BIRD RESERVES AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI
On June 7, 1915, I was the guest of my friend John M. Parker, of New
Orleans, at his house at Pass Christian, Mississippi. For many miles
west, and especially east, of Pass Christian, there are small towns
where the low, comfortable, singularly picturesque and attractive houses
are owned, some by Mississippi planters, some by city folk who come
hither from the great Southern cities, and more and more in winter-time
from the great Northern cities also, to pass a few months. The houses,
those that are isolated and those in the little towns, stand in what is
really one long row; a row broken by vacant reaches, but as a whole
stretching for sixty miles, with the bright waters of the Gulf lapping
the beach in front of them, and behind them leagues of pine forest.
Between the Gulf and the waters lies a low ridge or beach of white sand.
It is hard to make anything grow in this sand; but the owners of the
houses have succeeded, using dead leaves and what manure is available;
and in this leaf-mould the trees and grasses and flowers grow in
profusion. Long, flimsy wooden docks stretch out into the waters of the
Gulf; there is not much bad weather, as a rule, but every few years
there comes a terrible storm which wrecks buildings and bridges,
destroys human lives by the thousand, washes the small Gulf sailing
craft ashore, and sweeps away all the docks.
Our host's house was cool and airy, with broad, covered verandas, and
mosquito screens on the doors and the big windows. The trees in front
were live-oaks, and others of his own planting--magnolias, pecans,
palms, and a beautiful mimosa. The blooming oleanders and hydrangeas
were a delight to the eye. Behind, the place stretched like a long
ribbon to the edge of the fragrant pine forest, where the long-leaved
and loblolly pines rose like tall columns out of the needle-covered
sand. Five pairs of mocking-birds and one pair of thrashers had just
finished nesting; at dawn, when the crescent of the dying moon had risen
above the growing light in the east, the mockers sang wonderfully, and
after a while the thrasher chimed in. Only the singing of nightingales
where they are plentiful, as in some Italian woods, can compare in
strength and ecstasy and passion, in volume and intricate change and
continuity, with the challenging love-songs of many mockers, rivalling
one another, as they perch and balance and spring upward and float
downward through the branches of live-oak or magnolia, after sunset and
before sunrise, and in the warm, still, brilliant moonlight of spring
and early summer.
There were other birds. The soldierly looking red-headed woodpeckers, in
their striking black, red, and white uniform, were much in evidence.
Gaudy painted finches, or "non-pareils," were less conspicuous only
because of their small size. Blue jays had raised their young in front
of the house, and, as I was informed, had been successfully beaten off
by the mockers and thrashers when they attempted assaults on the eggs
and nestlings of the latter. Purple martins darted through the air.
King-birds chased the big grackles and the numerous small
fish-crows--not so very much bigger than the grackles--which uttered
queer, hoarse croakings. A pair of crested flycatchers had their nest in
a hollow in a tree; the five boldly marked eggs rested, as usual, partly
on a shed snake skin. How, I wonder, through the immemorial ages, and
why, did this particular bird develop its strange determination always,
where possible, to use a snake's cast-off skin in building its nest?
Every season, I was told, this flycatcher nested in the same hollow; and
every season the hollow was previously nested in by a tufted titmouse.
Loggerhead shrikes were plentiful. Insects were their usual food, but
they also pounced on small birds, mice, and lizards, and once on a
little chicken. They empale their prey on locust thorns and on the
spines of other trees and bushes; and I have known a barbed-wire fence
to be decorated with the remains of their victims. There were red
cardinal-birds; and we saw another red bird also, a summer tanager.
But the most interesting birds on the place were not wild, being nothing
more nor less than ordinary fowls engaged in what to me were most
unordinary occupations. Parker had several hundred fowls, and had by
trial discovered the truth of the statement that capons make far better
mothers than do hens, especially for very young chicks. We saw dozens of
broods of chickens, and one or two of young guinea-fowl, being taken
care of by caponized bantams, game-cocks, and cochin-chinas. These
improvised mothers looked almost precisely as they did before being
caponized, the differences, chiefly in the color of the comb, being
insignificant, for they were full-grown birds when operated on. But
their natures had suffered the most extraordinary change, for they had
developed not only the habits but the voices of unusually exemplary
mother hens. They never crowed; they clucked precisely like hens; and
they protected, covered, fed, and led about their broods just like hens.
They were timid, except in defense of the chicks; but on their behalf
they were really formidable fighters. The change in habits takes place
with extraordinary rapidity. In a few hours the cock has completely
changed and can be placed with a brood which he promptly adopts. In
perhaps one case in ten he does not take readily to his duties as an
_ex-officio_ hen; and in such case the further measure adopted seems as
incredible as the rest of the performance, for he is made drunk with
whiskey, acts as if he were intoxicated, and then promptly develops
maternal feelings, and zealously enters on his new career.
We saw game-cocks clucking and calling to their broods of little chicks,
to get them to the crumbs we tossed to them, and then sitting with the
chicks not only under their wings but on their backs. They kept the
broods with them until the young were nearly as large as they were; in
one case the brood consisted of guinea-fowl. Moreover, they welcomed any
brood, no matter how large. One big rooster was leading around so many
chickens--all, by what seemed a sardonic jest, his own progeny, the
progeny of the days when he was a mere unregenerate father--that when
they took shelter under him he had to spread his wings; "like a
buzzard," said my host, to whom soaring buzzards were familiar sights.
Of course, the extraordinary part of all this was not the loss of the
male qualities but the immediate and complete acquirement of those of
the female. It was as if steers invariably took to mothering calves, or
geldings to adopting foals.
These capon-mothers, with their weight and long spurs, fought formidably
for their chicks. In one case a Cooper's hawk swooped on a half-grown
chick, whereupon the game-cock who was officiating as hen flew at the
aggressor, striking it so hard as to injure the top of the wing. The
hawk was unable to fly, and the cock pressed it too close to let it
escape. Although the rooster could not kill the hawk, for the latter
threw itself on its back with extended talons, he had rendered it unable
to escape, and one of the men about the place came up and killed it,
having been attracted by the noise of the fight. Another cock killed a
big blacksnake which tried to carry off one of the chicks. The cock
darted to and fro over the snake, striking it continually until it
succumbed.
Pass Christian is an ideal place for a man to go who wishes to get away
from the Northern cold for a few weeks, and be where climate, people,
and surroundings are all delightful, and the fishing and shooting
excellent. There is a good chance, too, that the fish and game will be
preserved for use, instead of recklessly exterminated; for during the
last dozen years Louisiana and Mississippi, like the rest of the Union,
have waked to the criminality of marring and ruining a beautiful
heritage which should be left, and through wise use (not non-use) can be
left, undiminished, to the generations that are to come after us. As yet
the Gulf in front of the houses swarms with fish of many kinds up to the
great tarpon, the mailed and leaping giant of the warm seas; and with
the rapid growth of wisdom in dealing with nature we may hope that there
will soon be action looking toward the regulation of seining and to
protection of the fish at certain seasons. On land the quail have
increased in the neighborhood of Pass Christian during the last few
years. This is largely due to the activity of my host and his two sons
as hunters. They have a pack of beagles, trained to night work, and this
pack has to its credit nearly four hundred coons and possums--together
with an occasional skunk!--and, moreover, has chivied the gray foxes
almost out of the country; and all these animals are the inveterate
enemies of all small game, and especially of ground-nesting birds. To
save interesting creatures, it is often necessary not merely to refrain
from killing them but also to war on their enemies.
One of the sons runs the Parker stock-farm in upper Louisiana, beside
the Mississippi. There are about four thousand acres, half of it
highland, the other half subject to flood if the levees break. Five
years ago such a break absolutely destroyed the Parker plantations, then
exclusively on low land. Now, in event of flood, the stock can be
driven, and the human beings escape, to the higher ground. Young Parker,
now twenty-two years old, has run the plantation since he was sixteen.
The horses, cattle, and sheep are all of the highest grade; the
improvement in the stock of Louisiana and Mississippi during the last
two decades has been really noteworthy. Game, and wild things
generally, have increased in numbers on this big stock-farm. There is no
wanton molestation of any animal permitted, no plundering of nests, no
shooting save within strictly defined limits, and so far as possible all
rare things are given every chance to increase. As an example, when, in
clearing a tract of swamp land, a heron's nest was discovered, the
bushes round about were left undisturbed, and the heron family was
reared in safety. Wild turkeys have somewhat, and quail very markedly,
increased. The great horned owls, which destroyed the ducks, have to be
warred against, and the beasts of prey likewise. Surely it will
ultimately again be recognized in our country that life on a plantation,
on a great stock-farm or ranch, is one of the most interesting, and,
from the standpoint of both body and soul, one of the most healthy, of
all ways of earning a living.
At four on the morning of the 8th our party started from the wharf in
front of Pass Christian. We were in two boats. One, good-sized and
comfortable, under the command of Captain Lewis Young, was the property
of the State Conservation Commission of Louisiana, the commission having
most courteously placed it at our disposal. On this boat were my host,
his two sons, John, Jr., and Tom, myself, and a photographer, Mr.
Coquille, of New Orleans. The other boat, named the _Royal Tern_, was
the property of the Audubon Society, being allotted to the work of
cruising among and protecting the bird colonies on those islands set
apart as bird refuges by the National and State Governments. On this
boat--which had a wretched engine, almost worthless--went Mr. Herbert K.
Job and Mr. Frank M. Miller. Mr. Miller was at one time president of the
Louisiana Conservation Commission, and the founder of the Louisiana
State Audubon Society, and is one of the group of men to whom she owes
it that she, the home state of Audubon, of our first great naturalist,
is now thoroughly awake to the danger of reckless waste and destruction
of all the natural resources of the State, including the birds. Mr.
Herbert K. Job is known to all who care for bird study and bird
preservation. He is a naturalist who has made of bird-photography a
sport, a science, and an art. His pictures, and his books in which these
pictures appear, are fascinating both to the scientific ornithologist
and to all lovers of the wild creatures of the open. Like the other
field naturalists I have known, like the men who were with me in Africa
and South America, Mr. Job is an exceptionally hardy, resolute, and
resourceful man, following his wilderness work with single-minded
devotion, and continually, and in matter-of-fact manner, facing and
overcoming hardship, wearing toil, and risk which worthy stay-at-home
people have no means whatever of even gauging. I owed the pleasure of
Mr. Job's company to Mr. Frank M. Chapman, at whose suggestion he was
sent with me by the National Audubon Society.
The State Conservation Commission owes its existence to the wise public
spirit and farsightedness of the Louisiana Legislature. The Audubon
Society, which has done far more than any other single agency in
creating and fostering an enlightened public sentiment for the
preservation of our useful and attractive birds, is a purely voluntary
organization, consisting of men and women who in these matters look
further ahead than their fellows, and who have the precious gift of
sympathetic imagination, so that they are able to see, and to wish to
preserve for their children's children, the beauty and wonder of nature.
(During the year preceding this trip, by the way, the society enrolled
one hundred and fifty-one thousand boys and girls in its junior bird
clubs, all of which give systematic instruction in the value of bird
life.) It was the Audubon Society which started the movement for the
establishment of bird refuges. The society now protects and polices
about one hundred of these refuges, which, of course, are worthless
unless thus protected.
The _Royal Tern_ is commanded by Captain William Sprinkle, born and bred
on this Gulf coast, who knows the sea-fowl, and the islands where they
breed and dwell, as he knows the winds and the lovely, smiling,
treacherous Gulf waters. He is game warden, and he and the _Royal Tern_
are the police force for over five hundred square miles of sand-bars,
shallow waters, and intricate channels. The man and the boat are two of
the chief obstacles in the way of the poachers, the plume-hunters, and
eggers, who always threaten these bird sanctuaries.
Many of these poachers are at heart good men, who follow their fathers'
business, just as respectable men on the seacoast once followed the
business of wrecking. But when times change and a once acknowledged
trade comes under the ban of the law the character of those following it
also changes for the worse. Wreckers are no longer respectable, and
plume-hunters and eggers are sinking to the same level. The illegal
business of killing breeding birds, of leaving nestlings to starve
wholesale, and of general ruthless extermination, more and more tends to
attract men of the same moral category as those who sell whiskey to
Indians and combine the running of "blind pigs" with highway robbery and
murder for hire.
In Florida one of the best game wardens of the Audubon Society was
killed by these sordid bird-butchers. A fearless man and a good boat are
needed to keep such gentry in awe. Captain Sprinkle meets the first
requirement, the hull of the _Royal Tern_ the second. But the engines of
the _Tern_ are worthless; she can catch no freebooter; she is safe only
in the mildest weather. Is there not some bird-lover of means and
imagination who will put a good engine in her? Such a service would be
very real. As for Captain Sprinkle, his services are, of course,
underpaid, his salary bearing no relation to their value. The Biological
Survey does its best with its limited means; the Audubon Society adds
something extra; but this very efficient and disinterested laborer is
worth a good deal more than the hire he receives. The government pays
many of its servants, usually those with rather easy jobs, too much; but
the best men, who do the hardest work, the men in the life-saving and
lighthouse service, the forest-rangers, and those who patrol and protect
the reserves of wild life, are almost always underpaid.
Yet, in spite of all the disadvantages, much has been accomplished. This
particular reservation was set apart by presidential proclamation in
1905. Captain Sprinkle was at once put in charge. Of the five chief
birds, the royal terns, Caspian terns, Cabot's terns, laughing gulls,
and skimmers, there were that season about one thousand nests. This
season, ten years later, there are about thirty-five thousand nests. The
brown pelicans and Louisiana herons also show a marked increase. The
least tern, which had been completely exterminated or driven away, has
returned and is breeding in fair numbers.
As we steamed away from the Pass Christian dock dawn was turning to
daylight under the still brilliant crescent moon. Soon we saw the red
disk of the sun rising behind the pine forest. We left Mississippi
Sound, and then were on the Gulf itself. The Gulf was calm, and the
still water teemed with life. Each school of mullets or sardines could
be told by the queer effect on the water, as of a cloud shadow.
Continually we caught glimpses of other fish; and always they were
fleeing from death or ravenously seeking to inflict death on the weak.
Nature is ruthless, and where her sway is uncontested there is no peace
save the peace of death; and the fecund stream of life, especially of
life on the lower levels, flows like an immense torrent out of
non-existence for but the briefest moment before the enormous majority
of the beings composing it are engulfed in the jaws of death, and again
go out into the shadow.
Huge rays sprang out of the water and fell back with a resounding
splash. Devil-fish, which made the rays look like dwarfs, swam slowly
near the surface; some had their mouths wide open as they followed their
prey. Globular jellyfish, as big as pumpkins, with translucent bodies,
pulsed through the waters; little fishes and crabs swam among their
short, thick tentacles and in between the waving walls into which the
body was divided. Once we saw the head of a turtle above water; it was a
loggerhead turtle, and the head was as large as the head of a man; when
I first saw it, above the still water, I had no idea what it was.
By noon we were among the islands of the reservation. We had already
passed other and larger islands, for the most part well wooded. On these
there were great numbers of coons and minks, and therefore none of the
sea-birds which rest on the ground or in low bushes. The coons are more
common than the minks and muskrats. In the inundations they are
continually being carried out to sea on logs; a planter informed me that
on one occasion in a flood he met a log sailing down the swollen
Mississippi with no less than eleven coons aboard. Sooner or later
castaway coons land on every considerable island off the coast, and if
there is fresh water, and even sometimes if there is none, they thrive;
and where there are many coons, the gulls, terns, skimmers, and other
such birds have very little chance to bring up their young. Coons are
fond of rambling along beaches; at low tide they devour shell-fish; and
they explore the grass tufts and bushes, and eat nestlings, eggs, and
even the sitting birds. If on any island we found numerous coon tracks
there were usually few nesting sea-fowl, save possibly on some isolated
point. The birds breed most plentifully in the numberless smaller
islands--some of considerable size--where there is no water, and usually
not a tree. Some of these islands are nothing but sand, with banks and
ramparts of shells, while others are fringed with marsh-grass and
covered with scrub mangrove. But the occasional fierce tropical storms
not only change the channels and alter the shape of many of the islands,
but may even break up some very big island. In such case an island with
trees and water may for years be entirely uninhabited by coons, and the
birds may form huge rookeries thereon. The government should exterminate
the coons and minks on all the large islands, so as to enable the birds
to breed on them; for on the small islands the storms and tides work
huge havoc with the nests.
Captain Young proved himself not only a first-class captain but a
first-class pilot through the shifting and tangled maze of channels and
islands. The _Royal Tern_, her engines breaking down intermittently,
fell so far in the rear that in the early afternoon we anchored, to wait
for her, off an island to which a band of pelicans resorted--they had
nested, earlier in the year, on another island some leagues distant. The
big birds, forty or thereabouts in number, were sitting on a sand-spit
which projected into the water, enjoying a noontide rest. As we
approached they rose and flapped lazily out to sea for a few hundred
yards before again lighting. Later in the afternoon they began to fly to
the fishing-grounds, and back and forth, singly and in small groups. In
flying they usually gave a dozen rapid wing-beats, and then sailed for
a few seconds. If several were together the leader gave the "time" to
the others; they all flapped together, and then all glided together. The
neck was carried in a curve, like a heron's; it was only stretched out
straight like a stork's or bustard's when the bird was diving. Some of
the fishing was done, singly or in parties, in the water, the pelicans
surrounding shoals of sardines and shrimps, and scooping them up in
their capacious bags. But, although such a large, heavy bird, the brown
pelican is an expert wing-fisherman also. A pair would soar round in
circles, the bill perhaps pointing downward, instead of, as usual, being
held horizontally. Then, when the fish was spied the bird plunged down,
almost perpendicularly, the neck stretched straight and rigid, and
disappeared below the surface of the water with a thump and splash, and
in a couple of seconds emerged, rose with some labor, and flew off with
its prey. At this point the pelicans had finished breeding before my
arrival--although a fortnight later Mr. Job found thousands of fresh
eggs in their great rookeries west of the mouth of the Mississippi. The
herons had well-grown nestlings, whereas the terns and gulls were in the
midst of the breeding, and the skimmers had only just begun. The
pelicans often flew only a few yards, or even feet, above the water, but
also at times soared or wheeled twenty or thirty rods in the air, or
higher. They are handsome, interesting birds, and add immensely, by
their presence, to the pleasure of being out on these waters; they
should be completely protected everywhere--as, indeed, should most of
these sea-birds.
The two Parker boys--the elder of whom had for years been doing a man's
work in the best fashion, and the younger of whom had just received an
appointment to Annapolis--kept us supplied with fish, caught with the
hook and rod, except the flounders, which were harpooned. The two boys
were untiring; nothing impaired their energy, and no chance of fatigue
and exertion, at any time of the day or night, appealed to them save as
an exhilarating piece of good fortune. At a time when so large a section
of our people, including especially those who claim in a special sense
to be the guardians of cultivation, philanthropy, and religion,
deliberately make a cult of pacifism, poltroonery, sentimentality, and
neurotic emotionalism, it was refreshing to see the fine, healthy, manly
young fellows who were emphatically neither "too proud to fight" nor too
proud to work, and with whom hard work, and gentle regard for the
rights of others, and the joy of life, all went hand in hand.
Toward evening of our first day the weather changed for the worse; the
fishers among the party were recalled, and just before nightfall we ran
off, and after much groping in the dark we made a reasonably safe
anchorage. By midnight the wind fell, dense swarms of mosquitoes came
aboard, and, as our mosquito-nets were not well up (thanks partly to our
own improvidence, and partly to the violence of the wind, for we were
sleeping on deck because of the great heat), we lived in torment until
morning. On the subsequent nights we fixed our mosquito-bars so
carefully that there was no trouble. Mosquitoes and huge, green-headed
horse-flies swarm on most of the islands. I witnessed one curious
incident in connection with one of these big, biting horse-flies. A kind
of wasp preys on them, and is locally known as the "horse-guard," or
"sheriff-fly," accordingly. These horse-guards are formidable-looking
things and at first rather alarm strangers, hovering round them and
their horses; but they never assail beast or man unless themselves
molested, when they are ready enough to use their powerful sting. The
horses and cattle speedily recognize these big, humming, hornet-like
horse-guards as the foes of their tormentors. As we walked over the
islands, and the green-headed flies followed us, horse-guards also
joined us; and many greenheads and some horse-guards came on board.
Usually when the horse-guard secured the greenhead it was pounced on
from behind, and there was practically no struggle--the absence of
struggle being usual in the world of invertebrates, where the
automaton-like actions of both preyer and prey tend to make each case
resemble all others in its details. But on one occasion the greenhead
managed to turn, so that he fronted his assailant and promptly grappled
with him, sinking his evil lancet into the wasp's body and holding the
wasp so tight that the latter could not thrust with its sting. They
grappled thus for several minutes. The horse-guard at last succeeded in
stabbing its antagonist, and promptly dropped the dead body. Evidently
it had suffered much, for it vigorously rubbed the wounded spot with its
third pair of legs, walked hunched up, and was altogether a very sick
creature.
On the following day we visited two or three islands which the
man-of-war birds were using as roosts. These birds are the most
wonderful fliers in the world. No other bird has such an expanse of
wing in proportion to the body weight. No other bird of its size seems
so absolutely at home in the air. Frigate-birds--as they are also
called--hardly ever light on the water, yet they are sometimes seen in
mid-ocean. But they like to live in companies, near some coast. They
have very long tails, usually carried closed, looking like a
marlin-spike, but at times open, like a great pair of scissors, in the
course of their indescribably graceful aerial evolutions. We saw them
soaring for hours at a time, sometimes to all seeming absolutely
motionless as they faced the wind. They sometimes caught fish for
themselves, just rippling the water to seize surface swimmers, or
pouncing with startling speed on any fish which for a moment leaped into
the air to avoid another shape of ravenous death below. If the
frigate-bird caught the fish transversely, it rose, dropped its prey,
and seized it again by the head before it struck the water. But it also
obtained its food in less honorable fashion--by robbing other birds. The
pelicans were plundered by _all_ their fish-eating neighbors, even the
big terns; but the man-of-war bird robbed the robbers. We saw three
chase a royal tern, a very strong flier; the tern towered, ascending so
high we could hardly see it, but in great spirals its pursuers rose
still faster, until one was above it; and then the tern dropped the
fish, which was snatched in midair by one of the bandits. Captain
Sprinkle had found these frigate-birds breeding on one of the islands
the previous year, each nest being placed in a bush and containing two
eggs. We visited the island; the big birds--the old males jet black, the
females with white breasts, the young males with white heads--were there
in numbers, perched on the bushes, and rising at our approach. But there
were no nests, and, although we found one fresh egg, it was evidently a
case of sporadic laying, having nothing to do with home-building.
On another island, where we also found a big colony of frigate-birds
roosting on the mangrove and Gulf tamarisk scrub, there was a small
heronry of the Louisiana heron. The characteristic flimsy heron nests
were placed in the thick brush, which was rather taller than a man's
head. The young ones had left the nests, but were still too young for
anything in the nature of sustained flight. They were, like all young
herons, the pictures of forlorn and unlovely inefficiency, as they
flapped a few feet away and strove with ungainly awkwardness to balance
themselves on the yielding bush tops. The small birds we found on the
islands were red-winged blackbirds, Louisiana seaside sparrows, and
long-billed marsh-wrens--which last had built their domed houses among
the bushes, in default of tall reeds. On one island Job discovered a
night-hawk on her nest. She fluttered off, doing the wounded-bird trick,
leaving behind her an egg and a newly hatched chick. He went off to get
his umbrella-house, and when he returned the other egg was hatching, and
another little chick, much distressed by the heat, appeared. He stood up
a clam-shell to give it shade, and then, after patient waiting, the
mother returned, and he secured motion-pictures of her and her little
family. These birds offer very striking examples of real protective
coloration.
The warm shallows, of course, teem with mollusks as well as with
fish--not to mention the shrimps, which go in immense silver schools,
and which we found delicious eating. The occasional violent storms, when
they do not destroy islands, throw up on them huge dikes or ramparts of
shells, which makes the walking hard on the feet.
There are more formidable things than shells in the warm shallows. The
fishermen as they waded near shore had to be careful lest they should
step on a sting-ray. When a swim was proposed as our boat swung at
anchor in mid-channel, under the burning midday sun, Captain Sprinkle
warned us against it because he had just seen a large shark. He said
that sharks rarely attacked men, but that he had known of two instances
of their doing so in Mississippi Sound, one ending fatally. In this case
the man was loading a sand schooner. He was standing on a scaffolding,
the water half-way up his thighs, and the shark seized him and carried
him into deep water. Boats went to his assistance at once, scaring off
the shark; but the man's leg had been bitten nearly in two; he sank, and
was dead when he was finally found.
The following two days we continued our cruise. We steamed across vast
reaches of open Gulf, the water changing from blue to yellow as it
shoaled. Now and then we sighted or passed low islands of bare sand and
scrub. The sky was sapphire, the sun splendid and pitiless, the heat
sweltering. We came across only too plain evidence of the disasters
always hanging over the wilderness folk. A fortnight previously a high
tide and a heavy blow had occurred coincidentally. On the islands where
the royal terns especially loved to nest the high water spelled
destruction. The terns nest close together, in bird cities, so to
speak, and generally rather low on the beaches. On island after island
the waves had washed over the nests and destroyed them by the ten
thousand. The beautiful royal terns were the chief sufferers. On one
island there was a space perhaps nearly an acre in extent where the
ground was covered with their eggs, which had been washed thither by the
tide; most of them had then been eaten by those smart-looking
highwaymen, the trim, slate-headed laughing gulls. The terns had
completely deserted the island and had gone in their thousands to
another; but some skimmers remained and were nesting. The westernmost
island, we visited was outside the national reservation, and that very
morning it had been visited and plundered by a party of eggers. The eggs
had been completely cleared from most of the island, gulls and terns had
been shot, and the survivors were in a frantic state of excitement. It
was a good object-lesson in the need of having reserves, and laws
protecting wild life, and a sufficient number of efficient officers to
enforce the laws and protect the reserves. Defenders of the
short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted,
rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all
useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by
saying that "the game belongs to the people." So it does; and not merely
to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The "greatest good of
the greatest number" applies to the number within the womb of time,
compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction.
Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us
restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage
of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild
life, and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural
resources, are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.
On some of the islands we found where green turtles had crawled up the
beaches to bury their eggs in the sand. We came across two such nests.
One of them I dug up myself. The eggs we took to the boat, where they
were used in making delicious pancakes, which went well with fresh
shrimp, flounder, weakfish, mackerel, and mullet.
The laughing gulls and the black skimmers were often found with their
nests intermingled, and they hovered over our heads with the same noisy
protest against our presence. Although they often--not always--nested
so close together, the nests were in no way alike. The gulls' dark-green
eggs, heavily blotched with brown, two or three in number, lay on a rude
platform of marsh-grass, which was usually partially sheltered by some
bush or tuft of reeds, or, if on wet ground, was on a low pile of
driftwood. The skimmers' eggs, light whitish green and less heavily
marked with brown, were, when the clutch was full, four to six in
number. There was no nest at all, nothing but a slight hollow in the
sand, or gravel or shell débris. In the gravel or among the shell débris
it was at first hard to pick out the eggs; but as our eyes grew
accustomed to them we found them without difficulty. Sometimes we found
the nests of gull and skimmer within a couple of feet of one another,
one often under or in a bush, the other always out on the absolutely
bare open. Considering the fact that the gull stood ready, with cannibal
cheerfulness, to eat the skimmer's eggs if opportunity offered, I should
have thought that to the latter bird such association would have seemed
rather grewsome; but, as a matter of fact, there seemed to be no feeling
of constraint whatever on either side, and the only fighting I saw, and
this of a very mild type, was among the gulls themselves. As we
approached their nesting-places all these birds rose, and clamored
loudly as they hovered over us, lighting not far off, and returning to
their nests as we moved away.
The skimmers are odd, interesting birds, and on the whole were, if
anything, rather tamer even than the royal terns and laughing gulls,
their constant associates. They came close behind these two in point of
abundance. They flew round and round us, and to and fro, continually
uttering their loud single note, the bill being held half open as they
did so. The lower mandible, so much longer than the upper, gives them a
curious look. Ordinarily the bill is held horizontally and closed; but
when after the small fish on which they feed the lower mandible is
dropped to an angle of forty-five degrees, ploughing lightly the surface
of the water and scooping up the prey. They fly easily, with at ordinary
times rather deliberate strokes of their long wings, wheeling and
circling, and continually crying if roused from their nests. When flying
the white of their plumage is very conspicuous, and as they flapped
around every detail of form and coloration, of bill and plumage, could
be observed.
When sitting they appear almost black, and, in consequence, when on
their nests, on the beaches or on the white-shell dikes, they are
visible half a mile off, and stand out as distinctly as a crow on a
snow-bank.[2] They are perfectly aware of this, and make no attempt to
elude observation, any more than the gulls and terns do. The fledglings
are concealingly colored, and crouch motionless, so as to escape notice
from possible enemies; and the eggs, while they do not in color
harmonize with the surroundings to the extent that they might
artificially be made to do, yet easily escape the eye when laid on a
beach composed of broken sea-shells. But the coloration of the adults is
of a strikingly advertising character, under all circumstances, and
especially when they are sitting on their nests. Among all the vagaries
of the fetichistic school of concealing-colorationists none is more
amusing than the belief that the coloration of the adult skimmer is
ever, under any conditions, of a concealing quality. Sometimes the
brooding skimmer attempted to draw us away from the nest by fluttering
off across the sand like a wounded bird. Like the gulls, the skimmers
moved about much more freely on the ground than did the terns.
The handsome little laughing gull was found everywhere, and often in
numerous colonies, although these colonies were not larger than those of
the skimmer, and in no way approached the great breeding assemblages of
the royal terns on the two or three islands where the latter especially
congregated. They were noisy birds, continually uttering a single loud
note, but only occasionally the queer laughter which gives them their
name. They looked very trim and handsome, both on the wing and when
swimming or walking; and their white breasts and dark heads made them
very conspicuous on their nests, no matter whether these were on open
ground or partially concealed in a bush or reed cluster. Like the
skimmers, although perhaps not quite so markedly, their coloration was
strongly advertising at all times, including when on their nests. Their
relations with their two constant associates and victims, the skimmer
and the royal tern--the three being about the same size--seemed to me
very curious. The gull never molested the eggs of either of the other
birds if the parents were sitting on them or were close by. But gulls
continually broke and devoured eggs, especially terns' eggs, which had
been temporarily abandoned. Nor was this all. When a colony of nesting
royal terns flew off at our approach, the hesitating advent of the
returning parents was always accompanied by the presence of a few gulls.
Commonly the birds lit a few yards away from the eggs, on the opposite
side from the observer, and then by degrees moved forward among the
temporarily forsaken eggs. The gulls were usually among the foremost
ranks, and each, as it walked or ran to and fro, would now and then
break or carry off an egg; yet I never saw a tern interfere or seem
either alarmed or angered. These big terns are swifter and better fliers
than the gulls, and the depredations take place all the time before
their eyes. Yet they pay no attention that I could discern to the
depredation. Compare this with the conduct of king-birds to those other
egg-robbers, the crows. Imagine a king-bird, or, for that matter, a
mocking-bird or thrasher, submitting with weak good humor to such
treatment! If these big terns had even a fraction of the intelligence
and spirit of king-birds, no gull would venture within a half-mile of
their nesting-grounds.
It is one of the innumerable puzzles of biology that the number of eggs
a bird lays seems to have such small influence on the abundance of the
species. A royal tern lays one egg, rarely two; a gull three; a skimmer
four to six. The gull eats the eggs of the other two, especially of the
tern; as far as we know, all have the same foes; yet the abundance of
the birds is in inverse ratio to the number of their eggs. Of course,
there is an explanation; but we cannot even guess at it as yet. With
this, as with so many other scientific questions, all we can say is,
with Huxley, that we are not afraid to announce that we do not know.
The beautiful royal terns were common enough, flying in the air and
diving boldly after little fish. We listened with interest to their cry,
which was a kind of creaking bleat. We admired the silver of their
plumage as they flew overhead. But we did not come across vast numbers
of them assembled for breeding until the fourth day. Then we found them
on an island on which Captain Sprinkle told us he had never before found
them, although both skimmers and gulls had always nested on it. The
previous fall he had waged war with traps against the coons, which,
although there was no fresh water, had begun to be plentiful on the
island. He had caught a number, two escaping, one with the loss of a
hind foot, and one with the loss of a fore foot. The island was seven
miles long, curved, with occasional stretches of salt marsh, and with
reaches of scrub, but no trees. Most of it was bare sand. We saw three
coon tracks, two being those of the three-footed animals; evidently the
damaged leg was now completely healed and was used like the others,
punching a round hole in the sand. We saw one coon, at dusk, hunting for
oysters at the water's edge.
The gulls and skimmers were nesting on this island in great numbers, but
the terns were many times more plentiful. There were thousands upon
thousands of them. Their breeding-places were strung in a nearly
straight line for a couple of miles along the sand flats. A mile off,
from our boat, we were attracted by their myriad forms, glittering in
the brilliant sunlight as they rose and fell and crossed and circled
over the nesting-places. The day was bright and hot, and the sight was
one of real fascination. As we approached a breeding colony the birds
would fly up, hover about, and resettle when we drew back a sufficient
distance. The eggs, singly, or rarely in pairs, were placed on the bare
sand, with no attempt at a nest, the brooding bird being sometimes but a
few inches, sometimes two or three feet, from the nearest of its
surrounding neighbors. The colonies of breeders were scattered along the
shore for a couple of miles, each one being one or two hundred yards,
or over, from the next. In one such breeding colony I counted a little
over a thousand eggs; there were several of smaller size, and a few that
were larger, one having perhaps three times as many. A number of the
eggs, perhaps ten per cent, had been destroyed by the gulls; the coons
had ravaged some of the gulls' nests, which were in or beside the scrub.
The eggs of the terns, being so close together and on the bare sand,
were very conspicuous; they were visible to a casual inspection at a
distance of two or three hundred yards, and it was quite impossible for
any bird or beast to overlook them near by. These gregarious nesters,
whose eggs are gathered in a big nursery, cannot profit by any
concealing coloration of the eggs. The eggs of the royal and Cabot's
terns were perhaps a shade less conspicuous than the darker eggs of the
Caspian tern, all of them lying together; but on that sand, and crowded
into such a regular nursery, none of them could have escaped the vision
of any foe with eyes. As I have said, the eggs of the skimmer, as the
clutches were more scattered, were much more difficult to make out, on
the shell beaches. Concealing coloration has been a survival factor only
as regards a minority, and is responsible for the precise coloration of
only a small minority, of adult birds and mammals; how much and what
part it plays, and in what percentage of cases, in producing the
coloration of eggs, is a subject which is well worth serious study. As
regards most of these sea-birds which nest gregariously, their one
instinct for safety at nesting time seems to be to choose a lonely
island. This is their only, and sufficient, method of outwitting their
foes at the crucial period of their lives.
We found only eggs in the nurseries, not young birds. In each nursery
there were always a number of terns brooding their eggs, and the air
above was filled with a ceaseless flutter and flashing of birds leaving
their nests and returning to them--or eggs, rather, for, speaking
accurately, there were no nests. The sky above was alive with the
graceful, long-winged things. As we approached the nurseries the birds
would begin to leave. If we halted before the alarm became universal,
those that stayed always served as lures to bring back those that had
left. If we came too near, the whole party rose in a tumult of flapping
wings; and when all had thus left it was some time before any returned.
With patience it was quite possible to get close to the sitting birds; I
noticed that in the heat many had their bills open. Those that were on
the wing flew round and round us, creaking and bleating, and often so
near that every detail of form and color was vivid in our eyes. The
immense majority were royal terns, big birds with orange beaks. With
them were a very few Caspian terns, still bigger, and with bright-red
beaks, and quite a number of Cabot's terns, smaller birds with
yellow-tipped black beaks. These were all nesting together, in the same
nurseries.
It has been said on excellent authority that terns can always be told
from gulls because, whereas the latter carry their beaks horizontally,
the terns carry their bills pointing downward, "like a mosquito." My own
observations do not agree with this statement. When hovering over water
where there are fish, and while watching for their prey, terns point the
bill downward, just as pelicans do in similar circumstances; just as
gulls often do when they are seeking to spy food below them. But
normally, on the great majority of the occasions when I saw them, the
terns, like the gulls, carried the bill in the same plane as the body.
On another island we found a small colony of Forster's tern; and we saw
sooty terns, and a few of the diminutive least terns. But I was much
more surprised to find on, or rather over, one island a party of black
terns. As these are inland birds, most of which at this season are
breeding around the lakes of our Northwestern country, I was puzzled by
their presence. Still more puzzling was it to come across a party of
turnstones, with males in full, brightly varied nuptial dress, for
turnstones during the breeding season live north of the arctic circle,
in the perpetual sunlight of the long polar day. On the other hand, a
couple of big oyster-catchers seemed, and were, entirely in place; they
are striking birds and attract attention at a great distance. We saw
dainty Wilson's plover with their chicks, and also semipalmated
sandpipers.
On the morning of the 12th we returned to Pass Christian. I was very
glad to have seen this bird refuge. With care and protection the birds
will increase and grow tamer and tamer, until it will be possible for
any one to make trips among these reserves and refuges, and to see as
much as we saw, at even closer quarters. No sight more beautiful and
more interesting could be imagined.
I am far from disparaging the work of the collector who is also a field
naturalist. On the contrary, I fully agree with Mr. Joseph Grinnell's
recent plea for him. His work is indispensable. It is far more
important to protect his rights than to protect those of the sportsman;
for the serious work of the collector is necessary in order to prevent
the scientific study of ornithology from lapsing into mere dilettanteism
indulged in as a hobby by men and women with opera-glasses. Moreover,
sportsmen also have their rights, and it is folly to sacrifice these
rights to mere sentimentality--for, of course, sentimentality is as much
the antithesis and bane of healthy sentiment as bathos is of pathos. If
thoroughly protected, any bird or mammal would speedily increase in
numbers to such a degree as to drive man from the planet; and of recent
years this has been signally proved by actual experience as regards
certain creatures, notably as regards the wapiti in the Yellowstone
(where the prime need now is to provide for the annual killing of at
least five thousand), and to a less extent as regards deer in Vermont.
But as yet these cases are rare exceptions. As yet with the great
majority of our most interesting and important wild birds and beasts the
prime need is to protect them, not only by laws limiting the open season
and the size of the individual bag, but especially by the creation of
sanctuaries and refuges. And, while the work of the collector is still
necessary, the work of the trained faunal naturalist, who is primarily
an observer of the life histories of the wild things, is even more
necessary. The progress made in the United States, of recent years, in
creating and policing bird refuges,[3] has been of capital importance.
At nightfall of the third day of our trip, when we were within sight of
Fort Jackson and of the brush and low trees which here grow alongside
the Mississippi, we were joined by Mr. M. L. Alexander, the president of
the Conservation Commission, on the commission's boat _Louisiana_. He
was more than kind and courteous, as were all my Louisiana friends. He
and Mr. Miller told me much of the work of the commission; work not only
of the utmost use to Louisiana, but of almost equal consequence to the
rest of the country, if only for the example set.
The commission was not founded until 1912, yet it has already
accomplished a remarkable amount along many different lines. The work of
reforestation of great stretches of denuded, and at present worthless,
pine land has begun; work which will turn lumbering into a permanent
Louisiana industry by making lumber a permanent crop asset, like corn
or wheat, only taking longer to mature--an asset which it is equally
important not to destroy. In taking care of the mineral resources a stop
has been put to waste as foolish as it was criminal; for example, a
gas-well which had flowed to waste until six million dollars' worth of
gas had been lost was stopped and stored at the cost of five thousand
one hundred dollars. The oysters are now farmed and husbanded, the beds
being leased in such fashion that there is a steady improvement of the
product. Louisiana is peculiarly rich in fish, and a policy has been
inaugurated which, if persevered in, will make the paddle-fish industry
as important as the sturgeon fishery is in Russia. Not only do the
waters of Louisiana now belong to the State, but also the land under the
water, this last proving in practise an admirable provision. Some three
hundred thousand acres of game reserves and wild-life refuges (mostly
uninhabitable by man) have now been established. These have largely been
gifts to the State by wise and generous private individuals and
corporations, the chief donors being Messrs. Edward A. McIlhenny and
Charles Willis Ward, Mrs. Russell Sage, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Conservation Commission has accepted the gifts, and is taking care
of the reserves and refuges through its State wardens, with the result
that wild birds of many kinds, including even the wary geese, which come
down as winter visitants by the hundred thousand, have become very tame,
and many beautiful birds which were on the verge of extinction are now
re-established and increasing in numbers. These reserves, which lie for
the most part in the low country along the coast, are west of the
Mississippi.
Job had just come from a visit to the private reserve of Edward A.
McIlhenny on Avery Island. It is the most noteworthy reserve in the
country. It includes four thousand acres, and is near the Ward-McIlhenny
reserve, which they have given to the State--a king's gift! Avery's
Island is very beautiful. A great, shallow, artificial lake, surrounded
by dwellings, fields, lawns, a railroad, and ox-wagon road, does not
seem an ideal home for herons; but it has proved such under the care of
Mr. McIlhenny. He started the reserve twenty years ago with eight snowy
herons. Now it contains about forty thousand herons of several species.
Complete freedom from molestation has rendered the birds extraordinarily
tame. The beautiful snow-white lesser egret, which had been almost
exterminated by the plume-hunters, flourishes by the thousand; the
greater egret has been bothered so by the smaller one that it has
retired before it; its heronries are now to be found mainly in other
parts of the protected region. Many other kinds of heron, and many
waterfowl, literally throng the place. Ducks winter by the thousand,
and, most unexpectedly, some even of the northern kinds, like the
gadwall, now stay to breed. Most of these birds are so tame that there
is little difficulty in taking photographs of them.
The Audubon societies, and all similar organizations, are doing a great
work for the future of our country. Birds should be saved because of
utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of
reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents. A grove of
giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and
beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger-pigeon meant
that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the
destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. And to lose the chance to see
frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans
winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset,
or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover
in a shifting maze above the beach--why, the loss is like the loss of a
gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: An expression borrowed from Stewart Edward White's capital
"Rediscovered Country."]
[Footnote 3: See Appendix B.]