NOVEMBER. 1 79 



warned them carry them far. When the winds drop, 

 and soft airs from the south intervene, the birds have 

 neither incentive nor guide for their journey ; so 

 they remain contentedly where they happen to have 

 arrived, making the most they can of the shortening 

 hours of daylight, and seeking the warmest shelters 

 for the long night's rest. 



STRANGERS, NOT RESIDENTS. 



But these lingering guests are not the same 

 swallow birds which haunted the same spots in June. 

 These went far away with the cold north-easterly 

 winds that brought redwings and fieldfares, hooded 

 crows and bramblings, with hosts of rooks, jackdaws, 

 skylarks, chaffinches, missel-thrushes, and gold crests, 

 as well as woodcock and snipe, robins and hedge- 

 sparrows, etc., to spend the winter in England. With 

 them came belated foreign sand-martins, which, 

 finding southerly winds and summery conditions 

 prevailing in England, have halted for the time. In 

 the case of late house-martins it is easy to see that 

 they are strangers to the place, and not our own 

 resident birds, because on first arrival they evidently 

 do not know which of the nests have been appro- 

 priated by house-sparrows, and great disturbance 

 ensues from their persistence in trying to enter these. 

 When, too, they go up to nests which our own 

 martins built, with cunning little slits for doors close 

 to the roof, so that sparrows could not enter, the 

 strangers have obvious difficulty in finding their 

 way in. 



