26 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE. 
ance behind them, are pushing continually into colder and hungrier regions, 
and are likely at any moment to be met with climatic conditions that test 
their strength and endurance to the utmost and often exact the extreme 
penalty of death. Take an instance in illustration of this statement. April 
9, 1881, Mr. A. M. Frazar was a passenger on a sailing vessel about thirty 
miles off the mouths of the Mississippi, with a moderate east wind blowing 
and no land birds in sight. Suddenly, about noon, the wind changed to the 
north and increased to a gale, and within an hour birds of many species 
appeared, singly and in small flocks, having come down from far overhead 
to escape the force of the wind. All were flying toward the land, directly 
to windward, and in the teeth of the growing storm. ‘ Within a few hours,” 
says Mr. Frazar, “it had become a serious matter with them, as they could 
make scarcely any progress. As long as they were in the trough of the sea 
the wind had little effect on them, but as soon as they reached the crest of a 
wave it would catch them up and in an instant they were blown hundreds 
of yards back or else into the water and drowned. * * * It was sad 
indeed to see them struggling along by the side of the vessel in trying to pass 
ahead of her, for as soon as they were clear of the bows they were invariably 
blown back into the water and drowned. Most of those which came aboard 
(considerably over a hundred) were washed into the sea again.”* Twenty- 
three different species were identified, including warblers, finches, flycatchers, 
and a single swallow, hawk, dove and turnstone. Probably these were all 
migrants which had nearly crossed the Gulf of Mexico from the Peninsula 
of Yucatan, only to be swallowed up by the angry sea when almost within 
sight of their goal. 
Another observer describes the disaster caused to birds on Lake Michigan 
by a violent storm in September, 1879, as follows: ‘‘The eastern shore of 
Lake Michigan was strewn with dead birds. I took pains to count those on 
a certain number of yards, and estimated that if the eastern shore was alike 
through all its length, over a half a million birds were lying dead on that 
side of the lake alone. It is more than likely that nearly as many more were 
onthe west. It wasastrange and pitiful sight.”” There were wrens, creepers, 
kinelets, robins, kingbirds, warblers, sparrows, finches, woodpeckers, and even 
a few blue jays and kingfishers. Here apparently temperature played no 
part, but wind and heavy rain baffled the little migrants whichever way they 
turned, and finally beat them down into the relentless waves. 
Still another example of the dangers run by birds in migration is found 
in the record of a disaster on the eastern shore of Lake Huron in the autumn 
of 1906.¢ On the 19th of October, 1906, Mr. W. E. Saunders of London, 
Ontario, received word from a correspondent at Forest that he had spent the 
previous day on the Lake Huron shore near Port Franks and had observed 
hundreds of birds on the shore dead, cast up by the waves. He estimated 
five thousand dead birds to the mile and on the 21st Mr. Saunders visited the 
region and examined the beach southward from Grand Bend. His account 
of the disaster is given in his own words: ‘After covering several miles 
and seeing only a few dead birds, I came at length to the region of death. 
At first the birds were not very close together, but eventually became so 
plentiful that in one place I put my foot on four, and saw as many as a dozen 
in four or five feet. I began a census at once, which I continued until the 
lengthening shadows warned me to hurry on to the river so as to cross 
in daylight, but in the two or three hours spent in the count I recorded 1,845 
* Bul. Nutt. Orn. Club, VI, 1881, 250-251. 
{A Migration Disaster in Western Ontario. The Auk, XXIV, 1907, 108-110. 
