For abundance and for perfection of song and plumage, of the whole year,
May is the month of birds. Insects appear slowly in the spring and are
numerous all summer; squirrels and mice are more or less in evidence
during all the twelve months; reptiles unearth themselves at the approach
of the warm weather, and may be found living their slow, sluggish life
until late in the fall. In eggs, cocoons, discarded bird's-nests, in
earthen burrows, or in the mud at the bottom of pond or stream, all these
creatures have spent the winter near where we find them in the spring. But
birds are like creatures of another world; and, although in every summer's
walk we may see turtles, birds, butterflies, and chipmunks, all
interweaving their life paths across one another's haunts, yet the power
of extended flight and the wonderful habit of continental migration set
birds apart from all other living creatures. A bird during its lifetime
has almost twice the conscious existence of, say, a snake or any
hibernating mammal. And now in early May, when the creatures of the woods
and fields have only recently opened their sleepy eyes and stretched their
thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose
bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant
feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap--the height of the grand
symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels'
chatter were only the first notes of the prelude.
Tantalus-like is the condition of the amateur bird-lover, who, book in
hand, vainly endeavours to identify the countless beautiful forms which
appear in such vast numbers, linger a few days and then disappear, passing
on to the northward, but leaving behind a goodly assemblage which spends
the summer and gives abundant opportunity for study during the succeeding
months. In May it is the migrants which we should watch, and listen to,
and "ogle" with our opera glasses. Like many other evanescent things,
those birds which have made their winter home in Central America--land yet
beyond our travels--and which use our groves merely as half-way houses on
their journey to the land of their birth, the balsams of Quebec, or the
unknown wastes of Labrador, seem most precious, most worthy at this time
of our closest observation.
More confusing--albeit the more delightful--is a season when continued
cold weather and chilly rains hold back all but the hardiest birds,
until--like the dammed-up piles of logs trembling with the spring
freshets--the tropic winds carry all before them, and all at once winter
birds which have sojourned only a few miles south of us, summer residents
which should have appeared weeks ago, together with the great host of
Canadian and other nesters of the north, appear within a few days' time.
A backward season brings strangers into close company for a while. A
white-throat sings his clear song of the North, and a moment later is
answered by an oriole's melody, or the sweet tones of a rose-breasted
grosbeak--the latter one of those rarely favoured birds, exquisite in both
plumage and song.
The glories of our May bird life are the wood warblers, and innumerable
they must seem to one who is just beginning his studies; indeed, there are
over seventy species that find their way into the United States. Many are
named from the distribution of colour upon their plumage--the blue-winged
yellow, the black-throated blue, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, and black
poll. Perhaps the two most beautiful--most reflective of bright tropical
skies and flowers--are the magnolia and the blackburnian. The first fairly
dazzles us with its bluish crown, white and black face, black and
olive-green back, white marked wings and tail, yellow throat and rump, and
strongly streaked breast. The blackburnian is an exquisite little fellow,
marked with white and black, but with the crown, several patches on the
face, the throat and breast of a rich warm orange that glows amid the
green foliage like a living coal of fire. The black poll warbler is an
easy bird to identify; but do not expect to recognise it when it returns
from the North in the fall. Its black crown has disappeared, and in
general it looks like a different bird.
At the present time when the dogwood blossoms are in their full
perfection, and the branches and twigs of the trees are not yet hidden,
but their outlines only softened by the light, feathery foliage, the
tanagers and orioles have their day. Nesting cares have not yet made them
fearful of showing their bright plumage, and scores of the scarlet and
orange forms play among the branches.
The flycatchers and vireos now appear in force--little hunters of insects
clad in leafy greens and browns, with now and then a touch of
brightness--as in the yellow-throated vireo or in the crest of the
kingbird.
The lesser sandpipers, both the spotted and the solitary, teeter along the
brooks and ponds, and probe the shallows for tiny worms. Near the woody
streams the so-called water thrushes spring up before us. Strange birds
these, in appearance like thrushes, in their haunts and in their teetering
motion like sandpipers, but in reality belonging to the same family as the
tree-loving wood warblers. A problem not yet solved by ornithologists is:
what was the mode of life of the ancestor of the many warblers? Did he
cling to and creep along the bark, as the black-and-white warbler, or feed
from the ground or the thicket as does the worm-eating? Did he snatch
flies on the wing as the necklaced Canadian warbler, or glean from the
brook's edge as our water thrush? The struggle for existence has not been
absent from the lives of these light-hearted little fellows, and they have
had to be jack-of-all-trades in their search for food.
The gnats and other flying insects have indeed to take many chances when
they slip from their cocoons and dance up and down in the warm sunlight!
Lucky for their race that there are millions instead of thousands of them;
for now the swifts and great numbers of tree and barn swallows spend the
livelong day in swooping after the unfortunate gauzy-winged motes, which
have risen above the toad's maw upon land, and beyond the reach of the
trout's leap over the water.
It would take an article as long as this simply to mention hardly more
than the names of the birds that we may observe during a walk in May; and
with bird book and glasses we must see for ourselves the bobolinks in the
broad meadows, the cowbirds and rusty blackbirds, and, pushing through the
lady-slipper marshes, we may surprise the solitary great blue and the
little green herons at their silent fishing.
No matter how late the spring may be, the great migration host will reach
its height from the tenth to the fifteenth of the month. From this until
June first, migrants will be passing, but in fewer and fewer numbers,
until the balance comes to rest again, and we may cease from the strenuous
labours of the last few weeks, confident that those birds that remain will
be the builders of the nests near our homes--nests that they know so well
how to hide. Even before the last day of May passes, we see many young
birds on their first weak-winged flights, such as bluebirds and robins;
but June is the great month of bird homes, as to May belong the migrants.
Robins and mocking birds that all day long
Athwart straight sunshine weave cross-threads of song.
Sidney Lanier.