DISTANCES TRAVELLED BY BIRDS 75 



ward in search of food before there is any marked 

 autumnal southward migration. Terns and black- 

 headed gulls have been found a month or more 

 after they have left the nest to the north of their 

 breeding colonies in Cumberland and mid- Wales. 

 A bird from Ravenglass was taken in its first 

 January in Brittany. Rossitten black-heads have 

 been shot in the Isle of Wight and in Breydon in 

 Norfolk. 



This may only mean that the young blackhead 

 is a confirmed wanderer in search of food, but the 

 few results with woodcocks, marked as British- 

 bred nestlings, are puzzling. They have been 

 known to linger in the neighbourhood of their 

 home until November, and have been found in 

 Portugal only a month later. Birds marked at 

 Tyrone have been found so far apart as Cornwall, 

 Harrow and Inverness ; what route for the Irish 

 birds can be guessed at ? 



Birds marked as adults present further problems, 

 but also provide interesting evidence. Hooded 

 crows, captured on migration in spring at Rossitten 

 and then released, have been recovered in autumn 

 actually in the same place and in other localities 

 in Germany, and one marked in October was taken 

 two years later, in spring, in Finland. The sum 

 of these records of crows proves one thing con- 

 clusively the fallacy of Gatke's due east to west 



