80 THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 



proceeding in proximity to tlie latter, was completely extinguished : 

 and though we cannot actually jirove that it was continued in the 

 higher strata of the air, which at that time might perhaps have 

 returned to a state of calm, it is very likel}' that such really was 

 the case, for on the next day — the 2'ith — when the west wind had 

 considerably declined in force, and was beginning to give way to a 

 strong south-south-east wind, large quantities of all kinds of birds 

 at once reappeared. From the tremendous haste, however, in 

 which these were travelling, or rather, as I noted it in my diary, 

 ' dashing headlong across,' one was not as yet led to ho]ie for a 

 favourable change of weather. Xor was this surmise incorrect, for 

 during the night the wind again changed to south-west, developing 

 after midnight into a storm, which at about 3 a.m. on the 25th 

 attained to a violence such as is but seldom experienced on this 

 island. The unusual haste displayed by the migrants on the pre- 

 vious day was evidently the result of a presentiment of this storm, 

 just as was the case one or several daj-s before the bad weather on 

 the night of the 22nd. Whether this presentiment was already de- 

 veloped even before the day preceding the event, I will not venture 

 to decide here. It is, however, a fact that from so far back as the 

 middle of the month all the migrants had displayed an unusual 

 and extraordinary degree of haste in their movements. The Hooded 

 Crows, for instance — whose migrations proceed only in the daytime, 

 and which on their autumn passage never pass Heligoland later than 

 about two o'clock in the afternoon, it being their object to reach 

 the English coast before nightfall, certainly not later than 5 p.m. — 

 on this particular occasion were seen to pass so late in the after- 

 noon that they could not possibly have reached the coast of England 

 before seven or eight in the evening, which means in complete 

 darkness. During the early hours of the 22nd, at a time when the 

 barometer west of the Hebrides — i.e. about GOO geographical miles 

 west of Heligoland — was giving warning of the approaching storm, 

 the flocks which arrived here at noon of the same day in such un- 

 usual haste, must have been at the said time at least at an equal 

 distance to the east of this island, or, in other words, more than 

 1200 geographical miles from the area in which the signs of the 

 disturbance were then becoming evident. Nevertheless, all the 

 individuals of this immense migratory host manifested a decided 

 presentin^ent of the approaching storm, each striving to reach the 

 goal of the day's journey before the loosening of the elements. 



In the above instance the birds hastened to meet the storm, of the 

 imminence of which they had already become sensible in the elevated 

 regions of their migratory path, it being evidently their object b}- 

 extra efforts to reach in time some safe shelter or resting-place. On 



