p. 29 | Remarkable Visitors

S. D. A. Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 10, 1884

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 2

Remarkable Visitors.

The Fresno Expositor says the vineyards of that region were last year infested with vine slugs which threatened their total destruction, when one day they were entered by a stream of hawks estimated to number 50,000; these went through the vineyard in a few days, devouring the last of the slugs, and then disappeared as mysteriously as they came. This year worms attacked a vineyard and the hawks again came, thought to number at least 250,000, and repeated the operation of clearing out the crawling intruders. The hawks are described as large and black, with a broad tail, and very unlike an ordinary bird of that species. The Expositor thinks they were sent by the Ruler who “doeth all things well,” and that vineyardists should nourish and protect the bird. In the fall of 1852, in Sacramento Valley, between Butte Creek and the Sacramento River, there came an infinite number of grasshoppers. These were attacked by dark colored hawks, evidently the same species as above described. The grasshoppers took flight, and the hawks, in vast numbers filling the sky as far as the eye could reach, sailed among the fleeing swarms, gracefully reaching out their talons and grasping the insects, and transferring them to their beaks; and thus, during an entire day, the pursued and the pursuers were passing to the southwest, where they disappeared. The hawks in conspicuous numbers were seen only on that occasion. Where they came from and where they remain ordinarily, is a mystery.—Sel.