8 THE JA'UDU BON] BU ihe 
and bushes, likewise have their typical group of birds. Here are such 
species as towhee, indigo bunting, cardinal, chipping sparrow, goldfinch, 
field sparrow, mourning dove, blue-winged warbler, catbird, brown thrasher, 
cedar waxwing, kingbird, and others. 
Although the steep-sided sandstone gorges are among the most interest- 
ing features of the park to the average visitor, they contain little birdlife 
except where their slopes or bottoms have considerable amounts of herbace- 
ous or woody vegetation. Most non-aquatic birds have a fundamental and 
direct dependence on plants, for plants serve to afford food, nesting sites, 
and shelter to most species. But two species which do utilize the canyon 
walls for shelter and nest sites are the phoebe and the rough-winged 
swallow. Almost every canyon has one or more pairs of phoebes nesting on 
small projections beneath overhanging rock walls. The lower reaches of 
Rocky Hollow have several favorite spots so utilized. One summer a phoebe 
incubated its eggs throughout most of the day of July Fourth, while hun- 
dreds of people streamed by within ten feet of the nest, which was only four 
feet from the ground at the edge of the trail. Because it was in heavy 
shadow, probably few if any of the visitors realized its presence. 
The rough-winged swallows nest also in niches and on ledges in the 
higher sandstone walls, especially near the mouth of Rocky Hollow and in 
Turkey Run Hollow, beneath the old concrete bridge, and along the sides 
of the gorge farther up stream. Unlike the bank swallow, this species is a 
solitary nester. These swallows do some foraging in the canyons, but Sugar 
Creek is the main place for this activity. 
In the days when the region about Turkey Run was first being settled 
by white men (approximately the second quarter of the last century), wild 
turkeys were found there in varying abundance. Probably many of the 
beech and oak trees still standing in the park have provided mast on which 
wild turkeys fattened in the autumn. Legend has it that hunters used to 
obtain turkeys by cornering them in the canyons, from which the huge 
birds had difficulty in rising. Flocks of turkeys were said to have roosted 
on the ledges in the canyons during the winter, sheltered there from wind 
and snow. And so, according to tradition, arose the name of Turkey Run. 
Then, too, up to a little over a hundred years ago, the bottoms of Sugar 
Creek often resounded to the shrill cries and chatter of flocks of the Carolina 
paroquet, now confined to a few diminishing colonies in difficultly accessible 
parts of the South. The bars in the river furnished numbers of cockle burs, 
their favorite food, while the many beeches, black gums, hackberries, oaks 
and wild cherries of the upland woods provided the staple diet. The abun- 
dant sycamores were probably most commonly utilized for nesting, where 
cavities were available in trunks or limbs. Amos W. Butler quotes Prof. 
John Collett as stating that in the winter of 1842 a Parke County settler 
cut down a large, hollow sycamore, and in the cavity found some hundreds 
of paroquets hibernating, hanging by their hooked bills, with partial support 
from their feet. He sawed off a five foot section of the hollowed trunk, cut 
a@ window in it, and kept a number of the birds for several weeks in his 
house, studying their habits of food and sleeping, feeding them various wild 
berries, nuts and grain. In a few years more they had disappeared from 
