The history of the Lancashire summer visitants is crowded with interest of equal variety. The nightingale stays away. She has come now and then to the edge of Cheshire, but no farther. Very often, however, she is thought to have ventured at last, the midnight note of the sedge-warbler being in some respects not unlike that of Philomel herself. The earliest to arrive, often preceding the swallows, appear to be the wheatear and the willow-wren. The sand-martin is also a very early comer. It cannot afford, in truth, to be dilatory, the nest being constructed in a gallery first made in some soft cliff, usually sandstone. While building it never alights upon the ground, collecting the green blades of grass used for the outer part, and the feathers for the lining, while still on the wing. The advent of the cuckoo has already been mentioned. In the middle of May comes the spotted fly-catcher, an unobtrusive and confiding little creature; and about the same time the various "warblers" make their appearance. The males usually precede the females by a week or two; the black-cap going, like the hedge-sparrow, to the highest pinnacle it can find, and singing till joined by the hen; while the garden-warbler keeps to the bushes and gardens, and is silent till she arrives. The whinchat, the yellow wagtail, and the stone-chat, haunter of the open wastes where gorse grows freely, never forget. Neither do the dotterel and the ring-ouzel, the latter in song so mellow, both moving on speedily into the hilly districts. To many the voice of the corncrake, though harsh and tuneless, becomes a genuine pleasure, for she is heard best during those balmy summer evening hours while, though still too light for the stars, the planets peer forth in their beautiful lustre, clear and young as when first noted by the Chaldean shepherds, bryony in bloom in the hedgerows, "listening wheat" on either hand. The winter visitants comprehend chiefly the fieldfare and the redwing. In October and November these birds, breeding in Norway and Sweden, appear in immense flocks. Winging its way to the vicinity of farms and orchards, the one piercing cry of the redwing may be heard overhead any still night, no matter how dark. Siskins come at uncertain intervals; and in very severe seasons the snow-bunting is sometimes noticed. Such are the ornithological facts which in Lancashire give new attraction to the quiet and rewarding study of wild nature. The few that have been mentioned--for they are not the hundredth part of what might be cited were the subject dealt with _in extenso_--do not pretend to be in the slightest degree novel. They may serve, nevertheless, to indicate that in Lancashire there is lifelong pastime for the lover of birds no less than for the botanist. THE FOSSILS[47] [47] One or two paragraphs condensed from the seventh chapter of _Summer Rambles_, 1866. Long since out of print.