50 MATESHIP WITH BIRDS 



October 7. On that date the bush was suddenly 

 seething with the pretty chestnut-breasted birds of 

 the white-brow, and with them this time were many 

 of the black-faced, white-breasted "Masked" species. 

 Within seven other successive years of which re- 

 cords were kept for the district, only once did these 

 gauzy-winged wanderers misjudge the opening days 

 of October; that was in 1912, when a mixed advance 

 guard of about sixty members of the two species 

 came down with a high north wind on September 29. 



These exceptions do but prove the rule. Our bird- 

 world knows no arbitrary law in the matter of 

 calendar months; but, for all that the Australian 

 months merge one into the other almost imper- 

 ceptibly, the migrants and the nomads are able to 

 "take the sun's height" as accurately as any Ameri- 

 can bird. And none displays more consistency than 

 the "Skimmers." 



For the first day or two of their arrival in Vic- 

 toria the Wood-Swallows are not perceived by the 

 unobservant. They are, indeed, almost unbodied 

 voices, keeping as they do at a tremendous height in 

 the air, whence their combined chirping drifts down 

 to the watchful ear as the final promise of Spring. 

 Presumably they come to the trees to rest on the 

 night of their arrival ; but, if so, they must go aloft 

 again at dawn, for it is only by degrees that the land 

 is spied out to their satisfaction. 



But when the aerial evolutions have been given 

 over for the time being, what bustling and clatter 

 there is in the Wood-Swallow world! In one day 

 the byways of the bush are filled with busily nesting 

 birds that were not there on the previous day, and 



