Several of them informed me
that the noise was so great as to terrify their horses, and that it was
difficult for one person to hear another without bawling in his ear. The
ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab
pigeons, which had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of
hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles were sailing about in
great numbers, and seizing the squabs from the nests at pleasure; while,
from 20 feet upwards to the top of the trees, the view through the woods
presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of
pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the frequent
crash of falling timber; for now the axemen were at work cutting down
those trees that seemed most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell
them in such a manner, that in their descent they might bring down
several others; by which means the falling of one large tree sometimes
produced 200 squabs little inferior in size to the old birds, and almost
one heap of fat. On some single trees upwards of a hundred nests were
found, each containing one squab only; a circumstance in the history of
the bird not generally known to naturalists.
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