Produced by Patricia C. Franks, Lisa Carter, Danette Dulny,
Charles Duvall, Cheri Ripley, and Cheryl Sullivan
BIRDS AND BEES
SHARP EYES
AND OTHER PAPERS
By John Burroughs
With An Introduction
By Mary E. Burt
And A Biographical Sketch
CONTENTS
Biographical Sketch
Introduction By Mary E. Burt
Birds
Bird Enemies
The Tragedies of the Nests
Bees
An Idyl of the Honey-Bee
The Pastoral Bees
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
Nature chose the spring of the year for the time of John Burroughs's
birth. A little before the day when the wake-robin shows itself, that
the observer might be on hand for the sight, he was born in Roxbury,
Delaware County, New York, on the western borders of the Catskill
Mountains; the precise date was April 3, 1837. Until 1863 he remained
in the country about his native place, working on his father's farm,
getting his schooling in the district school and neighboring academies,
and taking his turn also as teacher. As he himself has hinted, the
originality, freshness, and wholesomeness of his writings are probably
due in great measure to the unliterary surroundings of his early life,
which allowed his mind to form itself on unconventional lines, and to
the later companionships with unlettered men, which kept him in touch
with the sturdy simplicities of life.
From the very beginnings of his taste for literature, the essay was his
favorite form. Dr. Johnson was the prophet of his youth, but he soon
transferred his allegiance to Emerson, who for many years remained his
"master enchanter." To cure himself of too close an imitation of
the Concord seer, which showed itself in his first magazine article,
Expression, he took to writing his sketches of nature, and about this
time he fell in with the writings of Thoreau, which doubtless confirmed
and encouraged him in this direction. But of all authors and of all men,
Walt Whitman, in his personality and as a literary force, seems to have
made the profoundest impression upon Mr. Burroughs, though doubtless
Emerson had a greater influence on his style of writing.
Expression appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1860, and most of his
contributions to literature have been in the form of papers first
published in the magazines, and afterwards collected into books. He more
than once paid tribute to his teachers in literature. His first book,
now out of print, was Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person,
published in 1867; and Whitman: A Study, which appeared in 1896, is a
more extended treatment of the man and his poetry and philosophy. Birds
and Poets, too, contains a paper on Whitman, entitled The Flight of the
Eagle, besides an essay on Emerson, whom he also treated incidentally in
his paper, Matthew Arnold on Emerson and Carlyle, in Indoor Studies; and
the latter volume contains his essay on Thoreau.
In the autumn of 1863 he went to Washington, and in the following
January entered the Treasury Department. He was for some years an
assistant in the office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and later
chief of the organization division of that Bureau. For some time he was
keeper of one of the vaults, and for a great part of the day his only
duty was to be at his desk. In these leisure hours his mind traveled off
into the country, where his previous life had been spent, and with the
help of his pen, always a faithful friend and magician, he lived over
again those happy days, now happier still with the glamour of all
past pleasures. In this way he wrote Wake-Robin and a part of Winter
Sunshine. It must not be supposed, however, that he was deprived of
outdoor pleasures while at Washington. On the contrary, he enjoyed many
walks in the suburbs of the capital, and in those days the real country
came up to the very edges of the city. His Spring at the Capital, Winter
Sunshine, A March Chronicle, and other papers bear the fruit of his life
on the Potomac. He went to England in 1871 on business for the Treasury
Department, and again on his own account a dozen years later. The record
of the two visits is to be found mainly in his chapters on An October
Abroad, contained in the volume Winter Sunshine, and in the papers
gathered into the volume Fresh Fields.
He resigned his place in the Treasury in 1873, and was appointed
receiver of a broken national bank. Later, until 1885, his business
occupation was that of a National Bank Examiner. An article contributed
by him to The Century Magazine for March, 1881, on Broken Banks and Lax
Directors, is perhaps the only literary outcome of this occupation, but
the keen powers of observation, trained in the field of nature, could
not fail to disclose themselves in analyzing columns of figures. After
leaving Washington Mr. Burroughs bought a fruit farm at West Park, near
Esopus, on the Hudson, and there building his house from the stones
found in his fields, has given himself the best conditions for that
humanizing of nature which constitutes the charm of his books. He was
married in 1857 to a lady living in the New York village where he was
at the time teaching. He keeps his country home the year round, only
occasionally visiting New York. The cultivation of grapes absorbs the
greater part of his time; but he has by no means given over letters. His
work, which has long found ready acceptance both at home and abroad,
is now passing into that security of fame which comes from its entrance
into the school-life of American children.
Besides his outdoor sketches and the other papers already mentioned,
Mr. Burroughs has written a number of critical essays on life and
literature, published in Indoor Studies, and other volumes. He has also
taken his readers into his confidence in An Egotistical Chapter,
the final one of his Indoor Studies; and in the Introduction to the
Riverside Edition of his writings he has given us further glimpses of
his private intellectual life.
Probably no other American writer has a greater sympathy with, and a
keener enjoyment of, country life in all its phases--farming, camping,
fishing, walking--than has John Burroughs. His books are redolent of the
soil, and have such "freshness and primal sweetness," that we need not
be told that the pleasure he gets from his walks and excursions is by no
means over when he steps inside his doors again. As he tells us on more
than one occasion, he finds he can get much more out of his outdoor
experiences by thinking them over, and writing them out afterwards.
Numbers 28, 36, and 92 of the Riverside Literature Series consist of
selections from Mr. Burroughs's books. No. 28, which is entitled Birds
and Bees, is made up of Bird Enemies and The Tragedies of the Nests from
the volume Signs and Seasons, An Idyl of the Honey-Bee from Pepacton,
and The Pastoral Bees from Locusts and Wild Honey. The Introduction,
by Miss Mary E. Burt, gives an account of the use of Mr. Burroughs's
writings in Chicago schools.
In No. 36, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers, the initial paper, Sharp
Eyes, is drawn from Locusts and Wild Honey, The Apple comes from Winter
Sunshine, A Taste of Maine Birch and Winter Neighbors from Signs and
Seasons, and Notes by the Way (on muskrats, squirrels, foxes, and
woodchucks) from Pepacton.
The collection called A Bunch of Herbs, and Other Papers, forming No.
92 of the Series, was designed with special reference to what the author
has to say of trees and flowers, and contains A Bunch of Herbs from
Pepacton, Strawberries from Locusts and Wild Honey, A March Chronicle
and Autumn Tides from Winter Sunshine, A Spray of Pine and A Spring
Relish from Signs and Seasons, and English Woods: A Contrast from Fresh
Fields.
INTRODUCTION.
It is seldom that I find a book so far above children that I cannot
share its best thought with them. So when I first took up one of John
Burroughs's essays, I at once foresaw many a ramble with my pupils
through the enchanted country that is found within its breezy pages. To
read John Burroughs is to live in the woods and fields, and to associate
intimately with all their little timid inhabitants; to learn that--
"God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here."
When I came to use Pepacton in my class of the sixth grade, I soon
found, not only that the children read better but that they came rapidly
to a better appreciation of the finer bits of literature in their
regular readers, while their interest in their new author grew quickly
to an enthusiasm. Never was a little brother or sister more real to
them than was "Peggy Mel" as she rushed into the hive laden with stolen
honey, while her neighbors gossiped about it, or the stately elm that
played sly tricks, or the log which proved to be a good bedfellow
because it did not grumble. Burroughs's way of investing beasts, birds,
insects, and inanimate things with human motives is very pleasing
to children. They like to trace analogies between the human and the
irrational, to think of a weed as a tramp stealing rides, of Nature as a
tell-tale when taken by surprise.
The quiet enthusiasm of John Burroughs's essays is much healthier
than the over-wrought dramatic action which sets all the nerves
a-quiver,--nerves already stimulated to excess by the comedies and
tragedies forced upon the daily lives of children. It is especially
true of children living in crowded cities, shut away from the woods and
hills, constant witnesses of the effects of human passion, that they
need the tonic of a quiet literature rather than the stimulant of a
stormy or dramatic one,--a literature which develops gentle feelings,
deep thought, and a relish for what is homely and homespun, rather than
a literature which calls forth excited feelings.
The essays in this volume are those in which my pupils have expressed an
enthusiastic interest, or which, after careful reading, I have selected
for future use. I have found in them few pages so hard as to require
over much study, or a too frequent use of the dictionary. John
Burroughs, more than almost any other writer of the time, has a
prevailing taste for simple words and simple constructions. "He that
runs may read" him. I have found many children under eleven years of age
who could read a whole page without hesitating. If I discover some words
which I foresee will cause difficulty, I place such on the blackboard
and rapidly pronounce and explain them before the reading. Generally,
however, I find the text the best interpreter of its words. What follows
explains what goes before, if the child is led to read on to the end of
the sentence. It is a mistake to allow children to be frightened away
from choice reading by an occasional hard word. There is no better time
than his reading lesson in which to teach a child that the hard things
of life are to be grappled with and overcome. A mistake also, I think,
is that toilsome process of explanation which I sometimes find teachers
following, under the impression that it will be "parrot work" (as the
stock phrase of the "institutes" has it) for the pupils to read anything
which they do not clearly and fully comprehend. Teachers' definitions,
in such cases, I have often noticed, are no better than dictionary
definitions, and surely everybody knows that few more fruitless things
than dictionary definitions are ever crammed into the memory of a child.
Better far give free play to the native intelligence of the child, and
trust it to apprehend, though it may not yet comprehend nor be able to
express its apprehension in definition. On this subject I am glad to
quote so high an authority as Sir Walter Scott: "Indeed I rather suspect
that children derive impulses of a powerful and important kind from
reading things which they do not comprehend, and therefore that to write
down to children's understanding is a mistake. Set them on the scent and
let them puzzle it out."
From time to time I have allowed my pupils to give me written
reports from memory of these essays, and have often found these little
compositions sparkling with pleasing information, or full of that
childlike fun which is characteristic of the author. I have marked the
errors in these exercises, and have given them back to the children
to rewrite. Sometimes the second papers show careful correction-and
sometimes the mistakes are partially neglected. Very often the child
wishes to improve on the first composition, and so adds new blunders as
well as creates new interest.
There is a law of self-preservation in Nature, which takes care of
mistakes. Every human soul reaches toward the light in the most direct
path open to it, and will correct its own errors as soon as it is
developed far enough. There is no use in trying to force maturity;
teachers who trouble children beyond all reason, and worry over their
mistakes, are fumbling at the roots of young plants that will grow if
they are let alone long enough.
The average mechanical work (spelling, construction of sentences,
writing, etc.) is better under this method than when more time is
devoted to the mechanics and less to the thought of composition. I have
seen many reports of Burroughs's essays from the pens of children more
pleasing and reliable than the essays of some professional reviewers;
in these papers I often find the children adding little suggestions of
their own; as, "Do birds dream?" One of the girls says her bird "jumps
in its sleep." A little ten year old writes, "Weeds are unuseful
flowers," and, "I like this book because there are real things in it."
Another thinks she "will look more carefully" if she ever gets out into
the country again. For the development of close observation and good
feeling toward the common things of life, I know of no writings better
than those of John Burroughs.
MARY E. BURT
JONES SCHOOL, CHICAGO, Sept. 1, 1887.
BIRDS.
BIRD ENEMIES.
How surely the birds know their enemies! See how the wrens and robins
and bluebirds pursue and scold the cat, while they take little or no
notice of the dog! Even the swallow will fight the cat, and, relying too
confidently upon its powers of flight, sometimes swoops down so near
to its enemy that it is caught by a sudden stroke of the cat's paw. The
only case I know of in which our small birds fail to recognize their
enemy is furnished by the shrike; apparently the little birds do not
know that this modest-colored bird is an assassin. At least, I have
never seen them scold or molest him, or utter any outcries at his
presence, as they usually do at birds of prey. Probably it is because
the shrike is a rare visitant, and is not found in this part of the
country during the nesting season of our songsters.
But the birds have nearly all found out the trick the jay, and when he
comes sneaking through the trees in May and June in quest of eggs, he
is quickly exposed and roundly abused. It is amusing to see the robins
hustle him out of the tree which holds their nest. They cry "Thief,
thief!" to the top of their voices as they charge upon him, and the jay
retorts in a voice scarcely less complimentary as he makes off.
The jays have their enemies also, and need to keep an eye on their own
eggs. It would be interesting to know if jays ever rob jays, or crows
plunder crows; or is there honor among thieves even in the feathered
tribes? I suspect the jay is often punished by birds which are otherwise
innocent of nest-robbing. One season I found a jay's nest in a small
cedar on the side of a wooded ridge. It held five eggs, every one of
which had been punctured. Apparently some bird had driven its sharp beak
through their shells, with the sole intention of destroying them, for no
part of the contents of the eggs had been removed. It looked like a case
of revenge; as if some thrush or warbler, whose nest had suffered at
the hands of the jays, had watched its opportunity, and had in this way
retaliated upon its enemies. An egg for an egg. The jays were lingering
near, very demure and silent, and probably ready to join a crusade
against nest-robbers.
The great bugaboo of the birds is the owl. The owl snatches them from
off their roosts at night, and gobbles up their eggs and young in their
nests. He is a veritable ogre to them, and his presence fills them with
consternation and alarm.
One season, to protect my early cherries I placed a large stuffed owl
amid the branches of the tree. Such a racket as there instantly began
about my grounds is not pleasant to think upon! The orioles and robins
fairly "shrieked out their affright." The news instantly spread in every
direction, and apparently every bird in town came to see that owl in
the cherry-tree, and every bird took a cherry, so that I lost more fruit
than if I had left the owl in-doors. With craning necks and horrified
looks the birds alighted upon the branches, and between their screams
would snatch off a cherry, as if the act was some relief to their
outraged feelings.
The chirp and chatter of the young of birds which build in concealed or
inclosed places, like the woodpeckers, the house wren, the high-hole,
the oriole, is in marked contrast to the silence of the fledglings
of most birds that build open and exposed nests. The young of the
sparrows,--unless the social sparrow be an exception,--warblers,
fly-catchers, thrushes, never allow a sound to escape them; and on
the alarm note of their parents being heard, sit especially close
and motionless, while the young of chimney swallows, woodpeckers, and
orioles are very noisy. The latter, in its deep pouch, is quite safe
from birds of prey, except perhaps the owl. The owl, I suspect, thrusts
its leg into the cavities of woodpeckers and into the pocket-like nest
of the oriole, and clutches and brings forth the birds in its talons.
In one case which I heard of, a screech-owl had thrust its claw into a
cavity in a tree, and grasped the head of a red-headed woodpecker; being
apparently unable to draw its prey forth, it had thrust its own round
head into the hole, and in some way became fixed there, and had thus
died with the woodpecker in its talons.
The life of birds is beset with dangers and mishaps of which we know
little. One day, in my walk, I came upon a goldfinch with the tip of one
wing securely fastened to the feathers of its rump, by what appeared
to be the silk of some caterpillar. The bird, though uninjured, was
completely crippled, and could not fly a stroke. Its little body was hot
and panting in my hands, as I carefully broke the fetter. Then it
darted swiftly away with a happy cry. A record of all the accidents
and tragedies of bird life for a single season would show many curious
incidents. A friend of mine opened his box-stove one fall to kindle a
fire in it, when he beheld in the black interior the desiccated forms of
two bluebirds. The birds had probably taken refuge in the chimney during
some cold spring storm, and had come down the pipe to the stove, from
whence they were unable to ascend. A peculiarly touching little incident
of bird life occurred to a caged female canary. Though unmated, it laid
some eggs, and the happy bird was so carried away by her feelings that
she would offer food to the eggs, and chatter and twitter, trying, as it
seemed, to encourage them to eat! The incident is hardly tragic, neither
is it comic.
Certain birds nest in the vicinity of our houses and outbuildings, or
even in and upon them, for protection from their enemies, but they often
thus expose themselves to a plague of the most deadly character.
I refer to the vermin with which their nests often swarm, and which kill
the young before they are fledged. In a state of nature this probably
never happens; at least I have never seen or heard of it happening to
nests placed in trees or under rocks. It is the curse of civilization
falling upon the birds which come too near man. The vermin, or the germ
of the vermin, is probably conveyed to the nest in hen's feathers, or in
straws and hairs picked up about the barn or hen-house. A robin's nest
upon your porch or in your summer-house will occasionally become an
intolerable nuisance from the swarms upon swarms of minute vermin with
which it is filled. The parent birds stem the tide as long as they can,
but are often compelled to leave the young to their terrible fate.
One season a phoebe-bird built on a projecting stone under the eaves
of the house, and all appeared to go well till the young were nearly
fledged, when the nest suddenly became a bit of purgatory. The birds
kept their places in their burning bed till they could hold no longer,
when they leaped forth and fell dead upon the ground.
After a delay of a week or more, during which I imagine the parent
birds purified themselves by every means known to them, the couple built
another nest a few yards from the first, and proceeded to rear a second
brood; but the new nest developed into the same bed of torment that the
first did, and the three young birds, nearly ready to fly, perished as
they sat within it. The parent birds then left the place as if it had
been accursed.
I imagine the smaller birds have an enemy in our native white-footed
mouse, though I have not proof enough to convict him. But one season the
nest of a chickadee which I was observing was broken up in a position
where nothing but a mouse could have reached it. The bird had chosen a
cavity in the limb of an apple-tree which stood but a few yards from the
house. The cavity was deep, and the entrance to it, which was ten feet
from the ground, was small. Barely light enough was admitted, when the
sun was in the most favorable position, to enable one to make out the
number of eggs, which was six, at the bottom of the dim interior. While
one was peering in and trying to get his head out of his own light, the
bird would startle him by a queer kind of puffing sound. She would not
leave her nest like most birds, but really tried to blow or scare the
intruder away; and after repeated experiments I could hardly refrain
from jerking my head back when that little explosion of sound came
up from the dark interior. One night, when incubation was about half
finished, the nest was harried. A slight trace of hair or fur at the
entrance led me to infer that some small animal was the robber. A weasel
might have done it, as they sometimes climb trees, but I doubt if either
a squirrel or a rat could have passed the entrance.
Probably few persons have ever suspected the cat-bird of being an
egg-sucker; I do not know that she has ever been accused of such a
thing, but there is something uncanny and disagreeable about her, which
I at once understood, when I one day caught her in the very act of going
through a nest of eggs.
A pair of the least fly-catchers, the bird which says chebec, chebec,
and is a small edition of the pewee, one season built their nest where
I had them for many hours each day under my observation. The nest was
a very snug and compact structure placed in the forks of a small maple
about twelve feet from the ground. The season before, a red squirrel
had harried the nest of a wood-thrush in this same tree, and I was
apprehensive that he would serve the fly-catchers the same trick; so,
as I sat with my book in a summer-house near by, I kept my loaded gun
within easy reach. One egg was laid, and the next morning, as I made my
daily inspection of the nest, only a fragment of its empty shell was
to be found. This I removed, mentally imprecating the rogue of a red
squirrel. The birds were much disturbed by the event, but did not desert
the nest, as I had feared they would, but after much inspection of it
and many consultations together, concluded, it seems, to try again. Two
more eggs were laid, when one day I heard the birds utter a sharp cry,
and on looking up I saw a cat-bird perched upon the rim of the nest,
hastily devouring the eggs. I soon regretted my precipitation in killing
her, because such interference is generally unwise. It turned out
that she had a nest of her own with five eggs in a spruce-tree near my
window.
Then this pair of little fly-catchers did what I had never seen birds
do before; they pulled the nest to pieces and rebuilt it in a peach-tree
not many rods away, where a brood was successfully reared. The nest was
here exposed to the direct rays of the noon-day sun, and to shield her
young when the heat was greatest, the mother-bird would stand above them
with wings slightly spread, as other birds have been know to do under
like circumstances.
To what extent the cat-bird is a nest-robber I have no evidence, but
that feline mew of hers, and that flirting, flexible tail, suggest
something not entirely bird-like.
Probably the darkest tragedy of the nest is enacted when a snake
plunders it. All birds and animals, so far I have observed, behave in
a peculiar manner toward a snake. They seem to feel something of the
loathing toward it that the human species experiences. The bark of a dog
when he encounters a snake is different from that which he gives out on
any other occasion; it is a mingled note of alarm, inquiry, and disgust.
One day a tragedy was enacted a few yards from where I was sitting with
a book; two song-sparrows trying to defend their nest against a black
snake. The curious, interrogating note of a chicken who had suddenly
come upon the scene in his walk caused me to look up from my reading.
There were the sparrows, with wings raised in a way peculiarly
expressive of horror and dismay, rushing about a low clump of grass and
bushes. Then, looking more closely, I saw the glistening form of the
black snake and the quick movement of his head as he tried to seize the
birds. The sparrows darted about and through the grass and weeds, trying
to beat the snake off. Their tails and wings were spread, and, panting
with the heat and the desperate struggle, they presented a most singular
spectacle. They uttered no cry, not a sound escaped them; they were
plainly speechless with horror and dismay. Not once did they drop their
wings, and the peculiar expression of those uplifted palms, as it were,
I shall never forget. It occurred to me that perhaps here was a case of
attempted bird-charming on the part of the snake, so I looked on from
behind the fence. The birds charged the snake and harassed him from
every side, but were evidently under no spell save that of courage in
defending their nest. Every moment or two I could see the head and neck
of the serpent make a sweep at the birds, when the one struck at would
fall back, and the other would renew the assault from the rear. There
appeared to be little danger that the snake could strike and hold one of
the birds, though I trembled for them, they were so bold and approached
so near to the snake's head. Time and again he sprang at them, but
without success. How the poor things panted, and held up their wings
appealingly! Then the snake glided off to the near fence, barely
escaping the stone which I hurled at him. I found the nest rifled and
deranged; whether it had contained eggs or young I know not. The male
sparrow had cheered me many a day with his song, and I blamed myself for
not having rushed at once to the rescue, when the arch enemy was upon
him. There is probably little truth in the popular notion that snakes
charm birds. The black snake is the most subtle, alert, and devilish of
our snakes, and I have never seen him have any but young, helpless birds
in his mouth.
We have one parasitical bird, the cow-bird, so-called because it walks
about amid the grazing cattle and seizes the insects which their heavy
tread sets going, which is an enemy of most of the smaller birds. It
drops its egg in the nest of the song-sparrow, the social sparrow, the
snow-bird, the vireos, and the wood-warblers, and as a rule it is the
only egg in the nest that issues successfully. Either the eggs of
the rightful owner of the nest are not hatched, or else the young are
overridden and overreached by the parasite and perish prematurely.
Among the worst enemies of our birds are the so-called "collectors," men
who plunder nests and murder their owners in the name of science. Not
the genuine ornithologist, for no one is more careful of squandering
bird life than he; but the sham ornithologist, the man whose vanity or
affectation happens to take an ornithological turn. He is seized with an
itching for a collection of eggs and birds because it happens to be the
fashion, or because it gives him the air of a man of science. But in the
majority of cases the motive is a mercenary one; the collector expects
to sell these spoils of the groves and orchards. Robbing the nests
and killing birds becomes a business with him. He goes about it
systematically, and becomes expert in circumventing and slaying our
songsters. Every town of any considerable size is infested with one or
more of these bird highwaymen, and every nest in the country round about
that the wretches can lay hands on is harried. Their professional term
for a nest of eggs is "a clutch," a word that well expresses the work of
their grasping, murderous fingers. They clutch and destroy in the germ
the life and music of the woodlands. Certain of our natural history
journals are mainly organs of communication between these human weasels.
They record their exploits at nest-robbing and bird-slaying in their
columns. One collector tells with gusto how he "worked his way" through
an orchard, ransacking every tree, and leaving, as he believed, not one
nest behind him. He had better not be caught working his way through my
orchard. Another gloats over the number of Connecticut warblers--a rare
bird--he killed in one season in Massachusetts. Another tells how a
mocking-bird appeared in southern New England and was hunted down by
himself and friend, its eggs "clutched," and the bird killed. Who knows
how much the bird lovers of New England lost by that foul deed? The
progeny of the birds would probably have returned to Connecticut to
breed, and their progeny, or a part of them, the same, till in time the
famous songster would have become a regular visitant to New England.
In the same journal still another collector describes minutely how he
outwitted three humming birds and captured their nests and eggs,--a
clutch he was very proud of. A Massachusetts bird harrier boasts of his
clutch of the egg's of that dainty little warbler, the blue yellow-back.
One season he took two sets, the next five sets, the next four sets,
besides some single eggs, and the next season four sets, and says he
might have found more had he had more time. One season he took, in
about twenty days, three from one tree. I have heard of a collector who
boasted of having taken one hundred sets of the eggs of the marsh wren,
in a single day; of another, who took in the same time, thirty nests
of the yellow-breasted chat; and of still another, who claimed to have
taken one thousand sets of eggs of different birds in one season. A
large business has grown up under the influence of this collecting
craze. One dealer in eggs has those of over five hundred species. He
says that his business in 1883 was twice that of 1882; in 1884 it was
twice that of 1883, and so on. Collectors vie with each other in the
extent and variety of their cabinets. They not only obtain eggs in sets,
but aim to have a number of sets of the same bird so as to show all
possible variations. I hear of a private collection that contains twelve
sets of kingbirds' eggs, eight sets of house-wrens' eggs, four sets
mocking-birds' eggs, etc.; sets of eggs taken in low trees, high trees,
medium trees; spotted sets, dark sets, plain sets, and light sets of the
same species of bird. Many collections are made on this latter plan.
Thus are our birds hunted and cut off and all in the name of science; as
if science had not long ago finished with these birds. She has weighed
and measured, and dissected, and described them, and their nests, and
eggs, and placed them in her cabinet; and the interest of science and
of humanity now demands that this wholesale nest-robbing cease. These
incidents I have given above, it is true, are but drops in the bucket,
but the bucket would be more than full if we could get all the facts.
Where one man publishes his notes, hundreds, perhaps thousands, say
nothing, but go as silently about their nest-robbing as weasels.
It is true that the student of ornithology often feels compelled to take
bird-life. It is not an easy matter to "name all the birds without a
gun," though an opera-glass will often render identification entirely
certain, and leave the songster unharmed; but once having mastered the
birds, the true ornithologist leaves his gun at home. This view of the
case may not be agreeable to that desiccated mortal called the "closet
naturalist," but for my own part the closet naturalist is a person with
whom I have very little sympathy. He is about the most wearisome and
profitless creature in existence. With his piles of skins, his cases of
eggs, his laborious feather-splitting, and his outlandish nomenclature,
he is not only the enemy of the birds but the enemy of all those who
would know them rightly.
Not the collectors alone are to blame for the diminishing numbers of our
wild birds, but a large share of the responsibility rests upon quite a
different class of persons, namely, the milliners. False taste in dress
is as destructive to our feathered friends as are false aims in science.
It is said that the traffic in the skins of our brighter plumaged
birds, arising from their use by the milliners, reaches to hundreds of
thousands annually. I am told of one middleman who collected from the
shooters in one district, in four months, seventy thousand skins. It
is a barbarous taste that craves this kind of ornamentation. Think of a
woman or girl of real refinement appearing upon the street with her head
gear adorned with the scalps of our songsters!
It is probably true that the number of our birds destroyed by man is but
a small percentage of the number cut off by their natural enemies; but
it is to be remembered that those he destroys are in addition to those
thus cut off, and that it is this extra or artificial destruction that
disturbs the balance of nature. The operation of natural causes keeps
the birds in check, but the greed of the collectors and milliners tends
to their extinction.
I can pardon a man who wishes to make a collection of eggs and birds
for his own private use, if he will content himself with one or two
specimens of a kind, though he will find any collection much less
satisfactory and less valuable than he imagines, but the professional
nest-robber and skin collector should be put down, either by legislation
or with dogs and shotguns.
I have remarked above that there is probably very little truth in
the popular notion that snakes can "charm" birds. But two of my
correspondents have each furnished me with an incident from his own
experience, which seems to confirm the popular belief. One of them
writes from Georgia as follows:--
"Some twenty-eight years ago I was in Calaveras County, California,
engaged in cutting lumber. One day in coming out of the camp or cabin,
my attention was attracted to the curious action of a quail in the air,
which, instead of flying low and straight ahead as usual, was some fifty
feet high, flying in a circle, and uttering cries of distress. I watched
the bird and saw it gradually descend, and following with my eye in a
line from the bird to the ground saw a large snake with head erect and
some ten or twelve inches above the ground, and mouth wide open, and
as far as I could see, gazing intently on the quail (I was about thirty
feet from the snake). The quail gradually descended, its circles growing
smaller and smaller and all the time uttering cries of distress, until
its feet were within two or three inches of the mouth of the snake; when
I threw a stone, and though not hitting the snake, yet struck the ground
so near as to frighten him, and he gradually started off. The quail,
however, fell to the ground, apparently lifeless. I went forward and
picked it up and found it was thoroughly overcome with fright, its
little heart beating as if it would burst through the skin. After
holding it in my hand a few moments it flew away. I then tried to find
the snake, but could not. I am unable to say whether the snake was
venomous or belonged to the constricting family, like the black snake.
I can well recollect it was large and moved off rather slow. As I had
never seen anything of the kind before, it made a great impression on
my mind, and after the lapse of so long a time, the incident appears as
vivid to me as though it had occurred yesterday."
It is not probable that the snake had its mouth open; its darting tongue
may have given that impression.
The other incident comes to me from Vermont. "While returning from
church in 1876," says the writer, "as I was crossing a bridge... I
noticed a striped snake in the act of charming a song-sparrow. They were
both upon the sand beneath the bridge. The snake kept his head swaying
slowly from side to side, and darted his tongue out continually. The
bird, not over a foot away, was facing the snake, hopping from one foot
to the other, and uttering a dissatisfied little chirp. I watched them
till the snake seized the bird, having gradually drawn nearer. As he
seized it, I leaped over the side of the bridge; the snake glided away
and I took up the bird, which he had dropped. It was too frightened to
try to fly and I carried it nearly a mile before it flew from my open
hand."
If these observers are quite sure of what they saw, then undoubtedly
snakes have the power to draw birds within their grasp. I remember that
my mother told me that while gathering wild strawberries she had on one
occasion come upon a bird fluttering about the head of a snake as if
held there by a spell. On her appearance, the snake lowered its head and
made off, and the panting bird flew away. A neighbor of mine killed
a black snake which had swallowed a full-grown red squirrel, probably
captured by the same power of fascination.
THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS
The life of the birds, especially of our migratory song-birds, is a
series of adventures and of hair-breadth escapes by flood and field.
Very few of them probably die a natural death, or even live out half
their appointed days. The home instinct is strong in birds as it is in
most creatures; and I am convinced that every spring a large number
of those which have survived the Southern campaign return to their old
haunts to breed. A Connecticut farmer took me out under his porch, one
April day, and showed me a phoebe bird's nest six stories high. The same
bird had no doubt returned year after year; and as there was room for
only one nest upon her favorite shelf, she had each season reared a new
superstructure upon the old as a foundation. I have heard of a white
robin--an albino--that nested several years in succession in the suburbs
of a Maryland city. A sparrow with a very marked peculiarity of song I
have heard several seasons in my own locality. But the birds do not all
live to return to their old haunts: the bobolinks and starlings run a
gauntlet of fire from the Hudson to the Savannah, and the robins and
meadow-larks and other song-birds are shot by boys and pot-hunters in
great numbers,--to say nothing of their danger from hawks and owls. But
of those that do return, what perils beset their nests, even in the most
favored localities! The cabins of the early settlers, when the country
was swarming with hostile Indians, were not surrounded by such dangers.
The tender households of the birds are not only exposed to hostile
Indians in the shape of cats and collectors, but to numerous murderous
and bloodthirsty animals, against whom they have no defense but
concealment. They lead the darkest kind of pioneer life, even in our
gardens and orchards, and under the walls of our houses. Not a day or a
night passes, from the time the eggs are laid till the young are flown,
when the chances are not greatly in favor of the nest being rifled and
its contents devoured,--by owls, skunks, minks, and coons at night, and
by crows, jays, squirrels, weasels, snakes, and rats during the day.
Infancy, we say, is hedged about by many perils; but the infancy of
birds is cradled and pillowed in peril. An old Michigan settler told
me that the first six children that were born to him died; malaria and
teething invariably carried them off when they had reached a certain
age; but other children were born, the country improved, and by and by
the babies weathered the critical period and the next six lived and grew
up. The birds, too, would no doubt persevere six times and twice six
times, if the season were long enough, and finally rear their family,
but the waning summer cuts them short, and but a few species have the
heart and strength to make even the third trial.
The first nest-builders in spring, like the first settlers near hostile
tribes, suffer the most casualties. A large portion of the nests of
April and May are destroyed; their enemies have been many months without
eggs and their appetites are keen for them. It is a time, too, when
other food is scarce, and the crows and squirrels are hard put. But the
second nests of June, and still more the nests of July and August, are
seldom molested. It is rarely that the nest of the goldfinch or the
cedar-bird is harried.
My neighborhood on the Hudson is perhaps exceptionally unfavorable as
a breeding haunt for birds, owing to the abundance of fish-crows and
of red squirrels; and the season of which this chapter is mainly a
chronicle, the season of 1881, seems to have been a black-letter one
even for this place, for at least nine nests out of every ten that I
observed during that spring and summer failed of their proper issue.
From the first nest I noted, which was that of a bluebird,--built
(very imprudently I thought at the time) in a squirrel-hole in a decayed
apple-tree, about the last of April, and which came to naught, even
the mother-bird, I suspect, perishing by a violent death,--to the last,
which was that of a snow-bird, observed in August, among the Catskills,
deftly concealed in a mossy bank by the side of a road that skirted a
wood, where the tall thimble blackberries grew in abundance, from which
the last young one was taken, when it was about half grown, by some
nocturnal walker or daylight prowler, some untoward fate seemed hovering
about them. It was a season of calamities, of violent deaths, of pillage
and massacre, among our feathered neighbors. For the first time I
noticed that the orioles were not safe in their strong, pendent nests.
Three broods were started in the apple-trees, only a few yards from
the house, where, for previous seasons, the birds had nested without
molestation; but this time the young were all destroyed when about half
grown. Their chirping and chattering, which was so noticeable one day,
suddenly ceased the next. The nests were probably plundered at night,
and doubtless by the little red screech-owl, which I know is a denizen
of these old orchards, living in the deeper cavities of the trees. The
owl could alight on the top of the nest, and easily thrust his murderous
claw down into its long pocket and seize the young and draw them forth.
The tragedy of one of the nests was heightened, or at least made more
palpable, by one of the half-fledged birds, either in its attempt to
escape or while in the clutches of the enemy, being caught and entangled
in one of the horse-hairs by which the nest was stayed and held to the
limb above. There it hung bruised and dead, gibbeted to its own cradle.
This nest was the theatre of another little tragedy later in the season.
Some time in August a bluebird, indulging its propensity to peep and
pry into holes and crevices, alighted upon it and probably inspected the
interior; but by some unlucky move it got its wings entangled in this
same fatal horse-hair. Its efforts to free itself appeared only to
result in its being more securely and hopelessly bound; and there it
perished; and there its form, dried and embalmed by the summer heats,
was yet hanging in September, the outspread wings and plumage showing
nearly as bright as in life.
A correspondent writes me that one of his orioles got entangled in a
cord while building her nest, and that though by the aid of a ladder
he reached and liberated her, she died soon afterward. He also found
a "chippie" (called also "hair bird") suspended from a branch by a
horse-hair, beneath a partly constructed nest. I heard of a cedar-bird
caught and destroyed in the same way, and of two young bluebirds,
around whose legs a horse-hair had become so tightly wound that the legs
withered up and dropped off. The birds became fledged, and left the nest
with the others. Such tragedies are probably quite common.
Before the advent of civilization in this country, the oriole probably
built a much deeper nest than it usually does at present. When now it
builds in remote trees and along the borders of the woods, its nest,
I have noticed, is long and gourd-shaped; but in orchards and near
dwellings it is only a deep cup or pouch. It shortens it up in
proportion as the danger lessens. Probably a succession of disastrous
years, like the one under review, would cause it to lengthen it again
beyond the reach of owl's talons or jay-bird's beak.
The first song-sparrow's nest I observed in the spring of 1881 was in
the field under a fragment of a board, the board being raised from the
ground a couple of inches by two poles. It had its full complement of
eggs, and probably sent forth a brood of young birds, though as to this
I cannot speak positively, as I neglected to observe it further. It was
well sheltered and concealed, and was not easily come at by any of its
natural enemies, save snakes and weasels. But concealment often avails
little. In May, a song-sparrow, that had evidently met with disaster
earlier in the season, built its nest in a thick mass of woodbine
against the side of my house, about fifteen feet from the ground.
Perhaps it took the hint from its cousin, the English sparrow. The nest
was admirably placed, protected from the storms by the overhanging
eaves and from all eyes by the thick screen of leaves. Only by patiently
watching the suspicious bird, as she lingered near with food in her
beak, did I discover its whereabouts. That brood is safe, I thought,
beyond doubt. But it was not; the nest was pillaged one night, either
by an owl, or else by a rat that had climbed into the vine, seeking
an entrance to the house. The mother-bird, after reflecting upon her
ill-luck about a week, seemed to resolve to try a different system of
tactics and to throw all appearances of concealment aside. She built a
nest few yards from the house beside the drive, upon a smooth piece
of greensward. There was not a weed or a shrub or anything whatever to
conceal it or mark its site. The structure was completed and incubation
had begun before I discovered what was going on. "Well, well," I said,
looking down upon the bird almost at my feet, "this is going to the
other extreme indeed; now, the cats will have you." The desperate little
bird sat there day after day, looking like a brown leaf pressed down in
the short green grass. As the weather grew hot, her position became very
trying. It was no longer a question of keeping the eggs warm, but of
keeping them from roasting. The sun had no mercy on her, and she fairly
panted in the middle of the day. In such an emergency the male robin
has been known to perch above the sitting female and shade her with his
outstretched wings. But in this case there was no perch for the male
bird, had he been disposed to make a sunshade of himself. I thought to
lend a hand in this direction myself, and so stuck a leafy twig beside
the nest. This was probably an unwise interference; it guided disaster
to the spot; the nest was broken up, and the mother-bird was probably
caught, as I never saw her afterward.