12
The Feathered Masters of the Air
Think of it! A frail little bird with no compass to guide it flies twice every year across two thousand four hundred miles of ocean. Another bird travels twenty-two thousand miles every year. Men have their airplanes, but Mr. Darrow tells you why the birds are still the Masters of the Air.
By October the migration of the birds to their winter homes in the southlands is well under way and has been going on for some time. In fact, some of these feathered masters of the air begin their southward jaunts
as early as the middle of July. When the nesting season is over and the young are able to care for themselves, the old birds turn their thoughts toward their favorite winter resorts of the tropics.
But why should birds thus migrate twice a year? Why should they build their nests and rear their young in the north, and then, often long in advance of autumn's chilly blasts, fly hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles to other homes? What guides them so truly on these long flights? These are questions which men have. always asked, and yet we are but little nearer to their answers than when the quest began. Mystery still surrounds the birds and their journeyings.
Talk of transatlantic flights! The golden plover makes a non-stop flight of 2,400 miles from Nova Scotia to the northeast coast of South America, and has been doing it for centuries without ever getting a line of publicity in the newspapers. The night-hawk nests in the Yukon and winters in Argentina, 7,000 miles away. Nineteen species of shore-birds rear their young north of the arctic circle and then fly to South America, six of the species even penetrating Patagonia, 8,000 miles from their northern nesting grounds. The far-famed bobolink of New England migrates to Brazil, making a transoceanic flight of 700 miles from Cuba to the South American coast. So also do the purple martins, cliff-swallows, barn-swallows, and some thrushes.
The bird which holds the world's record for long-distance flying is the arctic tern, which you see in the picture. It builds its nest within seven and one-half degrees of the north pole, remaining but a brief period in the "land of the midnight sun,"when it flies away to the icebergs of the antarctic continent, a distance of 11,000 miles. Although thousands of these birds make this round trip every year, no one has yet been able to map the route by which they travel. For nearly half the year they are in flight.
Still, some birds go but a short distance from their northern homes. Such birds as the grouse, quail, cardinal, and Carolina wren do not migrate. The bob-white remains throughout his life close to his first home. Meadow-larks migrate but a very short distance. The pine-warbler and the black-headed grosbeak do not venture in winter south of the country in which they rear their young. The robin does not go far away.
Talk of mystery, what becomes of the chimney-swifts during the winter months? Drifting southward in autumn, they become an innumerable host on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Then, of a sudden, as though swallowed up by the sea, they disappear—no one knows where. The last week in March sees them return; a gladsome twittering high in the air announces their coming, but where they have been in the meantime is a puzzling mystery, known only to the swifts themselves.
Winter's cold and lack of food, of course, cause birds to move south. But why should most of them go so far? And why do many of them leave their northern haunts while skies are still sunny and food abundant? We do not know.
NOTES AND QUESTIONS
1. What do you think is the most wonderful fact about the long-distance flight of a bird?
2. What wonderful knowledge do the birds seem to have about the seasons of the year?
3. Make a list of five birds, where they go, and the distance they fly. Thus:
Golden Plover Nova Scotia to South America 2,400 miles
Put them in order with the longest flight first.
4. Name three birds that leave your neighborhood in the fall. Perhaps you can name more.
5. Be ready to show on a wall map the flights of these birds. Or make an outline map of North and South America and draw lines to show the flights. You can put the bird's name and the distance on the line, too.