xi Departing Birds : an Epilogue 267 



and a vast gathering of them in a neighbouring 

 village warned us that migration was at hand. On 

 14th September I left for Falmouth, hoping to see 

 something of what these birds were doing in the far 

 west, and to follow them eastwards if they had begun 

 to move. But here the weather, which had been very 

 cold and rainy, suddenly changed, and we came again 

 into a summer which was tempting the birds to linger. 

 The morning after our arrival we crossed the harbour 

 in a boat to a beautiful sunny promontory, with wood 

 and gorse coming down to the water ; it was posi- 

 tively hot, and birds and butterflies were abundant. 

 In the gorse at one warm spot my nephew caught a 

 sound which I should have missed if I had been alone ; 

 he wished to know what it was, and, pushing a little 

 way into the gorse, I heard to my astonishment the 

 reel of the Grasshopper Warbler. It was new to 

 me that this bird ever finds his voice again in the 

 autumn. But Macgillivray, in a passage often quoted, 

 implies that he used to hear it at Norwich as late or 

 later than this, and Mr. Mansell Pleydell once heard 

 it in Dorset in September. 



In a day or two the fine weather showed signs of 

 breaking up, and the birds began to move a little. 

 Along the beach the Pied Wagtails were dallying, 

 yet clearly moving eastwards, and among them were 

 one or two unmistakable White Wagtails birds 

 which we do not often see in Oxfordshire. One of 



