30 .... THE CONDOR ' Vol. XX 2. OUT ACROSS THE WHEAT FIELDS Many of the ducks at this time were scattered out over the prairie nesting, When hungry rejoining their mates on their feeding grounds in the shallow sloughs. Individuals would be seen going or coming between the nest and the feeding grounds and a pair would often be seen winging their way out over the grain fields. One of the brooding ducks was flushed from her nest beside a dim farm road through the wheat, her nest containing five dingy olive eggs un- protected by feathers or down. And another duck, with white subterminal tail band, rose from my side by a grass grown road where I had previously seen a Shoveller drake, leaving her nest with its four pale greenish eggs uncovered 0nly a few feet from the wagon tracks, though well hidden in a brown band of coarse vegetation that had lodged and dried when the slough water subsided. The next day when I returned the eggs were cold, and much to my disappoint- ment that was the end of the story. One of the ducks most frequently seen was the Pintail, a bird known to me previously mainly through a Fuertes plate which depicts a pair crossing the sky, cutting the air delicately with long slender head and neck, and gliding by through the blue, the long tail of the drake with its gently up-curving pins preserving an exquisite balance--marvelous ?ircraft of the blue ether, whose portrait might well be entitled, The Poetry of Motion. What a privilege to meet the bird at home on the prairie! To be assured by the long upstretched neck, the angular brown patch on the side of the head, and the long tail feath- ers that it is indeed a Pintail is exciting; but when the distinguished bird rises and with level flight glides across the ethereal blue sky, you realize the poetry of motion. The prairie afforded many beautiful pictures and interesting sights. In cutting across lots I discovered beds of snowy anemones, streaks of golden mus- tard, and unsuspected pools, sometimes dark ultramarine, 'fr6m which startled ducks swam quickly to a marshy cove or flew off over the grain fields. Marsh Itawks were frequently seen, now a brown female flying off with a ground squirre! in its claws, now a blue male seesawing from the ground up perhaps ten feet, flying up, then down, then up, then down, whether in excitement over some unusual catch or in courtship play I could not determine, for neither nest nor quarry were in evidence. A pure white gull larger than the Franklin was occasionally seen flying over the prairie, once over inappropriate ploughed ground'; but looking up at it, its white breast went well with its background of soft blue sky and small white horizon cloudlets. The plaintive cry of the Kill- deer was sometime heard over the grain fields. One that 1 watched going down between the low rows of wheat went in its characteristic manner, run- ning a few steps, crouching down, rising, and running again till it was almost out of sight. On rare occasions I flushed a Prairie Chicken from one of the few small islands of prairie sod in the midst of the wheat; and one day a bird that must have been a Burrowing Owl appeared and disappeared so suddenly that i could hardl? believe my eyes in spite of its bob as it lit on the ground and the fact that the eastern line of its range extends from Manitoba to Louisiana. Chokecherry motts high clumps of bushes making islands in the grain fields-.-attracted a number of birds to whom they offered congenial nesting places.. A Yellow Warbler was singing loudly on the edge of one of them when I appeared, and a Catbird. singing inside stopped with suspicious abruptness when I intruded. A Kingbird was seen there too, and a bulky old nest sug- gested that a Crow had been a former resident of the island grove.
