![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pwrc.usgs.gov\/resshow\/perry\/bios\/BurleighTom.jpg\")
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Thomas Dearborn Burleigh<\/a>, born 119 years ago today,\u00a0spent his war months<\/a> near Pontonx<\/a>, in southwestern Aquitaine. Already he was “what might have been called a compulsive collector<\/a>,” but, as he recalled<\/a>\u00a0in 1919 on his return to Pittsburgh,<\/p>\n owing to working six days a week and drilling the seventh, ornithology was temporarily neglected.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Eventually, though, Burleigh found time to start robbing the nests of the local birds: a barn swallow clutch here, a green woodpecker nest there, even two nightjar eggs in June 1918, taken from “a slashing in the woods.”<\/p>\n Eggs, it seemed, were easy enough to come by. But the collecting was<\/p>\n the least of my difficulties for there still remained the necessity of blowing them and making good specimens of them. I pondered long over this matter and in the end succeeded beyond my modest expectations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Burleigh’s pipe stem served him well as a blow pipe. And to make the hole? He found\u00a0that he could use<\/p>\n![\"Green](\"https:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2500\/5705812040_e10c38584e_z.jpg\")
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![a hat pin<\/a> as a drill, concerning which no personal questions will be answered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nParley-voo?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thomas Dearborn Burleigh, born 119 years ago today,\u00a0spent his war months near Pontonx, in southwestern Aquitaine. Already he was “what might have been called a compulsive collector,” but, as he recalled\u00a0in 1919 on his return to Pittsburgh, owing to working six days a week and drilling the seventh, ornithology was temporarily neglected. Eventually, though, Burleigh … <\/p>\nContinue reading “Mademoiselle from Pontonx”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9468"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9468"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9484,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9468\/revisions\/9484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/wallflowerswithstyle.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/02\/hat-pin-sized12.jpg\"){kind=link}