No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. »45 



sand had gone in while we were crossing the bridge; and, as I 

 say, 1 thought my count was under the truth rather than over, so 

 that the probability is that there was something like G,000 swifts 

 that roosted in that one chimney and it seemed to be a pretty small 

 chimney. 



Now that is a pretty big story. I was talking on birds there in 

 Washington early this spring, and up to that time the largest num- 

 ber — I had seen the swifts go into chimneys a good many times, 

 but the largest number I had counted was about three thousand, 

 and I told them this same story about the swifts circling around 

 and going into that chimney, only I put the number at 3,000, and 

 I have heard from that from all directions since that time. It comes 

 to me something like this: A person says, "Why, I liked your 

 lecture, but when it was so good, why did you put in that nature 

 fake about the 3,000 swifts going into the chimney?" Well you 

 see I have just doubled it, I have got it 0,000 now. 



The bircls in migrating from eastern North America to their 

 South American home — and there are something over 100 different 

 kinds that make this migration — do not take what would seem to 

 be the natural course. Suppose birds from eastern North America 

 are going to winter down here in South America, you'd think they 

 would come right across through here, across the West Indies and 

 Cuba. That route is taken by a few birds. The bobolink goes 

 across there and it is the most common bird that does. Then there 

 is another course down through the islands that a bird could take 

 and not be out of sight of land the whole day. We don't know 

 of any bird that takes that course. The great bulk of the birds 

 cross the Gulf of Mexico, right at its widest point, coming along 

 through the eastern United States, going down the same general 

 course, the trend of the coast, through western Florida and then 

 across the Gulf and down to Central and South America, and that 

 requires a flight of 700 miles across the Gulf of Mexico, and it 

 is made in a single flight and in the night time. The birds start 

 soon after dark, fly through the night and reach the other side just 

 before daylight, and they are not tired by that trip, if they were 

 they would not take it because they don't have to, they could go 

 around, and we have proof that they are not exhausted by it be- 

 cause, in the spring, when the birds return, there are a great many 

 hundreds and thousands of them that fly across from the southern 

 shore, do not alight when they reach the coast of the United States, 

 but fly all the way from 100 to 200 miles inland before they alight. 

 There is one line out here, this route marked No. 1, which is a 

 straight shoot from Nova Scotia straight south to South America, 

 which of course would be the shortest route. There is no land bird 

 that takes that route. Take a common little summer warbler, one 

 of our commonest birds; it -nests here, abundantly and winters 

 down here, but instead of going across, it goes around nearly 2,000 

 miles out of its way; but there are some of the water birds 

 that do take this route. 



This bird and the golden plover is one of the best known birds 

 that takes that migration route. This shoAvs the two plumages, 

 the black breasted, the breeding birds' summer plumage, and the 

 white breasted, the winter plumage, and that bird does take that 



