Birds by Land and Sea 



of small glass tubes charged with powdered 

 magnesium, and plugged at the ends. By blowing 

 the powder through the flame of a couple of burning 

 matches, such dark corners can be satisfactorily 

 illumined. 



Not far from this shed was a large sheet of water 

 with a line of overhanging sallows growing on the 

 bank. Upon these sallows, at first hundreds, but 

 later thousands, of young swallows and martins 

 perched, whilst their mothers darted over the water 

 catching insects for them. When the parent bird 

 approached, mother and young rose twittering into 

 the air, and the food was passed from one to the other 

 as they hung for a moment breast to breast, with their 

 bodies almost perpendicular. Afterwards the young 

 one returned to its perch, and the old one to her 

 hawking. 



Broods of swallows and martins, and even eggs, 

 may be found up to the very moment when the birds 

 migrate. What a tragedy in little is here ! The 

 parent bird with all the highly strung devotion of 

 maternity constraining her to remain to tend her 

 young, whilst within her the mysterious impulse to 

 be gone awakens and urges her forth, until the 

 multitudinous twitter of the swarming migrants 

 calls her irresistibly, and she breaks away and follows 

 south, the racial impulse dominating the individual. 

 There is something of the Fate of the old Greeks in 

 this. 



Of our resident birds the yellow-hammer is one 

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