How do Birds find their Way?[[1]]
(Told at Foxes Corners School)
“I was telling Grand’ther about how far away the birds go in the winter, and how they fly against the lighthouses and get killed,” said Tommy Todd, “and he said I couldn’t tell him anything about their going away and coming back, ’cause he’d seen that going on, boy and man, these seventy years. Grand’ther knows how the same kind of birds come back to the place every spring, ’cause he says there were Phœbe Birds had a nest on the end beam of the cowshed over where the last cow stands,—way back when he was learning to milk. Then when that old shed blew down, and they built a new one like it, back the birds came, and they are coming yet; first nest over Black Bess, and second nest way out over the box-pen where the little calves live.
“What Grand’ther wants to know is how they find the way to go so far, and how they know where to stop and find something to eat, and if they get hungry, ’cause he says nobody seems to know just what they do between times, and what people do tell seems like Jack-and-the-Beanstalk fairy-stories, and he said maybe you had some book that told about it so’s you could explain.”
Gray Lady smiled in a half-puzzled way, as Tommy spoke, for the questions that the children asked often gave her as much cause for study and wonder as the stories that she told them. She was finding out that there were three or four members of the Kind Hearts’ Club who had been seeing correctly and trying to think out things for themselves before they had a chance to ask questions, or had any books to consult.
“Your grandfather’s question cannot be answered in a few words,” she said, “neither is there any one book that tells everything about these wonderful journeys, because, as yet, not the very wisest of the Wise Men know it all, though they wait and watch, and every spring and fall many of them are scattered through the country upon the course of the flying birds to watch them as they pass.
“All the information that they collect is printed and kept as evidence of what is known, a little here and a little there, until we hope some day that the history will be complete, when it will be one of the most wonderful stories in the world, for even the little we know sounds like a fairy-tale.
“Of course,” continued Gray Lady, “I know very little from my own sight, but I will tell you what I have learned of the Wise Men, who believe it to be the truth. I had intended telling you about Owls and Hawks to-day, as I promised you last week, when we saw the Screech Owl up in the orchard, but that story can wait until the next time you visit Birdland, for the Owls are still about; there are pictures of them in the library, and others that are stuffed and mounted in the glass case in the hall.
“All that we need, or that can help us with the story of the bird on its travels, is that large map of North and South America, for this will be a geography, as well as a bird, lesson.
(A fine map of the western hemisphere having been the first thing that Gray Lady had given Miss Wilde for the use of the school at Foxes Corners, the little old one being out of date and indistinct.)