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MARKING BIRDS: NOTES ON THE WORK AT 

 THE ROSSITTEN STATION. 



BY 



A. LANDSBOROUGH THOMSON. 



From time to time references have been made in the 

 pages of British Birds * to the work of the various 

 investigators who are endeavouring to obtain fuller and 

 more accurate data with regard to migration, by liberating 

 birds marked with metal foot-rings. It may be of in- 

 terest, however, to give a fuller account of the methods 

 employed, and of these I was able to gain some knowledge 

 during a couple of weeks' stay last autumn (1908) at 

 Rossitten, on the Baltic. Some details of the results 

 obtained there may indicate what may be looked for by 

 following similar lines of research. 



A word about the situation of Rossitten : at the very 

 south-eastern corner of the Baltic, the River Memen 

 (or Memel) flows through many mouths into a large 

 lagoon — the Kurisches Half. This lagoon is connected 

 with the sea by a narrow channel at one end, and for the 

 remainder of its length is separated only by a tongue of 

 land, or Nehrung, about sixty miles long by from less 

 than half a mile to more than two miles broad. It is 

 among the " wandering " dunes — the highest in Europe — 

 on the Kurische Nehrung, that the little out-of-the-way 

 fishing village of Rossitten lies. And it is there that the 

 German Ornithological Society has established its per- 

 manent Vogelwarte, or ornithological station. Lying 

 in the midst of a large tract of uninviting country, the 

 neighbourhood of Rossitten, combining as it does within 

 a small area, examples of many different types of country 

 — woods, meadows, sandy wastes, ponds, marshes, reed- 

 beds, open shore, and cultivated land — may be regarded 

 as a sort of oasis where vast numbers of resting mi- 



* Vol. I., pp. 58, 298, 326; Vol, TT., pp. 35, 171, 245, and 246, 



