Page:The Migration of Birds - Thomas A Coward - 1912.pdf/118

96 to him as an observer or to the goldcrests? Surely the birds did not aim for Fair Island; were not these weak-winged birds probably making for the south, when the south-east wind caught them and drifted them to the west? Fair Island was a refuge, but hardly the objective of their flight {17).

Compare this with Cordeaux's notes of another goldcrest immigration, this time to the Lincolnshire coast (23). On October 13th the wind was north to north-east in the afternoon, light but increasing in force, the weather clear and bright—a few birds arrived. They had started under favourable circumstances. Shortly after midnight on the morning of the 14th, the wind got full east, with quite half a gale and heavy beating rain, continuous to the morning of the 16th; the nights were very dark. "During this time the immigration was immense," and most of the birds were goldcrests. Cordeaux's idea that these were not normal immigrants but birds which were passing probably from north-eest to south-west, when the easterly gale caught them, is probably correct.

I have referred to birds starting at a high elevation. Service says that in normal departure from the Solway, most birds mount to a high altitude, but "a strong beam wind will bring the birds—even those of strongest power—down to 200 to 500 feet of the surface, and it is interesting to sea whole flocks with heads turned almost completely to