WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS 



the whole leg was swollen, discolored, the skin cut and bleeding, 

 and the bird almost dead. Release was all it needed. 



Again I came across a Scarlet Tanager a few days before 

 leaving the nest, and both its eyes were securely closed and hidden 

 by a thick plastering of feathers and filth. I took it home, soaked 

 and washed it perfectly clean in warm milk. Its eyes were a light 

 pink and seemed sightless. It was placed in the dark, fed care- 

 fully, gradually brought to the light and in three days it could see 

 perfectly and was returned to its nest, sound as the other inmates. 



Once I found a female Finch helpless on the ground, and dis- 

 covered her trouble to be an egg so large she could not possibly de- 

 posit it, and she had left the nest and was struggling in agony. 

 I broke the egg with a hatpin and she soon flew away, seemingly 

 all right. With the help of a man who climbed a big tree and 

 secured the egg of a Chicken-hawk, after the Hawk had been 

 shot by a neighboring farmer, we played the mean trick on a Hen 

 of having her brood on the egg of her enemy. 



Another time some boys came to me with a stringy baby Sheil- 

 poke, scarce old enough to fly, that had landed aimlessly in a ditch 

 filled with crude oil, and the poor bird was miserable past de- 

 scription. Warm water, soft soap and the scrub brush ended his 

 troubles and he was returned to the river clean, full fed and 

 happy, I hope. Walking through the woods one Sabbath morn- 

 ing this spring, after a night of high wind and driving rain, I 

 was attracted by the sharp alarm cries of a pair of Rose-breasted 

 Grosbeaks. I followed them until almost mired in the swamp, 

 and there, on a little tuft of grass, between pools of water and 

 among trampling cattle, within two feet of each other, I found a 

 male baby Grosbeak and a Scarlet Tanager, neither over five days 

 from the shell. The Tanager nest I could not discover. The 

 Grosbeak was in a slender oak sapling in a thicket of grape-vines. 

 The tree was too light to bear my weight and I was not prepared 



