Belated Arrival of Spring: Birds, Fish and Flowers - Leaves from the Notebook of an Old Nature Student

By Sandy Griswold.

That the flicker and the red-headed woodpecker did not put in an appearance in this immediate region until the past 10 days is proof enough of the belated dominance of spring.

While there were a few yellow-hammers seen at diverse near points as early as April 10, undoubtedly birds that had passed the winter in some protected nook of deep woods or tangly creek valley, there were no red-heads reported prior to May 1, and even just not they have not arrived in their normal numbers.

The oriole and wren are also laggard, the first of the orioles were noted in the early part of last week and but few wrens have been seen or heard at any time previous to the close of the month of showers, which consisted this spring of snow, instead of gentle rain, and these facts all go to prove that the individual who has postponed his bassing trip is, in the picturesque argot of the day, a wise gasaboo.

While we have been granted with precious little of the legendary gladsome springtime and sweet old summer hereabouts this year, there remains no longer any doubt but what we are going to have plenty of the kind of weather the optimistic fisherman dreams of an longs for from this time on to the sweltering dog days, and thence into autumn's golden reign. The right feel has at least crept into the air, the birds are about all here, even unto the shyest of the warblers, and in safety you can now get out the old fish-box and set your faces toward the wide open spaces.

Almost uninterruptedly, up to date, the spring has been little less than one long siege of wintry conditions, with brief interruptions of promise, but hardly a day of good old-fashioned angling weather.

Happily, however, the dawn of a change is here - things meteorological are properly shaping themselves and the coming weeks will, without much chance of failure, be prolific of happiness for the basser, the bird and flower lover.

But speaking of the proper season for fishing, while as I have, probably for the thousandth time, told you in these columns, the early springtime, in normal season, is the best period in the whole twelvemonth, for catching fish, of course, these conditions do not obtain when the sun is slowly climbing high in the heavens, and pelting hail and rain delay vegetation and roil streams and lakes, and the sport is meager indeed, and now days in most states unlawful. Such a season we have just gone through, but now that the atmosphere has assumed the proper fervor in these early summer days, they are certainly preeminently adapted to the wants and whims of the angler and the student of our flora and fauna. We are having now the weather that we should have had one month ago, and now is certainly the clover days for both bass and trout catcher, wherever it is permissible.

Leafy and odorous have the days at least become, and we can well afford to forget the disappointment that came to us in the true vernal season. Woods and fields and waters are now life-giving and animated with the countless insect forms that should have arrived with the first sultry days of April and will be multiplied and intensified long through June and July. But there is little to be gained in comment or regret, the weather is here at last, so be wise and enjoy it. You can catch bass in Nebraska, absurd as the fact is, at any time that suits you best.

This year, anyway, as I intimated above, these late May days are proving the real days for not only the angler, but the lover of wild flowers and the birds, too.

In this connection, let me say, that nowhere in this broad land of ours is a more inviting field offered the student of our woods and waters, hills and streams than right here in Nebraska. The woods, particularly, at this late date, are at their most charming state, and the fields at last redundant with beauty. During the latter days of April the first flowers of the sweet vernal season, in normal seasons, open their bright faces on an awakening world, but in May they appear, as if by the wand of necromancer, in their richest profusion. The birds, too, are all here usually, at that time, but were unwontedly delayed this spring by unfavorable conditions, as noted above, but all are on hand now, from the rhythmic catbird and the flirtatious chewink to the gaudy oriole, and in their gay finery vie with the inflorescence of tree, vine, and bush.

Within the chlaro-obscuro of the river road woods the delicate flame of the wake-robin, in purple and white, is now to be seen everywhere lighting the way. These lovely blossoms are of the Trillium family, and are partial to the dark crypts under the shade of elm, linden, or maple. The wake-robin is far more pleasing to the eye than it is to the nostril, for while it is a lovely flower, with its white or purple petals standing out from a background of he deepest emerald, its dull yellow pollen emits and odor anything but delicate or delightful.

In some few favored but well hidden dells, the Hepatica, which also came late, still shows its maiden blushes, but this is a rare flower with us, indeed, and but few would know it should they be fortunate enough to discover it. In old-fashioned language, this tiny flower is the squirrel cup, from belief of primitive people that from these little white and cerulean bells, bunny, in the golden morning, sips the nectar that appeases his thirst. The squirrel cup is a moss, distinguished only from the mosses by having a fourleafed capsule. With all the anemones, it is a ranunculaceous plant; some are flowering, others not, like those of the polymorpha species, which have an irregular lobed, spreading and forked frond. In April it is usually to be found crawling over the surface rocks, anywhere along the river road woods, although there are some botanists who thin I have confounded this plant with some other class. I have not. It includes in its varieties many medicinal plants, the crowfoot, buttercups and others. A cultivated relative has double flowers of various colors.

Along the gulch north of where the Big Spring used to gush so bounteously, but has gone forever, on the resplendent old river trail, is to be found the Green Dragon, and its cousin, the Jack-in-the-pulpit, with their ecstatic bizarre of blossoms, highly colored in purple and sea-green, which, in the hazy fall time, are succeeded by deep scarlet berries. Here, too, are the violets, both light and deep azure, and yellow, too, in intoxicating abundance. So seize your book, and get thee hence - this delightful epoch will be found all too short, and you will miss an opportunity you will never know again.

May 20, 1928. Sunday World-Herald 63(34): 5-B. Leaves From the Notebook of an Old Nature Student.

Early Season Scouts of the Red-breasted Robin - Leaves from the Notebook of an Old Nature Student

By Sandy Griswold.

Even though the limbs of the trees are still bare and all the country, far flung in all directions, dour and drab, the flowers of the elms, the buds of the cottonwoods, and the maples, have begun to swell, and the ashes and the lindens are dawning an all but intangible film of promise, we know that robin time is all but at hand and that the red-breasted battalions, with golden trumpets and atune, are rapidly marching our way.

The Redbreasted Scouts.

Already the reconnoitering scouts have been seen, swooping low over the ground, or perched silent on housetop or tree, waiting only the mandate of the winds to signal onward their mighty followers.

And what a joyous boon it is to all mankind the coming of this darling bird, and more so this spring than usual, as few of them, not withstanding the almost utter absence of the roistering weather of the season, lingered with us beyond an uncommonly early period in autumn's reign.

When They Leave Us.

In a single night, in mid-October, these birds seemed to disappear absolutely to the last bird and despite the frequent sorties I have made during winter months, not a single bird have I seen, when in former years, even in the severest of weather I have found them not isolated and alone, but at times in considerable flocks. The season now so rapidly flitting away, was most peculiar in this respect, for not even a number of visits to regions where they were always to be found, if anywhere, especially up in the thick woods and tangly ravines which spread out in such wonderful expansion along both the upper and lower roads between the city and the legendary old village of Calhoun, and midway between the two, were not rewarded by even a floating feather or the memory of a chirp. All had gone as completely as those of more delicate nature, the orioles, the swallows, and the swarms of warblers.

Tomtits, bluejays and cardinals were always more or less in evidence, but not a robin and there is none to deny, so far as I have been able to hear, but that redbreast made a cleaner exit last October than for any fall in many, many years.

Watchful Waiting.

There is the one potential fact that accounts for the watchful waiting among those who love this homely, yet beautiful, little visitant of our dooryards, that has been so marked all through the month of February for the first symptoms of their return. And now that, at least the forerunners of the hordes soon to follow, are here, we are all glad and all supremely thankful. It will not make much difference, however, it Old Boreas does indulge to one of his tantrums, the robins are coming, and in full force, all will soon be here.

And what about this wondrous little feathered enchantress, anyway? Merula migratoria, is the outlandish title scientifically bestowed upon the bird, the most beloved of all our dooryard friends.

Facts About the Robin.

Considering the fact that we all know Robin Redbreast so familiarly, he still strikes some benighted persons as trite and commonplace, so vast is the ignorance about even this most familiar of all the little visitors at our homes, our woods and our fields, our gardens, and backyards, that a few facts will no hurt a bit, but, on the contrary, be warmly welcomed by the wise as well as the foolish.

In the first place our robin is not a robin a robin at all, but properly is the redbreasted thrush, but resembling greatly the true English robin redbreast, the name for a lack of a better one, way back in the days the Pilgrim fathers, was bestowed upon the bird that we all love so well, and has become a favorite all over the land. And it was in those early times, also, that the hare became the rabbit, the grouse the prairie chicken or hen, and they will, in all probability, remain down to the end of time.

Why the robin is such an obsession among the bird lovers of this country is because it is the most confidential and the friendliest of all our common little dooryard beauties, not even excepting chickadee or cedarbird. And yet it is hardier than most of the confreres, and in some localities is regarded as much of a winter as it is a summer bird.

The Sort He Is.

Another reason for the robin's popularity is that it is a many-sided bird, much more so than any of those of gaudier plumage. Even before the bloodroot begins to illumine the sodden leaves, in these March days, or before the soft, mournful yet sweet purling call of the bluebird falls from the vernal skies, or the liquid plaint of the killdeer comes to us from the low wet places, we have days of delightful comradeship with homely little redbreast.

About here, the first nest-making starts in April. And they invariably raise two broods and sometimes three, every season - almost, invariably, four to a brood. And their eggs are a light greenish blue, very exquisite and very delicate. And from every angle and every detail it is one of the finest little songsters of all avian creation.

An Evening Denizen.

Where the orange arils of the bittersweet still light up our leafless but budding groves, all about the city of Omaha, the first thrill of his homely arietta sends a holier feeling swaying in the bearers heart. And when the snowy and pink involucre of the apple trees brighten the massing green, and the flute-like tones of the catbird have been added to the feathered orchestra, it is really heavenly to linger in your dooryard at eventide, and delight your soul with little redbreast's goodnight carrolings.

March 11, 1928. Sunday World-Herald 63(24): 15-W. Leaves from the Notebook of an Old Nature Student.

With Cloud and Wind and Changing Skies

By Sandy Griswold.

And these are the days of March, but up to date without her storms, and wind and cloud and changing skies, but wait; I am writing this early in the week, and there is plenty of time between now and Sunday next for the boisterous old termagant to be herself again.

Anyway the geese and the ducks are flying and that is one of the never failing concomitants that establishes the fact, with the sportsman at least, that this is March.

It is one of the pivotal season, and how revivifying, how inspiring, everything seems to be at these climacterics, the interment and resurrection of the isogeothermal periods in the role of nature. Go down into the lean and silent valley of the Elkhorn or the Loup, with their scraggy woods, and you will feel the throb of a new life, a life that was not there a few brief weeks ago.

Even if you do not see the newly arrived birds in any especial numbers, you will surely see a robin or two, and a jaybird, a yellowhammer, or a downy woodpecker, and perhaps bevies of chickadees and the snowbirds, now fidgety and restless, and peering eagerly to the northward.

The Children of Martius.

A few squirrels too, have undoubtedly abandoned their winter quarters n this or that decayed old elm or cottonwood, and if the sun is shining as it is shining today, there is every chance that you will find them cavorting amorously over the still unyielding earth, or among the gray branches of the trees.

As I have remarked, the chickadees should be seen and heard everywhere, for although they are fond of winter's snows and winter's winds, they are never so vivacious save in the late October, as they are in the changeful days of March, filling the air with three sweet notes, as they flicker from bush to tree, and back again. Now here, now there, hanging head down from this twig or that, like the man on the trapeze, or peering coyly into every crypt and interstice of stump or log for reawakening insectivorous tidbits, the pearly-breasted nuthatches are like-wise up and doing, sounding their elfin trumpets in rivalry to tomtit or creeper, while the ever inevitable bluejay, at times, in spiteful and absurd clamor, drowns out the lyrical efforts of all the others, save that of the far-reaching crow.

Bunny's Kitchen Middens.

The woody floors, too, you will find all barred and netted with the cold, cerulean shadows of the boles and branches of the trees, and strewn with the dead twigs that have fallen with the last of February winds, with strands of bark and shards of moss, weeds and lichen, with some of the bare places littered with the nibbled ends of sweet roots, or maybe, little piles of last fall's nutshells, walnut or acorn, the "kitchen middens" of the squirrels. Little chance, however, as was so common in the days that are gone of seeing any of those circular spots where a bevy of quail had spent the nocturnal hours, but you may find, once in a while, a tuft or so of Molly Cottontail's soft gray coat, marking the ill-omened spot where the cruel talons of some hungry owl or equally cruel paws of the prowling mink, had closed her innocent career.

These are signs and sights, however, seen only by the studious nature lover who is always on the search for the testimony of just such little woodland tragedies.

As you roam aimlessly about, here and there, you will discover the up-thrust stems, with some tattered remnants of last year's leaves still clinging valiantly to them, of the hazel bushes, and then again the rusty trail of the wild grape vines, generally of the crowseye variety; but sometimes of the big, musty blue, along which, in another week or two, at the most, the flatly pressed lobes of the squirrelcup and anemone, will greet your searching vision, promising gloriously to the dawn of hovering April, the first real month the wild flowers claim as their own.

An Elusive Fragrance.

Then mope along down the deeper bottom land thickets and a change in the lacey breath of the vernal breezes will reach your eager nostrils, a subtle scent, but wholly different from the aroma of any other month in the whole 12.

While it will baffle all but the one who has learned its secret, it will expand those little orifices of the nose of all who are greeted by it, with a decisive longing for a more generous waft of an aerial incense. Try as hard as you may, you cannot trace it to any definite source as you can the numerous well defined odors of showery May and rosy June, but you know that it is in the crisp, softening atmosphere, and you love it as you love but few scents that are so tangible in these, the first days of spring.

Day by Day.

The indurated old rambler of the quiet spaces, however, realizes that it is simply the ethereal exhalation of the ground beneath his feet, filtered upward through the coverlet of the woven crops of the past autumn's verdure, the first vitalizing breath of cottonwood, elm, oak, linden, walnut, ash, and sycamore, the unfailing accompaniment to the ambitious winds that sweep through the scant wooded valleys along all of Nebraska's erratic streams.

Not the sweet new grass and flowers,

But the rowen mired with weeds.

And then, thanks to the wisdom and the beneficence of the Father, from now on, day by day, warmer the winds will blow, more and more the tawny earth will shift into a soft emerald, bringing mirrored cloud and mirror skies, down to bounding field and swaying wood, while the rills and rivulets will wag their silvery tongues as they gladly glide along over gravelly beds, and intoned by all the musical hordes of the sweet vernal time with that ever soothing and holy, intangible though it be, of March's chaotic murmuring.

March 11, 1928. Sunday World-Herald 63(24): 15-W.

Sunday Outing on the Big Pappio - Leaves from the Notebook of an Old Nature Student

By Sandy Griswold.

Again, true to his word, the Boy was over bright and early Sunday morning, and for a change we took the car and drove out to the Big Pappio, west of the old Paxton farm, where this butterfly little creek makes its sinuous way, sometimes for a distance of hundreds of yards, through a deep rain-worn gully crowded with plum and grape, bittersweet, sumac and a variety of lesser willows. It was an area of country with which I was quite familiar years before, when it was far scraggier and wilder than it is today, and also a favorite haunt of Bob White, our common quail, now all but extinct throughout Douglas and adjacent counties.

I those days however, I made the trip out there two or three times every fall, and never failed in making at least a fair bag of what is undoubtedly the most precious game bird in the world.

The Boy and I were soon on the ground, and parking the car off the road, started for the creek. We had reached a point within a hundred yards or so of the creek's weedy shores when we were startled by several sharp "chuck! chuck! chucks," coming from the tangle below and the Boy eagerly demanded:

"Now what's that - a blackbird?" And we stopped for a reconnaissance.

"You don't see any blackbirds, do you, kid?" I enquired.

The Redbird Calls.

"No. But that sounds very much as if there was one somewhere's ahead of us there among those plum trees."

"Chuck! Chuck!" And before I could proclaim its identity, for had immediately recognized the bird's call as that of the cardinal, our common redbird, when there was a bright flaming flash athwart our vision and the bird itself, a gorgeous male, curved up out of the lower covert over the bank and, describing a parabola, was back in the thick of the tangle again, its disappearance being followed by a perfect concatenation of querulous chucks.

Raising my hand to the Boy as an admonition for quiet, we moved slowly forward, step by step, until finally we stood on the slight escarpment overlooking the Pappio and its brushy embroidery.

The redbird wasn't long in showing himself again, and this time, as if to block any intrusion on our part upon the sacredness of his sanctuary, he fluttered among the pallid stalks of the sumac almost in our very faces.

"Isn't he tame?" ventured the Boy.

Winter Birds Friendly.

"Yes, he is tame," I answered, "but it is just a gray, chilly day like this, with little flurries of snow about, that I have always regarded as the prime time to study the great variety of temperament there is among our little winter avian friends. You will find that your wanderings will be fuller of results than those taken in the milder and brighter seasons."

"What makes you think so?"

"Because, one of the chief things I have learned is, that in the bleak and trenchant days of winter there are fewer recluses among the birds than there are in the summer, when the fact is, it seems, as if it should be just the contrary.

"Yet it is true, Boy, as you will see, probably this very day - all of the birds that are here, from the crow down to the chickadee, are more sociable with each other and reside in what I might call, nomadic communities."

"Isn't that because there are fewer of them here, and there is nothing to do, but keep their little crops filled - don't you think, Mr. G.?"

"I don't think anything about it, and it please me beyond expression to see what a wonderful Bob Scout you really are."

"Thanks - awfully," and he screwed his mouth to one side, and gave me a wink as much as to say, "Oh, don't you kid me."

Song of the Creek.

"I never let on, however, but continued my dissertation along the lines I considered most valuable for any young and receptive mind, as we forced our way through the tangles down the bank to where the waters of the Pappio were heroically endeavoring to make their little roundelay heard above the low soughing wind, as they swirled over the muddy bottom and around obstructing drift or disputations, little curves and cul-de-sacs, the cardinal keeping just so far ahead of us all the time, like a real guide.

"You see, Kid, in the spring-time, after the birds have begun to mate, they are, of course, found most generally in pairs. They are then, too, more exclusive, secretive and covert, and keep close to some favored seignory that has taken their fancy and they claim as their own. The great adventure of their lives is imminent, and they have many secrets to jealously guard and many enemies to watch.

"Then, in the wintertime, there are no jealousies and few enemies among any of the hardier of our birds, consequently no quarreling even among those most at variance in their habits, like the crow for instance and the little woodpeckers.

And We Saunter On.

"As you have so aptly remarked, with nothing to do but search for food, and a cozy, protective roosting place, they are content to make the most of the society which, in the summer time, they would entirely ignore. Often they become exceedingly neighborly, the juncos and the sparrows, chickadees, woodpeckers, titmice, cardinals, and chewinks, all searching for fallen seeds among the same low bushes, or flitting about among the naked branches, or flying in variegated blocks over the desolate fields.

"There's our redbird - see, he is surely keeping an eye on us. Isn't he beautiful? I never saw such a vivid red. Don't they ever go south at all?" and the Boy made a leap and pulled down a scraggly vine to which a sad little cluster of wind-beaten and faded bittersweet was still clinging.

About the Cardinal.

"Yes, the cardinals go south, just like the robins and the meadowlarks, and just like these birds, a large number of them never make the trip at all and are numbered among our true winter birds. The fact is some ornithologists claim that none of our cardinals ever migrate, but the same bird exists in the more tropic states, and that these never come north. Their first cousins, though, the rose-breasted grosbeaks, depart early, go far beyond the gulf, and come back late in the spring.

"There are few showier birds than our redbird, and for one, I am glad he is here the year around.

"There he is, on that little white ash snag; look at him close; he's red all over, save that black marking around his cherry-colored beak, and isn't his head feathers dandy, crested just like a bluejay's and always erect excepting when the rain is falling?"

"And he is a good singer, too," remarked the boy, a question in his tone.

"That he is, not only himself, but his more sober hued little frau, for she is similarly gifted, with a more charming song, and with a sweeter softer voice than the ringing whistle of her gaudy mate, and quite different in general tone and timbre."

A Flurry of Sparrows.

Whirr-rrrr; That was a veritable flock of small brownish slate-colored birds flashing up into the air right in our very faces. They rose from a clump of low lacey weeds that covered a little open space traversing the creek for many yards ahead of us. For a time I could not make out what they were, but when I got my glasses focused on a number of them, perched as sedately as young owls along a limb of a nearby plum tree, I saw what they were, at least the most of them, but I wasn't so sure of the grayer ones, Harris sparrows. The boy, however, was in an ecstasy of delight, more so even, than over my statement that another bluejay had joined our pet of the window-sill, that he had arrived just that morning, but wasn't long getting acquainted and quickly availed himself of our pet's invitation to partake of the peanut banquet his big friends had spread so generously for himself and the bunnies.

First he wanted me to find out what those birds were, that seemed to be puzzling me, but I knew later he would return to the new bluejay. Therefore we crouched down together while I made an investigation through my glasses.

---

"Here, take the glasses and see what you can make out about the smaller of those birds in the plum tree ahead of us there," I said to the Boy, handing him my binoculars, which he quickly adjusted to his eyes and after quite a prolonged peering through them, he handed them back to me with the remark:

"I know the bigger birds are sparrows - tree sparrows - for you have pointed them out to me so many times, but those little fellows flitting about so lively, I don't recollect of ever having seen anything like them before - maybe they are the young birds hatched late last fall."

"No, I don't think so, but I believe I know what they are, but I am not dead certain, for I have seen them so seldom, but am quite sure they are what are called clay-colored sparrows."

"Well, I never saw any of them and can't say anything about the. Still I would know they belonged to the sparrow family," and the Boy stopped beside me while I gave the little fellows, a number of whom had hopped down upon the ground beneath the plum trees, another searching examination.

I saw that they greatly resemble our common little chipping sparrows, save their crown-piece and the general tone of the back, which was decidedly darker, while their under parts were almost as white as snow, and finally it was a much greater treat to me than it was to the Boy, this opportunity to study a bird so rare, in, at least, this part of the state, but which is quite common along our northern borders.

They are vivacious little bodies, are almost constantly on the move, flitting nervously among the lower branches of the low growths along the Pappio, and on the ground in weed patches and amongst the low underbrush.

You will not find much about them in bird literature, just why, I can't imagine, but the time will come when they will be known, I think, as well as any of the other familiar members of the family, and so I remarked to the Boy, who replied, that strange as they were, they seemed pretty much at home, and "I guess they know where they are at."

Points to Keep in Mind.

"Well, Kiddie, in bird study it is never safe to take too much for granted," I quickly rejoined, as I suspected the lad wasn't quite as greatly interested in these birds as he would have been in most any of our commoner sort.

"The rarer the bird, the more the real bird student is interest," I went on. "One must be constantly upon the alert, and he will soon be able to make fine distinctions with both eye and ear, and you must - hello, there they go, all together, Harris sparrow and the little fellows," and away the whole lot did go, rising up and out of the Pappio's deeply furrowed runway, high into the air, and bearing swiftly away to the southward.

The Harris Sparrow.

"And those larger birds, the Harrises," exclaimed the Boy. "I don't know anything about them. Are they common here?"

"Fairly so, but I am puzzled to find them here at this stage of the season. I am quite sure they go south in the fall, at least that is a natural conclusion, judging from the fact that they are late arrivals in the spring. Still this weather we are having is enough to change the habits of any bird, and the tree sparrows rank with our true winter birds. The Harris sparrows are common winter sojourners, too, just like the cardinal, the robin and the meadowlark. Those that do go south are invariably back here in February, and sometimes February is our very toughest month.

"'Well, they looked like fine birds to me, although this is the first time I ever saw one, and I'd like to have had a better look at them.'

"Truly, Boy, they are fine birds, and if anything a little larger than our dandy fox sparrow, supposed to be the biggest of them all. You saw, of course, how neatly they were attired. And those whose breasts were so strikingly decorated with a brooch of black dots held in place by an equally black necklace, and with shadowy throats and heads, were the males. So with their pink beaks and pinker legs, they are quite dudish, don't you think?"

"They certainly are, and I am going to know them better. I've go to."

And on we went, forgetting all about our redbird and the sparrows, when suddenly, in rounding a really big bend for the Pappio, we found ourselves at the edge of quite an extensive clump of big cottonwoods, towering upwards over a very tangle of underbrush, grapevines, sumachs, willows and other growths, and as we stopped, for a look around, we noticed a great bulging bunch of grapevines, that was dangling from the lower branches of a group of saplings, and which was fairly alive with birds evidently taking their noonday luncheon of the fruit of the vines, still clinging, withered and desiccated, to many of the inside threads of the vines.

Commonest of Winter Birds.

"Juncos!" I ejaculated and the Boy repeated the exclamation with equal fervor and delight, for he recognized them almost as quickly as I did.

"These jolly little Eskimos," I remarked, lacking a better simile,. "Boy, dwell with us all the winter, let old Boreas howl as loud as he may. They are always as full of life as little dynamos, flitting constantly from bush to weed and from the bare or snow-covered earth, to the storm-gnarled trees, now stuffing themselves upon the residue of wild berries and grapes, now on almost any kind of weed seeds, and they always generate enough caloric in their trig little corporosities to defy the blackest scowls of the ugliest of winter days.

"'My aren't they neat and trim,' the Boy cut in, 'just like our summer birds in full uniform - you see, Mr. G., our lingering robins and tree sparrows generally appear somewhat unkept in the winter time.'

The Junco Always Neat.

"That's a fact, Boy, but never the Junco, and I wish you could see them take a bath in some hole in the Pappio - but they must have the cleanest of water, and there can't be much of any kind in this shabby little old creek. Then any water they do find, must be ice cold, and the Juncos will plunge into it and rinse and rerinse their gray plumage with as much relish as if their lavatory was nice and tepid, like you have at your own home, and with as much joy as if June winds, instead of nipping northerners, were blowing over the land.

"Look, Boy, how dainty they eat," and then we watched one who had discovered quite a little raceme of the shrunken and blasted croweyes - grapes - and it was real fun to see him select one of what he thought was the choicest of the cluster; pressing it daintily between his white mandibles for a few seconds, swallow with jerking neck, whatever he got out of the withered skin and dropping the rest to the ground. Then together with others up he popped where the vines were thinner and the black little knots of berries more plentiful.

"'My, how I wonder where the birds all sleep these blustery winter nights,' and the Boy pulled up his sweater collar at the bare thought, and shivered like you old duck hunters have seen your retriever do many a time, while watching for ducks on a cold, autumn day.

"Well, that is something that has often set me to thinking, hard, myself, sure, but I can tell you where these Juncos will bunk, and that is in any corn shock they can find within five miles flight, but preferably in a field with bordering woods."

"In corn shocks?"

"Yes, in corn shocks, and many's the time when I was about so big, have I gone out to a cornfield near our old farmstead and started more than a dozen Juncos from a single shock.

"'What for?'

"Oh, just for fun. It made me fairly squeal with delight when the little gray fellows would burst pell-mell from their haven in the shock's top, chippering lugubriously their protestations until swallowed up in the thickening dusk.

"'What sort of beds do they find in a corn shock, I'd like to know?' from the Boy, half banteringly.

"Well you shall," I got back at him, "and when we come to a field of shocked corn, you had better examine one of the shocks and among the stalks and long, wide blades, and you'll find many coziest kind of little nooks and cunning angles, where they find a roost - and a covert as wind and cold-proof as your own bed-chamber at home.

"I used to stand, in the mysterious gloaming, at the border of the woods that walled the west side of our cornfield, when I was out on a marauding trip against the peace and quiet of my little friends, the juncos, listening to the elfin rustling of the fodder tops as the juncos settled themselves for the night within.

"'And then you'd route 'em out?'

"Yes, I would, and yet never in an evil spirit, Boy, as I have loved the birds too much for that, and I knew they'd soon get settled again -"

"'But if they didn't?'

"Oh, well, then they'd find some other roost," evasively, "and to prove to you, Boy, how my heart was always right when it came to the little people of the wild, I'll tell you some time, how, when I was a smaller codger than you are today, how I lay on my belly for hours, in the woods, every afternoon, for over a whole week, to make friends with one wary but beautiful little chipmunk. Hallow! On my life, look at that flock of pintails of there to the southwest, see 'em; it must be that we are going to have an early spring."

Then, flushing the juncos, on we stalked - the Boy and I, and I wondered and conjured over what little things it takes to bring happiness to either or both, a young heart and an old one! But, after all, don't we all get wisdom and sweetness out of the soil and the stars?

---

"A friend of mine, I remarked to the Boy as we rambled aimlessly along up the tortuous Pappio, "once told me that he never ran across a member of the feathered family with which he was not familiar but what it gave him a great thrill as well as a great feeling of exultation. He said that he became at once oblivious to all other surroundings as long as it gave him the opportunity to study it. That is characteristic of all lovers of the birds and that accounts for my own interest in those little strangers, the clay-colored sparrows, that we just saw in that plum thicket behind us."

"'That doesn't happen very often with you, does it, Mr. G? for you seem to know about all of them' was the youngster's complimentary rejoinder.

Up on Beautiful Ontonoggan.

"Oftener than you think. Why no longer ago than last June while I was fishing up on Lake Ontonoggan, in Minnesota, I was attracted by a charming little bird song that came seeping tenderly out of a dense thicket a few yards back of the rocky shore where I was casting for bass, and while I had never before heard such a quaint little ditty, I felt that it wasn't worthy while to go look it up, but that is just exactly what I did do, laying my rod on the ground, and cautiously advancing toward the thicket.

"'And did you find it?"

"That I did and identified it, too, although I had never seen one before that I could remember."

"'What was it?'

"A Bell vireo; which, like those clay-colored sparrows, are seldom seen in this section of the country, but which I later learned were not so rare in Minnesota, and before I left the woods on that trip I even found the nest of one, a cute little basket deftly made of small twigs and rooty fibers hanging in true vireo fashion among some low bushes not one hundred yards from the spot where I had seen one of the birds days before.

"'Wasn't that fine?'

"Indeed it was, Boy; and by the way, I discovered another bird up there that same trip that I knew little about.

"'And for pity's sake, what could that have been,' and the Boy laughed roguishly as he tugged at my sweater sleeve and looked up into my face.

"Oh, nothing more nor less than a Lincoln sparrow.

"'A Lincoln sparrow.'

"Yes, and they are one of the most tantalizing of all the finches, so inconsistent as to appear actually absurd.

"'How's that?'

"Why because they are about the wildest and wariest that I have ever endeavored to spy upon, and yet, at that, I discovered a contradiction to this opinion, when I later saw them right in the little town where I was stopping."

It was one lovely opalescent June evening, and I was lolling on the back porch of the ramshackle log tavern that graced the village, watching the fading lights over the firs and their lengthening shadows across an adjoining vacant lot, I saw several of these remarkable birds flitting about on the ground, in the low bushes and along the board fence that walls the farther side of the lot, in the wariest and most nervous maneuver, as if they were trespassers in that locality and were keenly aware of it. They appeared just like intermittent golden flashes, as they darted from fence to ground and from ground to bush, and back again, always chittering suspiciously as if they doubted their right to be so far away from their own signoiry in the deep woods.

"I had a hard time keeping my glasses upon any one of them long enough to see as I would have loved to have done, the snow-white throat and breast, washed with chestnut-hued streaks, which is a peculiar, but unmistakable marking of the Lincoln sparrow. While they are quite tuneful all I could catch of their ability in this line were some short squeaky little trills that did not impress me greatly with their lyrical accomplishments. However, up there on the fabled Ontonoggan is the only place I have ever seen them, and as they are so fidgety and contrary I was unable to acquire all the knowledge about them that I should have liked to.

"'It is a trade that requires lots of patience - ain't it, Mr. G,' and I thought I caught a tone of compassion in the Boy's inquiry.

"Yes, Kiddie, it is, but it is just that which gives such persons as you and I so much pleasure and satisfaction in its pursuit. If it did not require patience and a goodly amount of natural talent and the inherent love of the fine and beautiful, it would certainly prove a tiresome and illy-rewarded pastime. And we are not built that way, and thanks for that.

"'Yes, indeed, I would rather take such a hike as this, with you than anything that could be offered me; but gee! ain't it some work to find out much about the small birds?'

About the Small Birds.

"It is all that, Boy, the small birds are the worst of all to handle, while the robins, bluejays, meadowlarks, blackbirds, woodpeckers, in fact all of those we are so familiar with, are just so many chickens in the backyard, and all they need is your care and administration, but the warblers, well that is a different proposition entirely.

"'I'll tell the cockeyed world, it is,' the Boy rejoined with unusual vehemence in his tones, 'and I don't see how I am ever going to manage it. I'm afraid I can't even learn a great deal about them.'"

---

That the Boy was in earnest when he declared that he was fearful he would never acquire much knowledge of our warblers, I hurried to reassure him.

"Oh, yes you will, Boy, for you are made out of the right stuff; where there's a will there's a way, you know. But it is well to realize that the smaller the bird the more difficult it is to study and identify and that takes in all the scores and scores of warblers with which our woods and fields are so full, and it is the warblers, at that, which afford us our chief delight in the study, they are so elusive and so provokingly charming that we can not pass them up, like we can the big birds, the wild fowl, the hawks and owls and crows, for instance, for they are easy.

"'That is true, too, for I know a lot about all those birds, but the little snippers are so different, but I am going to find out more about them, you bet I am.'

"That's the right spirit, Boy. Just think of the long life I have spent at the very work, and how many long years it has taken to know even the little I do -

"'Little?'

Many Left to Work On.

"Yes, little, for there are still many of the little feathered fairies that are yet a puzzle to me, and I fear always will be, many that keep close to the leafy depths and bushy tree tops, which jealously hold their little secrets.

Winter Turtle Doves.

"Many and many the laborious chase they have led me, and more than once have I thought I had disjointed my neck peering up into the labyrinth of leaves of the tall trees in our woods to see what they were at in that haven of reticulated lace work of limb, branches and twigs. One day - Hello! What's this we have here?" and we both stood stock still as the musical whistle of wings greeted our hearing and away, up over the banks of the Pappio a bunch of doves - really doves - and out over the forlorn corn stubble they went, to my unbounded incredulity, and the Boy's jubilant delight - a bunch of turtle doves - and it wasn't the middle of February."

As the doves disappeared up over the creek's bank the Boy and I ran up hastily after them and luckily gained the top of the gentle slope to see them, and there must have been six or eight of them, circling 'round out over the center of a broad cornfield, where in a bare open space they lit.

The Boy was anxious and wanted to follow them, but I knew that we could not get anywhere nearly close enough to examine them, even through the glasses, with any satisfaction, and as the tramping would be anything but comfortable over the frozen ground, we gave it up and went back down along the creek.

A Trifle Premature.

"Those birds are certainly way head of their time," I remarked, "and as they are unusually wild and wary when they first come north at their normal time, I knew they would flush long before we could get near them and that is the main reason, Boy, that I concluded not to go after them.

"'When do the doves, arrive, anyway," he inquired, and I informed him not until well in March, unless the spring is materially advanced, but, at that, I have seen them even earlier than this, and once or twice in really severe weather in mid-winter.

"That, however, is exceedingly rare, as the bird is highly delicate and sensitive and cannot stand much cold, although they are prone, that is, many of them, to linger here until late in November.

Elusive Robin Redbreast.

"'It was fine we got to see them, even for a glimpse, then' he continued, 'and just think of it we haven't seen a single robin yet.'

"That is as true as it is remarkable, and while many persons have told me they have seen robins already, as diligently as I have searched for them, I haven't seen the sign of one. However, instead of being the first robin of spring, which people see at this time, they are undoubtedly birds that have not migrated at all. The robin, you know, is one of the hardiest and most indomitable of all our commoner kind, and can endure almost as much cold and inclement weather as some of the wild fowl, and even more than the bluewing teal."

---

"Well, it is pretty nearly time now for all the 'first robins' to report, isn't it," observed the Boy.

Yes, it is, and I wouldn't be surprised if we should see one yet this afternoon, but I hardly look for it. However, as you say, it is pretty nearly time now for the robins to come along from their winter homes in the southland. Most of the males should certainly be here within the next 10 days, unless the weather should happen to take one or more ugly twist. The advance couriers are most always here about this time.

"By the way, a friend of mine writes me from way up on the Niobrara that many robins have wintered in the deep canyons along that wonder river. This is no rare thing, right here, providing they can find cover and food. They like thick clumps of pine and cedar scrubs where they can find them, and the berries of the cedars are a great food of theirs.

"By the way, Boy, not so many years ago, robins were slaughtered by thousands for the table in some of our gulf states, and the result was that the birds down there became extremely wary and hard to get near, but when they came up here they seemed to lose all their timidity, made their nests in our very dooryards and grubbed for worms all about our lawns within a few feet of us human beings, and, in fact, are the most sociable of all our birds, and are even more scared than the turtledove.

"At that, my Boy, as I was saying, the turtledove is a most valuable bird, although almost wholly a grain and seed-eater - a really beautiful creature, and so gentle and affectionate as to be almost scared, and at the same time the most widely distributed of any American bird that I know of. It is a perfect prototype of the wild pigeon which 60 years ago was the most prolific of any known bird in the world, but today there is not one single specimen in existence - they have been absolutely exterminated."

"Not one left anywhere?"

"Not one."

"What became of them?"

"Well, it has been a pretended mystery to naturalists ever since they were finally blotted off the face of the earth back in the '70's, but there has never been the ghost of a doubt in my mind - they were simply slaughtered by man for the market. Why, Boy, myself, when I was a youngster back in the good old Buckeye state, I saw more than three thousand wild pigeons caught in one cast of the net, and after the three hours netting was over, oftener in the late afternoon, I saw them hauled off from the field not a mile from my home by the wagon load. Why -"

"How awful."

Ho! Molly Cottontail.

"Yes, it was awful, but I'll tell you all abut it some time later on. It is a long story and, well, for me, I don't like to talk about it. However - ah! A cottontail! Didn't he get out of sight quickly? You saw him, didn't you?"

"'Indeed, I did, and to tell the truth he scared me for a second,' and without waiting for a reply he ran swiftly forward and stopped at the spot from which Molly had jumped, and stooping down beside a dense tuft of dead grass and weeds he exclaimed; 'Oh, come here and see where he has been snuggled up,' and as I joined him he pulled the long stems aside, and true enough, there was a bunny's form - a round cup-like little hollow where he had been enjoying himself safe from the sharpest eyes of hawk or crow. "But he's gone," I said, "so let's mosey along. Let's see, you wanted me to tell you about the turtledove."

And the Dove Again.

"As I remarked, the dove is found in every state in the union, in fact, in almost every country in the world, and while exquisite in form and color and deportment, they have one glaring drawback - they are terribly slovenly about their housekeeping, making the shabbiest kind of a nest out of a handful of sticks, and twigs - a simply, flimsy little shallow saucer-like affair, on the flat side of a rail, in a corner of some old fence, or in the lowest crotch of some old, dead tree, and often on the naked ground. It has always been a mystery to me how the mother bird - she does all the nesting - ever managed to keep her two eggs - that is all she lays - in the nest for the two weeks it requires to hatch them. The way they drink, too, is different from any of our other birds. Immersing her whole bill in the water and sucking up the fluid until they are satisfied, instead of dipping nervously down, getting a beak full then raising her head and throwing it back to let the water trickle down her gullet like all other birds.

"'Drinks like a horse,' and the boy laughed at the simile.

"That's it, like a horse. And when she feeds her babies, she stands beside the nest and opens her beak and the little ones, one at a time, of course, poke their tender little bills down her throat and gorge themselves on the food she regurgitates."

"Regurgitates - what's that?"

"That is, she brings up to her bill the food she has already swallowed, softened and partially digested - just as a cow brings up her food and has the felicitation of eating it all over again - chewing her cud. There are other birds that feed their little ones in this manner - but say, boy, speaking of doves, you ought to try one some time, nicely broiled, and lain on a delicately browned piece of three-cornered toast. Yum! yum! yum!"

"'Oh, Mr. Griswold, you wouldn't--'"

The Call of the Flicker.

"Come boy, I think around this next bend ahead we'll find another thicket, and mayhap that robin we've been looking for - stop! Listen! Hear that flicker!" And as I spoke there came from a little clump of cottonwoods, off to our right a little ways, two or three sharp, far carrying 'kee-uck! kee-uck! kee-ucks!' The cries a yellowhammer always emits just as he is ready to leave his perch on old snag, stump or fence post, and as good luck would have it we quickly saw him coming our way on that undulating flight of his, displaying with each up-lift of his strong wings the golden flashes of their underparts.

The bird did not stop but went swiftly over, and back up the creek from where we had just come, and a moment later we heard his lighting call - 'ee-co! ee-co! ee-co!' faintly wafted our way on the gently blowing winds. And I was invidious enough to chuckle inwardly enough over this opportune interruption, for the moment I said it, I regretted that reference to a dove on toast, for it certainly checked all solicitation for an explanation the boy would have surely demanded. But the flicker, and his mellifluous calls, threw the dear lad's thoughts into another channel.

"'I have read,' he said, 'that the flicker is one of the most handsomely marked birds in the world - do you think so?'

"Indeed, I do; but let's toddle one, and I'll tell you about the goldenwing as we go."

February 5, 1928. Sunday World-Herald. 63(19): 13-W. Continues: 2/12, 63(20): 13-W; 2/19, 63(21): 15-W; 2/26, 63(22): 15-W; 3/4, 63(23): 13-W. Leaves From the Notebook of an Old Nature Student.

Sunday Outing to Turner Park - Habits of the Yellowhammer - Leaves from the Notebook of an Old Nature Student

By Sandy Griswold.

Though nothing strange, at an early hour on Sunday morning last, it fortuitously occurred to me that a little ramble through the boulevard park wouldn't be a bad idea, and happily I proceeded to follow the hunch and incalculably was my reward.

It was quite chilly, in the lower forties somewhere, and there were a few vagrant snowflakes in the air. Still there was no call for extra wraps and I was speedily on my way.

I do not know what actuated me, for surely I did not expect to encounter anything new or startlingly interesting. The birds had apparently all departed and I hardly hoped to catch sight of even a single one of my old favorites - a lingering robin, tree sparrow, nuthatch, downie or even the ever-present and irrepressible chickadee, for I had seen none of these for days.

However, I had hardly crossed the street to the little triangular patch of park in front of my residence, with its spreading blue cedars, pallid barked sycamores, walnut, elm and ash trees, all wind-stripped and coldly gray in the early ambient light, when to my delight surprise, amidst a little flurry of English sparrows from the ground where they had been breakfasting on the grass seeds, was a sturdy male yellowhammer, which undulated away before my advancing footsteps, sounding his sharp single note of alarm, "kee-uck!" he was quickly hidden within the leafless involucre of the big elm across the boulevard, and one of the most beautiful trees in all Omaha.

I did not intend, however, to permit him to dismiss me so unceremoniously before I had seen more of him and I followed him about from tree to tree, spying upon his every move through my glasses for more than a half hour and not one second of this period did I regard as wasted time.

I always love the flicker - one of the yellowhammer's commonest titles - from my earliest boyhood days, the bird has always been an obsession with me.

And why?

Because the yellowhammer is one of the loveliest, the most interesting and most valuable, of all our commoner birds and there are none who appreciate the qualities that are essential to beauty and attractiveness who are so bold as to deny.

I repeat, to me personally, the yellowhammer has always held an unequalled place as a bird of indescribable charm, and I believe, among all ornithologists of repute, is the most wondrously marked birds in the world.

"The cackle of the flicker among the oaks," was music to the soul of Thoreau, and it is music likewise to every pure-minded sportsman who takes to the fields and marshes in these chill fall days, or in the odorous spring time, either, when the wild fowl are flying.

All outers, I have found it the unbroken rule, whether they be shooters, anglers, or simple naturalists, have an especial affection for this beautiful bird, and while it used to be classified as a game bird in most states of the union, it is rare, indeed, that he is now-a-days killed for the table.

It is the yellowhammer, like the robin and the blue bird, that lifts time's veil and brings back beloved visions of the long, long ago, especially to such old woods haunters as myself, to whom, in youth, they were the primary game. It was on these birds that the most of the old day sportsmen first tried their prowess with the old smooth-bored musket or single barrel, among the hickories, bordering the village of my barefoot days.

When you hear the cheery cackle of the flicker, and you are sure to, on the first sunny days in March, when the forked rudder of the pintail is defined against the sky, and, when in the old days, you made your way out the Platte - sure to catch, those peculiar broken notes, as they emanated like strands of pearls, from distant groves of cottonwood or boxelder, you were also sure that spring has come.

Yes, the yellow-hammer is a migrant, although it is not uncommon for one or more of them to cling to us all winter, yet when they do go, they generally time their departure and arrival with a precision that seldom fails. From the time of his appearance in March, he is a familiar adjunct to our rural and frequently urbane scenery, until late in November. His absence would seem like a blot on one of nature's most royal works. As he darts away, with that undulating pitch of his, from a rotten snag or fence post, he borrows all the gold from the sunshine that glints his yellow pinions. As he flashes his wings in straightaway flight before your advancing footsteps, or sounds his sharp, single note of alarm, or peers down upon you from the portal of his lofty tower of oak or cottonwood, or clings to its gnarled wall, or poses right-side or wrong-side up on fence stake or telegraph pole, displaying his black dotted vest or mottled saddle, you recognize the fitness of each of the many names bestowed upon him by scientific scholar or quaint and quiet country folk.

It is a wonder his happy cackle wherewith he announces the end of his vernal journey from the land of honeysuckle and pomegranate, has not become symbolical of spring's climateric and gained for him one universal note.

His courtship note, a soft, sweet, refined clucking, almost impossible to imitate in words, is one of the sounds of melody that vibrates the springs caressing air, and is rated even with the carillon of the scarlet tanager or the vesper hymn of the spirit thrush. You have all heard it years ago, when down in the greening lowlands for jacks in the soothing days of early April, and can make no mistake. This cannot be called a song, but is so joyously welcomed, perhaps, because it is one of the most inevitable sounds of the entrancing spring-tide, and is seldom if ever heard after the time of glad return and love-making. The yellow-hammer's brood is well grown by the last of June, and as soon as the little ones launch themselves upon the world during the first part of the subsequent month, they instinctively become the implacable enemy of the borer, that most insidious destroyer of the apple and other fruit trees, as he is to noxious insects of all kinds, and yet his favorite diet is ants.

However, it wasn't of the yellow-hammer I meant to tell you when I began this little article, but of an entirely different kind, and a far rarer one here, and a number of which I discovered in my sauntering Sunday morning - but the pine grosbeak - but will now he compelled to forebear until another Sunday.

November 20, 1927. Sunday World-Herald 63(8): 15-W. Leaves from the Notebook of an Old Nature Student.

Shadows of Change - Glories of October - Leaves from the Notebook of an Old Nature Student

By Sandy Griswold.

Ordinarily, even in such exquisite autumn weather as was vouchsafed the sportsmen all through the third week of the present month, in the years gone by, there were plenty of ducks to keep them busy whenever they felt disposed to indulge in the sport.

Not so, today, however, and about nine out of every 10 hunters that did venture into the sandhills or out along the Missouri or the Plate, got beautifully skinned, the shooting being the poorest ever known in these favored old regions.

Even the crop of locally bred birds was away short of anything like the usual average, with the bluewing teal, always the most plentiful of all the ducks in the early fall, scarcer than they had ever been before. Of course there were many hunters who were favored with all the sport they ought to be rightfully entitled to, especially in the early morning and late evening, but it was but the mildest kind of reminder of the days of yore.

Shadows of Change.

Notwithstanding the scarcity of the birds in these early days of the season, there is soon to be a change if it has not already taken place, and with plenty of water and plenty of feed everywhere, the shooting should be all that the most ardent soul could desire. But so far as there being any great flight from the north at any time, that you need not look for. Of course the bulk of the birds have been lingering uncommonly long this fall, hundreds of miles to the north of us, for the weather throughout all that vast country lying this side the great arctic bays has been just as charming as it has in this latitude, and there has been no incentive for the birds to move.

The time is growing short, however, and they will soon be coming in, but not as formerly, in one huge overnight flight, but in straggling flocks, at all times, both day and night, as has marked their movements for several years now.

What to Look For.

A word as to near future weather probabilities. Whatever the calendar may say about what is likely to be the case, it has been my own studious observation extending over a period of 40 years right here in Nebraska, we do not have the real wild fowl conditions, that is generally, until after the golden days of October have faded, and the drab ones of November are upon us.

Generally the coming month is the ideal one, not only for an abundance of the birds, but the surety of being able to preserve them until you are ready to make the return trip home. With the likely exception of two or three real cold and inclement spells, we are granted a fair supply of clear skies, balmy sunshine and gentle winds, and not until the closing days of the month does winter take a real grip upon us, and often the genial protean weather is stretcher clear up to the holidays.

The Glories of October.

October, with the exception of an inaugural week, has maintained the wonders of the whole year in the way of remarkable weather, and so warm and balmy were the conditions of things, that many species of vegetation that have taken on a new start that most of the birds that did go south in that first drear week have come back and for the past few days the signs have been good that the northern birds will soon be on hand, as there has been an unusual flight of boreal birds, the hawks and the owls, from their natural haunts in the far north. This is a real forerunner of good hunting. And it is my belief that the sportsmen who have delayed their annual foray until now are the ones who are going to enjoy some really fine sport.

The Unafraid Hunter.

While there are few men who enjoy winter as they do summer, the gunner is a hardy critter, and just so the ducks and geese are flying, he finds an extra fascination in the sport in the worst booms of early winter's austerity. And yet the man who goes forth out of a pure love of nature, the well-known lines of Shakespeare are apropos.

"Now is the winter of our discontent."

And the most of us are well prepared to lie to until well along when the harbingers of another vernal season come trooping up from the south.

The Solace of a Grim Day!

If winter comes, and it surely will, you will miss one of the greatest witcheries of the whole year, until you go down into the tangle along the Elkhorn or the great woods up along the River road, and stand there with your back up against the bole of some old Anak of the forest and gaze about you, then, it is more than likely, you will appreciate how rare and peculiarly impressive is the sense of absolute silence - the soundless deathly quiet in earth and air on such a day, and which is only broken, at long intervals, by the cawing of some distant crow, of the lonely note of the little, indomitable chickadee, but even these, fantasies of the hearing, as they really seem, are as quickly engulfed in the vastness of chilly silence.

That is why I find solace in the winter time.

There is a potency in the sense of utter desolation when alone in the soundless woods on a December day, that is hardly equaled by any display of nature's tremendous energies, let it be in the cold and lonesome blind on some sandhills marsh, or in a hole in the sand on some river bar, waiting, watching and hoping for one more shot at a foolhardy duck or majestic goose.

The Last of the Hawks.

And then, too, nothing seems to so aptly symbolize the spirit of the grim in its gloom, in the mind of the hardy sportsman, as the sight of a lone hawk curling in his magnificent flight, far up in the great cold vault above searching with his telescopic eyes for a scanty meal upon some unfortunate victim of your shotgun.

And withal I must claim, there is but rare gayety in the heart of the hunter or nature lover amidst the grim season that will so soon be upon us, on the occasion of one of those driving snowstorms, as we so well know them here, and causing such a wailing over the blurried prairie and among the naked boughs of the trees.

"Bare, ruined days, where so late the sweet birds sang."

These and all other ghostly things that contribute regret to the last days of the shooting season, nature's annual burial.

October 30, 1927. Sunday World-Herald 63(5): 13-W. Leaves from the Notebook of an Old Nature Student.

Those Misnamed Warblers and Little Summer Episodes

By Sandy Griswold.

Doubtless there are many who will not agree with me, yet with all due reverence for the earlier of bird students and bird systemists, I cannot help but believe that those capable authorities who first christened our hosts of little feathered mites who haunt our woods and fields from spring to fall time, as warblers, were certainly actuated by some peculiar quality with which we today are unfamiliar, for the truth of the matter is that there is not a real warbler among them, unless we might except the yellow-breasted chat, quite numerous with us from May to September.

The Warbler Not a Warbler.

The truth is, there is not one really good singer in the group that can be compared, even by the greatest stretch of the imagination, to any of our thrushes, the robin, chewink, catbird, bluebird, rose-breasted grosbeak or meadowlark.

Almost wholly the vocal repertoire of the entire family consists of a barely audible, fine-threaded, seeping little lisp, that by no twist of auricular sensitiveness can be called a song. Sweet and pleasing enough, to be sure, are these filmy-beaded notes, but so homogeneous in rhythm and melodious sound that they go but a short ways in any attempt at establishing them among our real avian choirists and therefore the title, warbler, is a misnomer.

However, they have all winged their way south now, both singer and pretender, but being an able sort of genius ourselves, we are willing to accept the verdict, and proceed to tell you what we know of the lovely little pixies of our woody tangles.

A Thin Bird Year.

Despite the fact that the past spring and summer were extremely variable, not to say abnormal, with but little permanent weather of any sort. It was a poor bird year.

There was nothing like the customary plentifulness of the warblers and finches, and those that usually loiter here till late August, at least; they were gone long before their time, and as paradisaical as the past two weeks of October has been, I did not see a single specimen, excepting one quite large bunch of purple warblers, among the rarest of their kind here at any time, and these birds having arrived at our little wonder park just adjacent to my abiding place after most of its kind had gone on south.

What I Saw.

Through the summer, while I saw some blue-headed warblers, spring siskins and pewees off and on about this same tiny metropolitan wilderness, the passage of all the hyperborean species was extremely brief. Even the redheads, the flickers, hairys and downies were more conspicuous by their absence than I have known them in many long years of watching. At odd times, too, while I did not succeed in locating them, I heard the seeping melody of the yellow warbler, and the tender, lisping "see-see-see-see" of his close kindred, the white and black warbler, but the trills of the song sparrow was almost totally missing, and the truth remains that the orientation of most of our summer birds went awry, and it must have been that it was in other regions they passed the time away.

A Lucky Individual.

At that, what lucky one, indeed, have I been in having such an unusual bird haven at my very door as these park-like little groves out along the boulevard have always been. They have often saved me from gallivanting off into the unknown hinterlands up or down the old river road, on legs not nearly as strong and supple as they once were. And at that I did make many pilgrimages thither.

I cannot refrain from telling you of a pleasant little episode that befell me one Sunday in late April. It was quite early in the morning when I espied a dark hued siskin flitting, and twittering softly as he flitted, among the fast leafing branches of the huge walnut tree that shades our front porch and windows. When it suddenly seemed satisfied with its explorations it darted off over the boulevard for the thicker trees beyond, but grabbing hat and glasses I quickly followed.

About the Old Cottonwood.

Rich was my reward. Round about an old dead cottonwood, which had been permitted to stand picturesquely on the west side of an old Saddle creek ravine, where the bridal wreath flourishes in wondrous profusion all summer long, I found not only this little member of the family, himself, but a veritable shower of them, as they eddied in and out of the drooping branches and the clustering bushes, all twittering in unison as you can hear the redwings twitter today if you drive out almost anywhere along our lowlands.

Now I want to inform you that the siskin is by no means a common bird, and yet fairly plentiful in spots about Omaha. They are marvelously energetic, highly restless, never still an instant, while on their way, but withal a most lovely bird.

Like the Yellowbird.

While a close relative of the gold-finch, our incomparable little yellowbird, they are a lot smaller and more like the purple finch, especially the females, but easily distinguished by their pointed beak, with the same streaky back and underparts.

I lingered long and made quite a study of this unexpected little flock, watching them closely as they flivvered around upon the ground under the bridalwreath, every whipstitch lifting themselves, up to the drooping branches of the larger growths, only to drop as suddenly to the ground again, until suddenly, up they got and whisked away in a little greenish cloud, proving to me that they were the first visitants of their kind, but had not yet reached the destination they had in mind.

First of Vernal Tourists.

Usually they come with the first of the vernal tourists, but are one of the last to build and nest, and are often confused with many similar in color and habit, consequently sometimes difficult to actually identify.

For that matter, however, I do not believe there is a single bird expert in the wide world, who can name at sight all the warblers that come to us in the spring, for they are certainly a most undependable and contradictory group of all our common birds.

October 30, 1927. Sunday World-Herald 63(5): 13-W.