consisted of green worms about twice as large as a common knitting
needle. Three or four of them he held crosswise of his beak, and gave
one to each nestling. The next course was a big white grub, which he did
not divide, but gave to one, who had considerable difficulty in
swallowing it.
I said the birds did not notice the family, but they very quickly
recognized me as a stranger. They stood and glared at me in the cardinal
way, and uttered some sharp remonstrance; but business was pressing, and
I was unobtrusive, so they concluded to ignore me.
The advent of the first redbird baby seemed to give much pleasure, for
the head of the family sang a good deal in the intervals of feeding; and
both of the pair appeared very happy over it, often alighting beside the
wanderer, evidently to encourage him, for they did not always feed. The
youngster, after an hour, perhaps, flew about ten feet to a peach-tree,
where he struggled violently, and nearly fell before he secured a hold
on a twig. Both parents flew to his assistance, but he did not fall, and
soon after he flew to a grape trellis, and, with a little clambering, to
a stem of the vine, where he seemed pleased to stay,--perhaps because
this overlooked the garden whence came all his food.
I stayed two or three hours with the little family, and then left them;
and when I appeared the next morning all were gone from the nest. I
heard the gentle cries of young redbirds all around, but did not try to
look them up, both because I did not want to worry the parents, and
because I had already made acquaintance with young cardinals in my four
o'clock studies.
The place this discerning pair of birds had selected in which to
establish themselves was one of the most charming nooks in the vicinity.
Kept free from English sparrows (by persistently destroying their
nests), and having but a small and quiet family, it was the delight of
cardinals and catbirds. Without taking pains to look for them, one might
see the nests of two catbirds, two wood doves, a robin or two, and
others; and there were beside, thickets, the delight of many birds, and
a row of spruces so close that a whole flock might have nested there in
security. In that spot "the quaintly discontinuous lays" of the catbird
were in perfection; one song especially was the best I ever heard,
being louder and more clear than catbirds usually sing.
As I turned to leave the grounds, the relieved parent, who had not
relished my interest in his little folk, mounted a branch, and,
"Like a pomegranate flower
In the dark foliage of the cedar-tree,
Shone out and sang for me."
And thus I left him.
XI.
LITTLE BOY BLUE.
"The crested blue jay flitting swift."
To know the little boy blue in his domestic life had been my desire for
years. In vain did I search far and wide for a nest, till it began to
look almost as if the bird intentionally avoided me. I went to New
England, and blue jays disappeared as if by magic; I turned my steps to
the Rocky Mountains, and the whole tribe betook itself to the
inaccessible hills. In despair I abandoned the search, and set up my
tent in the middle country, without a thought of the bonny blue bird.
One June morning I seated myself by my window, which looked out upon a
goodly stretch of lawn dotted with trees of many kinds, and behold the
long-desired object right before my eyes!
The blue jay himself pointed it out to me; unconsciously, however, for
he did not notice me in my distant window. From the ground, where I was
looking at him, he flew directly to a pine-tree about thirty feet high,
and there, near the top, sat his mate on her nest. He leaned over her
tenderly; she fluttered her wings and opened her mouth, and he dropped
into it the tidbit he had brought. Then she stepped to a branch on one
side, and he proceeded to attend to the wants of the young family, too
small as yet to appear above the edge.
The pine-tree, which from this moment became of absorbing interest, was
so far from my window that the birds never thought of me as an observer,
and yet so near that with my glass I could see them perfectly. It was
also exactly before a thick-foliaged maple, that formed a background
against which I could watch the life of the nest, wherever the sunlight
fell, and whatever the condition of the sky; so happily was placed my
blue jay household.
I observed at once that the jay was very gallant and attentive to his
spouse. The first mouthful was for her, even when babies grew clamorous,
and she took her share of the work of feeding. Nor did he omit this
little politeness when they went to the nest together, both presumably
with food for the nestlings. She was a devoted mother, brooding her
bantlings for hours every day, till they were so big that it was hard to
crowd them back into the cradle; and he was an equally faithful father,
working from four o'clock in the morning till after dusk, a good deal
of the time feeding the whole family. I acquired a new respect for
_Cyanocitta cristata_.
I had not watched the blue jays long before I was struck with the
peculiar character of the feathered world about me, the strange absence
of small birds. The neighbors were blackbirds (purple grackles),
Carolina doves, golden-winged and red-headed woodpeckers, robins and
cardinal grosbeaks, and of course English sparrows,--all large birds,
able to hold their own by force of arms, as it were, except the
foreigner, who maintained his position by impudence and union, a mob
being his weapon of offense and defense. Beside him no small bird lived
in the vicinity. No vireo hung there her dainty cup, while her mate
preached his interminable sermons from the trees about; no phoebe
shouted his woes to an unsympathizing world; no sweet-voiced goldfinch
poured out his joyous soul; not a song-sparrow tuned his little lay
within our borders. Unseen of men, but no doubt sharply defined to
clearer senses than ours, was a line barring them out.
Who was responsible for this state of things? Could it be the one pair
of jays in the pine, or the colony of blackbirds the other side of the
house? Should we characterize it as a blue jay neighborhood or a
blackbird neighborhood? The place was well policed, certainly; robins
and blue jays united in that work, though their relations with each
other bore the character of an armed neutrality, always ready for a few
hot words and a little bluster, but never really coming to blows. We
never had the pleasure of seeing a stranger among us. We might hear him
approaching, nearer and nearer, till, just as the eager listener fancied
he might alight in sight, there would burst upon the air the screech of
a jay or the war-cry of a robin, accompanied by the precipitate flight
of the whole clan, and away would go the stranger in a most sensational
manner, followed by outcries and clamor enough to drive off an army of
feathered brigands. This neighborhood, if the accounts of his character
are to be credited, should be the congenial home of the
kingbird,--tyrant flycatcher he is named; but as a matter of fact, not
only were the smaller flycatchers conspicuous by their absence, but the
king himself was never seen, and the flying tribes of the insect world,
so far as dull-eyed mortals could see, grew and flourished.
Close scrutiny of every movement of wings, however, revealed one thing,
namely, that any small bird who appeared within our precincts was
instantly, without hesitation, and equally without unusual noise or
special publicity, driven out by the English sparrow; and I became
convinced that he, and he alone, was responsible for the presence of
none but large birds, who could defy him.
One of the prettiest sights about the pine-tree homestead was the way
the jay went up to it. He never imitated the easy style of his mate, who
simply flew to a branch below the three that held her treasure, and
hopped up the last step. Not he; not so would his knightly soul mount to
the castle of his sweetheart and his babies. He alighted much lower,
often at the foot of the tree, and passed jauntily up the winding way
that led to them, hopping from branch to branch, pausing on each, and
circling the trunk as he went; now showing his trim violet-blue coat,
now his demure Quaker-drab vest and black necklace; and so he ascended
his spiral stair.
There is nothing demure about the blue jay, let me hasten to say, except
his vest; there is no pretension about him. He does not go around with
the meek manners of the dove, and then let his angry passions rise, in
spite of his reputation, as does that "meek and gentle" fellow-creature
on occasion. The blue jay takes his life with the utmost seriousness,
however it may strike a looker-on. While his helpmeet is on the nest, it
is, according to the blue jay code, his duty, as well as it is plainly
his pleasure, to provide her with food, which consequently he does;
later, it is his province not only to feed, but to protect the family,
which also he accomplishes with much noise and bluster. Before the young
are out comes his hardest task, keeping the secret of the nest, which
obliges him to control his naturally boisterous tendencies; but even in
this he is successful, as I saw in the case of a bird whose mate was
sitting in an apple-tree close beside a house. There, he was the soul of
discretion, and so subdued in manner that one might be in the vicinity
all day and never suspect the presence of either. All the comings and
goings took place in silence, over the top of the tree, and I have
watched the nest an hour at a time without being able to see a sign of
its occupancy, except the one thing a sitting bird cannot hide, the
tail. And, by the way, how providential--from the bird student's point
of view--that birds have tails! They can, it is true, be narrowed to the
width of one feather and laid against a convenient twig, but they cannot
be wholly suppressed, nor drawn down out of sight into the nest with the
rest of the body.
When the young blue jays begin to speak for themselves, and their
vigilant protector feels that the precious secret can no longer be kept,
then he arouses the neighborhood with the announcement that here is a
nest he is bound to protect with his life; that he is engaged in
performing his most solemn duty, and will not be disturbed. His air is
that so familiar in bigger folk, of daring the whole world to "knock a
chip off his shoulder," and he goes about with an appearance of
important business on hand very droll to see.
The bearing of the mother of the pine-tree brood was somewhat different
from that of her mate, and by their manners only could the pair be
distinguished. Whatever may be Nature's reason for dressing the sexes
unlike each other in the feathered world,--which I will leave for the
wise heads to settle,--it is certainly an immense advantage to the
looker-on in birddom. When a pair are facsimiles of each other, as are
the jays, it requires the closest observation to tell them apart;
indeed, unless there is some defect in plumage, which is not uncommon,
it is necessary to penetrate their personal characteristics, to become
familiar with their idiosyncrasies of habit and manner. In the pine-tree
family, the mother had neither the presence of mind nor the bluster of
the partner of her joys. When I came too near the nest tree, she greeted
me with a plaintive cry, a sort of "craw! craw!" at the same time
"jouncing" herself violently, thus protesting against my intrusion;
while he saluted me with squawks that made the welkin ring. Neither of
them paid any attention to me, so long as I remained upon a stationary
bench not far from their tree; they were used to seeing people in that
place, and did not mind them. It was the unexpected that they resented.
Having established our habits, birds in general insist that we shall
govern ourselves by them, and not depart from our accustomed orbit.
On near acquaintance, I found the jay possessed of a vocabulary more
copious than that of any other bird I know, though the flicker does not
lack variety of expression. When some aspiring scientist is ready to
study the language of birds, I advise him to experiment with the blue
jay. He is exceedingly voluble, always ready to talk, and not in the
least backward in exhibiting his accomplishments. The low-toned,
plaintive sounding conversation of the jays with each other, not only
beside the nest, but when flying together or apart, or in brief
interviews in the lilac bush, pleased me especially, because it was
exactly the same prattle that a pet blue jay was accustomed to address
to me; and it confirmed what I had always believed from his manner, that
it was his most loving and intimate expression, the tone in which he
addresses his best beloved.
Beside the well-known squawk, which Thoreau aptly calls "the brazen
trump of the impatient jay," the shouts and calls and war-cries of the
bird can hardly be numbered, and I have no doubt each has its definite
meaning. More rarely may be heard a clear and musical two-note cry,
sounding like "ke-lo! ke-lo!" This seems to be something special in the
jay language, for not only is it peculiar and quite unlike every other
utterance, but I never saw the bird when he delivered it, and I was long
in tracing it home to him. Aside from the cries of war and victory, jays
have a great variety of notes of distress; they can put more anguish and
despair into their tones than any other living creature of my
acquaintance. Some, indeed, are so moving that the sympathetic hearer is
sure that, at the very least, the mother's offspring are being murdered
before her eyes; and on rushing out, prepared to risk his life in their
defense, he finds, perhaps, that a child has strayed near the tree, or
something equally dreadful has occurred. Jays have no idea of relative
values; they could not make more ado over a heart-breaking calamity than
they do over a slight annoyance. Some of their cries, notably that of
the jay baby, sound like the wail of a human infant. As to one curious
utterance in the jay _repertoire_, I could not quite make up my mind
whether it was a real call to arms, or intended as a joke on the
neighborhood. When a bird, without visible provocation, suddenly burst
out with this loud two-note call, instantly every feathered individual
was on the alert,--sprang to arms, as it were. Blue jays joined in,
robins hurried to the tops of the tallest trees and added their excited
notes, with jerking wings and tail, and at the second or third
repetition the whole party precipitated itself as one bird--upon what?
Nothing that I could discover.
XII.
STORY OF THE NESTLINGS.
While I was studying the manners and customs of the bird in blue, babies
were growing up in the pine-tree nest. Five days after I began to
observe, I saw little heads above the edge. On the sixth day they began,
as mothers say, to "take notice," stirring about in a lively way,
clambering up into sight, and fluttering their draperies over the edge.
Now came busy and hungry times in the jay family; the mother added her
forces, and both parents worked industriously from morning till night.
On the seventh day I was up early, as usual, and, also as usual, my
first act was to admire the view from my window. I fancied it was the
most beautiful in the early morning, when the sun, behind the rampart of
locust and other trees, threw the yard into deep shade, painting a
thousand shadow pictures on the grass; but at still noon, when every
perfect tree stood on its own shadow, openings looked dark and
mysterious, and a bird was lost in the depths, then I was sure it was
never so lovely; again at night, when wrapped in darkness, and all
silent except the subdued whisper of the pine, with its
"Sound of the Sea,
O mournful tree,
In thy boughs forever clinging,"
I knew it could not be surpassed. I was up early, as I said, when the
dove was cooing to his mate in the distance, and before human noises had
begun, and then I heard the baby cry from the pine-tree,--a whispered
jay squawk, constantly repeated.
On this day the first nestling mounted the edge of his high nursery, and
fluttered his wings when food approached. Every night after that it grew
more and more difficult to settle the household in bed, for everybody
wanted to be on top; and no sooner would one arrange himself to his mind
than some "under one," not relishing his crushed position, would
struggle out, step over his brothers and sisters, and take his place on
top, and then the whole thing would have to be done over. I think that
mamma had often to put a peremptory end to these difficulties by sitting
down on them, for frequently it was a very turbulent-looking nest when
she calmly placed herself upon it.
Often, in those days, I wished I could put myself on a level with that
little castle in the air, and look into it, filled to the brim with
beauty as I knew it was. But I had not long to wait, for speedily it
became too full, and ran over into the outside world. On the eighth day
one ambitious youngster stepped upon the branch beside the nest and
shook himself out, and on the ninth came the plunge into the wide, wide
world. While I was at breakfast he made his first effort, and on my
return I saw him on a branch about a foot below the nest, the last step
on papa's winding stair. Here he beat his wings and plumed himself
vigorously, rejoicing, no doubt, in his freedom and in plenty of room.
Again and again he nearly lost his balance, in his violent attempts to
dress his beautiful plumage, and remove the last remnant of nest
mussiness. But he did not fall, and at last he began to look about him.
One cannot but wonder what he thought when he
"First opened wondering eyes and found
A world of green leaves all around,"
looking down upon us from his high perch, complete to the little black
necklace, and lacking only length of tail of being as big as his
parents.
After half an hour of restless putting to rights, the little jay sat
down patiently to wait for whatever might come to him. The wind got up
and shook him well, but he rocked safely on his airy seat. Then some one
approached. He leaned over with mouth open, and across the yard I heard
his coaxing voice. But alas! though he was on the very threshold, the
food-bearer omitted that step, and passed him by. Then the little one
looked up wistfully, apparently conscious of being at a disadvantage.
Did he regret the nest privileges he had abandoned? Should he retrace
his steps and be a nestling? That the thought passed through his head
was indicated by his movements. He raised himself on his legs, turned
his face to his old home, and started up, even stepped one small twig
nearer. But perish the thought! he would not go back! He settled himself
again on his seat.
All things come in time to him who can wait, and the next provision
stopped at the little wanderer. His father alighted beside him and fed
him two mouthfuls. Thus fortified, his ambition was roused, and his
desire to see more, to do more. He began to jump about on his perch,
facing first this way, then that; he crept to the outer end of the
branch he was on, and was lost to view behind a thick clump of pine
needles. In a few minutes he returned, considered other branches near,
and, after some study, did really go to the nearest one. Then, step by
step, very deliberately, he mounted the winding stair of his father,
using, however, every little twig that the elder had vaulted over at a
bound. Finally he reached the branch opposite his birthplace, only the
tree-trunk between. The trunk was small, home was invitingly near, he
was tired; the temptation was too great, and in a minute he was cuddled
down with his brothers, having been on a journey of an hour. In the
nest, all this time, there had been a hurry and skurry of dressing, as
though the house were to be vacated, and no one wished to be late. After
a rest and probably a nap, the ambitious young jay took a longer trip:
he flew to the next tree, and, I believe, returned no more.
The next day was spent by all the nestlings in hopping about the three
branches on which their home was built, making beautiful pictures of
themselves every moment; but whenever the bringer of supplies drew near,
each little one hastened to scramble back to the nest, to be ready for
his share. The last day in the old home had now arrived. One by one the
birdlings flew to the maple, and turned their backs on their native tree
forever; and that night the "mournful tree" was entirely deserted.
The exit was not accomplished without its excitement. After tea, as I
was congratulating myself that they were all safely out in the world,
without accident, suddenly there arose a terrible outcry, robin and blue
jay voices in chorus. I looked over to the scene of the fray, and saw a
young jay on the ground, and the parents frantic with anxiety.
Naturally, my first impulse was to go to their aid, and I started; but I
was saluted with a volley of squawks that warned me not to interfere. I
retired meekly, leaving the birds to deal with the difficulty as they
best could, while from afar I watched the little fellow as he scrambled
around in the grass. He tried to fly, but could not rise more than two
feet. Both the elders were with him, but seemed unable to help him, and
night was coming on. I resolved, finally, to "take my life in my hands,"
brave those unreasoning parents, and place the infant out of the way of
cats and boys.
As I reached the doorstep I saw that the youngster had begun to climb
the trunk of a locust-tree. I stood in amazement and saw that baby climb
six feet straight up the trunk. He did it by flying a few inches,
clinging to the bark and resting, then flying a few inches more. I
watched, breathless, till he got nearly to the lowest branch, when alas!
his strength or his courage gave out, and he fell back to the ground.
But he pulled himself together, and after a few minutes more of
struggling through the grass he came to the trunk of the maple next his
native pine. Up this he went in the same way, till he reached a branch,
where I saw him sitting with all the dignity of a young jay (old jays
have no dignity). While he was wrestling with fate and his life was in
the balance, the parents had kept near him and perfectly silent, unless
some one came near, when they filled the air with squawks, and appeared
so savage that I honestly believe they would have attacked any one who
had tried to lend a hand.
But still the little blue-coat had not learned sufficient modesty of
endeavor, for the next morning he found himself again in the grass. He
tried climbing, but unfortunately selected a tree with branches higher
than he could hold out to reach; so he fell back to the ground. Then
came the inexorable demands of breakfast, with which no one who has been
up since four o'clock will decline to comply. On my return, the
straggler was mounted on a post that held a tennis net, three or four
feet from the ground. One of the old birds was on the rope close by him,
and there I left them. Once more I saw him fall, but I concluded that
since he had learned to climb, and the parents would not accept my
assistance any way, he must take care of himself. I suppose he was the
youngest of the brood, who could not help imitating his elders, but was
not strong enough to do as they did. On the following day he was able to
keep his place, and he came to the ground no more.
From that day I saw, and, what was more evident, heard the jay babies
constantly, though they wandered far from the place of their birth.
Their voices waxed stronger day by day; from morning to night they
called vigorously; and very lovely they looked as they sat on the
branches in their brand-new fluffy suits, with their tails a little
spread, and showing the snowy borderings beautifully. Twenty-two days
after they bade farewell to the old home before my window they were
still crying for food, still following their hard-working parents, and,
though flying with great ease, never coming to the ground (that I could
see), and apparently having not the smallest notion of looking out for
themselves.
XIII.
BLUE JAY MANNERS.