Sufferings of Birds 



with aeroplanes ; for reasons of their own 

 safety, however, and not from their love of 

 birds, airmen tried to give as wide a berth 

 as possible to any flocks of birds they hap- 

 pened to overtake or meet. An EAGLE is re- 

 ported to have been overtaken and entrapped 

 in the wires of a French aeroplane nearly 

 5,000 feet above the earth in Macedonia 

 (Daily Express, i8.v.i8), but the propeller 

 of an aeroplane is well known to be extremely 

 fragile. I have been assured that on one 

 occasion an airman narrowly escaped with 

 his life, the propeller of his machine having 

 been broken by coming into contact with a 

 soaring LARK. One is reminded of the story 

 of George Stephenson and the cow, whose 

 fate, it will be remembered, he did not expect 

 would be shared by the driver of the loco- 

 motive. 



The effect of searchlights on GULLS has 

 been described as soporific ( ? hypnotic) ; in this 

 case it would seem that they rest in the steady 

 beam much as migrating birds rest in the 

 light of the lantern on lighthouse bird-rests. 

 Another observer, however, states that the 



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