The hand that struck thee down
Could not have known
That thou hadst songs unsung
And flights unflown.
But ours will be the loss—
No more at morn
Will sound the reveillé
From thy wee horn.
Thy form will not be one
That flits the air,
As one that trusts in God
And knows no care.
Then when the shadows creep,
And light grows dim,
We’ll list, but never hear,
Thy vesper-hymn.
The hand that struck thee down
Could not have known
That thou hadst songs unsung
And flights unflown.
—J. D. LaBarre Van Schoonhoven.
THE GOBBLER WHO WAS LONESOME.
A HISTORICAL FACT.
Turkeys are social creatures and, like some boys and girls, do not like
to be left for any length of time to find their food or their pleasures
alone.
Big Tom was a mammoth gobbler of the bronze family, which stands high in
Turkeydom. Big Tom loved to have a group of admiring mates and social
equals about when he spread his jaw and sang his song. Some taller
bipeds who spoke a different language said that his song of
“gobble-obble-obble” was not pleasing. This remark may have been the
reason why Big Tom’s wattles grew so scarlet each time he sang, but it
is to be doubted.
When the spring days had grown long three hen turkeys came off their
nests with broods of turkey chicks, too valuable to the farmer to be
left entirely to the turkey mother’s judgment and care. Hence these
various broods, numbering in all twenty-seven chicks, were penned into
tiny homes and fed on food furnished by their master.
Big Tom watched these proceedings for about one week, and then evidently
rebelled at the taking of his kingdom away from him.
He first persuaded one brood to follow him into a field where
grasshoppers bounded and abounded. This brood he kept over night housed
under his great wings. His success pleased him, for in a few days a
second brood was discovered to be missing, and two hen turkeys were
idling away their time talking over their troubles or happiness through
the bars of their wooden prisons.
But the climax was reached when in a distant field a few days later Big
Tom was found chaperoning a party of twenty-seven young tourist turkeys
of a very tender age, through a field where insect food was too
plentiful for the farmer’s profit, but just right for sturdy bronze
turkeys, both young and old.
The farmer attempted to drive his majesty, Big Tom, back to his quarters
near the barn, but the young turks disappeared at their father’s first
warning cluck or signal, and Big Tom showed plainly that he resented
interference with his own plans for his children’s future.
The farmer returned to the house alone and finding the three turkey hens
calmly gossiping through the slatted fronts of their coops, gave them
their liberty, and went back to planting his crop in the distant field,
where he found Big Tom happy with his party of young adventurers.
Big Tom never allowed one turkey chick to return night or day to its
coop or its mother. In the fall, the farmer and his boys counted
twenty-seven well grown turkeys perched on the fence back of the barn,
with his majesty, their father, half way down the line, where his eyes
could take in all their doings.
The hen turkeys had gone about their own work, raised other broods and
brought them up in coops with various losses, but Big Tom of the red
wattles has always been celebrated in that locality from that year down
to the present date as the best manager of a turkey ranch ever known.
At Thanksgiving time Big Tom’s good qualities were enumerated by a large
party gathered at the farmer’s table, and if his majesty could have
heard the flattering remarks his pride would have perhaps caused him to
give back an answering “gobble-obble-obble.”
Mary Catherine Judd.
[Illustration: VARIED THRUSH.
(Hesperocichla naevia.)
About ½ Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.]
THE VARIED THRUSH.
(_Hesperocichla naevia._)
The Varied Thrush is one of the most beautiful members of the family of
thrushes. Its range is somewhat limited as it frequents only the coastal
regions of the northwestern part of North America. In winter, however,
it may be found in California and is occasionally seen as far south as
Lower California. As a straggler, it is sometimes noticed in the New
England states.
Mr. Mitchell says that the Varied Thrush reaches the Columbia river in
its southward flight some time in October. He also states that “at this
time they flit through the forests in small flocks, usually frequenting
the low trees, on which they perch in perfect silence and are at times
very timorous and difficult to approach, having all the sly sagacity of
the robin.” In fact this bird, which is often called the Western Robin,
is not only much more shy and retiring than our well known eastern
friend, but their song is also very different, “consisting only of five
or six notes in a minor key and a scale regularly descending.” Mr.
Townsend speaks of the song as being louder, sharper and quicker than
that of the robin and adds that its song just before its northward
flight, in the spring, is pleasant. Its song is seldom heard except from
the tree tops, and in summer, as a rule, only from the deeper forests.
Dr. Suckley describes the Varied Thrush as he studied it in Oregon and
Washington. He says: “In winter it is a shy bird, not generally becoming
noticeable in the open districts until after a fall of snow, when many
individuals may be seen along the sand beaches near salt water. They are
at such times tame and abundant. I suppose that they are driven out of
the woods during the heavy snows by hunger. It may then frequently be
found in company with the robin, with which it has many similar habits.
At this time of the year it is a very silent bird, quite tame and will
allow near approach. It appears to be fond of flying by short stages in
a desultory manner, sometimes alighting on the ground, at other times on
fences, bushes or trees.”
Mr. Cooper, speaking of the bird as he found it near San Francisco, says
that they begin to appear in October, when “they are usually timid, but
toward spring come more familiarly around houses and utter their shrill,
low notes, which seem much more distant than the bird itself really is.
If pursued they hide, and sit unmovable among the foliage.”
The bird is also known by several other names, such as the Spotted,
Golden, Painted or Columbia Robin or Thrush, and sometimes it is called
the Thrush-like Mockingbird. A marked characteristic of the male is the
black crescent on the breast.
Mr. Davie describes the nest as found by Dr. Minor in Alaska: “Its base
and periphery are composed of an elaborate basket-work of slender twigs.
Within these is an inner nest consisting of an interweaving of fine dry
grasses and long gray lichen.” The eggs are said to be a light
greenish-blue, slightly sprinkled with spots of a dark umber-brown.
MISSOURI SKYLARK.
(_Anthus spragueii._)
“What thou art we know not
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.”
—Shelley.
When the umber skylark is struck into glory of plume and of song by the
rising sun, we can conceive that the song is indeed “the nearest
approach, in animal nature, to the ringing of the hydrogen bells in the
physics of light,” and that when “the music soars within the little lark
and the lark soars,” he is almost an involuntary agent, the song, like
the summer, owing its creation, as George MacDonald tells, to
“The sun that rises early,
Shining, shining all day rarely;
Drawing up the larks to meet him,
Earth’s bird-angels, wild to greet him.”
Although the skylark, more than any other of the aerial tribes, “holds
the middle rank ’twixt heaven and earth, on the last verge of mortal
being stand,” the fate of the Missouri skylark is more unhappy than that
of a prophet, for, being so little known in comparison with his deserts,
he is almost without honor in his own country or any other. Yet it was
so long ago as May 19, 1843, that Audubon, near the headwaters of the
Missouri, celebrated in his journal the glad tidings of his discovery:
“Harris and Bell have returned, and, to my delight and utter
astonishment, have brought two new birds, one a lark, small and
beautiful.” And again, on June 22, he writes: “The little new lark, that
I have named for Sprague, has almost all the habits of the skylark of
Europe. Whilst looking anxiously for it on the ground, where we supposed
it to be singing, we discovered it to be high over our heads, and that
sometimes it went too high for us to see at all. When this species start
from the ground they fly in succession of undulations, which renders aim
at them quite difficult. After this, and in the same manner, they
elevate themselves to some considerable height, as if about to sing, and
presently pitch toward the ground, where they run prettily, and at times
stand still and quite erect for a few minutes.”
On June 24 he continues: “This afternoon I thought would be a fair
opportunity to examine the manners of Sprague’s lark on the wing. The
male rises, by constant undulations, to a great height, say one hundred
yards or more; and, whilst singing its sweetest sounding notes, beats
its wings, poised in the air like a hawk, without rising at this time,
after which, and after each burst of singing, it sails in divers
directions, forming three-quarters of a circle or thereabouts, then
rises again, and again sings. The intervals between the singing are
longer than those the song occupies (the latter about fifteen to twenty
minutes), and at times the bird remains so long in the air as to render
it quite fatiguing to follow it with the eye. Sprague thought one he
watched yesterday remained in the air about an hour. Bell and Harris
watched one for more than half an hour, and this afternoon I gazed upon
one, whilst Bell timed it, for thirty-six minutes.”
In November, 1873, Dr. Coues discovered this pipit in considerable
numbers, and continues Audubon’s enthusiastic description: The ordinary
straightforward flight of the bird is performed with a regular rising
and falling like that of the titlark; but its course, when startled from
the ground, is exceedingly rapid and wayward. At such times, after the
first alarm, they are wont to hover around in a desultory manner for a
considerable time and then pitch suddenly down to the ground, often near
where they rose. Under these circumstances they have a lisping,
querulous note. But these common traits have nothing to do with the
wonderful soaring action and the inimitable, matchless song of the birds
during the breeding season. It is no wonder Audubon grew enthusiastic in
describing it.
“Rising from the nest or from its grassy bed, this plain-looking little
bird, clad in the simplest colors, and making but a speck in the
boundless expanse, mounts straight up on tremulous wings, until lost to
view in the blue ether, and then sends back to earth a song of gladness
that seems to come from the sky itself, to cheer the weary, give hope to
the disheartened, and turn the most indifferent, for the moment at
least, from sordid thoughts. No other bird music heard in our land
compares with the wonderful strains of this songster; there is something
not of earth in the melody, coming from above, yet from no visible
source. The notes are simply indescribable; but once heard they can
never be forgotten. Their volume and penetration are truly wonderful.
They are neither loud nor strong, yet the whole air seems filled with
the tender strains and the delightful melody continues long unbroken.
The song is only heard for a brief period in the summer, ceasing when
the inspiration of the love season is over, and it is only uttered when
the birds are soaring.”
Baird, Brewer and Ridgway tell that Captain Blackiston found this
skylark common on the prairies of the Saskatchewan, and described the
song as consisting of a quick succession of notes, in a descending
scale, each note being lower than the preceding. The bird then descends
to the ground with great rapidity, almost like a stone, and somewhat in
the manner of a hawk sweeping on its prey. He also saw these birds in
northern Minnesota.
Some one says that the larks, those creatures of “light and air and
motion, whose nest is in the stubble and whose tryst is in the cloud,”
are well-known as the symbol of poets and victim of epicures, and
Burroughs, to whom they are a symbol, says: “Its type is the grass where
the bird makes its home, abounding, multitudinous, the notes nearly all
alike and in the same key, but rapid, swarming, prodigal, showering down
as thick and fast as drops of rain in a summer shower.” This of the
skylark of Europe. But he adds: “On the Great Plains of the West there
is a bird whose song resembles the lark’s quite closely, and it is said
to be not at all inferior—the Missouri Skylark, an excelsior songster,
which from far up in the transparent blue rains down its notes for many
minutes together. It is no doubt destined to figure in the future
poetical literature of the West.”
Yet all that has been written of the “Star of music in a fiery cloud” by
Burroughs and by Wadsworth, Shelley and the rest, might properly have
been indited to the “Musical Cherub” of the Big Muddy Valley, when,
climbing, “shrill with ecstacy, the trembling air,” he “calls up the
tuneful nations,” and the same celestial pilgrim might have appeared to
Eric MacKay:
“In the light of the day,
Like a soul on its way
To the gardens of God, it was loosed from the earth;
And the song that it sang was a pæan of mirth
For the raptures of birth.”
Juliette A. Owen.