8o Bird - Lore 



seeds of beech, chestnut, maple, elm, and other hardwoods, of pine and hem- 

 lock, and of the fruits and berries of bushes and shrubs. Angleworms, snails, 

 caterpillars, and soft-bodied insects, such as grasshoppers, helped to vary the 

 vegetarian diet. From the frequent mineral springs and licks the bird grati- 

 fied its craving for salt, a condiment eagerly sought by all grain feeders. 



The winter range of the bird comprised the territory south of Mason and 

 Dixon's hne, a land well stocked with its chief food supply during the inclement 

 seasons. In one of these natural granaries the flocks would settle down and 

 forage until the mast within a radius of two hundred miles and over had been 

 consumed. While feeding in concert, the rear ranks successively rose and, 

 passing over the whole flock, alighted in front, giving every bird an equal 

 chance. Like an enormous wheel in slow motion, the birds moved through the 

 wood and rapidly gathered its plenteous stores; toward night the swarms 

 would return to the roost. 



The following description of such a locality is given by Faux, an English 

 traveler who, about 1819, visited one of them in Tennessee. "The roost extends 

 over a portion of woodland or barrens from four to six miles in circumference 

 . . . The birds roost on the high forest trees, which they cover in the same 

 manner as bees in swarms cover a bush, being piled one on the other from 

 the lower to the topmost boughs which, so laden, are continually bending 

 and falling with their crushing weight, and presenting a scene of confusion and 

 destruction too strange to describe, and too dangerous to be approached by 

 either man or beast. While the living birds are gone to their distant dinner, 

 it is common for man and animals to gather up or devour the dead, thus found 

 in cartloads." 



Scattered in huge flocks throughout the hospitable south during autumn 

 and winter, at the advent of spring the birds assembled in several stupendous 

 hosts, which dispersed northward to find new pastures and breeding grounds. 

 In this vernal journey, the flocks were so densely packed and followed one 

 another so swiftly that they darkened the sky like a pall of thunderclouds, 

 and by their impact produced the roar of an advancing storm with its at- 

 tending wind. 



Of the few attempts to compute the number of birds in one of the spring 

 hosts, that of McGee who, in the sixties, frequently observed them coming 

 up the Mississippi Valley, one of the old migration routes, probably comes near- 

 est the truth. Assuming the cross section of an average flock to measure one 

 hundred yards from front to rear, and fifty yards in height, he finds the same 

 to comprise some 8,800,000 birds to the mile, or 30,000,000 for a flock extend- 

 ing from one woodland to another. "Such flocks passed repeatedly during the 

 greater part of the day of chief flight at intervals of a few minutes. The aggre- 

 gate nimiber of birds must have approached one hundred and twenty millions 

 an hour for five hours, or 600,000,000 Pigeons virtually visible from a single 

 point in the culminating part of a single typical migration." During its pass- 



