March 



station, finally losing sight of them behind the 

 buildings lying beyond. I should be inte- 

 rested to know in what district on the north 

 side of Manchester the rooks returned to their 

 summer haunts in the evening of the 3rd March, 

 1903. 



On the morning of the 29th March I passed 

 the spot where I had taken leave of my last wheat- 

 ear during the autumn migration at the close of 

 September of the preceding year. A sudden flash 

 of white on the freshly turned clods revealed the 

 wanderer returned to the old field-corner, where a 

 huge dung-heap forms, as it would seem, a baiting- 

 ground for the birds one could well believe them 

 to be the same birds in their passage to and fro 

 at the spring and autumn migrations. Whither 

 these particular birds go from here I do not know, 

 unless it be to the Derbyshire hills, whose grey 

 forms rise boldly on the horizon to the south and 

 east ; but if such be the case, they may well be 

 content to spend a day or two with us in the 

 lowlands, as is their habit, with the goal of their 

 wanderings so nearly in view. 



There are few sights more welcome to the 

 bird lover in his early spring rambles than that 

 of the wheatear as it flits from clod to clod in 

 the bare fields in the later days of March. A 

 rival of the chiff-chaff for the primacy as spring's 

 earliest herald from overseas, he delivers to the 

 eye in the open plain the message which the 



83 



