sounds very much like the squeak of a pair of rusty shears--a kind of
_hic_, which you will find no difficulty about remembering if you have
once learned it. His nest is generally built in a bush, often within
reach of the hand, but I have seen it well up in a rather tall tree.
The two birds spell each other in brooding, and are not only mutually
affectionate, but very brave. I have known the mother bird to keep her
seat even when I took hold of the bush below the nest and drew her
almost against my face. She, by the way, is a very modestly dressed
body, being not only without the rose-color, but without the clear
contrast of black and white. To look at her, you might take her for a
large sparrow.
The rose-color of the male, it should be said, is not confined to the
patch on the breast, but is found also on the lining of the wings,
where it is mostly unnoticed by the world, but where his mate, of
course, cannot help admiring it as he flutters about her; for it is
certain that female birds have a good eye for color, and believe that
fine feathers help, at least, to make fine birds. The shade is of
the brightest and most exquisite, and the total effect of the male’s
plumage--jet black, pure white, and vivid rose-red--is quite beyond
praise.
The birds, happily, are not shy, and prefer a fairly open or broken
country rather than a dense wood. Last season one sang day after day
directly under my windows, and undoubtedly had a mate and a nest
somewhere close by. The male, it should be added, has the very pretty
though dangerous-seeming habit of singing as he sits upon the eggs.
XI
THE BLUE JAY
Some years ago, as the story comes to me, two collectors of birds met
by accident in South America, one of them from Europe, the other from
the United States. “There is one bird that I would rather see than any
other in the world,” said the European. “It is the handsomest of all
the birds that fly, to my thinking, although I know it only in the
cabinet. You have it in North America, but I suppose you do not often
see it. I mean the blue jay.”
What the American answered in words, I do not know; but I am pretty
confident that he smiled. The European might almost as well have said
that he supposed Boston people did not often see an English sparrow.
Not that the blue jay swarms everywhere as the foreign sparrow swarms
in our American cities; but it is so common, so noisy, so conspicuous,
and so unmistakable, that it is, or ought to be, almost an everyday
sight to all country dwellers.
Strange as it seems, however, I find many people who do not know the
jay when they see it. In late winter, say toward the end of February,
when I begin to be on the lookout for the first bluebird of the year,
I am all but certain to have word brought to me by some one of the
village school-teachers that bluebirds have already come. Johnny This
or Jimmy That saw one near his house several weeks ago! That “several
weeks ago” makes me suspicious, and on following up the matter I
discover that John and James have seen a large blue bird, larger than a
robin, with some black and white on him--_all_ white underneath--_and_
wearing a tall crest or topknot. Then I know that they have mistaken a
blue _bird_ for a _blue_bird. They have seen a blue jay, a bird of a
very different feather. He has been with us all winter, as he always
is, and has been in sight from my windows daily. So easy is it for boys
and men to guess at things, and guess wrong.
The jay is a relative of the crow, and has much of the crow’s
cleverness, with more than the crow’s beauty. Like the crow, if he
has an errand near houses, he makes a point of doing it in the early
morning before the folks who live in the houses have begun to stir
about. In fact, he knows us, in some respects at least, better than we
know him, and habitually takes advantage of what no doubt seems to him
a custom of very late rising on the part of human beings.
Among small birds of all sorts he bears a decidedly bad name. In
nesting time you may hear them uttering a chorus of loud and bitter
laments as often as he appears among them. Their eggs and young are
in danger, and they join forces to worry him and drive him away. One
bird sounds the alarm, another hears him and hastens to see what is
going on, and in a few minutes the whole neighborhood is awake. And it
stays awake till the jay moves off. After that piece of evidence, you
do not need to _see_ him doing mischief. The little birds’ behavior is
sufficiently convincing. As Thoreau said, the presence of a trout in
the milk is something like proof.
And jays, in their turn, club together against enemies larger than
themselves. Last autumn I was walking through the woods with a
friend,--a city schoolmaster eager for knowledge, as every schoolmaster
ought to be,--when we heard a great screaming of blue jays from a
swampy thicket on our right hand.
“Now what do you suppose the birds mean by all that outcry?” said my
friend.
I answered that very likely there was a hawk or an owl there.
“Let’s go and see,” said the master, and we turned in that direction.
Sure enough, we soon came face to face with a large hen-hawk perched in
one of the trees, while the jays, one after another, were dashing as
near him as they dared, yelling at him as they passed.
At our nearer approach the hawk took wing; then the jays disappeared,
and silence fell upon the woods. And I dare say the schoolmaster gave
me credit for being a wondrously wise man!
The jay has many notes, and once in a great while may even be heard
indulging in something like a warble. One of his most musical calls
sounds to my ears a little like the word “lily.”
He seems to be very fond of acorns, and is frequently to be seen
standing upon a limb, holding an acorn under his claw and hammering it
to pieces with all the force of his stout bill. When angered, he scolds
violently, bobbing up and down in a most ridiculous manner. In fact, he
is of a highly nervous temperament, and as full of gesticulations as a
Frenchman.
To me he is especially a bird of autumn. At that season the woods are
loud with his clarion, and as I listen to it I can often feel myself a
boy again, rambling in the woods that knew me in my school-days. With
all his faults--his ill treatment of small birds, I mean--I should be
sorry to have his numbers greatly diminished.
XII
THE KINGBIRD
As a very small boy I spent much time in a certain piece of rather
low ground partly grown up to bushes. Here in early spring I picked
bunches of pretty pink and white flowers, which I now know to have been
anemones. In the same place, a month or two later, I gathered splendid
red lilies, and admired, without gathering it, a tiny blue flower with
a yellow centre. This would not bear taking home, but was always an
attraction to me. I should have liked it better still, I am sure, if
some one had been kind enough to tell me its pretty name--blue-eyed
grass.
Here, also, I picked the first strawberries of the season and the first
blueberries. They were luxuries indeed. A “gill-cup” full of either of
them was good pay for an hour’s search.
In one corner of the place there were half a dozen or so of
apple-trees, and on the topmost branches of these there used to perch
continually two or three birds of a kind which some older boy told me
were kingbirds. At these my brother and I--both of us small enough to
be excusable for such mischief--were in the habit of throwing green
apples; partly to see how near we could come to hitting them, partly
for the fun of watching them rise into the air, circle about with sharp
cries, and then settle back upon the perches they had left. Sometimes
we stuck the half-grown apple on the end of a stick, swung the stick
round our heads, and sent the apple flying to a tremendous distance.
Stick or no stick, however, we were in no danger of killing anything,
as I am glad now to remember.
What amazed us was that the birds did not go away. No matter how long
we “appled” them, they were certain to be on hand the next day in the
same place. We must have been very young and very green,--greener even
than the apples,--for it never occurred to us that the birds had nests
in the trees, and for that reason were not to be driven away by our
petty persecutions.
Even then I noticed the peculiar flight of the birds--the short, quick
strokes of their wings, and their habit of hovering. These are among
the signs by which the kingbird can be recognized a long way off. He
is dark-colored above,--almost black,--pure white underneath, and his
tail, when outspread, shows a broad white border at the tip. On his
crown is an orange-red patch, but you will probably never see it unless
you have the bird in your hand and brush apart the feathers in search
of it.
The kingbird’s Latin name has much the same meaning as his common
English one. _Tyrannus tyrannus_ he is called by scientific people. He
belongs to a family known as flycatchers, birds that catch insects on
the wing. That is the reason why the kingbird likes a perch at the tip
of something, so that he can dart out after a passing insect, catch it,
and return to his perch to wait for another. _I_ should call him the
“apple-tree flycatcher,” if the matter were referred to me.
He is not large,--little bigger than an English sparrow,--but he has
plenty of courage and a strong disposition to “rule the roost,” as the
saying goes. Every country boy has laughed to see the kingbird chasing
a crow. And a very lively and pleasing sight it is: the crow making for
the nearest wood as fast as his wings will carry him, and one or two
kingbirds in hot pursuit. Their great aim is to get above him and swoop
down upon his back. Sometimes you will see one actually alight on a
crow’s back and, as boys say, “give it to him” in great style.
Another taking action of the kingbird is his trick of flying straight
up in the air, almost perpendicularly, as if he were trying to see
how near he could come to performing that impossible feat, and then
tumbling about madly, with noisy outcries. Often it looks as if he
actually turned somersaults. He cannot sing, and so has to let his high
spirits bubble over in these half-crazy gymnastics. All in all, he is a
very lively and entertaining customer.
His nest is built in a tree, often in an orchard, and is comparatively
easy to find. The birds arrive in New England in the first week of May,
having passed the winter in Central or South America, and remain till
the end of August.
Like most birds, they are very punctual in their coming and going. No
doubt they have an almanac of their own. You will do well to find one
of them in Massachusetts after the first two or three days of September.
Toward the end of their stay, flycatchers though they are, they feed
largely upon berries. I have seen a dozen in one small dogwood bush,
all eating greedily.
XIII
THE HUMMINGBIRD
Hummingbirds are found only in America and on the islands near it.
They are of many kinds, but only one kind is ever seen in the eastern
United States. This is known as the ruby-throated hummingbird, because
of a splendid red throat-patch worn by the male. To speak more exactly,
the patch is red only in some lights. You see it one instant as black
as a coal, and the next instant it flashes like a coal on fire. This
ornament,--a real jewel,--with the lovely shining green of the bird’s
back, makes him an object of great beauty.
Every one knows him, or would do so only that some people confuse him
with bright-colored, long-tongued hummingbird moths that are seen
hovering, mostly in the early evening, over the flowers of the garden.
The ruby-throat spends the winter south of the United States. He
arrives in Florida in March, but does not reach New England till near
the middle of May.
Many persons seem to imagine that the hummer lives on the wing. They
have never seen one sitting still, they say. But the truth is that
hummingbirds pass but a small part of the time in the air. They are so
very small, however, that they are easily overlooked on a branch of a
tree, and the average person never notices them except when the hum of
their wings attracts his attention.
One of the prettiest sights in the world is a hummingbird hovering
before a blossom, his wings vibrating so fast as to make a mist about
him, and his long needle of a bill probing the flower with quick, eager
thrusts. All his movements are of lightning-like rapidity, and even
while your eyes are on him he is gone like a flash, you cannot say
whither.
The hummingbird’s nest is built on a branch of a tree,--saddled on
it,--and is not very hard to find after you have once seen one, and so
have learned precisely what to look for. Generally it is placed well
out towards the end of the limb. I have found it on pitch-pines in the
woods, on roadside maples,--shade-trees,--and especially in apple and
pear orchards. The mother bird is very apt to betray its whereabouts by
buzzing about the head of any one who comes near it.
[Illustration: RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD
_1, 2. Males. 3. Female. 4. Young_]
Last May, for example, I stopped in the middle of the road to listen
for the voice of a house wren, when I caught instead the buzz and
squeak of a hummer. Turning my gaze upward, I saw her fly to a
half-built nest on a maple branch directly over my head.
The nest is a tiny thing, looking for size and shape like a cup out
of a child’s toy tea-set. Its walls are thick, and on the outside are
covered--shingled, we may say--with bits of gray lichen, which help to
make the nest look like nothing more than a knot. Whether they are put
on for that purpose, or by way of ornament, is more than I can tell.
The bird always lays two white eggs, about as large as peas. The young
ones stay in the nest for three weeks, more or less, till they are
fully grown and fledged, and perfectly well able to fly. I once saw
one take his first flight, and a great venture it seemed. All these
three weeks, and for another week afterward, the mother--no father is
present--has her hands full to supply the little things with food,
which she gives them from her crop, thrusting her long, sharp bill
clean down their throats in the process, in a way to make a looker-on
shiver. The only note I have ever heard from the ruby-throat is a
squeak, which seems to be an expression of nervousness or annoyance,
and is uttered whenever an intruder--a man, a cat, or a strange
bird--comes near the tree in which her treasures are hidden.
Hummingbirds sometimes fly into open windows and are caught. At such
times they become tame almost at once, but it is difficult, if not
impossible, to keep them alive in captivity, and it is cruel to attempt
it, except when the little creature is injured and plainly unable to
look out for itself.
A lady of my acquaintance discovered a hummingbird under her piazza. It
had flown in by accident, probably, and now was darting to and fro in
a frantic attempt to get out. The piazza was open on three sides, to
be sure, but the frightened bird kept up against the ceiling, and of
course found itself walled in.
Fearful that it would injure itself, the lady brought a broom and tried
to force it to come down and so discover its way out; but it was only
the more scared. Then a happy thought came to her. She went to the
garden, plucked a few flowers, and going back to the piazza, set them
down for the bird to see. Instantly it flew toward them, and as it did
so it saw the open world without, and away it went.
Another lady wrote me once a very pretty story of a hummer that came
and probed a nasturtium which she held in her hand.
It is wonderful to think that so tiny a bird, born in New England or in
Canada in June, should travel to Cuba or Central America in the autumn,
and the next spring find its way back again to its birthplace.
XIV
THE CHIMNEY SWIFT
Every kind of bird is adapted to get its living in a particular way.
It is strong in some respects, and weak in others. Some birds have
powerful legs, but can hardly fly; others live on the wing, and can
hardly walk. Of these flying birds none is more common than the chimney
swift, or, as he is improperly called, the chimney swallow. No one ever
saw him sitting on a perch or walking on the ground. In fact, his wings
are so long, and his legs so short and weak, that if he were to alight
on the ground, he would probably never be able to rise into the air
again.
He hardly seems to need a description, and yet I suppose that many
persons, not to say people in general, do not know him from a swallow.
His color is sooty brown, turning to gray on the throat. His body, as
he is seen in the air, is shaped like a bobbin, bluntly pointed at both
ends. If he is carefully watched, however, it will be noticed that
he spreads his tail for an instant whenever he changes suddenly the
direction of his flight. In other words, he uses his tail as a rudder.
He shoots about the sky at a tremendous speed, much of the time
sailing, with his long, narrow wings firmly set, and is especially
lively and noisy toward nightfall. Very commonly two or three of the
birds fly side by side, cackling merrily and acting very much as if
they were amusing themselves with some kind of game.
They feed on the wing, and have wide, gaping mouths perfectly adapted
to that purpose.
As their name implies, they build their nests and pass the night mostly
in chimneys, although in the wilder parts of the country they still
inhabit hollow trees. Numbers of pairs live together in a colony.
One of the chimneys of a certain house near the Charles River, in
Newton, Massachusetts, has for many years been a favorite resort of
swifts. I have many times visited the place to watch the birds go to
roost. Little by little they gather in a flock, as twilight comes on,
and then for an hour or more the whole company, hundreds in number,
go sweeping over the valley in broad circles, having the chimney for
a centre. Gradually the circles become narrower, and at the same
time the excitement of the flock increases. Again and again the birds
approach the chimney, as if they meant to descend into it. Then away
they shoot for another round.
At length the going to roost actually begins. Half a dozen or a dozen
of the birds drop one by one into the chimney. The rest sweep away, and
when they come back, a second detachment drops in. And so the lively
performance goes on till the last straggler folds his wings above the
big black cavity and tumbles headlong out of sight.
The swift makes his nest of twigs, and as he cannot alight on the
ground in search of them, he is compelled to gather them from the dead
limbs of trees. Over and over again you will see the bird dart against
such a limb, catching at a twig as he pauses for the merest instant
before it. It is difficult to be sure whether he succeeds or not, his
movements are so rapid, but it is certain that he must often fail.
However, he acts upon the old motto, “Try, try again,” and in course of
time the nest is built. And an extremely pretty nest it is, with the
white eggs in it, the black twigs glued firmly together with the bird’s
own saliva.
XV
NIGHTHAWK AND WHIP-POOR-WILL
Rustic people are a little shy of theories and “book-learning.” Not
long ago--it was early in March--I met an old man who lives by himself
in a kind of hermitage in the woods, and who knows me in a general way
as a bird student. We greeted each other, and I inquired whether he had
seen any bluebirds yet. No, he said, it wasn’t time.
“Oh, but they are here,” I answered. “I saw a flock of ten on the 26th
of February.” Good-natured incredulity came out all over his face.
“Did you hear them sing?” he asked.
“Yes,” said I; “and, furthermore, I saw some this forenoon very near
your house.”
“Well,” he remarked, “according to my experience, it is too early for
bluebirds. Besides, they never go in flocks; and when anybody tells
me at this time of the year that he has seen a flock of bluebirds, I
always know that he has seen some blue snowbirds.”
He spoke with an air of finality which left me nothing to do but to
smile and pass on.
This little incident called to mind another, and that put it into my
head to write this article.
A farmer, who had seen me passing his house and loitering about
his lanes and fields for several years, often with an opera-glass
in my hand, one day hailed me to ask whether the nighthawk and the
whip-poor-will were the same bird, as he had heard people say. I
assured him (or rather I told him--it turned out that I had not made
him sure) that they were quite distinct, and proceeded to remark
upon some of the more obvious points of difference between the two,
especially as to their habits and manner of life. He listened with all
deference to what I had to offer, but as I concluded and turned to
leave him, he said: “Well, some folks _say_ they’re the same. They say
one’s the he one and t’ other’s the she one; but I guess they ain’t.”
Verily, thought I, popular science lectures are sometimes a failure.
Not long afterward I was telling the story to a Massachusetts man, a
man who had made a collection of birds’ eggs in his time.
“Why,” said he, “aren’t they the same? I always understood that they
were the male and female of the same species. That was the common
belief where I was brought up.”
[Illustration: NIGHTHAWK]
The confusion of the two birds is widespread, in spite of Audubon’s
testimony that he had seldom seen a farmer or even a boy in the United
States who did not know the difference between them. But, while they
resemble each other closely, they are sufficiently unlike to be
classified not only as separate species, but as species of different
genera. As for the difference in their habits, it is such as any one
may see and appreciate. The nighthawk, for all its name, is not a night
bird. It is most active at twilight,--in other words, it is crepuscular
instead of nocturnal,--but is often to be seen flying abroad at midday.
The whip-poor-will, on the contrary, is quiet till after dark. Then
it starts into fullness of life, singing with the utmost enthusiasm,
till the listener wonders where it can find breath for such rapid and
long-continued efforts. The nighthawk is not a musician. While flying
it frequently utters a single note, of a guttural-nasal quality, almost
indistinguishable from the so-called bleat of the woodcock; but, in
place of singing, it indulges in a fine aerial tumbling performance,
much in the manner of the snipe. This performance I have many times
observed in early summer from the Public Garden in Boston. I have
seen it also in September, though it is doubtless much less common at
that season. The bird rises gradually to a considerable height, and
presently drops like a stone almost to the ground. At the last moment
it arrests itself suddenly, and then is heard a very peculiar “booming”
noise, whether produced by the wings or by the voice, I will not
presume to say.
The most attractive feature of the nighthawk, to my eye, is its
beautiful and peculiar flight--a marvel of ease and grace, and
sufficient to distinguish it at a glance from every other New England
bird. It is a creature of the upper air, never skimming the ground, so
far as I know, and as it passes overhead you may easily see the large
white patch in the middle of each long wing--a beauty spot, by the way,
which is common to both sexes, and is wanting in the whip-poor-will.
[Illustration: WHIP-POOR-WILL]
The whip-poor-will’s chief distinction is its song--a song by itself,
and familiar to every one. Some people call it mournful, and I fear
there are still a few superstitious souls who listen to it with a
kind of trembling. I have heard of the bird’s being shot because the
inhabitants of a house could not bear its doleful and boding cry, as
they were pleased to consider it. To my ears it is sweet music. I take
many an evening stroll on purpose to enjoy it, and am perennially
thankful to Audubon for saying that he found the whip-poor-will’s
“cheering voice” more interesting than the song of the nightingale.
It will surprise unscientific readers to be told that the nearest
relatives of whip-poor-wills and nighthawks are the swifts and the
hummingbirds. As if a chimney swift were more like a whip-poor-will
than like a swallow! and, still more absurd, as if there were any
close relationship between whip-poor-wills and hummingbirds! Put
a whip-poor-will and a ruby-throated hummer side by side and they
certainly do look very little alike--the big whip-poor-will, with its
mottled plumage and its short, gaping beak, and the tiny hummingbird
with its burnished feathers and its long needle of a bill. Evidently
there is no great reliance to be placed upon outside show, or what
scientific men call “external characters.” We might as well say that
the strawberry vine and the apple-tree were own cousins. Yes, so we
might, for the apple-tree and the strawberry vine _are_ cousins--at
least they are members of the same great and noble family, the family
of the roses! We shall never get far, in science or in anything else,
until we learn to look below the surface.
XVI
THE FLICKER