SPRING MIGRATION OF BIRDS ON THE EAST COAST.
By John Cordeaux.
Mr. Gätke, writing from Heligoland, February 8th, says, "Sky Larks for about five days commenced going eastward, and so did a few Blackbirds. If open weather continues the Pied Wagtail and Stonechat will be the harbingers of the approaching spring."
With us in North-East Lincolnshire Blackbirds and Thrushes were in full song by the 14lh of February, and building. The first Stonechat appeared on the 24th;[1] wind S.W. and strong. Up to the 25th the weather was remarkably fine and open—showers and warm sunny days like April. On the 26lh there was a very sudden change to frost and snow. On the night of the 27th the thermometer registered 15° of frost.
Pied Wagtails did not arrive in any numbers previous to the 22nd March, coming in small companies, quickly moving forward, and others taking their place. By this date all appeared to have assumed the black chin and throat. On the 23rd there were enormous flocks of Golden Plovers, Fieldfares, and some Hooded Crows in the Humber marshes, evidently congregating for a general move northward. On the same day I was pleased to see a pair of the common Pochard, Fuligula ferina (Linn.), on a sheet of artificial water in this neighbourhood—a place, from its being closely preserved, admirably adapted for a nesting haunt. On the 26th I saw as many as a dozen Hooded Crows together feeding on fish-offal close to the town of Grimsby; a few, however, lingered about the marshes a month later, till the 2Glh April, on which day I surprised three on the carcase of a dead sheep, so gorged that they could barely rise from their putrid feast.
On the 27th March we found the first nest of the Long-eared Owl, with five eggs. The Owls had utilized an old Magpie's nest in a larch; the dome was removed and the platform covered with straw. Last season, when occupied by the Magpies, it had been lined, as is invariably the case, with very fine roots.
- ↑ I have strong reasons for supposing that the particular line of migration of the Stonechat is one across the usual routes of birds moving north and south, and that in the early spring months those of this species arriving on our eastern seaboard come from the continent of Europe, almost directly east and west across the North Sea. See a paper, "On the Migration of the Stonechat," in the 'Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society' for 1877, p. 264.
