Ill 



From these familiar haunts birds make those daily journeys 

 which fill up the stories of their lives. In the breeding season 

 material must be sought for and carried to the nest, next the 

 female must be fed as she broods, and eventually the young when 

 they are hatched. In the autumn and winter, when food is much 

 scarcer, those species like Curlews, Lapwings, Books, Daws, 

 Starlings, and many others, band themselves together into flocks, 

 setting out at particular times from the common roosting place on 

 their daily forays, which often extend for many miles, and to which 

 they return as regularly as the hour of sunset approaches. These 

 latter daily journeys are just as much migrations as are the great 

 movements of the present day. The difference is in degree not 

 in kind. 



The writer recently experienced an amusing instance of this 

 clock-work regularity of life carried out by an old male Black- 

 bird. This individual was observed throughout a whole winter, 

 to pass at dusk with the utmost regularity a shelter, erected at 

 a duck marsh. This bird always flew down the same hedgerow 

 and in the same direction, and always at the same speed and 

 elevation. The following winter, apparently, the identical 

 Blackbird was observed to carry out the programme exactly as 

 before. 



Such facts which might be multiplied, ad. lib., all point in 

 one direction, and form undoubted proof of the excellent 

 memory of locality possessed by birds. 



It happens at times, however, on the advent of exceptional 

 cold, that these regular habits are disturbed, and daily migra- 

 tions in search of food have to be prolonged to such a distance, 

 that a return during daylight becomes an impossibility. Kesi- 

 dents in particular localities are therefore driven from their 

 customary haunts to other districts, usually on the outskirts of 

 the area affected by the frost. There they manage to exist until 

 a thaw enables them to satisfy their longing to return. All 

 species will not be affected in the same manner. Many like the 

 Buntings and Finches, draw near to the habitations of man, 

 where around stackyards, and the outskirts of villages and towns 

 they manage to maintain themselves until better conditions 

 prevail. In thickly populated countries, cultivation has had an 



