1/2 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



the coast-line westwards ; and if a similar invasion of 

 rooks prevailed all down the east coast, England 

 had a prospect of seeing rather too much of the 

 " farmer's friend." The incoming stream of skylarks, 

 on the other hand, dwindled during the greater part 

 of the week, and flocks of peewits became compara- 

 tively few. Some woodcocks arrived, less exhausted 

 with their flight than is sometimes the case, when 

 men take them with their hands from the furze 

 bushes along the coast ; and on the whole the shore 

 gunners, who lie in wait to welcome our winter 

 visitors with shot-guns, were rather disappointed with 

 the small proportion of birds worth powder and shot 

 to the vast hosts of rooks and jackdaws. 



MIGRANTS FROM THE NORTH. 



This disproportion and the direction of the pre- 

 vailing winds suggest that the birds which had been 

 arriving this week were not foreigners, but the surplus 

 feathered population of North Britain drifting south- 

 wards for the winter. If the German Ocean has been 

 swept by the same shifting west winds that we have 

 had, it stands to reason that birds could not come to 

 Norfolk from Norway ; but, on the other hand, the 

 west winds would naturally have driven British birds, 

 travelling from north to south, to the east coast, 

 where, after crossing the mouth of the Wash, they 

 would appear upon the coast-line of Norfolk in un- 

 usual myriads. If this is the explanation, as seems 

 probable, of the phenomena of migration during the 

 last week of October, then what looked like a 

 threatened plague of rooks for the coming winter 



