BIRD STUDY 41 



houses while waiting for a possible mate to come and choose 

 between them; and male Red-winged Blackbirds may be seen 

 in considerable flocks before the females arrive. One would be 

 glad to think that bird migrations were their honeymoon trips, 

 but most of them do not mate until they arrive in the region 

 where they are to nest. 



As far as evidence has been collected it tends to show 

 that the same group of birds returns to the same region year 

 after year. Lack of sufficient data forbids the reaching of defin- 

 ite conclusions, yet observers have often noticed the return 

 even to the same yard of individuals with some peculiar charac- 

 teristic, such as a white feather, a drooping wing, only one leg, 

 or a familiarity with premises not shown by other members of 

 the species. In Audubon's "Birds of America" he tells of fast- 

 ening silver threads on the legs of young Phoebes along the 

 Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania, and the next summer having 

 the satisfaction of finding two females on nests in the same vi- 

 cinity with the silver thread on their legs. The banding of 

 young birds would not only help to determine this question but 

 would assist materially in solving other questions of migration 

 such as routes, speed and regularity of seasons. 



The strangest thing at present in the field of bird migra- 

 tions is that the Chimney Swifts, so familiar to everyone in sum- 

 mer by their nervous flight and constant chippering, gather in 

 great swarms on the Gulf Coast in autumn and then suddenly 

 disappear. No one knows where they pass the winter. 



