Outdoor pastimes of an American hunter

by Theodore Roosevelt

ALGONQUIN AND SKIP

The neighborhood of Washington abounds in birds no less than in flowers. There have been one or two rather curious changes among its birds since John Burroughs wrote of them forty years ago. He speaks of the red-headed woodpecker as being then one of the most abundant of all birds—even more so than the robin. It is not uncommon now, and a pair have for three years nested in the White House grounds; but it is at present by no means an abundant bird. On the other hand, John Burroughs never saw any mocking-birds, whereas during the last few years these have been increasing in numbers, and there are now several places within easy walking or riding distance where we are almost sure to find them. The mocking-bird is as conspicuous as it is attractive, and when at its best it is the sweetest singer of all birds; though its talent for mimicry, and a certain odd perversity in its nature, often combine to mar its performances. The way it flutters and dances in the air when settling in a tree-top, its alert intelligence, its good looks, and the comparative ease with which it can be made friendly and familiar, all add to its charm. I am sorry to say that it does not nest in the White House grounds. Neither does the wood thrush, which is so abundant in Rock Creek Park, within the city limits. Numbers of robins, song-sparrows, sputtering, creaking purple grackles—crow blackbirds—and catbirds nest in the grounds. So, I regret to say, do crows, the sworn foes of all small birds, and as such entitled to no mercy. The hearty, wholesome, vigorous songs of the robins, and the sweet, homelike strains of the song-sparrows are the first to be regularly heard in the grounds, and they lead the chorus. The catbirds chime in later; they are queer, familiar, strongly individual birds, and are really good singers; but they persist in interrupting their songs with catlike squalling. Two or three pairs of flickers nest with us, as well as the red-headed woodpeckers above mentioned; and a pair of furtive cuckoos. A pair of orchard orioles nested with us one spring, but not again; the redstarts, warbling vireos, and summer warblers have been more faithful. Baltimore orioles frequently visit us, as do the scarlet tanagers and tufted titmice, but for some reason they have not nested here. This spring a cardinal bird took up his abode in the neighborhood of the White House, and now and then waked us in the morning by his vigorous whistling in a magnolia tree just outside our windows. A Carolina wren also spent the winter with us, and sang freely. In both spring and fall the white-throated sparrows sing while stopping over in the course of their migrations. Their delicate, plaintive, musical notes are among the most attractive of bird sounds. In the early spring we sometimes hear the fox-sparrows and tree-sparrows, and of course the twittering snow-birds. Later warblers of many kinds throng the trees around the house. Rabbits breed in the grounds, and every now and then possums wander into them. Gray squirrels are numerous, and some of them so tame that they will eat out of our hands. In spring they cut the flowers from the stately tulip trees. In the hot June days the indigo birds are especially in evidence among the singers around Washington; they do not mind the heat at all, but perch in the tops of little trees in the full glare of the sun, and chant their not very musical, but to my ears rather pleasing, song throughout the long afternoons. This June two new guests came to the White House in the shape of two little saw-whet owls; little bits of fellows, with round heads, and no head tufts, or “ears.” I think they were the young of the year; they never uttered the saw-whet sound, but made soft snoring noises. They always appeared after nightfall, when we were sitting on the south porch, in the warm, starlit darkness. They were fearless and unsuspicious. Sometimes they flew noiselessly to and fro, and seemingly caught big insects on the wing. At other times they would perch on the iron awning-bars, directly overhead. Once one of them perched over one of the windows, and sat motionless, looking exactly like an owl of Pallas Athene.

PETER RABBIT
From a photograph, copyright, 1904, by E. S. Curtis

At Sagamore Hill we like to have the wood-folk and field-folk familiar; but there are necessary bounds to such familiarity where chickens are kept for use and where the dogs are valued family friends. The rabbits and gray squirrels are as plenty as ever. The flying squirrels and chipmunks still hold their own; so do the muskrats in the marshes. The woodchucks, which we used to watch as we sat in rocking-chairs on the broad veranda, have disappeared; but recently one has made himself a home under the old barn, where we are doing our best to protect him. A mink which lived by the edge of the bay under a great pile of lumber had to be killed; its lair showed the remains not only of chickens and ducks, but of two muskrats, and, what was rather curious, of two skates or flatfish. A fox which lived in the big wood lot evidently disliked our companionship and abandoned his home. Of recent years I have actually seen but one fox near Sagamore Hill. This was early one morning, when I had spent the night camping on the wooded shores near the mouth of Huntington Harbor. The younger children were with me, this being one of the camping-out trips, in rowboats, on the Sound, taken especially for their benefit. We had camped the previous evening in a glade by the edge of a low sea-bluff, far away from any house; and while the children were intently watching me as I fried strips of beefsteak and thin slices of potatoes in bacon fat, we heard a fox barking in the woods. This gave them a delightfully wild feeling, and with refreshing confidence they discussed the likelihood of seeing it next morning; and to my astonishment see it we did, on the shore, soon after we started to row home.

THE GUINEA PIGS

One pleasant fall morning in 1892 I was writing in the gun-room, on the top floor of the house, from the windows of which one can see far over the Sound. Suddenly my small boy of five bustled up in great excitement to tell me that the hired-man had come back from the wood-pile pond—a muddy pool in a beech and hickory grove a few hundred yards from the house—to say that he had seen a coon and that I should come down at once with my rifle; for Davis, the colored gardener, had been complaining much about the loss of his chickens and did not know whether the malefactor was a coon or a mink. Accordingly, I picked up a rifle and trotted down to the pond holding it in one hand, while the little boy trotted after me, affectionately clasping the butt. Sure enough, in a big blasted chestnut close to the pond was the coon, asleep in a shallow hollow of the trunk, some forty feet from the ground. It was a very exposed place for a coon to lie during the day-time, but this was a bold fellow and seemed entirely undisturbed by our voices. He was altogether too near the house, or rather the chicken-coops, to be permitted to stay where he was—especially as but a short time before I had, with mistaken soft-heartedness, spared a possum I found on the place—and accordingly I raised my rifle; then I remembered for the first time that the rear sight was off, as I had taken it out for some reason; and in consequence I underwent the humiliation of firing two or three shots in vain before I got the coon. As he fell out of the tree the little boy pounced gleefully on him; fortunately he was dead, and we walked back to the house in triumph, each holding a hind leg of the quarry.

The possum spoken of above was found in a dogwood tree not more than eighty yards from the house, one afternoon when we were returning from a walk in the woods. As something had been killing the hens, I felt that it was at least under suspicion and that I ought to kill it, but a possum is such an absurd creature that I could not resist playing with it for some time; after that I felt that to kill it in cold-blood would be too much like murder, and let it go. This tender-heartedness was regarded as much misplaced both by farmer and gardener; hence the coon suffered.