BIRD MIGR^ATION xvii 



"^ Even,- spring the lights of the Hghthouses along the coast lure to destruction myriads 



of birds en route from their winter homes in the south to their summer nesting places in 

 the north. Every fall a still greater death toll is exacted when the return journey is made. 

 Lighthouses are scattered every few miles along the more than 3,000 miles of coast Hne, 

 but two lighthouses, Fowey Rocks and Sombrero Key, cause far more bird tragedies than 

 any others. The reason is twofold — their geographic position and the character of their 

 lights. Both lights are situated at the southern end of Florida, where countless thousands 

 of birds pass each year to and from Cuba; and both are lights of the first magnitude on 

 towers 100-140 feet high. Fowey Rocks has a fixed white light, the deadliest of all. 

 A flashing light frightens birds away and a red light is avoided by them as would be a danger 

 signal, but a steady white light looming out of the mist or darkness seems like a magnet 

 drawing the wanderers to destruction. Coming from any direction they veer around to the 

 leeward side and then flying against the wind strike the glass, or more often exhaust themselves 

 like moths fluttering in and out of the bewildering rays. 



During the spring migration of 1903 two experienced ornithologists spent the entire 

 season on the coast of northwestern Florida, visiting every sort of bird haunt. They were 

 eminently successful in the long list of species identified, but their enumeration is still more 

 remarkable for what it does not contain. About 25 species of the smaller land birds of the 

 Eastern States were not seen, including a dozen common species. ■ Among these latter 

 were the Chat, the Redstart, and the Indigo Bunting, three species abundant throughout 

 the whole region to the northward. The explanation of their absence from the list seems 

 to be that these birds, on crossing the Gulf of Mexico, flew far inland before alighting and 

 thus passed over the observers. This would seem to disprove the popular belief that birds 

 under ordinary circumstances find the ocean flight excessively wearisome, and that after 

 laboring with tired pinions across the seemingly endless wastes they sink exhausted on reaching 

 terra firma. The truth seems to be that, endowed by nature with wonderful powers of 

 aerial locomotion, many birds under normal conditions not only cross the Gulf of Mexico 

 at its widest point but even pass without pause over the low swampy coastal plain to the 

 higher territon>^ beyond. 



So Httle averse are birds to an ocean flight that many fly from eastern Texas to the 

 Gulf coast of southern Mexico, though this 400 miles of water journey hardly shortens the 

 distance of travel by an hour's flight. Thus birds avoid the hot, treeless plains and scant 

 provender of southern Texas by a direct flight from the moist insect-teeming forests of 

 northern Texas to a similar country in southern Mexico. 



It may be well to consider the actual amount of energy expended by birds in their 

 migratory flights. Both the soaring and the sailing of birds show that they are proficient 

 in the use of several factors in the art of flying that have not yet been mastered either in 

 principle or practice by the most skillful of modern aviators. A Vulture or a Crane, after 

 a few preliminary wing beats, sets its wings and mounts in wide sweeping circles to a great 

 height, overcoming gravity with no exertion apparent to human vision even when assisted 

 by the most powerful telescopes. The Carolina Rail, or Sora, has small, short wings 

 apparently ill adapted to protracted flight, and ordinarily when forced to fly does so 

 reluctantly and alights as soon as possible. It flies with such awkwardness and apparently 

 becomes so quickly exhausted that at least one writer has been led to infer that most of its 

 migration must be made on foot; the facts are, however, that the Carolina Rail has one 

 of the longest migration routes of the whole Rail family and easily crosses the wide reaches 

 of the Caribbean Sea. The Hummingbird, smallest of all birds, crosses the Gulf of Mexico, 

 flying over 500 miles in a single night. As already noted, the Golden Plover flies from Nova 

 Scotia to South America, and in fair weather makes the whole distance of 2,400 miles without 

 a stop, probably requiring nearly if not quite 48 hours for the trip. 



Here is an aerial machine that is far more economical of fuel — i. e., of energ},- — than 

 the best aeroplane yet invented. The to-and-fro motion of the bird's wing appears to be an 



\'0I,. III. — .' 



