"Everywhere the blue sky belongs to them and is their appointed
rest, and their native country, and their own natural home
which they enter unannounced as lords that are certainly
expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival."
The return of the birds to their real home in the North, where they
build their nests and rear their young, is regarded by all genuine
lovers of earth's messengers of gladness and gayety as one of the most
interesting and poetical of annual occurrences. The naturalist, who
notes the very day of each arrival, in order that he may verify former
observation or add to his material gathered for a new work, does not
necessarily anticipate with greater pleasure this event than do many
whose lives are brightened by the coming of the friends of their youth,
who alone of early companions do not change. First of all--and ever the
same delightful warbler--the Bluebird, who, in 1895, did not appear at
all in many localities, though here in considerable numbers last year,
betrays himself. "Did he come down out of the heaven on that bright
March morning when he told us so softly and plaintively that, if we
pleased, spring had come?" Sometimes he is here a little earlier, and
must keep his courage up until the cold snap is over and the snow is
gone. Not long after the Bluebird, comes the Robin, sometimes in March,
but in most of the northern states April is the month of his arrival.
With his first utterance the spell of winter is broken, and the
remembrance of it afar off. Then appears the Woodpecker in great
variety, the Flicker usually arriving first. He is always somebody's old
favorite, "announcing his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from
the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence--a thoroughly
melodious April sound."
Few perhaps reflect upon the difficulties encountered by the birds
themselves in their returning migrations. A voyager sometimes meets
with many of our common birds far out at sea. Such wanderers, it is
said, when suddenly overtaken by a fog, completely lose their sense of
direction and become hopelessly lost. Humming birds, those delicately
organized, glittering gems, are among the most common of the land
species seen at sea.
The present season has been quite favorable to the protection of birds.
A very competent observer says that not all of the birds migrated this
winter. He recently visited a farm less than an hour's ride from
Chicago, where he found the old place, as he relates it, "chucked full
of Robins, Blackbirds, and Woodpeckers," and others unknown to him.
From this he inferred they would have been in Florida had indications
predicted a severe winter. The trees of the south parks of Chicago,
and those in suburban places, have had, darting through their branches
during the months of December and January, nearly as many members of the
Woodpecker tribe as were found there during the mating season in May
last.
Alas, that the Robin will visit us in diminished numbers in the
approaching spring. He has not been so common for a year or two as
he was formerly, for the reason that the Robins died by thousands of
starvation, owing to the freezing of their food supply in Tennessee
during the protracted cold weather in the winter of 1895. It is indeed
sad that this good Samaritan among birds should be defenseless against
the severity of Nature, the common mother of us all. Nevertheless the
return of the birds, in myriads or in single pairs, will be welcomed
more and more, year by year, as intelligent love and appreciation of
them shall possess the popular mind.
[Illustration: BLACK TERN.
Mother and Young with Eggs.]