Page:Condor13(3).djvu/13

 May, 1911 MY AVIAN VISITORS: NOTES IROM SOUTH DAKOTA 91 few words. A gentleman who has spent much time among the Indians informs me that on one occasion when he was passing a modern Siouan home a Magpie on the haystack distinctly uttered the words "How, kola! .... which, being interpreted, is "Howdy-do, friend!" I myself have heard a tame crow "talk Indian." A young Ma:pie that I took from a nest in this vicinity and brought to Il- linois, became very much of a pet. It was allowed the freedom of the town, and took a legitimate advantage of its liberty, always coming home to roost and feed. 'This bird suffered an untimely death by drowning in a barrel of water, and his taking-off was the cause of much lamentation in the household to which he had been attached for nearly a year. Magpies soon learn to distinguish the sound uttered by a person when calling the chickens to be fed, and are apt to appear suddenly and unbidden to partake of the meal. More than this,' they are known to have a liking for the flesh of the very young chicks themselves, and it is therefore unsafe to allow a hen with a brood less than fifteen days old to range far where there are Magpies in the neighborhood. When the breeding season commences the Pies keep close in the thick tree- growth along the creek where th ey build their massive nests; and now they come to us in pairs occasionally instead of in a flock as at all other periods. At this season they utter a note not heard at other times,--a soft, tender call, hard to de- scribe or imitate. It has often been said that their nests are "as large as bushel- baskets," but structures much larger than this are common. Where I observed them, nests with eggs were most numerous in the month of May. Two nests which I examined in 1903 were about ten feet from the ground. On May 7, 1904, I found a nest saddled upon buffalo-berry saplings, and so low that I had to look down instead of to climb up, in order to peer into it. On the date mentioned it contained two eggs, and an additional one was laid each day thereafter until the clutch, numbering seven eggs, was complete. A short time afterward this nest was robbed by Indians. Among these people, by the way, sympathy for animals ' is an unknown virtue, as to some extent is the case among small boys, who, like savages, sometimes lack certain of the nobler instincts, and, as one consequence, are often responsible for much suffering among animals. Nearly every bird has its own manner of flight, and although it be far off where color and form alike are indistinguishable, yet the student of ornithology ascertains from its way of progression through the air to what species a given bird may belong. The peculiar wavy flight of that small bird tells him of a goldfinch; the similar, but heavier, flight of the woodpecker is known to him; like an arrow the Mourning Dove shoots by, while perchance the whistling of its wings may be heard; sailing with the clouds, high overhead, are the nighthawks and swallows; and in the near horizon that lazily flying creature with the tail of a comet is a Magpie. Sometimes I have conjectured that that strange bird the Archeopteryx, bore a'similar general appearance as he flew through the pleasant air in that far- off Jurassic day. To my fodder-stacks, in early' spring, came the Western Meadowlark (Vtur- neJla nelecta). This is a bird of marked individuality; it differs from the Eastern Meadowlark in appearance, and its highly variable melody is quite unlike the song of its congener. On two occasions when passing through the sand-hills, a few miles to the south, while the songs of meadowlarks filled the air, I could easily distinguish the notes of the eastern birds, one or tw.o of which I now had the pleasure of seeing for the first time in that country among the multitudes of the