liKITISH ISLES AM) TIIHIR MIGRATORY BIRDS 31 



In addition to affording a half-way house, as it were, 

 for this wonderful concourse of transitory visitors, the 

 British Isles have a great bird-population of their 

 own, and the majority of their feathered citizens are 

 migratory. This again is due to their central geographi- 

 cal position, which renders them eminently suitable both 

 as a summer residence and a winter home. 



Our remarkable climate, too, plays an important part. 

 Its mild winter temperatures approaching, as they do, 

 those prevailing in southern Europe, induce a number 

 of species from the north to pass the winter with us 

 which would not remain if our climatic conditions at that 

 season were of the continental type in similar latitudes. 

 Mac Kinder i^Britain and the British Isles, p. 170) 

 tells us that we are "placed not far from the centre 

 of the area of abnormal warmth in winter, and the 

 British winters are, in consequence, milder than those 

 of any other region under the same northern latitudes." 



Drayton in his Polyolbion (161 3) thus quaintly sums 

 up these peculiarities : — 



"Of Albion's glorious isle, the wonders whilst I write, 

 The sundry varying soyles, the pleasures infinite ; 

 Where heat kills not the cold, nor cold expels the heat, 

 No calmes too mildly small, nor winds too roughly great ; 

 Nor night doth hinder day, nor day the night doth wrong, 

 The summer not too short, the winter not too long." 



Further evidence of the singular wealth of migratory 

 bird-life in the British Isles is afforded by the fact that 

 more than one-half of the species which form the ornis of 

 Europe are either regular or not infrequent visitors to 

 our shores. 



Small wonder, then, that with so many and varied 

 migratory birds around them, the naturalists of our 

 islands have found the subject of their movements such 



