MIGRATION. 41 



been properly worked. Every boy on the island is a born and bred ornithologist. The 

 fisherman steers with a gun by his side, the peasant digs his potatoes with a gun on the 

 turf and a heap of birds on his coat. Every unfortunate bird that visits the island has to 

 run the gauntlet of forty or more guns, to say nothing of scores of catapults and blowpipes. 

 Every bird which appears is whistled within range with marvellous skill. Long before 

 sunrise the island is bristling with guns, and after dark the netters are busy at their 

 throstle-bushes ; whilst at midnight the birds commit suicide against the lighthouse. The 

 common birds are eaten, the rare ones are sold to the bird-stuffer, and the unknown ones 

 are taken to the celebrated ornithologist Gatke. 



ear- 



Although the island is about twenty miles from the coast there is not a month in the 

 year during which migration cannot be observed. One of the most valuable contributions 

 to our knowledge of ornithology that has ever been published is a digest of Gatke's 

 observations for the year 1885. The following extracts relating to some of the birds 

 which comprise the family Charadriidse are taken from the seventh Annual Report on the 

 Migration of Birds, published by the Committee of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science. These observations show in a most forcible manner to what extent 

 migration takes place, even in midwinter. It can scarcely be supposed that Curlew and 

 Golden Plover fly twenty miles out to sea for the sake of feeding on the beach of Sandy 

 Island, which does not measure a couple of miles, even at ebb-tide. Probably these flocks 

 which visit Heligoland in winter breed in Yorkshire and Scotland, migrating from shore 

 to shore in winter (as the Snipes and the Coursers do from coast to coast in South Africa) in 

 search of new feeding-grounds. The Curlews, on the other hand, who spend a quiet winter 



Destruction 

 of birds. 



