Destruction by Man 41 



life. It is said that on one morning soon after its 

 erection, there were picked up at its base one 

 thousand four hundred birds which had been 

 killed the night before. 



The thousands of miles of telegraph, tele- 

 phone, electric light, and trolley wires, stretched 

 in every direction across civilized countries, kill 

 many birds which accidentally fly against them. 

 More than once I have picked up dead snipe 

 immediately below telegraph wires, and a neigh- 

 bor recently picked up a badly wounded wood- 

 cock beneath the telephone wire in his garden. 

 Tall wire fences are another cause of destruction. 

 Close to a small inclosure one hundred feet 

 square and surrounded by wire netting six feet 

 high, I picked up in one summer five dead or 

 wounded birds. The eight-and-a-half-foot wire 

 fence surrounding the Corbin Game Preserve in 

 New Hampshire probably accounts for the lives 

 of many birds every year. I walked around it 

 one day and in the twenty-seven miles I flushed 

 a number of ruffed grouse. Five of them dashed 

 right into the fence, some of them with such 

 force as to leave tufts of feathers clinging to the 

 wires. None of these birds happened to kill 

 itself, but employees of the Corbins tell me that 

 they have many times picked up dead grouse 

 along the fence. A few days ago a boy working 



