When you are looking for the first pussy willows in the frozen marshes, or listening to the peeping of young frogs some day in early spring, you will, no doubt, become acquainted with this handsome blackbird, with red and orange epaulettes on his shoulders, who has just returned, from the South.''Ke, kong-ker-ee,''he flutes from the willows and alders about the reedy meadows where he and his bachelor friends flock together and make them ring "with social cheer and jubilee." A little later, flocks of dingy, brown, streaked birds,{142}travelling northward, pause to rest in the marshes. Wholesale courting takes place shortly after and every red-wing in a black uniform chooses one of the plain, streaked, matter-of-fact birds for his mate. The remainder continue their unmaidenly journey in search of husbands, whom they find waiting in cheerful readiness in almost any marsh. By the first of May all have settled down to home life.
Then how constant are the rich, liquid, sweeto-ka-leenotes of the red-wing! Ever in foolish fear for the safety of his nest, he advertises its whereabouts in musical headlines from the top of the nearest tree, or circles around it on fluttering wings above the sedges, orchucksat any trespasser near it until one might easily torture him by going straight to its site.
But how short-lived is this excessive devotion to his family! In July, the restless young birds flock with the mothers, but the now indifferent fathers keep apart by themselves. Strange conduct for such fussy, solicitous birds! They congregate in large numbers where the wild rice is ripening and make short excursions to the farmers' fields, where they destroy some grain, it is true, but so little as compared with the quantity of injurious insects and weed seed, that the debt is largely in the red-wings' favour.
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This cousin of the red-wing, whom it resembles in size, flight and notes, is a common migrant in the United States. Nesting is done farther north. In spring, the rusty blackbirds come from the South in pairs, already mated, whereas the red-wings and grackles travel then in flocks. At that time the males are a uniform glossy, bluish-black, and their mates a slate gray, darker above than below; but after the summer moult, when they gather in small companies, both are decidedly rusty. You might mistake them for grackles in the spring, but never for male red-wings then with their bright epaulettes. Notice the rusty blackbird's pale yellow eye.
Every farmer's boy knows his father's friend, the meadowlark, the brownish, mottled bird, larger than a robin, with a lovely yellow breast and black crescent on it, that keeps well hidden in the grass of the meadows or grain fields. Of course he knows, too, that it is not really a lark, but a starling. When the shy bird takes wing, note the white feathers on the{144}sides of its tail to be sure it is not the big, brownish flicker, who wears a patch of white feathers on its lower back, conspicuous as it flies. The meadowlark has the impolite habit of turning its back upon one as if it thought its yellow breast too beautiful for human eyes to gaze at. It flaps and sails through the air much like bob-white. But flying is not its specialty. It is, however, a strong-legged, active walker, and rarely rises from the ground unless an intruder gets very near, when away it flies, with a nasal, sputtered alarm note, to alight upon a fence rail or other low perch.
The tender, sweet, plaintive, flute-like whistle,Spring-o'-the-year, is a deliberate song usually given from some favourite platform—a stump, a rock, a fence or a mound, to which the bird goes for his musical performance only. He sings on and on delightfully, not always the same song, for he has several in his repertoire, and charms all listeners, although he cares to please none but his mate, that looks just like him.
She keeps well concealed among the grasses where her grassy nest is almost impossible to find, especially if it be partly arched over at the top. No farmer who realises what an enormous number of grasshoppers, not to mention other destructive insects, meadowlarks destroy, is foolish enough to let his{145}mowing-machine pass over their nests if he can but locate them. By the time the hay is ready for cutting in June, the active meadowlark babies are usually running about through grassy run-ways, but eggs of the second brood too frequently, alas! meet a tragic end.
Fortunately many other birds besides this oriole prefer to live in orchards; otherwise think how many worm-eaten apples there would be! He usually has the kingbird for company, and, strange to say, keeps on friendly terms with that rather exclusive fellow; also the robin, the bluebird, the cedar waxwing and several other feathered neighbours who show a preference for fruit trees when it is time to nest. You may know the orchard oriole's cradle by its excellent weaving. It is not a deep, swinging pouch, like the Baltimore oriole's, but a well-rounded cup, more like a vireo's, formed of grasses of nearly even length and width, cut green and woven with far more skill and precision than a basket made by a boy or a girl is apt to be. Look for it near the end of a limb, ten to twenty feet up. It is by no means easily seen when the green, grassy cup matches the colour of the leaves.
The mother oriole is so harmoniously dressed{146}in grayish olive green, more yellowish underneath, that you may scarcely notice her as she glides among the trees; but her mate is more conspicuous, however quietly dressed in black and reddish chestnut—even somberly dressed as compared with his flashy orange and black cousin, the Baltimore oriole. Nevertheless, it takes him two, or possibly three years to attain his fine clothes. By that time his song is rich, sweet and strong.
Do orioles generally take special delight in the music of a piano? An orchard oriole who used to come close to our house to feed on the basket worms dangling from a tamarix bush, returned long after the last worm had been eaten whenever someone touched the keys. And I have known more than one Baltimore oriole to fly about the house, joyously singing, as if attracted and excited by the music in-doors.
A flash of flame among the tender young spring foliage; a rich, high, whistled song from the blossoming cherry trees, and every child knows that the sociable Baltimore oriole has just returned from Central America.
The gorgeous Baltimore oriole.
How do you suppose these young Baltimore orioles ever packed themselves into so small a nest?
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Brilliant orange and black feathers like his could no more be concealed than the fiery little redstart's; and as if they alone were not enough to advertise his welcome presence in the neighbourhood, he keeps up a rich, ringing, insistent whistle that you can quickly learn to imitate. You have often started all the roosters in your neighbourhood to crowing, no doubt; even so you can "whistle up" the mystified orioles, who are always disposed to live near our homes. Although the Baltimore oriole has a Southern name, he is really more common at the North, whereas the orchard oriole is more at home south of New England.
Lady Baltimore, who wears a yellowish-olive dress with dusky wings and tail, has the reputation of being one of the finest nest builders in the world. To the end of a branch of some tall shade tree, preferably an elm or willow, although almost any large tree on a lawn or roadside may suit her, she carries grasses, plant fibre, string, or bits of cloth. These she weaves and felts into a perfect bag six or seven inches deep and lines it with finer grasses, hair and wool—a safe, cozy, swinging cradle for her babies.
But, as you may imagine, those babies have a rather hard time when they try to climb out of it into the world. Many a one tumbles to the ground, unable to hold on to the tip of a{148}swaying twig, and not being strong enough to fly. Then what a tremendous fuss the parents make! They cannot carry the youngster up into the tree; they are in deadly fear of cats; they are too worried and excited to leave him alone; but the plucky little fellow usually hops toward the tree and with the help of his sharp claws on the rough bark, flutters his way up to the first limb. People who have brought up broods of orphan orioles say that they are unusually lively, interesting pets. The little girl orioles will attempt, instinctively, to weave worsted, string, grass, or whatever is given them to play with, for of course they never took a lesson in weaving from their expert mother.
You probably know either one of our two crow blackbirds, similar in size and habits, one with purplish, iridescent plumage, the commonest grackle east of the Alleghenies and south of Massachusetts, and the bronzed grackle, with brassy tints in his black plumage, who overruns the Western country and from Massachusetts northward.{149}Both have uncanny, yellow eyes that make you suspect they may be witches in disguise. Their mates are a trifle smaller and duller.
When the trees are still leafless in earliest spring and the ground is brown and cold, flocks of blackbirds dot the bare trees or take shelter from March winds among their favourite evergreens, or walk solemnly about on the earth like small crows, feeding on fat white grubs and beetles in a business-like way. They are singularly joyless birds. A croaking, wheezy whistle, like the sound of a cart wheel that needs axle-grease, expresses whatever pleasure they may have in life.
Always sociable, living in flocks the entire year through, it is in autumn only that they band together in enormous numbers, and in the West especially, do serious havoc in the cornfields. However, they do incalculable good as insect destroyers, so the farmers must forgive the "maize thieves."
…
Was ever a family so ill-assorted as the blackbird and oriole clan? What traits are common to every member of it? Not one, that I know. Some of the family, as you have seen, are gorgeously clad, like the Baltimore oriole; some quite plainly, like the cowbird; and although black seems to be a prevalent colour in the{150}plumage, the meadowlark, for example, is a brown bird with only a black crescent on its breast. Most of the males are dressed quite differently from their mates, although the female grackles are merely duller. Some of these birds sing exquisitely; others wheeze or croak a few unmusical notes. Some live in huge flocks; some live in couples. Some, like the bobolinks, travel to the tropics and beyond every winter; others, like the meadowlark, can endure the intense cold of the North. Part of the family feed upon the ground, but the oriole branch live in the trees. Devotion to mates and children characterise most of the family, but we cannot overlook the cowbird that neither mates nor takes the slightest care of its offspring. The cowbird builds no nest, while its cousin, the Baltimore oriole, is a famous weaver. The bobolink is a rollicking, jolly fellow; the grackle is solemn, even morose. What a queer family!
Young orchard orioles
"There were three crows sat on a tree"
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American CrowBlue JayCanada Jay
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Two close relatives there are which, like the poor, are always with us—the crow and the blue jay. Both are mischievous rascals, extraordinarily clever, with the most highly developed brains that any of our birds possess. Some men of science believe that, because of their brain power, they rightly belong at the head of the bird class where the thrushes now stand; but who wishes to see a family of songless rogues awarded the highest honours of the classAves?
No bird is so well known to "every child," so admired by artists, so hated by farmers, as the crow, who flaps his leisurely way above the cornfields with acawfor friend and foe alike, not caring the least for anyone's opinion of him, good or bad. Perhaps he knows his own true worth better than the average farmer, who has persecuted him with bounty laws, shotgun, and poison for generations. The crow keeps no account of the immense numbers of grubs and larvae he picks up as he walks after the plough every spring, nor does the farmer, who nevertheless counts the corn stolen as fast as it is planted, and as fast as it ripens,{154}you may be very sure, and puts a price on the robber's head. Yet he knows that corn, dipped in tar before it is put in the ground, will be left alone to sprout. But who is clever enough to keep the crows out of the field in autumn?
How humiliated would humans feel if they realised what these knowing birds must think of us when we set up in our cornfields the absurd-looking scares they so calmly ignore! Some crows I know ate every kernel off every ear around the scare-crow in a neighbour's field, but touched no stalk very far from it, as much as to say: "We take your dare along with your corn, Mr. Silly. If the ox that treadeth out his corn is entitled to his share of it, ought not we, who saved it from grasshoppers, cutworms, May beetles and other pests, be sharers in the profits?" Granted; but what about eating the farmer's young chickens and turkeys as well as the eggs and babies of little song birds? At times, it must be admitted, the crow's heart is certainly as dark as his feathers; he is as black as he is painted, but happily such cannibalism is apt to be rare. Strange that a bird so tenderly devoted to his own fledglings, should be so heartless to others'!
Toward the end of winter, you may see a pair of crows carrying sticks and trash to the top of some tall tree in the leafless woods,{155}and there, in this bulky cradle, almost as bulky as a squirrel's nest, they raise their family. Young crows may be easily tamed and they make interesting, but very mischievous pets. It is only when crows are nesting that they give up their social, flocking habit.
In winter, if the fields be lean, large picturesque flocks may be seen at dawn streaking across the sky to distant beaches where they feed on worms, refuse and small shellfish. More than one crow has been watched, rising in the air with a clam or a mussel in his claws, dropping it on a rock, then falling after it, as soon as the shell is smashed, to feast upon its contents. The fish crow, a distinct species, never found far inland, although not necessarily seen near water, may be distinguished from our common crow by its hoarsercar. In some cases it joins its cousins on the beaches. With punctual regularity at sundown, the flocks straggle back inland to go to sleep, sometimes thousands of crows together in a single roost. Many birds have more regular meal hours and bed-time than some children seem to care for. Because crows eat almost anything they can find, and pick up a good living where other birds, more finical or less clever, would starve, they rarely need to migrate; but they are great rovers. There is not a day in the year when you could not find a crow.
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This vivacious, dashing fellow, harsh-voiced and noisy, cannot be overlooked; for when a brightly coloured bird, about a foot long, roves about your neighbourhood with a troop of screaming relatives, everybody knows it. In summer he keeps quiet, but throws off all restraint in autumn. Hear him hammering at an acorn some frosty morning! How vigorous his motions, how alert and independent! His beautiful military blue, black and white feathers, and crested head, give him distinction.
He is certainly handsome. But is his beauty only skin deep? Does it cover, in reality, a multitude of sins? Shocking stories of murder in the song bird's nest have branded the blue jay with quite as bad a name as the crow's. The brains of fledglings, it has been said, are his favourite tid-bits. But happily scientists, who have turned the searchlight on his deeds, find that his sins have been very greatly exaggerated. Remains of young birds were found in only two out of nearly three hundred blue jays' stomachs analysed. Birds' eggs are more apt to be sucked by both jays and squirrels than are the nestlings to be eaten. Do you ever enjoy an egg for breakfast? Fruit, grain, thin-shelled nuts, and the larger seeds of trees{157}and shrubs, gathered for the most part in Nature's open store-room, not in man's, are what the jay chiefly delights in; and these he hides away, squirrel-fashion, to provide for the rainy day. More than half of all his food in summer consists of insects, so you see he is then quite as useful as his cousin, the crow.
Jays are fearful teasers. How they love to chase about some poor, blinking, bewildered owl, in the daylight!Jay-jay-jay, you may hear them scream through the woods. They mimic the hawk's cry for no better reason, perhaps, than that they may laugh at the panic into which timid little birds are thrown at the terrifying sound. A pet jay I knew could whistle up the stupid house-dog, who was fooled again and again. This same jay used to carry all its beech nuts to a piazza roof, wedge them between the shingles, and open them there with ease. An interesting array of hair pins, matches, buttons, a thimble and a silver spoon were raked out of his favourite cache under the eaves.
Anyone who has camped in the northern United States and over the Canadian border knows that the crow and blue jay have a rogue for{158}a cousin in this sleek, bold thief, the Canada jay. He is a fluffy, big, gray bird, without a crest, with a white throat and forehead and black patch at the back of his neck. This rascal will walk alone or with his gang into your tent, steal your candles, matches, venison, and collar-buttons before your eyes, or help himself to the fish bait while he perches on your canoe, or laugh at you with an impudentca-ca-cafrom the mountain ash tree where he and his friends are feasting on the berries; then glide to the ground to slyly pick a trap set for mink or marten. Fortunate the trapper who, on his return, does not find either bait gone, or game damaged.
Fearless, amazingly hardy (having been hatched in zero weather), mischievous and clever to a maddening degree, this jay, like his cousins, compels admiration, although we know all three to be rogues.
Blue jay on her nest.
Five little teasers get no dinner from Mamma blue jay.
Not afraid of the camera: baby blue jay out for their first airing.
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KingbirdCrested FlycatcherPhoebePeweeLeast Flycatcher
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When you see a dusky bird, smaller than a robin, lighter gray underneath than on its sooty-brown back, with a well-rounded, erect head, set on a short, thick neck, you may safely guess it is one of the flycatchers—another strictly American family. If the bird has a white band across the end of its tail it is probably the fearless kingbird. If the feathers on top of its head look as if they had been brushed the wrong way into a pointed crest; moreover, if some chestnut colour shows in its tail when spread, and its pearly gray breast shades into yellow underneath, you are looking at the noisy "wild Irishman" of birddom, the crested flycatcher. Confiding Phoebe wears the plainest of dull clothes with a still darker, dusky crown cap, and a line of white on her outer tail feathers. She and the plaintive wood pewee, who has two indistinct whitish bars across her extra-long wings, are scarcely larger than an English sparrow; while the least flycatcher, who calls himselfChebec, is, as you may suppose, the smallest member of the tribe to leave the tropics and spend the summer with us. Male and female members of this{162}family wear similar clothes, fortunately for "every child" who tries to identify them.
You can tell a flycatcher at sight by the way he collects his dinner. Perhaps he will be sitting quietly on the limb of a tree or on a fence as if dreaming, when suddenly off he dashes into the air, clicks his broad bill sharply over a winged insect, flutters an instant, then wheels about and returns to his favourite perch to wait for the next course to fly by. He may describe fifty such loops in mid-air and make as many fatal snap-shots before his hunger is satisfied. A swallow or a swift would keep constantly on the wing; a vireo would hunt leisurely among the foliage; a warbler would restlessly flit about the tree hunting for its dinner among the leaves; but the dignified, dexterous flycatcher, like a hawk, waits patiently on his lookout for a dinner to fly toward him. "All things come to him who waits," he firmly believes.
None of the family is musically gifted, but all make a more or less pleasing noise. Flycatchers are solitary, sedentary birds, never being found in flocks; but when mated, they are devoted home lovers.
We are apt to think of tropical birds as very gaily feathered, but certainly many that come from warmer climes to spend the summer with us are less conspicuous than Quakers.
The dashing, great crested flycatcher.
Baby kingbirds in an apple tree.
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In spite of his scientific name, which has branded him the tyrant of tyrants, the kingbird is by no means a bully. See him high in air in hot pursuit of that big, black, villainous crow, who dared try to rob his nest, darting about the rascal's head and pecking at his eyes until he is glad to leave the neighbourhood! There seems to be an eternal feud between them. Even the marauding hawk, that strikes terror to every other feathered breast, will be driven off by the plucky little kingbird. But surely a courageous home defender is no tyrant. A kingbird doesn't like the scolding catbird for a neighbour, or the teasing blue jay, or the meddlesome English sparrow, but he simply gives them a wide berth. He is no Don Quixote ready to fight from mere bravado.Tyrannus tyrannusis a libel.
For years he has been called the bee martin and some scientific men in Washington determined to learn if that name, also, is deserved. So they collected over two hundred kingbirds from different parts of the country, examined their stomachs and found bees—mostly drones—in only fourteen. The bird is too keen sighted and clever to snap up knowingly a bee with a{164}sting attached, you may be sure; but occasionally he makes a mistake when, don't you believe, he is more sorry for it than the beekeeper? He destroys so many robber flies—a pest of the hives—that the intelligent apiarist, who keeps bees in his orchard to fertilise the blossoms, always likes to see a pair of kingbirds nesting in one of his fruit trees. The gardener welcomes the bird that eats rose chafers; the farmer approves of him because he catches the gadfly that torments his horses and cattle, as well as the grasshoppers, katydids and crickets that would destroy his field crops if left unchecked.
From a favourite lookout on a tall mullein stalk, a kingbird neighbour of mine would detect an insect over one hundred and seventy feet away, where no human eye could see it, dash off, snap it safely within his bill, flutter uncertainly an instant, then return to his perch ready to "loop the loop" again any moment. The curved clasp at the tip of his bill and the stiff hairs at the base helped hold every insect his prisoner. While waiting for food to fly into sight the watcher did a good deal of calling. His harsh, chattering note,ching, ching, which penetrated to a surprising distance, did not express alarm, but rather the exultant joy of victory.
Four crested flycatchers who need to have their hair brushed.
Time for these young phoebes to leave the nest.
Young phoebes on a bridge trestle.
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He and his mate were certainly frantic with fear, however, when I climbed into their apple tree one June morning, determined to have a peep at the five creamy-white eggs, speckled with brown and pale lilac, that had just been laid in the nest in a crotch near the end of a stout limb. Whirling and dashing about my head, the pair made me lose my balance, and I tumbled ten feet or more to the ground. As the intruder fell, they might well have exclaimed—perhaps they did—"Sic semper tyrannis!"
Far more tyrannical than the kingbird is this "wild Irishman," as John Burroughs calls the large flycatcher with the tousled head and harsh, uncanny voice, who prowls around the woods and orchards startling most feathered friends and foes with a loud, piercing exclamation that sounds likeWhat!Unlike good children, he is more often heard than seen.
That the solitary, unpopular bird takes a mischievous delight in scaring its enemies, you may know when I tell you that it likes better than any other lining for its nest, a cast snake skin. Is it any wonder that the baby flycatchers' hair stands on end? If the great-crest cannot find the skin of a snake to coil{166}around her eggs, or to hang out of the nest, she may use onion skins, or oiled paper, or even fish scales; for what was once a protective custom, sometimes becomes degraded into a cheap imitation of the imitation in the furnishing of her house. Into an abandoned woodpeckers' hole or a bluebirds' cavity after the babies of these early nesters have flown, or into some unappropriated hollow in a tree, this flycatcher carries enough grasses, weeds and feathers to keep her nestlings cozy during those rare days of June beloved by Lowell, but which Dr. Holmes observed are often so rare they are raw.
The first of its family to come North, as well as the last to leave us for the winter, the phoebe appears toward the end of March to snap up the first insects warmed into life by the spring sunshine. Grackles in the evergreens, red-wings in the swampy meadows, bluebirds in the orchard may assure us that summer is on the way; but the homely, confiding phoebe, who comes close about our houses and barns, brings the good news home to us every hour.
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Pewit—phoebe, pewit—phoebe, he calls continually. As he perches on the peak of a building or other point of vantage, notice how vigorously he wags his tail when he calls, and turns his head this way and that, to keep an eye in all directions lest a bite should fly by him unawares.
Presently a mate comes from somewhere south of the Carolinas where she has passed the winter; for phoebes are more hardy than the rest of the family and do not travel all the way to the tropics. With unfailing accuracy she finds the region where she built her nest the previous season or where she herself was hatched. This instinct of returned direction is marvellous, is it not? Sometimes it is hard enough for us humans to find the way home when not ten miles away. Did you ever get lost? Birds almost never do.
Phoebes like a covering over their heads to protect their nests from spring rains, so you will see a domesticated couple going about the place like a pair of wrens, investigating niches under the piazza roof, beams in an empty barn loft and projections under bridges and trestles. By the middle of April a neat nest of moss and lichen, plastered together with mud and lined with long hair or wool, if sheep are near, is made in the vicinity of their home of the year before.{168}The nursery is exquisitely fashioned—one of the best pieces of bird architecture you are likely to find.
Some over-thrifty housekeepers, nevertheless, tear down nests from their piazzas, because the poor little phoebes are so afflicted with lice that they are considered objectionable neighbours. Many wild birds, like chickens, have their life-blood drawn by these minute pests. But a thorough dusting of the phoebe's nest with Persian powder would bring relief to the tormented birds, save their babies, perhaps, from death and keep the piazza free from vermin. No birds enjoy a bath in your fountain or water pan more than these tormented ones.
From purely selfish motives it pays to cultivate neighbours ever on the lookout for flies, wasps, May beetles, click beetles, elm destroyers and the moth of the cutworm. The first nest is usually so infested that the phoebes either tear it down in July, and build a new one on its site, or else make the second nest at a little distance from the first. The parents of two broods of from four to six ravenously hungry, insectivorous young, with an instinctive desire to return to their old home year after year, should surely meet no discouragement from thinking farmers' wives.
Shouldn't you think that baby phoebes, reared in nests under railroad bridges, would{169}be fearfully frightened whenever a train thundered overhead?
When you have been wandering through the summer woods did you ever, like Trowbridge, sit down
"Beside the brook, irresolute,And watch a little bird in suitOf sombre olive, soft and brown,Perched in the maple branches, mute?With greenish gold its vest was fringed,Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged,With ivory pale its wings were barred,And its dark eyes were tender starred.'Dear bird,' I said, 'what is thy name?'And thrice the mournful answer came.So faint and far, and yet so near—'Pewee! pe-wee! peer!'"
Doubtless this demure, gentle little cousin of the noisy, aggressive, crested flycatcher has no secret sorrow preying at its heart, but the tender pathos of its long-drawn notes would seem to indicate that it is rather melancholy. And it sings (in spite of the books which teach us that the flycatchers are "songless, perching birds") from the time of its arrival from Central America in May until only the tireless indigo bunting and the red-eyed vireo are left in the choir in August.
But how suddenly its melancholy languor{170}departs the instant an insect flies within sight! With a cheerful, sudden sally in mid-air, it snaps up the luscious bite, for it can be quite as active as any of the family. While not so ready to be neighbourly as the phoebe, the pewee condescends to visit our orchards and shade trees.
When nesting time comes, it looks for a partly decayed, lichen-covered branch, and on to this saddles a compact, exquisite cradle of fine grass, moss and shreds of bark, binding bits of lichen with spiders' web to the outside until the sharpest of eyes are needed to tell the stuccoed nest from the limb it rests on. Only the tiny hummingbird, who also uses lichen as a protective and decorative device, conceals her nest so successfully.
It is not until he calls out his name,Chebec! Chebec!in clear and business-like tones from some tree-top that you could identify this fluffy flycatcher, scarcely more than five inches long, whose dusky coat and light vest offer no helpful markings. Not a single gay feather relieves his sombre suit. Isn't this a queer, Quakerly taste for a bird that spends half his life{171}in the tropics among gorgeously feathered friends? Even the plain vireos, as a family, wear finer clothes than the dusky flycatchers. You may know that the chebec is not one of those deliberate searchers of foliage by his sudden, murderous sallies in mid-air.
Abundant from Pennsylvania to Quebec, the least flycatchers are too inconspicuous to be much noticed. They haunt apple orchards chiefly at nesting time, fortunately for the crop, and at no season secrete themselves in shady woods as pewees do. A little chebec neighbour of mine used to dart through the spray from the hose that played on the lawn late every every afternoon during a drought, and sit on the tennis net to preen his wet feathers; but he nearly put out my eyes in his excitement and anger when I presumed on so much friendliness to peep into his nest.
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Whip-poor-willNighthawkChimney SwiftRuby-throated Hummingbird
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A queer, shadowy bird, that sleeps all day in the dense wood and flies about through open country after dark as softly as an owl, would be difficult for any child to know were it not for the weird, snappy triplets of notes that tell his name. Every one knows him far better by sound than by sight.Whip-poor-will (chuck) whip-poor-will (chuck) whip-poor-will (chuck)he calls rapidly for about two hours, just after sunset or before sunrise from some low place, fluttering his wings at each announcement of his name. But you must be near him to hear thechuckat the end of each vigorous triplet; most listeners don't know it is there.
You might be very close indeed without seeing the plump bird, about the size of a robin, who has flattened himself lengthwise against a lichen-covered branch until you cannot tell bird from bark. Or he may be on a rock or an old, mossy log, where he rests serene in the knowledge that his mottled, dull dark-brown, gray, buff, black and white feathers blend perfectly with his resting place. He must choose a spot broad enough to support his{176}whole body, for, like his cousin, the nighthawk, and his more distant relatives, the hummingbird and the swift, his feet are too small and weak for much perching. You never see him standing erect on a twig with his toes clasped around it, but always squatting when at rest.
A narrow white band across his throat makes his depressed head look as if it had been separated from his body—a queer effect that may remind you of the Cheshire Cat in "Alice in Wonderland." The whip-poor-will's three outer tail feathers have white ends which help to distinguish him from the nighthawk. He has a funny little short beak, but his large mouth stretches from ear to ear, and when he flies low above the fields after sunset, this trap is kept open, like the swift's and the swallow's, to catch any night-flying insects—mosquitoes, June bugs, gnats, katydids and little moths—that cross his path. Long, stiffened bristles at the ends of his mouth prevent the escape of a victim past the gaping trap. On the wing the bird is exceedingly swift and graceful. Some children mistake him for a bat or a nighthawk.
Relying upon the protective covering of her soft plumage, the mother whip-poor-will builds no nest, but lays a pair of mottled eggs directly on the ground in the dark woods where a carpet of dead leaves and decayed wood makes concealment perfect.
Least flycatchers in a rose bush.
Nighthawk resting in the sunlight.
{177}
Not even the ovenbird contrives that a peep at her eggs shall be so difficult for us. It is next to impossible to find them. Unlike the wicked cowbird, who builds no nest because she has no maternal instinct, the whip-poor-will, who is a devoted mother, makes none because none is needed. Once I happened upon two fuzzy, dark, yellowish-gray, baby whip-poor-wills (mostly mouths) in a hollow of a decayed, lichen-covered log, which was their "comfy" cradle; but the frantic mother, who flopped and tumbled about on the ground around them, whining like a puppy, sent me running away from sheer pity.
In the Southern States a somewhat larger whip-poor-will, but with the same habits, is known as chuck-will's-widow.
Did you ever hear a rushing, whirring, booming sound as though wind were blowing across the bung-hole of an empty barrel? The nighthawk, who makes it, is such a high flyer, that in the dusk of the late afternoon or early evening, when he delights to sail abroad to get his dinner, you cannot always see him; but as{178}he coasts down from the sky—not on a sled, but on his half-closed wings—with tremendous speed, the rush of air through his stiff, long wing feathers makes an uncanny, aeolian music that silly, superstitious people have declared is a bad omen. You might think he would dash out his brains in such a headlong dive through the air, but before he hits the earth, a sudden turn saves him and off he goes unharmed, skimming above the ground and catching insects after the whip-poor-will's manner. He lacks the helpful bristles at the ends of his fly-trap. Don't imagine, because of his name, that he flies about only at night. He is not so nocturnal in his habits as the whip-poor-will. Toward the end of summer, especially, he may be seen coursing over the open country at almost any hour of the day. Once in a while, as he hunts, he callspeent—a sharp cry that reminds you of the meadowlark's nasal call-note. Presently, mounting upward higher and higher, at the leisurely rate of a boy dragging his sled up hill, he seems to reach the very clouds, when down he coasts again, faster than a boy's flexible flyer. Listen for the booming noise of this coaster! Evidently he enjoys the sport as much as any boy or girl, for he repeats his sky-coasting very often without having to wait for a snow-storm. Indeed, when winter comes, he is enjoying another summer in South{179}America. Life without insects would be impossible for him.
When he is coursing low above the fields, with quick, erratic, bat-like turns, notice the white spots, almost forming a bar across his wings, for they will help you to distinguish him from the whip-poor-will, who carries his white signals on the outer feathers of his tail. Both of these cousins wear the same colours, only they put them on differently, the whip-poor-will having his chiefly mottled, the nighthawk his chiefly barred. The latter wears a broader white band across his throat. His mate substitutes buff for his white decorations.
Like the mother whip-poor-will, she makes no nest but places her two speckled treasures in some sunny spot, either on the bare ground, on a rock, or even on the flat roof of a house. Since electric lights attract so many insects to the streets of towns and villages, the enterprising nighthawk often forsakes the country to rear her children where they may enjoy the benefits of modern improvements.
Both the nighthawk and the whip-poor-will belong to the goatsucker family. Did you ever hear a more ridiculous name? Eighty-five innocent birds of this tribe, found in most parts of the world, have to bear it because some careless observer may have seen one of their number flying among a herd of goats in Europe to catch{180}the insects on them, just as cowbirds follow our cattle; and he imagined the bird was actually drinking the goat's milk!
There are some children, and grown-ups, too, who persist in calling this bird the chimney swallow, although it is not even remotely related to the swallow family, and its life history, as well as its anatomy, are quite different from a swallow's, as you shall see.
Down within some unused chimney, the modern babies of this soot-coloured, dark, grayish-brown bird first open their eyes. Old-fashioned swifts still nest in hollow trees or caves, but chimneys are so much more abundant and convenient, that up-to-date birds prefer them. Without stopping in their flight, the parent swifts snap off with their beaks or feet, little twigs at the ends of dead branches, and these they carry, one by one, into a chimney, gluing them against the side until they have finished an almost flat, shelf-like, lattice cradle. Where do they get their glue? Only during the nesting season do certain glands in their mouths flow a brownish fluid that quickly gums and hardens when exposed to the air. After nursery duties have ended, the gland shrinks from disuse.