arned to imitate it so well that a bold cock often accepted our
challenge and came flying to fight. The young run as soon as they are
hatched and follow their parents until spring, roosting on the ground
in a close bunch, heads out ready to scatter and fly. These fine birds
were seldom seen when we first arrived in the wilderness, but when
wheat-fields supplied abundance of food they multiplied very fast,
although oftentimes sore pressed during hard winters when the snow
reached a depth of two or three feet, covering their food, while the
mercury fell to twenty or thirty degrees below zero. Occasionally,
although shy on account of being persistently hunted, under pressure
of extreme hunger in the very coldest weather when the snow was
deepest they ventured into barnyards and even approached the doorsteps
of houses, searching for any sort of scraps and crumbs, as if
piteously begging for food. One of our neighbors saw a flock come
creeping up through the snow, unable to fly, hardly able to walk, and
while approaching the door several of them actually fell down and
died; showing that birds, usually so vigorous and apparently
independent of fortune, suffer and lose their lives in extreme weather
like the rest of us, frozen to death like settlers caught in
blizzards. None of our neighbors perished in storms, though many had
feet, ears, and fingers frost-nipped or solidly frozen.

As soon as the lake ice melted, we heard the lonely cry of the loon,
one of the wildest and most striking of all the wilderness sounds, a
strange, sad, mournful, unearthly cry, half laughing, half wailing.
Nevertheless the great northern diver, as our species is called, is a
brave, hardy, beautiful bird, able to fly under water about as well as
above it, and to spear and capture the swiftest fishes for food. Those
that haunted our lake were so wary none was shot for years, though
every boy hunter in the neighborhood was ambitious to get one to prove
his skill. On one of our bitter cold New Year holidays I was surprised
to see a loon in the small open part of the lake at the mouth of the
inlet that was kept from freezing by the warm spring water. I knew
that it could not fly out of so small a place, for these heavy birds
have to beat the water for half a mile or so before they can get
fairly on the wing. Their narrow, finlike wings are very small as
compared with the weight of the body and are evidently made for flying
through water as well as throu