Punctual Birds Some very persuasive corroboration has reached me of
the strangely punctual habits of certain birds in Iceland. There is a small island in a park lake which is thickly populated with terns in summer, and it has been alleged again and again to my knowledge that the birds always arrive on May 23rd exactly, departing about this date. A returned traveller from the place assures me that he has unimpeachable evidence of the truth of the claim. Many animals have a remarkable and largely inexplicable sense of time. Sheep, for example, know certain feeding hours to within a minute or two. Migrant birds, too, may come " pat . . . like the catastrophe of the old comedy," but I should like to have this precise punctuality of the Reykjavik terns tested by scientific naturalists before being quite convinced. It should be easy to secure the right evidence.
Previous page
