BIRDS OF 
 LAKESIDE 
 
 a«^ PRAIRIE 
 
 EDWARD B CLARK 
 
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 IRew l^orf? State College of Hariculture 
 
Cornell University Library 
 QL 676.C58 
 
 Birds of lakeside and prairie, 
 
 3 1924 000 132 005 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924000132005 
 
BIRDS OF LAKESIDE AND 
 PRAIRIE 
 
km 
 
 .>^- 
 
 PROTHONOTARY WARBLER. 
 
BIRDS OF LAKESIDE 
 AND PRAIRIE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD B. CLARK 
 
 WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR 
 
 ^ 
 
 A. W. MUMFORD, Publisher 
 
 CHICAGO NEW YORK 
 
Copyright, 1901 
 By a. W. MUMFORD 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
 WITHOUT WHOSE GENTLE PERSUASION 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 HAD NEVER BEEN WRITTEN 
 
PREFACE 
 
 If the perusal of this little volume gives the reader one 
 tithe of the pleasure which the gathering of the material 
 gave the writer, the printing of the pages will not have 
 been in vain. The lakesides and prairies of the Middle 
 West are rich in bird life. The opera glass is a much more 
 satisfactory field companion than the shot gun. 
 
 Parts of a few of the chapters have appeared in Outing 
 of New York; Birds and Nature, the Tribune, the Post, and 
 the Record-Herald of Chicago. My thanks are due to the 
 Managing Editors of these publications for permission to 
 reprint such portions of the articles as I desired. 
 
 EDWARD B. CLARK. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Birds of a Smoky City ... 9 
 
 II The Songsters of the Skokie - - 19 
 
 III Through the Lost River Valley - - 29 
 
 IV In Southern Hoosier Hills - - - 39 
 V In Winter Fields - - 50 
 
 VI On the Trail of Pokagon - - 60 
 
 VII Some Odd Bits of Bird Life - - 68 
 
 VIII In God's Acre - - 78 
 
 IX Where the Black Tern Builds - - 87 
 
 X Comedy and Tragedy - - - 97 
 
 XI Spring on the Kankakee - - - 106 
 
 XII "From Haunts of Coot and Hern" - - 116 
 
 XIII The Reaches of the Prairie - - 129 
 
 XIV G. N. Shrike, Butcher - - 139 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prothonotary Warbler - - Frontispiece 
 
 Cerulean Warbler - - - - 17 
 
 DiCKCISSEL - - - - 27 
 
 Tufted Titmouse - - - -38 
 
 Red-Bellied Woodpecker - - - 49 
 
 Gold Finch - - - -59 
 
 White-Breasted Nuthatch - - 67 
 
 Black and White Warbler - - - 77 
 
 Evening Grosbeak .... 86 
 
 Loggerhead Shrike - - - - 96 
 
 Red-Eyed Vireo .... 105 
 
 Warbling Vireo - - - - - nS 
 
 Maryland Yellow-Throat - - - 119 
 
 House Wren - - - 13° 
 
 Black-Throated Blue Warbler - - 138 
 
 Great Northern Shrike ... - 144 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 BIRDS OF A SMOKY CITY 
 
 The birds' true homes are in the green fields, the hedges, 
 and the woodlands of the country, and the bird-student is fortu- 
 nate whose lines are cast in such pleasant places throughout the 
 entire year. The songsters, however, are not utterly neglectful 
 of their city friends. To a creature whose life is passed in 
 the freshness of the fields or in the fragrance of pine forests, 
 there must be something pitiful in the condition of him whose 
 daily round is one of grind and grime and noise. 
 
 The realist may frown if he will, yet the city-dwelling bird- 
 student loves to think that it is some touch of tenderness that 
 prompts the birds in spring and fall to turn aside from the 
 broader migration paths to brighten with color and song the 
 few green spots in the great bustling towns. No one who 
 feels a desire to scrape acquaintance with the songsters should 
 be kept from the attempt by the fact that he lives in a city 
 and has few opportunities to seek the country-side. During 
 certain times of the year our cities' parks are rich in bird life 
 and afford full opportunity for study. 
 
 My own city observations of birds have been confined 
 largely to Chicago. No place could seem less likely to be 
 attractive to the dainty warbler or the tuneful white throat 
 than this city with its shroud of smoke and its ceaseless clat- 
 ter. Yet it is doubtful if many other places in the land, of like 
 limited area, hold as much bird life in the spring months as 
 do the parks of this sooty city. 
 
 9 
 
lo Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 Many journeys in fields far from civilization, and holding 
 a dense feathered population, have never succeeded in making 
 me forget the delights and surprises of my first bird-hunting 
 trip in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Although hunting, my only 
 weapon was an opera-glass. I was but a recently added 
 attendant to the bird train, and I was skeptical of songster 
 possibilities in a park skirted with cable-car lines and thronged 
 seven days a week with pleasure-seekers. My companion had 
 hunted these fields aforetime, and said that we surely should 
 see something, though I thought the outlook was as cold as 
 the day, for this bird-seeking trip was made early in March 
 before winter had shown the least disposition to let go his 
 
 grip- 
 
 As a boy I had gathered some bird-lore in a sort of hap- 
 hazard way, and when on that March morning we neared the 
 edge of the south pond and heard a rattling cry, I exclaimed, 
 "Kingfisher!" as quickly as did my companion. We reached 
 the shore just in time to see a belted kingfisher, the halcyon 
 of the ancients, light on a dead limb of a tree on Willow 
 Island. The pond was ice-bound throughout, and the fish 
 beneath the glittering surface were safe from attack. The 
 wonder was how the kingfisher in this uncongenial clime 
 could escape starvation. The cold March sunlight showed 
 his fine feathers in all their beauty. He had sunk his head 
 well down between his shoulders. It seemed to me that he 
 must be cold, and that he was wishing mightily he could 
 pull his feathered topknot down over his ears like a hood. 
 Once halcyon darted from his perching-place and poised in 
 the air over the ice, as it is his custom to do when about to 
 strike his prey. For a moment I actually feared that the 
 bird was deceived by a bit of transparent ice through which 
 
Birds of a Smoky City 1 1 
 
 he could see a fish and was about to dash himself against the 
 hard surface and end his fishing days forever. He was wiser 
 than we knew, however, and after poising for a while, as 
 though it were only to exercise his wings, he flew back to his 
 dead-limb perch. 
 
 Just then we heard the note of a shrike. The bird was 
 on his watch-tower at the tiptop of an elm. He seemed to 
 be taking something of an interest in the kingfisher. It was 
 the great northern shrike, or butcher-bird, and it is barely 
 possible — his summer range being in the far North — that 
 never before had he met one of the tribe to which belonged 
 the belted knight below. Finally the shrike flew to the wil- 
 low and took a place just above the kingfisher's head. The 
 shrike is a bird of prey, but he never strikes quarry of the 
 fisher's size. Halcyon finally became a little restive under 
 the gaze of his visitor, who had cocked his head on one side 
 and was staring with all his might. The shrike dropped to a 
 lower limb. He was within a foot of the kingfisher's head. 
 This was too much of an impertinence, and the bigger bird 
 left his perch, but as he did so he sprang that watchman's 
 rattle of his full in the face of the shrike. That weird cry of 
 the waterside is enough to unsettle even stronger nerves than 
 those of a butcher, and the frightened shrike turned tail and 
 fled. The kingfisher, who probably had noted the effect of 
 his voice, made for the northern end of the pond, twisting 
 and retwisting his rattle in a sort of glee as he scurried along. 
 
 Into Lincoln Park 0n that March morning had come the 
 first song sparrow of the year. There is never a daylight 
 hour in all the seasons when this little fellow, conscious of the 
 melody within him, does not seem willing to give it voice. 
 The song sparrow is no silk-and-satin singer. He comes into 
 
12 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 the scene in plain homespun, but the listener loses all thought 
 of the garb in the sweetness of the strain. 
 
 The sparrow's song was marred by a harsh note that came 
 from the branches of the only pine tree that then stood on 
 the little peninsula which runs from the north into the park 
 pond. It was the voice of the bronzed grackle. This bird, 
 better known as the crow blackbird, is sable enough in color 
 on a dark day, but when the sun strikes him his garb is of 
 beaten gold and Tyrian purple. We found the grackle, and 
 found him all alone. That day was the first time of meeting 
 with this blackbird individual whose acquaintance I enjoyed 
 I firmly believe for five successive years. Crow blackbirds 
 are fond of company and it is seldom that you find one sepa- 
 rated from its fellows. This Lincoln Park bird, a male in fine 
 plumage, stayed about the pond and the animal house for ten 
 days before any of his kindred from the south joined him. 
 He found the tame ducks' quarters a splendid foraging-place, 
 and there he picked up every day much more than his share 
 of corn. Finally, when the bird was joined by his comrades, 
 I of course was unable to tell him from his mates, but the 
 next year more than a week before any other grackles were to 
 be seen, a single male appeared at the park and at once sought 
 out the ducks' corn-pit. The same thing happened the three 
 succeeding springs, and there never has been a doubt in my 
 mind that it was the same bird whom remembrance of the fat 
 feeding-grounds had tempted to a northern flight long before 
 others of his kind. 
 
 An inquiry of one of the ofificials on the day of my first 
 Chicago acquaintance with the grackle brought the informa- 
 tion that the blackbirds were not in the habit of visiting the 
 park. If this were true, that year marked the first appearance 
 
Birds of a Smoky City 1 3 
 
 of the grackles in Lincoln Park, but I have long since ceased 
 to place any confidence in the powers of observation of the 
 ordinary park guardian. One morning when I had seen and 
 identified within the limits of the pleasure-ground thirty-eight 
 varieties of native wild birds, I was informed by a policeman, 
 who said he had seen five years of service in the same place, 
 that in all that time there had been nothing wearing feathers 
 in evidence except English sparrows. 
 
 Before that first March day trip was ended we saw within 
 the Lincoln Park limits a few robins and bluebirds, and great 
 numbers of juncoes and fox sparrows. The white-breasted 
 nuthatches performed their gymnastic feats on every third 
 tree trunk. One of the lessons for beginners in bird-study to 
 learn from this bleak outing — and there was one beginner who 
 learned it well — is, that no matter how forbidding weather 
 conditions may be, there are always surprises in store for him 
 who seeks the birds in their haunts. 
 
 The presence of ponds in all the larger parks of our cities 
 makes these breathing places of the people especially attract- 
 ive to the birds. To the ponds the city dweller owes it 
 largely that the variety as well as the number of the feath- 
 ered visitors is so great. During the fullness of the tide of 
 migration the bird visitors are not limited to the smaller land 
 species. In the early morning hours the wild ducks are to be 
 found upon the waters, plovers and sand-pipers run along the 
 shores, herons perch upon tree branches in secluded places, 
 and bitterns rest in the sedge grasses. In Lincoln Park on 
 the same day I saw the ruby-throated humming bird and the 
 great bald eagle. The eagle was not one of the forlornly 
 feathered and unhappy looking prisoners in the big gilded 
 cage, but a great soaring bird whose birthright was freedom. 
 
14 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 Between these size extremes of the feathered kingdom there 
 can be found few birds that do not on some April or Septem- 
 ber day find their way into Lincoln Park. 
 
 In this day when the bullying English sparrow is abroad 
 in the land, it hardly seems possible that it can be the same 
 native bird individuals that drop into the parks year by year. 
 If the same birds do come back, they must have either short 
 memories or spirits forgiving enough to rank them with the 
 saints. The sparrows never cease their persecutions. At 
 times tragedies result, and at other times the sparrows' en- 
 counters with his American cousins take on the semblance of 
 broad comedy. One spring morning, just at sunrise, I saw a 
 bittern drop into the damp grasses along the edge of the 
 south Lincoln Park pond. The sparrows discovered the big 
 bog-trotter as soon as I did. They weighed down the willow 
 branches just above his head, and were all talking at once and 
 at the tops of their voices. They asked the bittern what he 
 was doing there, what right he had on sacred sparrow soil, 
 where he got his long legs, and why he needed a bill the size 
 of a plumber's. They questioned him and jeered at him for 
 five minutes, but he answered not a word. Finally the stake- 
 driver, as the bittern is called in swamp society, became tired 
 of the noise and flew to the little willow-planted island in the 
 middle of the pond. A small bird rarely attacks a larger one 
 when the object of attack is at rest. On the ground or in a 
 tree the assaulted one can readily use its weapons of offense 
 and defense. On the wing, however, it is a different matter. 
 No sooner had the bittern left the ground in lumbering flight 
 than the sparrows descended upon him in a cloud, each one 
 pecking the hapless visitor in passing. Some of the assailants 
 fairly rode on his back using both beak and claw to his tor- 
 
Birds of a Smoky City 15 
 
 ment and confusion. When the bittern reached a resting- 
 place at the island's edge, he was in a state of mind. In the 
 broad stretches of his native swamp the English sparrow was 
 an unknown quantity. There were swamp sparrows there to 
 be sure, but they were an American product, musical, harm- 
 less, and good fellows withal; surely these ill-mannered crea- 
 tures could be no kin of theirs. 
 
 Once lighted, the bittern turned from the water and faced 
 inland. He was looking squarely into the eyes of a score of 
 his sparrow persecutors. He took one comically awkward 
 step forward and made a drive with his powerful beak at one 
 of his tormentors. The blow fell far short of the mark, but 
 had the beak been a foot longer, the alert sparrow would have 
 been out of range before that sharp battering ram could strike 
 home. The bittern was attended by a train of sparrows all 
 the day long. He tried every part of the south pond's banks. 
 He was allowed neither to eat nor to rest. I saw the sparrow 
 horde still harrying the bird as I passed the place at sunset. 
 The next day the visitor had disappeared, and I hope that his 
 night's flight landed him safely among the marsh wrens and 
 the red-winged blackbirds of the swamp stretches which he 
 calls his home. 
 
 Lincoln Park, Chicago, has become known as the highway 
 of the warblers. From the time that the first myrtle bird 
 appears in April until the last "Cape May" has passed north 
 in the month whose name it bears, the park is a rich field for 
 the study of this most interesting family. The warbler, 
 whether you find it in Lincoln Park or along the spring flood- 
 burdened banks of the Illinois River, has a beauty and a 
 character all its own. There are bird-students who seek other 
 fields of study for other birds, but in the full tide of the 
 
1 6 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 warbler migration they turn their steps to the city's parks. 
 It is not at all unusual in a good warbler year to find every 
 park tree that offers a food supply of insects bearing a burden 
 of these little creatures, in gold, brown, red, yellow, black, 
 blue, and scarlet. Some of them, with seemingly barely 
 feather surface enough to show one color, are attired in 
 almost every hue known to the eye of man. 
 
 The yellow warblers nest by scores within the limits of 
 the parks of all Northern cities. I found the nest of this bird 
 once fastened to the slender stem of a rose-bush in the rose- 
 garden at Jackson Park, Chicago. It was not more than three 
 feet from the ground, and at the edge of a walk upon which 
 passed the thousands of visitors who went daily to enjoy the 
 bloom of the flowers. The little home was flanked on either 
 side by a great blossom, while another opened its petals just 
 above. Within the space of a few cubic inches there was as 
 much of beauty as it is the province of this world to hold 
 anywhere within like restricted limits. The people poked 
 inquisitively into the warblers' housekeeping, but the birds paid 
 little heed, though their hearts probably fluttered with an 
 unutterable fear. The mother bird fed the little ones while 
 trespassing human beings lifted the red rose roof to look into 
 the nest. Though disaster was feared, the devoted parents 
 finally successfully led the young forth for their first flight in 
 life. 
 
 The bluebirds, the gcarlet tanagers, the cerulean warblers, 
 the Baltimore orioles, the robins, nearly the whole tribe of 
 native sparrows, the woodpeckers, and not infrequently the 
 hawks and the owls, find rest and food within sound of the 
 clanging bells of surface cars and of the rumble of the wheels 
 of elevated roads. I once flushed a woodcock at the base of 
 
Birds of a Smoky City 17 
 
 the Lincoln Park statue of the Indian pony and rider, and for 
 three weeks of one spring month a wild wood duck rested on 
 the waters of a pond in the park and showed its brilliant 
 plumage to thousands of visitors. 
 
 It is to Lincoln Park that I owe the first chance since boy- 
 hood of seeing a living passenger pigeon. There are men of 
 middle age to-day who remember when the flocks of wild 
 pigeons darkened the sun, and when every gun in the land 
 brought down its share, and more than its share, of the crea- 
 tures that flew low and blindly to their destruction. There 
 were so many millions of the birds forty years ago that no 
 one dreamed that the day would come within a generation 
 when a single pigeon sitting on a tree in a city park might 
 be thought to be the last of its race. No satisfactory expla- 
 nation has ever been given for the disappearance of the pas- 
 senger pigeon. To-day it is well-nigh as rare as the great 
 auk, and the reported occurrence of one of the birds in any 
 part of the country is a matter of scientific interest. 
 
 The pigeon that I met on that April morning in the year 
 1894, in Lincoln Park, was perched on the limb of a soft 
 maple and was facing the rising sun. It was a male bird in 
 perfect plumage. There were no trees between him and the 
 lake to break the sun's rays from his breast. Every feather 
 shone, and the bird's neck was gem-like in its brilliancy. 
 Tennyson needed no special poetic license to write of the 
 "Burnished dove." I watched the pigeon through a glass 
 for fully ten minutes. A park loiterer approached and said 
 he wished that he had a gun ; that it was the first wild pigeon 
 he had seen in thirty years. That man had no soul above 
 pigeon pie. 
 
 A city park is not the safest resting-place for a creature 
 
1 8 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 upon whom may depend the saving of a race from extinction. 
 I flushed the pigeon, hoping that it would direct its flight 
 northward, and not rest until it had passed beyond the limits 
 of boys with slingshots and stones. It left its perch, but to 
 my dismay it shaped its course straight toward the heart of 
 the smoky city. Good wishes followed its arrowy flight, but 
 my fear is that the bird's life history is closed with this recital. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SONGSTERS OF THE SKOKIE 
 
 North of the city of Chicago, and a mile inland from the 
 shore of Lake Michigan, lie the stretches of the Skokie 
 swamp. This unreclaimed marshland is of great extent, and 
 in places it has a heavy fringe of scrub-oak, thick brush, and 
 tangled brier. The bluffs of the lake shore rise vertically to 
 the height of one hundred feet. A table-land extends for 
 some distance westward, and then slopes gently down to the 
 edge of the sluggish stream which stretches its length along 
 through the heart of the swamp. Still farther west the land 
 is low and well cultivated. Standing upon the table-land at 
 the east one looks far off to a heavy line of timber which 
 skirts the Desplaines River and marks the limit of vision. By 
 a sort of an optical illusion the woods of the Desplaines and 
 the adjacent land seem to stand much higher than the country 
 which intervenes. The whole effect of the view is that of a 
 valley, and I know of no other place in Illinois where such an 
 adequate idea may be formed of the character of the land- 
 scapes which have made some of the Eastern valleys famous. 
 
 There is a wealth of bird life in the region of the Skokie. 
 The diversified nature of the country makes possible the 
 finding of many varieties of the feathered kind. I have 
 tramped the Skokie at all seasons and always with profit. 
 The roads that lead from the lake westward through swamp 
 and meadow are in the springtime musical with the singing of 
 birds. One particular road I have in mind because of the 
 
 19 
 
20 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 many friends that I have made along its pleasant way. It is 
 rarely used, and at its beginning in the town of Highland 
 Park it is but little more than a tree-shadowed lane. The 
 orioles build in the swaying elm-boughs that droop above 
 the fences, and many robins place their mud houses in the 
 maples along the beginning of the way. 
 
 A tragedy is perhaps not an auspicious thing with which 
 to begin a day's outing. The bird-student, however, must 
 harden himself to endure the sight of the tragic, or else it were 
 better to put the field-glass in its case and forego the study. 
 There is perhaps something of the savage still left in us, and 
 I am free to confess that tragedies are not altogether uninter- 
 esting things. I am likewise free to confess that I have a 
 sort of a "sneaking admiration" for the hawk family. They 
 are freebooters and murderers, but there is something in the 
 lives of these birds that is typical of the wildness of the woods 
 and the freedom of the fields. There is a charm about their 
 very boldness, and that landscape lacks something which does 
 not have occasionally the living interest which is added by a 
 hawk beating the covers to startle its cowering quarry into 
 flight. 
 
 One May morning, before the sun was showing above the 
 bluff, I started westward along this favorite Skokie road. 
 Just beyond the elms and the maples at the road's beginning 
 lie some open cultivated fields with a barn and outbuildings 
 at their western border. One of the great barns was the 
 home of scores of domestic pigeons, which fed the greater 
 part of the day in the fields. I afterward learned that the 
 birds played havoc with the newly planted seeds. A detached 
 flock of the pigeons was foraging in the first field not more 
 than twenty yards from the fence. I stood leaning on the 
 
The Songsters of the Skokie 21 
 
 topmost rail and watched the birds for a few minutes. They 
 paid no attention to me, but suddenly with a whir they rose 
 and went in headlong flight toward the barn. A shadow 
 swept by me. I looked up, and not thirty feet above a hawk 
 was flying by like an arrow. I was to witness a bit of fal- 
 conry. The pursuer gained on the pigeons, and just before 
 they had reached the farm-house the hawk struck the last 
 scurrying bird and bore it to earth. There is generally a shot- 
 gun at hand for use when a hawk dares to approach a farm- 
 house. I fully expected to hear a report, and to have the 
 privilege, if it may be counted one, of looking at a dead bird 
 of prey, but no report came. I afterward found out that no 
 one but myself saw the tragedy, and that had the act been 
 seen it is doubtful if there would have been any shot-gun 
 interference. A farm-hand said that the pigeons had pulled 
 up all the peas and had eaten much more than their share of 
 the planted corn, and that a few pigeons less would be no 
 loss. A few days later the farmer took a hand at pigeon 
 killing himself, and saved his crops by sacrificing his birds. 
 I never knew what species of hawk it was that had a pigeon 
 breakfast so early that morning. It was one of the smaller 
 kinds, and with that knowledge I was forced to be content. 
 
 In the Skokie marsh there are two distinct sloughs. 
 Locally this word is pronounced "slews." In the middle of 
 each there is a thread of open water, which in the early spring 
 is a stream of some magnitude. The sloughs are the homes 
 of many red-winged blackbirds. In the last two or three 
 years, however, the blackbirds have decreased greatly in 
 numbers, though I am at a loss to find a reason. The lush 
 grasses and the flags offer as secure a retreat as before, and 
 civilization has as yet encroached but little upon the red- 
 
22 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 wing's retreat. This blackbird occasionally gives his friends 
 a surprise. I found his nest one spring day in a damp spot 
 within forty feet of a house in the town of Lake Forest. 
 The Skokie, where his brothers dwelt, was a mile away. 
 A much-traveled street passed within twenty feet of his home, 
 and children played daily under the trees almost within touch 
 of the nest. 
 
 A redwing took to a treetop as I crossed the bridge over 
 the first slough on that morning's trip. I was still thinking 
 of the hawk and pigeon, and was paying but little heed to the 
 swamp resident, notwithstanding the fact that he was saying, 
 "Look-at-me, look-at-me, look-at-me, " as he swung to and 
 fro on his slender perch. He soon forced my attention, how- 
 ever, by taking off in full flight after a crow. The redwing 
 literally rode on the crow's back. I have seen the kingbird 
 perform this feat, but did not know that the redwing had the 
 spirit for such deeds. It is a mooted question whether or not 
 the life of the crow has in it more evil than good. I was 
 once a stanch champion of the crow's cause, but I have been 
 wavering of late in my allegiance. To my mind the most 
 convincing evidence against him is the unanimity with which 
 all the smaller birds hate him. He must be a nest robber, or 
 else why the consternation whenever Corvus appears in a nest- 
 ing neighborhood? 
 
 I left the blackbird behind before he had given his part- 
 ing peck to the crow. There is a high, dry bit of meadow-land 
 just beyond the swamp, and there I found Dickcissel. Dick 
 has a yellow shirt-front and wears a black button in its center. 
 Some one, I have forgotten who, found much of dignity in 
 Dick, and claimed that unquestionably his right name was 
 Richard Cecil. Richard, however, does not take kindly to 
 
The Songsters of the Skokie 23 
 
 the name, and from mullen-stalk, or tree, all day long in the 
 May month he proclaims his proper name in a strident tone, 
 "Dickcissel, Dickcissel, Dickcissel." The books call Dick 
 the black-throated bunting. Formerly the bird was common 
 on the Atlantic coast ; now it is rarely found east of the Alle- 
 ghany Mountains. As far as my own observations go, I can- 
 not say that I have found it an abundant bird in the Middle 
 West. Dick is essentially a bird of the fields, and yet he 
 surprised me one day by appearing in a tree in a Chicago 
 street, and there giving voice to his name as insistently as 
 though his native meadow stretches lay below. 
 
 Two dilapidated barns stand near an old orchard across the 
 road from Dickcissel's field. Many years ago the apple-trees 
 shaded a small house, but that is gone, and a season or two 
 more at the most will see the last of the barns. Then what 
 will become of the swallows who have made the old gray build- 
 ings their summer abiding-place for years? Trespassers must 
 be few in the old tumble-down structures, for the barn swal- 
 lows place their nests upon the rafters within easy reach of 
 the ground, and seem utterly fearless of danger. Ordinarily, 
 the barn swallows put their mud and feathered homes far up 
 under the ridge-pole, but in these old barns, where they have 
 dwelt so many years in peace, the birds rear their young not 
 more than six feet above Mother Earth. On the occasion of 
 my first visit to this barn swallow resort, I was accompanied 
 by a big Newfoundland dog. I had seen the swallows pass 
 in and out the open doorway, and I jumped the fence to get 
 a glimpse of their housekeeping. The dog. Jack, jumped 
 with me. No sooner had Jack landed on the other side than 
 the swallows swooped down on him. They grazed his head 
 in passing, and I was ready to declare that they tweaked his 
 
24 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 ears. To me they paid no attention, but directed their wrath 
 at the poor four-footed creature, who could not have injured 
 them or their young had he tried. Jack did not like the 
 treatment he received. It seemed to cow him. Here was 
 an enemy with which he could not combat on anything like 
 equal terms. Finally he put his tail between his legs, jumped 
 the fence again, and slunk down the road, the swallows dart- 
 ing down on him again and again during his retreat. They 
 finally left him, and Jack took to his haunches some fifty 
 yards away and awaited my return. I made several journeys 
 with Jack along that same country road before the season 
 waned, but never again could I get him close to the scene of 
 the swallows' attack. 
 
 It was in a meadow near the weather-beaten barns that a 
 bird-loving friend of mine found an almost pure white bobo- 
 link, happily mated and as full of joyous song as though 
 Nature had not mixed her colors in painting him. Robert 
 was white, barring a few black streaks on his breast. I made 
 his acquaintance a little later in the season, and found that 
 he and his wife had a field all to themselves. Across the 
 road there were scores of bobolinks, but it was evident that 
 they had made an outcast of their brother because of his pecu- 
 liar plumage. It has been said that albino birds are not able 
 to secure mates. If that be the rule, this bobolink's case was 
 an exception, for he had a wife who seemed to find nothing 
 wrong with the attire of her lord. I have often wished that 
 I could have seen the albino at the period when the bobolinks 
 doff their summer garb and don the sober clothing of the fall. 
 I wondered if after the molting Bob's new crop of feathers 
 might not have been normal. The speculation ran still 
 further, and I wondered if the coming of the next spring's 
 
The Songsters of the Skokie 25 
 
 season might not find him in the regulation suit of yellow, 
 white, and black. 
 
 There is an old stumpy pasture at the end of the Skokie 
 road. With the friend who had found the albino bobolink 
 I was passing this pasture one day, when a sparrow alarm- 
 note quickly and sharply uttered attracted our attention. 
 My companion discovered the source of the alarm in a 
 moment. A little gray bird was perched on the top of a 
 stump, and uttering the most dismal cries that I think I ever 
 heard come from a bird throat. Soon another bird joined it, 
 and for every cry that the first one uttered, the other went it 
 one better, or as I thought it, one worse. Both birds took 
 flight and came close to us, flying just above our heads and 
 keeping up their lamenting, for their tone was sorrow-stricken 
 if anything. When our surprise at the birds' actions had 
 abated a little, we had sense enough to realize that we were 
 dealing with strangers. The birds were unquestionably spar- 
 rows, but of a kind neither of us had met before. As they 
 hovered over our heads, they showed soft gray breasts with 
 a single jet-black spot in the center. The sides of the crown 
 were chestnut, and the tail feathers were tipped with white. 
 While flying, both birds spread their tails like fans and 
 formed a striking picture. Finally they seemed to feel that 
 they had made much ado about nothing, and one of them 
 took to a fence-post close at hand. The other soon dropped 
 to the ground at the foot of a stump within ten feet of us, 
 and there fed two young birds, which apparently had just 
 emerged from the shell. The birds were lark sparrows, and 
 to my mind they are the handsomest of the sparrow tribe. 
 
 The day following the discovery of the nest I took some 
 friends to see the nestlings and their pretty parents. The 
 
26 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 mother bird was brooding the young when we reached the 
 place. I stood directly over her, one foot on either side of 
 the nest. She did not move, but she looked up at me with 
 an eye bright with fear. I sank to my knees. Mother love 
 held her chained to the nest. I put my hand down, and with 
 my forefinger gently stroked her back. She stood it for some 
 seconds, and then scuttled away, seeking to lead me from 
 her treasures by pretending to be crippled. I felt guilty 
 at bringing so much terror to that little homestead. The 
 bird I think soon gained heart, for as we reached the road 
 we saw her carrying food to the young. Eight days from 
 the afternoon that the young were hatched they were out of 
 the nest. Their growth it struck me was unprecedentedly 
 rapid. 
 
 I found the lark sparrows breeding in the same pasture the 
 following year, and it was not until then that I heard the 
 male's full song. On this occasion my companion was a 
 musician, and one acquainted with the whole range of bird 
 notes. She pronounced the song to be superior in quality to 
 that of any other of the sparrow tribe. There was a treat 
 that spring afternoon for eye and ear. There was a blending 
 of color and song which it does not often fall to man's lot to 
 enjoy. In the heart of a small tree, as yet destitute of foli- 
 age, sat a flaming scarlet tanager, while forming a frame 
 about him were seven gorgeous goldfinches. Below the tree 
 the lark sparrow sang its sweet solo. 
 
 I have found the American bittern along the Skokie 
 stretches during the nesting-season. That the bird rears its 
 young there I have no doubt. The race of the bittern in some 
 places, I fear, is nearly run. The jacksnipe shooters who 
 
The Songsters of the Skokie 27 
 
 plod the marshes in the late spring, shoot down ruthlessly 
 every bittern that rises lazily in front of them. The bird is 
 harmless and adds something of life to the landscape, but it 
 must needs fall victim to that love of killing simply for kill- 
 ing's sake, which seems to dwell in the hearts of many 
 so-called sportsmen. 
 
 One spring morning I saw a bittern pitch in the swamp 
 grasses where a bit of the woodland had encroached upon the 
 marsh. I marked the spot where the bird had lighted and 
 walking toward it flushed it from its retreat. It flapped 
 its way lazily over the marsh to a pasture which was dotted 
 with stumps. There was absolutely no cover there for the 
 bird. I went to the place and searched the ground thoroughly 
 through a pair of strong glasses, but never a feather did I see. 
 I knew that I could not have failed to see the bittern had it 
 flown away, for barring the stumps, the place was as open as 
 a lawn. Finally a small stump came into the field of my glass. 
 Stump? No; it was not a stump at all, but the bittern itself 
 posing as a bit of dead wood to deceive the intruder. The 
 bird was not more than fifteen yards away. Its body was 
 perpendicular, its neck and head were drawn well down into 
 the shoulders, and the beak was pointing upward, forming a 
 prolongation of the line of the back. The bird in appearance 
 was the counterpart of every one of a dozen of the smaller 
 stumps within a stone's toss of where I stood. I sat down 
 for the sole purpose of testing the bittern's patience. I 
 watched it steadily for twenty minutes, and during all that 
 time it moved not so much as a muscle. It seemed, more- 
 over, as if it had control of its feathers, for the passing breeze 
 which stirred the swamp grass beyond, failed to ruffle its 
 
28 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 plumage. Finally I became half ashamed of keeping the bird 
 under such a strain, and rising, I walked toward it slowly. I 
 was allowed to come within a few feet before it moved. 
 Then, after taking four comically dignified steps, the bittern 
 flew far down the stream which makes its way through the 
 heart of the swamp-land. 
 
DICKCISSEL. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THROUGH THE LOST RIVER VALLEY 
 
 It matters little whether the wind be roaring or bleating, 
 there comes into the heart of the bird-lover March first a puls- 
 ing desire to see the first robin of the springtime. Almanacs 
 and calendars forgotten, the true bird enthusiast can tell the 
 first day of the first spring month by a certain quickened 
 sense of yearning for the feathered friends of a bygone year. 
 Unhappily, however, the first day of spring does not always 
 bring the first songster, and after a suburban trip afield on 
 that day had developed no birds save some storm-blown gulls, 
 I made up my mind to go south and meet the migration 
 midway. 
 
 My pilgrimage took me to the valley of the Lost River 
 in southern Indiana. The grass had not yet taken on even a 
 tinge of green, but all the hillsides were glowing with the red 
 bloom of the maple. Some botanist will have to tell why 
 the grass was a laggard while the towering trees were aflush. 
 The native sparrows, the slate-colored snowbirds, and the other 
 gleaners of the ground in this part of Hoosierdom, must look 
 upward for their spring signs, and forget the withered grass 
 blades of a year that is gone. 
 
 Southern Indiana, the land of the redbird, and alack, of 
 the red mud ! To hear the matchless whistling solo of the 
 one, the bird-lover must take rather more than a surfeit of 
 the other. Mud, mud, red March mud everywhere; but 
 above it all a flood of melody from a thousand throats. I 
 
 29 
 
30 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 doubt if there be many places on earth better adapted to bird 
 life and better loved by the birds than this southern Indiana 
 country. 
 
 With a companion who was willing to become an enthusi- 
 ast, I left the hotel on the morning following my arrival, just 
 as the sun was touching the top of a chain of sugar-loaf hills 
 to the east. Although we were nearly three hundred miles 
 south of the shore of Lake Michigan, we were not quite near 
 enough to Dixie to have left behind us the last trace of win- 
 ter. A light cloak of snow clothed the hilltops, and upon 
 the lawn that stretched away from the hotel steps, white 
 patches showed here and there. At the edge of one of 
 these snowy spots a male robin, with the "brighter crimson" 
 of the springtime on his breast, was pulling a reluctant worm 
 from the sod. He was especially welcome to his discoverers, 
 for he was their first robin of the season. Before we had 
 crossed the bridge which spans the little river, we passed a 
 score of robin brothers and sisters, all industriously and suc- 
 cessfully "digging for bait." We startled some of the birds 
 from their feeding-places, and thereat they made straight for 
 the maples, where their breasts "added another bit of red to 
 the budding trees. They did not seem to resent our discour- 
 tesy, but in the joy coming from full stomachs and a glori- 
 ous morning, they told us in chorus to "cheer up." 
 
 My heart was set on redbirds. I had never been so placed 
 that I could form a close acquaintance with these gold- 
 tongued creatures. I had seen the cardinal grosbeak — that 
 is the redbird's other name — only on rare occasions. One 
 year a pair of the birds visited Graceland cemetery in the city 
 of Chicago. They were accidental visitors, and my com- 
 panionship with them was limited to the space of thirty min- 
 
Through the Lost River Valley 31 
 
 utes. I had just enough of it to make me wish for more. 
 There is something in the note of the cardinal grosbeak that 
 satisfies my ear more fully, perhaps, than the song of any 
 other bird. It has about it a wholesomeness and yet a sweet- 
 ness and cheer that I have found in no other bird voice. I 
 must confess, however, that when I have made this admission 
 to friends who have more music in their souls than ever I 
 may hope to have, they have regarded it as a bit of enthusi- 
 asm springing from no very sound judgment. Certain it is, 
 however, that no one can tire of the color and marked indi- 
 viduality of the cardinal grosbeak. 
 
 The startled robins had returned to their feeding-ground 
 when from some brush beyond the railroad trestle came a 
 melodious whistle, "Beauty, beauty, beauty." It was the 
 call of Master Redbird. Small blame to him for being vain 
 and for pouring into the ears of his listeners the oft-repeated 
 tale of his beauty. A song sparrow had taken to the topmost 
 rail of a crooked fence, and his ecstatic song was coming from 
 a throat that bade fair to split. When the full, rich notes of 
 the cardinal came over the field and marsh, the sparrow 
 stopped singing, as if he knew that a master's instrument was 
 in tune. From the standpoint of pure melody, however, I 
 am told, and I believe, that the sober-garbed song sparrow 
 need not fear to have his voice put to the test with that of 
 his brilliant cousin. There were a dozen cardinals in the 
 underbrush by the swamp. The singing was constant, but 
 for some reason of their own, the birds sang only one at a 
 time. I thought, perhaps, they felt that a chorus of such 
 sweetness would cloy. The Mesdames Cardinal, of whom 
 there were several, refused to sing at all on that morning, 
 although their notes have a softer sweetness than have those 
 
32 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 of their red-robed lords. A man who was at work clearing 
 land back of the cardinals' retreat said that the redbirds were 
 more plentiful than ever. Here was some recompense for days 
 spent in stuffy Chicago justice shops in the effort to secure 
 the punishment of receivers of stolen goods in the shape of 
 trapped and caged cardinals. 
 
 On our right was a great field whose soil was pierced with 
 standing stalks of withered corn. One of the cardinals left 
 his undergrowth retreat, and crossing our path lighted on one 
 of the stalks about midway of its height. An ear of corn that 
 the gleaners had overlooked was still clinging to the stem. 
 The cardinal at once began the process of husking and shell- 
 ing. With his powerful beak he pulled a strip of the husk 
 outward and downward, and then he attacked the disclosed 
 kernels. The sun struck the bird full and fair. His plumage 
 was like fire, and a brilliant picture it made against the con- 
 trasting brown of the corn. The cardinal shelled at least a 
 dozen kernels and dropped them one by one to the ground. 
 Then he took to the ground himself and began the work of 
 cracking the provender; at least I think he cracked it. He 
 went through a process that was remarkably like chewing, but 
 even a strong field-glass did not enable me to determine posi- 
 tively whether or not he swallowed the kernels whole. In a 
 few minutes he left his feeding-place and went back to his 
 friends in the underbrush. I went down into the field and 
 examined his breakfast-table, but he had cleared it so thor- 
 oughly that not a crumb remained. 
 
 It was hard to leave the whistling redbirds behind, but 
 there were other feathered friends and feathered strangers to 
 be looked for, and forsooth, all the cardinals of southern 
 Indiana are not confined to one bit of underbrush. We left 
 
Through the Lost River Valley 33 
 
 the railroad track for the highroad. Soon we were overtaken 
 by an attenuated-looking native, seated on a load of hickory 
 staves drawn by a pair of fat horses. He politely offered the 
 strangers a "lift," for he was going a "right smart way." 
 His invitation was speedily accepted, for March mud makes 
 tired tramps. The driver confided to his guests who sat on 
 the body of the load that he worked from sunrise to sunset 
 cutting and drawing hickory for the sum of sixty cents a day. 
 On this he fed, clothed, and housed a wife and four children. 
 We felt no need to commiserate this man on his lot, because 
 he said he was contented. What is there more than this? 
 This hewer of wood was a man of sentiment. My heart went 
 out to him. 
 
 "Some people think I am queer," he said, "because I 
 stop work when the brown thrush sings, and because I don't 
 let my boys go bird-nesting." 
 
 Bless him ! It is good to know that the small army of 
 "cranks" has recruits where they are most needed. 
 
 From a beech at the left of the road came a sharp "Quank, 
 quank." Quick as a flash our Hoosier stave-splitter said: 
 "That's a nuthatch. Most people hereabouts call it a sap- 
 sucker. It ain't." 
 
 Here was knowledge based on observation, and not on 
 books. The bird was a white-breasted nuthatch, and the 
 experience, of a few days showed that it was known to most 
 of the inhabitants of that Lost River Valley as a sapsucker, 
 a name suggestive of injury to trees, and a name which has 
 brought upon the tribe of Indiana nuthatches much unde- 
 served persecution. 
 
 A scream, "Keo-u, keo-u," came sharply across a field 
 which stretched away toward the river. A large hawk was 
 
34 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 making for a solitary sycamore which stood in the field's cen- 
 ter. He was in ignominious flight with two crows in hot 
 pursuit. The hawk pitched upon a limb and clung there, 
 though one of his pursuers struck him full and fair. The 
 impact swung the hawk about, but he made no attempt to 
 retaliate. Our driver kindly stopped his horses, and we glued 
 our glasses on the big bird. It was a red-shouldered hawk, 
 beyond much doubt, though positive identification at the 
 distance was impossible. The crows took a perch just above 
 his hawkship and dropped down alternately to give him a 
 peck and a wing stroke, which he took with cowardly humil- 
 ity. The red-shouldered hawk will strike and carry off a 
 game-cock, but the spurless crow is his master. Why it is 
 that this bird, so well fitted by Nature for fighting, should 
 allow himself on all occasions to be browbeaten and thrashed is 
 something that is past finding out. The crow is literally the 
 bite noir of the hawk tribe. Perhaps the reason may be, as 
 our Indiana friend suggested, "The crow has the devil in 
 him, and every bird and everybody is afraid of the devil." 
 
 The road wound round the base of one of the many hills. 
 A bird flushed from the wayside, took to the top of a pole 
 which served as a support for the rails of the crooked fence. 
 "One of the smaller thrushes," was the first thought, but it 
 was too early even in southern Indiana for the hermit or the 
 veery. The bird sang softly. No bell-like thrush notes 
 these. The singer was the fox sparrow, the largest of his 
 tribe, but this vocal effort was not his best. Foxie seemed 
 to feel that even though the sun were bright in the valley, 
 there might be storm conditions yet ahead, and that the time 
 had not yet come for the fullness of song. It has always 
 seemed to me that the fox sparrow of the Middle West is of a 
 
Through the Lost River Valley 35 
 
 richer color than his Eastern brother. When the sun strikes 
 his back, it is positively red ; then, too, there seems to be a 
 deeper shade to the brown spots and stripes upon the breast 
 of our Western bird. The sparrow had been gleaning the 
 roadside in company with a lot of juncoes, otherwise and 
 more lengthily known as slate-colored snowbirds. The 
 juncoes flitted leisurely along in front of the wagon, flirting 
 their tails and showing the snow-white feathers which are 
 their distinguishing mark. I believe that the juncoes are 
 inordinately proud of these white markings. Certain it is 
 that never one of them takes wing without making a great 
 showing of the snowy feathers. There must have been five 
 hundred of the juncoes all told, with here and there in the 
 flock some cinnamon-crowned Canadian tree sparrows. 
 
 The thoughts of the whole flock were bent on food. 
 Suddenly there came from far over the field a piercing 
 "Killy, killy, killy." The snowbirds and the sparrows were 
 stricken with an awful fear. There was a moment of fright- 
 ened crouching, and then the flock rose as one bird and 
 dashed into the heavy undergrowth beyond the roadside 
 fence. A shadow passed over the ground, and from above 
 again came the repeated and suggestive scream, "Killy, killy, 
 killy." A sparrow hawk was abroad in search of his break- 
 fast. It is the smallest as it is the most beautiful of all the 
 hawks. It may be that our presence at the foot of the big 
 cottonwood-tree, on which the hawk took its perch, saved 
 the life of one of the trembling juncoes. At any rate, the 
 bird made no attempt to strike feathered quarry, but with a 
 farewell scream, flew off to a point above the center of a bare 
 field. There it hovered gracefully for a moment after the 
 manner of the northern shrike. Then it dropped down like 
 
36 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 the passage of light upon what was doubtless "a morsel of a 
 mouse." 
 
 We met another sparrow hawk within a hundred rods. 
 The bird was abundant, and the people told me that it was a 
 permanent resident in southern Indiana. I was interested in 
 the actions of this second little hawk, because although it was 
 only the first week in March, I believe it was hunting a nest- 
 ing site. It was screaming as shrilly as did its brother first 
 met, and all the small birds of the neighborhood were under 
 cover. The sparrow hawk makes its home in a hole in a tree. 
 This particular bird flew to a cottonwood that was bare of 
 branches for a long distance from the ground. It disappeared 
 so suddenly after reaching the tree that our curiosity was 
 aroused, and we left the stave-splitter and his wagon and 
 started for the cottonwood. The tree stood alone, and the 
 hawk could not leave it without being seen. We searched 
 with our glasses, but found no trace of the bird. Half-way 
 up the trunk, however, we discovered a hole. My companion 
 picked up a club and pounded on the tree. The sparrow 
 hawk came out of the hole with a rush, and screamed "Killy, " 
 as he flew away, and I haven't the least doubt it meant it, 
 for we probably angered him by interfering with its affairs. 
 Several days afterward I saw the hawk go into the same hole, 
 and had the feat been possible, I should have climbed the 
 tree to see if I could not find a nest and eggs, and thus establish 
 the fact that the sparrow-hawk gets him a home at a much 
 earlier date than the scientists put it down in the books. 
 
 The chickadee, the cheerful little character in feathers 
 beloved of Emerson and Thoreau, tells the same lisping tale 
 and performs the same dizzy gymnastic feats in the lindens 
 along Lost River that he does in the elms on Concord's 
 
Through the Lost River Valley 37 
 
 banks. On that March morning, the chickadee showed me a 
 new trait in his character. I never before had known the bird 
 to be in the least pugnacious. Yet here he was having a very 
 decided row with a nuthatch neighbor. The birds were on 
 the same limb, and perhaps their quarrel was over some choice 
 bit of insect food that lay hidden in the bark. Whatever the 
 cause, they went at each other like a pair of game-cocks. A 
 bluejay, which let me say in passing was, strangely enough, 
 the only one I saw in southern Indiana, was looking on at the 
 combat with an expression of pure amazement. The jay, 
 doubtless, had had many a pitched battle of his own, but 
 equally doubtless he had never before looked on a sight like 
 this. Here were two models of deportment descending to the 
 level of the prize-ring. I know that the jay, like the human 
 observer, wanted to cry "shame," but also, like the human 
 observer, was kept from it by the fear of being thought incon- 
 sistent. The two feathered morsels fought for fully two 
 minutes, and then the nuthatch turned tail and fled. He took 
 to the trunk of a big tree, and there, head downward, began 
 searching for food as unconcernedly as though he had never 
 forgotten for an instant what was due to his fame as a bird of 
 correct habit. The chickadee remained on the battle-ground, 
 and in a moment he uttered his ' ' phoebe' ' note, though whether 
 it was intended as a cock's crow of victory or not must remain 
 a secret. 
 
 There have been one or two grave discussions as to 
 whether birds are deficient in the sense of smell. I came 
 - to the conclusion during my southern Indiana sojourn that 
 some birds must be deficient in both the senses of taste and 
 smell. In Orange County is situated a group of springs famous 
 for their healing qualities, and — dare I say it? — infamous 
 
38 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 for their taste and smell. I had ample evidence of the cura- 
 tive powers of the waters, but I must say that the fountain- 
 heads make their presence known long before you come 
 within sight of their bubbling water. The gem-like Maryland 
 yellow throat will build its nest in the heart of an ill-smelling 
 skunk-cabbage. This is one of the arguments advanced for 
 the absence of the olfactory nerve in some birds. If those 
 who adduce this yellow-throat habit to substantiate their 
 theory could see, as I have seen, the cardinal, the robin, and 
 the crow blackbird drinking with apparent relish of water that 
 smelled to heaven and beyond, they would consider their 
 point proven beyond the peradventure of a doubt. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN SOUTHERN HOOSIER HILLS 
 
 The Lost River of Indiana is well named. It flows along 
 its noisy course for many miles, and then suddenly disappears 
 into the bowels of the earth. At a point more than a mile 
 from where the stream gets lost it reappears, and thence 
 to its mouth its way is "clear and above ground." The river 
 flows for some distance through a natural bowl. A rain of a 
 few hours' duration causes an overflow of its banks, and the 
 bowl becomes a lake. A heavy thunder-storm occurred dur- 
 ing the night following my first day's trip afield in the Lost 
 River country. The morning showed the haunts of the red- 
 birds and juncoes well under water. There was not a cloud 
 in the sky, but the little valley through which we had tramped 
 the day before was flooded from hill to hill. The highlands 
 offered the only conditions that seemed likely to prove satis- 
 factory to birds and bird-lovers. 
 
 I found a companion for the second day's outing in a 
 young Indianapolis physician who had sought southern Indi- 
 ana "for the healing of the waters." Apparently he had 
 sought it to good effect. Two weeks before he had been 
 carried into the hotel, too weak to walk, and to-day he was 
 willing to undertake a tramp of ten miles over the hills. 
 Some one told us of a sugar-bush that was to be found in the 
 back country. This information was an added inducement 
 to the doctor who confessed a weakness for maple sap. 
 
 Before we struck out for the higher hills we came across a 
 
 39 
 
40 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 group of men and boys at the edge of a pond. A mud-hen, 
 which had dropped in during the night for food and rest, was 
 paddling about the water, and acting as a target for the revol- 
 vers of half a dozen of the men. The bullets spattered on the 
 surface all about the bird, but it lacked the wisdom to take 
 flight. It swam about in a circle in a half-bewildered way 
 and simply invited death. I asked the men to stop shooting, 
 but I speedily found that humanitarian pleas are of little avail 
 when addressed to a man with a gun. I threw a stone the 
 size of my fist in the direction of the bird, hoping that the 
 splash would frighten it to flight, but the stone had no more 
 effect than the shots. We left the men still popping away, 
 and that evening on our return I heard a big fellow boasting 
 to the group gathered round the open fire in the hotel ofifice 
 that he had killed the bird at the fifteenth shot. Mud-hens 
 are notoriously stupid, and they pay the penalty of their 
 stupidity every time a pot-hunter gets into one of their 
 retreats. 
 
 I saw my first bluebird of the year that morning in the 
 Hoosier hills. The bluebirds must have wonderful recruiting 
 powers ; it was only seven years before that their ranks were so 
 thinned by the attacks of the cold that it was thought the mus- 
 ter-roll never again would be full. This spring of 1901 was the 
 first time that I had seen anything like a satisfying number of 
 these sweet-voiced birds since they fell victims to that wintry 
 blast which penetrated far into the southland. It is said now 
 that there are more bluebirds than ever, but this saying is 
 doubtless due to faulty memories on the part of the observers. 
 One bluebird that we came across was gravely inspecting the 
 carcass of a crow which some one had hung on the thorns of 
 an Osage orange hedge. The crow had been killed and put 
 
In Southern Hoosier Hills 41 
 
 there as a lesson to his marauding brothers, but I couldn't 
 believe that the lesson had sunk very deep into the crow 
 mind, for on a tree less than fifty yards from the body of the 
 deceased, three crows were sitting and sunning themselves 
 unconcernedly. 
 
 Before the morning was spent I had found out why it is 
 that heavy windstorms fail to break the eggs in birds' nests 
 that are hung on frail branches which sway and snap with 
 every blast. The roads were in such condition that they 
 were impassable for wagons, and many people passed us on 
 horseback. If memory serves, every one of the horsemen 
 carried a basket of eggs slung over his right arm. The horses 
 floundered through mud-holes, and made their stumbling ways 
 up and down hills where the roadway was covered with 
 stumps and stones washed out from the embankments by the 
 heavy rain. The rider in every instance made the basket with 
 its precious burden conform to the swaying motion of the 
 horse, and never an egg did I see broken. One rider told us 
 that he depended largely on the egg crop for a living and 
 that he couldn't afford to smash any. He further volunteered 
 the information that he thought he could fall down hill with 
 his horse "and never crack a shell." 
 
 Our way led us through a little hamlet. At the crossing 
 of two roads there was a tavern with a huge tree standing in 
 front of its door. There were six bronzed grackles holding a 
 "windy congress" in the branches. A redbird occupied a 
 perch at the very top of a small tree which stood at the gate 
 of a cottage next the inn. Four boys were playing about the 
 gate, and though the bird was calling loudly, the youngsters 
 paid no heed. I thought it promised well for the future of the 
 race of redbirds when a songster of such brilliancy could sit 
 
42 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 and sing unmolested just above the heads of four boys who 
 were passing through the sling-shot and bird-nesting age. 
 Thinking it barely possible that the boys, intent on play, had 
 not noticed the bird, I purposely called their attention to it 
 and asked them what it was. They were not backward in 
 expressing surprise at my supposed ignorance, and the answer 
 to my question was, "Don't you know a redbird, mister?" 
 Then they told me there were lots of redbirds around, and 
 that they could whistle "bully." It is more than likely that 
 the very commonness of certain birds of brilliant plumage 
 saves them from destruction. It is to the unaccustomed that 
 human attention is most sharply attracted. In the East in 
 many places the red-headed woodpecker has been practically 
 exterminated. He never was as common a bird there as he 
 is to-day with us in the Middle Western country. His rarity 
 and beauty invited destruction, and it came. In the prairie 
 towns and villages the red-headed woodpecker is as common 
 as the robin, and despite his beauty, the small boy passes 
 him by with barely a thought. 
 
 The red-headed woodpecker came into my mind while we 
 stood at the gate talking to the little Hoosier lads; and fol- 
 lowing came a thought that not one of these birds had we 
 seen, though I had understood from a friend who had visited 
 the locality before that the red-headed woodpeckers were 
 abundant. When we had left the little village behind us we 
 accepted standing-room in a grain wagon, offered by a boy 
 who was driving home from the railroad station. I asked 
 him about the red-headed woodpeckers. He said that gener- 
 ally they were the commonest birds that they had, but that 
 the fall before they had all disappeared, and that he had not 
 seen one all through the winter nor thus far in the spring. I 
 
In Southern Hoosier Hills 43 
 
 asked him how he accounted for their disappearance, and he 
 answered that the birds left because the beechnut crop was a 
 failure. "The red-heads," he said, "like beechnuts better 
 than any other food. They live on them all winter. Last 
 fall, for some reason, there wasn't a beechnut in the country, 
 and the birds all cleared out." 
 
 The lad's explanation was undoubtedly the true one. He 
 said that he had studied something about the birds in school, 
 and that there wasn't as much shooting going on now as 
 there used to be. When he discovered that we were bird 
 enthusiasts and were out on an opera-glass hunt, he entered 
 into the spirit of the occasion and gave us much information. 
 He was in a receptive mood as well, and I hope that he 
 gained knowledge enough to pay him for what he imparted. 
 
 A high-pitched voice, calling "Peter, Peter, Peter," came 
 from some trees on the hillside. The boy stopped his horses. 
 
 "I've seen and heard that bird ever since I was born," he 
 said; "I call him Peter, because that's what he calls himself, 
 but what the bird is I don't know; tell me." 
 
 By this time I had the bird in the field of my glass, and I 
 told the boy driver its name, though this was my first glimpse 
 in life of "Peter." The discovery of a bird new to the 
 observer makes a red-letter field-day. "Peter" was the 
 tufted titmouse, first cousin to the chickadee. "Tufty" is 
 common enough in the southern Indiana latitude, and is occa- 
 sionally seen as far north as Chicago, though it had never 
 been my fortune to meet him. Soon more of the titmice 
 came into sight. There was a troop numbering nearly a 
 score. They are active little creatures, and of a jolly tem- 
 perament. For a week I had ample opportunity to study 
 "Tufty" and his ways; and with all due regard for our little 
 
44 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 friend, the black-cap chickadee, who does his best to save our 
 Northern winters from dreariness, I confess that I think Cousin 
 Peter is of the more interesting habit. 
 
 A woodpecker note that was new made me ask our driver 
 to stop once more. An orange-pated bird scuttled around 
 the trunk of a tree. Here was another discovery. It was 
 the red-bellied woodpecker, common enough in this locality, 
 but hitherto a stranger to the visiting observers. This wood- 
 pecker has been getting himself much disliked in recent years. 
 It is not at all an uncommon bird in Florida, and there the 
 orange-growers say that it attacks and ruins the fruit. Bird- 
 lovers, the country over, are hoping that it will be proved that 
 the bird selects only the unsound oranges for probing. Since 
 it has been fairly well established that the kingbird, which 
 was supposed to be a great destroyer of honey-bees, eats only 
 the worthless drones, the red-bellied woodpecker's friends 
 hope that a parallel excuse may be found for its conduct. 
 
 We drove under a tree whose branches roofed the road. 
 It was filled with red-winged blackbirds. They were all 
 males, and as they shifted uneasily from twig to twig, they 
 showed to advantage their shoulder-knots of scarlet and gold. 
 It was a noisy flock, but in the spring every bird-note has in 
 it something of softness. Our driver host told us that the 
 redwings were abundant in spring and fall, but that they did 
 not nest anywhere in the vicinity. This statement struck me 
 as being curious, for on every side were places which seemed 
 to be ideal for the purposes of blackbird housekeeping. 
 Beyond the blackbird tree we saw our first meadowlark. He 
 was full of the joy of living, and was trying his best to tell 
 the listening world about it from the top of a fence-post. 
 We drove past the bird without causing him to leave his perch. 
 
In Southern Hoosier Hills 45 
 
 I have known the meadowlark since boyhood, but never 
 before had been so near the living bird, except on the rare occa- 
 sions when I had flushed it from its nest with my trespassing 
 footsteps. A Httle farther on we found a flock of gold- 
 finches. As doubtless every one knows, the male goldfinch 
 changes his resplendent coat of yellow and black for one of 
 dun in the fall of the year. He takes off this habit some 
 time in the spring, and puts on his summer livery once more. 
 Three of the goldfinches we saw on that March morning 
 were in the transition stage. With them, undressing and 
 dressing must be the matter of a month or so. Familiar as 
 my companion and I were with the goldfinch in both his hot 
 and cold weather attire, neither of us had ever before seen 
 him while he was changing his clothes. As a matter of fact, 
 I did not recognize the bird until the little flock took wing 
 and began the familiar weaving flight across the field. I have 
 seen the goldfinch in northern Illinois as late as April ist still 
 wearing his full winter costume. 
 
 As my friend the doctor and I were bound for a sugar- 
 camp, which was supposed to lie at the left of the road we 
 were traveling, the time was approaching when we should 
 have to leave the wagon and take to the fields. In the few 
 minutes which passed before parting with our boy driver he 
 took occasion to tell us that he had liked birds and flowers 
 ever since he could remember. Then he named a number 
 of his favorites. That boy had a keen insight, and knew 
 Nature thoroughly and sympathetically. When we said 
 good by, I casually asked his name. 
 
 "Love," he said. 
 
 Surely there is something in a name after all. 
 
 My companion and I trudged our way over the hills 
 
46 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 toward the west. A mile ahead we saw a house with a grove 
 back of it. "There, surely," we thought, "we shall find the 
 sugar-camp." We made the mile, and were told that we had 
 another one to go. We tramped fully two good city miles, 
 and found we were "not there yet." A man in a field was 
 opening a shock of corn, an operation that was being watched 
 with great solicitude by a dozen crows sitting on a fence a 
 hundred yards beyond. We asked him about the sugar-bush, 
 and were told that it wouldn't do us any good to go there, 
 becartise it had been a poor season for sap and no trees had 
 been tapped. This was a disappointment to the doctor, who 
 had set his mind on sugar. It had its compensations, how- 
 ever, for our steps were turned aside into what proved to be 
 better bird-fields. We started the crows from their roosting- 
 place on the fence, and they flapped away across a stumpy 
 pasture, cawing their disapproval of our intrusion. Far away 
 above and beyond a little patch of woods we saw a moving 
 speck in the sky. The glasses showed us that it was a soar- 
 ing bird. I put it down at once for a great hawk. In a 
 moment I was ready to admit myself stupid, for my com- 
 panion, keener eyed than I, said, "Turkey-buzzard." 
 
 Buzzards are common enough, as I afterward found, in 
 southern Indiana, and it was curious that we had not seen 
 them before. In a few minutes two more buzzards appeared, 
 and before long the three were circling directly over our 
 heads. From the moment that they had come into view I 
 had not seen a single stroke of the wing. The birds simply 
 rode on the air. There was something majestic in their soar- 
 ing flight. If the turkey-buzzard were as interesting a crea- 
 ture at close range as he is at a distance, there are few birds 
 whose acquaintance would be better worth cultivating. 
 
In Southern Hoosier Hills 47 
 
 After a while I saw one of the buzzards leisurely flap his 
 wings, and then launch out once more upon his sailing flight. 
 As a matter of experiment I singled the bird out with my eye 
 from his fellows, took out my watch, and sat down on a 
 stump. Twenty minutes passed before that buzzard found it 
 necessary to gain new soaring power from another wing- 
 stroke. One of the birds dropped down to a point within 
 thirty yards of us just as we were passing a farm-yard. The 
 yard was full of chickens, and while the ordinary hen is always 
 ready to give a cluck of fear when a bird as harmless as a 
 pigeon passes over, these fowls paid no attention whatever to 
 the big bird whose shadow was thrown over them. The 
 chickens' ancestors doubtless had learned the harmless char- 
 acter of the buzzard, and the knowledge was one of the 
 hereditary properties of these particular barn-yard fowls. 
 
 With a courage born of hunger the doctor and I rapped 
 at the door of a farm-house and asked if we might have some 
 dinner. The answer was a hearty, "Yes, and welcome, if 
 you'll wait until we can cook it." 
 
 We were not only willing to wait, but were glad of a 
 chance to rest. We took station on the porch, in front of 
 which stood a tree that was full of woodpecker holes. This 
 farm-house was twelve miles from a railroad station, and the 
 nearest neighbor was three-quarters of a mile away, yet here 
 in this isolated spot were the English sparrows in scores. This 
 pest is thought to be city-loving, but here it was perfectly at 
 home miles away from its supposedly favorite haunts. Every 
 woodpecker's hole in the tree had a pair of sparrows in it, 
 and each pair was busy building a nest. When I thought 
 what those holes would mean as home-sites for the bluebirds 
 that we had passed on our way, I was ready to eject the 
 
48 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 Britishers without notice. A farm-hand told me that the 
 sparrows had been about the place for three years. He said 
 that the bluebirds disappeared the year that the foreigners 
 arrived. 
 
 The recollection of that southern Indiana farm-house din- 
 ner is with me yet. We ate in a long, narrow room, which 
 had at one end a huge, old-fashioned fireplace with twelve 
 great cord- wood sticks crackling and blazing away in its 
 ample interior. Although the sun was warm, there was a chill 
 in the air that made the fire grateful. I had not seen the 
 equal of that fireplace blaze since early childhood in the far- 
 away East. Our hostess gave us to eat of everything that a 
 farm produces. It was a dinner bountiful beyond precedent. 
 It was a perfect delight to us when we were asked whether 
 we would have coffee or sassafras tea. Of course we took 
 sassafras tea, and I have nothing ill to say of a beverage 
 which they told us was on their breakfast-table three hundred 
 and sixty-five days in the year, though they confessed, "We 
 generally have coffee for dinner." 
 
 We took up the journey hotel-ward, refreshed in mind and 
 body. Time forbade us to turn aside into bird byways, but 
 we had one interesting experience as we jogged on our way. 
 When we had turned into the main road that led straight to 
 our hotel we saw a large hawk sitting on a telegraph-pole. 
 The bird allowed us to approach as near as the next pole to 
 him before he showed any symptom of uneasiness. There 
 we stopped and ogled him with our glasses. It was a red- 
 tail, and the biggest one I had ever seen. Beyond a field to 
 the left a little white house stood on a side-hill. It was about 
 two hundred yards away, A rail fence separated the yard of 
 the house from a roadway where a flock of Brahma chickens 
 
In Southern Hoosier Hills 49 
 
 was feeding. Suddenly the hawk launched out and swept 
 across the field toward the fowls. The big rooster saw the 
 bird coming, and uttering an alarm cry, he made for the yard 
 as fast as his long legs could carry him. The hens followed, 
 and helter-skelter they went up the hill toward the house* 
 The last Brahma had succeeded in getting through a hole in 
 the latticework below the piazza just as the hawk brought up 
 on the flooring a few feet above. He sat there at the door- 
 step perfectly fearless for fully a minute, and then leisurely 
 made for the top of a tree only a few yards distant. The 
 last look that we had of the bird through our glasses showed 
 him still hungrily watching the hole. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 IN WINTER FIELDS 
 
 A crow was calling from the Skokie, while from the oak at 
 the doorstep a bluejay, in a voice more grating than usual, 
 answered the salutation with the epithet "thief," twice 
 repeated. It may seem strange that the summons of two 
 harsh bird-voices should be potent enough to draw one to the 
 outdoor world from the front of a pile of genially crackling 
 birch-logs, when the thermometer is dangerously near zero. 
 There are some people, however, to whom a jay and his 
 jargon, and the call of a bird as common as a crow, are pre- 
 ferred to the warmth of a hearth, though the fire be of birch. 
 The same persons who tell you that since the English spar- 
 row was imported every other winged thing except the mos- 
 quito and the house-fly has disappeared, will tell you also, 
 even if they admit the presence of a few songsters in summer, 
 that there are no more birds in winter than there are in last 
 year's nests. There are winter birds, however, and interesting 
 winter birds at that. Those who will take the trouble and 
 who will learn how to look, will find them lurking in the 
 shrubbery just beyond the snow which banks the doorstep, or 
 it may be, calling with voices as blithe as of the summer from 
 the bare apple-boughs of the orchard. 
 
 When the crow called me that cold January morning, I 
 struck out for a tramp through the Skokie swamp, and all the 
 country that lay between it and the hill on the east. It was 
 a bitter morning, and even the owl, hidden in the hole 
 
 5° 
 
In Winter Fields 51 
 
 in the oak, "for all his feathers was a-cold." I halted 
 at the foot of the dooryard steps, and cast an anxious look 
 upward to see if the jay which I had heard from the fireside 
 had deserted. I am superstitious enough to think that it 
 augurs well for the success of a bird-hunting trip to see some 
 feathered character at the start. This bit of superstition is, 
 I believe, common to all bird-students. The jay was still 
 there. It is perhaps the commonest bird of this locality, 
 both in winter and summer. You can always count upon the 
 jay's doing something new. This doorstep jay did some- 
 thing decidedly new — he dropped from his beak to the ground 
 at my feet a round, flat, smooth stone of the diameter of an 
 inch. It was one of the kind of which thousands may be 
 found along the lake shore. I should judge, from a long and 
 somewhat intimate acquaintance with jays, that they have not 
 the regular habit of making stone-boats of their beaks. I 
 picked the stone up, and asked the bird what he had intended 
 to do with it. He cocked his head on one side, looked down 
 on me, and screamed "Thief" at the top of his lungs. I 
 cigree with Bradford Torrey that this bird says "thief" much 
 more plainly than he says "jay." Thus he characterizes him- 
 self as well as if he spoke English more fluently. The jay is 
 essentially a thief, and seems to take delight in proclaiming 
 the fact to the world. 
 
 On the outskirts of Highland Park there is a patch of 
 dense undergrowth. Before the heavier timber was cut 
 down, the place was known as Hamilton's Woods. Some 
 years ago these acres of underbrush were divided into town 
 lots, and a new city was to spring up. One house and an 
 ambitious cement sidewalk with plank extensions are all that 
 remain as monuments to the purpose and hope of the pro- 
 
52 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 jectors. This town-site is on the very summit of the ridge 
 which slopes down westward to the Skokie. Far off beyond 
 the stretches of coarse swamp-grass one sees, blue in the dis- 
 tance, the woods that skirt the river. From this spot it is 
 that sunsets may be seen having in them something of the 
 higher glories of color that are associated with the close 
 of day in the hill countries far removed from the level plains 
 of Illinois. The undergrowth is not uninhabited. There, 
 summer and winter, live the rabbits, a squirrel or two, the 
 red-headed and downy woodpeckers, the jay and the chicka- 
 dee, and the not infrequent quail. In summer this spot is 
 the haunt of the scarlet tanager, the catbird, the brown 
 thrasher, and the oriole. 
 
 When I reached Hamilton's Woods on that winter's day, 
 I stopped to examine some bits of bird architecture; for 
 though man failed to build here, there are enough bird homes 
 in the patch to give evidence of its excellence as a dwelling 
 place. In a hazel-bjish, not more than twenty feet from the 
 highroad, I found the deserted nest of a catbird. The July 
 previous I had watched the outgoing of the fledgeling family 
 from this little home. I had reached a point within five feet 
 of the nest when I was struck by the fact that it was moving. 
 There was a rustling of the dry oak leaves which formed its 
 base, and the twigs above were swaying in a way which pre- 
 cluded the possibility of the movement being the work of the 
 wind. Then through my mind flashed the thought of Dr. 
 Abbott's tales of winter catbirds in New Jersey, and of the 
 story I had heard of one of the birds which for a whole winter 
 did not go nearer the equator than South Chicago. Was it 
 possible that one of these gray, scolding, querulous creatures 
 was revisiting its summer home, and marking the exception 
 
In Winter Fields 53 
 
 which proved the Spanish proverb, "There are no birds in 
 last year's nests"? I made a cautious step or two, and the 
 mystery was explained. A piercing little black eye, with a 
 world of fright in its narrow compass, was peering at me from 
 above the edge of the nest. Then there was more rustling, 
 and I caught a glimpse of something as it flashed down the 
 stem of the hazel-bush. Then there was disappearance and 
 quiet. It was a mouse, of course. He had taken possession 
 of the catbird's summer home for a winter residence. There 
 was too strong a temptation to resist to pry into the house- 
 keeping of Master Mouse. He had "bulged up" the inner 
 bark lining of the structure a little, and beneath this he 
 placed his store of provender, which consisted of corn and 
 hazelnuts. There was no corn-field within fifty rods, and this 
 diminutive four-footed "beastie" must have made many a 
 weary journey for his corn supply. The hazelnuts were close 
 at hand and in abundance. 
 
 It is hard work to get away from a jay. Even though he 
 be at a distance, his voice is a constant reminder that he is on 
 earth. I have said that the jay is essentially a thief — now for 
 proof positive. A pair of these steel-blue coated creatures 
 had been watching my operations on the catbird's nest with 
 apparent interest, though I had given them little attention, 
 because of the greater matter in hand. I had walked away 
 from the thorn-bush to a distance of about fifty yards, when a 
 jay call that had something of jubilation in it, caused me to 
 turn. The two birds were engaged in rifling the mouse's 
 larder. I was conscience-stricken at being the cause of the 
 loss of food, so I drove the birds away. I found that they 
 had secured already a large share of the supply, and I have 
 little doubt that they returned later to complete the robbery. 
 
54 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 A little log hut, built after the fashion of fifty years ago, 
 stands at a corner of Hamilton's Woods, upon what was 
 intended for a town lot. The path leads away from the high- 
 way at this point and strikes down straight toward the Skokie. 
 A pair of downy woodpeckers flew over the path, and began 
 playing hide-and-seek around the bole of an oak. The downy 
 woodpecker is everlastingly cheerful. Whenever there is a 
 break in the interest of a winter morning's walk, he is certain 
 to appear and do what he can to enliven the occasion. This 
 morning he did more. One of the pair went to the tip of a 
 tree, and while my eye was following his course along the 
 branch there came within the range of vision ten great birds far 
 up in the sky and flying westward. They were wild geese. 
 There was the gander leader, and trailing along forming the 
 V-shaped wedge were the followers. I blessed the downy for 
 calling my attention to the geese. It was the middle of Janu- 
 ary ; the thermometer was close to zero, and yet here was a 
 flock of geese in northern Illinois. The birds were heading 
 for the swamp. What two months before had been a stream 
 in the center of the marsh was now a long, glistening, ice rib- 
 bon, with here and there, as it were, a white knot tied, where 
 the rushes parted a little to the right and left. The ten geese 
 settled slowly toward the swamp, and then rose again at the 
 direction of their leader, who doubtless said, "No rest nor 
 forage here, but I know of a corn-field beyond." 
 
 I put these ten birds down as geese indeed, for forgetting 
 the warmth and food plenty in the South, and for trusting for 
 a living to the poor pickings of a frozen, storm-swept country. 
 In a few moments I found there were other geese. A second 
 V-shaped flock of thirteen individuals passed over in the wake 
 of the leading ten. Apparently there was some trouble in the 
 
In Winter Fields ^^ 
 
 second group, for the birds kept changing sides; the two 
 immediately behind the leader moved one in the place of the 
 other, and then the maneuver was repeated at the middle of 
 the gathering, and then at the extreme rear. This continued 
 for some time, and there came into my mind the irresistible 
 conclusion that the old gray gander leader was telling his 
 followers that five birds on one side and seven on the other 
 of the V was an uncouth flying order, and that in trying to 
 get one bird to change over, his orders were so misunderstood 
 that a general mix-up resulted. Finally, however, before the 
 flock was lost to sight, the old fellow succeeded in getting 
 things straightened out. 
 
 A man in a brickyard near the swamp said that the geese 
 were coming from the lake because a storm was brewing. 
 There was no storm for a week, however. The same man 
 said that he had seen a thousand geese "a few days before." 
 Pinned down, however, he admitted that the "few days 
 before" was in November. 
 
 The bluffs against which the waves of Lake Michigan beat 
 just north of Chicago are cut by deep ravines. In the sum- 
 mer these ravines are thickly tenanted by birds. All through 
 June they ring with the notes of the rose-breasted grosbeak, 
 the wood thrush and the brown thrasher. I determined one 
 winter morning, in the same month as that of my Skokie trip, 
 though in another year, to find out what one of these great 
 gullies held in winter that was of interest to a bird-lover. The 
 weather conditions of the night before and of the early morn- 
 ing were unusual for midwinter. At midnight the air was 
 warm and heavy; at five o'clock in the morning there was a 
 thunder-storm raging which would not have been out of place 
 in late April. The thermometer marked seventy degrees, and 
 
56 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 the lightning played through a heavy downfall of rain. At 
 seven o'clock there were signs of clearing. The sun peeped 
 out through a break in a cloud bank that hung low over 
 Michigan. An hour later as I stood on the lake shore ready 
 to begin the threading of the ravine, there was no longer any 
 rain and the air was beginning to take on a crispness. 
 
 The first glimpse of bird-life came just before I turned 
 inland. The advance guard of what became a great army of 
 gulls crossed the horizon. They were herring gulls, and in 
 color were in keeping with the gray day. A flock of ducks 
 flew rapidly along below the gulls and parallel to the shore 
 line. They were moving like thought and soon left the gulls 
 far behind. I recognized them as old squaws, wanderers from 
 the far off Arctic. In the middle of winter the old squaw is 
 not an uncommon bird at the southern end of Lake Michigan. 
 When the lake is well filled with ice these northern ducks 
 search for the stretches of open water, and there they seek 
 rest and food. A gunner who took station at the end of the 
 government pier in Chicago one winters day, killed a hundred 
 old squaws in a few hours' time. When the killing was com- 
 plete, he found out that the birds were unfit for food, and the 
 bodies of the beautiful creatures were thrown away. I left 
 the lake and went into the ravine. On the bank of the little 
 brook at the bottom the air was warm and still. The stream 
 was ice-bound only in places. The locality was like one of the 
 constant succession of scenes that are found in a ramble in 
 New England. Sadly enough, however, June sees this ravine 
 brook dried up, and the July sun withers the flowers at its edge 
 and the foliage on its banks. The ravine's beauty largely 
 will pass, while in New England the mountain-fed streams 
 will keep the summer blossoms bright and the leaves green. 
 
GOLDFINCH. 
 
In Winter Fields ^y 
 
 I startled a junco from his feeding place on the brook's 
 bank. He was all alone. I think that was the only time in 
 my field experiences that I have found a junco separated from 
 his fellows. While the books put this little snowbird down 
 as a common winter resident in this latitude, I have found it 
 in the heart of winter only on three occasions, and then in 
 limited numbers. A few yards beyond the junco's foraging 
 place I found the empty tenement of a red-eyed vireo. The 
 vireo had used a piece of newspaper as a part of his building 
 material. The piint was still clear, and I found the date-line 
 of a dispatch at the heading of a short article. The date was 
 July 3, of the year before. This was proof beyond question 
 that the vireo had begun housekeeping rather later in the 
 season than is usual with his tribe. Judging from other 
 empty nests that I found close at hand the vireo had pleas- 
 ant neighbors, the redstarts and the yellow warblers. The 
 birds must have found this ravine an ideal summer resort, 
 plenty of shade, good water, lake breezes, and a larder well 
 supplied with all the insect delicacies of the season. 
 
 The pathway of the stream was lined in places with snow 
 which the thaw had spared. I found that I was not the first 
 traveler of the morning. A rabbit had preceded me, and 
 apparently he had gone a long way from home, for the marks 
 of his footsteps led on until the ravine was at an end. A jay 
 resented my intrusion into the ravine. The jay finds his per- 
 fect setting in a winter day. His coloring makes the bird 
 seem like a bit broken from the blue sky and from the edge 
 of a cold gray cloud. When I finally reached the plain above 
 the ravine, I found that a blizzard was raging. In the shel- 
 tered depths I had not known of the change in the weather. 
 Within an hour the worst storm of the year was sweeping 
 
58 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 over the lake. It was on that day, which had opened with a 
 spring-like mildness, that the steamship Chicora, plying Lake 
 Michigan, went down to destruction. The air was filled with 
 particles of snow that cut like sleet. I reached a field finally 
 where the storm had full sweep, and was compelled to brace 
 myself to resist its force. I edged into it as best I could, and 
 before I had made many yards I found that even in the 
 tempest I had bird companions. A flock of snow buntings 
 were whirling over a depression in the prairie. The wind 
 tossed them about almost at will, but in some way they man- 
 aged to hold their place over the same low spot in the field. 
 They went to the ground finally, but as I passed them they 
 rose in a body and went hurtling down the wind. What I 
 saw was but little more than some streaks in the snow-laden 
 air. A blizzard is of but little more moment to a snow bunt- 
 ing than a zephyr. How the wind did hurl them! They 
 were not more than four feet above the ground, and were 
 being borne straight at a close board fence. I thought they 
 were about to be dashed headlong against it, but the buntings 
 had ridden on the breast of a storm before. When within a 
 few feet of the fence they rose and went scuttling over the 
 top, showing white against the treetops beyond. 
 
 I was forced by the storm to follow in the wake of the 
 snow buntings. I had been wondering all the morning at the 
 absence of the chickadee. I found him and a dozen of his 
 brothers working their way through the branches of a grove 
 of oaks near the little railroad station of Ravinia. Wind and 
 weather are nothing to the chickadees. They must feel some- 
 thing like a contempt for their relatives who must needs go 
 south at the first pinch of Jack Frost's fingers. The chicka- 
 
In Winter Fields 59 
 
 dee finds shelter and plenty of food in our winter woods. 
 They eat and lisp their little note until a touch of warmth 
 comes out of the south, and then, though their main occupa- 
 tion still will be eating, they will utter a fuller note and 
 become modest members of the great spring choir. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ON THE TRAIL OF POKAGON 
 
 Pokagon, hereditary chief of the Pottawattomies, until his 
 death three years ago lived in a hut which stood among the 
 fire-blasted remains of what was once a great Michigan pine 
 forest. Pokagon was writing a book. He toiled early and 
 late at the narrative which he said would give for the first 
 time the Indian's side of the story of the Chicago massacre. 
 The chief rejected the word "massacre," and called the affair 
 which took place under the old cottonwood tree on the lake 
 shore, a fight — a square, manly, open fight. 
 
 One early February day in the year 1897 a Chicago news- 
 paper commissioned me to seek out the old Pottawattomie in 
 his forest retreat, and to get from him an outline of the story 
 which he was writing. I have never been quite able to decide 
 which I found the more interesting, the two hours' talk with 
 the aged Pottawattomie at his fireside in the wilderness, or the 
 drive to his home over snow-covered fields and through the 
 winter woods. Almost every mile of that ride had in it some 
 bird surprise. The thermometer marked zero, and the dis- 
 tance from Hartford, Michigan, to Pokagon's home, twenty- 
 four miles, was made in an open sleigh. The air was perfectly 
 still, however, and with plenty of wraps the cold did not strike 
 deep. Had I known it I could have shortened the journey 
 to four miles by leaving the cars at another station, but I did 
 not make this discovery until the train which had brought me 
 to Hartford was whisking away around a hill in the distance. 
 
 60 
 
On the Trail of Pokagon 6i 
 
 I have never been sorry that I left the warm Pullman for the 
 cold of the open fields. 
 
 The proprietor of a Hartford livery stable agreed to drive 
 me to Pokagon 's dwelling and back again in time to take the 
 late night train to Chicago. It was a matter of forty-eight 
 miles out and back, and with zero conditions and the snow 
 over the fences all the way, we flattered ourselves that we 
 were showing some little fortitude in undertaking the trip. 
 When we had reached the edge of the village we met a party 
 of Indians occupying a box sleigh. One of them was Poka- 
 gon's son upon whom now rests his father's mantle. We 
 stopped and talked to the Indians for a few minutes, and 
 while we were getting some hints for the shortening of our 
 journey two woodpeckers flew over our heads and flattened 
 themselves against the bole of a big beech tree at the side of 
 the road. I never had seen the species before, but I knew 
 what it was. I wondered if the Indians were true enough to 
 the traditions of their knowledge of wild life in all its forms 
 to give me the name of these stranger birds. I called the 
 chief's son's attention to them and asked him what they 
 were. The two visitors were showing just the tops of their 
 heads around the tree trunk. The Indian looked at them 
 and said simply, "Winter woodpeckers." I asked him 
 whether he never saw them in summer and he answered, 
 "No." Then he went on to tell me that there were some 
 woodpeckers that were "both summer and winter woodpeck- 
 ers. ' ' As members of this class he described accurately the 
 downy woodpecker, and its larger brother, the hairy. The 
 red-head, he said, was also sometimes a winter woodpecker. 
 The bird on the tree, he informed me, did not come every win- 
 ter, or if it did come, he did not always see it. The Indian 
 
62 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 had no definite name for the bird but he knew its habits 
 thoroughly. The books contain nothing better nor truer than 
 this Pottawattomie's descendant's account of the "winter and 
 summer woodpeckers." 
 
 The birds which were making a breakfast table of the 
 beech tree were Arctic three-toed woodpeckers, an orange- 
 pated northern visitor which is not uncommon in hard winters 
 along the eastern shore of southern Lake Michigan. Before 
 we parted company with the Indians, a downy woodpecker 
 came to the beech and began chasing the Arctic visitors 
 around the bole. It seemed to be on the part of the downy 
 more of a frolic than a fight, and I did not feel called upon 
 to interfere. The downy woodpecker, while he is the smallest 
 of his tribe, is far from being the least in interest. I know 
 no more cheerful and companionable bird than this little 
 black and white fellow with the red feather in his cap. Cold 
 cannot chill his optimism nor heat abate one jot of his 
 industry. 
 
 Our course toward Pokagon's home took us northwest. 
 The roads in many places were unbroken, but our strong, 
 willing horses took us through the drifts with scarce an effort. 
 At times we left the road altogether and drove across lots and 
 through the open woods. At the edge of a small timber 
 patch we passed a spring with a thread of a stream running 
 away from its boiling pot. It was the first spring that I had 
 seen for years for they are practically unknown in the prairie 
 country. The little stream was tumbling over a bed of peb- 
 bles and Jack Frost had been unable to fetter it. Some 
 lisping notes fell from a maple whose boughs overhung the 
 water. In the tree I found four golden-crowned kinglets. 
 The kinglet is a winter bird in northern Illinois, I am told, 
 
On the Trail of Pokagon 63 
 
 but with all my searching I had never been able to find one 
 after Thanksgiving Day. The bird is the smallest of the 
 feathered kingdom barring only the ruby-throated hummer. 
 
 There is an interest that attaches to the kinglet aside from 
 its beauty and its cheerful habit of life. Aristotle knew and 
 named this bird more than three centuries before Christ. The 
 Greek philosopher was probably the first bird student. He 
 certainly was the first whose books have come to us. 
 Aristotle made all sorts of curious mistakes, but we must 
 honor him as a pioneer. He met the little kinglet with its 
 golden crown and named it Tyrannos, the tyrant. He so 
 named it from its golden crown of royalty which then as 
 to-day was too often synonymous with tyranny. The bird 
 retains the name in the form of kinglet, as it retains the 
 golden crown until this day. The most interesting study of 
 Aristotle's treatise on birds has been given us by W. Warde 
 Fowler, in his "Summer Studies of Birds and Books." The 
 Michigan kinglets were "t-zeeing, t-zeeing," energetically all 
 the while that they were picking grubs out of the bark. I 
 don't think that I ever ran across a silent golden-crowned 
 kinglet. Their utterance is not loud but it is constant, and 
 as they are always picking up food I am afraid that the 
 otherwise well-mannered little king is open to the reproach of 
 talking with his mouth full. 
 
 It is curious that on one shore of Lake Michigan birds 
 should be abundant in winter which on the opposite shore 
 are accounted rare. I have said that the Michigan kinglets 
 were my first winter birds of the kind. The white-breasted 
 nuthatches that I met on that trip to Pokagon's home were 
 also the first birds of their kind that I had seen in the winter 
 months. The nuthatches certainly winter in northern Illi- 
 
64 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 nois but it cannot be that they occur in anything like the 
 numbers in which they are found in the same latitude in 
 Michigan. Friends have occasionally told me of the visits 
 paid by white-breasted nuthatches to January breakfast 
 tables spread with suet for the benefit of the winter birds. It 
 was never my luck, although I have made many a cold-weather 
 trip for the purpose, to find one of these feathered acrobats 
 within range of my rambles. It may go without saying, per- 
 haps, that the bird is abundant on the west side of the lake in 
 fall and spring. 
 
 While we kept to the highways we found the nuthatches 
 on nearly every tree that grew along our course. They flew 
 from trunk to trunk as though they were using the line of the 
 road as a guide for a journey, but were making frequent stops 
 at eating-houses along the way. The nuthatches were as 
 silent as the kinglets were noisy. Only occasionally would a 
 vigorous "quank, quank," break the stillness of the frosty 
 air. 
 
 From the time we left the village behind I had seen 
 almost constantly large flocks of birds flying over the fields 
 but always keeping beyond the limit of identification. I 
 asked my driver friend what they were, and he said, "Snow- 
 birds." When I asked him what kind of snowbirds, he said, 
 "Why, just snowbirds." By and by when the road turned 
 suddenly around the corner of some woods we came on to a 
 flock of the birds feeding in some bushes and on the ground 
 which had been cleared of snow for some distance by the 
 wind. The birds were not more than forty feet from us, and 
 there were several hundreds of them. I asked my companion 
 to take a good look and tell me what they were. He looked 
 and again said, "Snowbirds, " adding that that was what every- 
 
On the Trail of Pokagon 65 
 
 body thereabouts called them. The birds were Canadian or 
 tree sparrows. I will give the good Michigan folk credit for 
 better judgment in the naming of this bird than had the 
 people who were responsible for dubbing the junco, snowbird. 
 The tree sparrow is much more of a snowbird than is the 
 junco. As a matter of fact nearly all the juncoes leave us 
 at the first sight of a snowflake while tree sparrows stay with 
 us and maintain their cheerfulness no matter how loud the 
 wind howls nor how deep the snow lies. Not infrequently 
 juncoes and tree sparrows are found together but this is dur- 
 ing the migrations or at the extreme southern limit of the 
 tree sparrow's winter journeyings. Certain it is that no 
 juncoes had the hardihood to stay with those Michigan tree 
 sparrows during that February month. Before the day was 
 over I had seen four great flocks of the sparrows at close 
 range, and not a junco feather did I see. 
 
 Upon a dead tree in a field, with its shapely form silhou- 
 etted against the sky, sat a sharp-shinned hawk. A flock of 
 the tree sparrows was flitting about the tops of the snow 
 banks not many yards beyond his perch. I had not the 
 slightest doubt that the villian's maw already contained 
 several of the birds. At any rate his hunger must have been 
 pretty well satisfied for in the midst of plenty he made no 
 attempt to secure food. I have confessed elsewhere to a sort 
 of liking for the hawk; but the hawk is one thing and the 
 sharp-shinned hawk is another. The scientists of Uncle 
 Sam's agricultural department tell us that the sharp-shinned 
 hawk is a double-dyed rascal, and they prove their point to 
 my satisfaction. The Cooper's hawk is another villain and 
 with his sharp-shinned friend has an inordinate appetite for 
 song birds and small chickens. We may make friends of the 
 
66 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 rest of the hawks, the scientists tell us, without laying our- 
 selves open to the charge of keeping bad company. 
 
 The hawk sitting on his watch tower was the last glimpse 
 of bird life that we had before Pokagon's hut came into view. 
 Just before we reached it our horses and sleigh became fast 
 in a huge snowdrift. The horses were in it much more than 
 leg deep and all their efforts to free themselves and the cutter 
 were unavailing. Soon we saw someone come to the door- 
 way of the house. It was Pokagon. He looked across the 
 snow and seeing our predicament came plowing through 
 the big drifts to the rescue. He had just the trace of a smile 
 on his face as he went to the back of the sleigh and put his 
 shoulder well under the box. There was a heave forward 
 and upward, an encouraging word to the horses, and with a 
 great lurch the cutter was free. Pokagon was old but he 
 had a deal of strength left in his arms, legs and body, and a 
 talk with him showed likewise that no weakness had entered 
 into his brain. 
 
 I am tempted to forget momentarily that this is a book of 
 birds and tell a little something of this visit to the fireside 
 of the famous Pottawattomie chief. He told the pathetic 
 story of his attempt to get from the United States what was 
 due the remnant of his people under their treaty rights. He 
 told of violated promises and of perfidy whose recital would 
 have better place in another "Century of Dishonor" than in 
 this little volume. It was Pokagon's father who sold for 
 three cents an acre the land on which now stands the city of 
 Chicago. On that winter day in Michigan, the chief said: 
 ' ' They tell me that vast sums now are paid for a few feet of 
 what was then sold for a trifle by the square mile. I inherited 
 my father's rights and I also inherited the care of my people. 
 
On the Trail of Pokagon 67 
 
 They are scattered all through the country now and are few 
 in numbers. The tribal relation is broken by their becoming 
 citizens of the United States. All this has weakened my 
 efforts to do for them what might be done. There is much 
 more money due from the wJiite people and I shall try to get 
 it. I may die before success comes; if I do, my eldest 
 son will take up what little there is left of my authority and 
 the much that there is left of my troubles." 
 
 In his youth Pokagon hunted deer on the site of the hut 
 in which he told his troubles that day. The old fellow knew 
 Nature like a book. I drew him out on the subject of birds 
 and mammals. When I spoke of my interest in birds and 
 asked him if he knew them well he smiled a little and asked 
 me if I had never read his writings on the birds. Then it 
 was that I felt uncornfortable in being forced to confess that 
 I had not had the pleasure. Pokagon then told me his legend 
 of the robin, which I have since seen in birch-bark book form, 
 and his story of the days when the chimney swifts dwelt 
 in hollow trees and went in and out like black clouds and 
 with a "roar of wings like the mutter of thunder." 
 
 We left the old Pottawattomie at dusk with a sort of a sad- 
 ness on our spirits. The drive back to Hartford was under 
 the glittering stars of a cloudless sky. Pokagon had cared 
 for the inner cravings of his guests both man and beast and 
 our rested and refreshed horses homeward bound needed 
 neither the urging of voice nor whip. As we sped onward 
 through the darkness, the thought that I was through with 
 the birds for the day came into my mind. No sooner was the 
 thought framed than from a wood by the roadside came the 
 loud hoot of an owl, as if to say, "Day or night, you cannot 
 get away from us." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SOME ODD BITS OF BIRD LIFE 
 
 Somewhere in the woods west of Highland Park, Illinois, 
 there lives a crow that bears on his back a pure white mark 
 of the size and shape of a silver dollar. "Jim," for so I've 
 named him, seems to know that he is distinguished above 
 other birds and as a result he is much shyer than his brother 
 crows. I ran across this crow curio in the winter of 1899. I 
 have met him several times since then and I have satisfied 
 myself that certain of the bird's characteristics are directly 
 traceable to the big white spot on his back as the first cause. 
 Jim has learned now that if he wishes any comfort in life he 
 must flock by himself. There is no doubt in the minds of his 
 fellow crows that white-spotted Jim is a freak. They keep 
 him always at the distance of a big field's width, and any 
 attempt on his part to approach nearer is met by assault. 
 
 The first time that I saw my friend Jim he was rounding the 
 edge of a belt of timber and making for a plowed field in 
 which four other crows were feeding. From their position 
 they could by no chance have seen his back, and yet 
 they seemed to know that the approaching bird was branded 
 and a pariah. The feeding crows rose as one bird, met 
 Jim half-way, and chased and buffeted him back into the 
 woods. It was in this hurried retreat that Jim's white 
 spot showed prominently and told better than words the 
 story of his persecution. Is it not possible that the crows 
 felt that their brother's marked peculiarity would attract 
 
 68 
 
Some Odd Bits of Bird Life 69 
 
 undue attention to them in case he were admitted to com- 
 radeship ? 
 
 I have spoken elsewhere of the albino bobolink who was 
 refused the companionship of his kind by all save one gentle 
 bird whom he wooed and won for a mate. The bobolink was 
 almost pure white while the crow's color was normal save 
 for the small white patch on his black back. Birds, however, 
 seem to regard the slightest variation from Nature's color rule 
 as a disgrace to their kind. I met Jim during two seasons 
 when the other crows were paired and keeping house. He 
 was unquestionably leading a bachelor existence. Twice I 
 saw other crows go out of their way to attack him, but 
 despite his unhappy and lonely lot he clings tenaciously to 
 life and only recently I have seen him foraging for food in 
 the northern Illinois cornfields. 
 
 There is no love in my heart for the English sparrow. 
 I have seen his persecution of our native birds until I 
 cannot summon up a particle of sympathy for him, no matter 
 into what straits he may come. I confess to a secret re- 
 joicing every time a predatory shrike strikes a sparrow and 
 trusses him for breakfast. The Britisher has a busy time all 
 winter dodging the butcher-bird, and even after the enemy 
 has gone to its northern home the sparrow trembles at pass- 
 ing shadows. I was idly watching a flock of sparrows one 
 summer day feeding at the edge of the Lake Shore Drive in 
 Chicago. Suddenly every individual in the flock crouched 
 close to the ground, and then all rose like a feathered entity 
 and made for shelter. No sparrow nor gathering of sparrows 
 ever made a quicker movement than did that flock. The 
 journey from the ground to the thickness of an evergreen 
 tree standing in the grounds of a private residence, was made 
 
JO Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 in arrow-flight time. It is probable that no feathered gather- 
 ing ever had a better apparent reason for adjourning than did 
 that bunch of city sparrows. Coincident with the sight of 
 their scurrying there fell upon my ear a dismal cry from 
 above. It was a half croak, half file rasp, a sort of disaster- 
 foreboding wail. Then a shadow swept over the ground, and 
 a look upward showed me a big red and gray parrot making 
 a lumbering flight in full and awful cry from the back piazza 
 of a third-story flat. The sparrows probably have family 
 traditions of all sorts of feathered horrors. It is doubtful, 
 however, if a search of the archives of their remote ancestors 
 would show anything descriptive of more terror of voice, beak, 
 and plumage than that which had just broken on their sight 
 and hearing. Small wonder is it that the sparrows took to 
 the woods. The parrot lighted in a tree which towered above 
 that in which the sparrows had taken refuge. The bird's 
 intention of perching in this tree was no sooner expressed by 
 the direction of its flight than the sparrow horde left one 
 hiding-place and fled to another. 
 
 English sparrows, like all other birds, are inquisitive, and 
 when they saw that this bird nightmare, which strangely had 
 chosen a bright day to be abroad, showed no signs of hostility 
 they gathered about it by the hundreds. They hurled all 
 sorts of names at the parrot. Never before had I realized the 
 extent of the sparrow vocabulary. The parrot made its awk- 
 ward way from tree to tree, followed by all the sparrows resi- 
 dent in that section of the city. The feathered street gamins 
 gave over eating and the delights of fighting for the pure 
 pleasure of swearing at this interrupter of their breakfast. 
 Poll contented herself with croaking at the assembled throng, 
 and with occasionally asking an individual sparrow for a 
 
Some Odd Bits of Bird Life 71 
 
 cracker. The sparrows were gaining courage, and apparently 
 were contemplating an attack in force when a boy who knew 
 how to climb trees captured Poll and carried her back to her 
 cage. 
 
 Some birds have become accustomed to many of the 
 appurtenances of , civilization. Those that have been shot at 
 once, or have seen their kind shot at, know a gun as far as 
 they can see it. They will all but perch on the shoulder of 
 an unarmed man, but will keep a ten-acre lot between them 
 and a man with a breech-loader. Glass, however, is one of 
 man's belongings which the most astute bird as yet fails 
 thoroughly to understand. A window which has light back 
 of it as well as in front of it is a perfect death trap for birds 
 of many species. The oven-bird, sometimes called the 
 golden-crowned thrush, is constantly dashing against window 
 panes, always to its discomfiture and frequently to its death. 
 One of these birds at noon one day brought up against a pane 
 of glass in the window of a great department store on one of 
 the busiest street corners of the city of Chicago. The bird 
 recovered itself, but in its bewilderment it left the window 
 only to fly into the crowded mart through an open door. 
 The oven-bird was caught and caged. Then it promptly and 
 properly died. All caged birds ought to die in self-defense. 
 The Audubon Society members say that death for the song- 
 sters is preferable to imprisonment. There are few bird-lovers 
 who will try to gainsay the society's dictum. 
 
 Not long ago a kingfisher tried to fly into the Academy of 
 Sciences through a pane of plate glass. The shock killed the 
 bird. It now stands stuffed with cotton and plaster of paris 
 looking out of the very window against which it hurled itself 
 to death. 
 
72 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 I once found the body of a small hawk which had met 
 death in a peculiar way. I doubt if a stranger fate ever over- 
 took any living creature. I found the bird hanging by the 
 upper tendons of its left wing to a barb on the strand of a 
 wire fence. Unquestionably the hawk was pursuing its 
 quarry when it struck the fence with terrific force. The barb 
 entered the skin and tendons of the wing and held the bird 
 fast. Such was the impetus acquired from the force of the 
 flight that the bird's body swung around the wire strand two 
 or three times, a fact shown by the twisted condition of the 
 tendons. The hawk was dead when discovered, but whether 
 the shock of the impact killed it or whether it died as the 
 result of the fierce struggle to free itself cannot be told. 
 There was no wound save that of the broken wing and torn 
 skin and tendons, a circumstance that shows that the bird was 
 not shot and afterward impaled upon the wire. Doubtless 
 some meadow mouse is still congratulating itself on the nar- 
 rowest escape of its life, and on the death of one of its 
 implacable enemies. 
 
 Recently the undoubtedly wise and humane members of 
 the Illinois legislature granted the right hitherto denied, to 
 shoot during certain months of the year the mourning-dove, 
 the emblem of peace and of all gentleness. I am charitable 
 enough to doubt if any member of the state body would have 
 voted for such a provision of the game law if he could have 
 seen the exhibition of courage and devotion to duty by a 
 dove that once came under my notice. A pair of the birds 
 had built a nest about four feet from the ground in a little 
 evergreen tree on a side hill. The nesting site was in the 
 outskirts of one of Chicago's suburbs. The month of the 
 nest building, April, had been unusually dry; the fallen oak 
 
Some Odd Bits of Bird Life 73 
 
 leaves and the grass where the tender green had not yet 
 sprung were as dry as chips. A fire, started by a sparlc from 
 a passing engine, spread rapidly and ran along the hillside 
 toward the dove's nest. I knew the location of the bird's 
 home and I watched the mother dove all through the subse- 
 quent ordeal. The flames reached the tree upon which the 
 frail nest was placed, and though the fire mounted high 
 enough for the dove to feel the intensity of the heat, she lifted 
 not a wing to leave her charge. The flames swept under her 
 and passed on, but for fully five minutes thereafter the devoted 
 mother was shrouded in smoke. The bird's courage was of 
 little avail, however, for some creature, man or beast, robbed 
 the nest the day after the fire. 
 
 The jay is unquestionably a good deal of a rascal, but he 
 is one of the most interesting creatures that fly. I confess to 
 a liking for him though he does steal eggs once in a while 
 and is the common scold of every bird neighborhood. I 
 watched a pair of jays once while they built their nest in a 
 small fir tree in the dooryard of a hotel at Highland Park. 
 The birds built the bulkiest jay's nest I had ever seen. 
 When the structure was about two-thirds completed I heard 
 a loud jay conversation in the lane back of the hotel and I 
 looked over the fence to discover the cause. The two jays 
 were on an ash pile, and were having an animated discussion 
 about a very dirty paper collar which lay between them. It 
 was apparent that one of the birds doubted the utility of the 
 collar as nest-making material, while the other was an advo- 
 cate of trying it if for no other reason than that it was some- 
 thing new. Womanlike, Madame Jay finally had her way (I 
 suppose it was the madame), and into the wall of the nest the 
 paper collar went. When the home was completed six eggs 
 
74 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 were deposited, one more than I had ever before found in a 
 jay's nest. Mother Jay staid on the nest continuously for 
 fourteen days with the exception of a few short trips for daily 
 bread. On the fourteenth day the young jays ought to have 
 been poking their heads through the shells. They didn't 
 poke. Mrs. Bluejay kept on sitting. Eighteen days had 
 passed and then the husband began to plead with his mate in 
 the few soft notes which he could command. He asked her 
 to leave the nest, but she paid no heed. Three weeks were 
 up. Young jays that occupied a nest whose foundation had 
 been laid many days later than that of the fir tree home, were 
 feathering out and clamoring for food. This fact was duly 
 called to the attention of Mrs. Jay by her husband. She 
 wouldn't budge an inch. He made many trips to and from 
 a laden cherry trfee, carrying his spouse specimens of the finest 
 fruit and telling her there were thousands more like them on 
 the tree. There was found one female who was proof against 
 the fruit temptation. Five days more passed, and the devoted 
 sitting bird looked tired and seedy. Her husband, who 
 throughout the ordeal had confined himself solely to melliflu- 
 ous pleadings, now got mad. He flew to a perch a foot 
 above his sitting mate, cocked his head on one side, looked 
 down at her, and with marked emphasis and significance 
 uttered the one word, "Jay." Sarcasm won and Madame left 
 her nest and six eggs for good and aye. After the desertion 
 of the nest I took it down and broke the eggs. They were 
 dried up and showed no signs that incubation had advanced 
 beyond a day or two. 
 
 One or two of my experiences makes me bold to say that 
 I believe the birds are much hardier creatures than generally 
 is supposed. It is something of a journey from our middle- 
 
Some Odd Bits of Bird Life j$ 
 
 western fields to the rocky little spot known as David's Island, 
 in Long Island Sound. Let us make the journey if only for 
 the sake of a story of the hardihood of a song sparrow. I 
 spent the winter of the year 1888 at David's Island which 
 was then a United States military station. The first week in 
 March a song sparrow arrived on the island and made his 
 headquarters near a woodpile at the government dock. The 
 bird sang daily from the top of an upright pole which marked 
 one of the divisions of the woodpile into cords. At the end 
 of the second week there came that awful blizzard which 
 buried buildings in snow, rooted trees out of the earth, and 
 cost many human lives. The storm was the worst in the his- 
 tory of the land and it raged unremittingly for two days. 
 Then there came a lull ; the sun shone on a buried country ; 
 the wooden barracks of the army recruits in places were 
 hidden from sight. So terrific had been the storm that strong 
 men sentinels had been overcome at their posts. On the 
 morning of the clearing of the skies the soldiers of the garri- 
 son attacked the snow-drifts and broke a road to the wood- 
 pile where three days before the sparrow sang. When the 
 last great white mass was overcome the attacking party was 
 greeted by as cheerful a note as ever fell on soldiers' ears. 
 The minstrel was the song sparrow with his melody still 
 unfrozen in his throat and with a spirit that the storm could 
 not conquer. 
 
 It would be edifying to a degree, doubtless, if we could 
 put ourselves in touch with the thoughts of birds. I would 
 give much to know just what it was that prompted a red- 
 headed woodpecker to a certain line of conduct on one occa- 
 sion. I concluded he was moved by a spirit of pure mischief 
 and nothing else, but possibly he had some graver reason in 
 
76 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 his head. I saw a brilliant Baltimore oriole sunning himself 
 on a limb and holding in his bill a piece of newspaper as large 
 as himself. I never knew an oriole to use newspaper for 
 nesting material, and although it was homesteading time I 
 did not think that the bird seriously contemplated playing 
 the vireo and using wall-paper in his residence. There was 
 a red-headed woodpecker on the trunk of the tree. He 
 seemed to take something more than passing interest in the 
 oriole and his bit of paper. Perhaps his thought was, "There's 
 a foolish bird laboring with something that it has no possible 
 use for. ' ' Whatever the thought, the red-head presently darted 
 out, snatched the bit of paper from the oriole, and flew far 
 across the field with it to another tree. There he dropped the 
 paper to the ground and began a search for grubs in the bark. 
 The woodpecker had no more use for the paper than did the 
 oriole. Perhaps its purloining of the paper was prompted 
 simply by a bad temper. It has often been intimated that 
 infirmities of temper are not infrequently the accompaniments 
 of red heads. 
 
 One night in late April a brilliant male scarlet tanager flew 
 through the open door into a cigar store situated on one of 
 the busiest corners in the city of Chicago. The bird took a 
 perch on top of one of the wall cases and proceeded to make 
 himself perfectly at home. It is a curious fact that not one of 
 the scores of people who visited the cigar store during the 
 next twenty-four hours was able to give the bird its proper 
 name. It was the belief of all that some rare bird, originally 
 from the tropics, had escaped from its cage. The scarlet 
 tanagers are abundant birds in the Chicago suburbs, and the 
 fact that no one knew the songster is a sufficient commentary 
 on the lack of the observing power of the mass of people. The 
 
Some Odd Bits of Bird Life 'j'j 
 
 tanager was supplied with food by the proprietor of the store. 
 The door was left open daily for hours and no attempt was made 
 to restrain the bird from leaving. He seemed perfectly satis- 
 fied with his quarters, however, and staid in the cigar store 
 until November, when he died. It is curious to know that 
 the bird did not change plumage as the fall approached, as 
 is the custom of the tribe. His scarlet coat was as brilliant 
 in November as in May. The fact that the store which 
 he made his home was pretty well filled with cigar smoke 
 during the greater part of the time did not seem to interfere 
 in the least with the comfort or the cheerful spirit of the 
 tanager. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN GOD'S ACRE 
 
 People who are striving for effect sometimes call burial- 
 grounds "cities of silence." That's all well enough, perhaps, 
 poetically, but in May and June cemeteries are anything but 
 silent. The songsters found out long ago that a meed of 
 protection was given them inside cemetery walls that was 
 given nowhere else. Sentiment is of course largely respon- 
 sible for this, for no matter how active may be the nest-rob- 
 bing proclivities of the small boy, he withholds his hand in 
 the graveyard. The birds throng in the city parks during the 
 migrations, but it is in the city cemeteries that they make 
 their homes. Oakwoods, Rose Hill, and Graceland, in Chi- 
 cago, resound with song all through the birds' courtship sea- 
 son. Nearly every tree and shrub in these burial-places holds 
 the home of a songster. In late June young robins and 
 bronzed grackles in hundreds are scattered all over the lawns. 
 The catbirds and brown thrashers are in every thicket, and 
 the wood thrush tinkles his twilight bell on every side. Birds 
 that in other places are shy and timid in the cemeteries 
 become familiar and fearless. 
 
 Graceland cemetery is wholly within the city of Chicago. 
 Within its limits birds can be found that seldom are found 
 elsewhere. The cardinal grosbeaks are rare enough in north- 
 ern Illinois. I have seen only one pair in a wild state in the 
 vicinity of Chicago and this pair I found in Graceland ceme- 
 tery. The male made a perch of the tip of a towering tree, 
 
 78 
 
In God's Acre 79 
 
 and there with the sun shining full on his scarlet coat, he sang 
 and whistled in the perfect ecstasy of living. He soon had 
 an audience, for from all parts of the burial-ground the people 
 gathered, attracted by the niagic of the voice. Had that 
 southern songster dared to give that solo in Lincoln Park I 
 should have trembled for his life, but within the cemetery 
 walls I felt that he was safe. There are people who, when 
 looking at the bright plumage of a bird or listening to its 
 sweet song, can think of only one of two things, killing it or 
 caging it. I heard expressed that afternoon, while the gros- 
 beak was singing, a dozen wishes: "I'd like to have that fel- 
 low in a cage." It is my sincere belief that the first bird 
 that Adam saw was pecking at a cherry, and that the first 
 bird that Eve saw was some scarlet tanager flashing across a 
 sunlit meadow. Adam said, "The bird is a thief"; Eve 
 said, "The bird is a beauty." From that day to this the 
 hand of man and the head of woman have been against the 
 bird. 
 
 The female cardinal is as musical as her mate, though she 
 has but a small share of his beauty. When the male cardi- 
 nal had tired his throat with his singing that afternoon the 
 female took up the strain and sang alone for fully five min- 
 utes. Then she joined the male and together they flew 
 beyond the cemetery walls where I was afraid their beauty 
 of plumage and voice would invite destruction. I heard from 
 a friend, however, that the cardinals were again in Graceland a 
 few days later. 
 
 In late April, 1900, the evening grosbeaks put in an appear- 
 ance in Graceland cemetery. They were found by two mem- 
 bers of the Audubon Society who were out on a search for 
 spring birds. The evening grosbeak is in its coloring one of 
 
8o Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 Nature's handsome children. The body of the male is bril- 
 liant yellow, while the tail is jet black. The wings are sharply 
 contrasted black and white. It is not at all a graceful bird. 
 Its body is chunky and its movements are awkward, the legs 
 and feet seemingly being unequal to the task of supporting 
 the bulk of body and feathers. The discoverers of the gros- 
 beaks were kind enough to tell me of the birds' presence in 
 Graceland and I went with them the next day and found the 
 creatures in the place they had first been seen. There is 
 something very childlike perhaps in the joy one feels in mak- 
 ing a new bird acquaintance. I never before had seen a living 
 evening grosbeak. There are men who have made ornithology 
 a vocation rather than an avocation, and yet never have met 
 this bird. The Graceland grosbeaks spent about half the 
 time in a clump of evergreens, flying from there to some box- 
 elders where they would feast for a while on the buds. There 
 were between twenty and thirty individuals in the flock. 
 Within a stone's throw of the birds' feeding-place workmen 
 were hammering spikes on an elevated railroad then under 
 construction. The din was nearly deafening. Added to this, 
 a locomotive with a tool train was pufiSng backward and for- 
 ward on the surface road beneath the elevated structure. 
 The grosbeaks paid no attention to the racket. They also 
 appeared absolutely fearless of the three human beings who 
 stood just beneath them almost within arm's reach and 
 ogled them through opera-glasses. Although the grosbeaks 
 were strangers in this part of the country, they seemed to 
 know the Illinois bluejay well enough and to share with other 
 birds the antipathy felt for this feathered thief. One of the 
 male grosbeaks attacked a jay that had approached the feed- 
 ing-place, and the two fought in midair. I have told else- 
 
In God's Acre 8i 
 
 where of a fight between a bluejay and a scarlet tanager and 
 of the bewildering confusion of color beauty that the combat 
 presented. In the grosbeak-bluejay fight there was a change 
 of color scheme, but the confusion and the beauty were there 
 not a bit abated. The grosbeak thrashed the jay, whereat 
 three human spectators rejoiced in concert with a dozen ruby- 
 crowned kinglets who had watched the row from a thicket. 
 The grosbeaks disappeared from Graceland on the afternoon of 
 Friday, April 20th, thereby disappointing some bird-lovers 
 who made belated attempts to see them. 
 
 I have just called the jay a thief. I have called him so a 
 number of times, and I will call him so again when opportu- 
 nity offers. He is a thief, but he is an interesting thief and I 
 don't know that we could do without him. What would the 
 doctors do if they didn't have criminals to study in order to 
 form new degeneracy theories? Why, the doctors would lose 
 half the fun of their profession. When you see a jay sneak- 
 ing off through the trees with his bill spiked through a stolen 
 robin's egg, you know at once why everything that wears 
 feathers hates him. A Kentucky friend once told me of see- 
 ing a jay deliberately lift four newly hatched mockingbirds 
 out of the nest and drop them to the ground, where they 
 perished. I had thought there must have been some mistake 
 about this story, for while I knew the jay was fond of eggs, I 
 hardly thought he was hardened enough to commit murder. 
 I am no longer in doubt. I found in Rose Hill cemetery 
 the nest of a wood pewee. It was a beautiful little lichen-made 
 saucer resting on the upper side of a broad horizontal limb of 
 an oak. I visited the nest a number of times and watched 
 the father bird launch out from the tree to snap up occasional 
 insect trifles. He was a pugnacious little fellow and he kept 
 
82 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 all the birds of the neighborhood at a distance. A pair of jays 
 had a nest in an evergreen tree not far away, and knowing the 
 jays' thieving proclivities the wood pewees waged constant 
 war against them. The appearance of either one of the pair 
 within twenty yards of the pewees' home was the signal for 
 an attack. The jay always fled. One day three little crea- 
 tures poked their way into the world through the eggshells in 
 the oak tree nest. There were enough insects near the oak 
 tree, apparently, to supply the wants of parents and children. 
 It was seldom that either one of the pewees wandered away 
 from home. I have never been able to explain why it was 
 that on one afternoon as I stood watching the birds, they 
 both left the oak and flew to a catalpa fully fifty yards away. 
 No sooner had the little guardians left their charge than one 
 of the jays came like a flash from the evergreen, and before I 
 could realize what was being done, much less interfere, the 
 three infant pewees were lifted from the nest and dropped one 
 by one to the gravel walk below. The parent pewees soon 
 came back, and their mourning is with me yet. 
 
 In Graceland there is a little lake whose waters and the 
 perfect peace of the surroundings attract many of the wilder 
 birds. One April morning I flushed a woodcock from under 
 the trees on the shore. In the early spring mallards not 
 infrequently rest in the sedges near the little island with its 
 drooping willows. The grebes, that are hunted mercilessly 
 throughout the entire year because women covet their silver 
 breasts for bonnet decoration, make this Graceland pond a 
 resting place for days together while on the weary journey 
 northward. No gun flashes through the bushes on the shore, 
 and the harassed birds find peace and food. Three of the 
 grebes stayed on the waters of the pond for ten days, and 
 
In God's Acre 83 
 
 became so tame that they paid no attention to the curious 
 people who watched their swimming and diving feats. A 
 female blue-bill duck came into the Graceland pond one 
 morning and was so pleased with the situation that she stayed 
 for two weeks. Before the blue-bill left it was possible to 
 approach within a few yards of her without causing her either 
 to dive or to dart away. 
 
 Seven small herons dropped down to the edge of the 
 cemetery pond one day and when startled by approaching 
 footsteps, they flew to the island and perched on one of the 
 willows. There they drew their heads down into their shoulders 
 and stood motionless. It has always been a matter of regret 
 that those herons were not positively identified. The green 
 heron is a much more abundant bird than is his little blue 
 cousin. It was a dark day when the birds were seen, and as 
 there was no way of reaching the island, distance forbade 
 certain identification. A fellow bird-lover, whose opinion 
 carries treble the weight of mine, was almost willing to say 
 positively, "Little blue herons." Probably they were, but 
 neither of us has dared to add the name of the bird to our 
 Chicago lists. 
 
 I give herewith a list of the birds that probably nest every 
 year in the Chicago cemeteries. In many instances the nests 
 have been found, and in the other cases the birds have either 
 been seen with young or have been found to be resident during 
 the breeding season : Robin, flicker, red-headed woodpecker, 
 chickadee, kingbird, phoebe, wood pewee, least fly catcher, 
 bronzed grackle, rose-breasted grosbeak, song sparrow, chip- 
 ping sparrow, vesper sparrow, catbird, brown thrasher, yel- 
 low warbler, redstart, red-eyed vireo, wood thrush, bluebird, 
 bouse wren, bluejay, indigo bird, Baltimore oriole, orchard 
 
84 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 oriole, scarlet tanager, cedarbird, cow-bird (parasite), yellow- 
 billed cuckoo, black-billed cuckoo, mourning dove, crow, 
 loggerhead shrike, towhee, goldfinch, ruby-throated humming- 
 bird, oven bird. 
 
 It is probable that some of the hawks and owls nest within 
 the cemeteries' limits, though I know of no recorded instances. 
 The nests of the meadowlark and bobolink both have been 
 found on a patch of ground belonging to the Rose Hill ceme- 
 tery authorities and lying just outside the fence of the ceme- 
 tery proper. When it is taken into consideration that these 
 burial-grounds lie within the limits of a city of nearly two 
 million inhabitants, there will come a realization that there is 
 much wild life in the very heart of civilization. 
 
 Although' the journey is generally made the other way, it 
 may not be amiss to go from the cemetery to the church. I 
 have never found owls in the graveyard, but I have found 
 them in the sanctuary. During the winter of 1895 several 
 owls, which I believe were of the long-eared species, took up 
 a temporary residence in the steeple of Unity Church, Walton 
 Place and Dearborn Avenue, Chicago. The church steeple 
 for years had been the home of a flock of pigeons. When 
 the owls appeared the pigeons had to seek other quarters, 
 though the chances are that several members of the flock were 
 sacrificed to owlish appetites before the moving was accom- 
 plished. One evening during a heavy snow storm I saw two 
 of the owls sitting in a tree on Delaware Place and blinking at 
 a strong electric light which stood not ten feet away. During 
 the same winter the screech owls visited the city in numbers. 
 They were particularly common along Dearborn Avenue. 
 One of the little fellows took up his abode under the porch 
 of a residence and stayed there for ten days. It is a sorrow 
 
In God's Acre 85 
 
 to be compelled to record that many of these visitors lost 
 their lives at the hands of the street boys. It is particularly 
 sorrowful to record this because the chances are that the owls 
 were doing their full duty in the matter of killing English 
 sparrows. 
 
 Standing in Graceland cemetery at the height of the bird 
 concert season, and hearing ten songsters at once breaking 
 the silence of the place, I have wondered whether the birds 
 loved to hear themselves sing. I suppose that they would 
 make music for the world if they were as deaf as posts. I 
 have a reason for this supposition. It is some distance from 
 Graceland cemetery, Chicago, to Goat Island, Niagara River, 
 but I must go that far for my reason. Since New York state 
 has made a park of the island and has enforced rules for the 
 regulation of lawless visitors, the birds have gone back to the 
 place and have made of it their summer home. Goat Island 
 lies in the river on the brink of the precipice between the 
 American and the Canadian Falls. It is eternally deluged, as 
 one might say, with the roar of the waters. In places upon 
 Goat Island it is hard to make the human voice heard. The 
 season was a little late for the singing of the birds when I 
 visited the island in July. The song sparrow, however, sings 
 every month of the year, and one of these little fellows was 
 perched on the limb of a tree close to the great fall and was 
 trying to let the sight-seeing visitors know that he was sing- 
 ing a solo. The noise of the waters was thunderous. Birds 
 may have acute ears, but I doubt very much if that song 
 sparrow heard his own sweet strains. He was prompted to 
 sing, and sing he must, though the song was lost in the roar 
 of the falls. 
 
 There is plenty of excuse for the visitor to Niagara, 
 
86 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 even though he be a bird-lover, for seeing nothing but the 
 ever-changing color beauty of the plunging water. I did 
 get my eyes away from that magnificent sight long 
 enough to note that myriads of swallows were passing and 
 repassing through the great cloud of spray and mist that rises 
 from the rocks where the falling waters strike. People ap- 
 proaching the falls from below on the venturesome Maid of 
 the Mist are compelled to wear rubber clothing to escape a 
 drenching from the dashing spray. It is heavier in places 
 than the heaviest rain, and yet through it the swallows were 
 constantly darting taking a shower bath without apparently 
 wetting so much as a feather. Most of the birds that I saw 
 on that late July morning were tree swallows. They con- 
 stantly cut through the bars of the floating rainbow which in 
 sunshine is ever present at Niagara. There was no hue in 
 those broad color bands, more beautiful than the shining green 
 that the sunlight brought out as it struck the upper feathers of 
 those darting swallows. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 WHERE THE BLACK TERN BUILDS 
 
 The little village of Worth lies just beyond the smoke of 
 factory-filled Chicago. It is on the marshes of Worth that 
 the black terns build their nests ; it is in the thorn thickets 
 that hedge the pastures that the loggerhead shrikes make 
 their homes ; the rails, the redwings, and the wrens haunt the 
 reedy swamps ; and the hawks and the crows live in the heavy 
 timber. Outside of a race-track and the many birds that 
 flock in its fields, Worth has few attractions to offer. The 
 race-track draws thousands of people daily for a short season, 
 but the birds' visitors are few. In no other place, perhaps, 
 so near the great city, could the black terns nest in peace. 
 Certain it is that Worth is the only place readily accessible to 
 the city bird-student where these "soft-breasted birds of the 
 sea" may be found during the season of courtship and house- 
 keeping. Black terns are abundant in the shop windows and 
 upon the hats of thoughtless women. The shop birds and the 
 bonnet birds are wired and twisted into positions of grotesque 
 ugliness. There never was a line of beauty in the stuffed bird 
 of a milliner. Would that woman could see it ! The black 
 terns of Worth are living; the sweep of their wings is as 
 graceful as are the curving blades of the swamp flags. There 
 is a price upon the head of the black tern because the milliner 
 covets the bird that it may be used as a means for a second 
 temptation of woman. Neither the black tern of Worth nor 
 the Wilson's tern nesting in northern Wisconsin can long sur- 
 
 87 
 
88 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 vive the demands of fashion for which the word cruel is far 
 too feeble an adjective. 
 
 I wandered one late May day through the music-filled 
 fields of Worth. My destination was the Phillips farm, which 
 lies about a mile from the depot. The orioles were whistling 
 wherever a treetop offered a swaying perch. The meadows 
 were literally filled with singing bobolinks. I passed a little 
 country school-house; the children were singing the opening 
 song of the morning. On the ridge-pole above them was 
 perched a black-throated bunting, who was adding his mite 
 of music to swell the chorus. A little farther on I made the 
 acquaintance, that morning, of the grasshopper sparrow. It 
 is a tiny field-loving bird, with a song which much resembles 
 the sound made by the insect for which it is named. One of 
 the sparrows took perch on a slender weed which its weight 
 was not sufficient to bend, and there gave me a sample of its 
 vocal power, though, perhaps, I might better say vocal weak- 
 ness. It will not do, however, to despise the grasshopper 
 sparrow's song, for some day when greed has caused the 
 killing of all the larger birds we may turn for enjoyment to 
 this humble little feathered rustic. 
 
 On either side of the Phillips farmhouse there is an orchard, 
 while hedges that do duty as fences extend in all directions. 
 On that May morning at the end of the porch there were four 
 wild rose bushes in full bloom A syringa, with its burden 
 of white blossoms, flanked the line of roses. In the syringa 
 bush a catbird was singing, and strangely enough, he forgot 
 to throw into the midst of his melody the harsh note that so 
 often mars his performance. I stood for a minute enjoying 
 the bloom of the roses and the song of the bird. The singer 
 left the discordant element out of its song, to be sure, but 
 
where the Black Tern Builds 89 
 
 discord came in the shape of an English sparrow, who 
 viciously attacked the catbird who had been presumptuous 
 enough to lift its voice in a British sparrow's presence. The 
 American fought faithfully, but it was no match for the heavy- 
 beaked alien. I drove the sparrow away. A few minutes 
 afterward I found its big bulky home in a cherry tree. I tore 
 the nest down and destroyed the eggs. Cruel? Not a bit of 
 it. Cruel to one kind of bird, perhaps, but kindness to an 
 hundred others. Go thou and do likewise. 
 
 At the end of a little lane that leads pastureward from the 
 house is an Osage orange, half tree and half shrub. It is the 
 sole surviving corner-piece of two hedges of bygone days. In 
 this growth was a nest of the loggerhead shrike. This bird 
 spends its winters in the South, but comes to this latitude to 
 breed, replacing here the great northern shrike which comes 
 from the far North in the winter and scurries back ArCtic- 
 ward at the first suggestion of spring. The loggerhead lives 
 on small birds, small snakes, and large' insects. Being a pre- 
 datory creature, it supposedly should be possessed of some 
 courage, and yet here was a loggerhead shrike that had five 
 dependent young ones in its nest, and still did not dare to come 
 within a field's width of its home while trespassing man was 
 about. A robin or a jay would have been at the post of 
 danger, and if it could have done nothing else, would have 
 roundly berated the intruder. The loggerhead sat on the far- 
 away fence-post and was apparently perfectly unconcerned 
 while effort was made to peek into its nest. Some friends 
 who had joined me undertook to take a snap-shot of the 
 shrike's home and young. The nest was so well fortified with 
 twigs and branches, each of which carried a score of thorns, 
 that the photographing process was beset with diiificulties. 
 
90 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 To the right of the nest, pierced through the neck and hang- 
 ing from a thorn was the half-eaten body of a small snake, 
 placed there by the shrike perhaps to provide the larder 
 against any future scarcity of living game. As soon as we 
 had left the vicinity of the nest the shrike went back to its 
 young and doubtless gave them each a bit of snake steak to 
 make them forget their fright. 
 
 The Worth marsh, which stretches away for acres from 
 the foot of the orchard, is a fruitful field for the study of bird- 
 life. When we had opened the old-fashioned gate at the 
 lane's end, we could see a glistening patch of clear water far 
 beyond the rushes' tops. The dark forms of birds were 
 wheeling about above its surface and their cries were borne 
 down to us by the breeze. We skirted the marsh and ap- 
 proached the open water, and there through our glasses had a 
 perfect view of the darting birds. They were dark, almost 
 black, but there was a gloss to their feathers which the sun's 
 rays let us see from time to time as the birds kept up their 
 changeful flight. They were black terns that had left the 
 waters of the larger lakes to come to this place of sedges to 
 rear their young. The red-winged blackbirds nest by hundreds 
 in the reeds of this great swamp. At the time of our visit 
 the nesting season was at its height. As we walked into the 
 swamp regardless of mud and water, the male redwings met 
 us and hovered over our heads. They asked us more vigor- 
 ously than politely to turn back. The redwing is protected 
 by law in the state of Illinois, but in nearly all the other 
 states he is put beyond the statute's pale. The bird unques- 
 tionably has a weakness for grain, but the good that he does 
 in insect-eating fairly balances the evil of his life. That he 
 is a beauty in his black blouse with its shoulder knots of 
 
Where the Black Tern Builds 91 
 
 scarlet and gold, none will gainsay. Can't we give a kernel 
 or two of corn ungrudgingly to a creature that adds some- 
 thing of living beauty to the dreary wastes of swamp-land? 
 
 The long-billed marsh wrens are abundant in the Worth 
 country. These birds have the curious habit of building 
 several nests before they make up their minds which one to 
 occupy. The scientists have been hard at work for years 
 trying to find a reason for this bit of wren freakiness. The 
 scientists are still at work, for no one yet knows the reason 
 save the wren, and the wren won't tell. We flushed from 
 the edge of the marsh that morning a Bartram's sandpiper. 
 This bird is, I believe, the largest of the sandpiper kind. It 
 makes its summer home at Worth, and occasionally has for a 
 neighbor its plover cousin, the lesser yellow-legs. When 
 splashing through the water to get a better look at the sand- 
 piper who had taken to some high ground, I found floating 
 the broken egg of a king rail. The egg told the story of a 
 nest built too low, of heavy night rains, and a flooded abode. 
 King rails are interesting creatures, notwithstanding the fact 
 that it is to be doubted if they have any brain. They are 
 big, blundering, stupid birds who get themselves into all sorts 
 of predicaments, out of which, of themselves, they can find no 
 means of extrication. A friend of mine once found a king 
 rail standing in the middle of the sidewalk near the corner of 
 Schiller Street and the Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. The 
 bird paid but little heed to passers, but seemed to lack the 
 wit to get away from such uncongenial surroundings as stone 
 pavements and brick walls. The men in a North Clark Street 
 barber-shop in the same city were astounded one day to see 
 an ungainly bird make its way through the open door to the 
 center of the shop, where it calmly surveyed the surroundings. 
 
92 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 Another king rail took possession of a bedroom in the second 
 story of a Chicago residence. The bird absolutely refused to 
 allow itself to be "shooed" out of the window through which 
 it had come. It showed no fear of human beings, and allowed 
 itself to be picked up without resistance. When it was put 
 through the window it took to flight readily enough, but the 
 chances are that before it had traveled far it managed to get 
 into some other fix. 
 
 There is something of the savage left in us all. I am free 
 to confess that I like to see birds fight. I don't mean that I 
 wish them to fight, but if they must fight I like to see the 
 fracas. In a tree in a field back from the Worth swamp was 
 a scarlet tanager. It was sitting there peacefully enough, 
 and apparently enjoying the view, when a bluejay dropped 
 down from above and went at it beak and claw. I fully 
 expected to see the tanager turn tail and flee before the face 
 of his assailant, but it surprised me and won my admiration 
 by doing nothing of the kind. It gave the bluejay blow for 
 blow. The combatants half flew, half fell to the ground, 
 clawing, pecking, scratching, and screaming. There was a 
 bewildering brilliancy of moving color. There was another 
 witness to this fight besides the human beings who were look- 
 ing at it with all the interest ever centered on a ring contest. 
 The bluejay' s mate was in the treetop, but made no effort to 
 take a claw in the affair until she thought that her spouse was 
 getting the worst of it. Then she came down hurtling, and 
 joining forces with her mate, soon convinced the tanager that 
 it had enough. The jays did not follow the defeated bird, 
 who made off like a scarlet streak to the shelter of the woods. 
 
 On our way back to the farm-house we saw a hawk quarter- 
 ing the marsh in search of prey. It was cfoubtless a marsh 
 
Where the Black Tern Builds 93 
 
 harrier, though it looked much lilce a duck hawk. I have 
 elsewhere spoken of my admiration for the hawk family. 
 The duck hawk is a true falcon. He is the epicure of the 
 feathered race. He disdains mice and barnyard fowl, and 
 lives largely upon game. His delight is in the chase, and the 
 rapidity of his flight is as the passage of light. He overtakes 
 the teal or the mallard, and seizing his quarry in midair, 
 bears it away for a feast. The utter fearlessness of this 
 wandering falcon was shown not long ago at Calumet Lake. 
 Some duck hunters had built a blind, behind which they 
 crouched in their boats. Two ducks came into the decoys. 
 Both men fired a barrel each, and both missed. At that 
 instant, like a bolt from the sky, a falcon descended and 
 struck down one of the ducks within twenty yards of the 
 blind. Instantly the hidden hunters fired the second barrels 
 of their guns at hawk and duck and both birds fell to 
 the water. The men put out from behind their blinds to pick 
 up the birds. The duck was dead; the hawk, still living, 
 though wounded unto death, remained with its talons sunk 
 deep into the feathers of its quarry, and facing the oncomers 
 with blazing eyes stood ready to give them battle. They 
 killed the falcon with the stroke of an oar. The hand of man 
 is ever against the hawk. When the last duck hawk is dead 
 there will have passed a creature with more of the essence of 
 true courage in its being than exists in the carcasses of a 
 dozen of the cowards who have brought extinction to its race. 
 I have spoken of the difficulties that beset the photog- 
 rapher who attempted to make the young loggerhead shrikes 
 "look pleasant" while he was taking their pictures. Bird 
 photography is for the bird-lover who has more patience than 
 I can ever hope to claim. In connection with this shrike 
 
94 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 "sitting," however, I cannot forbear to tell of another 
 experience which befell two of us while we were hunting birds 
 with a camera. A pair of bluejays, early in May, 1901, built 
 a nest in an oak tree not more than five feet from the window 
 of a room in a Lake Forest home. The nest was below the 
 level of the window-sill and its interior was in plain view. 
 The birds, when building, paid little attention to observers 
 who sat in the window. Finally, however, when the eggs 
 were laid and Mrs. Jay had taken upon herself the task of 
 sitting, it was proposed to take a photograph of the nest and 
 bird through the overlooking window. Most people will 
 declare that nothing sweet in the way of sound ever issued 
 from the mouth of a bluejay. Nine-tenths of the year the 
 jay's jargon is a pain to the sensitive ear. During the rest of 
 the time, however, the jay has one liquid note which is as 
 pleasing as almost any of Nature's sounds. Master Jay 
 reserves this sweet syllable for the benefit of Miss Jay, whom 
 he hopes before May Day will consent to change her estate 
 in life. I think that I have heard the jay's voice at its best 
 and at its worst, but it was left for that morning when the 
 photograph of the nest in the oak tree was to be taken for a 
 certain Mrs. Jay to outdo in loudness, harshness, and extent 
 of vocabulary the vocal performance of any bird to which I 
 ever before had listened. 
 
 It was the habit of Mr. Jay to come regularly and at short 
 intervals to the oak-tree home to feed his sitting spouse. 
 It happened just as the formidable-looking camera was being 
 adjusted and focused on the sitting bird that the husband 
 arrived with a tidbit for his wife. He saw the frowning instru- 
 ment and fled incontinently. Then it was proposed to wait 
 until he returned, so that a snap-shot might be made of both 
 
where the Black Tern Builds 95 
 
 birds while the feeding was in progress. The patient photog- 
 rapher sat with one hand on the bulb, waiting for the reappear- 
 ance of the male. He did not come. The female sat on her 
 nest, held there by mother love, though there was a great 
 fear in her eye as she looked at the gun-like affair in the 
 window above. An hour passed, and still Mr. Jay did not 
 appear. He was finally located by an interested observer in 
 a tree at the far-off edge of the lawn. He was keeping up 
 his watch on the nest and on the infernal machine in the 
 window, but he dared not approach. An hour and a half had 
 gone by, and Mrs. Jay was getting hungry and restless. She 
 had long since overcome her fear of the camera. Two hours 
 passed. Birds require a constant supply of food and Mrs. 
 Jay was at the famine point. Suddenly she spied her hus- 
 band in the tree beyond the flower beds. She left her nest 
 and made for her spouse like a flash. She perched just above 
 his head, and then there followed a scolding and berating that 
 has no parallel in bird families. The madame called her husband 
 a lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing coward. She called his 
 attention to the fact that for two hours she had sat under the 
 frowning face of the awful thing in the window, while he, lost 
 to all jayhood and to all memory of courtship promises, had 
 not dared so much as approach the nesting-tree, even for the 
 moment needed to feed his faithful wife. For fully two min- 
 utes the air was filled with jay ejaculations of wrath and con- 
 tempt, and none of these ejaculations came from Mr. Jay. 
 He took the tirade meekly. The pitch of Mrs. Jay's voice, 
 coupled with the choice selection of adjectives which she 
 hurled at her husband, brought an interested audience, com- 
 posed of all the bird residents of the neighborhood. Finally 
 madame broke off short and made her way back in all haste 
 
g6 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 to cover her eggs from the chill air of the morning. The 
 instant his wife was off for home, Mr. Jay darted down into 
 a thicket and at once reappeared with a fat morsel of food 
 with which he struck out like a blue streak for the nest in the 
 oak. He fed Mrs. Jay, and a satisfactory snap-shot photo- 
 graph was taken of the operation. After feeding his wife, the 
 husband looked at her and uttered the one mellifluous note 
 known to the jay language, and Mrs. Jay, womanlike, was 
 mollified. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 COMEDY AND TRAGEDY 
 
 In the bird's year the season of song is the season of trag- 
 edy. The wonder is that during the nest-building time 
 birds have the heart to sing at all. Danger is ever present, 
 and it is probably not an exaggeration to say that disaster 
 attends at least one-half of the attempts of the songsters to 
 rear their young. There are so many casualties among bird 
 homes that the nesting season holds for the field student rather 
 more of pain than of pleasure. It has struck me many times 
 that the birds must feel that the whole world is against them 
 when they are trying so patiently and so bravely to see that 
 their kind does not perish from the earth. From the moment 
 that the first egg appears the shadow of danger is across the 
 threshold of the little home. There are the perils of wind 
 and flood, of egg-loving snakes, and of egg-collecting boys. 
 A little later, when the young appear, there is danger from 
 prowling cats and looting owls, and from men nest-robbers, 
 who pretend to think that the proper sphere of a wild bird lies 
 within the limits of a cage. 
 
 The books tell us that many species of birds build their 
 nests near the habitations of men because of the protection 
 that is afforded by such locations. The theory is, that owls, 
 hawks, and snakes avoid the vicinity of civilization, and thus 
 the nesting birds are relieved from the fear of the depredations 
 of these natural enemies. There is another side to the ques- 
 tion, however. The minute that the bird places its home on 
 
 97 
 
98 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 the pillar of the porch, in the lilac bush of the garden, or in 
 the maple at the doorstep, it invites destruction for itself and 
 young at the claws of the family cat, a creature which, unfortu- 
 nately, few households are without. The very openness of 
 the nesting sites chosen makes of the eggs or of the young a 
 temptation to the badly trained boy, who nine times out of 
 ten finds himself unable to resist. As a deduction from obser- 
 vations that have extended through niany nesting seasons, I 
 don't hesitate to say that I think the part of wisdom belongs 
 to the bird who builds in the wilds and gives man, cats, and 
 boys a wide berth. 
 
 It is curious thing that, all things being apparently equal, 
 some of the birds that nest in the haunts of men have much bet- 
 ter success with their families than have others. The bluejay, 
 one of the characteristic birds of the Middle West, is handi- 
 capped in his struggle for existence by his brilliant plumage. 
 Notwithstanding this, the jay abounds and will continue to 
 abound unless his traits of character undergo a radical change. 
 A jay, building in an evergreen on one side of a doorstep, 
 will be rejoicing in five healthy offspring able to fly and to 
 care for themselves, while the robin, building in the maple on 
 the other side of the doorstep, is bewailing the disappearance 
 of its last fledgeling into the mouth of a cat. Accidents to 
 jays' nests are rare. It builds as strong a structure as does 
 the robin, and as a rule, Madame Jay insists that the young 
 jays shall stay in the nest until their wings are strong and 
 fully feathered. Robins have not the same excellent control 
 over their babies. The young robin, like the young crow of 
 the children's story, gets restless and wants to see the world 
 at a time when the only journey it can make is a high and 
 lofty tumble from the nest to the ground. You may pick up 
 
Comedy and Tragedy 99 
 
 a young robin, put it back in the nest, and you will be called 
 upon within five minutes to repeat the operation. The dis- 
 tress of the old birds, when a youngster tumbles out, is pitiful. 
 Possibly in the course of a few eons they may discover the 
 secret of parental control. At one time I had under obser- 
 vation five robins' nests and six jays' nests. Five of the jay 
 broods were led forth into the world in safety, while disaster 
 came to four of the robin households. It is curious to note 
 that the pair of robins that succeeded in raising a brood built 
 the nest on a crossbeam between two pillars of a piazza which 
 was frequented by many people all through the day. It was 
 a cat neighborhood. The nest was so placed that Tom and 
 Tabby could not get at it, though they watched it daily from 
 every vantage point. This pair of robins had more sense than 
 most of the tribe. There were five robin children in the nest. 
 When the time came for them to leave, the male robin took 
 a perch just outside the nest and coaxed the two strongest of 
 the fledgeling birds to leave. They stood on the edge of the 
 nest while the father took three or four short flights by way 
 of example. Finally the two little ones launched out together, 
 and with their father at their side they succeeded in making 
 the first flight carry them a distance of fully forty yards. 
 They plumped to the ground pretty hard, but in a minute 
 they recovered, and their father soon urged them to another 
 effort, this time upward to the safe retreat of a heavy foliaged 
 tree. The other three young ones remained in the nest 
 twenty-four hours longer, and were then led forth by the 
 mother. For two weeks the brood remained in the vicinity 
 of the nest, the father caring constantly for the two that he had 
 elected to take in charge, while the mother looked after the 
 other three. I watched the birds constantly, and never saw 
 
loo Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 either of the parents feed a youngster that was under the 
 other's care. There was something strikingly manlike in 
 the male bird's distribution of the labor. He gave his wife 
 the three requiring the most attention and took for his own 
 share the two lusty youngsters. 
 
 One robin's nest which met with disaster was placed on 
 the elbow of a rain-pipe which was supposed to carry the rain- 
 water from the eaves of the Presbyterian Church at Highland 
 Park. The chances are that robins never made a study of 
 rain-water spouts. The experience of the ordinary house- 
 holder is that water pours out of them at every place 
 excepting where it is intended to pour out. The Pres- 
 byterian pipe was no exception to the general rule. When 
 the robin's nest was well completed, "the rains descended and 
 the floods came' ' ; all the water from the eave-trough poured 
 down the pipe to a point about a foot above the nest on the 
 elbow, and then shot out through a hole and washed the little 
 habitation with its burden of eggs to the ground below. We 
 all know the poetical tale of the sparrow that built its nest in 
 the spout. We know how the "bloomin' rain-storm washed 
 the bloomin' sparrow out." We also know that when the 
 rain stopped the sparrow went up the spout again and there 
 fixed its habitation, awaiting another flood. I can readily 
 believe this story of a sparrow. The robins who lost their 
 home in that north-shore thunder-storm started to rebuild 
 their nest on the same rain-pipe elbow before the pools in the 
 street were thoroughly dry. Doubtless they felt that the 
 shadow of the church made their home sacred from the attack 
 of man, and they were willing for the safety thus secured to 
 run the risk of more showers. Their second home was washed 
 down within a week. They went elsewhere, and let it be 
 
Comedy and Tragedy loi 
 
 hoped were spared from the dangers of both field and 
 flood. 
 
 Chipping sparrows, robins, catbirds, bluejays, and many 
 of the other bird species which seek man's society do not 
 resent a certain amount of prying into their household affairs. 
 None of the birds named will think of deserting its home 
 simply because you take a daily peep at the eggs or occasion- 
 ally undertake to help the parent birds out in the matter of 
 feeding the young. Confidence when once established is 
 lasting. There are some birds, however, which occasionally 
 build under the shadow of our walls who resent human curi- 
 osity and will desert their nests at the first apparance of sup- 
 posed danger. The rose-breasted grosbeak frequently builds 
 in the garden or in the trees that shadow the sidewalks. The 
 rose-breast is a beauty. His life in the spring is one continu- 
 ous song. As someone has put it, he wears a blush rose 
 in his button-hole, and is the Beau Brummel of the birds. The 
 rose-breasts build a flimsy nest. It has but little more stabil- 
 ity than the nest of the mourning dove. They are as jealous, 
 however, of approach to the little home as though it had 
 taken a lifetime in its rearing. When a pair of the birds 
 build near the house they must not be allowed to know that 
 the nesting site has been discovered. If they see a person 
 looking at their home they will often desert instanter. A 
 pair of robins built a nest in a tree directly in front of the 
 residence of a bird-loving friend. One day he saw some 
 school-boys trying to climb the tree to get at the robin's nest. 
 He drove the boys away. A few days afterward he discov- 
 ered that a rose-breasted grosbeak was building its nest in the 
 tree not far above the home of the robin. Then the fear 
 came that the boys would come back and ravage both nests. 
 
102 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 So the birds' friend took a hammer and drove a lot of wire 
 nails into the trunk of the tree, thus precluding the possibility 
 of climbing it. "I may lose the tree," said the nail-driver, 
 "but I hope to save the birds." He was hitting the last 
 blow with the hammer when the grosbeak came with a 
 straw in its mouth. It saw the man standing below, dropped 
 its building material, and fled. It never came back. It is 
 something more than a pity that the birds cannot at first sight 
 tell friend from foe. The robin sat on the nest all through 
 the nail-driving without as much as fluttering a feather. 
 
 In the spring of 1899 I found the nest of a vesper sparrow 
 in a Highland Park field. The bird clung to its charge until 
 I almost stepped on it. Then it left the nest and gave an 
 acrobatic performance which, had its motive not been known, 
 would have been laughable. The bird was counterfeiting 
 injury and an inability to fly in the endeavor to draw the sup- 
 posed enemy from its treasure. This is a favorite trick of 
 many members of the sparrow tribe, and that it is at times 
 successful there isn't a doubt. The vesper sparrow that was 
 performing for my benefit spread one of its wings out and 
 dragged it along the ground as though it were broken. The 
 little creature propelled itself with its other wing, which it 
 beat violently against the grass blades. Finally, when it had 
 reached a point about ten yards from the nest, it spread both 
 wings to their fullest extent and skimmed the surface of the 
 green pasture as though it were using a pair of sculls. Eventu- 
 ally it flew away to join its mate, who was scolding vociferously 
 near at hand. So far from doing violence to the home of 
 that devoted mother, I performed a service for her by remov- 
 ing from the nest the egg which a cow-bird had deposited 
 there for the vesper sparrow to hatch. The hatching of this 
 
Comedy and Tragedy 103 
 
 parasite egg with the hatching of those of the sparrow itself 
 would have meant, doubtless, that the young cow-bird, by its 
 superior size and great greed, would have received the major 
 part of the food to the sacrifice of its foster brothers and 
 sisters. One morning, when on my way to pay a visit to the 
 vesper sparrow's nest, I stopped at the fence and looked 
 across the field to the spot where I knew the little home was 
 hidden in the grass. The field was pasture-land, and a cow 
 was grazing within a few yards of the sparrow's nest. It drew 
 dangerously near to the grass clump where the bird was brood- 
 ing, and in another instant I saw the sparrow leave the nest 
 and perform exactly the same series of gymnastics for the cow's 
 benefit that it had a day or two before for mine. Whether 
 this mother bird thought she could lure away from her home, 
 through motives of curiosity, this terrific horned beast or not, 
 I cannot say, but the effort was made in apparent good faith. 
 It is hard to be obliged to make a tragedy out of that into 
 which comedy has so largely entered. Before the young 
 vesper sparrows had been three days out of the shell one of the 
 grazing cattle put an end to the little ones' lives with a mis- 
 placed step. Much more than a month later I saw a pair of 
 vesper sparrows feeding four fledgeling young in the same field. 
 I believe that the plucky little mother, rising superior to dis- 
 aster, had succeeded finally in raising a promising family. 
 
 No bird better typifies the wild life of the woods than the 
 ruffed grouse, or partridge, as it is commonly called. Flushed 
 from its forest retreat in the autumn, the whir of its wings 
 through the falling leaves is like the whirling of a belted mill- 
 wheel. The rush of its flight through the brush strikes a sort 
 of terror to the novice sportsman who stands with gun in ner- 
 vous hands, nor thinks of shooting till the bolt-like pace of 
 
104 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 the bird has put it well beyond danger. This is the ruffed 
 grouse of the time of the ripened shellbark and of the blood- 
 red sumac. Then the bird's every effort is for self-preserva- 
 tion. In the earlier year, almost before the pulsing fullness of 
 the spring has passed, the bird that flees in the fall at the 
 approach of the despoiler stays to dispute his right to intrude, 
 and if necessary to give him battle. Others have told the 
 story of the attack that the female grouse will at times make 
 upon the man who stumbles upon her brood in the heart of 
 the woods. It has fallen to the lot of but few to witness the 
 exhibition that this wild bird gives of mother-love and cour- 
 age. It was my fortune once to have an experience with a 
 mother grouse who was caring for a brood of ten or twelve 
 downy young in the depths of a ravine on the government 
 reservation at Fort Sheridan. There are not many ruffed 
 grouse left in the country along the lake. The birds have 
 been shot by market hunters and others until the hearing of 
 a log drumming in the spring is an ornithological epoch. I 
 had been at target practice on the Fort Sheridan rifle range, 
 and was on my way from the firing point to relieve a man 
 behind the butts. To reach the objective point I was forced 
 to go through dense underbrush to the bottom of a deep ravine. 
 I was just about to jump the little brook which flows at the 
 base of the shelving ravine bank when I heard a clucking and 
 hissing noise. Before time was given to me to realize what 
 living thing was present, there was a rushing sound, followed 
 by the impact of a heavy body against my knee. It was a 
 case for a minute of both mental and physical stagger. Recov- 
 ering enough to look down, I saw two feet in front of me a hen 
 grouse bridling, and with her feathers ruffled up until she 
 looked as big as a buff-cochin. At the same time I became 
 
Comedy and Tragedy 105 
 
 dimly aware that some little creatures, not much bigger than 
 bumblebees, were scurrying for cover. In a second Dame 
 Grouse returned to the attack. She made the onslaught like a 
 game-cock. My knee was the objective point, and this she 
 buffeted with her body and struck with her beak. I had a 
 Springfield rifle in my hand, but of neither rifle nor man was 
 that valiant mother afraid. Had she but known, it was 
 admiration rather than resentment that was excited by her 
 attack. She prepared herself apparently for another assault, 
 and then suddenly changing her mind, she went whirring away 
 through the clustering trees. She had held the attention of 
 the intruder until her little ones had time to secrete them- 
 selves under the fallen leaves. I hardly dared stir for fear of 
 treading on one of the innocents. I picked my way carefully, 
 and when I reached a point half-way up the ravine's side, I 
 heard the mother grouse calling her chicks to the shelter of 
 her ample wings. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 SPRING ON THE KANKAKEE 
 
 The cup of the bird-lover is full who is permitted to wan- 
 der along the Kankakee's wooded banks or to float in a boat 
 on its bosom during the early May time. It is a varied bird- 
 life that makes glad this river valley. The wood ducks nest 
 in the timber, the golden plover dot the meadows, the sand- 
 pipers bob on the river bars, the tree swallows dip in the 
 waters, and warblers in thousands haunt the treetops; In 
 the early morning hours river, woodland, and marsh ring with 
 the bird chorus. 
 
 It was Warbler time, the first week in May, when three of 
 us having a common hobby left the great city and took the 
 way which led to the pleasant river valley. My companions 
 were of the gentler sex, but with a keen enthusiasm and an 
 untiring perseverance in the pursuit of field study. Our train 
 drew into the little village of Kouts, Indiana, where we found 
 waiting a comfortable democrat wagon which was to take us 
 the last stage of our journey, five miles across country to the 
 banks of the Kankakee. It was after sundown, but some 
 sparrow songs floated to us from across the fields and an 
 oriole whistled good night from an elm. Our host had met 
 us, and as we drove along through the deepening dusk, he 
 told us that the whippoorwill had come. It was a bit of 
 superfluous information, for at that instant, from a little 
 stretch of timber at the side of the road, the bird he had 
 named called to us softly. Its voice gained in volume as it 
 
 io6 
 
Spring on the Kankakee 107 
 
 rolled out the syllables one after another. I have read in one 
 of the books that William calls for his thrashing five times in 
 succession, and then pauses for a while before he begins his 
 plea again. My birds, like those of Dr. Abbott, are always 
 doing something contrary to the books. That Kankakee 
 whippoorwill certainly made no pause for breath until we 
 were well out of hearing. At the time that I had read the 
 statement that the bird rested after calling five times, I sought 
 a whippoorwill haunt for the sole purpose of testing the 
 matter. When darkness had settled over the wood, one of 
 the birds began calling. I counted fifty-eight "whippoor- 
 wills" uttered in rapid succession. I gave up the task, firmly 
 convinced that it is rarely safe to put down anything as a bird 
 rule without making due allowance for exceptions. 
 
 Another Kankakee Valley whippoorwill sang me to sleep 
 that night, and during the occasional wakeful moments caused 
 by the newness of the surroundings I heard him still calling. 
 The night bird's voice was mingling in my dreams with a note 
 of sweeter substance when I woke to a consciousness that day 
 was breaking, and that an oriole was giving it a jubilant wel- 
 come from a maple at the window. Enthusiasm took all three 
 of us afield before breakfast for an hour with the birds. One 
 of the soft maples in the dooryard. our host told us, had for 
 four successive years been the home of a pair of orioles. He 
 was firmly convinced that the two birds which were then at 
 his door were his friends of other years. In the maple next 
 the oriole home site was the empty tenement of a warbling 
 vireo. My companions had visited the valley the year before, 
 and had found the vireo nest when it held its treasure of eggs. 
 They told me how the father bird relieved his patient wife of 
 her household duties at intervals during the day, and how all 
 
io8 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 the while that he sat upon the nest he sang sweetly the war- 
 bling song that gives him his name. Somewhere in this habit 
 of the vireo there is hidden a lesson for humankind. Not 
 much searching is needed to find it. 
 
 The Kankakee flows along not more than a hundred yards 
 from our farm-house headquarters. We started for the river 
 bank, but found bird-life so abundant that we made little 
 more than half the journey before the breakfast bell sum- 
 moned us. The field sparrow, the little fellow with the red 
 bill and the chestnut crown, sang his sweet note from the fence 
 post and did not appear at all discouraged because his brother 
 song sparrow was giving a much better entertainment within 
 a rod. From a little patch of bushes in the damp pasture 
 came the call, "Witchety-witchety-witchety, " and in a 
 moment a Maryland yellow-throat showed his black-masked 
 face to us through the tender green of the foliage. The yel- 
 low-throat is a beauty, but one cannot say as much for his 
 voice. There were some chewinks, perhaps better known as 
 towhees, in the pasture, and one of them kindly sang for us. 
 The towhees's song, it has always seemed to me, has just 
 about volume enough for a bird of half its size. But then 
 we mustn't expect too much; the towhee wears a beautiful 
 suit of black, terra-cotta, and white, and he knows how to 
 show it to advantage. He charms our color sense, and we 
 forgive him readily for not being a nightingale. 
 
 The cow blackbird is despised above all feathered kind. 
 It is a parasite, building no nest of its own, but depositing its 
 eggs in the homes of smaller birds. The warblers are gener- 
 ally the ones imposed upon. They often seem unable to 
 detect the deception, and hatch the egg and rear the cow-bird 
 to a sacrifice of their own young. This habit is too well 
 
Spring on the Kankakee 109 
 
 known to be dwelt upon. The cow-bird, in the spring, has 
 just one sweet note. That is to say, at times this one note 
 is sweet. If the bird tries to continue the performance it fails 
 miserably, producing something like the sound of a file drawn 
 over a lemon-grater. As we stood that May morning listen- 
 ing for a repetition of- the yellow-throat's "witchety, " there 
 came one liquid note from a treetop. In chorus we said, 
 "Cow-bird." The next instant there followed note after note 
 of liquid beauty from the same treetop, and shamefacedly we 
 looked at one another and said, "Wood thrush." If greater 
 ignominy can come to bird-students who have haunted the 
 fields for years than to^mistake the note of one of America's 
 sweetest singers for that of the despised cow-bird, let it be 
 named. The wood thrush forgave us for the insult and heaped 
 coals of fire on our heads by continuing his song as long as 
 we staid to listen. 
 
 The catbirds and the brown thrashers sang their medleys 
 from the thicket. The Kankakee River country is a catbird 
 and thrasher paradise. We saw more catbirds during that 
 May outing than we did robins. The region affords the cat- 
 birds ideal nesting-places, and judging solely from numbers 
 I should say that it will be many generations before their 
 race is run. A swamp extending back from the river en- 
 croaches upon the pasture-land. We had not left the sing- 
 ing thrush far behind before we started a green heron from its 
 swamp retreat. A lesser blue heron took flight a moment 
 later. It is a much rarer bird than its green brother. As we 
 were about to retrace our steps a great blue heron ceased its 
 frog-hunting and flapped away leisurely over the trees. On 
 the way back to the house and to breakfast, we crossed a 
 foot-bridge. A male phcebe was sitting on a post near at 
 
no Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 hand. Out of curiosity I threw myself prone on the wet sod 
 at the side of the path and peered under the bridge. I 
 thought I should find something there, and I did find enough 
 to pay me for damp clothes and a strained neck. A phcebe's 
 nest of perfect architecture was fastened to one of the beams 
 of the bridge, with the mother bird holding faithfully by her 
 charge even in the face of the intruder. Father Phoebe from 
 his fence-post perch did not seem at all put out at the 
 encroachment on his dooryard. While the inspection of the 
 nest was going on he unconcernedly flew out, snapped up a 
 fugitive fly, and then went back to his post. After each of 
 us had taken a peep at the mossy structure under the bridge 
 we bothered the brave little mother no more. Within twenty- 
 five yards there was another foot-bridge, and on a cross-beam 
 beneath another pair of phoebes had a nest half completed. 
 
 When the Kankakee overflows its banks and makes a 
 broad lake of a part of the country and a marsh-land of the 
 rest, this Indiana region is a favorite resort for gunners. 
 Some of the water birds linger late into the spring, many of 
 them staying weeks after the time that the law first gives 
 them protection from persecution. Some of the pools in the 
 meadows do not dry up until June, and there the hunter who 
 carries an opera-glass instead of a shotgun has a fleeting 
 chance to scrape acquaintance with strangers. We started 
 out after breakfast to seek the marshes. The way to them 
 was along a road which ran parallel to the river and through 
 a wood that was musical with the voices of birds. The 
 orioles of the Kankakee were a revelation to me. They were 
 there in great numbers, and were found not only in the trees 
 near the dwellings of men, but in the depths of the woods. 
 I never knew until that May morning that an oriole could 
 
spring on the Kankakee iii 
 
 scream. We had crossed the long bridge spanning the river 
 and entered on the road through the woods, when from above 
 our heads came a scream of terror-. It was almost humanlike 
 in its agony of fear. Looking up we saw an oriole pursued 
 by a hawk. It was the oriole that was doing the screaming. 
 I took the hawk to be the broadwing, though the identifica- 
 tion was not certain. Its flight was lumbering and heavy, 
 but it seemed to be gaining on its quarry which was straining 
 every feather to escape. We watched the chase with an 
 interest mingled with fear. Suddenly a tree swallow appeared. 
 I don't pretend to say that the swallow had in mind the sav- 
 ing of the oriole, but save it it did, whether the act was one 
 of kindness or of accident. The eye had trouble to follow 
 the swallow's rapid flight. It passed between the oriole and 
 the hawk, staying its course momentarily as though with a set 
 intent. The hawk saw the nearer bird, and reasoning that 
 the nearer must necessarily be the easier prey, it turned 
 aside from its pursuit of the oriole and followed the elusive 
 swallow. The oriole made for shelter, while the swallow, 
 with doubtless an inward chuckle, increased its pace and left 
 the hawk so far in the lurch that it gave up the chase and 
 flew disgustedly back over the woods. 
 
 In the trees along the roadway we found the black- 
 throated blue warblers, the black and white tree-creepers, the 
 yellow warblers, and the fiery redstarts. These last-named 
 warblers, which look like diminutive orioles, were lisping their 
 incessant notes from nearly every tree. We heard the call of 
 the cardinal in the woods. This' bird is not common as far 
 north as our Kankakee hunting ground, and one brilliant 
 specimen which flashed across the road and disappeared in 
 the thicket was the only one of its kind that we saw. 
 
112 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 The woods ended and the marsh began. Th^re was a 
 pool at the edge of the timber, and about it were running 
 two spotted sandpipers. When I was a boy these tiny 
 waterside dwellers were called "tip-ups." The name fits 
 them to a nicety, for their bodies are in constant motion, and 
 look like diminutive teeter-boards ; first the head is in the air, 
 then down it goes, and the apology for a tail bobs up. This 
 operation is repeated incessantly. Some solitary sandpipers 
 were flying about the pool and the adjacent marsh. Finally, 
 to our surprise, one of them lit on a fence post within twenty 
 feet of us, and there stood fearlessly while we stared at it 
 through our glasses. It is strange how quickly the game 
 birds learn that the shooting season is over. Two weeks 
 before the solitary would have given us a wide berth, even 
 though we had nothing more harmful than field-glasses with 
 which to bring it down. I wanted to put the bird to flight 
 so that we could see its white markings to better advantage, 
 and I picked up a stick to toss toward it. The missile got 
 no farther than my hand, however, because my gentler- 
 minded companions begged me not to abuse, even to that 
 extent, the bird's confidence. 
 
 We flushed one after another three jacksnipe which were 
 feeding in the marsh at the very edge of the road. They rose 
 with the squawk that is translated into "scaipe" by most of 
 the books. A few jacksnipe nest in these Indiana marshes, 
 and thousands of them would make their homes here if the 
 vicious practice of spring shooting could be stopped. The 
 birds are harried daily during the mating time. They know 
 no rest from dog or gun until they get into the far North. 
 There is precious little sport in spring jacksnipe shooting. If 
 
Spring on the Kankakee 113 
 
 there must be shooting, it should be put off until the fall 
 when the sport is as keen as the air. 
 
 A dark cloud was moving rapidly over the marsh. Sud- 
 denly its color changed to silver, and then as quickly it went 
 to black again. It was a flock of May plover that had lingered 
 late on this choice feeding-ground. The May plover is also 
 called grass snipe and grass plover; neither of the three is its 
 right name. It is the pectoral sandpiper. The birds go in 
 large flocks, and twelve or fifteen of them are often killed 
 at one discharge of the gun. When the dead and wounded 
 have dropped from the flock, the rernnant will often whirl 
 about and fly back over the fallen comrades, only to be 
 met with another deadly discharge. The wonder is that 
 there are any pectoral sandpipers left to add life to the spring 
 marshes. 
 
 We walked back through the woods and across the river 
 bridge to a boat-house. There we hired a comfortable and 
 safe-looking snub-nosed boat for a trip on the broad stream. 
 The woman who rented us the boat said that notwithstand- 
 ing her occupation she had never been on the river in her 
 life, and in it only once. That once she fell in from the bank. 
 She also told us, for she saw that we were bird enthusiasts, 
 that she loved the birds, but knew very little about them. 
 "There is one bird, however," she said, "to whose note I am 
 never tired of listening, though I don't know the singer's 
 name. The song is like the sound of the tinkling of the tri- 
 angle. There, the bird is singing now"; and as she spoke 
 the rich notes of the wood thrush came across the river. I 
 think that those who have once heard the "tinkling" of the 
 little musical instrument called the triangle will admit that the 
 
114 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 woman's description of the wood thrush's song cannot be 
 improved upon. 
 
 We shaped our course up the stream. The Kankakee 
 woods where they edge the river are the haunts of the pro- 
 thonotary warbler, perhaps the most beautiful member of a 
 notedly beautiful family. The prothonotary owes its long 
 name to the fact that it wears a yellow coat such as the pro- 
 thonotaries, or court clerks, wore once upon a time. We had 
 looked forward to meeting these warblers with a good deal of 
 pleasure, but were disappointed to find that only a few of 
 them had arrived from their southern winter resort. One 
 pair, however, came so close to us when we landed at a pic- 
 turesque point on the river that we had a golden opportunity 
 in a double sense to get an adequate idea of the bird's ways 
 and beauty. The prothonotaries have a habit of constantly 
 flj'ing back and forth over the river. Their yellow bodies are 
 reflected in its smooth surface, and the observer has a double 
 color treat every time the bird crosses. The prothonotary 
 builds in a hole in a tree or in a decayed stump, after the 
 manner of the bluebird, and the nests are only less interesting 
 than the birds themselves. 
 
 The tree swallows of the Kankakee Valley believe that the 
 customs of their ancestors are good enough for the descend- 
 ants. They build in colonies in hollow trees, like their fore- 
 fathers. The tree swallows that wander away into the haunts 
 of men make their homes in bird-houses or in crevices in 
 buildings. Nearly every group of dead tree trunks along the 
 Kankakee River has its swallow colony. There were thou- 
 sands of the birds flying up and down the river, dropping 
 down now and then to dip in its waters. We passed many 
 of them sitting upon the tips of dead branches gr upon the 
 

 
 ... .^_^^ ?. .jI^^^H 
 
 WARBLING VIREO. 
 
 
Spring on the Kankakee 115 
 
 scarred tops of stumps. The tree swallow's under parts are 
 pure white, while its back and shoulders, when the sun strikes 
 them full and fair, are a shimmering green. 
 
 We turned the prow of our little boat toward the shore 
 and landed by some great trees under which the Indians once 
 must have roamed. There two male redstarts gave us a 
 diversion by having a pitched battle, first on a limb, then in 
 the air, and then on the limb again. We stayed in the vicin- 
 ity for certainly half an hour, and though we did not watch 
 them constantly, I think that these little warblers, whose 
 tempers are as fiery as their plumage, never once gave over 
 fighting. We found a red-bellied woodpecker on one of the 
 big trees. This locality is, I think, about its northern limit, 
 though one careful observer has reported the presence of one 
 of these woodpeckers in Lincoln Park, Chicago. We heard 
 the note of the tufted titmouse. It was the same "Peter- 
 peter-peter" that I had heard early in March in the south- 
 ern Hoosier hills. 
 
 As the shadows began to lengthen, we floated homeward 
 with the gentle current of the river. When the sun declined the 
 wood thrushes found voice once more. Their songs attended 
 us all the way to the farm-house. Perhaps the birds knew of 
 their listeners' appreciation, and were moved sympathetically 
 to sing until it was time for the vesper sparrow to close the 
 day's concert. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 "FROM HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERN" 
 
 When the snow melts in March, and the spring rains beat 
 on the land, the banks of the Kankakee River can no longer 
 hold their burden of waters. The flood rises rapidly and 
 spreads over the outlying meadows and woodlands. In Stark 
 County, Indiana, the broadening river forms a considerable 
 body of water known as English Lake. Summer comes 
 before the flood recedes to leave great pools and morasses in 
 its wake as reminders of its spring-time visit. In June these 
 English Lake reed-grown stretches are "the haunts of coot 
 and hern," of the redwings, the marsh wrens, and the rails. 
 In the earlier spring great flocks of ducks, geese, and plover 
 make a resting and feeding place of the reaches of swamp and 
 open water. There is a world of bird-life throughout the 
 whole English Lake section. Perhaps there better than any 
 other place in the Middle West may be studied the habits of 
 the water birds. A Chicago shooting club owns much of the 
 marsh, and as all hunting is done under rules which have 
 regard for the preservation of species, the birds still throng to 
 the locality with the first touch of spring-time warmth or of 
 autumn chill. 
 
 In the third week of May, 1901, four weeks after the 
 shooting season had closed, I tramped and rowed through the 
 English Lake section with Ruthven Deane, the president 
 of the Illinois Audubon Society. It is something to be famil- 
 iar with many birds ; it is something better to know them all. 
 
 116 
 
"From Haunts of Coot and Hern" 117 
 
 I learned much on that trip, both of birds and of methods of 
 observation. Mr. Deane is closer to Nature's heart than most 
 men, and of him she seems to have made a confidant. We 
 reached the English Lake club-house just at dusk, but all the 
 bird voices were not hushed. While waiting the call to sup- 
 per we strolled down to the banks of the little flooded inlet 
 which makes a water highway for the rowboats from the house 
 to the river. A vesper sparrow sang to us as we walked 
 through the deepening darkness. From the damp thicket on 
 the further side of the inlet came the voice of the Maryland 
 yellow-throat. He was as insistent in his calling as is the 
 custom with his tribe when once roused to vocal effort, but 
 even the yellow-throat's insistence gave way before the 
 screams and scoldings of a pair of robins. I have heard 
 robins raise disturbances before. They are often the com- 
 mon scolds of a bird neighborhood, but the performance of 
 the pair that we heard that night rather outdid in volume of 
 sound anything of which I had supposed the robin to be capa- 
 ble. It was too dark to investigate the cause of the trouble, 
 and so the matter was put off until sunrise. The robins 
 apparently wished to make it certain that we were impressed 
 with their trouble, if trouble it were, for the last thing that 
 we heard on closing the door of the dining-room behind us 
 was a noise that was nothing less than a screech, and it came 
 from both birds in unison. 
 
 Just as the sun touched the treetops the next morning we 
 were out of doors. The song sparrow was attune, an orchard 
 oriole piped to us from a maple at the doorstep, and a brown 
 thrasher was singing somewhere in the wet thicket beyond the 
 boat-houses. The robins were silent. I went directly to the 
 scene of the disturbance of the night before, and soon found 
 
ii8 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 Master Robin perched on a fence post with a big, fat worm 
 in his mouth. It is barely possible that he had worn his 
 voice out the night before, or more likely, he was afraid he 
 would drop the worm, else he would have scolded me and 
 perhaps sworn a little. I fully expected to find nothing less 
 than a rifled robin household. The duet of the night before 
 could hardly be accounted for on less tragic grounds. I soon 
 discovered, however, that neither black-snake nor small boy 
 robber had been about, for the robin, after looking me over 
 for a minute, flew to a crotch low down in a maple across the 
 inlet, and dividing his worm prize into bits, fed some concealed 
 young. I went to the tree and climbing a few feet looked 
 into the nest. There were four naked young ones within. 
 They were certainly not more than eight or ten hours old. 
 It is my firm conviction that the racket that the father and 
 mother bird made the night before was their method of rejoic- 
 ing that unto them several children were born. 
 
 The bird-lover's best time abroad is usually before break- 
 fast. We walked that morning along the edge of the swamp 
 and listened to the "fluting" of the redwings. In a little 
 clump of trees, whose foliage was nearly full, we found the 
 redstarts and the yellow warblers. There were other warblers 
 in their company, but they gave us only a fleeting glimpse, 
 and though we followed through the tangled thickets as they 
 went from tree to tree, we had to give them up in despair. 
 Warbler time is the time to try the bird-lover's soul. The 
 elusive creatures invariably give the observer a crook in the 
 back, and not infrequently give him a crook in the temper. 
 A pair of doves flew by. We had heard their notes ever since 
 we had left the house. There is something more than mournful 
 in the dove's note. To me there is something that the chil- 
 
MARYLAND YELLOW-TTHROAT. 
 
"From Haunts of Coot and Hern" 119 
 
 dren call "creepy" in the sound. Doves are abundant 
 throughout the Middle Western country, but how long they 
 will continue so is a question. Our wise legislators in many 
 states have been putting these birds on the game list so that 
 they may be shot and turned over to the cook. Before long 
 the wise ones will be planning an open season for humming- 
 birds and kinglets. 
 
 The doves were out of sight, but hardly out of mind, when 
 my companion caught sight of a male bluebird sitting on a 
 stump about forty yards away. The stump had holes in it, 
 any one of which looked like an ideal place for a bluebird's 
 nest. Presently the female bluebird appeared. She took a 
 perch by the side of her husband. "In truth," we said, "the 
 birds have a nest in the stump." Then we looked at them 
 through our glasses and became more firmly convinced than 
 ever that the nest was just below them, for the glass revealed 
 the fact that Mrs. Bluebird had a fat grub in her bill. Soon, 
 however, she left her perch and flew to a tree about twenty 
 yards to our left. We said to ourselves, "Mrs. Bluebird saw 
 us looking at the stump and so she has left it for another 
 place in order to distract attention from her home." Then 
 it was that Father Bluebird also quitted the stump and took 
 a station near his spouse. Both birds were restless and 
 apparently anxious. They moved to another tree only a few 
 feet distant, evidently trying to make us forget all about the 
 stump and the little homestead that it held. 
 
 We were standing close to a small birch tree. My left 
 hand was against its trunk while with my right I was using 
 the field-glass. I took my eyes off the bluebirds a moment 
 and saw that there was a hole in the birch-tree trunk within 
 an inch of my thumb. I called my companion's attention to 
 
I20 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 it. He laughed, and walking over, looked into the cavity. 
 There, snuggling down into their straw-lined nest, were four 
 young bluebirds almost fully fledged and apparently about 
 ready for their first flight in life. When Mr. and Mrs. Blue- 
 bird saw that their home was discovered, their trouble was 
 great. The madame dropped the choice morsel intended for 
 her young and called plaintively. We had no intention of 
 harrying that birch-tree home. We backed away from it as 
 quietly and as quickly as we could, and in a few minutes had 
 the satisfaction of seeing Mrs. Bluebird pay her family a visit. 
 If she had not recovered the grub which she had intended as 
 a bit of breakfast for her offspring, she had found another 
 exceeding quick, for we saw her feed the babes before the 
 bushes shut off our view of the hole in the birch. 
 
 On our way back to breakfast we passed a pigsty. It 
 was just like all other pigsties in the round world. There 
 was plenty of wallowing room and plenty of mud for the 
 porkers. The manager of the English Lake club-house had 
 paid a visit to this pen early one morning, and there in the 
 mud, in the very center of the circling pigs, was a cardinal 
 grosbeak, singing his sweet notes to an audience that could 
 do nothing but grunt its approval. Surely this was a literal 
 casting of pearls before swine. 
 
 It was still early morning when we took a boat and poled 
 our way down the grass-grown inlet toward the sweeping 
 Kankakee. As we made our way laboriously along the little 
 waterway we flushed a solitary sandpiper that flew away 
 reluctantly from a choice feeding-ground. Glancing back, I 
 saw the bird return to the spot before we were a dozen yards 
 away. A Baltimore oriole flew over our heads, carrying nest- 
 ing material. I watched the bird to see where it was going 
 
"From Haunts of Coot and Hern" 121 
 
 to swing its cradle. It took to a treetop perch, however, and 
 made no movement toward its nesting-place until we were 
 well out of sight. It was Sunday, May 19th, and the river was 
 still flowing with nearly even banks. We started down 
 stream letting the current take us almost as it would. We 
 passed a little rift, startling into flight a half-dozen "tip-ups" 
 that circled the prow of our boat and made off up the river, 
 peeping complainingly. We reached a patch of timber with 
 plenty of deadwood still standing, but leaning heavily toward 
 the river. There we landed, for we hoped to find the pro- 
 thonotary warblers building in the rotting stumps. We found 
 the birds in all the beauty of their orange dress, but if they 
 had decided on homestead sites they kept their secret well. 
 
 Walking up the river bank a little way to the edge of the 
 towering timber, we found a man and two boys fishing. They 
 had had no luck. It was too early, they said, and there was 
 still too much water in the river. It was while talking to 
 them that we saw a moving streak in the water. The ripple 
 with its shining trail came nearer and nearer, and in a moment 
 we saw that it was a snake with uplifted head, that was swim- 
 ming for the bank at our feet. I have never liked snakes well 
 enough to care to scrape acquaintance with them. I have 
 never been able to take well to heart Dr. Abbott's teaching 
 of the beauty and friendliness of the serpent tribe. The snake 
 that was swimming the Kankakee that spring morning was 
 surely four feet long, and it had a certain beauty of coloring 
 that pleased the eye even while the mind loathed. The man 
 of the fishing party said the snake visitor was a blue-racer and 
 that it was "as pizen as a rattler." We doubted the truth of 
 this latter assertion, but in the face of it we could not but 
 admire the cool indifference of one of the small boy fishers. 
 
122 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 who sat dabbling his bare feet and legs in the water within a 
 few inches of the place where the blue-racer was trying to 
 land. The man made a jab at the snake with his fishing-pole 
 and then struck at it with a club, but the reptile drew its 
 slimy length safely out of sight among the spreading roots of 
 a waterside tree. 
 
 Snakes are like misfortunes, they never come singly. We 
 had left the little fishing party only a few yards behind when 
 we came within an ace of stepping on a chocolate-colored 
 snake about three feet in length. It was a hideous-looking 
 reptile. It was blunter and fatter at the head and about the 
 body than any snake I had ever encountered in my rambles. 
 From the plump part it tapered off rapidly to a sharp-pointed 
 tail. When Nature painted this creature she added a little 
 dark ginger-root to the colors with which she had striped the 
 hideous gila monster, and then had laid the pigment on thick. 
 Neither of us waterside travelers that morning could give the 
 snake a name, and though I have searched diligently since, 
 I have been unable to find in the books anything that looked 
 like it. 
 
 It is not a very far cry from the snake to one species of 
 bird. The cow-bird is regarded by its feathered fellows in 
 much the same light as human beings regard serpents. We 
 hardly had banished the chocolate-colored crawler from our 
 minds when we came across a cow-bird sneaking — there is no 
 other word for it — its way down through the branches of a 
 willow. It took only a moment to show the bird's object. 
 A newly completed yellow warbler's nest, a perfect gem of 
 bird architecture, was fastened in the crotch of some slender 
 twigs of the willow, not more than four feet from the ground. 
 The cow-bird was about to deposit an egg in the little down 
 
"From Haunts of Coot and Hern" 123 
 
 structure and to trust to the goodness of heart of the warbler 
 to act as foster-mother. I threw a club at the cow-bird and 
 frightened it away. About ten minutes afterward I went to 
 the willow tree once more, and there was the parasite again 
 acting in the same sneaking way that it had at first. I fright- 
 ened it away once more, but rebuffs of that kind count 
 nothing with this bird. I haven't the faintest doubt that a 
 visit to the vicinity of the warbler's nest later in the season 
 would have shown two little gold-hued birds trying their best 
 to keep well filled the maw of a young cow-bird whose bulk 
 was greater than that of both foster-parents combined. The 
 yellow warbler apparently knows that the cow-bird's egg has 
 no right in its nest. At times the warbler will desert its 
 home after the depositing of the alien egg. More often, 
 however, the patient little creature will hatch out the egg 
 that has been foisted upon it and will feed and tend the young 
 cow-bird to the sacrifice of its own offspring. 
 
 On the river bank not far from the home of the yellow 
 warbler we found the half-completed nest of a pair of red- 
 starts. We first saw the female with a bit of downy stuff in 
 her bill. She paid little heed to us and by watching her 
 movements we soon discovered her secret. The nest was a 
 dainty little structure placed about fifteen feet from the 
 ground, close to the trunk of a small tree, where it was held 
 firmly in place by two slender, upward-growing twigs. I have 
 spoken elsewhere of the abundance of the redstarts in the 
 Kankakee Valley. Both at Kouts and at English Lake I 
 found them to be by far the most abundant birds of the 
 warbler family. No one need regret their abundance, for they 
 are useful in their lives and of a surpassing beauty of plumage. 
 
 When we had taken to our boat again and had drifted a 
 
1 24 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 mile with the current of the stream, we turned to the shore 
 once more and drew our little craft up on a muddy bank that 
 separated the river from a great insweeping marsh, guarded 
 on all sides by big native trees. We left the boat and plowed 
 our way into the swamp. We caught a fleeting glimpse of a 
 Louisiana water-thrush as we left the river bank ; a catbird 
 gave one strain of melody that ended in a sharp "meou" as 
 he discovered us. Two or three elusive sparrows dodged in 
 and out of the thicket at the edge of the marsh. The 
 endeavor to identify a sparrow under such circumstances is 
 one of the trying things of life. I soon gave over all thought 
 of the sparrows, however, for my companion, knowing every 
 bird-haunt of this bird-favored country, was leading me 
 straight to a feeding-ground of the great blue herons. The 
 swamp broadened out, the timber giving way to the right and 
 left. Suddenly from the rank grass growth not more than 
 thirty yards ahead of us there rose a great bird that flapped 
 its huge wings, stretched out its great neck, and trailing its 
 lanky legs behind, made straight for the sky-line at the tree- 
 tops. Only a few yards beyond another heron, surprised at 
 its breakfast table, left the well-furnished board reluctantly. 
 One after another the herons rose before our advancing foot- 
 steps. I felt a little conscience stricken at having interrupted 
 their feasting. We retraced our steps soon and before we 
 reached our boats the herons doubtless were back at their 
 repast of frogs, slugs, and delicate small fry, with which the 
 marshes of the Kankakee River abound. I never before had 
 seen a wild great blue heron at such short range. In first 
 taking flight the bird is an awkward creature. It reminded 
 me of nothing so much as of a man who is in a hurry to catch 
 a car, but has to stop to gather up four or five bundles before 
 
"From Haunts of Coot and Hern" 125 
 
 starting to run. The heron's bundles are its long neck, head 
 and beak, and its two lanky legs. It seems to lose a minute's 
 time trying to dispose of these impedimenta properly before 
 it spreads its wings for the start. 
 
 We left the entrance to the heron's retreat and pulled our 
 way up the river. Going against the current of the Kanka- 
 kee means the mingling of some work with the day's play. 
 The journey of ten minutes going down is a journey of twenty 
 minutes going up. There are, however, plenty of bird excuses 
 for stopping to rest. A small heron pitched on to an island 
 in midstream, fully a hundred yards ahead of our boat. The 
 island was grass-grown, but we succeeded in marking the spot 
 of the bird's disappearance fairly accurately. We made up 
 our minds that we would try to see how close we could 
 approach before this wary bird of the bog should take flight. 
 We kept in the open water until we reached a place abreast 
 of where the heron had disappeared, then turning the prow of 
 our boat toward the island, a few lusty strokes sent us ashore. 
 The bird had gone into the grass not ten yards from the 
 water. We searched the spot thoroughly with our glasses 
 but saw nothing. I was about to jump out of the boat for 
 the purpose of flushing the heron when my wiser friend told 
 me if I jumped off into the mud I could never get out again. 
 I was incredulous, but after I had poked an oar down into 
 the black oozy stuff without meeting with the slightest resist- 
 ance I concluded to stay in the boat. I had hardly pulled 
 the oar out of the mud before the heron rose and made off 
 for a treetop. It was a little green heron, called in many 
 country sections " fly-up- the-creek." It is probable that had 
 not the protective coloring of the bird been so perfect we 
 could have readily picked it out from its surroundings as 
 
1 26 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 it stood in the lush grasses of the island. When the heron 
 reached the tree toward which it flew, it took perch on a dead 
 limb and there silhouetted against the sky made a perfect 
 bird picture. 
 
 We left the green heron staring at the sky and once more 
 pulled hard against the stream. Our destination now was 
 English Lake proper, which opens out to the right and left of 
 the railroad bridge. Beneath this structure the contracted 
 Kankakee sweeps swiftly. By the time of the year of our 
 visit, well into the month of May, the lake was a lake in 
 name only, though the land in many places was still under 
 water. About half a mile above the bridge we saw ahead of us 
 on the open water a great flock of ducks. Our glasses told us 
 beyond much doubt that the birds were blue-bills, more scienti- 
 fically known, perhaps, as scaup ducks. We pulled directly to- 
 ward the flock. What follows shows how quickly wild birds 
 gain confidence after the shooting season closes. We reached a 
 point well within gunshot of the blue-bills before they paid 
 any attention to us. We had no advantage of cover whatso- 
 ever. A month before these same birds would have been up 
 and off while the boat even to their keen vision had been but 
 a black dot upon the water. We drew closer. One of the 
 ducks rose and in another instant the whole air was awhir 
 with their wings. I was kneeling on the forward seat of the 
 boat looking ahead through my glasses at the blue-bills. 
 Suddenly I heard the squawk of a duck within four feet of 
 me. I turned in amazement and found that the duck's cry, 
 so true to nature, was coming from between the lips of my 
 companion. He was calling the blue-bills. The birds heard 
 that counterfeit call, and deceived completely, circled and 
 swept by within a few yards of our boat. Wary as the birds 
 
"From Haunts of Coot and Hern" 127 
 
 are, when once fooled they are fooled utterly, and too often 
 to their sorrow in the shooting season. 
 
 On a mud bank beyond the reach of water where the 
 blue-bills had been paddling we saw some birds flying, and 
 moving about on the ground by turns. We succeeded in 
 getting close enough to say good morning to them all. They 
 were plover, known by the somewhat inelegant name of lesser 
 yellow-legs. These birds, much sought after by sportsmen, 
 seemed like the blue-bills to know that the shooting season was 
 over, and that on this game preserve at least no one was to 
 harm them. Near the yellow-legs we found solitary, spotted, 
 and red-backed sandpipers, and the ring-necked plover. The 
 birds were all as tame as chickens. We went ashore at a 
 place where there seemed to be some certainty of a firm foun- 
 dation for our footsteps and started on a hunt for marsh- 
 wrens. We found none, but we flushed a few jacksnipe and 
 took it for granted from the fact of their late tarrying that 
 they were to nest in the English Lake country. 
 
 The snipe, the plover, the sandpipers, in fact all the shore 
 birds and the deep-water birds with them, form one of the 
 most interesting groups for the purposes of study. The birds 
 are too little known to the student who is not likewise a 
 sportsman. Most of them are with us only during the shoot- 
 ing season, when approach is difficult. Then again, the very 
 nature of their haunts presents an obstacle to familiar knowl- 
 edge. It is hard work to scrape acquaintance with them. 
 Their friendship, if it is to be won, must be had at the 
 expense of much mud, some wading and not a few duckings. 
 If the legislators were wise enough to stop spring shooting, 
 thousands of our shore and water birds that now go to the 
 far North to breed would build their nests in the fields and 
 
128 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 marshes of the Middle Western states, and then there would 
 be some chance to gain their confidence and to learn their 
 ways. 
 
 I left the shore birds behind with a keenness of regret. I 
 never before had succeeded, in a double sense, in getting so 
 close to them. In the afternoon of that May day we went 
 once more afield to see and to hear our dry land friends. It 
 was soon forced home to us that all birds have their share of 
 water, for a heavy rain-storm set in and drove us and the 
 songsters to shelter. Passing through a bit of woodland on 
 our way to the protection of the club-house porch, we flushed 
 a drowsy whippoorwill. It flew silently and heavily for a few 
 yards and then went to earth again. In a few hours' time, 
 however, it was alert enough, for I am sure it was this bird 
 that repeated its quavering cry again and again as a sort of a 
 good by to us as we boarded the train in the dusk of evening 
 and sped away cityward. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE REACHES OF THE PRAIRIE 
 
 In the journey southwest from Chicago the traveler hour 
 after hour passes over a prairie country. Nowhere, as far as 
 eye can reach, is there a hill to hedge in these seemingly 
 limitless fields. It needs no native of these parts to explain 
 to the traveling stranger why it is that this great reaching 
 plain is called the Grand Prairie. There is a grandeur apart 
 from mountains, caflons, and rushing rivers. It is the gran- 
 deur that attaches to the thought of vast extent, unbroken 
 and unrestricted. 
 
 The Grand Prairie is the home of the birds that love the 
 level grass-grown stretches, the great corn-fields, and the low 
 swales that hold their moisture even in the burning heat of 
 summer. The meadowlarks nest in countless numbers all 
 over the face of the prairies. The Western lark is a somewhat 
 smaller bird than its Eastern cousin, and it is far more 
 friendly. Go where you will on the prairies in the spring-time 
 you will hear the lark's clear, sweet, whistling note. 
 Sometimes the bird's music has a bell-like quality, but I have 
 always been pleased to think that this bit of sweetness is for 
 the special benefit of Madame Meadowlark, hidden away on 
 her nest in the prairie grass. An attempt was made recently 
 in the Illinois legislature to put the meadowlark on the game 
 list. The farmer members said that the bird was too good a 
 friend to be shot for pot-pies, and the bill never went beyond 
 the first reading. I spent part of one winter in a wooded section 
 
 129 
 
1 30 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 of southeastern Texas. Nothing surprised me more than to 
 find the meadowlarks there in abundance, and making their 
 habitation in the woods. The woods were open, to be sure, 
 but the surroundings were totally unlike those which the lark 
 seeks in its Northern summer home. 
 
 The horned or shore lark is another common bird of the 
 open prairies. There are two varieties, the horned lark 
 proper, and the prairie horned lark. Both of the birds occur 
 in the Middle Western states. They sing on the wing, but 
 their notes, while not absolutely unmusical, have but little to 
 commend them to the ear. With one exception, my experi- 
 ence with these larks has been that, apart from the breeding 
 season, they go in small detacTied flocks. The one exception 
 was the sight of a flock of the birds flying above a great field 
 about sixty miles south of Chicago. I don't dare venture to 
 give an estimate of the number of individuals in the gathering. 
 The old comparison of the swarm of gnats is too weak to 
 hold. No flock of blackbirds that I have ever seen equaled 
 in size this gathering of the larks. The birds were constantly 
 going to the ground in mass, and then rising again in a sort of 
 hovering flight. Every lark in the vast concourse was singing 
 its twittering song. It was the last week in March, and 
 before three weeks had passed the birds had separated and 
 many of them were nesting. On April i sth I found a nest 
 containing five eggs on the ground within a few feet of a pool 
 of water, the surface of which was frozen. I flushed the 
 lark from the nest, and after taking one fleeting glimpse 
 at her egg treasures, I went hastily away. The bird was 
 back covering the eggs before I had gone a distance of ten 
 feet in my retreat. How the horned larks, building as early 
 as they do, manage to bring up such a numerous progeny 
 
HOUSE "WREN. 
 
The Reaches of the Prairie 131 
 
 in the face of perils of frost and flood is beyond my wit to 
 explain. 
 
 The prairie-chickens- and the quail are still abundant 
 throughout the Middle West. In some of the states good 
 laws have resulted in an increase in quail numbers, and the 
 prairie-chickens in many sections fairly may be said to be 
 holding their own. These birds live veritably in the shadow 
 of death. They are shot ruthlessly, and yet they have learned 
 to match their own cunning against that of man. They are 
 in very truth game birds, and one cannot scrape acquaintance 
 with them on the same terms with which he meets the robin 
 and the bluebird. Nevertheless, that walk afield in the cool 
 of the evening will lack much when the whistle of Bob-White 
 fails to come down the wind from the fence post near the 
 corn field. 
 
 There are places in plenty on the Grand Prairie where 
 birds that are not essentially field lovers make their homes. 
 Along the tree-bordered streams, in the trees of the village 
 streets, and about the farm-houses may be found nearly the 
 whole range of songsters, with the woodpeckers, the flycatch- 
 ers and the rest. It was while on an outing for the purpose of 
 getting nearer the hearts of the prairie birds that I had an 
 interesting experience with the members of a bird family, that 
 I was going to say wouldn't know a prairie if they saw it. I 
 stayed for a month in the early summer in a little village on 
 the Grand Prairie. I lived during my stay in what was half 
 hotel, half farm-house. At one time in the life of the pro- 
 prietor it was his determination to have his place as hotel-like 
 as circumstances would admit, and to this end he had put up 
 a real lamp-post which held in position a steady light for 
 the direction of possible travelers. Not many guests were 
 
132 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 attracted and the light fell into disrepute; the wick was no 
 longer trimmed and the match no longer applied. The post, 
 however, was suffered to stand. It happened that it stood 
 within ten feet of my ground floor bedroom window. The 
 morning after my arrival at the little prairie inn I was awak- 
 ened by a sweet song from without. I drew the curtain aside 
 and discovered the singer. It was a house wren that had 
 taken perch on the top of the lamp-post and was saluting the 
 rising sun. The little fellow sang all the time I was dressing, 
 and for the next two weeks I don't think that I knew five 
 minutes of the daylight hours to pass, while I was in the vi- 
 cinity of the house, that the wren's song was absent from my 
 ears. He certainly took the palm for musical industry, and I 
 am glad to record that he afterward proved as industrious in 
 what some people may claim to be more useful lines, though 
 he is a savage who doubts that music has its uses. 
 
 The lamp-post was surmounted by a conical-shaped tin 
 arrangement. There were apertures at the edges, made so as 
 to provide for proper combustion of the light. It did not 
 take me long to find out that a pair of house wrens had pre- 
 empted the tin top of the lamp-post for a home. I have said 
 that the house wren in his morning solo was saluting the 
 rising sun. He was doing nothing of the kind. He was 
 singing to his mate, who, just below him, was busy keeping 
 her eggs warm. Birds always sing for the benefit of their 
 mates. I lay for ten minutes one day on the ground under a 
 tall osage orange from the top of which a brown thrasher 
 was singing his ravishing song. My only thought was that 
 the thrasher was singing to me. I flattered myself. I finally 
 saw a movement in the thick part of the tree just below the 
 singer's perch, and in another instant I discovered the pres- 
 
The Reaches of the Prairie 133 
 
 ence of the female. She had been there the whole time, and 
 it was upon her that the brown lover above had been shower- 
 ing his vocal sweets. That experience taught me a lesson in 
 humility. 
 
 It did not take me long to make a friend of the house 
 wren. Perhaps it was toleration rather than friendship he 
 extended. Here is humility again, for I cannot get over the 
 brown thrasher experience. The wren would let me stand at 
 the foot of the lamp-post with my head within three feet of 
 him. After his first fear was over he would not stop his song 
 at my approach. I cannot understand to this day how such 
 a little throat could hold such a volume of song. Mrs. Wren 
 seldom left the nest. Her husband would take food to her. 
 He had the secret of the lurking place of many spiders, and 
 his food-collecting was but the work of a minute. I do not 
 think that the male bird once relieved his Wife of the duties 
 of incubation. She made no complaint as far as I could dis- 
 cover. The wren had charged me no admission to his musical 
 entertainments but I found a chance to repay him. I saved 
 his home from being carried off bodily by some village small 
 boys. I witnessed the leading forth of the young wrens from 
 the lamp-post home. They came out one at a time. It 
 seemed as if they would never stop coming. Seven of them, 
 one after another, took a diagonal course to the grass. The 
 mother soon coaxed them to a woodpile about which they 
 stayed for a week. There was perhaps something in the 
 cabalistic number, seven. None of the little ones met with 
 harm, though there were two full-grown cats on the premises. 
 While the young were in the nest both the parents were kept 
 busy feeding them. Not far from the house was a brick 
 wall. Ivy clambered over a part of its surface. The wall 
 
134 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 was half sunlight, half shadow, and it was the home of thou- 
 sands of spiders. The wrens had discovered the insects long 
 before, for it was from the direction of the wajl that the male 
 bore spiders to his sitting mate. I have seen it stated in 
 the books that the wrens feed their young about thirty times 
 an hour. My lamp-post wrens made a much better average 
 than that. I learned from my host of the inn that the wrens 
 had built on the lamp-post top for three years. I trust that 
 the same pair will make music and kill spiders at the same old 
 stand for years to come. 
 
 This question of the feeding of the young wrens brings to 
 mind the fact that in many bird households some of the young 
 grow much faster than the others. This has been accounted 
 for on the ground that the bigger youngsters receive the 
 greater share of the food, either through the possible favorit- 
 ism of the parents or because the adult birds are unable to 
 remember which of the offspring they fed last. It is my 
 belief, based, however, upon only two observations, that the 
 old birds feed the young ones impartially and in turn. In 
 many human families some of the boys and girls are sturdier 
 tha,n their brothers and sisters. In these human families it 
 will be found generally that the weaker ones get the more 
 attention and the better care. There are reasons, doutbless, 
 for individual cases of slow growth and feeble constitutions in 
 bird families as well as in the families of the humankind. I 
 once saw the fledgeling members of a wood pewee household 
 ranged side by side on the dead limb of a tree growing out of 
 the depths of a ravine. A bridge spanned the ravine from 
 bank to bank and ran close to the treetop upon which the 
 young flycatchers were perched. One of the parent birds sat 
 on the limb at the head of the family line. Every minute or two 
 
The Reaches of the Prairie 135 
 
 the parent would launch out into the air, catch a flying insect, 
 return to the limb, and poke the morsel into the open bill of 
 one of the young. As soon as another fugitive fly happened 
 along the operation was repeated, but the old bird, as cap- 
 ture succeeded capture, invariably would feed the youngster 
 whose turn it was to be fed. Not once did two insect morsels 
 go down the same throat twice in succession. If one of the 
 young received more food than another, it simply arose from 
 the fact that some of the bug specimens captured were larger 
 than others. In an hour's time the parent bird made forty 
 apparently successful hunting trips. Several times either the 
 aim was missed or the bird ate the quarry itself. It may be 
 argued that it is an easy matter for a mother with her three 
 children ranged in line on a limb to keep in mind the order of 
 feeding, whereas when the youngsters are all jumbled up in a 
 nest, and perhaps constantly changing places, the keeping the 
 feeding order in the parent's head may be impossible. It hardly 
 seems that we are giving credit for too much intelligence to a 
 robin or a bluebird or a jay when we say that doubtless the 
 parents know one youngster from another as well as any 
 human mother knows the difference between Tom and Bill, 
 or. Maud and Jenny. 
 
 The mourning dove is one of the most abundant birds of 
 the Grand Prairie. The farmers say that it dearly loves corn. 
 The result of this claim of the farmer has been that the dove 
 has been placed upon the list of game birds, and is now shot on 
 sight in every Illinois field from Cook County to Grand Tower. 
 The law granting the right to shoot the doves was passed only 
 recently. That is why it is the birds are still abundant. It 
 was always a source of wonder to the bird-student that the 
 tribe of mourning doves was so great even under the condi- 
 
136 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 tions of the law's protection. The bird lays but two eggs, 
 and the nest is so poorly constructed that a heavy rain-storm 
 frequently utterly demolishes it. The mourning dove's nesting 
 h,abits are erratic. In some sections of the country it builds 
 only upon the ground, while in other sections the nest is 
 invariably placed either in a tree or on a stump top. One 
 thing in favor of the perpetuation of the mourning dove's 
 species is the fact that the birds generally nest twice in a sea- 
 son. I saw a curious thing once in a Grand Prairie orchard. 
 A male mourning dove was feeding two fledgeling young that 
 were perched on a limb not four feet removed from the spot 
 where the mother bird was sitting on two newly laid eggs. I 
 met the father dove frequently during the next week. He 
 had led his charges away from the nest, but he was attending 
 faithfully to the duties of feeding the youngsters and of 
 teaching them to fly. The nest with its eggs was on a limb 
 that had been broken away partly from the body of the tree. 
 How the eggs were contained by the few wisps of straw and 
 the twig or two that did service as a nest was a puzzle. As 
 it was the mother had to be content that season with one 
 brood, for a heavy wind broke the limb on which her second 
 home was placed completely away from the tree trunk and 
 sent eggs and nest tumbling to the ground. 
 
 In the same Grand Prairie orchard I found the nest of a 
 yellow-billed cuckoo, which showed but little more evidence 
 of a builder's ability than did that of a mourning dove. 
 From beneath the limb upon which it was placed one could 
 see the sky through the nest. There were four eggs in the 
 ramshackle structure, and it is a pleasure to say that they 
 escaped destruction in the storm that brought disaster to the 
 home of the dove. The cuckoo loves caterpillars. When a 
 
The Reaches of the Prairie 137 
 
 father and a mother cuckoo have four lusty young ones in the 
 nest, as was finally the case with this Grand Prairie pair, they 
 will do more good in the way of caterpillar- slaying than will 
 four pairs of any other bird species under the sun. There is 
 something uncanny about the cuckoo. Its movements as it 
 glides along the branches through the thick foliage suggest 
 the wanderings^of a restless spirit. The bird can make plenty 
 of noise when it chooses, but when it is being watched it 
 usually preserves a silence that strengthens the uncanny feel- 
 ing that its movements impart. 
 
 There are thirty-five kinds of American cuckoos, so it is 
 said, but only two of them, the black-billed and the yellow- 
 billed, are familiar to those of us who search the northern 
 fields of the Middle West. In general appearance the two 
 birds are much alike, the main difference being expressed by 
 their respective names. The yellow-billed cuckoo is much 
 the more common in nearly all places. The chances are that 
 you will hear the bird before you see it, for its note attracts 
 instant attention. Do not expect the American cuckoo to 
 say "Cuckoo. " It won't; the utterance of that well-known 
 note is left to the English bird, and to the little wood and 
 metal creatures that poke their heads out of the tops of Swiss 
 clocks every hour and proclaim the time. The cuckoo's note 
 sounds almost exactly like the first four or five utterances of 
 a stuttering person who] is trying hard to twist his tongue 
 into shape to say some simple word. When you hear from 
 the heart of some thick-leaved tree a sound like "uk-uk-uk- 
 uk-uk-uk-uk-uk," you may make up your mind that the 
 cuckoo has stopped long enough from his laudable work of 
 caterpillar eating to attempt to say a few words. In many 
 farming districts the cuckoo is known as the rain crow, because 
 
138 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 it is supposed to wax noisy just before a shower. I have 
 known the bird to be a poor prophet, and one that soon 
 became without honor even with those who hitherto had 
 pinned to it their faith. I never knew the cuckoos to be so 
 noisy as they were one July month in northern Illinois when 
 the drought killed almost every green thing in the land. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 G. N. SHRIKE, BUTCHER 
 
 One has to have something of the savage in him to enjoy 
 thoroughly the study of the shrike. As a matter of fact, the 
 close daily observance of the bird involves some little sacrifice 
 for the person whose nature is tempered with mercy. The 
 shrike is essentially cruel. It is a butcher pure and simple, 
 and a butcher that knows no merciful methods in plying its 
 trade. More than this, the shrike is the most arrant hypo- 
 crite in the whole bird calendar. Its appearance as it sits 
 apparently sunning itself, but in reality keeping a sharp lookout 
 for prey, is the perfect counterfeit of innocence. The great 
 northern shrike is no mean vocalist. Its notes are alluringly 
 gentle, and to paraphrase, "It sings and sings and is a villain 
 still." 
 
 There is one compensation beyond the general interest of 
 the thing for the student who has to endure the sight of the 
 sufferings of the shrike's victims in order to get an adequate 
 idea of its conduct of life. The redeeming thing is found in 
 the fact that in the winter time the great majority of the 
 shrike's victims are the pestilential English sparrows, whom 
 every bird-lover would be willing to see sacrificed to make a 
 shrike's supper, though he might regret the attending pain 
 pangs. 
 
 My own observations of the shrike have been limited to 
 the city of Chicago and to the fields immediately beyond its 
 walls. For those unfamiliar with the subject it may be best 
 
 139 
 
140 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 to say that in the winter season the shrike is abundant in the 
 parks of the great smoky city by the lake, and that not infre- 
 quently it invades the pulsing business heart of the town. No 
 one ever saw the placidity of the shrike disturbed in the least. 
 It will perch on the top of a small tree and never move so 
 much as a feather, barring its tail, which is in well-nigh con- 
 stant motion, when the clanging electric cars rush by or when 
 the passing wagons shake its perch to the foundation. 
 
 The great northern shrike reaches the city from its habi- 
 tat beyond the Canada line about the first of November. 
 For four years in succession I saw my first northern shrike of 
 the season on November ist, a day set down in the church 
 calendar for the commemoration of "All Saints." It is emi- 
 nently in keeping with the hypocritical character of Mr. 
 Shrike, sinner that he is, to put in an appearance on so holy 
 a day. From the time of his coming until late March, and 
 sometimes well into April, the shrike remains an urban resi- 
 dent and harries the sparrow tribe to his heart's content. 
 
 As far as my own observation goes, the great northern 
 shrike in winter does not put very much food in cold storage. 
 I have never seen many victims of the bird's rapacity impaled 
 upon thorns. Perhaps I should qualify this statement a bit 
 by saying that I have never seen many victims hanging up in 
 one place. I have watched carefully something like a score 
 of the birds, and while every one occasionally hung up one of 
 its victims, there was nothing approaching the "general store- 
 house" of food, so often described. It is my belief that this 
 habit of impaling its prey upon thorns or of hanging it by the 
 neck in a crotch is one that is confined largely to the summer 
 season, and especially to the nesting period. 
 
 The great northern shrike has been said by some writers 
 
G. N. Shrike, Butcher 141 
 
 to be a bully as well as a butcher. I have never seen any 
 evidence of this trait in its character. It does not seem to 
 care for what some small human souls consider the delight of 
 cowing weaker vessels. When the shrike gives chase to its 
 feathered quarry it gives chase for the sole purpose of obtain- 
 ing food. While the bird is not a bully in the sense in which 
 I have written, it displays at times the cruelty of a fiend. It 
 has apparently something of the cat in its nature. It dehghts 
 to play with its prey after it has been seized, and by one swift 
 stroke reduced to a state of helplessness. 
 
 Every morning during the month of February, 1898, a 
 shrike came to a tree directly in front of my window on Pear- 
 son Street, Chicago. The locality abounded in sparrows, 
 and it was for that reason the shrike was such a constant 
 visitor. The bird paid no attention to the faces at the win- 
 dow, and made its excursions for victims in plain view. The 
 shrike is not the most skilled hunter in the world. About 
 three out of four of his quests are bootless, but as it makes 
 many of them it never lacks for a meal. The Pearson Street 
 shrike one day rounded the corner of the building on its way 
 to its favorite perch, and encountering a sparrow midway 
 struck it down in full flight. The shrike carried its struggling 
 victim to the usual tree. There it drilled a hole in the spar- 
 row's skull and then allowed the suilering, quivering creature 
 to fall toward the ground. The butcher followed with a 
 swoop much like that of a hawk, and catching its prey once 
 more, bore it aloft and then dropped it again as it seemed for 
 the very enjoyment of witnessing suffering. Finally when 
 the sparrow had fallen for the third time, it reached the 
 ground before the shrike could reseize it. The victim had 
 strength enough to flutter into a small hole in a snow bank, 
 
142 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 where it was hidden from sight. The shrike made no attempt 
 to recapture the sparrow. It seemingly was a pure case of 
 "out of sight, out of mind." In a few moments it flew 
 away in search of another victim. The sparrow was picked 
 up from the snow bank and put out of its misery, for it was 
 still living. There was a hole in its skull as round as though 
 it had been punched with a conductor's ticket clip. 
 
 It has been my experience that the great northern shrike 
 hunts most successfully when it, so to speak, flies down its 
 prey. If it gets a small bird well started out into the open, 
 and with cover at a long distance ahead, the shrike generally 
 manages to overtake and overpower its victim. If the quarry, 
 however, is sought in the underbrush or in the close twined 
 branches of the treetop, it generally succeeds in eluding the 
 butcher. One of the most interesting incidents of all my bird 
 observations was that of the attempted capture by a great 
 northern shrike of a small brown creeper. The scene of the 
 action was near the south end of the Lincoln Park lagoon in 
 Chicago. The creeper was nimbly climbing a tree bole, 
 industriously picking out insects, as is its custom, when a 
 shrike dropped down after it from its high perch on a tree 
 which stood close and overshadowed the one from whose bark 
 the creeper was gleaning its breakfast. The shrike was seen 
 coming. The creeper, for the fraction of a second, flattened 
 itself and clung convulsively to the tree trunk. Then recov- 
 ering, it darted to the other side of the bole, while the shrike 
 brought up abruptly and clumsily just at the spot where the 
 creeper had been. The discomfited bird went back to its 
 perch. The creeper rounded the tree once more, and down 
 went the shrike. The tactics of a moment before were 
 repeated, the shrike going back to its perch chagrined and 
 
G. N. Shrike, Butcher 143 
 
 empty clawed. Five times it made the attempt to capture 
 the creeper, and every time the little bird eluded its enemy 
 by a quick retreat. It was a veritable game of hide and seek, 
 amusing and interesting for the spectator, but to the birds a 
 game of life and death. Life won. I ever have believed 
 thoroughly that the creeper thought out the problem of escape 
 for itself. The last time the shrike went back to its perch 
 the creeper did not show round the trunk again, but instead 
 flew away, keeping the bole of the tree between itself and its 
 foe. It reached a place of safety unseen. The shrike 
 watched for the quarry to reappear. In a few moments it 
 grew impatient and flew down and completely circled the 
 tree. Then, seemingly knowing that it had been fooled, it 
 left the place in disgust. 
 
 Of the boldness of the great northern shrike there can be 
 no question. It allows man to approach within a few feet 
 and looks him in the eye with a certain haughty defiance, 
 showing no trace of nervousness, save a flirting of the tail, 
 which is a characteristic of the bird and in no way attribu- 
 table to fear or uneasiness. One morning early in March, 
 when the migration had just started, I saw two shrikes on the 
 grass in the very center of the ball-ground at the south end 
 of Lincoln Park. They were engaged in a pitched battle, 
 and went for each other much after the manner of game 
 cocks. The feathers literally flew. I looked at them through 
 a powerful field-glass and saw a small dark object on the grass 
 at the very point of their fighting. Then I knew that the 
 battle was being waged for the possession of an unfortunate 
 bird victim. The birds kept up the fight for fully two min- 
 utes. Then, being anxious to find out just what the dead 
 bird was which had given rise to the row, I walked rapidly 
 
144 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 
 
 toward the combatants. They paid no heed to me until I 
 was within twenty feet of the scene of their encounter. Then 
 they flew away. I kept my eyes on the much-ruffled body 
 of the little victim lying on the grass, and walking toward it 
 I stooped over to pick it up. At that instant, as quick as the 
 passing of light, one of the shrikes darted under my hand, 
 seized the quarry, and made ofl with it. It was an exhibition 
 of boldness that did not fail to win admiration. I did not 
 have the chance to learn what bird it was that had fallen a 
 victim to the shrikes' rapacity and had been the cause of 
 that battle royal. 
 
 The great northern shrike, when it is attempting to cap- 
 ture a mouse, or a small bird that has taken refuge in a bush, 
 hovers over the quarry almost precisely after the manner of 
 the sparrow-hawk. There are few more fascinating sights in 
 nature than that of the bird with its body absolutely motion- 
 less, but with its wings moving with the rapidity of the blades 
 of an electric fan. Sharply outlined against the sky, it fixes 
 the attention and rouses an interest that leaves little room for 
 sympathy with the intended victim that one knows is cower- 
 ing below. A mouse in the open has little chance for escape 
 from the clutches of the hovering shrike. Birds, however, 
 which have wisdom enough to stay in the bush and trust to 
 its shelter rather than to launch out into open flight, are more 
 than apt to escape with their lives. In February last I saw two 
 shrike-pursued English sparrows take to the cover of a vine- 
 covered lilac shrub. They sought a place well near the roots. 
 While flying they had shown every symptom of fear and were 
 making a better pace than I had ever seen one of their tribe 
 make before. The shrike brought itself up sharply in midair 
 directly over the lilac, and there it hovered on light wing and 
 
G. N. Shrike, Butcher 145 
 
 looked longingly downward through the interlacing stems at 
 the sparrows. It paid no heed to its human observer who 
 was standing within a few feet and who, to his amazement, 
 saw an utter absence of any appearance of fear on the part of 
 the sparrows. They apparently knew that the shrike could 
 not strike them down because of the intervening branches. 
 They must have known also that owing to the comparative 
 clumsiness of their pursuer when making its way on foot 
 through and along twigs and limbs, they could easily elude 
 him if he made an attempt at capture after that manner. 
 Finally the shrike forsook the tip of the lilac and began 
 working its way downward along the outer edge of the shrub. 
 When it had approached to a point as near as the sparrows 
 thought was comfortable, they shifted their position in the 
 bush. The shrike saw that the quest was useless unless he 
 could start them to flight. He tried it, but they were too 
 cunning for him, and he at last gave up the chase, the pro- 
 gress of which actually seemed to humiliate him. He flew 
 afar off, where perhaps the prospects of dinner were better. 
 I once saw a goldfinch in winter plumage escape a great 
 northern shrike by taking a flight directly at the zenith. 
 The shrike followed the dainty little tidbit far up, until the 
 larger bird was only a speck and the little one had disappeai-ed 
 entirely. The shrike apparently could neither stand the pace 
 nor the altitude, and the watchers, with whom the goldfinch 
 was the favorite in the race, rejoiced with the winner. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, Dr., 52, 107, 121. 
 
 Adam, 79. 
 
 Aristotle, 63. 
 
 Auk, Great; Plautus impennis, 17. 
 
 Beau Brummel of the Birds, loi. 
 Bittern, American; Botaurus lenti- 
 
 ginosus, 14, 15, 26, 27. 
 Blackbird, Red-winged; Agelaius 
 
 phoeniceus, 21, 22, 44, 90, 116, 
 
 118. 
 Blackbird, Crow; Quiscalus quiscula 
 
 aeneus, 12, 38. 
 Blizzard, Snowbirds in, 58. 
 Bluebird; Sialia sialis, 13, 16, 40, 47, 
 
 48, 52, 83, 114, 119, 120, 131, 135. 
 Bluejay; Cyanocitta cristata, 37, 50, 
 
 51. S3. 57. 73. 74, 80, 81, 82, 83, 89, 
 94. 95. 96. 98. 99. loi. 135- 
 
 Bobolink, Albino, 24, 69. 
 
 Bobolink; Dolichonyx oryzivorus, 
 24, 84, 88. 
 
 Bob-White, 131. 
 
 Bunting, Black-throated; Spiza 
 americana, 23, 88. 
 
 Bunting, Snow; Plectrophenax niva- 
 lis, 58. 
 
 Butcher Bird, 11,69. 
 
 Buzzard, Turkey; Cathartes aura, 
 46, 47- 
 
 Catbird; Galeoscoptes carolinensis, 
 
 52, 53, 78, 83, 88, loi, 109, 124. 
 Cedarbird; Ampelis cedrorum,84. 
 Cemetery, Graceland, 30, 78, 82, 
 
 85- . 
 Cemetery, Oakwoods, 78. 
 Cemetery, Rosehill, 78, 81, 84. 
 Chewink; Pipilo erythrophthalmus, 
 
 108. 
 Chickens, Brahma, 48, 49. 
 Chickadee; Parus atricapillus, 36, 
 
 37, 43. 44, 52' 58. 83. 142. 
 
 Chicago, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 19, 23, 30, 
 32, 43, 66, 69, 78, 83, 91, 115, 129, 
 
 139- 
 Chicora, Steamship, Loss of, 58. 
 Church, Presbyterian, Highland 
 
 Park, 100. 
 Church, Unity, Chicago, 84. 
 Coot, 116. 
 Cow-bird; Molothrus ater, 84, 102, 
 
 103, 122, 123. 
 Creeper, Brown; Certhia familiaris 
 
 americana, 142. 
 Crow, American; Corvus american- 
 
 us, 22, 34, 40, 41, 46, 50, 68, 84, 98. 
 Crow, Rain, 137. 
 
 Cuckoo, Black-billed; Coccyzus ery- 
 throphthalmus, 84. 
 Cuckoo, English, 137. 
 Cuckoo, Yellow-billed; Coccyzus 
 
 americanus, 84, 136, 137. 
 
 Deane, Ruthven, 116, 117. 
 Dickcissel; Spiza americana, 22. 
 "Dishonor, Century of," 66. 
 Dove, Mourning; Zenaidura ma- 
 
 croura, 72, 84, loi, 118, 119, 135, 
 
 136. 
 Duck, Bluebill; Aythya affinis, 83, 
 
 126, 127. 
 Duck, Mallard; Anas boschas, 93. 
 Duck, Old Squaw; Clangula hyema- 
 
 lis, 56. 
 Duck, Teal, 93. 
 Duck, Wood; Aix sponsa, 17, 106. 
 
 Eagle, Bald; Haliastus leucocepha- 
 
 lus, 13. 
 Emerson, 36. 
 
 English Lake, Indiana, 116. 
 Eve, 79. 
 
 Falls, Niagara, 85. 
 Farm, The Phillips, 88. 
 
 147 
 
148 
 
 Index 
 
 Fields, In Winter, 50. 
 Flicker; Colaptes auratus, 83. 
 Flycatchers, 131. 
 
 Flycatcher, Least; Empidonax mini- 
 mus, 83. 
 Fly-up-the-creek, 125. 
 Fort Sheridan, 104. 
 Fowler, W. Warde, 63. 
 
 Gila Monster, 122. 
 
 Goldfinch; Spinus tristis, 26, 45, 84, 
 
 US- 
 Goose, Canada; Branta canadensis, 
 
 54, 55- 
 Grackle, Bronzed; Quiscalus quis- 
 
 cula aeneus, 12, 13, 41, 78, 83. 
 Grebe, Pied-billed; Podilymbus 
 
 podiceps, 82. 
 Grosbeak, Cardinal; Cardinalis 
 
 cardinalis, 30, 31, 32, 38, 78, 79, III, 
 
 120. 
 Grosbeak, Evening; Coccothraustes 
 
 vespertinus, 79, 80, 81. 
 Grosbeak, Rose-breasted; Zamelo- 
 
 dia ludoviciana, 55, 83, loi, 102. 
 Grouse, Ruffed; Bonasa umbellus. 
 
 103, 104, 105. 
 Gull, Herring; Larus argentatus 
 
 Smithsonianus, 56. 
 
 Halcyon, 10. 
 
 Hartford, Michigan, 60. 
 
 Hawk, Broad-winged; Buteo latissi- 
 
 mus. III. 
 Hawk, Cooper's; Accipiter cooperi, 
 
 65. 
 Hawk, Duck; Falco peregrinus 
 
 anatum, 93. 
 Hawk, Killed by barbed wire, 72. 
 Hawk, Marsh; Circus hudsonius, 93. 
 Hawk, Red-shouldered; Buteo linea- 
 
 tus, 34. 
 Hawk, Red-tailed; Buteo borealis, 
 
 48, 49. 
 Hawk, Sharp-shinned; Accipiter 
 
 velox, 65. 
 Hawk, Sparrow; Falco sparverius, 
 
 3S, 36- 
 Heron, Great Blue; Ardea herodias, 
 124, 125. 
 
 Heron, Green; Ardea virescens, 83, 
 
 109, 125. 
 Heron, Little Blue; Ardea caerulea, 
 
 83, 109. 
 Highland Park, 20, 51, 68, 73, 102. 
 Hills, In Southern Hoosier, 39. 
 Humming-bird, Ruby-throated; Tro- 
 
 chilus colubris, 13, 63, 84, iig. 
 
 Illinois Audubon Society, 71, 79, 116. 
 
 Indiana, Southern, 29. 
 
 Indigo Bird; Passenna cyanea, 83. 
 
 Inn, Prairie, 132. 
 
 Island, David's, 75. 
 
 Island, Goat, 85. 
 
 Island, Willow, 10. 
 
 Jack, a dog, 23. 
 
 Jacksnipe; Gallinago delicata, 26, 
 
 H2, 127. 
 Jackson Park, 16. 
 Junco; Junco hyemalis, 13,35,39,57, 
 
 65. 
 
 Kingbird; Tyrannus tyrannus, 22, 
 
 44. 83. 
 Kingfisher, Belted; Ceryle alcyon, 
 
 10, 11,71. 
 Kinglet, Golden-crowned; Regulus 
 
 satrapa, 62, 63. 
 Kinglet, Ruby-crowned; Regulus 
 
 calendula, 81. 
 Kouts, Indiana, 106, 123. 
 
 Lake Forest, 111., 94. 
 
 Lark, Horned; Otocoris alpestris, 
 
 130. 
 Lark, Meadow; Sturnella magna 
 
 neglecta, 44, 84, 129. 
 Lark, Prairie Horned; Otocoris 
 
 alpestris praticola, 130. 
 Lincoln Park, 10, 11, 79, 115. 
 Love, Boy-driver's name, 45. 
 
 Massacre, Chicago, 60. 
 Mist, Maid of the, 86. 
 Myrtle-bird; Dendroica coronata, 15. 
 Mockingbird; Mimus polyglottus, 
 
 81. 
 Mudhen; Fulica americana, 40, 
 
Index 
 
 149 
 
 Nuthatch, White-breasted; Sitta 
 carolinensis, 13, 33, 36, 37, 63, 64. 
 
 Orange County, Indiana, 37. 
 Oriole, Baltimore; Icterus galbula, 
 16, 52, 76, 83, 88, 107, no. III, 120. 
 Oriole, Orchard; Icterus spurius, 
 
 83> 117- 
 Ovenbird; Seiurus aurocapillus, 71, 
 
 84. 
 Owl, Long-eared; Asio wilsonianus, 
 
 84. 
 Owl, Screech; Megascops asio, 84. 
 
 Parrot, Red and Gray, 70. 
 
 Pewee, Wood; Contopus virens, 81, 
 
 82, 83, 134, 135. 
 Phoebe; Sayornis phoebe, 83, 109, 
 
 no. 
 Pigeon, Domestic, 20, 84. 
 Pigeon, Passenger; Ectopistes mi- 
 
 gratorius, 17, iS. 
 Plover, Goldeni Charadrius domini- 
 
 cus, 106. 
 Plover, Lesser Yellow-Legs; Totan- 
 
 us flavipes, 91, 127. 
 Plover, Ring-necked; ^gialitis 
 
 Semipalmata, 127. 
 Pokagon, 60. 
 Pottawattomies, 60. 
 Prairie Chicken; Tympanuchus 
 
 americanus, 131. 
 Prairie, The Grand, 129, 131. 
 
 Quail; Colinus virginianus, 52, 131. 
 
 Rabbit, 52, 57. 
 
 Rail, King; Rallus elegans, 91, 92. 
 
 Rails, 116. 
 
 Ravinia, 111., 58. 
 
 Redbird; Cardinalis cardinalis, 29, 
 
 30. 3'. 32. 39. 41. 42. 
 Redstart; Setophaga ruticilla, 57, 83, 
 
 III, 115, 118, 123. 
 River, Concord, 36. 
 River, Desplaines, 19. 
 River, Illinois, 15. 
 River, Kankakee, 106, 116. 
 River, Lost, 29, 39. 
 River, Niagara, "85. 
 
 Robin; Merula migratoria, 13, 16, 
 29. 30. 31. 38, 42, 67, 78, 83, 89, 98, 
 
 99, 100, lOI, 102, 109, 117, 118, 131, 
 
 135- 
 Rose, Wild, 88, 
 
 Sandpiper, Bartram's; Bartramia 
 
 longicauda, 91. 
 Sandpiper, Pectoral; Tringa macu- 
 
 lata, 113. 
 Sandpiper, Red-backed; Tringa 
 
 alpina pacifica, 127. 
 Sandpiper, Solitary; Totanus soli- 
 
 tarius, 112, 120, 127. 
 Sandpiper, Spotted; Actitis macu- 
 
 laria, 112, 127. 
 Sapsucker; Sphyrapicus varius, 33. 
 Shrike, Great Northern; Lanius 
 
 borealis, n, 35, 69, 89, 139. 
 Shrike, Loggerhead; Lanius ludovi- 
 
 cianus, 84, 89, 93. 
 Shrikes, Fight of, 143. 
 Skokie, Songsters of, 19, 50. 
 Snake, Blue-racer, 121. 
 Snake, Chocolate-colored, 122. 
 Snipe, Grass; Tringa maculata, 113. 
 Snowbird, Slate-colored; Junco 
 
 hyemalis, 29, 35, 64. 
 Sparrow, Chipping; Spizella socialis, 
 
 83, lOI. 
 Sparrow, English; Passer domesti- 
 
 cus, 13, 14, 15, 47, 48, so, 69, 85, 89, 
 
 139, 141, 144. 
 Sparrow, Field; Spizella pusilla, 108. 
 Sparrow, Fox; Passerella iliaca, 13, 
 
 34, 35- 
 
 Sparrow, Grasshopper; Ammodra- 
 
 mus savannarum passerinus, 88. 
 Sparrow, Lark; Chondestes" gram- 
 
 macus, 25, 26. 
 Sparrow, Song; Melospiza fasciata, 
 
 II, 12,31,75,83,85. 108, 117. 
 Sparrow, Swamp; Melospiza georgi- 
 
 ana, 15. 
 Sparrow, Tree; Spizella monticola, 
 
 35. 65. 
 
 Sparrow, Vesper; Poocaetes gra- 
 
 mineus, 83, 102, 103, 115, 117. 
 Spiders, Food for Wrens, 134. 
 Squirrel, 52. 
 
I50 
 
 Index 
 
 Stake-driver, 14. 
 Stark County, Ind., 116. 
 Stave-splitter, Hoosier, 33. 
 Sugar-canip, A Search for, 45, 46. 
 Swallow, Barn; Chelidon erythro- 
 
 gaster, 23. 
 Swallow, Tree; Tachycineta bicolor, 
 
 86, 106, III, 114. 
 Swift, Chimney; Chaetura pelagica, 
 
 67. 
 Syringa, 88. 
 
 Tanager, Scarlet; Piranga erythro- 
 
 melas, 16, 26, 52, 76, 79, 81, 84. 
 Tea, Sassafras, 48. 
 Tennyson, 17. 
 Tern, Black; Hydrochelidon nigra 
 
 surinamensis, 87, 90. 
 Tern, Wilson's; Sturna hirundo, 87. 
 Texas, Meadowlarks in, 130. 
 Thoreau, 36. 
 Thrasher, Brown; Harporhyncus 
 
 rufus, 52, 55, 78, 83, 108, 117, 132. 
 Thrush, Golden-crowned; Seiurus 
 
 aurocapillus, 71. 
 Thrush, Hermit; Turdus aonala- 
 
 schkce pallasii, 34. 
 Thrush, Louisiana Water; Seiurus 
 
 motacilla, 124. 
 Thrush, Wood; Turdus mustelinus, 
 
 55, 78,83, 108, 113, 114, 115. 
 Tip-up, 112, 121. 
 Titmice, 43. 
 Titmouse, Tufted; Parus bicolor, 
 
 43. "S- 
 
 Torrey, Bradford, 51. 
 Towhee; Pipilo erythrophthalmus, 
 84, 108. 
 
 Veery; Turdus fuscescens, 34. 
 Vireo, Red-eyed; Vireo olivaceus, 
 
 57. 83. 
 Vireo, Warbling; Vireo gilvus, 107. 
 
 Vulture, Turkey; Cathartes aura, 
 46, 47. 
 
 Warbler, Black and White; Mniotil- 
 
 ta varia, iii. 
 Warbler, Black-throated Blue; Den- 
 
 droica caerulescens, in. 
 Warbler, Black-throated Green; 
 
 Dendroica virens, 1 10. 
 Warbler, Cape May; Dendroica 
 
 tigrina, 15. 
 Warbler, Cerulean; Dendroica 
 
 caerulea, 16. 
 Warbler, Maryland Yellow-throat; 
 
 Geothlypis trichas, 38. 
 Warbler, Prothonotary; Prothono- 
 
 taria citrea, 114, 121. 
 Warbler, Yellow; Dendroica asstiva, 
 
 i6> 57i 83, III, 118, 122, 123. 
 Whip-poor-will; Antrostomus vocif- 
 
 erus, 106, 107, 128. 
 Woodcock; Philohela minor, 16, 82. 
 Woodpecker, Artie Three-toed; 
 
 Picoides arcticus, 62. 
 Woodpecker, Downy; Dryobates 
 
 pubescens, 52, 54, 61, 62. 
 Woodpecker, Hairy; Dryobates vil- 
 
 losus, 61. 
 Woodpecker, Red-bellied; Melaner- 
 
 pes carolinus, 44, 115. 
 Woodpecker, Red-headed; Melan- 
 
 erpes erythrocephalus, 42, 43, 52, 
 
 61, 75, 76, 83. 
 Woods, Hamilton's, 51. 
 Worth, Village of, 87. 
 Wren, House; Troglodytes aedon, 
 
 83. 132. 133- 
 Wren, Long-billed Marsh; Cisto- 
 
 thorus palustris, 91. 
 Wrens, Marsh, 116, 127. 
 
 Yellow Throat, Maryland; Geothyl- 
 pis trichas, 108, 109, 117. 
 

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