The inexperienced gunner will declare emphatically that any old
bird can fly at least a mile a second, but science is of the
opinion that the swift, the most speedy bird of all, can make
but 250 miles an hour. The swallow can cover ninety-two miles in
an hour and the eider-duck ninety miles. All birds of prey are
necessarily rapid in their flight; the eagle can attain a speed
of 140 miles per hour and the hawk 150 miles. The flight of most
migratory birds does not exceed fifty miles an hour, and the
crow can accomplish but twenty-five.
A falcon belonging to Henry IV of France escaped from
Fontainebleau and was found at Malta twenty-four hours later,
having covered a distance of at least 1,530 miles. Sir John
Ross, on October 6, 1850, dispatched from Assistance Bay two
young carrier-pigeons, one of which reached its dove-cote in
Ayrshire, Scotland, on the 13th. This was comparatively slow
time for the distance, two thousand miles. It is probable that
flights which have occasioned astonishment by greatly exceeding
the average have been materially assisted by aerial currents
moving in the same direction.--_Harper’s Weekly._
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