March 



has ingratiated itself among many peoples by the 

 trustful or, perhaps, bold familiarity of its ways, and 

 is ever found in close association with man and his 

 works, the other shuns such contact, and flees 

 beyond the last furrow of the plough to the 

 waste uplands or rocky seashore, where it may 

 live its wild solitary life. Already during its 

 temporary sojourn in the plains one observes that 

 the wheatear does not perch on trees as robins 

 do, but flits from clod to clod and from post to 

 post, just as it is wont to fly from rock to rock 

 along the seashore, or from one prominent object 

 to another on the lonely moors which its presence 

 serves to enliven. Both, as a rule, fly close to the 

 ground, although the robin will at times perch high 

 to sing. Both are solitary birds, the robin never 

 packing, and the wheatears doing so only when 

 migrating. In spite, however, of all points of 

 difference, there remains a striking likeness in the 

 " personality " of these two birds, the more worthy, 

 perhaps, to be noted here, since such facts are 

 of too elusive a character to enter as elements in 

 classification. 



These birds continued to drift singly across our 

 fields until the i6th April, the first male being seen 

 ten days later than the first female. After a lull 

 from the 1 6th April until the 3rd May, other larger 

 wheatears began to drift across, and among these 

 were some apparently already paired. The last birds 

 of this second migration passed on the I2th May. 



85 



