Daily independent. [volume] (Elko, Nev.) 188?-1915, 1892-10-05
WINGED WANDERERS.
Where the. Beautiful Wild Birds
Go to Pass the Winter.

considerable number of European song
birds have been turned loose in the
woods and gardens of the new world,
but, with rare exceptions, they all dis
appeared before the end of the second
winter, says writer in the San Fran
cisco Chronicle. Only four out of fifty
English larks brought to Maryland in
1879 were seen the next spring. and no
nightingale has as yet managed to sur
vivc an American blizzard.
The failure of those experiments
may, however, be due to the circun-
stance that the assisted immigrants
were taken to the wrong side of the
Rocky mountains. Like the Gascon
farmer who hoped to find the climate of
southern France in southern Michigan,
they owed their ruin to a misapplica-
ton of geographical facts. A trip of
six hundred miles will carry British
bird to an almost winterless zone.
The birds Of our Pacific coast forests,
on the other hand, have no cause TO
envy their European relatives. The
pine thrush of British Columbia passes
the winter in Mendocino county, and
has been seen as far south as Lake Ma
jella in the redwoods of Monterey, but
most of our California wood birds man
age to dispense with lengthy winter
migration. Thrushes stick to the tim
Der zone, and our woodpeckers rarely
stray beyond the hills of Napa county.
Our California bluebirds, however, love
sunshine too much to enjoy the winters
of the timber counties" and are apt to
get rather numerous on Monterey bay
after the end Of October.
;.J,
states have n curious habit of following
established routes of travel. Countless
thousands of water birds. for instance,
cross the Mexican border near the
mouth of the Rio Grande, probably to
avoid the broad sand wastes that skirt
the upper river valley. Farther cast
there is n brackish estuary almost de-
void of islands, SO that the 1agoons of
the delta afford the only convenient
resting place for legions of swamp-lov-
ing wanderers. A similar bird trap is
found in low gap of the Sierra Nevada
near the eastern border of Plumas
county. The feathered inhabitants of
Colorado and Nevada could reach the
tropics only by two thousand mile
trip across barren table-lands without
water and wood, SO some of them have
found it the best plan to follow
Horace Grecley's advice and enjoy
the comforts of n protracted Indian
summer by going west.
A few species of eastern woodbirds
come to grief in trying to pass the win
ter in the southern Ai.eghanies. Robins,
for instance, flock by thousands to the
hill country of eastern Alabama, where
they fit about the woods in quest of
cedar berries and are killed in such
numbers that in the course of years
they will become as scarce as the travA
cling pigeons of the Mississippi valley.
Some of our shy woodbirds avoid hu-
man habitations in their wanderinCs,
but the wisest go where gunpowdcr is
deur and pass the winter in the swamp
forests of Tucatan, or even farther
south, in the painless woods of Guiana
and eastern Brazil. A Belgian noble
man once managed to catch two hun
dred stor,1s and labeled every one of
them with piece of pasteboard giving
the address Of the eXpcrimenter and re-
questing to inform him where the bird
had been caught or killed during the
winter season. These curious passports
were attached in conspicuous manner
to the neck or leg of the birds, and one
of them returned next spring with q
message to the effect that he had been
caught in q meadow near Sidi Belbez,
in western Algeria. Two years after
another of the original tickets came
back by mail with a note stating that
the winged messenger had been shot at
Fort George, near the mouth of the
Senegal.
Cranes, storl1s and wild geese fly fast
enough to make the trip from northern
Europe to Africa in week, but most of
them take midway rest north of the
Mediterranean. The reed swamps of
the Guadiana river, in northern Spain,
are all alive with migratory birds in
November, and the waterfowl of north
ern Russia winter on the shores of the
Caspian, where snowstorms may occur
now and then, but where water-birds
arc, on the whole, much better off than