i6S 



ORNITHOLOGIST 



[Vol. 17-X0, 1 1 



Where the Mississippi Kites Fly. 



"Dear Mr. Peabody : The Mississippi 

 Kite breeds in Barber and Comanche 

 Counties [Kas.] along the wooded streams 

 and their tributaries. I expect to visit 

 that region in May and June next, in 

 search of the Black-capped Vireo. Should 

 I be so fortunate as to find any eggs of the 

 Kite, I shall be glad to remember you. 

 "Very truly yours," 



Thus wrote Col. Goss but three weeks 

 before all those who had ever seen his 

 genial face and talked with him were 

 shocked at the tidings of his sudden death. 



But the letter filled me with a great 

 desire, not only to visit the breeding 

 grounds of the Kite, but to discover, if 

 possible, the nests and eggs of the Black- 

 capped Vireo among the wooded gypsum 

 hills along the Cimmarron River. Many 

 lions in the way killed this part of my 

 plan. But the 26th of May last found me 

 en route for Kansas, through South Min- 

 nesota, Iowa and Northwest Missouri. 



I5ut what delays ! One day, at the 

 start, through a young ticket seller's stu- 

 pidity ; another day, at Wellington, Kas., 

 the news of whose appalling cyclone dis- 

 aster reached us two hours after the stroke 

 as our long Pan-Handle train took on a 

 score of jolly Odd Fellows at Ottawa ; a 

 day's delay through the tearing up of the 

 track and its blockading with shattered 

 box cars at Harper, forty miles from Wel- 

 lington, a delay which I improved, or 

 desecrated, by viewing such sights of Na- 

 ture's awful destructive fury as I hope 

 never to see again. 



But Attica is reached at last and I leave 

 the Pan-Handle train to board the dingy 

 little stub that is to transport me to Medi- 

 cine Lodge. Ah, here is a colony of 

 prairie dogs beside the little station, — 

 promise of unknown things to delight 

 a nature-loving heart. Another delay ! 

 Through my failing to reach Medicine 



Lodge in the morning, the stage to Sun 

 City, twenty miles away, has gone on 

 without me, and it is now Saturday night. 



Never mind. My traps go to the hotel ; 

 and I, travel stained, seek a clean spot on 

 the river bank for a bath-house. As I 

 cross the flats there sweeps down from the 

 trailing horizontal branch of a cotton wood 

 a dark Red-tailed Hawk, to my very great 

 surprise. 



A ticklish climb to the ridiculous height 

 of twenty feet secured me from the flat, 

 much-feathered nest, laid atop the hori- 

 zontal lower branch, a one-third incubated 

 set of two eggs, of which one was but 

 faintly and palely marbled, the other im- 

 maculate. This set must have been de- 

 posited three months later than the earliest 

 nesting date (March i). 



Early Sunday morning, having packed 

 the heaviest of my belongings and left 

 them for the stage to bring, I set out on 

 foot for my destination, twenty-four miles 

 away, climbers, collecting box, rope, gun, 

 saddled to me, clinging to me somehow. 

 A stern walk was before me that hot May 

 morning ; but who could not rest and re- 

 joice, even as he walked, in such a region, 

 on such a day! Before me a smooth, 

 winding red road ; to the left in front, and 

 winding up to the northwest, glimpses of 

 the yellow stream, with its unbroken fringe 

 of drooping elms and white, spire-like 

 sycamores; beyond, to the south, rolling 

 prairies and red fields ; and far beyond the 

 abrupt terraces of the gypsum hills, gleam- 

 ing with red of clay and white of gypsum, 

 and green-seamed with their wooded can- 

 ons ; overhead, the bluest of skies, suf- 

 fused everywhere with foamy heaps and 

 masks of cloud ; and all glorified by more 

 than a suggestion of that luminous atmos- 

 phere whose perfection grows as one nears 

 the Rocky Mountain range. 



As I went, fresh traces of the recent 

 storm, so awful at its centre, were seen 

 everywhere ; a wagon blown far afield, a 



