MIGRATORY BIRDS. 



B. W. JONES. 



" The stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times; and the crane, and 

 the turtle, and the swallow observe the time of their coming-."— /^r. S: 7. 



THE migration of birds, as Baily 

 observes, is by no means the 

 least interesting part of their 

 history. I have noted for many years 

 the migrations of the birds that make 

 a longer or shorter stay with us, sum- 

 mer or winter, and have tabulated their 

 arrivals and departures. And it has 

 been to me a labor of love. Few 

 things cast such attraction around the 

 young and tender spring or over brown 

 and matured autumn, as the coming 

 and going of migratory birds. With 

 delight we welcome the first notes of 

 the purple martin, the bank or sand 

 swallow, and the chimney swift, as 

 they return to us in spring from the far 

 sunny southland; and with feelings of 

 wonder we witness the flight of the 

 wild geese, as they pass over us high in 

 air, or listen to the notes that tell us 

 the whippoorwill and the chuckwills- 

 widow are again the denizens of our 

 groves. And, night after night as I 

 listen to their weird song, feelings 

 almost akin to superstition creep over 

 me, till I can imagine their utterances 

 to be the omen of good or ill to the 

 hearer. There is no more mysterious 

 bird in our land than the chuckwills- 

 widow. Its migration so far northward 

 as southeast Virginia has been doubted 

 by some naturalists, but facts are 

 against them. 



And as I look abroad in autumn, and 

 view the bevies of snowbirds that have 

 just returned to us, and hear again the 

 familiar " chip," "chip," as a passing 

 vehicle puts them to sudden flight, 

 how the finger of thought touches 

 again on memory's bell, and I think of 

 boyhood's happy hours, when I wel- 

 comed with delight the snowbirds back 

 again to our lanes and fields. 



Each feathered songster, as it revis- 

 its us from northland or southland, 

 awakens feeling of profoundest inter- 

 est, and if we have within us a single 

 spark of that divine love of nature that 



dwells with the poet or the naturalist, 

 we instinctively receive the birds back 

 to their old haunts as we would wel- 

 come a long-absent friend. What boy 

 of sensibility, having a spark of the 

 nobler touch of manhood, could have 

 it in his heart to harm the least of 

 these sinless creatures that enliven our 

 homes with their presence and song? 

 Who can look without admiration 

 upon them? Who could wish to de- 

 stroy them? And when we reflect 

 that the martins, willets, swifts and 

 swallows that sport about our homes 

 in summer, and the mocking bird that 

 trills its polyglot song in our cedar 

 groves by night, have returned to us 

 from tropical or sub-tropical climes — 

 that only a few weeks before they were 

 flitting through the orange groves of 

 Cuba, or building their nests amid the 

 vine-latticed thickets of Florida, we 

 cannot but admire and wonder at that 

 " peculiar instinct," as Howitt calls it, 

 that guides them with such unerring 

 certainty through all the changes of 

 their mysterious round. 



For a period of twenty years the 

 average time of the arrival of the pur- 

 ple martin has been about the last five 

 days in March; and its departure for 

 the South the second week in August. 

 A few individuals may remain longer, 

 but it is only when their breeding has 

 been delayed. The earliest appear- 

 ance of the martin that I have noted 

 was>the 8th of March, 1871, the latest 

 the 26th of April, 1885. The last date 

 was a cold and backward spring. This 

 bird rears two broods of four or five 

 each during the four months that it 

 remains with us. 



The chimney swift comes a week 

 or ten days later than the martin, and 

 seldom begins to build before the lOth 

 of June. It raises one brood of four to 

 six young, usually in some unused 

 chimney. It remains with us longer 

 than the martin, even until the cool 



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