OCTOBER. 161 



swallows. These were, of course, all summer birds 

 travelling from Scandinavia ; but, with the exception 

 of the swallows, which moved on again, they remained 

 loitering near the coast for a full week. With these 

 summer birds came flocks of yellowhammers, larks, 

 pipits, and plovers, presumably to stay for the winter ; 

 and a solitary but interesting visitor who accompanied 

 them was a merlin. 



MIGRANTS OFF THE LINE. 



On the 4th a number of little siskins arrived, well 

 out of the line of their ordinary migration, while more 

 flocks of bramblings, usually scarce in the neighbour- 

 hood, and foreign chaffinches, came in on the 5th. 

 Next day more flocks of finches arrived ; and the 

 unusual number of robins and hedge-sparrows in the 

 hedges by the sea seemed to show that these birds 

 had travelled from Norway too. The robins, unlike 

 themselves, were silent, flitting in and out of the 

 hedges ; while the hedge-sparrows seemed to be 

 noisily piping to each other on all sides. The reason 

 for this contrast was, probably, that the robins, whose 

 winter song means defiance of all other robins within 

 hearing, were silent because they had not established 

 themselves yet in the strange country, and there were 

 no other robins in the coast hedges to object to the 

 new-comers j whereas the piping note of the hedge- 

 sparrow is not its song, but a call by which husbands 

 and wives, parents and children, keep within touch of 

 each other. After a journey over sea it was natural 

 that there should be a clamour for missing relatives. 

 Among the robins was one young blackcap though 



M 



