72 THE NATURALIST IN BERMUDA. 
The golden plover of America visits the Bermudas only 
at the season of its great southern migration. A few of 
these birds are met with as early as the Ist of September, 
or, very rarely, a few days earlier, but, as a general rule, 
these wonderful migrants pass over the Bermudas in large 
and numerous flocks, between the 10th and 17th of Sep- 
tember. Should the weather be favourable at the time, 
these flocks pass on at a considerable elevation, in a south, 
or south-easterly direction, their usual form of flight repre- 
senting a leading cluster, from which trail two, and some- 
times three long lines of single file. In vain does the 
would-be-sportsman watch these passing flocks by day, 
or listens to the piping whistle of the multitudes, which 
are distinctly heard moving in the same direction during 
the still hours of starlight; not a bird condescends to 
alight on the sea-girt isles, although a distance of seven or 
eight hundred miles of ocean must have been traversed on 
the wing to gain. their position; onward they go to the 
southward, over the vast Atlantic, with a still longer flight 
before them ere they can reach terra firma! How wonder- 
ful must be the power of flight, thus to enable mere land 
birds to make the ocean their highway from one region of 
the earth to another, without food, and without a resting- 
place! More wonderful still, that divine impulse under 
which these feathered legions move, and by which they are 
guided across this immensity of open sea at the “ appointed 
time.” 
Hurricanes sometimes rage with fearful violence in the 
latitude of our West India possessions at this season. In 
their course to the north, these hurricanes pass to the 
westward of the Bermudas, sometimes almost within sight 
