BIRDS OF THE SHORE AND MARSHES
Killdeer
Semipalmated Or Ring-Necked Plover
Least Sandpiper
Spotted Sandpiper
Woodcock
Clapper Rail
Sora Rail
Great Blue Heron
Little Green Heron
Black-Crowned Night Heron
American Bittern
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KILLDEER
If you don't know the little killdeer plover, it is surely not his
fault, for he is a noisy sentinel, always ready, night or day, to tell
you his name. _Killdee, killdee_, he calls with his high voice when
alarmed--and he is usually beset by fears, real or imaginary--but when
at peace, his voice is sweet and low. Much persecution from gunners
has made the naturally gentle birds of the shore and marshes rather
shy and wild. Most plovers nest in the Arctic regions, where man and
his wicked ways are unknown. When the young birds reach our land of
liberty and receive a welcome of hot shot, the survivors learn their
first lesson in shyness. Some killdeer, however, are hatched in the
United States. No sportsman worthy the name would waste shot on a bird
not larger than a robin; one, moreover, with musky flesh; yet I have
seen scores of killdeer strung over the backs of gunners in tide-water
Virginia. Their larger cousins, the black-breasted, the piping, the
golden and Wilson's plovers, who travel from the tundras of the far
North to South America and back again every year, have now become rare
because too much cooked {248} along their long route. You can usually
tell a flock of plovers in flight by the crescent shape of the rapidly
moving mass.
With a busy company of friends, the killdeer haunts broad tracts of
grassy land, near water-uplands or lowlands, or marshy meadows beside
the sea. Scattered over a chosen feeding ground, the plovers run about
nimbly, nervously, looking for trouble as well as food. Because worms,
which are their favourite supper, come out of the ground at nightfall,
the birds are especially active then. Grasshoppers, crickets, and
other insects content them during the day.
SEMIPALMATED PLOVER
The killdeer, which is our commonest plover, has a little cousin
scarcely larger than an English sparrow that is a miniature of
himself, except that the semipalmated (half-webbed) or ring-necked
plover has only one dark band across the upper part of his white
breast, while the killdeer wears two black rings. This dainty little
beach bird has brownish-gray upper parts so like the colour of wet
sand, that, as he runs along over it, just in advance of the frothing
ripples, he is in perfect harmony with his surroundings. Relying upon
that fact for {249} protection, he will squat behind a tuft of beach
grass if you pass too near rather than risk flight.
When the tide is out, you may see the tiny forms of these common
ring-necks mingled with the ever-friendly little sandpipers on the
exposed sand bars and wide beaches where all keep up a constant hunt
for bits of shell fish, fish eggs and sand worms.
General Greely found them nesting in Grinnell Land in July, the males
doing most of the incubating as is customary in the plover family,
whose females certainly have advanced ideas. Downy little chicks run
about as soon after leaving the egg as they are dry. In August the
advance guard of southbound flocks begin to arrive in the United
States _en route_ for Brazil--quite a journey in the world to test the
fledgling's wings.
LEAST SANDPIPER
Across the narrow beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I;
And fast I gather, bit by bit,
The scattered driftwood bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit,--
One little sandpiper and I.
Above our heads the sullen clouds
Scud black and swift across the sky;
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
Stand out the white light-houses high.
Almost as far as eye can reach
I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
As fast we flit along the beach,--
One little sandpiper and I.
I watch him as he skims along
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
He starts not at my fitful song,
Or flash of fluttering drapery.
He has no thought of any wrong;
He scans me with a fearless eye.
Stanch friends are we, well-tried and strong.
The little sandpiper and I.
Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night
When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky:
For are we not God's children both.
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?
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Almost every child I know is more familiar with Celia Thaxter's poem
about the little sandpiper than with the bird itself. But if you have
the good fortune to be at the seashore in the late summer, when flocks
of the friendly mites come to visit us from the Arctic regions on
their way south, you can scarcely fail to become acquainted with the
companion of Mrs. Thaxter's lonely walks along the beach at the Isles
of Shoals where her father kept the lighthouse.
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The least sandpipers, peeps, ox-eyes or stints, as they are variously
called, are only about the size of sparrows--too small for any
self-respecting gunner to bag, therefore they are still abundant.
Their light, dingy-brown and gray, finely speckled backs are about the
colour of the mottled sand they run over so nimbly, and their breasts
are as white as the froth of the waves that almost never touch them.
Beach birds become marvellously quick in reckoning the fraction of a
second when they must run from under the combing wave about to break
over their little heads. Plovers rely on their fleet feet to escape a
wetting. Least sandpipers usually fly upward and onward if a deluge
threatens; but they have a cousin, the semipalmated (half-webbed)
sandpiper that swims well when the unexpected water suddenly lifts it
off its feet.
These busy, cheerful, sprightly little peepers are always ready to
welcome to their flocks other birds--ring-necked plovers, turnstones,
snipe and phalaropes. If by no other sign, you may distinguish
sandpipers by their constant call, _peep-peep_.
SPOTTED SANDPIPER
Do you know the spotted sandpiper, teeter, tilt-up, teeter-tail,
teeter-snipe, or tip-up, {252} whichever you may choose to call it? As
if it had not yet decided whether to be a beach bird or a woodland
dweller, a wader or a perching songster, it is equally at home along
the seashore or on wooded uplands, wherever ditches, pools, streams,
creeks, swamps, and wet meadows furnish its favourite foods. It stays
with us through the long summer. Did you ever see it go through any of
the queer motions that have earned for it so many names? Jerking up
first its head, then its tail, it walks with a funny, bobbing,
tipping, see-saw gait, as if it were self-conscious and conceited.
Still another popular name was given from its sharp call _peet-weet,
peet-weet_, rapidly repeated, and usually uttered as the bird flies in
graceful curves over the water or inland fields.
WOODCOCK
_Called also: Blind, Wall-eyed, Mud, Bigheaded,
Wood, and Whistling Snipe; Bog-sucker; Bogbird; Timber Doodle._
Whenever you see little groups of clean-cut holes dotted over the
earth in low, wet ground, you may know that either the woodcock or
Wilson's snipe has been there probing for worms. Not even the
woodpecker's combination tool {253} is more wonderfully adapted to its
work than the bill of these snipe, which is a long, straight boring
instrument, its upper half fitted with a flexible tip for hooking the
worm out of its hole as you would lift a string out of a jar on your
hooked finger. Down goes the bill into the mud, sunk to the nostrils;
then the upper tip feels around for its slippery victim. You need
scarcely hope to see the probing performance because earth-worms, like
mice, come out of their holes after dark, which is why snipe are most
active then.
A little boy once asked me this conundrum of his own making: "What is
the difference between Martin Luther and a woodcock?" Just a few
differences suggested themselves, but I did not guess right the very
first time; can you? "One didn't like a Diet of Worms and the other
does," was the small boy's answer.
After the ground freezes hard in the northern United States and
Canada, the woodcock is compelled to go south to Virginia. But by the
time the skunk cabbage and bright-green, fluted leaves of hellebore
are pushing through the bogs and wet woodlands in earliest spring,
back he comes again. An odd-looking, thick-necked, chunky fellow he
is, less than a foot in length, his long, straight, stout bill
sticking far out from his triangular head; his eyes placed so far back
in the upper corners that he must {254} be able to see behind him
quite as well as he can look ahead; the streaks and bars of his
mottled russet-brown, gray and buff and black upper parts being so
laid on that he is in perfect harmony with the russet leaves, earth
and underbrush of his woodland home. When his mate is sitting on her
nest, the mimicry of her surroundings is so perfect it is well-nigh
impossible to find her.
Sportsmen pursue both the woodcock and Wilson's snipe relentlessly,
but happily they are no easy targets. Rising on short, stiff,
whistling wings they fly in a zig-zag, erratic flight, and quickly
drop to cover again, continually breaking the scent for a pursuing
dog.
RAILS
Rails are such shy, skulking hiders among the tall marsh grasses that
"every child" need never hope to know them all; but a few members of
the family that are both abundant and noisy, may be readily recognised
by their voices alone.
All rails prefer to escape from an intruder through the sedges in
well-worn runways rather than trust their short, rounded wings to bear
them beyond danger; and for forcing their way through grassy jungles,
their narrow-breasted, {255} wedge-shaped bodies are perfectly
adapted. Compressed almost to a point in front, but broad and blunt
behind where their queer little short-pointed tails stand up, the
rails' small figures thread their way in and out of the mazes over the
oozy ground with wonderful rapidity.
"As thin as a rail" means much to the cook who plucks one. It offers
even a smaller bite than a robin to the epicure. When a gunner routs a
rail it reluctantly rises a few feet above the grasses, flies with
much fluttering, trailing its legs after it, but quickly sinks in the
sedges again. Except in game bags, you rarely see a rail's varied
brown and gray back or its barred breast. The bill is longer than the
head. The long, widespread, flat toes help the owner to tread a dinner
out of the mud as well as to swim across an inlet; and the short hind
toes enable him to cling when he runs up the rushes to reach the
tassels of grain at the top. No doubt you once played with some
mechanical toy that made a noise something like the peculiar, rolling
cackle of the clapper rail. This "marsh hen," which is common in the
salt meadows along our coast from Long Island southward, continually
betrays itself by its voice; otherwise you might never suspect its
presence unless you are in the habit of pushing a punt up a creek to
get acquainted with the {256} interesting shy creatures that dwell in
what Thoreau called "Nature's sanctuary."
The clapper's cousin, the sora, or Carolina rail, so well known to
gunners, alas! if not to "every child," delights to live wherever wild
rice grows along inland lakes and rivers or along the coast. Its
sweetly whistled spring song _ker-wee, ker-wee_, and "rolling whinny"
give place in autumn to the _'kuk, kuk, 'k-'k'k-'kuk_ imitated by
alleged sportsmen in search of a mere trifle of flesh that they fill
with shot. As Mrs. Wright says of the bobolinks (neighbours of the
soras in the rice fields) so may it be written of them; they only
serve "to lengthen some weary dinner where a collection of animal and
vegetable bric-a-brac takes the place of satisfactory nourishment."
GREAT BLUE HERON
Standing motionless as the sphinx, with his neck drawn in until his
crested head rests between his angular shoulders, the big,
long-legged, bluish-gray heron depends upon his stillness and
protective colouring to escape the notice of his prey, and of his
human foes (for he has no others). In spite of his size--and he stands
four feet high without stockings--it takes the sharpest eyes to detect
him as he waits in {257} some shallow pool among the sedges along the
creek or river side, silently, solemnly, hour after hour, for a little
fish, frog, lizard, snake, or some large insect to come within
striking distance. With a sudden stroke of his long, strong, sharp
bill, he either snaps up his victim, or runs it through. A fish will
be tossed in the air before being swallowed, head downward, that the
fins may not scratch his very long, slender throat. When you are
eating ice cream, don't you wish your throat were as long as this
heron's?
A gunner, who wantonly shoots at any living target, will usually try
to excuse himself for striking down this stately, picturesque bird
into a useless mass of flesh and feathers, by saying that herons help
themselves to too many fish. (He forgets about all the mice and
reptiles they destroy.) But perhaps birds, as well as men, are
entitled to a fair share of the good things of the Creator. Some
people would prefer the sight of this majestic bird to the small,
worthless fish he eats. What do you think about protecting him by law?
Any one may shoot him now. The broad side of a barn would be about as
good a test of a marksman's skill.
The evil that birds do surely lives after them; the good they do for
us is far too little appreciated. Almost the last snowy heron and
{258} the last egret of Southern swamps have yielded their bodies to
the knife of the plume hunter, who cuts out the exquisite decorations
these birds wear during the nesting season. Inasmuch as all the heron
babies depend upon their parents through an unusually long, helpless
infancy, the little orphans are left to die by starvation. For what
end is the slaughter of the innocents? Merely that the unthinking
heads of vain women may be decked out with aigrettes! Don't blame the
poor hunters too much when the plumes are worth their weight in gold.
LITTLE GREEN HERON
_Called also: Poke; Chuckle-head_
This most abundant member of his tropical tribe that spends the summer
with us, is a shy, solitary bird of the swamps where you would lose
your rubber boots in the quagmire if you attempted to know him too
intimately. But you may catch a glimpse of him as he wades about the
edge of a pond or creek with slow, calculated steps, looking for his
supper. All herons become more active toward evening because their
prey does. By day, this heron, like his big, blue cousin, might be
mistaken for a stump or snag among the sedges and bushes by the
waterside, so dark and still is he.
[Illustration]
A flock of friendly sandpipers and turnstones in wading.
[Illustration]
One little sandpiper
[Illustration]
The coot
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Herons are accused of the tropical vice of laziness; but surely a bird
that travels from northern Canada to the tropics and back again every
year to earn its living, as the little green heron does, is not
altogether lazy. Startle him, and he springs into the air with a loud
squawk, flapping his broad wings and trailing his greenish-yellow legs
behind him, like the storks you see painted on Japanese fans.
He and his mate have long, dark-green crests on their odd-shaped,
receding heads and some lengthened, pointed feathers between the
shoulders of their green or grayish-green hunched backs. Their figures
are rather queer. The reddish-chestnut colour on their necks fades
into the brownish-ash of their under parts, divided by a line of dark
spots on the white throat that widen on the breast. Although the
little green heron is the smallest member of this tribe of large birds
that we see in the Northern States and Canada, it is about a foot and
a half long, larger than any bird, except one of its own cousins, that
you are likely to see in its marshy haunts.
Unlike many of their kind a pair of these herons prefer to build their
rickety nests apart by themselves rather in one of those large,
sociable, noisy and noisome colonies which we {260} associate with the
heron tribe. Flocking is sometimes a fatal habit.
BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON
_Called also: Quawk; Qua Bird_
When the night herons return to us from the South in April, they go
straight to the home of their ancestors, to which they are devotedly
attached--rickety, ramshackle heronries, mere bundles of sticks in the
tops of trees in some swamp--and begin at once to repair them. The
cuckoo's and the dove's nests are fine pieces of architecture compared
with a heron's. Is it not a wonder that the helpless heron babies do
not tumble through the loose twigs? When they are old enough to climb
around their latticed nursery, they still make no attempt to leave it,
and several more weeks must pass before they attempt to fly. If there
is an ancient heronry in your neighbourhood, as there is in mine,
don't attempt to visit the untidy, ill-smelling place on a hot day.
One would like to spray the entire colony with a deodoriser.
Thanks to the night heron's habits that keep him concealed by day when
gunners are abroad, a few large heronries still exist within an hour's
ride of New York, in spite of much persecution.
[Illustration]
The little green heron: the smallest and most abundant member of his
tribe.
[Illustration]
Half-grown little green herons on dress parade.
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Unlike the solitary little green cousin, the black-crowned heron
delights in company, and a hundred noisy pairs may choose to nest in
some favourite spot. How they squawk over their petty quarrels! Wilson
likened the noise to that of "two or three hundred Indians choking one
another."
Only when they have young fledglings to feed do these herons hunt for
food in broad daylight. But as the light fades they become
increasingly active and noisy; even after it is pitch dark, when the
fishermen go eeling, you may hear them _quawking_ continually as they
fly up and down the creek. Big, pearly-gray birds (they stand fully
two feet high) with black-crowned heads, from which their long,
narrow, white wedding feathers fall over the black top of the back,
the night herons so harmonise with the twilight as to seem a part of
it.
AMERICAN BITTERN
_Called also: Stake-driver; Poke; Freckled Heron; Booming Bittern;
Indian Hen._
Even if you have never seen this shy hermit of large swamps and marshy
meadows you must know him by his remarkable "barbaric yawp." Not a
muscle does this brown and blackish and {262} buff freckled fellow
move as he stands waiting for prey to come within striking distance of
what appears to be a dead stump. Sometimes he stands with his head
drawn in until it rests on his back; or, he may hold his head erect
and pointed upward when he looks like a sharp snag. While he meditates
pleasantly on the flavour of a coming dinner, he suddenly snaps and
gulps, filling his lungs with air, then loudly bellows forth the most
unmusical bird cry you are ever likely to hear. You may recognise it
across the marsh half a mile away or more. A nauseated child would go
through no more convulsive gestures than this happy hermit makes every
time he lifts up his voice to call, _pump-er-lunk, pump-er-hmk,
pump-er-lunk_. Still another noise has earned him one of his many
popular names because it sounds like a stake being driven into the
mud.
A booming bittern I know sits hour after hour, almost every day in
summer, year after year, on a dark, decaying pile of an old dock in
the creek. Our canoe glides over the water so silently it rarely
disturbs him. The timid bird relies on his protective colouring to
conceal him in so exposed a place and profits by his fearlessness in
broad daylight next to an excellent feeding ground. At low tide he
walks about sedately on the muddy flats treading out a dinner.
Kingfishers rattle up and down the {263} creek, cackling rails hide in
the sedges behind it, red-winged blackbirds flute above the phalanxes
of rushes on its banks: but the bittern makes more noise, especially
toward evening, than all the other inhabitants of the swampy meadows
except the frogs, whose voices he forever silences when he can. Frogs,
legs and all, are his favourite delicacy.
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