Part 9

SIX years ago, on my first visit to California, I found a dainty cup of a nest out in the oaks, but the name of its owner was a puzzle. On returning East I consulted those who are wisest in matters of such fine china, but they were unable to clear up the matter. For five years that mystery haunted me. At the end of that time, when back in California, up in those same oaks, I found another cup of the same pattern; but the cup got broken and that was the end of it.

The fact of the matter is, you can identify perhaps ninety per cent. of the birds you see, with an opera-glass and--patience; but when it comes to the other ten per cent., including small vireos and flycatchers, and some others that might be mentioned, you are involved in perplexities that torment your mind and make you meditate murder; for it is impossible to

Name _all_ the birds without a gun.

On bringing my riddle to the wise men, they shook their heads and asked why I did not shoot my bird and find out who he was. On saying the word his skin would be sent to me; but after knowing the little family in their home it would have been like raising my hand against familiar friends. Could I take their lives to gratify my curiosity about a name? I pondered long and weighed the matter well, trying to harden my heart; but the image of the winning trustful birds always rose before me and made it impossible. I will put the case before you, and you can judge if you would not have withheld your hand.

One day, hearing the sound of battle up in the treetops, I hurried over to the scene of action, when out dashed a pair of courageous little dull-colored birds in hot pursuit of a blue jay, whom they dove at till they drove him from the field. My sympathies were enlisted at once. Fearless little tots to brave a bird four times as big as themselves in defense of their home! How hard to have to build and rear a brood in the face of such a powerful foe! I wanted to take up the cudgels for them and stand guard to see that no harm came.

Planting my camp-stool under their oak, I watched eagerly to have my new friends show me their home. As I waited, a pair of turtle doves walked about on the sand under the farther branches of the tree; a pair of woodpeckers sat on a dead limb lying in wait for their prey; and a couple of titmice came hunting through the oak--all the world seemed full of happy home-makers.

But soon I saw a sight that made me forget everything else. There were my brave little birds up in the oak working upon a beautiful moss cup that hung from a forked twig. They were building together, flying rapidly back and forth bringing bits of moss from the brush to put in their nest.

They worked independently, each hunting moss and placing it to its own satisfaction. What one did the other would be well pleased with, I felt sure. But while each worked according to its own ideas, they always appeared to be working together; they could not bear to be out of sight of each other long at a time. When the small father bird found himself at the nest alone, after placing his material he would stand and call to let his pretty mate know that he was waiting for her; or else sit down by the nest and warble over such a contented, happy little lay it warmed my heart just to listen to him.

When his mate appeared the merry birds would chase off for a race through the treetops. Song and play were mingled with their work, but, for all that, the happy builders' house grew under their hands, and they kept faithfully at their task of preparing the home for their little brood. Once the small, dainty mother bird,--surely it must have been she,--after putting in her bit of moss, settled down in the nest and sat there the picture of quiet happiness.

This was all I saw of the nest builders that year. A great storm swept through the valley, and it must have washed away the frail mossy cup, for it was gone and the tree was deserted. Nevertheless, the birds had been so attractive, and their nest so interesting, that through the five years that passed before my return to California I kept their memory green, and could never think of them without tenderness--though I could call them by no name. If they had only worn red feathers in their caps, it would have been some clue to their coats-of-arms; but, out of hand, there seemed to be nothing to mark the plain, little, greenish gray birds from half a dozen of their cousins.

When I finally returned to the California ranch, one of my first thoughts was for the moss nest makers up in the oaks. Now I had a chance to solve the mystery without harming one of their pretty feathers, for by long and patient watching I might get near enough to puzzle out the 'spurious primary' and the subtle distinctions of tint that make such a difference in calling birds by their right names.

For six weeks I watched and listened in vain, but one day when riding up the canyon rejoicing at the new life that filled the trees, I stopped under an oak only a few rods from the one where the nest had been five years before, and looking up saw a small dull-colored bird with a bit of moss in its bill walking down into a mossy cup right before my eyes! For a few moments I was the happiest observer in the land. I had found my little friend again, after all these years! It looked over the edge of the twig at me several times, but went on gathering material as unconcernedly as if it, too, remembered me. The mossy cup seemed prettier than any rare bit of Sèvres china, for I looked upon it with eyes that had been waiting for the sight for five years.

As the bird worked, a cottontail rabbit rustled the leaves, and Billy started forward, frightening the timid animal so that it scampered off over the ground, showing the white underside of its tail. But though Billy and the rabbit were both terrified, the brave worker only flew down to a twig to look at them, and turned back calmly to its task.

The nest was so protectively colored that I could not see it readily, and sometimes started to find that I had been looking right at it without knowing it. The prospect of identifying my birds was not encouraging. You might as well expect to see from the first floor what was going on up in a cupola as to expect to see from the ground what birds are doing up in the thick oak tops. You have reason to be thankful for even a glimpse of a bird in the heavy foliage, and as for 'spurious primaries,'--"Woe worth the chase!"

Now and then I got a hint of family matters. My two little friends were working together, and occasionally I saw a bit of moss put in; but it was evident that the main part of the work was over. One day I waited half an hour, and when the bird came it acted as if it had really done all that was necessary, and only returned for the sake of being about its pretty home.

The birds said a good deal up in the oak, sometimes in sweet lisping tones, as though talking to themselves about the nest. They often flew away from it not far over my head. The call note was a loud whistle--_whee-it'_--and the bird gave it so rapidly that I once took out my watch to time him, after which he called seventy times in sixty seconds. Often after whistling loudly he would give a soft low call. His clear ringing voice was one of the most cheering in the valley.

When the building seemed done and I was looking forward to the brooding, as the birds would then, perforce, be more about the nest, one sad morning I rode up through the oaks and found the beautiful moss cup torn and dangling from its branch. It was the keenest disappointment of the nesting season, and there had been many. The pretty acquaintance to whose renewal I had looked forward so many years was now ended.

Again I had to leave California without being able to name my winning little friends. If I had been too much interested in them before to set a price on their heads; now, rather than raise my voice against them, they should remain forever unnamed.[4]

FOOTNOTE:

[4] Since this paper was written, I have consulted an authority on nests, who thinks that this nameless bird was probably Hutton's vireo.

XII.

HUMMERS.

CALIFORNIA is the land of flowers and hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are there the winged companions of the flowers. In the valleys the airy birds hover about the filmy golden mustard and the sweet-scented primroses; on the blooming hillsides in spring the air is filled with whirring wings and piping voices, as the fairy troops pass and repass at their mad gambols. At one moment the birds are circling methodically around the whorls of the blue sage; at the next, hurtling through the air after a distant companion. The great wild gooseberry bushes with red fuchsia-like flowers are like bee-hives, swarming with noisy hummers. The whizzing and whirring lead one to the bushes from a distance, and on approaching one is met by the brown spindle-like birds, darting out from the blooming shrubs, gleams of green, gold, and scarlet glancing from their gorgets.

The large brown hummers probably stop in the valley only on their way north, but the little black-chinned ones make their home there, and the big spreading sycamores and the great live-oaks are their nesting grounds. In the big oak beside the ranch-house I have seen two or three nests at once; and a ring of live-oaks in front of the house held a complement of nests. From the hammock under the oak beside the house one could watch the birds at their work. If the front door was left open, the hummers would sometimes fly inside; and as we stepped out they often darted away from the flowers growing under the windows.

California is the place of all places to study hummingbirds. The only drawback is that there are always too many other birds to watch at the same time; but one sees enough to want to see more. I never saw a hummingbird courtship unless--perhaps one performance I saw was part of the wooing. I was sitting on Mountain Billy under the little lover's sycamore when a buzzing and a whirring sounded overhead. On a twig sat a wee green lady and before her was her lover (?), who, with the sound and regularity of a spindle in a machine, swung shuttling from side to side in an arc less than a yard long. He never turned around, or took his eyes off his lady's, but threw himself back at the end of his line by a quick spread of his tail. She sat with her eyes fixed upon him, and as he moved from side to side her long bill followed him in a very droll way. When through with his dance he looked at her intently, as if to see what effect his performance had had upon her. She made some remark, apparently not to his liking, for when he had answered he flew away. She called after him, but as he did not return she stretched herself and flew up on a twig above with an amusing air of relief.

This is all I have ever seen of the courtship; but when it comes to nest-building, I have often been an eye-witness to that. One little acquaintance made a nest of yellow down and put it among the green oak leaves, making me think that the laws of protective coloration had no weight with her, but before the eggs were laid she had neatly covered the yellow with flakes of green lichen. I found her one day sitting in the sun with the top of her head as white as though she had been diving into the flour barrel. Here was one of the wonderful cases of 'mutual help' in nature. The flowers supply insects and honey to the hummingbirds, and they, in turn, as they fly from blossom to blossom probing the tubes with the long slender bills that have gradually come to fit the shape of the tubes, brush off the pollen of one blossom to carry it on to the next, so enabling the plants to perfect their flowers as they could not without help. It is said that, in proportion to their numbers, hummingbirds assist as much as insects in the work of cross-fertilization.

Though this little hummer that I was watching let me come within a few feet of her, when a lizard ran under her bush she craned her neck and looked over her shoulder at him with surprising interest. She doubtless recognized him as one of her egg-eating enemies, on whose account she put her nest at the tip of a twig too slender to serve as a ladder.

Another hummingbird who built across the way was still more trustful--with people. I used to sit leaning against the trunk of her oak and watch the nest, which was near the tip of one of the long swinging branches that drooped over the trail. When the tiny worker was at home, a yard-stick would almost measure the distance between us. As she sat on the nest she sometimes turned her head to look down at the dog lying beside me, and often hovered over us on going away.

The nest was saddled on a twig and glued to a glossy dark green oak leaf. Like the other nest, it was made of a spongy yellow substance, probably down from the underside of sycamore leaves; and like it, also, the outside was coated with lichen and wound with cobweb. The bird was a rapid worker, buzzing in with her material and then buzzing off after more. Once I saw the cobweb hanging from her needle-like bill, and thought she probably had been tearing down the beautiful suspension bridges the spiders hang from tree to tree.

It was very interesting to see her work. She would light on the rim of the nest, or else drop directly into the bottom of the tiny cup, and place her material with the end of her long bill. It looked like trying to sew at arm's length. She had to draw back her head in order not to reach beyond the nest. How much more convenient it would have been if her bill had been jointed! It seemed better suited to probing flower tubes than making nests. But then, she made nests only in spring, while she fed from flowers all the year round, and so could afford to stretch her neck a trifle one month for the sake of having a good long fly spear during the other eleven. The peculiar feature of her work was her quivering motion in moulding. When her material was placed she moulded her nest like a potter, twirling around against the sides, sometimes pressing so hard she ruffled up the feathers of her breast. She shaped her cup as if it were a piece of clay. To round the outside, she would sit on the rim and lean over, smoothing the sides with her bill, often with the same peculiar tremulous motion. When working on the outside, at times she almost lost her balance, and fluttered to keep from falling. To turn around in the nest, she lifted herself by whirring her wings.

When she found a bit of her green lichen about to fall, she took the loose end in her bill and drew it over the edge of the nest, fastening it securely inside. She looked very wise and motherly as she sat there at work, preparing a home for her brood. After building rapidly she would take a short rest on a twig in the sun, while she plumed her feathers. She made nest-making seem very pleasant work.

One day, wanting to experiment, I put a handful of oak blossoms on the nest. They covered the cup and hung down over the sides. When the small builder came, she hovered over it a few seconds before making up her mind how it got there and what she had better do about it. Then she calmly lit on top of it! Part of it went off as she did so, but the rest she appropriated, fastening in the loose ends with the cobweb she had brought.

She often gave a little squeaky call when on the nest, as if talking to herself about her work. When going off for material she would dart away and then, as if it suddenly occurred to her that she did not know where she was going, would stop and stand perfectly still in the air, her vibrating wings sustaining her till she made up her mind, when she would shoot off at an angle. It seemed as if she would be worn out before night, but her eyes were bright and she looked vigorous enough to build half a dozen houses.

"There's odds in folks," our great-grandmothers used to say; and there certainly is in bird folks; even in the ways of the same one at different times. Now this hummingbird was content to build right in front of my eyes, and the hummer down at the little lover's tree, with her first nest, was so indifferent to Billy and me that I took no pains to keep at a distance or disguise the fact that I was watching her. But when her nest was destroyed she suddenly grew old in the ways of the world, and apparently repented having trusted us. In any case, I got a lesson on being too prying. The first nest had not been down long before I found that a second one was being built only a few feet away--by the same bird? I imagined so. The nest was only just begun, and being especially interested to see how such buildings were started, I rode close up to watch the work. A roll of yellow sycamore down was wound around a twig, and the bottom of the nest--the floor--attached to the underside of this beam; with such a solid foundation, the walls could easily be supported.

The small builder came when Billy and I were there. She did not welcome us as old friends, but sat down on her floor and looked at us--and I never saw her there again. Worse than that, she took away her nest, presumably to put it down where she thought inquisitive reporters would not intrude. I was disappointed and grieved, having already planned---on the strength of the first experience--to have the mother hummer's picture taken when she was feeding her young on the nest.

At first I thought this suspicion reflected upon the good sense of hummingbirds, but after thinking it over concluded that it spoke better for hummingbirds than for Billy and me. If this were, as I supposed, the same bird who had to brood her young with Billy grazing at the end of her bill, and if she had been present at the unlucky moment when he got the oak branches tangled in the pommel of the saddle, although her branch was not among them, I can but admire her for moving when she found that the Philistines were again upon her, for her new house was hung at the tip of a branch that Billy might easily have swept in passing.

These nests had all been very low, only four or five feet above the ground; but one day I found young in one of the common treetop nests. I could see it through the branches. Two little heads stuck up above the edge like two small Jacks-in-boxes. Billy made such a noise under the oak when the bird was feeding the youngsters that I took him away where he could not disturb the family, and tied him to an oak covered with poison ivy, for he was especially fond of eating it, and the poison did not affect him.

Before the old hummer flew off, she picked up a tiny white feather that she found in the nest, and wound it around a twig. On her return, in the midst of her feeding, she darted down and set the feather flying; but, as it got away from her, she caught it again. The performance was repeated the next time she came with food; but she did it all so solemnly I could not tell whether she were playing or trying to get rid of something that annoyed her.

She fed at the long intervals that are so trying to an observer, for if you are going to sit for hours with your eyes glued to a nest, it really is pleasant to have something happen once in a while! Though the mother bird did not go to the nest often, she sometimes flew by, and once the sound of her wings roused the young, and they called out to her as she passed. When they were awake, it was amusing to see the little midgets stick out their long, thread-like tongues, preen their pin-feathers, and stretch their wings over the nest.

One fine morning when I went to the oak I heard a faint squeak, and saw something fluttering up in the tree. When the mother came, she buzzed about as though not liking the look of things, for her children were out of the nest, and behold!--a horse and rider were under her tree. She tried to coax the unruly nestlings to follow her into the upper stories, but they would not go.

Although not ready to be led, one of the infants soon felt that it would be nice to go alone. When a bird first leaves the nest it goes about very gingerly, but this little fellow now began to feel his strength and the excitement of his freedom. He wiped his tongue on a branch, and then, to my astonishment, his wings began to whirl as if he were getting up steam, and presently they lifted him from his twig, and he went whirring off as softly as a hummingbird moth, among the oak sprays. His nerves were evidently on edge, for he looked around at the sound of falling leaves, started when Billy sneezed, and turned from side to side very apprehensively, in spite of his out-in-the-world, big-boy airs. He may have felt hampered by his unused wings, for, as he sat there waiting for his mother to come, he stroked them out with his bill to get them in better working order. That done, he leaned over, rounded his shoulders, and pecked at a leaf as if he were as much grown up as anybody.

Of all the beautiful hummingbirds' nests I saw in California, three are particularly noteworthy because of their positions. One cup was set down on what looked like an inverted saucer, in the form of a dark green oak leaf wound with cobweb. That was in the oak beside the ranch-house. Another one was on a branch of eucalyptus, set between two leaves like the knot in a bow of stiff ribbon. To my great satisfaction, the photographer was able to induce the bird to have a sitting while she brooded her eggs. The third nest I imagined belonged to the bird who took up her floor because Billy and I looked at her. If she were, her fate was certainly hard, for her eggs were taken by some one, boy or beast. Her nest was most skillfully supported. It was fastened like the seat of a swing between two twigs no larger than knitting-needles, at the end of a long drooping branch. It was a unique pleasure to see the tiny bird sit in her swing and be blown by the wind. Sometimes she went circling about as though riding in a merry-go-round; and at others the wind blew so hard her round boat rose and fell like a little ship at sea.

XIII.

IN THE SHADE OF THE OAKS.

THERE were half a dozen places in the valley, irrigated by the spring rains, where I was always sure of finding birds. Among them, on the west side, was the big sycamore, standing at the lower end of the valley; while above, in the northwest corner, was the mouth of Twin Oaks canyon where the migrants flocked in the brush around the large twin oak that overlooked the little old schoolhouse. On the east side was the Ughland canyon, at the mouth of which the little lover and his neighbors nested; while below it straggled the line of sycamores that followed the Ughland stream down through my ranch. But up at the head of the valley beyond the ranch-house was the most delightful place of all. There I was always sure of finding interesting nests to study.

Surrounded by a waste of chaparral, it was a little oasis of great blooming live-oaks, and in their shade I used often to spend the hot afternoon hours. In the spring the water that flowed down the hills at the head of the valley formed a fresh mountain stream that ran down the Oden canyon and so on through the centre of this grove, feeding the oaks and spreading out to enrich the valley below. In summer, like the rest of the canyon streams, only its dry sandy bed remained. Then, when the meadows were oppressively hot, my leafy garden was a shady bower to linger in. Its long drooping branches hung to the ground, dainty yellow warblers flitted about the golden tassels of the blossoming trees, and the air was full of the happy songs of mated birds.