EARLY SPRING IN SOUTH DEVON 63 



ivy berries. The blackcap, though no invalid, shuns our 

 stern winters to spend its time in the sunshine of Italy 

 or North Africa ; it is an early immigrant, but by no means 

 the first to return; these two were neither early nor 

 late, but were exceptions to the rule that blackcaps 

 emigrate. South Devon had tempted them to stay; 

 there was food in abundance, flies and fruit, hi the sheltered 

 rock garden; why risk the perils of a long Channel cross- 

 ing ? A couple were they ? No, a pair ; male with black 

 cap, female with brown; they were a constant pair too, 

 electing to share the experiment of wintering in England 

 in one another's company. In early April the cock 

 blackcaps arrive in our woods, producing song little 

 inferior to that of the boasted nightingale; they spy out 

 the land and select territory, awaiting the arrival, some 

 days later, of the hens. But what happens in normal 

 winter quarters ? In Italy and Africa do the sexes remain 

 together, and when the time comes for a northward move 

 does the male bird take leave, explaining that he is going 

 to survey the land ? Here, in England, the two were 

 together, and when one flew the other followed; they were 

 undoubtedly mated birds. 



Blackcaps were not the only winterers on this South 

 Devon coast. In that peaceful hamlet, one of the most 

 beautiful spots on a beautiful shore, which shares with 

 the busy Lancashire watering-place the name of Black- 

 pool, the chiffchaff was working the blighted bark of the 

 apple-trees in an ancient orchard. Woolly aphids, tiny 

 morsels even for a tiny bird, supplied the warbler with 

 sweetness and sustenance; it was too busy to sing as it 

 flitted from stem to branch, and branch to stem, pecking, 

 pecking, pecking, wherever it went. 



In the mild West Country chiffchaff and blackcap, 

 landrail and, it is said, swallow, vary their normal habits 

 by risking an occasional winter, and more rarely still the 



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