Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/527

Rh solely on these casualties may be not only misleading but erroneous. In other words, the number of birds which strike a light is a poor index to the number which have flown by or above it in safety.

Throughout the evening there was a more or less regular fluctuation in the number of birds present; periods of abundance were followed by periods of scarcity, and the birds passed in well-defined flights, or loose companies, probably composed in the main of individuals which had started together.

The birds chirped and called incessantly. Frequently, when few could be seen, hundreds were heard passing in the darkness; the air was filled with the lisping notes of warblers and the mellow whistle of thrushes, and at no time during the night was there perfect silence. At daybreak a few stragglers were still winging their way southward, but before the sun rose the flights had ceased. The only birds identified were several species of warblers and thrushes, one red-eyed vireo, two golden-winged woodpeckers, one catbird, one whip-poor-will, and one bobolink. The most interesting and important results of the night's observations were, the immediate effect of rainfall in forcing birds to migrate at a lower level, the infrequency with which they struck the torch, the immense number which passed beyond its rays, and the constancy with which they called and chirped as they flew.

An almost virgin field awaits the investigator who will systematically observe night-migrating birds with the aid of a telescope. Messrs. Allen and Scott, at Princeton, and the writer, assisted by Mr. John Tatlock, Jr., at Tenafly, New Jersey, and at the Columbia College Observatory, have alone recorded the results of observations of this nature. Their labors, however, were too brief to more than show the possibilities which await more extended effort.

A comparatively low-power glass is focused upon the moon, the birds appearing silhouhetedsilhouetted [sic] upon its glowing surface as they cross the line of vision. Some idea of the multitude of feathered forms which people the upper regions of the air at night may be formed when it is stated that during three hours' observation at Tenafly no less than two hundred and sixty-four birds were seen crossing the restricted field included in the angle subtended by the full moon. Under proper focal conditions, birds were so plainly visible that in many instances marked character of flight or form rendered it possible to recognize the species. Thus ducks, snipe, and sora rail were distinguished with certainty.

The effect on the observer of this seeing of things unseen is not a little curious, and maybe likened to the startling disclosures which a high-power microscope presents in a drop of water.

From calculations based on an assumption that birds were not