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through on migration. Italy too acts as a sort of conduit for birds from central Europe. But there is evidence that the birds fan out again as soon as these constricting features are passed, and broad front migration over North Africa, and even, contrary to many opinions, over the Sahara itself, is now a well-established fact. The fighting in the North African desert during the war gave many soldier-ornithologists the chance to study migration in the desert, and some surprising observations were made. One observer was on the famous cross-desert expedition which set out across the Sahara from Kufra to attack the oasis of Jalo, 400 miles westwards. He noticed that the lorries forming the convoy were used by many warblers and other small migrants for shelter at night. Wherever they were in the desert (and that is the point to be noted), as soon as the convoy stopped for the night, warblers, chats, whitethroats and other small birds appeared out of the sky and rushed to shelter beneath the lorries and tents of the convoy. One officer had to abandon his car " 150 miles from anywhere " in the desert, and when he retrieved it later found 20 small birds sitting beneath it ! Oases, too, throng with birds but this is also a reflexion of the fact that those passing the immediate neighbourhood descend there as they do at the English reservoirs, meres and sewage farms. |
