JUNIOR AUDUBON WORK 



For Teachers and Pupils 



Exercise IX: Correlated Studies: Reading: Basket-making and 

 Weaving: Modeling. 



During the last year or more, we have studied the birds in their wanderings 

 from ph\ce to place, and have tried in a simple way to form some idea of the 

 general features of the areas they frequent. The birds' map of America we found 

 C|uite different from the mai) we are accustomed to study in the ordinary 

 geography, for on it, altitude, humidity and temperature play a far more 

 important part than state or territorial di\-isions, although these have a rela- 

 tion to the welfare of birds, as we shall see later on, when we come to consider 

 what birds do for man and what man does for birds. 



In this exercise we shall try to find out a few facts about the birds at home. 



Did you ever stop to think what is meant by the home of a bird? It is 

 really a difficult thing to explain, and involves several theories concerning the 

 original place or places where birds were found ages ago when palm trees grew 

 in Greenland and reindeer roamed through France. 



In those remote times, animals and plants were distributed very differently 

 o\-er the earth than they are today, owing to the great changes in climate, and 

 consequently in all conditions for the maintenance of life which then occurred. 



We know that now certain birds spend the entire year in practically the 

 same latitude, wandering comparatively short distances, to seek food or 

 nesting-sites, and that such birds are found permanently settled in the arctic, 

 temperate and tropical regions. We also know that certain other birds spend 

 part of the year in one place and part in another, often traveling enormous 

 distances to reach the summer and winter resorts which they prefer. 



Such birds we call transients or migrants. Migrants may go regularly 

 each season, along fixed routes from one resort to the other, or they may go 

 irregularly, taking one route north and another route south. Again, they 

 may make their journeys in the spring and fall, for purposes of nesting and 

 possibly for food; or they may change their abode only during the colder 

 months in search of better feeding-areas, going regularly back and forth each 

 winter, or irregularly, according to the severity of the season. 



In order to make these strangely complicated movements of the birds more 

 real to your minds, let us take your own home-^'icinity as the point from w^hich 

 to watch the feathered throng, provided you live in the North Temperate 

 region, where the greater part of bird- travel takes place. If we selected a 

 place in the Arctic region, you will readily see that part of the movements 

 described could not occur there, since there is no "farthest north" beyond this 

 region; and, if we selected a place in the tropics, we might find ourselves com- 

 l)letely turned around, since the seasons and zones of temperature in the south- 



(187) 



