A Cooperative Study of Bird Migration 



^LTHOUGH we received seventy-one reports on the migration of the 

 r\ first group of birds — Robin, Red-winged Blackbird and Phoebe — 

 (including five that were held and sent with the second group), only 

 forty-four reports on the Chimney Swift, House Wren and Baltimore Oriole 

 have come in. Therefore we cannot make such comparisons nor come to such 

 conclusions as might have been possible from a larger number of returns. It 

 would have been interesting, for instance, to see whether the Swifts reached 

 Nova Scotia from the mainland, as the Robins apparently did, or entered 

 the south end directly, from over the water. 



The migration of the present three species called forth few comments as 

 to its being unusual in any way. Pittsburgh reported all three as being uncom- 

 monly early, Milwaukee that the Oriole was four days ahead of its record, 

 and New Haven that the Swift and Wren were late. For all three species the 

 Mississippi Valley dates average several days earlier than those of the 

 Atlantic coast. 



The Chimney Swift averaged the earliest species to appear and to become 

 common, though at some stations, particularly in the north, it was the latest. 

 The first individuals took just a month from southeastern Pennsylvania to the 

 far end of Nova Scotia. As with the Robins, after passing New York City, 

 those that continued along the coast went much faster than those that followed 

 up the big river valleys. Swifts reached northern Vermont but three or four 

 days before others reached northern Nova Scotia, though the former is three 

 hundred, and the latter seven hundred miles from New York. That makes 

 the advance of the species along the coast about thirty-two, and up the Hud- 

 son and Champlain Valleys less than seventeen miles a day. This rate is much 

 slower than the Robin's, which was forty-seven and twenty miles, respectively. 



Although the House Wren breeds north to New Brunswick and Quebec, 

 it is apparently too rare north of southern New England to be counted on 

 regularly. In the Middle West, however, it is common much farther north — 

 as far as these records extend. In Norway, Maine, "In 191 1 several bird- 

 houses in town had one lone House Wren, who made a nest and sang and 

 waited for a week or two, but no mates arrived and they disappeared. We 

 never saw them before or since." It is remarkable that this species was noted 

 at Viroqua, Wis., twenty days earlier than at any other station in that state, 

 and thirteen days earlier than at any other station from Missouri northward, 

 — in fact, it became common there six days before it was first seen elsewhere 

 in Wisconsin. 



The Baltimore Oriole seemed to become common at substantially the same 

 date along a line from the lower Delaware Valley to southwestern Maine 

 (except at Bernardsville, which is in the hilly interior of northern New Jersey), 

 and to reach, several days later, points farthest to either side of that line, — 

 Orient, Bournedale, Clarendon and St. Albans. — Charles H. Rogers. 



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