with
numerous perils for the travelling hosts. Attracted and blinded by the
torches of lighthouses, multitudes of birds are annually killed by
striking against lighthouse towers in thick, foggy weather. The keeper
of the Cape Hatteras light once showed me a chipped place in the lens
which he said had been made by the bill of a great white Gannet which
one thick night crashed through the outer protecting glass of the
lighthouse lamp. As many as seven hundred birds in one month have
killed themselves by flying against the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty in
New York Harbour. As its torch is no longer lighted the death-rate
here has been greatly reduced, although some birds are still killed by
flying against the statue. Many were formerly killed by striking the
Washington Monument, the record for one night being one hundred and
fifty dead birds.

{76}

Locomotive engineers have stated that in foggy weather birds often hurl
themselves against the headlight and frequently their bodies are later
picked up from the engine platform beneath. Birds seem rarely to lose
their sense of direction, and they pursue their way for hundreds of
miles across the trackless ocean. Terns, Gulls, and Murres are known
to go many miles in quest of food for their young and return through
dense fogs with unerring directness to their nests.

[Illustration: Lighthouses Cause the Death of Many Birds]

During the spring it is not uncommon for strange waterfowl to be found
helpless in the streets or fields of a region in which they are
ordinarily unknown. These birds have become exhausted during the storm
of the night before, or have been injured by striking telephone or
telegraph wires, an accident which often happens. Once I picked up a
Loon after a stormy night. Apparently it had recovered its strength
after a few hours' rest, but, as this bird can rise on the wing only
from a body of water, over the surface of which it can paddle and flap
for many rods, and as {78} there was no pond or lake in all the
neighbouring country, the Loon's fate was evident from the first.

Birds are often swept to sea by storm winds from off shore. Vainly
they beat against the gale or fly on quivering wings before its blast,
until the hungry waves swallow their weary bodies. One morning in
northern Lake Michigan I found a Connecticut Warbler lying dead on the
deck beneath my stateroom window after a stormy night of wind and rain.
Overtaken many miles from sh