Page:The Migration of Birds - Thomas A Coward - 1912.pdf/76

60 find companions of quite an alien tribe; others, wind~swept in this way, may travel alone to new lands. A few pelagic South Pacific and South Atlantic petrels and other birds have reached Europe from time to time, but theirs is an error of too wide nomadic wandering. The wonder is not that these stragglers do turn up, but that so few are noticed; probably the frequent mistakes made by inexperienced or even experienced birds are speedily rectified by nature; failure to find food or exhaustion spells death.

Mr C. Dixon emphatically declares that each party of young birds is accompanied by one or more older ones to act as guides—"The many winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home." This is as emphatically denied by other observers. Probably there is no regular rule for many species, as there certainly is not for swallows, in which the old and young birds can be easily distinguished. I have seen bands trailing south in autumn in which all the birds were immature, and others in which a number of young were accompanied by a few mature birds; though, certainly, these old birds did not appear to lead. Another assertion, that the old and young do not even travel by the same route rather supports the idea that the young birds find their way simply by a sense of direction, a sense liable to blunder; whilst the old birds travel