A LITTLE MIGRANT.
German papers please copy ! The poor remnants of a small dark-feathered bird have been found in the Belgian Congo : and on one of its legs is an aluminium ring marked " Biolog : Heligoland 625926." The report came some weeks ago to the Overseas League from a mission station on the east bank of the Inzia River. Probably the bird is a black cap. Heligoland has been famous among ornithologists all the world over since Gatke first published his account of the birds arriving there in autumn and spring ; and in that wonderful tale no passage is so remarkable as the description of the hordes of warblers descending from the sky. The Germans are now marking thousands of birds season after season, and have already recovered records of many strange journeys from North Europe to Africa and, indeed, Asia ; but so far the journeys of the big birds, notably storks, are, very much more fully documented than those of small birds ; and some of the small birds fly as far as the big. We should all like to know when the little black cap—if black cap it was—was ringed in Heligoland. .
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