Unanswered Questions About Vacated Osprey Nests

Essayist Margaret Renkl writes in a recent column for The New York Times (July 7, 2025) that the Northern House Wren is "a tiny, feathered terrorist" because of its wanton destruction of the Carolina Chickadee nests (including eggs and young) that graced her backyard.  Nevertheless, that explosion of blood lust failed to dampen her enthusiasm about this spring which was replete with young birds leaving their nests and making their way in the world.  Amid her pleasure in the season, she grappled with myriad questions about the ways of the birds she observed (for instance, "Why did the baby cardinals leave the nest too early, still half bald and flightless?"), questions that brooked no easy, simple answers.  It was this clutch of questions that prompted Renkl to posit that, whereas once she had little tolerance for unanswered questions or ones not answered quickly (e.g., the results of some medical test), "I am older now, and these days not knowing often feels like a gift."

At this point in the essay, she shifts from unanswered questions involving nature on a small scale or her own personal well being, to the more fundamental question of what will happen in the long term environmentally to the planet, with those in charge evincing little regard for the consequences of their actions.  It's in the not knowing the outcome that she finds hope; the dire expectations haven't been realized yet, so, in the space between the now and the future, action might be taken.  "I am grateful for the way that not knowing allows room for a future that is different from the one I fear."

I'm not grappling in this post with the long term environmental consequences of how people currently in power are intent on sacrificing the future for some short term payoff in the present.  Rather, I want to share a couple of Renkl-like questions that have left me stumped.  Over the past three years, I have been monitoring a small number of Ospreys each summer on the North Fork of Long Island.  It wasn't until July of this year that I returned to my summer cottage and found that, of seven nests that were active in July and August of 2023 and 2024, three are vacant.  By "active," I mean these were nests where, as best I could determine, short of climbing up to peer into the cavity, female birds were incubating eggs and the Osprey couple was subsequently feeding and tending to young.  Nests I deemed "vacant" this year were ones without any Ospreys in or on them.  Significantly, none appears to be damaged.  I admit that I do not know if these nests were the scene of some nesting activity earlier in the season, and were subsequently abandoned before I started observing at the beginning of July.

In a post in 2023 I described an active nest very near my summer cottage that, despite the commotion visited on the it and its occupants by the passage of daily commuter trains, boasted healthy parents and robust, demanding young.  It was also active in 2024.

Now it stands empty.

My first question was:  What happened to the pairs that once raised young in this nest and the other two?  My second was an attempt to place the experience of my nests into context:  What's the expected year-to-year vacancy rate for Osprey nests?

I am unable to answer the first question with any certainty.  Though Renkl suggests she has a willingness not to have an immediate answer to her nature questions, she did pursue some with a bit of determination.  That's the case here.  I do want to know the fate of my pairs, though, as I explain below, not having an answer leaves some room for hope.

The starting point, I guess, is that, as with nearly every kind of bird, the nest during the breeding season is the focal point of the Osprey's activity.  The breeding pair becomes singularly attached to its nest, not only dedicating great time and energy to its construction, but, often, returning year after year to the same nest, repairing and adding to it.  (See, for example, Alan F. Poole, Ospreys:  The Revival of a Global Raptor, 2019, p. 80.)  Which makes it puzzling why so many of the nests I'd observed over the past three years now are vacant, some even with vegetation now growing in them.

The factors that can influence why any single nest might be occupied one year and not the next are many.  The most dire, of course, is that one or both of the birds that dedicated upwards of six months to it, perished on the several thousand mile long migration the Ospreys took to and from their wintering ground in the southern hemisphere.  Alan Poole in his 1989 work on ospreys describes various ways of estimating the raptor's mortality rate.  (Ospreys:  A Natural and Unnatural History, 1989.)  For large banded populations this may be a relatively straight forward calculation.  He writes that preliminary data for two such populations offer estimated annual mortality rates of between 10 and 17 percent.  (1989, p. 142)  As I noted in my previous post on Ospreys, mortality in the earliest years of the bird's life is quite high:  "Fewer than half of the birds that fledged will survive to breed."  (For similar data, see, Hinterland Who's Who:  Osprey, Minister of the Environment, Canada, 1993, p. 4.)  The most dangerous periods in the bird's life are during the long migrations to and from the wintering grounds, and the wintering period itself.  It's also the case that mortality rates are relatively low in early adulthood through late adulthood.  (Federico De Pascalis, et al., Shift in Proximate Causes of Mortality for Six Large Migratory Raptors Over a Century, Biological Conservation, volume 251, 2020.)  The percentage of absent breeding pairs in the seven nests is higher (at 43 percent) than the estimated mortality rates among adults just cited.  This does make me question whether mortality, alone or at all, might account for these vacant nests.

Of particular relevance to my concern is Poole's observation:

Because most Ospreys are faithful to breeding sites, one can reasonably assume that any established breeder failing to return to its nesting territory (or nearby) at the start of the season has died.  (1989, p. 142)

Though the import of his comment is profoundly negative (no bird returning to the site equals a dead bird), he does hint at a more benign outcome for my birds.  One or more of these osprey pairs that, in past years, used the now vacated nests might have found some other nearby location more to its liking.

I then considered what might influence that decision.  Is the relatively substantial human activity in the area around some of the nests I've been tracking discouraging Ospreys from returning?  Likely not.  Ospreys adapt readily to urbanized locations.  A very interesting study on the factors that influence the success (not the presence) of Osprey nests in an urbanized Florida location found that it was principally the timing of the nesting activity which affected success rates (earlier nests fared better than later), not urbanization.  Results from this study are affected by the fact Florida hosts migratory and non-migratory Osprey populations; the latter may nest earlier than the former.  (Elizabeth A. Forys, et al., Predictors of Osprey Nest Success in a Highly Urbanized Environment, Journal of Raptor Research , Volume 55, Number 4, 2021.)  The authors found no significant effect on nest success from the location factors they measured, including the nature of the land surrounding the nests - forests, grassy tracts, parks and ball fields, and "urban cover."  They write:

In conclusion, this study provides further evidence that Ospreys can be productive in highly urban environments and this might be particularly true for areas like Pinellas County that are surrounded by water.  (p. 493)

That conclusion rings true with my local populations.  There is substantial human activity in this environment (e.g., repeated passage of commuter trains) which has not deterred Ospreys from nesting and nesting successfully in the area in the past, and there's been no obvious change this year in that activity.  I would note that, after the 2023, breeding season, the local power company added a platform to the utility pole seen in the photographs above.  That change to the pole in one year didn't preclude nesting in the following.  Might this modification, nevertheless, have rendered the site sufficiently less attractive so the pair this year looked elsewhere?  Perhaps.

It is possible that some threat to an Osprey nest is now present in the neighborhood, say a Great Horned Owl, though there's no evidence of that, and it's not clear why all three of the vacated nests were affected.  As already noted, none of the nests appeared damaged, ruling out that potential deterrent to reoccupying a nest.

So, this first question remains unanswered.

As for the second, I tried to determine if the vacancy rate of my nests is unusual.  It certainly appeared so to this uninformed observer.  My journey through the research has not been very productive.  Much of the research on Osprey nesting is focused on the success of the nesting activity (as is the one just cited for Florida).  In contrast, if one asks the question regarding year-to-year use of a nest, there appears to be little data readily at hand.  I've tried to tease out the answer to that question from data provided in various published sources, data not focused on the vacancy issue.  I turned particularly to state projects monitoring Osprey nests, but, so far (the search continues), I have found only one with reported figures even tangentially speaking to my concern.

The Connecticut Audubon Society, in its 2024 report on the observations recorded by its Osprey Nation (a network of citizen scientists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on the state's Osprey population), noted that, in that year, there were "105 vacant platforms or comparable sites previously used."  (Osprey Nation 2024 Season Report, November 8, 2024, p. 6.)  If I read that description correctly, that's potentially the numerator I need - nests used previously, now vacant. But, what's the denominator?

Based on the data reported by the Society, the aggregate total number of nests observed in 2024 was 945.  This includes 726 active nests, 31 nests that were removed or somehow destroyed, 83 abandoned nests, and the 105 vacant nests.  That's not the appropriate denominator since the count of active nests includes ones newly observed that year, and some of the removed, destroyed, or abandoned nests might not have been used in prior years.  ("Active" is defined as nests in which observers saw birds in the incubation posture or young not ready to fly.)

Recognizing that it's not wholly defensible, I turned to the prior year's count of active nests - 688 - and added it to the 105 vacant nests from 2024, to calculate a potential denominator of 793.  That generated a vacancy rate in Connecticut in 2024 of approximately 13 percent.

If this is at all close to a reasonable year-to-year vacancy rate in my locality, then the 43 percent (3 of 7 nests) vacancy rate of my nests is dramatically higher.  I recognize, though, that it's folly to draw any conclusions from data based on such an absurdly small sample.  So, I will leave off, for the moment, the search for an answer to that and my initial question.

To end on a bit more of an upbeat note:  even with nearby vacant nests, I have still been enjoying the piercing calls of Ospreys soaring high overhead while I work in the yard of my summer cottage or walk around the neighborhood, down to the beach, and along the road that abuts the marshy, reedy extension of the bay.  There are Ospreys here and in number, some with nests that have escaped my detection.  I have seen the raptors with plump, glistening fish in their talons, taking a meal to mates and fledglings in nests somewhere nearby.  I hope my previous tenants are among them.

Another bit of good news.  At some distance from my cottage, in the heart of the town of Riverhead, I found an Osprey nest new to me.  What a beautiful sight, even with the unintended product placement.

The Enigmatic Scaphopoda Reflect the Downside of Distinctiveness

I find the members of the Scaphopoda Class of mollusks to be beautiful and quite distinctive.  This post is partly about how that distinctiveness may work against them in paleontological terms.

My interest in these animals was sparked by several fossil shells (shown below) from Dentalium attenuatum Say 1824, an extinct member of this class.  These were a gift from a friend who collected them at Windmill Point on the St. Marys River.  The formation shedding fossil shells at this location is considered Upper Miocene, deposited about 11.6-5.6 million years ago.

Marine biologist Helen Scales, when describing the various classes of mollusks, had this to say of the members of the Scaphopoda Class:

Scaphopods or tusk shells are fairly self-explanatory:  they look like little tusks.  Often they live buried in the seabed, head down, with the tips of their shells poking out.  (Spirals in Time:  The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells, 2015, p. 27.)

In a wonderful aside in her discussion of the changing thinking about the relationships among different taxa of the mollusk family, she wrote of Scaphopoda:

The scaphopods continue to be a pain in the neck to identify; we simply don't know enough about them to be sure where exactly they fit in.  (Scales, p. 35.)

Though there is uncertainty about the kinship of scaphopods with all of the other mollusk taxa, there is no doubt that they belong in the mollusca phylum.  (Scales, p. 28.)  Further, we also know that they are the newest of mollusk classes to show up in the fossil record, appearing perhaps as early as the Mississippian in the Carboniferous Period, about 362.5 million years ago.  (Patrick D. Reynolds, The Scaphopoda, Advances in Marine Biology, Volume 42, 2002, p. 139.)

To elaborate on Helen Scales' brief description, each of the extinct and extant scaphopods generally positions itself in sea bottom sediment with its larger opening (the aperture) buried and its narrower opening (the apex) exposed.  The aperture houses the animal's "creeping" foot and its mouth.  Water is drawn in through the exposed apex and waste is excreted from the same opening.  (See descriptions of tusk shells in:   National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Seashells by Harald A. Rehder, 1981, p. 655; and Invertebrate Fossils by Raymond C. Moore, et al., 1952, p. 273-275.)

I think it undeniable that the Scaphopoda Class, as a whole, is distinctive:   shells of all members share the same morphology, one which readily distinguishes them from other mollusks.  At the same time, it may be challenging to differentiate among species within the class.  That morphological sameness has long been noted as a potential issue.  For example, when the D. attenuatum shells were first described in 1824 by conchologist and entomologist Thomas Say (1787-1834), he noted of the Dentalium genera as a whole:

The species of this genus are very closely allied to each other, and at the same time they exhibit so few characters, that it is with difficulty that some of them are determined.  (An Account of Some of the Fossil Shells of Maryland, Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Volume IV, Part 1, 1824, p. 155.)

They exhibit so few characters:  from a taxonomic perspective, that's a fairly damning statement.  Later, paleontologist Raymond Moore et al., in Invertebrate Fossils (cited above), characterized the Scaphopoda as being "simple tapered tubular shells [exhibiting] few sorts of difference other than size and surface markings."  (Moore, p. 275)  The authors,  prompted by the general sameness of the various species in this class, concluded that these shells "are not very useful as index fossils."  (Moore, p. 275)

Hmmm.  Though their dismissal of the shells of scaphopoda as potential index fossils seems to have been sparked solely by the relative uniformity of the morphology of the individual species in the class, Moore et al. may not have been wrong about the possible utility of these shells as index fossils.  I turned to Hervey Woodburn Shimer and Robert Rakes Shrock, who, in their Index Fossils of North America (1944), defined an index fossil as:

one which identifies and dates the strata or succession of strata in which it lies.  The ideal index species has narrow or restricted stratigraphic range and broad, even worldwide geographic distribution. . . .  A genus which has narrow stratigraphic range and rather broad geographic distribution is now considered an index fossil.  (Shimer and Shrock, p. 1.)

There's nothing in that definition about whether the difficulty of distinguishing one species from another might affect what could be considered an index fossil, though that could be the case.  The actual focus of Shimer and Shrock's definition is on the temporal and geographic distribution of a species:

Is it found in a short and well defined interval in the stratigraphic column and, so, could it be used to identify and date the interval?

Is it distributed widely enough that it could be useful for correlating formations across a broad geographic range?

I wondered what we do know of the distribution of the scaphopods in the Maryland Miocene formations.   Of this class of animal here, paleontologist Harold E. Vokes et al., in their useful Miocene Fossils of Maryland (Maryland Geological Survey, second edition 1999), wrote that the scaphopods "occur throughout the [Maryland] Miocene deposits."  (Vokes, p. 18.)  I became hung up over that "throughout."  Undoubtedly, this does not mean that each species in this class is found everywhere in the stratigraphic column.  So what does it mean?

The seminal work on the Maryland Miocene published by the Maryland Geological Survey in 1904 is somewhat helpful in teasing this out.  (Miocene, Text, Maryland Geological Survey, 1904, p. eviii-evix.)  Five scaphopod species are identified in that publication.  (I think it interesting that there is no statement in this volume regarding any particular difficulty in distinguishing among these species.)  Data presented on the distribution of these five species among the Maryland Miocene formations show they may be widely, though unevenly, distributed in these formations.  The distribution of these species across the three formations covered in the report is this:  three of the species had been collected in localities in all three formations, two of the species were collected in only one formation (a different one for each).  Does that pattern offer any support to using scaphopod species as index fossils or militate against such an application?  Frankly, I don't think the data from this particular publication are sufficient to inform such a decision.

A better sense of the adequacy, or, rather, inadequacy, of the scaphopods as potential index fossils may be gained from their complete absence in the stratigraphic work on the mid-Atlantic coastal Miocene formations by paleontologist Lauck W. Ward.  In Molluscan Biostratigraphy of the Miocene, Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain of North America (Virginia Museum of Natural History, Memoir Number 2, 1992), he proposed stratigraphic zones for these formations based on the distribution of various mollusk taxa, defining the boundaries of zones in his schema by the first appearance of a mollusk taxon in the stratigraphic column.  For instance, the zone from which the D. attenuatum shells in my collection came is the Chesapecten/Glossus fraterna Interval-zone, which begins where fossil shells of the species Chesapecten santamaria first appear, and ends where fossil shells of Glossus fraterna enter the fossil record here.  None of Ward's zones in this work involve scaphopods.  (There is also no mention of scaphopods in Ward's later work with George W. Andrews titled Stratigraphy of the Calvert, Choptank, and St. Marys Formations (Miocene) in the Chesapeake Bay Area, Maryland and Virginia (Virginia Museum of Natural History, Memoir Number 9, 2008, p. 48).)

Ward characterized the mollusk species that he used in setting the boundaries for the zones as "well represented."  Further, confidence in appropriateness of these taxa to mark zone boundaries was heightened

because of the relatively complete phyletic record of the aforementioned taxa and because this record is found over a wide geographic area.  (Ward, Molluscan Biostratigraphy, p. 9.)

The scaphopoda species are missing because they, in general, did not meet these index standards.  (Ward indicated as much in a private communication.)  I would note that, for each molluscan zone, he also listed mollusk species restricted to that zone, as well as, various mollusk species common in, but not restricted to, that zone.  Scaphopods are excluded from those lists as well.

In sum, it would appear that our knowledge of scaphophod fossils is limited, here in Maryland and elsewhere.  Further, biologist Patrick D. Reynolds has argued that the morphological sameness of the scaphopods, coupled with the taxon's uncertain phylogeny in the mollusk family tree, "renders the scaphopods an enigmatic group."  (Reynolds, p. 139, emphasis added.)  Indeed.

A Different Kind of Deep Time: The 1909 Norton (Kansas) Town Team

This post is about my discovery of a tiny slice of life in this country, dating back to the early 20th century.  This isn't a story about paleontology or even natural history.  Rather, it's about the attraction of exploring and making some sense of a world that seems familiar but which is also distinct in many ways from mine today.  Though not a matter of deep time, it feels a bit like it.  The attraction of this research is quite analogous to what I experience when engaging with paleontology or natural history.  (This is my thin justification for uploading this post.)

My wife's aunt was, by profession, a neuroanatomist, and, by avocation, a genealogist.  Upon her death, she left a wealth of material about her extended family.  I don't know what happened to most of it, but some came to my wife and me.  Any collection of "things" likely undergoes marked diminution in size as it is passes from the original collector (who probably considered all of it treasure) to others, less involved and less dedicated.  That is, if the collection isn't simply trashed at its first transition from the collector.  (See my post titled Why Did Dad Collect All This Crap?, April 28, 2016.)

I was being ruthless in doing triage on the contents of a box of photographs of family and friends, until I uncovered a professional photograph of a baseball team.  Though I tried to resist, the allure of the image and the label pasted below it was too much for me.  It was all so markedly and wonderfully different from the rest of the pictures I'd been sorting; it called out for exploration.

How could I not be taken by this photograph of these young players, their manager, and a bat boy.  All are unsmiling as they stare into the camera, well, all save Oran Morehead (#15), a pitcher, seated at the far end of the first row, who is captured looking at something or someone off to his right.  The picture was taken on September 8, 1909, by photographer C.E. Reed.  (The Norton County News, September 9, 1909.)  There are at least a couple of errors in the picture's label.  The second entry in the column on the left should be #2 not #5.  The manager is the actual #5, but his name was spelled Hobart not Hobert.

A note about research sources:  I was aided immeasurably by the Kansas Historical Society which, on its website, provides digital access to a broad collection Kansas newspapers.

A question I addressed and answered early was this:  Why did my wife's aunt have this picture among her genealogically related materials?  The answer rests on the shoulders of the young man seated in the first row, second from the viewer's left:  L. Graves, #10 in the photograph, 2nd baseman.  One branch of my wife's extended family has a connection with the Graves family of which the 2nd baseman was a part.  His full name was Lyman Archibald Graves (1890-1927) and he was 18 years old at the time he posed for the group shot.  Lyman Graves and my wife are 2nd cousins 2 times removed.  (I utilized the very useful cousin chart provided by Jessica Grimaud on the FamilySearch Blog, July 23, 2019.)

My wife's aunt would be disappointed in me.  I used her very complete treatise on her extended family to determine the genealogical relationship of Lyman Graves to my wife; after that, though, I paid little attention to the Graves family.  It was what this image depicts that prompted me to spend several engrossing weeks of research.  Yes, the photograph shows a baseball team that played for the town of Norton, Kansas, but, in reality, it offers a glimpse of a widespread social and cultural phenomenon of the early 20th century, one completely new to me:  town team baseball or, as it was also known, townball.

Myriad small towns across the country fielded amateur teams that played each other during the summer months.  (Town team baseball is still very much alive in some areas of the country.)  To set the stage for this particular team, I would note that Norton was, and is, a small town located in the northwestern portion of the state, up near the border with Nebraska.  Its population in 1910 was 1,787.  Based on my research, I believe Norton played in 1909 against teams from 13 other towns - 10 in Kansas and 3 in Nebraska.  In general, Norton with about two thousand inhabitants had a larger population than nearly all of the other locations involved.  Muddying this picture is the fact that two of Norton's games were at home against the "K.C. Red Sox," a team that may have come from Kansas City, Kansas, and that played games around the state.  With a population of over 80,000 in 1910, Kansas was a decided outlier among these localities.  Excluding Kansas City, Norton had a larger population than all of the other jurisdictions involved but one, Concordia, Kansas, population 4,415.  The smallest of the towns was Selden, Kansas, population 297.  The average size of the towns involved (excluding Kansas City) was 1,236; the median size was 975:  these were all small towns.  (Data on the Kansas towns' population size was taken from a table available on the University of Kansas' website, titled Population of Cities in Kansas 1900-2020 - Decennial Censuses.)

In his insightful documentary Town Teams:  Bigger than Baseball (2016), focused on town teams in Kansas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mark Honer cites a study of Kansas newspapers from 1911 to 1920 that found more than 300 town teams playing baseball in the state.  He posits that these teams and the games they played had an impact well beyond the ball field.  He makes the case that the towns fielding these teams did so for much more than friendly sporting competition:  the games had economic, cultural, and social importance.  Those who assembled these teams did so, in part, to bring their particular community together.  These games were among the organized social events of small towns and their surrounding areas.  At a time without the ubiquitous visual media available to us today (television and the rest), organized social cultural events that prompted people to gather together physically, such as fairs, Chautauqua assemblies, lectures, plays, and, of course, sporting events, were the life blood of many small towns.  Honer contends, quite rightly in my mind, that towns established and supported teams in order to boost civic pride and to tell the broader world that here was a municipality worthy of economic investment and a good place to live.  (Some papers referred to this specific team as the "Norton Boosters.")  In general, small towns across the country were engaged in a struggle to survive and town team baseball was one of the steps many took to stand out from, and out pace, other area towns.

The games were major events for the towns.  Norton's games were often played on the weekends, but a majority (22 of its games) fell on weekdays.  (As described below, my data on the team's games are missing two games, at least.)  If Fridays are excluded from the weekday count, 17 of the games were played between Monday and Thursday.  Obviously, all were played during daylight hours.  Reportedly, in many towns that fielded a team, businesses would close on game days.  Norton was probably no exception.  I found attendance reported for only three games; it ranged from 150 to 400 patrons.  That last was for a game played on a Sunday (July 11, 1909) at Norton against the Selden team.  Though fans might come not only from town, but also from outlying areas, those 400 people represented a striking 22 percent of the Norton town population.

Historian David Vaught has summarized the central role of baseball for small, rural towns.

From the 1880s through the 1950s, the small-town team became an institution in rural American every bit as much as the little red schoolhouse and the old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration.  Diamonds dotted the countryside right alongside grain elevators, water towers, courthouses squares, and churches.  Every small town in rural American that considered itself a progressive, modern place had its own baseball team.  (Abner Doubleday, Marc Bloch, and the Cultural Significance of Baseball in  Rural America, Agricultural History, Vol. 85, No 1, Winter 2022, p.10-11.)

Town teams were composed of players often, but not always, drawn from the local male population.   Sometimes skilled players were recruited from outside the local area in an effort to field a winning team. Overall, these ball players were considered to be, and were referred to as, amateurs.  If the definition of that label is undergoing dramatic change today, it was certainly stretched almost to the breaking point in the first decades of the 20th century with regard to town team baseball.  These town team players were often financially compensated for their services.   Paul R. Albert, in his book Plainville Baseball:  History of Plainville, Kansas Town Team Baseball (2021), states that the Plainville team eschewed paying its players which many local town teams did.  Yet, he also observes that "men with baseball talent may have been recruited to open [business] positions in town," and that the town was not above hiring pitchers for important games.  (p. 4)

Suggestive of the financial rewards coming to the players, I found that the occupations reported for three of the Norton players in the 1910 decennial census were baseball related:  Ralph Shimeall and Lyman Graves were employed as "ball player," while Oran Morehead's occupation was "umpire baseball."  (I have found very few of the Norton players in that decennial census, probably due, in part, to my inexpert searching.)  The Beaver City Tribune reporting on a loss of its town team to Norton said it was "outclassed by the salaried players of our Kansas neighbor."  (The Norton Courier, May 20, 1909.)

The following description, written in March of 1909, of the assembling of Norton's 1909 team captures some of the most salient aspects at the time of town teams, in general, and of this Kansas town team, in particular.

Manager Hobart, of the Norton Baseball team[,] has signed two men for the coming year for sure and has strings out for three more that are 'cracker jacks.'  In fact it has been suggested to the Telegram editor by some of the sports of the game that we had better not publish the line up of the team or we would not be able to get any games with the other towns in this section.  So far, the manager has four men in [sic] pitching staff, Elliot, Morehead, Shimeall and a new man who just came to town a few days ago that is endorsed by Ed Port [his surname was actually Poort], professional player who makes his headquarters in Norton.  All these boys are good utility men and can play anywhere on the diamond.  Ed Port is a catcher and will probably sign the agreement in a few days.  Johnnie Dempewolf will wear a Norton uniform around the third station if he is offered a reasonable compensation and as the fans here like him that will probably happen.  (The Norton Weekly Telegram, March 3, 1909.)

The author of this article also observed, "Almena is reported to be in the game with a salary team this year as the business men of that town say they will pay $710 per month to a bunch that will skunk the county seat aggregation every game they play."  These teams were presumably not in any organized leagues.  Further, it appears that parts of Norton's schedule of games were established as the season progressed; who played and when could be rather ad hoc.

The Norton town team, as noted on the photograph, had a record of 33 wins and 9 losses through, I believe, September 4, 1909.  My basic data on those 42 games using the newspapers published in Norton in 1909 is incomplete.  I am missing two of the games, presumably Norton victories since I can account for the nine losses.  The actual final 1909 record compiled by the club remains unclear.   The Norton Weekly Telegraph on September 15, reported that the team had a record of 43-9 going into a double header on September 11 against Kensington; Norton reportedly lost both games.  I seriously doubt that total of 43 victories which is well beyond what I have been able to record.

Box scores are available for each of the 40 games I've tallied.  They provide information on opponents, where the games were played, scoring by inning, total hits, runs, and errors, and batteries (pitchers and catchers).  Umpires were often identified (as noted below, probably with good reason).  Sometimes the strikeouts and walks are provided for each participating pitcher.  Once in awhile the duration of the game is noted; even rarer, is the inclusion of figures on attendance.

Frequently, a sentence or two describing a highlight of the game would be included with the box score.  Those brief blurbs about the games offer a wealth of insight into the nature of the contests, the emotions involved, not only on the part of the players, but the crowd in attendance, and the partisanship of the Norton newspapers when covering its team.  A recurrent complaint was about the bias or ineptitude of the umpires.

Among the most dramatic or amusing are the following:

The score is omitted because we are unable to distinguish between the umpire and his pets.  (The Champion, June 10, 1909.)

Monday's game was much more tame owing to a row among the Smith Center players that caused several of their stars to leave hostilities.  (The Champion, July 8, 1909.)

This game should have been 2 to 0, but a rank decision on the part of the umpire, gave Kensington a score.  (The Norton County News, July 29, 1909.)

With the regular line-up in the field, Norton had an easy time winning this game, even if we did have to beat nine men - and the umpire.  (The Norton County News, August 12, 1909.)

The Norton team certainly received the worst treatment Saturday at Selden that they have ever been up against.  There was a bunch of hoodlums that crowded the players off the bench and used the vilest language possible.  (The Norton County News, August 12, 1909.)

A most remarkable thing happened in one of the latter innings, when an Oberlin base runner trying to make home plate ran afoul of the Norton catcher and both went down.  The runner straightened out as though dead - unconscious - and while in this condition several of the Oberlin players ran up, grabbed him and dragged him onto the base, resuscitating him afterwards and claiming a tally.  Before this runner had been dragged onto the home plate another runner taking advantage of conditions made home plate and a tally was claimed for it.  If the first runner was perpetrating a ruse, it didn't work.  Neither did the bluster of the other runner whose imagination carried him to a state of wildness.  The game was finished in red hot work [sic].  (The Norton Courier, September 9, 1909.)

More than a century ago, town team baseball helped to define and energize life in small town America.  Turns out, the young men on the Norton team did more than play ball.