No fact of natural history is more interesting, or more significant of the
poetry of evolution, than the distribution of birds over the entire
surface of the world. They have overcome countless obstacles, and adapted
themselves to all conditions. The last faltering glance which the Arctic
explorer sends toward his coveted goal, ere he admits defeat, shows flocks
of snow buntings active with warm life; the storm-tossed mariner in the
midst of the sea, is followed, encircled, by the steady, tireless flight
of the albatross; the fever-stricken wanderer in tropical jungles listens
to the sweet notes of birds amid the stagnant pools; while the thirsty
traveller in the desert is ever watched by the distant buzzards. Finally
when the intrepid climber, at the risk of life and limb, has painfully
made his way to the summit of the most lofty peak, far, far above him, in
the blue expanse of thin air, he can distinguish the form of a majestic
eagle or condor.
At the approach of winter the flowers and insects about us die, but most
of the birds take wing and fly to a more temperate climate, while their
place is filled with others which have spent the summer farther to the
north. Thus without stirring from our doorway we may become acquainted
with many species whose summer homes are hundreds of miles away.
No time is more propitious or advisable for the amateur bird lover to
begin his studies than the first of the year. Bird life is now reduced to
its simplest terms in numbers and species, and the absence of concealing
foliage, together with the usual tameness of winter birds, makes
identification an easy matter.
In January and the succeeding month we have with us birds which are called
permanent residents, which do not leave us throughout the entire year;
and, in addition, the winter visitors which have come to us from the far
north.
In the uplands we may flush ruffed grouse from their snug retreats in the
snow; while in the weedy fields, many a fairy trail shows where bob-white
has passed, and often he will announce his own name from the top of a rail
fence. The grouse at this season have a curious outgrowth of horny scales
along each side of the toes, which, acting as a tiny snowshoe, enables
them to walk on soft snow with little danger of sinking through.
Few of our winter birds can boast of bright colours; their garbs are
chiefly grays and browns, but all have some mark or habit or note by which
they can be at once named. For example, if you see a mouse hitching
spirally up a tree-trunk, a closer look will show that it is a brown
creeper, seeking tiny insects and their eggs in the crevices of the trunk.
He looks like a small piece of the roughened bark which has suddenly
become animated. His long tail props him up and his tiny feet never fail
to find a foothold. Our winter birds go in flocks, and where we see a
brown creeper we are almost sure to find other birds.
Nuthatches are those blue-backed, white or rufous breasted little climbers
who spend their lives defying the law of gravity. They need no supporting
tail, and have only the usual number of eight toes, but they traverse the
bark, up or down, head often pointing toward the ground, as if their feet
were small vacuum cups. Their note is an odd nasal _nyeh!_ _nyeh!_
In winter some one species of bird usually predominates, most often,
perhaps, it is the black-capped chickadee. They seem to fill every grove,
and, if you take your stand in the woods, flock after flock will pass
in succession. What good luck must have come to the chickadee race
during the preceding summer? Was some one of their enemies stricken with a
plague, or did they show more than usual care in the selecting of their
nesting holes? Whatever it was, during such a year, it seems certain that
scores more of chickadee babies manage to live to grow up than is
usually the case. These little fluffs are, in their way, as remarkable
acrobats as are the nuthatches, and it is a marvel how the very thin legs,
with their tiny sliver of bone and thread of tendon, can hold the body
of the bird in almost any position, while the vainly hidden clusters of
insect eggs are pried into. Without ceasing a moment in their busy
search for food, the fluffy feathered members of the flock call to each
other, "_Chick-a-chick-a-dee-dee!_" but now and then the heart of some
little fellow bubbles over, and he rests an instant, sending out a sweet,
tender, high call, a "_Phoe-be!_" love note, which warms our ears in
the frosty air and makes us feel a real affection for the brave little
mites.
Our song sparrow is, like the poor, always with us, at least near the
coast, but we think none the less of him for that, and besides, that fact
is true in only one sense. A ripple in a stream may be seen day after day,
and yet the water forming it is never the same, it is continually flowing
onward. This is usually the case with song sparrows and with most other
birds which are present summer and winter. The individual sparrows which
flit from bush to bush, or slip in and out of the brush piles in January,
have doubtless come from some point north of us, while the song sparrows
of our summer walks are now miles to the southward. Few birds remain the
entire year in the locality in which they breed, although the southward
movement may be a very limited one. When birds migrate so short a
distance, they are liable to be affected in colour and size by the
temperature and dampness of their respective areas; and so we find that in
North America there are as many as twenty-two races of song sparrows, to
each of which has been given a scientific name. When you wish to speak of
our northeastern song sparrow in the latest scientific way, you must say
_Melospiza cinerea melodia_, which tells us that it is a melodious song
finch, ashy or brown in colour.
Our winter sparrows are easy to identify. The song sparrow may, of course,
be known by the streaks of black and brown upon his breast and sides, and
by the blotch which these form in the centre of the breast. The tree
sparrow, which comes to us from Hudson Bay and Labrador, lacks the
stripes, but has the centre spot. This is one of our commonest field birds
in winter, notwithstanding his name.
The most omnipresent and abundant of all our winter visitors from the
north are the juncos, or snowbirds. Slate coloured above and white below,
perfectly describes these birds, although their distinguishing mark,
visible a long way off, is the white V in their tails, formed by several
white outer feathers on each side. The sharp chirps of juncos are heard
before the ice begins to form, and they stay with us all winter.
We have called the junco a snowbird, but this name should really be
confined to a black and white bunting which comes south only with a
mid-winter's rush of snowflakes. Their warm little bodies nestle close to
the white crystals, and they seek cheerfully for the seeds which nature
has provided for them. Then a thaw comes, and they disappear as silently
and mysteriously as if they had melted with the flakes; but doubtless they
are far to the northward, hanging on the outskirts of the Arctic storms,
and giving way only when every particle of food is frozen tight, the
ground covered deep with snow, and the panicled seed clusters locked in
crystal frames of ice.
The feathers of these Arctic wanderers are perfect non-conductors of heat
and of cold, and never a chill reaches their little frames until hunger
presses. Then they must find food and quickly, or they die. When these
snowflakes first come to us they are tinged with gray and brown, but
gradually through the winter their colours become more clear-cut and
brilliant, until, when spring comes, they are garbed in contrasting black
and white. With all this change, however, they leave never a feather with
us, but only the minute brown tips of the feather vanes, which, by wearing
away, leave exposed the clean new colours beneath.
Thus we find that there are problems innumerable to verify and to solve,
even when the tide of the year's life is at its lowest ebb.
From out the white and pulsing storm
I hear the snowbirds calling;
The sheeted winds stalk o'er the hills,
And fast the snow is falling.
On twinkling wings they eddy past,
At home amid the drifting,
Or seek the hills and weedy fields
Where fast the snow is sifting.
Their coats are dappled white and brown
Like fields in winter weather,
But on the azure sky they float
Like snowflakes knit together.
I've heard them on the spotless hills
Where fox and hound were playing,
The while I stood with eager ear
Bent on the distant baying.
The unmown fields are their preserves,
Where weeds and grass are seeding;
They know the lure of distant stacks
Where houseless herds are feeding.