we heard a wren which was new to me. "That's Bewick's wren," he said. We
got out and watched it as it darted in and out of the fence and sang.

I asked him if he knew whether the little gray gnatcatcher was to be
seen there. I had not seen or heard it for thirty years. "Yes," he
replied, "I saw it the last time I was here, over by a spring run."

We walked over to some plum-trees where there had been a house at one
time. No sooner had we reached the spot than he cried, "There it is
now!" And sure enough, there it was in full song--a little bird the
shape of a tiny catbird, with a very fine musical strain.

As we were walking in a field we saw some birds that were new to me.
Roosevelt also was puzzled to know what they were till we went among
them and stirred them up, discovering that they were females of the blue
grosbeak, with some sparrows which we did not identify.

In the course of that walk he showed me a place where he had seen what
he had thought at the time to be a flock of wild pigeons. He described
how they flew, the swoop of their movements, and the tree where they
alighted. I was skeptical, for it had long been thought that wild
pigeons were extinct, but that fact had not impressed itself upon his
mind. He said if he had known there could be any doubt about it, he
would have observed them more closely. I was sorry that he had not, as
it was one of the points on which I wanted indisputable evidence. We
talked with the colored coachman about the birds, as he also had seen
them. His description agreed with Roosevelt's, and he had seen wild
pigeons in his youth; still I had my doubts. Subsequently Roosevelt
wrote me that he had come to the conclusion that they had been mistaken
about their being pigeons.

One day while there, as we were walking through an old weedy field, I
chanced to spy, out of the corner of my eye, a nighthawk sitting on the
ground only three or four yards away. I called Roosevelt's attention to
it and said, "Now, Mr. President, I think with care you can drop your
hat over that bird." So he took off his sombrero and crept up on the
bird, and was almost in a position to let his hat drop over it when the
bird flew to a near tree, alighting lengthwise on the branch as this
bird always does. Roosevelt approached it again cautiously and almost
succeeded in putting his hand upon it; the bird flew just in time to
save itself from his hand.

One Sunday after church he took me to a field where he