Bird Notes <^ News 



ISSUED QUARTERLY BY THE ROYAL SOCIETY 

 :: FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Vol. V. ] 



MARCH, 1913. 



[No. 5. 



Birds at the Lighthouse. 



" One of the greatest of all dangers [to 

 migrating birds] is the numerous lighthouses 

 and Hght-vessels on and off our owti and other 

 coasts. These, under certain conditions of 

 weather are veritable shambles. Those who 

 have not witnessed a ' bird-night ' at a 

 light-station cannot form any conception 

 of the appalling loss of life that takes place." 

 Studies in Bird Migration (W. Eagle Clarke). 



For years this great and grievous des- 

 truction of bird life has been noted and 

 deplored. Mr. Eagle Clarke estimates it 

 at hundreds of thousands in a season 

 at the British stations alone, and he de- 

 scribes how he has watched through a 

 whole night the oncoming streams of 

 birds flying at and around the lantern 

 and falling thickly, to perish miserably 

 in the sea beneath. 



Few people are insensible to the 

 mystery and pathos that surround the 

 migratory birds, especially the small 

 frail creatures that cross land and sea 

 in the springtime, from the country of 

 the Pharoahs or of Omar Khayyam it 

 may be, to flood our land with the sense 

 and the songs of summer. Few people 

 do not heed the first call of the Chiffchaff, 

 the first sight of the Swallow's glancing 

 wings, the first soft cadence of the Willow- 

 Wren. And of all the perils and sorrows 

 of bird-life (apart from those occasioned 

 by man's cruelty), it has seemed the 

 saddest and most pitiful that these great 

 companies of feathered travellers, weary 

 and hungry after their long flight — often 



on the very edge of their native land, to 

 which imperious instinct has bid them 

 return to build their nests and rear their 

 young — should be caught and dazed and 

 destroyed by the radiance of lights set 

 up for the saving of human life. With 

 the advance of science and the vastly- 

 increased power and brilliance of the great 

 lanterns, man has been the better safe- 

 guarded ; but the peril to the bird has 

 become greater and greater. 



It has been supposed that the fate of 

 the migrants, though deplorable, was 

 imavoidable, that it was caused almost 

 entirely by the birds directly striliing 

 the lantern and being maimed or stunned 

 by the impact. A different view has, 

 however, been taken by the distinguished 

 Dutch naturalist. Professor Jac. P. Thijsse, 

 who holds that by far the greater number 

 are only attracted to the light, and that 

 they circle about it for hours until, 

 exhausted, they fall and perish. Possibly 

 it is not merely the compelling power of 

 the Kght that draws them ; it may 

 confuse and trouble their sense of direc- 

 tion ; it may even imaginably delude 

 them into some belief that morning has 

 arrived and with it the end of their 

 journey, and that they fly round seek- 

 ing the expected alighting-place. Heer 

 Thijsse accordingly devised a series of 

 resting-places to be fitted on the lantern 

 itself, without interfering with its illumi- 

 nating power, where the baffled and 



