2m 



takes place at night, but Larks have been seen over the Channel migrating by day, 

 and I have myself watched birds coming in fatigued during an autumn day at 

 Flamborough Head from the Continent. Heligoland is probably not a hundred 

 acres in extent, and its resident birds do not appear to exceed a dozen species, 

 but its value to migratory birds as a resting place is so great that 15,000 Larks 

 have been caught there in a single night. " On the night between October 2Sth 

 and 29th, 1882," Mr. Giitke remarks, "we have had a perfect storm of Gold- 

 crests, poor little souls, ])erching on the ledges of the window-panes of the 

 lighthouse, preening their feathers in the glare of the lamps. On the 2nth, all the 

 island swarmed with them, filling the gardens and over all the cliffs — hundreds of 

 thousands; by 9 a.m. most of them had passed on again ('Migration Report,' 

 1882, p. 49)." The number of rare birds that have been obtained here is 

 marvellous. Birds when migrating dislike a favouring as much as an absolutely 

 contrary wind, preferring a wind from the side. They appear to fly at a high 

 elevation, and when they arrive at Heligoland, their great half-way home between 

 England and the Continent, to drop down as it were from the clouds. Mr. Seebohm 

 supposes that they migrate liy sight and not by instinct, but the gravest difficulties 

 appear to me to beset the former theory. In the spring migration (of course I 

 take for granted a knowledge of our spring and autumnal migrations) the adult 

 males usually come first, then the adult females, next the birds of the year, then 

 wounded or cripjjled birds. On their return various stragglers first come, then 

 the young birds, and finally the old birds. " The conclusion I came to," says 

 Mr. Seebohm, "was that desire to migrate was an hereditary impulse to which 

 the descendants of migratory birds were subject in spring and autumn, and which 

 has during the lapse of ages acquired a force almost, if not quite, as irresistible as 

 the instinct to breed in spring " (10). Here again allowance must be made for 

 the prepossessions in the writer's mind. "Among true migratory birds," he 

 continues, " it api)ears to be a general rule that the farther north a species goes 

 to breed the farther south it goes to winter" (11). 



During the land migration, the same author thinks that birds travel slowly 

 during unfavourable weather, and rest at night, but for a sea journey they wait 

 for a favourable wind and then come there en masse. Mr. Cordeaux, a member of 

 the Migration Committee, agrees with this. "In the Cheviots," he says, "I 

 have observed for two years in succession that the streams of small migrants from 

 Scotland follow those main valleys which run nearest north and south, sticking 

 closely to the lowest levels, where the brushwood and bracken beds offer greater 

 privacy and security than the bare fell sides. Birds also, when migrating, follow 

 from choice low-lying tracks of land and river-courses in preference to elevated 

 plateaus and the summit-line of mountain ranges" ("Migration Report," 1880, 

 p. 52). When birds cross the German ocean, if fine, they fly at a great height ; if 

 wet and cloudy, they keep but a little distance above the waves. There is 

 doubtless much mortality in bad weather, even among the larger birds during 

 their migration. The Lincolnshire csoast during a gale has been found strewn 



(lo). Seebohm, p. 259. 

 (ii). Seebohm, p. 260. 



