THE HOMECOMERS 85 



APRIL 

 II 



THE HOMECOMERS 



FOR a week, even for a month, the cuckoo 

 has been reported from one part of the 

 country and another. Every year he is heard 

 long before he actually comes. Yesterday, a 

 favoured farm hand both heard and saw him. 

 As the man chopped poles from a withy tree, 

 sending the white chips flying from his keen axe, 

 the bird sat for a little time in a tree near by and 

 gave his name a dozen times. We listened for 

 him all day long and never heard him, but in the 

 evening there came over the orchard from the 

 west, first a martin, then another, and then a 

 swallow, evidently one of our own swallows, for 

 it stayed and hawked back and forth till the sun 

 set. 



It is a penalty on these birds that spend their 

 winter in a softer climate that they should be 

 regarded as foreigners. Just so much foreigners 

 are the people of the big house who annually 

 migrate to Italy in autumn, and do not return till 



