184 
FOREST AND STREAM 
April, 1920 
FORESTS STREAM 
FORTY-EIGHTH YEAR 
FOUNDERS OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETY 
ADVISORY BOARD 
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, New York, N. Y. 
CARL E.AKELEY, American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
FRANK S. DAGGETT, Museum of Science, Los Angeles, Cal. 
EDMUND HELLER, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 
C. HART M ER RI A M , Biological Survey, Washington, D. C. 
?•. 0SG00p . Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 111. 
PHILLIPS, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CHARLES SH ELDON, Washington, D. C. 
GEORGE SHIRAS, 3rd, Washington, D. C. 
WILLIAM BRUETTE, Editor 
JOHN P. HOLMAN, Associate Editor 
TOM WOOD, Manager 
Nine East Fortieth Street, New York City 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL WILL BE TO 
studiously promote a healthful interest in outdoor rec- 
reation, and a refined taste for natural objects. 
August 14, 1873. 
movement of his broad wings ; a little sparrow hawk 
from a watch point in a tall tree dashes down to cap- 
ture his prey from the dead grass, and bears it off 
to his high wind-swept resting place where he stands 
tearing it to pieces, balancing himself the while with 
graceful movements of wing and tail. 
In the woods and swamps the scenes are still of 
winter. Little banks of snow and ice yet linger in 
the sheltered places. The tall trees stand apart 
ragged and gray. The eye can look far through 
swamps, whose recesses in summer are so well 
hidden. Now one may walk safely over morasses 
that in summer would engulf him, for beneath the 
carpet of sodden leaves and dull green moss there is 
still heavy ice. Yet in the brook and on the pond a 
few of the darting insects that the boys call water 
spiders are skating about. 
The buds of the pussy willows are swelling. 
Where warm springs issue from the hillside the 
new starting grass is vivid green. The purple and 
green spathes of the skunk cabbage have pushed 
their way upward into the warming air, and the 
earliest plants are sending out new leaves. 
In the garden the snowdrops are all in bloom, and 
about the wet places in the meadows new grass is 
sprouting. Only a few weeks more and the whole 
face of the landscape will have changed. 
SIGNS OF SPRING 
r J" 1 HE sun shines warm on the sere brown fields, over 
which the first aggressive robins are running. 
The hedge rows, deserted through the winter except 
for an occasional flock of black snow birds, are alive 
now with the first flight of returning migrants, 
mostly tuneful song sparrows, white throats and fox- 
colored sparrows whose red backs show bright as 
they flash in and out among the tall reeds. Groups 
of crows are awakening the echoes with tumultuous 
cawings and now and then alight in the topmost 
branches of chestnut or oak and swing back and 
forth on the naked twigs holding excited converse. 
From the little pond whose borders are grown up 
with alders and soft maples, comes a confused 
gurgling chatter, punctuated by short bursts of in- 
terrupted song, and presently blackbirds in a dense 
flock rise on wing and, alighting on some tall tree, 
drape its branches in mourning. For a moment they 
sit quiet and then one by one drop down to resume 
their feeding, or perhaps all fly away in a loose, 
straggling flock and disappear in the distance. 
The little phoebes have just returned and are flying 
from one to another of the perches that they used 
last summer. Soon they will venture under the 
piazza roof to inspect the nesting sites in which for 
so many years they have reared their broods. 
Along a brier-grown fence which separates com 
lot from hay meadow a chipmunk is seen to run. 
Doubtless his store of nuts and grain, industriously 
garnered last autumn, is beginning to run low and 
he has ventured abroad to forage and to see if 
spring is really here. The muskrats have left their 
houses and taken to the open. They know that, al- 
though before warm weather actually comes there 
may be snow and cold and ice, there will be no long, 
hard frosts again this spring. 
All winter the gray squirrels have been out off and 
on, and now their tracks are seen in the soft mud 
as so often before they have been seen in the snow. 
A few of the migrating hawks have come — a giant 
redtail scales low over the ground with hardly a 
TO SAVE THE SAGE GROUSE 
'T'HE sage grouse, North America’s largest land 
1 game bird except the wild turkey, has a range 
which is confined chiefly to the high, dry prairies 
of the West where grows the artemisia, commonly 
called sage. This grows only in arid territory and 
at an altitude of several thousand feet, and so the 
range of this great bird is limited. It is not a very 
swift flier, and, being very large, it furnishes an 
easy mark to the gunner. It has been little pursued, 
is very gentle, and because it can be closely ap- 
proached, it suffers severely whenever gunners get 
after it. As settlement advances, and more and more 
people come into the range where the sage grouse are 
found, their numbers will inevitably diminish. 
There are people who believe today that the species 
is approaching extinction. 
Close seasons for these birds accomplish little 
or nothing for the reason that the territory they 
occupy is sparsely settled and is not likely to be 
patrolled by game wardens. 
An effort is now being made to have set aside 
by executive order a bird refuge for this splendid 
species where it will be efficiently protected and 
will be molested by no one. The region recom- 
mended for this refuge is in southern Oregon and 
northern Nevada, a territory now almost waterless 
— substantially desert — but where there are still 
some sage hens and a few antelope. 
The refuge suggested is of considerable size — 
about fifteen hundred square miles — and for the 
most part is public domain, though there are some 
settlers whose ranches cover but a few thousand 
acres. 
The establishment of a refuge for the sage grouse 
should have the effect also of protecting the ante- 
lope that range in this territory. Law-breakers in 
Nevada and Oregon have for years been killing this 
beautiful and fast disappearing animal for Wolf 
bait, and in view of the fact that the antelope is on 
the point of extinction in the United States, it is of 
high importance that all possible steps should be 
