As the days grow shorter and cooler, the warblers go. These are the bright-colored little fellows, who live mostly in the tops of trees. Then the orioles and the thrushes and the cuckoos leave us, and most birds who live on insects.
By the time that November comes in, few of them will be left. Birds who can live on seeds and winter berries, such as cedar-berries and partridge-berries, and others, often stay with us,—bluebirds, finches, and sometimes robins.
Many birds take their journey by night. Think of it! Tiny creatures, that all summer go to bed at dark, start off some night, when it seems as if they ought to be asleep, and fly all night in the dark.
When it grows light, they stop in some place where they can feed and rest. And the next night, or two or three nights later, they go on again. So they do till they reach their winter home, hundreds or thousands of miles away.
These night flyers are the timid birds, and those who live in the woods, and do not like to be seen,—thrushes, wrens, vireos, and others. Birds with strong wings, who are used to flying hours every day, and bolder birds, who do not mind being seen, take their journey by daylight.
Most of them stop now and then, a day or two at a time, to feed and rest. They fly very high, and faster than our railroad trains can go.
In the spring the birds take their second long journey, back to their last year's home.
How they know their way on these journeys, men have been for many years trying to find out. They have found that birds travel on regular roads, or routes, that follow the rivers and the shore of the ocean. They can see much better than we can, and even in the night they can see water.
One such road, or highway, is over the harbor of New York. When the statue of Liberty was set up on an island in the harbor a few years ago, it was put in the birds' path.