70 



THE OSPREY. 



a camp dinner was on the fire; such a dinner as 

 I had not tasted in many a long day. Two 

 weeks of good dinners with a little collectings, 

 and Mr. Moore was recalled to the city of 

 Mexico. 



Almost at once Mr. Colburn and myself set 

 about finishing; our plans to ascend the San 

 Juan River. With a 30-foot native dug-out 

 canoe and provisions which we thought should 

 last us for six weeks we left Tlacotalpan on 

 February IS. at daylight, for our trip up the 

 river. Everything so far, considering our lim- 

 ited knowledge of Spanish and of handling 

 this kind of a boat, had gone along smoothly. 



Slowly we crept along near the grass covered 

 banks of this silent stream; now and then we 

 passed a native hut or a canoe which was moored 

 to the bank while her crew prepared breakfast, 

 and all the time we longed to leave even these 

 slight signs of native civilization. As dark ap- 

 proached we prepared for supper and to camp 

 for the night. Shall I ever forget that first 

 night with the constant cry of Whip-poor-wills 

 and Night Herons ever in our ears, with rain, 

 mosquitoes and ticks trying their best to devour 

 us bodily? no! never so long as I remember any- 

 thing. Yet after the few hours of sleep that 

 we were able to catch toward morning, we 

 awoke with a firm determination to press on, 

 and with hungry eyes and ears to know what 

 was ahead of us. 



As the days passed on, huts became fewer, a 

 canoe passed us only now and then, whole days 

 pass, and only the noisy rattle of the King- 

 fisher with his red throat and back of burnished 

 green to break the stillness. The river banks 

 grew higher with now and then a clump of trees 

 swarming with birds, many of which I had not 

 seen in life before. The full moon shone at 

 night upon the river, rendering it one burst of 

 flowing silver. Now and then a great fish broke 

 the stillness with a mighty splash, sending a 

 shower of silvery sparks high into the air. Now 

 from the distance comes that strange weird 

 song of Mexico, and a native clad entirely in 



white and standing erect in his canoe glides 

 past, a flock of crying night birds pass, and all 

 is quiet — still again. 



More slowly as the current in the river grows 

 swifter we creep towards the jungle, the river, 

 bending, in some places almost doubling back 

 upon itself, becomes more and more as I had 

 often dreamed a tropical river should be. Palms 

 with their stately waving foliage line the 

 banks, great trees hung with curling, twisting 

 vines offer a home to chattering parrots, a flash 

 yellow and vivid green is passed, and Colburn 

 tells me that I have seen a Trogon. At one 

 place we passed a clump of bushes which some 

 big Iguanas had made their home. They stood 

 statue-like in the broiling sun, only to fall 

 awkwardly into the water or to run hastily into 

 their holes in the bank as we approached nearer. 



One day, while we had stopped to eat dinner 

 and skin some specimens beneath the shade of 

 a mighty fruit tree, I heard a strange noise 

 above us; looking up we at once discovered a 

 troop of Monkeys eating their dinner. How 

 unkindly we treated that first company of Mon- 

 keys I should not like to say here. 



The days passed on; clumps of graceful 

 bamboo nodded a welcome to us. We were in- 

 deed in the wild, wild forest of the tropics, 

 beneath its cool shade, alone with Nature, and 

 now one of the fondest dreams of my life was 

 indeed a reality. There were moments of dis- 

 couragement, times when the work seemed hard, 

 but all this was outweighed a thousand times by 

 the many pleasures and new experiences which 

 came to us at every turn in the river, at the 

 passing of every tree and bush. 



Two weeks have passed, and now we are in 

 our camp 120 miles above Tlacotalpan, on a hill 

 overlooking a vast extent of original forest, the 

 San Juan River shining like a silver thread 

 below us, the jungle at our door, we wait with 

 eagerness only known to the collector in a new 

 country to know what a tortuous tramp through 

 the woods will add to our collection. 



MY STORY OF THE SHARP-SHINNED HAWK. 

 By P. M. Sii.lowav, Lewistown. Mont. 



At my former Illinois home, both in Macoupin 

 and in Greene Counties, it was my fortune to 

 know the Sharp-shinned Hawk {Accipiter velox 

 H'/'/s.) only as a spring and fall visitor, for my 

 observations were not thorough enough to find 

 it as a summer resident. I well remember my 

 first meeting with this cruel little Accipitrine. 

 I was collecting one fine spring morning in a 

 small maple grove on the edge of Virden, Illinois, 

 giving special attention to migrating Warblers 

 that were occasionally flitting into the grove to 

 spend a few minutes in foraging among the un- 

 folding vegetation. Suddenly the Accipiter, 

 seemingly quite large to me in the imperfect 

 light and in comparison with the small forms 

 of the tree-top vocalists, glided among the grav 

 stems of the slender maples and alighted on a 

 low branch scarcely twenty feet from me. Upon 



picking up my prize, I found a Robin tightly 

 grasped in the marauder's claws, from whose 

 body the head had been neatly wrenched, as ex- 

 pertly as if it had been wrung in the manner 

 one wrings the neck of a chicken. 



One fall I was going from the public square 

 to m)' home, and I had reached the third block 

 from the square, where I was passing under a 

 row of noble maples. The English Sparrow had 

 appropriated old nests of the Robins, and using 

 the structures as foundations, had built up 

 several roomy habitations in the upper parts of 

 the maples. Happening to be looking: upward, 

 a habit we bird-cranks get into when we are 

 mousing- along the shaded highways, I observed 

 a Sharp-shinned Hawk Hit along, swoop into the 

 top of one of the Sparrows' nests, and alight in 

 an exposed situation in a maple tree across the 



