The Missing Coots 
windows. They beat against the glass until utterly 
dazed, and would have perished there, had I not 
climbed up later and brought them down. So thou- 
sands of the migrating birds perish yearly by flying 
wildly against the dazzling lanterns of the light- 
houses, and thousands more lose their way in the 
thick darkness of the stormy nights, or are blown 
out of their course, and drift away to sea, 
Hasty, careless, miscalculated movements are not 
as frequent among the careful wild folk as among 
us, perhaps; but there is abundant evidence of their 
occasional occurrence and of their sometimes fatal 
results. 
Several instances are recorded of birds that have 
been tangled in the threads of their nests; and one 
case of a bluebird that was caught in the flying 
meshes of an oriole’s nest into which it had been 
spying. 
I once found the mummied body of a chippy twist- 
ing and swinging in the leafless branches of a peach 
tree, The little creature was suspended in a web of 
horsehair about two inches below the nest. It looked 
as if she had brought a snarled bunch of the hair 
and left it loose in the twigs. Later on, a careless 
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