Produced by Don Kostuch
[Transcriber's notes]
This is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/birdsthateverych00doub
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly
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[End Transcriber's notes]
{cover}
BIRDS
Every Child Should Know
by Neltje Blanchan
{i}
BIRDS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW
{ii}
[Illustration]
Red-Eyed Vireo.
{iii}
BIRDS THAT EVERY
CHILD SHOULD KNOW
BY
NELTJE BLANCHAN
Author of
"Bird Neighbours,"
"Birds that Hunt and Are Hunted,"
"Nature's Garden," and
"How to Attract the Birds."
SIXTY-THREE PAGES OF
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM LIFE
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
{iv}
Copyright, 1907, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
_All rights reserved,
including that of translation into foreign languages, including the
Scandinavian._
{v}
PREFACE
If all his lessons were as joyful as learning to know the birds in the
fields and woods, there would be no
"...whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell
And shining morning face creeping like Snaile
Unwillingly to schoole."
Long before his nine o'clock headache appears, lessons have begun.
Nature herself is the teacher who rouses him from his bed with an
outburst of song under the window and sets his sleepy brain to
wondering whether it was a robin's clear, ringing call that startled
him from his dreams, or the chipping sparrow's wiry tremulo, or the
gushing little wren's tripping cadenza. Interest in the birds trains
the ear quite unconsciously. A keen, intelligent listener is rare,
even among grown-ups, but a child who is becoming acquainted with the
birds about him hears every sound and puzzles out its meaning with a
cleverness that amazes those with ears who hear not. He responds to
the first alarm note from the nesting blue birds in the orchard and
dashes out of the house to chase away a prowling cat. He knows from
{vi} afar the distress caws of a company of crows and away he goes to
be sure that their persecutor is a hawk. A faint tattoo in the woods
sends him climbing up a tall straight tree with the confident
expectation of finding a woodpecker's nest within the hole in its
side.
While training his ears, Nature is also training every muscle in his
body, sending him on long tramps across the fields in pursuit of a new
bird to be identified, making him run and jump fences and wade brooks
and climb trees with the zest that produces an appetite like a
saw-mill's and deep sleep at the close of a happy day.
When President Roosevelt was a boy he was far from strong, and his
anxious father and mother naturally encouraged every interest that he
showed in out-of-door pleasures. Among these, perhaps the keenest that
he had was in birds. He knew the haunts of every species within a wide
radius of his home and made a large collection of eggs and skins that
he presented to the Smithsonian Museum when he could no longer endure
the evidences of his "youthful indiscretion," as he termed the
collector's mania. But those bird hunts that had kept him happily
employed in the open air all day long, helped to make him the strong,
manly man he is, whose wonderful physical endurance is not the least
factor of his greatness. No one abhors the killing of birds and the
{vii} robbing of nests more than he; few men, not specialists, know so
much about bird life.
Nature, the best teacher of us all, trains the child's eyes through
study of the birds to quickness and precision, which are the first
requisites for all intelligent observation in every field of
knowledge. I know boys who can name a flock of ducks when they are
mere specks twinkling in their rapid rush across the autumn sky; and
girls who instantly recognise a goldfinch by its waving flight above
the garden. The white band across the end of the kingbird's tail leads
to his identification the minute some sharp young eyes perceive it. At
a considerable distance, a little girl I know distinguished a
white-eyed from a red-eyed vireo, not by the colour of the iris of
either bird's eye, but by the yellowish white bars on the white-eyed
vireo's wings which she had noticed at a glance. Another girl named
the yellow-billed cuckoo, almost hidden among the shrubbery, by the
white thumb-nail spots on the quills of his outspread tail where it
protruded for a second from a mass of leaves. A little urchin from the
New York City slums was the first to point out to his teacher, who had
lived twenty years on a farm, the faint reddish streaks on the breast
of a yellow warbler in Central Park. Many there are who have eyes and
see not.
What does the study of birds do for the {viii} imagination, that high
power possessed by humans alone, that lifts them upward step by step
into new realms of discovery and joy? If the thought of a tiny
hummingbird, a mere atom in the universe, migrating from New England
to Central America will not stimulate a child's imagination, then all
the tales of fairies and giants and beautiful princesses and wicked
witches will not cause his sluggish fancy to roam. Poetry and music,
too, would fail to stir it out of the deadly commonplace.
Interest in bird life exercises the sympathies. The child reflects
something of the joy of the oriole whose ecstasy of song from the elm
on the lawn tells the whereabouts of a dangling "cup of felt" with its
deeply hidden treasures. He takes to heart the tragedy of a robin's
mud-plastered nest in the apple tree that was washed apart by a storm,
and experiences something akin to remorse when he takes a mother bird
from the jaws of his pet cat. He listens for the return of the
bluebirds to the starch-box home he made for them on top of the grape
arbour and is strangely excited and happy that bleak day in March when
they re-appear. It is nature sympathy, the growth of the heart, not
nature study, the training of the brain, that does most for us.
Neltje Blanchan.
_Mill Neck_, 1906.
{ix}
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Our Robin Goodfellow and His Relations 3
Robin, Bluebird, Wood Thrush, Wilson's Thrush.
II. Some Neighbourly Acrobats 17
Chickadee, Nuthatches, Titmouse, Kinglets.
III. A Group of Lively Singers 31
Mockingbird, Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Wrens.
IV. The Warblers 51
Yellow Warbler, Black and White Creeping Warbler,
Ovenbird, Maryland Yellow-throat, Yellow-breasted Chat.
V. Another Strictly American Family 62
The Vireos.
VI. Birds Not of a Feather 77
Butcherbirds, Cedar Waxwing, Tanagers.
VII. The Swallows 91
Purple Martin, Barn Swallow, Cliff Swallow,
Tree Swallow, Bank Swallow.
VIII. The Sparrow Tribe 105
Purple Finch, English Sparrow, Goldfinch,
Vesper Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow,
White-throated Sparrow, Tree Sparrow,
Chippy, Field Sparrow, Junco, Song Sparrow,
Swamp Sparrow, Fox Sparrow,
Towhee, Cardinal, Rose-breasted Grosbeak,
Indigo Bunting, Snowflake.
{x}
IX. The Ill-assorted Blackbird Family 135
Bobolink, Cowbird, Red-wing,
Meadowlark, Orioles, Blackbirds.
X. Rascals We Must Admire 151
Crow, Blue Jay and Canada Jay.
XI. The Flycatchers 159
Kingbird, Crested Flycatcher, Phoebe,
Pewee, Least Flycatcher.
XII. Some Queer Relations 173
Nighthawk, Whip-poor-will, Chimney Swift, Hummingbird.
XIII. Non-union Carpenters 187
Our Five Common Woodpeckers.
XIV. Cuckoo and Kingfisher 203
XV. Day and Night Allies of the Farmer 211
Buzzards, Hawks, and Owls.
XVI. Whistler and Drummer 233
Bob-white and Ruffed Grouse.
XVII. Birds of the Shore and Marshes 245
Snipe, Sandpiper, Plover, Rails and Coots,
Bitterns and Herons.
XVIII. The Fastest Flyers 265
Gulls, Ducks, and Geese.
Index 275
{xi}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Red-eyed Vireo. Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
It is Only When he is a Baby that you
Could Guess our Robin is Really a Thrush.
(_A. R. Dugmore_) 8
Young Bluebirds Taking their First Walk.
(_A. R. Dugmore_) 9
Baby Wood Thrushes--Notice the Family
Resemblance Between them and the
Baby Robins and Bluebirds. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 12
A Wood Thrush Startled by the Click of the
Camera. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 13
The Chickadee at her Front Door. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 22
Young Nuthatches Learning their First Lesson in
Balancing on a Horizontal Bar. (_W. E. Carlin_) 23
The Noisy Contents of a Soap Box: a Family
of House Wrens. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 30
The Marsh Wren's Round Cradle Swung
Among the Rushes. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 31
{xii}
Like "Brer Rabbit" the Catbird is Usually
"Bred en Bawn in a Brier Patch." (_A. R. Dugmore_) 34
Another Tragedy of the Nests: What Villain
Ate the Catbird's Eggs? (_Verne Morton_) 35
"Mamma!" Young Mockingbird Calling for
Breakfast. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 50
All is Well with this Yellow Warbler's Nest.
(_G. C. Embody_) 51
Dinner for One: A Black-and-white Warbler
Feeding her Baby. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 51
The Oven-bird who Calls "Teacher, Teacher,
TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER!" (_William P. Hopkins_) 58
Oven-bird in her Cleverly Hidden Nest--
Some of the Leaves and Sticks Have Been
Pulled Away From the Front to Secure
her picture. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 59
Young Oven-birds on Day of Leaving Nest. (_A.R. Dugmore_) 59
A Red-eyed Vireo Baby in his Cradle. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 76
Out of It. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 76
Home of the Loggerhead Shrike with Plenty
of Convenient Hooks for this Butcher
Bird to Hang Meat On. (_R. H. Beehe_) 77
The Cedar Waxwing. (_W. P. Hopkins_) 84
{xiii}
The Gorgeous Scarlet Tanager, who Sang in
this Tree, Was Killed by a Sling Shot. The Nest
Was Deserted by his Terrified Mate. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 85
Young Barn Swallows Cradled Under the
Rafters. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 96
Baby Barn Swallows Learning to Walk a
Plank. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 97.
The Most Cheerful of Bird Neighbours: Song
Sparrows. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 116
A Baby Chippy and its Two Big Rose-breasted
Grosbeak Cousins . 116
A Chipping Sparrow Family: One Baby Satisfied, the
Next Nearly So, the Third Still Hungry. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 117
Cardinal. (_C. W. Beebe_) 134
That Dusky Rascal the Cowbird. (_C. W. Beebe_) 135
The Gorgeous Baltimore Oriole. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 146
How do you Suppose these Young Baltimore
Orioles Ever Packed themselves into this
Nest? (_A. R. Dugmore_) 147
Young Orchard Orioles. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 150
"There Were Three Crows Sat on a Tree." (_A. R. Dugmore_) 151
Blue Jay on her Nest. (_R. H. Beebe_) 158
{xiv}
Five Little Teasers Get No Dinner from
Mamma Blue Jay. (_Craig S. Thomas_) 159
Not Afraid of the Camera: Baby Blue Jays
Out for their First Airing. (_Craig S. Thomas_) 159
The Dashing Great Crested Flycatcher. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 162
Baby Kingbirds in an Apple Tree. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 163
Four Crested Flycatchers, who Need to Have
their Hair Brushed. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 164
Time for these Young Phoebes to Leave the
Nest. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 165
Young Phoebes on a Bridge Trestle. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 165
Least Flycatchers in a Rose Bush 176
Nighthawk Resting in the Sunlight. (_John Boyd_) 177
A Chimney Swift at Rest. (_C. W. Beebe_) 180
Hummingbird Pumping Food into her Babies'
Crops. (_Julian Burroughs_) 181
Twin Ruby-throats. (_Julian Burroughs_) 181
Our Little Friend Downy. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 192
The Red-headed Woodpecker. (_C. W. Beehe_) 193
The Sapsucker. (_G. C Embody_) 198
Baby Flickers Just Out of their Hole. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 199
{xv}
The Flicker. (_C. W. Beebe_) 206
Two Baby Cuckoos on the Rickety Bundle of
Sticks that by Courtesy we Call a Nest. (_Verne Morton_) 207
Waiting for Mamma and Fish. (_A. W. Anthony_) 210
Young Belted Kingfisher on his Favourite Snag.
(_A. W. Anthony_) 210
Kingfisher on the Look-out for a Dinner. (_A. W. Anthony_) 211
Turkey Buzzard: One of Nature's Best
Housecleaners. (_C. W. Beebe_) 226
The Beautiful Little Sparrow Hawk. (_C. W. Beebe_) 227
Father and Mother Barn Owls. (_Silas A. Lottridge_) 232
The Heavenly Twins: Young Barn Owls.
(_Silas A. Lottridge_) 233
A Little Screech Owl in the Sunlight Where
Only a Photographer Could Find him. (_C. W. Beehe_) 236
Mrs. White on her Nest while Bob Whistles
to her from the Wild Strawberry Patch. (_A. R. Dugmore_) 237
A Little Girl's Rare Pet. (_C. F. Hodge_) 242
The Drummer Drumming. (_C. F. Hodge_) 243
A Flock of Friendly Sandpipers and Turnstones
in Wading. (_Herbert K. Job_) 258
{xvi}
One Little Sandpiper. (_R. H. Beebe_) 259
The Coot. (_C. W. Beebe_) 259
The Little Green Heron, the Smallest and Most
Abundant Member of his Tribe. (_W. P. Hopkins_) 260
Half-grown Little Green Herons on Dress
Parade. (_John M. Schreck_) 261
Black-crowned Night Heron Rising from a
Morass. (_Alfred J. Might_) 268
Canada Geese. (_Geo. D. Bartlett_) . . 269
The Feather-lined Nest of a Wild Duck 272
Sea Gulls in the Wake of a Garbage Scow
Cleansing New York Harbour of Floating Refuse. 273
{3}
CHAPTER I
OUR ROBIN GOODFELLOW AND HIS RELATIONS:
American Robin
Bluebird
Wood Thrush
Wilson's Thrush
{4}
{5}
THE AMERICAN ROBIN
Called also: Red-breasted Thrush; Migratory Thrush; Robin Redbreast
It is only when he is a baby that you could guess our robin is really
a thrush, for then the dark speckles on his plump little
yellowish-white breast are prominent thrush-like markings, which
gradually fade, however, as he grows old enough to put on a brick-red
vest like his father's.
The European Cock Robin--a bird as familiar to you as our own, no
doubt, because it was he who was killed by the Sparrow with the bow
and arrow, you well remember, and it was he who covered the poor Babes
in the Wood with leaves--is much smaller than our robin, even smaller
than a sparrow, and he is not a thrush at all. But this hero of the
story books has a red breast, and the English colonists, who settled
this country, named our big, cheerful, lusty bird neighbour a robin,
simply because his red breast reminded them of the wee little bird at
home that they had loved when they were children.
When our American robin comes out of the {6} turquoise blue egg that
his devoted mother has warmed into life, he usually finds three or
four baby brothers and sisters huddled within the grassy cradle. In
April, both parents worked hard to prepare this home for them. Having
brought coarse grasses, roots, and a few leaves or weed stalks for the
foundation, and pellets of mud in their bills for the inner walls
(which they cleverly managed to smooth into a bowl shape without a
mason's trowel), and fine grasses for the lining of the nest, they
saddled it on to the limb of an old apple tree. Robins prefer
low-branching orchard or shade trees near our homes to the tall,
straight shafts of the forest. Some have the courage to build among
the vines or under the shelter of our piazzas. I know a pair of robins
that reared a brood in a little clipped bay tree in a tub next to a
front door, where people passed in and out continually. Doubtless very
many birds would be glad of the shelter of our comfortable homes for
theirs if they could only trust us. Is it not a shame that they
cannot? Robins, especially, need a roof over their heads. When they
foolishly saddle their nest on to an exposed limb of a tree, the first
heavy rain is likely to soften the mud walls, and wash apart the
heavy, bulky structure, when
"Down tumble babies and cradle and all."
{7}
It is wiser of them to fit the nest into the supporting crotch of a
tree, as many do, and wisest to choose the top of a piazza pillar,
where boys and girls and cats cannot climb to molest them, nor storms
dissolve their mud-walled nursery. There are far too many tragedies of
the nests after every heavy spring rain.
Suppose your appetite were so large that you were compelled to eat
more than your weight of food every day, and suppose you had three or
four brothers and sisters, just your own size, and just as ravenously
hungry. These are the conditions in every normal robin family, so you
can easily imagine how hard the father and mother birds must work to
keep their fledglings' crops filled. No wonder robins like to live
near our homes where the enriched land contains many fat grubs, and
the smooth lawns, that they run across so lightly, make hunting for
earth worms comparatively easy. It is estimated that about fourteen
feet of worms (if placed end to end) are drawn out of the ground daily
by a pair of robins with a nestful of babies to feed. When one of the
parents alights near its home, every child must have seen the little
heads, with wide-stretched, yellow bills, pop up suddenly like
Jacks-in-the-box. How rudely the greedy babies push and jostle one
another to get the most dinner, and how noisily they clamour for it!
Earth worms are the staff of {8} life to them just as bread is to
children, but robins destroy vast quantities of other worms and
insects more injurious to the farmers' crops, so that the strawberries
and cherries they take in June should not be grudged them.
A man of science, who devoted many hours of study to learn the great
variety of sounds made by common barnyard chickens in expressing their
entire range of feeling, from the egg shell to the axe, could
entertain an audience delightfully for an evening by imitating them.
Similar study applied to robins would reveal as surprisingly rich
results, but probably less funny. No bird that we have has so varied a
repertoire as Robin Goodfellow, and I do not believe that any boy or
girl alive could recognise him by every one of his calls and songs.
His softly warbled salute to the sunrise differs from his lovely
even-song just as widely as the rapturous melody of his courting days
differs from the more subdued, tranquil love song to his brooding
mate. Indignation, suspicion, fright, interrogation, peace of mind,
hate, caution to take flight--these and a host of other thoughts, are
expressed through his flexible voice.
[Illustration]
"It is only when he is a baby that you could guess our robin is really
a thrush."
[Illustration]
Young bluebirds taking their first walk.
{9}
Toward the end of June, you may see robins flying in flocks after
sun-down. Old males and young birds of the first brood scatter
themselves over the country by day to pick up the best living they
can, but at night they collect in large numbers at some favourite
roosting place. Oftentimes the weary mother birds are now raising
second broods. We like to believe that the fathers return from the
roosts at sun-up to help supply those insatiable babies with worms
throughout the long day.
After family cares are over for the year, robins moult, and then they
hide, mope, and keep silent for awhile. But in September, in a suit of
new feathers, they are feeling vigorous and cheerful again; and,
gathering in friendly flocks, they roam about the woodland borders to
feed on the dogwood, choke cherries, juniper berries, and other small
fruits. You see they change their diet with the season. By dropping
the undigested berry seeds far and wide, they plant great numbers of
trees and shrubs as they travel. Birds help to make the earth
beautiful. With them every day is Arbour Day.
It is a very dreary time when the last robin leaves us, and an
exceptionally cold winter when a few stragglers from the south-bound
flocks do not remain in some sheltered, sunny, woodland hollow.
THE BLUEBIRD
Is there any sign of spring quite so welcome as the glint of the first
bluebird unless it is his {10} softly whistled song? Before the farmer
begins to plough the wet earth, often while the snow is still on the
ground, this hardy little minstrel is making himself very much at home
in our orchards and gardens while waiting for a mate to arrive from
the South.
Now is the time to have ready on top of the grape arbour, or under the
eaves of the barn, or nailed up in the apple tree, or set up on poles,
the little one-roomed houses that bluebirds are only too happy to
occupy. More enjoyable neighbours it would be hard to find. Sparrows
will fight for the boxes, it is true, but if there are plenty to let,
and the sparrows are persistently driven off, the bluebirds, which are
a little larger though far less bold, quickly take possession. Birds
that come earliest in the season and feed on insects, before they have
time to multiply, are of far greater value in the field, orchard, and
garden than birds that delay their return until warm weather has
brought forth countless swarms of insects far beyond the control of
either bird or man. Many birds would be of even greater service than
they are if they received just a little encouragement to make their
homes nearer ours. They could save many more millions of dollars'
worth of crops for the farmers than they do if they were properly
protected while rearing their ever-hungry families. As two or even
three broods {11} of bluebirds may be raised in a box each spring, and
as insects are their most approved baby food, you see how much it is
to our interest to set up nurseries for them near our homes.
But when people are not thoughtful enough to provide them before the
first of March, the bluebirds hunt for a cavity in a fence rail, or a
hole in some old tree, preferably in the orchard, shortly after their
arrival, and proceed to line it with grass. From three to six pale
blue eggs are laid. At first the babies are blind, helpless, and
almost naked. Then they grow a suit of dark feathers with speckled,
thrush-like vests similar to their cousin's, the baby robin's; and it
is not until they are able to fly that the lovely deep blue shade
gradually appears on their grayish upper parts. Then their throat,
breast, and sides turn rusty red. While creatures are helpless, a prey
for any enemy to pounce upon, Nature does not dress them
conspicuously, you may be sure. Adult birds, that are able to look out
for themselves, may be very gaily dressed, but their children must
wear sombre clothes until they grow strong and wise.
Young bluebirds are far less wild and noisy than robins, but their
very sharp little claws discourage handling. These pointed hooks on
the ends of their toes help them to climb out of the tree hollow, that
is their natural home, into the big world that their presence makes so
cheerful.
{12}
As you might expect of creatures so heavenly in colour, the
disposition of bluebirds is particularly angelic. Gentleness and
amiability are expressed in their soft, musical voice. _Tru-al-ly,
tru-al-ly_, they sweetly assert when we can scarcely believe that
spring is here; and _tur-wee, tur-wee_ they softly call in autumn when
they go roaming through the country side in flocks of azure, or whirl
through Southern woods to feed on the waxy berries of the mistletoe.
THE WOOD THRUSH
_Called also: Song Thrush; Wood Robin; Bell Bird_
Much more shy and reserved than the social, democratic robin is his
cousin the wood thrush, whom, perhaps, you more frequently hear than
see. Not that he is a recluse, like the hermit thrush, who hides his
nest and lifts up his heavenly voice in deep, cool, forest solitudes;
nor is he even so shy as Wilson's thrush, who prefers to live in low,
wet, densely overgrown Northern woods. The wood thrush, as his name
implies, certainly likes the woodland, but very often he chooses to
stay close to our country and suburban homes or within city parks with
a more than half-hearted determination to be friendly.
[Illustration]
BABY WOOD THRUSHES
Notice the family resemblance between them and the baby robins and
bluebirds.
[Illustration]
A wood thrush startled by the click of the camera.
{13}
He is about two inches shorter than the robin. Above, his feathers are
a rich cinnamon brown, brightest on his head and shoulders and shading
into olive brown on his tail. His white throat and breast and sides
are heavily marked with heart-shaped marks of very dark brown. He has
a white eye ring.
_"Here am I"_ come his three clear, bell-like notes of
self-introduction. The quality of his music is delicious, rich,
penetrative, pure and vibrating like notes struck upon a harp. If you
don't already know this most neighbourly of the thrushes--as he is
also the largest and brightest and most heavily spotted of them all--
you will presently become acquainted with one of the finest songsters
in America. Wait until evening when he sings at his best.
_Nolee-a-e-o-lee-nolee-aeolee-lee!_ peals his song from the trees.
Love alone inspires his finest strains; but even in July, when bird
music is quite inferior to that of May and June, he is still in good
voice. A song so exquisite proves that the thrush comes near to being
a bird angel, very high in the scale of development, and far, far
beyond such low creatures as ducks and chickens.
_Pit-pit-pit_ you may hear sharply, excitedly jerked out of some
bird's throat, and you wonder if a note so disagreeable can really
come from the wonderful songster on the branch above your head. By
sharply striking two small stones {14} together you can closely
imitate this alarm call. Whom can he be scolding so severely? It is
yourself, of course, for without knowing it you have come nearer to
his low nest in the beech tree than he thinks quite safe. While
sitting, the mother bird is, however, quite tame. A photographer I
know placed his camera within four feet of a nest, changed the plates,
and clicked the shutter three times for as many pictures without
disturbing the gentle sitter who merely winked her eye at each chick.
Wood thrushes seem to delight in weaving bits of paper or rags into
their deep cradles which otherwise resemble the robins.' A nest in the
shrubbery near a bird-lover's home in New Jersey had many bits of
newspaper attached to its outer walls, but the most conspicuous strip
in front advertised in large letters "A House to be Let or Sold." The
original builders happily took the next lease, and another lot of
nervous, fidgety baby tenants came out of four light greenish-blue
eggs; but, as usual, they moved away to the woods, after ten days, to
join the choir invisible.
WILSON'S THRUSH
The veery, as the Wilson's thrush is called in New England, is far
more common there than {15} the wood thrush, whose range is more
southerly. During its spring and fall migrations only is it at all
common about the elms and maples that men have planted. Take a good
look at its tawny coat and lightly spotted cream buff breast before it
goes away to hide. Like Kipling's "cat that walked by himself," the
veery prefers the "wild, wet woods," and there its ringing, weird,
whistling monotone, that is so melodious without being a melody, seems
to come from you can't guess where. The singer keeps hidden in the
dense, dark undergrowth. It is as if two voices, an alto and a
soprano, were singing at the same time: _Whee-you, whee-you_:--the
familiar notes might come from a scythe being sharpened on a
whetstone, were the sound less musical than it is. The bird is too
wise to sing very near its well-hidden nest, which is placed either
directly on the damp ground or not far above it, and usually near
water. Throughout its life the veery seems to show a distrust of us
that, try as we may, few have ever overcome.
If you have thought that the thrush-like, cinnamon brown,
speckle-breasted bird, with a long twitching tail like a catbird's,
and a song as fine as a catbird's best, would be mentioned among the
robin's relations, you must guess again, for he is the brown thrasher,
not a thrush at all. You will find him in the Group of Lively Singers.
{16}
{17}