Dates of Arrival and Departure df Birds 257 



Lady-day (old style) — say from the 6th- of April to the 

 20th — great changes take place in the fauna and flora; 

 or, rather, those changes which have long been slowly 

 maturing become visible. The nightingales arrive and sing, 

 and with them the white butterfly appears. The swallow 

 comes, and the wind-anemone blooms in the copse. 

 Finally the cuckoo cries, and at the same time the pale 

 lilac cuckoo-flower shows in the moist places of the mead. 



The exact dates, of course, vary with the character of 

 the season and the locality ; but, speaking generally, you 

 should begin to keep a keen look-out for these signs of 

 spring about old Lady-day. In the spring of last year, in 

 a warm district, the nightingale sang on the 12th of April, 

 a swallow appeared on the 13th, and the note of the 

 cuckoo was heard on the 15th. No great reliance should 

 be put upon precise dates, because in the first place they 

 vary annually, and in the next an observer can, in astro- 

 nomical language, only sweep a limited area, and that but 

 imperfectly ; so that it is very likely some ploughboy 

 who thinks nothing of it — except to immediately imitate 

 it — hears the cuckoo forty-eight hours before those who 

 have been listening most carefully. So that these dates 

 are not given because they are of any intrinsic value, but 

 simply for illustration. On the 14th of April (the same 

 spring) the fieldfares and redwings were passing over swiftly 

 in small parties — or, rather, in a long flock scattered by the 

 march — towards the North Sea and their summer home in 

 Norway. The winter birds, and the distinctly spring and 

 summer birds, as it were, crossed each other and were, visible 

 together, their times of arrival and departure overlapping. 



As the sap rises in plants and trees, so a new life seem= 

 to flow through the veins of bird and animal. The flood 

 tide of life rises to its height, and after remaining there 



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