STORK SWIFTEST OF BIRDS.

Northland Age, Volume 2, Issue 44, 12 June 1906, Page 2

STORK SWIFTEST OF BIRDS.

BEEN KNOWN TO MAKE A JOURNEY OF 2,400 MILES IN A DAY AND A NIGHT. * There are certain species of ducks that are given the credit by naturalists of being the fleetest of winged creatures. Recently, however, it has been ascertained that the learned men were in error, and the stork is found to outstrip by far all denizens of the air in speed. After an exhaustive survey of the field it is now declared that no living thing, not even a scared jack rabbit, can travel with the speed displayed by such birds as the stork and the northern bluethroat. Not only do these birds fly with a speed that can hardly be conceived, but they keep up their rapid flight for 1,000 or 2,000 miles at a stretch without apparently tiring. Evidence has been collected recently which shows that the bluethroat flies from Central Africa to the shores of the North Sea, a distance of 1,600 miles, in less than a day and night, and making it, moreover, in one unintrupted flight. The storks which spend their summers in Austria-Hungary and their winters in India and Central Africa are also marvelous travellers, and make their journies twice a year in unbroken flight each time. From Buda-Pesth, in Hungary, to Lahore, in India, is 2,400 miles in an air line and the storks make the journey in 24 hours, thus travelling at the rate of 100 miles an hour for the whole distance. The storks which spend the summer in Central Europe and winter in Central Africa travel with the same rapidity.