252 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. xiii. 



wind going on at the same time, a circumstance often observ- 

 able on the coast, but less usual inland. These two currents 

 are seldom opposed to one another, but the careful watcher 

 of the clouds can frequently perceive a difference amounting 

 to several points of the compass between them. It follows 

 that migrants which have come over the sea with the upper 

 current, and on approaching land lowered their altitude, will 

 somewhat alter their direction of flight to suit the lower 

 current, in which they now find themselves. 



Again it has to be borne in mind that it is not so much the 

 state of the wind when a rare migrant happens to be shot, 

 that is important, but its direction on the night preceding 

 that event, when the bird, in all probability, made land, for 

 nineteen-twentieths of our autumn migrants arrive before 

 dawn. If a thick fog comes on, those which are caught in 

 it make little effort to proceed and generally descend upon 

 the first object in the least degree suitable to their require- 

 ments, which accounts for the unlikely places in which they 

 are occasionally found. 



Sea-birds destroyed by " Tar." — Mr. R. J. Pinchen writes, 

 under date of November 7th : "I have seen a lot of Divers 

 washed ashore, most of them covered with what looks like tar. 

 This tar is all along the high-water mark. I have picked up 

 Red-throated Divers and Black-throated Divers, and have seen 

 lots of Razorbills, Guillemots, one Puffin, one Little Auk, and a 

 speckled Gannet, which was partly covered with tar but still 

 alive. Some Gulls were flying about with tar on them. . . , 

 It was 29th October when I saw most of the Divers, and the 

 Gannet." Now that the war is over one had hoped that 

 this horrible compound would have disappeared. This Little 

 Auk is the only one of that species reported. 



Effect of the War on Birds. — More than one author has 

 expressed an opinion that during the four years of war, birds 

 of passage did not take their customary routes,* but this 

 theory is not borne out by any observations made in Norfolk 

 or Suffolk. There is no doubt that birds of prey benefited 

 by the war, inasmuch as they escaped persecution, as is 

 shown in a marked manner by the hovering Kestrel, the 

 surprising increase of which was doubtless ascribable to the 

 absence of gamekeepers. There ought to be a corresponding 

 diminution of fieldmice, and certainly I have never seen 

 fewer mice in the stacks when threshing, but moles are more 

 abundant than ever. Rats moderately numerous. Whether 



* See Birds and the War, by H. S. Gladstone, Ch. IV. 



