. Birds through the year . nd there in the last week ofthe month, and are usuallyseen on fine days skimmingeasily at some distance over-head, bent on making goodspeed to their summer quar-ters further inland. The flightof the migrating swallow ismuch like that of the cloudedyellow butterfly, which is alsoa migrant; it looks desultoryand unhurried, and yet coversa great distance in a very shorttime. March cuckoos are muchscarcer than March swallows,and yet undoubtedly occur. There is no event of spring,however, over which the unwary observer is so likely to bedeceived. It is the immemorial prac
. Birds through the year . nd there in the last week ofthe month, and are usuallyseen on fine days skimmingeasily at some distance over-head, bent on making goodspeed to their summer quar-ters further inland. The flightof the migrating swallow ismuch like that of the cloudedyellow butterfly, which is alsoa migrant; it looks desultoryand unhurried, and yet coversa great distance in a very shorttime. March cuckoos are muchscarcer than March swallows,and yet undoubtedly occur. There is no event of spring,however, over which the unwary observer is so likely to bedeceived. It is the immemorial practice of British schoolchildren to begin imitating the cry of the cuckoo on any finespring morning when primroses and violets suggest otherassociations of spring; and the imitation is often quitegood enough to delude the uncritical. Sparrow-hawks andkestrels are also apt to be mistaken for cuckoos when thereis a hot spring feeling in the air, and the mind outstrips thecalendar. But some of the records are too well authenti-. STONE-CURLEW 8 SPRING cated to be doubted ; and with the March cuckoo, or some-times even a few days before it, comes sometimes thecuckoos mate, or wryneck. By the latter half of March thetrees harbour enough reviving insects to provide the wry-neck with a fair living if the weather is bright and mild ; butone can only conjecture how exceptionally early cuckoospick up a living, before the first of their favourite hairycaterpillars—the woolly bears and drinkers—emerge fromhibernation and creep among the April grass.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectbirdspi, bookyear1922
