Every-Day Book | vol II date / index |
October 20.
St. Artemius, A. D. 362. St. Barsabias, Abbot, and others, A. D. 342. St. Zenobius, Bp. St. Sindulphus, or St. Sendou, 7th Cent. St. Adian, Bp. of Mayo, A. D. 768.
Migration of Birds.Woodcocks have now arrived. In the autumn and setting in of winter they keep dropping in from the Baltic singly, or in paris, till December. They instinctively land in the night, or in dark misty weather, for they are never seen to arrive, but are frequently discovered the next morning in any ditch which affords them shelter, after the extraordinary fatigue occasioned by the adverse gales which they often have to encounter in their aërial voyage. They do not remain near the shores longer than a day, when they are sufficiently recruited to proceed inland, and they visit the very same haunts which they left the preceding season. In temperate weather they retire to mossy moors, and high bleak mountainous parts; but as soon as the frost sets in, and the snows begin to fall, they seek lower and warmer situations, with boggy grounds and springs, and little oozing mossy rills, which are rarely frozen, where they shelter in close bushes of holly and furze, and the brakes of woody giens, or in dells which are covered with underwood: here they remain concealed during the day, and remove to different haunts and feed only in the night. From the beginning of March to the end of that month, or sometimes to the middle of April, they keep drawing towards the coasts, and avail themselves of the first fair wind to return to their native woods. — The snipe, scolopax gallinago, also comes now, and inhabits similar situations. It is migratory, and met with in all countries: like the woodcock, it shuns the extremes of heat and cold, by keeping upon the bleak moors in summer, and seeking the shelter of the valleys in winter. In unfrozen boggy places, runners from springs, or any open streamlets of water, they are often found in considerable numbers.*[1]
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Yellow Sultan. Centaurea suavcolens.
Dedicated to St. Artemius.
Notes [all notes are Hone's unless otherwise indicated]:
1. Dr. Forster's Perennial Calendar. [return]