The boys took the hint, and when they came to the big ditch they saw, crowding up stream along the sandy bottom of its clear waters, multitudes of long, slender pickerel, one of the most prized game fish of the Wisconsin waters. “I might have thought of that,” said naturalist Dauphin. “These fish crowd into every little stream each spring and swim up as far as they can, to deposit their eggs.”
With the three-tined spears that Uncle Sam Thompson made for them, the boys enjoyed great sport in the shallow water of the big ditch, and put away several more dollars as a result of the fish dinners served to the ditchers.
Then came the days of the flight of the “passenger pigeons,” and a new idea entered the heads of the boys.
To one who was not for himself privileged to see, the tales of the great size of the flocks of these birds, of their nesting places, of their daily flights for food, must appear gross exaggeration. Yet I am but stating an historical fact when I say that at times the sky would be darkened as by a heavy thunder cloud, and the rush of wings could be likened only to the roar of a mighty waterfall, at the passage of the innumerable multitudes of these birds.
In the section of the state concerning which I write, there was no form of animal life in such apparent prodigal abundance. Much has been written of the “passenger pigeon;” the beauty of its long, blue and bluish-white body; its rapid flight; its habits of nesting at a remote distance from its feeding ground—and then the mystery of the sudden and complete extinction of this the most numerous of all birds. For it was, that one day the woods were full of their nestlings, the skies darkened by their flight—and then they were not, forever.
The mystery of the “passenger pigeon” is indeed like that of that prehistoric race, the builders of the strange mounds of that region—without doubt, a great and numerous people, spreading from the Rockies to the Alleghanies—but who, in some long-past days were not, leaving no answer to Why, and When, and How.
The clouds of these birds spread over the boys at their fishing. “Dauph,” said Rob, “do you know where these birds will nest?”
“Yes,” replied Dauphin, “over in the dead pines in Adams county, some fifteen miles from here. Uncle Sam says there were millions upon millions of nests there last year.”
“Well, I’m for taking a trip over that way to see what we can do for another fresh meat contract,” said Ed.
The boys carried out their plan, and when they came to the abandoned fields of dead pines they found the crudely built nests of the past year in inconceivable numbers. About three o’clock in the afternoon the birds began to arrive from their feeding place over in Minnesota, and the noise and apparent confusion were indescribable. As they came crowding into their roosting place it was not guns that the boys needed for their capture, but simply clubs to swing, and in almost no time they had as many of these game birds as they could make use of at a time.