DEPARTING BIRDS.
AVERY pleasant book by Mr. Arthur H. Patterson, called "Notes of an East Coast Naturalist," just published by Messrs. Methuen, and dealing with the birds and fish in -the neighbourhood of Great Yarmouth, reminds us of the constant renewal and variety of interests which the ebb and flow of bird life that we call "migration" lends to days spent out of doors at nearly all seasons of the year on the Eastern and Southern coasts of these islands. It is some compensation for living in the East Atlantic, "in a sub-arctic climate, under crepuscular skies," that Nature is always in a state of advance and retreat, of death and renewal, and that the element of change is never absent, though, acting as it does in a cycle, and not without bounds or limits, it observes the law sealed by the rainbow in the skies, that the balance of Nature shall be ever in force in saecula saeculorum.
• It still remains for some naturalist to depict and contrast with the fixed order underlying the phenomena of the changes of the seasons in a latitude like ours the almost inconceivable sameness of the life of plants, birds, beasts, and insects in some regions under the equator, such as those parts of the forest of the Amazons described by Bates. There the changes of a season are compressed into a day, every space of twenty-four hours has its summer and its rainy season, its period of vigorous life and, during the fiercest midday heat, of suspended animation, when the birds are still, and the very leaves of the forest hang their heads and sleep ; but there like day follows like day without break or change eternally.
Here, it is true, we do not see the passing of the travelling hosts of birds as it appears in certain places on the Continent of Europe, or on the little " stepping-stone " of Heligoland. It has been proved, both by the careful notes taken at the lighthouses round the English shores, and by those organised by Mr. Barrington, of Fessaroe, round the coasts of Ireland, that on an island you may see the arrival and note the stay of the incoming birds, but that the departing hosts are very seldom seen. The reason is easy to find. They assemble, as a rule, near to the shore, and depart by night. In doing so they are usually flying south, or crossing such a narrow sea as the Irish Channel. Consequently, they are not seen when over the waters, for they are across and on land again when day dawns. But on the Continent the pilgrimage of the departing birds, though not, as a rule, of those coming north- wards, may be clearly seen. The most famous of all localities for watching this autumn procession is on the plains of Brabant, where the main stream of the larger birds nesting in the north-west and west central parts of the Continent are making their way, by a route which has been noted in history for centuries, across these Valkensvaard heaths to the Rhone Valley. It is there that the falcon-catchers sit waiting to snare the falcons which follow and feed on the other depart- ing birds, and where, hour after hour in steady series, the flocks of cranes, storks, and other birds, great and small, pass during the autumn days. These routes are so well known that it is the rarest thing for the birds ever to miss them, or for species that usually pass south by one road to follow another, either by mistake or as an experiment. Take, for example, the cranes. Though many of them breed so far north that they might be supposed to be likely to visit England occasion- ally on migration, it is extremely rare to hear of anything like a flock of these fine birds being seen here. The present writer once, and once only, saw a flock of cranes pass over, going south, in this country; and a small company visited, for a few days, the marshes near Cley, in Norfolk. Perhaps :the best clue to what birds may be expected to cross England regularly from the north, when going southwards, and what may not be expected to do so, is to distinguish between the migrants which will go to Africa vid, the Straits of Gibraltar, and those which mean to make for. the Nile Valley. A good number probably only go as far as the Mediterranean coast-line of Africa, and winter in Algeria and Morocco. But by far the greater number pass on to the upper waters of the Nile, or, edging round by the west, go to the head-waters of the Niger. Between these winter homes lies the inhospitable and foodless Sahara, as impassable to the flight of birds as the lethal air which hung heavy over the pit of Acheron. Those officers stationed at Gibraltar who have cared to divert their leisure by noting the arrival of birds from Africa in the spring, as may very easily be done, have made a most interesting contribution to the known facts of birds migrate northwards, and also of what birds
• cross at the Straits. There is no "rush," as there is when the pressure of bad weather issues notice to quit to all and sundry. The swallows, for instance, begin to come to Europe in January, and other small birds do the same. Some stay and build early; others pass on, and are succeeded by still later arrivals. These Gibraltar observations account, among other things, for the numbers of those very beautiful hawks, the rough-legged buzzards, seen arriving from across the North Sea last autumn. The parent birds, some of which probably show the young ones the way home again, are doubt- less recruited in a great measure from West Africa. Large flights of rough-legged buzzards cross the Straits every spring. Some no doubt stay to breed in Spain. But, judging from the reports of naturalists in Norway, and of observers of their passage on our East coasts, a number of them cross England and go to nest in Lapland. In the autumn they often gather in small flocks, and return by the way they came. Last autumn ten of these - birds were seen soaring for the greater part of the day over the golf links near one of the East Yorkshire coast towns.
There is one place on the East Coast which is a resting. place, often for a day only, of birds which frequently come there, and nowhere else, except as very occasional stragglers, in England. This is the shore between Blakeney and Cley, in Norfolk. It is a strange piece of coast, full of picturesqueness of a kind, and is apparently regarded as a providentially con- structed landing-place by birds coming from Norway south- wards. Into the sea there runs a long pebble ridge, mile after mile, partly parallel with the shore, and beyond that a long spit of sandhills. Inside is Blakeney Harbour, much beloved of wild-fowl later in the autumn and winter. On to this shingle-spit, amid the tufts of rough grass and suaeda bushes at its base, the small migrants drop, coming in exhausted from the sea. The most striking feature of this migration is the number of so-called " rarities " seen there, and as a rule "collected." The "blue throat" is fairly common. Rare larks, and still rarer warblers, such as Pallas's warbler, the barred warbler, and the yellow-browed warbler, have been captured when resting by this wild strip of the Norfolk shore. One morning the towers and sails of an old windmill there were absolutely black with swallows, which had probably come over from Norway on the evening before, and were getting the night's chill out of their wings before passing on southwards.
The largest, and by far the most conspicuous, of the migrant birds which come to pass the winter with us, but which are not seen as a rule west or south of the Thames, are the hoodie crows, sometimes called the grey or Royston crows. They arrive in enormous numbers on the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk from October onwards, and thence- forward until the middle of March are the vultures of the coast. The immense length of creeks and tidal rivers pro- vides them with endless food, in the form of mussels, shore- crabs, dead fish, wounded and sick wild-fowl, and offal. They also visit the marshes and commons inland, and devour quantities of wounded game, moles, and small birds, especially in snowy weather. They patrol every mile of coast, sea-wall, and sandhill, and nothing escapes their keen eyes and sharp beaks. This crow is the only really mischievous bird that migration sends to our shores. But its operations are mainly confined to the coast-line, where the greater part of its food is provided without loss to man or injury to the fisheries.
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