MIGRATION. 161 



the Pied Woodpecker, — a singular jumble truly! Snipes and Wagtails are 

 a good deal influenced by weather, and shape their course to milder regions 

 according to its severity, searching out the running streams and sheltered 

 low grounds; and their movements (except the Jack Snipe and Yellow 

 Wagtails, which are regular birds of passage) can hardly deserve the name 

 of migration. This is very much the case with the Wild Pigeon, which 

 can only be said to be migratory in the south of England, where it does 

 not appear in bulk of numbers until deep autumn, and yet they breed very 

 much in any extent of park, and there are many localities very far south 

 which they never desert during the whole year. Windsor great park has 

 vast numbers at all seasons, but in winter the numbers are certainly greatly 

 augmented, and regular flights wing their way, out early and home late, 

 during November and December, in search of food, and probably traverse 

 great distances in these excursions; in fact, if we looked narrowly into the 

 matter, we should doubtless discover may internal migrations which take 

 place among our small native birds, and with which we are at present 

 wholly unacquainted ; but this could only be effected by a quick succession 

 of movements to different parts of the country by a careful and competent 

 observer. By this means not only might new migrations be brought to 

 light, but many which are now but imperfectly understood would receive 

 a greater certainty of limit and direction than they at present possess. 



It is a beautiful provision of Nature for the preservation of life, that 

 when a time arrives at which the species of food which supports a being 

 fails, he should be endowed with an insuperable desire to travel to other 

 realms, where that sustenance is to be found; this is a generally implanted 

 instinct, and arises naturally in the individual, as has been frequently 

 instanced; for birds of passage, taken from the nest, and upon whom their 

 parents' movements could have consequently had no influence, are seized 

 with a sort of restless anxiety at that particular season, and unless very 

 narrowly watched and sufficiently secured, will make their escape and follow 

 their companions. This has ever been the case with birds that have been 

 in captivity for some years from the nest, and then escaped, having learned 

 several notes from other birds that were kept with them, and which dis- 

 tinguished them from the general chorus in the same vicinity, summer after 

 summer, as the species of birds to which they belonged again returned to 

 us. It certainly binds a great interest to the first appearance of summer 

 birds in May, to reflect on the difficulties and dangers they have encountered, 

 and the immense tracts of earth and ocean they must have traversed to 

 visit us. As numbers continue to drop in, this feeling wears off, but I 

 have often considered, as I have watched them gathering materials for their 

 nest to fulfil the chief object of their visit, how much greater travellers 

 they were than I, and had probably since last with us visited regions in 



