26 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE. 



ance behind them, are pushing continually into colder and hungrier regions, 

 and are Hkely at any moment to be met with climatic conditions that test 

 their strength and endurance to the utmost and often exact the extreme 

 penalty of death. Take an instance in illustration of this statement. April 

 2, 1881, Mr. A. M. Frazar was a passenger on a sailing vessel about thirty 

 miles off the mouths of the Mississippi, with a moderate east wind blowing 

 and no land birds in sight. Suddenly, about noon, the wind changed to the 

 north and increased to a gale, and within an hour birds of many species 

 appeared, singly and in small flocks, having come down from far overhead 

 to escape the force of the wind. All were flying toward the land, directly 

 to windward, and in the teeth of the growing storm. "Within a few hours," 

 says Mr. Frazar, "it had become a serious matter with them, as they could 

 make scarcely any progress. As long as they were in the trough of the sea 

 the wind had little effect on them, but as soon as they reached the crest of a 

 wave it would catch them up and in an instant they were blown hundreds 

 of yards back or else into the water and drowned. * * * j^ -^vas sad 

 indeed to see them struggling along by the side of the vessel in trying to pass 

 ahead of her, for as soon as they were clear of the bows they were invariably 

 blown back into the water and drowned. Most of those which came aboard 

 (considerably over a hundred) were washed into the sea again."* Twenty- 

 three different species were identified, including warblers, finches, flycatchers, 

 and a single swallow, hawk, dove and turnstone. Probably these were all 

 migrants which had nearly crossed the Gulf of Mexico from the Peninsula 

 of Yucatan, only to be swallowed up by the angry sea when almost within 

 sight of their goal. 



Another observer describes the disaster caused to birds on Lake Michigan 

 by a violent storm in September, 1879, as follows: "The eastern shore of 

 Lake Michigan was strewn with dead birds. I took pains to count those on 

 a certain number of yards, and estimated that if the eastern shore was alike 

 through all its length, over a half a million birds were lying dead on that 

 side of the lake alone. It is more than likely that nearly as many more were 

 on the west. It was a strange and pitiful sight." There were wrens, creepers, 

 kinglets, robins, kingbirds, warblers, sparrows, finches, woodpeckers, and even 

 a few blue jays and kingfishers. Here apparently temperature played no 

 part, but wind and heavy rain bafliled the little migrants whichever way they 

 turned, and finally beat them down into the relentless waves. 



Still another example of the dangers run by birds in migration is found 

 in the record of a disaster on the eastern shore of Lake Huron in the autumn 

 of 1906.t On the 19th of October, 1908, Mv. W. E. Saunders of London, 

 Ontario, received word from a correspondent at Forest that he had spent the 

 previous day on the Lake Huron shore near Port Franks and had observed 

 hundreds of bii'ds on the shore dead, cast up by the waves. He estimated 

 five thousand dead birds to the mile and on the 21st Mr. Saunders visited the 

 region and examined the beach southward from Grand Bend. His account 

 of the disaster is given in his own words: "After covering several miles 

 and seeing only a few dead birds, I came at length to the region of death. 

 At first the birds were not very close together, but eventually became so 

 plentiful that in one place I put my foot on four, and saw as many as a dozen 

 in four or five feet. I began a census at once, which I continued until the 

 lengthening shadows warned me to hurry on to the river so as to cross 

 in dayhght, but in the two or three hours spent in the count I recorded 1,845 



*Bul. Nutt. Orn. Club. VI, 1881. 250-251. 



t A Migration Disaster in Western Ontario. Tlie Auk, XXIV, 1907. 108-110. 



