Then in the sunny mornings, too, there is the twittering of the swallows. They were very late this spring at Surbiton. The first of the species was a bank-martin flying over the Wandle by Wimbledon on April 25; the first swallow appeared at Surbiton on April 30. As the bank-martins skim the surface of the Thames--there are plenty everywhere near the osier-beds and eyots, as just below Kingston Bridge--their brown colour, and the black mark behind the eye, and the thickness of the body near the head, cause them to bear a resemblance to moths. A fortnight before the first swallow the large bats were hawking up and down the road in the evenings. They seem to prefer to follow the course of the road, flying straight up it from the copse to the pond, half-way to Red Lion Lane, then back again, and so to and fro, sometimes wheeling over the Common, but usually resuming their voyaging above the highway. Passing on a level with the windows in the dusk, their wings seem to expand nine or ten inches. Bats are sensitive to heat and cold. When the north or east wind blows they do not come out; they like a warm evening. A shrike flew down from a hedge on May 9, just in front of me, and alighted on a dandelion, bending the flower to the ground and clasping the stalk in his claws. There must have been an insect on the flower: the bright yellow disk was dashed to the ground in an instant by the ferocious bird, who came with such force as almost to lose his balance. Though small, the butcher-bird's decision is marked in every action, in his very outline. His eagle-like head sweeps the grass, and in a second he is on his victim. Perhaps it was a humble-bee. The humble-bees are now searching about for the crevices in which they make their nests, and go down into every hole or opening, exploring the depressions left by the hoofs of horses on the sward when it was wet, and peering under stones and flints beside the way. Wasps, too, are about with the same purpose, and wild bees hover in the sunshine. The shrikes are numerous here, and all have their special haunts, to which they annually return. The bird that darted on the dandelion flew from the hedge by the footpath, through the meadow where the stag is generally uncarted, beside the Hogsmill brook. A pair frequent the bushes beside the Long Ditton road, not far from the milestone; another pair come to the railway arch at the foot of Cockrow Hill. In Claygate Lane there are several places, and in June and July, when they are feeding their young, the 'chuck-chucking' is incessant.