SOME QUEER RELATIONS
Whip-poor-will
Nighthawk
Chimney Swift
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
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WHIP-POOR-WILL
A queer, shadowy bird, that sleeps all day in the dense wood and flies
about through open country after dark as softly as an owl, would be
difficult for any child to know were it not for the weird, snappy
triplets of notes that tell his name. Every one knows him far better
by sound than by sight. _Whip-poor-will (chuck) whip-poor-will (chuck)
whip-poor-will (chuck)_ he calls rapidly for about two hours, just
after sunset or before sunrise from some low place, fluttering his
wings at each announcement of his name. But you must be near him to
hear the _chuck_ at the end of each vigorous triplet; most listeners
don't know it is there.
You might be very close indeed without seeing the plump bird, about
the size of a robin, who has flattened himself lengthwise against a
lichen-covered branch until you cannot tell bird from bark. Or he may
be on a rock or an old, mossy log, where he rests serene in the
knowledge that his mottled, dull dark-brown, gray, buff, black and
white feathers blend perfectly with his resting place. He must choose
a spot broad enough to support his {176} whole body, for, like his
cousin, the nighthawk, and his more distant relatives, the hummingbird
and the swift, his feet are too small and weak for much perching. You
never see him standing erect on a twig with his toes clasped around
it, but always squatting when at rest.
A narrow white band across his throat makes his depressed head look as
if it had been separated from his body--a queer effect that may remind
you of the Cheshire Cat in "Alice in Wonderland." The whip-poor-will's
three outer tail feathers have white ends which help to distinguish
him from the nighthawk. He has a funny little short beak, but his
large mouth stretches from ear to ear, and when he flies low above the
fields after sunset, this trap is kept open, like the swift's and the
swallow's, to catch any night-flying insects--mosquitoes, June bugs,
gnats, katydids and little moths--that cross his path. Long,
stiffened bristles at the ends of his mouth prevent the escape of a
victim past the gaping trap. On the wing the bird is exceedingly swift
and graceful. Some children mistake him for a bat or a nighthawk.
Relying upon the protective covering of her soft plumage, the mother
whip-poor-will builds no nest, but lays a pair of mottled eggs
directly on the ground in the dark woods where a carpet of dead leaves
and decayed wood makes concealment perfect.
[Illustration]
Least flycatchers in a rose bush.
[Illustration]
Nighthawk resting in the sunlight.
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Not even the ovenbird contrives that a peep at her eggs shall be so
difficult for us. It is next to impossible to find them. Unlike the
wicked cowbird, who builds no nest because she has no maternal
instinct, the whip-poor-will, who is a devoted mother, makes none
because none is needed. Once I happened upon two fuzzy, dark,
yellowish-gray, baby whip-poor-wills (mostly mouths) in a hollow of a
decayed, lichen-covered log, which was their "comfy" cradle; but the
frantic mother, who flopped and tumbled about on the ground around
them, whining like a puppy, sent me running away from sheer pity.
In the Southern States a somewhat larger whip-poor-will, but with the
same habits, is known as chuck-will's-widow.
NIGHTHAWK
_Called also: Bull-bat; Night-jar; Mosquito-hawk_
Did you ever hear a rushing, whirring, booming sound as though wind
were blowing across the bung-hole of an empty barrel? The nighthawk,
who makes it, is such a high flyer, that in the dusk of the late
afternoon or early evening, when he delights to sail abroad to get his
dinner, you cannot always see him; but as {178} he coasts down from
the sky--not on a sled, but on his half-closed wings--with tremendous
speed, the rush of air through his stiff, long wing feathers makes an
uncanny, aeolian music that silly, superstitious people have declared
is a bad omen. You might think he would dash out his brains in such a
headlong dive through the air, but before he hits the earth, a sudden
turn saves him and off he goes unharmed, skimming above the ground and
catching insects after the whip-poor-will's manner. He lacks the
helpful bristles at the ends of his fly-trap. Don't imagine, because
of his name, that he flies about only at night. He is not so nocturnal
in his habits as the whip-poor-will. Toward the end of summer,
especially, he may be seen coursing over the open country at almost
any hour of the day. Once in a while, as he hunts, he calls _peent_--a
sharp cry that reminds you of the meadowlark's nasal call-note.
Presently, mounting upward higher and higher, at the leisurely rate of
a boy dragging his sled up hill, he seems to reach the very clouds,
when down he coasts again, faster than a boy's flexible flyer. Listen
for the booming noise of this coaster! Evidently he enjoys the sport
as much as any boy or girl, for he repeats his sky-coasting very often
without having to wait for a snow-storm. Indeed, when winter comes, he
is enjoying another summer in South {179} America. Life without
insects would be impossible for him.
When he is coursing low above the fields, with quick, erratic,
bat-like turns, notice the white spots, almost forming a bar across
his wings, for they will help you to distinguish him from the
whip-poor-will, who carries his white signals on the outer feathers of
his tail. Both of these cousins wear the same colours, only they put
them on differently, the whip-poor-will having his chiefly mottled,
the nighthawk his chiefly barred. The latter wears a broader white
band across his throat. His mate substitutes buff for his white
decorations.
Like the mother whip-poor-will, she makes no nest but places her two
speckled treasures in some sunny spot, either on the bare ground, on a
rock, or even on the flat roof of a house. Since electric lights
attract so many insects to the streets of towns and villages, the
enterprising nighthawk often forsakes the country to rear her children
where they may enjoy the benefits of modern improvements.
Both the nighthawk and the whip-poor-will belong to the goatsucker
family. Did you ever hear a more ridiculous name? Eighty-five innocent
birds of this tribe, found in most parts of the world, have to bear it
because some careless observer may have seen one of their number
flying among a herd of goats in Europe to catch {180} the insects on
them, just as cowbirds follow our cattle; and he imagined the bird was
actually drinking the goat's milk!
CHIMNEY SWIFT
There are some children, and grown-ups, too, who persist in calling
this bird the chimney swallow, although it is not even remotely
related to the swallow family, and its life history, as well as its
anatomy, are quite different from a swallow's, as you shall see.
Down within some unused chimney, the modern babies of this
soot-coloured, dark, grayish-brown bird first open their eyes.
Old-fashioned swifts still nest in hollow trees or caves, but chimneys
are so much more abundant and convenient, that up-to-date birds prefer
them. Without stopping in their flight, the parent swifts snap off
with their beaks or feet, little twigs at the ends of dead branches,
and these they carry, one by one, into a chimney, gluing them against
the side until they have finished an almost flat, shelf-like, lattice
cradle. Where do they get their glue? Only during the nesting season
do certain glands in their mouths flow a brownish fluid that quickly
gums and hardens when exposed to the air. After nursery duties have
ended, the gland shrinks from disuse.
[Illustration]
A chimney swift at rest
[Illustration]
Hummingbird pumping food into her babies' crops
[Illustration]
Twin rubythroats
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When the basket cradle has been stuck against a chimney-side, it looks
as if it were covered with a thin coat of isinglass. On this lattice
from four to six white eggs are laid. A friend, who innocently started
a fire in his library one cold, rainy mid-summer evening, was startled
and shocked when a nest and eggs suddenly fell on the hearth. He had
no idea birds were nesting in his chimney. The rush of their wings he
had thought was the wind. Of course the fire melted the glue, when
down fell the cradle. Happily there were no "babies and all" to tumble
into the flames.
When the baby swifts are old enough to climb out of the lattice, they
still cling near it for about a fortnight waiting for their wings to
grow strong, before they try to leave the chimney. Apparently they
hang themselves up to go to sleep. Shouldn't you think they would fall
on the hearth down stairs? Doubtless they would but for their short,
thin, stiff-pointed tail feathers which help to prop them up where
they cling to the rough bricks and mortar of the chimney lining.
Woodpeckers also prop themselves with their tail feathers, but against
tree trunks. Not until swifts are a month old do the lazy little
fellows climb out of their deep, dark cavern into the boundless sky,
which is their true home. No birds are more tireless, rapid flyers
than they. Their {182} small feet, weak from disuse, could scarcely
hold them on a perch.
One day last July I picked up on the ground a young swift I thought
had dropped from exhaustion in its first flight. As swifts had been
nesting in one of the chimneys, I carried the young bird in my hand
into the house, up stairs, out through an attic window onto the roof,
climbed along the ridgepole in terror for my life, clinging by only
one free hand to the peak of the roof, and at last reached the swift's
chimney. Laying the sooty youngster on the stone chimney-cap I had
crawled cautiously backward only a few feet, when lo! my charge
suddenly bounded off into the air like a veteran to join a flock of
companions playing cross-tag. As it wheeled and darted above the
house, evidently quite as much at ease in the air as any of the merry,
twittering company, don't you believe it started the laugh on me? But
what had brought so able a young flyer to earth? My wounded vanity
tempts me to believe that it had really dropped from fatigue and, once
on the ground, was unable to rise again, whereas it was comparatively
easy to launch itself from the chimney-top.
With mouths agape from ear to ear, the swifts draw in an insect dinner
piecemeal, as they course through the air, just as the whip-poor-will,
nighthawk and swallows do. {183} Fortunate the house where a colony
elect to live, for they rid the air of myriads of gnats and
mosquitoes, as they fly about overhead, silhouetted against the sky.
Early in the morning and late in the afternoon are their hours for
exercise. You will think, perhaps, that they look more like bats than
birds. Watch their rapid wing-beats very closely and see if you can
settle the mooted question as to whether they use both wings at once,
or first one wing and then the other in alternate strokes. After you
have noticed their peculiar, throbbing flight, you will never again
confuse them with the graceful, gliding swallows. Although the swift
is actually shorter than a sparrow, its spread wings measure over a
foot across from tip to tip. No wonder it can fly every waking moment
without feeling tired, and journey from Labrador to Central America
for a winter holiday.
RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD
What child does not know the hummingbird, the jewelled midget that
flashes through the garden, poises before a flower as if suspended in
the air by magic, thrusts a needle-like bill into one cup of nectar
after another, then whirs off out of sight in a trice? It is the
smallest {184} bird we have. Suppose a fairy wished to pluck one for
her dinner, as we should pluck a chicken; how large, do you think,
would be the actual body of a hummingbird, without its feathers? Not
much, if any, larger than a big bumble-bee, I venture to guess. Yet
this atom of animation travels from Panama to Quebec or beyond, and
back again every year of its brief life, that it may live where
flowers, and the minute insects that infest them, will furnish drink
and meat the year around. So small a speck of a traveller cannot be
seen in the sky by an enemy with the sharpest of eyes. Space quickly
swallows it. A second after it has left your garden it will be out of
sight. This mite of a migrant has plenty of stay-at-home relatives in
the tropics--exquisite creatures they are--but the ruby-throat is the
only hummingbird bold enough to venture into the eastern United States
and Canada.
What tempts him so far north? You know that certain flowers depend
upon certain insect friends to carry their pollen from blossom to
blossom that they may set fertile seed; but did you know that certain
other flowers depend upon the hummingbird? Only his tongue, that may
be run out beyond his long, slender bill and turned around curves,
could reach the drops of nectar in the tips of the wild columbine's
five inverted horns of plenty. The {185} Monarda or bee-balm, too,
hides a sweet sip in each of its red tubes for his special benefit. So
does the coral honeysuckle. There are a few other flowers that cater
to him, especially, by wearing his favourite colour, by hiding nectar
so deep that only his long tongue can drain it, and by opening in
orderly succession so that he shall fare well throughout the summer,
not have a feast one month and a famine the next. In addition to these
flowers in Nature's garden that minister to his needs, many that have
been brought from the ends of the earth to our garden plots please him
no less. The canna, nasturtium, phlox, trumpet-flower, salvia, and a
host of others, delight his eye and his palate. Don't you think it is
worth while to plant his favourites in your garden if only for the joy
of seeing him about? He is wonderfully neighbourly, coming to the
flower-beds or window-boxes with undaunted familiarity in the presence
of the family. A hummingbird that lived in my garden sipped from a
sprig of honeysuckle that I held in my hand. But the bird is not
always so amiable by any means. A fierce duelist, he will lunge his
rapier-like bill at another hummer with deadly thrusts. A battle of
the midgets in mid-air is a sorry sight. You may know a male by the
brilliant metallic-red feathers on his throat. His mate lacks these,
but her brilliancy has another {186} outlet, for she is one of the
most expert nest-builders in the world. An exquisitely dainty little
cup of plant down, felted into a compact cradle and stuccoed with bits
of lichen bound on by spider-web, can scarcely be told from a knot on
the limb to which it is fastened. Two eggs, not larger than beans, in
time give place to two downy hummers about the size of honey-bees.
Perhaps you have seen pigeons pump food down the throats of their
squabs? In this same way are baby hummingbirds fed. After about three
weeks in the nest, the young are ready to fly; but they rest on
perches the first month of their independence more than at any time
afterward. No weak-footed relative of the swift could live long off
the wing. It is goodbye to summer when the last hummingbird forsakes
our frost-nipped, northern gardens for happier hunting grounds far
away.
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