364 



REPORTS. 



" flittings " shall we say, that were in no way worthy the name 

 migration have slowly developed into the complicated and 

 elaborate system we are interested witnesses of to-day. 

 However this may be, the fascinating subject is occupying the 

 close attention of many bird-lovers, and each year new 

 knowledge is being brought to light, confirmatory or otherwise 

 of existing theories. 



The question is often asked as to the whence and whither 

 of the swallows which for some five months of the year — from 

 May to September — frolic and gambol around us. Silently 

 and unannounced they appear in the spring ; silently and 

 without word of farewell they disappear in the autumn. 

 Whence came they and whither do they go ? 



The question is answered in a recently published little 

 book, "The Migration of Birds," by Mr. T. A. Coward 

 (Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature). The author 

 says : — 



" Our swallow and its congeners have an almost 

 cosmopolitan range, summering in the Northern and 

 wintering in the Southern Hemisphere or comparatively 

 near to the Equator in the Northern. Towards the centre 

 of its range its migrations are either short or the bird is 

 non-migratory. 



Mr. W. L. Sclater, addressing the South African 

 Ornithologists' Union, stated that the swallow arrives at 

 Cape Town at the end of October, and is common 

 from November to March ; practically all have left by the 

 middle of April. Swallows begin to arrive from the south 

 in Africa north of the Sahara in the latter half of February ; 

 early in March they reach Southern Europe, later in the 

 same month they are in Central Europe, and by the middle 

 of April large numbers arrive in England. Thus swallows 

 leave South Africa actually after they have arrived in 

 England ; the South African birds cannot be the same 

 which are in North Africa a month earlier ! The swallow 

 supports Seebohm's thesis that the individuals which go 

 farthest to the south in winter, breed farthest north. A 

 day-migrant and by no means a rapid one, the swallow 

 may be timed from place to place, and it is no presumption 

 to suggest that the birds which reach Britain to nest come 

 from lands little south of the Sahara and well north of the 

 Equator, and that those which pass through England and 

 along our shores in May and even in June are on their 

 way from Southern Africa to the northernmost limits of 

 their range." 



With these introductory remarks I shall now tell you 

 about the 1912 summer birds of passage that have come under 



