110 Bird- Lore 



wlicthcr half a cake (of soap) is better for birds tlian no bread. But, 

 as olil Jcil Prout\ said of the doi: tliat wanted the moon, Whiskey 

 Jack is " eovtous." 



If he were a better-known bird his ill-repute would be in everybody's 

 mouth: his isolation saves him. Hut all fur-hunters and all who travel 

 the ijreat spruce woods, from Atlantic to Pacific, know and revile Whis- 

 key John. He jroes by many names, of which this, beinjj only a cor- 

 ruption of the Indian Wis-ka-tjon (but wouldn't one like to know 

 what that means in Indian!) is as coini^limentary as any. In Maine he 

 IS most commonly calleil the Moose-birtl or Meat-bird; in the Adiron- 

 dacks he is the Camp-robber; in books he is the Canada Ja\'. If you 

 would know how he looks do not ^o to the scientific books that tell 

 you every feather on him, but take down your Lorna Doone and turn 

 to those patjes where that wil\' oKi scoundrel. Counsellor Doone, run- 

 ninii; awa\' with Lorna's iliamond necklace, almost persuades John Ridd 

 that he is a i2;ood man cruelly misnamed. Whiskey Jack is the bird 

 counterpart t)f Counsellor Doone. He looks like him, acts like him and 

 has the same undesirable expertness in acciuirint; property not his own. 

 Newcomers to the woods dread bears, wolves and snakes. What they 

 fear will never harm them; it is the weak things of the wilderness that 

 are exceedinij strong. There is a certain large- win tj;ed, tiny-boilicd little 

 fly, so feeble and appealing); that in pity for his frailty you tenderly brush 

 him aside — and then learn that he is the bloody butcher who is flayinu; 

 your neck and ears; there is this clear-eyed, mild-mannered, trustful 

 bird, for whose gooil behavior you would go bonds — until he eats your 

 soap. These two and the mosquito are the real enemies of man in the 

 wililerness. 



Suppose that you are paddling along one of the still, thicket -bordered, 

 moose-haunted streams of northern Maine, the ''Sis,'' on Caucomgomoc, 

 for example. There is a whistling and confabulating ashore and down 

 scales a medium -sized gray bird, whitish beneath and with a white fore- 

 head which gives him a curiously venerable and bald-headed look. He 

 stretches out his black legs and alights with an uncertain hover on your 

 canoe-bow. " Ca - en - ca / Who are you anyway?" he inquires, looking 

 boliUy at you. You are new to this sort of thing and the woods are big 

 and lonely ; it seems like getting into a city to go where nobody cares 

 about Nou, and this confidence man takes you in at once. He flits ashore 

 and tells the others that is So-and-so, of New York. Then back he 

 comes; he never stays still long anywhere. '^ Ca-ca-ca / (jot an\ meat 

 today? " says he, seating himself again upon the bow. Perhaps the guide 

 has given you a hint, and this time you bat at him with the paddle and 

 bill hmi begone for a thief. That hurts his feelings; he puf^s out his 

 waistcoat feathers in rufHed innocence till you forget that it would take 



