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THE Wisconsin oak openings
were a summer paradise for song birds, and a fine place to get acquainted
with them; for the trees stood wide apart, allowing one to see the happy
home-seekers as they arrived in the spring, their mating, nest-building, the
brooding and feeding of the young, and, after they were full-fledged and
strong, to see all the families of the neighborhood gathering and getting
ready to leave in the fall. Excepting the geese and ducks and pigeons nearly
all our summer birds arrived singly or in small draggled flocks, but when
frost and falling leaves brought their winter homes to mind they assembled
in large flocks on dead or leafless trees by the side of a meadow or field,
perhaps to get acquainted and talk the thing over. Some species held regular
daily meetings for several weeks before finally setting forth on their long
southern journeys. Strange to say, we never saw them start. Some morning we
would find them gone. Doubtless they migrated in the night time.
Comparatively few species remained all winter, the nuthatch, chickadee, owl,
prairie chicken, quail, and a few stragglers from the main flocks of ducks,
jays, hawks, and bluebirds. Only after the country was settled did either
jays or bluebirds winter with us.
The brave, frost-defying
chickadees and nuthatches stayed all the year wholly independent of farms
and man's food and affairs.
With the first hints of
spring came the brave little bluebirds, darling singers as blue as the best
sky, and of course we all loved them. Their rich, crispy warbling is
perfectly delightful, soothing and cheering, sweet and whisperingly low,
Nature's fine love touches, every note going straight home into one's heart.
And withal they are hardy and brave, fearless fighters in defense of home.
When we boys approached their knot-hole nests, the bold little fellows kept
scolding and diving at us and tried to strike us in the face, and oftentimes
we were afraid they would prick our eyes. But the boldness of the little
housekeepers only made us love them the more.
None of the bird people of
Wisconsin welcomed us more heartily than the common robin. Far from showing
alarm at the coming of settlers into their native woods, they reared their
young around our gardens as if they liked us, and how heartily we admired
the beauty and fine manners of these graceful birds and their loud cheery
song of Fear not, fear not, cheer up, cheer up. It was easy to love
them for they reminded us of the robin redbreast of Scotland. Like the
bluebirds they dared every danger in defense of home, and we often wondered
that birds so gentle could be so bold and that sweet-voiced singers could so
fiercely fight and scold.
Of all the great singers that
sweeten Wisconsin one of the best known and best loved is the brown thrush
or thrasher, strong and able without being familiar, and easily seen and
heard. Rosy purple evenings after thundershowers are the favorite
song-times, when the winds have died away and the steaming ground and the
leaves and flowers fill the air with fragrance. Then the male makes haste to
the topmost spray of an oak tree and sings loud and clear with delightful
enthusiasm until sundown, mostly I suppose for his mate sitting on the
precious eggs in a brush heap. And how faithful and watchful and daring he
is! Woe to the snake or squirrel that ventured to go nigh the nest! We often
saw him diving on them, pecking them about the head and driving them away as
bravely as the kingbird drives away hawks. Their rich and varied strains
make the air fairly quiver. We boys often tried to interpret the wild
ringing melody and put it into words.
After the arrival of the
thrushes came the bobolinks, gushing, gurgling, inexhaustible fountains of
song, pouring forth floods of sweet notes over the broad Fox River meadows
in wonderful variety and volume, crowded and mixed beyond description, as
they hovered on quivering wings above their hidden nests in the grass. It
seemed marvelous to us that birds so moderate in size could hold so much of
this wonderful song stuff. Each one of them poured forth music enough for a
whole flock, singing as if its whole body, feathers and all, were made up of
music, flowing, glowing, bubbling melody interpenetrated here and there with
small scintillating prickles and spicules. We never became so intimately
acquainted with the bobolinks as with the thrushes, for they lived far out
on the broad Fox River meadows, while the thrushes sang on the tree-tops
around every home. The bobolinks were among the first of our great singers
to leave us in the fall, going apparently direct to the rice-fields of the
Southern States, where they grew fat and were slaughtered in countless
numbers for food. Sad fate for singers so purely divine.
One of the gayest of the
singers is the redwing blackbird. In the spring, when his scarlet epaulets
shine brightest, and his little modest gray wife is sitting on the nest,
built on rushes in a swamp, he sits on a near-by oak and devotedly sings
almost all day. His rich simple strain is baumpalee, baumpalee, or bobalee
as interpreted by some. In summer, after nesting cares are over, they
assemble in flocks of hundreds and thousands to feast on Indian corn when it
is in the milk. Scattering over a field, each selects an ear, strips the
husk down far enough to lay bare an inch or two of the end of it, enjoys an
exhilarating feast, and after all are full they rise simultaneously with a
quick birr of wings like an old-fashioned church congregation fluttering to
their feet when the minister after giving out the hymn says, "Let the
congregation arise and sing." Alighting on near-by trees, they sing with a
hearty vengeance, bursting out without any puttering prelude in gloriously
glad concert, hundreds or thousands of exulting voices with sweet gurgling
baum-palees mingled with chippy vibrant and exploding globules of musical
notes, making a most enthusiastic, indescribable joy-song, a combination
unlike anything to be heard elsewhere in the bird kingdom; something like
bagpipes, flutes, violins, pianos, and human-like voices all bursting and
bubbling at once. Then suddenly some one of the joyful congregation shouts
Chirr! Chirr! and all stop as if shot.
The sweet-voiced meadowlark with its placid,
simple song of peery-eery-6dical was another favorite, and we soon learned
to admire the Baltimore oriole and its wonderful hanging nests, and the
scarlet tanager glowing like fire amid the green leaves.
But no singer of them all got farther into our
hearts than the little speckle-breasted song sparrow, one of the first to
arrive and begin nest-building and singing. The richness, sweetness, and
pathos of this small darling's song as he sat on a low bush often brought
tears to our eyes. The
little cheery, modest chickadee midget, loved by every innocent boy and
girl, man and woman, and by many not altogether innocent, was one of the
first of the birds to attract our attention, drawing nearer and nearer to us
as the winter advanced, bravely singing his faint silvery, lisping, tinkling
notes ending with a bright dee, dee, dee! however frosty the weather.
The nuthatches, who also stayed all winter with
us, were favorites with us boys. We loved to watch them as they traced the
bark-furrows of the oaks and hickories head downward, deftly flicking off
loose scales and splinters in search of insects, and braving the coldest
weather as if their little sparks of life were as safely warm in winter as
in summer, unquenchable by the severest frost. With the help of the
chickadees they made a delightful stir in the solemn winter days, and when
we were out chopping we never ceased to wonder how their slender naked toes
could be kept warm when our own were so painfully frosted though clad in
thick socks and boots. And we wondered and admired the more when we thought
of the little midgets sleeping in knot-holes when the temperature was far
below zero, sometimes thirty-five degrees below, and in the morning, after a
minute breakfast of a few frozen insects and hoarfrost crystals, playing and
chatting in cheery tones as if food, weather, and everything was according
to their own warm hearts. Our Yankee told us that the name of this darling
was Devil-downhead.
Their big neighbors the owls also made good winter music, singing out loud
in wild, gallant strains bespeaking brave comfort, let the frost bite as it
might. The solemn hooting of the species with the widest throat seemed to us
the very wildest of all the winter sounds.
Prairie chickens came strolling in family flocks
about the shanty, picking seeds and grasshoppers like domestic fowls, and
they became still more abundant as wheat-and-cornfields were multiplied, but
also wilder, of course, when every shotgun in the country was aimed at them.
The booming of the males during the mating-season was one of the loudest and
strangest of the early spring sounds, being easily heard on calm mornings at
a distance of a half or three fourths of a mile. As soon as the snow was off
the ground, they assembled in flocks of a dozen or two on an open spot,
usually on the side of a ploughed field, ruffled up their feathers, inflated
the curious colored sacks on the sides of their necks, and strutted about
with queer gestures something like turkey gobblers, uttering strange loud,
rounded, drumming calls, — boom! boom! boom! interrupted by choking sounds.
My brother Daniel caught one while she was sitting on her nest in our
corn-field. The young are just like domestic chicks, run with the mother as
soon as hatched, and stay with her until autumn, feeding on the ground,
never taking wing unless disturbed. In winter, when full-grown, they
assemble in large flocks, fly about sundown to selected roosting-places on
tall trees, and to feeding-places in the morning, — unhusked corn-fields, if
any are to be found in the neighborhood, or thickets of dwarf birch and
willows, the buds of which furnish a considerable part of their food when
snow covers the ground.
The wild rice-marshes along the Fox River and
around Pucaway Lake were the summer homes of millions of ducks, and in the
Indian summer, when the rice was ripe, they grew very fat. The magnificent
mallards in particular afforded our Yankee neighbors royal feasts almost
without price, for often as many as a half-dozen were killed at a shot, but
we seldom were allowed a single hour for hunting and so got very few. The
autumn duck season was a glad time for the Indians also, for they feasted
and grew fat not only on the ducks but on the wild rice, large quantities of
which they gathered as they glided through the midst of the generous crop in
canoes, bending down handfuls over the sides, and beating out the grain with
small paddles. The
warmth of the deep spring fountains of the creek in our meadow kept it open
all the year, and a few pairs of wood ducks, the most beautiful, we thought,
of all the ducks, wintered in it. I well remember the first specimen I ever
saw. Father shot it in the creek during a snowstorm, brought it into the
house, and called us around him, saying: "Come, bairns, and admire the work
of God displayed in this bonnie bird. Naebody but God could paint feathers
like these. Juist look at the colors, hoo they shine, and hoo fine they
overlap and blend thegether like the colors o' the rainbow." And we all
agreed that never, never before had we seen so awfu' bonnie a bird. A pair
nested every year in the hollow top of an oak stump about fifteen feet high
that stood on the side of the meadow, and we used to wonder how they got the
fluffy young ones down from the nest and across the meadow to the lake when
they were only helpless, featherless midgets; whether the mother carried
them to the water on her back or in her mouth. I never saw the thing done or
found anybody who had until this summer, when Mr. Holabird, a keen observer,
told me that he once saw the mother carry them from the nest tree in her
mouth, quickly coming and going to a near-by stream, and in a few minutes
get them all together and proudly sail away.
Sometimes a flock of swans were seen passing
over at a great height on their long journeys, and we admired their clear
bugle notes, but they seldom visited any of the lakes in our neighborhood,
so seldom that when they did it was talked of for years. One was shot by a
blacksmith on a millpond with a long-range Sharp's rifle, and many of the
neighbors went far to see it.
The common gray goose, Canada honker, flying in
regular harrow-shaped flocks, was one of the wildest and wariest of all the
large birds that enlivened the spring and autumn. They seldom ventured to
alight in our small lake, fearing, I suppose, that hunters might be
concealed in the rushes; but on account of their fondness for the young
leaves of winter wheat when they were a few inches high, they often alighted
on our fields when passing on their way south, and occasionally even in our
cornfields when a snowstorm was blowing and they were hungry and wing-weary,
with nearly an inch of snow on their backs. In such times of distress we
used to pity them, even while trying to get a shot at them. They were
exceedingly cautious and circumspect; usually flew several times round the
adjacent thickets and fences to make sure that no enemy was near before
settling down, and one always stood on guard, relieved from time to time,
while the flock was feeding. Therefore there was no chance to creep up on
them unobserved; you had to be well hidden before the flock arrived. It was
the ambition of boys to be able to shoot these wary birds. I never got but
two, both of them at one so-called lucky shot. When I ran to pick them up,
one of them flew away, but as the poor fellow was sorely wounded he did n't
fly far. When I caught him after a short chase, he uttered a piercing cry of
terror and despair, which the leader of the flock heard at a distance of
about a hundred rods. They had flown off in frightened disorder, of course,
but had got into the regular harrow-shape order when the leader heard the
cry, and I shall never forget how bravely he left his place at the head of
the flock and hurried back screaming and struck at me in trying to save his
companion. I dodged down and held my hands over my head, and thus escaped a
blow of his elbows. Fortunately I had left my gun at the fence, and the life
of this noble bird was spared after he had risked it in trying to save his
wounded friend or neighbor or family relation. For so shy a bird boldly to
attack a hunter showed wonderful sympathy and courage. This is one of my
strangest hunting experiences. Never before had I regarded wild geese as
dangerous, or capable of such noble self-sacrificing devotion.
The loud clear call of the handsome bobwhites
was one of the pleasantest and most characteristic of our spring sounds, and
we soon learned to imitate it so well that a bold cock often accepted our
challenge and came flying to fight. The young run as soon as they are
hatched and follow their parents until spring, roosting on the ground in a
close bunch, heads out ready to scatter and fly. These fine birds were
seldom seen when we first arrived in the wilderness, but when wheat-fields
supplied abundance of food they multiplied very fast, although oftentimes
sore pressed during hard winters when the snow reached a depth of two or
three feet, covering their food, while the mercury fell to twenty or thirty
degrees below zero. Occasionally, although shy on account of being
persistently hunted, under pressure of extreme hunger in the very coldest
weather when the snow was deepest they ventured into barnyards and even
approached the doorsteps of houses, searching for any sort of scraps and
crumbs, as if piteously begging for food. One of our neighbors saw a flock
come creeping up through the snow, unable to fly, hardly able to walk, and
while approaching the door several of them actually fell down and died;
showing that birds, usually so vigorous and apparently independent of
fortune, suffer and lose their lives in extreme weather like the rest of us,
frozen to death like settlers caught in blizzards. None of our neighbors
perished in storms, though many had feet, ears, and fingers frost-nipped or
solidly frozen. As soon
as the lake ice melted, we heard the lonely cry of the loon, one of the
wildest and most striking of all the wilderness sounds, a strange, sad,
mournful, unearthly cry, half laughing, half wailing. Nevertheless the great
northern diver, as our species is called, is a brave, hardy, beautiful bird,
able to fly under water about as well as above it, and to spear and capture
the swiftest fishes for food. Those that haunted our lake were so wary none
was shot for years, though every boy hunter in the neighborhood was
ambitious to get one to prove his skill. On one of our bitter cold New Year
holidays I was surprised to see a loon in the small open part of the lake at
the mouth of the inlet that was kept from freezing by the warm spring water.
I knew that it could not fly out of so small a place, for these heavy birds
have to beat the water for half a mile or so before they can get fairly on
the wing. Their narrow, finlike wings are very small as compared with the
weight of the body and are evidently made for flying through water as well
as through the air, and it is by means of their swift flight through the
water and the swiftness of the blow they strike with their long, spear-like
bills that they are able to capture the fishes on which they feed. I ran
down the meadow with the gun, got into my boat, and pursued that poor
winter-bound straggler. Of course he dived again and again, but had to come
up to breathe, and I at length got a quick shot at his head and slightly
wounded or stunned him, caught him, and ran proudly back to the house with
my prize. I carried him in my arms; he didn't struggle to get away or offer
to strike me, and when I put him on the floor in front of the kitchen stove,
he just rested quietly on his belly as noiseless and motionless as if he
were a stuffed specimen on a shelf, held his neck erect, gave no sign of
suffering from any wound, and though he was motionless, his small black eyes
seemed to be ever keenly watchful. His formidable bill, very sharp, three or
three and a half inches long, and shaped like a pickaxe, was held perfectly
level. But the wonder was that he did not struggle or make the slightest
movement. We had a tortoise-shell cat, an old Tom of great experience, who
was so fond of lying under the stove in frosty weather that it was difficult
even to poke him out with a broom; but when he saw and smelled that strange
big fishy, black and white, speckledy bird, the like of which he had never
before seen, he rushed wildly to the farther corner of the kitchen, looked
back cautiously and suspiciously, and began to make a careful study of the
handsome but dangerous-looking stranger. Becoming more and more curious and
interested, he at length advanced a step or two for a nearer view and nearer
smell; and as the wonderful bird kept absolutely motionless, he was
encouraged to venture gradually nearer and nearer until within perhaps five
or six feet of its breast. Then the wary loon, not liking Tom's looks in so
near a view, which perhaps recalled to his mind the plundering minks and
muskrats he had to fight when they approached his nest, prepared to defend
himself by slowly, almost imperceptibly drawing back his long pickaxe bill,
and without the slightest fuss or stir held it level and ready just over his
tail. With that dangerous bill drawn so far back out of the way, Tom's
confidence in the stranger's peaceful intentions seemed almost complete,
and, thus encouraged, he at last ventured forward with wondering,
questioning eyes and quivering nostrils until he was only eighteen or twenty
inches from the loon's smooth white breast. When the beautiful bird,
apparently as peaceful and inoffensive as a flower, saw that his hairy
yellow enemy had arrived at the right distance, the loon, who evidently was
a fine judge of the reach of his spear, shot it forward quick as a
lightning-flash, in marvelous contrast to the wonderful slowness of the
preparatory poising, backward motion. The aim was true to a hairbreadth. Tom
was struck right in the centre of his forehead, between the eyes. I thought
his skull was cracked. Perhaps it was. The sudden astonishment of that
outraged cat, the virtuous indignation and wrath, terror, and pain, are far
beyond description. His eyes and screams and desperate retreat told all
that. When the blow was received, he made a noise that I never heard a cat
make before or since; an awfully deep, condensed, screechy, explosive Wuck!
as he bounced straight up in the air like a bucking bronco; and when he
alighted after his spring, he rushed madly across the room and made frantic
efforts to climb up the hard-finished plaster wall. Not satisfied to get the
width of the kitchen away from his mysterious enemy, for the first time that
cold winter he tried to get out of the house, anyhow, anywhere out of that
loon-infested room. When he finally ventured to look back and saw that the
barbarous bird was still there, tranquil and motionless in front of the
stove, he regained command of some of his shattered senses and carefully
commenced to examine his wound. Backed against the wall in the farthest
corner, and keeping his eye on the outrageous bird, he tenderly touched and
washed the sore spot, wetting his paw with his tongue, pausing now and then
as his courage increased to glare and stare and growl at his enemy with
looks and tones wonderfully human, as if saying: "You confounded fishy,
unfair rascal! What did you do that for? What had I done to you? Faithless,
legless, long-nosed wretch!" Intense experiences like the above bring out
the humanity that is in all animals. One touch of nature, even a
cat-and-loon touch, makes all the world kin.
It was a great memorable day
when the first flock of passenger pigeons came to our farm, calling to mind
the story we had read about them when we were at school in Scotland. Of all
God's feathered people that sailed the Wisconsin sky, no other bird seemed
to us so wonderful. The beautiful wanderers flew like the winds in flocks of
millions from climate to climate in accord with the weather, finding their
food — acorns, beechnuts, pine-nuts, cranberries, strawberries,
huckleberries, juniper berries, hackberries, buckwheat, rice, wheat, oats,
corn — in fields and forests thousands of miles apart. I have seen flocks
streaming south in the fall so large that they were flowing over from
horizon to horizon in an almost continuous stream all day long, at the rate
of forty or fifty miles an hour, like a mighty river in the sky, widening,
contracting, descending like falls and cataracts, and rising suddenly here
and there in huge ragged masses like high-plashing spray. How wonderful the
distances they flew in a day — in a year — in a lifetime! They arrived in
Wisconsin in the spring just after the sun had cleared away the snow, and
alighted in the woods to feed on the fallen acorns that they had missed the
previous autumn. A comparatively small flock swept thousands of acres
perfectly clean of acorns in a few minutes, by moving straight ahead with a
broad front. All got their share, for the rear constantly became the van by
flying over the flock and alighting in front, the entire flock constantly
changing from rear to front, revolving something like a wheel with a low
buzzing wing roar that could be heard a long way off. In summer they feasted
on wheat and oats and were easily approached as they rested on the trees
along the sides of the field after a good full meal, displaying beautiful
iridescent colors as they moved their necks backward and forward when we
went very near them. Every shotgun was aimed at them and everybody feasted
on pigeon pies, and not a few of the settlers feasted also on the beauty of
the wonderful birds. The breast of the male is a fine rosy red, the lower
part of the neck behind and along the sides changing from the red of the
breast to gold, emerald green and rich crimson. The general color of the
upper parts is grayish blue, the under parts white. The extreme length of
the bird is about seventeen inches; the finely modeled slender tail about
eight inches, and extent of wings twenty-four inches. The females are
scarcely less beautiful. "Oh, what bonnie, bonnie birds!" we exclaimed over
the first that fell into our hands. "Oh, what colors! Look at their breasts,
bonnie as roses, and at their necks aglow wi' every color juist like the
wonderfu' wood ducks. Oh, the bonnie, bonnie creatures, they beat a'! Where
did they a' come fra, and where are they a' gan? It's awfu' like a sin to
kill them!" To this some smug, practical old sinner would remark: "Aye, it's
a peety, as ye say, to kill the bonnie things, but they were made to be
killed, and sent for us to eat as the quails were sent to God's chosen
people, the Israelites, when they were starving in the desert ayont the Red
Sea. And I must confess that meat was never put up in neater,
handsomer-painted packages."
In the New England and Canada woods beechnuts
were their best and most abundant food, farther north, cranberries and
huckleberries. After everything was cleaned up in the north and winter was
coming on, they went south for rice, corn, acorns, haws, wild grapes,
crab-apples, sparkle-berries, etc. They seemed to require more than half of
the continent for feeding-grounds, moving from one table to another, field
to field, forest to forest, finding something ripe and wholesome all the
year round. In going south in the fine Indian-summer weather they flew high
and followed one another, though the head of the flock might be hundreds of
miles in advance. But against head winds they took advantage of the
inequalities of the ground, flying comparatively low. All followed the
leader's ups and downs over hill and dale though far out of sight, never
hesitating at any turn of the way, vertical or horizontal that the leaders
had taken, though the largest flocks stretched across several States, and
belts of different kinds of weather.
There were no roosting- or breeding-places near
our farm, and I never saw any of them until long after the great flocks were
exterminated. I therefore quote, from Audubon's and Pokagon's vivid
descriptions. "Toward
evening," Audubon says, "they depart for the roosting-place, which may be
hundreds of miles distant. One on the banks of Green River, Kentucky, was
over three miles wide and forty long."
"My first view of it," says the great
naturalist, "was about a fortnight after it had been chosen by the birds,
and I arrived there nearly two hours before sunset. Few pigeons were then to
be seen, but a great many persons with horses and wagons and armed with
guns, long poles, sulphur pots, pine pitch torches, etc., bad already
established encampments on the borders. Two farmers had driven upwards of
three hundred hogs a distance of more than a hundred miles to be fattened on
slaughtered pigeons. Here and there the people employed in plucking and
salting what had already been secured were sitting in the midst of piles of
birds. Dung several inches thick covered the ground. Many trees two feet in
diameter were broken off at no great distance from the ground, and the
branches of many of the tallest and largest had given way, as if the forest
had been swept by a tornado.
"Not a pigeon had arrived at sundown. Suddenly a
general cry arose — `Here they come!' The noise they made, though still
distant, reminded me of a hard gale at sea passing through the rigging of a
close-reefed ship. Thousands were soon knocked down by the pole-men. The
birds continued to pour in. The fires were lighted and a magnificent as well
as terrifying sight presented itself. The pigeons pouring in alighted
everywhere, one above another, until solid masses were formed on the
branches all around. Here and there the perches gave way with a crash, and
falling destroyed hundreds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which
every stick was loaded; a scene of uproar and conflict. I found it useless
to speak or even to shout to those persons nearest me. Even the reports of
the guns were seldom heard, and I was made aware of the firing only by
seeing the shooters reloading. None dared venture within the line of
devastation. The hogs had been penned up in due time, the picking up of the
dead and wounded being left for the next morning's employment. The pigeons
were constantly coming in and it was after midnight before I perceived a
decrease in the number of those that arrived. The uproar continued all
night, and, anxious to know how far the sound reached I sent off a man who,
returning two hours after, informed me that he had heard it distinctly three
miles distant.
"Toward daylight the noise in some measure
subsided; long before objects were distinguishable the pigeons began to move
off in a direction quite different from that in which they had arrived the
evening before, and at sunrise all that were able to fly had disappeared.
The howling of the wolves now reached our ears, and the foxes, lynxes,
cougars, bears, coons, opossums, and polecats were seen sneaking off, while
eagles and hawks of different species, accompanied by a crowd of vultures,
came to supplant them and enjoy a share of the spoil.
"Then the authors of all this devastation began
their entry amongst the dead, the dying and mangled. The pigeons were picked
up and piled in heaps until each had as many as they could possibly dispose
of, when the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder.
"The breeding-places are selected with reference
to abundance of food, and countless myriads resort to them. At this period
the note of the pigeon is coo coo coo, like that of the domestic species but
much shorter. They caress by billing, and during incubation the male
supplies the female with food. As the young grow, the tyrant of creation
appears to disturb the peaceful scene, armed with axes to chop down the
squab-laden trees, and the abomination of desolation and destruction
produced far surpasses even that of the roosting places."
Pokagon, an educated Indian writer, says: "I saw
one nesting-place in Wisconsin one hundred miles long and from three to ten
miles wide. Every tree, some of them quite low and scrubby, had from one to
fifty nests on each. Some of the nests overflow from the oaks to the hemlock
and pine woods. When the pigeon hunters attack the breeding-places they
sometimes cut the timber from thousands of acres. Millions are caught in
nets with salt or grain for bait, and schooners, sometimes loaded down with
the birds, are taken to New York, where they are sold for a cent apiece." |
