Relief from the Sparrow nuisance began to come to our neighborhood about the middle of August, after full 400 of the noisy chatterers had fallen victim to the innocent-looking wire cage. And by the time the Indian summer days of October came, the English Sparrow tribe in our part of town had dropped from the status of “abundant” to only “fairly common.” Indeed, I have not seen more than six individuals together in our end of the little city at any time in the last three months.
Is it possible that my neighbor’s experience was out of the ordinary? I do not see why it should be, but I have found a similar record only in the above-mentioned Farmers’ Bulletin, where the capture of 300 Sparrows in six weeks in the Missouri Botanical Gardens, St. Louis, is noted. If it is at all typical of what may be accomplished, then one or two things seem clear. An easy method is at hand for holding in check the Sparrow nuisance and more attention should be given to Farmers’ Bulletin 493 than seems thus far to have been accorded this worthy publication.—Charles R. Keyes, Mt. Vernon, Iowa.
[We are indebted to Prof. M. H. Saville for a copy of ‘El Comercio’ for October 18, 1915, a newspaper published at San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which contains the following account of a migration tragedy.—Editor.]
“At midnight, on October 10, 1915, there commenced to appear groups of birds flying in a southerly direction. At the time darkness set in, we began to hear the call of a great number of birds that were circling constantly over the city. This avian invasion increased considerably during the night. The main part of the army of invasion crossing the Gulf of Honduras arrived in the evening off the coast of Puerto Cortes. These birds do not travel by day, but follow the eastern shore, guided by certain groups that, toward night, exhausted, ceasing their flight, turn inland. The bright rays from the electric lights projected high in among the clouds, serving to indicate the position of San Pedro Sula and, attracted by its splendor, the bird emigrants, greatly fatigued by their vigorous exercise in the long flight against contrary winds in their travel across the Gulf of Mexico (approximately 700 miles), their short stay in Yucatan, and their flight across the Gulf of Honduras, the greater part of them fell one upon another in their revolutions about the lights, some dropping half-crazed against the roofs and fences, breaking wings and legs, some dying outright.
“At two o’clock in the morning, the greater part of the expedition directed toward this zone had arrived in the neighborhood of the city. It was at that time that the sound of their striking against the posts and the electric wires was a continual tattoo. It seemed almost as though the stones in the streets had been awakened, and were being hurled against the inhabitants. Numbers of birds striking against the zinc roofs gave off a sound like hurrying footsteps, the drumming on the zinc extending over the entire city. At one spot within a radius of two yards there fell dying six wounded birds. In the morning the streets were strewn with bodies; the greater part of them dead, others wounded.”
In the fall of 1915, a violent wind-storm passed through the southern states, just grazing the edge of Spartanburg, in upper South Carolina. Here the minister of the First Presbyterian Church was about to take shelter in his home, from the fury of the wind, when he saw what appeared to be a small, black cloud swoop down upon his roof and disappear. He hastened in, and found, to his and his family’s dismay, that little black birds were fairly pouring down one of the chimneys.
The birds seemed to have been stunned by the force of the gale to which they had been exposed, and the floor was soon covered, several inches deep, with their inanimate bodies. They were picked up by the bucketful, and thrown out, but soon revived and flew away, none the worse, apparently, for their unusual experience. Two little fellows who were overlooked took refuge on a curtain pole, where they were discovered by a little girl, several hours later.