THE BIRDS OF BATTLE GROVE. 160 
to pick and eat a few of the ripest ones. The berries 
were by no means plentiful for the acreage in bushes, 
and the feathered residents seemed to know this. No 
sooner had I commenced to eat the luscious fruit when a 
bevy of birds surrounded me with an incessant chatter- 
ing, chirping and scolding. Each bird seemed to take 
turns flying about my head, with incessant noise from 
every featherei throat. ‘‘See here, mister,” they were 
probably saying, ‘‘don’t you see the berries are scarce 
and unripe and we have all our little ones tofeed. Get 
out of here! Get out of here!”  ‘‘Well little birds,” I 
said, ‘‘I guess I understand you—and you shall have 
my share of the berries this season in the bad lands of 
Battle Grove.” And happy was I to leave them in pos- 
session, and I returned back to the village. 
But the impending change would come to these birds 
of the grove—and fortunate were they that the days of 
the second movement or boom of the soil changers was 
so long delayed. Idle disposed people drifted in with 
the advanced hosts and the ‘‘bad boy” came in evi- 
dence through the lack of proper discipline and good 
example. The two flocks of pigeons about the pretty 
village grew smaller. The report of a gun, the click of 
a trap; the thud of a dead fall; the swish of a hotel 
pitchfork or jar of club,and the Venice appearing aspect 
of early Washburn had ended; and the old man whose 
pride and happiness was with his flocks,moved down to 
the Turtle Valley with the remnants, that peace and rest 
would come to him and to his bird and animal charges. 
Then the few lazy fishermen who basked along the 
Missouri’s banks contiguous to Battle Grove, suddenly 
conceived the idea that birds killed and their flesh cut 
