drawback is that there are always too many other birds to watch at the
same time; but one sees enough to want to see more. I never saw a
hummingbird courtship unless--perhaps one performance I saw was part of
the wooing. I was sitting on Mountain Billy under the little lover's
sycamore when a buzzing and a whirring sounded overhead. On a twig sat a
wee green lady and before her was her lover (?), who, with the sound and
regularity of a spindle in a machine, swung shuttling from side to side
in an arc less than a yard long. He never turned around, or took his
eyes off his lady's, but threw himself back at the end of his line by a
quick spread of his tail. She sat with her eyes fixed upon him, and as
he moved from side to side her long bill followed him in a very droll
way. When through with his dance he looked at her intently, as if to see
what effect his performance had had upon her. She made some remark,
apparently not to his liking, for when he had answered he flew away. She
called after him, but as he did not return she stretched herself and
flew up on a twig above with an amusing air of relief.
This is all I have ever seen of the courtship; but when it comes to
nest-building, I have often been an eye-witness to that. One little
acquaintance made a nest of yellow down and put it among the green oak
leaves, making me think that the laws of protective coloration had no
weight with her, but before the eggs were laid she had neatly covered
the yellow with flakes of green lichen. I found her one day sitting in
the sun with the top of her head as white as though she had been diving
into the flour barrel. Here was one of the wonderful cases of 'mutual
help' in nature. The flowers supply insects and honey to the
hummingbirds, and they, in turn, as they fly from blossom to blossom
probing the tubes with the long slender bills that have gradually come
to fit the shape of the tubes, brush off the pollen of one blossom to
carry it on to the next, so enabling the plants to perfect their flowers
as they could not without help. It is said that, in proportion to their
numbers, hummingbirds assist as much as insects in the work of
cross-fertilization.
Though this little hummer that I was watching let me come within a few
feet of her, when a lizard ran under her bush she craned her neck and
looked over her shoulder at him with surprising interest. She doubtless
recognized him as one of her egg-eating enemies, on whose account she
put her nest at the tip of a twig too slender to serve as a ladder.
Another hummingbird who built across the way was still more
trustful--with people. I used to sit leaning against the trunk of her
oak and watch the nest, which was near the tip of one of the long
swinging branches that drooped over the trail. When the tiny worker was
at home, a yard-stick would almost measure the distance between us. As
she sat on the nest she sometimes turned her head to look down at the
dog lying beside me, and often hovered over us on going away.
The nest was saddled on a twig and glued to a glossy dark green oak
leaf. Like the other nest, it was made of a spongy yellow substance,
probably down from the underside of sycamore leaves; and like it, also,
the outside was coated with lichen and wound with cobweb. The bird was a
rapid worker, buzzing in with her material and then buzzing off after
more. Once I saw the cobweb hanging from her needle-like bill, and
thought she probably had been tearing down the beautiful suspension
bridges the spiders hang from tree to tree.
It was very interesting to see her work. She would light on the rim of
the nest, or else drop directly into the bottom of the tiny cup, and
place her material with the end of her long bill. It looked like trying
to sew at arm's length. She had to draw back her head in order not to
reach beyond the nest. How much more convenient it would have been if
her bill had been jointed! It seemed better suited to probing flower
tubes than making nests. But then, she made nests only in spring, while
she fed from flowers all the year round, and so could afford to stretch
her neck a trifle one month for the sake of having a good long fly spear
during the other eleven. The peculiar feature of her work was her
quivering motion in moulding. When her material was placed she moulded
her nest like a potter, twirling around against the sides, sometimes
pressing so hard she ruffled up the feathers of her breast. She shaped
her cup as if it were a piece of clay. To round the outside, she would
sit on the rim and lean over, smoothing the sides with her bill, often
with the same peculiar tremulous motion. When working on the outside, at
times she almost lost her balance, and fluttered to keep from falling.
To turn around in the nest, she lifted herself by whirring her wings.
When she found a bit of her green lichen about to fall, she took the
loose end in her bill and drew it over the edge of the nest, fastening
it securely inside. She looked very wise and motherly as she sat there
at work, preparing a home for her brood. After building rapidly she
would take a short rest on a twig in the sun, while she plumed her
feathers. She made nest-making seem very pleasant work.
One day, wanting to experiment, I put a handful of oak blossoms on the
nest. They covered the cup and hung down over the sides. When the small
builder came, she hovered over it a few seconds before making up her
mind how it got there and what she had better do about it. Then she
calmly lit on top of it! Part of it went off as she did so, but the rest
she appropriated, fastening in the loose ends with the cobweb she had
brought.
She often gave a little squeaky call when on the nest, as if talking to
herself about her work. When going off for material she would dart away
and then, as if it suddenly occurred to her that she did not know where
she was going, would stop and stand perfectly still in the air, her
vibrating wings sustaining her till she made up her mind, when she would
shoot off at an angle. It seemed as if she would be worn out before
night, but her eyes were bright and she looked vigorous enough to build
half a dozen houses.
"There's odds in folks," our great-grandmothers used to say; and there
certainly is in bird folks; even in the ways of the same one at
different times. Now this hummingbird was content to build right in
front of my eyes, and the hummer down at the little lover's tree, with
her first nest, was so indifferent to Billy and me that I took no pains
to keep at a distance or disguise the fact that I was watching her. But
when her nest was destroyed she suddenly grew old in the ways of the
world, and apparently repented having trusted us. In any case, I got a
lesson on being too prying. The first nest had not been down long before
I found that a second one was being built only a few feet away--by the
same bird? I imagined so. The nest was only just begun, and being
especially interested to see how such buildings were started, I rode
close up to watch the work. A roll of yellow sycamore down was wound
around a twig, and the bottom of the nest--the floor--attached to the
underside of this beam; with such a solid foundation, the walls could
easily be supported.
The small builder came when Billy and I were there. She did not welcome
us as old friends, but sat down on her floor and looked at us--and I
never saw her there again. Worse than that, she took away her nest,
presumably to put it down where she thought inquisitive reporters would
not intrude. I was disappointed and grieved, having already planned---on
the strength of the first experience--to have the mother hummer's
picture taken when she was feeding her young on the nest.
At first I thought this suspicion reflected upon the good sense of
hummingbirds, but after thinking it over concluded that it spoke better
for hummingbirds than for Billy and me. If this were, as I supposed, the
same bird who had to brood her young with Billy grazing at the end of
her bill, and if she had been present at the unlucky moment when he got
the oak branches tangled in the pommel of the saddle, although her
branch was not among them, I can but admire her for moving when she
found that the Philistines were again upon her, for her new house was
hung at the tip of a branch that Billy might easily have swept in
passing.
These nests had all been very low, only four or five feet above the
ground; but one day I found young in one of the common treetop nests. I
could see it through the branches. Two little heads stuck up above the
edge like two small Jacks-in-boxes. Billy made such a noise under the
oak when the bird was feeding the youngsters that I took him away where
he could not disturb the family, and tied him to an oak covered with
poison ivy, for he was especially fond of eating it, and the poison did
not affect him.
Before the old hummer flew off, she picked up a tiny white feather that
she found in the nest, and wound it around a twig. On her return, in the
midst of her feeding, she darted down and set the feather flying; but,
as it got away from her, she caught it again. The performance was
repeated the next time she came with food; but she did it all so
solemnly I could not tell whether she were playing or trying to get rid
of something that annoyed her.
She fed at the long intervals that are so trying to an observer, for if
you are going to sit for hours with your eyes glued to a nest, it
really is pleasant to have something happen once in a while! Though the
mother bird did not go to the nest often, she sometimes flew by, and
once the sound of her wings roused the young, and they called out to her
as she passed. When they were awake, it was amusing to see the little
midgets stick out their long, thread-like tongues, preen their
pin-feathers, and stretch their wings over the nest.
One fine morning when I went to the oak I heard a faint squeak, and saw
something fluttering up in the tree. When the mother came, she buzzed
about as though not liking the look of things, for her children were out
of the nest, and behold!--a horse and rider were under her tree. She
tried to coax the unruly nestlings to follow her into the upper stories,
but they would not go.
[Illustration: The Swing Nest of the Hummer.
(From a Photograph.)]
Although not ready to be led, one of the infants soon felt that it would
be nice to go alone. When a bird first leaves the nest it goes about
very gingerly, but this little fellow now began to feel his strength and
the excitement of his freedom. He wiped his tongue on a branch, and
then, to my astonishment, his wings began to whirl as if he were getting
up steam, and presently they lifted him from his twig, and he went
whirring off as softly as a hummingbird moth, among the oak sprays. His
nerves were evidently on edge, for he looked around at the sound of
falling leaves, started when Billy sneezed, and turned from side to
side very apprehensively, in spite of his out-in-the-world, big-boy
airs. He may have felt hampered by his unused wings, for, as he sat
there waiting for his mother to come, he stroked them out with his bill
to get them in better working order. That done, he leaned over, rounded
his shoulders, and pecked at a leaf as if he were as much grown up as
anybody.
Of all the beautiful hummingbirds' nests I saw in California, three are
particularly noteworthy because of their positions. One cup was set down
on what looked like an inverted saucer, in the form of a dark green oak
leaf wound with cobweb. That was in the oak beside the ranch-house.
Another one was on a branch of eucalyptus, set between two leaves like
the knot in a bow of stiff ribbon. To my great satisfaction, the
photographer was able to induce the bird to have a sitting while she
brooded her eggs. The third nest I imagined belonged to the bird who
took up her floor because Billy and I looked at her. If she were, her
fate was certainly hard, for her eggs were taken by some one, boy or
beast. Her nest was most skillfully supported. It was fastened like the
seat of a swing between two twigs no larger than knitting-needles, at
the end of a long drooping branch. It was a unique pleasure to see the
tiny bird sit in her swing and be blown by the wind. Sometimes she went
circling about as though riding in a merry-go-round; and at others the
wind blew so hard her round boat rose and fell like a little ship at
sea.
XIII.
IN THE SHADE OF THE OAKS.
THERE were half a dozen places in the valley, irrigated by the spring
rains, where I was always sure of finding birds. Among them, on the west
side, was the big sycamore, standing at the lower end of the valley;
while above, in the northwest corner, was the mouth of Twin Oaks canyon
where the migrants flocked in the brush around the large twin oak that
overlooked the little old schoolhouse. On the east side was the Ughland
canyon, at the mouth of which the little lover and his neighbors nested;
while below it straggled the line of sycamores that followed the Ughland
stream down through my ranch. But up at the head of the valley beyond
the ranch-house was the most delightful place of all. There I was always
sure of finding interesting nests to study.
Surrounded by a waste of chaparral, it was a little oasis of great
blooming live-oaks, and in their shade I used often to spend the hot
afternoon hours. In the spring the water that flowed down the hills at
the head of the valley formed a fresh mountain stream that ran down the
Oden canyon and so on through the centre of this grove, feeding the
oaks and spreading out to enrich the valley below. In summer, like the
rest of the canyon streams, only its dry sandy bed remained. Then, when
the meadows were oppressively hot, my leafy garden was a shady bower to
linger in. Its long drooping branches hung to the ground, dainty yellow
warblers flitted about the golden tassels of the blossoming trees, and
the air was full of the happy songs of mated birds.
[Illustration: A SHADY BOWER]
The trail from the ranch-house to the oaks was a line through the low
grass in which grew yellow fly flowers and orange poppies; and over them
every spring, day after day, processions of migrating butterflies
drifted slowly up the canyon. At the entrance of the garden was a
sentinel oak whose dark green foliage contrasted well with the yellow
flowers in the grass outside. It was the chosen hunting-ground of many
birds. Its dead upper branches offered the bee-birds and woodpeckers an
unobstructed view of passing insects, and gave the jays and flickers a
chance to overlook the brush, and take their bearings. The lower limbs
offered perches where doves might come to rest, finches to chatter, and
chewinks to sing; while its hanging boughs and elm-like feathered sides
attracted wandering warblers and songful wrens.
The happy days spent among these beautiful California oaks are now
far in the past, but as I sit in my study in the East and dream back
over those hours my mind is filled with memory pictures. Sauntering
through this oaken gallery, each tree recalls some pleasant hour--the
sight of a new bird, the sound of a new song, the prolonged delight of
some cozy home that I watched till accepted as a friend, when the little
family's fears and joys were my own.
That big double oak, spreading across the middle of the garden, was the
haunted tree whose blue ghost drove away the pewees and gnatcatchers
after they had begun to build; though the vireos and bush-tits braved it
out, and the tiny hummer and gentle dove were not afraid to perch there.
This was hummingbird lane--that small oak held the nest in which the two
wee nestlings sat up like Jacks-in-the-box; these blue sage bushes
growing in the sand were the ones the honey bees and hummers used to
haunt, the hummers probing each lavender lip as they circled round the
whorls; in front of this bush I saw a fairy dancer perform his airy
minuet,--swing back and forth, and then sweep up in the air to dive
whirring down with gorget puffed out and tail spread wide; and here,
when watching a procession of ants, I discovered a tiny hummingbird
building in a drooping branch that overhung the trail. That dead limb
was the perch of a wood pewee, a silent grave bird with a sad call, who
flew on when he was still only a lonely stranger. That oak top was made
memorable by the sight of a flaming oriole, though he came on a cold
foggy morning and answered my calls with a broken song and a
half-hearted scold as he sat with his feathers ruffled up about him.
Under the low spreading branches of that tree the chewinks used to
scratch--I can hear the brown leaves rustle now--the branches were so
low that, if the shy birds flew up to rest from their labors, they could
quickly drop down and disappear in the brush.
On ahead, where the garden narrows to the trail between the walls of
brush, when I was hidden behind a screen of branches, the timid
white-crowned sparrows used to venture out, hopping along quietly or
stopping to sing and pick up seeds on the path. Back a few steps was the
tree where the bush-tits came to build their second nest after the roof
of the first one fell in; the nest which hung on such a low limb that I
watched it from the sand beneath, looking up through the branches at the
blue sky, the canyon walls covered with sun-whitened bowlders, and the
turkey buzzards circling over the mountains.
[Illustration: Green-tailed Chewink.
(One half natural size.)]
Just there, in that small open place between the trees,--how well I
remember the afternoon,--I saw a new bird come out of the bushes; the
green-tailed chewink he proved to be, on his way back to the Rocky
Mountains. He was a beautiful stranger with a soft glossy coat touched
off with yellowish green, while his high-bred gentle manners have made
me remember him with affectionate interest all these years. Across the
garden I heard my first song from that unique rhapsodist, the
yellow-breasted chat. The same place marks another interesting
experience. While I was sitting in the crotch of an oak a thrasher came
out of the brush into an open space in front of me. Her feathers were
disordered and apparently she had come from her nest. She walked with
wings tight at her sides and her tail up at an angle well out of the way
of the rustling leaves; altogether a neat alert figure that contrasted
sharply with the lazy brown chippie which appeared just then in
characteristic negligée, its wings hanging and tail dragging on the
ground. The thrashers of Twin Oaks have bills that are curved like a
sickle, and this bird used her tool most skillfully. Instead of
scratching up the leaves and earth with her feet as chewinks and
sparrows do, the thrasher used her bill almost exclusively. First she
cleared a space by scraping the leaves away, moving her bill through
them rapidly from side to side. Then she made two holes in the ground,
probing deep with her long bill. After taking what she could get from
the second hole, she went back to the first again, as if to see if
anything had come to the surface there. Then she lay down on the sand to
sun herself and acted as though going to take a sun bath, when suddenly
she discovered me and fled.
When watching the bird at work I got a pretty picture in the round disk
of my opera-glass. The glass was focused on the digging thrasher, but a
goldfinch came into the picture and pulled at some stems for its nest
and a cottontail ran rapidly across from rim to rim. I lifted the glass
to follow him and saw him go trotting down the path between the bushes.
The thrasher's curved bill gives a most ludicrous look to the bird when
singing. He looks as if he were trying to turn himself inside out. I
once saw an adult thrasher tease its mate for food, and wondered how it
would be possible for one curved bill to feed another curved bill; but a
few days later I came on a family of young, and discovered for myself
that _they_ have straight bills; a most curious and interesting instance
of adaptation.
At the head of the garden stands a tree that always reminds me of the
horses I rode in California. I watched my first bush-tit's nest under
it, with Canello grazing near; and five years later watched another
bush-tit's nest there, sitting in the crotch of the oak with Mountain
Billy looking over my shoulder. Although Billy was, in his prime, a
bucking mustang, he became more of a petted companion than Canello had
been; and when we were out alone together, we were a great deal of
company for each other. As soon as I dismounted he would put his head
down to have me slip the reins off over his ears, so that he could graze
by himself. Sometimes, when he stood behind me he rested his bridle on
my sun-hat, and once went so far as to take a bite out of the brim--in
consideration of its being straw. If I were sitting on the ground and he
was grazing near, he would at times walk up and gravely raise his face
to look into mine. When he got tired, he would rub up against my arm and
yawn, looking down at me with a friendly smile in his eyes.
Birding was rather dull for Billy--when there was neither grass nor
poison ivy at hand, but he had one never-failing source of
enjoyment--rolling. He tried it in the sand under the oak, one day, with
the saddle on. Before I knew what he was about he was down on his knees,
sitting still, with a comical, helpless look in his eyes, as if quite at
a loss to know what to do next, having become conscious of the saddle.
When I had gotten him on his feet and finished lecturing him I uncinched
the saddle, laid it one side on the ground, took hold of the end of the
long bridle, and told him to roll. A droll abstracted look came into
his eyes, he dropped on his knees and, with a sudden convulsion, threw
his heels into the air and rolled back and forth, rubbing his backbone
vigorously on the sand. After that, the first thing every morning when
we got to the oaks, I unsaddled him and let him roll, and then he would
stand with bare back keeping cool in the shade of the trees.
One morning as we stood under the bush-tit's tree, I discovered a pair
of turtle doves looking out at me from the leaves of the small oak
opposite, craning their necks and moving their heads uneasily. One of
them seemed to be shaping a nest of twigs. I drew Billy around between
us, so that my staring would seem less pointed, and when one of the pair
flew to the ground to spy at me, hurriedly looked the other way to
remove his anxiety. His mate soon joined him, and the two doves walked
away together, fixed their feathers in the sun, stretched their wings,
and lazily picked at the ground. When one whirred back to the nest, the
other soon followed. The gentle lovers put their bills together, while,
unnoticed, I stood behind Billy, looking on and thinking that it was
little wonder such birds should rise from the ground with a musical
whirr.
Billy's oak was the last of the high trees in the garden. Above it was a
grassy space where bright wild flowers bloomed, and pretty cottontail
rabbits often went ambling over the soft turf. On one side of the
opening was a low stocky oak, full of balls of mistletoe, and on the
other a great blossoming bush buzzing with hummingbirds. The mistletoe
had begun to sap the little oak, and on one of its dead twigs a
hummingbird had taken to perching. I wondered if he were the idle mate
of one of my small garden builders, but he sat and sunned himself as if
his conscience were quite clear.
My first experience with gnatcatchers had been here. I suspected a nest,
and the ranchman's daughter went with me to hunt through the brush. She
cautioned me to look out for rattlesnakes, but the brush was so dense
and the ground so covered with crooked snake-like sticks that it was not
an easy matter to tell what you were stepping on. Then, the poison oak
was so thick that I felt like holding up my hands to avoid it. We pushed
our way through the dense chaparral, and my fearless companion got down
on her hands and knees to look through the tangle for the nest. It was
hard disagreeable work, even if one did not object to snakes, and we
were soon so tired that we were ready to sit down and let the birds show
us to their house. We might have saved ourselves all the trouble if we
had done this to begin with, for it was only a few moments before the
little pair went to the mistletoe oak, out in plain sight and within
easy reach--how they would have laughed in their sleeves had they known
what we were hunting for back in the brush! The nest was about the size
of a chilicothe pod, and so covered with lichen that it looked just like
a knot on the tree.
Around the blossoming bush the air fairly vibrated with hummers, darting
up into the sky, shooting down and chasing each other pell
mell--sometimes almost into my face. As I sat by the bush one day, a
handsome male went around with upraised throat, poking his bill up the
red fuchsia-like tubes. Another one was flying around inside the bush,
and I edged nearer to see. The sun shone in, whitening the twigs, and as
the bird whirred about with a soft burring sound, I caught gleams of
red, gold, and green from his gorget, and could see the tiny bird rest
his wee feet on a twig to reach up to a blossom. Then he hummed what
sounded more like a love song than anything I had ever heard from a
hummingbird. He seemed so much more like a real bird than any of his
brothers that I felt attracted to him.