412 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



alongside of them six feet off, and then fluttered around 

 to the attack. The crows, however, were evidently less 

 bothered by it than they would have been by a kingbird. 

 At Plain Dealing many birds nest within a stone's throw 

 of the rambling attractive house, with its numerous out- 

 buildings, old garden, orchard, and venerable locusts 

 and catalpas. Among them are Baltimore and orchard 

 orioles, purple grackles, flickers and red-headed wood- 

 peckers, bluebirds, robins, kingbirds and indigo buntings. 

 One observation which I made was of real interest. On 

 May 1 8, 1907, I saw a small party of a dozen or so of 

 passenger pigeons, birds I had not seen for a quarter of 

 a century and never expected to see again. I saw them 

 two or three times flying hither and thither with great 

 rapidity, and once they perched in a tall dead pine on the 

 edge of an old field. They were unmistakable; yet the 

 sight was so unexpected that I almost doubted my eyes, 

 and I welcomed a bit of corroborative evidence coming 

 from Dick, the colored foreman at Plain Dealing. Dick 

 is a frequent companion of mine in rambles around the 

 country, and he is an unusually close and accurate ob- 

 server of birds, and of wild things generally. Dick had 

 mentioned to me having seen some " wild carrier pig- 

 eons," as he called them; and, thinking over this remark 

 of his, after I had returned to Washington, I began to 

 wonder whether he too might not have seen passenger 

 pigeons. Accordingly I wrote to Mr. Wilmer, asking 

 him to question Dick and find out what the " carrier 

 pigeons " looked like. His answering letter runs in part 

 as follows : 



