MIGRATION. 
11 
with the failure of certain kinds of food. No sooner does 
spring return and promise abundance of food, than all the 
feathered tribes return northward, to dwell and to rear 
their joung in the very places where they themselves were 
reared. The country of all species is not the same : thus 
redwings and fieldfares bred in Scandinavia return to 
Scandinavia ; and because they feed on hips and haws, 
they go just so far south as to procure a supply. The ring- 
ousel breeds in Caernarvonshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, 
and Lancashire, but not finding sufficient food there, nor 
yet in our southern counties, nor yet even in France or 
Spain, all of which it crosses, it goes on into the warmer 
regions of Africa. Well, then there is our dear darling- 
nightingale, that homes in Surrey, despising the inclement 
regions of the north ; he, too, turns his face southward at 
the same time and for the same cause as the redwing, the 
fieldfare and the ring ousel; and he, too, passes onward 
into Africa. The very birds of prey, if also birds of pas- 
sage, perform their journeys in the same direction.* 
* There are passages in Mr. Yarrell's ' History of British Birds ' that lead 
me to fear that even he entertains confused if not erroneous notions on the in- 
teresting subject of migration. Among those passages I have marked, I select 
the following, because it bears on the birds mentioned in the foregoing remarks, 
enclosing between parentheses the part that seems erroneous. " The ring ousel 
is a summer visiter to the British Islands : and, (although its migrations are 
decidedly opposite as to season to those of the fieldfare and redwing), which 
visit us in winter, all three pass the coldest weather in the warmer parts of 
Europe, and the countries a little further to the south of it, and all three like- 
wise pass the summer in the more central or northern parts." ~ Birds, i. 207. 
Instead of the migrations of these birds being ' decidedly opposite,' our infor- 
mation shows us that they are closely approximate, not only as regards season, 
but also as regards direction. Even Gilbert White, the great ornithologist of 
his day, boggles at the movements of the ring ousel : at first he concludes, vvith- 
out any other ground excepting that of analogy, that" its autumnal migration 
is southward." Afterwards he says, in the 26th letter addressed to Pennant, — 
