The Coming of the Birds 



BY the time the first summer migrants arrive, 

 the birds' wandering movements take a new and 

 steadier purpose. Migration has been more or less 

 actively in progress through all the cloudy months 

 since the disappearance of the last swallow in 

 October; its impulse is not confined to the two 

 great movements in spring and autumn, as is 

 suggested by the popular division of English birds 

 into resident and migratory kinds. Yet, by the 

 time that such home-keeping species as our native 

 rooks, or the thrushes and robins of well-furnished 

 gardens, are nesting under the bare March skies, 

 there is a striking change in the preoccupations of 

 most of the birds to be seen on an afternoon's walk. 

 The wandering flocks which drifted eastwards or 

 westwards across the country before the frosts and 

 thaws of midwinter have now almost all dis- 

 appeared ; and although the woods and gardens are 

 still only half peopled, there is a steady con- 

 centration of small groups and single pairs of birds 

 into their summer nesting quarters. 



The last of the great winter flocks to linger into 

 April are often those of the fieldfares massing in 

 some bold wood, or among the trees on some wide, 

 conspicuous hillside, before crossing the North Sea 

 to their summer homes. These huge and noisy 



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