THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN 49 



of this species, repeatedly increasing to vast hordes like those 

 seen in Heligoland, was reported from all stations on the east 

 coast of Great Britain from Guernsey northward to Bressay, the 

 central island of the Shetland group, representing a migration 

 column of nearly 680 miles in width." Gatke accounts for the 

 phenomenal migration of these birds by the fact that their breeding 

 area is of enormous extent, " reaching from the South of France 

 and England through Central and Northern Europe up to the limit 

 of the pine forests, and in the same parallels of latitude through Asia 

 as far as Japan. 



The return journey is made in April, and again Gatke's inimitable 

 description is well worth quoting : 



"Suddenly through the silence of a mild clear evening the 

 fine clear note of our little goldcrests is heard, and soon afterwards 

 the bird is seen rising from the neighbouring bushes, through the 

 still luminous sky; at measured intervals its call-note "hut hut 

 liiit" is heard as it flies off in slightly ascending spirals over the 

 neighbouring gardens ; then from every bush the cry is answered 

 in loud clear tones, and from all sides its travelling companions 

 wakened for the journey rise upwards, following in the wake of 

 the earliest starter the latter, however, when the answering voices 

 have announced that all the sleepers are aroused, ceases circling 

 about, and rises, with breast erect and brief rapid strokes of the 

 wings, almost vertically upwards ; soon all assemble in a somewhat 

 loose swarm, the call-notes are silenced when the last straggler 

 has joined the departing flock and the tiny wanderers vanish from 

 sight. While we are listening to their call-notes growing fainter 

 and fainter in the distance, and straining our eyes for one last 

 look at the little songsters, the first faintly gleaming stars appear 

 in their stead in the deep transparent ether above. Later still, 

 as we gaze upwards to the night sky sown with innumerable 

 points of light, we imagine that those myriads of shining worlds 

 are all that moves between us and the Infinite, while all the time 



VOL. II. G 



