390 BULLETIN 162, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



When they alighted on the trees their weight was so heavy that not only 

 big limbs and branches of the size of a man's thigh were broken straight off, 

 but less firmly rooted trees broke down completely under the load. 



The ground below the trees where they had spent the night was entirely 

 covered with their dung, which lay in great heaps. 



Wilson (1832) thus describes a flock of pigeons that passed over 

 him as he was on his way to Frankfort, Ky. : 



Coming to an opening by the side of a creek called the Benson, where I had 

 a more uninterrupted view, I was astonished at their appearance. They were 

 flying with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height beyond gunshot, in 

 several strata deep, and so close together, that could a shot have reached 

 them, one discharge could not have failed of bringing down several individuals. 

 From right to left as far as the eye could reach, the breadth of this vast 

 procession extended, seeming everywhere equally crowded * * *. It was 

 then half past one. I sat for more than an hour, but instead of diminution of 

 this- prodigious procession, it seemed rather to increase both in numbers and 

 rapidity; and, anxious to reach Frankfort before night, I rose and went on. 

 About four o'clock in the afternoon I crossed the Kentucky river, at the town of 

 Frankfort, at which time the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous 

 and as extensive as ever. Long after this I observed them, in large bodies that 

 continued to pass for six or eight minutes, and these again were followed by 

 other detached bodies, all moving in the same south-east direction, till after 

 six in the evening. 



Wilson calculated that this great mass of birds contained the 

 incredible number of 2,230,272,000 individuals, and his method of 

 calculation seems to be a conservative one. He assumed the flock to 

 be a mile in breadth, although he believed it was much more. 

 Supposing it was moving at the rate of a mile a minute, as it was four 

 hours in passing, he estimated that its whole length would have been 

 240 miles. He also assumed that each square yard contained three 

 pigeons. As the flock was several strata deep there must have been 

 many more than this. 



Wilson (1832) says: 



In descending the Ohio by myself, in the month of February, I often rested 

 on my oars to contemplate their aerial manoeuvres. A column, eight or ten miles 

 in length, would appear from Kentucky, high in air, steering across to Indiana. 

 The leaders of this great body would sometimes gradually vary their course, 

 until it formed a large bend of more than a mile in diameter, those behind 

 tracing the exact route of their predecessors. This would continue sometimes 

 long after both extremities were beyond the reach of sight, so that the whole, 

 with its glittering undulations, marked by a space on the face of the heavens 

 resembling the winding of a vnst and majestic river. * * * . Sometimes a 

 hawk would make a swoop on a particular part of the column, from a great height, 

 when almost as quick as lightning, that part shot downwards out of the common 

 track, but soon rising again, continued advancing at the same height as before; 

 this inflection was continued by those behind, who on arriving at this point, 

 dived down almost perpendicularly, to a great depth, and rising followed the 

 exact path of those that went before. 



