108 BULLETIN 16 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAI, MUSEUM 



15, 1913. The course is generally southward to the shores of Long 

 Island Sound, thence turning westward along the coast, and then 

 southward along the New Jersey coast. On Fishers Island, at the 

 eastern entrance of Long Island Sound, according to A. L. and H. L. 

 Ferguson (1922) , they get three flights, as a rule, each fall : 



The first about September 13 ; the second about September 20, which has 

 always been the main flight; and the last flight, which is much smaller, near 

 the end of September, or early in October. 



* * * On any date after September 5, if a decided change of weather 

 occurs, and is followed by a clear, bright day with a northwest wind and large 

 white clouds, we invariably get a flight. That the wind plays the most im- 

 portant part we know from our records. On some days we have had the 

 flight commence early in the morning, only to have it stop completely when 

 the wind changed from north-west to north or north-east. For the last six 

 years we have made notes of the hawks passing over Fishers Island, and have 

 found that with only a few exceptions the flight has come when the wind was 

 from the northwest. The days when these exceptions occurred the surface 

 wind was northeast, and the hawks were flying at a great height, and at a 

 level where we believe the winds were moving from the northwest, though 

 this could not be determined, as there were no clouds. 



* * * The young birds are the first to come, and late in the flight sea- 

 son the adults are met with. It is most interesting to watch a good flight. 

 Some birds will be high up, sailing straight along, keeping up their momentum 

 with occassional beats of their wings. Others will be flying dose to the ground, 

 taking advantage of hollows and hillsides, to get the most favorable wind cur- 

 rents, while others may be seen darting through the patches of woods, hunting 

 for small birds. 



Most wonderful flights have been seen at Point Pelee, Ontario, 

 during September, where these hawks came along in such enormous 

 numbers that it seemed as if all the hawks in Ontario had gathered 

 at this point to cross Lake Erie. The flight begins about the first 

 of September, but the heaviest flight lasts for only three or four 

 days around the middle of the month, after which the numbers of 

 hawks gradually decrease. Taverner and Swales (1907) have given 

 a full account of it, from which I quote as follows : 



After the coming of the first in the fall their numbers steadily increased 

 until from six to a dozen can be noted in a day, which in most localities 

 would be accounted common. Then there came a day, Sept. 11, 1905, and 

 Sept. 15, 1906, when the morning's tramp found Sharp-shins everywhere. As 

 we walked through the woods their dark forms darted away between the tree 

 trunks at every few steps. Just over the tree tops, a steady stream of them 

 was beating up and down the length of the Point, while in the air they could 

 often be discerned at every height until the highest looked like a mote floating 

 in the light. As concrete illustrations of the number present : — In 1905 we 

 stood in a little open glade and at various times of the day counted from 

 twenty-five to thirty in sight at one time and Saunders writes, "When I saw 

 the flight in 1882 it was probably even greater than in 1905. There were more 

 Sharp-shinr, than one would suppose were in Ontario, and one day my brother 

 and I stood thirty paces apart, facing each other, with double-barrel, breech- 

 loaders, and for a short time the hawks passed so thick that we had to let 



