surprise of the winter. For several years I had been studying the
tree-sparrows, hoping to hear them sing, but only two or three times had
my anxious quest been rewarded with even a wisp of melody from their
lyrical throats. On this day, however, I came upon a whole colony of
them in full tune, giving a concert that would have thrilled the most
prosaic soul with poetry and romance. It was the first time I had ever
really seen these birds while singing; but now, so kind was fortune, I
could watch the movement of their mandibles, the swelling of their
throats, and the heaving of their bosoms while they trilled their
roundelays. My notes, taken on the spot, run as follows: “The song is
somewhat crude and labored in technique; but the tones are very sweet
indeed, not soft and low, as one author says, but quite loud and clear,
so that they might be heard at some distance. The minstrelsy is more
like that of the fox-sparrow than of any other sparrow, though the tones
are finer and not so full and resonant. Quite often the song opens with
one or two long syllables, and ends with a merry little trill having a
delightfully human intonation. There is, indeed, something innocent and
even childlike about the voices of these sparrows. Had they the
song-sparrow’s skill in execution, they would rival that triller’s vocal
performances. How many of them are taking part in the concert! They seem
to be holding a song carnival to-day, and there is real witchery in
their music. Frequently their songs are superimposed, as it were, upon
the semi-musical chattering in which these birds so often indulge.”
But, strange to say, although the conditions were apparently in every
respect favorable, I did not hear the song of a single tree-sparrow
after that epochal day for more than a year. Evidently these birds are
erratic songsters, at least in this latitude. On the same day the
meadow-larks flung their flute-like songs athwart the fields, and the
bold bugle of the Carolina wren echoed through the woods.
_February 14._ “In the swamp the song-sparrows are holding an opera
festival,” my notes run. “One of them trills softly in a clump of
wild-rose bushes, as if asking permission to sing; and then, his request
being gladly granted, he leaps up boldly to a twig of a sapling, and
breaks into a torrent of melody. Another, in precisely the same tune,
answers him farther down the stream, the two executing a sort of fugue.
A third leaps about on the dry grass that fringes a ditch, twitters
merrily for a while, then flies to a small oak-tree near by, and—well,
such a loud, rollicking, tempestuous song I have never before heard from
a song-sparrow’s throat. Some of his tones are full and exultant, while
others in the same run are low and tender, like the strains of a
love-lorn harp. The tones produced by exhalation can be distinguished
from those produced by inhalation. Sometimes his voice sounds a little
hoarse, as if he had strained one of the strings of his lyre, but I
find, on focusing my ear upon them, that these are some of his most
melodious notes. Presently, in a fit of ecstasy, he hurls forth such a
torrent of song, in _allegro furioso_, that one almost fancies the
naiads and water-witches of the marsh are crying out for admiration.
“Here is something worthy of note—when the song-sparrow begins a trill,
he usually sings it over a number of times, and then, as if wearied with
one tune, turns to another; and yet with all his variations—and I know
not how many he is capable of singing—there is always something
distinctive about his minstrelsy that differentiates it from that of all
other birds.”
_February 17._ “Again in the swamp. It seems to me I have never before
heard the song-sparrows sing so gleefully. Every concert goes ahead of
its predecessor. Here is a sparrow hopping about on the green grass
among the bushes like a brown mouse; now he chirps sharply as if to
attract my attention, and then bursts into a melody that almost makes me
turn a somersault for very joy; and now, having sung his intermittent
trills for a few minutes, he begins to warble a sweet, continuous lay,
with an _andante_ movement, as if he could not stop.
“A little farther on, another songster, with a voice of excellent
_timbre_, is descanting on a small oak sapling. Note, he runs over
several trills, rising higher at every effort, until at last he strikes
a note far up in the scale, holds it firmly a moment, and then drops to
a lower note. Then he repeats the process, the summit of his ambition
being attained whenever he reaches that high note, which is bewitchingly
sweet. How clear and true his voice rings!
“Sometimes a silence falls upon the marsh; not a note is to be heard for
a minute or two; and then, as if by a preconcerted signal, a dozen
sparrows throw the air into musical tumult, their combined rush of notes
seeming almost like a salvo. Often, too, when I approach the marsh, no
music is heard, but no sooner have I climbed the fence into the
enclosure than the choral begins; so that I believe I am justified in
saying that the song-sparrow appreciates a human auditor. This is not
said by way of disparagement,—by no means; for almost all musicians,
whether human or avian, sing to be heard.”
On the same day I saw a song-sparrow whose central tail-feather was pure
white from quill to tip, and the bird remained in the marsh until the
twenty-fourth of the month, his odd adornment visible from afar. I was
also surprised to find two male chewinks in the bushes. A cardinal
grossbeak was also seen, and a robin’s song and the loud call of a
flicker were heard.
My next outing occurred on the nineteenth, when the weather had turned
colder, and snow was falling, mingled with sleet; yet several
song-sparrows trilled softly in the marsh. On the twenty-third crow
blackbirds were seen, and on the twenty-fourth a turtle-dove was cooing
meditatively, and the song-sparrows were holding another opera festival.
The last days of February became cold again, and March brought several
severe storms; but I think none of the hardy, adventurous birds named,
retreated to a warmer clime, even if they did regret having left their
winter quarters a little prematurely.
V.
ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS.
Have any of my readers kept a record of the arrival of the birds during
the spring? The northward procession of the battalions in feathers is an
interesting study. Why do some birds begin their pilgrimage from the
south so much earlier than others? What is there in their physical and
mental make-up that gives them the northward impulse even before fair
weather has come? Do they become homesick for their summer haunts sooner
than their fellows? These are questions that are much more easily asked
than answered. The size of the bird furnishes no clew to the solution,
for some small birds are better able to resist the cold than many larger
ones. There is the little black-capped titmouse—a mere mite of a
bird—which generally remains in my neighborhood all winter, cheerfully
braving the stormiest weather; while the brown thrasher, fully five
times as large, is carefully warming his shins in the sunny south, and
will not venture north until the spring has come to stay. Here, too, is
Bewick’s wren on the first day of April,—with no thought of making an
April fool of any one,—while the Baltimore orioles, rose-breasted
grossbeaks, and scarlet tanagers, all larger than he, are tarrying in
Georgia and Alabama. There is nothing in the size or color or form of
the birds that makes this difference; it is doubtless in the blood.
I have kept a careful memorandum of the arrival of these feathered
voyagers (this was during the spring of 1892), and know almost to a
certainty the day, and sometimes the hour, when they cast anchor in this
port. The winter had been unusually severe, and yet the migration began
as early as the twenty-second of February, when the first meadow-larks
put in appearance, and sent their wavering shafts of song across the
frost-bound fields. They had left only on the last day of December, but
had apparently remained away as long as they could. On the same day the
killdeer plovers also arrived, making their presence known by their
wailing cry. On the twenty-third I heard the _Q-q-o-o-ka-l-e-e-e_ of the
red-winged blackbirds, and on the morning of the twenty-fourth the first
robins dropped from the sky after a “flying trip” in the night from some
more southern stopping-place; but the weather was too cold for them to
sing. Yet the song-sparrows and meadow-larks defied the cold with their
cheerful melody. While the robin is a very gay and lavish songster, he
wants favorable weather for his vocal rehearsals, and a “cold snap” will
easily discourage him. He is evidently somewhat of a fair-weather
minstrel. It was on February twenty-eighth, a pleasant day, that I
caught the first strain of robin melody.
The towhee buntings dropped anchor on the seventh of March, filling the
woods with their fine, explosive trills. It was a pleasant day, a sort
of oasis in the midst of the stormy weather, and it did not seem inapt
to speculate a little as to the thoughts of these birds on their arrival
at their old summer haunts, after an absence of four or five months. Was
the old brush-heap, where they had built their nest the previous spring,
still there? Had the winter storms spared the twig on the sapling where
Cock Bunting had sung erstwhile his sweetest trills to his dusky mate?
“What if the woodman has cleared away our pleasant corner of the woods?”
whispers Mrs. Towhee to her lord as they approach the sequestered spot.
How their hearts must bound with joy when they find sapling and
brush-heap and winding woodway all as they had left them in the autumn!
No wonder they are so tuneful! Even the snow-storms that moan and howl
through the woods a few days later cannot wholly repress their exuberant
feelings.
On the same date a whole colony of young song-sparrows stopped at this
station on their journey northward, although you must remember that
quite a number of their elders remained here through the winter. What a
twittering these year-old sparrows made in the bushes fringing the
woods! I actually laughed aloud at their crude, tuneless, quasi-musical
efforts. They were not in good voice, and, besides, had not yet fully
learned the tunes that are sung in sparrowdom, and could not control
their vocal chords. They made many sorry and amusing attempts to chant
and trill, but their voices would break and catch in the most remarkable
ways, now sliding up too high in the scale, now sliding down too low,
and now veering too much to one side, so to speak. One tyro, I observed,
sang the first part of a run very well, almost as well, in fact, as an
adult musician could have sung it; but when he tried to finish, his
voice seemed to fly all to flinders. He made the attempt again and
again, but to no purpose. It was a day for which I have cut a notch in
the tally-stick of memory. Leaving the company of young vocalists at
their rehearsals at the border of the woods, I made my way to a swamp
not far off, where a pleasant surprise lay in ambush. Here were no
longer found young song-sparrows, but adults, and you should have heard
them sing. What a contrast between the crude songs of the young birds
and the loud, clear, splendidly intoned and executed trills of these
trained musicians!
But I must return to the subject of migration. The fifteenth of March
was a raw, blustering day, as its predecessors had been; but in the
woods several fox-sparrows were singing, not their best, of course, but
fairly well for such weather. They must have come during the night. But
why had they come when the weather was so cold? Most birds wait until
there is a bland air-current from the south on which they can ride
triumphantly. Had this small band of fox-sparrows followed the example
of a well-known American humorist, and gone to “roughing it”? Strange to
say, I saw no more fox-sparrows until the twenty-eighth, when the
weather had grown warm. That was also the day on which I saw the first
winter wren scudding about in the brush-heaps and wood-piles and perking
up his tail in the most approved bantam fashion. It may be a poor joke,
but the thought came of its own accord, that if brevity is the soul of
wit, this little wren must have a very witty tail; and it really is an
amusing appendage, held up at an acute angle with the bird’s sloping
back.
As I strolled along the edge of the woods on the same day, the fine
rhythmic trill of the bush-sparrow reached my ear. He was celebrating
his return to this sylvan resort, and his voice was in excellent trim;
the fact is, I never heard him acquit himself quite so well, not even in
May. Miss Lucy Larcom, of tender and sacred memory, has happily
characterized this triller’s song in melodious verse:—
“One syllable, clear and soft
As a raindrop’s silvery patter,
Or a tinkling fairy-bell, heard aloft,
In the midst of the merry chatter
Of robin and linnet and wren and jay,—
One syllable oft repeated;
He has but a word to say,
And of that he will not be cheated.”
But why was not the grass-finch, his relative of the fields, in just as
good voice when he arrived on the thirty-first? The last two springs
this bird had to be on his singing-grounds several days before he
recovered his full powers of voice. On the twenty-ninth the phœbe came
with his burden of sweet song, and the first of April brought Bewick’s
wren—sweet-voiced Arion of the suburbs—and the chipping sparrow, whose
slender peal of song rang through my study window. Here my record stops
for the present year; but by reference to my last year’s notes (1891) it
appears that Bewick’s wren did not then arrive until April tenth, and
chippy not until April twelfth. The difference in the seasons is
doubtless the primary cause of this divergence in the time of arrival.
April brings many other winged pilgrims,—the white-throated and
white-crowned sparrows, the thrushes, the orioles, the tanagers, the
cat-birds, the swallows and swifts, and some of the hardier warblers,
while the great army of warblers delay their coming till the first and
second weeks in May. And all the while we are having bird concerts,
cantatas, oratorios, and opera festivals, mingled with some tragedy and
a great deal of comedy, and there are love songs and cradle songs,
matins and vespers, and twitterings expressive of every shade and
variety of feeling.
I yield to the temptation to add a brief article entitled “Watching the
Parade,” which was published in a New England journal in the summer of
1893, and contains a record of some observations made during the
previous spring. By comparison with the preceding part of this chapter,
it will indicate the versatile character of bird study in the same
season of different years. I shall give it almost verbatim as first
published, hoping the rather “free and easy” style will be generously
overlooked by critical readers.
Every spring and autumn for many years I have been watching the parade;
not a parade of soldiers, or of civic orders, or even of a menagerie;
but one of far more interest to the naturalist,—the procession of the
army in feathers. A wonderful cortége it is, this army in bright array;
and every time you witness it, you add something new to your knowledge
of bird life. The last spring has been no exception, although, when the
pageant began, I wondered if I should see any new birds or hear any new
songs, and even felt a little doubtful about it.
But quite early a new bird was added to my list. It was the blue-winged
warbler, which carries about a scientific name big enough to break its
dainty back. Just think of calling a tiny bird _Helminthophila pinus_!
But happily it does not know its own name, and, like some of my readers,
would not be able to pronounce it if it did, and therefore no serious
harm is done. This bird may be known by the bright olive-green of its
back, the pale blue of its wings, the pure yellow of its under parts,
and the narrow black line running back through its eye. It seemed to be
quite wary, yet I got near enough to see it catch insects on the wing
like a wood-pewee, as well as pick them from the leaves of the trees.
The bird student must sometimes let problems go unsolved. For nearly,
perhaps quite a week, three or four large, heavy-beaked birds flitted
about in several tall tree-tops of the woods, but were so far up that,
try as I would, I could not identify them even with my opera-glass. In
my small collection of mounted birds there is a female evening
grossbeak; and the tree-top flitters looked more like it than any other
bird of my acquaintance. If they were evening grossbeaks, it was a rare
find; for these birds are almost unknown in this part of the country,
only a few having ever been discovered in this State. Their usual
_locale_ is thought to be west of Lake Superior. I was sorely tempted to
use a gun, but decided that it was just as well not to know some things
as to massacre an innocent bird.
However, other finds were more satisfactory. Strolling through the woods
one day, I caught the notes of a bird song that did not sound familiar.
Surely it was a vireo’s quaint, continuous lay; but which of the vireos
could it be? It was different from any vireo minstrelsy I had ever
heard. Peering about in the bushes for the author of those elusive
notes, I at length espied a little bird form, and the next moment my
glass revealed the blue-headed or solitary vireo. It was the first time
I had ever heard this little vocalist sing in the spring, although we
have met—he and I—on familiar terms every season for many years. Here is
a query: Why was blue-head silent other years, and so tuneful that
spring? For he was often heard after that day.
The song was varied and lively, sometimes running high in the scale, and
had not that absent-minded air which marks the roundelay of the warbling
vireo. It is much more intense and expressive, and some notes are quite
like certain runs of the brown thrasher’s song. The bird did two other
things that were a surprise: he chattered and scolded much like the
ruby-crowned kinglet. Then he caught a miller, and, as it was too large
to be swallowed whole, placed it under his claws precisely like a
chickadee or blue jay, and pulled it to pieces. This was a new trick to
me, nor have I ever read, in any of the bird manuals, of his taking his
dinner in this way.
The red-eyed vireo also chanted a little roundel that spring, as he
pursued his journey northward, his song being slower in movement and
less expressive and varied than that of his cousin just referred to.
Indeed, the procession seemed to be especially musical during that
spring. One day, in the last week in April, a new style of music rang
out at the border of the woods, and I fairly trembled lest the jolly
soloist should scud away before I could identify him; but he had no
intention of making his escape, and giving the credit of his vocal
efforts to somebody else in the bird world. At length I got my glass
upon him. He proved to be the purple finch,—rosy little Mozart that he
was! For years he has passed through these woods with the vernal
procession, but this was the first time he had ever been obliging enough
to sing in my hearing. And what a rolling, rollicking little song it
was, just as full of good cheer as bird song could be! He continued his
vocal rehearsal for many minutes on that day, but afterward he and his
fellows were as mute as the inmates of a deaf and dumb asylum. A purple
finch once sang here in the fall; but the music was quite harsh and
squeaking, very different from his springtime melody.
One of the most beautiful birds that have a part in the vernal parade is
the rose-breasted grossbeak,—a bird that you will recognize at once by
his white-and-black coat and the rosy shield he so bravely bears on his
bosom. In his summer home, farther north, I have often heard his
vivacious music (this was in northern Indiana); but until the past
spring he has always been silent as he passed through this neighborhood,
save that he would sometimes utter his sharp, metallic _Chip_. However,
on the fourteenth of May two of these grossbeaks sang a most vigorous
duet in the grove near my house; and I wish you could have heard it, for
it would have made you almost leap for joy, it was so jolly and
rollicksome. At first you may be disposed to think the grossbeak’s song
much like the robin’s, but you will soon find that it is finer in
several respects, the tones being clearer and fuller, the utterance more
rapid and varied, and the whole song much more spirited; and that is
saying a good deal, considering Cock Robin’s cheery carols. No one
should fail to hear this rosy-breasted minstrel, whatever else he may
miss. It will make him feel that life is worth living; that if God made
this bird so happy, he must intend that his rational creatures, who are
of more value than a bird, should also be cheerful.
Never were the birds so gentle and confiding as they were during that
spring. A female redstart took up her residence in my yard for fully a
week, flitting about in the trees and grape-arbor, seeking for nits and
worms; and you are to remember that I live in town (though in the
outskirts), with many houses and people about, and an electric car
whirling along the street every few minutes. A dainty bay-breasted
warbler—little witch!—kept the redstart company, letting me stand
beneath the trees on whose lower branches she tilted, and watch her
agile movements; yet one of my bird books declares that the bay-breasted
warblers remain in the highest tree-tops of the woods! Both these birds
occasionally uttered a trill.
The goldfinches, too, were very familiar. They came with the procession
as far north as my neighborhood, but stopped here for the summer,
instead of continuing their pilgrimage. Some of their brothers and
sisters remained with me all winter. Within a few feet of my rear door
stands a small apple-tree, in whose branches these feathered gold-flakes
flashed about, and sang their childlike ditties, and one little madam
fluttered in the leafy crotches of the twigs, fitting her body into them
as if trying to see if they would make good nesting-sites; the while Sir
Goldfinch sang and sang at the top of his voice. Several white-crowned
sparrows also came to eat seeds thrown out into the back yard. These
handsome sparrows were not shy, but perched on the fence or the trees,
and trilled their sweet refrains.
VI.
WINGED VOYAGERS.
The subject of bird migration is one of absorbing interest, presenting
many a perplexing problem to the student who cares to go into the
philosophy of things. Why do the birds make these wonderful semi-annual
pilgrimages, and whence came the original impulse, are questions often
asked. With my limited opportunities for observation I cannot hope to
shed much, if any, new light on the subject; yet it seems to me that
some persons are disposed to invest it with more of an air of mystery
than is really necessary. There are several patent, if not wholly
satisfactory, reasons that may be assigned for the migrating impulse.