INTRODUCTION 



necessary for them to go south, gather in flocks preparatory 

 to the journey. Seed-eating birds generally travel only far 

 enough south to make sure of a good supply of food to carry 

 them through the winter, while insect-eating birds usually 

 make quite extended journeys, although Chickadees, which 

 live upon insects, do not migrate at all, but eke out a frugal 

 fare of insect eggs and pupte which they can gather from the 

 bark of trees. 



It is not difficult to see why birds should wish or might be 

 obliged to migrate in fall, but why they should return in 

 spring cannot be so easily demonstrated since they are al- 

 ready in a land of plenty as far as food is concerned. Birds 

 that winter in our Southern States move northward with the 

 rise in temperature, but rise in temperature cannot be the 

 cause of the return of those species that leave our shores and 

 continue to South America. Hudsonian Godwits, shore 

 birds that nest along our Arctic coast, spend our winter 

 months in Patagonia, where the temperature at the time is 

 about the same as our Southern States. Furthermore, for 

 a short time, they there associate on the pampas with other 

 Godwits of the same species which are about to leave for 

 their breeding grounds only a few hundred miles farther 

 south. Why our birds should travel six or seven thousand 

 miles between their summer and winter homes, when places 

 equally as desirable and used by the same species are only as 

 many hundred miles away, is a mystery that cannot be 

 satisfactorily explained and can only be attributed to hered- 

 itary instinct. 



Value of Birds. — Living birds are pretty to look at and 

 they are interesting to watch. The more acquainted one 

 becomes with them the more interested one is in watching 

 them. Our sea beaches would be quite desolate could we 

 not see an occasional tern or gull gracefully winging his way 

 over the water or a sandpiper running along the shore; our 

 ponds and lakes would not be half so interesting if we could 

 not hear the rattle of the kingfisher or see the great herons go 

 slowly flapping away on their large wings; and imagine our 

 orchards and shade trees without the warblers, wrens, robins, 



