78 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Aug. 



in this direction can be arrived at. Some of the notes on a few 

 of these flights may be of interest to the readers of The Ottawa 

 Naturalist. 



Sharp-shinned Hawk. (Accipiter velox). 



Flights of hawks are not rare in literature, but the great 

 majority of them are irregular in occurrence and rarely seem to 

 occur twice in the same place or in successive years. At Point 

 Pelee, however, a flight of this species can be looked for regularly, 

 beginning about Sept. 10th and lasting irregularly for about a 

 week. About the middle of October another flight usually 

 occurs, lasting several days and then gradually diminishing until 

 cold weather sets in. The writer first saw this flight on September 

 9th, 1905. Sharp-shins were but normallv common and we saw 

 but one or two each day. The next morning, however, we found 

 them everywhere on the Point: beating about the edges of the 

 shrubberies, darting through the coverts like shadows and 

 winging their way up and down the Point just over the tree tops, 

 while high in the air their forms could be seen at all altitudes 

 until they looked like mere specks in the sky. Standing in a 

 small opening in the woods and looking out over an open field we 

 could count from twenty-five to thirty individuals at any time 

 of the day. During the flight there is usually a steady stream 

 of hawks crossing from the end of the Point out towards the Ohio 

 shore opposite, and during the height of the migration a man can 

 stand near the end of the Point and shoot Sharp-shins almost as 

 fast as he can load and fire. On September 18, 1906, Mr. W. E. 

 Saunders, in company with Mr. B. H. Swales and the writer, 

 counted, between 11.24 and 11.54 a.m., 133 Sharp-shins that left 

 the main land for across the lake. Besides these, 74 more went 

 out to the end of the Point and returned again, without crossing. 

 An interesting point to observe is that this early September 

 flight is composed almost entirely of juvenile birds in the brown 

 plumage and it was not until October 16, 1908, that we saw 

 any adults at all. This flight was not quite as heavy as that of 

 the early young birds but we noted over a hundred birds daily, 

 nearly all being adult males. At our station at the end of the 

 Point the birds pass so close that there is no difficulty in distin- 

 guishing either plumage or sex; many of them pass within almost 

 arm's reach. 



The effect of this great increase of raptorial life on the small 

 birds is most interesting. Up to their advent the woods are 

 usually swarming with the small species of warblers, flycatchers, 

 etc., but as soon as the Sharp-shins put in an appearance these 

 disappear to almost nothing and the woods are almost lifeless. 

 Most of the small birds seem to leave immediately and what 



