392 BULLETIN 16 2, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



produced a strongly unusual atmospheric draught of air. * * * The 

 pigeons arrived by millions, precipitating themselves, the ones upon the others, 

 pressed together like the bees in a swarm that escape from the hives in the 

 month of May. The over-loaded tree-tops of the roosting place broke, and, 

 falling to earth, pulled down at the same time the pigeons and the branches 

 which found themselves below them. The noise was so great that even the next 

 neighbors could not hear each other if they cried out with all the power of 

 their lungs. 



Sutton (1928) quoting: from an account of a roost by Dr. Samuel 

 P. Bates says : " In the hot summer nights the constant flapping of 

 their wings produced by being crowded from their perches, gave 

 forth a sound not unlike the distant roar of Niagara." John C. 

 French (1919) speaking of a flight from a roost in 1866 in Potter 

 County, Pa., says : " Each morning a valley a mile wide between the 

 hills was filled strata above strata, eight courses deep at times, for 

 about an hour with the multitude of birds flowing westward at the 

 rate of a mile a minute, going for food. The roar of wings was like 

 a tornado in the tree tops and the morning was darkened as by a 

 heavy thunder-shower.' 1 ' These accounts, coming from different inde- 

 pendent sources, are so similar that we are compelled to believe what 

 seems to pass belief. 



Although some of the great flights described above are the migra- 

 tory flights of spring and autumn, as for example those described by 

 Higginson and Wood, many of them are merely flights to and from 

 the roosts or nesting grounds to the feeding grounds. The locality 

 of these feeding grounds, as well as the winter residence, depended 

 on the abundance of mast, which varied from year to year in differ- 

 ent forests. As the mast could not be picked up from the ground if 

 it were covered with snow, the birds migrated south of the snow line. 

 Thus Mearns (1879) notes that the pigeon was rare in winter in the 

 Hudson Valley except in very mild weather when the ground 

 was bare. 



Beechnuts were particularly sought by the pigeons. H. J. Jewett 

 (1918) describes as follows the activities of a flock of about 120, 

 feeding on these nuts : 



They lighted in the top of a large beech tree; and, finding the beechnuts had 

 fallen out of the hulls, dropped in rapid succession from branch to branch till 

 all had reached the ground. I never have seen more intense activity or seeming 

 system in feeding than these birds displayed. They worked in a wing-shaped 

 group, moving nervously forward in one direction around the tree, gleaning 

 the entire nut-eovered space as they went. Those falling to the rear of the 

 flock, where the nuts were picked up. kept flopping across to the front so as 

 to get the advantage of the unpicked ground. A few that wandered apart in 

 search of scattered nuts kept scurrying about and tilting as they picked them 

 up and then hurried back to the flock as if they feared that the flock would soon 

 be through feeding and off on the wing. This restless, voracious activity con- 

 tinued till the flock took fright and burst into the air. 



