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Bird- Lore 



I wish I knew what the English Spar- 

 row thinks who often sits on an upper 

 limb of the lilac and watches the battle 

 with his head cocked on one side, an 

 impartial neutral. 



"What has the long war brought you, 

 my fiery terror, but headache and dis- 

 appointment! That other Cardinal, why 

 attack him? he hasn't disturbed you, he 

 doesn't keep you from sitting in the sun. 

 Isn't the world wide enough for you both? 

 Look at me, I raise family after family of 

 Sparrows every summer, and yet there is 

 room for all!" 



The war at the window-pane has gone 

 on now for two years. The Cardinal still 

 is attacking his own image, attacking his 

 own hate, his own dreams of conquest, his 

 own belligerency. Fortunately, the object 

 of his attack is a phantom image and not a 

 peaceful neighbor of flesh and blood. Yet 

 I fear for the consequences. Stout as is 

 my Cardinal's little bill, it seems that it 

 must be broken by the multitude of 

 blows he strikes the unyielding glass. If 

 it is an ancestral habit, this of beating 

 against barriers, a Lamarckian might 

 explain the blunt bill of the species by 

 impact. Just so Rudyard Kipling explains 

 the long-drawn trunk of the elephant as 

 the result of tension. But even if my 

 Cardinal's bill is not broken or worn to 

 a frazzle, even if his little neck -bones 

 are not dislocated by the furious blows 

 he strikes, what must be the results in 

 character? Battle, I fear, is already a 

 fixed idea. The Cardinal sees red con- 

 tinually; he has gone war mad. Yet in the 

 past, in Kentucky, it would seem that the 

 Cardinal, according to James Lane Allen, 

 was a peaceful bird, a lover, so to say, of 

 philosophy and poetry. It can not be our 

 Iowa environment which has so changed 

 him. No, safe in the interior of the con- 

 tinent Iowa is pacifist to the core. It 

 must be the cosmic krieglust which has 

 obsessed the Cardinal. He will never 

 cease fighting until, quite worn out in 

 battle, his black flag still wrapped above 

 his breast, he lies dead upon the ground. 

 — William Norton, Mount Vernon, 

 Iowa. 



Migration on the Great Lakes 



I have spent about fifteen years of my 

 life on the Great Lakes and have always 

 taken a great interest in the migratory 

 birds we had as passengers every spring 

 and fall. 



I have counted as high as 1,000 song- 

 birds on a 500-foot steamer at one time. 

 They come aboard during a fog, and if it 

 turns to rain in the night, most of them 

 perish from cold. I hit upon a way of 

 saving thousands, during the fifteen 

 years I spent on the Lakes, and I'll tell 

 you how. 



In the spring of 1903, on the steamship 

 "F. B. Morse," we anchored near the 

 Apostle Island group in Lake Superior, 

 in a heavy fog. We had the biggest bunch 

 of migratory birds on the vessel I had 

 ever seen. I counted over one thousand, 

 just before dark. As second mate I had 

 the anchor watch, from 6 p.m. till 12. 



About 8 o'clock a cold rain began to fall, 

 and the poor birds, unable to find shelter, 

 fluttered around the electric lights thicker 

 than flies. They soon began to fall on the 

 deck exhausted, and that is their 'finish' 

 unless you can get them right away into a 

 warm place. I went back in the galley and 

 got a small basket and started picking 

 them up. As soon as I had the basket 

 full, I carried them into a steam-heated 

 room and dumped them on the floor. I 

 picked up over four hundred birds that 

 night, and every one survived. 



We arrived in Ashland about daybreak, 

 and I went in to look at my charges before 

 turning them out. They were a varied 

 bunch. Warblers, Wood Thrushes, 

 Finches, Song Sparrows, and High- 

 holders, a few Catbirds, and others I 

 couldn't classify, not being very well 

 versed in ornithology. 



I shall never forget how beautiful the 

 Wood Thrushes looked. I counted just 

 six of them, and they were not at all 

 afraid when I picked them up. 



After feasting my eyes on them a few 

 minutes I opened the door, and in two 

 minutes the room was emptied. I felt 

 more than repaid for the little trouble I 



