. The story of hedgerow and pond . one. And now the timedrew near for them to go southwards ;many of their friends had already de-parted, and hundreds were daily arrivingand departing on their long journey, andtheir young were not yet out of the would they be able to fly the long-distances, and keep up with the others,without any previous practice ? Dailythey strove hard to obtain food for them ;but the days went by, until at last theyabandoned the hopeless task, and withsad hearts followed their friends and kin-dred to the warm and sunny south. TheStruofSfle had been too hard for the
. The story of hedgerow and pond . one. And now the timedrew near for them to go southwards ;many of their friends had already de-parted, and hundreds were daily arrivingand departing on their long journey, andtheir young were not yet out of the would they be able to fly the long-distances, and keep up with the others,without any previous practice ? Dailythey strove hard to obtain food for them ;but the days went by, until at last theyabandoned the hopeless task, and withsad hearts followed their friends and kin-dred to the warm and sunny south. TheStruofSfle had been too hard for them, 270 A Tale of Two Martins and they had to give in to save their ownlives. And the helpless young, aban-doned in the nest—w^hat of them ? Aweek afterwards their dead bodies werefound on the ground below. They hadperished miserably of cold and starva-tion.^ A fact. For three years running young birds havebeen picked up dead in the same place after having been leftby their parents in consequence of delays such as described. / /-. The Sea^birds^ Nursery The scenes amid which the youngsea-birds have their first experience ofthe world are very different from thoseenjoyed by the birds of the hedges andwoods. Their future Hfe is to be muchrougher, and they themselves have to bestrong and hardy from the very begin-ning or they would never grow up ableto get their own living from the wildsea-waves and to withstand the coldand the storms of winter. They haveno warm nests of moss and feathers,and very many of them begin life byfinding themselves on a bare, rocky T 273
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