1 9 6 Henshaw on Causes affecting the Decrease of Birds. 
limited points of observation give such results what estimate will 
suffice to comprehend the number of the Ocean’s victims in its 
vast expanse of storm-visited surface ! That millions of birds 
are annually thus destroyed cannot be doubted, and it is in this 
way I would account for the numerical fluctuations noticed in 
the beginning of this article. 
The migrations of birds have been well likened to the waves 
of the ocean, each billow of this living sea being made up of 
different species, the individuals of each species coming from 
more or less contiguous ones. This latter statement is proven 
from the fact that the main body of a given species arrives at a 
locality in the spring, as it leaves it in the fall, almost simultane- 
ously, a single day usually sufficing to see a neighborhood stocked 
with its full quota, the onset of the numerous clans having been 
“ It was a strange and pitiful sight. Some were so' fresh and perfect, and their 
feathers so unruffled, that it seemed impossible that they had been drowned. There 
were multitudes of wrens, with narrow, gauzy wings spread out, so that the wind swept 
them up and down on the sand, like autumn leaves sere and brown. Tiny creepers, 
looking ghastly with only a head and wing unburied, and moving as if alive; kinglets 
with their bright crowns defaced huddled into a group, where I counted a robin with 
fair unruffled breast, a kingbird, a summer yellowbird, and one orange-crowned war- 
bler. The greatest number of any one species was the yellow-winged sparrow, both 
young and old. The grass finch and the song sparrow were abundant, as was also the 
familiar little pair bird. Of the goniaphea I do not remember a single specimen. 
They leave before September, I think. There were cowbirds, and one or two black- 
birds, and no orioles. Blue jays one or two, much worn and defaced, and the common 
phebe more numerous. Belted king-fishers I saw once or twice, and of the picidae, the 
red-head and the golden-winged, a single specimen each, as well as two of the downy 
woodpeckers. 
“ There were none of the varieties of the hirundinidee, and but one or two of the 
thrushes, except the robin, which was rather numerous. Evidently that bird comes 
earlier and stays later than any others of his family. A single catbird came under my 
notice. 
“ I have observed that all through the summer more or less birds are drowned and 
thrown up on the beach. How many it is impossible to say, as they are soon covered 
with sand or carried away by prowling wildcats, whose tracks I constantly saw there. 
It is unlikely that during the breeding season any bird ventures so far from home as to 
cross the lake, and as there are no bays, and a sandy beach skirts all the wooded shores, 
the birds are not lost in, flying voluntarily over the water, but are blown out and ex- 
hausted by baffling winds, fall down, and perish 
“ If one had time to follow the beach during the season a pretty fair knowledge of 
the birds that haunt the shores of Lake Michigan might be gained. My observation 
was necessarily limited to a small space, but a wider research would no doubt give 
many other varieties of birds that perish in the lake. This is a very large percentage 
of loss no doubt, and must be reckoned as only the part belonging to Lake Michigan, 
since the same thing happens on all the great lakes to some extent ” — Chicago 
Tribune , Sept. 3, 1881. 
