336 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



wards. In dull cloudy days, with occasional showers, 

 they frequent for the most part the vicinity of trees, 

 flying low under the spreading branches, or circling 

 round, at a somewhat higher level, their white tail- 

 coverts contrast sharply with the dark foliage. In 

 windy weather they will also seek the same localities ; 

 but it is curious to watch them at such times, daring the 

 wind, as it were, in their playful flight, hovering up in 

 the very teeth of the gale till, fairly mastered, they are 

 borne swiftly away on outspread wings only to return 

 again and again to the charge. The sportsman finds 

 them in the early autumn playing over the turnip fields 

 with the skimming swallow, crossing his path at every 

 turn, or chasing each other in little groups over the 

 sheltered corners where, some small plantation casts a 

 little shade, or a chance pit-hole adds the attractions of 

 water to a shady nook rich in coarse herbage and teeming 

 with insect life. How strange it is that the migratory im- 

 pulse should be stronger even than parental love, causing 

 even these gentle and peculiarly affectionate beings to 

 desert their later nestlings and leave them to the sad 

 lingering fate of death by starvation. Yet many are the 

 instances in which this has come to the knowledge of 

 careful observers, and the bodies of these callow young 

 are thrown out by the old ones on their return in spring. 

 I have frequently seen martins still feeding their off- 

 spring in the nest up to the end of September, and it is 

 these late hatched ones which are observed occasionally 

 about our dwellings long after the main body have left 

 us in October, being then too young and feeble to 

 attempt so long a journey. A young pair were shot 

 at Carrow, near Norwich, in 1862, as late as the 

 loth of November. As before remarked, though 

 for the most part peculiarly gentle and inoffensive 

 amongst themselves, these little creatures will pursue 

 any feathered intruder with the utmost vigour and 



