MARTIN HOUSE BUILT BY THE BOYS STANDING BESIDE IT, BOTH OF WHOM ARE TOTALLY BLIND
15. How fast do birds fly?
This is a question hard to answer and prove, and one upon which we may differ. I have heard men say that geese migrate at the rate of one hundred and twenty miles an hour. While this may be true, I have no earthly reason to believe it.
My home is three miles north of the lake; these geese go to the lake to roost and in the morning they rise high, and as they reach the shore there is always some one with a high-power rifle to greet them; these volleys of shot on a still morning will tell you the very second the geese have reached shore and are coming our way; and in every case, it will be over three minutes before the geese get to my home.
Moreover, when they start for Hudson Bay I have time and again wired ahead of them, and on three different occasions I have got returns, and if they were the same geese I wired ahead of, they were travelling between fifty and sixty miles an hour.
Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, the aviator, tells me that he has often overtaken geese in the air, and the only way they could travel one hundred miles an hour was by dropping, which they did to avoid him.
Because a goose was killed at Hudson Bay three days after we tagged it here, and because another one was killed at the Belcher Islands, Hudson Bay, four days after being tagged here, at my home, this does not prove anything, as we have no proof how long these birds lingered here after being tagged, nor how long they were there before being shot. But there is one thing I am quite certain of: That the great majority of them make the flight from my home to Hudson Bay without coming down, and I firmly believe they go about fifty miles an hour, and not two miles a minute as some report them to.
16. What became of the Passenger Pigeon?
This bird was about twice the size of the mourning dove, and so much the same in looks, ways and habits, that the mourning dove could be called a miniature pigeon.