Part 2
Romulus, the collie, went up to the burrows and the old owls came swooping over his back screaming shrilly--the milkers told me that they often struck him so violently they nipped more than his hair! When the owls flew at him, Romulus would jump up into the air at them, and when they had settled back on the fence posts he would run up and start them off again. The performance had been repeated every night through the nesting season, and was getting to be rather an old story now, at least to Romulus. The ranchman had to urge him on for my benefit, and the owls acted as if they rather enjoyed the sport, though with them there was always the possibility that a reckless nestling might pop up its head from the ground at the wrong moment and come to grief. It would be interesting to know if the owls were really disturbed enough to move their nest another year.
When Canello and I faced home on our daily circuit of the valley, we often found the vineyard well peopled. In April, when it was being cultivated, there was a busy scene. All the blackbirds of the neighborhood--both Brewer's and redwings--assembled to pick up grubs from the soft earth. A squad of them followed close at the plowman's heels, others flew up before his horse, while those that lagged behind in their hunt were constantly flying ahead to catch up, and those that had eaten all they could sat around on the neighboring grape-vines. The ranchman's son told me that when he was plowing and the blackbirds were following him, two or three 'bee-birds,' as they call the Arkansas and Cassin's flycatchers, would take up positions on stakes overlooking the flock; and when one of the blackbirds got a worm, would fly down and chase after him till they got it away, regularly making their living from the blackbirds, as the eagles do from the fish hawks.
One day in riding by the vineyard, to my surprise and delight I saw one of the handsome yellow-headed blackbirds sitting with dignity on a grape-vine. Although his fellows often flock with redwings, this bird did not deign to follow the cultivator with the others, but flew off and away while I was watching, showing his striking white shoulder patches as he went. The distinguished birds were sometimes seen assembled farther down the valley; and I once had a rare pleasure in seeing a company of them perched high on the blooming mustard.
The son of the ranchman told me an interesting thing about the ordinary blackbirds. He said he had seen a flock of perhaps five hundred fly down toward a band of grazing sheep, and all but a few of the birds light on the backs of sheep. The animals did not seem to mind, and the birds flew from one to another and roosted and rode to their heart's content. They would drop to the ground, but if anything startled them, fly back to their sheep again. Sometimes he had seen a few of the blackbirds picking out wool for their nests by bracing themselves on the backs of the sheep, and pulling where the wool was loose. He had also seen the birds ride hogs, cattle, and horses; but he said the horses usually switched them off with their tails.
On our way home we passed a small pond made by the spring rains. Since it was the only body of water for miles around, it was especially refreshing to us, and was the rendezvous of all our feathered neighbors--how they must have wished it would last all through the hot summer months! As I rode through the long grass on the edge of the pond, dark water snakes often wriggled away from under Canello's feet; but he evidently knew they were harmless, for he paid no attention to them, though he was mortally afraid of rattlers. I did not like the feeling that any snake, however innocent, was under my feet, so would pull him up out of the grass onto a flat rock overlooking the pond.
In the fresh part of the morning, before the fog had entirely melted away, the round pool at our feet mirrored the blue sky and the small white clouds. If a breath of wind ruffled the water into lines, in a moment more it was sparkling. Along the margin of the water was a border of wild flowers, pink, purple, and gold; on one side stood a group of sycamores, their twisted trunks white in the morning sun and their branches full of singing birds; while away to the south a line of dark blue undulating hills was crowned by the peak from which we had looked off on the mountains of Mexico. The air was ringing with songs, the sycamores were noisy with the chatter of blackbirds and bee-birds, and the bushes were full of sparrows.
There was an elder on the edge of the pond, and the bathers flew to this and then flitted down to the water; and when they flew up afterwards, lighted there to whip the water out of their feathers and sun themselves before flying off. I never tired watching the little bathers on the beach. One morning a pipit came tipping and tilting along the sand, peeping in its wild, sad way. Another time a rosy-breasted linnet stepped to the edge of the pond and dipped down daintily where the water glistened in the sunshine, sending a delicate circle rippling off from its own shadow. Then the handsome white and golden-crowned sparrows came and bathed in adjoining pools. When one set of birds had flown off to dry their feathers, others took their places. A pair of blackbirds walked down the sand beach, but acted absurdly, as if they did not know what to do in water--it was a wonder any of the birds did in dry California! Two pieces of wood lay in the shallows, and the blackbirds flew to them and began to promenade. The female tilted her tail as if the sight of herself in the pond made her dizzy, but the male finally edged down gingerly and took a dip or two with his bill, after which both flew off.
On the mud flats on one side of the pond, bee-birds were busy flycatching, perching on sticks near the ground and making short sallies over the flat. Turtle doves flew swiftly past, and high over head hawks and buzzards circled and let themselves be borne by the wind.
Swallows came to the pond to get mud for their nests. A long line of them would light on the edge of the water, and then, as if afraid of wetting their feet, would hold themselves up by fluttering their long pointed wings. They would get a little mud, take a turn in the air, and come back for more, to make enough to pay them for their long journeys from their nests. Sometimes they would skim over the pond without touching the surface at all, or merely dip in lightly for a drink in passing; at others they would take a flying plunge with an audible splash. Now and then great flocks of them could be seen circling around high up against a background of clouds and blue sky.
One day I had a genuine excitement in seeing a snow-white egret perched on a bush by the water. I rode home full of the beautiful sight, but alas, my story was the signal for the ranchman's son to seize his gun and rush after the bird. Fortunately he did not find him, although he did shoot a green heron; but it was probably a short reprieve for the poor hunted creature.
Canello was so afraid of miring in the soft ground that it was hard to get him across some places that seemed quite innocent. He would test the suspicious ground as carefully as a woman, one foot at a time; and if he judged it dangerous, would take the bits, turn around and march off in the opposite direction. I tried to force him over at first, but had an experience one day that made me quite ready to take all suggestions in such matters. This time he was deceived himself. We were on our homeward beat, off in the brush beyond the vineyard. I was watching for chewinks. We came to what looked like an old road grown up with soft green grass, and it was so fresh and tender I let Canello graze along at will; while keeping my eyes on the brush for chewinks. Suddenly Canello pricked up his ears and raised his head with a look of terror. Rattlesnakes or miring--it was surely one or the other! When I felt myself sinking, I knew which. I gave the horse a cut with the quirt to make him spring off the boggy ground, and looked off over his side to see how far down he was likely to go, but found myself going down backwards so fast I had to cling to the pommel. I lashed Canello to urge him out, and he struggled desperately, but it was no use. We were sinking in deeper and deeper, and I had to get off to relieve him of my weight. By this time his long legs had sunk in up to his body. On touching the ground I had a horrible moment thinking it might not hold me; but it bore well. Seizing the bridle with one hand and swinging the quirt with the other, I shouted encouragement to Canello, and, straining and struggling, he finally wrenched himself out and stepped on _terra firma_--I never appreciated the force of that expression before! The poor horse was trembling and exhausted when I led him up to high ground to remount, and neither of us had any desire to explore boggy lands after that.
On our morning round, Canello and I attended strictly to business,--he to grazing, I to observing; but on our afternoon rides I, at least, felt that we might pay a little more heed to the beauties of the valley and the joys of horsebacking. Sometimes we would be overtaken by the night fog. One moment the mustard would be all aglow with sunshine; at the next, a sullen bank of gray fog would have risen over the mountain, obscuring the sun which had warmed us and lighted the mustard; and in a few moments it would be so cold and damp that I would urge Canello into a lope to warm our blood as we hurried home.
II.
THE LITTLE LOVER.
ON my second visit to California, I spent the winter in the Santa Clara valley, riding among the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, where flocks of Oregon robins were resting from the labors of the summer and passing the time until they could fly home again; but when the first spring wild flowers bloomed on the hills I shipped my little roan mustang by steamer from San Francisco to San Diego, and hurried south to meet him and spend the nesting season in the little valley of the Coast Mountains which, five years before, had proved such an ideal place to study birds.
I went down early in March, to be sure to be in time for the nesting season; but spring was so late that by the last of April hardly a nest had been built, and it seemed as if the birds were never coming back. The weather was gloomy and the prospect for the spring's work looked discouraging, when one morning I rode over to the line of oaks and sycamores at the mouth of Ughland canyon I had not visited before. In this dry, treeless region of southern California only a little water is needed to cover the bare valley bottoms with verdure. The rushing streams that flow down the canyons after the winter rains fill their mouths with rich groves of brush, oaks and sycamores; while lines of trees border the streams as far as they extend down the valleys. Before the streams go far, the thirsty soil drinks them up, leaving only dry beds of sand bordered by trees, until the rains of the following winter. In April, the water in this particular canyon mouth had already disappeared, and the wide sand bed under the trees alone remained to tell of the short-lived stream. But the resulting verdure was enough to attract the birds. Apparently a party of travelers had just arrived. The brush and trees were full of song--yellowbirds, linnets, chewinks, doves, wrens, and, best of all, a song sparrow,--bless his heart!--singing as if he were on a bush in New York state. It was more cheering than anything I had heard in California.
When able to listen to something besides song sparrows, I realized that from the trees in front of me was coming the rippling merry song of a wren. Wrens are always interesting,--droll, individual little scraps,--and having found their nests in sycamore holes before, I let my horse, Mountain Billy, graze nearer to the tree from which the sound came. Before long the small brown pair flew away together across the oat field that spread out from the mouth of the canyon. While they were gone, I took the opportunity to inspect the tree, and found a large hole with twigs sticking out suggestively. Presently, back flew one of the wrens with more building material. But this line of sycamores was off from the highway, and the bird was not used to prying equestrians; so when she found Mountain Billy and me planted in front of her door, she doubted the wisdom of showing us that it was her door. Chattering nervously, she would back and fill, flying all but to the door and then flitting off again. She could not make up her mind to go inside. But soon her mate came and--unmindful of visitors, ardent little lover that he was--sang to her so gayly that it put her in heart; and before I knew it she had slipped into the tree.
Here was a nest, at last, right over my eye. To encourage myself while waiting for something to happen, I began a list with the heading NESTS, when something caught my eye overhead, and glancing up, behold, a goldfinch walked down a branch and seated herself in a round cup! A few moments later--buzz--whirr--a hummingbird flew to a nest among the brown leaves of one of the low-hanging oak sprays not ten feet away! I simply stared with delight and astonishment. No need of a list for encouragement now. From Billy's back I could look down into the little cup, which seemed the tiniest in the world. Forgetting the little lover and his mate, I sat still and watched this small household.
The young were out of the eggs, though not much more, and their mother sat on the edge of the nest feeding them. She curved her neck over till her long bill stood up perpendicularly, when she put it gently into the gaping bills of her young; the smallest of bills, not more than an eighth of an inch long, I should judge. I never saw hummingbirds fed so gently. Probably the small bills and throats were so delicate the mother was afraid they would not bear the usual jabbing and pumping.
When the little ones were fed, the old bird got down in the nest, fluffing her feathers about her in a pretty motherly way and settling herself comfortably to rest, apparently ignoring the fact that Billy was grazing close beside her. She may have had her qualms, but no mother bird would leave her tender young uncovered on such a cold morning.
While she was on the nest, there was an approaching whirr, followed by a retreating buzz--had the father bird started to come to the nest and fled at sight of me? Remembering the evidence Bradford Torrey collected to prove that the male bird is rarely seen at the nest, I wondered if his absence might be explained by his usually noisy flight, for it would attract the notice of man or beast.
Two days later I carefully touched the tip of my finger to the back of one of the tiny hummingbirds,--it was very skinny, I regret to state,--and at my touch the little thing opened its wee bill for food. That day the mother fed the birds in the regulation way, when we were only four feet distant. I was near enough to see all the horrors of the performance. She thrust her bill down their throats till I felt like crying out, "For mercy's sake, forbear!" She plunged it in up to the very hilt; it seemed as if she must puncture their alimentary canals.
While waiting for the wrens, I buckled Billy's bridle around the sycamore and threw myself down on the warm sand under the beautiful tree. The little horse stood near, outlined against the blue sky, with the sunlight dappling his back, while I looked up into the light green foliage of the white sycamore overhead. There seemed to be a great deal of light stored in these delicate trees. The undersides of the big, soft, white leaves looked like white Canton flannel; the sunlight mottled the whitish bark of the trunks and branches; and a great limb arched above me, making a high vaulted chamber whose skylights showed the deep blue above.
But there were the little lover and his mate, and I must turn my glass on them. She came first, with long streamers hanging from her bill, and at sight of me got so flustered that one of her straws slipped out and went sailing down to the ground. When the pair had gone again, two linnets came along. The female saw the wren's doorway, and being in search of apartments flew up to look at the house. When she came out she and her mate talked it over and, apparently, she told him something that aroused his curiosity--perhaps about the wren's twigs she found inside--for he flew into the dark hole and looked around as she had done. Then both birds went off to inspect other holes in the tree. The master of the wren cottage came back in time to see them on their rounds, and taking up his position in front of his door sang out loudly, with wings hanging and a general air of, "This is _my_ house, I'd have you understand!"
When the lord of the manor had flown away, his lady came. I thought perhaps he had told her of the visitors and she had come to see if they had disturbed any of her sticks, for she brought no material. She was afraid to go to the nest in my presence, but flew to a branch near by and leaned down so far it was a wonder she didn't tip over as she stared anxiously at the hole--a bad way to keep a secret, my little lady! I thought. When her merry minstrel came, his song again gave her courage and she flew inside, turning in the doorway, however, to look out at me.
But what with horses grazing under her windows and linnets making free with her nest, the poor wren was unsettled in her mind. Possibly it would be wiser to take out her sticks and build elsewhere. She went about looking at vacant rooms and examined one opening in the side of the trunk where I could see only her profile as she hung out of the hole.
For some time the timid bird would not accept Mountain Billy and me as part of her immediate landscape, and I watched the premises a number of days, getting nothing but my labor for my pains, as far as wrens were concerned.
One day when she did not come, I thought it was a good chance to get a study of the hummingbird's nest; but alas!--the delicate little structure hung torn and dangling from the twig, with nothing to tell what had become of the poor little hummers. I moralized sadly upon the mutability of human affairs as I took the tattered nest and tied it up in a corner of my handkerchief; for it was all that was left of the little home built with such exquisite care and brooded over so tenderly.
The yellowbird's nest came to an untimely end, too, although its start was such a bright one. It was a disappointment, for the goldfinches are such trustful birds and so affectionate and tender in their family relations that they always win one's warm interest. At first, when this mother bird went to the nest, her mate stationed himself on the nest tree, leaning over and looking down anxiously at Billy and me; but before their home was broken up the watchful guardian fed his pretty mate at her brooding when we were below.
We had a great many visitors while waiting for the wrens: neighbors came to sit in our green shade, young housekeepers came looking for rooms to rent, and old birds who were leading around their noisy families came to dine with us. Once a pair of flickers started to light in the tree, but they gave a glance over the shoulder at me and fled. Later I found their secret--down inside an old charred stump up the canyon. Occasionally I got sight of gay liveries in the green sycamore tops. A Louisiana tanager in his coat of many colors stopped one day, and another time, when looking up for dull green vireos, my eye was startled by a flaming golden oriole. The color was a keen pleasure. Lazuli buntings, relatives of our eastern indigo-bird, sang so much within hearing that I felt sure they were nesting in the weeds outside the line of sycamores--I did find a pair building in the malvas beyond; a pair of bush-tits, cousins of the chickadees, came with one of their big families; California towhees often appeared sitting quietly on the branches; linnets were always stopping to discuss something in their emphatic way; clamorous blue jays rushed in and set the small birds in a panic, but seeing me quickly took themselves off; and a pair of wary woodpeckers hunted over the sycamore trunks and worked so cautiously that they had finished excavating a nest only just out of my sight on the other side of the wren tree trunk before I seriously suspected them of domestic intentions.
One day, when watching at the tree, a great brown and black lizard that the children of the valley call the 'Jerusalem overtaker' came worming down the side of an oak that I often leaned against. The rough bark seemed such a help to it that I imagined the wrens had done wisely in choosing a smooth sycamore to build in. I looked narrowly at their nest hole with the thought in mind and saw that the birds had another point of vantage in the way the trunk bulged at the hole--it did not seem as if a large lizard could work itself up the smooth slippery rounding surface, however much given to eggs for breakfast. But in the West Indies lizards walk freely up and down the marble slabs, so it is dangerous to say what they cannot do.
Billy had a surprise one day greater than mine over the lizard. He was grazing quietly near where I sat under the wren tree, when he suddenly threw up his head. His ears pointed forward, his eyes grew excited, and as he gazed his head rose higher and higher. I jumped from the ground and put my hand on the pommel ready to spring into the saddle. As I did so, across the field I caught a glimpse of a great fawn-colored animal with a white tip to its tail, bounding through the brush--a deer! Then I heard voices through the trees and saw the red shawl of a woman in a wagon rumbling up the road the deer must have crossed.
When Mountain Billy and I pulled ourselves together and started after the deer, the poor horse was so unstrung he made snakes of all the sticks he saw and shied at all imaginable bugaboos along the way. We were too late to see the deer again, but found the marks of its hoofs where it had jumped a ditch and sunk so deep in the fine sand on the other side that it had to take a great leap to recover itself.
The sight of the deer made Billy as nervous as a witch for days. Every time we went to visit the wrens he would stand with eyes glued to the spot where it had appeared, and when a jack-rabbit came out of the brush with his long ears up, Billy started as if he thought it would devour him. I was perplexed by his nervousness at first, but after much pondering reasoned it out, to my own satisfaction at least. His name was Mountain Billy, and in the days when he had been a wayward bucking mustang he lived in the Sierra. Now, even in the hills surrounding our valley, colts were killed by mountain lions. How much more in the Sierra. Mountain lions are large fawn-colored animals: that was it: Mountain Billy was suffering from an acute attack of association of ideas. The sight of the deer had awakened memories of the nightmare of his colthood days.
We made frequent visits to the wren tree, and both my nervous little horse and I had a start one morning, for as we rode in, a covey of quail flew up with a whirr from under the tree in front of us.