If one were to keep on writing monographs of all our interesting avian
species, the books that would result would make a good-sized library.
The few examples that have been given will illustrate what can be done
in this direction with the help of the field glass and the handbook. A
few chapters will now be given on what might be called "odds and ends
of bird life," and these are written not only for the information they
may impart, but also for the purpose of showing how many interesting
facts can be gathered along the way by the method of bird study
commended in our opening chapter.
The prince of American ornithologists, Dr. Elliott Coues, has somewhere
said that he would travel a long distance to discover a new kind of
bird, or even to ascertain a new fact about a familiar species. I
would applaud and echo that sentiment, for by all means let us have
bird news that really is news, instead of revamping the familiar facts
again and again, as some amateurish writers do. While I am not able to
add any new species to science, I have made note of many pleasing
incidents in the bird realm, and these, I venture to hope, may be of
not a little general interest.
[Illustration: Pewee, or Phoebe (missing from book)]
There is the companionable white-breasted nuthatch which goes scudding
up and down the tree trunks with as much ease and aplomb as a fly
gliding over a window-pane. I have already told you something about
him. I had long been aware that he wedged grains of corn, sunflower
seeds, and kernels of nuts in the crannies of the bark; but one day he
invented a trick that was a surprise to me. It occurred at a summer
resort in northern Indiana, where I noticed a nuthatch hitching up and
down and around the slender stem of a sapling, pausing at intervals to
thrust something into the crevices of the bark. My curiosity led me to
pry into the bird's affairs. Stepping smartly forward, I drove him
away, not heeding his vigorous protest of "yank, yank," and examined
the bark of the sapling. What did I discover? A colony of black ants
were scuttling up and down the tree, apparently under stress of great
excitement; and good reason they had, for here and there one of their
number was tightly wedged into a chink of the bark, often doubled up
into a bow or an angle. They were not killed, at least not all of
them, for they were still wiggling their legs and antennas; but they
were evidently benumbed, or some of their backs were broken, and they
were fastened so securely in the fissures that they could not escape.
Does it not look as if the forehanded nuthatch was laying by a supply
of ants for a coming time of hunger?
One day a family of wood pewees visited the dooryard of my tent. A
multitude of gnats circling about in the air, seemed to be precisely to
the taste of the pewee parents and their hungry bairns. The bantlings
sat chirping in the saplings, or flitted from twig to twig, twinkling
their wings in the coaxing way that is characteristic of young birds,
while the papa and mamma swung out into the air, nabbed the insects on
the wing, and flew back to the trees, describing many circles,
ellipses, and festoons of rare grace and beauty. The snapping of their
mandibles could often be heard as they closed upon the fated insects.
Most of the gnats thus captured were thrust into the mouths of the
young birds, the parents dashing up to them and feeding them without
alighting. As lavish a minstrel as the pewee _pater familias_ is under
most circumstances, that morning he was too busy to tune his wind harp.
Speaking of the voracious appetites of birds, as exhibited by the young
pewees, which never seemed to get enough, I am reminded of something I
witnessed one day in a deep, wooded hollow. A red-eyed vireo suddenly
appeared in the branches above me, holding an immense green worm in his
beak. Then followed a tussle for the "upper hand" that was worth
seeing. The bird, holding its squirming victim by one end, proceeded
to beat it against the limb, though it was almost too big and
recalcitrant for him to handle. Presently the vireo, after a good deal
of effort, succeeded in passing his quarry through his bill from end to
end, thus reducing it to somewhat smaller dimensions. Still, it was a
large morsel for so small a diner.
However, there were some intimations that the bird intended to bolt the
worm whole. And that was just what he was planning to do! What a
struggle ensued! I would have wagered that the little gourmand had
reckoned without his host when he undertook to swallow that immense
worm. He twisted his neck this way and that, gulped and squeezed and
pried, until I feared he would burst his throat open. At length the
worm was partly bolted, but it seemed to stick fast, and the bird stood
there with his mandibles pressed far apart, the end of his dinner
bulging out of his mouth, and I felt uneasy for a time lest he should
choke to death before my very eyes. But, after resting a minute, he
gave his neck a number of convulsive twists, and at last succeeded in
forcing the unwilling worm down his throat, after which he wiped his
bill on the limb with a self-satisfied air and flitted away as happy as
a lark, knowing that his faithful craw would do the rest.
A slate-colored junco did a pretty thing in the woods one day of early
spring--much more pleasing to see than the incident just described. He
had rinsed his feathers in a pool of the little stream down in the
hollow, and now he was squatting flat on his belly on the ground in a
soft bed of brown leaves, preening and primping his plumes with his
little white, conical bill. Now he gave his quills a deft touch, now
the feathers of his wing, now those of his dainty breast. Lying there
in the sun he presented a perfect picture of feathery laziness. Many a
bird I have seen arranging his toilet after a bath while perching on a
limb or a twig, and even, as in the case of the brown creeper, while
clinging to the bole of a tree, but never before did I see one doing
this while lolling on the ground. He was not sick or hurt, simply
lazy; for when I went near him he flew away as chipper as a bird could
be.
The rambler not only sees many of these pretty bird ways, but he
sometimes has a hearty laugh at the birds' expense. During one of my
outings a blustering whirlwind started on the summit of a small hill
scantily covered with scrub oak. It seized the dead leaves and twirled
them about as if in a spasm of anger; then it went scurrying noisily
down the steep incline, flinging itself against a couple of large brush
heaps in the hollow where a number of fox and Harris sparrows were
concealed. They had imagined themselves safe in their brushy covert.
Suddenly the whirlwind struck their hiding place with a clang and
clatter, sending the birds in a wild panic in every direction. They
did not seem to know what had struck them, and, as the wanton breezes
tossed them this way and that, they expressed their astonishment in
loud and frightened chirping. All over and no harm done, the bird
lover burst into a peal of laughter at the discomfiture of his
feathered neighbors, who looked at him as if they did not know what to
make of his untimely hilarity.
Then, too, one cannot be an observing rambler without stumbling upon
some exceedingly odd avian pranks, as the following description will
indicate: One day I was sitting on the steep bank of a wooded ravine
watching several rare little birds, hoping to discover some of their
nests. Presently the susurrus of the hummingbird was heard, and a
moment later two ruby-throats, a male and a female, flashed into view
on the slope below me. The tiny madam settled on a twig near the
ground, while her ruby-throated spouse performed one of the queerest
antics I have ever witnessed in featherland. He began to swing back
and forth in an arc of almost half a circle, the diameter of which was
at least twelve feet, just grazing his mate whenever he reached the
lowest point of his concentric movements. Back and forth he swung at
least a dozen times, looking like a tiny pendulum moving in an immense
arc, and, oddly enough, the segment seemed to be perfectly formed every
time. Had the bird wheeled entirely around, he would, I feel sure,
have described a circle and not an ellipse. The movement was
exceedingly swift, and might well have been called the embodiment of
grace. Suddenly, as the diminutive acrobat reached the highest point
of his arc, he dashed off to the right in a straight line, followed by
his mate, and in a moment both had disappeared. Whether other
observers have been witnesses of this curious gambol, I am unable to
say.
Have you ever been ill-mannered enough to watch the birds going to bed?
I remember spending an evening in the woods playing the role of Paul
Pry on my feathered neighbors. The sun was just sinking behind the
bluffs on the other side of a broad river--the Missouri--and the moon,
which was half full, was hanging high in the blue sky. What were those
two large black objects over yonder in the woods? My glass soon
revealed their identity--a pair of turkey buzzards perched side by side
on a limb, one of them squatted flat on his belly ready to take his
first nap. My curiosity led me to go near them, when they spread their
broad, sable wings, flew a few rods, and alighted on another horizontal
bar. There they sat as long as I could see them in the thickening
darkness, turning their heads now and then to see whether their
ill-bred visitor was still spying upon them. They made no efforts to
conceal themselves, as the small birds do in roosting, for they knew,
no doubt, that nothing would carry off fowls of their size.
A little later on the same evening a whip-poor-will darted up from the
roadside and flew into the woods a short distance, alighting on a white
flag of good size, so that I could plainly see his dark form in the
moonlight. Then I was witness of this uncanny bird's table manners,
which were entirely unknown to me and may be to others. At irregular
intervals he leaped into the air, now in one direction, now in another,
captured an insect, and flew back to the top of the flag. Some of his
evolutions were quite wonderful, and all of them were the perfection of
grace. He described all kinds of curves and loops. On alighting he
uttered a low, hollow chuck suggestive of the sepulchral. Another
notch had to be cut in the tally-stick of my ornithological journey--I
had learned how the whip-poor-will takes his nocturnal dinner of moths
and beetles, and I felt that there was still such a thing as news to be
gathered in birdland.
Most birds, however, do not take their dinner at night, and therefore
it is easier to watch them at their _table d'hote_. One day a
red-headed woodpecker was giving a strapping youngster as large as
herself his noonday meal. She came close to him with a morsel in her
long bill, and, after pounding it awhile against a limb, she thrust it
into the screaming youngling's mouth. But she had failed to reduce it
to a swallowable size; it stuck in his throat, and, do what he would,
he could not bolt it. It was so large that he was choking; what should
be done? The simplest thing you can conceive. The mother bird reached
over and impatiently jerked the refractory morsel out of her baby's
throat, thumped it vigorously several times against the branch, then
gave it to him again, as much as to say, "Now try it! I guess you can
manage it this time." And he did, for down his gullet it went with
very little effort. Then she went after more provender for his
spacious craw. Whenever she came with a tidbit, she would first drop
it into a kind of pocket in the bark, and pound it a while to reduce it
to a proper consistency; the while the youngster would sit near and
watch her with hungry eyes, and often scream in his coaxing way and
twinkle his wings, until she was ready to deliver up the tempting
fragment.
Once, after she had given him all she had brought, he still opened his
mouth and whimpered for more. At this exhibition of gluttony she lost
her patience. Would he never be satisfied, the great, greedy,
overgrown lubber? He was simply making a slave and a drudge of her.
She looked at him for a moment with a savage glitter in her dark eyes,
then began to peck him angrily right in the mouth, and drove him
peremptorily backward down the limb. Mother patience has its
limitations in the bird world as well as elsewhere.
On the same day a bank swallow was feeding her little ones, a half
dozen or so, which were ranged on a willow stem at the margin of the
river. Every time she flew toward them they set up a vigorous calling
to be fed. She procured her food by skimming airily over the river and
catching the insects that rose from its surface. Having nabbed one,
she would dart with it to her little family, and, without alighting,
and scarcely pausing in her swift flight, would thrust it into the
mouth of one of the birdkins. Thus she fed them one by one until she
had gone the round of the little circle, though sometimes, oddly
enough, she would serve the same infant twice in succession.
The little family, all perched in a row, looked very attractive, and I
was watching them closely most of the time. Suddenly the mother bird
disappeared, and was gone for several minutes. I forgot to keep my eye
steadily on the youngsters sitting six in a row, and, to my great
surprise, when she reappeared they had left their perch, which was in
plain sight, and I could not rediscover them for some time. Finally,
however, I espied them cuddling among some leafy twigs a few feet away,
where the mother resumed her duties of purveyor. My opinion is that
she had begun to feel uneasy for their safety in the exposed place
where I could see them so plainly, and so, while I was looking
elsewhere, had persuaded them to shift their position. Now they were
partly screened by the intervening leaves, and she felt that they were
secure.
There can be no doubt that birds have a language which the youngsters
soon come to understand, however simple and inarticulated it may be.
In a shady hollow, one day of early spring, a pair of tufted titmice
were supplying the wants of a family of famishing children, and I
invited myself to the family reunion. The young birds had left the
nest and were perched in a leafy tree. Most of the time they kept up a
great clamor for food--or, perhaps, they shrieked merely from force of
habit; but every few minutes one of the parent birds would utter a
shrill, commanding cry, at which all the noisy clamorings of the
youthful family would suddenly cease, and for a few moments perfect
quiet would reign in titmouse town; then the hubbub would begin again,
and continue until another order for perfect silence was given. So far
as I could see, there was no danger from raptorial foes at hand, but
the little family seemed to be in training against the approach of a
marauder.
It may be a far cry, but from green-robed spring fancy yourself
suddenly flung into the lap of snow-bound winter, to look upon scenes
quite different from the foregoing. The Frost King had been playing a
good many pranks for a week or two, and once, in a spasm of frigid ill
humor, had jammed the mercury in our thermometers a dozen or more
degrees below zero, and had held it there quite too long for our
comfort. More than once had he shrieked and blustered and stamped his
feet incontinently, and more than once sent his legions of wind, sleet,
and snow howling through the leafless woods. Everybody in our central
latitudes knows what an explosive old fellow the Frost King is, and how
fierce and savage he can become let the mood once seize him.
Sometimes, too, by the hour he had ground his ice crystals to powder in
mid-air and hurled them to the earth, covering its surface with a robe
of purest white, thus proving that, with all his rudeness and bluster,
he is an old gentleman of aesthetic tastes. One evening his mood
became blander, and he dropped his crystals from the sky in large, damp
flakes, which clung tenaciously to the branches and twigs; then during
the night his breath became chilled and froze the snowy cylinders, and
when morning broke the woods were a miracle of loveliness, every leaf
and twig bearing a ridge of gleaming pearls, while the sylvan floor was
pure white. Soon the sun was shining from an unmarred sky, and the
snow-clad earth smiled back in shimmering recognition. It was a day
for worship in God's first sanctuary.
Yet it was a day for watching the gambols of the birds, and such
occupation by no means interfered with the spirit of worship. In the
depths of the woods the white-breasted nuthatches were holding a
friendly interview. How affectionately they talked to one another in
idioms all their own, saying "Hick! hick!" and "Yank! yank!" and
"Ha-ha! ha-ha! ha-ha!" which may mean anything that is kind and cordial
and confidential. They were either playing at a game of tag, or were
having a peep-show among the bushes, hiding for a moment in some leafy
cluster, then dashing in pursuit of one another in the most frolicksome
way. I crept in under the arches of the snow-clad bushes to watch
their caperings more closely, but the birds at once quieted down, and
went about their more prosaic vocation of grub gathering. They were no
doubt "aching" to frisk about among the snowy bushes, but would not
indulge their playful mood under the eye of a human spectator.
Presently one of them was seen carefully primping his feathers--a
function that I had not previously seen a nuthatch perform. His plumes
seemed to be really quite damp, and, as there was no water at hand--the
streams being mailed with ice as well as nearly a half mile away--he
must have used a snowbank for his lavatory. But you ask how he
arranged his toilet. I had several times seen the little brown creeper
clinging to the vertical wall of a tree and preening his plumes after a
bath, and it was natural to suppose that his congener, the nuthatch,
being also a bird of reptatory habits, would follow the same formula.
But not so! Instead of clinging to the upright bole of a tree, Master
Nuthatch perched crosswise on a twig like a robin or a chickadee, and
smoothed his ruffled plumes.
After this interesting interview with the nuthatches, I trudged about
in the woods for some time without seeing any birds. What had become
of my feathered neighbors, my companions in every ramble throughout the
winter? Had the storm driven them to other climes where bland winds
prevailed? Oh, no! See what prudent creatures they were that wintry
day. At the eastern border of the woods, where the sun shone warmly
and the keen westerly breeze was broken and tempered, my little friends
were found in goodly numbers, well knowing where the Frost King's anger
would be softened.
Here were nuthatches and chickadees in plenty, and also tufted tits,
tree sparrows, juncos, downy woodpeckers, and, to make the complement
as nearly full as possible, a hairy woodpecker drummed and
_chir-r-r-red_, several blue jays complained in the distance, and a
goldfinch swinging overhead threaded the air with festoons of black and
gold. And here I witnessed a new and pretty antic of a tree sparrow,
which flew over from a cornfield hard by and perched on a dogwood
sapling only a few feet away; then it plunged its beak into the little
snowbank on the twig before it and ate greedily of the snow, some of
the crystals clinging to its mandibles, just as the crumbs adhere to
the lips of a hungry boy. Had the exclamation not been so much like
slang, I would have cried "Next!" And there was a "next," as sure as
you live, for the little bird soon flitted to another twig in the same
tree and, reaching up, daintily sipped from the dripping underside of
the branch just above and in front of it. Its thirst having been
assuaged, it flew over into the adjoining field to resume its winter
feast of seeds and berries.
And what was happening over in the field? Something worth noting, to
be sure. A coterie of juncos and tree sparrows were breakfasting on
the seeds of a clump of tall weeds, a few of the little feasters
perched on the swaying stems, while others stood on the snow on the
ground and picked the seeds from the racemes that were bent down by
their burden of crystals. When I went to the place, I could see the
delicate tracery of their feet on the snow, as if they had been writing
their autographs on an untarnished scroll. Two tiny footprints at
regular intervals, one a little before the other, and each pair
connected with the next by a slender thread or two traced by the bird's
claws--that is a junco's or a tree sparrow's trail in the snow.
A little later a scattering flock of tree sparrows were skipping about
on the snowy floor of the woods, picking up at quick intervals a
palatable tidbit. Birds often find edibles on the surface of the snow
when our duller eyes can see nothing but immaculate whiteness. What
long leaps the little birds took across the snow, which looked like a
marble pavement with fairies dancing upon it! Near by, on one of the
lower twigs of a thorn bush, a sparrow sat with feathers fluffed up and
wings hanging negligently at his side, as if he were taking a siesta
after a hearty meal of weed seeds and winter berries. Two of his
companions soon joined him in his noonday rest, the trio making a
pretty picture sitting there within an inch or two of the ground.
It was not very long before a tree sparrow perpetrated another
surprise, proving that this species is not without character, as indeed
no species is. He leaped to the bole of a sapling, clinging there a
few moments like a chickadee or a wren, while he pecked an appetizing
morsel from the bark; then he dropped down to the snow for a brief
breathing spell, after which he sprang up again to the sapling for a
few more bits, repeating the little performance a number of times.
In the same part of the woods a company of chickadees was flitting
about in the trees, plunging into the little snowbanks on the twigs,
sometimes standing in them up to their white bosoms, and often brushing
a segment to the ground, thus making numerous breaches in the white
drifts. The racket they made with their scolding and piping might have
been called a musical din. Deciding to watch them a while, I flung
myself down upon the snow. This act was the signal for a precious
to-do among the nervous little potherers. Did any one ever hear or
read of such a performance in all the annals of birdland? What in the
world did it mean--a man lying flat on the ground out there in the
woods? I was highly amused at the hurly-burly, and decided to add
still more variety to it. Suddenly I sprang to my feet with a shout.
Several of the birds dropped, as if shot, into a thorn bush below them,
where they set up a hubbub that would have made on old-time Puritan
laugh, even at the risk of being censured for levity. By and by they
quieted down, and one of them began to whistle his pretty minor tune
with as much serenity as if he had never been excited in his life. My
winter outing proved that the Frost King and the hardy birds often go
cheek by jowl, as if they were on terms of the most cordial fraternity.