Jan., 1917 BIRDS OF THE HUMID COAST 11 



stalked slowly up and down the shore. A second Heron that was perched on a 

 snag far out in the bay was presumably his mate, angling in other waters. 

 From my distance the outlines of the fisherman by the shore were three long 

 sticks — neck and legs — for the shadowy form of the body faded into the water 

 of the bay with its blues and greens and white caps. The only conspicuous 

 feature was the long white neck. When walking along shore the Heron with 

 long neck craned forward statuesquely Avould suddenly sprawl onto the water, 

 rising with a tiny fish in its bill which it would shake persistently, the sun 

 glancing from the scaly sides and also from the wet side of the bird's own 

 head. When the great Heron flew, its slender form opened to broad gray, 

 black-margined wings, and it flapped on and on till it disappeared down the 

 hazy shore toward the safe harbor of a woodland creek leading back to the 

 mountains. 



II. A VISIT FROM A SOOTY GROUSE 



Between the mountains and the shore there is a strip of dense forest, and 

 as we wandered along the road bordering it, looking for a possible habitation, 

 to our amazement we found a broad board walk leading up through the forest. 

 A Golden Pileolated Warbler enticed us up its woodland vista, flashing gold in 

 and out of the greenery. What could be the explanation of this broad highway 

 through the timber? Where would it lead us? We folloAved it between a stand 

 of spotted mossy alder trunks and heavy-topped hemlocks and Sitka spruces 

 filled in with a dense growth of glossy green salal, of skunk cabbage whose 

 huge shining leaves rose two or three feet above the ground, of purple elder- 

 berry, and red huckleberry bushes, of a luxuriant growth of tall salmonberry, 

 and round-leafed vine maples whose red-winged seeds give the effect of red 

 fruit in the tops of the small trees, together with bracken and clusters of high 

 ferns that occupied the remaining crevices and niches. The charred trunk of a 

 huge spruce felled and burned back to make way for the walk, and pools 

 standing in deep hollows left by upturned roots, huge gray roots that made a 

 chipmunk look like a mouse, told how man had wrestled with the forest. If 

 we stepped off the walk and essayed to penetrate the jungle, the crossed pros- 

 trate trunks of enormous primeval trees, cut twenty-five years before, disputed 

 the way and the dense tangle of vegetation added such difficulties that Ave were 

 glad to get back to the open highway. 



At the head of the board walk, much to pur surprise we faced a large two- 

 story school building surrounded by cleared grassy acres. Set in the forest on 

 the edge of a small fishing hamlet, it seemed strangely out of place but — as I 

 learned later when the family in the house near the school had kindly taken 

 me in — it was one of Oregon's modern schools gathering its children from other 

 hamlets. The board walk that had bespoken prodigal extravagance before, 

 with this explanation became a bare necessity ; for how else could children 

 come and go through the water-soaked forest during the nine months of the 

 rainy season? 



On occasion, as I discovered, the board walk proved convenient for birds 

 and was also an attractive highway for roaming cattle, for by the Oregon law 

 they may go where they will, objectors having the privilege of fencing against 

 them ! Even a perambulatory bear had found the walk more convenient than 

 clambering up and down the log-blocked woods — woods that it cost five hun- 

 dred dollars an acre to clear ! 



A spruce stump beside the school house measuring nearly twenty-four feet 



