The Lifr SIfnr?/ of a Mealy IRrrlpnll. 
125 
been tolrl, ratifies thi"ou,i,''Ii Siberia and Aretir America, but we 
consider all Redpolls wliicli have either grey or white rumps, 
true Mealies, and, as I was able to prove to tiie Ross last 
summer, we are very closely related to the brown rumped 
Eedpolls of Central Europe. Of course we arc biggei' but lhat 
is simply because we belong to tlic Noi'thlaiul, for let me tell 
you that the birds which come north every summci- to breed 
at Lake U'kanskoe are the salt of the earth -strong as the 
mountain pine and hardy as Siberian wolves, able to en(hire 
cold and hungei- and to traverse the great wide barren spaces 
01 the Arctic on untiring wing— in fact the little brown-rumped 
Redpolls wou'd soon starve and die if they came north with 
us. 
As food became scarcer we young Mealies passed south- 
ward in large flocks, through Finmark and Nordland and 
Tronhjem, until we came to the extreme south to Norway 
and were face to face with the sea once more. Food was 
plentiful enough here — delicious gra:^s see\is in the upland 
meadows and alders and flowering rushes and sedges in the 
low -lying valleys— but still we were restless and ever on the 
move. The cause of this was that day after day and all 
day long great flights of Larks and Pipits and Bramblings and 
Waders passed overhead; there would be a swish of wings and, 
like a flash, they would be gone, heading for the south-west 
and the open sea. Day by day we became more and more 
excited, and at last we simply burned with curiosity to know 
what it was that they were seeking beyond that my.sterious 
and vast expanse of water. 
I cannot quite tell you how it happened because it all 
happened so quickly. One day we were particularly restless 
and towards evening one of our leaders seemed to go suddenly 
mad; he went whirling up into the sky, screaming to us to 
follow him, and instantly we all seemed to go mad too, and 
before we had time to think, we were off like a cloud of 
leaves driven before a gale. I had never flown so fast before 
and I do not l>elieve I shall ever fly so fast again. Soon the 
moon rose in a cloudless sky and by its light we could see 
land a long way off to the east of us— I think it must have 
been the coast of Denmark. But it was westward we wanted 
to go— the way the other migrants were going, for the sky was 
