A NORTHERING HERALD 109 



Africa and, in autumn, arrive there in great flocks ; and 

 being weak fliers, momentarily tuned up to the great 

 adventure, they cross with a rush and peculiar impetus. 

 The drifting, the slow distribution over the new con 

 tinent, begins thereafter, and varies much from year to 

 year. A few, for example, came last year all the way to 

 England. Perhaps five or six pairs in all nested with us 

 in Norfolk, Warwickshire, and Wales. It is one of the 

 mysteries why so many birds are stopped by the Channel 

 and North Sea after crossing more serious ditches. 

 Why should the willow warbler darken the sky over 

 Heligoland and cross the North Sea in myriads when the 

 icterine warbler, a strong flier that abounds in Holland 

 and Northern France, never sends a single spy ? 



March is the date for the coming of the earliest mi 

 grants, and we are accustomed to regard the wheatear as 

 the very earliest, though most of us do not see it first. 

 It delights especially in the South and West and in the 

 Downs. When you watch it on a favourite down, 

 running about almost like a mouse, flying scarce a foot 

 from the ground, and as fond of its legs as a cock pheasant 

 in February, it looks of the homeland homelike, and 

 your least thought would be that it could or would 

 venture on a great aerial journey. Probably the majority 

 cross the wide westerly end of the Channel, for most of 

 us who have our being towards the East side of England 

 hear and see a score of chiflHiaff and willow wren before 

 ever a wheatear is rumoured, i Yet now and again a single 

 bird will appear early in March on Hampstead Heath 

 before the chiffchaffs annotmce themselves at their 

 favourite haunts in Beckenhkm and Dulwich, both of 

 which, in spite of their urbanity, have claimed several 

 first appearances. Our scientific ornithologists have 

 worked out, with the help ofi rings and other pointers, 



