PASSENGER PIGEON 391 



On another occasion, he says, " while talking with the people within 

 doors, I was suddenly struck with astonishment at a loud rushing 

 roar, succeeded by instant darkness, which, on the first moment, I 

 took for a tornado about to overwhelm the house, and everything 

 around in destruction. The people, observing my surprise, coolly 

 said, ' It is only the pigeons.' " 



Audubon (1840) describes similar great multitudes of passenger 

 pigeons. In the autumn of 1813, while traveling 54 miles on the 

 banks of the Ohio River between Hardensburgh and Louisville, he 

 observed great flocks of pigeons flying southwest. He counted the 

 flocks for 21 minutes in the morning and found that 163 had passed. 



*' I traveled on," he says, " and still met more the farther I pro- 

 ceeded. The air was literally filled with pigeons ; the light of noon- 

 day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots not unlike 

 melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tend- 

 ency to lull my senses to repose." He reached Louisville at sunset. 

 " The pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers and con- 

 tinued to do so for three days in succession." 



Audubon (1840) describes as follows a roosting place on the banks 

 of the Green River in Kentucky : 



It was, as is always the case, in a portion of the forest where the trees 

 were of great magnitude, and where there was little underwood. I rode 

 through it upwards of forty miles, and, crossing it in different parts, found its 

 average breadth to be rather more than three miles * * *. The dung lay 

 several inches deep, covering the whole estent of the roosting-place. Many 

 trees two feet in diameter, I observed, were broken off at no great distance from 

 the ground, and the branches of many of the largest and tallest had given 

 way as if the forest had been swept by a tornado. Everything proved to me 

 that the number of birds resorting to this part of the forest must be immense 

 beyond conception. 



When the birds were coming to the roost, he continues — 

 the noise which they made, though yet distant, reminded me of a hard gale 

 at sea, passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel. As the birds 

 arrived and passed over me, I felt a current of air that surprised me * * *. 

 The pigeons, arriving by thousands, alighted everywhere, one above an- 

 other, until solid masses were formed on the branches all round. Here and 

 there the perches gave way under the weight with a crash, and, falling to the 

 ground, destroyed hundreds of birds beneath, forcing down the dense group 

 with which every stick was loaded. 



A similar account, confirming that of Audubon, is given by Revoil 

 (1869) of his experiences in 1847 of a pigeon roost near Hartford, 

 Ky. As the sun set, the birds began to come. 



Indeed, the horizon grew dark, and the noise made by the pigeons resembled 

 that of the terrible Mistral of the Provence, engulfing itself in the gorges of the 

 Apennines. 



When the column of the pigeons passed over my head, I felt a chill, caused 

 all at once by the astonishment and the cold, for this displacement of the air 



