Destruction of Robins in a Storm.— There occurred on Long Island 

 about midnight, Friday, August 29, the most severe electric storm I have 

 ever witnessed. During my forty years of residence at Floral Park, I have 

 never known a summer storm so severe as to kill any mature bird in full 

 strength, but the one above referred to annihilated the Robins that Hve in 

 the trees about my lawn. Thirty-six were picked up the next morning 

 on about an acre of ground, and others in the near vicinity brought the 

 total up to about fifty. The Enghsh Sparrows were very abundant also 

 but very few were Idlled; the StarUngs escaped uninjured as far as I can 

 learn. I have hardly seen a Robin since that fatal night. The storm was 

 accompanied by high wind although not severe enough to uproot trees or 

 break branches to any considerable extent, but it was accompanied by the 

 heaviest downpour of rain I have seen in many years and lasted for a con- 

 siderable time. 



The birds were evidently blown out of the trees where they were roostmg 

 and perished from the awful wetting they were subjected to on the ground, 

 — .John Lbwis Guilds, Floral Park, N. Y. /jf jn^ ^O, Ocit IQ' -:. p. ^ 



Morning Awakening Notes at Jefferson Highland, N. H. — Mr. 



Francis H. Allen in his genera] note in ' The Auk,' January, 1915, p. 110, 

 again calls in question the genuineness of the early songs which precede the 

 singing of the Robin as morning songs given in response to the break of day, 

 still regarding them as songs of night. Others may share in some measure 

 his incredulity. I desire, therefore, that my records obtained at Jefferson 

 Highland, N. H., should remove this doubt, for they show conclusively 

 season by season that there not only do Song Sparrows and Chipping 

 Sparrows habitually sing several times before the Robin, but that Wood 

 Pewee and Alder Flycatcher are always much earlier singers, and that 



and adventitious, due to the caprice of the bird, occasionally heard, but 

 not to be regularly looked for and with certainty heard. These earliest 

 songs after the first light of dawn are unfailingly given and can be looked 

 for with certainty of realization. 



In the hour preceding visible dawn, which in days of earliest sum-ise at 

 Jefferson is 2.30 o'clock or a little before, I have very, very few times heard 

 any expression of song, yet I have often been awake at one o'clock and 

 remained awake listening carefully until I have gone out at two o'clock or a 

 few minutes thereafter. Whereas, as the time of 2.30 approaches, it is 

 usual to hear the first songs from one, two, or three birds which are within 

 range of hearing, and these songs are followed by repetitions from the same 

 birds or from other birds at infrequent intervals for a time, until their 

 awakening is more complete. So it has been my practice to be out shortly 

 after 2 o'clock, when not before; in season for these first responses to the 

 break of day, and experience has shown that the birds' awakening begins 

 with these songs, given when the dawn has already visibly brightened the 

 eastern sky. 



The Ovenbird's early flight song, which is heard quite unfailingly at 

 dawn, is its twiUght song, equally so in the morning as in the evening and 

 late afternoon. It can be depended upon, at least in the woodlands of 

 Jefferson Highland, and it must be borne in mind that my testimony on 

 the whole subject of the morning awakening is the result of my experience 

 in this mountain hamlet, where there is broad expanse of sky and complete 

 silence reigns, when the day opens, broken only by the birds as they awake 

 and sing.— Horace W. Wright, Boston, Mass. 



