When, as sometimes happens, I feel an inclination to seek out new lands
in my own country, or in other countries, to see what Nature is doing
there, and what guise she wears, something prompts me to pause, and
after a while to say to myself: "Look a little closer into the nature
right at your own door; do a little intensive observation at home, and
see what that yields you. The enticement of the far-away is mostly in
your imagination; let your eyes and your imagination play once more on
the old familiar birds and objects."
One season in my walks to the woods I was on the lookout for a natural
bracket among the tree-branches, to be used in supporting a book-shelf.
I did not find it; but one day in a shad-blow tree, within a few feet
from the corner of my own house, I found what I was searching for,
perfect in every particular--the right angle and the supporting brace,
or hypothenuse. It gave me a hint I have not forgotten.
I find that one has only to overcome a little of his obtuseness and
indifference and look a little more closely upon the play of wild life
about him to realize how much interesting natural history is being
enacted every day before his very eyes--in his own garden and dooryard
and apple-orchard and vineyard. If one's mind were only alert and
sensitive enough to take it all in! Whether one rides or walks or sits
under the trees, or loiters about the fields or woods, the play of wild
life is going on about him, and, if he happens to be blessed with the
seeing eye and the hearing ear, is available for his instruction and
entertainment. On every farm in the land a volume of live natural
history goes to waste every year because there is no historian to note
the happenings.
The drama of wild life goes on more or less behind screens--a screen of
leaves or of grass, or of vines, or of tree-trunks, and only the alert
and sympathetic eye penetrates it. The keenest of us see only a mere
fraction of it. If one saw one tenth of the significant happenings that
take place on his few acres of orchard, lawn, and vineyard in the course
of the season, or even of a single week, what a harvest he would have!
The drama of wild life is played rapidly; the actors are on and off the
stage before we fairly know it, and the play shifts to other stages.
I wonder how many of the scores of persons passing along the road
between my place and the railway station one early May day became aware
that a rare bird incident was being enacted in the trees over their
heads. It was the annual _sängerfest_ of the goldfinches--one of the
prettiest episodes in the lives of any of our birds, a real musical
reunion of the goldfinch tribe, apparently a whole township, many
hundreds of them, filling scores of the tree-tops along the road and in
the groves with a fine, sibilant chorus which the ear refers vaguely to
the surrounding tree-tops, but which the eye fails adequately to account
for. It comes from everywhere, but from nowhere in particular. The birds
sit singly here and there amid the branches, and it is difficult to
identify the singers. It is a minor strain, but multitudinous, and fills
all the air. The males are just donning their golden uniforms, as if to
celebrate the blooming of the dandelions, which, with the elm-trees,
afford them their earliest food-supply. While they are singing they are
busy cutting out the green germs of the elm flakes, and going down to
the ground and tearing open the closed dandelion-heads that have shut up
to ripen their seeds, preparatory to their second and ethereal flowering
when they become spheres of fragile silver down.
Whether this annual reunion of the goldfinches should be called a
dandelion festival, or a new-coat festival, or whether it is to bring
the sexes together preliminary to the mating-season, I am at a loss to
decide. It usually lasts a week or more, and continues on wet days as
well as on fair. It all has a decidedly festive air, like the fête-days
of humans. I know of nothing like it among other birds. It is the
manifestation of something different from the flocking instinct; it is
the social and holiday instinct, bringing the birds together for a brief
season, as if in celebration of some special event or purpose. I have
observed it in my vicinity every spring for many years, usually in April
or early May, and it is the prettiest and most significant bird episode,
involving a whole species, known to me.
The goldfinch has many pretty ways. He is one of our most amiable birds.
So far as my knowledge goes, he is not capable of one harsh note. His
tones are all either joyous or plaintive. In his spring reunions they
are joyous. In the peculiar flight-song in which he indulges in the
mating season, beating the air vertically with his round, open wings,
his tones are fairly ecstatic. His call to his mate when she is
brooding, and when he circles about her in that long, billowy flight,
the crests of his airy waves being thirty or forty feet apart, calling,
"Perchic-o-pee, perchic-o-pee," as if he were saying, "For love of thee,
for love of thee," and she calling back, "Yes, dearie; yes, dearie"--his
tones at such times express contentment and reassurance.
When any of his natural enemies appear--a hawk, a cat, a jay--his tones
are plaintive and appealing. "Pit-y, pit-y!" he cries in sorrow and not
in anger.
When with his mate he leads their brood about the August thistles, the
young call in a similar tone. When in July the nesting has begun, the
female talks the prettiest "baby talk" to her mate as he feeds her. The
nest-building rarely begins till thistledown can be had--so literally
are all the ways of this darling bird ways of softness and gentleness.
The nest is a thick, soft, warm structure, securely fastened in the fork
of a maple or an apple-tree.
None of our familiar birds endear themselves to us more than does the
bluebird. The first bluebird in the spring is as welcome as the blue sky
itself. The season seems softened and tempered as soon as we hear his
note and see his warm breast and azure wing. His gentle manners, his
soft, appealing voice, not less than his pleasing hues, seem born of the
bright and genial skies. He is the spirit of the April days incarnated
in a bird. He has the quality of winsomeness, like the violet and the
speedwell among the flowers. Not strictly a songster, yet his every note
and call is from out the soul of harmony. The bluebird is evidently an
offshoot from the thrush family, and without the thrush's gift of song;
still his voice affords us much of the same pleasure.
How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer
them suitable nesting-retreats! Bring them something from nature,
something with the bark on--a section of a dry beech or maple limb in
which the downy woodpecker has excavated his chamber and passed the
winter or reared his brood; fasten it in early spring upon the corner of
your porch, or on the trunk of a near-by tree, and see what interesting
neighbors you will soon have. One summer I brought home from one of my
walks to the woods a section, two or three feet long, of a large yellow
birch limb which contained such a cavity as I speak of, and I wired it
to one of the posts of the rustic porch at Woodchuck Lodge. The next
season a pair of bluebirds reared two broods in it. The incubation of
the eggs for the second brood was well under way when I appeared upon
the scene in early July. My sudden presence so near their treasures, and
my lingering there with books and newspapers, disturbed the birds a good
deal. The first afternoon the mother bird did not enter the cavity for
hours. I shall always remember the pretty and earnest manner in which
the male tried to reassure her and persuade her that the danger was not
so imminent as it appeared to be, probably encouraging a confidence in
his mate which he did not himself share. The mother bird would alight at
the entrance to the chamber, but, with her eye fixed upon the man with
the newspaper, feared to enter. The male, perched upon the telegraph
wire fifty feet away, would raise his wings and put all the love and
assurance in his voice he was capable of, apparently trying to dispel
her fears. He would warble and warble, and make those pretty wing
gestures over and over, saying so plainly: "It is all right, my dear,
the man is harmless--absorbed there in his newspaper. Go in, go in, and
keep warm our precious eggs!" How long she hesitated! But as night grew
near she grew more and more anxious, and he more and more eloquent.
Finally she alighted upon the edge of the overhanging roof and peered
down hesitatingly. Her mate applauded and encouraged till finally she
made the plunge and entered the hole, but instantly came out again; her
heart failed her for a moment; but she soon returned and remained
inside. Then her mate flew away toward the orchard, uttering a cheery
note which doubtless she understood.
The birds soon became used to my presence and their household matters
progressed satisfactorily. Both birds took a hand in feeding the young,
which grew rapidly. When they were nearly ready to leave the nest, a
cruel fate befell them: I slept upon the porch, and one night I was
awakened by the cry of young bluebirds, and the sound of feet like those
of a squirrel on the roof over me. Then I heard the cry of a young bird
proceed from the butternut-tree across the road opposite the house. I
said to myself, "A squirrel or an owl is after my birds." The cry coming
so quickly from the butternut-tree made me suspect an owl, and that the
bird whose cry I heard was in his talons. I was out of my cot and up to
the nest in a moment, but the tragedy was over; the birds were all gone,
and the night was silent. In the morning I found that a piece of the
brittle birch limb had been torn away, enlarging the entrance to the
cavity so that the murderous talons of the owl could reach in and seize
the young birds. I had been aroused in time to hear the marauder on the
roof with one, and then hear its cry as he carried it to the tree. In
the grass in front I found one of the young, unable to fly, but
apparently unhurt. I put it back in the nest, but it would not stay. The
spell of the nest was broken, and the young bird took to the grass
again. The parent birds were on hand, much excited, and, when I tried to
return the surviving bird to the nest, the male came at me fiercely,
apparently charging the whole catastrophe to me.
We had strong proof the previous season that an owl, probably the
screech owl, prowled about the house at night. A statuette of myself in
clay which a sculptor was modeling was left out one night on the porch,
and in the morning its head was unusually bowed. The prints of a bird's
talons upon the top told what had happened. In the bronze reproduction
of that statuette the head has more of a droop than the artist at first
planned to give it.
The next season the bluebirds occupied the cavity in the birch limb
again, but before my arrival in July the owls had again cleaned them
out. In so doing they had ripped the cavity open nearly to the bottom.
For all that, early the following May bluebirds were occupying the
cavity again. It held three eggs when I arrived. I looked over the
situation and resolved to try to head off the owl this time, even at the
risk of driving the bluebirds away. I took a strip of tin several inches
wide and covered the slit with it and wired it fast. Then I obtained a
broad strip of dry birch-bark, wrapped it about the limb over the tin,
and wired it fast, leaving the entrance to the nest in its original
form. I knew the owl could not slit the tin; the birch-bark would hide
it and preserve in a measure the natural appearance of the branch. When
the bluebirds saw what had happened to their abode, they were a good
deal distressed; they could no longer see their eggs through the slit
which the owl had made, and they refused to enter the cavity. They hung
about all day, uttering despondent notes, approaching the nest at times,
but hesitating even to alight upon the roof above it. Occasionally the
female would fly away toward the distant woods or hills uttering that
plaintive, homesick note which seemed to mean farewell. The male would
follow her, calling in a more cheery and encouraging tone. Once the
couple were gone three or four hours, and I concluded they had really
deserted the place. But just before sundown they were back again, and
the female alighted at the entrance to the nest and looked in. The male
called to her cheerily; still she would not enter, but joined him on the
telephone wire, where the two seemed to hold a little discussion.
Presently the mother bird flew to the nest again, then to the roof above
it, then back to the nest, and entered it till only her tail showed,
then flew back to the wire beside her mate. She was evidently making up
her mind that the case was not hopeless. After a little more
maneuvering, and amid the happy, reassuring calls of her mate, she
entered the nest cavity and remained, and I was as well pleased as was
her mate.
No owls disturbed them this time, and the brood of young birds was
brought off in due season. In July a second brood of four was
successfully reared and sent forth on their career.
The oriole nests in many kinds of trees--oaks, maples, apple-trees,
elms--but her favorite is the elm. She chooses the end of one of the
long drooping branches where a group of small swaying twigs affords her
suitable support. It is the most unlikely place imaginable for any but a
pendent nest, woven to half a dozen or more slender, vertical twigs,
and swaying freely in the wind. Few nests are so secure, so hidden, and
so completely sheltered from the rains by the drooping leaves above and
around it. It is rarely discoverable except from directly beneath it. I
think a well-built oriole's nest would sustain a weight of eight or ten
pounds before it would be torn from its moorings. They are also very
partial to the ends of branches that swing low over the highway. One May
I saw two female orioles building their nests twenty or twenty-five feet
above our State Road, where automobiles and other vehicles passed nearly
every minute all the day. An oriole's nest in a remote field far from
highways and dwellings is a rare occurrence.
Birds of different species differ as widely in skill in nest-building as
they do in song. From the rude platform of dry twigs and other coarse
material of the cuckoo, to the pendent, closely woven pouch of the
oriole, the difference in the degree of skill displayed is analogous to
the difference between the simple lisp of the cedar-bird, or the little
tin whistle of the "chippie," and the golden notes of the wood thrush,
or the hilarious song of the bobolink.
Real castles in the air are the nests of the orioles; no other nests are
better hidden or apparently more safe from the depredations of crows and
squirrels. To start the oriole's nest successfully is quite an
engineering feat. The birds inspect the branches many times before they
make a decision. When they have decided on the site, the mother bird
brings her first string or vegetable fiber and attaches it to a twig by
winding it around and around many times, leaving one or both ends
hanging free. I have nests where these foundation strings are wound
around a twig a dozen times. In her blind windings and tuckings and
loopings the bird occasionally ties a substantial knot, but it is never
the result of a deliberate purpose as some observers contend, but purely
a matter of chance. When she uses only wild vegetable fibers, she
fastens it to the twig by a hopeless kind of tangle. It is about the
craziest kind of knitting imaginable. After the builder has fastened
many lines to opposite twigs, their ends hanging free, she proceeds to
span the little gulf by weaving them together. She stands with her claws
clasped one to each side, and uses her beak industriously, looping up
and fastening the loose ends. I have stood in the road under the nest
looking straight up till my head swam, trying to make out just how she
did it, but all I could see was the bird standing astride the chasm she
was trying to bridge, and busy with the hanging strings. Slowly the maze
of loose threads takes a sacklike form, the bottom of the nest thickens,
till some morning you see the movement of the bird inside it; her beak
comes through the sides from within, like a needle or an awl, seizes a
loose hair or thread, and jerks it back through the wall and tightens
it. It is a regular stitching or quilting process. The course of any
particular thread or fiber is as irregular and haphazard as if it were
the work of the wind or the waves. There is plan, but no conscious
method of procedure. In fact, a bird's nest is a growth. It is not
something builded as we build, in which judgment, design, forethought
enter; it is the result of the blind groping of instinct which rarely
errs, but which does not see the end from the beginning, as reason does.
The oriole sometimes overhands the rim of her nest with strings and
fibers to make it firm, and to afford a foundation for her to perch
upon, but it is like the pathetic work which an untaught blind child
might do under similar conditions. The birds use fine, strong strings in
their nest-building at their peril. Many a tragedy results from it. I
have an oriole's nest sent me from Michigan on the outside of which is a
bird's dried foot with a string ingeniously knotted around it. It would
be difficult to tie so complicated a knot. The tragedy is easy to read.
Another nest sent me from the Mississippi Valley is largely made up of
fragments of fish-line with the fish-hooks on them. But there is no sign
that the bird came to grief using this dangerous material. Where the
lives of the wild creatures impinge upon our lives is always a
danger-line to them. They are partakers of our bounty in many ways, but
they pay a tax to fate in others.
The orioles in my part of the country always use the same material in
the body of their nests--a kind of soft, gray, flaxlike fiber which they
apparently get from some species of everlasting flower. Woven together
and quilted through with strings and horse-hairs, it makes strong, warm,
feltlike walls. In the nest sent me from Michigan the walls are made of
something that suggests brown human hair, except that it is too hard and
brittle for hair.
Our orchard oriole also makes a pendent nest, but not so deep and
pocketlike as that of the Baltimore oriole, and showing no such
elaborate use of strings and hairs. It is made entirely of some sort of
dried grass, very elaborately woven together.
Bullock's oriole of California weaves its nest entirely of the long,
strong threads which it draws out of the palm-leaves. The only one I
have seen was suspended from the under side of one of those leaves.
I think the prize nest of the woods, if we except the nest of the
hummingbird, is that of the wood pewee. It is as smooth and compact and
symmetrical as if turned in a lathe out of some soft, feltlike
substance. Of course, the phœbe's artistic masonry under the shelving
rocks, covered with moss and lined with feathers, or with the finest dry
grass and bark fibers, sheltered from the storms and beyond the reach
of four-footed prowlers, is almost ideal. It certainly is a happy
thought.
The least flycatcher, the kingbird, the cedar-bird, the goldfinch, the
indigo-bird, are all fine nest-builders, each with a style of its own.
About the most insecure nest in our trees is that of the little social
sparrow, or "chippie." When the sudden summer storms come, making the
tree-tops writhe as if in agony, I think of this frail nest amid the
tossing branches. Pass through the grove or orchard after the tempest is
over, and you are pretty sure to find several wrecked nests upon the
ground. "Chippie" has never learned the art of nest-building in trees.
She is a poor architect. She should have kept to the ground or to the
low bushes. The true tree nest-builders weave their nests fast to the
branches, but "Chippie" does not; she simply arranges her material
loosely between them, where the nest is supported, but not secured. She
seems pathetically ignorant of the fact that there are such things as
wind and storm. Hence her frail structure is more frequently dislodged
from the trees than that of any other bird.
Recently, after a day of violent northwest wind, I found a wrecked
robin's nest and eggs upon the lawn under a maple--not a frequent
spectacle. The robin's firm masonry is usually proof against wind and
rain, but in this case the nest was composed almost entirely of dry
grass; there was hardly a trace of mud in it, hence it was flexible and
yielding, and had no grip of the branches. It was evidently the second
nest of the pair this season, and the second nest in summer of any
species of bird is frailer and more of a makeshift than the first nest
in spring. Comparatively few of our birds attempt to bring off a second
brood unless the first attempt has been defeated, but the robin is sure
to bring off two, and may bring off three. But the robin is a hustler,
probably the most enterprising of all our birds. I recall a mother robin
that, in late June, repaired a nest in a climbing rosebush which her
first brood had vacated only a week before. A brood of wood thrushes
which left their nest about the same time was still being fed by their
parents about the place.
The song sparrow, the social sparrow, the phœbe, the bluebird, all
build a second nest. The first brood of the bluebird will be looked
after by the father in some near-by grove or orchard, while the mother
starts a new family in the old nest. If all goes well with them, those
two bluebird families will unite and keep together in a loose flock till
they migrate in the fall.
So many of our birds nest about our houses and lawns and gardens and
along our highways, that at first sight it seems as if they must be
drawn there by a sense of greater security for their eggs and young. The
robin has become almost a domestic institution. It is rarely that one
finds a robin's nest very far from a human habitation. One spring there
were four robins' nests on my house and outbuildings--in the vines, on
window-sills, or other coigns of vantage. There were at the same time at
least fifteen robins' nests on my lot of sixteen acres, and I am quite
certain that I have not seen all there were. They were in sheds and
apple-trees and spruces and cedars, in the ends of piles of grape-posts,
in rosebushes, in the summer-house, and on the porch. We did not expect
to get one of the early cherries, and might count ourselves lucky if we
got any of the later ones.
A robin has built her nest in my summer-house. She abuses me so when I
try to tarry there, after incubation has begun, that I take no comfort
and presently withdraw. Until her brood has flown, I am practically a
stranger in my open-air rest-house and study.
When the fish crows come egging in the spruces and maples about the
house, and I hear the screaming of the robins, I seize my gun and rush
out to protect them, but am not always successful, as the mischief is
often done before I get within reach; I am not sure but that the robins
think--if they think at all--that I am in league with the crows to
despoil them. I was not in time to save the eggs of the wood thrush the
other morning, when I heard the alarm calls of the birds, but I had the
satisfaction of seeing the black marauder go limping over the hill,
dropping quills from his wings at nearly every stroke. I am sure he will
not come back. The fish crow is one of the most active enemies of our
small birds. Of course, he only obeys his instincts in hunting out and
devouring their eggs and young, but I fancy I obey something higher than
instinct when I protest with powder and shot.
The birds do not mind the approach of the domestic animals, such as the
cow, the horse, the sheep, the pig, and they are only a little
suspicious of the dog, but the appearance of the cat fills them with
sudden alarm. I think that birds that have never before seen a cat join
in the hue and cry. What alarms one alarms all within hearing. The
orioles are probably the most immune from the depredations of crows and
jays and owls of all our birds, and yet they will join in the cry of
"Thief, thief!" when a crow appears. (The alarm cry of birds will even
arrest the attention of four-footed beasts, and often bring the
sportsman's stalking to naught.)
I fancy that Phœbe selects our sheds and bridges and porticoes for
her nesting-sites because they are so much more numerous than the
overhanging rocks where her forbears built. For the same reason certain
of the swallows and the swifts select our barns and chimneys.
If the birds themselves are not afraid to draw near us, why should their
instinct lead them to feel that their enemies will be afraid of us? How
do they know that a jay or a crow or a red squirrel will be less timid
than they are? And why also, if they have such confidence in us, do they
raise such a hue and cry when we pass near their nests? The robin in my
summer-house knew, if she knew anything, that I had never raised a
finger against her. On the contrary, my hoe in the garden had unearthed
many a worm and slug for her. Still she sees in me only a possible
enemy, and tolerate me with my book or my newspaper near her nest she
will not. Another robin has built her nest in a rosebush that has been
trained to form an arch over the walk that leads to the kitchen door and
only a few yards from it; but whenever we pass and repass she scurries
away with loud, angry protests and keeps it up as long as we are in
sight, so that we do not feel at all complimented by her settling down
so near us. If one's appearance is so alarming, even when he is going to
hoe the garden, why did the intolerant bird set up her household gods so
near? If I keep away her enemies, why will she not be gracious enough to
regard me as her friend? The robin that trusted her brood to the
sheltering vines of the woodshed, and lined her nest with the hair of
our old gray horse--why should she scream, "Murder!" whenever any of us
go to the well a few feet away?
What is the real explanation of the fact that so many of our birds nest
so near our dwellings and yet show such unfriendliness when we come near
them? Their apparent confidence, on the one hand, contradicts their
suspicion on the other. Is it because we have here the workings of a new
instinct which has not yet adjusted itself to the workings of the older
instinct of solicitude for the safety of the nest and young? My own
interpretation is that birds are not drawn near us by any sense of
greater security in our vicinity. It is evident from the start that
there is an initial fear of us to be overcome. How, then, could the
sense of greater safety in our presence arise? Fear and trust do not
spring from the same root. How should the robins and thrushes know that
their enemies--the jays, the crows, and the like--are more afraid of
human beings than they are themselves? Hunted animals pursued by wolves
or hounds will at times take refuge in the haunts of men, not because
they expect human protection, but because they are desperate, and
oblivious to everything save some means of escape. If the hunted deer or
fox rushes into an open shed or a barn door, it is because it is
desperately hard-pressed, and sees and knows nothing but some object or
situation that it may place between itself and its deadly enemy. The
great fear obliterates all minor fears.
The key to the behavior of the birds in this respect may be found in the
Darwinian theory of natural selection. From the first settlement of the
country a few of the common birds, attracted by a more suitable or more
abundant food-supply, or other conditions, must inevitably have nested
near human dwellings. These birds would thrive better and succeed in
bringing off more young than those that nested in more exposed places.
Hence, their progeny would soon be in the ascendancy. All animals seem
to have associated memory. These birds would naturally return to the
scenes and conditions of their youth, and start their nests there. It
would not be confidence in men that would draw them; rather would the
truth be that the fear of man is inadequate to overcome or annul this
home attraction.
The catbird does not come to our vines on the veranda to nest from
considerations of safety, but because her line of descent runs through
such places. The catbirds and robins and phœbe-birds that were reared
far from human habitations doubtless return to such localities to rear
their young. The home sense in birds is strong. I have positive proof in
a few instances of robins and song sparrows returning successive years
to the same neighborhood. It is very certain, I think, that the
phœbe-birds that daub our porches with their mud, and in July leave
a trail of minute creeping and crawling pests, were not themselves
hatched and reared in the pretty, moss-covered structure under the
shelving rocks in the woods, or on the hillsides.
How different from the manners of the robins are the manners of a pair
of catbirds that have a nest in the honeysuckle against the side of the
first-floor sleeping-porch! Nothing seems farther from the nature of the
catbird than the hue and cry which the robin at times sets up. The
catbird is sly and dislikes publicity. An appealing feline _mew_ is her
characteristic note. She never raises her voice like the town-crier, as
the robin does, perched in the mean time where all eyes may behold him.
The catbird peers and utters her soft protest from her hiding-place in
the bushes. This particular pair of catbirds appeared in early May and
began slyly to look over the situation in the vines and bushes about the
house. All their proceedings were very stealthy; they were like two dark
shadows gliding about, avoiding observation--no tree-tops or house-tops
for them, but coverts close to the ground. We hoped they would divine
safety in the shadow of the cottage, but tried to act as if oblivious of
their goings and comings. We saw them now and then stealthily inspecting
the tangle of honeysuckle on the east side of the veranda, where a robin
last season reared a brood, and the low hedge of barberry-bushes on the
south side of the cottage, where a song sparrow had her nest. If they
come, which will they take, we wondered. Several times in the early
morning I heard the male singing vivaciously and confidently in the
thick of the honeysuckle. I guessed that the honeysuckle was the choice
of the male, and that his song was a pæan in praise of it, addressed to
his mate. But it was nearly a week before his musical argument prevailed
and the site was apparently agreed upon.
When the nest-building actually began, the birds were so shy about it
that, watch as I might, I failed to catch them in the act. One morning I
saw the mother bird in the garden with nesting-material in her beak, but
she failed to come to the honeysuckle with it while I watched from a
near-by covert. At the same time robins were flying here and there with
loaded beaks, and wood thrushes were going through the air trailing long
strips of white paper behind them, but the catbird was an emblem of
secrecy itself. She, too, brought fragments of white paper to her nest,
but no one saw her do it. Like other nest-builders, she apparently put
in her big strokes of work in the early morning before the sleepers on
the veranda were stirring. A few times my inquisitive eye, cautiously
peering over the railing, started her from the vine, but I never saw her
enter it with leaf, stick, or straw; yet slowly the nest grew and came
into shape, and finally received its finishing touches. So cautiously
had the birds proceeded that, were they capable of concepts like us, I
should fancy they flattered themselves that we had not the least
suspicion of their little secret. The male ceased to sing near the house
after the nest was begun. So much time elapsed after the finishing of
the nest before the first egg appeared in it that some members of the
household feared the birds had deserted it, especially as they were not
seen about the premises for several days. But the weather was wet and
cool, and the eggs ripened slowly. Then one morning the birds were seen
again, and one blue-green egg was discovered in the nest. The next
morning another egg was added, and a third egg on the third morning, and
a fourth on the fourth morning. In due time incubation began, and
thenceforth all went well with our dusky neighbors.
It is an anxious moment for all birds when their young leave the nest.
One noontime by the unusual mewing of a parent catbird I felt sure that
the critical time had come. Sure enough, there sat one of the young on a
twig a few inches above the nest, motionless and hushed. No lusty
response to the agitated cry of the mother, as is usually the case with
the robin. "No publicity" is the watchword of the young catbirds as well
as of the old. An hour or two later another young one was perched on a
branch, and before night, when no one was looking, they both
disappeared, leaving two motionless birds in the nest. The next morning
early, without any signs of alarm or agitation on the part of the old
birds, they took the important step. It could hardly have been much of a
flight with any of them, as their wing-quills were only partially
developed, and their tails were mere stubs. For several days afterward
no sign or sound of old or young was seen or heard. They were probably
keeping well concealed in the near-by trees or in the vines and
currant-bushes in the vineyard. In about a week the whole family
appeared briefly in upper branches of the maples near the house. The
young were distinguishable from the old only by their shorter tails. A
few days later the parent birds were seen moving stealthily through the
vines and bushes about the house, or perching on the near-by stakes that
supported the wire netting. Are they coming back for a second brood? was
the question in our minds.
Soon we began to hear snatches of song from the male, then one morning a
regular old-time burst of joy from him in the vine that held the old
nest. Then he sang in a syringa-bush near the window on the south side
of the cottage, and both birds were soon seen paying frequent visits to
the bush. We felt sure another brood was in the air. Whether or not the
first brood were now shifting for themselves, we did not know; they
never again appeared upon the scene. Finally, on the morning of the
Fourth of July, the foundation of a new nest was started in the
syringa-bush three feet from the ground, and barely four feet from the
window!
We had a view of the proceedings that the first site did not afford us.
The old nest appeared to be in perfect condition, but there was
evidently no thought with the birds of using it again, as the robins
sometimes do, and as bluebirds and cliff swallows always do. A new nest,
built of material almost identical with that of the old, and in a more
exposed position, was decided upon. It progressed rapidly, and I was
delighted to find that the male assisted in the building. Indeed, he was
fully as active as the female. Very often they were both in the nest
with material at the same moment. They seemed to agree perfectly. At
first I got the impression that the male was not quite as decided as the
female, and hesitated more, once or twice bringing material that he
finally rejected. But he soon warmed up to the work and certainly did
his share.
With most species of our birds the nest is entirely built by the female.
With the robin, the wood thrush, the phœbe, the oriole, the
hummingbird, the pewee, and many others, the male is only an interested
spectator of the proceeding. He usually attends his mate in her quest
for material, but does not lend a hand, or a bill. I think the cock
wren assists in nest-building. I know the male cedar-bird does, and
probably the male woodpeckers do also. The male rose-breasted grosbeak
assists in incubation, and has been seen to sing upon the nest. It seems
fair to infer that he assists in the nest-building also, but I am not
certain that he does, and I have heard another observer state that in a
nest which he watched the female apparently did it all.
My catbirds both worked overtime one afternoon at least, being on their
job as late as seven o'clock. In three days the nest was done, all but
touching up the interior. During the construction I laid out pieces of
twine and bits of white paper on the bushes and wire netting, also some
loose material from the outside of the old nest; all was quickly used.
How much labor the birds would have saved themselves had they pulled the
old nest to pieces and used the material a second time! I have known the
oriole to start a nest, then change her mind, and then detach some of
her strings and fibers and carry them to the new site; and I once saw a
"chebec" whose eggs had been destroyed pull the old nest to pieces and
rebuild it in a tree a hundred feet away.
The male catbird is slightly brighter and fresher-looking than his mate,
but we could easily tell her by her often simulating the actions of a
young bird when she came with material in her beak; she would alight on
a near-by post and slightly spread and quiver her wings in a tender,
beseeching kind of way. She would do this also when bringing food to her
first brood. When one of the parent birds of any species simulates by
voice or manner the young birds, it is always the female; her heart
would naturally be more a-quiver with anticipation than that of the
male.
On the fifth day the nest was completed and received its first egg.
There was considerable delay with the second egg, but it appeared on the
second or third day, and the third egg the following day. Then
incubation began. In twenty days from the day the nest was begun, the
birds were hatched, and in eleven days more they had quietly left the
nest.
A friend of mine who has a summer home on one of the trout-streams of
the Catskills discovered that the catbird was fond of butter, and she
soon had one of the birds coming every day to the dining-room window for
its lump of fresh butter, and finally entering the dining-room, perching
on the back of the chair, and receiving its morsel of butter from a fork
held in the mistress's hand. I think the butter was unsalted. My friend
was convinced after three years that the same pair of birds returned to
her each year, because each season the male came promptly for his
butter.
The furtive and stealthy manners of the catbird contrast strongly with
the frank, open manners of the thrushes. Its cousin the brown thrasher
goes skulking about in much the same way, flirting from bush to bush
like a culprit escaping from justice. But he does love to sing from the
April tree-tops where all the world may see and hear, if said world does
not come too near. In the South and West the thrasher also nests in the
vicinity of houses, but in New York and New England we must look for him
in remote, bushy fields. I do not know of any bad traits that go with
the thrasher's air of suspicion and secrecy, but I do know of one that
goes with the catbird's--I have seen her perch on the rim of another
bird's nest and deliberately devour the eggs. But only once. Whether or
not she frequently does this, I have no evidence. If she does, she is
doubtless so sly about it that she escapes observation.
I welcomed the catbird, though she is not so attractive a neighbor as
the wood thrush. She has none of the wood thrush's dignity and grace.
She skulks and slinks away like a culprit, while the wood thrush stands
up before you or perches upon a limb, and turns his spotted waistcoat
toward you in the most open and trusting manner. In fact, few birds have
such good manners as the wood thrush, and few have so much the manner of
a Paul Pry and eavesdropper as the catbird. The flight of the wood
thrush across the lawn is such a picture of grace and harmony, it is
music to the eye. The catbird seems saying, "There, there! I told you
so, pretty figure, pretty figure you make!" But the courteous thrush
(just here I heard the excited calls of robins and the hoarse, angry caw
of a crow, and rushed out hatless to see a fish crow fly away from the
maple in front of the Study, pursued by a mob of screeching robins. He
took refuge in the spruces above the house where the collected robins
abused him from surrounding branches. On my appearance he flew away, and
the robins dispersed)--but the courteous thrush, I say, invites the
good-breeding in you which he himself shows. The thrush never has the
air of a culprit, while the catbird seldom has any other air. But I
welcome them both. One shall stand for the harmony and repose of bird
life, and the other for its restlessness and curiosity. The songs and
the manners of birds correspond. The catbird, the brown thrasher, and
the mockingbird are all theatrical in their manners--full of gestures of
tail and wings, and their songs all imply an audience, while the serene
melody of the thrushes is in keeping with the grace and poise of their
behavior.
V