THE OOLOGIST 



21 



We found fishing off McMehan good 



—Photo by L. E. Healey 



expanse of waterstretching out to 

 meet the sky, forty-five miles in its 

 longest reach and twenty-five miles 

 wide, regular in outline, an inland sea 

 without a single island to dot its sur- 

 face, the largest fresh water area 

 totally within the confines of the 

 United States. It was to this, a still 

 remaining vistage of primeval Minne- 

 sota, that two lovers of the wild, hear- 

 ing the call, set out on July eighth 

 in the year of our Lord nineteen hun- 

 dred and seventeen to drink of the 

 glorious air, bathe in the sparkling 

 waters, to be free in God's great out 

 of doors. 



"We were disappointed in not being 

 able to make the trip during bird nest- 

 ing season, the glorious month of June 

 when all nature puts on her lovliest 

 gown and her feathered creatues vie 

 with each other in their mad revel of 

 song. It had been our object in this 

 long planned trip to study these fairy 

 friends and thus be able to report 

 more fully upon bird life about Red 

 Lake and the marshes immediately 

 tributary thereto, but at so late a date 

 most of the songsters had ceased to 

 sing and were too busy rearing a hun- 

 gry family to give us the opportunity 



of even knowing of their immediate 

 presence, either that, or the wilder 

 the country, the fewer the song birds; 

 and I am inclined to believe the latter 

 to be true. In this respect our entire 

 trip of nearly three hundred seventy 

 five miles by water was conspicuous 

 in the absence of bird life. True we 

 saw a bird life we were not so familiar 

 with of which I shall speak as my 

 story progresses, but we were im- 

 pressed with the thought that God 

 placed these feathered creatures in 

 the world for man, and they knowing 

 full well their mission, take up their 

 abode heroicly near those who seek 

 to destroy much less know their 

 habits, and hear so little of heir efforts 

 to cheer the weary mind and sing the 

 glory of their maker. 



The Red Lake River is the outlet 

 of Red Lake. It leaves the Lake at 

 the southwest corner and flows in a 

 general direction westward to the 

 border line between Minnesota and 

 North Dakota where it joins the Red 

 River of the North in a grand fork at 

 Grand Forks, thence making its way 

 northward through the far famed Red 

 River Valley, the bread basket of the 

 world, emptying its muddy course in 



