The Washington herald., 1911-03-26
Great FlOcks of Wild Fowl
Begin to Wing Their
Way to Northern
Waters.

This Is the time in the year when a
semi-annual miracle is taking place.
Only a few of the more favored folk
in the big towns ever have a chance to
observe it, for those who witness 1t must
go out along the rivers. the reedy ponds,
and the thousands OF little lakes where
the wild things pause for a few hours
or for a night on their way to the Cana
dian country. The winged life of the
whole continent is moving with the first
warm days. Winter drives them South
IN October and early November and the
gradual approach of the sun from the
line northward turns their beaks toward
their native lakes in the dim North or
the millponds and little creeks of the
Middle States and New England.
Men have been studying the mystery
of bird fight since the days OF Leonardo
da Vinci Langley. builder of the first
queer and misshapen hint of the aero
plane. had studied bird wings for years.
Lilienthal. who fell from his gliding
machine in the early days of aviation,
was long a student OF the curved and
wonderful pinions of the wild bird.
Chanute, the real father OF the aeroplane.
fened pinions. the slender muscles and
the knife-like edges of the tireless wings
The mechanism OF the flying machines
of 1911 approach more closely the con-
struction of the keel-breasted wild bird
than they do anything else in nature.
The mechanism of actual flying has
been stripped OF some of its mystery.
but the scientists have signally failed
in their efforts to explain that amazing
tkr,
winged creatures to cross States and
continents, inland seas. and even oceans
in a flight as unerring as light. A wild
duck that has spent the winter in some
southern bayou rises from the warm
waters and with steady wing places the
long miles of the valley and the Great
Lakes country behind him, and out of
the vast wilderness that stretches be-
tween White Horse Pass and the rocks of
Labrador he drops into his native place
without faltering. or hesitancy. He
passes over a thousand ponds. a thousand
creeks, and innumerabls nesting places
that might be his own and that of his
mate. but some strange sense of location
carries him steadily toward his own ma
tive pond.
Birds on the Move.
Struggling lines and V-shaped fiocks OF
winged things are already beginning to
appear high up in the March skies. The
duck hunters up and down the valley
are finding the birds on the move. The
great fiers are going North. At the four
and FIVE thousand feet level they have
set their wings aslant and pointed their
stubby beaks toward the Hudson Bay
country. Behind them a tremendous
cloud of slower-winged bird life is max
ing its leisurely way northward to the
fields and orchards, the meadows and the
groves of the wheat and the apple
country. By the time the apple trees be-
gin to bud and burst into clouds Of white
blossoms; by the time oak leaves are
as big as the ears of a fox squirrel: by
the days when the great wheat is tall
enough to hide the ears OF a rabbit, the
birds will have made their nests in the
same trees, the same barn lofts, and the
same fence posts as they did last year.
They may have spent the somber days
of midwinter amid the bright groves OF
the South, possibly thousand miles
from their own nesting places: but when
the mating season was at hand they
were already far on their way north
ward.
Many times the whole subject of bird
migration has been explained by orni-
biologists as being due to the appetite of
the feathered things who make these
long flights. There are birds that will
make a detour of a thousand miles in
three-thousand-mile trip from the
North to the South to linger for a few
days in the rice fields of the Carolinas.
Others have been found and noted who
have made apparently aimless flights,
carrying them many hundreds of miles
out of their way in their passages from
one end of the continent to the other.
The curlew, the crane, and the catbird
each have their own little personal con-
Germs to look after in their long trips,
but no amount of stopping here and
there or wandering from their direct
line of flight can explain by what mys-