78 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS 



will not faze it. In order to cut it, some especially 

 strong compound like Dutch Cleanser, Snow Boy, 

 or Gold Dust must be used with extremely hot 

 water. The loss of the finch did not deter me 

 from trying to save all of the birds I found in field 

 work suffering from having fallen into oil or 

 through having mistaken its glassy surface in 

 some lights for water. The finch was the only 

 oil-coated bird that died. 



About the same time I had this experience, one 

 of my friends among the oilmen brought me a 

 much larger bird so plastered with dust and grease 

 that I had no idea what it might be. The same 

 methods I used on the finch brought this bird 

 out the next morning, a lark fully grown, perfectly 

 clean, but so utterly broken in spirit by his con- 

 tact with the oil and his handling previous to and 

 in the course of his cleansing that when I raised 

 the flannel covering him, he crouched in the box 

 like a young bird in a nest, opened his beak, and 

 begged for food. I fed him the customary prep- 

 aration of the yolk of egg made into a paste with 

 equal parts of boiled potato and rolled hemp seed, 

 freed as much as possible from the husk of the 

 grain, and gave him water. After feeding him 

 I lifted him to the edge of the box but he made 

 not the slightest attempt to fly no matter how near 

 any of us approached him. We even stroked his 

 wings. I decided to try a daring experiment with 

 him. I set up a camera, focused il upon an a])- 



