Where Town and Country Meet 



has become so marked as to be almost 

 amusing. 



The list of May arrivals among the song- 

 sters is a long one, and includes, for New 

 England, the thrushes, wrens, and warblers, 

 all the swallows and swift tribe, the wood- 

 peckers, phcebe, vireos, golden robins, king- 

 birds, cat-birds, bobolinks, cuckoos, chats, 

 and finches. Nearly all these birds have 

 wintered in the Southern States. Some, 

 however, have gone as far south as Mexico, 

 and a few to South America and the West 

 Indies. Some of the very smallest birds 

 make the longest migratory flights. Thus, 

 a writer in the Nineteenth Century calls at- 

 tention to a diminutive humming-bird, the 

 flame-bearer (Selasphorus rufus), which 

 breeds on the west coast of America as far 

 north as Alaska and Bering Island, and win- 

 ters in Lower California and Mexico, cov- 

 ering in each migration more than three 

 thousand miles. 



Probably, three-fourths of our New Eng- 

 land birds do not go farther south in the 

 winter than the northern border of the Gulf 

 States. Their line of flight has been pretty 

 definitely traced, in both migrations. It 

 60 



