MIGRATION 157 



nient is hi the cHrection of their niigration, and thus 

 the close of a day finds them some distance farther on 

 their way. The male birds of some species migrate 

 before the females and the adults before the young. 



Although many birds, like the Warblers and 

 Thrushes, travel leisurely and consume weeks in the 

 journey, some make wonderful flights. Pigeons have 

 been killed in New England with their crops full of 

 undigested rice, which could only have been picked 

 up the day before in the great rice-fields of Georgia 

 or Carolina. Ducks and geese fly at the rate of sixty 

 or seventy miles an hour, while the Northern Black 

 Cloud Swift, it is said, averages eighty miles an hour, 

 and can cover from fifteen hundred to two thousand 

 miles a day. 



On cloudy nights migrants fly low and their calls 

 can be plainly heard. On foggy and rainy nights 

 birds are likely to lose their way, and along the coast 

 lighthouses attract them, so that often large numbers 

 are killed by flying against the lights. In Washing- 

 ton they strike the Monument, and in the early morn- 

 ing after such a night the unfortunates may be picked 

 up — sometimes rare species among them. 



The distances between the summer and winter 

 homes of different birds vary greatly. Many of our 

 summer residents winter in the Southern States, com- 

 paratively near, while other birds that nest far north 

 migrate to South America. The Golden Plover 

 breeds in Arctic America and migrates the entire 

 length of North and South zA.merica to Patagonia; 

 and certain shore birds which nest in the islands of 

 Bering Sea winter in the Hawaiian Islands,' making 

 a journey of two thousand miles, with apparently no 

 opportunity to rest or feed on the way. 



