grossbeaks, Brazilian cardinals, crow blackbirds, towhee buntings, brown
thrashers, and English blackbirds, I had the pleasure of hearing the
song of the Brazilian cardinal. It was quite fine, but scarcely
comparable with the rich, full-toned, and varied whistle of our
cardinal-bird, being much less vigorous, slower in movement, and feebler
in tone. It was gratifying to be able to give the palm to our North
American songster.
But of all the clatter of bird music and bird noise combined that I have
ever heard in my life, the song of the English starling bore off the
bays. Never before had I listened to such divers sounds from a bird’s
throat, nor had I even fancied that they were possible. Small wonder a
well-trained starling costs from twenty to forty dollars at the bird
stores! No description can do justice to the starling’s song. He begins
in a low, subdued tone, and seems at first to be quite calm; but
gradually he grows excited, his body quivers and sways from side to
side, his neck is craned out, his throat expands and contracts
convulsively, and, oh! oh! oh!—pardon the exclamations—the hurly-burly
that gurgles and ripples and bubbles and pours from his windpipe! At one
point a double sound is produced, or two sounds nearly at the same
moment,—one low and guttural, the other on a higher key,—presently a
half-dozen notes rush forth pell-mell, accompanied by a quick snapping
of the mandibles; then a succession of loud, musical, explosive notes
fall on the ear; and finally the bird, as if in a spasm of ecstasy,
opens his mouth wide and utters a clear, rapturous trill as a sort of
musical peroration. It is simply wonderful. At first the bird seems to
control the song, but erelong the song seems to master the bird
completely. To my mind, it seemed that the songster in the intervals of
silence had wound up his music-box, and then, having got started, was
unable to stop until the spring had run down. Some of the notes of the
strain were quite melodious, while others were rather grating.
But what was that silvery song, rising above all the other clangor of
music? It was the trill of my peerless little friend, the white-throated
sparrow, which I have met so often in my own woodland trysts. Were I to
award the prize to any bird in the whole Zoo for sweetness of tone, it
would certainly be given to this matchless minstrel. No other bird’s
voice had such a purely musical quality; and he sang just as loudly and
sweetly as he does in his native copse, bringing back the memory of many
a pleasant woodland ramble.
A beautiful family group next claimed attention. It comprised two adult
silver pheasants, a male and female, and two little chicks recently from
the shell, which had been hatched in the Zoo. They looked like downy
chickens, and were about as large. There was no hint of the long,
gorgeous plumes that their papa bore so proudly; nothing but brownish,
slightly checkered down made up their suits. When their mamma pecked at
something on the ground, they would scamper to her for it, as you have
seen small chickens do. Unlike most young birds, they picked up their
food themselves, and did not pry open their mouths to be fed.
Had you seen the birds I next stopped to ogle, you would have joined in
my merriment; for they were the great kingfishers of Australia. What
heavy bills they carried, looking like good-sized clubs! One of them
pounded his beak against his perch until it fairly rattled with the
concussion. When I tapped lightly against the wires, they stretched out
their necks, and hissed at me out of their huge mouths.
Nothing was more pleasing than a large wired house containing a dozen or
more blue jays. Rain was falling gently at the time, and the refreshing
drops filtered upon the birds through the wire roof. How they enjoyed
their bath as they flitted from perch to perch! But the rain did not
descend rapidly enough for several of them; and so, in order to drench
their plumage more thoroughly, they plunged into the leafy bushes
growing in their apartment, and crept about over and through the
sprinkled foliage until their feathers were well rinsed.
An interesting bird was the yellow-headed blackbird, which is a resident
of some of our Western States, but which does not deign even to visit my
neighborhood. His whole head and neck are brilliant yellow, as if he had
plunged up to his shoulders in a keg of yellow paint, while the rest of
his attire is shiny black. He utters a loud, shrill whistle, quite
unlike any sound produced by his kinsmen, the crow blackbird and the
red-wing. He seemed to feel quite at home in his cage with several other
species of birds.
Many a time I have thought I heard a tumult of bird song in the fields
or woods, but at the Zoo I was greeted with a perfect din from the
throats of more than two dozen indigo-birds, all singing simultaneously.
They simply drowned out every other sound in the neighborhood when they
chimed in the chorus. Even the goldfinch, doing his level best, could
not be heard until there was a lull in the shriller music. In the same
enclosure were the bluebirds and robins. My pity went out to one of the
robins, which was trying to build a nest, but could not find a proper
site nor the right kind of material. She would pick up a bunch of fibres
and strings from the ground, fling them on the window-sill, and then
squat down upon them to press them into the desired concave with her red
bosom; but it was all to no purpose, for she had no mortar with which to
rear the walls of a cottage.
Leaving the robin to her fruitless labors, I turned to a collection of
weaver-birds of various species and divers markings. There was one,
especially, with a black head and neck and yellow body, that attracted
notice. He was rather handsome; his song, however, was a perfect squall,
especially the closing notes. These birds did not sing all the time, but
intermittently, one of them beginning with a few ringing notes as a
prelude, and then the others joining, all screaming louder and louder as
the chorus went on, until they ended in a supreme racket. Then there
were a few moments of quiet, followed by the united chorus as before,
making such a tumult that one voice could scarcely be distinguished from
another. A dainty little sparrow, unnamed, seemed to fill in the
intervals with his chirpings, forming a sort of semi-musical interlude.
The enclosure which contained the yellow-headed blackbird was divided
into a number of apartments. Here were parrots of various species, among
them a number of white-throated Amazons. You have doubtless heard a
dozen or more parrots screaming simultaneously. On my visit these birds
created a terrible hubbub. They cried and laughed and sighed and groaned
and shrieked until my ears were almost deafened. But in the midst of it
all, when there was a slight lull, could be heard the silvery trill of a
white-throated sparrow, sounding like the music of an angel amid a
tumult of imps.
Near the centre of the garden there is a long pond enclosed by wire
fencing, and on and about this pond is to be found an interesting group
of water-fowls. There was a large bluish-colored crane with a ruff of
feathers about his head. A workman came along and snapped his fingers at
the bird, which hopped and leaped about and almost turned a somersault.
A great blue heron had made a nest of sticks and twigs on the bare bank
of the pond, and was sitting on two eggs. While I was watching her, she
rose slowly on her long stilts, stretched out her stiffened wings,
rearranged the sticks with her bill, and then sat down on her eggs
again, turning them under her breast. What an opportunity for a bird
student if day by day he could have watched her build her nest and rear
her young!
Swimming about on the pond like a couple of feathered craft were two
great white pelicans with long bills and elevated wings. A tuft of
feathers or bristles grew on the top of their upper mandibles. They
seemed to be guying each other, or probably were engaged in a real naval
battle; for they pursued each other around and around, engaged in
various martial movements and counter-movements, and every now and then
clashed together their great beaks like two men fencing with swords. But
they avoided close contact. How lightly and smoothly they glided about
on the water!
Standing on a platform on the other side of the pond, were two more
large, almost gigantic pelicans, not of the same species as the two just
mentioned, having no tufts on their beaks, but a large featherless spot
on the side of their heads encircling the eye. There they stood,
silently preening their plumes, dexterously drawing each snowy feather
between their mandibles. How long they had been making their toilet I
cannot say. Presently the first two pelicans came sailing over to the
platform, and climbed awkwardly upon it. Would there be a pitched battle
between them and the other two birds? One of the latter stretched forth
his neck, and, to my great surprise, puffed out a large membranous bag
or pouch at his throat like that of a frog, and uttered a warning cry.
But soon the quartette of feathered Goliaths settled down into quiet,
and adjusted their plumes without the least interference with one
another’s comfort.
Following a winding pathway, I presently reached an apartment which
contained sixteen great horned owls, sitting in a row and looking as
wise as Greek sages. It was amusing to see them expand their eyes and
stare through the blinding light, then blink, close one eye and dilate
the other, and then shut both so nearly that only narrow chinks were
visible between the lids. Several of them opened their small, human-like
mouths, and hissed at me softly whenever I stirred. In another part of
the ground there was a collection of barn owls, with faces that looked
very intelligent; but the birds seemed to be quite wild, glaring with
their black eyes and swaying their heads from side to side in a nervous,
irritable way.
I felt many times repaid for my saunter through the Zoo, and would
advise all who have an opportunity of visiting a good zoölogical garden
not to let it go by unimproved. A great deal of information as well as
pleasure may be thus gained.
Wherever one is, one must get people to talking about one’s mania. How
else could it be said that there is method in one’s madness, or in what
respects it differs from mere lunacy? While visiting with a delightful
family living in a city some distance from my home, our conversation
drifted—perhaps with a good deal of calculation on my part—to the birds,
with the result that I was put in possession of several facts worth
noting, chiefly because they prove how helpful some birds are to one
another in their domestic relations. No birds are more ingenious in
planning for one another’s comfort and safety than our “foreign
brethren,” the English sparrows. The mistress of this intelligent
family, a woman who has keen eyes and ears for the birds, declared that
she always heard one sparrow in the trees about the house waking up its
sleeping mates at break of day, like the father of a family rousing his
drowsing children. It called in shrill tones as if it were saying, “Wake
up! wake up! Day is coming! Time to go to work!” As it continued its
clamor, it seemed to be flying about from one point to another, visiting
every bedroom, until at length a faint peep was heard here and there in
response from various members of the sparrow household, and erelong the
entire company was awake. When my friend told me this story, I was
considerably surprised, not to say a little skeptical. But, remaining in
their home over night, I had an opportunity to confirm the story, for I
was myself awakened in the morning by the loud, impatient calls of a
sparrow rousing his family; and the process took place just as my
informants had described it, leaving no longer any room for doubt.
The same kind friends described another cunning freak of bird behavior.
A lady’s bedroom window opened near some bushy trees, in which a pair of
birds—perhaps robins—had built a nest. At night the lady would often
hear the male singing. But sometimes he would grow drowsy, and would
become silent,—he had evidently got to napping,—when there would be a
coaxing, complaining _Pe-e-e-p! pe-e-e-p!_ from the little wife on the
nest, evidently asking him to “sing some more.” Then he would tune his
pipe again until his throat got tired and his eyelids heavy. In this way
the exacting wife kept her spouse serenading her for a large part of the
night. Perhaps, like children, she could not sleep unless some one was
singing to her. At all events, it was very bright of her to demand a
lullaby or love-song from her husband to put her to sleep.
The conduct of many kinds of birds in the autumn while preparing for
their Hegira to the south is extremely interesting. They assemble in
flocks, sometimes large enough to suggest an ecumenical council, and
fall to cackling, twittering, discussing, and in many other ways making
preparation for their aerial voyage to another clime. They really seem
to regret being compelled to leave their pleasant summer haunts, if one
may judge from the length and fervor of their goodbyes. Perhaps they are
like human beings who have a strong attachment for home, and must visit
every nook and tryst to say _au revoir_ before they take their
departure. One can easily imagine how dear to their hearts are the
scenes of their childhood, and of their nest-building and brood-rearing.
No birds make a greater to-do over their leave-taking in the autumn than
the house martins, I once visited for a few days with some friends who
live in the country and have had a bevy of martins in their boxes for
many years. They described the behavior of these birds when fall comes.
At a certain date in September they will gather in a compact flock, sing
and whistle and chatter at the top of their voices, circle about the
premises, alighting on the trees, fences, and buildings, and then will
rise in the air and sail away through the blue ether. Strange to say,
they may return in a day or two, and repeat their evolutions; and this
may be done several times before they say adieu and begin their
southward pilgrimage in real earnest. Why do they do this? One might
well rack one’s brain in vain conjectures. Do they lose their way the
first time? Or do they get a bad start, and then come back to try again?
Or do they get homesick after they have gone some distance, and return
once more to look upon the familiar scenes? It would be difficult to
sift all the processes of bird cerebration.
XVIII.
A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL.[9]
In making a study of Lowell’s poetry for a special purpose, one cannot
help admiring the genius with which he transmutes every theme he touches
into gold. His Muse is exceedingly versatile, ranging at her own sweet
will over a wide and varied field. There may be times when you are not
in the mood for smiling at his humor or weeping at his pathos; but his
delineations of Nature are always so true, so musical, so picturesque,
that they seldom fail to strike a responsive chord in the breasts of
those readers who are not.
“Aliens among the birds and brooks,
Dull to interpret or conceive
What gospels lost the woods retrieve.”
No other American poet seems to get quite so near to Nature’s throbbing
heart. Dream though he sometimes may, he seldom loses his hold on the
world of reality. Nature in her own garb is beautiful enough for him,
and does not need the garnishing and drapery of an over-fanciful
interpretation. It is not my purpose, however, to eulogize Lowell’s
poetry, even his poetry of Nature, in a general way, or attempt an
analysis of it, but simply to call attention to his metrical
descriptions of the feathered creation. Among all our American poets, he
is the limner _par excellence_ of bird ways. It is true that Emerson is
somewhat rich in allusions to our feathered denizens, and especially
felicitous in his characterizations; but his references are briefer,
more casual, and far less frequent than those of Lowell, who takes toll
of them, one might almost say, without stint; for he says of himself,—
“My heart, I cannot still it,
Nest that has song-birds in it.”
Lowell never speaks of the birds in a stereotyped way, as many poets do,
but mentions them by name, and often describes their behavior with a
deftness and accuracy of touch that fairly enchant the specialist in
bird lore. Having given no little attention to the study of birds, I
feel prepared to say that Lowell’s hand is almost always sure when he
undertakes to depict the manners of the “feathered republic of the
groves.” I have found, I think, only one technical inaccuracy in all his
numerous allusions;[10] and I believe I may say, without boasting, that
I am familiar with every bird whose charms he has chanted. Indeed, he
himself boasts modestly, as poets may, of his familiarity with the birds
in his beautiful tribute to George William Curtis, saying,—
“I learned all weather-signs of day and night;
No bird but I could name him by his flight.”
In the first place, let me point out the remarkable felicity of his more
general references to birds and their ways. The music of the minstrels
of the air often fills his bosom with pleasing but half-regretful
reminders of other and happier days, as, for example, when he penned
those exquisite lines, “To Perdita, Singing,”—
“She sits and sings,
With folded wings
And white arms crost,
‘Weep not for bygone things,
They are not lost.’”
Then follow some lines of rare sweetness, the concluding ones of which
are these,—
“Every look and every word
Which thou givest forth to-day,
Tells of the singing of the bird
Whose music stilled thy boyish play.”
A similar pensive reference is found in our poet’s ode, “To the
Dandelion,” which is as deserving of admiration as many of the more
famous odes of English poesy. He thus apostrophizes “the common flower”
that fringes “the dusty road with harmless gold,”—
“My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long;
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears,
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.”
A bird often affords our poet a metaphor or a simile by which to
represent some sad reminiscence of his life. Listen to this sweet minor
strain,—
“As a twig trembles, which a bird
Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;—
I only know she came and went.”
With what a plaintive melody the last line lingers in one’s mind, like
some far-off melancholy strain, singing itself over again and again with
a persistency that will not be hushed,—“I only know she came and went.”
There are times, too, when our bard falls into a slightly despondent
mood, and even then the birds serve to give a turn to his pensive
reflections,—
“But each day brings less summer cheer,
Crimps more our ineffectual spring,
And something earlier every year
Our singing birds take wing.”
To my mind, he is less attractive when his verse takes on this cheerless
hue, and I therefore turn gladly to his more jubilant lays, in which he
seems to have caught the joy of the full-toned bird orchestra, as he
does at more than one place in “The Vision of Sir Launfal,”—
“The little birds sang as if it were
The one day of summer in all the year,
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees.”
What bird lover has not often been caught in such a mesh of bird song,
on a bright day of the early springtime? Even good-natured Hosea Biglow
cannot always repress his enthusiasm for the birds, although he is quite
too chary of his allusions to them,—that is, too chary for the man who
has birds on the brain. His unsophisticated sincerity cannot brook a
perfunctory treatment of Nature’s blithe minstrels, for he breaks out
scornfully in denouncing those book-read poets who get “wut they’ve
airly read” so “worked into their heart an’ head” that they
“... can’t seem to write but jest on sheers
With furrin countries or played-out ideers.
· · · · · · ·
This makes ’em talk o’ daisies, larks, an’ things,
Ez though we’d nothin’ here that blows an’ sings.
Why, I’d give more for one live bobolink
Than a square mile o’ larks in printer’s ink!”
Hosea, in spite of the meagreness of his allusions to bird life, still
proves beyond a doubt that he is conversant with the migratory habits of
the birds, and that he has been watching a little impatiently for their
vernal appearance in his native fields and woods, as every bird student
who reads the following lines will testify,—
“The birds are here, for all the season’s late;
They take the sun’s height, an’ don’ never wait;
Soon’z he officially declares it’s spring,
Their light hearts lift ’em on a north’ard wing,
An’ th’ ain’t an acre, fur ez you can hear,
Can’t by the music tell the time o’ year.”
Sometimes a single line or phrase proclaims our poet’s loving
familiarity with the feathered world, and gives his verse an outdoor
flavor that positively puts a tonic into the appreciative reader’s
veins, almost driving him out beneath the shining vault of the sky; as
when the poet refers to “the cock’s shrill trump that tells of scattered
corn;” or to “the thin-winged swallow skating on the air;” or laments
because “snowflakes fledge the summer’s nest;” or remarks incidentally
that the “cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush;” or that “the robin sings,
as of old, from the limb;” or that “the single crow a single caw lets
fall;” or asks, “Is a thrush gurgling from the brake?” How vivid and
full of woodsy suggestion are the following lines from that captivating
poem, “Al Fresco”:—
“The only hammer that I hear
Is wielded by the woodpecker,
The single noisy calling his
In all our leaf-hid Sybaris.”
Nothing could be more characteristic of woodpeckerdom than that
quatrain. Still more rhythmical are the first six lines—a metrical
sextette that sing themselves—of the poem entitled “The Fountain of
Youth,”—
“’Tis a woodland enchanted!
By no sadder spirit
Than blackbirds and thrushes,
That whistle to cheer it
All day in the bushes,
This woodland is haunted.”
And what a picture for the fancy is limned in the following lines:—
“Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom
A moment on some autumn bough,
That, with the spurn of their farewell,
Sheds its last leaves!”
A flashlight view that, of one of the rarest scenes in Nature. The poet
must have bent over more than one callow brood of nestlings, or he never
could have written so knowingly about them,—
“Blind nestlings, unafraid,
Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade
By which their downy dream is stirred,
Taking it for the mother bird;”
for such is the unsuspicious habit of most bantlings in the nest. It
would be difficult to find a defter touch than that with which Lowell
describes a resplendent morning, “omnipotent with sunshine,” whose
“quick charm ... wiled the bluebird to his whiff of song,”
“While aloof
An oriole clattered and a robin shrilled,
Denouncing me an alien and a thief;”
particularly if it is borne in mind that the allusion is to the
chattering alarm-call of the oriole and the robin. Exquisite indeed is
the description of—
“The bluebird shifting his light load of song
From post to post along the cheerless fence;
while it would puzzle one to find anywhere a more poetical and at the
same time realistic portrayal than this,—
“Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee
Close at my side,”—
especially if the reference be to the little black-capped titmouse’s
minor whistle, which has a strange, sad remoteness when heard in the
sylvan depth, reminding one of the myth of Orpheus mourning for his lost
love. No less vivid are the lines,—
“The phœbe scarce whistles
Once an hour to his fellow;”
or these,—
“O’erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides,
Twinned in the river’s heaven below;”
or this description of a winter scene,—
“I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds
Like brown leaves whirling by.”
Hark!—
“All pleasant winds from south and west
With lullabies thine ears beguiled,
Rocking thee in thine oriole’s nest,
Till Nature looked at thee and smiled.”
Listen again!—
“The sobered robin, hunger-silent now,
Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer.”
If one were only there to see:—