PROLOGUE 3 



is that they are teeming with life that belies their 

 apparent barrenness. Here a small group of Long- 

 billed Dowitchers from Alaska is rubbing shoulders 

 with a fussy flock of Stilt Sandpipers from the Barren 

 Lands. There a flight of two hundred Golden 

 Plovers is indulging in spectacular manoeuvers over 

 golden sheaves of grain in company with Black- 

 bellied Plovers and Knots from the very purlieus of 

 the North Pole itself. Further out, preening, bick- 

 ering and swirling, a flock of a thousand Phalaropes 

 in massed formation. Everywhere there are shore- 

 birds. It appears to be the bird Mecca of the West, 

 a rabble from all corners of the North. As we scan 

 them, an extraordinary fact strikes us. Every 

 wader we can see is a bird of the year. Not one has 

 travelled before. This is their virgin migration. 

 Yet here they are, southward-bound in their hordes, 

 making no mistakes. Inexperienced, untutored, 

 mere infants, here today in a stupendous throng, 

 seemingly inextricably mixed; gone tomorrow, to 

 regions where the trials of a northern winter, from 

 which they are fleeing without knowing it, will not 

 concern them. But they are mixed no longer. 

 One species to the Argentine, another to the Falk- 

 land Islands, others to the Indies, yet others to 

 California or Florida or Peru or Patagonia. They 

 are travelling into the unknown without guidance, 



