Why Birds Come and Go 



Of course the food question incites the greater 

 part of the activities in our own world ; and be it 

 observed that birds and other wild creatures seek 

 those places where the food on which life itself de- 

 pends is abundant just as unerringly, with just as 

 much intelligence and forethought, as men do. 

 When conditions prove too hard in Russia, Italy or 

 Ireland, a great stream of human immigrants pours 

 into America greater in our prosperous years than 

 in the lean periods of financial depression. When 

 the birds are starved out of frozen Canada and the 

 northern states, they go south, where the proverbial 

 hospitality of that genial land will be extended to 

 them by nature. Those which can live on pine 

 seeds, insect eggs, larvae, and grubs hidden in the 

 bark of trees, the dry, seedy weed-stalks that rear 

 themselves above the snow, the fish and refuse in 

 the open waters of our larger streams, lakes and 

 harbors, may safely remain at the north all winter, 

 and they do. But we shall never find a flycatcher 

 north then. To escape competition from the horde 

 of contestants that pours out of the south in spring, 

 the winter residents beat a retreat on their approach. 

 Plenty of birds do not find it necessary to shift their 

 residence farther than the next state in order to live 

 in a land of plenty. Robins from Ohio may find 

 Kentucky perfectly satisfactory as a winter resort. 

 Robins, crows, and wild geese often sleep in one 

 state and eat in another, going and coming daily as 

 regularly as sunrise and sunset from one to the other. 

 Geese, which prefer to sleep a-float, fly early to 

 inland feeding grounds to spend the day that is, 

 if hunters are not waiting in ambush to receive them. 



