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In the spring, about the middle of April, we go out of doors and find that the woods and fields are becoming populated, in ever increasing numbers, by birds which were not present during the winter. Most probably it is their songs which first attract our attention ; willow-warblers, chiff-chaffs, cuckoos, and many more are all back and proclaiming to everyone that there they are. They have come northwards for over 2000 miles to breed in the same area in which they were born in some previous spring. How this migratory urge came into being has long been a source of speculation among ornithologists, from the curious theory of a bishop Godwin of Hereford, who held that birds migrated to the moon, and that a man might be carried there by harnessing a number of large birds, to the modern |
