250 Stone, Some Light on Night Migration. [fuU 



The possibility of viewing the main flight as a whole might well 

 be looked upon as an idle dream, and yet this was my privilege on 

 the night of March 27 of the present year. 



Shortly after eight o'clock in the evening there occurred in the 

 western part of the city of Philadelphia, within half a mile of the 

 historic Bartram's garden, a great conflagration which burned 

 continuously until noon of the following day. The fire was con- 

 fined to a lumber yard, one of the largest in the city, and between 

 four and five acres of thoroughly seasoned hardwood lumber were 

 burning simultaneously throughout the night. The nature of the 

 fuel produced a tremendous illumination with very little smoke — 

 practically none of the dense black clouds that usually accompany 

 fires in a large city. 



The sky was brilliantly illuminated for a great distance in all 

 directions, and objects floating overhead, such as scraps of flying 

 paper, reflected the light as if aflame. Early in the night, numbers 

 of bats, doubtless driven out when the sheds caught fire, were to be 

 seen, and some English Sparrows, which had probably roosted 

 among the lumber piles, were circling about thoroughly bewildered, 

 looking exactly like flying embers, so brilliantly did their breasts 

 and wings reflect the glare of the flames. 



Presently I realized that the birds were increasing in numbers, 

 that the bulk of them were not English Sparrows, and that instead 

 of the bewildered, aimless flight of these miserable foreigners they 

 were passing steadily across the heavens from southwest to north- 

 east. At ten o'clock the flight was at its height and I estimated 

 that two hundred birds were in sight at any given moment as I 

 stood facing the direction from which they came with the fire to 

 my left. They flew in a great scattered, wide-spread host, never 

 in clusters, each bird advancing in a somewhat zigzag manner, 

 just as flights of warblers or finches pass across the open from one 

 copse or thicket to another. Far off in front of me I could see 

 them coming as mere specks, twinkling like the stars, and gradually 

 growing larger as they approached until their wings could be dis- 

 tinctly seen as they passed overhead. For some distance to the 

 right they could be seen passing steadily on, those most remote 

 appearing and disappearing as their moving wings caught the 

 reflection or lost it again. 



