THE FLYCATCHERS
Kingbird
Crested Flycatcher
Phoebe
Pewee
Least Flycatcher
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THE FLYCATCHERS
When you see a dusky bird, smaller than a robin, lighter gray
underneath than on its sooty-brown back, with a well-rounded, erect
head, set on a short, thick neck, you may safely guess it is one of
the flycatchers--another strictly American family. If the bird has a
white band across the end of its tail it is probably the fearless
kingbird. If the feathers on top of its head look as if they had been
brushed the wrong way into a pointed crest; moreover, if some chestnut
colour shows in its tail when spread, and its pearly gray breast
shades into yellow underneath, you are looking at the noisy "wild
Irishman" of birddom, the crested flycatcher. Confiding Phoebe wears
the plainest of dull clothes with a still darker, dusky crown cap, and
a line of white on her outer tail feathers. She and the plaintive wood
pewee, who has two indistinct whitish bars across her extra-long
wings, are scarcely larger than an English sparrow; while the least
flycatcher, who calls himself _Chebec_, is, as you may suppose, the
smallest member of the tribe to leave the tropics and spend the summer
with us. Male and female members of this {162} family wear similar
clothes, fortunately for "every child" who tries to identify them.
You can tell a flycatcher at sight by the way he collects his dinner.
Perhaps he will be sitting quietly on the limb of a tree or on a fence
as if dreaming, when suddenly off he dashes into the air, clicks his
broad bill sharply over a winged insect, flutters an instant, then
wheels about and returns to his favourite perch to wait for the next
course to fly by. He may describe fifty such loops in mid-air and make
as many fatal snap-shots before his hunger is satisfied. A swallow or
a swift would keep constantly on the wing; a vireo would hunt
leisurely among the foliage; a warbler would restlessly flit about the
tree hunting for its dinner among the leaves; but the dignified,
dexterous flycatcher, like a hawk, waits patiently on his lookout for
a dinner to fly toward him. "All things come to him who waits," he
firmly believes.
None of the family is musically gifted, but all make a more or less
pleasing noise. Flycatchers are solitary, sedentary birds, never being
found in flocks; but when mated, they are devoted home lovers.
We are apt to think of tropical birds as very gaily feathered, but
certainly many that come from warmer climes to spend the summer with
us are less conspicuous than Quakers.
[Illustration]
The dashing, great crested flycatcher
[Illustration]
Baby kingbirds in an apple tree
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KINGBIRD
_Called also: Bee Martin_
In spite of his scientific name, which has branded him the tyrant of
tyrants, the kingbird is by no means a bully. See him high in air in
hot pursuit of that big, black, villainous crow, who dared try to rob
his nest, darting about the rascal's head and pecking at his eyes
until he is glad to leave the neighbourhood! There seems to be an
eternal feud between them. Even the marauding hawk, that strikes
terror to every other feathered breast, will be driven off by the
plucky little kingbird. But surely a courageous home defender is no
tyrant. A kingbird doesn't like the scolding catbird for a neighbour,
or the teasing blue jay, or the meddlesome English sparrow, but he
simply gives them a wide berth. He is no Don Quixote ready to fight
from mere bravado. _Tyrannus tyrannus_ is a libel.
For years he has been called the bee martin and some scientific men in
Washington determined to learn if that name, also, is deserved. So
they collected over two hundred kingbirds from different parts of the
country, examined their stomachs and found bees--mostly drones--in
only fourteen. The bird is too keen sighted and clever to snap up
knowingly a bee with a {164} sting attached, you may be sure; but
occasionally he makes a mistake when, don't you believe, he is more
sorry for it than the beekeeper? He destroys so many robber flies--a
pest of the hives--that the intelligent apiarist, who keeps bees in
his orchard to fertilise the blossoms, always likes to see a pair of
kingbirds nesting in one of his fruit trees. The gardener welcomes the
bird that eats rose chafers; the farmer approves of him because he
catches the gadfly that torments his horses and cattle, as well as the
grasshoppers, katydids and crickets that would destroy his field crops
if left unchecked.
From a favourite lookout on a tall mullein stalk, a kingbird neighbour
of mine would detect an insect over one hundred and seventy feet away,
where no human eye could see it, dash off, snap it safely within his
bill, flutter uncertainly an instant, then return to his perch ready
to "loop the loop" again any moment. The curved clasp at the tip of
his bill and the stiff hairs at the base helped hold every insect his
prisoner. While waiting for food to fly into sight the watcher did a
good deal of calling. His harsh, chattering note, _ching, ching_,
which penetrated to a surprising distance, did not express alarm, but
rather the exultant joy of victory.
[Illustration]
Four crested flycatchers who need to have their hair brushed
[Illustration]
Time for these young phoebes to leave the nest
[Illustration]
Young phoebes on a bridge trestle
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He and his mate were certainly frantic with fear, however, when I
climbed into their apple tree one June morning, determined to have a
peep at the five creamy-white eggs, speckled with brown and pale
lilac, that had just been laid in the nest in a crotch near the end of
a stout limb. Whirling and dashing about my head, the pair made me
lose my balance, and I tumbled ten feet or more to the ground. As the
intruder fell, they might well have exclaimed--perhaps they did--_"Sic
semper tyrannis!"_
CRESTED FLYCATCHER
Far more tyrannical than the kingbird is this "wild Irishman," as John
Burroughs calls the large flycatcher with the tousled head and harsh,
uncanny voice, who prowls around the woods and orchards startling most
feathered friends and foes with a loud, piercing exclamation that
sounds like _What!_ Unlike good children, he is more often heard than
seen.
That the solitary, unpopular bird takes a mischievous delight in
scaring its enemies, you may know when I tell you that it likes better
than any other lining for its nest, a cast snake skin. Is it any
wonder that the baby flycatchers' hair stands on end? If the
great-crest cannot find the skin of a snake to coil {166} around her
eggs, or to hang out of the nest, she may use onion skins, or oiled
paper, or even fish scales; for what was once a protective custom,
sometimes becomes degraded into a cheap imitation of the imitation in
the furnishing of her house. Into an abandoned woodpeckers' hole or a
bluebirds' cavity after the babies of these early nesters have flown,
or into some unappropriated hollow in a tree, this flycatcher carries
enough grasses, weeds and feathers to keep her nestlings cozy during
those rare days of June beloved by Lowell, but which Dr. Holmes
observed are often so rare they are raw.
PHOEBE
_Called also: Bridge Pewee; Dusky Flycatcher;
Water Pewee_
The first of its family to come North, as well as the last to leave us
for the winter, the phoebe appears toward the end of March to snap up
the first insects warmed into life by the spring sunshine. Grackles in
the evergreens, red-wings in the swampy meadows, bluebirds in the
orchard may assure us that summer is on the way; but the homely,
confiding phoebe, who comes close about our houses and barns, brings
the good news home to us every hour.
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_Pewit--phoebe, pewit--phoebe_, he calls continually. As he perches on
the peak of a building or other point of vantage, notice how
vigorously he wags his tail when he calls, and turns his head this way
and that, to keep an eye in all directions lest a bite should fly by
him unawares.
Presently a mate comes from somewhere south of the Carolinas where she
has passed the winter; for phoebes are more hardy than the rest of the
family and do not travel all the way to the tropics. With unfailing
accuracy she finds the region where she built her nest the previous
season or where she herself was hatched. This instinct of returned
direction is marvellous, is it not? Sometimes it is hard enough for us
humans to find the way home when not ten miles away. Did you ever get
lost? Birds almost never do.
Phoebes like a covering over their heads to protect their nests from
spring rains, so you will see a domesticated couple going about the
place like a pair of wrens, investigating niches under the piazza
roof, beams in an empty barn loft and projections under bridges and
trestles. By the middle of April a neat nest of moss and lichen,
plastered together with mud and lined with long hair or wool, if sheep
are near, is made in the vicinity of their home of the year before.
{168} The nursery is exquisitely fashioned--one of the best pieces of
bird architecture you are likely to find.
Some over-thrifty housekeepers, nevertheless, tear down nests from
their piazzas, because the poor little phoebes are so afflicted with
lice that they are considered objectionable neighbours. Many wild
birds, like chickens, have their life-blood drawn by these minute
pests. But a thorough dusting of the phoebe's nest with Persian powder
would bring relief to the tormented birds, save their babies, perhaps,
from death and keep the piazza free from vermin. No birds enjoy a bath
in your fountain or water pan more than these tormented ones.
From purely selfish motives it pays to cultivate neighbours ever on
the lookout for flies, wasps, May beetles, click beetles, elm
destroyers and the moth of the cutworm. The first nest is usually so
infested that the phoebes either tear it down in July, and build a new
one on its site, or else make the second nest at a little distance
from the first. The parents of two broods of from four to six
ravenously hungry, insectivorous young, with an instinctive desire to
return to their old home year after year, should surely meet no
discouragement from thinking farmers' wives.
Shouldn't you think that baby phoebes, reared in nests under railroad
bridges, would {169} be fearfully frightened whenever a train
thundered overhead?
WOOD PEWEE
When you have been wandering through the summer woods did you ever,
like Trowbridge, sit down
"Beside the brook, irresolute,
And watch a little bird in suit
Of sombre olive, soft and brown,
Perched in the maple branches, mute?
With greenish gold its vest was fringed,
Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged,
With ivory pale its wings were barred,
And its dark eyes were tender starred.
'Dear bird,' I said, 'what is thy name?'
And thrice the mournful answer came.
So faint and far, and yet so near--
'Pewee! pe-wee! peer!'"
Doubtless this demure, gentle little cousin of the noisy, aggressive,
crested flycatcher has no secret sorrow preying at its heart, but the
tender pathos of its long-drawn notes would seem to indicate that it
is rather melancholy. And it sings (in spite of the books which teach
us that the flycatchers are "songless, perching birds") from the time
of its arrival from Central America in May until only the tireless
indigo bunting and the red-eyed vireo are left in the choir in August.
But how suddenly its melancholy languor {170} departs the instant an
insect flies within sight! With a cheerful, sudden sally in mid-air,
it snaps up the luscious bite, for it can be quite as active as any of
the family. While not so ready to be neighbourly as the phoebe, the
pewee condescends to visit our orchards and shade trees.
When nesting time comes, it looks for a partly decayed, lichen-covered
branch, and on to this saddles a compact, exquisite cradle of fine
grass, moss and shreds of bark, binding bits of lichen with spiders'
web to the outside until the sharpest of eyes are needed to tell the
stuccoed nest from the limb it rests on. Only the tiny hummingbird,
who also uses lichen as a protective and decorative device, conceals
her nest so successfully.
LEAST FLYCATCHER
_Called also: Chebec_
It is not until he calls out his name, _Chebec! Chebec!_ in clear and
business-like tones from some tree-top that you could identify this
fluffy flycatcher, scarcely more than five inches long, whose dusky
coat and light vest offer no helpful markings. Not a single gay
feather relieves his sombre suit. Isn't this a queer, Quakerly taste
for a bird that spends half his life {171} in the tropics among
gorgeously feathered friends? Even the plain vireos, as a family, wear
finer clothes than the dusky flycatchers. You may know that the chebec
is not one of those deliberate searchers of foliage by his sudden,
murderous sallies in mid-air.
Abundant from Pennsylvania to Quebec, the least flycatchers are too
inconspicuous to be much noticed. They haunt apple orchards chiefly at
nesting time, fortunately for the crop, and at no season secrete
themselves in shady woods as pewees do. A little chebec neighbour of
mine used to dart through the spray from the hose that played on the
lawn late every every afternoon during a drought, and sit on the
tennis net to preen his wet feathers; but he nearly put out my eyes in
his excitement and anger when I presumed on so much friendliness to
peep into his nest.
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