196 Henshaw on Causes affect i??g the Decrease of Birds. 



limited points of observation give such results what estimate will 

 suffice to comprehend the number of the Ocean's victims in its 

 vast expanse of storm-visited surface ! That millions of birds 

 are annually thus destroyed cannot be doubted, and it is in this 

 way I would account for the numerical fluctuations noticed in 

 the beginning of this article. 



The migrations of birds have been well likened to the waves 

 of the ocean, each billow of this living sea being made up of 

 different species, the individuals of each species coming from 

 more or less contiguous ones. This latter statement is proven 

 from the fact that the main body of a given species arrives at a 

 locality in the spring, as it leaves it in the fall, almost simultane- 

 ously, a single day usually sufficing to see a neighborhood stocked 

 with its full quota, the onset of the numerous clans having been 



" It was a strange and pitiful sight. Some were so fresh and perfect, and their 

 feathers so unruffled, that it seemed impossible that they had been drowned. There 

 were multitudes of wrens, with narrow, gauzy wings spread out, so that the wind swept 

 them up and down on the sand, like autumn leaves sere and brown. Tiny creepers, 

 looking ghastly with only a head and wing unburied, and moving as if alive; kinglets 

 with their bright crowns defaced huddled into a group, where I counted a robin with 

 fair unruffled breast, a kingbird, a summer yellowbird, and one orange-crowned war- 

 bler. The greatest number of any one species was the yellow-winged sparrow, both 

 young and old. The grass finch and the song sparrow were abundant, as was also the 

 familiar little pair bird. Of the goniaphea I do not remember a single specimen. 

 They leave before September, I think. There were cowbirds, and one or two black- 

 birds, and no orioles. Blue jays one or two, much worn and defaced, and the common 

 phebe more numerous. Belted king-fishers I saw once or twice, and of the picidse, the 

 red-head and the golden-winged, a single specimen each, as well as two of the downy 

 woodpeckers. 



" There were none of the varieties of the hirundinidce, and but one or two of the 

 thrushes, except the robin, which was rather numerous. Evidently that bird comes 

 earlier and stays later than any others of his family. A single catbird came under my 

 notice. 



" I have observed that all through the summer more or less birds are drowned and 

 thrown up on the beach. How many it is impossible to say, as they are soon covered 

 with sand or carried away by prowling wildcats, whose tracks I constantly saw there. 

 It is unlikely that during the breeding season any bird ventures so far from home as to 

 cross the lake, and as there are no bays, and a sandy beach skirts all the wooded shores, 

 the birds are not lost in flying voluntarily over the water, but are blown out and ex- 

 hausted by baffling winds, fall down, and perish 



" If one had time to follow the beach during the season a pretty fair knowledge of 

 the birds that haunt the shores of Lake Michigan might be gained. My observation 

 was necessarily limited to a small space, but a wider research would no doubt give 

 many other varieties of birds that perish in the lake. This is a very large percentage 

 of loss no doubt, and must be reckoned as only the part belonging to Lake Michigan, 



since the same thing happens on all the great lakes to some extent " — Chicago 



Tribune, Sept. 3, 188 1. 



