OVERSEAS MIGRATION 



binoculars were all observed to be compensating for the wind speed and 

 direction by angling their flight and heading approximately 30 degrees to 

 the east of south. This carried the birds on a true southward course at an 

 estimated speed of 30 miles per hour. The largest flights were made up of 

 from 50 to 100 individuals flying in close formation." 



Wynne-Edwards (1935) found that the spring migration of the Arctic 

 Tern across the North Atlantic had a definite trend to the west-northwest, 

 and he felt that he had evidence that these birds returned over the same 

 route in the fall. Regarding the fidelity of birds to regular migration paths 

 over the ocean, Lloyd (1954) observed on May 10, 1950, a remarkable 

 flight of Long-tailed Jaegers in migration at 53° 19' N., 26° 45' W., in the 

 North Atlantic. This location is only 200 miles from that where seventeen 

 years earlier, on May 23, 1933, Wynne-Edwards (1935) encountered a 

 migrating flock of the same species. By such deliberate attempts as those of 

 Paynter and Wynne-Edwards to search out birds at sea for a study of their 

 movements, and through the alertness of ornithologists like Lloyd, Yocom, 

 and Buss during ocean crossings, we shall accumulate, bit by bit, much 

 more information to explain the travels of the overseas migrants. 



No problems of ocean passage have been solved here, no explanations 

 established. But it seems certain that some of the mysteries of sea migra- 

 tions (as these are mysterious to the inquiring mind of man) are generously 

 diluted when certain fundamentals are marshaled for open-minded ap- 

 praisal. Surely the complexity of pelagic journeys has been deepened by 

 our human evaluation of distance and by our sense of the monotony of the 

 ocean. The problem is faced in a much more rational manner when dis- 

 tances are approached as relative and when ecological variations at sea are 

 critically assayed as possible avian cues for travel. 



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