212 



KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



and they leave the more southerly places as 

 a provision for others. 



If such latitudes as our own are considered, 

 the water or shore birds which migrate to us 

 in the spring, are exceedingly few, though 

 those which feed upon land insects and their 

 larvae, in the trees, on the ground, or in the 

 air, are numerous. 



The air visitants which feed upon insects 

 are among the most characteristic, or at all 

 events the best marked of the whole. They 

 are of smaller size, and their prey is different ; 

 but still there is some resemblance between 

 them and the birds of prey, properly so 

 called. Like those, they are divided into 

 day-feeders, and feeders during the night, or 

 at all events during the twilight. The former 

 are the swallow tribe. The swifts are at the 

 t op of the sky, incessantly on the wing during 

 the season of their labor, seidom alighting on 

 the ground, and quite incapable of walking 

 upon it. They generally build their nests in 

 the most lofty situations, such as towers, 

 steeples, and the crevices of lofty cliffs. The 

 fleetness of their wings is such that they have 

 little to fear in their proper element, the 

 sky, while they do not interfere with what is 

 going on at the earth's surface. The swallow, 

 known from the rest by the deep fork of its 

 tail, even when it is on the wing, occupies 

 the next highest position. It builds in 

 chimneys and other lofty places, though not 

 so high as the swift. The house-martin is 

 one of those birds which claim the closest 

 neighborhood with the human race. The 

 c< rner of the window, the projecting eves of 

 the roof, and such situations, are those in 

 which it builds its curious clay castle ; and it 

 is understood that this interesting little 

 favorite returns again and again for many 

 successive years to the same spot. The other 

 is the sand-martin, which excavates holes in 

 the banks, in which its nest is lodged with 

 great safety. The surfaces of pools and 

 streams are the places where the martins and 

 the swallows find the greater part of their 

 food, though the house-martin rids those with 

 whom it lodges of great numbers of house- 

 flies ; and for this, as well as for the fami- 

 liarity of its manners, the ingenuity of its 

 architecture, and its personal neatness and 

 beauty, it is a bird which is usually pro- 

 tected. 



The only night or twilight bird at all 

 allied to these, is that which in common 

 language is very improperly called the goat- 

 sucker. It is improperly so called, because, 

 instead of sucking goats, its bill is so con- 

 structed that it cannot suck at all. This 

 bird, in its plumage and its whole structure, 

 only that it has no weapons that could injure 

 another bird, resembles the owls. It feeds 

 on night insects, which it catches in the air, 

 not at a very great height. The prey con- 



sists, of course, chiefly of moths and twilight 

 beetles. 



Though this division of our birds is 

 brought to us by the spring migration, no one 

 of them comes to us in the spring as it stands 

 in the calendar, unless it be in the very 

 warmest districts in the south. The martins 

 are generally the first to arrive, then the 

 swallows, and lastly the swifts and the goat- 

 suckers, which very rarely make their appear- 

 ance in any part of Britain before the middle 

 or even toward the end of the month of May. 

 Our true spring months are March, April, 

 and May ; and in the northern and upland 

 parts of the country, spring may be said to 

 extend into June ; for among the mountains 

 it is not uncommon to meet, in the beginning 

 of that month, with those brief snow showers 

 and sunny gleams between, wdiich charac- 

 terise April in more southern parts, and indi- 

 cate that the contest between the two great 

 seasons of the year is at its height. 



The birds of which w r e have spoken delay 

 their coming until there shall be food for them 

 on the wing. The insects which are bred in 

 the water, and spend the greatest part of 

 their brief existence in sporting over its 

 surface, are the first to make their appear- 

 ance ; and as the martins and swallows feed 

 chiefly in such places, they come before the 

 swifts and the goat-suckers, the former of 

 which hawk in the upper air, and the latter 

 near the surface, but still over the land 

 rather than over the water. 



None of these birds utter anything which 

 bears the least resemblance to a song. In 

 some states of the atmosphere, the swifts 

 screech in a harsh and piercing key ; and the 

 goat-suckers utter a booming or jarring sound 

 as they fly along; but none of these are very 

 agreeable. Still this family of birds is of 

 great service to vegetation : for they eat full- 

 grown insects, just when they are in a con- 

 dition for depositing their eggs : and thus 

 they tend more to keep down the numbers 

 than those birds which feed upon cater- 

 pillars. The goat-sucker, in particular, is 

 highly useful ; for its chief food, at least at 

 one season of the year, consists of those large 

 beetles known by the name of chafers, 

 because the full-grown insects injure the 

 leaves of trees and other plants ; and the 

 larvae of the chafers are among the most de- 

 structive to the roots of grass and corn. 



Our other summer birds which come to 

 capture indiscriminately insects and their 

 larvae, upon trees, upon the ground, or in the 

 air, are far more numerous ; and the services 

 which they lender are of course far more im- 

 portant. They come earlier than the birds 

 which hawk in the air; because the cater- 

 pillars are hatched before perfect insects ap- 

 pear. Some come earlier and some later, 

 according to the nature of their food ; and 



