4 ANNALS OF BIRD LIFE. 



nooks between the big boulders of millstone grit. 

 Spring is creeping rapidly over the valleys and 

 clothing every twig and spray with delicate green. 

 Suddenly, as if by magic, the Chiffchaff appears. 

 Scores and hundreds of them may be heard chiff- 

 chaffing from the birch and alder trees, and even 

 from the long bilberry wires and heath that in 

 some places half conceals the rocks. No man 

 saw these birds arrive ; silently they make their 

 ddbut in their summer quarters, journeying to them 

 in the night when all is still and the road is safe. 

 Whence have these little feathered wanderers 

 come ? They are all the way from Northern 

 Africa; from the oases in the Great Desert; from 

 the groves of Morocco and Fez and the country 

 of the lawless Touareg. They have crossed the 

 Straits of Gibraltar, " passed along the coasts of 

 Portugal, Spain, and France, and over the stormy 

 English Channel ; then two hundred miles further 

 still, nearly the length of England, to the old 

 familiar coppices in this Yorkshire valley. Think 

 of the magnitude of such a journey ; fifteen 

 hundred miles of flight for a pair of little wings 

 almost as delicate as gossamer, supporting a body 

 which would go inside a big thimble ! Think of 

 the little mind encased in this feathered casket ; 

 the recalling to memory of old familiar landmarks 

 on the way ; the eye for detail ; the knowledge of 

 locality brought into action between the date- 

 palms of Algerian oases and the bilberry wires and 

 birch trees of Yorkshire! And remember that 



