FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 



photograph of a Cardinal, either male or female, because of the 

 disposition of the bird, I realized I would have to attempt a thing 

 which no one else had accomplished at that time. As I scooped 

 a deep grave in the orchard, laying the bird in and covering him 

 with leaves before I packed in the earth, I vowed to make the 

 name of any man who would kill a Cardinal, repulsive to hu- 

 manity. 



The first thing was to find nests. Bob, the man on our farm, 

 and several oil-men were enlisted in the cause. During the 

 three years following, studies were made of over a dozen Cardinal 

 locations. I wanted a perfect, typical nest with a full clutch of 

 eggs, a series of the young; also grown birds in every conceivable 

 attitude that would display their beauty, their devotion to 

 their mates, their fiery dispositions and their chosen environ- 

 ment. 



I am qualified to speak of the Cardinal as of no other bird, 

 having had three times the experience with him I have had with 

 any other. I did not despair of securing the studies needed to 

 illustrate the book I was planning, because when I was a child a 

 pair of Cardinals had built a nest near the ground, on a flat cedar 

 limb, not six feet from my father's front door. The remembrance 

 that it had taken me only a few days so to become acquainted 

 with them that I sat by the hour on the stoop, watching with a 

 child's broad sympathy every detail of their relations and home 

 life, was my comfort now. If I could win a pair of Cardinals to 

 trust me then, surely it could be done again, and the camera 

 introduced also. 



In the third year of my work, when material was rapidly 

 shaping for the book, a suitable nest-picture was lacking. In a 

 search for moth cocoons in the valley of the Wood Robin a de- 

 lighted cry from my invaluable assistant, Molly-Cotton, brought 

 me quickly. She had found for me the typical nest, exactly what 



280 



