in sleep, as babies should; and at last came the time, sooner than
expected, when we found the family had flitted. Nestlings cradled near
the ground seem to be spared the long period in the nest endured by
birdlings who must be able to fly before they can safely go. Young
veeries and bobolinks, song sparrows and warblers, who build low,
apparently take leave of the nursery as soon they can stand up.
Thereafter the parents must seek them on the ground; and if the student
follows their chirps, he will often see the droll little dumpy fellows
running about or crouched under bushes until their wing feathers shall
grow and lift them to the bird's world, above the dull earth.
After the exit of the family in the maples, we kept closer watch of the
remaining nest. Every day we passed it, and not always at the same hour,
yet never but once did we find the mother away, and seven days after
that morning, when not one youngster had broken the shell, the family
was gone.
The young birds in the maples we had seen in the nest for five days
after they were hatched, so we were forced to believe that either the
second nest had been robbed, or that the mother had watched for us, and
flown to cover her babies after they were hatched, till we had paid our
daily visit and passed on. This latter may be the correct conclusion,
and if so, her conduct was entirely different from that of any veery I
have seen.
Whatever cause had emptied the thrush cradle we found no signs of
disturbance about it, and we heard no lamentations. But we did hear
from every impenetrable tangle in the woods, the baby-cries of young
thrushes; and we ventured to hope that no hawk or owl or squirrel, or
other foe in feathers or in fur, had carried off the nestlings of that
brave brown-eyed mamma.
XII.
A MEADOW NEST.
A bird's nest in the middle of a meadow is as isolated as if on an
island; for the most eager bird student, though he may look and long
afar off, will hesitate before he harrows the soul of the owner of the
fair waving sea of grass by trampling it down. In such a secure place,
among scattered old apple-trees, a pair of veeries had set up their
household, surrounded and protected from every enemy who does not wear
wings.
They were late in nesting, for young veeries were out everywhere.
Doubtless the first home had been destroyed, and they had selected this
retreat in the midst of the tall grass for its seclusion and apparent
safety.
What dismay, then, must have filled the heart of the timid creatures
when there arrived, one morning, a party of men and horses and machines,
who proceeded at once, with the clatter and confusion which follows the
doings of men, to lay low their green protecting walls, and expose their
cherished treasures to the greed or the cruelty of their worst enemies!
Not less their surprise and grief when, after the uproar of cutting,
raking and carrying away their only screen, there entered the silent but
watchful spies, who planted their stools in plain sight, to take note of
all their doings.
The nest, with its babies three, was wide open to the sun; no one could
pass without seeing it. It was in a cluster of shoots growing up from
the roots of an old apple-tree, and so closely crowded between them that
its shape was oval.
The nestlings were nearly ready to fly, and I hoped that birds brave
enough to come out of the woods and build among apple-trees would be
less afraid of people than the woods dwellers. So when I learned of my
comrade's discovery I hastened at once to make the acquaintance of this,
our fourth nesting-veery of the summer.
The parents were absent when I seated myself at some distance from their
homestead to wait. They soon came, together, with food in their mouths;
but their eager, happy manner vanished at sight of me, and they
abandoned themselves to utter despair, after the manner of veeries. They
stood motionless on neighboring perches, and cried and bewailed the
anticipated fate of those babies for all of the short time that I was
able to endure it. A kingbird came to the tree under which I sat, to see
for himself the terrible bugaboo, and a robin or two, as usual,
interested themselves in the affairs of a neighbor in trouble.
Thirty minutes proved to be as long as I could bring myself to stay, and
then I meekly retired to the furthest corner of the field, where I made
myself as inconspicuous as possible, and hoped I might be allowed to
remain. Kingbird and robins accepted the compromise and returned to
their own affairs; but the veeries by turns fed the babies and reviled
me from a tree near my retreat, till I took pity on their distress and
left the orchard altogether.
Not only does the veery exhibit this strong liking for solitude, and
express the loneliness of the woods more perfectly than any other bird,
with the exception, perhaps, of the wood-pewee; but his calls and cries
are all plaintive, many of them sensational, and one or two really
tragic.
His most common utterance, as he flits lightly from branch to branch, is
a low, sweet "quee-o," sometimes hardly above a whisper. When everything
is quiet about him one may often hear an extraordinary performance.
Beginning the usual call of "quee-o," in a tender and mournful tone, he
will repeat it again and again at short intervals, every time with more
pathetic inflection, till the wrought-up listener cannot resist the
feeling that the next sound must be a burst of tears. Although his notes
seem melancholy to hearers, however, the beautiful bird himself is far
from expressing that emotion in his manner.
Aside from the enchanting quality of his calls, and the thrilling
magnetism of his song, the tawny thrush is an exceedingly interesting
bird. In his reserved way he is socially inclined, showing no dislike to
an acquaintance with his human neighbors, and even evincing a curiosity
and willingness to be friendly, most winning to see.
Speak to one who, as you passed, has flown up from the ground and
alighted on the lowest limb of a tree, looking at you with clear, calm
eyes. He will not fly; he will even answer you. You may stand there half
an hour and talk to him and hear his low replies. It seems as if it were
the easiest thing in the world to inspire him with perfect confidence,
to coax him to a real intimacy. But there is a limit to his
trustfulness. When he has a nest and little ones to protect, as already
shown, he is a different bird; he is wild with terror and distress, and
refuses to be comforted when one approaches the sacred spot.
This unfortunate distrust of one's intentions makes it very hard for a
student who loves the individual bird to watch his nest. One can't
endure to give pain to the gentle and winsome creature. The mournful,
despairing cry of both parents, "ke-o-ik! ke-o-ik! ke-o-ik!" constantly
repeated, makes me, at least, feel like a robber and a murderer, and no
number of "facts" to be gained will compensate me for the suffering thus
caused.
One more phase of veery character I was surprised and delighted to
learn. Sitting on a log in the edge of the woods one evening, just at
sunset, I listened to the singing of one of these birds quite close to
me, but hidden from sight. I had never been so near a singer, and I was
surprised to hear, after every repetition of his song, a low response, a
sort of whispered "chee." Was it his mate answering, or criticising his
music? Was it the first note of his newly-fledged offspring? Or could it
be _sotto voce_ remarks of the bird himself? It was impossible to
decide, and I went home much puzzled to account for it; but a day or two
later the mystery was solved,--the thrush showed himself to be a
humorist.
The odd performance by which I discovered this fact I saw through my
closed blind. The bird was in plain sight on a small dead tree, but it
was a retired spot, where he was accustomed to see no one, and he
evidently did not suspect that he had a listener.
He had eaten his fill from a cluster of elderberries I had hung on the
tree, and he lingered to sing a little, as he often did. First he
uttered a call, aloud, clear "quee-o," and followed it instantly by a
mocking squawk in an undertone. I could hardly believe my eyes and ears,
and at once gave much closer attention to him. As if for the express
purpose of convincing me that I had not been mistaken, he instantly
repeated his effort; and after doing so two or three times, he poured
out his regular song in his sweet, ringing voice, and followed it by a
whispered "mew," almost exactly in the tone of pussy herself.
He was not far from my window, across a small yard, and as plainly seen
through my glass as though not six feet away. I saw his beak and throat,
and am absolutely certain that he delivered every note. The absorbed
singer stood there motionless a long time, and carried on this queer
conversation with himself. It sounded precisely like two birds, one of
whom was mocking or ridiculing the other in a low tone.
Sometimes the undertone, as said above, was a squawk; again it resembled
a squeal; now it was petulant, as though the performer scoffed at his
own singing; and then it was a perfect copy of the song itself, given in
an indescribably sneering manner. I could think of nothing but the way
in which one child will sometimes mock the words of another.
It was very droll, as well as exceedingly interesting, and I hope some
day to study further this unfamiliar side of the thrush nature.
After my unsuccessful attempt to disarm the fears and suspicions of the
meadow-nesting thrushes, we left the little family to its much loved
solitude, and in a day or two the whole nestful departed.
XIII.
A JUNE ROUND OF CALLS.
"I should like to meet you two in that rig on Fifth Avenue," calmly said
our hostess one morning in June, as we started out on our regular round
of calls.
What a suggestion! We stared at each other with a new standard of
criticism in our eyes. We were not exactly in ordinary visiting costume;
but then, neither were we making ordinary visits, for the calling-list
of June differs in every way from that of January. The neighbors at
whose doors we appeared would be quite as well (or as ill) pleased to
see us in our dull green woods dress, with fresh leaves on our hats to
convey the impression that we were mere perambulating shrubs, with
opera-glasses instead of cards, and camp-stools in place of a carriage,
as though we had been in regulation array. Away we went, the big dog
prancing ahead with the camp-stool of his mistress.
Our first call was upon a small dame very high up in the world, thirty
feet at least. The mention of Fifth Avenue suggests that possibly our
manners were not above criticism. We introduced ourselves to Madam
Wood-Pewee not by ringing and sending up cards, but by pausing before
her door, seating ourselves on our stools, and leveling our glasses at
her house. We felt, indeed, that we had almost a proprietary interest in
that little lichen-covered nest resting snugly in a fork of a dead
branch, for we had assisted in building it, at least by our daily
presence, during the week or two that she spent in bringing, in the most
desultory way, snips of material, fastening them in place, and moulding
the whole by getting in the nest and pressing her breast against it,
while turning slowly round and round. Now that she had really settled
herself to sit, we never neglected to leave a card upon her, so to
speak, every morning.
As we approached we were pleased to see her trim lord and master bearing
in his mouth what was no doubt intended for a delicate offering to cheer
her weary hours, for a gauzy yellow wing stuck out on each side of his
beak, suggesting something uncommonly nice within. He stood a moment
till we should pass, looking the picture of unconsciousness, and defying
us to assert that he had a house and home anywhere about that tree. But
when we did not pass, after hesitatingly hopping from perch to perch
nearer the nest, he deliberately diverted yellow wing from its original
destiny, swallowed it himself, and wiped his beak with an air that said:
"There now! What can you make out of that?"
Ashamed to have deprived the little sitter of her treat, we folded our
stools and resumed our march.
How shall one put into words the delights of the woods in June without
"dropping into poetry?" Does not our own native poet say:--
"Who speeds to the woodland walks?
To birds and trees who talks?
Caesar of his leafy Rome,
There the _poet_ is at home."
But if one is not a poet, must he then suffer and enjoy in silence? When
he puts aside the leafy portiere and enters the cool green paradise of
the trees, must he be dumb? Slowly, almost solemnly, we walked up the
beautiful road with its carpet of dead leaves. It was as silent of man's
ways as if he were not within a thousand miles, and we had all the
enjoyment of the deep forest, with the comforting assurance that five
minutes' walk would bring us to people.
A small family in dark slate-color and white, with a curious taste for
the antique cave-dwelling, was next on our list. The home was an
excavation in the soft earth, held together by the roots of an
overturned tree, and everything was quiet when we arrived--the two
well-grown infants sound asleep on their hair mattress. We sat down to
wait, and in a moment we heard the anxious "pip" of the returning
parents. They had been attending to their regular morning work, and both
brought food for those youngsters, who woke inopportunely--as babies
will--and demanded it instantly.
Junco--for he was the head of this household--paused on a twig near by,
opened and shut his beautiful white-bordered tail, in the embarrassing
consideration whether he should go in before our eyes and take the risk
of our intentions, or let his evidently starving offspring suffer. He
"eyed us over;" he waited till his modest little spouse, acting from
feeling rather than from judgment (as was to be expected from one of her
unreasoning sex), had slipped in from below, administered her morsel to
those precious babies, and escaped unharmed. Then he plucked up courage,
boldly entered his door, gave a poke behind it, and flew away.
A week later, after we had called as usual one morning and found the
house empty, he brought his pretty snow-birdlings in their tidy striped
bibs up to the grove at the back door, where we often heard his sharp
trilling little song, and saw him working like some bigger papas to keep
the dear clamorous mouths filled.
The Junco neighborhood was a populous part of our calling district.
Behind his cave, in a high tree, lived a family of golden-winged
woodpeckers, who "laughed" and talked as loud as they liked, scorning to
look upon the two spies so far below them. Not quite so self-possessed
and bold were they a little later, when madam came up to the grass by
the farmhouse with her young son to teach him to dig, for that is what
she did. He was a canny youngster, though he was shy, and had no notion
of being left in the lurch for a moment. If mamma flew to the fence, he
instantly followed; did she return to the ground, baby was in a second
at her side demanding attention. On one occasion while I was watching
them behind my blind, the mother managed to slip away from him and
disappear. In a moment he realized his deserted condition, stretched up,
like a lost chicken, looking about on every side, and calling, in a most
plaintive tone, "pe-au! au!" and then, "au! au! pe-au!" When at length
he saw his mother, he burst into a loud cry of delight, and flew into a
locust-tree, where I heard for a long time low complaining cries, as if
he reproached her for leaving her baby alone on the fence.
On the right of the home of the golden wings, in a sapling not more than
five feet from the ground, was the residence of a gay little redstart,
which we had watched almost from the laying of the foundations. We made
our visit. Yesterday there were two pearls of promise within; to-day,
alas! nothing.
Squirrels, we said; for those beasts were the bugaboo of the woods to
its feathered inhabitants. Hardly a nest was so high, so well hidden, or
so closely watched, but some unlucky day a little fellow--sportsman,
would you call him?--- in gray or red fur, would find his chance, and
make his breakfast on next year's song birds.
Musing on this and other tragedies among our friends, we silently turned
to the next neighbor. At this door we could knock, and we always did.
(We desired to be civil when circumstances permitted.) A rap or two on
the dead trunk brought hastily to the door, twenty-five feet high, a
small head, with a bright red cap and necktie, and eager, questioning
eyes. Observing that he had guests, he came out, showing his black and
white coat. But one glance was usually enough; he declined to entertain
us, and instantly took his leave. We knew him well, however--the
yellow-bellied woodpecker, or "sapsucker," as he was called in the
vicinity. This morning we did not need to knock, for one of the family
was already outside,--a young woodpecker, clinging to the bark, and
dressing his nest-ruffled plumage for the grand performance, his first
flight. We resolved at once to assist at the debut, secured reserved
seats with a good view, and seated ourselves to wait.
Didst ever, dear reader, sit in one position on a camp-stool without a
back, with head thrown back, and eyes fixed upon one small bird thirty
feet from the ground, afraid to move or turn your eyes, lest you miss
what you are waiting for, while the sun moves steadily on till his
hottest rays pour through some opening directly upon you; while
mosquitoes sing about your ears (would that they sang only!), and flies
buzz noisily before your face; while birds flit past, and strange notes
sound from behind; while rustling in the dead leaves at your feet
suggests snakes, and a crawling on your neck proclaims spiders? If you
have not, you can never appreciate the enthusiasms of a bird student,
nor realize what neck-breaks and other discomforts one will cheerfully
endure to witness the first flight of a nestling.
This affair turned out, however, as in many another case of great
expectations, to be no remarkable performance. When the debutant had
made his toilet, he flew, as if he had done it all his life, to the next
tree, where he began at once to call for refreshment, after his
exertion.
Disappointed, we dropped our eyes, whisked away our insect tormentors,
gathered up our properties, and passed on our way.
This was the farthest point of our wanderings. The way back was through
a narrow path beside the oven-bird's pretty domed nest, then between the
tangle of wild-berry bushes and saplings, where a cuckoo had set up
housekeeping, and where veeries and warblers had successfully hidden
their nests, tantalizing us with calls and songs from morning till
night; from thence through the garden, past the kitchen door, home.
XIV.
A BOBOLINK RHAPSODY.
Can anything be more lovely than a meadow in June, its tall grass
overtopped by daisies, whose open faces,
"Candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free,
Publish themselves to the sky"?
One such I knew, despised of men as a meadow, no doubt, but glorious to
the eye with its unbroken stretch of white bowing before the summer
breeze like the waves of the sea, and charming as well to pewee and
kingbird who hovered over it, ever and anon diving and bringing up food
for the nestlings. When, to a meadow not so completely abandoned to
daisies, where buttercups and red clover flourish among the grass, is
added the music of the meadow's poet, the bobolink, surely nothing is
lacking to its perfection.
Passing such a field one evening, I noted the babble of bobolinks, too
far off to hear well, and the next day I set out down another path which
passed through the meadow, to cultivate the acquaintance of the birds.
It was a warm summer morning, near the middle of June, and when I
reached the spot not a bobolink was in sight; but I sought a convenient
bank under an old apple-tree, made myself as inconspicuous as possible,
and waited. With these birds, however, as I soon found out, my
precautions were unnecessary. They are not chary of their music; on the
contrary, they appear to sing directly to a spectator, and they are too
confident of the security of the nest to be disturbed about that. In a
moment a black head with its buff cap appeared at the top of a grass
stem, and instantly the black body, with its grotesque white decoration,
followed. The bird flew half a dozen feet, singing as he went, as if the
movement of the wings set the music going, alighted a little nearer,
sang again, and finally, concluding that here was something to be looked
after, a human being, such as he was accustomed to see pass by, taking
possession of a part of the bobolink domain, he flew boldly to a small
tree a few yards from me. He alighted on the top twig, in plain sight,
and proceeded to "look me over," a performance which I returned with
interest. He was silent only a few seconds, but the sound that came from
his beak amazed me; it was a "mew." If the cat-bird cry resembles that
of a cat, this was a perfect copy of a kitten's weak wail. It was always
uttered twice in close succession, and sometimes followed by a harsh
note that proclaimed his blackbird strain, a "chack!"
His utterance was thus: "mew, mew (quickly), chack!" and I interpreted
it into a warning to me to leave the premises. I did not go, however,
and after several repetitions his vigilance began to relax. He was
really so full of sweet summer madness that it was impossible to keep up
the role of stern guardian of the nests under the veil of buttercups and
daisies, which he knew all the time I could never find. So, when he
opened his mouth to say "chack," a note or two would irresistibly bubble
out beside it, as if he said, "You really must go away, my big friend.
We cannot have you in our fields;--but, after all, isn't the morning
delicious?"
After a long conflict between desire to sing and his conviction of duty
as special policeman, which ludicrously suggested Mr. Dick in his
struggle between longing to be foolish with David Copperfield and to be
grave to please Miss Betsy, he fairly gave in and did sing--and such a
burst! Everybody has tried his hand at characterizing this bird's
incomparable song, but no one has fully expressed it, for words are not
capable of it. Perhaps Mrs. Spofford has caught the spirit as well as
any one:--
"Last year methinks the bobolinks
Filled the low fields with vagrant tune,
The sweetest songs of sweetest June--
Wild spurts of frolic, always gladly
Bubbling, doubling, brightly troubling,
Bubbling rapturously, madly."
Expressing himself was so great a relief to my bobolink, after his
unnatural gravity of demeanor, that he repeated the performance again
and again. I say repeated it; I found that he had two ways of beginning,
but after he got into his ecstasy I could think of nothing but how
marvelous it was, so that whether the two differed all through I am not
sure. It was every time a new rapture to me as well as to him. One of
his beginnings that I had time to note before I was lost in the flood of
melody was of two notes, the second a fifth higher than the first, with
a "grace-note," very low indeed, before each one. The other beginning
was also two notes, the second at least a fifth lower than the first,
with an indescribable jerk between, and uttered so softly that if I had
been a little further away I could not have heard it. It sounded like
"tut, now."
Seeing that I remained motionless, the bird forgot altogether his
uncongenial occupation of watchman, and launched himself into the air
toward me, soaring round and round me, letting fall such a flood, such a
torrent, of liquid notes that I thought half a dozen were singing,--and
then dropped into the grass. Soon others appeared here and there, and
sang it mattered not how or where,--soaring or beating the wings, on a
grass stem, the top of a tree, hidden in the grass, or rudely rocked by
the wind, they "sang and sang and sang."
Then for a while all was still. A turkey leading her fuzzy little brood
about in the grass thrust her scrawny neck and anxious head above the
daisies, said "quit! quit!" to me, and returned to the brooding
mother-tones that kept her family around her. Tiring of my position
while waiting for the concert to resume, I laid my head back among the
ferns, letting the daisies and buttercups tower above my
face,--strangely enough, by this simple act realizing as never before
the real motherhood of the earth.
While I lay musing, lo, a sudden burst of music above my head! A
bobolink sailed over my face, not three feet from it, singing his
merriest, and then dropped into the grass behind me. Oh, never did I so
much wish for eyes in the back of my head! He must be almost within
touch, yet I dared not move; doubtless I was under inspection by that
keen dark eye, for the first movement sent him away with a whir.