Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1895 — Birds Like to Travel. [ARTICLE]

Birds Like to Travel.

Why do tho birds flit southward each autumn and return again with every spring? No one knows, but science, in the person of Profossoi Wang, the eminent Austrian ornithologist, has just disclosed that the usual flippant unswer to this question, “Because they like to travol,” is not far out of the way, after all. In a lecture that Professor Wang recently delivered at Vienna he gave some extremely interesting details regarding the migrations of birds, all of which migrations resemble one another in two respects: they follow tho most direct lino southward, and are made with most incredible rapidity. Numerous observations huve been made at Heligoland, which is tho principal halting pluco of birds of pussage from northorn countries, and in Egypt, which is the winter home of inuny, and these observations have established some facts hitherto unknown. The bluebirds travorse the 400 nautical miles which separate Egypt from Heligoland in a single night, which is at the rate of more than forty geographical miles per hour. The swallow’s speed is over two and one-half miles per minute, or nearly three times that of the fastest railway train. Even the younger birds, six or eight weeks old, accompany the others in their long journey. Professor Wang asks himself what is the impulse which causes the birds, after the brooding and molting season is over, to quit our northern climate. He does not think it is fear of cold—for many species qnite as delicate as those which migrate southward easily withstand the rigors of the winter, but that they have an irresistible humor for traveling. This is his idea of the fact, but he can give no explanation.