Montauk Point, Long Island, is the most isolated and desolate spot
imaginable during this weather. The frigid monotony of winter has
settled down upon that region, and now it is haunted only by sea fowl.
The bleak, barren promontory whereon stands the light is swept clean
of its summer dust by the violent raking of cold hurricanes across it,
and coated with ice from the wind-dashed spume of the great breakers
hurled against the narrow sand spit which makes the eastern terminus
of the island. The tall, white towered light and its black lantern,
now writhing in frosty northern blizzards, and again shivering in
easterly gales, now glistening with ice from the tempest tossed seas
all about it, and now varnished with wreaths of fog, is the only
habitation worthy of the name for many miles around. Keeper Clark and
his family and assistants are almost perpetually fenced in from the
outside world by the cold weather, and have to hug closely the roaring
fires that protect them in that desolation.
But for ducks and the duck hunter the lighthouse family would die of
inanition. With the cold weather comes the ducks, and they continue to
come till the warmer blasts of spring drive them to the northward.
Montauk Point is a favorite haunt for this sort of wild fowl. It is a
good feeding ground, is isolated, and there is nearly always a weather
shore for the flocks to gather under. But year by year the point is
being more and more frequented by sportsmen, and the reports of their
successes increase the applicants for lodgings at the light. Some 20
gunners were out there last week with the most improved paraphernalia
for the sport, and did telling work. Flight shooting is the favorite
method of taking them. The light stands very near the end of the
point, about a sixteenth of a mile to the west, and all migratory
birds in passing south seem to have it down in their log-book that
they must not only sight this structure, but must also fly over it as
nearly as possible. Hence the variety and extent of the flocks which
are continually passing is a matter of interest and wonder to a
student of natural history as well as to the sportsman. Coots,
whistlers, soft bills, old squaws, black ducks, cranes, belated wild
geese, and, in fact, all sorts of northern birds make up this long and
strange procession, and the air is frequently so densely packed with
them as to be actually darkened, while the keen, whistling music of
their whizzing wings makes a melody that comparatively few landsmen
ever hear. Millions of the birds never hesitate at this point in their
flight, although thousands of them do. These latter make the
neighboring waters their home for the rest of the winter. Great flocks
of ducks are continually sailing about the rugged shores, and the
frozen cranberry marshes of Fort Pond Bay, lying to the westward, are
their favorite feeding-grounds. The birds are always as fat as butter
when making their flight, and their piquant, spicy flavor leads to
their being barbecued by the wholesale at the seat of shooting
operations. One of the gunner's cabins has nailed up in it the heads
of 345 ducks that have been roasted on the Point this winter.
Early morning is the favorite time for shooting. At daybreak the
flights are heavy, and from that time until seven o'clock in the
morning they increase until it seems as though all the flocks which
had spent the night in the caves and ponds on the Connecticut shore
were on the wing and away for the south. By ten o'clock in the
forenoon the flights grow rarer, and the rest of the day only
stragglers come along. A good gunner can take five dozen of these
birds easily in a morning's work, provided he can and will withstand
the inclemency of the weather.
Keeper Clark never shoots ducks. Scarcely a morning has dawned for two
months but that several of the poor birds have been picked up at the
foot of the light house tower with the broken necks which have mutely
told the story of death, reached by plunging headlong against the
crystal walls of the dazzling lantern overhead the night before. There
is a tendency with such migratory birds as are on the wing at night to
fly very high. But the great, glaring, piercing, single eye of Montauk
light seems to draw into it by dozens, as a loadstone pulls a magnet,
its feathered victims, and they swerve in their course and make
straight for it. As they flash nearer and nearer, the light, of
course, grows brighter and brighter, and at length they dash into what
appears a sea of fire, to be crushed lifeless by the heavy glass, and
they fall to the ground below, ready to be plucked for the oven.
Inside the lantern the thud made by these birds when they strike is
readily felt. Although they are comparatively small, yet so great is
their velocity that the impact creates a perceptible jar, and the
lantern is disfigured with plashes of their blood. Upon stormy and
foggy nights the destruction of birds is found to be greatest. When
the weather is clear and fair many smaller birds, like robins,
sparrows, doves, cuckoos, rail, snipe, etc., will circle about the
light all night long, leaving only when the light is extinguished in
the morning. Large cranes show themselves to be almost dangerous
visitors. Recently one of these weighing 40 pounds struck the wrought
iron guard railing about the lantern with such force as to bend the
iron slats and to completely sever his long neck from his body.--_N.Y.
Times_.
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[THE GARDEN.]