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Autumnal ornithology may almost be called a science by itself. A few years of note-taking will put one in possession of the approximate dates of arrival of all our common vernal migrants. Every local observer will tell you when to look for each of the familiar birds of his neighborhood; but he will not be half so ready with information as to the time of the same birds' departure.
Nesting birds spend much more time in the South than migrants, and during the weeks when the old birds are feeding young they are almost incessantly engaged in the pursuit of insects. It is not, of course, claimed that birds alone can stay the ravages of the cotton boll weevil in Texas, but they materially aid in checking the advance of the pest into the other cotton states.
It is September the month of restlessness for the birds. Weeks ago the first migrants started on their southward journey, the more delicate insect-eaters going first, before the goldfinches and other late nesters had half finished housekeeping.
This circumstance had however brought her again in contact with her fellow-creatures; a slight illness of her infant, proved to her that she was still bound to humanity by an indestructible tie; to preserve this little creature's life became the object of her being, and she joined the first division of migrants who went over to Paris.
In my boyhood the last division of that great exodus, largely made up of migrants from the eastern half of the valley, was still passing westward. Occasionally one came back with the inglorious substitute legend upon his wagon, "Busted" a laconic intimation of failure. But this was the exception.
Many migrants in the spring seem to follow the course of the Severn during their journey northwards through Worcestershire; and where the river bends to the north-west at Lincombe Lock, there they leave it, or, rather, continue in a north-easterly direction which takes them across the southern end of Hartlebury Common.
At what precise period what is known as the Scoto-Celtic branch of the great Aryan stock broke away from its parent tree, by what route its migrants travelled, in what degree of consanguinity it stood to the equally Celtic race or races of Britain, what sort of people inhabited Ireland previous to the first Aryan invasion all this is in the last degree uncertain, though that it was inhabited by some race or races outside the limits of that greatest of human groups seems from ethnological evidence to be perfectly clear.
But the examples which I have given refer, of course, to only a few migrants and a few residents and moreover it must be admitted that a female is often conspicuous during the battles so that by themselves they must be regarded, and rightly so, as inconclusive. We must therefore pass on to consider evidence of a somewhat different character. I spoke of the complexity of the strife.
But with the advent of spring a change comes over the scene: flocks disperse, family parties break up, summer migrants begin to arrive, and the hedgerows and plantations are suddenly quickened into life.
River water, impounded for the purpose, provided the means of irrigating an all but rainless desert countryside. Skillful engineering drained the swamps, adding to the cultivable area of a narrow valley cut by the river through jagged barren hills. Deserts on both sides of the Nile protected the valley against aggressors and migrants.
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