The Desert Pampas. 21 
birds, and in their great biannual journey they pass 
through a variety of climates, visiting many countries 
where the conditions seem suited to their require- 
ments. Nevertheless, in September, and even as 
early as August, they begin to arrive on the pampas, 
the golden plover often still wearing his black 
nuptial dress ; singly and in pairs, in small flocks, 
and in clouds they come—curlew, godwit, plover, 
tatler, tringa—piping the wild notes to which the 
Greenlander listened in June, now to the gaucho 
herdsman on the green plains of La Plata, then to 
the wild Indian in his remote village; and soon, 
further south, to the houseless huanaco-hunter in 
the grey wilderness of Patagonia. 
Here is a puzzle for ornithologists. In summer 
on the pampas we have a godwit—Limosa hudsonica ; 
in March it goes north to breed; later in the 
season flocks of the same species arrive from the 
south to winter on the pampas. And besides this 
godwit, there are several other North American 
species, which have colonies in the southern hemi- 
’ spere, with a reversed migration and breeding 
season. Why do these southern birds winter so far 
south P Do they really breed in Patagonia? If so, 
their migration is an extremely limited one com- 
pared with that of the northern birds—seven or 
eight hundred miles, on the outside, in one case, 
against almost as many thousands of miles in the 
other. Considering that some species which mi- 
grate as far south as Patagonia breed in the Arctic 
regions as far north as latitude 82°, and probably 
higher still, it would be strange indeed if none of 
the birds which winter in Patagonia and on the 
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