A BIT OF WOODLAND ON THE SLOPE TOWARDS OYSTER BAY
From stereograph, copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York
As we walked along we discussed many questions, all bearing directly or indirectly upon natural history. The conversation was perpetually interrupted by some bird-note in the trees about us which we would pause to identify—the President's ear, I thought, being the most alert of the three. Continuing the talk, he dwelt upon the inaccuracy of most persons' seeing, and upon the unreliability as natural history of most of the stories told by guides and hunters. Sometimes writers of repute were to be read with caution. He mentioned that excellent hunting book of Colonel Dodge's, in which are described two species of the puma, one in the West called the "mountain lion," very fierce and dangerous; the other called in the East the "panther,"—a harmless and cowardly animal. "Both the same species," said the President, "and almost identical in disposition."
Nothing is harder than to convince a person that he has seen wrongly. The other day a doctor accosted me in the street of one of our inland towns to tell me of a strange bird he had seen; the bird was blood-red all over and was in some low bushes by the roadside. Of course I thought of our scarlet tanager, which was then just arriving. No, he knew that bird with black wings and tail; this bird had no black upon it, but every quill and feather was vivid scarlet. The doctor was very positive, so I had to tell him we had no such bird in our state. There was the summer redbird common in the Southern States, but this place is much beyond its northern limit, and, besides, this bird is not scarlet, but is of a dull red. Of course he had seen a tanager, but in the shade of the bushes the black of the wings and tail had escaped him.
This was simply a case of mis-seeing in an educated man; but in the untrained minds of trappers and woodsmen generally there is an element of the superstitious, and a love for the marvelous, which often prevents them from seeing the wild life about them just as it is. They possess the mythop[oe]ic faculty, and they unconsciously give play to it.
Thus our talk wandered as we wandered along the woods and field paths. The President brought us back by the corner of a clover meadow where he was sure a pair of red-shouldered starlings had a nest. He knew it was an unlikely place for starlings to nest, as they breed in marshes and along streams and in the low bushes on lake borders, but this pair had always shown great uneasiness when he had approached this plot of tall clover. As we drew near, the male starling appeared and uttered his alarm note. The President struck out to look for the nest, and for a time the Administration was indeed in clover, with the alarmed black-bird circling above it and showing great agitation. For my part, I hesitated on the edge of the clover patch, having a farmer's dread of seeing fine grass trampled down. I suggested to the President that he was injuring his hay crop; that the nest was undoubtedly there or near there; so he came out of the tall grass, and, after looking into the old tumbled-down barn—a regular early settler's barn, with huge timbers hewn from forest trees—that stood near by, and which the President said he preserved for its picturesqueness and its savor of old times, as well as for a place to romp in with his dogs and children, we made our way to the house.
The purple finch nested in the trees about the house, and the President was greatly pleased that he was able to show us this bird also.
A PATH IN THE WOODS LEADING TO COLD SPRING HARBOR
From stereograph, copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York
A few days previous to our visit the children had found a bird's nest on the ground, in the grass, a few yards below the front of the house. There were young birds in it, and as the President had seen the grasshopper sparrow about there, he concluded the nest belonged to it. We went down to investigate it, and found the young gone and two addled eggs in the nest. When the President saw those eggs, he said: "That is not the nest of the grasshopper sparrow, after all; those are the eggs of the song sparrow, though the nest is more like that of the vesper sparrow. The eggs of the grasshopper sparrow are much lighter in color—almost white, with brown specks." For my part, I had quite forgotten for the moment how the eggs of the little sparrow looked or differed in color from those of the song sparrow. But the President has so little to remember that he forgets none of these minor things! His bird-lore and wood-lore seem as fresh as if just learned.