76 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Jan. 17, 1914. 
the township and I suppose you've got a duck 
massacre all laid out'for us. Huh?” 
“Yessir,” fired Pete. “I’ve been waiting for 
you fellers to come so’s we could kill a big bag 
of ducks. The ponds are just a couple of miles 
off.” And he started hitching up, while we gave 
the crumbs to John who was so fagged he 
wouldn’t walk over from his cool spot under the 
wagon to get them for himself. 
On the way to the ponds we saw a few bunches 
of ducks swinging from one pot-hole to another, 
and rightly decided that the stands on the passes 
were all taken. Driving over the hill we could 
distinguish tawny caps and duck-coats lying about 
the tall grass, so we stopped in the grove of 
box-elders on the hill and debated. Bert dis¬ 
covered a covey of something near a hundred 
shitepokes in the tops of the trees at the oppo¬ 
site end of the grove, and declared he was going 
to have some shooting anyhow. 
Pete was for it, though the rest of us were 
content to sit in the shade and watch for any¬ 
grain. But we had had a great day of it. The 
watchers of the covies, those men who lifted the 
sickle-bar when it threatened a nest, who raised 
their plows to avoid disturbing a young brood, 
who watched their dogs and killed the foxes and 
coyotes, who frowned down the “sooner” from 
the villages—those hearties of the prairies had 
enjoyed their limited sport. Well they knew 
that cool weather would bring the birds out into 
the stubbles where they would lie to the dog, or 
sit until kicked from under foot. When they 
had plowed a half or two-thirds of the stubble- 
lands, and cut their hay,- shocked half their corn, 
and started threshing the great stacks of bundled 
grain that awaited—then they knew it would be 
easier -to get a “mess of chickens,” and twice or 
thrice during the fall they would go out again. 
They shoot for the meat, the change of diet, the 
fun of the pursuit, for the sport, if you will 
have it that way. And they welcome the man 
from anywhere who is courteous and considerate 
of the birds, and who wants to work his dog and 
. 
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TAKING A REST. 
thing that might resemble a bunch of ducks 
coming in. 
“You play dog, Bert,” suggested Pete as they 
left the wagon, “and remember that if you flush 
a shitepoke I’m going to jerk a sommerset out 
of you. When I say ‘Point’ you point, no matter 
whether you see a shitepoke or not.” 
They were hardly out of sight before their 
fusillade began and the air became full of squawk¬ 
ing members of the heron species, circling and 
standing up into the wind. And I might add 
that they were liberally damned by those watchers 
of the ponds, though we did not hear it. It was 
in the air! 
Homeward we turned during midafternoon. 
We passed rigs and rigs of jolly hunters, all 
farmers who owned land and plows in that 
section, celebrating the opening of the season. 
Good bags were scarce. 
“What you got ?” 
This was the uniform query as we passed other 
parties. And the reply was the same. 
“Too hot. Birds in the corn.” All of which 
was the sum total of the situation. 
Prairie chickens will not leave the corn during 
a scorching day. Early in the morning they will 
wing to the creeks for a drink, and then run 
through the stubbles or fly back to the corn 
and possibly tarry for a few moments by the 
way chasing hoppers and filling crops on waste 
leave enough for seed and to spare. Prairie 
chickens will increase under the hands and eyes 
of these great hearted men, these guardians of 
the covies. 
In late afternoon we arrived at Pete’s and 
struck out for home, taking a circuitous route 
through a bit of stubble along the ripening corn. 
In the center of the field we saw a woman, gun 
in arm, carefully quartering a portion of the 
field. When she saw us, she halted and motioned 
us to come up to her from behind. It was Mrs. 
Nate who, tired of staying the day out at home, 
had put the cat out, and started on a little scout 
for a possible bird. 
“Just as I came through the corn a pair of birds 
raised into the air and dropped over here some¬ 
where. Cast the dog off ahead.” Mrs. Nate 
is something of a hunter herself and knows all 
the terms, enjoys the recounting of the day’s 
doings as well as the next one, as if she were 
there and had a hand in it. 
Off the chain, John a bit refreshed, quartered 
across the dry stubble and located a single. He 
was dead tired, but found the bird, and made 
his point while we came up behind, ready for the 
bird to get up. When it rose Mrs. Nate promptly 
dropped it with the second barrel, though it was 
her first shot of the season. 
John swung out again, and nailed another 
single about two hundred yards ahead of us, 
but we were too late, and the bird too wild to 
hold in the stubble, and we lost it. Anyhow we 
were glad enough to get back to Mrs. Nate’s 
spread and laden table, and annoint the inner 
man, while we all regaled her with the tale of 
her spouse, and the birds he so neatly missed 
along the drainage ditch. Such viands make the 
poorest day’s hunt a pleasure and a blessing. 
The Nightingale’s Song 
By W. K. PUTNEY 
The song of the nightingale has always been 
considered the hardest of bird songs to be inter¬ 
preted. The praises of the bird have been sung 
by many a person, no less personages than 
Shakespeare, Milton, Cowper, Byron, Shelley, 
Keats, Longfellow, Gil Vincente, Coleridge, 
Drummond, and Christina G. Rosetti, having 
lauded this famous bird, but as far as actual in¬ 
terpretations of the beautiful singer’s song, 
nobody has ever struck- the right chord and few 
indeed are they who have attempted to do so. It 
has been put to notes and the notes do come 
within bounds of reasonable interpretation, but 
as to words, nobody has considered himself capa¬ 
ble of portraying the beauty and passion of the 
song. In a paper dated 1871, I find the following 
syllable interpretation by a Geneva musician 
named Bechstein; it is thrilling and yet does it 
express what the notes really should? 
“Zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zo-zirrhrlding 
Hez-ez-ez-ez-ez-ez-ez-ez-ez cowar ho dze hoi 
Hai-gai - gai - gai-gai - gai-gai - gai - gai - gai guai - a-gai 
coricor dzio dzio pi.” 
Perhaps this was the idea of Bechstein; cer¬ 
tainly any bird that could go through with those 
syllables should be well trained! But to my mind 
the song of the nightingale cannot be properly 
interpreted; it is the ideal of bird music, and one 
cannot ever reach the ideal; in describing the 
songs of other birds, what author is not satisfied 
if he can simply state that her song has the touch¬ 
ing notes of the nightingale? I think that we 
can be well satisfied with the notes as given by 
authors or musicians of prominence, such as the 
interpretation of Athanasius Kircher, in “Musur- 
gia Universalis,” and reproduced by F. Schuyler 
Mathews in his book “Field Book of Wild Birds 
and Their Music.” 
NOTES OF A CASUAL READER. 
The introduction of the American gray squir¬ 
rel to English parks is bringing many complaints 
of its mischievous propensities. It is said to kill 
or drive away the British squirrels in an amazing¬ 
ly short time; and it is feared that when it 
spreads to the wilder lands the native species of 
squirrel will be exterminated. This fable teaches 
that it is dangerous to implant animals where 
Nature didn't place them. 
In parts of the Mississippi Valley the crayfish 
is such a nuisance to farmers, especially when 
mowing, that the Department of Agriculture is 
trying to abate it. There are districts where the 
black prairie soil has an average of 10,000 cray¬ 
fish holes to the acre. The old method of catch¬ 
ing the creatures by hand, at night, costs from 
$6 to $10 an acre, but the Biological Survey’s men 
poison them at a quarter of that expense. 
A new species of whalebone-whale has been 
discovered in the South Atlantic. Instead of 
feeding on minute crustaceans, as does its huge 
relative, the rorqual, it subsists on small school¬ 
ing fishes, as young herring, mackerel, and the 
like; and the frayed ends of its baleen are not 
curled into a woolly fringe, as in the rorqual, 
which needs such a fringe to hold its almost 
invisible fare, but are straight and comblike. The 
new rorqual is nearly as large, and commercially 
as valuable, as the more familiar whale of those 
waters. Binocular. 
