In 1900 we planted a young pine tree in front of our temporary office building, within six feet of a main walk; and at once a pair of robins nested in it and reared young there.

[Illustration:  WILD CREATURES QUICKLY RESPOND TO FRIENDLY ADVANCES Chickadee and Chipmunk Tamed by Mr. Loring]

[Illustration:  THE COLORADO OBJECT LESSON IN BRINGING BACK THE DUCKS]

Up in Putnam County, where for five years deer have been protected, the exhibitions that are given each year of the supreme confidence of protected deer literally astonish the natives.  They are almost unafraid of man and his vehicles, his cattle and his horses, but of course they are unwilling to be handled.  Strangers are astonished; but people who know something about the mental attitude of wild animals under protection know that it is the natural and inevitable result of real protection.

At Mr. Frank Seaman’s summer home in the Catskills, the phoebe birds nest on the beams under the roof of the porch.  At my summer home in the Berkshires, no sooner was our garage completed than a phoebe built her nest on the edge of the lintel over the side door; and another built on a drain-pipe over the kitchen door.

Near Port Jervis, last year a wild ruffed grouse nested and reared a large brood in the garden of Mr. W.I.  Mitchell, within two feet of the foundation of the house.

On the Bull River in the wilds of British Columbia two trappers of my acquaintance, Mack Norboe and Charlie Smith, once formed a friendship with a wild weasel.  In a very few visits, the weasel found that it was among friends, and the trappers’ log cabin became its home.  I have a photograph of it, taken while it posed on the door-sill.  The trappers said that often when returning at nightfall from their trap-lines, the weasel would meet them a hundred yards away on the trail, and follow them back to the cabin.

“Old Ben,” the big sea-lion who often landed on the wharf at Avalon, Santa Catalina, to be fed on fish, was personally known to thousands of people.

AN OBJECT LESSON IN PROTECTION.—­A remarkable object lesson in the recognition of protection by wild ducks came under my notice in the pages of “Recreation Magazine” in June, 1903, when that publication was edited by G.O.  Shields.  The article was entitled,—­” A Haven of Refuge,” and the place described well deserved the name.  It is impossible for me to impress upon the readers of this volume with sufficient force and clearness the splendid success that is easily attainable in encouraging the return of the birds.  The story of the Mosca “Haven of Refuge” was so well told by Mr. Charles C. Townsend in the publication referred to above, that I take pleasure in reproducing it entire.