iris ArUD UPB OiN” SB IU EET aN a 
OCTOBER 11. Brown creepers returned today. 
OCTOBER 12. Chimney swifts left today. 
OcTOBER 13. Killing frost. Great flights of crested cormorants. 
OCTOBER 23. The big flight of snow and blue geese went over 
last night. 
NOVEMBER. Quail crop abundant but most birds are very young 
and small. Evidently the early hatch was disturbed or killed and the 
second was very late. 
DECEMBER. During December I have seen bluebirds nearly every 
day. A flock of thirty doves and fifty meadowlarks wintered on my 
farm. Shrikes remained all winter while flickers and red-headed wood- 
peckers have been common winter visitors. The drift of chickadees 
which carried our birds west several years ago has made them scarce. 
Happily they have returned to us this year. The appearance of a 
Mississippi kite on December 3 was one of the highlights of the winter 
season. Also a red-tailed hawk in nearly white winter plumage was 
interesting, but not unusual.* Pa Quincy, 
Episode 
I found a dying gull on the sands. It was of a beauty so great 
it hardly seemed fanciful to regard it as an angel dropped piteously 
from the sky. It suffered me to lift it. It did not struggle nor show 
fear. There was, it Seemed to me, a look of resignation in its mild 
eye. What struck me most was its perfection of plumage. Not a 
feather, not a barb, was stained or sodden. There was, evidently, no 
wound. 
It was an adult Bonaparte’s Gull, in winter plumage. On its 
back and head it wore a mantle of pearl-gray mist; its figure else 
was white as cherry-bloom in May. Even its snowy breast, which 
had rested on the wet sand, was immaculate. 
I took it home, intending to restore it, if possible. When I lifted 
it from the robe on which I had laid it, there was a little pool of blood 
but, mysteriously, not a drop on the bird. Its purity, one felt, was 
such as to be incapable of stain. The blood must have come from gape 
or vent but there was no trace of its passing. 
I tried to force it to take a morsel of bread dipped in brandy but 
it resisted; albeit so weakly that it could be seen it was near spent. 
Then suddenly it raised, spread wide its wings toward heaven and ex- 
pired. And fancy insisted that the bird, in its final moment, aspired 
to some bright vision it had seen. 
EDWARD R. Forp. 
New Smyrna Beach, Fla., Jan. 13, 1938. 
*Possibly Krider’s Hawk.—EbD. 
