OUR RAREST MIGRANT BIRDS.
14 ATE in March a white stork was seen in Romney Marsh, probably one that had missed its way on its return to Holland. Storks, the most regular in their habits of all migrants—so much so that in Turkey the labourers' year is divided into "long days " and " short days," dating from the coming and going of these birds—never did make a home in England, though they wander across into Norfolk and on to our marshes at intervals. Dr. William Turner, writing at Cologne in 1544, expressed his surprise that a bird so common in Germany should be almost un- known in England. The black stork is still more rarely seen, though it breeds in Jutland and in the South of Sweden. Why these and many other birds which occasionally do come to this country, and which could find abundant food here, do not stay, return with others of their kind the next year to enjoy their new and agreeable discovery, is one of the most difficult puzzles of ornithology. The turtle-dove, for example, which winters in Africa, comes every year in greater numbers. It clearly finds the country adapted to its wants, and the storks are far more tolerant of cold climates than the doves. It is believed, on the other hand, that the glossy ibis was once fairly common on the shores of the Wash, for it had a local name,—the black curlew. Flamingoes are seen now and again on our coasts, usually in places well suited to their habits. Their brilliant white and rose colour and fantastic shape render them the most foreign and striking of any rare migrants. Yet single flamingoes have been seen at " flighting time" on Romney Marsh, and one, evidently a wild bird, was killed on the Beaulieu River, and is now stuffed at Palace House. If it is true that the crane used to breed in the Eastern Fens down till 1590, there is some evidence that they have still a wish to return there, for five cranes were seen a few years ago in the marshes near Cley in Norfolk. They were not far from Salthouse Marshes, once the best-loved haunt of wild fowl and waders in East Anglia, but now reclaimed and useless. Another lost bird—the great bustard— at rare intervals takes a flight to our island, and turns up, by some infallible instinct, in the old haunts of its race.
Such visits might be expected; but who could credit the
fact, if actual birds had not been shot and preserved, that another bustard resident in the Aral-Caspian steppe, which naturally migrates across the Pamirs to India in the cold season, sometimes wanders across the whole of Europe and takes a flight to this little island in the Atlantic ? Three Asiatic ruffed bustards have been killed in this country, two in Lincolnshire and one in Yorkshire. Other birds which have no great distance to travel, steadily refuse to visit us, except under stress of weather, or very rarely. Such, for instance, is the woodchat shrike. Why he should be so very select is quite inexplicable, for he lives on just the same food as his cousin the red-backed shrike, and is quite common across the Channel; in Normandy, for example. It is a more handsome bird than our common butcher-bird, and if it would take it into its head to cross the Channel and breed here it would be a welcome addition to our summer migrants. At present it is quite rare, and its nests have been very seldom found, though it is believed to have bred near Fresh- water. But if the woodchat prefers to keep his domicile in France, and only to come here as a tripper, there are two beautiful and friendly birds which do migrate here occasionally, and would nest here if not shot or disturbed. They are the hoopoe and the golden oriole. It is not too late in the spring to say a good word for both. The orioles are the wild pets par excellence of our Dutch and French neighbours, who would as little think of shooting an oriole in spring as we should of killing a nightingale. Their song is beautiful. Unfortunately their plumage is also, and they are killed to stuff, though pro- tected by every County Council. They come regularly to Cornwall every spring, and are known to have nested in several other counties. A pair, carefully protected, reared broods in two successive years in the Isle of Thanet. The hoopoe arrives regularly every spring on the South Coast, and also in Norfolk. Mr. Howard Saunders considers that if not persecuted it would become one of our regular breeding species. They have nested in seven counties, possibly in more. Any one who sees a hoopoe this spring, and wishes tc find and protect its nest, will probably discover the latter in a hole in a dead tree, or any such place as a stockdove might select to breed in. If there is a local society for the protec- tion of birds, information should be sent to the secretary. Persecution of rare migrants accounts partly for their not proving pioneers, and summoning others to return with them the next year. The close time now saves many of them in the spring, but in the autumn they are killed when leaving our coasts. Other very rare birds make our island only the resting place of a night, sleeping there, or remaining for a few hours, and then passing onwards. These places are well known to the people who desire to possess these little birds. Most respectable ornithologists will make a special excursion to these desolate flats of shingle and suda bush armed with guns and small shot, and come back in triumph with a "rarity" as large as a tomtit, which their eyes have detected creeping about in a sea-bush or tuft of marram.grass. Their keenness is sadly misplaced in the eyes of most other naturalists, even if their collecting mania enables them to discover birds which no one would otherwise have guessed as visitors to our coast. The second edition of Mr. Howard Saunders's "Manual of British Birds" may be taken as the latest authority on what are and what are not entitled to the name. The author gives details of the time and manner• of their capture. Most of these " rarities " are tiny warblers. The yellow-browed warbler, a wanderer from Asia, has its summer home among the forests of North-Eastern Siberia, from the valley of the Yenisei to the Pacific. It is scarcely larger than a golden-crested wren, which it much resembled. Another tiny creature of the same description is Pallas's warbler, from beyond Lake Baikal. Yet one or two of these little creatures have been killed in England, and a few on Heligoland. The desire to possess these tiny scraps from the Far East seems a mania with certain collectors of birds. A third is the greenish willow-warbler, one of which was killed at North Cotes in Lincolnshire. The successful person who obtained it went out after three days of gales and rain in the early part of September, weather which is usually followed by a great rush of small birds across the North Sea. The rarity of the bird was undeniable. Only four others of the kind have been seen in the western half of Europe, though it is common from the Ural to the Himalayas. The same collector who discovered that the greenish willow-warbler visited the Lincoln coast found another, equally rare, in the sea-banks which border the Lincoln side of the Humber. He heard a loud and unfamiliar note in a hedge by the shore. The owner of the voice proved to be a bash-warbler, which had been discovered by a naturalist of the name of Radde on the far eastern side of Lake Baikal. The aquatic warbler, which breeds on the south of the Baltic, and the rufous warbler and great reed - warbler are also " rarities " and migrants. Many of these little warblers possibly " wandered round the pole," shifting westwards along the northern edge of the forest fringe in the Arctic summer. But be that as it may, many of those taken on our Eastern Coast were certainly "going home" by the short line taken by the bulk of the regular migrants. Did they do this by imitation or communication? Probably by the former. In any case, their line of migration was not an inherited route. Many other chance birds migrate here obviously by accident or mistake, among them the white-winged lark, from the plains of Russia. One was taken at Brighton. The short- toed lark belongs to a more southerly and also more easterly range. Other birds which breed fairly near to this country and have unrivalled powers of flight are, nevertheless, very rare. Take, for instance, the Alpine swift. Only about twenty have been taken in this country. Yet it nests as near as the Vosges and Jura and cliffs in Western Burgundy.
Mr. Howard Saunders believes _that the birds which come to us are from the Pyrenees. Probably we are further to the north than this swift cares to go. Yet the English swallow migrates in winter as far as South Africa, and it would not seem that this country is too cold for a swift which nests in the Alps or Pyrenees.
The " diesociable ocean," the broad Atlantic, seems the only impassable barrier to the occasional visits of any bird of temperate climates which has properly developed wings, and even this has been known to be crossed by wanderers from the New World. One of these, the capped petrel, an ocean bird, but one which formerly bred in the Antilles, was found in a furze bush on a Norfolk heath. Another, the collared petrel, wandered to Wales, though its breeding place is in the Western Pacific. These birds have endless powers of flight. But there is another bird common in the United States, the American bittern, which has no such special equipment, but which has been found in this country so often, and at dates so closely coinciding with the time of its migrations, that it is impossible not to believe that it does cross the Atlantic. It is believed to be a passenger not by wing only, but by steamer, and to rest en route on the masts of the ships which are for ever crossing the "ocean ferry" from England to the United States.
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