70 THE CONDOR Vol. XXI 
way. The only time that I ever saw her willingly show herself to a bird was 
when she heard a Veery Thrush give its cry of alarm. She was seated in a com- 
fortable piazza rocking chair at the moment, but sprang up and waded ankle 
deep through the soft plowed ground of a wide field between the house and the 
woods to go to its rescue. | 
Ordinarily when we went to the woods, she would steal in through the 
bushes in her leaf-colored gown, open her camp-stool cautiously at the foot of 
a tree whose dark trunk would help conceal her, pull down a branch before 
her and, with note-book ready, carefully raise her opera-glass and focus it upon 
the nest she wanted to study. And there she would sit in silence, stoically defy- 
Fig. 18. OLIvE THORNE MILLER. 
ing tormenting gnats and mosquitoes, patiently waiting and watching to see 
what might befall. 
Alert, keen-eyed, and conscientious to the flit of a wing, she kept a firm 
rein upon herself, never letting her imagination run away with her, allowing 
herself to generalize, or attribute her own thoughts and feelings to the bird she 
was watching; conscientiously writing up her field notes in detail every day, 
preparatory to putting them in final form for publication during the months 
following each field season. Scrupulously truthful and enthusiastically in 
earnest, she was indeed an ideal reporter of bird ways. If all observers had 
her spirit and devotion, what could we not hope for in addition to our knowl- 
edge of little known life histories! 
