HOUSE AND GARDEN 
November, 1911 
ture rises above the freezing point and un¬ 
locks the ice-fettered streams, or the melt¬ 
ing snows lay bare the fields to furnish 
adequate food supplies; and even some 
days earlier the tree sparrow and the 
horned lark have begun their northward 
journey. All these birds stay in the north- 
land until driven south by the approach of 
the winter’s cold, and when at last forced 
to move they retreat only far enough to 
the south to obtain nourishment through 
the winter and are ready at the earliest 
possible moment for the return. Such 
birds seem to consider the neighborhood 
of the nesting site as their real home, to 
be left with regret and to be revisited 
speedily. On the other hand, a still larger 
group of birds remain in the south as long 
as possible, make a late and hurried mi¬ 
gration, arrive at the breeding grounds 
just in time for nest-building and depart 
for the south as soon as the young are 
fully grown. One would judge them to con¬ 
sider the land of their winter choice as 
their home, which they are reluctantly 
forced to leave by the exigencies of the 
period of procreation and to which they 
gladly return. This latter class includes 
more than half of our migratory birds— 
the warblers, vireos, thrushes, flycatchers, 
orioles, tanagers, swallows and such of the 
sparrows as winter south of the United States. Many an orchard 
oriole arriving in southern Pennsylvania the first week in May, 
leaves there by the middle of July, thus spending only two and a 
half months out of the twelve at the nesting site, while robins 
can be found in the same locality from March to November, being 
absent less than a third of the year. 
Nothing can be more variable than the distance travelled by 
birds in their migrations. A few birds, like the grouse, quail, 
cardinal and Carolina wren are non-migratory. Many a Carolina 
wren rounds out the full period of its existence without ever going 
ten miles from the nest where it was hatched. Some other 
species migrate so short a distance that the movement is scarcely 
noticeable. Thus meadow-larks are found near New York City 
all the year, but it is probable that the in¬ 
dividuals nesting in that region move a 
little farther south for the winter and 
their places are taken by migrants from 
farther north. Or part of a species may 
migrate and the rest remain stationary— 
the pine warblers of the Gulf States are 
non-migratory, but their numbers in win¬ 
ter are largely increased by migrants 
from the north. In the case of the Mary¬ 
land yellow-throat, the breeding birds of 
Florida, are strictly resident, while 
spring and fall other yellow-throats pass 
through Florida from their winter home 
in Cuba to their summer home in New 
England. 
Most migratory birds desert the entire 
region occupied in the summer for some 
other distinct region they have adopted 
as their winter home. These two homes 
are very variable distances apart. Many 
species from Canada winter in the United 
States, others nesting in the northern 
United States winter in the Gulf States, 
while more than a hundred species leave 
this country for the winter and spend 
that season in Central or even in South 
America. Nor are they content with 
journeying to northern South America, 
but many cross the equator and pass on 
to the pampas of Argentina and a few 
even to Patagonia. Among these long distance migrants are 
some of our commonest birds; the scarlet tanager migrates from 
Canada to Peru; the bobolinks that nest in New England proba¬ 
bly winter in Brazil in company with the purple martins, cliff 
swallows, barn swallows, nighthawks and some of the thrushes 
who are their companions both summer and winter. The black- 
poll warblers that nest in Alaska, winter in northern South 
America at least 5.000 miles from the summer home. The land- 
bird with the longest migration route is probably the nighthawk, 
which occurs north to Yukon and south to Argentina, the two 
countries being 7,000 miles apart. But even these distances are 
surpassed by some of the waterbirds and notably by some of the 
shorebircls which, as a family, have the longest migration routes 
of all birds. Nineteen species of 
shore birds breed north of the 
Arctic Circle, every one of which 
visits South America in winter and 
six of which penetrate to Patago¬ 
nia, a migration route more than 
8,000 miles in length. The cham¬ 
pion migrant of the world is the 
Arctic tern; it nests on the most 
northern shores of the Arctic 
Ocean as far north as it can find 
anything stable on which to con¬ 
struct its nest and it winters along 
the ice pack in the Antarctic as far 
south as it can find open water and 
food. The two extremes of its mi¬ 
gration route are fully 11,000 miles 
apart or a 22,000 mile round trip 
each year. 
More wonderful, however, than 
the total distance the bird migrates 
in the year, is the enormous dis¬ 
tance traveled at a single flight. 
The nighthawk has the longest migration route of the land birds, traveling each year north to Yukon 
and south 7,000 miles to Argentina 
The longest single flight made by any 
bird is that of the golden plover from 
Nova Scotia to South America 
