Aluminum Ring

A flock of strange, crested birds flapped jerkily, like tired oarsmen, westward from England to the Newfoundland Coast. They dropped to land, some to die immediately --bundles of white, bay and bottle green feathers. Some capered crazily on their spindly legs, soon to die with broad, round wing outstretched in a last flap and necks outstretched -- like architectural ornaments. A few lived. They were lapwings, whose eggs ("plovers' eggs") British gourmets find piquant. Only in isolated cases had lapwings before been seen in North America. They are natives of northern Europe and Asia and, ornithologists believed, lacked hardihood or strength to fly the Atlantic. That this flock had done so, W. H. D. Witherby, British ornithologist, asserted in London last week. He had just received a small aluminum ring found in Newfoundland on the leg of one of those wearied lapwings. He himself had fastened the ring on the bird more than a year ago.*

*Last week Frederick Charles Lincoln of the U. S. Biological Survey (a division of the Department of Agriculture) announced that 1,000 or more volunteer bird lovers had banded 270,000 birds. Details are in the Department's pamphlet ''Returns from Banded Birds 1923 to 1926," which may be had for the asking. The cumulative information describes the life histories and economic advantages of birds.