go Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



gion of Argentina from September to March. In March they, 

 appear in Guatemala and Texas ; April finds their long lines 

 trailing across the prairies of the Mississippi Valley ; the frost 

 of May sees them creeping along our northern boundaries and 

 through Canada and by the first week in June we find them in 

 their place of breeding, in the bleak, wind-swept "barren 

 grounds" above the Artie Circle, far beyond the tree line. 

 Some even venture one thousand miles farther north. While 

 the lakes are still ice bound, they hurriedly fashion shabby 

 little nests in the moss only a few inches above the frozen, 

 ground. By August they have hatched their young and with 

 them have hastened to the coast of Labrador to enjoy a feast 

 of the crowberry, a juicy, black, fruit which is produced in 

 great quantities on a vine which grows over the rocks and tree- 

 less slopes of that inhospitable coast. After a few weeks of 

 such feasting the plovers become excessively fat and are ready 

 for their return flight. They have raised their young 

 under the midnight sun, and now they seek a southern hem- 

 isphere. After gaining the coast of Nova Scotia they strike 

 straight out to sea and take a direct course for the eastermost 

 islands of the West Indies. Eighteen hundred miles of ocean 

 waste lie between the last land of Nova Scotia and the first 

 of the Antilles, and yet six hundred more to the eastern main- 

 land of South America, their objective point. The only land 

 along the route is the Bermuda Islands, eight hundred miles 

 from Nova Scotia. In fair weather the birds fly past the Ber- 

 mudas without stopping; indeed they are often seen by vessels 

 five hundred miles or more east of these islands. Though 

 feathered balls of fat when they leave Labrador, and still 

 plump when they pass the Bermudas, the plovers alight lean 

 and hungry in the Antilles. Only the first, though the hardest, 

 half of the journey is over. After a short stop of three or four 

 weeks in the Antilles and on the northern coasts of South 

 America, the flocks disappear, and later their arrival is noted 

 at the place from which they made their start in March. What 

 a journey ! Eight thousand miles of latitude separates the ex- 

 tremities of their elliptical course, and three thousand of longi- 

 tude constitutes the shorter diameter, and all for the sake of 

 spending ten weeks on an Artie coast. 



