6o MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



RETURN OF THE SWALLOWS. 



The swallows constitute, of course, one large ex- 

 ception to the rule that birds are more in evidence 

 in winter ; and when in April your eye follows the 

 wavy flight of the first swallow who is probably a 

 sand-martin, to be precise you wonder how this 

 striking feature of the life of the air can have been 

 absent all the winter and been missed so little. 

 When our thoughts are with the robin and the holly, 

 it is hard to realize what a haze of whirling bird-life 

 covers the whole country again when the swallows 

 have come. In the evening the change is almost 

 greater. Where in winter you would have had to 

 take a lantern and search the hedgerows for sign of 

 insect life, and would have found none there unless 

 the air was mild, in spring the twilight hedgerow 

 flickers with filmy life, and the bats go whirling in 

 and out among the crowd, taking toll of their fellow- 

 passengers at every snap which you can plainly 

 hear of their little jaws. 



THE MULTIPLYING BATS. 



Until the middle of April the bats are compara- 

 tively few ; but they increase in numbers so rapidly 

 with each spell of mild weather afterwards that one 

 is almost inclined to class them among the migrants 

 of the season. There is, of course, no reason why 

 bats should not migrate, if it would do them any 

 good. They seem to be almost tireless on the wing, 

 and with the wind in their favour would find no diffi- 

 culty whatever in crossing the Channel or the Straits 



