Read Online Following the Sun by John Hanson Mitchell - Free Book Online Page A

parts begins in late February, and now, in late March, it had passed its peak, but there were still a lot of birds around. Actually, migration for many of these species probably began back in late January in Africa, where they had wintered. Their northward flights in fact have nothing to do with warming weather in Europe; birds are no better predictors of weather patterns than any other species, and considerably worse than weather forecasters. The thing that starts them moving is not weather, but the angle of the sun as it rides along the great road in the sky that astronomers call the ecliptic.
    As the light begins to increase in late winter, the changing length of day induces changes in the internal hormonal rhythms in a variety of migratory species. This in turn causes a phenomenon the Germans call Zugunruhe , a sort of premigratory restlessness that affects birds during seasons of migration. Ornithologists know of this because of experimental work that was carried out on a sparrowlike species known as the brambling. Researchers captured bramblings and kept them in aviaries and then artificially shortened the length of day throughout the normal spring migration period. Without their normal seasonal cycles of light and dark, the bramblings must have believed it was a very long winter indeed and failed to exhibit the migratory restlessness that they would normally have been feeling at that time of year. Furthermore, they did not experience the gonad enlargement that takes place in the spring mating season. Once they were put back into natural light, however, they began to get restless and accumulate fat, as they normally would do just before undertaking the hardships of migration. All this, as the researchers proved, had to do with the angle of the sun and the amount of light that occurs in the different seasons.
    Back on the road to the research station, after extricating myself from the thickets, I heard a loud popping and sputtering from behind and turned to see a much beaten truck rocking toward me, carrying in its bed the hives of bees. The kind driver offered me a ride and dropped me off at the station, the palatial hunting club of a former local grandee. Here I met with Torg, the Danish bird bander, a quiet man in his thirties with blond hair and steel-rimmed glasses. He and I talked about the migration of that year, of the various threats to European bird populations, and he broke out a bottle of tinto , uncorked it and set it out on a wooden table. There were no glasses, so he took the first drink in the Spanish style, that is, he held the neck of the bottle above his mouth and chug-a-lugged the wine without putting the bottle to his lips, an art of drinking I had never mastered in spite of the fact that I had lived in southern Spain. I said as much, and sucked from the bottle like any normal lush. Torg did not seem to mind.
    Torg had a pet egret that had been pacing around the tiled floor as we talked. In between drinking bouts, Torg spotted a gecko on the wall and swatted it to the floor. His sharp-eyed pet was on it in a flash, its spearlike beak darting and its wings propelling it forward. The egret held the gecko squirming broadwise in its bill for a second and then deftly flipped it around and swallowed it headfirst.
    â€œI do not like to kill,” said Torg. “But is this not life? You eat, you are eaten.”
    Torg offered to take me around the reserve in his Land Rover to look at some of the blinds he used. As we were leaving, he mumbled something about bringing someone along and pulled up to a little stucco house. A svelte Spanish woman opened the door and leaned against the jam with her arms folded. She wore the wide-brimmed Cordovan sombrero and high boots and tan riding pants and had the large, hooped golden earrings of the local women. In jest she threw her hip to the side and lifted a shoulder when she saw Torg. “What is it that you want, big boy?” she said in Spanish. (Torg and I