odd-looking Arizona hooded orioles busily going and coming to a drooping
branch on the edge of the tree. They had a great deal to talk about as
they went and came, and when they had gone I found, to my great
satisfaction, that they had begun a nest. They often use the gray
Spanish moss, but here had found a good substitute in the orange-colored
parasitic vine of the meadows known among the people of the valley as
the 'love-vine' (dodder). The whole pocket was composed of it, making a
very gaudy nest.
Linnets nested in the same old tree. Indeed, it is hard to say where
these pretty rosy house finches, cousins of our purple finches, would
not take it into their heads to build. They nested over the front door,
in the vines over the windows, in the oaks and about the outbuildings,
and their happy musical songs rang around the ranch-house from morning
till night. As I listened to their merry roundelay day after day during
that beautiful California spring, it sounded to me as though they said,
"_How-pretty-it-is'-out, how-pretty-it-is'-out, how-pretty-it-is'!_" The
linnets are ardent little wooers, singing and dancing before the
indifferent birds they would win for their mates. I once saw a rosy
lover throw back his pretty head and hop about before his brown lady
till she was out of patience and turned her back on him. When that had
no effect, she opened her bill, spread her wings, and leaned toward him
as if saying, "If you don't stop your nonsense, I'll----" But the fond
linnets' gallantry and tenderness are not all spent in the wooing. When
the mother bird was brooding her nest over our front door, her
crimson-throated mate stood on the peak of the ridgepole above and sang
blithely to her, turning his head and looking down every little while to
make sure that she was listening to his pretty prattle.
One of the birds that nested in the trees by the ranch-house was the
bee-bird, who was soft gray above and delicate yellow below, instead of
dark gray above and shining white below, like his eastern relative, the
kingbird. The birds used to perch on the bare oak limbs, flycatching. It
was interesting to watch them. They would fly obliquely into the air and
then turn, with bills bristling with insects, and sail down on
outstretched wings, their square tails set so that the white outer
feathers showed to as good advantage as the white border of the
kingbird's does in similar flights. They made a bulky untidy nest in the
oaks by the barn, using a quantity of string borrowed from the ranchman.
Their voices were high-keyed and shrill with an impatient emphasis, and
at a distance suggested the shrill yelping of the coyote. _Kee'-ah,
kee-kee' kee'-ah_, they would cry. The wolves were so often heard around
the ranch-house that in the early morning I have sometimes mistaken the
birds for them.
One of the favorite hunting-grounds of the bee-birds was the orchard,
where they must have done a great deal of good destroying insects. They
were quarrelsome birds, and were often seen falling through the air
fighting vigorously. I saw one chase a sparrow hawk and press it so hard
that the hawk cried out lustily. The ranchman's son told me of one
bee-bird who defended his nest with his life. Two crows lit in a tree
where the flycatcher had a nest containing eggs. The crows had
difficulty in getting to the tree to begin with, for the bee-birds
fought them off; and though they lighted, were soon dislodged and chased
down the vineyard. The man was at work there, and as the procession
passed over his head the bee-bird dove at the crow; the crow struck back
at him, crushing his skull, and the flycatcher dropped through the air,
dead! The other bee-bird followed its dead mate to the ground, and then,
without a cry, flew to a tree and let the crows go on their way.
The bee-bird was one of the noisiest birds about the ranch-house, but
commoner than he; in fact, the most abundant bird, next to the linnet
and blackbird, was the California chewink, or, as the ranchman
appropriately called him, the 'brown chippie;' for he does not look like
the handsome chewink we know, but is a fat, dun brown bird with a thin
_chip_ that he utters on all occasions. He is about the size of the
eastern robin, and, except when nesting, almost as familiar. There were
brown chippies in the door-yard, brown chippies around the barns, and
brown chippies in the brush till one got tired of the sight of them.
The temptations that come to conscientious observers are common to
humanity, and one of the subtlest is to undervalue what is at hand and
overvalue the rare or distant. Unless a bird is peculiarly interesting,
it requires a definite effort to sit down and study him in your own
dooryard, or where he is so common as to be an every-day matter. The
chippies were always sitting around, scratching, or picking up seeds; or
else quarreling among themselves. Feeling that it was my duty to watch
them, I reasoned with myself, but they seemed so mortally dull and
uninteresting it was hard work to give up any time to them. When they
went to nesting, their wild instincts asserted themselves, and they hid
away so closely I was never sure of but one of their nests, and that
only by most cautious watching. Then for the first time they became
interesting! To my surprise, one day I heard a brown chippie lift up his
voice and sing. It was in a sunny grove of oaks, and though his song was
a queer squeaky warble, it had in it a good deal of sweetness and
contentment; for the bird seemed to find life very pleasant. The
ranchman's son told me that up in the canyons at dusk he had sometimes
heard towhee concerts, the birds answering each other from different
parts of the canyon.
[Illustration: California Chewink.
(One half natural size.)]
[Illustration: Eastern Chewink.
(One half natural size.)]
There was a nest in the chaparral which probably belonged to these
chewinks. It was in a mass of poison ivy that had climbed up on a
scrub-oak. I spent the best part of a morning waiting for the birds to
give in their evidence. Brown sentinels were posted on high bare brush
tops, where they chipped at me, and once a brown form flew swiftly away
from the nest bush; but like most people whose conversation is limited
to monosyllables, the towhees are good at keeping a secret. While
watching for them, I heard a noise that suggested angry cats spitting at
each other; and three jack-rabbits came racing down the
chaparral-covered knoll. One of them shot off at a tangent while the
other two trotted along the openings in the brush as if their trails
were roads in a park. Then a cottontail rabbit came out on a spot of
hard yellow earth encircled by bushes, and lying down on its side kicked
up its heels and rolled like a horse; after which the pretty thing
stretched itself full length on the ground to rest, showing a pink light
in its ears. After a while it got up, scratched one ear, and with a kick
of one little furry leg ran off in the brush. Another day, when I sat
waiting, I saw a jack-rabbit's ears coming through the brush. He trotted
up within a few feet, when he stopped, facing me with head and ears up;
a noble-looking little animal, reminding me of a deer with antlers
branching back. He stood looking at me, not knowing whether to be
afraid or not, and turning one ear trumpet and then the other. But
though smiling at him, I was a human being, there was no getting around
that; and after a few undecided hops, this way and that, he ran off and
disappeared in the brush. Near where he had been was a spot where a
number of rabbit runways came to a centre, and around it the rabbit
council had been sitting in a circle, their footprints proved.
Brown chippies were not much commoner around the ranch-house than
western house wrens were, but the big prosaic brown birds seemed much
more commonplace. The wrens were strongly individual and winning
wherever they were met. They nested in all sorts of odd nooks and
corners about the buildings. One went so far as to take up its abode in
the wire-screened refrigerator that stood outside the kitchen under an
oak! Another pair stowed their nest away in an old nosebag hanging on a
peg in the wine shed; while a third lived in one of the old grape crates
piled up in the raisin shed.
The crate nest was delightful to watch. The jolly little birds, with
tails over their backs and wings hanging, would sing and work close
beside me, only three or four feet away. They would look up at me with
their frank fearless eyes and then squeeze down through their crack into
the crate, and sit and scold inside it--such an amusing muffled little
scold! The nest was so astonishingly large I was interested to measure
it. Twigs were strewn loosely over one end of the box, covering a square
nearly sixteen inches on a side. The compact high body of the nest
measured eight by ten inches, and came so near the top of the crate that
the birds could just creep in under the slats. Some of the twigs were
ten inches long, regular broom handles in the bills of the short bobbing
wrens. One of the birds once appeared with a twig as long as itself. It
flew to the side of a beam with it, at sight of me, and stood there
balancing the stick in its bill, in pretty fashion. Another time it flew
to the peak of the shed to examine an old swallow's nest now occupied by
linnets, and amused itself throwing down its neighbors' straws--the
naughty little rogue!
Such jolly songsters! They were fairly bubbling over with happiness all
the time. They had an old stub in front of the shed that might well have
been called the singing stub, for they kept it ringing with music when
they were not running on inside the shed. They seemed to warble as
easily as most birds breathe; in fact, song seemed a necessity to them.
There was a high pole in front of the shed, and one day I found my
ebullient little friend squatting on top to hold himself on while he
sang out at the top of his lungs! Another time I came face to face with
a pair when the songster was in the midst of his roundelay. He stopped
short, bobbed nervously from side to side, and then, rising to his feet
and putting his right foot forward with a pretty courageous gesture,
took up his song again. When the pair were building in the crate, I
stuck some white hen's feathers there, thinking they might like to use
them. Mr. Troglodytes came first, and seeing them, instead of turning
tail as I have known brave guardians of the nest to do, burst out
singing, as if it were a huge joke. Then he hopped down on the rim of
the box to scrutinize the plumes, after which he flew out. But he had to
stop to sing atilt of an elder stem before he could go on to tell his
spouse about them.
One day, when riding back to the ranch, I saw half a dozen turkey
buzzards soaring over the meadow--perhaps there was a dead jack-rabbit
in the field. It was astonishing to see how soon the birds would
discover small carrion from their great height. The ranchman never
thought of burying anything, they were such good scavengers. A few hours
after an animal was thrown out in the field the vultures would find it.
They would stand on the body and pull it to pieces in the most revolting
way. The ranchman told me he had seen them circle over a pair of
fighting snakes, waiting to devour the one that was injured. They were
grotesque birds. I often saw them walk with their wings held out at
their sides as if cooling themselves, and the unbird-like attitude
together with the horrid appearance of their red skinny heads made them
seem more like harpies than before.
They were most interesting at a distance. I once saw three of them
standing like black images on a granite bowlder, on top of a hill
overlooking the valley. After a moment they set out and went circling in
the sky. Although they flew in a group, it seemed as if the individual
birds respected one another's lines so as not to cover the same ground.
Sometimes when soaring they seemed to rest on the air and let themselves
be borne by the wind; for they wobbled from one side to the other like a
cork on rough water.
One of the most interesting birds of the valley is the road-runner or
chaparral cock, a grayish brown bird who stands almost as high as a crow
and has a tail as long as a magpie's. He is noted for his swiftness of
foot. Sometimes, when we were driving over the hills, a road-runner
would start out of the brush on a lonely part of the road and for quite
a distance keep ahead of the horses, although they trotted freely along.
When tired of running he would dash off into the brush, where he stopped
himself by suddenly throwing his long tail over his back. A Texan, in
talking of the bird, said, "It takes a right peart cur to catch one,"
and added that when a road-runner is chased he will rise but once, for
his main reliance is in his running, and he does not trust much to his
short wings. The chaparral cocks nested in the cactus on our hills, and
were said to live largely on lizards and horned toads.
[Illustration: Valley Quail and Road-Runner.]
It became evident that a pair of these singular birds had taken up
quarters in the chaparral on the hillside back of the ranch-house, for
one of them was often seen with the hens in the dooryard. One day I was
talking to the ranchman when the road-runner appeared. He paid no
attention to us, but went straight to the hen-house, apparently to get
cocoons. Looking between the laths, I could see him at work. He flew up
on the hen-roosts as if quite at home; he had been there before and knew
the ways of the house. He even dashed into the peak of the roof and
brought down the white cocoon balls dangling with cobweb. When he had
finished his hunt he stood in the doorway, and a pair of blackbirds lit
on the fence post over his head, looking down at him wonderingly. Was he
a new kind of hen? He was almost as big as a bantam. They sat and looked
at him, and he stood and stared at them till all three were satisfied,
when the blackbirds flew off and the road-runner walked out by the
kitchen to hunt among the buckets for food.
These curious birds seem to be of an inquiring turn of mind, and
sometimes their investigations end sadly. The windmills, which are a new
thing in this dry land, naturally stimulate their curiosity. A small boy
from the neighboring town--Escondido--told me that he had known four
road-runners to get drowned in one tank; though he corrected himself
afterwards by saying, "We fished out _one_ before he got drowned!"
Another lad told me he had seen road-runners in the nesting season call
for their mates on the hills. He had seen one stand on a bowlder fifteen
feet high, and after strutting up and down the rock with his tail and
wings hanging, stop to call, putting his bill down on the rock and going
through contortions as if pumping out the sound. The lad thought his
calls were answered from the brush below.
In April the ranchman reported that he had seen dusky poor-wills,
relatives of our whip-poor-wills, out flycatching on the road beyond the
ranch-house after dark. He had seen as many as eight or nine at once,
and they had let him come within three feet of them. Accordingly, one
night right after tea I started out to see them. The poor-wills choose
the most beautiful part of the twenty-four hours for their activity.
When I went out, the sky above the dark wall of the valley was a quiet
greenish yellow, and the rosy light was fading in the north at the head
of the canyon. White masses of fog pushed in from the ocean. Then the
constellations dawned and brightened till the evening star shone out in
her full radiant beauty. Locusts and crickets droned; bats zigzagged
overhead; and suddenly from the dusty road some black objects started
up, fluttered low over the barley, and dropped back on the road again.
At the same time came the call of the poor-will, which, close at hand,
is a soft burring _poor-will, poor-wil'-low_. Two or three hours later
I went out again. The full moon had risen, and shone down, transforming
the landscape. The road was a narrow line between silvered fields of
headed grain, and the granite bowlders gleamed white on the hills
inclosing the sleeping valley. For a few moments the shrill barking of
coyote wolves disturbed the stillness; then again the night became
silent; peace rested upon the valley, and from far up the canyon came
the faint, sad cry, _poor-wil'-low, poor-wil'-low_.
VIII.
POCKET MAKERS.
THE bush-tits are cousins of the eastern chickadees, which is reason
enough for liking them, although the California fruit growers have a
more substantial reason in the way the birds eat the scale that injures
the olive-trees. The bush-tits might be the little sisters of the
chickadee family, they are so small. They look like gray balls with long
tails attached, for they are plump fluffy tots, no bigger than your
thumb, without their tails. One of them, when preoccupied, once came
within three feet of where I stood. When he discovered me a comical look
of surprise came into his yellow eyes and he went tilting off, for his
long tail gave him a pitching flight as if he were about to go on his
bill, a flight that reminds one of the tail that wagged the dog.
[Illustration: Nest of the Bush-tit.]
There were so many of the gray pocket nests in the oaks that it was hard
to choose which to watch, but one of the most interesting hung from a
branch of the big double oak of the gnatcatchers, above the ranch-house,
where I could see it when sitting in the crotch of the tree. While
watching it I looked beyond over the chaparral wall away to a dark
purple peak standing against a sky flecked with sun-whitened clouds. The
nest was like an oriole's, but nearly twice as long, though the builders
were less than half the size of the orioles. Instead of being open at
the top, it was roofed over, and the only entrance was a small round
hole, the girth of the bird, about two inches under the roof.
One might imagine that such big houses would be dark with only one small
dormer window, and the valley children assured me that the birds hung
living firefly lamps on their walls! I suggested that a Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Fireflies would be needed if that were the
case; but when it comes to that, what bird would choose to brood by
gaslight?
When I first saw the bush-tit in its round doorway, it suggested Jack
Horner's famous plum, comical little ball of feathers! When first
watching the nest the small pair put me on their list of enemies, along
with small boys, blue jays, and owls. To go down into the pocket under
my stare seemed a terrible thing. When one of them came with a bit of
moss for lining, it started for the front door, saw me, stopped, and
turned to go to the back of the nest. Then it tried to get up courage to
approach the house from the side, got in a panic and dashed against the
wall as if expecting a door would open for it. When at last it did make
bold to dart into the nest it was struck with terror, and, whisking
around, jabbed the moss into the outside wall and fled!
Seeing that nothing awful happened, the birds finally took me off the
black list and allowed me to oversee their work, as long as I gave no
directions. Sometimes both little tots went down into the bag to work
together; surely there was plenty of room for many such as they. But it
is not always a matter of cubic inches, and one morning when the second
bird was about to pop in, apparently it was advised to wait a minute.
There was no ill feeling, though, for when the small builder came out it
flew to the twig in front of the door, where its mate was waiting, and
sat down beside it, a little Darby by his Joan.
They worked busily. Sometimes they popped in only to pop out again; at
other times they stayed inside as long as if they had been human
housekeepers, hanging pictures, straightening chairs, and setting their
bric-a-brac in order for the fortieth time; each change requiring mature
deliberation.
One morning--after the birds had been putting in lining long enough to
have wadded half a dozen nests--if my judgment is of any value in such
matters--I discovered that the roof was falling in; it was almost on top
of the front door! The next day, to my dismay, the door had vanished.
What was the trouble? Were the pretty pair young builders; was this
their first nest, and had they paid more attention to decorating their
house inside than to laying strong foundations; or had their pocket been
too heavy for its frame?
However it came about, the wise birds concluded that they would not
waste time crying over spilt milk. They calmly went to work to tear the
first nest to pieces and build a second one out of it. One of them
tweaked out its board with such a jerk it sent the pocket swinging like
a pendulum. But the next time it wisely planted its claw firmly to
steady itself, while it cautiously pulled the material out with its
bill.
If the birds were inexperienced, they were bright enough to profit by
experience. This time they hung their nest between the forks of a strong
twig which had a cross twig to support the roof, so that the accident
that had befallen them could not possibly occur again. They began work
at the top, holding onto the twig with their claws and swinging
themselves down inside to put in their material; and they moulded and
shaped the pocket as they went along.
After watching the progress of the new nest, I went to see what had
become of the old one. It was on the ground. On taking it home and
pulling it to pieces, I found that the wall was from half an inch to an
inch thick, made of fine gray moss and oak blossoms. There was a thick
wadding of feathers inside. I counted _three hundred_, and there were a
great many more! The amount of hard labor this stood for amazed me. No
wonder the nest pulled down, with a whole feather-bed inside! Why had
they put it in? I asked some children, and one said, "To keep the eggs
warm, I guess;" while the other suggested, "So the eggs wouldn't break."
Most of the feathers were small, but there must have been several dozen
chicken's feathers from two to three inches long. Among them was a plume
of an owl.
[Illustration: POCKET NEST IN AN OAK]
Much to my surprise, in the bush-tit's nest there was a broken eggshell.
Had the egg broken in falling, or had a snake been there? One of the
boys of the valley told me about seeing a racer snake go into a
bush-tit's pocket. The cries of the birds rallied several other pairs,
and they all flew about in distress, though not one of them dared touch
the dreadful tail that hung out of the nest hole. As the snake was about
three feet long, the pocket bulged as it moved around inside. There were
four nestlings about a quarter grown, and the relentless creature
devoured them all. The boy waited below with a stick, and when it came
out, killed it and shook it by the tail till the small birds popped out
of its mouth. If my broken eggshell pointed to any such tragedy, it
cleared the birds of the accusation of being poor builders.
The nest, which the first day was a filmy spot in the leaves, by the
next day had become a gray pocket over eight inches long, although I
could still see daylight through it. In working, the birds flew to the
top of the open bag and hopped down inside. I could see the pocket shake
and bulge as they worked within. When they flew away to any distance,
on their return they almost always came with their little call of
_schrit, schrit_.
This nest was so low that I used to throw myself on the sand beneath the
tree to watch it, taking many a sunbath there, with hat drawn down till
I could just see the nest in the pendent branches, and watch the
changing mosaics made by the sky through the moving leaves. When resting
on the sand the thought of rattlesnakes came to me, for the brush on
either side was a shelter for them, and they might easily have crept up
beside me without my hearing them.
The second bush-tit's nest was shorter than the first one. Perhaps the
builders thought the length had something to do with the fall of the
first; or perhaps they didn't feel like collecting three hundred more
feathers, with oak blossoms and moss to match. They first put the frame
of the front door below the supporting cross twig, and then, as if they
thought it needed more support, changed it and put the door above the
twig, so that the roof could not possibly close the hole, even if it did
fall in. The doorway was also made much larger than that of the first
nest.