ao OXFORD : speing and early summer. 



a cloud. Accounts are always forthcoming of the departure 

 of summer migrants, and especially of the Swallows and 

 Martins, and there are few who have not seen these as they 

 collect on the sunny side of the house-roof, or bead the 

 parapet of the EadcUffe building, before they make up their 

 minds to the journey. But few have seen the Fieldferes and 

 Redwings under the same conditions, and I find no account 

 of their migration, or at least of what actually happens when 

 they go, in any book within my reach as I write. But on 

 March 19, 1884, I was lucky enough to see something of 

 their farewell ceremonies. I was walking in some water- 

 meadows adjoining a wood, on the outskirts of which were 

 a number of tall elms and poplars, when I heard an extra- 

 ordinary noise, loud, harsh, and continuous, and of great 

 volume, proceeding from the direction of these trees, which 

 were at the time nearly half-a-mUe distant. I had been 

 hearing the noise for a minute or two without attending to 

 it, and was gradually developing a consciousness that some 

 strange new agricultural instrument, or several of them, were 

 at work somewhere near, when some Fieldfares flew past me 

 to alight on the meadow not far oif. Then putting up my 

 glass, I saw that the trees were literally hlack with birds ; 

 and as long as I stayed, they continued there, only retreating 

 a little as I approached, and sending foraging detachments 

 into the meadow, or changing trees in continual fits of rest- 

 lessness. The noise they made was like the deep organ-sounds 

 of sea-birds in the breeding-time, but harsher and less serious. 

 I would willingly have stayed to see them depart, but not 



