THE THRUSH GENUS 359 



early autumn, it is that we see appearing in our fields and parks and 

 gardens the familiar flocks of song-thrushes and other species that 

 are here to-day and, after a hasty meal, are gone to-morrow. All 

 these birds, in their thousands, fieldfares and redwings, thrushes and 

 blackbirds, winter visitors or birds of passage, keep pressing onward 

 to the coast, where in a state of restless expectation they await the 

 final irresistible impulse that, day after day, is to drive them, flock 

 after flock, across the North Sea to the shores of Norway and Sweden. 

 The journey once begun there can be no lingering by the way, no 

 repose for tired wings, no rest for the soles of their feet. Unlike the 

 dove that issued from Noah's Ark, they cannot return whence they 

 came ; the summons draws them relentlessly onward, guiding their 

 course over the trackless waters, till they sink exhausted on the 

 coasts of the land of their birth. 1 



Long before the last of these emigrating birds have disappeared 

 from our coast, the thrushes and blackbirds that rest with us 

 throughout the year are in the thick of their nesting activities, their 

 numbers having been considerably increased by new-comers from 

 across the English Channel, who arrive on the south coast of England 

 and Ireland during February and March, staying to breed, and 

 returning in the autumn to their winter quarters on the Continent. 2 



It will have been noted that there is in the case of our blackbirds 

 and thrushes two entirely distinct migrations ; that of the Scandi- 

 navian birds which come south to winter with us, going back in the 

 spring, and that of the birds from Western Europe, which come north 

 to breed with us, going back in the autumn. Consequently many of 

 the birds we see nesting in our hedge-rows in the summer are, in 

 winter, far away in the sunnier South, their places being taken by the 

 Northern invaders. Such are the facts that have been established by 

 the records kept at the light stations on our coasts, both of birds seen 

 flying by day and of those less happy ones that, speeding hot-winged 



1 See the works quoted in footnote 3 on p. 354. The resident mistle-thrushes also receive 

 a slight accession to their numbers in the spring. See the " Classified Notes." 2 Ibid. 



