258
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
is expended in flying around in a mile-wide circle, at all hours
of the night. Such "songs" as these are confined to spring
and summer. The Redwing's flights happen in winter.
My actual observations may give me the privilege of making
a few speculations. I do not ask that they be taken as correct.
But it will easily be seen that the explanation "Migration"
cannot possibly fit in with my observations. We have to bear
in mind the sedentary habit of the bird ; there is no doubt
that these nocturnal travellers are moving in different directions,
and along paths that are certainly curved—dipping down into
deep valleys, and so forth. My conception of migration is a
great function carried out in an economical way. If, during a
period when I have been hearing the call of the Redwing every
night, I notice no variation in the numbers of Redwings observed
by day in the surrounding fields, I am very reluctant to assume
that the voices heard have been those of migrating birds.
From about 1916 onwards the Redwing was extremely scarce
in most parts of England. The nocturnal notes were seldom
heard then, but they gradually increased from 1919 to 1921,
when, with me, they reached their maximum. Records last year
were not quite so numerous ; but in 1922 I had fewer opportun-
ities of systematic nightly vigils, however short. I have
kept this question in mind during my long and wide excursions
into the literature of ornithology, both British and Continental.
The majority of ornithologists either consider the subject to be
quite beneath their notice ; or, if mentioned at all, these
nocturnal voices are summarily dismissed as coming from a
notorious migrant.
To my mind, these shrill calls, coming so suddenly from the
dark air, bring always an air of romance to the night. One may
be sitting on the top of a 'bus that is waiting its turn to cross
Piccadilly Circus ; on one such occasion, I remember my fellow
passengers glancing upwards as they heard the thin note of a
Redwing close overhead. The second biggest "rush" I remem-
ber passed over Mile End Road at the busiest part of a Saturday
night. When crossing a wide moor, with nothing in sight but
the dark world and the stars above, the call seems equally wonder-
ful. Even in lowland fields, past elms and woods and thick
hedgerows, I cannot hear the bird without a sort of thrill of
pleasure.