Nov. 5, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
737 
migratory bird which breeds in Central and 
Northern Europe, goes v south in autumn, crosses 
the Mediterranean and spends the winter months 
in Africa. These birds were easily obtained and 
were inexpensive. Considerable numbers of 
them were imported. They appeared to take 
readily to their new home and many of them 
bred. Nevertheless, after a time they disap¬ 
peared without any apparent cause. It was re¬ 
ported that flocks of them had flown out to 
sea and been drowned, and it is quite possible 
that, migrating to the shores of the Gulf of 
Mexico, they attempted to cross that body of 
water and perished. At all events it is now 
many years since one of these birds has been 
authentically reported as taken in America. 
Attempts were made to acclimatize the English 
pheasant in the United States a hundred years 
ago, but the birds turned loose in New Jersey 
all disappeared. Another attempt was made early 
in the nineteenth century, near Belleville, N. J., 
but again the birds' disappeared. It is said that 
between 1820 and 1830 pheasants were turned out 
near Baltimore, Md., but by 1830 the last of the 
birds seems to have vanished. 
In 1880 Hon. O. N. Denny, then United States 
Consul at Tien-Tsin, China, shipped some ring¬ 
necked pheasants to Oregon. Most of these 
died, but the following year, according to the 
report of the fish and game protector of Oregon 
for 1895-96, another shipment was made which 
did better, and these were set free on the ranch 
of John Denny, in the Willamette Valley, in 
Lynn county, Oregon, where they did well and 
increased rapidly. In the late winter or early 
spring, 1885, an important importation came to 
Portland. These were again from Consul Denny 
and were sent to the people of Oregon in care 
of a sportsmen’s association of Portland. They 
included several species. Efforts were made to 
induce the Legislature to enact a law protect¬ 
ing them and to make a small appropriation for 
their care until they could become established. 
The Legislature laughed at these requests and 
treated them with so much scorn as to create 
quite a little sympathy for the sportsmen’s asso¬ 
ciation, and incidentally for the pheasants. The 
owner of Protection Island, in Puget Sound, 
offered to give the birds a home and protect 
them if desired, and they were turned out there. 
In 1882 two hundred pairs of English pheas¬ 
ants were brought to New York from England 
to stock Pierre Lorillard’s game preserve in 
Monmouth county, N. J. They did well there, 
and with others imported later by Pierre Loril- 
lard and Rutherford Stuyvesant and turned out 
at various points in New Jersey and along the 
border between that State and New York, 
stocked in a limited way a considerable terri¬ 
tory west of the LIuds'on River. 
In the year 1881, nineteen Chinese pheasants 
were imported to Victoria, Vancouver Island, 
and set free there, while a law was enacted giv¬ 
ing them absolute protection for five years. They 
increased astonishingly, so that when the closed 
time was ended, there was excellent shooting in 
the neighborhood of Victoria, and it was esti¬ 
mated that during the first season not less than 
3,000 pheasants were killed. During the winter 
the birds could be seen, sometimes along the 
roadside and often in the cultivated fields, and 
were evidently very abundant. 
The introduction of the pheasants in Oregon 
(Continued on page 756.) 
The Sandhill Crane «f Old. 
Omaha, Neb., Oct. 25 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: I read with much pleasure in a recent 
number of Forest and Stream the article on 
the dancing of the sandhill crane, which took 
me back to my early ducking expeditions on the 
Lake Creek marshes on the Pine Ridge reserva¬ 
tion. 
That used to be a famous country for sand¬ 
hill cranes, the greatest without doubt in all this 
part of the West. The Lake Creek marshes 
were also the greatest mallard grounds I ever 
visited, even exceeding the old-time wondrous 
region about Beaver Lake on Upper Kankakee. 
In the early autumn, say along the first two 
weeks of October, the cranes came in there by 
the thousands, and many an hour we spent in 
watching them through our glasses going through 
the evolutions of their grotesque dance. Hun¬ 
dreds of them would settle on a barren hillside, 
probably a quarter of a mile from our tents, 
and evidently for no other purpose than to en¬ 
joy their terpsichorean pastime. I have seen 
scores of these comical birds in the mazes of 
the dance at one time, circling round and round, 
hopping up and down, stiff-legged, now with one 
wing drooping low, now the other squatting, 
sidling and strutting, sometimes running swiftly 
backward and forward, and maintaining all 
the time as a sort of an accompani¬ 
ment, a low cluttering, seductive call. When 
one group of birds grew tired of the dance, 
others would take it up, and always there were 
some of them on the move. Along about sun¬ 
set they would rise in flocks and stream across 
the sunlit sky over our camp out on to the 
hundreds of terraqueous knolls in the middle of 
that vast- marsh where they roosted. Their ring¬ 
ing, far-reaching “Pur-rut, rut-rut” we would 
hear long after darkness had settled over the 
landscape, and we had retired for the night. 
This queer maneuvering could not have been 
any mating ceremony, as we always saw it in the 
fall and but seldom in the spring. This leads 
me to remark that with the possible exception 
of the woodcock, less is known about this royal 
game bird by the average young gunner of the 
day than almost any other game bird whose 
presence we have enjoyed in the past. The 
woodcock even in its palmiest days, and where 
it was most abundant, was always more or less 
of a study and a mystery, but not so with the 
sandhill. He was once as common as the wild 
goose or our so-called white brant, and was as 
thoroughly understood in all his whims and 
habits, as was either of these birds, but in latter 
years he has been scarce, indeed, and like the 
wild pigeon is destined soon to become only a 
memory. 
Even now he is a rarity, and on a three 
weeks’ trip to this same famous old ground 
you will see fewer birds during your entire so¬ 
journ there than you could have seen at a single 
glance any evening fifteen or twenty years ago. 
As co-migrants with the wild goose and ducks, 
as tempting game birds, they formerly ranked 
high in the estimation of all our sportsmen, and 
to-day it would be a greater boon to kill a 
sandhill than it would a Canada goose. In keen¬ 
ness of vision the sandhill crane has no superi¬ 
ors, not even in the wild turkey, the red-tailed 
hawk or orange-legged mallard, while he has 
all the cunning of the smartest of them and can 
hear about as far as any bird that stalks the 
plains or cleaves the air. Unlike other birds 
there is never any change noted in the sandhill. 
He is always wild and shy and extremely cau¬ 
tious in all his wanderings. He does not get 
accustomed to the sight of men like the mem¬ 
bers of the goose and the duck family, but is 
always suspicious, always wary and alert. 
A sportsman to-day would have a discouraging 
task on his hands were he to contract to fur¬ 
nish you a sandhill crane within a reasonable 
given time. Long ago they were driven away 
from their former well-known haunts within a 
day’s travel of Omaha, and now are but seldom 
seen even in the best of seasons in the gloomiest 
recesses of the remotest sandhills and desert 
marsh lands. 
They were truly a great bird and a good one, 
too, and it is with profound melancholy the old 
sportsman notes their passing. 
The fact that there are still a few \vhite- 
tailed deer lingering in the wilds of Cherry 
county, and that an occasional small bunch of 
antelope come down into our State from the 
mountains is not nearly so incredible as is the 
fact that there are yet many beaver to be found 
along the streams in our northwestern counties. 
Mr. Russell, a rancher, on the Dismal, has a 
colony of over 300 along a three-mile stretch, 
and he guards them with even greater vigilance 
than he does his cattle. There are small colonies 
also along Big Creek, White River and the 
Birdwood, and where they are protected, as they 
are everywhere in this State, they are on the 
increase.! 
Charles Jordan, living at Valentine, on the 
Niobrara, was bitten by a rattlesnake while hunt¬ 
ing Sunday, and is in a critical condition. It 
seems that he had shot a rabbit; what for is 
not stated, and it ran into a hole on the open 
plain. He knelt on his knees to take a look, 
when the snake, which lay coiled in the low- 
cropped grass close to the hole, struck him. It 
gave no warning. His face and neck were 
swollen almost beyond recognition when he 
reached Valentine, and while his physician thinks 
he will recover, he had a close call. 
Another accident to a hunter is reported from 
Wymore. Henry E. Fuller, a young man, while 
coming out of a low, marshy place where he 
had gone for ducks, trailed his gun behind him, 
holding it well forward by the barrels. It 
caught in some small vines and was discharged, 
both loads entering his neck and face, killing 
him instantly. 
United States Judge W. H. Munger teturned 
from a successful chicken shoot out north of 
Hyannis this morning. He says the birds are 
still plentiful out there and he brought in the 
limit. Sandy Griswold. 
Bears Fond of Cider. 
The bears of Plunkett’s Creek township, Ly¬ 
coming county, are hard drinkers. Edward Ful¬ 
ler left two barrels of cider at a crossroads, 
where his neighbor’s wagon had rolled them off 
on the way back from the cider press. They 
were near to where the Fullers were to make 
apple butter. The next morning after the ar¬ 
rival of the barrels Fuller found that the bungs 
had been drawn and the cider gone. The tracks 
of bears all around told the story.—Philadelphia 
Record. 
