THE SPARROW TRIBE
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Vesper Sparrow
English Sparrow
Chipping Sparrow
Tree Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Junco
Snowflake
Goldfinch
Purple Finch
Indigo Bunting
Towhee
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Cardinal Grosbeak
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THE SPARROW TRIBE
Like the poor, the sparrows are always with us. There is not a day in
the year when you cannot find at least one member of the great tribe
which comprises one-seventh of all our birds--by far the largest North
American family. What is the secret of their triumphant numbers?
Many members of the hardy, prolific clan, wearing dull brown and
gray-streaked feathers, in perfect colour harmony with the grassy,
bushy places or dusty roadsides where they live, are usually
overlooked by enemies in search of a dinner. Undoubtedly their
protective colouring has much to do with their increase. They are
small birds mostly, not one so large as a robin.
Sparrows being seed eaters chiefly, although none of the tribe
refuses insect meat in season, and all give it to their nestlings,
there is never a time when they cannot find food, even at the frozen
North where some weedy stalks project above the snow. They are not
fastidious. Fussy birds, like fussy people, have a hard time in this
world; but the whole sparrow tribe, with few exceptions, make the best
of things as they {108} find them and readily adapt themselves to
whatever conditions they meet. How wonderfully that saucy little
gamin, the English sparrow, has adjusted himself to this new land!
Members of the more aristocratic finch and grosbeak branches of the
family, however, who wear brighter clothes, pay the penalty by
decreasing numbers as our boasted civilisation surrounds them. Gay
feathers afford a shining mark. Naturally grosbeaks prefer to live
among protective trees. They are delightful singers, and so, indeed,
are some of their plain little sparrow cousins.
All the members of the family have strong, conical bills well suited
to crush seeds, and gizzards, like a chicken's, to grind them fine.
These little grist-mills within the birds' bodies extract all the
nourishment there is from the seed. The sparrow tribe, you will
notice, do immense service by destroying the seeds of weeds, which,
but for them, would quickly overrun the farmer's fields and choke his
crops. Because these hardy gleaners can pick up a living almost
anywhere, they do not need to make very long journeys every spring and
autumn. Their migrations are comparatively short when undertaken at
all. As a rule their flight is laboured, slow, and rather heavy--just
the opposite from the wonderfully swift and graceful flight of the
swallows.
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THE SONG SPARROW
This is most children's favourite bird: is it yours? Although by no
means the belle of the family, the song sparrow is beloved throughout
its vast range if for no other reason than because it is irrepressibly
cheerful. Good spirits are contagious: every one feels better for
having a neighbour always in a good humour. Most birds mope when it
rains, or when they shed their feathers, or when the weather is cold
and dreary, or when something doesn't please them, and cultivate their
voices only when they fall in love in the happy spring-time. But you
may hear the hardy, healthful song sparrow's "merry cheer" almost
every month in the year, in fair weather or in foul, in the middle of
the night and in broad daylight, when a little mate is to be wooed
with light-hearted vivacity, when two, three, or even four broods
severely tax the singer's energy through the summer, when clothes must
be changed in August and when the cold of approaching winter drives
every other singer from the choir. The most familiar song--for this
tuneful sparrow has at least six similar but slightly different
melodies in his repertoire--begins with a full round note three times
repeated, then dashes off into a sweet, short, lively, intricate
strain that almost trips itself in its hasty utterance. Few people
{110} whistle well enough to imitate it. Few birds can rival the
musical ecstasy.
Artlessly self-confident, not at all bashful, the song sparrow mounts
to a conspicuous perch when he sings, rather than let his efforts be
muffled by foliage. Don't mistake him for an English sparrow; notice
his distinguishing marks: the fine dark streaks on his light breast
tend to form a larger blotch in the centre. You see him singing on the
extended branch of some low tree, on the topmost twig of a bush, on a
fence, or a piazza railing from which he dives downward into the
grass, or flies straight along into the bushes, his tail working like
a pump handle as if to help his flight. Very rarely he flies upward.
Diving into a bush is one of his specialties. He best likes to live in
regions near water.
The song sparrows that come almost every day in the year among many
other birds to my piazza roof for waste canary seed and such
delicacies, show refreshing spirit in driving off the English sparrows
who, let it be recorded, can get not a morsel until the song sparrows
are abundantly satisfied. One of the latter is quite able to keep off
half a dozen of his English cousins. How does he do it? Not by his
superior size, for the measurements of both birds show that they are
about the same length although the song sparrow's slightly longer and
{111} more graceful tail makes him appear a trifle larger. Certainly
not by any rowdy, bold assaults, which are the English bird's
specialty. But by simply assuming superiority and expressing it only
by running in a threatening attitude toward each English sparrow who
dares to alight on the roof, does he bluff him into flying away again!
There is never a fight, not even an ill-mannered scolding, just quiet
monopoly for a few minutes, then a joyous outburst of song. After that
the English sparrows may take the songster's leavings.
SWAMP SPARROW
Where rails thread their way among the rushes, and red-winged
blackbirds, marsh wrens, and Maryland yellow-throats like to live,
there listen for the _tweet-tweet-tweet_ of the swamp sparrow. It is a
sweet but rather monotonous little song that he repeats over and over
again to the mate who is busy about her grassy nest in a tussock not
far away, but well hidden among the rank swamp growth.
Some children say it is difficult to tell the plain gray-breasted
swamp sparrow from the larger song sparrow with the streaked breast;
but I am sure their eyes are not so sharp as yours.
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FIELD SPARROW
While the neighbourly song sparrow and the swamp sparrow delight to be
near water, the field sparrow chooses to live in dry uplands where
stunted bushes and cedars cover the hills and overgrown old fields,
and towhees and brown thrashers keep him company. He is not fond of
human society, however, and usually flies away with wavering,
uncertain flight from bush to bush rather than submit to a close
scrutiny of his bright chestnut brown back and crown, flesh-coloured
bill, gray eyebrow, grayish throat, buffy breast and light feet.
Because his tail is a trifle longer than the chippy's he is slightly
larger than the smallest of our sparrows. Unless you notice that his
bill is not black and his head not marked with black and gray streaks
like the chippy's, you might easily mistake him for his sociable,
confiding little cousin who comes hopping to the door.
How differently he sings! Listen for him some evening after sunset
when his simple vesper hymn, clear, plaintive, sweet, rings from the
bush where he perches especially for the performance. Scarcely any two
field sparrows sing precisely alike. Most of them, however, begin with
three clear, smooth, leisurely whistles--_cher-wee, cher-wee,
cher-wee_--then hurry through the other notes--_cheo,
cheo-dee-dee-eee, e, e_--which run rapidly into a trill before they
die away. {113} Others reverse the time and diminish the measures
toward the close. However sung, the song, which makes the uplands
tuneful all day and every day from April to August, does not vary its
quality, which is as fine as the vesper sparrow's.
Hatched in a bush, and almost never seen apart from one, this humble
little bird might well be called the bush sparrow.
VESPER SPARROW
To name this little dingy sparrow that haunts the open fields and
dusty roadsides, you must notice the white feather on each side of his
tail as he spreads it and flies before you to alight upon a fence.
Like the song sparrow, this cousin has some fine dark streaks on his
throat and breast. If you get near enough you will notice that his
wing coverts, which are a bright chestnut brown, make the rest of his
sparrow plumage look particularly pale and dull. Some people call him
the bay-winged bunting; others, the grass finch, because he nests,
like the meadow-lark and many other foolish birds, on the ground where
mice, snakes, mowing machines and cats often make sad havoc of his
young family.
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The field sparrow, as we have seen, prefers neglected old fields
overgrown with bushes, but the vesper sparrow chooses more broad,
open, breezy, grassy country. When busy picking up insects and seed on
the ground, he takes no time for singing, but keeps steadily at work,
unlike the vireos that sing between bites. With him music is a
momentous matter to which he is quite willing to devote half an hour
at a time. He usually mounts to a fence rail or a tree before
beginning the repetitions of his lovely, serene vesper which is most
likely to be heard about sunset, or at sunrise, if you are not a
sleepy-head. Like the rose-breasted grosbeak, he has the delightful
habit of singing through the early hours of the summer night.
ENGLISH SPARROW
Is there a boy or girl in America who does not already know this
saucy, keen-witted little gamin who thrives where other birds would
starve; who insists upon thrusting himself where he is not wanted, not
only in other bird's houses, but about the cornices, pillars, and
shutters of our own, where his noise and dirt drive good housekeepers
frantic; who, without any weapons but his boldness and impudence to
fight with, fears neither man nor beast, and who {115} multiplies as
fast as the rabbit, so that he is rapidly inheriting the earth? Even
children who have never been out of the slums know at least this one
bird, this ever-present nuisance, for he chirps and chatters as
cheerfully in the reeking gutters as in the prettiest gardens; he hops
with equal calm about the horse's feet and trolley cars in crowded
city thoroughfares, as he does about flowery fields and quiet country
lanes; he will pick at the overflow from garbage pails on the sidewalk
in front of teeming tenements and manure on the city pavements with
quite as much relish as he will eat the fresh clean seed spilled by a
canary, or cake-crumbs from my lady's hand. Intense cold he endures
with cheerful fortitude and as intense mid-summer heat without losing
his astonishing vitality. Is it any wonder that a bird so readily
adaptable to all sorts of conditions should thrive like a weed and
beat his way around the world?
Now that he has gained such headway in this country his extermination
is practically impossible, since a single pair of sparrows might have
275,716,983,698 descendants in ten years! It is foolish to talk of
ridding the land of these vermin of birddom. The conditions that kept
them in check at home are lacking in this great land of freedom and so
we Americans must pay the penalty for ignorantly tampering with
nature.
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Sparrows were first imported into Brooklyn in 1851 to rid the shade
trees of inch worms. This feat they accomplished there and in New York
with neatness and despatch. Every one fed, petted, and coddled them
then. It was not until many years later that their true character came
to be thoroughly understood. Then it was found by scientific men in
Washington, after the fairest trial any culprits ever received, that
not all the insects and weed seeds they destroy compensate for the
damage they do in the farmer's grain fields, to say nothing of their
harassing and dispossessing other birds more desirable. But they kill
no birds, so we may hope that, in the course of time, our native
songsters may pluck up courage to claim their rights and hold their
own, learning from the sparrows the important lesson of adaptability.
CHIPPING SPARROW
_Called also: Chippy; Door-step Sparrow; Hair Sparrow._
This summer a pair of the sociable, friendly little chippies--the
smallest members of their clan--decided that they would build in a
little boxwood tree on the verandah of our house next to the front
door through which members of the family passed every hour of the day.
[Illustration]
The most cheerful of bird neighbors: song sparrows
[Illustration]
A baby chippy and its two big rose-breasted grosbeak cousins
[Illustration]
A chipping sparrow family: one baby satisfied, the next nearly so, the
third still hungry.
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While we sat within a few feet of the tree, both birds would carry
into it fine twigs and grasses for the foundation of the nest and,
later, long horse hairs which they coiled around and around to form a
lining. Where did they get so many hairs? A few might have been
switched out of the horses' tails in the stable yard or dropped on the
road, but what amazingly bright eyes the birds must have to find them,
and how curious that chippies alone, of all the feathered tribe,
should always insist upon using them to line their cradles!
From the back of a settle, the round of a rocking chair, or the gnomon
of the sun-dial near the verandah, the little chippy would trill his
wiry tremulo, like the locust's hot weather warning, while his mate
brooded over five tiny greenish-blue eggs in the boxwood tree. Before
even the robin was awake, earlier than dawn, he would start the
morning chorus with the simple little trill that answers for a song to
express every emotion throughout the long day. Both he and his mate
use a chip call note in talking to each other.
When she was tired brooding, of which she did far more than her share,
he would relieve her while she went in search of food. Very often he
would carry to the nest a cabbage worm for her or some other
refreshing delicacy. The screen door might bang beside her while she
sat {118} close upon her treasures without causing her to do more than
flutter an eyelid. Every member of the family parted the twigs of
boxwood that enclosed the nest to look upon her pretty little
reddish-brown head with a gray stripe over the eye and a dark-brown
line running apparently through it. All of us gently stroked her from
time to time. She would occasionally leave the nest for only a minute
or two to pick up the crumbs, chickweed, and canary seed scattered for
her about the verandah floor, and showed not the slightest fear when
we went on with our regular occupations. We were the breathlessly
excited ones, while she hopped calmly about our feet. The chippy is
wonderfully tame--perhaps the tamest bird that we have.
You may be sure there was joy in the household when the nest in the
boxwood contained baby chippies one morning--not a trace of eggshells
which had been carried away early. Insects were the only approved
baby-food and we were greatly astonished to see what large ones were
thrust down the tiny, gaping throats every few minutes. Instead of
flying straight to the nest, both parents would frequently stop to
rest or get proper direction on the back or the arm of a chair where
some one was sitting. In eight days the babies began to explore the
verandah. Then they left us suddenly without {119} a "good-bye." No
guests whom we ever had beneath our roof left a more aching void than
that chipping sparrow family. How we hope they will find their way
back to the boxwood tree from the Gulf States next April!
TREE SPARROW
_Called also: Winter Chippy_
When the friendly little chippy leaves us in autumn, this similar but
larger sparrow cousin comes into the United States from the North, and
some people say they cannot tell the two birds apart or the field
sparrow from either of them. The tree sparrow, which, unlike the
chippy, has no black on his forehead, wears an indistinct black spot
on the centre of his breast where the chippy is plain gray, and the
field sparrow is buffy. The tree sparrow has a parti-coloured bill,
the upper-half black, the lower yellow with a black tip, while the
chippy has an entirely black bill, and the field sparrow a
flesh-coloured or pale-red one. Only the tree sparrow, which is larger
than either of the others, although only as large as a full grown
English sparrow, spends the winter in the Northern United States, and
by that time his confusing relatives are too far south for comparison.
It is in spring and autumn that their {120} ranges over-lap and there
is any possibility of confusion.
When the slate-coloured juncos come from their nesting grounds far
over the Canadian border, look also for flocks of tree sparrows in
fields and door yards, where crab grass, amaranth and fox tail grass,
among other pestiferous weeds, are most abundant. I do not know how
Professor Beal of the Department of Agriculture, arrived at his
conclusions, but he estimates that in a single state--Iowa--the tree
sparrows alone destroy eight hundred and seventy-five tons of noxious
weed seeds every winter. Then how incalculably great must be our debt
to the entire sparrow tribe!
Tree sparrows welcome other winter birds to their friendly flocks that
glean a comfortable living from the weed stalks protruding from the
snow. Their cheerful, soft, jingling notes have been likened by Mr.
Chapman to "sparkling frost crystals turned to music."
WHITE-THROATED SPARROW
_Called also: Peabody-bird; Canada Sparrow_
"What's in a name?" Our English cousins over the border are quite sure
they hear this sparrow sing the praises of _Swee-e-et Can-a-da,
Can-a-da, Can-a-da-ah,_ while the {121} New Englanders think the bird
distinctly says, _I-I-Pea-body, Pea-bod-y, Pea-bod-y-I,_ extolling the
name of one of their first families. You may amuse yourself by fitting
whatever words you like to the well-marked metre of the clear,
high-pitched, plaintive, sweet song of twelve notes. Learn to imitate
it and you will be able to whistle up any white-throat within reach of
your voice in the Adirondacks, the White Mountains, or the deep, cool
woods of Maine, throughout the summer, although the majority of these
hardy sparrows nest on the northern side of the Canadian border. Our
hot weather they cannot abide. When there is a keen breath of frost in
the air and the hedgerows and thickets in the United States are taking
on glorious autumnal tints, listen for the white-throated migrants
conversing with sharp _chink_ call-notes that sound like the ring of a
marble-cutter's chisel.
During the autumn and spring migrations, when these birds are likely
to give us the semi-annual pleasure of coming closer about our homes,
with other members of their sociable tribe, you will see that the
white-throat is a slightly larger and more distinguished bird than the
English sparrow, and that he wears a white patch above his plain, gray
breast. Except the white-crowned sparrow, who wears a black and
white-striped soldier cap on his head, {122} and who sometimes travels
in migrating flocks with his cousins, the white-throated sparrow is
the handsomest member of his plain tribe.
FOX SPARROW
Do you imagine because he is called the fox sparrow that this bird has
four legs, or that he wears a brush instead of feathers for a tail, or
that he makes sly visits to the chicken yard after dark? When you see
his rusty, reddish-brown coat you guess that the foxy colour of it is
alone responsible for his name. His light breast is heavily streaked
and spotted with brown, somewhat like a thrush's, and as he is the
largest and reddest of the sparrows, it is not at all difficult to
identify him.
In the autumn, when the juncos come into the United States from
Canada, small flocks of their fox sparrow cousins, that have spent the
summer from the St. Lawrence region and Manitoba northward to Alaska,
may also be expected. They are often seen in the junco's company among
the damp thickets and weeds, along the roadsides and in stalky fields
bounded by woodland. The fox sparrow loves to scratch among the dead
leaves for insects trying to hide there, quite as well as if he were a
chicken or a towhee or an oven-bird who kick up the {123} leaves and
earth rubbish after his vigorous manner.
From Virginia southward, the people know the fox sparrow only as a
winter resident. Before he leaves them in the spring, he begins to
practise the clear, rich, ringing song, which fairly startles one with
pleasure the first time it is heard.
JUNCO
_Called also: Slate-coloured Snow-bird_
When the skies are leaden and the first flurries of snow warn us that
winter is near, flocks of juncos, that reflect the leaden skies on
their backs, and the grayish-white snow on their breasts, come from
the North to spend the winter. A few enter New England as early as
September, but by Thanksgiving increased numbers are foraging for
their dinner among the roadside thickets, in the furrows of ploughed
fields, on the ground near evergreens, about the barn-yard and even at
the dog's plate beyond the kitchen door.
Notice how abruptly the slate gray colour of the junco's mantle ends
in a straight line across his light breast, and how, when he flies
away, the white feathers on either side of his tail serve as signals
to his friends to follow. Such signals {124} are especially useful
when birds are migrating; without them, many stragglers from the
flocks might get lost. Juncos, who are extremely sociable birds,
except when nesting, need help in keeping together. A crisp, frosty
_'tsip_ call note signifies alarm and away flies the flock. They are
quiet, unassuming visitors, modest in manner and in dress; but how we
should miss them from the winter landscape!
SNOWFLAKE
In the northern United States and Canada, it is the snowflake or snow
bunting, a sparrowy little bird with a great deal of white among its
rusty brown feathers that is the familiar winter visitor. Instead of
hopping, like most of its tribe, it walks over the frozen fields and
rarely perches higher than a bush or fence rail, for it comes very
near being a ground bird. Delighting in icy blasts and snow storms,
flocks of these irrepressibly cheerful little foragers fatten on a
seed diet picked up where other birds would starve.
AMERICAN GOLDFINCH
_Called also: Black-winged Yellow-bird; Thistle Bird; Lettuce Bird;
Wild Canary._
Have you a garden gay with marigolds, sunflowers, coreopsis, zinnias,
cornflowers, and {125} gaillardias? If so, every goldfinch in your
neighbourhood knows it and hastens there to feed on the seeds of these
plants as fast as they form, so that you need expect to save none for
next spring's planting. Don't you prefer the birds when flower seeds
cost only five cents a packet? Clinging to the slender, swaying stems,
the goldfinches themselves look so like yellow flowers that you do not
suspect how many are feasting in the garden until they are startled
into flight. Then away they go, bounding along through the air, now
rising, now falling, in long aerial waves peculiar to them alone. You
can always tell a goldfinch by its wavy course through the air. Often
it accents the rise of each wave as it flies by a ripple of sweet,
twittering notes. The yellow warbler is sometimes called a wild canary
because he looks like a canary; the goldfinch has the same misleading
name applied to him because he sings like one.
But goldfinches by no means depend upon our gardens for their daily
fare. Wild lettuce, mullein, dandelion, ragweed and thistles are
special favourites. Many weed stalks suddenly blossom forth into black
and gold when a flock of finches alight for a feast in the summer
fields, or, browned by winter frost, bend beneath the weight of the
birds when they cling to them protruding through the snow.
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Usually not until July, when the early thistles furnish plenty of
fluff for nest lining, do pairs of goldfinches withdraw from flocks to
begin the serious business of raising a family. A compact, cozy,
cup-like structure of fine grass, vegetable fibre, and moss, is placed
in the crotch of a bush or tree, or sometimes in a tall, branching
thistle plant. Except the cedar wax wings, the goldfinches are the
latest nesters of all our birds. As their love-making is prolonged
through the entire summer, so is the deliciously sweet, tender,
canary-like song of the male. _Dear, dear, dearie,_ you may hear him
sing to his dearest all day long.
In summer, throughout his long courtship, he wears a bright,
lemon-yellow wedding suit with black cap, wings, and tail, while his
sweetheart is dressed in a duller green or olive yellow. After the
August moult, he emerges a dingy olive-brown, sparrowy bird, in
perfect colour harmony with the wintry fields.
PURPLE FINCH
_Called also: Linnet_
It would seem as if the people who named most of our birds and wild
flowers must have been colour-blind. Old rose is more nearly the
colour of this finch who looks like a brown {127} sparrow that had
been dipped into a bath of raspberry juice and left out in the sun to
fade. But only the mature males wear this colour, which is deepest on
their head, rump, and breast. Their sons are decidedly sparrowy until
the second year and their wives look so much like the song sparrows
that you must notice their heavy, rounded bills and forked tails to
make sure they are not their cousins. A purple finch that had been
caged two years gradually turned yellow, which none of his kin in the
wild state has ever been known to do. Why? No ornithologist is wise
enough to tell us, for the colour of birds is still imperfectly
understood.
Like the goldfinches, these finches wander about in flocks. You see
them in the hemlock and spruce trees feeding on the buds at the tips
of the branches, in the orchard pecking at the blossoms on the fruit
trees, in the wheat fields with the goldfinches destroying the larvae
of the midge, or by the roadsides cracking the seeds of weeds that are
too hard to open for birds less stout of bill. When it is time to
nest, these finches prefer evergreen trees to all others, although
orchards sometimes attract them.
A sudden outbreak of spirited, warbled song in March opens the purple
finch's musical season, which is almost as long as the song sparrow's.
Subdued nearly to a humming in October, it is still a delightful
reminder of the {128} finest voice possessed by any bird in the great
sparrow tribe. But it is when the singer is in love that the song
reaches its highest ecstasy. Then he springs into the air just as the
yellow-breasted chat, the oven-bird, and woodcock do when they go
a-wooing, and sings excitedly while mounting fifteen or twenty feet
above his mate until he drops exhausted at her side.
INDIGO BUNTING
_Called also: Indigo-bird._
Every child knows the bluebird, possibly the kingfisher and the blue
jay, too, but there is only one other bird with blue feathers, the
little indigo bunting, who is no larger than your pet canary, that you
are ever likely to meet unless you live in the Southwest where the
blue grosbeak might be your neighbour. If, by chance, you should see a
little lady indigo-bird you would probably say contemptuously:
"Another tiresome sparrow," and go on your way, not noticing the faint
glint of blue in her wings and tail. Otherwise her puzzling plumage is
decidedly sparrowy, although unstreaked. So is that of her immature
sons. But her husband will be instantly recognised because he is the
only very small bird who wears a suit of deep, rich blue with
verdigris-green reflections {129} about the head--bluer than the
summer sky which pales where his little figure is outlined against it.
Mounting by erratic, short flights from the weedy places and bushy
tangles he hunts among to the branches of a convenient tree, singing
as he goes higher and higher, he remains for a time on a conspicuous
perch and rapidly and repeatedly sings. When almost every other bird
is moulting and moping, he warbles with the same fervour and timbre.
Possibly because he has the concert stage almost to himself in August,
he gets the credit of being a better performer than he really is. Only
the pewee and the red-eyed vireo, whom neither midday nor midsummer
heat can silence, share the stage with him then.
TOWHEE
_Called also: Chewink; Ground Robin; Joree_
From their hunting-ground in the blackberry tangle and bushes that
border a neighbouring wood, a family of chewinks sally forth boldly to
my piazza floor to pick up seed from the canary's cage, hemp, cracked
corn, sunflower seed, split pease, and wheat scattered about for their
especial benefit. One fellow grew bold enough to peck open a paper
bag. It is a daily happening to see at least one of the family close
{130} to the door; or even on the window-sill. The song, the English,
the chipping, the field, and the white-throated sparrows--any one or
all of these cousins--usually hop about with the chewinks most
amicably and with no greater ease of manner; but the larger chewink
hops more energetically and precisely than any of them, like a
mechanical toy.
Heretofore I had thought of this large, vigorous bunting as a rather
shy or at least self-sufficient bird with no desire to be neighbourly.
His readiness to be friends when sure of the genuineness of the
invitation, was a delightful surprise. From late April until late
October my softly-whistled _towhee_ has rarely failed to bring a
response from some pensioner, either in the woodland thicket or among
the rhododendrons next to the piazza where the seeds have been
scattered by the wind. _Chewink_, or _towhee_ comes the brisk call
from wherever the busy bunting is foraging. The chickadee,
whippoorwill, phoebe and pewee also tell you their names, but this
bird announces himself by two names, so you need make no mistake.
Because he was hatched in a ground nest and loves to scratch about on
the ground for insects, making the dead leaves and earth rubbish fly
like any barnyard fowl, the towhee it often called the ground robin.
He is a little smaller than robin-redbreast. Looked down upon from
{131} above he appears to be almost a black bird, for his upper parts,
throat and breast are very dark where his mate is brownish; but
underneath both are grayish white with patches of rusty red on their
sides, the colour resembling a robin's breast when its red has
somewhat faded toward the end of summer. The white feathers on the
towhee's short, rounded wings and on the sides of his tail are
conspicuous signals, as he flies jerkily to the nearest cover. You
could not expect a bird with such small wings to be a graceful flyer.
Rarely does he leave the ground except to sing his love-song. Then,
mounting no higher than a bush or low branch, he entrances his
sweetheart, if not the human critic, with a song to which Ernest
Thompson Seton supplies the well-fitted words: _Chuck-burr, pill-a
will-a-will-a._
RED-BREASTED GROSBEAK
Among birds, as among humans, it is the father who lends his name to
the family, however difficult it may be to know the mother and
children by it. Who that had not studied the books would recognise
Mrs. Scarlet Tanager by her name? or Mrs. Purple Finch? or Mrs. Indigo
Bunting? or Mrs. Rose-breasted Grosbeak? {132} The latter lady has not
a rose-coloured feather on her. She is a streaked, brown bird,
resembling an overgrown sparrow, with a thick, exaggerated finch bill
and a conspicuous, white eyebrow. When her husband wears his winter
clothes in the tropics, his feathers are said to be similar to hers,
so that even his name, then, does not fit. But when he returns to the
United States in May he is, in very truth, a rose-breasted grosbeak.
His back is as black as a chewink's; underneath he is grayish white,
and a patch of lovely, brilliant, rose colour on his breast, with wing
linings of the same shade, make him a splendidly handsome fellow.
Perhaps before you get a glimpse of the feathers that are his best
means of introduction, you may hear a thin _eek_ call-note from some
tree-top, or better still, listen to the sweet, pure, mellow, joyously
warbled song, now loud and clear, now softly tender, that puts him in
the first rank of our songsters.
Few birds so conspicuously dressed risk the safety of their nests
either by singing or by being seen near it, but this gentle cavalier
not only carries food to his brooding mate but actually takes his turn
at sitting upon the pale-greenish, blue-speckled eggs. As a lover,
husband, and father he is irreproachable.
A friend who reared four orphan grosbeaks says that they left the nest
when about eleven {133} days old. They were very tame, even
affectionate toward him, hopping over his shoulders, head, knees, and
hands without the least fear, and eating from his fingers. When only
ten weeks old the little boy grosbeaks began to warble. On being
released to pick up their own living in the garden, these pets repaid
their foster-father by eating quantities of potato-bugs, among other
pests. Some people call this grosbeak the potato-bug bird.
CARDINAL GROSBEAK
_Called also: Crested Redbird: Virginia Nightingale._
It was on a cold January day in Central Park, New York, that I first
met a cardinal and was warmed by the sight. Then I supposed that he
must have escaped from a cage, for he is uncommon north of Washington.
With tail and crest erect, he was hopping about rather clumsily on the
ground near the bear's cage, and picking up bits of broken peanuts
that had missed their mark. Presently a dove-coloured bird, lightly
washed with dull red, joined him and I guessed by her crest that she
must be his mate. Therefore both birds were permanent residents in the
park and not escaped pets. Although they look as if they belonged
{134} in the tropics, cardinals never migrate as the rose-breasted
grosbeak and so many of our fair-weather feathered friends do. That is
because they can live upon the weed seeds and the buds of trees and
bushes in winter as comfortably as upon insects in summer. It pays not
to be too particular.
In the Southern States every child knows the common cardinal and could
tell you that he is a little smaller than a robin (not half so
graceful), that he is red all over, except a small black area around
his red bill, and that he wears his head-feathers crested like the
blue jay and the titmouse. In a Bermuda garden, a shelf restaurant
nailed up in a cedar tree attracted cardinals about it every hour of
the day. If you can think of a prettier sight than that dark
evergreen, with the brilliant red birds hopping about in its branches
and the sparkling sapphire sea dashing over gray coral rocks in the
background, do ask some artist to paint it!
Few lady birds sing--an accomplishment usually given to their lover's
only, to help woo them. But the female cardinal is a charming singer
with a softer voice than her mate's--most becoming to one of her
sex--and an individual song quite different from his loud, clear
whistle.
[Illustration]
Cardinal
[Illustration]
That dusky rascal, the cowbird
{135}