This gay little warbler looks as if he were dressed for a masquerade ball with a gray-edged black mask over his face and the sides of his throat, a brownish green coat and a bright yellow vest. He is smaller than a sparrow. How sharply the inquisitive fellow peers at you through his mask whenever you pass the damp thicket, bordering the marshy land, where he{62}likes best to live! And how quickly he hops from twig to twig and flies from one clump of bushes to another clump, in restless, warbler fashion, as he leads you a dance in pursuit! Not for a second does he stop watching you.
If you come too close, a sharppit-pitorchockis snapped out by the excited bird, whose familiar, oft-repeated, sprightly, waltzing triplet has been too freely translated, he thinks, into,Fol-low-me, fol-low-me, fol-low-me. Pursuit is the last thing he really desires, and of course he issues no such invitation. What he actually says almost always sounds to me likeWitchee-tee, witch-ee-tee, witch-ee-tee. You will surely hear him if you listen in his marshy retreats. He sings almost all summer. Except when nesting he comes into the garden, picks minute insects out of the blossoming shrubbery, hops about on the ground, visits the raspberry tangle, and hides among the bushes along the roadside. Only the yellow warbler, of all his numerous tribe, is disposed to be more neighbourly. In spite of his local name, he is to be found in winter from Georgia to Labrador and Manitoba westward to the Plains. You see he is something of a traveller.
The little bird who bewitches him, and to whom he sings the witch's song, wears no black mask, so it is not easy to name her if her mate is not about. Her plumage is duller than his and{63}the sides of her plump little body, which are yellowish brown, shade into grayish white underneath. Sometimes you may catch her carrying weeds, strips of bark, broad grasses, tendrils, reeds, and leaves for the outside of her deep cradle, and finer grasses for its lining, to a spot on the ground where plants and low bushes help conceal it. She does not build so beautiful a nest as the yellow warbler, but like her she, too, poor thing, sometimes suffers from the sneaking visits of the cowbird. Unhappily, she is not so clever as her cousin, for she meekly consents to hatch out the cowbird's egg and let the big, greedy interloper crowd and worry and starve her own brood. Why does the cowardly cowbird always choose a victim smaller than herself?
"Now he barks like a puppy, then quacks like a duck, then rattles like a kingfisher, then squalls like a fox, then caws like a crow, then mews like a cat—C-r-r-r-r-r-whrr—that's it—Chee-quack, cluck, yit-yit-yit-now—hit it—tr-r-r-r-wheu-caw-caw-cut, cut-tea-boy-who, who-mew, mew," writes John Burroughs of this rollicking polyglot, the chat; but not even that close student of nature could set down on{64}paper all the multitude of queer sounds with which the bird amuses himself. He might be mistaken for a dozen different birds and animals in as many minutes.
Such a secretive roysterer is he that you may rarely see him, however often you may hear his voice when he is hidden beyond sight in partial clearings or the bushy, briery, thickety openings in the woods. As he seems to delight in keeping pursuers off by a natural fence of barbed wire, the cat brier, wild blackberry, raspberry, and rose bushes are among his favourite plants. But if you will sit down quietly near his home, your patience will probably be rewarded by the sight of this largest of the warblers, with olive green upper parts, a conspicuous white line running from his bill around his eye and another along his throat, and a bright yellow breast shading to grayish white underneath. He is over an inch longer than the English sparrow. His wife looks just like him.
The zany at the circus can go through no more clownish tricks than the chat. See him, a mere bunch of feathers, dance and balance in the air, now fluttering, now falling as if he had been shot, or turning aerial somersaults, now rising and trailing his legs behind him like a stork, now dropping out of sight in the thickest part of the thicket. The instant he spies you,Chut-Chut, he scolds from the briars. Shy,{65}eccentric, absurd, but inspired with a "fine frenzy," which is a passionate love for his mate and their nest, all his queer notes and equally queer stunts centre about his home. On moonlight nights, Punchinello entertains himself and Columbine with a series of inimitable performances which have earned him the title of yellow mockingbird. He can throw his voice so that it seems to come from quite a different direction, as you may sometime have heard a human ventriloquist do.
When this exquisite little warbler flashes his brilliant salmon flame and black feathers among the trees, darting hither and thither, fluttering, spinning about in the air after insects caught chiefly on the wing, you will surely agree that he is the most beautiful as well as the most lively bird in the woods. The colour scheme of his clothes suggests the Baltimore oriole's, only the flaming feathers on the sides of his body, wings, and tail are a pinker shade of flame, and the black ones which cover his back, throat, and upper breast, are more glossy, with bluish reflections. Underneath he is white, tinged with salmon. But you could not possibly mistake this lovely little sprite for the oriole, he is so much smaller—about an inch{66}shorter than the sparrow. His cousin, the Blackburnian warbler, a much rarer bird, with a colour scheme of black, white, and beautiful rich orange, not salmon flame, can be named instantly by the large amount of white in his tail feathers. There are so few brilliantly coloured birds that find their way to us from the tropics, that it should not take any boy or girl longer to learn them than it does to learn the first multiplication table. In Cuba the redstart is known as "El Candelita"—the little candle flame that flashes in the deep, dark, tropical forest.
Who would believe that this small firebrand, half glowing, half charred, whirling about through the trees, as if blown by the wind, is a cousin of the sombre oven-bird that walks so daintily and leisurely over the ground? The redstart keeps perpetually in motion that he may seize gnats and other gauzy winged mouthfuls in mid-air—not as the flycatchers do, by waiting on a fence rail or limb of a tree for a dinner to fly past, then dashing out and seizing it, but by flitting about constantly in search of insect prey. The bristles at the base of his bill prevent many an insect from getting past it. He rests on the trees only long enough to snatch a morsel, then away he goes again. No wonder the Spaniards call all the gaily coloured, tropical wood warblers "Mariposas"—butterflies.
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Red-Eyed VireoWhite-Eyed VireoYellow-Throated VireoWarbling Vireo
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You know that if the birds should suddenly perish, there wouldn't be a leaf, a blade of grass, or any green thing left upon the earth within a few years—it would be uninhabitable.
When Dame Nature, the most thorough of housekeepers, gave to the birds the task of restraining insects within bounds so that man and beast could live, she gave the care of foliage to the vireos. It is true that most of the warblers, and a few other birds too, hunt for their food among the leaves, but with nothing like the vireo's painstaking care and thoroughness. The nervous, restless warblers flit from twig to twig without half exploring the foliage; whereas the deliberate, methodical vireos search leisurely above and below it, cocking their little heads so as to look up at the under side of the leaf above them and to peck off the destroyers hidden there—bugs of many kinds and countless little worms, caterpillars, weevils, inchworms, May beetles, and leaf-eating beetles. Singing as they go, no birds more successfully combine work and play.
Because they spend their lives among the foliage, the vireos are protectively coloured; with{70}soft grayish or olive green on their backs, wings, and tail, whitish or yellow below. Some people call them greenlets. They are all a little smaller than sparrows. More inconspicuous birds it would be hard to find or more abundant, although so commonly overlooked except by people on the look-out for them. Where the new growth of foliage at the ends of the branches is young and tender, many insects prefer to lay their eggs that their babies may have the most dainty fare as soon as they are hatched. They do not reckon upon the vireos' visits.
Toward the end of April or the first of May, these tireless gleaners return to us from Central and South America where they have spent the winter, which of course you know, is no winter on the other side of the equator, but a continuation of summer for them. Competition for food being more fierce in the tropics than it is here, millions of birds besides the warblers and vireos travel from beyond the Isthmus of Panama to the United States and back again every year in order that they may live in perpetual summer with an abundance of food. If any child thinks that birds are mere creatures of pleasure, who sing to pass the time away, he doesn't begin to understand how hard they must work for a living. They cannot limit their labours to an eight-hour day. However, they keep cheerful through at least sixteen busy hours.
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Almost everywhere in the Eastern United States and Canada, the red-eyed vireo is the most common member of his family. The only individual touch to his costume that helps to distinguish him is a gray cap edged with a black line which runs parallel to his conspicuous white eyebrow. He wears a dull olive coat and a white vest. But listen to the Preacher! You have no need to meet him face to face in order to know him:"You see it—you know it—do you hear me?—do you believe it?"he propounds incessantly through the long summer days, even after most other birds are silent. You cannot mistake his voice. With a rising inflection at the end of each short, jerky sentence, he asks a question very distinctly and sweetly, then pauses an instant as if waiting for a reply—an unusually courteous orator. His monotonous monologue, repeated over and over again, comes to us from the elms and maples in the village street, the orchard and woodland, where he keeps steadily and deliberately at work. Some boys say they can whittle better if they whistle. Vireos seem to hunt more thoroughly if they sing.
Like the rest of his kin, the red-eyed vireo is quite tame. A little girl I know actually stroked the pretty head of a mother bird as she sat brooding in her exquisite nest, and a week later{72}carried one of the young birds all around the garden on a rake handle.
Vireos are remarkably fine builders—among the very best. Although their nests are not so deep as the Baltimore orioles', the shape and weave are similar. The red-eye usually prefers to swing her cradle from a small crotch in an oak or apple tree or sapling, and securely lace it through the rim on to the forked twigs. Nests vary in appearance, but you will notice that these weavers show a preference for dried grass as a foundation into which are wrought bits of bark, lichen, wasps' nest "paper," spider web, plant down, and curly vine tendrils.
It is not often that you can get close enough to any bird to see the white of his eyes, but the brighter olive green of this vivacious little white-eyed vireo's upper parts, his white breast, faintly washed with yellow on the sides, and the two yellowish white bars on his wings help you to recognise him at a distance. Imagine my surprise to meet him in Bermuda, over six hundred miles out at sea from the Carolina coast, where he, too, was taking a winter vacation! In those beautiful islands, where our familiar catbirds and cardinals also abound,{73}the white-eyed vireo is the most common bird to be seen. His sweet, vigorous, irregular interrogation may be heard all day. But there he is known by quite a different name—"Chick of the Village." It was a pleasant shock to hear,"Now, who are you, eh?"piquantly sung out at me, a stranger in the islands, by this old acquaintance in a hibiscus bush within a few steps of the pier where the steamer landed.
In the United States where he nests, his manners are less sociable; in fact they are rather pert, even churlish at times, and never very friendly. Here he loves to hide in such low, briery, bushy tangles as the chat and catbird choose. By no stretch of the imagination would his chic Bermuda name fit him here, for he has little to do with villages and he resents your advances toward more intimate acquaintance with harsh, cackling scoldings, half to himself, half to you, until you, in turn, resent his impertinence and leave him alone— just what the independent little fellow wanted. He has a strong, decided character, you perceive.
His precious nest, so jealously guarded, is a deeper cup than that of his cousin with the red eye, deeper than that of any of the other vireos, and it usually contains three favourite materials in addition to those generally chosen by them: they are bits of wood usually stolen from some woodpecker's hole, shreds of paper,{74}and yards and yards of fine caterpillar silk, by which the nest is hung from its slender fork in the thicket. It also contains, not infrequently, alas! a cowbird's most unwelcome egg.
In a family not conspicuous for its fine feathers, this is certainly the beauty. The clear lemon yellow worn at its throat spreads over its vest; its coat is a richer and more yellowish green than the other vireos wear, and its two white wing-bars are as conspicuous as the white-eyed vireo's. Moreover its mellow and rich voice, like a contralto's, is raised to a higher pitch at the end of a sweetly sung triplet."See me; I'm here; where are you?"the singer inquires over and over again from the trees in the woodland, or perhaps in the village when nesting duties are not engrossing. Don't mistake it for the chat simply because its throat is yellow.
As this is the beauty of the family, so is it also the best nest builder.
High up in the top of elms and maples that line village streets where the red-eyed vireo loves{75}to hunt, even among the trees of so busy a thoroughfare as Boston Common, an almost continuous warble in the early summer indicates that some unseen singer is hidden there; but even if you get a glimpse of the warbling vireo you could not tell him from his red-eyed cousin at that height. Modestly dressed, without even a white eye-brow or wing-bars to relieve his plain dusty olive and whitish clothes, he is the least impressive member of his retiring, inconspicuous family. He asks you no questions in jerky, colloquial triplets of song, so you may know by his voice at least that he is not the red-eyed vireo. Some self-conscious birds, like the song sparrow, mount to a conspicuous perch before they begin to sing, as if they had to deliver a distinct number on a programme before a waiting audience. Not so with this industrious little gleaner to whom singing and dining seem to be a part of the same performance—one and inseparable. He sings as he goes, snatching a bit of insect food between warbles.
Although towns do not affright him, he really prefers wooded border-land and clearings, especially where birch trees abound, when it is time to rear a family.
A red-eyed vireo baby in his cradle
Out of it
Home of the loggerhead shrike, with plenty of convenient hooks for this butcher bird to hang meat on.
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Two Butcher-birdsCedar WaxwingScarlet Tanager
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Is it not curious that among our so-called song birds there should be two, about the size of robins, the loggerhead and the northern shrike, with the hawk-like habit of killing little birds and mice, and the squirrel's and blue jay's trick of storing what they cannot eat? They are butchers, with the thrifty custom of hanging up their meat, which only improves in flavour and tenderness after a day or two of curing. Then, even if storms should drive their little prey to shelter and snow should cover the fields, they need not worry nor starve seeing an abundance in their larder provided for the proverbial rainy day.
In the Southern and Middle States, where the smaller loggerhead shrike is most common, some children say he looks like a mockingbird; but the feathers on his back are surely quite a different gray, a light-bluish ash, and pearly on his under parts, with white in his black wings and tail which is conspicuous as he flies. His powerful head, which is large for his size, has a heavy black line running from the end of his mouth across his cheek, and his strong bill has a hook on the end which is useful in tearing the{80}flesh from his victim's bones. He really looks like nothing but just what he is—a butcher-bird. See him, quiet and preoccupied, perched on a telegraph pole on the lookout for a dinner! A kingbird, or other flycatcher which chooses similar perches, would sail off suddenly into the air if a winged insect hove in sight, snap it up, make an aerial loop in its flight and return to its old place. Not so the solitary, sanguinary shrike. When his wonderfully keen eyes detect a grasshopper, a cricket, a big beetle, a lizard, a little mouse, or a sparrow at a distance in a field, he drops like an eagle upon the victim, seizes it with his strong beak, and flies with steady flapping strokes of the wings, close along the ground, straight to the nearest honey locust or spiny thorn; then rises with a sudden upward turn into the tree to impale his prey. Hawks, who use the same method of procuring food, have very strong feet; their talons are of great help in holding and killing their victims; but the shrikes, which have rather weak, sparrow-like feet, for perching only, are really compelled in many cases to make use of stout thorns or sharp twigs to help them quiet the struggles of their victims. Weather-vanes, lightning rods, bare branches, or the outermost or top branches of tall trees, high poles, and telegraph wires, which afford a fine bird's eye-view of the surrounding hunting ground, are favourite points{81}of vantage for both shrikes. When it is time to husk the corn, every farmer's boy must have seen a shrike sitting on a fence-rail or hovering in the air ready to seize the little meadow mice that escape from the shocks.
It is sad to record that sometimes shrikes also sneak upon their prey. When they resort to this mean method of securing a dinner they leave the high perches and secrete themselves in clumps of bushes in the open field. Luring little birds within striking distance by imitating their call notes, they pounce upon a terror-stricken sparrow before you could say "Jack Robinson." Shrikes seem to be the only creatures that really rejoice in the rapid increase of English sparrows. In summer they prefer large insects, especially grasshoppers, but in winter when they can get none, they must have the fresh meat of birds or mice. At any season they deserve the fullest protection for the service they do the farmer. Shrikes kill only that they themselves may live, and not for the sake of slaughter, which is a so-called sport reserved for man alone, who in any case, should be the last creature to condemn them.
The loggerhead's call-notes are harsh, creaking, and unpleasant, but at the approach of the nesting season he proves that he really can sing, although not half as well as his cousin, the northern shrike, who astonishes us with a fine{82}song some morning in early spring. Before we become familiar with it, however, the wandering minstrel is off to the far north to nest within the arctic circle. It is only in winter that the northern shrike visits the United States, travelling as far south as Virginia and Kansas between October and April. He is larger than the loggerhead, being a little over ten inches long, a goodlooking winter visitor in a gray suit with black and white trimmings on his wings and tail and wavy bars on his breast. Bradford Torrey used to visit a vireo that would drink water from a teaspoon which he held out to her while she sat brooding on her nest. I know a lady who fed bits of raw meat to a wounded shrike from the tines of a fork, the best substitute for a thorn she could find, because he found it awkward to eat from a dish.
So few birds wear their head feathers crested that it is a simple matter to name them by their top-knots alone, even if you did not see the gray plumage of the little tufted titmouse, the dusky hue of the crested flycatcher, the blue{83}of the jay and the kingfisher, the red of the cardinal, and the richly shaded grayish-brown of the cedar waxwing, which is, perhaps, the most familiar of them all. His neat and well-groomed plumage is fine and very silky, almost dove-like in colouring, and although there are no gaudy features about it, few of our birds are so exquisitely dressed. The pointed crest, which rises and falls to express every passing emotion, and the velvety black chin, forehead, and line running apparently through the eye, give distinction to the head. The tail has a narrow yellow band across its end, and on the wings are the small red spots like sealing wax that are responsible for the bird's queer name. The waxwing is larger than a sparrow and smaller than a robin.
But it is difficult to think of a single bird when one usually sees a flock. Sociable to a degree, the waxwings rove about a neighbourhood in scattered companies, large and small, to feed on the cedar or juniper berries, choke-cherries, dog-wood and woodbine berries, elder, haw, and other small wild fruits on which they feed very greedily; then move on to some other place where their favourite fruit abounds. Happily, they care very little about our cultivated fruit and rarely touch it. A good way to invite many kinds of birds to visit one's neighbourhood is to plant plenty of{84}berry-bearing trees and shrubs. The birds themselves plant most of the wild ones, by dropping the undigested berry seeds far and wide. How could the seeds of many species be distributed over thousands of miles of land without their help? It will surprise you to count the number of trees about your home that have been planted, quite unconsciously, by birds many years before you were born. Cedarbirds are responsible for no small part of the beauty of the lanes and hedgerows throughout their wide range from sea to sea and from Canada to Mexico and Central America. Nature, you see, makes her creatures work for her, whether they know they are helping her plans or not.
When a flock of cedarbirds enters your neighbourhood, there is no noisy warning of their coming. Gentle, refined in manners, courteous to one another, almost silent visitors, they will sit for hours nearly motionless in a tree while digesting a recent feast. An occasional bird may shift his position, then, politely settling himself again without disturbing the rest of the company, remain quiet as before. Lisping,Twee-twee-zeecall notes, like a hushed whispered whistle, are the only sounds the visitors make. How different from a roving flock of screaming, boisterous blue jays!
The cedar waxwing
The gorgeous scarlet tanager who sang in this tree was killed by a sling-shot. The nest was deserted by his terrified mate.
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When rising to take wing, the squad still keeps together, flying evenly and swiftly in close ranks on a level with the tree-tops along a straight course; or, wheeling suddenly, the birds dive downward into a promising, leafy, restaurant. Enormous numbers of insects are consumed by a flock. The elm-beetle, which destroys the beauty, if not the life, of some of our finest shade trees, would be exterminated if there were cedarbirds enough. One flock within a week rid a New England village of this pest that had eaten the leaves on the double row of elms which had been the glory of its broad main street for over a hundred years. When you see these birds in an orchard, look for better apples there next year. Canker-worms are abon boucheto them; so are grubs and caterpillars, especially cutworms.
Sometime after all the other birds, except the tardy little goldfinch, have nested, the waxwings give up the flocking habit and live in pairs. Toward the end of June, when many birds are rearing the second brood, you may see a couple begin to carry grass, shreds of bark, twine, fine roots, catkins, moss or rags—any or all of these building materials—to some tree, usually a fruit tree or a cedar; and then, if you watch carefully, you will find what is not always the case with humans—the birds' manners at home are even better than when moving in society abroad. The devoted male brings dainties to his brooding mate and helps her feed{86}their family. Moreover, cedarbirds are very good to feathered orphans.
People who are now living can remember when scarlet tanagers were as common as robins. Where are they now? You see a redbird at the north so rarely that a thrill of excitement is felt when a flash of scarlet among the tree-tops makes the day a red-letter one on your bird calendar. Alas! He has, what has certainly proved to be, the fatal gift of beauty. A scarlet coat with black wings and tail, worn by a bird larger than a sparrow, makes a shining mark among the foliage for the shot gun and sling shot. Thousands of tanagers have been slaughtered to be worn on the unthinking heads of vain girls and women. Many are killed every year, during the spring and autumn migrations, by flying against the great lighthouses along our coasts, the birds' highway of travel. Tanagers, who are only summer visitors from the tropics, are peculiarly susceptible to cold; a sudden change in the weather, a drop in the thermometer some time in May just after they have come here from a warmer{87}climate and are still especially sensitive, will kill off great numbers in the north woods and in Canada. They really should postpone their journey a little while until the weather becomes settled and there are fewer fogs on the coast.
The male tanager, in his wedding garment, is sometimes mistaken for a cardinal by people who only half see any object they look at. Bird study sharpens the sight wonderfully, and teaches boys and girls the importance of accurate observation. The cardinal, a larger bird, is almost as large as a robin; he is a rich, deep red all over, and not a scarlet shade. Moreover he wears a pointed crest by which you may always know him, while the tanager, whose head is smooth, may be certainly named by his black wings and tail. After the nesting season, the tanager begins to moult and then he is a queer looking object indeed in his motley coat. Only little patches and streaks of scarlet remain here and there among the olive green feathers that gradually replace the red ones until, in winter, he becomes completely transformed into an olive bird with black wings, looking like his immature sons. How tiresome to have to change his feathers again toward spring before he can hope to woo and win a mate!
The exacting little lady bird, who demands such fine feathers, is herself quietly clad in light olive green with a more yellowish tinge on her{88}lighter breast that she may be in perfect colour harmony with the leaves she lives and nests among. If she, too, wore scarlet, I fear the tanager tribe would have disappeared years ago. Happily her protective colouring, which betrays no nest secrets, has saved the species. Is it not strange that birds, who spend the rest of their lives among the tree-tops, hunting among the foliage for insects and small fruit, should nest so low? Sometimes they place their cradle on a limb only six feet from the ground. It is a rather shabby, poorly made affair which very lively tanager youngster might easily tumble apart."Chip—churr"calls the gorgeous father from the tree top, and a reassuring reply that all is well with the nest floats up to him from his mate. He does not often risk its safety by showing himself near the nest, securely hidden by the foliage below. If, toward the end of May, you hear him singing his real song, which is somewhat like an oriole's mellow, cheery carol, you may be sure he is planning to spend the summer in your neighbourhood. Not many miles from New York there is a house built on the top of a hill, whose sides are covered with oak and chestnut woods, where one may be sure to see tanagers among the tree tops from any window at any hour of any day from May to October. Several nests in those woods are saddled on to the horizontal{89}limbs of the white oak. Not many people are blessed with such beautiful, interesting neighbours.
In the Southern States, one of the most familiar birds in the orange groves, orchards, and woods of pine and oak, is the summer tanager, another smooth-headed redbird, but without a black feather on him. He is fire red all over. Of the three hundred and fifty species of tanagers in the tropics, only two think it worth while to visit the Eastern United States and one of these frequently suffers because he starts too early. Suppose all should suddenly decide to come north some spring and spend the summer with us! Our woods would be filled with some of the most brilliant and gorgeous birds in the world. Don't you wish all the members of the family were as adventurous as the scarlet tanager?
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Purple MartinBarn SwallowCliff SwallowBank SwallowTree Swallow
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If you were a bird, could you think of any way of earning a living more delightful than sailing about in the air all day, playing cross-tag on the wing with your companions, skimming low across the meadows, ponds and marshes, or rising high above them and darting hither and thither wherever you pleased, without knowing what it means to feel tired? Swallows are as much in their element when in the air as fish are in water; but don't imagine they are there simply for fun. Their long, blade-like wings, which cut the air with such easy, but powerful strokes, propel them enormous distances before they have collected enough mosquitoes, gnats and other little gauzy-winged insects to supply such great energy and satisfy their hunger. With mouth widely gaping, leaving an opening in the front of their broad heads that stretches from ear to ear, they get a tremendous draught down their little throats, but they gather in a dinner piece-meal just as the chimney swift, whip-poor-will and night-hawk do. Viscid saliva in the bird's mouth glues the little victims as fast as if they were caught on sticky fly-paper; then, when{94}enough have been trapped to make a pellet, the swallow swallows them in a ball, although one swallow does not make a dinner, any more than one swallow makes a summer.
These sociable birds delight to live in companies, even during the nesting season when most feathered couples, however glad to flock at other times, prefer to be alone. As soon as the young birds can take wing, one family party unites with another, one colony with another, until often enormous numbers assemble in the marshes in August and September. You see them strung like beads along the telegraph wires, perched on the fences, circling over the meadows and ponds, zigzagging across the sky. Millions of swallows have been noted in some of these autumnal flocks. Usually they go to sleep among the reeds and grasses in a favourite marsh where the bands return year after year; but some prefer trees. Comparatively little perching is done except at night, for swallows' feet are very small and weak.
At sunrise, the birds scatter in small bands to pick up on the wing the long continued meal, which lasts till late in the afternoon. Those who have gone too far abroad and must travel back to the roost after sundown shoot across the sky with incredible swiftness lest darkness overtake them. Relying upon their speed of flight to carry them beyond the reach of{95}enemies, they migrate boldly by daylight instead of at night as the timid little vireos and warblers do. During every day the swallows are with us they must consume billions and trillions of blood-sucking insects that would pester other animals beside ourselves. Think of the mosquito bites alone that they prevent! Every one of us is greatly in their debt.
Male and female swallows are dressed so nearly alike that you can scarcely tell one from the other. Both twitter merrily but neither really sings.
There is a picturesque old inn beside a post road in New Jersey with a five-storied martin house set up on a pole above its quaint swinging sign. For over thirty years a record was kept on the pole showing the dates of the coming and going of the martins in April and September, which did not vary by more than two or three days during all that time. The inn-keeper locked up in his safe every night the registers on which were entered the arrivals and departures of his human guests, but he valued far more the record of his bird visitors which interested everybody who stopped at his inn.
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One day, while he was away, a man who was painting a fence for him thought he would surprise him by freshening up the old, weather-beaten pole. Alas! He painted over every precious mark. You may be sure the surprise recoiled upon him like a boomerang when the wrathful inn-keeper returned. However, the martins continue to come back to their old home year after year and rear their broods on little heaps of leaves in every room in the house, which is the cheerful fact of the story.
These glossy, blue-black iridescent swallows, grayish white underneath, the largest of their graceful tribe, have always been great favourites. Even the Indians in the Southern States used to hang gourds for them to nest in about their camps—a practice continued by the Negroes around their cabins to this day. Strangely enough these birds which nested and slept in hollow trees before the coming of the white men, were among the first to take advantage of his presence. Now, in the Eastern United States, at least, the pampered darlings of luxury positively refuse to live where people do not put up houses for their comfort. In the sparsely settled West, however, they still condescend to live in trees, but only when they must, like the chimney-swifts, who, by the way are no relation. Plenty of people persist in calling them chimney swallows, which is precisely what they are not. Not even the little house wren has adapted itself so quickly to civilised men's homes, as the swift and purple martin.
Young barn swallows cradled under the rafters.
Baby barn swallows learning to walk a plank.
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Intelligent people, who are only just beginning to realise what birds do for us and how very much more they might be induced to do, are putting up boxes for the martins, not only near their own houses, that the birds may rid the air of mosquitoes, but in their gardens and orchards that incalculable numbers of injurious pests in the winged stage may be destroyed. When martins return to us in spring from Central and South America, where they have passed the winter, insects are just beginning to fly, and if they can be captured then, before they have a chance to lay their eggs, you see how much trouble and money are saved for the farmers by their tireless allies, the swallows. Unfortunately, purple martins are not so common at the North as they were before the coming of those saucy little immigrants, the English sparrows, who take possession, by fair means or by foul, of every house that they can find. In the South, where the martins are still very numerous, a peach grower I know has set up in his orchard rows of poles, with a house on each, either for them or for bluebirds. He says these bird partners are of inestimable value in keeping his fruit trees free from insects.
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The curculio, one of the worst enemies every fruit grower has to fight, destroying as it does millions of dollars worth of crops every year, is practically unknown in that Georgia planter's orchard. Some day farmers all over the United States will wake up and copy his good idea.
A colony of martins circling about a house give it a delightful home-like air. Their very soft, sweet conversation with one another as they fly, sounds like rippling, musical laughter.
Do you know where there is an old-fashioned, weather-worn barn, with its hospitable doors standing open, where you could not find at least one pair of barn swallows at home beneath its roof? These birds, you will notice, prefer dilapidated old farm buildings, whose doors are off their hinges, and whose loose shingles or broken clapboards offer plenty of entrances and exits. If you like to play around a barn as well as every child I know, you must be already acquainted with the exquisite, dark steel-blue swallows with glistening reddish buff breasts, and deeply forked tails, that dart and glide in and out of the openings, merrily twittering as they fly. While you tumble about in the{99}hay among the rafters the swallows go and come, so that, quite unconsciously, you will associate them with happy hours as long as you live.
High up on some beam, too high for the children to reach, let us hope, a pair of barn swallows will plaster their mud cradle. Did you ever see them gathering pellets of wet soil in their bills at some roadside puddle? It is, perhaps, the only time you can ever catch them with their feet on the earth. Each mud pill must be carried to the barn and fastened on to the rafter. Countless trips are made to the puddle before a sufficient number of pellets are worked into the deep mud walls of the ample nursery. Usually grass is mixed with the mud, but some swallows make their bricks without straw. A lining of fine hay and plenty of feathers from the chicken yard seem to be essential for their comfort, which is a pity, because almost always chicken feathers are infested with lice, and lice kill more young birds than we like to think about. When there is a nestful of fledglings to feed, sticky little pellets of insects, caught on the wing, are carried to them by both parents from daylight to dusk. Do notice how tirelessly they work!
In a family famous for graceful, rapid flight, the barn swallow easily excels all his relations. The deep fork in his tail enables him to steer{100}himself with those marvellously quick, erratic turns, which make his course through the air resemble forked lightning. But with what exquisite grace he can also glide and skim across the water, fields and meadows without an apparent movement of the wing! His flight seems the very poetry of motion. The ease of it accounts for the very wide distribution of barn swallows from southern Brazil in winter to Greenland and Alaska in summer. What a journey to take twice a year!
More than any other bird family, the swallows are becoming increasingly dependent for shelter upon man, at least when they are nesting; and as this is the season when they are most valuable to him because of the enormous numbers of insects they prevent from multiplying, let us hope that familiarity with us will never breed contempt and cause them to return to their old, uncivilised building sites. In the sparsely settled West, the cliff swallow still fastens its queer, gourd-shaped, mud nest against projecting rocks, but in the East it is so quick to take advantage of the eaves of the barns and other out-buildings, that its old name does not apply, and we know it here only as an eave swallow.
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The barn swallow, as we have seen, chooses to nest upon the rafters inside the barn, but the eave swallow is content to stay outside under the shelter of a projecting roof. In such a place you find not one, but several or many mud tenements plastered in a row against the wall, for eave swallows are always remarkably sociable, even at the nesting season. A photograph of a colony I have seen shows one hundred and fifteen nests nearly all of which touch one another.
Although so often noticed circling about barns, you may know by the rusty patch on the lower part of his steel-blue back, the crescent-shaped white mark on his forehead, and the notched, not deeply forked tail, that the eave swallow is not the barn swallow, which it otherwise resembles.
Perhaps you have seen a sand bank somewhere, probably near a river or pond, where the side of the bank was filled with holes as if a small cannon had been trained against it as a target. In and out of the holes fly the smallest of the swallows, with no lovely metallic blue or glistening buff in their dull{102}plumage, which is plain brownish gray above, white underneath, with a grayish band across the breast. Only their cousin, the rough-winged swallow, whose breast is brownish gray, is so plainly dressed.
The giggling twitter of the bank swallows as they wheel and dart through the air above you, proves that they are never too busy hunting for a dinner to speak a cheerful word to their friends. Year after year a colony will return to a favourite bank, whose face has been honey-combed with such care. Think of the labour and patience required for so small a bird to dig a tunnel two feet deep, more or less! Some nests have been placed as far as four feet from the entrance. You are not surprised at the big kingfisher, who also tunnels a hole in a bank for his family, because his long, strong bill makes digging comparatively easy; but for the small-billed, weak-footed swallow, the work must be difficult indeed. What a pity they cannot hire moles to make the tunnels with their strong, flat, spade-like feet. No wonder the birds become attached to the tunnels that have cost so much labour. When there are no longer any baby swallows on the heaps of twigs, grass and feathers at the end of them, the birds use them as resting places by day as well as by night until it is time to gather in vast flocks and speed away to the tropics.