WITH THE BIRDS. 
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chaffinches, hedge-sparrows, robins, and sparrows, coming close 
to me, and even the blackbirds coming at our call for soaked 
bread ; the swallows the while skimming past and overhead, 
too busy with their own joyous existence to take fright at us ; 
indeed, so constant has our companionship been, that they 
accept us as part of the place, and pursue their swift, unerring 
course as though no human beings desecrated their bird paradise. 
This year we watched the swallows from week to week, from 
their arrival in the sunny days of April, to the sunny day in 
autumn, when, noiselessly and unseen, they left us. For days 
beforehand they had perched on a sunny roof, telling tales of 
English summers and foreign winters in their sweet chatter, and 
now — where are they ? It was a great amusement to watch the 
return of the young swallows from their first flights ; they 
perched in a row on the ledge under the eaves, and one by one, 
in due order, hopped into the nest and tightly packed themselves 
in, when they were speedily refreshed by gnats brought by the 
attentive parent bird. They are gone now — young and old — 
and the house seems for a time deserted. But even as I write, 
a blue tit comes to the window, a blackbird in fine feather struts 
over the lawn, and a handsome nuthatch looks in at us, as though 
it had been here every day. And so the winter is bringing back 
the old friends, and the summer season will be duly opened by 
the return of the swallows ! In an interesting article in the Daily 
News, which appeared on the 17th of October, on the migra- 
tion of birds, the writer thus accounts for the “ quiet time ” in 
the early autumn or late summer. He has been speaking of 
swallows, and thus concludes his article : “ We think of birds 
like these as migrants, but it is now known that almost all birds 
move more or less in the autumn ; that rooks and crows, black- 
birds and thrushes, starlings and jackdaws, even our own familiar 
robins, cross the sea in crowds before the setting in of winter.” 
Which of our birds will take the place of the swallows 
in sounding the alarm at the approach of a sparrow-hawk ? 
This year seems to have favoured the increase of sparrow-hawks, 
and it has always been the swallows who gave the alarm ; with 
quick, excited screams of terror and defiance, they combine 
against the common enemy, and darting around and above him, 
so bewilder and scare him, that he is driven back to his haunts 
over yonder hill. But what a panic does a visit from a sparrow- 
hawk cause in the bird world ! and truly one cannot wonder. 
In May this year we found a handsome bird lying on the ground 
below one of the windows, to all appearances dead, having 
stunned itself by dashing against the thick plate glass (our birds, 
big and little, have an unreasonable habit of doing this, and to 
the amusement of our friends we are obliged to put “ danger 
signals,” in the shape of Christmas cards, envelopes, tracts, or 
anything that comes to hand, in the windows). We picked up 
the hawk, and wrapping it in flannel, gave it water to drink, by 
dropping it on its beak, and presently it showed signs of life. Of 
