ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



SrpartmrntB : 



Birds 

 William Beebe. 

 Lee S. Crandall. 



Published bi-monthly at the Office of the Society. 

 Ill Broadway, New York City. 



Yearly by Mail. $1.00. 



MAILED FREE TO MEMBERS. 



Copyright, 1919, by the New York Zoological Society. 



Each author is responsible for the scientific accuracy 



and the proof reading of his contribution. 



Elwin R. Sanborn, 



Editor and Official Photographer 



Vol. XXII. No. 3. 



MAY. 1919 



tation, contains a brief account of the total de- 

 struction of Count Potocki's estate and game 

 sanctuary. It says in part: 



"Hundreds of deer, wapiti, European bison 

 and animals of all sorts were kept there, in 

 7,000 acres of enclosed forest, which was part 

 Hi a great tract of 30.000 acres. The place was 

 invaded by 2.000 Bolshevik Red Guards, who 

 shot every animal, and left their corpses to rot 

 on the ground. The palace, its furniture and 

 collections were destroyed, and the servants and 

 keepers of the game were not only murdered, 

 but tortured to death, with indescribable 

 ferocity. 



"This will certainly spread and come to us 

 if our governments continue to close their eyes 

 to the anarchistic propaganda which is raging 

 more than ever." 



***** 



Not only servants and game-keepers, but 

 even the wild animals all are wantonly mur- 

 dered by the Bolsheviki. W. T. H. 



BIRDS ON BATTLEFIELDS OF EUROPE. 



Unaffected By Strange Sounds — Fearless 

 Under Fire. 



By G. Inness Hartley, 

 Captain, 302nd Ammunition Train, A. E. F. 



The conflict of last summer and fall afforded 

 small opportunity for observation other than 

 that necessary to carry on the work of fighting. 

 Much of the night was spent on the road. The 

 day was passed in thick woods or deep ravines 

 to escape observation from enemy planes. Con- 

 sequently bats and owls of France are more 

 familiar to me than the birds of the day. Never- 

 theless it was necessary at times to scout out 

 the way by daylight so that the going for con- 



voys of ammunition would be easier at night, 

 and I was able to catch glimpses, here and there, 

 of what was going on among the birds and 

 animals of the battle zone. 



Three weeks of sun. rain and shells had fallen 

 on the Vesle Valley before it became true con- 

 quered territory. Fismes and Bazoches had 

 ceased to exist as towns. The forests on the 

 south were masses of fallen timber; on the north 

 the hills were gouged and torn by our artillery 

 fire, and the valley was a flooded morass of 

 swamp, shell holes, reeds and machine-gun nests. 

 Hundreds of dead lay blackening in the grass 

 where they had fallen. The hills were djtted 

 for two miles back with the remains of horses 

 that had drawn ammunition or rations within 

 the danger zone. The taint of battle in the air 

 was quite evident. 



In the tropics a dead animal attracts visitors 

 almost immediately — beetles, flies, vultures and 

 opossums. They act as nature's sanitary train 

 and carry out their labors with speed and finesse. 

 Nor is the Temperate region wanting in its bat- 

 talions. The sun was hot on the Vesle and 

 things did collect. There were the world-over 

 swarms of flies — blue bottle, the common house 

 variety, and a large brown species. Rats took 

 the place of opossums. Tiny were plentiful 

 in the open fields as well as in the ruins. Day- 

 light held no terrors for them. 



Crows were numerous. They hunted singly 

 or feasted in great flocks. There were big ones 

 and little ones. The larger birds were more 

 exclusive and seldom traveled in groups of 

 more than six, while the others often changed 

 a field from green or brown to black. All rest- 

 ed at night in the broken trees that crowned the 

 hills. The first streak of dawn was the signal 

 for a babel of hoarse caws, and, as the gray 

 of morning became fixed, they flew croaking to 

 their early meal. 



Soon after sunrise swallows appeared as tiny 

 specks in the sky, or glided low to the ground. 

 No swifts were present. Finches lived in the 

 bushes and fields. They quickly became so ac- 

 customed to the explosions, which to them prob- 

 ably were sharp bursts of thunder, that their 

 flight to the next field to escape the dust and 

 fragments was scarcely hurried. Gas drove 

 them only temporarily from their posts in the 

 edges, though it sometimes searched out victims. 

 as demonstrated by the discovery of two dead 

 yellow finches in a gas-browned alfalfa patch. 



One day the enemy conceived the idea of 

 shelling the wood that was our temporary 

 camp. Fortunately his calculation of angles 

 was not what it should have been, and every 



