252 Wild Birds and their Haunts 



places being on a line drawn due south from where they 

 they were marked to North Africa. 



All the birds mentioned so far, with the exception of 

 those of the swallow tribe, the terns, and the storks, 

 were not thought to migrate at all a few years ago, but 

 were supposed to be resident on account of the species 

 being represented all the year round ; but it is now gene- 

 rally acknowledged, and confirmed by these marking 

 experiments, that the majority of them are migratory, 

 and that the majority of those we have with us in the 

 winter are birds from the far north, which leave again 

 in the spring, to be replaced by others of the same species 

 from the south, which have wintered in southern climes. 

 Blackbirds, and thrushes, for instance, are apparently 

 resident, until we think of the vast hordes which stream 

 past our South-coast lighthouses in the autumn, outward 

 bound, hundreds killing themselves against the lanterns 

 should the weather be thick during the middle of Sep- 

 tember, when the autumn migration is at its height. 

 Few realise that the lapwing or peewit is chiefly a migra- 

 tory bird, yet there is a great southward movement 

 in autumn, the Shetlands, Orkneys, and the North of 

 Scotland being utterly devoid of this species between 

 October and March, and one of these birds marked in 

 Stirlingshire in July had got as far as the Basses-Pyreneas 

 in the South of France, where it was shot in Novembet. 

 A starling also, marked apparently in Edinburgh with a 

 private ring, was shot in Denmark, and another marked 

 in Lincolnshire had passed due west across England into 

 Pembrokeshire. 



An Irish-bred woodcock was shot in Portugal, and a 

 Yorkshire one at Dunblane in Scotland. A Yorkshire 

 cuckoo was caught in Essex, a Cumberland-marked 

 ringed plover was shot in County Down, Ireland ; 

 Argyllshire-bred common gulls had reached Northum- 

 berland and Londonderry, a Sussex pied wagtail travelled 

 down into Portugal, and a dunlin, marked on the Baltic 

 coast, was killed in Essex. A curious record is that of 

 two blackbirds caught in a fruit-net in Ayrshire in June 



