He laughs by the summer stream
Where the lilies nod and dream,
As through the sheen of water cool and clear
He sees the chub and sunfish cutting shear.
His are resplendent eyes;
His mien is kingliwise;
And down the March wind rides he like a king
With more than royal purple on his wing.
His palace is the brake
Where the rushes shine and shake;
His music is the murmur of the stream,
And the leaf-rustle where the lilies dream.
Such life as his would be
A more than heaven to me;
All sun, all bloom, all happy weather,
All joys bound in a sheaf together.
No wonder he laughs so loud!
No wonder he looks so proud!
There are great kings would give their royalty
To have one day of his felicity!
—Maurice Thompson.
“The very name of Phœbe calls us from the Red-wing in the marsh meadows
and the Kingfisher by the waterways and brings us home again. Not only
within the home acres, but close to the house, barns, and woodshed, for
has she not been living in and about them quite as long as we have, or
even longer? There was a Phœbe who always built her first nest on the
deep sill of the dormer-window of the store-closet, and her second in
the bracket that supports the hood of the north window in the
guest-room.
“She was not very tidy about her work of nest-building (it seems more
natural to call the Phœbe _she_ than _he_), but then, it must be very
difficult to make a nest with a high foundation of crumbling moss and
mud, with hairs and grass for a lining, without spilling some of the
nesting material. My mother used to grumble about having the store-room
window-sill remain in such a litter for so long, but she never disturbed
the nest, even by brushing away the loose moss, and almost every day she
would look through the window to see how the eggs or young were faring,
and I thought it a great privilege to be allowed to go to the store-room
and sit quite still inside the closed window and watch the Phœbe’s
housekeeping.
“It was in this way that I first learned how the bird stands up in the
nest and turns the white eggs over with its feet so that they may be
evenly warmed through; how the young are fed and the droppings removed
from the nest so that it need not become foul.
“In spite of great care and constant bathing, for Phœbe is very fond of
a bath and was always a great patron of the log water-trough, the
puddles that gathered in the gutter after rain, and upon occasion would
dash into the bucket that always stood under the well-spout, the poor
bird suffers greatly from insect parasites. The reason for this I cannot
tell, unless it is that the foundation of the nest is so light and
spongy on account of the moss, that the air does not pass through and
the lice breed freely. One thing I remember, however, is that as soon as
the birds had flown, mother always removed the empty nest and had its
resting-place thoroughly cleansed.
“This is not so apt to happen when the bird chooses a fresh location and
makes a new nest for a second brood, but upon the only occasion that the
window-sill nest was used twice in a season, the lice crawled through
the window-frame into the house, and of the second brood, only one lived
to fly, and he was a miserable, emaciated little thing, so badly did the
lice beset the young birds. After that, mother always gave them a hint
that a new nest was best by making it impossible for them to use the old
one.”
“I should think the Phœbes might have got mad and gone away for good,”
said Sarah Barnes.
“No; they either understood that mother’s intentions were good, or else
they appreciated the comfort and cleanliness of the new nest, for their
children and grandchildren have occupied the two sites ever since, and
this summer when I stood inside the store-room window showing the nest
to Goldilocks, bird and nest were just the same as when my mother stood
there by me.
“That is why the everyday birds that live about our homes are so
precious and should be so carefully guarded. We never see them grow old,
and so they help us to keep young in heart.
“Phœbe belongs to a very important family, that of the Flycatchers,
songless birds with call-notes that are distinctive; these take their
food upon the wing, diving from a perch into the air for it as the
Kingfisher dives into the water for his. In this way the flycatchers are
among the most valuable of the Sky Sweepers.
“Among Phœbe’s cousins you will find the _Kingbird_, who wears a
slate-coloured coat and white vest, a crest on his head, and a white
band on the end of his tail by which you may know him, as he sits on a
fence rail, stump, or even on a tall mullen stalk and sallies out into
the air, crying a shrill ‘Kyrie-Kyrie!’ The Great Crested Flycatcher,
with an olive-brown coat, gray throat, and yellow belly, who builds in a
tree hole well above the ground, and uses dried snake skins among his
materials when he can get them, is another relative, and the largest of
the family; while a third is the little Wood-pewee, of the dark
olive-brown coat and two whitish wing-bars, who saddles his
lichen-covered nest, as dainty as that of a Humming-bird high up on a
limb, and calls his plaintive note, Pee-wee-pee-a-wee peer,’ through the
aisles of the deep woods, as constantly as Phœbe lets her name be known
in a more shrill and rasping voice to the barnyard flock.
“These and several other flycatchers do not come to us until May, but
the Phœbe of all his tribes trusts his livelihood to the care of gusty
March. Perhaps it is the early return that makes the Phœbe so friendly
and causes it to choose either a site by the water or near a house.
Insect life awakes much more quickly in gardens and about the
farm-yards, or near open running water, than in the remote woods; for
certain it is that no other member of the family is so easily
domesticated.
“The Phœbe not only eats the earliest insects that appear, but it has
peculiarly constructed eyes, like the Whip-poor-will and Night Hawk; it
can catch its food until the end of twilight, so that it kills many bugs
that hide all day. Among the hurtful insects that it catches are the
click-beetle, brown-tail moth, canker-worm moth, and the elm beetle. As
a berry-eater no one can find fault with it, as when late in a dry
season it takes a little fruit, wild berries supply the need.
“All this should be a hint to us to leave a few nooks about the place
for a pair of Phœbes to appropriate for a homestead; a little shelf
under suitable shelter is all they ask, or, better yet, nail a few wide
braces under the roof of a wagon, cattle, or wood shed, even if it does
not need supporting. Then, before the first Robin or Chipping-sparrow
awakens, when the first flush of light penetrates the darkness of night,
you will have a home sentinel at hand to cry, ‘Phœbe! I see, all’s
well!’ to the morning, and at evening she will blend her voice with the
Whip-poor-will’s in wishing you good night, for though Phœbe is early to
come in the spring and early to rise in the morning, she goes late to
bed and meets the bats in the sky during her evening excursions.”
“Maybe Phœbes don’t really sing, but they think they do,” said Tommy, as
Gray Lady looked in vain in her scrap-book for a poem that should do the
bird justice and be catching in rhythm.
“Sometimes in May they get up on the roof or the telephone wire or
something like that, and tumble somersaults into the air and cry
‘phœbe-phœbe-phœbe-phœbe,’ on and on and on and over again, like the
Katydids and Katydidn’ts in the maples at night, only the Phœbe is so
worked up she can only think of her own name.”
“Then this verse of Lowell’s at least is true,” said Gray Lady, closing
the scrap-book.
“Phœbe is all it has to say
In plaintive cadence o’er and o’er,
Like children that have lost their way
And know their names, but nothing more.”
-----
[5] _The Kingfishers’ Home Life_, W. L. Baily in _Bird-Lore_.
XXIV
THE TIDE HAS TURNED