24 BIRDS OF CALIFORNIA AFFECTING FRUIT INDUSTRY. 
the flock was to be seen. They were first found feeding on early cherries, in 
an orchard situated along the steep bank of a creek, on the edge of rolling hills, 
well covered with a thick growth of live oaks, which faced the orchard on the 
east. To this thick cover they would fly, after filling themselves with cherries, 
and rest till it was time to eat again. ‘This they would keep up from daylight 
to dark, coming and going singly all day, without any noise whatever being heard. 
Two men were kept busy shooting them as fast as they came into the trees 
which lay on the side next to the oak-covered hills. * * * After the first 
week, I found on going here (May 17), that dozens on dozens of the birds were 
lying about. * * ™ Tanagers lay about.everywhere, and no doubt many must 
have flown off to die in the bushes or on the hillsides. * * * I noticed one 
fact of the restriction of the taunagers to the orchards along the hill edges. None 
were found, so to speak, in the larger orchards abouc the town of Hayward. 
x oo  ' Mar. H. A. Gaylord, of Pasadena, Cal., in a letter under date of June 16, 
1896, states that ‘‘ they were seen singly from April 23 to May 1. From this 
date up to May 5 their numbers were greatly increased, and by May 5 there was 
an unusually large number of them. Then for about ten days, until May 16, 
the great wave of migration was at its height. Tauagers were seen everywhere, 
and noticed by everyone. After May 20 they decreased in numbers, and by 
May 26 the last ones had left the valley.” * * * Healso says: ‘The damage 
Gone to cherries in one orchard was so great that the sales of the fruit which 
was left, did not balance the bills for poison and ammunition. The tanagers 
lay all over the orchard, und were, so to speak, ‘corded up’ by hundreds under 
the trees.” 
There must have been thousands of tanagers destroyed all through the path 
of their movement along the State, as they worked their way to the breeding 
grounds. 
Here are two accounts of this great flight of tanagers—one from 
Pasadena, the other from Hayward, 330 miles farther north as the 
bird flies. The time taken by the tanagers in traversing this dis- 
tance was only eight days, so it would appear that individual birds 
did not spend much time in the same orchard. Such sporadic flights 
are hard to account for. The tanagers are in California every year, 
and every year they migrate to their nesting grounds in spring and 
return in fall, but only at long intervals do they swarm in such 
prodigious numbers. Evidently the migration ordinarily takes place 
along the mountains where the birds are not noticed. It is possible 
that in some years the mountain region lacks the requisite food, and 
so the migrating birds are obliged to descend into the valleys. This 
would seem to be the most plausible explanation of the occurrence— 
that is, that the usual line of migration is along the Sierra Nevada, 
Int some years, owing to searcity of food, or other cause, the flight 
is foreed farther west into the Coast Ranges, where the birds find 
the ripening cherries. The damage done by this species, however, 
is not confined exclusively to the rare occasions when they appear in 
such extraordinary uumbers, R. H. Carr, of Redlands, southern 
California, wrote us in June, 1899: 
Without examining any stomachs it is easy {o report the value of the Louisi- 
ana tanager to the fruit growers near here. In the city they seem to keep 
