The Flight of Birds.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 288, 27 November 1902, Page 4

The Flight of Birds.

! A bird-in an unexpected position j was observed by three Havanan officers who, travelling in a balloon at the height of GOOO feet, were puzzled by a tiny black speck which seemed to accompany them. A sudden loud chirping showed that the object was an aspiring lark, “ probably quite as much frightened by the presence of the unknown monster as the aeronauts were surprised to find the small songster at such a height.” The incident forms the subject of some “ Nature Notes ” in the Daily News, where it is mentioned that though this seems the highest record of a lark’s flight, the migratory movements of many birds are performed at even greater distances from the earth. At least 40,000 feet, or about seven or eight miles above the sea level is, according to Humboldt, a common flight of the condor in search of food ; though in this case the bird has some anvantage in starting loftily from his peak in the Andes. And the theory runs now that some migratory birds have fanned the cold thin atmosphere at a height even more prodigious than that attributed to the condor. A writer in

Country Life relates how in India, on a cloudless night, the moon became partially veiled with a thin film which powerful field-glasses were just able to identify as “ a great flight of some large cranes or storks, which even then seemed larger than small specks It was conjectured the even then descending still more remote, and conclusion is drawn eye-power far beyond the of field-glasses they had such altitude in the first view the land. Birds on continue to rise higher until theysi 6 ht the Conand their flight bea long descent. “ This habit HH}g to a great height in order land in the distance is, after natural and inevitable line for birds to adopt when themselves launched in a wide waste of water ; may see it practised daily Hawaii scale ashore by the rooks which haunt the plough* This may scarcely be as a large scale as on a small, seems very good sense in that it explains some rates of speed. Migratory at Heligoland, for have been credited with a of 540 miles an hour while Whereas, “to regisHBpvco of their arrival as the speed of their migrating as ridiculous as it would H|Hne a coasting cyclist at the a long hill and then credit HHBth the power of riding at fifty miles an hour.”