BIRD MIGRATION.

Wairarapa Age, 22 August 1929, Page 4

BIRD MIGRATION.

CONSIDERABLE MOVEMENTS TAKING PLACE. ADDRHSS AT OPTIMISTS CLUB. The migratory movement* of birds was the subject of an address given at yesterday’s meeting of the Masterton Optimists’ Club by Mr. R. H. D. Stidolph. The president, Mr. M. Mackay. presided. Mr. Stidolph referred to the local movements of several species in the colder months of the apparently necessitated on account of food supplies. These birds merely moved from one part of the district to the other, but others undertook more extensive migrations. The blackbird had established itself on the Chatham, Auckland and Kermadec Islands, respectively about 450, 290 and 600 miles from the New Zealand coast, and the song tbrush had also appeared on the Chatham and Kermadec Islands. That showed that there was a much greater movement among ’birds than was generally known and led to the belief that many birds of these species and others had perished in a search for other lands. It wan only some of these birds, however, which had the migratory impulse. Mr. Stidolph went on to state that two cuckoos were considered to migrate regularly each year between islands near north east Australia and New Zealand, and several other birds, such an the godwit, the knot, the turnstone and others, some no larger than a song thrush, migrated each year to and from Siberia and New Zealand, a distance of nearly ten thousand miles. Many of these migratory movements were apparently made during the night. The wanderings of the mighty albatroesee across vast expanses of the ocean and the return to their breeding haunts on mere specks of islands, almost in midocean, was another marvel in bird movements. After answering a number of questions, Mr. Stidolph was accorded a vote of thanks for his address.