Even in birddom some of the styles come from Paris, where the _rouge
gorge_ smartens up his red waistcoat as regularly as the spring comes
round. Our staid American robin tries to follow suit, though he never
can equal his old-world models. Even the English redbreast excels him
in beauty and song. I must tell the truth, as an honest reporter,
though I am not a bit English, and would not exchange our _Merula
migratoria_ for a nightingale; for beauty is but feather-deep, and when
our robin shines up his yellow bill--a spring fashion of his own--the
song that comes from it is dearer than the pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow. That little relative of his whom our forefathers called
the "blue robin," has the same rufous color in his waistcoat, though
it stops so short it always seems as if the stuff must have given out.
No Parisian or London dandy set the style for his lovely coat. If ever
a fashion came down from heaven, that did; and it came to the fresh,
new world and stopped here. No blue-coats perch on the rails in old
England; perhaps because there is never clear sky enough to spare for a
bird's back. We have so much on this continent, that half a dozen birds
dress in the celestial hue; some of them, like the jay, all the year
round.
But indigo bunting, whose summer coat and vest seem interwoven of blue
sky and a thunder cloud, and then dipped in a sea-wave of foamy green,
is not so lavish of his beauty. His plain wife and children, who dress
almost like common sparrows, have only shreds and patches of blue in
their attire, and indigo _pater_ puts on the same dull shade for his
winter overcoat. But in spring, what a spruce old beau he is!--and
how he does like to show off in the tasseled oaks! So beautiful is
his changeable silk that one half suspects him of borrowing from the
peacock's wardrobe. A grain of that lordly fowl's disposition may have
mixed with the dye; for if there is a pointed spruce tree near, indigo
is sure to perch on the tip-top and sing until you look at him. Still,
he loves beauty for beauty's sake, and is not really vain like the
tanager.
That gorgeous bird actually sings, "_Here pretty, pretty here!_" with
variations, as if all loveliness focused in his feathers. He arrives
just when the tender young foliage of May will half veil his vivid
scarlet coat; and as it is less dependent on light than the indigo's,
he does not affect tree-tops, but perches under a spray of golden
oak leaves or the delicate green of an elm, and shines like a live
coal in a bed of leaves. If he were a British trooper he could not be
more resplendent in scarlet and black. Tanager is uniformed first for
conquest, then for guard duty. He wears his bright trappings during
courting and nesting time, and the rest of the year doffs his scarlet
and wears olive-green like that of his modest mate. He still carries
black wings and tail, however, to mark his sex.
So does gay little goldfinch, bird of winsome ways and a happy heart.
He, too, dresses up for courting; and how do you think he does it? All
winter long he has worn an olive-brown coat, as subdued as any finch's
needs to be; but when the willows begin to hint at the fashionable
spring color, and the spice bush breathes its name, and the dandelions
print the news on the grass and the forsythia emblazons it on every
lawn, and the sunset sky is a great bulletin board to announce it--then
this dainty bird peels off his dull winter overcoat, each tiny feather
dropping a tip, and lo! underneath a garb that a Chinese Chang might
covet. To match his wings and tail, he puts on a black cap, and then
you never saw a more perfect "glass of fashion and mold of form"--at
least that is Mme. Goldfinch's opinion.
"_No dis-pu-ting a-bout tastes!_" chirps chipping sparrow. He prefers
a dress of sober tints and thinks nothing so durable as gray and
black and brown. Though not a slave to fashion, he does freshen up a
bit in the spring and puts on a new cap of chestnut, not to be too
old fogyish. But he believes in wearing courting clothes all the year
round. Young chippies put on striped bibs until they are out of the
nursery, but the old folks like a plain shirt front.
No such notion has the barn-swallow. He believes in family equality,
even in the matter of clothes; and having been born in a pretty and
becoming suit, wears it all the time. When the cinquefoil fingers the
grass, you may look for his swallow-tailed coat in the air; and if
the April sun strikes its steel-blue broadcloth, and discloses the
bright chestnut muffler and the pale-tinted vest, you will rejoice that
old fashions prevail in swallow-land. These swift-flying birds have
something higher to think about than changing their clothes.
It seems otherwise with some birds of the meadow. That gay dandy,
the bobolink, for instance, lays himself out to make a sensation in
the breast of his fair one. When he started on his southern trip
last autumn, he wore a traveling-suit of buff and brown, not unlike
Mistress Bobolink's and the little Links'. No doubt he knew the danger
lurking in the reeds of Pennsylvania and the rice-fields of Carolina,
and hoped to escape observation while fattening there. In the spring,
if fortunate enough to have escaped the gunner, he flies back to his
northern home, "dressed to kill," in human phrase, happily not, in bird
language. Robert o'Lincoln is a funny fellow disguised as a bishop.
Richard Steele, the rollicking horse-guardsman, posing as a Christian
hero, is a human parallel. With a black vest buttoned to the throat, a
black cap and choker, bobolink's front is as solemn as the end-man's at
a minstrel show. But what a coat! Buff, white and black in eccentric
combination; and at the nape of the neck, a yellow posy, that deepens
with the buttercups and fades almost as soon. Bobby is original, but
he conforms to taste, and introduces no discordant color-tone into his
field of buttercups and clover. In his ecstatic flight he seems to
have caught a field flower on his back; and if a golden-hearted daisy
were to speak, surely it would be in such a joyous tongue.
A red, red rose never blooms in a clover meadow, and the grosbeak
does not go there for his chief spring adornment. Red roses do bloom
all the year, though none so lovely as the rose of June; and so the
grosbeak wears his distinctive flower at his throat the round year, but
it is loveliest in early summer. I do not know a prettier fashion--do
you?--for human kind or bird, than a flower over the heart. I fancy
that a voice is sweeter when a breast is thus adorned. If ever the rich
passion of a red, red rose finds expression, it is in the caressing,
exultant love-song of the rose-breasted grosbeak. The one who inspires
it looks like an overgrown sparrow; but grosbeak knows the difference,
if you do not. If that wise parent should ever be in doubt as to his
own son, who always favors the mother at the start, he has but to lift
up the youngster's wings, and the rose-red lining will show at once
that he is no common sparrow.
That pretty fashion of a contrast in linings is not confined to the
grosbeak. The flicker, too, has his wings delicately lined with--a
scrap of sunset sky. I do not know whether he found his material there
or lower down in a marsh of marigolds; but when he flies over your
head into the elm tree and plies his trade, you will see that he is
fitly named, golden-winged woodpecker. He makes no fuss over his spring
clothes. A fresh red tie, which, oddly enough, he wears on the back of
his neck, a retinting of his bright lining, a new gloss on his spotted
vest and striped coat, and his toilet is made. Madame Flicker is so
like her spouse that you would be puzzled to tell them apart, but for
his black mustache.
The flicker fashion of dressing alike may come from advanced notions
of equality; whatever its source, the purple finch is of another mind.
He sacrifices much, almost his own identity, to love of variety; and
yet he is never purple. His name simply perpetuates a blunder for which
no excuse can be offered. Pokeberry is his prevailing hue, but so
variously is it intermingled with brown at different times and seasons
and ages, that scarcely two finches look alike. The mother-bird wears
the protective colors of the sparrow, while young males seem to be
of doubtful mind which parent to copy; and so a purple finch family
presents diversity of attire puzzling to a novice.
But why, pray, should a bird family wear a uniform, as if a charity
school or a foundling hospital? The gay little warblers are not
institutional to that degree. An example of their originality is
redstart--another misnamed bird. He wears the colors of Princeton
College, or rather, the college wears his; and a lordly male privilege
it is, in both cases. His mate contents herself with pale yellow and
gray, while the young male waits three years before putting on his
father's coat. The first year he wears his mother's dress; the second,
a motley betwixt and between; the third, he is a tree "_candelita_,"
or little torch, lighting up his winter home in a Cuban forest, and
bringing Spanish fashions to New England with the May blossoms.
When dame nature in the spring
For her annual opening
Has her doors and windows washed by April showers;
When the sun has turned the key,
And the loosened buds are free
To come out and pile the shelving rocks with flowers;
When the maple wreathes her head
With a posy-garland red,
And the grass-blade sticks a feather in his cap;
When the tassels trim the birch,
And the oak-tree in the lurch
Hurries up to get some fringes for his wrap;
When the willow's yellow sheen
And the meadow's emerald green
Are the fashionable colors of the day;
When the bank its pledges old
Pays in dandelion gold,
And horse-chestnut folds its baby hands to pray--
Then from Cuba and the isles
Where a tropic sun beguiles,
And from lands beyond the Caribbean sea,
Every dainty warbler flocks
With a tiny music-box
And a trunk of pretty feathers duty-free.
And in colors manifold,
Orange, scarlet, blue, and gold,
Green and yellow, black, and brown and grays galore,
They will thread the forest aisles
With the very latest styles,
And a tune apiece to open up the score.
But they do not care to part
With their decorative art,
Which must always have the background of a tree;
And will surely bring a curse
To a grasping mind or purse,
Since God loves the birds as well as you and me.