you are likely to stumble upon in your walk; it is hidden as a miser
hides his gold, and watched as jealously. The male pours out his rich
and triumphant song from the tallest tree he can find, and fairly
challenges you to come and look for his treasures in his vicinity. But
you will not find them if you go. The nest is somewhere on the outer
circle of his song; he is never so imprudent as to take up his stand
very near it. The artists who draw those cozy little pictures of a
brooding mother bird, with the male perched but a yard away in full
song, do not copy from nature. The thrasher's nest I found was thirty or
forty rods from the point where the male was wont to indulge in his
brilliant recitative. It was in an open field under a low
ground-juniper. My dog disturbed the sitting bird as I was passing near.
The nest could be seen only by lifting up and parting away the branches.
All the arts of concealment had been carefully studied. It was the last
place you would think of looking in, and, if you did look, nothing was
visible but the dense green circle of the low-spreading juniper. When
you approached, the bird would keep her place till you had begun to stir
the branches, when she would start out, and, just skimming the ground,
make a bright brown line to the near fence and bushes. I confidently
expected that this nest would escape molestation, but it did not. Its
discovery by myself and dog probably opened the door for ill luck, as
one day, not long afterward, when I peeped in upon it, it was empty. The
proud song of the male had ceased from his accustomed tree, and the
pair were seen no more in that vicinity.
After a pair of nesting birds have been broken up once or twice during
the season, they become almost desperate, and will make great efforts to
outwit their enemies. A pair of brown thrashers built their nest in a
pasture-field under a low, scrubby apple-tree which the cattle had
browsed down till it spread a thick, wide mass of thorny twigs only a
few inches above the ground. Some blackberry briers had also grown
there, so that the screen was perfect. My dog first started the bird, as
I was passing near. By stooping low and peering intently, I could make
out the nest and eggs. Two or three times a week, as I passed by, I
would pause to see how the nest was prospering. The mother bird would
keep her place, her yellow eyes never blinking. One morning, as I looked
into her tent, I found the nest empty. Some night-prowler, probably a
skunk or a fox, or maybe a black snake or a red squirrel by day, had
plundered it. It would seem as if it was too well screened; it was in
such a spot as any depredator would be apt to explore. "Surely," he
would say, "this is a likely place for a nest." The birds then moved
over the hill a hundred rods or more, much nearer the house, and in some
rather open bushes tried again. But again they came to grief. Then,
after some delay, the mother bird made a bold stroke. She seemed to
reason with herself thus: "Since I have fared so disastrously in seeking
seclusion for my nest, I will now adopt the opposite tactics, and come
out fairly in the open. What hides me hides my enemies: let us try
greater publicity." So she came out and built her nest by a few small
shoots that grew beside the path that divides the two vineyards, and
where we passed to and fro many times daily. I discovered her by chance
early in the morning as I proceeded to my work. She started up at my
feet and flitted quickly along above the ploughed ground, almost as red
as the soil. I admired her audacity. Surely no prowler by night or day
would suspect a nest in this open and exposed place. There was no cover
by which they could approach, and no concealment anywhere. The nest was
a hasty affair, as if the birds' patience at nest-building had been
about exhausted. Presently an egg appeared, and then the next day
another, and on the fourth day a third. No doubt the bird would have
succeeded this time had not man interfered. In cultivating the vineyards
the horse and cultivator had to pass over this very spot. Upon this the
bird had not calculated. I determined to assist her. I called my man,
and told him there was one spot in that vineyard, no bigger than his
hand, where the horse's foot must not be allowed to fall, nor tooth of
cultivator to touch. Then I showed him the nest, and charged him to
avoid it. Probably if I had kept the secret to myself, and let the bird
run her own risk, the nest would have escaped. But the result was that
the man, in elaborately trying to avoid the nest, overdid the matter;
the horse plunged, and set his foot squarely upon it. Such a little
spot, the chances were few that the horse's foot would fall exactly
there; and yet it did, and the birds' hopes were again dashed. The pair
then disappeared from my vicinity, and I saw them no more.
THE HOUSE WREN
A few years ago I put up a little bird-house in the back end of my
garden for the accommodation of the wrens, and every season a pair have
taken up their abode there. One spring a pair of bluebirds looked into
the tenement and lingered about several days, leading me to hope that
they would conclude to occupy it. But they finally went away, and later
in the season the wrens appeared, and, after a little coquetting, were
regularly installed in their old quarters, and were as happy as only
wrens can be.
One of our younger poets, Myron Benton, saw a little bird
"Ruffled with whirlwind of his ecstasies,"
which must have been the wren, as I know of no other bird that so throbs
and palpitates with music as this little vagabond. And the pair I speak
of seemed exceptionally happy, and the male had a small tornado of song
in his crop that kept him "ruffled" every moment in the day. But before
their honeymoon was over the bluebirds returned. I knew something was
wrong before I was up in the morning. Instead of that voluble and
gushing song outside the window, I heard the wrens scolding and crying
at a fearful rate, and on going out saw the bluebirds in possession of
the box. The poor wrens were in despair; they wrung their hands and tore
their hair, after the wren fashion, but chiefly did they rattle out
their disgust and wrath at the intruders. I have no doubt that, if it
could have been interpreted, it would have been proven the rankest and
most voluble billingsgate ever uttered. For the wren is saucy, and he
has a tongue in his head that can outwag any other tongue known to me.
The bluebirds said nothing, but the male kept an eye on Mr. Wren, and,
when he came too near, gave chase, driving him to cover under the fence,
or under a rubbish-heap or other object, where the wren would scold and
rattle away, while his pursuer sat on the fence or the pea-brush waiting
for him to reappear.
Days passed, and the usurpers prospered and the outcasts were wretched;
but the latter lingered about, watching and abusing their enemies, and
hoping, no doubt, that things would take a turn, as they presently did.
The outraged wrens were fully avenged. The mother bluebird had laid her
full complement of eggs and was beginning to set, when one day, as her
mate was perched above her on the barn, along came a boy with one of
those wicked elastic slings and cut him down with a pebble. There he
lay like a bit of sky fallen upon the grass. The widowed bird seemed to
understand what had happened, and without much ado disappeared next day
in quest of another mate.
In the mean time the wrens were beside themselves with delight; they
fairly screamed with joy. If the male was before "ruffled with whirlwind
of his ecstasies," he was now in danger of being rent asunder. He
inflated his throat and caroled as wren never caroled before. And the
female, too, how she cackled and darted about! How busy they both were!
Rushing into the nest, they hustled those eggs out in less than a
minute, wren time. They carried in new material, and by the third day
were fairly installed again in their old quarters; but on the third day,
so rapidly are these little dramas played, the female bluebird
reappeared with another mate. Ah! how the wren stock went down then!
What dismay and despair filled again those little breasts! It was
pitiful. They did not scold as before, but after a day or two withdrew
from the garden, dumb with grief, and gave up the struggle.
* * * * *
The chatter of a second brood of nearly fledged wrens is heard now
(August 20) in an oriole's nest suspended from the branch of an
apple-tree near where I write. Earlier in the season the parent birds
made long and determined attempts to establish themselves in a cavity
that had been occupied by a pair of bluebirds. The original proprietor
of the place was the downy woodpecker. He had excavated it the autumn
before, and had passed the winter there, often to my certain knowledge
lying abed till nine o'clock in the morning. In the spring he went
elsewhere, probably with a female, to begin the season in new quarters.
The bluebirds early took possession, and in June their first brood had
flown. The wrens had been hanging around, evidently with an eye on the
place (such little comedies may be witnessed anywhere), and now very
naturally thought it was their turn. A day or two after the young
bluebirds had flown, I noticed some fine, dry grass clinging to the
entrance to the cavity; a circumstance which I understood a few moments
later, when the wren rushed by me into the cover of a small Norway
spruce, hotly pursued by the male bluebird. It was a brown streak and a
blue streak pretty close together. The wrens had gone to housecleaning,
and the bluebird had returned to find his bed and bedding being pitched
out of doors, and had thereupon given the wrens to understand in the
most emphatic manner that he had no intention of vacating the premises
so early in the season. Day after day, for more than two weeks, the male
bluebird had to clear his premises of these intruders. It occupied much
of his time and not a little of mine, as I sat with a book in a
summer-house near by, laughing at his pretty fury and spiteful onset. On
two occasions the wren rushed under the chair in which I sat, and a
streak of blue lightning almost flashed in my very face. One day, just
as I had passed the tree in which the cavity was located, I heard the
wren scream desperately; turning, I saw the little vagabond fall into
the grass with the wrathful bluebird fairly upon him; the latter had
returned just in time to catch him, and was evidently bent on punishing
him well. But in the squabble in the grass the wren escaped and took
refuge in the friendly evergreen. The bluebird paused for a moment with
outstretched wings looking for the fugitive, then flew away. A score of
times during the month of June did I see the wren taxing every energy to
get away from the bluebird. He would dart into the stone wall, under the
floor of the summer-house, into the weeds,--anywhere to hide his
diminished head. The bluebird, with his bright coat, looked like an
officer in uniform in pursuit of some wicked, rusty little street gamin.
Generally the favorite house of refuge of the wrens was the little
spruce, into which their pursuer made no attempt to follow them. The
female would sit concealed amid the branches, chattering in a scolding,
fretful way, while the male with his eye upon his tormentor would perch
on the topmost shoot and sing. Why he sang at such times, whether in
triumph and derision, or to keep his courage up and reassure his mate, I
could not make out. When his song was suddenly cut short, and I glanced
to see him dart down into the spruce, my eye usually caught a twinkle of
blue wings hovering near. The wrens finally gave up the fight, and their
enemies reared their second brood in peace.
THE SONG SPARROW
The first song sparrow's nest I observed in the spring of 1881 was in a
field under a fragment of a board, the board being raised from the
ground a couple of inches by two poles. It had its full complement of
eggs, and probably sent forth a brood of young birds, though as to this
I cannot speak positively, as I neglected to observe it further. It was
well sheltered and concealed, and was not easily come at by any of its
natural enemies, save snakes and weasels. But concealment often avails
little. In May, a song sparrow, which had evidently met with disaster
earlier in the season, built its nest in a thick mass of woodbine
against the side of my house, about fifteen feet from the ground.
Perhaps it took the hint from its cousin the English sparrow. The nest
was admirably placed, protected from the storms by the overhanging eaves
and from all eyes by the thick screen of leaves. Only by patiently
watching the suspicious bird, as she lingered near with food in her
beak, did I discover its whereabouts. That brood is safe, I thought,
beyond doubt. But it was not: the nest was pillaged one night, either by
an owl, or else by a rat that had climbed into the vine, seeking an
entrance to the house. The mother bird, after reflecting upon her ill
luck about a week, seemed to resolve to try a different system of
tactics, and to throw all appearances of concealment aside. She built a
nest a few yards from the house, beside the drive, upon a smooth piece
of greensward. There was not a weed or a shrub or anything whatever to
conceal it or mark its site. The structure was completed, and incubation
had begun, before I discovered what was going on. "Well, well," I said,
looking down upon the bird almost at my feet, "this is going to the
other extreme indeed; now the cats will have you." The desperate little
bird sat there day after day, looking like a brown leaf pressed down in
the short green grass. As the weather grew hot, her position became very
trying. It was no longer a question of keeping the eggs warm, but of
keeping them from roasting. The sun had no mercy on her, and she fairly
panted in the middle of the day. In such an emergency the male robin has
been known to perch above the sitting female and shade her with his
outstretched wings. But in this case there was no perch for the male
bird, had he been disposed to make a sunshade of himself. I thought to
lend a hand in this direction myself, and so stuck a leafy twig beside
the nest. This was probably an unwise interference: it guided disaster
to the spot; the nest was broken up, and the mother bird was probably
caught, as I never saw her afterward.
One day a tragedy was enacted a few yards from where I was sitting with
a book: two song sparrows were trying to defend their nest against a
black snake. The curious, interrogating note of a chicken who had
suddenly come upon the scene in his walk first caused me to look up from
my reading. There were the sparrows, with wings raised in a way
peculiarly expressive of horror and dismay, rushing about a low clump of
grass and bushes. Then, looking more closely, I saw the glistening form
of the black snake, and the quick movement of his head as he tried to
seize the birds. The sparrows darted about and through the grass and
weeds, trying to beat the snake off. Their tails and wings were spread,
and, panting with the heat and the desperate struggle, they presented a
most singular spectacle. They uttered no cry, not a sound escaped them;
they were plainly speechless with horror and dismay. Not once did they
drop their wings, and the peculiar expression of those uplifted palms,
as it were, I shall never forget. It occurred to me that perhaps here
was a case of attempted bird-charming on the part of the snake, so I
looked on from behind the fence. The birds charged the snake and
harassed him from every side, but were evidently under no spell save
that of courage in defending their nest. Every moment or two I could see
the head and neck of the serpent make a sweep at the birds, when the one
struck at would fall back, and the other would renew the assault from
the rear. There appeared to be little danger that the snake could strike
and hold one of the birds, though I trembled for them, they were so bold
and approached so near to the snake's head. Time and again he sprang at
them, but without success. How the poor things panted, and held up their
wings appealingly! Then the snake glided off to the near fence, barely
escaping the stone which I hurled at him. I found the nest rifled and
deranged; whether it had contained eggs or young, I know not. The male
sparrow had cheered me many a day with his song, and I blamed myself for
not having rushed at once to the rescue, when the arch enemy was upon
him. There is probably little truth in the popular notion that snakes
charm birds. The black snake is the most subtle, alert, and devilish of
our snakes, and I have never seen him have any but young, helpless birds
in his mouth.
* * * * *
If one has always built one's nest upon the ground, and if one comes of
a race of ground-builders, it is a risky experiment to build in a tree.
The conditions are vastly different. One of my near neighbors, a little
song sparrow, learned this lesson the past season. She grew ambitious;
she departed from the traditions of her race, and placed her nest in a
tree. Such a pretty spot she chose, too,--the pendent cradle formed by
the interlaced sprays of two parallel branches of a Norway spruce. These
branches shoot out almost horizontally; indeed, the lower ones become
quite so in spring, and the side shoots with which they are clothed
droop down, forming the slopes of miniature ridges; where the slopes of
two branches join, a little valley is formed, which often looks more
stable than it really is. My sparrow selected one of these little
valleys about six feet from the ground, and quite near the walls of the
house. "Here," she thought, "I will build my nest, and pass the heat of
June in a miniature Norway. This tree is the fir-clad mountain, and this
little vale on its side I select for my own." She carried up a great
quantity of coarse grass and straws for the foundation, just as she
would have done upon the ground. On the top of this mass there gradually
came into shape the delicate structure of her nest, compacting and
refining till its delicate carpet of hairs and threads was reached. So
sly as the little bird was about it, too,--every moment on her guard
lest you discover her secret! Five eggs were laid, and incubation was
far advanced, when the storms and winds came. The cradle indeed did
rock. The boughs did not break, but they swayed and separated as you
would part your two interlocked hands. The ground of the little valley
fairly gave way, the nest tilted over till its contents fell into the
chasm. It was like an earthquake that destroys a hamlet.
No born tree-builder would have placed its nest in such a situation.
Birds that build at the end of the branch, like the oriole, tie the nest
fast; others, like the robin, build against the main trunk; still others
build securely in the fork. The sparrow, in her ignorance, rested her
house upon the spray of two branches, and when the tempest came, the
branches parted company and the nest was engulfed.
A little bob-tailed song sparrow built her nest in a pile of dry brush
very near the kitchen door of a farmhouse on the skirts of the northern
Catskills, where I was passing the summer. It was late in July, and she
had doubtless reared one brood in the earlier season. Her toilet was
decidedly the worse for wear. I noted her day after day, very busy about
the fence and quince bushes between the house and milk house, with her
beak full of coarse straw and hay. To a casual observer, she seemed
flitting about aimlessly, carrying straws from place to place just to
amuse herself. When I came to watch her closely to learn the place of
her nest, she seemed to suspect my intention, and made many little
feints and movements calculated to put me off my track. But I would not
be misled, and presently had her secret. The male did not assist her at
all, but sang much of the time in an apple-tree or upon the fence, on
the other side of the house.
The song sparrow nearly always builds upon the ground, but my little
neighbor laid the foundations of her domicile a foot or more above the
soil. And what a mass of straws and twigs she did collect together! How
coarse and careless and aimless at first,--a mere lot of rubbish dropped
upon the tangle of dry limbs; but presently how it began to refine and
come into shape in the centre! till there was the most exquisite
hair-lined cup set about by a chaos of coarse straws and branches. What
a process of evolution! The completed nest was foreshadowed by the first
stiff straw; but how far off is yet that dainty casket with its
complement of speckled eggs! The nest was so placed that it had for
canopy a large, broad, drooping leaf of yellow dock. This formed a
perfect shield against both sun and rain, while it served to conceal it
from any curious eyes from above,--from the cat, for instance, prowling
along the top of the wall. Before the eggs had hatched, the docken leaf
wilted and dried and fell down upon the nest. But the mother bird
managed to insinuate herself beneath it, and went on with her brooding
all the same.
Then I arranged an artificial cover of leaves and branches, which
shielded her charge till they had flown away. A mere trifle was this
little bob-tailed bird with her arts and her secrets, and the male with
his song, and yet the pair gave a touch of something to those days and
to that place which I would not willingly have missed.
THE CHIMNEY SWIFT
One day a swarm of honey-bees went into my chimney, and I mounted the
stack to see into which flue they had gone. As I craned my neck above
the sooty vent, with the bees humming about my ears, the first thing my
eye rested upon in the black interior was a pair of long white pearls
upon a little shelf of twigs, the nest of the chimney swallow, or
swift,--honey, soot, and birds' eggs closely associated. The bees,
though in an unused flue, soon found the gas of anthracite that hovered
about the top of the chimney too much for them, and they left. But the
swifts are not repelled by smoke. They seem to have entirely abandoned
their former nesting-places in hollow trees and stumps, and to frequent
only chimneys. A tireless bird, never perching, all day upon the wing,
and probably capable of flying one thousand miles in twenty-four hours,
they do not even stop to gather materials for their nests, but snap off
the small dry twigs from the tree-tops as they fly by. Confine one of
these swifts to a room and it does not perch, but after flying till it
becomes bewildered and exhausted, it clings to the side of the wall till
it dies. Once, on returning to my room after several days' absence, I
found one in which life seemed nearly extinct; its feet grasped my
finger as I removed it from the wall, but its eyes closed, and it seemed
about on the point of joining its companion, which lay dead upon the
floor. Tossing it into the air, however, seemed to awaken its wonderful
powers of flight, and away it went straight toward the clouds. On the
wing the chimney swift looks like an athlete stripped for the race.
There is the least appearance of quill and plumage of any of our birds,
and, with all its speed and marvelous evolutions, the effect of its
flight is stiff and wiry. There appears to be but one joint in the wing,
and that next the body. This peculiar inflexible motion of the wings, as
if they were little sickles of sheet iron, seems to be owing to the
length and development of the primary quills and the smallness of the
secondary. The wing appears to hinge only at the wrist. The barn swallow
lines its rude masonry with feathers, but the swift begins life on bare
twigs, glued together by a glue of home manufacture as adhesive as
Spaulding's.
The big chimney of my cabin "Slabsides" of course attracted the chimney
swifts, and as it was not used in summer, two pairs built their nests in
it, and we had the muffled thunder of their wings at all hours of the
day and night. One night, when one of the broods was nearly fledged, the
nest that held them fell down into the fireplace. Such a din of
screeching and chattering as they instantly set up! Neither my dog nor I
could sleep. They yelled in chorus, stopping at the end of every
half-minute as if upon signal. Now they were all screeching at the top
of their voices, then a sudden, dead silence ensued. Then the din began
again, to terminate at the instant as before. If they had been long
practicing together, they could not have succeeded better. I never
before heard the cry of birds so accurately timed. After a while I got
up and put them back up the chimney, and stopped up the throat of the
flue with newspapers. The next day one of the parent birds, in bringing
food to them, came down the chimney with such force that it passed
through the papers and brought up in the fireplace. On capturing it I
saw that its throat was distended with food as a chipmunk's cheek with
corn, or a boy's pocket with chestnuts. I opened its mandibles, when it
ejected a wad of insects as large as a bean. Most of them were much
macerated, but there were two house-flies yet alive and but little the
worse for their close confinement. They stretched themselves and walked
about upon my hand, enjoying a breath of fresh air once more. It was
nearly two hours before the swift again ventured into the chimney with
food.