a brood of young in an apple-tree, only a few yards from the house; but
during this season disaster overtook them also. The nest was completed,
the eggs laid, and incubation had begun, when, one morning about
sunrise, I heard cries of distress and alarm proceed from the old
apple-tree. Looking out of the window I saw a crow, which I knew to be a
fish-crow, perched upon the edge of the nest, hastily bolting the eggs.
The parent birds, usually so ready for the attack, seemed over-come
with grief and alarm. They fluttered about in the most helpless and
bewildered manner, and it was not till the robber fled on my approach
that they recovered themselves and charged upon him. The crow scurried
away with upturned, threatening head, the furious kingbirds fairly upon
his back. The pair lingered around their desecrated nest for several
days, almost silent, and saddened by their loss, and then disappeared.
They probably made another trial elsewhere.
The fish-crow only fishes when it has destroyed all the eggs and young
birds it can find. It is the most despicable thief and robber among
our feathered creatures. From May to August, it is gorged with the
fledglings of the nest. It is fortunate that its range is so limited.
In size it is smaller than the common crow, and is a much less noble
and dignified bird. Its caw is weak and feminine--a sort of split and
abortive caw, that stamps it the sneak-thief it is. This crow is
common farther south, but is not found in this State, so far as I have
observed, except in the valley of the Hudson.
One season a pair of them built a nest in a Norway Spruce that stood
amid a dense growth of other ornamental trees near a large unoccupied
house. They sat down amid plenty. The wolf established himself in the
fold. The many birds--robins, thrushes, finches, vireos, pewees--that
seek the vicinity of dwellings (especially of these large country
residences with their many trees and park-like grounds), for the greater
safety of their eggs and young, were the easy and convenient victims
of these robbers. They plundered right and left, and were not disturbed
till their young were nearly fledged, when some boys, who had long
before marked them as their prize, rifled the nest.
The song-birds nearly all build low; their cradle is not upon the
tree-top. It is only birds of prey that fear danger from below more than
from above, and that seek the higher branches for their nests. A line
five feet from the ground would run above more than half the nests, and
one ten feet would bound more than three fourths of them. It is only
the oriole and the wood pewee that, as a rule, go higher than this. The
crows and jays and other enemies of the birds have learned to explore
this belt pretty thoroughly. But the leaves and the protective coloring
of most nests baffle them as effectually, no doubt as they do the
professional oölogist. The nest of the red-eyed vireo is one of the most
artfully placed in the wood. It is just beyond the point where the eye
naturally pauses in its search; namely, on the extreme end of the lowest
branch of the tree, usually four or five feet from the ground. One looks
up and down through the tree,--shoots his eye-beams into it as he might
discharge his gun at some game hidden there, but the drooping tip of
that low horizontal branch--who would think of pointing his piece just
there? If a crow or other marauder were to alight upon the branch or
upon those above it, the nest would be screened from him by the large
leaf that usually forms a canopy immediately above it. The nest-hunter
standing at the foot of the tree and looking straight before him, might
discover it easily, were it not for its soft, neutral gray tint which
blends so thoroughly with the trunks and branches of trees. Indeed,
I think there is no nest in the woods--no arboreal nest--so well
concealed. The last one I saw was a pendent from the end of a low branch
of a maple, that nearly grazed the clapboards of an unused hay-barn in
a remote backwoods clearing. I peeped through a crack and saw the old
birds feed the nearly fledged young within a few inches of my face. And
yet the cow-bird finds this nest and drops her parasitical egg in
it. Her tactics in this as in other cases are probably to watch the
movements of the parent bird. She may often be seen searching anxiously
through the trees or bushes for a suitable nest, yet she may still
oftener be seen perched upon some good point of observation watching
the birds as they come and go about her. There is no doubt that, in many
cases, the cow-bird makes room for her own illegitimate egg in the nest
by removing one of the bird's own. When the cow-bird finds two or more
eggs in a nest in which she wishes to deposit her own, she will remove
one of them. I found a sparrow's nest with two sparrow's eggs and one
cow-bird's egg, another egg lying a foot or so below it on the ground.
I replaced the ejected egg, and the next day found it again removed, and
another cow-bird's egg in its place; I put it back the second time, when
it was again ejected, or destroyed, for I failed to find it anywhere.
Very alert and sensitive birds like the warblers often bury the strange
egg beneath a second nest built on top of the old. A lady, living in the
suburbs of an eastern city, one morning heard cries of distress from a
pair of house-wrens that had a nest in a honeysuckle on her front porch.
On looking out of the window, she beheld this little comedy--comedy from
her point of view, but no doubt grim-tragedy from the point of view
of the wrens; a cow-bird with a wren's egg in its beak running rapidly
along the walk with the outraged wrens forming a procession behind it,
screaming, scolding, and gesticulating as only these voluble little
birds can. The cow-bird had probably been surprised in the act of
violating the nest, and the wrens were giving her a piece of theirs
minds.
Every cow-bird is reared at the expense of two or more song-birds.
For every one of these dusky little pedestrians there amid the grazing
cattle there are two more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less.
It is a big price to pay--two larks for a bunting-two sovereigns for
a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate occasionally to
contradict herself in just this way. The young of the cow-bird is
disproportionately large and aggressive, one might say hoggish.
When disturbed it will clasp the nest and scream, and snap its beak
threateningly. One hatched out in a song-sparrow's nest which was under
my observation, and would soon have overridden and overborne the young
sparrow, which came out of the shell a few hours later, had I not
interfered from time to time and lent the young sparrow a helping hand.
Every day I would visit the nest and take the sparrow out from under the
pot-bellied interloper and place it on top so that presently it was able
to hold its own against its enemy. Both birds became fledged and left
the nest about the same time. Whether the race was an even one after
that, I know not.
I noted but two warblers' nests during that season, one of the
black-throated blue-back and one of the redstart,--the latter built in
an apple-tree but a few yards from a little rustic summer-house where
I idle away many summer days. The lively little birds, darting and
flashing about, attracted my attention for a week before I discovered
their nest. They probably built it by working early in the morning,
before I appeared upon the scene, as I never saw them with material in
their beaks. Guessing from their movements that the nest was in a large
maple that stood near by, I climbed the tree and explored it thoroughly,
looking especially in the forks of the branches, as the authorities say
these birds build in a fork. But no nest could I find. Indeed, how can
one by searching find a bird's nest? I overshot the mark; the nest was
much nearer me, almost under my very nose, and I discovered it, not by
searching but by a casual glance of the eye, while thinking of other
matters. The bird was just settling upon it as I looked up from my book
and caught her in the act. The nest was built near the end of a long,
knotty, horizontal branch of an apple-tree, but effectually hidden by
the grouping of the leaves; it had three eggs, one of which proved to be
barren. The two young birds grew apace, and were out of the nest early
in the second week; but something caught one of them the first night.
The other probably grew to maturity, as it disappeared from the vicinity
with its parents after some days.
The blue-back's nest was scarcely a foot from the ground, in a little
bush situated in a low, dense wood of hemlock and beech and maple,
amid the Catskills,--a deep, massive, elaborate structure, in which the
sitting bird sank till her beak and tail alone were visible above the
brim. It was a misty, chilly day when I chanced to find the nest, and
the mother-bird knew instinctively that it was not prudent to leave her
four half incubated eggs uncovered and exposed for a moment. When I sat
down near the nest she grew very uneasy, and after trying in vain
to decoy me away by suddenly dropping from the branches and dragging
herself over the ground as if mortally wounded, she approached and
timidly and half doubtingly covered her eggs within two yards of where
I sat. I disturbed her several times to note her ways. There came to be
something almost appealing in her looks and manner, and she would keep
her place on her precious eggs till my outstretched hand was within a
few feet of her. Finally, I covered the cavity of the nest with a dry
leaf. This she did not remove with her beak, but thrust her head deftly
beneath it and shook it off upon the ground. Many of her sympathizing
neighbors, attracted by her alarm note, came and had a peep at the
intruder and then flew away, but the male bird did not appear upon the
scene. The final history of this nest I am unable to give, as I did not
again visit it till late in the season, when, of course, it was empty.
Years pass without my finding a brown-thrasher's nest; it is not a nest
you are likely to stumble upon in your walk; it is hidden as a miser
hides his gold, and watched as jealously. The male pours out his rich
and triumphant song from the tallest tree he can find, and fairly
challenges you to come and look for his treasures in his vicinity. But
you will not find them if you go. The nest is somewhere on the outer
circle of his song; he is never so imprudent as to take up his stand
very near it. The artists who draw those cosy little pictures of a
brooding mother-bird with the male perched but a yard away in full song,
do not copy from nature. The thrasher's nest I found thirty or forty
rods from the point where the male was wont to indulge in his brilliant
recitative. It was in an open field under a low ground-juniper. My dog
disturbed the sitting bird as I was passing near. The nest could be
seen only by lifting up and parting away the branches. All the arts of
concealment had been carefully studied. It was the last place you would
think of looking, and, if you did look, nothing was visible but the
dense green circle of the low-spreading juniper. When you approached,
the bird would keep her place till you had begun to stir the branches,
when she would start out, and, just skimming the ground, make a bright
brown line to the near fence and bushes. I confidently expected that
this nest would escape molestation, but it did not. Its discovery by
myself and dog probably opened the door for ill luck, as one day, not
long afterward, when I peeped in upon it, it was empty. The proud song
of the male had ceased from his accustomed tree, and the pair were seen
no more in that vicinity.
The phoebe-bird is a wise architect, and perhaps enjoys as great an
immunity from danger, both in its person and its nest, as any other
bird. Its modest, ashen-gray suit is the color of the rocks where it
builds, and the moss of which it makes such free use gives to its nest
the look of a natural growth or accretion. But when it comes into the
barn or under the shed to build, as it so frequently does, the moss is
rather out of place. Doubtless in time the bird will take the hint, and
when she builds in such places will leave the moss out. I noted but two
nests, the summer I am speaking of: one, in a barn, failed of issue, on
account of the rats, I suspect, though the little owl may have been the
depredator; the other, in the woods, sent forth three young. This latter
nest was most charmingly and ingeniously placed. I discovered it while
in quest of pond-lilies, in a long, deep level stretch of water in the
woods. A large tree had blown over at the edge of the water, and its
dense mass of up-turned roots, with the black, peaty soil filling the
interstices, was like the fragment of a wall several feet high, rising
from the edge of the languid current. In a niche in this earthy wall,
and visible and accessible only from the water, a phoebe had built her
nest, and reared her brood. I paddled my boat up and came alongside
prepared to take the family aboard. The young, nearly ready to fly, were
quite undisturbed by my presence, having probably been assured that no
danger need be apprehended from that side. It was not a likely place for
minks, or they would not have been so secure.
I noted but one nest of the wood pewee, and that, too, like so many
other nests, failed of issue. It was saddled upon a small dry limb of a
plane-tree that stood by the roadside, about forty feet from the ground.
Every day for nearly a week, as I passed by I saw the sitting bird upon
the nest. Then one morning she was not in her place, and on examination
the nest proved to be empty--robbed, I had no doubt, by the red
squirrels, as they were very abundant in its vicinity, and appeared to
make a clean sweep of every nest. The wood pewee builds an exquisite
nest, shaped and finished as if cast in a mould. It is modeled
without and within with equal neatness and art, like the nest of the
humming-bird and the little gray gnat-catcher. The material is much
more refractory than that used by either of these birds, being, in the
present case, dry, fine cedar twigs; but these were bound into a shape
as rounded and compact as could be moulded out of the most plastic
material. Indeed, the nest of this bird looks precisely like a large,
lichen-covered, cup-shaped excrescence of the limb upon which it is
placed. And the bird, while sitting, seems entirely at ease. Most birds
seem to make very hard work of incubation. It is a kind of martyrdom
which appears to tax all their powers of endurance. They have such a
fixed, rigid, predetermined look, pressed down into the nest and as
motionless as if made of cast-iron. But the wood pewee is an exception.
She is largely visible above the rim of the nest. Her attitude is easy
and graceful; she moves her head this way and that, and seems to take
note of whatever goes on about her; and if her neighbor were to drop in
for a little social chat, she could doubtless do her part. In fact,
she makes light and easy work of what, to most other birds, is such a
serious and engrossing matter. If it does not look like play with her,
it at least looks like leisure and quiet contemplation.
There is no nest-builder that suffers more from crows and squirrels
and other enemies than the wood-thrush. It builds as openly and
unsuspiciously as if it thought the whole world as honest as itself.
Its favorite place is the fork of a sapling, eight or ten feet from
the ground, where it falls an easy prey to every nest-robber that comes
prowling through the woods and groves. It is not a bird that skulks and
hides, like the cat-bird, the brown-thrasher, the chat, or the cheewink,
and its nest is not concealed with the same art as theirs. Our thrushes
are all frank, open-mannered birds; but the veery and the hermit build
upon the ground, where they at least escape the crows, owls, and jays,
and stand a better chance to be overlooked, by the red squirrel and
weasel also; while the robin seeks the protection of dwellings and
out-buildings. For years I have not known the nest of a wood-thrush
to succeed. During the season referred to I observed but two, both
apparently a second attempt, as the season was well advanced, and both
failures. In one case, the nest was placed in a branch that an apple
tree, standing near a dwelling, held out over the highway. The structure
was barely ten feet above the middle of the road, and would just escape
a passing load of hay. It was made conspicuous by the use of a large
fragment of newspaper in its foundation--an unsafe material to build
upon in most cases. Whatever else the press may guard, this particular
newspaper did not guard this nest from harm. It saw the egg and probably
the chick, but not the fledgeling. A murderous deed was committed
above the public highway, but whether in the open day or under cover
of darkness I have no means of knowing. The frisky red squirrel was
doubtless the culprit. The other nest was in a maple sapling, within
a few yards of the little rustic summer-house already referred to. The
first attempt of the season, I suspect, had failed in a more secluded
place under the hill; so the pair had come up nearer the house for
protection. The male sang in the trees near by for several days before
I chanced to see the nest. The very morning, I think, it was finished,
I saw a red squirrel exploring a tree but a few yards away; he probably
knew what the singing meant as well as I did. I did not see the inside
of the nest, for it was almost instantly deserted, the female having
probably laid a single egg, which the squirrel had devoured.
If I were a bird, in building my nest I should follow the example of the
bobolink, placing it in the midst of a broad meadow, where there was no
spear of grass, or flower or growth unlike another to mark its site. I
judge that the bobolink escapes the dangers to which I have adverted
as few or no other birds do. Unless the mowers come along at an earlier
date than she has anticipated, that is, before July lst, or a skunk goes
nosing through the grass, which is unusual, she is as safe as bird well
can be in the great open of nature. She selects the most monotonous and
uniform place she can find amid the daisies or the timothy and clover,
and places her simple structure upon the ground in the midst of it.
There is no concealment, except as the great conceals the little, as
the desert conceals the pebble, as the myriad conceals the unit. You
may find the nest once, if your course chances to lead you across it
and your eye is quick enough to note the silent brown bird as she darts
quickly away; but step three paces in the wrong direction, and your
search will probably be fruitless. My friend and I found a nest by
accident one day, and then lost it again one minute afterward. I moved
away a few yards to be sure of the mother-bird, charging my friend not
to stir from his tracks. When I returned, he had moved two paces, he
said (he had really moved four), and we spent a half hour stooping
over the daisies and the buttercups, looking for the lost clew. We
grew desperate, and fairly felt the ground all over with our hands, but
without avail. I marked the spot with a bush, and came the next day, and
with the bush as a centre, moved about it in slowly increasing circles,
covering, I thought, nearly every inch of ground with my feet, and
laying hold of it with all the visual power that I could command, till
my patience was exhausted, and I gave up, baffled. I began to doubt
the ability of the parent birds themselves to find it, and so secreted
myself and watched. After much delay, the male bird appeared with food
in his beak, and satisfying himself that the coast was clear, dropped
into the grass which I had trodden down in my search. Fastening my eye
upon a particular meadow-lily, I walked straight to the spot, bent down,
and gazed long and intently into the grass. Finally my eye separated the
nest and its young from its surroundings. My foot had barely missed them
in my search, but by how much they had escaped my eye I could not tell.
Probably not by distance at all, but simply by unrecognition. They were
virtually invisible. The dark gray and yellowish brown dry grass and
stubble of the meadow-bottom were exactly copied in the color of the
half-fledged young. More than that, they hugged the nest so closely and
formed such a compact mass, that though there were five of them, they
preserved the unit of expression,--no single head or form was defined;
they were one, and that one was without shape or color, and
not separable, except by closest scrutiny, from the one of the
meadow-bottom. That nest prospered, as bobolinks' nests doubtless
generally do; for, notwithstanding the enormous slaughter of the birds
during their fall migrations by Southern sportsmen, the bobolink
appears to hold its own, and its music does not diminish in our Northern
meadows.
Birds with whom the struggle for life is the sharpest seem to be more
prolific than those whose nest and young are exposed to fewer dangers.
The robin, the sparrow, the pewee, etc., will rear, or make the attempt
to rear, two and sometimes three broods in a season; but the bobolink,
the oriole, the kingbird, the goldfinch, the cedar-bird, the birds of
prey, and the woodpeckers, that build in safe retreats, in the trunks
of trees, have usually but a single brood. If the boblink reared two
broods, our meadows would swarm with them.
I noted three nests of the cedar-bird in August in a single orchard,
all productive, but all with one or more unfruitful eggs in them. The
cedar-bird is the most silent of our birds having but a single fine
note, so far as I have observed, but its manners are very expressive at
times. No bird known to me is capable of expressing so much silent alarm
while on the nest as this bird. As you ascend the tree and draw near it,
it depresses its plumage and crest, stretches up its neck, and becomes
the very picture of fear. Other birds, under like circumstances, hardly
change their expression at all till they launch into the air, when by
their voice they express anger rather than alarm.
I have referred to the red squirrel as a destroyer of the eggs and young
of birds. I think the mischief it does in this respect can hardly be
over estimated. Nearly all birds look upon it as their enemy, and attack
and annoy it when it appears near their breeding haunts. Thus, I have
seen the pewee, the cuckoo, the robin, and the wood-thrush pursuing it
with angry voice and gestures. A friend of mine saw a pair of robins
attack one in the top of a tall tree so vigorously that they caused it
to lose its hold, when it fell to the ground, and was so stunned by the
blow as to allow him to pick it up. If you wish the birds to breed and
thrive in your orchard and groves, kill every red squirrel that infests
the place; kill every weasel also. The weasel is a subtle and arch enemy
of the birds. It climbs trees and explores them with great ease and
nimbleness. I have seen it do so on several occasions. One day my
attention was arrested by the angry notes of a pair of brown-thrashers
that were flitting from bush to bush along an old stone row in a remote
field. Presently I saw what it was that excited them--three large red
weasels, or ermines coming along the stone wall, and leisurely and half
playfully exploring every tree that stood near it. They had probably
robbed the thrashers. They would go up the trees with great ease, and
glide serpent-like out upon the main branches. When they descended the
tree they were unable to come straight down, like a squirrel, but went
around it spirally. How boldly they thrust their heads out of the wall,
and eyed me and sniffed me, as I drew near,--their round, thin ears,
their prominent, glistening, bead-like eyes, and the curving, snake-like
motions of the head and neck being very noticeable. They looked like
blood-suckers and egg-suckers. They suggested something extremely
remorseless and cruel. One could understand the alarm of the rats when
they discover one of these fearless, subtle, and circumventing creatures
threading their holes. To flee must be like trying to escape death
itself. I was one day standing in the woods upon a flat stone, in what
at certain seasons was the bed of a stream, when one of these weasels
came undulating along and ran under the stone upon which I was standing.
As I remained motionless, he thrust his wedge-shaped head, and turned it
back above the stone as if half in mind to seize my foot; then he drew
back, and presently went his way. These weasels often hunt in packs like
the British stoat. When I was a boy, my father one day armed me with
an old musket and sent me to shoot chipmunks around the corn. While
watching the squirrels, a troop of weasels tried to cross a bar-way
where I sat, and were so bent on doing it that I fired at them,
boy-like, simply to thwart their purpose. One of the weasels was
disabled by my shot, but the troop was not discouraged, and, after
making several feints to cross, one of them seized the wounded one and
bore it over, and the pack disappeared in the wall on the other side.