A NEW MIGRATION.
This week we shall probably see the arrival in London of the first migrant birds : a wheatear, perhaps, on Hampstead and a willow warbler at Dulwich. Writing some while ago in the Spectator on oddities of the migratory impulse, I alluded to the curious fact in the history of birds that they migrate over shallow seas, however wide, for example the North Sea, but not over deep seas, however narrow ; and witnessed the lack of migrant birds in Madagascar (that last home of the Dodo) which is separated from the Continent by a strait of altogether exceptional depth. A charming letter from a Yorkshireman resident in Madagascar reports one exception that gave much
pleasure. He writes :
"I have just been reading the Spectator for October 18th, 1930, which of necessity takes a long time to reach me in this out-of-the- world spot in the heart of Madagascar. . . . It will probably interest you to know that two couples of house-martins have nested under the eaves of our Mission house here in Anjozorobe, and have young ones at the moment of writing: They appeared for the first time a year ago, much to our astonishment and greatly to our delight, it being so homely to see house-martins flitting about the garden, and in and out of the top verandah. We wondered if they would return this year, and to our joy they have come again. Under the same eaves and only a few yards away, there are sparrow hawks nesting, and we have been somewhat fearful for the young of the house-martins. Apparently they were not raided a year ago, and so have ventured again. House-martins are certainly not indigenous to Madagascar ; during my twenty-two years out here I have never seen them until a year ago, or heard of them, so I can only conjecture that they have crossed 'the Straits of Madagascar."
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