Birds on Tour 



by George Heinold . . . painting by Claude Peacock 



THE HUMMINGBIRD, tiniest of all our feathered neighbors, 

 transports his thumb's-length of bright plumage each year 

 all the way from Brazil to Alaska and back again. Blackpoll 

 warblers also regularly wing the 7,ooo-odd mile distance between 

 South America and Alaska. The wheatear, a small bird seen in 

 northern Europe, Asia, and America, has no qualms about com- 

 muting between Greenland and Africa. And cliff swallows, flying 

 from South America to northerly points in the United States, 

 scorn the air route across the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. 

 "By picking a course through Central America and Mexico, they 

 add 2,000 miles to an already long journey. 



Sea birds navigate distances that would have paled Columbus 

 and Magellan. A blackheaded gull, banded at Rossitten, Ger- 

 many, was later recovered at Vera Cruz, Mexico. Nesting gulls 

 of other species have been banded on the English coast, to be 

 later retaken in both Newfoundland and Labrador. And to 

 Arctic terns, space is nothing. Nesting within 500 miles of the 

 North Pole, they winter 11,000 miles away in Antarctic seas. 

 Their migration each year totals 22,000 miles! 



The longest over-ocean flights for shore birds are those flown 

 by the golden plovers. Pacific representatives of this family share 

 honors with the turnstone, another plover-like bird, in 3,000- 

 mile crossings from Alaska to Hawaii. 



For the sportsman, no sight is more stirring than the V-forma- 

 tions of wild geese and the clouds of ducks that darken the skies 

 over the country's flyways in the autumn. From their breeding 

 lands, which extend from the Arctic coast to the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence, they honk their way to the Gulf of Mexico. The 



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