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bushy beard as white as beach flax; he resembled Charles Darwin as an old man (the British naturalist had died in 1882), or Father Time. There was about him an outdoors aura of a solitary holy man or troglodyte. From 1889 to 1900 Roosevelt and Burroughs had regularly met for lunch, discussed bird laws, and swapped books. The two men shared the admirable traits of enjoying a well-turned phrase and never keeping the inkhorn dry. During his tenure as governor Roosevelt and Burroughs each managed to publish three books. Together they were proud Audubonists. “I send you a copy of my Big Game Hunting,” Roosevelt wrote to Burroughs on May Day 1900. “It is really a combination of two volumes. In the second part, I wish you would look on p. 65 and before and after, where I speak about some birds. Again and again as I have listened to those plains birds I have longed to have you hear them, and I have longed even more to have you hear the bull elk and the great wolves.”1

In 1899 James Bryce deemed Roosevelt “the hope of American politics” Burroughs, however, saw the Colonel as the great public naturalist of the future.2 An alliance of great importance to the wildlife protection movement was forged between Roosevelt and Burroughs. Burroughs, in fact, invited Roosevelt’s twelve-year-old son, Ted—who had straight jet-black hair and a face full of freckles—to spend a long weekend with him, hiking around the clear streams near his rustic cabin, Slabsides (built in 1895 on a bog that was once a celery swamp).*3 According to Roosevelt, little Ted “grinned with delight” when he heard of Burroughs’s offer of hospitality. “How I wish I could be with you!”, Roosevelt wrote to Burroughs. “As I have written you, when out on the Ranch in the old days I cannot say how many times I longed to have you there. It was only while I was in the West and on my ranch that I ever had much opportunity of really hearing bird songs. Of course I know our common birds of the East—the thrushes, bobolinks, etc., but it was only while I was on my ranch that I ever lived out of doors.”4

Having Burroughs provide a guided tour around the Hudson River Valley was akin to having Thoreau describe the salient features of Walden Pond in a walk-around. Burroughs, Roosevelt believed, was the top-drawer nature writer of all time. His voice and memory were those of a master. Burroughs’s book of nature essays, Far and Near, included “Babes in the Woods,” about his fine time with Ted exploring Black Creek.5 Eastern bluebirds—nesting in dead tree stumps—became the species du jour on their fine tramp. Burroughs explained to Ted the difference between the plaintive female note and the more ardent note of the male. The red, white, and blue eastern bluebird had become signature birds to Burroughs.6 “Never in your life have you given more happiness than to the small boy who spent last Saturday and Sunday with you,” Governor Roosevelt wrote to Burroughs on May 21. “I thank you most sincerely for your kindness to him. Ted is a good little fellow and he appreciated every moment of his stay. He has really been very interesting over of his experiences, notably the conduct of the two parent bluebirds after you by accident broke down the stump containing their nest and then put it up again.” 7

With Burroughs as his primary muse, Governor Roosevelt had entered the “citizen bird” movement full-throttle. Along with Frank M. Chapman, William Dutcher, and a few others, Roosevelt truly thought of himself as part of the guild of professional naturalists. And Burroughs was their éminence grise. Just as Theodore Roosevelt Sr. had gotten immersed in the humane movement, his son now believed in the moral impact of Darwin’s theory: that benevolence toward other species was compulsory, that society had a sacred obligation to take care of lower species like birds.8 This “moral” Darwinian impulse had first started fomenting when T.R. had read Wake-Robin at Harvard University. (In 1859, when Roosevelt was one year old, Burroughs had written in his Notebook the evolutionary sentiment that “from a single atom,