126 THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 



just at the moment of a terrific gust, when the gale 

 was outdoing itself, they might possibly be unable 

 to move backward as they should. Certainly this is 

 imaginable, though I cannot help thinking that the 

 bird, though flustered for a moment, would cope with 

 the difficulty. It must be remembered that it is 

 only at slight altitudes above the earth's surface 

 that the wind is so capricious and irregular ; the 

 obstructions it meets with there make it a broken, 

 boisterous torrent. The migrant bird flying high 

 above us is in a calmer stream, however rapid its 

 onward sweep may be. What we want is positive 

 evidence. Being in difficulties some years ago about 

 this question, I was delighted when I came across a 

 paper read before a learned society in Germany on 

 this subject. The writer maintained that birds did 

 often fly with a gale blowing from behind them, but 

 that under these circumstances their flight is so rapid 

 that we do not see them ! And the learned society 

 printed his paper ! Commander Lynes has recorded 

 an interesting observation that might seem to throw 

 light upon the matter. A migrating Swallow was 

 flying in the wrong direction, northward, when he 

 should have been flying southward.* Apparently 

 a gale sprang up, a gale from behind, and the Swallow 

 in consequence, as it appeared, turned and was flying 

 against the wind, as if intending to return to the place 

 from which it had set out. It must not be forgotten, 

 however, that migration, as a rule, proceeds at a 

 great height, and that there the wind may not be 

 blowing from the same quarter as it is at our lower 

 level. At Alderney some years back I saw what I 



* British Birds, Vol. in, p. 141. 



