A BIRDLOVER'S YEAR 



migration, the underlying impulse still re- 

 mains a complete mystery. Thanks to the 

 most painstaking labours of some of our 

 celebrated naturalists (and above all to 

 Mr. Eagle Clarke of the Royal Scottish 

 Museum in Edinburgh), the movements of 

 migrating birds are no longer shrouded in 

 mystery ; their routes and dates of departure 

 and arrival are all in course of being tabu- 

 lated, and every summer one may count 

 upon welcoming one's old friends to their 

 breeding-haunts of former years. 



' Summer is coming, summer is coming ! 



I know it, I know it, I know it. 

 Light again, leaf again, life again, love again ' ; 



Yes, my wild little poet. 



TENNYSON. 



That one swallow does not make a summer 

 may be true, but summer-time without the 

 swallows would be impossible to conceive 

 of. They are wonderful travellers, those 

 frail little birds ; and year after year they 

 tenant the same nests on our shores. They 

 are perpetually on the wing hawking for 

 insects, and seem almost to have mastered 

 the secret of perpetual motion. 

 72 



