LIFE AT "MILL GROVE" 107 



year of the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. It was 

 early in the season when Audubon chanced upon this 

 quiet retreat; the buds were swelling and maples had 

 already burst into bloom, but snow still lingered in 

 patches through the woods, and the air was piercing chill. 

 The pewees were not yet at home, but one of their nests, 

 fashioned of mud and finest moss, was fixed above the 

 vaulted entrance; their coming was not long delayed, 

 and Audubon, marking the very night or day's dawn 

 when the first pewee arrived, saw them beginning to re- 

 store their old home on the tenth of April. 



Strange to say, almost at that very time another pio- 

 neer in American ornithology, Alexander Wilson, who 

 will enter this history later, was teaching a rough coun- 

 try school at Gray's Ferry, Kingsessing, also on the 

 Schuylkill, and not over twenty-five miles away. 

 Though Audubon's early studies were very desultory, 

 both naturalists began their observations at about the 

 same time, for on June 1, 1803, Wilson wrote to a 

 friend that many pursuits had engaged his attention 

 since leaving Scotland in 1794, and that then he was 

 "about to make a collection of all our finest birds." 



It must be set down to Audubon's credit that in the 

 little cave on the banks of the Perkioming, in April, 

 1804, he made the first "banding" experiment on the 

 young of an American wild bird. Little could he or any 

 one else then have thought that one hundred years later 

 a Bird Banding Society would be formed in America to 

 repeat his test on a much wider scale, in order to gather 

 exact data upon the movements of individuals of all 

 migratory species in every part of the continent. After 

 a few trials, "I fixed," said he, "a light silver thread on 

 the leg of each, loose enough not to hurt the part, but 

 so fastened that no exertions of theirs could remove it." 



