“The last and least of the four-winged mysteries is also the smallest of our birds, lacking a quarter of being four inches long. But it does not need size to proclaim its beauty any more than a glowing ruby or emerald; and indeed it wears both of these gems, the one on its throat and the other on its back. Its world is the garden where everything is brightest, its food nectar, and such little aphis as gather in it, and its home lashed by cobwebs to a slender branch, a fairy nest of plant, wool, and lichens, soft as feather down, wherein lie two eggs, white and opaque and glistening like some fresh-water pearls.

“When on the wing it either darts about like a ray of feathered light, or else, poised before a deep-throated flower, remains apparently motionless, though its wings vibrate with the mechanical hum of a fly-wheel of perfect workmanship.

“In spite of the fact that Father Humming-bird takes himself to parts unknown and leaves his mate to tend both eggs and birds, the mother is neither put out nor discouraged, and makes a model parent, who gathers and swallows the food for her tiny offspring and then, by a pumping process called regurgitation, brings it up and, taking no chances of spilling a drop, literally rams it into the little throat! This bird is to me the greatest mystery of all. It comes and it goes, but how does it endure the stress of weather and travel? Many a moth outspans it in breadth of wings. If the flight of the Wild Goose is wonderful in its courage, what of the Humming-bird? Is Puck of Pook’s Hill still alive, and has he feathered playfellows?

THE HUMMING-BIRD

THE WOOD THRUSH

MOCKERS AND THRUSHES

“I know it,” answered little Clary; “I know his colour and the way his song tinkles, but up at our house we call him Song Thrush. Why, Gray Lady, he doesn’t live in the woods; we haven’t any woods. He stays right around the garden and orchard, and last summer they made a nest in the crotch of a sugar-maple so low that I could see into it by standing on the fence. It looked just like Robin’s nest, and it had some rags woven into it, and the eggs are like the Robin’s, too.

“Mother said that I mustn’t watch too long, or they might not come back next year, but that if we didn’t bother them, they might come back, and the children, too, and bring their wives.

“This pair seemed real tame; they used to hop all round on the grass where the clothes dry, and they drank out of Roy’s dish. He’s a Collie dog, you know, and they don’t bother birds at all the way bird-dogs will sometimes.

“The Thrushes did eat some strawberries and currants, but mother said to credit those to company, for they pleasured her when she sat sewing on the porch of afternoons more than all the company she ever had to tea, for they had to have sugar and cream on their berries, and left plates and spoons to wash up, and the Thrushes cleared up after themselves and gave a concert every night.

“You know, Gray Lady, it isn’t nice to have company and not give them any lunch, so mother says if you have nice garden birds, why should you expect more of them than of folks?”

“Why, indeed,” said Gray Lady. “I will go and see your mother and ask her to come to Birdland. A mother in a community who thinks as she does is better than half a dozen bird wardens.”

“I know that bird, too,” said Dave, “but on the hill where I live he stays in the river woods and only comes out to the lane edge to get wild cherries and blackcaps and shadberries. We call it Wood Robin, ’cause it’s shaped like a Robin and runs on the ground like one, only it’s different in colour. Do you suppose they are the same bird? Or are there two that seem alike, like the Nighthawk and Whip-poor-will?”

“Wood Thrush, Song Thrush, Wood Robin, are all one; the shy bird of river woods or the lovely musician of gardens and home grounds, where they are protected and dogs reign instead of cats. This place is vocal with them all through May, June, and well into July. Not only Birdland and the orchard, but the garden and trees on the lawn.

“One afternoon last June, when Goldilocks lay in her hammock under the spruces, four were singing where I could see all at once,—and oh, that song! As the bird sits in a tree-top with head thrown back and pours it forth,

“This Thrush has a sharp alarm note, ‘Pit! Pit!’ and a sort of whistle that he seems to use as a signal. Fruit he does eat at times, but he has as long a list of evil insects to his credit as the Robin himself. Unfortunately, owing to his size and plumpness, southern vandals shoot him in the fall and winter. Fancy silencing his heavenly voice for a pitiful mouthful of meat.

“There is another Thrush that lives in your river woods, Dave, smaller than the Wood Thrushes, tawny of back, and a buffy breast with faint arrow-shaped spots upon it, the Wilson’s Thrush, or Veery. It has not so long and varied a song as either the Wood Thrush or the more northern Hermit Thrush, is really but an echo song, wonderfully pure and spiritual in quality. One of the Wise Men gives in syllables this ‘Ta-weel-ah-ta-weel-ah,’ pronounced in whispering head tones, and then repeated a third lower, ending with the twang of a stringed instrument.

“At evening and until quite late into the night these birds echo themselves and each other. It is not a song to hear amid laughter and talking, but for the heart that is alone, even if not lonely. To at least one of our poets, he who best interprets the song-life of birds, it rivals the famous English Nightingale.

THE INCREDULOUS VEERY

“This spring Brown Thrasher came to the bushy end of the orchard the last of April, and scratched about in the leaves like a Grouse. In a few days I saw him in the back of the garden, where Jacob had a great pile of pea-brush. This the bird looked at favourably. Birds know how to get in and out of pea-brush, but cats are afraid of the sharp twigs.

“For a couple of weeks or more I heard him singing every day in the tree-tops, and I wondered where he would locate.

“Jacob, one morning, told me that he wished to use the pea-brush, but that a ‘pair of great brown birds that beat their tails and “sassed” him when he came near’ had built a nest of twigs in the back of the heap. ‘My friends, the Thrashers,’ said I, ‘will need that brush for a couple of months. Have you no more in the lot?’ Jacob had plenty with only the trouble of carting.

“Now hardy vines have grown over the brush and tangled into what Goldilocks calls a lovely ‘Thrashery’ that will last for several years.”

“I know them,” said Jack Todd; “they are mockers and jeerers for certain; when Dad and I plant the big south field with corn every spring, they come in the berry-bushes by the fence and tell us how to do it, and that if we’re smart and take their advice, we won’t cut the fence brush until they are done with nesting.

“But can’t they pick cherries to beat the band? Last summer I was up in the ox-heart tree and they came in the top and picked ’em off, just as they grew in pairs, and flew away with them as pleased and satisfied as if they were picking them for market and were a week ahead of the season. Dad was awfully down on them once, but one morning about two years ago he got up at daylight to try and get the cutworms that were spoiling his early cauliflowers, and there were Thrashers and Catbirds doing the work for him, watching out for the worms to move ground just as clever as a man could.

“Ah, the merry, mischievous Mocker, all dressed in a parson’s suit of gray, with a solemn black cap on his head that is as full of tricks as his throat is of music.

“You say, ‘Yes, I know that he is a jolly musician, but my father says that he bites the best strawberries and cherries, and always on the ripest cheek!’

“Well, so he does sometimes; but his ancestors lived on that spot where your garden stands before yours did, and you have more ways of earning a living than he has. Give him something else to eat. Plant a little wild fruit along your fences.

“Some people think that he likes to live in seclusion, but he doesn’t; he likes to be near people and perch on a clothes-pole to plume and sing. Yes, indeed, and he shall nest in the syringa nearest my garden, where he gets his fresh fruit for breakfast, and be the only thing with anything catlike about it on my premises!”

THE CATBIRD

It was the first Friday of May, the day that was set apart for Arbour and Bird Day in the schools. Gray Lady and Miss Wilde had thought of having the celebration in Birdland, but for a good reason decided to hold it in the schoolhouse.

The reason was this: One day after the schoolhouse had been put in order,—for Gray Lady had persuaded the town fathers to have the walls painted, and had then given a band of soft green burlap that covered the wall just above the chair board, and made a fine background against which pictures might be pinned and then changed at will,—little Clary said with a sigh, “I wish we could have a bird party here in school some day, so’s mother could see how we learn about the birds; it would be much realer than my telling her about it.”

So a very simple programme was arranged for the forenoon, and the parents invited. It is a great mistake to hold celebrations that are too long when it is spring, and the weather is so bright and the bird music so fine that people can learn much more by being out-of-doors than in poring over books.

The first part of the programme was under the charge of Jacob Hughes and the older boys. It consisted in the planting of some strong young sugar-maples to complete the row between the schoolhouse and the highway that had been begun last autumn. The holes had been dug the day previous, and Mr. Todd brought the trees from his grove in the hay-cart, with plenty of earth about their roots, and after they were set straight and true, the boys filled in the holes and tramped the earth down firmly. After this the little boys brought water, four pails being considered a sufficient drink for each tree.

Next, a dozen shrubs were planted in the eastern corner of the bit of ground where it rolled up toward the brush-lot and the earth was deep and good. They were varieties that would flower in May and June, before the closing of school. Syringa, Weigela, Yellow Forsythia, Purple and White Lilac, Snowballs, Spireas, Scarlet Flowering Quince, Strawberry Shrub, and Deutzia. Between this shrubbery a little strip along the north fence had been made into a long bed of about thirty feet, and the girls had been asked to collect enough hardy plants from about the farm gardens to fill it; for there is little use in planting bedding or annual flowers in school yards, for these are later in starting and are killed by early frost.

The girls had been very successful in their task, and a goodly assortment of old-fashioned, hardy plants, that many a gardener would envy, was the result: Iris of several shades, Peonies, Sweet Williams, Larkspur, Foxgloves, Honesty, May Pinks, Lemon Lilies, Johnny-jumpers, and several good roots of Cinnamon and Damask Roses were among the collection, while Sarah Barnes’ grandmother sent a basket of the roots of hardy button Chrysanthemums—pink, white, crimson, yellow, and tawny—that she said would hold out from October to Thanksgiving if they had “bushes between them and the north.” It was quite eleven o’clock when, the planting over and the benches that the boys had made during the winter set in place, the children, whose hands were washed under very difficult conditions, gathered in the school.

But those parents who cared to come had meanwhile had a chance to go into the little building, see the pictures, charts, and books on the shelf behind the desk, and chat with Miss Wilde in a friendly, informal way that was helpful to all concerned.

Goldilocks had been there all the morning, but when Gray Lady arrived she brought with her a friend of “the General’s,” who was also a Wise Man in one of the chief agricultural colleges of the country, who had promised to talk to the children. Gray Lady herself was to read them some bird poetry, and Miss Wilde a little story of her own invention, while as a finale the children themselves were to recite some verses where ten familiar birds were represented each by a child who wore a cap and shoulder cape, cleverly made of crêpe paper, that would give a clew, at least, to the bird he or she represented.

These costumes had been made at the last Saturday meeting of the Kind Hearts’ Club, in the playroom at “the General’s,” and had caused no little fun, the idea of them having come from the caps in the mottoes at that orchard party, in September, eight months before, when the children first entered Birdland.

This is the poem that Gray Lady read. She had a voice that sang even in speaking, and as Goldilocks often said, “When mother reads bird poetry you don’t hear the words, but the birds themselves.”

BIRDS IN SPRING

“I do declare!” exclaimed Tommy Todd’s grandfather, speaking out loud, much to the boy’s embarrassment. “I reckon I’ll get out a pole and go a-trout-fishing to-morrow dawn. I haven’t thought of a yallerthroat, not since I used to go casting in the brook that ran through Ogden’s meadows among the bush willows, and them birds kept hollerin’ on ahead.”

This is what the Wise Man told the children, standing in front of Miss Wilde’s desk and speaking as if he knew them all by name.

THE BIRDS AND I

The springtime belongs to the birds and me. We own it. We know when the May-flowers and the buttercups bloom. We know when the first frogs peep. We watch the awakening of the woods. We are wet by the warm April showers. We go where we will, and we are companions. Every tree and brook and blade of grass is ours; and our hearts are full of song.

There are boys who kill the birds, and girls who want to catch them and put them in cages; and there are others who steal their eggs. The birds are not partners with them; they are only servants. Birds, like people, sing for their friends, not for their masters. I am sure that one cannot think much of the springtime and the flowers if his heart is always set upon killing or catching something. We are happy when we are free; and so are the birds.

The birds and I get acquainted all over again every spring. They have seen strange lands in the winter, and all the brooks and woods have been covered with snow. So we run and romp together, and find all the nooks and crannies which we had half forgotten since October. The birds remember the old places. The Wrens pull the sticks from the old hollow rail and seem to be wild with joy to see the place again. They must be the same Wrens that were here last year and the year before, for strangers could not make so much fuss over an old rail. The Bluebirds and Wrens look into every crack and corner for a place in which to build, and the Robins and Chipping-sparrows explore every tree in the old orchard.

If the birds want to live with us, we should encourage them. The first thing to do is to let them alone. Let them be as free from danger and fear as you or I. Take the hammer off the old gun, give pussy so much to eat that she will not care to hunt for birds, and keep away the boys who steal eggs and who carry sling-shots and throw stones. Plant trees and bushes about the borders of the place, and let some of them, at least, grow into tangles; then, even in the back yard, the wary Catbird may make its home.

For some kinds of birds we can build houses. You have been doing this all through the winter, I hear. Some of the many forms which can be used are shown in the pictures, but any ingenious boy can suggest a dozen other patterns. Although birds may not appreciate architecture, it is well to make the houses neat and tasty by taking pains to have the proportions right. The floor space in each compartment should be not less than five by six inches, and six by six or six by eight may be better. By cutting the boards in multiples of these numbers, one can easily make a house with several compartments; for there are some birds, as Martins, Tree Swallows, and Pigeons that like to live in families or colonies. The size of the doorway is important. It should be just large enough to admit the bird. A larger opening not only looks bad, but it exposes the inhabitants to dangers of cats and other enemies. Birds which build in houses, aside from Doves and Pigeons, are Bluebirds, Wrens, Tree Swallows, Martins, and sometimes the Chickadee. For the Wren and Chickadee the opening should be an inch-and-a-half augur-hole, and for the others it should be two inches. Only one opening should be provided for each house or compartment. A perch or doorstep should be provided just below each door. It is here that the birds often stop to arrange their toilets; and when the mistress is busy with domestic affairs indoors, the male bird often sits outside and entertains her with the latest neighbourhood gossip. These houses should be placed on poles or on buildings in somewhat secluded places. Martins and Tree Swallows like to build their nests twenty-five feet or more above the ground, but the other birds usually prefer an elevation less than twelve feet. Newly made houses, and particularly newly painted ones, do not often attract the birds.

But if the birds and I are companions, I must know them more intimately. Merely building houses for them is not enough. I want to know live and happy birds, not dead ones. We are not to know them, then, by catching them, nor stuffing them, nor collecting their eggs. Persons who make a business of studying birds may shoot birds now and then, and collect their eggs. But these persons are scientists and they are grown-up people. They are trying to add to the sum of human knowledge, but we want to know birds just because we want to. But even scientists do not take specimens recklessly. They do not rob nests. They do not kill brooding birds. They do not make collections merely for the sake of making them; and even their collections are less valuable than a knowledge of the bird as it lives and flies and sings.

Boys and girls should not make collections of eggs, for these collections are mere curiosities, as collections of spools and marbles are. They may afford some entertainment, to be sure, but one can find amusement in harmless ways. Some people think that making collections makes one a naturalist, but it does not. The naturalist cares more for things as they really are in their own homes than for museum specimens. One does not love the birds when he steals their eggs and breaks up their homes; and he is depriving the farmer of one of his best friends, for birds keep insects in check!

Stuffed birds do not sing and empty eggs do not hatch. Then let us go to the fields and watch the birds. Sit down on the soft grass and try to make out what the Robin is doing on yonder fence or why the Wren is bursting with song in the thicket. An opera-glass or spy-glass will bring them close to you. Try to find out not only what the colours and shapes and sizes are, but what their habits are. What does the bird eat? How much does it eat? Where is its nest? How many eggs does it lay? What colour are they? How long does the mother bird sit? Does the father bird care for her when she is sitting? For how long do the young birds remain in the nest? Who feeds them? What are they fed? Is there more than one brood in the season? Where do the birds go after breeding? Do they change their plumage? Are the mother birds and father birds unlike in size or colour? How many kinds of birds do you know?

These are some of the things which every boy or girl wants to know; and we can find out by watching the birds! There is no harm in visiting the nests, if one does it in the right way. I have visited hundreds of them and have kept many records of the number of eggs and the dates when they were laid, how long before they hatched, and when the birds flew away; and the birds took no offence at my inquisitiveness. These are some of the cautions to be observed: Watch only those nests which can be seen without climbing, for if you have to climb the tree, the birds will resent it. Make the visit when the birds are absent if possible; at least, never scare the bird from the nest. Do not touch the eggs or the nest. Make your visit very short. Make up your mind just what you want to see, then look in quickly and pass on. Do not go too often, once or twice a day will be sufficient. Do not take the other children with you, for you are then apt to stay too long and to offend the birds.

Now let us see how intimately you can become acquainted with some bird this summer.

—L. H. Bailey.

This is the little story that Miss Wilde read them, and they were very anxious as to what schoolhouse and children she really meant, but she said that was a secret.

THE BIRDS AND THE TREES

It was May Day. Half a dozen birds had collected in an old apple tree, which stood in a pasture close by the road that passed the schoolhouse; some of them had not met for many months, consequently a wave of conversation rippled through the branches.

“You were in a great hurry, the last time I saw you,” said the little black-and-white Downy Woodpecker to the Brown Thrasher, who was pluming his long tail, exclaiming now and then because the feathers would not lie straight.

“Indeed! When? I do not remember. What was I doing?”

“It was the last of October; a cold storm was blowing up, and you were starting on your southern trip in such a haste that you did not hear me call ‘good-by’ from this same tree, where I was picking insect eggs that expected to hide safely in the bark all winter, only to hatch into all kinds of mischief in the spring. But I was too quick for them; my keen eyes spied them and my beak chiselled them out. Winter and summer I’m always at work, yet some house-people do not understand that I work for my living. They seem to think that a bird who does not sing is good for nothing but a target for them to shoot at.”

“That is true,” said the dust-coloured Phœbe, dashing out to swallow a May beetle, which stuck in her throat, causing her to choke and cough. “I can only call, yet I worked with the best for the farmer where I lodged last year. I made a nest on his cowshed rafters and laid two sets of lovely white eggs, but his boys stole them and that was all my thanks for a season’s toil.”

“Singing birds do not fare much better,” said the Thrasher. “I may say frankly that I have a fine voice and I can sing as many tunes as any wild bird, but children rob my nest, when they can find it, and house-people drive me from their gardens, thinking I’m stealing berries.”

“They treat me even worse,” said the Robin, bolting a cutworm he had brought from a piece of ploughed land. “In spring, when I lead the Bird Chorus night and morning, they rob my nest. In summer they drive me from the gardens, where I work peacefully, and in autumn, when I linger through the gloomy days, long after your travelling brothers have disappeared, they shoot me for pot-pie!”

“It is a shame!” blustered Jennie Wren. “Not that I suffer much myself, for I’m not good to eat, and I’m a most ticklish mark to shoot at. Though I lose some eggs, I usually give a piece of my mind to any one who disturbs me, and immediately go and lay another nest full. Yet I say it is a shame, the way we poor birds are treated, more like tramps than citizens, though we are citizens, every one of us who pays rent and works for the family.”

“Hear, hear!” croaked the Cuckoo, with the yellow bill. He is always hoarse, probably because he eats so many caterpillars that his throat is rough with their hairs. “Something ought to be done, but can Jennie Wren tell us what it shall be?”

“I’ve noticed that most of the boys and girls who rob our nests and whose parents drive us from their gardens go every day to that square house down the road yonder,” said Mrs. Wren. “Now if some bird with a fine voice that would make them listen could only fly in the window and sing a song, telling them how useful even the songless bird brothers are, they might treat us better and tell their parents about us when they go home.”

“Well spoken,” said the Robin; “but who would venture into that house with all those boys? There is one boy in there who, last year, killed my mate with a stone in a bean-shooter, and also shot my cousin, a Bluebird. Then the boy’s sister cut off the wings of these dead brothers and wore them in her hat. I think it would be dangerous to go in that schoolhouse.”

“The windows are open,” said the Song Sparrow, who had listened in silence. “I hear the children singing, so they must be happy. I will go down and speak to them, for though I have no grand voice, they all know me and perhaps they will understand my homely wayside song.”

So the Sparrow flew down the road, but as he paused in the lilac hedge before going in the window, he heard that the voices were singing about birds, telling of their music, beauty, and good deeds. While he hesitated in great wonder at the sounds, the children trooped out, the girls carrying pots of geraniums which they began to plant in some beds by the walk. Then two boys brought a fine young maple tree to set in the place of an old tree that had died. A woman with a bright, pleasant face came to the door to watch the children at their planting, saying to the boys, “This is Arbour Day, the day of planting trees, but pray remember that it is Bird Day also. You may dig a deep hole for your tree and water it well; but if you wish it to grow and flourish, beg the birds to help you. The old tree died because insects gnawed it, for you were rough and cruel, driving all the birds away from hereabouts and robbing their nests.”

“Please, ma’am,” said a little girl, “our orchard was full of spinning caterpillars last season and we had no apples. Then father read in a book the government sent him that Cuckoos would eat the caterpillars all up, so he let the Cuckoos stay, and this year the trees are nice and clean and all set full of buds!”

The Song Sparrow did not wait to hear any more, but flew back to his companions with the news.

“I shall put my nest under the lilac hedge to show the children that I trust them,” said he, after the birds had recovered from their surprise.

“I will lodge in the bushes near the old apple tree,” said the Cuckoo; “it needs me sadly.”

“I will build over the schoolhouse door,” said the Phoebe; “there is a peafield near by that will need me to keep the weevils away.”

“I think I will take the nice little nook under the gable,” said Jennie Wren, “though I need not build for two weeks yet, and I have not even chosen my mate.”

“I shall go to the sill of that upper window where the blind is half closed,” said the Robin. “They have planted early cauliflowers in the great field and I must help the farmer catch the cutworms.”

“I will stay by also,” said the Woodpecker. “I know of a charming hole in an old telegraph pole and I can see to the bark of all the trees that shade the schoolhouse.”

Just then a gust of wind blew through the branches, reminding the birds that they must go to work, and May passed by whispering with Heart of Nature, her companion, about the work that must be done before June should come,—June, with her gown all embroidered with roses and a circle of young birds fluttering about her head for a hat.

“Dear Master,” May said, “why am I always hurried and always working? I do more than all other months. July basks in the sun and August sits with her hands folded while the people gather in her crops. Each year March quarrels with Winter and does no work; then April cries her eyes out over her task, leaving it dim and colourless. Even the willow wears only pale yellow wands until I touch them. The leaf buds only half unfold, and the birds hold aloof from the undraped trees; see, nothing thrives without me.” And May shook the branches of a cherry tree and it was powdered with white blossoms.

“Nothing grows by or for itself,” said Heart of Nature, tenderly. “The tree is for bird and the bird for the tree, while both working together are for the house-people if they will only understand me and use them wisely. Never complain of work, sweet daughter May. Be thankful that you have the quickening touch, for to work in my garden is to be happy.”

Then the Song Sparrow caught up the words and wove them in his song and carolled it in May’s ear as she swept up the hillside to set the red-bells chiming for a holiday.

These are the verses that the children recited. Goldilocks asked the question in the first line of each verse, and the child who represented the bird answered. Little Clary was the first,—the Chippy,—and as she said the words she raised her arms and flapped them like wings; the parents all applauded with delight.

THE BIRDS AND THE HOURS