THE AUK: 



A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF 

 ORNITHOLOGY. 



Vol. xxiv. October, 1907. No. 4. 



A LAPLAND LONGSPUR TRAGEDY: 



Being an Account of a Great Destruction of these Birds dur- 

 ing a Storm in Southwestern Minnesota and Northwestern 

 Iowa in March, 1904. 1 



BY THOMAS S. ROBERTS, M. D. 

 Director, Department Birds, Minnesota Natural History Survey. 



Plates XIII and XIV. 



A considerable amount of interesting and highly valuable 

 information in regard to the always mysterious migratory move- 

 ments of birds has been obtained of late years by studying the 

 destructive effects of great or unseasonable elemental disturbances; 

 such disturbances operating either alone or, more frequently, in 

 conjunction with various artificial obstructions of human devising. 

 Lighthouses, prominent electric lights in cities and villages, bril- 

 liantly illuminated buildings and similar lures, together with the 

 net-work of wires, that now form a huge cobweb over such a large 

 portion of the surface of the globe, serve, especially in times of 

 unusual darkness and storm, to lead to their death countless 

 thousands of the hurrying, migrating hosts. The light of morning 

 permits an inventory of the dead and dying that reveals, not infre- 

 quently, facts that are new in regard to the movement, distribution 

 and comparative abundance of little known species and much in 

 regard to many others that may be surprising and that could have 

 been learned in scarcely any other way. 



It is my purpose in this article to present to the Union an account 

 of one of these great bird catastrophies that, by reason of its extent 



1 Read at the Twenty-third Congress of the A. O. U., New York, Nov. 16, 1905. 



