SOME NEIGHBOURLY ACROBATS
Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Golden-crowned Kinglet
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THE CHICKADEE
_Called also: Black-capped Titmouse_
Bitterly cold and dreary though the day may be, that "little scrap of
valour," the chickadee, keeps his spirits high until ours cannot but
be cheered by the oft-repeated, clear, tinkling silvery notes that
spell his name. _Chicka-dee-dee: chicka-dee-dee:_ he introduces
himself. How easy it would be for every child to know the birds if all
would but sing out their names so clearly! Oh, don't you wish they
would?
"Piped a tiny voice near by
Gay and polite--a cheerful cry--
_Chick-chickadeedee!_ Saucy note
Out of sound heart and merry throat.
As if it said, 'Good day, good Sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places
Where January brings few faces.'"
No bird, except the wren, is more cheerful than the chickadee, and his
cheerfulness, fortunately, is just as "catching" as measels. None will
respond more promptly to your whistle in imitation of his three very
high, clear call notes, and come nearer and nearer to make quite sure
you {20} are only a harmless mimic. He is very inquisitive. Although
not a bird may be in sight when you first whistle his call, nine
chances out of ten there will be a faint echo from some far distant
throat before very long; and by repeating the notes at short intervals
you will have, probably, not one but several echoes from as many
different chickadees whose curiosity to see you soon gets the better
of their appetites and brings them flying, by easy stages, to the tree
above your head. Where there is one chickadee there are apt to be more
in the neighbourhood; for these sociable, active, cheerful little
black-capped fellows in gray like to hunt for their living in loose
scattered flocks throughout the fall and winter. When they come near
enough, notice the pale rusty wash on the sides of their under parts
which are more truly dirty white than gray. Chickadees are wonderfully
tame: except the chipping sparrow, perhaps the tamest birds that we
have. Patient people, who know how to whistle up these friendly
sprites, can sometimes draw them close enough to touch, and an elect
few, who have the special gift of winning a wild bird's confidence,
can induce the chickadee to alight upon their hands.
Blessed with a thick coat of fat under his soft, fluffy gray feathers,
a hardy constitution and a sunny disposition, what terrors has the
winter for him? When the thermometer goes down, {21} his spirits seem
to go up the higher. Dangling like a circus acrobat on the cone of
some tall pine tree; standing on an outstretched twig, then turning
over and hanging with his black-capped head downward from the high
trapeze; carefully inspecting the rough bark on the twigs for a fat
grub or a nest of insect eggs, he is constantly hunting for food and
singing grace between bites. His _day, day, day_, sung softly over and
over again, seems to be his equivalent for "Give us this day our daily
bread."
How delightfully he and his busy friends, who are always within call,
punctuate the snow-muffled, mid-winter silence with their ringing
calls of good cheer! The orchards where chickadees, titmice,
nuthatches, and kinglets have dined all winter, will contain few
worm-eaten apples next season. Here is a puzzle for your arithmetic
class: If one chickadee eats four hundred and forty-four eggs of the
apple tree moth on Monday, three hundred and thirty-three eggs of the
canker worm on Tuesday, and seven hundred and seventy-seven
miscellaneous grubs, larvae, and insect eggs on Wednesday and
Thursday, how long will it take a flock of twenty-two chickadees to
rid an orchard of every-unspeakable pest? One very wise and thrifty
fruit grower I know attracts to his trees all the winter birds from
far and near, by keeping on several shelves nailed up in his orchard,
{22} bits of suet, cheap raisins, raw peanuts chopped fine, cracked
hickory nuts and rinds of pork. The free lunch counters are freely
patronised. There is scarcely an hour in the day, no matter how cold,
when some hungry feathered neighbour may not be seen helping himself
to the heating, fattening food he needs to keep his blood warm.
At the approach of warm weather, chickadees retreat from public gaze
to become temporary recluses in damp, deep woods or woodland swamps
where insects are most plentiful. For a few months they give up their
friendly flocking ways and live in pairs. Long journeys they do not
undertake from the North when it is time to nest; but Southern birds
move northward in the spring. Happily the chickadee may find a
woodpecker's vacant hole in some hollow tree; worse luck if a new
excavation must be made in a decayed birch--the favourite nursery.
Wool from the sheep pasture, felt from fern fronds, bits of bark,
moss, hair, and the fur of "little beasts of field and wood"--anything
soft that may be picked up goes to line the hollow cradle in the
tree-trunk. How the crowded chickadee babies must swelter in their bed
of fur and feathers tucked inside a close, stuffy hole! Is it not
strange that such hardy parents should coddle their children so?
[Illustration]
The chickadee at her front door.
[Illustration]
Young nuthatches learning their first lesson in balancing on a
horizontal bar.
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TUFTED TITMOUSE
_Called also: Peto Bird; Crested Tomtit; Crested Titmouse_
Don't expect to meet the tufted titmouse if you live very far north of
Washington. He is common only in the South and West.
This pert and lively cousin of the lovable little chickadee is not
quite so friendly and far more noisy. _Peto-peto-peto_ comes his loud,
clear whistle from the woods and clearings where he and his large
family are roving restlessly about all through the autumn and winter.
A famous musician became insane because he heard one note ringing
constantly in his overwrought brain. If you ever hear a troupe of
titmice whistling _Peto_ over and over again for hours at a time, you
will pity poor Schumann and fear a similar fate for the birds. But
they seem to delight in the two tiresome notes, uttered sometimes in
one key, sometimes in another. Another call--_day-day-day_--reminds
you of the chickadee's, only the tufted titmouse's voice is louder and
a little hoarse, as it well might be from such constant use.
Few birds that we see about our homes wear a top knot on their heads.
The big cardinal has a handsome red one, the larger blue jay's is
bluish gray, the cedar waxwing's is a Quaker {24} drab; but the little
titmouse, who is the size of an English sparrow, may be named at once
by the gray pointed crest that makes him look so pert and jaunty. When
he hangs head downward from the trapeze on the oak tree, this little
gray acrobat's peaked cap seems to be falling off; whereas the black
skull cap on the smaller chickadee fits close to his head no matter
how much he turns over the bar and dangles.
Neither one of these cousins is a carpenter like the woodpecker. The
titmouse has a short, stout bill without a chisel on it, which is why
it cannot chip out a hole for a nest in a tree trunk or old stump
unless the wood is much decayed. You see why these birds are so
pleased to find a deserted woodpecker's hole. Not alone are they saved
the trouble of making one, but a deep tunnel in a tree-trunk means
security for their babies against hawks, crows, jays, and other foes,
as well as against wind and rain.
When you find a flock of either chickadees or titmice, you may be sure
it is made up chiefly, if not entirely, of the birds of one or two
broods of the same parents. Their families are usually large and the
members devoted to one another. Titmice nest in April so that you
cannot tell the brothers and sisters from the father and mother when
the troupe of acrobats leave the woods in {25} early autumn and
whistle lustily about your home.
WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH
_Called also: Tree Mouse; Devil Downhead._
When it comes to acrobatic performances in the trees, neither the
chickadee nor the titmouse can rival their relatives, the little
bluish gray nuthatches. Indeed, any circus might be glad to secure
their expert services. Hanging fearlessly from the topmost branches of
the tallest pine, running along the under side of horizontal limbs as
comfortably as along the top of them, or descending the trunk head
foremost, these wonderful little gymnasts keep their nerves as cool as
the thermometer in January. From the way they travel over any part of
the tree they wish, from top and tip to the bottom of it, no wonder
they are sometimes called Tree Mice. Only the fly that walks across
the ceiling, however, can compete with them in clinging to the under
side of boughs.
Why don't they fall off? If you ever have a chance, examine their
claws. These, you will see, are very much curved and have sharp little
hooks that catch in any crack or rough place in the bark and easily
support the bird's weight. As a general rule the chickadee keeps to
the {26} end of the twigs and the smaller branches; the tufted
titmouse rids the larger boughs of insects, eggs, and worms hidden in
the scaly bark; but the nuthatches can climb to more inaccessible
places. With the help of the hooks on their toes it does not matter to
them whether they run upward, downward, or sidewise; and they can
stretch their bodies away from their feet at some very queer angles.
Their long bills penetrate into deep holes in the thick bark of the
tree trunks and older limbs and bring forth from their hiding places
insects that would escape almost every other bird except the brown
creeper and the woodpecker. Of course, when you see any feathered
acrobat performing in the trees, you know he is working hard to pick
up a dinner, not exercising merely for fun. The most familiar
nuthatch, in the eastern United States, is the one with the white
breast; but in the Northern States and Canada there is another common
winter neighbour, a smaller compactly feathered, bluish gray gymnast
with a pale rusty breast, a conspicuous black line running apparently
through his eye from the base of his bill to the nape of his neck, and
heavy white eyebrows. This is the hardy little red-breasted nuthatch.
His voice is pitched rather high and his drawling notes seem to come
from a lazy bird instead of one of the most vigorous and spry little
creatures in the wood. The {27} nasal _ank-ank_ of his white-breasted
cousin is uttered, too, without expression, as if the bird were
compelled to make a sound once in a while against his will. Both of
these cousins have similar habits. Both are a trifle smaller than the
English sparrow. In summer they merely hide away in the woods to nest,
for they are not migrants. It is only when nesting duties are over in
the autumn that they become neighbourly.
Who gave them their queer name? A hatchet would be a rather clumsy
tool for us to use in opening a nut, but these birds have a
convenient, ever-ready one in their long, stout, sharply pointed bills
with which they hack apart the small thin-shelled nuts like beech nuts
and hazel nuts, chinquapins and chestnuts, kernels of corn and
sunflower seeds. These they wedge into cracks in the bark just big
enough to hold them. During the summer and early autumn when insects
are plentiful, the nuthatches eat little else; and then they thriftily
store away the other items on their bill of fare, squirrel fashion, so
that when frost kills the insects, they may vary their diet of insect
eggs and grubs with nuts and the larger grain. Flying to the spot
where a nut has been securely wedged, perhaps weeks before, the bird
scores and hacks and pecks it open with his sharp little hatchet,
whose hard blows may be heard far away.
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Although this tool is a great help to the nuthatches in making their
nests, they appear to be quite as ready to accept a deserted
woodpecker's hole as the chickadee with a smaller bill. A natural
cavity will answer, or, if they must, they will make one in some
forest tree. The red-breasted nuthatches have a curious habit of
smearing the entrance to the hole with fir-balsam or pitch. Why do you
suppose they do it? Perhaps they think this will discourage egg
suckers, like snakes, mice, or squirrels; but, in effect, the sticky
gum often pulls the feathers from their own breasts as they go in and
out attending to the wants of their family.
RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET
Count that a red-letter day on your calendar when first you see either
this tiny, dainty sprite, or his next of kin, the golden-crowned
kinglet, fluttering, twinkling about the evergreens. In republican
America we don't often have the chance to meet two crowned heads.
Energetic as wrens, restless as warblers, and as perpetually looking
for insect food, the kinglets flit with a sudden, jerking motion from
twig to twig among the trees and bushes, now on the lawn, now in the
orchard and presently in the hedgerow down the lane. They have a
pretty {29} trick of lifting and flitting their wings every little
while. The bluebird and pine grosbeak have it too, but their much
larger, trembling wings seem far less nervous.
Happily the kinglets are not at all shy; no bird is that is hatched
out so far north that it never sees a human being until it travels
southward to spend the winter. Alas! It is the birds that know us too
well that are often the most afraid. When the leaves are turning
crimson and russet and gold in the autumn, keep a sharp look out for
the plump little grayish, olive green birds that are even smaller than
wrens, and not very much larger than hummingbirds. Although members of
quite a different family--the kinglets are exclusive--they condescend
to join the nuthatches and chickadees in the orchard to help clean the
farmer's fruit trees or pick up a morsel at the free lunch counter in
zero weather. Love or war is necessary to make the king show us his
crown. But vanity or anger is sufficient excuse for lifting the dark
feathers that nearly conceal the beauty spot on the top of his head
when the midget's mind is at ease. If you approach very near--and he
will allow you to almost touch him--you may see the little patch of
brilliant red feathers, it is true, but you will probably get an
unexpected, chattering scolding from the little king as he flies away.
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In the spring his love song is as surprisingly strong in proportion to
his size as the wren's. It seems impossible for such a volume of
mellow flute-like melody to pour from a throat so tiny. Before we have
a chance to hear it again the singer is off with his tiny queen to
nest in some spruce tree beyond the Canadian border.
[Illustration]
The noisy contents of a soap box: a family of house wrens.
[Illustration]
The marsh wren's round cradle swung among the rushes.
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