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    The Migration of Birds
    The Migration of Birds
    The Migration of Birds
    Ebook134 pages1 hour

    The Migration of Birds

    By Thomas Alfred Coward

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    This is Thomas Alfred Coward's 1912's treatise, "The Migration of Birds". A fascinating and beautifully-written exploration of avian migratory patterns and habits, this is a volume not to be missed by modern readers with an interest in ornithology and nature writing. Thomas Alfred Coward (1867 - 1933), was an English ornithologist and astronomer who produced many books on natural history. Other notable works by this author include: "Bird and Other Nature Problems" (1931), "Bird Haunts and Nature Memories" (1922), and "The Birds of Cheshire" (1900). Contents include: "Migration Of Birds", "Cause And Origin Of Migration", "Routes", "The Height And Speed Of Migration Flight", "Orientation And Route Finding", "The Distances Travelled By Birds", "Migration And Weather", "The Perils Of Migration", "Early Ideas Of Migration", and "Suggestions And Guesses". Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateDec 5, 2016
    ISBN9781473346475
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      Book preview

      The Migration of Birds - Thomas Alfred Coward

      THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS

      BY

      THOMAS COWARD

      Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from

      the British Library

      Contents

      Thomas Coward

      PREFACE

      CHAPTER I

      MIGRATION OF BIRDS

      CHAPTER II

      CAUSE AND ORIGIN OF MIGRATION

      CHAPTER III

      ROUTES

      CHAPTER IV

      THE HEIGHT AND SPEED OF MIGRATION FLIGHT

      CHAPTER V

      ORIENTATION AND ROUTE FINDING

      CHAPTER VI

      THE DISTANCES TRAVELLED BY BIRDS

      CHAPTER VII

      MIGRATION AND WEATHER

      CHAPTER VIII

      THE PERILS OF MIGRATION

      CHAPTER IX

      EARLY IDEAS OF MIGRATION

      CHAPTER X

      SUGGESTIONS AND GUESSES

      CHAPTER XI

      SUMMARY

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      Thomas Coward

      Thomas Coward was born on 8 January 1867 and was an English ornithologist and amateur astronomer. He wrote on natural history, local history and Cheshire for a number of publications and books.

      Coward was born in Bowden, Cheshire, England and was the youngest child of Thomas and Sarah Coward. His father was a congregational minister and a partner in the firm Melland and Coward, a company of textile bleachers and finishers. Coward was educated at Brooklands School, Sale and later Owens College (now Manchester University), after which he joined his father’s company. He worked for Melland and Coward for nineteen years, until the company was bought by The Bleachers Combine. Coward’s proceeds from the sale were enough to allow him to retire and focus on his true interest and passion – wildlife and natural history. Coward had loved the study of birds and nature since he was a child and for the next thirty years of his life he dedicated himself to ornithology and natural history.

      Coward wrote articles on the natural world for many newspapers, including The Chester Courant, The Liverpool Daily Post, and The Manchester Guardian, for whom he wrote a Country Diary column until his death. He also wrote for a number of magazines including Country Life and The Field, and for a number of specialist journals, such as The Zoologist and British Birds.

      Coward’s first book, The Birds of Cheshire, was published in 1900 whilst Coward was living in Hale, Manchester. The book was co-written with his old school friend, Charles Oldham (1868-1942), and was the first comprehensive study of the county’s birds. It focused on the behaviour and field characteristics of the birds of Cheshire. Oldham and Coward remained friends throughout their lives and wrote a number of other books and articles together, such as The Vertebrate Fauna of Cheshire and Liverpool Bay (1910). Coward’s other titles include The Migration of Birds (1912), Bird Haunts and Nature Memories (1922), and Bird and Other Nature Problems (1931). Perhaps Coward’s most famous piece of work was his three volume book The Birds of the British Isles and Their Eggs (1920-25) which was illustrated by Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935). The book was said to have done more to popularise the study of birds than any other publication produced in the first part of the twentieth century.

      Coward married his cousin Mary Milne in 1904, they remained married until his death. Throughout his life, Coward held a number of positions including Acting Keeper of Manchester Museum during World War One, Chairman and President of the Altrincham and District Natural History and Literary Society, and President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He also travelled widely in the British Isles doing fieldwork and studying the country’s natural history. His death came suddenly whilst he was at home on 29 January 1933. There is a blue plaque on his home in Bowden, where he moved in 1911. Upon his death, public donations were raised all around the world in order to buy the whole of Cotterhill Clough (which is fourteen acres) and Manbury Reed Bed to turn them into nature reserves in Coward’s honour showing the popularity and respect given to him and his work. His field notes are archived at the Department of Zoology in Oxford.

      PREFACE

      Any attempt to elucidate the problems connected with the Migration of Birds must, in the present state of knowledge, contain some theory and speculation, but the diligent observations of an army of careful workers yearly add facts, which though they may appear insignificant when considered alone, tend in the aggregate to confirm or repudiate the conclusions of past workers. I have endeavoured to bring together some of the more important theories, and to give prominence to ascertained facts; I have also striven to check desire on my own part to wander into realms of pure speculation, though conscious that I have not always evidence to support my suggestions.

      The numbers in brackets ( ) in the text refer to the books or papers mentioned in the list at the end of the volume, which is in no ways an attempt at a full bibliography. I have quoted freely from the works of past and living ornithologists. To these I offer apologies if I have  misconstrued their arguments, and acknowledge my indebtedness to those whose observations or writing have given me light. In particular I tender thanks to Mr Wells W. Cooke for his permission to reproduce the maps facing pp. 76, 78, 80. I have found his writings and those of Herr Otto Herman and Mr W. Eagle Clarke especially valuable. Mr Eagle Clarke's long looked-for book on Migration is, as I write, still in the press; had mine been more than a manual I should have hesitated to publish until his had appeared.

      T. A. Coward.

      Bowdon, Cheshire,

      4 November 1911.

      CHAPTER I

      MIGRATION OF BIRDS

      Migration is the act of changing an abode or resting place, the wandering or movement from one place to another, but technically the word is applied to the passage or movement of birds, fishes, insects and a few mammals between the localities inhabited at different periods of the year. The wandering of a nomadic tribe of men is migration; the mollusc, wandering from feeding ground to feeding ground in the bed of the ocean, migrates; the caterpillar migrates from branch to branch, even from leaf to leaf; the rat leaves the ship in which it has travelled and migrates to the granary; we pack our goods, hire a removing van and migrate to a new abode. The word migration thus applied may be literally correct but it fails to convey the generally accepted meaning, and the expression Bird Migration suggests periodical and regular movement, the passage as a rule between one country and another.

      The popular application of a term does not do away with the need of definition, especially as there are many complicated phases of  migration. The migration of birds is as a rule between the breeding area or home and the winter quarters, but there are many migrants which never reach breeding quarters in spring, and many others which leave the regular breeding quarters or the place of residence in winter to perform a very real migration under peculiar stress of circumstances. Again the spasmodic movements of certain gregarious species, which at irregular intervals change their location in large numbers to take up their abode in another part of the range, is really migration, though it is now usually described as irruption, incursion or invasion.

      Newton says  (38)  that bird migration is most strangely and unaccountably confounded by many writers with the subject of Distribution, but the very act of the bird which extends its range, the first step in distribution, is migration. The histories of present-day distribution and migration are irrevocably interwoven; as Mr P.A. Taverner remarks  (51), migration is a dispersal, and conversely, this dispersal, as it manifests itself, is migration, whilst distribution is the outcome of dispersal.

      Broadly speaking, all birds migrate, though the length of the journey  varies in different species, and in some cases in individuals of the same or closely allied species, from the merest change of elevation to a voyage almost as wide as the world itself. The sedentary red grouse nests on the moors, often less than 1000 feet above the sea, but when snow-bright the moor expands it feeds and resides in the cultivated valley, and as shown by the committee appointed to study grouse disease, not infrequently migrates from range to range across wide valleys. Many tropical birds, usually considered non-migratory, are subject to short movements, the origin and purpose of which is search for food and safe nesting places.

      The knot breeds in countless numbers in Arctic Greenland and America, so far north that only a handful of ornithologists have traced its home; it travels south in summer so far as Damara Land. The Arctic tern has a northern breeding range extending perhaps as far north as that of any bird, and it has been taken far to the south of South America in the Antarctic regions; if the thesis that the

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