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Bird Tragedies 



Into the experience of every bird student 

 have come some examples of tragic deaths 

 and accidents to our feathered friends, other 

 than the deaths caused by predatory crea- 

 tures. 



Often in the migrations birds perish in 

 storms, sometimes in large numbers, as was 

 recorded by Dr. Roberts, of Minnesota, at 

 the last Congress of the American Orni- 

 thologists' Union, in the case of theLapIanc 

 Longspurs, when in a single night in south- 

 ern Minnesota and northern Idaho, accord- 

 ing to a careful estimate, a million birds 

 perished. Again, the search for food, or the 

 nest-building, may lead birds into unforeseen 

 danger which results disastrously. The 

 writer recalls that in the summer of 1903 he 

 and a friend found a nearly complete nest of 

 the Baltimore Oriole from which hung the 

 dead body of the female bird. A horsehair 

 used in the construction had become twisted 



AMERICAN GOLDFINCH ENTANGLED IN 

 BURDOCK 



Photographed by B. S. Bowdish 



about her neck and she had been strangled 

 to death. 



Last April, Mr. Charles H. Alexander 

 sent to the office of the National Association 

 of Audubon Societies a branch of burdock, 

 to the burs of which the mummified remains 

 of an American Goldfinch were firmly 

 attached, found in Belmont county, Ohio. 

 Seeking the seed, the bird had alighted on 

 something worse than a bird-lime trap. 

 ? ome eighteen years ago the writer remem- 

 jers finding an identical case near Rochester, 

 N.Y., where a Golden-crowned Kinglet 

 was the victim.* 



Cases where young Barn Swallows become 

 tangled in the horsehairs of the nest-lining 

 and break a leg or are choked to death are 

 not infrequent. It has been widely recorded 

 how the weather during the year 1904 

 brought disaster to many a bird home and 

 family of young. In many cases, even, the 

 adults were unable to obtain their accustomed 

 insect food, and died in the retreats which 

 they sought from the storms. 



As in the life experience of man, so in the 

 life of birds, some of the many accidents 

 which befall the birds may easily be averted 

 by man, by means of a little forethought for 

 his "little brothers of the air," and the 

 time will probably come when agriculturists 

 realize that it is for their practical benefit to 

 take such precautions as the furnishing of 

 food and shelter in the winter, the destruc- 

 tion of predatory animals, and the removal of 

 such dangers to the small insect-eating birds, 

 as the burdocks from the fence-rows and 

 waste spots of the farm. — B. S. Bowdish, 

 National Association of Audubon Societies, 

 New York City. 



Adirondack Notes 



While on my vacation this summer, at 

 Long Lake in the Adirondacks, I success- 

 fully used, in the identification of numerous 



*The American Museum of Natural History has 

 recently received from C. C. Warren, White Plains, 

 N. Y., the remains of a Hummingbird which met a similar 

 fate. — Ed. 



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