35^ General Notes. [October 



window. The upper sash was down about iS inches, and when I opened 

 the inside Venetians a bird flew in. I saw some others flying against 

 the glass, and throwing up the lower sash of the window I stepped on 

 the balcony and easily caught two birds — all that were there then. At 

 another window at the head of my bed I heard at least one bird, but I could 

 not easily reach it, and it soon went away or dropped to the ground. 



I placed the two I had caught under a glass shade, where they continued 

 their fruitless efforts against the glass until I covered it up with a dark 

 colored cloth. The bird in the room kept up an incessant fluttering 

 against the walls and ceiling and eluded me completely. At daylight I 

 noticed the ceiling streaked on the window side with blood — some two 

 or three hundred marks altogether, from two inches long and three- 

 eighths of an inch wide down to almost imperceptible dots. With the aid 

 of a friend I secured the poor little frightened thing and put it also under 

 a glass shade, first compelling it to swallow some water. It was a Tennes- 

 see Warbler, and the feathers and skin were completely torn off its head 

 and showed a large and nasty wound already dry and healing. When 

 taking it out in the afternoon to try and feed it, for it would eat nothing 

 I put under the shade for it, it got out of my hand and again flew about 

 the top of the room. At four in the afternoon I let the two under the 

 shade out, and one found its way to the open window and flew a couple 

 of hundred yards, when it got beyond my sight. The other joined the 

 Warbler, but neither would fly low enough to get out at the top of the 

 windows. Neither flew so as to hurt itself. At last the smaller bird got 

 out, but the Warbler did not follow it. I left the windows wide open and 

 when I came back, just before dark, it was gone. They were all this 

 year's birds, the two caught on the window being Flycatchers — one quite 

 young with the down still showing between the feathers, but flying well. 



It turned out that during the night a general scare of birds had taken 

 place, and I was asked all sorts of questions on the subject. A number 

 of birds were brought to me to be identified. Some were rare visitors 

 here — the Hermit Thrush, for instance. I was handed a pretty specimen 

 of the Golden-crowned Thrush, but the crown was marred by a ghastly 

 wound on which the blood was still fresh; in trying to escape from the 

 hand its whole tail came out. It flew about the room, this was the 27th, 

 until evening when it at last went out at the window. 



On the evening of the 26th I took a walk to my friends, the taxider- 

 mists, and I learned from them that they had been offered large numbers 

 of birds during the day by small boys who had caught them on the streets 

 or on hawthorn bushes. One little fellow saw the birds during the day 

 falling off the bushes exhausted. They flew in a circle and were quite 

 dazed. One man said he counted fifty dead birds lying against the wall 

 of a building as he walked past. During the night the 'Free Press 

 premises were invaded by them until the windows had to be shut. 

 Through this paper I asked for information as to where the scare origi- 

 nated, but so far no one has replied. 



My own opinion is that the birds were overtaken while roosting by a 



