ccount of difficult egg-birth. Pitying the poor mother, I
picked her up out of the grass and helped her as gently as I could,
and as soon as the egg was born she flew gladly away. Oftentimes I
have thought it strange that one could walk through the woods and
mountains and plains for years without seeing a single blood-spot.
Most wild animals get into the world and out of it without being
noticed. Nevertheless we at last sadly learn that they are all subject
to the vicissitudes of fortune like ourselves. Many birds lose their
lives in storms. I remember a particularly severe Wisconsin winter,
when the temperature was many degrees below zero and the snow was
deep, preventing the quail, which feed on the ground, from getting
anything like enough of food, as was pitifully shown by a flock I
found on our farm frozen solid in a thicket of oak sprouts. They were
in a circle about a foot wide, with their heads outward, packed close
together for warmth. Yet all had died without a struggle, perhaps more
from starvation than frost. Many small birds lose their lives in the
storms of early spring, or even summer. One mild spring morning I
picked up more than a score out of the grass and flowers, most of them
darling singers that had perished in a sudden storm of sleety rain and
hail.

In a hollow at the foot of an oak tree that I had chopped down one
cold winter day, I found a poor ground squirrel frozen solid in its
snug grassy nest, in the middle of a store of nearly a peck of wheat
it had carefully gathered. I carried it home and gradually thawed and
warmed it in the kitchen, hoping it would come to life like a pickerel
I caught in our lake through a hole in the ice, which, after being
frozen as hard as a bone and thawed at the fireside, squirmed itself
out of the grasp of the cook when she began to scrape it, bounced off
the table, and danced about on the floor, making wonderful springy
jumps as if trying to find its way back home to the lake. But for the
poor spermophile nothing I could do in the way of revival was of any
avail. Its life had passed away without the slightest struggle, as it
lay asleep curled up like a ball, with its tail wrapped about it.

IV

A PARADISE OF BIRDS

Bird Favorites--The Prairie Chickens--Water-Fowl--A Loon on
the Defensive--Passenger Pigeons.

The Wisconsin oak openings were a summer paradise for song birds, and
a fine place to get acquainted with them; for the trees stood wi