Sept., 1904 I 
THE CONDOR 
119 
main there through the winter. Only adventurers out of some six species gain 
the South American mainland by completing the island chain. The reason 
seems not far to seek — scarcity of food. The total area of all the West Indies east 
of Porto Rico is a little less than that of Rhode Island. Should a small proportion 
only of the feathered inhabitants of the eastern part of the United States select this 
route, not even the luxuriant fauna and flora of the Tropics could supply their needs. 
A still more direct route, but one requiring longer single flights, stretches 
from Florida to South America via Cuba and Jamaica. The 150 miles between 
Florida and Cuba are crossed by tens of thousands of birds of some 
sixty diflferent species. About half the species take the next flight of ninety 
miles to the beautiful Jamaican mountains. Here a 500-niile stretch of islandless 
ocean confronts them, and scarcely a third of their number leave the forest-clad 
hills for the unseen beyond. Chief among these dauntless voyagers is the bobo- 
link, fresh from despoiling the Carolina rice fields, waxed fat from his gormandiz- 
ing, and so surcharged with energy that the 500-mile flight to South America on 
the way to the waving pampas of southern Brazil seems a small hardship. Indeed, 
many bobolinks appear to scorn the Jamaican resting point and to compass in a 
single flight the 700 miles from Cuba to South America. With the bobolink is an 
incongruous company of traveling companions — a vireo, a kingbird, and a night- 
hawk that summer in Florida: the queer chuck-will’s-widow of the Gulf States; 
the New England cuckoos; the trim Alice thrush from Quebec; the cosmopolitan 
bank swallow from frozen Labrador, and the black poll warbler from far-off Alaska. 
But the bobolinks so far outnumber all the rest of the motley crew that the pas- 
sage across the Caribbean Sea from Cuba to South America may with propriety 
be called the “bobolink route.’’ Occasionally a mellow-voiced wood thrush joins 
the assemblage, or a green-gold tanager which will prepare in the winter home its 
next summer livery of flaming scarlet. But the “bobolink route” as a whole is 
not popular with other birds, and the many that traverse it are but a fraction of 
the thousands of North American birds that spend the winter holiday in 
South America. 
The main traveled highway is that which stretches from northwestern Florida 
across the Gull, continuing the southw'est direction which most of the birds of the 
Atlantic coast follow in passing to Florida. A larger or smaller proportion of 
nearly all the species bound for South America take this roundabout course, quite 
regardless of the 700-mile flight over the Gulf of Mexico. It might seem more 
natural for the birds to make a leisurely trip along the Florida coast, take a short 
flight to Cuba, and thence a still shorter one of less than 100 miles to Yucatan — a 
route only a little longer and with much less of exposure. Indeed, the earlier nat- 
uralists. finding the same species both in Florida and in Yucatan, took this proba- 
ble route for granted, and for years it has been noted in ornithological literature as 
one of the principal migration highways of North American birds. As a fact it is 
almost deserted except by a few swallows, some shore birds, and an occasional 
land bird storm-driven from its intended course, while over the Gulf route, night 
after night, for nearly eight months in the year, myriads of hardy migrants wing 
their way through the darkness toward an unseen destination. 
West of the Florida route the Gulf is crossed by migrating birds at its widest 
point, from Louisiana southward. Still farther west, the numerous species of 
Plains and Rocky Mountains birds choose Mexico and Central America for the 
winter, and make a land journey of short stages that extends over several weeks. 
As already stated, the longest migration route is taken by some of the wading 
birds, especially the American golden plover, the Eskimo curlew, and the turn- 
