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BITS OF BIRD LIFE. 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 From The Youth's Companion. 
 
 Number Seven. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE 
 
 . . . JOHN BURROUGHS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 3 
 
 AN ORIOLE'S NEST 
 
 WM. J. LONG. 
 
 n 
 
 CROW WAYS 
 
 WM. J. LONG. 
 
 15 
 
 A FAMILY HISTORY " 
 
 EMELINE A. CROSS. 
 
 22 
 
 A JOLLY RED-HEAD .... 
 
 . LEANDER S. KEYSER. 
 
 29 
 
 THE CARRIER-PIGEON IN AMERICA . 
 
 . HENRY EDWARD WALLACE. 
 
 33 
 
 THE PARTRIDGE ..... 
 
 
 39 
 
 OSTRICH-FARMING 
 
 . HENRY H. BARROLL. 
 
 46 
 
 A WIDOW'S- MITES 
 
 E. F. HOLDEN. 
 
 53 
 
 OWLS AND THEIR USES .... 
 
 . H. W. HENSHAW. 
 
 58 
 
 Copyright, 1895. 
 PERRY MASON & COMPANY, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
Early Spring Birds. 
 
Bird Life in an Old Apple -Tree 
 
 Near my study there used to stand several old apple-trees 
 that bore fair crops of apples, but better crops of birds. 
 Every year these old trees were the scenes of bird incidents 
 and bird histories that were a source of much interest and 
 amusement. 
 
 Young trees may be the best for apples, but old trees are 
 sure to bear the most birds. If they are very decrepit, and 
 full of dead and hollow branches, they will bear birds in 
 winter as well as summer. The downy woodpecker wants 
 no better place than the brittle, dozy trunk of an apple-tree 
 in which to excavate his winter home. 
 
 My old apple-trees are all down but one, and this one 
 is probably an octogenarian, and I am afraid cannot stand 
 it another winter. Its body is a mere shell not much over 
 one inch thick, the heart and main interior structure having 
 turned to black mold long ago. 
 
 An old tree, unlike an old person, as long as it lives at all, 
 always has a young streak, or rather ring, in it. It wears a 
 girdle of perpetual youth. 
 
 My old tree has never yet failed to yield me a bushel or 
 more of gillyflowers, and it has turned out at least a dozen 
 broods of the great crested flycatcher, and robins and blue- 
 birds in proportion. It carries up one large decayed trunk 
 which some one sawed off at the top before my time, and in 
 this a downy woodpecker is now, January 12th, making a 
 home. 
 
 Several years ago a downy woodpecker excavated a 
 retreat in this branch, which the following season was 
 appropriated by the bluebirds, and has been occupied by 
 them nearly every season since. 
 
 When the bluebirds first examined the cavity in the 
 
 00 
 r 
 
4 
 
 BIRD LIFE IN AN OI.D APPI,E-TREK. 
 
 Spring, I suppose they did not find the woodpecker at home, 
 as he is a pretty early riser. 
 
 I happened to be passing near the tree, when on again 
 surveying the premises one afternoon, they found him in. 
 
 The male bluebird was very angry, and I suppose looked 
 upon the innocent downy as an intruder. He seized on him, 
 and the two fell to the ground, the speckled woodpecker quite 
 covered by the blue coat of his antagonist. Downy screamed 
 vigorously, and got away as soon as he could, but not till the 
 bluebird had tweaked out a feather or two. 
 
 He is evidently no fighter, though one would think that a 
 bird that had an instrument with which it could drill a hole 
 into a tree could defend itself against the soft-billed bluebird. 
 
 Two seasons the English sparrows ejected the bluebirds 
 and established themselves in it, but were in turn ejected by 
 the undersigned, their furniture of hens' feathers and straws 
 pitched out, and the bluebirds invited to return, which later 
 in the season they did. 
 
 The new cavity which downy is now drilling is just above 
 the old one and near the top of the stub. Their wells are 
 usually sunk to a depth of six or eight inches, but in the 
 present case it cannot be sunk more than four inches with- 
 out breaking through into the old cavity. 
 
 Downy seems to have considered the situation, and is 
 proceeding cautiously. As she passed last night in her new 
 quarters I am inclined to think it is about finished, and there 
 must be at least one inch of wood beneath her. She worked 
 vigorously the greater part of the day, her yellow chips 
 strewing the snow beneath. 
 
 I paused several times to observe her proceedings. 
 
 After her chips have accumulated she stops her drilling 
 and throws them out. This she does with her beak, shaking 
 them out very rapidly with a flirt of her head. 
 
 She did not disappear from sight each time to load her 
 beak, but withdrew her head and appeared to seize the 
 fragments as if from her feet. If she had had a companion 
 
BIRD IvIFK IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE. 
 
 5 
 
 I should have thought he was handing them up to her from 
 the bottom of the cavity. Maybe she had them piled up near 
 the doorway. 
 
 The woodpeckers, both the hairy and the downy, usually 
 excavate these winter retreats in the fall. They pass the 
 nights and the stormy days in them. So far as I have 
 observed they do not use them as nesting-places the following 
 season. 
 
 L<ast night when I rapped on the trunk of the old apple- 
 tree near sundown, downy put out her head with a surprised 
 and inquiring look, and then withdrew it again as I passed 
 on. 
 
 I have spoken of the broods of the great crested flycatchers 
 that have been reared in the old apple-tree. This is by no 
 means a common bird, and as it destroys many noxious 
 insects I look upon it with a friendly eye, though it is the 
 most uncouth and unmusical of the flycatchers. 
 
 Indeed, among the other birds of the garden and orchard 
 it seems quite like a barbarian. 
 
 It has a harsh, froglike scream, form and manners to suit, 
 and is clad in a suit of butternut brown. It seeks a cast-off 
 snakeskin to weave into its nest, and not finding one, will 
 take an onion skin, a piece of oiled paper, or large fish 
 scales. 
 
 It builds in a cavity in a tree, rears one brood, and is off 
 early in the season. I never see or hear it after August ist. 
 
 A pair have built in a large, hollow limb in my old apple- 
 tree for many years. Whether the same pair or not I do not 
 know. Probably it is, or else some of their descendants. 
 
 I looked into the cavity one day while the mother bird 
 was upon the nest, but before she had laid any eggs. A 
 sudden explosive sound came up out of the dark depths of 
 the limb, much like that made by an alarmed cat. It made 
 me jerk my head back, when out came the bird and hurried 
 off. For several days I saw no more of the pair, and feared 
 they had deserted the spot. But they had not ; they were 
 
Three Happy Families. 
 
BIRD LIFE IN AN OI.D APPLK-TRKK. 
 
 7 
 
 only more sly than usual. I soon discovered an egg in the 
 nest, and then another and another. 
 
 One day as I stood near by, a male bluebird came along 
 with his mate, prospecting for a spot for a second nest. He 
 alighted at the entrance of this hole and peeped in. 
 
 Instantly the flycatcher was upon him. The blue was 
 enveloped by the butternut brown. The two fell to the 
 ground, where the bluebird got away, and in a moment more 
 came back and looked in the hole again, as much as to say, 
 "I will look into that hole now at all hazards." 
 
 The barbarian made a dash for him again, but he was 
 now on his guard and avoided her. 
 
 Not long after, the bluebirds decided to occupy the old 
 cavity of the downy woodpecker from which I had earlier in 
 the season expelled the English sparrows. After they had 
 established themselves here a kind of border war broke out 
 between the male bluebird and the flycatchers, and was kept 
 up for weeks. 
 
 The bluebird is very jealous and very bold. He will not 
 even tolerate a house-wren in the vicinity of his nest. Kvery 
 bird that builds in a cavity he looks upon as his natural rival 
 and enemy. The flycatchers did not seek any quarrel with 
 him as long as he kept to his own domicile, but he could not 
 tolerate them in the same tree. 
 
 It was a pretty sight to see this little blue coat charging 
 the butternut through the trees. The head of the latter 
 would click like a gunlock, and its harsh, savage voice was 
 full of anger, but the bluebird never flinched and was always 
 ready to renew the fight. 
 
 The English sparrow will sometimes worst the bluebird 
 by getting possession of the box or cavity ahead of him. 
 Once inside the sparrow can hold the fort, and the bluebird 
 will soon give up the siege ; but in a fair field and no favors, 
 the native bird will quickly rout the foreigner. 
 
 Speaking of birds that build in cavities reminds me of a 
 curious trait the highhole has developed in my vicinity, one 
 which I have never noticed or heard of elsewhere. 
 
Bird Life in an Old Apple -Tree. 
 
BIRD LIFE IN AN OI.D APPLE-TREE. 
 
 9 
 
 It drills into buildings and steeples and telegraph poles, 
 and in some instances makes itself a serious nuisance. 
 
 One season the large Grecian columns made of wood of 
 an unoccupied old-fashioned summer residence near me were 
 badly marred by them. The bird bored into one column, 
 and finding the cavity — a foot or more across — not just 
 what it was looking for, cut into another one, and still into 
 another. Then he bored into the ice-house on the premises, 
 and in the sawdust filling between the outer and inner 
 sheathing found a place to his liking. 
 
 Every season of late years they bore into the large ice- 
 house on the banks of the river, and cut so many holes and 
 let out so much sawdust that the men employed about the 
 place have had to shoot them. 
 
 One bird seemed like a monomaniac, and drilled holes up 
 and down and right and left as if possessed of an evil spirit. 
 It is quite probable that if a highhole or other woodpecker 
 shrould go crazy, it would take to just this sort of thing, 
 drilling into seasoned timber till it used its strength up. 
 The one I refer to would cut through a dry hemlock board 
 in a very short time, making the slivers fly. The sound was 
 like that of a carpenter's hammer. It may have been that he 
 was an unmated bird, a bachelor whose suit had not pros- 
 pered that season, and was giving vent to his outraged 
 instincts in drilling these mock nesting-places. 
 
 John Burroughs. 
 
An Oriole's Nest. 
 
 How suggestive is the oriole's nest, swinging from the 
 long, drooping tips of the old elm boughs ! What a delightful 
 cradle it must be for the young orioles, swayed all day long 
 by every breath of the summer breeze, and with never a fear 
 of falling ! And the mother-bird must feel very comfortable 
 about it as she leaves it to go in search of food, for no bird- 
 enemy will trouble it while she is gone. 
 
 The blacksnake — that horror of all low-nesting birds — 
 will never climb so high. The red squirrel — little cannibal 
 that he is, eating flesh when he has still a bushel of nuts and 
 acorns stowed away in his old wall — cannot find a footing on 
 those delicate branches. The crow also can find no resting- 
 place from which to steal the young, should he ever venture 
 so near the house ; and the hawk's legs are hardly long 
 enough to reach down and grasp them, should he perchance 
 hover over the nest. 
 
 Yet the oriole is a neighborly little body. Though her 
 young are kept from harm by the cunning instinct that builds 
 a hanging nest, she still prefers to build close by the house, 
 where hawks and crows and owls rarely come. She knows 
 her friends, and takes full advantage of their protection, 
 returning year after year to the same old elm, and like a 
 provident little housewife, carefully saving and sorting the 
 good threads of her old house to be used in building the new. 
 
 Of late years, however, it has seemed to me that the beau- 
 tiful nests along the elm-lined streets of New England towns 
 are growing scarcer. The orioles are sunny, peace-loving 
 birds, and dislike the society of those noisy, pugnacious little 
 rascals, the English sparrows. Often I now find their nests 
 along lonely old roads in places where a few years ago I 
 never saw them ; and often a solitary farmhouse, too far 
 
12 
 
 AN oriole's nest. 
 
 away from the town to be troubled by sparrows, has two or 
 three orioles' nests in the boughs of its old elms. 
 
 I know of three old, lonely houses, deserted for years, and 
 fast falling to piles of ruins, where every year the orioles 
 return to build, untroubled by sparrows, and still protected 
 by the old walls and chimneys from the presence of hawks 
 and crows. 
 
 It is a curious evidence of the birds' keen instinct, that 
 where the nests are built on lonely roads away from houses 
 they are noticeably deeper, and so better protected from bird- 
 enemies. The same thing is noticed of the nests that are 
 built in other than elm-trees, and so have not the protection 
 of the elm's drooping branches. 
 
 In the choice of building material the birds are very 
 careful. They know well that no branch supports the nest 
 from beneath ; that the safety of the young depends solely on 
 good strong 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 bind the whole nest to the branches, they 
 are unwilling to trust to appearances. Then a pair of birds 
 may be seen holding a little tug-of-war with feet braced and 
 heads twisted first on one side, then on the other, till .the 
 thread is well tested. 
 
 In gathering the material also the birds display no little 
 ingenuity. 
 
 One warm spring day a few years ago I was lying under 
 some shrubs watching a pair of orioles that were building 
 close to the house. It was a typical nest-making day, the 
 sun pouring his bright, warm rays through delicate green 
 leaves and a glory of white apple blossoms, the air filled with 
 warmth and fragrance, birds and bees busy everywhere. 
 Orioles seem always happy, and to-day they quite overflowed 
 in the midst of the brightness, though materials were rather 
 scarce, and they had to be very busy. 
 
 The female was very industrious, never returning to the 
 
AN ORIOIvK'S NE:ST. 
 
 13 
 
 nest without some contribution, while the male frolicked 
 about the trees in his brilliant orange and black, whistling 
 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, 
 or to fly with the female to the nest, uttering that soft, rich 
 twitter of his as if in 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 on the grass directly in front of me was a small frag- 
 ment of white cloth. I was wondering why the birds did not 
 utilize it when the male, in one of his lively flights, seemed 
 to see it for the first time and flew down. First he hopped 
 about it oh all sides, then took hold of some threads at one 
 corner and tried to pull them out. But the cloth was lying 
 loose on the grass, and whenever he pulled, the whole piece 
 came instead of the threads. 
 
 For a few moments he worked diligently, trying a pull on 
 every side, once tumbling over with a comical scramble as 
 the cloth, caught for a moment on a grass stub, gave way 
 when he pulled hardest. Quite abruptly he flew away, and I 
 thought he had given up the attempt. 
 
 But in a minute back he came with the female, thinking 
 no doubt that, as a prudent little manager, she 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 much the same thing. 
 
 The two birds worked together for some minutes, getting 
 an occasional short thread, but not enough to pay for the 
 labor. The trouble was they both pulled together, and the 
 cloth kept slipping. Once they unravelled a long thread by 
 pulling at right angles, but the next moment they were on 
 the same side again. Twice they left it and came back 
 again. 
 
 I was wondering how long their patience would last when 
 
14 
 
 AN ORIOIvK'S nest. 
 
 the female suddenly seized the cloth by the corner and flew 
 with it along the ground, chirping loudly the while. She 
 disappeared into a low crab-apple bush at the corner of the 
 garden. The male followed a moment later. 
 
 Curious as to what they were doing, yet fearing to disturb 
 them, I waited a few moments, and soon saw both birds fly 
 to the nest, each with some long white threads. This w^as 
 repeated ; and while the orioles w^ere busy at the nest I ran 
 round the house and crept down behind an old wall where I 
 could see the crab-apple. 
 
 They had solved their problem — the piece of cloth was 
 fastened there among the thorns ! Soon the birds came back, 
 and seizing the ends of some threads, ravelled them out and 
 flew away to their building. 
 
 For nearly an hour I watched them while they worked 
 from that bit of cloth to the nest. Several times it slipped 
 away from the thorns, but as often as it did so the birds 
 carried it back and fastened it ; till at last it grew so snarled 
 and torn that they could get no more threads, and left it for 
 good. 
 
 That same day I carried out some bright bits of worsted 
 and narrow ribbons, and scattered them about on the grass. 
 The birds soon found them and wove them into the nest. 
 For a time a gayer little dwelling never was seen in a tree. 
 The bright bits of color among the gray and white gave it 
 always a holiday appearance, in good keeping with the high 
 spirits of the two birds. But by the time the young had 
 chipped the shell, and the joyousness of nest-building had 
 given place to the sober duties of feeding hungry little 
 mouths, the rains and the sun of summer had bleached the 
 bright colors into 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 I had helped to build and hung it in my study 
 as a souvenir of my bright little neighbors. 
 
 Wm. J. Long. 
 
Crow Ways. 
 
 With all his rascality, the crow has many curious and 
 interesting ways. Indeed, I hardly know another bird that 
 so well repays a season's study. Only one must be very 
 patient and endure frequent disappointments if one 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 go shooting I get one or two crows from 
 a flock that ranges over my hunting-ground by simply hiding 
 among the pines and calling like a young crow. It is aston- 
 ishing to hear the loud chorus of haw-haws, and see its 
 members come rushing over the same grove where a week 
 before they were fooled in the same way. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, they seem to remember, and when the 
 pretended young crow begins his complaint at the bottom of 
 some thick grove, they collect on a distant pine-tree, and 
 haw-haw in vigorous protest. But curiosity gets the better of 
 them, and they generally compromise by sending over some 
 swift, long-winged old flier. 
 
 Over he comes, fast as he can fly, and the crowd stop their 
 clatter to watch results. Down he tumbles through the pine 
 tops, at the report of a gun ; and away they go, screaming 
 at the tops of their voices, and never stop till they are safe 
 across the valley. Next week they will act in exactly the 
 same way. 
 
 Crows, more than any other birds, are fond of excitement 
 and great crowds. The slightest unusual object furnishes an 
 occasion for an assembly to investigate. 
 
 A wounded bird will create as much excitement in a flock 
 of crows as a railroad accident does in a village. All the 
 
CROW WAYS. 
 
 17 
 
 crows seem to be talking at once, and advising the poor 
 fellow what to do. 
 
 When some prowling old crow discovers an owl sleeping 
 away the sunlight in the top of a great hemlock, his delight 
 and excitement know no bounds. There is a suppressed 
 excitement 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 about 
 that hemlock than one would believe existed within miles of 
 the place. 
 
 One day I counted over seventy immediately about a tree 
 in which one of them had found an owl, and 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 
 caution, and attend, as it were, a crow caucus. Though I 
 have attended a great many, I have never been able to dis- 
 cover any real cause for the excitement. 
 
 Those nearest the owl sit about in the trees, cawing vocif- 
 erously ; not a voice is silent. Those on the outskirts are 
 flying rapidly about, making if possible more noise than the 
 inner ring, and apparently urging speedy and vigorous 
 measures against the culprit they have discovered. The owl 
 meanwhile sits hidden in the green top blinking and staring 
 and puffing out his long feathers till he looks twice his usual 
 size. 
 
 Every moment two or three crows leave the ring to fly up 
 close and peek in ; then go screaming back again. Hopping 
 about on their perches, cawing at every breath, nodding their 
 heads and striking the branches, they seem 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 
 
i8 
 
 CROW WAYS. 
 
 follow, some swift old crow keeping close to the owl and 
 cawing all the way to guide the whole noisy rabble. 
 
 When the owl stops they gather round again, and go 
 through the same performance more 
 excitedly than before. So it contin- 
 ues till the owl finds some hollow 
 tree and goes in out of sight leaving 
 them to caw themselves tired ; or 
 else 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 never think 
 of looking, and sitting 
 close up against the 
 
 trunk blinks his great yellow eyes, and listens to the mob 
 that go sweeping through the grove, peering into every thick 
 tree, and searching everywhere for their lost excitement. 
 
CROW WAYS. 
 
 19 
 
 The crows give it up reluctantly. They circle for a few 
 minutes over the grove, rising and falling and wheeling with 
 that beautiful motion that seems like the practice drill of all 
 gregarious birds ; then end by collecting on some large tree 
 at a distance and hawing about it till some new excitement 
 calls them elsewhere. 
 
 Just why they grow so excited over an owl is uncertain. 
 I have never seen them molest him. They only stare at him 
 occasionally and make a great noise about it. That they 
 recognize 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 thievery by open daylight it may be that 
 they are denouncing him as an impostor. 
 
 Perhaps the owl in his nightly prowlings sometimes 
 snatches a young crow off the roost — the great-horned owl 
 would hardly hesitate to eat an old crow if he could catch 
 him napping — and so the crows grow excited, as all birds 
 do in the presence of their natural enemies. They make 
 much the same kind of a fuss over a hawk, though he easily 
 escapes the annoyance by flying swiftly away, or circling 
 slowly upward till the crows grow dizzy and dare not follow. 
 
 Once I utilized this habit to get a near view of them. 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 where a flock 
 of crows often congregated. Then I lay down in a thick 
 clump of bushes near by and cawed excitedly. 
 
 The first messenger from the flock flew straight over with- 
 out making any discoveries ; the second one found the owl 
 and I had no need of further calling. Haw-haw — he cried 
 deep down in his throat — hej^e he is ! Here' s the rascal ! In a 
 moment he had the whole flock there, and for ten minutes 
 they kept coming in from every direction. 
 
 A more excited lot I never saw. The cawing was tre- 
 mendous, and I hoped at last to settle the real cause of the 
 excitement. But one crow flying close over my hiding-place 
 discovered me peering out through the bushes. How he 
 
20 
 
 CROW WAYS. 
 
 made himself heard or understood in the din is a mystery ; 
 but the crow is never too excited to heed a danger note. A 
 moment later the whole flock was streaming away across the 
 woods. 
 
 There is another but much more dignified way in which 
 the crow's love of excitement is manifested. Occasionally a 
 flock may be surprised sitting about in the trees deeply 
 absorbed in watching a performance by one of themselves. 
 
 A crow's chief note is the hoarse haw-haw with which 
 every boy is familiar. This, indeed, seems capable of 
 expressing almost everything, from the soft, chattering gos- 
 sip of going to bed in the pine tops to the loud derision with 
 which he detects ordinary attempts to surprise him, but he 
 is not always confined to it. Certain crows occasionally 
 develop unusual vocal ability, and at times they seem to 
 display it for the entertainment of the others. Yet I suspect 
 that this vocal gift is seldom used or even discovered till 
 lack of excitement throws them upon their own resources. 
 Certain it is that whenever a crow exercises his voice there 
 are always several more about, apparently listening atten- 
 tively. 
 
 One September afternoon, while I was walking quietly 
 through the woods, my attention was attracted by an unusual 
 sound coming from an oak grove near by — a favorite haunt 
 for gray squirrels. The crows were cawing in the same 
 direction, but every few minutes would come a strange 
 cracking sound — crrrack-a-rack-rack, as if some one had a 
 giant nut-cracker and was 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 brUvSh fence on the edge of the grove and looked 
 through did I discover the object of their interest. Out on 
 the end of a long, delicate branch, a few feet above the 
 ground, clung a small crow. He was swaying up and down 
 like a bobolink on a cardinal-flower, balancing himself 
 
CROW WAYS. 
 
 21 
 
 gracefully by spreading his wings, and every few minutes 
 giving the strange cracking sound with a vigorous flirt of 
 his wings and tail as the branch swayed upward. At every 
 repetition the audience hawed. I watched the unusual 
 performance for fully fifteen minutes before the crows saw 
 me and flew away. 
 
 Several times since, when hunting, I have been attracted 
 by unusual sounds mingled with the cawing of crows, and 
 surprised the flock evidently watching a performance. Once 
 in the Maine woods the call was so gruff and loud that I was 
 completely deceived, and stole forward with heavy shells in 
 my gun, expecting some strange animal. The only musical 
 sound I ever heard from a crow was a whistling very much 
 like the ioo-loo-loo of the blue jay, who belongs to the same 
 family for all his bright colors, but deeper and louder, and 
 without the middle roll or trill that always marks the blue 
 jay's whistle. 
 
 The same love of excitement and variety leads the crows 
 to investigate any unusual sight or sound in the woods. 
 Sometimes they follow a fox which the hounds have started 
 ' so that the hunter can trace his exact course, and reach the 
 runaway in time for a shot. Often they go out of their way 
 to warn other birds and animals of the approach of danger. 
 
 Once I saw a young crow — I knew he was young by his 
 nasal voice — deliberately play a practical joke on the flock 
 by hiding under a thick pine, and calling them over again 
 and again till they discovered him and chased him away. In 
 fact, whenever one hears a flock of crows cawing away in the 
 pine woods, he may be assured that some excitement is afoot 
 that will well repay his time and patience to investigate. 
 
 Wm. J. lyONG. 
 
A Family History 
 
 Perhaps every reader of this knows a robin when he sees 
 one, but it is one thing to know a bird by name and quite 
 another to know the bird itself. I am sure that no boy or 
 girl could watch a family of robins, as I did for nearly five 
 weeks, and ever meet a robin afterward without greeting him 
 as a friend. 
 
 It was early in May when my acquaintance began with 
 the family whose history I am about to relate. Then I 
 discovered that the pair had found a building-site to their 
 liking in a fork of the apple-tree within ten feet of my 
 window. 
 
 All that day and the next, in spite of the rain, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Redbreast were busy plastering their adobe house. So 
 steadily did they work, collecting sticks, grass and mud, and 
 molding and shaping with breast and beak, that their home 
 was all ready to move into by the second night. 
 
 When the nest contained four pretty blue eggs, the little 
 wife began to set. The male would occasionally fly up to the 
 nest and offer his spouse food, with many a tender caress. 
 Then he would fly into a neighboring tree and call to her 
 merrily, " Cheer up ! cheer up ! " 
 
 She had been setting twelve days when I thought, from 
 Mr. Redbreast's frequent visits to the garden for worms, that 
 his family had increased. Of this I was not sure until next 
 day, when he came to the nest with a worm in his beak. 
 His mate, instead of taking it from him, slowly rose and 
 lowered her bill into the nest as if to whisper some secret to 
 little ones there. 
 
 Then two tiny beaks rose to view, and opened to receive 
 the morsel. Next instant Mr. Redbreast was off for another 
 worm, and the little mother was lovingly covering her 
 
A FAMILY HISTORY. 
 
 23 
 
 precious brood. They were three days old when I awoke 
 one morning at four o'clock, and watched them as they ate 
 their morning meal. During the next two hours food was 
 brought to the nest 
 fourteen times, and 
 each time was eaten 
 as greedily as if the 
 little brood were on 
 the verge of starva- 
 tion. 
 
 So rapidly had the 
 young birds grown 
 by this time that four 
 heads could be seen 
 above the edge of the 
 nest when the parents 
 were away. They 
 
 were not pretty 
 heads in that stage 
 of development, for 
 they were entirely 
 bare except for a 
 gray fuzz, and the 
 prominent features 
 
 were an immense mouth and two bulging lumps on the sides. 
 These lumps opened as eyes three days later. 
 
 The babies were now six days old and looked more like 
 birds, though still far from being objects of beauty. They 
 had grown so large as nearly to fill the nest, and at the 
 
 Nest and Tenants. 
 
24 
 
 A FAMILY HISTORY. 
 
 slightest noise would lift up their heads high, and open their 
 mouths wide. So long and slender were their necks, their 
 heads so wide and fiat, their beaks so long and opened to an 
 almost incredible width, that there was something uncanny 
 about them as they stretched up and uttered a queer little 
 whine when either parent brought food. 
 
 I don't know where Mr. Redbreast spent his nights, but I 
 do know that at half past three o'clock on the morning when 
 the young birds were a week old, he flew up to his front door 
 and fondly saluted his family. After a few moments, with a 
 parting caress, to which the little mother responded in a con- 
 tented twitter, he dropped from the twig by the nest. In a 
 few minutes, with the air of one who was conscious of having 
 done his duty, he returned with the first course of their 
 morning meal. 
 
 The first faint streak of light was just showing in the east, 
 but his day's work had begun. All day long, until after 
 dusk, he and his mate were tireless in their search for food 
 for the little ones. 
 
 The small folks in the nest grew more interesting every 
 day. At ten days of age they were pretty well feathered and 
 a very bright family. Two seemed brighter than the others, 
 and were growing restless in their crowded nest. They 
 would stand upon its edge, stretch their wings and necks, 
 then stand on one foot, stretch out the other leg, and gape 
 like a sleepy schoolboy. The home nest was getting too 
 small for them, and the poor little mother was quite crowded 
 out. 
 
 Two days later one of the young ones mysteriously disap- 
 peared, and I feared that he had fallen from the nest and 
 become the prey of some prowling cat. But, probably, he 
 had flown away, to begin life on his own account. 
 
 Now full fledged, they showed the robin markings dis- 
 tinctly — the black head, the light ring about the eye, the 
 light throat and red breast prettily mottled above. The tail 
 was the least developed, being not over three-fourths of an 
 
A FAMILY HISTORY. 
 
 25 
 
 inch in length. As they sat in the nest it was elevated at 
 such an angle that it pointed skyward, like the tail of a wren. 
 It seemed incredible, that in less than two weeks from the 
 time that they broke the shell of the egg, and in one week 
 from the time they opened their eyes, they could have 
 developed into such handsome creatures. 
 
 Beauties they were as they gazed at me so knowingly 
 from above the edge of the nest. The three heads were close 
 together, and each little face was full of expression, while 
 they looked fearlessly into my eyes, as if trying to under- 
 stand what sort of creature I was. Suddenly the mother 
 flew into the tree with food for them. Instantly the heads 
 lifted, the mouths opened wide, the wings fluttered, and 
 every feather bristled with life and animation. 
 
 Their appetites being satisfied, they settled down for an 
 after-dinner nap, with the three beaks pointing directly at 
 me, and the eyes blinking drowsily. 
 
 And a nap they needed, for a tremendous quantity of food 
 had gone into their stomachs since I sat down at the window 
 an hour earlier. I wondered what a bird's digestive appa- 
 ratus could be like, for worms, bugs, slugs and moths in great 
 numbers all slipped down their gaping throats. 
 
 Once, a spear of grass, more than ten inches long, which 
 hung from the father bird's beak, was eagerly seized by one 
 of the youngsters. After a few convulsive gulps it disap- 
 peared down his throat. 
 
 But a robin's life is too short to be spent in providing food 
 for hungry children, when they are old enough to begin to 
 look for it themselves. 
 
 Several times during the day the mother came to the nest 
 with food, held it tantalizingly in sight of the fledglings, 
 allowed them to struggle for it, and then devoured it herself ! 
 Was she urging them to seek their own food by tempting the 
 appetite and then leaving it unsatisfied ? 
 
 About live o'clock a faint chirp from the tree awoke me. 
 
26 
 
 A FAMILY HISTORY. 
 
 One of the small birds stood on a limb, with his back turned 
 to his old home and the wide world before him. Soon the 
 mother came with food for the remaining ones, but no sign of 
 recognition passed between her and the young adventurer. 
 He flapped his wings two or three times, and with a hoarse 
 croak flew clumsily into a neighboring tree. I did not see 
 him again. 
 
 After the mother's next visit, the larger bird in the nest 
 began to stretch. He stood on the edge of the nest, and 
 looked curiously up and down among the branches for a few 
 minutes. Then he spread his wings and flew a few feet, to a 
 limb from which he looked around with wondering eyes. 
 
 The little bird left behind settled down contentedly for a 
 while, turning around and pressing the nest, much as the 
 mother did in shaping it, and all of the time making a soft, 
 happy sound, as if pleased to have plenty of room. But his 
 contentment did not last long. 
 
 Soon Mrs. Redbreast came with food, and with it, I fancy, 
 she gave him some wholesome advice, for she had no sooner 
 disappeared than he showed an inclination to follow his late 
 companion who, when he saw the mother come to the nest, 
 turned awkwardly around on his perch, and flew a little way 
 toward her. She paid him no attention. 
 
 In less than five minutes the little fellow left behind mus- 
 tered courage to try his wings. With a desperate spring 
 from the side of the nest, he settled on a limb a few feet from 
 the other bird. The parents for the next ten minutes called 
 and coaxed and scolded from a neighboring tree, until the 
 youngsters launched out and flew to them, one after the 
 other. Soon all were out of sight, and my tree robbed of its 
 treasures. 
 
 A few days after the nest was deserted I heard a queer, 
 scratching noise in the tree, and saw a chipmunk peeping 
 over the side of the nest, first at me, and then into the nest. 
 Having satisfied himself that everything Avas all right, he 
 briskly hopped into the nest, whirled around in it two or 
 
A. FAMILY HIStORV. 
 
 4? 
 
 three times, and then cuddled down just as, in my childish 
 fancy years ago. Goldilocks cuddled down when she "tried 
 the little bear's bed." But Bunny didn't go to sleep. 
 He filled the nest as completely as if it had been made for 
 him, but it evidently did not suit him for a residence. After 
 lying and blinking in it for a few minutes, he sprang out, 
 scampered down the trunk of the tree, and was soon out of 
 sight among the shrubbery. 
 
 Emki^ink a. Cross. 
 
Red -Headed Woodpecker. 
 
A Jolly Red -Head. 
 
 One of the most interesting birds of my acquaintance 
 is the red-headed woodpecker. In Ohio he is the most 
 abundant species of the woodpecker family, the flicker 
 coming next in point of numbers. You may see him al- 
 most everywhere ; in the city as well as in the country ; 
 in the lowlands and meadows, if there are a few trees, as 
 well as in the uplands ; in the open spaces and in the dense 
 woods, and wherever found, he is the same jolly, compan- 
 ionable fellow. I suppose every boy knows this bird, which, 
 as Mr. Burroughs prettily says, "festoons the woods" 
 with red, white and blue-black. He may be readily identi- 
 fied by his crimson head and neck, making him look as 
 if he had plunged up to his shoulders into a keg of red paint. 
 
 Like all other woodpeckers, he is a hewer of timber, 
 chiselling out a parlor — or rather, perhaps, a nursery — in a 
 dead limb or tree-trunk, where he rears his young and trains 
 them in the way they should go. I have known him to 
 drill his nest in a fence-stake, while the telegraph poles 
 along the railroad, although they must be hard and tough, 
 often afford him a nesting place, and it is amusing to see 
 him bolt from his cavity whenever a train dashes along. 
 
 It is regretted that our bird has not a more musical 
 voice, and yet his well-known g-r-r-u-k, g-r-7'-7i-k and g-u-r-r-l, 
 g-u-r-r-l and kt-r-r, kt-r-r are by no means disagreeable, but 
 are suggestive of the good nature and buoyancy of spirit 
 that animate his bosom. If he is not much of a vocalist, 
 he still seems to be a lover of music. 
 
 Listen to him as he plays a tune on that shellbark 
 hickory-tree, or beats his tattoo on the slate roof. He 
 evidently engages in this exercise, in part at least, for the 
 sake of the musical effect, else why should he drum on the 
 
30 
 
 A JOLLY RE)D-HEAD. 
 
 roof, where no inseots are to be found, or upon an old tin 
 pan that he has discovered out on the commons ? There has 
 been some dispute as to how he produces this quick succes- 
 sion of raps, several writers contending that he does it by 
 rapidly striking together his mandibles. This cannot be the 
 true explanation, for I have often watched him at his rehears- 
 als, and have always noticed that the sound varies according 
 to the object upon which he hammers. 
 
 For instance, if it is a large hollow tree, the sound is 
 coarse and resonant, as one would expect. If he beats 
 upon a piece of partly loosen bark, his tune is sharp and 
 penetrating. On a tin or slate roof the sound is precisely 
 what it would be if you or I should pound rapidly upon 
 the same object with a similar instrument. But how can 
 he beat so fast with his bill ? Just as a drummer-boy deftly 
 taps his snare-drum so rapidly that you cannot count the 
 strokes, and almost think that his drumsticks must be 
 small boards rounded at the end. 
 
 Of all the woodpeckers that I have studied, the red- 
 head* is the most expert on the wing. Of course he follows 
 the fashion of the family when he flies, going in a kind of 
 gallop from one perch to another. But other woodpeckers 
 seem to regard flying as a serious business, and are there- 
 fore on the wing only as much as is necessary to secure 
 food and escape from their foes. 
 
 Not so with our crimson-headed acrobat, who often per- 
 forms the most amazing feats of scaling in the air out of 
 pure exuberance of spirits. He must have some valve of 
 escape for his rollicksome nature. And so he frequently 
 hurls himself out into the air as if shot from a cannon, 
 performs some exploit, such as poising, whirling, darting 
 straight upward, and almost turning a somersault, and then 
 circles gracefully back to his upright floor of bark, crying 
 exultingly, G-r-i^-e-e-l, g-r-r-e-e-l ! which being interpreted 
 means, "Wasn't that a clever trick?" 
 
 Often, it is true, he makes a dash for an insect, just as 
 
A JOIXY RED - HEAD. 
 
 31 
 
 the wood pewee or the great crested flycatcher does ; but 
 I think that many of his feats are performed for pure love 
 of frolic. 
 
 I have v^atched a dozen or more of these birds engaging 
 in their wing-exercises in a favorite woodland, which might 
 have been called their gymnasium. They had selected a 
 certain tree for a point of departure, and with loud chat- 
 tering would dash away after one another, describe a grace- 
 ful circle, and then plunge back into the tree. 
 
 At times their cries seemed to be half-angry. Still, the 
 whole performance seemed so jolly that it reminded me of 
 a company of children playing "base" or "black-man." 
 
 These birds certainly have some sense of humor, and 
 enjoy a romp as much as the most playful schoolboys. 
 
 One of their favorite pastimes is playing "hide-and-seek" 
 about the trunks of trees. It is amusing to see two of them 
 peep at each other a moment around the bole of a tree, 
 and then jerk their heads back, precisely as you have seen 
 children do. Besides, they often play "catch" or "tag," 
 dashing pell-mell after each other among the trees, until 
 you wonder they do not dash themselves to atoms. 
 
 A pair of bluebirds had a nest in a box near my house 
 last spring. They seemed to be greatly vexed by the 
 presence of a red-head which was in the habit of coasting 
 on the maples along the street. They would make a quick 
 dash at him, but the "artful dodger" would slip dexter- 
 ously around to the other side of the tree out of harm's 
 way. 
 
 Sometimes, however, he would stand his ground, and 
 present his long spear of a bill to his enemies as they flung 
 themselves at him, and thus keep them at a safe distance ; 
 for no bluebird would care to impale himself on the end of a 
 lance like that. 
 
 Still the woodpecker would occasionally lose a feather by 
 failing to be quick enough to evade the swift assaults 
 of his enemies. I do not know whether he sometimes 
 
32 
 
 A JOLLY RED -HEAD. 
 
 makes a raid on other birds' nests or not. I hope not ; 
 but I have noticed that robins and bluebirds have a mortal 
 hatred of him, especially when he comes into the neighbor- 
 hood of their nests. 
 
 Speaking of bluebirds in connection with the red-head, 
 reminds me of a curious freak of bird-behavior that I ob- 
 served one day in July. I was strolling along the banks 
 of a small creek, when I saw a male bluebird sitting on a 
 limb of an apple-tree, while only a few feet away, a red- 
 head was busy at work in a cavity of the trunk (which he 
 had evidently himself drilled), throwing out the chips at 
 a lively rate, and at intervals peeping from the hole to see 
 if the coast was clear. 
 
 I drove both birds away, and then watched them at 
 some distance. In a few minutes the bluebird was again 
 at his post, while his companion had gone back into the 
 cavity to ply his trade of carpentry as before. 
 
 What did it mean ? Was the bluebird playing the role 
 of sentinel for the red-head ? Or was the woodpecker hewing 
 out a home for the bluebird by way of accommodation ? 
 Or was the bluebird only biding his time until the cavity 
 should be done, when he intended to drive the busy toiler 
 away, and occupy the nest himself ? I have never been 
 able to come to a decision in the matter. 
 
 From youth to old age our bird is a cunning, tricksy 
 spirit. Ah ! yes, there is the red-head, junior — but his head 
 is black instead of crimson ; so that we may say without 
 contradicting ourselves that he is a black-headed red-head. 
 He is a quaint lad. I have seen him clinging to the feathers 
 of the parent bird, as a child to his mother's skirts, scream- 
 ing for something to eat. 
 
 But when his stomach is full of titbits, he and his 
 playmates have rare sport tobogganing (though they usually 
 prefer to go uphill instead of down) on the trunks of trees, 
 playing hide-and-seek, and flying race. 
 
 Leander S. Keyser. 
 
The Carrier- Pigeon in America. 
 
 Amateur owners and breeders of carrier-pigeons are 
 numbered by the thousands in this country. Nearly every 
 city has a club or association devoted to the breeding and 
 flying of these interesting birds. It is the opinion of good 
 judges that, after a few generations, birds bred and flown in 
 the United States become stronger and more sagacious than 
 the European stock from which they are descended. Some of 
 the best records, both for distance flown and for time, have 
 been made by the pigeons of American fanciers. 
 
 The use of a carrier-pigeon post during the siege of 
 Paris is a familiar fact. Newspapers, letters and despatches 
 were reduced to diminutive size by photography, and 
 entrusted to carrier birds, which had been brought out of 
 Paris in balloons, and were thus carried back into the 
 beleaguered city over the heads of the German army. 
 During several months the pigeon-post was the only means 
 by which the besieged city received news from the outside 
 world. 
 
 But in spite of the telegraph, the telephone and the regular 
 post, the services of pigeons are still often put to practical 
 use in Europe. This is particularly the case in Belgium and 
 the north, of France, where they are most extensively bred. 
 They are often employed successfully in carrying reports of 
 speeches and other news from distant points to the Paris and 
 Brussels newspapers. 
 
 American pigeon-fanciers have not devoted much attention 
 to the practical side of their favorite diversion. Pigeon-flying 
 here is regarded merely as a sport, and its principal object is 
 the making of " records." There exists, however, near New 
 York City a flock of these birds which demonstrates how 
 easily they can be employed for a useful purpose. 
 
34 
 
 THE CARRIER - PIGPZON IN AMERICA. 
 
 About forty miles from New York, amid the hills of Som- 
 erset County, New Jersey, a New York banker has a country 
 estate, to which he has given the name of Chetola. 
 
 It is several miles distant from the nearest railroad and 
 telegraph station. The proprietor has found a prompt means 
 
 The Carrier- Pigeon. 
 
 of communicating with his place of business in the employ- 
 ment of trained pigeons; and the "Aerial Messenger 
 Company, I^imited," as the Chetola flock is called by its 
 owner, has attained a high state of efficiency in its work. 
 
 About twenty-five birds are engaged in the service. They 
 
'THE CARRIER-PIGKON IN AMERICA. 
 
 35 
 
 are the descendants of several pairs of Antwerp carriers 
 imported by the owner. In appearance they are quite 
 handsome, being longer in the body than the ordinary 
 pigeon, with slim necks, bright, intelligent eyes, and large 
 wings supplied with the abundance of muscular power neces- 
 sary to sustain them in long and rapid journeys. 
 
 The general color of the birds is a slate-gray, with mark- 
 ings on the wings and body of a darker hue, melting on the 
 neck and back into rainbow shades — the poetical, lively iris 
 of the " burnish 'd dove." 
 
 Their residence is a roomy loft over one of the farm build- 
 ings. Here they are provided with all the luxuries a pigeon 
 can desire, including feeding-places constantly supplied with 
 provender, and a continuous flow of water for drinking and 
 bathing. Exceedingly fastidious birds, scrupulously neat as 
 to their plumage, their dwelling-place must be kept in a 
 condition of order and cleanliness. 
 
 The practical working of this Aerial Messenger service is 
 simple. The birds are accustomed to being handled, and are 
 not dismayed when some of their number are taken from the 
 loft, placed in a wicker hamper, and carried by the railroad 
 to New York. 
 
 Indeed, as some of them are always kept on hand at their 
 owner's city office, they are habituated to this experience, 
 and remain with apparent contentment in temporary 
 seclusion. 
 
 While thus waiting for duty, their food and water are 
 restricted to a minimum. When a message is to be entrusted 
 to them, it is written out on a piece of very thin paper about 
 three inches square. This is folded lengthwise into narrow 
 compass, and one of the birds being taken from the hamper, 
 the strip of paper is firmly attached to one of its tail feathers 
 by means of a piece of fine wire. 
 
 A vigorous pull is always given to the feather to make sure 
 that it is not loose. Then a window is opened, and the bird 
 let loose. 
 
THE CARRIER- PIGp:0N IN AMERICA. 
 
 37 
 
 Instantly gaining its wings, it rises above the lofty build- 
 ings of the city, and without hesitation, strikes out in the 
 direction of its home in New Jersey. 
 
 In from forty minutes to an hour the little messenger from 
 Wall Street alights at its cote in the country. The entrance 
 has a light swinging-door, which the bird easily pushes 
 aside. In its desire for food and a bath after its long flight, 
 it usually wastes no time in entering. 
 
 The door has an electrical attachment which signals the 
 appearance of a bird by ringing a bell in the mansion. Some 
 one at once goes to the pigeon loft, captures the newly 
 arrived messenger, and relieves it of the note it carried. 
 
 In this way the master of the establishment can be kept 
 by his partners and clerks fully informed of what is going on 
 in the city. 
 
 Each bird in the service bears on its leg a light brass ring, 
 upon which its number is inscribed. A careful record is kept 
 of each trip a bird makes, and of the time it requires. Most 
 of the flock have made the journey many times. 
 
 This precision was not attained without care and atten- 
 tion. Some birds, especially young and untried ones, never 
 reappeared at their home after being despatched. They may 
 fall victims to hawks or to undiscriminating gunners. Some- 
 times they are enticed from their duty by the prospect of food 
 on the way, or join flocks of ordinary pigeons which they 
 encounter. 
 
 Carrier-doves, like men, include some stupid and lazy 
 individuals. Those who succumb to danger or temptation 
 are caught or shot. The lazy birds, when freed, prefer to 
 sun themselves on a roof rather than proceed with their mes- 
 sage. Or on arriving at their home they roost for a time on a 
 tree before entering their hospitable loft. 
 
 But by weeding out the weak or incompetent, by training 
 the young birds to duty by flying them on gradually increas- 
 ing distances, and above all by making their home attractive 
 to them, this corps of feathered messengers has been brought 
 
3^ 
 
 ME CARRIER-PIGEON IN AMERICA. 
 
 to a state of assured efficiency. The "old stagers" have 
 learned to avoid peril, to disdain allurements, and to attend 
 strictly to business. 
 
 On one occasion a pair from this Chetola flock combined 
 an important business service with a long distance flight. 
 
 Their master left New York in summer to spend some 
 days at a fishing station on the New England coast, three 
 hundred miles away from New York. He took with him a 
 hamper containing a few birds, intending to test them on a 
 long distance journey. The place at which he was staying 
 was an isolated spot, far from a telegraph office, and was 
 reached only by a steamboat on alternate days. One 
 morning, after the steamboat had come and gone, he found 
 that it had brought him a message from New York in regard 
 to an important matter of business. An immediate answer 
 was required, as the subject involved a considerable amount 
 of money. 
 
 There was no way of sending a message for several days. 
 He resolved to make use of his birds. He wrote the neces- 
 sary instructions to his representatives in duplicate. The 
 messages were attached to two of the birds, which were 
 liberated at about two o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 The next morning at seven o'clock the gallant carriers, 
 having flown three hundred miles over an unfamiliar country, 
 rang the bell that communicated with their loft in New 
 Jersey. The messages were secured, and sent to New 
 York at once ; and the next mail brought the owner of the 
 birds the information that his orders had been successfully 
 carried out. 
 
 On this occasion alone, he says, the performance of the 
 two birds repaid him a hundredfold for all the trouble or 
 expense his faithful little feathered employes had ever cost 
 him. 
 
 Henry Edward Wali^ace. 
 
The Partridg-e. 
 
 An interesting incident to me the past season was seeing, 
 on two occasions, a partridge sitting upon her nest in the 
 woods. It was an incident which one does not witness every 
 season. 
 
 One of the partridges had come up out of the dense woods 
 and nested near a path on the edge of a large cemetery. A 
 bevy of schoolgirls, after wild flowers in May, first discovered 
 her. Their skirts almost brushed her before she stirred. 
 Her nest was at the foot of an oak a few yards from the 
 open ground. She could command the approaches in all 
 directions, and fly whichever way she chose. 
 
 My friend and I approached to within a few yards of her, 
 and stood and regarded her to our hearts' content. Her 
 color so blended her with surrounding objects that she was 
 practically invisible. On such occasions the bird is as 
 motionless as a stone, till she springs from her nest and is off 
 on booming wing. 
 
 We did not disturb her this time, but withdrew as gently 
 as we had approached. The brood was soon out and off, and 
 I hope prosperous. 
 
 The other partridge was sitting upon her nest in the woods 
 near an old road but little used. As it was late June, it was 
 probably her second attempt at rearing a family. This is the 
 more probable as she was sitting upon only five eggs, when 
 from twelve to fifteen are the usual complement. Indeed, it 
 may have been her third attempt. 
 
 Under the guidance of Martin, who lived near by, we 
 approached and observed her from the road a few paces away. 
 Martin had a task to pilot our eyes to the exact spot. One 
 had to pass his eyes over the ground as he passes his hand 
 over a table in the dark to find a pin. 
 
The Partridge. 
 
THE PARTRIDGE. 
 
 41 
 
 She, too, was at the foot of a tree, but the red leaves and 
 the gray bark and the brown fragments of wood were all 
 copied in her plumage. 
 
 Presently we made her out, and then we wondered we had 
 not seen her before. After some moments we took a few 
 steps toward her, when she went humming away. As she 
 left the nest, she fanned the dry leaves so with her wings that 
 several of them sprang up and settled upon the eggs, quite 
 covering them. 
 
 I have observed this before. It is probably the result of 
 design on, the part of the bird. The nest is usually little 
 more than a depression in the dry leaves, but its simplicity 
 may be the result of a shrewd wisdom. If the bird ran from 
 her nest before taking flight, she would seem to run less risk 
 of breaking her eggs by the sudden withdrawal of her feet 
 from among them ; but in that case they would not be cov- 
 ered up by the leaves, as they usually are when she takes 
 flight directly from the nest. 
 
 Martin kept his eye on the nest for me, and noted what 
 time elapsed after the young were out of the shell before they 
 were led away by the parent bird. One morning he visited 
 them at nine o'clock, and the young were just out, as they 
 were still moist. Apparently they had all hatched at the 
 same time. 
 
 At noon he visited the place again, and found the nest 
 empty ; the brood was a few yards away. So brief is the 
 period of helplessness of these creatures ! After they can run 
 they have little need of wings. The tactics of the mother and 
 their own wit and protective coloring shield them most 
 effectively. 
 
 As you come suddenly upon them, does the mother bird 
 flee and tell her young to follow ? Not a bit of it. She 
 springs up with spread wings and tail, and would fain fill the 
 space all about you with her presence and the sound of her 
 wings and voice. She makes herself just as conspicuous and 
 noisy as possible, and sets every dry leaf in commotion all 
 
Waiting to hear him drum. 
 
THE PARTRIDGE. 
 
 43 
 
 about her. Under cover of this bluster the young scatter and 
 hide in a twinkling. Before you have got over your surprise 
 they have vanished like spirits, and the parent bird, lame and 
 halt and apparently blind, flutters along before you, tempting 
 you to stoop and pick her up, till she has lured you a few 
 yards away, when she suddenly recovers herself and is gone. 
 
 Seeing how you have been fooled, you return to the spot 
 and search for the young ; but I have never known a person 
 to find one under such circumstances. 
 
 I once caught one by refusing to have my attention 
 diverted by the mother, and concentrating it on the young. 
 One of them squatted amid the leaves which its parent's 
 wings had set in motion, and I picked it up, when it squatted 
 in the palm of my open hand. 
 
 After they can fly, the brood when disturbed scatter in all 
 directions. The mother gives the signal, when up they all 
 spring like an explosion. Union may be strength, but the 
 young partridges know it is not safety for them. I^ater in 
 the fall, when full grown, they will, on being flushed, usually 
 all take the same general direction. 
 
 The hardiness and the cunning of the partridge will prob- 
 ably ensure its continuance in our woods in the face of all 
 the guns and traps that are brought against it. It takes 
 advantage of every circumstance. Think of it plunging 
 beneath the snow and passing the night there, snug and 
 warm ; or of sitting down and letting the falling snow 
 bury it. 
 
 When the hunter or walker comes upon it at such times, 
 there is a sudden explosion in the snow at his feet as if some 
 kind of frost cannon or mortar had been discharged, and he 
 sees the brown missile go humming through the woods before 
 him. 
 
 When the partridge cannot get food upon the ground, it 
 can get buds upon the trees. Birch buds are its favorite, and 
 when it wants a change it visits in the early morning the 
 apple-trees in the orchard, or the wild apple-trees in the 
 
44 
 
 THE PARTRIDGE. 
 
 remote pasture. It is said that the complacent wa}^ in which 
 the partridge allows itself to be snowed under sometimes 
 brings it to grief. The storm changes to rain before morning, 
 and then as suddenl}^ it becomes cold and freezes, thus form- 
 ing a crust beneath which the luckless bird is imprisoned. I 
 have never seen anything of this kind, and cannot believe 
 that this shrewd bird is often caught napping in this way. 
 
 The partridge has a cunning enemy in the fox, but I am 
 convinced that Renard does not often have this choice morsel 
 for his dinner. The oldest 
 hunters report having seen but 
 little evidence of this fact. 
 
 The hawk, too, rarely sur- 
 prises it. I remember that once 
 when I was a boy, on return- 
 ing from the hay-field at noon, 
 we found a partridge, nearly 
 grown, at the edge of the woods 
 with its head partly torn off, 
 evidently b}^ the stroke of a 
 hawk. Nests are probably more 
 often broken up by crows and skunks. The partridge is 
 preeminently the game bird of this country. It abounds 
 almost everywhere, and it is alwa3'S a challenge to the best 
 skill of the sportsman. The hunting of it is full of surprises 
 and disappointments. It is a kind of bitter-sweet pleasure, 
 and hence about the most tonic pastime the country affords. 
 
 The country boy does not hope to shoot it on the wing in 
 true sportsman fashion ; this is a feat almost beyond his 
 belief. He hopes to see it on the ground or in a tree, and 
 kill it before it takes flight ; and once in five or six years, if 
 he is diligent, he will do so. 
 
 The first time I ever carried a gun alone into the woods I 
 killed my first partridge. The gun was an old flint-lock 
 musket, which my father had loaded for me. The partridge 
 was upon the ground beside a small fallen tree ; and she was 
 
THE PARTRIDGE. 
 
 45 
 
 evidently a kind-hearted bird, and wanted to give the boy a 
 chance. She jumped upon the trunk of this little tree three 
 or four rods from me and began to walk back and forth upon 
 it with spread tail and elevated ruff, and uttering some 
 chiding note, as if to say, " Now, little boy, now fire away." 
 
 I could not hold the old musket out at arm's length, so I 
 sat down by a small bush, rested the gun upon a twig, took 
 aim and began to pull the trigger. 
 
 I felt it begin to yield, and in half a breath expected the 
 crash to come, when the twig broke and let my gun down 
 upon the ground. 
 
 Still the game came promenading up and down the pros- 
 trate tree, jerking her tail and threatening to be off if I fooled 
 much longer. I lifted the gun to another branch, took aim 
 again, and pulled desperately. 
 
 The gun was discharged, and the grouse lay fluttering 
 upon the leaves. I carried it home in great pride. Mother 
 cooked it for me, and it was a part of my fare on the first 
 journey I ever made out of my native county. This expe- 
 rience convinced me that the partridge was a very easy bird 
 to kill ; but it was years before I killed another one, and it 
 was not because I did not make the effort to do so. 
 
 I did not find another bird so skeptical of my ability to 
 injure it. 
 
 John Burroughs. 
 
Ostrich - Farming. 
 
 Ostrich-farming was introduced into South America, 
 whose pampas or great plains are peculiarly suited to this 
 bird, in 1878, by direct importation from South Africa. 
 There is a species of the ostrich native to South America, 
 but it is only half as large as the South African species, 
 and its plumes are not so valuable. 
 
 The South African ostrich stands seven or eight feet 
 in height, and weighs, when full grown, about one hundred 
 pounds. The color of the plumage of the male is black 
 and white, and of that of the female either dark gray or 
 light brown. The female is quite as large as the male. 
 
 The ostrich's small head, which is not much larger than 
 that of a goose, indicates a small brain and little intelli- 
 gence. The long neck and legs, contrasting with the small 
 head and body, give the bird an ungainly appearance. 
 
 Ostriches eat almost anything vegetable — grain, fruits of 
 all kinds, potatoes, carrots, beets, and so on, besides grass, 
 clover, and various weeds. Their digestion is powerful, 
 and, to aid it, they continually accumulate in the gizzard 
 small pebbles and sand. 
 
 The female* is exceedingly careless about her eggs, 
 laying them in any slight hollow, and often deserting her 
 nest. The rearing of the birds, therefore, would hardly be 
 profitable, if the hatching were not done by artificial heat. 
 In some cases the females lay as many as fifty eggs in a 
 season, but oftener not more than twenty-five or thirty. 
 
 The illustration represents the ostrich farm of Mr. 
 Ambrose Sapello, at Las Piedras, near Montevideo, Uruguay. 
 Mr. Sapello was the first to introduce ostriches into South 
 America from the Cape of Good Hope, where, for twenty 
 years, the profitableness of raising ostriches had been dem- 
 
OSTRICH - FARMING. 
 
 47 
 
 onstrated. This farm now supports one hundred and ten 
 ostriches. They are kept in pairs, and each pair is allotted 
 a space of about two acres, which is .sown to grass, and has 
 in one corner a small hut in which the birds find shelter 
 in wet weather. 
 
 These small lots are surrounded by a common wire or 
 picket fence, about six feet high. The birds, kept in 
 
 An Ostrich Farm. 
 
 constant sight of human beings, are not easily frightened. 
 They have a great deal of curiosity ; they approach to wathin 
 a few feet of a person, and, if not interfered with, investigate 
 with their great bills any bright object, such as a watch- 
 chain, locket, or breast-pin ; but a sudden movement with the 
 hand causes them to run clumsily but rapidly to what they 
 consider a safe distance. 
 
48 
 
 OSTRICH - FARMING. 
 
 The thick-shelled egg of the ostrich is twenty times as 
 large as an ordinary hen's egg, and its weight is about two 
 pounds. Before the eggs are placed in the incubator, or 
 hatching-box, each one is placed in a long box which has at 
 one end a lamp and at the other end a small opening for 
 observation. If the egg is fruitful, an opaque spot will be 
 observed in the 3^olk. If the yolk has a uniform density it is 
 worthless. 
 
 Young Ostriches. 
 
 The eggs which pass this test are carefully placed in a 
 cabinet consi.sting of a series of drawers, in which they rest 
 upon soft felt. The temperature is raised to the required 
 height by means of hot water from a large boiler near by. A 
 thermometer attached to each drawer shows the exact heat. 
 The temperature is kept between ninety-nine and one hun- 
 dred and two degrees Fahrenheit. 
 
 At interval's of seven or eight days the eggs are turned 
 over, and, during all the handling, great care is taken to 
 
OSTRICH - FARMING. 
 
 49 
 
 avoid sudden jars. The period of incubation is forty-two 
 days — just twice as long as that required for the ordinary 
 hen's egg. The young ostrich is about the size of a young 
 pullet, when hatched, and has a brownish color, which gives 
 him the appearance of an 
 overgrown partridge. Not 
 until they are half-grown 
 do the male birds begin to 
 differ in color from the 
 females. 
 
 The young chicks are 
 fed upon bran, corn-meal 
 and green leaves, and grow 
 rapidly. In six weeks they 
 are as large as turkeys, 
 and at three months they 
 
 Ostrich -Farming in South America. 
 
 are four feet in height. The first ostriches brought from Cape 
 Town to South America w^ere sold for prices which would 
 seem excessive if the profits of the business were not consid- 
 ered. Twelve hundred and even sixteen hundred dollars 
 were paid for one pair of birds. The freight charge alone, 
 upon forty ostriches imported by Mr. Sapello from Cape 
 
50 
 
 OSTRICH - FARMING. 
 
 Town, was nearly four thousand dollars. The usual price 
 now is about three hundred dollars for a single pair of 
 ostriches raised in South America. The importation from 
 Cape Town has practically ceased, since the birds do not 
 lose by being bred in 
 America, but rather 
 gain in the quality of 
 the plumage. A pair 
 of half - grown os- 
 triches, six months 
 to a year old, are 
 worth about one hun- 
 dred and fifty dollars. 
 The birds are first 
 plucked at nine or ten 
 months, and thereaf- 
 ter every six months. 
 Plumes taken from 
 the living ostrich are 
 finest. 
 
 To obtain them, 
 the bird is imprisoned 
 in a kind of cage — 
 a small box-stall, on 
 wheels, with a door 
 at each end. 
 
 Into this the os- 
 trich is driven and 
 the door is fastened. 
 Portions of the sides 
 of the stall are ar- 
 ranged to let down on 
 
 hinges, and through the openings thus made the plucking 
 and cutting of the feathers is done. This caution is neces- 
 sary in order to escape the powerful feet of the bird, for 
 though the ostrich is not vicious, it is dangerous in close 
 
 A Full -Grown Ostrich. 
 
OSTRICH - FARMING. 
 
 51 
 
 quarters. A blow from the wing of a full-grown ostrich has 
 not infrequently been known to break a man's arm or leg. 
 The limited intelligence of the bird is taken full advantage of 
 in its management. 
 
 The smaller feathers are plucked. The plumes of the 
 wings and the larger feathers are cut, leaving imbedded a 
 stump of the feather some four inches in length. After a 
 lapse of some two weeks or a month these stumps are pulled 
 out from the wings with a pair of pincers. They have 
 shrunk in this time to such an extent as to make their 
 removal easy and painless. When the plucking is finished, 
 the ostrich is released through the front door of the stall. 
 
 The yield can be counted upon almost to a certainty as to 
 the number of feathers, but the price varies with the quality. 
 The South American plumes are considered in London and 
 Paris equal to those of South Africa, if not superior to them. 
 
 Two dozen large plumes are plucked or cut from each 
 wing. Those cut from the male bird are pure white, except 
 two, which are partly white and partly black. The long 
 plumes cut from the wings of the female are white and gray. 
 In addition to the long plumes from the wings of the male, 
 there are about three ounces of smaller black feathers, and, 
 from either male or female, about forty ounces of tail and 
 breast-feathers. About three pounds of feathers are taken 
 from each ostrich. 
 
 The first plucking, when the bird is only nine or ten 
 months old, yields, at the present wholesale prices, five or six 
 dollars' worth of feathers to each bird. The yield increases 
 from year to year, until the ostrich has its full growth, — 
 about two and a half to three years, — when the clip from 
 each is worth about forty dollars. 
 
 Henry H. Barroi.1.. 
 
* 
 
A Widow's Mites. 
 
 One bright day in June, as I delved in my little garden a 
 loud humming close at hand caused me suddenly to look up. 
 I was a trifle surprised to see, poised in mid-air some six feet 
 from my head, an excited specimen of that dainty tropical 
 visitant, the ruby-throated humming-bird. 
 
 Ten seconds later the bird was gone like a flash, but only 
 to perch on a twig of the nearest tree, there to sit and watch 
 my movements with evident concern. 
 
 Ignorant of birds and their habits though I was, the little 
 creature's conduct seemed to me very peculiar, so I waited to 
 see what would come next. 
 
 In less than five minutes the bird darted into the air, 
 circled about twice or thrice, and then, dashing back to the 
 tree, suddenly dropped, light as a feather and without pre- 
 liminary perching after the usual manner of birds, full upon 
 her nest. 
 
 There she sat in plain sight, as indeed she must have 
 done for several days, though hitherto I had failed to see her. 
 The nest was so tiny, so exactly the color of the bough that 
 held it, and so shielded by overhanging leaves as to be very 
 hard to find, even after one knew its position ; and yet it was, 
 as I have said, in full sight all the time. 
 
 Luckily I have a neighbor who is deeply versed in bird- 
 lore ; to him I hastened with the story of my discovery. An 
 hour later we took advantage of the bird's temporary absence 
 to inspect the nest. 
 
 We found that we could easily look from the top of a 
 small step-ladder directly down upon the two tiny white eggs 
 lying in their cup-shaped bed of downy vegetable fibre, and 
 could examine closely the exquisite workmanship of the nest 
 itself. It was saddled upon a drooping bough some ten feet 
 
54 
 
 A widow's MITEvS. 
 
 from the ground. It was made of vegetable floss, soft as the 
 finest wool, and was completely covered on the outside with 
 bits of lichen to make it look like the mossy wood that sup- 
 ported it. How anxiously did we 
 watch that tiny nest during the 
 
 next week ! 
 
 And with what joy 
 did we find, one day, 
 that the two eggs 
 had changed to two 
 young humming- 
 
 birds ! Helpless, naked, pitiful-look- 
 ing objects they were, to be sure ; 
 but at one day old, even the best of 
 us are not remarkable for strength, 
 
 grace or beauty. lyooking at these helpless creatures, no big- 
 ger than bumblebees, their whole flabby bodies shaking with 
 every beat of their little hearts, it seemed almost impossible 
 
A WIDOW'vS MITKS. 
 
 55 
 
 that they should ever attain such brilliancy of plumage, such 
 swiftness of motion, and such power of endurance as belong 
 to adult humrning-birds, and that in a few wrecks. 
 
 But if we wondered at the generally wretched appearance 
 of the newly-hatched humming-birds, *we wondered still 
 more, and our wonder was mixed with great admiration, 
 when we saw them survive the process of feeding. 
 
 Doubtless this process is just the one best adapted to the 
 condition of young humming-birds ; but to the human spec- 
 tator it appears nothing less than cruel and dangerous. 
 Imagine a human mother feeding her baby by thrusting 
 down its throat a tube, say a yard long and two inches in 
 diameter, placing the food in the upper end of this tube, and 
 then violently churning the tube up and down so as to settle 
 the food to the infant's stomach ! The child would be dead 
 before his meal was finished. 
 
 Yet all this would be not a whit worse than the process of 
 feeding young humming-birds appears to be. The mother- 
 bird inserts her bill in the open mouth of her hungry 
 offspring, and pushes it down as far as possible. Then 
 follow, in rapid succession, a series of apparently very violent 
 rammings and shakings, as the partially-digested food is 
 raised from the stomach of the old bird and forced into that 
 of the young one. 
 
 The first time that I saw this operation I felt sure that the 
 poor little things would be corpses by the time it was ended ; 
 and many a time, as the mother's sharp bill was thrust with 
 great haste and apparent force down the gaping throat of the 
 helpless fledgling, I almost held my breath for fear it would 
 go entirely through the little, soft body, and pin the wretched 
 creature firmly to the nest. 
 
 No doubt this performance, notwithstanding its apparent 
 cruelty, serves a good purpose in exercising the muscles of 
 the young bird as well as aiding in the digestion of its food. 
 
 Thanks to the constant care of their hard-working mother, 
 the helpless, naked, awkward little "hummers" gradually 
 
56 
 
 A widow's mites. 
 
 1 
 
 increased in size and strength, raised a crop of stubbly 
 plumage, and began to look something like birds. Meantime, 
 all accessible accounts of young humming-birds were carefully 
 read, and found to require that the birds should leave the 
 nest at the age of seven days. Now, from the very first it 
 was plain that our birdlings had no intention of leaving 
 home so early in life. 
 
 When they were a week old, and should have been, 
 according to the books, spreading their wings for flight, they 
 were still practically helpless, and their original nakedness 
 was not yet decently covered by their crop of pinfeathers. 
 
 Their bills were, at this time, not longer than that of a 
 sparrow, but much sharper and more slender. At two weeks 
 of age the little fellows, though neither fully grown nor fully 
 fledged, had yet acquired a noticeable likeness to their 
 mother ; but their plumage was less brilliant and their bills 
 much shorter. 
 
 About this time one of the little birds began to pay strict 
 attention to his health, taking exercise regularly after each 
 meal, by standing up in the nest and vibrating his wings for 
 perhaps ten or fifteen seconds. As he was fed about once an 
 hour on the average, it followed that he got a good deal of 
 exercise in the course of a day. 
 
 For several days longer affairs went on with little change 
 except that the young birds grew noticeably larger and more 
 uneasy, one of them surpassing the other in both respects. 
 So large and active was he, and apparently so strong, that I 
 should not have been surprised to see him fly away from the 
 nest at any time after he was sixteen days old. 
 
 Yet still he lingered, and like his companion was fed by 
 the mother, though he was occasionally seen to pick, from a 
 neighboring leaf, an insect for himself. 
 
 The feeding by the mother-bird seemed now less danger- 
 ous than formerly, perhaps because the young, being larger 
 and stronger, seemed better able to survive the violent 
 treatment that always accompanied the operation. 
 
A widow's mites. 
 
 57 
 
 At last, when the birds were nineteen da^^s old, the larger 
 and more active one suddenly spread his wings in real earnest 
 one fine morning, and flew out of the nest to a neighboring 
 twig. He was not followed by his smaller and weaker sister 
 till two days later. 
 
 For several days after this the two lingered about the tree 
 in which they had been reared, or in its immediate vicinity, 
 sometimes fed in the good old way by their watchful mother, 
 sometimes feeding themselves on the insects that happened to 
 be upon twigs and leaves near them. 
 
 During these days the mother occasionally fed them by 
 putting food merely into their mouths, after the manner of 
 birds generally, but more often the feeding was by the old 
 method of regurgitation. She even shook one of them off his 
 twig one da}^ by the violence of her motions. 
 
 How long the birds remained in that neighborhood I 
 cannot say, for a few days after the second one left the nest 
 I was called from home, and did not return for three weeks. 
 When I did return the birds were gone. However, I once 
 afterward saw both the young birds and their mother in the 
 old familiar tree. Then they flew away, and I have never 
 seen them since. 
 
 K. F. HoLDEN. 
 
Owls and their Uses. 
 
 There is a popular belief that owls are exclusively birds of 
 night and cannot see by day, or, if they see at all, that their 
 vision is extremely limited. "As stupid as an owl ! " is the 
 
 common saying ; but doubtless the 
 phrase refers rather to feebleness of 
 vision in open daylight than to any 
 supposed mental deficiency. 
 
 In truth, owls are not stupid, nor 
 are they by any means blind by day. 
 Even ornithologists have, I think, ^ 
 erred in assuming that most owls are 
 exclusively nocturnal, though it has 
 long been known that one species, 
 the Hawk Owl, hunts only by day. 
 Probably at night its vision is as 
 defective as that of a hawk. 
 
 I am inclined to believe that even 
 the Great Horned, Barn and little 
 Screech Owls, which are perhaps as 
 nocturnal as any, are endowed with 
 by no means keen vision in the dark, 
 and that they do most of their hunt- 
 ing by twilight and by moon or bright starlight. True, it is 
 possible to approach closely many of the owls in the daytime, 
 as they sit dozing in their shady retreats, and not infrequently 
 the smaller .species may be caught in the hands. But the 
 passiveness of the owls by day is the result more of sleepiness 
 than of inability to see ; and, once started in the daytime, and 
 given a chance to rub open their drowsy eyes, so to speak, 
 they are able to lead their would-be captors a lively chase. 
 If any one has ever been aroused from a deep sleep to face 
 
OWLS AND THEIR USEvS. 
 
 59 
 
 the broad daylight suddenly, he will appreciate the feelings 
 of the winking, blinking owl, and be surprised no longer that 
 under such circumstances it has suffered the unjust impu- 
 tation of stupidity. 
 
 But let us pass from general facts to particulars, and see 
 what relation the owl tribe bears to man, especially to the 
 farmer. It is high time the matter is understood ; for if the 
 
 ionable craze. Let us consider the Great Horned Owl (Fig. i) 
 first by reason of his size, his fine presence — for he is our 
 finest species — and his economic importance. 
 
 He has shortcomings. The chief one is a liking for fowls 
 and turkeys. But as he does not begin to hunt until it is 
 dusk, and retires to the deep woods by early daylight, he 
 seldom gets a chance at the farmer's fowls unless they roost 
 in trees. Then he becomes a dangerous foe indeed, and one 
 the farmer is justified in disposing of by any means. 
 
 However, when rabbits are plenty this owl prefers them ; 
 and in the far West, where the rabbit is extremely abundant 
 and a most destructive foe to the crops, the Great Horned 
 Owl does good service in warring upon them. Many thou- 
 sands of pounds are annually expended in Australia in an 
 
 owl be the farmer's friend, the 
 farmer ought to know it, and 
 bear a hand in the effort to 
 stop the destruction of owls of 
 all sorts for decorative pur- 
 poses. 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 Of late there seems to be an 
 abatement of the fashion, but 
 in the last ten years many 
 thousands of owls, from the 
 Pigmy Owl, scarce a hand's 
 breadth high, to the Great 
 Horned Owl, with a spread of 
 wing of three feet and more, 
 have fallen victims to the fash- 
 
6o 
 
 OWLS AND THEIR USES. 
 
 attempt to destroy the rabbits — an attempt this owl woula 
 gladly second if it were given a chance. The Barred Owl 
 (Fig. 2) is not quite so large as the Great Horned, but though 
 by no means as fine a species as the preceding, it is yet a 
 notable bird. It is a good friend of the farmer, too, in the 
 main, though its record with regard to chickens is not 
 altogether a clean one. Still, it feeds mainly upon squirrels 
 and mice. 
 
 Probably all the larger owls are cannibals, and do not 
 disdain to eat one of their smaller brethren when opportunity 
 
 offers. The Barred Owl is no exception in this respect, and 
 the remains of more than one Screech and Acadian Owlet 
 have been found in the stomachs of their bigger relatives. 
 
 This species has often been tamed ; and when taken from 
 the nest it makes a gentle and interesting pet. Mr. Frank 
 Bolles, in the Auk for April, 1890, tells a story of a pair he 
 kept captive for a long time. It seems probable from one of 
 his experiments that fish are eaten by this species when it 
 can catch them. When some live perch were placed in the 
 
OWLS AND THEIR USEvS. 
 
 OI 
 
 water-tank in the cage, both owls, though they were but three 
 months old, and had never seen a fish before, exhibited great 
 excitement, and immediately jumped into the water to seize 
 their prey. 
 
 These pets, curiously enough, were fond of earthworms. 
 At first they were afraid of snakes, but soon became curious 
 about them, and subsequently killed and ate them with 
 relish. So far as our farmers are concerned, the Snowy Owl 
 (Fig. 3) is of 
 less economic 
 importance 
 than some 
 others, since it 
 is never pres- 
 ent in the Uni- 
 ted States ex- 
 cept in autumn 
 
 and winter, ^■ 
 and then usually only in comparatively 
 small numbers. Occasionally, however, 
 as it did in 1877-8, it appears in large 
 numbers, and is eagerly shot for the 
 cabinet or parlor. Its food consists 
 chiefly of lemmings, hares and ptarmi- 
 gans. When in the United States it also destroys many rats. 
 Singularly enough, this owl is an expert fisher, and has often 
 been seen on the margins of pools, waiting an opportunity to 
 seize its finny prey. Very different from the preceding species 
 both in appearance and habits is the Barn or " Monkey-faced 
 Owl " (Fig. 4), as it is often not inaptly termed. While the 
 Snowy Owl is a bird of the inclement north, the Barn Owl 
 loves sunnier climes, and is found from about the latitude of 
 the Middle States southward, not only through the United 
 States but over almost all the world. Doubtless in early 
 times the Barn Owl had to depend upon its own resources for 
 a habitation, but it was quick to perceive the advantages of 
 
62 
 
 OWLS AND THEIR USES. 
 
 a co-partnership with man, and early learned to build its 
 nest in odd nooks and crannies of barns, churches and 
 monasteries. 
 
 This owl feeds nearly exclusively upon rodents, and 
 especially mice, and does its hunting almost at the threshing- 
 floor of the farmer. It is therefore a friend which should be 
 
 by the Barn Owl is simply enormous. The Southern planter 
 also owes it a debt of gratitude from the persistent war it 
 wages upon the cotton rat. 
 
 The lyong-eared Owl (Fig. 5), as its name implies, has 
 long ear-tufts, which give it a peculiarly wise appearance, and 
 unfortunately render it a favorite ornament of the parlor and 
 study. It is one of our most common owls, both East and 
 West, and almost every dark pine thicket shelters a pair or 
 two. It roosts in trees, and in them builds a rude nest of 
 sticks and twigs. In the far West, I have started a dozen 
 or more from a thicket of bushes a few yards in extent. 
 
 It is one of our most assiduous mouse-destroyers, and the 
 presence of hundreds of pellets of mouse hair and bones 
 usually marks the retreat of a pair of these birds. The 
 downy young of all owls are curious-looking creatures, as 
 may be seen from the accompanying illustration of a growing 
 
 peculiarly cared for by 
 him and not left, as now, 
 to be sacrificed to the 
 passing whim of the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 Fig. 6. 
 
 The pouched gopher 
 of California is pecul- 
 iarly destructive to 
 lawns, which it injures 
 by tunnelling under the 
 grass roots. It also does 
 much damage in the 
 garden. The number of 
 these animals captured 
 
OWLS AND THEIR USES. 
 
 63 
 
 family of lyOng-eared Owls. Almost as soon as hatched, the 
 nestlings will take food from the hand as readily as from the 
 parent bird, and soon become remarkably tame and confiding. 
 
 The Short-eared Owl (Fig. 6) is of about the same size as 
 the preceding, but the ear-tufts are inconspicuous. 
 
 Moreover, it is a bird of very different habits. It summers 
 chiefly in the fur countries and the Northern prairie States, 
 and winters far southward, becoming common in the United 
 
 States in the early fall. It is most 
 at home in the marshes and open 
 country, where it spends the hours 
 of bright sunlight among the thick 
 grass. 
 
 While it thus prefers to doze 
 during the brightest hours, it can 
 see remarkably well in the daytime, 
 and, once wakened to a sense of 
 danger, it is no easy matter to shoot 
 it. Its food consists chiefly of mice 
 and insects. Occasionally, doubt- 
 less, it destroys small birds, but its 
 ^. ^ main subsistence is derived from 
 
 Fig. 7. 
 
 animals that the farmer properly 
 dreads ; nor can he rid himself of them so easily and cheaply 
 in any other way as by protecting the owls. 
 
 In the little Screech Owl (Fig. 7), whose length is less 
 than ten inches, the farmer has another friend, and one whose 
 value is not to be reckoned by its bulk. For this wise- 
 looking tufted owlet is an inveterate foe to mice, and although 
 he has been known to enter the farmer's domain and snatch 
 a tender squab, or still more rarely a young chicken, he can 
 plead that such misdeeds are performed but rarely, and only 
 when family cares drive him to the necessity. For young 
 owls are most voracious creatures, as one may learn who 
 attempts to play nurse to a growing owl family. 
 
 Moreover, now that we know what a destructive pest 
 
64 
 
 OWLS AND THEIR USES. 
 
 is the English sparrow, it is well to note that "Scops" is 
 very fond of this pestilent foreigner ; and, from the habit of 
 the sparrow of roosting about buildings, our owl is sometimes 
 very successful in his patriotic attempts to reduce their 
 numbers. 
 
 Very gentle and interesting pets Screech Owls make ; and 
 if taken from the nest when in the down, and well fed and 
 petted, they may be released after a time with the certainty 
 that they, will not wander far. Frequently they roost in the 
 shrubbery near the house during the day, and at dusk fly to 
 the window where they are accustomed to be fed. 
 
 They nest in the hollows of trees, and this is where they 
 usually roost during the day. Not an old apple orchard in 
 New England that has not a pair of these little owls snugly 
 hidden away in the hollows of some gnarled tree. Other 
 owls there are which are worthy of mention, did space permit. 
 
 Take them all in all, the owls must be considered friends 
 to man. They are emphatically mice-eaters, and they sup- 
 plement the work of the hawks by day by waging incessant 
 warfare against man's enemies at a time when both hawks 
 and men are resting. 
 
 H. W. Henshaw. 
 
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 four volumes of The Companion Library described on the inside cover at 
 the beginning of this book. The Series comprises the following volumes: 
 
 By lyand and Sea. A Book of Travel and Research. 
 
 Containing The Companion Library Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5. 
 
 Talks About Animals. A Book of Natural History. 
 
 Containing The Companion Library Nos. 6, 7, 8 and 9. 
 
 Our Country : West. The Newer Portions of the United States. 
 Containing The Companion Library Nos. 10, 11, 12 and 13. 
 
 Our Country : l^ast. The Earliest-Settled Regions of America. 
 Containing The Companion Library Nos. 14, 15, 16 and 17. 
 
 Price r>0 Cents, Sent Prepaid. 
 
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 The Youth's Companion 
 
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