The home journal. (Winchester, Tenn.) 1858-188?, 1882-05-10
TIE MIGRATION OF BIRDS.
Remarkable SwInnea, OF Birds on The
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Familiar as tho migration Of birds is 10
MS, there is perhaps no question in zool-
pgy more obscure. The long flights
they take and tho unening certainty
with which they wing their way between
the most distant places, arriving and de-
parting in the same period, year after
year, are points in the history Of birds
Of passage rs mysterious Gs they are in
tercsting. We know that m1st migrants
fly after shutdown, though many Of them
select moonlight night e. cross the
Mediterranean. But that their meteor
illogical instinct is not unoring is yet
proved by the fact that thousands are
every year drowned in their flight over
the Atlantic and other oceans North
ern Africa and Western Asia are selected
MS winter quarters by most Of them, and
they may be often noticed on their way
thith6r 20 hang over towns at night, puz-
zled, in spite Of their experience, by tho
shifting lights Of the streets and houses.
The swallow or the nightingale may
sometimes be delayed by unexpected cir
cumslanccs. Yet it is rarely that they
arrive or depart many dayB gooner or
later, one year with another Professor
Newton considered that were seafowl
satellites revolving round the earth their
arrival could hardly DO more surely cal
culated by astronomer. Foul weather
or fair, heat or cold, the puiiins repair to
some Of their stntions punctually on
given day, rs if their movements we're
regulated by clock-wmk. Tho stiffness
Of flight which chnrnctcrizes most birds
enables them 10 cover vast space in
brief time. Tho common black swift
can fly two hundred and soycnly-six
miles IN hour, u speed which, if il could
DO maintained for less than half day,
would carry the bird from its winter 10
it's summer quarters. The large purple
swift, Of America, ia capable Of even
greater icats ON the wing. The chimney
swallow is slower-nincty miles per hour
being about the limit Of its powers; but
the passenger pigeon, of tho United
States, can accomplish journey Of ono
thousand miles between sunrise and sun
set. II is also true, as the ingenious
Herr Palmer has attempted 10 show,
that migrants during their long flight
may be directed by an experience partly
Inherited and partly acquired by the III
diyidual bird They often follow the
coast lines OF continents, and invariably
take, on their passage over the blediler-
ranean, one OF the 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-
gethcr; then come, after an interval,
the parents; and finally tho rear is
brought up by the weakly, infrm, molt-
ing, and brokcn-wingod. This is the
rule in autumn. The return journey is
accomplished in the reverse order. The
distance Travelled seems, moreover, to
have 10 relation TO the size Of the hav-
eler. The Swedish blue throat performs
its maternal functions among the Laps,
md enjoys its winter holiday among the
negroes of the Soudan, while the tidy,
ruby-throated hummmg-hird proceeds
annually from Mexico to Newfoundland
and back again, though ono would inn
agine that 80 delicate little fairy would
be more at home among the cacl and
agaves of the Terra Calicute than among
the frs and logs Of the North.