WHY BIRDS GO TO THE ARCTIC REGIONS.
THE number of birds which go to the Arctic regions to breed is "vast beyond conception." They go not by thousands, but by millions, to rear their young on the tundra. The cause which attracts them is the fact that nowhere in the world does nature provide, at the same time and in the same place, "such a lavish prodigality of food." That the barren swamp of the tundra should yield a food supply so great as to tempt birds to make journeys of thousands of miles to rear their young in a land of plenty, only to be found beyond the Arctic Circle, seems incredible. The vegetation largely consists of cranberry, cloudberry, and crowberry bushes. Forced by the perpetual sunshine of the Arctic summer, these bear enormous crops of fruit. But the crop is not ripe until the middle and end of the Arctic summer, and if the fruit-eating birds had to wait until it was ripe, they would starve, for they arrive on the very day of the melting of the snow. But each year the snow descends on this immense crop of ripe food before the birds have time to gather it. It is then preserved beneath the snow, perfectly fresh and pure, and the melting of the snow discloses the bushes with the unconsumed last year's crop hanging on them, or lying, ready to be eaten, on the ground. The frozen meal stretches across the breadth of Asia. It never decays, and is accessible the moment the snow melts. Ages have taught the birds that they have only to fly to the Arctic Circle to find such a store of "crystallized foods" as will last them till the bushes are once more forced into bearing by the perpetual sunlight. The same heats which free the fruits bring into being the most prolific insect life in the world; the mosquito swarms on the tundra—no European can live there without a veil after the snow melts; the gun barrels are black with them, and the cloud often obscures the sight. Thus the insect-eating birds have only to open their mouths to fill them with mosquitoes, and the presence of swarms of tender little warblers, cliff-chaffs, pipits, and wagtails in this Arctic region is accounted for.—Selected.