70 THE CONDOR Vol. XXII 
some quite near the ground, though at this time they did not appear to be feed- 
ing, but merely loitering on their way. 
We saw some of the lakes where they might have gone, on our trips over 
the prairie, in the family Ford. For the intelligent young farmer who, not 
long from Scotland, read his Burns as only a true Scot ean, often took off the 
edge of the day’s work for the capable makers of oat cakes by short jaunts in 
the ear, kindly asking us to go along. Now a ean of cream to be earried to 
the station three miles away, now a bag of grain to be traded out at another 
town equally distant, was the excuse for the exhilarating drive. Sometimes as 
we raced past farms and villages, the talk drifted to the local sects, number- 
ing among them Dunkards, Amish, and Mennonites; and we were told that the 
self-denying Amish wear hooks and eyes instead of decorative buttons; wear 
untrimmed, if colored dresses—a child in solid happy red we hoped marked 
escape from the spirit of sadness—build barns without cupolas, and, worst of 
all, own no automobiles! A most elaborate cupola seen on a barn, we imag- 
ined celebrated escape to the sect of the less rigid Mennonites, to whose num- 
bers, we were amused to hear, some of the Amish are withdrawing—that they 
may buy automobiles! One of the Amish men was going about the neighbor- 
hood with a threshing outfit and when our turn came and the cook ear with 
its Sioux cook was established in our front yard—smoke coming out of its stove 
pipe and a roller towel hanging from its outside wall—rain kept the men from 
work and I was glad to see the long-bearded puritanical Amish looking on 
indulgently while his men passed the time by playing quoits. Surely there was 
no lurking sin in this! 
When an errand about the threshing gave us a moonlight drive to the beau- 
tiful blue Twin Lakes, we heard the welcome news that a flock of Geese had 
already gone over—‘‘T heerd them holler’’, the neighbor said in testimony— 
and added that the lake had been visited by seven white Pelicans for a week 
before the opening of the hunting season. 
Before leaving we had the good fortune to have a visit from the Pelicans 
at our own lake. When out walking just before sunset I happened to glance 
up and discovered a flock of about forty of the superb white birds in the sky. 
To my joy they flew down to the lake, lighting out in the middle of the clear 
open water opposite the Crow roost on the wooded island heyond. Walking 
across to a screen of trees on the edge of the lake I watched them quite un- 
observed, as long as I could stay. The setting sun lit up their file, a line of 
ereat white birds with orange pouches, while the dark forms of Ducks spotted 
the surface of the lake and two inquiring ones swam up near the white proces- 
sion to satisfy their curiosity. The procession faced, now north, now south, now 
west, and as it filed by in dignified silence one of the great birds would ocea- 
sionally lean forward and plunge in his bill up to the hilt. But the last low - 
rays of the sun were touching up the green bases of the tules below the Crow 
roost, the Crows were restlessly flying around trying to get settled for the 
night, and I reluctantly started home, facing the sky of red and gold, and the 
soft clouds of its afterglow. 
Karly the next morning my friend and I hurried down to the lake, and to 
our great satisfaction were able to watch the Pelicans for an hour or so before 
they left. They were evidently getting ready to start on their morning flight 
high through the sky to some distant feeding ground, for they spent their 
time sunning themselves, stretching their wings, and drilling (swimming) in 
“AT 
