MICHIGAN ACADEMY OP SCIENCE. 
23 
but it is evident that a very large percentage of the young and inex¬ 
perienced birds which start south in autumn never return to their 
birth place—probably having perished from the dangers of the trip. 
As a rule the southward journey is made—or at least might be made— 
with comparative safety. There is no need of great haste, food is 
abundant and the travellers are moving always toward regions of in¬ 
creasing warmth and superabundant food. On the northward trip on 
ihe contrary, the birds often are leaving safety and abundance 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 pen¬ 
alty of death. Take an instance or two in illustration of this state¬ 
ment. April 2, 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 Avould 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 identi¬ 
fied, including warblers, finches, flycatchers and a single swallow, hawk, 
dove and turnstone. Probably these were all migrants which had almost 
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. T 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 mil¬ 
lion birds were lying dead on that side of the lake alone. It is more 
than likely that nearly as many more were on the west. It was a 
strange and pitiful sight.” There were wrens, creepers, kinglets, 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 baflled the little migrants whichever way 
they turned, and finally beat them down into the relentless waves. 
One more example of such destruction will suffice: February 12, 
1899, at Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, on the coast, sleet began fall¬ 
ing, and the next day the snow was four or five inches deep, and the 
temperature 14° above zero, dropping to but 6° above zero on Thurs- 
Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club, VI, 25C-251. 
