LIFE AT “MILL GROVE” 107 
year of the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. It was 
early in the season when Audubon chanced upon this 
quiet retreat; the buds were swelling and maples had 
already burst into bloom, but snow still lingered in 
patches through the woods, and the air was piercing chill. 
The pewees were not yet at home, but one of their nests, 
fashioned of mud and finest moss, was fixed above the 
vaulted entrance; their coming was not long delayed, 
and Audubon, marking the very night or day’s dawn 
when the first pewee arrived, saw them beginning to re- 
store their old home on the tenth of April. 
Strange to say, almost at that very time another pio- 
neer in American ornithology, Alexander Wilson, who 
will enter this history later, was teaching a rough coun- 
try school at Gray’s Ferry, Kingsessing, also on the 
Schuylkill, and not over twenty-five miles away. 
Though Audubon’s early studies were very desultory, 
both naturalists began their observations at about the 
same time, for on June 1, 1803, Wilson wrote to a 
friend that many pursuits had engaged his attention 
since leaving Scotland in 1794, and that then he was 
“about to make a collection of all our finest birds.” 
It must be set down to Audubon’s credit that in the 
little cave on the banks of the Perkioming, in April, 
1804, he made the first “banding” experiment on the 
young of an American wild bird. Little could he or any 
one else then have thought that one hundred years later 
a Bird Banding Society would be formed in America to 
repeat his test on a much wider scale, in order to gather 
exact data upon the movements of individuals of all 
migratory species in every part of the continent. After 
a few trials, “I fixed,” said he, ‘“‘a light silver thread on 
the leg of each, loose enough not to hurt the part, but 
so fastened that no exertions of theirs could remove it.” 
