86 BRITISH BIRDS. 



away, and in a few minutes is again repeated. This is called the ' Herring 

 Piece ;' the Folkstone people call it the herring ' Spear.' These are the 

 Redwings, who choose a dark still night to cross the channel, which is 

 always about the herring-fishing time. No harm follows. Not so with the 

 'Seven Whistlers;' they come all of a sudden, singing ' Ewe, Ewe.' It is 

 the noise of the Long-billed Curlews; there is always an accident when 

 they come." 



General Remarks. 



There is one thing which has often been noticed, viz. that a suitable 

 spot will almost always contain a species. There is a place near Brighton 

 where a pair of Wood- Wrens have been shot and their eggs taken every 

 season till lately for thirty years or thereabouts. Nevertheless each year 

 finds a fresh pair in that situation. 



From a different cause (the advance of houses on Brighton beach) the 

 Ring-Dotterel has been driven back to Shoreham ; yet I have myself taken 

 a nest on a spot where scores and scores of persons passed daily. Probably 

 the species had bred there hundreds and hundreds of years, and it clung with 

 tenacity to its traditions. 



Capt. F. W. Hutton, in his article " On the Geographical Relations of 

 the New-Zealand Fauna " (' Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,' 1872, 

 vol. V. p. 235), says : — " That we should have two Cuckoos which migrate 

 regularly to other countries, each more than a thousand miles distant, is a 

 fact that deserves special attention ; for I know of no parallel case in any 

 other part of the world, the distance across the Mediterranean being less than 

 half that travelled over by our summer visitants. The phenomenon of a bird 

 at a certain season of the year flying out to sea to an island more than a 

 thousand miles distant is remarkable enough, but is rendered still more so in 

 the case of the little Shining Cuckoo (^Chrysococcyx lucidus, which is supposed 

 to come from Australia), by there being no apparent necessity for it ; for this 

 bird migrates east and west, and not from a warmer to a colder climate, and 



