CHAPTER III. 



STRANGERS OF THE SPRING. 



IN scanning the list of British birds, the naturalist 

 will note with regret the names of many species 

 now marked as accidental visitors only which 

 were once regular migrants to our shores. 

 Modern improvements and ruthless persecution 

 have exterminated these birds as breeding species : 

 yet scarcely a spring passes that some of them do 

 not wander across the Channel, prompted to do 

 so perhaps by memories of more prosperous days, 

 or following a deeply- rooted desire to visit 

 English haunts, and breed in districts where, 

 unmolested, their ancestors had bred for so many 

 generations in the past. Many of our accidental 

 visitors only reach the British Islands in spring. 

 Their breeding range does not extend so far 

 north as this country, so that they do not come 

 within the influence of the southern stream of 

 migrants in autumn ; they reach our shores by 

 travelling too far north when on their way in 

 spring to their summer quarters. They are, for 

 the most part, birds that migrate north at that 



