Ten years ago it was only on two or three houses in the village that house-martins built, and they were seldom seen except in the immediate neighbourhood of these, but now (1911) they have become comparatively abundant everywhere. The wooden hay-sheds recently put up at many of the farms seem to have attracted them in the first instance, but when once they were led to look more closely into the matter they evidently found that there were many more eligible building sites in Warburton than they had had any idea of before. They have never yet made their real home with us, but during the latter part of the summer they come in crowds to the garden, and there are among them many only just able to fly, who spend most of their time on the roof of the house, waiting to be fed. [Illustration: A Corner in the Garden with Allium Dioscorides.] Two house-martins fell down a bedroom chimney here, and when I opened the window to let them out, whilst one took advantage of it at once the other kept flying round and round quite close up to the ceiling and resting on a bell-wire that ran across. It was a long time, more than half an hour, before I could persuade him that he was looking in the wrong place for a way of escape. At one time after the Ship Canal had been begun and traffic had ceased on the river, a large colony of sand-martins established themselves under the disused towing-path almost opposite, and naturally they were then plentiful enough. Now, as far as we are concerned, the river with all its belongings is a thing of the past, and it is only occasionally that we see the little brown birds hawking for flies in the garden. I was surprised not long ago to find in a field-sandpit, a mile away from any other sand-martins' nests that I knew of, a solitary nest in a hole within easy reach of my hand. The young must have been hatched, for I watched the birds go in with food. Sand-martins have a peculiar interest as being perhaps the most universally distributed of all small birds. One likes to think that nearly everywhere one went, in Asia, Africa or America, the very same little brown swallows might be seen ceaselessly flitting about, bringing back to mind the green fields and cloudy skies of home in England. Only once have I seen that other cosmopolitan, the tree-creeper, in the garden. One morning in May, 1895, I heard a strange, small, rather shrill song and found that it came from a little brown tree-creeper on an oak just opposite my window. I watched it for some time through field glasses as it climbed about, prying into every crack of the bark and singing as it worked. VII. SPARROWS AND OTHER FINCHES.