298 Wild Lifein a Southern County. 
‘pack.’ In the spring the males appear, and, after a 
period of fighting for the mastery, pair, and the nests 
are built. After the young are reared, song ceases, 
and the old haunts are deserted. This summer I was 
much struck with this partial migration, perhaps the 
more so because observed in a fresh locality. 
During the spring and summer I daily followed a 
road for some three miles which I had found to pass 
through a district much frequented by birds. The 
birch coppice so favoured by ‘nightingales was that 
way; and, by the bye, the wrynecks were almost 
equally numerous ; and the question has occurred to 
me whether these birds are companions, in a sense, of 
the nightingale, having noticed them in other places 
to be much together. All spring and summer the 
hedges, coppices, brakes, thickets, furze lands, and 
cornfields abounded with bird life. About the middle 
of August there was a notable decrease. Early in 
September the places previously so populous seemed 
almost deserted ; by the middle of the month quite 
deserted. 
There were no chaffinches in the elms or in the 
road, and scarcely a sparrow; not a yellowhammer 
on the hedge by the cornfield ; only a very few green- 
finches ; not a single bullfinch or goldfinch, Black- 
birds, thrushes, and robins alone remained. The way 
to find what birds are about is to watch one of their 
favourite drinking and bathing-places ; then it is easy 
to see which are absent. Where had all these birds 
