io8 APRIL 



morning. There is no food for it on &quot; the unharvested 

 sea &quot; and no rest for its feet except the occasional ship. 

 Yet birds commonly and at many seasons come aboard 

 ships crossing the Bay of Biscay, some of them small 

 birds and weak flyers, some of them strong winged 

 hawks. The hawk sailors say is one of the commonest. 

 This mystery must explain itself. The small birds of the 

 Mediterranean in spring are a constant and explicable 

 phenomenon. 



The ship doubtless had covered a line of migration, 

 and stragglers from the fell, weaker vessels, had wel 

 comed the chance of a rest, or found the temptation of 

 something that looked like land irresistible. When we 

 begin to look into the mystery of migration we find it to 

 be not one mystery, but many. There are birds whose 

 whole being seems to rise to a strange ecstasy, who 

 become capable of scarcely credible feats of both power 

 and endurance. They rise to great heights, course with 

 unerring aim through the night, and perhaps reach a 

 high pitch of speed. The pair of swallows that travelled 

 twice each year for a number of years from West Africa 

 or the Cape to a barn in Aberdeen must have needed 

 almost supernal powers. But much migration is a hop, 

 skip, and jump. Many of the warblers fly low and by 

 day, at no great height and at no great speed. Few, per 

 haps, exceed some thirty miles an hour. There seems to 

 be no rule about the grouping of the pilgrimage. Some 

 companies are large, some very small indeed, and single 

 birds will drop off on to ship or island as the spirit moves 

 them. So far as may be, they drift across the sea as they 

 drift about the land, moving by easy stages to their ulti 

 mate home in the North and West. 



Among the most determined migrants across the 

 Mediterranean are the quail, which both depart from 



