The month of carnival of all the year,
When Nature lets the wild earth go its way,
And spend whole seasons on a single day.
The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;
The summer charily her reds doth lay
Like jewels on her costliest array;
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.
The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign
Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,
Or Empress wore, in Egypt’s ancient line,
October, feasting ’neath her dome of blue,
Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through
Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!
—Helen Hunt Jackson.
October comes, a woodman old,
Fenced with tough leather from the cold;
Round swings his sturdy axe, and lo!
A fir-branch falls at every blow.
—Walter Thornbury.
THE YELLOW-BELLIED FLYCATCHER.
(_Empidonax flaviventris._)
The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher with the kingbird, the phoebe and the wood
pewee belongs to a family of birds peculiar to America—the family
Tyrannidæ or the family of tyrants. No better name could be applied to
these birds when we take into consideration the enormous number of
insects, of all descriptions, that they capture and devour and their
method of doing it. They resemble the hawks in some respects. They are
at home only where there are trees, on the outer branches of which they
can perch and await a passing insect, and when one appears they “launch
forth into the air; there is a sharp, suggestive click of the broad bill
and, completing their aerial circle, they return to their perch and are
again en garde.”
In the tropics, the land of luxuriant vegetable growth, where the number
and kinds of insects seem almost innumerable, the larger number of the
three hundred and fifty known species are found. In the United States we
are favored with the visits, during the warmer months, of but
thirty-five species of these interesting and useful birds.
As we would naturally expect of birds of prey, whether hunters of
insects or of higher animal life, these birds are not usually social,
even with their own kind. They are also practically songless, a
characteristic which seems perfectly fitted to the habits of the
Flycatchers. Some of the species have sweet-voiced calls. This is the
case with the wood pewee, of which Trowbridge has so beautifully written
in the following verse:
“Long-drawn and clear its closes were—
As if the hand of Music through
The sombre robe of Silence drew
A thread of golden gossamer;
So pure a flute the fairy blew.
Like beggared princes of the wood,
In silver rags the birches stood;
The hemlocks, lordly counselors,
Were dumb; the sturdy servitors,
In beechen jackets patched and gray,
Seemed waiting spellbound all the day
That low, entrancing note to hear—
‘Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!’”
The Flycatchers are fitted both in the structure of their bills and in
the colors of their plumage for the kind of life that they live. The
bills are broad and flat, permitting an extensive gape. They live in
trees and are usually plainly colored, either a grayish or greenish
olive, being not so easily seen by the insects as if more brightly
arrayed. This characteristic is known as deceptive coloration.
The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher has its summer home in eastern North
America, breeding from Massachusetts northward to Labrador. In the
United States it frequents only the forests of the northern portion and
the mountain regions. In the winter it passes southward into Mexico and
Central America. Like all the Flycatchers of North America, the very
nature of its food necessitates extensive migrations.
Its generic name is very suggestive. It is Empidonax, from two Greek
words, meaning mosquito and a prince—Mosquito Prince!
Major Bendire says: “In the Adirondack mountains, where I have met with
it, it was observed only in primitive mixed and rather open woods, where
the ground was thickly strewn with decaying, moss-covered logs and
boles, and almost constantly shaded from the rays of the sun. The most
gloomy looking places, fairly reeking with moisture, where nearly every
inch of ground is covered with a luxuriant carpet of spagnum moss, into
which one sinks several inches at every step, regions swarming with
mosquitoes and black flies, are the localities that seem to constitute
their favorite summer haunts.” Surely the name Empidonax is most
appropriate.
[Illustration: YELLOW-BELLIED FLYCATCHER.
(Empidonax flaviventris).
About Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.]
The nest is usually constructed on upturned roots near the ground, or on
the ground deeply imbedded in the long mosses. A nest belonging to the
National Museum is thus described: “The primary foundation of the nest
was a layer of brown rootlets; upon this rested the bulk of the
structure, consisting of moss matted together with fine broken weed
stalks and other fragmentary material. The inner nest could be removed
entire from the outer wall, and was composed of a loosely woven but,
from its thickness, somewhat dense fabric of fine materials, consisting
mainly of the bleached stems of some slender sedge and the black and
shining rootlets of ferns, closely resembling horsehair. Between the two
sections of the structure and appearing only when they were separated,
was a scant layer of the glossy orange pedicels of a moss not a fragment
of which was elsewhere visible. The walls of the internal nest were
about one-half an inch in thickness and had doubtless been accomplished
with a view of protection from dampness.” The nests are sometimes made
of dried grasses interwoven with various mosses and lined with moss and
fine black wire-like roots. Again, the birds seem to have an eye for
color and will face the outside of the nest with fresh and bright green
moss. In every way the nest seems a large house for so small a bird.
To study this Flycatcher “one must seek the northern evergreen forests,
where, far from human habitations, its mournful notes blend with the
murmur of some icy brook tumbling over mossy stones or gushing beneath
the still mossier decayed logs that threaten to bar the way. Where all
is green and dark and cool, in some glen overarched by crowding spruces
and firs, birches and maples, there it is we find him and in the beds of
damp moss he skillfully conceals his nest.”