In the Spring of the year—March and April—we have the greatest arrival of our summer visitors, and it is astonishing with what order and punctuality they arrive and depart. They are the unerring messengers of Spring; and, true to Nature’s laws, arrive generally within a few days of the time pointed out by the scientific observations of the Ornithologist. The poets, from Chaucer downwards, have largely introduced birds into their works. Chaucer, in his “Assembly of Fowles,” says— On every bough the birdis herd I syng. With voice of Angell in their harmonie. Milton, in praising the nightingale, says— As the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Shakspear writes— The poor wren, The most diminutive of buds, will fight;— Her young ones in her nest—against the owl. Byron, in his “Bride of Abydos,” says— There sings a bird unseen, but not remote, Invisible his airy wings,— But soft as harp, that Houri strings His long entrancing note. Lord Erskine, in beautiful words, says—All our poets, from the greatest to the least, from the first to the last, acknowledge by their writings how much they owe to the productions of Nature, both animate and inanimate. The Golden Eagle—_Falco chrysaetos_—is mentioned by Yarrell, in his “History of British Birds,” as having been shot near Bexhill, but none of our late writers on Ornithology have been able to authenticate the fact. We have not been honoured with a visit from his imperial majesty the king of birds. Several specimens of the White-tailed Eagle—_Falco albicilla_,—have been shot in the immediate neighbourhood, and the parties have always fancied they have been lucky enough to obtain the true Golden Eagle. A gentleman from Brighton, being at Shoreham some years ago, just after the landlord of the Dolphin Inn had shot what he considered was the Golden Eagle, somewhat surprised the imagined lucky shot by assuring him that it showed too much of its legs, and that it was only an immature specimen of the Sea Eagle; and so it turned out. Several others are likewise recorded as having been shot in this neighbourhood. The Osprey, or Fishing Hawk—_Falco haliætus_,—has of late years been a rare visitant in this vicinity, though several are authenticated as having been shot here formerly. They are occasional visitors along our shores, but seldom go far inland for their prey, as they are true fishermen, living entirely upon the fruits of their labour; and they are very formidable, and powerfully winged birds, darting down from a great height, like an arrow from a bow, upon their prey with unerring certainty. In North America they are welcomed in the Spring by the fishermen, as the happy omen of the approach of herring, shad, &c., which periodically arrive there on the coast, in prodigious shoals.