4. A happy little gurgling song, which can hardly be translated into
words.
The chickadee wears a black cap with a white vest and a blue-gray
coat, completing his costume with a black necktie, and he is perfectly
willing to sit for you and have his picture taken.
Mr. Blue Jay sat in a clump of dogwood, doing nothing. He was not so
tame as the others and yet he permitted a twenty-foot view of his
blue-gray coat, his aristocratic crest, his dusky white vest, his
white-tipped tail and the black band across the back of his head, down
the neck and across the breast--like a black collar worn very low
down. It was a spring-like morning, the thermometer rapidly rising
toward forty-five, and Mr. Blue Jay was in one of his imitative moods.
There is hardly a limit to his vocabulary, and it would not be
surprising if some of his imitative stunts should be mistaken for the
call of an early robin. Among these calls is a liquid gurgle, like
hard cider coming out of the neck of a big brown jug. Another, and a
common one, is two slurred eighth notes, repeated, "sol te, sol
te"--upper G and B in the key of C.
Meanwhile the woods had been resounding with the lively tattoo of the
woodpecker, and finally Downy was found at the top of a dead dry elm,
busily doing this reveille, fast and loud as the roll of a snare drum.
His head was going so fast that it looked like a quick series of heads
and the tree rattled so it could be heard afar. Most writers regard
this as the woodpecker's love call, a sign of spring, as it were--but
Downy is usually heard and seen doing it on warm days every month in
the winter. The females are seen at it almost as often as the males;
the latter are known by the scarlet band at the back of the head.
Perhaps it is not a love call after all; it may be only the exuberance
of spirits caused by a fine breakfast and a warm morning.
Downy kept it up, heedless of the human observer. But when a red
squirrel ran up the tree to within four feet of the spot chosen for a
sounding board, Downy suddenly left. The squirrel sat in the sunshine
and smoothed his fur with his nose and his paws, like a cat.
Two big hairy woodpeckers were on a neighboring tree, but they were
not so fearless. One can hardly get nearer than thirty feet. The field
glass is a great help in such cases, and no one should go to the woods
without one, or at least a good opera glass. These two were both
males. That could be easily told by the bright scarlet band on the
back of their heads. The rest of the plumage is much like the downy
woodpecker. Both have beautiful black wings, spotted and striped with
white and a broad white stripe down the back. Downy's white outer
tail-feathers are barred with black; the Hairy's are all white. Downy
is sparrow-size; Hairy is robin-size. Downy is usually a gentle
creature; Hairy is aggressive and militant. Downy is a little Lord
Fauntleroy; Hairy is a Robin Hood.
One other woodpecker was seen on this lucky bird-day. It was the
red-bellied woodpecker, more rare and more shy than either of the
others. His breast is a grayish white tinged with red, and his back is
barred white and black like a ladder; but the black is not so deep and
vivid as that of the other woodpeckers. He has no white stripe down
the middle of his back. His nape and crest are both scarlet and he
utters a hoarser squeak than either the downy or the hairy.
One of the events of the day was the sight of the winter wren, the
first time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the
stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had
been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was
no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner,
his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards
his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body
from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed perfectly happy,
with his two sharp, shrill, impatient "quip quaps," much shriller than
the "pleeks" of downy woodpecker.
A flock of tree sparrows were busy in and around a big thicket of wild
gooseberry bushes on the upland. You may easily get within a rod of
them, but hardly closer, and a field glass is almost a necessity to
careful study. He is a grayish, graceful sparrow, with streaks of
reddish brown, chestnut caps, and a small black spot in the middle of
the brownish breast. One white wing bar is a distinguishing
characteristic, and a better one is the difference in color of the two
mandibles; the upper one is black and the lower one yellow. The
tinkling notes of the tree sparrows sound like the music a pipe
organist makes when he uses the sweet organ and the flute stop.
A sharp watch was kept for goldfinches and the evening grosbeak
during the day, but neither was seen. This was something of a
disappointment. But it was forgotten in the thrill of joy that came
late in the afternoon. There was a wide stretch of river bottom,
walled in on the west by a high and forest-crowned ridge; on the east
was the river, with a hundred foot fringe of noble trees, not yet
sacrificed to the axe of the woodsman. The sun was just above the tops
of the trees on the western ridge and long rays of slanting light came
pink across the river flood-plain, investing the tree-tops by the
shore with a soft and radiant light. Suddenly there came a plaintive
little note from the bottom of a near-by tree, instantly recognized as
a new note in the winter woods. Then another, and another, leading the
eyes to the foot of a big bass-wood, where a graceful bird, with a
beautiful blue back and a reddish brown breast, as if his coat had
been made of the bright blue sky and his vest of the shining red sand,
was hopping. The field glass brought him within ten feet. A bluebird,
sure enough! The first real, tangible sign of the spring that is to
be, the first voice from the southland telling us that spring is
coming up the valleys. There is no mistaking the brilliant blue, the
most beautiful blue in the Iowa year, unless it be the blue of the
fringed gentian in the fall; and the soft reddish, earthy breast
enhances the beauty of the brilliant back.
Another hopped into view; the female, doubtless, for both the blue and
the reddish brown were less brilliant. Every well-regulated bluebird
ought to be seen in the top of a tall elm or maple; but these seemed
to have no high-flying inclinations. Maybe they could read in the
clouds beneath the setting sun a prediction of the snow which came
that night. They stayed a few moments and then slowly hopped away and
were lost among the tree trunks. A further search only frightened a
prairie chicken from beneath a hawthorne bush, where he had meant to
pass the night; and the bluebirds were not seen again. But the sight
of bluebirds in Iowa on the nineteenth day of February is glory enough
for one day.