The Coming of the Birds 35 



autumn the yellow wagtail or cowbird a summer 

 migrant will visit a garden lawn for a meal, as it 

 were, between trains, darting across the dewy morn- 

 ing grass with its flash of yellow beneath a back of 

 olive-green. The grey wagtail may often be seen 

 by the rivers of midland districts in March and early 

 April on his way from the dykes and rivers of the 

 low country, where he spends the winter, to his 

 breeding grounds by the steeper hill-streams. Most 

 chiffchaffs and blackcaps migrate to more southern 

 lands ; yet some linger in the south-western coun- 

 ties in midwinter. Tennyson is true to nature 

 when he makes the sea-blue kingfisher a " bird of 

 March " on many smaller streams, which it leaves 

 in winter for more open waters, and seeks again in 

 spring ; and even so retiring and home-keeping a 

 bird as the moor-hen has its own spring migrations. 

 In April it is not uncommon to see a moor-hen flying 

 heavily across the middle of a waterless field at a 

 height of fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, or 

 resting, to recover itself for a fresh plunge into 

 publicity, in a holly bush in a garden shrubbery. 

 Though a retiring bird, it is also pugnacious ; and 

 when it meets strange company on its travels its 

 combativeness sometimes leads it into curious 

 affrays. It has been seen to keep an irate magpie 

 out of its own newly built nest, which it was using (as 

 barn owls will in winter) for a convenient hiding- 

 place. 



The spring tide of migration is at its height about 

 the third week of April, when the arrival of many 

 birds of summer opens a new era in the year. In 



