Popular Science Monthly 



Vol. 9 



No. 6 



239 Fourth Avenue, New York City 



December, 1917 



$1.50 

 Annually 



Fishing for Birds of Prey in the Air 



The possibilities of a new sport suggested 

 by the killing of birds by flying machines 



By Carl Dienstbach 



WHAT is the speed of a bird? Mr. 

 H. H. Clayton, of Bluehill Ob- 

 servatory, saw wild ducks flying at 

 a height of 958 feet. He was at the time 

 engaged in measuring the height and 

 velocity of clouds and was able to estimate 

 the speed of the birds as nearly forty-eight 

 miles an hour. Prof. J. Stebbins and Mr. 

 E. A. Fath made careful observations with 

 the telescope and found that birds pass at 

 rates varying from eighty to one hundred 

 and thirty miles per hour and these were 



minimums. Heavy _ 



bomb-dropping air- 

 planes travel at the 

 rate of ninety miles 

 an hour and fast 

 fighters at nearly one 

 hundred and forty 

 miles. Clayton's 

 ducks were poor air- 

 planes, as flying 

 speeds go. Is it any 

 wonder, then, that 

 even a fast bird 

 should be overtaken 

 in its flight by a still 

 faster machine and 

 killed in an aerial 

 rear-end collision? 



It is*a wonder that 

 birds are not more 

 often overtaken as 

 was the unfortunate 

 creature which, as 

 our photograph 

 shows, was caught in 



airplanes connected by a long wire, and 

 enmesh the condors and eagles that soar 

 over inaccessible mountain peaks? That 

 ought to be a fascinating sport. Great 

 birds of prey are fighting creatures. Ved- 

 rines found that out some years ago when 

 he flew across the Pyrennes. He was' 

 actually attacked by eagles and had to 

 shoot them with a pistol. 



The sport is all the more possible when it 



is considered how dependable is the modern 



fast flying machine. Chavez, the first man 



who ever flew across 



Underwood & Underwood 



An eagle caught and 

 bracing of a modern 



a military flying 



machine. With its wide expanse of super- 

 posed wings, criss-crossed with stay-wires, 

 a biplane is not unlike a very wide-meshed 

 net. That being the case, why should it 

 not be possible to trail fine piano-wire nets, 

 spread by small kite-buoys between two 



the Alps, was killed 

 in some unknown 

 manner as he de- 

 scended into Italy. 

 But the modern fly- 

 ing machine is more 

 powerfully controll- 

 ed and has a more 

 dependable motor 

 than the airplane in 

 which Chavez made 

 his tragic flight. 

 Witness the daily 

 performances of Aus- 

 trian and Italian avi- 

 ators in flying over 

 the dizzy peaks of 

 the Austrian battle- 

 grounds. Vedrines' 

 experience shows 

 that an eagle regards 

 an airplane much as 

 a dog an automobile 

 — something not to be frightened at but 

 to be challenged. 



Think, too, of the possibilities of cap- 

 turing with a net whole flocks of game 

 ducks and geese as well as wild pigeons. 

 Even the use of hook, line and bait, as well 

 as of the net, appears feasible in the air. 



held fast in the wire 

 airplane in its flight 



803 



