24 THE CONDOR Vol. XXII 
we looked down at the lake, usually so quiet, and saw white spray blowing from 
the surface of the roughened water out onto the bank above. To the south of us, 
we heard later, buildings were blown down and people killed by the cyclone. Big 
thunder heads, an electric storm, and a rainbow followed, and the next morning 
it was cooler. As my notes record, there was ‘‘a cool perfect day with west wind 
and a wonderful sunset.’’ 
Where the Swallows were during the storm I do not know, but at seven 
o’elock that night, as if nothing had happened, they were flying from the lake 
across the wheat field to the telegraph wires in front of a deserted cabin. By 
this time the flock had increased in size from five or six hundred to between 
nine hundred and a thousand. They fairly swarmed around the house, highting 
on the ridgepole and the chimney and then dropping off and flying over to the 
wires. The late comers had to fly along the line looking for a vacant seat. If 
a row was sitting close, the seated birds objected to the efforts of the newcomers, 
perhaps not liking to have their balance disturbed; so, after flying along the 
most closely packed wires, they had to go on to the more openly spaced. After 
laboriously getting settled, at a word, those on a long length of wire would break 
away and have it all to do over again. 
Finally, to my surprise, a large section suddenly dropped from the wires 
and flying toward the lake crossed high over the wheat field, the sky fairly 
twinkling, sparkling, as their white fronts caught the light. Then they pitched 
down over the lake and I realized with a thrill that this great migrating flock, 
nearly a thousand strong, was going to roost in the tules, a sight that, for years, 
I had been longing to witness. What a perfect hour they celebrated! No trace 
of the cyclonic disturbance was left. The woods at the foot of the lake, vellowed 
and enriched with shadows by the sinking sun, were mirrored in the quiet water. 
The tule islands—long thin streaks of tule—were imaged in the lake whose 
opaque surface was almost opalescent with the reflections of soft cloudlets. 
Glancing back at the wires I saw another section left bare, a large flock break- 
ing away and sweeping low over the surface of the water, glinting white as they 
went. Swarming over the tule islands, fluttering over the dark pointed stems 
and settling down among them, when I supposed they were quiet in their roost, 
they swarmed up again, going on to other islands out in the sunset. By 7:20 
the wires were deserted and the flock apparently quiet for the night, though 
the harvester was still heard in the wheat field, and not until after our belated 
supper did the shocks of wheat around the farm-house lose the soft pink of the 
afterglow. 
The next morning at eight o’clock when the shore was resounding with the 
notes of young Black Terns, and large flocks of Ducks from the open lakes were 
coming back and lighting down, the surface of the lake was alive with Swallows, 
and some were flying back to the wires; but in the afternoon when a strong east 
wind was blowing up rain, none were to be seen; they had doubtless started off 
on another stage of their long journey. This was the fourth of August. On 
the sixth, when no Swallows had been seen for a day, a flock of five or six hun- 
dred appeared on the wires by the farmhouse, another invoice from the north, as 
I imagined. 
Covering two wires between poles they sat facing the north wind, in places 
sitting so close together that the borders of their tails made a regular pattern. 
The next night at 7:10, when two hundred and fifty or three hundred were on 
