FLIGHT OF THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 43 T 



" As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they left the nests, numerous parties 

 of the inhabitants, from all parts of the adjacent country, came with wagons, oxen, beds, 

 cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the greater part of their families, and 

 encamped for several days at this immense nursery. Several of them infonned me that the 

 noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and that it was difficult for one 

 person to hear another sj)eak without bawling in his ear. 



"The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab pigeons 

 which had been i^recipitated from above, and on which herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, 

 buzzards, and eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their 

 nests at pleasure ; while from twenty feet upwards to the top of the trees, the view through the 

 woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their 

 wings roaring like thunder, mingled Avith the frequent crash of falling timber. For now the 

 axe-men were at work cutting down those trees which seemed to be most crowded with nests, 

 and contriving to fell them in such a manner that in their descent they might bring down 

 several others, by which means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred 

 squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and almost one mass of fat. 



" On some single trees u^nvards of one hundred nests were found, each containing one 

 young only, a circumstance in the history of this bird not generally known to naturalists. It 

 was dangerous to walk under these flying and fluttering millions, from the frequent fall of 

 large branches, broken down by the weight of the multitudes above, and which, in their 

 descent, often desti'oyed numbers of the birds themselves. 



" I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breeding-place, near Shelby villa, 

 and was traversing the woods with my gun, on my way to Frankfort, when, about one o'clock, 

 the pigeons which I had observed flying the greater part of the morning northerly, began to 

 return in such immense numbers as I never before had witnessed. Coming to an opening by 

 the side of a creek called the Benson, I was astonished at their appearance. 



"They were flying with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height beyond gunshot, in 

 several strata deep, and so close together that could shot have reached them, one discharge 

 would not have failed of bringing down several individuals. From right to left, as far as 

 the eye could reach, the breadth of this vast procession extended, seeming everywhere equally 

 crowded. 



" Curious to determine how long this appearance would continue, I took out my watch to 

 note the time, and sat down to observe them. It was then half-past one. I sat for more than 

 an hour, but instead of a diminution of this jirodigious procession, it seemed rather to increase 

 both in numbers and rapidity ; and anxious to reach Frankfort before night, I rose and went 

 on. About four o'clock in the afternoon, I crossed the Kentucky river, at the town of Frank- 

 fort, at Avhich time the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous and as extensive 

 as ever. The great breadth of front which this mighty multitude preserved would seem to 

 intimate a corresponding breadth of their breeding-place, which by several gentlemen who had 

 lately passed through part of it, was stated to me at several miles." 



A few observations on the mode of flight of these birds must not be omitted. 



" The appearance of large detached bodies of them in the air, and the various evoliitiong 

 they display, are strikingly picturesque and interesting. In descending the Ohio by myself in 

 the month of February, I often rested on my oars to contemplate their aerial manoeuvres. 



" A column, eight or ten miles in length, would ai^pear from Kentucky, high in air, steer- 

 ing over to Indiana. The leaders of this great body would sometimes gradually vary their 

 course, until it formed a large bend of more than a mile in diameter, those behind tracing the 

 exact route of their predecessors. This would continue sometimes long after both extremities 

 were beyond the reach of sight ; so that the whole, with its glittering undulations, marked a 

 space on the face of the heavens resembling the windings of a vast and majestic river. When 

 this bend became very great, the birds, as if sensible of the unnecessarily circuitous course 

 they were taking, suddenly changed their direction, so that what was in column before became 

 an immense front, straightening all its indentures until it swept the heavens in one vast and 

 infinitely extended line. 



