WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS 



morning and the very first thing they did was to get into that 

 shrubbery and pull a limb across the nest and tear it up and break 

 the eggs." 



To that sort of thing a field worker must become accustomed. 

 But I did not realize just what I had hoped to do with those 

 Doves, nor the extent to which I had counted upon them for some- 

 thing fresh and characteristic, until the dainty little nest and the 

 pearls of eggs lay trampled and broken at my feet. 



Here is another point for nature students. Having had bad 

 luck in a low location and seen their nest torn down by browsing 

 cattle, what did they do? Go somewhere else and build another 

 nest as low, from instinct? They followed the line of the fence 

 down to the river-bank, and, at the height of at least twenty-five 

 feet, they built the highest nest I ever saw constructed by Doves. 

 It was in the branches of quite a large hickory tree. 



So there was no "series" of these Doves and no pictures of the 

 young. A week later, however, Bob told me that across the river, 

 in the woods pasture, he had found a nest the preceding day with 

 a pair of Doves in it certainly old enough to fly. We rowed across 

 and found them still there. 



These Doves had homed in a brush heap so old that the limbs 

 were rotten and covered with a tangle of wild rose and grape- 

 vines. I remember that the grapes were in bloom. In fact, so 

 vividly is every surrounding of each of the studies in this book 

 photographed on my memory and sensibilities, that, though it is 

 January and a white world as I write, I can scent the pungent 

 grape-bloom and a rank succulent odor of green things crushed 

 under foot, and hear the bumbling of bees and the lusty chal- 

 lenges to combat of a pair of Brahma roosters separated by two 

 miles of space, just as I did when working with these Doves. 



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