THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRD 149 
come excessively fat, and ready for their great flight. 
They have reared their young under the midnight sun, 
and now they seek the southern hemisphere. After 
gaining the coast of Nova Scotia, they strike straight 
out to sea, and take a direct course for the easternmost 
islands of the West Indies. Eighteen hundred miles of 
ocean waste lie between the last land of Nova Scotia 
and the first of the Antilles, and yet 600 more to the 
eastern mainland of South America, their objective 
point. The only land along the route is the Bermuda 
Islands, 800 miles from Nova Scotia. In fair weather, 
the birds fly past the Bermudas without stopping; indeed, 
they are often seen by vessels 400 miles or more east of 
these islands. 
‘‘When they sight the first land of the Antilles, the flocks 
often do not pause, but keep on to the larger islands 
and sometimes even to the mainland of South America. 
Sometimes a storm drives them off the main track, 
when they seek the nearest land, appearing not infre- 
quently at Cape Cod and Long Island. 
‘A few short stops may be made in the main flight, for 
the Plover swims lightly, and easily, and has been seen 
resting on the surface of the ocean; and _ shore-birds 
have been found busily feeding 500 miles south of Ber- 
muda and 1000 miles east of Florida, in the Atlantic, 
in that area known as the Sargasso Sea, where thousands 
of square miles of seaweed teem with marine life. 
“Though feathered balls of fat when they leave Labrador 
and still plump when they pass the Bermudas, the Plovers 
alight lean and hungry in the Antilles. Only the first, 
though the hardest, half of the journey is over. How 
