Birds and Nature, Vol. 10 No. 3 [October 1901] — John Shaqi
Birds and Nature, Vol. 10 No. 3 [October 1901]Various
History
Birds and Nature, Vol. 10 No. 3 [October 1901]
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
The Indians and half-breeds of the far North stalk the wary Moose where
he beds himself down after a night of browsing, but so acute is his
hearing and sense of smell and so great his cunning that only the
trained woodsman can hope for success. Leaving his feed-trail abruptly,
the Moose moves off to one side down the wind so that any one trailing
him will be surely scented, and there beds himself down for the day. The
Indian follows the well-defined trail of the Moose until it becomes
fresh, and then by a series of circuits down the wind and leading back
to the trail, like the semicircles of the letter B, he gradually
approaches the hiding place until at last, coming up the wind, he sights
his prey and, startling it by a slight sound, shoots it where it stands.
The young are brought forth in the early summer and stay with their
mother until the third year. During this time she defends them with the
greatest ferocity from man and wild animals alike, using her sharp hoofs
in striking out at wolves and men, often trampling them into the snow in
her fury. The new-born young are very helpless at first on their long,
tottering legs, and, roaming as they do in a wild land of wolves and
beasts of prey, they could scarcely survive at all without the
protection of their mother’s knife-like hoofs. So long and awkward are
the legs of Moose that in running through the woods the hind feet often
interfere with the fore feet, throwing the clumsy animal in a heap. The
falling of Moose while running was considered so unaccountable at first
that it was assigned to attacks of epilepsy, but it has since been
discovered that when galloping the Moose spreads his hind feet far apart
in a more or less successful effort to avoid tripping up his fore feet.
But when we consider his load of horns and the fallen trees and broken
branches of his native haunts it is a marvel that he is able to outrun
his foes at all, whereas the Moose is in fact the swiftest animal in the
Northern woods.
Dane Coolidge.
There’s a wonderful weaver
High up in the air,
And he waves a white mantle,
For cold earth to wear.
With the wind for his shuttle
The cloud for his loom,
How he weaves! How he weaves!
In the light, in the gloom.
—Wayne Whistler, in the Record-Herald.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A DUCK.
FOUNDED UPON FACT.
“How queer, my child! what a long, broad mouth you have, and what
peculiar feet!”
It was my mother, a big brown hen, who spoke. I had stepped from my egg,
only a short while before, and as I was the only one hatched out of the
whole thirteen, my poor mother was greatly disappointed.
Now, to add to her troubles, there seemed to be something very peculiar
about my appearance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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