Page:The Migration of Birds - Thomas A Coward - 1912.pdf/38

22 increasingly severe winters, to return and attempt to nest in the locality which had become unsuitable for nesting. The spread of glaciation would be gradual and so would be the annihilation of the species, but the end would be sure.

Birds which are cited as species which have shown this remarkable attachment to home, have disappeared before adverse circumstances—the great auk and the Labrador duck.

From what little we do know about the behaviour of our summer birds in their winter home, we may safely conclude that their habits are similar to those of winter visitors to Britain. Only in a few species are there two restricted areas, two abiding places or homes. The necessity of retaining a secure home for the young and the care of these young during their more helpless age keeps the individual birds within a certain area during the breeding season, but at all other times the bird is more or less of a wanderer. The variation, however, of the wanderings is remarkable. For instance the flocks of fieldfares, redwings, and some of the finches which come to winter in the British Islands wander continually from feeding ground to feeding ground, remaining in one place only so long as the food supply is plentiful. When there is a plentiful harvest of beech-mast, chaffinches and bramblings will linger near one clump or avenue of beeches for