Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1885 — THE MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS. [ARTICLE]

THE MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS.

Marvelous Speed of the Swallow—The Flight in Search of ]sew Foot Supplies. Among all the migrants the swallow has-, perhaps, attracted most attention in all ages and countries, says a writer in The Edinburgh Review. It arrives in Sussex villages with remarkable punctuality ; none of the migrants pern form their journeys more rapidly than the swallows and their congeners. A swift with young ones, or during migration, covers from 1,500 to 2,000 miles a day. It begins business feeding its young about 3 o’clock a. m., and continues it till 9p. m. At that season, therefore, the swift spends nearly eighteen hours upon the wing, and it has been computed that at the ordinary rate of traveling of this very fast bird it would circumnavigate the globe in about fourteen days. At a push, if it were making forced flights, the swift would probably keep on the wing, with very brief intervals of rest, during fourteen days. The speed of the whole tribe is marvelous, and seems the more sc when compared with that of the swiftest of animals that depend for their progressive powers on legs, however many legs they may be furnished with. The hare is swift, yet in Turner’s well-known picture of rain, steam, and speed the hare’s fate is sealed; she will be run over and crushed by the engine rushing in her wake. The swiftest animals would soon break down at forty miles an hour, which the swallow unconsciously accomplishes, merely twittering all the while. All the swallows tribe are found in every part of Great Britain, including Shetland, except the swift, which is not found in those islands. Dr. Saxby, author of “Birds of Shetland,” says that one day a poor fellow, a cripple, who happened at the time to be exceedingly ill off and in want of food, came to him with a swallow in his hand. The doctor ordered the man some dinner. It seems he had opened his door, restless and half famished, when in flew the swallow and bro ught hip, so to speak, a dinner. “After this,” said the poor fellow, “folks need na tell me that the Lord does not answer prayer.” The swallow can hardly be inelegant, "When ’it walks, however, it does so with particularly short steps, assisted by the wings, and In accomplishing any journey longer than a few inches it spreads its wings and takes flight. It twitters both on the wing and on the nest, and a more incessant, cheerful, amiable, happy little song no other musician has ever executed. Much has been said of that “inexplicable longing” and “incomprehensible presentiment of coming events” which occasion birds to migrate from certain districts before the food supplies begin to fail. Quails, woodcocks,snipes, and many other birds, it is said, are in the finest condition at the time of commencing their migration, while none of them are emaciated at that season, so that the pinch of hunger, it is argued, cannot have yet affected them. But it should be remembered that fat, as well as lean, birds may feel that pinch, and that birds are very fast-living creatures, full of life, movement, and alertness, quick to observe, to feel, and to act. In the rapid digestion of their food they are assisted by a special organ which grinds down such items as grain, gravel, nails, or needles, swallowed in mistake or from caprice or curiosity, with astonishing facility. They prefer feeding nearly all day, and when fully crammed they\ sometimes become as plump as ortolans, or as well-fed quails, whose skin bursts when they fall to the gun. But when the appetite is urgent, obesity does not by any means preclude hunger. Twelve hours fast and snow and a change of wind are very urgent facts in the lives of these quick creatures in the autumn of the year, and then begins that sudden migration which the lighthouse-keepers have observed. It is impossible to imagine creatures more practical and full of action and freer from “presentiments” than birds, engaged as they are from day to day snatching their food at nature’s board. Perhaps we may compare them to the guests of Macbeth, since all goes well so long as the ghost abstains from making its appearance; but very suddenly sometimes, in the case of the northern birds, the specter of hunger puts th,em to flight Fat or lean, they must go on the instant, and that is why they arrive pell-mell upon our coast; but, as the country to be cleared of its birds of summer is extenBIVO, autt tiro aißtanco cri cue - joitrneyß various, they naturally arrive' at intervals. The migration of birds is worldwide. The birds of North America make corresponding movements to those of northern Europe, traveling in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction, and at the same seasons. The countries of the Gulf of Mexico form the chief retreat of the North American migrants, especially Mexico itself, with its three zones and great variety of climate. But some of them go as far as the West Indies and New Granada. A great number winter in the Southern States.