6 THE MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS 



summer to them on its azure wings, and they noted 

 its arrival with appropriate pleasure. The Eskimo 

 of the lower Yukon call the season comprising the 

 latter part of March and the first days of April "the 

 coming of the birds," and the succeeding period, 

 embracing a portion of April and May, "the arrival 

 of the geese." South of the Yukon Delta, October is 

 known as "the month of the flying away," because 

 of the departure of birds. 



In the vast Chaco of Paraguay, when the north- 

 ward flight of shore-birds starts these voyagers on 

 their long journey from their winter homes in South 

 America to their breeding grounds near the Arctic 

 Circle, the Anguete and Lengua Indians, hunting 

 tribes governed in their movements by the availabil- 

 ity of water and the presence of game, resort to cer- 

 tain river channels where, from the shelter of low 

 sand-banks, they waylay passing sandpipers and 

 kill them in quantity with throw-sticks of light 

 wood hurtled through the closely flying flocks. 



In the writings of Homer, we find reference to the 

 flight of cranes at the approach of winter, and the 

 gathering at that season of hordes of aquatic birds 

 on the marshes of Asiatic rivers. To Hesiod, in the 

 eighth century before Christ, the cries of the crane 

 were a summons to the laborer to plough his land, 

 while Herodotus (about 525 b. c.) supposed that 

 the hawks he saw must have come from some distant 



