BIRD TRAVELLERS 



usually informed that they have seen starlings, which 

 will fly, when in dashing mood and hawking insects in 

 the air, with much of the swallows' grace and speed. 

 But there is overwhelming testimony from West- 

 Country naturalists that in mild seasons the swallow 

 tribe lingers with us far into December. At Marazion, in 

 Cornwall, martins have been flying about the cliffs as 

 late as December iyth, and swallows have been seen in 

 the south a day later. The loiterers would no doubt be 

 birds of third broods which missed the day appointed for 

 general migration in October. 



A PRETTY conceit about the phrase, " Showing the 

 white feather," is that it arose from the 

 The way the wheatear, that shepherd's com- 



White panion, flashes its white rump as it flutters 

 Feather timidly before any intruder of its haunts, 

 even before a cloud-shadow. Yet a few 

 wheatears will face a winter in England, and in the 

 delicate climate of Cornwall may be found hovering 

 about the rocks at Land's End. True, these may be 

 shirking the perils of a sea voyage ; but in another way 

 the bird of the white feather shows a brave heart, for 

 it is often the first migrant to come home in March, and 

 its delicious wild warble is the first Spring song. 



THE music of night- wandering birds falls on few ears, 

 yet Winter's nights have their melodies as 

 Winter's well as June's. In Devonshire, a country 

 Night- where owls are marvellously abundant, 

 Music nights now are loud with mellow hooting, 

 diversified by the white owl's blood- 

 curdling shrieks. It is the marsh-man of the East 

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