36 Proceedings of the 



the early years of its statehood, the observations of Professor 

 Lawrence Bruner, who distinctly remembers the flights which oc- 

 curred in the vicinity of Omaha during the years 1866-1868. 

 when he was a boy ten or twelve years old, are indicative. The 

 birds would arrive about the time the later willows began t3 

 bloom (latter April), being present in force for a week or ten 

 days only, for by the time all of the wild plum blossoms had 

 fallen (middle ATay) the birds were gone. Usually the heaviest 

 flights occurred coincident with the beginning of corn planting 

 time, and enormous flocks of these birds would settle on the 

 newly plowed fields and on the dry burnt-oft' prairies, where 

 they searched industriously for insects. 



These flocks reminded the settlers of the flights of Passenger 

 Pigeons and the curlews were given the name of "Prairie 

 Pigeons." They contained thousands of indi^•iduals, and would 

 often form dense masses of birds extending for a quarter to a 

 half mile in length and a hundred yards or more in width. When 

 the flock would alight the birds would cover forty or fifty acres 

 of ground. During such flights the slaughter of these poor birds 

 was appalling and almost unbelievable. Hunters would drive out 

 from Omaha and shoot the birds without mercy until thev had 

 literal!}' slaughtered a wagon load of them ; the wagons being 

 actually filled and often wiih the sideboards on at that. Some- 

 times when the flight was unusually heavy and the hunters were 

 well supi^lied with ammunition their wagons were too quickly 

 and easily filled, so whole loads of the birds would be dumped on 

 the prairie, their bodies forming piles as large as a couple of tons 

 of coal, where they would be allowed to rot while the hunters 

 proceeded to refill their wagons with fresh victims and thus 

 further gratify their lust of killing. The compact flocks and 

 tameness of the birds made this slaughter possible, and at each 

 shot usually dozens of the birds would fall. In one specific in- 

 stance a single shot from an old muzzle-loading shotgun into a 

 flock of these curlews as they veered by the hunter brought down 

 twenty-eight birds at once, while for the next half mile every 

 now and then a fatally wounded bird would drop to the ground 

 dead. So dense were the flocks when the birds were turning in 



