34° Wonders of the Bird World 



one evening and arrive in Heligoland nine hours later, as 

 Gatke believed, having travelled 1600 geographical miles 

 during the night, at the almost miraculous velocity of one 

 hundred and eighty miles per hour. This is a prodigious 

 performance to assign to little birds of the size of our Robin. 

 A great deal has been written about the distress which a 

 bird experiences in going through its moult and passing 

 through its migrations. Doubtless many small birds do 

 perish in the sea, especially if they get blown out of their 

 course by high winds, but my own belief is that migration 

 is only part of their ordinary life, and is taken as such. The 

 migration of the little Gold-crest has been known to continue 

 for eighty days to our eastern coasts, and many of my 

 readers must have noticed the way in which Larks and 

 Meadow-Pipits land on the coasts of Norfolk in the early 

 morning, if one has been up in good time in the month of 

 September. A Pipit comes tripping in from the sea and 

 drops into the first field he comes to. Larks fly low and 

 come in little parties, uttering their call-notes, as if they had 

 only been indulging in a morning flight, and none of them 

 seem at all distressed. On the other hand, Starlings appear 

 to have a set purpose in their flight, and come in little packs, 

 flying low, and not uttering a note, nor taking any notice of 

 other flocks of Starlings which may be feeding on the salt- 

 ings. These migrants usually pass straight on into the 

 interior without stopping, and their flight is of quite a 

 different nature to that of the Rooks, who come wheeling 

 into land, as if the crossing of the North Sea were the 

 simplest matter in the world. Some Wading-birds, too, 

 take matters easily, and certainly rest by the way to feed, 

 proceeding by easy stages. Others, on the other hand, pass 

 high over head, and may occasionally be decoyed by 

 whistling their call-notes to descend to the mud-flats to feed, 

 which they do most voraciously, keeping close together and 

 probing the mud vigorously with their bills. At other 



