BIRD STUDY 41 
houses while waiting for a possible mate to come and choose 
between them; and male Red-winged Blackbirds may be seen 
in considerable flocks before the females arrive. One would be 
glad to think that bird migrations were their honeymoon trips, 
but most of them do not mate until they arrive in the region 
where they are to nest. 
As far as evidence has been collected it tends to show 
that the same group of birds returns to the same region year 
after year. Lack of sufficient data forbids the reaching of defin- 
ite conclusions, yet observers have often noticed the return 
even to the same yard of individuals with some peculiar charac- 
teristic, such as a white feather, a drooping wing, only one leg, 
or a familiarity with premises not shown by other members of 
the species. In Audubon’s “Birds of America” he tells of fast- 
ening silver threads on the legs of young Phoebes along the 
Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania, and the next summer having 
the satisfaction of finding two females on nests in the same vi- 
cinity with the silver thread on their legs. The banding of 
young birds would not only help to determine this question but 
would assist materially in solving other questions of migration 
such as routes, speed and regularity of seasons. 
The strangest thing at present in the field of bird migra- 
tions is that the Chimney Swifts, so familiar to everyone in sum- 
mer by their nervous flight and constant chippering, gather in 
great swarms on the Gulf Coast in autumn and then suddenly 
disappear. No one knows where they pass the winter. 
