APRIL. 
PIONEERS OF SPRING. 
f[ He air was very warm, and very still, and 
very wonderful. It ought to have been 
summer, but, being in England, it wasn’t, of 
course. It was just very early spring. To- 
morrow, who knew ? 
A. gauzy, old-gold fly of summer sat on the 
dust of the hot road, gnats danced in the air, 
and a little fly with heart-shaped wings danced 
too. 
The thrushes were going mad trying to sing 
each other down; robins were everywhere ; 
dandy chaffinches with wine-red waistcoats 
gleamed on lawns; and starlings in pairs 
stared down the chimneys on the house-tops 
—especially the kitchen chimneys. 
But no one knew about the real harbinger 
of spring—not the cuckoo bird, but another, 
much more humble and early. 
That night there was a frost—naturally— 
and in the pale dawn-haze that followed, a 
flock of tiny, mouse-coloured birds, mostly 
wing, and with short, slightly forked tails, 
flew swift and low over the cold, choppy 
waters of the busy English Channel. 
