192 NATURAL HISTORY CALENDAR NOTICES.

and if he chances to become a hunted hare, while on one
of his amatory expeditions, he breaks through all the
traditions of his kind; instead of circling and dodging
about, never going far in a direct line from the place
where the chase commenced, as hare-wont is, he goes off
straight on end for his own country, acting the part of a
hare distraught, or, as our Cleveland folks term it, “ off
his know.” And this is all beside the inclination to
engage in very funny looking, but very fierce battles
with other hares, invaders, as he estimates them, of his
demesnes and territorial rights; and the antics of a hare-
fight are quite pronounced enough to suggest the idea of
“ possession ” if not of “lunacy.”

In March, and although perhaps most in the early
part, yet really throughout the month, many signs and
tokens of migration in full provess are noticeable; the
skeins of wild geese may often be seen or heard, as they
wing their way towards their far-away northern breeding-
homes. Many proofs, too, of the movements of the snipes
who have eluded the sportsman, or escaped his shot, are
now met with, and I have been myself from time to time
very much struck with the evidences of a spring “ flitting”
of the little unobtrusive jack-snipe. I remember once,
early in March, on going over certain bogs, which I knew
had not contained a couple of jack-snipes for weeks before,
finding eight or ten, one of which, under the alarm of
being as nearly as possible trodden on, as I leaped across
a broadish channel, uttered a little piping stridulous cry ;
the only instance of the kind I ever met with.

But it is not only “returning” snipe and other birds,
making their way back to their northern breeding-home,
that are to be noticed; but many of our summer residents
may be recognized as newly arrived. Thus on the llth
March, last year, three wheatears made their appearance
at a place in this neighbourhood, so early for this northern
locality, that I was slow to realize the fact. “It is one of
the earliest among those birds which seek to pass the
season of reproduction far to the north of their winter
quarters,” says Mr. Yarrell, adding that it “generally
makes its appearance from the southward, about the
middle of March.” Mz. Couch’s observations tend to
show, that when actually on the move northwards, they
set out on their journey across the sea during the hours
of darkness. Few arrive after nine in the morning, and
most very early ; and sometimes they perch on the fishing
boats, six or eight miles short of the land, in a very
exhausted condition. He writes of Cornwall localities,
giving the middle of April as the beginning of the nest-
ing period for that district; and yet, last year, some of
them had worked their way thus far north, before the
middle of March. The pied or common wagtail is
another bird I look for here about the 5th to the 10th
March ; for although it is resident in the southern parts
of the kingdom throughout the year, it is not so with us,
and his movements, therefore, are typical of not a little
that is now going on in the daily doings of bird-life.
Hosts of our northern-bred starlings, blackbirds, larks,
chaffinches, &c., have left us before the severities of
winter are on us, and are now beginning to drift back
again pretty fully. Nearly all our thrushes are away for
the winter season. A solitary songster or two, however,
may be heard in a fine, still, warm day, at the end of Feb-
ruary; but by the midWe of March, unless the weather
be very ungenial, you may hear one or more in tree-tops,
not very distantly remote from each other.

It would only take up space to notice all the birds that
are on the move in the present month; but it may be
remarked that the notice taken of these specially named, .

has been taken, because the movements indicated are

movements open to the observation of dwellers in the
south, as well as dwellers in the north. It is possible to.
notice the express train from London to the north, not
only at the northern terminus, nor even at the interme-
diate stopping stations; but as it rushes along between
Peterborough and Grantham, or between Doncaster and
York, folks who care can note it passing. No doubt the
flight of birds may often take place in the darkness of
night, or at least of very early morning; but then the
flitting hosts, or pairs, rest during the day, and may be
missed to-morrow by the duly observant, and it adds a
strange interest to an interval of out-door exercise or
pastime, to be able to note, and even to note down, such
changing incidents in the moving panorama of Natural
History life as are disclosed by the note or the flight,
by the presence to-day or the absence to-morrow, of
this or that feathered work of the wonderful hand of
nature.

It seems almost unnecessary to remark, that nesting
has fairly commenced long before the end of the month,
although possibly large numbers of the birds which
statedly breed with us, have not, so far, arrived, and will
not have arrived, until the middle of April, or even
later.

Some of the owls breed early in March, at least ocea-
sionally, and blackbirds, and hedge-sparrows, and robins,
get constantly spoken of as being “early birds ” in this
particular. A note I observed in the Zoologist of last
May also induces me to remark on another circumstance.
The writer was surprised to hear a hedge-sparrow suddenly
break out into song, from a hedge near him at 10 p.m.
on March 25, singing its usual spring melody. Was it
disturbed in its sleep? he wonders. It is hard to say
why birds become suddenly vocal at night sometimes, or
what secrets of bird movements might be disclosed, if
the occurrence were more frequent. Thus late one night,
in the early part of the past year, Iwas driving home
from an out-lying part of my parish, and walking up a
steep hill by the side of my horse, I heard the voices of
a large flight of jackdaws crossing high above me, from
south to north. Our many crags in this neighbourhood,
furnish hundreds and thousands of nest-holes, for the
jackdaw and the starling, and we are never without them,
except perhaps in the very chilliest depths of long-con-
tinued snow-drifts. But in March they are all as much
at home as the men and women of the dales. There
was no “migration” involved in this night flight; at
least, I could not find reason to think so. But the jacks
were on the wing, past doubt; they were a mile from the
nearest rocks, and could hardly have found their way to
their individual haunts in such darkness, if bent on
seeking them. I suspect they had been disturbed by a
prowling night marauder. There had been four foxes re-
centlyseen among the wood and rocks these birds had proba-
blyflown from, about their night’s lodgings; and, disturbed
by the outery of some unfortunate victim caught napping,
they were moving off in a body to another cragey resort, a
mile more to the north; and being chatterers by nature,
took the sound of my wheels, and the voices of myself
and my companions, as a challenge to join in the conver-
sation, and tell out aloud their unhappy discomposure.

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