Reprinted from School Science and Mathematics, April-May, 1908. 
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Migratory Route 
of the American 
Golden Plover 
THEORIES OF BIRD MIGRATIO.N, 
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By Herbert Eugene ,« f 
Brown Univcrsit^v.i i , | 1’-1 I '■ 
The American Golden Plover is known to 
travel in the neighborhood of 15,000 miles a 
year. Its breeding grounds are well within the 
arctic circle far beyond the northern tree line. In fact Gen. Greeley, 
the arctic explorer, found it nesting at 81° N. latitude within 600 
miles of the north pole. These remarkable birds arrive in the far 
north about June ist, remaining there approximately ten weeks. 
By the latter part of August, nesting duties completed, they have 
already traveled as far south as Labrador where a rich temporary 
feeding ground supplies them while the crowherries, common to 
that region, are ripening. From Labrador they move further 
south to Nova Scotia, and thence straight out over the open ocean 
1,800 miles to the islands that lie east of Cuba and Porto Rico, 
sometimes breaking the journey at the Bermudas 800 miles south 
of Nova Scotia but more frequently passing by to the eastward. 
From the Eastern Antilles to the continent of South America is a 
flight of 600 miles more an,d after this mainland is reached they 
press on to the pampas region of Patagonia where they remain for 
the winter months, 8,000 miles from their nesting grounds. March 
finds them on the move again as far north as Guatemala and 
Texas. During April they are traversing the Mississippi'valley, 
in May the vast territory of Canada, while early in June they are 
nest-building again in the land of the midnight sun, having com¬ 
pleted the 15,000 mile circuit. 
What explanation can be given to account for such astonishing 
behavior? How is a bird, who weighs only a few ounces and 
whose brain can easily be packed in a thimble, able to find its way 
over such vast reaches of land and sea, and what are the laws 
which impel it to carry out such a colossal undertaking in the face 
of all sorts of perils, not only once in a lifetime but every year so 
long as it lives ? The American Golden Plover Is an extreme case, 
but the laws which govern its behavior are doubtless the same as 
those which cause the lesser, but quite as noteworthy, migratory 
movements so generally observed among bird kind. 
Early Mention of The migrations of birds have been recognized 
Migration ^lan from the earliest times. Mention is 
made in the book of Job of the hawk that “stretches her wings to¬ 
ward the south.” Homer observed the mightv rush of the water 
