64 BIRD HAUNTS AND NATURE MEMORIES 



stone curlew lingers, astonishing the shooter who adds to 

 his bag one of these big-eyed plovers. But there is 

 another winterer whose habits, though more regular, are 

 more surprising. All along those southern shores, frequent- 

 ing the rock faces, the bramble scrub, and promenades 

 were black redstarts; whence come they, these conti- 

 nental nesters, and why ? The common redstart which 

 nests with us, and in Scandinavia up to the North Cape, 

 spends the colder months in Africa; this darker bird, 

 whose breeding area extends from the Baltic to the 

 Mediterranean shores, comes west for choice; possibly, 

 if it travels from Spain, actually comes north. How the 

 little dusky males flicked their fiery tails as they clung to 

 the rocks, hunting for spiders or insects in every crack 

 and cranny; they flitted amongst the bushes which fill 

 the deep valleys where tiny streams have carved their 

 way towards the shore; they perched on the backs of 

 seats on the sea-front at Seat on. Travellers from 

 Germany find their way to the Lancashire coast, and 

 annually visit the western Welsh headlands, but we have 

 still to learn the nesting area of the particular birds which 

 come each winter to the Cornish and Devon shores. 



In those Devon lanes, deep narrow ways, some of them, 

 with high banks and thick hedgerows meeting overhead, 

 tunnels from which the feathery awns of old man's beard 

 still hung in grey masses, and where the hazel catkins 

 were thick and green, abundant lamb's tails, tits worked 

 in busy flocks. The long-tails shot from hedge to hedge 

 with high-pitched calls, the blue tits chimed, the greats 

 and coals sounded their vernal up-and-down challenges. 

 There, too, the nuthatch whistled like any schoolboy, 

 and hammered with its pick bill as it ran up and down the 

 trunks, often descending head foremost. Primroses and 

 violets were in abundance, speedwell and avens weeks 

 before their usual time further north, and even the summer- 



