UC-NRLF cWTter 'PrkfwrdGaton In Berkshire Fields * T Winter is richer in color masses than spring or sumn., In Berkshire Fields WALTER PRICHARD EATON I) Illustrated by WALTER KING STONE HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON :^-l English 1 ENGLiSW I IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published September, 1920 G-U TO WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON 43C521 CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD xi LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS ..... i JIM CROW 27 THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 55 THE MENACE FROM ABOVE 77 BY INLAND WATERS 100 POKING AROUND FOR BIRDS' NESTS 122 THE QUEEN OF THE SWAMP 151 FORGOTTEN ROADS .158 FROM A BERKSHIRE CABIN 170 LITTLE FOLKS THAT GNAW 185 THE WAYS OF THE WOODCHUCK .212 FOXES AND OTHER NEIGHBORS .234 IN PRAISE OF TREES 262 ENJOYING THE INFLUENZA • 285 ADVENTURES WITH AN Ax • 291 WEEDS ABOVE THE SNOW 3<>i ILLUSTRATIONS WINTER is RICHER IN COLOR MASSES THAN SPRING OR SUMMER Frontispiece A RAIN-POOL BATH AMONG THE ROCKS Page I TREE-SPARROWS FEEDING IN THE SNOW ....... Facing p. 4 CHICKADEES IN A JAPANESE PRINT " 10 JENNIE WREN BRINGS SCORES OF GRUBS TO THE NEST . Page 13 THE MARTIN-HOUSE " 19 THE PLAY OF THE CHIMNEY-SWIFTS AT TWILIGHT ... " 21 TAPPING AWAY AT A FROZEN BIT OF SUET Facing p. 22 A PHCEBE NESTING UNDER THE PORCH EAVES " 24 WINTER OR SUMMER, THE CROW HAS HIS PLACE IN THE PROSPECT Page 2J A FLEDGLING CROW 29 CRYING INCESSANTLY FOR FOOD 31 HE WOULD FOLLOW UP THE ROWS OF FRESH-TURNED EARTH 33 HlS LIKING FOR BRIGHT OBJECTS IS SOMETIMES A NUISANCE 35 SINKING HIS CLAWS INTO THE WOOL AND CAWING DELIGHT- EDLY 37 A GREAT HORNED OWL FLYING LOW IN THE TREES ... 47 THE CROW IN TURN IS ATTACKED BY SMALLER BIRDS . . Facing p. 50 WINGING CHEERILY AGAINST THE WHITENED LANDSCAPE . Page 55 OTHER BIRDS GO SOUTH IN WINTER — THE CHICKADEE REMAINS 57 THE FIRST SNOWFALL BRINGS THE CHICKADEE TO OUR WINDOWS 59 THE CHICKADEE, OR BLACK-CAPPED TITMOUSE 6 1 HE MAKES LIGHT OF THE RIGORS OF WINTER 63 ON BLACKBERRY STALKS BY GRAY STONE WALL THE CHICKA- DEES ARE CONSPICUOUS OBJECTS 67 vui ILLUSTRATIONS PERCHED ON THE END OF A BARE TWIG AS IN A JAPANESE PRINT . . . ... . ... . ...... Page 69 IN THE HUSHED NAVES OF THE FOREST " 71 IN SEARCH OF FOOD IN A WINTER CORN-FIELD .... " 75 THE DUCK-HAWK NESTS ON THE LEDGES OF ROCK PRECIPICES ' ' 83 THE RED-TAILED HAWK DROPPING FROM HIS AERIAL PATHWAY ' ' 8.5 THE SPARROW-HAWK IS A PRETTY LITTLE FALCON THAT DOES MORE GOOD THAN HARM 87 THE MARSH-HAWK 89 THE GREAT HORNED OWL, OR " SIX-HOOTER" " 93 THE SNOWY OWL 95 THE DIM FORM OF A SCREECH-OWL OUTLINED AGAINST THE TWILIGHT SKY Facing p. 9g YOU MIGHT HAVE SUPPOSED THE MERGANSERS WERE MERELY PLAYING A GAME COASTING DOWN THE CURRENT . . " IO2 WOOD-DUCKS ARE FEWER IN NUMBER THAN THEY USED TO BE Page IO5 THE BLACK DUCK IS THE DUCK MOST OFTEN SEEN ON INLAND WATERS ~ \ " 108 THE GREAT BLUE HERON SUGGESTS A JAPANESE PRINT . IIO THE LITTLE GREEN HERON HAS SHOWN A STURDY ABILITY TO LOOK AFTER HIMSELF Facing p. 112 EVERY COUNTRY BOY KNOWS THE SPOTTED SANDPIPER . . Page 116 THE KINGFISHER IS EXTREMELY DECORATIVE AS HE PERCHES HIGH OVER POND OR RIVER " 119 HOUSES AND BARNS ATTRACT THE WRENS AND SWALLOWS. " 127 THE ORCHARD HAUNTS OF THE WOODPECKER IN SPRING . " 133 SOUNDING HIS SWEET, SAD, ANDANTE CALL TO HIS MATE . ";; 143 THE BLACKBIRDS MAKE LIVELY THE AIR OVER THE SEDGY BORDERS OF STREAMS AND PONDS . . . * . . * " *45 THE COTTONTAIL RABBIT BENEATH A TENT OF SWAMP SHRUBBERY " 187 A VARYING HARE UNDER HIS SNOW-LADEN, FAIRY ROOF . " . 19! THE FAMILIAR, AGGRESSIVE, FEARLESS, QUARRELSOME RED SQUIRREL " 195 A CHIPMUNK WAITING EXPECTANTLY FOR BREAKFAST . . " 199 ILLUSTRATIONS ix THE WOODCHUCK is THE LARGEST AND LAZIEST OF COMMON RODENTS Page 2OI THE SHORT-TAILED, BURROWING MICE EAT CORN AND OTHER GRAIN IN THE SHOCK " 203 THE PORCUPINE is ARMORED AGAINST ALL ENEMIES ... " 207 SITTING ON HIS HAUNCHES IN A FIELD OF DAISIES ... " 215 HlS BURROW USUALLY COMMANDS A WIDE PROSPECT . . " 219 YOU WILL SEE A SHREWD FACE AND FAT BODY UP ON THE WALL " 221 A TROPHY OF THE CHASE " 225 SUNNING HIMSELF IN LAZY CONTEMPLATION OF THE LAND- SCAPE . . " 227 A FAVORITE HAUNT IS THE NETWORK OF ROOTS AT THE BASE OF A HUGE TREE " 22Q A DENIZEN OF THE DEEP WOODS " 23! GREEN MEADOWS, DAISY-STARRED, INVITE THE WOODCHUCK FROM HIS LAIR Facing p. 2$2 REYNARD SPRINGS ON A MOUSE 238 A MIDNIGHT VIGIL Page 240 A DASH ACROSS THE OPEN BY AN AIR-LINE TRACK ... " 244 THE WILDCAT IS THE SHYEST ANIMAL OF OUR EASTERN FOR- ESTS, AND YET THE FIERCEST AND MOST FORMIDABLE . 248 THE OTTER WILL FRISK ON THE RIVER-BANK LIKE A PUPPY Facing p. 2$2 IF HE IS NOT FRIGHTENED, THE SKUNK IS QUITE INOFFEN- SIVE AND HARMLESS 254 THE LITTLE WEASEL IS A CUNNING AND ELUSIVE MARAUDER 256 TREES ARE THE INSTINCTIVE REFUGE OF THE 'COON . . Page 258 THE MASSIVE TRUNK OF A HORNBEAM AGAINST THE RED AND GRAY OF A DISTANT SNOWY MOUNTAIN .... 265 THE SYCAMORE GAINS A WINTER CHARM OVER OTHER TREES BECAUSE OF ITS MOTTLED BARK 267 SLENDER OLIVE POPLARS RISING TO FOREST HEIGHT CROWDED FROM BEHIND BY THE HEMLOCKS OF THE SWAMP ... 270 A PINE BEFITS A MOUNTAINOUS LANDSCAPE, A PLACE OF ROCKS AND WINDY SWEEPS *««'** *• 276 IN WINTER THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE LOWER IRREGULAR APPLE-TREES AND THE GREEN PINES IS CHARMING . . Page 277 ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGH THE CURLING SPRAY OF THE WEED-TOPS SOME WHITE PATH INTO THE QUIETUDE INVITES YOUR FEET Page 2/8 ALONG THE BACK ROAD A DOUBLE ROW OF CEDARS MARCH ALONG BESIDE YOU AS YOU TRAMP ....... " 280 WHITE BIRCHES ON THE CREST OF THE RIDGE SHOOTING THEIR SLENDERNESS UPWARD . ... . . . . . Facing p. 280 THE GREEN DOMED CROWN OF ELM RISING STATELY OUT OF CLUSTERED FOLIAGE ^ . .. " 282 MY PASTURE CLIMBS STEEPLY TO THE FOREST WITH EVER- INCREASING ABRUPTNESS " 302 A YOUNG MOON HOLDING IN ITS CRESENT THE VAGUE WRAITH OF THE FULL SPHERE Page 307 FOREWORD PRE-EMINENT in the field of so-called nature-writ- ing is, and should be, the scientific naturalist or bota- nist, when he can bring to his task literary grace and charm. Nothing is more important than an addi- tion to human knowledge, even when its immediate, or even its most remotely conceivable, bearing seems trivial enough. No laughter is so much like the crackling of thorns under a pot as that excited some- times in certain people by the spectacle of a patient scientist pursuing his minutiae. Yet there are many among those who write for whom biological or botanical science is, and must remain, impossible of attainment, and yet who find a delight and refresh- ment in wandering among the materials of such science, even, perhaps, in speculating, now and then, on their own account, from their own observed data. This proceeding adds nothing to the sum total of human knowledge, but it stimulates in its practitioners a certain kindly curiosity and, like golf, it at least keeps them out in the open air. The present writer scarcely needs to confess himself such a one. Nothing is farther from his intention, as nothing is farther from his ability, than to attempt a natural history, even of the Berkshire Hills which surround his house and too insistently invite his feet to wander. Yet it is just because he has found so much delight and stimulation, amid a life other- xii FOREWORD wise mainly occupied, in the doubtless unscientific and haphazard observation of woodland folk and winged, in the personalities of trees and the retreats of wild flowers, that he has been moved to think such avocation cannot be wholly evil, and that the scientists who deal with lovely or fascinating sen- suous things must expect those lovely or fascinating things to be approached from other angles than theirs. One who is not a scientist does not delib- erately toy with a 40,000- volt high-potential cur- rent. But you or I may, .1 trust, explore for the Cypripedium spectabile in its swamp, or track a wea- sel over its snowy rocks, in a spirit of pure advent- ure, in the quest, let us say, for the essential flavor of the wilderness, which may come in the odor of a flower or the note of a bird or the imaginative reali- zation on our part of how the world looked last night to the animal which tracked warily here, searching for its prey. In such a spirit, at any rate, these chapters have been written, records of sometimes purposeful but more often idle wanderings through the fields and woods, beside the streams and over the steep slopes, of the Berkshire Hills, with here and there a record or a memory of wandering elsewhere. Those of us who live in these hills, wisely, the year through, and know their rugged winter moods as well as their softer summer aspect, love the Berkshires less for their softness than their wildness, less for their val- leys than their heights, less for their well-groomed towns than their half -abandoned upland hamlets and their miles of forest where to-day moose and wildcat roam, and even there is recent evidence of a FOREWORD xiii timber- wolf. It is the writer's hope — a modest one, surely — that other lovers of that wildness which has largely disappeared from our Eastern country- side, and which is such a refreshment to the spirit when we can get back to it, will be glad, at least, to know that the foxes still bark and the deer browse up here in our hills, and each year, in Berkshire County, we kill almost a score of wildcats. Many of the chapters that follow have appeared in Harper's Magazine, from which they are re- printed with some additions. The editors of The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The Boston Transcript have kindly given their permission, also, for the inclusion of certain other chapters originally printed in those publications. The author regrets that the absence of Mr. Stone with the Y. M. C. A. in France has prevented his co-operation in selecting and arranging the illustrations. W. P. E. TWIN FIRES, SHEFFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS, 1920. In Berkshire Fields A rain-pool bath among the rocks IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS I WONDER if any reader of this chapter was ever present when a state legislature considered the question of licensing cats. If so, he must have been impressed anew with several facts, one of them being that in spite of all the information disseminated by the ornithological and biological bureaus of the Federal and state governments, and by other ornithologists, regarding the economic value of our common birds, the average man is still blind to the importance of the subject. Of course, one doesn't expect a state legislator to be swayed by sentiment; one expects him, rather, to yield to economic pressure! Yet when the question of establishing a cat license, as we now have a dog IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS license, comes up, the only economic argument your average legislator can see is on the other side. The cats catch rats in the farmer's barn. We mustn't do anything to lose the rural vote! The congressional wag make's a funny speech about pretty pussy and the old maids coming down-town to get their licenses, the legislative assembly titil- lates with mirth, and the bill is laid on the table. It would all be rather amusing if it weren't so serious. How serious it is a very brief survey of the figures will show. The figures, too, may well be taken from reports by Edward Howe Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, whose own legislature has tabled a bill to license cats, with the usual display of Sunday-supplement humor (but the fight is not yet over). Dr. Forbush bases his figures on the reports of over a hundred observers throughout the state. "If we assume," he says, "that the average cat on the farm kills but ten birds in a year, and that there are but two cats on each farm in Massachusetts, we have in round numbers 70,000 cats, killing 700,000 birds an- nually." As a matter of fact, there are many more than 70,000 cats in Massachusetts, even on the farms, and those which live near the open, even in the suburbs, take a toll of bird life that is prob- ably in excess of ten birds a year. A cat belonging to a neighbor of mine, not a farm cat, but a pam- pered house puss, brought twenty-six birds to the veranda last summer, and I have to wage a constant warfare on half a dozen sleek, well-fed house cats which daily try to catch birds in my garden. Doc- LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 3 tor Forbush is too careful and conservative. The toll of bird life due to farm cats alone in the single state of Massachusetts is probably in excess of 1,000,000 a year. To this huge total we must probably add another 1,000,000 for the toll taken by the domestic pets and stray cats and their descendants, now gone wild. Few people have any conception of the number of cats gone wild there are in our woods. Now, undoubtedly, if cats were licensed as dogs are, and men appointed to dispose of the strays, there would be a great and immediate diminution of the feline population, still more noticeable in a second generation, for the females would pay a higher fee. The cats which remained would be those valued and cared for as pets (and if a person isn't willing to pay one or two dollars a year for his or her pet, his attachment isn't very strong) or else those cats valuable as destroyers of rodents. The stray cat, that has to hunt for a living, would be eliminated, as would the present excess of half- stray house and barn cats. There would be little hardship to the farmer, because a good barn cat earns its license fee; and, besides, very few cats are as effective as traps, anyhow, as careful experi- ments have again and again proved. Finally, an added revenue would accrue to the state. But why go to all this trouble merely to save 2,000,000 birds a year? asks the sentimental cat- lover, who would rather have the cat than the blue- birds and song-sparrows, because he (or she) cannot pat a bluebird, nor dangle a string before its young. The answer is, because the birds help to maintain IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS the balance in nature between destructive insects and growing things, between weeds and flowers, and any serious diminution in our bird population means a serious increase in the ranks of our insect and vegetable foes. The birds are among our best and most valuable friends, while the cat, artificially bred and introduced, does not belong to the natural scheme of things. A bluebird, a barn-swallow, a screech-owl, even a so-called " hen-hawk" (which scarcely touches hens at all) has a definite economic value, and its protection by man from cats and other hunters, on four legs or two, from storms and starvation, is as useful, and some day we shall realize as necessary, as catching rats in the barn or spraying the potato-vines. Indeed, if every potato-field could harbor a bevy of quail (and it could if we had not been such game-hogs in America for a hundred years) there would be little call for Paris green or arsenate of lead. Again let us quote figures. There are plenty of them. The appeal to sentiment in order to save the birds is not necessary. The matter can be reduced to a cold business proposition for the farmer, or for anybody else with trees and a garden. In Farmers* Bulletin No. 513, prepared by the United States Bureau of Biological Survey, it is stated that at a conservative estimate the common tree-sparrow consumes a quarter of an ounce of weed seeds a day. On this basis, in the state of Iowa alone, the bureau estimates these sparrows consume 875 tons of weed seeds. If you will try to imagine the acres upon acres which could be Tree-sparrows feeding in the snow LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS s sown to weeds with such a pile, and the weeks upon weeks of labor necessary to harrow them out, you hardly need to be told further that the combined sparrow family (not including the pestiferous Eng- lish sparrow) probably saved the farmers of the United States in 1910 $89,260,000. Doesn't it begin to be apparent why the destruc- tion of 2,000,000 birds a year in one state alone, by cats, is a serious affair? If all those birds had been sparrows that would mean a daily increase of 32,000 pounds in the number of weed seeds allowed to ripen, and possibly to germinate, in Massa- chusetts alone. Of course it doesn't mean quite that, for many birds do not live on weed seeds. On the other hand, many of them live on even more objectionable insects and tree pests. The economic loss is very clear and very serious. Here is a paragraph from the same bulletin quoted above: It is interesting to observe that hungry birds — and birds are hungry most of the time — are not content to fill their stomachs with insects or seeds, but, after the stomach is stuffed until it will hold no more, continue to eat till the crop or gullet also is crammed. It is often the case that when the stomach is opened and the contents piled up the pile is two or three times as large as the stomach was when filled. Birds may truly be said to have healthy appetites. To show the astonishing capacity of birds' stomachs and to reveal the extent to which man is indebted to birds for the destruction of noxious insects, the following facts are given as learned by stomach examinations made by assistants of the Biological Survey: "A tree-swallow's stomach was found to contain 40 entire chinch-bugs and fragments of many others, besides 10 other species of insects. A bank-swallow in Texas devoured 68 6 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS cotton-boll weevils, one of the worst insect pests that ever invaded the United States; and 35 cliff-swallows had taken an average of 18 boll weevils each. Two stomachs of pine- siskins from Haywards, California, contained 1,900 black 'olive scales and 300 plant lice. A killdeer's stomach taken in November in Texas contained over 300 mosquito larvae. A flicker's stomach held 28 white grubs. A night-hawk's stomach collected in Kentucky contained 34 May-beetles, the adult form of white grubs. Another night-hawk from New York had eaten 24 clover-leaf weevils and 375 ants. Still another night-hawk had eaten 340 grasshoppers, 52 bugs, 3 beetles, 2 wasps, and a spider. A boat-tailed grackle from Texas had eaten at one meal about 100 cotton-boll worms, besides a few other insects. A ring-necked pheasant's crop from Washington contained 8,000 seeds of chickweed and a dandelion head. More than 72,000 seeds have been found in a single duck stomach taken in Louisiana in February." From so brief a survey as this of the actual, as- certained facts about the habits and economic value of certain birds, it should at least be apparent even to a state legislator, one would suppose, that the subject of bird protection is important, worthy of investigation, not lightly to be dismissed. Some day these gentlemen will wake up, but probably not until public opinion wakes them, including the opinion of those most conservative of God's creat- ures, the farmers, who for the most part are not yet even dimly aware of how much they owe to birds and how sorely the birds need protection, need it more and more every year. Our birds are de- creasing; our pests are increasing. And in part, at least, it is cause and effect, though the increased facilities of commerce and intercourse have been responsible for some of our worst inflictions. LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 7 It is not necessary in this chapter to discuss at any length the harmful birds. They are relatively few in number, the worst being the goshawk, the Cooper and sharp-shinned hawks, which are the only ones that seriously raid poultry. Bobolinks are harmful to the Southern rice-fields, destroying as high as ten per cent, of the crop. Crows are neither all bad nor all good; they are the most human of birds! The English sparrow is an un- diluted pest because he drives out other and much more desirable birds, and should always be de- stroyed, either by poison, by traps, or by a gun. Knocking down the nest does no good, though taking out the eggs every day helps. The robin and certain other birds sometimes seriously raid small-fruit crops, particularly the cherry, but by planting a few trees of a wild variety on the edge of an orchard they can be controlled; and in most cases the good they do outbalances the harm. The great bulk of our common North American birds are unreservedly our friends, in a very real sense, working for us at least ten hours a day, busily, without pay, singing at their labors, destroying insect pests, keeping down weeds, grubbing up worms, helping the beneficent forces in nature in their endless battle with the parasites. Their total economic value in this capacity is far up in the millions of dollars. Their destruction would mean a very grave disturbance of the balance of nature ; and, conversely, their protection by every means in our power is as much a duty as any other form of conservation. Sentiment may be left quite out of the question. IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS Over perhaps the worst foe of bird life we have no control — the weather. A bad winter twelve years ago killed nearly all the quail in Massa- chusetts , for example . The exceptionally deep snow of the winter of 1915-16 also wrought great havoc among the partridges and pheasants. They suffered again in 1917-18, even more, perhaps. The late March blizzard which hit Berkshire in 1919 killed thousands of song-sparrows, robins, bluebirds, and even juncos. Storms may catch the migratory birds when over the water, and destroy them by the thousands. The cold, wet, late spring of 1917, in the Northeastern states, exacted a pathetic toll from the warblers. These beautiful little birds, of so many and bewildering varieties, are entirely insectivorous and seem never to have learned how to eat anything else, even in times of dire need. Migrating in May over a land still too cold and wet for insect life to be active, they were hard pressed, and came into our gardens by the thou- sands, looking for food in the newly turned earth. I often had redstarts and Blackburnians hopping on my very feet as I hoed or cultivated. They not only died of starvation in droves, but fell, through weakness, an easy prey to cats. A cat belonging to a neighbor of mine was seen to kill ten warblers in a single afternoon. I think if I had seen it I should have killed the cat ! But, next to the elements, man is the birds' chief foe — man, the cruelest of God's creatures. Not only does he turn his cats loose to prey, and go out himself with a gun to slaughter, but gradually, as more and more land comes under cultivation, he is LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 9 destroying the cover for the birds, taking away their nesting-places, driving them, his best friends, un- consciously from his door. I never see the modern slaughter with a brush scythe along a country road, for instance, without thinking not only how much beauty of wild landscape gardening has been laid low, but how many nesting-places have been laid low, also — nesting-places for birds that are the farmers' assistants. The vireos and chipping-spar- rows love to nest in friendly proximity to a road or lane, in shrubs or low trees, and both varieties of birds are great insect-destroyers. The sparrow also eats weed seeds. A nest of four young sparrows was watched by a government observer at different hours on four different days, and it was found that a day's average rations for the brood was 238 insects and caterpillars. Watching a similar nest in my grapevine, I saw the parents bring seven cutworms (each worm capable of destroying a cauliflower plant worth fifteen or twenty cents) to the young in less than half an hour. How can any one doubt that it pays to have as many chipping-sparrows as possible nesting near one's farm and orchard? The problem of attracting the birds back to our dwellings and farms, of assisting them to breed in safety, of providing them with proper shelter, and, in seasons when their natural food-supply is difficult to get, of furnishing them the food their active little bodies demand, is not one that can be solved by law. All laws which protect the beneficent birds from destruction by pot and feather hunters, by cats and game-hogs, are of course necessary, and will have to be ever more strictly enforced. But it io IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS is of slight avail to protect the robin from the pot hunter of the South during the winter season, only to let him freeze and starve during a late spring snow-storm in the North, for lack of evergreens to take shelter in, or any food-bearing shrubs above the snow. What is the bluebird to do, or the chicka- dee, or the downy woodpecker, if he flies to his grove where the hole for his nest was so tempting the year before — and finds no grove there? What are the quail to do in winter when the few who have escaped the hunters find all their food-supply buried deep in snow, at the very time that their bodies need a big supply to keep them warm? Such ques- tions as these are not to be answered by laws. They are only to be answered by individual and com- munity effort. But, as a matter of fact, they can be answered, and rather easily. How easily, I have illustrated for myself. I lived for some years on a five-acre place, on the main street of a village in western Massachusetts. The heavy snow of March, 1916, lay deep in my yard even on the ist of April, when a flock of juncos made their appearance. They joined the chickadees and tree-sparrows and other birds which had been with us all winter, in the steady procession down to the feeding-shelf outside the kitchen window. But I decided there were too many of them for that small supply station, so I packed down with my snow-shoes a considerable area on the other side of the house, and scattered seeds and fine mixed chicken feed (which I had been, using for pheasants) on the hard snow. The juncos immediately discovered it, as did a flock of horned Chickadees in a Japanese print LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS n larks (rare visitors with us). As the snow rapidly melted, I kept food scattered about. In a few days the lawn was visible, but the birds were still there, and in the morning when I got up, there would be no less than a hundred of them scratching and pecking in the grass. I stopped putting out food now, but they did not stop pecking. In the section where they worked, the lawn is spoiled late each summer by crab grass, an abominable annual, which spreads low and ripens in spite of the mower, thus seeding itself. That flock of birds was after the seed and doing me a valuable service. A little feed- ing at a time when they needed it kept them on my premises until they were ready to migrate north- ward. Outside my kitchen door stood an apple-tree. Just beyond this tree was a thick stand of pines, partly on my land, partly across the fence on my neighbor's. All winter long a large number of birds rode out the severest storms in the safe shelter of these evergreens, and came to the apple- tree for a perch before darting down to the window- ledge for sunflower seeds and suet. Our all- winter guests included in one season chickadees, white- breasted nuthatches, a pair of golden-crowned kinglets, tree-sparrows, a pair of downy wood- peckers (their third winter), a pair of red-breasted nuthatches (their third winter also), several blue jays, and a cock pheasant, which stalked up in a stately manner over the snow nearly every morning. The chickadees would alight on our fingers, our heads and shoulders, and even hop through the open door or window into the house and eat from a i2 IN BERKSHIREFIELDS dish on the table. But neither chickadees, nut- hatches, nor woodpeckers were made lazy by this feeding. They continued, even after a square meal, to hop up and down and round about every limb and twig of the apple-tree, exploring every crevice of the bark. And that tree in three years never had a caterpillar's nest on it, nor showed any sign of injury by insect pests or scale. I do not need the evidence which comes from Germany (where much more extensive efforts have been made to attract the birds) that birds are beneficent in our trees. In the spring of 1905, in Eisenach, the larvae of a moth attacked and nearly stripped a large wood, while in a neighboring wood in Seebach, in which nesting- houses had been systematically placed, the trees were uninjured. A similar effect was noticed in the orchards. Whereupon, according to Gilbert H. Trafton, in his excellent book, Methods of Attracting Birds, the inhabitants of the villages around See- bach began to put out bird-boxes also, and the pest visibly decreased. The steady feeding of the birds during the winter frequently induces them to remain and nest near the dwelling, especially if food is kept out through the spring. Nearly every year a pair of chickadees nested in a wren-box on my summer-house, the box being immediately reoccupied, after their departure, by the wrens. One pair of woodpeckers, too, re- mained all the year, and though they were much less conspicuous during the summer, I often heard their hammering on the apple-trees and saw them hard at work destroying insects under the bark. Our yard, indeed, was full of birds' nests, and we had LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 13 an excellent opportunity of checking up their habits and estimating any damage they may do. The Jennie Wren brings scores of grubs to the nest damage consists of fruit-robbing. We generally had two pairs of cat-birds, who nested either in the i4 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS red osier dogwood bushes or in a tall hedge of ancient, tangled syringa. These birds, which were extremely friendly and would sit on a low branch and mock us as we stood below and whistled, un- doubtedly steal raspberries, but not enough to cause any serious loss. The robins, however, which are always extremely numerous, as many as a dozen nests having been built on the place in a season, did annoy us each year by completely stripping a cherry- tree. If we had grown cherries commercially we should have had to take steps to protect the fruit. But with these two exceptions all the bird activi- ties we were able to observe were beneficent. For instance, a pair of robins built a nest under the eaves, on top of a shutter, and reared two broods. When the second brood was hatched the fall web-worms had begun to hang their horrid nests up in the slender limb-tips of an elm and a birch near by, beyond the reach of any ladder. Day after day we could see the parent robins flying to these nests and returning with food for their hungry brood. Three wren-houses (one of them, at first unoccupied, was finally rented by means of a ''To Let" sign!) were sometimes the homes of two broods a season, and the cheerful little tenants not only delighted us all day with their chatter, but could be seen constantly flying into the hole with bugs, caterpillars, grasshoppers, cutworms, and the like for their crowded nestful of squeaking, hungry young. A family of young wrens keeps the parents extremely busy hunting pests. Over my summer- house climbed several Virginia creepers, and usually a pair of chipping-sparrows built in the thickly LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 15 twined stems, about six feet from the ground, so well concealed by the overhanging leaves that you wondered the birds could find the way in themselves. It is much harder to see what the sparrows bring to their young, as they are shy and crafty about ap- proaching the nest, but by sitting very still I have watched the parents coming in with caterpillars over and over. The United States Bureau of Bio- logical Survey gives forty- two per cent, of their food as "insects and spiders, chiefly caterpillars," and fifty-eight per cent, vegetable matter. That the vegetable matter is seeds you have only to watch the sparrows hopping over the ground to de- termine for yourself. One day I saw a chipping- sparrow fly down from his nest in the vines, to the lawn, and start in on a ripe dandelion-top which was almost ready to burst and scatter its seeds. He completely finished this head, stripping it to the bare, green crown before he rose. The chipping-sparrows likewise nested in a row of cedars along a garden path, and here, too, the song-sparrows sometimes built. The song-sparrow, one of the most friendly of summer visitors, who comes early and sings all the time he is here, is gen- erally assigned to the group of ground-building birds ; but he is adaptable both as to nest and as to diet, and with us seemed to prefer the thick protec- tion of an upstanding cedar, several feet above the ground, to a nest in the grass. It was almost a joke with us that we never went out into the garden to work or to pick flowers, but one of our song- sparrows spied us, and thereupon sought the tall, swaying leader of a young pine or spruce and began 16 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS to sing his liquid, melodious welcome. Like the chipping-sparrow, the song-sparrow eats more large- ly of weed seeds than of insects — in fact, three- fourths of his diet is weed seeds. Just now, as I write [I find this entry in my journal for one early September], there is a whole flock of song-sparrows in the neighborhood — twenty or more, I should say — and this morning they were all in my Early Rose potato-patch. The vines have pretty well died down, and the weeds, especially the grasses, which escaped the cultivator by growing amid the hills, are standing up in plain sight and beginning to drop their seeds. As I passed the bed all the sparrows rose with a whirl (I had not seen them, and their flight startled me), but instantly settled down out of sight again when I had gone on a few steps, in and under the weeds. Two hours later, when I once more passed by, they were still at it. No one, of course, can calculate the number of seeds those birds ate, but it was in the thousands, certainly, and next year's cultivating will be by so much the easier, next year'.s crop so much the more suc- cessful, for a given amount of labor. Among other birds which nested on the place were downy woodpeckers, flickers, king-birds, phcebes, ruby-throated humming-birds, screech-owls, orioles, flycatchers, and swallows, all of them without ar- tificial boxes. Of course, the bluebirds, owls, and woodpeckers would need boxes on a place where there were no trees with rotten limbs or holes, but our orchard was an old one and had several ideal trees from the bird standpoint, if not from that of the orchardist. We also had an old hickory, once struck by lightning and now sawed off twenty feet from the ground, with a tin cap nailed over the stub. Under this cap both owls and flickers have nested, LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 17 one flicker, two or three years ago, taking great delight in drumming on the under side of the tin for fifteen minutes at a time, like a small boy with an old dishpan. Sometimes he made so much noise it was a nuisance. Almost invariably when you start up a flicker it is from the ground. I used to come on them over and over in the middle of the lawn, and was not surprised when I found that the investigations of flickers' crops and stomachs showed they live very largely upon ants. Any one who has been troubled by ant-hills in a lawn (and who has not?) will be glad to learn that the government bureau found as many as five thousand ants in a single stomach, and that flickers, when natural holes are not available, will take readily to artificial boxes. Bluebirds, too, will readily nest in boxes, and if you had sat as I did one day, quietly in the orchard, and watched a single bluebird alternating song with caterpillar-eating — a caterpillar, then a bit of mel- ody, then another caterpillar, and another bit of melody, and so on, unceasingly, for two hours — you would still further rejoice in the presence of this beloved messenger of spring. The king-bird, too, is an orchard nester. He bears the unpleasant techni- cal name of Tymnnus tymnnus, but none that I have observed merited even one of these terms, let alone the double dose. It is the characteristic of a tyrant to oppress everybody, especially the weak, but the king-birds reserve their pugnacity for birds larger and stronger than themselves — namely, the hawks and crows. I well remember, in my boyhood, a pair of king-birds which nested in our orchard, at a i8 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS time when crows were plentiful near by. Almost daily we would hear cries and caws of conflict, and, rushing out, I would watch with delight the flight of the two relatively small gray-and-white birds at one side or directly over the great black crow. They would dart down upon him exactly as one fancies an airplane used to dart down over a. Zeppelin to drop a bomb; and invariably they drove the crow away, sometimes pursuing him out of sight. The king-bird lives largely on an insectivorous diet, and one of his greatest merits is his fondness for rose- bugs. Long live the king-bird! So we might continue, if there were space and time, enumerating the various birds and telling of their diet, which almost invariably will be found to consist of insects or vegetable matter injurious to the farm or orchard or garden. Only certain hawks, the starlings, and English sparrows (because they drive away more desirable birds), and to a limited extent the crow, the jay, and one or two more are objectionable. All the rest are of very real and positive service to mankind, capable of returning a money value to the nation conservatively esti- mated at many millions of dollars a year. But to render this service they must be en- couraged, not discouraged, and they must be fed and housed when nature fails them. Their greatest need for food, of course, is in winter, or late autumn and early spring, for in summer there is food enough and to spare — more now than ever before, with the increase of insect pests. Their greatest need for housing is in those districts which are thickly settled, or becoming so, where the natural cover is cut off LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 19 and suitable nesting-places are destroyed. For every rotted tree, or tree with holes in it, which is The martin-house cut down or cemented up, the wise farmer or gar- dener will mount nicker, woodpecker, wren, and 20 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS bluebird boxes, and put up martin-houses. At pres- ent this is chiefly done in the larger suburban towns (like Greenwich, Connecticut, which has a splendid organization that has done great service both to the birds and to the community). There is need in such places, of course, but the need is by no means confined to the towns. Modern farm barns are often closed to the beneficent barn-swallows, and modern flues are less adapted than of old to the chimney-swifts. New orchards have no rot holes, and with the farmer trimming all the roadside adjoining his fields, and the State Highway Com- missioners cutting down all the wild gardens beyond him, and the lumbermen buying and cutting down all his woodland, the birds have a progressively harder time everywhere. Besides, it is not far out in the fields or the woods that we so much need them — it is about our dwellings, our orchards, our gardens, for their services, even if we do not appre- ciate their companionship. And it is so easy and pleasant to aid the birds, for nearly everything they need is also a desirable adorn- ment for man! For the winter birds there should always be some evergreen protection, and it is a safe generalization that no country house is com- plete without such protection also. For summer nesting there should be proper trees, and boxes for the birds which require holes, and also some thick shrubbery, trimmed when young, if possible, to grow into whorls to hold the nests, and thereafter left undisturbed to attain a natural wildness and to protect its center from invasion, by out-thrown growths. Not only is such shrubbery needed for The play of the chimney-swifts at twilight the birds, but it is the only proper way to plant shrubbery, anyhow. Then, of course, there should be water readily available — not in a deep receptacle, but in a shallow bath not over two inches deep. My 22 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS most successful of several bird baths is simply a shallow pan, oval in shape and about twenty-four inches long, embedded with its lip level with the sod, between two spirasa bushes and almost under- neath an iris plant. It is flushed and filled with a hose every day or two, and makes a bright little twinkle of reflection as you look toward the edge of the garden. At this bath, on a hot day, the birds literally form in line, waiting their turn, for it is characteristic of all birds that they insist on bathing alone, if they are strong enough to maintain their rights against an insistent competitor. I have even seen a sparrow drive out a robin. The baths form an important part of bird attraction, and any yard, even in a city, which has the proper water facilities will be sure of its feathered visitors. In the midwinter season, when nearly all natural food is covered up with snow, suet fastened in wire racks with meshes wide enough for the birds to peck through, and a plentiful supply of sunflower seeds put out daily on a shelf or the trodden snow (a shelf with a shelter over it is best, of course), will serve admirably for the tastes of most of our winter residents. Bread crumbs, fine mixed chicken feed, crumbled dog biscuit, and cracked nuts are all good, but the two staples of animal and vegetable food, respectively, are undoubtedly suet and sunflower seeds. It is well to have the food out early, before the snow comes, and to maintain the supply until the spring is well advanced. But the feeding of the birds should not end with these artificial provisions. There are some winter visitors, such as the occa- sional pine-grosbeaks, which will not eat at the Tapping away at a frozen bit of suet LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 23 feeding- table, and many early spring arrivals which look for other food. Then, too, at all seasons it must be remembered that wild fruit is greatly appre- ciated, and serves as a great attraction. Therefore certain shrubs and trees should be planted which have attractive fruit, and some which will hold this fruit above the snow during the winter. Of all such shrubs and trees, undoubtedly the most useful is the mulberry. If planted near cherries, it is said, the robins will even leave the cherries alone. The June berry is also recom- mended to protect strawberry beds, but I have found that, as far as strawberries are concerned, black threads stretched taut over the rows will effectively keep the robins away. Among the orna- mental vines, shrubs, and trees the most useful are, perhaps, the common Virginia creeper, the bar- berry (which the pine-grosbeaks especially like) , the cedar, and the mountain ash. All of these are dis- tinct adornments to house or garden, be it noted, and provide nesting-places as well as food for the birds. I have found the red osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) an unfailing attraction to domestically inclined cat-birds, and its berries are invariably all eaten. Holly, bayberry, black alder, bittersweet, elderberry, and burning-bush are other varieties which may be planted. If you have soil without lime, you might try a blueberry-bush. Of course, a honeysuckle-vine is the best of all lures to the hum- ming-birds, and few birds can resist a sunflower patch after the flowers have gone to seed. I re- member we once cut a mass of sunflowers and laid them out on a back veranda to dry, but before we 24 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS knew what was up a flock of birds had discovered them and taken half our stock. Cosmos and let- tuce gone to seed are two of the surest lures for the goldfinches. I feel almost as if I owed an apology to my little feathered friends for writing of them so statistically save only that it is in their defense. When I think how much less pleasant, nay, how much less home- like, my home would be without the birds, I realize anew my debt to them for things more precious than material advantages. When I think how since my earliest boyhood I have watched the chimney-swal- lows rise and dart against the pale-gold sky of even- ing, the old brick chimney-stack seems no more a part of home than they. When I recall how the birds bathed fearlessly in my garden, naively performing their toilets (about which they are so particular) with all the unconsciousness of some wild field bird in a rain-pool on a pasture rock, it seems to me the birds bring a bit of the far, free spaces into my gar- den close. When I see a chickadee tapping away at a frozen bit of suet, suspended against the gray and white landscape of winter, his little black head is a symbol of the cheerfulness of the snow, and when I hear the harder blows of the woodpecker at the suet ball, I say: " Hammer away, old chap! That's what we put it there for. It's poor picking under the tree bark now, and that beautiful, sleek, black-and-white body of yours needs heat to maintain itself in this frozen world. Come again, and often, you bit of vivid life in the chill and naked tracery of winter limbs." A phcebe nesting under the porch eaves LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 25 When I remember the twinkling eye of the mother phoebe that watched us from her nest over the inside rafter of the porch, and the cheery outlook on the garden world maintained by her spouse from a perch just outside, in a spray of blossoms, I think of them both as members of the family, like the robin who for three years built under another porch, and would let us mount a chair and see her babies at close range. And when I think of the packed snow outside the house in winter, and the fearless little brown sparrows, or the juncos, fluttering from the protecting evergreens or leaving their task of hop- ping under the weed stalks near by, and gathering around for crumbs, I think of the gentle saint of Assisi, though no sermon comes to my lips for this feathered congregation. It is not spiritual food they are after! Indeed, by their busy little lives, so full of danger, yet so full of song, it is rather they who do the preaching. They are so faithful to their single mates, so few of them ever kill their kind in the struggle to survive, they work so hard to bring up their families properly, they do not even fight (except occasionally and in bloodless combat, to get first turn at the tub), they are so beautiful to look at, so pleasant to hear! The air without birds would be an aerial desert, cold and void, and with- out their song — without the fluting of the white- throat in the spring, the midsummer chatter of the wrens, the reveille of the robins and the vesper of the song-sparrows, without the piercingly sweet call of the meadow-lark behind the summer-house and the cool, elfin, woodland clarion of the thrush which lives in the great trees just up the hill — a silence 26 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS would settle over my garden which would seem like the silence of the grave, as if the life breath had gone out of nature; and I should be as one bereft. That the birds eat so many insect pests and destroy so many noxious weeds I am thankful. But I love them just for their air-darting, feathered selves, for their freedom, their friendliness, and their melody. Winter or summer, the crow lias his place in the prospect JIM CROW \ THE American crow (Corvus americanus) is the wisest of all our birds, the best able to take care of himself under any and all cir- cumstances, the most difficult to exterminate, and yet the easiest to tame. He has, from the earliest settlement of the country, been looked upon as a pest, and his tribe has enriched our language with the word scarecrow. Probably he was regarded as a pest long before the advent of the Mayflower; the squaws of the Six Nations doubtless shooed him from their maize-plantings while Joseph was hoard- ing corn in Egypt, and the braves of the Six Nations affirmed that you never saw a crow when you had your bow with you. He is still to-day regarded as a pest, though in a lesser degree, for we have learned that a coating of coal-tar over the seed-grain will generally protect the corn-planting, and we have learned that his fondness for wire worms, cutworms, 28 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS grasshoppers, and white grubs probably counter- balances to a very considerable extent, if not en- tirely, his destructive instincts toward the eggs and young of other birds. The most that the United States Department of Agriculture, in its famous Farmers' Bulletin 54, will say is that "a reduction in its numbers in localities where it is seriously destructive is justifiable." But does any one love the crow? Has any one thought how much poorer, less characteristic, our landscape would be were he exterminated? We have sent our sluggards to the ant for instruction, but have we considered the crow, adept in co-operation, intelligently gregarious, with what the Farmers' Bulletin calls "the social in- stinct" highly developed? It would seem that our New England farmers, at any rate, have much to learn from this despised bird! One man, of course, appreciated him — Thoreau; but he appreciated everything in our native fields and forests. And I doubt not that every man who as a boy once had a pet crow loves still the entire species and finds a wistful music in their call. A pet crow's name is always Jim, regardless of sex. Just why that is those wiser in folk-lore than I will have to answer. Even the famous jackdaw of the now-ill-fated Rheims became Saint Jim when he died a penitent, did he not? The name must have come over the water with our ancestors. Like the jackdaw, too, the crow's middle name is always mis- chief. The process of catching and taming a crow is not difficult — if you have somebody to climb the tree for you. As the crows almost invariably nest in the tallest white-pine trees, particularly those in JIM CROW 29 swampy places, and as the process of scaling a tall white pine is neither clean nor easy, young crows are usually secured by small boys. Even Thoreau admitted the diffi- culty of reaching the crow's nest, but it did not deter him. On May n, 1855, he records (Notes on New England Birds) : ' ' You can hardly walk in a thick pine wood now, especially in a swamp, but presently you will have a crow or two over your head, either si- lently flitting over, to spy at what you would be at and if its nest is in danger, or angrily cawing. It is most impres- sive when, look- ing for their nests, you first detect the presence of the bird by its shadow." How like Thoreau is that last touch of subtle observation! When I was a boy our favorite method of securing a young crow, after we had discovered a nest, was A fledgling crow 3o IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS to climb the pine-tree clad in overalls to protect us from pitch, and armed with a ball of twine with a small cloth bag tied to one end. The operation had to be conducted in May, for the crow breeds early. If the birds were found to be too young, experience taught us it was better to wait a few days. If, however, the silly, homely little things had grown feathers enough to bear a family resemblance to their parents instead of to a lump of animated coal- tar, the most aggressive bird would be lifted from the nest, put as gently as possible into the bag, and lowered by the cord to the ground, where another boy was waiting — not a simple job by any means, as it would not do to bang the poor creature against the limbs or trunk of the tree in its descent, and the light, swaying load had to be navigated between branches, while the parent birds sometimes kept up a perfect stream of terrified profanity overhead. (There is no question but the crow swears. Any- body who has observed him closely will testify to this.) Once safely out of the tree, the baby crow was taken home and put in a barrel or a deep box, with plenty of smallish sticks at the bottom for it to catch hold of with its feet, and later perches put across higher up the sides. Bread soaked in milk was usually found to be the best diet for a time— and not as much of that as the little greedy-gut demanded. There is nothing so greedy as a small bird, and nothing so vociferous about it as a small crow. If you give them all they demand, you can kill them in twenty-four hours. Did you ever see a young crow being fed by its parents? At that de- JIM CROW pendent stage of their existence they cry for food al- most incessantly, and keep right on crying as the food is going down, which results in an odd sound some- thing like this: Squaw, squaw, squa — (down goes a white grub dropped from the parent's beak) awbble, awbble, awbble; squaw, squaw, squa- (down the yawn- ing gullet goes an- other morsel of food from the other parent) - awbble, awbble, awbble. They be- have in much the same way when a human is trying to bring them up, and a great deal depends upon your ability to resist their appeals before you kill them with kindness. Once the young crow has passed the dangerous age and is able to be placed on a perch outside of his barrel and fed with a more miscellaneous diet, or put upon the low roof of some outhouse, whence he hops to the ground and learns to fly, your troubles of that sort are over. He will soon be foraging for Crying incessantly for food IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS himself. Nor do you need to clip his wings. He will not desert you. Sometimes, perhaps, you will almost wish he would. The crow is by nature gre- garious. If he is not nocking with birds of his feather, he will stick close to his human protectors. He has, too, a strongly developed sense of place, almost like a cat (whom he also resembles in his per- sonal independence and frequent resentment of any handling save a stroking of his head). I knew a pet crow who was left behind for two weeks while the entire family went away on a visit, and when they returned he was strolling about the yard, and came walking, with frequent hops of haste and a short flight or two, to meet them, uttering little caws of welcome. The possession of a pet crow is not only an end- less source of amusement — not unmixed at times with annoyance at his mischief, almost as in the case of a pet monkey — but it affords an opportunity to study the habits of the bird, especially his diet. As the whole question of the crow's destructiveness is concerned with his diet, this study has peculiar interest, and the case of Jim Stone, captured in May, 1913, is worth recording. Jim's capture was effected in the orthodox man- ner— by the employment of an energetic small boy to climb the pine-tree ; and his early upbringing was orthodox, also. His supply of milk-soaked bread was always withdrawn before his pleadings ceased, and in a short time he could perch outside of his barrel, and presently he was placed on the low roof of the woodshed and taught to fly. After this lesson was learned he became a self-sustaining member JIM CROW 33 of the household, and by no means the least con- spicuous member. He had the free range not only of the garden behind the house, but of the whole farm and the Berkshire Hills beyond. No effort whatever was made to confine him. Yet he, in his turn, showed no disposition to depart and join his feathered fel- lows. As a matter of fact, he showed an odd fear of his own kind, and when wild crows came into the garden he would fly hastily to the protection of the woodshed or the kitchen door. I wonder if this is characteristic of all crows reared in captivity? Neither did he at any time during the entire season molest the garden or the field corn, in spite of his constant opportuni- ties, nor any of the numerous robin and field-sparrow nests about the place. This may, of course, be ex- plained in part by his many opportunities to get food more easily at the kitchen door — scraps fallen He would follow up the rows of fresh- turned earth 34 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS about the garbage-pail, for instance, for crows are natural scavengers, and they are extremely fond of meat and fish. On the other hand, there were plentiful evidences of his beneficent activities in the garden. Almost invariably, when the master of the house picked up a hoe or fork and set forth to cultivate, Jim would come walking, with that quaint, rather uncertain, sidelong gait of his tribe, interspersed with hops, and follow up the rows of fresh-turned earth behind the gardener, pouncing upon every white grub which was brought into sight. They were very evidently his favorite morsel, as he would frequently neglect other worms when the fat white ones were plentiful. His capacity for these grubs seemed unlimited, and when you reflect that a single grub in a single night can kill a cauliflower-plant which is worth fifteen cents to the gardener, Jim is seen to have had a very positive commercial value. Another item of Jim's diet was mice. The first evidence of his fondness for mice was disclosed when somebody found a trap successfully sprung one morning and tossed the little body out of the door near the dog's nose to see what he would do with it. He was an energetic and good-natured collie pup, always ready to investigate anything and anybody, and he at once picked up the mouse in his teeth. The crow, however, happened to be close by (he usually kept close to the dog, whenever possible, in a curious spirit of teasing comradeship) , and with an angry and profane caw he rose from the ground, swept down at the dog's head, and snatched the mouse out of his mouth, flying off with it, and cast- JIM CROW 35 ing back over his shoulder as he flew a cry of with- ering scorn, a sort of, "You would, would you!" This, to be sure, by itself was hardly evidence that the crow is an enemy of field-mice, but it kept his owners on the lookout, and plenty of evidence was forthcoming later in the year, when, after the corn had been shocked and the fields frozen, he used to follow who- ever went out from the barn for a load of fodder, and hover over the shock as it was lifted. Frequently, of course, a mouse would scurry out from beneath, sometimes three or four mice, and down upon them Jim would pounce with astonishing speed, and kill them apparently with a single tweak of his powerful bill. No matter if four mice ran out from under the same shock at the same time, he would invariably get every one, and then proceed to hide them. His liking for bright objects is some- times a nuisance 36 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS It was curious to watch his instinct to hide things manifest itself in a hundred odd ways, to the hu- man mind not in the least related to a food-sup- ply. Any small object which was bright and shin- ing particularly attracted him, and he would spend hours attempting to hide bits of broken crockery or glass in the dog's fur or in his ear. Don's ear was a favorite hiding-place. Jim would get a bit of crockery in his beak, hop upon the dog's head, drop it neatly into his ear, and then carefully fold the ear-flap down over the aperture. If Don objected and raised his ear again, Jim would once more grab it and fold it down, scolding meanwhile. If Don were wide awake he did not seem to mind this per- formance in the least, but if he chanced to be sleepy he would get up with a bored air, shake out the crockery from his ear, and with the look of one who says, "For Heaven's sake, why can't they leave me in peace!" walk away to some other place. Noth- ing discouraged, Jim would slowly follow along be- hind him, keeping an eye cocked meanwhile for a fresh bit of shiny stuff (even a bright pebble would do), and, when Don once more lay down, the entire operation would be repeated. One could never be certain at these times how far Jim's actions were purely teleological — the exercise in captivity of instincts upon which the endurance of the wild species depends — and how far there was mingled with them an almost human love of teasing. For Jim unquestionably loved to tease. Of that there could be no doubt. He knew, too, just as a dog knows, who could be teased and who couldn't. There were two lambs on the place, one a stolid JIM CROW 37 creature, and one of totally different temperament, highly excitable, in fact. Jim discovered the differ- ence after a single trial. As they were frisking about one day he lit first on the back of one and then on the back of the other, sinking his claws into the wool with a good grip, flapping his wings, and caw- Sinking his claws into the wool and cawing delightedly ing delightedly. One lamb paid no attention to him, but the other immediately took fright and be- gan to buck like a broncho, or rather an animated sawhorse, and then to cavort about the pasture lot. Thereafter Jim confined his attentions entirely to her. He never tried to ride the other lamb, but again and again he would pounce down suddenly upon the poor timid one's back, set up a great flap- ping and cawing, and speedily enjoy a free ride over a goodly portion of the surrounding landscape. 38 IN BERKSHIRE FIpLDS He loved to plague human beings, also. Here his method was simple, but to a stranger at least highly effective. It consisted of perching on a low-hanging limb of the big maple in the dooryard and dropping suddenly down upon the head of the unsuspecting caller. Once he had accomplished his purpose, he would fly back to the limb and sit there emitting sounds .which it required no imagination whatever to construe as chortles of glee. But, among fre- quent visitors to the house, and among the regular occupants as well, he soon learned who were the ones that his actions annoyed, and confined his attentions to them, just as a small boy will jump from behind the c'orner with a loud "Boo!" only at the little girls who scream with terror. Jim had a particular victim of the timid sex from whose hair he used to extract the hairpins whenever he had the chance, flying off with one in his claws and uttering cries of diabolical glee. He never took hairpins from anybody else. Jim — like all tame crows that I have ever had any- thing to do with — in spite of his evident desire for human companionship, never really showed any affection. It was as if those gregarious instincts which have made the crow family so successful in the evolutionary struggle were merely perverted a little, and Jim flocked with us. Often he would hop upon the window-sill when the family were inside, and peck at the pane, uttering his queer gibber of low caws and crow talk ; but it was merely to induce somebody to come out and pay attention to him. He would let you stroke him on the head — • would even beg you to, in fact; but that was merely JIM CROW 39 because he enjoyed the physical sensation, not be- cause it was a form of contact with one he loved, as in the case of a dog. Try to put your hand about his body and pick him up, and away he would struggle, with an angry oath, his instinct of personal independence roused into fierce resentment. After all, a crow is a bird, a creature of the air, of the free spaces. He has a marvelous adaptability to human companionship, but his heart remains aloft. I have never myself heard a crow talk. There used to be a theory when I was a boy that if you slit their tongues they could talk, but I never tried this measure. It is perfectly easy, however, for a fairly lively imagination to construe the incessant gibber of a pet crow into human speech. He makes so many noises that some of them are mathemati- cally bound to resemble certain monosyllabic and even bisyllabic words. Jim, for example, frequent- ly said "Papa" quite as plainly as most babies do when they are being shown off by their proud par- ents. Certain it is that if any bird could be taught to use speech intelligently, the crow could. He has a perfectly well-defined language of his own, which is unfailingly understood by his fellows. I have heard it said that an investigator in Washington, D. C., could distinguish and successfully imitate no less than twenty different crow calls, each with a specific meaning. This may be an exaggeration, but any observant farmer's boy knows half a dozen. Many times I have gone out into the fields and seen the crows walking about on the ground, with one or two sentinels posted in conspicuous trees at the edge of the clearing, and heard a sudden caw go 40 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS up from those sentinels as they spied me. That caw meant the approach of danger, yet the birds on the ground would keep right on at their task. Per- haps I would swerve aside and turn up the wood road, and nothing more would happen. On the other hand, sometimes I would pick up a stick the length of a gun, and approach the bars to the field. Then the sentinels would utter another caw, sharper in sound, appreciably different from the first, and instantly every bird on the ground would rise and disappear into the woods on the farther side. I have done this time and again to make sure that there is a difference in the two notes, and I cannot doubt it. They say two distinct and different things ; they are definite sentences. Take again the cawing of the crows about the house in the early morning, or far off across the upland pasture in the woods where the night mists still trail the tree-tops. The note is not harsh; softened by distance, indeed, it is posi- tively mellow. It speaks of sun-up and breakfast no less surely than the song of the meadow-lark or the fluting of the white-throat. Wandering over the uplands when the crows are calling, with now and then a glimpse of their shining black bodies winging against the blue sky* or a red October maple, you have a sense of landscape charm pecul- iarly American, and the caws are music to your ears, the folk-song of our woods and cornlands. But what an utterly different note the crow emits when he is on the war-path or gathering in angry council — gathering in a caw-cuss, as the old New England punsters always put it. When the crow cries, "Here is corn for breakfast!" we hear music JIM CROW 4i over the fields. When he cries, " Come here, quick, and help fight this owl!" even the dullest farmer's lad knows at once the difference. There is no doubt but the crows have a definite language of their own, and no doubt but it contains a liberal mixture of profanity. As a guest once remarked when Jim was particularly provoked at the dog, who had grabbed a bit of meat away from him, and was expressing himself freely and fully, "That crow's language makes a barge-driver sound like a Sunday- school superintendent" — an expression well within the facts. How close a crow is to the intelligence of such an animal as the dog has been attested on numerous occasions. I once knew of a pet crow many years ago, for example, which belonged to a small boy on a farm. The boy's grandfather lived a few hundred yards away, and every morning of the year the crow flew first to the grandfather's house, waking that old gentleman up with almost clockwork regularity (he seldom varied more than fifteen minutes, though the sun, supposedly his timepiece, varied whole hours), and then he returned and roused his own family. The family -rousing process was simple. He perched on a bedroom window-sill and cawed. Sleep thereafter became impossible. If you are fond of sleeping late in the morning, by the way, do not try to keep a pet crow, or you may become as profane as he. It was this same crow which, greatly to the children's delight and the teacher's wrath, followed his little master to school one morning, pounced upon the school-house key when the teacher dropped it, and, flying to a low branch over her 42 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS head, sat there for nearly half an hour, replying sar- castically to her threats. He used to come to meet his master almost every day when school was out, again telling the time by some instinct as mysterious as a dog's, and either riding home on his master's shoulder or else flying along ahead, lighting on the fence-posts. It was the same crow, too, who got into the house, upset a bottle of ink, investigated the contents with his feet, and then walked on the bed- spread. It was a seven-day wonder in the neigh- borhood that, because of his master's pleading, his life was spared. The youngsters looked with a kind of awe upon a boy who could put up such a case to his justly irate parents. Demosthenes seemed, by comparison, rather second-rate. The same little boy, curiously enough, in after- years became connected for a time with the Zoologi- cal Gardens in Washington, where they had a large cage containing crows. It had been the habit to feed these crows corn, that supposedly being their staple diet, though it might have occurred to the keepers that the crow in its natural state can secure corn but for a week or two in late May, and possibly for a time at harvest. At any rate, they had been dying off regularly, constant fresh recruits being necessary. But when the former owner of the mis- chievous Jim arrived he spoke out of his experience, and declared that crows like meat and probably need it. The other keepers laughed at him, but he fed these birds meat, none the less, and the deaths ceased. It is apparent to any observer that crows are by nature meat-eaters, and in captivity they appear to prefer a meat diet. It is not from any wanton JIM CROW 43 cruelty that they sometimes prey on the eggs and young of other birds. They are simply after food. A year or two ago I passed through Niagara in midwinter and stopped over a day to ride through the gorge below the Falls in order to see the superb spectacle of the great ice-cakes tossing and grinding in the whirl and chop of the rapids. After the first narrow rush of the river was over and the stream widened and grew comparatively calm, I was amazed to see almost every ice-cake bearing a black rider. At first I could not trust my eyes, and asked a native if those riders were crows. He assured me that they were, and that they were fishing for scraps in the water. I watched the birds for nearly an hour, and he was quite right. They were fishing for scraps of food, and it was easier and probably safer to fish from the edge of an ice-cake than to fly low over this turbulent current, where the waves were uncertain in their sudden up-jump, and in zero weather when wet feathers meant an ice-coat. The surrounding country lay two feet deep in snow, so that food was probably very scarce. But here, on this stream that never freezes, floated the refuse of the towns just above, and the crows knew it. They rode their ice-cakes in countless numbers — thousands upon thousands of them, and their black bodies winged up out of the gorge against the white Canadian slopes. They were for the most part silent, however, though now and then a faint caw came over the titanic hiss of the rapids. It seemed to me as convincing a demonstration as I had ever seen of the crow's intelligent adaptability to a changing environment. 44 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS But the very next week I saw still another ex- ample. I chanced to be riding through Long Island, and in many of the fields in the central portion corn- shocks still stood, and there were patches of oats here and there, or perhaps only single stalks ndw and again, missed by the reapers and left lying on the ground. At all such spots the crows were con- gregated. But the following night it snowed, and in the morning I saw flight after flight of crows headed south toward the seashore, without doubt making for the water's edge, where they could still get at food, either shellfish or refuse cast up by the tide. Only last winter, in my own inland hills, I watched the crows adapt themselves, on a much smaller scale (for they do not winter with us in any large number), to the necessities of the snow. The snow was very deep, and most of their vegetable food was no doubt scarce or inaccessible. But through a meadow ran the depression made by a. little rivulet, and here and there along its banks the water had worked in under the snow cornice till the overhang collapsed, exposing a bit of black mud, or at any rate but slightly covering it. Here two or three crows would congregate, being startlingly visible on the great white field of the meadow, and dig into the mud, even scratching away the snow to expose it. Examination of their work showed that they had excavated and devoured crawfish, and no doubt had found other animal life as well, of which no remains were left. That same winter, too, I saw on a field of snow about six inches deep a remarkable evidence of the crow's acuteness of sense — which JIM CROW 45 sense, vision or odor or reasoning, I cannot say. Walking over this field, I came upon two footprints of a crow, with the brush-marks of the wings on either side. Just in front was a hole into the snow, from the bottom of which a piece of mud-wasps' nest had been extracted, the bodies it contained (if any) eaten, and the gray comb dropped. Now, that bit of nest was buried under six inches of snow, and could hardly have been visible from above. Yet the crow had descended exactly to it, without hav- ing to take a single step after alighting. The only explanation I can give — except the improbable one of pure chance — is that some conformation of the snow over the nest disclosed to the bird's reasoning faculties or trained instinct the presence beneath of something worth investigating. In my own oat- field, after the snow has covered the mown stubble, the crows walk about and get grain with a sure instinct; but here they are on the ground, and hence so near the object sought that other senses can aid them. The single crow, too, not only shifts wisely for himself, but thinks of his fellows. They are co- operative workers. The tribe survives because of tribe instinct no less than individual smartness. Last winter a farmer in our region was bringing home on a wood-sledge a load of oats from the village and one of the bags fell over and the grain trickled out for a quarter of a mile along the road before he discovered the accident. That was late in the after- noon. The next morning the road was quite liter- ally black with crows. They must have come from miles around, for but few had been noted in the 46 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS neighborhood previously. Certainly, both around our houses and in the woods, the chickadees and j uncos had far outnumbered them. Yet some bird, spying the life-saving food on the road, had spread the word in a night through all the countryside and here was a veritable black army the next morning. Just the other day, late in March, after all signs of an early spring and the return of many birds, we had a terrible gale, with snow and freezing cold. Hundreds of birds perished. But on the second morning I saw literally hundreds — nobody could count them — of crows gathered on the southern slopes of my sheep pasture and the adjoining aban- doned quarry, where a freak of the wind had kept the ground scoured bare. Before the storm, only the four crows which spent the winter with us had been in evidence, yet the word was passed around, evidently for miles, that here was salvation. The crows, indeed, are masters of mobilization. Nearly every one who has lived much in the country with his eyes open has probably seen an example of this. Some years ago I was walking in an upland which ran like a deep, narrow fiord into the woods on the western wall of one of the Franconia hills. I was on my way to search for a hermit-thrush's nest. Suddenly, over my head, I noticed a crow in rapid, excited flight. He had come out of the woods to the south, and flew across the pasture and into the woods to the north, keeping close to the tops of the pointed firs and cawing raucously from time to time. I wondered if the bird which had just passed over my head were not a courier, so I sat down to wait. In a very few moments about JIM CROW 47 twenty crows, flying in irregular formation, came out of the firs to the north, went swiftly over my A great horned owl flying low in the trees head, and disappeared southward. Shortly after another detachment appeared, and then another 48 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS and another and another. Sometimes there were only a few birds at a time, sometimes as many as a hundred, flying seldom more than three or four abreast, their line streaming out raggedly. That first northward-flying courier had done his errand with marvelous rapidity! The birds kept coming for half an hour, I should say. They flew for the most part in silence, only the leaders cawing, as if they were crying, "This way! This way!" But a far-off noise of the gathering to the south began to come faintly to my ear, as it was augmented by new throats, birds doubtless arriving from the south as well as the north. Unfortunately, this gathering was well up on the precipitous mountain-side at least two miles away from me, and between lay a tract of forest which had been lumbered some ten years before, and .even my curiosity to learn the cause of this mobilization could not induce me to attempt the passage. Any one who has wrestled with old lum- ber slash on a mountain-side will understand. But such mobilizations have frequently been in- vestigated. Usually they prove to be for the attack on some enemy. Thoreau speaks of the crows " bursting up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded." When they are gathered for war purposes their cries will lead you to the spot where they are fighting, and these same bursts of black fragments among the trees, usually following an especial uproar of cawing, will direct you to the center of the battle. Walter King Stone, the illus- trator of this book, and Charles Livingston Bull have told me of a mobilization they once witnessed, JIM CROW 49 when the crows gathered for hours, and the two observers were able to penetrate the woods to the exact spot beneath the feathered explosions. There they found a great horned owl, flying low in the trees, with a dead crow in his talons. Whether this was the original cause of the battle, or whether he had grabbed the crow in one of the descents of the birds about his head, they of course could not say. He was evidently struggling to find a dead tree where he could take refuge. He was saved probably by the coming of night. Crows have even been known to attack foxes, as Winslow Homer's painting is the most famous witness. A farmer near my home, who has observed crows for many years and has the reputation of knowing more about them than any one else in the neighbor- hood, tells me that almost invariably in his experi- ence the cause of a large mobilization is either a big owl or a hawk. The little screech-owls are also attacked, but by lesser numbers. He has also per- sonally seen the crows attack a fox while it was crossing an open field, and once he watched a flock of nearly a hundred crows worrying a Skye-terrier dog, which was so thoroughly frightened that it was running in circles. I have seen crows attack a cat also, but the cat always is wise enough to make for cover. Large gatherings of crows, however, are not al- ways for defensive purposes. Beside the great win- ter roosts you will see flocks of from fifty to a hun- dred birds, during migration periods especially, which appear to be playing a game. They will wheel and circle over a field, cawing loudly, then all 50 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS suddenly settle, usually on the ground, remain silent for a few moments, and then as suddenly rise and begin wheeling and cawing again. If, at such times, you approach them, they scatter and do not collect again. If they are engaged in worrying some foe, however, they almost invariably regather. At these playtimes, too, their cawing has a different sound, less profane and raucous. Are there any other of our native birds which even appear to play? But the crow does not escape attack, in his turn, by birds smaller than himself, upon whose eggs and young he sometimes preys — which is his real sin. Every one has seen a crow flying along a New Eng- land pasture hedgerow in June, and heard the at- tendant startled clamor of the smaller birds, fearful for their young ; and every one has probably seen a crow, perhaps the same marauder, set upon by a pair of king-birds — pugnacious fellows who appear to have constituted themselves a police force — and driven off. They fly over the head of the larger bird, like airplanes over a dirigible, and dart down savagely from time to time. The crow never rel- ishes these attacks any more than the hawk does, and usually flies for cover as speedily as possible. Just how much damage the crow does to the young of the smaller birds it is difficult to estimate, if not quite impossible. Edward A. Samuels, in his book on the birds of New England and adjacent states, reports some very destructive pirates which came under his observation, and the farmer referred to above declared to me recently that he had seen one crow rob two robins' nests, two chipping- sparrows* The crow in turn is attacked by smaller birds JIM CROW 51 nests, and one meadow-lark's nest in a single hour. "I have watched crows with field-glasses from my hilltop," he adds, " again and again, and I never yet kept one in sight for two hours in breeding- season that I did not see him take eggs or young from at least one nest." This is a severe indictment, surely, and justifies us in keeping the crows from, becoming too numerous. But it should also teach us to make it easy for them to get meat scraps dur- ing the breeding-season, thus preventing many of their raids on the nests of other birds. If a tame crow does not molest other birds' nests because he gets all the meat he wants, it surely shows that it is the meat he is after, not the sport of hunting. It is only man that hunts for sport, anyway. Nearly all birds and beasts are more civilized. The last crows I have had an opportunity to observe in captivity again belonged to Walter Stone, who doesn't object to being waked in the morning. There were three of them, out of the same nest, and from them we learned several interesting facts. For one thing, we observed them disgorge food pellets, like owls — pellets from an inch to an inch and a half long — which could be examined for signs of a destructive diet. For another thing, we ob- served them taking, as we at first supposed, dust- baths; but they did not flutter and rub about as a hen does, but squatted quite still. Investigation showed that they thus squatted directly in large ant-hills. We could think of no reason whatever for this action, till Stone read one day that the poilus in France spread their cootie-infested shirts over ant-hills whenever possible, the ants destroying 52 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS that particular vermin. That these crows had made the same discovery seemed a logical — the only logi- cal— explanation . But the most interesting thing about these three birds developed after two of them, through some disease, lost enough of their flight feathers to dis- able them for any sustained flight. The two crippled birds and the one sound bird all roosted at night on the upper rungs of a ladder, under the eaves of the ell. One day, however, a marsh-hawk came over the garden, discovered the crippled con- dition of the two weak crows, and made for them. The well crow instantly attacked him, and held him off till the others were under cover before taking to shelter himself. The hawk came back presently, however, and the same operation was repeated. That night the sound crow roosted not on the ladder, but on the ridge-pole, where he could com- mand a view in all directions! All the rest of the summer, too, he roosted there, and by day or night he was alert for signs of the approaching hawk and at a certain warning signal his • two companions would scurry as fast as they could to shelter, while he circled overhead and, if necessary, gave actual battle to the invader. There could not have been a more perfect illustration of the strong protecting the weak, of a sense of communal responsibility. These two weak crows, mind you, were not his off- spring, but his brothers, yet he at once accepted the task of looking after them and bravely fulfilled it. After such an exhibition, and after the repeated warnings of the United States Bureaus, that a whole- JIM CROW 53 sale extermination of the crows would be exceedingly unwise, as is any violent disturbance of the balance of nature, I confess the campaign of one of our largest powder-manufacturing companies, just after the war ended, to organize a " National Crow Shoot," filled me with shame and indignation. Trading, of course, on the average farmer's preju- dice against crows, and the average person's igno- rance of them, this powder company, solely to sell more shells (which fact they practically confess in their circular letter of January 29, 1919, to pow- der-dealers), goes against the expressed and matured judgment of the government experts and endeavors to slaughter all the crows it can. Powder com- panies have done worse things than this in the past, to be sure. They have even encouraged hatred of men. But this alone is sufficient to convince me that all ammunition-works should be owned and controlled by the government and conducted with- out profit. In spite of the crow's instinct to feed on the eggs and young of other species (which he shares in com- mon with several other birds), who would really wish to see him exterminated, even if it were pos- sible to exterminate so resourceful a fellow? His destruction to crops is certainly far less than that of the bobolink in the Southern rice-fields. He is an efficient scavenger, and his destruction of white grubs, cutworms, wireworms, and grasshoppers is of great value. Above all, however, his place in our landscape is such that his passing would leave a dreary void. Winter or summer, we are conscious of him against the sky, against the fields, or senti- 54 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS nel on a patriarch pine. In the misty mornings of summer when the sun has not yet rolled up the curtains of cloud from the mountains we hear his voice far off in the woods, rousing us from slumber, and when autumn has come and our sugar-groves are a glory of crimson he is still there, his distant call floating down sweetly from the upland woods and intensifying in some strange way the height of the peaks beyond. He calls over the peaceful meadows of Middlesex, where Thoreau wandered; he calls from the wilderness of the White Hills, from the Long Island shore, from the rapids of Niagara, from the corn-fields of the West. The corn itself is not more American than he, no more closely woven into the texture of our memories, into our national consciousness. Probably we could not exterminate him if we would. But, after all, why should we? Winging cheerily against the whitened landscapt THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE THE world would be rather a dull and dolo- rous place without a certain type of jovial person who leavens the lump in any com- munity. Such a person my grandmother would have described as "a cheerful little body." The " cheerful little bodies" greet you with a smile, they sing or whistle at their work, they are frankly curi- ous about your affairs, and as frankly sympathetic. They belong to the limited company of the immor- tals who get up cheerful, who can take an interest in life before breakfast, and are still interested after dinner. Needless to say, they are in good health, and very often inclined to a certain placid and pleas- ant plumpness. In a word, they are the human chickadees. Everybody who knows anything at all about 56 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS birds knows the common chickadee, or black- capped titmouse, as he was perhaps more commonly called by our forefathers — the Par us atricapillus. And to know him is to love him. " The nightingale has a lyre of gold," the skylark pours out his melody against the blue empyrean — both made famous by generations of Old World poets. Our own hermit- thrush, who is a much more skilled musician than either, with a more exquisite timbre than even the nightingale, has no classic background to sing against, and because his song reaches its perfection only in the depths of the Northern woods in June, his incomparable melody is relatively unknown; yet echoes of his prowess have reached us all. Our minor poets have celebrated his inferior cousin, the veery. The robin has almost ceased to be a bird, and become a symbol. Edward Rowland Sill has enshrined him in poetry, MacDowell in song — a wistful song, quite unlike the buxom and ubiquitous bird's own domineering melody. Yet, in spite of all the poets have done, it is doubtful if any of us who dwell in the northeastern section of the United States, from Illinois to the sea, and even pretty well south along the ridges of the Alleghanies, would yield to any other bird the first place in our affec- tions held by the little chickadee. Other birds go south in winter — the chickadee remains. He, and he alone, is always present either about our dwellings or in the woods, every day in the year. Other birds are shy of man, save only that pariah, the English sparrow, and even when they build nests under our very eaves they avoid human contact. But the chickadee will perch on THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 57 our shoulders and eat from our hand. The in- stinct of other birds, when man passes through their leafy retreats, is to fly farther away. The Other birds go south in winter — the chickadee remains chickadee, when he sees us coming, flits nearer and nearer inquisitively, and either tweets a soft little greeting or shouts right out his chick-a-dee-dee-dee- dee-dee-dee-dee. Other birds, even the nuthatches, seek shelter in the winter storms, but the chickadee, 58 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS his black cap conspicuous in the whiteness, his feathers fluffed into a fat ball by the wind, goes buf- feting through the driving snow, just as cheerful as ever, a five-inch-long epitome of indomitable good nature. He sings when all else in nature is silent. And he sings when all the woods are musical — and holds his own! He is the bird of the summer pine woods, and the snow-covered window-ledge in win- ter, of our forests and our dwellings. One chickadee is worth a gallon of kerosene emulsion, considered utilitarianly. Spiritually, he is a tonic that makes for cheerfulness, and there are no standards of value for that. I have observed the chickadee for many years. Indeed, during our Berkshire winters it is impos- sible not to observe him; he attends to that! Nor has it been necessary much of the time to stir out of the house. We welcome the first good snowfall for many reasons, but not the least of them is be- cause the first heavy snow brings our little black- capped, acrobatic friends into the pine hedge thirty feet from the kitchen door, and the process of form- ing familiar acquaintance begins. Food, of course, is the lure which attracts and holds them. Almost overarching the kitchen door-steps and one of the dining-room windows is an apple-tree. Between this tree and the pine hedge is a drive. The birds make their winter roost in the thick protection of the pines, but they use the bare twigs of the apple- tree for a daytime perch, and from this tree they descend to pick up food. Outside both the kitchen and dining-room windows we have built flat ledges eight or ten inches wide, which are kept free from THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 59 snow, and on them are placed pieces of suet and sun- flower seeds. Even before the snow conies, some The first snowfall brings the chickadee to our windows chickadees and possibly a pair of nuthatches and a pair of woodpeckers have discovered the provender 60 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS and make periodic visits. But it requires a snow- fall to drive them up to the dwelling in considerable numbers. A day after the ground is permanently covered, however, the pine hedge is alive with them, and we see their little fat, fluffed bodies twinkling in the bare branches of the apple-tree, and as we are seated at breakfast suddenly there is a flutter of wings outside the window, and a pair of bright, bead- like, marvelously intelligent eyes look in at us. If, on this first morning, we rise from the table and move toward the window, the bird will probably take flight, dropping the seed he had picked up. But in a very few days he gets over his timidity. We can come close to the window and sit with our faces not a foot from the ledge outside, while the bird will hop about selecting a seed or pecking with his tiny, sharp bill at the piece of frozen suet with loud, ringing blows. A bird is an incredibly quick thing in all his move- ments. Watch a robin crossing the lawn, and you will be hard put to say whether he runs or hops, so fast do his legs move. Watch a chickadee pecking at a piece of frozen suet, and again you will be amazed at the rapidity of his blows, and also at the muscular power in that tiny neck, which, under its deceptive ruff of downy feathers, can't be much thicker than your little finger. His whole body is scarce larger than your thumb. Bang, bang, bang, goes his beak — and then he suddenly stops, lifts his head, cocks a shiny, twinkling eye at you, swallows, looks around at the landscape, hops off the suet, hops on again, and — -bang, bang, bang, go the blows of his beak 'once more. Birds are curiously jerky THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 61 in their movements when they are not flying. A few rapid acts — then a pause, with a change to a fresh position for no reason that you can fathom. When a robin is hunting worms, he runs five or six feet like lightning, stops short, looks up to the sky, and then suddenly ducks his head, perhaps pulls The chickadee up a worm, and goes on again. Even when he doesn't pick up any worms, he alternately runs and stands still contemplating the heavens. The chickadee hammers at suet in the same dis- jointed manner. But he gets what he's after. A day or two, and a pound of frozen suet will be gone- suet frozen so hard that it is all you can do to pick off a crumb with your or black-capped titmouse finger-nail. As soon as the birds have become accustomed to the house, to the dog, and to the human beings, we 62 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS begin the process of coaxing them into still greater familiarity. There is always one bird braver or more friendly than the rest, possibly an old fellow who was with us last season, and sometimes he will eat from our hands several days before the others get up their courage. My wife is much more suc- cessful as a chickadee-tamer than I am, possibly because she has more patience ; but in the course of a long, hard winter we have frequently had a whole flock so tame that they would come not only to our hands, but to those of adults and even children visit- ing us. The process is simple. My wife puts half a dozen sunflower seeds in the palm of her hand and stands under the apple-tree at the hour when the birds are most hungry. (They are comparatively hungry all the time, but early in the morning, at about our lunch-time, and again late in the winter afternoon, they make their chief meals, with innumerable snacks between.) Then she holds out her hand invitingly, looks up, and usually whistles once or twice the chickadee's song — not his dee-dee call, but his real song: The chances are that several birds are already hop- ping and twittering in the apple-tree overhead. If they aren't, they come in a moment. Every bird has his eye on the palmful of inviting black seeds. Every bird shows unmistakable signs of excitement, hopping nearer and nearer to lower and lower THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 63 twigs, till the bare tree looks exactly like one of good St. Francis's congregations. Finally one bird, bolder than the rest, gets on the very lowest twig He makes light of the rigors of winter nearest the hand, and, like a small boy suddenly making up his mind to dive into cold water, plunges off. Very often he is terrified before he quite 64 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS reaches the hand, and puts on all brakes, beating back with his wings. But the bait is too tempting. The same bird, after flying away to the pine hedge for a moment, almost invariably comes back to his perch over the outstretched hand, dives again, this time alights on a finger, snatches a seed, and is off with it into the pines. The other birds seem plainly to have been watching the outcome of his experi- ment, for soon after two or three others repeat the operation — a first attempt which is stopped in mid- air, and a second, braver trial which results in capt- uring a seed. The next day these bold leaders do not hesitate. They come at once, and after a week or two of deep snow the whole flock will have be- come so bold that merely to hold out a palmful of seeds at breakfast-time is to bring a steady proces- sion of chickadees to perch one after the other on your finger. If you hold the seeds on your bare hand, the sen- sations of the tiny claws clutching your finger with a light yet strong grip is quite indescribable — a deli- cate clutch from this wild, pretty little creature of the air, this mite of puffed feathers and snapping, bright eyes which somehow warms the very cockles of your heart. Perhaps the flattery of the bird's confidence has something to do with it. But my wife doesn't stop with calling the chicka- dees to her hand. After they are comparatively tame and fearless, she puts a sunflower seed be- tween her lips, tips her face upward, and holds out her index finger as a perch a few inches from her mouth. Many of the birds will now fly down to her finger, perch there a moment, looking directly THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 65 into her face, then lean forward, take the seed from between her lips as though they were snatching a kiss, and fly off with it. I have seen a chickadee perch in her hair also, and reach down across her cheek for the seed. I have seen one on her finger and one on her hat-rim at the same moment, each taking a seed, for she held two in her lips. If there is only one seed, however, the well-bred little fel- lows never fight for it, at least not in our dooryard, where they are sure of plenty more. They are not nearly so ready to take seeds from my lips, but once or twice they have done so. Usually, however, they draw back when they get close; and it is a pretty sight to see them put on the brakes with their wings while their bright eyes still look hungrily at the food. The chickadees not only take food from our hands, however, but they will even come into the house to get it. I was inclined not to believe this at first, but Katie convinced me by bidding me sit quietly in the corner of the kitchen while she set out her dinner close to the door. Then she left the door open, put some seeds beside her plate, and laid a little trail of them conspicuously on the white cloth out to the end of the table. She herself began to eat, paying no attention to the birds. Suddenly there was a whir of wings, a bird entered, snatched a seed from the table, and flew out. A second bird came, a third, and soon the trail was carried off, and Katie was eating her dinner with two chickadees actually standing on the table within six inches of her plate! Once a bird hopped up on the edge of a dish of tomatoes and took a seed out of that. 66 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS Of course, there are other winter birds than the chickadees about our dwelling — nuthatches always, for you meet few flocks of chickadees without at least a pair of "devil downheads" in friendly com- panionship, a tree-sparrow or two, and usually a pair of woodpeckers. All these birds feed on the window-ledge, but only very rarely can a nuthatch be persuaded to eat from the hand, and the others never. The occasional flocks of pine-grosbeaks do not come even to the ledge. They are shy and silent birds. But a pair of red-breasted nuthatches — • smaller than the more comjnon variety — have been with us for three winters now. They are an extreme- ly ill-mannered and aggressive pair, too, driving off their larger cousins till they themselves have eaten their fill. At first they also intimidated the chicka- dees, but the little fellows soon rallied, came back with a counter offensive en masse, and taught the redbreasts their place. How valuable the chickadees are as insect-de- stroyers can readily be observed by anybody who watches them. Their winter appetite is voracious, for it must require a deal of heat to keep those little bodies warm in the bleak storms and zero weather. I have seen one bird eat twenty sunflower seeds in an hour, each seed being for him the equivalent in size of an English muffin for you and me. With their short, sharp, powerful little bills they go peck- ing busily and incessantly all over the trees. But they are never too busy to pay attention to the passing stranger. Not far from us there is a large country estate, with a walled garden deserted in winter. Over the THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 67 wall looks an apple-tree, and as we tramp by on the snowy road we have only to pause at that point and whistle to bring a whole flock of chickadees into On blackberry stalks by gray stone wall the chickadees are conspicious objects the branches. They are the only live things visible on the white face of nature. They come down into the low twigs quite close to us, and pretend that all they came for was to pick off eggs and scale. They hop busily about, their little bills tapping, their IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS little eyes twinkling, and every few seconds one of them does a flip-flop to some other twig, swells up his throat, and peals out his chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee- dee, exactly as if he were greeting us. When the world is beautiful with its winter mantle, the fields white, the timbered mountains reddish gray or amethyst, and the bare, gracefully curving blackberry stalks by a gray stone wall a lovely lavender, the chickadees are conspicuous objects, in spite of their diminutive size. They are as conspicuous as a robin on a spring lawn, and far more decorative, for their little black caps and their soft, fluffy, gray bodies, swaying on a lavender berry stalk against the snow-white fields, or perched on a roadside rail fence, or on the end of a bare twig that comes into the composition like the inevitable branch in a Japanese print, seem always to tone into the simple color scheme of winter — to fit its minor harmonies. Even in the deep woods the tiny birds become conspicuous at this season. That flock of them we saw flying over the bare fields toward the pine cover is twittering and dee-deeing to greet us when we arrive in the hushed naves of the forest, and one little fellow, gray against the gray bole of a giant chestnut, flutters lower like a bit of animated bark, to see who's coming. From the fact that the chickadees remain in the North the year round, it may be inferred that they are either extremely clever in securing food, like the crows, or else extremely liberal in their choice of a diet. Possibly both inferences are correct. Frozen insects and eggs from trees, weed seeds, pine seeds, and corn they can usually find for themselves, and THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 69 they devour all of them. Personally, from watch- ing their actions on apple-trees, I believe they eat oyster-shell scale. Like almost all birds, of course, Perched on the end of a bare twig as in a Japanese print they are greedy for suet; and they are very fond of sunflower and pumpkin seeds. If you will try to break a sunflower seed with your finger-nail, you will realize how strong their little bills are, for they take off the outer shell with a couple of rapid mo- tions as neatly as you please. If you follow one of them down in the winter corn-field where a few ears TO IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS have been left on the shocks, or perhaps on the ground not yet covered with snow, you will find that they drill into the kernel and extract the meat, again with the utmost neatness. In common with other birds, they must like plenty of water to drink, though I have never seen one, in spring or summer, in our bird baths. I have, however, seen their tracks about an open spring in the woods, where the pheasants also came in great numbers, and I have seen them eat ice as a thirsty dog will eat snow. Although the chickadee is such a friendly little beggar all winter long (indeed, the season through), when he is merely engaged in the occupation of get- ting food and the joyous pastime of living, when breeding-time arrives he suddenly becomes highly secretive, and gets as far out of sight as possible. No doubt that is one of the reasons the species has been so successful in the fight for survival. Like the woodpecker and the bluebird, the chickadee nests in a hole. Of course they have been known to select holes close to a dwelling. Walter King Stone tells me he knew of a pair who nested in a cranny over a back stoop not more than two feet above the heads of the passers. We now have an artificial bird-box in the apple-tree by our kitchen window, and as I write (in early May) a pair of chickadees have been hopping in and out of it for several days. But so far as we can observe they have been engaged rather in taking the sawdust out than taking any new material in. The same pair have removed material from a blue-bird box near by, on another tree, much to our disgust, for a In the hushed naves of the forest pair of bluebirds had looked the property over several times, and apparently were much pleased with it. But for the most part the chickadees pick out a well-hidden and rather remote hole for their nest, sometimes in an old fence-post, more often higher from the ground, in a tree in the woods. Some 72 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS writers say they excavate these holes for them- selves, but I have never seen a nest in a hole which didn't appear to have been already dug. The act- ual nest is made of wood fiber, wool, hair, fine moss, feathers, or other soft material. They take, the hair where they can get it. Thoreau, who loved the chickadees and used to watch them pecking bread out of the French-Canadian woodchopper's hand in the Concord woods, records a nest in a small maple stump which seemed to be made of bluish- slate rabbit's fur. Mr. Stone has seen a chickadee taking hair from the back of a Jersey cow for two hours. If they take hair from a cow, they un- doubtedly used to take it — and perhaps still do in the deep woods — from the backs of the deer. They lay a sizable number of little white eggs, with rusty, reddish - brown spots. The young birds, when they get their feathers, are indescrib- ably adorable; but it is not often that you will see them. The male and female birds do not differ in appearance, so it is usually impossible to determine which is the mother, except in the incubating season. The song of the chickadee is very simple, but to many ears very beautiful in its absolute definiteness of interval. Of course, the better known chick-a-dee- dee-dee-dee-dee is not its song. That is more like its college yell, into which it breaks at periodic in- tervals out of sheer exuberance of spirits. Neither is the song that tinkling little lisp with which it talks to you from the low twigs of an apple-tree as you pass by. Its song is the exquisitely clear whistle which is most commonly heard in spring, and which THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 73 is undoubtedly associated with the love life of the bird— Some bird writers render this whistle by two notes instead of three, and Thoreau constantly speaks of the Phce-be note of the chickadee. But in many years of constant residence among the chickadees of western Massachusetts I have never heard one which did not break up the second tone clearly and sharply into two quarter-notes, and Mr. Stone agrees with me in this. Nor is it true that the song is confined to spring, though it is then most frequently heard. It comes occasionally out of the depths of the summer pines or the pasture hedge- rows, and very often we hear it floating over the frozen fields of winter, an exquisite and a cheering note, the chickadees* "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" F. Schuyler Matthews, in his excellent Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music, says: "Few small birds whistle their songs so clearly, and separate the tones by such lucid intervals. The charm, too, of the chickadee's singing lies in the fact that he knows the value of a well-sustained half -note, an- other point which should be scored in the little musi- cian's favor." Still another is that the chickadee so far recognizes the musical intervals of his song that he will answer those notes when you whistle them. We can go out into our yard at any hour of the day 74 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS in spring — indeed, during the winter, too — and whistle a couple of times, to be answered, from near or far, by a bird. After he has once answered you, he will keep up the conversation, the musical dia- logue, as long as your patience holds out, like a dog chasing a stick. Mr. Matthews records a curious thing about this performance. He has, he says, frequently persuaded the chickadee to come down to a lower pitch by setting his own whistle lower, but he has never been able to persuade the bird to go back to the original one after the descent. While it is easy for anybody to induce the chick- adee to answer his whistle, comparatively few people can imitate the timbre well enough to call the birds directly to them. The artist for this book can, however, and it is a quaint spectacle which would have delighted the good Saint of Assisi to see him with a fat little fellow on his head, another on his hand, and still another on his shoulder, actually answering the whistle directly intahis mouth! The oddest part about this performance is that no mat- ter how many birds come to the call, first into over- hanging branches and then to his person, only one of them does the replying, and that bird is the only one which appears excited. He, however, is mani- festly wrought up. His feathers fluff, his move- ments are rapid, he is conspicuously restless. This song, undoubtedly, is connected with the mating and domestic life of the chickadees. I have records of observations which show that a bird bringing food uttered it, that it was answered by the mate inside the nesting-hole, and that she then appeared out of the hole and took the food. Not THE CHEERFUL CHICKADEE 75 all of us humans summon our wives in so charming a manner! It was an amusing incident of the Lenten season just past that our good rector, dutifully minded of In search of food in a winter corn-field his calling on a warm Sabbath, when spring was in the air and the stained-glass windows were lowered, 76 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS letting in perforce the natural light of heaven, preached a sermon upon the lusts of the flesh. (I have this on hearsay only, but my informant, who is also my conscience, my collaborator, and at times my cook, cannot be doubted.) As the good man thundered against those instincts which, no doubt, needs must be thundered against or we might sup- pose the world a really rather pleasant place, outside in a breeze-blown elm a chickadee sat and pro- claimed his desire for a mate, punctuating each pul- pit period with his three sweet pagan notes. It was, I submit, an amusing incident, though nobody (so my informant tells me) , least of all the good rector intent upon demolishing the lusts of the flesh, seemed aware of it. Cheerful, happy, brave, musical little bird, whom Thoreau loved and Emerson praised! This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior. Like the dog, you flatter us with your friendliness, you protect our trees, you sing of summer when the woods are bare, you sing of love when the south wind comes, you put life and music into our bleakest land- scapes. May your supply of sunflower seeds never grow less on hospitable window-ledges! THE MENACE FROM ABOVE EVERY mouse in the fields and meadows, every rabbit that crouches under the thick- et, every grouse and pheasant, even fish and frogs and muskrats in the waters and the squirrels and song-birds of the forest, live under a menace from above, no less terrible to them than the Zeppelin to London, and far less effectively combated. They live under the menace of the raptores, or birds of prey, the eagles, hawks, falcons, and owls, certain species of which are still far commoner than the ordinary person supposes, even in the settled sections of our northeastern states. The terror comes to them out of the air, it drops with the speed of lightning, and kills with extraordinary strength and ferocity. Mere size is little protection, for a goshawk will easily kill a rooster and even carry him off. That menacing shadow over the hen-yard which causes such a com- 78 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS motion on a still summer day in reality hovers over all the land of the little wild folk, by night as well as by day, and tragedy falls like the traditional bolt from the blue in open field and sedgy marsh and silent forest. On the twenty-ninth day of March, 1918, 1 found a strange record on my mountain-side/ The body of a small skunk dangled over a bent sap- ling, about four feet from the ground. Beneath were snow and mud, without a track in them. The skunk showed no mark of shot, nor had there been any hunters in that vicinity. He could hardly have climbed up and straddled a sapling to die a natural death; besides, there were blood-marks on his head, throat, and back. In all probability he had been killed by a great horned owl, that being one of the few creatures I know which have any fond- ness for skunks, and either dropped because the owl wasn't hungry or else placed on the limb prepara- tory to eating, the owl having been scared away before the meal could begin. At any rate, I could see no other explanation. It was on the eighteenth day of March this same year that I first noticed the hawks so prominent in the air. It was also the day that bird song and spring warmth were first apparent. Walking along a high- road above a pine-filled valley, I heard a loud com- motion in the trees, and suddenly a score of crows burst up above the pines like black fragments of an explosion. In their midst was a bird of about the same size, which speedily made off. Four crows went in pursuit, however. I was too far away to make out with any certainty what variety of hawk this bird was, and the light was in my face, in addi- THE MENACE FROM ABOVE 79 tion. It was probably a Cooper's hawk. But I could see the four crows fly over him, and dart down every few feet to take a peck at his head. Mean- while the crows which remained behind kept up an incessant racket in the pines. The hawk made no effort to fight back, nor did he even seem greatly annoyed. Without any attempt to dodge or change his line of flight, he gradually accelerated his speed, swung down wind, and disappeared, the four crows being left astern after about a mile. Just what he had done to annoy them I cannot say. He may have been hungry and attacked one. But it doesn't pay to attack a crow. E pluribus unum is their motto. Literally thousands of crows will gather in less than two hours to attack a great horned owl which has killed one of their number. As a rule, I doubt if the hawks and owls trouble the crows very much, even though their nests are so similarly placed in the tops of the forest trees. I had hardly finished watching this little battle over the pines when, on looking upward, I saw a big red-tailed hawk (the large bird commonly and mistakenly called a " hen-hawk") sailing far aloft on almost motionless pinions. It is a beautiful flight, this of the red-tailed hawk, only exceeded in con- summate ease, perhaps, by the turkey buzzard of the South, which is undoubtedly the king of aero- nauts. He was sailing in great circles, apparently aimless, and it seemed incredible that from such a height he could see his prey on the earth below, even prey as large as a rabbit, not to mention mice, which are the chief staple of his diet. Yet he was prob- ably intently watching the earth beneath, as his 8o IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS great loops swung him northward (much like the connected capital O's we used to have to push across the page of our "writing-books" at school), and sooner or later he would drop from his aerial pathway and swing aloft again with his quarry. That same day I saw a third hawk, sitting quietly on top of a large log in a pasture within two hundred feet of the trolley track. The car was moving rapidly, so I had little time for observa- tion, but it seemed to be a red-shouldered hawk, which is a trifle smaller than the red-tailed, but rather closely resembles it, especially in habits of flight. I could see, however, that the noisy pas- sage of the trolley did not disturb this bird in the least. He was facing in the opposite direction, with his head down, as if he were watching the ground. It may be there was some quarry beneath that log which he was waiting for. A cat at a mouse-hole can be no more patient than a hawk. It is by no means true that all hawks are seriously destructive of desirable bird and animal life. The so-called " hen-hawk" is a case in point. Because this hawk, and the red-shouldered hawk, also, have soared in their great, beautiful circles high above our clearings since the first settlers came, and be- cause hawks do unquestionably raid poultry-yards and kill pigeons and wild game-birds, the most conspicuous raptores have had the burden of re- proach heaped upon them. Yet actually the red- tailed, or " hen-hawk, " does probably as much good as harm to the farmer and the community. In that monumental work The Birds of New York, by Elon Howard Eaton, is a table of stomach con- THE MENACE FROM ABOVE 81 tents from all the varieties of hawks and owls found in New York State, compiled from many careful investigations. In only 10 per cent, of the red-tailed hawks was any trace of poultry or game, and in only 9 per cent, any trace of other birds. The red-shotildered had a still smaller percentage. In both species 50 per cent, showed mice, and 45 per cent, of the red-shouldered showed insects. Doctor Eaton classes the red-tailed hawk as ''near the bor- der-line of beneficent birds," however, and he puts the common marsh-hawk in the same rather doubt- ful class, because of its raids on birds, along with the barred and snowy owls. He leaves in the unques- tionably injurious class, as birds of prey which should be exterminated, only these: the goshawk, Cooper's hawk, sharp-shinned hawk, duck-hawk, pigeon- hawk, and great horned owl. They are the ones which do the real damage, both goshawks and great horned owls, for example, showing as high as 36 and 25 per cent., respectively, of poultry and game in the stomach contents examined, while the pigeon-hawk showed 85 per cent, of other birds, and the duck- hawk 35 per cent, of poultry and game and 45 per cent, of other birds. In none was there any com- mensurate percentage of mice or insects to balance this destruction. So far as my own state of Massachusetts is con- cerned, there is no doubt that the goshawk during the severe winter of 1917-18 was the most serious menace to all our small wild game, next to the weather, and even a serious menace to our domestic fowls. Not only did this vicious, cruel, and in- credibly swift and powerful bird, supposedly an 82 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS inhabitant of the North, visit regions where hitherto he was comparatively unknown in any such num- bers, but he seemed to be displaying a tendency to remain, at least for all the winter months. It may be he will yet have to be reckoned as our worst winged enemy. I collected that winter a few re