Such birds are called birds of
passage; the Swallow is the one you know best, and it also is mentioned in
the verse in which so many migratory birds are grouped together, "The stork
in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and
the swallow observe the time of their coming." It is God who bids these
birds "observe the time of their coming": no one knows why they go south
for the winter, nor how they can tell their way over land and sea, and come
back again to the very place from whence they took their flight.
The Stork must be to the People in Palestine just such a "guest of summer"
as the swallow is with us, for it regularly arrives about the end of March,
and flies away in the autumn.
Ships make their long voyages to the other end of the world and back with
wonderful regularity, but though the helmsman has a compass to guide him,
they do not arrive in port so exactly at their appointed time as the little
swallow, who has only the sense which we call "instinct" to guide it; only
its own light, strong wings to carry it on its swift way, flying a mile a
minute--for even to its little bones and feathers, every part of its body
is filled with air, rendering it the most buoyant of winged creatures.
I met with a beautiful passage about migratory birds in a book I was
reading lately. The writer says, "Were they planets revolving round the
sun, their arrival could hardly be more accurately calculated by the
astronomer.
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