210 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



about Oxford, and I have been the unwilling wi^tness 

 of the gradual failure and death, evidently from 

 hunger, of some of these poor would-l)e colonists 

 in permanency. 



Birds of passage in the Southern Hemisphere 

 naturally migrate north in winter, from the same 

 motives as induce the northern birds to go south, 

 but there is a curious exception in the case of the 

 Emperor Penguin, which chooses mid-winter in its 

 haunts on the Antarctic ice-floes as the time for 

 ' laying and rearing its chick. Some other birds, 

 too, seem to come into breeding condition at most 

 unlikely-seeming times, for the fragile little Sun- 

 birds in some cases breed in high mountainous 

 parts of South Africa in winter when the snow 

 lies quite deep under their hanging nests. 



Besides the direct north and south migrations 

 also, there are cases where the migration is rather 

 from east to west, as in the cases^of^the White-eyed 

 and Red-crested Pochards {Nyroca africana and 

 Netta rufina), whose chief winter haunt is in India, 

 though their breeding-range extends not only into 

 Central Asia, but far west into Europe. The 

 Rosy Pastor presents the unusual case of a bird 

 which has a fixed wintering station in the east, 

 and a pronounced westerly migration, but no 

 definite breeding- haunt 4 for these birds in winter 

 are essentially Indian, but breed in Western Asia 

 and Eastern Europe, but in different places in 

 different years, the flocks, which keep- together even 

 in the breeding-season and nest in company. 



