Nevertheless, in
September, and even as early as August, they begin to arrive on the
pampas, the golden plover often still wearing his black nuptial dress;
singly and in pairs, in small flocks, and in clouds they come--curlew,
godwit, plover, tatler, tringa--piping the wild notes to which the
Greenlander listened in June, now to the gaucho herdsman on the green
plains of La Plata, then to the wild Indian in his remote village; and
soon, further south, to the houseless huanaco-hunter in the grey
wilderness of Patagonia.
Here is a puzzle for ornithologists. In summer on the pampas we have a
godwit--Limosa hudsonica; in March it goes north to breed; later in the
season flocks of the same species arrive from the south to winter on the
pampas. And besides this godwit, there are several other North American
species, which have colonies in the southern hemi-spere, with a reversed
migration and breeding season. Why do these southern birds winter so far
south? Do they really breed in Patagonia? If so, their migration is an
extremely limited one compared with that of the northern birds--seven or
eight hundred miles, on the outside, in one case, against almost as many
thousands of miles in the other. Considering that some species which
migrate as far south as Patagonia breed in the Arctic regions as far
north as latitude 82 degrees, and probably higher still, it would be
strange indeed if none of the birds which winter in Patagonia and on the
pampas were summer visitors to that great austral continent, which has
an estimated area twice as large as that of Europe, and a climate milder
than the arctic one.
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