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Part of Iowa, May 1890

extracted text

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This story begins th tay of 1690, in Iowa woodland 100 miles weet

‘

of Dubuque-on-the-Mississippi. The dramatis personae are the birds
mentioned; 1, the teller of the tale, am the villain. My age is
fifteen years; and I act the part, I hope and fear, with an obvious

degree of fidelity.

A largish bird flew from a tree near by. It circled back, and
seemed a bit bothered. And then I sew the nest.

My very first nest of Cooper's Hewk! Or, as I then preferred to
call it, “Accipiter cooperi (Bonaparte), A.0.U.:No. 333," - vorbatim
fron my Bibles which chanced to be Oliver Davie's "Nests and Eggs of
North American Birds." For the glemor of nomencleture is alluring in
one's early days. I was not et all sure of the significance of the
parenthesized Bonaparte, having a fixed impression thet he had been a
French General or something, end certainly not a Scientific Oologist
like myself; however, it was in the Book, so it belonged. As for the

American Ornithologists’ Union checklist Number 333 - that embodied



an exactitude dear to my juvenile Scientific heart, and simply could
not be omitted.
The nest was thirty feet up, in a slender oak, which I promptly

climbed. One egg: One bluish egg, without marks. This was not goods



for I was a Scientific Oologist, and I was collecting Sets of birds’




eggs; i.e, the total of eggs ina “setting.” - Clutches, the British

bird-books obscurely term whet we Americans openly call Sets; and I had