The Clymer boys and girls, of Cloverdale, New England, belonged to a
Bird Club; they were proposed to membership by their neighbors, the
Walkers; in fact, the two families composed the club, and it partook of
the nature of a secret society.
All this was before the young people of Cloverdale knew of Clark
University, and Dr. Hodges’ “Ten to One Clubs,” wherein the members
pledged themselves to strive by all imaginable means—provided they were
also practical—to induce ten song birds to live and sing each year,
where only one was found the year before.
It was not necessary for the Cloverdale Club to put up carefully
constructed and artistic bird houses, or to hang cotton and the like
fine nest-building materials in choicest ornamental shade trees—not at
all. The English Sparrow had not found the village in those days; the
song birds were there, they knew all the good locations and just where
to find the best stuffs for constructing, furnishing and decorating
their homes; the work of the club was to find these homes, to study
them, with the ways and habits of their occupants, and to record their
discoveries in a big book labeled, “Things Not Generally Known.”
Many of the statements in this book were as broad and conclusive as
scientific dogmas, but the Cloverdale Club did not waste its time
searching for hundreds of instances to establish a single truth; one was
enough to be worthy of record; then, if some time the big book should be
given to the public, and some naturalist or investigator should choose
to confirm its statements by patient research, of course he would be
welcome so to do. The club had the distinction of discovery, that was
enough.
One interesting item recorded was this: “Birds—such as Orioles—who build
in conspicuous places, like to decorate the outside of their nests, and
in so doing are known to use manufactured materials and patterns.”
Strange statement, but of course thereby hangs a tale, and here it is.
At the spring house-cleaning time, Mrs. Clymer had the big, bright
sitting-room carpet taken out under one of the old colonial elms, at the
east of the house, to be cleaned. Mrs. Baltimore Oriole was up in the
elm that morning looking for a building spot that should be a bit
superior to the old one; she had spent three summers in that tree, was
familiar with the ways of the club, and habits of the family; like the
birds of Eugene Field’s boyhood, “she knew her business when she built
the old fire-hang-bird’s nest.”
No one was near when Mrs. Oriole fixed her eyes on the great red, green
and white ingrain carpet, and admired it; what she thought we know not,
but when she glanced at the hitching post under the tree, she instantly
descended from high, waving branch, to lowly square post, for exactly
covering the top of the same was a miniature carpet, a piece just six by
six inches which Patrick should have left indoors; not having done so,
he laid it on the inviting post for safe-keeping. That bit of wool
fabric was very valuable, it exactly filled a jog right by the
fireplace, in which, alas! ever after was seen an ugly piece of oil
cloth!
All summer long the club girls and boys gazed with wonder at the gay
nest in the elm, hanging like a solitary blossom among the leaves; their
speculations about it would fill a long chapter; but after the birds
were flown far to the south, and the leaves were gone, that nest was
finally cut down and told its story: thread by thread, just as pulled
from the bit of carpet, had been woven into a decoration for the outer
wall of that hanging house, till a rude reproduction of the original
tiny rug was under the feet of the birdlings, and over the heads of the
boys.
The club held a special exhibition of that nest, and at Thanksgiving
time one of the home-coming guests, who was an enthusiastic
kindergartener in the city, persuaded those generous nature students to
let her take their treasure to the poor children who seldom saw the
commonest kind of a hang-bird’s nest, and in that kindergarten it may be
seen today.
Another entry in the club book was this: “Birds building on the ground,
especially Vesper Sparrows, locate if possible where they have a fine
outlook, and give great attention to the arrangement of the front yard.”
This was discovered when Emily Clymer took her small brother Jo up in
the “side hill pasture” to see the finest mountain view in all the
county, and to find wild strawberries; while picking the berries they
found what was afterward called the juniper house; this was a Vesper
Sparrow’s home, roofed by green growing juniper.
Everybody knows that the prophet Elijah could never have sat and wept
under a New England juniper tree; no tree is less high or more nearly
horizontal than this; in fact, we call it a bush—where it is big—this
one was not larger than Emily Clymer’s two hands, and growing straight
out from descending ground, it formed a flat, green roof to the Sparrow
homestead; then, while my lady sat upon her nest, she looked out of her
tiny front door, across a gently sloping lawn, upon a whole range of
mountains. But most remarkable of all were the ornamental shade trees,
for just ten inches from the door, on either side, waved two big brakes,
symmetrical in size and shape; they gracefully arched across the
entrance, and were to the Sparrow domicile as the giant elms to the big
Clymer homestead. A sketch of this beautiful residence was made by a
member of the club—for cameras were not common in Cloverdale then—the
picture cannot be taken from the club book, but I think we can see it
all with our mind’s eye.
Here is one of the most astounding statements in that book of many
observations: “Some Phoebes are like the Golden Eagle in three
ways—first, they build on rocky and inaccessible cliffs, second, they
build in the same place for one hundred years; and, third, when the
young are big enough to fly, they know how, and just go up without any
practicing.” All this can be proved to any one who will go in nesting
time to a cliff overhanging the river just below Cloverdale, and who
will accept the testimony of some of the most reliable and respectable
men who have honored that place in the past century.
You must go in a boat and hug the shore; of course you need a member of
the club for guide; at an unexpected moment you are told to look over
your head, and there, glued to a shelf of rock so small as to be
entirely covered by the same, is the nest! No porch, or even doorstep,
beyond its wall—an overhanging roof of rock above, a shoreless expanse
of water below; now, if some one can keep the boat steady, and you have
the nerve to stand at the highest point of the bow, then by reaching
over your head you can gently touch some fuzzy bits of life in the nest.
Now you know the first and last of the facts recorded are correct: there
is the nest on the inaccessible cliff; there are the birds, and if they
did not fly up and out into the world the first time they stood on the
edge of the nest, would they not be in the dark water below, instead of
coming back to the old home for a hundred years?
The evidence of successive occupation for a century is this: The present
family of Walkers—father and children—have watched that nest, never
finding it empty a summer for twenty years. Old Deacon Walker,
grandfather of our club members—who, of course, initiated their
father—proved that Phoebes had hatched in the cliff nest during eighty
years previous, in this wise: After he had stood guard forty years, as
the deacon loved to relate, didn’t his Uncle Israel—who had been
spending just those two-score years in the South—come home one spring
evening, and the very next morning that ancient worthy demanded a boat
and a boy to take him under the old Phoebe’s nest on the ledge, which he
affirmed had never been without tenants during the forty years before he
left Cloverdale?
So there are the figures and facts showing how not only the nest, but
bird love and bird lore had come down through the century, and with such
an inheritance, no wonder the Walkers are on the best of terms with
feathered folk, or that they, with their confidential friends, the
Clymers, are still adding to their bird book things not generally known.
Elizabeth Reed Brownell.