erch. He is always there, or
near; he was there all through the winter, and is there now.
Beneath, where there are a few inches of sand beside the water, a
wagtail comes now and then; but the robin does not like the
intrusion, and drives him away.

The same oak at the end of the garden, where the wryneck calls, is
also the favourite tree of a cock chaffinch, and every morning he
sings there for at least two hours at a stretch. I hear him first
between waking and sleeping, and listen to his song before my eyes
are open. No starlings whistle on the house-tops this year; I am
disappointed that they have not returned; last year, and the year
before that--indeed, since we have been here--a pair built under the
eaves just above the window of the room I then used. Last spring,
indeed, they filled the gutter with the materials of their nest, and
long after they had left a storm descended, and the rain, unable to
escape, flooded the corner. It cost eight shillings to repair the
damage; but it did not matter, they had been happy. It is a
disappointment not to hear their whistle again this spring, and the
flutter of their wings as they vibrate them superbly while hovering
a moment before entering their cavern. A pair of house-martins built
under the eaves near by one season; they, too, have disappointed me
by not returning, though their nest was not disturbed. Some fate has
probably overtaken late starlings and house-martins.

Then in the sunny mornings, too, there is the twittering of the
swallows. They were very late this spring at Surbiton. The first of
the species was a bank-martin flying over the Wandle by Wimbledon on
April 25; the first swallow appeared at Surbiton on April 30. As the
bank-martins skim the surface of the Thames--there are plenty
everywhere near the osier-beds and eyots, as just below Kingston
Bridge--their brown colour, and the black mark behind the eye, and
the thickness of the body near the head, cause them to bear a
resemblance to moths. A fortnight before the first swallow the large
bats were hawking up and down the road in the evenings. They seem to
prefer to follow the course of the road, flying straight up it from
the copse to the pond, half-way to Red Lion Lane, then back again,
and so to and fro, sometimes wheeling over the Common, but usually
resuming their voyaging above the highway. Passing on a level with
the windows in the dusk, their wings seem to expand nine or ten
inches. Bats are sensit