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WHAT I HAVE DONE
WITH BIRDS
CHARACTER STUDIES OF NATIVE AMERICAN BIRDS WHICH,
THROUGH FRIENDLY ADVANCES, I INDUCED TO POSE
FOR ME, OR SUCCEEDED IN PHOTOGRAPHING
BY GOOD FORTUNE, WITH THE STORY OF
MY EXPERIENCES IN OBTAINING
THEIR PICTURES
By
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
Author of
The Song of the Cardinal, Freckles, etc.
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
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A :.: ".
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COPYRIGHT 1907
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
Jr 5
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tfNftAPR14
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
"The kernels of nuts and the resins of trees,
The nectar distilled by the wild honey-bees,
Should be thrown in together, to flavor my words
With the zest of the woods and the joy of the birds !"
Thompson.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Brooding Cuckoo Frontispiece
Male Cardinal Doing Sentinel Duty xxii
Owl 1
Dusky Falcon 3
Chicken-hawk 7
Black Vulture 11
Sheilpoke 15
Cardinal Grosbeaks Courting 19
Baby Grosbeak 22
Kingfisher 23
Young Tanager 25
Hen's Nest Containing Egg of Chicken-hawk 25
Hen Brooding on Egg of Chicken-hawk 26
Brooding King Rail 30
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Continued
PAGE
Rail Hiding Egg 31
Nest of King Rail 35
Eggs of King Rail 39
Pair of Young Bell-birds 42
Nest of Wood Robin With Snake Skin 43
Nest of Wood Thrush 45
Young Bell-bird Hiding Under Leaf 50
Barn Owl 52
Owl Head 53
Barn Owl Leaving Its Home 55
The Face a Perfect Heart Shape 61
Young Killdeer 64
The Killdeer Nest 65
Baby Killdeer Just From Shell 72
The Black Vulture's Nest With Egg and Young 74
The Black Vulture's Front Door 75
"Little Chicken" 77
Young Vulture Three-fourths Grown 81
Full-grown Vulture 85
Vulture Taking Flight 88
Young Loggerhead Shrikes 90
Pair of Young Shrikes 91
Nest and Eggs of Shrike 94
Pair Half -grown Shrikes 95
Young Shrikes 99
Purple Martin 102
A Martin Double House 103
Martin Standing Sentinel 108
Cat-bird Nest and Eggs 110
Young Cat-bird Ill
Pair of Young Cat-birds 113
Cat-birds ..119
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Continued
PAGE
Kingfishers on Favorite Fishing Log 122
Waiting For Lunch 123
Father Kingfisher 129
Young Kingfishers at Entrance to Nest 135
Kingfisher Flats 139
Cuckoo Eggs in Abandoned Nest of Larger Bird 142
Brooding Cuckoo 143
Typical Cuckoo Nest 146
Evolution of Cuckoos, Pair in Nest 150
Pair Leaving Nest 150
Pair One Day From Nest 151
Mother Cuckoo Brooding While I Worked Behind Her 156
Ready for the Mercies of the World 159
Great Blue Heron 162
Heron Swallowing Frog 163
Indian River Plover 168
Pair of Young Doves 170
Nest of Doves on Fence 171
Pair of Young Doves in Nest 176
Black -masked Warbler and Cow-birds 178
Cow-birds Clustering About Cattle 179
Nest of Indigo Finch Containing Egg of Cow -bird ;183
Nest of Red-eyed Vireo With Cow-bird Egg 187
Pair of Young Vireos 190
Nest of Song Sparrow With Walled-in Egg of Cow-bird. . .191
Pair of Young Cow-birds 194
Male Cardinal Grosbeak Taking Sun-bath 196
Young Cardinals 197
Nest and Eggs of Cardinals 199
Male Cardinal Singing 203
Male Cardinal 207
Nest and Eggs of Robin 210
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Continued
PAGE
Robin on Bench 211
Nest and Young Robins 215
Robin on Limb 223
Blue Jay Calling 226
Jay on Stump 227
Nest and Eggs of Jay 228
Mother Jay and Nestling 230
Mother Jay and Nestling With Open Bill 231
Male and Female Jays Feeding Young 233
Young Jays Ready to Fly . .237
Young Jay 240
Humming-bird on Rose 242
A Chilly Humming-bird 243
Nest of Humming-bird 248
Grown Quail . 250
Quail Nest 251
Nest of Shells., .257
TO
BOB BURDETTE BLACK
WHO HAD A HAND IN IT
THANKS ARE DUE TO OUTING, THE METROPOLITAN
AND THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL FOR THE PRIVILEGE
OF REPRODUCING PICTURES COPYRIGHTED BY THEM
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I What I Have Done With Birds 1
II The "Queen" Rail In a Swamp 31
III The Wood Thrush In the Valley of the Wood
Robin 43
IV The Barn Owl In Deep Forest 53
V The Killdeer On the Ground 65
VI The Black Vulture In the Limberlost. 75
VII The Loggerhead Shrike In Field Trees 91
VIII The Purple Martin In the Air 103
IX The Cat-bird In Thickets Ill
X The Belted Kingfisher In Embankments 123
XI The Yellow-Billed Cuckoo In Small Thickly
Leaved Trees 143
XII The Blue Heron In the Great Lake Regions 163
XIII The Mourning Dove In Deep Wood 171
XIV The Cow-bird In the Pastures 179
XV The Cardinal Grosbeak In Small Trees and
Bushes 197
XVI Robin In the Dooryard. 211
XVII The Blue Jay In the Orchard 227
XVIII The Humming-bird At the Cabin 243
XIX The Quail On the Ground 251
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
Cried Falco Sparverius: "I chased a mouse up this log."
Hooted Scops Asio : "I chased it down a little red lane."
"The bubbling brook doth leap when I come by,
Because my feet find measure with its call ;
The birds know when the friend they love is nigh,
For I am known to them, both great and small.
The flower that on the lonely hillside grows
Expects me there when spring its bloom has given ;
And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows,
And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven."
Very.
CHAPTER I
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
The greatest thing possible to do
with a bird is to win its confidence. In
a few days' work about most nests the
birds can be taught so to trust me, that
such studies can be made as are here
presented of young and old, male and
female.
I am not superstitious, but I am
afraid to mistreat a bird, and luck is
with me in the indulgence of this fear.
In all my years of field work not one study of a nest, or of any
bird, has been lost by dealing fairly with my subjects. If a nest
is located where access is impossible without moving it, an ex-
posure is not attempted, and so surely as the sun rises on another
morning, another nest of the same species is found within a few
days, where a reproduction of it can be made.
Recently, in summing up the hardships incident to securing
one study of a brooding swamp-bird, a prominent nature lover
and editor said to me most emphatically, "That is not a woman's
work."
"I do not agree with you," I answered. "In its hardships, in
wading, swimming, climbing, in hidden dangers suddenly to be
confronted, in abrupt changes from heat to cold, and from light to
dark, field photography is not a woman's work; but in the matter
of finesse in approaching the birds, in limitless patience in await-
ing the exact moment for .the best exposure, in the tedious and
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
delicate processes of the dark room, in the art of winning bird
babies and parents, 'it is not a man's work. No man ever has had
the patience to remain with a bird until he secured a real character
study of it. A human mother is best fitted to understand and deal
with a bird mother."
This is the basis of all my field work, a mute contract be-
tween woman and bird. In spirit I say to the birds, "Trust me and
I will do by you as I would be done by. Your nest and young
shall be touched as I would wish some giant, surpassing my size
and strength as I surpass yours, to touch my cradle and baby. I
shall not tear down your home and break your eggs or take your
naked little ones from the nest before they are ready to go, and
leave them to die miserably. I shall come in colors to which you
are accustomed, and move slowly and softly about, not approach-
ing you too near until your confidence in me is established. I
shall be most careful to feed your young what you feed them;
drive away snakes and squirrels, and protect you in every way
possible to me. Trust me, and go on with your daily life. For
what small disturbance is unavoidable among you, forgive me,
and through it I shall try to win thousands to love and shield
you."
That I frequently have been able to teach a bird to trust me
completely, these studies prove; but it is possible to go even fur-
ther. After a week's work in a location abounding in every bird
native to my state, the confidence of the whole feathered popula-
tion has been won so that I could slip softly in my green dress
from nest to nest, with not the amount of disturbance caused by
the flight of a Crow or the drumming of a Woodpecker. This
was proved to me when one day I was wanted at home, and a
member of my family came quietly and unostentatiously, as she
thought, through the wood to tell me. Every Wren began scold-
ing. Every Cat-bird followed her with imperative questions.
WISDOM DUSKY FALCON
'A Dusky Falcon is beautiful and most intelligent'*
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
Every Jay was on a high perch sounding danger signals. With
a throb of great joy came the realization that I was at home and
accepted of my birds ; this other was a stranger, and her presence
was feared and rejected.
So upon this basis I have gone among the birds, seeking not
only to secure pictures of them by which family and species can
be told, but also to take them perching in characteristic locations
as they naturally alight in different circumstances; but best and
above all else, to make each picture prove without text the disposi-
tion of the bird. A picture of a Dove that does not make that bird
appear tender and loving, is a false reproduction. If a study of
a Jay does not prove the fact that it is quarrelsome and obtrusive
it is useless, no matter how fine the pose or portrayal of markings.
One might write pages on the wisdom and cunning of the Crow,
but one study of the bird that proved it would obviate the neces-
sity of the text. A Dusky Falcon is beautiful and most intelli-
gent, but who is going to believe it if you illustrate the statement
with a sullen, sleepy bird, which serves only to furnish markings
for natural -history identification? If you describe how bright
and alert a Cardinal is, then see to it that you get a study of a
Cardinal which emphasizes your statements.
A merry war has waged in the past few years over what the
birds know ; and it is all so futile. I do not know what the birds
know, neither do you, neither does any one else, for that matter.
There is no possible way to judge of the intelligence of birds, save
by our personal experience with them, and each student of bird
life will bring from the woods exactly what he went to seek, be-
cause he will interpret the actions of the birds according to his
temperament and purpose.
If a man seeking material for a volume on natural history,
trying to crowd the ornithology of a continent into the working
lifetime of one person, goes with a gun, shooting specimens to
5
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
articulate and mount from which to draw illustrations, he will no
doubt testify that the birds are the wildest, shyest things alive,
because that has been his experience with them.
If he goes with a note-book, a handful of wheat and the soul
of a poet, he will write down the birds as almost human, because
his own great heart humanizes their every action.
I go with a camera for the purpose of bringing from the fields
and forests characteristic pictorial studies of birds, and this book
is to tell and prove to you what my experiences have been with
them. I slip among them in their parental hour, obtain their like-
nesses, and tell the story of how the work was accomplished. I
was born in the country and grew up among the birds in a place
where they were protected and fearless. A deep love for, and a
comprehension of, wild things runs through the thread of my dis-
position, peculiarly equipping me to do these things.
In one season, when under ten years of age, I located sixty
nests, and I dropped food into the open beaks in every one of
them. Soon the old birds became so accustomed to me, and so con-
vinced of my good intentions, that they would alight on my head
and shoulders in a last hop to reach their nests with the food they
had brought. Playing with the birds was my idea of fun. Pets
were my sort of dolls. It did not occur to me that I was learning
anything that would be of use in after years; now comes the
realization that knowledge acquired for myself in those days is
drawn upon every time I approach the home of a bird.
When I decided that the camera was the only method by which
to illustrate my observations of bird life, all that was necessary to
do was to get together my outfit, learn how to use it, to compound
my chemicals, to develop and fix my plates, and tone and wash
my prints. How to approach the birds I knew better than any-
thing else.
This work is to tell of and to picture my feathered friends of
6
ANGER CHICKEN-HAWK
I once snapped a Chicken-hawk with a perfect expression of anger on
his face"
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
the woods in their homes. When birds are bound to their nests and
young by the brooding fever, especially after the eggs have quick-
ened to life, it is possible to cultivate, by the use of unlimited pa-
tience and bird sense, the closest intimacy with them and to get
almost any pose or expression you can imagine.
In living out their lives, birds know anger, greed, jealousy,
fear and love, and they have their playtimes. In my field ex-
periences I once snapped a Chicken-hawk with a perfect expres-
sion of anger on his face, because a movement of mine disturbed
him at a feast set to lure him within range of my camera. No
miser ever presented a more perfect picture of greed than I fre-
quently caught on the face of a young Black Vulture to which it
was my daily custom to carry food. Every day in field work one
can see a male bird attack another male, who comes fooling around
his nest and mate, and make the feathers fly. Did humanity ever
present a specimen scared more than this Sheilpoke when he dis-
covered himself between a high embankment and the camera, and
just for a second hesitated in which direction to fly? Sometimes
by holding food at unexpected angles young birds can be coaxed
into the most astonishing attitudes and expressions.
I use four cameras suited to every branch of field work, and
a small wagon-load of long hose, ladders, waders and other field
paraphernalia.
Backgrounds never should be employed, as the use of them
ruins a field study in two ways. At one stroke they destroy at-
mosphere and depth of focus.
Nature's background, for any nest or bird, is one of ever
shifting light and shade, and this forms the atmosphere without
which no picture is a success. Nature's background is one of deep
shadow, formed by dark interstices among the leaves, dense thick-
ets and the earth peeping through; and high lights formed by
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
glossy leaves, flowers and the nest and eggs, if they are of light
color.
Nature revels in strong contrasts of light and shade, sweet
and sour, color and form. The whole value of a natural-history
picture lies in reproducing atmosphere, which tells the story of
out-door work, together with the soft high lights and velvet shad-
ows which repaint the woods as we are accustomed to seeing them.
It is not a question of timing; on nests and surroundings all the
time wanted can be had; on young and grown birds, snap shots
must be resorted to in motion, but frequently, with them, more
time than is required can be given. It is a question of whether
you are going to reproduce nature and take a natural-history pic-
ture, or whether you are going to insert a background and take a
sort of flat Japanese, two-tone, wash effect, fit only for decora-
tion, never to reproduce the woods.
Also in working about nests when the mother bird is brooding,
the idea is, or should be, to make your study and get away speed-
ily ; and this is a most excellent reason from the bird's side of the
case as to why a background never should be introduced. In the
first place, if you work about a nest until the eggs become chilled
the bird deserts them, and a brood is destroyed. On fully half
the nests you will wish to reproduce, a background could not be
inserted without so cutting and tearing out foliage as to drive the
bird to desert; to let in light and sunshine, causing her to suffer
from heat, and so to advertise her location that she becomes a prey
to every thoughtless passer. The birds have a right to be left
exactly as you find them.
It is a good idea when working on nests of young birds, where
you have hidden cameras in the hope of securing pictures of the
old, and must wait some time for them to come, to remember that
nestlings are accustomed to being fed every ten or fifteen min-
utes, and even oftener. If you keep the old ones away long, you
10
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73
I
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
subject the young to great suffering and even death; so go to the
woods prepared, if such case arise, to give them a few bites your-
self. In no possible way can it hurt a young bird for you to drop
into its maw a berry or worm of the kind its parents feed it, since
all the old bird does, in the majority of cases, is to pick a worm or
berry from the bushes and drop it into the mouth of the young.
In case you do not know what to feed a nestling, an egg put
on in cold water, brought to a boil and boiled twenty minutes,
then the yolk moistened with saliva, is always safe for any bird.
While you are working so hard for what you want yourself, just
think of the birds and what they want occasionally.
The greatest brutality ever practised on brooding birds con-
sists in cutting down, tearing out and placing nests of helpless
young for your own convenience. Any picture so taken has no
earthly value, as it does not reproduce a bird's location or charac-
teristics. In such a case the rocking of the branches, which is
cooling to the birds, is exchanged for a solid location, and the
leaves of severed limbs quickly wither and drop, exposing both
old and young to the heat, so that your pictures represent, not the
free wild life of thicket and wood, but tormented creatures lolling
and bristling in tortures of heat, and trying to save their lives
under stress of forced and unnatural conditions. If you can not
reproduce a bird's nest in its location and environment, your pic-
ture has not a shred of historical value. My state imposes heavy
fines for work of this sort and soon all others will do the same.
The eggs of almost all birds are pointed and smaller at one
end than the other, and mother birds always place these points
together in the center of the nest. If you wish to make a study
of a nest for artistic purposes, bend the limb but slightly, so that
the merest peep of the eggs shows, and take it exactly as the
mother leaves it. If you desire it for historical purposes, repro-
duce it so that students can identify a like nest from it. Bend
13
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
the limb lower so that the lining will show, as well as outside
material, and with a little wooden paddle turn^ at least one egg
so that the shape and markings are distinct. This can not possi-
bly hurt the egg and when the bird returns to brood she will
replace it to suit herself.
If you find statements in the writings of a natural-history
photographer that you can not corroborate in the writings of your
favorite ornithologist, be reasonable. Who is most likely to
know? The one who tries to cover the habits and dispositions of
the birds of a continent in the lifetime of one person, or the one
who, in the hope of picturing one bird, lies hidden by the day
watching a nest? Sometimes a series of one bird covers many
days, sometimes weeks, as the Kingfisher; sometimes months, as
the Vulture; and sometimes years, as did the Cardinals of this
book. Does it not stand to reason that, in such intimacy with a
few species, much can be learned of them that is new?
All that my best authority on our native birds can say of the
eggs of a Quail is that they are "roundish." He hesitates over the
assertion that Cardinals eat insects, and states for a fact that they
brood but once a season. No bird is so completely a seed- or in-
sect-eater that it does not change its diet. Surely the Canaries of
your cages are seed-eaters, yet every Canary -lover knows that if
the bird's diet is not varied with lettuce, apple, egg and a bit of
raw beefsteak occasionally, it will pull out its feathers and nibble
the ends of them for a taste of meat. Chickens will do the same
thing.
Certainly Cardinals eat insects, quite freely. The one lure
effective above all others in coaxing a Cardinal before a lens was
fresh, bright red, scraped beefsteak. Nine times out of ten this
bird went where I wanted him when a dead limb set with raw
meat was introduced into his surroundings. He would ven-
* 14
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WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
ture for that treat what he would not for his nestlings. And how
his sharp beak did shear into it !
Ornithologists tell us that the diet of a Black Vulture is car-
rion. To reasonable people that should be construed as a general
principle, and not taken to mean that if a Vulture eats a morsel of
anything else it can not be a Vulture. Once during a Vulture
series in the Limberlost a bird of this family in close quarters
presented me with his dinner. In his regurgitations there were
dark streaks I did not understand, and so I investigated. They
were grass! Later I saw him down in a fence-corner, snipping
grass like a Goose, and the week following his mate ate a quan-
tity of catnip with evident relish. Then some red raspberries
were placed in the door of their log and both of them ate the
fruit.
In the regurgitations of a Kingfisher there can be found the
striped legs of grasshoppers and the seeds of several different
kinds of berries. All grain- and seed-eaters snap up a bug or
worm here and there. All insect-eaters vary their diet with bugs
and berries and all meat- and carrion-eaters crave some vegetable
diet.
Through repeated experience with the same pairs I know that
Cardinals of my locality nest twice in a season, and I believe there
are cases where they do three times, as I have photographed young
in a nest as late as the twenty-ninth of August. Had it not been
that a pair were courting for a second mating about a nest still
containing their young, almost ready to go, such a picture as this
pair of Courting Cardinals never would have been possible to me.
But after one brooding they became so accustomed to me that
they flitted about their home, making love as well as feeding the
nestlings. Repeatedly in my work I have followed a pair of
cardinals from one nest to a new location a few rods away where
they continued operations about a second brooding.
17
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
Neither does an authority who tells you certain kinds of birds
are the same size, male and female, mean anything except that
they are the same on an average. All accepted authorities state
that Black Vultures are the same size. My male of the Limber-
lost was a tough old bird, of what age no one could guess, his eyes
dim, his face wrinkled and leathery, his feet incrusted with scale,
and he was almost as large as his cousin, Turkey Buzzard. His
mate was a trim little hen of the previous year, much smaller and
in every way fresh compared with him, but they were mated and
raising their family. No ornithologist can do more than lay
down the general rules, and trust to your good sense to recognize
the exceptions.
There are pairs of birds in which the male is a fine big speci-
men, the female small and insignificant. There are pairs where
the female is the larger and finer, and where they are the same
size. Sometimes they conform in color and characteristics to the
rules of the books and again they do not. Twice in my work I
have found a white English Sparrow, also a Robin, wearing a
large white patch on his coat. I once came within a breath of
snapping an old Robin of several seasons with a tail an inch long.
It did not appeal to me that he was a short-tailed species of Robin,
there is a way to explain all these things. The bird had been in
close quarters and relaxed his muscles, letting his tail go to save
his body.
A large volume could be filled with queer experiences among
birds. Once I found a baby Robin that had been fed something
poisonous and its throat was filled with clear, white blisters, until
its beak stood wide open and it was gasping for breath. I punc-
tured the blisters with a needle and gave it some oil, but it died.
Another time I rescued a Robin that had hung five inches below
its nest by one leg securely caught in a noose of horsehair, until
18
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
the whole leg was swollen, discolored, the skin cut and bleeding,
and the bird almost dead. Release was all it needed.
Again I came across a Scarlet Tanager a few days before
leaving the nest, and both its eyes were securely closed and hidden
by a thick plastering of feathers and filth. I took it home, soaked
and washed it perfectly clean in warm milk. Its eyes were a light
pink and seemed sightless. It was placed in the dark, fed care-
fully, gradually brought to the light and in three days it could see
perfectly and was returned to its nest, sound as the other inmates.
Once I found a female Finch helpless on the ground, and dis-
covered her trouble to be an egg so large she could not possibly de-
posit it, and she had left the nest and was struggling in agony.
I broke the egg with a hatpin and she soon flew away, seemingly
all right. With the help of a man who climbed a big tree and
secured the egg of a Chicken-hawk, after the Hawk had been
shot by a neighboring farmer, we played the mean trick on a Hen
of having her brood on the egg of her enemy.
Another time some boys came to me with a stringy baby Sheil-
poke, scarce old enough to fly, that had landed aimlessly in a ditch
filled with crude oil, and the poor bird was miserable past de-
scription. Warm water, soft soap and the scrub brush ended his
troubles and he was returned to the river clean, full fed and
happy, I hope. Walking through the woods one Sabbath morn-
ing this spring, after a night of high wind and driving rain, I
was attracted by the sharp alarm cries of a pair of Rose-breasted
Grosbeaks. I followed them until almost mired in the swamp,
and there, on a little tuft of grass, between pools of water and
among trampling cattle, within two feet of each other, I found a
male baby Grosbeak and a Scarlet Tanager, neither over five days
from the shell. The Tanager nest I could not discover. The
Grosbeak was in a slender oak sapling in a thicket of grape-vines.
The tree was too light to bear my weight and I was not prepared
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
BABY GROSBEAK
for field work. To leave them meant for them to be drowned or
trampled by the cattle. I carried them both home in my hands.
That night I read that a young Hawk taken from his coarse nest
of sticks and placed in a soft nest would die miserably, so the
next morning I took a ladder and went back to the swamp. There
had been some woodland tragedy other than the storm. The
nest contained one baby, dead and badly abused, so I carefully
cut the surrounding vines and brought the cradle home to my
bird. For the next ten days, in the midst of my busiest time on
this book, a stop every fifteen minutes was made to feed those
youngsters a mixture of boiled potato and egg, varying with a
little mashed fruit and bread and milk.
They grew beautifully. When they were large enough to fly
well they were given the freedom of the conservatory, then the
door was left open, and finally they were placed in an apple-tree
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
YOUNG TANAGER
with food and water beneath. As I write
they are six weeks old. Bath water is still
furnished them, but they have not been
fed for ten days. Both of them are fly-
ing about the orchard, clean, bright,
beautiful birds. I was most anxious to
keep them, the Grosbeak especially. It
would have made a precious pet, but the
laws of my state prohibit the caging of
a song-bird, so I gradually had to ac-
custom them to become self-supporting,
take their pictures, and let them go.
While working among and about birds in the nesting season I
have secured these intimate studies and experiences. At any other
time, when they are the wild, shy, free creatures of all outdoors, a
preconceived study of them is the merest chance, and a stray snap
shot, luck pure and simple. This, of course, refers to songsters.
With coast and tropical birds that live in flocks it is different.
But don't let any one imagine that because he knows his nat-
tural history well, he knows anything about the camera. That is
a separate and distinct study. You might as well ask a great
surgeon to do X-ray work without knowing how, as to ask a
scientist to judge of a
natural-history photog-
rapher's work. It is
possible to locate a f a-
forite stump and pho-
tograph one or a pair
of Kingfishers in the
act of diving for food.
It is possible by his
HEN'S NEST CONTAINING EGG OF CHICKEN-HAWK drOppingS tO locate Si
25
WHAT I HAVE t^NE WITH BIRDS
"We played the mean trick on a Hen of having her brood on the egg of her
worst enemy"
Pheasant's drumming log, hide a camera and take him drumming,
fighting another cock, or mating. It is possible to locate a
Heron's fishing grounds and take him frogging at any time in
the season. These are the things which seldom happen, and
which are rare luck, hut they are perfectly possible to one who
has mastered the art of setting and hiding a camera and making
the most of a poor plate.
I have done some of these things ; but for the most part these
are simple little stories of what occurs every day in field work.
What I Have Done with Birds will tell how they were ap-
proached, to what extent their confidence was gained, and how
26
WHAT I HAVE LiONE WITH BIRDS
much time was required ; it will show the studies and will explain
what of courage, strength and patience they cost.
My closet contains hundreds of negatives of nests, young
birds, fully feathered on the day of leaving the nest and mostly
in pairs, several series from nests to grown birds, some extending
over three months ; and grown birds in the act of diving, bathing,
flying, singing, in anger, greed, fear, taking a sun bath, and court-
ing. I have two studies of birds when the pair were forming
their partnership, one of a male bird standing sentinel beside his
brooding mate, and one of a pair of Kingfishers on a stump in
their favorite fishing shoal. Some of these studies were made
from blinds, some with hidden covered cameras and long hose,
and some with the camera in plain sight and the lens not ten feet
from the subject.
In cases where nestlings are similar in form and coloring to
their elders and will answer every historical purpose as well, I
have preferred to use the young in pairs in these illustrations, be-
cause my heart is peculiarly tender over these plump, dainty,
bright-eyed little creatures, and I fancy others will feel the same.
Every picture reproduced is of a living bird, perching as it
alighted in a characteristic environment. I have no gallery save
God's big workshop of field and forest, and my birds are bound
by no tie save the chord of sympathy between us.
'Spirit that moves the sap in spring,
When lusty male birds fight and sing,
Inform my words and make my lines
As sweet as flowers, as strong as vines."
Thompson.
CHAPTER II
The " Queen" Rail: Eallus Elegans
IN A SWAMP
There are particularly fine
specimens among birds and ani-
mals as well as among men; and
for this reason one bird no more
represents the whole of its species
than one man represents the
whole of his race. The greatest
thing ever done with a bird was
to win its confidence. I have
done this in the case of many
brooding birds, but never to a de-
gree surpassing this instance.
One evening one of the Faithful brought me word that seven
miles east of the cabin, in a little swamp in one corner of Eli Mc-
Collum's corn-field, "a large bird brooded on a nestful of big
eggs." A message like that means everything delightful to a
natural-history photographer, and I could scarcely await the com-
ing morning to be on my way. That night I dreamed of a great
bird that carried me on its back across a waving green swamp
and kindly poised in air above its nest while a study of its eggs
was made.
Early the next morning I donned my swamp outfit, packed
four cameras and started. The road wound off to the northeast
31
HIDING AN EGG FROM SIGHT
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
through entirely new country; there were hills and hollows to
which I was not accustomed, and all May was in each intoxicating
breath of spring air, in the Lark's note o'erhead, and in every
whitening corner of the old snake fences outlining my way.
A passing farmer directed me to McCollum's, and, standing
in my carriage, I could see a corn-field with a small swamp in one
corner. r I turned from the broad highway and drove up a narrow
country road such as one reads of, but seldom finds. Crisp, thick
grass grew to the wheel-tracks, big oaks and maples locked
branches overhead, while every fence-corner was a blanket of
bloom above and a carpet of bloom below.
The corn-field, mellow with alternate freezing and thawing,
outlined in symmetrical rows by the brown stubble of last year's
crop, green splotched with rank upspringing mullein, thistle, dog-
fennel and smartweed, drowsed in the warm sunshine. It was
inclosed by a snake fence, so old that it had become a thing of
great beauty and most interesting. There must have been a time
when that fence shone with the straw colors of newly-split timber
and gave off sappy odors. Now, it was blacker than the bark
of great trees that had grown from the acorns and beechnuts the
squirrels had dropped in its corners ; and it was hoary with the lint
that wasps and Orioles love to gather in nest-building, and gay
with every endless shade of gray and green that ever harmonized
in the crimpled face of a lichen. There were places where the old
fence stoutly bore up its load of bitter-sweet and woodbine, wild
grape and blackberry; again it slid down dejectedly, as if the
years were heavy upon it, and the wood, soggy with earth's damp-
ness, grew tiny ferns, mosses and brilliant fungus.
I almost forgot the bird of which I had dreamed, in my de-
light over the fence. Every rail of it was a tenement. Some
housed woodworms, ants and beetles ; hollow ends and knot-holes
sheltered brooding Linnets and Pewees; small mud-plastered
32
THE "QUEEN" RAIL
spots marked the walled-in families of boring wasps. Garter
snakes, moles and field mice homed in and under the rotting bot-
tom rails, bright green lizards liked to laze on the sunny sides of
the middle ones, and sleek squirrels, with black-striped backs,
flashed along the top.
In the corners on either side grew rank orchard-grass, thickly
sprinkled with sweet-williams, and laughing-faced blue-eyed
marys coquetted with them through the cracks. Graceful maiden-
hair ferns tossed their tresses from wiry stems. Bleached
mandrake umbrellas, that would later unfurl shades of green to
shelter cups of wax and gold, pushed stoutly through the sod.
Half the corners were filled with the whiteness of wild plum and
hawthorn, and the others were budding the coming snow of alder
and the blush of wild roses. Papaw sheaths were bursting with
the pressure of coming leaf and wine-colored bloom, and rich red
and yellow buckeye buds were pursy with swelling flower and
foliage.
"Mu-m-m-m-m-m-m !" came the low rumble of a swamp bird.
"Gyck! Gyck!" came the answer, and the fence was forgotten.
The camera I selected to use weighed forty pounds, the field was
mellow and the swamp at its farthest corner. Sharp study was
required to locate the nest, but at last, by just a few grass blades
persistently arching against the wind, I found it. Then putting
on my waders and carefully probing with a long tripod for each
step, I entered the swamp and started toward the nest.
The birds fear noise far more than objects, so I made a long
wait between steps and shifted my feet side wise a little so as not
to sink so deep in the muck that I could not get out. It was hard
work to take a step, and I sank deeper and deeper on nearing
the nest. Coming close I made longer pauses between steps.
When I was quite close to the nest, from the heart of the swamp
broke a sharp "Gyck! Gyck!" the same cry that I had heard on
33
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
the road, and then I knew that it came from a King Rail and that
this was the palace of his Queen.
She had chosen her location on a little hummock, far out in
a deep pool, and so few inches above the water that when brood-
ing she could take a drink without rising. The erection of her
palace evidently had been simplicity itself. She had snipped this
year's green grass from her location, sat down in the old dead,
dry blades, and repeatedly turned around. Then she had gath-
ered the dry blades she had broken off, dropped them under her
and worked them down with her feet. This gave her a large,
flat, bowl-shaped nest of beautiful shades of tan, yellow and
brown dried-grass blades. The finishing touch was to catch the
long rank-growing blades above her head, draw them together
and weave them into an arch of living green.
Through its sides the brooding Rail could be seen. She was a
large, splendid specimen of her species, her plumage a bright
beautiful brown, with little V-shaped markings of white over her
back and touches of black about the wings, in the shape of black
feathers twice banded with white. The top of her head was a
smooth even brown with ash-colored streaks above the eyes. Her
throat was a paler ash. Later I saw that her legs were slender,
smooth, a pale greenish yellow, and her feet graceful, with slim
toes and sharp black nails. Her beak was elegant in its sym-
metrical curve, with hints of red and yellow at the base, daintily
cut nostrils and rich ivory tip. But the loveliest things of all were
her big, wise, wonderful eyes, as she sat motionless, steadily re-
garding me.
As I returned her fearless gaze the thought came to me that,
if the King Rail earned his royalty by personally conducting the
migratory voyages of the Quail, as he was accredited with having
done at the time of his coronation in early France, his mate un-
doubtedly was worthy of equal honors; for she was graceful,
34
THE "QUEEN" RAIL
lovely, and her heart was unafraid, as royal hearts ever should be.
Straightway I named her the "Queen," and our acquaintance be-
gan.
After staying quietly about her until convinced that she
was not frightened, I worked my way to the bank and car-
ried my camera into the swamp, setting it up about fifteen feet
from the nest, by the use of a long water tripod, and covering it
with rushes. Then with the bulb of a long hose in one hand I
slowly waded toward the nest, stooping to reach under water and
to cut the intervening grasses from the foreground of my pic-
ture. On nearing the nest I worked very slowly, studying every
movement to make it noiseless and simple. It was not so easy,
for the water was quite cold, the muck deep and sticky, and
constant watching was required to avoid sinking above my wad-
ers in a net-work of muskrat burrows. In my absorption I
forgot how nearly I was approaching the nest, and suddenly
there came between the grasses a flash of ivory, and a red stain
spread on my bared arm.
I almost cried aloud for pure joy. Every second I had looked
for my "Queen" to flatten her feathers and dart into a well-de-
fined little runway, that could be detected leading off from one
side of the nest into the swamp. But this was pure glory. She
was a fighter. She would stay. Talk about excitement! My hair
pricked my head and my heart muffled up in my throat as I stooped
low, and slowly and carefully parted and bent back the grasses
of the nest, while the "Queen" peppered me without mercy. My
hands and arms were seeping blood in twenty-three places when
the nest was opened to my satisfaction, and the "Queen" had not
budged to leave it when I finished the exposure and closed it
again.
Every day for seven days I slipped into the swamp, set up
my camera, closer and closer each time, and opened that nest.
37
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
Each day the "Queen" paid less and less heed to me. On the day
that I traveled those fourteen miles for the seventh time, my
camera was set with no covering at all, exactly where it was
wanted, and the grasses parted widely, without the slightest pro-
test from the bird; she did not move or open her beak, and she
neither looked nor felt afraid or annoyed. Then with a slow plate
and time exposure, the frontispiece of this chapter was made; a
study of a bird that any hunter will tell you is one of our wildest,
shyest creatures.
After changing the plate, I desired a reproduction of the nest
and eggs to complete the series, and as the "Queen" would not
leave I gently picked her up, being extremely careful to lift her
straight above the nest, so as not to break an egg. Holding her on
my breast, with her head slipped inside my blouse, that she might
not be alarmed by seeing me touch her eggs, I made an exposure
on her nest.
Her eggs were twelve in number, four and one-half inches
around the long way and three and three-quarters at the larger
end, by the best measurements I could secure and manage the
"Queen" at the same time. They were of a pale ash-color, sparsely
sprinkled with splotches of reddish brown and faint lavender
markings that looked as if seen through a thin, oily veil. In the
golden bowl with the green arch above they were exquisite.
Then I set the "Queen" back on the edge of her nest and
kissed the top of her shining head in parting, for I knew what was
on those plates. The grasses of her arch were closed just as nearly
as she had them as was possible for me to arrange them. Every-
thing was replaced as I found it and I hurried away, unspeakably
grateful to the bird that would allow such fellowship on the part
of a mortal.
Our unf amiliarity with the King Rail arises, not from the fact
that it is so uncommon, the swamps are filled with them; but
because they are extremely wild and almost never take wing,
38
THE "QUEEN" RAIL
trusting to escape pursuit by flattening the feathers against the
slender bodies and darting between the reeds and rushes, where
dogs can not penetrate or hunters get a shot ; hence the expression,
"slim as a rail."
Possibly I have many rarer studies of rarer birds, but into
many of them there enters an element of pure luck, over which
no control can be exercised, and they were only obtained because I
happened to be on the spot at the right moment, and so acquainted
with the birds that I was able to snap, not for what they were do-
ing, but for what experience had taught me they would do next.
This picture was deliberate. I worked and planned for it. The
bird was superb and I did not spare myself in my efforts to gain
her confidence. I drove those ninety-eight miles, and dragged my
muck-laden feet by the hour through the chilly swamp-water, in
the hope that I should get something nearly as good. I confess I
never expected to do quite so well. This study of the "Queen"
Rail to me represents the high-water mark of what I have done
with birds, in the way of winning their confidence.
EGGS OF KING RAIL
39
'His palace is in the brake
Where the rushes shine and shake ;
His music is the murmur of the stream
And that leaf rustle where lilies dream."
Thompson.
CHAPTER III
The Wood Thrush: Hylocichla Mustelina
IN THE VALLEY OF THE WOOD ROBIN
I am always happy to learn
the location of a pair of birds by
any method, but it is pure delight
to find a nest myself. For a week,
on coming from field work in the
evening, when crossing the levee
that bridges the valley lying be-
tween the Wabash and the outlet
of the Limberlost, I heard a
Wood Thrush or Bell Bird sing-
ing the ecstatic passion song of
mating time.
The embankment was fifteen
feet high and on either side of
it lay patches of swamp which grew giant forest trees and almost
impenetrable thickets of underbrush. There were masses of dog-
wood, hawthorn, wild plum, ironwood and wild rose bushes grow-
ing beneath the big trees ; grape-vines, trumpet creeper and wild
ivy clambered everywhere and the ground was covered with vio-
lets, anemones, spring beauties, cowslips, and many varieties of
mosses and ferns. The place was so damp, dark and cool that the
cowslips were paler than is their wont and the violets grew stems
a foot in length. A little creek wound a devious course through
43
NEST OF WOOD ROBIN, SHOWING
USE OF CAST SNAKE SKIN
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
the valley and there were many pools that lay filled throughout
the summer.
In all the surrounding country, here was the one spot exactly
filling the requirements of an ideal location for Wood Thrushes ;
and when those notes of bell-toned sweetness sounded, evening
after evening, from the same tree, it was evident that somewhere
in the shrubs beneath that divine singer there brooded a bright-
eyed brown-coated mate to whom he was pouring out his heart in
notes of tenderness and cheer.
The next morning, traveling east an hour earlier than usual
and hitching my little black horse to a telephone pole on the levee,
I climbed down the embankment. My way in the thicket could
be made only by stooping beneath the branches and creeping be-
tween bushes, and sometimes using my hatchet to get through at
all. My feet sank deep into the damp muck beneath the thick
layer of dead leaves; there were many small pools to skirt and
once my course changed entirely, because a great flood of a few
months previous had filled the whole valley with one broad raging
torrent that overwashed the levee. Lodged in underbrush were a
drowned cow and some pigs.
When the tree from which my bird had sung was located I
began searching about it, in an ever-widening circle, for the nest.
The first thing I found was a big carp, firmly impaled at the
height of my head on a thorn tree and dry as any herring an-
other result of the flood. My next find was the nest of a pair of
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, which defied the rules of naturalists, be-
cause they didn't build in a wild grape-vine, where grape-vines
were plentiful, and they didn't build of last year's dried grape-
feelers, but of sticks and twigs. Then I found the largest ce-
cropia cocoon of my experience; in a few weeks there would
emerge from it a beautiful moth; but that was so high above
my head it could not be secured that morning. I got it a week
NEST OF WOOD THRUSH
'With untold patience and labor this pair had digged from the ground the root*
of red raspberries and nettles and woven them into a deep cup while wet"
THE WOOD THRUSH
later and in my conservatory early in June hatched from it a moth
with a wing-spread of six and three-quarter inches the widest
of the species of which I ever have heard. A Woodcock was
flushed and an hour spent in searching for her nest, when I re-
membered that my quest was for Bell Birds, and returned to my
original pursuit.
I had hunted until despairing when there was a brown flash
above my head, and a Bell Bird flew over with a sharp warning
chirp ; then I realized I was close to his home and standing still I
used my eyes to such good advantage that presently I was look-
ing squarely into the big, liquid, startled ones of Mother Bell
Bird, as she peered down from an elm thicket a little above me.
Oh, but she was a beauty! Even in her plain colors, which
after all were not so plain, for her back was a rich reddish brown
and her breast snowy white, with long irregular markings of
black. My plan had been to locate her that morning and go my
way for a day's work elsewhere ; but a nest on a dry plate is worth
ten in a bush, for the birds have hosts of enemies, and you never
know with any certainty when you leave a nest one day that you
will find it safe the next. It could be seen at a glance that there
was something most unusual about this nest, for it was bright as
the back of the bird that brooded on it; so I hurried to the car-
riage for my step-ladder to use as a tripod, and a camera, and I de-
cided that I would bring a big one.
I felt that this was a rare find, and so it proved. The nest
was the most surprisingly individual piece of bird architecture
imaginable. Disdaining corn -husk, straw, and other material al-
most invariably chosen by their species, this pair of birds, with
untold patience and labor, had digged from the ground the roots
of red raspberries and nettles and woven them into a deep cup
while wet. There was not a particle of lining and very little other
foundation: nothing at all in the body of the nest except these
47
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
two kinds of roots. They had dried firmly as spun glass and
turned to a bright terra cotta color. The long soaking the flood
had given the valley made it possible for the birds to dig these
roots ; but how they ever broke them off the size they were is still
an unsolved problem. The eggs were a Robin's delicate blue, and
in their bright cradle, with the tender green of the elm thicket all
about, they made a picture that has to be seen to be appreciated
fully.
After making a record of the nest that was to my satisfaction,
I began courting the confidence of the mother bird truly a de-
lightful task ! Every morning and almost every evening I visited
the nest, each time going a little closer, making longer waits,
moving with extreme caution, lest she become frightened, and al-
ways going through the operation of setting up the ladder and a
small camera in front of the nest, just to accustom her to the pro-
cess ; in the hope that I soon could approach near enough to make
a study of her as she brooded.
Sometimes I crept into the thicket in the early morning when
the bushes were heavy with dew, when the breath of night lin-
gered in the valley and when the Bell Bird and the Grosbeak were
singing chants to the rising sun. Sometimes I lingered near the
nest until late evening and the woods grew very still for a time,
lacking the chirp and chatter of a hundred little heads now tucked
in sleep. Then night's sounds would begin to rise in a steady vol-
ume all about me. A 'coon that lived in a hollow tree near me
could be heard getting ready for his nightly raid, tree-toads would
sing intermittently, Whippoorwills set me shivering, and once in
June a great golden Eccles Imperialis brushed my cheek and I
had to let it go for fear pursuit would startle my bird and undo
all my hours of watching with her, yet I would have given much
to have captured that beautiful moth. Once while waiting near
Mother Bell, climbing the ladder occasionally and softly talking
48
THE WOOD THRUSH
to her, I sat on a log to rest. Something touched my foot and I
looked down to see a big black water-snake passing from pool to
pool. It would not strike, save in self-defense ; but I wonder if
I shall ever learn my woodcraft sufficiently to see near me a snake,
no matter how harmless, without a feeling of horror.
From the hour the mother bird felt the quickening to life of
four little shell-incased bodies against her breast, she became a
fanatic and my work was easy. She allowed me to make studies
of her on her nest and even to stroke her wing as she brooded. I
never tried to pick her up. I thought of it and wondered if it
could be done, but I was afraid she might grip with her feet and
carry an egg from the nest, a thing not to be risked when there
was no greater result to be accomplished than merely to prove
that she could be handled.
After the nestlings hatched, they soon grew so accustomed
to me that they cared not a particle whether their mother or I
dropped the worms and berries into their mouths. Many inter-
esting studies were secured of them, but not one nearly equaling
a pair of the young on the day they left the nest. These babies
were bright, alert and sweet, beautifully colored and very easy to
coax into poses. Surely the male made as exquisite a singer as his
father, and the female another brave tender-eyed mother bird.
The taking of these pictures was comparatively easy. Fight-
ing my way through the thicket, carrying heavy cameras,
dragging about a twenty- foot step-ladder for a tripod, avoiding
poisonous vines, snakes and miring in muck, being stung by
insects and scratched by briers was not so easy, but all that is in
any real field-worker's daily life.
Here is a study of this rare and beautiful bird-home and of
the pair of handsome youngsters hatched from it ; but what would
I not give if every one could hear the Bell Bird's exquisite notes,
rolling down the valley, as he courted, comforted and guarded his
49
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
mate. All of my life I shall hear him as he would come hopping
from branch to branch toward his choir-loft, tenderly questioning,
"Uoli? Uoli?" Then in a burst of impassioned rapture, clear as
the finest golden toned flute, "A-e-o-l-e! A-e-o-l-e! Aeolee, lee,
lee!"
YOUNG BELL BIRD HIDING
UNDER LEAF
50
HEAD OF BARN
OWL
CHAPTER IV
The Barn Owl: Stria? Pratincola
IN DEEP FOREST
Did you ever traverse the Inland Route, be-
fore fire annihilated and lumbermen despoiled its
great beauty? There was a charm in every foot
of that dark, marshy old northern forest, in the
little river flowing swiftly over its bed of golden
sand, in the rushy, moss -covered swamps which
bordered it and in the clear, cool air, perfumed
with dank odors and the resin of pines.
Forests of spruce, cedar and birch locked
branches across the river, among them monster trees had died and
lodged at every conceivable angle in falling, the swamp on either
hand was scarlet with foxfire, while curious ferns, mosses and
lilies lined each bank. All about were traces where deer had been
to browse and drink, clumsy bears to eat berries, fish in shallow
pools and play havoc with the housekeeping of muskrat and
beaver. Fancy peopled these spots with dusky-painted faces, and
one could almost hear the water-dripping paddle-blades and the
twang of the bow-string.
We were unusually early that year, and extremely fortunate
in securing a guide who was an ardent sportsman and a lover of
all wild life. Of course I was more interested than he in secur-
ing subjects for my camera, but a casual observer scarcely would
have guessed it. My window on the second floor of our stopping-
53
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
place overlooked the tree-tops and gave ine a view of a wide
stretch of the lake, the river creeping away in the distance, the
gleaming trunks of birch and the spiral tops of cedars lifting
above an impenetrable tangle of interlocking trees and bushes.
Every morning a great Eagle with a golden head, either fish-
ing or preying on water birds, hung above the lake, and how my
guide and I did hunt for the nest of that bird ! We never found
it, but in our search we located, in a great hollow tree back of our
stopping-place, a family that repaid our disappointment. If you
never saw Strix pratincola in her chosen location, busy keeping
.house, then you have missed one of the rarest sights of bird-land.
We named her "Monkey- face," buffoon that she was,) the minute
we caught sight of her, blinkingly peering from her front door
to learn if it were too early to go hunting and sadly shaking her
low-hung head, as if all the woes of bird-land rested heavily on
her shoulders. (Her face was heart-shaped, sharply outlined by
several rows of crisp up-standing brown feathers and covered
with white feathers lightly tinged with the pale ash and lavender
which proved her a last year's bird. Her eyes were small, for an
Owl, and slightly oblong. Her beak and mouth were almost hid-
den by long silky down. Her breast was paler than her face and
touched here and there with tiny black feathers. On the top of
her head began a beautiful light tan-color that took on strength
as it spread over her back, wings and tail. A-top her head and
across her shoulders she was thickly sprinkled with tiny black
feathers tipped with white. Her primaries and secondaries were
lightly barred with brown, but her tertiary and shoulder feathers
were solid tan, and each seemed to end with this peculiar tipping
of black and white. She had four strong toes, and her legs were
bare to the first joint. Later we saw her mate, and he closely re-
sembled her. All the difference we could note was that his face
and breast were snowy white, with the same markings, and his
54
BARN OWL
'Blinkingly peering from her front door to learn if it were too early to
go hunting"
THE BARN OWL
shade of tan seemed a degree lighter. Crouching where we were
we watched and waited, and soon with the soft, uncanny flight of
an Owl she swept over us and away into the deep dark forest.
Investigation proved that the tree contained Owl babies, how
many could not be told, but ornithologists allot to this species
from three to five. They also place this bird's northern limit on
a line with Rhode Island and its habitat in the south and on the
coast ; yet here was a true Stria? pratincola in northern Michigan,
almost a full degree above this Owl's northern limit and certainly
central.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to measure the depth
of that opening and remove a section from the back of the tree
that would allow pictures of the young to be taken, but how was
one ever to secure a camera-shot at the old ones? That was our
problem and we decided to try to solve it before touching the tree
to work on the babies.
The next evening we were at the tree early and again saw the
Mother Owl leave it in search of food. The opening was large.
We had been as noiseless as possible and concealed ourselves so
well that she stood, to accustom her eyes to the light, for a length
of time that would have given a fine exposure, had there been a
camera at her level.
Fortunately the opening faced the east. Trees and branches
could soon be cut away to get direct light, and there was another
tree close, to the trunk of which a camera could be attached di-
rectly opposite the entrance. That was a day of hard work.
Cleats were sawed and nailed to this tree so that we could walk
up and down it like a ladder, and opposite the Owl's door a small
platform was fastened on which we placed the camera and focused
it on the opening. It was useless to talk of snap shots in that light,
so the shutter was set at a half second on a medium plate, the long
hose attached and the camera covered with bark. It so closely re-
57
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
sembled a huge knot on a tree that no bird, even with the keenest
eyes, would have paid the least attention to it.
Then we waited until black night and no birds either came to
or left the tree. We attributed this fact to the noise and disturb-
ance we had made, although work was done as swiftly and quietly
as possible ; but there was much to do, and several trees in our way
could not be felled without the inevitable crash. We decided to
risk leaving the camera as it was and did not go near it again un-
til five o'clock the next evening. About six, Mother Owl stood in
her doorway, blinked her eyes, yawned, hung her head and slowly
and sadly shook it back and forth as if life had no attraction for
her.
Kneeling up in my anxiety, to see better through the under-
brush, I snapped a twig. Mother Owl peered in my direction,
listening intently, every muscle on the alert. Oh, but I was thank-
ful for a well-oiled shutter! It might have been set at a second,
for fully that length ,of time elapsed before she dropped her
head again and shook it more depressedly than before. Then
her body seemed to lift suddenly and she was gone.
"Oh, why didn't I set that shutter for a second?" I groaned.
"She never moved in that length of time."
"To-morrow night we will," said my guide encouragingly.
Then we went to develop the plate. We really had Mother
Owl so that the plate could be intensified into a printable one,
but it greatly lacked my idea of what could be done with this sub-
ject. The next night we tried it again. We set the shutter at a
second and Mother Owl flew in the middle of the exposure, which
taught me that I should have used the bulb, as the impulse to
flight was detected in time to have closed the shutter if it could
have been done. That plate was spoiled.
The next day I had a brilliant idea. Why not close Mother
Owl's door after she left at night, and keep her out until the light
58
THE BARN OWL
was sufficiently strong to take her picture in the morning? She
was feeding her young, and they would be very hungry, but not
particularly hurt by a little longer fast than usual, and no doubt
they would cry for food and keep her near. When she found she
could not reach them she would perch close, and then, if they
would cry, there was every probability that she would fly to them,
even in a fairly strong light.
That day my lenses were polished like diamonds, a fresh me-
dium plate placed in the camera, the shutter set at a bulb exposure
and everything tested to see that it worked smoothly. When
Mother Owl left that night, we discussed giving her until mid-
night to bring several rounds of food to the babies, but dared not
risk it. If the Owlets were not very hungry they would not cry,
and if they did not, it was almost sure their mother would not try
to fly by day.
A board was nailed securely over the opening. Mother Owl
returned and attacked it beak and claw. Soon her mate came,
and how the two of them worked! It was almost too bad. I
fancied I could see Mother Owl shaking her head when she really
had some reason to shake it. My heart failed me. This was not
living up to my pact. It was not treating that mother as I would
be treated. I whispered to the guide to go and take away the
board. It is a good thing that he was made of a little sterner
stuff, for he pointed out that the young were well grown, that
there was nothing happening to injure them permanently, that
they were birds of prey, and that if they didn't want their pic-
tures taken they had no business to carry about such faces to
tempt us.
At times they would leave. Then they would return, some-
times together, sometimes singly, and work to get the board away.
The night was clear and cool and filled with sounds. The guide
repeatedly assured me that there were no snakes, and I had seen
59
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
none. Often we heard the crashing of deer, and at times the
heavier passing of bear, but the guide said they were only little
black fellows and should we meet they would be worse scared
than we. Anyway, the guide had a rifle and both of us good
revolvers.
With the dawn both birds gave up the struggle and flew
away, but from their calls to each other we knew that they were
very close. About six o'clock, when the good old red sun fell
fairly on the opening, I nodded to the guide. Quietly as possible
he slipped to the tree, climbed it and removed the board. Then
he dropped inside the opening a piece of string, weighted with
fresh beefsteak and a stone. As soon as he returned and every-
thing had been still for a time, he lowered the meat and the
young Owls set up a perfect clamor. I was kneeling, watching
and listening with all my soul. The night had been cold, but I
was wet with perspiration. The flight of Mother Owl was noise-
less, but I felt her coming and signaled the guide to jerk away
the meat. The string broke and the meat fell inside. She
alighted with a slow sweep and as she struck, behind her I did my
level best at an imitation of her babies' cry that I had been softly
practising over in my throat all the night.
Instantly she paused, turned to my direction, surely for a
full second, opened her eyes unusually wide to intensify her
vision, then she was gone. Save for a feather she had slightly
disarranged on one wing in working at the board, she seemed
to me absolutely perfect.
"What makes you so white?" asked the guide, as I stared at
him wildly.
"I forgot to squeeze the bulb," I sobbed, breaking down
entirely, after the long strain.
"You squeezed it until your finger-nails were white," he said.
"I was watching you."
60
THE BARN OWL
"I am sure that I didn't," I urged, in the hope that he would
say something in contradiction that would help me to remember.
"But you did," he said positively. "Having to tell me when
to pull, trying to imitate the babies and work the bulb all at once
made so much you can't remember. Can't you tell from the
camera if you did?"
"Why, of course!" I cried joyously. "Get it down at once;
and, dear boy, were you ever careful?"
I vow his eyes were wet as he answered, "Several times lately.
You look the other way. It shall come down like a box of eggs,"
and it did, with the shutter closed.
My hands shook as I pushed the slide into the plate-holder,
and, withdrawing the holder, wrapped it in a sheet of rubber.
Before eating or sleeping I carried that plate to my boarding-
house and developed it, with the guide peering over my shoulder.
It was breathless work.
"Are you sure that stuff is all right?" he asked as the chemi-
cals were measured in the beginning. A little later, "Can you sec
anything yet?" Then, "Would it hurt just to take a little peep
now? She ought to be out enough that you can see if she really is
coming/' When I first held the dripping plate to the ruby lamp
he shouted, "Hello, old monkey faced-mooneye ! I knew we had
you! Stopped to look back, didn't you? And just see what we
got! Ginger! Ain't she a bird? Yessir! That's the way she
looked, just exact!"
THE FACE A PERFECT HEART-SHAPE
61
'Mourn not for the Owl, nor his gloomy plight !
The Owl hath his share of good :
If a prisoner he be in the broad daylight,
He is lord in the dark greenwood !
We know not alway,
Who are kings by day,
But the king of the night is the bold brown Owl."
Barry Cornwall.
THE KILLDEER NEST
CHAPTER V
The Killdeer: Oocyechus Vociferus
ON THE GROUND
"John has a nest for you," said a sweet- faced country woman,
as she poured my second glass of buttermilk.
So many wonderful things come to me in just that simple
way and my heart always gives the same old thump of delightful
anticipation.
"Did he say what kind?" I questioned eagerly.
"He thinks it's one of these killdeer-crying birds. It flew up
right under the horses' noses and he had to pull back hard on them
to save the nest. It's in the east corn-field, where he is working.
He plowed around it and drove a stake to mark the place for you.
There's four eggs and she's gone back to them."
I thought intently for a moment. "One of these killdeer-
crying birds." I could not remember having seen a study of the
65
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
nest of a Killdeer published, not even in a recent work devoted
exclusively to bird architecture, or a reproduction of the young.
I promptly hugged Mrs. Stukey, because I love these great-
souled country people who save me nests, lay down their fences,
offer food and a cooling drink, and try in every way to help me
in work they do not always understand, merely because they like
to be kind and helpful. Then I hurried to the east corn-field.
The gate from the road into the field was nailed shut, so I
hitched my horse, whose original name was Ben, but, regardless
of sex, since has been changed to Patience, for obvious reasons ;
climbed the gate and started for what looked like a stake far
across the field. Part of my course lay between the weather-
beaten dry weeds and the stubble of last year's crop, and the rest
over freshly-plowed ground.
The open sunny field was almost a solid green in perspective,
with the tender upspringing wild lettuce, silvery catnip, golden
green dandelion and pale whitish burdock. The light green felt
of the mullein and the rank dark green of the thistle spread
everywhere in great plants which had slept securely beneath the
snows and renewed their vigorous growth before the last drifts of
March had passed. It occurred to me to wonder if we had learned
everything about thistles and mullein it was intended we should.
These plants must have been made so vigorous and so hardy for
some special reason and I scarcely think we have found it.
On nearing the plowed ground a great clamor broke on my
ears and I stopped, enthralled by one of the most beautiful sights
conceivable. Down the field came John, the lines hanging over a
plow-handle, guiding his powerful gray Percherons by his voice,
a black line of swamp loam rolling up as he passed, and myriads
of big birds swarming over him or fighting for place on the
freshly-turned earth at his heels.
66
THE KILLDEER
"T'check! T'check! T'chee!" cried a whole flock of Black-
birds, the sun flashing on their iridescent satin wings and sleek
heads, as they circled about or stepped gracefully along the fur-
row, searching for grubs. Somber-coated Crows cawed in full-
fed satisfaction, and plump-breasted Robins cried "Kip, kip! Cut
cut, cut!" in exultation over each juicy morsel. There was the
azure flash of the Bluebird's wing as he occasionally stopped
searching for nest locations along the old snake fence and in
the high stumps and darted down for some small insect. There
was the plaintive cry of the Killdeers, and the silver gleam of their
snowy underwings and breasts as they hung over a pool, fed by
wells drilled to produce oil and contrarily producing water; and
Meadow Larks left their nests in the adjoining wheat-field, and
from high stumps and fence riders made excursions to secure
their share of the feast, returning again to proclaim the season
with notes of piercing melody.
Twenty fields had been passed in the process of spring plow-
ing that day, and a few scared birds hanging about the fences
or scattering before the crack of a shot-gun were all that could be
seen. There was only one John above whom they swarmed in
absolute confidence ; there was only one John who paused a second
now and then to kick open big pieces of muck, or stooped to break
it with his hands and fling the grubs to the birds. And was he not
wise ? Was not their trust in him, the company they were to him,
and the music they made for him a soul-feast for any man? Was
not every grub and worm eaten then one less to prey on his young
crop later?
Long before I reached the stake set to guide me a clear,
musical "Te-dit! Te-dit!" rang from a sentinel above the swamp,
and straight toward me on slender stilt-legs a female Killdeer
came running. Then she uttered a sharp cry and turned to the
67
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
south, directly away from the stake, limping, hopping and drag-
ging a wing to attract my attention. That trick had been familiar
to me ever since I could remember, so I went on toward the stake,
and, by the small spot which John had plowed around, easily
located the nest, or rather the eggs.
There was very little nest to describe. On bare earth, sur-
rounded by a few bits of bark, corn-stalk and chips, all picked
up in the immediate vicinity, lay four tan-colored eggs thickly
sprinkled with dark brown and black, their sharp points nosing
together so that a stiff wind could not roll them away, a wise
provision of nature in case these improvident mothers neglect to
surround them by any barriers at all, as so often occurs. When a
few days of sunshine had dried the black earth about the nest
to the exact color of the eggs it would be impossible to distinguish
it from the surroundings. I hunted a stone and drove deeper the
stake which John had set up for guidance. Then arranging my
camera, practically on the ground, I made a study of the eggs at
once. I wanted it so much I was afraid of delay. There are
times when in summing up the dangers which menace the birds
from snakes, squirrels, Hawks, Crows, Jays, small animals, hunt-
ers, untaught children and the trampling and tearing of stock
which are browsing, it is really a marvel that a season produces the
number of young that it does.
The next thing was to make friends with Mother Killdeer.
In the light of early experiences, with one brooding Killdeer in
particular, I had dreamed dreams and seen visions on my way
to that nest. I dreamed of becoming so well acquainted with
that mother bird that she would take a cricket from my fingers
and allow me to stroke her wing as she brooded, for I once had
done that with a bird of her kind. I saw a vision of pictures of
the brooding bird, and possibly one as she left her nest with her
68
THE KILLDEER
young about her, for I once was so familiar with a Killdeer she
would have allowed me even greater familiarity than would be
required for that.
There are birds which make me feel that the title of this book
should be, "What I Have Not Done With Birds." This Killdeer
was one of my rank failures. She was a last year's bird and this
was her first brooding. She was nervous and foolish. She would
suffer the horses to come quite close, but the first glimpse of John
would send her a gray streak across the field. I tried to accustom
her to a tripod, and she bore that, but when a small camera covered
with twigs was placed on it she left her eggs and would not re-
turn.
She was accustomed to the open field and deserted her nest
at every device I could think of, and circled above, crying so
plaintively my heart failed me and I removed the camera. She
would not submit to a camera covered with a green cloth, grasses
or a false stump. My experience with her did much to confirm
me in my belief that it is almost impossible to work with a young
bird in her first brooding. After a season or two and several
nestings she matures and grows in confidence. She learns to dis-
tinguish friends from enemies and unfamiliar objects from dan-
gers, so that work about her can be carried on with some degree
of assurance, especially after her eggs have quickened.
While lying awake nights trying to concoct some scheme
whereby to outwit Mother Killdeer, I was compelled to miss one
day's visit to her and on going the next found only a little bare
spot of earth surrounded by a few clods and chips. While I was
closely investigating to see if any signs of tragedy could be
found my ear caught the sweetest, faintest little silver thread of
a cry conceivable from the throat of a bird baby. I glanced
toward the pool and across its bare bank moved the brown and
69
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
white body of the mother, her slender legs invisible in the rapidity
of motion, and behind her, almost keeping pace, a tiny ball of
down also invisibly propelled.
Pursuit began. The old bird at once took wing and with eyes
fast on the baby I darted here and there and ran and ran.
"Want help?" inquired my daughter from the carriage on the
road.
' 'Deed I do !" I panted, running on.
Molly-cotton joined the chase. After repeated failures, we
caught him. We were breathless and disheveled and he was not
even "winded." He certainly was the most exquisite bird baby
I ever handled. His entire covering was of the softest, silkiest
down. On his head was a little tan cap, sprinkled with pepper-
and-salt and having a black band and chin strap, and a white vizor.
Around his throat was a broad snowy collar and a narrow black
tie. His coat and the upper half of his sleeves was of the same
tan with the pepper-and-salt effect, as his cap. The lower sleeve
was white, separated from the upper by a black band. His vest
began snowy white at the collar and shaded by delicate gradations
to an exquisite salmon pink. He had a neat little long bill, long
bare legs and the big prominent eyes of the nocturnal feeder,
for Killdeer both feed and fly at night when they choose.
We expended what breath we had left in going into raptures
over his suit, and the sweetness of his baby voice. Then Molly-
cotton held the bird while a camera was set up. She placed him
on the bank and I focused sharply on his head and her hands.
Then I put in a quick plate, set the shutter at the one hundredth
of a second and told her to let him go. He went. He had cov-
ered a rod before I had sufficiently recovered from my surprise
to see that no exposure had been made and then only to realize
70
THE KILLDEER
that a plate had been saved, for there would have been nothing on
it.
No record was kept of the trials we gave him or the different
methods we used. We worked two and one-half hours over him.
We were bathed in perspiration, crimson in our faces, breathless,
our hats lost, our clothing torn on the bushes, our hands and faces
scratched, our feet bruised and twisted with the stones, and just
before us that little dandy, in his elaborate suit, moved like a tiny
airship, fresh as at the start. He traveled as easily as a puff of
thistledown rolling before the wind.
"We can keep this up for ever " I began.
"No, we can't," interrupted Molly-cotton. "The sun is so hot
I am getting so dizzy I can't see. Ill step on him next."
She was right. We were so tired we were in danger of stum-
bling and hurting the bird, while he was a born runner and could
keep on all day.
He had crossed one big stone repeatedly. I usually twisted
my foot in going over it. I left Molly-cotton to watch the baby
and focused sharply on that stone, heaping sand against it with
my hands, so that he could run up on it easily. There were
bushes back of it, and stones and rotten wood were piled among
them until a thick wall was formed. Then a focusing cloth was
staked before the camera, so that he would not run toward that,
the shutter moved up to the one five-hundredth of a second and
Molly-cotton asked to turn him slowly and carefully that way
once again. The first time he crossed was a failure.
I manqeuvered him back, and Molly-cotton turned him toward
the stone again. Twice he darted past. That was stopped by
blocking the path he took with pieces of wood. The fourth time
Molly-cotton headed him my way, I moved closer to the stone than
71
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
before, and as the tiny legs flashed up it, I loomed so large on the
other side that for just one smallest fraction of a second he hesi-
tated. Then he went free, for in that instant I had secured his
likeness.
This spring a little friend found a nest from which all the
brood had gone save one, and it was so recently from the shell its
down was scarcely dry ; so I obtained a likeness of it before it was
strong enough to stand.
BABY KILLDEER JUST FROM SHELL
Notice how the three distinct colors on him fit into the surrounding landscape
CHAPTER VI
Black Vulture: Catharista Uruba
IN THE LIMBERLOST
I am indebted to Otty Bolds,
who owns that portion of the
Limberlost selected as their hap-
py home by the Black Vultures,
for word of their location. Mr.
Bolds sent a messenger to tell me
that in a great hollow elm tree, of
last year's felling, was a nest con-
taining a bird baby as big as a
Gosling, but white as snow, and
beside it a pale blue egg heavily
speckled with brown and shaped
like a Hen's, but large as a Tur-
key's.
This was bewildering. I knew where for three years Turkey
Buzzards had nested in a hollow tree on the Wabash River, on
Dan Hawbaker's farm, but their eggs were cream-colored. The
blue eggs sent me to sea. We had no native bird that laid the egg
described. If the description were at all correct, it could only
mean some stray, and strays in ornithology are extremely inter-
esting.
On hearing of a bird that is new to me I think of Pliny's clas-
75
THE BLACK VULTURE S FRONT
DOOR
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
sification of species; "those that have hooked tallons, as Hawkes;
or long round claws, as Hennes; or else they be broad, flat and
whole- footed, as Geese," and wonder in which class the bird can
be placed. I was all eagerness to see these birds, but hesitated,
not because of doubts that I would go and make studies of them
eventually, but because it required thinking as to how it could be
accomplished. The Limberlost was my one spot of forbidden
territory. A rash promise had been made never to go there, but
this sounded too alluring. I immediately sought the Deacon.
"I want to take back my promise not to go to the Limberlost,'*
I said.
"Can't release you, girlie," answered the Deacon.
We do not live long with people in this world until we discover
their weak spot. One of the Deacon's is relics, specimens and
curios, first cousin to natural history.
"What a pity!" I murmured meditatively. "This is the only
opportunity I ever have had to take a white baby as large as a
Gosling, with a big speckled blue egg beside it, and of course I'll
never have another."
"What's that!" cried the Deacon.
"How do you expect me to tell what it is, if I must not go and
see?" I countered.
"When did you want to go?" questioned the Deacon.
I thought of the old adage about striking the hot iron and
answered promptly, "This minute!"
"But I can't go now," said the Deacon.
"Then the blue egg will hatch and I won't get a picture of it
beside the white baby. I am reliably informed that it has large
dark speckles on it, the egg, not the baby. Mr. Bolds sent a
man to tell me."
76
LITTLE CHICKEN
"From Little Chicken, just before he stood to walk, I secured
the study here given, which covers every possible natural
history point, even the tongue "
THE BLACK VULTURE
"Umph!" muttered the Deacon and started for the stable.
My soul sang for joy as I went to pack my paraphernalia.
This was the beginning of a series of swamp-studies that is,
in all probability, without an equal in natural history or photogra-
phy. The Limberlost at that time was no joke. It had not been
shorn, branded and tamed. There were most excellent reasons
why I should not go there. Most of it was impenetrable. There
had been one or two roads cut by expert lumbermen, who had lo-
cated valuable trees, and a very little timber had been taken out.
No one knew when tree-hunters were there, and always it had been
a rendezvous for outlaws and cutthroats in hiding. The swamp
was named for a man who became lost in its fastnesses and wan-
dered about, failing to find the way out until he died of starvation.
In its physical aspect it was steaming, fetid, treacherous swamp
and quagmire, filled with every danger common to the central
states.
A few oil-wells had been drilled near the head of the swamp,
and it was over a road, cut to one of these, that we were to travel
as far as a certain well. After that the way led north a quarter
of a mile, and then straight east, until we came to the prostrate
trunk of a giant elm, with a hollow five feet in diameter. That
sounds easy but it was not. In the beginning I had to pay a lessee
a dollar for the privilege of driving over the road the oil and
lumbermen used. A rod inside the swamp the carriage wheels on
one side mired to the hub. Another rod, I took the camera in-
tended for use in my lap and shielded it with my arms. Every
few yards I expected the light carriage we drove to be twisted
to pieces. We left it at the oil-well and started on foot with an
ax, hatchet and two revolvers, to find the tree.
The Deacon wore high, heavy leather boots and I wore waist -
79
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
high rubber waders. We had to cut our way before us, as the
felled tree had been hollow and not worth taking out, so no road
had been made to it. For two hours we searched for that log.
The time was late June ; there was not a breath of air stirring in-
side the swamp; there were steaming, fetid pools everywhere,
swarms of flies, gnats, mosquitoes, and poisonous insects, masses
of poisonous vines and at every step not only the ground, but the
bushes about, had to be watched for rattlesnakes. The muck
was so spongy we sank ankle-deep, bushes scratched and tore at
us and logs we thought were solid let us down knee-deep.
An observer readily could have seen that the Deacon got his
cognomen by contraries. His face was crimson, his wet clothing
plastered to his shoulders and he lit one cigar after another to
drive the cloud of insects from his head and neck. The portion
of my body covered by rubber was in a Turkish bath and the rest
was bitten until I was lumpy as a beaded pincushion, but every
breath was a prayer that the Deacon would not lose his patience
and give up. And he did not! Of course we had to find it after
a while, when we searched like that.
I was glad that it was the Deacon who first sighted the loca-
tion. He would be more interested in it if he did. When we
reached the tree, a big black bird was brooding. We held a coun-
cil. I must have the baby while it was a tiny baby and the blue
egg if possible. A camera was set up and focused on the mouth
of the log. The Deacon plunged into the swamp and started
back along the trunk, tapping it gently to drive out the bird.
She was to be snapped as she emerged.
The light was bad, but the experiment was worth a plate. We
did not dare risk frightening the bird by doing any clearing while
she was brooding. These matters must be handled delicately and
80
THREE-FOURTHS GROWN
"No actor could surpass him in poses'
THE BLACK VULTURE
with common sense. To cut down a tree with her watching us,
in all probability meant to frighten her into creeping to the far-
thermost recesses of the log, where she might refuse to come out
for hours. Then for the Deacon to go in and get the baby while
she was there would mean to give her a fright from which she
never would recover, and might result in her deserting the nest.
She must be coaxed out, before any clearing to throw light on
the opening was done. My eyes were fast on the log, my shak-
ing fingers grasping the bulb. I had figured on her walking to
the opening and flying from there. She came out on wing and
with a rush. My shutter was set too slow for flight. There was
only an indistinct swipe on my plate.
Then the Deacon entered the log, crept its length and car-
ried out the baby and the egg in his hat, which we previously had
lined with leaves. The odor was so unbearable we could work
about the log only by dipping our handkerchiefs in disinfectant
and binding them over our mouths and nostrils. The Deacon
said there was not a trace of nest. The baby and the egg were in
a little hollow in the decayed, yellow elm fiber.
The baby was cunning as possible, white and soft as a powder-
puff. He had a little, quaint, leathery, black old face and the
unhatched egg was a beauty, but far too light weight to contain
a young bird ready to pip the shell. We at once named the baby
Little Chicken after Pharaoh's Chickens of old. The Deacon
placed him in the mouth of the log, exactly as he found him, while
I cut away vines and fought out a footing. Then we cut down
several trees and bushes to get a good light on the mouth of the
log. A study was made of the location, two of Little Chicken
and the egg, and one of the baby alone.
Then the Deacon crept back into the log and replaced the
83
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
T3aby and the egg, although we knew it would not hatch. The
next morning the mother broke it and ate the contents.
The birds were Black Vultures, the pioneers of their kind in
this part of the country. The female was a brilliant young bird,
with fresh face and feet. The male was much larger than his
mate, duller of coloring, with a wrinkled old face, and his feet
and legs were incrusted with a lime-colored growth at which he
bit and worked.
When we left the swamp we were so overheated that we
chilled until we were compelled to wrap ourselves in the side cur-
tains and lap-robe of the carriage, lower the top so that we sat
in the sun of a hot June day, and drive at a slow walk. The
Deacon turned on me with the first word he had uttered, save to
ask what I next wanted done, and inquired, "Do you think that
paid?"
Never in all my life was I so uncomfortable, so unspeakably
miserable. I was chilling until I shook under my leather cover-
ing and so pretended not to hear him. The next morning I pro-
duced my bunch of proofs.
"Do you think it paid?" I asked.
The Deacon went through the proofs several times, finally
selecting the best one of Little Chicken and the egg.
"That more than pays," he said succinctly. "When are we
going again?"
"I want to go every day and feed Little Chicken some liver
or sweetbreads and get acquainted with his parents. I want to
make a study of him every three days and all I can of the old
ones," I answered.
"All right!" said the Deacon.
"But you can't spare all that time," I cried in astonishment.
84
BLACK VULTURE
"When he was almost full-grown and only a trace of down showed about his
ears,, he would follow me across the swamp"
THE BLACK VULTURE
"I must," said the Deacon. "No one less careful of you than
I am ever shall take you to the Limberlost."
So for weeks, until October, in fact, we watched over that
baby and courted his parents. We found a dead calf in our
own woods, and, putting it into a sack, we carried it into the
swamp and placed it conveniently for the old ones and for me to
take pictures of them. When Little Chicken was a few weeks
old, without our knowledge lumbermen removed the log for a
watering-trough, but sent me word where they had placed the
baby. His parents were very indifferent about feeding him and
I had to see to him daily. Once when I was called from town for
several days he was brought to the cabin, in the back of the car-
riage, and a woman hired to feed him until my return, when he
was taken back to the swamp. There is no way of adequately de-
scribing what we went through for that series of pictures.
The birds were friendly, the male especially, and responded
beautifully to our advances. From Little Chicken just before
he stood to walk, I secured the study here given, which covers
every possible natural history point, even the tongue. The baby
was a perfect dear to pose and in two weeks answered to his name
and took food from my hand as readily as from his mother. When
he was almost full-grown and only a trace of down showed about
his ears, he would follow me across the swamp with his queer rock-
ing walk, humping his shoulders and ducking his head; looking
so uncanny in that dark weird place I had to set my muscles hard
to keep from giving a scream and running as if for life.
The last time I saw him was late in October. He followed
me to the edge of the Limberlost, and I turned and made this
picture, used as a tailpiece, when his wings were raised for a
sweep that carried him up to his parents. That season the Lim-
87
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
berlost yielded me the only complete series of Vulture studies ever
made, dozens of studies of other birds, material for a novel, more
natural history stuff than could be put into several big volumes,
many rare specimens and much priceless experience in swamp
work, for all of which I acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr.
Bolds, to Little Chicken and to the Deacon.
HIS WINGS WERE RAISED FOR THE
FLIGHT THAT FIRST CARRIED
HIM UP TO HIS PARENTS
88
CHAPTER VII
The Loggerhead Shrike: Lanius Ludovicianus
IN FIELD TREES
The Shrikes choose open fields
and sunlit distances. They settled
east of the cabin, on the Stanley
farm, in a scrub apple-tree be-
neath which four fields cornered.
v Mr. Bob Burdette Black told me
of them, and as he appears so fre-
quently in my bird-chronicles, a
few words concerning him are ap-
propriate.
Bob has played with birds,
raised them by hand and befriend-
ed them ever since childhood. He
has studied them in a half-dozen different states and he knows
them well. He is the manager of a large oil-lease lying on the
Wabash River where it has a strip of thicket on one side and a
heavy forest on the other. He holds this position because of his
love of the woods, and from Pennsylvania to Colorado he is
familiar with all outdoors. When the machinery of his leases
runs smoothly, Bob goes out and searches the fields, river-banks
arid woods for bird-nests. He locates them in large numbers and
then escorts me to them, often carrying heavy cameras and lad-
ders. More than this, when I am crowded with field work he
91
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
trains a pair of birds by setting up three sticks for a tripod, using
a soap box for a camera and an old coat for a focusing cloth,
until by the time I reach them they are neither man-shy nor
camera-shy. His leases are covered with Martin and Bluebird
boxes, shy forest birds build close to his power-houses and in the
very trees under which his hammock swings.
Bob passed the Shrike corner on the way between two wells,
and he told me of the enterprise in the apple-tree. There was no
other tree near it. Four lines of old snake fences, bearing their
usual load of treasures, crept to a meeting under its friendly
boughs. Above it was a clear broad sweep of summer sky, across
which birds from the woods constantly trailed in a broken line of
flight to bathe and hunt food at the river. Beneath it Stanley's
sleek herd, with the beringed ears denoting beasts of high degree,
chewed their cuds, switched flies and welcomed the ministrations
of a large flock of Cow-birds.
Subjects were located in each of those four fields. In one,
under an arch of growing wheat, I had made a study of a Lark's
beautiful nest and was waiting for the young to hatch. Through
the adjoining clover-field Bob and I hunted ceaselessly for the
nest of a Bobolink, which strutted the rod-line, playing the clown
and pouring out a lilting melody that at times seemed especially
improvised to mock our unavailing efforts to find his home.
At any rate the search was a delight, for the perfume of
clover was heavy on the air, the drowsy hum of big bumblebees,
staggering on wing with loads of gold, was a lulling sound ; sing-
ing grasshoppers, beautifully colored and striped, feasted here;
satin-winged butterflies wavered over the field and the Bobolink
swung on the rod-line and strained his throat to produce notes
sufficiently sweet to tell it all to the brooding mate we were seek-
ing.
Once this search for the Bobolink became a terror. Early in
92
THE LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE
the morning 1 in passing the field he flew across the road in front
of me with a worm in his beak and alighted in the clover. Im-
mediately I was over the fence, my eyes fast on the spot where
the bird had disappeared. On reaching it I began circling around,
searching for the nest. The clover had been blown down when at
a height of eighteen inches and the tops had lifted and made a
second equal growth. I was catching handfuls of clover and
lifting it straight from the roots to see if the nest were hidden
beneath the parts which lay on the ground.
In doing this I uncovered, not the Bobolink's nest, but the
largest snake I ever have seen in freedom. Its body was thick
as my upper arm and it coiled round and round in a great heap,
its head on top. When the light and air struck it, the skin seemed
to gather in rolls on its body, its eyes blinkingly opened and closed
in a dazed fashion and an undulating movement ran the length
of it.
My horror of snakes is complete. One instant I stood as if
paralyzed, gazing at it ; the next I started for the cabin and never
stopped until it was reached. Later in the day I recovered my
senses and led a guide to the spot, only to find a hollow of earth
fifteen inches across, worn smooth and hard and scattered with
patches of snake-skin. The snake had been in the act of shed-
ding and by my foolishness I had missed an opportunity to take
one of the greatest natural-history pictures imaginable.
One of the fields was an open meadow of short grass. A pair
of cotton-tails had a burrow there which contained two normal
babies and one dwarf, a mite no larger than my thumb and two
weeks old. Here, attended by the Cow-birds, the cattle grazed,
and occasionally, when temptation became irresistible, pushed
down the fence and invaded the clover. Then how the Bobolink
danced and scolded ! And how I danced and scolded when the heat
;ruffled the temper of the leader of the herd, and, lowering his
93
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
NEST AND EGGS OF SHRIKE
great head, with a rumble like distant thunder, he came my way
threateningly, and I had to gather my paraphernalia and beat a
hasty retreat. In the fourth field under a protecting leaf of a
thistle growing near the oats, a Chewink fed four babies, not a
stone's throw from the rabbits' burrow in the adjoining field.
At the central corner of these four fields grew the little scrub
apple-tree in which the Shrikes located, probably because of the
myriads of grasshoppers and insects within one sweep of flight,
94
THE LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE
and it was only a short distance to wire fences decorated with
wool, and the Stanley chicken yard, which furnished the lining
and trimming of the nest. It was a larger structure than a
Robin's.
Mother Shrike laid five grayish eggs, sprinkled with brown-
ish ash. Father Shrike fed her as she brooded. When she went
to bathe he stood sentinel and no sneaking Cow-bird imposed on
his family and no thieving Crow ate of his eggs or young. Occa-
sionally, to prove that he was more closely related to the Vireo
and the Robin than to the Hawk family, Father Shrike perched on
a fence-post and repeated a few notes that made the Crow laugh,
drove away the Cow-birds and sent the Bobolink dancing down
the rod-line with every feather awry.
The old Shrikes were very friendly and soon paid little heed
to my work about them. But there is no place for pictures of
them unless reproductions of their family run short. The young
were marked exactly like their parents and very like them in
color effect, and they were darlings. The grown birds differed
in having the gray parts of the feathering a solid color, a more
prominent hook on the beak, and their length of wing and tail
destroyed in them the plump appearance of the babies. At a
little distance no difference could be noticed except in shape.
The youngsters filled their cradle to overflowing. They were
impartial and allowed Bob and me to feed them. The parts of
their food they could not assimilate they regurgitated in little ob-
long pellets. There was no such thing as calculating the number
of insects consumed in that nest in a day. The old birds kept up
a steady flight and Bob and I wore ourselves out, yet the five
squalling beaks were always wide open. If any baby failed to
receive a morsel, it caught one of its nest -mates by the bill or
wing and tried to swallow it. To watch the performance made
one doubt if a baby with two sound eyes could leave the nest.
97
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
Father Shrike might have warbled all day, but he could not have
effaced the Hawk-like tendencies of his brood.
Yet it is a fact that the wildest and worst dispositioned Hawk
can be tamed into the most docile and obedient of pets. Young
Hawks taken from a nest and raised by hand are so easily domesti-
cated that after a few weeks of feeding they may be released and
will live on the roof of a house and among the trees, coming at
call.
While in the nest the baby Shrikes squalled and fought ; a few
days after leaving it, when foraging for themselves, they perched
about the trees and fences of those fields, in attitudes of such re-
markable poise and dignity as would be hard to equal in young
birds.
Then what beauties they were ! They had plump cunningly-
shaped bodies and in the nest were the only birds I ever have seen
that could lay claim to the term "dimpled." Their feathering
was extremely fine and close. Next their bodies these tiny silken
feathers were white, the tips shaded to palest gray very faintly
touched with black. The whole effect was of a delicate whitish
gray, almost invisibly mizzled with black. They had jet-black
dashes running from the corners of the mouth across the eye to
back of the ear, and the tail- and wing-feathers were white,
touched with black exactly like their elders. They were amaz-
ingly friendly little creatures and did such cunning things. They
delighted to be fed and petted and responded to friendly advances
in surprising fashion.
Any one would have liked them. I was afield for character
studies. Here were birds of complex character and most peculiar
disposition. My task was to reproduce their varying moods.
Their pictures shall prove if I succeeded in portraying in them
the traits described. I pictured them over and over,, in groups,
singly and in pairs. Head-pieces, tail-pieces and initials were
98
THE LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE
made with them. All it required was kindness, patience and
grasshoppers, to coax them into any position; but they always
manifested their character. You could catch them looking very
dignified, but never Dove-like.
On the whole I doubt if bird-land contains more interesting
and beautiful babies. Work about them was one long picnic, with
the exception of the snake and the leader of the Stanley Jierd. It
would be delightful if all birds had the Shrikes' trusting disposi-
tion and chose their beautiful and accessible locations. They fur-
nished subjects for some of my most characteristic work with
birds, and I can still smell the clover and hear the Bobolink.
'All it required was patience and grasshoppers to coax them into any position'
99
"I like
The shrike,
Because, with a thorn for a guillotine,
He does his work so well and clean,
A critic keen
A practical bird,
Whose common sense
Must be immense,
For, tell me, who has ever heard
Of such a thing
As a loggerhead shrike that tried to sing?"
Thompson.
100
CHAPTER VIII
The Purple Martin: Progne Subis
IN THE AIR
For these I need make no per-
sonal search, nor tax the kindness of
friends. The Purple Martins come
to us. Every year at migration time
they sweep up from the South and
claim their preempted location on the
windmill, and in a small bird-house
east of the cabin, on the stump of a
dead wild cherry. Sometimes our
Wrens fail us. Sometimes our Song
Sparrow crosses the line and builds
in our neighbor's pear-tree. The Ori-
oles may locate with us and they
may not. The English Sparrows
drive away the Flycatchers, which
nest so high in the big elm we can
not protect them. But three stand-
bys never fail us; always we have
Martins, Bluebirds and Robins.
Martin headquarters are on the
windmill, in a big box arranged for
eight families and placed on the
north side of the mill just under the
shelter of a small platform, above
which swings the wheel. This makes
A MARTIN DOUBLE HOUSE a splendid location for the birds,
103
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
sheltered from sun and wind. But it is almost impossible to se-
cure pictures of it, as the camera must always face the strong
light of the east, south and west, and the mill is so high that I
have as yet devised no way to get on a level with the Martin box.
So every day through summer the most wonderful groupings of
Martins, circling the mill or perching over the wheel and fan,
tempt me but can not be obtained.
At the house on the wild cherry stump I have better luck. It
is not over twenty feet high, and a wire brace running from one
telephone pole to another passes very close. From the top of a
twenty-foot step-ladder a camera is level with the nest and wire,
the birds soon become accustomed to it, and it can be worked with
a long hose from the cabin window opposite.
Last year, 1905, the weather moderated a little for a few days
in the latter part of February and I was amazed to see one Purple
Martin fluttering about the windmill and perching to rest on the
grape arbor, looking weather-beaten and as if it were exhausted
from long flight. It was scarcely to be believed, but that night the
gardener said he had seen it from the stable. A few days later
a tenant on the farm told me there was a Martin about his boxes
on the same day. This year sharp watch shall be kept and if he
comes again, I shall be convinced that the Martins send out scouts
to see if their quarters are all right. My belief in this is so strong
that last fall I refused to allow their box to be taken down and
stored in the stable until spring, for fear a prospector should be
sent to see if it were safe, find it missing, and so become discour-
aged and take up quarters elsewhere.
The flock arrives from the first to the fifteenth of May. The
gardener empties their boxes on the first sign of their coming.
They swarm all over and about the windmill and immediately the
fight with the dispossessed Sparrows begins. Last year we
boarded up the openings so that the Sparrows could not have the
104
THE PURPLE MARTIN
boxes lousy and infested when the Martins arrived. That seemed
to delight the Martins, but it in no way discouraged the Sparrows.
From a back porch where a rack was placed containing print-
ing frames with which I was doing the printing of these illus-
trations I watched a war which I was powerless to prevent. All
day long it went on. The Martins took possession of the boxes,
slept there the first night and began building in a few days.
When the gardener cleaned the boxes this fall he said there was
scarcely anything that could be called nests, a few dried grass-
blades, pieces of strings, rags and dry leaves. There was little
time for elaborate nest-building in the strenuous work of holding
the fort.
Every time a Martin left a door, in rushed a Sparrow and car-
ried away a piece of straw or string, or threw out an egg. Every
time the whole Martin flock left to bathe or go food-hunting, they
found a Sparrow head protruding from each door on their return.
Then there was a battle royal. Seven times in one day the Mar-
tins sent a messenger to a flock occupying a larger house than
mine on the premises of Colonel James Hardison four blocks
away, air line. Each time the bird returned with reinforcements
to the number of twenty and the Sparrows were ousted.
But if I could do nothing for our pets of the windmill, a
mite of help could be given to those of the bird-house on the wild
cherry stump. Day after day I mounted the step-ladder and
with a bent wire tore out Sparrow nests, until finally the Sparrows
gave up the house and located in a large ash tree on a line with
the Martin house, facing it, and only three rods away. The Mar-
tins fought valiantly for their nests, but, with one exception, they
never went to the Sparrows' location and attacked them. On the
other hand, the brooding Sparrow would leave her nest, if her
mate was not about to harass the Martins, and enter their box to
be on hand for a fight with them every time they returned home.
105
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
The male Martin never brooded, but his other attentions to his
mate seemed delicate, constant and tender. When the Sparrows
became too aggressive, he spent every minute, when not bathing
or food-hunting, doing sentinel duty on the telephone wire only a
few feet from his front door. When one considers the tireless
flight of the Martin, which seems for ever winging the air, one
can not help feeling that those long stretches of watching, cling-
ing to the hot wire, were punishment indeed.
But like the brave soldier he was, the Martin stood sentinel
on the wire and I secured many good pictures of him there : pic-
tures in which the force and strength of his character show plainly.
Once I caught him when he was watching with forceful determi-
nation to guard that nest or die ; and once when he was gathered
for a dart and even as the shutter sprang he shot like a catapult
at his enemy.
One day he proved himself a soldier indeed, by an act of
strategy that human warriors have employed since time began.
While he was away from home, from some pressure the female
felt she must leave the nest. She came to the door and looked all
about for him and called several times, but he probably was at the
river, as he returned in high flight from that direction. Failing
to call him to guard, after some hesitation the female left, also
flying toward the river.
She was not out of sight before the Sparrow in the ash left
her nest and entered the Martin house, turned around and filled
the door with her head and shoulders. It was only a few seconds
until Father Martin struck the wire, and from my hammock on
the veranda a few feet away, screened by the wistaria, I could
see the rage that shook him. He evidently thought it unwise to
attack the Sparrow in his nest, so he darted to the ash, perched on
the edge of the Sparrow's nest, ripped a big beakful of straw
from it, and with a quick jerk of his head scattered it on the wind.
106
THE PURPLE MARTIN
The second beakful brought the Sparrow home in a hurry. The
Martin flew back to his place on the wire and executed a little tri-
umphal demonstration. He plumed his feathers with an exag-
gerated swagger, that looked exactly as if he were saying:
"Oh, didn't I fix you that time !" He sprang straight up from
the wire and rapidly settled again ; he chattered angrily, though I
never before heard him make a sound when on sentinel duty. He
taught that Sparrow a lesson, for that was the last time for weeks
that she entered the Martin box. She would dash at the Martins
and threaten them outside, but she seemed to have learned that
there was such a thing as the besieged retreating and attacking
the stronghold of the enemy.
Last year six pairs of Martins raised two broods on our wind-
mill. They averaged four, creamy-white, oblong oval eggs to the
nest. After the first brood had become full grown and self-sup-
porting, still they all forced into that box for night. When the
second brood was hatched, and joined the family on wing, they
could not all crowd into the box, so the elders slept on top of it
in a narrow space beneath the platform of the mill. By October,
then, our twelve Martins of spring, allowing four eggs to the
nest and two broods to the season, had multiplied to more than
forty. The Sparrows must have destroyed a good many, for I
never was able to count more than thirty at one time during the
fall.
However many there were, one thing was sure : they all stayed
in or upon that box at night. By sundown they gathered from
the forests and the river and began the preliminaries of settling.
For a full hour they chattered, jabbered and circled in wide
sweeps of flight around the mill. At first they would fly in a
great circle almost out of sight. Then narrowing by almost im-
perceptible degrees after an hour, and sometimes longer on wing,
they would circle closely about the box and at last one would en-
107
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
ter. After that one or two deserted the circle for the box at each
round until the last bird disappeared.
I am glad to own the pictures I have of them. The coming
summer, however, a box must be arranged with a hinged roof so
the young ones and eggs can be reproduced. One box might be
placed on the west side of the mill so that a focus could be had on
it from the barn roof.
So far I have not been able to do just what is possible with
Martins. I never shall unless some way is invented to extermi-
nate English Sparrows. But I have succeeded in enticing them
to build on our premises, and afforded them sufficient protection
to bring out large broods. With all that flock to clean pests from
our fruit trees and sift insect plagues from the air with their
queer little sieve-like throats, we were almost free from mos-
quitoes, and what a fruit crop we had! Summer life at the cabin
would riot be complete without them. I like to hear their morn-
ing chatter and watch their evening flight, and the twitter with
which they perform the business of living is all-day company
for me.
( He spent every minute, when not bathing or food-hunting,, doing
sentinel duty on the telephone wire"
108
CHAPTER IX
The Cat-bird: Galeoscoptes Caroliniensis
IN THICKETS
"Guess what I have for you,"
commanded Bob.
"Nest of a Ha-ha bird," I ven-
tured.
"Ha, ha! Nests of forty other
birds," he retorted.
I stood and stared. Several days
before I had confided to Bob that I
was in trouble. I had accepted a posi-
tion on the staff of an outing maga-
zine and had contracted to furnish,
during the ensuing year, at least nine
natural-history articles, each illus-
trated with from four to ten studies of birds. At the time of
making that contract I had just four pictures fit for use. So
I appealed to him just to notice a little closer than usual as he
passed from well to well and along the river, and mark every nest
he saw for me. And this was the answer, the answer big as
the great heart of Bob. My spirits bounded sky-high. Forty
111
YOUNG CAT-BIRD
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
nests! Why, right there material could be secured to last me
three years.
"Bob ! What kinds ?" I cried.
"Oh, Robins, Cat-birds, Cuckoos, Larks, Doves, Redbirds,
Jays, Red-winged Blackbirds and a lot of little fine stuff of
which I don't know the names."
"A lot of little fine stuff!" That meant Warblers, Finches,
Vireos and Linnets.
"And the prettiest thing in the lot," said Bob, "the one you
must get first, is the nest of just a common old Cat-bird. I never
saw anything to beat it in the nest line."
That same day I started a series of drives to Bob's lease that
continued every fair day throughout the season. The trip was
a delight. The way lay across the levee east of the village, where
every attraction of wood life was to be found growing in a tangle,
and a babel of bird-song swelled early and late, led always by the
Bell Bird I had pictured a few days before and now claimed as
my especial property. After crossing the bridge, the green line
of the river, decorated by the white bloom of hawthorn and wild
plum, lay always in sight. At Bob's lease a sudden curve brought
the water up to the road, and then swept it away again, leaving a
pressing invitation to all and sundry to follow and learn from
the Wabash itself just why people wrote poems and sang songs
about it.
The lease lay on both sides of the road. On the right as you
approached was the Aspy farm, where the Bobolink strutted the
rod-line; adjoining it on the same side was Stanley's, where the
Shrikes homed in the oak, Kingbirds in the orchard and Larks in
the meadow.
On the left lay a strip of high, grassy, wooded pasture, cut into
112
YOUNG CAT-BIRDS
"Cat-bird nestlings are so gentle as to seem almost Dove-like"
THE CAT-BIRD
curves by the river, on the near bank of which was the power
house. Below the house and oil-tanks was a grassy old orchard
running down to the water. Across the river was a deep wood,
with great pools frequented by Bittern and Heron; tangles of
underbrush, and forest trees of the height and size selected by
Hawks and Crows. Where could be found another such Paradise
for birds?
Bob did have forty nests located, and he had not worked very
hard to do it. That day was spent in taking an inventory of
them, going into ecstasies over their beauty, and trying to decide,
by the condition of the nest and the bushes about, on which to
work first, until we reached the nest of the Cat -bird and there
I stopped, lost in admiration. Without a word Bob leaped the
old snake fence, crossed the orchard and started for a camera.
The nest was in a red haw thicket in a corner of the fence
separating the orchard from the meadow. It was low enough
to take from a tripod, there was no obstruction to prevent my
setting it just where it should be placed and the light was fine.
Photographic conditions could scarcely have been bettered in
field work, and it was imperative to record the nest at once be-
cause browsing cattle, angered by flies, might run into the bushes
and destroy it any hour.
The fence was a lichen-covered, linty, picturesque old affair;
the bushes were young and newly leaved in rare shades of golden
green; beautiful vines clambered everywhere, and moss, ferns
and wild flowers grew beneath. The nest was built of fine twigs
such as were thick underfoot in the fence corners ; but somewhere
in the fields about the Cat-birds had found a finely-shredded corn-
husk, or one so old that they could shred it themselves, for the
nest was lined with this material, bleached almost white. There
115
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
was a little dry grass also and the eggs were that exquisite deep
blue-green of this species. That was the picture. No wonder
Bob hurried for the camera! Of all the forty nests into which
we had gazed with reverent wonder that morning, not pendent
purse of Oriole, cobweb decorated cup of Vireo, living green arch
of Lark or flat bowl of Quail was so beautiful as this.
Of course it couldn't wait, so I made two exposures to be
sure. Then overtures to the Cat -birds began by sprinkling cracker
crumbs, of which they are very fond, along the top rail of the
fence. The mother bird proved how she got her name by keeping
up a feline concert in the thicket. "Me-aw, me-aw, me-aw!"
"Me-ow, me-ow, me-ow! 'Arry, 'arry," then insistently, ff Har-Yy,
Har-Tyl"
Making friends with her was a task. The Rubicon was a cir-
cle about three yards from her in any direction, and when you
crossed it, no matter with what adroitness you made your ap-
proach, she was gone. I never got a study of her brooding. It
was impossible to take it without separating the bushes and not
even after her eggs had quickened could you touch her fence-
corner but she would take flight.
While making these efforts my appreciation of Cat-bird mu-
sic doubled and all I ever had of Cat -bird character was lost; so
that in these days, the memory of those hours of watching, filled
with the exquisite morning and evening song of the Cat-bird fa-
ther as he perched in a topmost bough of the old apple-tree, is all
that keeps me from destroying every nest I find.
\He liked a big Rambo closest his location, and from a high
twig the mimic copied the notes of every bird of the lease. He
could do the Robin's rain-song beautifully. He reproduced the
Bobolink of the rod-line, across the road, until he fooled me if he
116
THE CAT-BIRD
opened his matins with that strain. He piped the lay of the Song
Sparrow, and warbled like the Linnet. He could not whistle, but
he could catch the "Co'cheer, co'cheer!" notes of the Cardinals
across the river. In fact, traces could be detected of the notes of
every bird of the orchard, meadow and forest except the Lark and
the Quail.
And he mixed them all up, and worked them over, and poured
them out in a continuous and ever-changing stream of melody
so fast you had to do mental gymnastics to place each note. Then
at times he became inspired with his own performance, his beady
eyes shot gleams of light, his throat swelled its fullest and he
rocked the twig he perched on and improvised a melody of his
own that was a reminder of all fine wood music and a repetition of
none. For this thing I forgive him much.
There was much to forgive, for among Bob's forty nests
there were Blackbirds, Song Sparrows and Doves on that same
stretch of fence, before it ended at the river. There were King-
birds, Robins, Vireos, Bluebirds and Orioles in the orchard ; along
the river, Cardinals, Cuckoos, Warblers, Indigo Finches, Sand-
pipers, Grebe and Sheilpoke ; and in the meadow were the Bobo-
link and Lark, Quail and Ground Robin. Into the home affairs of
every bird of them at some point in my work came that Cat-bird
with his sharp little beak and sharper black eyes. Much that I for-
merly had laid to the credit of my ancient enemy the Crow in
reality proved to be the work of the Cat-bird.
He stole eggs from Vireo and Linnet when only two and
three in a nest proved them fresh. It was so easy, while a little
mother the size of a Canary was bathing or exercising, to slip to
her nest, pick out a tiny, thin-shelled egg, crush it and suck up the
contents. Also he was responsible for the disappearance of many
117
WHiT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
newly hatched Warblers and other birds of their size, because one
day, right in the face of my lens, he darted to the nest of a Sum-
mer Yellow Bird and snatched and swallowed a baby just
emerged as if it were a juicy grub.
That day I vowed I would ask Bob to shoot him. The next
morning, while making studies of a pair of his own nestlings, he
paid me the tribute of singing to me, as I worked, his mixed
chorus of orchard, meadow and forest, almost broke my heart by
the most beautiful improvisation I yet had heard from him, and
ended my captivation quite by continuing his song while two of
his young perched on my hand, instead of coming down and
frightening them into a panic with his cat-calls.
So now I am a traitor to other dainty little folk I should
protect, for while beyond all doubt he is responsible for much
damage, every time the chance comes to tell on him and urge his
partial extermination, at least, I find myself hiding his sins, and
excusing his shortcomings, all because of his exquisite song.
There is small enough cause to love him. He follows me
through the woods for a mile and arouses suspicion and fear in
the hearts of more trusting birds by his questionings. Many
weary waits with a set camera have been just at the point of
fruition when a Cat -bird came mewling about, made my subject
nervous by his intrusion and spoiled my picture. That should
be enough to condemn him in my eyes, and it is almost.
He is more pervasive and inquisitive than the Blue Jay, ad-
mittedly the guardian and danger-signaler of the woods. He is
different from the Jay. Convince a Jay that you are a part of
woodland life, that you are not shooting or making a noise or dis-
turbance, and he will go away and let you alone, and soon you can
enter his preserves with no comment from him. But a Cat -bird is
118
THE CAT-BIRD
always questioning and never seems to find a satisfactory answer.
He never becomes accustomed to your presence about other nests,
and this seems pure perversity, for he will accept you near his
own when he feels assured that you are doing no damage. If
hunger-pangs or family cares did not call him strongly, he would
follow me all day, watching, questioning and interfering with
what was happening to other birds.
YOUNG CAT-BIRDS
"The deadnin' and the thicket's jest a-bilin' full of June,
From the rattle o' the cricket, to the yallar-hammer's tune ;
And the catbird in the bottom, and the sapsuck on the snag,
Seems ef they can't od-rot 'em! jest do nothin' else but brag! "
James Whitcomb Hlley.
CHAPTER X
The Belted Kingfisher: Ceryle Alcyon
IN EMBANKMENTS
As the cashier pushed the
amount of my check under the
wicket, Mr. William Hale, the
bookkeeper, turned from his desk
and, touching the tips of his
thumbs and first fingers in an
oval, asked:
"What does a hole shaped so,
and running six feet back into a
solid embankment, mean?"
"Is the bottom of it like this?"
I questioned, picking up a pencil
and drawing a line.
"Yes, it is," he answered.
"Then," I said, "it means
Kingfishers. The middle curve is
formed by their breasts and the
side tracks by their funny little
crippled feet. Where did you
find a hole like that?"
"Found it on my farm while
taking Helen and Mary for a
walk yesterday. It is in the back
wall of the old pit from which the Grand Rapids people took the
gravel for the railway."
123
WAITING FOR LUNCH
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
"You need a half-hour's outing," I suggested, for the gravel
pit was only a mile away and my horse was at the door. The
cashier happened to be the head of my family, so the matter was
easily arranged and Mr. Hale and I at once drove to his farm.
The spot was beautiful, just the place for birds of all kinds.
Gravel for two railroads had been taken from one little hill, the
presence of which in this stretch of low country was hard to ex-
plain, for on the east lay the river, south the Limberlost, west
the great ditch draining it, and north more swampy lowland. A
great basin had been shoveled out from the main bed of gravel,
and then veins running through it in different directions had been
followed up as long as pay dirt was found. Heavy rains and
drainings from the swamp had transformed these into a small
lake and canals. As it all happened twenty years ago, the high
parts were covered now with tall poplars and maples, the low with
a beautiful fringy -leaved variety of willow, the canal and lake
surrounded by cattails, bullrushes and tall swamp-grasses, and
everywhere there grew luxuriant vines, and almost impenetrable
thickets of wild rose, button -bush and all kinds of swamp under-
brush. The river was only a quarter of a mile away and solid
swamp covered the intervening space.
The back wall of the old pit was twenty feet high and
faced east; about a foot and a half from the surface was the
opening which had attracted Mr. Hale and his little daughters
during their Sabbath walk. We cut a willow and measured the
tunnel, finding it to be six feet deep. We threw light into it
with a pocket mirror, but could see nothing. Mr. Hale was cer-
tain that the opening had not been there a week before, as he had
been about the pit much of late, ostensibly entertaining the
children, in reality, from the number of locations to which he led
me, hunting bird-nests for me. I was sure that the work was
fresh, for a little heap of sand and gravel that had been pushed
THE BELTED KINGFISHER
from the excavation lay directly beneath, not yet spread by wind
and rain.
That a bird could have drilled such a tunnel seemed abso-
lutely impossible, for the bank was hard clay, thickly intermin-
gled with gravel and sand, and baked by the glare of the sun from
earliest morning until night. Above the opening meadow-grass
waved, beside it alders and willows grew, and beneath, where the
last of the gravel had been taken out, flourished a large and pros-
perous frog-pond. One had to creep about the edges of this
pond and cling to the willows, in reality, as well as dig in with
his toes, to climb up to the location. We tried repeatedly, by a
clear shaft of light we could throw into the far end of the tunnel,
and failed to see anything except that there was a turn and a still
larger opening made to the north. So we gave it up, but Mr.
Hale consoled me quite by pointing out the nests of a Cuckoo and
of a Summer Yellow Bird, and I found the locations of a Robin,
two Cat -birds and a Purple Finch.
Work on these nests took me back to the pit daily. For three
mornings I climbed to the opening and with a hand-mirror ex-
plored its interior, but to no avail. It was May; every day I
found new nests here ; Bob added to his forty a mile farther east ;
I was working on the series of Black Vultures over in the Limber-
lost, calling on them every day and taking their likenesses every
third day, and visiting daily a half-dozen widely scattered
Cardinal nests for the illustration of a book. Every day pho-
tographically possible, I was in the woods early and late, stopping
at absolutely nothing that stood in the way of my work ; and you
well may believe with such richness of material on hand, there
was little time for anything that looked unpromising.
But one day, two weeks later, when passing the embankment a
Swallow came to the opening and flew away. Immediately I
climbed up, and throwing in a strong ray of light with a good-
125
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
sized hand-mirror, searched the back of the tunnel. Just as I
was despairing, there was thrust suddenly into the light a great
scarred beak, the biggest eyes I ever had seen in the head of a
bird of that size, and a flaring crest. The whole thing looked so
uncanny as it flashed sharply on my vision that I jumped until
I dropped the mirror and slid down into the frog-pond. But I
didn't mind that. I had a brooding Kingfisher, the bird of an-
cient mystery, and an object of tradition in all time; whether
eluding naturalists of Greece, controlling the weather of Italy or
driving away evil luck and devils in Germany. I confess the
brooding bird looked like a devil to me back there in the dark,
and as she rushed from the nest and headed for the river, the
rattle she rolled was as uncanny a sound as I ever heard from the
throat of any bird, save only the loon.
What to do was the question. Go after a man and have him
dig in to the back of the nest? That would give a picture of the
eggs, and no doubt destroy the nest and drive aw'ay the birds.
Wait until the young hatched and try for a picture of them? That
seemed the most likely to yield best results, for surely when the
old were feeding they would not desert the young, even if the
nest were opened at the back. Then the babies could be pictured
while the old ones were away, and carefully replaced, and then,
too, there was every chance that, with set cameras, shots at the old
birds could be taken as they entered and left the nest. So I de-
cided to wait. That day the bushes were carefully straightened
and my tracks covered when I left. Also arrangements were
made with Mr. H ale's farmer, plowing in the adjoining field, to
keep an eye on the pit, and drive away small boys.
After that I haunted that location. I was there every day
and, by a morning of the second week of June, with my mirror I
caught two little Kingfishers peering into the light. Then I went
after help. The earth was so hard that when a big strong man
126
THE BELTED KINGFISHER
set a shovel on the spot we had measured and came down on it with
his foot, it curled up as if made of lead. We had to get another
and use a hatchet for most of the work. We cut an opening into
the tunnel, six inches from the turn to the nest, fitted a shingle
to cover it, and a piece of sod to fill the hole so that it could not
be noticed from the top, and I had free access to the birds. The
old birds never knew it. On their return they entered the tunnel
without the slightest hesitation.
I always waited until their morning feeding was done. As
they have long, tedious waits on stumps and dead limbs above the
water to catch the crabs and minnows which form the greater part
of their diet, and always utter their rattle on returning from the
river to the nest, there was plenty of time to work between their
visits, and time to drop the young into the nest and cover the
opening before the old ones arrived. The re gurgitations proved
fish, clams and crabs to be the staple of diet, though there were a
few berry-seeds and occasionally the striped legs of a grass-
hopper.
The first time I took those babies into my lap I was wild with
joy. They were the quaintest little birds I ever had handled, and
the first of their kind. No wonder the snowy white eggs of the
Kingfisher are so very oblong. They have to be to allow the
growth of that enormous bill, for enormous it was, even on the
babies. The little fellows had eyes as large in proportion as their
elders, crests of blue coming, a tiny white dot before either eye,
broad collars of white, steel-blue wings and backs, tail and pri-
mary wing- feathers banded with white, and white breasts touched
with blue below the crop.
The old birds were exactly like them, save that the breast of
the female was touched with russet where that of the male was
blue. Perhaps these birds seemed just a little different to me
from any others I have worked with before or since, because they
127
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
did so exactly what I hoped they would do. Still I never have
seen any living or pictured Kingfishers with quite such heavy big
beaks, such big eyes, and such flaring crests. They seemed to me
larger and finer in every way; it may be imagination, but yet I
am sure they were. You can compare their pictures with others
you have seen, and decide for yourself.
At the first picturing of the babies, I tried twice and secured
good likenesses of them. The second time, some days later and
near the time when they would be going, I was assisted by Ray-
mond Miller, a friend of mine who was born for a naturalist.
While focusing on these birds I explained to Raymond that two
were a small brood; frequently there were seven and eight in a
family. I said to him:
"Wouldn't it be splendid if we had seven to go into this pic-
ture?"
"I don't know," answered Raymond dubiously; "if there were
seven, people would get so mixed looking at all of them, they
never would see how cunning just two are."
I knew that if I was ever to get snap-shots at the old birds,
in all probability it would have to be while they were engrossed
with family cares. I never worked harder than I did over those
birds. Up one river-bank, and down the other, across the swamp
and along the Limberlost ditch I followed them, until I had lo-
cated fifty spots on stumps and dead branches, from which they
fished every day. Then to figure on lighting, where to set a
camera, where to conceal myself, whether I had the bird in range
or would waste my plate if I made an exposure, these were the
next considerations.
Never was luck so surely with me. And never were pictures
more due to luck, pure and simple. Of all the stumps and dead
branches on which I had seen them perch, who could say on which
they would alight at their next coming? It was by the merest
128
THE HEAD OF THE KINGFISHER FAMILY
"His great beak was scarred from tip to base by contact with stone and
gravel in tunneling"
THE BELTED KINGFISHER
chance that I guessed it, and focused on points they visited.
There was a little extra grace granted me because I did not dis-
turb the birds while brooding, for as sure as fate I do have best
luck when I work in ways that can not possibly injure the birds.
Once I got a splendid small picture of the male fishing from a
favorite spot on a dead branch along the river. He was near
enough and the focus sharp enough to give the detail of every
feather and to show distinctly the hard work he had done in ex-
cavating his tunnel, for his great beak was scarred from tip to
base by contact with stone and gravel. He was a noble bird, as
he struck that limb in front of my camera. If you want to realize,
as you never did before, just how funny the bird caricatures of
artists of brush and pencil are, compare some of their attempts at
drawing Kingfishers with these living free birds.
I could not make a better picture than one of the female, also
fishing. But it was on a stump in mid-river that I capped the
climax. I pictured the female there, fishing alone, and was so de-
lighted with the plate that I set the camera a second day to learn
if by any chance I could improve it. By one of my special dispen-
sations I took the pair; the female dripping as she came up from a
plunge, the male with flaring crest, just an instant before he flat-
tened it and dived.
In the thick of the series came a rare June freshet. The Lim-
berlost rose up to meet the river, and the water crept up and up un-
til the ditch and river were raging torrents, and all low country
was under water, and I had not finished with the babies. For three
days I worried, the fourth the rain stopped, the sun shone and I
started with Molly-cotton to drive to the pit. We followed a
short cut by way of a lane across Mr. Hale's farm, but we found
the water a few inches deep over the road before we reached the
Limberlost bridge. Molly-cotton was dubious, but I was deter-
mined and drove on to the bridge. Beyond it was a sight.
131
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
The water of the big ditch was running like a mill-race, and
the flood covered all the fields and swamp save a few of the
highest places. It was above the fences, thick with floating logs
and debris. The bridge to the private ditch crossing Mr. Hale's
land was anchored out in the swamp against some tree-trunks.
We could not go on, and we could not turn around. We unhitched
the horse, tied him to the bridge, backed the carriage off into the
road, and when we thought we were far enough to miss the em-
bankment, tried to turn it. We had not gone so far as we
thought, and ran it down a steep place until the water filled half
the bed and reached my best camera.
With all our might we pulled and pulled and could not budge
it. Then we corralled some floating rails, laid them out to the run-
ning gear, and Molly-cotton walked them and set the camera
arid my waders upon the seat. Then we brought down the horse,
tied the lines to the tugs and to the carriage, held up the shafts,
and with Patience's help got the carriage into the road, where we
harnessed and drove back.
On the road leading east from town we held a council of war
and decided to drive over to the levee and prospect from there.
We turned south at the first crossing, but when we came to the
gate we expected to enter the water was a foot deep. That portion
of the meadow lying along the ditch was all under water, but
there was no current. I was doubtful about it, but Molly-cotton
proposed to put on my waders and prospect. It was meadow that
cattle had grazed over, I had driven over it all the spring, and she
could feel her way before her, so I consented. She put on the
waders, pinned up her skirts, took a water tripod and started.
She wore a flaming red waist, and in the midst of that pool I
saw she was attracting the attention of a cow of the Hale herd.
I didn't know whether the cow would enter the water or not,
but I did know Molly-cotton couldn't hurry on that soggy
132
THE BELTED KINGFISHER
ground, with those heavy waders. So I called to her to come to
me just as quick as she could, that "I saw something" I wanted
up the road. Whenever I "see something" all of my family fly.
I knew that would bring her with all haste and still not frighten
her. On came the cow.
"Hurry all you can, Molly-cotton, I am afraid it will get
away! Do come faster!" I urged. She made it with mighty
little margin and only saw the cow when she left the water.
She said I was wise, for she couldn't have helped trying to run
if she had seen it, and as the water was within three inches of the
boot tops, she surely would have fallen.
Next we decided to drive through, and started. It was a
treacherous journey, for the way was covered with stumps and
logs beside the floating stuff. We unreined the horse and it was
well we did, for half the way across the carriage was floating,
we were up on the seat holding the camera, and Patience swam
several rods. We struck high ground safely and drove over the
ridge, confident we were on the way to the nest. When we were
almost there we came to a ditch ten feet wide and six feet deep,
that we had forgotten. I had hoped to reach the nest, get a pic-
ture and cross the corn-field to the road, paying for any damage
we might do to the young corn. Here was another dead stop.
It seemed to me I couldn't make that trip back again. I proposed
to drive to the south of the ditch, try to swim the horse across
and thus reach the bed of the road from which we had turned
back at the bridge. This time Molly-cotton was dubious. I
drove the horse down to the water, where he showed his good sense
by balking for the first time in his life.
He simply wouldn't enter that water. I suppose the stiff
current and the floating logs dismayed him. We had to back out
and face the flood and the cow again. It was rather sickening
business, and I was glad when it was safely over. After the
133
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
flood subsided I went and measured the place I had tried to drive
into. It was an abrupt embankment and where I would have
driven the water had been nine feet deep and the current stiff,
so undoubtedly the horse saved our lives by refusing to enter.
After we left the meadow the last resort was to drive south on
the road until we reached the corn-field, cross that and thus ap-
proach the quarry on its west side. We stopped to take a picture
of the Kingfisher, fishing from an old fence-post; with a small
camera and long distance it was, but a beautiful thing. Then we
drove south. The road lay straight before us and at no place
was the water over two feet deep, so we were safe there. We got
into the field, then into the quarry, and were overjoyed to find
our birds.
During our absence they had grown, it seemed, fully a fourth
larger, the pinfeathers about the base of the beak had opened,
making their faces much handsomer, the whole plumage had
grown and taken on color, and the size of their eyes, beaks and
crests was comical. We sat on the ground and played with them
while we rested from our rough experiences.
We used special care with those studies of them, as we ex-
pected they would be the last, and in one of them we felt repaid
for all our effort. But in field work one never can tell, for this
was not the end. That came unexpectedly two days later. Pass-
ing the quarry with Raymond, I suggested to him that we see if
the birds were gone. As we approached, there were the youngsters
in the doorway, evidently meditating their first flight. They
would crowd up beside each other, half lift their wings, peep
down over the edge, duck back and then threaten to try again.
"Oh, Raymond!" I gasped. "That is my picture! There is the
real natural-history picture of those birds. Fifty of them made
when taken from their nest and set up somewhere are not worth
that one! Oh, I must have that!"
134
THE BELTED KINGFISHER
"Can't you take it?" asked Raymond.
"I must," I answered, but I did not know what I was attempt-
ing, for that picture cost me the highest price I ever paid for
any study, with the exception of .one landscape.
"Cover the hole with your hat until something can be found
to stop it," I said. Raymond in his eagerness splashed through the
frog-pond and did as he was told. A piece of sod securely stopped
the opening. Then I figured on the light and where my camera
must stand. Of course the location fell in the frog-pond. There
was no way to place the camera, so we began carrying stumps
and rotten logs to build a foundation. When we had a fairly
solid basis we carried rails from the fence near-by and laid them
lengthwise and then across until we had a solid platform above the
water. Then I set up my tallest step-ladder, placed an eight-by-
ten camera on top and focused on the opening. The camera
was just right, so I put in a plate, attached the sixty- foot hose,
and tossed the bulb up on the embankment.
Then I went around in front, set the shutter at a snap, and
climbed up to remove the sod. Raymond crowded close behind me
to help and we broke into a colony of digger wasps. They
swarmed all over us. Raymond got one on his ankle and one on his
arm. I had one on my arm and one down the back of my neck in-
side my linen collar. I do not remember that anything ever hurt
me worse. It was the middle of June, our time of most intense
heat; I had worked carrying rails and logs until my blood was
boiling, and the sting was directly over my spine and near the base
of the brain. The thing so paralyzed me that it was some time be-
fore I could move to doctor Raymond with wet clay.
I sent him into the willows in front of the nest, gave him
some lunch and water, and told him to sleep or do anything save
make a movement. If he happened to see the young coming he
was to signal me. Then I went up on that embankment, lay
137
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
down, hung my chin over the edge and fixed my eyes on the tun-
nel. Fifty times the youngsters came close enough so that I could
catch the gleam of their bills, but seeing the camera they craw-
fished. Fifty times it seemed I should have to give up because I
was not equal to it. Like a mustard plaster that sun poured down
on my shoulders and arms. I felt as if I were being blistered, and
I was. Each upper arm and the top of my shoulders above my
heavier clothing was burned into patches of water blisters as
large as my hand. I can't tell how those wasp-stings throbbed
and ached.
It was two and a half hours by my watch, and I was almost
insensible, when a faint whistle from Raymond recalled me. I
looked down and snapped on the instant, and here is what I got.
This in connection with the two fishing pictures of the grown birds
are the only real, natural Kingfisher pictures I have ever seen. I
could scarcely pack my camera and get my stuff to the cabin. I
was red as red flannel, long ago perspiration had dried up, and my
flesh burned as with fire. I got into the bath-tub, turned on hot
water and took a Turkish bath until perspiration started again
and I sweated the heat out of me. Then I dressed my blisters
and went to bed for the rest of that day. But never again have
I been able to bear that degree of heat for that length of time.
Whatever it cost, it was worth while. The picture is one of
my finest, and I got some mental impressions on that day, of the
swamp in the quarry and across the road, and of the line of the
river, which I now could reproduce to the least detail. I could
catch every breath of movement among the willows and poplars.
There were water rats riffling the pool, and snakes weaving
among the grasses. All birds of spring were busy everywhere.
The Red-winged Blackbirds, there were myriads of them, seemed
especially to delight in swaying on the rushes and splashing in
the water. It appeared to me, up on that embankment, in the
138
THE BELTED KINGFISHER
merciless heat, throbbing with wasp-stings, burning with thirst,
blistering with sunburn, that those pesky birds took great joy in
bathing with exaggerated slop and splash. Just for one insane
moment, after the shutter closed, I had an idea of throwing my-
self into that pool and splashing also. And then it came to me
that in my condition to enter cold water meant death, so I waited
and took the further punishment of the hot bath, or I would not
to-day tell the story of what I did with the Kingfishers.
r
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KINGFISHER FLATS
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139
"He laughs by the summer stream
Where the lilies nod and dream,
As through the sheen of water cool and clear
He sees the chub and sunfish cutting sheer.
His are resplendent eyes ;
His mien is kingliwise;
And down the May wind rides he like a king,
With more than royal purple on his wing."
Thompson.
CHAPTER XI
The Yellow-Billed Cuckoo: Coccyzus Americanus
IN SMALL THICKLY LEAVED TREES
I love the Cuckoo. In this
taste there is much good com-
pany, for I could quote, to the
length of a chapter, poems and
songs by lovers of the bird.
Jraditions concerning it are al-
most as old and as mixed in fable
and legend as those of the King-
fisher. It is an individual bird
and its characteristics are sharply
outlined. It is a bird that has been slandered by writers learned
in the lore of books, but wholly lacking in knowledge of the
woods and the actual habits of birds.
There are charges against it of depositing its eggs in other
birds' nests, as do its European relatives. Surely in the length of
my life I have looked into as many birds' nests as any other one
person, but I never saw a Cuckoo egg that had been deposited
with any other species. It is charged with destroying the nests
and young of other birds; I never have seen a suspicion of this
characteristic in it, and I have yet to meet a real natural-history
worker, of the woods, who has. It is accused, by writers who
should know better, of having a filthy, repulsive nest and badly
143
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
soiled surroundings. This would be to advertise its location
widely, and one of the most prominent characteristics of the bird
is its power of concealment, its secretive habits.
Two of my most beautiful Cuckoo nests were on the Hale
farm, one of them being pointed out to me by Mr. Will Hale
the same day he led me to the Kingfisher's location. This nest was
in the crotch of a scrub elm, about twelve feet from the ground,
in a thicket on the bank of the little lake opposite the Kingfishers.
I do not know what bird originally built that nest, but I do know
the Cuckoos never did. The structure began in the sharp parting
of the branches, and was one and a half feet in height. Some of
the sticks used in its construction toward the top were the thick-
ness of a lead pencil and three feet long. Mr. Hale told me the
nest had been there several years. The Cuckoos spread a handful
of their fine twig nest material in the bottom and pulled a few dry
pussy-tails from the willows and they were ready for nesting.
I photographed the nest when it had three big pale greenish-blue
lusterless eggs in it, and it made an interesting picture.
Possibly from making use of abandoned nests, as in this case,
the Cuckoo gets some of its bad reputation. On Mr. Black's
lease, in the last five years, I have seen perhaps a dozen different
Cuckoo nests and photographed many of them. In a little red
haw-bush, not three feet from the ground, Mr. Black found the
lowest of these nests and the most characteristic. It was a mere
handful of twigs, loosely laid flat on seemingly the slightest
foundation, and dropped into the numerous interstices were
maple blossoms for lining.
In all some half-dozen of the most beautiful nests were re-
corded because they contained an unusual number of eggs or for
some reason which seemed to me good. I worked for days about
a half-dozen more containing young birds up to the day of de-
parture. And in all that time I never saw a hint of droppings on
144
THE YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
or around the nests, and on all of the dozen negatives, which in-
clude liberal portions of surroundings, not a soiled leaf can be
seen.
I stated in the introduction that in cases where the young were
similar to their elders and I had secured studies of them when
well grown, they would be used in preference to the grown birds,
because as a rule ten people out of every dozen who care for birds
prefer these unusual pictures of the young. Cuckoos are in this
list, but they should be taken out. In this instance I don't use the
pictures of the young for that reason. I should be most proud
to publish a reproduction of the grown Cuckoo, as I never have
seen one and should regard the picture an achievement. I have
tried and tried, times without number, but so far I always have
failed. The very nature of the bird makes failure in his case
almost certain.
In the first place, their location makes a snap shot impossible,
and in the second their nature makes a time exposure equally so.
They always choose a secluded location where experience teaches
them that most likely they will be solitary. They select the
thickest place they can find, where leaves grow in masses, for
their nest. They are not so unfriendly. One can approach quite
close, but in the dense shade and surrounded by leaves as they are,
a picture is not possible unless time could be given, and it could
not, for the instant one pauses, the bird is gone with exactly the
same motion with which a big black water-snake glides from bush
to bush in dense underbrush.
Jacob Studer says the Cuckoo is a "slipper," and the term fits
him to the life. He is indeed a slipper. The word seems coined to
describe this subject. The Brown Thrush can not equal him in
the graceful art of vanishing in deep shrubbery. So I never have
secured his likeness.
The Cuckoo always is associated in my mind with deep,
145
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
TYPICAL CUCKOO NEST
"A mere handful of twigs, loosely laid flat on seemingly the slightest founda-
tion, with maple blossom lining"
thickly leaved, cool places, where moss and wild flowers cover the
damp earth, where silence reigns and solitude is unbroken. It is
from such places that the weather prophet booms his never- failing
predictions of rain, which for this reason sound so startling. I
think of him as very near to the heart of nature, slipping grace-
fully through his green haunts, and colored like the young tree-
and bush-stems, and the half-faded and withered leaves about
him. Never a feather out of place, and what delicate shades of
color make up his suit !
There is a hint of leaves in the greenish satiny reflections on
146
THE YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
his gray back. There is a touch of cinnamon brown on his wings.
His tail is a work of art, the two gray middle feathers being
twice the length of the outer ones, which are black, tipped with
white, and taper down gradually to the pointed middle. Under-
neath he is snowy white, with bluish silver reflections on his throat.
His bill is long and graceful, curved at the tip and broad at the
base, the upper mandible grayish brown and the lower yellow.
His hazel eyes are quick and beady-bright, he drops his yellow lids
in a roguish way, and his feet, slaty-blue with two toes front and
two back, are as trim, clean and graceful as the rest of him.
At the knee he has the long Hawk-like feathers of his species.
His head and body are slender and beautifully proportioned.
When on rare occasions he comes to the light and the sun strikes
his greenish back, reddish wings and the delicate pale blue of his
throat, as an example of exquisite coloring, I should not know
where to turn to choose a bird that can surpass him.
This is a treat one rarely gets, for he keeps to the underbrush.
Where that fails him, he interrupts his flight at every small tree.
On the ground he seems at a loss to use his feet with ease and
trails his wings and erects his tail in a comical manner. He is
always eating; a spider here, a larva there, and caterpillars all the
time. He is provided with a flexible gizzard, lined with hair,
which makes possible the eating of this worm which is rapidly
destroying our fruit ; so a Cuckoo is worth many times his weight
in gold in any orchard.
Of all the young birds I ever have pictured, baby Cuckoos are
my favorite. I can not tell how exquisite the coloring of the fine
silken throat-feathers and the shades of the back are. The big
hazel eyes, the graceful beak, the slender feet, the whole baby
immaculate and trusting, tender and gentle of disposition to
surpass any birds I know. They climb out of a nest on your
fingers and all over you, coo and peer as if fear or distrust never
147
WHAT I HAVE DOXE WITH BIRDS
existed. All you have to do to make a study of them any way you
can think of is to hold out your hand, they will climb on, and
place them on a branch face or back to the camera. They will
sit any way, and look perfect pictures of trust and confidence
while they do it. I always carry food about with me, and if I am
working long with young birds, and they grow hungry, as they
do with amazing rapidity, with a little paddle I feed them a few
bites. I give baby Cuckoos the yolk of hard-boiled egg. When
feeding them I moisten the egg with saliva. They are crazy for it
and will pose indefinitely if they get a bite once in a while.
With Cuckoos the whole process of family affairs is individual.
They can confide four and five nestlings to a piece of architecture
more rickety than a Dove's nest. The mother is erratic about her
laying, but begins incubation with the first egg. As a result the
brood strings along, and before the last of the first clutch is out of
the nest, eggs of the second are deposited. In any event, the
babies leave one a day, and the difference in their size and feather-
ing is surprising. I have seen nests containing a brood with one
ready to fly, one half-feathered, one covered with sheathed
feathers, and a freshly laid egg.
Up to the day of leaving the nest Cuckoo babies are the fun-
niest little fellows imaginable. Their bodies are covered with a
tough leathery black skin, and each coming feather is incased in a
black-pointed shield. This gives them the appearance of little
porcupines. If you touch the nest at that stage they crawfish,
erect those spines and cry, a reedy little whine of a cry that is
distressing. They know they have no business being touched in
that condition. When the hour to leave the nest begins to ap-
proach, all in a twinkling these shields burst and the leathery little
Mack bird becomes a thing of delicately-shaded silken attire and
assured tone of voice.
Once this sudden emerging of the Cuckoo baby struck me
148
THE YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
as so comical that I made a series from a pair of nestlings to illus-
trate it. The birds hatched in a thorn thicket on the river-bank
on Mr. Black's lease. Two had left the nest and we knew that the
other two would go the next day. I arrived at the lease at nine
o'clock on the morning of the first of August, 1901, and made my
first study of the series representing the evolution of the Cuckoo.
Not a shield had opened on the baby, but on the elder a few were
breaking across the back of the head and breast.
At three o'clock that afternoon only two or three shields
around each eye were left on the elder, and the baby was almost
feathered. Both of them were clambering around on the edge
of the nest, but settled down into it that night and were sheltered
by the mother. At nine o'clock on the morning of the second not a
shield was to be seen on the elder, and just a few small ones about
the eyes of the baby.
At this point in their careers they climbed all over me and the
thorn tree, ate the egg, and posed until I was out of plates. They
were the softest of plumage and the sweetest of disposition of
any young birds I ever had handled. They had no sense of fear
and made no effort to fly. They did not even stand up, lift their
wings and try them, as do so many young birds. Bob said, "Well,
aren't they 'most too good to be true?" And they were. I can not
guarantee that they would be so good for every one, but if any
natural-history devotee wishes to try, here is the receipt.
Use plain common sense. Approach the nest slowly, and when
the young begin to cry, imitate them so that they will think
you a kindred thing. Always carry suitable food, and the instant
any baby opens his mouth, have ready your little paddle well
loaded with egg, quite moist, and drop the food carefully into
him. Then the others will follow suit.
Feed them several times, with a half-hour's wait between, to
get them accustomed to you. Take them first in the nest, then if
149
IN THE NEST AT NINE A. M., AUGUST FIRST, 1Q01
ON LIMB BESIDE NEST AT THREE P. M., AUGUST FIRST, 1901
THE YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
you want to scatter them a little, or to take a pair, hold the food
out of their reach and coax them to it. If they won't come, leave
them alone until the next day. When they are ready to desert the
nest, they will follow egg, properly prepared. If you want to
set them in some special place, never pick them up and pull them
by main force. If they are in the nest they will grip with their
feet and wreck it. If they are on a limb you will almost pull the
tender little things in two. Slip your fingers into the nest and
gently work them under their feet. The little toes will clasp
firmly around the fingers and by moving slowly, avoiding noise
and being gentle with them you can do what you choose.
I have been told by nature workers and read in many books
that it was impossible to take a young bird from the nest, put it
back, and have it stay. I should not advise any one lacking bird
sense and years of experience to try it; but I have done it all my
life, and never in my life have I failed to put back a young bird
taken from a nest, and it always stays. This may be due to the
fact that I never try to lift a baby from a nest unless it knows
me and will accept food from me, and I am sure I can manage it.
I should not dream of walking up to a nest of young birds and
attempting to touch them, without preliminary acquaintance. Of
course they would jump, even if they were not ready to go for
days.
If any one having a prejudice against the Cuckoo will enter
its dim, leafy haunts, make friends with it until he learns at first
hand its habits and nature, cultivate the young to the handling
point, and come away without being a Cuckoo enthusiast, he is a
very queer person.
In June of '06, after this book was in the hands of its pub-
lishers, Mr. Black said to me, "There is a Cuckoo nest you should
see on the Aspy place."
153
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
"I have more Cuckoo nests now than I ever can use," I an-
swered.
"But this is different," insisted Bob.
"Different in what way?" I questioned.
"Two," replied Bob. "This pair has fixed over that Robin-
nest that was in the thicket before the cabin last year. It is so close
to the ground you can take it from a tripod, and one egg is fully
one-fourth larger than any of the rest. Doesn't that tempt you?"
"Yes," I said. "It tempts me to try just one time more to
make a study of a brooding Cuckoo. I never before had a nest
where I could work on it from the ground. That is half the bat-
tle. Then the little plum-tree the Robin-nest was in is on the edge
of the thicket next the cabin. The light is good in the morning.
You have been going within a few yards of it for water three
and four times a day and they must have become accustomed to
you while they were repairing the nest and depositing the eggs.
If you want to do something for the good of the cause, educate
Mother Cuckoo until you can go where I would want to set a
camera without once causing her to desert."
"I'll do it!" said Bob.
"You'll do it!" I jeered. "Yes, it will be so easy!"
I had as nearly given up photographing a grown Cuckoo as I
ever give up any bird of my territory. I was in the midst of
the busiest and the most aggravating season of field work I ever
had experienced on account of constant June rains, and I con-
fess I forgot the Cuckoo and did not even go to see her. A few
days later Bob came to me.
"I can go within fifteen feet of that Cuckoo and go through
with as many motions as you would to take a picture," he said,
"and she sticks!"
It would have been impolite to tell so old and trusted a friend
to my work that I could not believe him, but I scarcely could.
154
THE YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
Taking a tripod I drove east to the Aspy farm at once. It was
about seven o'clock in the evening.
The old cabin around which a brood of rosy, happy children
once romped now stood doorless, windowless, floorless and de-
serted, just across the road from the orchard where so many
highly-prized studies had been obtained, and beside the open,
sunny clover field of the Bobolink. What once had been a front
yard that was a gentle little woman's pride and care now answered
no description save thicket. A big cottonwood in one corner had
thrown up a thousand rank sprouts; so had cherry, peach and
plum trees. Cabbage and bride roses had spread to masses;
honeysuckle, creeper and grape-vines clambered everywhere, and
striped grass and day lilies filled in the interstices.
The path Bob traveled to water his horse was worn smooth
and following it around the bushes to the well I could see a new
trail leading through knee-deep grass between the thicket and the
cabin. A few steps brought me in sight of the nest. The location
was even lower than I remembered it, and while the plum-tree
really belonged to the thicket it stood on the very edge next the
clover field and the cabin. The clipping of three little twigs
would be all that was necessary to get the best light there could be
on the beautiful brooding bird.
She was of the black bill variety and the instant she saw me
I paused and waited a long time. Then slowly, and with greater
caution than I ever before used, I advanced until I stood at the
place where Bob's trail stopped. There the tripod was cautiously
set up. Then slipping off a long gray cravenette, rolling it up and
placing it as I would a camera I went through every motion neces-
sary in making a study of her. She watched me steadily, but
never moved. Had I brought a camera, had light, and the inter-
vening twigs removed, she could have been photographed then.
A little clipping was imperative, and thinking it over I decided
155
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
PROVING THAT MOTHER CUCKOO WOULD BROOD WHILE I WORKED BEHIND HER
that she would return to her nest in the evening sooner than in the
morning, when she would have left once to bathe and drink; so
I went back to the carriage, got my clippers and approached the
nest again, just as cautiously as before. She left at about ten
feet. With all possible speed, cutting not a twig that was not
necessary, I cleared the foreground and hurried away.
That night the nervous strain was so great I could not sleep
and the next morning I was at the cabin as early as there was light
and tried to approach the nest with tripod and camera. At fifteen
feet Mother Cuckoo simply vanished. There I stood sick with
disappointment. The previous evening had made me too sure.
There was nothing left to do but vanish myself. Thinking it
156
THE YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
over I realized in bitterness that it was a large mistake to go early
and try to approach her so soon after she had been from the nest
for her morning exercise. Late that afternoon I went back again.
The light was directly in the face of the lens in case I got a chance
to set up a camera, but I wanted to accustom her to the process.
It seemed to me I took an age to go from the well to a spot
as close to the nest as possible. I never wanted to make a study of
a bird worse, and so worked in greater trepidation, and with
greater caution than I ever before used on any subject. That
shy, slipping, deep wood thing if I only could get her! She let
me set up the camera, and focus on her, so I shaded the lens, made
a time exposure and left without causing her to desert. That
night I made up lost sleep, for I felt that "I had the hang of it
now and could do it again."
Next morning, instead of going early, I waited until eleven
o'clock, which was as late as I dared risk the light; then with the
same deliberation and caution I approached her again and made
three exposures, each time slipping the camera a little nearer.
She sat, as brooding tree birds always do, on the point of her
breast. Her tail was toward the lens and her head at the farthest
side of the nest. That was not a position I would have chosen,
but it was a very good omen that she would stay when she was
headed toward the thicket. Had she brooded facing me, she
would have been compelled to make an impulse in my direction
in order to reach the deep shrubbery, and she would not have liked
to do that.
The next morning I went an hour earlier, moved up to ten
feet, and exposed two more plates in the same attitude. The fol-
lowing morning she was in a beautiful position, sidewise toward
the lens, showing her outline from beak to tip in one elegant
sweep, her black bill, her red-rimmed eye, and the exquisite shad-
ings of her silvery throat and the bronze of her back and wings.
157
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
She was all of twelve inches in length. I set my teeth hard to
keep my heart from jumping out of my mouth and exposed a
twenty-six plate the fiftieth of a second. Then I took it over at a
twenty-fifth, for fear the first exposure might be short. And
there she sat!
At my feet lay a plate-holder that fits inside my camera.
There were more time-plates in it. Should I ? With all delibera-
tion I turned the camera front toward me, inserted an enlarging
lens and turned it back. Then almost breathlessly, if any one
wants excitement ! I began walking that tripod toward her. First
I would reach through under the camera, and tilting it back a lit-
tle, set the front leg forward six inches, then each of the side ones
in turn. At last I was so close I had to use the extension front
almost full-length to get her in focus and she never flinched as
the shining big glass eye came sliding toward her. If she was
frightened she gave none of the usual signs, for she crowded no
lower in the nest, nor did she plaster her feathers any tighter to
her body. She brooded lightly and easily and looked exactly as
she did before the camera ever was placed near her.
When the first exposure was made the sun 'was shining
brightly. One little spot of light struck the top of her head and
another her shoulder. I inserted a second plate, lengthened the
exposure and waited as motionless as possible for over fifteen
minutes, until a cloud I could see coming up obscured the sun
just enough to wipe out those spots of light. Then came the ex-
posure I had coveted for years, the picture used as the frontispiece
to this book ; but my fingers are crowding on the keys of my type-
writer in my haste to acknowledge that I owe it entirely, as I owe
so many of my best studies, to the kindness of Bob.
I knew of no way to better that last exposure, so I inserted a
fresh plate, stepped up beside the camera and said to the Cuckoo
"I want a study of your nest showing your big egg now. Won't
158
THE YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
you leave, girlie?" She made no movement to go. One more
step brought my face level with her. I lifted my hand and gently
stroked her wing. Then she stood in the nest and looked down
to see what was there, exactly like a brooding hen. I gave her the
slightest little push and she hopped to the edge of the nest. That
broke the spell of the brooding fever which had bound her and
she was lost in the thicket. And I would have given much to recall
her, for her first nestling was just struggling through the shell.
That explained her conduct. I had approached her at precisely
the psychological moment, when, knowing she had not been
harmed previously, she would stay. There was no use for a study
of a nest with so small a bird in it and I removed my camera with-
out waiting to close it or take it down. Before driving away I
took a last peep and she was back in the nest and just settling to
brood again.
READY FOR THE MERCIES OF A WORLD NONE TOO TENDER
159
"But soft ! mine ear upcaught a sound, from yonder wood it came !
The spirit of the dim green glade did breathe his own glad name ;
Yes, it is he ! the hermit bird, that, apart from all his kind,
Slow spells his beads monotonous to the soft western wind ;
Cuckoo ! cuckoo ! he sings again, his notes are void of art ;
But simplest strains do soonest sound the deep founts of the heart."
Motherwell.
A FROG IN HIS THROAT
CHAPTER XII
The Blue Heron: Ardea Herodias
IN THE GREAT LAKE REGIONS
I saw this Blue Heron for myself, hunted him to his favorite
feeding-grounds alone, and secured these studies of him, which
may be the reason I am so especially fond of them. I was located
at a small boarding-house on the Inland Route, and with my boat
had access to a half-dozen lakes and rivers which make up this
chain. The little river nearest us opened shortly into a large lake.
From my room Blue Herons could be seen sweeping the water
morning after morning and settling in one spot, which seemed
easy to locate. The Deacon probably had good reason to be ner-
vous about my entering those swamps and forests alone. But
one day he was away trout-fishing; Molly-cotton was trying,
under the instruction of the landlady, to prepare a pair of deer
163
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
horns for mounting, and I slipped away to search for the haunt
of the Heron.
The row up the river was delightful. For once the veil of
nature was lifted everywhere. I could see as far as my eyes
could penetrate, and even the water hid no mysteries. The air
was clear and cool, touched with the odor of balsam, and sweep-
ing in light breezes. The sky was a great arch of blue, with lazy
floating clouds, and the sun not too ardent in his attentions.
On either hand the marsh was teeming with life. There were
tracks along the water edge where deer and bear came down to
drink, small water-rats and beaver lived along the banks, and in
the rushes were Duck, Teal, Plover, Heron, every kind of north-
ern water-bird you could mention. This river was the first of my
experience to give up its secrets. The bed was white sand, washed
of every impurity by a swift current, and the water was pure and
clear. At a depth of twenty and even thirty feet I could see
every detail of the bed.
I have not time to tell of its wonders and mysteries in mineral
formation, and its dainty growing vines and mosses. But the
water folk! If you never saw such a spot you can not dream how
beautiful it is. The flowers along the bank and the birds and but-
terflies of the air were not more gaily colored than the fish of that
little river. Every shade of silver was striped and mottled with
green, yellow, blue and red. Pike that looked half as long as the
boat shot past or darted under it. Big black bass, the kind that
wreck your tackle and keep it, swam lazily unless moved to a sud-
den dart after small fry. There were a few rainbow trout, in-
numerable speckled perch, shad, and the most beautiful big
sunfish. Occasionally an eel, monster turtles, sometimes a musk-
rat and a few water-puppies came slowly into sight and as slowly
vanished. Oh, I could not row very fast on that river ! And it was
no wonder Herons and Cranes stalked with slowly -lifted feet
164
THE BLUE HERON
along those banks, no wonder Kingfishers poised above that water
by day, or that 'coons flattened themselves and lay immovable
while they fished for frogs by night, for all of them could see
their prey plainly and know exactly how to capture it.
I pulled into the lake, took my bearings and made for the
point where the Herons seemed to congregate. On reaching it I
found the remains of an old saw-mill. The shores of all these
northern lakes and rivers were dotted with them a few years ago.
There was an oozy landing-place on sawdust foundation, and the
old mill was due to collapse in the first hard wind-storm. I pulled
the boat up on the landing and entered the mill, which was just a
shed, the floor half covered with water. Many boards were lack-
ing, but enough were left to shelter me, and quietly creeping to
the back end where the mill had been built over the water on pur-
pose to float in logs, I saw a sight.
The rushes had grown up through what formerly had been
a bed of sawdust, until they almost reached the mill. In this rot-
ten sawdust there seemed to be a big white worm, of which the
Herons were fond, and how they did gobble frogs! Undoubtedly
the old mill was the attraction for both frogs and birds. The
story was told in nature's plainest writ. The sun shining on the
water-soaked sawdust raised a sweetish sappy odor. This odor
attracted flies and other insects in myriads. The insects in turn
lured the frogs. The frogs made a feast which called up the
Herons, and the Herons furnished subjects for my cameras. In-
side the old mill, so close I could almost reach out and touch the
actors, I interpreted these "signs."
Surely I am qualified to tell how a Blue Heron catches frogs.
There is no hunting; his prey comes to him. The great birds,
some of them over three feet in height, came winging across the
lake, selected the spot from which they wished to fish, and with as
little noise as possible alighted. After looking carefully about
165
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
him, each bird would move several yards, stepping high and with
great care, flattening his body and slipping between grasses often
taller than he was. When he had selected a good location he stood
perfectly still, mostly on one foot, and his long slender leg looked
so like the cattails and rushes as to be unnoticed ; folded his wings
tight; drew in his neck; pointed his bill at an angle of about
twenty-three degrees before him, and went to sleep, apparently.
This was queer hunting. I wondered if it could be possible
that those Herons left their nests in the tall timber across the lake,
came over there behind that old mill and stood up in the water
among those rushes to sleep. The first pounce that was made
straight in front of me startled me so that I almost cried out.
After a lifetime of field work I can not suppress a sort of breath-
less snap of an "Ow," when I am surprised, and it is a cry to
which a bird rises every time. I just saved myself. The thing 1
was so unexpected. There stood the Heron, a big fine fellow, the
light striking to brilliancy the white of his throat, wet with dew
from the rushes, and the deep steel-blue of his back, and bringing
out sharply the black on the flattened crest and the narrow line
down the front of his throat.
I had not seen a frog climb to the sawdust in front of the bird,
so intent was my watch on him, and so tremblingly was I setting
up my camera and focusing, in an effort to get everything just
right and avoid his seeing me slide the camera before the opening
beside me. I was wondering if he possibly could hear the shutter,
or if the plate could be changed before he did something more
interesting than sleep, when snap! just like a machine, out shot
the Heron's neck, clip went his great shear-like beak, then it
pointed skyward, crest flat, the frog was tossed around and
caught head-first, one snap, two, it was half-way down the
gullet of the bird, whose beak was drawn in, crest flared and chin
raised, before I recovered from my surprise enough to remember
166
THE BLUE HERON
that I held the bulb in my hand and must squeeze it to secure the
picture.
In a flash I shot in the slide, whirled over the holder, set the
shutter and drew the slide. The bird had turned and moved sev-
eral feet toward me, and more in the open. I set the focus by
scale and snapped again. That time in my eagerness I moved
out too far, he saw me and away he swept, several of his fellows
nearest following. I put away the plates and focused on the spot
where he had been. It seemed sufficiently sharp for a good pic-
ture. Developing the plate proved that it was almost as nice a
piece of work as I could have done if blest with plenty of time.
Then I glanced over my background. For a Heron picture
it scarcely could be improved. The mill stood in a little bay.
Behind it the rushes grew in a tangled mass, the body of the lake
swept up close to them, out in the water a couple of runaway logs
were bobbing in the sunlight, and away in the distance a far shore
showed faintly. There was only one thing to keep me from
having fine natural-history pictures. The bird was dripping with
the heavy dew of the swamp. But if I had his head sidewise,
with its bill and one eye, and the frog going down, surely that
would not hurt my picture. In fact, thinking it over, it seemed
to add to the naturalness of it and help portray the damp, swampy
atmosphere.
Then I heard voices and splashing of water and remembered
that I was a runaway. I caught up my tripod and carrying case,
tumbled them into my boat, pushed off and jumped in, not a min-
ute too soon. I pulled well out into the lake just in time to clear
a crew of a half-dozen coming around the shore driving a log
float and gathering up stray timber. When well away from the
float I put away my paraphernalia, set a small hand-camera in
reach on the seat before me and started back down the river.
The day had grown a little warmer, but that was made up for
167
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
by rowing with the current, and after entering the river I need
not pull ; but by steering could travel quite as fast as I wanted to
go. On that return trip my first muscalonge showed himself.
Really, in the water it looked as long as my boat. The fish must
have weighed fifty pounds. It was only a little way in the river
mouth, bewildered, no doubt, by the clear water, and it turned
almost beneath my boat and went back. A magnificent big fish it
was. My attention was called to it by the commotion caused
among small fish darting in all directions to escape it.
On my way back I had a shot with a small hand-camera at a
Heron on wing, but it was so far away that developing the plate
disclosed only a little speck on the sky. I tried some Plover and
a Duck with better results, but that is another story. This one is
of the Blue Heron, and is one of my best pieces of work, quite by
myself.
INDIAN RIVER PLOVER
168
NEST OF DOVES ON THE FENCE OF ASPY ORCHARD
CHAPTER XIII
The Mourning Dove: Zenaidura Macroura
IN DEEP WOOD
This was one of Mr. Black's original forty nests. It was the
most beautiful Dove-nest of all my experience. Five rods south
of the Cat-birds, on the same fence, the Doves had located. They
had laid a foundation unusually sure on the flat surface of a top
rail, where the rails cross at a corner. Almost every day in field
work I wish that color photography had come into actual, prac-
tical, every-day use. This structure and its surroundings made
me wish for color more fervently than usual.
The fence was very old, in fact, such a deep steel-gray as to
be almost black, veiled in a delicate mist of lint and well covered
with crimply lichens running the whole color scheme of gray and
green. The nest, as you will observe, is not a typical Dove's nest.
These birds are famous for their careless architecture, a handful
171
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
of coarse twigs artlessly laid in any thick shrubbery or evergreen
being the rule. Frequently I have been able to tell whether a
Dove's nest contained eggs or young birds by standing under it
and looking up through the bottom.
This nest was built of fine material, and, no doubt to make it
inconspicuous, everything used in its construction harmonized
with the shades of color in the rails, until at a distance the nest,
seen on a level with the rail, looked like a knot in the wood. There
were two delicate, opalescent white eggs in it, as is the rule, and
all around it and overhanging it was a thicket of maple sprouts.
I have made studies of Doves' nests in March, when there was
a skiff of snow on the ground, all the way through the spring
and until July, and in every location, and of every construction
imaginable, but this was the most perfect picture and the most
individual piece of architecture I yet had seen. I always have
had a good opinion of Doves. They compel that by their charm-
ing characteristics and absolute harmlessness. These Doves gave
me a deeper respect for the whole species by proving their sense
in constructing this nest.
Had they piled on this rail a rough little heap of their ordi-
nary construction, I should have said, "Doves' usual work! It's
to be hoped the eggs won't roll out!" Before that nest I held
my breath.
"Oh, Bob," I cried. "Oh, Bob! Do you see what they have
done ? Do you see how they have kept to the coloring of the fence
and built to look like a knot-hole, just as surely as ever Flycatcher
did?"
"By Jove!" exclaimed Bob. "That's a fact! I didn't know
they had that much sense."
Neither did I. But now that it is proven, my estimation of the
172
THE MOURNING DOVE
whole species rises. It is things like these, just little things, which
set nature-students wondering. Had these Doves built their usual
structure, ornithologists would say it was instinctive. When they
leave all traces of the building of their species, and fashion a com-
pact nest of unaccustomed material, resembling in color the fence
on which they build it, what shall it be called ?
I watched these birds to see if in any other way they differed
from the rest of their family, but could detect no trait unusual
to every Dove I ever had known. From a grassy couch under a
big winesap closest their corner I studied every feature of their
daily life and found them just common Doves. They were no
bigger than the average Dove, their plumage was the same, they
ate seeds to gluttony, their wings whistled when they flew, they
were closer the river than the road, yet they preferred to bathe in
the dust. The male verified every specification relating to him as
to constancy and tenderness. He stuff ed his brooding mate until
she was compelled to refuse more food, and loved her until he
almost pushed her off her eggs.
He always preceded the feeding process by locking bills in
a caress, then stroking her wing, then a bite and another caress
and locked bills at parting. When she would not take any more,
close against her as he could crowd he perched on the rail until
she frequently had to push him away to keep her carefully-
built nest intact. I did love to watch and study them. I was
waiting until brooding had progressed a week or so before be-
ginning a series of pictures of them, when Bob met my carriage
with a long face.
"Our Doves are gone," he said.
I could only repeat, "Our Doves are gone?"
"Yes," said Bob. "Aspy turned the cattle into the orchard this
173
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
morning and the very first thing they did was to get into that
shrubbery and pull a limb across the nest and tear it up and break
the eggs."
To that sort of thing a field worker must become accustomed.
But I did not realize just what I had hoped to do with those
Doves, nor the extent to which I had counted upon them for some-
thing fresh and characteristic, until the dainty little nest and the
pearls of eggs lay trampled and broken at my feet.
Here is another point for nature students. Having had bad
luck in a low location and seen their nest torn down by browsing
cattle, what did they do? Go somewhere else and build another
nest as low, from instinct? They followed the line of the fence
down to the river-bank, and, at the height of at least twenty-five
feet, they built the highest nest I ever saw constructed by Doves.
It was in the branches of quite a large hickory tree.
So there was no "series" of these Doves and no pictures of the
young. A week later, however, Bob told me that across the river,
in the woods pasture, he had found a nest the preceding day with
a pair of Doves in it certainly old enough to fly. We rowed across
and found them still there.
These Doves had homed in a brush heap so old that the limbs
were rotten and covered with a tangle of wild rose and grape-
vines. I remember that the grapes were in bloom. In fact, so
vividly is every surrounding of each of the studies in this book
photographed on my memory and sensibilities, that, though it is
January and a white world as I write, I can scent the pungent
grape-bloom and a rank succulent odor of green things crushed
under foot, and hear the bumbling of bees and the lusty chal-
lenges to combat of a pair of Brahma roosters separated by two
miles of space, just as I did when working with these Doves.
174
THE MOURNING DOVE
The young were not so near ready to fly as Bob had im-
agined. That day we photographed them in their nest, which
was typical, the merest little handful of twigs imaginable. They
could scarcely cling to it and a heavy wind would have wrecked
it quite. Two days later we found them sitting side by side and
made a study of them. I very nearly said we induced them to
look characteristic, but come to think of it, they would look that
way in any event, and we neither could cause nor prevent it. In
my experience a Dove is always a Dove. If I should see one in-
volved in an affair of honor with any other bird or pulling feath-
ers from his mate I should think he had eaten wild parsnip-seed
and gone crazy.
As we worked about these nestlings from away back in the
deep cool forest came continuously the mournful "A'gh, coo, coo,
coo," of the old Doves. No wonder early ornithologists thought
fitting to name them Mourning Doves. The same idea has be-
come so ingrained with us that it is a protection to them. Even
careless children respect the supposed grief of Doves, as they
would that of humans.
As a matter of fact there are no happier birds. They emerge
in pairs, grow up close as they can keep together all day and
crowd tight against each other at night. With them there is no
eager unrest and search for a mate. Excepting while the fe-
male broods, a circle of three yards would include both of them
three-fourths of the time, even in flight. Often on wing I have
seen a male Dove forge ahead a little too far and turning cut a
circle around his mate and come up closer to her. They are of
such quiet disposition and inconspicuous coloring that they es-
cape many of the dangers which brilliant, self-assertive birds call
upon themselves.
175
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
Always there is an abundance of the seed they love best to be
had for the eating, their crops eternally are stuffed to gluttony ;
always it is easy to find dust for bathing. Always they are to-
gether, tender, loving, and in reality cooing in an ecstasy of su-
preme content about it all. Mourning Doves, indeed ! One might
well covet such mourning as theirs.
"They emerge in pairs and grow up close as they can keep together"
176
COWS AND THEIR FEATHERED NAMESAKES
CHAPTER XIV
The Cow-Bird: Molothrus Ater
IN THE PASTURES
The sky was cloudless and the air was still. The dust lay
thick on the country road. There were so many cicadas reveling
in the drowsy heat and so many thirsty tree-toads calling for rain
that it was as if one cicada and one tree -toad traveled with you,
singing all the way. \To the north lay fields of velvet-green
where young clover quickly sprang to cover the brown stems of
the lately-mown crop ; dull tan where the timothy that now packed
swelling barns had grown; gold stubble thickly dotted with the
sheaves of garnered wheat ; waving blue-green seas of unripened
oats and the jade-colored blades of growing corn.)
Above the shorn fields the Larks flung down an interrogatory,
"Spring o' the year?" as if they feared to state for fact a matter
which might be open to question. For the season had been pe-
culiar. Winter had lingered late. Then the spring rains set in,
cold and prolonged so that the leaves had been unusually slow in
179
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
opening and the birds had been forced to build low for shelter
and later than ever before. Half these Larks had lost their be-
lated broods in the garnering of the harvest and now they hung
disconsolate above the shorn fields uttering querulous cries. Be-
neath them restless Shrikes gathered grasshoppers for half-
fledged broods. On the cross-rails the Song Sparrows piped
bravely, and from fence-corner saplings the Goldfinches ques-
tioned of every passer, "See me?"
To the south a sinuous line of giant sycamore, tulip, ash,
maple and elm trees and the lapping purl of water marked the
river near at hand, while the rattle of my Kingfishers and the
splash of wallowing carp told the story of affairs of importance
going on there as well as in the fields. Though it was mid-after-
noon the prickly heat held unabating. The patch of red backs
under the oak at Stanley's line fence meant that the herd had
been driven from grazing, and bunched together, were lazily
chewing their cuds and fighting flies. A flock of Cow-birds cir-
cled over and about them, snatching up insects their stamping
feet drove from the grass or boldly foraging on their glossy
backs.
Patience picked his way slowly and each foot fell with a soft,
rhythmic pat that raised a small cloud of dust. The lines swung
loosely from my fingers as I sat on the edge of the seat and with
roving eyes searched for "studies," from my Vultures from over
in the Limberlost, hanging a mere speck in the sky, to the hare
scudding across the stubble or the winnowing of grasses that told
of a snake sliding down to the river.
At Stanley's Bend, Patience neighed sharply, pricked up his
ears and broke into a swinging trot. The beast found intelligence
and voice to show its anxiety to reach Bob ; for Bob meant to him
180
THE COW-BIRD
rest, shade, water, grass and Gypsy, with whom to make friends.
And to me Bob meant the best person of all to whom to appeal
for help, for "the birds know when the friend they love is nigh,"
and despite the deafening explosions of the gas-engine, the steady
rumble of the balance-wheel, the creaking of the turning-table,
the rattling rod-lines, the constant wash of the streams of crude
oil that poured into the great black tanks, and the sharp metallic
click of the valves as it gushed through the pipe-lines, the birds
clustered about Bob until there were a half-dozen there to every
one on any other lease along the river.
Paradise on the Wabash meant Bob's lease to me. I always
stopped when passing and almost every day there was some won-
der in store for me. For the birds trusted Bob, just as men
trusted him, were unafraid just as women were unafraid, and
loved him as little children everywhere loved him. Patience left
the road, crossed the grass to the tree he liked best and stood lip-
ping the bark or watching down the path. I lay back on the seat
and closed my aching eyes. The horse neighed sharply. There
was a clear whistle and the bark of a dog in answer; a second
later the pointer leaped the fence and came dashing down the
path to touch noses with her friend. Then a man's head came to
light among the bushes, his shoulders lifted above the bank ; with
a spring to equal the dog's he cleared the fence and came hurry-
ing to the carriage.
As I watched him a warm wave of gratitude swept my heart.
Bob always had understood, and there were so very few others
who had. I had found such various people in my work. Of the
land-owners about the country many had opened their gates, laid
down their fences, and given me freedom to go wherever my sub-
jects called me. Some had left the plow and harvesting to assist
181
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
me. Some had merely tolerated me, letting me shift for myself,
others had closed their premises against me and others had charged
me an enormous price for driving down a lane they used every
day themselves.
But among the oil-men it always had been different. Whether
I came in contact with a millionaire lease-owner or a ditcher in a
trench, the mere fact that I was a woman and trying to do some-
thing about which they could help had been sufficient. Some of
them had understood my work and some had not, but in no single
instance had one of them ever failed to do anything in his power
or show me royal courtesy, and of them all Bob was king.
Without a word of salutation or apparent notice he walked
straight to the little black and began knotting the hitching strap
around the tree. As his hands moved a big diamond gleamed in
the light. I knew Bob, but you never could tell about an oil-man
if you didn't. An elegantly dressed individual might be a pro-
moter with capital so nearly atmospheric that he lacked the price
of his dinner, and a begrimed creature in jumpers and sweater
might be a capitalist whose automobile waited in the stubble of the
next field while he inspected his holdings.
"Is there something for me?" I asked.
"There is," replied Bob.
He lifted the camera, picked up the tripod, ordered Gypsy to
remain with the rig and led the way down the path, through the
boiler house, where the exhaust pipe uttered deafening shrieks
and the ground trembled with the throbbing of the big black
monster, past his brooding Quail and Wood Robin, past his Blue
Finch and Song Sparrow down to the nest of his Black-masked
Warbler.
182
NEST OF INDIGO FINCH CONTAINING EGG OF COW-BIRD
THE COW-BIRD
"But I thought we agreed not to disturb her until she had
brooded at least a week," I objected.
"Look!" said Bob, and kneeling, he bent back the wild plum
bushes and brought to light the daintiest of little grassy, moss-
covered cups. It contained only two of the beautiful Warbler
eggs that had been in it the day before, and two big eggs with a
white ground finely dotted with purple.
"What does it mean?" questioned Bob in rank disgust.
"Cow-birds," I answered. "When did you first notice this?"
"Early this morning," replied Bob. "I heard the Warblers
fretting and went to see if a snake or squirrel was bothering them.
Two of their eggs were gone a"nd those two big speckled things in
their place. Make your study quickly if you want one, for I am
going to smash them."
"Oh, no, you're not, Bob," I pleaded. "I wouldn't have you
touch that nest for a farm. Those Warblers just have begun
brooding and the Cow-birds have disturbed them all they will bear
already. We will slip away quietly and you guard that nest as
you never before guarded one. It is most uncommon for a Cow-
bird to leave two eggs in a nest, and if they hatch, with those tiny
Warblers, why then, we shall have a picture worth talking about."
"But will the Warbler brood on them?" protested Bob.
"Hasn't she been on them all day?"
"All day," growled Bob, "and nothing but waiting for you
ever kept me from pitching them out. I don't see how a bird
almost as big as a Blackbird ever laid in that tiny nest, and what
became of the Warbler eggs?"
"The Cow-bird ate them," I answered. "She disposed of one
each time she deposited one, though how she managed to drop an
egg in that nest without breaking the Warbler's is a mystery."
"I easily can break hers, right now," volunteered Bob, with
185
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
that twinkle in his eye in response to which his discerning mother
named him Bob Burdette.
"But you never will, Bob," I coaxed. "What you will do is
to stand guard and make sure they hatch, and, in the meantime,
find me the rest of the Cow-bird's eggs. She will lay two more,
possibly three."
"What!" cried Bob.
"I said you would find me the rest of her eggs and we never
will touch these, to make their hatching doubly sure, but we will
make our studies from the others."
"Well, wouldn't that freeze you?" marveled Bob, mopping
perspiration. "I'm going to do it!"
"Good boy!" I applauded. "I know you don't very well like
the job, but this is our chance for something really rare. The
Cow-bird will come back to-morrow, at the same time she did this
morning and select the nest of some deep builder, so if you are on
the lookout you are almost sure of seeing her."
Next morning Bob sent me word that the Cow-bird had im-
posed an egg on his Vireo and to come quickly if I wanted a
study of it. I knew exactly what that meant. Bob uncovered in
front of his Vireo nest. The little mother Vireo was so dainty,
so delicate, and so softly colored ! Her beak was elegantly shaped,
her back pale gray, her breast white and her ruby eyes so wise
and so trustful, and her confidence in Bob, who passed close by
her many times every day, was implicit.
Of all the dozens of nests Bob had located, there was not one
so exquisite as this Vireo's, for at the branching of two elm twigs,
no higher than my head, she had built a pendent cup lashed to
the limbs by bits of string and hair, wound securely round and
round and even carried to near-by limbs. When it was solidly
186
THE COW-BIRD
NEST OF VIREO CONTAINING TWO EGGS OF THE BUILDER AND ONE OF
THE COW-BIRD
timbered, securely fastened and softly lined, to Bob and me, who
had watched its progress, it seemed complete, but the little bird-
mother, with exactly the same loving impulse that is in the breast
of a human mother when she adds lace and ribbon to her baby's
cradle, set about gathering heavy, rough, snow-white cobwebs
and festooning them over the outside until the nest looked as if
dipped in ocean foam. Then she stuck through these webs a
number of fantastically-shaped little dried, brown, empty last
year's seed-pods as a finishing touch, and Bob took off his hat.
He said she was a lady and no gentleman would stand before
her covered. He fairly worshiped the delicately colored, jewel-
eyed little pair and their exquisite cradle. Concerning them he
187
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
was squarely on the ground of Nuttall, who said that, "wantonly
to destroy these delightful aids to sentimental happiness ought
to be viewed not only as an act of barbarity, but almost as sacri-
lege." Knowing what the destruction of a single Vireo egg
meant to Bob, I went with all possible haste.
He was angrier even than I had feared, for the Cow-bird had
eaten one Vireo egg and, in depositing her own, cracked another.
He had a little bowl-shaped paddle whittled out and ready, and
on my advice scooped out the broken egg, lest it soil the contents
of the nest in bending down the limb. We tied the branch se-
curely and in a short time the two Vireo eggs and the big speckled
one were on record. Scarcely had the shutter clicked when Bob
scooped out the Cow-bird egg, dropped it on the ground and vin-
dictively set his heel on it. I shuddered to think of the picture he
was spoiling by not letting that egg hatch, but there was no use
asking him to leave it. There are times when Bob can say no,
and he had reached the limit when he left two Cow-bird eggs in
the Warbler's nest.
"I'm glad that's over," said Bob, drawing a long breath. "I'll
not stand having this little gray soul pestered again. If that
Cow-bird comes here to-morrow I'll take my shot-gun and blow
her to atoms."
In a few minutes the Vireo was on the edge of her nest, peep-
ing inquiringly into it to see what had happened next, and it
really looked as if she ruffled her feathers with satisfaction as she
settled to brood on her two eggs.
The next morning, Bob kept his word and stood guard. He
did not see the Cow-bird ; but following his line of nests down the
bank, when he thought all danger to the Vireo was over, found
that this bird of brass had made a house-warming party all by
188
,
THE COW-BIRD
herself and laid the first egg in the newly completed nest of a
Song Sparrow in a wild crab. While he awaited my arrival he no-
ticed that the little father and mother Sparrow were working fe-
verishly, and when we reached the nest a new floor was laid over
the Cow-bird's egg, a Sparrow egg was deposited and the mother
was brooding. That made four eggs for the Cow-bird, and we
figured that it would be the last, but the next morning Bob saw
her sneaking up the opposite river-bank with such elaborate cau-
tion it made her conspicuous. v -
She entered a thicket of wild rose and blackberry that con-
tained no nest of which we knew, so he did not follow her. But
wonder as to what she could have been doing there kept filling his
mind, so he stepped into his boat and started across the river, just
in time to see her leaving the thicket in what appeared to be a
frenzy of excitement, and Bob decided that she had found a place
to deposit her last egg and was rejoicing over the successful plac-
ing of her family.
He entered the bushes and located the nest of an Indigo Finch
that he had not suspected was there. There were two of the deli-
cate opalescent eggs of the Finch and the last egg of the Cow-
bird, still warm to the touch. Again there was a hurry call and the
study was a beauty. Bob unceremoniously dumped that egg also.
He heroically stood guard at the Warbler's nest and every
few days we speculated as to what would happen there. Suppose
all four of the eggs hatched. Would those dainty little Warblers
be able to supply food for the Cow-birds and their own babies
also? Would they feed their own and starve the strangers? Or
would the beaks that could open widest and lift highest get all the
food and the Warbler babies be trampled under foot and die of
hunger?
189
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
THE PAIR OF YOUNG VIREOS
These questions soon were settled. All four of the eggs
hatched, and although the Warbler babies should have been out
first, we were amazed to see the Cow-birds emerge the same day,
thereby clearly proving that they required several days' shorter
incubation than the young among which they were placed. The
Cow-birds were three times the size of the Warblers in the begin-
ning and filled the nest. They crowded from the first. Scarcely
was their down dry until they lifted sturdy big heads, opened
cavernous mouths and the clamor for food began.
The tiny specks of bugs and worms that the Warblers were
able to collect made little impression on their ravenous appetites.
All day their heads were up and their mouths wide open. All day
those little Warbler parents darted hither and thither, nervously
searching for food to satisfy the greed of the foster children
thrust so unceremoniously upon them, and if their own succeeded
in securing a tiny morsel, really it was by accident, for they were
190
THE COW-BIRD
s buried from sight and their feeble cries so drowned in the lusty
clamor of the Cow-birds, that their end seemed apparent from
the first. The smallest Warbler had no chance at all and in a few
days Bob lifted him from the nest with my hat-pin, dead and
trampled flat, and I am afraid he "said things" when he did it.
The beak of the remaining Warbler did not reach the butts of the
Cow -birds' wings when he raised his wobbly little head and joined
his voice in the hunger-cry which went on all day, but some way he
got just enough to keep him alive.
INVERTED NEST OF SONG SPARROW, SHOWING
WALLED-IN EGG OF COW-BIRD
The old Warblers seemed to feel that the continual cries from
their brood were an imputation on their housekeeping, and they
raced about pitifully, taking time neither to bathe nor eat enough
themselves. Soon they were mere shadows. But day by day the
Cow-birds waxed fatter and fatter and their cries grew more
vociferous. Day by day the Warblers grew thinner. The baby's
crop hollowed until it was drawn from sight, his eyes sank deeper
and he grew more patient.
Bob's only relief was to watch his Vireos thrive. There being
191
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
but two of them they were unusually well fed and grew to re-
markable size and beauty. Every time he approached the nest
the proud little father came turning somersaults through the air
and inquiring with true pulpit oratory, "Do you see it? Do you
hear me? Do you believe it?" and Bob with bared head and wor-
shipful eyes said that he did. One day he found them on the edge
of the nest and sent for me to hurry, for he not only wanted a
picture of them, but when they went it was near time for the
Warblers' queer brood to go also.
I arrived just in time to secure a study of them, and soon they
were gone. But it was not until three days later that Bob found
one of the Cow-birds on a limb and the other on the edge of the
nest, and both of them so stuffed that by no possibility could they
point their beaks straight front over their swollen crops. The
Warbler was fully feathered. There was not a trace of down on
him, and by every right he should have been the first to leave the
nest; but he crouched down as if enjoying his first comfortable
breathing-space, and clung to the nest as if he could not move.
His crop and eyes were sunken, his beak and feet pale, and his
throat anything but the bright, healthy color it should have been.
Starvation was written all over him. There seemed to be nothing
of him but a little bunch of bones and abnormally developed
feathers. His plumage almost curled.
The largest Cow-bird climbed to the edge of the nest and
stuck there and the other stayed on the limb. I tenderly lifted the
Warbler and set him between them to contrast their size and
plethoric condition with him. They never attempted to fly, but
opened wide beaks and raised cries for more food, though where
they were to put it one couldn't see. Bob said to them, "You
little boogers! I know what you'd get if I were engineering
this." I made several exposures and carefully put the Warbler
192
THE COW-BIRD
back into the nest, where he remained all day, the Cow-birds stay-
ing in the same bush.
Then came the baby Warbler's picnic. All day the old ones
alighted on the nest first when they came with food and if he was
ready he got a good share before the vociferous cries of the Cow-
birds called them away. The next day he had so improved that
he could move about the nest and the Cow-birds, fat and sleepy-
eyed, flew to a near-by walnut shrub, where I made a last picture
of them. Next day I couldn't find them and when I remarked
that they seemed young to join a flock of their kind, Bob looked
so peculiar that I lost no time searching.
"Where do these things belong?" he asked as we gathered up
my paraphernalia from the last trip. "Are they protected?"
"They belong to the Blackbird family and they are," I an-
swered. "The law makes two classes, wild and game birds. The
section referring to unprotected birds reads, 'House Sparrows,
Crows, Hawks, and other birds of prey.' '
"Well, if Cow-birds are not birds of prey, I'd like to know
what you'd call them," said Bob, "Have you figured it?"
I had not, but here is Bob's summing up of the situation.
"I do not know how many there are in the Stanley flock, but
the other day I counted over two hundred at Shimps'. It's fair
to presume that half of them are females. (jN"ow here is one fe-
male that we know in one season has killed three Masked War-
blers, two Vireos and one Blue Finch.) If each female of her
flock has equaled her record that makes six hundred of our most
harmless, inoffensive, dainty, beautiful little songsters wiped out
and if all Cow-birds average four eggs apiece there are four
hundred of them instead. And Cow-birds are ugly, their little
rasping 'Cluck-see-ee!' is no song; instead of rustling for insects
that need to be exterminated they sit on the back of a cow eating
193
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
flies from a scratch ; why, sling-shots and the millinery trade are
innocent compared with them! They should be exterminated!"
"I think so myself," I said, "but I suppose it is like Blue Jays
and Cat-birds, the lawmakers see no way to discriminate against
them."
"Well, just you watch me give the law a little valuable assist-
ance," said Bob. "There won't be any Cow-birds in these parts
next season."
I have watched with interest. Since that summer not a Cow-
bird flutters over Stanley's sleek herd. There are none at A spy's
adjoining, nor down the river far below Shimps', and Bob's birds
raise no foster nestlings.
PAIR OF YOUNG COW-BIRDS
CHAPTER XV
The Cardinal Grosbeak: Cardinalis Cardinals
IN SMALL TREES AND BUSHES
Early in my field experience
with a camera, coming in from the
east one day I found the body of a
Cardinal Grosbeak lying in the
dust just at the entrance to the river
bridge. I stopped and picked him
up to keep passing horses from
trampling his dead body, and as I
drove home with him lying on the
seat beside me my feelings were
outraged. ^The brightest bird of our Indiana ornithology, an
incomparable singer,) one frequently to be seen about our fields
and forests throughout the winter^ a seed-eater that seldom spoils
fruit, enough of an insect exterminator to make his presence
valuable anywhere,] and he lay there limp, his bright head never
to lift again, his brave song never to enrich summer music and
YOUNG CARDINALS
197
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
impoverish all other winter singers, and for what? Merely to
prove that some fiend with a gun could drop a shining mark.
Always I have been the devout worshiper, the true lover of
this bird. By the time I reached the cabin, The Song of the Car-
dinal had been sung in my heart. I immediately set about gather-
ing notes and searching for nests from w r hich to make illustrations
for the protest I had planned. Never having seen a photograph
of a Cardinal, either male or female, and because of the disposi-
tion of the bird, I realized I would have to attempt a thing which
no one else had accomplished. As I scooped a grave deep in the
orchard, laid the bird in and covered him with leaves before I
packed in the earth, I vowed to make the name of any man who
would kill a Cardinal repulsive to humanity.
The first thing was to find nests. Bob, the man on our farm
and several oil-men were enlisted in the cause. During the next
three years studies were made of over a dozen Cardinal loca-
tions. I wanted a perfect, typical nest with a full clutch of eggs,
a series of the young ; and grown birds in every conceivable atti-
tude which would display their beauty, their devotion to their
mates, their fiery dispositions and their chosen environment.
I am qualified to speak of the Cardinal as of no other bird,
having had three times the experience with him I have had with
any other. I did not despair of securing the studies needed to il-
lustrate the book I was planning, because when I was a child a
pair of Cardinals had built a nest near the ground, on a flat cedar
limb, not six feet from my father's front door. The remembrance
that it had taken me only a few days so to become acquainted with
them that I sat by the hour on the stoop, watching with a child's
broad sympathy every detail of their relations and home life, was
my comfort now. If I could win a pair of Cardinals to trust me
198
THE CARDINAL GROSBEAK
then, surely it could be done again and the camera introduced as
well.
In the third year of my work, when material was rapidly shap-
ing for the book, a suitable nest-picture was lacking. In a search
for moth cocoons in the valley of the Wood Robin a delighted cry
from my invaluable assistant, Molly-cotton, brought me quickly.
She had found for me the typical nest, exactly what I wanted for
my series, and you should have seen her shining face when I told
her so.
The nest was four feet from the ground, not far from the
Wood Robin's location, on a brush heap overgrown and covered in
a thick mat with wild roses, grape-vines and blackberry bushes.
The roses were in full bloom, and their delicate blossoms were
close over and about the brooding mother. The nest was a little
firmer than the usual Cardinal construction, typical of the best
sort, the lining of dried grass quite thickly woven and cuppy, the
four blue-white eggs mizzled and mottled all over with brownish
and dark lavender specks, no two of them exactly the same color ,
and one egg, undoubtedly the first, quite perceptibly larger than
the others. That told the story of a young bird in her first brood-
ing, and, as a pullet sometimes does, she had surpassed herself
with her first egg. With the securing of that nest my series was
complete, for I had sufficient material for every other illustration
needed. Studies of more or less value had been made about almost
every one of the nests located by others or myself.
I chose for the hero of my story a male Cardinal, undoubtedly
a stray in Indiana, for he certainly was the big brilliant "redbird"
of Kansas and Iowa. I could not carry him through the illustra-
tion a half-dozen different Cardinals had to be worked in for
that but I got him several times alone, so that he dominated
201
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
the work and the others used did not look so unlike him as to at-
tract the attention of any one reading for the story.
As described in the book, this bird really was "the biggest,
reddest Redbird" ever seen in these parts. His home, in a thicket
of sumac, on the bank of the Wabash River, was on the Brown
farm northeast of the village of Ceylon. Cultivated fields came
close to the bank, inclosed by an old snake-fence; a few feet of
grassy ground was covered by sumac, wild plum, red haw, thorn,
spice brush, papaw and vines of every native variety; then the
embankment sloped sharply down to the water which sparkled
over clean pebbly shoals. For a mercy we were undisturbed. The
location was farther both from my home village and from Ceylon
than boys playing at the river cared to walk; the water here was
very shallow, so that bathing and fishing were impossible, and I
never left my carriage anywhere near the nest, but approached it
always from the river, so that workers in the field would not see
me and investigate.
He was not only the biggest and reddest, but his beard
was the blackest and the longest, witness the reproductions,
his crest flared the highest, his song was the mellowest and he was
the tamest of all my Cardinal birds. It would interest no one to
know how many plates I spoiled on him; in three instances I
caught him squarely, and at his level best, and that paid for all
failure, time and expense.
These pictures were secured by cutting off a living limb on
which he was accustomed to alight in a pause before he reached his
nest and substituting a dead branch in its place. He never seemed
to know the difference and soon it became a favorite resort with
him. He liked to sit there and be sprinkled during a light shower.
MALE CARDINAL SINGING
"I know of no other bird that, in the stress of mating-fever, rocks, trills, lifts
his wings, turns his head and so displays his passion and his power"
THE CARDINAL GROSBEAK
It was the finest place in the world to fluff and dry after his morn-
ing bath. No other spot was so to his liking for a sun-bath.
The camera was concealed in the thick leaves of a papaw
bush a few feet away, a green strip was bound about the shining
brass of the lens, the camera was covered carefully with leaves and
the exposures made with a big bulb and long hose.
A detailed story of all the time spent about these Cardinal
nests would fill a larger book than this, but a few incidents may
be interesting. There was no way to photograph a Cardinal with-
out a nest to lure him. How then was I to bring the big bird,
from the big egg I had found to account for him, up to his first
mating? I simply had to send him south, and as Cardinals
migrate, especially the young in their first winter, that was all
right. I thought seriously of going to Florida and trying my
luck, but I was overwhelmingly busy. How I did crave a shot
at that crimson bird on a waxy-green orange bough! There was
a nest location from which I had made several good pictures, for
the Cardinals had preempted the sumacs on this stretch of river-
bank for years, and there was plenty of sumac setting. But how
was a Cardinal ever to be found alone on something that would
answer for a southern tree for the opening of my story?
Watering plants in my conservatory one day I snagged my
wrist on the thorn of a lemon tree. That solved my problem in a
hurry. Before night the tub containing that tree was worked
into the Cardinal's surroundings, covered with moss and grass,
and the tree so arranged that a good-sized limb replaced the perch
on which both male and female alighted on entering the nest.
The birds are accustomed to having all paths, save their trackless
one of air, changed with every passing wind-storm ; it was a limb
205
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
and green like the other, and was used just the same. Four ex-
posures were made on the male bird there before that device was
removed. Three of them were fit to use, two were better than
I hoped for, and one was unaccountably foreshortened so that it
was a failure. After my success with the lemon tree, which I
thought so like an orange as to answer, that perch was changed
almost every day to give a thread of continuity to my illustration.
A cardinal is a strenuous lover, his attachment to his mate be-
ing unusually strong and his fighting capacity equal in force to
his affections. He shows no mercy on a rival and spares no atten-
tion to his mate. He is a splendid singer and vastly proud of his
vocal ability. I know of no other bird that, in the stress of
mating- fever rocks, trills, lifts his wings, turns his head, and so
displays his passion and his power. As never before I found in
him material for studies which were reproductions of character
indeed. Yet do the best I could, my likenesses of this vivid bird
always seem pale and small to me when I think of the pictures
he made there in the sumac, living out his life of joy and freedom.
All the studies one could wish of young could be secured about
these nests as easily as those of any other birds, but Cardinal
young are a special temptation. There is lure in their deep hazel
eyes, flaring crests, important carriage and their red-tinted feath-
ering. A pair of them makes a picture hard to surpass in attrac-
tiveness.
I have followed several pairs of birds throughout one season
and made more or less complete series of them, but the Cardinal
is the only bird I have followed season after season and through
days and weeks of unceasing labor of the hardest sort, and I have
done it in the hope that what I might write and tell would work
206
THE CARDINAL GROSBEAK
for his protection. He is our brightest, bravest bird, and not
only are field and stream enriched by his summer music, but our
winter woods in the gray days and in the biting cold resound with
his cheery whistle, and, oh, how we need every winter singer!
"And, oh, how we need every winter singer!"
207
-"What cheer !
What cheer \
That is the Cardinal Grosbeak's way,
With his sooty face and his coat so red.
Cheer! cheer!
What cheer!
Oh, all the world shall be glad to hear !
And the nightingale
Shall fail
When I burst forth with my freedorn-song
So rich and strong !"
Thompson.
Taken on February twenty-seventh,, with camera on library table, through
heavy plate glass. Robin on the bench on veranda, snow six
inches deep on the ground
CHAPTER XVI
Robin: Merula Migratoria
IN THE DOCKYARD
I learned to love the Robin when, as a child, I sat on my
father's knee and he pointed out to me the russet-breasted bird,
singing from the top of a cherry-tree during a spring shower,
and taught me to mark the accent and catch the exquisite inflec-
tion of tone as the happy bird sang, "Cheer up, dearie! Cheer up,
dearie! Cheer up! Cheer!"
He told me the story of the Robin that tried to minister to
the dying Saviour on the cross and stained its breast with sacred
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
blood, of how Christ blessed it and commissioned it ever to be the
friend of mankind, always to sing to him of good cheer. Of how
its eggs are blue-green like the sky above the sea, and how to this
day the Robin is man's best friend among the birds, because he
would scarcely have fruit crops at all, were it not for the insects
it destroys. During the story my eyes were fixed on the dark-
gray bird with its bright breast, singing through the rain the
words I could plainly distinguish, "Cheer up, dearie!"
We were taught that a blessing came to any home with the
Robins and every inducement was extended to them to build with
us. The first year in a home of my own there were no Robins. By
the second my overtures were accepted and every summer they
are sure to build about the orchard, often in the vines on the
veranda and several times where the logs cross at a corner under
a porch they have set up housekeeping.
Always we have extended to them every protection and as-
sistance in our power to give to a bird. Last year we had a Robin
in the wistaria vines on the veranda, and the birds in feeding
perched on the logs within a yard of me and flew back and forth
across me as I lay in a hammock within a few feet of them. \ An-
other pair will find their last year's nest in the mulberry west of
the cabin, only needing relining when spring comes again, and a
third can return to the elm by the back porch.\
But it is of Robins of a few years ago 01 which I tell, as these
pictures are of them. One summer nine years gone a pair of
young Robins established themselves in a plum-tree close to the
back door. They were birds that had been hatched the previous
summer, shy and nervous as birds in their first brooding are
likely to be. They attracted my attention by their timidity. I
cautioned my household to be especially careful in no way to
ROBIN
alarm them. I noticed the male bird at the well one day drinking
water from the boards.
Soon after he left I set out a dark, shallow baking-pan,
filled it with water and instructed every one going there to see
that it was freshly filled. The table crumbs were scattered by it,
and in a few days both birds drank and bathed there and came
regularly for food. They did like bread and milk and hard-
boiled egg.) It was while they were bathing and feeding about
that I especially noticed the male. He was the biggest, bright-
est, most alert and knowing-looking Robin I had ever seen, and I
had been accustomed to them almost every summer of my life.
Immediately apples and fruit were added to his diet, suet and
scraped beefsteak, grubs spaded up in the garden and anything
I thought him likely to eat that was not salty. It was amazing
the way that bird grew, and he carried food to his mate until she
was above the average Robin size.
He not only developed in body, but he grew strong in every
way, for no other Robin could come near his vocal powers. His
song was the same old song of cheer, but there was a depth of
volume, a mellowness of note, a perfection of accent that outdid
all other performers of orchard and wood. And he seemed to
know it. He would perch on a peach-tree near the plum and sing
his opening strain. Then he would pause as if considering it.
Then he would repeat it and raise a little louder, fall a shade
deeper and cling to his notes until he came to the final, always
abrupt. He would think it over again and begin anew and when
he had repeated his strain five or six times he was in a frenzy of
ecstasy with his own performance, stretching to full height, his
throat swollen, his eyes gleaming, every muscle tense, and in all
bird-land there was but a faint breath of harmony to surpass him.
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
And when the rain fell, as if he knew it a blessing and a thing for
which to be thankful, with the drops dripping from his gray coat
he lifted his golden throat and sang and sang incomparably.
In just a little while he learned that when the pump was used
the water would be fresh and cool, and so when any one started
toward it he went along and perching on a bush close by awaited
his treat. Then he learned that when the master of the house
came soon after would appear his table scraps, and so he went to
meet him and greeted his appearance with an alert, "Kip, kip,
kip! Cut, cut, cut!" Neither was he long in discovering that
when I walked about the orchard and pottered among the plants
and flowers he always got a piece of ripe apple, fresh fruit, ber-
ries or a grub or worm, and so he went with me and talked to me
all the way and flew down for what I gathered for him. They
raised two broods on the premises and when family cares were
over and the rest of the Robins and Blue-birds betook themselves
to the deep wood for vacation and moulting they went along, but
with the difference that every day, and several times a day, they
came winging in from the forest and ate and bathed at the well.
It seemed to me that they were with us two weeks after all other
Robins had migrated in the fall.
During the winter we wondered about them and speculated
on whether they would return, and if we should know them. We
were uneasy, for we had laid the foundations of a new home and
there would be workmen and noise all summer, and I sadly proph-
esied that we should lose our birds and have to begin all over
again. Late in March the Deacon called me, and, as I stepped to
the back door, before he could speak I saw the Robin at the well,
our big bright bird beyond all question. We hurried to put out
his water-plan and food, and, while the foundations of our home
were settling, he laid those of his in the plum-tree again.
s *
1 1
** fee
Q ^
03
o
4_>
ns
So
d
03
a
ROBIN
But the noise of the carpenters within a few feet of him drove
him away ; and he went down in the orchard, and set up housekeep-
ing on an apple branch that did not seem to me much farther from
the building. His music was even finer in quality, and his dispo-
sition friendlier than the year before. All the workmen about the
cabin were under special instructions concerning him and, just as
I thought his brood would come off safely, a new man was put on
the gang. I did not notice the man's arrival from the house in
which we lived on the premises, but seeing that they were running
a veranda on the new house close to the Robin's tree I hurried out
for his protection only to meet him coming for me, screaming,
frantically, "Kip, kip, kip!" and uttering sharp alarm cries.
I ran, but it was too late. His branch had brushed across the
face of the new workman as he set up a pillar, and, whirling, with
one stroke of his hatchet he slashed through a limb as thick as his
wrist and it fell to the ground, tore off the nest and broke the
eggs. Any member of that gang is qualified to tell what I say
and do when angry. Then I was sure we should lose our bird,
but he went up to the front of the lot and located thirty feet
high in a big elm and came to the well and for food as usual.
That gang was broken to birds, however, for a few days later
the foreman came to the door, grinning sheepishly, and told me
that a pair of Pigeons had built a nest at the base of a big chim-
ney, that turned and twisted its way to completion, carrying
drafts for five fireplaces, and at a last turn, just as it cleared the
attic rafters, the birds had built and laid their pair of beautiful
eggs and were brooding and he didn't know what to do.
"Let them alone," I said. "Don't allow a man to touch them."
"But we are going to shingle," he said.
"Then shingle!" I retorted. "You will be fifteen feet above
the bird."
217
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
"But the siding and shingling of the upper walls come next,"
he objected. "Shall we pen them in?"
"No, go on with your work just as if they were not there.
When the walls are inclosed there will be three windows left, and
if you come to them before the birds are gone you can leave out a
north one nearest the nest."
A day or two later one of the men told me a pair of wrens
was building over a dormer window up-stairs, and we also found
a way to give them access to their nest after the building was in-
closed ; so that two families occupied our new home before we did.
The next season, on the twenty-eighth of February, I was
amazed to hear my Robin calling me and looked out to see him on
the grape-arbor peering into a back window. It was a moderate
day, bright and sunny, but there would come a heavy freeze at any
time. It was five weeks earlier than any other Robins would ar-
rive and I did not know what to do. Food and water were hastily
set out and he ate and drank as if quite hungry. By mid-after-
noon the clouds gathered, a northern wind swept down and snow
began to fall. Poor Robin did not know what to do and we did
not know either. At last I saw him peering about an old summer
kitchen left standing on the back of the lot, and that gave me an
idea.
I hurried down, opened a small door in the loft above the door
below and shoved back on the rafters a warm box covered with an
old coat and hay. I barely had it fixed when the storm broke in
fury, and the bird went into the loft. His droppings proved next
morning that he had perched in the box as I had hoped. Two
days later his mate came and they took possession of the premises
and lived in the shed loft at night. Long before the snow was
off the ground they were pulling last year's dead dry grass-
218
ROBIN
blades from underneath it, and on the sunny side of each little
hummock working to pick off mud for plaster.
They located where the logs crossed at a corner over a back
door and built this nest. A finer piece of Robin architecture
would be hard to find. There were no twigs to be used. They
couldn't find any. All the material they had to draw on was a
very little mud and dry grass-blades. The eggs were laid and
Mother Robin was brooding and the rest of her kind had not yet
arrived. I kept out a good supply of food, as there was none for
them to find, and everything was going well.
Robin sang his heart out from the old shed roof and sunny
spots to the south, and his music never sounded so mellow and
fine as when no other birds were singing. February might bluster
and rave and March empty her watering-pot in icy showers over
us, but first in the morning and last at night we were cheered by
the voice of our loved Robin.
One morning he came on the grape-arbor in a tumult of excite-
ment and startled me by his alarm cries. I hurried out, but could
see nothing to frighten him. I looked at the nest, and his mate
was not there. For hours he kept up his flight and cries. Then
I took a step-ladder and examined the nest. The eggs were cold,
but there was no sign of an Owl or violence of any kind.
Then I started for the shed, thinking some harm might have
befallen her there, and ran across a little heap of bloody bones
and gray feathers, and our neighbor's cat slinked away licking her
chops. She had dined off a bird on our premises that money or
time never could replace. I do not care for cats.
For a week Robin mourned his mate, searched and called for
her until we were almost distracted with him, then one day his
song piped up again, for the south had sent his kind and he was;
219
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
courting. He really looked apologetic when he flew down on the
lawn with his second choice and introduced us. No wonder ! She
was a young thing, she looked bedrabbled, and she was one of
those foolish, jumpy, nervous birds that never will act with sense,
because they have none.
If ever a male tried to dominate the choice of a location it was
our Robin. I gave up long before he did. He carried grass-
blades to the old location. Oh, dear no, she never would enter a
veranda. He tried the wistaria. Mercy, she would be killed if
she went near it. He dilated on the plum-tree. Shocking! It
was entirely too close to the cabin. Then he took every tree of the
orchard and the big forest trees in turn, and carried grass-blades,
and worked and worked. But no! She was a deep-wood bird,
and she was not going to be fooled into any such location.
Sadly he and I watched her select a big hickory across the
street, and begin her nest. I honestly don't think she got much
help with it, and it is the truth that Robin's song was a failure in
comparison with his former efforts. The dear bird loved us. He
knew his home, and it seemed to me, even after the new mate was
brooding, that he bewailed his first love and his old location as he
sang. He did his duty when it came to feeding, but he always
came to me to search for food and to bathe and sing.
The next year it was on the twenty-fifth of February, three
weeks to the day before the other Robins arrived, that he an-
nounced himself at the well. Again we hurried to meet and
welcome him. No mate was with him and none arrived later.
He was still growing and was an immense fellow. Shortly
after his arrival he was attracted by a long-haired white spaniel,
a new possession of Molly-cotton's, and he seemed unable to
decide whether it was a dog or cat.
220
ROBIN
Soon I noticed him perching on the back of an oaken bench
that stood on the front veranda, its back directly across a big
six-foot-square plate-glass window. I sat at my desk a few feet
away and he sat there looking at me. He came more and more
frequently and stayed longer each time, and at last a heavy snow
fell, covering everything several inches deep. Then he adopted
the bench back and for an hour at a time would perch there.
Our movements did not worry him in the least and unless the
little dog jumped to the deep seat of the window inside he seldom
took flight except for food and water. One day he sat motionless
so long, while I waited for an idea, that one other than that for
which I waited struck me. Why not take his picture?
There sat that blessed bird, now of four long years' acquaint-
ance, through his love for and trust in us, our guest three weeks
before any of his kind had come ; and the fence in front and the
logs of the veranda railing were covered with three inches of
snow, the ground with six. Surely that was a picture to material-
ize as well as to live in the heart.
I polished the glass to the last degree inside and out, set a
camera oh the library table and focused on the bench back. The
shutter was set at a bulb exposure, the long hose attached and the
bulb laid on my desk, and time after time I made exposures on
him. I had to work against strong light, for there was the snow
outside, and his face and breast were in the shadow, but I did my
best. I had thought he remained motionless much longer than he
did, when it actually came to counting off time in seconds. I
couldn't get just as long an exposure as I wanted, he would
turn his head, ruffle his feathers a bit or draw a foot out of the
cold. But I got several good pictures that were precious to all of
us, for there was the window-seat cushion for a foreground, the
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
oak bench outside the glass for a perch and three inches of snow
in the distance on railing and fence.
And still he awaited the coming of spring and his kind, and
no mate came. One night the Killdeers struck the Limberlost at
two o'clock; the next the Larks, and a few days later came the
Robins, and again our bird went courting. For two days we
missed him, and were growing more anxious than any one who
has not had a like experience could believe possible ; then he came
home, and what a bird he brought with him! He was so proud he
almost perched on my head as he swept the length of the veranda
calling me. I turned to welcome him and there was his mate.
She was almost his size, sprucely dressed and, thank heaven!
open to conviction. I could see it in her big, wise eyes, the alert
poise of her head and her willingness to follow his choice. Be-
fore the day was over she was helping carry twigs to the wistaria,'
and in an incredibly short time she was brooding, and Robin was
back on the bench looking in the window. He seemed content
and happy as a bird could be. I guarded faithfully with him, no
accident befell the nest, and its brood got off safely. Then
they changed to a hickory in a little grove by the back porch and
nested again. That nest and its babies were so beautiful I had
to make some pictures of it. Mother Robin seemed uneasy, but
he paid no attention whatever while I worked.
They stayed late that fall, and the next spring came early as
usual and together. Again they built in the wistaria, using the
old nest for a foundation, and again they brought out a full
brood. For a second nesting they chose the top of the martin box
on the windmill and I think they were sorry, for the sparrows tor-
mented them constantly. That year Robin seemed a little slug-
gish in his flight, he sang much less and with nothing like his first
spirit and inflection. And no wonder! For five years the pre-
cious bird had homed with us. All the care we could give him
ROBIN
was freely his for the love we bore him. I often wondered what
I would have seen could I have followed him south ; but however
kind every one would be forced to be to him, I always shall believe
he loved us best on account of those early migrations, often made
alone.
The next year we had swarms of Martins on the windmill,
Bluebirds in the bird houses, Song Sparrows in the honeysuckle,
and Robins in three different trees, but tragedy or old age had
done its work, for all the spring we listened in vain for the voice
of our dear bird.
Ready for first migration
003
'See yon robin on the spray ;
Look ye how his tiny form
Swells, as when his merry lay
Gushes forth amid the storm.
Thank him for his lesson's sake,
Thank God's gentle minstrel there,
Who, when storms make others quake
Sings of days that brighter were."
Weir.
CHAPTER XVII
The Blue Jay: Cyanocitta cristata
IN THE ORCHARD
A long-time friend of mine
told me that "if I was interested
in such a blamed nuisance as a
Jay Bird there was a nest in a
grape-vine covered scrub elm in a
fence-corner on the west side of
the orchard." So I turned in at
the lane, drove past the machinery
sheds, past the garden where
squares of radishes, onions, let-
tuce, poppies and phlox were sur-
rounded by a hedge of goose-
berry and currant bushes, past the
milk yard, past the big red barn,
and down the long lane which
separated the orchard from a
wheat-field and led on to the
creek. This world has no more
beautiful spot than that orchard.
The great trees were at their
prime, there was a thick carpet of waving grass beneath them, an
arch of blue with lazy floating clouds above, and around it a
lichen- and vine-covered old snake fence, most rails of which
housed uncounted tenants.
227
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
THE JAY NEST IN THE ELM
Sky-larks from the wheat-fields hung over it and their notes
of piercing sweetness rang constantly ; Song Sparrows were pip-
ing from the fence, and bees droned over beds of calamus in one
corner and paid shorter visits to blue-eyed marys and white violets
sprinkled all along the west side, where they got the benefit of
shade and moisture from the adjoining woods. The Jay could
be heard long before he could be seen. He recognized the car-
riage as something new and sounded an alarm, until he made
every bird of the orchard nervous by the time his fence -corner was
located.
The Jays had set their nest on a limb of the elm which made a
THE BLUE JAY
substantial foundation, and studies of it could be made from a
step-ladder. All the material used was the color of the bark of
the tree and the nest was quite neat for Jays. It was shaded by
masses of wild grape-vines and Mother Jay was serenely brood-
ing when I found her. The first thing was to get the Jays accus-
tomed to my presence in the orchard, and then try for studies of
the gaudy brooding bird.
So I sat down under a rambo just across the fence from the
elm and studied Jay character. Before finishing with those birds
I found that they had character in plenty, but of a kind scarcely
compatible with the peace of other birds. Sooner than I expected,
the racket Father Jay made at my intrusion ceased, no doubt be-
cause he was too busy protecting his mate from the Hawks of the
woods to bother with me ; so I moved closer.
I had hard work to concentrate my attention on the Jays, de-
spite all a series of such well-known and characteristic birds would
mean to me, for to the Lark's call and the Sparrow's lay were
added the notes of the Killdeer down at the creek, the scream of
Ganders busy guarding their feeding flocks, the gobble of the
Turkey-cock from the dooryard, the boasting of the big Brahma
Rooster over by the barn every time a Hen came out and an-
nounced that she had laid an egg, and June at her prime was
oozing from all the earth, air and sky.
The thing which caught and fastened my attention on the
Jays was when the male suddenly screamed, "D'jay! D'jay!
D'jay !" and then gave almost an exact imitation of a Hawk's cry.
Looking up I saw one of those great birds sweep from the woods
across the orchard. Right there the Jay paid the farmer his
"keep," and in a measure atoned for his meanness to other birds;
for at his warning every chick of the Yellow Dorking catching
grasshoppers in the orchard took to cover with never a cheep;
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
"A baby thrust its head through its mother's breast feathers, laid it on the rough
edge of the nest and went to sleep"
and where a babel of bird- voices had commingled before that cry,
not a sound was heard afterward. Even the Lark hurriedly
dropped to earth and was lost in the wheat.
But Mother Jay stoutly stuck to her nest, and presently her
mate came slipping through the trees and went to her to learn if
she were all right. It did not seem possible that the strident rasp
of that warning and the tender softly-modulated rejoicing in
which he now indulged could come from the throat of the same
bird. His every action proclaimed that he had come to tell her
how he loved her and that she need never have a fear while he was
on guard. Surely that was what he told her, though to me it
sounded like, "Chinkle-choo, tinkle, tankle, tunkle! Binkle, ran-
kle, runkle! Tee, chee, twee?" Then he flew to the top of the
tallest tree of the orchard and stood guard again.
Gradually I moved up until I stood where a tripod should be
placed, and the brooding bird never flinched. Slowly and care-
230
THE BLUE JAY
fully I made my way back to the carriage and with my assistant
brought up and placed a twelve-foot step-ladder, and mounted it
with great caution, making a long wait on each step. The bird
sat so securely I decided her eggs had quickened and I climbed
down, moved the ladder nearly under her branch, mounted again
and cut away grape-vines and small twigs that would be out of
focus. That blessed Jay Bird sat there and allowed me to use the
clippers on a grape-leaf not four inches from her breast. Then
I placed the ladder just right, but it was too low, so I added a
mineral-water box and secured it with the hitching strap. Still
it was too low, so I emptied my carrying case and set it on the box
and then placed the camera on that. Then I focused and made
several studies of her. Throughout the whole proceeding, which
was not managed with my usual caution toward the last, when she
proved so bold, Mother Jay sat, her beak pointed skyward and
"The baby lifted its head, opened wide its yellow mouth and asked for food"
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
without giving any evidence of fear or indication of flight. Then,
because in field work you are never sure of, your subject from one
day to the next, I secured the nest with its v five beautiful eggs.
Next day I went back early, but a nestling had arrived ahead
of me, which explained why its mother brooded so constantly the
previous day. For several days I called on them and secured some
interesting study at each visit. Once while waiting with a set
camera and long hose in the hope of securing Father Jay feeding
his mate or nestlings, a bareheaded, yellow-mouthed baby thrust
its head from under its mother's breast, and, using the hard rough
edge of the nest for a pillow, went fast asleep. I gave the bulb
one frantic grip and hastened up the ladder to turn the plate
holder. I barely had it inserted when a wonderful thing hap-
pened. The baby lifted its head and opened wide its yellow mouth
against the breast of its mother. For an instant my fingers flew
so fast I was scarcely sure I had caught it. The shutter proved
I had and in my delight I called to my assistant, "Look here!
Quick!"
"Take it !" he shouted. "Take it !"
"Well, do you suppose I stopped to call you to look before I
did?" I questioned reproachfully. "I never have seen a picture
like that made with a camera or drawn by an artist. I truly be-
lieve I have something perfectly new."
"Smart Alec! Smart Alec! Smart Alec!" cried Father Jay,
as he came winging into the elm with a worm in his beak, which in
no way seemed to impede his utterance.
So to prove him a truthful bird I thrust another holder into
the camera and photographed him as he fed one of his nestlings
a worm while at the same time Mother Jay removed a cloaca.
In the following days I studied those Jays closely. There
I
"I
8)
THE BLUE JAY
was little new to tell. (They did eat the eggs of other small birds,
and the newly hatched young as well, and even tore up tiny nest-
lings and fed them to their babies. They did impose on smaller
birds, tormented their equals and acted the coward with larger
ones. There seemed no evenness of temperament in them. At one
minute they came slipping through the trees, cowards in hiding,
and the next gained a sudden access of courage and from the top
bough of the tallest tree in the orchard screamed defiance to all
creation, bird, beast and human. )
The male truly was,
"Mr. Blue jay full o' sass,
In them base-ball clothes o' his."
But he flew to his home base instead of sliding, for he kept his
suit immaculate. The orchard was so clean and the creek so near
he had no excuse to be otherwise, and he asked none, for twice and
three times a day he went down to the creek and bathed and
dressed every feather on him carefully, always ending by polish-
ing his beak.
I did want to make a true character-study of him alone, one
that would index him without a label; one that would show him
as he screamed Hawk-like when on guard. But I could see no
way to photograph him away from his nest, and he was not the
same bird near his cradle, when he felt weighted with family cares.
I never get anything by giving up, so I sat down under a
winesap in line with the rambo and studied the situation closely.
There I saw something. Blue Jay frequently went over in the
wheat along the fence and caught small worms and grasshop-
pers. Every time he came back from the west, he broke his long
235
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
flight by perching an instant on a tall stump in another fence-
corner surrounded by a growth of hickory and sycamore sprouts.
I set up the camera, leaned two rails against the fence on
each side of it, covered it with green leaves and attached the long
hose. The scheme worked like a charm. I got three pictures of
the full-grown Jay, a rare one with swollen throat as he screamed
defiance, seemingly in answer to the cry of an old Gander down
by the creek; one with closed beak; and one of the female, all
sharp and strong enough to enlarge beautifully.
These studies proved it quite true that most birds select a
route by which to come to and leave a nest. If you watch them you
can nearly always discover it. Sometimes the female and male
approach from different sides, each coming and leaving by its
own way. Both these Jays entered their tree by way of the
stump, coming from the west ; and by way of one certain branch
of the rambo when coming in from the orchard. Many other
birds follow this custom. The Cardinals I knew best each had a
route coming to and leaving the nest, and they never varied from
it unless some sound startled them. A pair of Baltimore Ori-
oles I knew well both used the same route in approach and
leaving.
On the morning the oldest Jay baby first investigated the
apple-tree, I posed him, with his mates, on a maple limb and took
their pictures. Some young birds are worse subjects, and some
are better, but I seldom have made a finer baby picture. Their
colors were similar to their elders, not quite so strong as they
would be after a first moulting, and their feather-markings were
the same. Their beaks always were wide open, and how Father
Jay worked! Every few minutes he came slipping into the elm
and fed a nestling, and then left in a great hurry to get another
236
THE BLUE JAY
lunch ; but he always paused on a near-by tree and called back to
Mother Jay, "Fill the kittle! Fill the kittle! Fill the tea-kittle!"
My feelings concerning the Jay are varied. I admit all his
bad traits, but there is in his favor the fact that he so perfectly
imitates the cries of several birds of prey that he saves many
of the woodland folk from Hawks; whether as many as he de-
stroys, I have no way to judge, but I think so. ( He is for ever
guarding the woods, and every bird of field and forest knows his
signals and heeds them, to that I certainly can testify; for, lying
in hiding, I repeatedly have seen birds take to cover at his warn-
ing when it took me some time to discover what was coming ; but
always he was a true prophet, for something came, either a hun-
ter, Hawk, Owl, Crow, squirrel, snake, or, near houses, some-
times a hungry caty
These alarm cries are not pleasant, but that the wood-folk
heed them proves that they appreciate and are grateful for them.
He is a spot of brilliant color about our homes in winter when
birds are scarce, and his "D'jay, D'jay!" cry is a cheery and wel-
come sound, proving as it does that we are not altogether de-
serted. In courting he carries on a long, low conversation well
down in his throat and his tones are sweet and musical. Not only
do they use this sweet throaty murmuring in pairs when courting,
but throughout the season they congregate in small flocks and
have a Jay party.
There is one big maple on the banks of the Wabash, beneath
which I have caught a few black bass, where the Jays for years
have gathered at intervals for one of their tree parties. At least
a half-dozen collect in the tree and perch near together. One be-
gins to chatter, jabber, chuckle and murmur. Another joins him,
then the whole company, then one continues alone, several more
239
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
join in, and again the whole flock unite in a sweet, inquiring,
throaty vocalizing that is music in which I delight. The Brown
Thrush chants exquisitely from a thorn opposite ; the Oriole flings
golden notes on wing ; and the clear, strong whistle of the Cardi-
nal carries beautifully with the water; but the undertones of the
Jays are a minor melody which fills in the pauses of these star
performers with constant harmony.
YOUNG JAY
240
CHAPTER XVIII
The Humming-bird: Trochilus Colubris
ABOUT THE CABIN
When Mr. McCollum sent
me word that one of his sons had
located the nest of a Humming-
bird, I traveled the same road I
had gone over a little earlier in
the season to the haunt of the
Rail. The fact that all nature
had advanced a few weeks nearer
fruition made the trip none the
less delightful. We found the
location in deep forest in a small
ironwood tree and the nest so lit-
tle that only by a miracle had any
one ever seen it at all.
The tiny cradle was built of
lichens lined with chestnut-col-
ored down fine as silk, saddled on
a limb about twice the thickness
of a lead-pencil, and bound fast
with cobwebs. A silver dollar laid on top would have sheltered it
perfectly during a rainstorm. There were no eggs, and as it had
been discovered ten days before and the tree bent to examine it
while the birds had been building, I concluded they had abandoned
it. I am sure it was completed outside, but I do not know that it
'It soon revived until it could
cling to a dead twig
on the bush"
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
was finished within. Because it was the daintiest piece of bird ar-
chitecture of my experience a picture was made of it even if it
was empty.
But I have had three real experiences with Humming-birds.
The first, when one of them mistook the front window of the
cabin for a pool of water, and in trying to fly across it struck
the glass full force and fell stunned. I heard the blow, hastened
to pick up the bird, and while trying to think what could be done
for it I saw that it was reviving and soon it flew away.
Whenever Molly-cotton enters the cabin alone, simultane-
ously with the setting of a foot on the threshold she always sings
out, "Mama!" One inflection she gives that call means, "Are
you at home?" Another, "May I go to Bertha's?" and yet a third,
which sends me flying at the first tone of it, means a heartbreak.
This day came the trouble call, sharply defined as the alarm-cry
of my Robin. Molly-cotton stood in the doorway with big ex-
cited eyes shining from a background of flushed cheeks and flying
hair. On her outstretched palm lay a ruby-throated Humming-
bird, both wings wide spread, but making no attempt to fly.
"Doctor it!" she demanded.
Is there anything harder for a mother than falling short of
what her child expects of her? I did not know a thing to do for
a sick Humming-bird, those daintiest creatures of nectar and sun-
shine, but as I looked into Molly-cotton's distressed and eager
face, I knew I could not tell her so. Of course I realized there
would come the inevitable hour when I would not be able to fur-
nish "balm for every wound," but I could not fail her just then,
so I temporized.
"Where did you get it? Do you know what is the trouble
with it?"
"I gave a boy my soda dime for it and it's hurt with a sling-
shot."
244
THE HUMMING-BIRD
"Hurt with a sling-shot!" I cried. "He'd better be punished
instead of paid for that trick."
"But, mama," said Molly-cotton, "the boy that had it wasn't
the boy that hurt it, that's why I bought it; and," she added
with characteristic justice, "the boy that hurt it ran. He was
awful sorry. He just shot. He didn't ever think he could hit it.
Really, it was an accident!"
"And that is the way almost every song-bird that is shot meets
its fate," I retorted hotly. "Men always have to try if they can
hit a thing, and when a bird as brilliant as a butterfly or a flower
falls they are surprised and so sorry that it is dead. They only
wanted to see if they could hit it. It is the old excuse."
Molly-cotton advanced a step and held out the bird. "Well,
mama!" she said. "Aren't you going to do something?"
"Take it into the conservatory," I answered, striving to collect
my wits. First aid to an injured Humming-bird ! What would it
be? Of course its back was almost or quite broken, from those
wide-spread motionless wings, the heavy breathing and the eyes
protruding with pain. From a box of abandoned nests a large
one was selected with some fine twigs in the bottom, and the bird
with all care transferred to it.
Wounded people are always thirsty, so I proposed to give it
a drink of sweetened water. Molly-cotton ran for a teaspoon
and the sugar, and we held a few drops of sweetened water to
the bird's bill. At the touch of it the little creature drank and
drank and ran its slender thread-like tongue over the bowl of the
spoon, searching for particles of sugar. Every hour that after-
noon it was given more. When Molly-cotton came from school
she carried it honeysuckle and trumpet-creeper blooms, and when
either honey from the flowers or sweetened water was put against
its beak it ate and drank.
I confidently expected that it would be dead by morning, but
245
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
instead it had folded its wings and before the day was over was
clinging to the twigs with its feet. Then I took courage and went
to work in earnest. I put it in a cool shaded place and added
hard-boiled egg thinned almost to liquid to its diet, and by the
third morning it could walk and had climbed up on the edge of the
nest. When I saw that, "It is going to get well, sure as fate!" I
cried to Molly-cotton.
"It's going to get well! It's going to get well!" exulted the
Girlie, dancing for joy.
Straightway she exacted a promise that she should be the one
to open the door and give it freedom, which surely was her right.
Then she thought of another world to conquer.
The night before Bob had brought me a little reddish-brown
mother bat, weighted with four babies clinging to her body, and
I was to photograph them that day and put them back where they
had been before night. Molly-cotton thought the bat should be
fed also. She argued that if she had been free the night before
her mate would have fed her and with those four babies to care
for she must be almost famished. So I was called upon, in all
confidence, to tell what bats ate.
I told her we could not get for a bat, in daytime, what it
found on wing at night, but I thought it could do no possible
hurt, so I suggested fresh, warm milk. Molly-cotton fished a
nickel from her purse and sped to a neighbor's for milk, and I
whittled out a tiny wooden paddle. We dipped this into the milk
and held it to the bat's nose. She instantly seized it between her
sharp little teeth and sucked and gnawed at it. She would not let
go, so we took the Humming-bird's spoon and dropped milk a
drop at a time on the paddle. That little bat turned up her head
and drank and drank like a famished creature.
We had a splendid chance to study her face. It was shaped
like a young pig's, only flatter. She had a small, round, flat nose
246
THE HUMMING-BIRD
like a pig's, a face very similar, and ears round like a mouse's,
instead of pointed. Her fur was silken fine and of beautiful
color. Each of the four babies was a miniature of the mother.
When she was quite satisfied she let go the paddle and went to
sleep. But until her picture was taken and she was returned to
freedom Molly-cotton fed her milk, which she took eagerly at
every offering.
Just when we were congratulating ourselves that the Hum-
ming-bird was saved came disaster. I do not know why I was so
thoughtless. That ability to climb to the edge of the nest should
have warned me. The bird tried its first flight and fell from the
shelf, on which the nest was placed, five feet to the cement floor
and died in a few seconds.
Our next Humming-bird experience was short. I met Mr.
Hale on the way to the post-office. "Hold fast all I give you,"
he said, reaching out a hand. What I got was a Humming-bird
lying on its back, its eyes closed, its feet drawn up among its
feathers, to all appearances dead.
"Found that among the sweet peas this morning," he said.
"It forgot to migrate and took a chill." For it was October and
the night had been heavy with frost.
I cupped both hands about the bird and on reaching the cabin
could see that it was alive. I gradually warmed it until it opened
its eyes. Then I told Molly-cotton to bring me four grains
(granules) of granulated sugar, with one drop of tincture of
ginger and five of water added to them. We held this mixture
to the bird's bill and it drank feebly. In a little while it began to
ruffle its feathers and shiver.
Then I sent Molly-cotton to carry my camera to the south
side of the cabin, where she had a LaFrance rosebush in full
bloom that we had covered during the night. I followed with the
bird. It soon revived until it could cling to a dead twig on the
2*7
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
bush, though its tail was tucked, its feathers ruffled and it looked
chilly. We were running no risks, so we took its picture. I
should have taken the first one while it lay on its back, to all ap-
pearances a dead bird.
I put in a new plate, and when all was ready Molly-cotton
gave the bird another drink, a big generous one. The air was
rapidly warming with the rising sun and the bird now revived
to the point of feeling disheveled, for it ruffled its feathers, shook
them and laid them so they looked quite sleek. The little thing
felt very spruce indeed, considering a few moments before, so
I made a second exposure. While I was hustling to get in a plate
for a third the bird hopped to a twig above it, gave its tail and
wings a flirt and with a whizz darted over the nearest trees and in
a bee-line, as far as we could follow him, sailed for the south.
THE NEST OF A HUMMING-BIRD
w
CHAPTER XIX
The Quail: Colinus Virginianus
ON THE GROUND
With the combined meadows,
wheat-fields and orchards of the
Stanley and Aspy farms, as well
as a mile-stretch of grassy river-
bank from which to choose, Mrs.
Bob White paid Mr. Bob Black
the compliment of coming up
within a rod of his engine-house,
two yards from his foot-path and
selecting her building site. When
Bob pointed out the nest to me I
was amazed.
The churning of the great en-
gine that furnished power to
pump many wells, some of them
a half-mile away, shook the earth
under her location. The exhaust
pipe shrieked until close to it the explosions were deafening. All
day long the rod-lines rattled and steady streams of oil poured
into the big tanks. Bob, with pointer always to heel, passed over
the path many times a day. I traversed it daily, and there was a
steady flow of children's feet rushing down to the river to play
and back to Bob to borrow fish-lines, corks, hooks, knives, any-
thing a boy could use along the water.
251
NEST OF QUAIL
Containing seventeen eggs
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
There came the Quail to brood. I wonder why. Did she like
company? Did she prefer to keep house where she could hear
sounds and see people? Had she lingered about the place until
she had lost all fear of it and hoped in the noise and proximity to
people to find protection from her natural enemies, the snake,
squirrel and Owl?
Bob never knew the bird was there until Gypsy made a point
at her, and then she was brooding on seventeen eggs. The nest
was constructed on the ground. The builder had slipped through
the long hair-like grasses until she found a slight depression
sheltered by a small spray of wild grape-vine. There she sat
down and turned around until she worked out a flat bowl-shaped
place, from which she picked away the blades of green grass,
using the dead ones for lining.- The taller grasses closed over her
and the grape-vine screened her from the sight of the man, but
not from the scent of the dog.
Her nest was a beauty. I like to think she placed it there
because she had put herself under Bob's protection. This idea of
shy wood-things creeping up to him, because they knew he was
their friend and champion, makes me proud that he is my friend
also. Those seventeen eggs were freshly laid, bluish white and
sharply pointed at one end. The picture they made was a novelty
on account of their number.
After we had secured a fair study of the nest we waited for
the young. We knew our ornithology well enough to be aware
that there was small hope of getting them, for a Quail lays all her
eggs before she begins to brood, so that the young emerge at once
and travel before their down is quite dry. While we waited for
these nestlings I had rare luck in securing two good studies of
grown Quail over in the Limberlost, so I did not bother these old
ones.
THE QUAIL
We did not know just how many of the twenty-three days of
incubation had passed before Gypsy found the nest, but when we
thought the time for the brood to emerge was close I was on hand
and ready. A three days' wait made me careless, and the follow-
ing day I did not reach the lease until nine o'clock. The tailpiece
of this chapter shows what I got for my pains. Not much, you
think?
That one little picture for ever settles two questions long in
dispute concerning the Quail. Many writers will contend that
young Quail remain in the nest some time after they emerge.
They go before they are thoroughly dry and feed themselves
from the start. The proud father, with head feathers flared to
a crest and hackle bristling, leads the way, the young follow,
the mother brings up the rear. When either old bird sights a
morsel fit for the young to eat it calls the chicks about it and with
its bill indicates what is to be eaten, often breaking it up so that
as many as possible shall get a bite. The young had left this nest
so soon after hatching that the shells were warm, and flies and
ants were gathering over them, attracted by tiny bloodvessels in
the lining.
/Also these shells proved beyond question that the mother had
gone over each egg at time for emergence and with her sharp,
strong bill cut the shell and lining in halves, releasing the young.
I had been contradicted so frequently on this statement that I
had quit making it, until this nest of shells was found. They
clearly show that the work is done from the outside, as a deep rim
is bent in, the lining cut instead of torn, and each shell divided
exactly in halves.)
There was pleasure in proving this point long defended, but
I bewailed those babies. So to comfort me Bob said we would
search along the river and perhaps we could find them. Neither
253
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
of us had much hope, but there were so many other things to find
we were sure not to waste time, so we set out. And we did find
things, for all nature was very busy that morning. We took a
rare butterfly, located a Cuckoo nest, a Woodpecker tree, a Song
Sparrow's bush, and found a fine specimen of cardinal flower,
which is rare in this locality.
On the way back to the carriage, from under our very feet
Mother Quail rose with a whir, and there was a breath of faint
peeps. We were in the thick of the seventeen youngsters. I
dropped to my knees and began combing the grass with my fin-
gers. The first sweep brought up a tiny ball of fluff with a black
striped back and the second another. By that time Bob had one,
then I had another; my hands were full of Quail now and no
place to put them. Bob came up with a second chick and what to
do with them was a serious problem, for their little legs flew.
Just then Bob sighted another baby and in desperation
stuffed the two he held into the front of his flannel shirt. I
passed over mine and in they went also. Then we hunted Quail
by hand. The sun was hot and it was warm work, but we had
eight before we quit and that was all we felt we could manage
at once. What to do with them became the next question.
The grass was high and there was no chance where we were.
I suggested taking them back to the nest. But that was in high
grass also. Bob had a better plan. He knew where there had
been a Quail-nest in an adjoining wheat-field, beside a big stone.
We could have a better opportunity there, and one egg remained
in the nest. Also it was close to the carriage and would save mov-
ing the cameras far, so I welcomed the suggestion.
I set up the camera, focused on the nest, bent back the wheat,
left the unhatched egg as it lay and announced I was ready.
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THE QUAIL
Bob produced the Quail. I held them until he found all of them
and then we placed them in the nest. Over the stone and into the
wheat they darted like weasels. Two were lost completely before
we knew it. Again and again we tried, and there wasn't the ghost
of a chance to make an exposure, for our hands would have been
the whole picture. At last we were worn out completely. We had
just three of our birds left. We carefully put them down in the
nest. Bob on one side, I on the other; he holding the babies, I
ready to squeeze the bulb or stop one if it ran my way.
"Now let me try," I said.
Bob lifted his hands. Over the stone for the wheat raced the
birds. All I knew was that all of them were on the stone when I
snapped. Development of the plate proved that Bob had thrust
out his hand to stop them and I had taken it, also, although the
motion was so quick that neither of us knew it. We both were
worn out and made no attempt to try again. I was accustomed to
being warm, tired, wet and muddy, but a vague unusual dis-
comfort was stealing over me as I slipped the slide in the holder
and packed the camera. What ailed me? I actually was in dis-
tress. I glanced at Bob. His face and arms were like red flannel.
Was he suffering, too? He didn't look happy. I had a right to
sacrifice myself for my work if I chose, but I had no right to
punish Bob. I studied him closer.
A million tiny red lice were swarming up his neck and over
his face and arms. Only a quarter of a million fell to my share
and drove me frantic. I climbed into the carriage and almost
killed Patience racing for the cabin. Glancing back I saw Bob
come from the power-house with a bundle and run to beat the
pointer for the river. I stopped in passing that afternoon to see
if he were alive and found him smoking his pipe in a hammock
255
WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS
on the river bank. He said in fifteen minutes after I left, the old
Quail were about whistling and calling until they collected their
entire brood.
I was sorry to miss that. I think a Quail call, the Bob White
whistle, beautiful. It is mellow, musical, inflected to a nicety,
and it is always so cheerful and happy. I like Quail love-mak-
ing, too; those soft, tender little wisps of sound, those creeps
and peeps and gently-murmured things. In fact, the only note
a Quail makes which I don't like is his alarm-cry, and I dislike to
hear that from any bird.
I am sorry our legislators do not put Quail among song birds.
Their plumage is much handsomer than some of our choicest
singers; they are graceful and elegant on foot, and their music
every one knows and loves. Only a note shorter and only a degree
less melodious than the Lark, which is of finer flavor as food ; yet
the soul sickens at the thought of such sacrilege in the case of the
Lark, why not the Quail also?
I love these two birds and I always think of them together.
They use the breast of earth in common in the business of living.
The notes of their songs are syllabicated the clearest and enunci-
ated the purest of any of our singers. But the Lark is the bird of
Heaven, the Quail is of the very earth. Soaring above cloud, the
Lark seems to catch the breath of divine inspiration in his notes
that enthralls and uplifts the spirit. Keeping close to the dark
earth, the Quail draws from it strength and courage, which so
tinctures his tones as to renew hope and cheer in our tired hearts
and set them singing with him.
"Bob, Bob White! Bob, Bob White!" How beautifully it
pipes up from meadow-grass and clover! How it softens and
quivers with the passion of mating! How it swells and rings
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THE QUAIL
when flung as a challenge to a rival from stumps and fences!
How it comes sweeping in certain, steady tones on the breast of
the river! What would summer be to lovers of field and stream
without it! How little children everywhere love and try to
imitate it! Sip nectar of fruit and honey of flower that you
may trill even sweeter, O ye favorites of protecting fortune,
or soon this plucky little gamester of the fields will win enough
hearts with his cheery whistle to place himself among you !
GENE STRATTON-PORTER.
Limberlost Cabin, March 17, 1906.
Proof that Mother Quail cuts the shells of her eggs in halves and releases all
of her young at one time
257
