THE TRAVELS OF BIRDS 



Anyone finding them in bed, as it were, before 

 they were fully awake in the morning, might be 

 pardoned for thinking that they had just come 

 out of the ground and were perched in the reeds 

 waiting for their feathers to dry. 



The belief that in the fall the European 

 Cuckoo turned into the Sparrow-hawk of the 

 same country is doubtless to be explained by the 

 fact that the Cuckoo leaves for the south in the 

 summer; while the Hawk, which it resembles in 

 color, stays throughout the winter. 



Now that we have explored nearly every 

 corner of the earth, there are only a few birds 

 whose "routes of migration," as they are called, 

 are unknown. We have learned that these routes 

 are followed just as regularly as though, like our 

 highways and railroads, they could be seen. 



The birds' air line, as we shall see, is not always 

 the shortest distance between two points. It was 

 not made in a day, or by one surveyor. Many, 

 many years have passed since the first bird trav- 

 elers on any one of the many air lines followed 

 by birds began their spring and fall journeys; 

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