6 On the trail of vanishing birds 



course, but was definite assurance that we would proceed straight 

 to church by the quickest, most direct route and not stop along 

 the way to watch a flock of ducks on the river or to climb a tree 

 and stick an exploring hand in a flicker's nest. Mother was our 

 most sympathetic ally when it came to our exploring, but on cer- 

 tain points, like all mothers, she was adamant. 



I had a deep desire for adventure and a determination to seek 

 it out. I remember the day in 1916 when our local National Guard 

 battery boarded a troop train and left for the Mexican border. 

 One of the officers brandished a sporting rifle that was fitted with 

 a telescopic sight, and I can hear him now, shouting from the rear 

 platform that this was the gun that would kill Pancho Villa. It 

 was an exciting and never-to-be-forgotten moment. I was only 

 eleven, and I never wished more fervently for anything than that 

 I might be a few years older. So when the battery returned from 

 France after World War I and was eventually reorganized in 

 1920, I successfully advanced my actual age and enlisted. There 

 were drills on Friday nights and two weeks of artillery range ex- 

 perience each summer. But even these adventures were mere 

 fillers. In an old notebook under date of April 24, 1921, my six- 

 teenth birthday, I find this sober and, as it turned out, significant 

 entry: "At drill Friday evening I was paid for the six months end- 

 ing Jan. 1, a check for $26.67 . . . Now I can get a pair of good 

 field glasses. I find that they are indispensable for the study of 

 birds." 



With high school behind me, the question of a career had to be 

 considered. Though still as interested in ornithology as in breath- 

 ing, I found little basis for hope and almost no encouragement. In 

 those years there were few specialized courses in the universities, 

 and in the field in which I was interested there were scarcely any 

 openings. I entered Lafayette College at Easton, where my father, 

 grandfather, and numerous uncles and cousins had graduated. I 

 found that in my outmoded Norfolk jacket I was a trifle rural 

 among my new friends, and although I knew that I could outrun 

 the whole lot of them on a mountain trail, outpaddle them in a 

 canoe, and make jackasses out of them in a river-bottom swamp, 



