220 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



introduce it artificially into the United States have 

 failed. 



This tendency to settle down and have done 

 with the fatigues and dangers of migration has 

 resulted in the production of many localized and 

 often insular races of birds, which have often 

 become flightless, where flight was of little import- 

 ance in their daily life ; thus we had the Great 

 Auk in the north, formerly a most abundant bird, 

 and in the Galapagos there has been discovered of 

 late years a flightless Cormorant (Nannopterum 

 harrisi), and on the elevated Lake Titicaca in the 

 Peruvian Andes there lives a flightless Grebe 

 (Podicipes mi crofter us), such a lake being the bio- 

 logical equivalent of an oceanic island. 



Such flightless species are to be found most com- 

 monly amongst the Rails, birds which migrate a 

 good deal, but are nevertheless poor flyers as a 

 whole, and always more ready to use their legs than 

 their wings ; they also have a most peculiar pro- 

 pensity for turning up in the most out-of-the-way 

 places, being probably unable to make head against 

 a wind, while their power of swimming enables 

 them to rest on the water and gain fresh strength 

 where others would drown. 



The widest migrant and most successful bird of 

 all is the little unspecialized Turnstone, which is 

 to be found on all shores in the world at one 

 time or other of the year, and is strongly sus- 

 pected of having established^ breeding colonies far 

 and wide in the world, though its main haunts 



