OUR RARER BIRDS 



birds is familiar with the migrations many of them under- 

 take. In the genial spring, when Nature is waking up from 

 her long wintery sleep, we all welcome back the stranger 

 Cuckoo as a long- lost friend, and greet the skimming 

 Swallows with feelings of unwonted pleasure. They are 

 harbingers of brighter skies, and warmer, longer days; of 

 music, flowers, and foliage ; in short, of all that invests a 

 northern summer with its fairest charm ! As the year rolls 

 on apace, bird after bird makes its appearance; from the 

 middle of boisterous March to the end of showery April 

 migration is in progress, and stranger after stranger is 

 suddenly but quietly returning to the haunts of its choice. 

 On moor and on mountain, in field and in wood, by the 

 stream and the shore, the summer birds are fast appearing, 

 and imbuing such scenes with joyous life. 



What is Migration ? How has it been caused ? What 



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is its purpose ? In the old days the migratory movements 

 of birds were said to be influenced by impulses as mysterious 

 as they w^ere unchangeable. At their stated times birds 

 were thought to leave for their distant destinations, prompted 

 by mysterious instincts, with no chart or compass to guide 

 them ; reaching them unerringly, and just as unerringly 

 returnincr to their old haunts at the change of season. 

 Fortunately much sounder ideas prevail nowadays, and birds 

 are no longer regarded as automatic machines, but as 

 creatures endowed with life and mental qualities the same in 

 kind as man's, differing only in their degree of development. 

 Now we look upon migration as a habit that has been slowly 

 acquired, with many failures and many blunders, which has 

 been performed so often that it has become almost an 

 involuntary action, the result perhaps of unconscious 

 memory. For thousands of years these birds have performed 

 the journey to and fro — they know the road by heart. So 

 often have they and their ancestors repeated the migratory 



