66 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



into a company movement and acted in unanimity and 

 as a corporate body, yet as soon as they returned to the 

 trees, they alighted in couples, each pair close together 

 and separated from the other pairs. The interrelation 

 between the social functions and domestic individualism 

 of the species was in fact presented in dramatic form 

 and as a kind of alternating rhythm. The personal 

 and sexual identity dived, as it were, and then reappeared 

 on the surface. 



Ill 



Between the middle of June and the middle of 

 September practically all the interest of inland bird- 

 life disappears. Fields and groves have no offerings 

 for eye or ear, and the drooping, browning foliage is a 

 sanatorium for avian patients undergoing their seasonal 

 moult. Then suddenly, this anxious period over, 

 they stream gaily and tumultuously out of their leafy 

 shelters, invading the open spaces once more I had 

 almost said like a carnival throng in Southern Europe 

 but for our impoverishment in brightly plumaged native 

 birds during the last fifty and a hundred years. From 

 then until the beginning of November or later, and all 

 through the winter, if there are prolonged frosts, take 

 place those complicated and internal migratory move- 

 ments which affect all our resident species. So I 

 returned in autumn to this diminutive city of birds to 

 meet them. 



One afternoon, a small colony of half a dozen sand- 

 pipers delayed their migration on the moat before passing 

 onwards. Sandpipers are rare enough anywhere in the 

 south ; in southern towns they must be nearly legendary. 

 They flew about the moat like miniature mallards, 

 though so much speedier and more versatile upon their 

 sharply pointed wings. Occasionally they would turn 

 like a swallow and expose the pure, conspicuous white 

 of the underparts, uttering all the time in concert their 

 high, clear, musical, triple and quadruple whistle. Their 

 gay visitation was made in the kingfisher's estate, and 

 he, I believe, breeds regularly within five minutes' walk 

 of the market-place, though the young are frequently 



