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Updated: June 23, 2025
Of all the migrants, however, the behaviour of the Ruff is perhaps the most strange, and though it has long been known that these birds have their special meeting places where they perform antics and engage in serious strife, yet it is only within recent years that the primary purpose of these gatherings has been ascertained that purpose being the actual discharge of the sexual function. Mr.
But anything open to the sky is open to some of the birds, for the paths of many of the migrants lie close along the clouds. Other birds than the passing migrants, however, sometimes come within range of my look-out. The year around there are English sparrows and pigeons; and all through the summer scarcely an evening passes when a few chimney-swallows are not in sight.
This radical proposition was set aside through the advice of a wise woman, named Gambara, who suggested that lots should be drawn for the migration of a third of the population. Her counsel was taken and the migration began, under the leadership of her two sons. These migrants wore beards of prodigious length, whence their subsequent name.
It was as if all joined hands, dressed in green and white; for at every turn a thousand white breasts gleamed in the purple sunset. The restless call of the birds added a peculiar charm to the scene in the darkening twilight. Of our winter visitants that come to take the place of the summer migrants the fieldfare is the commonest and most familiar.
In the previous chapter we had occasion to refer to the difference in the times of arrival of the male and female migrants, and we came to the conclusion, it may be remembered, that this was a fact of some importance, because it gave us a clue to the meaning of much that was otherwise obscure in their behaviour.
The northern man who once denounced the South on account of its maltreatment of the blacks gradually grows silent when a Negro is brought next door. There comes with the movement, therefore, the difficult problem of housing. Where then must the migrants go?
Blacks long since unaccustomed to venture a few miles from home, at once had visions of a promised land just a few hundred miles away. Some were told of the chance to amass fabulous riches, some of the opportunities for education and some of the hospitality of the places of amusement and recreation in the North. The migrants then were soon on the way.
*Reprinted by permission from "American Ornithology," with important additions. Several days passed before an individual of this species put in appearance, as the scissorstails, which are migrants, had not yet returned from their winter quarters in a more southern clime, and so I had to wait for their arrival.
And so, when the males of the smaller migrants confine their movements to an acre of ground at the completion of their long journey, they are acting no more under the influence of fatigue than the Cuckoo, which keeps within certain bounds yet flies about briskly, or the Godwit which, though holding to its few square yards on the ground, executes most tiring and extensive flights above the marsh.
Their number, however, is, I think, rather increased in the autumn by migrants; at all events, more specimens are brought to the bird-stuffers at that time of year. I have before mentioned the incident of the Water Rail being killed by the Merlin, recorded by Mr. Couch in the 'Zoologist' for 1875. The Water Rail is included in Professor Ansted's list, and marked as occurring in Guernsey and Sark.
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