Strange facts about the Flight of Birds.

Manawatu Herald, 25 August 1898, Page 2

Strange facts about the Flight of Birds.

♦ A very interesting , paper on '•Mysteries of Animal and Bird j Life " lights up the erudite paget of the " Quarterly Review ',' for April. One of the mysteries whioh are partly explained is the remarkable annual migration of innumerable birds to the Arctic regions :— It is incontrovertible that millions of tiny frail creatures, some of them short- winged, do traverse Europe each year from end to end, congregating by thousands, at a score of places, and at different times,, alonc^ our coasts, before they start f or tbdMH long and perilous flight. Why they fly to the frozen North, and what

they find there, wo know from the Striking picture of Mr Seebohm. The Tundra, a vast stretch of treeless swamp, millions of acres, within the Arctic Circle, uninhabited by human beings, and for eight months oak of the year covered with snow, and hardly known even by name to Europeans, drains the Old World of half n i bird population. In this region, ifc must be remembered, the year is divided into six months of unbroken day, and six of unbroken night, the former forcing life to beat strongly under almost perpetual sunshine. Here buttercups, dandelions, forget-me-not, hawkweed, cuckoo flower, and saxifrage abound ; no English meadow may outvie these Arctic pastures in masses of purple, blue, and gold. All round tbis glorious domain lie millions of acres cohered with beds of abundant food, cranberry and crowberry and other berries of the same genus, in 40 varieties. The crop is not ripe until the middle or end of the Artie sum. mer, and if the fruit-eating birds had to wait until it was all ripe, they might have to starve, arriving, as they do, on the very day of the melting of the snow. But the immense crop of ripe fruit of the previous sea* ton, ungathered by birds, was quickly covered up by the snow, and kept pure aid fresh, "like crystallised fruit," until the melting of next year's fall ; and is now ready for them. Meanwhile the insect-eating birds have but to open their mouths And be filled ; for the air is at times blaok with swarms of mosquitoes or other such dainties foe the chiffchaffs, pipits, warblers, and wagtails, &c, which abound on all sides. Aget of long-inherited instinct have taught the birds the nature of the banquet in store for them in the air ; while the frozen meal on the bushes stretches across the breadth of Asia nevet decays, and is accessible the moment the snow melts. Such is the discovery, mainly owing to the enterprise of Mr Seebohm, which Mr Cornish describes with infectious enthusiasm.