392 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



Burmah, etc., continue their southern career through the 

 Malay archipelago, and eventually winter in Australia 

 and New Zealand. To say they "winter" there is not, of 

 course, strictly correct, for it is obvious that birds which 

 thus transfer their home bi-annually from one hemisphere 

 to the other, practically exclude that period from their 

 chronology. Curlew-sandpipers enjoy the advantage 

 of perennial summer. They, or at least the majority of 

 them, pass what is our winter in the summer of the 

 southern hemisphere. In (our) spring they begin to 

 move north again. Even in Australia they are obtained 

 in April in full summer-plumage while yet 10,000 miles 

 distant from the points whereat they will breed. Early 

 in May they reappear on the Mediterranean, at which 

 period I have shot them in Andalusia, together with 

 grey plovers, knots, and whimbrels, in perfect breeding- 

 plumage. During that month they traverse Europe, and 

 by June have again disappeared from our view in the 

 mists of the scarce-known north. 



One more example of the utterly inscrutable disposi- 

 tions of Nature with regard to the migrations of this 

 bird-group' — a volume might be filled on the subject! 

 The first arrivals on our coasts in autumn are composed 

 (in several species) exclusively of young' birds, then only 

 a few weeks old. The parents not having completed 

 their moult, are not ready to leave their northern home 

 till three weeks or a month later. Thus these infantile 

 creatures, some of which still display filaments of "down," 

 are able, without knowledge, experience, or guide, with- 

 out pilot or compass, safely to traverse thousands of 

 miles of unknown space. Yet, generation after genera- 

 tion, they arrive with unerring regularity, punctual to a 

 week — almost to a day — at the very spots, often the 



