106 THE CONDOR Vol. XXII 
ing decidedly stranded in the dry, pasture with goldenrod, snowberry, tar- 
weed, and sagebrush. The water had partly dried up in the large pasture 
slough, but Coot calls and Mallard quacks still came from it. Even the Big 
Slough where the Coots’ nests had been found was partially mowed, although 
the water was still too deep for approach a long distance out from the black 
streak. 
Harvesting over, the fall plowing and disking were under way, and flocks 
‘of Franklin Gulls were keeping watch of the work ready to take advantage 
of the soft open ground. A flock of five or six hundred followed the farmer 
and his man when disking with eight horses, but as he said, “‘they didn’t stay 
long,’’ the shallow cutting disk not exposing worms as the plow did. 
The open season being well under way, automobiles full of hunters crossed 
the pastures to the pass below us, and nervous flocks of Ducks shifted up the 
lake out of reach. Mallards were flushed from the Pasture Slough and I was 
told by my friend, the farmer’s wife, that late in the fall they are seen out in 
the stubble fields feeding on the barley left from the threshing. Evenings, 
in the golden afterglow, Ducks passed over toward the lake, their flocks sug- 
gesting the sound of wind in frosted corn. 
As the September days passed, I began to think of the Geese coming from 
the north. Several Snow Geese, doubtless wounded on their northward flight 
in the spring, had been seen during the summer by a neighbor who thought 
they were nesting; and one day as I came in, the farmer asked if I had seen 
a large white bird in our next neighbor’s pasture. ‘‘I bet it’s a Pelican!’’ 
he exclaimed. Going out with me, he had to fairly point out the bird, for it 
was so conspicuous that I had passed it over as a white stone in the grass— 
which gives a side light on protective coloration! Creeping cautiously down 
to field-glass distance, I discovered to my delight that it was a pure white 
Goose with black wing tips and a brightly colored bill, bending over, feeding 
from the slough. But before I could get closer, feeling itself observed, the 
shy bird flew away. How soon would its brothers come from the north, and 
the reunited bands pass on to the south? 
The year previous the Geese had come the first week in October, the 
farmer’s wife told me, and she gave me a graphic account of their arrival. 
She had gone out to the windmill about five o’clock in the afternoon—the 
fifth of October—and looking north discovered them coming toward the lake. 
They made a solid phalanx a mile and a half wide, and coming on flew low 
over the windmill and the barn, passing on to the lake. With keen enjoyment 
of the memory of the wonderful sight she exclaimed—‘‘I could see them com- 
ing from the east as far as I could see, and could see them going into the west 
till they were as small as Swallows!’’ They went out onto the lake for the 
night and with the sun on the water could not be seen. 
During their stay in the neighborhood, they would ‘‘go out to feed about 
sun up and return from ten to twelve; then go out again from two to four, 
and return about sundown. One day about noon,’’ my friend continued, ‘‘a 
very quiet day, bright and sunshiny, they drifted toward the shore of the lake 
in a big white mass and after they had gotten on the shore worked over the 
bank of the lake down into a slough, where they stayed and fed on the rank 
green grass.’’ Their mass, she said, must have been four or five rods wide 
and a quarter of a mile long. ‘‘Oh that was a pretty sight, though,’’ she 
ejaculated. The Geese stayed quietly feeding till about two o’clock when 
