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The Fortunate Life of a Museum Naturalist:

Alfred M. Bailey

Volume 1—Boyhood to 1919

Kristine A. Haglund, Elizabeth H. Clancy & Katherine B. Gully (Eds)

2001 Colorado BoulevardDenver, CO 80205, U.S.A.

DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE REPORTS

WWW.DMNS.ORG/SCIENCE/MUSEUM-PUBLICATIONS

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Cover photo: A.M. Bailey at Laysan Albatross

nesting colony, Laysan Island, Hawaii, December

1912. Photograph by George Willett. DMNS No.

IV.BA13-072.

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science Reports (ISSN

2374-7730 [print], ISSN 2374-7749 [online]) is an open-

access, non peer-reviewed scientifi c journal publishing

papers about DMNS research, collections, or other

Museum related topics, generally authored or co-authored

by Museum staff or associates. Peer review will only be

arranged on request of the authors.

The journal is available online at www.dmns.org/Science/

Museum-Publications free of charge. Paper copies are

exchanged via the DMNS Library exchange program

([email protected]) or are available for purchase

from our print-on-demand publisher Lulu (www.lulu.com).

DMNS owns the copyright of the works published in the

Reports, which are published under the Creative Commons

Attribution Non-Commercial license. For commercial use of

published material contact the Alfred M. Bailey Library &

Archives at [email protected].

WWW.DMNS.ORG/SCIENCE/MUSEUM-PUBLICATIONS Denver Museum of Nature & Science Reports

(Print) ISSN 2374-7730

Denver Museum of Nature & Science Reports

(Online) ISSN 2374-7749

Frank Krell, PhD, Editor and Production



NUMBER 12, MARCH 1, 2019

A.M. Bailey hunting, Iowa, 1914. Photograph by

Fred W. Kent. DMNS No. IV.2002-10-12.


Alfred M. Bailey




Edited byKristine A. Haglund,1

Elizabeth H. Clancy1 &Katherine B. Gully1

1Alfred M. Bailey Libary and Archives

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

2001 Colorado Boulevard

Denver, Colorado 80205-5798, U.S.A.

[email protected]

CONTENTS

Foreword by Kristine A. Haglund 2Alfred M. Bailey photography by Elizabeth H. Clancy 3Alfred M. Bailey chronology Alfred M. Bailey chronology Alfred M. Bailey chronology 5The Fortunate Life of a Museum Naturalist

by Alfred M. Bailey by Alfred M. Bailey by Alfred M. Bailey 6Preface 6Boyhood to early career 9Boyhood Memories 9High School to University, 1907–1911 20Laysan Island Expedition, 1912–1913 23Iowa, 1913–1916 41

Indian Summer Canoeing, Theme Paper, 1914 41The “Egg” 42

Louisiana, 1916–1919 431916 43Chenier au Tigre, 1918 53Seabird Colonies, 1918 57Bear Hunt, 1918 59Down the Atchafalaya, 1918 601919 62References 71

2 DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE REPORTS | No. 12, March 1, 2019

Bailey

Foreword

Born on February 18, 1894, and raised in Iowa City, Iowa, Alfred Marshall Bailey would become widely known as an ornithologist, author, photographer, lecturer, nature popular-author, photographer, lecturer, nature popular-author, photographer, lecturer, nature popularizer, and museum director. His career, which spanned 56 years, brought him national and international recognition. He was an enthusi-astic fieldman, always looking forward to his next outing. The results of his work include his publications, correspondence, and photogra-phy, most of which are preserved by the Alfred M. Bailey Library & Archives. In addition, he acquired the funding, participated in most of the field work, and oversaw the installa-tion of the majority of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s1 nature dioramas during his tenure as the Museum’s second Director (1936-1969). Those “windows on nature” still intrigue and stimulate wonder, excitement, and learning conversations between parents, teachers, and children. The Bailey-era diora-mas also inspired the addition of others such as those in the Museum’s Prehistoric Journey and Space Odyssey halls.

This autobiographical publication covers Bailey’s childhood through the end of his career. His working title was Field Work of a Museum Naturalist, but he already had a Museum Naturalist, but he already had a Museum Naturalista publication by that name that describes his 1919–1922 work in Alaska. To avoid confusion, we have changed the title to The Fortunate Life of a Museum Naturalist: Alfred M. Bailey. Bailey always considered himself to be one of the most fortunate people he knew, fortunate because he was able to do for a living everything he loved: traveling to exotic, challenging, and distant locales; meeting fascinating people; observing and photographing wildlife, especially birds; and

1 The Denver Museum of Nature & Science was known during his time as the Colorado Museum of Natural History and the Denver Museum of Natural History.

educating people through his film lectures and exhibits. The Denver Museum’s dioramas, in many ways, are Bailey’s way of inviting the visitor to stand where he had stood and see what he had seen.

These volumes, eight in all, will not only function as a narrative of Bailey’s life but also of the history of natural history museums and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in particular. Additionally, they will serve as an entrée and finding aid to portions of the DMNS archives, library, and zoological col-lections and provide backstories for many of the dioramas.

At the urging of the Museum’s board of trustees, Bailey began writing, in longhand, his life’s story around the end of his time as Director of the Museum. He was able to complete it to a logical end, including pre-liminary image selection, prior to his death on February 25, 1978. His secretary, Margaret (Maggie) Denny, was the one most capable of translating his scribbled handwriting into a typescript. She continued the transcription until her own death in 1980.

Bailey’s autobiographical manuscript remained on a shelf in the Museum’s archives until about 2010 when I began to contemplate my own retirement from the Museum and realized that if I didn’t publish it, probably no one would. This was a task larger than initially envisioned. The process of taking a handwritten document to a typed version and then to an electronic version is time-consuming, meticulous work. This project couldn’t have been done without the technological advancements unknown during Bailey’s lifetime: sophisticated word process-ing software, scanners and photo editing software, and the resources of the World-wide Web. Also valuable in establishing and

3DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE REPORTS | No. 12, March 1, 2019

Life of a Museum Naturalist vol. 1

correcting dates, spelling, and questionable wording were Bailey’s journals. But most valuable were the volunteers, without whom this project would have been impossible and to whom I am extremely grateful: Dr. Jean Saul, Marjorie Pries, and Martha Gray trans-ferred the text into electronic format; Saul assisted Liz Clancy (the Museum's Image Archivist Emerita and Image Editor for this publication) with image selection; and Kath-erine Gully, the Museum's Librarian Emerita, compiled the list of Bailey’s publications and the bibliographies for each of the eight volumes. A large thank-you goes to Jean Saul for her financial support. The Museum’s Archivist Sam Schiller and Image Archivist René O’Connell patiently provided their valu-able assistance whenever requested, which was frequently. Last, but never least, I am thankful to Dr. Frank Krell for his patience and ongoing support for this publication. Many thanks to everyone who joined me in this memorial to one of the Museum’s most influential individuals.

Kristine A. HaglundArchivist Emerita

Alfred M. Bailey Library & Archives

Alfred M. Bailey Photography

Bailey already understood the importance of documenting his field work when he was invited on his very first field trip to Laysan Island in 1912. He kept a daily record in his field journal and he took along a camera bor-field journal and he took along a camera bor-field journal and he took along a camera borrowed from a college friend in order to make a photographic record as well. He continued to combine detailed journal entries with pho-tographs throughout his 56-year career and they served him well in the numerous and varied publications he wrote over the years. Taking copious notes, he documented images with stories of the unusual and the important. And he found and recorded a great deal of the humorous along the way.

In working with Bailey's photographic collection, I have been continually impressed with the clarity and near perfect focus of most of his pictures—especially when seen under extreme magnification.

One has only to read his autobiography to understand many of the problems wildlife photographers must endure while obtaining good wildlife photographs. In the early 1920s, Bailey spent 16 months above the Arctic Circle collecting specimens in Alaska and Siberia. He photographed his experiences as he went. Photographic equipment of that period was large, bulky, and heavy. Cameras, lenses, tripods, film, and other photographic accesso-ries had to be carried along in addition to the normal equipment needed to collect specimens and survive in freezing temperatures. Over the years, photographic technology improved and camera equipment got smaller and lighter, but the convenience of the digital world was never available to Bailey as it didn’t exist at all during his lifetime.

Bailey traveled all over the world to study and obtain photographs of a huge variety of birds and mammals which he used for


Bailey

museum exhibits, publications, and lectures. He worked in many obscure and difficult loca-tions in order to be where unique, rare, and even endangered wildlife can be found. He built photographic blinds and waited in them for hours. He hung off cliffs and climbed tall trees. He battled insects and snakes and bad weather, always hoping wildlife would appear on "schedule" and "pose" for a good picture. On one particularly memorable occasion in 1947, he even got the engineer of a railroad train to allow him to ride the cowcatcher across the highest trestle on the route!

At some point, probably in the late 1920s or early 1930s, Bailey began using a motion picture camera in the field. He used motion pictures for his research, and also for the lectures that he gave annually all around the country. He frequently cut out individual frames

from the motion picture film to use as "still" images suitable for publication. Fairly early on, Bailey also began taking color images in 35mm slide and 4”x5” formats. He frequently converted some of his color images to black and white, knowing that black and white is a more permanent medium and it was more useful in publications of the day.

Although he didn't consider himself a por-Although he didn't consider himself a por-Although he didn't consider himself a portrait photographer, he showed his quality with portraits of native peoples in Alaska and Abys-sinia particularly. He also recorded images of fellow researchers, helpers, and colleagues along the way. In combination with his field journals, his body of photographic work contin-ues to be of interest and useful for scholars and researchers even these many decades later.

Liz ClancyImage Archivist Emerita

Alfred M. Bailey Library & Archives

Note: All images in this publication not otherwise credited were taken by Dr. Bailey.



Alfred M. Bailey Chronology

1894 (February 18): Born in Iowa City, Iowa.1912–1913: Member and camp cook U.S.

Biological Survey expedition to Laysan Island. Purpose of expedition to exter-Island. Purpose of expedition to exter-Island. Purpose of expedition to exterminate rabbit population which was competing for rare birds’ food supply and threatening their extinction. Bailey collected some now extinct birds, later donating some of them to the Denver Museum of Natural History for Laysan exhibit.

1916: Awarded Bachelor of Arts from the University of Iowa.

1916–1919: Curator of Birds and Mammals, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana.

1917 (June 16): Married Muriel Eggenberg, Iowa City, Iowa.

1919–1921: First representative of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (U.S. Biologi-cal Survey) in Alaska, based in Juneau. Mrs. Bailey accompanied her husband to Juneau, where their first baby (Beth) was born.

1921–1926: Curator of Birds and Mammals, Colorado Museum of Natural History, Denver, Colorado.

1921–1922: Headed expedition to Arctic Alaska for the Colorado Museum of Natural History.

1926–1927: Biologist, Field Museum of Natural History expedition to Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1927–1936: Director, Chicago Academy of Sciences, Chicago, Illinois.

1936 (May)–1969 (Dec.): Director, Denver Museum of Natural History, Denver, Colorado.

1978 (February 25): Died, Denver, Colorado.

Honors and awards:1929–1932: Served on editorial board of the

Wilson Bulletin.1941: Elected Fellow of American Ornitholo-

gists’ Union.1944: Received Honorary Doctor of Science

degree, Norwich University, Norwich, Connecticut.

1954: Received Honorary Doctor of Public Service degree, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado.

1961: Received second annual Malcolm G. Wyer Award for distinguished service in adult education, Denver, Colorado.

1967: Received Civis Princeps award, Regis College, Denver, Colorado.

1967: Received Detroit Audubon Society Honors award, Detroit, Michigan.

1971: Alfred M. Bailey Bird Nesting Area dedicated, Eagles Nest Wilderness Area, Colorado.


Bailey

Preface

Looking back through the years, I realize that there was a more or less orderly sequence of events which led to my becoming a museum naturalist, although there was nothing in my family background to have aroused an interest in nature. My father, W.H. Bailey, was an attorney in Iowa City, Iowa, with little time to pay attention to his growing boys—my older brothers John and Lee and my younger brother Ralph. Probably Lee, six years older than I, influenced me greatly, for he liked to fish and camp and often he took me with him.

That there was an excellent museum at the Univer-That there was an excellent museum at the Univer-That there was an excellent museum at the University of Iowa is undoubtedly responsible to a great extent for the direction I was to follow, and yet only one other Iowa City boy of my generation showed a like interest —Wesley Kubichek, the son of a Bohemian gunsmith and Old World taxidermist, and probably Wes received his stimulus through the work of his father. In later years, Wes was the head of the motion picture division of the Fish and Wildlife Service and made many remarkable photographs of animals.

As a small youngster, my interests were definitely in the out-of-doors. I dreamed of trapping in the Maine woods, of following in Hornaday’s footsteps in India, and being another Frank Russell in Arctic Canada. I visited the museum and gazed with admiration at the trophies assembled there. I hunted and fished along the Iowa River with my older brother Lee at every spare moment. My ambition turned to being a taxidermist, and my patient stepmother encouraged me—and remonstrated with my father when he protested I was wasting my time.

Eventually, I met Professor H.R. Dill, Director of the University of Iowa museum and, through him, received encouragement and help. Consequently, after high school, I enrolled in the University in 1911, special-izing in museum training, and I have not had cause to

regret the choice of my life work. It has been my privi-lege to have visited all continents except Antarctica, my work adjacent being on Subantarctic Campbell Island, 400 miles south of New Zealand, noted for its wealth of animal life, including five species of albatrosses; fur, leopard, and elephant seals; and sea lions.

My first expedition, while a sophomore at the Uni-versity of Iowa, was with a party from the U.S. Biological Survey to spend three months on remote Laysan Island in the Leeward Chain of the Hawaiians, in 1912–1913, to eliminate rabbits which were destroying the vegetation of that bird island. After college days, my wife and I spent three wonderful years (1916–1919) with headquarters in New Orleans, where I served as Curator of Birds and Mammals in the Louisiana State Museum and had many opportunities for fieldwork in the “Cajun” country along the bayous and the marshes and the bird islands of the Gulf of Mexico.

The next three years (1919–1922) were spent in Alaska, the first half as representative of the U.S. Bio-logical Survey with headquarters in Juneau, where our daughter Beth was born. In December 1919, I took a sled journey up the Copper River into the interior, and in 1920 and the early months of 1921, often accompanied by my wife, I worked the main islands of the southeastern archipelago.

The next year and a half were spent in the Far North collecting habitat groups of polar bear, barren ground bear, caribou, and walrus, and three large ecological bird displays for the Colorado Museum of Natural History. My associate Russell W. Hendee and I secured specimens on the islands of the Bering Sea and the east coast of Siberia, traveling on the famous Coast Guard Cutter Bear, and then when ice conditions were favorable, we continued on up the Arctic Coast past Point Barrow—on

The Fortunate Life of a Museum Naturalist

by Alfred M. Bailey



to Demarcation Point, the International Boundary line between Alaska and Canada—and then back to spend the winter at the Eskimo village of Wainwright, 100 miles down the coast from Barrow.

Wainwright, far north of the Arctic Circle, was an ideal base for our fall and winter work, and Hendee remained in that vicinity in the spring of 1922 to hunt with the Eskimos, while I made the approximately 700-mile dogsled journey down the coast to Wales, the westernmost village on the mainland of Alaska, on the shores of the Bering Strait, to collect walrus with the Eskimos. Our work in skin umiaks, in the stormy waters separating Alaska from Siberia, resulted in securing the walruses now on display in the museum.

The following years (late 1922 to early 1926) we lived in Denver where, as Curator of Birds and Mammals at the Colorado Museum of Natural History (now called the Denver Museum), I worked with the talented staff members in preparing the Alaskan exhibits (Fig. F.01). Field trips were made to Bonaventure Island at the

mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, to the Bahamas, and throughout Colorado and Utah.

In 1926 I became a staff member of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, and was privileged to make a 2,000-mile, mule-back journey through then little-known Abyssinia—one of a party of five with Dr. Wilfred Osgood the leader. Others were Jack Baum, a writer for the Chicago Daily News; Suydam Cutting; and the world-famous bird artist Louis Fuertes. We were the first Americans to travel in some of the remote areas, and I was the first American to collect the Abyssinian ibex (walia) in the high Simien Mountains of the northern part of the country—and we were privi-leged to become acquainted with noted chieftains—and the ruler of the country, Ras Tafari, later (1930) to become Emperor Haile Selassie.

After seven months in the country, we made our exit across the desert of the Sudan to Khartoum and down the Nile to Cairo and back to Chicago late in May 1927.

Figure F.01. William C. Bradbury, A.M. Bailey, Frederick C. Lincoln, and Jesse D. Figgins, Colorado,

Summer 1919. DMNS No. IV.00-2862.1.


Bailey

During the next ten years, I served as Director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences—with field trips, when time allowed, to Canada, Labrador, Mexico, Florida, Louisiana, and the western states. During this time, we built an extensive motion film library, which resulted in my starting in 1929 to give illustrated lectures, and I continued to do so until 1968.

In 1936, I returned to Denver as director of the fine natural history museum, a position I held for 34 years, retiring as Director Emeritus January 1, 1970. During that time four additions were added to the museum building and, after the reinstallation of old exhibits in new electrically lighted cases, I planned expeditions to many interesting parts of the world, the museum policy being not to duplicate the exhibit work of other museums. As a consequence, numerous trips were made to Alaska to secure ecological displays of fine big game animals. Four expeditions to Australia resulted in the collecting of geographic exhibits from tropical Queensland, the Red Centre, and the Tree Fern Forests of Victoria. Two large habitat groups were collected in Subantarctic New

Zealand and one in the Galapagos Islands, and thousands of feet of motion film were obtained on the islands of the Pacific from Wake, Midway, Canton, the Fijis, Australia, and New Zealand. Other fieldwork took me to Canada, “Down North” along the Labrador with the great explorer Donald B. MacMillan, Bermuda, the Bahamas, to all the states of the Union, and twice to Africa.

In the following narrative of this publication, I have endeavored to record the sequence of events chron-ologically from my earliest recollections, as a youngster, on down through the years. Events up to college days are vague in memory, but fortunately, starting with my field trip to Laysan and the Hawaiian Islands in 1912–1913, I endeavored to make daily journal entries of field activi-ties, with accounts of the many interesting forms of life encountered, and I continued to do so on all journeys, my last extensive one being to Rhodesia, South Africa, and Botswana in 1969, where talented members of the museum staff collected exhibits to be placed in the Museum’s Helen K. and Arthur E. Johnson Botswana Africa Hall.



Boyhood to Early Career

Boyhood MemoriesI have been cursed with a poor memory. Unless I keep notes, I’m likely to forget details of interesting experiences, and consequently, the events of my boyhood are very vague.

Apparently, I tried to express myself at an early age, for I’ve been told of how strenuously I objected to returning home with my father, who had placed me with cousins Ida and George Wagoner while Mother was awaiting the arrival of my little brother Ralph. Cousin Ida, who was childless, mothered me (then a two-year-old) through many visits. My behavior on arriving back at the parental fireside was not that of a lovable child, I fear, for when the new little baby was held cuddled in my mother’s arms for my approval, I (according to Ida) looked at the uptilted nose of the new arrival and then hauled off in an attempt to flatten it with a well-aimed smash.

My earliest recollections seem to merge around my mother. She was seriously ill, and as a consequence, I often was sent to the farm of my Aunt Ella and Uncle George McKee near West Liberty, Iowa, so as not to be in the way. A few pictures stand out in memory: the gilt-edged dishes of oatmeal with sifted nutmeg (a favorite seasoning to this day); an old mother hen (with a brood of small chicks) that put a terrified boy into flight; and, with special vividness, Christmas Eve at my grandpar-with special vividness, Christmas Eve at my grandpar-with special vividness, Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ farm two miles away.

My bearded grandfather was sitting in his easy chair, the reading lamp throwing a rather dim light across the room. He told me that Santa Claus would be down the chimney, and when I was not watching, Grandad would flip pennies into the fireplace, making me believe good old Saint Nick was dropping them down the flue. Grandad, as a correspondent for the Muscatine, Iowa newspaper, would send in local items, and one Thanksgiving time he dressed me up in one of his shirts, my arms and legs through the sleeves and a bunch of turkey feathers placed on my elevated posterior. And so, in that undignified position, I posed for my first publicity picture, the photographic result being published in the “City” paper.

Often I was parked out with the two other tolerant relatives previously mentioned, cousins George and Ida, in Williamsburg, Iowa, and one terror-filled afternoon is still vivid. I had been coasting down a small hill on my little wagon when a horse and buggy came to the inter-little wagon when a horse and buggy came to the inter-little wagon when a horse and buggy came to the intersection at the same time my cart made its appearance. The horse bolted, while the frantic lady driver tugged at the lines. Too short a turn upset the buggy, the woman, fortunately, being thrown clear, while the frightened horse galloped up the street, the buggy disintegrating at every jump. All that afternoon I hid in the haymow of cousin George’s livery stable, while worried relatives searched the near vicinity. I can still recall George’s gentle voice as he talked to me when hunger and fear finally forced me from my place of refuge.

Probably I should have been spared my most vivid memory, the death of my mother. I can recall various relatives being at the house, the unusual quiet tones of conversation, and my father admonishing me to go up to the Calkins’ on the corner to play but be sure to keep my little brother Ralph in sight, so we could both come home immediately when called. Mrs. Calkins was friendly (unusually so, it seemed to me), and later in the afternoon, she told me to hurry home. With Ralph holding my hand, I ran down the street past the Carnegie Library, a sense of urgency spurring me on.

I regret that my only memory of Mother, except a rather dim picture of a beautiful, brown-eyed woman seen hazily as I was being sent on one of my numerous trips to relatives, was that afternoon as she reclined half propped up on her pillows. Father and my older broth-ers Jack and Lee were there, and many others, but all I can recall is the picture of my mother lying quietly, her eyes gradually becoming glassy—and then the sudden realization of a small boy that here was something he didn’t understand—and the sympathetic soothing voice of brother Jack as he gently led me from the room.

It is strange how some things stick in memory. It must have been the next day that Ralph and I wandered two blocks away to the business district and were gazing into a store window filled with shoes when one of the neighbors came along and turned us back, saying, “You kids ought to be at home at a time like this.”


Bailey

My memory of the funeral—in the little English Lutheran Church where later I was to pump the pipe organ—comes back vividly, especially when, with tears in his eyes, Dad told us, “This is the last time we will see Mother on this earth.”

The next couple of years were rather hectic, with numerous housekeepers attempting to keep control over two small boys. About this time I first heard about animals having a choice of environment. Rabbits, I was told, laid their eggs at Easter time, and when I searched our yard early one Easter morning, I was excited to find three nests with five brightly colored eggs in each. What I could not understand, however, was that, although I looked in all the neighbors’ yards, the only nests were in ours. My brother Lee solved the problem to my complete satisfaction: each form of life chooses a special place, and our yard was the only one containing lilac bushes.

The purchase of Pedro, a beautiful little stallion pony, was the highlight of my life at the age of eight or nine (Fig. 1.01). A pretty little animal, Pedro was an

individualist that delighted in reaching around and biting his rider on the kneecap, until I broke him of the habit with a couple of well-aimed swipes across the nose with a whip. A rented barn about 100 yards away became the rendezvous of the rather tough gang of kids I was associating with at the time, my little brother Ralph usually tagging along. We were distinguished as Big and Little Bailey, the “Big” being merely a matter of compari-son, for I was always a scrawny youngster, too small to play football on the school teams. We had many experi-ences with Pedro; being tough-mouthed and mean, he was difficult to handle. Full of pep, he would take the bit in his mouth and bolt on the slightest provocation, his cleverest trick to unseat the rider being to make sudden right-angle turns, the surprised boy going one way and the pony another. He would always run away on his return to the barn, and I learned to pile the straw and manure in such a manner that, when Pedro made the turn from the alley, both of us would have a soft landing place when he lost his footing.

Figure 1.01. A.M. Bailey with Pedro, Iowa City, Iowa, 1902–1903. Photographer unknown. DMNS

No. IV.2002-10-14.



About that time I had my first and only theatrical experience. We lived in a two-story house on Linn Street just south of the Carnegie Library, and there were three bedrooms above, one often being rented to university students. I remember that our roomers were in a uni-versity play in the Opera House. A boy was needed, and I was chosen. The name of the play and details escape me, except that my appearance before the audience involved a violent shaking from one of the participants so that I was dizzy as I staggered to the footlights and mournfully spoke my lines: “Master kicks Fagg—Fagg kicks me. I’m going home and kick the cat.”

Among my friends was Edgar Poland, who lived two blocks away, and I recall playing in his backyard on the day his mother called out to us, with tears in her eyes, saying that President William McKinley had been shot (September 6, 1901).

The Iowa River, which meandered between wooded hills, was a constant magnet. My first catfish came out of it, a six-inch fellow that I proudly carried home on a string that all might see, and the river banks were the favorite retreat of the older boys wishing to swim on hot summer days. Learning to swim seemed natural enough, and I assumed it was also easy. My older brothers were experts, and I often accompanied them. One of my early trips nearly proved the last, for my brothers had crossed the river to the springboard, leaving me to my own resources. Growing lonesome, I attempted to follow and was soon under water and being carried down by the current. Rough hands seemed to grab hold, and I can still hear a voice saying, as though in explanation, “I saw bubbles coming up.” With no one to check on my activities, I used to tag along after other boys who were bound for the river. I would paddle around in the shal-lows or hang onto a plank, and one day, gaining courage, let go, and down I went, only to be fished out and rolled over a log until breathing became normal again. But not long after, I mastered the technique and was soon able to swim for hours without effort.

One of the pleasant early recollections of the old swimming hole was of the Sunday morning when we skipped out before church and had a pleasant dip along the wooded shores of the Iowa. The city had built

a little one-room board house for us to use to change our clothes that was elevated on poles so it would be above high water, and there was a 2-by-4-inch railing on which we could hang our “swimming pants” to dry. Swimming was forbidden on Sunday mornings, so these stolen pleasures were always especially enjoyable. On this occasion, a half-dozen of us, naked as the day we were born, were lounging about the porch and enjoying the warmth of the morning sun. Suddenly, from the edge of the boathouse, appeared a little girl, and she darted up to the steps as the six of us stood petrified. Then the unabashed little miss pointed to one cringing culprit, who was endeavoring to cover himself with outstretched hands, and shouted triumphantly, “Yo, ho! Willie. Your hair is wet. You’ll get it when you get home!”

Another swimming experience remains in my memory. I used to spend several weeks in summer on the farm of my cousin near Oxford, Iowa, a delightful spot with a meandering creek and fine swimming hole down in the forest a mile from the house. I was sternly told by my cousin Ed not to take his son near the water, but Bert and I could not resist the temptation. He was larger but could not swim as well as I. I dived off the bank and crossed the creek by sheer momentum, but Bert came up in the middle and began to flounder, waving his arms wildly as he sank. I plunged back, grabbed him, and between the two of us, we managed to reach the bank little the worse for wear. Hardly were we on our feet, however, than my big cousin arrived on the scene; he grabbed me by my hair, turned me over his knee, and gave me a thrashing I’ve never forgotten. It was a long time before I stopped wishing we both had drowned.

I was much on my own and used to prowl the river, often with my brother Lee (nicknamed Bill from the song “Old Bill Bailey”).2 By the time I was 10 and he 16, we often went camping and set lines for catfish and carp. We would start the end of a great log smoldering near our tent and put on a five-gallon can of mulligan stew which, with continuous additions of corn and tomatoes and an occa-sional chunk of beef, kept us going for a week at a time.

2 Although his brother Lee acquired the nickname “Bill” first, Dr. Bailey later acquired that nickname for himself and is referred to as “Bill” later in this publication.


Bailey

These summer evenings along the Iowa were marvel-ous. On dark nights we would raise our line over the bow of the boat and work across the river from the shadows of the timber along the bank out into the bright path thrown by the moon. We could feel the fish swinging on the line long before we reached them, and then when we lifted the struggling creatures over the gunwale, we would free them from the hook, re-bait, and go on to the next. The tops of the trees of the woods on the opposite side were black against a lighter sky, and the stars shone like gleaming coals in the distant void. The silence of the night on the river always impressed me, for though there were many night voices, they always seemed subdued.

It was on one of those night excursions across moonlit Iowa that I had a painful experience. I was running the setline over the bow of my boat, baiting hooks as they passed over. There was a surging on the line that indicated a good-sized fish coming alongside, and I gave a flip of the line that brought an eight-pound catfish into the boat. Unfortunately, as it flew into the air, it shook the hook, and the descending fish struck back down—the sharp, saw-toothed dorsal spine going entirely through my bare foot. It was a most painful wound but not sufficiently so to call an end to the trip. The following day, however, I stepped on a broken bottle which took me out of circulation for a couple of weeks and resulted in a lifetime scar across my instep.

Somewhere about this time, Lee took me to the museum at the University of Iowa in our hometown and, covering my eyes, led me to a case holding a black bear. The fright I received should have been sufficient to have erased any desire for wildlife adventures, but possibly it was this experience that caused me to dream about trap-ping and hunting in the Maine woods, and later I read all the outdoor books which were children’s favorites at the time. Stories of Indians and pioneer days were available at the library and, for a while, I read so much that Dad insisted I spend more time at play.

It was in 1904 that I saw my first lantern slides of birds and heard a lecture on far-off places. Professor C.C. Nutting of the University of Iowa had been on a cruise in the Pacific on the exploring fisheries ship USS Albatross in 1902 and, on his return, presented the illustrated

report of his experiences in the University Auditorium. He told of the marvelous concentrations of birdlife—the thousands of albatrosses, terns, Man-o’-war birds, and other species on the little island of Laysan, 850 miles northwest of Honolulu, and he showed hand-colored slides. The program made such a great impression upon me that I dreamed of the strange seabirds that night.

Was it merely coincidence, or is there something that guides one’s destiny, that my first long field trip should have been to that same little island of Laysan less than ten years later? Just what chance would a boy in Iowa back in those days have of visiting such a remote spot?

That same year, when I was ten, Dad bought me a shotgun, a 12-gauge Winchester pump, and I became skillful with both the shotgun and a .22 rifle. Brother Lee, an expert with the latter, taught me to shoot small clay balls thrown 25 feet into the air. Soon I could hit three out of four with dust shot, and one memorable afternoon, when hunting along the Iowa River and using the same load in my .22, I collected two bobwhite quail in flight.

I lost my shotgun that first summer. I was camping along the Iowa with one of my friends, and we wanted to market some of the fish we had caught, so early one morning we took a number from the live box and dressed them and, before starting to town, I hid my gun under a pile of driftwood. On our return, the gun was gone, and I felt that my companion’s father was responsible, for he was reputed to be a worthless character.

Certainly, I had an experience with him on one occasion that made me realize that breaking the law has its hazards. I was pole fishing from the bank when this amiable, if worthless, individual came rowing along with his flatboat and, seeing me perched on the bank, shoved the stern in and said, “Jump in! I want you to row for me a bit.” I took the oars, and he directed, “Back her up to the eddy,” pointing to a swirling place at the base of a half-submerged snag. “There ought to be some big flatheads in that hole,” he said.

As I backed, he took a stick of dynamite, cut it in two, put the caps with a fuse on, and then wrapped some oiled paper about it. He weighted his charge, struck a match, and lighted the fuse, holding the sputtering bomb



for a while to assure himself that all was well. Then he gave it a toss. His finger caught in the string, and this yanked the whole thing back into the boat!

My startled companion half jumped to his feet as though to go overboard and then, probably realizing that the exploding dynamite would be disastrous if he was in the water, made a grab and heaved the explosive over the side, where it went off with a fountain of spray. The several fish which came belly-up aroused no interest —my friend was green and, as I look back through the years, I believe he had reason to be.

Dad took me to St. Louis on one of his numerous business trips when I was 11. The only memory I have of the journey is breakfast in the dining room of the railway terminal hotel. It was the first time I recall of having seen Negroes—the waiters all dressed in black—and there was an array of glittering silver on the tables. The great chande-liers deeply impressed me. Prices on the bill of fare seemed terrific, and I tried to save my father money by ordering bacon at 15 cents. I well remember my consternation when five strips were brought me—at 15 cents each!

After my return from St. Louis, I spent a couple of weeks in late summer on the Hasty farm near Kalona, Iowa. There were several boys, and Raymond was about my own age. I recall our wandering one afternoon, with our slingshots, through the orchard and finding a huge hornet nest hanging from a low branch of an apple tree, beneath which were several hogs busily eating fallen fruit. There must have been a streak of orneriness in both of us for, with well-aimed shots at the nest, we caused the angry insects to descend upon the innocently feeding porkers, the latter rushing away with tails erect and grunts of displeasure to escape the painful stings.

My father was often irritable, and in later years he reminded me of the character in the cartoon strip The Terrible Tempered Mr. Bang. Dad would fly off the handle at the slightest excuse, and I well remember the time he threatened to thrash the mailman for walking on the grass. The sickly little plot of green in front of our house was Dad’s pride and joy, and anyone trampling upon it did so at his peril. My father was a good businessman and was always making a “deal”; he had a keen business sense but none whatsoever of human cussedness, so he

was constantly being imposed upon.The best deal Dad ever put over was when he

induced Mrs. Wachenfeld to marry him (March 15, 1906). My brother Jack, a senior medic at Iowa, had been “going steady” with her daughter Lilly, and the long-drawn tele-phone conversations between the two were my first insight into how silly people in love could sound. When Jack was ready to graduate from the College of Medicine and decided to get married, Dad had an inspiration and con-vinced the wonderful lady to make it a double wedding. That was the most fortunate day of my life for “Mother,” as we always called her, was truly more sympathetic than a real parent could have been. So Lilly became my stepsister and sister-in-law at the same time I obtained a mother and her son Carl, my stepbrother. Carl soon went away to St. Louis where he secured his medical degree, and as he was much older than I, our paths rarely crossed.

Looking back, I realize my childhood days were wonderful, in the days before the automobiles became so numerous as to complicate and make hectic the survival of the fittest. With a tolerant mother, I was free to roam and yet had a home instead of just a place to sleep.

It was three months later, June 1906, that Mother, younger brother Ralph, and I accompanied my father on a trip to New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado. There was a land boom on, and we were in a special car with prospec-tive buyers. I was impressed with the rolling Yucca-dotted plains of Colorado and with towering Fisher’s Peak near Trinidad. We traveled by horse and buggy into the dry farming areas near Las Vegas, New Mexico, where there were occasional acreages of ripening wheat, and I recall that, on a narrow road into nearby mountains, our frisky horses tried to back the buggy over the side of a cliff as one of the newfangled automobiles chugged toward us. A visit to grain fields near Amarillo on the Texas Panhandle resulted in lantern slides in memory, just isolated pho-tographs of numerous places and kindly people, without connecting film to make a continuous story.

From Texas we traveled to Colorado Springs and drove out to the Garden of the Gods in a surrey with a fringed top, the horse kicking up a cloud of dust as we rambled over the narrow road to the Balanced Rock, among other interesting formations.

The next stop was Denver where we stayed in the old American House where many notable people had made their headquarters, including Prince Alexis and Buffalo Bill. We made a conducted tour of the city with a dozen other people, our van being pulled by two spirited horses. Out on the eastern edge of town was City Park, where a few trees dotted the original prairie, and to the westward was the Front Range with majestic Mount Evans still with a touch of snow upon its crest. At the far, east end of the expanse of the park was a newly erected museum of natural history, and we were disappointed that it had not yet been opened to the public. (Thirty years later I was appointed director of the museum.)

Our genial guide pulled his horses to a stop in front of the museum building (Fig. 1.02) and pointed toward the distant range, explaining that Longs Peak was up to the right some 60 miles and Pikes Peak

equally distant off to the left—that imposing mass we had seen the day before when touring the Garden of the Gods. One of the comments of the driver, as we drove through the nearby residential section, remains in memory. He pointed to a small house as he asked his attentive listeners, “You wouldn’t believe that the roof of that house covers two acres, would you?” And after a pause to allow his question to sink in, he added—“Mr. and Mrs. Acres.”

One of the tourist delights in those days was the rail journey into the mountains, the long train winding upward through forested slopes and over shaky trestles; the engine with its trailing cars of the Moffat Road climbed skyward to timberline and then snaked its way through long snow sheds to Corona Station (11,660 feet). Our journey was made on one of those brilliant days so characteristic of early fall when the aspens were just


Bailey

Figure 1.02. Colorado Museum of Natural History prior to opening in July 1908. Photographer

unknown. Courtesy of Denver Public Library. DPL No. PMS469.


beginning to be tinged with gold, and we hung over the railing of the observation car and watched the puffing engine curving ahead.

A walk out on the tundra a few hundred yards from the station gave us a chance to imagine that the high altitude caused us to be short of breath, and also to see small birds among the boulders, including some of a rosy color, and others brown with flicking tails bordered with white. There was a band of a dozen brown birds that looked like bantam chickens and a mammal scurrying for cover that resembled our groundhogs back home. And the greatest thrill was to hold the skin of a bobcat that a couple of bearded individuals carried aboard the train. They called it lynx, and it remained in memory until years later when I was privileged to see the common wildcat in its native haunts.

It was hard to return home after such an expedition to the Far West. In the early fall, my friend Wesley Kubi-chek brought to school two male Red-winged Blackbirds that his father had stuffed. The glossy birds with the red chevrons were the most beautiful things I had ever seen, and I resolved that I’d fix some of my own trophies.

In those days, the five-cent, paperback magazines devoted to the adventures of Nick Carter, Diamond Dick, Buffalo Bill, and Frank Merriwell were popular, and I had as excellent a library as the next youngster. In the back of a Tip Top Weekly I ran across an article with the title How to Stuff a Bird, and so it was not long before I was How to Stuff a Bird, and so it was not long before I was How to Stuff a Birdexperimenting in the art of taxidermy. My first victim was a coot, and what a strange bird a coot is! I well remem-ber canoeing among the willows alone on the river and seeing the slate-colored bird with white, pointed beak swimming and diving. I finally, after many attempts, succeeded in collecting it, but my efforts were doomed to failure, for the neck was so small I couldn’t get the skin over the head.

My second attempt at taxidermy was more successful. Al Scales and I, armed with his father’s dou-ble-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun, were wandering along some ponds near Coralville when we saw a couple of little birds swimming and whirling about along the edge of a little waterway. A blast of black powder obscured all from view for a short time, and then, when the smoke

cleared away, we saw one of the birds floating lifeless. It was one of the finest of shorebirds, a Wilson’s Phalarope, and Al and I hurried home to prepare it. The skin came off nicely. We put copper wire in the legs and filled the body with cotton—and my first bird was mounted.

My taxidermy efforts during these grade school days had been restricted to birds. One day the telephone rang, and a woman’s voice said, “I want to speak to the boy who stuffs things,” and when I modestly admitted I was the expert, she breathlessly announced, “Buttons is dead!”

Cautious inquiry brought the information that Buttons was her black cat and, that with the death of the cat, life was no longer worth living for its mistress. I was commissioned, for a fee of three dollars, to make Buttons appear as lifelike as possible. I should hate to come face to face with that mounted cat, for my first effort must have been frightful to behold. I stuffed the skin with cotton and, not having the proper kind of eyes, put in round yellow ones made for Screech Owls. In two days’ time, the job was done, and the finished specimen was delivered with cardboards still pinned to the ears; I needed the money and couldn’t wait for the skin to dry.

The cat, covered with a cloth, was deposited on the piano stool and then, like an artist unveiling a painting, I slowly drew the cloth aside. There was studied silence for a moment, and then an anguished voice protested, “Oh, no! That’s not my Buttons!”

I became a capitalist that year, for a few brief hours of tragedy elsewhere made it possible for me to make $3.95, a tremendous sum in those days. The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a front page flash, and on the afternoon that the news broke across the country, the local Iowa City Republican published an “extra.” With many other youngsters, I yelled, “Read all about it!” and collected five cents each from eager Iowa City residents. No doubt inspired by such quick profit, I acquired a paper route that fall but soon lost interest, probably because there was no need to work when my Dad was so generous as to supply my meager needs.

It was about this period that I became conscious of girls and would go a long way to keep from meeting them. There was an unusually good-looking young lady across the street whom I admired from afar, but the most


interesting was a little country girl, Muriel Eggenberg, who used to come to town driving an old horse hitched to a surrey “with a fringe on top.” I rarely saw her, and the first time we talked was years later in high school—when I certainly made an impression. I rounded the corner of a hallway with my usual hurried gait, and we collided violently, her books flying in all directions. I picked them up and retreated in confusion, little realizing that she was to be my life’s companion.

By now, at mid-grammar school age, I was a con-firmed woodsman. One memorable Indian summer day stands out most vividly. It all happened because Quack Poland had wanted to get back to nature. The afternoon before, on a Sunday, Quack, my bulldog Spurgyns, and I had gone on the trail. We had found a couple of rusty traps in the alley back of a blacksmith shop, and we decided to set them along the Iowa River.

A flock of quail was flushed in Mandeville’s woods, the biggest we’d seen all fall, and Spurgyns surprised a woodchuck, which lost no time in scurrying to his burrow. We trekked across the field to where the river flowed between steep, wooded banks; the leaves were brightly colored and were beginning to fall with every little breeze, and from the damp earth came the fragrance of autumn. Along the brush-filled valleys were many holes, and at one place there were six or seven burrows with brown patches of newly disturbed soil where both traps were set.

It was still rather dark when we neared the traps the following morning, for the sun had not climbed high enough to clear the top of the hill. We cautiously approached and found the ground scuffed, but the first trap un-sprung. The second held a victim, however—a striped fellow! We backed away and held a council of war on how to get the skunk out of the trap.

“Quack,” I suggested, “I’ll make a noise down here to keep his interest and you crawl up above the hole. You grab the chain and snap him in the air. Yank him up quick and hit him.”

“You show me,” said Quack. He had more sense than I.

When I was above the hole, the skunk couldn’t see me. In fact, I couldn’t see the skunk either. It was easy to get my hand on the chain because the slack hadn’t been

taken up. There was a ring in the chain over the peg that stuck in the ground, so I cautiously slipped the ring over my forefinger, straightened up and pulled. Unfortunately, just as I swung the animal in the air, the top of the tunnel gave way. I lost my balance, and when I fell, the skunk landed with all four feet on my leg. He didn’t bite—it wasn’t necessary. A fine spray filled the air as Quack rushed in and finished the little animal with a stick.

We were two woebegone boys with mud-stained and, we suspicioned, rather smelly clothing; we couldn’t tell, however, for, after the first sickening onslaught of the yellowish mist, all sense of smell seemed to disappear. Quack had a pocket knife, so while I held the skunk by the hind legs, he made a “Y” cut, and we soon had the skin off. We realized that if we were going to get to school on time, we’d better hurry, so after wrapping the skin in an old paper, we set off at a dogtrot for the Black Springs station of the interurban which ran between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Our timing was perfect for we arrived just as the car pulled to a stop. Quack and I jumped on the rear platform and decided to stay outside, as we feared we might be carrying a slight odor. As the motorman started ahead, the conductor motioned for us to come in. I shook my head, and as he came out to claim our five cents for the two-mile ride to town, he had a startled expression. “Let me off at Front Street, please,” I requested.

Backing into the half-open door, he gasped, “Boy, you can get off anywhere you want.” The car stopped when across the Iowa River bridge, and we headed up the hill toward the university campus, and I had a brilliant thought. “Quack,” I suggested, “Maybe we smell a bit. Let’s stop at Hank Lewis’ drugstore and get some perfume.” It was on the way to school, on the corner across from where the Jefferson Hotel was to be located.

The druggist was a friendly man, a good friend of my father and a neighbor of ours, living just down the street. “Mr. Lewis,” I said in my politest manner, “I’d like a little perfume. Please charge it to Dad. I haven’t a cent on me.” To which the startled druggist responded, “Boy, if the scents you have made dollars, you’re a millionaire!”

I put the small vial of perfume in my hip pocket, and we hurried to school. The kids were inside when we arrived, and I waved “so long” to Quack as he dashed off


Bailey


for his class. All was quiet as I entered my room. The old clock was going “tick-tock, tick-tock,” and I glanced up to assure myself I was on time. It seemed that everyone was eyeing me as I walked rapidly down the aisle and flopped heavily into my seat. There was a crunch as the perfume bottle broke under the impact and, at the same time, a buzz from all the kids roundabout, some of them holding their noses.

Just then I was grabbed by the shoulder and yanked out of my seat. Looking up, I saw Miss Quinlan as she gave me a start toward the door—and there was Quack being propelled by Miss Startsman. The teachers shoved us both out, saying, “Go home!—And don’t come back!”

School days merged one into another. I must have been too busy hunting to get into trouble for, now, I spent all my spare hours wandering along the Iowa River, gun in hand. We had a succession of dogs; some were hunters and others were just four-legged canines. I remember Princess especially. She was a little hound-like tyke with big brown eyes, and she made her headquarters in the manger in front of Pedro. The two got along beautifully, and the sleek little dog thoroughly enjoyed a run with the swift-legged pony.

My brother Jack was just finishing medical school, and my new stepbrother Carl was a beginner. They decided that Princess was having too many admirers of the opposite sex. So, while Carl administered the chloro-form, Jack performed the operation intended to keep the dog population within reasonable bounds.

Poor Princess! A little later, while the incision was still unhealed, she had the misfortune to get in the way of one of those newfangled motor cars, and she came trailing home a very sick dog. Jack gave her emergency aid, sewed up the wound, and some months later, when I was feeding Pedro, I happened to look into the manger. There was Princess with 13 of the most beautiful pups I had ever seen!

Tragedy struck, however. We felt sure we knew who gave Princess poison but, of course, could not prove it. The poor little mother dragged herself back to the manger, the pups nursed on the poisoned milk, and all died.

The family name for most of our dogs has been “Spurgyns,” and through the years there has been a

succession of Spurgynses. One, of a general bulldog type, was my steady hunting companion. I used a single-barreled shotgun, the successor to the stolen pump gun, and we would comb the corn fields for rabbits. In those days, it was legal (and the usual thing) to hunt with ferrets, and I carried a trained one in my coat. Spurgyns would usually put a rabbit in a hole; the ferret would chase it out.

If a rabbit was at home when the ferret was put into the hole, bunny usually scooted out so fast that he did not touch the ground within five feet of his burrow, and he landed running with Spurgyns in hot pursuit. If I could get in a shot in front of the plunging dog and suc-ceeded in hitting my game, then it was a toss-up whether Spurg got it or I did. He had no idea of retrieving and apparently felt I was helping. It was his rabbit, and the only way I could take game away was to grab him by the hind legs and start to whirl. Eventually, he would let go, and I would throw him in the direction opposite to the mauled rabbit.

One day, Spurgyns and I were separated, and he tried to go home by way of the interurban bridge, with fatal results, for he was caught by the trolley. When I arrived home that evening, I was met at the door by a tearful little brother Ralph, who reproached me, “You couldn’t even take care of a dog.” And then he dra-matically hit himself upon the chest and cried, “Oh, why couldn’t it have been me?” And there was no question that the grief-stricken boy was sincere. Whenever I have passed the west end of that bridge, through all the years that have elapsed, I think of my boyhood companion that was buried along the rail right of way.

Another Spurgyns was a slathering-mouthed bulldog with an out-shot jaw—a good-natured, bow-legged fellow, so clumsy as a pup that he could hardly walk. The boy down the street had a bull terrier that delighted in jumping the pup and giving it a fearful mauling, and I always had to wade to the rescue. We sent our Spurg to the country for a few months, and he continued to grow. Then one day I had him on a leash in front of our home. He was now a powerful animal, but he looked the same to the neighbor’s bull terrier. My friend started up the street with his pup, and the latter


made a beeline for mine. I grabbed Spurgyns by the loose skin of his back and lifted him as high as I could, but the other dog made a leap and grabbed Spurg by the jowls. I couldn’t hold both, so I dropped them. Spurgyns rolled over, broke the hold, and then caught the surprised aggressor in a vice-like grip that required the combined efforts of several onlookers to break.

Spurg became too active to handle, so we gave him to a truck driver who delighted to go around town with the powerful-looking creature sitting alongside. The dog was peaceful enough ordinarily, but he was death on cats. On one occasion, he saw a huge Angora on a porch, and he jumped off the moving truck and took after. The cat darted into the house, with Spurg in pursuit. Puss climbed onto the piano, and the dog tried. Chaos followed, and the new owner of Spurgyns had a considerable bill of damages to pay.

Brother Lee liked to fish, and I continued to accompany him occasionally. They were wonderful, carefree excursions when we would find good snags and fish in the current for channel cats. Kingfishers worked noisily up and down the river, giving their rattling cry, sometimes posing momentarily on fast-moving wing, and then diving head foremost into the water to emerge from the flying spray with a dangling shiny minnow.

Rather hazy in memory were visits to Iowa City of two famous men: President Theodore Roosevelt, who spoke to the assembled crowd from the rear of his Rock Island Railway special train (probably in 1903 when he was running for election), and about the same time or earlier, the famed Buffalo Bill, who had brought his Wild West circus to town. The tents were erected on a vacant lot on the corner of Linn Street within two blocks of my home, and I marveled as Buffalo Bill, from the back of a beautiful horse, broke with his rifle the balls which were tossed in the air by another rider.

Also back in the dim past is a remembrance of the time some affluent citizen of my hometown drove an automobile past our house—a single-seater without a top, guided by stick rather than a wheel—and of my running alongside the car shouting, “Automobile!” at the top of my voice. I was barefooted, for I remember how the pebbles in the street hurt my feet. And also,

sometime between 1906 and 1910, barnstormer Ivy Baldwin brought the first airplane to Iowa City.

My memory of Baldwin is of his making short flights from the Johnson County Fair Grounds at Iowa City. He drew fine crowds, and I recall his takeoff as he headed east. All in attendance shouted as the plane slowly gained altitude—too slowly, for he failed to clear the apple trees at the east end of the field—and crashed. It was one of many that he walked away from during his long adventurous career. Many of us gathered at the crash site and found his plane was not badly damaged. I recall him as a rather short man and his cheerfulness as he talked to newspapermen covering the event.

I graduated from grammar school in the fall of 1907 when I was 13, and the following spring, early on a Saturday morning, Possum Withers and I took my rowboat on a duck hunt down the Iowa. It was the height of migration, many wildfowl winging their way northward. We worked down-stream for two days, pulling the oars in leisurely fashion, occasionally taking toll from a passing flock. The first night’s camp was on a little island, and the next afternoon, a Sunday, we stopped along a nicely wooded bank, where there was plenty of firewood, intending an early start the following morning so we could reach Columbus Junction, ship our boat back by freight, and return home by train.

It was one of those mild spring days, but late in the afternoon a slight drizzle set in, and by evening we were wet to the skin. A glowing fire was built and our soggy shoes placed as close as possible to dry. Meals were easily prepared—coffee, a can of baked beans, and bread. I took my half of the beans, leaving the rest in the frying pan. Possum put them back on the coals and then added several whopping spoonfuls of lard to simmer. To my astonished query as to why such a mess, Possum picked up the can, pointed to the label, and explained, “It says ‘Pork and Beans’ and there ain’t no pork.”

About the time the meal was finished, lightning began flaring to the south. Gradually the slight breeze intensified and came from the west, the storm circling to the north. Soon a small gale was blowing, with drift-ing snow. We took shelter under blankets in the tent, the snow melted from the heat of our bodies, and two uncomfortable boys spent a miserable night.


Bailey


Morning was ushered in by scurrying clouds and great numbers of hurrying wildfowl. Our shoes were frozen with snow, and so canvas strips substituted. The skiff was launched, and we pulled for three hours to Columbus Junction, arranged the return of our boat by freight, and then huddled against the depot stove waiting for the train, both vowing we had had enough of the outdoors.

Such experiences are soon forgotten, however, and that summer my friend Don Luscombe and I took my rowboat on another expedition. My stepmother had gone to St. Louis to visit her son, and I was lone-some to see her. I suggested to Don that we go down the Iowa about a hundred miles to the mouth, and then down the Mississippi. We set out without telling our fathers. It was easy going, and where the water was shallow we’d get out and walk, pulling the canoe. Naturally, whenever we came to a bridge with deep water beneath, we always jumped from the highest span. Unfortunately, we did not have the sense to put on shirts during the heat of the day, so by the time we reached the Mississippi, we were so sunburned that our skin cracked and bled.

The night we spent on an island just below the mouth of the Iowa, in the Father of Waters, was a miser-mouth of the Iowa, in the Father of Waters, was a miser-mouth of the Iowa, in the Father of Waters, was a miserable one. We were so burned we could not keep a blanket over us, but the mosquitoes were so numerous that we had to keep covered. It was a night of torture, and by the time Burlington was reached the following day, we were glad to end our expedition.

As both of us were ardent fishermen, we carried a quart of the best bait possible for catch-ing catfish—sour clams. The evil-smelling mixture was prepared by covering fresh clams with milk and cornmeal, soon to become so strong that a catfish within 100 yards would be able to find it. At journey’s end, we had our boat hauled to the freight depot, and we gave the truckman our remaining provisions—and the sour clams. A few hours later we dropped around at the livery stable to pay our bill and asked him if he was able to use the stuff we had left in the boat. He replied, “Yes, but, boys, how in hell do you eat those clams?”

I was usually to be found down along the river, and it was late that same summer after school had started that the city fire alarm bell started to toll, indicating someone had drowned. As was the custom in those days, everyone headed for the river bank. My brother Bill saw Sam Tanner hurrying his horses down the street and, waving him down, asked, “Who’s drowned?” “Young Bailey,” Tanner replied.

Bill jumped into the buggy, and they lashed the horses to a gallop. When they reached the bank, a throng of people crowded about the drowned boy, and brother Bill thrust his way through, fully expecting to see me stretched out on the sand. Instead, it was a college student named Dailey.

When Bill was telling his story, with gestures, to a breathless family that evening, Mother asked, “Well, Lee, what did you think when you saw it was not Alfred?” And my beloved brother replied, “Gosh, Mom, I thought all that running for nothing.”

When I returned from hunting trips, I usually brought home some form of wildlife and endeavored to mount it in as lifelike a position as possible. The collec-tion grew, and I had a young museum of my own by the time I entered high school. One spring day in 1909, I was down on the McCollister farm five miles south of town. It was late for migrant ducks, the majority having passed to the northward, but as I was walking along the shore of “the big pond,” a flock of large birds passed overhead— black fellows—and I brought one down with an audible thud upon the sands. It was as large as a goose and had a hooked bill and webbed feet. It must be a goose I decided, and proudly carried it home, announcing to my patient mother that I had succeeded in bagging a goose and had taken the skin for my collection; the body would be ideal for Sunday dinner. How was I to know it was a cormorant, the rankest of fish-eating birds?

That bird smelled to heaven as it was being cooked, but Mother did not want to disappoint me. In due time, it was placed upon the table. She gingerly tasted a portion and then asked, “What did you say this bird is, Alfred?” “A wild goose, Mother,” I replied. ”Well,” said Mother gently, “It does taste wild.”


High School to University, 1907–1911School days are vague. Going to classes was just a neces-sary evil, and in the fall of 1907, when 13 years of age, I successfully passed from grammar school into high and, for four years, went through the necessary routine with a minimum of effort, with Latin proving the stumbling block. Being shy and inclined to spend all my spare time in the woods along the Iowa, I made few friends, Wesley Kubichek and Wilbur Cannon two kindred nimrods, being the exception. I was too small and light to take part in athletics in competition with brawny and older boys, so my high school days were marked with few incidents of note.

During that first year in high school, Wilbur Cannon and I were down along the Iowa River. The ice was going out of the creeks and river, and the banks were flooded, and in the gray sky above was a continu-ous flight of wildfowl on their northward trek. It was a glorious, gray, chill day, with the grinding of ice along the shores, and the migration of birds indicating that winter was on the way out. Wib and I were along a creek, and I shot a small waterbird on the opposite side, which lodged among the willows. It was a kind I did not have in my collection—a strange looking creature to me. So I pulled off my clothes and gingerly waded into the ice-filled creek, took the plunge, thrashed my way across, grabbed the bird between cakes of floating ice, and floundered back as fast as my numbed arms could flail the water.

My bird was common enough, but it was a prize to me, the first hell-diver (Pied-billed Grebe) I had ever secured, and the fact that Wib had to pull my clothes on for me, and that my fingers could not close the but-tonholes made not the slightest difference.

That day was the greatest of my career as a hunter. Although I have bagged game of many sizes, in various parts of the world, there was never anything to equal the experience that noontime. Wilbur and I were walking through McCollister’s woods about 100 yards from the river when suddenly there were resonant calls of the honking of geese, and in the river, we saw a band of 30 or more of the great black-headed Canadas bucking the current in midstream.

We dropped to the ground with hearts pounding against our ribs, and we hugged the earth as we discussed how we could get upon them. The decision was not ours, for in a few moments there was a great clamor as the geese beat the water with their strong wings and climbed into the air against the breeze coming down the river. And then they turned, and the whole gang sailed over the woods—directly toward us. Two breathless boys waited, and when the fast-moving birds were overhead we each picked one, and our victims came rolling from the air and struck the hard earth with two audible thumps. Without attempting to fire second shots, we dropped our guns and raced to our prizes; mine weighed 16 pounds. Yes, hunting is a cruel sport, but there never is a second thrill for a boy equal to the taking of his first goose.

Long before this time, I had been dreaming of roaming the West, possibly with a taxidermy shop estab-lished somewhere in Wyoming. My mother suggested that I talk to H.R. Dill, who was in charge of the preparation of exhibits in the University of Iowa museum. I was sur-of exhibits in the University of Iowa museum. I was sur-of exhibits in the University of Iowa museum. I was surprised to find that I knew him as a kindly man I had met a couple of years before who had seemed amused when I had told him that I was going to “stuff” the big carp I was carrying. He suggested that if I wanted to do museum work, it would be well to finish high school and then go to college. I was anxious to improve my mounting methods, and he agreed to give me a private lesson for a dollar and a half an hour. So one day I secured a beauti-ful little Green Heron, and Professor Dill demonstrated the correct way of preparing the bird. It came out nicely and was the choice specimen of my collection which began to overflow my room. As I look back, I realize what a patient mother I had.

My summers—vacation time—were pretty much my own. There was no pressure to get jobs, and the winding Iowa River was always a sufficient enticement for an outdoor-minded youngster. For some reason, when about 14, however, I took a summer job driving the milk wagon, dispensing milk from large cans to customers of the dairy. The milk company was a small establishment which was to develop into one of the important business concerns of the city, certainly through no effort of mine. The propri-etor first showed me the ice cream department with the


Bailey


huge cans of the frozen mixture and advised me to eat all I wanted. It was surprising how soon I lost interest in the frozen delicacies. One job was to wash the five-gallon milk cans in water as hot as I could endure, and my boss instructed me to use my hands and fingers as much as possible and so save wear and tear on the brushes. He was a thrifty soul, and deserved to succeed, for another of his admonitions was in the technique of washing windows. The well-known Bon Ami was the cleanser, and I was given a small moist rag and advised to apply it to the end of the cake rather than the middle, and so keep from breaking down the bar in the center. With such a beginning in the ways of economy, there is no wonder that I have been a frugal individual ever since.

It was a happy year, 1910, the last one before college, when Halley’s Comet, on starlit nights, was con-spicuous high in the sky over the Iowa River. The tops of the trees of the woods on the opposite side usually were black against a lighter sky, and the stars were gleaming coals in the distant void, with the trailing comet another Milky Way. I spent the summer fishing and wandering the shores of the Iowa. Often I would take the train down to Hills and walk the 10 or 15 miles back, stopping to see my farmer acquaintances along the way and, late in the season, to sample their melon patches.

There were many species of birds to be seen in the woods bordering the Iowa. Barred Owls roosted in cavities of large trees; Little Green Herons flushed from along the shores; Kingfishers sent their rattling challenges echoing from bank to bank. All in all, it was a satisfying life for a growing boy. Probably I studied somewhere along the line, but there are no recollections. My grades must have been satisfactory, for there was no difficulty about enter-been satisfactory, for there was no difficulty about enter-been satisfactory, for there was no difficulty about entering the University of Iowa in the fall of 1911.

My interests were in the university museum and the remarkable collection assembled by Dr. C.C. Nutting and earlier naturalists. Many noted men had gone to Iowa and traveled to far places, among them being Frank Russell, who spent two years in the wilds of Arctic Canada and collected musk oxen and caribou upon the Barren Grounds. Rudolph Anderson and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who were to become famous through their explorations along the Arctic coast in the early 1900s, had been students at Iowa, and Nutting had led expedi-tions to semitropical areas where great collections of invertebrate materials were secured. H.R. Dill (Fig. 1.03)had recently been placed in charge of the museum and was busily engaged in modernizing the displays, and he established a training course for museum workers in 1910, his first student being C.J. Albrecht, who was to become a leader of expeditions to many parts of the world. Through the years, many of Dill’s students held important positions in leading natural history museums of the country (Fig. 1.04).

Dr. Nutting, as a result of his experiences on Laysan Island in 1902, visualized a museum cyclorama showing the great seabird colonies, the spectators to stand on


Figure 1.03. Homer R. Dill, University of

Iowa, 1914. Photographer unknown. DMNS

No. IV.BA13-129.

a platform in the center of the group. As a result, a cooperative expedition was arranged by Dr. Nutting between the University of Iowa and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to gather information on the condition of the Laysan bird colonies, with Professor Dill in charge of the field party. He, the noted Chicago artist Charles A. Corwin, and assistants C.J. Albrecht and H.C. Young sailed from Honolulu April 17, 1911, on the Revenue Cutter Thetis and landed on Laysan seven days later. During their six weeks on the island, outstanding collec-tions were made, and in the next four years, the famous Laysan cyclorama was installed in the museum, artist Corwin painting the unique background. As a freshman in the College of Liberal Arts at the university that fall of 1911, I was the second student enrolled in the museum training course under Professor Dill and, naturally, was greatly impressed when the collection of strange seabirds from the far-off Pacific island was unpacked.

One of my first acquaintances among fellow fresh-men was a boy of my own age, Fred W. Kent from DeWitt, Iowa, who was working his way through school by doing photographic work and was destined to be a lifelong friend.

I was greatly impressed with his Ia camera with a focal plane shutter which would take pictures up to a 1,000th of a second. He had bought the camera on time, and soon afterward he photographed a barnstorming aviator at the local fairgrounds, just as the pilot fell from his seat. Kent sold enough postcards showing the plane and the unfortu-nate man in midair to pay for the camera.

On his return from Laysan in the summer of 1911, Professor Dill reported at length on the killing of more than a quarter of a million seabirds by the Japanese poachers in 1908 and noted that there was a more serious problem. Rabbits, which had been introduced in 1903, had increased to such an extent they were destroying the vegetation. He recommended that a field party be sent to Laysan to eliminate the rabbits. As a result, the U.S. Biological Survey planned a trip for late 1912 with Com-modore G.R. Salisbury of the U.S. Navy in charge. William Wallace of Stanford University and ornithologist George Willett were the other two members. After all arrange-ments were made, Chief H.W. Henshaw of the Survey suggested that possibly Dill had a student who would like to go along as cook, and the professor—who had hunted


Bailey

Figure 1.04. University of Iowa students learning the art of taxidermy, ca. 1910. Photographer

unknown. DMNS No. IV.BA13-131.


rabbits with me and, no doubt, had noted that I knew how to warm a can of beans on a campfire without exploding the contents over the nearby scenery—recommended me. I took light work (mostly in the museum laboratory) during the first three months of my sophomore year in 1912 and planned for the expedition.

The history of Laysan was of interest, the island being discovered in May 1857 and annexed to the Hawai-ian Kingdom and leased in 1892 for the digging of guano deposits. Professor Dill showed me photographs made the following year in 1893 by J.J. Williams of Honolulu of the thousands of Laysan Albatrosses nesting on the inner slopes of Laysan, and one of the trucks and wheelbarrows of the guano diggers filled with albatross eggs intended for the Honolulu market (Fig. 1.05).

The island and the other Leeward Islands had been set aside as a Hawaiian reservation by President Theodore Roosevelt by executive order on February 3, 1909—and a few months later Japanese poachers raided Laysan, slaughtering thousands of albatrosses, terns, and other species for their feathers to be used in the millinery

trade. Fortunately, the men were interrupted by the officers of the Revenue Cutter Thetis and were hauled to Honolulu with their plunder.

Laysan Island Expedition, 1912–1913Memory fails me in recalling the days of preparation for my field trip to Laysan. Fred Kent loaned me his camera, and I had a trunk full of supplies (my 15-year-old grand-son Jack Murphy used the same trunk in 1958 on his first expedition—to Subantarctic Campbell Island, 400 miles south of New Zealand). I bought 12 rolls of film of 12 exposures each, as well as chemicals so the films could be developed at night, Fred cautioning me to be sure and wash out all the hypo.

The train trip westward is vague, but I recall early the morning of December 1, 1912, at Helper, Utah, where an extra engine was attached to the train to help pull the heavy load over steep grades. The name “Helper” seemed especially appropriate as a stop was made at the station to allow passengers to get their breakfast, and a swarm of waitresses was on hand to load the plates of the customers.


Figure 1.05. Collecting albatross eggs on Laysan Island, 1891. Photograph by J.J. Williams,

Honolulu. DMNS No. IV.BA13-130.

I began keeping a journal of field experiences at that time and have continued through the years, concluding my field notes December 5, 1972. The first couple lines under date of December 2, 1912, record my arrival in “Frisco,” going to the Hotel Stewart, and my impression of the scenery in Utah, Nevada, and California. Commo-dore Salisbury, retired from the U.S. Navy and, as former Naval Governor of Guam, proved to be a kindly man. He signed me on as a member of the expedition with pay at one dollar a day plus four dollars a day expenses when in San Francisco and Honolulu. George Willett arrived that afternoon, a powerful fellow, 6’3” tall, weighing over 200 pounds, wearing a wide-brimmed Stetson hat, and I still can visualize the surprised look when he first met me, a youngster of 18 years. It was the beginning of a friend-ship which was to be renewed in Alaska, on interesting trips and elsewhere, and continued until his death in Los Angeles, where he had for years served as Curator of Birds in the Los Angeles County Museum.

Willett had served during the war in the Philippine Islands and had a good knowledge of Spanish, German, and Chinese, the latter gained when he was a detective on the Los Angeles police force with special duties in China-town. He was recognized as one of the leading amateur ornithologists of the West and had recently joined the Biological Survey, with the Laysan Island expedition his first assignment.

He took me to see the sights of Chinatown, and we met one of his Chinese friends, who invited us to attend a banquet the next night to celebrate the opening of a tong house. We accepted, and as we were leaving the hotel the following evening, Dr. Joseph Grinnell, the famous ornithologist at Berkeley, dropped by to say “so long,” and he joined us. My journal entry for Decem-ber 5 states: “Got back from Chinese blowout at 4:30 this morning. Had some strange experiences. Leave on transport Sherman at noon.”

The other member of the party, William Seward Wallace (Bill), a graduate student from Stanford, arrived at 10:00, and we all headed for the dock. The journey to Honolulu was of interest because of the numerous seabirds observed—my first Black-footed Albatrosses, sailing circles around the vessel, and occasional petrels,

which came aboard. The Sherman arrived off Honolulu the morning of December 13, and I will always remember my first near view of Oahu: people on the dock shouting greetings to friends gathered at the railing, rooftops of the town, and the Punchbowl crater beyond with char-the town, and the Punchbowl crater beyond with char-the town, and the Punchbowl crater beyond with characteristic, low-hung clouds massing in valleys and dark shadows of the mountains beyond.

The Commodore checked in at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, then a sprawling wooden building with wide veran-das situated in the center of town, while we three registered at the Alexander Young Hotel. I was a bit perturbed because I thought I’d save money on my four-dollar per diem expense account, but the tariff took the whole four dollars for my single room and three meals a day!

I recall breakfast the next morning. As per custom through the years, I was up early. In the dining room were many ahead of me, and in addition to pancakes, I ordered cantaloupe. The bewildered waiter shook his head, and I pointed to the people at the next table with the most delicious melons I had ever seen—my intro-duction to papayas.

After we checked in, Willett and I visited the Revenue Cutter Thetis at anchor half a mile offshore and met Captain C.S. Cochran, Lieutenant Todd, and other officers and arranged to send out our baggage— personal gear and food supplies for our three months’ stay on Laysan. One of our first tasks, after putting the expedition supplies aboard the Thetis December 14, was to destroy the bird plumage which had been seized on Laysan two years previously from the 23 Japanese poach-ers (Fig. 1.06). We hauled 11 wagonloads of wings and feathers to the dump and burned them, nearly all that remained of the nearly 300,000 birds which the Japanese had killed and packed for shipment in their few short months on the island.

In the afternoon, we talked to William Alanson Bryan at the Bishop Museum, a noted authority on Hawai-ian birds who had visited Laysan for a week in 1911 with Dill’s party, being picked up by the Thetis on its return from Midway Island en route back to Honolulu.

He showed us a map of the Hawaiian group (Fig. 1.07) with the Leeward Islands extending 1,200 or more miles to the northwest between latitudes 23° and 29° N


Bailey



Figure 1.06. Albatross wings piled in old guano shed, Laysan Island, 1911. Photograph by Homer R.

Dill. DMNS No. IV.BA13-124.

Figure 1.07. Sketch map of Hawaiian Islands chain. Drawing by Arminta P. Neal, July 15, 1952.

DMNS No. IV.BA54-112.

and longitudes 160° and 180° W—a series of volcanic rocks, shoals, reefs, and low-lying coral islets, the latter less than 50 feet above the sea. All were uninhabited except for representatives of a cable company on Midway.

The Thetis sailed at 4:00 p.m. December 15 with Governor G.F. Freer, Attorney General Judge Lindsay, and entomologist D.T. Fullaway as additional passengers. We were in sight of Kauai all the next day and off Nihoa (Bird Island) the following morning, where many frigatebirds (Man-o’-wars) and Fairy Terns were seen near the vessel and both Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses sailing low over the water.

The seven passengers had their meals in the cap-tain’s cabin. The sea was rough as we headed northwest at noontime the second day, so it was necessary, sitting at the dining table, to keep one foot in front and the other behind to balance with the rolling of the vessel. Unfortunately, a wave caught Judge Lindsay unprepared, and as he fell backward, he grabbed the rack which held the dishes in place, pulling all cutlery, dishes, and food on top of him as he sprawled over the floor.

Necker Island, a distant mass against the skyline, was observed ahead at sunup December 18, and a couple of hours later a cutter was launched and Willett and I, with Lieutenant Todd and a crew, approached the wall of igneous rock, its red veins conspicuous against darker formations. We attempted a landing, but there was such a surge of waves against the seawall, each crashing white, that we were unable to back the boat close enough so we could leap ashore. Numerous common seabirds circled close to our craft, but among them were the unique Necker Island Terns.

French Frigate Shoals, a series of small islands in a 30-square-mile area circled by an outer reef and dominated by a 120-foot-high rocky pinnacle somewhat resembling a ship in full sail, was discovered by the French navigator La Perouse in 1786 and named by him for his two French frigates. We landed on the second island adjacent to the rock shortly after midday, Decem-ber 19, by wading among the beautiful head corals left partly exposed by the outgoing tide.

There had been stories of shipwrecked sailors from the majority of the islets of the Leeward Islands,

and on the highest point of land, surrounded by a colony of Laysan Albatrosses, Blue-faced Boobies, and graceful terns, was a little excavation; four pegs with tattered canvas flapping listlessly marked the remains of a shelter, and the numerous bleaching turtle bones told plainly the main source of food of the castaways. A half-rotted turtle shell turned bottom to the sky seemed to ask for rain, and a broken oar blade lay half buried in the sand—mute testimony of a possible tragedy.

It was on this remote little sand island that I saw my first nesting seabirds—the albatrosses, boobies, and terns mentioned above. Bristle-thighed Curlew, golden-plover, and turnstones, and an occasional Wandering Tattler worked along the shoreline, so the time allowed ashore was all too brief. An impatient blast of the horn from the Thetis hastened all hands back to the cutter.

The Thetis headed for Laysan at dusk and traveled all the next day out of sight of land, the many seabirds —albatrosses, frigatebirds, and Sooty Terns—indicat-ing the proximity of nesting islands. About 3:00 in the afternoon of the next day, the sailor in the crow’s nest called out that he had sighted the island, and within an hour, we were anchored a mile offshore. Through the binoculars, we could see the little bungalow framed with two coconut palms, the former home of Max Schlemmer, the leader of the Honolulu firm which leased the island at the turn of the century from the Hawaiian Kingdom for the digging of guano. Several other buildings were to the right. There was a narrow entrance through the outer reef through which great waves were breaking white, so Captain Cochran, concluding it was too dangerous to attempt a landing, had the anchor pulled, and the Thetisheaded into the open ocean.

The following morning, December 22, we returned. The ocean was less violent, and with five members of the crew and Lieutenant Todd handling the stern oar, I started ashore perched high on the load of baggage. Waves were cresting white in the passageway through the barrier reef, but Todd skillfully evaded all breaking waves, and we landed on the sheltered beach. Eventually, all four of our party were safely ashore to start our three months of Crusoe life, during which time—so isolated was Laysan in 1912 and 1913—not even a distant sail was seen.


Bailey


The prospect from the beach was an encouraging one. There was a string of six low buildings running par-one. There was a string of six low buildings running par-one. There was a string of six low buildings running parallel to the shore, a low bungalow where we were to make our headquarters with a watchtower light to the extreme left, the light designed as an aid in guiding boats at night through the narrow reef passageway (Fig. 1.08).

The beach sloped gently, and above high tide mark were scraggly bushes, the majority girdled by the rabbits which were threatening to destroy all edible plant life upon the island. The little endemic flightless Laysan Rails scurried from one bit of shelter to the next, and several of the two members of the Honeycreeper family —one a beautiful rose scarlet bird, the other, a yellowish finch-like bird with robust mandibles—were in the hau tree on the south side of the bungalow.

All baggage was landed safely, the supplies were stored in a small warehouse, which I was to use as a labo-ratory, and adjacent was a weather-beaten building, one end torn out, revealing the sodden wings of thousands of frigatebirds and albatrosses which the poachers had not had time to box for shipment. Behind the buildings

on the inward slope were patches of tobacco, apparently unmolested by the rabbits. All four of us took a quick trip down the sandy slopes, denuded of vegetation except for clumps of grass, to the green flat adjacent to the mile-long salt lagoon where a thousand or more Laysan Albatrosses (Fig. 1.09) were sitting either upon empty nests or upon a single egg. The nests were scooped out of the shallow soil, each with a dike-like rim built up by the birds as they leisurely incubated.

Our inspection trip was brief, for we returned to clean Schlemmer’s old home, which had last been used by the Japanese poachers three years previously and had been left in a deplorable condition. I set up an army camp stove in an adjacent cook shack to prepare the evening meal. All hands had specific jobs. I was cook; Bill Wallace of Leland Stanford was dishwasher (it took twice as long to clean up after me as for me to prepare the meals). I would wager that I am the only camp cook in the history of cooks who had a Commodore of the U.S. Navy to gather and split kindling wood for him each morning. We had plenty of provisions. There were huge green turtles for


Figure 1.08. Lookout tower and living quarters on Laysan Island, June 1891. Photograph by George

C. Munro. DMNS No. IV.BA13-100.

fresh meat (we had little appetite for rabbit), and there was a bit of strip that was cleared by the beach where, later, the Gray-backed Terns nested by the wash of waves every few days and so made a supply of fresh eggs avail-able. My task of preparing meals was an easy one.

That first evening was a memorable one in that the nocturnal seabirds were especially active just before dark, their strange calls being characteristic sounds of the island. After the lanterns were lighted, an occasional night flier hit the windows, and as we were having supper, a White-breasted Petrel walked in the door; when placed on my knee, it calmly clawed to my shoulder and sat there, apparently unconcerned.

Our island was about two miles long and one and a half wide, with the salt lagoon unconnected with the sea in the center. Willett and I in the following weeks kept track of the nesting seabirds and checked the migrants along the lagoon and seashore—Bristle-thighed Curlew and golden-plover being especially numerous. The Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses had just started nesting, and gradually their numbers increased, the former inhabiting the inner slopes and the level areas along the lagoon, and the latter upon the exposed beaches where they were battered by strong winds. There still remained a few Scaevola bushes on the eastern slopes colonies of frigatebirds nested, the males with brilliant red inflated pouches, holding down their claims on empty nests to keep others of their kind from stealing the building

material. All the slopes were covered with tunnels of the White-breasted Petrels, and so barren of vegetation were the areas that each strong wind shifted the sands, burying hundreds of seabirds. On every excursion afield we liberated many with only heads exposed—unable to free themselves.

And under each bit of vegetation were rabbits large and small, often a dozen or more crouching in the shelter of the bushes they were destroying—upon which they depended for food. Ours was the unpleasant task to destroy as many as possible. It had been recommended that we pump gas into rabbit burrows, but the majority of the holes contained petrels or shearwaters, so such a method of control was not practical. Consequently, we used .22 rifles and, in the three months, eliminated 5,020 rabbits—a fruitless effort, for those left behind had additional food available because of the lessening of the population. As a result of the destruction of the vegetation, the rabbits ten years later were few in number and Dr. A. Wetmore and others of the USS Tanager Expe-dition eliminated those remaining—the island at that time being a barren waste with little food available. The rabbits, in making Laysan a desert, made life impossible for three of the five endemic species for which the island was famous—the Laysan Rail (Fig. 1.10), the red Laysan Honeyeater (Fig. 1.11), and the little Millerbird (Fig. 1.12), a warbler so tame it came into our quarters seeking out insects, all becoming extinct by the end of 1923.


Bailey

Figure 1.09. Thousands of albatrosses, Laysan Island, January 1913. DMNS No. IV.BA13-063.


There was a little freshwater pond adjacent to the southwest corner of the lagoon, the resting place of the unique Laysan Teal (Fig. 1.13), probably the rarest duck in the world at that time. Professor Dill gave twelve as his estimate of the birds existing in the spring of 1912 but noted only six at one time. We hoped to find twelve, but

although the shores of the lagoon and the little freshwa-ter pond were checked regularly, the most recorded were seven—certainly as low as any game species could drop with any hope of surviving in the wild.

Early one morning, I was along the little pond and was successful in securing one of my best wildlife photos. Three ducks were along the border of the pool, and a pair swam near the middle. I flattened out at water’s edge with Kent’s camera stretched in front of me at arm’s reach and kicked my heels upward to arouse their curiosity. The pair responded beautifully, swimming broadside within a few feet of the short-focus lens, and by twist-ing around I secured a shot of the three on land—thus securing photos of five of the seven individuals of the species existing at that time.

Fortunately, through the years, the ducks were unmolested—and while, as noted above, three of the five endemic species failed to survive the destruction of their habitat by the rabbits, the little ducks were able to find food, possibly the brine shrimp in the lagoon, so that 64 years later (1976) they have increased and many have been raised in captivity. Breeding stock captured on Laysan were loaned to numerous organizations by the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, Honolulu, result-ing in many young being raised by 1976.

The Laysan Finches (Fig. 1.14), in reality hon-eycreepers with heavy beaks, were hardy and today are numerous, and the slopes of Laysan are again clad with


Figure 1.10. Laysan Rail, Laysan Island,

January 1913. DMNS No. IV.BA13-048.

Figure 1.11. Laysan Honeyeater, Laysan

Island, 1923. From movie frame by Donald R.

Dickey. DMNS No. IV.BA13-046A.

Figure 1.12. Laysan Millerbird at nest with

eggs, Laysan Island, 1902. Photograph by

Walter K. Fisher. DMNS No. IV.BA13-053.

vegetation, effectively holding down drifting sands which, at the time of our visit, clogged the nesting burrows of thousands of shearwaters and petrels.

On excursions around the island we often saw eight- and nine-foot sharks in the crystal clear waters of potholes, and on one occasion, I secured photos as they came to the surface and scraped over a coral ledge, with dorsal fins exposed. Green turtles hauled regularly up on the sands, providing us with a welcome change of food, and we kept a close watch for a rare species of monk seal from the Leeward Islands, which must have been numerous in early years, for the brig Ainoa secured specimens in 1824, and the crew of the Gambia was reported to have taken 1,500 skins and 240 barrels of seal oil in 1859 (Bryan 1915). The seals were little known at the time of our visit. Schlemmer, who lived on Laysan


Bailey

Figure 1.13. Laysan Teal, Laysan Island, December 1912. DMNS No. IV.0090-1505.

Figure 1.14. Laysan Finch at nest with eggs,

Laysan Island, May 1902. Photograph by

Walter K. Fisher. DMNS No. IV.BA13-105.


during guano digging days, secured nine specimens on Laysan in 14 years and the animal was described in 1905 as Monachus schauinslandi by Dr. Matschie (Matschie 1905) from a skin and skull and parts of two other skulls given by Schlemmer to Dr. Schauinsland, the director of the natural history museum in Bremen.

Willett collected a male December 30 on the north end of the island, the only one we were to see on Laysan, which he and I carefully skinned for the U.S. Biological Survey (Bailey 1918 & 1952). The Thetis stopped briefly the following day en route to Honolulu, and the crew reported seeing about 40 seals including young on Pearl and Hermes reef near Midway. They took a specimen which later was deposited in the Bishop Museum.

Although all the nesting birds of Laysan were of interest, the Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses rated as first citizens (Fig. 1.15). Photographs taken at the turn of the century show solid masses of the Laysan Albatross


Figure 1.16. Black-footed Albatross dancing ceremony, Midway Island, May 6, 1949. Photograph by

A.M. Bailey and R.J. Niedrach. DMNS No. IV.BA49-194-36.

Figure 1.15. Black-footed Albatross, Laysan

Island, 1913. DMNS. No. IV.BA13-068.

on slopes and along flats bordering the lagoon, and great numbers of the black species on the exposed beaches. After the ravages of the Japanese feather hunters, there were less than half in the colonies in comparison with the numbers ten years previously.

Memory serves me poorly, but after being with alba-trosses for three months so long ago, my mental picture through the years of that bit of wonderful bird world has been of teeming albatross colonies and courtship displays of pairs and groups of both species carrying on their dances (Fig. 1.16), which have been described by many authors. I have reported at length upon the birds of Midway and Wake Islands under the titles of Stepping Stones Across Wake Islands under the titles of Stepping Stones Across Wake Islands under the titles ofthe Pacific (Museum Pictorial, No. 3, 1951), Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses (ibid., No. 6, 1952), and Birds of Midway and Laysan Islands (ibid., No. 12, 1956), the latter out of print (Bailey 1951, 1952, 1956).

The albatrosses’ eggs started hatching in early January, and the adults were most solicitous, one or the

other always at hand to shelter the small young from the sun or to protect them from the predacious frigatebirds (Fig. 1.17). As the babies grew in size, they begged eagerly whenever a parent returned with food and seemed to stimulate the old one to disgorge by stroking the adult’s beak with their own.

Schlemmer, at the time of Dr. Walter K. Fisher’s visit to Laysan in 1902, estimated there were two million Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses on the island, and Fisher (1906) stated that an “estimate of a million birds is not too great.” No doubt the above numbers were optimistic. With the elimination of so many birds by the Japanese poachers, we were able to make a careful check of the two species by each of our party taking a quarter of the island and counting nests. Our figures show the great decrease in the populations.

There were 9,201 occupied and 3,120 abandoned nests of the Laysan or 12,321 pairs that had started nesting. With two adults to a nest, there should have been 24,642 birds. We estimated 4,600 young were raised and that there were about the same number of non-breeding albatrosses in full plumage, making a guesstimate of 34,000 of this species on Laysan in 1913. Of the Black-footed there were 7,506 occupied nests and 216 abandoned, giving a possible 15,444 nesting adults, plus a liberal estimate of 5,000 young and 7,500 non-breeding birds, for a population of under 30,000 in 1913—or less than 70,000 for both species. Photographs I made in 1912–1913 show how few birds there were at the time of our visit in comparison to the vast numbers portrayed in J.J. William’s photograph taken in December 1893.

Professor Dill (Dill & Bryan 1912) estimated the Japanese had killed five-sixths of the albatrosses. If he was correct and our census was reasonably accurate, then the population at the turn of the century might have been a quarter of a million birds, far less than previously thought.

Through the more than half a century which has elapsed since my visit to Laysan, the seabirds have increased greatly. In these days when ecology is a house-hold word, it is well to remember that the preservation or restoration of the environment is most important. The Japanese slaughtered thousands of birds, but over


Bailey

Figure 1.17. Laysan Albatross chick in a nest

made of albatross bones, Laysan Island, 1913.

DMNS No. IV.0090-1456.


a great period of time the various species, unmolested, have thrived. On the other hand, one well-intentioned individual placed rabbits upon the island, which resulted in the destruction of the vegetation and the elimination of shelter and food for the endemic birds—and extinc-tion of three of the five species.

Heavy rains in late December 1912 inundated hundreds of nests along the lagoon, causing the Laysan Albatrosses to abandon their eggs, and Bristle-thighed Curlew swarmed over the flats, taking advantage of the easily obtained harvest, often followed by turnstones which could not break the eggs. (In 1923, Donald Dickey secured a fine movie sequence of a Bristle-thighed with a frigate-bird egg in its mouth, from which I made a black and white print (Fig. 1.18).) Occasionally, we saw the little flightless rails attempt to break the eggs; they would jump in the air and strike with their beaks in a fruitless endeavor.

Willett and I salvaged many albatross eggs, usually sitting on the ground and blowing their contents in front of us. We were surprised to have the rails hop over our outstretched legs and eagerly consume the offering. Later, toward the end of our stay on Laysan, we captured many rails (to transplant on Lisianski and Midway) by placing chicken eggs under a box lifted on one end by a stick with a string tied to it which we could pull to drop the trap; often four

and five would be caught at once. We placed rails on both islands, but the introduction was not successful on Lisianski. Rails previously had been introduced on Midway and the birds thrived until the war years when they were eliminated, probably by rats escaped from vessels, but possibly from chemicals sprayed to eliminate mosquitoes.

Only two rails were seen at the time of Dr. Wetmore’s visit to Laysan in 1923, and he tried to reintroduce eight birds from Midway, but his attempt ended in failure. The vegetation was so scant, there was no place to hide, and the predacious frigatebirds captured the rails as soon as they were liberated.

The stay on Laysan was an enjoyable Crusoe existence, the members of our party being constantly afield during good weather, each of us going to areas of particular interest.

As mentioned above, our only way to destroy rabbits was by shooting them, and because of the scarcity of ammunition, we tried to average a rabbit a shot. A crippled one was dispatched as mercifully as possible. All too soon our ammunition was gone except for 100 rounds each, and we set up a contest to see who would have the best average. We all had good success with our first 75 rounds, and Bill was the first to use his last cartridges. He returned late one evening and rather sheepishly put his rifle in a corner of the room, announcing that he had killed 23 straight, but the last two bullets had stuck in the gun.

We debated the best method to remove the lead and finally filled the barrel with vinegar and allowed it to remain overnight. The next morning as I was getting breakfast, I heard the Commodore pounding on a ramrod in an endeavor to remove the two bullets. There was a pause in the pounding, and then the Commodore called out, “Bailey, how many rabbits did Wallace get?” To which I replied, “He took 23 straight and the other two bullets stuck in the rifle.” The Commodore hit the ramrod a couple more times and then exploded, “Why, dad burn it, I’ve pounded out five and they’re still coming.” Later Bill explained the discrepancy by saying he shot an old female with eight young—which gave him a total of 23.


Figure 1.18. Bristle-thighed Curlew holding

frigatebird egg in beak, Laysan Island, 1923.

Photograph by Donald R. Dickey. DMNS No.

IV.BA23-099.

On our daily excursions over the island, we became acquainted with its many birds. The beautiful Red-tailed Tropicbirds were not numerous, but occasional pairs

were noted under scraggly bushes, usually one incubat-ing the single egg. About noontime, it was not unusual to see them in nuptial flight as though performing for others hidden below.

The little white-breasted Bonin Island Petrels (Fig. 1.19) were common. They had rather shallow nesting burrows, through which we often stumbled when walking carelessly, and we made a practice of watching after strong winds so as to free unfortunate birds caught in their tunnels by drifted sand. The little Sooty Petrels occurred in two small colonies, one at the north end of the lagoon and the other at the southwest, and after heavy rains, many perished when their nesting burrows were inundated. There was great activity after dark, and when we walked near with a light, the blinded birds often would fly into us like great moths. There were no shearwaters on our arrival, but the black Christmas Island species


Bailey

Figure 1.19. Bonin Island Petrel, Laysan

Island, January 1913. DMNS No. IV.BA13-082.

Figure 1.20. Christmas Island Shearwaters, Laysan Island, 1913. DMNS No. IV.0090-1457.


became numerous and conspicuous toward the end of our stay (Fig. 1.20).

The beautiful white Fairy Terns laid their single eggs upon the outcroppings of rock along the lagoon and along the great seawall at the south end of the island where the southeast trade winds caused great waves to crash, forcing white spray 30 or more feet in the air (Fig. 1.21). The dark terns and their smaller coun-terparts, the Hawaiian Terns, were colonial nesters in the remaining low bushes, and Gray-backed Terns were upon the seawall and higher ridges. The first Sooty Terns were seen early in January, and they began arriving in numbers in February.

The most conspicuous birds of the island, other than the albatrosses, were the frigatebirds, the males black with red gular pouches and the females dark with white breasts, full-grown immatures having white heads (Fig. 1.22). During the heat of the day, we often saw them swooping down on the little freshwater pond and taking beakfuls of water as they passed by. They were predators, and small young of other species were in danger, and in the evening many flew along the coastline to waylay incoming Red-footed and Masked Boobies heavily loaded with fish. The boobies squawked as the frigatebirds swooped upon them, often disgorging to lighten their


Figure 1.21. Fairy Tern, Laysan Island, 1913. DMNS No. IV.0090-1463.

Figure 1.22. Frigatebird, Laysan Island, 1913.

DMNS No. IV.BA13-019.

load, and on one occasion I obtained a photo just after the frigatebird grabbed a booby by the tail—the picture showing both birds and the disgorged fish in the air (Fig. 1.23). The predators were tame when resting in the bushes on their fragile nests and often were so filled with fish they could rise in the air only after disgorging. We collected flying fish in excellent condition by tapping well-fed frigatebirds with cane sticks, for invariably it was necessary for them to unload their cargo before they could get airborne.

Our days were routine. I cooked three meals a day, Bill Wallace cleaned up after me, and we all spent our spare time eliminating rabbits. Willett and I kept careful watch for unusual birds, and we often went out on the reef, fishing and gathering shells at low tide. On warm days, clad only with shoes, we would brace ourselves as white crested rollers nearly shoulder high came roaring shoreward, and then would fish during the quiet periods. Adventures were few, but Willett’s diary of January 3 records: “Bailey attacked by an octopus”—just a slight exaggeration. He and I were on the reef, and on this occa-sion, the surge of water was only waist deep. An octopus about six feet across, the first I had ever seen, came in on the wave and landed on me amidship. It frightened me half to death, and the animal was probably even more scared, for when I hit it in the middle, it dropped off and disappeared in a trail of inky fluid, leaving slight red welts on my legs as a reminder of the brief visit.

On one occasion, at the north end of the island, I was photographing sharks in a pothole. There must have been 20 in the clear waters—and looking seaward, I was surprised to see Willett swimming in from the barrier reef where (without saying anything to any of us) he had gone out to get a turtle. He had on his back a bag of bloody meat as he came to the shark-filled pool, and on seeing the animals, he merely trod water, reached into the sack for his knife, and then, as the shark came near, struck it. The knife had no protection on the hilt, so when it hit the tough hide, George’s hand slipped down on the blade, cutting all four fingers severely. He climbed upon the reef, held his arm up, with blood streaming off his elbow, and called to me, “Look, Al, what I get for being a kid all my life.”

One of the hazards of field trips to out-of-the-way places in pre-radio days when help could not be summoned was the possibility of serious accident or illness. Fortu-nately, the members of our party were hardy individuals and, strangely, the strongest, George Willett, was the only one to be hit. My journal entry of January 19 states:

Willett had a bad case of poisoning of some sort, the rest of us slightly but not off our feet. He was in great pain, raving part of the time. Pain not relieved until 4:00 a.m. The following remarkable list of medicines given Willett at maybe half-hour intervals:

(1) Hot water and mustard (twice); (2) painkiller with laudanum; (3) whiskey (Stiff braces); (4) two tablespoons castor oil (When I told George to “take this,” he feebly asked, “What is it?” and when I replied, “Castor oil,” he straightened up in the bunk and asked, “My Gawd, boys, do I have to take


Bailey

Figure 1.23. Frigatebird attacking Masked

Booby and catching regurgitated food, Laysan

Island, 1913. DMNS No. IV.BA13-132.

37

that?”); (5) more painkiller; (6) a morphine pill; (7) brandy and cognac (stiff dose twice); (8) two more tablespoons castor oil; (9) hot water; (10) hot water with soda; (11) hot coffee; (12) Epsom salts (several times).

And after taking all this stuff between 8:00 and 1:00 in the morning, he was not relieved until 4:00 a.m.

Surely only a man with Willett’s strong constitu-tion could have survived such treatment. We had had a variety of fish for dinner and suspected one might have been a poisonous variety—but I do not know whether such species occur in Hawaiian waters.

Stormy weather prevailed through much of the latter part of February and early March, with spectacular surf crashing upon the ledges at the south end of the island, and waves upon the beach which threw spray upon the front of our bungalow. Regardless of condi-tions, Willett and I tried to circle the lagoon whenever possible, usually separately to give a better chance for a count of migrants and to record unusual species. We both saw a pair of Mallards, and I collected them February 9, the specimens being saved for the Biological Survey. We observed a flock of fifteen pintails December 24, eight the 26th, and twelve the next day. Willett noted six shoveler ducks January 13 and a Bufflehead December 27, and the bird was collected January 3. Two Black-bellied Plover, apparently the first recorded from Laysan, were seen December 12, and Willett secured one January 10.

Golden-plover, turnstones, and Bristle-thighed Curlew were observed daily, and I collected a female Red-backed Sandpiper January 30 which, as far as I could determine at the time of publication of Birds of Midway and Laysan Islands (Bailey 1956), was the only definite record for the Hawaiian Group. I also collected a Herring Gull (L.a. vegae) on January 25 and a Bonaparte Gull on December 27, which I skinned. When Willett viewed the bedraggled results, he drawled, “Kid, is this the way you skin birds back in I-oway?”

Willett secured an excellent series of specimens for the Biological Survey, and I gave him a hand whenever possible. The Japanese poachers had left numerous

boxes, and as the time for our departure approached, we packed specimens for shipment. We expected the ThetisMarch 10, and my journal entry for that date reads:

The Thetis arrived in sight at 10 minutes to 7:00 this morning—but the entrance was closed by the breaking waves (the sea had been calm for the previous two weeks). The cutter worked along the horizon all day, coming in close every once in a while. They put down a boat on one occasion but were unable to make a landing.

Willett and I looked for turtles while we were waiting but found none, George saw three Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, the first we have observed; the Sooty Terns are in great numbers now and there is a large colony at the north end of the island—but no eggs as yet.

At dark, the entrance was still closed with a westerly still blowing. Chances are of a north wind by morning.

And on March 12:

Left Laysan yesterday and set sail about 1:00 for Lisianski some hundred miles away. We put all our stores safely aboard the Thetis, although one of the boats was swamped by a breaker as the men were headed for shore.

Sighted Lisianski today a little after noon. The Captain gave Willett and me the choice boat crew because of the dangerous nature of the landing. We made it ashore and back safely without shipping much water.

Although rabbits had been introduced to Lisianski, the vegetation had been little affected, the Scaevola bushes being of a considerable height and the tussock grass growing luxuriantly. It is interest-ing to note that ten years later Dr. Wetmore found the island barren of vegetation due to the ravages of the rabbits. The seabirds were the same as on Laysan, except we saw a few Brown Boobies; the Red-footed


were nesting, and the Blue-faced (Masked Boobies) had nearly fully grown young.

The Japanese poachers had erected two houses, and they left many of their possessions behind when their work was interrupted by the officers of the Thetis. Of great interest were two monk seals along the shore, and Willett collected the large female, which we skinned under dif-collected the large female, which we skinned under dif-collected the large female, which we skinned under difficulties with occasional breakers washing over us.

On March 13 we skirted Pearl and Hermes Reef, but the sea was too rough to attempt a landing, and the Thetis continued on through the night, anchoring off Midway Island at 7:00 the next morning.

The Midway, as the name indicates, is centrally located in the Pacific Ocean; it is 2,300 miles west of San Francisco, 3,600 east of Shanghai, and 3,800 north of Australia. The islands were discovered by Captain N.C. Brooks of the bark Gambia, and through the years there were many wrecks upon the coral ledges, the first people to live upon Midway being the crew of the schooner General Siegel, crushed November 16, 1886. The Wander-Wander-Wandering Minstrel, a wonderful name for a vessel cruising in such colorful waters, came to grief a short time later, and Captain F.D. Walker, his wife and three sons, and the crew were marooned for 14 months until rescued by the schoo-ner Norma. Photographs made in 1891 of the quarters of the castaways upon the barren sands, given me by the veteran naturalist George C. Munro, offer mute testimony of the privations endured by the unfortunate people.

The first permanent settlement on Midway was started April 29, 1903, when the Commercial Pacific Cable Company occupied Sand, the larger of the two main islands. As the name indicates, the island was a barren waste, but when Daniel Morrison became super-barren waste, but when Daniel Morrison became super-barren waste, but when Daniel Morrison became superintendent of the cable station in 1908, he remedied the situation by importing grass and other vegetation from California and Hawaii. Supplies were carried on the company’s sailing ship, the Florence Ward commanded Florence Ward commanded Florence Wardby Captain George Piltz. The vessel averaged four trips a year from Honolulu, and tons of soil for gardens were transported for more than ten years. Grass from the Cali-fornia mainland was planted in clumps to hold down the shifting sands, and ironwood trees were planted around the stormproof concrete buildings to eventually give

shade to their potential oasis. In the early years, it was a nearly Eve-less paradise, however, for only two of the headmen could have their wives. Two women associated nicely, but a third—they found from experience— caused complications.

As soon as the Thetis anchored, Superintendent Morrison sent out a motorboat to transport Captain Cochran and the members of our party to land, where we met all the people of the island and were entertained royally. Conspicuous about the building were Canaries (Serinus canaria(Serinus canaria( ). Mr. Morrison had brought one pair with him, liberating the young and two additional males, and he believed the population to be about 1,000.

I photographed the recent plantings of clump grass, the five concrete buildings, the windmills—and the bones of the Wandering Minstrel along the shores, Wandering Minstrel along the shores, Wandering Minstreland we liberated the rails I had captured on Laysan.

In the afternoon, Mr. Morrison took us to Eastern Island which was covered with a dense growth of Scae-vola and grasses. Every bird observed on Laysan, except the endemic species, was noted. Sooty Terns were numer-the endemic species, was noted. Sooty Terns were numer-the endemic species, was noted. Sooty Terns were numerous, and the little Fairy Terns had eggs on Scaevolabranches scarcely larger than the eggs. Tropicbirds were more numerous than we had seen elsewhere. The stay on Midway was far too short, the hospitable islanders going out of their way to make our visit enjoyable.

The Thetis sailed after dark, and we were off Pearl and Hermes Reef the following morning—so named for two vessels which came to grief on the coral reefs. We took two ship cutters, Willett and the Commodore on one, and Bill Wallace and I on the other, each with a crew of five men and an officer. Sooty Terns were conspicuous, and the white breasts of low-flying birds appeared green as they reflected the light of the clear waters. On the main sandspit visited were about 20 female seals, several with black pups (Fig. 1.24); there were a few half-grown seals, very few bulls, and about 40 large green sea turtles—the sailors taking five back to the Thetis. We sailed among the islands from 10:30 to 3:00 and then returned to the vessel. The anchor was raised and the Thetis was headed southward.

We were en route to Necker Island March 18 with 30 or 40 whales being seen close to starboard in the morning. The island was reached early the next morning,


Bailey


and Willett and I tried to make a landing, but again there was such a surge against the steep cliffs, it was impossible to back the cutter close enough so we could leap ashore. Willett, however, swam close to the ledges, drifted in on a high wave, and successfully grabbed a shelf and was left dangling as the wave receded. Naked and barefoot, he spent two hours upon the island and reported the majority of birds observed at Midway were nesting on the ledges. He secured an egg of the Necker Island tern, the first collected. While waiting for Willett, the crew kept our cutter fairly close to the island, and I collected half a dozen adults and a few immatures of the unique Necker Island terns, the first specimens to be secured since Walter K. Fisher discovered the species in 1902. Willett commented upon the altars and monuments, possibly places of worship left by unknown people, probably early Polynesians, who must have made pilgrimages from Nihoa or Kauai as it is doubtful the rugged island was suitable for a permanent settlement. There were platforms with unworked, upended slabs at

the back—reminders of the hardy people of the past who had made arduous journeys over unknown waters.

The Thetis returned to Honolulu in mid-afternoon March 22, and we registered in the Blaisdell Hotel. During the following week, Willett and I made a three-day trip into the mountains with friends, climbing Mount Ka’ala, the highest on Oahu, to search for land shells in the tree fern forests. Due to the hospitality of the members of the Healeani Boat Club, we were privileged to have many fine swims. We met Duke Kahanamoku, the famous Olympic swimmer and, with Willett and a thousand others, went to the dock to see General Frederick Funston on his arrival from the Philippines—a thrill to Willett, who had served in the islands. The following day, we sailed for California on the Sherman—the end of a fine field trip.

Willett invited me to visit his home, so the day after our arrival in San Francisco we were in Los Angeles, where I stayed two days and was shown the fine natural history museum and other interesting places. Mrs. Willett was most kind.


Figure 1.24. A.M. Bailey aboard the Thetis holding Hawaiian monk seal pup, Pearl and Hermes Reef, Thetis holding Hawaiian monk seal pup, Pearl and Hermes Reef, Thetis

March 1913. Photographer unknown. DMNS No. IV.BA13-117.

Stacked on a lounge in the front room of this small home was a three-months accumulation of mail, and when George unrolled one piece, read the printed notice, grunted, “That’s nice,” while tossing it back, I asked, “What’s nice?” He said, “Oh, it’s just a recogni-tion for valor from Los Angeles County.” To my natural inquiry, he said it dated back to the time he was on the Los Angeles Police Force. And then he told of the incident (as well as I can remember).

One morning as George was at headquarters, a man masked and carrying a box with his hands inserted in sleeves came in, approached the desk sergeant, and said he wanted to see the district attorney. Naturally, the sergeant was startled and asked why, to which the masked individual replied, “I want to take him out in

the middle of the street and blow him up. I don’t want to kill a lot of innocent people here.”

George walked up to the man and asked, “What’s the joke?” and received the reply, “It’s no joke. Do you know dynamite when you see it?” George said, “Yes,” and the man said, “Lift the lid of the box. I’ve got 20 sticks of dynamite in here which will blow when I pull my fingers.” George said he lifted the lid—and then commented to me, “The damned liar, there were only 16 sticks!”

As George talked to the man, another officer approached from behind, struck the man down with a club, and either George or the other fellow grabbed the box and rushed it out of the building (can’t remember which one), and when the man recovered


Bailey

Figure 1.25. A.M. Bailey preparing taxidermy armature, University of Iowa, ca. 1912. Photograph by

Fred W. Kent? DMNS No. IV.2002-10-10.


from the blow, he said he didn’t know why the dyna-mite did not explode!

From Los Angeles, I returned to my home in Iowa City, but seven years later, in 1920, I often was privileged to be afield with George Willett in Southeast Alaska.

Iowa, 1913–1916On my return to Iowa in mid-April 1913, I found great activity in the museum as the large exhibit case for the Laysan Island Cyclorama was being built—a room with a passageway to the center where visitors would stand, as though in the center of the island. With no university work to attend to, I spent much time along the Iowa River collecting specimens and preparing them in the laboratory, (Fig. 1.25) usually making skins of birds and mammals for the university collec-tion. Professor Dill had started mounting the Laysan birds for his exhibit, and I was fascinated with his lifelike results.

Fred Kent, that fall, was nicely installed in a photographic laboratory in the new physics building where he was able to expand his activities doing work for the university. Adjacent was the office of Assistant Professor H.L. Dodge of the Physics Department, and we soon became acquainted—resulting in a lifelong friendship. He became intrigued with hunting, as did Professor Dill. They acquired guns and a pack of beagles, and when the fall of 1913 rolled around, and during the two hunting seasons of subsequent years, we were afield over the wonderful oak-clad hills along the Iowa, the baying of beagles hot on the trail being some of the most beautiful music a sportsman is privi-leged to hear.

Dodge was a canoeing enthusiast known to some of the local citizens as “that crazy professor” because, at high water, he was accustomed to shooting the rapids over the dam. It was not long before I acquired my own canoe and disposed of my rowboat, which had served me well through high school days.

I remember few of my courses during the sopho-more year. I obtained a fair reading knowledge of French and Spanish and took a writing course under the well-known Professor Percy Hunt, all of which were of value

in later years. In a file of papers, I ran across one of my themes, written in 1914, indicating my interest in the out of doors.

Indian Summer Canoeing, Theme Paper, 1914. The Iowa River, after cutting through the rich farmlands of the state, passes almost before our front door. To be sure, it is sluggish. It is muddy, too, but it winds between heavily wooded hills with cool ravines, and joining it at intervals are little creeks that cry aloud for exploration. I would not be without it.

Especially in the fall with the harmonious autumn foliage, the quiet sky, and restful river, all seems fit. It is then that chum Fritz and I get out the canoe, take camera and gun, and wander. We always go together. For one thing, neither of us is ever in a hurry, and for another, he has the insight of an artist. When he sets to frame a pretty stretch of river with the extended limb of an old tree, I let him go his own gait, for I have found it pays both then and later when the photos tell the story.

So we paddle slowly. The gun is always ready for game, and if a bit of woodland lays long shadows to our fancy, the camera is ready, too. Who wants to hurry in Indian summer?

We glide by stony shores; now we sneak close to a low bank overgrown with willows in the hope of surpris-ing a duck. The quiet green of the changing willows is brightened in places by the red of the maple and white bark of the sycamore. There is a call of alarm and a flash of metallic blue as a brace of teal break clear of a partly submerged log and curve upward over the low trees. One comes tumbling through the branches of a windblown birch; the other swings on to safety.

We stop at a little creek opening, take camera and gun, and reconnoiter. The rolling hills, with hazel and scrub oak, invite tramping, and occasionally on some such woodland path, the whir of a grouse rising from cover startles us. Their rapid flight seems out of harmony with the listless afternoon, for the warm wind scarcely rustles the leaves or ripples the shining water below. We gaze idly up the river and, without rousing ourselves from our lazy reverie, watch a swift little hawk swoop over the nearby ridge.


From the river bank, Fritz points out another canoe swinging around the bend, and pushing out to meet it, we find two boys after our own heart. Together we drift on; then all disembark in a shimmering little backwater pond to compare notes and game. The soft light on the scraggly bark of the birches, the still water, and the pile of game make a picturesque wilderness scene. Fritz and his camera can prove it.

Then in the early dusk, we bid the boys “so long” at the portage. Fritz shoves the canoe under the low-lying willows. I hand him my gun as I take my place at the stern, and we push out through the tangle of marsh grass to open water ahead. The trees begin to stand out as dark masses against the light of the west; deep shadows form along the bank; a few faint stars appear. In the dusk, we slide silently, the musical whisper of the water rippling off the bow, the low voices of the woods and the distant mournful farm sounds alone breaking the stillness of the Indian summer evening. It is the close of a perfect day.

The “Egg”. I mention above that Fritz and I “always go together,” but it was that fall of 1914 that I acquired another companion. One October day, I was en route home, and on the steps of the Carnegie Library—just three doors from our house—were two girls, Ann Sidwell and Muriel Eggenberg, the latter the farm girl I had admired so many years before who drove to town in the surrey with the fringe around the top and with whom I collided in high school days, sending her books in all directions.

I had a bag of popcorn and stopped to share it, and we talked, as young people will. I learned the “Egg,” as I soon called her, lived across the river a mile or more from the university; that we were both starting our junior year; that she liked to go to football games and liked canoeing and skating; and, when I asked for a date, that there was considerable competition. However, I had a canoe—and it was not long before she was handling the paddle in the bow on numerous occasions.

Her father couldn’t see the use of a girl going to college, so the Egg worked in the newspaper office of The Republican during the summer months for $3.50 a week to make her tuition of $20.00 a semester. As Profes-sor Dill needed help in making wax leaves of Scaevola

bushes and other plants of Laysan to be installed in the cyclorama, I suggested she apply for a job, and soon she was spending spare time in the museum laboratory reproducing foliage—a great addition to her income by 20 cents an hour—and a fine arrangement as far as I was concerned. I bought us season tickets to the football games, and she taught me to dance—a difficult task in that I seemed to have four feet. However, competition was gradually eliminated, and in the rest of our junior and senior years, I was able to monopolize her time—even though two pestiferous younger sisters made fun of the lanky, long-legged individual who accompanied her home after classes. Professor Dodge, Kent, and the Egg and I often shipped the canoes to mid-river and, at all seasons, even when ice was floating, made the 30-mile trip downstream.

The last two years of college passed quickly, and as graduation time approached, both the Egg and I took it for granted we would share the years ahead after I was established financially. She had majored in education, planning to teach. In those days there was no question of obtaining work, and by April 9, 1916, Muriel had agreed to teach botany and agriculture in the high school in Williamsburg, Iowa. My future was not so certain, but I hoped to find a job in a museum. Professor Dill sug-gested that I accompany him to the Annual Meeting of the American Museums Association to be held in Wash-ington, D.C., and then visit other museums of the East with the idea of making contacts.

The last entry in my journal at the end of the Laysan trip was on April 2, 1913, at Honolulu, the con-cluding line reading: “Met the Governor; expect to sail tomorrow.” The next was dated May 11, 1916, and in the following couple of pages I mention leaving Iowa City and arriving in Chicago at 7:25 a.m., May 12 and of visiting the Field Museum, where I met two of the outstanding preparators, Pray and Herb Stoddard, and Dr. Cory, Curator of Zoology. I wrote in detail of our visit to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh the next day and then to Washington. The following couple days were among the most important in my life, for I made the contact needed to launch me on my way. An excerpt from my notes of Tuesday, May 16 reads:


Bailey


Museum meeting opened with a rather slim attendance. Was much surprised to meet Joseph Grinnell, who said George Willett had gone to Forrester Island, Alaska. Met a Dr. Robert Glenk, Director of the Louisiana State Museum of New Orleans. He needs a man, and from the report he gave, it seems a highly desirable place. I feel that I have a chance and will make the most of it.

Tuesday we had the election of officers, which created quite a lot of excitement. In the afternoon visited the Capitol and Corco-ran Art Gallery.

Wednesday, [May] 17: Attended meeting this morning. Cases and labels were main subjects discussed—but not a word about contents. In afternoon to Mount Vernon. Talked to Dr. Glenk this morning about New Orleans job and received much encourage-ment. I feel this is my chance and sincerely hope things turn my way. From his descrip-tion, I should say it is a position that would be hard to duplicate.

My notes give detail of going to Philadelphia with Professor Dill and visiting the Academy of Sciences and Independence Hall with the Liberty Bell—which was cracked—I understand, when tolling for the funeral of Chief Justice John Marshall, one of my ancestors.

We continued on to New York and “went through the American Museum and had lunch with Carl Akeley (famous animal sculptor),” then to Boston and return to Chicago with a side trip to Milwaukee. The final four lines of the journal covering the trip read: “Arrived home Friday morn at 4:30 and found a letter from Dr. Glenk from New Orleans. I answered immediately. Sincerely hope I can land the place. Got a call from Cedar Falls today offering me $1,200 for nine months’ work in the college museum.”

Graduation time rolled around, and shortly after, Dr. Glenk wrote me offering me the curatorship of birds and mammals in the Louisiana State Museum for the salary of $100 a month. The position seemed much more

attractive than the one in Cedar Falls, so I accepted by return mail.

Muriel and I had several weeks to play around before it was necessary for me to leave, and we spent much time canoeing, often accompanied by Fred Kent and Dr. Dodge. Our last day was at the home of my older brother John, a physician in Des Moines. We climbed the stairs of the capitol building to obtain the view over the city, and as we looked to the future, it seemed a long time ahead until next June when, if all went well, we would be married.

Louisiana, 1916–1919

1916I arrived in New Orleans July 6 and went directly to the museum—two old Spanish buildings of the 1700s in the French Quarter just off Jackson Park, flanked by the famous Pontalba Buildings with their iron railings. The Cabildo, where the Louisiana transfer took place in 1803, the United States acquiring for $15,000,000 vast territo-ries west of the Mississippi River three times greater in extent than the original 13 states, was being converted into an art museum, while the equally large Presbytère (Fig. 1.26)—with a great cathedral between the two museums—was to be developed into a natural history museum. I met Dr. Glenk in his office in the Cabildo, and we immediately went to the other building where, over the next three years, I prepared many exhibits.

It is doubtful that many young naturalists have been confronted with such a discouraging start. A tropical storm had taken the roof off the building, and 16 inches of rain had poured into the structure, so the plaster on ceilings and walls had fallen. The roof had been replaced, and the crew of workmen had just started cleaning up the mess.

The first order of business was to get settled in a room which Dr. Glenk had reserved for me in a boarding house run by a Mrs. Fields at 2714 Coliseum Avenue, but two days later—as my quarters were so far from the museum (and the other boarders were old folks)—I moved to the YMCA where, so my notes say: “I have a good room and


have privileges of baths, pool, etc., for ten dollars a month. And across the street is a good boarding house where I get breakfast and dinner for $3.50 a week.”

Associated with me in the museum was a Percy Viosca who, with Dr. Glenk’s encouragement, had started the Southern Biological Supply Company to make avail-able natural history specimens for schools. He was a skilled reptile man, and in the years that followed, we had many field trips together. My first was the following weekend, July 9, when we crossed Lake Pontchartrain and, for three days, worked in the cypress swamps catch-ing frogs and small alligators.

On my return to the museum, I visited the Con-servation Department and met Commissioner M.L. Alexander and ornithologist Stanley Clisby Arthur, who later was to write the fine book on the life of John James

Audubon who had painted so many of his bird portraits in Louisiana. Thanks to my friendship with Mr. Alexan-der, a Commission launch was always available when I wanted to do work in the marshes or on the bird islands of the Gulf of Mexico.

My first trip was on the Conservation boat Opelou-sas with Captain Lyon, in October 1916, from Houma down Bayou Terrebonne, which traversed huge fields of sugarcane en route to the Gulf. Mr. Labot, an oyster inspector; engineer Bill Wilson; and Jimmy the cook were the others aboard. Marshlands overgrown with wiry sedge stretched to distant horizons, the marshes being cut with innumerable bayous and canals where the oysterman put old shells so the young oysters would have supports to cling to. We stopped at several camps where men were busy shucking oysters. They were hospitable,


Bailey

Figure 1.26. Louisiana Presbytère, New Orleans, Louisiana. DMNS No. IV.BA17-061.


introduced me to raw oysters—a delicacy which requires getting used to—and invited me to return during the duck season and enjoy a few days hunting.

We left the oyster camps and chugged down Bayou Caillou with marshlands on both sides, often flushing Great Blue Herons and Double-crested Cormorants, anchoring that evening off a shrimp platform where the fishermen brought their shrimp to be cooked and dried (Fig. 1.27). Early the next morning, with shrimp for bait, I had my first experience catching beautiful trout, perch, and redfish which were in great numbers, and two large yellow jacks (Fig. 1.28). Many Laughing Gulls and For-yellow jacks (Fig. 1.28). Many Laughing Gulls and For-yellow jacks (Fig. 1.28). Many Laughing Gulls and Forster’s Terns hovered here and there close at hand. Soon we were en route again, stopping to examine beds where men were tonging oysters (Fig. 1.29).

In the afternoon, we started for Timbalier Island, passing down a wide bayou and into the “inside passage,” a wide expanse of water which lies between the coastal marshes and Last Island. The water was rough, and the Opelousas pitched and rolled. We passed many islands, and on one was a flock of at least 500 White Pelicans

which took wing and circled us—a beautiful sight as the sunlight flashed off the snow white of their plumage, their black primaries offering a striking contrast. Brown Pelicans, the state bird of Louisiana, were in pairs and flocks as they flew laboriously ahead of us or rested upon the water.

We anchored off low-lying Timbalier late in the afternoon in a sheltered lagoon where we would be protected from the roll of the Gulf swells. The beautiful Royal Terns were numerous, and occasional small flocks of shorebirds flashed by, always close to the water. After a dinner of fried oysters, shrimp, and fish, the captain, engineer, and I took the small tender and ran up to the lagoon to the fine, sandy beach of Timbalier where, dark against the lighted west, there were Sanderlings, Least and Semipalmated Sandpipers, Black-bellied Plover, and Willets busily skirting the water’s edge. It was a wonderful time—just at dusk—to be along the coast, to listen to the dull murmuring of the surf washing on the sand. It seemed as though the waters were trying to roll quietly and keep everything in accord with the perfect southern evening.


Figure 1.27. Shrimp platform, drying shrimp, Bayou Caillou, Louisiana, October 10, 1916. DMNS

No. IV.BA17-059.


Bailey

Figure 1.29. Oyster tonging, Bayou Caillou, Louisiana, October 11, 1916. DMNS No. IV.0099-864.

Figure 1.28. A.M. Bailey with

yellow jack fish on the Conservation

Department boat Opelousas, Bayou

Caillou, Louisiana, October 11, 1916.

Photographer unknown. DMNS No.

IV.BA17-037.


The next morning, Bill Wilson landed me on the beach that I might secure a few photographs as back-ground studies for a group of shorebirds I planned to install in the museum—and I was pleased to see several Peregrine Falcons that were making an easy living by swooping down on unsuspecting plovers and sandpip-ers. One of the photos secured was a Duck Hawk at rest upon the beach.

Bill picked me up, and we ran back to the launch for a lunch of Timbalier oysters, fried as only Jimmy knew how, and then we headed to the main bird island —a low-lying expanse of sand devoid of vegetation except for wiry salt grass and scraggly bushes. It was far past the nesting season, but a great flock of terns, gulls, and skimmers was resting on a small sandbar, and as the boat grounded, I walked toward them slowly. They arose in a bunch, giving strident calls, and then dropped back upon the wet sands. I drew closer and took pictures as an occasional few would rise, and finally, the whole flock took wing—the band resembling the flow of a wave as they would rise and dip, the sunlight playing on their wings. I crept over the crest of the island and was rewarded by seeing a large flock of White Pelicans resting on the beach and secured a few photos of the birds at rest and in the air. I then returned to the tender and back to the launch.

After supper, Bill and I again took the dinghy and ran back into the shallow waters of the marsh. There were numerous Little Blue Herons with their white immatures, as well as flocks of Louisiana and Great Blue Herons. Rails called from all sides, and we spent an enjoyable time gliding through still waters. The return trip was especially delightful, just as it was growing dusk, for only the putt-putt of the motor, muffled down as quiet as it would go, and the occasional calls of the marsh hens broke the silence. The wonderful color of the sky reflected in the bayou waters, and a lone Great Blue Heron, black against the west as he winged his way toward his nightly resting place, made our little excursion worthwhile.

On our return to the launch, the little gnats were so active that the captain decided to head for home, so we pulled anchor and arrived at Houma about midnight— the end of my first trip into Louisiana marshes.

A month later, Stanley Arthur invited me to join him on a trip into the extensive marshes south of Abbev-ille in Vermilion Parish. We took the Southern Pacificout of New Orleans, arrived at New Iberia at 4:00 a.m., and then rented a car to take us through the sugarcane country to Abbeville, where Game Warden Wilfred Trahan was waiting for us with his small launch, the Pintail.

The following day, we started down Bayou Ver-The following day, we started down Bayou Ver-The following day, we started down Bayou Vermilion, a beautiful stream lined with moss-festooned, century-old live oaks and cypresses. The bayou flowed into the Vermilion Bay where many ducks were massed, recent migrants of many species from the North. Trahan’s cabin was along a little bayou through the marsh south of the Bay, and on our journey along the cane-grown shores, thousands of ducks were noted, with occasional bands of Blue Geese flying low and then settling into the marsh grass.

My notes for the next several days mention many species of birds and those collected for the museum. The marshes extending from Vermilion Bay southward to the Gulf were the wintering grounds for northern nesting wildfowl, the Blue and Snow Geese being the most con-spicuous, often observed in flocks of several thousand.

A shell bank, an hour’s run from the cabin, known locally as “Hell Hole,” was a favorite graveling place for Blue Geese. A photograph blind had been erected, and early one morning, we installed Arthur there, while Trahan and I followed down the shore where I tried to stalk great bands feeding on the three-cornered grass. The whole area should have been called Hell Hole, for the “mosquitoes were terrible,” a phrase that was repeated regularly on account of my activities on various Louisiana field trips. We picked up Arthur at dusk; he had had a good band of geese land on the shells in front of the blind.

The following day, we traveled for miles south along a narrow canal, with thousands of ducks and geese constantly in sight, to a five-mile-long wooded section bor-constantly in sight, to a five-mile-long wooded section bor-constantly in sight, to a five-mile-long wooded section bordering the Gulf—Chenier au Tigre (oak ridge of the tiger), grown with ancient live oaks all adorned with Spanish moss. From the end of the canal, a footpath led through the stands of palmettos, and then under wide-spreading branches of the oaks, past a little fence-enclosed Sagrera family cemetery of several graves, and to the Simms


Sagrera home, facing the Gulf of Mexico (Fig. 1.30). There we met Mrs. Simms (Zoe), the mother of three small children. Often, during the next 50 years, I was privileged to visit with the hospitable Sagreras. They led an isolated life in those pre-radio days when communication with the outside world for them and the five other families on the Chenier entailed a 50-mile launch trip to Abbeville.

Simms came in from running his traplines, a tall, wiry individual who made his living trapping muskrat and mink in the winter and poling alligators in the summer. On each run of his traps, Simms would catch many ducks, and at the back door were hanging a dozen Mallards caught the day before; for supper that night we had roast Mallard and rice and wonderful home-canned figs—the usual evening meal for the people of the Chenier during the winter season.

There was drizzly rain and wind off the Gulf in the morning, but the sky gradually cleared, and Trahan, Arthur, and I borrowed horses so we could work areas ten

miles to the north. We followed along the beach for five miles, often under windblown live oaks, and then turned off into a wide, clear expanse dotted with lagoons. Here and there were flocks of Blue Quail, with a sprinkling of Snow Geese sailing low and then swirling down and out of sight in patches of cane as they settled to feed. The shallow ponds were covered with ducks of many species —more than we had seen elsewhere—and my notes mention: “They were almost as common as mosquitoes that pestered the life out of us.”

The highlight of the ride was to see three large, white birds—Whooping Cranes—the only ones I encountered in Louisiana in many years of fieldwork. The low-hung sun filtered through clouds as we wound our way home-ward beneath the dark live oaks, and my notes indicate a satisfaction with life, for I recorded: “After changing into dry clothes, we sat down to regular feed—Mallard ducks fixed three different ways, rice, bread and plum jam, a


Bailey

Figure 1.30. Home of the Sagreras, Chenier au Tigre, Louisiana, 1916. DMNS No. IV.BA17-057.


dinner fit for any hungry collector. We are seated in the parlor, all writing notes. There is a fine fire glowing in the big fireplace, and our wet clothes are hanging near. Simms caught three coons and two mink.”

The following morning, November 24, 1916, we left the Chenier about 9:00 and headed up the canal, stopping off at a palmetto-grown ridge where we worked various ponds. I recorded:

Never can hope to see more ducks, for they rose in clouds at my feet only to settle down a little farther ahead. In places, they would rise from the cane by the hundreds, and I cursed myself a dozen and one times for not taking a Kodak instead of a gun, for the ducks were so numerous. I could have filled the film with flying birds. Continued up the canal, where Mr. and Mrs. E.A. McIlhenny had a commodious houseboat, and Arthur and I had lunch and supper with them. “Mr. Ned,” as he is usually called by his plantation help, is one of the well-known conservationists and businessmen of southern Louisiana; he spent one winter at Point Barrow collecting specimens (1897–1898). I look forward to seeing the great heronry he established near his home on Avery Island.

We returned to the museum November 27 with numerous specimens to be prepared for exhibit and the next few months were busy ones. Dr. Glenk brought around a young lady artist, and I explained as best I could the type of background needed for a shorebird group, her painting to be eight feet long and four high. I intended to install a sandy shore with plover and sandpipers in the foreground. The artist was most enthusiastic as she promised, “I will make you something beautiful.” Three weeks later she returned, and when she unveiled her creation, I was at a loss for words. Sky, water, and the shore left something to be desired. In the center at the bottom was a long dark object which vaguely resembled a drift log and on top was a stretch of yellow.

For lack of some favorable comment I pointed to the ribbon of yellow and asked, “What is that?” and the reply was, “Oh! That is the last ray of the dying sun.” In the more than half a century that has passed since that time, I’ve seen many a “last ray” on museum backgrounds.

The winter was enjoyable in that I played basketball on the lightweight YMCA team for men and boys in the 130-pound group. The team was allowed an additional five pounds, and as I weighed in at about 138, I removed most of my extra pounds by playing handball for three or more consecutive hours, taking off enough weight to keep within bounds.

At noontime, Viosca, his brother Felix, and I would have lunch together. We would buy a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, and we could get 17 nicely ripened bananas for a dime.

The next journal entry was April 27, 1917, giving an account of my first visit to Avery Island, home of E.A. McIlhenny, mentioned above—“Mr. Mac” to his friends or “Mistah Ned” to his employees (Fig. 1.31). He had established a heronry, one of the outstanding examples of successful conservation effort. Avery Island, in reality, is a high, wooded knoll surrounded by cypress swamps and open marshes, the nesting areas for many species of southern waterbirds. At the turn of the century when the millinery trade had resulted in the near elimination of plumed bird species, Mr. Mac captured some young Snowy Egrets and kept them in captivity during the summer along a small pond of about two acres in extent which he created by damming a small creek lined with willows and buttonbushes. He visited and fed the birds daily and, when the fall migration started, liberated his captives. They remained about the pond for several days and then joined others on their southern journey.

In the spring, several returned, and two pairs built nests in the scrubby trees and successfully reared young, 11 adults and immatures leaving again in the fall; nine returned and Little Blue Herons joined them to start a thriving colony. The eggs of both species are blue and the young are white, and after a couple years as the colony increased in size, Mr. McIlhenny placed egret eggs in the nests of the Little Blue and Louisiana Herons, the birds incubating them without noticing the substitution,


while the egrets laid again—and so two broods of egrets often were obtained each season instead of one.

I had looked forward to my visit to Avery Island and rather expected to find the colony of birds in an out-of-the-way place. Instead, it was in a little valley along the main road and a railway leading to a salt mine beyond and McIlhenny’s Tabasco factory 100 yards away, the birds so accustomed to traffic they would not rise when cars or trains passed. There were three common species, the Snowy Egrets, Little Blue, and Louisiana Herons, and rather rare, occasional pairs of Little Green Herons. The long-necked Anhingas nested in the willows and several bull alligators, up to ten feet in length, had a rather easy living from small herons that tumbled from the nest or the fish that had been planted in the pond.

Three days were spent at Avery, Mr. Mac making a bungalow available so I could prepare specimens which we collected.

During the year Muriel and I and Kent and his Clara Hartman decided on a June wedding in 1917 and that we would take our honeymoon trip together. I returned to Iowa City June 15, and the next evening, with our parents lending moral support, we were married by the Reverend C. Rollin Scherk in the par-married by the Reverend C. Rollin Scherk in the par-married by the Reverend C. Rollin Scherk in the parsonage at the same time that Fred and Clara were being wed in Davenport, Iowa. The next morning, in two canoes—one loaned by our friend Dr. H.L. Dodge—we started a four-day trip down the Iowa into the Missis-sippi (Fig. 1.32).

The weather was perfect; wildflowers were at the height of their beauty along the wooded shores. Once a day we walked to nearby small communities to purchase supplies, and fish and an occasional young squirrel furnished meat for our evening meal. Kent kept a running account of food purchased and cost of shipping the canoes at the conclusion of the trip from Burlington to Iowa City as follows:


Bailey

Figure 1.31. E.A. McIlhenny, Avery Island, Louisiana, April 1917. DMNS No. IV.BA17-062.


Shredded Wheat 15¢Pancake Flour 15¢Prunes 35¢Peaches dried 20¢Coffee pwd 30¢Peanut Butter 10¢Condensed milk 4 cans 32¢Ham, 2# Ham, 2# Ham, 2# 70¢Eggs 28¢Bread 40¢Cookies 20¢Soup, 2 cans 25¢Oranges 80¢Butter, 2# 90¢Borden’s 1 can 25¢Onions 2# Onions 2# Onions 2# 15¢Beans 3 cans 25¢

Potatoes 1/4 pk. 25¢Cheese 35¢Sugar 25¢Bacon, 1 1/2# 70¢Eggs 1 doz. 32¢Pineapple 38¢Ice Cream 60¢Strawberries 20¢Milk 35¢Sandwiches & pop 60¢Total Grub $10.60Freight on canoes $1.74Drayage .75Drayage .75

3.24Total honeymoon expenses for four of us June

16–20, 1917: $13.84


Figure 1.32. Newlyweds Muriel E. and A.M. Bailey and Clara and Fred W. Kent embarking on joint

honeymoon, Iowa River, June 1917. Photographer unknown. DMNS No. IV.BA17-063.

The above cost for food and for transferring our canoes from Burlington on the Mississippi to Iowa City does not seem too extravagant for the first four days of a honeymoon trip for two couples! To the expense, however, must be added our one-way railroad tickets to our new home in Louisiana.

A few days later, Muriel and I started for New Orleans, stopping off in St. Louis. According to custom, I visited taxidermy shops to see if interesting specimens might be available. The first was a fine modern establishment and the proprietor, Mr. Schwartz, was most hospitable in showing us around. As we were leaving, he asked if I knew where any Passenger Pigeons were available—he had a customer for a pair. I regretted that I knew of none and said I also would like a specimen for our museum.

The next shop was on the wrong side of the tracks in a two-story building that leaned so far to one side it was in danger of collapsing. We ascended a dark stairway to the second floor and were met by the genial owner Mr. J.K. Keller. On the back wall were numerous well-mounted birds on natural twigs—and in the center of the display was a beautiful pair of Passenger Pigeons in full spring plumage. I explained we were from the Louisi-ana State Museum and that I was looking for specimens for our collection. With a wave of his arm Mr. Keller said, “Well, everything I have is for sale.” I pointed to the pigeons and asked how much he was asking for them, to which he replied, “Oh, they are the rare Passenger Pigeons. They are almost gone. I collected them myself in Minnesota in 1882.” 3

I said I realized they were rare, but that if he did not want too much, I would like to buy them. Mr. Keller scratched his head and then asked, “Do you think five dollars for the pair is too much?” It seemed a reasonable price, and I wound up purchasing 15 more, the majority skins, but some which had been split in half and were intended to be mounted for wall decorations. However, each half was intact.

We had to scrape the bottom of our barrel to dig up the entire purchase price of $65, and two days later I proudly showed Dr. Glenk the two shirt boxes full of

3 The last Passenger Pigeon died in the Cincinnati, Ohio, zoo in 1914.

Passenger Pigeons, expecting to be refunded. He looked at them questioningly then asked, “How much did you say you paid?” I again told him $65. He shook his head and said, “I guess I’ll let you speculate on them.”

The last thing the newly married Baileys needed were two boxes of bird skins—but we had them until the summer of 1919 when Director J.D. Figgins and ornitholo-gist Frederick Lincoln of the Colorado Museum of Natural History came to New Orleans to go on a field trip with me. I showed them the pigeon skins and saw that avari-cious gleam which comes to museum men’s eyes— that cost them additional money. Trustee John McGuire of the Denver museum paid for the pigeons—and the money received was enough for our tickets and cost of sending our worldly goods to Juneau, Alaska, a few months later, where I was to be the first representative of the U.S. Biological Survey, the forerunner of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Some five years later, as a member of the Denver museum staff, Figgins gave me the job of mounting the birds which are now installed—all 17 birds—in a beau-tiful habitat group, the background painted by famous C. Waldo Love in an autumn setting showing the Iowa River, where my wife and I canoed during our college days. It is a very personal display which we cherish highly.

Our first home in New Orleans was a two-bedroom apartment over a garage of Mr. and Mrs. McWilliams, friends of the Glenks—a very nice arrangement—and during the following months, the hospitable Glenks and McWilliamses went out of their way to give southern hospitality, which made life in New Orleans a constant delight.

Details of hunting trips blur in memory as I did not write details in my journal, but two names stand out—Dad Reno and Archie Diebold, Dad in the office of the Conservation Department and Archie a Game Warden. For some reason, they liked to have me go along, and often on a Friday afternoon, Dad would call me and say they were taking a launch down the Missis-sippi to some favorite spot. The duck limit was 25 and we invariably would end up with a fine bag and could distribute the birds to all our friends. Archie, a capable warden, had the hard luck a couple years later to get stuck in the mud while crossing a little inlet and was drowned by a rising tide.


Bailey


Chenier au Tigre, 1918The first field trip for Muriel was to Chenier au Tigre the following March with Warden Wilfred Trahan on his launch the Pintail. With us was a Tulane University student Jules Ledieu who was much interested in herpe-tology. En route down Bayou Vermilion, mockingbirds were noted perched on high twigs along the banks, giving their courtship performances—singing and then springing a few feet into the air with wings and tails spread to their greatest extent, and then floating down to their song perches.

The Sagreras had screened the front of their home, and they welcomed us with their usual kind hospitality, including, as we arrived, hot Cajun coffee—the brew so strong it stained the cups. When politicians of Louisiana buttonholed prospective voters and said, “Let’s have a drink,” they usually meant coffee—more potent than the average alcoholic beverage.

Muriel found the first day in the marshes a rather strenuous one for a short-legged person wading knee deep, but she was rewarded by seeing the usual great numbers of ducks and large flocks of geese. That night Ledieu and I tried to get close to an enormous band by shining them with carbide lights on our hats, but the birds rose and drifted off into the darkness. My journal reads: “Got back at 2:00 a.m. about eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

The following morning, Ledieu and I worked the beach and saw many Red-backed Sandpipers, Willets, Sanderlings, a few gulls, terns, Pintails, and Baldpates. I recorded: “Mosquitoes fierce, horses literally covered, and we not much better.”

About 4:30, Muriel, Jules, and I, with head nets and gloves, rode up to the end of the Chenier to the flat pasture, wide stretches of prairie separated from the Gulf by a few ridges grown with low trees. The grass had been burned off a month previous, so the new crop was about six inches in height. The pasture, about seven miles long was dotted with small ponds which were used by the geese as their resting place at night and after we had ridden a mile north to the end of the Chenier, we saw in the dis-tance on the ground a flock of 1,000 or more Blue Geese with a sprinkling of Snow Geese among them (Fig. 1.33). We took stands along a pond in some tall grass, where

mosquitoes made things lively, and shot a few ducks for specimens, Muriel using her 20-gauge pump gun.

The pasture was a grazing ground for the cattle of the people on the Chenier, and 400 or 500 yards in front of us was a small bull. Evidently, the insects were disturbing to him, for he moved into the flock of birds and flushed them. They arose with a clamor, a few at a time, and then settled a short distance beyond. They had hardly dropped to the ground than far distant cries announced the first arrivals for the evening, and two long wavering lines were discernible through the gath-ering darkness. They circled down, and as they landed, distant calls came from all directions. Soon the sky was traced with dark moving lines of several V-shaped forma-tions making up each group that indicated thousands of flying geese. The birds on the ground served as decoys


Figure 1.33. Muriel E. Bailey with geese and

pump gun, Chenier au Tigre, Louisiana, March

1918. DMNS No. IV.BA17-008.

and those in the air headed toward the resting geese like spokes of a wheel to the hub; they sailed downward and alighted among the ever-increasing horde. We estimated there were more than 10,000 geese in the band—and now that darkness was over the pasture, their presence was evident only by their continuous calls as they wel-comed newcomers. We called it a day and headed home, well satisfied with our experiences.

The spring migration of shorebirds was at its height and, the next evening, Ledieu and I tried to collect a few specimens. Jules took his stand on a mud bar at the mouth of a little bayou out of sight from my blind. I waited for him until after dark, but he kept on shooting. Finally, a little exasperated, I went to look for him and found him stuck in mud to his waist—with an incom-ing tide. I searched for driftwood and made a walkway over the sticky bar and finally freed him—the hordes of mosquitoes thoroughly enjoying our predicament.

Ledieu was having the time of his life at the Chenier collecting reptiles, large and small, but I noticed that Simms did not seem much interested. In his daily trips into the marsh, Sagrera constantly ran across cottonmouth moccasins. He was not afraid, but he respected them and kept a wary lookout. He had had a couple of unpleasant experiences, as was natural for a man living such a strenuous existence. The morning after Jules had been stuck in the mud, Simms had to go to the pasture to look after his cattle, and Jules asked to go along. They rode northward and when they returned about eight hours later, Jules rolled off his horse and pulled from inside his shirt a large brownish snake with yellow underparts, which he showed me with delight, explaining, “Didn’t know king snakes were down here. Isn’t it a beauty? Forgot to take my collect-ing bag along.”

I found Simms’ reaction surprising—a man who saw snakes every day through the summer. He said to me a little later in a low voice so no one else could hear, “Mistah Alfred, I know you wouldn’t bring anyone down here who isn’t all right—but, you know, I hate that Jules Ledieu just like I hate the snakes he put in his shirt.” It was a lesson I’ve never forgotten—to be careful not to tread on the sensitivities of others.

The next afternoon, I had my own reason for disliking snakes. Ledieu and I again took horses and rode to the end of the Chenier, tying our animals and then starting on foot northward across the pasture where many geese were working. We wanted to collect a few, and when we reached the chain of lakes, we located some longneedle grass which had escaped the fire and chose clumps a couple hundred yards apart for our blinds. Back and forth flew the great bands of birds as they selected the best places to feed, and when any flocks came near, I gave goose calls to the best of my ability. Twenty-five of them headed toward us, but some old gander out on the prairie took wing and the whole mob followed him—as did the small group I was trying to decoy.

Mosquitoes were bad, and I invented a game to pass the time away by taking off my left glove and trying with the forefinger of my right hand to kill mosquitoes as they settled to feed. The object was to make a straight run of ten without a miss. I would get six, seven, or eight and then one would fly, forcing me to start all over again. Then I found if I waited until an insect sucked enough blood to show red through his skin, I could make my run of ten every time. Such a childish pastime soon grew tiresome, so I put the glove back on, tightened the net about my neck more securely, and let the frustrated mosquitoes hum.

After about two hours in the blind without success, I saw two horsemen come from the end of the Chenier and head out toward some feeding cattle—and the geese. The horses ambled lazily, the men swinging their hats at winged pests. A small flock of geese raised ahead of the horses, and then the whole mob took wing and swirled toward us. I thought surely the band was coming directly over, but instead, they settled down within 200 yards, the white heads of the adult Blues conspicuous against the fresh green of the emerging new grass. There was a little streambed behind me, fringed with a low growth a couple feet high which made ideal cover for stalking the birds. I started on hands and knees through the muck, the mosquitoes taking undue delight in roosting where my trousers drew tight. I pushed my way with nose near the ground and knees digging in close to the concealing fringe of vegetation, and all the time, the buzz of goose conversation grew louder. I peered cautiously up without


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raising my head more than necessary and, about ten inches from my nose, looked directly into the opened white maw of a cottonmouth moccasin as the ugly brute flattened itself out and waited for me to shove a few inches nearer.

I never thought of geese but shrank back and, with the muzzle of the gun just beyond the palm of my hand, let drive with a charge of number fours. I was so fright-ened I have no recollection of the hundreds of geese clamorously rising within 30 feet and swirling away. So far as I was concerned, the day’s hunt was over.

Through the years, I have observed and photo-graphed poisonous reptiles in this country, Australia, and Africa, securing interesting footage, but I learned not to include such sequences in my motion film lecture, just because of the adverse reaction of many people.

The next trip to the Chenier was two months later with Professor H.R. Dill of the University of Iowa, who wanted specimens for display in his museum. Journal accounts through the years have recorded birds observed, and a typical entry reads:

May 11, 1918: Arrived at the Chenier from Abbeville the evening of May 9 with Muriel and Professor Dill. No mosquitoes, weather fine. Walked up the beach and saw Wilson’s Plover, Willets, turnstones, and Laughing Gulls. Next morning Dill and I started along the shore to the south of the little bayou where, while H.R. took a stand, I went farther up the beach. Fine morning with beautiful cloud effect, strong sea breeze, and high tide. Among the shorebirds noted were Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plover, Willets, turnstones, and Hudsonian Curlew in large flocks. The curlew were unsuspicious and decoyed readily, seemingly inquisitive about imitative whistles. There were many Black-necked Stilts and found two nests with four eggs each. The nesting birds would crouch down with breast feathers roughed out, and they scolded with high-pitched voices and would jump in the air, fluttering their wings

like cheerleaders at a football game—and then again holding their wings horizontally and quivering them, all the time uttering their rather monotonous calls.

On my many visits to the Chenier through the years, I often accompanied Simms over his traplines. In winter he would go out of his way to get me close to geese for motion film and in summer I secured footage as he “poled” alligators. We would ride horses as far as possible and then wade the marsh, often waist deep. In those days the reptiles were abundant in Louisiana marshes and the hunter received two prices—one for ‘gators six feet long or under, and another for those more than six feet. There was never a thought that someday the animals would be threatened with extinction. It should be remembered that the people of the Chenier were dependent upon their hunting and trapping for a livelihood and that they preserved the animals carefully.

The alligators lived in deep holes in the marsh where there was a permanent supply of water. Such little pools, usually grown with flowering water lilies in summer months, had fringes of vegetation where the Boat-tailed Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds nested —the little areas in the marshes easily being located from afar by the actions of the birds. On May 11, Dill and I accompanied Simms into the marsh to secure specimens; it was my first experience and I recorded at some length the activities of the day.

We went on an alligator hunt this a.m. Simms could not find saddles, so Dill and I rode bareback and we got along fairly well. Simms trailed a slender pole about 20 feet long with a sharp, un-barbed hook on the end. We headed out into the marsh from the pasture as far as possible and then tied the horses to cane—and started wading. Jumped an old hen Mottled Duck; she flew off low and we listened for her chicks hidden in the marsh grass, locating three by their little chirps.

Directly ahead, not far from where we tied the horses, was a nice water-lily-grown pool with possibly a dozen grackle nests in the bordering vegetation. The water was waist deep and Simms started probing along the edges until he located the alligator hole. No one was


at home. A couple hundred yards beyond was another grackle and blackbird colony and a larger pool of water, a beautiful spot with flowers of the water lily at the height of their beauty. Simms found the entrance to a den and about 12 feet back was a ‘gator. The hunters usually try to make the animals mad by tormenting them so they will grab the end of the hook, as it is difficult to pull one out unless caught through the mouth, I tried the pole and could feel the old fellow fighting it. Simms yanked him out rather easily—a male 6’7” long.

We cached our game and the skin and tried several other holes, one being longer than the pole so we did not know whether a ‘gator was in the den. Saw several small young and Simms caught one by making a grunt-ing noise which brought the animal to the surface of the pond. I was bending down, trying to imitate Simms

talking to the ‘gators when I heard a gentle ripple behind and turned around in time to see an eight-foot one that came from another hole. He slid through the grass and twisted so it was impossible to reach him.

There is a science to ‘gator hunting. It takes a good pole 18 to 20 feet long; it should be limber so that it will go into a crooked hole and feel out the corners (Fig. 1.34). Simms worked hard on this ‘gator for an hour, standing waist deep. We sounded the hole from behind by pushing the pole down and found the back to be some seven feet deep—which Simms said was about average. We had to give up without landing our game.

There was a favorable den in the next pool we worked and although the ‘gator fought the pole, we were unable to land him and finally went on. A little four-footer which Simms caught in his hands was turned loose, and at the


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Figure 1.34. Simms Sagrera poling an alligator, Chenier au Tigre, Louisiana, May 1918. DMNS No.

IV.BA17-058.


next try, one seven feet long surprised us by coming out of his own accord—making Simms step lively to get out of the way. The animal finally was caught, and we roughed out the skins and started back, passing by the hole where we had touched the ‘gator but failed to catch. To our surprise, there were tracks leading away—a not uncommon occur-there were tracks leading away—a not uncommon occur-there were tracks leading away—a not uncommon occurrence when the reptiles have been disturbed, according to Simms. We followed and soon caught up to the seven-foot-long reptile—giving me a chance for a photo.

We returned to the Chenier, both Dill and I being so tired we could not enjoy our supper.

Seabird Colonies, 1918The Louisiana offshore islands in the Gulf of Mexico have been noted for their concentration of nesting seabirds of several species, notably those off the east coast in Chan-deleur and Breton Sounds, “mud lumps” off the delta of the Mississippi River, and the numerous islets and shell keys to the westward to Marsh Island.

During the days of feather hunting for the mil-linery trade, the spring arrival of terns and gulls from southern wintering areas to their breeding grounds was eagerly awaited by many gunners, and thousands of the graceful birds were slaughtered. Then wise conservation practices prevailed, the birds increased, and the colonies were protected by state and federal laws, and by 1918 there were fine concentrations on Louisiana islands.

There had been some concern among commercial fishermen that the pelicans were destroying fishes of value, and as a consequence, T. Gilbert Pearson, Secretary of the Audubon Society, arranged a visit to the islands through the cooperation of the Louisiana Conservation Department to study the food habits of the huge birds. Stanley Arthur and I were delegated to accompany him on the conservation boat Alexandria, which Theodore Roosevelt had used on his tour of the bird islands of the Louisiana Gulf Coast.

In the following narrative of our journey, I have mentioned bird observations at some length in that there have been great changes during the half-century and more that have passed since my early experiences. Storms have damaged many islands, and pelicans have been nearly

eliminated due to pesticides. I have mentioned specific islands so that future observers may make comparisons.

We left New Orleans, June 7, 1918, and the next day visited the crescent-shaped Isle au Pitre at the north end of Chandeleur Sound, about 20 miles south of Gulfport, Mississippi, a fine little island with wide shell expanses. There were 300 Brown Pelicans and numerous terns and gulls, but none nesting. The Alexandria cruised along the Chandeleur chain southward to Errol Island, and my brief notes for June 8 read:

Almost decided to pass Errol by, it looked so small and inconspicuous, but the evident numbers of seabirds changed our minds. As we landed from the dinghy, a wonderful sight greeted us. Royal and Cabot (Sand-wich) Terns were nesting in great colonies, and to see those beautiful feathered folk in their native habitat with the thousands of flashing wings—the shimmering sea and the blue of the sky—all made a picture that harmonized wonderfully. The Cabot Terns were my favorites, more fearless than the Royals and seemingly more concerned with the welfare of their young, for they covered them from the sun even when we approached within a few yards, the nearer ones taking wing and circling back as soon as we moved away.

We continued a few miles farther to Grand Cochere where there were twice as many birds, a really beautiful sight for the air over the entire northern end was just one mass of gleaming wings, and the birds upon the ground were crowded closely together. No attempt to describe the concentration will give anyone an idea of the enormous numbers of screaming birds.

Pelicans were nesting in low mangroves, and we captured an adult. It seemed a good opportunity to prove we were studying the food habits of the clumsy bird, so T. Gilbert Pearson obligingly opened the large beak and peered into the empty pouch, as I took his and the pelican’s photograph (Fig. 1.35).


The Alexandria worked close along the shores of Breton Island June 10 and then was headed for Bat-tledore where there were “about 1,000 Laughing Gulls, 5,000 terns—Royal, Cabot, and Forster’s—and about 300 Skimmers. All were nesting.”

The next day, a stop was made on low-lying Hog Island where “we found plenty of nesting birds—many young Skimmers, Forster’s Terns, Royals (with fresh eggs), and Laughing Gulls, each species nesting sepa-rately. Photos were secured of Skimmers at ten feet; they were rather wild but, when frightened off, came right back and settled.”

The delta of the Mississippi was reached about dark and the Alexandria was stuck on a mud bar briefly at the entrance to Pass-a-Loutre, the easternmost channel of the Mississippi. Pelicans were noted on all of the islands and great strings of adults flying low were observed returning to their nesting places.

As soon as the light was favorable the morning of June 12, we visited the mud lumps and it was a wonderful experience. There were about 20 islands, varying from a few hundred square feet to several acres in extent, which were said to have been pushed to the surface by heavy deposits of silt from the Father of Waters. There were thousands of pelicans; the islands farthest from shore had the largest young, while the later arrivals occupied the near lumps.

The vegetation was scant, only a few coarse grasses and nightshade growing sparingly. Indeed, the birds were so numerous that plant life had little chance to grow, and as a result, nesting material was at a premium. Adults could be seen coming from afar, dangling sticks from their beaks to be used in the construction of nests. These were crudely built, usually with two to three chalk-white eggs, both adults sharing the task of incubation. The newly hatched were naked, dark, skinny little fellows, entirely helpless and needing the constant shelter of an adult from the semitropical sun. A coat of white down was soon acquired, and not long after, the youngsters left the nests to pad about the near vicinity—the adults, however, returning to the site to feed their offspring.

I put up my blind on the nearest lump where there were newly hatched black little young and took numerous photos. It was interesting to watch them feed; they almost crawled into their parents’ throats, with wheezy cries, and hunched forward like hungry calves—I suppose to hurry up the process of regurgitation. Many were so full of fish that tails were sticking from their mouths. As the old birds circled before landing, the young seemed to know when their parents were approaching, for they started to cry in an excited manner before the adults landed. All nest sites were examined carefully, but no game fish were found. Apparently, the pelicans were feeding their young almost exclusively upon menhaden (the principal food fish of the pelican).

The warden from the lighthouse accompanied us to the various islands. He said the first eggs were laid about April 15 and that the islands would be repopulated as soon as the first young departed—probably indicating new arrivals of adults rather than the pelicans raising two broods.


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Figure 1.35. T. Gilbert Pearson with pelicans,

Grand Cochere Island, Louisiana, June 8,

1918. DMNS No. IV.BA17-064.


The Alexandria headed into Pass late in the after- headed into Pass late in the after- headed into Pass late in the afternoon and up the Mississippi to Buras, where we anchored for the night. The next morning, after taking on ice and other supplies, the launch dropped down Sou’West Pass into the open Gulf. One little island visited had about 200 adult pelicans with 45 young. We “had a fine day’s trip westward to Timbalier, sea smooth, weather beautiful.”

June 14: Laid off Timbalier all day. Went to the small bird island first and found the Pelicans had not started nesting. There were many Skimmers, Laughing Gulls, Cabots, and Caspian Terns. Along the beach of the main island found eggs of the Florida Night-hawk and there were many Wilson’s Plover. Tried fishing and got my thumb burned on the reel, trying to stop a six-foot tarpon which grabbed my lure. The line went out so fast my thumb smoked. The fish kept going with all my line.

The last two days of the journey were an anticli-max as far as concentrations of birds were concerned. Stops were made the 15th along the little sandspits where numerous Man-o’-wars and Pelicans were seen; the Alexandria was anchored for the night off the mouth of the Atchafalaya, and the next day, we continued the long run westward, visiting the Federal Bird Reservation and Shell Keys off Marsh Island where many Royal Terns had young larger than seen elsewhere. The launch was well offshore as we passed Chenier au Tigre and, some hours later, headed into Calcasieu Pass and the calm waters of the lake to spend the night. The following morning, we continued our journey up the river lined with moss-hung cypresses.

Bear Hunt, 1918Probably my most memorable hunting trip in the fall of 1918 was in the swamps adjacent to Avery Island. The season had been a dry one, and as a consequence, water was low in the great cypress forests, making it possible to hunt on foot. Black bear had been unusu-ally abundant that summer, invading the cane field to

knock down and eat the succulent shoots, much to the irritation of the plantation hands who were in charge of harvesting the crop.

Mr. McIlhenny (Mistah Ned or Mr. Mac) decided on a hunt, and he invited many well-known sportsmen of the country, who had fine packs of dogs, to participate— resulting in a band of 54 dogs in full cry as they pursued a bear. I was invited to join the hunt. Working through the palmettos under the moss-hung cypresses and tupelo gums was an unforgettable experience.

The sportsmen took stands, but I, with a couple of others, chose to follow the hounds, often in knee-deep water, my rifle being an ancient beat-up .44 caliber which Mr. Ned loaned me. It was a four-day hunt, and the first afternoon, an old bruin was closely followed by the dogs and I tried to keep up. Finally, the call of the hounds indicated the bear was at bay, and I was the only hunter near. I pushed my way through the tangled vegetation until the large black animal could be seen backed against a cypress—swiping with outthrust claws at the snarling dogs hemming him in from all sides.

Out of breath and on my knees, I squared away, and as the gun was shifted from my right hand to the left to put stock to my shoulder—there was a sickening realiza-tion that there was no stock! It had come off somewhere along the trail. The proposed victim was only 20 feet away and looked formidable among the shadows. I tried to use the rifle like a revolver but could not hold the gun steady, so I backed from the heavy cover as gracefully as pos-sible and hastily started to follow my trail. The missing stock was found 50 feet away, where I had crossed a fallen tree. Hastily it was jammed on, and I ran back and again crawled within sight of the vociferous dogs and the bear and attempted to aim but couldn’t make the stock fit my cheek. Finally, the gun was fired, and in spite of the uncomfortable position—the old bruin dropped (Fig. 1.36). It was not until the other hunters arrived that it was discovered that, in my haste and excitement, the very straight stock had been stuck on upside down!

As I was hurrying after the hounds, I recalled a story Mr. Ned had told me early that morning about a hunt he had had a few years previously. He and a man from the North were standing on a knoll and the dogs were in full


cry in the cypresses below—and anyone who has listened to the excited yaps of a dozen hounds on trail knows the thrill of the chase. Turning to his friend, McIlhenny waved his hand in the direction of the dogs as he commented, “Ah, isn’t that music fit for the gods?”

The Northerner, after listening for a moment, shook his head and then replied, rather sheepishly, “Can’t hear a thing for the racket those damn dogs are making.”

The hunt continued for three more days and six bears were taken.

Down the Atchafalaya, 1918Journeys in 1918 into the marsh country with the conserva-tion men were always of interest, each one being made to secure specimens for exhibit in the museum. Two years had passed since my trip down Bayou Terrebonne with Captain

Lyon on the Opelousas, so I looked forward to joining him at Morgan City December 6 for a run down the historic Atchafalaya, a wide hyacinth-grown river lined on the upper reaches with cypresses festooned with Spanish moss.

We headed through picturesque stands of vegeta-tion into narrow Shell Island Bayou to pay a brief visit to the William Cantys, old settlers of the area who had arrived 65 years earlier and had established a Swiss Family Robinson place, a little paradise situated at the junction of the bayou. They had a wealth of orange, peach, and fig trees, and a thick bank of banana palms to give a tropical setting. Their well-kept garden assured them of an abundance of the necessities of life.

The Hawkins family (the wife, the daughter of “old Mrs. Canty”) and another young couple with their children were most hospitable. The men were tall and


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Figure 1.36. Black bear hunt, Avery Island, Louisiana, Fall 1918. DMNS No. IV.BA17-035.


soft-spoken and, like those of the Chenier and elsewhere of coastal Louisiana, made much of their living by trap-ping furbearers in winter—one coming in shortly after our arrival with two raccoons and a mink. They used the slender pirogues for winter travel but had built up the sides so the oars were elevated, enabling the men to stand on their tippy crafts as they propelled themselves forward at about five miles an hour—much better time than was possible paddling. My notes read:

After the stop at Cantys’, traveled all day— through Atchafalaya Bay toward Point au Fer into Four League Bay and over to Mosquito Bayou. Saw numerous flocks of ducks scattered over shimmering water and flushed them as we passed—Mallards, Pintail, and Gadwall. We headed for Oyster Bayou; the water was very shallow and miserable time was made. Day warm with a slick ca’m and mosquitoes attentive. When near the bayou, St. Clair (the engineer) and I took the dinghy and ran up the first stream to the left of the mouth of Oyster Bayou. The tide was low, the oyster reefs were numerous, and our craft drew so much water we entered the place with difficulty, working far back to a favorite resting place for ducks and flushed several hundred. A blind was made with the expectation we would have a good shoot when the birds returned, but the mosquitoes were by billions. There were dozens on each stalk of grass and so many swarmed around our heads it was almost impossible to see through them. In fact, we probably couldn’t have seen an incoming duck. We took our pun-ishment for a short time and then headed back to the launch, arriving after dark.

With an early start in a light fog the next morning, we ran to the mouth of the bayou, pausing briefly at a little lighthouse for a chat with the keeper who hadn’t been away from his place for three years. His was a lonely existence. Our course took us into the open Gulf and eastward a two-hour run to Isle Dernière, where the anchor was dropped

in a sheltered cove. I hoped to collect a few White Pelicans for a group and 40 were counted along the sands just at dusk. After dark, St. Claire landed me on the beach and I tried to stalk the birds with a light. My notes read:

The moon was too bright for decent results, but at that, it was about the most interest-ing trip I’ve had, even if I didn’t collect the white ones. When we landed, we were turned around and didn’t know where to locate the pelicans. I heard terns and gulls calling, the skimmers seemed active in the dark-ness and not just resting, so I headed their way. Cormorants were by the hundreds and allowed me within ten feet. I saw two white heads, but they proved to be Brown Pelicans. It was surprising how close we were able to get before they clumsily took wing. The eyes of the mass of cormorants gleamed greenish and reddish in the beam of my light, but we couldn’t locate the White Pelicans.

Isle Dernière, just west of Timbalier, is well named, for it is the southernmost of the Louisiana islands except for the mud lumps off the mouth of the Mississippi. Captain Lyon allowed me a couple of hours ashore the next morning before our start back to Morgan City, and I noted that: “Skimmers are on the island by thousands, great waves of them. They seem to be more or less noctur-great waves of them. They seem to be more or less noctur-great waves of them. They seem to be more or less nocturnal, often sitting around on the mud bars by day, and as soon as twilight comes around, they start flying over the water, their lower mandibles cutting the surface as they gather food. There were many shorebirds on the flats, Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plover and Least, Semi-palmated and Red-backed Sandpipers. Many Caspian and a few Royal and Least Terns, and numerous Ring-billed, Laughing, and Herring Gulls. No White Pelicans.” And so ended my short field trip through the coastal waters— unproductive in the securing of photographs.

Museum affairs progressed nicely in between field trips. Specimens collected were mounted; many exhibits were prepared by the end of 1918 and others planned. J.D. Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum, had written


me during the summer that they were completing an addition to the museum in Denver and that he would be interested in securing southern birds, which he could install in habitat groups. As a result of my fieldwork, I had collected more specimens than we needed, so Figgins and I arranged an exchange. He sent me four fine bison specimens which I mounted in a large prairie exhibit, and I was pleased to have collected some of the first specimens to be exhibited in the Denver museum’s new Standley Wing. Mr. Figgins and I kept up a regular corre-spondence, and I suggested that, possibly, he might like to join me on a field trip the next summer, mentioning that a journey among the bird islands might be of interest. He took kindly to the idea and we made tentative plans, based on my being able to arrange transportation.

1919Many field trips of short duration are mentioned in my journal, each of interest to me but recorded briefly here only in résumé. Wilfred Trahan met Muriel and me at Abbeville with his launch Pintail January 16, and as Pintail January 16, and as Pintailsoon as our equipment was aboard, we were winding our way southward. There were few birds along Vermilion Bayou—an occasional Anhinga in the cypresses and flashes of red as cardinals crossed the stream in front of the launch—but when the choppy waters of Vermilion Bay were reached, many large flocks of dos gris (Scaup Ducks) skittered over the water and they took wing. Trahan headed the Pintail for the warden’s shack on Pintail for the warden’s shack on Pintailthe game refuge, and then with the dinghy, we scouted around the nearby lakes and ponds.

The Louisiana marshes teemed with birdlife; Snowy Herons, Big Blues, and Louisianas were wading in shallow waters; dowitchers (dormeurs—sleepers—to our French-speaking friends) were on every mud bar, and with them were other species of shorebirds. Trahan was an excellent fieldman and knew where to go to locate interesting species. He chugged along narrow canals through stands of cane. Ducks of many species would raise with a flurry of wings, and there were the constant calls of Blue and Snow Geese to remind us that we were in one of America’s fine wildfowl wintering grounds. En route back, we stopped on an oyster reef,

tonged more than enough for our evening meal, and returned to camp.

With an early start next morning we ran to Hell Hole, expecting to find hundreds of geese—and saw not one, so Trahan headed for the Chenier and we arrived at the Sagreras’ in the late afternoon, receiving the usual friendly welcome.

The next three days were typical of winter in the southern coastal region. Muriel and I on the first morning headed back into the marsh, loaded down with cameras. She found the going a bit difficult wading in knee-deep water, wearing hip boots, pushing through marsh vegetation, but still had the energy that evening, after Zoe Sagrera’s wonderful duck dinner, to record the day’s events as follows:

January 18, 1919: Went directly to Simms’ trap-ping camp. Saw many White-faced Glossy Ibis (bec-croche—crooked bill to our Cajun friends). They have a swift erratic flight when searching for food over the lowlands and swirl about in the air with the wavelike motion characteristic of skimmers—swooping this way and that, their wings making a swishing noise audible for a long distance. Each bird flies seemingly with no particular position in the flock. When alarmed, they have a direct flight, the whole band string-ing out in file, each bird holding its relative position. They were curious, however, often circling over us, peering down with little notes of alarm. When feeding, they keep up a constant conversation. On our return along the beach, we saw nine Long-billed Curlew.

Two more days were spent observing the birds along the sand and mud shores of the Gulf and back in the marsh, and Muriel and I took numerous photos of marsh-festooned live oaks and palmettos. Trahan picked us up on January 22 for the 50-mile journey back to Abbeville—and the train trip to New Orleans.

Less than two weeks later, I was back on Avery Island to observe and, hopefully, to photograph nesting Bald Eagles. Mr. Mac knew of several sites and had two of


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his men accompany me. My notes of February 2 mention that we went out in the swamp with Nathan Foreman and Gabriel Landre to an eagle’s nest, which was located in a picturesque, dead cypress festooned with moss. When I was two-thirds of the way up the tree, the old bird flushed and, after a few circles, disappeared, not to return as long as we remained in the vicinity. There were two eggs in the nest.

We then went across the marsh to the Weeks Island region where a pair had built their nest—about five feet across, high up in a very tall cypress. The old birds were not around, but we could see the two large young and could hear the crying now and then. One of the old birds came in dangling a piece of moss behind her, giving her tail a long, pointed appearance. It was not until she circled close that I could identify what she carried. Both pairs of eagles had built in the very top of the cypresses and both were close to the open marsh and away from other trees—so the adults could survey a wide stretch of territory.

About three weeks later, February 26, Stanley Arthur and I made the first of several trips to Cameron, the southwest parish of Louisiana, where we stayed on a 20,000-acre plantation grown with rice and overrun with wildfowl, Canada and White-fronted Geese being especially numerous. Bill Lea, later the mayor of Orange, Texas, was in charge of the great sawgrass marsh which extended southward to the Gulf of Mexico, an area at that time inac-cessible to hunters because of the lack of waterways, the tall sharp-edged grass being an effective barrier.

Arthur and I were interested in White-fronted Geese, for someone had reported the large race A. a. gambeli, which winters in California from southwestern Louisiana, and we desired specimens. Buck Huffman, an alligator hunter and trapper, knew where the “speckle-bellies” were feeding, so we accompanied him that afternoon over extensive grasslands in a buckboard, flushing en route several small groups of Attwater Prairie Chickens, even then becoming very rare, this apparently being the last observation of the species in Louisiana (Lowery 1955). Several flocks of geese were located, and Buck and I made successful stalks, but all the specimens proved to be the common A. a. frontalis.

One of the employees of the rice ranch, Elmer Bowman, was an old-time market hunter back in the days when no protection was given to the hordes of wildfowl wintering on the vast marsh areas of southern Louisiana. He and his seven-year-old son Bobby were ardent hunters and offered to help us secure some Canada Geese. Early the third morning, I accompanied them to the edge of a great rice field where wildfowl of many species were harvesting the crop. We made a blind and put out a stand of “blackhead” (Canada Geese) decoys, and Bobby crouched in front of us. Soon a band of geese came flying low, and the youngster started his quavering goose talk, imitating the calls of the birds perfectly. With head down, I remained motionless as Elmer cautioned, “Don’t move.” I could hear the sound of great wings circling, and then, when the geese were actually backing air to drop to the ground, Elmer gave the word—“Now.”

Later, when we picked up the fine specimens we’d collected and noted the great number of birds massed to the southward where only a few trappers had been, Elmer said that undoubtedly more Canada and White-fronted Geese wintered in that region than elsewhere in Louisiana.

Our fieldwork in Cameron completed and speci-mens cared for, Stanley Arthur and I headed for New Orleans, but five weeks later my wife and I were on our way to Chenier au Tigre to observe the spring migration along that strategic coastline. Muriel recorded in my notebook under date of April 6:

Arrived at Abbeville at 2:30 p.m. and left next morning with Wilfred Trahan on his launch for the run down to Vermilion Bayou, the dark green of tall trees looming above, the freshness of smaller ones reminding us of wooded hills of Iowa. We saw various birds including thrushes, cardinals, and mockingbirds. Along Deep Water Bayou, Snowy Egrets, Louisiana Herons, and many shorebirds were very tame—also numerous Boat-tailed Grackles, Redwings, warblers, and sparrows. Arrived at the Chenier in late afternoon, and after going to the Sagreras’,


we took a quick trip up the beach, I riding the gentle old white horse [Fig. 1.37], and observed Caspian and Royal Terns and many shorebirds. Found a nest of Mottled Ducks with 12 eggs within 200 yards of the Gulf.

Five days were spent with the hospitable Sagre-ras, during which time many interesting species were observed, including several bands of Hudsonian Curlew, the first of the season, according to Simms. On three consecutive evenings after dark, we wandered both north and south of the Sagrera home with carbide lights on our heads and “shined” the eyes of several Screech Owls that made their homes in hollows of the moss-festooned live oaks.

On our return to New Orleans, I wrote J.D. Figgins regarding his joining me on a field trip to the islands of the Gulf, for I had arranged with Conservation Com-missioner M.L. Alexander for the use of the Alexandria,

a large launch with excellent accommodations for the journey. The plans were to go down the Mississippi to the pelican colonies of the mud lumps and then northward into Breton and Chandeleur Sounds to the numerous shell keys where silver-winged seabirds nested by the thousands. Mr. Figgins responded enthusiastically and said he would like to bring another member of his staff.

During May, a representative of the U.S. Biologi-cal Survey, E.R. Kalmbach, had been studying the food habits of the Yellow-crowned Night Heron in the cypress swamps of Louisiana. Stanley Arthur and I saw him often and had nicknamed him “Gros-bec” (big beak), the Cajun name for the long-legged Night Heron. He was an ardent fieldman, and as the time approached for our expedition to the bird islands, I suggested he wind up his studies in time to accompany us. The short launch journey among the teeming bird colonies proved to be one of the most important of all I was to make in more than half a century of activity.


Bailey

Figure 1.37. Muriel E. Bailey, Chenier au Tigre, Louisiana, April 6, 1919. DMNS No. IV.BA17-043.


J.D. Figgins, accompanied by Frederick C. Lincoln, Curator of Birds at the Denver museum, who later devel-oped the bird banding department for the U.S. Biological Survey, arrived in New Orleans on the last of May, and all arrangements were made for our departure the following day on the Alexandria with Captain Dan Lynch and a crew of four. As there were excellent accommodations, my wife Muriel was a member of the party and her notes for the first day, June 1 record:

The five of us left New Orleans at 9:30 on the fine launch Alexandria; the day was cloudy and threatening. We cruised through the harbor where a captured German submarine was anchored and, as we headed down the Mississippi, met many fruit boats and three freighters. At the quarantine station, we noticed

several Mexican boats flying yellow flags.As we progressed downstream, we sat

around in comfortable chairs, took moving pictures and ate fine meals. A few Royal Terns and Louisiana Herons circled the launch. Near the mouth of the Mississippi, we passed the barber pole lighthouse about 6:30 p.m. and then began to see small flocks of Brown Pelicans returning to their nesting islands. Then the mud lumps appeared, and we could see that they were literally covered with pelicans. We ran back into the mouth of Pass a l’Outre, where the ocean swell was not so noticeable, and anchored for the night.

June 2: It rained during the night and the morning looked a little squally, but we took the dinghy and investigated the lumps.


Figure 1.38. Frederick C. Lincoln and Jesse D. Figgins with pelicans, Louisiana mud lumps, June 2,

1919. DMNS No. IV.BA19-02.

On the first were a few pelican eggs and tiny India rubber babies, on the next [were] eggs only, and on the third were 35 nests of Caspian Terns and young pelicans. After lunch, we all (Figgins, Lincoln, Kalmbach, and Baileys) went to the lumps farther out in the Gulf where there were about 10,000 pelicans, many with nearly full-grown young, on each of the two islands [Fig. 1.38]. Set up blinds and Mr. Figgins took moving pictures; AMB took stills with the 4x5 Graflex. The pelicans settled down when all was quiet, and the young varied in size from newly hatched naked little fellows, to those with white down, and the well-grown birds with wing feathers well developed.

The young large and small are great beggars, pleading for food from every adult coming near, but their usual reception from strangers was a good cuff on the head. The old pelicans were quarrelsome, snapping bills at each other, especially when one tried to steal nesting material, which was at a premium. If the claim was held down by a young, he would do his best to protect his home, but the big bird would usually succeed in grabbing a beakful of sticks. I saw one pelican with a brown head sitting on three eggs. It seems the nesting birds have varied plumages—not just the adult white heads.


Bailey

Figure 1.39. Brown pelicans and young, Louisiana mud lumps, June 1919. DMNS No. IV.0099-239.


The very small black young were sheltered from the heat of the sun, the old one standing over the baby, usually erect, although sometimes stooping with half-drooping wings casting shadows. Whenever a neighbor or its offspring would waddle near the nest of another, he was greeted with an angry snapping of beaks, even the small young adding their quaint squawks.

There was a combination of sounds in the pelican colonies, ranging all the way from elephant-like grunts to complaining caterwauls. One little India-rubber baby had hard luck; a parent had presented him a won-derful appetizing mouthful of half-digested menhaden, and the youngster naturally tried to swallow it whole, but unfortunately, the sharp spines caught in the throat, and the fish would not go up or down [Fig. 1.39]. Kalmbach played the good Samaritan.

The Alexandria remained anchored off the Pass June 3, while we photographed pelicans, and was headed northward the next day. A brief stop was made on Breton Island, but there were few birds, so we continued on to Hog Island where many Royal Terns, Laughing Gulls, and Skimmers had fresh eggs. Figgins secured movies, while I concentrated on getting stills on half a dozen pairs of Forster’s Terns with both eggs and young, the adults being most cooperative. The agile silver-winged birds at first hovered over the blind, uttering their monotonous, querulous notes, and then one dropped to its distant nest, the others settling down also landing with wings upraised for a few moments. Two on empty nests close to the blind gave little chirps, and downy young emerged from shade or scant growth and made haste to return to the shelter of the parent’s wings.

A nearby group of Laughing Gulls had nests more concealed than the terns (Fig. 1.40). The blind was erected close to a set of three eggs in rather an exposed position and soon the adult landed some four feet away and approached the nest timidly—and the rest of the flock hovered overhead, individuals gradually dropping

to their nesting sites. The one closest to the blind settled so quickly I didn’t get a shot of her standing over the eggs. She was panting, and her whole body shook as she sat incubating, her mouth held open with drool dripping from the tip of the beak. She flushed when the shutter of the Graflex made its usual snap as an exposure was taken, but she soon returned—a most satisfactory pho-tographic subject.

The Alexandria was anchored off Errol Island June 5 and we found that two small islands which, having good bird populations in 1918, had been wiped out by storms. One sandspit had about 150 pelican nests—all with fresh eggs—while there were about 3,000 nesting Royal and Cabot (Sandwich) Terns (Fig. 1.41, Fig. 1.42), many pairs having eggs and young a few days old. We set up blinds, as usual, with Lincoln, Kalmbach, and Muriel occasionally going in with the photographers. The terns were very quarrelsome, continually striking at their neighbors, shrieking at the top of their voices, each nesting pair seemingly owning as much territory as it could defend with its beak. The terns, like pelicans, were solicitous of their own young, but extremely liberal with the cuffs handed to their neighbor’s children. They would strike the fuzzy little fellows whenever they toddled


Figure 1.40. Laughing Gull on nest with

eggs, Hog Island, Louisiana, June 3, 1919.

DMNS No. IV.0091-097.

within range, seeking shelter from the sun’s hot rays. I saw an adult Royal shelter her young, while another came from behind and forced its way under cover.

The nests were so close together that there was a continuous hubbub going on, the noise so deafening it was necessary to shout to Figgins in his blind only a few steps away. The adults were bringing in small shiny fishes held crosswise in their beaks. They stood about warding off attempts of other birds to grab the food and then would dart in quickly and feed their own young.

The middle of Errol had been washed by a high tide and there was a row of about 1,000 Royal Tern eggs thrown back against bushes. The north end of Errol was visited the next day where, according to my notes: “We found an immense colony of terns, the Cabot’s (Sandwich)

being most numerous. We estimated about 13,000 in all. They had fresh eggs, the island being rather low and a fit place for another catastrophe if strong onshore winds should blow. There were a few raccoons on the island as evidenced by numerous tracks. A large colony of pelicans used one mangrove island just offshore from the main one, some of the nests being rather bulky structures either in the mangroves or on the ground. All eggs were fresh and the birds seemed very wild, possibly an indica-tion they had been molested.”

The evenings aboard the Alexandria were full of interest as we sat about after dinner chewing the fat, each of us telling of past experiences and hopes for the future. Figgins told of his journey to Greenland with the North Pole explorer Peary when they secured the great


Bailey

Figure 1.41. Royal Terns, Sandwich Terns, and Brown Pelicans, Errol Island, Louisiana, June 5,

1919. DMNS No. IV.BA19-15.


meteorite now in the American Museum before Figgins became director of the Denver museum. Kalmbach recalled his experiences the past summer with the Cajun people while studying the food habits of the night herons, and the others seemed interested in the account of my first field trip to Laysan and the other Hawaiian Leeward Islands. I expressed the desire that someday Muriel and I should work in Alaska.

Weather conditions were fine June 7, and we con-tinued our journey along the Chandeleur chain, but no landing was made as few concentrations of birds were seen until we were off Free Mason Shoals where there were mangrove thickets and fine shell beaches. A landing was made and a pair of shrill-voiced Oystercatchers greeted us. About 100 Caspian Terns were at the tip of the

peninsula, while a couple hundred Royals nested along the shore, vulnerable to high tides and strong winds, like others we had seen.

There was a fine colony of about 75 Least Terns with fresh eggs and downies, and Kalmbach and I put up a blind, the old birds dropping to their eggs or young within eight feet, some of the young seeking shade along-side the blind. When the canvas was lifted, several came inside. One adult was incubating an egg and caring for two downies, and when another youngster strolled by, she darted off her nest and picked it savagely. Often I put my hand out to frighten her from the nest, but she would immediately land, posing with wings half lifted, afford-ing me an excellent opportunity for studying position and shooting pictures. My notes state:


Figure 1.42. Cabot (Sandwich) Terns. Errol Island, Louisiana, June 5, 1919. DMNS No. IV.0091-185.

The young are very inconspicuous, nearly white little fellows with dark spots, so they blend with the background. When they crouch close to the shell, it is almost impos-sible to see them. The adults, however, are very anxious when an intruder is near, their shrill piping notes indicating their fears.

June 8: Took the dinghy for a run into Elephant Pass to look for Oystercatchers, but the key was pretty well worn down since my last visit, and beyond a few gulls and terns, we saw little.

We stopped at a point where Skimmers were starting to nest; saw some Red-winged Blackbirds and a couple of Willets—also three Diamond-backed Terrapins, one just in the act of laying eggs. She had crawled up on the shell beach, dug a depression about three feet deep, and three eggs had been deposited.

Captain Dan then headed to Smith Keys, off Isle au Pitre, where we visited last year with Pearson. There were many Man-o’-wars, the majority males, while on Errol they were females. After the brief stop, we ran on to New Orleans, tying up at the dock, ending an interesting field trip with congenial friends and memories of the colonies of nesting birds, and wonderful sky effects each evening.

Kalmbach headed back for Washington the next day, but Figgins and Lincoln remained in the vicinity of New Orleans for a week, taking short field trips nearby to secure specimens and photographs. In the evenings, they invited my wife and me to dinner at their hotel and we were greatly impressed, for invariably the meals cost more than one dollar.

The next entry in my journal was June 16 telling that Figgins, Lincoln and I had arrived at Orange, Texas, where Bill Lea met us.

We got our supplies aboard the launch and made an immediate start for the farm, heading down the Sabine and, then, Black

Bayou where we saw plenty of buzzards, gros-bec, crows, and three flying Roseate Spoonbills. Then we saw 11 more perched on a little cypress, beautiful pink fellows against the blue of the sky. Arrived at the farm at noon, had a good feed, and ran down to watch the boys dip cattle.

The next two days were full of interest in that we made many trips out into the marsh and to nesting colonies in nearby cypress swamps. In one visited the 17th “were many nests of Great Blue Herons with full-grown young, Little Blues, a world of Yellow-crowned and Black-crowned Gros-becs, and 50 Anhingas, the majority with large, downy young. The old Anhingas sailed over-with large, downy young. The old Anhingas sailed over-with large, downy young. The old Anhingas sailed overhead continuously, each with its fluted tail, looking like my idea of the primitive archaeopteryx. There were five Roseates. It was a long hot trip, wading knee- to waist- deep carrying movie camera and tripod as well as other equipment, and Lincoln has decided he has had enough swamp work.”

The final trip was to a colony along Black Bayou, with Buck Huffman, where there were many Roseates.

We found them extremely wild, flushing at first sight. Buck thinks they use the nests of the herons, for they are late nesters and, according to him, start their activities without previous nest building. In flight, the Roseates remind me of cranes, for they circle high in uniform ranks with military precision, each bird keeping its proper interval in the line. They scrutinize the cover thoroughly, flying very high and circling and then, when apparently satisfied that all is well, come dropping from the clouds with a whirr of wings.

Our summer field trip was concluded, which, as mentioned above, proved to be an important one. During the following years, I collected from Arctic Alaska to Africa, but I kept up my correspondence with Dr. Glenk and other friends of earlier days. There were


Bailey


plaintive letters from Bill Lea, who had become mayor of Orange, Texas, complaining that oil men were drill-ing along Black Bayou, roads were being built across the prairies, and game in the vicinity of his rice acreage was depleted by the hordes of hunters. He mentioned our friend Lutcher Stark, the wealthy lumberman of Orange who had purchased 150,000 acres of marshland and had built a canal into the previously inaccessible area in the very region that Elmer Bowman, my goose hunting companion, had desired to work, and that Lutcher had a houseboat as a hunting base. More than ten years were to elapse before I was privileged to again work in Cameron Parish.

References

Bailey, A.M. 1918. The monk seal of the southern Pacific. American Museum Journal 18: 396–399.

Bailey, A.M. & Niedrach, R.J. 1951. Stepping stones across the Pacific. Denver Museum of Natural History, Museum Pictorial 3: 64 pp.

Bailey, A.M. 1952. Laysan and Black-footed Albatross. Denver: Denver Museum of Natural History, Museum Pictorial 6: 78 pp.

Bailey, A.M. 1952a. The Hawaiian monk seal. Denver, Denver Museum of Natural History, Museum Picto-rial 7: 30 pp.

Bailey, A.M. 1956. Birds of Midway and Laysan Islands. Denver: Denver Museum of Natural History, Museum Pictorial 12: 130 pp.

Bryan, W.A. 1915. Natural History of Hawaii. Honolulu: Hawaii Gazette Co. (chapter Sealing expeditions, 1859 on pp. 303–304)

Dill, H.R. & Bryan, W.A. 1912. Report on an expedition to Laysan island in 1911. Bulletin, Biological Survey, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture 42: 1–30.

Fisher, W.K. 1906. Birds of Laysan and the Leeward Islands, Hawaiian group (U.S. Fish Commission Bulletin for 1903). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govern-ment Printing Office, p. 787.

Lowery, G.H. Jr. 1955. Louisiana Birds. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press. pp. 213–214.

Matschie, P. 1905. Monachus schauinslandi, eine Robbe von Laysan. Sitzungsberichte der Gesell-schaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin 1905: 254–262.



Alfred M. Bailey


Kristine A. Haglund, Elizabeth H. Clancy & Katherine B. Gully (Eds)

2001 Colorado BoulevardDenver, CO 80205, U.S.A.



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Cover photo: A.M. Bailey at Laysan Albatross

nesting colony, Laysan Island, Hawaii, December

1912. Photograph by George Willett. DMNS No.

IV.BA13-072.

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A.M. Bailey hunting, Iowa, 1914. Photograph by

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