6 BIRD FRIENDS 



Colombia; the rose-breasted grosbeak spends his 

 winter just over the equator in Ecuador; the king- 

 bird has perhaps flown above the waters of Lake 

 Titicaca in Bolivia and Peru; the bobolink has 

 traveled from Paraguay to build his nest in our 

 meadows; the red-eyed vireo has visited the coffee 

 plantations of southwestern Brazil; the barn swal- 

 low that builds his mud nest in our barns will 

 return to the Pampas in Argentina for his winter 

 sojourn; while some of the nighthawks that nest in 

 Alaska may travel to the southern part of South 

 America, to Patagonia, a distance of about seven 

 thousand miles and of about one hundred and fif- 

 teen degrees of latitude. 



Speed. The speed with which birds migrate 

 varies with different species of birds and with the 

 same species of bird in different parts of its journey. 

 In general, birds travel faster during the latter part 

 of their journey than during the first part. During 

 the first part of March, the robin averages thirteen 

 miles a day in migrating from southern Iowa to 

 central Minnesota. From here its speed keeps in- 

 creasing till it is traveling at the rate of seventy 

 miles a day when it reaches Alaska by the middle 

 of May. The robins along the Atlantic Coast travel 

 more slowly, at the rate of seventeen miles a day. 



The average speed for all species of birds is 

 twenty-three miles per day from New Orleans to 

 southern Minnesota. From this locality some spe- 



