(The Hermit of Gloucester) Boston Dana Estes & Company Publishers Copyright, 1903 By Dana Estes & Company All rights reserved A HERMIT'S WILD FRIENDS Published October, 1903 Colonial Press Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. To the Lovers of Nature, everywhere, this volume is fraternally dedicated....

During my eighteen years of hermit life, I claim to have discovered several new features in natural history, namely: That the cow-bunting watches over its young, assists the foster parents in providing food, and gradually assumes full care of the young bird, and takes it to the pasture to associate with its kind; that the white-footed mouse is dumb, and communicates with its species by drumming with its toes; that the wood-thrush conducts a singing-school for the purpose of teaching its young ho

Eighteen years ago I was in sore straits. Ill health had reduced my flesh until I resembled the living skeleton of a dime show. I realized that a few months more of city life would take me beyond the living stage, and that the world would have no further use for me except to adorn some scientific laboratory. A diagnosis of my case would read as follows: Dyspepsia, aggravated, medicine could give but slight relief. Catarrh, malignant, persistent. A douche was necessary every morning to relieve th

During the early years of my hermit-life, I had caged many small animals, such as deer-mice, raccoons, woodchucks, chipmunks, flying-squirrels, stoats, mink, and red and gray squirrels. My first captive was an artful old coon. I caught him in a small steel trap, the jaws of which had been wound with cloth as a protection to the foot. The den was under a boulder near the cabin. I set the trap at the mouth of the den and covered it with leaves. The next morning the trap, with clog attached, was mi

Wabbles is the name of a wild bird. Not a book name, for the bird is known to naturalists as the song-sparrow ( Melospiza fasciata ). I made Wabbles's acquaintance some years ago. On returning to my log cabin one afternoon, I had found him in the dooryard, wounded, bleeding, and exhausted. An examination disclosed a number four shot bedded in the muscle of the wing-joint. While I was removing the lead Wabbles struggled violently, and when released, hopped into the bushes and hid himself. I think

The red squirrel, or chickaree, leads all the wild things in the woodlands of Cape Ann for intelligence and the ability to maintain an existence under adverse circumstances. His life during the spring and summer months is a grand hurrah, but in the fall he sobers down and plods and toils in his harvest-fields like a thrifty farmer. Right or wrong, it is a fact that the red squirrel bears a disreputable character. He is called a thief because he takes the farmers' corn, and a bloodthirsty wretch

For several years I had slept in a hammock without a roof to keep off the night air. I had found this method inconvenient on account of stormy nights, when I was obliged to seek the shelter of the cabin. I overcame the difficulty by putting a tent roof over my hammock. The sides and ends were open so that I was practically exposed to the night air. The tent roof protected me on stormy nights, and with this slight shelter I slept out-doors from April 1st until Christmas, unless there was a heavy,

The white-footed mouse, unlike the house mouse, is a handsome fellow. He sports a chestnut coat, a white vest, reddish brown trousers, and white stockings. His eyes and ears are uncommonly large, causing his head to resemble a deer's in miniature. This resemblance has bestowed upon him the name of "deer-mouse." He is also called "wood-mouse," but is known to science as Hesperomys leucopus . My object in writing about these mice is to call attention to their peculiar method of communication. I ha

The next spring, after my attempt to thin out the white-footed mice, the stoats returned. I did not molest them, and they reduced the number of mice in short order. Mouse number two had a little family in a nest on a shelf. They were mice-babies, helpless and sprawling. They were dragged out of the nest by one of the stoats, and were killed one at a time. The stoat was obliged to make three trips to remove the pile of dead mice. The mother had escaped by way of the stone wall at the rear of the

The intelligence of the crow is admitted by those who deny reason to the lower animals. This bird is so large and is so meddlesome in human affairs that he has forced mankind to acknowledge his intelligence. While I admire his ability to look out for number one, I do not believe that he is in any way beneficial to the farmer. In my opinion, he is a great deal blacker than he is painted by our wise men at Washington. After a lifetime knowledge of the crow, with ten years' close observation of his

The first years of my hermit life were passed rambling the woods of Ward Eight, Rockport, Essex, and Manchester. I bought a double-barrel shotgun, not on account of the game to be found in the woods, but because I was told of the wonderful duck shooting in Ipswich Bay. For three years there was a great supply of acorns, and gray squirrels swarmed in the woods of the Cape. The next four years were years of famine to all animal life that depended on acorns. The gray squirrels died off by hundreds,

It was a May morning, clear and warm, the time was half-past five. It was my breakfast-hour and a pert chickadee had just whistled "Tea's ready," to the other birds, when I heard in the bushes near by a bird voice call out "Chewink," in answer to the chickadee. My breakfast-table was a dry-goods box and this morning it was under a pine-tree. A newspaper served for a table-cloth. Breakfast under the pines was a grand affair, and I was sorry when a year later I had dropped the custom for a breakfa

On Sunday, May 30, 1897, while the church bells were calling saint and sinner to worship in the city of Gloucester, and a catbird's blithe music, supplemented by the silvery bells of a veery, was calling me to worship in my cabin dooryard, I turned to the path that leads to Magnolia Swamp. Two years before, on the west side of the swamp, I had discovered a woodpecker's sap orchard. For two seasons I had carefully noted the work of the woodpeckers in their curious method of tapping trees, and I d

The books on ornithology tell us that the cowbird ( Molothrus ater ) is a common summer resident of New England, without regard to locality. However true this may be as to other parts, it is a fact that the bird was unknown to me in Penobscot County, Maine. Cowbirds are summer residents of Cape Ann, and I have studied their habits for years. I commenced by requiring answers to the following questions: Why do birds, when victimized, rear the young cowbird? Why does the young cowbird desert its fo

I have made my title Bee Hunting, while I remember well that down in Maine we used the term "lining bees." I was enthusiastic over the sport when farming in Maine, and when I had located on Cape Ann, I searched the wild flowers for bees. I found bees enough, so made the attempt to find a wild swarm. All my efforts were unsuccessful the first year. My bees all lined to tame swarms in hives. The second and third years I found swarms, but they did not have much honey. These wild bees were in ledges

In the series of nature studies, published in Forest and Stream's natural history columns, Tiny was briefly introduced to the public. Tiny is a red squirrel, the son of Bismarck. The latter was a grizzled old warrior, the hero of many a fierce battle. Why he gave the cabin dooryard to Tiny is one of the mysteries of squirrel life. He had held it against all squirrels, red or gray, for ten years, and now gave it over to Tiny to have and to hold, without reserve. A return to Bismarck's life histor

Thursday morning, May 27, 1886, a small bird hopped out of the bushes into my dooryard. The bird was a female chestnut-sided warbler. She was collecting dry grass blades for a nest. May 27, 1897, the same little bird was in my dooryard engaged as before, collecting nesting material. Eleven years had been credited to the past for man and bird. The man had not escaped the weight of the added years. Deeper wrinkles and gray hair told the story, but the little bird, strange to tell, was apparently a

Instinct is the overworked and much abused word of many writers. As applied to the wild things, we often stumble on to the terms, instinct of direction, instinct of migration, instinct of song, instinct of nest building, and so on. Webster gives several definitions as to the meaning of instinct. The following covers the ground: "An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge." To gather acorns in the balmy days of October and store them for the

The chickadees are with me the year through. In winter they collect into a flock and remain near the cabin, but when the snow departs, they drift away in pairs, in search of a good nesting site. From this time, until the young birds are large enough to fly, the chickadees come to my cabin in pairs. The domestic life of the chickadee overflows with love, joy, and devotion. These little birds when once mated are mated for life. There is no divorce in the bird family, from eagles down to humming-bi

I opened up my cabin one winter morning, at daylight, to find the dooryard covered with two inches of light snow. A mass of fox tracks centred about a piece of meat, which was nailed to the trunk of a pine-tree. When the fox left, about daylight, it went down the old highway, and this is the trail it made: ooo  ooo  ooo  ooo  ooo Two tracks started from a cluster near the meat, followed by a space, then three tracks followed by another space, and so on, in regular order, three tracks and a space