Few people, living away from the coast, have any idea that hundreds of thousands of birds are killed each year, during migrations, by flying against lighthouse towers. Capt. O. N. Brooks, of Faulkner's Island Light, tells me that between two and three hundred dead •birds were picked up at the foot of the tower on the morning of May 16th, 1877, and that at the same time thousands of living ones stopped at the Island, devouring all the tender plants and newly sown seeds in his garden. During the same night about three hundred birds killed themselves against the light at the entrance of New Haven Bay, and the daily papers stated that over seven hundred were picked up on the decks of one of the New York steamers. When we take into consideration the number of light-houses and steamships along our whole coast it becomes clear that the number of birds that perish annually by this means is simply immense. Nearly all our common, and many rare, migrants are found among the dead, but the Maryland Yellow-throats (Geothlypis trichas) greatly predominate, constituting full one third of the total number examined. It is lamentable that this wholesale slaughter of our song-birds seems to be unavoidable.

Initially, sick bar-headed geese were recorded on a single islet that contained about

3,000 bar-headed geese as well as some brown-headed gulls (Larus brunnicephalus), great black-headed gulls (Larus ichthyaetus) and great cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo). Clinical findings included paralysis, unusual head tilt, staggering and neck thrill — all are known features of H5N1 disease in waterfowl. By 4 May, bird mortality was more than 100 a day; by 20 May, the outbreak had spread to other islets, with some 1,500 birds dead.

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