GOLD BIRDS 



soon showed, while his beady black eyes were always watching 

 me. As I sat reading or sewing in the house he hopped all over 

 me, often sleeping on my head or shoulder. He entered and left 

 his cage at will. He would play for an hour weaving bits of cot- 

 ton cord or bright wool back and forth between the wires of the 

 cage. He would hunt the sand of the cage floor for large pebbles 

 which he would carry to the top perch, and leaning, drop into his 

 bath to make the water splash. If I laughed and talked to him, 

 he would do this repeatedly; if I said nothing and pretended not 

 to notice, he would wait awhile, then try again. Once on entering 

 the house I left the screen door open so long he darted from it 

 sailing high in the sky with a burst of wild notes; so I thought him 

 gone forever and stood helplessly gazing up at him ; but presently 

 he dropped lower and lower, then settled on my head and quietly 

 I walked inside carrying him back to captivity. But the glad 

 exultation of those notes on free wing kept coming back to me. 

 They were not notes he sang in the house. That day I began 

 definitely training him for freedom, lessening the food I prepared, 

 instead bringing in branches with bugs, worms and lice, which J 

 taught him to hunt. When he could fly strongly, and live from 

 food he found himself, in the spring of his second year I let him 

 go, but missed him inexpressibly. 



After securing my cameras and beginning professional field 

 work among the birds, my first chance at an Oriole nest came 

 while visiting my sister at Wabash. The nest was high in a 

 maple in front of her residence, while not far from it stood a 

 telegraph pole of size and height used to carry city wiring in the 

 days before buried lines were compulsory. I hired her little son 

 to climb the maple and tie back the intervening limbs, then I 

 borrowed two ladders from painters working on an adjoining 

 house, and lashed them together while the men set and fastened 

 them against the telegraph pole for me. Carrying a hammer and 



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