LABORATORY OF ORNITHOLOGY LIBRARY SSX SS, \ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Hopewell House, where the Little Bird Woman began homing with the birds HOMING WITH THE BIRDS The History of a Lifetime of Personal Experience With the Birds BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER GARDEN City New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1920 \ g S ON city Ee os «x COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN Thanks are due ‘The Youth’s Companion” for the privilege of reproducing parts of two articles, published by them HOMING WITH THE BIRDS Fences the birds love To DOROTHY AND NELSON A bit of Limberlost in early Spring NATURE BOOKS NATURE STORIES Tur Sone or THE CARDINAL FRECKLES Frienps In FeatHers A Giru or THE LivBERLost Birps or THE BIBLE At tHE Foot or THE Rainsow Music or THE WILD Tuer Harvester Morus or tHe Luweer.ost Lapp Morning Face Micuar. O’Hattoran Homine Wira tae Birps A Daveuter or THE Lanp CHAPTER II. Til. IV. VI. VIL. VIII. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. CONTENTS Earnine A TITLE A Girt oF THE Birps . BEcoMING AN ILLUSTRATOR Tue Lure or Fietp Work UnusuaL Experiences AFIELD UnusuaL Experiences AFIELD UnusuaL Experiences AFIELD Unusuau Experiences AFIELD Rare Pictures AFIELD Rare Pictures AFIELD. Learnine Birp LancuacsE Waat tue Birps Say anp SInG . Wuat THE Birps Say snp SING . Brirp CourtsHIr . Nest Bur.pine How tue Birps Know Suaty We Pay Our Dest? 1x PAGE Q1 35 57 71 125 143 161 181 197 215 239 259 271 307 340 The sparrow hath found her an house” LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Hopewell House . . . . 2... il The Little Bird Woman Chicken Hawk Dining on Rabbit esse See 5 Mark Stratton . .. erat ae oO A Screech Owl ofthe Orchard . . . . . .) .) The Majorand Molly Cotton. . . . . . . . 84 MrsBobsBlack ev «@ “i oi. & Wa: S & = +62 ASwamp BirdHome. ....... . .. + 54 Limberlost Cabin, North . . . . . . . . . 56 Raymond Miller . . . . .... . O62 Limberlost Cabin, South . . . . . we ..t«CSB Coming Through theSwamp. . . . . . . . Male Indigo Finch Brooding . . . . . . .) .) OT Nestling Cardinal Grosbeak . . . . . . . . 8! Molly Cotton Raised the Young. . . . . . . 86 The Robin That Builtona Hay Rake . . . . .~ 90 The Robin of the Flood . . . . . . . . 92 xi Xi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Male Oriole That Hanged Himself Drunken Cedar Waxwing . Carousal of Butterflies and Moths Richmond Robin from New York Shitepoke Nest Reconstructed by Cuckoo . Screech Owl That Followed Call Notes . Snake of the Water Hyacinths Male Cardinal Guarding His Nest Scientific Study of Young Vulture Male Robin Caring for Young Female Robin Regurgitating Berries Male Kingbird Posing . 3k Blue Heron Having “a Frog in His Throat” Brooding Jay with Sleeping Young . Brooding Jay with Hungry Young Laughing Kingfisher “Hark the Caw-Bird!” Cardinal Grosbeak Singing Wren Singing i Jay Bird Calling Cardinal Courtship. Bridge Under Which Swallows Nest Every: Year . Paxon, My Limberlost Guide Cardinal Building Her Nest : Paxon Working on Nest in the Limberlost . Kingfisher Head, Showing Scarred Beak. PAGE 96 109 111 124 133 136 142 160 173 176 177 180 183 191 191 196 207 214 Q17 238 258 262 267 270 Q77 283 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Nest of Rail a ek Wood Robin Nest of Red Roots . Kingbird Nest Decorated with Cotton . Nests of Various Birds Built Together 3 Nest of Wood Robin Draped with Snake Skin . Group of Nests . . Dove’s Nest in Apple Tree Wren Nest Having Nine Eggs Archaeopteryx . : Oriole Nest Having a Window Reverse of Same Nest, Showing Entrance Double Vireo Nest . A Late Hummingbird . Hummingbird Ready to Migrate Crow Stealing Lens. Robin That Migrated Early . The Grebe That Will Not Fly Caterpillar of Regalis Moth Oriole Feeding Young . Blue Bird Feeding Young . Wren Carrying Dragonfly . Regalis Moth Egg Clusters Female Regalis Moth . ‘ Two Cowbirds and One Warbler . Pair of Young Cowbirds Cowbird Egg in Sparrow Nest Xill PAGE 288 293 293 294 296 299 302 302 306 314 315 318 321 321 323 325 329 348 352 357 358 360 362 368 369 370 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Cowbird Egg in Finch Nest . . . eo 0 Red-Eyed Vireo Nest with Eggs of Cowbird . . . 370 Domestic Henj 3; 3. 40% Yeo go ee Hal ee 875 INTRODUCTION In THE fall of 1916, while visiting at the home of Mr. F. N. Doubleday, a member of the house which publishes most of my books, in conversation with my very dear friend Mrs. Neltje De Graff Double- day, the author of a number of invaluable books on birds and flowers, she began to question me about unusual experiences I encountered afield. I told her some of the things here recorded, the queerest and most peculiar things that I had seen during a lifetime of personal contact with the birds. In the course of that intimate conversation, Mrs. Doubleday conceived and planned this book, feel- ing—I hope not mistakenly—that these intimate personal experiences with birds, which so in- tensely interested her, would not fail to be of equal interest to other bird lovers and protectors. She felt that these records faithfully and simply set down would add very largely to the sum of human achievement in a scientific estimate of the habits and characteristics of birds. So, I have written for any one who is interested, these sketches of personal experience, as I outlined them to such a devoted lover and champion of the birds as Neltje Blanchan. HOMING WITH THE BIRDS The Little Bird Woman Homing With the Birds CHAPTER I EARNING A TITLE LMOST my first distinct memory is con- A nected with a bird. I found a woodpecker lying on the grass beneath a cherry tree. I could not understand why he did not fly with the birds flocking over the fruit; I spread his wings and tossed him through the air, but he only fell to the ground. Then I noticed that his kind were all flying from the tree tops and high places, so I carried him upstairs and launched him from a window. He fell as before. Then I thought perhaps he was hungry; I took him to the garden, pried open his beak, and stuffed him with green gooseberries, but still he would not fly. In complete discouragement, I sat on the front steps with the bird in my lap, wondering what I could do to help him. My father passed, so I began asking questions. That morning I learned a new word; I had not known “dead” before. Father very carefully explained that he never permitted robins, orioles, or any song bird 3 4 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS to be killed, but that woodpeckers made no music, while they carried away distressingly large quanti- ties of fruit. It was then that I made my first business proposition: ‘If you will make the boys stop shooting woodpeckers, I will not eat another cherry. The birds may have all of mine.” My father said that was a bargain. I never before noticed that cherries were so big, so red, so tempting, while it seemed that all of our family, helpers, and friends spent most of their time offer- ing them tome. Our cook almost broke my heart by baking a little cherry pie in a scalloped tart- pan for me. I could not say a word, but I put my hands behind me and backed away from that awful temptation with tears in my eyes. At that point my mother intervened. She said she had decided that we had cherries enough for all of our needs and for the birds as well, so she gave me the pie. It is probable that this small sacrifice on my part set me to watching and thinking about the birds, which every day flashed their bright colours and sang their unceasing songs all over and around us. For years one pair of wrens homed over the kitchen door, the entrance to their dwelling being a knot hole in the upper casing. While the mother bird brooded the father frequently spent an hour at a time, often in the rain, on a wooden acorn ornamenting the top of the pump on our back porch, becoming so tame that he frequently Chicken hawk dining on a young rabbit—not my hawk, but one similar in size and kind 6 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS brushed us with his wings in going back and forth to his door, sometimes alighting on our heads. In his behalf I spent much time sweeping up the débris dropped by the pair on the back porch while building their nest, because my mother threatened to nail shut the opening; but as she never did, I strongly suspect that she had no real intention of so doing. She was a great friend of a pair of hummingbirds that almost always nested in a honeysuckle over her bedroom window. One day, the front door having been left open, the male bird flew into the room and did not seem able to find his way out again. When he had circled the ceiling, striking his head until the feathers were worn away and tiny touches of red began to show on the paper, my mother could endure no more; so she sum- moned help and finally succeeded in capturing the bird, which she allowed me to hold in my hands while she showed me how small its body was, how tiny its feet, how fine its bill. She had much trouble with the swifts that built in the chimney to a huge fireplace in our living room. A number of these birds would build their nests near the top of this chimney every season, beginning a raucous chatter very early in the morning, constantly dropping twigs and clay over the andirons and into the fireplace; while, either from imperfect construction or through heavy rains loosening the fastenings, there never EARNING A TITLE 7 was a season that one or more nests did not fall into the fireplace, frequently carrying young birds almost ready for flight with them. They were very seldom killed in the fall, but they swept down soot, and flopped around in the ashes to the vexa- tion of Mother’s housewifely soul. The old birds often fell with the nests or followed down the chimney and escaped into the room; so they, too, decorated the ceiling with their blood, if they fell when we chanced to be away from home and they were not released immediately. Often, if the nest were not completely shattered, I gathered up the pieces, wired them back into shape to the best of my ability, climbed from an upstairs window to the roof of the back part of the house, which was only one story, and from there to the roof of the second story. By using pieces of shingle and bits of wire, I replaced the nests inside the chimney, then put the little birds back into them. It was a frequent prophecy with the family that I should break my neck in this undertaking. My experience with birds began as soon as I could walk, at my home, Hopewell Farm, in Wa- bash County, Indiana. As I recall our farm at that time, it was of unusual beauty, a perfect in- land location for birds. The public highway ran north and south through the middle of the land. On the west of the road were a number of culti- vated fields and one large tract of native timber. On the east of the road lay the residence, sur- 8 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS rounded by a large, tree-filled dooryard, south of which was a garden, bright with flowers and shrubs. Behind the dooryard spread a very large orchard filled with apple trees and bordered with peach trees on three sides, with rare peach, plum, and pear trees on the fourth. A lane ran from the barnyard to a woods pasture where much of the heavy timber had been cut away leaving only a few large trees interspersed with berry bushes and thickets of wild rose and elder. Three streams of running water crossed the place, one flowing through the woods and rounding the foot of a steep hill south of the residence. A smaller one flowed in a parallel direction on the north, both emptying into a larger stream coming from the north through our meadow and joining the Wabash River several miles south of us. The land was new, a large part of it having been cleared and put into cultivation by my father. All of the wild growth was much ranker and more luxuriant than at the present time, while this was true also of everything we cultivated. My mother used the natural fertilizer from the poultry house and stable in her garden; the cleanings from the barn were scattered over the fields; but no other fertilizer ever was talked of at that time. The flowers and all growth were more luxuriant than now because the soil was young, the tem- perature more equable. Summer always brought heavy rains every few days; long periods of heat EARNING A TITLE 9 and drought and cyclones or high, raging winds were unknown. As I recall, there were small flocks of birds for every one that is seen at the pres- ent time. We were taught to love the song birds for their beauty, their music, and the likeness of their life processes to ours. We were told that we must not harm a bird’s nest because it would break the little mother bird’s heart; but no one ever particularly impressed it upon us to protect them because the berry and fruit crops would fail if we did not. My father was the only person I ever heard mention the subject in my childhood. The birds’ work as insect exterminators was not generally realized or taught at that time, while the spraying of fruit trees was unknown. When the trees had been pruned and the trunks given a thorough coat of whitewash, everything that was known to do for their care had been done; and so bounteous and fine were the fruit crops in my father’s orchard that the whitewash was not used there, but I did see it in neighbouring orchards and dooryards. I distinctly remember the swarms of birds that flocked over the cherry trees when the fruit was ripe, and the Babel of song that went up from the orchard, while the field birds were so numerous that we were always allowed to take the eggs from any quail nest we found, provided we first used the precaution of raking one egg from the nest with a long stick to see to what stage of incubation 10 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS it had progressed. If the quail had not finished laying or had brooded only a few hours, we carried the eggs to the house, put them in cold water, boiled them for twelve minutes, let them cool in the water, and divided them among the children, as one of the greatest treats possible. No other egg I ever have tasted was so fine in grain and delicate in flavour. Despite the destruction we must have wrought in a season, the quail were so numerous that it was the custom to build traps of long, fine pieces of wood, covered with leaves, and set with a trigger, baited with grain. A trail of grain led to these traps, where from half a dozen up to twelve and more of the birds frequently imprisoned themselves at one time. The advan- tage over shooting was that the birds were in perfect condition when taken. Now, this seems a dreadful thing to have done, but at that time quail were so plentiful we never could distinguish any diminution in their numbers, while rabbits and squirrels were pests, which we had to fight to protect our fruit trees and for our comfort. After the cold weather set in at Thanksgiving time, we always had a large supply of frozen quail and rabbits hanging in the smokehouse for a treat upon the arrival of unexpected guests. The only game bird, the protection of which I ever heard mentioned in my childhood, was the wild pigeon. My father never would allow our boys to go to the pigeon roosts, baffle the birds EARNING A TITLE 11 with the light of lanterns, club them, and carry them away by bagfuls, as some of our neigh- bours did. He said that such proceedings would eventually end in the extermination of the birds; that God gave us these creatures to enjoy but not to destroy; so he always cautioned all of us, either in hunting or fishing, to be content with a “‘moder- ate share.” The prophecy he then made concern- ing the wild pigeons has found its fulfillment in my day, for a heavy reward has been offered for a number of years past for even one specimen of this beautiful bird; the metallic lustre of whose plumage made a gleam of light when on wing, and whose whistling flight was familiar music in my childhood. These birds now seem to have joined the extinct starlings of Ile de la Réunion. All of the trees and most of the bushes surround- ing the house were filled with bird nests. A privet bush in one corner of the garden always had at least one nest, while the grape arbour and berry bushes sheltered many. There were little cups of hair even among the currant and gooseberry bushes. Every bird that ever homed in an orchard in the Central States was to be found in the apple trees, in a big heap of trimmings at the back of the orchard, in the hollow rails of the fence, or in the grassy corners of our orchard. I think too that every bird of the fields was to be found in our meadow, our clover fields, and in the fence corners, while the big trees of the woods pasture 12 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS and of the deep woods had their share of crows, hawks, owls; while twenty years after we moved away, a pair of golden eagles nested in the woods pasture, and were shot because they were carrying off small pigs and lambs. The female of this pair is my only mounted bird. From my earliest recollection I was the friend and devoted champion of every bird that nested in the garden, on the fences, on the ground, in the bushes, in the dooryard, or in the orchard trees. From breakfast until dinner and from dinner until supper, almost my entire day was spent in making the rounds of these nests, watching the birds while they built, brooded, or fed their young, championing their cause against other children, cats, snakes, red squirrels, or larger animals such as skunks and foxes, which were so numerous that we held organized fox-chases for their extermina- tion. I was always on terms of the greatest intimacy with a pewee that built on a rafter supporting the roof of a log pig-pen. It was very easy to climb from a rail fence to the roof, then by working loose a clapboard near the nest I could watch the birds’ daily life and make friends with them. I do not recall one instance during my childhood when I ever intruded myself into the affairs of any bird in such a manner as to cause it to desert its nest location. I always approached by slow degrees, remained motionless a long EARNING A TITLE 13 time, and did the birds no harm whatever; so they very soon accepted me as a part of their daily life. One of the heartbreaks of my childhood oc- curred when one of our hired men forgot his in- structions and put up the third bar of an opening in one of the west field fences, which I had asked Father to have him leave down, because in the open- ing chiselled out to hold the bar was the nest of a chippy having four exquisite, speckled eggs. When I found this bar in place and could not re- move it, I hurried to my father in a tumult of © grief and anger which very nearly resulted in the dismissal of the man; but it was too late to save the bird and her nest. I can not recall how many robin nests I located in a season, but there were two locations in which the robins built where access to them was espe- cially convenient. One was a catalpa tree in the northwest corner of our dooryard, to the branches of which I could easily step from the front picket fence. In my morning rounds I always climbed to visit this robin, sitting on a branch talking to the brooding mother bird, almost always carrying her a worm or a berry in my apron pocket as a friendship offering. The other location was the early harvest apple tree of our orchard. This tree was especially designed by nature for the convenience of children in climbing. In the first place the tree grew at an angle, and in the second 14 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS it had a growth as large as a good-sized butter bowl on the top side which was in the proper posi- tion to make a first step in the ascent of the tree. We used to start a few rods away on the run, take this first step, which brought us in reach of the nearest branch, and from there we went up the tree almost as swiftly as we ran along the path. ‘I can not recall one spring of my childhood in which the robins did not have at least one nest in this tree. Coming from it early one summer morning I heard the crack of my father’s rifle in the dooryard, then I saw a big bird whirling to earth in the milk yard, which adjoined the garden on one side, the orchard on the other. I saw my father start toward the bird, so as fast as possible I sped after him, my bare feet making no sound on the hard, worn path. A large chicken hawk was sitting back on his tail, one wing stiffly extended, the tip hanging broken and bleeding, while in the bird’s eyes there was a look of commingled pain, fear, and regal defiance that drove me out ef my senses. My father grasped his rifle by the barrel. As the butt came whirling around, I sprang before him and sheltered the hawk with my body, the gun whizzing past my head so close that the rush of air fanned my face. My father dragged me away. “Are you mad?” he cried. | “I barely missed braming you!” EARNING A TITLE 15 “Td rather you did hit me,” I answered, “than to have you strike a bird when its eyes are like that! Oh, Father, please don’t kill him! He never can fly again. Give him to me! Do please give him to me!” “Keep back!’ cried my father. “He will tear your face!” Father was an ordained minister, better versed in Biblical history than any other man I ever have known intimately. To him, “hawk” meant “Ayit.” This old Hebrew word, literally trans- lated, means “‘to tear and scratch the face.” That is exactly what a hawk meant to my father; the word and bird were synonymous. To me, it meant something very different, because I had watched this pair of kingly birds carry heavy sticks and limbs, with which they had built a nest in a big oak tree overhanging a bank of the brook that ran through our meadow. The structure was bigger than a bushel basket, but no one else of our family knew about it, because it was well screened by the leaves of the tree. It was part of my self- imposed, daily task to gather up from the bank skeletons of any wild bird, rabbit, or domestic fowl, which the hawks had dropped there, and consign them to the current so that the telltale evidence of their location was quickly carried down stream. I envied these birds their power to soar in the face of the wind, to ride with the stiff gale of a beating storm, or to hang motionless as if frozen in air, 16 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS according to their will, as I envied nothing else on earth. I had haunted the region of this nest so long that I knew it contained a mother bird and a pair of young big enough to look down at me over the edge of the nest, while I was quite sure that the birds were as well acquainted with me as I was with them. So, for the first time in my life, I contradicted my father. “He won't!” I cried. “‘This bird knows me. He knows I would not hurt him. Oh, do please give him to me!” To prove my assertion, I twisted from my father’s grasp and laid my hands on the bird. The hawk huddled against me for protection. In a choice between a towering man who threatened with a rifle and the familiar figure of a child who offered protection, is it any wonder that the bird preferred the child? My father gazed at us in amazement. “God knows I do not understand you,” he said in all reverence. “Keep the bird, if you think you can!” After my father had gone, the hawk began to revive from the shock. He was not so friendly as I had hoped he would be. In fact, he showed de- cided signs of wanting to scratch and bite. I did not know how to begin caring for him. My first thought was that he should be in a shady place, where he could have something to perch upon. I EARNING A TITLE 17 hunted a long stick and by patient manceuvring drove him to the woodhouse, where he climbed to the highest part of the corded wood. There he sat in sullen suffering for the remainder of the day. The next morning I went to him very early. I thought that after a day and a night with a broken wing and without food or drink he would surely allow me to care for him. I cautiously approached him with a basin of water. He drew back as far as he could crowd into a corner. I had always heard that wounded soldiers were frantic for water, so I patiently held the basin before the bird, dab- bling and splashing to show him that it contained water. Suddenly, he thrust in his beak and drank like a famished creature. Then I offered him some scraped meat, which he finally took from the end of a stick. The flies began to cluster over the broken wing, and I knew that that must be stopped; so with one clip of the sheep shears I cut through the skin and muscle that held the dangling tip. The bird uttered a shrill scream, but he did not attack me. Then I poured cold water over the hurt wing, which was kept stiffly extended, until it was washed clean. From the time I put the cold water on, the bird ceased even to threaten me. He seemed to realize that his pain was relieved. Then I went into the house to ask my mother if there was not something in her medicine chest that would help heal the wound and keep away the flies. She thought that there was, and as 18 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS she measured out a white powder for me, she smiled and said: ‘“‘What a little bird woman you are!” In two weeks, the hawk was as well as he ever could be. By that time he would take food from my fingers and allow me to do anything I chose for him. Inside of a month he followed me through the dooryard, woodyard, and garden much like a dog, although he was a very awkward walker, prob- ably having had less use for his feet in walking than in carrying and holding prey. There were times when birds of his kind, often his mate without doubt, swept low above us. Then he would beat his wings and try frantically to fly. Some- times he followed them with his despairing eyes as they sailed from sight, and sent after them a scream that never failed to set my heart aching. At such times I could scarcely forgive my father for having deprived such a royal bird of his high estate. Although he never said so, I. believe from after events that my father had the same feeling. By this time I had become known in the family as the unfailing friend of the birds. Every un- fortunate bird caught in a reaper, wounded by having been stepped on by stock, or that had escaped from the attack of a cat, a red squirrel, or a snake, was brought to me for treatment. No one told me how to care for them. I was so inti- mate with each different kind that when a member EARNING A TITLE 19 of any bird family was brought to me I tried to do for it what seemed to be the right thing for a bird of its species. J think that in doctoring them I copied very closely the methods of my mother in treating our hurts. Mark STRATTON Who gave me a wonderful gift 20 CHAPTER II A Girt oF THE Brirps p \ HE following year, one morning in early spring, my father called me to him to ask whether I should like to have as a gift the most beautiful thing ever made by man. Of course I eagerly assured him that I should like it very much indeed. Then he told me that he had something for me even finer and more precious than anything man ever had made or ever could make: a gift straight from the hands of the Creator. He then proceeded formally to present me with the personal and indisputable ownership of each bird of every description that made its home on his land. Undoubtedly the completeness of this gift was influenced by his experience with the hawk. Before that time if he had been making such a gift I think he undoubtedly would have reserved the right to exterminate the hawks that preyed on the fields and poultry, the owls that infested the barns and chicken houses, and very probably, too, the woodpeckers, which seemed to take even more of the cherries than did the robins, orioles, or tanagers. That he made the gift complete, with no reserva- tions, proved that he had learned to regard my a1 22 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS regard for the laws of nature, which, even when very young, I seemed dimly to realize and stoutly to maintain; for the worst hawk or owl was quite as dear to me and fully as interesting as the most exquisitely coloured and ecstatic singer. He must have realized that the gift would not be perfect to me if there were exemptions, so he gave me for my very own not only the birds of free, wild flight with flaming colour and thrilling song, with nests of wonder, jewels of eggs, and queer little babies, but also the high flying, wide winged denizens of the big woods, which homed in hollow trees and on large branches, far removed from any per- sonal contact I might ever hope to have with them. Such is the natural greed of human nature that even while he was talking to me I was making a flashing mental inventory of my property, for now I owned the hummingbirds, dressed in green satin with ruby jewels on their throats; the plucky little brown wren that sang by the hour to his mate from the top of the pump, even in a hard rain; the green warbler, nesting in a magnificent speci- men of wild sweetbriar beside the back porch; and the song sparrow in the ground cedar beside the fence. The bluebirds, with their breasts of earth’s brown and their backs of Heaven’s deepest blue; the robin, the rain song of which my father loved more than the notes of any other bird, be- longed to me. The flaming ‘cardinal and _ his A GIFT OF THE BIRDS 23 Quaker mate, keeping house on a flat limb within ten feet of our front door, were mine; and every bird of the black silk throng that lived in the top branches of four big evergreens in front of our home was mine. The oriole, spilling notes of mol- ten sweetness, as it shot like a ray of detached sunshine to its nest in the chestnut tree across the road was mine; while down beside the north creek, on a top branch of a willow sheltering an immense bed of blue calamus, nested a blood-red tanager, with black velvet wings. Every person visiting our family was taken to see him. With what pride I contemplated my next personally conducted trip to that tree to show the bird of blood-red! Now I owned the pewees in their marvellous little nest under the pig-pen roof, the song sparrow and the indigo finches of the privet bush at the foot of the garden, the swifts of our living room chimney, the swallows on the barn rafters, and the martins under the eaves. When it came to the orchard with its fruit trees and its shrub-filled snake fence corners of bloom and berries, I could not even begin to enumerate the vireos and bluebirds, the cat- birds, robins, jays, and thrushes. Mine, too, was the friendly, delicately coloured cuckoo, slipping through the shrub-filled fence corners and bushes of the woods pasture, with his never failing pre- diction of rain. J remember that in the first moment of tumultuous joy, one thought was to hope that a storm would come soon so that I 24 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS might remark in careless, proprietary tones: “‘ Hear my cuckoo calling for rain!” In my enumeration, I included the queer little stilt-legged killdeer that had a nest on the creek bank of the meadow. I was on terms of such intimacy with her during the last few days of her brooding that she would take food from my fingers and even allow me to stroke her wing. There was another pair of hawks nesting in the big oak over- hanging the brook a short distance farther in its course to the south; while I was as proud to possess the owls, from every little brown screecher in a hol- low apple tree of the orchard to the great horned hooter of the big woods, as I was the finest song and game birds. In the greed of my small soul I saw myself ordering my brothers and sisters never again to take the eggs from any quail nest of the fence corners. I do not recall that I made a virtuous resolve at that minute not to take any more my- self, but I do remember that the next time I found a nest of eggs it occurred to me that if I left them to hatch I should have that many more birds, so I never robbed another nest. In that hour I was almost dazed with the wonder and the marvel of my gift, and to-day, after a lifetime of experience among the birds, this gift seems even more wonder- ’ ful than it did then. That same day the search began for new treas- ures. No queen on her throne, I am sure, ever felt so rich or so proud as the little girl who owned “T was as proud to possess the owls, from every little brown screecher in a hollow tree of the orchard to the great horned . o J ” hooter of the big woods, as I was the finest song and game birds 26 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS every bird on her father’s land. Ever since I could remember I had loved, to the best of my ability, protected, and doctored the birds, but I never before had realized that they were quite so wonderful. From that hour in which they became my personal property every bird of them took on new beauty of colouring, new grace in flight, and previously unnoted sweetness of song. So with the natural acquisitiveness of human nature I began a systematic search to increase my possessions. I climbed every tree in the dooryard and looked over the branches carefully. Nota sweet scented shrub, a honeysuckle, a lilac, a syringa, a rose bush, or a savin escaped my exploring eyes. Then I proceeded to the garden, and one by one I searched the currant, gooseberry, blackberry, and raspberry bushes, the grape arbour, the vines clambering over the fence, and the trees and shrubs of its corners. Then I went over each vine-covered section of the fence enclosing the dooryard, hunting for nests set flat on the crosspieces. I almost tore the hair from my head, while I did tear my apron to pieces and scratched my face, hands, and feet to bleeding in my minute exploration of the big berry patch east of the dooryard, where the Lawton blackberries grew high above my head. Then I extended my search to every corner of the fence enclosing the orchard and took its dozens of trees one at a time, climbing those that I could and standing motionless under those that I could not, intently watching until Iam A GIFT OF THE BIRDS 27 sure that few, if any, nests were overlooked. After that I gave the buggy-shed, the corn cribs, the pig- pens, and the barn a careful examination and then followed the lane fences to the woods pasture in one direction and to the woods in the other. Lastly, I went with my brothers to the fields, and while they cultivated the crops, I searched the enclosing snake fences, with their corner triangles of green, filled with bushes and trees. It is my firm conviction that at that time there were, at the most conserva- tive estimate, fifteen birds to every one that can be located in an equally propitious place and the same amount of territory to-day. Before I had finished my inventory I had so many nests that it was mani- festly impossible for me to visit all of them in a day; so I selected sixty of those, which were most conveniently located and belonged to the rarest and most beautiful birds, giving them undivided attention and contenting myself with being able to point out, describe, and boast about the re- mainder. As always ownership brought its cares. At once an unusual sense of watchfulness developed. No landholder was ever more eager to add to his acres than I was to increase my flock of birds. My first act was to beg my mother for an old tea- spoon that I might have to keep. A green warbler in the gooseberry bushes, when stepping into her nest, had pierced the shell of an egg with the sharp nail of one of her toes. If the broken egg 28 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS began to leak, it would stick to and soil the others and the nest. I was afraid to put my fingers into the small hair-lined cup, so I secured the spoon for this purpose and afterward always carried it in my apron pocket. Life became one round of battles with cats, snakes, and red squirrels, while crows and jays were not to be trusted near the nests and the young of other birds. It was a long, tedious task to make friends with the builders of each of the chosen nests, for I was forced to approach very slowly and with extreme caution, imitating the call note of the bird the best I could; and when I had gone so near a nest that the brooding mother began to plaster her feathers flat to her body, to draw up her wings, the light of fear began to shine in her beady eyes, and she started to rise to her feet, it was time for me to pause until she regained her confidence and again settled to brooding. Almost always at this point a few more steps could be taken. I usually contented myself with leaving a little of the food that the bird being approached liked best to eat. On going back the following day, it would be possible to advance with confi- dence as far as I had gone the day before; from there on I would be forced again to work my way slowly and cautiously toward the nest. In this manner gradually the confidence of the mothers could be won so completely that it was permissible to touch them while they brooded. Some of the friendliest A GIFT OF THE BIRDS 29 would look at me steadily for a long time and then, with a dart so quick that I had to watch myself lest I shrink back and frighten them, they would snatch the worm or berry held before them. At that time I sincerely thought that it was my work to help those birds feed their young. Half of my breakfast slipped into my apron pockets, while I worked like the proverbial beaver searching the bushes for bugs, hunting worms on the cab- bages in the garden, digging them from the earth, and gathering berries and soft fruits. I carried with me grain from the bins in the barns, pounded fine with the hammer and soaked until it was soft for the young of the grain and seed eaters. Few mothers were so careful about the food they fed their children. I gave those nestlings only one bite at a time, and never a morsel of anything until I had watched what it was that the old birds were giving them. Before the nesting season was over they allowed me to take the most wonderful liber- ties with them. Warblers, Phoebes, sparrows, and finches swarmed all over me, perching indis- criminately on my head; shoulders, and hands, while I stood beside their nests, feeding their young. When it was decided that I had reached a suit- able age to attend a city school, I stoutly rebelled, capitulating only when Father said the most precious of my birds might go with me. These, of course, were unfortunates that had fallen from 30 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS their nests in high trees, where I could not replace them, those orphaned by an accident or some prowling creature, while sometimes a nest of young birds was brought me by a neighbour who thought he was doing me a kindness; so I left the country in company with nine birds, none smaller than a grosbeak, that had been raised by hand. I had to arrange my school day so that there was a morning hour in which to clean the cages, change sand, scrape perches, scour bath-tubs, and cook food. My especial favourite among my pets was a brown thrasher named Peter, because he had constantly called: ‘‘Pe-ter, Pe-ter” in the dis- tressful days when he was missing his mother and growing accustomed to my longer intervals be- tween feedings. One of my brothers had found him helpless and dying beside a country road and had picked him up and put him in his pocket for me. When he was given into my care, he was half-starved. After a few minutes, he opened his bill for food, and in a short time spent in getting acquainted we became the greatest friends. He grew to be a strong, fine, male bird, and in the spring of his second year developed a remarkably sweet voice, with which he imitated the song of every bird that could be heard around our house. He also made excursions into improvisations, which I could not recognize as familiar bird notes. One warm night of summer my father suggested that Peter would be more comfortable if left on the A GIFT OF THE BIRDS 31 veranda. That was a mistake. Either a screech owl or a rat attacked him in the night and broke the tip of one wing. In the morning Peter hopped from his open door and showed me his wing. We did all we could to comfort each other. I doctored him as in childhood I had doctored the hawk. I never shall forget the fortitude with which he bore the amputation, not struggling nor making the slightest effort to get away from me, although he cried pitifully. The wing soon healed, but Peter had lost his equilibrium. He never again could fly. Always before, he had had the freedom of the premises. Now he was forced to ride on my shoulder when I went out into the yard, or to hop after me. ‘There was one particular apple tree of our dooryard in which there was a perch where I could learn a lesson much more easily than in school. While I studied, Peter hopped from branch to branch through the tree. One day under pressure of an especially difficult Latin translation I forgot to take Peter with me to the apple tree. A maid in the house saw that he was fretting to be with me, so she put him outside the door. I heard his call, realized he was coming, and climbed down as speedily as possible, but before I could reach him a prowling cat darted from under a shed and caught him. Powerless to give him any aid, I listened to his last, pitiful calls. With one exception he was the most interesting bird I ever raised by hand. 32 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS I still had left in my family a splendid cardinal that I think must surely have belonged to the bigger, brighter red birds of the West, a pair of our common Indiana cardinals, and a pair of rose- breasted grosbeaks with their family of four youngsters. The rose-breasted grosbeaks had built a nest in a tall maple tree growing between our sidewalk and the street. A night of high wind and driving rain broke from the tree the branch on which they had located and dropped it in our yard. From an upstairs window I noticed it early in the morning, my attention having been attracted by the distressing calls of the old birds. There was scarcely a trace of the nest to be found as it had been torn to pieces in the parting of the branches, but I did find every one of the four babies. They were too small for my ministrations, so I repaired the nest, put it in a cage, and set it beside the branch. In a short time the mother bird entered to feed the young. The door was held open with a long piece of string and as soon as she entered it closed. Then she was removed to a larger cage in the house. Inside of half an hour the father bird was captured in the same way. Then the cage was put in a partially darkened room with plenty of food and the parents allowed to take care of their young, which they did with scarcely a sign of protest. I was not particularly attached to this family. I merely helped them out of their predicament the best I knew how and when the A GIFT OF THE BIRDS 33 young ones were old enough to become self- supporting all of them were given their freedom. During my last two years in school the work be- came so rigorous that I could not care for my pets and make a grade that would pass me, so reluc- tantly and not without many tears all of them were trained to become self-supporting and given their freedom. The Major and Molly Cotton 34 CHAPTER III BEcoMING AN ILLUSTRATOR FTER three years of birdless estate I was A so homesick for my former friends that I determined again to surround myself with a bevy of my favourite birds. Having established a home of my own one of the first considerations that came to me was how to fill the houses I still carried with me. The solution of my problem was under way when a niece of mine sent me a green linnet, produced by interbreeding with the canary tribe, a Harz mountain singer carefully trained. My first thought was to secure a mate for him. Through inquiry a neighbour was found who wanted to sell a hen canary having pure yellow colour with white beak and feet, brilliant black eyes, not a discoverable feather off colour. I immediately paid a rather exorbitant price for her and introduced her to my linnet. Theirs was a case of love at first sight. The nest was made by me from a collar box, a piece of white flannel, and some cotton padding. While the birds were busy with the affairs of housekeeping I had a house built for them at a factory in Cincinnati. It was six feet high, four long and three wide, the 35 36 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS sides enamelled white with gold decorations, and had a roof of moss green. This pair of birds ac- complished three nestings their first season. The initial brood contained six sturdy youngsters, the second five, and the third four, so that I had seventeen birds for my new house at the end of the first summer. The young birds were of won- derful colour, more than half of them sweet singers. Some of them were green like their father, some pure gold like their mother, some very largely gold with only a touch of green, while others had the green in predominance with beautiful markings of yellow; others had their colour evenly divided between green and yellow, and two of the brood were a solid colour of pure warm dusty tan, a shade I never before nor since saw produced in the feathering of acanary. Unfortunately both of these were hens. With the last brood, in flying from her nest in haste, the mother bird dragged one of the young to the edge of the nest from which he fell to the gravel below. I found him in the morning and thought him dead. Picking him up I started toward the door to toss him out. While on the way a member of the family asked me a question so I stood for a few minutes talking. As I again turned toward the door there was a slight movement on the palm of my hand. I looked down to see that the tiny bare bird with his eyes not yet open was responding to warmth, so instead of throwing him away I re- BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR 37 turned him to the nest. Before the day was over he was lifting his head and taking food with the other young. When the brood left the nest I dis- covered that this bird had a leg out of joint at the socket. He could fly and hop around the cage as well as the others but the injured leg was longer, and while in use, it could be seen that the bird was a cripple. At once my family began to urge that the bird be removed from the cage and put out of what they termed “its misery.”” I watched the bird closely but could discover no sign that he was suf- fering any pain and only very slight inconvenience. In plumage, he was almost the clear yellow of his mother with a touch of green making a perfect cap jockily placed on his head at a very saucy angle, which gave him a particularly pert, ingratiating appearance. In size he was the largest bird of the brood and soon the largest in the cage. This may have been accounted for by the fact that he did not take as much exercise as the other birds, seldom leaving the top perch except for food or water, while when feeding he ate longer. Before any other of the young birds had begun to think of music, this one was trying to sing. In a year he had his father’s whole repertoire, to which he added robin, song sparrow, and indigo finch notes that he learned from outdoor birds flocking over the conservatory, inside which his house stood. When he was two years old, with his feathers settled tight, his head tipped at an impertinent angle, 38 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS his beak wide open, he lifted his voice above those of his brothers and father, and sang the most exquisite songs I ever heard from the throat of a canary. He had especial opportunities to learn music from a distant relative, the indigo finch whose nest was in a honeysuckle a few yards from the conservatory. This bird, from the top of a mulberry even closer, sang his full strain at the rate of five times a minute for an hour at a time several hours during a day, making by reliable mathematical calculation over two thousand daily renderings of his song for the greater part of a month. No wonder the canaries learned his notes —the master singer especially. To me he was the dearest bird in the Cabin, while everyone ad- mitted that he was the finest singer; but his broken leg was a daily annoyance to a member of my family. One day, during my absence, a woman, whose name and residence I could never learn, called at the Cabin begging to be sold a singer in order that she might raise young birds with a hen canary she had, and my best beloved bird was easily caught and given to her, which was a small heartbreak from which I never have recovered. When the birds of this cage were asleep in a row, filling the highest perch, with their heads tucked under their wings, and their feathers fluffed in cold weather, they looked exactly like gaudy swan’s down powder puffs. Shortly after this, a relative of my husband, BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR — 39 who had been United States consul to Mexico, came home bringing me a wonderfully trained black-headed grosbeak which he had gotten from an Indian bird dealer in the market at Saltillo. This bird was black over the head and back, black on his wings and tail with touches of white, wear- ing a vest of warm, rotten apple brown. He was a magnificent singer, having sweeter notes than his rose-breasted cousin, and delivering them with more joyous spontaneity than the oriole. His call note was loud, clear, and sweet. He had an individual manner in rendering his stage perform- ances which was as new to me as his person; for he was “‘a stranger in a strange land.” He sang his full strain at the top of his voice. Then he dropped to a minor tone and sang exactly the same song, note for note; and then, with distended throat and beak so nearly closed that it could barely be seen to move, he gave the same performance pianissimo. Every note was given its full value but many times diminished to such mere threads and whispers of sound that I had to stand near him and listen in- tently to verify the notes. His strain was two or three times as long and much sweeter than that of his cousins the evening or rose-breasted grosbeak. As I did not know the history of his youth it ap- pealed to me that he might have been taken from a nest when young and reared in the home of a professional bird-catcher, where he learned the notes that made up his repertoire from old birds 40 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS of different kinds. This same bird dealer sold to the wife of the consul a gay assortment of ex- quisitely warbling little birds of blood-red, deep and pale blue, pink, yellow, rose, and purple. She released them in her conservatory with delight, but after their first bath they all proved to be pale yellow canaries gorgeously coloured with Diamond Dyes, which were being introduced into Mexico at that time. My grosbeak had a tender, loving disposition. He was always delighted to leave his cage and perch on my fingers or have the freedom of the room where the flowers were growing, but he was a shameless glutton. Undoubtedly he had been fed by hand when young and never had gotten over the habit, while his diet included almost every- thing. His gross beak proclaimed him a seed eater, but he flopped his wings and cried vocifer- ously at the sight of fruit, berries, or vegeta- bles, and almost “‘lost his head’”’ over a luscious worm, Every time I passed the cage he would spread his wings, open his mouth and cry for food like a nestling. He would fly from the perch to the floor of the cage and hop back and forth the length of it, begging for food while I was in sight. Be- cause of this I formed the habit of finding, every time I went to the garden or among the outside flowers, a spider, a worm, or a juicy berry for him before I returned; so he grew to enormous size, BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR = 41 having oily, glossy plumage, while he was almost a constant singer. At about this time, a sister living in Michigan sent me a big African parrot. He was a gaudy creature, having a head and shoulders of the love- liest dark bronzy green. The extreme top of his head was pale blue and light yellow, his breast delicate light green, while his extended wings had feathers of blood-red, deep blue, yellow, and green. He was a fluent talker and a great musi- cian, having been carefully trained to whistle a number of tunes that had been taught him with a flute. He was a fine addition to my bird family. When the grosbeak began to sing the canaries joined in; then the Major drowned all of them by his rendition in clear high notes of ‘The Washing- ton Post’? march, which was a favourite perform- ance; but, as in the case of the grosbeak, he could raise the notes high above the piano or flute and still keep them all of perfect tone, accurate measure and inflection, retaining pure sweetness. That spring, merely to test his marksmanship, one of my neighbours severed the tiny twigs from which depended the nest of an oriole. In the long fall an unhatched egg and the youngest bird were destroyed, the two remaining seeming perfect and healthy. They were very young and required deli- cate attention and frequent feeding. I knew that in care of the woman of that family, the birds would be dead shortly; so I gave her a dollar for the 42 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS little birds and undertook to raise them myself. When they were full grown I gave one of them toa friend, who seemed extremely eager to have it. The one that I kept had his living room in a big brass house, which was very attractive and of which he seemed to be extremely proud. The greater part of the day his door was open so he did as he pleased about remaining in his house. He was the bird I had in mind when I wrote previously that “with one exception” the brown thrasher was the best loved of all the birds I ever raised by hand. There is only one adjective that will adequately describe my oriole, and that is the much abused “charming.” I always gave any bird I reared or accepted from a friend exquisite care. Their cages shone, their perches were clean, their baths were spotless, their food was freshly prepared every morning, they were given only as much as they would consume at a feeding, and the remainder was kept in the refrigerator until later in the day. All of my birds were larger and of richer plumage than those of their species in freedom. My oriole had black parts of jetty blackness; his yellow plumage was a clear warm orange yellow; his eyes were like black diamonds; while, from having been brought up by hand and associated with me and daily receiving almost hourly atten- tion, he had developed practically a reasoning, intelligent brain. He loved to fly around the room and perch on my head or shoulder. He liked BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR = 43 to sleep on the back of my chair when I was sewing. He stuck his sharp, polished bill into almost every affair of my day. Very early in his career he began picking up any bit of thread or wrapping cord he could find in the conservatory or when he flew through the rooms, carrying these to his cage and spending hours weaving them back and forth between the wires. When I saw how busily he worked at this and how much pleasure he seemed to get from it I gave him lengths of brightly col- oured woolen yarn and string to see what he would do with them. One of the biggest fallacies ever published by any nature writer is the statement that male song birds do not work in the building of nests. The general rule is that they carry material assiduously, frequently entering the nest in the course of con- struction to try to help with the building. This, the female almost always resents. I have watched the construction of a number of oriole nests from start to finish. With one in particular I spent three full days, so I know that half of the weav- ing and more than half of the material carrying was the work of the male. My oriole was par- ticularly expert in weaving. One morning I cut pieces of loosely twisted coarse, stiff twine into lengths, pulling it apart and loosely rolling it into a ball about the size of a pint cup, and gave it to him to play with. He immediately stuck his head into the centre of the ball, worked out a 44 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS hollow carefully, and began shaping around him the structure of an oriole’s hammock for its nest exactly as the female bird weaves in freedom. He loved water, often bathing two or three times during the day. He was a practical joker, one of his tricks being to pick up any large pebble from the sand in the bottom of his cage, carry it to the highest perch, and leaning over, drop it in his bath to make the water splash. So long as I watched him and laughed at him, he would keep this up. If I was reading and did not notice his performance, he would resort to some other means of attracting my attention. He was a fine musi- cian and kept the house filled with joyous oriole notes all day. In those days I was experiencing constant strug- gle to find an outlet for the tumult in my being. On a fourth of a square in a village not a mile from the Limberlost, we laid the foundations of a home. The lot was covered with several tall for- est trees, an old orchard of eight apple trees, scat- tering peach, pear, plum, and cherry, and had been thickly planted years before with bushes, vines, and flowers. Here, my husband built the log cabin of my dreams for me. During my early days in that Cabin I went through more agony than should fall to the lot of the average seeker after a form of self-expression. Because I dearly loved music I thought that might be my medium. Never was any one more BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR = 45 mistaken, but I had to try several things before finding out what I had been born todo. While the musical fever endured I practised for hours every day on the piano or violin. Soon I noticed when playing that the birds set up a perfect Babel of song. If the music was fast and loud, they sang in imitation. If my notes were soft and low, they warbled deep in distended throats. The parrot especially enjoyed whistling to the piano or violin but he disliked the song of the other birds and frequently broke off his most charming strain in order to scream harshly, “Shut up!” at the canaries. Having been taught to whistle with a flute the parrot soon became expert, while the other birds seemed to follow his lead. All of them did their best work with simple old melodies, played slowly. “‘The Carnival of Venice”? seemed to be the most suitable, and the greatest favourite with allof them. After along course of special training, feeling ready to perform before an audience, I grew vainglorious and wrote to my father to come and be convinced of the wonder I was per- forming. Then one day my little daughter caught her apron on a nail and tore a long straight slit down it; so I drew the sewing machine from a closet and started to mend the garment. With the exception of the parrot, every one of my birds tuned up and sang “The Carnival of Venice” to the accompani- . ment of the sewing machine quite as well as they 46 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS ever had sung with the violin or piano, so my con- cert never really materialized before an audience. At this time I had also a pair of cardinals that had come around the house in a half-starved con- dition during a severe winter of unusual cold and deep snow, so that I enticed them inside in order to feed and take care of them. By spring they had grown sotamethat I added them to my bird friends, but among all of them the oriole was my constant companion, my best loved bird. One day, for- getting that he was free, I stepped from a door and was slow about closing the screen behind me. A burst of jubilant notes above me first told me what I had done. I stood heartsick and watched my bird circle up and up, higher than I ever had seen any wild oriole fly. Then he slowly descended in curves and alighted on my head. I walked in- doors, carrying him with me, but the mischief had been done. His exuberant joy in that short flight had been too apparent. From that day, I began training him to become self-supporting, and soon I gave him and the cardinals their free- dom. That same summer I lost the grosbeak through fatty degeneration. I discovered one morning that he was sick, and taking him from his cage for an examination, I was surprised at the size and weight of his body in my hand; while on blowing apart his feathers to discover the condition of his BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR = 47 ‘as a small roll of clover butter. He died before the day was over, for no cause whatever except that he was so fat that he could not live. His was a marked case of having been “killed by kind- ness.” Because he was a rare bird with us I sent his body to a taxidermist, who afterwards told me that the bird was so fat, his skin so thin and tender, he could mount it only by preparing a form and transferring to it little pieces not so large as his thumb nail at a time, so his work did not last long. The more I studied and thought, the more clearly I saw, no matter how much I enjoyed having my home full of birds, I had no right to keep wild creatures in captivity; so I never replaced any of these birds. Long before I owned a camera or wrote a word on any nature subject my bird family was reduced to the parrot and canaries. I no longer needed to keep my home full of birds in order to enjoy all of the pleasure that might be had from them, for God had taught me that my gift endured, that all of the birds afield were mine, and that the only way to know and to study them rightly was as they lived, in the abandonment of perfect freedom. Several years later I began writing on natural history subjects, and immediately the question of illustration arose. The editors who had ac- cepted my work began to send me drawings of mounted birds, articulated with wire, stuffed with excelsior, and posed by men. It requires no great 48 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS stretch of the imagination to understand how those pictures repelled me. I was_ horrified. Editors insisted upon illustration; I refused to allow the pictures they could provide to be in- corporated in my text; so we were at a stand- still. The parrot solved my problem. He was an especial favourite with my husband, beside whose place at the dining table the bird frequently perched on the back of a low chair turned toward the table. In solemn and dignified silence the Major daintily ate food from a plate set before him. . There were times when he grew tired of crackers and coffee, and saw something else on the table that he preferred. Then he would try to make us understand what he wanted. Once, after completely losing patience with our stupidity, he climbed from his chair to the table and with flattened feathers and in tremulous haste lest he be rebuked for this breach of discipline before he reached the object of his quest, he made his way among the dishes and snatched up a small green onion. Hurrying back to his chair he greedily ate three fourths of the hot vegetable. Several months later he displayed an unusual desire for something and we could not imagine what he wanted. Finally I suggested that it might be an oyster. He caught one from a fork and went hurrying back and forth across his chair, his wings half-lifted, fussing as he was accustomed to over something he had secured BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR 49 which he felt might be taken from him. He looked so comical that all of us laughed. “Behold the antipodes!”’ I exclaimed. “Africa and Baltimore Bay! How I wish I had a camera!” That was shortly before Christmas more than twenty years ago. A look not intended for me flashed across the table between my husband and daughter, but I saw it. Christmas brought me-a small hand camera. Of course among the first pictures I attempted was one of the Major. That was a most amusing picture, sadly undertimed and overdeveloped; but before the weak streaky print left its first bath I was shouting through the Cabin like an insane creature, for although the picture contained almost every defect of a be- ginner’s work I could see clearly that it was a perfectly natural, correct reproduction of a living bird. Ihad found my medium! I could illustrate what I wrote myself! I knew that with patient work the camera could soon be mastered in detail. How to make friends with the birds I knew better than any other one thing on earth. Immediately I ordered a supply of chemicals from one of the leading drug houses of the country, laid in a heavy stock of print paper, and began work in the most intense earnestness. By spring I could make a technically perfect reproduction of the Major or any flower in the conservatory, while I even succeeded in photographing the fish in the aquarium, and, through the window glass, 50 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS I made several really remarkable pictures of birds perching or feeding on the sills outside. That spring, with the first dove of March, I went afield. I spent over a thousand dollars in equip- ment. All of the money accumulated from nature articles and a few stories went to pay for four cameras, each adapted to a different branch of outdoor work, also a small wagonload of field paraphernalia. I transformed the downstairs bath- room into a dark-room and used the kitchen sink for plate and print washing. These arrangements were extremely inconvenient and uncomfortabie, as shutting out all light excluded air in summer and heat in winter; but I soon made prints which brought a prominent man of the Eastman Kodak Company to investigate my methods. He frankly admitted that their experts at the factory were not making as good prints on their paper as some I had sentthem. I owned a Kodak, but asa rule all of my best negatives were on plates exposed incameras. I did not subject the gentleman to the shock of show- ing him that my dark-room was the family bath, my washing tanks the turkey and meat platters in the kitchen sink. I first mastered the mechanism of my equipment, studied good works on photog- raphy and experimented with compounding chem- icals and developing and fixing plates, and then the difficult processes of print making. At this time I was doing all of the work in the thirteen- room Cabin, except the washing, and was making, BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR 51 most of the clothing worn by my daughter; so I was what might have been considered a busy person. My first feeling on going afield was one of amaze- ment at what my early days among the birds had taught me. Then I was merely amusing myself, following inborn tendencies. Now I learned with every approach to the home of a bird that I was using knowledge acquired in childhood. I knew what location each bird would choose for her nest, how she would build it, brood, and care for her young. When I wanted the picture of any particu- lar bird I knew exactly where to search for its nest, so no time was wasted. When I found a nest, all that was necessary was to set up a camera before it, focus it sharply, cover the camera to the lens with a green cloth or a few twigs, then repeat the methods of childhood. The birds had not changed in the slightest; nor had I. By using tact, patience, and plain common sense, and draw- ing on former experience, in three days or less I was on a working basis with any nest of birds I ever attempted to cultivate, so that I could secure poses of the old birds performing every action of their lives anywhere in the locality of their nests. I have reproduced birds in fear, anger, greed, pride, surprise, in full tide of song, while dressing their plumage, taking a sun bath, courting, brood- ing, and carrying food to their young. My procedure was merely to turn child’s play into The best friend I ever had in field work, Mr. Bob Black, operating oul leases beside the Wabash River, spent his spare tume locating nests for me. 52 BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR 53 woman’s work. My methods must be followed by any one who desires to accustom wild creatures to a state of fellowship with humanity. In order to do this it is necessary to move slowly, to live among the birds until one thoroughly understands their characteristics and habits, to remain near their locations until they have become sc accus- tomed to one as a part of their daily life that they will be perfectly natural in one’s presence. The best friend I ever had in field work, Mr. Bob Black, an oilman operating leases beside the Wa- bash River, spent his spare time for several seasons locating nests for me. When I was extremely rushed, during the brooding months of May and June especially, by copying my methods he fre- quently trained families of birds for me so perfectly that they would endure my presence close enough to a nest to allow me to begin work with brooding pictures at the time of my first visit. He used a soap box set on stakes for a camera, his coat for a focusing cloth. With these he imitated my ap- proach and work so closely that the birds paid no attention to me when I began operations. Each student of bird life will rate the intelligence of the birds according to his ability to make friends with feathered creatures, to insinuate himself into their home life and to learn their secrets for himself. People who have not had much centact with them are the ones who insist that birds act solely upon instinct and are very wild. I have been 54 A Swamp bird home BECOMING AN ILLUSTRATOR 55 upon terms of close intimacy with the home life of birds ever since I began to walk, and heretofore I kave hesitated to put into print many of the experiences I have had with them, simply because the public is not yet educated to the point where it will credit my statements. If I were compelled to pass an examination as to the number of bones in the bodies of my bird friends I should be in sad perplexity. I never have had the slightest desire or necessity to know so I do not intend to learn. If it became necessary for me to shoot one hundred and fifty rose-breasted gros- beaks in order to determine the number of potato bugs or of some certain “‘ very tough worm,” in their “little insides” then I should remain in ignorance as to the exact number they consume. On any point pertaining to the life, habits, and characteris- tics of the birds I can stand securely beside the doctors of ornithology, for few of them have had the incalculable advantage of beginning life with a gift of the birds, where birds homed in flocks. Yi L0.NT ‘ Urgny IOpLaqUrT 55 CHAPTER IV Tue Lure or Fretp Work r NO THIS beginning I have now added more than twenty years of straight field work with every kind of camera on the market suitable for my purposes. In all this time the birds have been the main object of my search, but it would be impossible for any nature lover to spend this length of time afield, a large part of it being consumed in watching set cameras from some vantage point for hiding, without having accumu- lated a large fund of other experience. Upon many occasions I have had such rare and beautiful natural history subjects of other kinds literally thrust upon me that I have neglected the birds for their closest rivals, the moths and butterflies, while rare and exquisite flowers are always of in- tense interest to any field worker. Aside from work I have done among the birds, I have photographed or painted in water colours every rare moth native to the Limberlost, as well as the common ones, and many of the most ex- quisite butterflies. The moth studies made the foundation for my book entitled “‘Moths of the Limberlost,”’ while stray pictures of other insects, 57 58 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS such as locusts, Katy-dids, dragon flies, crickets, and the like, combined with beautiful flower and landscape pictures, were the origin of another nature book, ‘‘ Music of the Wild.” I can truth- fully say that with the exception of the months of May and June of one season, when I gave all of my time to moths, the real object of all field work I ever have done has been to bring from the deep forest, the woods pastures, the open fields, the swamps, meadows, orchards, and gardens, characteristic natural history reproductions of living birds. I have always reproduced each nest in its own environment exactly as the birds placed it, keeping the surroundings natural with the possi- ble exception of tying back a branch here and there to allow sufficient light for pictures of action, such branches being released and restored to their former positions the moment the exposures were made. In securing thousands of negatives afield, I have resorted to every device my ingenuity could con- jure up without the slightest regard to the amount of time, expense, or physical exertion that was required on my part. The one thing I never have done is to cut down a nest or in any way interfere with the home life of the birds, but gradually and with the greatest caution I have insinuated myself and my cameras into the birds’ immediate sur- roundings. One of the most interesting oriole pictures I ever made was taken by lashing two long, painter’s THE LURE OF FIELD WORK 59 ladders to one of the high telegraph poles of a city and fastening my camera on the opposite side of the pole slightly above the highest ladder; then by having a small boy climb the closest tree and tie back a branch, I could obtain a fine focus on the oriole’s nest. For each picture I made in a long _ series I was compelled to climb those ladders to change the plates and reset the shutter. On another occasion two men erected a platform for me level with the nest of a scarlet tanager, high among the branches of an extremely tall tree. The structure was so frail that it waved with every breath of wind and bent under my weight, but, as with the ladder, I was compelled to mount it in order to change plates every time I made an ex- posure with a long hose and bulb from a hidden location. Sometimes I have worked in deep, dark woods where it was necessary to cut down a number of trees and bushes in order to obtain sufficient light for instantaneous exposure; again I have worked on embankments in the scorching suns of June and July without a trace of shelter. I have waded in swamps and braved the quicksands of lake shores, at times having mired until it was utterly impos- sible for me to extricate myself. I vividly recall one day at a lake near Silver Lake, in northern Indiana, when I entered the water shortly before nine o’clock in the morning and did not leave it until half past four in the afternoon, with the ex- 60 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS ception of a few minutes when eating a lunch at noon. I have worked under bridges, in the unspeakable odours of vulture locations, near slaughter houses and crematories, in territory that was one shallow lake covering miles of surface in a June freshet; and once I worked under the rafters of an ice-house, where I had a fight to save my assistant from suffo- cation. He slipped from the top of the packed ice, on which we were setting up a camera, and fell eight feet below, between the side wall and the ice, the sawdust so covering and strangling him that he was almost helpless, while he could not gain a foothold either against the side of the building or the wall of ice. I finally got him out, while he was still able to help himself slightly, by taking a rail from a near-by fence, carrying it up the ladder by which we had entered a high door in the ice- house, and lowering it to him. One of my very clear recollections of a choice day afield was in a swamp location of southern Michigan where there were so many big swamp rattlesnakes that my native guide, a temporary acquisition, refused to step from the conveyance, which carried us to the edge of the swamp; so I was forced to carry my tripods, ladder, and cameras and perform the day’s work alone, or give up the pictures I had come to secure. In all of these years of field work I have met with every peril that can be found afield in nature, to THE LURE OF FIELD WORK 61 which there must be added tramps, vicious domes- tic animals, and cross dogs. I have braved the heat of the sun until my helper refused longer to work with me, and I have experienced the torture of chills, fever, and delirium from incipient sun- stroke. There is no way of gauging the hardships of a field worker. One of the most vivid recollections I have is of a day spent in securing two chapter tailpiece decorations for “The Song of the Cardi- nal.” In the morning of a day of intense heat after a night of rain in late June, I almost suffo- cated in a steaming valley beside the Wabash River, where I was making pictures of a bed of wild morning glories; a few hours later, while wad- ing the river to secure pictures of a bed of rose mallows, I contracted a chill which ended in con- gestion that gave me a ten day fight for my life. There are hundreds of negatives in my closet, and if they could speak more than half of them could relate a thrilling tale of the hardship and dangers endured to secure them; but with it all I came through fifteen years without any broken bones and with no permanent damage done to my health except that after the near sunstroke I never again have been able to endure the same amount of intense heat for the same length of time as before. During the past five years, I have not been so fortunate. One of the real discomforts of a professional field Raymonp MILLER First Assistant in field work in the region of the Limberlost. For him, no day was too hot, no tree too high, no swamp too treacherous. In years of field work, he never refused any hazard I suggested we undertake. 62 THE LURE OF FIELD WORK 63 worker is the tiny red lice which infest many birds to such an extent it is marvellous that they survive. In handling the young of a shrike family, the his- tory of which is given in a bird book of mine en- titled “‘ Friends in Feathers,” I covered myself with these tormenting pests. Another day a friend who was helping me and I had the same experience with young quail from a nest near the Wabash; and later, on our farm, I had perhaps the choicest experience in this line. I was working on a nest of swallows under the floor of the upstairs of the barn, and in order to get the instantaneous exposure required to show the old birds feeding the young, I removed a large mirror from one of the dressing tables in the Cabin and set it up in the barnyard on a line with a window, so that it threw direct sunlight upon the nest for the greater part of an hour each forenoon. With the help of a ladder, I set up and focused my camera on the nest, waiting in a stall below for the appearance of the birds, climbing the ladder and changing the plates at each exposure. These birds were infested with red lice that dropped from the nest and fell from the old ones as they flew. Before I finished this series I made a prac- tise of binding a napkin dipped in alcohol tightly over my hair, and at the finish of each hour’s work I made a mad race for home, where I could secure a hot bath and a complete change of clothing. It is to me one of the marvels of nature that the tender young birds of a nest survive the myriads of red 64 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS or grey or both kinds of bird lice which infest them. Sometimes they are killed by the large grey lice on the chicken feathers carried into nests for lining by the old birds. T have gained a vast fund of experience in win- ning the confidence of birds and in reproducing their most intimate habits and characteristics during these twenty short years of field work with a camera. My negative closet now contains series after series made of the home life of birds, each nest reproduced where the birds located it, exactly as they built it, the birds being free wild creatures of the outdoors. Among the plates, now numbering thousands, I have a three months’ series of the home life of a pair of black vultures, two months with a pair of kingfishers, and a complete pictorial history of the cardinal grosbeak. This last series includes a number of different birds, the collection extending over three or four years and comprising such exquisite and intimate pic- tures as a male bird in full tide of song, taking a bath in the rain, taking a sun bath, courting his mate, standing guard on the edge of his nest beside the brooding hen, and helping to feed the young, as well as the only picture I ever had the good fortune to secure of a hen bird working at the construction of her half-built nest. For obvious reasons it is practically impossible to secure such a picture. To those who do not understand what I mean by this I offer the follow- THE LURE OF FIELD WORK 65 ing explanation: all birds build their nests in what they suppose to be secure, sheltered locations. Very frequently they make mistakes, but with the shy, wild birds which I have pictured for the greater part, every nest location is chosen in the parting twigs, the crotch of a branch, or some place se- cluded and sheltered by leaves, roofs, rails, bridges, or embankments. The instant any mother bird at work on a nest feels that her location has been discovered she deserts that spot and begins a new one somewhere else. Always, in the work of nest building, she is in motion, either carrying material or weaving it into a cup, patterned around her breast, so that no picture of her is possible except through instantaneous exposure. To change the surroundings of a building female by the bending back of branches to let in sufficient light for in- stantaneous work would simply mean to drive the bird to the selection of a new location. She would not return to her first spot when a camera, however skilfully concealed, had been intruded, and brilliant sunlight was shining on the structure she had begun in deep shade. I have made more or less complete series of the | home life of the larger number of our shyest, wild- est song birds of the interior. It is a far greater feat to secure a characteristic likeness of one of the song birds of deep wood or field than to point a camera at a flock of ocean or gulf birds and secure a thousand on a plate. 66 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS I have spent practically every summer of my life afield, more than twenty years of the time with cameras and other paraphernalia in active field work among the birds, work that required living from March to November in close, personal inti- macy with them, and included the remainder of the year among the winter residents. Five years ago, through the work of farmers and lumbermen, my immediate territory had been cleared, drained, and put under cultivation, until the birds had flown, the flowers and moths were exterminated, there was not an interesting landscape left to re- produce. Then, in desperation, I hunted the state over, finally selecting another piece of true Limberlost country at the head of the same swamp region, where there are lakes by the score and miles upon miles of luxuriant swamp growth to attract the birds and perpetuate the flowers. Here, with the earnings from my work, I bought one hundred and twenty acres of rolling land, sloping abruptly to a small lovely lake, a mile of the winding shore line of which is included in my purchase. Also there are two fair-sized pieces of original timber, truly remarkable for the tall straightness of the trees and the wide range in variety; for I have chest- nut oaks, blue ash, and coffee trees, as well as splendid red and white oaks, and grand grey old beeches, elms, lindens, and hackberries. Here, I practically reproduced the first Cabin, greatly enlarging it and adding a corner especially designed THE LURE OF FIELD WORK 67 to facilitate my work; so I now have a library, dark-room, and a printing room, shut from the remainder of the Cabin, where I may work in se- clusion. This I call Limberlost Cabin, north; the other, south. I have had many unusual and inexplainable ex- periences afield. I have come to know the birds more intimately and to understand their ways better than those of my fellow men, with whom I have had no such contact. So if some of the happenings I record are not within the knowledge and experience of my readers I ask that before my veracity is questioned or an attempt is made to controvert the conclusions I draw, my lifetime of personal experience with the birds be taken into consideration, and that if I am to be questioned, the questioning be done by those who have had a like amount of similar experience. Naturally, I feel that having lived with and among the birds in such intimacy as to secure really characteristic pictures which exhibit the very human attributes of joy, grief, pain, fear, greed, suspicion, and the like, I should not be questioned except by those sufficiently intimate with the birds to have se- cured similar reproductions of them. I make no apology for any incident I introduce. In some cases I can offer incontrovertible proof by reliable witnesses, but very frequently my unsupported word must suffice, as of necessity in the more intimate and characteristic of these studies I have 68 Limberlost Cabin, South THE LURE OF FIELD WORK 69 been obliged to go to the woods alone and to work with no disturbance whatever to the birds beyond my presence, which through days of intimacy they had been taught to ignore. Wherever it has been possible I have made photographic records to sus- tain my statements, but very frequently this was manifestly impossible because the subject was in motion in a place too dark or secluded for a snap- shot, and some of the most wonderful things I record I have seen when passing through a wood alone, having no camera with me. Some of these happenings I have been able to verify by different birds of the same species, often enough that I have felt they might be attributed to the species as a characteristic; but most of the occurrences here described are isolated cases having been met with only once in my experience afield, so that nothing habitual or characteristic of an entire species could be adduced from such records; they are merely straws showing which way the wind blows. through the swamp ing Com 70 CHAPTER V UnusuaL Experiences AFIELD NE day in searching along a wooded slope () of the Wabash for birds’ nests I noticed a small greyish brown bird fluttering among the leaves a few yards from me. I thought at first that she was practising the subterfuge of the plover family and some of the other small game birds by pretending that she had a broken wing, in order to toll me from a nest location on the ground; but closer inspection disclosed that she was a female indigo finch in great distress. From her wide-spread wings and the manner in which she was gasping for breath, I imagined that her spine had been injured by a sling-shot or by some- thing having fallen on her back. On my going nearer she proved to be so nearly dead that she was unable to fly; so I picked her up to see if her trouble was apparent, and if there was any first aid that I could offer to an injured bird. I first examined her wings and found that they were not broken. Then I began blowing up the feathers on her back to see if there was a wound of any kind, but there was none. On re- versing her to examine her breast and underparts, 77 72 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS I was amazed to discover that her trouble was an ege so large that she could not deposit it. Then I knew exactly what to do because I once had a female canary in this same condition. I recalled also that on two occasions I had seen my mother operate on a hen for the same trouble. One end of the egg was exposed for perhaps one fourth of its surface. I took the small oil can from my para- phernalia and dropped a drop of oil on the exposed shell of the egg to soften the expanded parts as much as possible. Then, holding the bird firmly, I pierced the shell of the egg and broke it up with a hatpin so that it could be easily ejected. I then carried the bird down to the river and gave her water. In a few minutes, she was sufficiently recovered to perch on a small twig, and in less than five minutes she felt so much better that she flew away. I have no doubt that the next morning she began to deposit the remainder of her eggs in safety. This is a thing that I have known to occur twice among birds and twice among poultry. Very frequently an egg is so large for a young hen in her first laying that it is deposited completely striped with her blood. Often, very large hen eggs prove to be.double yolked. A few times I have seen a blood-stained egg in the nest of a bird, while almost without exception the first egg placed in a nest is noticeably larger than the others, and the last is smaller. I know, through years of ex- UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 73 perience, the nest of a young hen bird in the first building. A young hen can be recognized by her trim freshness and the fact that her plumage has not taken on the decided colour of her species that comes after three or four moultings. Her location is not wisely chosen, her nest well shaped nor so compactly built as the work of birds having had experience. Such a bird having built such a nest, invariably produces a first egg very noticeably larger than the others. Two other finch experiences are distinct in my memory. While working in the garden one May day, I noticed that somewhere nearby an indigo finch was in a frenzy of the mating song, and presently discovered him on the windowsill of the conservatory, hopping back and forth, his beak against the glass panes, trying to get inside, un- doubtedly attracted by the foliage of a lemon tree, the flowers, and the song of his cousins in the canary house. This bird spent the greater part of one afternoon on the sill, until I was strongly tempted to open a ventilator and allow him to enter, but I could see nothing to be gained there- by, as he would only become alarmed and beat himself against the glass when he found he was confined in strange surroundings. Late that evening a hen bird appeared, and the pair built a nest in a honeysuckle directly opposite the conservatory and perhaps thirty feet due west. There was an abundance of leaves and all sorts of poo.g 07 ysau bursaqua ‘afia paosaid- uLoy? buravy ‘your obrpur a0 74 UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 75 nest material. I think that the female of this pair was a young bird. In the plethora of material and the exuberance of her first attempt, she built a nest twice the size of any of her kind I had examined in roadside, meadow, or thicket bushes, using copiously the dry last year’s honeysuckle leaves, which she picked up on the ground under the bush. The size and peculiarity of this nest was one thing I wish to record. The other is the fact that the male appeared to be blind in one eye. Every forenoon about nine o’clock he entered the nest and brooded for an hour or more while his mate went to find her breakfast, bathe, and exer- cise. In setting up a camera before the nest in an attempt to secure such a rare picture as that of a male bird brooding, I noticed that he had flown against a thorn or some sharp projection, which had penetrated the inner corner of his right eye so that the ball was somewhat discoloured and partially flooded, while a small red growth had formed in each corner. I thought that he was a bird several years of age, as his plumage was so fully matured through a number of moultings that when he brooded with the morning sun falling directly upon him, the top of his head and the feathers on the back of his neck were perfectly exquisite pale, greenish blue, shining like a highly polished gem of turquoise. I worked with this bird early in my outdoor experience, trying re- peatedly to make him enter the nest and brood with 76 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS his perfect eye toward the lens. For a number of mornings I tried to induce him to give me a study showing him in perfect condition, without at that time giving a thought to the fact that it might be extremely interesting to prove that the birds have accidents and sickness the same as human beings. I always had noticed afield that after the con- struction of the nest had advanced for a day or two, each bird chose a separate route, by which to approach their location, and strictly adhered to that route in coming to the nest, leaving it by another and on the wing, wherever possible. This indigo bird had formed the habit of approaching his nest by flying to a certain twig of a bellflower apple tree near by, then to the pointed top of a board of the high alley fence, against which the honeysuckle climbed. From there, he would drop to the nest, every time bringing his bad eye on the side toward the lens. One morning I started to focus the camera on his location with my mind fully made up to saw the limb from the bellflower tree in an effort to make him seek a new route and approach from the other side; but when I reached the honeysuckle I found that the neighbour’s cat. had attacked the nest in the night, probably killing the mother bird—certainly tearing down the nest and eating the eggs. The final intimate experience with an indigo bird came when driving from our farm one evening. T saw an abject spectacle in the shape of a bira UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 77 hopping beside the road and climbed from the carriage to investigate. I knew by the bird’s bill that it was a finch, but further than that I could not go in its identification as it had been com- pletely immersed in crude oil, surrounding a well inside the fence. I took the miserable creature home, prepared a bath of Gold Dust in as hot water as the bird could bear, and with extreme care about the head and eyes, I tried to remove the oil. Only those who have had personal contact with crude oil can imagine what it meant to have the feathers of a bird soaked in it, then liberally sprin- kled with the dust of the summer highway. I worked with all patience for the greater part of an hour, and nearly as long in cleansing the wash bowl afterward. I gave my bird a drink, some food, rolled him in a flannel cloth, and tucked him away for the night. His struggle in the oil had been too severe, too long endured, the bath too strenuous. In the morning I found that I had been working with an indigo finch, which was now extremely clean, also extremely dead. For fifteen years all of my work was in oil coun- try, which gave me the invaluable assistance of many oilmen in locating nests and working around them. I was at the same time in constant contact with crude oil, which is perhaps one of the nastiest things on earth upon footwear, clothing, and a working outfit, while in combination with a living bird I know of nothing worse. Ordinary soap 78 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS will not faze it. In order to cut it, some especially strong compound like Dutch Cleanser, Snow Boy, or Gold Dust must be used with extremely hot water. The loss of the finch did not deter me from trying to save all of the birds I found in field work suffering from having fallen into oil or through having mistaken its glassy surface in some lights for water. The finch was the only oil-coated bird that died. About the same time I had this experience, one of my friends among the oilmen brought me a much larger bird so plastered with dust and grease that I had no idea what it might be. The same methods I used on the finch brought this bird out the next morning, a lark fully grown, perfectly clean, but so utterly broken in spirit by his con- tact with the oil and his handling previous to and in the course of his cleansing that when I raised the flannel covering him, he crouched in the box like a young bird in a nest, opened his beak, and begged for food. Ifed him the customary prep- aration of the yolk of egg made into a paste with equal parts of boiled potato and rolled hemp seed, freed as much as possible from the husk of the grain, and gave him water. After feeding him I lifted him to the edge of the box but he made not the slightest attempt to fly no matter how near any of us approached him. We even stroked his wings. I decided to try a daring experiment with him. I set up a camera, focused it upon an ap- UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 79 propriate spot outdoors, carried him out as he perched on one of my fingers, cupping the other hand over him, and setting him on the spot, made almost a life-sized portrait of him. As he evinced no inclination to fly, I turned him in several posi- tions; and finally, when I was ready to release him, he still showed not the slightest inclination to go. At this time my daughter was closely associated with me in field work and it always had been her privilege to return to freedom all of the sick and the wounded that we had found or that had been brought to us for treatment; so when I finished every picture I could think of to make with the lark, I put him into Molly Cotton’s hands that she might start him on his way to freedom. He sat there in perfect contentment until, at my sug- gestion, she shook him upa bit. Then he stood on his feet, but failed to fly. The Cabin, south, was located in a small village, immediately surrounded by fields, over which larks were constantly flying. Just at that point, one of his kind passed over our heads at no great height, singing the “Spring o’ year” song of the lark. Instantly our bird found his voice, his wings, and his wild spirit. He uttered a sharp cry and flew at such speed that his going was merely an indistinct flash. My worst experience with an oil-coated bird was that with a shitepoke, brought me by some boys who had found him while playing. I can not im- agine what occurred to a bird with his length of 80 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS leg and strength of wing to immerse him so com- pletely in crude oil, unless from some high perch he saw an unfortunate small frog leap into a pool of oil, and like the frog mistaking it for water, he plunged also. Never before nor since have I seen a feathered creature make such an abject spectacle as did this oil-and-dirt-covered shitepoke, but my sympathies were so entirely with the bird that it never occurred to me to take his picture before giving him a bath. As was the case with the lark, he was so miserable and so cowed in his misery that he stood in the washbowl of my bath- room and allowed me to begin at his beak with a toothbrush and gradually move onward, cleaning every feather on him, and the skin as well, without making the least effort to get away; but when he was finished, thoroughly dry, and had rested over night, his broken spirit disappeared. He was ready to fly, also to fight for his freedom the instant he was uncovered in the morning. There is nothing in an experience I once had with a pipit lark, except proof that birds are as subject to accident and injury as human beings. While I was driving one evening about six o’clock, a pipit lark on wing arose above a snake fence on one side of the highway, and crossed the road a few rods ahead of my carriage, dropping low as he flew. I thought he intended to pass between the rails of the fence he was headed toward and alight in a clover field. Whatever might have been his A nestling cardinal grosbeak that would have fallen to its death, had it not been helped to safety 81 82 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS purpose, his estimate of space was wrong. In- stead of passing between the rails, as birds do constantly in flight, he struck with full force, and fell on the grass of the wayside, lying motionless. I hurried to him, picked him up, and examined his beak to see that he had not broken it nor his neck. While I was handling him he began to revive and in a few minutes he was able to sit up, so I placed him on the top rail from which he very shortly flew to the clover field. In writing of examining this bird’s beak to see if it was broken, there comes to my mind the re- membrance of a robin I once noticed in the door- yard in extreme distress. I was unable to capture this bird, but I could distinctly see that he had flown against something, squarely breaking off three fourths of the upper mandible, exposing his tongue, and incapacitating him either for pulling up angleworms, eating fruit, or taking a drink. He was crying pathetically. There is no question but he must have died very soon in much suffering. While on the subject of robins, I might record my most unusual experience with these birds in having seen a white one in a flock, when they were massing for fall migration, congregating over some wild grapes on a country fence. This bird was robin in form, uttered robin notes, and was in robin country and company but had every feather on him of a soft dusty tan colour, much like my canaries. UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 83 Among albino birds, in addition to the white robin, I once saw a robin with a large white spot on his shoulder, extending down one wing. The rest of his plumage was natural, so I figured that possibly this peculiar feathering might have re- sulted from a bruise, as I always have noticed that bruising or rubbing the hair from the skin of a domestic animal is very apt to result in the injured spot becoming covered by white hair. T also have seen a large flock of English sparrows, of which two were a solid dusty cream colour, and up to 1919 I have seen two white blackbirds. I once worked with a pair of robins, one of whose young kept its head extended above the top of the nest, waving it and crying unceasingly, even im- mediately after the old bird had been to the nest with food. In the absence of the parents I climbed to the nest and discovered that the young one had been fed something of a poisonous nature, which had irritated its throat. A big water blister closed the entire food canal, while the wind pipe was badly crowded from the swelling in the neck. The bird could not shut its mouth, and could not swallow. I pricked the blisters, letting out the water, and tried the soothing influence of oil in the throat, but the bird died a few hours later in much distress. I wish now that I had taken the pains to see what its crop and gizzard contained. Undoubtedly its trouble arose from something it had been fed, as its entire body was full of inflam- 84 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS mation, while at the same time it had slowly starved to death. Another instance of extreme suffering, was on the part of a robin I found in the orchard of our farm. Driving down the lane to the highway one evening at dusk, I noticed something unusual dangling from the branch of an apple tree, and heard pitiful robin calls of distress. I responded immediately and found a young bird so fully feathered that its condition seemed to indicate that it should have been several days from the nest, which gave no signs of having been occupied more recently. Being unable to reach the nest by means of the branch, which was too light to bear my weight, I went to the house to bring a ladder. As I approached the tree on my return, I found an old robin clinging to the side of the nest putting food into the mouth of the young one. When I reached the nest I discovered that this bird had a long, stout horsehair tightly looped around one of its legs just above the knee joint, both ends being firmly plastered in the mud of the nest foundation. It had hung by this hair for so long that the skin was cut to the muscle. The wound was so old that it had ceased to bleed, while the flesh had drawn back and was partially healed all around the cut, exposing the muscle, which was slowly being cut through by the strug- gles of the bird. I could draw no other conclusion than that this robin had hung there since it was UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 85 old enough to leave the nest. During all this time the old ones must have fed it, as it was in fairly good flesh and its crop was well distended with food at the time I found it. All that was neces- sary in that instance was to break the hair and release the bird. I put it back in the nest, where it remained, as it seemed unable to stand on its hurt foot; but I hoped that after having been in an upright position for a time, it would regain its equilibrium and establish enough circulation to en- able it again to use its foot. At another time I saw a robin in our dooryard that had so nearly been the prey of a cat, red squirrel, or an owl that he had been forced to exer- cise a bird’s prerogative and let his tail go to save his body. Farmers and people experienced in handling poultry know that a rooster or turkey, if grasped by the tail when pursued, can release the tail feathers to escape. I have noticed several instances and had my attention called to additional cases proving wild birds have the same power. This robin was full-grown, a bird of several seasons. I knew this by the ruddy colour of his breast and the dark feathering of his back; but his tail, which was growing out again, was not more than three fourths of an inch in length and it could be seen that he missed it, for he attempted only short flights in which he seemed to experience constant difficulty, plunging forward, head down. A very peculiar thing, which I have seen but ‘Bunoh ay, pass pun paydopy uazfo uono) fijjopy sp4rg po ay} joys ssausvf uay J Pe F ae ‘ex 86 UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 87 once afield, occurred in a piece of swampy, low ground, filled with sturdy scrub oak, button bush, and low shrubs, where the presence of many birds proved it especially good nesting territory. Here one morning, on a dead limb in plain sight so that I could not possibly mistake my identification, sat a young blackbird squalling lustily for food. There were many blackbirds flying over him and feeding young of their kind in the bushes all around him, but not one of them gave this half-famished youngster a morsel. He evidently had left the nest only that morning, and I thought prematurely at that, for he had much difficulty in maintaining his balance on the limb. This may have been caused by his reaching toward every blackbird that passed him a widely yawning mouth, while he flopped his wings to attract their attention. This went on for so long that I decided his mother must have met her fate at the hands of a farmer, the crack of whose gun could be heard occasionally while he was planting corn in an adjoining field. Finally the young blackbird held his position with difficulty and seemed to be completely discouraged. A hen robin that had been carrying food to her young in a cottonwood in a line of flight directly over the blackbird evidently became as much exercised about the plight of the youngster as I was, for the next time she came with food she flew to the limb beside the blackbird and gave him a very generous feeding, which he seemed greatly 88 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS pleased to take. This is the only incident of my life in which I have seen a bird of one species feed the young of another with the exception of small birds feeding cowbirds they had hatched in their own nests. The robin knew that all of her brood were intact in their nest in the cottonwood; she could only have deviated from her course and fed the young blackbird because he was a hungry youngster vociferously begging for food. There are a number of wild cherry trees located very near Limberlost Cabin, north. When the fruit attains a juicy degree of ripeness and there has been a high wind during the night there are more cherries on the ground and these are more easily obtained for bird food than the fruit on the trees. Such a condition existed one morn- ing in summer, as I was on my way downstairs to breakfast. I paused at a window at a turn in the stairs and looked into the west woods attracted by sounds of warfare among the birds. I was amazed to count seven pileated woodpeckers, four old and three young not long from the nest, four red-headed woodpeckers, and four robins on the ground engaging in a battle royal over the cherries. This was the first time I ever had seen robins really fight with other birds. They seemed to be as pugnacious as the red-heads, which are stronger than they, and they seemed fearless in attacking the pileated woodpeckers, which are both larger and stronger. The battle raged the UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 89 greater part of the day and it ceased entirely only when the ground was fairly well cleared of the fruit. Probably from over two centuries of brooding near houses, robins have become tamer and more trustful of humanity than any other bird. Possibly there should be an exception in the case of the wren, but I am not sure; there are always three pairs of robins to one of wrens with us. They build where the logs cross at corners, under porch ceilings, and among the vines climbing on the verandas. Last year a robin built her nest on a windowsill directly against the sash of a summer residence belonging to my daughter. The nest was in a corner, its mud foundations so plastered to the sash that it was impossible to raise the window from the bottom until the young birds had flown, so the ventilation of the room was managed by the upper sash for the length of time the bird used the lower one, but as it was cool spring weather this worked no hardship for any one. One of the most peculiar nesting locations I have encountered afield was on the running gear of a hay rake that had been left standing where the farmer had finished using it. The only protection that had been afforded it from the weather was the unscrewed seat turned upside down. On the crosspiece of the frame the bird had located her nest, so centred under the shelter of the overturned The mother robin that built on a hay rake standing in a field 90 UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 91 seat that it was perfectly protected from sun and rain. A man in Richmond, Indiana, once sent me a photograph of a brooding robin. He wrote that the bird had been carried into the Union Depot of that city on the running gear of a freight car, having ridden on her nest, which the train crew said had been built in freight yards in New York City. The bird was the pet of the men about the yards, and much food from the dinner pails of the workmen was left near the nest for her convenience. The picture was certainly that of a live, brooding robin on the gear of a freight car, while the story seemed to be supported by ample and reliable proof, although it was in no way a personal experience of mine. Heroic as the Richmond robin may have been, I have one robin experience which proves the bird of even greater devotion to her nest and young than that previously related. This robin arrived early and built in an apple tree outside the music-room window of the Cabin, south. The tree had been struggling with a bad case of scale for several years and had succumbed the past winter. The bird built in all confidence nearly fifteen feet from the ground at the branching of two large limbs, but not one leaf opened to shelter her from alternate driving spring rains and hot sunshine, as she surely expected. One day she baked in the sun; the following, she chilled The mother robin that built in a dead apple tree and then brooded without shelter during ninety hours of heavy rain, and the three of her young that survived the flood. 92 UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 93 in a flurry of snow. How she breasted one flood rain always has been a marvel to me. The tree stood on sloping ground outside a French window. Taking into account two feet of foundation and the slope, the nest was almost level with the face of a person standing inside the window. The rainfall began on Monday morning quite early. From that time until ten o’clock on Thursday there was not an hour of daylight during which there was not rain heavy enough to keep the bird on her nest to shelter it and her eggs. Much of the time there was a deluge that forced her to stick her beak straight up and gasp for breath. Dur- ing daylight some member of the household was almost constantly on watch. Never once did the bird leave her nest or the male bird bring her food or relieve her long siege of brooding. It rained and it rained, until I thought that the mud plaster- ing of the nest foundations would dissolve so that it would wash away from under her, but she had built an unusually large nest with much grass and straw covering the outside of the body so that it endured. I thought that she would become so wet that the water would run down her body through her feathers and chill the eggs until they would be spoiled. In the heaviest of the downpour I truly thought that the bird would drown on her nest or die from hunger. We seriously discussed trying to wire an old umbrella over her or fixing a box above the nest but any shelter we could 94 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS arrange before her eggs quickened to bind her to them would drive her from them so long that they would be chilled. So we watched, marvelled, but did nothing. At ten o’clock Thursday the rain ceased, the clouds scattered, the sun shone. From the length of time the robin had remained in the same position during all of those hours of cold drenching and hunger, she staggered when she finally arose in her nest, uttered the robin tribal call, and attempted flight. I was watching, sc I saw her miss the branch of a near-by plum tree and fall among the bushes below. There she gained a footing, rested awhile, and then flew to the branch she had first started toward. After another rest she wavered to earth and ate angle- worms until my next fear for her was that she would burst. While she was feeding her mate flew down to her and they talked over the situation. I cer- tainly should have been interested in knowing exactly what she said to him. He flew to the edge of the nest and carefully inspected it and the eggs, but even then he did not enter it to brood awhile for her. The mother bird soon went back to her nest. She left it more frequently than usual the -remainder of that day, but the following day she seemed to have recovered from her rough expe- rience. Three eggs of that nest hatched, so that only one bird was lost and I have no proof that it failed to develop on account of the storm. That mother robin stands monumental to me as UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 95 the most heroic of the birds of my personal ex- perience. J am convinced that she brooded under the conditions described without having once left her nest from the time she entered it for night, about four o’clock Sunday afternoon, until ten o’clock Thursday morning—ninety hours. This experience clearly proves that human mothers are not the only ones who make sacrifices for their young. Male Baltimore oriole that hanged himself while carrying mate- rial to his mate CHAPTER VI UnusvuaL Experiences AFIELD NE spring morning, after the owls had raised pandemonium in the night in the wild grape vines surrounding the spring at the Cabin, north, when passing along the path leading to my east woods I found under a small wild crab tree heavily loaded with bittersweet vines most of the tail feathers of a cardinal gros- beak; and a few yards farther along, the remainder. Later in the day, I saw the cardinal without a vestige of tail. He was experiencing even greater difficulty in flight than had the tailless robin. He could fly in stretches of a few yards, but he did not seem to be able to keep his head up and guide his course in the usual manner. A woman in the southern part of the state wrote a few years ago to tell me that for the greater part of one winter a male cardinal roosted under the eaves near a kitchen window on a vine climbing the side of her residence. One night during the winter he had perched in such a manner that his tail touched a water spout running horizontally from the eaves to a turn at the corner of the house. During the forepart of the night water 97 98 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS had dripped from the eaves, wetting his tail. As the night advanced and grew colder, ice formed, freezing the tail to the pipe. In the early morning when the woman looked to see if the bird was there she saw only his tail fast to the pipe. She had taken a step-ladder and secured the feathers. She wanted to know whether losing the tail would kill the bird, and she also stated in her letter that he did not again return to his former perching place. Thad another letter concerning a cardinal. This bird was reported to have visited a certain western window every afternoon about four o’clock and in repeated instances fought with his own reflection on the glass for an hour at a time. I had had this same experience in a limited degree. Three differ- ent times in one afternoon a blackbird put his bill against the glass of my bedroom window and tried repeatedly to walk through it, not seeming to understand why he could not. My bird did not seem to be pugnacious, merely inquisitive. The window was rather heavily covered with a wild rose bush, and the glass had only that morning been highly polished during the course of spring house-cleaning. At the third appearance of the bird I went outside to see what his view would mean to me. The late sun in_ travelling around to the west shone obliquely across the window, which faced due south, and what I saw where the bird had been appeared to me UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 99 exactly like a pool of water surrounded by wild rose leaves; so I have no doubt that the bird from the same point got the same effect. All one season a song sparrow having a broken wing lived in the honeysuckle of the blue finch and among the rose bushes, blackberries, rasp- berries, and wild roses of the west fence where it extended down to the garage beside the garden, at the Cabin, south. He could hop from the ground to the branches of the bushes and from there make his way higher even to the girder of the fence, from which it was possible to reach two different apple trees. By extending his sound wing and spreading his tail he could fly from the low branches of the apple trees to the ground without seriously hurting himself. I watched him with anxiety and always kept crumbs on the ground under the honeysuckle and in a secluded place on the fence girder. He was there through- out the summer and until very late in the fall, his chirp constantly sounding, but his spirit had broken with his wing, for I never heard him sing a note. When the leaves fell and he lost their shelter he was peculiarly exposed. Early in No- vember he disappeared. I think very likely he was the victim of a prowling cat, as these birds or others exactly like them from farther north were with us all winter. One morning as I was walking through the woods of our farm after a night of heavy rain my attention 100 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS was attracted by the alarm cries of grosbeaks and scarlet tanagers, while from the ground I could hear the feeble cries of young in distress. I was not prepared for field work but I entered the swamp, balancing myself from hummock to hum- mock and walking on old logs and fallen branches, where a short search revealed one young grosbeak and one scarlet tanager. There remained traces of the grosbeak nest in a thicket of wild grape vines but I could not find the location of the tanager nest. The frail tree with the vines creep- ing over it was too light to bear my weight. To leave the young birds meant for them to flutter into the water or be trampled by cattle, which frequently made mad rushes through the vines to rid themselves of the torment of flies settling on their backs, so I carried the nestlings home in my hands. That night I read in a work on ornithology that a young hawk taken from his nest of large sticks and coarse rough material and put in a soft nest would die miserably. The following morning I returned to the swamp with a ladder. There had been some woodland tragedy other than the storm. The grosbeak nest contained one baby, dead and badly abused, so I carefully cut away the sur-_ rounding vines and brought the cradle home to my birds. , Then for ten days, in the midst of my busiest season afield, I stopped every fifteen min- utes to feed those two youngsters a mixture of equal UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 101 parts of boiled potato and hard boiled egg, varied by the addition of a little fruit, at times bread and milk or rolled hemp seed. When I was compelled to go afield, for a week or ten days, their nest placed in a small box and covered with a cloth was carried with me so that they might be fed regu- larly. Sometimes their field feedings were farther apart than those at home but at no time did they go longer than half an hour. They grew finely. When they were large enough to fly well they had the freedom of the conservatory. Then the door was left open and at last they were placed in an apple tree near the back door with their food and water convenient. It was not long until they could take care of themselves. For several weeks I could see them and hear their voices as they flew through the orchard. Then they wandered farther afield and finally deserted me altogether. One of the greatest tragedies I have known of afield was revealed by the body of a Baltimore oriole hanging from a loop of cotton cord in a cottonwood, not far from a partially completed nest that evidently had been abandoned on account of the accident. In carrying material one of the pair had dropped a piece of cotton cord mixed with heavy sewing cotton. This had lodged on the stiff point of a dead twig, then had been worked back by the wind until it caught on a tiny projec- tion of the twig made by a falling leaf. The male oriole in working to free this material in order to 102 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS use it as a lashing to fasten his nest had slipped his head through a loop in the string, so fashioned that when he had pulled it to slip it off the twig it became a veritable noose, which grew tighter with his struggles until it had choked him to death. As this oriole and the robin are the only examples I recall having seen of birds trapped in nest material, when almost every nest visited has hair, string, and plant fibre in which they easily could entangle their heads or feet, I deem these isolated cases excellent proof that the birds are extremely deft in the business of building; and it is one of the rarest experiences of the woods to find a bird in difficulty through its awkwardness in handling its building material. The nest of a scarlet tanager is a beautifully built structure, placed, in comparison with the average locations of other birds, at extreme heights. I have not examined many of them, but all I ever have seen at close range or observed through glasses were neat and clean, giving every evidence that the old birds emptied the cloaca and carried away the excrement, as is almost the universal rule. In climbing to the heights of a tanager nest one day to make a record of the state of its prog- ress, one of my field assistants reported to me that one of the nestlings, perhaps four or five days from the shell, was in serious trouble which he thought I might relieve; so I told him to slip his fingers under the feet of the little bird so that it UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 103 would not cling to and tear up the bottom of the nest, put it in his pocket, and bring it down with him. When he placed it in my hands I found that the top of its head, both of its eyes and its nose were thickly plastered with a deep coat of excre- ment, to which the down of the other nestlings and the fine feathering of the mother bird had adhered until it was blinded. Having no conveni- ences with me with which to operate on such a ease I carried the young bird home, warmed some milk, dipped a cloth into it, and bound it over the top of its head until I had soaked loose all foreign substance. Its eyes and the entire region surrounding them were the palest of coral pink. It seemed at first as if the bird would be permanently blind. I put it in the dark, fed it for a day or two, gradually introducing light, and by the end of the second day its eyes had returned to almost normal colour, while a number of ex- periments convinced me that it could see as well as any young bird. It was then returned to the nest, from which the rest of its family had not yet taken wing. I have had trouble with a window on the front porch of each Cabin on which the surrounding trees throw green reflections, while the glass takes on the lights of water. Several times birds have been deceived by this and in striking the glass in flight have either killed or severely injured them- selves. One of the first instances of this kind was 104 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS that of a ruby-throated hummingbird that was knocked limp and helpless, but soon after being picked up he revived sufficiently to fly. Very late in the fall I once found on my front porch the dead body of a ruby-crowned kinglet, a tiny pinch of bone, muscle, and delicately col- oured feathers, with a little dab of red on the crest. The bird was the first of the kind I ever had had in my hands, as kinglets live farther north and come to my locality only as winter migrants. Because he was so rare and so beautiful I sent this bird toa firm of taxidermists, considered reliable; but when I called for my bird no one knew anything about him. I took the pains to trace the firm’s signature for the receipt of the package containing him, on the books of the express company, but still they insisted that they had not seen him. Un- doubtedly some collector paid them far more for his mounted body than they would have dared ask me for doing the work, since they would scarcely have signed for an express package and failed to open it. The largest bird that I ever found dead from striking the glass was a woodcock. Between these extremes, perhaps half a dozen other birds have lost their lives on these windows, while repeatedly there is evidence on the glass that it has been struck by some bird in flight, injured so slightly that it has soon flown away. While about my work in the oil fields one morn- UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 105 ing I was told by one of the oilmen that a neigh- bouring farmer had just shot a hawk for carrying away young chickens. The oilman knew the loca- tion of the nest and thought the bird killed was the female. We went to the spot. He climbed the tree and found one egg in the nest, which he carefully brought to the ground. We put it in the nest of a hen that was brooding in a tool-house. I con- sidered it a scurvy trick to ask a patient, law- abiding hen to brood on the egg of her worst enemy, but the egg had become so chilled during the length of time it had been uncovered that it never hatched. I have had two very intimate experiences with hummingbirds. On the streets of our village one morning a man who always made an effort to help me about my work held his hands cupped together before me, saying after the manner of the old game: “Hold fast all I give you.” What he gave me was the body of aruby throat. I thought at first that it was dead, that he had brought it so that I might make a minute examination of its plumage and anatomy or have its body mounted. Before I reached the Cabin it showed signs of life, so I put a drop of brandy into a few drops of water, added a few grains of sugar and gave it a drink. The time was late fall and there had been a heavy frost the previous night. For some reason this bird had been slow about migrating so it was almost frozen to death. When I saw that it was reviving I carried it back of the Cabin, where I 106 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS had covered a la France rose bush the night before in order to save the buds as long as possible. I set the bird on the rose bush and took its picture. Then I gave it another drink. It sat straighter and seemed to feel much better so I tried another pose. Then I administered another drink and put a fresh plate in the camera. By this time the bird had fluffed its feathers and settled its plumage, which had been somewhat ruffled through handling. As I reached for the bulb to make a third exposure the familiar hum of wings above my head told me that my subject had taken leave of me. As far as I could see the little creature, it headed its flight due south. I doubt that it made a prolonged stop until it reached Florida or Central America. Perhaps my most puzzling experience with a hummingbird occurred when Molly Cotton gave her ice cream money to a boy as the purchase price of a hummingbird he had accidentally hit with a stone from his sling-shot. She brought the bird to me, demanding in all confidence that I doctor it. From the position in which it lay in her extended hand I thought its back was seriously injured if not broken. I had not the faintest idea how to render first aid to an injured hummingbird, nor could I fail the expectant eyes or disappoint the tone of conviction in my girl’s voice when she so confidently demanded that I “‘do something.” More in order to convince her that I was doing something than because I felt I could do anything UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 107 effective I put the hummingbird into an empty nest in the conservatory, giving the little creature a drink of sweetened water. It drank as if it were famished, running its long, threadlike tongue over the bowl of the spoon, searching for particles of sugar. We then surrounded it with the bloom of honeysuckle and trumpet creeper. When the flowers were held within its reach it fed on the pollen and never refused the water. I confidently expected that it would be dead the following morning, but instead it had folded its wings, which drooped the day before, and was clinging to one of the coarser twigs of the nest with its feet. At these signs of improvement I began to work in earnest. I removed the nest to a cool, shady place, and added to the bird’s diet hard boiled egg, thinned almost to liquid and sweetened. By the third morning it could move its body and use its feet, for it had climbed to the edge of the nest. Both of us rejoiced, seeing that our bird was going to recover. I blame myself for the accident which followed. From the fact that the bird was strong enough to climb to the edge of the nest, I should have been warned that it would attempt to fly and placed it in a lower position. Shortly afterward, it tried to take wing, falling from the shelf four or five feet to the cement floor of the conservatory, so aggravating its original injury that it soon died. Perhaps my most unique experience with a bird 108 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS occurred rather late one fall. On the way to the river one morning I noticed a bird acting pecu- liarly on a fine specimen of pokeberry. There had been a frost the night before. A hot autumn sun was shining on the frozen fruit. On going closer to see what was happening I found a cedar wax- wing, a bird native to my location but for all that extremely rare, one seen less frequently than almost any other bird of my acquaintance. The wax- wing was feasting continuously on the frozen berries, and almost as continuously raining them down in the form of scarcely digested excrement. He was in such a state of intoxication that he did not always secure the berry at which he aimed and the plumage of his face and throat was badly stained with the juice. He was so unsteady on his feet that he frequently lost his balance and plunging headfirst he fell to the underside of the little branches to which he clung with his feet; but hanging head down, and even while he was struggling to gain an upright position, he still continued eating every berry he could reach. Approaching as close as I thought I dared I ex- posed two or three plates, while my assistant hurried back to my base of supplies for more plates. I first began so far away that the picture included the whole bush, which was shaped like a small tree, having two or three trunks, then ad- vanced gradually until my last plate was gone. When no longer able to take pictures I tried the «1 cedar waxwing too badly intoxicated on fermented poke- berries to fly 109 110 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS experiment of seeing how close I could approach and found to my surprise that the bird was unable to fly. I could pick him up in my hands. He did not exhibit the least sign of fear, so I put him back on the bush and left him in what could be consid- ered nothing less than a state of intoxication, which I could have reproduced even more inti- mately than in the pictures I had secured if I had known that he was past flight before using my last plate. Previously, I had one experience with wild creatures becoming intoxicated, when, in order to get more light on my subject, Mr. Black trimmed the lower branches of a young crab tree while the sap was still running. The liquid quickly fer- mented in the hot spring sunshine. Soon the trunk was covered with butterflies, moths, bees, ants, and flies, all of them becoming rapidly in- toxicated. This occurrence happened early in my field work with a camera and was both pictured and described in my first nature story. I have frequently been told that our robins and other Northern birds become intoxicated on fermenting fruit and berries during their stay in the South, getting themselves into such a soiled and repulsive condition that people have small compunction about shooting them to reduce their numbers. During my experiences afield I have met with several instances of isolated birds not supposed to belong to my territory. Early in my work A carousal of butterflies, moths and beetles, drinking fermenting sap oozing from a freshly trimmed wild crab apple tree. 1li 112 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS afield with a camera beside the Wabash River and confined to the same stretch of territory for two seasons, I heard the notes and frequently saw the high-flying form of a lark, which €>uld have been nothing but an English skylark. I called upon my undefended head the harsh criticis n of a number of writers on ornithological subjects by describing the high flight of this bird and hts exquisite song among the clouds, when he seemed literally to soar to the gates of Heaven. As I recall, I de- scribed him as flying higher than any other bird which sang on wing, and this is exactly what he did. I never succeeded in getting sufficiently close to him to differentiate his markings and feathering from our meadow larks which were constantly singing from rod lines, high fence posts, and other points of vantage about as high as the average tree, or singing on wing, but in flight not so high as the goldfinch or oriole. Just at the time when I was most severely criticized for describing this lark of high flight and exquisite song, the facts were made public in the newspapers of the East that several men had some British skylarks cap- tured, brought to this country and released in an effort to add them to our ornithology. I am sorry that I lost this clipping and can no longer give its origin, for undoubtedly it was a skylark from these importations, which for two seasons sang above the Limberlost. The reference to bird importa- tions in the West met a better fate and can be UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 113 quoted in its entirety. Mr. C. F. Pfluger, Secretary of the Association for the Importation of Song- birds into Oregon, makes the following report: In the month of May, 1889, the society imported from Clausthal, in Germany, under a contract with a German bird-dealer, the following birds in pairs of males and females, viz.: ten pairs of blackheaded nightingales, eight pairs of gray song thrushes, fifteen pairs of black song thrushes, twenty-two pairs of skylarks, four pairs of singing quail, twenty pairs of black starlings, nineteen bullfinches, three of which were females and sixteen males (the rest of the females had died on the way), forty pairs of chaffinches, thirty-five pairs of linnets, forty pairs of ziskins (green finches), twenty pairs of cross-beaks, one pair of real nightingales (the rest had died on the way), and several pairs of red-breasted Eng- lish robins, the European wren species, forest finches, yellow- hammers, green finches. When these birds arrived here, each species was put intoa large wooden cage six feet high, six feet long, and four feet deep, with wire-net front, with plenty of water and their favourite food, thus giving them a good opportunity to rest and exercise their wings before they were turned loose. All these birds, with their cages, were placed on exhibition for four days to the public. Thousands of people went to see them, and the society realized about five hundred dollars by this show, which went toward paying for the expense of bringing them here. At the close of the exhibition the birds were turned loose under direction of Frank Dekum, president of the society, in the suburbs of Portland and in other counties here. The larks were let loose outside of the city near clover meadows. The birds have done well ever since they were let loose; 114 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS we watched them all through the summer of 1889. Some nested in Portland and some in the suburbs, while others went far off into the State. We have had very flattering reports of these birds from all parts of the State. The birds left here in the fall of 1889 and returned in the spring of 1890, except the black thrush and the skylark; they did not migrate. The society has received reports from numerous places in this vicinity which show that the birds brought here and turned loose a year ago last spring, have prospered, and that the scheme has been a grand success. These birds did so well that the same society ordered for March, 1891, through a Portland bird- dealer named Stuhr: Twenty-four pairs of skylarks at $4 per pair, twenty-four pairs of American mocking-birds at $5.50 per pair, twenty- four pairs of bullfinches at $4 per pair, twelve pairs of black song thrushes at $7.50 per pair, twelve pairs of gray song thrushes at $8.50 per pair, eighteen pairs of red-breasted English robins at $5.50 per pair, twenty-four pairs of black- headed nightingales at $5.50 per pair. Some special orders for different parties were of goldfinches at $2.50 per pair, black starlings at $5.50 per pair, chaffinches at $2.50 per pair, linnets at $3.50 per pair, ziskins (green finches) at $2.50 per pair. The aforesaid birds have to be delivered here in first-class order and healthy condition by Mr. Stuhr, the bird-dealer, and upon such delivery he will be paid for the same at the aforesaid prices. This is a move in a most interesting direction. Why should we not have nightingales, bulfinches, UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 115 linnets, and larks, if they can be bought so cheaply and will acclimatize and be happy with us? Near this time, Mr. Bok wrote me concerning the feasibility of releasing some European nightingales on his residence grounds at Merion, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. I advised Mr. Bok and two other men, who asked the same question, by all means to try acclimating the nightingales and larks also. There is no reason why we should not add exquisite singers to our ornithology as well as rare orchids and other imported flowers, shrubs, vines, and trees to our horticulture. In the case of two other strange birds, I have no hesitation in saying: “I know.” One day while working with a guide in an open piece of woods pasture with clumps of thickly growing trees while we crouched motionless in hiding waiting for a pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks to come to their nest on which I had two set cameras focused, there burst on our ears such a bedlam of song that we were fairly dazed. The time was about half past three in the afternoon. I thought at first that the notes were those of the brown thrasher, but pres- ently I discovered that this bird was singing as no thrasher ever sang. He was imitating the bold, clear notes of the lark, and every song that lay between that and the tiniest wisps of sound made by a gnat-catcher or hummingbird; and when he interrupted this performance to imitate the crow- ing of a rooster, the bark of a dog, the rattle of a 116 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS hay wagon on the highway, and the neigh of a horse in an adjoining field, we came from hiding, cautiously crept through the willows and under- brush until we could get a clear view of the singer, perched in the tiptop of the highest poplar tree of a clump nearby, singing to split his throat. He was a bird of pure greys with a greyish white vest and touches of white on his dark wing feathers. There is nothing he possibly could have been except a Southern mocking bird. I was extremely fami- liar with three birds of this kind, which were kept in captivity at that time in a home of a friend of mine whose residence lay scarcely a mile away on the outskirts of the village. I was so sure that one of his birds had escaped that I stopped at night on my way home to tell him where his pet could be found, and to make sure again that I could not be mistaken in the identity of the singer. The birds were all in their room. They were exact re- productions of the one [had heard. Returning to work the following morning in the same location, I took with me my daughter, who recently had been visiting in Asheville, North Carolina, where, I had heard her say, these birds were very numerous and almost impudently tame. I did not tell her of my experience the day before, but took her with me to the blind where I had been hiding, fervently hoping that the mocking bird would be in the same locality and sing again. About ten o’clock I heard him calling in the bushes, and a few minutes later UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 117 he began to sing. Then I led her where she could see him and asked her what he was. She promptly answered that he was a mocking bird, so I had her corroboration and that of my helper who knew the caged birds well. I worked throughout the sum- mer, the greater part of the time in or near this location, but never saw or heard the bird again. The ornithology of Indiana now includes this bird in the southern part of the state, while it is listed as a stray even as far north as the southern part of Michigan. The other incident, concerning which I know I shall be questioned but in which I also know I am right, occurred about fifteen years ago, while I was in field work witha camera. I was hiding ina fence corner on one side of a highway lying about a mile south and three miles west of the Limberlost. On the opposite side of the road I had a camera fo- cused on the nest of a pair of birds in some bushes in a fence corner. While I was waiting for the birds to return from food hunting there was a whistling of wings, suggestive of wild doves or domestic pigeons, but much clearer and higher than anything I had heard since childhood.