CORNELL LAB of ORNITHOLOGY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 At Sapsucker Woods 
 
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 Ulustiatlon of Snowy Owl by Louis Agaan Fueroa 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3, 19P4 nan ora oa^ 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924090284245 
 
Fowls of the Air 
 
striking the decoys with a great splash and clatter 
 
-n^.^OrS^ 
 
 FOWLS 
 
 BOSTON, U.S.A., AND LONDON 
 
 GINN & COMPANY PUBLISHERS 
 
 THE ATHEN/tUM PRESS 
 
1 90 1 
 
 ^-^'-1 
 
 .71 
 
 Copyright, iSgg, igoo, 1901 
 By WILLIAM J. LONG 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 28. TI 
 
TO THE 
 TEACHERS OF AMERICA 
 
 who are striving to make Nature 
 Study more vital and attractive by ^i 
 revealing a vast realm of Nature 
 outside the realm of Science, and 
 a world of ideas above and beyond 
 the world of facts, these studies 
 from Nature are dedicated 
 
^INCE the publication of ''Ways of 
 ^ Wood Folk'' and ''Wilderness Ways'' 
 and the more recent "Secrets of the Woods',' 
 many requests have come to Publishers and 
 Author for better and more fully illustrated 
 editions of these studies of life in the woods 
 and fields ; and these requests grow m,ore 
 and m-ore num,erous as successive editions 
 are printed. 
 
 It is chiefly in answer to this dem.and that 
 these two volumes, "Beasts of the Field" and 
 "Fowls of the Air," have been prepared. 
 They include most of the previous sketches, 
 with enough new material to give variety 
 
VI 11 
 
 and a wider range of acquaintance with 
 the Wood Folk. 
 
 The names used here for birds and beasts 
 were given by the Milicete Indians; the 
 occasional legends referred to have never been 
 written, but were heard by the writer before 
 the camp fire, in the heart of the wilderness ; 
 and the incidents and sketches are true to life, 
 as I have seen it in m,aiiy years of watching 
 and following the wild things. 
 
 WM. f. LONG. 
 Stamford, Conn., 
 August, 1 90 1. 
 
The Ol' Beech Pa'tridge 
 
 Cloud-Wings the Eagle 
 
 Ch'geegee-lokh-sis 
 
 A Wild Duck 
 
 hukweem the night voice 
 
 An Oriole's Nest 
 
 One Touch of Naturb 
 
 koskomenos the outcast 
 
 A Fellow of Expedients 
 
 kwaseekho 
 
 kookooskoos 
 
 Crow-Ways 
 
 Snowy Visitors 
 
 A Christmas Carol 
 
 Killooleet, Little Sweet Voice 
 
 Glossary of Indian Names 
 
FULL-PAGE 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Striking the Decoys with a Great Splash 
 
 AND Clatter ...... Frontispiece 
 
 Thundered away to the Safety and Shelter 
 
 OF THE Pines 30 
 
 There he poised on Dark Broad Wings . 38 
 
 There was a Low Quack that brought Every 
 
 Duck out of his Hiding . . . .100 
 Hukweem's Curiosity could stand it no 
 
 longer 108 
 
 Uttering the Softest and most Musical of 
 
 Whistles 150 
 
 So they drove him down Stream and out of 
 
 Sight 160 
 
 He caught Sight of the Hawk just ready to 
 
 POUNCE down on him I90 
 
 The Little Fellows occasionally brought up 
 
 Something to eat 206 
 
 He had mastered the Trill perfectly . . 2y2 
 
 xi 
 
 Facing Page •■■■••'•■«"• >S5,Sr 
 
 .'-■JSjiiri.;,* ■ 
 '■'■itmr --■'*' 
 
 ■■.'TV 
 
THE OCBEEC 
 PATRIDG 
 
ALL the wild birds that still haunt 
 our remaining solitudes, the ruffed 
 grouse — the pa'tridge of our younger 
 days — is perhaps the wildest, the most alert, 
 the most suggestive of the primeval wilder- 
 ness that we have lost. You enter the woods 
 from the hillside pasture, lounging a moment 
 on the old gray fence to note the play of 
 light and shadow on the birch bolls. Your 
 eye lingers restfully on the wonderful mixture 
 of soft colors that no brush has ever yet imi- 
 tated, the rich old gold of autumn tapestries, 
 the glimmering gray-green of the mouldering 
 stump that the fungi have painted. What a 
 
giant that tree must have been, generations 
 ago, in its days of strength; how puny the 
 c9J5c O/'Seec/i birches that now grow out of its roots ! You 
 ^Th^/v'd^e remember the great canoe birches by the 
 5^^ wilderness river, whiter than the little tent 
 
 that nestled beneath them, their wide bark 
 banners waving in the wind, soft as the 
 flutter of owls' wings that swept among 
 them, shadow-like, in the twilight. A vague 
 regret steals over you that our own wilder- 
 ness is gone, and with it most of the shy 
 folk that loved its solitudes. 
 
 Suddenly there is a rustle in the leaves. 
 Something stirs by the old stump. A 
 moment ago you thought it was only a 
 brown root; now it runs, hides, draws itself 
 erect — Kwit, kwit, kwit ! and with a whirring 
 rush of wings and a whirling eddy of dead 
 leaves a grouse bursts up, and darts away 
 like a blunt arrow, flint-tipped, gray-feath- 
 ered, among the startled birch stems. As 
 you follow softly to rout him out again, and 
 to thrill and be startled by his unexpected 
 rush, something of the Indian has come un- 
 bidden into your cautious tread. All regret 
 
for the wilderness is vanished ; you are simply 
 glad that so much wildness still remains to 
 speak eloquently of the good old days. 
 
 It is this element of unconquerable wild- ^^ Of 'Beech 
 ness in the grouse, coupled with a host of T'afn'd^e 
 early, half-fearful impressions, that always 
 sets my heart to beating, as to an old tune, 
 whenever a partridge bursts away at my feet. 
 I remember well a little child that used to 
 steal away into the still woods, which drew 
 him by an irresistible attraction while as yet 
 their dim arches and quiet paths were full of 
 mysteries and haunting terrors. Step by 
 step the child would advance into the 
 shadows, cautious as a wood mouse, timid 
 as a rabbit. Suddenly a swift rustle, a thun- 
 derous rush of something from the ground 
 that first set the child's heart to beating 
 wildly, and then reached his heels in a fear- 
 ful impulse which sent him rushing out of 
 the woods, tumbling headlong over the old 
 gray wall, and scampering halfway across 
 the pasture before he dared halt from the 
 terror behind. And then, at last, another 
 impulse, which always sent the child stealing 
 
, back into the woods again, shy, alert, tense 
 as a watching fox, to find out what the fear- 
 <3^Ae O/'Beec/i ful thing was that could make such a com- 
 ^y^frrdgfe motion in the quiet woods. 
 5^ And when he found out at last — ah, that 
 
 was a discovery beside which the panther's 
 kittens are as nothing, as I now think of 
 them. One day in the woods, near the spot 
 where the awful thunder used to burst away, 
 the child heard a cluck and a kwii-kwit, and 
 saw a beautiful bird dodging, gliding, halt- 
 ing, hiding in the underbrush, watching the 
 child's every motion. And when he ran for- 
 ward to put his cap over the bird, it burst 
 away, and then — whirr ! whirr ! whirr ! a 
 whole covey of grouse roared up all about 
 him. The terror of it weakened his legs, 
 so that he fell down in the eddying leaves 
 and covered his ears. But this time he knew 
 what it was, at last ; in a moment he was up 
 and running, not away, but fast as his little 
 legs could carry him after the last bird that 
 he saw hurtling away among the trees, with 
 a birch branch, touched by his wings, nod- 
 ding good-by behind him. 
 
There is another association with this 
 
 7 
 same bird that always gives an added thrill 
 
 to the rush of his wings through the startled 
 woods. It was in the old school by the ^eOfSeech 
 cross-roads, one sleepy September afternoon. jP<afr/o^c 
 A class in spelling, big boys and little girls, 
 toed a crack in front of the master's desk. 
 The rest of the school droned away on 
 appointed tasks in the drowsy interlude. 
 Suddenly there was a terrific crash, a clat- 
 tering tinkle of broken glass, a howl from a 
 boy near the window. Twenty knees banged 
 the desks beneath, as twenty boys jumped. 
 Then, before any of us had found his wits, 
 Jimmy Jenkins had jumped over two forms 
 and was down on the floor, in the girls' aisle, 
 gripping something between his knees. — 
 
 " I 've got him," he announced, with the 
 air of a general. 
 
 " Got what } " thundered the master. 
 
 " Got a pa'tridge ; he 's an old buster," said 
 Jimmy. And he straightened up, holding by 
 the legs a fine cock partridge whose stiffen- 
 ing wings still beat his sides spasmodically. 
 He had been scared up in the neighboring 
 
^ woods, frightened by some hunter out of 
 
 his native coverts. When he reached the 
 
 G%e O/'Beec/i unknown open places he was more frightened 
 
 ^h'fyy'e/g^e still and, as a frightened grouse always flies 
 
 ^^ straight, he had driven like a bolt through 
 
 the schoolhouse window, killing himself by 
 
 the impact. 
 
 Rule-of-three and cube-root and the un- 
 mapped wilderness of partial-payments have 
 left but scant impression on one of those 
 pupils, at least ; but a bird that could wake 
 up a drowsy schoolroom and bring out a 
 living lesson, full of life and interest and 
 the subtile call of the woods, from a drowsy 
 teacher who studied law by night but never 
 his boys by day, — that was a bird to be 
 respected. I have studied him with keener 
 interest ever since. 
 
 Yet however much you study the grouse, 
 you learn little, except how wild he is. Occa- 
 sionally, when you are still in the woods and 
 a grouse walks up to your hiding place, you 
 get a fair glimpse and an idea or two ; but 
 he soon discovers you and draws himself up, 
 straight as a string, and watches you for five 
 
minutes without stirring or even winking. 
 
 Then, outdone at his own game, he glides 
 
 away. A rustle of little feet on leaves, a faint 
 
 kwit-kwit, with a question in it, and he is S^eOfBeech 
 
 gone. Nor will he come back, like the fox, jPafrithfe 
 
 to watch from the other side and find out 
 
 what you are. 
 
 Civilization, in its first advances, is good 
 to the grouse, providing him with an abun- 
 dance of food and driving away his enemies. 
 Unlike other birds, however, he grows wilder 
 and wilder by nearness to men's dwellings. 
 Once, in the wilderness, when very hungry, 
 I caught two partridges by slipping over their 
 heads a string noose at the end of a pole. 
 Here one might as well try to catch a bat in 
 the twilight as to hope to snare one of our up- 
 land partridges by any such invention, or even 
 to get near enough to meditate the attempt. 
 
 But there was one grouse — and he the 
 very wildest of all that I have ever met in 
 the woods — who showed me, unwittingly, 
 many bits of his life, and with whom I grew 
 to be well acquainted after a few seasons' 
 watching. All the hunters of the village 
 
lO 
 
 knew him well ; and a half-dozen boys, who 
 
 owned guns and were eager to join the 
 
 (3f/)e O/'BeecA hunters' ranks, had a shooting acquaintance 
 
 ^Ta'fr/dge with him. He was known far and wide as 
 
 5^ " the ol' beech pa'tridge." That he was old 
 
 no one could deny who knew his ways and 
 
 his devices ; and he was frequently scared up 
 
 in a beech wood by a brook, a couple of miles 
 
 out of the village. 
 
 Spite of much learned discussion as to 
 different varieties of grouse, due to marked 
 variations in coloring, I think personally that 
 we have but one variety, and that differences 
 in color are due largely to the different sur- 
 roundings in which they live. Of all birds 
 the grouse is most invisible when quiet, his 
 coloring blends so perfectly with the roots 
 and leaves and tree stems among which he 
 hides. This wonderful invisibility is increased 
 by the fact that he changes color easily. He 
 is darker in summer, lighter in winter, like 
 the rabbit. When he lives in dark woods he 
 becomes a glossy red-brown ; and when his 
 haunt is among the birches he is often a 
 decided gray. 
 
II 
 
 This was certainly true of the old beech 
 partridge. When he spread his tail wide and 
 darted away among the beeches, his color 
 blended so perfectly with the gray tree trunks ^g OfBeech 
 that only a keen eye could separate him. ^Pofrithfe 
 And he knew every art of the dodger per- 
 fectly. When he rose there was scarcely a 
 second of time before he had put a big tree 
 between you and him, so as to cover his line 
 of flight. I don't know how many times he 
 had been shot at on the wing. Every hunter 
 I knew had tried it; and every boy who 
 roamed the woods in autumn had sought to 
 pot him on the ground. But he never lost a 
 feather ; and he would never stand to a dog 
 long enough for the most cunning of our 
 craft to take his position. 
 
 When a covey of young partridges hear a 
 dog running in the woods, they generally flit 
 to the lower branches of a tree and kwit-kwit 
 at him curiously. They have not yet learned 
 the difference between him and the fox, who 
 is the ancient enemy of their kind, and whom 
 their ancestors of the wilderness escaped and 
 tantalized in the same way. But when it is 
 
an old bird that your setter is trailing, his 
 
 actions are a curious mixture of cunning and 
 
 G%e O/'Beec/i fascination. As Old Don draws to a point, 
 
 ^Pa'fr/'d^e the grouse pulls himself up rigidly by a 
 
 ^|b^ stump and watches the dog. So both stand 
 
 like statues; the dog held by the strange 
 
 instinct which makes him point, lost to sight, 
 
 sound, and all things else 
 
 save the smell in his nose ; 
 
 the grouse tense as a fiddle- 
 
 string, every sense alert, watching the 
 enemy whom he thinks to be fooled by 
 / his good hiding. For a few moments 
 they are motionless ; then the grouse skulks 
 and glides to a better cover. As the strong 
 scent fades from Don's nose, he breaks his 
 point and follows. The grouse hears him 
 and again hides by standing still where he is 
 invisible ; again Don stiffens into his point, 
 one foot lifted, nose and tail in a straight line, 
 as if he were frozen and could not move. 
 So it goes on, now gliding through the 
 
coverts, now still as a stone, till the grouse 
 discovers that so long as he is quiet the dog 
 seems paralyzed, unable to move or feel. 
 Then he draws himself up, braced against a ^g OfBeech 
 root or a tree boll; and there they stand, 'P&friaj^e 
 within twenty feet of each other, never stir- 
 ring, never winking, till the dog falls from 
 exhaustion at the strain, or breaks it by leap- 
 ing forward, or till the hunter's step on the 
 leaves fills the grouse with a new terror that 
 sends him rushing away through the October 
 woods to deeper solitudes. 
 
 Once, at noon, I saw Old Ben, a famous 
 dog, draw to a perfect point. Just ahead, in 
 a tangle of brown brakes, I could see the 
 head and neck of a grouse watching the dog 
 keenly. Old Ben's master, to test the splen- 
 did training of his dog, proposed lunch on 
 the spot. We withdrew a little space and 
 ate deliberately, watching the bird and the 
 dog with an interest that grew keener and 
 keener as the meal progressed, while Old 
 Ben stood like a rock, and the grouse's eye 
 shone steadily out of the tangle of brakes. 
 Nor did either move so much as an eyelid 
 
while we ate, and Ben's master smoked his 
 pipe with quiet confidence. At last, after a 
 cjf/te O/'BeecA full hour, he whacked his pipe on his boot 
 \T<a'fr/dge heel and rose to reach for his gun. That 
 ^1^ meant death for the grouse ; but I owed him 
 
 too much of keen enjoyment to see him cut 
 down in swift flight. In the moment that 
 the master's back was turned I hurled a knot 
 at the tangle of brakes. The grouse burst 
 away, and Old Ben, shaken out of his trance 
 by the whirr of wings, dropped obediently 
 to the charge and turned his head to say 
 reproachfully with his eyes : " What in the 
 world is the matter with you back there — 
 did n't I hold him long enough } '" 
 
 The old beech partridge was a bird of a 
 different mind. No dog ever stood him for 
 more than a second ; he had learned too well 
 what the thing meant. The moment he 
 heard the patter of a dog's feet on leaves he 
 would run rapidly, and skulk and hide and 
 run again, keeping dog and hunter on the 
 move till he found the cover he wanted, — 
 thick trees, or a tangle of wild grapevines, 
 — when he would burst out on the farther 
 
15 
 
 side. And no eye, however keen, could catch 
 
 moi-e than a glimpse of a gray tail before he 
 
 was gone, Other grouse make short, straight 
 
 flights, and can be followed and found again ; ^^^ Of'Beech 
 
 but he always drove away on strong wings 'T^afrid^e 
 
 for an incredible distance, and swerved far to 
 
 right or left ; so that it was a waste of time 
 
 to follow him up. Before you found him 
 
 he had rested his wings and was ready for 
 
 another flight ; and when you did find him, 
 
 he would shoot away like an arrow out of 
 
 the top of a pine tree and give you never a 
 
 glimpse of himself. 
 
 He lived most of the time on a ridge 
 behind the ' Fales place,' an abandoned farm 
 on the east of the old 
 post road. This was his 
 middle range, a place of 
 dense coverts, bullbrier 
 
, thickets and sunny open spots among the 
 ledges, where you might, with good-luck, 
 <3^/ye O/'Beec/i find him on special days at any season. But 
 ^Ta'frid^e he had all the migratory instincts of a New- 
 5^^ foundland caribou. In winter he moved 
 
 south, with twenty other grouse, to the foot 
 of the ridge, which dropped away into a 
 succession of knolls and ravines and sunny, 
 well-protected little valleys. Here, fifty years 
 ago, was the farm pasture ; but now it had 
 grown up everywhere with thickets and 
 berry patches, and wild apple trees of the 
 birds' planting. All the birds loved it in 
 their season ; quail nested on its edges ; and 
 you could kick a brown rabbit out of almost 
 any of its decaying brush piles or hollow, 
 moss-grown logs. 
 
 In the spring he crossed the ridge north- 
 ward again, moving into the still, dark woods, 
 where he had two or three wives, with as 
 many broods of young partridges; all of 
 whom, by the way, he regarded with aston- 
 ishing indifference. 
 
 Across the whole range — stealing silently 
 out of the big woods, brawling along the 
 
17 
 
 foot of the ridge and singing through the 
 old pasture — ran a brook that the old beech 
 partridge seemed to love. A hundred times 
 I started him from its banks. You had only 3^^ 0/'3eecA 
 to follow it any November morning before y^<afnai^e 
 eight o'clock, and you would be sure to find 
 him. But why he haunted it at this partic- 
 ular time and season I never found out. 
 
 I used to wonder, sometimes, why I never 
 saw him drink. Other birds had their regu- 
 lar drinking places and bathing pools there, 
 and I frequently watched them from my 
 hiding ; but though I saw him many times, 
 after I learned his haunts, he never touched 
 the water. 
 
 One early summer morning, a possible 
 explanation suggested itself. I was sitting 
 quietly by the brook, at the edge of the big 
 woods, waiting for a pool to grow quiet, out 
 of which I had just taken a trout and in 
 which I suspected there was a larger one 
 hiding. As I waited a mother grouse and 
 her brood — one of the old beech partridge's 
 numerous families for whom he provided 
 nothing — came gliding along the edge of 
 
g the woods. They had come to drink, 
 evidently, but not from the brook. A 
 ofAeOrBeecfi sweeter draught than that was waiting for 
 \^a'frJd^e their coming. The dew was still clinging to 
 jfc^^ the grass blades ; here and there a drop hung 
 
 from a leaf point, flashing like a diamond in 
 the early light. And the little partridges, 
 gliding, cheeping, whistling among the droop- 
 ing stems, would raise their little bills for 
 each shining dewdrop that attracted them, 
 and drink it down and run with glad little 
 pipings and gurglings to the next drop that 
 flashed an invitation from its bending grass 
 blade. The old mother walked sedately in 
 the midst of them, now fussing over a lag- 
 gard, now clucking them all together in an 
 eager, chirping, jumping little crowd, each 
 one struggling to be first in at the death of 
 a fat slug she had discovered on the under- 
 side of a leaf ; and anon reaching herself 
 for a dewdrop that hung too high for their 
 drinking. So they passed by, within a few 
 yards, a shy, wild, happy little family, and 
 disappeared into the shadow of the big 
 woods. 
 
Perhaps that is why I never saw the 
 old beech partridge drink from the brook. 
 Nature has a fresher draught, of her own 
 distilling, that is more to his tasting. B^eOfBeecft 
 
 Earlier in the season I found another of Pofridj^e 
 his families near the same spot. I was steal- 
 ing along a wood road, when I ran plump 
 upon them, scratching away at an ant hill 
 in a sunny, open spot. There was a wild 
 flurry, as if a whirlwind had struck the ant 
 hill ; but it was only the wind of the mother 
 bird's wings, whirling up the dust to blind 
 my eyes and to hide the scampering retreat 
 of her downy brood. Again her wings beat 
 the ground, sending up a flurry of dead leaves, 
 in the midst of which the little partridges 
 jumped and scurried away, so much like 
 the leaves that no eye could separate them. 
 Then the leaves settled slowly and the brood 
 was gone, as if the ground had swallowed 
 them up; while Mother Grouse went flut- 
 tering along just out of my reach, trailing 
 a wing as if broken, falling prone on the 
 ground, clucking and kwitting and whirling 
 the leaves to draw my attention and bring 
 
20 
 
 me away from where the little ones were 
 hiding. 
 
 c/he O/'BeecA I knelt down just within the edge of woods, 
 ^Va'fndge whither I had seen the last laggard of the 
 5^^ brood vanish like a brown streak, and began 
 
 to look for them carefully. After a time I 
 found one. He was crouched flat on a dead 
 oak leaf, just under my nose, his color hiding 
 him wonderfully. Something glistened in a 
 tangle of dark roots. It was an eye; and 
 presently I could make out a little head there. 
 That was all I could find of the family, though 
 .„ , a dozen more were close beside me, under 
 the leaves mostly. As I backed away I put 
 my hand on another before seeing him, and 
 barely saved myself from hurting the little 
 sly-boots, who never stirred a muscle, not 
 even when I took away the leaf that covered 
 him and put it back again softly. 
 
 Across the pathway was a thick scrub oak, 
 under which I sat down to watch. Ten long 
 minutes passed, with nothing stirring, before 
 Mother Grouse came stealing back. She 
 clucked once — " Careful ! " it seemed to say; 
 and not a leaf stirred. She clucked again — 
 
21 
 
 did the ground open ? There they were, a 
 
 dozen or more of them, springing up from 
 
 nowhere and scurrying with a thousand 
 
 cheepings to tell her all about it. So she S^eOJ3eech 
 
 gathered them all close about her, and they ^'oMa^e 
 
 vanished into the friendly shadows. 
 
 It was curious how jealously the old 
 beech partridge watched over the solitudes 
 where these interesting little families roamed. 
 Though he seemed to care nothing about 
 them, and was never seen near one of his 
 families, he suffered no other cock partridge 
 to come into his woods, or even to drum 
 within hearing. In the winter he shared the 
 southern pasture peaceably with twenty other 
 grouse; and on certain days you might, by 
 much creeping, surprise a whole company of 
 them on a sunny southern slope, strutting 
 and gliding, in and out and round about, 
 with spread tails and drooping wings, going 
 through all the movements of a grouse minuet. 
 Once, in Indian summer, I crept up to twelve 
 or fifteen of the splendid birds, who were 
 going through their curious performance in 
 a little opening among the berry bushes ; and 
 
in the midst of them — more vain, more 
 
 2 2 
 
 resplendent, strutting more proudly and cluck- 
 
 <3^/Je O/'Beec/i ing more arrogantly than any other — was 
 
 ^^a'fr/dge the old beech partridge. 
 
 ^fck^ But when the spring came, and the long 
 
 rolling drum-calls began to throb through 
 
 the budding woods, he retired to his middle 
 
 range on the ridge, and marched from one 
 
 end to the other, driving every other cock 
 
 grouse out of hearing, and drubbing him 
 
 soundly if he dared resist. Then, after a 
 
 triumph, you would hear his loud drum-call 
 
 rolling through the May splendor, calling as 
 
 many wives as possible to share his rich 
 
 living. 
 
 He had two drumming logs on this range, 
 as I soon discovered ; and once, while he was 
 drumming on one log, I hid near the other 
 and imitated his call fairly well by beating 
 my hands on a blown bladder that I had but- 
 toned under my jacket. The roll of a grouse 
 drum is a curiously muffled sound ; it is often 
 hard to determine the spot or even the direc- 
 tion whence it comes ; and it always sounds 
 much farther away than it really is. This 
 
23 
 
 may have deceived the old beech partridge 
 at first into thinking that he heard some 
 other bird far away, on a ridge across the 
 valley, where he had no concern; for pres- 3^e 01 Beech 
 ently he drummed again on his own log. I T'afrid^e 
 answered it promptly, rolling back a defiance, 
 and also telling any hen grouse on the range 
 that here was another candidate, willing to 
 strut and spread his tail and lift the resplen- 
 dent ruff about his neck to win his way into 
 her good graces, if she would but come to his 
 drumming log and see him. 
 
 Some suspicion that a rival had come to 
 his range must have entered the old beech 
 partridge's head. There was a long silence, in 
 which I could fancy him standing up straight 
 and stiff on his drumming log, listening 
 intently to locate the daring intruder, and 
 holding down his bubbling wrath with 
 difficulty. 
 
 Without waiting for him to drum again, I 
 beat out a challenge. The roll had barely 
 ceased when he came darting up the ridge, 
 glancing like a bolt among the thick branches, 
 and plunged down by his own log, where he 
 
drew himself up with marvelous suddenness 
 to listen and watch for the intruder. 
 <3fAe O/'Beecfi He seemed relieved that the log was not 
 ^/^rr/ag^e occupied ; but he was still full of wrath and 
 3^^ suspicion. He glided and dodged all about 
 
 the place, looking and listening; then he 
 sprang to his log and, without waiting to 
 strut and spread his gorgeous feathers as 
 usual, he rolled out the long call, drawing 
 himself up straight the instant it was done, 
 turning his head from side to side to catch 
 the first beat of his rival's answer. — " Come 
 out, if you dare ; drum, if you dare. Oh, you 
 coward ! " And he hopped, five or six high, 
 excited hops, like a rooster before a storm, 
 to the other end of the log, and again his 
 quick throbbing drum-call rolled through the 
 listening woods. 
 
 Though I was near enough to see him 
 clearly without my field glasses, I could not 
 even then, nor at any other time when I have 
 watched grouse drumming, determine just 
 how the call is given. After a little while 
 the excitement of a suspected rival's pres- 
 ence wore away, and he grew exultant, 
 
thinking that he had driven the rascal out 
 
 of his woods. He strutted back and forth 
 
 on the log, trailing his wings, spreading wide 
 
 his beautiful tail, lifting his crest and his ^eOI Beech 
 
 resplendent ruff. Suddenly he would draw ^latrio^e 
 
 himself up; there would be a flash of his 
 
 wings up and down that no eye could follow, 
 
 and I would hear a single throb of his drum. 
 
 Another flash and another throb ; then faster 
 
 and faster, till he seemed to have two or 
 
 three pairs of wings, whirring and running 
 
 together like the spokes of a swift-moving 
 
 wheel, and the drumbeats rolled together into 
 
 a long call and died away in the woods. 
 
 Generally he stood up on his toes, as a 
 rooster does when he flaps his wings before 
 crowing; rarely he crouched down close to 
 the log; but I doubt if he beat the wood 
 with his wings, as is often claimed. Yet the 
 two logs were different; one was dry and 
 hard, the other mouldy and moss-grown ; and 
 the drum-calls were as different as the two 
 logs. After a time I could tell by the sound 
 which log he was using at the first beat of 
 his wings ; but that, I think, was a matter of 
 
26 
 
 resonance, a kind of sounding-board effect, 
 
 and not because the two sounded differently 
 
 a^Ae O/'Seec/i as he beat them. The call is undoubtedly 
 
 ^rarr/dg^e made either by striking the wings together 
 
 5^^ over his back or, as I am inclined to 
 
 believe, on the down beat against his own 
 
 sides. 
 
 Once I heard a wounded bird give three 
 or four beats of his drum-call ; and when I 
 
 went into the grape- 
 vine thicket, where 
 he had fallen, I found 
 him lying flat on his 
 back, beating his sides 
 with his wings. 
 
 Whenever he 
 drums he first 
 struts, because he 
 knows not how 
 many pairs of 
 
bright eyes are watching him shyly out of 
 the coverts. Once, when I had watched 
 him strut and drum a few times, the leaves 
 rustled, and two hen grouse emerged from S^eOfBeech 
 opposite sides into the little opening where /^ofrid^G 
 his log was. Then he strutted with greater 
 vanity than before, while the two hen 
 grouse went gliding about the place, search- 
 ing for seeds apparently, but in reality 
 watching his every movement out of their 
 eye corners, and admiring him to his heart's 
 content. 
 
 In winter I used to follow his trail through 
 the snow to find what he had been doing, 
 and what he had found to eat in nature's 
 scarce time. His worst enemies, the man 
 and his dog, were no longer to be feared, 
 being restrained by law, and he roamed the 
 woods with greater freedom than ever. He 
 seemed to know that he was safe at this 
 time; more than once I trailed him up to 
 his hiding and saw him whir away through 
 the open woods, sending down a shower of 
 snow behind him, as if in that curious way 
 to hide his line of flight from my eyes. 
 
o There were other enemies, however, whom 
 no law restrained save the universal wood- 
 <3f/ie OfBeech laws of fear and hunger. Often I found 
 ^/^a'Trid^e ^he trail of a fox crossing his in the snow; 
 ^fc^ and once I followed a double trail, fox over 
 
 grouse, for nearly half a mile. The fox had 
 struck the trail late the previous afternoon, 
 and followed it to a bullbrier thicket, in the 
 midst of which was a great cedar, in which 
 the old beech partridge roosted. The fox 
 went twice around the tree, halting and look- 
 ing up, then went straight away to the swamp, 
 as if he knew it was of no use to watch 
 longer. 
 
 Rarely, when the snow was deep, I found 
 the place where he went to sleep on the 
 ground. He would plunge down from a 
 tree into the soft snow, driving into it head- 
 first for three or four feet, then turn around 
 and settle down in his white warm chamber 
 for the night. I would find the small hole 
 where he plunged in at evening, and near it 
 the great hole where he burst out when the 
 light waked him. Taking my direction from 
 his wing prints in the snow, I would follow 
 
to find where he lit, and then trace him on 
 his morning wanderings. 
 
 One would think that this might be a 
 dangerous proceeding, sleeping on the ground ^g OfBeech 
 with no protection but the snow, and a score 'jPsfr/d^G 
 of hungry enemies prowling about the woods ; 
 but the grouse knows well that, when the 
 storms are out, his enemies bide at home, 
 not being able to see or smell, and therefore 
 afraid each one of his own enemies. There 
 is always a truce in the woods during a snow- 
 storm ; and that is the reason why a grouse 
 goes to sleep in the snow only while the 
 flakes are still falling. When the storm is 
 over and the snow has settled a bit, the fox 
 will be abroad again; and then the grouse 
 sleeps in the evergreens. 
 
 Once, however, the old beech partridge 
 miscalculated. The storm ceased early in 
 the evening, and hunger drove the fox out 
 on a night when, ordinarily, he would have 
 stayed under cover. Some time about day- 
 break, before yet the light had penetrated to 
 where the old beech partridge was sleeping, 
 the fox found a hole in the snow, which told 
 
him that just in front of his hungry nose a 
 grouse was hidden, all unconscious of dan- 
 <£fhe O/'Beec/i ger. I found the spot, trailing the fox, a few 
 ^TvTr/tfge hours later. How cautious he was ! The sly 
 jfc^ trail was eloquent with hunger and antici- 
 
 pation. A few feet away from the promising 
 hole he had stopped, looking keenly over the 
 snow to find some suspicious roundness on 
 the smooth surface. Ah ! there it was, 
 just by the edge of a juniper thicket. He 
 crouched down, stole forward, pushing a deep 
 trail with his body, settled himself firmly and 
 sprang. And there, just beside the hole his 
 paws had made in the snow, was another 
 hole where the grouse had burst out, scat- 
 tering snow all over his enemy, who had 
 miscalculated by a foot, and thundered away 
 to the safety and shelter of the pines. 
 
 There was another enemy, who ought to 
 have known better, following the old beech 
 partridge all one early spring when snow 
 was deep and food scarce. One day, in 
 crossing the partridge's southern range, I 
 met a small boy, — a keen little fellow, with 
 the instincts of a fox for hunting. He had 
 
»'^' 
 
 i^fff' 
 
 -^>i: 
 
 ■fi^^^' 
 
 ^>\-i)r\(t Co^t.\-jrvl\^ 
 
 Thundered away to the safety and shelter of the pines 
 
always something interesting afoot, ° — minks, 
 or muskrats, or a skunk, or a big owl, — so 
 I hailed him with joy. 
 
 " Hello, Johnnie ! what you after to-day — g^^ OfBeech 
 bears?" 7>afrid^e 
 
 But he only shook his head — a bit sheep- 
 ishly, I thought — and talked of all things 
 except the one that he was thinking about ; 
 and presently he vanished down the old road. 
 One of his jacket pockets bulged more than 
 the other, and I knew there was a trap in it. 
 
 Late that afternoon I crossed his trail and, 
 having nothing more interesting to do, fol- 
 lowed it. It led straight to the bullbrier 
 thicket, where the old beech partridge roosted. 
 I had searched for it many times in vain 
 before the fox led me to it; but Johnnie, in 
 some of his prowlings, had found tracks and 
 signs under a cedar branch, and knew just 
 what they meant. His trap was there, in the 
 very spot where, the night before, the old 
 beech partridge had stood when he jumped 
 for the lowest limb. Corn was scattered 
 liberally about; and a blue jay, that had fol- 
 lowed Johnnie, was already fast in the trap, 
 
caught at the base of his bill. He had sprung 
 Sf/>e OfBeecfi ^^ *^^P ^^ pecking at some corn that was 
 \y^a'frid^e fastened cunningly to the pan by fine wire. 
 ^|k When I took the jay carefully from the 
 
 trap he played possum till my grip relaxed, 
 when he flew to a branch over my head, squall- 
 ing and upbraiding me for having anything 
 to do with such abominable inventions. 
 
 I hung the trap to a low limb of the cedar, 
 with a note in its jaws telling Johnnie to 
 come and see me next day. He came at dusk, 
 shamefaced, and I read him 
 on fair play and the 
 difference between 
 a thieving mink and 
 an honest partridge. 
 But he chuckled 
 over the blue jay, 
 and I doubted the 
 withholding power 
 of a lecture; so, to 
 even matters, I hint- 
 ■A^^,A ed of an otter 
 
 'ju'^/pfc, slide I had 
 "Mr, discovered, 
 
and of a Saturday-afternoon tramp together. 
 
 Twenty times, he told me, he had tried to 
 
 snare the old beech partridge. When he saw 
 
 the otter slide he forswore traps and snares 3^eO/"Beech 
 
 for birds ; and I left soon after, with hopes for ■T'ofrid^G 
 
 the grouse, knowing that I had spiked the 
 
 guns of his most dangerous enemy. 
 
 Years later I crossed the old pasture again 
 and went straight to the bullbrier tangle. 
 There were tracks of a grouse in the snow, 
 
 — blunt, triangular tracks that rested lightly 
 on the soft whiteness ; showing that nature 
 remembered his necessity and had caused his 
 new snowshoes to grow famously. I hurried 
 to the brook, a hundred memories thronging 
 over me of happy days when the wood folk 
 revealed their secrets. In the midst of them 
 
 — Kwit ! kwit ! and with a thunder of wings 
 a grouse darted away, wild and gray as the 
 rare bird that lived there years before. And 
 when I questioned a hunter, he said : " That 
 ol' beech pa'tridge ? Oh, yes, he 's there. He '11 
 stay there, too, till he dies of old age ; 'cause 
 you see. Mister, there ain't nobody in these 
 parts spry enough to ketch 'im." 
 
Ml m^^jjE 
 
 35 
 
CLOUD-WINGS THE EAGLE 
 
 HERE he is again! here's 
 Old Whitehead, robbing 
 the fish-hawk." 
 
 I started up from the 
 
 Uttle commoosie beyond the 
 
 fire, at Gillie's excited cry, 
 
 and ran to join him on the 
 
 shore. A glance out over 
 
 Caribou Point to the big 
 
 bay, where innumerable 
 
 whitefish were shoaling, showed 
 
 me another chapter in a long 
 
 but always interesting story. 
 
 Ismaquehs, the fish-hawk, had 
 
 risen from the lake with a big 
 
 fish, and was doing his best to 
 
 get away to his nest, where his 
 
 young ones were clamoring. 
 
 Over him soared the eagle, 
 
 37 
 
38 
 
 me 
 
 f5ag/e 
 
 still as fate and as sure, now dropping to 
 flap a wing in Ismaquehs' face, now touch- 
 Cloud-llf/nds ing him gently with his great talons, as if 
 " ~ " to say, "Do you feel that, Ismaquehs? If I 
 grip once 't will be the end of you and your 
 fish together. And what will the little ones 
 do then, up in the nest on the old pine? 
 Better drop him peacefully; you can catch 
 another. — Drop him ! I say." 
 
 Up to that moment the eagle had merely 
 bothered the big hawk's flight, with a gentle 
 reminder now and then that he meant no 
 harm, but wanted the fish which he could 
 not catch himself. Now there was a change, 
 a flash of the king's temper. With a roar 
 of wings he whirled round the hawk like 
 a tempest, bringing up short and fierce, 
 squarely in his line of flight. There he 
 poised on dark broad wings, his yellow eyes 
 glaring fiercely into the shrinking soul of 
 Ismaquehs, his talons drawn back for a 
 deadly strike. And Simmo the Indian, who 
 had run down to join me, muttered: "Chep- 
 lahgan mad now. Ismaquehs find-um out 
 in a minute." 
 
There he poised on dark broad wings 
 
But Ismaquehs knew just when to stop. 
 With a cry of rage he dropped, or rather 
 threw his fish, hoping it would strike the Cloud-tOings 
 water and be lost. On the instant the eagle M e ^ ^/e 
 wheeled out of the way and bent his head 
 sharply. I had seen him fold wings and 
 drop before, and had held my breath at the 
 speed. But dropping was of no use now, 
 for the fish fell faster. Instead he swooped 
 downward, adding to the weight of his fall 
 the push of his strong wings, glancing down 
 like a bolt to catch the fish ere it struck the 
 water, and rising again in a great curve — 
 up and away steadily, evenly, as the king 
 should fly, to his own little ones far away 
 on the mountain. 
 
 Weeks before, I had my introduction to 
 Old Whitehead, as Gillie called him, on the 
 Madawaska. We were pushing up river on 
 our way to the wilderness, when a great 
 outcry and the bang-bang of a* gun sounded 
 just ahead. Dashing round a wooded bend, 
 we came upon a man with a smoking gun, 
 a boy up to his middle in the river, try- 
 ing to get across, and, on the other side, a 
 
black sheep running about baaing at every 
 jump. 
 
 Cloud-tOirtj^s "He's taken the lamb; he's taken the 
 ^^>i^e lamb!" shouted the boy. Following the 
 S^BS ^ direction of his pointing finger, I saw Old 
 Whitehead, a splendid bird, rising heavily 
 above the tree-tops across the clearing. 
 Reaching back almost instinctively, I 
 clutched the heavy rifle which Gillie put 
 into my hand and jumped out of the canoe; 
 for with a rifle one wants steady footing. 
 It was a long shot, but not so very difficult. 
 Old Whitehead had his bearings and was 
 moving steadily, straight away. A second 
 after the report of the rifle, we saw him hitch 
 and swerve in the air ; then two white quills 
 came floating down, and as he turned we saw 
 the break in his broad white tail. And that 
 was the mark that we knew him by ever 
 afterwards. 
 
 That was nearly eighty miles by canoe 
 from where we now stood, though scarcely 
 ten in a straight line over the mountains; 
 for the rivers and lakes we were following 
 doubled back almost to the starting point; 
 
and the whole wild, splendid country was 
 the eagle's hunting ground. Wherever I 
 went I saw him, following the rivers for Cloud-lOinds 
 stranded trout and salmon, or floating high me Ca^te 
 in air where he could overlook two or three 
 wilderness lakes, with as many honest fish- 
 hawks catching their dinners. I had prom- 
 ised the curator of a museum that I would 
 get him an eagle that summer, and so took 
 to hunting the great bird diligently. But 
 hunting was of little use, except to teach 
 me many of his ways and habits; for he 
 seemed to have eyes and ears all over him ; 
 and whether I crept like a snake through 
 the woods, or floated like a wild duck in 
 my canoe over the water, he always saw or 
 heard me, and was off before I could get 
 within shooting distance. 
 
 Then I tried to trap him. I placed two 
 large trout, with a steel trap between them, 
 at a shallow spot in the river that I could 
 watch from my camp on a bluff, half a mile 
 below. Next day Gillie, who was more eager 
 than I, set up a shout; and running out I 
 saw Old Whitehead standing in the shallows 
 
and flopping about the trap. We jumped 
 into a canoe and pushed up river in hot 
 Cloud-Winds haste, singing in exultation that we had the 
 'w^/fie fierce old bird at last. When we doubled 
 * -^ the last point that hid the shallows, there 
 was Old Whitehead, still tugging away at 
 a fish, and splashing the water not thirty 
 yards away. I shall not soon forget his 
 attitude and expression as we shot round 
 the point, his body erect and rigid, his wings 
 half spread, his head thrust forward, eyelids 
 drawn straight, and a strong 
 fierce gleam of freedom and 
 utter wildness in his bright 
 eyes. So he stood, a magni- 
 ficent creature, till we were almost 
 upon him, — when he rose quietly, 
 taking one of the trout. The other was 
 already in his stomach. He was not in the 
 trap at all, but had walked carefully round it. 
 The splashing was made in tearing one fish 
 to pieces with his claws, and freeing the other 
 from a stake that held it. 
 
 After that he would not go near the shal- 
 lows ; for a new experience had come into his 
 
life, leaving its shadow dark behind it. He 
 
 who was king of all he surveyed from the old 
 
 blasted pine on the crag's top, who had always C/oud-lOin^s 
 
 heretofore been the hunter, now knew what it me^^a^/e 
 
 meant to be hunted. And the fear of it was 
 
 in his eyes, I think, and softened their fierce 
 
 gleam when I looked into them again, weeks 
 
 later, by his own nest on the mountain. 
 
 Simmo entered also into our hunting, but 
 without enthusiasm or confidence. He had 
 chased the same eagle before — all one sum- 
 mer, in fact, when a sportsman whom he was 
 guiding had offered him twenty dollars for 
 the royal bird's skin. But Old Whitehead still 
 wore it triumphantly ; and Simmo prophe- 
 sied for him long life and a natural death. 
 " No use hunt-um dat heagle," he said simply. 
 " I try once an' can't get near him. He see 
 everyt'ing ; and wot he don't see, he hear. 
 'Sides, he kin feel danger. Das why he 
 build nest way off, long ways, — O, don' 
 know where." This last with a wave of his 
 arm to include the universe. Cheplahgan, 
 Old Cloud-Wings, he called the bird that 
 had defied him in a summer's hunting. 
 
At first I had hunted him like any other 
 44 . . 
 
 savage, — partly, of course, to get his skin for 
 
 Cloud-tOinds ^^ curator ; partly, perhaps, to save the set- 
 "^ ^^ttie tier's lambs over on the Madawaska; but 
 *fiopfe (,]^jgfly j^g^ i-Q ]^iii ]^ij^^ l-o gxult in his death 
 
 flaps, and to rid the woods of a cruel tyrant. 
 Gradually, however, a change came over me 
 as I hunted; I sought him less and less for 
 his skin and his life, and more and more for 
 himself, to know all about him. I used to 
 watch him by the hour from my camp on 
 the big lake, sailing quietly over Caribou 
 Point, after he had eaten with his little ones 
 and was disposed to let Ismaquehs go on 
 with his fishing in peace. He would set his 
 great wings to the breeze and sit like a kite 
 in the wind, mounting steadily in an immense 
 spiral, up and up, without the shadow of 
 effort, till the eye grew dizzy in following. 
 And I loved to watch him, so strong, so free, 
 so sure of himself — round and round, up and 
 ever up, without hurry, without exertion ; and 
 every turn found the heavens nearer and the 
 earth spread wider below. Now head and 
 tail gleam silver white in the sunshine ; now 
 
he hangs motionless, a cross of jet that a lady 
 
 might wear at her throat, against the clear, 
 
 unfathomable blue of the June heavens — Cloud-lOInps 
 
 there ! he is lost in the blue, so high that I m^i^mlle 
 
 cannot see any more. But even as I turn 
 
 away he plunges down into vision again, 
 
 dropping with folded wing straight down 
 
 like a plummet, faster and faster, larger and 
 
 larger, through a terrifying rush of air, till I 
 
 spring to my feet and catch breath, as if I 
 
 myself were falling. And just before he 
 
 dashes himself to pieces he turns in the air, 
 
 head downward, and half spreads his wings, 
 
 and goes shooting, slanting down towards 
 
 the lake, then up in a great curve to the 
 
 tree-tops, where he can watch better what 
 
 Kakagos, the rare woods-raven, is doing, and 
 
 what game he is hunting. For that is what 
 
 Cheplahgan came down in such a hurry to 
 
 find out about. 
 
 Again he would come in the early morn- 
 ing, sweeping up river as if he had already 
 been a long day's journey, with the air of 
 far-away and far-to-go in his onward rush. 
 And if I were at the trout pools, and very 
 
, still, I would hear the strong silken rustle of 
 his wings as he passed. At midday I would 
 Cloud-^inds S6S \vv!Vi. poised over the highest mountain- 
 ^^tfie top northward, at an enormous altitude, 
 " ■^ ^ where the imagination itself could not fol- 
 low the splendid sweep of his vision ; and at 
 evening he would cross the lake, moving 
 westward into the sunset on tireless pinions 
 — always strong, noble, magnificent in his 
 power and loneliness, a perfect emblem of 
 the great, lonely, magnificent wilderness. 
 
 One day as I watched him, it swept over 
 me suddenly that forest and river would be 
 incomplete without him. The thought of 
 this came back to me, and spared him to 
 the wilderness, on the last occasion when I 
 went hunting for his life. 
 
 That was just after we reached the big 
 lake, where I saw him robbing the fish-hawk. 
 After much searching and watching I found 
 a great log by the outlet, where Old White- 
 head often perched. There was a big eddy 
 hard by, on the edge of a shallow, and he 
 used to sit on the log, waiting for fish to 
 come out where he could wade in and get 
 
them. There was a sickness among the 
 suckers that year (it comes regularly every 
 few years, as among rabbits), and they would Cloud-ZOinjgs 
 come struggling out of deep water to rest on nTn^^^d/e 
 the sand, only to be caught by the minks 
 and fish-hawks and bears and Old White- 
 head, all of whom were waiting and hungry 
 for fish. 
 
 For several days I put a big bait of trout 
 and whitefish on the edge of the shallows. 
 The first two baits were put out late in the 
 afternoon, and a bear got them both the 
 next night. Then I put them out in the 
 early morning ; and before noon Cheplahgan 
 had found them. He came straight as a 
 string from his watch place over the moun- 
 tain, miles away, causing me to wonder 
 greatly what strange sixth sense guided 
 him ; for sight and smell seemed equally out 
 of the question. The next day he came 
 again. Then I placed the best bait of all in 
 the shallows, and hid in the dense under- 
 brush near, with my gun. 
 
 He came at last, after hours of waiting, 
 dropping from above the tree-tops with a 
 
48 
 tgts 
 
 me 
 
 heavy rustling of pinions. As he touched 
 the old log, and spread his broad white tail, 
 Cloud-Winds \ saw and was proud of the gap which my 
 me bullet had made, weeks before. He stood 
 there a moment erect and splendid, head, 
 neck and tail a shining white ; even the dark 
 brown feathers of his body glinted in the 
 bright sunshine. And he turned his head 
 slowly from side to side, his keen eyes flash- 
 ing, as if he would say, " Behold, a king ! " 
 to Chigwooltz the frog, and Tookhees the 
 wood mouse, and to any other chance wild 
 creature that might watch him from the 
 underbrush at his unkingly act of feeding 
 on dead fish. Then he hopped down, — 
 rather awkwardly, it must be confessed ; for 
 he is a creature of the upper deeps, who 
 cannot bear to touch the earth, — seized a 
 fish, which he tore to pieces with his claws 
 and ate greedily. Twice I tried to shoot 
 him ; but the thought of the wilderness with- 
 out him was upon me, and held me back. 
 Then, too, it seemed mean to pot him from 
 ambush when he had come down to earth, 
 where he was at a disadvantage ; and when 
 
49 
 
 
 4. 
 
 ""«'!' / / /' y 
 
 he clutched some of the larger fish in his 
 talons, and rose swiftly and bore away west- 
 ward, all desire to kill him was gone. There Cloud-lOinds 
 were little Cloud-Wings, it seemed, which I ifii^^^Ie 
 must also find and watch. After that I 
 hunted him more diligently than before, but 
 without my gun. And a curious desire, 
 which I could not account for, took posses- 
 sion of me : to touch this untamed, untouched 
 creature of the clouds and mountains. 
 Next day I did it. There were 
 thick bushes growing along -one end 
 of the old lo 
 rested. Into 
 
 tunnel with my hunting- i"^A^ 
 knife, arranging the tops in 
 such a way as to screen me 
 more effectively. 
 Then I put out my 
 bait, a good two 
 hours before the 
 time of Old White- 
 head's earliest 
 appearance, and 
 crawled into my den to wait. 
 
 Dg on which the eagle J^^ 
 ) these I cut a , .r^' '. 
 
_ I had barely settled comfortably into my 
 
 place, -wondering how long human patience 
 
 Cloud-Winds could endure the sting of insects and the 
 
 " ^"^7,^^ hot close air without moving or stirring a 
 
 ^ ^ leaf, when a heavy silken rustle sounded 
 
 _ close at hand, and I heard the grip of his 
 
 talons on the log. There he stood, at arm's 
 
 length, turning his head uneasily, the light 
 
 glinting on his white crest, the fierce, untamed 
 
 flash in his bright eye. Never before had he 
 
 seemed so big, so strong, so splendid; my 
 
 heart jumped at the thought of him as our 
 
 national emblem. I am glad still to have 
 
 seen that emblem once, and felt the thrill 
 
 of it. 
 
 But I had little time to think; for Chep- 
 lahgan was restless. Some instinct seemed 
 to warn him of a danger that he could not 
 see. The moment his head was turned away, 
 I stretched out my arm. Scarcely a leaf 
 moved with the motion, yet he whirled like 
 a flash and crouched to spring, his eyes glar- 
 ing straight into mine with an intensity that 
 I could scarce endure. Perhaps I was mis- 
 taken, but in that swift instant the hard glare 
 
51 
 
 in his eyes seemed to soften with fear, as he 
 recognized me as the one thing in the wilder- 
 ness that dared to hunt him, the king. My Cloud-lOinds 
 hand touched him fair on the shoulder ; then m^^^^Ie 
 he shot into the air, and went sweeping in 
 great circles over the tree-tops, still looking 
 down at the man, wondering and fearing at 
 the way in which he had been brought into 
 the man's power. 
 
 But one thing he did not understand. 
 Standing erect on the log, and looking up 
 at him as he swept over me, I kept think- 
 ing, " I did it, I did it, Cheplahgan, Old 
 Cloud- Wings. And I had grabbed your 
 legs, and pinned you down, and tied you in 
 a bag, and brought you to camp, but that I 
 chose to let you go free. And that is better 
 than shooting you. Now I shall find your 
 httle ones and touch them too." 
 
 For several days I had been watching Old 
 Whitehead's lines of flight, and had con- 
 cluded that his nest was somewhere in the 
 hills northwest of the big lake. I went there 
 one afternoon, and while confused in the big 
 timber, which gave no outlook in any direction, 
 
52 
 
 fSagh 
 
 'e 
 
 I saw, not Old Whitehead, but a larger eagle, 
 his mate undoubtedly, flying straight west- 
 Cloud-tOinds ward with food towards a great cliff that I 
 fne had noticed with my glass one day from a 
 mountain on the other side of the lake. 
 
 When I went there, early next morning, 
 it was Cheplahgan himself who showed me 
 where his nest was. I was hunting along 
 the foot of the cliff when, glancing back 
 towards the lake, I saw him coming far away, 
 and hid in the underbrush. He passed very 
 near, and following, I saw him standing on 
 a ledge near the top of the cliff. Just below 
 him, in the top of a stunted tree growing out 
 of the face of the rock, was a huge mass of 
 sticks that formed the nest, with a great 
 mother eagle standing by, feeding the little 
 ones. Both birds started away silently when 
 I appeared, but came back soon and swept 
 back and forth over me as I sat watching 
 the nest and the face of the cliff through my 
 glass. No need now of caution. Both birds 
 seemed to know instinctively why I had come, 
 and that the fate of the eaglets lay in my 
 hands, if I could but scale the cliff. 
 
It was scaring business, that three-hundred- 
 foot dimb up the sheer face of the mountain. 
 Fortunately the rock was seamed and scarred CIoud'tl)Jn<gs 
 with the wear of centuries; bushes and m^^ja^Ie 
 stunted trees grew out of countless crevices, 
 which gave me sure footing, and sometimes 
 a lift of a dozen feet or more on my way up. 
 As I climbed, the eagles circled lower and 
 lower ; the strong rustling of their wings was 
 about my head continually; they seemed to 
 grow larger, fiercer, every moment, as my 
 hold grew more precarious, and the earth 
 and the pointed tree-tops dropped farther 
 below. There was a good revolver in my 
 pocket, to use in case of necessity; but had 
 the great birds attacked me I should have 
 fared badly; for at times I was obliged to 
 grip hard with both hands, my face to the 
 cliff, leaving the eagles free to strike from 
 above and behind. I think now that had I 
 shown fear in such a place, or shouted, or 
 tried to fray them away, they would have 
 swooped upon me, wing and claw, like furies. 
 I could see it in their fierce eyes as I looked 
 up. But the thought of the times when I 
 
had hunted him, especially the thought of 
 
 that time when I had reached out of the 
 
 Cloud-tffinds bushes and touched him, was upon Old 
 
 ^^>»e Whitehead and made him fear. So I kept 
 
 S^ap/e si-gadily on my way, apparently giving no 
 
 thought to the eagles, though deep inside I 
 
 was anxious enough, and reached the foot of 
 
 the tree in which the nest was made. 
 
 I stood there a long time, my arm clasping 
 
 the twisted old boll, looking out 
 
 over the forest spread wide below, 
 
 partly to regain courage, partly to 
 
 reassure the eagles, which 
 
 were circling very near with 
 
 a kind of intense wonder 
 
 in their eyes, but chiefly 
 
 to make up my mind what 
 
 to do next. The tree was 
 
 easy to climb, but 
 
 the nest — a huge 
 
 affair, which had 
 
 been added to year 
 
 after year — filled the 
 
 whole tree-top, and I 
 
 could gain no foothold 
 
from which to look over and see the easrlets, 
 
 55 
 without tearing the nest to pieces. I did not 
 
 want to do that ; and I doubted whether the Cloud'tOinjgs 
 mother eagle would stand it. A dozen times CTj^^g/e 
 she seemed on the point of dropping on my 
 head to tear it with her talons; but always 
 she veered off as I looked up quietly, and Old 
 Whitehead, with the mark of my bullet strong 
 upon him, swept between her and me and 
 seemed to say, " Wait, wait ! I don't under- 
 stand ; but he can kill us if he will — and the 
 little ones are in his power." Now he was 
 closer to me than ever, and the fear was van- 
 ishing. But so also was the fierceness. 
 
 From the foot of the tree the crevice in 
 which it grew led upwards to the right, then 
 doubled back to the ledge above the nest 
 upon which Cheplahgan was standing when 
 I discovered him. The lip of this crevice 
 made a dizzy path that one might follow by 
 moving crabwise, his face to the cliff, with 
 only its roughnesses to cling to with his 
 fingers. I tried it at last; crept up and out 
 twenty feet, and back ten, and dropped with 
 a great breath of relief to a broad ledge 
 
, covered with bones and fish scales, the relics 
 of many a savage feast. Below me, almost 
 Cloufl-tifinds within reach, was the nest, with two dark, 
 "^^tAe scraggly young birds resting on twigs and 
 " " grass, with fish, flesh, and fowl in a gory, 
 skinny, scaly ring about them — the most 
 savage-looking household into which I ever 
 looked unbidden. 
 
 But even as I looked and wondered, and 
 tried to make out what other game had been 
 furnished the young savages I had helped to 
 feed, a strange thing happened, which touched 
 me as few things ever have among the wild 
 creatures. The eagles had followed me close 
 along the last edge of rock, hoping, no doubt, 
 in their wild hearts that I would slip, and 
 end their troubles, and give my body as food 
 to the young. Now, as I sat on the ledge, 
 peering eagerly into the nest, the great 
 mother bird left me and hovered over her 
 eaglets, as if to shield them with her wings 
 from even the sight of my eyes. But Old 
 Whitehead still circled over me. Lower he 
 came, and lower, till with a supreme effort 
 of daring he folded his wings and dropped 
 
to the ledge beside me, within ten feet, and 
 
 turned and looked into my eyes. " See," 
 
 he seemed to say, "we are within reach Cloud-lOinjgs 
 
 again. You touched me once ; I don't know ^i^^o^'c 
 
 how or why. Here I am now, to touch or 
 
 to kill, as you will ; only spare the little 
 
 ones." 
 
 A moment later the mother bird dropped 
 to the edge of the nest. And there we sat, 
 we three, with the wonder upon us all, the 
 young eagles at our feet, the cliff above, and, 
 three hundred feet below, the spruce tops of 
 the wilderness reaching out and away to the 
 mountains beyond the big lake. 
 
 I sat perfectly still, which is the only way 
 to reassure a wild creature; and soon I 
 thought Cheplahgan had lost his fear in his 
 anxiety for the little ones. But the moment 
 I rose to go he was in the air again, circling 
 restlessly above my head with his mate, the 
 same wild fierceness in his eyes as he looked 
 down. A half-hour later I had gained the 
 top of the cliff and started eastward towards 
 the lake, coming down by a much easier way 
 than that by which I went up. Later I 
 
„ returned several times, and from a distance 
 watched the eaglets being fed. But I never 
 Cloud-Winds climbed to the nest again. 
 
 T^iWe One day, when I came to the little thicket 
 ^Cap/e ^^ ^j^g ^jjg where I used to lie and watch 
 the nest through my glass, I found that one 
 eaglet was gone. The other stood on the 
 edge of the nest, looking down fearfully into 
 the abyss, whither, no doubt, his bolder nest- 
 mate had flown, and calling disconsolately 
 from time to time. His whole attitude 
 showed plainly that he was hungry and cross 
 and lonesome. Presently the mother eagle 
 came swiftly up from the valley, and there 
 was food in her talons. She came to the 
 edge of the nest, hovered over it a moment, 
 so as to give the hungry eaglet a sight and 
 smell of food, then went slowly down to the 
 valley, taking the food with her, telling the 
 little one in her own way to come and he 
 should have it. He called after her loudly 
 from the edge of the nest, and spread his 
 wings a dozen times to follow. But the 
 plunge was too awful ; his heart failed him ; 
 and he settled back in the nest, and pulled 
 
his head down into his shoulders, and shut 
 
 59 
 his eyes, and tried to forget that he was 
 
 hungry. The meaning of the little comedy Cloud-lOinds 
 
 was plain enough. She was trying to teach me <^ gf/e 
 
 him to fly, telling him that his wings were 
 
 grown and the time was come to use them ; 
 
 but he was afraid. 
 
 In a little while she came back again, this 
 time without food, and hovered over the nest, 
 trying every way to induce the little one to 
 leave it. She succeeded at last, when with a 
 desperate effort he sprang upward and flapped 
 to the ledge above, where I had sat and 
 watched him with Old Whitehead. Then, 
 after surveying the world gravely from his 
 new place, he flapped back to the nest, and 
 turned a deaf ear to all his mother's assur- 
 ances that he could fly just as easily to the 
 tree-tops below, if he only would. 
 
 Suddenly, as if discouraged, she rose well 
 above him. I held my breath, for I knew 
 what was coming. The little fellow stood on 
 the edge of the nest, looking down at the 
 plunge which he dared not take. There was 
 a sharp cry from behind, which made him 
 
alert, tense as a watch-spring. The next 
 instant the mother eagle had swooped, strik- 
 Cloud-Win^s ing the nest at his feet, sending his support 
 ^l^t^e of twigs and himself with them out into the 
 * -^ air together. 
 
 He was afloat now, afloat on the blue air 
 in spite of himself, and flapped lustily for 
 life. Over him, under him, beside him hov- 
 ered the mother on tireless wings, calling 
 softly that she was there. But the awful 
 fear of the depths and the lance tops of the 
 spruces was upon the little one ; his flapping 
 grew more wild ; he fell faster and faster. 
 Suddenly — more in fright, it seemed to me, 
 than because he had spent his strength — he 
 lost his balance and tipped head downward 
 in the air. It was all over now; he folded 
 his wings to be dashed in pieces among the 
 trees. Then like a flash the old mother 
 eagle shot under him ; his despairing feet 
 touched her broad shoulders, between her 
 wings. He righted himself, rested an instant, 
 found his head ; then she dropped like a shot 
 from under him, leaving him to come down 
 on his own wings. A handful of feathers, 
 
6i 
 
 torn out by his claws, hovered slowly down 
 after them. 
 
 It was all the work of an instant before I Cloud-tOinds 
 lost them among the trees far below. And Ifi^ccnglle 
 when I found them again with my glass, the 
 eaglet was in the top of a great pine, and the 
 mother was feeding him. 
 
 And then, standing there alone in the 
 great wilderness, it flashed upon me for the 
 first time just what the wise old prophet 
 meant; though he wrote long ago in a dis- 
 tant land, and another than Cloud-Wings 
 had taught her little ones, all unconscious of 
 the kindly eyes that watched out of a thicket : 
 " As the eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth 
 over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, 
 taketh them, beareth them on her wings, — 
 so the Lord." J} 
 
 N®. 
 
 A 
 
 V-'" 
 
EE-LOKH'SIS 
 
 63 
 
CH'GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS 
 
 HAT is the name which the north- 
 ern Indians give to the black- 
 capped titmouse, or chickadee. 
 " Little Friend Ch'geegee " is what 
 it means; for the Indians, like everybody 
 else who knows Chickadee, are fond of 
 this cheery little brightener of the northern 
 woods. The first time I asked Simmo what 
 6s 
 
66 
 
 his people called the bird, he answered with 
 a smile. Since then I have asked other 
 Ch'geepee-lokh-sis Indians ; and always a smile, a pleased look 
 ^ lit up the dark grim faces as they told me. 
 
 It is another tribute to the bright little bird's 
 influence. 
 
 Chickadee wears well. He is not in the 
 least a creature of moods. You step out of 
 your door some bright morning, and there he 
 is among the shrubs, flitting from twig to 
 twig ; now hanging head down from the very 
 tip to look into a terminal bud ; now winding 
 upward about a branch, looking industriously 
 into every crevice. An insect must hide well 
 to escape those bright eyes. He is helping 
 you raise your plants. He looks up brightly 
 as you approach, hops fearlessly down and 
 looks at you with frank, innocent eyes. Chick 
 a dee dee dee dee ! Tsic a de-e-e ? — this last 
 with a rising inflection, as if he were asking 
 how you were, after he had said good-morning. 
 Then he turns to his insect hunting again; 
 for he never wastes more than a moment 
 talking. But he twitters sociably as he works. 
 
 You meet him again, in the depths of the 
 
wilderness. The smoke of your camp-fire 
 
 has hardly risen to the spruce tops, when 
 
 close beside you sounds the same cheerful {^'deedee-IoAhsis 
 
 greeting and inquiry for your health. There 
 
 he is on the birch twig, bright and happy 
 
 and fearless ! He comes down by the fire 
 
 to see if anything has boiled over, which he 
 
 may dispose of. He picks up gratefully the 
 
 crumbs you scatter at your feet. He trusts 
 
 you. — See ! he rests a moment on the finger 
 
 you extend, looks curiously at the nail, and 
 
 sounds it with his bill to see if it shelters 
 
 any harmful insect. Then he goes back to 
 
 his birch twigs. 
 
 On summer days he never overflows with 
 the rollicksomeness of bobolink and oriole, 
 but takes his abundance in quiet content- 
 ment. I suspect it is because he works 
 harder winters, and his enjoyment is deeper 
 than theirs. In winter, when the snow lies 
 deep, he is the life of the forest. He calls to 
 you from the edges of the bleak caribou 
 barrens, and his greeting somehow suggests 
 the May. He comes into your rude bark 
 camp, and eats of your simple fare, and 
 
68 
 
 leaves a bit of sunshine behind him. He 
 goes with you, as you force your way heavily 
 (^'geej^ee-ZoA/i-s/s through the fir thickets on snowshoes. He 
 .^ is hungry, perhaps, like you, but his note is 
 none the less cheery and hopeful. 
 
 When the sun shines hot in August, he 
 finds you lying under the alders, with the lake 
 breeze in your face, and he opens his eyes 
 wide and says : " Tsic a dee-e-e ? I saw you 
 last winter. Those were hard times. But 
 it 's good to be here now." And when the 
 rain pours down, and the woods are drenched, 
 and camp life seems beastly altogether, he 
 appears suddenly with greeting cheery as 
 the sunshine. " Tsic a de-e-e-e ? Don't you 
 remember yesterday? It rains, to be sure, 
 but the insects are plenty, and to-morrow 
 the sun will shine." His cheerfulness is 
 contagious. Your thoughts are better than 
 before he came. 
 
 Really, he is a wonderful little fellow; 
 there is no end to the good he does. Again 
 and again I have seen a man grow better 
 tempered or more cheerful, without know- 
 ing why he did so, just because Chickadee 
 
69 
 
 stopped a moment to be cheery and sociable. 
 I remember once when a party of four made 
 camp after a driving rain-storm. Everybody (^"rieedee-Iokhsis 
 was wet ; everything soaking. The lazy 
 man had upset a canoe, and all the dry 
 clothes and blankets had just been fished 
 out of the river. Now the lazy man stood 
 before the fire, looking after his own com- 
 fort. The other three worked like beavers, 
 making camp. They were in ill humor, 
 cold, wet, hungry, irritated. They said 
 nothing. 
 
 A flock of chickadees came down with 
 sunny greetings, fearless, trustful, never 
 obtrusive. They looked innocently into 
 human faces and pretended that they did 
 not see the irritation there. " Tsic a dee. I 
 wish I could help. Perhaps I can. Tsic a 
 dee-e-e?" — with that gentle, sweetly insinu- 
 ating up-slide at the end. Somebody spoke, 
 for the first time in half an hour, and it was 
 not a growl. Presently somebody whistled 
 — - a wee little whistle ; but the tide had 
 turned. Then somebody laughed. " ' Pon 
 my word," he said, hanging up his wet 
 
70 
 
 clothes before the fire, " I believe those 
 chickadees make me feel good-natured. 
 Seem kind of cheery, you know, and the 
 crowd needed it." 
 
 And Ch'geegee, picking up his cracker 
 ^ crumbs, did not act at all as if he had done 
 most to make camp comfortable. 
 
 There is another way in which he helps, a 
 more material way. Millions of destructive 
 insects live and multiply in the buds and 
 tender bark of trees. Other birds never see 
 them ; but Chickadee and his relations leave 
 never a twig unexplored. His bright eyes 
 find the tiny eggs hidden in the buds; his 
 keen ears hear the larvae feeding under the 
 bark, and a blow of his bill uncovers them in 
 their mischief -making. His services of this 
 kind are enormous, though rarely acknowl- 
 edged. 
 
 Chickadee's nest is always neat and com- 
 fortable and interesting, just like himself. It 
 is a rare treat to find it. He selects an old 
 knot-hole, generally on the sheltered side of 
 a dry limb, and chisels a deep tunnel through 
 the heart of it. In the dry wood at the 
 
bottom he makes a little round pocket and 
 
 lines it with the very softest material. When 
 
 one finds such a nest, with five or six white t^'deetiee-IoAhsis 
 
 eggs delicately touched with pink, and a pair "^ 
 
 of chickadees gliding about, half fearful, half 
 
 trustful, it is altogether such a beautiful little 
 
 spot that I know hardly a boy who would be 
 
 mean enough to disturb it. 
 
 One thing about the nests has always puz- 
 zled me. The soft lining has generally more 
 or less rabbit fur. Sometimes, indeed, there 
 is nothing else, and a softer nest one could 
 not wish to see. But where does he get it .? 
 He would not, I am sure, pull it out of Br'er 
 Rabbit, as the crow sometimes pulls wool 
 from the sheep's backs. Are his eyes bright 
 enough to find it, hair by hair, where the 
 wind has blown it, down among the leaves? 
 If so, it must be slow work; but Chickadee 
 is very patient. Sometimes, in spring, you 
 may surprise him on the ground, where he 
 never goes for food ; but at such times he is 
 always shy, and flits up among the birch 
 twigs, and twitters, and goes through an 
 astonishing gymnastic performance, to hold 
 
72 
 
 your attention and make you forget that you 
 caught him fur hunting. That is because 
 (^'gee^ee-Iokh-s/'s you are near his nest. 
 
 Once, after such a performance, I pre- 
 tended to go away ; but I only hid in a pine 
 thicket. Chickadee listened awhile, then 
 hopped down to the ground, picked up some- 
 thing quickly, and flew away. It was the 
 lining for his nest near by. He had dropped 
 it when I surprised him, so that I should not 
 suspect him of nest-building. 
 
 Such a bright, helpful little fellow should 
 have never an enemy in the world; and I 
 think he has to contend against fewer than 
 most birds. The shrike is his worst enemy, 
 the swift swoop of his cruel beak being always 
 fatal in a flock of chickadees. Fortunately 
 the shrike is rare with us ; one seldom finds 
 his nest, with poor Ch'geegee impaled on a 
 sharp thorn near by, surrounded by a varied 
 lot of ugly beetles. The owl sometimes 
 hunts him at night; but he sleeps in the 
 thick pine shrubs, close up against a branch, 
 with the pine needles all about him, making 
 it very dark; and what with the darkness, 
 
11 
 
 and the needles to stick in his eyes, the owl 
 generally gives up the search and hunts in 
 more open woods. Ch'dee§ee-hkh^is 
 
 Sometimes the hawks try to catch him, but 
 it takes a very quick and a very small pair of 
 wings to follow Chickadee. Once I was 
 watching him hanging, head down, from an 
 oak twig to which the dead leaves were 
 clinging ; for it was winter. Suddenly there 
 was a rush of air, a flash of mottled wings 
 and fierce yellow eyes and cruel claws. 
 Chickadee whisked out of sight under a leaf. 
 The hawk passed on, brushing his pinions. 
 A brown feather floated down among the 
 oak leaves. Then Chickadee was hanging, 
 head down, just where he was before. " Tsic 
 a dee? Didn't I. fool him!" he seemed to 
 say. He had just gone round his twig, and 
 under a leaf, and back again ; and the danger 
 was over. When a hawk misses like that he 
 never strikes again. 
 
 Boys generally have a kind of sympathetic 
 liking for Chickadee. They may be cruel or 
 thoughtless to other birds, but seldom so to 
 him. He seems somehow like themselves. 
 
74 
 
 Two barefoot boys with bows and arrows 
 were hunting, one September day, about the 
 'ee-7okh-sts half-grown thickets of an old pasture. The 
 older was teaching the younger how to shoot. 
 A robin, a red squirrel, and two or three spar- 
 rows were stowed away in their jacket pockets ; 
 a brown rabbit hung from the older boy's 
 shoulder. Suddenly the younger raised his 
 bow and drew the arrow back to its head. 
 Just in front a chickadee hung and twittered 
 among the birch twigs. But the older boy 
 seized his arm. 
 
 " Don't shoot — don't shoot him ! " he said. 
 
 " But why not .? " 
 
 " 'Cause you must n't — you must never 
 kill a chickadee." 
 
 And the younger, influenced more by a 
 certain mysterious shake of the head than by 
 the words, slacked his bow cheerfully; and 
 with a last wide-eyed look at the little gray 
 bird that twittered and swung so fearlessly 
 near them, the two boys went on with their 
 hunting. 
 
 No one ever taught the older boy to dis- 
 criminate between a chickadee and other 
 
birds ; no one else ever instructed the younger. 
 Yet somehow both felt, and still feel after 
 many years, that there is a difference. It is (^'deedee'loKh-^ 
 always so with boys. They are friends of 
 whatever trusts them and is fearless. Chick- 
 adee's own personality, his cheery ways and 
 trustful nature had taught them, though they 
 knew it not. And among all the boys of 
 that neighborhood there is still a law, which 
 no man gave, of which no man knows the 
 origin, a law as unalterable as that of the 
 Medes and Persians : Never kill a chickadee. 
 If you ask the boy there who tells you 
 the law, " Why not a chickadee as well 
 as a sparrow ? " he shakes his head as of 
 yore, and answers dogmatically: "'Cause 
 you must n't." 
 
 CHICKADEE'S SECRET 
 
 If you meet Chickadee in May with a bit 
 of rabbit fur in his mouth, or if he seem 
 preoccupied or absorbed, you may know that 
 he is building a nest, or has a wife and chil- 
 dren near by to take care of. If you know 
 
76 
 
 him well, you may even feel hurt that Little 
 Friend Ch'geegee, who shared your camp 
 Ch'geegee-Iokh'Sis and fed from your dish last winter, should 
 this spring seem just as frank, yet never 
 invite you to his camp, or should even lead 
 you away from it. But the soft little nest 
 in the old knot-hole is the one secret of 
 Chickadee's life; and the little deceptions 
 by which he tries to keep it are at times so 
 childlike, so transparent, that they are even 
 more interesting than his frankness. 
 
 One afternoon in May I was hunting, with- 
 out a gun, about an old deserted farm among 
 the hills — one of those sunny places that 
 the birds love, because some sense of the 
 human beings who once lived there still 
 clings to the half-wild fields and gives pro- 
 tection. The day was bright and warm. 
 The birds were everywhere, flashing out of 
 the pine thickets into the birches in all the 
 joyfulness of nest-building, and filling the 
 . air with life and. melody. It is poor hunting 
 to move about at such a time. Either the 
 hunter or his game must be still. Here 
 the birds were moving constantly ; one might 
 
see more of them and their ways by just 
 keeping quiet and invisible. 
 
 I sat down on the edge of a pine thicket, 
 and became as much as possible a part of 
 the old stump which was my seat. In front 
 of me an old rail fence wandered across the 
 deserted pasture, struggling against the black- 
 berry vines, which grew profusely about it 
 and seemed to tug at the lower rails to pull 
 them down to ruin. On either side it disap- 
 peared into thickets of birch and oak and 
 pitch pine, planted, as were the blackberry 
 vines, by birds that stopped to rest a moment 
 on the old fence or to satisfy their curiosity. 
 Stout young trees had crowded it aside and 
 broken it. Here and there a leaning post 
 was overgrown with woodbine. The 
 rails were gray and moss-grown. Nature "W 
 was trying hard to make it a bit of the 
 landscape; it could not much longer '"'^""^',* 
 retain its individuality. The wild things of 
 the woods had long accepted it as theirs, 
 though not quite as they accepted the vines 
 and trees. 
 
 As I sat there, a robin hurled himself upon 
 
 fgiee-/oAA-s/s 
 
78 
 &i'gee^ee/oM-sis 
 
 the fence from the top of a cedar, where he 
 had been, a moment before, practising his 
 mating song. He did not intend to light, 
 but some idle curiosity, like my own, made 
 him pause a moment on the old gray rail. 
 Then a woodpecker lit on the side of a post 
 and sounded it softly. But he was too near 
 the ground, too near his enemies to make a 
 noise ; so he flew to a higher perch and beat 
 a tattoo that made the woods ring. He was 
 safe there, and could make as much noise as 
 he pleased. A wood mouse stirred the vines 
 and appeared for an instant on the lower rail, 
 then disappeared as if very much frightened 
 at having shown himself in the sunlight. He 
 always does just so at his first appearance. 
 
 Presently a red squirrel rushes out of the 
 thicket at the left, scurries along the rails 
 and up and down the posts. He goes like a 
 little red whirlwind, though he has nothing 
 whatever to hurry about. Just opposite my 
 stump he stops his rush with marvelous sud- 
 denness ; chatters, barks, scolds, tries to make 
 me move ; then goes on and out of sight at 
 the same breakneck rush. A jay stops a 
 
moment in a young hickory above the fence 
 
 to whistle his curiosity, just as if he had not 
 
 seen it fifty times before. A curiosity to him (^'deedee-lokhsis 
 
 never grows old. He does not scream now ; 
 
 it is his nesting time. — And so on through 
 
 the afternoon. The old fence is becoming a 
 
 part of the woods ; and every wild thing that 
 
 passes by stops to get acquainted. 
 
 I was weaving an idle history when a 
 chickadee twittered in the pine behind me. 
 As I turned, he flew over me and lit on the 
 topmost mossy rail. He had something in 
 his beak ; so I watched to find his nest ; 
 for I wanted very much to see him at work. 
 Chickadee had never seemed afraid of me, 
 and I thought he would trust me now. But 
 he did not. He would not go near his nest. 
 Instead he began hopping about the old rail, 
 and pretended to be very busy hunting for 
 insects. 
 
 Presently his mate appeared, and with a 
 sharp note he called her down beside him. 
 Then both birds hopped and twittered about 
 the rail, with apparently never a care in the 
 world. The male especially seemed just in 
 
„ the mood for a frolic. He ran up and down 
 the mossy rail; he whirled about it till he 
 &igee^ee/okh-s/s looked like a little gray pinwheel ; he hung 
 
 ^1 head down by his toes, dropped and turned 
 like a cat, so as to light on his feet on the 
 rail below. While watching his performance, 
 I hardly noticed that his mate had gone till 
 she reappeared suddenly beside him. Then 
 he disappeared, while she kept up the per- 
 formance on the rail, with more of a twitter, 
 perhaps, and less of gymnastics. In a few 
 moments both birds were together again and 
 flew into the pines out of sight. 
 
 I had almost forgotten them in watch- 
 ing other birds, when they reappeared on the 
 rail and went through a similar performance. 
 This was unusual, certainly ; and I sat very 
 quiet, very much interested, though a bit 
 puzzled, and a bit disappointed that they 
 had not gone to their nest. They had some 
 material in their beaks both times, and were 
 now probably hunting for more — for rabbit 
 fur, perhaps, in the old orchard. But what 
 had they done with it } " Perhaps," I thought, 
 " they dropped it to deceive me." Chickadee 
 
8i 
 
 does that sometimes. " But why did one 
 bird stay on the rail? Perhaps" — Well, 
 I would look and see. C^'geegee-Mhsh 
 
 I left my stump and began to examine 
 the posts of the old fence carefully. Chicka- 
 dee's nest was there somewhere. In the 
 second post on the left I found it, a tiny 
 knot-hole, which Chickadee had hollowed 
 out deep and lined with rabbit fur. It was 
 well hidden by the vines that almost covered 
 the old post, and gray moss grew all about 
 the entrance. A prettier nest I never found. 
 
 I went back to the pines and sat where I 
 could just see Ch'geegee's doorway. No 
 other birds interested me now till the chick- 
 adees came back. They were soon there, 
 hopping about on the rail as before, with just 
 a wee note of surprise in their soft twitter 
 that I had changed my position. This time 
 I was not to be deceived by a gymnastic per- 
 formance, however interesting. I kept my 
 eyes fastened on the nest. The male was 
 going through with his most difficult feats, 
 doing his best to engage my attention, when 
 I saw his mate glide suddenly from behind 
 
82 
 
 Cffgeegfee-Iokh-s/s 
 
 the post and disappear into her doorway. 
 I could hardly be sure it was a bird. It 
 seemed rather as if the wind had stirred a 
 little bundle of gray moss. Had she moved 
 slowly I might not have seen her, so closely 
 did her soft gray cloak blend with the weather- 
 beaten wood and moss. 
 
 In a few moments she reappeared, waited 
 a moment with her tiny head peeking out of 
 the knot-hole, flashed round the post out 
 of sight; and when I saw her again it 
 was as she reappeared suddenly beside the 
 male. 
 
 Then I watched him. While his mate 
 whisked about the top rail he dropped to the 
 middle one, hopped gradually to one side, 
 then dropped suddenly to the lowest one, 
 half hidden by vines, and disappeared. I 
 [( turned my eyes to the nest. In a moment 
 there he was — just a little gray flash, appear- 
 ing for an instant from behind the post, only 
 to disappear into the dark entrance. When 
 he came out again I had but a glimpse of 
 him till he appeared on the rail near me, 
 beside his mate. 
 
Their little ruse was now quite evident. „ 
 They had come back from gathering rabbit 
 fur, and found me, unexpectedly, near their (^'deetiee-hkhsis 
 nest. Instead of making a fuss and betray- 
 ing it, as other birds might do, they lit on 
 the rail before me, and were as sociable as 
 only chickadees know how to be. While 
 one entertained me, and kept my attention, 
 the other dropped to the bottom rail and 
 stole along behind it; then up behind the 
 post that held their nest, and back the same 
 way, after leaving his material. Then he 
 held my attention while his mate did the 
 same thing. 
 
 For two hours or more I sat there beside 
 the pine thicket, while the chickadees came 
 and went. Sometimes they approached the 
 nest from the other side, and I did not see 
 them, or perhaps got only a glimpse as they 
 glided into their doorway. Whenever they 
 approached from my side they always stopped 
 on the rail and went through their little 
 performance to distract my attention. Grad- 
 ually they grew more confident, reassured by 
 my stillness; or thinking perhaps that they 
 
84 
 &igeegee-lokh-sis 
 
 had entertained me so well that I did not 
 even suspect them of nest-building. 
 
 As the afternoon wore away and the sun 
 dropped into the pine tops, the chickadees 
 grew hungry and left their work until the 
 morrow. They were twittering among the 
 young birch buds when I left them, sharing 
 their best finds generously and calling softly 
 to each other lest they stray too far apart 
 while hunting their supper. 
 
A 
 
 8s 
 
A WILD DUCK 
 
 4 
 
 — j^ HE title will suggest to most 
 I people a line across the autumn 
 
 sky at sunset, with a bit of mys- 
 tery about it ; or else a dark 
 triangle moving southward, 
 high and swift, at Thanksgiv- 
 ing time. To a few, who know well the 
 woods and fields about their homes, it may 
 suggest a lonely little pond, with a dark bird 
 rising swiftly, far out of reach, leaving the 
 ripples playing among the sedges. To those 
 accustomed to look sharply it will suggest 
 five or six more birds, downy little fellows, 
 hiding safe among roots and grasses, so still 
 that one seldom suspects their presence. 
 The duck, like most game birds, loves soli- 
 tude; the details of his life he keeps very 
 closely to himself ; and one must be content 
 with occasional glimpses. 
 87 
 
nr. This is especially true of the dusky duck, 
 generally known by the name black duck 
 ^ To/Id Duck among hunters. An ordinary tramp with a 
 field glass, and eyes wide open, may give a 
 rare, distant view of him; but only as one 
 follows him winter after winter, meeting with 
 much less of success than of discouragement, 
 does he pick up many details of his personal 
 life; for wildness is born in him, and no 
 experience with man is needed to develop it. 
 On lonely lakes, in the midst of a Canada 
 forest, where he meets man for the first time, 
 he is the same as when he builds at the head 
 of some mill pond, within sight of a busy New 
 England town. Other ducks may, in time, 
 be tamed and used as decoys ; but not so he. 
 Several times I have tried it with wing4ipped 
 birds; but the result was always the same. 
 They worked night and day to escape, refus- 
 ing all food and even water till they broke 
 through their pen, or were dying of hunger, 
 when I let them go. 
 
 One spring a farmer whom I know deter- 
 mined to try with young birds. He found a 
 black duck's nest and hatched the eggs, with 
 
some others, under a tame duck. Every time „ 
 he approached the pen the little things skulked 
 away and hid ; nor could they be induced to ^ tO/'Id "Duck 
 show themselves, although their tame com- 
 panions were feeding and running about, 
 quite contented. After two weeks, when he 
 thought them somewhat accustomed to their 
 surroundings, he let the whole brood go 
 down to the shore just below his house. 
 The moment they were free the wild birds 
 scurried away into the water grass, and no 
 amount of anxious quacking on the part of 
 the mother could bring them back into cap- 
 tivity. He never saw them again. 
 
 This habit, which the young birds have, 
 of slculking away out of sight, is a measure 
 of protection that they practise constantly. 
 A brood may be seen on almost any secluded 
 pond or lake in New England, where the 
 birds come in the early spring to build their 
 nests. Watching from some hidden spot on 
 the shore, one sees them diving and swim- 
 ming about, hunting for food everywhere in 
 the greatest freedom. The next moment 
 they scatter and disappear, so suddenly that 
 
one rubs his eves to make sure that the birds 
 go ■' , , 
 
 are really gone. If he is near enough, he 
 
 J^TlfildDuck has heard a low cluck from the old bird, 
 ,\J^' // which now sits with neck standing straight 
 jjm^-^A up out of the water, so still as to be easily 
 ""P I mistaken for one of the old stumps or bogs 
 among which they are feeding. She is look- 
 ing about to see if the ducklings are all well 
 hidden. After a moment there is another 
 cluck, very much like the first, and downy 
 little fellows come bobbing out of the grass, 
 or from close beside the stumps where you 
 looked a moment before and saw nothing. 
 This is repeated at frequent intervals, the 
 object being to accustom the young birds to 
 hide instantly when danger approaches. 
 
 So watchful is the old bird, however, that 
 trouble rarely threatens without her knowl- 
 edge. When the young are well hidden, at 
 the first sign of the enemy, she takes wing 
 and leaves them, returning when danger is 
 over, to find them still crouching motionless 
 in their hiding places. When surprised she 
 acts like other game birds, — flutters along 
 with a great splashing, trailing one wing as 
 
91 
 
 ^ 
 
 if wounded, till she has led you away from 
 
 the young, or occupied your attention long 
 
 enough for them to be safely hidden; then JS' tfj/7e/ TfacA 
 
 she takes wing and leaves you. 
 
 The habit of hiding becomes so fixed with 
 the young birds that they trust to it long 
 after the wings have grown and they are able 
 to escape by flight. Sometimes, in the early 
 autumn, I have run the bow of my canoe 
 almost over a full-grown bird, lying hidden 
 in a clump of grass. A month later, in the 
 same place, the canoe could hardly approach 
 within a quarter of a 
 mile without his taking " - „ ' 
 
 alarm. 
 
 Once they have 
 learned to trust their 
 wings, they give up 
 hiding for swift flight. 
 But they never forget ~ T^^^ -^^r" 
 their early training, 
 
 and, when wounded, hide with a cunning that 
 is remarkable. Unless one has a good dog 
 it is almost useless to look for a wounded 
 duck, if there is any cover to be reached. 
 
Hiding under a bank, crawling into a musk- 
 rat hole, worming a way under a bunch of 
 ^Zcf/IdDuck dead grass or pile of leaves, clinging to a 
 root under water, swimming around and 
 around a clump of bushes just out of sight 
 of his pursuer, diving and coming up behind 
 a tuft of grass, — these are some of the ways 
 by which I have known a black duck try to 
 escape when I was looking for him. 
 
 With the first sharp frost that threatens 
 to ice over the ponds in which they have 
 passed the summer, the inland birds betake 
 themselves to the seacoast, where there is 
 more or less migration all winter. The great 
 body of ducks moves slowly southward as 
 the winter grows severe; but if food is 
 plenty they winter all along the coast. It 
 is then that they may be studied to the 
 best advantage. 
 
 During the daytime they are stowed away 
 in quiet little ponds and hiding places, or 
 resting in large flocks on the shoals, out of 
 reach of land and danger. When possible, 
 they choose the former, because it gives 
 them an abundance of fresh water, which is 
 
93 
 
 a daily necessity; and because, unlike the 
 
 coots which are often found in great numbers 
 
 on the same shoals, they dislike tossing about ^ tO//d "Duck 
 
 on the waves for any length of time. But 
 
 late in the autumn they desert the ponds 
 
 and are seldom seen there again until spring, 
 
 even though the ponds are open. They are 
 
 very shy about being frozen in, and prefer 
 
 to get their fresh water at the mouths of 
 
 creeks and springs. 
 
 With all their caution, — and they are very 
 good weather prophets, knowing the times 
 of tides and the approach of storms, as well 
 as the days when fresh water freezes, — they 
 sometimes get caught. Once I found a flock 
 of five in great distress, frozen into the thin 
 ice while sleeping, no doubt, with heads 
 tucked under their wings. At another time 
 I found a single bird floundering about with 
 a big lump of ice and mud attached to his 
 tail. He had found the insects plentiful in 
 some soft mud, at low tide, and stayed there 
 too long with the thermometer at zero. 
 
 Night is their feeding time ; on the sea- 
 coast they fly in to the feeding grounds just 
 
at dusk. Fog bewilders them, and no bird, 
 except a plover, likes to fly in rain, because 
 ^ TOi/dT^ucA it makes the feathers heavy ; so on foggy or 
 rainy afternoons they come in early, or not 
 at all. The favorite feeding ground is a salt 
 marsh, with springs and creeks of brackish 
 water. Seeds, roots, tender grasses, and snails 
 and insects in the mud left by low tide are 
 their usual winter food. When these grow 
 scarce they betake themselves to the mussel 
 beds with the coots; their flesh in conse- 
 quence becomes strong and fishy. 
 
 When the first birds come in to the feed- 
 ing grounds before dark, they do it with the 
 greatest caution, examining not only the little 
 pond or creek, but the whole neighborhood 
 before lighting. The birds that follow trust 
 to the inspection of these first comers, and 
 generally fly straight in. For this reason it 
 is well for one who attempts to. see them at 
 this time to have live decoys and, if pos- 
 sible, to have his blind built several days in 
 advance, in order that the birds which may 
 have been feeding in the place shall see no 
 unusual object when they come in. 
 
By moonlight one may sit on the bank in 
 plain sight of his decoys, and watch the 
 wild birds as long as he will. It is neces- J^ tfJ/VJ DucA 
 
 sary only to sit perfectly still. But this is 
 unsatisfactory; you can never see just what 
 they are doing. Once I had thirty or forty 
 close about me in this way. A sudden turn 
 of my head, when a bat struck my cheek, sent 
 them all off in a panic to the open ocean. 
 A curious thing about these birds, as they 
 come in at night, is their power to make 
 their wings noisy or almost silent at will. 
 Sometimes the rustle is so slight that it is 
 scarcely audible ; at other times it is a strong 
 wish-wish that can be heard two hundred 
 yards away. The only theory I can suggest 
 is that it is done as a kind of signal. In the 
 daytime and on bright evenings one seldom 
 hears it ; on dark nights it is very frequent, 
 and is always answered by the quacking of 
 birds already on the feeding grounds, prob- 
 ably to guide the incomers. How they do it 
 is uncertain ; probably in some such way as 
 the night-hawk makes his curious booming 
 sound, — not by means of his open mouth. 
 
96 
 
 as is generally supposed, but by slightly turn- 
 ing the wing quills so that the air sets them 
 J^TOildHtfck vibrating. One can test this, if he will, by 
 blowing on any stiff feather. 
 
 On stormy days the birds, instead of rest- 
 I ing on the shoals, light near some lonely 
 part of the beach and, after watching care- 
 fully for an hour or two, to be sure that no 
 danger is near, swim ashore and collect in 
 great bunches in some sheltered spot 
 under a bank. It is indeed a tempting 
 sight to see perhaps a hundred of the 
 splendid birds gathered close together on 
 \ the shore, the greater part with heads 
 tucked under their wings, fast asleep; 
 but if you are to surprise them, you must 
 turn Indian and crawl, and learn 
 patience. Scattered along the beach 
 
 i^^c^^^ on either side are single birds evi- 
 dently acting as sentinels. The 
 crows and gulls are flying con- 
 tinually along the tide-line after 
 food; and invariably, as they 
 pass over a flock of ducks, they 
 rise in the air to look around 
 
over all the bank. You must be well hid- 
 
 97 
 den to escape those bright eyes. The ducks 
 
 understand crow and gull talk perfectly, ^ ZOild Duck 
 
 and trust largely to these friendly sentinels. ^ 
 
 The gulls scream and the crows caw all day 
 
 long, and not a duck takes his head from 
 
 under his wing ; but the instant either crow 
 
 or gull utters his danger note, every duck is 
 
 in the air and headed straight off shore. 
 
 The constant watchfulness .of black ducks 
 
 is perhaps the most remarkable thing about 
 
 them. When feeding at night in some lonely 
 
 marsh, or hidden away by day deep in the 
 
 heart of the swamps, they never for a moment 
 
 seem to lay aside their alertness, nor trust 
 
 to their hiding places alone for protection. 
 
 Even when lying fast asleep among the 
 
 grasses with heads tucked under their wings, 
 
 there is a nervous vigilance in their very 
 
 attitudes, which suggests a sense of danger. 
 
 Generally one has to content himself with 
 
 studying them through a glass; but once I 
 
 had a very good opportunity of watching 
 
 them close at hand, of outwitting them, as it 
 
 were, at their own game of hide-and-seek. It 
 
„ was in a grassy little pond, shut in by high hills, 
 on the open moors of Nantucket. The pond 
 ^ TOildTiuck was in the middle of a plain, a hundred yards 
 from the nearest hill. No tree or rock or bush 
 offered any concealment to an enemy; the 
 ducks could sleep there as sure of detecting 
 the approach of danger as if on the open 
 ocean. 
 
 One autumn day I passed the place and, 
 looking cautiously over the top of a hill, saw a 
 single black duck swim out of the water grass. 
 After a few minutes of watching, he went 
 into the grass again, and I started to creep 
 down the hill, keeping my eyes intently 
 on the pond. Halfway down, another duck 
 appeared, and I dropped flat on the hillside 
 in plain sight. Of course the duck noticed 
 the unusual object. There was a commotion 
 in the grass ; heads came up here and there. 
 The next moment, to my great astonishment, 
 fully fifty black ducks were swimming about 
 in the greatest uneasiness. 
 
 I lay very still and watched. Five min- 
 utes passed ; then quite suddenly all motion 
 ceased in the pond ; every duck sat with neck 
 
standing straight up from the water, looking 
 
 directly at me. So still were they that one 
 
 could easily have mistaken them for stumps ^ tOi'/d "Duck 
 
 or peat bogs. After a few minutes of this 
 
 kind of watching they seemed satisfied, and 
 
 glided back, a few at a time, into the grass. 
 
 When all were gone I rolled down the hill 
 into some tall grass at the edge of a little 
 run. Then it was easier to advance without 
 being discovered ; for whenever a duck came 
 out to look round — which happened almost 
 every minute at first — I could drop into the 
 grass and be out of sight. 
 
 In half an hour I had gained the edge of 
 a low bank, well covered by coarse water 
 grass. Just below me, within six feet, was a 
 big drake, with head drawn down so close to 
 his body that I wondered what he had done 
 with his neck. His eyes were closed ; he 
 was fast asleep. In front of him were eight 
 or ten more ducks, close together, all with 
 heads under their wings. Scattered about 
 in the grass everywhere were small groups, 
 sleeping, or pluming their glossy dark 
 feathers. 
 
Beside the pleasure of watching them, the 
 
 first black ducks that I had ever seen uncon- 
 
 J^ TOi'IdDuck scious, there was the satisfaction of thinking 
 
 ,\|^' /• how completely they had been outwitted at 
 ^^m -^-M their own game of sharp watching. How 
 
 "» I they would have jumped, had they known 
 
 what was lying there in the grass so near 
 their hiding place 1 At first, every time I 
 saw an eye wink, or a head come from under 
 a wing, I felt myself shrinking close together 
 in the thought that I was discovered; but 
 that wore off after a time, when I found that 
 the eye winked rather sleepily, and the necks 
 were taken out just to stretch them, much as 
 one would take a comfortable yawn. 
 
 Once I was caught squarely, but the grass, 
 and my being so near saved me. I had 
 raised my head and lay with chin in my 
 hands, deeply interested in watching a young 
 duck making a most elaborate toilet, when 
 from the other side an old bird shot into the 
 open water and saw me as I dropped out of 
 sight. There was a low quack which brought 
 every duck out of his hiding, wide awake 
 on the instant. At first they all bunched 
 
« ' ... 
 
 f'/m}/, , .„,,,.,-Mf^''m, 
 
 ~l?jiV'^'"^t 
 
 There was a low quack which brought every duck out of his hiding 
 
lOI 
 
 together at the farther side, looking straight 
 at the bank where I lay. Then they drew 
 gradually nearer till they were again within ^ tOi'Id Duck 
 the fringe of water grass. Some of them sat 
 quite up on their tails by a vigorous use of 
 their wings, and stretched their necks to look 
 over the low bank. Just keeping still saved 
 me. In five minutes they were quiet again; 
 even the young duck seemed to have forgot- 
 ten her vanity and gone to sleep with the 
 others. 
 
 Two or three hours I lay thus and watched 
 them through the grass, spying very rudely, 
 no doubt, into the seclusion of their home 
 life. As the long shadow of the western hill 
 stretched across the pool, the ducks awoke 
 one by one from their nap and began to stir 
 about in preparation for departure. Soon 
 they were collected at the center of the open 
 water, where they sat for a moment very still, 
 heads up, and ready. If there was any signal 
 given I did not hear it. At the same moment 
 each pair of wings struck the water with a 
 sharp splash, and they shot straight up in 
 that remarkable way of theirs, as if thrown 
 
I02 ^^ ^ strong spring. An instant they seemed 
 
 to hang motionless in the air, high above the 
 
 ^XOild'^uck water, then they turned and disappeared 
 
 swiftly over the eastern hill toward the 
 
 marshes. 
 
103 
 
HUKWEEM THE NIGHT VOICE 
 
 UKWEEM the loon 
 must go through the 
 world crying for what 
 he never gets, and 
 searching for one 
 whom he never finds ; for 
 he is the hunting-dog of 
 Clote Scarpe. So said 
 Simmo to me, one night, 
 in explaining why the 
 loon's cry is so wild and 
 '~ sad. 
 
 Clote Scarpe, by the way, is the legendary 
 hero, the Hiawatha of the northern Indians. 
 Long ago he lived on the' Wollastook and 
 ruled the animals, which all lived peaceably 
 together, understanding each other's lan- 
 guage ; and " nobody ever ate anybody," as 
 
 Simmo says. But when Clote Scarpe went 
 105 
 
, away they quarreled, and Lhoks the panther 
 and Nemox the fisher took to killing the 
 Tfuktaeem (jf^ other animals. Malsun the wolf soon fol- 
 ^^^i?*^ J*J lowed, and ate all he killed ; and Meeko the 
 squirrel, who always makes all the mischief 
 he can, set even the peaceable animals by the 
 ears, so that they feared and distrusted each 
 other. Then they scattered through the big 
 woods, living each one for himself; and now 
 the strong ones kill the weak, and nobody 
 understands anybody any more. 
 
 There were no dogs in those days. Huk- 
 weem was Clote Scarpe's hunting companion 
 when he hunted the great evil beasts that 
 disturbed the wilderness ; and Hukweem 
 alone, of all the birds and animals, remained 
 true to his master. For hunting makes 
 strong friendship, says Simmo; and that is 
 true. Therefore does Hukweem go through 
 the world, looking for his master and calling 
 him to come back. Over the tree-tops, when 
 he flies low looking for new waters ; high in 
 air, out of sight, on his southern migrations ; 
 and on every lake, where he is only a voice, 
 the sad night voice of the vast, solitary, 
 
I07 
 
 unknown wilderness, — everywhere you hear 
 
 him seeking. Even on the seacoast, in 
 
 winter, where he knows Clote Scarpe cannot Tfuktaeem 
 
 be, — for Clote Scarpe hates the sea, — Huk- 9,^-^^t 
 
 weem forgets himself, and cries occasionally 
 
 out of pure loneliness. 
 
 When I asked what Hukweem says when 
 he cries — for all cries of the wilderness 
 have their interpretation— 7 Simmo answered : 
 " Wy, he say two ting. First he say. Where 
 are you 1 O, where are you ? Dass what 
 you call-um his laugh, like he crazee. Denn, 
 wen nobody answer, he say, O, I so sorry, so 
 sorry ! Ooooo-eee ! like woman lost in woods. 
 An' dass his tother cry." 
 
 This comes nearer to explaining the wild 
 unearthliness of Hukweem's call than any- 
 thing else I know. It makes things much 
 simpler to understand, when you are camped 
 deep in the wilderness, and the night falls, 
 and out of the misty darkness under the 
 farther shore comes a wild, shivering call 
 that makes one's nerves tingle till he finds 
 out about it — Where are you ? O, where are 
 you? That is just like Hukweem. 
 
io8 
 
 Sometimes, however, he varies the cry, and 
 asks very plainly : " Who are you ? O, who 
 Tfuktaeem M^ are you?" There was a loon on the Big 
 ^^l?^^^-^^ Squattuk lake, where I camped one summer, 
 who was full of inquisitiveness as a blue jay. 
 He lived alone at one end of the lake ; while 
 his mate, with her brood of two, lived at the 
 other end, nine miles away. Every morning 
 and evening he came close to my camp — 
 very much nearer than is usual; for loons 
 are wild and shy in the wilderness — to cry 
 out his challenge. Once, late at night, I 
 flashed a lantern at the end of the old log 
 that served as a landing for the canoes, 
 where I had heard strange ripples; and 
 there was Hukweem, examining everything 
 with the greatest curiosity. 
 
 Every unusual thing in our doings made 
 him inquisitive to know all about it. Once, 
 when I started down the lake with a fair 
 wind, and a small spruce set up in the bow 
 of my canoe for a sail, he followed me four 
 or five miles, calling all the way. And when 
 I came back to camp at twilight with a big 
 bear in the canoe, his shaggy head showing 
 
Hukweem's curiosity could stand it no longer 
 
over the bow, and his legs up over the mid- 
 
 . 109 
 
 die thwart, like a little old black man with 
 
 his wrinkled feet on the table, Hukweem's 7/uAtoeem 
 
 curiosity could stand it no longer. He y.-fU^"' 
 
 swam up within twenty yards, and circled 
 
 the canoe half a dozen times, sitting up 
 
 straight on his tail by a vigorous use of his 
 
 wings, stretching his neck like an inquisitive 
 
 duck, so as to look into the canoe and see 
 
 what queer thing I had brought with me. 
 
 He had another curious habit, which 
 afforded him unending amusement. There 
 was a deep bay on the west shore of the lake, 
 with hills rising abruptly on three sides. 
 The echo here was remarkable ; a single 
 shout brought a dozen distinct answers, and 
 then a confusion of tongues as the echoes 
 and reechoes from many hills met and 
 mingled. I discovered the place in an inter- 
 esting way. 
 
 One evening, as I was returning to camp 
 from exploring the upper lake, I heard a wild 
 crying of loons on the west side. There 
 seemed to be five or six of the great divers, 
 all laughing and shrieking like so many 
 
no 
 
 Vo/ce^„ 
 
 lunatics. Pushing over to investigate, I 
 noticed for the first time the entrance to a 
 Jfuktaeem tj^ great bay, and paddled up cautiously behind 
 ^^^^■•^^te ^ point, so as to surprise the loons at their 
 game. For they play games, just as crows 
 do. But when I looked in, there was only 
 '■s"^ one bird, Hukweem the Inquisitive. I knew 
 him instantly by his great size and beautiful 
 markings. He would give a single sharp 
 call, and listen intently, swinging his head 
 from side to side as the separate echoes came 
 ringing back from the hills. Then he would 
 try his cackling laugh, Ooo-ah-ha-ha-ha-hoo ! 
 ooo-ah-ha-ha-ha-hoo ! and as the echoes began 
 to clatter about his head he would get 
 excited, sitting up on his tail, flapping his 
 wings, cackling and shrieking with glee at 
 his own performance. Every wild syllable 
 was flung back like a shot from the sur- 
 rounding hills, till the air seemed full of 
 loons, all mingling their crazy cachinnations 
 with the din of the chief performer. The 
 uproar made one shiver. Then Hukweem 
 would cease suddenly, listening intently to 
 the warring echoes. Before the confusion 
 
I II 
 
 was ended he would get excited again, and 
 
 swim about in small circles, spreading wings 
 
 and tail, showing his fine feathers as if every J^uAtcfeem 
 
 echo were an admiring loon, pleased as a jr^-^^^^ 
 
 peacock with himself at having made such 
 
 a noise in a quiet world. 
 
 There was another loon, a mother bird, on 
 a different lake, whose two eggs had been 
 carried off by a thieving muskrat ; but she 
 did not know who did it, for Musquash 
 knows how to roll the eggs into water and 
 carry them off, before eating, where the 
 mother bird will not find the shells. She 
 came swimming down to meet us the moment 
 our canoe entered the lake; and what she 
 seemed to cry was, " Where are they .? O, 
 where are they 1 " She followed us across 
 the lake, accusing us of robbery, and asking 
 the same question over and over. 
 
 But whatever the meaning of Hukweem's 
 crying, it seems to constitute a large part of 
 his existence. Indeed, it is as a cry that he 
 is chiefly known — the wild, unearthly cry 
 of the wilderness night. His education for 
 this begins very early. Once I was exploring 
 
112 
 
 Jfuktaeem 
 Voice- 
 
 the grassy shores of a wild lake when a 
 mother loon appeared suddenly, out in the 
 middle, with a great splashing and crying. 
 I paddled out to see what was the matter. 
 She withdrew with a great effort, apparently, 
 as I approached, still crying loudly and beat- 
 ing the water with her wings. " Oho," I 
 said, " you have a nest in there somewhere, 
 and now you are trying to get me away from 
 it." This was the only time I have ever 
 known a loon to try that old mother bird's 
 trick. Generally they slip off the nest while 
 the canoe is yet half a mile away, and swim 
 under water a long distance, and watch you 
 silently from the other side of the lake. 
 
 I went back and hunted awhile for the 
 nest among the bogs of a little bay ; then left 
 the search to investigate a strange call that 
 sounded continuously farther up the shore. 
 It came from some hidden spot in the tall 
 grass, an eager little whistling cry, reminding 
 me somehow of a nest of young fish-hawks. 
 
 As I waded cautiously among the bogs, 
 trying to locate the sound, I came suddenly 
 upon the loon's nest — just the bare top of a 
 
113 
 
 bog, where the mother bird had pulled up 
 the grass and hollowed the earth enough to 
 keep the eggs from rolling out. They were T^uku/eem 
 there on the bare ground, two large olive (p^.-^J^"'' 
 eggs with dark blotches. I left them undis- 
 turbed and went on to investigate the crying, 
 which had stopped a moment as I approached 
 the nest. 
 
 Presently it began again behind me, faint 
 at first, then louder and more eager, till I 
 traced it back to Hukweem's household. 
 But there was nothing here to account for it, 
 only two innocent-looking eggs on the top 
 of a bog. I bent over to examine them more 
 closely. There, on the sides, were two holes, 
 and out of the holes projected the points of 
 two tiny bills. Inside were two little loons, 
 crying at the top of their lungs, " Let me 
 out ! O, let me out ! It 's hot in here. Let 
 me out — Oooo-eee ! pip-pip-pip ! " 
 
 But I left the work of release to the 
 mother bird, thinking she knew more about 
 it. Next day I went back to the place and, 
 after much watching, saw two little loons 
 stealing in and out among the bogs, exulting 
 
114 
 
 VoicCr,^ 
 
 in their freedom, but silent as two shadows. 
 The mother bird was off on the lake, fishing 
 Tfukaieem (f^ for their dinner. 
 
 ^wM^C-'^^- Hukweem's fishing is always an interest- 
 ing thing to watch. Unfortunately he is so 
 shy that one seldom gets a good opportunity. 
 Once I found his favorite fishing ground, 
 and came every day to "watch him from a 
 thicket on the shore. It was of little use to 
 go in a canoe. At my approach he would 
 sink deeper and deeper in the water, as if 
 taking in ballast. How he does this is a 
 mystery; for his body is much lighter than 
 its bulk of water. Dead or alive, it floats 
 like a cork; yet without any perceptible 
 effort, by an impulse of will apparently, he 
 sinks it out of sight. You are approach- 
 ing in your canoe, and he moves off slowly, 
 swinging his head from side to side so as to 
 look at you, first with one eye, then with the 
 other. Your canoe is swift; he sees that 
 you are gaining; that you are already too 
 near. He swings on the water, and sits 
 watching you steadily. Suddenly he begins 
 to sink, deeper and deeper, till his back is 
 
just awash. Go a little nearer, and now his 
 
 body disappears; only his neck and head 
 
 remain above water. Raise your hand, or 7{ukweem 
 
 make any quick motion, and he is gone y1^-"^^^l, 
 
 altogether. He dives like a flash, swims 
 
 deep and far, and when he comes to the 
 
 surface will be well out of danger. 
 
 If you notice the direction of his bill as it 
 enters the water, you can tell fairly well 
 where he will come up again. It was con- 
 fusing at first, in chasing him, to find that 
 he rarely came up where he was expected. 
 I would paddle hard in the direction he was 
 going, only to find him far to the right or 
 left, or behind me, when at last he showed 
 himself. That was because I followed his 
 body, not his bill. Moving in one direction, 
 he will turn his head and dive. That is to 
 mislead you, if you are following him. Follow 
 his bill, as he does himself, and you will be 
 near him when he rises ; for he rarely turns 
 under water. 
 
 With two good men to paddle, it is not 
 difficult to tire him out. Though he swims 
 with extraordinary rapidity under water — 
 
ii6 
 
 Voice' 
 
 fast enough to follow and catch a trout — a 
 long, deep dive tires him, and he must rest 
 7{ukiaeem ff^ before another. If you are chasing him, 
 ^*»V^ -^ln^~ shout and wave your hat the moment he 
 appears, and paddle hard the way his bill 
 points as he dives again. The next time he 
 comes up you are nearer to him. Send him 
 down again quick, and after him. The next 
 time he is frightened to see the canoe so 
 close, and dives deep, which tires him the 
 more. So his disappearances become shorter 
 and more confused; you follow him more 
 surely because you can see him plainly now 
 as he goes down. Suddenly he bursts out 
 of water beside you, scattering the spray into 
 your canoe. Once he came up under my 
 paddle, and I plucked a feather from his 
 back before he got away. 
 
 This last appearance always scares him 
 out of his wits, and you get what you have 
 been working hard for — a sight of Huk- 
 weem getting under way. Away he goes in 
 a smother of spray, beating the water with his 
 wings, kicking hard to lift himself up; and 
 so for a hundred yards, leaving a wake like 
 
a stern-wheel steamer, till he gathers head- 
 way enough to rise from the water. 
 
 After that first start there is no sign of T/ukufeem 
 
 awkwardness. His short wines rise and fall *:*.-^*^"* 
 
 . ,. , . , , „ Voice" 
 
 with a rapidity that tries the eye to follow, 
 
 like the rush of a coot down wind to decoys. 
 You can hear the swift, strong beat of them, 
 far over your head, when he is not calling. 
 His flight is very rapid, very even, and often 
 at enormous altitudes. But when he wants 
 to come down he always gets frightened, 
 thinking of his short wings, and how high 
 he is, and how fast he is going. On the 
 ocean, in winter, where he has all the room 
 he wants, he sometimes comes down in a 
 great incline, miles long, and plunges through 
 and over a dozen waves, like a dolphin, 
 before he can stop. But where the lake is 
 small, and he cannot come down that way, 
 he has a dizzy time of it. 
 
 Once, on a little lake in September, I used 
 to watch for hours to get a sight of the pro- 
 cess. Twelve or fifteen loons were gathered 
 there, holding high carnival. They called 
 down every migrating loon that passed that 
 
ii8 
 
 Tfuktaeem 
 meMght 
 
 way; their numbers increased daily. Twi- 
 light was the favorite time for arriving. In 
 the stillness I would hear Hukweem far 
 away, so high that he was only a voice. 
 Presently I would see him whirling over 
 the lake in a great circle. — "Come down; 
 O, come down," cry all the loons. " I 'm 
 afraid ; ooo-ho-ho-ho-ho-hoooo-eee ! I 'm afraid," 
 says Hukweem, who is perhaps a little loon, 
 all the way from Labrador on his first migra- 
 tion, and has never come down from a height 
 before. " Come on ; O, come oh-ho-ho-ho-ho- 
 hon I It won't hurt you; we did it; come 
 on," cry all the loons. 
 
 Then Hukweem would slide lower with 
 each circle, whirling round and round the lake 
 in a great spiral, yelling all the time, and all 
 the loons answering. When low enough, he 
 would set his wings and plunge like a shot 
 at the very midst of the assembly, which 
 scattered wildly, yelling like school-boys — 
 " Look out ! he '11 break his neck ; he '11 hit 
 you ; he '11 break your back if he hits you." 
 — So they splashed away in a desperate 
 fright, each one looking back over his 
 
119 
 
 shoulder to see Hukweem come down ; which 
 
 he would do at a terrific pace, striking the 
 
 water with a mighty splash, and shooting half 7fuAic/eem 
 
 across the lake in a smother of white, before he tt^- -^^^i, 
 
 could get his legs under him and turn around. 
 
 Then all the loons would gather round him, 
 
 cackling, shrieking, laughing, with such a 
 
 din as the little loon never heard in his life 
 
 before ; and he would go off in the midst of 
 
 them, telling them, no doubt, what a mighty 
 
 thing it was to come down from so high and 
 
 not break his neck. 
 
 Later in the fall I saw those same loons 
 do an astonishing thing. For several even- 
 ings they had been keeping up an unusual 
 racket in a quiet bay, out of sight of my 
 camp. I asked Simmo what they were doing. 
 — " O, I don' know ; playin' game, I guess, 
 jus' like one boy. Hukweem do dat some- 
 time, wen he not hongry," said Simmo, going 
 on with his bean-cooking. That excited my 
 curiosity ; but when I reached the bay it was 
 too dark to see what they were playing. 
 
 One evening, while I was fishing, the 
 racket was different from any I had heard 
 
I20 
 
 Tfuktaeem 
 
 me/T/ghf 
 
 Voices. 
 
 '^ifi 
 
 
 before. There would be an interval of per- 
 fect silence, broken suddenly by wild yelling; 
 then the ordinary loon talk for a few minutes, 
 and another silence, broken by a shriller out- 
 /^G cry. That meant that something unusual 
 was going on ; so L left the trout, to find out 
 about it. 
 
 When I pushed my canoe through the 
 fringe of water grass on the point nearest 
 the loons, they were scattered in a long line, 
 twelve or fifteen of them, extending from 
 the head of the bay to a point nearly oppo- 
 site me. At the other end of the line two 
 loons were swimming about, doing something 
 which I could not make out. Suddenly the 
 loon talk ceased. There may have been a 
 signal given, which I did not hear. Any- 
 way, the two loons faced about at the same 
 moment and came tearing down the line, 
 using wings and feet to help in the race. 
 The upper loons swung in behind them as 
 they passed, so as to watch the finish better; 
 but not a sound was heard till they passed 
 my end of the line in a close, hard race, 
 one scarcely a yard ahead of the other; 
 
121 
 
 when such a yelling began as I never heard 
 
 before. All the loons gathered about the 
 
 two swimmers; there was much cackling T/uAiaeem 
 
 and crying, which grew gradually quieter; ip^.-'^^"!' 
 
 then they began to string out in another 
 
 long line, and two more racers took their 
 
 places at one end of it. By that time it was 
 
 almost dark, and I broke up the race trying 
 
 to get nearer in my canoe, so as to watch 
 
 things better. 
 
 Twice since then I have heard from sum- 
 mer campers of their having seen loons 
 racing across a lake. I have no doubt it is 
 a frequent pastime with the birds when the 
 summer cares for the young are ended, and 
 autumn days are mellow, and fish are plenty, 
 and there are long hours just for fun together, 
 before Hukweem moves southward for the 
 hard, solitary, winter life on the seacoast. 
 
 Of all the loons that cried out to me in 
 the night, or shared the summer lakes with 
 me, only one ever gave me the opportunity 
 of watching at close quarters. It was on a 
 very wild lake — so wild that no one had 
 ever visited it before in summer — and a 
 
122 
 
 Jfuktaeem 
 Voice:. 
 
 mother loon felt safe in leaving the open 
 shore, where she generally nests, and placing 
 her eggs on a bog at the head of a narrow 
 bay. I found them there a day or two after 
 my arrival. 
 
 I used to go at all hours of the day, hoping 
 the mother would get used to me and my 
 canoe, so that I could watch her later, teach- 
 ing her little ones ; but her wildness was 
 unconquerable. Whenever I came in sight 
 of the nest-bog, with only the loon's neck 
 and head visible, standing up straight and 
 still in the grass, I would see her slip from 
 the nest, steal away through the green cover 
 to a deep place, and glide under water with- 
 out leaving a ripple. Then, looking sharp 
 over the gunwale into the clear water, I 
 would get a glimpse of her — just a gray 
 streak with a string of silver bubbles — pass- 
 ing deep and swift under my canoe. So she 
 went through the opening, and appeared far 
 out in the lake, where she would swim back 
 and forth, as if fishing, until I went away. 
 As I never disturbed her nest, and always 
 paddled away soon, she thought that she had 
 
v/ce 
 
 fooled me, and that I knew nothing about 
 her or her nest. 
 
 Then I tried another plan. I lay down in T^ukioeem 
 my canoe, and had Simmo paddle me up to y.^ -Jiwhr 
 
 the nest. While the loon was out on the 
 lake, hidden by the grassy shore, I went 
 and sat on a bog, with a friendly alder bend- 
 ing over me, within twenty feet of the nest. 
 Then Simmo paddled away, and Hukweem 
 came back without the slightest suspicion. 
 As I had supposed from the shape of the 
 nest, she did not sit on her two eggs ; she 
 sat on the bog instead, and gathered them 
 close to her side with her wing. That was 
 all the brooding they had, or needed; for 
 within a week there were two bright little 
 loons to watch instead of the eggs. 
 
 After the first success I used to go alone 
 and, while the mother bird was out on the 
 lake, would pull my canoe up in the grass, a 
 hundred yards or so below the nest. From 
 here I entered the alders and made my way 
 to the bog, where I could see Hukweem's 
 household plainly. After a long wait she 
 would steal into the bay and, after much fear 
 
and circumspection, glide up to the canoe. 
 
 It took a great deal of looking and listening 
 
 Jfukiaeem (f^ to convince her that it was harmless, and that 
 
 ^^ if^-^^-^^-- ^ ^^'^ ^^^ hiding near in the grass. Once 
 
 ' assured, however, she would come direct to 
 
 the nest ; and I had the satisfaction at last of 
 
 watching a loon at close quarters. 
 
 She would sit there for hours — never 
 sleeping apparently, for her eye was always 
 bright — preening herself, turning her head 
 slowly, so as to watch on all sides, snapping 
 now and then at an obtrusive fly, — all in 
 utter unconsciousness that I was just behind 
 her, watching every movement. Then, when 
 I had seen enough, I would steal away along 
 a caribou path, and push off quietly in my 
 canoe without looking back. She saw me, of 
 course, when I entered the canoe, but not 
 once did she leave the nest. When I reached 
 the open lake, a little searching with my glass 
 always showed me her head there in the grass, 
 still turned in my direction apprehensively. 
 
 I had hoped to see her let the little ones 
 out of their hard shell, and see them first 
 take the water; but that was too much to 
 
125 
 
 expect. One day I heard them whistHng in 
 the eggs; the next day, when I came, there 
 was nothing to be seen on the nest-bog. I T^ukweem 
 feared that something had heard their whis- jt^-''^^^^^ 
 tling and put an untimely end to the young <^ 
 
 Hukweems while mother bird was away. But 
 when she came back, after a more fearful 
 survey than usual of the old bark canoe, two 
 downy little fellows came bobbing to meet 
 her out of the grass, where she had hidden 
 them and told them to stay till she came back. 
 Like all wild birds, she had carried the egg- 
 shells far away, or swallowed them, lest their 
 conspicuous whiteness guide some fierce, 
 thieving eye to her household. 
 
 It was a rare treat to watch them at their 
 first feeding, the little ones all eagerness, 
 bobbing about in the delight of eating and 
 the wonder of the new great world, the 
 mother all tenderness and watchfulness. 
 Hukweem had never looked to me so noble 
 before. This great wild mother bird, moving 
 ceaselessly with marvelous grace about her 
 little ones, watching their play with exquisite 
 fondness, and watching the great dangerous 
 
, world for their sakes, now chiding them 
 gently, now drawing near to touch them with 
 7{uktaeem t^ her strong bill, or to rub their little cheeks 
 ^yy ■^r^" ^'^^ hers, or just to croon over them in an 
 ecstasy of that wonderful mother love which 
 makes the summer wilderness beautiful, — 
 in ten minutes she upset my theories, and 
 won me altogether, spite of what I had 
 heard and seen of her destructiveness on the 
 fishing grounds. After all, why should she 
 not fish as well as I ? 
 
 And then began the first lessons in swim- 
 ming and hiding and diving, which I had 
 waited so long to see. 
 
 Later I saw her bring little fish, which she 
 had purposely crippled, turn them loose in 
 shallow water, and with a sharp cluck bring 
 the young loons out of their hiding, to set 
 them chasing and diving wildly for their 
 own dinners. But before that happened 
 there was almost a tragedy. 
 
 One day, while the mother was gone fish- 
 ing, the little ones came out of their' hiding 
 among the grasses, and ventured out some 
 distance into the bay. It was their first 
 
journey alone into the world ; they were full of 
 the wonder and importance of it. Suddenly, 
 as I watched, they began to dart about wildly, 
 moving with astonishing rapidity for such 
 little fellows, and whistling loudly. From the 
 bank above, a swift ripple had cut out into 
 the water between them and the only bit of 
 bog with which they were familiar. Just 
 behind the ripple were the sharp nose and the 
 beady eyes of Musquash, who is always in 
 some mischief of this kind. In one of his 
 prowlings he had discovered the little brood ; 
 now he was manoeuvering craftily to keep 
 the frightened youngsters moving till they 
 should be tired out, while he swam between 
 them and the shore, to cut off their retreat. 
 
 Musquash knows well that when a young 
 loon, or a sheldrake, or a black duck is 
 caught in the open, like that, he always tries 
 to get back where his mother hid him when 
 she went away. That is what the poor little 
 fellows were trying to do now, only to be 
 driven back and kept moving wildly by the 
 muskrat, who lifted himself now and then 
 from the water, and wiggled his ugly jaws in 
 
 127 
 
 Tfukiaeem 
 meJ^hf 
 Voice 
 
128 
 
 Tfuktaeem 
 Voice-,, 
 
 anticipation of the feast. He had missed the 
 eggs in his search ; but young loon would be 
 better, and more of it. — " There you are ! " 
 he snapped viciously, lunging at the nearest 
 loon, which flashed under water and barely 
 escaped. 
 
 I had started up to interfere, for I had 
 grown fond of the little wild things whose 
 growth I had watched from the beginning, 
 when a great splashing began on my left, and 
 I saw the old mother bird coming like a fury. 
 She was half swimming, half flying, tearing 
 over the water at a great pace, a foamy white 
 wake behind her. — " Now, you little villain, 
 take your medicine. It 's coming ; it 's com- 
 ing," I thought excitedly, and dodged back 
 to watch. But Musquash, intent on his evil 
 doing (he has no need whatever to turn flesh- 
 eater), kept on viciously after the exhausted 
 little ones, paying no heed to his rear. 
 
 Twenty yards away the mother bird, to my 
 great astonishment, flashed out of sight under 
 water. What could it mean! Suddenly a 
 catapult seemed to strike the muskrat from 
 beneath and lift him clear from the water. 
 
With a tremendous rush and sputter Huk- 
 
 I 2Q 
 
 weem came out beneath him, her great 
 
 pointed bill driven through to his spine. T^ukuieem 
 
 Little need of my help now. With another 0,^-'^^^^^ 
 
 straight hard drive, this time at eye and brain, 
 
 she flung him aside disdainfully, and rushed 
 
 to her shivering little ones, questioning, chid- ' 
 
 ing, praising them, all in the same breath, 
 
 fluttering and cackling low in an hysteric 
 
 wave of tenderness. Then she swam twice 
 
 around the dead muskrat and led her brood 
 
 away from the place. 
 
 Perhaps it was to one of those same little 
 ones that I owe a service for which I am 
 more than grateful. It was in September, 
 when I was at a lake ten miles, away — the 
 same lake into which a score of frolicking 
 young loons gathered before moving south, 
 and swam a race or two for my benefit. I 
 was lost one day, hopelessly lost, in trying to 
 make my way from a trout pond where I had 
 been fishing, to the lake where my camp was. 
 It was late afternoon. To avoid the long 
 hard tramp down a river, up which I had 
 
VoiceA 
 
 come in the early morning, I attempted to 
 cut across through unbroken forest without 
 TfuAtaeem (g^ a compass. Traveling through a northern 
 ^y^^i-'^te forest in summer is desperately hard work. 
 , ^,, The moss is ankle deep, the underbrush 
 1^^ thick; fallen logs lie across each other in 
 "^^ hopeless confusion, through and under and 
 over which one must make his laborious 
 way, stung and pestered by hordes of black 
 flies and mosquitoes. So that, unlesg you 
 have a strong instinct of direction, it is 
 almost impossible to hold your course with- 
 out a compass, or a bright sun, to guide you. 
 I had not gone half the distance before I 
 was astray. The sun was long obscured, and 
 a drizzling rain set in, without any direction 
 whatever in.it by the time it reached the 
 underbrush where I was. I had begun to 
 make a little shelter, intending to put in a 
 cheerless night there, when I heard a cry 
 and, looking up, caught a glimpse of Huk- 
 weem speeding high over the tree-tops. Far 
 down on my right came a faint answering 
 cry, and I hastened in its direction, making 
 an Indian compass of broken twigs as I went 
 
along. Hukweem was a young loon, and 
 was long in coming down. The crying 
 ahead grew louder. Stirred up from their Tfuktaeem 
 day rest by his arrival, the other loons began Sl^.^U^"'^ 
 their sport earlier than usual. The crying 
 soon became almost continuous, and I fol- 
 lowed it straight to the lake. 
 
 Once there, it was a simple matter to find 
 the river and my old canoe waiting patiently 
 under the alders in the gathering twilight. 
 Soon I was afloat again, with a sense of 
 unspeakable relief that only one can appre- 
 ciate who has been lost and now hears the 
 ripples sing under him, knowing that the 
 cheerless woods lie behind, and that the camp- 
 fire beckons beyond yonder point. The 
 loons were hallooing far away, and I went 
 over — this time in pure gratitude — to see 
 them again. But my guide was modest and 
 vanished post-haste into the mist the moment 
 my canoe appeared. 
 
 Since then, whenever I hear Hukweem 
 in the night, or hear others speak of his 
 unearthly laughter, I think of that cry over 
 the tree-tops, and the thrilling answer far 
 
132 
 
 Jfukb/eem 
 
 away. And the sound has a ring to it, in 
 my ears, that it never had before. Hukweem 
 the Night Voice found me astray in the 
 woods, and brought me safe to a snug camp. 
 — That is a service which one does not 
 forget in the wilderness. 
 
ORIOLES 
 
 133 
 
AN ORIOLE'S NEST 
 
 OW suggestive it is, swing- 
 ing there through sunlight and 
 shadow from the long droop- 
 ing tips of the old elm boughs ! 
 And what a delightful cradle for the 
 young orioles, swayed all day long by 
 every breath of the summer breeze, 
 peeping through chinks as the world sweeps 
 by, watching with bright eyes the boy below 
 who looks up in vain, or the mountain of hay 
 that brushes them in passing, and whistling 
 cheerily, blow high or low, with never a fear 
 of falling ! The mother bird must feel very 
 comfortable about it as she goes off cater- 
 pillar hunting ; for no bird enemy can trouble 
 the little ones while she is gone. The black 
 snake, that horror of all low-nesting birds, 
 will never cUmb so high. The red squirrel 
 — little wretch that he is, to eat young birds 
 ^35 
 
136 
 
 — cannot find a footing on those delicate 
 branches. Neither can the crow find a rest- 
 7ln Or/o/esWesf ^"^^ place from which to steal the young; 
 and the hawk's legs are not long enough to 
 reach down and grasp them, should he per- 
 chance venture near the house and hover an 
 instant over the nest. 
 
 Besides all this, the oriole is a neighborly- 
 little body ; and that helps her. Though the 
 young are kept from harm anywhere by the 
 cunning instinct which builds a hanging 
 nest, she still prefers to build near the house, 
 where hawks and crows and owls rarely 
 come. She • knows her friends and takes 
 advantage of their protection, returning year 
 after year to the same old elm, and, like a 
 thrifty little housewife, carefully saving and 
 sorting the good threads of her storm-wrecked 
 old house to be used in building the new. 
 
 Of late years, however, it has seemed to 
 me that the pretty nests on the secluded 
 streets of New England towns are growing 
 scarcer. The orioles are peace-loving birds, 
 and dislike the society of those noisy, pug- 
 nacious little rascals, the English sparrows, 
 
which have of late taken possession of our 
 
 streets. Often now I find the nests far away 
 
 from any house, on lonely roads where, a few 
 
 years ago, they were rarely seen. Sometimes 
 
 also a solitary farmhouse, too far from the town yjn ^r/o/e^ Nesf 
 
 to be much visited by sparrows, has two or 
 
 three nests swinging from its old elms, where 
 
 formerly there was but one. 
 
 It is an interesting evidence of the bird's 
 keen instinct that, where nests are built on 
 lonely roads and away from houses, they are 
 noticeably deeper, and so better protected 
 from bird enemies. The same thing is some- 
 times noticed of nests built in maple or apple 
 trees, which are without the protection of 
 drooping branches, upon which birds of prey 
 can find no footing. Some wise birds secure 
 the same protection by simply contracting the 
 neck of the nest, instead of building a deep 
 one. Young birds, building their first nests, 
 seem afraid to trust in the strength of their 
 own weaving. Their nests are invariably 
 shallow, and so suffer most from birds of prey. 
 
 In the choice of building material the 
 birds are very careful. They know well that 
 
138 
 
 no branch supports the nest from beneath ; 
 that the safety of the young orioles depends 
 on good material, well woven together. In 
 some wise way they seem to know at a 
 glance whether a thread is strong enough to 
 be trusted; but sometimes, in selecting the 
 first threads that are to bear the whole 
 weight of the nest, they are unwilling to 
 trust to appearances. At such times a pair 
 of birds may be seen holding a little tug-of- 
 war, with feet braced, shaking and pulling 
 the thread like a pair of terriers, till it is well 
 tested. 
 
 In gathering and testing the materials for 
 a nest the orioles display no little ingenuity. 
 One day, a few years ago, I was lying under 
 some shrubs, watching a pair of the birds that 
 were building close to the house. It was a 
 typical nest-making day, the sun pouring his 
 bright rays through delicate green leaves 
 and a glory of white apple blossoms, the 
 air filled with warmth and fragrance, birds 
 and bees busy ever}rwhere. Orioles seem 
 always happy ; to-day they quite overflowed 
 in the midst of all the brightness, though 
 
materials were scarce and thev must needs 
 
 be diligent. ^^ 
 
 The female was very industrious, never 
 returning to the nest without some contri- 
 bution ; while the male frolicked about the yjn ^rjol^ Nesf 
 trees in his brilliant orange and black, whis- 
 tling his warm rich notes, and seeming like 
 a dash of southern sunshine amidst the 
 blossoms. Sometimes he stopped in his 
 frolic to find a bit of string, over which he 
 raised an impromptu jubilate, or to fly with 
 his mate to the nest, uttering that soft rich 
 twitter of his in a mixture of blarney and 
 congratulation whenever she found some 
 particularly choice material. But his chief 
 part seemed to be to furnish the celebration, 
 while she took care of the nest-making. 
 
 Out in front of me, under the lee of the 
 old wall whither some line-stripping gale had 
 blown it, was a torn fragment of cloth with 
 loose threads showing everywhere. I was 
 wondering why the birds did not utilize it, 
 when the male, in one of his lively flights, 
 discovered it and flew down. First he 
 hopped all around it ; next he tried some 
 
threads ; but, as the cloth was lying loose on 
 140 . 1. 
 
 the grass, the whole piece came whenever he 
 
 ^n Or/o/esWesf P^^^d. For a few moments he worked dili- 
 gently, trying a pull on each side in succes- 
 sion. Once he tumbled end over end in a 
 comical scramble, as the fragment caught on 
 a grass stub but gave way when he had 
 braced himself and was pulling hardest. 
 Quite abruptly he flew off, and I thought 
 he had given up the attempt. 
 
 In a minute he was back with his mate, 
 thinking, no doubt, that she, as a capable 
 little manager, would know all about such 
 things. If birds do not talk, they have at 
 least some very ingenious ways of letting 
 one another know what they think, which 
 amounts to the same thing. 
 
 The two worked together for some minutes, 
 getting an occasional thread, but not enough 
 to pay for the labor. The trouble was that 
 both pulled together on the same side ; and 
 so they merely dragged the bit of cloth all 
 over the lawn, instead of pulling out the 
 threads they wanted. Once they unraveled 
 a long thread by pulling at right angles, but 
 
the next moment they were together on the 
 
 same side agam. The male seemed to do, 
 
 not as he was told, but exactly what he saw 
 
 his mate do. Whenever she pulled at a 
 
 thread, he hopped around, as close to her _^ '^rio/ei Nesf 
 
 as he could get, and pulled too. 
 
 Twice they had given up the attempt, only 
 to return after hunting diligently elsewhere. 
 Good material was scarce that season. I was 
 wondering how long their patience would 
 last, when the female suddenly seized the 
 cloth by a corner and flew along close to 
 the ground, dragging it after her, chirping 
 loudly the while. She disappeared into a 
 hawthorn tree in a corner of the garden, 
 whither the male followed her a moment 
 later. 
 
 Curious as to what they were doing, yet 
 fearing to disturb them, I waited where I 
 was till I saw both birds fly to the nest, 
 each with some long threads. This was 
 repeated; and then curiosity got the better 
 of consideration. While the orioles were 
 weaving the last threads into their nest, I 
 ran round the house, crept a long way 
 
142 
 
 Tin Orio/e's 
 
 behind the old wall, and so to a safe hiding 
 place near the hawthorn. 
 
 The orioles had solved their problem ; the 
 bit of cloth was fastened there securely 
 among the thorns. Soon the birds came 
 back and, seizing some threads by the ends, 
 raveled them out without difficulty. It was 
 the work of but a moment to gather as much 
 material as they could use at one weaving. 
 For an hour or more I watched them work- 
 ing industriously between the hawthorn and 
 the old elm, where the nest was growing 
 rapidly to a beautiful 
 depth. Several times the 
 bit of cloth slipped from 
 the thorns as the birds 
 pulled, upon it; but as 
 often as it did they carried 
 it back and fastened it 
 more securely, till at last 
 
it grew so snarled that they could get no 
 more long threads, when they left it for 
 good. 
 
 That same day I carried out some bright- 
 colored bits of worsted and ribbon, and scat- jJn ^rJo/e's Nesf 
 tered them on the grass. The birds soon 
 found them and used them in completing 
 their nest. For a while a gayer little dwell- 
 ing was never seen in a tree. The bright 
 bits of color in the soft gray of the walls gave 
 the nest always a holiday appearance, in good 
 keeping with the high spirits of the orioles. 
 But by the time the young had chipped the 
 shell, and the joyousness of nest-building had 
 given place to the constant duties of filling 
 hungry little mouths, the rains and the sun 
 of summer had bleached the bright colors to 
 a uniform sober gray. 
 
 That was a happy family from beginning 
 to end. No accident ever befell it ; no enemy 
 disturbed its peace. And when the young 
 birds had flown away to the South, I took 
 down the nest which I had helped to build, 
 and hung it in my study as a souvenir of my 
 bright little neighbors. 
 
ONE TOUCH 
 OF NATURE 
 
 MS 
 
ONE TOUCH OF NATURE 
 
 C- — I ( — ^HE cheery whistle of 
 a quail recalls to most 
 New England people 
 a vision of breezy up- 
 land pastures, with a 
 mottled brown bird 
 calling melodiously 
 from the topmost 
 slanting rail of the old 
 sheep-fence. Farmers 
 say he foretells the 
 ■ weather, calling, More- 
 
 wet ; Tfiuch-more-wet ! Boys say he only pro- 
 claims his name. Bob White ! I 'm Bob 
 White ! But whether he prognosticates or 
 introduces himself, his voice is always a 
 welcome one. Those who know the call 
 listen with pleasure, and speedily come to 
 love the bird that makes it. 
 
 147 
 
148 
 
 Bob White has another call, more beauti- 
 ful than his boyish whistle, which compar- 
 Oneahuch atively few have heard. It is a soft, liquid 
 AT * "^ yodeling, which the male bird uses to call the 
 scattered flock together. One who walks in 
 the woods at sunset sometimes hears it from 
 a tangle of grapevine and bullbrier. If he 
 has the patience to push his way carefully 
 through the underbrush, he may see the 
 beautiful Bob on a rock or stump, utter- 
 ing the softest and most musical of whistles. 
 He is telling his flock that here is a nice 
 place he has found, where they can spend 
 the night and be safe from owls and prowl- 
 ing foxes. 
 
 If the watcher be very patient and still, he 
 will presently hear the pattering of tiny feet 
 on the leaves, and see the brown birds come 
 running in from every direction. Once in a 
 lifetime, perhaps, he may see them gather in 
 a close circle — tails together, heads out, like 
 the spokes of a wheel, and so go to sleep for 
 the night. Their soft whistlings and chirp- 
 ings at such times form the most delightful 
 sound one ever hears in the woods. 
 
149 
 
 This call of the male bird is not difficult 
 to imitate. Hunters use it occasionally to 
 call a scattered covey together, or to locate 0ne3fouch of 
 the male birds, which generally answer the Nafure^^f^- 
 leader's call. I have frequently called a flock 
 of the birds into a thicket at sunset, and 
 caught running glimpses of them as they 
 hurried about, looking for the bugler who 
 iSl'j / called taps. 
 
 t me, late one after- 
 
 noon, in the great 
 
Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. I was 
 watching a yard of birds — three or four 
 Oneafoucfi hundred representatives of the pheasant 
 % ^ of family, from all over the earth, that were run- 
 ning about among the rocks and artificial 
 copses. Some were almost as wild as if in 
 their native woods ; others had grown tame 
 from being constantly fed by visitors. 
 
 It was rather confusing to a bird lover, 
 familiar only with home birds, to see all the 
 strange forms and colors in the grass, and to 
 hear a chorus of unknown notes from trees 
 and underbrush. But suddenly there was a 
 touch of naturalness. That beautiful brown 
 bird with the shapely body and the quick, 
 nervous run, — no one could mistake him; 
 it was Bob White. And with him came a 
 flash of the dear New England landscape 
 three thousand miles away. Another and 
 another showed himself and was gone. 
 Then I thought of the woods at sunset, 
 and began to call softly. 
 
 The carnivora were being fed not far 
 away; a frightful uproar came from the 
 cages. The coughing roar of a male lion 
 

 
 uttering the softest and most musical of whistles 
 
made the air shiver. Cockatoos screamed; 
 noisy parrots squawked hideously. Chil- 
 dren were playing and shouting near by. Qneufouch of 
 In the yard itself fifty birds were singing or Nafure''^^^^ 
 crying strange notes. Besides all this, the 
 quail I had seen had been hatched far from 
 home, under a strange mother. So I had 
 little hope of success. 
 
 But as the call grew louder and louder, 
 a liquid yodel came like an electric shock 
 from a clump of bushes on the left. There 
 he was, looking, listening. Another call, 
 and he came running toward me. Others 
 appeared from every direction, and soon a 
 score of quail were running about, just inside 
 the screen, with soft gurglings like a hidden 
 brook, doubly delightful to an ear that had 
 longed to hear them. 
 
 City, gardens, beasts, strangers, — all van- 
 ished in an instant. I was a boy in the 
 fields again. The rough New England hill- 
 side grew tender and beautiful in the sunset 
 light; the hollows were rich in autumn 
 glory. The pasture brook sang on its way 
 to the river; a robin called from a crimson 
 
maple; and all around was the low, thrilling 
 
 whistle and the patter of welcome feet on 
 
 One&ouch leaves, as Bob White came running again to 
 
 Yr , ''^ meet his countryman. 
 Nature ■' 
 
KOSKOMENOS 
 THE OUTCAST 
 
 153 
 
OSKOMENOS the kingfisher is an 
 outcast among the birds. I think they 
 regard him as a half-reptile, who has not 
 yet climbed high enough in the bird scale to 
 deserve recognition ; so they let him severely 
 alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before 
 taking a swoop at him, not knowing whether 
 the gaudy creature is dangerous or only 
 uncanny. I saw a great hawk once drop like 
 a bolt upon a kingfisher that hung on quiver- 
 ing wings, rattling softly, before his hole in 
 the bank. But the robber lost his nerve at 
 the instant when he should have dropped his 
 
, claws to strike. He swerved aside and shot 
 156 
 
 upward in a great slant to a dead spruce top, 
 •Aomenos where he stood watching intently till the 
 Outcast dark beak of a brooding kingfisher reached 
 out of the hole to receive the fish that her 
 mate had brought her. Whereupon Kos- 
 komenos swept away to his watchtower above 
 the minnow pool, and the hawk set his wings 
 toward the outlet, where a brood of young 
 sheldrakes were taking their first lessons in 
 the open water. 
 
 No wonder the birds look askance at 
 Kingfisher. His head is ridiculously large ; 
 his feet ridiculously small. He is a poem of 
 grace in the air; but he creeps like a lizard, 
 or waddles like a duck in the rare moments 
 when he is afoot. His mouth is big enough 
 to take in a minnow whole ; his tongue so 
 small that he has no voice, but only a harsh 
 klr-r-r-r-ik-ik-ik, like a watchman's rattle. 
 He builds no nest, but rather a den in the 
 bank, in which he lives most filthily half the 
 day ; yet the other half he is a clean, beauti- 
 ful creature, with never a suggestion of earth, 
 but only of the blue heavens above and the 
 
157 
 
 (osk 
 fhe S^ufcasf 
 
 color-steeped water below, in his bright gar- 
 ments. Water will not wet him, though he 
 plunge a dozen times beneath the surface. Koskomenos 
 His clatter is harsh, noisy, diabolical; yet 
 his plunge into the stream, with its flash of 
 color, its silver spray, and its tinkle of smitten 
 water, is the most musical thing in the 
 wilderness. 
 
 As a fisherman he has no equal. His 
 fishy, expressionless eye is yet the keenest 
 that sweeps the water, and his swoop puts 
 even the fish-hawk to shame for its certainty 
 and its lightning quickness. 
 
 Besides all these contradictions, he is soli- 
 tary, unknown, inapproachable. He has no 
 youth, no play, no joy except to eat ; he asso- 
 ciates with nobody, not even with his own 
 kind ; and when he catches a fish, and beats 
 it against a limb till it is dead, and sits with 
 head back-tilted, swallowing his prey, with a 
 clattering chuckle deep down in his throat, a 
 suspicion creeps over you, as you watch, that 
 the birds are right in casting him out ; that 
 there is too much lizard still left in him to 
 class him properly among the fowls of the air. 
 
158 
 
 It is this uncanny mixture of bird and rep- 
 tile that has made the kingfisher an object of 
 \komenos superstition among all savage peoples. The 
 Outcast legends about him are legion; his crested 
 head is prized above all others by savages as 
 a charm or fetish ; and even among civilized 
 peoples his dried body may still sometimes 
 be seen hanging to a pole, in the belief that 
 his bill will point out the quarter from which 
 the next wind will blow. 
 
 But Koskomenos has another side ; though 
 the world, as yet, has found out little about 
 it. One day, in the wilderness, I cheered 
 him quite involuntarily. It was late after- 
 noon ; the fishing was over, and I sat in my 
 canoe watching for anything that might come 
 along. Across the stream was a clay bank, 
 near the top of which a dark hole showed 
 where a pair, of kingfishers had dug their 
 long tunnel. " There is nothing for them to 
 stand on there; how did they begin that 
 hole .? " I wondered lazily ; " and how can 
 they ever raise a brood, with an open door 
 like that for mink and weasel to enter .? " 
 Here were two new problems to add to the 
 
many unsolved ones which meet you at every 
 turn on the woodland byways. 
 
 A movement under the shore stopped my Tioskomenos 
 wondering, and the long lithe form of a hunt- the ^^Oufcasf 
 ing mink shot swiftly up stream. Under the 
 hole he stopped, raised himself with his fore 
 paws against the bank, twisting his head from 
 side to side and sniffing nervously. " Some- 
 thing good up there," he thought, and began 
 to climb. But the bank was sheer and soft ; 
 he slipped back half a dozen times without 
 rising two feet. Then he went down stream 
 to a point where some roots gave him a foot- 
 hold, and ran lightly up till under the dark 
 eaves that threw their shadowy roots over 
 the clay bank. There he crept cautiously 
 along till his nose found the nest, when he 
 slipped down and rested his fore paws on the 
 threshold. A long sniff of the rank fishy 
 odor that pours out of a kingfisher's den, a 
 keen look all around to be sure the old birds 
 were not returning, and he vanished like a 
 shadow. 
 
 " There is one brood of kingfishers the 
 less," I thought, with my glasses focused on 
 
i6o 
 
 the hole. But scarcely was the thought 
 formed when a fierce rumbling clatter 
 \komenos sounded in the bank. The mink shot out, 
 ^tcasf a streak of red showing plainly across his 
 brown face. After him came a kingfisher, 
 clattering out a storm of invectives, and aid- 
 ing his progress by vicious jabs at his rear. 
 He had made a miscalculation that time ; the 
 old mother bird was at home waiting for him, 
 and drove her powerful beak at his evil eye 
 the moment it appeared at the inner end of 
 the tunnel. That took the longing for young 
 kingfisher all out of Cheokhes. He plunged 
 headlong down the bank, the bird swooping 
 after him with a rattling alarm that brought 
 another kingfisher in a twinkling. The mink 
 dived, but it was useless to attempt escape in 
 that way; the keen eyes above followed his 
 flight perfectly. When he came to the sur- 
 face, twenty feet away, both birds were over 
 him and dropped like plummets on his 
 head. So they drove him down stream 
 and out of sight. 
 
 Years afterward I solved the second prob- 
 lem suggested by the kingfisher's den, when 
 
So they drove him down stream and out of sight 
 
i6i 
 
 I had the good fortune, one day, to watch 
 a pair beginning their tunneling. All who 
 have ever watched the bird have, no doubt, J(oskomenos 
 noticed his wonderful ability to stop short in ffie ^R^ufcasr 
 swift flight and hold himself poised in mid- 
 air for an indefinite time, while watching the 
 movements of a minnow beneath. They 
 make use of this ability in beginning their 
 nest on a bank so steep as to afford no 
 foothold. 
 
 As I watched the pair referred to, first one 
 then the other would hover before the point 
 selected, as a humming bird balances for a 
 moment at the door of a trumpet flower to 
 be sure that no one is watching ere he goes 
 in, then drive his beak with rapid plunges 
 into the bank, sending down a continuous 
 shower of clay to the river below. In a 
 remarkably short time they had a foothold 
 and proceeded to dig themselves in out of 
 sight. 
 
 Kingfisher's tunnel is so narrow that he 
 cannot turn around in it. His straight, 
 strong bill loosens the earth; his tiny feet 
 throw it out behind. I would see a shower 
 
l62 
 
 of dirt, and perchance the tail of Koskome- 
 nos for a brief instant, then a period of wait- 
 •\komenos i^g) '^'^^ another shower. This kept up till 
 ^tcasf the tunnel was bored perhaps two feet, when 
 they undoubtedly made a sharp turn, as is 
 their custom. After that they brought most 
 of the earth out in their beaks. While one 
 worked, the other watched, or fished at the 
 minnow pool, so that there was steady 
 progress as long as I observed them. 
 
 A curious thing about these birds, which 
 you may see for yourself on any wilderness 
 river, is that each pair of kingfishers have 
 their own particular pools, over which they 
 exercise unquestioned lordship. There may 
 be a dozen pairs of birds on a single stream; 
 but, so far as I have been able to observe, 
 each family has a certain stretch of water on 
 which no other kingfishers are allowed to fish. 
 They may pass up and down freely, but they 
 never stop at the minnow pools ; or, if they 
 are caught watching near them, they are 
 promptly driven out by the rightful owners. 
 
 The same thing is true on the lake shores. 
 Whether there is some secret understanding 
 
and partition among them, or whether (which 
 is more likely) their right consists in dis- 
 covery or first arrival, there is no means of 7(osAomenos 
 knowing. the ^^^ufcasf 
 
 I had not half settled this matter of the 
 division of trout streams when another 
 observation came, which was utterly unex- 
 pected. Koskomenos, half reptile though he 
 seem, not only recognizes riparian rights, 
 but he is also capable of friendship — and 
 that, too, for a moody prowler of the wilder- 
 ness whom no one else cares anything about. 
 Here is the proof. — 
 
 I was out in my canoe alone, looking for a 
 loon's nest, one midsummer day, when the 
 fresh tracks of a bull caribou drew me to 
 shore. The trail led straight from the water 
 to a broad alder belt ; beyond which, on the 
 hillside, I might find the big brute loafing 
 his time away till evening should come, and 
 watch him to see what he would do with 
 himself. 
 
 As I turned shoreward, a kingfisher 
 sounded his rattle and came darting across 
 the mouth of the bay where Hukweem the 
 
164 
 
 loon had hidden her two eggs. I watched 
 him, admiring the ripphng sweep of his 
 Aomerros Aig^'t, like the run of a cat's-paw breeze 
 ^fcasf across a sleeping lake, and the clear blue of 
 his crest against the deeper blue of summer 
 sky. Under him his reflection rippled along, 
 like the rush of a gorgeous fish through the 
 glassy water. Opposite my canoe he checked 
 himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watch- 
 ing the minnows that my paddle had 
 disturbed, and dropped bill first 
 — plash ! with a silvery tinkle 
 in the sound, as if hidden bells 
 down among the green water weeds had 
 been set to ringing by this sprite of the 
 air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow 
 for a brief instant ; the ripples gathered and 
 began to dance over the spot where Kos- 
 komenos had gone down, when they were 
 scattered rudely again as he burst out among 
 them with his fish. He swept back to the 
 stub whence he had come, chuckling on the 
 way. There he whacked his fish soundly 
 on the wood, threw his head back, and 
 through the glass I saw the tail of a minnow 
 
wriggling slowly down the road that has for 
 him no turning. Then I took up the caribou 
 tr^^il- Koskomenos 
 
 I had gone nearly through the alders, fol- ^^ ^^J^^"^'^^^^ 
 
 lowing the course of a little brook and steal- 
 ing along without a sound, when behind me 
 I heard the kingfisher coming above the 
 alders, rattling as if possessed, klrrr ! klrrr ! 
 klrrr-ik-ik-ik ! On the instant there was a 
 heavy plunge and splash just ahead, and the 
 swift rush of some large animal up the hill- 
 side. Over me poised the kingfisher, look- 
 ing down first at me, then ahead at the 
 unknown beast, till the crashing ceased in a 
 faint rustle far away; when he swept back 
 to his fishing-stub, clacking and chuckling 
 immoderately. 
 
 I pushed cautiously ahead and came pres- 
 ently to a beautiful pool, below a rock, where 
 the hillside shelved gently towards the alders. 
 From the numerous tracks and the look of 
 the place, I knew instantly that I had stum- 
 bled upon a bear's bathing pool. The water 
 was still troubled ; huge tracks, all soppy and 
 broken, led up the hillside in big jumps ; the 
 
, , moss was torn, the underbrush spattered with 
 
 shining water drops. " No room for doubt 
 
 •>Aomenos here," I thought ; " Mooween was asleep in 
 
 fiufcasf this pool, and the kingfisher woke him up — 
 
 but why ? and did he do it on purpose ? " 
 
 I remembered suddenly a record in an 
 old notebook, which reads : " Sugarloaf Lake, 
 26 July. — Tried to stalk a bear this noon. 
 No luck. He was nosing alongshore and I 
 had a perfect chance ; but a kingfisher scared 
 him." I began to wonder how the rattle of 
 a kingfisher, which is one of the commonest 
 sounds on wilderness waters, could scare 
 a bear, who knows all the sounds of the 
 wilderness perfectly. Perhaps Koskomenos 
 has an alarm note and uses it for a friend in 
 time of need, as gulls go out of their way to 
 alarm a flock of sleeping ducks when danger 
 is approaching. 
 
 Here was a new trait, a touch of the 
 human in this unknown, clattering suspect 
 of the fishing streams. I resolved to watch 
 him with keener interest. 
 
 Somewhere above me, deep in the tangle 
 of the summer wilderness, Mooween stood 
 
watching his back track, eyes, ears, and nose , 
 
 alert to discover what the creature was who 
 
 dared frighten him out of his noonday bath. Koskomenos 
 
 It would be senseless to attempt to surprise _^g^^ '^^ 
 
 him now; besides, I had no weapon of any 
 
 kind. — " To-morrow, about this time, I shall 
 
 be coming back; then look out, Mooween," 
 
 I thought, as I marked the place and stole 
 
 away to my canoe. 
 
 But the next day, when I came to the 
 place, creeping along the upper edge of the 
 alders so as to make no noise, the pool was 
 clear and quiet, as if nothing but the little 
 trout that hid under the foam bubbles had 
 ever disturbed its peace. Koskomenos was 
 clattering about the bay below, as usual. 
 Spite of my precaution he had seen me enter 
 the alders; but he gave me no attention 
 whatever. He went on with his fishing as 
 if he knew perfectly that the bear had 
 deserted his bathing pool. 
 
 It was nearly a month before I again 
 camped on the beautiful lake. Summer was 
 gone. All her warmth and more than her 
 fragrant beauty still lingered on forest and 
 
, „ river ; but the drowsiness had gone fronn the 
 atmosphere, and the haze had crept into it. 
 omenos Here and there birches and maples flung out 
 Outcast their gorgeous banners of autumn over the 
 silent water. A tingle came into the even- 
 ing air; the lake's breath lay heavy and 
 white in the twilight stillness; birds and 
 beasts became suddenly changed as they 
 entered the brief period of sport and of full 
 feeding. 
 
 I was drifting about a reedy bay (the same 
 bay in which the almost forgotten kingfisher 
 had cheated me out of my bear, after eating 
 a minnow that my paddle had routed out 
 for him) shooting frogs for my table with 
 a pocket rifle. How different it was here, 
 I reflected, from the woods about home. 
 There the game was already harried; the 
 report of a gun set every living creature 
 skulking. Here the crack of my little rifle 
 was no more heeded than the plunge of a 
 fish-hawk, or the groaning of a burdened elm 
 bough. A score of fat woodcock lay unheed- 
 ing in that bit of alder tangle' yonder, the 
 ground bored like a colander after their 
 
night's feeding. Up on the burned hillside 
 the partridges said, Kwit, kwit ! when I ap- 
 peared, and jumped to a tree and craned their 7(oskomenos 
 necks to see what I was. The black ducks ff^e ^^^Oulcasf 
 
 skulked in the reeds. They were full-grown 
 now and strong of wing, but the early hiding 
 habit was not yet broken up by shooting. 
 They would glide through the sedges, and 
 double the bogs, and crouch in a tangle till 
 the canoe was almost upon them, when with 
 a rush and a frightened hark-ark ! they shot 
 into the air and away to the river. The 
 mink, changing from brown to black, gave 
 up his nest-robbing for honest hunting, 
 undismayed by trap or deadfall; and, up in 
 the inlet, I could see grassy domes rising 
 above the bronze and gold of the marsh, 
 where Musquash was building thick and 
 high for winter cold and spring floods. 
 Truly it was good to be here, and to enter 
 for a brief hour into the shy, wild, but unhar- 
 ried life of the wood folk. 
 
 A big bullfrog showed his head among the 
 lily pads, and the little rifle, unmindful of the 
 joys of an unharried existence, rose slowly to 
 
its place. My eye was glancing along the 
 sights when a sudden movement in the alders 
 •<komenos o'^ ^^ shore, above and beyond the uncon- 
 ^utcasf scions head of Chigwooltz the frog, spared 
 him for a little season to his lily pads and 
 his minnow hunting. At the same moment 
 a kingfisher went rattling by to his old perch 
 over the minnow pool. The alders swayed 
 again as if struck ; a huge bear lumbered out 
 of them to the shore, with a disgruntled 
 woof ! at some twig that had switched his 
 ear too sharply. 
 
 I slid lower in the canoe till only my head 
 and shoulders were visible. Mooween went 
 nosing alongshore till something — a dead 
 fish or a mussel bed — touched his appetite, 
 when he stopped and began feeding, scarcely 
 two hundred yards away. I reached first for 
 my heavy rifle, then for the paddle, and cau- 
 tiously " fanned " the canoe towards shore 
 till an old stump covered my approach. 
 Then the little bark jumped forward as if 
 alive. But I had scarcely started when — 
 klrrrr ! klrrr ! ik-ik-ik ! Over my head 
 swept Koskomenos with a rush of wings 
 
171 
 
 >ufcasf 
 
 and an alarm cry that spoke only of haste 
 
 and danger. I had a glimpse of the bear 
 
 plunging into the alders, as if thrown by a J(oskomenos 
 
 catapult; the kingfisher wheeled in a great ■^^ 
 
 rattling circle about the canoe before he 
 
 pitched upon the old stump, jerking his tail 
 
 and clattering in great excitement. 
 
 I swung noiselessly out into the lake, 
 
 where I could watch the alders. They were 
 
 all still for a space of 
 
 ten minutes; but 
 
 Mooween was there, 
 
 I knew, sniffing and 
 
 listening. Then a ^Myf«(^- H!^4s,/j™i!««|in^ 
 
 great snake seemed ^^^^mit^im^imk... 
 
 ^Ci. 
 
172 
 
 to be wriggling through the bushes, making 
 no sound, but showing a wavy line of quiver- 
 Aomenos ing tops as he went. 
 
 Outcast Down the shore, a little way, was a higher 
 point, with a fallen tree that commanded a 
 view of half the lake. I had stood there a 
 few days before, while watching to determine 
 the air paths and lines of flight that shel- 
 drakes use in passing up and down the lake, 
 — for birds have runways, or rather fly ways, 
 just as foxes do. Mooween evidently knew 
 the spot; the alders showed that he was 
 heading straight for it, to look out on the 
 lake and see what the alarm was about. As 
 yet he had no idea what peril had threatened 
 him; though, like all wild creatures, he had 
 obeyed the first clang of a danger note on 
 the instant. Not a creature in the woods, 
 from Mooween down to Tookhees the wood 
 mouse, but has learned from experience that, 
 in matters of this kind, it is well to jump to 
 cover first and investigate afterwards. 
 
 I paddled swiftly to the point, landed and 
 crept to a rock from which I could just see 
 the fallen tree. Mooween was coming. " My 
 
bear this time," I thought, as a twig snapped 
 faintly. Then Koskomenos swept into the 
 woods, hovering over the brush, looking J(oskomenos 
 down and rattling — Klrrr-ik, clear out I ffte ^^Oufcasf 
 klrrr-ik, clear out ! There was a heavy rush, 
 such as a bear always makes when alarmed ; 
 Koskomenos swept back to his percii ; and I 
 sought the shore, half inclined to make my 
 next hunting more even-chanced by dis- 
 posing of one meddlesome factor. " You 
 wretched, noisy, clattering meddler!" I mut- 
 tered, the front sight of my rifle resting fair 
 on the blue back of Koskomenos, " that is 
 the third time you have spoiled my shot, and 
 you won't have another chance. — But wait ; 
 who is the meddler here .? " 
 
 Slowly the bent finger relaxed on the trig- 
 ger. A loon went floating by the point, all 
 unconscious of danger, with a rippHng wake 
 that sent silver reflections glinting across the 
 lake's deep blue. Far overhead soared an 
 eagle, breeze-borne in wide circles, looking 
 down on his own wide domain, unheeding 
 the man's intrusion. Nearer, a red squirrel 
 barked down his resentment from a giant 
 
spruce trunk. On my left a heavy splash 
 and a wild, free tumult of quacking told 
 •<Aome/ros '^'^'^lere the black ducks were coming in, as 
 ^ufcasf they had done, undisturbed, for generations. 
 Behind me a long roll echoed through the 
 woods — some young cock partridge, whom 
 the warm sun had beguiled into drumming 
 his spring love call. From the mountain- 
 side a cow moose rolled back a startling 
 answer. Close at hand, yet seeming miles 
 away, a chipmunk was chunking sleepily in 
 the sunshine; while a nest of young wood 
 mice were calling their mother in the grass 
 at my feet. And every wild sound did but 
 deepen the vast, wondrous silence of the 
 wilderness. 
 
 " After all, what place has the roar of a 
 rifle or the smell of sulphurous powder in the 
 midst of all this blessed peace .? " I asked 
 half sadly. As if in answer, the kingfisher 
 dropped with his musical plash, and swept 
 back with exultant rattle to his watchtower. 
 — " Go on with your clatter and your fish- 
 ing, Koskomenos. 'The \\alderness and the 
 solitary place shall still be glad ' for you and 
 
Mooween, and the trout pools would be lonely 
 without you. But I wish you knew that your 
 life lay, a moment ago, in the bend of my 
 finger; and that some one, besides the bear, 
 appreciates your brave warning." 
 
 Then I went back to the point to measure 
 the tracks, and to estimate how big the bear 
 was, and to console myself with the thought 
 of how I would certainly have had him, if 
 something had not interfered — which is the 
 philosophy of all hunters since Esau. 
 
 A few days later the chance came of 
 repaying Koskomenos with coals of fire. 
 The lake surface was still warm; no storms 
 nor frosts had cooled it. The big trout had 
 risen from the deep places, but were not yet 
 quickened enough to take my flies ; so, trout 
 hungry, I was trolling for them with a min- 
 now. I had taken two good fish, and was 
 moving slowly by the mouth of the bay, 
 Simmo at the paddle, when a suspicious 
 movement on the shore attracted my atten- 
 tion. I passed the line to Simmo, the better 
 to use my glasses, and was scanning the alders 
 sharply, when a cry of wonder came from the 
 
 175 
 
 Tioskomenos 
 the S^ufcasf 
 
176 
 
 ;55i 
 
 Indian. " O, bah cosh, see ! das second time 1 
 catch-um, Koskomenos." And there, twenty 
 ■>Aomenos ^^^^ above the lake, a 3'oung kingfisher — 
 ^tcasf one of Koskomenos' frowzy-headed, wild-eyed 
 youngsters — was whirling wildly at the end 
 of my line. He had seen the minnow trail- 
 ing a hundred feet astern and, with more 
 hunger than discretion, had swooped for it 
 promptly. Simmo, feeling the tug but seeing 
 nothing behind him, had struck 
 promptly, and the hook went 
 ^ _ home. 
 
 I seized the line 
 and began to pull in 
 gently. The young 
 kingfisher came most 
 unwillingly, with a 
 V continuous clatter 
 of protest that speed- \ ily brought Kos- 
 komenos and his mate, \ and two or 
 three of the captive's \ brethren. 
 They showed no lack of \ courage, 
 but swooped again and again \ at the 
 line, and even at the man who \ held 
 it. In a moment I had the youngster ^ in my 
 
hand, and had disengaged the hook. He was 
 not hurt at all, but terribly frightened ; so I 
 held him a little while, enjoying the excitement 7(osAomenos 
 of the others, whom the captive's rattle kept ^c^^Oufcasf 
 circling wildly about the canoe. It was note- 
 worthy that not another bird heeded the cry 
 or came near. Even in distress they refused 
 to recognize the outcast. Then, as Kos- 
 komenos hovered on quivering wings just 
 over my head, I tossed the captive close up 
 beside him. " There, Koskomenos, take your 
 young chuckle-head, and teach him better 
 wisdom. Next time you see me stalking a 
 bear, please go on with your fishing." 
 
 But there was no note of gratitude in the 
 noisy babel that swept up the bay after the 
 kingfishers. When I saw them again, they 
 were sitting on a dead branch, five of them 
 in a row, chuckling and clattering all at once, 
 unmindful of the minnows that played be- 
 neath them. I have no doubt that, in their 
 own way, they were telling each other all 
 about it. 
 
iilMLEiWdlp 
 
 179 
 
A FELLOW OF EXPEDIENTS 
 
 [MONG the birds there is one whose 
 personal appearance is rapidly 
 changing. He illustrates in his 
 present life a process well known 
 historically to all naturalists, viz., 
 the modification of form resulting 
 from changed environment. I refer to the 
 golden-winged woodpecker, perhaps the most 
 beautifully marked bird of the North, whose 
 names are as varied as his habits and accom- 
 plishments. 
 
 Nature intended him to get his living, as 
 do the other woodpeckers, by boring into old 
 trees and stumps for the insects that live on 
 the decaying wood. For this purpose she 
 gave liim the straight, sharp, wedge-shaped 
 bill, just calculated for cutting out chips ; 
 the long horn-tipped tongue, for thrust- 
 ing into the holes he makes ; the pecuhar 
 
o arrangement of toes, two forward and two 
 182 ° ' 
 
 back; and the stiff, spiny tall-feathers for 
 
 /yj supporting himself against the side of a tree 
 
 Je//ocu as he works. But getting his living so, as 
 
 ea/enfs Nature intended, means hard work ; and he 
 
 has discovered for himself a much easier 
 
 way. One now frequently surprises him on 
 
 the ground, in old pastures and orchards, 
 
 floundering about rather awkwardly (for his 
 
 little feet were never intended for walking) 
 
 after the crickets and grasshoppers that 
 
 abound there. Still he finds the work of 
 
 catching them much easier than boring into 
 
 dry old trees, and the insects themselves 
 
 much larger and more satisfactory. 
 
 A single glance will show how much this 
 new way of living has changed him from the 
 other woodpeckers. The bill is no longer 
 straight, but has a decided curve, like the 
 thrush's; and instead of the chisel-shaped 
 edge there is a rounded point. The red tuft 
 on the head, which marks all the woodpecker 
 family, would be too conspicuous on the 
 ground. In its place we find a red crescent 
 well down on the neck, and partially hidden 
 
i83 
 
 by the short gray feathers about it. The 
 point of the tongue is less horny, and from 
 the stiff points of the tail-feathers laminae <^ c^ellocj of 
 are beginning to grow, making them more ^^P^'^^j^P 
 like other birds'. A future generation will un- 
 doubtedly wonder where this peculiar kind of 
 thrush got his unusual tongue 
 and tail, just as we won- 
 der at the deformed little 
 feet and 
 
 
i84 
 
 The habits of this bird are a curious com- 
 pound of his old life in the woods and his 
 ^ new preference for the open fields and farms. 
 ^el/ow Sometimes the nest is in the very heart of 
 ea/enis ^j^g woods, where the bird glides in and out, 
 silent as a crow in nesting time. His feed- 
 ing place meanwhile may be an old pasture 
 half a mile away, where he calls loudly, and 
 frolics about as if he had never a care or 
 a fear in the world. But the nest is now 
 more frequently in a wild orchard, where the 
 bird finds a knot-hole and digs down through 
 the soft wood, making a deep nest with very 
 little trouble. When the knot-hole is not 
 well situated, he finds a decayed Hmb and 
 drills through the outer hard shell, then digs 
 down a foot or more through the soft wood, 
 and makes a nest. In this nest the rain 
 never troubles him, for he very providently 
 drills the entrance on the underside of the 
 Hmb. 
 
 Like many other birds, he has discovered 
 that the farmer is his friend. Occasionally, 
 therefore, he neglects to build a deep nest, 
 simply hollowing out an old knot-hole, and 
 
depending on the presence of man for protec- 
 tion from hawks and owls. At such times 
 the bird soon learns to recognize those who 
 belong in the orchard, and loses the extreme 
 shyness that characterizes him at all other 
 times. 
 
 Once a farmer, knowing my interest in 
 birds, invited me to come and see a golden- 
 winged woodpecker, which in her confidence 
 had built so shallow a nest that she could be 
 seen sitting on the eggs like a robin. The 
 moment we crossed the wall, within sight of 
 the nest, the bird slipped away out of the 
 orchard. Wishing to test her, we withdrew 
 and waited till she returned. Then the 
 farmer passed within a few feet without 
 disturbing her in the least. Ten minutes 
 later I followed him, and the bird flew away 
 again as I crossed the wall. 
 
 The notes of the golden-wing — much 
 more varied and musical than those of other 
 woodpeckers — are probably the results of 
 his new free life, and the modified tongue and 
 bill. In the woods one seldom hears from 
 him anything but a rattling tattoo, as he 
 
 185 
 
 <^ &ellga) of 
 Expedient's 
 
„ , hammers away on a dry old pine stub. As 
 a rule he seems to do this more for the noise 
 ^ it makes, and the exercise of his abilities, 
 
 Jef/ow than because he expects to find insects; 
 
 eaients gxcept in winter time, when he goes back to 
 his old ways. But out in the field he has 
 a variety of notes. Sometimes it is a loud 
 kee-uk ! like the scream of a blue jay divided 
 into two syllables, with the accent on the 
 last. Again it is a cheery whistling call, of 
 very short notes run close together, with 
 accent on every other one. Again he teeters 
 up and down on the end of a fence rail, with a 
 rollicking eekoo, eekoo, eekoo, that sounds more 
 like a laugh than anything else among the 
 birds. 
 
 A curious habit, which the bird has adopted 
 with advancing civilization, is that of provid- 
 ing himself with a sheltered sleeping place 
 from the storms and cold of winter, instead 
 of migrating to the South. Late in the fall 
 he finds a deserted building, and after a great 
 deal of shy inspection, to satisfy himself that 
 no one is within, drills a hole through the 
 side. He has then a comfortable place to 
 
i87 
 
 sleep, and an abundance of decaying wood in 
 
 which to hunt insects on stormy days. An 
 
 ice-house is a favorite location for him, the (^ z^ellgv) of 
 
 warm sawdust furnishing a good burrowing P^'^,^^ 
 
 place for a nest or sleeping room. When a 
 
 building is used as a winter resort, the bird 
 
 very cunningly drills the entrance close up 
 
 under the eaves, where it is sheltered from 
 
 storms, and at the same time out of sight of 
 
 all prying eyes. 
 
 During the winter several birds often 
 occupy one building together. I know of 
 one old deserted barn where, last year, five 
 of the birds lived very peaceably together. 
 At almost any hour of the day, if one 
 approached cautiously and thumped the side 
 of the barn, some of the birds would dash 
 out in great alarm, never stopping to look 
 behind them. At first there were but three 
 entrances ; but after I had surprised them a 
 few times, two more were added, in order , 
 to get out more quickly -^^ 
 when all were inside. 
 
 Two things about my 
 family in the old bai-n 
 
1 88 
 
 edi'enh 
 
 aroused my curiosity — what they were 
 doing there by day, and how they got out 
 jyj so quickly when alarmed. The only way it 
 ^e//ou) seemed possible for them to dash out on the 
 instant, as they did, was to fly straight through. 
 But the holes were too small, and no bird 
 but a bank-swallow would have attempted 
 such a thing. 
 
 One day I drove the birds out, then crawled 
 in under a sill on the opposite side, and hid 
 in a corner of the loft. It was a long wait 
 in the stuffy old place before one of the birds 
 came back. I heard him light first on the 
 roof; then his little head appeared at one of 
 the holes, as he sat just below, against the 
 side of the barn, looking and listening before 
 coming in. Quite satisfied, after a minute or 
 two, that nobody was inside, he scrambled in 
 and flew down to a corner in which was a 
 lot of old hay and rubbish. Here he began 
 a great rustle and stirring about, like a 
 squirrel in autumn leaves, probably after 
 insects, though it was too dark to see just 
 what he was doing. It sounded part of the 
 time as if he were scratching aside the hay, 
 
much as a hen would have done. If so, his 
 two httle front toes must have made sad work 
 of it, with the two hind ones always getting 
 doubled up in the way. When I thumped a 
 board suddenly, he hurled himself like a shot 
 at one of the holes, lighting just below it. 
 I could hear plainly the thump of his little 
 feet as he struck. With the same movement, 
 and without pausing an instant, he dived 
 through headlong, aided by a spring from his 
 tail, much as a jumping-jack goes over the 
 head of his stick, only much more rapidly. 
 Hardly had he gone before another appeared, 
 to go through the same program. 
 
 Though much shyer than other birds of 
 the farm, he often ventures up close to the 
 house in the early morning, before any one 
 is stirring. One spring morning I was awak- 
 ened by a strange little pattering sound, and, 
 opening my eyes, was astonished to see one 
 of these birds on the sash of the open window, 
 within five feet of my hand. Half closing 
 my eyes, I kept very still and watched. Just 
 in front of him, on the bureau, was a stuffed 
 golden-wing, with wings and tail spread to 
 
 189 
 
 c^l^elloa) of 
 Expedient's 
 
I go 
 
 show the beautiful plumage. He had seen 
 it in flying by, and now stood hopping back 
 j^ and forth along the window sash, uncertain 
 leZ/oio whether to come in or not. Sometimes he 
 eaienfs spread his wings, as if on the point of flying 
 in; then he would turn his head to look 
 curiously at me and at the strange surround- 
 ingSj and, afraid to venture in, endeavor to 
 attract the attention of the stuffed bird, whose 
 head was turned away. In the looking-glass 
 he saw his own movements repeated. Twice 
 he began his love call very softly, but cut it 
 short, as if frightened. The echo of the small 
 room made it seem so different from the 
 same call in the open fields that I think he 
 doubted even his own voice. 
 
 Almost over his head, on a bracket against 
 the wall, was a great hawk, pitched forward 
 on his perch, with wings spread and fierce 
 eyes glaring downward, in the intense atti- 
 tude a hawk takes as he swoops for his prey. 
 The golden-wing by this time was ready to 
 venture in. He had leaned forward with 
 wings spread, looking down at me to be quite 
 sure I was harmless, when, turning his head 
 
He caught sight of the hawk just ready to pounce down on him 
 
igi 
 
 for a final look round, he caught sight of the 
 
 hawk just ready to pounce down on him. 
 
 With a startled kee-uk! he fairly tumbled c^ c^ellovj of 
 
 back off the window sash, and I caught one Pm^'f!^^ 
 
 glimpse of him as he dashed round the corner 
 
 in full flight. 
 
 What were his impressions, I wonder, 
 as he sat on a limb of the old apple tree 
 and thought it all over? Do birds have 
 romances .? How much greater wonders had 
 he seen than those of any romance ! And do 
 they have any means of communicating them, 
 as they sing their love songs ? What a won- 
 derful story he could tell, a real story, of a 
 magic palace full of strange wonders; of a 
 glittering bit of air that made him see him- 
 self; of a giant, all in white, with only his 
 head visible ; of an enchanted beauty, stretch- 
 ing her wings in mute supplication for some 
 brave knight to touch her and break the 
 spell; while on high a fierce dragon-hawk 
 kept watch, ready to eat up any one who 
 should dare enter! 
 
 And of course none of the birds would 
 believe him. He would have to spend the 
 
192 
 
 rest of his life explaining; and the others 
 
 would only whistle, and call him lagoo, the 
 
 P^ lying woodpecker. On the whole, it would 
 
 lel/ow be better for a bird with such a very unusual 
 
 ea/enfs experience to keep still about it. 
 

 /*3«^ 
 
 tC 
 
 j«*i 
 
 193 
 
KWASEEKHO 
 
 IHELDRAKE, or shelbird, is 
 le name by which this duck 
 J generally known. Probably 
 it was given him by gun- 
 ners, who see him only in 
 winter, when hunger 
 drives him to eat mus- 
 _^ sels. The name fish- 
 
 duck, which one hears 
 occasionally, is much more appropriate. The 
 long slender bill, with its serrated edges 
 fitting into each other, like the teeth of a 
 bear trap, just calculated to seize and hold a 
 wriggling fish, is quite enough evidence as 
 to the nature of the bird's food, even if one 
 had not seen him fishing on the lakes and 
 rivers which are his summer home. 
 
 That same bill, by the way, is sometimes a 
 source of danger. Once, on the coast, I saw 
 195 
 
196 
 
 a sheldrake trying in vain to fly against the 
 wind, which flung him rudely among some 
 tall reeds near me. The next moment Don, 
 my old dog, had him. In a hungry moment 
 he had driven his bill through both shells of 
 a scallop, which slipped or worked its way 
 up to his nostrils, muzzling the bird perfectly 
 with a hard shell ring. The poor fellow by 
 desperate trying could open his mouth barely 
 wide enough to drink or to swallow the 
 tiniest morsel. He must have been in this 
 condition a long time, for the bill was half 
 worn through, and he was so light that the 
 wind blew him about like a great feather 
 when he attempted to fly. 
 
 Fortunately Don was a good retriever and 
 had brought the duck in with scarcely a quill 
 ruffled ; so I had the satisfaction of breaking 
 his bands and letting him go free with a 
 splendid rush. But the wind was too much 
 for him ; he dropped back into the water and 
 went skittering down the harbor, like a lady 
 with too much skirt and too big a hat in 
 boisterous weather. Meanwhile Don lay on 
 the sand, head up, ears up, whining eagerly 
 
197 
 
 for the word to fetch. Then he dropped his 
 
 head, and drew a long breath, and tried to 
 
 puzzle it out why a man should go out on a 
 
 freezing day in February, and tramp, and (;^^^^ .. 
 
 row, and get wet to find a bird, only to let ^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 him go after he had been fairly caught. 
 
 Kwaseekho the sheldrake leads a double 
 life. In winter he is found along the Mas- 
 sachusetts coast and southward, where he 
 leads a dog's life of it, notwithstanding V 
 his gay appear- ^ -"^t 
 
 ance. A hun- ^^^' J^r 
 
 dred guns are roaring 
 at him wherever he 
 goes. From daylight 
 to dark he has never a minute to 
 eat his bit of fish, or to take a wink 
 of sleep in peace. He flies to the 
 ocean, and beds with his fellows on 
 the broad open shoals for safety. 
 But the east winds blow; and the 
 shoals are a yeasty mass of tumbling 
 breakers. They buffet him about; 
 they twist his gay feathers ; they 
 dampen his pinions, spite of his 
 
198 
 ^-^eaaseekho 
 
 
 skill in swimming. Then he goes to the 
 creeks and harbors. 
 
 Along the shore a flock of his own kind, 
 apparently, are feeding in quiet water. 
 Straight in he comes with unsuspecting soul, 
 the morning light shining full on his white 
 breast and bright red feet as he steadies him- 
 self to take the water. But bang, bang! go 
 the guns ; and splash, splash ! fall his com- 
 panions ; and out of a heap of seaweed come 
 ac a man and a dog; and away he goes, 
 
 '^^ sadly puzzled at the painted decoys 
 in the water, to think it all over in 
 hunger and sorrow. 
 
 Then the weather grows cold, 
 and a freeze-up covers all his 
 feeding grounds. Under his 
 beautiful feathers the bones 
 project to spoil the contour of 
 his round plump body. He is 
 famished now; he watches the 
 gulls to see what they eat. 
 When he finds out, he forgets 
 
 
 
his caution, and roams about after stray 
 
 mussels on the beach. In the spring hunger 
 
 drives him into the ponds, where food is '"^^S^^^^ 
 
 plenty, but where guns roar also, and boys (^^ AyL_ 
 
 lurk in every bush. Altogether it is small 
 
 wonder that, as soon as his instinct tells 
 
 him the streams of the North are open and 
 
 the trout running up, he is off to a land of 
 
 happier memories. 
 
 In summer he forgets his hardships. His 
 life is peaceful as a meadow brook. His 
 home is the wilderness — on a lonely lake, it 
 may be, shimmering under the summer sun, 
 or kissed into a thousand smiling ripples by 
 the south wind ; or perhaps it is a forest 
 river, winding on by wooded hills and grassy 
 points and lonely cedar swamps. In secret 
 shallow bays the young broods are plashing 
 about, learning to swim and dive and hide in 
 safety. The plunge of the fish-hawk comes 
 up from the pools. A noisy kingfisher rattles 
 about from tree to stump, like a restless 
 busybody. The hum of insects fills the 
 air with, a drowsy murmur. Now a deer 
 steps daintily down the point, and looks, and 
 
200 
 
 ^^(oaseekho 
 
 listens, and drinks. A great moose wades 
 awkwardly out to plunge his head under and 
 pull away at the lily roots. But the young 
 brood mind not these harmless things. 
 Sometimes, indeed, as the afternoon wears 
 away, they turn their little heads apprehen- 
 sively as the alders crash and sway on the 
 bank above; a low cluck from the mother 
 bird sends them all off into the grass to hide. 
 How quickly they have disappeared, leaving 
 never a trace ! But it is only a bear come 
 down from the ridge where he has been 
 
 sleeping, to find a dead fish for his supper ; 
 
 and the little brood seem to laugh as 
 
 another low cluck brings them scurrying 
 
 back from their hiding. 
 
 Once, perhaps, comes a real fright, 
 
 Wf when all their summer's practice is put 
 to the test. An unusual noise is heard ; 
 and round the bend glides a bark canoe, 
 
 ^ with sound of human voices. Away 
 go the brood together, the river behind 
 
them foaminsc like the wake of a tiny 
 
 . . . 20I 
 
 steamer as the swift-moving feet lift them 
 almost out of water. Visions of ocean, ^''S&j^*^ 
 the guns, falling birds and the hard winter ^^^^ , , 
 distract the poor mother. She flutters 
 wildly about the brood, now leading, now 
 bravely facing the monster; now pushing 
 along some weak little loiterer, now floun- 
 dering near the canoe, as if wounded, to 
 attract attention from the young. But they 
 double the point at last, and hide away under 
 the alders. The canoe glides by and makes 
 no effort to find them. Silence is again over 
 the forest. The little brood come back to the 
 shallows, with mother bird fluttering round 
 them to count again and again, lest any be 
 missing. The kingfisher comes out of his 
 hole in the bank. The river flows on as 
 before, and peace returns ; and over all is the 
 mystic charm of the wilderness and the quiet 
 of a summer day. 
 
 This is the way it all looks and seems to 
 me, sitting over under the big hemlock, out 
 of sight, and watching the birds through my 
 field glass. 
 
202 
 
 Day after day I have attended such Httle 
 schools, unseen and unsuspected by the 
 ^^foaseekho mother bird. Sometimes it was the a-b-c 
 class, wee little downy fellows, learning to 
 hide on a lily pad, and never getting a reward 
 of merit in the shape of a young trout till 
 they hid so well that the teacher (somewhat 
 over-critical, I thought) was satisfied. Some- 
 times it was the baccalaureates that displayed 
 their talents to the unbidden visitor, flashing 
 out of sight, cutting through the water like 
 a ray of light, striking a young trout on the 
 bottom with the rapidity and certainty almost 
 of the teacher. It was marvelous, the diving 
 and swimming; and mother bird looked on 
 and quacked her approval of the young 
 graduates. 
 
 While all this careful training is going on 
 at home, the drake is off on the lakes some- 
 where with his boon companions, having a 
 good time, and utterly neglectful of parental 
 responsibility. Sometimes I have found clubs 
 of five or six, gay fellows all, living by them- 
 selves at one end of a big lake where the 
 fishing was good. All summer long they 
 
roam and gad about, free from care, and 
 happy as summer campers, leaving the mother 
 birds, meanwhile, to feed and educate their 
 offspring. Once only have I seen a drake 
 sharing in the responsibilities of his family. 
 I watched three days to find the cause of 
 his devotion; but he disappeared the third 
 evening, and I never saw him again. Whether 
 the drakes are lazy and run away, or whether 
 they have the atrocious habit of many male 
 birds and animals of destroying their young, 
 and so are driven away by the females, I 
 have not been able to find out. 
 
 These birds are very destructive on the 
 trout streams. If a summer camper spare 
 them, it is because of his interest in the 
 young, and especially because of the mother 
 bird's devotion. When the recreant drake is 
 met with, however, he goes promptly upon 
 the bill of fare with other good things. 
 
 Occasionally one overtakes a brood on a 
 rapid river. Then the poor birds are dis- 
 tressed indeed. At the first glimpse of the 
 canoe they are off, churning the water into 
 foam in their flight. Not till they are out of 
 
 203 
 
 ^(jfaseekho 
 
204 
 
 sight, round the bend, do they hear the cluck 
 that tells them to hide. Some are slow in 
 finding a hiding place on the strange waters. 
 The mother bird hurries them. They are 
 hunting in frantic haste when round the 
 bend comes the swift-gliding canoe. With 
 a note of alarm they are all off again, for she 
 will not leave even the weakest alone. Again 
 they double the bend and try to hide ; again 
 the canoe overtakes them; and so on, mile 
 after mile, till a stream or bogan flowing into 
 the river offers a road to escape. Then, like 
 a flash, the little ones run in under shelter of 
 the overhanging banks, and glide up stream 
 noiselessly, while mother bird flutters on 
 down the river just ahead of the canoe. 
 Having lured it away to a safe distance, as 
 she thinks, she takes wing and returns to 
 the young. 
 
 Their powers of endurance are remarkable. 
 Once, on the Restigouche, we started a brood 
 of little ones late in the afternoon. We were 
 moving along in a good current, looking for 
 a camping ground, and had little thought for 
 the birds, which could never get far enough 
 
ahead to hide securely. For five miles they 
 kept ahead of us, rushing out at each succes- 
 sive stretch of water, and fairly distancing us 
 in a straight run. When we camped they 
 were still below us. At dusk I was sitting 
 motionless near the river when a slight move- 
 ment over near the opposite bank attracted 
 me. There was the mother bird, stealing 
 along up stream under the fringe of bushes. 
 The young followed in single file. There 
 was no splashing of water now ; no evidence 
 of fright or hurry. Shadows were not more 
 noiseless. 
 
 Twice since then I have seen them do the 
 same thing. I have no doubt they returned 
 that evening all the way up to the feeding 
 grounds where we first started them ; for, like 
 the kingfishers, every bird seems to have 
 his own piece of the stream. He never fishes 
 in his neighbor's pools, nor will he suffer any 
 poaching in his own. On the Restigouche 
 we found a brood every few miles ; on other 
 rivers, less plentifully stocked with trout, 
 they are less numerous. On lakes there is 
 often a brood at either end ; but though I have 
 
 205 
 
 '^t/aseeAho 
 
206 
 
 '-y(eoaseekho 
 
 watched them carefully, I have never seen 
 them cross to each other's fishing grounds. 
 
 Once, up on the Big Toledi, I saw a curi- 
 ous bit of their education. I was paddling 
 across the lake when I saw a shelbird lead 
 her brood into a little bay, where I knew the 
 water was shallow; and immediately they 
 began dipping, though very awkwardly. 
 They were evidently taking their first les- 
 sons in diving. The next afternoon I was 
 near the same place. I had done fishing and 
 had pushed the canoe into some tall grass 
 out of sight, and was sitting there just doing 
 nothing. 
 
 A musquash came by, and rubbed his nose 
 against the canoe, and nibbled a lily root 
 before he noticed me. A shoal of minnows 
 were playing among the grasses near by. A 
 dragon-fly stood on his head against a reed 
 — a most difficult feat, I should think. He 
 was trying some contortion that I could not 
 make out, when a deer stepped down the 
 bank to drink and never saw me. Doing 
 nothing pays one under such. circumstances, 
 if only by the glimpses it gives of animal 
 
The little fellows occasionally brought up something to eat 
 
life. It is so rare to see a wild thing uncon- 
 scious. 
 
 Then Kwaseekho came into the shallow 
 bay again with her brood, and immediately 
 they began dipping as before. I wondered 
 how the mother made them dive, till I looked 
 through the field-glass and saw that the little 
 fellows occasionally brought up something to 
 eat. But there certainly were no fish to be 
 caught in that warm, shallow water. An 
 idea struck me, and I pushed the canoe out 
 of the grass, sending the brood across the 
 lake in wild confusion. There on the black 
 bottom were a dozen young trout, all freshly 
 caught, and all with the air-bladder punc- 
 tured by the mother bird's sharp bill. She 
 had provided their dinner, but she brought 
 it to a good place and made them dive to 
 get it. 
 
 As I paddled back to camp, I thought of 
 the way the Indians taught their boys to 
 shoot. They hung their dinner from the 
 trees, out of reach, and made them cut the 
 cord that held it, with an arrow. Did 
 the Indians originate this, I wonder, in their 
 
 207 
 
 '^uaseekho 
 
Q direct way of looking at things, almost as 
 simple as the birds'? Or was the idea 
 ^^loaseekho whispered to some Indian hunter, long 
 ago, as he watched Kwaseekho teach her 
 young to dive? 
 
 Of all the broods I have met in the wilder- 
 ness, only one, I think, ever grew to recog- 
 nize me and my canoe a bit, so as to fear me 
 less than another. It was on a little lake in 
 the heart of the woods, where we lingered 
 long on our journey, influenced partly by the 
 beauty of the place, and partly by the fact 
 that two or three bears roamed about there, 
 which I sometimes met at twilight on the 
 lake shore. The brood were as wild as other 
 broods ; but I met them often, and they 
 sometimes found the canoe lying motionless 
 and harmless near them, without quite know- 
 ing how it came there. So after a few days 
 they looked at me with curiosity and uneasi- 
 ness only, unless I came too near. 
 
 There were six in the brood. Five were 
 hardy little fellows that made the water boil 
 behind them as they scurried across the lake. 
 
 A . »- 
 
But the sixth was a weakUng. He had been 
 hurt, — by a hawk perhaps, or a big trout, or 
 a mink ; or he had swallowed a bone ; or 
 maybe he was just a weak little fellow with 
 no accounting for it. Whenever the brood 
 were startled, he struggled bravely a little 
 while to keep up ; then he always fell behind. 
 The mother would come back, and urge and 
 help him ; but it was of little use; He was 
 not strong enough ; and the last glimpse I 
 always had of them was a foamy wake dis- 
 appearing round a distant point, while far 
 astern was a ripple, where the little fellow 
 still paddled away, doing his best patheti- 
 cally. 
 
 One afternoon the canoe glided round a 
 point and ran almost up to the brood before 
 they saw it, giving them a terrible fright. 
 Away they went on the instant, putter^ putter, 
 putter, lifting themselves almost out of water 
 with the swift-moving feet and tiny wings. 
 The mother bird took wing, returned and 
 crossed the bow of the canoe, back and forth, 
 with loud quackings. The weakling was 
 behind as usual ; and in a sudden spirit of 
 
 209 
 
 '^uaseekho 
 
2IO 
 
 ^-^ajaseekho 
 
 curiosity, or perversity, I shot the canoe for- 
 ward, almost up to him. He tried to dive; 
 got tangled in a lily stem in his fright ; came 
 up, flashed under again ; and I saw him rise 
 to the surface, ten feet away, in some grass, 
 where he sat motionless and almost invisible 
 amid the pads and yellow stems. I remained 
 where I was to watch him and see what the 
 mother would do. 
 
 How frightened he was ! Yet how still he 
 sat ! Whenever I took my eyes from him a 
 moment I had to hunt again, sometimes two 
 or three minutes, before I could see him 
 there. 
 
 Meanwhile the brood went almost to the 
 opposite shore before they stopped ; the 
 mother, satisfied at last by my quietness, 
 flew over and lit among them. She had not 
 seen the little one. Through the glass I saw 
 her flutter round and round them, to be quite 
 sure they were all there. Then she missed 
 him. I could see it all in her movements. 
 She must have clucked, I think, for the young 
 suddenly disappeared, and she came swim- 
 ming rapidly back over the way they had 
 
come, looking, looking everywhere. Round 
 the canoe she went at a safe distance, search- 
 ing among the grass and lily pads, calling 
 him softly to come out. But he was very 
 near the canoe, and very much frightened; 
 the only effect of her calls was to make him 
 crouch closer- against the grass stems, while 
 the bright little eyes, grown large with fear, 
 were fastened on me. 
 
 Slowly I backed the canoe away till it was 
 out of sight, behind the point; though I 
 could still see the mother bird through the 
 bushes. She swam rapidly about where the 
 canoe had been, calling more loudly; but 
 the little fellow had lost confidence in her, 
 or was too frightened, and refused to show 
 himself. At last she discovered him and, 
 with quacks and flutters that looked to 
 me a bit hysteric, pulled him out of his 
 hiding place. How she fussed over him ! 
 How she hurried and helped and praised 
 and scolded him all the way over; and 
 fluttered on ahead, and clucked the brood 
 out of their hiding places to meet him ! 
 Then, with all her young about her, she 
 
 21 I 
 
 ^waseekho 
 
swept round the point into the quiet bay- 
 that was their training school. 
 
 And I, drifting slowly up the lake into the 
 (^^f""^ ,, sunset over the glassy water, was thinking 
 how human it all was. " Doth he not leave 
 the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness, and go 
 after that which is lost, until he find it t " 
 
OOSKOOS, 
 
 HO CATCHES 
 HE WRONG RAT 
 
 213 
 
KOOKOOSKOOS, WHO CATCHES 
 THE WRONG RAT 
 
 OOKOOSKOOS is 
 the big brown owl, 
 the Bubo Virginia- 
 nus, or Great Horned 
 Owl of the books. 
 But his Indian name 
 is best. Almost any- 
 night in autumn, if 
 you leave the town 
 and go out towards 
 the big woods, you 
 can hear him calling 
 it, Koo-koo-skoos, 
 koooo, kooo! down in 
 the swamp. 
 
 Kookooskoos is 
 always catching the wrong rat. The reason 
 
 is that he is a great hunter, and thinks that 
 215 
 
, every furry thing which moves must be 
 game ; and so he is Hke the fool sportsman 
 ^^^ookooskoos who shoots at a sound, or a motion in the 
 bushes, before finding out what makes it. 
 Sometimes the rat turns out to be a skunk, 
 or a weasel ; sometimes your pet cat ; and, 
 once in a lifetime, it is your own fur cap, 
 or even your head; and then you feel the 
 weight and the edge of Kookooskoos' claws. 
 But he never learns wisdom by mistakes; 
 for, spite of his grave appearance, he is 
 excitable as a Frenchman ; and so, whenever 
 anything stirs in the bushes and a bit of 
 fur appears, he cries out to himself, A rat, 
 Kookoo ! a rabbit! and swoops on the 
 instant. 
 
 One evening, at twilight, as I came home 
 from hunting in the big woods, I heard the 
 sound of deer feeding just ahead. I stole for- 
 ward to the edge of a thicket and stood there 
 motionless, looking and listening intently. 
 My cap was in my pocket, and only my head 
 appeared above the low firs that sheltered 
 me. Suddenly, without noise or warning of 
 any kind, I received a sharp blow on the 
 
head from behind, as if some one had struck 
 
 . . 217 
 
 me with a thorny stick. I turned quickly, sur- 
 prised and a good bit startled ; for I thought "Kqokooskoos 
 
 myself utterly alone in the woods — and I 
 was. There was nobody there. Not a sound, 
 not a motion broke the twilight stillness. 
 Something trickled on my neck; I put up 
 my hand, to find my hair already wet with 
 blood. More startled than ever, I sprang 
 through the thicket, looking, listening every- 
 where for sight or sound of my enemy. Still 
 no creature bigger than a wood mouse ; no 
 movement save that of nodding fir tips; no 
 sound but the thumping of my own heart 
 and, far behind me, a sudden rush and a 
 bump or two as the frightened deer broke 
 away ; then perfect stillness again, as if noth- 
 ing had ever lived in the thickets. 
 
 I was little more than a boy; and I went 
 home more puzzled and more frightened 
 than I have ever been, before or since, in the 
 woods. I ran into the doctor's office on my 
 way. He looked at me queerly when I told 
 my story. Of course he did not believe me, 
 and I made no effort to persuade him. 
 
„ Indeed, I scarcely believed myself. But for 
 the blood which stained my handkerchief, 
 ^^^ookooskgps and the pain in my head, I should have 
 doubted the reality of the whole experience. 
 That night I started up out of sleep, and 
 said before I was half awake : " It was an 
 owl that hit you on the head — of course 
 it was an owl ! " Then I remembered that, 
 years before, an older boy had a horned owl, 
 which he had taken from a nest, and which 
 he kept loose in a dark garret over the shed. 
 None of us younger boys dared go up to the 
 garret, for the owl was always hungry, and 
 the moment a boy's head appeared through 
 the scuttle the owl said Hoooo ! and swooped 
 for it. So we used to get acquainted with 
 the big pet by pushing in a dead rat or a 
 chicken, on the end of a stick, and climbing 
 in ourselves afterwards. 
 
 As I write, the whole picture comes back 
 to me again vividly; the dark, cobwebby old 
 garret, pierced here and there by a pencil of 
 light, in which the motes were dancing; the 
 fierce bird down on the floor in the darkest 
 corner, horns up, eyes gleaming, feathers all 
 
219 
 
 a-bristle till he looked big as a bushel basket 
 in the dim light, standing on his game with 
 one foot and tearing it savagely to pieces "Kookooskoos 
 with the other, snapping his beak and gob- 
 bling up feathers, bones and all, in great hun- 
 gry mouthf uls ; and, over the scuttle, two or 
 three small boys staring in eager curiosity, 
 but clinging to each other's coats fearfully, 
 ready to tumble down the ladder with a yell 
 at the first hostile demonstration. 
 
 The next afternoon I was back in the big 
 woods to investigate. Fifty feet behind the 
 thicket where I had been struck was a dead 
 stub overlooking a little clearing. " That 's 
 his watchtower," I thought. " While I was 
 watching the deer, he was up there watching 
 my head ; and when it moved he swooped." 
 
 I had no intention of giving him another 
 flight at the same game, but hid my fur cap 
 among some bushes, tied a long string to it, 
 went back into the thicket with the other 
 end of the string, and sat down to wait. A 
 low Whooo-hoo-hoo ! came from across the 
 valley to tell me I was not the only watcher 
 in the woods. 
 
2 20 
 
 Towards dusk I noticed suddenly that the 
 top of the old stub looked a bit peculiar, but 
 ^^ookooskoos ^* ^^^ some time before I made out a big owl 
 sitting up there. His back was towards me; 
 he sat up very straight and still, so as to make 
 himself just a piece, the tip end, of the stub. 
 As I watched, he hooted once and bent for- 
 ward to listen. Then I pulled on my string. 
 With the first rustle of a leaf he whirled 
 and poised forward, in the intense attitude an 
 eagle takes when he sights the prey. 
 On the instant he had sighted the 
 cap, wriggling in and out among the 
 low bushes, and swooped for it like 
 an arrow. Just as he dropped his 
 legs to strike, I gave a sharp pull, 
 and the cap jumped from under 
 him. He missed his strike, but 
 wheeled like a fury and struck again. 
 Another jerk, and again he missed. 
 Then he was at the thicket where 
 I stood ; his fierce yellow eyes glared 
 straight into mine for a startled instant, and 
 he brushed me with his wings as he sailed 
 away into the shadow of the spruces. 
 
221 
 
 Small doubt now that I had seen my 
 assailant of the night before ; for an owl 
 has regular hunting grounds, and uses the 7(qoAooskoos 
 same watchtowers night after night. He had 
 seen my head in the thicket, and struck at 
 the first movement. Perceiving his mistake, 
 he kept straight on over my head ; so of 
 course there was nothing in sight when I 
 turned. As an owl's flight is perfectly noise- 
 less, I had heard nothing, though he passed 
 close enough to strike, and I was listening 
 intently. And so another mystery of the 
 woods was made plain by a little watching. 
 
 Years afterwards, the knowledge gained 
 stood me in good stead in clearing up 
 another mystery. It was in a lumber camp 
 — always a superstitious place — in the heart 
 of a Canada forest. I had followed a wan- 
 dering herd of caribou too far, one day, and 
 late in the afternoon found myself alone at a 
 river, some twenty miles from camp. Some- 
 where above me I knew that a crew of lum- 
 bermen were at work ; so I headed up river 
 to find their camp, if possible, and avoid 
 sleeping out in the snow and bitter cold. It 
 
222 
 
 was long after dark, and the moon was flood- 
 ing forest and river with a wonderful light, 
 OiooAoosAoos when I at last caught sight of the shanty. 
 The click of my snowshoes brought a dozen 
 big men to the door. At that moment I felt 
 rather than saw that they seemed troubled and 
 alarmed at seeing me alone ; but I was too 
 tired to notice, and no words save those 
 of welcome were spoken until I had eaten 
 heartily. Then, as I started out for another 
 look at the wild beauty of the place under 
 the moonlight, a lumberman followed and 
 touched me on the shoulder. 
 
 " Best not go far from camp alone, sir. 
 'Tis n't above safe heteabouts," he said in 
 a low voice. I noticed that he glanced back 
 over his shoulder as he spoke. 
 
 " But why ? " I objected. " There 's nothing 
 in these woods to be afraid of." 
 
 " Come back to camp and I '11 tell you. 
 It 's warmer there," he said. And I followed 
 to hear a strange story, — how " Andy there " 
 was sitting on a stump, smoking his pipe in 
 the twilight, when he was struck and cut on 
 the head from behind ; and when he sprang 
 
up to look, there was nothing there, nor any 
 track save his own in the snow. The next 
 night Gillie's fur cap had been snatched from 
 his head, and when he turned there was 
 nobody in sight; and when he burst into 
 camp, with all his wits frightened out of him, 
 he could scarcely speak, and his face was 
 deathly white. Other uncanny things had 
 happened since, in the same way, and coupled 
 with a bad accident on the river, which the 
 men thought was an omen, they had put the 
 camp into such a state of superstitious fear 
 that no one ventured alone out of doors after 
 nightfall. 
 
 I thought of Kookooskoos and my own 
 head, but said nothing. They would only 
 have resented the suggestion. 
 
 Next day I found my caribou, and returned 
 to the lumber camp before sunset. At twi- 
 light there was Kookooskoos, an enormous 
 fellow, looking like the end of a big spruce 
 stub, keeping sharp watch over the clearing, 
 and fortunately behind the camp, where he 
 could not see the door. I called the men and 
 set them crouching in the snow under the low 
 
 223 
 "Kookooskoos 
 
224 
 
 eaves. — " Stay there a minute and I '11 show 
 you the ghost." That was all I told them. 
 
 Taking the skin of a hare, which I had 
 shot that day, I hoisted it cautiously on a 
 stick, the lumbermen watching curiously. A 
 slight scratch of the stick, a movement of the 
 fur along the splits, then a great dark shadow 
 shot over our heads. It struck the stick 
 sharply and swept into the spruces across 
 the clearing, taking Bunny's skin with it. 
 Then one big lumberman, who 
 saw the point, jumped up with a 
 yell and danced a jig in the snow, 
 like a schoolboy. There was no need 
 of further demonstration with a cap ; and 
 nobody volunteered his head for a final 
 experiment; but all remembered seeing 
 the owl on his nightly watch, and knew 
 something of his swooping habits. Of 
 course some were incredulous at first, 
 and had a dozen questions and objections 
 when we were in camp. So I spent half 
 the night in convincing them that they 
 had been brought up in the woods to be 
 scared by an owl. 
 
 \ 
 
Poor Kookooskoos ! they shot him next 
 night on his watchtower, and nailed him to 
 the camp door as a warning. 
 
 Should you ever find Kookooskoos on his 
 watchtower, and observe him awhile patiently 
 in the twilight, you will see a curious bit of 
 woodcraft, and perhaps discover the object 
 of his uncanny hooting. Sometimes, if he 
 is a young owl, he hoots for practice, or to 
 learn how ; and then he makes an awful noise 
 of it, — a rasping screech, before his voice 
 deepens. And if you are camping near and 
 are new to the woods, the chances are that 
 you lie awake and shiver; for there is no 
 other sound like it in the wilderness. Some- 
 times, when you climb to his nest, he has 
 a terrifying hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo, running 
 up and down a deep guttural scale, like a 
 fiendish laugh, accompanied by a vicious 
 snapping of the beak. And if you are a 
 small boy, and it is getting dark in the 
 woods, you climb down the tree quick and 
 let his nest alone. But the regular whooo- 
 hoo-hoo, whooo-hoo, always five notes, with the 
 second and third very short, is a hunting 
 
 225 
 Tiookooskoos 
 
- call, which he uses to alarm the game. 
 That is queer hunting; but his ears account 
 ^^ookooskqos for it. 
 
 If you separate the feathers on Kookoos- 
 koos' head, you find an enormous ear-opening 
 running from above his eye halfway round 
 his face. And the ear within is so marvel- 
 ously sensitive that it can hear the rustle of 
 a rat in the grass, or the scrape of a sparrow's 
 toes on a branch fifty feet away. So he sits 
 on his watchtower, so still that he is never 
 noticed, and as twilight comes on, when he 
 can see best, he hoots suddenly and listens. 
 The sound has a muffied quality which 
 makes it hard to locate, and it frightens 
 every bird and small animal within hearing ; 
 for all kno'vv Kookooskoos, and how fierce 
 he is. As the terrifying sound rolls out of 
 the air so near them, fur and feathers shiver 
 with fright. A rabbit stirs in his form; a 
 partridge shakes on his branch; the mink 
 stops hunting frogs at the brook ; the skunk 
 takes his nose out of the hole where he is 
 eating sarsaparilla roots. A leaf stirs, a toe 
 scrapes, and instantly Kookooskoos is there. 
 
His fierce eyes glare in; his great claws 
 
 drop; one grip, and it's all over. For the 
 
 very sight of him scares the little creatures 7(qokooskoos 
 
 so that there is no life left in them to cry 
 
 out or to run away. 
 
 A nest which I found, a few years ago, 
 shows how well this kind of hunting suc- 
 ceeds. It was in a gloomy evergreen swamp, 
 in a big tree, some eighty feet from the 
 ground. I found it by some pellets of hair 
 and feathers at the foot of the tree ; for the 
 owl devours every part of his game, and after 
 digestion is complete, feathers, bones and 
 hair are disgorged in small balls, like so 
 many sparrow heads. When I looked up, 
 there at the top was a huge mass of sticks, 
 which had been added to year after year till 
 it was nearly three feet across, and half as 
 thick. Kookooskoos was not there. He 
 had heard me coming and slipped away 
 silently. 
 
 Wishing to be sure the nest was occupied 
 before trying the hard climb, I went away 
 and hid in a thicket. Presently a large owl 
 came back and stood by the nest. Soon after 
 
„ a smaller bird, the male, glided up beside her. 
 Then I came on cautiously, watching to see 
 ^ookooskops what they would do. 
 
 At the first crack of a twig both birds started 
 forward; the male slipped away; the female 
 dropped below the nest, and stood behind a 
 limb, just her face peering through a crotch 
 in my direction. Had I not known she was 
 there, I might have looked the tree over 
 twenty times without finding her. And 
 there she stayed hidden till I was halfway 
 up the tree. 
 
 When I peered at last over the edge of 
 the nest, after a desperately hard climb, there 
 was a bundle of dark gray down in a little 
 hollow in the middle. It touched me at 
 the time that the little ones rested on a 
 feather bed pulled from the mother bird's own 
 breast. I brushed the down with my fingers. 
 Instantly two heads came up, fuzzy gray 
 heads, with black pointed beaks, and beautiful 
 hazel eyes, and a funny long pin-feather over 
 each ear, which made them look like little 
 wise clerks just waked up. When I touched 
 them again they staggered up and opened 
 
229 
 
 their mouths, — enormous mouths for such 
 
 little fellows ; then, seeing that I was an 
 
 intruder, they tried to bristle their few pin- Tiqokooskoos 
 
 feathers and snap their beaks. 
 
 They were fat as two aldermen; and no 
 wonder. Placed around the edge of the big 
 nest were a red squirrel, a rat, a chicken, a 
 few frogs' legs, and a rabbit. Fine fare that, 
 at eighty feet from the ground. Kookooskoos 
 had had good hunting. All the game was 
 partly eaten, showing that I had disturbed 
 their dinner ; and only the hinder parts were 
 left, showing that owls like the head and 
 brains best. I left them undisturbed and 
 came away ; for I wanted to watch the young 
 grow — which they did marvelously, and were 
 presently learning to hoot. But I have been 
 less merciful to the great owls ever since, 
 thinking of the enormous destruction of game 
 represented in raising two or three such 
 young savages, year after year, in the same 
 swamp. 
 
 Once, at twilight, I shot a big owl that 
 was sitting on a limb facing me, with what 
 appeared to be a long tail hanging below the 
 
limb. The tail turned out to be a large mink, 
 230 . . . . . ° 
 
 just killed, with a beautiful skin that put 
 
 ^-^ookooskoos five dollars into a boy's locker. Another 
 time I shot one that sailed over me; when 
 he came down, there was a ruffed grouse, 
 still living, in his claws. Another time I 
 could not touch one that I had killed for the 
 overpowering odor which was in his feathers, 
 showing that Mephitis, the skunk, never loses 
 his head when attacked. But Kookooskoos, 
 like the fox, cares little for such weapons, and 
 in the spring, when game is scarce, swoops 
 for and kills a skunk wherever he finds him 
 prowling away from his den in the twilight. 
 The most savage bit of his hunting that I 
 ever saw was one dark winter afternoon, on 
 the edge of some thick woods. I was watch- 
 ing a cat, a half-wild creature, that was 
 watching a red squirrel making a great fuss 
 over some nuts which he had hidden, and 
 which he claimed somebody had stolen. 
 Somewhere behind us, Kookooskoos was 
 watching from a pine tree. The squirrel 
 was chattering in the midst of a whirlwind 
 of leaves and empty shells which he had 
 
231 
 
 thrown out on the snow ; behind him the 
 cat, creeping nearer and nearer, had crouched 
 with blazing eyes and quivering muscles, 7(ookoos/coos 
 her whole attention fixed on the spring, 
 when broad wings shot silently over my hid- 
 ing place and fell Hke a shadow on the cat. 
 One set of strong claws gripped her behind 
 the ears ; the others were fastened like a 
 vise in the spine. Generally one such grip 
 is enough, but the cat was strong, and at the 
 first touch sprang away. In a moment the 
 owl was after her, floating, 
 hovering above, till the right 
 moment came, when he 
 dropped and struck again. Then 
 the cat whirled and fought like a 
 fury. For a few moments there 
 was a desperate battle, fur and 
 feathers flying, the cat screeching 
 like mad, the owl silent as death. 
 Then the great claws did their 
 work. When I straightened up 
 from my thicket, Kookooskoos was 
 standing on his game, tearing off 
 the flesh with his feet, and carrying 
 
232 
 
 it up to his mouth with the same movement, 
 swallowing everything alike, as if famished. 
 ^^^ookooskoos Over them the squirrel, which had whisked 
 up a tree at the first alarm, was peeking with 
 evil eyes over the edge of a limb, snickering 
 at the blood-stained snow and the dead cat, 
 scolding, barking, threatening the owl for 
 having disturbed the search for his stolen 
 walnuts. 
 
 I caught that same owl soon after in a 
 peculiar way. A farmer near by told me 
 that an owl was taking his chickens regu- 
 larly. Undoubtedly the bird had been driven 
 southward by the severe winter, and had not 
 taken up regular hunting grounds until he 
 caught the cat. Then came the chickens. 
 I set up a pole, on the top of which was 
 nailed a bit of board for a platform. On the 
 platform was fastened a small steel trap, and 
 under it hung a dead chicken. The next 
 morning there was Kookooskoos on the plat- 
 form, one foot in the trap, at which he 
 was pulling awkwardly. Owls, from their 
 peculiar ways of hunting, are prone to 
 light on stubs and exposed branches ; and so 
 
233 
 
 Kookooskoos had used my pole as a watch- 
 tower before carrying off his game. 
 
 There is another way in which he is easily "^Kookooskoos 
 fooled. In the early spring, when he is mat- 
 ing, and again in the autumn, when the 
 young birds are well fed and before they 
 have learned much, you can bring him close 
 up to you by imitating his hunting call. In 
 the wilderness, where these birds are plenty, 
 I have often had five or six about me at 
 once. You have only to go well out beyond 
 your tent, and sit down quietly, making your- 
 self part of the place. Give the call a few 
 times, and if there is a young bird near with 
 a full stomach, he will answer and gradually 
 come nearer. Soon he is in the tree over 
 your head. Keep still now, and presently he 
 sets up a great hooting that you have called 
 him and do not answer. Others are attracted 
 by his calling ; they come in silently from all 
 directions ; the outcry is startling. The call 
 is more nervous, more eerie, more terrifying 
 close at hand than when heard in the dis- 
 tance. They sweep about like shadows, 
 hoo-hoo-hooing and frolicking in their own 
 
uncanny way; then go off to their separate 
 watchtowers and their hunting. But the 
 ^^^ookooskoos chances are that you will be awakened with 
 a start more than once in the night, as some 
 inquisitive young owl comes back and gives 
 the hunting call in the hope of finding out 
 what the first summons was all about. 
 
CROW-WAYS 
 
 235 
 
CROW-WAYS 
 
 iiHE crow is very much of a rascal 
 — that is, if any creature can be 
 called a rascal for following out 
 natural and rascally inclinations. 
 I came to this conclusion one 
 early morning, several years ago, as I watched 
 an old crow diligently exploring a fringe of 
 bushes that grew along the wall of a deserted 
 pasture. He had eaten a clutch of thrush's 
 eggs, and carried off three young spar- 
 rows to feed his own young, before I 
 found out what he was about. Since then 
 I have surprised him often at the same 
 depredations. 
 
 An old farmer has assured me that he has 
 also caught him tormenting his sheep, light- 
 ing on their backs and pulling the wool out 
 by the roots, to get fleece for lining his nest. 
 This is a much more serious charge than 
 
 237 
 
o that of pulling up corn, though the latter 
 makes almost every farmer his enemy. 
 
 Yet with all his rascality he has many 
 curious and interesting ways. In fact, I 
 t^roW'tuays ha.rdly know another bird that so well repays 
 a season's study; only one must be very 
 patient, and put up with frequent disappoint- 
 ments, if he would learn much of a crow's 
 peculiarities by personal observation. How 
 shy he is ! How cunning and quick to learn 
 wisdom ! Yet he is very easily fooled ; and 
 some experiences that ought to teach him 
 wisdom he seems to forget within an hour. 
 Almost every time I went shooting, in the 
 old barbarian days before I learned better, I 
 used to get one or two crows from a flock 
 that ranged over my hunting ground, by 
 hiding among the pines and calling like a 
 young crow. If the flock was within hear- 
 ing, it was astonishing to hear the loud 
 chorus of haw-haws, and to see them come 
 rushing over the same grove where, a week 
 before, they had been fooled in the same 
 way. Sometimes, indeed, they seemed to 
 remember ; for when the pseudo young crow 
 
H 
 
 began his racket they would collect on a 
 distant pine tree and haw-haw in doubtful 
 answer. But curiosity always got the better Crouf-iOays 
 of them, and they generally compromised by 
 sending over some swift, long-winged old 
 flier, only to see him go tumbling down at 
 the report of a gun ; and away they would go, 
 screaming at the top of their voices, and never 
 stopping till they were miles away. Next 
 week they would do exactly the same thing. 
 Crows, more than any other birds, are fond 
 of excitement and great crowds ; the slightest 
 unusual object furnishes an occasion for an 
 assembly. A wounded bird will create as 
 much stir in a flock of crows as a railroad 
 accident does in a village. But when some 
 prowling old crow discovers an owl sleeping 
 away the sunlight in the top of a great hem- 
 lock, his delight and excitement know no 
 bounds. There is a suppressed frenzy in his 
 very call that every crow in the neighbor- 
 hood understands. Come ! come ! everybody 
 come! he seems to be screaming as he 
 circles over the tree-top ; and within two 
 minutes there are more crows gathered 
 
240 
 
 Crofo^arys 
 
 about that old hemlock than one would 
 believe existed within miles of the place. I 
 counted over seventy, one day, immediately 
 about a tree in which one of them had found 
 an owl ; and I think there must have been 
 as many more flying about the outskirts that 
 I could not count. 
 
 At such times one can approach very near, 
 with a little care ; for whenever an owl is dis- 
 covered the crows forget to post their usual 
 sentinels. Creeping through the underbrush 
 you find yourself suddenly in the midst of a 
 tremendous excitement. The crows nearest 
 the owl sit about in the trees cawing all at 
 once ; not a crow is silent. Those on the 
 outskirts are flying rapidly about and mak- 
 ing, if possible, more noise than the inner 
 ring. The owl meanwhile sits blinking and 
 staring, out of sight in the green top. Every 
 moment two or three crows leave the ring to 
 fly up close and peep in at him, and then go 
 screaming back again to their perches, where 
 they hop about, cawing, nodding their heads, 
 striking the branches, and acting for all the 
 world like excited stump speakers. 
 
The din grows louder and louder; fresh 
 voices are coming in every minute ; and the 
 owl, wondering in some vague way if he is 
 the cause of it all, flies off to some other 
 tree, where he can be quiet and go to sleep. 
 Then, with a great rush and clatter, the 
 crows follow, some swift old scout keeping 
 close to the owl and calling all the way to 
 guide the whole cawing rabble. When the 
 owl stops, they gather round again and go 
 through the same performance more excitedly 
 than before. So it continues till the owl 
 finds a hollow tree and goes in out of sight, 
 leaving them to caw themselves tired ; or 
 else he finds some dense pine grove, and 
 doubles about here and there, with that 
 shadowy noiseless flight of his, till he has 
 thrown them off the track. Then he flies 
 into the thickest tree he can find, generally 
 outside the grove where the crows are look- 
 ing, and sitting close up against the trunk 
 blinks his great yellow eyes and listens to the 
 racket that goes sweeping through the grove, 
 peering curiously into every thick pine, search- 
 ing everywhere for the lost excitement. 
 
 241 
 
 Croto-tOays 
 
242 
 
 ^wCrouylOays 
 
 The crows give him up reluctantly. They 
 circle for a few minutes over the grove, 
 rising and falling with that beautiful, regular 
 motion that seems like the practice drill of 
 all gregarious birds, and generally end by 
 collecting in some tree at a distance and 
 hawing about it for hours, till some new 
 excitement calls them elsewhere. 
 
 Just why they grow so excited over an owl 
 is an open question. I have never seen 
 them molest him, nor show any tendency 
 other than to stare at him occasionally and 
 make a great noise about it. That they rec- 
 ognize him as a thief and cannibal I have no 
 doubt. But he thieves by night when other 
 birds are abed, and as they practise their own 
 thieving by open daylight, it may be that 
 they are denouncing him as an impostor. 
 Or it may be that the owl in ' his nightly 
 prowlings sometimes snatches a young crow 
 off the roost ; and so they grow excited, as 
 all birds do, in the presence of their natural 
 enemy. They make much the same kind of 
 a fuss over a hawk ; though the latter easily 
 escapes the annoyance by flying swiftly 
 
away, or by circling slowly upward to a 
 height so dizzy that the crows dare not 
 follow. 
 
 In the early spring I have utilized this 
 habit of the crows in my search for owls' 
 nests. The crows are much more apt to dis- 
 cover its whereabouts than the most careful 
 ornithologist; and they gather about it fre- 
 quently for a little excitement. Once I 
 utilized the habit for getting a good look at 
 the crows themselves. I carried out an old 
 stuffed owl, and set it up on a pole, close 
 against a great pine tree, on the edge of a 
 grove. Then I lay down in a thick clump 
 of bushes and hawed excitedly. The first 
 messenger from the flock flew straight over, 
 without making any discoveries. The sec- 
 ond one found the owl, and I had no need 
 for further calling. Haw ! haw ! he cried 
 deep down in his throat — here he is ! here 's 
 the rascal ! In a moment he had the whole 
 flock there ; and for nearly ten minutes they 
 kept coming in from every direction. A 
 more frenzied lot I never saw. The hawing 
 was tremendous, and I hoped to settle at last 
 
 243 
 Croai-tOays 
 
 H 
 
244 
 
 CrouiXOays 
 
 the real cause and outcome of the excite- 
 ment ; but an old crow, flying close over my 
 hiding place, caught sight of me looking out 
 through the bushes. How he made himself 
 heard or understood in the din I do not 
 know ; but the crow is never too excited to 
 heed a danger note. The next moment the 
 whole flock were streaming away across the 
 woods, giving the scatter-cry at every flap. 
 
 There is another way in which the crows' 
 love of variety is manifest, though in a much 
 more dignified manner. Occasionally a flock 
 may be surprised sitting about in the trees, 
 deeply absorbed in watching a performance 
 by one of their number. The crow's chief 
 note is the hoarse haw, haw, with which 
 everybody is familiar, and which seems capa- 
 ble of expressing everything, from the soft 
 chatter of going to bed in the pine tops to 
 the loud derision with which he detects all 
 ordinary attempts to surprise him. Certain 
 crows, however, have unusual vocal abilities, 
 and at times they seem to use them for the 
 entertainment of the others. Yet I suspect 
 that these vocal gifts are seldom used, or 
 
H 
 
 even discovered, until lack of amusement 
 throws them upon their own resources. Cer- 
 tain it is that, whenever a crow makes any Croai~t[)avs 
 unusual sounds, there are always several more 
 about, hawing vigorously, yet seeming to 
 listen attentively. I have caught them at 
 this a score of times. 
 
 One September afternoon, while walking 
 quietly through the woods, my attention was 
 attracted by an unusual sound coming from 
 an oak grove, a favorite haunt of gray squir- 
 rels. The crows were cawing in the same 
 direction; but every few minutes would 
 come a strange cracking sound — c-r-r-rack- 
 a-rack-rack, as if some one had a giant nut- 
 cracker and were snapping it rapidly. I 
 stole forward till I could see perhaps fifty 
 crows perched about in the oaks, all very 
 attentive to something going on below them, 
 that I could not see. 
 
 Not till I had crawled up to the brush 
 fence, on the very edge of the grove, and 
 peeked through, did I see the performer. 
 On the end of a long delicate branch, a few 
 feet above the ground, a small crow was 
 
^ clinging, swaying up and down like a bobo- 
 link on a cardinal flower, balancing himself 
 gracefully by spreading his wings, and every 
 few minutes giving the strange cracking 
 l^roW' ay gQ^nd, accompanied by a flirt of his wings 
 and tail as the branch swayed upward. At 
 every repetition the crows hawed in. applause. 
 I watched them fully ten minutes before they 
 saw me and flew away. 
 
 Several times since, I have been attracted 
 by unusual sounds, and have surprised a 
 flock of crows which were evidently watch- 
 ing a performance by one of their number. 
 Once it was a deep musical whistle, much 
 like the too-loo-loo of the blue jay (who is the 
 crow's cousin, for all his bright colors), but 
 deeper and fuller, and without the trill that 
 always marks the blue jay's whistle. Once, 
 in some big woods in Maine, it was a hoarse 
 bark, utterly unlike a bird call, which made 
 me slip heavy shells into my gun and creep 
 forward, expecting some strange beast that I 
 had never before met. 
 
 The same love of variety and excitement 
 leads the crow to investigate any unusual 
 
H 
 
 sight or sound that catches his attention. 
 
 . . 247 
 
 Hide anywhere "in the woods, and make any 
 
 queer sound you will, — play a jew's-harp, CrotJ^ays 
 or pull a devil's-fiddle, or just call softly, — 
 and first comes a blue jay, all agog to find 
 out all about it. Next a red squirrel steals 
 down and barks just over your head, to make 
 you start, if possible. Then, if your eyes 
 are sharp, you will see a crow gliding from 
 thicket to thicket, keeping out of sight him- 
 self, yet drawing nearer and nearer to inves- 
 tigate the unusual sound. And if he is sus- 
 picious or unsatisfied, he will hide and wait 
 patiently for you to come out and show 
 yourself. 
 
 Not only is he curious about you, and 
 watches you as you go about the woods, but 
 he watches his neighbors as well. When a 
 fox is started you can often trace his course, 
 far ahead of your dogs, by the crows circling 
 over him and calling Rascal! rascal/ when- 
 ever he shows himself. He watches the 
 ducks and plover, the deer and bear; he 
 knows where they are, and what they are 
 doing ; and he will go far out of his way to 
 
248 
 
 warn them, as well as his own kind, at the 
 approach of danger. When birds nest, or 
 foxes den, or beasts fight in the woods, he is 
 there to see it. When other things fail, he 
 t^row- ays ^-^ even play jokes, as upon one occasion 
 when I saw a young crow hide in a hole in a 
 pine tree, and for two hours keep a whole 
 flock in a frenzy of excitement by his dis- 
 tressed cawing. He would venture out 
 when they were at a distance, peek all about 
 cautiously to see that no one saw him, then 
 set up a heart-rending appeal, only to dodge 
 back out of sight when the flock came rush- 
 ing in with a clamor that was deafening. 
 
 Only one of two explanations can account 
 for his action in this case ; either he was 
 a young crow who did not appreciate the 
 gravity of crying Wolf ! wolf ! when there 
 was no wolf, or else it was a plain game of 
 hide-and-seek. When the crows at length 
 found him they chased him out of sight, 
 either to chastise him, or, as I am inclined 
 now to think, each one sought to catch 
 him for the privilege of being the next to 
 hide. 
 
That crows do play at hide-and-seek, and 
 other games without a name, becomes more 
 and more evident to one who follows and 
 watches them. Here is a curious bit of play- 
 that I discovered one September afternoon 
 when a vigorous cawing over in the woods 
 induced me to leave the orchard, where I 
 was picking apples, for the more exciting 
 occupation of spying on my dark neighbors. 
 
 The clamor came from an old deserted 
 pasture, bounded on three sides by pine 
 woods, and on the fourth by half-wild fields 
 that straggled away to the dusty road beyond. 
 Once, long ago, there was a farm here ; but 
 even the cellars have disappeared, and the 
 crows no longer fear the place. 
 
 It was an easy task to creep unobserved 
 through the nearest pine grove, and gain a 
 safe hiding place under some junipers, on the 
 edge of the old pasture. The cawing mean- 
 while was intermittent ; at times it broke out 
 in a perfect babel, as if every crow were doing 
 his best to outcaw all the others ; again there 
 was silence save for an occasional short note, 
 — the all 's well of the sentinel on guard. 
 
 249 
 Croai-tO&ys 
 
 H 
 
When I reached the junipers, the crows 
 — half a hundred of them — were ranged in 
 the pine tops along one edge of the open. 
 _ They were quiet enough, save for an occa- 
 
 t/row- y sional scramble for position, evidently wait- 
 ing for something to happen. Down on my 
 right, on the fourth or open side of the 
 pasture, a solitary old crow was perched in 
 the top of a tall hickory. I might have 
 taken him for a sentry but for a bright 
 object which he held in his beak. It was 
 too far to make out what the object was ; 
 but whenever he turned his head it flashed 
 in the sunlight, like a bit of glass. 
 
 As I watched him curiously he launched 
 himself into the air and came speeding down 
 the center of the field, making for the pines 
 at the opposite end. Instantly every crow 
 was on the wing; they shot out from both 
 sides, many that I had not seen before, all 
 cawing like mad. They rushed upon the 
 old fellow from the hickory, and for a few 
 moments it was impossible to make out any- 
 thing except a whirling, diving rush of black 
 wings. The din meanwhile was deafening. 
 
Something bright dropped from the excited 
 flock, and a single crow swooped after it ; 
 but I was too much interested in the rush 
 to note what became of him. The clamor 
 ceased abruptly. The crows, after a short 
 practice in rising, falling and wheeling to 
 command, settled in the pines on both sides 
 of the field, where they had been before. 
 And there in the hickory was another crow 
 with the same bright, flashing 
 thing in his beak. 
 
 There was a long wait this time, 
 as if for a breathing spell. Then 
 the solitary crow came skimming 
 down the field again without warn- 
 ing. The flock surrounded him on 
 
 251 
 
 Crow^ays 
 
the instant, with the evident intention of 
 252 
 
 hindering his flight as much as possible. 
 
 They flapped their wings in his face; they 
 zig-zagged in front of him ; they attempted 
 Crow^ays ^^ ^^^^it on his back. In vain he twisted 
 and dodged and dropped Hke a stone. 
 Wherever he turned he found fluttering 
 wings to oppose his flight. The first object 
 of the game was apparent : he was trying to 
 reach the goal of pines opposite the hickory, 
 and the others were trying to prevent it. 
 Again and again the leader was lost to 
 sight; but whenever the sunlight flashed 
 from the bright thing he carried, he was 
 certain to be found in the very midst of a 
 clamoring crowd. Then the second object 
 was clear : the crows were trying to confuse 
 him and make him drop the talisman. 
 
 They circled rapidly down the field and 
 back again, near the watcher. Suddenly the 
 bright thing dropped, reaching the ground 
 before it was discovered. Three or four 
 crows swooped upon it, and a lively scrim- 
 mage began for its possession. In the midst 
 of the struggle a small crow shot under the 
 
contestants, and before they knew what was 
 
 up he was scurrying away to the hickory 
 
 with the coveted trinket held as high as Crooj^avs 
 
 he could carry it, as if in triumph at his ^ ^ 
 
 sharp trick. >«fcF 
 
 The flock settled slowly into the pines 
 again with much hawhig. There was evi- 
 dently a question whether the play ought to 
 be allowed or not. Everybody had some- 
 thing to say about it ; and there was no end 
 of objection. At last it was settled good- 
 naturedly, and they took places to watch till 
 the new leader should give them opportunity 
 for another chase. 
 
 There was no doubt left in the watcher's 
 mind by this time as to what the crows were 
 doing. They were playing a game, like so 
 many schoolboys, enjoying to the full the 
 long bright hours of the September after- 
 noon. Did they find the bright object as 
 they crossed the pasture on the way from 
 Farmer B's corn-field, and the game so 
 suggest itself.'' Or was the game first 
 suggested, and the talisman brought after- 
 wards 1 Every crow has a secret storehouse, 
 
where he hides every bright thing he finds. 
 Sometimes it is a crevice in the rocks under 
 moss and ferns ; sometimes the splintered 
 ^ end of a broken branch ; sometimes a 
 
 v>roW' y deserted owl's nest in a hollow tree ; often a 
 crotch in a big pine, covered carefully by 
 brown needles ; but wherever it is, it is full 
 of bright things — glass, and china, and 
 beads, and tin, and an old spoon, and a 
 silvered buckle — and nobody but the crow 
 himself knows how to find it. Did some 
 crow fetch his best trinket for the occasion, 
 or was this a special thing for games, and 
 kept by the flock where any crow could 
 get it? 
 
 These were some of the interesting things 
 that were puzzling the watcher when he 
 noticed that the hickory was empty. A 
 flash over against the dark green revealed 
 the leader. There he was, stealing along in 
 the shadow, trying to reach the goal before 
 they saw him. A derisive haw ! announced 
 his discovery. Then the fun began again, 
 as noisy, as confusing, as enjoyable as 
 ever. 
 
255 
 
 H 
 
 When the bright object dropped this time, 
 curiosity to get possession of it was stronger 
 than my interest in the game. Besides, the Crow^ays 
 apples were waiting. I jumped up, scatter- 
 ing the crows in wild confusion ; but as they 
 streamed away I fancied that there was still 
 more of the excitement of play than of alarm 
 in their flight and clamor. 
 
 The bright object which the leader carried 
 proved to be the handle of a glass cup. A 
 fragment of the vessel itself had broken off 
 with the handle, so that the ring was com- 
 plete. Altogether it was just the thing for 
 the purpose — bright, and not too heavy, 
 and most convenient for a crow to seize and 
 carry. Once well gripped, it would take a 
 good deal of worrying to make him drop it. 
 
 Who first was " it," as children say in 
 games? Was it a special privilege of the 
 crow who first found the talisman, or do the 
 crows have some way of counting out for 
 the first leader.? There is a schoolhouse 
 down that same old dusty road. Sometimes, 
 when at play there, I used to notice the 
 crows stealing silently from tree to tree in 
 
 ,^-^ 
 
256 
 
 Croof^&ys 
 
 the woods beyond, watching our games with 
 shy, silent interest. Did they learn their 
 game from watching us at tag, and do they 
 know coram, and leave-stocks, and prisoners' 
 base, and bull-in-the-ring as well ? One 
 could easily believe their wise little black 
 heads to be capable of any imitation, espe- 
 cially if one had ever owned a tame crow, or 
 had followed the flock in the bright autumn 
 days, when food is plenty and every crow is 
 free from care as a schoolboy in vacation. 
 
257 
 
SNOWY VISITORS 
 
 VER my table, as I 
 write, is a big snowy 
 owl, whose yellow 
 eyes seem to be 
 always watching 
 me, whatever J do. 
 Perhaps he is still 
 wondering at the 
 curious way in 
 which he came to 
 my den. 
 
 One stormy after- 
 noon, a few winters ago, I was watching for 
 black ducks by a lonely salt creek that 
 doubled across the marshes from Maddaket 
 Harbor. In the shadow of a low ridge I had 
 built my blind among some bushes, near the 
 freshest water. In front of me a solitary 
 
 decoy was splashing about in joyous freedom 
 259 
 
, after having been confined all day, quacking 
 loudly at the loneliness of the place and at 
 ^^^- being separated from her mate. Beside me, 
 Snowy ^^^0 crouched in the blind, my old dog Don was 
 ^ trying his best to shiver himself warm with- 
 out disturbing the bushes too much. That 
 would have frightened the incoming ducks, 
 as Don knew very well. 
 
 It grew dark and bitterly cold. No birds 
 were flying, and I had stood up a moment 
 to warm my half -frozen toes, when a shadow 
 seemed to pass over my head. The next 
 moment there was a splash, followed by 
 loud quacks of alarm from the decoy. All 
 I could make out, in the obscurity under 
 the ridge, was a flutter of wings that rose 
 heavily from the water, taking my duck with 
 them. Only the anchor string prevented 
 the marauder from getting away with his 
 booty. Not wishing to shoot, for the decoy 
 was a valuable one, I shouted, and sent out 
 the dog. The decoy dropped with a splash, 
 and in the darkness the thief got away — 
 just vanished, like a shadow, without a 
 sound. 
 
Poor ducky died in my hands a moment , 
 later, the marks of cruel claws telling me 
 plainly that the thief was an owl ; though I Snowy Visitors 
 had no suspicion then that it was the rare 
 winter visitor from the North. I supposed 
 that it was only a great horned owl, and so 
 laid plans to get him. 
 
 Next night I was at the same spot with 
 some wooden decoys, over which the skins 
 of wild ducks had been carefully stretched. 
 An hour after dark he came again, attracted, 
 no doubt, by my continued quacking. I had 
 another swift glimpse of what seemed only a 
 shadow ; saw it poise and shoot downward 
 before I could find it with my gun-sight, 
 striking the decoys with a great splash and 
 clatter. Before he discovered his mistake 
 I had him. The next moment Don came 
 ashore, proud as a peacock, bringing a great 
 snowy owl with him — a rare prize, worth 
 ten times the trouble we had taken to get it. 
 
 Owls are generally very lean and mus- 
 cular; so much so, in severe winters, when 
 food is scarce, that they are unable to fly 
 straight when the wind blows ; and a 
 
262 
 
 Snooty 
 
 twenty-knot breeze catches their broad wings 
 and tosses them about helplessly. This one, 
 however, was fat as a plover. When I 
 stuffed him, I found that he. had just eaten 
 a big rat and a meadow-lark, hair, bones, 
 feathers, and all. It would be interesting to 
 know what he intended to do with the duck. 
 Perhaps, like the crow, he has snug hiding 
 places here and there, where he keeps things 
 against a time of need. 
 
 Every severe winter a few of these beau- 
 tiful owls find their way to the lonely places 
 of the New England coast, driven south- 
 ward by lack of food in the frozen North. 
 Here, in Massachusetts, they prefer the 
 southern shores of Cape Cod, and especially 
 the island of Nantucket, where, besides the 
 food cast up by the tides, there are larks 
 and blackbirds and robins which linger all 
 winter. At home, in the far North, the owls 
 feed largely upon hares and grouse ; here 
 nothing comes amiss, from a stray cat, roving 
 too far from the house, to stray mussels on 
 the beach that have escaped the sharp eyes 
 of crows and sea-gulls. 
 
':Ji^ 
 
 Some of his hunting ways are most curi- , 
 ous. One winter day, in prowling along 
 the beach, I approached the spot where, Snoanr Visifors 
 a day or two before, I had been shooting ^^7^ 
 whistlers (golden-eye ducks) over decoys. 
 The blind had been made by digging a 
 hole in the sand. In the bottom was an 
 armful of dry seaweed, to keep one's toes 
 warm ; and just behind the stand was the 
 stump of a ship's mainmast, the relic of 
 some old storm and shipwreck, cast up by 
 the tide. 
 
 A commotion of some kind was going on 
 in the blind as I drew near. Sand and sea- 
 weed were hurled up at intervals, to be 
 swept aside by the wind. I dropped out of 
 sight into the dead beach grass to watch 
 and listen. Soon a white head and neck 
 bristled up from behind the old mast, every 
 feather standing straight out ferociously. 
 The head was perfectly silent a moment, 
 listening ; then it twisted completely round, 
 so as to look in every direction. A moment 
 later it had disappeared, and the seaweed 
 was flying again. 
 
264 
 
 There was a prize in the old blind evi- 
 dently. But what was he doing there ? Till 
 ^r-<P3^f then I had supposed that the owl always 
 •^ kiia^%i^' takes his e-ame from the wine. Farther 
 
 ..^-B 
 
 takes his game from the wing. Farther 
 along the beach was a sand bluff over- 
 looking the proceedings. I gained it, after 
 a careful stalk, crept to the edge and looked 
 over. Down in the blind a big snowy owl 
 was digging away like a Trojan, tearing out 
 sand and seaweed with his great claws, first 
 one foot then the other, like a hungry hen, 
 and sending it up in showers behind him 
 over the old mast. Every few moments he 
 would stop, bristle up all his feathers till he 
 looked comically big and fierce, take a look 
 out over the log and along the beach, then 
 fall to digging again furiously. 
 
 I suppose that the object of this bristling 
 up before each observation was to strike ter- 
 ror into the heart of any enemy that might 
 be approaching to surprise him at his unusual 
 work. It is an owl trick. Wounded birds 
 always use it when approached. 
 
 The object of the digging was soon appar- 
 ent. A beach rat had jumped down into the 
 
265 
 
 blind, after some fragments of my lunch, 
 
 and, being unable to climb up the sheer sand 
 
 walls, had started to tunnel up to the surface. Snooty Visitors 
 
 The owl heard him at work, and started a 
 
 stern chase. He won, too, for right in the 
 
 midst of a fury of seaweed he shot up with 
 
 the rat in his claws. Had it not been for the 
 
 storm and his underground digging, he surely 
 
 would have detected me long before I could 
 
 get near enough to see what he was doing; 
 
 for his eyes and ears are wonderfully keen. 
 
 In his southern visits, or perhaps on the 
 ice fields of the Arctic ocean, he has discov- 
 ered a more novel way of procuring his food 
 than digging for it. He has turned fisher- 
 man and learned to fish. Once only have I 
 seen him get his dinner in this way. It was 
 on the north shore of Nantucket, one day in 
 the winter of 1890-91, when the remarkable 
 flight of white owls came down from the 
 North. The bay was full of floating ice, and 
 swirnming about the shoals were thousands 
 of coots. While watching the latter through 
 my field glass, I noticed a snowy owl stand- 
 ing up still and straight on the edge of a big 
 
Snowy 
 
 , , ice cake. " Now what is that fellow doing 
 there?" I thought. — "I know! He is try- 
 ^^: ing to drift down close to that flock of coots 
 before they see him." 
 
 That was interesting; so I sat down on 
 a rock to watch. Whenever I took my eyes 
 from him a moment, it was difficult to find 
 him again, so perfectly did his plumage blend 
 with the white ice whereon he stood motion- 
 less. 
 
 But he was not after the coots. I saw 
 him lean forward suddenly and plunge a foot 
 into the water. Then, when he hopped back 
 from the edge, and appeared to be eating 
 something, it dawned upon me that he was 
 fishing — and fishing like a true sportsman, 
 out on the ice alone, with only his own skill 
 to depend upon. In a few minutes he struck 
 again, and this time rose with a fine fish, 
 which he carried to the shore to devour at 
 leisure. 
 
 For a long time that fish was to me the 
 most puzzling thing in the whole incident; 
 for at that season no large fish are to be 
 found, except in deep water off shore. Some 
 
weeks later I learned that, just previous to , 
 the incident, several fishermen's dories, with 
 full fares, had been upset on the east side of Snotmr l^sifora 
 the island when trying to land through a 
 heavy surf. The dead fish had been carried 
 around by the tides, and the owl had been 
 deceived into showing his method of fish- 
 ing. In his northern home, when the ice 
 breaks up and the salmon are running, he 
 goes fishing from an ice cake as a regular 
 occupation. 
 
 The owl lit upon a knoll, not two hundred 
 yards from where I sat motionless, and gave 
 me a good opportunity of watching him at 
 his meal. He treated the fish exactly as he 
 would have treated a rat or duck : stood on 
 it with one foot, gripped the long claws of 
 the other through it, and tore it to pieces 
 savagely, as one would a bit of paper. The 
 beak was not used, except to receive the 
 pieces, which were conveyed up to it by his 
 foot, as a parrot eats. He devoured every- 
 thing, even to the bones, in great hungry 
 mouthfuls. Then he hopped to the top of 
 the knoll, sat up straight, puffed out his 
 
268 
 
 •5^; 
 
 feathers to look big, and went to sleep. But 
 with the first slight movement I made to 
 ^^'fvf-^', creep nearer, he heard me and was wide 
 :inowy ^i^^^f- awake, and flew to a higher point. Such 
 hearing is simply marvelous. 
 
 The stomach of an owl is peculiar, there 
 being no intermediate crop, as in other birds. 
 Every part of his prey small enough (and 
 the mouth and throat of an owl are large 
 out of all proportion) is greedily swallowed. 
 Long after the flesh is digested, feathers, fur 
 and bones remain in the stomach, softened 
 by acids, till everything is absorbed that can 
 afford nourishment, even to the quill shafts, 
 and the ends and marrow of bones. The 
 dry remains are then rolled into pellets by 
 the stomach and disgorged. 
 
 This, by the way, suggests the best method 
 of finding an owl's haunts. It is to search, 
 not overhead, but on the ground under large 
 trees, till a pile of these curious remnants of 
 savage feasting reveals the nest or roosting 
 place above. 
 
 It seems remarkable that my fisherman- 
 owl did not make a try at the coots that were 
 
so plenty about him. Rarely, I think, does , 
 
 he attempt to strike a bird of any kind in the 
 
 daytime. His long training at the North, Snotoy Visitors 
 
 where the days are several months long, has 
 
 adapted his eyes to seeing perfectly, both in 
 
 sunshine and in darkness ; and with us he 
 
 spends the greater part of each day hunting 
 
 along the beaches. The birds at such times 
 
 are never molested. He seems to know that 
 
 he is not good at dodging ; that they are all 
 
 quicker than he, and are not to be caught 
 
 napping. And the birds, even the little 
 
 birds, have no fear of him in the sunshine ; 
 
 though they shiver themselves to sleep when 
 
 they think of him at night. 
 
 I have seen the snowbirds twittering con- 
 tentedly near him. Once I saw him fly out 
 to sea in the midst of a score of gulls, which 
 paid no attention to him. At another time 
 I saw him fly over a large flock of wild 
 ducks that were preening themselves in the 
 grass. He kept straight on ; and the ducks 
 merely stopped their toilet for an instant, 
 and turned up- one eye so as to see him 
 better. Had it been dusk, the whole flock 
 
Snooty 
 
 would have shot up into the air at the first 
 270 
 
 startled quack — all but one, which would 
 
 ■ff^: have stayed with the owl. 
 
 His favorite time for hunting is the hour 
 after dusk, or just before daylight, when 
 birds are restless on the roost. No bird 
 is safe from him then. The fierce eyes 
 search through every tree and bush and 
 bunch of grass. The keen ears detect 
 every faintest chirp, or rustle, or scratching 
 of tiny claws on the roost. Nothing that 
 can be called a sound escapes them. The 
 broad, soft wings tell no tale of his pres- 
 ence, and his swoop is swift and sure. He 
 utters no sound. Like a good Nimrod, he 
 hunts silently. 
 
 The flight of an owl, noiseless as the 
 sweep of a cloud shadow, is the most 
 remarkable thing about him. The wings 
 are wonderfully adapted to the silent move- 
 ment that is essential to surprising birds at 
 dusk. The feathers are long and soft. The 
 laminae extending from the wing quills, 
 instead of ending in the sharp feather-edge 
 of other birds, are all drawn out to fine hair 
 
271 
 
 points, through which the air can make no 
 
 sound as it rushes in the swift wing-beats. 
 
 The whisk of a duck's wings can be heard Snoary Hsifora 
 
 two or three hundred yards on a still night. 
 
 The wings of an eagle rustle like silk in the 
 
 wind, as he mounts upward. A sparrow's 
 
 wings flutter or whir as he changes his 
 
 flight. Every one knows the startled rush 
 
 of a quail or grouse. But no ear ever heard 
 
 the passing of a great owl, spreading his 
 
 five-foot wings in rapid flight. 
 
 He knows well, however, when to vary his 
 program. Once I saw him hovering at dusk 
 over some wild land covered with bushes 
 and dead grass, a favorite winter haunt of 
 meadow-larks. His manner showed that he 
 knew his game was near. He kept hover- 
 ing over a certain spot, swinging off noise- 
 lessly to right or left, only to return again. 
 Suddenly he struck his wings over his head 
 with a loud flap and swooped instantly. It 
 was a clever trick. The bird beneath had 
 been waked by the sound, or startled into 
 turning his head. With the first movement 
 the owl had him. 
 
272 
 Sno(ay 
 
 All owls have the habit of sitting still 
 upon some high point which harmonizes 
 with the general color of their feathers, and 
 swooping upon any sound or movement that 
 indicates game. The long-eared, or eagle- 
 owl invariably selects a dark-colored stub, 
 on top of which he appears as a part of the 
 tree itself, and is seldom noticed ; while the 
 snowy owl, whose general color is soft gray, 
 will search out a birch or lightning-blasted 
 stump, and sitting up still and straight, so 
 hide himself in plain sight that it takes a 
 good eye to find him. 
 
 The swooping habit leads them into queer 
 mistakes sometimes. Two or three times, 
 when sitting still in the woods watching for 
 birds, my head has been mistaken for a rat 
 or squirrel, or some other furry quadruped, 
 by owls, which swooped and brushed me 
 with their wings, and once left the marks of 
 their claws, before discovering their mistake. 
 
 Sometimes the crows find one of these 
 snowy visitors on the beach, and make a 
 great fuss and racket, as they always do 
 when an owl is in sight. At such times he 
 
273 
 
 takes his stand under a bank, or in the lee 
 
 of a rock, where the crows cannot trouble 
 
 him from behind, and sits watching them Snotoy Visitora 
 
 fiercely. Woe be to the one that ventures 
 
 too near! A plunge, a grip of his claw, a 
 
 weak caw, and it 's all over. That seems to 
 
 double the crows' frenzy — and that is the 
 
 one moment when you can approach the 
 
 owl rapidly from behind. But you must 
 
 drop flat when the crows perceive you ; for 
 
 the owl is sure to take a look around for the 
 
 cause of their sudden alarm. If he sees 
 
 nothing suspicious, he will return to his 
 
 shelter to eat his crow, or just to rest his 
 
 sensitive ears after all the pother. Some 
 
 distance away the crows sit silent, watching 
 
 you and him. 
 
 And now a curious thing happens. The 
 crows, that a moment ago were clamoring 
 angrily about their enemy, watch with a 
 kind of intense interest as you creep towards 
 him. Halfway to the rock behind which 
 he is hiding, they guess your purpose, and a 
 low rapid chatter begins among them. One 
 would think that they would exult in seeing 
 
him surprised and killed; but that is not 
 crow nature. They would gladly worry the 
 ^^^: owl to death, if they could ; but they will 
 Snoa^ ¥^^^^- not stand by and see him slain by a common 
 ^^ enemy. The chatter ceases suddenly. Two 
 or three swift fliers leave the flock, circle 
 around you, and speed over the rock, utter- 
 ing short notes of alarm. With the first 
 sharp note, which all birds seem to under- 
 stand, the owl springs into the air, turns, 
 sees you, and is off up the beach. The 
 crows rush after him with crazy clamor, and 
 speedily drive him to cover again. — But 
 spare yourself more trouble. It is useless 
 to try stalking any game while the crows 
 are watching. 
 
m emgii 
 
Mi^^i^w 
 
 mwmmj 
 
 jj^iijip^ ^*i^^''^' 
 
 Sometimes, on a winter walk; H 
 
 '^'^ you meet a flock of stranger jPW, 
 /HI ) birds — fluffy gray visitors, ''4':' 
 ^|]jj„j,^jl^ almost as large as a robin — flying ''' 
 
 about the lawns with soft whistling 
 calls, or feeding on the ground, so tame and 
 fearless that they barely move aside as you 
 approach. The beak is short and thick ; the 
 back of the head and a large patch just above 
 the tail are golden brown; and across the 
 wings are narrow double bars of white. All 
 
 the rest is soft gray, dark above and light 
 
 277 
 
 '7 
 
o beneath. If you watch them on the ground, 
 you will see that they have a curious way of 
 Q^ moving about, like a golden-winged wood- 
 Cnnspnas pecker in the same position. Now they put 
 ' one foot before the other, in a funny little 
 attempt at a dignified walk, like the black- 
 birds ; again they hop like a robin, but much 
 more awkwardly, as if they were not accus- 
 tomed to walking, and did not quite know 
 how to use their feet — which is quite true. 
 
 The birds are pine-grosbeaks, and are 
 somewhat irregular winter visitors from the 
 far North. Only when the cold is most 
 severe, and the snow lies deep about Hud- 
 son Bay, do they leave their nesting places 
 to spend a few weeks in bleak New England 
 as a winter resort. Their stay with us is 
 short and uncertain. Long ere the first 
 bluebird has whistled to us from the old 
 fence rail, the grosbeaks are whistling of 
 spring, and singing their love songs in the 
 forests of Labrador. 
 
 A curious thing about the flocks we see 
 in -winter is that they are composed almost 
 entirely of females. The male bird is very 
 
rare with us. You can tell him instantly by 
 his brighter color and his beautiful crimson 
 breast. Sometimes the flocks contain a few c^ 
 young males ; but until the first mating sea- f^nsfmas 
 son has tipped their breast feathers with 
 deep crimson, they are almost indistinguish- 
 able from their sober-colored companions. 
 
 This crimson breast shield, by the way, is 
 the family mark or coat of arms of the gros- 
 beaks, just as the scarlet crest marks all the 
 woodpeckers. And if you ask a Micmac, 
 deep in the woods, how the grosbeak got 
 his shield, he may tell you a story that will 
 interest you as did the legend of Hiawatha 
 and the woodpecker in your childhood days. 
 
 If the old male, with his proud crimson, 
 be rare with us, his beautiful song is still 
 more so. Only in the deep forests, by the 
 lonely rivers of the far North, where no 
 human ear ever hears, does he greet the 
 sunrise from the top of some lofty spruce. 
 There also he pours into the ears of his 
 sober little gray wife the sweetest love song 
 of the birds. It is a flood of soft warbling 
 notes, tinkling like a brook deep under the 
 
28o 
 
 Cfir/'sfmas 
 Carol 
 
 ice, tumbling over each other in a quiet 
 ecstasy of harmony; mellow as the song of 
 C^ the hermit thrush, but much softer, as if he 
 
 ■?»--•■-.' 
 
 -r " >'■■ 
 
 feared lest any should hear but her to whom 
 he sang. Those who know the music of the 
 rose-breasted grosbeak (not his robin-like 
 song of spring, but the exquisitely soft warble 
 to his brooding mate) may multiply its sweet- 
 ness indefinitely, and so form an idea of what 
 the pine-grosbeak's song is like. 
 
 But sometimes he forgets himself in his 
 winter visit, and sings as other birds do, just 
 because his world is bright; and then, once 
 in a lifetime, a New England bird lover hears 
 him, and remembers; and regrets for the 
 rest of his life that the grosbeak's northern 
 country life has made him so shy a visitor. 
 
 One Christmas morning, a few years ago, 
 the new-fallen snow lay white and pure over 
 
 all the woods 
 and fields. It 
 was soft and 
 clinging as it 
 
 
 ^•■- 
 
 irH~" V 
 
fell on Christmas eve. Now every old wall „ 
 
 and fence was a carved bench of gleaming 
 
 white ; every post and stub had a soft white c)ff 
 
 robe and a tall white hat ; and every little O^ristmas 
 
 bush and thicket was a perfect fairyland of 
 
 white arches and glistening columns, and 
 
 dark grottoes walled about with delicate 
 
 frostwork of silver and jewels. And then 
 
 the glory, dazzling beyond all words, when 
 
 the sun rose and shone upon it! 
 
 Before sunrise I was out. Soon the jump- 
 ing flight and cheery good-morning of a 
 downy woodpecker led me to an old field 
 with scattered evergreen clumps. There is 
 no better time for a quiet peep at the birds 
 than the morning after a snowstorm, and no 
 better place than the evergreens. If you 
 can find them at all (which is not certain, 
 for they have mysterious ways of disap- 
 pearing before a storm), you will find them 
 unusually quiet, and willing to bear your 
 scrutiny indifferently, instead of flying off 
 into deeper coverts. 
 
 I had scarcely crossed the wall when I 
 stopped at hearing a new bird song, so 
 
„ amazingly sweet that it could only be a 
 ' Christmas message, yet so out of place that 
 Q^ the listener stood doubting whether his ears 
 Cnr/srmos ^vere playing him false, wondering whether 
 the music or the landscape would not sud- 
 denly vanish as an unreal thing. The song 
 was continuous — a soft melodious warble, 
 full of sweetness and suggestion; but sug- 
 gestion of June meadows and a summer sun- 
 rise, rather than of snow-packed evergreens 
 and Christmastide. To add to the unreality, 
 no ear could tell where the song came from ; 
 its own muffled quality disguised the source 
 perfectly. I searched the trees in front; 
 there was no bird there. I looked behind; 
 there was no place for a bird to sing. I 
 remembered the redstart, how he calls some- 
 times from among the rocks, and refuses to 
 show himself, and runs and hides when you 
 look for him. I searched the wall; but not 
 a bird track marked the snow. All the while 
 the wonderful carol went on, now in the air, 
 now close beside me, growing more and more 
 bewildering as I listened. It took me a good 
 half-hour to locate the sound; then I under- 
 
stood. Near me was a solitary fir tree with a „ 
 
 bushy top. The bird, whoever he was, had- 
 
 gone to sleep up there, close against the cD7 
 
 trunk, as birds do, for protection. During Ginsfmas 
 
 the night the soft snow gathered thicker and 
 
 thicker upon the flexible branches. Their 
 
 tips bent with the weight till they touched 
 
 the trunk below, forming a green bower, 
 
 about which the snow packed all night long, 
 
 till it was completely closed in. The bird 
 
 was a prisoner inside, and singing as the 
 
 morning sun shone in through the walls of 
 
 his prison-house. 
 
 As I listened, delighted with the carol 
 and the minstrel's novel situation, a mass of 
 snow, loosened by the sun, slid from the 
 snow bower, and a pine-grosbeak appeared 
 in the doorway. A moment he seemed to 
 look about curiously over the new, white, 
 beautiful world ; then he hopped to the 
 topmost twig and, turning his crimson 
 breast to the sunrise, poured out his morn- 
 ing song ; no longer muffled, but sweet 
 and clear as a wood-thrush bell ringing the 
 sunset. 
 
Q Once, long afterward, I heard his softer 
 
 love song, and found his nest in the heart of 
 
 G/^ a New Brunswick forest. Till then it was 
 
 Cnr/ST/nas not known that he ever nested south of 
 i»»^ak: Carol ■, , , -r. , i i • r t 
 
 1^ Labrador. But even that, and the loy of dis- 
 
 ^"^''f^^'^l covery, lacked the charm of this rare sweet 
 
 ^"'^ carol, coming all unsought and unexpected, 
 
 as good things do, while our own birds were 
 
 spending the Christmas time and singing the 
 
 sunrise in Florida. 
 
KILLOOLEET, 
 LriTLESWEETf 
 
 285 
 
KILLOOLEET, LITTLE SWEET- 
 VOICE 
 
 'HE day was cold, 
 the woods were 
 wet, and the weather 
 was trying patience 
 and temper sorely 
 when Killooleet first 
 came and sang on my 
 ridgepole. Fishing 
 was poor down in the 
 big lake, and there 
 were signs of civiliza- 
 tion here and there, 
 which we did not like ; so we had pushed up 
 river, Simmo and I, thirty miles in the rain, 
 to a smaller lake, where we had the wilder- 
 ness all to ourselves. 
 
 The rain was still falling, the lake white- 
 capped, and the forest all misty and 
 287 
 
Qo wind-blown when we ran our canoes ashore 
 
 2oo 
 
 by the old cedar that marked our camping 
 ^///oo/eef, ground. First we built a big fire to dry 
 ^^rr/e some boughs to sleep upon ; then we put 
 V6ice "P °^^ houses, Simmo a bark commoosie, and 
 I a little tent ; and I was inside, getting dry 
 clothes out of a rubber bag, when I heard a 
 white-throated sparrow calling cheerily his 
 Indian name, O hear, sweet Killooleet-lillooleet- 
 lillooleet ! And the sound was so sunny, 
 so good to hear in the steady drip of rain 
 on the roof, that I went out to see the 
 little fellow who had bid us welcome to the 
 wilderness. 
 
 Simmo had heard too. He was on his 
 hands and knees, just his dark face peering 
 by the corner stake of his commoosie, so as 
 to see better the little singer on my tent. — 
 " Have better weather and better luck now. 
 Killooleet sing on ridgepole," he said con- 
 fidently. Then we spread some cracker 
 crumbs for the guest and turned in to sleep 
 till better times. 
 
 That was the beginning of a long acquaint- 
 ance. It was also the first of many social 
 
calls from a whole colony of white-throats ^ 
 (Tom-Peabody birds) that lived on the 
 mountain-side, behind my tent, and that "Kiliooleef, 
 came one by one to sing to us, and to get ■^ w, 
 acquainted, and to share our crumbs. Some- Voice 
 times, in rainy weather, when the woods 
 seemed wetter than the lake, and Simmo 
 would be sleeping philosophically, and I 
 reading, or tying trout flies in the tent, I 
 would hear a gentle stir and a rustle under 
 the tent fly. Then, if I crept out quietly, 
 I would find Killooleet exploring my goods 
 to find where the crackers grew, or just rest- 
 ing contentedly under the fly, where it was 
 dry and comfortable. 
 
 It was good to live there among them, 
 with the mountain at our backs and the 
 lake at our feet, and peace breathing in 
 every breeze or brooding silently over the 
 place at twilight. Rain or shine, day or 
 night, these white-throated sparrows are the 
 sunniest, cheeriest folk to be found any- 
 where in the woods. I grew to under- 
 stand and love the Milicete name, Killooleet, 
 Little Sweet- Voice, for its expressiveness. 
 
" Hour- Bird " the Micmacs call him ; for they 
 290 . 
 
 say he sings every hour, and so tells the time, 
 
 ^i//oo/eef, " ^^1 same 's one white man's watch." And 
 i^j(lff/e indeed there is rarely an hour, day or night, 
 Vo/ce ^^ ^^^ northern woods when you cannot 
 hear Killooleet singing. Other birds grow 
 silent after they have won their mates ; or 
 they grow fat and lazy as summer advances, 
 absorbed in the care of their young, and 
 have no time nor thought for singing. But 
 not so Killooleet. He is kinder to his mate 
 after he has won her, and never lets selfish- 
 ness or the summer steal away his music; 
 for he knows that the woods are brighter 
 for his singing. 
 
 Sometimes, at night, I would take a brand 
 from the fire, and follow a deer path that 
 wound about the mountain, or steal away 
 into a dark thicket and strike a parlor match. 
 As the flame shot up, lighting its little circle 
 of waiting leaves, there would be a stir 
 beside me in the underbrush, or overhead 
 in the fir ; then tinkling out of the darkness, 
 like a brook under the snow, would come 
 the low clear strain of melody that always 
 
set my heart a-dancing, — I''m here, sweet 
 Killooleet-lillooleet-lillooleet, — the good-night 
 song of my gentle neighbor. Then along 
 the path a little way, and another match, 
 and another song to make one better and 
 his rest sweeter. 
 
 By day I used to listen to them, hours long 
 at a stretch, practising to perfect their song. 
 These were the younger birds; and for a 
 long time they puzzled me. Those who 
 know Killooleet's song will remember that it 
 begins with three clear sweet notes ; but very 
 few have observed the break between the 
 second and third of these. I noticed, first of 
 all, that certain birds would start the song 
 twenty times in succession, yet never get 
 beyond the second note. And when I crept 
 up, to find out about it, I would find them 
 sitting disconsolately, deep in shadow, instead 
 of out in the light where they love to sing, 
 with a pitiful little droop of wings and tail, 
 and the air of failure and dejection in every 
 movement. Then again, these same singers 
 would touch the third note ; and always, in 
 such cases, they would prolong the last trill. 
 
 291 
 
 Kiltooleef, 
 
 Sweet. 
 Voice 
 
the lillooleet-lillooleet, to an indefinite length, 
 292 . 
 
 instead of stopping at the second or third 
 
 '^il/ooIeeF repetition, which is the rule with good singers. 
 f-^_jCiffIe Then they would come out of the shadow. 
 Voice ^'^^ ^^^^ about briskly, and sing again with 
 an air of triumph. 
 
 One day, while lying still in the under- 
 brush, watching a wood mouse, Killoeleet, a 
 fine male bird and a perfect singer, came and 
 sang on a branch just over my head, not 
 noticing me. Then I discovered that there 
 is a trill, a tiny grace note or yodel, at the 
 end of his second note. I listened carefully 
 to other singers, as close as I could get, and 
 found that it is always there, and is the one 
 difficult part of the song. You must be very 
 close to the bird to appreciate the beauty of 
 this little yodel ; for ten feet away it sounds 
 like a faint cluck, interrupting the flow of the 
 third note; and a little farther away you 
 cannot hear it at all. 
 
 Whatever its object, Killooleet regards this 
 as the indispensable part of his song, and 
 never goes on to the third note unless he 
 gets the second perfectly. That accounts 
 
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 He had mastered the trill perfectly 
 
for the many times when one hears only the 
 
 r 293 
 
 first two notes. That accounts also for the 
 
 occasional prolonged trill which one hears ; TdHooleef, 
 for when a young bird has tried many times Jltffc 
 for his grace note without success, and then Vg/ce 
 gets it unexpectedly, he is so pleased with 
 himself that he forgets he is not Whippoor- 
 will, who tries to sing as long as the brook 
 without stopping, and so keeps up the final 
 lillooleet-lillooleet as long as he has an atom 
 of breath left to do it with. 
 
 But of all the Killooleets, — and there 
 were many that I soon recognized, either by 
 their songs or by some peculiarity in their 
 striped caps or brown jackets, — the most 
 interesting was the one who first perched on 
 my ridgepole and bade me welcome to his 
 camping ground. I soon learned to distin- 
 guish him easily ; his cap was bright, and his 
 white cravat very full, and his song never 
 stopped at the second note; for he had 
 mastered the trill perfectly. Then, too, he 
 was more friendly and fearless than all the 
 others. The morning after our arrival (it was 
 better weather, as Simmo and Killooleet had 
 
predicted) we were eating breakfast by the 
 
 fire, when he lit on the ground close by, and 
 
 ^///oo/eeF turned his head sidewise to look at us curi- 
 
 ^jCiffk ously. I tossed him a big crumb, which 
 
 V6/ce ™^^^ ^™ ^^'^ away m fright; but when he 
 
 thought we were not looking he stole back, 
 
 touched, tasted, ate the whole of it. And 
 
 when I threw him another crumb, he hopped 
 
 to meet it. 
 
 After that he came regularly to meals, and 
 would look critically over the tin plate which 
 I placed at my feet, and pick and choose 
 daintily from the cracker and trout and 
 bacon and porridge which I offered him. 
 Soon he began to take bits away with him, 
 and I could hear him, just inside the fringe 
 of underbrush, persuading his mate to come 
 too and share his plate. But she was much 
 shyer than he ; it was several days before I 
 noticed her flitting in and out of the shadowy 
 underbrush ; and when I tossed her the first 
 crumb, she flew away in a terrible fright. 
 Gradually, however, Killooleet persuaded her 
 that we were kindly, and she came often to 
 meals; but she would never come near, to 
 
eat from my tin plate, till after I had gone 
 away. 
 
 Never a day now passed that one or both TiUlooleef, 
 of the birds did not rest on my tent. When '^^^^^. 
 I put my head out, like a turtle out of his Voice 
 shell, in the early morning, to look at the 
 weather, Killooleet would look down from 
 the projecting end of the ridgepole and sing 
 good-morning. And when I had been out 
 late on the lake, night-fishing, or following 
 the inlet for beaver, or watching the grassy 
 points for caribou, or just drifting along 
 shore silently to catch the night sounds and 
 •smells of the woods, I would listen with 
 eager anticipation for Killooleet's welcome 
 as I approached the landing. He had 
 learned to recognize the sounds of my com- 
 ing, the rub of a careless paddle, the ripple 
 of water under the bow, or the grating of 
 pebbles on the beach; and with Simmo 
 asleep and the fire low, it was good to be 
 welcomed back by a cheery little voice in 
 the darkness; for he always sang when he 
 heard me. Sometimes I would try to sur- 
 prise him; but his sleep was too light and 
 
, his ears too keen. The canoe would gUde 
 
 up to the old cedar and touch the shore 
 
 '^illooleeh noiselessly; but with the first crunch of 
 
 ' XltHe gravel under my foot, or the rub of my 
 
 \6ice ^^'^o^ ^^ ^ lifted it out, he would waken; 
 
 and his song, all sweetness and cheer, I'm 
 
 here^ sweet Killooleet-lillooleet-lillooleet, would 
 
 ripple out of the dark underbrush where his 
 
 nest was. 
 
 I am glad now to think that I never saw 
 that nest, though it was' scarcely ten yards 
 from my tent, until after the young had 
 flown, and Killooleet cared no more about 
 it. I knew the bush in which it was, close 
 by the deer path ; could pick out from my 
 fireplace the thick branch that sheltered it ; 
 for I often watched the birds coming and 
 going. I have no doubt that Killooleet 
 would have welcomed me there without 
 fear ; but his mate never laid aside her shy- 
 ness about it, never went to it directly when 
 I was looking, and I knew he would like me 
 better if I respected her little secret. 
 
 Soon, from the mate's infrequent visits, 
 and from the amount of food which Killoo- 
 
leet took away with him, I knew she was 
 
 brooding her eggs. And when, at last, both 
 
 birds came together and, instead of helping KHIooleef, 
 
 themselves hungrily, each took the largest Mtf/e 
 
 morsel he could carry and hurried away to Voice 
 
 the nest, I knew that the little ones were 
 
 come ; and I spread the plate more liberally, 
 
 and moved it away to the foot of the old 
 
 cedar, where Killooleet's" mate would not 
 
 be afraid to come at any time. 
 
 One day, not long after, as I sat at a late 
 breakfast after the morning's fishing, there 
 was a great stir in the underbrush. Pres- 
 ently Killooleet came skipping out, all fuss 
 and feathers, running back and forth with 
 an air of immense importance between the 
 last bush and the plate by the cedar, crying 
 out in his own way, " Here it is, here it is, 
 all right, just by the old tree as usual. 
 Crackers, trout, brown bread, porridge; 
 come on, come on ; don't be afraid. He 's 
 here, but he won't harm. I know him. 
 Come on, come on ! " 
 
 Soon his little gray mate appeared, under 
 the last bush, and after much circumspection 
 
o came hopping towards the breakfast ; and 
 
 after her, in a long line, five little Killoo- 
 
 ^i7/oo/eef, leets, hopping, fluttering, cheeping, stum- 
 
 i^j(lff/e bling, — all in a fright at the big world, but 
 
 V^/ce ^^^ ^"^ ^ desperate hurry for crackers and 
 
 porridge ad libitum; now casting hungry 
 
 eyes' at the plate under the old cedar, now 
 
 stopping to turn their heads sidewise to see 
 
 the big kind animal with only two legs, that 
 
 Killooleet had told them about, no doubt, 
 
 many times. 
 
 After that we had often seven guests to 
 breakfast, instead of two. It was good to 
 hear them, the lively tink, tink-a-tink of 
 their little bills on the tin plate in a merry 
 tattoo, as I ate my own tea and trout thank- 
 fully. I had only to raise my eyes to see 
 them in a bobbing brown ring about my 
 bounty ; and, just beyond them, the lap 
 of ripples on the beach, the lake glinting 
 far away in the sunshine, and a bark canoe 
 fretting at the landing, swinging, veering, 
 nodding at the ripples, and beckoning me 
 to come away as soon as I had finished my 
 breakfast. 
 
299 
 
 Before the little Killooleets had grown 
 accustomed to things, however, occurred the 
 most delicious bit of our summer camping. "Killooleet 
 It was only a day or two after their first Mff/e 
 appearance ; they knew simply that crumbs Vo/'ce 
 and a welcome awaited them at my camp, 
 but had not yet learned that the tin plate in 
 the cedar roots was their special portion. 
 Simmo had gone off at daylight, looking up 
 beaver signs for his fall trapping. I had 
 just returned from the morning fishing, 
 and was getting breakfast, when I saw an 
 otter come out into the lake from a cold 
 brook over on the east shore. Grabbing a 
 handful of figs, and some pilot bread from 
 the cracker box, I paddled away after the 
 otter ; for that is an animal which one has 
 small chance to watch nowadays. Besides, 
 I had found a den over near the brook, 
 and I wanted to find out, if possible, 
 how a mother otter teaches her young 
 to swim. For, though otters live much in 
 the water and love it, the young ones are 
 afraid of it as so many kittens. So the 
 mother — 
 
But I must tell about that elsewhere. I 
 300 
 
 did not find out that day ; for the young 
 
 '^il/ooIeeF, were already good swimmers. I watched the 
 ^J^ffle den two or three hours from a good hiding 
 V^Mce pl3.ce, and got several glimpses of the mother 
 and the little ones. On the way back I ran 
 into a little bay, where a mother sheldrake 
 was teaching her brood to dive and catch 
 trout. There was also a big frog that always 
 sat in the same place, and that I used to 
 watch. Then I thought of a trap, two miles 
 away, which Simmo had set, and went to 
 see if Nemox, the cunning fisher, who 
 destroys the sable traps in winter, had been 
 caught at his own game. So it was after- 
 noon, and I was hungry, when I paddled 
 back to camp. It occurred to me suddenly 
 that Killooleet might be hungry too ; for 
 I had neglected to feed him. He had grown 
 sleek and comfortable of late, and never went 
 insect hunting when he could get cold fried 
 trout and corn bread. 
 
 I landed silently and stole up to the tent 
 to see if he were exploring under the fly, as 
 he sometimes did when I was away. A 
 
30I 
 
 curious sound, a hollow tunk^ iunk, tunk, 
 
 tunk-a-tunk, grew louder as I approached. I 
 
 stole to the big cedar, where I could see the 7Ci7ioo/eef, 
 
 fireplace and the little opening before my '^'*'^, 
 
 tent, and noticed first that I had left the Voice 
 
 cracker box open (it was almost empty) when 
 
 I hurried away after the otter. The curious 
 
 sound was inside, growing more eager every 
 
 moment — tunk^ tunk, tunk-a-trrrrrrr-runk, 
 
 iunk, tunk ! 
 
 I crept on my hands and knees to the box, 
 to see what queer thing had found his way 
 to the crackers, and peeped cautiously over 
 the edge. There were Killooleet, and Mrs. 
 Killooleet, and the five little Killooleets, just 
 seven hopping brown backs and bobbing 
 heads, helping themselves to the crackers. 
 And the sound of their bills on the empty 
 box made the jolliest tattoo that ever came 
 out of a camping kit. 
 
 I crept away more cautiously than I 
 had come and, standing carelessly in my 
 tent door, whistled the call I always used 
 in feeding the birds. Like a flash Killoo- 
 leet appeared on the edge of the cracker box, 
 
302 
 
 looking very much surprised. " I thought 
 you were away ; why, I thought you were 
 ^///oo/eef, away," he seenied to be saying. Then he 
 /^Uzffk clucked, and the tunk-a-tunk ceased instantly. 
 V6ice Another cluck, and Mrs. Killooleet appeared, 
 looking frightened ; then, one after another, 
 the five little Killooleets bobbed up; and 
 there they sat in a solemn row on the edge 
 of the cracker box, turning their heads side- 
 wise to see me better. 
 
 "There!" said Killooleet, "didn't I tell 
 you he would n't hurt you .? " And like five 
 winks the five little Killooleets were back in 
 the box, and the tunk-a-tunking began again. 
 This assurance that they might do as they 
 pleased, and help themselves undisturbed to 
 whatever they found, seemed to remove the 
 last doubt from the mind of even the little 
 gray mate. After that they stayed, most of 
 the time, close about my tent, and were never 
 so far away, or so busy insect hunting, that 
 they would not come when I whistled and 
 scattered crumbs. The little Killooleets 
 grew amazingly, and no wonder ! They 
 were always eating, always hungry. I took 
 
good pains to give them less than they 
 wanted, and so had the satisfaction of feed- 
 ing them often, and of finding their tin T{iltooleef, 
 
 plate picked clean whenever I came back Jj.H'lc 
 r £ , . Sweet 
 
 from fishmg. p^/cg 
 
 Did the woods seem lonely to Killooleet 
 when we paddled away, at last, and left the 
 wilderness for another year ? That is a 
 question which I would give much, or watch 
 long, to answer. There is always a regret 
 at leaving a good camping ground; but I 
 had never packed up so unwillingly before. 
 Killooleet was singing, cheery as ever; but 
 my own heart gave a minor chord of sad- 
 ness to his trill that was not there when he 
 sang on my ridgepole. Before leaving I had 
 baked a loaf, big and hard, which I fastened 
 with stakes at the foot of the old cedar, with 
 a tin plate under it and a bark roof above, so 
 that when it rained, and insects were hidden 
 under the leaves, and their hunting was no 
 fun because the woods were wet, Killooleet 
 and his little ones would find food, and 
 remember me. And so we paddled away 
 and left them to the wilderness. 
 
A year later my canoe touched the same 
 old landing. For ten months I had been in 
 ^ilJooIeeh the city, where Killooleet never sings, and 
 ^J^tHe where the wilderness is only a memory. In 
 V^i'ce the fall, on some long . tramps, I had occa- 
 sional glimpses of the little singer, solitary 
 now and silent, stealing southward ahead of 
 the winter. In the spring he showed himself 
 rarely in the underbrush, on country roads, 
 eager, restless, chirping, hurrying northward 
 where the streams were clear and the big 
 woods budding. But never a song in all 
 that time ; my ears were hungry for his voice 
 as I leaped out to run eagerly to the big 
 cedar. There were the stakes, and the tin 
 plate, and the bark roof all crushed by the 
 snows of winter. The bread was gone ; 
 what Killooleet had spared, Tookhees the 
 wood mouse had eaten thankfully. I found 
 the old tent poles and put up my house 
 leisurely, a hundred happy memories throng- 
 ing about me. In the midst of them came a 
 call, a clear whistle, — and there he was, the 
 same full cravat, the same bright cap, and 
 the same perfect song to set my nerves 
 
a-tingling : / 'm here, sweet Killooleet-lillooleet- 
 
 lillooleet ! And when I put crumbs by the 
 
 old fireplace, he flew down to help himself, "Killooleet, 
 
 and went off with the biggest one, as of yore, "^ ' f, 
 
 to a new nest by the deer path. Voice 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 Cheokhes, che-ok-hSs', the mink. 
 
 Ch'geegee-lokh-sis, cK gee-gee^ -lock-sis, the chickadee. 
 
 Cheplahgan, chep-lah'-gan, the bald eagle. 
 
 Chigwooltz, chig-wooltz , the bullfrog. 
 
 Clote Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, 
 
 Northern Indians. Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, 
 
 Groscap, Gluscap, etc. 
 Deedeeaskh, dee-dee' -ask, the blue jay. 
 Hukweem, huk-weem', the great northern diver, or loon. 
 Ismaq^ues, iss-7nA-ques' , the fish-hawk. 
 Kagax, kdg'-ax, the weasel. 
 Kakagos, kA-kd-gos', the raven. 
 Keeokuskh, kee-o-kusk. , the muskrat. , 
 Keeonekh, kee'-o-nek, the otter. 
 Killooleet, kil' -loo-leet' , the white-throated sparrow. 
 Kookooskoos, koo-koo-skcos', the great horned owl. 
 Koskomenos, kos'-kom-e-nos', the kingfisher. 
 Kupkawis, cup-kc^-wis, the barred owl. 
 Kwaseekho, kwA-seek^-ho, the sheldrake. 
 Lhoks, locks, the panther. 
 Malsun, mdl'-sun, the wolf. 
 Meeko, meek'-o, the red squirrel. 
 Megaleep, meg'-d-leep, the caribou. 
 3°9 
 
Milicete, mil'-i-cete, the name of an Indian tribe; written 
 3^*^ also Malicete. 
 
 Mitches, mit-cMs, tlie birch partridge, or ruffed grouse. 
 
 Moktaques, mok-tA'-ques, the hare. 
 
 Mooween, moo-ween', the black bear. 
 
 Musquash, mus'-gudsh, the muskrat. 
 
 Nemox, nim'-ox, the fisher. 
 
 Pekquam, pek-wdm', the fisher. 
 
 Seksagadagee, sek'-sd-gS-dd'-gee, the Canada grouse, or spruce 
 
 partridge. 
 Skooktum, skook'-tum, the trout. 
 Tookhees, tdk'-hees, the wood mouse. 
 TJpweekis, up-weehf-iss, the Canada lynx.