Frances Hamerstrom Quotes

The s mark where they have been and once one has learned to read sign, as woodsmen and professional ornithologists do, one can study food habits. Meat and fishing-eating birds pass conspicuous white urates, commonly called whitewash, and they regurgitate pellets. The splashes of whitewash under a perch suggest that a bird of prey may have used the perch. s, for example, also pass their urates in the form of whitewash, but if the perch is far from a body of water or from a heron rookery, the whitewash was probably passed by a hawk, an owl or a crow. The whitewash of hawks is rather splashy and falls in spatters and streaks. That of owls is far more solid, chalky in texture and tends to form little heaps.
Owls tend to gulp their food in big mouthfuls, swallowing many bones—large and small—along with meat. The bones, only slightly digested, persist in the pellets of adults. One can learn a great deal about what owls have eaten by examining the contents of pellets carefully.

If you are aware of the actual nest location, it is best to approach it on a path which would lead past the nest. When you are adjacent to the nest, you should turn at right angles to your path of travel, walk directly to the nest and band the nestlings. Once you have banded the nestlings, retrace your steps to your original line of travel.
On the return trip from the nest, sprinkle your trail with liberal quantities of crystals. When you reach your original trail, you should again turn at right angles and continue in your original direction of travel ... Thus any predator who picks up and follows your original trail would be discouraged from turning off and following your side trail to the nest. He would be more likely to continue following your trail in your original direction of travel.

In those days, we did a good deal of camping in abandoned houses. spent the first night up in this part of the world in a house. We had him sleep in the living room, because the roof didn’t leak there. And we slept in the kitchen, and we had pans put on the end of the bed. And we could hear the water beating in all night, falling into the pans by our feet.

When I was a small child I longed one day to become so famous that I did not have to hide how odd I was—how unlike other people. Few people really held my attention. It was birds and mammals, reptiles and insects that filled my dreams and eternally whetted my curiosity.