MIGRATION. 137 



nient is in the direction of their migration, and thus 

 the close of a day finds them some distance farther on 

 their way. The male birds of some species migrate 

 before the females and the adults before the voune. 



Although many birds, like the Warblers and 

 Thrushes, travel leisurely and consume weeks in the 

 journey, some make wonderful flights. Pigeons have 

 been killed in New England with their crops full of 

 undigested rice, which could only have been picked 

 up the day before in the great rice-fields of Georgia 

 or Carolina. Ducks and geese fly at the rate of sixty 

 or seventy miles an hour, while the Northern Black 

 Cloud Swift, it is said, averages eighty miles an hour, 

 and can cover from fifteen hundred to two thousand 

 miles a day. 



The distances between the summer and winter 

 homes of different birds vary greatly. Many of our 

 summer residents winter in the Southern States, com- 

 paratively near, while other birds that nest far north 

 migrate to South America. 



The vernal migration is much more satisfactory to 

 observers than the autunmal, for in spring the birds 

 are in song, and the males wear their gayest colors, 

 while in fall their voices are heard only in call-notes, 

 many of the males have changed to dull and incon- 

 spicuous hues, and the strange-plumaged young are 

 also there to complicate matters. From the middle 

 of April to the last of May, however, a morning spent 

 among the birds is not only interesting but is posi- 

 tively exciting as one tries to identify the many species 

 within sight and hearing. 



Around Washington there is no better place to 

 observe the migrations than the unfrequented parts 

 of the Zoological Park and Rock Creek Park adjoin- 



