The Migration of North American Birds (1935)Lincoln, Frederick Charles
Science
The Migration of North American Birds (1935)
Lincoln, Frederick Charles
Birds -- Migration
In the effort to find winter quarters furnishing satisfactory living
conditions, many North American birds fly hundreds of miles across
land and sea. Others, however, are able to attain their objective
merely by moving down the sides of a mountain. In such cases a
few hundred feet of altitude corresponds to hundreds of miles of
latitude. Movements of this kind, known as "vertical migrations", are
found wherever there are large mountain ranges. In the Rocky Mountain
region they are particularly notable, as chickadees, rosy finches
(_Leucosticte_), juncos, pine grosbeaks (_Pinicola_), and some other
species that nest in the Alpine Zone move down to the lower levels to
spend the winter. It has been noted that such species as Williamson's
sapsucker (Sphyrapicus thyroideus), and the western wood pewee
(_Myiochanes richardsoni_), which nest in the higher mountains, move
down to the lower regions in August following the breeding season.
At this time there is a distinct tendency also among the young of
mountain-breeding birds to work down to the lower levels as soon as
the nesting season is over. The sudden increases among birds in the
edges of the foothills are particularly noticeable when cold spells
with snow or frost occur at the higher altitudes.
Some species that normally breed in the Hudsonian or Arctic Zones
find suitable breeding areas on the higher levels of the mountains,
as for example the pipit, or titlark (_Anthus spinoletta rubescens_),
which breeds on the tundras of Alaska and northern Canada and also
south as far as Colorado on the summits of many peaks in the Rocky
Mountains. On the other hand a few species, as the Clark's crow, or
nutcracker (_Nucifraga columbiana_), nest at relatively low altitudes
in the mountains and as the summer advances move higher up, thus
performing a vertical migration that in a sense is comparable with
the post-breeding movements of herons on the Atlantic coast. These
illustrations show that the length of a migration route may depend
upon factors other than latitude.
=VAGRANT MIGRATION=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account