WHERE BIRDS GO IN WINTER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18556, 11 August 1922, Page 4

WHERE BIRDS GO IN WINTER

Records have recently been published in England as to the tracing of marked birds on their migration journeys to the south from that country. About 7000 birds caught in Britain have been marked and then let loose, with a note asking whoever found any of them to send a record of the fact to a British scientific journal of the University of Aberdeen. Of the travels of these 700 0 birds records have come to hand concerning sixty, many of them swallows, and it is interesting to note how they have all been travelling south, though some were captured before they had got very far on their journey. On the other hand, there were some that had gone several thousand miles. The birds are generally marked when they are nestlings, and these are some of the records. Of the birds marked and let loose in Lancashire in the early spring one was found in the Isle of Wight in October, and the other the sale month in Central France. Three birds marked and set free in Staffordshire were caught, one in South-Western France in October, another in Brittany in December, and the third at Bilbao, in Spain, in the following March. A bird released in Stirlingshire in spring was caught in the Transvaal in January of the succeeding year, and one marked and let loose in Ayrshire was captured in the Orange Free State in the March following. Similar markings of birds have taken place in Continental countries, one bird released in Schleswig-Holstein being captured on the shores ot Lake Constance, and one set free in Holland in Tangier. AH the evidence seems to confirm the fact that Africa is undoubtedly the winter home of most of the birds that leave British shores for the south when the cold weaker begins. Another interesting result of markings is that it is proved beyond doubt that the same swallows return year after year to their old haunts, and not only to the same buildings, but often to the very eaves that they had previously occupied.