Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/197

 164 I would wait until the end of this wave was opposite my hiding place and then arise and fire into this windrow of living, animated beauty, and I have picked up as many as twenty-seven dead birds killed at a single shot with an old flintlock smooth bore. Later in the fall these birds would come in countless millions to feed on the wild mast of beech nuts and acorns, and every evening they would pass over our home, going west of our place to what was known as Lodi Swamp.

Many and many a time have I seen clouds of birds that extended as far as the eye could reach, and the sound of their wings was like the roar of a tempest. And for those who are not acquainted with the habits and flight of these birds, I wish to say that once in the month of November, while these pigeons were going from their feeding grounds to this roost in the Lodi Swamp, they were met with a storm of sleet and snow. The wind blew so hard that they could not breast it and were compelled to alight in a sugar orchard near our place. This orchard consisted of twenty acres, where the timber had all been cut out, except the maples, and when they commenced alighting, the trees already partially loaded with snow and ice, and the vast flock of pigeons being attracted by those alighting, all sought the same resting place.

Such vast numbers alighted that in a short time the branches of the trees were broken and as fast as one tree gave way those birds would alight on the already