course I do not mean that these are all. Why should not everybody
know the goldfinch--a small, stout-billed, bright yellow, canary-like
bird, with black wings and tail and a black cap? And the flicker--or
golden-winged woodpecker--a little larger than the robin, with
gold-lined wings, a black crescent on the breast, a red patch on the
back of the head, and a white rump, conspicuous as the bird takes
wing? The hummingbird, too--our only one; I should say that everybody
ought to recognize it, only that I have found some who confuse it with
sphinx moths, and will hardly believe me when I tell them of their
mistake. The cedar-bird, likewise, known also as the cherry-bird and
the waxwing, is a bird by itself; remarkably trim and sleek, its upper
parts of a peculiarly warm cinnamon brown, its lower parts yellowish,
its tail tipped handsomely with yellow, its head marked with black and
adorned with a truly magnificent topknot; as great a lover of cherries
as any schoolboy, and one of the first birds upon which the youthful
taxidermist tries his hand. Just now--in early March--the waxwings are
hereabout in great flocks (I saw more than a hundred, surely, three
days ago), stuffing themselves, literally, with savin berries. These
large flocks will after a while disappear, and some time later, in May,
smaller companies will arrive from the South and settle with us for the
summer, helping themselves to our cherries in return for the swarms of
insects of whose presence they have relieved us. If we see them thus
engaged, we shall do well to remember the Scripture text, “The laborer
is worthy of his hire.”
This enumeration of birds, so strongly marked that even a wayfaring man
may easily name them, might be extended indefinitely. It would be a
strange Massachusetts boy who did not know the ruffed grouse (though he
would probably call him the partridge) and the Bob White; the kingbird,
with his black and white plumage, his aerial tumblings, and his
dashing pursuit of the crow; the splendid scarlet tanager, fiery red,
with black tail and wings; the bobolink; the red-winged blackbird,
whose watery _conkaree_ is so welcome a sound about the meadows in
March; the slate-colored snowbird; the indigo-bird, small, deep blue
throughout, and with a thick bill; the butcher-bird, a constant though
not numerous winter visitor, sometimes flying against windows in which
canaries are hung, as one did at our house only this winter--these
surely may be known by any who will take even slight pains to form
their acquaintance. And, beside these, there are two birds whom
everybody _does_ know, but whom I forgot to include with the six
first mentioned,--the catbird and the brown thrasher, two overgrown,
long-tailed wrens, near relatives of the mockingbird, both of them
great singers in their way, and one of them--the catbird--decidedly
familiar and a fairly good mimic.
XIX
WINTER PENSIONERS
Our northern winter is a lean time, ornithologically, though it brings
us some choice birds of its own, and is not without many alleviations.
When the redpolls come in crowds and the white-winged crossbills in
good numbers, both of which things happened last year, the world is not
half so bad with us as it might be. Still, winter is winter, a season
to be tided over rather than doted upon, and anything which helps to
make the time pass agreeably is matter for thankfulness. So I am asked
to write something about the habit we are in at our house of feeding
birds in cold weather, and thus keeping them under the windows. Really
we have done nothing peculiar, nor has our success been beyond that of
many of our neighbors; but such as it is, the work has given us much
enjoyment, and the readers of “Bird-Lore”[1] are welcome to the story.
Our method is to put out pieces of raw suet, mostly the trimmings of
beefsteak. These we attach to branches of trees and to the veranda
trellis, taking pains, of course, to have them beyond the cat’s reach
(that the birds may feed safely), and at the same time well disposed
for our own convenience as spectators. For myself, in addition, I
generally nail pieces of the bait upon one or two of the outer sills of
my study windows. I like, as I sit reading or writing, to hear now and
then a nuthatch or a chickadee hammering just outside the pane. Often
I rise to have a look at the visitor. There is nothing but the glass
between us, and I can stand near enough to see his beady eyes, and, so
to speak, the expression of his face. Sometimes two birds are there at
once, one waiting for the other. Sometimes they have a bit of a set-to.
Then, certainly, they are not without facial expression.
Once in a while, in severe weather, I have sprinkled crumbs (sweet or
fatty crumbs are best--say bits of doughnut) on the inside ledge, and
then, with the window raised a few inches, have awaited callers. If the
weather is bad enough they are not long in coming. A chickadee alights
on the outer sill, notices the open window, scolds a little (the thing
looks like a trap--at all events it is something new, and birds are
conservative), catches sight of the crumbs (well, now, that’s another
story), ceases his _dee, dee, dee_, and the next minute hops inside.
[Illustration: A DOWNY WOODPECKER]
[Illustration: A BRANCH ESTABLISHMENT]
The crumbs prove to be appetizing, and by the time he has swallowed a
few of them he seems to forget how he came in, and instead of backing
out, as a reasonable being like a chickadee might be expected to do, he
flies to another light of the bay window. Then, lest he should injure
himself, I must get up and catch him and show him to the door. By the
time I have done this two or three times within half an hour, I begin
to find it an interruption to other work, and put down the window.
White-breasted nuthatches and downies come often to the outer sill, but
only the chickadees ever venture inside.
These three are our daily pensioners. If they are all in the tree
together, as they very often are, they take precedence at the larder
according to their size. No nuthatch presumes to hurry a woodpecker,
and no chickadee ever thinks of disturbing a nuthatch. He may fret
audibly, calling the other fellow greedy, for aught I know, and asking
him if he wants the earth; but he maintains a respectful distance.
Birds, like wild things in general, have a natural reverence for size
and weight.
The chickadees are much the most numerous with us, but taking the year
together, the woodpeckers are the most constant. My notes record them
as present in the middle of October, 1899, and now, in the middle of
October, 1900, they are still in daily attendance. Perhaps there were a
few weeks of midsummer when they stayed away, but I think not. One pair
built a nest somewhere in the neighborhood and depended on us largely
for supplies, much to their convenience and our pleasure. As soon as
the red-capped young ones were able to fly, the parents brought them
to the tree and fed them with the suet (it was a wonder how much of it
they could eat), till they were old enough to help themselves. And they
act, old and young alike, as if they owned the place. If a grocer’s
wagon happens to stop under the tree they wax indignant, and remain so
till it drives away. Even the black cat, Satan, has come to acknowledge
their rights in the case, and no longer so much as thinks of them as
possible game.
I have spoken, I see, as if these three species were all; but, not to
mention the blue jays, whose continual visits are rather ineffectively
frowned upon (they carry off too much at once), we had last winter,
for all the latter half of it, a pair of red-bellied nuthatches. They
dined with us daily (pretty creatures they are), and stayed so late
in the spring that I began to hope the handy food-supply would induce
them to tarry for the summer. They were mates, I think. At any rate,
they preferred to eat from the same bit of fat, one on each side, in
great contrast with all the rest of our company. Frequently, too, a
brown creeper would be seen hitching up the trunk or over the larger
limbs. He likes pleasant society, though he has little to say, and
perhaps found scraps of suet in the crevices of the bark, where the
chickadees, who are given to this kind of providence, may have packed
it in store. Somewhat less frequently a goldcrest would come with the
others, fluttering amid the branches like a sprite. One bird draws
another, especially in hard times. And so it happened that our tree,
or rather trees,--an elm and a maple,--were something like an aviary
the whole winter through. It was worth more than all the trouble which
the experiment cost us to lie in bed before sunrise, with the mercury
below zero, and hear a chickadee just outside singing as sweetly as any
thrush could sing in June. If he had been trying to thank us, he could
not have done it more gracefully.
The worse the weather, the better we enjoyed the birds’ society; and
the better, in general, they seemed to appreciate our efforts on their
behalf. It was noticeable, however, that chickadees were with us
comparatively little during high, cold winds. On the 18th of February,
for example, we had a blizzard, with driving snow, the most inclement
day of the winter. At seven o’clock, when I looked out, four downy
woodpeckers were in the elm, all trying their best to eat, though the
branches shook till it was hard work to hold on. They stayed much of
the forenoon. At ten o’clock, when the storm showed signs of abating,
though it was still wild enough, a chickadee made his appearance and
whistled _Phœbe_ again and again--“a long time,” my note says--in his
cheeriest manner. Who can help loving a bird so courageous, “so frolic,
stout, and self-possest”? Emerson did well to call him a “scrap of
valor.” Yet I find from a later note that “there were nothing like
the usual number of chickadees so long as the fury lasted.” Doubtless
most of them stayed among the evergreens. It is an old saying of the
chickadee’s, frequently quoted, “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.”
On the same day I saw a member of the household snowballing an English
sparrow away from one branch, while a downy woodpecker continued to
feed upon the next one. The woodpecker had got the right idea of
things. Honest folk need not fear the constable.
XX
WATCHING THE PROCESSION
It begins to go by my door about the first of March, and is three full
months in passing. The participants are all in uniform, each after
his kind, some in the brightest of colors, some in Quakerish grays
and browns. They seem not to stand very strictly upon the order of
their coming; red-coats and blue-coats travel side by side. Like the
flowers, they have a calendar of their own, and in their own way are
punctual, but their movements are not to be predicted with anything
like mathematical nicety. Of some companies of them I am never certain
which will precede the other, just as I can never tell whether, in a
particular season, the anemone or the five-finger will come first into
bloom. They need no bands of music, no drum-corps nor fifers. The whole
procession, indeed, is itself a band of music, a grand army of singers
and players on instruments. They sing many tunes; each uniform has a
tune of its own, but, unlike what happens in military and masonic
parades, there is never any jangling, no matter how near together the
different bands may be marching.
As I said, the pageant lasts for three months. It is fortunate for
me, perhaps, that it lasts no longer; for the truth is, I have grown
so fond of watching it that I find it hard to attend to my daily work
so long as the show continues. If I go inside for half a day, to read
or to write, I am all the time thinking of what is going on outside.
Who knows what I may be missing at this very minute? I keep by me a
prospectus of the festival, a list of all who are expected to take part
in it, and, like most watchers of such parades, I have my personal
favorites for whom I am always on the lookout. One thing troubles me:
there is never a year that I do not miss a good many (a _bad_ many, I
feel like saying) of those whose names appear in the announcements.
Some of them, indeed, I have _never_ seen. If they are really in the
ranks, it must be that their numbers are very small; for the printed
programme tells exactly how they will be dressed, and I am sure I
should recognize them if they came within sight. Some of them, I fancy,
do not keep their engagements.
I spoke, to begin with, of their passing my door. But I spoke
figuratively. Some, it is true, do pass my door, and even tarry for a
day or two under my windows, but to see others I have to go into the
woods. Some I find only in deep, almost impenetrable swamps, dodging in
and out among thick bushes and cat-tails. A good many follow the coast.
I watch them running along the sea-beach on the edge of the surf, or
walking sedately over muddy flats where I need rubber boots in which to
follow them. Some are silent during the day, but as darkness comes on
indulge in music and queer aerial dancing.
Many travel altogether by night, resting and feeding in the daytime.
It is pleasant to stand out of doors in the evening, and hear them
calling to each other overhead as they hasten northward; for at this
time of the year, I have forgotten to say, they are always traveling in
a northerly direction.
The procession, as such, has no definite terminus. It breaks up
gradually by the dropping out of its members here and there. Each of
them knows pretty well where he is going. This one, who came perhaps
from Cuba, means to stop in Massachusetts; that one, after a winter
in Central America, has in view a certain swamp or meadow, or, it may
be, some mountain-top, in New Hampshire; another will not be at home
till he reaches the furthermost coast of Labrador or the banks of
the Saskatchewan. The prospectus of which I spoke, and of which every
reader ought to have a copy, tells, in a general way, whither each
company is bound, but the members of the same company often scatter
themselves over several degrees of latitude.
Some of the companies move compactly, and are only two or three days,
more or less, in passing a given point. You must be in the woods, for
example, on the 12th or 13th of May, or you will miss them altogether.
Others straggle along for a whole month. You begin to think, perhaps,
that they mean to stay with you all summer, but some morning you wake
up to the fact that the last one has gone.
It is curious how few people see this army of travelers. They pass by
thousands and hundreds of thousands. More than a hundred different
companies go through every town in Massachusetts between March 1 and
June 1. They dress gayly--not a few of them seem to have borrowed
Joseph’s coat--and are full of music, yet somehow their advent excites
little remark. Perhaps it is because, for the most part, they flit
from bush to bush and from tree to tree, here one and there one. If
some year they should form in line, and move in close order along the
public streets, what a stir they would excite! For a day or two the
newspapers would be full of the sensation, and possibly the baseball
reporters would be compelled for once to shorten their accounts of
Battum’s “wonderful left-hand catch” and Ketchum’s “phenomenal slide to
the second base.” It is just as well, I dare say, that nothing of this
kind should ever happen, for it is hard to see how the great reading
public could bear even the temporary loss of such interesting and
instructive narratives.
Meantime, though the greater part of the people pay no heed to these
“birds of passage,” some of us are never tired of watching them. I
myself used to be fond of gazing at military and political parades.
In my time I have seen a good many real soldiers and a good many
make-believes. But as age comes on, I find myself, rightly or wrongly,
caring less and less for such spectacles. It will never be so, I think,
with the procession of which I am now writing. I have never watched it
with more enthusiasm than this very year. It is only just over, but
I am already beginning to count upon its autumnal return, and by the
middle of August shall be looking every day for its advance couriers.
Till then I shall please myself with observing the ways of such of the
host as have happened to drop out of the procession in my immediate
neighborhood. One of them I can hear singing at this very moment. He
and his wife spent the winter in Mexico, as well as I can determine,
and have been back with us since the 11th of May. They have pitched
their tent for the summer in the top of a tall elm directly in front
of my door, and just now are much occupied with household cares. The
little husband (_Vireo gilvus_ he is called in the official programme,
but I have heard him spoken of, not inappropriately, as the warbling
vireo) takes upon himself his full share of the family drudgery, and it
is very pretty indeed to see him sitting in the tent and singing at his
work. He sets us all, as I think, an excellent example.
XXI
SOUTHWARD BOUND
While walking through a piece of pine wood, three or four days ago, I
was delighted to put my eye unexpectedly upon a hummingbird’s nest. The
fairy structure was placed squarely upon the upper surface of a naked,
horizontal branch, and looked so fresh, trimmed outwardly with bits
of gray lichen, that I felt sure it must have been built this year.
But where now were the birds that built it, and the nestlings that
were hatched in it? Who could tell? In imagination I saw the mother
sitting upon the tiny, snow-white eggs, and then upon the two little
ones--little ones, indeed, no bigger than bumble-bees at first. I saw
her feeding them day by day, as they grew larger and larger, till at
last the cradle was getting too narrow for them, and they were ready
to make a trial of their wings. But where were they now? Not here,
certainly. For a fortnight I had been passing down this path almost
daily, and not once had I seen a hummingbird.
No, they are not here, and even as I write I seem to see the little
family on their way to the far south. They are making the journey by
easy stages, I hope--flitting from flower-bed to flower-bed, now in
Connecticut, now in New Jersey, and so on through Pennsylvania and the
Southern States. Will they cross the water to the West Indies, as some
of their kind are said to do? or, less adventurous, will they keep
straight on to some mountain-side in Costa Rica, or even in Brazil? I
should be sorry to believe that the parent birds took their departure
first, leaving the twin children to find their way after them as best
they could--as those who have paid most attention to such matters
assure us that many of our birds are in the habit of doing. But however
they go, and wherever they end their long journey, may wind and weather
be favorable, and old and young alike return, after the winter is over,
to build other nests here in their native New England.
This passing of birds back and forth, a grand semi-annual tide, is to
me a thing of wonder. I think of the millions of sandpipers and plovers
which for two months (it is now late in September) have been pouring
southward along the sea-coast. Some of them passed here on their way
north no longer ago than the last days of May. They went far up toward
the Arctic circle, but before the end of July they were back again,
hastening to the equator. The golden plover, we are told, travels from
Greenland to Patagonia.
All summer the golden warblers were singing within sound of my windows.
As I walked I saw them flitting in and out of the roadside bushes,
beautiful and delicate creatures. But before the first of September the
last of them disappeared. I did not see them depart. They took wing in
the night, and almost before I suspected it they were gone. They will
winter in Central or South America, and, within a week of May-day, we
shall have them here again, as much at home as if they had never left
us.
They were gone before the first of September, I said. But I was
thinking of those which had summered in Massachusetts. In point of
fact, I saw a golden warbler only ten days ago. He was with a mixed
flock of travelers, and, in all likelihood, had come from the extreme
north; for this dainty, blue-eyed warbler is common in summer, not
only throughout the greater part of the United States, but on the
very shores of the Arctic Ocean. So he voyages back and forth, living
his life from land to land, as Tennyson says, led by who knows what
impulse?
“Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.”
It is worth giving a little time daily to what is called ornithology to
be able to greet such wanderers as they come and go. For some days now
a few Western palm warblers have been paying us a visit, and, though
the town has never commissioned me to that office, I have taken it upon
myself to do them the honors. They have met me halfway, at least, as
the everyday expression is; yielding readily to my enticements, and
more than once coming near enough to show me their white lower eyelids,
so that I might be quite sure of their identity. A little later the
_Eastern_ palm warbler will be due, and I hope to find him equally
complaisant; for I wish to see his lower eyelid, also, which is yellow
instead of white.
At this time of the year, indeed, there is no lack of such interesting
and well-dressed strangers, no matter where we may go. The woods are
alive with them by day, and the air by night. There are few evenings
when you may not hear them calling overhead as they hasten southward.
Men who have watched them through telescopes, pointed at the full moon,
have calculated their height at one or two miles. One observer saw
more than two hundred cross the moon’s disk in two hours. The greater
part passed so swiftly as to make it impossible to say more than
that they were birds; but others, flying at a greater altitude, and
therefore traversing the field of vision less rapidly, were identified
as blackbirds, rails, snipe, and ducks. Another observer plainly
recognized swallows, warblers, goldfinches, and woodpeckers.
All over the northern hemisphere to-night, in America, Europe, and
Asia, countless multitudes of these wayfarers will be coursing the
regions of the upper air; and to-morrow, if we go out with our eyes
open, we shall find, here and there, busy little flocks of stragglers
that have stopped by the way to rest and feed: sparrows, snowbirds,
kinglets, nuthatches, chickadees, thrushes, warblers, wrens, and what
not, a few of them singing, and every one of them evidently in love
with life, and full of happy expectations.
INDEX
Bittern:--
American, 68.
least, 78.
Blackbird, red-winged, 86.
Bluebird, 44, 59, 83.
Bob White, 85.
Bobolink, 86.
Butcher-bird, 19, 86.
Catbird, 86.
Cedar-bird, 84.
Chickadee, 7, 12, 83, 88, 91, 92.
Chimney swift, 56, 63.
Creeper, brown, 10, 91.
Crossbill, white-winged, 87.
Crow, 44, 49, 83.
Flicker, 64, 84.
Goldfinch, 84.
Grosbeak:--
cardinal, 25.
rose-breasted, 36, 40.
Grouse, 85.
Hummingbird, ruby-throated, 51, 63, 84, 99.
Indigo-bird, 86.
Jay, blue, 43, 83, 90.
Kingbird, 47, 85.
Kinglet:--
golden-crowned, 1, 91.
ruby-crowned, 1.
Migration, 93, 99.
Mockingbird, 16.
Nighthawk, 60.
Nuthatch:--
red-breasted, 90.
white-breasted, 88, 89.
Oriole, Baltimore, 83.
Partridge, 85.
Plover, golden, 101.
Plovers, 100.
Purple finch, 36, 37.
Redpoll linnet, 37.
Robin, 83.
Sandpipers, 100.
Shrike:--
great northern, 19, 86.
loggerhead, 21.
Snipe, 61.
Snowbird (junco), 36, 59, 86.
Sparrow:--
chipping, 30, 31.
English, 30, 92.
field, 30, 32, 36, 37.
fox, 36, 37.
Ipswich, 38.
savanna, 26, 38.
song, 26, 36, 37, 39, 83.
tree, 36, 37, 38.
vesper, 26, 36, 37, 39.
white-throated, 36, 37, 38.
Swift, chimney, 56, 63.
Tanager:--
scarlet, 22, 85.
southern, 25.
Thrasher, brown, 15, 86.
Vireo, warbling, 98.
Vireos, 84.
Vulture, California, 1, 4.
Warbler:--
golden, 101.
palm, 102.
Warblers, 84.
Waxwing, cedar, 84.
Whip-poor-will, 60.
Woodcock, 61.
Woodpecker:--
downy, 89, 92.
golden-winged, 64, 84.
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co._
_Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
FOOTNOTE:
[1] To which this article was originally contributed.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.