56 Twelve Months With 



tion to its winter home makes the longest single- 

 flight oversea journey of which we have any 

 record. This flight is from the coast of Nova 

 Scotia across the Atlantic southward to South 

 America, a distance of 2500 miles. These birds 

 have magnificent powers of flight, and Mr. G. H. 

 Mackay thinks, with reason, that in making this 

 long oversea journey under favorable conditions 

 they travel at a speed of from 150 to 200 miles 

 per hour. 



The Eastern or Pacific golden plover winters 

 in certain islands of the Southern Pacific Ocean, 

 including the Low Archipelago, which is 5000 

 miles, by direct air route, but about 11,000 miles, 

 by way of its migration route from Alaska, which 

 is also the summer home of this species. These 

 two golden plovers, therefore, which are sub-spe- 

 cifically distinct, nest in Alaska little more than 

 one hundred miles apart, and one travels east 

 through Nova Scotia, and south 8000 miles to 

 South America, and the other travels south-west to 

 Siberia and China, and then south-east to the 

 islands of the southern Pacific, a distance of about 

 1 1,000 miles. These two birds, very similar in gen- 

 eral appearance, nesting in the same area, never 

 fail to separate into two distinct migrating groups, 

 one travelling south-west 11,000 miles, and the 

 other south-east 8000 miles, to winter homes as 

 remote from each other as they could well be in 

 two widely divergent species. 



Our robin makes a leisurely 3OOO-mile trip twice 



