Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/34

8 stormy waters of the great North Sea,—and rarely do we find a finer and more intelligent body of men than those employed in this important and trustful service.

It has long been a well-known fact that, during the period of the autumn migrations, large numbers of birds of various species immolate themselves by dashing, during the night time, when in full migratory swing, against the thick glasses which surround the lanterns of the various lighthouses on our shores, more particularly those situated on the eastern and southern coasts. I have known flocks of migrating Starlings settle in the night time on the top of a lighthouse, where they continued for a long time to keep up a continual chattering, astonished perhaps at the novelty of the situation. Numbers of small birds will often hover for hours to and fro in the blaze of light without striking the glass, like moths on a summer evening when the hall-door is open and the lamp lighted. Sometimes, too, on dark and misty nights flocks of Curlew and Whimbrel, like spirits of the lost, wail and scream round the solitary lamp-trimmer in his lonely pharos, or troops of Gray Plover and Dunlin whirl past in the blaze cast forth by highly-polished lenses—shape, size or colour as distinctly apparent in each individual bird as if seen by the light of noonday. It is a curious sight indeed for the lonely night-watcher to see the deluded little birds beating themselves to death against the polished pane, or to hear the thump as something heavier—Blackbird or Fieldfare—strikes and is hurled back smashed and senseless into the abyss. It seems easy enough for the spectator unaccustomed to the scene, bewildered and dazed by the blaze of light within the lamp-room, to slip and pitch headlong through the glass into the same black abyss which has just swallowed up the birds; but it is years now since I spent a night in a lighthouse, and the sensation of fancying oneself pitching backwards through the glass into the darkness requires some imagination to recall it.

Often have I wished that it were possible for a thoroughly practical ornithologist to be placed, for three months in the autumn, in each lighthouse and lightship; his work to consist of filling up, in a tabulated form, a record of birds striking the glass at night; the number of each species, sex and age, direction of flight, hour, state of weather and wind. These tables, taken collectively, would be deeply interesting, and perhaps throw light on some of the yet little-understood problems of migration.