In Bird Land

A nestful of half-callow younglings, standing on tiptoe, craning up their necks, wabbling from side to side, opening their mouths to the widest extent of their “gapes,” knocking heads and beaks together, and chirping at the top of their voices,—I confess it makes a picture more grotesque than attractive. By and by, as the pin-feathers begin to grow, the infant brood seem to feel an itching sensation, which causes them to pick the various parts of their bodies to remove the scaly substance that gathers on the skin and at the bases of the sprouting feathers. But how awkwardly they go about this exercise! Their heads seem to be too heavy for their long, slender necks, and go waggling and rolling from side to side, often missing the mark aimed at. However, the muscles of the nurslings are developing all the while. Soon they lift themselves to their full height, stretch themselves, jerk their tails higher than their heads in a most amusing way (you smile, but they don’t), and then squat down upon the floor of the nest again. A day or so later the most advanced youngster feels the flying impulse stirring in his veins, and so, after stretching himself as previously described, he extends his wings to their utmost reach, and flaps them in a joyous way over his cuddling companions, sometimes rapping them smartly on the head. Soon there comes a day when he hops to the edge of the nest, looks out upon the wide, beckoning world like a young satrap, and flaps his wings with a semi-conscious feeling of strength. Ere long, encouraged by his parents, he spreads his wings, and takes a header for the nearest twig. Why, his wings will bear him up on the buoyant air! He has graduated from the nursery and the grammar grade into the high school.

Every year has its eccentricities, so to speak; that is, the character of the weather and other modifying causes afford the faunal life an occasion for a development that is peculiar. Thus the observations made by the naturalist one year are not necessarily mere repetitions of those made other years. Nature is not often guilty of tautology. I yield therefore to the temptation to add a few chronicles made during the spring of 1893, which, I hope, will not destroy the unity of this article on bird nurseries. One day in June, while strolling through the woods, I heard the song of a red-eyed vireo. It was a kind of talking song, or recitative, as if the bird were discoursing on some favorite theme, and improvising his music as he went. His voice was so loud and clear that I could hear it far away, drifting through the green, embowered aisles of the woods. This vigorous chanson was a surprise, for I have never before known this vireo to remain in my neighborhood during the summer. He mostly hies farther north. But a still greater surprise lay in ambush for me a few days later, in one of my rambles through the woods. Suddenly there was a light flutter of wings near my head, and there hung a tiny nest on the low, swaying branches of a sapling.

That it was a vireo’s nest was evident, for it was fastened to the twigs by the rim, without any support below, swinging there like a dainty basket. Presently I got my glass on the bird herself, and found her to be a red-eyed vireo. That was my first nest of this species, and proud enough I was of the discovery. The outside of the little cot was prettily ornamented with tufts of spider-webs. As usual with this bird, a piece of white paper was wrought into the lower part of the nest. Three vireo’s eggs and one cow-bunting’s lay in the bottom of the cup.

Every few days I called on the bird, going close enough only to see her plainly, without driving her off the nest. She made a pretty picture sitting there, one fit for an artist’s brush, with her head and tail pointing almost straight up, her body gracefully curved to fit the deep little basket, and her eyes growing large and wild at her visitor’s approach. At length, one day, I felt sure there must be little ones in the nest, and so I went very close to her; yet she did not fly. Then I moved my hand toward her, and finally touched her back before she flitted away. A featherless cow-bunting lay in the hammock, but the vireo’s eggs were not yet hatched. A few days later the nest was robbed. Some heartless villain, probably a blue jay, had destroyed all the children. I could have wept, so keen was my sense of bereavement.

The cow-buntings imposed a great deal on other kind-hearted bird parents that spring. Almost every nest contained one or two of this interloper’s eggs, and, as if Nature abetted the designs of the parasite, these eggs were almost always hatched first. One wood-thrush’s nest contained two bunting and three thrush eggs. As soon as the bantlings had broken from the shell, the buntings could be readily distinguished from the thrushes, for the former feathered much more rapidly than the latter. When the youngsters were about half grown, they crowded one another considerably in their adobe apartment, but, to all intents and purposes, they lived together in beautiful domestic harmony. At all events, no unseemly family wrangles came under my eye. By and by, on one of my visits, I found that the buntings had left the maternal roof (to speak with a good deal of poetic license), while the thrush trio still sat contentedly on the nest, and did not display any fear when I caressingly stroked their brown backs, but looked up at me in a naïve, confiding way that was very gratifying. Quite different was the conduct of the inmates of a bush-sparrow’s nest, hidden in the grass at the woodland’s border. The baby sparrows rushed pell-mell from their pretty homestead when I came near, leaving a bunting, which had been hatched and reared with them, alone in the nest. He was not nearly so far developed as his brothers and sisters, and had no intention of being driven from home.

But here is an instance more like that of the bunting-wood-thrush episode just described. A pretty basket, woven of fine fibrous material, swung from the lower branches of an apple-tree in the orchard of one of my farmer friends, and contained three young orchard orioles and one cow-bunting. One day I procured a step-ladder and climbed up to the nest, when the bunting sprang out with a wild cry and toppled to the ground, while the young orioles, not yet half-fledged, merely pried open their mouths for food. Yet these birds, when grown, are fully as dexterous on the wing as their foster relatives, the buntings.

During the same spring some observations on youthful blackbirds were made. They may be of sufficient interest to register in this place. Did you know that a part of the heads of infant blackbirds remains bare a week or two after the other portions of their bodies are well feathered? This is true of the three species of my acquaintance,—the purple grackles, the red-winged blackbirds, and the cow-buntings. The bald portion includes the forehead, part of the crown, the chin, and throat, and extends behind and below the ears, which are covered with a tiny tuft of fuzz. Had this unfeathered portion been red instead of black, the youngsters would have looked quite like diminutive turkey-buzzards. One may be pardoned for being somewhat puzzled over the childish conundrum, Why young blackbirds, of all the birds in the circle of one’s acquaintance, must go bareheaded during the first few weeks of their life. By and by, however, the feathers grow out on this space as thickly as on the remainder of their bodies.

Strange that I have found so few black-capped titmice’s nests, familiar and abundant as they are in my neighborhood, both summer and winter; but my quest was rewarded in two instances during the spring of 1893,—the first nest being in the top of a truncated sassafras-tree. The snag was perhaps twenty feet high. On one of my visits the birds were hollowing out their little apartment. They would dart into the narrow opening, and presently emerge, carrying small fragments of partly decayed wood in their beaks and dropping them to the ground. Some weeks later, I climbed the tree (with much fear and trembling, be it said), but the birds had made the cavity so deep that I could not see the bottom, and break open their sylvan nursery I would not. The second titmouse nest was in a very slender branch of a sassafras-tree,—so slender, indeed, that it was a wonder the birds were able to make a hollow in it. At first it looked precisely like a black patch burned on the bough’s surface. When one of the feathered atoms stood in the tiny doorway and looked out, she made a pretty picture,—one that would have put a throb of joy into an artist’s bosom.

Yet there is another picture that I should prefer to have painted, not on account of its attractiveness, but on account of its quaintness; it was the nest, eggs, and young of a pair of green herons in an orchard. The nest was built high in an apple-tree, and was only a loose platform of sticks. Although anything but an expert climber, I contrived to scale that tree three times to satisfy my curiosity. The first time there were four eggs of a greenish-blue cast—not jewels by any means—in the nest. On my second visit four of the oddest birdlings I ever looked upon greeted me with wide-open eyes and mouths. They were covered with light yellowish down, and the space about the eyes was of a greenish hue,—one of the characteristic markings of the adult birds. When they opened their mouths, expecting to be fed, their throats puffed out somewhat like the throats of croaking frogs, making a good-sized pocket inside to receive chunks of food. The thought struck me that perhaps the pocket was designed as a sort of temporary storage place for victuals until the nestling was ready to swallow them. The birds made a low, quaint noise that cannot be represented phonetically. Indeed, the picture they made was slightly uncanny, so I did not linger about it overlong.

A week later my third and last call on the heron household was made. What an odd spectacle it presented! The young birds had grown wonderfully, though still covered with down, with very little sign of feathers. As my head appeared above the rim of the nest, they slowly craned up their India-rubber necks, then rose on their stilt-like legs, and looked at me with wondering, wide-open eyes that gleamed almost like gold. The spectacle made me think of ghouls, incongruous as the simile may seem. When I touched one of the birds, it huddled, half-alarmed, down to the bottom of the nest. Another slyly stalked off to the edge of the platform, upon a thick clump of twigs and leaves, eying me keenly as he moved away. I hurriedly climbed down, lest he should topple to the ground and dash himself to death; and thus, while I was on the brink of causing a tragedy, yet, as a sort of emollient to my conscience, I consoled myself with the thought that I had really prevented one.

Another interesting discovery of the same spring was a killdeer plover’s nest, which my farmer friend across-lots found in a clover-field. There had been a heavy rainfall, making the ploughed ground as soft as mush; but my tall rubber boots were mud-proof, and so I went to pay the plovers my respects. This was after six o’clock in the evening. I found one little bird in the shallow, pebble-lined nest, and three eggs, one of them slightly broken at the larger end. The plover nestling was an odd baby, with its large head, fluffy, square-shouldered body, and slender beak sticking straight out. A small piece of the egg-shell still clung to its back. On taking the tiny thing into my hand, what was this I saw? It had only three toes on each foot, instead of four, as most birds have; and those three were all fore toes, while the bird had no hind toe at all. Why the plover should have no hind toe is an enigma; but then, the ostrich has none, either, and only two in front,—“every species after its kind.”

Early the next morning two more youngsters had broken shell, and come forth to keep their more precocious brother company. The eldest was marked quite distinctly about the head and neck like its parents, having the characteristic white and black bands, thus early proclaiming the persistence of its type. When I set it down—for I had lifted it in my hand—it started to run over the soft ground, enhancing its speed by flapping its tiny wings. The picture was indescribably cunning. The bird was so small that it looked like a downy dot scudding over the undulations of the ground. Think of a baby only about fifteen hours old running away from home in that manner! I caught the infantile scapegrace and placed it back in its cradle, where it remained. During the night there had been a very heavy fall of rain, and yet these youngsters, small as they were, had not been drowned, having doubtless been covered by their parents. At six o’clock in the evening they had all left the nest, and, search as I would, I could find no clew to their whereabouts, though the parent birds were flying and scuttling about with loud cries of warning to me to keep my distance. Thus it would seem that young plovers, like young partridges, grouse, and ducks, leave the nest at a very tender age.

Before closing, I must mention something odd that befell a kingfisher’s nest. A year prior I had found a nest in a high bank in a sloping field, where the water had washed out a deep gully. In passing the bank one day I noticed that it had been partly broken down; there had been a landslide on a small scale, caused by the washing of the heavy spring rains. Half way to the top, on a narrow shelf, lay a clutch of kingfisher’s eggs, some of them broken by the caving of the bank. The landslide had occurred after the cavity had been made and the eggs deposited, thus blasting the hopes of the kingfishers. However, they had not become despondent, for, later in the season, they burrowed a hole for an underground nursery in another part of the bank.

III.
BIRD HIGH SCHOOLS.

It is not to be supposed that there is a regularly graded system of instruction in the school-life of the birds. There may be method in their learning, but it would be difficult to state positively just where the primary, grammar, high-school, and college grades merge into one another, or when diplomas of efficiency are granted, if granted at all. But that there is something of a system of pedagogy among birds, and that the juniors do receive instruction from their seniors, no observer of feathered life can doubt for a moment. In the systems of human instruction the child-life of the young learner usually ends with his high-school course; he then stands at the threshold of young manhood, ready to do a good deal of wrestling with his problems on his own account. Taking that fact as our cue, we should say that the high-school instruction of the youthful bird begins when he leaves the nest, and ends when he is able to fly with dexterity, and provide for his own support, at least in the main. It is not probable that the lecture system prevails in the bird community, or the method of class instruction now in vogue, or that books and charts and blackboards are used; but the instruction is chiefly individual, and is carried on mostly by example, coercion, and urgent appeal. There is not an inexhaustible number of branches to be pursued by the little undergraduates in plumes; but their efforts at obtaining an education consist chiefly in mastering three grand accomplishments,—flying, feeding, and singing.

If ever you have seen a bevy of young red-headed woodpeckers, led by several of their elders, taking their wing-exercises, choosing a certain tree in the woods for a point of departure, and then sailing around and around with loud cries of delight, you must have concluded that it was a veritable class in calisthenics. One seldom has an opportunity to see young birds taking their first lessons in flight, but it is worth one’s time and patience to be present at such a recitation. The parents set the example by flying from the nest to a perch near by, and then coax and scold their children to follow their example. If the little learners hesitate, as they usually do, their impatient teachers exclaim: “Why, just try it once. You never will learn to fly any younger. If you will only spread your wings, let go of the rim of the nest, and venture out on the air, you will find that it will bear you up. Don’t be afraid.” But perhaps the pupils complain that it makes their heads dizzy to look down from their awful height. Then the teachers pooh-pooh at their fears, and cry condescendingly, “The idea of being afraid! Why, just see here!” and they mount up into the air, poise, careen, and perform other extraordinary feats, while the youngsters gaze at them in wide-eyed wonder. At last, after much persuasion and many half-attempts, one of the youngsters spreads his pinions and flutters laboriously until he scrambles upon the nearest twig, with bated breath and throbbing pulses. He is frightened half to death, but he has found that the friendly air will support him if he makes proper use of his wings, and so he will soon make another effort, and another, until he begins really to enjoy the exercise. However, several days may elapse before the youngest and weakest member of the class can muster sufficient courage to take his first aerial journey.

Some species of birds graduate from the nest much sooner than others. In one case I observed that a family of goldfinches remained in the nest just seven days after a family of bush-sparrows, hatched on the same day, had taken their flight.[8] The yellow-billed cuckoo has given me no little surprise in this respect. When he first creeps out of his shell apartment, he is a callow, ungainly infant, black as coal, with a sparse covering of stiff bristles; but almost before a week has passed, he has hopped from his washed-out cradle to try the realities of the great world around him. Why the agile little goldfinch should remain in the crib so much longer than his less dexterous fellow-pupil, the cuckoo, is a problem of bird school-life that I must leave for solution to wiser heads.

Having gone from the nest, the young bird has not yet learned all about the art of flying; no, indeed! He must become perfect by practice. Many a blunder will he make. At first he cannot always nicely calculate the distance to the twig that he has in view, and so he fails to give himself the proper propulsive force; he misses his footing by going too far, or not far enough, and then where he will alight is a question of what he happens to strike first. Probably a wild, desperate scramble will ensue, which ends only when the youthful novice has fallen plump upon the ground. He may be very much alarmed; but as soon as he recovers his breath, his courage rises, and he tries again.

Although the young birds have the whole world for their larder, with victuals just to their taste constantly at their elbow, they must learn even the art of eating, and, until they do so, they demand that their parents be their caterers. For several weeks after they have passed the first term of school-life, they will still sit on a limb, open their mouths, twinkle their wings, and allow their patient victuallers to thrust morsel after morsel down their throats. My opinion is that the patience of their parents wears out after a time, and they leave the overgrown youngster to paddle for himself. How proud he must be of the exploit when he catches his first insect and successfully stows it away in his maw! In a deep, quiet glen I watched a family of young phœbes and their parents catching insects on the wing. It was amusing. The old birds evidently felt that it was about time for their pupils to learn to provide their own victuals, but the youngsters stoutly demanded that their luncheons be brought them in the accustomed manner. They must have noticed that the old birds would occasionally catch an insect and dispose of it themselves. Once when the parent bird darted out for a small cabbage butterfly, a young fellow swooped down at her with such force that she let the insect squirm out of her bill and flutter to the ground, and thus make good its escape before she could recover it. Both birds lost their dinner through the greed and rashness of the little gourmand. Another time an old bird caught a yellow butterfly, dashed to a limb, and quickly gulped it down, wings and all, before any of the presumptuous high-schoolers could reach him. The bearing of the bird was most laughable. Finally, several of the young birds darted out into the air for passing insects, proving that they were taking lessons in that fine art; but their gymnastics were far from perfect, and they hit the mark scarcely half the time.

With most young birds music is a part of their high-school curriculum. Perhaps you have thought that they learn their lessons in vocal music without special instruction, but this is not always the case. Observation proves that the old birds have them under tutelage, setting them lyrical copies, which they are expected to learn by frequent rehearsal. I have myself observed such a performance in the case of the wood-pewee, as described in the chapter on “Midsummer Melodies.” First attempts are crude and awkward, although the tones may be very fine. It requires frequent drill to bring the vocal organs under perfect control, just as is the case with human singers. If you have listened to the squeaking, chattering, twittering medley of young song-sparrows, you have realized how much practice is necessary before the would-be vocalists will be able to execute the wonderful trills of which they are master when they graduate from the musical conservatory.

I must tell you of a little bird high-school class over which I once assumed charge. It consisted of three wood-thrushes, two bluebirds, and a brown thrasher, all of which were taken from the nest before they were ready to fly, and confined in a large wire cage. Very soon they learned to take food from my hand. But in many things that are essential to bird life and bird weal they had no tutors and no drill-masters, and therefore had to learn them as best they could. Yet it was surprising how soon they gained proficiency. Without a single copy from adult birds, all of them were able to fly about from perch to perch in a few days. It was not more than a week before they began to pick in an awkward way, but after more than five weeks they would still open their mouths and take food from the hand. The mechanical act of eating was something they had to learn by slow degrees. While they could readily pick up a tidbit, it seemed to be a difficult task to get it back far enough into the mouth to swallow it. This was especially true of the thrasher, whose bill was long. How he would toss a morsel about, pinch it, fling it away, catch it up again, and pound it against a perch, before he could work it back into his capacious throat!

They were amusing pets, those feathered pupils of mine. From them I have gained an insight into bird character which could have been gained in no other way. The difficulty in observing birds in the wild state is, you cannot study them at close range, and hence cannot watch their development from day to day. None the less interesting were my little pupils because they had to depend on their own wits and learn their lessons without a pedagogue. How did they learn to bathe without being shown how! They learned it, that is sure; and they went through the exercise precisely as birds do in the wildwood. They would leap into the bath-dish, duck their heads into the water, flutter their wings and tails until thoroughly rinsed, and then fly up to a perch to preen their bedrenched plumage. But they made some mirth-provoking blunders. One day a wood-thrush got astride of the rim of his bath-tub, one leg outside and the other inside, and in that interesting position tried to take his ablution. He looked exceedingly droll, and seemingly could not understand why he did not succeed better. Another time the thrasher remained outside of the bath-dish, and thrust his head over the rim into the water, squatting on the sand and twinkling his pinions. But the time came when all the birds discovered of their own accord that the proper way was to leap right into the lavatory.

How early in life do juvenile birds begin to sing? That is a question, I venture to say, that very few students of bird life would be able to answer. It may be difficult to believe—if my own ears had not heard, I should be very skeptical of the accuracy of the assertion—but my wood-thrushes had not been in my care more than three or four weeks before one of them began to twitter a little song. He could not have been much more than five weeks old. This is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that there were no adult thrushes within a half-mile of the house. He seemed to discover that he had a voice, and thought he might as well use it.

Ah, yes, and sad to relate, my high-school pupils soon learned to quarrel, and that without the example of their elders. When I threw a billsome morsel on the floor of the cage, several of them would make a dive for it, and soon get into a wrangle. “It’s mine! it’s mine!” each would proclaim by his greedy behavior. Then perhaps two would seize it, and tug at it like boys fighting for an apple. Or if one contrived to get it first, the rest would try to wrench it from his beak, and thus they would pursue one another about in a wild chase. The thrasher, being younger than his fellows, was for a time cheated out of every choice morsel he secured; but he finally learned to help himself and swallow his victuals instanter. Two of the thrushes, probably males, seemed to have a mutual grudge. They would pursue each other until the fugitive would turn and stand at bay, snapping his mandibles in a savage manner, as if they were worked by steel springs. I regret being compelled to publish these pugnacious tendencies in my beloved pets; but I prefer giving a realistic rather than a fictitious or roseate sketch of the school-days of these pupils in plumes.

IV.
BIRD WORK.

“Life is real, life is earnest,” might be just as truly said of “our little brothers of the air” as of us, their big brothers of the soil. If you think that their whole career consists of nothing but play and song and bounding joy, you have seen very little of the bird life around you. For the mother bird, at least, the whole period of nesting, sometimes extending over several months, is a time of drudgery, anxiety, and, far too often, of disappointed hopes. I have heard a bird mother’s wail that went like iron into my soul, and told me all too plainly that it had come from a bereft and broken heart. When we remember how many tragedies occur in the feathered community, we scarcely care about singing, “I wish I were a little bird.” Had you witnessed the unutterable agony of a pair of yellow-breasted chats one spring, when their four pretty bairns were stolen by some heartless buccaneer, you would have thanked the Pleiades, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and all your other lucky stars, that you were a man or woman and not a bird.

“Oh! it would be so pleasant to fly and tilt in the air, to dash from twig to twig, to make long aerial voyages to foreign countries!” Do I hear you say that? Wait a moment. Have you ever thought that even the long, bounding flight of the swallows and swifts, accomplished apparently without effort, may sometimes become a weariness to the flesh, especially when insects are scarce and their maws empty? Then, those long nocturnal journeys that birds make during the migrating season may often tax their strength to the utmost. Indeed, if you will listen to their feeble chirping, as they sweep overhead through the darkness, you will often detect a note of fatigue running through it, as much as to say, “Ah, I wish we were at our journey’s end!” No, bird life is not all roseate. It has its humdrum and drudgery, its wear and tear, its prose as well as its poetry, its hard realism as well as its romance.

One of the tasks of bird life is the building of nests. It is true, the birds always do this work with a zest that makes it seem half play; but, after spending a day in gathering material and weaving it into the nest, scarcely taking time to stop for meals, I have no doubt the little toilers are ready to retire when bedtime comes. Have you ever watched these little artists constructing their nests? They first lay the foundation, which is usually made of rather coarse material, and is more or less loosely woven; and then they proceed to build the superstructure. Some birds, like the robin and the bluebird, will have their mouths full of material every time they come to the nest; while others, such as the dainty warblers, will return with a single fibre. Usually the bird leaps into the cup of the nest, and deftly weaves in the new material with its bill; and then shifts around with a quivering motion of body and wings, to give the structure proper shape and size. The nest must be made to fit the body of the bird like a glove, so that she may rest easily in it during the long period of incubation. The robin and the wood-thrush bring mud and clay; this they mix, no doubt, with their own saliva, which gives it its viscid character. The dainty, blue-gray gnat-catcher collects lichens of various kinds, with which she decorates the high walls of her compact little cottage. Does this tiny artist sometimes build nests just for fun or æsthetic effect? I watched the building of two nests one spring that were never used. With what a graceful touch the feathered dots laid the lichen bricks in the walls!

The hatching of the eggs must be a severe tax on the patience of the mother bird, for the principal part of this work devolves upon her. Sitting hour by hour upon the nest, looking out upon the wide spaces of air waiting to be conquered by her active wings; with nothing except hope to feed her mind; with not even a book or a newspaper to read,—well, here is a chance to let patience have her perfect work. Then think of her uneasiness at the approach of every foe. It is work; it is not mere idleness. As for her lord, it may seem only like holiday sport to sit in the tree-top and sing all the livelong day, to beguile the weary hours of his sitting mate. But perhaps it often takes on the hue of work, too, when singing becomes a duty. Small wonder, if the choralist’s vocal chords often become jaded and sore, while there may be danger of bringing on throat or lung trouble. Besides, he must often carry a dainty morsel to his spouse when he would much prefer to eat it himself. Then, he must take his turn on the nest while his partner goes off for a “constitutional” to get the stiffness out of her joints, or gathers a relay of food and preens her ruffled plumes.

One of the most unpleasant tasks of the time of incubation and brood rearing is the warding off of enemies. And they are numerous. No feathered parents can feel sure that they shall be able to tide their little family safely over this perilous period. Have you ever seen the plucky wood-pewee engaging in a contest with that highwayman in feathers, the blue jay? How he dashes at the bloodthirsty villain, snapping his mandibles viciously at every onset, and sometimes pecking a feather from his enemy’s back! Nor will he give up the battle until the jay steals off with a hangdog expression on his face. The little warbling vireo is no less game when the jay comes too near his precincts.

One day in spring I was witness to a curious incident. A red-headed woodpecker had been flying several times in and out of a hole in a tree where he (or she) had a nest. At length, when he remained within the cavity for some minutes, I stepped to the tree and rapped on the trunk with my cane. The bird bolted like a small cannon-ball from the orifice, wheeled around the tree with a swiftness that the eye could scarcely follow, and then dashed up the lane to an orchard a short distance away. But he had only leaped out of the frying-pan into the fire. In the orchard he had unconsciously got too near a king-bird’s nest. The king-bird swooped toward him, and alighted on his back. The next moment the two birds, the king-bird on the woodpecker’s back, went racing across the meadow like a streak of zigzag lightning, making a clatter that frightened every echo from its hiding-place. That gamy flycatcher actually clung to the woodpecker’s back until he reached the other end of the meadow. I cannot be sure, but he seemed to be holding to the woodpecker’s dorsal feathers with his bill. Then, bantam fellow that he was, he dashed back to the orchard with a loud chippering of exultation. “Ah, ha!” he flung across to the blushing woodpecker; “stay away the next time, if you don’t fancy being converted into a beast of burden!”

A large part of a bird’s toil, after there are children in the nest, consists in providing victuals for them. For this purpose the whole country around must be scoured, and sometimes long journeys must be made. I have watched a kingfisher flying again and again from a winding creek in the valley to her nest on a hillside nearly a half-mile distant, with a minnow in her bill, while the sun was pouring a sweltering deluge upon the fields. It kept her busy every moment to supply the imperious demands of her hungry brood in the bank. A common field-bird, which I watched one day for a long while, would often return to her nest every minute with an insect. Many, many times have I obeyed Lowell’s injunction,—

But even at that early hour the feathered toilers have always been ahead of the human wage-workers in beginning the labors of the day. The nestlings must have a twilight breakfast; and then, in the evening, as long as the gloaming lasts, they noisily demand just one more mouthful for supper.

Young birds are ravenous feeders. They seem to live to eat, and have no thought of eating to live. For an hour and a half, one August day, I kept watch of a nestful of bantlings, and during that time the parent birds were so shy that they fed their infants only twice. At last the little things became fairly desperate for food, springing up in the nest and opening their mouths with pitiful cries every time the breeze stirred the bushes about them. They were so famished that I hurried away lest they should go to preying on one another, for they would sometimes greedily seize one another by the bills or heads, and try to gobble one another down. Incidents like this prove that the old birds must be on the jump every moment to procure a sufficient supply of food for their young. Even after they have left the nest, the juvenile members of the family must be fed for several weeks. As long as mamma and papa will get their luncheons for them, they will make little effort to help themselves. I have seen the dainty little accentor feeding a great, overgrown mossback of a cow-bunting, which had to “juke” down to her like a giant to a dwarf to receive the morsel she offered him. What a drudgery it must have been to collect victuals enough to fill his capacious maw! Think of a toil-worn, care-fretted little mother feeding a strapping boy that will not work!

Moreover, adult birds often are kept busy for hours supplying their own craving for food. One April day a hooded warbler, natty little beau, near an old gravel-bank in the woods, was watched by me for an hour and a half. During that time he must have caught an insect almost every minute, and sometimes no sooner had he gulped down one than he made a swift dash for another. Had he not been so very, very handsome, I should have dubbed him a gourmand.

At certain seasons of the year what an active life the red-headed woodpeckers are compelled to lead, in order to satisfy the demands of their stomachs! With intervals of scarcely more than a few seconds, they bound out from a perch, seize an insect on the wing, and wheel back again. For hours this half work, half frolic is kept up. By the way, almost all birds sometimes engage in this flycatcher game of taking their prey on the wing. The Baltimore orioles, the bluebirds, the yellow-bellied woodpeckers, the crested tits, the chippies, the indigo-birds, and even the white-breasted nuthatches and English sparrows, to say nothing of many species of warblers, catch insects in this way.

Many birds have to “scratch for a living,” and that in a literal sense. There is the towhee bunting, for example. Instead of getting down on his breast, however, like the hen or the partridge, he stretches himself up on his legs as if they were stilts, and then bobs up and down in an amusing fashion, while he scatters leaves and dirt to side and rear. I do not know whether the robins scratch or not, but they often jerk the leaves from the ground with their bills, and hurl them away with a half-disdainful air. Several young wood-thrushes kept in a cage removed obstructions in the same way.

Even the merry bobolink, the Beau Brummel of our meadows and clover-fields, cannot spend every day

for the time comes when he must do the work of a staid husband and father, and help to take care of the growing brood. With all his pirouetting in the air, he carries in his bosom an anxious heart, as you will quickly see if you go too near his snuggery in the grass. The wild scramble in which birds of all kinds often have to engage, in order to secure a refractory insect, proves that there is ample room for the play of their best energies. Thus we see that the birds have plenty to do besides rollicking, singing, enjoying gala-days, and taking excursions to gay watering-places. Like their human brothers and sisters, they must toil patiently on “through the every-dayness of this work-day world.” They, too, may have their literature—unwritten, however—on the “dignity of labor.”

V.
BIRD PLAY.

How strange it is that animals never laugh! If you watch a group of monkeys playing their antics, you will find their faces as sedate as a judge’s, save, perhaps, a merry twinkle of the eye. Comical as their gambols are, one would think they would break into convulsions of merriment. True, animals have various ways of giving vent to their exuberant feelings, but this is done very slightly by means of facial expression. Their risibles must be meagrely developed. What has been said in regard to animals in general is also true of birds, whose eyes often twinkle and are intensely expressive, but whose countenances proper reveal very little of the emotion swelling in their breasts.

Yet by the movements of their bodies you can easily read their feelings. You can tell at a glance by the conduct of a bird whether or not it is alarmed at your presence, or whether it is engaged in a frolic or in watching a wily foe. How different is the behavior of most birds in the breeding-season, with a nest near at hand, from their demeanor at other times! Look at that brown thrasher perched in a tree-top on a spring morning, singing his pæan to the surrounding woodland, and notice how fearless he appears. Contrast his manners two months later when he goes skulking through the tanglewood, afraid to be seen. Conceal their secret as they may, an expert student of birds can almost always tell if there is a nest in the neighborhood.

It is, therefore, by their conduct rather than by their facial expression that birds reveal their love of play. That they do have their frolics, no one can doubt. Much of their time is occupied in labor, and that often of the most serious, if not arduous, kind, and they frequently combine toil and play; but there are times when they seem to give themselves up to unmixed sportiveness. There is not much system in their games, so far as I have observed. They mostly engage in frolics of a rough-and-tumble kind, for the pure love of the fun, and perhaps with no thought of winning a prize.

It is possible, however, that the company of red-headed woodpeckers I watched one day in the woods were having a genuine flying-race. One tree was selected as a point of departure, from which they would start and fly around in a wide circle,—perhaps their race-track,—always returning to the same tree with loud chattering, which sounded like shouts of applause. This exercise they kept up for hours, always starting from the same tree and describing nearly the same circle. If it was not a contest of speed, I am at a loss to know what it was.

The woodpeckers, especially the youngsters, have another game that has a decidedly human flavor; it is the game of bo-peep among the trunks and branches of trees. A red-head will shy off from his companions, conceal himself somewhere behind a tree-trunk, and then peep from his hiding-place in an exquisitely comical way, until he is espied by some sharp-eyed fellow-frolicker. A vigorous chase will follow, as pursuer and pursued dash wildly away among the trees. Sometimes, when the fugitive is too hotly pursued, he will stop and keep his companion at bay by presenting his long, spearlike bill as a sort of bayonet.

Another tree-climber is the brown creeper. I have described many of his pranks in the first chapter of this volume. One November day I witnessed a performance that beats the record. Two creepers were hitching up the trunks of the trees in their characteristic manner, when one of them suddenly dropped straight down about fifteen feet, scarcely more than an inch from the trunk of the tree; then, instead of alighting, he darted straight up again the same distance, fluttered a moment uncertainly on the wing, and then dropped again to the foot of the tree, where he alighted, and resumed his upward march. But that was not all. Presently his companion, not to be outdone, began to whirl around and around the tree, descending in a spiral course until he reached the foot. There he tarried a moment to take breath, and then, much to my surprise, whirled himself up in the same way, a distance of perhaps twenty feet, accomplishing it in four or five revolutions. But, as if to distance all creepers’ pranks ever witnessed before, he descended again in the same spiral course. These performances can be interpreted only as ways in which to give vent to the spirit of frolic in the creeper nature.

On the same day my dancing dot in feathers, the golden-crowned kinglet, performed one of his favorite tricks, which is not often described in the books. You will remember that in the centre of the yellow crown-patch of the males, there is a gleaming golden speck, visible only when you look at him closely. But when the little beau is in a particularly rollicksome mood, or wants to display his gem to his mate or kindred, he elevates and spreads out the feathers of his crest, and lo! a transformation. The whole crown becomes golden! That gleaming speck expands until it completely hides the yellow and black of the crown. It has been my good fortune on several occasions to see the ruby-crowned kinglet transfigure himself in the same way, except, that his entire crown became ruby. Probably the little Chesterfield that can exhibit the most brilliant coronal wins the sweetest damsel in the kinglet community for a wifie.

Perhaps, as a rule, our winter birds find the season rather cold for play; yet they often frolic in the snow like children, even when they do not stalk through it in quest of food. This is especially true of the snow-birds and tree-sparrows. Birds are especially fond of splashing in water. Even in the winter-time, when it flows ice-cold into the stream or pond from the melting snow on the banks, certain birds will plunge into it, and enjoy their bath for many minutes. They do not seem to be satisfied with merely wetting their plumes, but remain in the water, twinkling their wings and tails, much longer than is actually necessary. Several times in the autumn I have seen a large company of warblers of different species taking a bath in a woodland pond. How they enjoyed their ablutions! Again and again they would return to the water, as if loath to quit it.

To my mind, the flicker is one of our most playful birds, spite of his staid looks. I have seen a half-dozen of these birds on a single tree, scudding about after one another and calling, Zwick-ah! zwick-ah! in their affectionate way. Not infrequently two of them will face each other, and begin bowing in a vigorous style, turning their heads dexterously from side to side to avoid collision. This is sometimes kept up for several minutes. It is very comical, the only drawback being that the birds themselves do not laugh. Why they should engage in so ridiculous a performance with so serious an air, is a problem that still belongs to the unknown.

A cut-throat finch, a pet, was, as a rule, a very sedate little body, but one day he had to come down from his pedestal to get rid of his surplus of feeling. This he did by dancing a sort of jig to his own music, swaying his body to and fro in a most laughable way. On another day an English sparrow flew upon his cage, which was hanging on the veranda, when “Pompey” turned his head toward his visitor, burst into song, and bobbed his head from side to side. No doubt the sparrow felt that he was receiving an ovation.

A most laughable incident occurred one day in my large cage of birds. “Flip,” a fine young wood-thrush, was rehearsing his song. A young thrasher leaped up beside him on the perch. The two birds turned their heads to each other, and looked into each other’s eyes a moment; then Flip opened his mouth at his visitor, and broke into song, the tones coming right out of his gold-lined throat. All the while he jerked his head from side to side or up and down in perfect time with his music, his eye gleaming intelligently, as if he enjoyed the fun. Even my loud outburst of laughter did not put a stop to the little farce. Flip was a bright bird. He afterward had a cage all to himself, and regaled his hosts with many a cheerful song, such as only the wood-thrush is master of. Occasionally he would leap to the end of his cage, open his mouth wide at “Brownie,” whose cage stood next to his, and sing a comic song; at least, it seemed comic.

These incidents, although they do not prove that birds have elaborate games, do prove that they possess the play spirit, and no doubt their pastimes and amusements are relished fully as much by them as ours are by us; perhaps more so.

VI.
BIRD DEATHS.

If only some master dramatist could write the tragedies of bird land! They would be highly exciting, and would afford ample room for the play of genius; for there are adventures and disasters without number. Perhaps it is on account of the many reverses that there is so often a pensive strain in the songs of the birds,—a minor chord running like a shimmering silver line through the weft of the woodland music. Robert Burns, in his “Address to a Woodlark,” touched the very marrow of bird sadness, and pleaded with the little singer to cease its song, or he himself would go distracted,—