128 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



nights grow cold. Desperate and ravenous, they will eat 

 anything, but perish by hundreds as the warmth declines. 



Dragon-flies of the larger size are now very busy 

 rushing to and fro on their double wings ; those who go 

 blackberrying or nutting cannot fail to see them. Only 

 a very few days since it does not seem a week there was 

 a chiffchaff calling in a copse as merrily as in the spring. 

 This little bird is the first, or very nearly the first, to 

 come in the spring, and one of the last to go as autumn 

 approaches. It is curious that, though singled out as a 

 first sign of spring, the chiffchaff has never entered into 

 the home life of the people like the robin, the swallow, 

 or even the sparrow. 



There is nothing about it in the nursery rhymes or 

 stories, no one goes out to listen to it, children are not 

 taught to recognise it, and grown-up persons are often 

 quite unaware of it. I never once heard a countryman, 

 a labourer, a farmer, or any one who was always out of 

 doors, so much as allude to it. They never noticed it, 

 so much is every one the product of habit. 



The first swallow they looked for, and never missed ; 

 but they neither heard nor saw the chiffchaff. To those 

 who make any study at all of birds it is, of course, per- 

 fectly familiar ; but to the bulk of people it is unknown. 

 Yet it is one of the commonest of migratory birds, and 

 sings in every copse and hedgerow, using loud, un- 

 mistakable notes. At last, in the middle of September, 

 the chiffchaff, too, is silent. The swallow remains ; but 

 for the rest, the birds have flocked together, finches, 

 starlings, sparrows, and gone forth into the midst of the 

 stubble far from the place where their nests were built, 

 and where they sang, and chirped, and whistled so long. 



The swallows, too, are not without thought of going. 

 They may be seen twenty in a row, one above the other, 



