270 THE LAND'S END 



else is comparatively rare, while the local chiffchaff is 

 exceedingly common. 



Before the earliest summer migrants are heard 

 some of the resident species are breeding, not only 

 on the cliffs, but the small birds in the bushes- 

 thrushes, blackbirds, dunnocks, wrens and others. 

 I was surprised to find that clothes-drying was a very 

 serious trouble to these bush-breeders where there are 

 no trees. Monday is washing-day at the farms and 

 cottages, and it is usual to use the stone hedges 

 covered with their luxuriant crop of furze as a 

 drying-place. Looking over the land from some 

 elevated place you see the gleam of white linen far 

 and near as of hedges covered with snow. Passing 

 one of these hedges one evening I found a gather- 

 ing of about a dozen blackbirds in a state of great 

 excitement, hopping and flying up and down, chuck- 

 ling and screaming before the white sheets and 

 counterpanes covering some of the large round bushes. 

 Poor birds ! it was late in the day and they were 

 getting desperate, since if these hateful white cover- 

 ings were not removed soon so as to let them 

 return to their nests their eggs would be chilled beyond 

 hope. Some of the birds care as little for the cover- 

 ing sheet as rooks and jackdaws do for the grotesque 

 imitations of a human figure set up in the ploughed 

 fields to frighten them. A woman in one of the 

 cottages told me that once when going round among 

 the furze bushes where her things were drying she 

 noticed a dunnock slip out from under a sheet and fly 

 away. She lifted the sheet and found a nest with 



