Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/526

508 one when for the first time the air at night is actually seen to be filled with the tiny songsters which before were known only as timid haunters of woods and thickets.

On September 26, 1891, it was the writer's good fortune to pass the night with several ornithologists at the Bartholdi Statue in observing the nocturnal flight of birds. The weather was most favorable for our purpose. From the balcony at the base of the statue we saw the first bird enter the rays of light thrown out by the torch one hundred and fifty feet above us at eight o'clock. During the two succeeding hours birds were constantly heard and many were seen. At ten o'clock a light rain began to fall and for three hours it rained intermittently. Almost simultaneously there occurred a marked increase in the number of birds seen about the light, and within a few minutes there were hundreds where before there was one, while the air was filled with the calls and chirps of the passing host.

The birds presented a singular appearance. As they entered the limits of the divergent rays of light they became slightly luminous, but as their rapid wing-beats brought them into the glare of the torch they reflected the full splendor of the light, and resembled enormous fireflies or swarms of huge golden bees.

At eleven o'clock we climbed to the torch and continued our observations from the balcony by which it is encircled. The scene was impressive beyond description; we seemed to have torn aside the veil which shrouds the mysteries of the night, and in the searching light reposed the secrets of Nature. As the tiny feathered wanderers emerged from the surrounding blackness, appeared for a moment in the brilliant halo about us, and continuing their journey were swallowed up in the gloom beyond, one marveled at the power which guided them thousands of miles through the trackless heavens. While by far the larger number hurried onward without pausing to inspect this strange apparition, others hovered before us like humming birds before a flower, then wheeling retreated for a short distance and returned to repeat the performance or pass us as did the first class mentioned, while others still, and the number was comparatively insignificant, struck some part of the torch either slightly or with sufficient force to cause them to fall stunned or dying. It was evidently by the merest accident that they struck at all; and so far as we could judge they were either dazzled by the rays of the light and thus unwittingly flew directly at the glass which protects it, or came in contact with some unilluminated part of the statue. During the two hours we were in the torch thousands of birds passed within sight, but less than twenty were killed.

This fact, in connection with the comparative or entire absence of birds on clear nights, very plainly shows that conclusions based