IN NEW GUINEA Once, for a few startled moments, I thought I had a sea serpent before my very eyes. It was on the middle Fly River in south New Guinea. We were camped on a bamboo-covered bluff overlooking the river. Though about one hundred miles from the mouth, the tide made itself strongly felt here, and there was an abundance of driftwood. This driftwood, varying from freshly uprooted trees that had fallen into the river to waterlogged timber that had been long in the river, went up and down on the tide until it got out in the main channel and so on to the sea. One day at lunch, sitting in front of my tent, I was idly watching the driftwood. One piece in particular caught my fancy. Apparently it was the root of a partly submerged log, projecting about three feet above the water, and curved at the end so that it looked like the neck and head of a reptile with a casque on its head. Knowing it was a waterworn root, in fancy I even saw its eye. I called my companion's attention to it, as here was as close as we were ever likely to get to a sea serpent. Then, the "head" turned. It was alive. For a few startled moments it was a sea serpent. You can imagine our amazement at having a piece of driftwood that we had in fancy turned into a sea serpent come to life. Investigation became the order of the day. The binoculars that were constantly at hand were trained on it. The reality came as a further surprise. Our sea serpent was the head and shoulders of a cassowary which was swimming the river. Later I found that these large, ostrichlike birds, which have a large casque on their heads, are well known to swim, but I didn't then.
This seemed an ideal opportunity to collect a specimen. These birds may weigh up to 150 pounds. When shot in the forest there is the question of lugging them perhaps miles to camp. Here was one swimming up to our door.
We sat quietly waiting for it. But our native boys had seen it too, for next I saw them rowing the dinghy to it. An oar was brought into play to stun it. And then both the boys and ourselves found out something else. Dead cassowaries sink. When the bird was stunned by a blow of an oar, it disappeared below the surface and was never seen again.
CONSERVATION OVER THE TELEPHONE
Richard Orr, the Tribune reporter, called me one day about bronze grackles. It seems that the Chicago Tribune, in their "Day by Day on the Farm," had told about the grackles on the Tribune farm. A Tribune reader wrote in, expressing surprise that grackles were permitted on the Tribune farm and gave details of destruction by grackles of other birds, personally observed. What were the facts of the case? Should grackles be tolerated? Or should they be eliminated? Orr wanted to know.
This is the sort of question that is difficult. It is important, too, for it involves basic conservation issues. And there is no sharp, clear-cut yes-or-no answer. The question as to the grackle's character reminds me of the character of Moses, as explained when I was in school by a professor of the Bible: The black was there and the white was there; Moses was a character sketch in gray. And so with most creatures. They're both good and bad from our standpoint. Grackles certainly do kill other birds at times, and interrupt the nesting of some of our favorite songbirds. And yet, liking birds as I do, I tolerate them in my garden. On a trumpet vine on our garage in Chesterton, Indiana, one year we had a grackle build its nest on top of a domed English-sparrow nest. The young of both sparrows and grackles hatched about the same time, and the two families, within six inches of each other, were successfully raised without friction between the parents.
Quite evidently grackles are not always killers of other birds. As to robins or grackles being the "better" birds, if we had a robin's nest that we prized, and the grackle killed the young in it, the grackle would be "bad." But if we were an inquiring farmer, and had to weigh the grackle against the robin, we might find the grackle "good" and the robin "bad." The grackle feeds its young vast quantities of insects harmful to the gardener; the robin sometimes seems to specialize in earthworms. Earthworms are beneficial to man, passing through the earth, making air and water more accessible, and, by passing earth and vegetable matter through their intestines, enrich the soil.
The house wren that warned the Tribune reader when the grackles were about is often prized as a garden bird; it is bold, saucy in appearance, and a vigorous songster. But it is also well known as a quarrelsome bird, prone to punch holes in the eggs of its neighbors, and it also may fill up with sticks nesting boxes so that other birds cannot use them.
The above was the gist of what I told Orr, and appeared in the May 5, 1950, Tribune.