EAST COAST OF ENGLAND. 41 



always earlier than in years of rain and low temperature, birds 

 breeding sooner in the former, and the nestlings, like all other 

 young things, with dry weather and sunshine, developing more 

 rapidly. 



Nothing is more remarkable in the phenomenon of migration 

 than the punctuality with which certain species return in the 

 autumn, one species regularly taking precedence of another; 

 also in respect to the date of the arrival year after year. In the 

 LimicolcB and Anatidce the date of autumn migration varies — 

 often considerably — from year to year. In some species, as the 

 Wheatear, Eedstart, Fieldfare, Kedwing, Hooded Crow, Goldcrest 

 and Woodcock, and others, we may almost predict to a day the 

 time of their first appearance. 



The period of the migratory flight in the autumn of any 

 particular genus or species is most probably referable to two 

 causes : the first one of temperature, affecting the time of 

 nesting ; the second is the period at which the young arrive at 

 maturity, or rather that period when they throw off paternal 

 control or are thrown off' themselves. When able to act in- 

 dependently and procm'e food on their own account, they flock 

 together and migrate in a body. We know that, with rare 

 exceptions, the young of the year migrate some weeks in advance 

 of the parent birds ; thus we can readily conceive the whole of 

 the large raptorial birds nesting about the same time over 

 widely extending districts in Northern Europe ; when the many 

 young arrive at a self-dependent stage there would be a 

 simultaneous movement, ending in a universal migratory rush. 

 This period of self-dependence is arrived at much more quickly 

 in some birds than in others, for species like the Knot, Grey 

 Plover, Godwit, and Sanderling, nesting in very high latitudes, 

 leave our shores the last in the spring of any of the migrants, 

 and their young are amongst the first to return in autumn. 

 The order of migration, more especially in coxmection with the 

 shore birds, is the occurrence very early in autumn — July or 

 August — of a few old birds in summer plumage, either barren or 

 such perhaps as have been prevented nesting, then the young in 

 large flocks, and some weeks subsequently old birds. 



The season of 1881 - 82 will long be remembered by east 

 coast ornithologists for the number of rare visitants which have 

 appeared from time to time, driven to westward of their ordinary 



G 



