Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/281

Rh which is only interrupted by the contingency of a severe frost.

This settling into winter quarters involves, even in the case of our common resident birds, a large amount of movement about the country and change of haunt. It may be no more than a change from the woods to the lanes, as in the case of the Bullfinches which now leave the plantations and appear in the hedge-rows, their presence made known by a glimpse of white rumps disappearing into a thicket and by the low piping call-note which the bird-catcher can imitate so well.

The Golden Plover have left the moors to appear on sand-bars and tidal flats, and the blue-backed Merlin, which nested near them amongst the heather-knolls, also seeks the coast where it picks up many a wheatear or rock-pipit. The Sparrow-hawk, too, glides with straight and noiseless flight along the cliff-slope on the look-out for similar game. It is sometimes chevied and scolded by half-a-dozen wagtails, just as, earlier on, the swallow's sharp "feet-a-feet" never fails to raise the alarm when the enemy is about. Chaffinches and Linnets now flock upon the stubbles and weedy fallows. The cock chaffinches seem slow to join these gatherings, wishing perhaps to enjoy a longer spell of freedom, at any rate so large a proportion of the flocks consists of hen-birds and young of the year as to have led Linnæus to apply the