xi Departing Birds : an Epilogue 265 



I did not see another till 26th August, when a 

 young bird, which most probably had missed his way 

 on his travels, appeared on the telegraph wires, and 

 was gone the next day. 



Other stray travellers began to show themselves 

 as August crept on, and made up for the comparative 

 dulness of that month for the ornithologist. Not 

 indeed that most beautiful bird the Green Sandpiper, 

 which for years used to enliven our Augusts ; he has 

 deserted us for some inscrutable reason, and left his 

 favourite stream to the Kingfishers, which are now 

 again growing more abundant every year. But a fine 

 show of orange-red berries of the mountain-ashes in 

 my garden brought a new and strange visitor, for whose 

 sake, would he but have stayed, I would willingly 

 have sacrificed them. The thrush tribe are so pas- 

 sionately fond of these berries that I enjoy the sight 

 of them for only a very few days; and this year 

 a young Eing-ousel, the only one I have ever seen 

 in the neighbourhood, having no doubt lost his way 

 on migration, found these out and hankered after 

 them for a whole day. He startled me by his unmis- 

 takable alarm -note early in the morning of 16th 

 August, and again and again that day he tried to get 

 at the berries, flying round and round while we were 

 playing on the lawn, and in spite of his natural wild- 

 ness alighting now and then on the tree, but always 

 on the side of it away from us. But even such hard- 



