90 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
613. Birds and Mountains — Erratum— \n this note, p. 72, 1. 15, for 
“ South-west corner of the Carpathians,” read “ South-west corner of the 
Caspian.” 
614. Stoats. — One day I disturbed a stoat engaged in hunting on the river 
bank, that immediately took to the water and swam with considerable speed to 
the other side. Being startled at my approach, it made as much commotion and 
noise in swimming as a dabchick when scuttling along the surface of the water. 
It then took to cover and swam quietly across a moat ; but on again catching 
sight of me retreated in haste, making the same disturbance in the water as 
at first. Then it ascended a tree, scampering up the trunk with the ease and 
quickness of a squirrel, and hid among some ivy until 1 had gone away. Stoats 
are great wanderers, and can easily be distinguished from weasels, even at a 
distance, by the black tuft at the end of the tail, which is conspicuously displayed 
as they pass rapidly from spot to spot. 
South-acre, Swaffham, ' Ed.mund Thomas Daubeny. 
April, 1908. 
615. A House in a Wood. — Your contributor’s delightful description of 
her woodland home quite makes the mouth of a town-dwelling Nature-lover 
water. I should like to ask her two questions, without, however, in any way 
discrediting her statements. What evidence has she that nightjars prey on the 
goat-moth ? This insect is so large in expanse of wing and size of body that I 
should have thought it too large a mouthful for even a nightjar’s expansive gape. 
What becomes of the bones of the rabbits and birds which the woodants remove, 
“ leaving in a very few days no trace of them except a tiny pile of feathers, or 
shreds of fur ? ” Surely the ants do not carry away the bones also ; in fact, I 
have seen it recommended, in preparing skeletons of small birds and mammals, 
that the corpses should be placed on or near an anthill to be cleaned. 
Hale End, Chingford. C. Nicholson. 
616. A Bird’s Education. -In his comments on my article bearing the 
above title, Mr. Nicholson settles offhand some of the difficult problems of the 
migration of birds in a way so satisfactory to himself, that it is almost a pity to 
attempt to upset it. lie says that “birds migrate because of scarcity of food.” 
A little examination into this very common belief will show that it is often 
erroneous. Neither dearth of food nor the approach of cold weather are a cause 
of migration in young birds, for they go at a time when food is plentiful ; the 
weather in July and August being warmer than earlier in the year. Young star- 
lings migrate at the end of June, ringed plover, golden plover, ruff, dunlin, 
whimbral, redshank, greenshank, in July, all being young individuals. In the 
case of the birds in my garden — and about thirty-six kinds breed in it — there are 
five times as many, not counting sparrows, in the spring, as at Midsummer. In 
July and August even the tits desert us; while green plover and rooks, both of 
which are highly migratory, forsake the fields, comparatively few being seen till 
the end of autumn. 
One of the greatest migratory puzzles is how young birds make their first 
journey to foreign lands without a guide. Mr. Nicholson cuts the knot by 
infoiming us that “the inherited experience called ‘instinct’ sends them oft' in 
the right direction.” This is no explanation at alias far as information is con- 
cerned. It is merely a way of getting out of a difficulty by resorting to the worn- 
out theory of blind instinct, which makes us none the wiser, though it does 
satisfy many minds, especially those who do not take the trouble to try and probe 
the matter to its depths. 
Vast clouds of moths of certain kinds pass over Heligoland and away from the 
continent of Europe, on their one and only migration every year. Hardly a 
single individual survives the journey, and they never return to the land of their 
birth. Some strange impulse, the nature of which at present we cannot fathom. 
