Short-eared Owls, Golden Crested Wrens, and Woodcocks arrive with great punctuality during the first fortnight in October, and are invariably associated in their migration--that is, coming at the same time; it is a curious fact that, in the last autumn, all three arrived in conjunction five weeks in advance of their average period; this perhaps may have been a local and coast movement from North Britain, and not across the North Sea. In August and early in September, Knots, Grey Plovers, Sanderlings, Curlew Sandpipers, and Little Stints--all circumpolar in their nesting--had returned in large number, being unusually abundant and early in their movements up the coast. The _Anatidæ_ have been remarkably scarce in shore and within our river estuaries, and it has been an almost blank season for the wildfowl-shooter; yet we find, in the returns from some light-vessels, they have occurred in extraordinary numbers out at sea, the weather having never been sufficiently severe to drive them inland or near the coast. With a dry hot summer in Northern Europe migration is always earlier than in years of rain and low temperature, birds breeding sooner in the former, and the nestlings, like all other young things, with dry weather and sunshine, developing more rapidly. Nothing is more remarkable in the phenomenon of migration than the punctuality with which certain species return in the autumn, one species regularly taking precedence of another; also in respect to the date of the arrival year after year. In the _Limicolæ_ and _Anatidæ_ the date of autumn migration varies--often considerably--from year to year. In some species, as the Wheatear, Redstart, Fieldfare, Redwing, Hooded Crow, Goldcrest and Woodcock, and others, we may almost predict to a day the time of their first appearance.