YOUNG STORKS

Evening Star, Issue 19658, 10 September 1927, Page 19

YOUNG STORKS

“INSTINCT LIKE A CLOCK.” An interesting experiment with a flock of young storks has brought unexpected results. A famous authority on bird migration, Professor Thicncman, of East Prussia, obtained twenty-seven white nestling storks last summer, fastened the (light feathers of their wings, and enclosed them in a big wire compound to which there was no roof. . The birds throve, grew up, and were content until the date for migration was near. Then, liko caged migrants which arc quiet until that season arrives and then beat their breasts raw against the bars of their prison, these youngsters grew more and more excited until three managed to fly away, one on August 18, a second on August 23, and a third on August 29. Inquiry proved that those wore the three days on which the general stream of migrating storks started south from East Prussia.

The remaining twenty-four storks were now placed in an enclosure from which there was no escape, and were detained for nine days, in which time the professor ascertained that there remained no more storks in East Prussia. Then he released the remainder of Ids young captives. Tho passion to fly south had by this time cooled down. The birds circled round in freedom, hut returned and had to bo seared away. They made a resting place nearby, but finally, on September 18, the myriads .of frogs upon which they had been feeding having disappeared, they at last set off. Their progress south was traced for fourteen miles on tho succeeding day, and all sight of them was lost for three months. Then, instead of basking in the sunshine of Lake Victoria, where they should have been, they were still loitering in Southern Europe. The normal flight route for these storks from East Prussia _is south-east to the Bosnhorus, across Asia Minor and Palestine, and then down within sight of the east coast of Africa, But these birds had gone due south to Athens. Did they reach Lake Victoria and find their kindred? asks a writer in an English paper. Were they admitted to the common company of storks, and will they fly back with them to their original nurseries this year? That is what watchers want to know. But even now there is valuable new light on migration. Young birds fly, at tho right moment, by the route their ancestors have been wont to follow. However, if they are detained beyond the natural date for departure the impulse to migrate wanes. The writer adds: “Hero there seems to be a clue to the old problem, how do birds basking in tropical sunshine know when to set out to meet spring in England? May we assume that tho migrating bird has within it an instinct like a clock which Nature winds up as wo wind an alarm? The appointed hour arrives, and go it must; it knows not why or whither. “ If the bird flies wketl the passion for its journey still burns all is well; if it lets the critical hour pass, tho urgent voice go' .unheeded, then its purpose flags, tho sense of direction is dulled, and, instead of crowding on in glory to the Promised Land of Ithaca, it may be to the drowsy land of the lotus caters that the travellers come, where love of homo and kind must die and Ambition perish. There, is a tide in the affairs of birds as in (he affairs of men.”