Every American boy and girl knows our national bird, which is the farmer's ally, however, only when it appears on the money in his pocket. Without an eagle on that, you must know it would be of little use to him.
Truth to tell, this majestic emblem of our republic (borrowed from imperial Rome) that spreads itself gloriously over our coins, flag poles, public buildings and government documents, is, in real life, not the bravest of the brave, nor the most intelligent, nor the noblest,{221}nor the most enterprising of birds, as one fain would believe. On the contrary, it often uses its wonderful eyesight to detect a bird more skilful than itself in the act of catching a fish, and then puts forth its superb strength to rob the successful fisher of his prey. The osprey is a frequent sufferer, although some of the water fowl, that patiently course over the waves hour after hour, in search of a dinner, may be robbed of it by the overpowering pirate. Dead fish cast up on the beach are not rejected. When fish fail, coots, ducks, geese and gulls—the fastest of flyers—are likely to be snatched up, plucked clean of their feathers, and torn apart by the great bird that drops suddenly upon them from the clouds like Jove's thunderbolt. Rarely small animals are seized, but there is probably no well-authenticated case of an eagle carrying off a child.
It is in their family life that hawks and eagles, however cruel at other times, show some truly lovable traits. Once mated, they know neither divorce nor family quarrels all their lives. Home is the dearest spot on earth to them. They become passionately attached to the great bundle of trash that is at once their nest and their abode. A tall pine tree, near water, or the rocky ledge of some steep cliff, is the favourite site for an eagle eyrie. Here the devoted mates will carry an immense quantity of{222}sticks, sod, cornstalks, pine twigs, weeds, bones, and other coarse rubbish, until, after annual repairs for several seasons, the broad, flat nest may grow to be almost as high as it is wide and look something like a New York sky-scraper. Both parents sit on the eggs in turn and devote themselves with zeal to feeding the eaglets. These spoiled children remain in the nest several months without attempting to fly, expecting to be waited upon even after they are actually larger than the old birds. The castings of skins, bones, hair, scales, etc., in the vicinity of a hawk's or eagle's nest, will indicate, almost as well as Dr. Fisher's analysis, what food the babies had in their stomachs to make them grow so big. Immature birds are almost black all over. Not until they are three years old do the feathers on their heads and necks turn white, giving them the effect of being bald. Any eagle seen in the eastern United States is sure to be of this species.
In the West and throughout Asia and Africa lives the golden eagle, of which Tennyson wrote the lines that apply equally well to our Eastern "bird of freedom":
"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;Close to the sun in lonely lands,Ringed with the azure world he stands.The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls:He watches from his mountain walls.And, like a thunderbolt, he falls."
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Just such an extended branch as a shrike or a kingbird would use as a lookout while searching the landscape o'er for something to eat, the little sparrow hawk chooses for the same purpose. He is not much larger than either of these birds, scarcely longer than a robin. Because he is a hawk, with the family possession of eyes that are both telescope and microscope, he can detect a mouse, sparrow, garter snake, spider or grasshopper, farther away than seems to us possible.
Every farmer's boy knows this beautiful little rusty-red hawk, with slaty-blue cap and wings, and creamy-buff spotted sides, if not by sight then by sound, as it callskill-ee, kill-ee kill-ee, across the fields. It does not soar and revolve in a merry-go-round on high like its cousins, but flies swiftly and gracefully, keeping near enough to the ground to see everything that creeps or hops through the grass. Dropping suddenly, like a stone, upon its victim (usually a grasshopper) it seizes it in its small, sharp, fatal talons and bears it away to a favourite perch, there to enjoy it at leisure.
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This is the hawk that is so glad to find a deserted woodpecker's hole for its nest. How many other birds gratefully accept those skilful carpenters' vacant tenements!
A pair of these beautiful big hawks, that had nested year after year in the top of a tall pine tree on the Manasquan River, New Jersey, were great pets in that region. An old fisherman of Barnegat Bay told me that when he was hauling in his seine one day, he saw the male osprey strike the water with a splash, struggle an instant with a great fish that had been following his net, and disappear below the waves, never to rise again. The bird more than met his match that time. The fish was far larger than he expected, so powerful that it easily dragged him under, once his talons were imbedded in the fish's flesh. For the rest of the summer the widowed osprey always stayed about when the fisherman hauled his net on the beach, and bore away to her nest the worthless fish he left in it for her special benefit. But after rearing her family—a prolonged process for all the hawks, eagles, and owls—she never returned to the{225}neighbourhood. Perhaps old associations were too painful; perhaps she was shot on her way South that winter; or perhaps she took another mate with more sense and less greed, who preferred to reside elsewhere.
As you may imagine, fish hawks always live near water. In summer they frequent the inlets along the Atlantic coast, but over inland lakes and rivers also, many fly back and forth. You may know by their larger size—they are almost two feet long—and by their slow flight that they are not the winter gulls. Their dusky backs and white under parts harmonise well with the marine picture, North or South. Their plumage contains more white than that of any other hawk. No matter how foggy the day or how quietly the diving osprey may splash to catch his fish dinner, any bald-headed eagle in the vicinity is sure to detect him in the act of seizing it, and then to relieve him of it instantly.
Like many children I know, owls begin to be especially lively toward night, only they make no noise as they fly about. Very soft, fluffy plumage muffles their flight so that they can drop upon a meadow mouse creeping through the grass in the stilly night before this wee,{226}timorous beastie suspects there is a foe abroad. As owls live upon mice, mostly, it is important they should be helped to catch them with some device that beats our traps. If mice should change their nocturnal habits, the owl's whole scheme of existence would be upset, and the hawks would get the quarry that they now enjoy: mice, rats, moles, bats, frogs and the larger insects. You see the farmer has invaluable day and night allies in these birds of prey which take turns in protecting his fields from rodents, one patrol working while the other sleeps. On the whole, owls are the more valuable to him. They usually continue their good work all through the winter after the hawks have gone South. Can you think of any other birds that work for him at night?
Not only can owls fluff out their loose, mottled plumage, but they can draw it in so close as to change their shape and size in an instant, so that they look like quite different birds, or rather not like birds at all, but stumps of trees. Altering their outlines, changing their shape and size at will, is one of these queer birds' peculiarities. Their eyes, set in the centre of feathered discs, do not revolve in their sockets, but are so fixed that they look only straight ahead, which is why an owl must turn his head every time he wishes to glance to the right or left.
Turkey buzzard: one of Nature's house cleaners.
The beautiful little sparrow hawk.
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Another peculiarity is the owls' method of eating. Bolting entire all the food they catch, head first, they digest only the nutritious portions of it. Then, bowing their heads and shaking them very hard, they eject the bones, claws, skin, hair and fur in matted pellets, without the least distress. Some children I know, who swallow their food in a hurry—cherry stones, grape skins, apple cores and all—need a similar, merciful digestive apparatus.
Like the hawks, owls are devoted, life-long mates. The females are larger than the males. Some like to live in dense evergreens that hide them from teasing blue jays and other foes by day; some, like the barn owl, prefer towers, church steeples or the tops of barns and other buildings; some hide in hollow trees or deserted woodpeckers' holes, but all naturally prefer to take their long, daily naps where the sunlight does not penetrate. They live in their homes more hours than woodpeckers or any other birds. No doubt we pass by many sleeping owls without suspecting their presence.
This is the shy, odd-looking, gray and white mottled owl with the triangular face and slim{228}body, about a foot and a half long, that comes out of its hole at evening with a wild scream, startling timid and superstitious people into the belief that it is uncanny. The American counterpart of "wise Minerva's only fowl," its large eye-discs and solemn blink certainly make it look like a fit companion for the goddess of wisdom.
A tame barn owl, owned by a gentleman in Philadelphia, would sit on his shoulder for hours at a time. It felt offended if its master would not play with it. The only way the man could gain time for himself during the bird's waking hours, was to feed it well and leave a stuffed bird for it to play with when he went out of the room, just as Jimmy Brown left a doll with his baby sister when he went out to play; only the man could not tack the owl's petticoats to the floor.
A pair of barn owls lived for many years in the tower of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. Dr. Fisher found the skulls of four hundred and fifty-four small mammals in the pellets cast about their home. Another pair lived in a tower and on the best of terms with some tame pigeons. Happily the owls had no taste for squab, but the debris of several thousand mice and rats about their curious dwelling proved that their appetite needed no coaxing with such a delicacy.
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This owl, and its long-eared cousin, wear the tufts of feathers in their ears that resemble harmless horns. Unlike its relatives, the short-eared owl does some hunting by daylight, especially in cloudy weather, and like the marsh hawk it prefers to live in grassy, marshy places frequented by meadow mice. On the other hand, the long-eared owl respects family traditions, and goes about only after dark. "It usually spends the day in some evergreen woods, thick willow copse or alder swamp, although rarely it may be found in open places," says Dr. Fisher. "The bird is not wild and will allow itself to be closely approached. When conscious that its presence is recognised, it sits upright, draws the feathers close to its body, and erects the ear-tufts, resembling in appearance a piece of weather-beaten bark more than a bird." The long and the short of it is, that few people, except professional bird students, know very much about these or any other owls, for few find them by day or forsake their couches when they are abroad. We may take Dr. Johnson's advice and "give our days and nights to the study of Addison," but few of us give even a part of our days and less of our nights to the study of the birds about us.
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If "a good child should be seen and not heard" what can be said for this owl? Its deep-tonedwhoo-whoo-who-whoo-to-whoo-ah, like the wail of some lost soul asking the way, is the only indication you are likely to have that a hoot owl lives in your neighbourhood. You can imitate its voice and deliberately "hoot it up." Few people who know its voice will ever see its smooth, round, bland, almost human face.
"As useless as a last year's nest" can have no meaning to a pair of these large hardy owls that go about toward the end of winter looking for a deserted woodpecker's nest or a hawk's, crow's, or squirrel's bulky cradle in some tree top. Ever after they hold it as their own.
Farmers shoot the owl that occasionally takes one of their broilers or a game bird, not knowing that the remainder of its diet really leaves them in its debt.
A boy I know had a pair of little screech owls invite themselves to live in a box he had nailed{231}up for bluebirds in his father's orchard. Although they had full liberty, in time they became tame pets, even pampered darlings, with a willing slave to trap mice for them in the corn crib and hay loft. At first mice were plentiful enough, and every day after school the boy would empty the traps, climb the apple tree and feed the owls. But presently the mice learned the danger that may lurk behind an innocent looking lump of cheese. One foolish, hungry mouse now and then was all the boy could catch. This he would carry by the tail to his sleeping pets, arouse them by dangling it against their heads, at which, while half asleep, they would click their beaks like castanets. When both were wide awake he would allow one of them to bolt the mouse while he still held on firmly to the tail. Then, jerking the mouse back out of the owl's throat, he would allow the other owl to really swallow it. When next he caught a mouse, the operation was reversed: the owl that had been satisfied before now gulped the mouse first, only to have it jerked away and fed to its mate. In this way, strange to say, the boy kept on friendly terms with the pair for several weeks, when he discovered that they liked bits of raw beef quite as well as mice. After that he carried his queer pets to the house and kept them in his room all winter. Early in the spring they{232}returned to the bird house and raised a family of funny, fluffy, plump little owlets.
This boy discovered for himself the screech owls' strange characteristic of changing their colour without changing their feathers, as moulting song birds change theirs. They have a rusty, reddish-brown phase and a mottled-gray phase. So far as is known, these changes of colour are not dependent upon age, sex, or season. No one understands what causes them or what they mean. Sometimes the same family will contain birds with plumage that is rusty-brown or gray or intermediate. But you may always know a screech owl by its small size (it is only about as long as a robin) and by the ear tufts that make it look wide-awake and very wise.
By day it keeps well hidden in some deserted woodpecker's hole or a hollow in some old orchard tree, which is its favourite residence; but some mischievous little birds, with sharper eyes than ours, often discover its hiding place, wake it up, and chase it, blinking and bewildered, all about the farm. By night, when its tormentors are asleep, this little owl goes forth for its supper, and then we hear its weird, sweet, shivering, tremulous cry. Because it lives near our homes and is, perhaps, the commonest of the owls all over our country, every child can know it by sound, if not by sight.
Father and mother barn owls.
The heavenly twins: young barn owls.
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Mourning DoveBob-WhiteRuffed Grouse
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Do not waste any sympathy on this incessant love-maker that slowly singscoo-o-o, ah-coo-o-o-ooo-o-o-ooo-o-o, in a sweetly sad voice. Really he is no more melancholy than the plaintive pewee but, on the contrary, is so happy in his love that his devotion has passed into a proverb. Nevertheless, the song he sings to his "turtle dove" sounds more like a dirge than a rapture. While she lives, there is no more contented bird in the woods.
Dove lovers are quite self-sufficient. Their larger cousins, the wild pigeons, that once were so abundant, depended on friends for much of their happiness and lived in enormous flocks. Now only a few pairs survive in this land of liberty to refute the adage "In union there is strength." Because millions of pigeons slept in favourite roosts many miles in extent, they were all too easily netted, and it did not take greedy men long to turn the last flock into cash. Happily, doves preserved their race by scattering in couples over a wide area—from{236}Panama, in winter, as far north as Ontario in warm weather. Not until nursery duties, which begin early in the spring, are over, late in summer, do they give up their shy, unsocial habits to enjoy the company of a few friends. When they rise on whistling wings from tree-bordered fields, where they have been feeding on seeds and grain, not a gun is fired: no one cares to eat them.
Only the cuckoo of our common birds builds so flimsy a nest as the dove's adored darling. I am sorry to tell you she is a slack, incompetent housekeeper, but evidently her lover is blind to every fault. What must the expert phoebe think of such a poorly made, untidy cradle, or that bustling, energetic housewife, Jenny Wren, or the tiniest of clever architects, the hummingbird? It is a wonder that the dove's two white eggs do not fall through the rickety, rimless, unlined lattice. How scarred and bruised the naked bodies of the twins must be by the sticks! Like pigeons, hummingbirds, flickers, and some other feathered parents, doves feed their fledglings by pumping partly digested food—"pigeon's milk"—from their own crops into theirs.
When they leave the open woodlands to take a dust bath in the road, or to walk about and collect gravel for their interior grinding machines, or to get a drink of water before going to sleep, you may have a good look at them.
A little screech owl in the sunlight where only a photographer could find him.
Mrs. White on her nest while Bob whistles to her from the wild-strawberry patch.
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As they walk, they bob their heads in a funny manner of their own. They are bluish, fawn-coloured birds about a foot long. The male has some exquisite metallic colours on his neck, otherwise he resembles his best beloved. Both wear black crescent patches on their cheeks. All the feathers on their long, pointed tails, except the two largest central ones, have a narrow, black band across the end and are tipped with white. The breast feathers shade from pinkish fawn to pale buff below. Beautiful birds these, in spite of their quiet, Quaker clothes.
What a cheerful contrast is Bob White's clear, staccato whistle to the drawing coo of the amorous dove! Character is often expressed in a bird's voice as well as in ours. From their voices alone you might guess that the dove and the quail are no relation. They do not belong even to the same order, bob-white being a scratching bird and having the ruffed grouse and barnyard chicken for his kin. Pheasants and turkeys are distantly related. In the South people call him a partridge; in{238}New England it is the ruffed grouse that is known by that name; therefore, to save confusion, why not always give bob-white the name by which he calls himself? The chickadee, phoebe, peewee, towhee, whip-poor-will and bobolink, who tell their names less plainly than he, save every child who tries to know them much trouble. Don't you wish every bird would introduce himself?
The boy who
"Drives home the cows from the pasture,Up through the long, shady lane,Where the quail whistles loud in the wheat fields,That are yellow with ripening grain,"
probably "whistles up" those bob-whites on his way home as you would start up the roosters in the barnyard by imitating their crow.Bob White! Ah, Bob White!rings from some plump little feathered gallant on the outskirts of almost any farm during the long nesting season.
A slight depression in some dry, grassy field or a hole at the foot of an old stump or weed-hedged wall will be lined with leaves and grasses by both mates in May to receive from ten to eighteen brilliant white eggs that are packed in, pointed end downwards, to economise space. If an egg were removed, it would be difficult indeed to re-arrange the clutch with such economy. Would it not be cruel to touch a{239}nest which the outraged owners would at once desert?
Just as baby chickens follow the mother about, so downy bob-whites run after both their parents and learn which seeds, grain, insects and berries they may safely eat. Man, with his gun and dog and mowing machines, is their worst enemy, of course; then comes the sly fox and sneaking weasel that spring upon them from ambush, and the hawk that drops upon them like a thunderbolt. Birds have enemies above, below, and on every side. Is it any wonder that they are timid and shy? A note of alarm from Mamma White summons the chicks, half-running, half-flying, to huddle close to her or to take shelter beneath her short wings. Their little grouse cousins find protection in a more original way. When the mother is busy sitting on a second or third clutch of eggs, it is Bob himself, a pattern of all the domestic virtues, who takes full charge of the family. When the last chicks are ready to join their older brothers and sisters, the bevy may contain three or four dozen birds, all devotedly attached to one another. At bed time they squat in a circle on the ground, tails toward the centre of the ring, heads pointing outward to detect an enemy coming from any direction. As if their vigilance were not enough, Bob usually remains outside the ring to act as{240}sentinel. At the sign of danger the bunch of birds will rise with loud whirring of the wings, as suddenly as a bomb might burst.
From November onward, every gun in the country will be trained against them. There is sufficient reason for poor people, who rarely have any really good food, or enough to eat, shooting game birds in season; but who has any patience with the pampered epicures for whose order "quail-on-toast" are cooked by the hundred thousand at city clubs, restaurants, and private tables, already over-supplied? No chef could ever tempt me to eat this friendly little song bird that stays about the farm with his family through the coldest winter to pick up the buckwheat, cheap raisins, and sweepings from the hay loft that keep him as neighbourly as a robin. Every farmer who does not post his place, and who allows this useful ally in his eternal war against weeds and insect pests to be shot, impoverishes himself more than he is aware.
Bob-white and ruffed grouse are the fife and drum corps of the woods. That some birds are wonderful musicians everybody knows.{241}No other orchestra contains a member who can drum without a drum. Even that famous drummer, the woodpecker, needs a dead, dry, resonant, hardwood limb to tap on before he can produce his best effects. How does the grouse beat his deep, muffled, thump, thump, thumping, rolling tattoo? Some scientists have staked their reputation on the claim that they have seen him drum by rapidly striking his wings against the sides of his body; but other later-day scientists, who contend that he beats only the air when his wings vibrate so fast that the sight cannot quite follow them, are undoubtedly right.
On a fallen log, a stump, a rail fence or a wall, that may have been used as a drumming stand for many years, the male grouse will strut with a jerking, dandified gait, puff out his feathers, ruff his neck frills, raise and spread his fan-shaped tail like a turkey cock, blow out his cheeks and neck, then suddenly halt and begin to beat his wings. After a few slow, measured thumps, the stiff, strong wings whir faster and faster, until there is only a blur where they vibrate. This is the grouse's love song that summons a mate to their trysting place. It serves also as a challenge to a rival. Blood and feathers may soon be strewn around the ground, for in the spring grouse will fight as fiercely as game-cocks. Sportsmen in the autumn woods{242}often hear grouse drumming at the old stand, merely from excess of vigour and not because they take the slightest interest then in a mate. After the mating season is over, they have less chivalry than barnyard roosters.
Shy, wary birds of wooded, hilly country, grouse are rarely thought of as possible pets, but the gentle little girl in the picture won the heart of a drummer and subdued his wildness, as you see. Some people are trying to domesticate grouse in wire-enclosed poultry yards.
Sometimes when, like "the cat that walked by himself" you wander "in the wild wet woods," perhaps you will be suddenly startled by the loud whirring roar of a big brown grouse that suddenly hurls itself from the ground near your feet. If it were shot from the mouth of a cannon it could surprise you no less. Then it sails away, dodging the trees and disappears. Gunners have "educated" the intelligent bird into being, perhaps, the most wily, difficult game in the woods.
A little girl's rare pet: ruffed grouse.
The drummer drumming.
Like the meadowlark, flicker, sparrows and other birds that spend much time on the ground, the bob-white and ruffed grouse wear brown feathers, streaked and barred, to harmonise perfectly with their surroundings. "To find a hen grouse with young is a memorable experience," says Frank M. Chapman. "While the parent is giving us a lesson in mother love and bird intelligence, her downy chicks are teaching us facts in protective colouration and heredity.{243}How the old one limps and flutters! She can barely drag herself along the ground. But while we are watching her, what has become of the ten or a dozen little yellow balls we had almost stepped on? Not a feather do we see, until, poking about in the leaves, we find one little chap hiding here and another squatting there, all perfectly still, and so like the leaves in colour as to be nearly invisible."
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KilldeerSemipalmated Or Ring-Necked PloverLeast SandpiperSpotted SandpiperWoodcockClapper RailSora RailGreat Blue HeronLittle Green HeronBlack-Crowned Night HeronAmerican Bittern
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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.
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 Statesen routefor Brazil—quite a journey in the world to test the fledgling's wings.
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 cloudsScud black and swift across the sky;Like silent ghosts in misty shroudsStand out the white light-houses high.Almost as far as eye can reachI see the close-reefed vessels fly,As fast we flit along the beach,—One little sandpiper and I.I watch him as he skims alongUttering 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-nightWhen 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 wrothThe 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.
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 callpeet-weet, peet-weet, rapidly repeated, and usually uttered as the bird flies in graceful curves over the water or inland fields.
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 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 songker-wee, ker-wee, and "rolling whinny" give place in autumn to the'kuk, kuk, 'k-'k'k-'kukimitated 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."
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.