While May bedecks the naked trees
With tassels and embroideries,
And many blue-eyed violets beam
Along the edges of the stream,
I hear a voice that seems to say,
Now near at hand, now far away,
“Witchery-witchery-witchery!”
* * * * * *
An incantation so serene,
So innocent, befits the scene;
There’s magic in that small bird’s note.
See! there he flits—the Yellowthroat;
A living sunbeam, tipped with wings,
A spark of light that shines and sings,
“Witchery-witchery-witchery!”
—Henry van Dyke, in _The Builders and Other Poems_.
“A whistle comes out of the bushes that line the wood lane perhaps when
you are gathering the pink Wild Azalea. If you have a dog with you, he
will get up and sniff about. The whistle is repeated, and you yourself
think it is one of your companions who has rounded the turn calling you.
No; then it is merely a Catbird mocking half a dozen other songsters and
then jeering at them.
“By mere chance, glancing at a tree close above, you see a bird of good
size with brilliant yellow throat, breast, and wing-linings, and a
strong curved beak that appears almost hooked. Perching there is a
Yellow-breasted Chat. He it is who is doing the mocking and jeering, but
throws his voice in such a way that it seems to come from the opposite
bushes. It is this power that gives him the name of ‘Ventriloquist.’
Being observed, he slips quickly out of sight, and then you notice the
olive-green colour on his back. He has a song of his own as well as the
power of imitating others and in the nesting season floats out upon the
air, with spread wings and legs trailing behind, in a wild ecstasy of
singing, looking to us humans very foolish, but is doubtless very
fascinating to his mate on her nest hidden amid briers and bushes and
thoroughly protected by vines.
_Singers in Costume_
“Among the birds many of the best vocalists are choir singers, as it
were. We hear their voices first, and from hearing them desire to know
and name the singers. The Thrushes belong to the first group. Others
there are who come on the stage in brilliant costume; we see them first,
then desire to hear them sing, and afterward remember them as pleasing
both to eye and ear. These are the gentlemen of the Opera, and four of
them made the garden and orchard their music-hall last summer and I do
not doubt will do so again. In fact the Goldfinches have never left, but
a flock in sober winter suits have fed at the lunch-counter on the
sunflower heads and fluttered over the weed seeds in the fields all
winter.
“The _Baltimore Oriole_ is the first of the quartet to settle down to
family life late in May. The _Rose-breast_ follows him closely. But the
_Tanager_ waits for the heavy leafage of June to cover his brilliant
colours while, for some reason not yet understood, the _American
Goldfinch_ keeps his bachelor freedom longer than any bird except the
Cedar Waxwing. And though he wears his handsome yellow wedding-clothes
from late April, he waits until he has feasted well on dandelion-down
and the best grass seeds before he ceases to rove and takes to a bush,
high maple, or other tree, to locate his soft nest made of moss and
grasses and lined with thistle-down.