In Bird Land

If Coleridge had studied the birds more carefully, and acquainted himself with their griefs, he never would have written, in mockery of Milton’s “L’Allegro,”—

I have seen a pair of birds whose little brood had just been cruelly slaughtered, and my heart bled for them when I saw that their anguish was too great for expression. Perhaps birds that have been bereaved soon forget their sorrow, and yet I doubt it; for if you listen to the minor treble of the black-capped chickadee, you cannot help feeling that he is singing a dirge for some long-lost love, or, if not that, may be recounting, by some occult law of heredity, the story of the many sorrows of his ancestors from the beginning down to his own generation. What ravishing sadness there is in the songs of the white-throated and white-crowned sparrows! The bluebird is always sighing as he shifts from post to post, and nothing could be more melancholy than the call of the jay in autumn. The crow at a distance complains of his disappointment, while the wood-thrush, in his evening and morning voluntaries, rehearses the sad memories of his life. Keats speaks of the “plaintive anthem” of the nightingale, and Thomson declares that even the merry linnets “lit on the dead tree, a dull, despondent flock.”

It would be difficult to arrange a “table of mortality” for the birds. However, as they know nothing about life insurance, there is no call for such a compilation; but even if the statistician could state the number of deaths, there is no arithmetic that could compute the heartaches and heartbreaks experienced by “our little brothers of the air.” “In the midst of life we are in death,” might well be put into the litany of the birds. If they had burial-grounds, there would be plenty of employment for the sexton and some grave “Old Mortality.”

The elements themselves sometimes play sad havoc with the birds. Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, of Buffalo, N. Y., tells of an October storm in which many golden-crowned kinglets were dashed to the ground, while others flew against windows of houses in which lights were left burning. The storm was so severe that the little voyagers, travelling southward by night, were compelled to alight, and thus many of them were destroyed. The same writer speaks of a cold rain which froze as it fell, coating everything with ice, and thus cutting off the birds’ supply of food, so that many bluebirds perished. To my certain knowledge, robins, which breed very early in the spring, sometimes are frozen to death while hugging their nests, when a cold wave swoops from the north. The same calamity sometimes overtakes the crossbill during the winter in the forests of Canada. Apparently even Nature herself is not always a tender mother to her offspring. Do not ask me why, for I am not writing a philosophical thesis.

Birds have many natural enemies. I can still hear the cries of a young bird that a sparrow-hawk had seized in his talons and was bearing overhead. What a savage cannibal he seemed to be! Not for anything would I cast undeserved odium on the reputation of any bird, but I fear very much that the blue jay is both a robber and a murderer. In the season when eggs and young birds are in the nest, he has a sly, hang-dog air, which, to my mind, proclaims not only a guilty conscience, but also a sinister purpose. At other seasons he seems to have an open, frank manner. It is true, I myself have never seen him in the very act of robbing a fellow-bird’s nest, but I have often seen pewees, vireos, sparrows, and goldfinches charge upon him with desperate fury when he came in the vicinity of their homesteads. Indeed, all the smaller birds seem to have a mortal terror of him, which can be accounted for only on the ground that he is known to be a highwayman.

A farmer friend, who loves the birds, and has none of the unreasoning prejudice against them sometimes displayed by country folk, told me that he once saw a blue jay pounce upon a chippie’s nest, snatch up a callow bantling in his bill, and fly off with it across the field to his nest. In a few moments he returned, and bore away another nestling. By this time the farmer’s ire was aroused, and he got his gun and put an end to the feathered brigand’s life on his return for the third mouthful. This is more than circumstantial evidence. Yet in defence of the handsome rascal it may be said that he does good in other directions, for he rids the earth of many pestiferous insects. Gladly would I acquit him of all blame if that were possible.

Mr. Burroughs thinks that birds which have suffered at the blue jay’s hands—or, rather, beak—often retaliate by destroying the jay’s eggs. He found a jay’s nest with five eggs, every one of which was punctured, apparently by the sharp bill of some bird, with the sole purpose of destroying them, for no part of their contents had been removed. He suggests that in the bird world the Mosaic law may be, “An egg for an egg,” instead of “An eye for an eye.”

The life of young birds hangs on a very brittle thread. A kind of Damocles’ sword seems to be dangling over them. What a “slaughter of innocents” in a single season! I think that of the many nests I found during the spring of 1892 fully half were raided. How often, on finding a nest, I have resolved to watch it until the young birds were ready to leave; but on going back a few days later, the cradle was rifled of its treasures. These frequent “tragedies of the nests” make the bird-lover sick at heart. It is no paradox to say that many birds are killed before they are born.

Birds often meet with fatal accidents. They sometimes impale themselves on a thorn, or creep into places in thorn-trees from which they cannot extricate themselves. A robin hung itself one spring by a kite-string that swung in a loop from the roof of my house,—a case of involuntary suicide. A nuthatch that I saw one day in the woods had its leg broken, and I could not help thinking of its lingering agony before it would starve to death. A pet nonpareil, a dear, bright-hued little fellow, was well and happy one evening; but the next morning he lay dead on the bottom of the cage, perhaps the victim of a convulsion. Another pet nonpareil was not in good health; so I thought a bath in tepid water might be good for him; but alas! the ablution proved too much for the little invalid, which, in spite of our utmost efforts to save his life, succumbed to the inevitable. A like fate befell a young turtle-dove which a neighbor found in the woods and brought me for a gift.

But the cause of a great deal of mortality among birds is man’s inhumanity to them. The thirst for blood seems to be inherent in many coarse natures, and as killing a fellow-man is illegal and almost sure to be summarily punished, many men gratify their greed for gore by slaying innocent birds and animals.

The small boy with a sling or a spring-gun or an air-rifle is a source of much grief to the birds. He even kills the tiny kinglets that flit to and fro in the trees bordering our streets, and seems to think it sport. More senseless and wicked still was the fashion in vogue a few years ago, perhaps not yet quite obsolete, which compelled the massacre of thousands of bright-hued birds for feminine—I should say unfeminine—adornment. To say nothing of the “loudness” and bad taste of such a fashion, it is extremely unwise to put birds to death, for no one can compute the number of injurious insects they annually devour. A bird on the bonnet means so much less bread on the table. A bird in the orchard is a sort of scavenger and pomologist combined, and does his share in giving you a dish of fruit for dinner. The scarlet tanager looks like a living ruby in a green tree; but—I speak bluntly—it looks like a chunk of gore on a woman’s bonnet. In behalf of good taste and the birds, I enter my protest against this barbaric custom.

True, birds have elements of the Adamic nature in them. Many of them do relish forbidden fruit, and must be driven off, lest they rifle your cherry-tree; but it is seldom necessary to kill them, even then, especially those that live wholly on insects and fruit.

A correspondent once sent me a number of queries. How do birds come to their “last end”? Do none of them die natural deaths? If they do, why do we never, or at least very rarely, find dead or dying birds in the fields and woods? My response to these questions is: Very few birds die natural deaths,—that is, merely of sickness or old age,—though a few of them may. When a bird becomes feeble or is crippled, it falls an easy prey to a prowling hawk, owl, shrike, eagle, or cat. Should a bird escape all these enemies, and finally lie down and die in a natural way, it would doubtless soon be found and devoured by a carrion-eating fowl or quadruped, and thus its corpse would never be seen by human eyes. Sad indeed it is to think of the numberless ways in which birds meet “the last enemy.”

Be it far from me to use caustic speech against any man or set of men; but it makes me both indignant and sick at heart to read the bloody chronicles of most of the so-called “collectors.” How many embryo birds they slay merely to gratify their morbid craze for gathering “clutches,” as they suggestively call a set of eggs! Not long ago a collector narrated, in an ornithological journal, the harrowing story of his having rifled the nest of a hairy woodpecker five or six times in a single season, the poor bird laying a new deposit after each burglary, until at last she grew suspicious and sought a safer site for her nest. The writer described his part of the performance with apparent gusto, as if he had made a splendid contribution to science! If he must have a collection of hairy woodpecker’s eggs, why not take a single “clutch,” and then leave the bird to make her second deposit and rear her brood in peace?

To my mind, many “professionals” shoot a score of birds where they ought to shoot but one. The long record of slaughtered birds is sickening. The Newgate Calendar scarcely furnishes a parallel. Even our most scientific journals print many of these bloody annals. It is true, a reasonable number of specimens must be collected for scientific purposes, but surely no adequate excuse can be given for shooting hundreds of individuals of the same species merely to have the honor of saying that an astounding number of specimens were “taken.” If the cause of natural history cannot be promoted without destroying the humane instincts of the naturalist himself, the price is too great; it were better left unpaid. A bird in the bush is worth forty in the hand, especially if the forty are dead; worth more, too, I venture to add, to the cause of science itself.

XVI.
THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION.

It is an open secret, and perhaps not a very profound one. I need not prolong the reader’s suspense, if mayhap he should feel any, by assuming a mysterious air, but may as well frankly divulge the secret at once. There are times when melodrama is sadly out of place—if, indeed, it is ever in place. What, then, is the secret of appreciation? It is simply being en rapport with the object or truth to be appreciated. No more patent fact was ever declared than that which Saint Paul wrote: “Spiritual things are spiritually discerned.” There must be mental kinship, or there cannot be true valuation. Bring a depressed or distracted mind to the most exhilarating service, and you will miss its pith and point, and go away unrewarded.

The same truth obtains in our commerce with Nature, which, it would seem, will not brook a rival in our hearts if we would win from her all her treasured sweets. “Give me your whole mind, your whole attention,” she says, “or I will close up every fountain of refreshment.” What benefit will that man whose mind is absorbed in the affairs of the market derive from a woodland stroll? What secret will the rustling leaves speak to him, or the opening flowers, or the chirping birds? He sees no transit of swift wings, and the sunshine dapples the leaf-carpeted ground in vain for eyes that see only the ledger and day-book in the sylvan haunt.

My own experience confirms the foregoing statements. For several months one summer I felt depressed and abstracted on account of several untoward circumstances which need not be described, for “every heart knoweth its own bitterness.” In this mood I sometimes sauntered out to my woodland haunts; but I saw very little, and what I did see bore the stamp of triteness, and seemed as dull and languid as myself. My heart was otherwhere. A secret, gnawing grief draws the thoughts inward, and breaks the spell of the outer world, charm she never so sweetly. The soul hopelessly hungering for the unattainable comes almost to despise the blessings within its grasp. A-lack-a-day, that anything should ever come between the heart and its gentle mistress, Nature! And so it was that even the birds, my precious intimates, became a weariness both to the flesh and the spirit.

Master Chickadee was nothing but a lump of flesh covered with mezzo-tinted feathers, all prose, no poetry; a creature that I had once invested with a rare charm (in my own mind), but now only a lout of a bird, a buffoon, whose noisy chatter broke harshly into my gloomy meditations. Once I had fairly revelled in the army of kaleidoscopic warblers, and had called them to their faces all kinds of endearing names, like a lover wooing a bride; but now, in my dejected frame of mind, they were prosaic enough, and provokingly shy, and I felt too indifferent even to ogle them with my glass as they tilted in the tree-tops. What a humdrum life was the life of the birds, anyway, and how indescribably humdrum my semi-frequent beat in the woods was becoming!

But by and by, in the autumn, an event occurred that transformed my inner world, dispelling the darkness, dissipating the clouds, bathing all in sunshine. Then I hied to the fields and woods, and, behold, a metamorphosis! The inner miracle had wrought an outer wonder. Never was there “such mutual recognition vaguely sweet” between the autumn woods and my appreciative heart. The ground, flecked with sunshine, filtering through the browning leaves, became a work of mosaic fit for a king to tread on, and the westerly breeze sang a pæan through the branches. And how many birds there were! A flock of robins were chirping in the grove, now and then breaking into song, as if they had forgotten that spring was past and that it was unconventional for robin redbreast to sing in the autumn; but they seemed to be willing to make a breach of the convenances to give me delight.

Numerous warblers chirped in the tree-tops, or swung out on the upbuoying air to catch some ill-fated insect on the wing; and although I could not identify many of them, I felt no annoyance, as I had at other times, for I could truly “rejoice with those that do rejoice,” because I had no sorrow of my own to distract my mind. I could have forgiven almost any trick a bird had seen fit to play me. The brown creeper, just from his haunt in some primeval forest of British America, went hitching up a tree-bole in his own quaint way without even the courtesy of a friendly how-d’-you-do; but I forgave the slight, and told him he was a poet,—there was rhythm in every movement, and his feathers rhymed each with its fellow.

Across the breezy hills to the river valley I made my way in lightsome mood, finding birds a-plenty wherever I went. More than once the song-sparrows broke into their autumnal twitter, aftermath of their springtime choruses when they were in full tone; and occasionally the Carolina wren uttered his stirring reveille, which, though perhaps not tuneful in itself, seemed tuneful to me that day, because there was music in my own mind. When you are in the right mood, even the distant caw of the crow or the plaintive cry of the blue jay sets the harp of your soul to melody; while the riotous piping of the cardinal grossbeak makes you feel as if you were “married to immortal verse.”

But, alas! when “loathed melancholy, of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,” is your unbidden companion, every overture of Nature is a burden, an intrusion into the privacy of your grief, and—

In a leaf-strewn arcade beneath the overarching bushes hard by the river, were the merry juncos, my companions of the winter, which had come back from their summer vacation in the north. How glad I was to salute them and welcome them home! Their trig little forms, sprightly motions, confident air of comradery, and merry trills were a joy to me. And then I could not help wondering if any of them might be the same birds I had met during the early summer on one of the green mountains of Canada, where I had spent a day of rapturous delight. In the same sequestered angle, autumn though it was, the phœbe bird brought back reminiscences of spring, with his cheery whistle; while farther down the valley his shy relative, the wood-pewee, complained dulcetly that winter was coming to drive him from his pleasant summer haunts. Every sound, whether joyful or sad, struck a responding chord in my heart, because Nature had my undivided thought.

When the mind is distracted by sorrows it cannot shake off, it boots little that the chirp of the chestnut-sided and cerulean warblers is sharp and penetrating; that the call of the black-throated green, black-throated blue and myrtle warblers is somewhat harsh; that the Maryland yellow-throat expresses his alarm or disapproval in a note still lower in the scale and quite rasping; that the Blackburnian and parula warblers tilt about far up in the tree-tops, as if they scorned the ground; that the black-throats and creepers dance airily about in the bushes or lower branches of the trees, come confidingly near you, a tiny interrogation point dangling from every eyelash, ask you what you are about, what you do when you are at home, whether you have just come from the hospital that you look so pale, and, having decided that you are a harmless monomaniac, to say the worst, go about their playful toil of capturing insects, apparently unmindful of your presence. But when your heart is jolly and full of nature love, all these simple facts, proving the large diversity of temperament in bird-land’s denizens, are a source of joy to you; you note them, are glad on account of them, though you scarcely know why.

In a quiet retreat just beyond a steep-graded railway-track the black-throated green warblers were very abundant and unusually rollicksome. It was strange how they could dash about in the thorn-trees without impaling themselves on the terrible spears. One little fellow swung out of a tree after a miller, which dropped upon a fence-post near by. Why did the natty bird act so queerly? He danced about on the top of the post, tried to pick up something, but was baffled in all his efforts; then he scudded around the post a few inches below the top like a nuthatch, uttering his harsh little chirp. At length I stepped up, determined to solve the enigma. There was the solution; the miller had wriggled into a deep hole in the post, so that the bird could not reach it. With a slender stick I drew it out of its hiding-place, and placed it on the top of the post; but whether the bird ever went back and profited by my well-meant helpfulness I do not know. Begging the poor miller’s pardon, I felt happy in befriending the charming fairy of a bird. With gladness throbbing in every corpuscle, it was not in my place to question Nature’s economy in making the sacrifice of one life necessary to the sustenance of another.

Tramping on, I presently found myself in a marsh stretching back from the river-bank. As I stood in the tangle of tall grass and weeds, listening to the songs and twitters of various birds, the sentiment, if not the precise lines, of Lowell, came to mind like a draught of invigorating air,—

But what was that sharp chirp? It instantly drew my thoughts from the marsh itself and the poet’s tribute. Opera-glass in hand, I softly stole near the bushy clump from which the sound came. Ah! there the bird was, tilting uneasily on a slender twig. The swamp-sparrow! It was the first time I had positively identified this bird in my own neighborhood,—not, I suppose, because it had not been present often and again, but because I had been too dull of sight to see it. Then came a glad memory. I recalled the peculiar circumstances under which I had seen my first swamp-sparrow, hundreds of miles away. During a visit to Boston and vicinity, a year prior, I spent a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon with Bradford Torrey, who needs no introduction to intelligent readers. We walked out to some of his favorite haunts. It was an ideal October day, and the charming New England landscape threw a spell over me that gave me a kind of other-worldly feeling. My companion was all I had expected him to be, and more,—a good talker and an appreciative listener,—and even now, when I recall my saunter with this quiet, gentle bird-lover, it seems more like a dream than a reality.

The afternoon had slipped well by when we came to a bush-fringed brook and Mr. Torrey told me that there were swamp-sparrows in the thickets. “How much I should like to see one!” I cried. “The swamp-sparrow is a stranger to me.” “You shall have your wish gratified,” he replied; and forthwith he climbed the fence, stalked to the other side of the stream, and slowly, gently drove the chirping sparrows toward me, so that I could see their markings plainly with my glass. How lovingly I ogled them! I could not get my fill of the birds shown me by one whom I had loved so long at a distance. It was an epoch in my poor life,—an epoch in a double sense. Who will censure my feeling of gratified pride? In the evening, after our stroll, as we walked to and fro on the platform at the railway-station waiting for the train to start, I remarked: “Mr. Torrey, I shall never forget my first meeting with the swamp-sparrow.”

“No,” he responded innocently, as if my humble remembrance would confer an honor upon him; “whenever you see that bird hereafter, you will think of me, won’t you?” I told him I should; and that evening in the marsh, a year later, I kept my tryst with memory, while tears, half sad, half glad, dimmed my eyes.

But hark! A little farther on, from the sparse bushes of a grassy bank, came the swinging treble of a white-throated sparrow, like a votive offering. What enchantment possessed the birds that evening? Had Orpheus with his miracle-working harp come back to earth? I was half tempted to believe for the nonce in the transmigration of souls, for the notes drifted so sadly sweet on the still air, as if the fabled minstrel had indeed returned to mundane realms. Among the thick clusters of weeds and bushes that fringed a railway, which I pursued in my homeward walk, many birds were going to roost,—sparrows, warblers, red-winged blackbirds, and cardinal grossbeaks. My passing along alarmed them, and sent them dashing from their leafy couches.

Thus the afternoon passed. I had not, perhaps, learned as many new things about my kinsmen in plumes as on many other rambles, but I had discovered the secret of appreciation; that the mind must be unharassed by carking care or depressing sorrow to win the best from Nature. Give me a lightsome heart, and I will trudge with any pedestrian. Give me a heavy heart, and the weight clings to the soles of my feet like barnacles to a ship’s bottom. Given the proper mood, the lines of an American poet—no need to mention his name—have the ring of gospel truth,—

XVII.
BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS.

Even the most home-loving body may sometimes gain refreshment, and at the same time have his mental vision broadened, by a jaunt to another neighborhood; and if he has a hobby, he may beguile the days in riding it, and thus evade, for a time at least, that most harrowing of all maladies, homesickness. Well, to make a long story short, and a dull one a little brighter, let me say at once that I have, more or less recently, made several visits to various points of interest, and everywhere have found delightful comradeship with the birds. First, I shall speak of a trip to Montreal, that gem city on the St. Lawrence, beautiful for situation as well as for other attractive features.

South of the city a mountain rears its green, symmetrical mass. True, it is not very lofty as mountains go; but standing there alone in the midst of a far stretching plain, it seems really majestic, especially to one unused to great altitudes. It is a favorite pleasure-resort for residents and visitors, having been converted into a beautiful park, with winding paths and driveways, many shady nooks, with comfortable benches to lounge on, and a tower on the summit, from which you can look down upon a scene that is really enchanting. Nestling at the foot of the mountain is the city, with its towers, steeples, well-laid streets, and palatial residences; curving and gleaming far to the northeast and southwest is the mighty St. Lawrence, its green banks holding it in loving embrace far as the eye can reach; in another direction you trace the Ottawa River meandering far to the northwest like a ribbon of silver, and dividing into two branches a few miles away, thus forming the island of Montreal; beyond the St. Lawrence is the Lake of Two Mountains, and far away in the misty distance toward the south and southwest, are the blue outlines of the Green and Adirondack ranges; in other directions the plain stretches level until it melts in the hazy distance, and is dotted with farm-houses, villages, well-cultivated fields, and green woodlands.

One afternoon a few unoccupied hours were at my disposal. I determined to spend them on Mount Royal, as the eminence is called. A car wheels you up an inclined plane, almost perpendicular near the top, at least two-thirds of the way to the summit. Having filled myself with the scene from the tower, I was starting off to make a tour of the park, when my footsteps were arrested by a quaint new song coming from a clump of trees farther down the declivity. Interest in everything else vanished in a moment. A good deal of time was spent before I could get a sight of the minstrel. Much to my surprise, he turned out to be a thrush; the species, however, could not be determined at the time for lack of my opera-glass, as the bird was perched rather high in a tree. In the brief time at my disposal just then, I saw a number of other birds, and resolved to spend a day on the mountain studying them, as soon as other duties would permit.

That day came in good time. An early morning hour found me skirting the steep sides of the mountain, alert for feathered dwellers. It was the tenth of July, too late for the best songs and for finding birds in the nest, and yet I felt fairly well satisfied with the results of the day’s excursion. Presently the song of the thrush, whose identity I had come to settle, was heard in the copse. A look at him with my glass proved him to be the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, only a migrant in my State, and one that pursues his pilgrimage both to the north and south in patience-trying silence.

To my ear the song was sweet, almost hauntingly so. Some notes were quite like certain strains of the wood-thrush’s rich song, but others seemed more ringing and bell-like, and the whole tune was more skilfully and smoothly rendered,—that is, with less labored effort. Still, I am loath to say that the general effect of this bird’s song is more pleasing than that of the wood-thrush, for there is something far-away and dreamy about the minstrelsy of the latter that one does not hear in the song of any other species.

The veeries evidently had nests or younglings among the bushes, for they called in harsh, alarmed tones as I entered their secluded haunts, but I had not the good fortune to find a nest. Indeed, it was too late to discover any nests at all, except such as had been deserted. But, to my great delight, I found that the jolly juncos breed on the mountain, for there they were carrying food to their little ones, which had left the nursery and were ensconced in the thick foliage. These birds are winter residents in my own neighborhood, but in the spring they hie to this and other localities of the same and higher latitudes to spend the summer. It was refreshing to meet my little winter intimates. They were quite lyrical, but their little trills did not seem any more tuneful here in their breeding-haunts than in their winter residences, especially when Spring pours her subtle essence into their veins.

Nothing surprised me more than to find song-sparrows on the top of the mountain, whereas they are usually the tenants of the swamps and other lowlands in my neighborhood. Here they were rearing families on the mountain’s crest as well as along the streams that laved the mountain’s base. They also sang their tinkling roundels in both places, sometimes ringing them out so loudly that they could be distinctly heard above the clatter of the street cars.

At one place, in a cluster of half-dead trees and saplings, a colony of warblers were tilting about; all of them only migrants about my home in Ohio, but breeding here. There were old and young creeping warblers, the elders singing their trills in lively fashion, and the young ones twittering coaxingly for food. Here were also a number of redstarts,—sonnets in black and gold,—the young beseeching their parents constantly for more luncheon. A beautiful chestnut-sided warbler wheeled into sight and reeled off his jolly little trill, and then gave his half-grown baby a tidbit from his beak. On another part of the mountain the song of a black-throated green warbler fell pensively on the ear, coming from the thick branches of a tall tree, like a requiem from a broken heart. Presently he flitted down into plain view, his curiosity drawing him toward his auditor sitting beneath on the grass. No doubt his mate was crouched on her nest far up in one of the trees.

In a thicket on the acclivity of the mountain, I heard a loud, appealing call, which was new to me; and yet it evidently came from the throat of a young bird pleading for its dinner. By dint of a good deal of peering about and patient waiting, I at length found it to be a juvenile chestnut-sided warbler. Lying on the ground beneath the green canopy of the bushes, I watched it a long time, hoping to see the old bird feed it; but she was too shy to come near, although the youngster grew almost desperate in its entreaties. An old nest in the crotch of a sapling near at hand announced where the little fellow had, no doubt, been hatched. It was a beautiful nest, as compactly built as the cottage of a goldfinch, and was decorated, like a red-eyed vireo’s nest, with tiny balls of spider-web and strips of paper.

Not far away from this charmed spot a red-eyed vireo had hung her basket to the horizontal fork of a small swaying branch. It was still fresh, and in such good condition as to convince me that it had just been completed by the little basket-maker, which had not yet deposited her dainty eggs in the cup. No other bird on the mountain sang as much as this vireo, with the sharp red eyes and golden breast. On the whole, I doubt not that Mount Royal would be an almost ideal place for bird study, if one could spend the month of June on its wooded summit, slopes, and acclivities.

The next visit to be described was made to the somewhat celebrated Zoölogical Garden at Cincinnati, Ohio, which contains a really magnificent collection of animals and birds. However, a description of the latter must suffice, although the animals interested me almost as deeply. There are many cages and aviaries containing rare species of feathered folk, the only difficulty being that they are not so thoroughly labelled as they might be for the convenience of visitors, many of whom are sufficiently interested to want to know at least the common names of the birds. All curators and superintendents of such institutions should recognize the importance of complete and systematic labelling of the specimens in their care.

The first aviary at which I stopped consisted of a collection of bright-hued and sweet-toned birds, most of them foreigners. Here one could revel in variety; for there were crimson-eared waxbills from West Africa, black-headed finches from India, cut-throat finches and other dainty folk from across the sea, with indigo-birds, nonpareils, goldfinches, and song-sparrows from our own land. Of these, the nonpareils, or painted finches, were the most gifted singers, having loud, clear voices that rang far above the voices of their fellow-prisoners. No birds make daintier pets than these pretty creatures, with their delicate blue and red costumes. The next best singer in this collection was the American goldfinch, which was not far behind the nonpareil, and really excelled him in one respect,—that is, his song was more prolonged and varied.

The next collection was certainly a parti-hued one, containing cardinal grossbeaks, Brazilian cardinals, crow blackbirds, towhee buntings, brown thrashers, and English blackbirds, I had the pleasure of hearing the song of the Brazilian cardinal. It was quite fine, but scarcely comparable with the rich, full-toned, and varied whistle of our cardinal-bird, being much less vigorous, slower in movement, and feebler in tone. It was gratifying to be able to give the palm to our North American songster.

But of all the clatter of bird music and bird noise combined that I have ever heard in my life, the song of the English starling bore off the bays. Never before had I listened to such divers sounds from a bird’s throat, nor had I even fancied that they were possible. Small wonder a well-trained starling costs from twenty to forty dollars at the bird stores! No description can do justice to the starling’s song. He begins in a low, subdued tone, and seems at first to be quite calm; but gradually he grows excited, his body quivers and sways from side to side, his neck is craned out, his throat expands and contracts convulsively, and, oh! oh! oh!—pardon the exclamations—the hurly-burly that gurgles and ripples and bubbles and pours from his windpipe! At one point a double sound is produced, or two sounds nearly at the same moment,—one low and guttural, the other on a higher key,—presently a half-dozen notes rush forth pell-mell, accompanied by a quick snapping of the mandibles; then a succession of loud, musical, explosive notes fall on the ear; and finally the bird, as if in a spasm of ecstasy, opens his mouth wide and utters a clear, rapturous trill as a sort of musical peroration. It is simply wonderful. At first the bird seems to control the song, but erelong the song seems to master the bird completely. To my mind, it seemed that the songster in the intervals of silence had wound up his music-box, and then, having got started, was unable to stop until the spring had run down. Some of the notes of the strain were quite melodious, while others were rather grating.

But what was that silvery song, rising above all the other clangor of music? It was the trill of my peerless little friend, the white-throated sparrow, which I have met so often in my own woodland trysts. Were I to award the prize to any bird in the whole Zoo for sweetness of tone, it would certainly be given to this matchless minstrel. No other bird’s voice had such a purely musical quality; and he sang just as loudly and sweetly as he does in his native copse, bringing back the memory of many a pleasant woodland ramble.

A beautiful family group next claimed attention. It comprised two adult silver pheasants, a male and female, and two little chicks recently from the shell, which had been hatched in the Zoo. They looked like downy chickens, and were about as large. There was no hint of the long, gorgeous plumes that their papa bore so proudly; nothing but brownish, slightly checkered down made up their suits. When their mamma pecked at something on the ground, they would scamper to her for it, as you have seen small chickens do. Unlike most young birds, they picked up their food themselves, and did not pry open their mouths to be fed.

Had you seen the birds I next stopped to ogle, you would have joined in my merriment; for they were the great kingfishers of Australia. What heavy bills they carried, looking like good-sized clubs! One of them pounded his beak against his perch until it fairly rattled with the concussion. When I tapped lightly against the wires, they stretched out their necks, and hissed at me out of their huge mouths.

Nothing was more pleasing than a large wired house containing a dozen or more blue jays. Rain was falling gently at the time, and the refreshing drops filtered upon the birds through the wire roof. How they enjoyed their bath as they flitted from perch to perch! But the rain did not descend rapidly enough for several of them; and so, in order to drench their plumage more thoroughly, they plunged into the leafy bushes growing in their apartment, and crept about over and through the sprinkled foliage until their feathers were well rinsed.

An interesting bird was the yellow-headed blackbird, which is a resident of some of our Western States, but which does not deign even to visit my neighborhood. His whole head and neck are brilliant yellow, as if he had plunged up to his shoulders in a keg of yellow paint, while the rest of his attire is shiny black. He utters a loud, shrill whistle, quite unlike any sound produced by his kinsmen, the crow blackbird and the red-wing. He seemed to feel quite at home in his cage with several other species of birds.

Many a time I have thought I heard a tumult of bird song in the fields or woods, but at the Zoo I was greeted with a perfect din from the throats of more than two dozen indigo-birds, all singing simultaneously. They simply drowned out every other sound in the neighborhood when they chimed in the chorus. Even the goldfinch, doing his level best, could not be heard until there was a lull in the shriller music. In the same enclosure were the bluebirds and robins. My pity went out to one of the robins, which was trying to build a nest, but could not find a proper site nor the right kind of material. She would pick up a bunch of fibres and strings from the ground, fling them on the window-sill, and then squat down upon them to press them into the desired concave with her red bosom; but it was all to no purpose, for she had no mortar with which to rear the walls of a cottage.

Leaving the robin to her fruitless labors, I turned to a collection of weaver-birds of various species and divers markings. There was one, especially, with a black head and neck and yellow body, that attracted notice. He was rather handsome; his song, however, was a perfect squall, especially the closing notes. These birds did not sing all the time, but intermittently, one of them beginning with a few ringing notes as a prelude, and then the others joining, all screaming louder and louder as the chorus went on, until they ended in a supreme racket. Then there were a few moments of quiet, followed by the united chorus as before, making such a tumult that one voice could scarcely be distinguished from another. A dainty little sparrow, unnamed, seemed to fill in the intervals with his chirpings, forming a sort of semi-musical interlude.

The enclosure which contained the yellow-headed blackbird was divided into a number of apartments. Here were parrots of various species, among them a number of white-throated Amazons. You have doubtless heard a dozen or more parrots screaming simultaneously. On my visit these birds created a terrible hubbub. They cried and laughed and sighed and groaned and shrieked until my ears were almost deafened. But in the midst of it all, when there was a slight lull, could be heard the silvery trill of a white-throated sparrow, sounding like the music of an angel amid a tumult of imps.

Near the centre of the garden there is a long pond enclosed by wire fencing, and on and about this pond is to be found an interesting group of water-fowls. There was a large bluish-colored crane with a ruff of feathers about his head. A workman came along and snapped his fingers at the bird, which hopped and leaped about and almost turned a somersault. A great blue heron had made a nest of sticks and twigs on the bare bank of the pond, and was sitting on two eggs. While I was watching her, she rose slowly on her long stilts, stretched out her stiffened wings, rearranged the sticks with her bill, and then sat down on her eggs again, turning them under her breast. What an opportunity for a bird student if day by day he could have watched her build her nest and rear her young!

Swimming about on the pond like a couple of feathered craft were two great white pelicans with long bills and elevated wings. A tuft of feathers or bristles grew on the top of their upper mandibles. They seemed to be guying each other, or probably were engaged in a real naval battle; for they pursued each other around and around, engaged in various martial movements and counter-movements, and every now and then clashed together their great beaks like two men fencing with swords. But they avoided close contact. How lightly and smoothly they glided about on the water!

Standing on a platform on the other side of the pond, were two more large, almost gigantic pelicans, not of the same species as the two just mentioned, having no tufts on their beaks, but a large featherless spot on the side of their heads encircling the eye. There they stood, silently preening their plumes, dexterously drawing each snowy feather between their mandibles. How long they had been making their toilet I cannot say. Presently the first two pelicans came sailing over to the platform, and climbed awkwardly upon it. Would there be a pitched battle between them and the other two birds? One of the latter stretched forth his neck, and, to my great surprise, puffed out a large membranous bag or pouch at his throat like that of a frog, and uttered a warning cry. But soon the quartette of feathered Goliaths settled down into quiet, and adjusted their plumes without the least interference with one another’s comfort.

Following a winding pathway, I presently reached an apartment which contained sixteen great horned owls, sitting in a row and looking as wise as Greek sages. It was amusing to see them expand their eyes and stare through the blinding light, then blink, close one eye and dilate the other, and then shut both so nearly that only narrow chinks were visible between the lids. Several of them opened their small, human-like mouths, and hissed at me softly whenever I stirred. In another part of the ground there was a collection of barn owls, with faces that looked very intelligent; but the birds seemed to be quite wild, glaring with their black eyes and swaying their heads from side to side in a nervous, irritable way.

I felt many times repaid for my saunter through the Zoo, and would advise all who have an opportunity of visiting a good zoölogical garden not to let it go by unimproved. A great deal of information as well as pleasure may be thus gained.

Wherever one is, one must get people to talking about one’s mania. How else could it be said that there is method in one’s madness, or in what respects it differs from mere lunacy? While visiting with a delightful family living in a city some distance from my home, our conversation drifted—perhaps with a good deal of calculation on my part—to the birds, with the result that I was put in possession of several facts worth noting, chiefly because they prove how helpful some birds are to one another in their domestic relations. No birds are more ingenious in planning for one another’s comfort and safety than our “foreign brethren,” the English sparrows. The mistress of this intelligent family, a woman who has keen eyes and ears for the birds, declared that she always heard one sparrow in the trees about the house waking up its sleeping mates at break of day, like the father of a family rousing his drowsing children. It called in shrill tones as if it were saying, “Wake up! wake up! Day is coming! Time to go to work!” As it continued its clamor, it seemed to be flying about from one point to another, visiting every bedroom, until at length a faint peep was heard here and there in response from various members of the sparrow household, and erelong the entire company was awake. When my friend told me this story, I was considerably surprised, not to say a little skeptical. But, remaining in their home over night, I had an opportunity to confirm the story, for I was myself awakened in the morning by the loud, impatient calls of a sparrow rousing his family; and the process took place just as my informants had described it, leaving no longer any room for doubt.

The same kind friends described another cunning freak of bird behavior. A lady’s bedroom window opened near some bushy trees, in which a pair of birds—perhaps robins—had built a nest. At night the lady would often hear the male singing. But sometimes he would grow drowsy, and would become silent,—he had evidently got to napping,—when there would be a coaxing, complaining Pe-e-e-p! pe-e-e-p! from the little wife on the nest, evidently asking him to “sing some more.” Then he would tune his pipe again until his throat got tired and his eyelids heavy. In this way the exacting wife kept her spouse serenading her for a large part of the night. Perhaps, like children, she could not sleep unless some one was singing to her. At all events, it was very bright of her to demand a lullaby or love-song from her husband to put her to sleep.

The conduct of many kinds of birds in the autumn while preparing for their Hegira to the south is extremely interesting. They assemble in flocks, sometimes large enough to suggest an ecumenical council, and fall to cackling, twittering, discussing, and in many other ways making preparation for their aerial voyage to another clime. They really seem to regret being compelled to leave their pleasant summer haunts, if one may judge from the length and fervor of their goodbyes. Perhaps they are like human beings who have a strong attachment for home, and must visit every nook and tryst to say au revoir before they take their departure. One can easily imagine how dear to their hearts are the scenes of their childhood, and of their nest-building and brood-rearing.

No birds make a greater to-do over their leave-taking in the autumn than the house martins, I once visited for a few days with some friends who live in the country and have had a bevy of martins in their boxes for many years. They described the behavior of these birds when fall comes. At a certain date in September they will gather in a compact flock, sing and whistle and chatter at the top of their voices, circle about the premises, alighting on the trees, fences, and buildings, and then will rise in the air and sail away through the blue ether. Strange to say, they may return in a day or two, and repeat their evolutions; and this may be done several times before they say adieu and begin their southward pilgrimage in real earnest. Why do they do this? One might well rack one’s brain in vain conjectures. Do they lose their way the first time? Or do they get a bad start, and then come back to try again? Or do they get homesick after they have gone some distance, and return once more to look upon the familiar scenes? It would be difficult to sift all the processes of bird cerebration.