IS 



THE WILSON BULLETIN No. 59. 



lantern fell struggling to the stage below. Many of these were 

 killed outright, but he says that sometimes he would gather up 

 the stunned ones and carry them inside and has had more than 

 a hundred flying about his small quarters at a time. 



As far as we can see, the night departures of birds in the 

 fall are made almost independent of the weather. Several 

 times we congratulated ourselves that the night was too bad 

 for birds to leave the Point and cross the troubled waters of 

 the lake and that the next day we would have a chance to see 

 some rare species again only, when morning dawned, to find 

 that we were to be disappointed and where birds were 

 abundant the day before they -were scarce then. This latter 

 fact is easily explainable on considering the short flights from 

 island to island and the number of havens of rest offered should 

 the weather prove too unpropitious. 



Usually, companies of migrating birds seem to be moving in 

 given- and definite directions and! one acquainted with the 

 ground can often locate a group again after it has once passed. 

 On Point Pelee, however, they seem to move erratically about, 

 sonnetimtes traveling up and sometimes down the Point. They 

 seem to have reached the end of their land journey and have 

 nothing to do but kill time until they are ready to take up 

 their next stage across the water. 



These facts stand out plainly in our work on Point Pelee : 

 the evident "wave" form of the migrations, the great con- 

 gestion . of bird life during migrations, their erratic wander- 

 ing while on the Point in the fall and their departure, as 

 far as we could see, regardless of weather. 



All these facts point to the conclusion that here is the con- 

 traction and consequent condensation of a great migration 

 route and the congestion of bird life in spring and a few days 

 in the fall suggests the great area of territory to the north that 

 must be supplied in the spring and drained in the fall of its 

 birds by this stream. The occurrence of so many rarities 

 within a small locality is also interesting and suggestive, 

 showing how such wandering waifs "follow the crowd" and 

 progress along routes unknown to their ancestors and along 

 these highways sometimes establish permanent homes in new 



