228 WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



him, stamped two or three times, then walked 

 away. 



By the lake I learned to identify many birds 

 and animals, also flowers and trees. In addition 

 to identification, I learned a number of the ways 

 of each of these living visitors to the lake, and of 

 those who lived in and by it. For several weeks 

 I watched a ground-hog near his den on the 

 west shore without knowing that he was a 

 ground-hog. I noticed that the aspen grew in 

 moist places, bloomed before its leaves came out, 

 and that it was the favourite tree used by 

 beavers, before I could learn its name and long 

 before I learned its identification marks. 



After seeing Flattop around the lake for a 

 number of years I realized that most birds and 

 animals cannot be called gypsies. They have a 

 regular home near which they are ever found. 

 Most of them live and die in the locality in 

 which they are born. They claim a home terri- 

 tory and generally try to keep others of the same 

 species from using this. Even the water birds, 

 and the white-crowned sparrows that nested 

 around the shore, came back to the lake after 

 wintering hundreds of miles south. Three times 

 a white-crown built in the same willow. 



A little black bear was swimming in the lake 

 one evening when I arrived. Two claws were 

 missing from the left forefoot print in his track 



