NOTES FROM NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE. g 
to say, ‘‘ we have broken up our summer quarters, and are off for 
the winter amidst the eternal green of the tropics.” I thought of 
boys breaking up for the holidays, and felt that small birds, like 
small boys, had their special seasons of exuberance and high 
spirits. On passing this place ten minutes later I was surprised 
to find the Martins had gone; their sudden departure struck me 
so much that I kept a look-out during the day for Martins in the 
vicinity, but saw none excepting a few pairs of local birds. Some 
Martins and Swallows remained with us to the end of September 
and early in October. On the 29th a single Martin was seen 
flying about, not migrating, at Hasington, near Spurn. 
On September 16th, W., fine and bright, I heard both Green- 
shanks and Whimbrels passing over; the former at 12.30 P.M., 
the latter at 5 p.m. On the 17th I saw twelve to fourteen Yellow 
Wagtails together. There were really more than that number, 
perhaps double, but, like the Irishman’s pig, their flittings to and 
fro were so rapid, searching the stubbles, or hawking for insects 
from the “stook” tops, that I could not readily count them. On. 
this day I also heard Redshanks calling on the “ flats,’ and put 
up numbers of the first migratory Thrushes by riding down a 
furrow from one end to the other of a thirty-acre field of beans. 
Thrushes, Blackbirds, Whitethroats, and many of our smaller 
migrants are very fond of resorting to the shelter of bean-fields on 
their first arrival in the autumn. It suits them admirably for 
concealment in these treeless plains; they also obtain an ample 
supply of food in the variety and number of insects, which may be 
always found in such situations. On the east coast, if you wish 
to obtain rare immigrants, search the bean-fields. 
On September 18th I shot several young Knots from flocks 
on the muds, and, contrary to what we might expect, found them 
very thin and poor. In ‘The Zoologist’ for November, 1879, 
Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., makes nearly the same remark about 
Knots shot on the Norfolk coast in September—that they “ were 
like skeletons, having no fat at all upon them.” Old birds which 
I shot on the Lincolnshire coast on October 3lst were, on the 
contrary, very fat and in high condition. The young Knots 
migrate in September, fully six weeks before the old birds; that 
they should be in such poor condition is quite exceptional. There 
is a reason for everything if we can only find it out, and it may be 
that for some seasonal cause, such as the lateness and scarcity of 
c 
