MAY. 73 



DELAYED MIGRANTS. 



May 10. The first week in May, 1902, was not 

 such a period as one can look back upon with especial 

 pleasure. The smiles and frowns of our coy spring 

 alternated too rapidly, and the frowns had been so 

 very, very chilly. What might have been the busiest 

 week of bird migration in the year had seen no 

 feathered traffic at all, because the persistent wind, 

 always in the north and east, had been dead against 

 the little travellers. The fieldfares, assembled still in 

 their winter flocks, waited on the east coast in vain 

 for the favourable wind which should carry them to 

 their Arctic homes, where they could nest in safe 

 colonies among the birch trees of the furthest forest 

 range. No thrush-bird can remain to build " in 

 colonies" in the land of the birds'-nesting British 

 boy, to say nothing of egg-stealing British vermin. 

 So the voice of the fieldfare is unwelcome in England 

 in May. It speaks too harshly of inclement seasons ; 

 and the adverse wind which keeps him here holds 

 back the house-martins when they ought to be with 

 us, twittering above the windows as they repair their 

 mud nests under the eaves. 



SUCCESSIONAL SWALLOWS. 



It would be interesting to know why the sand- 

 martin, a smaller, slimmer bird than the house-martin, 

 elects to brave our English climate the earlier of the 

 two. Of sand-martins, and also of swallows, we had 



