34 



MORTALITY AMONG WARBLERS 



During the nesting season, Warblers sometimes suffer, as do 

 other birds, from prolonged wet and cold weather and severe 

 storms, but it is while they are migrating that they are most 

 exposed to danger from the elements. None of our land birds are 

 greater travelers than the Warblers. Journeying by night and 

 crossing large bodies of water, they sometimes encounter storms 

 with which they are ill-prepared to contend, and die in countless 

 numbers. From a large amount of literature on this subject I 

 extract only one or two descriptions of catastrophes of this nature. 



In a paper entitled 'On Some Causes Affecting the Decrease 

 of Birds' (Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club, VI, 1881, 189), H. W. Henshaw 

 quotes the account of an eye-witness who writes : "Two years ago 

 there was a heavy storm, lasting some twenty-four hours. It 

 occurred during the first week in September, and the eastern shore 

 of Lake Michigan was strewn with dead birds. I took some pains 

 to count those in a certain number of yards, and estimated that if 

 the eastern shore was alike through all its length, over half a 

 million of birds were lying dead on that side of the lake alone." 

 Added remarks show that many of the birds were Warblers. 



On the Gulf of Mexico, A. M. Frazar {Ibid., p. 250) chanced 

 to observe one of doubtless many similar occurrences, which he 

 described as follows: 



"April 2, 1881, found me in a small schooner on the passage 

 from Brazos de Santiago, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama. At about 

 noon of that day the wind suddenly changed from east to north, 

 and within an hour it was blowing a gale; we were now about 

 thirty miles south of the mouths of the Mississippi River, which 

 would bring the vessel on a line with the river and the peninsula 

 of Yucatan. Up to the time the storm commenced the only land 

 birds seen were three Yellow-rumped Warblers (Dendroica coronata) 

 that came aboard the day previous, keeping us company the most 

 of the day; but within an hour after the storm broke they began 

 to appear, and in a very short time birds of various species were 

 to be seen in all directions, singly and in small flocks, and all flying 

 towards the Mississippi River. These birds, of course, must have 

 been far overhead and only came down near the surface of the 

 water in endeavoring to escape from the force of the wind. By 

 four o'clock it had come to be a serious matter with them, as the 

 gale was too strong for them to make scarcely any progress. As 

 long as they were in the trough of the sea the wind had very 



