In this same month of August, and still more in September, we are visited, in our warm, olive-clad regions, by caravans of little birds of passage descending by easy stages from the countries where they have wooed and loved, countries cooler, more thickly wooded, less wild than ours, where they have reared their broods. They arrive almost on a fixed day, in an unvarying order, as though guided by the dates of a calendar known only to themselves. They sojourn for some time in our plains, a halting-place rich in insects, which form the exclusive fare of most of them; they ransack every clod in our fields, where the ploughshare by now has laid bare in the furrows a multitude of grubs, their special delight; thanks to this diet, they soon put on a fine cushion of fat, a storehouse of reserve provisions for the coming exertions; and at last, supplied with this viaticum, they continue their southward flight, making for the winterless lands where insects are never lacking: Spain, Southern Italy, the Mediterranean islands and Africa. This is the season for brave sport with the gun and for dainty roasts of small birds. The first to arrive is the Shore-lark, or, as he is called in these parts, the Crèou. August is hardly here before we see him exploring the pebbly fields, in search of the little seeds of setaria, an ill weed that overruns our tilled soil. At the least alarm he flies away with a harsh clattering in his throat which is not badly represented by his Provençal name. He is soon followed by the Whin-chat, who preys placidly on small Weevils, Locusts, and Ants in the old lucern-fields. With him begins the long line of small winged things, the glory of the spit. It is continued, when September comes, by the most famous of them, the Common Wheat-ear, or White-tail, extolled by all who are able to appreciate his exalted qualities. No Beccafico of the Roman epicures, immortalized in Martial’s epigrams, ever equalled the exquisite, scented ball of fat that is the Wheat-ear, grown shamefully stout on gluttonous living. He is an unbridled devourer of every kind of insect. The notes which I have taken as a sportsman and naturalist bear witness to the contents of his gizzard. It includes the whole little world of the fallow fields: grubs and Weevils of every species, Locusts, Tortoise-beetles, Golden Apple-beetles, Crickets, Earwigs, Ants, Spiders, Wood-lice, Snails, Millipedes, and ever so many others. And, as a change from this full-flavoured diet, there are grapes, blackberries and dogberries. Such is the bill of fare for which the Wheat-ear is ever in search, as he flies from clod to clod, with the white feathers of his outspread tail giving him that fictitious look of a Butterfly on the wing. And Heaven knows what prodigies of plumpness he is able to achieve.