The Audubon Societies 123 



Let us draw lines on our luap or lay colored threads along the different 

 routes we lind to tra\el, numbering and naming each one to help us remember 

 them. 



First, we will start by land, because that seems safer, and travel along 

 the western lowlands of Mexico up to Arizona and California, keeping along 

 the Pacific Coast away from the great mountains and deserts. It seems to be 

 an easy route to fly over, but we do not find so many kinds of birds traveling 

 this way as might be expected. Calling this the "Pacific Coast Route," let us 

 start again a little more to the eastward, and enter the United States at New 

 IMexico, pushing north to the Great Plains. There is an almost limitless 

 stretch of land here, but much of it is dry and treeless. We see at once that 

 many birds will never come this way, because they could not find proper food, 

 water or nesting-sites. Perhaps we may name this little-traveled route, the 

 "Route of the Plains, or the Interior." These western trails are most conve- 

 nient for those birds which winter in Mexico but are somewhat out of the way 

 for those which come north from South America. We must make a fresh start, 

 if we expect to keep company with the great mass of northward-bound birds. 



It looks, on the map, as though we might get across from Yucatan to Cuba 

 and then to Florida without much exertion or danger but for some unknown 

 reason the birds do not like this way. So they cross anywhere from Vera 

 Cruz to Yucatan, and fly northeast over the great Gulf of Mexico, a sea-flight 

 of 500 to 700 miles, according to the point of departure. 



We may leave the coast with them at night flying on and on through the 

 darkness, until we come to land once more somewhere between Louisiana and 

 northwestern Florida. There our feathered companions, many of whom are 

 mong the smallest and weakest birds, will separate, some to keep on 

 through the popular "Alississippi Valley Route" to the far north, others to 

 continue up the Atlantic coast, and others to seek the valley of the Missouri 

 as far as the western plains. 



The "Island Route" is frequented by certain birds which spend the winter 

 in the West Indies and by some others who leave South America and fly 500 

 miles to Jamaica, then 90 miles across to Cuba, and from there 150 miles to 

 southern Florida. The Bobolinks, with a few companions, cut out Jamaica, 

 making a direct flight of 700 miles from South America to Cuba, and so on to 

 Florida. We will call this the "Bobolink Route" from the jaunty travelers who 

 go over it. There are birds of stronger wing and more endurance than e\-en 

 the Bobolink, who like to travel by sea better than by land. Wild Ducks and 

 many shore-birds follow up the Atlantic coast, well out to sea, except as they 

 stop to feed and rest in secluded places along the shore. 



One famous traveler, the Golden Plover, goes north by land through the 

 great plains of the West, but comes back mostly by water, to its winter home 

 in South America. No other bird is known that takes so long a sea-flight with- 

 out stopping. It is 2,500 miles from Nova Scotia to northeastern South Amer- 



