The previous chapter closed with some notes on the behavior of birds in
the winter time. My home rambling grounds in northeastern Kansas were
extremely undulating, cut up into ridges and ravines, most of which
were covered with a thick growth of weeds, bushes, and timber. In some
places the thickets were so dense as to be almost impenetrable. This
diversity in the topography of the country afforded considerable
variety in the faunal life of the region.
For example, in bitter winter weather most of the birds would hug the
sheltered hollows, where they found coverts in the copses, and would
avoid the hilltops, which were exposed to the nipping winds blowing
from the western prairies. As the spring approached, bringing blander
weather, they gradually moved up the hillsides, many of them finding
billsome seeds and berries on the summits.
However, note a difference in the temperament of individuals of the
same species. On the bitterest days of winter I would sometimes leave
the sheltered hollows and lowlands and clamber to the summits of the
wind-swept hills, and, oddly enough, on the exposed heights I
occasionally flushed a solitary bird, which would spring up from the
weeds or copses and dart away with a frightened cry. More than likely
it would be an individual of the same species as some of the more
socially disposed tenants of the lower grounds, but for some reason,
what, I know not, it preferred the life of an anchorite; it did not
care for society, even of its own kith. Invariably, too, these
feathered recluses were extremely shy, scuttling away like frightened
deer as I approached their cloistered haunts.
These notes stir several queries in one's mind. Is there such a thing
as social ostracism in the bird world? Might these hilltop eremites
have committed some crime or some breach of decorum that effected their
banishment from respectable avicular society? Or were they simply of a
sullen or retiring disposition, choosing seclusion rather than the
company of their kind? These questions must be left unanswered. Most
frequently the lone bird would be a song sparrow. Once a brilliant
cardinal was trying to conceal himself in a clump of bushes and weeds
far up the hillside, acting very much like a social outcast. For some
reason that he did not see fit to explain he wanted to be alone.
If the song sparrows of eastern Kansas belie their name and seldom fall
into the lyrical mood, as has been said, the like cannot be said of the
robins, which, in the proper season, were very lavish of their
minstrelsy. Their favorite singing time in the West, as in the East,
was at the "peep of dawn." How often their ringing carols broke into
my early morning dreams!
Have you ever noticed the tentative efforts of the robins in the early
spring, at the beginning of the song season, before they get their
harps in full tune? It is interesting and amusing to listen to their
rehearsals, of which they need quite a number before they acquire full
control of their voices. This is the method: Starting off on a tune,
they will keep it up until their voices break; then they will stop a
while to recover breath, and presently make another attempt with
perhaps slightly better success. At first they are able to pipe only a
syllable or two before their voices break. After a while they succeed
in carrying the tune for a respectable little run, but sooner or later
their voices will go all to pieces or slide up into a falsetto, making
another pause necessary. By and by, however, after much practice, they
gain perfect vocal control, and are able to sustain their songs for a
long time without a mishap. When the voice of the rehearsing bird
breaks, it apparently runs too high in the scale for the bird's
register, just as the voice of a sixteen-year-old boy is apt to do, to
his own confusion and the amusement of his friends.
[Illustration: Cardinal]
Another fact about robin music may be of interest to those who have not
observed it. In the early spring these birds are extremely lyrical,
that being their season of courtship; then will follow a few weeks of
comparative silence--the time when there are little ones in need of
parental care. At this period the husbands, it would seem, are either
too busy or too wary to sing a great deal. But now note: When the
youngsters have flown from the nest and are able to take care of
themselves, the silence in robindom is again broken, and there is a
flood-tide of melody from early morning till eventide. The second
lyrical period lasts until another nest has been built and another
clutch of eggs has been hatched, when the choralists again relapse into
comparative silence.
Since coming back to Ohio, I imagine that the eastern robins are better
singers than their western relatives. Their voices, to my ear, are
clearer and more ringing, less apt to break into a squeak at the top of
their register, and there is more variety of expression as well as
greater facility in managing the technique. I think this is not all
fancy, yet I would not speak with the assurance of the dogmatist.
In the good Jayhawker state the orchard orioles are more abundant than
they are in the eastern and northeastern part of the state of Ohio.
Indeed, the range of this species is more southerly than that of their
congeners, the Baltimore orioles. In their proper latitude no birds,
or at least few of them, are more lavish of their melody than the
orchard orioles. What a ringing voice the oriole possesses! His song
has a saucy note of challenge running through it, and also a human
intonation that makes it rarely attractive. All day long the male
sings his cheery solos, scarcely pausing for breath or food, now
sitting on the topmost twig of a dead apple tree in the orchard, now
amid the screening foliage of a maple in the yard, and anon on the
other side of the street in a stately cottonwood. But where is that
modest little personage, his wife? She is seldom heard, and almost as
seldom seen. It is really remarkable--her gift of concealment. When
she builds her nest is a mystery. It is often so deftly hidden that
you would not be likely to find it in a long hunt. In the spring of
1898 a pair of orchard orioles took up their residence in the trees
about my house, the male singing his brisk overtures, the female seen
only at flitting intervals and never heard. Watch as I would, I could
not surprise her laying the timbers of her cottage, which I felt sure
was being built somewhere in the trees. Indeed, I did not discover it
until autumn came, long after the orioles, old and young, had taken
flight to a balmier clime, and the trees were stripped of their leaves,
when, lo! it appeared in plain view on one of the trees on the opposite
side of the street, the very place where I had not thought of looking
for it.
The Baltimore orioles as a rule are not so secretive; yet during the
summer of 1898 a pair of these firebirds led me a fruitless chase.
Their secret was not divulged until the leaves had fallen the next
autumn, when there the nest hung in the midst of a tall cottonwood in
my back yard close to the house. Lord Baltimore and his mate usually
suspend their nests on the outer branches of the trees, where they are
not hard to discover, but this pair did not follow the common formula,
for the nest was placed in the thickest part of the foliage, so that it
was impossible to see it from the ground until the branches were bare.
Of all the malaperts of birddom none excel and few equal the white-eyed
vireo for volubility and downright audacity. All his songs--and he has
quite a respectable list of them--seem to be either a protest or a
challenge; a protest against your intrusion into his precincts, a
challenge to find him and his nest if you can. Again and again in
Kansas I crept into their bushy coverts just for the purpose of
receiving a sound scolding. Such a berating did they give me, telling
me of all my faults and foibles, that I certainly ought to remain
humble all the rest of my days. A half dozen viragoes could not have
done better--that is, worse. They would flit about in the bushes above
my head, their little white eyes gleaming with fire, and call me all
the names they could lay their tongues to. I wonder whether the
white-eyes have a dictionary of epithets. Nature has done an odd thing
in making the white-eyed vireo.
Their nests are not easy to find, although they do not always make a
great deal of effort at concealment. Like all the vireo tribe, they
suspend their tiny baskets from the fork or crotch of a horizontal
twig. The nest is somewhat bulkier than the compact little cup of the
red-eyed vireo, and is apt to be more carefully concealed in the
foliage, although I have found more than one nest that was hung in
plain sight. I remember one in particular. It was dangling from the
outer twigs of a small bush by the side of the woodland path which I
was pursuing. In fact, it could be distinctly seen from the path. In
spite of the mother's pleadings, protests, and objurgations, I stepped
over to inspect her pendant domicile, whose holdings were four baby
white-eyes, their eyelids still glued together. As the twigs stirred,
they opened their mouths for food, and I decided to accommodate them.
Taking a bit of cracker from my haversack, I moistened it, and rolled
it into a pellet between my finger and thumb; then, gently swaying the
bushes, I induced the bantlings to open their mouths, when I dropped
the morsel into one of the tiny throats. You ought to have seen the
wry face baby made as it gulped down the new kind of food, which had
such an odd taste. It was plain that the callow nestling was able to
distinguish this morsel from the palatable diet it had been accustomed
to. Possibly it suffered from a temporary fit of indigestion, but no
permanent harm was done by my experiment, for when I called on them
again a few days later, the birdkins four were safe and well, their
eyes open, and their instincts sufficiently developed to cause them to
cuddle low in their basket instead of opening their mouths.
[Illustration: White-eyed Vireo]
The rambler who would hear a real outdoor concert should rise early,
swallow a few bits of cracker and a cup of coffee, and seek some
bird-haunted hollow or woodland just as day begins to break. One
morning I pursued this plan, and was more than compensated for the loss
of an hour or two of sleep. Just as the east began to blush I found
myself in a favorite wooded hollow.
What a _potpourri_ of bird song greeted my ear! How many choralists
took part in the matutinal concert I cannot say, but there were scores
of them. The volume of song would sometimes swell to a full-toned
orchestra, and then for a few moments it would sink almost to a lull,
all of it like the flow and ebb of the tides of a sea of melody. It
was interesting to note how several voices would sometimes run into a
chime when they struck the same chord.
Let me call the roll of the members of that feathered choir. First,
and most gifted of all, were a couple of brown thrashers, whose tones
were as strong and sweet as those of a silver cornet, making the echoes
ring across the hollow. I have listened to many a thrasher song in the
North, the South, and the West, but have never heard a voice of better
timbre than that of one of the tawny vocalists singing that morning, as
he sat on the topmost twig of an oak tree and flung out his medley upon
the morning air. It is wonderful, anyway, with what an ecstasy the
thrasher will sometimes sing. Nothing could be plainer than that he
sings for the pure pleasure of it--an artist deeply in love with his
art.
Falling a little behind the thrashers in vocal power and technical
execution were the catbirds, which sent up their cavatinas from the
bushes in the hollow. Their voices lacked the volume and strength of
their rivals, yet some of their strains were truly the quintessence of
sweetness.
Conspicuous members of the early chorus were the wood thrushes, a dozen
or more of which were often singing at the same time. From every part
of the woods their peals arose. Of course, there was no attempt--at
least, so far as I could discover--to sing in concert, but each
minstrel followed his own sweet will, and so the combined result was
not what you would call a harmony, but a medley, albeit a very pleasing
one. If the wood thrush's execution were less labored, he would
certainly be a marvelous songster, and even as it is, he furnishes
unending delight to those whose ears are trained to appreciate avian
minstrelsy.
Two or three rose-breasted grossbeaks piped their liquid, childlike
arias; towhees, at least a half-dozen of them, flung forth their loud,
explosive trills that have a real musical quality; several cardinals
whistled as if they meant to drown out all the other voices; scarlet
and summer tanagers drawled their good-natured tunes, while their rich
robes gleamed in the level rays of the rising sun; running like silver
threads through all the other music, could be heard the fine trills of
the field sparrows; the swinging chant of the creeping warblers and the
loud rattle of the Tennessee warblers ran high up in the scale,
furnishing a gossamer tenor; that golden optimist, the Baltimore
oriole, piped his cheery recitative in the tops of the trees;
chickadees supplied the minor strains and tufted titmice the alto; four
or five turtle doves soothed the ear with their meditative cooing;
while the calls and songs of numerous jays and a few yellow-breasted
chats made a kind of trombone accompaniment. Surely it is worth one's
while to hie early to the haunts of the birds to hear such a tumult of
song.
One spring I made up my mind to make a closer study than ever of the
dainty creeping warbler, wishing to know just how he contrives to
scuttle up and down the boles and branches of the trees with so much
ease and grace. He is the only warbler we have in eastern North
America that makes a habit of scaling the tree trunks and descending
them head downward. How does he do this? The muscles of his legs and
pelvis are as elastic as India rubber, so that he can twist and twirl
about in a marvelous way, pointing his head one moment to the east and
the next, without losing his hold, in the opposite direction. He is
able to swing himself around almost as if he were hung on a pivot.
But how does he hold himself on his shaggy wall as he hitches head
downward? Just as the nuthatch does--not by keeping both feet directly
under him, as most people suppose, but by thrusting one foot slightly
forward and the other outward and backward, thus preserving his balance
at the same time that he holds himself firmly with his sharp little
claws to his upright wall. Some of the pictures of the creeper seen in
the books are not quite true to creeper methods of clinging and
locomotion, for they represent him as stuck to the bark of a tree trunk
with both feet invisible, presumably held directly under his striped
breast. In the real position it is likely that one or both feet could
be seen, the one thrust forward and the other flung back and to one
side. At least one foot would be visible, whatever the angle at which
the bird would be inspected, and from many points of view both of his
tiny feet may be plainly seen in the position described.
Our little striped friend, usually called in the books the
black-and-white warbler, is not, after all, so expert a creeper as is
the nuthatch, which may be called the arboreal skater _par excellence_.
The warbler does not go scuttling straight down a vertical bole or
branch as the nuthatch does, but swings his lithe body from side to
side, as if he did not loosen the hold of both feet simultaneously but
alternately. Besides, both in ascending and descending he must have
more frequent recourse to his wings to tide him over the difficult
places. While the nuthatch can glide over the smoothest and hardest
bark, and even descend the wall of a brick house, his sharp claws
taking a firm grip on the edges of the bricks, the warbler is not quite
so much of a gymnast, for when he strikes a difficult spot in his
promenade ground, he flies or flits over it to the next protuberance
which his claws can hold. He has a decided advantage, however, over
all his warbler kin, for he is not only gifted with the creeping
talent, but is also just as dexterous as they in perching on a
horizontal twig.
The little bird known as the brown creeper belongs to a different
avicular family entirely, but in one respect he is like the
black-and-white warbler--that is, he scales the trunks and branches of
the trees. There, however, the resemblance ceases, for the creeper
rarely goes head downward, evidently thinking that the proper position
for a bird's head is pointing toward the sky, not toward the ground.
Besides, he seldom, if ever, sits crosswise on a perch; no, he is an
inveterate creeper. My study of him proves that he does not hold his
feet directly under his breast, but spreads them out well toward either
side, knowing instinctively how to make a broad enough base to enable
him to preserve his center of gravity.
Like the woodpecker, he uses his stiff tail as a brace; nor does he go
zigzagging up his wall after the manner of the creeping warbler, but
hitches along in a direct line--unless, of course, a tidbit attracts
him to one side--proving that he is a true creeper, one to the manner
born. However, the warbler has one advantage--he is able to perch with
perfect security on a twig, an accomplishment that has not yet been
attained by his little brown cousin. How cunningly the creeper peeps
into the crannies of the bark as he plies his trade, thrusts his long,
curved beak into the tiny holes and crevices, and draws out a worm or a
grub, which the next moment goes twinkling down his throat! His
economic value to the farmer and the fruit grower cannot be estimated,
and he should never be destroyed.
The conduct of different birds is not alike upon their arrival from the
South at their summer nesting haunts in our more northern latitudes;
some heralding their advent with jubilant song as if in greeting to the
familiar scenes, while others are silent and wary. The first I knew of
the Baltimore and orchard orioles last spring, they were singing
blithely in the trees about the house; but the brown thrashers flitted
about slyly and silently for a few days, apparently to make sure that
the coast was clear of danger; having done which, they burst into their
dithyrambs with a will. Out in the woodland the gorgeous scarlet
tanager announced his arrival one morning with a lively sonnet, which
was heard long before the singer was seen; whereas his cousin, the
summer tanager, uttered only his quaint alarm-call, "Chip-burn,
chip-burn," and was excessively shy, dashing wildly away as I
approached, unwilling to vouchsafe a wisp of song. Once he even
pounced angrily upon his black-winged relative and drove him to the
other side of the hollow, precisely as if he meant to say, "Your
singing is out of place, sir, and dangerous, too! Don't you know that
the man prowling about yonder will shoot little birds who betray their
presence by singing?"
[Illustration: Baltimore Oriole]
One of our most lavish singers all summer long is the indigo bunting;
yet when he first came back from the South he was very shy, and his
voice seemed to be out of tune, so that, even when he tried to sing,
which was seldom, his effort sounded like the creaking of a rusty
door-hinge. Afterwards, however, when he got the cobwebs out of his
larynx, he made up for all his previous silence. Quite different is
the habit of the towhee, which announces his presence by his loud,
explosive trill--all too brief--or his complaining "chewing."
Sometimes the rambler and bird gazer meets with other than avian
"specimens" in his excursions. One evening I was loitering in a
distant hollow, ogling with my field glass several lark sparrows that
were flitting about on the ground in an adjacent patch of some kind.
The birds were singing as only these beautiful sparrows can, and the
quiet of the evening lent an idyllic charm to their rich and varied
chansons. On the other side of a small stream stood a shanty, in the
door of which sat an old negro woman. In looking at the birds, I
sometimes turned the glass toward the shanty, although too intent on my
studies to notice it. Presently the woman could no longer endure my
apparent espionage, and so she said: "Go 'bout yer own business,
mister, 'n' don' ye be spyin' inter my house!"