212 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[April 4, 1889. 



A GROUSE TRAJECTORY. 



JUST after dinner recently, I went out as usual to feed 

 my grouse. The male bird was in a coop by himself, 

 and although I noticed that he seemed nervous and 

 frightened about something, I carelessly raised the hinged 

 top, when wbirr went a brown streak over my head and 

 into the air at the rate of sixty miles an hour. Jack is a 

 magnificent specimen of his kind, and it was impossible 

 not to admire the grand burst of speed he showed as he 

 rose skyward at an angle of forty- five degrees. Some 

 234ft. from the point from which he started and in the 

 direct line of bis flight the walls of a public school build- 

 ing ran up about 80ft., and it was to clear these that he 

 was obliged to make his rapid climb. Pretty heavy grade, 

 you see, about 1ft. rise in every 3ft. of horizontal distance, 

 but he made it nicely, never so much as scraping the top 

 of the roof. 



"Where did he go then?" He went eastward and down- 

 ward into the heart of a city of a hundred thousand 

 people— downward from an elevation that would easily 

 have carried him a mile if he had simply set his wings 

 and sailed. But where? That was what I asked myself 

 as I took a landing net and wandered sadly out into the 

 cross streets and main streets, feeling that the search for 

 the traditional needle in the haystack was a compara- 

 tively easy undertaking. A man whom I met asked if it 

 wasn't "a little early for frogs." I explained. 



"I saw a boy," said he, "only a short time ago, walking 

 down Madison street with a strange kind of bird under 

 his arm. Looked like a prairie chicken or something of 

 that kind. Couldn't say what became of him." 



Here was a clue, and thanking my unknown friend, I 

 gave him my address and we separated, only to meet a 

 little later in front of an office on an adjacent street. 



"1 have some good news for you," was his second greet- 

 ing. "I have just been using the telephone for you, and 

 your friend is all right. The fact is," he continued, "I 

 lied just a little when I first met you. The bird was 

 brought into our office in the Law Building just before 

 by the janitor of Grand Army Hall, who said he came 

 through the plate glass window like a full fledged brick- 

 bat, and dropped on the sill inside The janitor is a 

 Mend of my partner's, and thought the bird would make 

 an excefient pot pie — a quarter's worth of potpie, and the 

 Colonel (my partner) invested a quarter in him. The 

 bird was badly stunned when first brought in, and 

 I was afraid that he might be dead and thought I would 

 find out before I told you about him." 



It did not take long to reach the Law Building, where 

 I found Jack jammed down in a basket not much bigger 

 than himself and apparently a good deal the worse for 

 wear. But I most gladly paid his ransom, and placed 

 him in his coop again. He was evidently glad to get 

 home, but the strangest part of the story is that when 

 he was released he was without mark or injury of any 

 kind, and although his little adventure occurred nearly 

 three weeks ago he shows no trace of any ill effects. 



The distance of the plate of glass through which Jack 

 entered the Grand Army Hall (measured with the other 

 distances after his flight) was approximately 720ft., so 

 you will see that this was a case of very high trajectory. 

 We both of us congratulated ourselves most heartily; he 

 that he had escaped the unseasonable potpie, and I that 

 he still lived to be father of a much-desired family. 



Let me say in passing that on Sunday last (the 24th 

 inst.) Jack began strutting and parading in regular grouse 

 fashion — the earliest demonstration of the kind of any of 

 my birds in captivity. I hope this spring to find out 

 whether the grouse ever drums in captivity, although I 

 have little expectation of enjoying that sound and sight. 

 Furthermore, I hope to pick up one or two additional 

 hens before the mating (not pairing) season is too far ad- 

 vanced. Jay Beebe. 



Toledo, 0„ March 26. 



OPOSSUMS ON LONG ISLAND. 



OAKDALE, Long Island, March 20.— Editor Forest and 

 Stream: To those interested in the preservation of 

 game on this beautiful island, the serious question of the 

 hour is how to get rid of the greatest game destroyer, the 

 opossum. My attention was first called to this sly sneak 

 about a year ago by the destruction of large numbers of 

 my rabbits, which I was continually finding on the pre- 

 serve, half eate /. The destroyer commenced always at 

 the head and devouring half of a full-grown rabbit at one 

 meal, so that my stock of cottontails began to diminish 

 very fast. The nuisance got to be so serious I set to work 

 to get rid of all the varmints on my premises, but Long 

 Island is so large I am about giving up in disgust unless 

 others interested will take a hand in and help get rid of 

 the pest. 



For the benefit of those interested I will give my ex- 

 perience in the matter. My first step was to set traps in 

 the most likely places in the swamp, baited with raw 

 meat, but that turned out to be a very troublesome and 

 slow way of getting rid of the enemy, on account of the 

 ground mice devouring the bait on the traps about as fast 

 as they were set. So after three weeks of trap setting I 

 abandoned that process, having caught in that time only 

 three possums, one coon and one dog. 



My next experiment was to cut raw beef up in small 

 pieces and insert strychnine and place in the low tangled 

 swamp, but to my horror I found that I was the destroyer 

 of my partridges, and upon inquiry learned that all game 

 birds were very fond of meat. As I could not get half- 

 devoured rabbits enough to set for these foxy-looking 

 chaps I determined to try cats, as my neighbors in the 

 village to the east were always very kind to me in keep- 

 ing my preserve supplied with these pests and destroyers 

 of the f eathered tribe. Whenever they had more cats 

 than they wanted they would, out of kindness to Miss 

 Pussy, bring a lot up in bags and dump them out in the 

 woods to destroy the quail and look out for themselves 

 generally. Knowing the cats to be very partial to cooked 

 fish I took small pieces of eel and inserted a little strych- 

 nine and I soon had all the cat bait I wanted, besides rid- 

 ding my premises, of some wonderful large, and I may 

 say wild cats; also killing several opossums with the 

 fish, which they liked very much. After getting the cats 

 I had my man strip the skin and fur from a small spot 

 on tho side of the animal, so as to expose the flesh, and 

 in which I inserted a little poison. This proved a perfect 

 success, as the partridge and quail would not approach 

 the fur, and I found as many as three opossums dead 

 beside a cat, which they must have thought was a rabbit, 



for the reason that a gray cat always made the best bait, 

 the opossums not taking to any other color so well. 



I have lost in the past year between sixty and seventy 

 hens and chicks by the raids of this pest. I have had 

 them come to the roost several times, kill the setting 

 hens, and after destroying all within their reach carry 

 the largest size old hen to the swamp, where I would 

 track them by the wake of feathers left by the hen in 

 her struggles to get away. 



While shooting last fall I found quantities of quail 

 feathers at the mouth of holes in the swamp and woods, 

 which accounted for my not having a full bevy of birds 

 on the preserve. Some pairs hatched out as many as 

 twenty birds, but when the law was off and I began to 

 shoot I found that all the bevies had been depleted, some 

 being reduced to three birds and the largest eleven. It 

 is a perfect mystery to me how the quail takes care of 

 itself, being a bird that sleeps and fives on the ground, 

 with such enemies as skunks, weasles, foxes, cats, dogs, 

 possums, snakes, owls and hawks, and then to be ham- 

 mered at two months by shooters and dogs. How do the 

 little fellows get through? It is certainly surprising; and 

 although I am an old sportsman it makes me feel sad, 

 and the older I grow the more I feel for them. 



Alfred A. Feaser. 



BIRD NOTES FROM MARYLAND. 



HOWAED COUNTY, Md., March 25.— On yesterday, 

 March 24, I saw the first robins of the season, two 

 small flocks, and another large flock to-day. Last year 

 they arrived here in large flocks Feb. 19, about the usual 

 time. It is evident that they are fully a month late this 

 season. 



On the night of the 23d inst. I heard the first wood- 

 cock; they, too, are rather more than a month later than 

 their usual time. 



The same is true of nearly all the small migratory birds. 

 In fact, I have never seen so few birds in this locality in 

 my life as during the winter just passed. On the con- 

 trary, I do not remember ever to have seen as many as 

 during the preceding winter of 1887-88, the former being 

 the severest winter I ever remember, this last an excep- 

 tionally mild one. I suspect that the same birds of the 

 various migratory species return season after season to 

 the same locality, and that the individuals belonging to 

 this immediate locality, remembering the blizzard of the 

 middle of last March, during which very many bluebirds, 

 sparrows, snowbirds and the like froze to death, they 

 have profited by their experience and lingered longer at 

 the South. Be this as it may, certainly the general fact 

 is true, that during the winter of 1887-88 immense num- 

 bers of birds wintered here, and the southern migrants 

 arrived earlier than usual; whereas the past winter very 

 few remained all winter, and the southern migrants are 

 only now beginning to arrive, fully a month later than 

 usual. 



Daring the winter of 1887-88 several red-headed wood- 

 peckers wintered in my orchard and grounds, and in the 

 woods belonging to Carroll's Mannor, about a mile from 

 this place. A colony of from forty to fifty of them were 

 observed by my &on and myself several times during the 

 months of January, February and early March. We also 

 observed that these birds had stored great quantities of 

 the acorns of the fine oaks in several old trees. During 

 the past winter there was not a single specimen either in 

 that- woods or about this place; nor any of the small 

 woodpeckers, commonly called sapsuckers, which were 

 numerous about here the previous winter. 



Some three or four winters ago four or five red-headed 

 woodpeckers wintered in the grounds of my father-in-law 

 at Cedar Park, West River, Md., and my sons observed 

 them there stowing the same species of acorn. But this 

 species is very rarely observed wintering in this locality. 

 In the midst of the blizzard last March a small bunch of 

 American crossbills appeared here. One of them was 

 observed picking in the waste hay seed near the barn, 

 and it suffered my youngest son to put his hat over it 

 and pick it up. When brought into the house it showed 

 neither embarrassment nor alarm, but speedily devoured 

 some canary seed and then put its head under its wing 

 and went to sleep. When the blizzard was over its com- 

 panions were seen in a tree near the house, and being 

 liberated it joined them as if nothing strange had oc- 

 curred, when they all left together for parts unknown. 

 This was the third occasion in my life I had observed 

 this species as far south as this. In 1877 I saw a small 

 flock about Warrenton, Virginia, and in 1855 I saw 

 immense numbers of them at Ball's Bluff, the place of 

 the severe battle of the late war near Leesburg, Va. 

 Among the birds very numerous here during all the win- 

 ter and spring of 1887-88 were hawks of divers kinds, 

 roughlegs, red-shouldered and red-tailed predominating, 

 some broad wings and a pair of peregrines, also Cooper's 

 sharp-shins and pigeon hawk. This season only the spar- 

 row hawks have remained in anything like the usual 

 numbers. Of the larger kinds I have noted only one pair 

 of redtails and a single red-shouldered hawk. 



By the way, some of my friends over at Washington 

 contended against me in your columns some years since 

 that the sparrow hawk is not a common winter resident 

 here. Yet not a day during either of the two winters I 

 have spent in my home here, but several specimens could 

 be seen hovering over the fields near the house. Cer- 

 tainly the past two winters it has been one of the com- 

 monest bird3 of this locality; one or a pair to be seen 

 about nearly every hay barrack at any and all times. I 

 must mention a very unusual fact reported by a neighbor 

 of mine who is a practical and successful sportsman and 

 intelligent gentleman. He says there are at this time 

 four ruffed grouse on his place not yet fully grown, 

 which were hatched out last fall. He has observed them 

 constantly and is perfectly sure of the accuracy of the 

 statement. I have no doubt whatever of the cor- 

 rectness of the fact, but I have never before heard of 

 a case of the kind. It may not, however, be so unusual 

 as I have supposed. I have shot ruffed grouse for nearly 

 forty years and I never observed a second brood hatched 

 so late. M. G. Ellzey, M.D. 



Albino Robin.— Oakdale, L. I. — While beating the 

 meadows I saw an albino robin, which specimen I tried 

 very hard to obtain for my friend Mr. William Dutcher, 

 but was unable to get near enough, as the bird was one 

 of a large bunch of robins which were migrating, and 

 very shy.— Alfred A. Fraser. 



Spring Birds. — Concord, N. H., April 1.— Editor 

 Forest and Stream: The following birds have arrived on 

 and since the 1st of March. Pewee on the 1st, bluebird 

 16th, robin and Canada goose 19th, black snowbird 20th, 

 crow blackbird and song sparrow 23d, white-throated 

 sparrow 25th, meadowlark and redwing blackbird 26th, 

 spotted sandpiper 27th. We have had a wonderfully 

 early spring. — P. C. 



'mw j§ag md %m\. 



"Sam LoveVs Camps." By B. E. Robinson, Noiv ready. 



HONKINGS FROM THE PLATTE. 



KEARNEY, Neb., March 15. — The proper nomencla- 

 ture of geese and brant is, to me, a regular "13-14- 

 15" puzzle. It has been my hope that with specific 

 names arranged according to the A. O. U. check list the 

 problem would be simplified, but I have found that the 

 only way to do is to determine the species by careful 

 study, without reference to geographical distribution as 

 given by recognized manuals, and then to let local sports- 

 men decide as to local names. We have, in central 

 Nebraska, as spring and fall visitants, five anserine 

 species, known locally as the "Canada goose," "Mexican 

 goose," "white goose," "speckled brant" and "black- 

 winged brant." Some of these are easily identified, the 

 first being Branta canadensis (Linn.); second, B. c. hutch- 

 insii (Sw. and Rich.), though why it should be called 

 Mexican instead of Hutchin's goose I cannot imagine. 

 The speckled brant almost corresponds with Anser albi- 

 frons gambeli (Hartl.), but the upper parts seem to be 

 rather a dove color. Chen hyperboria (Pall.) will answer 

 for black-winged brant, but should we not have C. caru- 

 lescens (Linn. ) or does not the blue goose fly so far west of 

 the Mississippi? The white goose I have never shot. In' 

 the air it appears perfectly white, and those who have 

 shot it say that it is white with the exception of yellow- 

 ish feathers upon the neck. Feet yellow. It is extremely 

 rare and shy. From the description given by those who 

 claim to have handled the bird, I cannot make any satis- 

 factory determination of the species, though it seems to 

 be a Chen. 



My midwinter notes closed with the extremely cold 

 wave of Feb. 22, and the consequent southern flight of 

 all game and ducks. The 23d was warm, and the next 

 day was quite springlike. On Feb. 25, Canadas and 

 Hutchin's geese returned in considerable numbers. 

 Two flocks flew over the Platte and probably did not 

 alight before reaching the Loup. Since then geese have 

 become more ' numerous each day. The same week 

 brought a few mallards and a great number of pintails. 

 Duck hunters are compelled for the present to devote 

 themselves to the pintails. As yet there are no teal. On 

 March 4 speckled brant began to arrive, and on this date 

 I saw the first robin of the season. Six days later came 

 the black-winged brant, and with them mcadowlarks put 

 in an appearance. 



Already the migration is well under way. From this 

 point the geese uniformly take a northwesterly direction 

 in their flight. Upland shooting on the feeding grounds 

 is fair, but not as good as at the same time last year. The 

 country about Kearney is getting so thickly settled that 

 the main fine of migration has taken another westward 

 move. 



There must be a certain social instinct in geese where- 

 by they can select friends and acquaintances from a par- 

 tieular flock and one flock from another. Yesterday 

 afternoon, just before sundown, I heard the honkings of 

 some Canadas, and rushed to the door to see whether the 

 flight was sufficient to warrant a four o'clock call in the 

 morning. Within fifteen minutes six large flocks passed 

 directly overhead on their way to the feeding ground. 

 While the last flock was in full view there appeared to 

 the west and about half a mile distant an equally large 

 flock returning from the feeding grounds to the river. 

 When they were opposite each other the nearer flock was 

 thrown into confusion from some unknown cause. The 

 Canadas lost their line and huddled as though they had 

 been shot at. Suddenly a pair of geese darted from the 

 bunch, in spite of the evident efforts of the rest to detain 

 them, and, instead of going toward the feeding grounds, 

 rapidly retraced their way, flying in a southwesterly 

 direction to the second flock. This, too, became con- 

 fused in welcoming the new comers, but, as soon as the 

 formal introduction was concluded, the line resumed its 

 proper position. It looked as though the pair of fugitives 

 had voluntarily given up a feast with enemies in order 

 that they might be with friends. 



Two of our local sportsmen went to the feeding grounds 

 a day or two since, and as they both have records we 

 expected nothing less than a wagonload of game. They 

 found that the cornstalks in the field had been raked into 

 long winrows, thus affording the best possible cover; so 

 they crawled under the pile and awaited the sound of 

 wings. They had lain there perhaps half an hour, when 

 one of them complained of the great amount of smoke in 

 the atmosphere. A few minutes later they crawled out 

 to find the row in flames and two small boys superintend- 

 ing the conflagration. The opulent sportsmen put their 

 hands in their pockets and offered twenty-five cents 

 apiece if the lads would put out the fire. But the inno- 

 cents could not be bribed. "Can't do it, boss, for less'n a 

 dollar," was the ultimatum; so the hunters journeyed 

 homeward, and the sad-eyed boys wished that they had 

 taken the quarter, and the geese laughed audibly as they 

 alighted in the next field. Such, at least, is the story of 

 the smoked-out shots. 



All that is needed to make first-rate shooting is a hard 

 storm. The weather is too fine at present, and with a 

 moderate south wind the flight of geese is out of range, 

 except near the river, where birds are liable to drop into 

 the stream and be carried away. Shoshone. 



Pickerel and Woodcock. — A friend writing me from 

 Haddam, Conn., says he shot in a back-water on the 

 river, 12 pickerel that weighed over 171bs. How's that 

 for shooting fish on the wing ? He also says he started 

 six woodcock in passing through a strip of alders the 

 same day; and says the birds came early this year and 

 in unusual numbers. This looks encouraging for next 

 fall's shooting, and may I be there to see. — A. 



