MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
13 
FACT AND FANCY IN BIRD MIGRATION. 
WALTER B. BARROWS. 
In 1896 Alfred Newton, probably the most scholarly living ornitholo¬ 
gist of Great Britain, if not of all Europe, said of bird migration 
proper: “We are here brought face to face with the greatest mystery 
which the whole animal kingdom presents—a mystery which attracted 
the attention of the earliest writers, and can in its chief point be no 
more explained by the modern man of science than by the simple minded 
savage or the poet or prophet of antiquity. The flow and ebb of the 
mighty feathered wave has been sung by poets and reasoned of by 
philosophers, has given rise to proverbs and entered into popular super¬ 
stitions, and yet we may say of it still that ‘our ignorance is immense.’ ” 
Ten years has added much to the total of our knowledge of birds, 
yet the gain in that time has come also through subtraction, for we 
have been compelled to unlearn much that was once considered fixed 
and sure. The attempt today to sift the known from the unknown in 
the matter of bird migration is a task of such gigantic proportions that 
the busy scientist may well hesitate before the undertaking. 
. We . rea< J how tiny and defenceless birds fly thousands of miles at 
lightning speed through the blackest of nights, yet, guided by some 
mysterious power, they cross deserts, mountains and even oceans with 
tireless wing and unerring instinct, arriving presently at the exact spot 
intended, without loss of time or prestige. Here in a land of peace and 
plenty they bask in the sunshine, renew their strength and perhaps 
their travel-worn plumage, and then as the vernal equinox approaches, 
in obedience to some mysterious inner voice—some pressing, resistless, 
yet seductive impulse, they break away again for another mad rush 
through the trackless air toward the land of their birth, where perhaps 
the nest which cradled them still swings from the bough where it 
has defied the winter’s storm. 
No doubt many species make long journeys safely and rapidly, but 
we now know that a heavy percentage of loss of life goes with every 
such movement. Undoubtedly certain individual birds find their way 
back to their birth place after a trip of hundreds of miles and an 
absence of many months; but it is more than likely that where one in¬ 
dividual succeeds in doing this many more fail. ' Thanks to patient 
investigation and careful exploration we now know pretty accuratelv 
where most of our migrants spend their winters, and we have much 
leliable information as to the general routes by which some of them go 
and return, and even the approximate time occupied by the species in 
making the trip, but no sane man pretends to say how long it takes 
any individual bird to travel from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Winni¬ 
peg,—or even from the Ohio River to the Saginaw Valley. 
