Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1880-11-17
MIGRATION OF BIRDS.
tn cir Remarkable swiftness on the Vino

thetF nemarkaDIe SWrtneSS on the Vino.
Familiar as the migration of birds is
80 us, there is, perhaps, no question in
zoology more obscure. The long flights
they take and the unerring certainty
with which they wing their way between
the most distant places, arriving and de-
parting at the same places year after
year, are points in the history of birds
OF passage as mysterious as they are in
teresting. We know that most migrants
tiy after shutdown, though many of them
| select a moonlight night to cross the
Mediterranean. But that their meteoro-
logical instinct is not unerring is proved
by the fact that thousands are every wear
drowned in their fight over the Atlantic
and other oceans. Northern Africa and
western Asia are selected as winter
quarters by most of them, and they may
be often noticed, on their way thither,
to hang over towns at night, puzzled, in
spite OF their experience, by the shifting
lights of the streets and houses. The
swallow or the nightingale may some
times be delayed by unexpected circum-
stances. Yet it is rarely that they de-
part or arrive many days sooner or
later, one year with another. Professor
Newton considered that were sea-fowl
satellites revolving round the earth their
arrival could hardly be more surely
calculated by an astronomer Foul
weather or fair, heat or cold, the puffins
repair to some of their stations punctual-
ly on a given day, as if their move
ments were regulated by clock work.
Theswiftness of flight which characterizes
most birds. enables them to cover vast
space in a brief time. The common
black swift can fly 276 miles an hour,
speed which, If it could be maintained
for less than half day, would
carry the bird from it's winter to it's sum-
mer quarters. The large purple swift of
America, is capable of even greater feats
on the wing. The chimney is
slower-ninety miles per hour being
about the limit of it's powers; but the
passenger pigeon of the United States
can accomplish journey of 1000 miles
between sunrise and sunset. 1t is also
true, as the ingenious Herr Palmer has
attempted to show, that migrants during
their long flights may be directed by an
experience partly inherited and partly
acquired by the individual bird. They
often follow the coast line of continents,
and invariably take, on theirpassage over
the Mediterranean, one of three routes.
But this theory will not explain how they
pilot themselves across broad oceans,
and is invalidated by the fact, familiar
to every ornithologist, that the old and
young birds do not journey in company.
Invariably, the young broods travel to-
gether; then come, after an interval, the
and finally the rear is brought
up by the weakly, inflm, melting and
broken winged. This is the rule in au-
tumn. The return journey is accom-
plshed in the reverse order. The dis
lance travelled seems, moreover, to have
no relation to the size of the traveller.
The Swedish blue-throat performs it's ma
ternal functions among the Laps, and
enjoys It's winter holidays among the
negroes of the Soudan, while the tiny,
ruby -throated hummingbird proceeds an
nually from Mexico to Newfoundland and
back again, though one would imagine
that so delicate little fairy would be
more at home among the cacti and
agaves of the TERRA Caliente than among
the frs and fogs of the north.