106 THE ZOOLOGIST 
THE BIRDS OF NORTH KENT: AUTUMN 
PASSENGERS. 
By Tuomas HeEppurn. 
To the observer of bird-life the early autumn has almost as 
many interests as the early spring. Summer visitors are de- 
parting, winter visitors are arriving, and there are also many 
birds to be seen which are only passers-by on the road from 
countries north to countries south. You may sometimes read 
about this time in the daily papers of enormous flights of 
waders and other birds passing over cities at night, being noticed 
and identified simply by their whistling notes and cries. And if 
you are of an imaginative turn of mind you may, perhaps, do as 
the writer did a short time back—stand in your back garden 
fancying to distinguish winged travellers innumerable flying far 
out of sight in the night by a subdued murmuring whistle—to 
be rudely awakened to the fact that the whistling proceeds from 
a neighbour’s Ducks as they whisper to each other in their 
nocturnal search for worms. 
But the unmistakable whistle of a Curlew flying overhead in 
the darkness of a September night which lies over the lights of 
a town is a reminder that these mysterious movements of travel, 
which waning summer and incipient autumn induce amongst 
bird-life year after year, have again commenced. Several times 
during the evening the same plaintive sound is heard, and at a 
late hour of the night there comes through the open window the 
subdued call-note and reply of a flock of the same birds resting 
in a field near the houses for a few hours before making a further 
move in their journey. 
After many years of records from lightships and lighthouses, 
and of persevering observations carried on at various points 
along our coast, there is still almost as much mystery as ever, 
both as to motive and manner. attached to these annual migra- 
tions ; and the difficulty of solving the mystery is intensified by 
