Chapter 10

While the young father was manifesting his anxiety in this way, the mother showed hers in another; she took to watching, hardly leaving the place at all. When she had her babies well fed for the moment, she went up the trunk a little, in a loitering way that I had never seen her indulge in before,--and a loitering wren is a curiosity. It was plain that she simply wished to pass away the time. She stepped from the trunk upon a twig on one side, stayed a little while, then passed to one on the other side, lingered a few moments, and so she went on. When she arrived at the height of two feet she perched on a small dead twig, and remained a long time--certainly twenty minutes--absolutely motionless. It was hard to see her, and if I had not watched her progress from the first, I should not have suspected her presence. A leaf would hide her, even the crossing of two twigs was ample screen, and when she was still it was hopeless to look for her. The only way we were able to keep track of either of the pair was by their incessant motions.

The Great Carolinian had a peculiar custom which showed that his coming with song was a ceremony he would not dispense with. He would often start off singing, gradually withdraw till fifty or seventy-five feet away, singing at every pause, and then, if one watched him closely, he might see him stop, drop to the ground, and hunt about in silence. When he was ready to come again, he would fly quietly a little way off, and then begin his singing and approaching, as if he had been a mile away. He never sang when on the ground after food, but so soon as he finished eating, he flew to a perch at least two feet high, generally between six and ten, and sometimes as high as twenty feet, and sang.

After a day or two of the wren's singular uneasiness, we discovered at least one object of his concern. It was a chipmunk, whom we had often noticed perched on the highest point of the little ledge of rocks near the nest. He seemed to be attending strictly to his own affairs, but after a good deal of "dear-r-r"-ing, the wren flew furiously at him, almost, if not quite, hitting him, and doing it again and again. The little beast did not relish this treatment and ran off, the bird following and repeating the assault. This was undoubtedly the foe that he had been troubled about all the time.

On the tenth or eleventh day of their lives (as I believe) I examined the babies in the nest a little more closely than before. I even touched them with my finger on head and beak. They looked sleepily at me, but did not resent it. If the mother were somewhat bigger, I should suspect her of giving them "soothing syrup," for they had exactly the appearance of being drugged. They were not overfed; I never saw youngsters so much let alone. The parents had nothing like the work of the robin, oriole, or blue jay. They came two or three times, and then left for half an hour or more, yet the younglings were never impatient for food.

The morning that the young wrens had reached the age of twelve days (that we knew of) was the 22d of July, and the weather was intensely warm. On the 21st we had watched all day to see them go, sure that they were perfectly well able. Obviously it is the policy of this family to prepare for a life of extraordinary activity by an infancy of unusual stillness. Never were youngsters so perfectly indifferent to all the world. In storm or sunshine, in daylight or darkness, they lay there motionless, caring only for food, and even that showed itself only by the fact that all mouths were toward the front. The under one of the pile seemed entirely contented to be at the bottom, and the top ones not to exult in their position; in fact, so far as any show of interest in life was concerned, they might have been a nestful of wooden babies.

On this morning, as we dragged ourselves wearily over the hot road to the ravine, we resolved that no handful of wrenlings should force us over that road again. Go off this day they should, if--as my comrade remarked--"we had to raise them by hand." My first call was at the nest, indifferent whether parents were there or not, for I had become desperate. There they lay, lazily blinking at me, and filling the nest overfull. The singer came rushing down a branch, bristled up, blustering, and calling "Dear-r-r-r!" at me, and I hoped he would be induced to hurry up his very leisurely brood.

We took our usual seats and waited. Both parents remained near the homestead, and little singing was indulged in; this morning there was serious business on hand, as any one could see. We were desirous of seeing the first sign of movement, so we resolved to cut away the last few leaves that hid the entrance to the nest. We had not done it before, partly not to annoy the birds, and partly not to have them too easily discovered by prowlers.

Miss R---- went to the stump, and cut away half a dozen leaves and twigs directly before their door. The young ones looked at her, but did not move. Then, as I had asked her to do, she pointed a parasol directly at the spot, so that I, in my distant seat, might locate the nest exactly. This seemed to be the last straw that the birdlings could endure; two of them flew off. One went five or six feet away, the other to the ground close by. Then she came away, and we waited again. In a moment two more ventured out and alighted on twigs near the nest. Then the mother came home, and acted as surprised as though she had never expected to have them depart. She went from a twig beside the tree to the nest, and back, about a dozen times, as if she really could not believe her eyes.

Anxious to see everything that went on, we moved our seats nearer, but this so disconcerted the pair that we did not stay long. It was long enough to hear the wren baby-cry, a low insect-like noise, and to see something that surprised and no less disgusted me, namely, every one of those babies hurry back to the tree, climb the trunk, and scramble back into the nest!--the whole exit to be begun again! It could not be their dislike of the "cold, cold world," for a cold world would be a luxury that morning.

Of any one who would go back into that crowded nest, with the thermometer on the rampage as it was then, I had my opinion, and I began to think I didn't care much about wrens anyway; we stayed, however, as a matter of habit, and I suppose they all had a nap after their tremendous exertion. But they manifestly got an idea into their heads at last, a taste of life. After a proper amount of consideration, one of the nestlings took courage to move again, and went so far as a twig that grew beside the door, looked around on the world from that post for a while, then hopped to another, and so on till he encircled the home stump. But when he came again in sight of that delectable nest, he could not resist it, and again he added himself to the pile of birds within. This youth was apparently as well feathered as his parents, and, except in length of tail, looked exactly like them; many a bird baby starts bravely out in life not half so well prepared for it as this little wren.

After nearly three hours of waiting, we made up our minds that these young folk must be out some time during the day, unless they had decided to take up permanent quarters in that hole in the stump, and what was more to the point, that the weather was too warm to await their very deliberate movements. So we left them, to get off the best way they could without us, or to stay there all their lives, if they so desired.

The nest, which at first was exceedingly picturesque--and I had resolved to bring it away, with the stump that held it--was now so demolished that I no longer coveted it. The last and sweetest song of the wren, "Shame-ber-ee!" rang out joyously as we turned our faces to the north, and bade a long farewell to the Great Carolinians.

XVI.

THE APPLE-TREE NEST.

All day long in the elm, on their swaying perches swinging, New-fledged orioles utter their restless, querulous notes.

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.

The little folk let out the secret, as little folk often do, and after they had called attention to it, I was surprised that I had not myself seen the pretty hammock swinging high up in the apple boughs.

It was, however, in a part of the grounds I did not often visit, partly because the trees close by, which formed a belt across the back of the place, grew so near together that not a breath of air could penetrate, and it was intolerable in the hot June days, and partly because my appearance there always created a panic. So seldom did a human being visit that neglected spot, that the birds did not look for guests, and a general stampede followed the approach of one.

On the eventful day of my happy discovery I was returning from my daily call upon a blue jay who had set up her home in an apple-tree in a neighbor's yard. The moment I entered the grounds I noticed a great outcry. It was loud; it was incessant; and it was of many voices. Following the sound, I started across the unmown field,

"Through the bending grasses, Tall and lushy green, All alive with tiny things, Stirring feet and whirring wings Just an instant seen,"

and soon came in sight of the nest near the topmost twig of an old apple-tree.

It was about noon of a bright, sunny day, and I could see only that the nest was straw-color, apparently run over with little ones, and both the parents were industriously feeding. The cries suggested the persistence of young orioles, but it was not a Baltimore's swinging cradle, and the old birds were so shy, coming from behind the leaves, every one of which turned itself into a reflector for the sunlight, that I could not identify them.

Later in the day I paid them another visit, and finding a better post of observation under the shade of a sweet-briar bush, I saw at once they were orchard orioles, and that the young ones were climbing to the edge of the nest; I had nearly been too late!

Four o'clock was the unearthly hour at which I rose next morning to pursue my acquaintance with the little family in the apple-tree, fearful lest they should get the start of me. The youngsters were calling vociferously, and both parents were very busy attending to their wants and trying to stop their mouths, when I planted my seat before their castle in the air, and proceeded to inquire into their manners and customs. My call was, as usual, not received with favor. The mother, after administering the mouthful she had brought, alighted on a twig beside the nest and gave me a "piece of her mind." I admitted my bad manners, but I could not tear myself away. The anxious papa, very gorgeous in his chestnut and black suit, scenting danger to the little brood in the presence of the bird-student with her glass, at once abandoned the business of feeding, and devoted himself to the protection of his family,--which indeed was his plain duty. His way of doing this was to take his position on the tallest tree in the vicinity, and fill the serene morning air with his cry of distress, a two-note utterance, with a pathetic inflection which could not fail to arouse the sympathy of all who heard it. It was not excited or angry, but it proclaimed that here was distress and danger, and it had the effect of making me ashamed of annoying him. But I hardened my heart, as I often have to do in my study, and kept my seat. Occasionally he returned to the lower part of his own tree, to see if the monster had been scared or shamed away, but finding me stationary, he returned to his post and resumed his mournful cry.

At length the happy thought came to me that I might select a position a little less conspicuous, yet still within sight, so I moved my seat farther off, away back under a low-branched apple-tree, where a redbird came around with sharp "tsip's" to ascertain my business, and a catbird behind the briar-bush entertained me with delicious song. The oriole accepted my retirement as a compromise, and returned to his domestic duties, coming, as was natural and easiest, on my side of the tree. His habit was to cling to the side of the nest, showing his black and red-gold against it, while his mate alighted on the edge, and was seen a little above it. After feeding, both perched on neighboring twigs and looked about for a moment before the next food-hunting trip. I thought the father of the family exhibited an air of resignation, as if he concluded that, since the babies made so much noise, there was no use in trying longer to preserve the secret.

As a matter of fact, both our orioles need a good stock of patience as well as of resignation, for the infants of both are unceasing in their cries, and fertile in inventing variations in manner and inflection, that would deceive those most familiar with them. Two or three times in the weeks that followed, I rushed out of the house to find some very distressed bird, who, I was sure, from the cries, must be impaled alive on a butcher-bird's meat-hook, or undergoing torture at the hands--or beak of somebody. It was rather dangerous going out at that time (just at dusk), for it was the chosen hour for young men and maidens, of whom there were several, to wander about under the trees. Often, before I gave up going out at that hour, my glass, turned to follow a flitting wing, would bring before my startled gaze a pair of sentimental young persons, who doubtless thought I was spying upon them. My only safety was in directing my glass into the trees, where nothing but wings could be sentimental, and if a bird flitted below the level of branches, to consider him lost. On following up the cry, I always found a young oriole and a hard-worked father feeding him. The voice did not even suggest an oriole to me, until I had been deceived two or three times and understood it.

The young ones of the orchard oriole's nest lived up to the traditions of the family by being inveterate cry-babies, and making so much noise they could be heard far around. Sometimes their mother addressed them in a similar tone to their own, but the father resigned himself to the inevitable, and fed with dogged perseverance.

The apple-tree nest looked in the morning sun of a bright flax color, and two of the young were mounted on the edge, dressing their yellow satin breasts, and gleaming in the sunshine like gold.

A Baltimore oriole, passing over, seemed to be attracted by a familiar quality of sound, for he came down, alighted about a foot from the nest, and looked with interest upon the charming family scene. The protector of the pretty brood was near, but he kept his seat, and made no objections to the friendly call. Indeed, he flew away while the guest was still there, and having satisfied his curiosity, the Baltimore also departed upon his own business.

When the sun appeared over the tree-tops, he came armed with all his terrors. The breeze dwindled and died; the very leaves hung lifeless on the trees, and though, knowing that

"Somewhere the wind is blowing, Though here where I gasp and sigh Not a breath of air is stirring, Not a cloud in the burning sky,"

the memory might comfort me, it did not in the slightest degree make me comfortable--I wilted, and retired before it. How the birds could endure it and carry on their work, I could not understand.

At noon I ventured out over the burning grass. The first youngster had left the nest, and was shouting from a tree perhaps twenty feet beyond the native apple. The others were fluttering on the edge, crying as usual. As is the customary domestic arrangement with many birds, the moment the first one flew, the father stopped coming to the nest, and devoted himself to the straggler, which was a little hard on the mother that hot day, for she had four to feed.

While I looked on, the second infant mustered up courage to start on the journey of life. A tall twig led from the nest straight up into the air, and this was the ladder he mounted. Step by step he climbed one leaf-stem after another, with several pauses to cry and to eat, and at last reached the topmost point, where he turned his face to the west, and took his first survey of the kingdoms of the earth. A brother nestling was close behind him, and the pretty pair, seeing no more steps above them, rested a while from their labors. In the mean time the first young oriole had gone farther into the trees, and papa with him.

The little dame worked without ceasing, though it must have been an anxious time, with nestlings all stirring abroad. I noticed that she fed oftenest the birdlings who were out, whether to strengthen them for further effort, or to offer an inducement to those in the nest to come up higher where food was to be had, she did not tell. I observed, also, that when she came home she did not, as before, alight on the level of the little ones, but above them. Perhaps this was to coax them upward; at any rate, it had that effect: they stretched up and mounted the next stem above, and so they kept on ascending. About three o'clock I was again obliged to surrender to the power of the sun, and retire for a season to a place he could not enter, the house.

Some hours passed before I made my next call, and I found that oriole matters had not rested, if I had; the two nestlings had taken flight to the tree the first one had chosen, and three were on the top twig above the nest, which latter swung empty and deserted. Mamma was feeding the three in her own tree, while papa attended as usual to the outsiders, and found leisure to drop in a song now and then.

While I watched, number three took his life in his hands (as it were) and launched out upon the air. He reached a tree not so far away as his brothers had chosen, and his mother sought him out and fed him there. But he did not seem to be satisfied with his achievement, or possibly he found the position rather lonely; at any rate, the next use of his wings was to return to his native apple, to the lower part. During this visit, the mother of the little brood, seeing, I suppose, her labors growing lighter, indulged herself and delighted me with a scrap of song, very sweet, as the song of the female oriole always is.

It was with forebodings that I approached the tree the next morning, foreboding speedily confirmed--the whole family was gone! Either I had not stayed late enough or I had not got up early enough to see the flitting; that song, then, meant something--it was my good-by.

Indeed it turned out to be my farewell, as I thought, for the whole tribe seemed to have vanished. Usually it is not difficult to hunt up a little bird family in its wanderings, during the month following its leaving the nest, but this one I could neither see nor hear, and I was very sure those oriole babies had not so soon outgrown their crying; they must have been struck dumb or left the place.

Nearly three weeks later I was wandering about in what was called the glen, half a mile or more from where the apple-tree babies had first seen the light. It was a wild spot, a ravine, through which ran a stream, where many wood-birds sang and nested. On approaching a linden-tree loaded with blossoms, and humming with swarms of bees, I was saluted with a burst of loud song, interspersed with scolding. No one but an orchard oriole could so mix things, and sure enough! there he was, scrambling over the flowers. Something he found to his taste, whether the blossoms or the insects, I could not decide. On waiting a little, I heard the young oriole cry, much subdued since nesting days, and the tender "ye-ep" of the parent. The whole family was evidently there together, and I was very glad to see them once more.

The nest, which I had brought down, was a beautiful structure, made, I think, of very fine excelsior of a bright straw-color. It was suspended in an upright fork of four twigs, and lashed securely to three of them, while a few lines were passed around the fourth. Though it was in a fork, it did not rest on it, but was suspended three inches above it, a genuine hanging nest. It was three inches deep and wide, but drawn in about the top to a width of not more than two inches, with a bit of cotton and two small feathers for bedding. How five babies could grow up in that little cup is a problem. The material was woven closely together, and in addition stitched through and through, up and down, to make a firm structure. Around and against it hung still six apples, defrauded of their manifest destiny, and remaining the size of hickory-nuts. Three twigs that ran up were cut off, but the fourth was left, the tallest, the one sustaining the burden of the nest, and upon which the young birds, one after another, had mounted to take their first flight.

This pretty hammock, in its setting of leaves and apples, still swinging from the apple boughs, I brought home as a souvenir of a charming bird study.

XVII.

CEDAR-TREE LITTLE FOLK.

'T is there that the wild dove has her nest, And whenever the branches stir, She presses closer the eggs to her breast, And her mate looks down on her.

CLARE BEATRICE COFFEY.

One of the voices that helped to make my June musical, and one more constantly heard than any other, was that of the

"Mourning dove who grieves and grieves, And lost! lost! lost! still seems to say,"

as the poet has it.

Now, while I dearly love the poets, and always long to enrich my plain prose with gems from their verse, it is sometimes a little embarrassing, because one is obliged to disagree with them. If they would only look a little into the ways of birds, and not assert, in language so musical that one can hardly resist it, that

"The birds come back to last year's nests,"

when rarely was a self-respecting bird known to shirk the labor of building anew for every family; or sing, with Sill,

"He has lost his last year's love, I know,"

when he did not know any such thing; and add,

"A thrush forgets in a year,"

which I call a libel on one of our most intelligent birds; or cry, with another singer,

"O voiceless swallow,"

when not one of the whole tribe is defrauded of a voice, and at least one is an exquisite singer; or accuse the nightingale of the superfluous idiocy of holding his (though they always say her) breast to a thorn as he sings, as if he were so foolish as to imitate some forms of human self-torture,--if they would only be a little more sure of their facts, what a comfort it would be to those who love both poets and birds!

No bird in our country is more persistently misrepresented by our sweet singers than the Carolina or wood dove--mourning dove, as he is popularly called; and in this case they are not to be blamed, for prose writers, even natural history writers, are quite as bad.

"His song consists," says one, "of four notes: the first seems to be uttered with an inspiration of the breath, as if the afflicted creature were just recovering its voice from the last convulsive sob of distress, and followed by three long, deep, and mournful moanings, that no person of sensibility can listen to without sympathy." "The solemn voice of sorrow," another writer calls it. All this is mere sentimentality, pure imagination; and if the writers could sit, as I have, under the tree when the bird was singing, they would change their opinion, though they would thereby lose a pretty and attractive sentiment for their verse. I believe there is

"No beast or bird in earth or sky, Whose voice doth not with gladness thrill,"

though it may not so express itself to our senses. Certainly the coo of the dove is anything but sad when heard very near. It has a rich, far-off sound, expressing deep serenity, and a happiness beyond words.