72 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



(3) In a North Temperate country like Britain, we may 

 divide the birds into five sets, which are not very rigidly 

 limited from one another. 



First, there are the Summer visitors, such as swift and 

 swallow, cuckoo and nightingale, who arrive from the south 

 and south-east in the wake of Spring, with Spring in their 

 voices. They remain to breed, but leave our shores again in 

 the Autumn. We see some of them congregating excitedly, 

 taking trial flights, as it were saying good-bye many times 

 over ; they start on their journey ; they pass the coast 

 lighthouses in the night ; they traverse the pathless sea ; 

 they speed on, it may be along the west coast of Africa, or 

 across the blue waters of the Mediterranean ; they reach 

 winter-quarters somewhere in the Nile Valley, in Madeira, 

 in South Africa somewhere. There they abide until the 

 cold and dark days in the north are past ; thence they 

 return in Spring, some of them at least love-prompted, to 

 our budding hedgerows and reawakened woods. 



Among the more familiar Summer visitors to Britain, 

 we may mention cuckoo, nightingale, swift, swallow, 

 martins, ring-ousel, willow- wren, whitethroat, and fly- 

 catchers. The name of the last suggests the obvious 

 remark that the majority of the Summer visitors are 

 insectivorous. 



Second, there are the Winter visitors, such as fieldfare 

 and redwing, snow-bunting and some northern ducks. 

 They arrive in Autumn, chiefly from the north and north- 

 east ; they are with us during the cold, raw months ; they 

 fly northwards again in Spring, to sing their love-songs if 

 they have any in the inhospitable " barren grounds " of 

 the Tundra or amid the surge which surrounds the northern 

 skerries. Many of our Winter visitors in the wider sense 

 come as additions to the ranks of those species that are 

 represented in the country throughout the whole year. 



