old log. As I approached he disappeared beneath some loose stones
in the bank, then came out again and took another peep at me,
then fidgeted about for a moment and disappeared again, running
in and out of the holes and recesses and beneath the rubbish like
a mouse or a chipmunk. The winter wren may always be known by
these squatting, bobbing-out-and-in habits.
As I sought a still closer view of him, he flitted stealthily a
few yards up the run and disappeared beneath a small plank bridge
near a house.
I wondered what he could feed upon at such a time. There was a
light skim of snow upon the ground, and the weather was cold. The
wren, so far as I know, is entirely an insect-feeder, and where
can he find insects in midwinter in our climate? Probably by
searching under bridges, under brush heaps, in holes and cavities
in banks where the sun falls warm. In such places he may find
dormant spiders and flies and other hibernating insects or their
larvæ. We have a tiny, mosquito-like creature that comes forth in
March or in midwinter, as soon as the temperature is a little
above freezing. One may see them performing their fantastic
air-dances when the air is so chilly that one buttons his
overcoat about him in his walk. They are darker than the
mosquito,--a sort of dark water-color,--and are very frail to the
touch. Maybe the wren knows the hiding-place of these insects.
With food in abundance, no doubt many more of our birds would
brave the rigors of our winters. I have known a pair of bluebirds
to brave them on such poor rations as are afforded by the
hardhack or sugarberry,--a drupe the size of a small pea, with a
thin, sweet skin. Probably hardly one per cent. of the drupe is
digestible food. Bluebirds in December will also eat the berries
of the poison ivy, as will the downy woodpecker.
Robins will pass the winter with us when the cover of a pine or
hemlock forest can be had near a supply of red cedar berries. The
cedar-bird probably finds little other food in the valley of the
Hudson and in New England, yet I see occasional flocks of them
every winter month.
Sometimes the chickadees and nuthatches, hunting through the
winter woods, make a discovery that brings every bird within
hearing to the spot,--they spy out the screech owl hiding in the
thick of a hemlock-tree. What an event it is in the day's
experience! It sets the whole clan agog.
While I was walking in the December woods, one day, my attention
was attracted by a great hue and cry among these birds. I found
them in and about a hemlock-tree,--eight or ten chickadees and
four or five red-bellied nuthatches. Such a chiding chorus of
tiny voices I had not heard for a long time. The tone was not
that of alarm so much as it was that of trouble and displeasure.
I gazed long and long up into the dark, dense green mass of the
tree to make out the cause of all this excitement. The chickadees
were clinging to the ends of the sprays, as usual, apparently
very busy looking for food, and all the time uttering their
shrill plaint. The nuthatches perched about upon the branches or
ran up and down the tree trunks, incessantly piping their
displeasure. At last I made out the cause of the disturbance,--a
little owl on a limb, looking down in wide-eyed intentness upon
me. How annoyed he must have felt at all this hullabaloo, this
lover of privacy and quiet, to have his name cried from the
treetops, and his retreat advertised to every passer-by!
I have never known woodpeckers to show any excitement at the
presence of hawk or owl, probably because they are rarely
preyed upon by these marauders. In their nests and in their
winter quarters, deeply excavated in trunk or branch of tree,
woodpeckers are beyond the reach of both beak and claw.
The day I saw the winter wren I saw two golden-crowned kinglets
fly from one sycamore to another in an open field, uttering their
fine call-notes. That so small a body can brave the giant cold of
our winters seems remarkable enough. These are mainly birds of
the evergreens, although at times they frequent the groves and
the orchards.
How does the ruby-crowned kinglet know he has a brilliant bit of
color on his crown which he can uncover at will, and that this
has great charms for the female? During the rivalries of the
males in the mating season, and in the autumn also, they flash
this brilliant ruby at each other. I witnessed what seemed to be
a competitive display of this kind one evening in November. I was
walking along the road, when my ear was attracted by the fine,
shrill lisping and piping of a small band of these birds in an
apple-tree. I paused to see what was the occasion of so much
noise and bluster among these tiny bodies. There were four or
five of them, all more or less excited, and two of them
especially so. I think the excitement of the others was only a
reflection of that of these two. These were hopping around each
other, apparently peering down upon something beneath them. I
suspected a cat concealed behind the wall, and so looked over,
but there was nothing there. Observing them more closely, I saw
that the two birds were entirely occupied with each other.
They behaved exactly as if they were comparing crowns, and each
extolling his own. Their heads were bent forward, the red crown
patch uncovered and showing as a large, brilliant cap, their
tails were spread, and the side feathers below the wings were
fluffed out. They did not come to blows, but followed each other
about amid the branches, uttering their thin, shrill notes and
displaying their ruby crowns to the utmost. Evidently it was some
sort of strife or dispute or rivalry that centred about this
brilliant patch.
Few persons seem aware that the goldfinch is also a winter
bird,--it is so brilliant and familiar in summer and so neutral
and withdrawn in winter. The call-note and manner of flight do
not change, but the color of the males and their habits are very
different from their color and habits in summer. In winter they
congregate in small, loose flocks, both sexes of a dusky
yellowish brown, and feed upon the seeds of grasses and weeds
that stand above the snow in fields and along fences.
Day after day I have observed a band of five or six of them
feeding amid the dry stalks of the evening primrose by the
roadside. They are adepts in extracting the seed from the pods.
How pretty their call to each other at such times,--_paisley_ or
_peasely_, with the rising inflection!
The only one of our winter birds that really seems a part of
the winter, that seems to be born of the whirling snow, and to
be happiest when storms drive thickest and coldest, is the
snow bunting, the real snowbird, with plumage copied from the
fields where the drifts hide all but the tops of the tallest
weeds,--large spaces of pure white touched here and there with
black and gray and brown. Its twittering call and chirrup coming
out of the white obscurity is the sweetest and happiest of all
winter bird sounds. It is like the laughter of children. The
fox-hunter hears it on the snowy hills, the farmer hears it when
he goes to fodder his cattle from the distant stack, the country
schoolboy hears it as he breaks his way through the drifts toward
the school. It is ever a voice of good cheer and contentment.
One March, during a deep snow, a large flock of buntings stayed
about my vineyards for several days, feeding upon the seeds of
redroot and other weeds that stood above the snow. What boyhood
associations their soft and cheery calls brought up! How plump
and well-fed and hardy they looked, and how alert and suspicious
they were! They evidently had had experiences with hawks and
shrikes. Every minute or two they would all spring into the air
as one bird, circle about for a moment, then alight upon the snow
again. Occasionally one would perch upon a wire or grapevine, as
if to keep watch and ward.
Presently, while I stood in front of my study looking at them, a
larger and darker bird came swiftly by me, flying low and
straight toward the buntings. He shot beneath the trellises, and
evidently hoped to surprise the birds. It was a shrike, thirsting
for blood or brains. But the buntings were on the alert, and were
up in the air before the feathered assassin reached them. As the
flock wheeled about, he joined them and flew along with them for
some distance, but made no attempt to strike that I could see.
Presently he left them and perched upon the top of a near maple.
The birds did not seem to fear him now, but swept past the
treetop where he sat as if to challenge him to a race, and then
went their way. I have seen it stated that these birds, when
suddenly surprised by a hawk, will dive beneath the snow to
escape him. They doubtless roost upon the ground, as do most
ground-builders, and hence must often be covered by the falling
snow.
VIII
A BIRDS' FREE LUNCH
One winter, during four or five weeks of severe weather, several of
our winter birds were pensioners upon my bounty,--three blue jays,
two downy woodpeckers, three chickadees, and one kinglet,--and
later a snowbird--junco--appeared.
I fastened pieces of suet and marrow-bones upon the tree in front
of my window, then, as I sat at my desk, watched the birds at their
free lunch. The jays bossed the woodpeckers, the woodpeckers bossed
the chickadees, and the chickadees bossed the kinglet.
Sometimes in my absence a crow would swoop down and boss the
whole crew and carry off the meat. The kinglet was the least of
all,--a sort of "hop-o'-my-thumb" bird. He became quite tame, and
one day alighted upon my arm as I stood leaning against the tree.
I could have put my hand upon him several times. I wonder where
the midget roosted. He was all alone. He liked the fare so well
that he seemed disposed to stop till spring. During one terrible
night of wind and snow and zero temperature I feared he would be
swept away. I thought of him in the middle of the night, when the
violence of the storm kept me from sleep. Imagine this solitary
atom in feathers drifting about in the great arctic out-of-doors
and managing to survive. I fancied him in one of my thick
spruces, his head under his tiny wing, buffeted by wind and snow,
his little black feet clinging to the perch, and wishing that
morning would come.
The fat meat is fuel for him; it keeps up the supply of animal
heat. None of the birds will eat lean meat; they want the clear
fat. The jays alight upon it and peck away with great vigor,
almost standing on tiptoe to get the proper sweep. The woodpecker
uses his head alone in pecking, but the jay's action involves the
whole body. Yet his blows are softer, not so sharp and abrupt as
those of the woodpecker. Pecking is not exactly his business.
He swallows the morsel eagerly, watching all the time lest some
enemy surprise him in the act. Indeed, one noticeable thing about
all the birds is their nervousness while eating. The chickadee
turns that bead-like eye of his in all directions incessantly,
lest something seize him while he is not looking. He is not off
his guard for a moment. It is almost painful to observe the state
of fear in which he lives. He will not keep his place upon the
bone longer than a few seconds at a time lest he become a mark
for some enemy,--a hawk, a shrike, or a cat. One would not think
the food would digest when taken in such haste and trepidation.
While the jays are feeding, swallowing morsel after morsel very
rapidly, the chickadees flit about in an anxious, peevish manner,
lest there be none left for themselves.
I suspect the jays carry the food off and hide it, as they
certainly do corn when I put it out for the hens. The jay has a
capacious throat; he will lodge half a dozen or more kernels of
corn in it, stretching his neck up as he takes them, to give them
room, and then fly away to an old bird's-nest or a caterpillar's
nest and deposit them in it. But in this respect the little
kettle cannot call the big pot black. The chickadee also will
carry away what it cannot eat. One day I dug a dozen or more
white grubs--the larvæ of some beetle--out of a decayed maple on
my woodpile and placed them upon my window-sill. The chickadees
soon discovered them, and fell to carrying them off as fast as
ever they could, distributing them among the branches of the
Norway spruces. Among the grubs was one large white one half the
size of one's little finger. One of the chickadees seized this;
it was all he could carry, but he made off with it. The mate to
this grub I found rolled up in a smooth cell in a mass of decayed
wood at the heart of the old maple referred to; it was full of
frost. I carried it in by the fire, and the next day it was alive
and apparently wanted to know what had brought spring so
suddenly.
How rapidly birds live! Their demand for food is almost
incessant. This colony of mine appear to feed every eight or ten
minutes. Their little mills grind their grist very rapidly. Once
in my walk upon the sea beach I encountered two small beach birds
running up and down in the edge of the surf, keeping just in the
thin, lace-like edging of the waves, and feeding upon the white,
cricket-like hoppers that quickly buried themselves in the sand
as the waters retreated. I kept company with the birds till they
ceased to be afraid of me. They would feed eagerly for a few
minutes and then stop, stand on one leg and put their heads under
their wings for two or three minutes, and then resume their
feeding, so rapidly did they digest their food. But all birds
digest very rapidly.
My two woodpeckers seldom leave the tree upon which the food is
placed. One is a male, as is shown by his red plume, and the
other a female. There is not a bit of kindness or amity between
them. Indeed, there is open hostility. The male will not allow
the female even to look at the meat while he is feeding. She will
sidle around toward it, edging nearer and nearer, when he will
suddenly dart at her, and often pursue her till she leaves the
tree. Every hour in the day I see him trying to drive her from
the neighborhood. She stands in perpetual dread of him, and gives
way the instant he approaches. He is a tyrant and a bully. They
both pass the night in snug chambers which they have excavated in
the decayed branch of an old apple-tree, but not together.
But in the spring what a change will come over the male. He will
protest to the female that he was only in fun, that she took him
far too seriously, that he had always cherished a liking for her.
Last April I saw a male trying his blandishments upon a female in
this way. It may have been the same pair I am now observing. The
female was extremely shy and reluctant; evidently she was
skeptical of the sincerity of so sudden a change on the part of
the male. I saw him pursue her from tree to tree with the most
flattering attention. The flight of the woodpecker is at all
times undulating, but on such occasions this feature is so
enhanced and the whole action so affected and studied on the part
of the male that the scene becomes highly amusing. The female
flew down upon a low stump in the currant-patch and was very busy
about her own affairs; the male followed, alighted on something
several rods distant, and appeared to be equally busy about his
affairs. Presently the female made quite a long flight to a tree
by the roadside. I could not tell how the male knew she had flown
and what course she had taken, as he was hidden from her amid the
thick currant-bushes; but he did know, and soon followed after in
his curious exaggerated undulatory manner of flight. I have
little doubt that his suit was finally successful.
I watch these woodpeckers daily to see if I can solve the mystery
as to how they hop up and down the trunks and branches without
falling away from them when they let go their hold. They come
down a limb or trunk backward by a series of little hops, moving
both feet together. If the limb is at an angle to the tree and
they are on the under side of it, they do not fall away from it
to get a new hold an inch or half inch farther down. They are held
to it as steel to a magnet. Both tail and head are involved in the
feat. At the instant of making the hop the head is thrown in and
the tail thrown out, but the exact mechanics of it I cannot
penetrate. Philosophers do not yet know how a backward-falling cat
turns in the air, but turn she does. It may be that the woodpecker
never quite relaxes his hold, though to my eye he appears to do so.
Birds nearly always pass the night in such places as they select
for their nests,--ground-builders upon the ground, tree-builders
upon trees. I have seen an oriole ensconce himself for the night
amid the thick cluster of leaves on the end of a maple branch,
where soon after his mate built her nest.
My chickadees, true to this rule, pass the arctic winter nights
in little cavities in the trunks of trees like the woodpeckers.
One cold day, about four o'clock, while it was snowing and
blowing, I heard, as I was unharnessing my horse near the old
apple-tree, the sharp, chiding note of a chickadee. On looking
for the bird I failed to see him. Suspecting the true cause of
his sudden disappearance, I took a pole and touched a limb that
had an opening in its end where the wrens had the past season had
a nest. As I did so, out came the chickadee and scolded sharply.
The storm and the cold had driven him early to his chamber. The
snow buntings are said to plunge into the snow-banks and pass the
night there. We know the ruffed grouse does this.
IX
BIRD-NESTING TIME
The other day I sat for an hour watching a pair of wood thrushes
engaged in building their nest near "Slabsides." I say a pair,
though the female really did all the work. The male hung around
and was evidently an interested spectator of the proceeding. The
mother bird was very busy bringing and placing the material,
consisting mainly of dry maple leaves which the winter had made
thin and soft, and which were strewn over the ground all about.
How pretty she looked, running over the ground, now in shade, now
in sunshine, searching for the leaves that were just to her
fancy! Sometimes she would seize two or more and with a quick,
soft flight bear them to the fork of the little maple sapling.
Every five or six minutes during her absence, the male would come
and inspect her work. He would look it over, arrange a leaf or
two with his beak, and then go his way. Twice he sat down in the
nest and worked his feet and pressed it with his breast, as if
shaping it. When the female found him there on her return, he
quickly got out of her way.
But he brought no material, he did no needful thing, he was a
bird of leisure. The female did all the drudgery, and with what
an air of grace and ease she did it! So soft of wing, so trim of
form, so pretty of pose, and so gentle in every movement! It was
evidently no drudgery to her; the material was handy, and the
task one of love. All the behavior of the wood thrush affects one
like music; it is melody to the eye as the song is to the ear; it
is visible harmony. This bird cannot do an ungraceful thing. It
has the bearing of a bird of fine breeding. Its cousin the robin
is much more masculine and plebeian, harsher in voice, and ruder
in manners. The wood thrush is urban and suggests sylvan halls
and courtly companions. Softness, gentleness, composure,
characterize every movement. In only a few instances among our
birds does the male assist in nest-building. He is usually only a
gratuitous superintendent of the work. The male oriole visits the
half-finished structure of his mate, looks it over, tugs at the
strings now and then as if to try them, and, I suppose, has his
own opinion about the work, but I have never seen him actually
lend a hand and bring a string or a hair. If I belonged to our
sentimental school of nature writers I might say that he is too
proud, that it is against the traditions of his race and family;
but probably the truth is that he doesn't know how; that the
nest-building instinct is less active in him than in his mate;
that he is not impelled by the same necessity. It is easy to be
seen how important it is that the nesting instinct should be
strong in the female, whether it is or not in the male. The male
may be cut off and yet the nest be built and the family reared.
Among the rodents I fancy the nest is always built by the female.
Whatever the explanation, the mother bird is really the head of
the family; she is the most active in nest-building, and in most
cases in the care of the young; and among birds of prey, as among
insects, the female is the larger and the more powerful.
The wood thrush whose nest-building I have just described, laid
only one egg, and an abnormal-looking egg at that--very long and
both ends of the same size. But to my surprise out of the
abnormal-looking egg came in due time a normal-looking chick
which grew to birdhood without any mishaps. The late, cold season
and the consequent scarcity of food was undoubtedly the cause of
so small a family.
Another pair of wood thrushes built a nest on the low branch of
a maple by the roadside, where I had it under daily observation.
This nest presently held three eggs, two of which hatched in due
time, and for a few days the young seemed to prosper. Then one
morning, I noticed the mother bird sitting in a silent,
meditative way on the edge of the nest. As she made no move
during the minute or two while I watched her, I drew near to see
what was the matter. I found one of the young birds in a state of
utter collapse; it was cold and all but lifeless. The next
morning I found the bird again sitting motionless on the rim of
the nest and gazing into it. I found one of the birds dead and
the other nearly so. What had brought about the disaster I could
not tell; no cause was apparent. I at first suspected vermin, but
could detect none. The silent, baffled look of the mother bird I
shall not soon forget. There was no demonstration of grief or
alarm; only a brooding, puzzled look.
I once witnessed similar behavior on the part of a pair of
bluebirds that were rearing a brood in a box on a grape post near
my study. One day I chanced to observe one of the parent birds at
the entrance of the nest, gazing long and intently in. In the
course of the day I saw this act several times, and in no case
did the bird enter the box with food as it had been doing. Then I
investigated and found the nearly fledged birds all dead. On
removing them I found the nest infested with many dark,
tough-skinned, very active worms or grubs nearly an inch long,
that had apparently sucked the blood out of the bodies of the
fledglings. They were probably the larvæ of some species of
beetle unknown to me. The parent birds had looked on and seen
their young destroyed, and made no effort to free the nest of
their enemy. Or probably they had not suspected what was going
on, or did not understand it if they beheld it. Their instincts
were not on the alert for an enemy so subtle, and one springing
up in the nest itself. Any visible danger from without alarmed
them instantly, but here was a new foe that doubtless they had
never before had to cope with.
The oriole in her nest-building seems more fickle than most other
birds. I have known orioles several times to begin a nest and
then leave it and go elsewhere. Last year one started a nest in
an oak near my study, then after a few days of hesitating labor
left it and selected the traditional site of her race, the
pendent branch of an elm by the roadside. This time she behaved
like a wise bird and came back for some of the material of the
abandoned nest. She had attached a single piece of twine to the
oak branch, and this she could not leave behind; twine was too
useful and too hard to get. So I saw her tugging at this string
till she loosened it, then flew toward the elm with it trailing
in the air behind her. I could but smile at her thrift. The
second nest she completed and occupied and doubtless found her
pendent-nest instinct fully satisfied by the high swaying elm
branch.