The Project Gutenberg eBook, Jack Miner and the Birds, by Jack Miner

JACK MINER

AND THE BIRDS

JACK MINER HIMSELF
Photo by his friend Frank Scott Clark, Detroit

Jack Miner and the Birds
AND
SOME THINGS I KNOW ABOUT NATURE

By

JACK MINER

of Kingsville, Ontario, Canada

TORONTO

THE RYERSON PRESS

NOTE—This volume is copyrighted, as noted below. Parties are warned against the unwarranted reproduction of photographs or articles from it. Application for permission for such reproduction should be made to Manly F. Miner, Kingsville, Ontario, Canada.

PRINTED IN CANADA

BY THE RYERSON PRESS

COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1923

BY JACK MINER

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

Long and intimate acquaintance with the author of this book must be my apology for attempting to write a brief introduction. Meeting Jack Miner for the first time in 1888, I was at once impressed with his striking personality. I found myself instinctively attracted to him, and a cordial friendship sprang up between us, which grew in intimacy as the years passed. Although lacking in academic culture, his manner was decidedly urbane, and it was not long before I discerned beneath his rough exterior an enshrined soul.

Inheriting, as I did, a passion for dog and gun, I cultivated his friendship, and many delightful days have we spent together afield. I was a novice in woodcraft; he taught me to hunt and shoot. Many a bird fell to his gun for which I took full credit in those early days, until, on one occasion, when I had made, as I thought, a particularly clever kill, I glanced over my shoulder as I heard him say: “Good Shot, Doctor!” only to see him hurriedly slipping a shell into the smoking breech of his gun. I said: “Did you shoot, Jack?” and his face betrayed guilt as he replied: “Take more time, Doctor. If you hit a bird fair at that distance, you will have nothing to pick up!” I was shooting too soon, and of course missing. He had got on to my time, and was now and then dropping a bird, apparently to my gun, to give me confidence.

What impressed me most, perhaps, in the days of my novitiate was the determination with which he pursued a wounded bird. He would spend an hour ferreting out a cripple rather than leave it to die in misery, or become the prey of its natural enemies, owls, hawks or vermin. He invariably repiled the logs and brush he had dislodged in his efforts to retrieve a wounded bird. And this is but one evidence that a keen sense of justice, a full regard for the rights of all living creatures, are conspicuous traits in Jack Miner’s character.

Years passed. Until now he had held aloof from church and social life in the community. Then trouble came. Trouble, that so often floors the weak man, is the strong soul’s opportunity to reveal itself. Thus it proved in Jack Miner’s case. Death robbed his family circle of three of its members in a comparatively brief period of time. Of an exceptionally emotional and sympathetic nature, his grief was overwhelming. Something had to move, or break. Gradually he came over to the allies, and became active in social and Sunday school work. All his dormant virtues seemed bursting with life, and latent genius sprang into activity. He pursued his hobby of making friends with the birds with a zeal, as it were, begotten of despair. Steadily he plodded on in the face of financial burdens, in spite of the discouraging indifference of the many, and in defiance of the more malignant opposition of the few.

Ultimately he secured possession of the entire Miner homestead. He procured thousands of evergreen trees from the Government, and using native trees as well, prosecuted his work of beautifying his surroundings, until he had transformed what was an ordinary farm of two hundred acres, without one attractive feature, into a place which would arrest the attention of the passer-by, and which formed a veritable paradise for birds and waterfowl. Inheriting a love of the beautiful from his mother, he has developed his home surroundings into a bower of lilacs and roses. I venture to say that there is no spot in Western Ontario, if indeed in the entire Province, that attracts to itself, season after season, the thousands of visitors—distinguished men and women of Canada and the United States—that come to see the Miner Bird Sanctuary.

As a lad, however, he did not see exactly eye to eye with his mother. Of what use was an old, battered spoon, the sole surviving member of a set of pewter, that had been in the family for generations? He would convert it into smooth, round bullets, and make it contribute to the upkeep of the table. So one night the spoon went into the melting-pot, to appear in a few days on the table in the form of savory venison steak, and Mrs. Miner was left guessing what had become of her precious heirloom.

Jack Miner has built an enduring monument to his patient toil and his unfaltering confidence in an over-ruling Providence, that will stand for all time. That this untutored man of the woods is able to entertain and interest vast concourses of people in our college halls throughout Canada and the United States, being recalled season after season to our educational centres as well as to our towns and villages, to deliver his lectures, is convincing evidence that he has a world message and can deliver it with compelling force.

I have read “Jack Miner and the Birds” in manuscript form. It is a remarkable book, by a remarkable man. While it makes no pretensions to literary excellence, it is free from faults of egotism and verbiage, often present—almost laconic in style. It contains much valuable information, expressed in trite and witty language, and will prove a valuable addition to our works on bird lore.

Of more interest, perhaps, to the average reader will be a brief narrative of a few episodes in the life of Jack Miner. With characteristic self-effacement, he has refrained from incorporating in his book any incident in which he might seem to figure as the hero. Nevertheless his life has not been without tragic experience and thrilling adventure.

No sketch of his career, however brief, will do him justice without reference to his elder brother, Ted, whom Jack regarded with the profoundest respect and reverence. They played together—if work can be called play—hunted together, slept together, and lived with and for each other. As boys they practised shooting with a rifle at snowballs thrown into the air, at twenty-five yards rise, until they became so expert that they could break forty-six out of fifty.

In 1898, when the brothers were hunting with a friend in Northern Quebec, Ted was killed instantly, shot through the head by the accidental discharge of his companion’s gun, as he was dropping on one knee to dispatch a wounded and charging bull moose. Imagine the situation, if you can! Jack came running down the ravine through which he had driven the moose, confident that the boys had made a kill, only to meet his friend running toward him, his face pale as death, frantically shouting: “I have killed Ted!” Though dazed by the shock, Jack nevertheless realized the necessity of submerging his emotions, for the occasion demanded sane judgment and prompt action, and the friend was helpless by reason of his grief. They were twenty-five miles from the nearest railway station; help must be procured promptly and—it was up to him. Washing the blood from his dead brother’s face, and pressing a kiss on his pallid brow, he covered his body with snow, lest the smell of fresh blood might attract a band of prowling wolves before he could return, and, leaving him within a dozen feet of the big bull moose he had shot as he pulled the trigger for the last time, Jack set out for help. He ran thirteen miles to the nearest settler’s cabin, where he procured the aid of an old man and his boy. On returning to the scene of the accident, a litter was improvised on which the body was placed, but the absence of all trail, and the deep snow, made it impossible to proceed except in single file, and so Jack took his brother, who weighed 202 pounds, across his shoulders as he would a dead deer, and carried him almost the entire distance of thirteen miles, while the other three men cut brush and broke trail. Arriving at the lake they placed Ted’s body in the bow of a home-made punt, and Jack paddled twelve miles down the lake in the face of a blinding snowstorm, making the entire distance in twenty-four hours. From this terrible strain he has never fully recovered.

Many times he has rescued men lost in the woods. Indeed he has never once failed to bring his man out alive, although in some cases he had nothing human to guide him, all trail having been obliterated by heavy snowfall. For this signal success he takes no credit to himself, but attributes it to Divine Guidance in answer to his petitions.

On one occasion he was gone from camp forty-eight consecutive hours without sleep or rest, and with little food, tramping through snow up to his knees, in search of two men who had strayed in entirely opposite directions. He brought them both to camp, his hands being frozen during his adventure.

On another occasion, when hunting moose in Northern Quebec, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, he heard in the distance signal shots of distress. It gets dark early and suddenly in the North in November, but Jack immediately broke into a run, never stopping until, just at dusk, he came up to a young guide, standing guard over a man fallen in the snow. This was a well-to-do gentleman who had joined a hunting party, but was overcome by the strain of the unusual fatigue. His clothing had become saturated with the wet snow, his limbs lost all sense of feeling, and he fell, unable to move hand or foot. Jack Miner gave the rifles to the guide, hoisted the man, who weighed 185 pounds, on his shoulders, and carried him to an old lumber camp five miles distant in less than two hours. Other members of the party arrived, a fire was made, and hot coffee, hot flannels, and much rubbing, eventually brought feeling into the benumbed limbs. By morning the man was able to walk. As so often happens, the most solemn occasion is not without its spark of humor. When all immediate danger seemed to have passed and enquiry was made as to the whereabouts of the rifles, the guide, with the utmost sangfroid, said: “I left them stacked back in the woods at the scene of the tragedy!” Since no one but Jack would brave the dangers of the dark and the swollen river which had to be crossed on a fallen tree, it was up to him to retrieve the guns, and he did it.

He was never so happy as when studying the lives and habits of the wild creatures, whether it was the timid field mouse or the lordly moose, the socially inclined Chickadee or the elusive Canada goose. Thus did he lay the foundation of the success he has achieved as a hunter and naturalist.

In traversing the forest his sense of location and direction is akin to that of the denizens of the woods. When an Indian caches his game, intending to return for it at some future time, he blazes trees and breaks twigs to guide him back. Jack Miner was never known to blaze a tree nor break a twig for the purpose of locating a dead moose or a beaver-trap. He can follow a trail all day long to every point of the compass, and at nightfall turn his face directly toward camp. If on the following day he wishes to return to any spot visited the day before he will go to it with a directness and accuracy almost uncanny.

Years before he ever set foot in the northern woods he and Ted planned annual hunting excursions. They were the pioneers of big game hunting in Essex County, and while it is true that Jack Miner has killed car loads more game than any other man in Western Ontario, it must be remembered he never wasted a pound of meat, nor kept more than perhaps ten per cent. of his kill for his own use, but gave it away to rich and poor alike. He organized moose dinners for charitable purposes, even buying meat on one occasion when he had not enough of his own to supply the tables.

So did Jack Miner, the boy dreamer, become Jack Miner, noted naturalist, popular lecturer, and Canada’s Famous Birdman.

—J. Earle Jenner, M.D.

WILD GEESE AT MY HOME
These birds belong to you as much as they do to me. They winter on the South-East Coast, and nest on Hudson Bay. In fact the only bird in this bunch that belongs to me is the lady to the left of the two in the lower photograph.

INTRODUCTION

My reason, dear reader, for writing this book, I will assure you is not to expose my A, B, C education, but simply because my many friends have requested me to put into book form at least a portion of my interesting experiences.

For years I have simply ignored such requests; but the more I thought about it, the more seriously it appealed to me. So this morning I loaded up chair, stove, tent, etc., and made my way to the woods, where I am at home, and away from the wires of communication and the honk of the automobiles, and even the enquiring voice of my little boy. I have run away from them all and have pitched my tent in the woods.

As I was out gathering wood for the camp-fire I quietly looked around, and a few remnants of old stumps are still visible where I helped to cut the virgin timber, the forest that provided a home and shelter for the raccoon that I once hunted by night, and the birds, from quail to the wild turkey, that I hunted by day. About one hundred yards to the east of where I am sitting is where I split my big toe with a nine-pound broad-axe while hewing railroad ties when I was but fourteen years of age. But Nature is helping me to replace a little, and the second-growth trees are from thirty to fifty feet high.

A hawk has disturbed the Bob-Whites that are increasing in numbers very rapidly, and the sweet tones of their familiar voices are making this old spot fairly ring. In fact the very atmosphere seems so full of cheer that when I entered the tent and sat down to write, I first whispered a few words of silent prayer of thankfulness, and asked God to guide my untrained hand so that you will understand my meaning.

Let me assure you I will be as brief as possible. And while I am very thankful to my many friends who have offered to write it for me if I would only dictate it, yet I firmly believe the majority of readers will enjoy these facts right from the awkward hand of Jack Miner better than if they were polished too much. While it may read very unreasonable, yet please don’t forget that outside of a little joke I may attempt to crack, the rest is all facts gathered from personal experience and observation, and I assure you these views are not second-hand, as I am a very poor reader and have never read a book through in my life.

—J. M.

Jack Miner and the Birds

CHAPTER I.
Who is Jack Miner?

Now, as you have this book in your hands and have looked at the name of the writer, and possibly flipped over a few pages, glancing at the interesting illustrations, etc., I imagine I can see you raise your head, as your eyelids come down for an instant. “Who is Jack Miner? Who is Jack Miner?” This thought repeatedly flashes through your mind.

Well, let me assure you of this fact, that Jack Miner is not Old Bill Miner, nor Jesse James, and although I have been raised in the woods, that is no evidence that I have split feet and antlers. But I will admit there has been many a time in my life that if you could have seen me you would have thought you were looking over Esau’s line fence.

However, just who I am is a question I am not prepared to answer, as it is not a history of my life I am supposed to be writing; but in a few brief words will say that my dear mother’s people that are in America are a good, self-sacrificing, respectable, God-fearing people. And my father never had but one full sister; yet, he said, where he lacked in quantity he made up in quality. Father and mother were both born in Leicestershire, England. As to my father, I know he was a truthful, honest man, and, according to his own story, he was raised on the toe of a step-father’s boot. A few years after he graduated from this lofty position, he followed mother and her people to America, and eventually overtook them in the good old State of Ohio, and on the 10th day of April, 1865, I was born, bare-foot. According to my oldest brother’s statement, father was at that time quite down-hearted over the fact that his old favorite yellow tom-cat had been coming home absent for about two weeks, and he had given up all hope; but as soon as I arrived and he saw my complexion, he took me out and laid me in brother’s arms, and as he raised up he clapped his hands together, quite cheerful, and said, “Ted, we’ll call him John Thomas.” John Thomas it really is. Fortunately, my friends have shortened it down to just Jack.

LOOKING OVER ESAU’S LINE FENCE AT THE WRITER
Photograph taken in 1907 while on a Moose Hunt.

We were very poor financially, and as I was second-oldest boy in a family of ten children, I had to put a shoulder to the wheel and help roll the bread-wagon. The result is I was educated for ditching, cutting cord-wood, and splitting rails. In the spring of 1878 father decided to migrate, and at the age of thirteen I was liberated here in Canada, a sportman’s paradise. I took to the woods as naturally as a park hare, and I know I was father’s favorite because he always called me to build the fire in the morning, and when the other boys would lodge a tree I have often heard him shout, “Come out and come away from it! You’ll get ’urt! Leave it w’ile Jack comes; ’e’ll go hunder and cut it down.” If we were splitting rails, father always set the wedges, permitting me to handle the maul.

Father and mother enjoyed life together nearly sixty years and put up with the mingled enjoyment and annoyance of us ten children. How some of father’s teachings still ring in my ears! When I have gone to him with complaints about others he has often said, “Shut up; I don’t want to ’ear it. But if you have some of your own failings to tell, let’s ’ear ’um.” Yes, he was always short but to the point. One piece of advice that he gave us boys I have always tried to practise; that was: whenever we grabbed hold of anything and found it was red-hot, to drop it.

But now let me lay these smiling facts aside for a few seconds and close my introduction to you in real earnest. For, outside of unavoidable sadness, my life has been one continuous round of enjoyment made up of failures and disappointments and dark, stormy clouds, which have been completely trampled out of existence by success that in every case exceeded my expectations, and has caused the sun to shine so brightly that it has illumined my path clear up to the Great Divide, and given me an imaginary glimpse of the beautiful Beyond.

CHAPTER II.
My First Pets.

Well, the first pet I can remember having was a young blue jay. I was, of course, very anxious that he should live, so I filled him to the top with fish worms. The next morning the blue was there, but the jay was silent.

The next I have any recollection of was when father took our pet ’possum by the handle and wound it around the corner of the old stable, to settle a quarrel which arose between my brother and myself over its ownership.

I remember I started one spring with a pair of white rabbits, and when fall came, I had every box on the premises full; even father’s old wagon-box was turned up-side-down with a snarl of rabbits under it, and when he used the box my troubles were many. As I knew how to set traps around my rabbit pens I am strongly of the opinion that some of the neighbors’ cats haven’t got home yet.

How well do I recollect seeing the wild geese, and hearing their “Honk! Honk!” as I strained my young eyes to see them ’way up there, often having to look twice before seeing them, as they passed, in spring and fall, over the good old State of Ohio on their migrating trips. Oh, how I used to stand with clenched hands and wish I were a man so I could follow them somewhere and secure one, but not until I got to Canada did the real fun begin.

All kinds of game, and such a variety of pets as I had; squirrels, coons, foxes, crows and ravens, and I even got a nest of young hen hawks and kept them until father found it out. You know in those days there was one day in the week that we did not work, and I made every minute count; and although I had miles and miles of woods to roam through, night and day, yet my ambition was a little higher. So I secured a pair of tree-climbers, and then there was no tree high enough for Mrs. Crow or Mrs. Hawk to raise her young so as to be out of my reach.

Well do I remember shooting my first deer, and how I burglarized the top shelf of the pantry to get one of my mother’s old pewter spoons. This spoon had a great handle to its history, being handed down from somewhere this side of Noah. I pounded it, to remove the ancient look, melted it and ran seven small bullets, while my unsuspicious mother looked on at the operation of melting and moulding. By daylight the snow had ceased falling, and I put the seven balls in the “thumb-hand” barrel of the old shotgun and started on my first deer hunt. By noon I was back with a fine deer, and if I had had a melted spoon in the other barrel I surely would have killed two.

CHAPTER III.
Market Hunting.

As quail and grouse were so very plentiful and good warm clothes were scarce, the second fall we were here my brother and I started to hunt for the market. This caused us to study the nature of game. I soon found myself practising the call of Bob White. I would call early in the morning, when the country was silent, and listen to the echo come back from the woods, until I could call Bob right up to me from as far as he could hear the faintest sound of my imitative note. Yes, many a time during the nesting season have I called five or six male birds up near where I was sitting, then see them have a scrap. I tell you they are gamey little fellows. And what fun it was to be back in the field, hid in a bunch of goldenrod, with my old slouch hat tucked in my pants pocket, allowing my long hair and freckles to blend with the surroundings, and watch these plump little beauties come together in battle, sometimes striking each other so hard they would go fully six feet in the air and come down facing each other. I have had them so close I could almost feel the breath of their wings; and possibly three or four rods away was another one, picking the earth sidewise, apparently challenging the fourth who was sitting on a stump as if he were refereeing.

I tell you, life in the country was so sweet to me I would have agreed to stay here longer than it would take a raft of detectives to find my great-grandmother’s pewter spoon.

But the grouse was a hard fellow to call. This, however, did not prevent our success; for as soon as we got one we would examine its crop and find out just what it was feeding on; if it contained buds, then what kind they were, etc. And you could rest assured that ninety per cent. of the grouse in that country were feeding on this same variety of food. Then as we would walk through the woods with the dogs at our heels and our faces as nearly on the tops of our heads as possible, the grouse became very easy. I have shot five out of the tiptop of a cotton-wood tree where nine out of ten men would never think of looking. But if the crop contained seeds from the ground, the dogs were put to work where these seeds grew. As practice makes perfect, we soon became expert shots and the result was we left a bloody trail behind us.

We would walk miles away in the morning and start in so as to be near home at night with our heavy loads. Once or twice a week we would box our game up, and when the road was fit we would wheel it on a wheel-barrow up to the old stage line.

For at least five miles around, these birds appeared to fear us, and fly and scream as though Satan himself was after them. Brother and I often remarked: “Why did they just fly over the fence from the farmer, and ten minutes later, when we arrived, fly a mile or more from us?”

During the summer months these same birds seemed quite tame; in fact, they did not seem to be a bit more frightened of us than they were of the other residents of the country.

However, we soon found that every grain of sport had vanished, and we were in a financial business. So, speaking from actual experience, I know that market hunting is not sport; that it is murder in the first degree, and no principled sportsman will practise it. For one successful market-hunter will deprive twenty-five real sportsmen of their enjoyable recreation and outing.

I am pleased to say that we two boys soon outgrew this murderous practice, and hunted for pleasure only. And as we kept two well-trained dogs, many pleasant hours’ recreation have we enjoyed with some of the best gentlemen this earth can produce, returning home with an appetite for anything and stomachs that would almost digest railroad iron; then about nine p.m. we would roll in and sleep a hole right down through the bed.

Next morning, when you awake after such an experience, you will usually find your eyes are open, and more in focus.

CHAPTER IV.
Our Faithful Dogs.

While I would not advise any person to keep a dog unless he needs one, yet one of the most faithful animal friends man can have is an educated dog. Our two bird-dogs were full brothers, and though my brother and I were always together, yet the dogs knew us apart. If I went to the barn alone, my dog would follow me; yet if we boys walked to the road together, both dogs would follow us and would not come farther unless they were invited. If we threw our coats down, each dog would lie on or near his master’s coat.

I never knew Set (“Set” was my dog’s name) to disobey orders but once; that was when he was about eighteen months old. Brother and I had started from home before daylight to walk about eight miles, to hunt deer. When daylight came we were about five miles on our way, and I looked around and here was Set following. I at once gave him a right down good scolding, and told him to start for home, but he hesitated. That minute, a snarl of “just dogs” came yelping out from a settler’s buildings, and Set took leg bail for home with this bunch pow-wowing in pursuit. Just then brother looked at his watch and it was fifteen minutes past seven. When we arrived home at night my first question was “What time did Set get home?” Mother looked over her glasses and said, “He got here just seven o’clock.” Now I knew he was going some, by his actions, but just where he gained the fifteen minutes still remains a mystery.

On one occasion three sportsmen came and wanted a hunt, but I could not go; so I introduced Set to them, and as they had guns he eventually consented to go along. In about an hour he pointed a large bevy of quail in a weed field. The three sportsmen lined up and pressed forward, and as the birds buzzed up in front of them, bangety-bang! went six shots, right out in the open. And not a bird was touched. Dear old Set looked around in disgust, turned, and came straight home.

Well, it wasn’t long before our faithful dogs were getting a year older every twelve months, but still they clung to us, though life had become a burden. Dear mother, unbeknown to us, got a man to chloroform them. When he started to dig their graves we caught on, and both of us, men, stopped work and made a box and laid our faithful friends—friends who had never deceived us—side by side in one coffin and buried them under a shade tree on the old homestead. As we pushed the earth on the box I felt ashamed to look up at brother, but when I did I found there were tears in his eyes, too.

CHAPTER V.
Bob White Quail.

Now as I had grown from boyhood to man and had become the father in a little “home, sweet home,” my responsibilities naturally caused me to take life a little more seriously. But, as a boy loves to go bare-foot and play marbles in the spring of the year, when fall came my whole body and soul seemed to reach out for just one sup of pure, unadulterated nature, and many and many a morning, after I have been over to the factory and built a fire under the boiler, have I taken a stroll by twilight, before breakfast, and stepped up into a fence corner, leaned against the old rails and stood and breathed the pure air of a new-born day. Possibly the swish-sh-sh-sh of a flock of small wild ducks might be heard overhead as they darted their way southward; the note of the wood-thrush might also be noticed, and the flutter of the dear old woodcock’s wings have sometimes almost caused me to flinch. Then as the last stars were closing their eyes for the day and the white frost of the early-October morning became visible on the top rail, away to the east would come the faint call of the quail. That voice would hardly die out before the father of another family would start calling the roll, right in the next field; then one to the south; another bevy, near the woods, to the north; and again to the west would come these cheerful notes; until the frosty air would fairly ring, all around me, with the melody of Bob White’s roll call, the head of the family calling and each member answering. And if all is well, and none is missing, in about three minutes all is still and one would not know there was a quail in the country, unless a hawk happened to dart among them; then a shrill alarm is given, and all buzz for cover.

Now it is said that there never was a tribe of heathen discovered that did not worship some kind of idol. This I am not prepared to prove. But I will say this: That no intelligent man can live in this great, great out-of-doors and study the creatures that occupy it before man has any control over them, combined with the regularity of the sun, moon and whispering stars, without being compelled to believe that there is an over-ruling Power. And although I had not read a word on the value of our quail, this thought often presented itself to me: “What did God put them here for?” Yes, I can recall time, and time again, when, after I had emptied the quail out of my hunting-coat pocket I have gone to the kitchen door and thrown out by the handful the weed-seed that had worked out of their bursted crops; and how often, in the summer, I have seen them picking insects, as they strutted by my hiding place! Now, I am proud to say, I have not shot a quail in nearly twenty years, and I am still prouder to say that I have this much confidence in humanity, that to-day there wouldn’t be one quail shot where there are five, if these shooters would first consider their cheerfulness, beauty and value while alive. For one Bob White sitting on the top rail, sounding his beautiful note, brings more gladness and more cheer to more people than twenty-five will in a bloody game-sack.

Now about the only argument the quail shooter has to put up is that the wire fence has taken the place of the old rail and weedy fence row, and has destroyed their cover, and that if he didn’t shoot them the quail would only fight, one among the others, and would not nest. I am not here to say that this man has no brains, but I will say that the itching of his trigger-finger to shoot something has got control of his brains; and when I hear him blowing off this stuff I take father’s advice, and “drop it.” For the positive fact is that the old fence row is, and always was, the worst death trap that quail ever took shelter in. The height of a sportsman’s ambition is to see them alight there; and the prowling house-cat has a great advantage there; and when March comes, that is just the place to look for a bunch of dead quail—quail that sought shelter there during the winter months, were drifted under, and died. All thinking men will admit that when quail are in real need of shelter, this old fence row is nothing but a fence drift. The only drawback quail have in Western Ontario, and in Ohio as well, is the disappearing of the woods that sheltered them from the drifting snows. Not that he gets any of his living there, but just flies there for shelter during the severe storms of winter.

As to them becoming so numerous as to quarrel and not breed, quail do not nest or breed in the woods. When we came to Canada in 1878 there were twenty-five where there hasn’t been one during the last ten years. I am sure I have seen one hundred and fifty quail on an ordinary farm; and this change is not because the wire fence has taken the place of the rail, etc. All these excuses are false and without foundation.

Now here is the positive fact: The great mistake the sportsmen have made is that they have directed all their attention on the death-dealing weapons, as to how to destroy the quail. The breech-loader has taken the place of the old muzzle-loader; the six-shot pump gun has taken the place of the double-barrelled breech-loader; the quick, nitro-explosives have taken the place of the slow black powder; and thus we have gone on and on for the last thirty-five years, to my personal knowledge, thoughtless and ignorant of what we were doing, not taking into consideration at all the increasing number of shooters, year by year, until at last we have waked up to find that our birds have decreased over ninety per cent. during that time.

Has the wire fence destroyed the ducks, the beautiful trumpeter swans, our mourning doves, the woodcocks and meadow-larks? These migratory birds have decreased the same as our Ontario quail have, and God-given intelligence, wrongly directed, is responsible for it all.

SELF-SERVING FEED-RACK FOR QUAIL THAT GAVE FAIRLY GOOD SATISFACTION

Now just picture North America if, during the last thirty-five years, we had paid as much attention to the protection and increase of our birds as we have to these death-dealing weapons. What a cheerful difference it certainly would have made!

About ten years ago I started to protect the quail in earnest. I made eight feed-racks, the same as shown in illustration.

The boxes are eight inches square and four inches deep. The cover is about three feet wide and almost one foot from the feed. If a little snow does drift in, it is very light and the birds will scratch and get the feed, as no sleet or rain can reach it.

The quail soon found the food and I was agreeably surprised to see the number of tracks around these racks the first time I went to visit them; but when I returned three or four days later there was scarcely a quail to be seen. On investigation I found that the hawks had apparently struck the Klondyke of their lives, and it was almost sure death to Bob to go near the feed, as Mr. Hawk was always watching.

HAWK AND OWL TRAP
This photograph shows a mistake in that the Clog got fastened and is holding the Hawk up. This will scare other Hawks and make them shy of the place.

Then I bought a few No. 1 jump traps and cut three poles, fifteen or twenty feet long and from four to five inches through at the butt. I then drove three or four small nails in the butt-end of each pole, to stay the trap and keep it from blowing off, but leaving it free enough so that when it caught its victim he could fly up and raise the trap off the top of the pole. A small brush-clog was fastened to the end of the chain and a nail was driven in the side of the pole about a foot from the trap, to hang the clog on. About six or eight small staples were driven in around the pole, near the trap, to put fragments of weed and grass in so as to disguise the trap, making it appear like an old sparrow’s nest. Then I stood the pole, with the butt up, beside another small tree so that the boughs of the tree would project a foot or so above the trap; then wired the pole to the tree. When a hawk or owl gets his toe in such a trap there is nothing solid for him to jerk against, but he can fly down with the trap and clog, and isn’t apt to jerk out. Moreover, when hawk number two comes along, number one is not up there, flapping, to scare him and make him shy of this pole. I have known them, time and again, to alight on the same pole and then fly down and kill and eat the hawk below who was flapping around with the trap and clog.

In these three traps I caught seventeen quail-destroyers the first month I put them up, and I also got the toe of another hawk, and the following winter I got the rest of that hawk.

As proof that birds visit the same places, I will say that I haven’t caught over fifteen hawks and owls down there in any one winter, in those three traps, since.

SHELTER AND FEEDING PLACE FOR QUAIL

Well, the feed-racks did not seem to fill the bill in every way, so in a year or so I decided to try another scheme. I loaded up all the old junk lumber I could find and hauled it to the woods, and in one day another man and I completed ten little bungalows-in-the-rough. They are about one foot high in the rear, and four to five feet high in the front, with from five to six feet ground space, as shown in the illustration herewith.

Then, to complete my experiment, I begged ten bags of weed-seed from a neighbor who was hulling clover. I threw a bagful in each house, and then threw in, on top of the weed-seed, corn, wheat and buckwheat. In less than a week the birds visited every house, and on a cold, zero day I believe I have seen as high as fifty quail buzz out of one of these little, unpatented shacks. And best of all, they scratched right down through the grain and ate the weed-seeds first. I soon found I had made a hit, as the shacks furnished the birds shelter as well as food in the time of need, and a certain amount of protection from their natural enemies.

But these birds down in the woods remained quite wild. So I got several quiet bantam hens and kept them ready, and when any neighbor farmer disturbed a quail’s nest I had a place for the eggs. In this way I have had some enjoyable experiences.

I first set the hen in a small box on the ground, on a nice cushion of soft grass, pet her lots and let her eat from my hand; I push her feathers forward and pepper her just full of Prussian insect powder, and sprinkle a little in the nest, also. Now I am all ready for some one to phone that they have disturbed a quail’s nest.

SHELLS OF QUAIL EGGS AFTER HATCHING

If you take eggs from a nest that is not disturbed, never, never take them until the bird has finished laying and has started to set, for if you take the eight or ten she will build another nest and finish laying, then put in her valuable time with only half a brood, whereas if she has started to set she will only lay off a few days, then will build a new nest and raise a full brood. A quail will lay from fifteen to twenty-two, and sometimes as high as twenty-five, eggs.

Quail eggs all hatch, and hatch very suddenly. One year I looked at a nest at ten o’clock and there was nothing doing, and when I came by at twelve o’clock the old hen scolded, so I took another peep; all hands had apparently opened the door at once, and the cluster of pure white eggs had changed so that they resembled a live bumble-bee’s nest.

Quail have no trouble hatching, like some of our domestic fowl; they just simply open the door and jump out. See the illustration.

Pat once asked a little boy what he came for. The little chap in his bashful way replied, “Oh, nothing.” Again Pat took his pipe from between his teeth, as he said, “Well, you’ll find that in the jug behind the door, where the whiskey was.” So we can say the same about this illustration; it is where the little quail were. Notice the neat, uniform way in which they opened the door from the inside.

When they are about to hatch, shut the door of the box so as to keep the tiny pets in. When they are from twenty to thirty-six hours old, move all hands to a dry coop near the garden, or in the back yard near shrubbery. The coop should be from eighteen to twenty-four inches square inside, built with a shed roof ten to twelve inches high in the rear and eighteen to twenty inches high in the front, with a board floor so that the old hen cannot scratch and be on damp ground. Now take three boards about one foot wide and two feet long, tack them in front of the old hen’s coop for a playground for the quail. Leave the hen in the coop and she will put her head out and talk to her family, who cannot get over two feet away from her. Feed them a little custard (one egg to half a cup of milk; no sugar). Feed tiny bits five times a day, always tapping the tin with the spoon as you go near them. In three or four days they will accept the hen as their stepmother, and you as their step-parent. Now draw the two nails (which are only partly driven in) and pull the three boards quietly away, leaving the hen in the permanent coop, but giving the quail their liberty. See illustrations.

Now don’t run after them if they run away; just tap the tin a little, as you drop a little custard in front of their mother so she can call them.

Let me say right here: Never try to drive any bird. They can hide where you can’t, and experience has proven to my entire satisfaction that they can fly faster that I can run. Always throw feed and kindness at them, and watch results.

In about a week, let the hen out a few minutes before sundown, so she hasn’t time to stray far from home and will go back into the roost. In about another week the hen can run all the time with her family. Feed at the back door, or any place you want the quail to come, and your pets will be there. Remember that it is the human race that is wild, not the birds. Birds are wild because they have to be, and we are wild because we prefer to be. Any creature that is intelligent enough to fly or run from you for self-preservation, will come to you for food and protection from all other enemies.

YOUNG QUAIL JUST FOUR WEEKS OLD
Notice one in Baby’s hair.

EATING FROM THE HAND THAT ONCE HELD THE GUN

As to the value of quail, I know this, that they are the farmer’s friends; that they cannot live in the dense wilderness and that they do follow up the pioneer’s axe where climate will allow; and that fully seventy-five per cent. of their diet consists of weed-seed and insects that are injurious to the production of food stuffs for the human race. The small amount of wheat they eat is ’most all gathered from the stubble field, and as for the few kernels of corn, this is mostly taken during the winter; and we all know that a farmer who makes a practice of leaving his corn out, is an undesirable heavy weight and possibly has no appreciation of Bob White’s beautiful note ringing in the country, and the sooner he moves to town and joins the “Retired Failures’ Association” the better for the country.

CHAPTER VI.
Raising English or Ring-necked Pheasants in Canada.

Having often heard father speak of the English pheasant as a beautiful game bird, and as I was overly anxious to pay Canada back some of the birds I had murdered in my younger days, I decided to try these pheasants.

In 1895 I sent to Pleasant Ridge, Ohio, for two or three settings of English pheasants’ eggs. I felt sure this climate would agree with them as they were exactly the same breed as I was, English buck-eyes! However, I was smart enough not to ignore my mother’s kind offer, and I let her have one setting to hatch for me. I paid particular attention to the two hens I set, scarcely allowing them to get off the nest; and here is where I now believe I made the mistake. Not one egg hatched. But dear mother signalled me to come over and I was right there. Her old hen had hatched eleven. Mother smiled and gave them to me, hen and all, but told me to leave them with her until the next day. Then I moved them, and raised nine to the size of quail, when a dog killed four, leaving the old hen and me with only five. Four of these proved to be males and a cat owl killed the hen. March, 1896, found me with four beautiful male birds only.

I had now learned that a gentleman in London, Ontario, had English pheasants for sale, and as my experience had proved that an English buck-eye hitched up to a Canadian was a joyous, satisfactory cross, with the human race, I wrote this man and secured two hens which were undoubtedly English-Canadians. I liberated three of the four male birds and put the two hens in with the one male; and from this trio we hatched sixty-two pheasants. Then I enclosed four acres with a wire fence seven feet high. Along one side I made several brood pens about two rods square, each. I put one male bird with every five hens, putting plenty of gravel and grit in each pen so as to secure good digesting powers. I also gave the birds plenty of shade.

Our pheasant hens laid from thirty-five to fifty eggs each between April the 15th and June the 15th. By giving the old birds lots of grit, the egg shells were very hard. I used Wyandotte hens for mothers, putting from twenty to twenty-five eggs under each hen and setting them on the damp ground as much as possible. The eggs, like quail eggs, hatch in twenty-four days. I pursued the same course, all through, as I have described for raising quail, only the nest and coop are one-quarter larger. I used the insect powder by the pound. I usually set four or five hens at a time; keeping a record of the same, I knew when to prepare for a hatch. I penned them in front of her for two or three days, the same as with the quail.

When raising pheasants, I never let hens out of the coops. When birds are from six to eight weeks old I take the hen away but leave the coop there. Coops may be set around like bee-hives, two or three rods apart. I painted my coops, some white and some red; the little fellows will know their own coops and will not forget them.

Remember, I have experimented with a great variety of pheasant foods. I have raised flies by the tens of thousands to feed to them. To do this I would take a piece of meat, say of beef’s liver, allow the flies to blow it, and a few hours later throw the meat in a barrel; the barrel would be partly filled with rotten sawdust and the top of it would be covered with a screen, with a hole left about an inch in diameter. In a few days the maggots would have the meat all eaten up, and would have disappeared into the sawdust below. In about two weeks the barrel would be simply full of flies. I would now put a small flytrap over the hole, darkening the rest of the screen; the flies would come to the light, get into the trap, and when in the small trap could be either scalded or drowned. I have also fed the pheasants the maggots. But to raise either flies or maggots is not as desirable for the nose as it might look from the eye and both are unnecessary. Feed a little custard, and when about two weeks old, add corn-meal to it. Keep them hungry and let them hunt for insects. Exercise is what they need and what they must have. When birds are three months old, they should be caught and shipped.

The high fence for young is unnecessary, for your birds will know you and will be just as tame as chickens. In this way I made my pleasure self-sustaining, and I would often let an old hen and fifteen or twenty go. The finest brood I ever saw was out of two poor hatches. I put twenty-five with one hen and in about a week I let hen and all out. They roamed all over the premises, but of course like spiteful deeds and chickens, they came home to roost. I fed them just enough to give them a sweet taste in their mouths, and the hen raised twenty-three of them. How they did grow! Finally she left them and they went to the woods about one-half mile away.

In this way I stocked this township so I could have shot a two-bushel bag full in half a day. Two miles north of my place there were twenty-eight seen dusting in the road at one time. But to-day I doubt if there is one left in the township. Men came for miles and miles around. Yes, I have seen them come twenty-five miles to hunt rabbits in this neighborhood! Now I don’t want to insinuate that all rabbit hunters were hunting pheasants, but what I really want to say is that all pheasant hunters were hunting rabbits!

CHAPTER VII.
The Natural Enemies of Our Birds.

Now we come to the most serious question that the bird-lovers of America are up against; and until this great question is settled, we shall continue to pull against each other.

At a sportsmen’s show in Michigan I once saw one-half dozen mounted hawks in a glass case, and there were thousands of school children looking at them. The label read: “These are all valuable hawks.” Another man will say, “Protect the cat-owl, or great horned owl,” and possibly this same man will advocate the destruction of the wild house-cat, when the positive fact is that this owl is nothing but a wild house-cat with the advantage of wings, and for cruel, bloodthirsty, murderous depredations he has got the house-cat chased right out of the slaughter-house, for he will kill and eat a great variety of adult birds and animals I have never known a house-cat to destroy, such as turkeys, wild geese, peacocks, all kinds of hawks and all other owls, and animals such as skunks, muskrats, groundhogs, minks, weasels and hares. Now, although I have no personal knowledge of this, yet a gentleman farmer who lived near the woods told me (and I believe him, or I would not repeat it) that his bunch of house cats which were about half grown, were in the habit of climbing upon the roof of the house and sitting near the chimney to keep warm during the winter months; these horned owls came and took away every one of the cats. However, I have no positive proof of this last statement. But this I do know: There is nothing roosts high enough or sleeps low enough to be out of reach of this heartless cannibal. One regrettable fact to me is that I have never seen where another bird or animal ever killed a great horned owl, although they have lived in the township with me all my life.

A particular friend of mine was dissecting a shrike. This shrike is a bird about the size and color of a blue jay, known to a great many people as the butcher bird. I said to those standing by, “He is a bad one; always shoot him on sight.” My friend stopped for a moment and said, “Beg your pardon, Jack, but you are wrong; this is not the big northern shrike you have reference to.” “No, no, my dear fellow,” I replied; “I mean the very one you are skinning, and again I say, shoot him on sight.” My friend smiled and replied in a kind, cheerful manner, “Jack, I am surprised at you.” Now, dear reader, here were two natural born naturalists right opposite each other, one advocating the protection, the other the destruction, of the same bird. I had watched this shrike in Ohio when I was a kid. I had often found his nest and knew what he fed his young upon. I have caught dozens of them, right in the act, in Canada, and they are always searching for birds, chiefly the small fly-catchers. Well, we dissected this fellow, and found two little birds’ legs, and they were not mates. Last fall I saw a shrike follow a snow bird fully five hundred feet high, but the snow bird won out.

I said to another man, “The crow and bronze grackle take the robin’s eggs.” “Why,” he said, “I don’t understand that; there is a robin’s nest within a rod of my door, and the woods are full of crows.” Why, bless your life, that is just the reason why the robin built there, it simply came to him for protection.

Now first of all we must not lose sight of this fact: That there never was but one perfect Manager stood on this earth, and He put these creatures all here. So let us roll back the pages of time and take a look at nature before man interfered. Likely you have read the history of America; I haven’t; but I doubt if there is any account known of the clouds of birds that once hovered over this continent. The settlings in the bottom of the little artificial pond near my house, caused from the wild goose and duck droppings, are exactly of the same material that we find in our marshes, and which is from three to ten feet deep in the average marsh. I will not attempt to mention the number of birds I have seen in one day, because the average boy of the present would not believe it; but I will say that I firmly believe I have seen more birds in one day, before I was ten years of age, than the average ten-year-old boy of the present day has seen in all his life. Time and time again during my life have I seen a wounded bird lag behind as the flock flew to cover; and often have I seen a hawk dart at them, and he never failed to get the wounded one. And some wounded quail have been stolen from me by hawks before I got to where they lit, and if it were not for the snow I wouldn’t have known what had happened as I did not always see the hawk.

Once in my life I had a flock of about thirty young wild ducks. There were two little runts that appeared to want to die, but I rebelled and kept patching them up. Finally one took with a sore eye disease, and in a few days the other little scab had it, and both died, but not until they had introduced these sore eyes to the rest of the ducks and all my nice, healthy ducks started drooping. When I eventually got this disease checked I had only seven ducks left. Now, according to my own experience, if a hawk had come along he would have picked up the weak ones and prevented this disease. So, after all my life’s study I am fully convinced that these cannibal birds were put here to destroy the weak and sickly and prevent contagious disease, letting the strong and healthy survive. But man has interfered. He has paid all his attention to the destruction of the food birds and has almost annihilated them and let what we now call their enemies go; or, in other words, we human beings have combined our forces with the food birds’ enemies.

Now Point Pelee marsh is about fifteen miles from where I am sitting. Point Pelee is the most southerly part of mainland in Canada, and the hawks cross there by the thousands every fall; yet I never knew of a hunter going purposely to shoot them. But if there were twenty-five ducks in a pond down there and twenty-five men knew it to-night, there would likely be fifty guns there to-morrow morning. Yes, I honestly believe there are as many hawks and owls in America to-day as there were thirty years ago.

Last fall, when the hawks were migrating, in October, they started roosting in our woods, and in less than a week there were thousands upon thousands coming there. So I took a flash-light and the .22 rifle and went down and I am sure as high as twenty-five would fly out of one little tree every time I shot. It was a bright moonlight night, and they soon took the hint, and I only killed fifteen or twenty. But to hear their wings as they hovered around, over the woods, would cause one to wonder where they came from and where they were going. However, once was enough; the rest took the hint for the next night not one was seen going there. So don’t let us blame the Great Provider; it is man’s mistake, that is all; we have gone wrong.

“Oh, but say, Jack Miner, do you pretend to say that there were once birds enough in America that the old and the delicate, crippled, maimed and diseased would supply all these hawks and owls with food?” Yes, that is just exactly what I want to say, yet I have no proof of it. I only know that the hawks will take a cripple every time and let the strong and healthy go. “Well,” you say, “how about a flock of little ducks? He could take any one of them.” Not so easily. Wild ducks at six hours old will dive like a lot of frogs, but a delicate one cannot; he will possibly just put his head under, and his body will stick out like a bloated toad. Yes, I believe that less than one hundred years ago there were more of the above class of birds for the hawks, each year, in America, than there are altogether, now. So, after having a lifetime of experience raising birds, instead of doctoring the sickly ones and petting the droopies and sore eyes, I just take the hawk’s plan and destroy them.

While I would not like to see these cannibal birds become extinct, yet I would be pleased to see them decreased the same as our other birds have become during the last forty years.

CHAPTER VIII.
Some Things I have Known Cannibal Birds to Do.

Now, dear reader, I am well aware of the fact that my book would be more popular if I left these questions out. I am like yourself, I wish I had nothing to say but good about every bird, for I love to see them. But remember, what I am telling in this book is what I know about nature, so please don’t jump on me with both feet for telling the truth.

First of all let me say that the larger the hawk, the more anxious the majority are to shoot him. This is a mistake. It is the medium-sized hawk that is the worst. The sparrow-hawk is the smallest, and he is hard on fledglings such as bobolinks and song sparrows. Yes, I know they will eat grasshoppers, but these are usually eaten by the young birds; the adult sparrow-hawk lives chiefly on mice and small birds.

When I raised pheasants I always made a “hide” where I could lay for the little chicks’ enemies. One day I fed my chicks at one p.m., when I returned at four-thirty I tapped the tin to call them and only seven out of the seventeen little beauties came and they were on their tiptoes, shy and frightened. My first thought was, “a weasel,” but when I saw Mrs. Hen turn her head sidewise and look up, I called to my boy to bring the shotgun and a couple of loads of No. 6. I soon was in the “hide,” and the boy had scarcely got to the house when I heard the old hen say “k-tt-tt-tt,” meaning “lie low,” so I took her advice, and in about five seconds a sparrow-hawk came down out of the heavens like a bullet—too fast for me. Before I could get the gun on him he was on the ground. He saw me and missed his bird; and when he was about four feet in the air again I just lifted him with a load of shot. The next morning we went over to the woods and destroyed the other old one and the young, and found remnants of some of the young pheasants. Now this hawk killed and carried away ten of these little chick pheasants in less than four hours. These little pheasants were about ten days old. After pheasants get to be the size of a small quail or mourning dove, sparrow-hawks will not take them. Many a small hawk have I fooled by taking a little dead pheasant and running a wire through him, standing up in a natural position on a steel trap, letting Mr. Hawk come down out of the air and help himself. I have often caught owls in this same way.

I could go on and on, relating such experiences until you got hungry. But remember, the sparrow-hawk is only one. The worst are yet to come, the Cooper’s, the sharp-shinned, and the goshawk; these three are just like bullets in the air. But while the pheasants are tiny the sparrow-hawk is the worst, because it is more numerous. To any person who might think of raising pheasants for profit let me say that unless you first study how to destroy weasels, barn rats, stray house cats and cannibal birds you had better give up the business a week or so before you start. Remember, when hawks are driven to it by hunger they will kill and eat each other, and owls will do the same; I have known dozens of cases of this in my life.

There are two large hawks I never destroy, the Red Tail and the Red Shoulder. They are too big and clumsy to be very destructive on our birds. When these two varieties get in my traps I usually label them with an aluminum band and let them go; but, strange to say, I have never heard from one of these in my life. I know they will kill a clumsy barnyard fowl or so, and they will also kill snakes; so I say of them as Pilate said, “I find no fault” with these fellows.

I spend a lot of my life burning brick and drain-tile at night, and during the summer months it is very interesting to see the toads come before the light of the fires and catch insects. The snakes that these big hawks eat, kill the toads; and I don’t like snakes, even if they are not in my boots.

Now this innocent-looking little screech-owl! Just last summer I went over to the martin house one morning to see what was wrong with them, and here were three or four helpless fledglings flapping on the ground, and the old ones hovering at the house as if it were a bees’ nest. Well, to be brief, we killed nine screech-owls in less than two weeks, but not until they had killed and driven all our martins away for that year. At a screech-owl’s nest I once found my hat-full of remnants of bluebirds’ wings, young robins’ wings and feet, and quail, song-sparrow and English sparrow feathers. In another case a screech-owl went through the two-inch mesh wire netting and killed a golden pheasant hen for me and ate her throat out. This owl only weighed three and one-half ounces. A doctor in the town of Leamington once called me in to see what had killed his golden pheasant hen that was setting on twelve eggs. The pen was made of two-inch mesh netting. I at once said it was a screech-owl and showed him how I knew. He then told me he harbored screech-owls in and around his barns to kill the English sparrows. Another man I knew kept a screech-owl in his barn to kill the sparrows, and he was puzzled to know what killed his tame pigeons.

The screech-owl is just a miniature horned owl, both in looks and habits. But I have never had my wits tried more with any bird than I have with the Great Horned Owl. On one occasion one of these winged brutes came and apparently just got his toes pinched in a trap; and night after night he sprung the traps and took a hen pheasant. This went on until he had taken twelve. Then I put on fur coat and made a bed of robes out in the “hide” which I always kept ready in the enclosure; and there I lay in that bright moonlit, stinging-cold, zero night. At last I saw an owl hovering over the ground, and fortunately for me he got fooled; he came to examine the decoys near me and while his attention was rivetted on them I raised up and fired, and he never knew what hit him. When I went to the house it was three a.m. I usually catch twelve to fifteen of these owls every winter.

Remember, when he comes and gets a bird he will eat what he wants of it, and come back the following night for a new one.

But how these cannibals locate other birds for miles and miles across the country is a mystery. Yet if we go down in the field and kill a beef on a hot summer’s day, the turkey buzzards will be here in less than one-half hour. Where did these vultures come from? You perhaps have not seen one for a month. How did they know you were killing a beef? This question may be just as much in place as: How do the hawks and owls find their prey?

The great horned owl nests in the winter or early, early spring, building in a cavity of a tree or a crow’s or hawk’s nest. They lay two pure white eggs, round like a turtle’s eggs, about the size of an ordinary barnyard fowl’s or a shade smaller. I have got the nest as early as the first day in February, when old Mrs. Owl was setting. The female horned owl is larger than the male; she will weigh about four pounds and has a wing-spread of fully fifty inches.

Now I know there are a lot of people who protect these cannibal birds because they kill mice. Yes, they do kill mice. But it takes dozens and dozens of our insectivorous and weed-destroying birds to raise one owl. I claim that the good one robin or quail does, in one day, overbalances the harm a dozen mice will do.

Now we come to the crow and bronze grackle, the largest blackbird. These two birds raise their young chiefly on the eggs of other birds. Why this is, I won’t pretend to say, nor will I attempt to throw a ray of light upon it, but will frankly confess I do not understand. Possibly it has come about through man’s interference with their natural habits.

The crow was the first bird I hunted in Canada, as we thought they pulled our corn. I went to the woods and located their nests, and soon I became wise enough to imitate the call of the young; then I had Mr. Crow beaten. I would first destroy the young if possible, then hide in the green bushes and caw quietly as I had heard the young do, and dozens of crows have brought their food to the wrong baby. Yes, I have even gone so far as to call them right down into the small trees so as to make a very light load of ammunition do the work, as it cost money to buy powder and shot in those days. Now comes more of what we don’t want to hear. What were these crows feeding their young on? Crawfish, pollywogs, small frogs, grubs, etc.; but seventy-five per cent. of the food that these old crows would vomit up as they struck the ground was eggs. It was these old black rascals that taught me what to raise fledglings on, and it is just as easy for me, now, to raise a young bird on custard as it would be to raise a row during a political campaign.

I am going to tell you some pitiful things. I have seen young, unhatched robins spued out of a dying crow’s mouth, and the little things were still alive. Whether the eggs were broken in her throat before I shot her or not, I do not know, but they were broken when thrown up. Yes, they will take blackbirds’ eggs just as quick as they will the robins’, and other, weaker birds’ if they have the opportunity; but the robin does seem to be their choice, possibly because he does not conceal his nest better. Yet I was hunting the crows because they pulled our corn! In all my life I never knew a crow to bring corn to her young. Yes, I have shaken as high as seven little, unhatched birds out of a gasping crow’s mouth, and any one of these creatures, if left to mature, would do as much good as a crow. If you want to trap a crow use hens’ eggs for bait, but bear in mind he is cute, and you must conceal the trap very carefully.

The bronze grackle is nothing only a small crow; his habits are exactly the same. He will drop on a tree and look around; seizing an opportunity he will come down and go through a bush where there is likely to be a song-sparrow’s nest just like a ferret will go through a stone-pile after a rabbit. I have known him to take the young birds after they were hatched. But so many men who know the habits of these birds will say they think they do as much good as they do harm! Why they make this statement I don’t understand. And if you throw this book across the room and never pick it up, I cannot help it, for I am telling you the truth: These crows and grackles are the worst nest-robbers in America. They do ten times more harm than good. Remember I am not writing just to please the reader, but to give you facts gathered from personal experience and observation, and my beliefs founded thereon; and I am sure that fifty per cent. of the eggs and young of our song, insectivorous and game birds in Ontario are devoured by these cold-blooded, nest-robbing cannibals, the crow being the worst of all. He will take young mourning doves out of the nest when they are as large as sparrows; the quail, and kildeer, and dozens of other such beautiful mothers are perfectly helpless and can no more keep him off than a human mother’s naked hands could keep a vicious lion from tearing her baby into fragments.

By the way, I am now perfecting a trap whereby I can catch crows by the hundreds during the winter months. These crows will be handed over to gun clubs for trap-shooting purposes. And although he is a black murderer we must treat him fair, and give him a chance for his life; therefore, my request will be to shoot them from five unknown traps at twenty-five to thirty yards rise. The shooter will not be charged for the crows he kills, but will be fined for every one he allows to escape; in addition to the above fine he will be liable to any other punishment a good, cheerful bunch of trap-shooters see fit to impose upon him, such as rail-riding him around the club-house for allowing one of these black murderers to get away. The shooters will be fined according to their shooting ability. These fines will be used for buying up old, faithful horses which will be humanely destroyed and used for bait to decoy more of these old, black Pharaohs to their just doom. Thus what is now the crow nuisance will be turned into a sport.

The hawks and owls are worst on the adult birds, the screech-owl is not so innocent as he looks, but there is none can compare with the great horned owl, and I just wish you knew the annoyance he has caused me by taking my choicest pets. Yes, it seems he delights in taking the nearest and dearest. But now let me give my horn a toot: Never did a horned owl take a bird from me but what paid the penalty.

About the only argument you hear in favor of the hawks and owls is “mice.” But when a bunch of successful farmers meet at my tile factory, never in my life have I heard them complain about mice, and I know mice seldom bother clean, shrewd farmers. But I have heard them complain about worms until I could almost feel myself crawling. The cut-worms were cutting their corn, or the wire-worms were destroying their oats, the army worm was working north, and so forth. Personally I have never had any experience with worms, but field mice I have often carried in my pockets, and if it wasn’t for some youth practising the same sport, how I would like to tell you some of the fun I have had with them when I was a lad. For the death of each mouse by hawks and owls possibly we lose several birds which would destroy thousands and thousands of worms each year. I know there is a type of farmer who is much more easily annoyed by mice than others. You will usually find him down town, sitting on a soap box, smoking in the time, now and then getting up and moving his seat around and possibly turning it end for end to keep it from getting tired; his stock at home are of the rainbow variety, with long whiskers, and when they see him coming they don’t know whether to come or go, and the one or two razor-backed, South Carolina, thistle-digger hogs don’t care whether or not they get out of the steaming manure heap, to be disappointed; the remnant of scrubby apple trees in the field, which some one else planted, have been fleece-grown with cut grass ever since he got possession of the farm, that, of course, was handed down to him.

If your orchard is stubble or clover sod, go through it in the early fall. By being careful you can determine whether there are any fieldmice there by their little runways that criss-cross on the ground. If so, take about one-half bushel of grain and thirty or forty bundles of corn fodder; throw a handful or two of grain on the ground and two bundles of fodder side by side over it, making a nice mouse cover. Refuse hay, or clover chaff will do, but I prefer the corn fodder. Fifteen or twenty of these little harbors are sufficient in an ordinary orchard. In ten days or two weeks all the mice in the orchard will be under these covers. Now take the six- or eight-pronged pitch-fork, scratch around these little harbors to destroy their road of retreat, then throw the cover off quickly; the light striking their eyes so suddenly, they are apparently blinded for a second, giving you just time enough to give them a side whack with your fork; if you study what you are doing, you will kill seventy-five per cent. of them the first time ’round, always placing the cover back ready for next time. If you don’t care for this sport, just introduce a bunch of school boys to your plan and you will soon find your annoyance turned into sport and education for the neighbor boys.

In case you haven’t the above-mentioned material to make these mouse covers, old junk lumber thrown on the ground will answer the same purpose. But if you leave these mice and depend on the hawks and owls to destroy them, some of your trees will be girdled, as the mice seem to have a sort of human appetite, and appear to like the apple tree bark equally as well as the human race likes the apple tree juice.

The mouse question always reminds me of a story told on the other fellow. It is said that he saw an advertisement: “How to kill potato bugs! Full directions sent on receipt of one dollar.” This of course was a cheap opportunity, and he enclosed a dollar at once. In reply he received a small box containing a little block and mallet; the directions were: “Put him on No. 1, and hit him with No. 2.”

CHAPTER IX.
Weasels, and How to Destroy Them.

Now, as a field-mouse destroyer we have come to the king of them all. I have found as high as twenty-seven adult field mice stored in a weasel’s winter home. Yet of all the four-legged enemies our birds have, I know of none to compare with the weasel. But if I were to ask the experienced hunters of America if they know the weasel all would be disgusted, because the weasel is so common throughout this country. I was once in that class myself; I thought I knew all there was to be known about them. I had shot them out of the tops of trees, and dug them out of the ground; I had called them into the tile shed and even into the engine room; I had sat here in the woods and called them so they would come up and smell of the ends of my fingers; I had seen dozens of the little rascals in Northern Ontario when I had been hunting moose, and had sat down and called them across the creek to me. Yes, I thought I was well acquainted with them.

Now, when I come to think of it I am always reminded of a middle-aged, corpulent gentleman who once came to our tile yard. After he had his wagon loaded he climbed down over the wheel; as he struck the earth, he took both hands and pulled his loose trousers up over the dome of his constitution; then pushing his right hand down into his pants pocket he pulled it out full of what looked to be tobacco, Canada thistles and milk-weed chaff; after pouring this from one hand to the other and blowing the coarse gravel out, he tipped his mouth on top of his face, and raising his hand above, he let this junk roll into the cavity, just like throwing garbage into a skunk-hole. Then he turned and said, “Mr. Miner, do you know Mr. ——?” calling his neighbor by name. “Yes,” I replied, “I am well acquainted with him.” “Well,” he said, as he raised one hand and came towards me, “that is just where you are mistaken. Now, Mr. Miner, you think you know him, but you don’t.” Then raising both hands, he continued, “Now let me tell you who he is, Mr. Miner. He is a limb of the devil,” and he continued coming closer and going from bad to worse, saying nasty, unclean things about his neighbor until this combination in his mouth was all churned into a dirty froth, with the over-splush slopping out the corners and running down his chin like tar boiling out of a hotbox on a manure-spreader. So I excused myself: The engine in the factory needed my attention.

So now, whenever I think of this man’s conversation, I always think of the weasel, as I was sure I knew him. To prove I didn’t, the third year I raised pheasants, these innocent-looking little vermin took over two-thirds of what were hatched. You talk about worms bothering the farmers’ crops; they weren’t in it. Really, these weasels bothered me more than the heavy mortgage that held my buildings down and took care of my insurance policy.

I watched them day and night. I shut the birds in so tight that they smothered in their pens, and yet the weasels got them. I sat on the fence and blew several into fragments with a load of shot, and would go to the house quite light-hearted; next morning likely I would find ten or fifteen more dead pheasants. I put traps everywhere and caught as many pheasants as weasels. I used all kinds of bait, and failed. I tried to call them, but no, no. I took young, live birds and put them in a small mesh wire cage and set traps on the outside, but nothing doing. At last I brought the pheasants near the house and all hands watched them, and even then we lost some. I studied weasels night and day, but I was beaten. Where did they come from?

For there were weasels in the door-yard,

Weasels in the barn,

There were weasels in the hen-house,

Weasels all over the farm;

There were weasels in the engine-room,

Weasels in the shed,

And when I went to sleep at night

There were weasels in my head.

I could see weasels on the bare ground,

Weasels in the weeds;

I could see weasels in the pheasant-coops

Doing their bloody deeds;

I could see weasels coming across the road;

I could see weasels in the lane;

And in the morning when I awoke

I had weasels on the brain.

For in spite of all my determined efforts the weasels were increasing by leaps and bounds. Not that they were getting more numerous throughout the whole country, but they were simply attracted here by the pheasants, and it was no use, as there would be more and more next season. I thought I would have to give in, beaten. But Mr. Weasel had run up against a determined fellow to kill, and I was dying hard; and while it is not my intention to preach a sermon, yet I want to tell you what happened.

A few years previous to this, a dear little boy whom God lent to me for a short time climbed upon my lap, and putting his little arms around my neck with his sweet face looking into mine, pleaded with me to go to Sunday school with him and mamma. I unclasped his little arms one at a time, and told him to get down and go along as it was all right; but he insisted, stating it looked lonesome to leave me at home all alone. His sincere request took such a hold on me that I could not resist, and the very next Sunday found him and his father, hand in hand, on their way to the little old red schoolhouse. And although against my will, as I had no schooling, but finally to my delight, in about three months I was teaching a class of boys. They, of course, did the reading, but I was general manager and furnished the brute force if required. It took us several Sundays to get acquainted, and when we read the 26th verse of first Genesis we were very much encouraged to know that we were given “Dominion over all.” Now, dear reader, lest I forget I want you to know His promise in this verse is the foundation of a great percentage of my success in taming and controlling these so-called wild creatures during the last twenty years. Although the weasel had me beaten, yet my mind kept drifting back on His words, “Let man have dominion over all.”

Eventually I thought, “Why did the weasel take the remnants of pheasants over to the rail pile, nearly one hundred yards away?” Yes, it was plain enough he was over there and knew that hiding place before he got the birds. Well then, if I had had a trap over there I would have headed him off. So I would reverse my plans, and instead of destroying their homes I would build them some as perfect as I knew how. So with bright prospects and a light heart I went at it again and built three weasels’ houses as follows:

For each one I took four pieces of two-by-four scantling, three feet long, laid them down on the level ground, pointing these scantling east, west, north and south, but leaving them about six inches apart in the centre—just room enough to set a No. 1 or 1½ jump trap. Then I covered the top with old lumber and nailed it fast, leaving a hole in the centre about a foot square, right over the trap, which I covered with a loose board. See illustration.

Now I had a weasel house, complete, six or seven feet square, the cover just two inches from the ground, with all the runs leading to the trap like the spokes lead to the hub.

I placed these three platforms around in the most likely places, two in the enclosure and one on the outside. I then threw pieces of stumps, rails, or anything I could find, around to make a complete weasel harbor. Then I scratched a hole out about an inch deep in the centre and put in a handful of soft hen feathers, and placed a trap down on them, setting the trigger of the trap very light. Then I dropped two or three light feathers on top, making it appear like a perfect mouse-nest. I now put the loose board cover over. I set the traps early in the spring, but weasels did not come until I put the pheasants out. Then the real fun began, for I caught three in one trap in one day; this was in the trap on the outside of the enclosure. To prove to your satisfaction that my weasel story is not exaggerated, I caught fifty-seven weasels the first summer, and they only got four pheasants; for three seasons in succession I got over fifty weasels each year. But now they are so nearly exterminated that we only keep one weasel platform, as we call them, and catch two or three weasels a year.

UNDER SIDE OF WEASEL TRAP AND HARBOR

Please let me ask you to excuse me for writing so much to say a little, but I want you to understand just how to head off this pest, as one weasel will kill as high as twenty or thirty young fowl in one night, and to know how to catch him the night before, instead of the morning after, is worth the price of this book a good many times a year if you have had a taste of my experience. And the great beauty of it is you cannot help yourself without helping your neighbor. Previous to my exterminating over ninety per cent. of the weasels in this neighborhood, some of my neighbors were almost discouraged trying to raise young turkeys, and, in fact, any domestic fowl, but to-day these complaints seem to be a thing of the past and the weasel annoyance, ancient history.

CHAPTER X.
Robins.

Now I have tested your staying qualities, giving you the worst first, and we have come to the bright side of what the birds have taught me. After all, I have a lot to thank the cannibal birds for, as there are about thirty acres in this piece of second-growth woods where I am now sitting, and during the summer months I take a stroll down here at least once a week. This is the most perfect place for robins to build that one could find in a day’s travel, yet the last four or five years I haven’t seen five of their nests down here; but just one-half mile away, at my home, there were seventeen nests last summer, all within one hundred yards of the house, and outside of the thirteen maples that shade our door-yard the shrubbery is very young. All thinking humanity must admit that they come there for protection from their natural enemies, as there is usually a crow’s nest hidden away in this or the neighboring woods. But remember a crow knows better than to venture near my house. And the robins know it.

The chief reason the robins leave us early in the fall is because their choice food, the worms, have gone into the ground for the winter; but as soon as the worms start coming to the surface again the robins come back; and the beauty of it is they come to the same homes, and perch on the same limbs of our trees, sounding their cheerful notes to brighten the dark spots in our paths. Between songs they drop down on the lawn and hop and listen; all at once they start pecking at a grub in the grass; as soon as they have pecked him out and turned him into a robin they either listen for more, or jump up and give us another song. By catching so many mothers of the season’s grubs they render us tens of dollars worth of service.

Then about July the first the grubs that are not destroyed are under the hard, dry soil, and the robin has its second family to support; and Shame! Shame! Shame! on the man who claims to be intelligent who will slip out and shoot him because he took two cents’ worth of sour cherries that possibly were not worth picking. Has this man got a heart? If so, let him go under the tree where the little starving young robins are calling, “Mamma! mamma! mamma!” That’s the exact interpretation of these three chirps that are getting fainter and fainter. Now, my brother, let me ask you again: Have you got a heart? You love your little baby brother or your darling baby boy, and the very though of King Pharaoh makes you wicked within; but remember, as cruel as he was, he never demanded that a baby boy should die a lingering death as these dear little robins have to do through the fact that you shot their mother. Personally, I hate to shoot a crow or a grackle, as bad as they are, during the nesting season, on that account.

Now it would not be fair for me to pass the robin by without giving you a taste of our enjoyable experience, as while I know that by times robins will annoy fruit growers by congregating there in hundreds, yet to be fair we must consider the most good for the most people. So let us take the average farm, occupied by the cleanest of farmers, with his corn, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, and other crops too numerous to mention, all coming up through the clean, fertile soil. And now, like a sneaking thief in the night, the annoying cut-worm crawls out like a snail, cuts down the promising plant and then passes on to another and repeats his destructive doings. Then when he has gorged himself to the limit he will just dig himself in under the soil near the stump of the last plant he has destroyed. I have known fully one-fourth of the plants in a field to be destroyed by cut-worms in less than five days. Not that there are so many of them, but, like the weasel, each one is so destructive. Now just think of the expense and drawback to this farmer, having to replant. Moreover, the second planting never produces the same crop as the original one would have done. Here is only one of the valuable points I could explain for Robin Red Breast. For long before the average farmer is out of bed, he is in the field, hopping from one plant to another in search of these worms; and when he gets two or three in his throat he flies across to his family, and in less than three minutes he is back again.

Yes, I know there are men who will tell you the robin will not eat cut-worms and that his song is no better than that of a warty toad. One of these statements is just as true as the other. The robin will eat about all kinds of worms I have ever seen excepting the dirty tobacco worm, and we must give him credit for that. Last summer I saw a young robin not over six weeks old, picking up ants at the rate of sixty per minute. What does this mean to your lawn?

Some years ago a boy was passing my house carrying a .22 rifle. I heard him shoot, so I went out to the road and investigated; went and picked up the old robin that was fluttering, a few rods away, and as she gasped her last, two cut-worms spued out of her mouth and a third was squirming on the ground near where I picked her up. After this boy and I had had a heart to heart talk about the matter we separated, but that afternoon I found another robin with a bullet in its back. The next day was Sunday, and at ten a.m. I was sitting near the window trying to read, and as I glanced out I saw a young robin, dying, under the fir tree. I soon found a nest above it, and two larger ones were still alive, but cold. We brought them in, nest and all, and when they got warm I dropped a little custard in the mouth of the larger one. This caused number two to realize that there was some to be had and he, too, awoke from his slumber, and apparently put all his strength into his neck and jaw bones, for he opened his mouth so wide that it seemed to split his head completely in two. The little bits they choked down them immediately gave them strength to want more, and as soon as they were satisfied, we covered them up with good warm flannel. When we returned from church about an hour and a half later and uncovered them, one hopped right up on the edge of the nest and just squealed for more custard, and in two days they were out, hopping around us for their feed. In fact I have never had robins accept us as their step-parents so quickly as these two did. Possibly when they were in their unconscious state they forgot their original parent to a certain extent. In two weeks they were flying all over the premises, but always came to the back door and chirped when they got hungry, and would stay until some one fed them. Finally they would follow us men over to the factory and often have I seen them sitting on the mill, watching the stream of clay run out, now and then turning their heads sidewise as if they doubted their best eye. Once or twice I saw them alight on a hot gas pipe; this always made me laugh, because they got off long before one had to tell them. The next one might see of them they would be out at the clay bank, watching the man dig clay, now and then picking out an earth worm. But they never went near any stranger that happened around, and this point alone brought us a lot of satisfaction, just to know that these two innocent robins, that had scarcely been acquainted with us a month, knew every person that worked around the premises.

These two stayed with us until October and disappeared. But they taught me one good lesson: What a great mistake I had made, through life, by keeping my pets shut up, as one bird having its liberty to go and come at will is worth a hundred in a cage.

Well, that is some years ago, but we have had pet robins ever since. The last seven or eight years, strangers have been coming here by the thousands, and all want to feed our robins; we, of course, let them, and sometimes I will not feed them myself for days. But I often see them come flying when a bunch of strange people arrives. Why? Just because they are fed so much by strangers; that is why.

A laughable thing happened last summer. I heard the lady of the house scolding and shooing with the broom; I found that little Jasper had left the screen door open and three of his pet robins had flown in and roosted on his mother’s choice picture that hangs in the cold storage room, or parlor, as some call it. When Jasper found what the noise was about he just took the feed tin and went in, gave the pan a few taps with his spoon, and the birds at once flew down into the pan, the boy walked out with it and ended all confusion.

JASPER FEEDING THE ROBINS

In 1917 we had twenty-one pet robins, and I have often seen little Jasper start for school and have to come back and feed his pets to keep them from following him away.

The way we get them is when some neighbor gets afraid his cats are going to kill the young robins around his place, we get them. If you want to try it, keep them warm, in a small dry-goods box. When you have had them about six hours, open their mouths and slip a little custard in them. The second day they will open their own mouths and in about three days they will accept you as their stepmother and you can let them out. Be sure and keep them good and warm, and feed often.

We put tags on some of our robins, and odd ones returned the next spring, and they are always more wild; in fact when they return they will not let you near them. This fact I do not understand. My last experiment was to take two robins out of a nest of four where the parent birds were the tamest of any I knew; then I went and got one out of a nest of two, with exceptionally wild parents. The birds were all taken the same hour. But the two were tamer in two days than the one was in four.

SNOWBALL

This reproduction of a photograph will introduce to you Miss Snowball, our pure white robin with pink eyes and cream-colored beak and feet. Snowball was hatched in a nest with three others, but, like the parents, the other three were just common robins.

CHAPTER XI.
The Bluebirds.

To the average middle-aged person of America, this bird needs little or no introduction, but to the young people they are now quite rare. In fact I was speaking to a young lady quite recently, and she has camped out every summer for the longer part of her life (but of course, like all other girls at her age, she has just passed sixteen; passed it coming back, of course) and she told me she had never seen a bluebird. They have decreased over ninety-five per cent. the last forty years, but when I was a boy they were as common as the robin is to-day. They usually arrive the same day in the spring, bringing with them their beautiful note that no musician has ever been able to imitate correctly.

In 1908 I put up three or four nests for them and in 1909 a pair came and built in one. These nests were made of wood; so it occurred to me possibly they would build in tile houses, and I set to work and made six or eight different varieties of drain-tile, and to my surprise and delight the wrens and bluebirds both took to the tile houses and have never built in the frame one since. Last summer I put a wren house up on Monday and the very next morning Mrs. Wren had her nest half built; or in other words, the tile house had hardly gotten cold before she started carrying in sticks.

I had one pair of bluebirds raise their first family for three successive years in the same house. So last summer I made about two hundred bluebird houses, taking this, their choice house, as a pattern. This pair of birds I know raised three families one summer, but they usually raise two. The same house does for both wrens and bluebirds; if the wrens use it, they will stop the large hole up with sticks so the English sparrows cannot get in, but of course leaving door-room enough to get in themselves, as they are so much smaller. This is my experience, but whether these birds will take to tile houses away from here, where they are not accustomed to seeing red tile and a red man, remains to be proven.

In case they do not, there are several remedies. The houses could be painted any color in order to get them coming. But first of all, leave it to the birds, as they seem to know whom it was put there for. So, knowing that the birds prefer them, and as the tile house can be made for about one-fourth of the cost of the wood and, like Pat said about the stone coffin “Sure it will last a lifetime,” I know I have secured a home run for the birds.

TILE BIRD HOUSES
The house to the right is the old original that the birds picked out, and the one to the left is the duplicate I made with the removable top.

The removable top can be left off all winter if preferred. The wet and frost will rid the house of mites and so forth, which sometimes kill fledglings. By the use of these little fireproof bird dwellings around our home, the wrens have become far more plentiful than English sparrows, as the latter know they are not wanted. Although we have four or five pairs of bluebirds each year, yet they do not seem to multiply as rapidly as the wrens; I believe this is due to the wrens’ cunningness in barring the door against these cruel “flying rats.” This experience has compelled me to believe that the sparrows are responsible for the decrease of our lovable bluebird. I say “lovable,” and so will any person who is acquainted with the bluebird, for they expose their love for humanity by preferring to build their nests near our dwellings so they can rely on our protection.

We usually toe-nail their houses on top of the fence-posts around our premises. I have never tagged the bluebirds, therefore I have no positive proof the same one returns year after year; yet I am like the Scotchman who said he was open to conviction but he would like to see the man who could convince him otherwise, for we have several old birds any one of which will permit us to climb up the fence post and remove the roof from her house, and when we peep in she will sit there on her eggs, within eight inches of our eyebrows, and, turning her head sidewise she will cover our whole face with her one little eye as much as to say “Beg your pardon, sir, but you should have rapped before you opened the door.” If a stranger is permitted to do this, she will fly out, every time, though after I have taken the top off she will permit him to look in and will not fly out.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU KNOCK BEFORE YOU OPENED THE DOOR?”

The chief cause of the decrease of the bluebird is English sparrows. One of man’s great mistakes was when he introduced this little, domineering Bolshevik into America. Not that he doesn’t destroy insects enough to counterbalance the amount of grain he takes, but here is my charge against him: He is doing all in his power to exterminate several varieties of birds that God put here, and any one of these birds will destroy more insects in a day than he will in a week.

Last summer when I awoke one Sunday morning I heard the voices of sparrows and bluebirds fighting at the bluebird house, which was about one hundred feet from my open window; but as I knew the young bluebirds were hatched, I just rolled over and had another snooze. About an hour later I saw that the English sparrows had possession. So I went over, and found five young bluebirds lying dead at the foot of the post. Now I did not see the sparrows throw them out. I only know that the old bluebirds were chirping and hovering around the nest and were driven back by the sparrows, and that the little dead birds were still warm. In fact, one was just gasping its last when I picked them up, and each showed marks where it had been pecked. I pinned the five little murdered babies to a piece of cardboard and hung them out and took their picture, which is shown herewith.

THE ENGLISH SPARROWS’ VICTIMS

CHAPTER XII.
Woodpeckers.

Near where this tent is pitched is a soft maple tree with a decayed limb in its top, and about one-half dozen downy woodpeckers are making their home there. This morning there is about four inches of snow, and the air is still, so that I could hear these little God-given helpers at work. So I took the ax and went and cut some samples to show you just what they are doing, cutting these little trees off three inches above and below the gimlet holes made by the birds; then I split the blocks and photographed them. Of course I knew before I went what they were doing, as I have noticed their valuable work for over twenty-five years. The illustration shows gimlet holes made in the proper place by Mr. and Mrs. Woodpecker; then with their long, sharp, bearded tongues which they insert into the grub they gradually draw him out, either head or tail first, I don’t know which. The life of the tree is thus saved.

Some years ago when I was cutting timber to secure lumber to build my present home, we sawed down an oak tree over four feet in diameter. The heart of this tree showed where the little woodpeckers had taken the grubs out, over a hundred and fifty years ago, as the marks were preserved there, in the heart of that tree, as plain as they are in the photograph reproduced above. And through their help, a hundred years before I was born, I am able to have nice quarter-cut oak in my home to-day.

Wormhole. Gimlet-hole made by Woodpecker.
HOW THE WOODPECKER GETS THE WORM

Yes, the photograph makes me think more seriously of myself than it does of you. Is it possible that Jack Miner was ever so ignorant and cruel as to shoot one of these dear little forest-protectors just for the fun of seeing him fall!

But there is an old proverb, familiar to all, “Misery likes company.” A friend of mine was telling me just yesterday how he and his man went to the back cornfield and shot the red-headed woodpecker because they were pulling his corn. After they had killed all the old birds in sight the man suggested that they cut the old stub down and destroy the fledglings. When this stub fell, the rotten nests broke up in dozens of pieces, killing the young. As the crop of each of these little birds resembled a wart on a needle, they decided to cut them open and see the amount of corn each contained; but to their surprise they were packed full of injurious worms and bugs, and not one kernel of corn could be found.

Now these two incidents are only fair examples of the ignorance of us human beings during the past, regarding bird life. I could go on enumerating such convincing points for a week about our beautiful bobolink, meadow-lark, and the song-sparrow family, and dozens and dozens of other insectivorous birds. This is all outside their song service, and the cheerful, clear note of such as the bobolink as he flutters across the meadow, singing “Johnny why don’t you mend your britches?” or of the cat-bird, who is perfectly willing to come and sing in your back yard if you will plant just a little shrubbery.

This calls to mind a particular friend of mine, Mr. Angus Woodbridge, whose summer home is about three miles from where I live, located on the north shore of Lake Erie. He has less than two acres, but the fifth year the shrubbery was planted there were over seventy birds’ nests around this lovely home, twenty different varieties, a pair of mourning doves being so bold as to build on the window-sill and raise their young there. The brown thrasher, who has such a beautiful imitating voice, could not resist the temptation and built his home in the wild grape arbor that covers the path in the little ravine that wends its way down to the sandy beach. My chief reason for mentioning this fact is to make it plain that these beautiful creatures will come clear across the continent to you, if you will go a few steps towards them.

CHAPTER XIII
The Swallow Family.

This is, to my notion, the most valuable family of birds we have in America, as they live entirely on winged insects. And while I am writing on their value, I want you to keep your eye on their intelligence.

Over twenty-five years ago we built an extra large drying shed at our tile factory. It is two hundred feet long, and two stories high; then with the addition of one hundred feet of machine shed, we have over three hundred feet of the very choicest place for the old-fashioned, fork-tailed barn swallows.

Here it stood, with those windows continually open, for years; but no swallows came near.

During that time I read the first game law I have any knowledge of ever being published. I found it in Deuteronomy, twenty-second chapter, verses six and seven, which reads as follows: “If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: but thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.” I read, and tried to analyze the meaning, but my eyes were too weak to see the point.

Finally, to my delight, when I went over to the factory one morning here was the pair of long-looked-for swallows darting around near the south end of this shed. Now the machinery, where ninety per cent. of the work is done, is at the extreme north end of the shed; the south part is used for drying purposes only. And the next morning this pair of birds had some mud stuck up at the points of the third pair of rafters from the south end. They were building just as far from us workmen as they possibly could and still be under the same roof. How this pair of birds did keep those two verses of Scripture fresh in my mind.

Well, they had no sooner completed their house and started setting on five eggs, than along came their deadly enemy, the English sparrow, and destroyed the nest. Then I went up in the air pretty high and came down with a .22 rifle in my hand, and pointed a whole lot of my attention at this particular variety of sparrow. And I had the pleasure of seeing those swallows rebuild and successfully raise their second brood, which is four. Before they migrated, they got quite tame and by times they apparently came closer to us than necessary.

The next spring two pairs came back, one pair occupying the old nest, but the others built about fifty feet closer to us. I watched the sparrows closer than ever, and it seemed that the swallows called to us as much as to say “Help! Help!” whenever their enemies put in their appearance, and I always tried to be on hand like a sore thumb. That summer each pair raised two broods, making a total of eighteen young. Now we had just what we had been looking for, and these birds apparently thought the same, for every man in the factory had learned to love them and know their call when a sparrow arrived. This, too, may sound a little fishy, but I will go you one better: I know you could blindfold me and I could tell you if there was a swallow’s enemy approaching them. If they looked to us to help them why surely they knew we were their friends.

The third spring they came back in goodly numbers and built five nests, and the fifth year there were no less than twenty nests in the shed. But the beauty of it all is, they simply discarded the south end, and fifteen of the nests are within twenty feet of the busiest spot on the premises where the men are all working and the steam is sometimes blowing. This proves without a doubt that these little, innocent, valuable birds came to us for protection.

I have seen three alight on the cart-horse’s back, at once. I have also seen the clay digger put his hand upon the nest, and the old mother bird would simply look over the side as much as to say, “Do you like me?” But let a stranger go in the clay shed, and you will hear their sweet, alarmed voices ring out by the dozens.

Another very interesting sight is when the parent of, say nest number one, darts in at the window, fifty feet away from the nest, the hungry mouths in that nest will go up, proving that each nest of fledglings know their parents as soon as they see them at that distance.

Another great satisfaction to me is that there are now swallows’ nests in about every horse-barn of this neighborhood. The great question is: What good are they? We have made a careful study of this point. I have time and again put a sheet of paper under the nest, and when these five fledglings are at their best for consuming flies there is about one-half cupful of droppings thrown overboard every twenty-four hours. I have seen our cow and cart-horse and our self-starter all three lying down in the shade of the shed, and comfortable as could be because here were a dozen swallows dipping up and down after every fly that appeared.

Now scientists tell us that these typhoid flies will carry germs. Such being the fact, when this bird catches and devours the fly that is on its way to your house with that dreaded disease, then it has prolonged your days. “That it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.”

There are six different varieties of swallows that visit this part of Canada. The purple martin is by far the largest, and his warbling voice should be heard around every country home in the greater portion of America, because he is so easily attracted. Thirty-five years ago there were a few in this country; they usually built their nests in old, deserted woodpeckers’ holes. I knew a chestnut stub that afforded several pairs a home for the summer. But the first martin house I ever saw was on Mr. Jasperson’s building in the town of Kingsville. Then a Mr. Elliott, who kept a summer hotel near the lake, built houses and had good success. This gave me the martin fever very bad, so I hooked up the self-starter and drove to the lake and saw Mr. Elliott. The dear old gentleman’s voice trembled as he said, “Jack, I had twenty-five or thirty pairs around my houses, but the boys thought it fun to shoot them. They would go up the lake shore for nothing else, only to hunt my pets; and now I only have three birds left. I am going to pull the houses down because I would rather not have them come than see them shot.”

The question was, how could I get them coming to my place? I am three miles from the lake and seldom ever see a purple martin out here. Finally I saw an advertisement in the little journal known as Our Dumb Animals, published in Massachusetts: “J. Warren Jacobs, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, manufacturer of martin houses, shipped three carloads last week.” Just then I caught myself thinking that these birds would know his houses wherever they saw them. I at once sent an order for a twenty-roomed dwelling, but when the house arrived the wild geese were continually sitting where I wanted to erect it, so to avoid frightening them I waited till they left for the breeding grounds, still farther north. On the evening of May the 2nd, 1913, I had all the boys in the neighborhood come and we raised the house on a pole sixteen feet high. The questions I was asked that evening would surely have puzzled a Philadelphia lawyer, as to “How soon would the martins come?” and so on.

The next morning, before I had my working harness sufficiently buttoned to avoid an embarrassing accident, I took a peep out the window to see what the bird house looked like in daylight, and really my breath was almost taken from me, for here was a pair of martins hovering around the house, and when the schoolboys went by they shouted, “Uncle Jack,” and as they shook their little dinner pails and laughed heartily they said, “there are two blackbirds around your martin house.”

In less than a month there were thirteen rooms occupied. This, of course, taught all of us children, old and young, what a purple martin was. In August I counted sixty-three hovering around the house at one time.

Now I have built two of what I call “martin castles,” but it took me three years to induce the birds to come to them. To-day they have almost discarded the frame house, and are in the “castles;” the fact that the “castles” are warmer in the spring and cooler in the summer possibly accounts for this. But the brick house is altogether too expensive.

THE MARTIN “CASTLE”
Photograph taken during the absence of the birds.

CHAPTER XIV.
Wild Duck Hunting.

The following, I know, will sound strange to most readers. But the fact is, duck hunting is the one sport above all others for me.

Yes, it is true I have hunted the swift, ruffed grouse, which is sometimes called partridge, and as this beautiful bird darted through the undergrowth I have downed eleven of them without a miss.

In northern Ontario I have time and again got the wind in my face and slipped up and peeped over a hill at a doe and fawn that were quietly feeding there. I have stood with the crisp breeze cutting my eyes, watching Nature in all her beauty, and presently a big fellow steps out from some concealed spot, nibbles a little browse, or perhaps walks up to a sapling and rubs his antlers. There he is, perfectly unconscious of the fact that a deadly enemy is unfolding his arms from around a clean rifle; and in the midst of life he is in death.

The lordly moose is another of our Canadian beauties (I said “beauties” when I believe I should have said “homelies”) and more than once have I had an ordinary carload of these noble animals at the mercy of my rifle. There they have stood, watching their leader die, apparently unconscious of what had taken place.

I have crawled, head-first, down into an old, deserted bear den, and to my astonishment and surprise almost rubbed noses with Mr. Bruin. Needless to say I didn’t require telling to back out. This was in the winter, of course, when the bears were hibernating.

On another occasion, one still, frosty morning, I stood at the top of a hill and answered the howl of a timber wolf, and to my delight he replied. Then with my mouth close to the ground I again imitated that lonesome, blood-curdling sound; and in about one minute he answered back. Then in a few seconds I very carefully let out another call, and while I was examining and cocking my rifle he again answered. Now I was sure he was coming my way. There I stood, waiting, for over five minutes, with the crispy air in my favor, every nerve keyed up with anxiety. Just as I was about to turn my face to call again, I saw this monstrous, shaggy wolf break from the green cover out into a beaver-marsh about one hundred and fifty yards away, and as I pressed the rifle firmly to my shoulder a low whistle from my lips brought him to a stand, and I had the great satisfaction of seeing him give one tremendous leap in the air as that two-hundred-grain bullet blew his heart into fragments. I mention this incident because our timber wolf, the great red-deer destroyer, may be poisoned or trapped, yet, owing to his keen smelling powers, hearing, and sneaking ability, very few sportsmen—yes, very few of even the most experienced trappers—have ever had the satisfaction of stinging him with a bullet.

Yet in spite of all these experiences, which are the height of thousands of sportsmen’s ambitions, I can recall no line of hunting that afforded me more real pleasure than duck-shooting over a flock of home-made decoys. And before I attempt to tell you some things that the wild ducks have taught me I want to give you a glimpse of a real duck-hunt my brother Ted and I had, way back in boyhood, muzzle-loading days, when a dollar bill would blanket a horse.

Somehow or other we had gotten our duck-boat up at a place on the north shore of Lake Erie called Cedar Creek, a distance of about five miles south-west of our home. I had whittled in nearly every night of the winter, making a flock of decoys, and brother Ted did the painting. This particular spring we were splitting rails to finish fencing in one hundred acres of bush; so one Monday morning about the first of April, father gave us a stint, to put up so much fence for the week, and at it we went. At half-past five Friday evening we had our week’s work finished, ready for a duck-hunt on Saturday.

After supper we got everything ready for an early start, and as we shook the powder in the flasks and sized up the amount of shot we had in our leather pouches, the anticipation of the next day worked on us until one said, “Let’s go up there to-night. We can build a fire in the cedars and sleep under the boat.” Enough said; here we go! Dear mother scoffed at the idea, but she seemed powerless. “Well,” she said, “if you are bound to go, I will put you up a basket of food.” “No, no; we are not going to carry a basket of grub all the way up there. Just give us a small lunch to put in our pockets for breakfast.”

Well, just about sunset found each of us with six wooden decoys, some in our hunting-coat pockets, others strung around our necks, and with each a pair of those old-fashioned cowhide boots on. We started by hand over those soft, sticky, newly-built clay roads, a great percentage of it running through the unfenced forest; and by the time we got there I can assure you those twelve decoys were heavier than they were when we started. It was a beautiful night; the moon which was only a few days old, lay on its back in the south-west, those two little, sharp, bright horns almost outlining the picture of a full moon. To think of it, even now, calls to my memory a sweet little song my older sister sang to me when I was but a lad:

“Oh, Mama, how pretty the moon is to-night;

’Twas never so lovely before,

With its two little horns, so sharp and so bright—

I hope they don’t grow any more!

If I were up there with you and my friends

We’d rock in it nicely, you see;

We’d sit in the middle and hang on to both ends,

And what a nice cradle ’twould be!

We’d call to the stars to get out of our way

Or else we would rock on their toes,

And there we would sit till the dawn of the day

And see where the pretty moon goes.

Oh, there we would rock, in the beautiful skies,

And through the bright clouds we would roam;

We’d see the sunset, and see the sun rise,

And on the next rainbow come home.”

Soon we made our way into the cedars and found our boat just as we had left it. Then we carried the decoys back to the lake shore again, and as we put them down on the sand, Ted suggested we carry old driftwood and build our “blind” ready for the morning’s sport. Even with this we weren’t satisfied, but we also waded out in the shallow water, threw out our decoys, and had the pleasure of seeing the sinking moon glitter over the rippling waves of beautiful Lake Erie on to the sides of our newly-painted decoys. Then we started back into the cedars.

In those days there were about twenty acres of this red-cedar jungle and in some places one could not see a man over twenty-five feet away. The camping place we selected was about twenty feet in diameter, partly surrounded on three sides with a bank of sand fully six feet high, heavily capped with cedars. Here we gathered dry twigs and built a fire. Then we dragged the boat over and turned it on its side, thus filling the gap and making almost a complete circle around our fire. After gathering armful after armful of wood for our night’s fuel and cutting lots of cedar boughs for our bed, we sat down to rest. The sand was dry, and as the night was still, a very little fire kept us quite comfortable. Then we pulled off our cowhide boots and set them back on the opposite side of our fire. They made great reflectors, mine especially; for although I was only sixteen years old, most of my growth had gone into foundation.

Ted allowed his boots were French kip; I said mine were cowhide. This caused brother to pick at his sprouting moustache as he remarked, “Jack, to look at them from here, one would think they were cows’ fathers’ hides.”

As I got up and dropped another stick or two on our fire, Ted spoke up quite cheerfully, “Jack, let me tell you just what this made me think of. You know the other night when I was down at that country dance, I ran across one of the sweetest French dolls it has ever been my pleasure to meet. She was a real little bird of life, and the more I danced with her the more I wanted to, and really I began to think I held a hand bigger than a foot. Finally as we were standing on the corner, awaiting our turn to swing, she nudged me and as I leaned over she whispered in my ear, ‘Mr. Miner, don’t you think if you were to trade your cowhide boots off for a pair of light shoes it would be easier on this man’s white ash floor?’”

About the next suggestion was to eat our lunch so as not to be bothered with it in the morning. This piece of work was eagerly accomplished, only the programme was altogether too short at the one end, as I could almost feel the pieces of dead hog and hunks of bread strike the log I was sitting on. However we were compelled to be satisfied.

As we sat there watching the sparks disappear into the darkness we could hear the lonely hoot of the owl in the distance; and the swish-sh, swish-sh-sh-sh, of the small waves on the lake a few rods to the south of us; and from the slough to the north came the faint creak-k, creak-k-k-k, of the little spring frogs, as much as to say, “Go to sleep. Go to sleep.” All at once Ted’s voice rang out, “Wake up, Jack!” and really our surroundings were so completely covered in with Nature she had closed my eyes and I did not know it. Shortly the wind started moaning through the cedars, and we imagined we could feel a change in the atmosphere, and brother suggested we crawl in under our boat and have a sleep. So we straightened the soft cedar boughs around as best we could on the dry sand, crawled in, letting the boat down over us. We wrapped ourselves around each other very closely. The next I knew I was lying on my side with brother’s warm arms around me, but my eyes were open and I imagined I could see light under the boat; so I raised it up. Ted spoke first, “Jack, look at the snow!” And really the sight almost caused one to doubt his own eyes, for everything was hanging with snow; the only bare spot was the small pile of smouldering ashes; those cowhide boots were simply snowed full. To make bad matters worse the wind was in the north and it was still snowing.

Well, we knocked it out of our boots the best we could and put them on. While I was fixing and blowing smoke in my eyes out of the fire, trying to get it started, Ted knocked the snow off his gun and went to see if the decoys were all right, and before I got the blaze going I heard “Bang!” I only thought he was trying to dry his gun out, but presently I heard “Bang!” again. Then I knocked the snow off my shooting outfit and made fresh tracks toward him. I found him quite excited. “Jack, hurry! The ducks are coming by the thousands!” There were about fifty or more in the decoys when I came. “Look! Here they come again! Get in the ‘blind’ and keep your red head down!” and he continued pricking dry powder in the tube of his gun with a pin. As about twenty-five ducks hovered to alight we rose up and lit into them. That is, he did, and down came three; but my old gun just went “Snap! Snap!”

Ted sprang to his feet and said, “Prick some dry powder in the tubes of your gun while I go and get the boat,” and just as I was in the middle of this operation brother shouted from the edge of the cedars, “Jack, get ready; here they come again.” So I slipped a cap on each tube, but none too quickly, for the ducks were upon me. “Snap! Bang!” and down came a big red-headed drake. Brother fairly ran with the boat on his shoulders, a paddle in one hand; and then the real fun began, for it wasn’t a case of looking for ducks, but how fast could we load those old soft coal burners and get the fuse started. Although some of the decoys were half covered with snow, yet the ducks would alight right among them while we were standing up loading our guns; really the snowy air seemed full of them, and we had the pleasure of seeing five tumble out of one flock.

Soon our empty powder horns compelled us to stop shooting; but this did not stop the sport by any means, for there we lay low in our “blind” and watched and studied these migrating birds, as flock after flock settled down among our decoys, until I firmly believe there were over two hundred blue-bills, canvas-backs, red-heads, golden-eyes, ruddies and so forth, within gunshot of our hiding place.

But like lots of other good times, it had to come to a close and about eight o’clock the storm ceased, it cleared off and the ducks got wise and scarce.

So we picked up the decoys and hid them in the dry sand, carried our boat to its hiding place, and about 10 a.m. we shouldered our thirty-seven ducks and started for home.

The snow was now nearly all melted on the road, leaving the clay so sticky that we decided to go home through the woods and fields. But our heavy load of ducks and the spongy fields made our travelling real hard work, and our progress was of the very slowest character. The farther we went, the slower our gait, for our steam was gradually running down. And how we thought of the basket of grub dear mother wanted us to take! Finally we crossed the last road and the next house to become visible was ours. How high some of those old rail fences did seem, and how my stomach did gnaw for just one bit of food! Talk about Esau selling his birthright for a plate of porridge! really there was such an aching void in me I would willingly have given my birthright, or birth-wrong, for just one handful of corn-mush and pork grease.

As we neared the house mother came to meet us. Glancing over her glasses, she said, “Are you hungry boys? Let me carry some of your ducks. How many did you get? Aren’t they beauties! Now sit down, boys, and I will have your lunch ready in a few minutes.” Just then the old clock said “Three.” Here we had been nearly five hours coming that many miles.