True Stories about Dogs and Cats

by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen

Now they pass lower over the forest and are lost among the foliage, for a moment, but reappear as suddenly above. Now they alight, and then, as if affrighted, the whole again take to wing with a roar equal to loud thunder, and wander swiftly through the forest as if to see if danger is near.

Hunger, however, soon brings them all to the ground, and then they are seen industriously throwing up the fallen leaves to seek for every beech nut or acorn. The last ranks continually pass over and alight in front, in such quick succession that the whole still has the appearance of being on the wing. The quantity of ground thus harvested (moissonee) is astonishing, and so clean is the work that no gleaners think it worth while to follow where the pigeons have been.

During the middle of the day, after the repast is finished, the whole settle on the trees to enjoy rest, and digest the food; but, as the sun sinks, the army departs in a body for the roosting place, not unfrequently hundreds of miles off. This has been ascertained by persons keeping account of the arrival at, and departure from the curious roosting places, to which I must now conduct the reader.

To one of these general nightly rendezvous, not far from the banks of the Green River, in Kentucky, I paid repeated visits. The place chosen was in a portion of the forest where the trees were of great height with little under-wood. I rode over the ground lengthwise upwards of forty miles, and crossed it in different parts, ascertaining its average width to be a little more than three miles.

My first view of this spot was about a fortnight after the birds had chosen it. I arrived there nearly two hours before sunset. Few pigeons were then to be seen, but a great number of persons with horses and wagons, guns and ammunition, had already established different camps on the borders.

Many trees two feet in diameter I observed were broken at no great distance from the ground, and the branches of many of the largest and tallest so much so that the desolation already exhibited equalled that of a furious tornado. The sun was lost to our view, yet not a pigeon had arrived. All on a sudden, I heard a general cry of, "Here they come!"

The noise which they made, though distant, reminded me of a hard gale at sea passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel. As the birds arrived and passed over me, I felt a current of air that surprised me. The stream of birds still kept increasing. Fires were lighted, and many people had torches, and a most magnificent, as well as wonderful and terrifying sight was before me.

The pigeons, coming in by millions, alighted every where, one on the top of another, until masses of them, resembling hanging swarms of bees as large as hogsheads were formed on every tree. These heavy clusters were seen to give way as the supporting branches, breaking down with a crash, came to the ground, killing hundreds of birds beneath, forcing down other equally large and heavy groups, and rendering the whole a scene of uproar and distressing confusion.

I found it quite useless to speak, or even to shout to those persons nearest me. Even the reports of the guns were seldom heard, and I knew only of their going off by seeing their owners reload them. It was past midnight before I perceived a decrease in the numbers arriving.

The uproar continued, however, the whole night; and, as I was anxious to know to what distance the sound reached, I sent off a man, who told me afterwards, that at three miles he heard the sound distinctly. Towards the approach of day, the noise rather subsided; but long ere objects were at all distinguishable, the pigeons began to move off in a direction quite different from that from which they had arrived the day before.