On mornings when I happen to be wakeful the observations I make are not always through the tent flap. Many of them are through the sides of the tent, and I hear them instead of seeing them. As you might expect, the first morning sound is the crowing of the roosters, and let me tell you that it is no trifling sound on the farm at present. Between thirty and forty broilers are practising crowing and there seems to be a very sharp rivalry among them. Some of the older ones can crow almost as lustily as the father of the flock, while a lot of young fellows cannot manage anything better than a hasty mixture of a squeak and a squawk. You know, of course, that the scientists are unable to offer any explanation of the foolishness of roosters in crowing like this and telling their enemies where they are. One morning recently I was awakened by the crowing of the young roosters about an hour before dawn. The racket they were making recalled to my mind the fact that we were expecting visitors that day and that broilers would be in order for dinner. I "obeyed that impulse" at once, got up, lit the lantern, and started on a raid. All I needed to do was to listen and locate the lustiest crowers where they were roosting in the apple trees. Then I went around and picked them off the branches until I had half a dozen plump ones stowed away in a coop. If they hadn't reminded me of their existence by their fool crowing they might still be alive and scratching gravel with both feet for admiring young pullets.

When the first light of dawn appears the young ducks begin to jabber, where they are spending the night in a packing box under an apple tree. A few minutes later I have a chance to make my first observations through the tent flap as they march loquaciously past in single file. Now that the mornings are getting cool, sometimes with a touch of hoar frost, the crickets, beetles and other innumerable insects are sluggish, and the ducks seem to know just where to look for them in the long grass. That reminds me that the wise old fellows who made up our proverbs were not always careful observers of natural phenomena. We have been told that it is the "early bird that catches the worm," but the observations I have made lead me to believe that for one worm that suffers for his folly in being out late a thousand bugs and beetles are captured. The proverb should read, "It is the early bird that catches the bug," and different birds have different ways of going about it. When a duck goes after a bug he acts much like a ball player trying to steal a base. He throws himself forward so suddenly that he lands on his stomach, and at the same time shoots out his neck full length. When I umpire such an action through the tent flap it is very seldom that I could announce the bug "safe." If ducks could only be taught to play baseball they would beat Ty Cobb at stealing bases. Shortly after the ducks the turkeys come marching past on their morning bug hunt. Instead of moving in Indian file they walk abreast in extended formation, and their method of taking the unwary bug is entirely different from that of the duck. When a turkey sees his prey he stops still, sometimes with one foot in the air. Slowly and almost imperceptibly he moves his head towards the luckless bug, and when his beak is within a couple of inches of it he makes a quick grab that is invariably fatal. In this connection I sometimes wonder if my attitude as a nature lover is entirely correct. The bug probably enjoys life just as much as the turkey, and I wonder if the bug should not have my sympathy rather than the birds. But that is a delicate point which I am willing to leave to professors of ethics and other subtle reasoners.

Although the roosters are apparently the first of the domestic fowls to waken in the morning, they are usually the last to get up, or, to be more exact, to get down. When they start to lead out their pullets in the twilight I have a chance to see that at least one maker of proverbs was a close observer of nature. I have heard it said of ladies who walk with a mincing gait that "she steps out like a hen before day." As I observe the hens through the tent flap I notice that their gait differs from the gait they use later in the day. They pick up their feet carefully, and hold them poised for a moment before putting them down daintily, and they hold their heads up in a way that looks very haughty. The philosopher who originated that simile must have been an early riser, or perhaps he also made his observations through a tent flap, with the blankets tucked cosily up to his chin. But some mornings I make observations through the tent flap that I cannot stay in bed to meditate on. Through the tent flap I have an excellent view of the haystacks and the stack of oat sheaves. One morning when I opened a lazy eye in the early dawn I was suddenly brought wide awake and sitting up, as the Red Cow and her progeny were among the stacks. The sleepy inhabitants of the tent were immediately rousted out, and for the next few minutes we took the Kneipp cure together while sending Fenceviewer I. and her family back through the gate she had managed to work open. On another morning my first observation was of a team of horses that had come in from the road and were trying to founder themselves on our fodder. Luckily Sheppy was loose and he attended to their case without making it necessary for me to do anything more than whistle for him and yell, "Sick 'em!"