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[Illustration: BLUE JAY
_1. Male._ _2, 3. Females_]
EVERYDAY BIRDS
ELEMENTARY STUDIES
BY
BRADFORD TORREY
_WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN
COLORS AFTER AUDUBON, AND
TWO FROM PHOTOGRAPHS_
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY BRADFORD TORREY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FIFTH IMPRESSION
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. TWO LITTLE KINGS 1
II. THE CHICKADEE 7
III. THE BROWN CREEPER 10
IV. THE BROWN THRASHER 15
V. THE BUTCHER-BIRD 19
VI. THE SCARLET TANAGER 22
VII. THE SONG SPARROW 26
VIII. THE FIELD SPARROW AND THE CHIPPER 30
IX. SOME APRIL SPARROWS 35
X. THE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK 40
XI. THE BLUE JAY 43
XII. THE KINGBIRD 47
XIII. THE HUMMINGBIRD 51
XIV. THE CHIMNEY SWIFT 56
XV. NIGHTHAWK AND WHIP-POOR-WILL 59
XVI. THE FLICKER 64
XVII. THE BITTERN 68
XVIII. BIRDS FOR EVERYBODY 82
XIX. WINTER PENSIONERS 87
XX. WATCHING THE PROCESSION 93
XXI. SOUTHWARD BOUND 99
INDEX 105
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
BLUE JAY (page 43) _Frontispiece_
GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET 2
CHICKADEE 8
BROWN CREEPER 12
BROWN THRASHER 16
SCARLET TANAGER 22
SONG SPARROW 26
ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK 40
RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD 52
NIGHTHAWK 60
WHIP-POOR-WILL 62
FLICKER 66
_The illustrations entitled A Downy Woodpecker and A Branch
Establishment, facing page 88, are from photographs by Mr. Frank M.
Chapman and were first printed in Bird-Lore._
EVERYDAY BIRDS
I
TWO LITTLE KINGS
The largest bird in the United States is the California vulture, or
condor, which measures from tip to tip of its wings nine feet and a
half. At the other end of the scale are the hummingbirds, one kind of
which, at least, has wings that are less than an inch and a half in
length. Next to these insect-like midgets come the birds which have
been well named in Latin “Regulus,” and in English “kinglets,”--that is
to say, little kings. The fitness of the title comes first from their
tiny size,--the chickadee is almost a giant in comparison,--and next
from the fact that they wear patches of bright color (crowns) on their
heads.
Two species of kinglets are found at one season or another in nearly
all parts of the United States, and are known respectively as the
golden-crown--or goldcrest--and the ruby-crown. The golden-crown
has on the top of its head an orange or yellow patch (sometimes one,
sometimes the other) bordered with black; the ruby-crown wears a very
bright red patch, though you may look at many specimens without finding
it. Only part of the birds have it,--the adult males, perhaps,--and
even those that have it do not always display it. The orange or yellow
of the goldcrest, on the other hand, is worn by all the birds, and is
never concealed. If you are a beginner in bird study, uncertain of
your species, look for the black stripes on the crown. If they are not
there, and the bird is really a kinglet, it must be a ruby-crown. You
may know it, also,--from the goldcrest, I mean,--by what looks like a
light-colored ring round the eye. In fact, one of the ruby-crown’s most
noticeable peculiarities is a certain bareheaded, large-eyed appearance.
Unless your home is near or beyond the northern boundary of the United
States, you need not look for either kinglet in summer. The ruby-crown
is to be seen during its migrations in spring and fall, the goldcrest
in fall, winter, and spring.
[Illustration: GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET
_1. Male._ _2. Female_]
At any time of the year they are well worth knowing. Nobody could look
at them without admiration; so pretty, so tiny, and so exceedingly
quick and graceful in their motions. Both species are of a prevailing
greenish or olive shade, with noticeable light-colored wing-bars, and
light, unstreaked, unspotted under parts.
The ruby-crown is famous as a singer. A genuine music-box, we may call
him. In spring, especially, he is often bubbling over with melody; a
rapid, wren-like tune, with sundry quirks and turns that are all his
own; on the whole decidedly original, with plenty of what musical
people call accent and a strongly marked rhythm or swing. Over and
over he goes with it, as if he could never have enough; beginning
with quick, separate, almost guttural notes, and winding up with a
_twittity, twittity, twittity_, which, once heard, is not likely to be
soon forgotten.
A very pleasing vocalist he surely is; and when his extreme smallness
is taken into account he is fairly to be esteemed a musical prodigy.
Every one who has written about the song, from Audubon down, has found
it hard to say enough about it. Audubon goes so far as to say that
it is as powerful as a canary’s, and much more varied and pleasing.
That I must think an exaggeration; natural enough, no doubt, under
the circumstances (romantic surroundings count for a good deal in all
questions of this kind), but still a stretching of the truth. However,
I give but my own opinion. Let my readers hear the bird, and judge
for themselves. They will enjoy him, whether or no. Every such new
acquaintance that a man makes is a new source of lifelong happiness.
The enormous California vulture is said to be almost dumb, having “no
vocal apparatus” and “emitting only a weak hissing sound.” What a
contrast between him and the ruby-crown,--a mere speck of a bird, but
with a musical nature and the voice of an artist. Precious stuff, they
say, comes in small packages. Even the youngest of us may have noticed
that it is always the smaller birds that sing.
But if all the singers are small birds, it is not true that all small
birds are singers. The golden-crowned kinglet, for example, is hardly
to be classed under that head. The gifts of Providence are various,
and are somewhat sparingly dealt out. One creature receives one
gift, another creature another,--just as is true of men, women, and
children. This boy “has an ear,” as the saying goes. He is naturally
musical. Give him a chance, and let him not be too much in love with
something else, and he will make a singer, or a player on instruments,
or possibly a composer. His brother has no ear; he can hardly tell Old
Hundred from Yankee Doodle. It is useless for him to “take lessons.”
He can paint, perhaps, or invent a machine, or make money, or edit a
paper, or teach school, or preach sermons, or practice medicine; but he
will never win a name in the concert room.
The case of the golden-crown is hardly so hopeless as that, I am glad
to believe; for if he is not much of a musician now, as he surely is
not, he is not without some signs of an undeveloped musical capacity.
The root of the matter seems to be in him. He tries to sing, at any
rate, and not unlikely, as time goes on,--say in a million or two of
years,--he may become as capable a performer as the ruby-crown is at
present. There is no telling what a creature may make of himself if
his will is good, and he has astronomical time in which to work. The
dullest of us might learn something with a thousand years of schooling.
What you will mostly hear from the goldcrest is no tune, but a hurried
_zee, zee, zee_, repeated at intervals as he flits about the branches
of a tree, or, less often, through the mazes of a piece of shrubbery.
His activity is wonderful, and his motions are really as good as music.
No dancing could be prettier to look at. All you need is eyes to see
him. But you will have to “look sharp.” Now he is there for an instant,
snatching a morsel or letting out a _zee, zee, zee_. Now he is yonder,
resting upon the air, hovering against a tuft of pine needles, his
wings all in a mist, they beat so swiftly. So through the tree he goes,
and from one tree to another, till presently he is gone for good.
Once in a great while you may find him feeding among the dry leaves
on the ground. Then you can really watch him, and had better make the
most of your opportunity. Or you may catch him exploring bushes or low
savins, which is a chance almost as favorable. The great thing is to
become familiar with his voice. With that help you will find him ten
times as often as without it. He is mostly a bird of the woods, and
prefers evergreens, though he does not confine himself to them.
If you do not know him already, it will be a bright and memorable
day--though it be the dead of winter--when you first see him and are
able to call him by his regal name, _Regulus satrapa_. It is a great
pity that so common and lovely a creature, one of the beauties of the
world, should be unseen by so many good people. It is true, as we say
so often about other things, that they do not know what they miss; but
they miss a good deal, notwithstanding.
II
THE CHICKADEE
The chickadee, like many other birds, takes his name from his notes;
from some of his notes, that is to say, for he has many others besides
his best-known _chick-a-dee-dee-dee_. His most musical effort, regarded
by many observers as his true song, sounds to most ears like the name
Phœbe,--a clear, sweet whistle of two or three notes, with what musical
people call a minor interval between them. It is so strictly a whistle
that any boy can imitate it well enough to deceive not only another
boy, but the bird himself.
In late winter and early spring, especially, when the chickadee is in
a peculiarly cheerful frame of mind, it is very easy to draw him out
by whistling these notes in his hearing. Sometimes, however, the sound
seems to fret or anger him, and instead of answering in kind, he will
fly near the intruder, scolding _dee-dee-dee_.
He remains with us both summer and winter, and wears the same colors at
all seasons.
Perhaps no wild bird is more confiding. If a man is at work in the
woods in cold weather, and at luncheon will take a little pains to feed
the chickadees that are sure to be more or less about him, he will soon
have them tame enough to pick up crumbs at his feet, and even to take
them from his hand.
Better even than crumbs is a bit of mince pie, or a piece of suet. I
have myself held out a piece of suet to a chickadee as I walked through
the woods, and have had him fly down at once, perch on my finger like a
tame canary, and fall to eating. But he was a bird that another man, a
woodcutter of my acquaintance, had tamed in the manner above described.
[Illustration: CHICKADEE
_1. Male._ _2. Female_]
The chickadee’s nest is built in a hole, generally in a decayed stump
or branch. It is very pretty to watch the pair when they are digging
out the hole. All the chips are carried away and dropped at a little
distance from the tree, so that the sight of them littering the ground
may not reveal the birds’ secret to an enemy.
Male and female dress alike. The top of the head is black--for which
reason they are called black-capped chickadees, or black-capped
titmice--and the chin is of the same color, while the cheeks are clear
white. If you are not sure that you know the bird, stay near him till
he pronounces his own name. He will be pretty certain to do it,
sooner or later, especially if you excite him a little by squeaking or
chirping to him.
Although the chickadee is small and delicate-looking, he seems not to
mind the very coldest of weather. Give him enough to eat, and the wind
may whistle. He picks his food, tiny insects, insects’ eggs, and the
like, out of crevices in the bark of trees and about the ends of twigs,
and so is seldom or never without resources. The deepest snows do not
cover up his dinner-table. His worst days, no doubt, are those in which
everything is covered with sleet.
One of his prettiest traits is his skill in hanging back downward from
the tip of a swinging branch or from the under side of a leaf while
in search of provender. As a small boy, who had probably been to the
circus, once said, the chickadee is a “first-rate performer on the
flying trapeze.”
III
THE BROWN CREEPER
In the midst of a Massachusetts winter, when a man with his eyes open
may walk five miles over favorable country roads and see only ten or
twelve kinds of birds, the brown creeper’s faint _zeep_ is a truly
welcome sound. He is a very little fellow, very modestly dressed,
without a bright feather on him, his lower parts being white and his
upper parts a mottling of brown and white, such as a tailor might call
a “pepper and salt mixture.”
The creeper’s life seems as quiet as his colors. You will find him by
overhearing his note somewhere on one side of you as you pass. Now
watch him. He is traveling rather quickly, with an alert, business-like
air, up the trunk of a tree in a spiral course, hitching along inch
by inch, hugging the bark, and every little while stopping to probe a
crevice of it with his long, curved, sharply pointed bill. He is in
search of food,--insects’ eggs, grubs, and what not; morsels so tiny
that it need not surprise us to see him spending the whole day in
satisfying his hunger.
There is one thing to be said for such a life: the bird is never
without something to take up his mind. In fact, if he enjoys the
pleasures of the table half as well as some human beings seem to do,
his life ought to be one of the happiest imaginable.
How flat and thin he looks, and how perfectly his colors blend with the
grays and browns of the mossy bark! No wonder it is easy for us to pass
near him without knowing it. We understand now what learned people mean
when they talk about the “protective coloration” of animals. A hawk
flying overhead, on the lookout for game, must have hard work to see
this bit of a bird clinging so closely to the bark as to be almost a
part of it.
And if a hawk does pass, you may be pretty sure the creeper will see
him, and will flatten himself still more tightly against the tree and
stay as motionless as the bark itself. He needs neither to fight nor to
run away. His strength, as the prophet said, is to sit still.
But look! As the creeper comes to the upper part of the tree, where the
bark is less furrowed than it is below, and therefore less likely to
conceal the scraps of provender that he is in search of, he suddenly
lets go his hold and flies down to the foot of another tree, and begins
again to creep upward. If you keep track of him, you will see him do
this hour after hour. He never walks down. Up, up, he goes, and if you
look sharply enough, you will see that whenever he pauses he makes use
of his sharp, stiff tail-feathers as a rest--a kind of camp-stool, as
it were, or, better still, a bracket. He is built for his work; color,
bill, feet, tail-feathers--all were made on purpose for him.
He is a native of the northern country, and therefore to most readers
of this book he is a winter bird only. If you know his voice, you will
hear him twenty times for once that you see him. If you know neither
him nor his voice, it will be worth your while to make his acquaintance.
When you come upon a little bunch of chickadees flitting through the
woods, listen for a quick, lisping note that is something like theirs,
but different. It may be the creeper’s, for although he seems an
unsocial fellow, seldom flocking with birds of his own kind, he is fond
of the chickadee’s cheerful companionship.
[Illustration: BROWN CREEPER
_1. Male._ _2. Female_]
To see him and hear his _zeep_, you would never take him for a
songster; but there is no telling by the looks of a bird how well he
can sing. In fact, plainly dressed birds are, as a rule, the best
musicians. The very handsome ones have no need to charm with the voice.
And our modest little creeper has a song, and a fairly good one; one
that answers his purpose, at all events, although it may never make him
famous. In springtime it may be heard now and then even in a place like
Boston Common; but of course you must go where the birds pair and nest
if you would hear them at their finest; for birds, like other people,
sing best when they feel happiest.
The brown creeper’s nest used to be something of a mystery. It was
sought for in woodpeckers’ holes. Now it is known that as a general
thing it is built behind a scale of loose bark on a dead tree, between
the bark and the trunk. Ordinarily, if not always, it will be found
under a flake that is loose at the bottom instead of at the top. Into
such a place the female bird packs tightly a mass of twigs and strips
of the soft inner bark of trees, and on the top of this prepares her
nest and lays her eggs. Her mate flits to and fro, keeping her company,
and once in a while cheering her with a song, but so far as has yet
been discovered he takes no hand in the work itself. It is quite
possible that the female, who is to occupy the nest, prefers to have
her own way in the construction of it.
After the young ones are hatched, at all events, the father bird’s
behavior leaves nothing to be complained of. He “comes to time,” as we
say, in the most loyal manner. In and out of the nest he and the mother
go, feeding their hungry charges, making their entry and exit always
at the same point, through the merest crack of a door, between the
overhanging bark and the tree, just above the nest. It is a very pretty
bit of family life.
It would be hard to imagine a nest better concealed from a bird’s
natural enemies, especially when, as is often the case, the tree stands
in water on the edge of a stream or lake. And not only is the nest
wonderfully well hidden, but it is perfectly sheltered from rain, as
it would not be if it were built under a strip of bark that was peeled
from above. All in all, we must respect the simple, demure-looking
creeper as a very clever architect.
IV
THE BROWN THRASHER
The brown thrasher--called also the brown thrush--is a bird
considerably longer than a robin, with a noticeably long tail and a
long, curved bill. His upper parts are reddish brown or cinnamon color,
and his lower parts white or whitish, boldly streaked with black. You
will find him in hedgerows, in scrub-lands, and about the edges of
woods, where he keeps mostly on or near the ground. His general manner
is that of a creature who wishes nothing else so much as to escape
notice. “Only let me alone,” he seems to say. If he sees you coming,
as he pretty certainly will, he dodges into the nearest thicket or
barberry-bush, and waits for you to pass.
Farmers know him as the “planting-bird.” In New England he makes his
appearance with commendable punctuality between the twentieth of April
and the first of May; and while the farmer is planting his garden, the
thrasher encourages him with song. One man, who was planting beans,
imagined that the bird said, “Drop it, drop it! Cover it up, cover it
up!” Perhaps he did. It was good advice, anyhow.
In his own way the thrasher is one of the great singers of the world.
He is own cousin to the famous mockingbird, and at the South, where he
and the mocker may be heard singing side by side,--and so much alike
that it is hard to tell one from the other,--he is known as the “brown
mockingbird.” He would deserve the title but for one thing--he does not
mock. In that respect he falls far short of his gray cousin, who not
only has all the thrasher’s gift of original song, but a most amazing
faculty of imitation, as every one knows who has heard even a caged
mockingbird running over the medley of notes he has picked up here and
there and carefully rehearsed and remembered. The thrasher’s song is a
medley, but not a medley of imitations.
I have said that the thrasher keeps near the ground. Such is his habit;
but there is one exception. When he sings he takes the very top of a
tree, although usually it is not a tall one. There he stands by the
half-hour together, head up and tail down, pouring out a flood of
music; sounds of all sorts, high notes and low notes, smooth notes and
rough notes, all jumbled together in the craziest fashion, as if the
musician were really beside himself.
[Illustration: BROWN THRASHER
_1, 2, 3. Males._ _4. Female_]
It is a performance worth buying a ticket for and going miles to hear;
but it is to be heard without price on the outskirts of almost any
village in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and south of
Maine. You must go out at the right time, however, for the bird sings
but a few weeks in the year, although he remains in New England almost
six months, or till the middle of October. He is one of the birds that
every one should know, since it is perfectly easy to identify him;
and once known, he is never to be forgotten, or to be confounded with
anything else.
The thrasher’s nest is a rude, careless-looking structure, made of
twigs, roots, and dry leaves, and is to be looked for on the ground,
or in a bush not far above it. Often it has so much the appearance of
a last year’s affair that one is tempted to pass it as unworthy of
notice. I have been fooled in that way more than once.
The bird sits close, as the saying is, and as she stares at you with
her yellow eyes, full at once of courage and fear, you will need a hard
heart to disturb her. Sometimes she will really show fight, and she
has been known to drive a small boy off the field. Her whistle after
she has been frightened from her eggs or nestlings is one of the most
pathetic sounds in nature. I should feel sorry for the boy who could
hear it without pity.
Besides this mournful whistle, the thrasher has a note almost exactly
like a smacking kiss,--very realistic,--and sometimes, especially
at dusk, an uncanny, ghostly whisper, that seems meant expressly to
suggest the presence of something unearthly and awful. So far as I am
aware, there is no other bird-note like it. I have no doubt that many
a superstitious person has taken to his heels on hearing it from the
bushes along a lonesome roadside after nightfall.
Except in the spring, indeed, there is little about the thrasher’s
appearance or behavior to suggest pleasant thoughts. To me, at any
rate, he seems a creature of chronic low spirits. The world has used
him badly, and he cannot get over it. He is almost the only bird I ever
see without a little inspiration of cheerfulness. Perhaps I misjudge
him.
Let my young readers make his acquaintance on their own account, if
they have not already done so, and find him a livelier creature than I
have described him, if they can.
V
THE BUTCHER-BIRD
“Butcher-bird” is not a very pretty name, but it is expressive and
appropriate, and so is likely to stick quite as long as the more
bookish word “shrike,” which is the bird’s other title. It comes from
its owner’s habit of impaling the carcasses of its prey upon thorns, as
a butcher hangs upon a hook the body of a pig or other animal that he
has slaughtered.
In a place like the Public Garden of Boston, if a shrike happens to
make it his hunting-ground for a week or two, you may find here and
there in the hawthorn-trees the body of a mouse or the headless trunk
of an English sparrow spitted upon a thorn. Grasshoppers are said to be
treated in a similar manner, but I have never met with the bird’s work
in the grasshopper season.
The shrike commonly seen in the Northern States is a native of the
far north, and comes down to our latitude only in cold weather. He
travels singly, and if he finds a place to suit him, a place where the
living is good, he will often remain almost in the same spot for weeks
together.
In size and appearance he resembles the mockingbird. His colors are
gray, black, and white, his tail is long, and his bill is hooked like a
hawk’s.
He likes a perch from which he can see a good distance about him. A
telegraph wire answers his purpose very well, but his commonest seat
is the very tip of a tallish tree. If you look across a field in
winter and descry a medium-sized bird swaying on the topmost twig of
a lonesome tree, balancing himself by continual tiltings of his long
tail, you may set him down as most likely a butcher-bird.
His flight is generally not far from the ground, but as he draws near
the tree in which he means to alight, he turns suddenly upward. It
would be surprising to see him alight on one of the lower branches, or
anywhere, indeed, except at the topmost point.
Small birds are all at once scarce and silent when the shrike appears.
Sometimes in his hunger he will attack a bird heavier than himself. I
had once stopped to look at a flicker in a roadside apple-tree, when I
suddenly noticed a butcher-bird not far off. At the same moment, as it
seemed, the butcher-bird caught sight of the flicker, and made a swoop
toward him. The flicker, somewhat to my surprise, showed no sign of
panic, or even of fear. He simply moved aside, as much as to say, “Oh,
stop that! Don’t bother me!” How the affair would have resulted, I
cannot tell. To my regret, the shrike at that moment seemed to become
aware of a man’s presence, and flew away, leaving the woodpecker to
pursue his exploration of the apple-tree at his leisure.
The shrike has a very curious habit of singing, or of trying to sing,
in the disjointed manner of a catbird. I have many times heard him
thus engaged, and can bear witness that some of his tones are really
musical. Some people have supposed that at such times he is trying to
decoy small birds, but to me the performance has always seemed like
music, or an attempt at music, rather than strategy.
Southern readers may be presumed to be familiar with another shrike,
known as the loggerhead. As I have seen him in Florida he is a very
tame, unsuspicious creature, nesting in the shade-trees of towns. The
“French mockingbird,” a planter told me he was called. Mr. Chapman
has seen one fly fifty yards to catch a grasshopper which, to all
appearance, he had sighted before quitting his perch. The power of
flight is not the only point as to which birds have the advantage of
human beings.
VI
THE SCARLET TANAGER
When I began to learn the birds, I was living in a large city. One of
the first things I did, after buying a book, was to visit a cabinet
of mounted specimens--“stuffed birds,” as we often call them. Such a
wonderful and confusing variety as there was to my ignorant eyes! Among
them I remarked especially a gorgeous scarlet creature with black wings
and a black tail. It was labeled the scarlet tanager. So far as I was
concerned, it could not have looked more foreign if it had come from
Borneo. My book told me that it was common in Massachusetts. It _might_
be, I thought, but I had never seen it there. And a bird so splendid as
that! Bright enough to set the woods on fire! How could I have missed
it?
[Illustration: SCARLET TANAGER
_1. Male._ _2. Female_]
Well, there came a Saturday, with its half-holiday for clerks, and I
went into the country, where I betook myself to the woods of my native
village, the woods wherein I had rambled all the years of my boyhood.
And that afternoon, before I came out of them, I put my opera-glass
on two of those wonderful scarlet and black birds. It was a day to be
remembered.
Since that time, of course, I have seen many like them. In one sense,
their beauty has become to me an old story; but I hope that I have set
here and there a reader on a hunt that has been as happily rewarded as
mine was on that bright summer afternoon. In one respect, the beginner
has a great advantage over an old hand. He has the pleasure of more
excitement and surprise.
The bird to be looked for is a little longer than a bluebird, of a
superb scarlet color except for its wings and tail, which, as I have
said, are jet black. I speak of the male in full spring costume. His
mate does not show so much as a red feather, but is greenish yellow, or
yellowish green, with dark--not black--wings and tail.
You may see the tanager once in a while in the neighborhood of your
house, if the grounds are set with shade-trees, but for the most part
he lives in woods, especially in hard woods of a fairly old growth.
One of the first things for you to do, with him as with all birds, is
to acquaint yourself with his call-notes and his song. The call is of
two syllables, and sounds like _chip-chirr_. It is easily remembered
after you have once seen the bird in the act of uttering it. The song
is much in the manner of the robin’s, but less smooth and flowing. I
have often thought, and sometimes said, that it is just such a song as
the robin might give us if he were afflicted with what people call a
“hoarse cold.” The bird sings as if his whole heart were engaged, but
at the same time in a noticeably broken and short-winded style.
The oftener you hear him, the easier you will find it to distinguish
him from a robin, although at first you may find yourself badly at a
loss. A boy that can tell any one of twenty playmates by the tones of
his voice alone will need nothing but practice and attention to do the
same for a great part of the sixty or seventy kinds of common birds
living in the woods and fields about him.
The tanager’s nest is built in a tree, on the flat of a level branch,
so to speak, generally toward the end. Sometimes, at any rate, it is a
surprisingly loose, carelessly constructed thing, through the bottom of
which one can see the blue or bluish eggs while standing on the ground
underneath.
It must be plain to any one that the mother bird, in her dull greenish
dress, is much less easily seen, and therefore much less in danger, as
she sits brooding, than she would be if she wore the flaming scarlet
feathers that render her mate so handsome.
Southern readers will know also another kind of tanager, not red and
black, but red all over. He, too, is a great beauty, although if the
question were left to me, I could not give him the palm over his more
northern relative. The red of the southern bird is of a different
shade--“rose-red” or “vermilion,” the books call it. He sings like the
scarlet tanager, but in a smoother voice. Although he is a red _bird_,
he is not to be confounded with the southern _red_-bird. The latter,
better known as the cardinal grosbeak, is a thick-billed bird of the
sparrow and finch family. He is frequently seen in cages, and is a
royal whistler.
The scarlet tanager--the male in red and black plumage--is not to be
mistaken for anything else in the Eastern States. Once see him, and
you will always know him. For that reason he is an excellent subject
for the beginner. He passes the winter in Central or South America,
and returns to New England in the second week of May. He makes his
appearance in full dress, but later in the season changes it for one
resembling pretty closely the duller plumage of his mate.
VII
THE SONG SPARROW
Sparrows are of many kinds, and in a general way the different kinds
look so much alike that the beginner in bird study is apt to find
them confusing, if not discouraging. They will try his patience, no
matter how sharp and clever he may think himself, and unless he is much
cleverer than the common run of humanity, he will make a good many
mistakes before he gets to the end of them.
One of the best and commonest of them all is the song sparrow. His
upper parts are mottled, of course, since he is a sparrow. His
light-colored breast is sharply streaked, and in the middle of it the
streaks usually run together and form a blotch. His outer tail-feathers
are not white, and there is no yellow on the wings or about the head.
These last points are mentioned in order to distinguish him from two
other sparrows with streaked breasts--the vesper sparrow and the
savanna.
[Illustration: SONG SPARROW
_1. Male._ _2. Female_]
By the middle of March song sparrows reach New England in
crowds,--along with robins and red-winged blackbirds,--and are to be
heard singing on all hands, especially in the neighborhood of water.
They remain until late autumn, and here and there one will be found
even in midwinter.
The song, for which this sparrow is particularly distinguished, is a
bright and lively strain, nothing very great in itself, perhaps, but
thrice welcome for being heard so early in the season, when the ear is
hungry after the long winter silence. Its chief distinction, however,
is its amazing variety. Not only do no two birds sing precisely alike,
but the same bird sings many tunes.
Of this latter fact, which I have known some excellent people to be
skeptical about, you can readily satisfy yourself,--and there is
nothing like knowing a thing at first hand,--if you will take the pains
to keep a singer under your eye at the height of the musical season.
You will find that he repeats one strain for perhaps a dozen times,
without the change of a note; then suddenly he comes out with a song
entirely different. This second song he will in turn drop for a third,
and so on. The bird acts, for all the world, as if he were singing
hymns, of so many verses each, one after another.
It is really a wonderful performance. There are very few kinds of birds
that do anything like it. Of itself it is enough to make the song
sparrow famous, and it is well worth any one’s while to hear it and see
it done. Nobody can see it without believing that birds have a true
appreciation of music. They are better off than some human beings, at
all events. They know one tune from another.
A lady correspondent was good enough to send me, not long ago, a
pleasing account of the doings of a pair of song sparrows, which, as
she says, came to her for six seasons.
“One year,” she writes, “they happened to build where I could watch
them from the window, and they did a very curious thing. They fed the
little birds with all sorts of worms of different colors until they
were ready to leave the nest; then the male brought a pure white moth
and held it near the nest, which was in some stems of a rosebush a few
inches from the ground, on a level with the lower rail of a picket
fence.
“One of the little birds came out of the nest at once and followed its
parent, who went sidewise, always holding the dazzling white morsel
just out of the youngster’s reach. In this manner they crossed the
lane, climbed the inclined plane of a woodpile, and passed through a
fence and across a vegetable garden into an asparagus bed, in which
miniature forest the little traveler received and ate the moth.
“Another nest was built on the bank of a brook on the farther side of
a road. Out of this nest I saw two little fellows coaxed with these
snow-white moths, and led across the dusty road into a hedge.”
One or two experiences of this kind are sufficient reward for a good
deal of patient observation. The singer of this pair of birds, my
correspondent says, had ten distinct songs, one of them exceedingly
beautiful and peculiar.
The song sparrow’s nest is usually built on the ground, and the bird is
one of several kinds that are known indiscriminately by country people
as ground sparrows.
Song sparrows seem to be of a pretty nervous disposition, to judge from
their behavior. One of their noticeable characteristics is a twitching,
up-and-down, “pumping” motion of the tail, as they dash into cover on
being disturbed.
People who live in the Southern States see these birds only in the
cooler part of the year, but must have abundant opportunity to hear
them sing as spring approaches.
VIII
THE FIELD SPARROW AND THE CHIPPER
All beginners in bird study find the sparrow family a hard one.
There are so many kinds of sparrows, and the different kinds look so
confusingly alike. How shall I ever be able to tell them apart? the
novice says to himself.
Well, there is no royal road to such learning, it may as well be
confessed. But there is a road, for all that, and a pretty good
one,--the road of patience; and there is much pleasure to be had
in following it. If you know one sparrow, be it only the so-called
“English,” you have made a beginning.
_If_ you know the English sparrow, I say; for, strange as it may seem,
I find numbers of people who do not. Take the average inhabitant of any
of our large cities into the country, and let him come upon an English
sparrow in a wayside hedge, and there are three chances to one that he
will not know with certainty what to call it. Quite as likely as not he
has never noticed that there are two kinds of English sparrows, very
differently feathered--the male and the female.
In a short chapter like this I am not going to attempt a miracle. If
you read it to the end, never so carefully, you will not be prepared to
name all the sparrows at sight. As I said before, they are a hard set.
My wish now is to speak of two of the smallest and commonest.
One of these is called sometimes the chipping sparrow, sometimes
the chipper, and sometimes--much less often--the doorstep sparrow.
Personally, I like the last name best,--perhaps because I invented it.
Scientific men, who prefer for excellent reasons to have their own
names for things, call him _Spizella socialis_--that is to say, the
familiar or social little spiza, or sparrow. The idea of littleness,
some young readers may not know, is contained in the termination
_ella_, which is what grammarians call a diminutive. Umbrella, for
instance, is literally a small _umbra_, or shade.
With most readers of this book the chipping sparrow is a bird of
spring, summer, and autumn. For the winter he retires to our extreme
Southern States and to Mexico. If you live in Massachusetts, you may
begin to be on the watch for him by the 5th of April. If your home is
farther south, you should see him somewhat earlier.
Perhaps you will know him by this brief description: a very small,
slender sparrow, with a dark chestnut-red crown, a black forehead, a
black bill, and plain--unstreaked and unspotted--under parts.
His ordinary note, or call, is a _chip_ (whence his name), and his song
is a very dry, tuneless, monotonous, long-drawn _chippy-chippy-chippy_,
uttered so fast as to sound almost like a trill. You may like the bird
never so well, but if you have any idea of music, you will never call
him a fine singer. What he and his mate think about the matter there
is, of course, no telling. He seems to be very much in earnest, at all
events.
He is a social bird, I say. You will not have to go far afield or
into the woods in search of him. If you live in any sort of country
place, with a bit of garden and a few shrubs and fruit trees, a pair of
chippers will be likely to find you out. Their nest will be built in a
tree or bush, a small structure neatly lined with hair, and in due time
it will contain four or five eggs, blue or greenish blue, with brown
spots.
Our other bird is of the chipper’s size, and, like him, has unstreaked
and unspotted lower parts. His bill is of a light color, “reddish
brown,” one book says, “pale reddish,” says another. This is one of the
principal marks for the beginner to notice. Another is a wash of buff,
or yellowish brown, on the sides of the breast. The upper parts, too,
are in general much lighter than the chipper’s.
You will not be likely often to find this bird in your garden or about
the lawn. He is called the field sparrow, but he lives mostly in dry
old pastures, partly overgrown with bushes and trees. His nest is
placed on the ground, or in a low bush, and is often lined wholly or in
part with hair. He and the chipper belong to what is called the same
genus. That is to say, the two are so nearly related that they have the
same surname. The chipper is _Spizella socialis_, the field sparrow is
_Spizella pusilla_; just as two brothers will have one name in common,
say, Jones, William, and Jones, Andrew.
The chipper is a favorite on account of his familiar, friendly ways.
The field sparrow deserves to be known and loved for his music. Few
birds sing better, in my opinion, though many make more display and
are more talked about. The beauty of the song is in its sweetness,
simplicity, and perfect taste. It begins with three or four longer
notes, which run at once into quicker and shorter ones, either on the
same pitch or a little higher. Really the strain is almost too simple
to make a description of: a simple line of pure melody, one may say.
You must hear it for yourself. Sometimes the bird gives it out double,
so to speak, catching it up again just as he seems ready to finish.
The tone is the clearest of whistles, and the whole effect is most
delightful and soothing. It is worth anybody’s while to spend a season
or two in bird study, if only to learn this and half a dozen more
pieces of our common wild-bird music.
The field sparrow’s times of arrival and departure are practically the
same as the chipper’s. Neither bird is hard to see, or very hard to
distinguish; a bit of patience and an opera-glass will do the business;
though you may have to puzzle awhile over either of them before making
quite sure of your knowledge. In bird study, as in any other, we learn
by correcting our own mistakes.
IX
SOME APRIL SPARROWS
For the first three weeks of April the ornithologist goes comparatively
seldom into the woods. Millions of birds have come up from the South,
but the forest is still almost deserted. May, with its hosts of
warblers, will bring a grand change in this respect; meanwhile the
sparrows are in the ascendant, and we shall do well to follow the road
for the most part, though with frequent excursions across fields and
into gardens and orchards. Of eighty-four species of birds seen by me
in April, a year ago, twenty-one were water birds, and of the remaining
sixty-three, twenty, or almost one third, were members of the sparrow
family, while only five were warblers. In May, on the other hand, out
of one hundred and twenty-five species seen twenty-three were warblers,
and only eighteen were sparrows. To represent the case fairly, however,
the comparison should be by individuals rather than by species, and
for such a comparison I have no adequate data. My own opinion is that
of all the birds commonly seen in April, more than half, perhaps as
many as four fifths, are members of the sparrow family. There are days,
indeed, when the song sparrows alone seem to outnumber all other birds,
and other days when the same is true of the snowbirds.
The large and noble sparrow family, which includes not only the
sparrows, commonly so called, but finches, grosbeaks, crossbills,
snowbirds, buntings, and the like, is represented in North America by
more than ninety species, and in Massachusetts by about forty. It is
preëminently a musical family, and, with us at least, April is the
best month of the twelve in which to appreciate its lyrical efforts,
notwithstanding the fact that one of its most distinguished songsters,
the rose-breasted grosbeak, is still absent.
Among the more gifted of its April representatives are the fox
sparrow,--so named from his color,--the purple finch, the song sparrow,
the vesper sparrow, the tree sparrow, the field sparrow, and the
white-throated sparrow--seven common birds, every one of them deserving
to be known by any who care for sweet sounds.
One of the seven, the purple finch, also called the linnet, is
unlike all the others, and easily excels them all in the fluency and
copiousness of his music. He is readily distinguishable--in adult male
plumage--as a sparrow whose head and neck appear to have been dipped in
carmine ink, or perhaps in pokeberry juice. His song is a prolonged,
rapid, unbroken warble, which he is much given to delivering while on
the wing, hovering ecstatically and singing as if he would pour out
his very soul. He is a familiar bird, a lover of orchards and roadside
trees, but is not so universally distributed, probably, as most of the
other species I have named.
In contrast with the purple finch, all the six sparrows here mentioned
with him have brief and rather formal songs. Those of the fox sparrow
and the tree sparrow bear a pretty strong resemblance to each other,
especially as to cadence or inflection; the song sparrow’s and the
vesper sparrow’s are still more closely alike, and will almost
certainly confuse the novice, while those of the field sparrow and the
white-throat are each quite unique.
The fox sparrow visits Massachusetts as a migrant only, and the same
might be said of the white-throat, only that it breeds in Berkshire
County and single birds are often seen in the eastern part of the State
during the winter. The tree sparrow is a winter resident, going far
north to rear its young, and the remaining four species are with us for
the summer.
The fox sparrow is to be heard from the 20th of March (I speak
roughly) to the middle of April. In respect to voice and cadence, he
is to me the finest of our sparrows proper, though I do not think
him so finished an artist as the song and vesper sparrows. He may be
recognized by his superior size and his bright rusty-red (reddish
brown) color. Indeed, these two features give him at first sight the
appearance of a thrush. He is one of the sparrows--like the song, the
vesper, the savanna, and the Ipswich--which are thickly streaked upon
the breast.
The tree sparrow passes the winter with us, as I have said, but abounds
only during the two migrations. He is in full song for the greater
part of April. His distinctive marks are a bright reddish (“chestnut”)
crown, conspicuous white wing-bars, and an obscure round blotch in the
middle of his unstreaked breast.
The white-throat, commonly a very abundant migrant, arrives about the
20th of April and remains till about the middle of May. His loud,
clear song is remarkable for its peculiar and strongly marked rhythm.
It consists of two comparatively long introductory notes, followed by
three sets of triplets in monotone--like _see, see, peabody, peabody,
peabody_. This bird, too, perplexing as the sparrows are usually
thought to be, is perfectly well marked, with a white throat (not
merely a white chin, as in the swamp sparrow) and a broad white stripe
on each side of the crown, turning to yellow in front of the eyes. The
crown itself is dark, with a white line through the middle, and each
wing is adorned with two white bars. In size the white-throat comes
next to the fox sparrow.
The song sparrow and the vesper sparrow not only sing alike, but look
alike. The latter may be told at once, however, by his white outer
tail-feathers, which show as he flies. These are two of our commonest
and worthiest birds. The vesper sparrow, more generally known, perhaps,
as the bay-winged bunting, likes a drier field than the song sparrow,
and is especially noticeable for his trick of running along the path or
the road directly in front of the traveler.
X
THE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK
There is never a May passes, of recent years, but some one comes to me,
or writes to me, to inquire about a wonderfully beautiful bird that he
has just seen for the first time. He does hope I can tell him what it
is. It is a pretty large bird, he goes on to say,--but not so long as a
robin, he thinks, if I question him,--mostly black and white, but with
such a splendid rosy patch on his breast or throat! What can it be?
He had no idea that anything so handsome was ever to be seen in these
parts.
If all the questions that people ask about birds were as easily
answered as this one, I should be thankful. It is a rose-breasted
grosbeak, I tell the inquirer. Perhaps he noticed that its bill was
uncommonly stout. If he did, the fact is exceptional, for somehow the
shape of the bill is a point which the average person seems very seldom
to notice, although it is highly important. Anyhow, the rosebreast’s
beak is most decidedly “gross.” And he is every whit as beautiful as
my inquirer represents him to be. In that respect he ranks with the
oriole and the scarlet tanager.
[Illustration: ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK
_1. Males._ _2. Female._ _3. Young Male_]
He is distinguished also for his song, which is a flowing warble,
wonderfully smooth and sweet. To most ears it bears a likeness to the
robin’s song, but it is beyond comparison more fluent and delicious,
although not more hearty. Keep your ear open for such a voice,--by the
middle of May if you live in New England, a little earlier if your home
is farther south,--and you will be likely to hear it; for at that time
the bird is not only common, but a very free singer.