FEBRUARY 31 



the gold-crested wren, which, by the way, is not a wren 

 Troglodytes but a Regulus, closely related to the 

 warblers. Wherefore let us speak of it correctly as the 

 goldcrest. This feathered pigmy, with a wing-spread 

 no wider than that of one of the larger hawk-moths, 

 we only know as it flits incessantly from bough to bough 

 in pursuit of diminutive insects aphides, chermes, and 

 suchlike. It would seem impossible, had we not posi- 

 tive proof to the contrary, that tens of thousands of 

 these feeble creatures perform twice a year a journey 

 of hundreds of miles across the ocean, and that, too, at 

 the stormiest seasons autumn and spring. Hear what 

 Herr Gatke has to say about them : 



' The migration of the goldcrests is performed with perfect 

 regularity year after year, and conducts them not only in 

 hundreds, but in many hundreds of thousands in one night 

 to this island [Heligoland]. On the following morning their 

 merry call-note resounds from the bushes in all the gardens. 

 ... In 1882 the earliest individuals arrived on 8th Sep- 

 tember, and the migration proceeded, with occasional inter- 

 ruptions, throughout the month. With the approach of 

 October a considerable increase in the number took place, 

 and on the night of 28th September the migration assumed 

 such vast dimensions that even an approximate computation 

 of the numbers was quite out of the question. Perhaps the 

 simile of a snowstorm may help to convey an idea of the 

 scene. ... At daybreak the whole island was literally 

 'covered with the birds, but by ten o'clock in the morning 

 the majority had resumed their journe} 7 .' l 



That was the autumnal southward flight. The north- 

 ward migration in spring is equally well marked, 



1 Heligoland as an Ornithological Observatory, pp. 317, 318. Edin- 

 burgh, 1895. 



