164 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 



could be seen, yet the noise continued. Lighting the gas, I 

 found a poor little bird bumping his head against the ceiling, in 

 frantic efforts to escape. He was easily caught, and proved to 

 be a young yellow-rumped warbler, much frightened, but unhurt 

 except from a temporary baldness where he had rubbed his 

 head against the ceiling. Evidently he had been flying by 

 moonlight, and the chances were that he was not going alone 

 on this unknown journey, but that all his tribe were on their 

 fall migration. But I could not see the passing armies, and 

 when I looked out in the morning the little warblers flitting 

 about in the shrubbery were apparently the same that had been 

 there for days. 



It is not often that one really has an opportunity to see the 

 flood sweep past ; and, because it is, perhaps, the most vivid 

 story ever written of the way a great army of birds makes 

 its marches, I am going to quote to you the account written 

 by Mr. William Brewster of his studies of the migration of 

 birds at Point Lepreaux lighthouse, near the Bay of Fundy. 

 Of the experience of one stormy night he gives the following 

 description : 



" A clear, cool day ; the evening perfectly clear up to ten 

 o'clock, when a heavy curtain of clouds rolled overhead from 

 the northwest, and it became very dark. An hour later dense 

 fog set in, and at midnight it began to rain, heavy showers 

 succeeding one another at frequent intervals. Wind south; 

 puffy, at times strong. 



"As soon as the sky became overcast small birds began to 

 come about the light. Their numbers increased steadily from 

 ten to eleven o'clock, but during this time the majority kept 

 at a safe distance, and only two or three, struck. With the 

 advent of the fog they multiplied tenfold in the course of a 

 few minutes. For the next hour from fifty to one hundred 



