good form in house-building has but one accepted style. The nest is
rather deep, loosely woven of rough grass, lined with finer grasses.
Standing on the little island to-day I could not help seeing these two
nests which before I had passed a score of times without seeing, for if
June is the time of year to hunt for birds’ nests, this is the time of
year to find them.
The birds can give you, and I really think they are right about it, many
reasons why you should not hunt for their nests in June. Looking at a
nestful of young birds, with the mother fluttering solicitously about, I
always feel as I think I should if I went into a town where I was not
acquainted and went about peeping in at the nursery windows of peoples’
houses. My motives might be the best in the world. I might be making a
study of nestlings and nests of the human family for scientific
purposes; in fact, I might be a veritable “friendly visitor,” but I
should be fortunate if I did not fall under suspicion, become the object
of dislike, and eventually land in the police court.
The mere too frequent inspection of the nests and eggs of some birds
will cause abandonment, and those parents who stand by do so with such
evident distress that after the briefest possible satisfactory
inspection we ought to apologize for the intrusion and step away. Many
birds will even attempt to hasten this departure by pretty vigorous
means.
None of these objections obtains now. There are no birds in this year’s
nests, and you may gather them or tear them to pieces in analytical mood
without doing harm, at least to the birds. Down stream, ten feet from my
second blackbird’s nest, was a catbird’s. The catbird builds a better
nest than the blackbird, at least so far as strength is concerned.
Before the winter is over the grasses of the latter’s structure will be
broken and blown away by the wind or washed back to earth by rain and
snow.
The catbird’s will surely stand until next fall, and remnants of it may
be sometimes seen in the bush the year after that. For the catbird’s
material is of more rugged quality. His foundation is often of pliant
twigs or tough bark of the wild grapevine, though the nest I have before
me as I write--the one which I could not see last summer when I passed
it at the foot of the little island--has strong, coarse grasses loosely
interwoven for its foundation. Then, within this loose, rough cup is a
layer of tough oak leaves, the dry ones of the year before,
wind-proofing the bottom of the structure. Then comes a layer of fine
black roots, I think those of alder, taken where the stream had washed
them bare. Then more oak leaves, and finally an inner lining of finer
black roots from the same source as those already used.
The whole is firm, sanitary, wind-proof, but not air-proof, and
sufficiently cup-shaped to hold the young securely, though not so deep
as that of the blackbird. One kick would smash a blackbird’s nest to a
handful of straw. You might kick a catbird’s all about the meadow, and I
am quite sure the inner structure would remain interwoven.
I think the reason for the difference in the two is this. Though both
often build over water and in similar situations, the blackbird has but
one brood a season, and even a frail nest will do for this. The
[Illustration: A field mouse had appropriated this nest for an autumn
storehouse]
catbird hardly has his first brood off the nest before preparations are
in hand for a second; and the nest which can stand two broods of riotous
youngsters in succession, even if fixed up a bit, must needs be of
fairly firm texture.
The strength of the catbird’s nest often serves another purpose, though
I doubt if this is taken into the calculations when it is planned and
built. I found one of the half-dozen which line the brook conspicuously,
now that they may be seen at all, half full of wild cherry stones.
Evidently a field mouse had appropriated this nest for an autumn
storehouse, perhaps planning, before the weather got too cold, to roof
it over with a dome of soft grasses, this work of the field mouse being
not so very different from that of the red squirrel, only on a smaller
scale.
Farther down stream in a rough portion of the pasture, brambly but
beautiful with barberries, is the chosen habitat of the yellow warblers
of my neighborhood. Always they build in the barberry bushes here, nor
have I ever found them anywhere else or in other bushes. It is not
difficult to find them when the pasture is in the full leafage of late
May, for you have but to go from one barberry bush to another till you
have succeeded. But the yellow warbler is a shy bird, and I have known
them to desert nest and eggs when these were too often visited.
It is much better to hunt them now, when you have but to stand on a
little hillock and count, then pluck the nest that you prefer and take
it home with you without abraiding anybody’s feelings. The yellow
warbler mother bird seems to have a great love for the tender buff wool
of the young shoots of the cinnamon fern, which are just about ready to
shed these delicate overcoats when nesting begins with the yellow
warblers. In fact, her color scheme is perfect.
The nest, when finished, is a symphony of pale buff and silvery grays
that shade imperceptibly toward the buff touches on the under parts of
the warbler and are lighted as with a gleam of sunlight by the bright
yellow of the remaining plumage. Yet this bright yellow has a greenish
tint that is deepened in the tender green of the young shoots of the
barberry, while the yellow itself is again reproduced in the blossoms.
No wonder this lovely little singing-bird loves a barberry bush for its
nest. It finds protection and an artistically satisfying color scheme in
the same bush.
The silvery grays of the nest are the fine, silky, fibrous inner bark of
the milkweed, whose last year’s stems are shredded by wind and storm in
time for the nest-building. These barberry-bush-building yellow warblers
with whom I have been more or less acquainted for a quarter of a century
seem to care for little else for material, though sometimes they make
the fern fuzz more adhesive with caterpillars’ silk and line with a few
horsehairs and soft feathers.
Yet though these nests have been invariable in material they have varied
otherwise. Some have been so firmly woven and the material so stoutly
packed as to defy the storms of a winter or two. Others have been so
frail as hardly to be found when the leaves are off. Perhaps these
slight nests are made by birds that were nestlings of the previous year
and have not yet learned the complete art of nest-building.
Once I found one whose makers were skilled indeed. Instead of placing it
firmly in a crotch and building up with the fern wool within a netting
of fiber wound from twig to twig, as is the usual method, these had
launched boldly into a new architecture. Perhaps they had neighbored the
year before with a vireo. Anyway, they took the vireo’s plans and built
a yellow warbler’s nest on them, hanging it from a nearly horizontal
barberry fork, and finishing a fine, firm, pensile nest, vireo style,
out of yellow warbler material. I never found this nest’s successor, and
I am not sure whether, having found they could do it, they abandoned the
type for the old home style, or whether something happened to the birds,
and thus the warbler world lost budding genius.
Only one other nest have I found that seemed to be in any way abnormal,
and this, unlike the pensile nest, seems to have had a very definite
reason for its abnormality. The hollow part which had contained the eggs
and young was in no wise different from that of all other warblers’
nests. It was the depth and firmness of the foundation which surprised
me. This was built up to the height of an ordinary yellow warbler’s nest
before the real nest began at all, and (the young had flown) I promptly
took it home and dissected it.
Then the murder was out. The extra height had been added to the
structure to circumvent the villainy of a cowbird. The cowbird lays her
eggs in nests of birds that are smaller than herself and there leaves
them to be hatched. She is partial to yellow warblers’ nests because the
eggs that belong there are much like hers in coloring, though smaller,
and the fraud is less likely to be detected. When hatched the young
cowbird is so much larger and stronger that it starves out the other
nestlings or crowds them out. The nest-builders in the main are foolish
enough to bring up this murderous changeling; hence cowbirds are
perpetuated. Perhaps these warblers had had one experience.
Anyway, finding the cowbird’s egg in their nest, they had promptly
roofed it over with fern wool and fiber, built up the sides to
correspond to the addition, and gone on with their housekeeping. Here
was evidence of prompt action in an emergency in nest-building. I do not
think it possible for the birds to have lifted the cowbird’s egg over
the side of their nest and to have dropped it on the ground, which would
have been the quickest way of getting rid of it. A yellow warbler’s
nest “tumbles home” a bit at the top, as does the hull of a yacht, and I
do not think their slender claws could grasp the egg and get it over
that lip. Instead, they had done what they could,--imprisoned the
intruder egg where it could not hatch.
I found it there, addled and nearly dried up within, and I rejoiced. The
cowbird is a light-o’-love and abandons children on other people’s
doorsteps. All such should be put in a pie. Since English sparrows
became so plentiful the cowbird has shown a decided partiality for their
nests for its abandoned offspring. I found a cowbird’s egg with those of
an English sparrow that nested in a crevice right over my front door
last spring. If cowbirds must behave in this nefarious manner it is not
so bad to find them choosing the English sparrows for their dupes. The
surprising part of it is to find the cowbird with sufficient courage to
come in under the porch.
I’d like to watch a young cowbird growing up in a nestful of young
English sparrows. The tender nestlings of the yellow warbler have no
show, but I have an idea that here Greek would meet Greek, and after the
tug-of-war the cowbird would be among those not present. Perhaps in the
falling out both would fall out, at which most of us who love birds
would not grumble.
SOME CROWS I HAVE KNOWN
Already the robins that piped such a deafening morning chorus all about
us last June are swirling in great flocks about the Florida everglades,
getting up a Christmas spirit by filling their crops with holly berries
and practicing spring songs, and perhaps a little spring love-making in
the waxy shadows of the mistletoe bough.
But not all of them. Yesterday, at sunset, I heard one that had not
joined the innumerable throng. Instead, he lingers to take his Christmas
dinner in New England, his holly the red-berried alder, his mistletoe
black instead of white, with the crowded fruit of the buckthorn. Like
his mates, a thousand miles away, he, too, sang a faint little winter
song that was like an echo of his summer jubilate, a triumphant,
light-hearted tune indeed, but not heartily sung. Twilight gloomed the
deep pine growth where we were, and though the fires of a November
sunset burned red and angry in the sky, they warmed the grove only to
the eye, while the keen north wind that had blowzed the sky with clouds
all day seemed to be seeking shelter there with us. He, too, whistled in
such keen sibillation that the faint oak-leaf rustle from the hillside
sounded like chattering teeth.
The robin’s faint song may have been one of contentment with his lot, or
one of evening praise for as many mercies as he had received, but it
sounded far more, in that light and that biting air, like the boy who
whistles at night on the long and lonesome road to keep his courage up.
Then the song died away in his throat, for across the angry crimson of
the west flitted silhouetted black wings, and a pair of crows lighted
among the thick boughs of the higher pines to roost for the night.
The robin muttered “tut, tut!” somewhat hysterically and slipped away to
safer shelter deep among the low boughs and denser shadow of a tree on
the edge of the open pasture. No doubt he recognized hereditary enemies
of his race, and though he was tough enough to dare a northern winter,
was unwilling to take chances with the strong black bills of these
reckless freebooters of the wilderness. And he was right. Crows rarely
eat grown robins, for they cannot catch them, but the tender,
half-fledged nestlings are the mainstay of many a crow saturnalia.
Only too well do I remember an orgy of this sort. It was late May and
the scent of the apple blossoms filled all the orchard with delight,
just as the robins, morning and evening, filled it with song. They sang
for every cloud that crossed the sky and piped up now and then in the
full sunshine. How they found time for it all it is hard to tell, for
every nest was full of young birds that eat almost their weight in
hearty food each day.
One day the tunes changed. Coming into the farthest corner from a
woodland trip I heard from some ancient, neglected trees, such as the
robins always love and in which were grouped three or four nests, wild
shrieks of anger and dismay from a whole chorus of robins. Coming nearer
I could hear crow voices in guttural undertones, croaking ghoulishly.
[Illustration: Across the angry crimson of the west flitted silhouetted
black wings]
The crow has a language, not exactly of words but of inflections and
intonations, which express the primal emotions pretty clearly. I always
think I know what he means, though undoubtedly his crow hearers
understand the finer shades of inflection better than I do.
There is the shout of warning which says plainly, “Look out, there is
trouble right ahead of you!” A similar shout, but with different
inflection, says, “Come on. Come on. I’ll show you something worth
seeing.” There is the yell of derision and defiance with which a flock
drives an owl through the forest; there is the gentle cooing croak with
which mated birds do their love-making. There is the cry of terror and
the suppliant call for food from the full-grown young. There is also a
peculiarly devilish croak of satisfaction which they make only when
feasting on the tender nestlings of pasture birds.
This I knew, and I rushed to the rescue of my young robins, but I was
much too late. The feast was well along toward its conclusion and the
nests were nearly empty. The parent birds, reënforced by others of the
neighborhood, were doing their best. They plunged and darted at the
marauders, plucked and clawed at them, but not one whit could they stir
them, nor did they leave at my approach, and it took vigorous and
well-directed volleys of stones from a near-by heap to drive them away.
Then they went heavily, as if gorged to such repletion that they could
hardly fly.
I went on home sick at heart, and vowing shot-gun vengeance on all crows
thereafter; and it was not until I had carved the chicken for dinner
that I realized that there might be extenuating circumstances. For,
after all, the crows had as much right to robin for their dinner as I
had to chicken for mine.
Crows certainly are responsible for a large amount of infant mortality
among young birds in the nesting season, however, and to my mind it is
the greatest crime of which these black robbers stand guilty. It is for
this reason that the crow is so well hated by smaller birds, and I don’t
doubt it is this consciousness of guilt that makes him hang his head and
flee away before the attack of the least of them. Blackbird and kingbird
alike will send him flapping in shamed haste for the big wood, and it
makes no difference whether or not he has attempted to burglarize their
homes or slaughter their children.
Just as a known pickpocket is railroaded out of town by the police,
whether guilty of present misdemeanor or not, so the kingbird sends
flying any crow that crosses his path during the nesting season. You
will hear the strident, half-hissing scream of rage on the part of the
kingbird, see him launch himself from the air above and strike the back
of the flapping crow with a thump that perhaps makes the feathers fly.
The crow never attempts to strike back. He merely hangs his head and
scuttles the faster for the tall timber where is release from this
torment. I’ve never known the kingbird or any other indignant small bird
to do the crow material harm; but he certainly sends him flying.
One August, traversing a lonely swamp, I heard a great commotion among
crows over in its duskiest, farthest corner. Slipping quietly up, I
found a number of them swooping about another, which sat on a low limb
within a few feet of the ground. This crow was making beseeching cries,
like those of a greedy youngster which still hoped to be fed, and I
thought this was the case at first, for, though by August all young
crows have long been full grown, the old birds continue to keep
oversight of them. I had no sooner come within sight than the keen birds
saw me, and away they all went except the supposed youngster, who still
kept his perch and his silence, nor did he attempt to move as I
approached and finally picked him off his perch.
For he was no youngster, this crow, but was blind, old, and emaciated. I
think from the appearance of his eyes that he had been blind for a
considerable time, and the interesting question arises as to how he had
lived thus far. Surely he could not have found food for himself thus
for any long period of time, so perhaps the other crows had fed him
right along.
How old crows grow to be I do not know, but whatever extreme age they
attain this one was it. I took him home and gave him the freedom of the
yard, which he accepted. I fed him, and he seemed to be glad to have a
foster parent and to have no fear. But his presence was fiercely
resented by another family, and that was the kingbirds that had nested
in a neighbor’s apple tree. The young were grown up long ago. In fact,
the kingbirds had not been seen about for some time, but the crow had no
sooner appeared than they came darting into the yard and savagely
attacked him.
Again and again I had to rescue him from their fury, though he was the
meekest crow I have ever seen, and they no longer had young to defend.
Kingbirds go to bed at early dusk as a rule, but even after dark and
long after I had put my foundling under shelter for the night, this pair
could be heard swearing away to themselves up in the top of their apple
tree, waiting for one more whack at him. Kingbirds leave us for the
south about the first of September. I am quite sure this pair delayed
their migration for some days that year, hating to give up their daily
harrying of my ancient and toothless old crone of a crow.
He died, of old age no doubt, before the winter, seeming to fade gently
away, as a patriarch should. When, about the fifth of May the next year,
the kingbirds came back, they were noticed looking our back yard over
very minutely several different times. They remembered the crow and
were prepared to drive him over into the next country before they began
their nesting.
The patriarch was so old he could not see when I found him. Box and Cox
were so young when I lifted them from their nest that they had never
seen. They had scarcely kicked their blue-green, brown-splashed
eggshells overboard when I climbed to their great, strongly-built home
in the upper limbs of a good-sized pine. It had a foundation of stout
sticks topped with smaller ones, and within these a well-woven cup of
slender twigs lined with grapevine bark and the soft fiber of the red
cedar.
There were five young, hideous, negroid creatures with dark warts where
eyes would be, and mouths that gaped portentously. Had I realized when I
got them the amount of bird food those gaping mouths would engulf, and
then opening, clamor for more, I would have left them to their parents.
These had slipped silently away when I approached the nest, nor were
they visible at all during the kidnapping. I take it that this desertion
is prompted by wisdom, not cowardice or heartlessness, for crows are
devoted parents and look after their young long after they have left the
nest and after a period at which the devotion of other bird parents has
ceased.
There was no choice among the five; all were equally ugly, and I took
two at random and shinned down the tree with them in a bandanna
handkerchief swung from my teeth. Seeing their young thus carried away
in the teeth of a marauder, I dare say the old crows thought of me as I
thought of their fellows that ate the young robins. But though I don’t
doubt they saw from safe retreat all that went on, they took great care
neither to be seen nor heard.
The two young birds accepted the featherless biped in _loco parentis_
without any question. They also accepted all I would put into their
yawning maws, and opened them mutely for more. By and by they found
eyesight, and later voices. Then, not seeing food coming, they would
call for it with yearning and yell for it with ebullient eagerness when
they saw it, or me, or any other approaching biped. I don’t think the
neighbors took kindly to this pair of pets of mine. It was too much like
having a piano and an opera candidate in the next flat.
Sometimes their own weight a day went into these howling dervishes, in
the form of fish, frogs, grasshoppers, meat, scraps from the table, any
thing, indeed, that luck put in my way or that the ingenuity of
desperation suggested, and still nightfall found them ravenously
emulating Oliver Twist. But they grew, and grew so much alike that which
was Box or which was Cox neither I nor anybody else could tell.
As their feathers sprouted so did their ambitions. In a little while
they could stand on the edge of their nest, which I had built for them
in the low limbs of a tree near the back door, and flap their impotent
wings at the same time that they yelled for the waiter. Though I was
their guardian angel it was not for me in particular that their clamor
rent the sky, but any one who by any remote possibility might feed them.
Their first venture off the nest showed this. The new minister went
through the yard, thus making a short cut to a neighborly call. By
chance Box and Cox had been stuffed to repletion some minutes before and
were silent, half asleep in fact. But when the new minister’s hat passed
within two feet of their nest they rose to the occasion, and with one
mutual crow-language yell of “Bread, for the Lord’s sake give us bread!”
they landed on his hat. The family rescued him, of course, with humble
apologies, and he was good enough not to take offence. He came later to
call, generously, also I think somewhat stealthily, and by way of the
front door.
Box and Cox had found their wings and they used them to hunt down all
possible purveyors of food. They knew me best because I fed them
oftenest, but otherwise showed neither partiality nor affection. They
kept away from the carpenters at work in the near-by shop because they
had many times narrowly missed decapitation with hatchets, but they kept
just beyond hatchet stroke only and clamored tantalizingly. The
carpenters thought they taunted them and used to threaten gun play.
In return the crows stole bright nails, screws, and such small tools as
they could get hold of. They got away with my pearl-handled pocketknife
on the same principle, and though we often hunted for their hoard we
never found it. Their doings were often amusing to the bystander, but
more often vexatious and sometimes outrageous. I have still a vivid
mental picture of good old Grandfather Totter on his way home by the
path in the field, and stalled, because he could no longer use his cane
to hobble with, but had to have it to fight off Box and Cox.
Bird neighbors did not love Box and Cox any better than did human
neighbors, and their presence kept kingbirds and robins, bluebirds and
sparrows all in a state of great nervous tension, though I am bound to
say that I never knew the crows to disturb their nests or young. In
fact, as long as I had them, Box and Cox showed no signs of learning to
forage for themselves in any way. They depended absolutely on mankind
for food, and if man was not kind they went hungry. I think that if I
had conscientiously tried to wean them they would have shown ability to
take care of themselves, but I never had the courage to try. I did not
think the neighborhood would stand the racket.