THE OOLOQIST 



225 



The Rare Sport of Catching Birds 

 With Airplanes 



The accidental catching recently of 

 an Eagle in the wire bracing of a 

 military airplane suggests the many 

 possibilities of the new sport of hunt- 

 ing for birds of prey and wild fowl in 

 the air with flying machines. 



The success of this new sport de- 

 pends upon the airman's knowledge of 

 the speed of various birds. 



Prof. H. H. Clayton of Blue Hill Ob- 

 servatory saw ducks flying at a height 

 of 958 feet. He was at the time en- 

 gaged in measuring the height and 

 velocity of clouds and was able to es- 

 timate the speed of the birds as near- 

 ly 48 miles an hour. Profs. J. Steb- 

 bins and E. A. Fath made careful ob- 

 servations with the telescope and 

 found that birds pass at rates varying 

 from 80 to 130 miles per hour, and 

 these were minimums. Heavy bomb- 

 drooping airplanes travel at the rate 

 of 90 miles an hour and fast fighters 

 at nearly 140 miles. Prof Clayton's 

 ducks were poor airplanes, as flying 

 speeds go. Is it strange then, that 

 even a fast bird should be overtaken 

 in its flight by a still faster machine 

 and killed in an aerial rear-end col- 

 lision? 



Aviators say that it is a wonder that 

 the birds are not more often overtaken 

 as well as the eagle which was caught 

 in a military flying machine. With 

 its wide expanse of superposed wings, 

 criss-crossed with stay-wires, a biplane 

 is not unlike a very wide-meshed net. 



"That being the case," writes Carl 

 Dienstbach in Poplar Science Month- 

 ly, "why should it not be possible to 

 trail fine piano-wire nets, spread by 

 small kite-buoys between the air- 

 planes connected by a long wire, and 

 enmesh the condors and eagles that 

 soar over inaccessible mountain 

 peaks? That ought to be a fascinat- 

 ing sport. Great birds of prey are 



flying creatures. Vedrines found that 

 out some years ago when he flew 

 across the Pyrenees. He was actually 

 attacked by eagles and had to shoot 

 them with a pistol. 



"The sport is all the more possible 

 when it is considered how dependable 

 is the modern fast-flying machine 

 Chavez, the first man who ever flew 

 across the Alps, was killed in some 

 unknown manner as he descended in- 

 U Italy. But the mode; a rlying ma- 

 chine is more powerfully controlled 

 and has a more dependable motor 

 than the airplanes in which Chavez 

 made his fatal flight. Witness the 

 many performances of Austrian and 

 Italian aviators in flying over the 

 dizzy peaks of the Austrian battle- 

 grounds. Vedrine's experience shows 

 that an eagle regards an airplane 

 much as a dog an automobile — some- 

 thing not to be frightened at bat to be 

 challenged. 



Think, too, of the possibilities of 

 capturing with a net whole flocks of 

 game ducks and geese as veil as wild 

 pigeons. Even the use of hook, line 

 and bait, as well as the net, appears 

 feasible in the air." — San Francisco 

 Chronicle. — W. A. Strong, San Jose, 

 Cal. 



Audubon's Loss 



The famous naturalist, Audubon, 

 pursued many of his fascinating studies 

 in the Ohio Valley. For several years 

 he made his home in Henderson, Ken- 

 tucky, whence he went forth to study 

 the birds in their native haunts. With 

 rare skill he sketched them in colors, 

 filling large portfolios with the finest 

 pictures of these. 



After some time he found it neces- 

 sary to make a visit to Philadelphia. 



He left his cherished drawings be- 

 hind, but he took the precaution of 

 packing them in a stout wooden box 

 and left this with a relative, to whom 



