8 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
swing. The migration of Swifts up the east coast has been 
very remarkable. According to a correspondent of ‘The Field,’ 
they were seen on the 20th August between the Tees-mouth and 
Redcar, flying about in thousands, and again on the 27th were so 
numerous that “the air seemed alive with them, and boys in the 
streets were striking them down with whips.” Mr. Inchbald, 
writing in the same paper the following week (Sept. 18th), says 
that on August 25th, when at Flamborough, “ hundreds of Swifts, 
in one continuous flight, came flying from the north over the 
headland towards the south. The flight continued for nearly half 
an hour, and the birds flew lazily on, as though they had journeyed 
for some distance.” At Spurn they were seen in most unheard-of 
numbers until the 29th of August, on which day they departed. 
When birds are once moving they are too restless to remain long 
in one locality, often only for a few hours; and in the Lincoln- 
shire marshes, unless we are out at a very early hour, we know 
little of what is really going on. 
The night of Saturday, September 14th, was very dark, with 
heavy rain from S.E.; the morning of the 15th bright and fine. 
At 8 a.M., when dressing near the open window looking into the 
garden, I noticed the shrubs close to the house full of small 
warblers which had come in during the night—Blackcaps, male 
and female (rare birds in this district), the Common and Lesser 
Whitethroat, and numerous Willow Wrens. I thought of Herr 
Giitke’s garden, far away in Heligoland, under similar circum- 
stances. After breakfast, about 9.30, I took my binocular to 
look up a very yellow Willow Wren, showing an unusual amount 
of this colour on the wing-feathers, a conspicuously different bird 
I had seen from the window amongst the others in the bushes. 
Not a bird, however, except one female Blackcap, could I find in 
any part of the garden or adjoining shrubberies; they had 
stopped, rested, and gone forward again. 
On September 19th, about 8.30 a.m., I pulled up for a few 
minutes at the entrance of one of our fields to watch a flight of 
Martins, two to three hundred; some were careering in full flight 
in and out between two ash trees, others perched on these trees, 
and scores on the adjacent field round a little pool of rain-water. 
Very pleasant it was to see their graceful evolutions, as now one 
and now another dashed within a few feet of my head, the whole 
flock keeping up an incessant low twitter or warbling, as much as 
