Bird Migration

Abstract

THE captain of the Portuguese steamer Bolama, recently touching here on her voyage from Cape Verde Islands to Lisbon, reports that near the Canary Island, Las Palmas, his ship was visited by an immense cloud of swallows settling in thousands upon every part of the vessel and resting until early dawn, when almost every bird departed. Nothing is known as to the direction in which the birds were travelling or why they should be found far away over the open sea in such a southerly latitude. Two swifts are perennially present and nest at Madeira, but the chimney-swallow is only known as a rare straggler; and in the last fifty-five years I have not known of the passing of any migrating flock, though our latitude is five hundred miles north of the locality indicated in the Bolama occurrence. So strange an incident might be taken from the pages of Pliny or Ambroise Paré, and cannot fail to interest those of your readers who are working on the subject of migration.