A WET AUTUMN. 173 



The sand-martins have been troubled by this 

 whirligig weather. A woodland lane that I fre- 

 quently walk in has a large hollow close to the 

 road, overhung with trees ; the banks of it are 

 sandy. In one corner, quite close to the road, 

 from which it is divided only by a rough fence, a 

 colony of these birds have tunnelled their homes 

 and nesting-places in the sandstone rock. Some 

 atmospheric influence had apparently completely 

 upset them, for they wobbled and fluttered about 

 in a very weak state, quite unlike the alert butter- 

 fly flight of better times ; and they kept within the 

 circuit of the hollow, never going beyond it. They 

 evidently felt that something must have gone wrong 

 with everything. 



The cuckoo, and the cuckoo's mate the wryneck, 

 have also been affected by the weather. I have not 

 heard the wryneck shout out his hearty, merry note 

 of Peet, pee-peet pee-peet, peet, peet ! once this 

 season. It has only been a half-hearted perform- 

 ance, poor fellow ; in fact, so weakly has he shouted 

 out, or tried to shout, his cry, that the starlings on 

 the roof of my house have positively mocked him. 

 Starlings are our English mocking-birds; they will 



