The autumn migration of birds lasts for about five months, beginning in July, and continuing to November. Of the two seasons of passage, perhaps the autumn movement will prove the most interesting to the ordinary observer of bird-life on the coast. Birds are much more numerous in autumn, and travel slower. The movements of birds during winter along the coast, are also intensely interesting, but this scarcely comes within the scope of the present chapter. We cannot well conclude this brief account of Bird Migration on the coast without some allusion to those perils which beset the birds on their journeys, and which arise principally from light-houses and light-vessels. Vast numbers of birds kill themselves every spring and autumn by striking against these gleaming beacons of the coast. From this great mortality, however, naturalists have learnt much concerning the annual movements of birds; for the records kept by our light men, extending, as they do, over a number of years, of these fatalities and periodical visits of migrants, are most instructive and suggestive. Some of the scenes witnessed at these light-houses and vessels, during the seasons of migration—especially in autumn—are intensely interesting. These beacons are most fatal during cloudy weather; few birds strike on clear and cloudless nights. Odd birds are continually striking against the lanterns. Now and then, however, there come nights when birds swarm like bees round the lamps, and kill themselves in thousands by striking against the glass, sometimes with such force as to shatter it to fragments. The illustration at the head of the present chapter also shows another peril of migration. Many nets are placed on the shores of the Wash, and great numbers of birds are, or used to be, caught during the autumn months. Information, however, has recently reached me that the birds are learning, by many years’ experience, to avoid these snares, flying over instead of through them, and that nothing like the numbers are caught nowadays. Fifteen years ago thousands of birds must have been taken in these nets. Another peril of migration is the danger of losing the way. Many young and inexperienced birds go astray each autumn, and the British list contains the names of numbers of rare species that have visited us on abnormal flights. Many of these birds have been captured on the coast. From Eastern Europe, from Siberia, from Africa, and even from America, these wanderers have come. Each period of migration, the observer, on the coast, may be agreeably surprised to meet with one of these lost and wandering individuals; and it is this glorious uncertainty that adds considerably to the pleasure of a ramble along the shore in spring and autumn. Footnotes [1]_Heligoland as an Ornithological Observatory_, p. 151, _et seq._ [2]_Dictionary of Birds_, p. 712. [3]_Dictionary of Birds_, p. 774. [4]_Dictionary of Birds_, p. 399. [5]Ray, _English Words_, p. 74.