11 The education of a Seton Indian 



in contributions to our knowledge and, at the same time, as we 

 hoped, add immeasurably to the personal enjoyment and intellec- 

 tual satisfaction of the participants. 



In the hope that I might be able to assist with one of our re- 

 search projects, I went to John Baker and asked that I be permitted 

 to come into the office an hour late each day during the period 

 from late March to early June. We were then living in Amityville 

 on the south shore of Long Island, where we had moved after 

 the untimely death of my brother John. It was my plan to get up 

 at 4 A.M. and pedal my bicycle some three miles west to Massapequa, 

 where a colony of black-crowned night herons was established 

 each season in a cedar swamp. I wanted to make a nesting behavior 

 study of these birds, and if I could arrange to have a reasonable 

 amount of time in the colony each morning, and still reach the 

 office only one hour late, I felt that the results might justify all the 

 trouble involved and perhaps increase my ultimate value to the 

 Society. John Baker immediately agreed to this plan and I set to 

 work on it at once. 



Without question the field experiences of the next three seasons 

 were of immense help to me later on. I enlisted the talents of 

 Fred Mangels as a working partner, and we later published our 

 findings in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New York 

 (Nos. 50-51, October, 1940). In addition to increasing my knowl- 

 edge of heron behavior in particular, and of the literature of the 

 important and fascinating field of animal behavior in general, there 

 were other lessons. I would leave the house in the darkest hour 

 before dawn as stealthily as possible so as not to rouse my wife 

 and small children. As I tiptoed out to the garage where my bi- 

 cycle was housed I frequently had a near collision with the milk- 

 man. Since we didn't know each other by sight, and as I thought 

 he might take me for a sneak thief and raise a hue and cry, I always 

 managed to conceal myself in a shadow or behind the garage. My 

 own garage! After he moved on I would emerge, feeling a little fool- 

 ish, and proceed with my journey. These experiences were some- 

 times a little unnerving, but I soon learned to think of them as one 

 of the occupational hazards in the career that I had chosen. But 

 even more shattering involvements lay in store for me! 



