THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRD 147 
which follows the coast of Florida, and passes thence, 
by island or mainland, to South America. What would 
seem, at first sight, to be a natural and convenient mi- 
gratory highway extends from Florida through the Baha- 
mas or Cuba to Haiti, Porto Rico, and the Lesser Antilles, 
and thence to South America. 
The Bobolink Route 
‘‘Chief among these dauntless voyagers is the Bobolink, 
fresh from despoiling the Carolina rice-fields, waxed 
fat from his gormandizing, and so surcharged with 
energy that the 500-mile flight to South America on 
the way to the waving pampas of southern Brazil seems 
a small hardship. Indeed, many Bobolinks appear to 
scorn the Jamaican resting-point and to compass in 
a single flight the 700 miles from Cuba to South America. 
With the Bobolink is an incongruous company of travel- 
ling companions — a Vireo, a King Bird, and a Night 
Hawk that summer in Florida; the queer Chuck-will’s- 
widow of the Gulf States; the two New England Cuckoos; 
the trim Alice’s Thrush from Quebec; the cosmopolitan 
Bank Swallow from frozen Labrador, and the Black- 
poll Warbler from far-off Alaska. But the Bobolinks 
so far outnumber all the rest of the motley crew that 
the passage across the Caribbean Sea from Cuba to 
South America may with propriety be called the ‘ Bobo- 
link route.’ Occasionally a mellow-voiced Wood Thrush 
joins the assemblage, or a green-gold Tanager, which will 
prepare in its winter home its next summer livery of 
flaming scarlet. But the ‘Bobolink route,’ as a whole, 
is not popular with other birds, and the many that 
