FIELDFARES.
THE birds that come to us in spring, when fleecy sunlit clouds are dropping verdure on the meadows and we tread on budding flowers at every step we take, are like our own particular familiar friends. No mere visitors in our locality, they come to stay with us. In our orchards and our woods they are at home, and they know the open ways amongst our garden trees. Some of them before now have known the shelter of our roofs, and others the hospitable security of the flowering creeper around our window-sills. So, whether they be old birds returning year after year to the same place, or only nestlings of a season that have winged long ocean voyages on the reminiscence of a joyous youth, they come with the happy certainty of welcome guests. They bring us news of clearer skies and lengthening days. There
is no reticence with them from first to last. We are admitte4 to an intimate confidential knowledge of the inner secrets of their private lives. We watch the martins flying to and fro from the poolside to the eaves as they work like bricklayers and slowly raise their wall of mud. We note their love-idyll
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