When John Smith traveled across the Northern Neck, from the Rappahannock to the Potomac, in the winter of 1607, he probably saw many birds, for this was their season.
"In winter," he wrote, "there are great plenty of Swans, Craynes gray and white with blacke wings, Herons, Geese, Brants, Ducke, Wigeon, Dotterell, Oxeies, Parrots, and Pigeons. Of all those sorts great abundance, and some other strange kinds, to vs unknowne by name. But in sommer not any, or a very few to be seene."
For ages wildfowl had been multiplying with little to hinder them. The Indians killed only what they needed and their weapons were too primitive to make an impression on the great flocks of waterfowl that came to the rivers and marshes to feed on the heavy growth of wild celery, oats and other aquatic plants.
In early winter when these fowl gathered in their annual migration from the North the sky, it was said, was darkened with them as they arose and descended from their feeding grounds in the marshes lying along shore.
John Smith probably heard the trumpet notes of the swans and saw the pattern of flight of the wild geese many times while on his "journie."
He may have at some time seen one of the flightless Great Auks, swimming along down the Bay on its way South for the winter. Or he may have espied a heath hen on the shores of the Chesapeake.
It is doubtful if he saw very many of the "Parrots" he mentioned. They were nocturnal creatures—small, swift, bright and beautiful. The passenger pigeons came in such flocks that their "weights brake down the limbs of large trees thereon they rested at night."
There were many red birds to brighten the somber forest aisles. A little bird with white breast and black wings and back was called "snow-bird" by the English because it arrived at the first fall of snow. Captain Smith probably saw these in the vicinity of the Indian villages as they stayed near habitations.
Turkeys were common in the reedy marshes. Flocks of four and five hundred were not unusual. These wild turkeys, early writers say, averaged forty pounds in weight.