and abundant as they are in my neighborhood, both summer and winter; but
my quest was rewarded in two instances during the spring of 1893,—the
first nest being in the top of a truncated sassafras-tree. The snag was
perhaps twenty feet high. On one of my visits the birds were hollowing
out their little apartment. They would dart into the narrow opening, and
presently emerge, carrying small fragments of partly decayed wood in
their beaks and dropping them to the ground. Some weeks later, I climbed
the tree (with much fear and trembling, be it said), but the birds had
made the cavity so deep that I could not see the bottom, and break open
their sylvan nursery I would not. The second titmouse nest was in a very
slender branch of a sassafras-tree,—so slender, indeed, that it was a
wonder the birds were able to make a hollow in it. At first it looked
precisely like a black patch burned on the bough’s surface. When one of
the feathered atoms stood in the tiny doorway and looked out, she made a
pretty picture,—one that would have put a throb of joy into an artist’s
bosom.
Yet there is another picture that I should prefer to have painted, not
on account of its attractiveness, but on account of its quaintness; it
was the nest, eggs, and young of a pair of green herons in an orchard.
The nest was built high in an apple-tree, and was only a loose platform
of sticks. Although anything but an expert climber, I contrived to scale
that tree three times to satisfy my curiosity. The first time there were
four eggs of a greenish-blue cast—not jewels by any means—in the nest.
On my second visit four of the oddest birdlings I ever looked upon
greeted me with wide-open eyes and mouths. They were covered with light
yellowish down, and the space about the eyes was of a greenish hue,—one
of the characteristic markings of the adult birds. When they opened
their mouths, expecting to be fed, their throats puffed out somewhat
like the throats of croaking frogs, making a good-sized pocket inside to
receive chunks of food. The thought struck me that perhaps the pocket
was designed as a sort of temporary storage place for victuals until the
nestling was ready to swallow them. The birds made a low, quaint noise
that cannot be represented phonetically. Indeed, the picture they made
was slightly uncanny, so I did not linger about it overlong.
A week later my third and last call on the heron household was made.
What an odd spectacle it presented! The young birds had grown
wonderfully, though still covered with down, with very little sign of
feathers. As my head appeared above the rim of the nest, they slowly
craned up their India-rubber necks, then rose on their stilt-like legs,
and looked at me with wondering, wide-open eyes that gleamed almost like
gold. The spectacle made me think of ghouls, incongruous as the simile
may seem. When I touched one of the birds, it huddled, half-alarmed,
down to the bottom of the nest. Another slyly stalked off to the edge of
the platform, upon a thick clump of twigs and leaves, eying me keenly as
he moved away. I hurriedly climbed down, lest he should topple to the
ground and dash himself to death; and thus, while I was on the brink of
causing a tragedy, yet, as a sort of emollient to my conscience, I
consoled myself with the thought that I had really prevented one.
Another interesting discovery of the same spring was a killdeer plover’s
nest, which my farmer friend across-lots found in a clover-field. There
had been a heavy rainfall, making the ploughed ground as soft as mush;
but my tall rubber boots were mud-proof, and so I went to pay the
plovers my respects. This was after six o’clock in the evening. I found
one little bird in the shallow, pebble-lined nest, and three eggs, one
of them slightly broken at the larger end. The plover nestling was an
odd baby, with its large head, fluffy, square-shouldered body, and
slender beak sticking straight out. A small piece of the egg-shell still
clung to its back. On taking the tiny thing into my hand, what was this
I saw? It had only three toes on each foot, instead of four, as most
birds have; and those three were all fore toes, while the bird had no
hind toe at all. Why the plover should have no hind toe is an enigma;
but then, the ostrich has none, either, and only two in front,—“every
species after its kind.”
Early the next morning two more youngsters had broken shell, and come
forth to keep their more precocious brother company. The eldest was
marked quite distinctly about the head and neck like its parents, having
the characteristic white and black bands, thus early proclaiming the
persistence of its type. When I set it down—for I had lifted it in my
hand—it started to run over the soft ground, enhancing its speed by
flapping its tiny wings. The picture was indescribably cunning. The bird
was so small that it looked like a downy dot scudding over the
undulations of the ground. Think of a baby only about fifteen hours old
running away from home in that manner! I caught the infantile scapegrace
and placed it back in its cradle, where it remained. During the night
there had been a very heavy fall of rain, and yet these youngsters,
small as they were, had not been drowned, having doubtless been covered
by their parents. At six o’clock in the evening they had all left the
nest, and, search as I would, I could find no clew to their whereabouts,
though the parent birds were flying and scuttling about with loud cries
of warning to me to keep my distance. Thus it would seem that young
plovers, like young partridges, grouse, and ducks, leave the nest at a
very tender age.
Before closing, I must mention something odd that befell a kingfisher’s
nest. A year prior I had found a nest in a high bank in a sloping field,
where the water had washed out a deep gully. In passing the bank one day
I noticed that it had been partly broken down; there had been a
landslide on a small scale, caused by the washing of the heavy spring
rains. Half way to the top, on a narrow shelf, lay a clutch of
kingfisher’s eggs, some of them broken by the caving of the bank. The
landslide had occurred after the cavity had been made and the eggs
deposited, thus blasting the hopes of the kingfishers. However, they had
not become despondent, for, later in the season, they burrowed a hole
for an underground nursery in another part of the bank.
III.
BIRD HIGH SCHOOLS.
It is not to be supposed that there is a regularly graded system of
instruction in the school-life of the birds. There may be method in
their learning, but it would be difficult to state positively just where
the primary, grammar, high-school, and college grades merge into one
another, or when diplomas of efficiency are granted, if granted at all.
But that there is something of a system of pedagogy among birds, and
that the juniors do receive instruction from their seniors, no observer
of feathered life can doubt for a moment. In the systems of human
instruction the child-life of the young learner usually ends with his
high-school course; he then stands at the threshold of young manhood,
ready to do a good deal of wrestling with his problems on his own
account. Taking that fact as our cue, we should say that the high-school
instruction of the youthful bird begins when he leaves the nest, and
ends when he is able to fly with dexterity, and provide for his own
support, at least in the main. It is not probable that the lecture
system prevails in the bird community, or the method of class
instruction now in vogue, or that books and charts and blackboards are
used; but the instruction is chiefly individual, and is carried on
mostly by example, coercion, and urgent appeal. There is not an
inexhaustible number of branches to be pursued by the little
undergraduates in plumes; but their efforts at obtaining an education
consist chiefly in mastering three grand accomplishments,—flying,
feeding, and singing.
If ever you have seen a bevy of young red-headed woodpeckers, led by
several of their elders, taking their wing-exercises, choosing a certain
tree in the woods for a point of departure, and then sailing around and
around with loud cries of delight, you must have concluded that it was a
veritable class in calisthenics. One seldom has an opportunity to see
young birds taking their first lessons in flight, but it is worth one’s
time and patience to be present at such a recitation. The parents set
the example by flying from the nest to a perch near by, and then coax
and scold their children to follow their example. If the little learners
hesitate, as they usually do, their impatient teachers exclaim: “Why,
just try it once. You never will learn to fly any younger. If you will
only spread your wings, let go of the rim of the nest, and venture out
on the air, you will find that it will bear you up. Don’t be afraid.”
But perhaps the pupils complain that it makes their heads dizzy to look
down from their awful height. Then the teachers pooh-pooh at their
fears, and cry condescendingly, “The idea of being afraid! Why, just see
here!” and they mount up into the air, poise, careen, and perform other
extraordinary feats, while the youngsters gaze at them in wide-eyed
wonder. At last, after much persuasion and many half-attempts, one of
the youngsters spreads his pinions and flutters laboriously until he
scrambles upon the nearest twig, with bated breath and throbbing pulses.
He is frightened half to death, but he has found that the friendly air
will support him if he makes proper use of his wings, and so he will
soon make another effort, and another, until he begins really to enjoy
the exercise. However, several days may elapse before the youngest and
weakest member of the class can muster sufficient courage to take his
first aerial journey.
Some species of birds graduate from the nest much sooner than others. In
one case I observed that a family of goldfinches remained in the nest
just seven days after a family of bush-sparrows, hatched on the same
day, had taken their flight.[8] The yellow-billed cuckoo has given me no
little surprise in this respect. When he first creeps out of his shell
apartment, he is a callow, ungainly infant, black as coal, with a sparse
covering of stiff bristles; but almost before a week has passed, he has
hopped from his washed-out cradle to try the realities of the great
world around him. Why the agile little goldfinch should remain in the
crib so much longer than his less dexterous fellow-pupil, the cuckoo, is
a problem of bird school-life that I must leave for solution to wiser
heads.
Having gone from the nest, the young bird has not yet learned all about
the art of flying; no, indeed! He must become perfect by practice. Many
a blunder will he make. At first he cannot always nicely calculate the
distance to the twig that he has in view, and so he fails to give
himself the proper propulsive force; he misses his footing by going too
far, or not far enough, and then where he will alight is a question of
what he happens to strike first. Probably a wild, desperate scramble
will ensue, which ends only when the youthful novice has fallen plump
upon the ground. He may be very much alarmed; but as soon as he recovers
his breath, his courage rises, and he tries again.
Although the young birds have the whole world for their larder, with
victuals just to their taste constantly at their elbow, they must learn
even the art of eating, and, until they do so, they demand that their
parents be their caterers. For several weeks after they have passed the
first term of school-life, they will still sit on a limb, open their
mouths, twinkle their wings, and allow their patient victuallers to
thrust morsel after morsel down their throats. My opinion is that the
patience of their parents wears out after a time, and they leave the
overgrown youngster to paddle for himself. How proud he must be of the
exploit when he catches his first insect and successfully stows it away
in his maw! In a deep, quiet glen I watched a family of young phœbes and
their parents catching insects on the wing. It was amusing. The old
birds evidently felt that it was about time for their pupils to learn to
provide their own victuals, but the youngsters stoutly demanded that
their luncheons be brought them in the accustomed manner. They must have
noticed that the old birds would occasionally catch an insect and
dispose of it themselves. Once when the parent bird darted out for a
small cabbage butterfly, a young fellow swooped down at her with such
force that she let the insect squirm out of her bill and flutter to the
ground, and thus make good its escape before she could recover it. Both
birds lost their dinner through the greed and rashness of the little
gourmand. Another time an old bird caught a yellow butterfly, dashed to
a limb, and quickly gulped it down, wings and all, before any of the
presumptuous high-schoolers could reach him. The bearing of the bird was
most laughable. Finally, several of the young birds darted out into the
air for passing insects, proving that they were taking lessons in that
fine art; but their gymnastics were far from perfect, and they hit the
mark scarcely half the time.
With most young birds music is a part of their high-school curriculum.
Perhaps you have thought that they learn their lessons in vocal music
without special instruction, but this is not always the case.
Observation proves that the old birds have them under tutelage, setting
them lyrical copies, which they are expected to learn by frequent
rehearsal. I have myself observed such a performance in the case of the
wood-pewee, as described in the chapter on “Midsummer Melodies.” First
attempts are crude and awkward, although the tones may be very fine. It
requires frequent drill to bring the vocal organs under perfect control,
just as is the case with human singers. If you have listened to the
squeaking, chattering, twittering medley of young song-sparrows, you
have realized how much practice is necessary before the would-be
vocalists will be able to execute the wonderful trills of which they are
master when they graduate from the musical conservatory.
I must tell you of a little bird high-school class over which I once
assumed charge. It consisted of three wood-thrushes, two bluebirds, and
a brown thrasher, all of which were taken from the nest before they were
ready to fly, and confined in a large wire cage. Very soon they learned
to take food from my hand. But in many things that are essential to bird
life and bird weal they had no tutors and no drill-masters, and
therefore had to learn them as best they could. Yet it was surprising
how soon they gained proficiency. Without a single copy from adult
birds, all of them were able to fly about from perch to perch in a few
days. It was not more than a week before they began to pick in an
awkward way, but after more than five weeks they would still open their
mouths and take food from the hand. The mechanical act of eating was
something they had to learn by slow degrees. While they could readily
pick up a tidbit, it seemed to be a difficult task to get it back far
enough into the mouth to swallow it. This was especially true of the
thrasher, whose bill was long. How he would toss a morsel about, pinch
it, fling it away, catch it up again, and pound it against a perch,
before he could work it back into his capacious throat!
They were amusing pets, those feathered pupils of mine. From them I have
gained an insight into bird character which could have been gained in no
other way. The difficulty in observing birds in the wild state is, you
cannot study them at close range, and hence cannot watch their
development from day to day. None the less interesting were my little
pupils because they had to depend on their own wits and learn their
lessons without a pedagogue. How did they learn to bathe without being
shown how! They learned it, that is sure; and they went through the
exercise precisely as birds do in the wildwood. They would leap into the
bath-dish, duck their heads into the water, flutter their wings and
tails until thoroughly rinsed, and then fly up to a perch to preen their
bedrenched plumage. But they made some mirth-provoking blunders. One day
a wood-thrush got astride of the rim of his bath-tub, one leg outside
and the other inside, and in that interesting position tried to take his
ablution. He looked exceedingly droll, and seemingly could not
understand why he did not succeed better. Another time the thrasher
remained outside of the bath-dish, and thrust his head over the rim into
the water, squatting on the sand and twinkling his pinions. But the time
came when all the birds discovered of their own accord that the proper
way was to leap right into the lavatory.
How early in life do juvenile birds begin to sing? That is a question, I
venture to say, that very few students of bird life would be able to
answer. It may be difficult to believe—if my own ears had not heard, I
should be very skeptical of the accuracy of the assertion—but my
wood-thrushes had not been in my care more than three or four weeks
before one of them began to twitter a little song. He could not have
been much more than five weeks old. This is all the more remarkable when
it is remembered that there were no adult thrushes within a half-mile of
the house. He seemed to discover that he had a voice, and thought he
might as well use it.
Ah, yes, and sad to relate, my high-school pupils soon learned to
quarrel, and that without the example of their elders. When I threw a
billsome morsel on the floor of the cage, several of them would make a
dive for it, and soon get into a wrangle. “It’s mine! it’s mine!” each
would proclaim by his greedy behavior. Then perhaps two would seize it,
and tug at it like boys fighting for an apple. Or if one contrived to
get it first, the rest would try to wrench it from his beak, and thus
they would pursue one another about in a wild chase. The thrasher, being
younger than his fellows, was for a time cheated out of every choice
morsel he secured; but he finally learned to help himself and swallow
his victuals instanter. Two of the thrushes, probably males, seemed to
have a mutual grudge. They would pursue each other until the fugitive
would turn and stand at bay, snapping his mandibles in a savage manner,
as if they were worked by steel springs. I regret being compelled to
publish these pugnacious tendencies in my beloved pets; but I prefer
giving a realistic rather than a fictitious or roseate sketch of the
school-days of these pupils in plumes.
IV.
BIRD WORK.
“Life is real, life is earnest,” might be just as truly said of “our
little brothers of the air” as of us, their big brothers of the soil. If
you think that their whole career consists of nothing but play and song
and bounding joy, you have seen very little of the bird life around you.
For the mother bird, at least, the whole period of nesting, sometimes
extending over several months, is a time of drudgery, anxiety, and, far
too often, of disappointed hopes. I have heard a bird mother’s wail that
went like iron into my soul, and told me all too plainly that it had
come from a bereft and broken heart. When we remember how many tragedies
occur in the feathered community, we scarcely care about singing, “I
wish I were a little bird.” Had you witnessed the unutterable agony of a
pair of yellow-breasted chats one spring, when their four pretty bairns
were stolen by some heartless buccaneer, you would have thanked the
Pleiades, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and all your other lucky stars, that
you were a man or woman and not a bird.
“Oh! it would be so pleasant to fly and tilt in the air, to dash from
twig to twig, to make long aerial voyages to foreign countries!” Do I
hear you say that? Wait a moment. Have you ever thought that even the
long, bounding flight of the swallows and swifts, accomplished
apparently without effort, may sometimes become a weariness to the
flesh, especially when insects are scarce and their maws empty? Then,
those long nocturnal journeys that birds make during the migrating
season may often tax their strength to the utmost. Indeed, if you will
listen to their feeble chirping, as they sweep overhead through the
darkness, you will often detect a note of fatigue running through it, as
much as to say, “Ah, I wish we were at our journey’s end!” No, bird life
is not all roseate. It has its humdrum and drudgery, its wear and tear,
its prose as well as its poetry, its hard realism as well as its
romance.
One of the tasks of bird life is the building of nests. It is true, the
birds always do this work with a zest that makes it seem half play; but,
after spending a day in gathering material and weaving it into the nest,
scarcely taking time to stop for meals, I have no doubt the little
toilers are ready to retire when bedtime comes. Have you ever watched
these little artists constructing their nests? They first lay the
foundation, which is usually made of rather coarse material, and is more
or less loosely woven; and then they proceed to build the
superstructure. Some birds, like the robin and the bluebird, will have
their mouths full of material every time they come to the nest; while
others, such as the dainty warblers, will return with a single fibre.
Usually the bird leaps into the cup of the nest, and deftly weaves in
the new material with its bill; and then shifts around with a quivering
motion of body and wings, to give the structure proper shape and size.
The nest must be made to fit the body of the bird like a glove, so that
she may rest easily in it during the long period of incubation. The
robin and the wood-thrush bring mud and clay; this they mix, no doubt,
with their own saliva, which gives it its viscid character. The dainty,
blue-gray gnat-catcher collects lichens of various kinds, with which she
decorates the high walls of her compact little cottage. Does this tiny
artist sometimes build nests just for fun or æsthetic effect? I watched
the building of two nests one spring that were never used. With what a
graceful touch the feathered dots laid the lichen bricks in the walls!
The hatching of the eggs must be a severe tax on the patience of the
mother bird, for the principal part of this work devolves upon her.
Sitting hour by hour upon the nest, looking out upon the wide spaces of
air waiting to be conquered by her active wings; with nothing except
hope to feed her mind; with not even a book or a newspaper to
read,—well, here is a chance to let patience have her perfect work. Then
think of her uneasiness at the approach of every foe. It is work; it is
not mere idleness. As for her lord, it may seem only like holiday sport
to sit in the tree-top and sing all the livelong day, to beguile the
weary hours of his sitting mate. But perhaps it often takes on the hue
of work, too, when singing becomes a duty. Small wonder, if the
choralist’s vocal chords often become jaded and sore, while there may be
danger of bringing on throat or lung trouble. Besides, he must often
carry a dainty morsel to his spouse when he would much prefer to eat it
himself. Then, he must take his turn on the nest while his partner goes
off for a “constitutional” to get the stiffness out of her joints, or
gathers a relay of food and preens her ruffled plumes.
One of the most unpleasant tasks of the time of incubation and brood
rearing is the warding off of enemies. And they are numerous. No
feathered parents can feel sure that they shall be able to tide their
little family safely over this perilous period. Have you ever seen the
plucky wood-pewee engaging in a contest with that highwayman in
feathers, the blue jay? How he dashes at the bloodthirsty villain,
snapping his mandibles viciously at every onset, and sometimes pecking a
feather from his enemy’s back! Nor will he give up the battle until the
jay steals off with a hangdog expression on his face. The little
warbling vireo is no less game when the jay comes too near his
precincts.