No. 4.] DESTRUCTIOX (W BIROS. 485 



that State in regard to the elleot on bird life produced by 

 the June storms. Mr. Robert AV. C'urtiss of Stratford says 

 that the martins there gradually disappeared for about four 

 days ; the last were seen on June 22. It was cold, wet and 

 stornn' there until June 25, as it was in Massachusetts. 

 One resident took down his bird boxes and found fifteen 

 young biids dead. No martins were seen alive after the 

 storm, and not over ten or fifteen })er cent of the usual 

 number of chimney swifts were seen flying about. Swallows 

 were i)erhaps seventy-five per cent less abundant than usual ; 

 but one pair of barn swallows reared two broods in his barn. 



As agjiinst this, IMrs. Mabel Osgood Wright asserts that 

 the destruction of bird life w^as not appreciable at Fairfield, 

 but many robins' nests were water-soaked and destroyed. 

 At NorAvalk, the nearest weather observers' station to Fair- 

 field, there were only two davs of heavy rain during the 

 month, — the 8th and 29th. Th^se were far apart, but there 

 were fifteen days on Avhich rain fell. 



Mr. B. S. Bowdish of Ncav York City read a paper before 

 the last cono-ress of the American Ornitholoofists' Union at 

 Washington, D. C, in which he described the destruction of 

 ymmg birds in the INIiddle States. This paper has not been 

 published, but ]Mr. Bowdish has kindh^ sent me some of the 

 correspondence he received in relation to the matter. From 

 this correspondence and my own some interesting facts have 

 been gathered.* 



Mr" John Lewis Childs of Floral Park, N. Y., finds no 

 evidence that an unusual number of young birds perished on 

 Long Island ; but he says that Mr. John BmToughs examined 

 many nests on the Hudson, and believes that large numbers 

 of nestlings died there. Mr. J. H. Clark of Paterson, N. J., 

 gives a detailed account of bird fatalities. 



Mr. Henry Hales of Ridgewood, N. J., notes the rise 

 of the Saddle River and the flooding of birds' nests. He 

 says that humming birds, tanagers and flvcatchers that 

 usually build in his garden were unable to breed at all, and 

 notes a great scarcity of barn swallows and bobolinks where 



* Since the above was written, some correspondence on this subject has been 

 published by Mr. Bowdish in the " Auk " for April, 1904, p. 284. 



