FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 27, 1907. 
and when we paid our visit early the next morn¬ 
ing they were still there, but perched well up 
in the top limbs. We had at last reached almost 
a bird-in-the-hand acquaintance with the old 
birds. We could watch them at close range and 
they did not seem to care. 
I have watched a good many birds, but I 
never saw the work divided up as it seemed to 
be in the grosbeak nest. The first day I stayed 
about the nest I noticed that the male was_ feed¬ 
ing the little birds almost entirely. The female 
fed only about once an hour, while he fed every 
ten or fifteen minutes. This seemed rather 
contrary to my understanding of bird ethics. 
Generally the male is wilder than his mate and 
she has' to take the responsibility of the nest. 
The next day I watched conditions were the 
same, but I was surprised to see that the parental 
duties were just reversed. The female was 
going and coming continually with food, while 
the 'male sat about in the treetops, sang and 
preened his feathers leisurely, only taking the 
trouble to hunt up one mouthful for his bairns 
to every sixth or seventh his mate brought. To 
my surprise the third day I found the male was 
the busy bird again. Out of eighteen plates ex¬ 
posed that day on the grosbeaks I only got five 
snaps at the female and three of these were 
poor ones. The fourth day I watched the fe¬ 
male seemed to have charge of the feeding 
again, but she spent most of her time trying to 
coax the bantlings to follow her off into the 
bushes. It was hardly the male’s day for get¬ 
ting the meals, but on the whole he fed almost 
as much as his mate, otherwise the youngsters 
would not have received their daily allowance. 
I have watched at some nests where the young 
were cared for almost entirely by the female, 
and I have seen others where those duties were 
taken up largely by the male. Many times I 
have seen both work side by side in rearing a 
family, but the grosbeaks seemed to have a 
way of dividing duties equally and alternating 
wi f h days of rest and labor. 
The grosbeaks stayed about the thicket for 
over two weeks. I saw the babies when they 
were almost full grown birds and watched them 
follow the old birds about. They were able 
to find bugs and feed themselves, but each knew 
it was easier to be fed than to go- about look¬ 
ing under every twig and leaf. One flew up to 
the limb beside the male, quivering his wings 
and begging for a bite. The old bird straight¬ 
ened back and looked at him with an air of in¬ 
quiry, “Why don’t you hunt for yourself?” The 
little fellow turned his back as if in shame, but 
he kept on crying. The male flew into the next 
tree; the little beggar followed and squatted 
right beside him as if he half expected a trounc¬ 
ing. I looked to see him get it. The male turned 
and fed him. He could not resist! In some 
ways, children are the same, and bird fathers 
are, perhaps, a good deal like human fathers. 
William L. Finley. 
Why Do Wounded Ducks Disappear? 
Augusta, Maine, April 20 .— Editor Forest and 
Stream: I have read with much interest the 
articles on this question, and cannot for the life 
of me see why there should be any contention 
upon that point. That is, if the query is put 
another way, “Why do some wounded ducks 
disappear for good and never come to the sur¬ 
face?” There can be but one answer to that 
cmestion, and that given by your correspondents. 
They either get tangled and cannot come up, 
or in a death grip hold to something and remain 
there. The question I want to raise is, how 
many of such instances happen in one’s hunt¬ 
ing experiences? I have seen ducks disappear, 
and have tried in vain to get another look at 
them and failed, but I was satisfied that they 
outwitted me. 
In all my gunning experiences of more than 
fifty years—and my principal shooting has been 
duck shooting—I can only remember of two in¬ 
stances where to my knowledge a wounded duck 
disappeared and did not come to the surface. 
One was when a black duck, in shallow, weedy 
water, badly wmunded, dove and I unfastened it 
with my paddle from a root which it had taken 
hold of with its bill. Another, same kind of 
bird, got tangled in some weeds and was liber¬ 
ated in the same way. I have had plenty of 
them get aw r ay after being wounded, especially 
the bluebill, whistler and ruddy, and have had 
the black and wood duck play me pretty fine 
antics in trying to and many times fooling me 
and getting away. My shooting has been done 
where observation was easy, as the waters were 
not deep and the bottoms well adapted to allow 
the bird to take hold and remain down. For 
one I do not believe any duck purposely does 
this to fool the gunner. Crazed or in a death 
struggle it may do so, but not with the inten¬ 
tion of committing suicide or evading the gunner. 
The opportunities for observing birds fasten 
themselves to the bottom have been very rare, 
even in shallow water. Often I can remember 
FEMALE GROSBEAK ABOUT TO FEED HER YOUNG. 
Photograph by H. T. Bohlman. 
when trying to retrieve a wounded bird, when 
the water was without a ripple, that it was diffi¬ 
cult to d® so, from the fact that as soon as the 
duck found itself pursued it would dive, and 
when it came to the surface, only show its head 
or bill, get air and go down again, and strange 
to say, appear off at one side of the boat or 
directly behind it. Finally, being unable to 
locate the rise again, I have had to abandon the 
pursuit. One not accustomed to these tricks 
might easily infer that it went to the bottom 
and fastened itself there, while it simply made 
its retreat to safe quarters without being ob¬ 
served again. Very rarely have I ever found 
a dead duck upon the water, which must have 
happened if the bird had taken hold of some¬ 
thing and remained down. It would be liberated 
some time and come to the surface. It all 
proves to my mind that it is a very unusual 
thing for a duck to thus fasten itself to the 
bottom. 
When the waters were rippled and the duck 
not badly wounded, it is very difficult to keep 
an eye on it and retrieve it. Therefore it is 
conclusive to me that very few ducks disappear 
to remain upon the bottom, and that some do is 
not at all strange. E. C. Farrington. 
The Butcher Bird. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
This hook-billed fellow, not as large as the 
robin, appears to us as one of the bloodthirstiest 
of all birds, vet perhaps he is not more so than 
the owl or hawk. The fact that the shrike or 
butcher bird, after killing its prey, lizard, snake, 
insect or bird, has a habit of impaling it upon a 
thorn or barbed wire, devouring it at its leisure, 
gives it a credit for ferocity and cruelty more 
or less undeserved. 
An alligator will drag down a calf and instead 
of devouring it at once will crowd the body 
securely between some entangling submerged 
roots and then allow it to rest securely for per¬ 
haps days. The alligator as well as the butcher 
bird may be epicurean as to taste. Those who 
like jugged hare think it no objection that when 
being prepared for the jug that worms should 
be found burrowing freely in the flesh of the 
hare. Ducks, green with incipient decomposi¬ 
tion, are considered of the proper “highness" to 
be roasted and served upon the table. All this 
being so, the butcher bird, like his namesake who 
hangs legs of mutton upon the ceiling until they 
are tender and high at the same time, prefers to 
hang his game upon thorn or barbed wire until 
it has assumed that condition of “highness” most 
preferable to the palate of the butcher bird. 
The hawk or owl after striking its prey will 
seek some isolated spot and with beak and claw 
rend it into devouring mouthfuls, while the 
butcher bird will hang his game on a thorn or 
in the crotch of a limb or upon the sharpened 
point of a fence wire to eat it at his leisure. 
Lizards and small snakes, mice and very 
young gophers, and the fledgling birds, tree- 
toads, locusts and grasshoppers come to the 
shrike with equal favor. 
He is a bold marauder and will take a fledg¬ 
ling off the ground right under the eyes of its 
mother. He strikes home with his pointed beak, 
or if the coast is clear will tear the head free 
and clutching the body in its talons retreat to 
its store house and then hang up the bird to 
season. 
The mockingbird, full of fight and fury, when 
the shrike comes sneaking around its nestlings 
as they are ready to leave the nest, will in a 
few moments drive the bloodthirsty enemy to 
cover. The sight of a shrike is sufficient to set 
a mockingbird c-r-r-r-r-ing as it prepares itself 
to descend upon the enemy. X. 
Bison in Nebraska. 
Seattle, Wash., April 11 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: I notice that Mr. Lewton killed a 
buffalo in Hall county in 1873, and thinks this 
to be among the last killed in Nebraska. My 
father moved to Plum Creek (now Lexington), 
Dawson county, in April, 1873. He settled on 
some land about six miles northwest of town. 
The fall of that year we camped on the farm 
in putting up our hay. There was not a house 
within sight, and it was not unusual to see 
deer, elk, antelope and often buffalo in the 
morning between our tent and the hills to the 
north, about three miles. Of course, in these 
days we never left the house for any distance 
without our guns, both rifle and shotgun. 
In 1875 I, with my brother, was breaking 
some prairie on a pre-emption about two miles 
west of the original homestead. We saw a herd 
of about one hundred buffalo traveling toward 
the Platte River to the south. Taking my 
hunting horse out of the plow and my gun 
from the wagon, I gave chase. The buffalo 
circled toward the east, then north toward the 
hills from whence they came, and at a point 
about two miles east of the ranches of Kreitz 
and Cramers I overtook them, and picking out 
what afterward proved to be a nice, fat, young 
heifer, I killed it, one being all I cared for; this 
was late in summer or early fall of 1875. 
R. R. Hetrick. 
March 23.- — I was “brought up” on Forest and 
Stream, having it to read from the time I was able to 
read, and the pictures to look at before that.—F. A. 
Hedge. 
