CHAPTER IV -- FAUNA AND FLORAY (Cont'd)
BIRDS.
Speaking of the birds, the prairie chicken during the seventies and early eighties was exceedingly common and one of the sights remembered by the prairie pioneers was the nests thickly and cruelly exposed to view on the high prairie ridges after the passage of prairie fires in the spring. These fires helped to destroy these fine birds, which, with the prevalence of the fires and the breaking of the prairies, greatly decreased in numbers and began nesting elsewhere than in Shelby county. For many years after the breaking of the native sod, the prairie chicken nested in the fence rows on high ground and occasionally in the prairie grass on public highways little traveled. The young prairie chickens, when but a short time out of the shell, much resembled young turkeys and were exceedingly shy and endowed with a wonderful instinct of self-preservation, which caused them to scatter in all directions, to hide in the prairie grass and weeds, and to keep perfectly quiet in the presence of apprehended danger.
The prairie hen was a very wily bird in the spring on the prairie whenever a person came anywhere near her nest. Every pioneer boy of the prairie recalls that often in his primitive innocence he chased this bird when she pretended to have a broken wing and half walked and half flew clumsily over the prairie grass, leading the foolish lad farther and farther away from the eggs on which she was sitting or from the young birds but recently hatched. The eggs of the prairie hen much resembled the eggs of the guinea hen. During the seventies and eighties and earlier, and perhaps later, the prairie chicken was trapped by the pioneers, the trap being made of lath or boards placed usually on top of a straw stack, usually with a shingle at the top with a weight at one end, arranged in such a way that when the luckless prairie chicken alighted on the shingle at the top of the trap to secure corn from an car placed thereon, it fell into the trap.
Mr. Dudley states that one prairie hen nested in Greeley township last year and that the prairie chickens have been nesting there for the last five years in small numbers. The birds now, however, usually come about October first and, provided they can find corn or other food in the fields, remain until about March, when they go to northern Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Canada to nest. The sandhill crane nested in Shelby county until about the late seventies. Boys who grew up on the prairie remember with how much wonderment and delight they first saw these birds go through various maneuvers on the prairie, moving back and forth, their long legs making them appear quite grotesque. The wild turkey was found in Shelby county in the late fifties and occasionally in the sixties.
Isaac P. Wyland, a well-known pioneer, once told the writer of having on horseback pursued a wild turkey in the vicinity of Bowman's Grove. J. B. Stutzman also speaks of having seen, in 1860 or thereabouts, a flock of wild turkeys walking rapidly into the south part of Bowman's Grove, near the old J. J. Miller farm, apparently coming from the prairie. Dr. N. E. Palmer, of Botna, tells me he shot them in Bowman's Grove in the sixties. Milo Adams in the sixties killed a thirty-two-pound turkey in Chichester's Grove.
The quail or "bobwhite" was found at an early date in the timber of the county and for many years was comparatively numerous; at present the birds are somewhat rare, owing to the very destructive bliz/ard of January 28 and 29, 1909, which killed them in great numbers. This storm, it will be remembered, was so severe as to kill great numbers of crows, usually very hardy birds. The large plover and the jack-snipe are becoming very scarce.
Of the song birds, there arc a goodly number found whose melody delighted the hearts of pioneers in wood and on prairie. The red-winged black bird, nesting in the center of some clump of slough grass projecting far enough out of its swamp surroundings to keep the nest dry, was one of the most attractive birds, whose cheery, melodious, boldly-tittered note was delightful to hear in the early spring. It nests in a few of the sloughs here yet. Also the meadow lark, to a large extent, a bird of the upland, always attracted attention and fortunately it is yet common. The robin became somewhat common on the prairie after the pioneers on the prairies planted timber, and he is now one of our birds earliest to appear in the spring, and most welcome. Other birds such as the blue bird, wild canary, oriole, crow, wren, swallow, doves, the hawks, owls, rain crow, killdeer, sap-sucker, thrush, cat-bird. etc., are common.
As in an earlier time when men followed trapping for revenue, so now many boys and young men make money during winter months by trapping along the forks of the 'Botna and Mosquito rivers and their branches. For instance, one young farmer living north of Defiance, unable to go into his held one winter and pick his corn, and not having stock to feed, decided to take up trapping to add to his funds. In a few weeks' time he caught four raccoons, bringing him $3.20; eleven minks, which brought him $37.05; eighty-one muskrats, which sold for $36.05; sixteen skunks, which sold for
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$8.96, and two weasels, which sold for $1.40, making a total of $87.51. This trapping, moreover, was done in a part of the county where timber is comparatively scarce and where the streams are very small.
Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, October, 2024 from the Past and Present of Shelby County, Iowa, by Edward S. White, P.A., LL. B.,Volume 1, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1915, pp. 79-81.
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