444 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



load.^ This reads like the tale of a romancer; but similar 

 occurrences all over the land are recorded by many credible 

 witnesses. 



Alexander Wilson, the father of American ornithology, tells 

 of a breeding place of the Wild Pigeons in Shelbyville, Ky. 

 (probably about 1806), which was several miles in breadth, 

 and was said to be more than forty miles in extent. More 

 than one hundred nests were found on a tree. The ground 

 was strewn with broken limbs of trees; also eggs and dead 

 squabs which had been precipitated from above, on which 

 herds of hogs were fattening. He speaks of a flight of these 

 birds from another nesting place some sixty miles away from 

 the first, toward Green River, where they were said to be 

 equally numerous. They were travelling with great steadi- 

 ness and rapidity, at a height beyond gunshot, several strata 

 deep, very close together, and " from right to left as far as 

 the eye could reach, the breadth of this vast procession 

 extended; seeming everywhere equally crowded." From half- 

 past 1 to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, while he was travelling to 

 Frankfort, the same living torrent rolled overhead, seemingly 

 as extensive as ever. He estimated the flock that passed him 

 to be two hundred and forty miles long and a mile wide, — 

 probably much wider, — and to contain two billion, two hun- 

 dred and thirty million, two hundred and seventy-two thou- 

 sand pigeons. On the supposition that each bird consumed 

 only half a pint of nuts and acorns daily, he reckoned that this 

 column of birds would eat seventeen million, four hundred and 

 twenty-four thousand bushels each day. 



Audubon states that in the autumn of 1813 he left his 

 house at Henderson, on the banks of the Ohio, a few miles 

 from Hardensburgh, to go to Louisville, Ky. He saw that 

 day what he thought to be the largest flight of Wild Pigeons 

 he had ever seen. The air was literally filled with them ; and 

 "the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse." 

 Before sunset he reached Louisville, fifty-five miles from 

 Hardensburgh, and during all that time Pigeons were passing 

 in undiminished numbers. This continued for three days in 



1 Auk, 1911, pp. 5Q,57. 



