RETURN OF MIGRATING BIRDS. 
146 
our hedges and copses unperceived. If the weather be 
bright or warm, their voices are heard ; if gloomy and 
cold, they will lie secreted till the call of hunger or of 
love intimates their presence. Though we rarely see 
these birds in their transits, yet I have at times, on a 
calm bright evening in November, heard high in the 
air the redwing and the fieldfare, on progress to a des- 
tined settlement, manifested by the signal-notes of some 
leading birds to their scattered followers. These con- 
ductors of their flocks are certainly birds acquainted 
with the country over which they travel, their settle- 
ments here being no promiscuous dispersion : it being 
obvious that many pairs of birds return to their ancient 
haunts, either old ones which had bred there, or their 
offspring. The butcher-bird successively returns to a 
hedge in one of my fields, influenced by some advantage 
it derives from that situation, or from a preference to 
the spot where hatched ; but we have perhaps no bird 
more attached to peculiar situations than the gray fly- 
catcher (muscicapa grisola), one pair, or their de- 
scendants, frequenting year after year the same hole in 
the wall, or the same branch on the vine or the plum. 
Being perfectly harmless, and hence never molested, 
they become 
“ Enamor’d with their ancient haunts, 
and hover round.” 
I once knew a pair of these birds bring off two broods 
in one season from the same nest. This flycatcher 
delights in eminences. The naked spray of a tree, or 
projecting stone in a building, or even a tall stick in 
the very middle of the grass-plot, is sure to attract its 
attention, as affording an uninterrupted view of its 
winged prey ; and from this it will be in constant ac- 
tivity a whole summer’s day, capturing its food and re- 
turning to swallow it. The digestion of some birds 
must be remarkably rapid, to enable them to receive 
such constant replenishments of food. The swift and 
the swallow are feeding from the earliest light in the 
morning till the obscurity of evening ; the quantities of 
cherries and raspberries that the blackcap and petti- 
