12 THE CONDOR Vol. XIX 



in circumference bespoke the difficulties encountered. While the main part of 

 the forest had been cut or burned twenty-five years before, a few of the origi- 

 nal two-hundred-foot trees had been left standing because too knotted to make 

 good timber, and the second growth of spruce and hemlock had now reached a 

 height of a hundred feet. 



The acres adjoining the school had been cleared of bracken and timber by a 

 carpenter who, after building the Life Saving Station on the bay, discovered 

 the school and settled beside it, that advantages missed in his own youth might 

 be afforded his little daughter. In front of the house a dead tree, one of the 

 kings of the original forest, marked the clearing from above and below, for al- 

 though it had lost its top its shaft, estimated at two hundred feet, rose proudly 

 into the air above the adjoining timber, while the trunk about five feet from 

 the ground had a girth of over twenty-nine feet. 



Around the school house, even in vacation, the birds proved to be suggest- 

 ively shy; but one morning a rare visitor, a Sooty Grouse, strayed into the 

 clearing from the woods. She was first seen flying into a young spruce by the 

 house, and the family were called to look at her. The spruce was so dense and 

 its mossy cushions made so many dark Grouse-like spots that, crane our necks 

 as we might, we could not find her. The fisherman who had seen her fly in told 

 us that he had once hunted half an hour trying to see a cock hooting over his 

 head ! Discouraged by this we gave up looking, but before long I heard the 

 fisherman calling in some excitement for "the woman" — interested in ornith- 

 ology — to come out again. 



There was the Grouse, secretive inhabitant of dusky forests, out in the 

 glaring light of day, perched on the ridgepole of the school house surrounded 

 by grassy acres, to us the most conspicuous object in the landscape, though her 

 body matched the slaty shade of the roof. The explanation was simple. Tom, 

 the big house cat, had flushed her from the grass, in the excitement of the chase, 

 as the witness declared, actually jumping up into the air after her. There she 

 sat, or rather crouched, with pointed head projecting beyond the ridgepole on 

 one side of the roof, and long banded tail hanging over the other. The cat was 

 still prowling about and when the excited little Goldilocks chased him off, the 

 old Grouse moved her head and raised up as if meditating flight, but, as if de- 

 ciding that the child was harmless, sat down again. When the fisherman ap- 

 proached and levelled his long spy glass at her, however, she opened her wings 

 and flew across the school lot, disappearing in a high spruce. 



Where were the young? She had doubtless brought them to the open 

 school lot to feed, as the carpenter imagined. She would have to come back 

 and gather them together again. To get a good view of the tree into which she 

 had flown and from which she must come, I walked over to the school house 

 steps and sat down to wait. And still I waited. Then the two men of the house 

 with gun and wheelbarrow followed by Goldilocks and her two white Spitz 

 dogs passed by and clattered down the board walk out of hearing, after which 

 there was unbroken, reassuring silence. At last I heard a low familiar cluck- 

 uck-uck-uclc, and out came the Grouse, flying across the entire length of the 

 school lot into the woods at its head, as if scouring the ground for her chickens. 

 Where could they be? Why didn't they answer her? After a little, back she 

 came to the woods at the foot of the lot, still without a sign, that I could note. 

 This time, after she lit among the shadows of a high spruce branch, by close 

 scrutiny her pointed head and dusky form could be distinguished. 



