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A well-known ornithologist has related how one day he wandered into the forest in an idle mood, and accidentally catching a gleam of bright color overhead, raised his gun and brought the bird to his feet; and how excited and charmed he was with the wondrous beauty of his little trophy. Were there other birds in the woods as lovely as this? He would see for himself.
The waters have their denizens, in the grey Canada and white-fronted geese ducks of numerous species the stupid pelican and shy loon gulls, cormorants, and the noble swan; while the groves of alamo ring with the music of numerous bright-winged songsters, scarcely known to the ornithologist. But no land of peace is this fair region of the Rocky Mountains.
Our prejudice against selling game does not exist in Europe, and this same ornithologist told me he often shot 200 ducks in a day at his shooting-box, sending to the market what he could not use himself. On November 1, 1910, he shot 82 ducks, and on November 8, 103, chiefly widgeon and teal." An "ornithologist" indeed! A "sportsman" also, is he not?
"`Well, stranger, says I, goin' for'ard, `you do seem to be hard up for victuals when you'd shoot a small thing like that! `Not at all, my good man, says he an' the critter had a kindly smile an' a sensible face enough `you must know that I am shootin' birds for scientific purposes. I am an ornithologist. "`Oh! say I, for I didn't rightly know what else to say to that.
I had taught for three years in a school where the children and I were taken out of doors every week in spring and autumn by an ornithologist and an entomologist. At this time we were beginning to buy more books on out-of-door subjects, and I had learned enough in my teaching to be able to evaluate them in a bulletin.
Our Common and Garden are not an ideal field of operations for the student of birds. No doubt they are rather straitened and public. Other things being equal, a modest ornithologist would prefer a place where he could stand still and look up without becoming himself a gazing-stock.
The latter should contain, packed into a comparatively small space, in rooms adapted for working purposes, the objects of purely scientific interest. For example, we will say I am an ornithologist. I go to examine a collection of birds. It is a positive nuisance to have them stuffed.
Captain Fielden went as ornithologist; Mr Wootton, the senior engineer, was an officer of experience; Mr White was the photographer of the Alert; and Mr Pullen, the chaplain, was a botanist.
Graeme's; there was the Viscount Chambery, who had penned a pamphlet on finance indited a folio on architecture and astonished Europe with an elaborate dissertation on modern cookery; there was Charles Selby, the poet and essayist; Daintrey, the sculptor a wonderful Ornithologist a deep read Historian a learned Orientalist and a novelist, from France; whose works exhibited such unheard of horrors, and made man and woman so irremediably vicious, as to make this young gentleman celebrated, even in Paris that Babylonian sink of iniquity.
I made a nosegay of blue violets and sweetbrier leaves; I regaled myself with wintergreens in memory of my childhood; I wrote up my note-book; but never a blue feather did I see. The next day, between showers, I tried the north, with a guide a visiting Massachusetts ornithologist to show me a partridge nest with the bird sitting.
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