Local Migration. i 73 



villages, orchards, and gardens are beginning to 

 receive more of the bird population, while the 

 great flocks are beginning to break up under the 

 influence of the approach of spring. In March 

 the same process goes on more rapidly ; the fields 

 are becoming deserted and the gardens fuller. 

 But meanwhile hedges, woods, thickets and 

 streams are filling with a population from beyond 

 the seas, some part of which penetrates even into 

 the gardens, sharing the fruit-trees with the resi- 

 dents, or modestly building their nests on the 

 ground. As a rule, though one of a very general 

 kind, it may be laid down that our resident birds 

 prefer the neighbourhood of mankind for nesting 

 purposes, while the summer migrants build chiefly 

 in the thickets and hedges of the open country ; 

 so that just at the time when Chaffinches, Green- 

 finches, Goldfinches, and a host of other birds are 

 leaving the open country for the precincts of the 

 village, their places are being taken by the new 

 arrivals of the spring. Or if this rule be too 

 imperfect to be worth calling a rule at all (for all 

 the Swallow kind but one British species build in 

 human habitations), it is at least true that if a 



