page_title: Charles Kellogg (naturalist)
section_title: Career and later life
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Kellogg (naturalist) / Career and later life
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles Kellogg demonstrating an Indian technique of punishment by locking the legs around a tree to boy scouts
context_page_description: Charles Kellogg was an American vaudeville performer who imitated bird songs, and later a campaigner for the protection of the redwood forests of California. He was born on a ranch in Susanville, California and grew up in the 1870s observing the animals and birds of the forests and learning outdoor skills. He constructed a mobile home, called the "Travel Log", out of a redwood tree and drove it around the country to raise awareness of the plight of the California forests. Its maximum speed was 18 mph. The Travel Log itself is currently on display in the Visitor Center at Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
  Pat Foster of Hemmings Classic Car magazine wrote "the vehicle itself was incredible, a monument to man and nature. It consisted of a huge chunk of giant redwood-said to be the single largest piece of hewn timber in the world-hollowed out and mounted on what was then the toughest, most rugged chassis on earth: the Nash Quad."
context_section_description: During his childhood Kellogg developed the remarkable ability to perfectly imitate bird song. While bird song imitation was quite popular at the turn of the century, Kellogg's ability to sing from the throat instead of whistle the songs, was what gained him such national attention. By the time he was 22 he was performing his bird songs on vaudeville tours around the country. By the time he was in his forties he was traveling outside of the United States, performing for audiences throughout Europe. Kellogg claimed that he had a 12½-octave, almost twice the range of a piano.
  
  In 1911 Victor Records signed Kellogg to his first recording contract.  He recorded with Victor Records until 1926, mostly singing classical and light classical pieces.  Kellogg often performed an adaptation of Xaver Scharwenka's Polish Dance No. 1 in E-Flat Minor, Op. 3, a popular piece for vaudeville actors to perform at that time.
  
  Kellogg proclaimed his love for the Californian wilderness while traveling in his carved redwood log home. He also claimed to be a vegetarian who chose not to own a gun and his outdoor skills included the ability to start a fire with a wooden drill. After discovering an 1867 treatise by John Tyndall that a small and regulated flame could be extinguished by a sound of the appropriate frequency, he claimed to have developed the technique to do this with his voice. He was also a skilled craftsman and an inventor. In 1924 he designed and patented a mechanized fruit and nut picker. He also designed a movable fireplace. Every time he visited his California home, he found that the forests were dwindling and along with his friends who included John Muir and John Burroughs he considered ways to highlight the loss. He "kept thinking and thinking through many years how to take the forest out to the world ...[since] the world could not come out to the forests". After World War I he saw a powerful truck, a Nash Quad and decided to modify it by adding a body made from a 7 metre section of a redwood and carving it out with a bed, a toilet and a kitchen with cupboards. The wood weighed 3 tons and could not be lifted. He then dug a tunnel under the wood and drove the Nash Quad under it and then had the log body lowered onto it. He called his vehicle the "Travel Log" and drove it around at a maximum speed of about 8 km/hour. In later years he traveled in a lighter vehicle that he called the "Bird Wing" - something that he claimed would start when he whistled to it. He traveled at various times to the West Indies and Fiji where he observed a fire-walking ceremony. He also traveled to Paris where he met Auguste Rodin.
  Kellogg later moved to live in a carved wooden cabin, The Mushroom, in a place he called Ever Ever Land. The cabin included all the amenities built to merge into the surrounding wilderness. He was taken care in later life by two of his sisters. They used his Travel Log as a sewing room and donated it in 1994 to the Humboldt Redwood Interpretive Association. Kellogg wrote an autobiographical book Charles Kellogg, the nature singer, his book (1929).
caption: In a demonstration to boy scouts, Kellogg locks a volunteer's legs around a tree to show a supposed punishment used by the local Indigenous people.[3] The "Digger Indians" noted in this clipping was a non-specific racial stereotype used by white people.[4]
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