The Immigrants Arrive
The incoming flood of migrant birds continually increases throughout April, but it is the -single spy, making a first appearance, that interests both specialist and the public, as it interested the more famous diarists. Gilbert White saw both swallow and cuckoo in the first week of April, both very early appearances. So far the early birds—chiffchaff, willow warbler and wheat-ear (the last of which even White delighted to eat)— have been fairly true to date, though reports of black-caps have been so early that they are thought to have wintered here, as White believed of the early swallows. However, birds are not the only immigrants. A good number of moths and butterflies cross the North Sea in spring, and one has arrived at an astonishingly early date. A correspondent tells me that a Humming Bird Hawk Moth appeared in his Sussex garden in the last week of March. For myself I have seen them land, so to say, in Devon, along with a great number of Painted Ladies, in the second week of May. The most numerous immigrant— and much the most harmful—is the White butterfly. May it be in as small numbers (comparatively) as last summer I
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