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 146 Bird-Lore

deformed or diseased birds, and how seldom while ‘in the ﬁeld,’ and under usual conditions, we find the bodies, or skeletal remains, of a bird? True. one does see such occasionally on the plains, in wooded districts and along the lake shores, that have probably fallen prey to the raptorials or small mammals, but such ﬁndings are a numerically insigniﬁcant portion of the great host of birds which meet death each year. How, then, ends all this myriad avian host? Countless numbers, no doubt, fall prey to hungry birds and beasts—stronger links in the evolutional chain—no evidence remaining to show a bird existed. Many eggs and nestlings fall to the reptiles, as well as to Crows, Jays and their near of kin, whose ﬂedgling proclivities are well known. The deadly lighthouse claims its thousands of sacriﬁces, and the ‘small boy’ and the hunter add their quota to the death toll.

To these. what we may call, external death factors, I am inclined to believe we may add ﬂood and hail, and I believe this applies with especial force and ﬁtness to our prairie avifauna. so varied and so numerous in the great northwest country—the Dakotas, northern Minnesota and the Canadian plains still to the north. Here countless hosts of birds spend their summers and rear their broods. Over these districts hail-storms are of such frequency and intensity as to justify the belief that, compared to these causes, the work of the lighthouse and the hunter must be insigniﬁcant.

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DOUBLE - CRESTED CORMORANTS

Phutngruphcd from nan-m. by Frank M, Chapman, Shoal Lake, Manitoba, July. mol