Chapter 5

Perhaps none of our birds have so fitted into song and story as the bobolink. Unlike a good child, who should "be seen and not heard," he is heard more frequently than seen. Very shy, of peering eyes, he keeps well out of sight in the meadow grass before entrancing our listening ears. The bobolink never soars like the lark, as the poets would have us believe, but generally sings on the wing, flying with a peculiar self-conscious flight horizontally thirty or forty feet above the meadow grass. He also sings perched upon the fence or tuft of grass. He is one of the greatest poseurs among the birds.

In spring and early summer the bobolinks respond to every poet's effort to imitate their notes. "Dignified 'Robert of Lincoln' is telling his name," says one; "Spink, spank, spink," another hears him say. But best of all are Wilson Flagg's lines:

". . .Now they rise and now they fly; They cross and turn, and in and out; and down the middle and wheel about, With a 'Phew, shew, Wadolincon; listen to me Bobolincon!"

After midsummer the cares of the family have so worn upon the jollity of our dashing, rollicking friend that his song is seldom heard. The colors of his coat fade into a dull yellowish brown like that of his faithful mate, who has borne the greater burden of the season, for he has two complete moults each year.

The bobolinks build their nest on the ground in high grass. The eggs are of a bluish white. Their food is largely insectivorous: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, spiders, with seeds of grass especially for variety.

In August they begin their journey southward, flying mainly by night. Arriving in the Southern States, they become the sad-colored, low-voiced rice or reed bird, feeding on the rice fields, where they descend to the ignominious fate of being dressed for the plate of the epicure.

Could there be a more tragic ending to the glorious note of the gay songster of the north?

BLACKPOLL WARBLER (Dendroica striata) Wood Warbler family

Length -- 5.5 to 6 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Black cap; cheeks and beneath grayish white, forming a sort of collar, more or less distinct. Upper parts striped gray, black, and olive. Breast and under parts white, with black streaks. Tail olive-brown, with yellow-white spots. Female -- Without cap. Greenish-olive above, faintly streaked with black. Paler than male. Bands on wings, yellowish. Range -- North America, to Greenland and Alaska. In winter, to northern part of South America. Migrations -- Last of May. Late October.

A faint "screep, screep," like "the noise made by striking two pebbles together," Audubon says, is often the only indication of the blackpoll's presence; but surely that tireless bird-student had heard its more characteristic notes, which, rapidly uttered, increasing in the middle of the strain and diminishing toward the end, suggest the shrill, wiry burn of some midsummer insect. After the opera-glass has searched him out we find him by no means an inconspicuous bird. A dainty little fellow, with a glossy black cap pulled over his eyes, he is almost hidden by the dense foliage on the trees by the time he returns to us at the very end of spring. Giraud says that he is the very last of his tribe to come north, though the bay-breasted warbler has usually been thought the bird to wind up the spring procession.

The blackpoll has a certain characteristic motion that distinguishes him from the black-and-white creeper, for which a hasty glance might mistake him, and from the jolly little chickadee with his black cap. Apparently he runs about the tree-trunk, but in reality he so flits his wings that his feet do not touch the bark at all; yet so rapidly does he go that the flipping wing-motion is not observed. He is most often seen in May in the apple trees, peeping into the opening blossoms for insects, uttering now and then his slender, lisping, brief song.

Vivacious, a busy hunter, often catching insects on the wing like the flycatchers, he is a cheerful, useful neighbor the short time he spends with us before travelling to the far north, where he mates and nests. A nest has been found on Slide Mountain, in the Catskills, but the hardy evergreens of Canada, and sometimes those of northern New England, are the chosen home of this little bird that builds a nest of bits of root, lichens, and sedges, amply large for a family twice the size of his.

BLACK-AND-WHITE CREEPING WARBLER (Mniotilta varia) Wood Warbler family

Called also: VARIED CREEPING WARBLER; BLACK-AND WHITE CREEPER; WHITEPOLL WARBLER; [BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER, AOU 1998]

Length -- 5 to inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Upper parts white, varied with black. A white stripe along the summit of the head and back of the neck, edged with black. White line above and below the eye. Black cheeks and throat, grayish in females and young. Breast white in middle, with black stripes on sides. Wings and tail rusty black, with two white cross-bars on former, and soiled white markings on tail quills. Female -- Paler and less distinct markings throughout. Range -- Peculiar to America. Eastern United States and westward to the plains. North as far as the fur countries. Winters in tropics south of Florida. Migrations -- April. Late September. Summer resident.

Nine times out of ten this active little warbler is mistaken for the downy woodpecker, not because of his coloring alone, but also on account of their common habit of running up and down the trunks of trees and on the under side of branches, looking for insects, on which all the warblers subsist. But presently the true warbler characteristic of restless flitting about shows itself. A woodpecker would go over a tree with painstaking, systematic care, while the black-and-white warbler, no less intent upon securing its food, hurries off from tree to tree, wherever the most promising menu is offered.

Clinging to the mottled bark of the tree-trunk, which he so closely resembles, it would be difficult to find him were it not for these sudden fittings and the feeble song, "Weachy, weachy, weachy, 'twee, 'twee, 'tweet," he half lisps, half sings between his dashes after slugs. Very rarely indeed can his nest be found in an old stump or mossy bank, where bark, leaves. and hair make the downy cradle for his four or five tiny babies.

DUSKY AND GRAY AND SLATE-COLORED BIRDS

Chimney Swift Kingbird Wood Pewee Phoebe and Say's Phoebe Crested Flycatcher Olive-sided Flycatcher Least Flycatcher Chickadee Tufted Titmouse Canada Jay Catbird Mocking-bird Junco White-breasted Nuthatch Red-breasted Nuthatch Loggerhead Shrike Northern Shrike Bohemian Waxwing Bay-breasted Warbler Chestnut-sided Warbler Golden-winged Warbler Myrtle Warbler Parula Warbler Black-throated Blue Warbler

See also the Grayish Green and the Grayish Brown Birds, particularly the Cedar Bird, several Swallows, the Acadian and the Yellow-bellied Flycatchers; Alice's and the Olive-backed Thrushes; the Louisiana Water Thrush; the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher; and the Seaside Sparrow. See also the females of the following birds: Pine Grosbeak; White-winged Red Crossbill; Purple Martin; and the Nashville, the Pine, and the Magnolia Warblers.

DUSKY, GRAY, AND SLATE-COLORED BIRDS

CHIMNEY SWIFT (Chaetura pelagica) Swift family

Called also: CHIMNEY SWALLOW; AMERICAN SWIFT

Length -- to 5.45 inches. About an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Long wings make its length appear greater. Male and Female -- Deep sooty gray; throat of a trifle lighter gray. Wings extend an inch and a half beyond the even tail, which has sharply pointed and very elastic quills, that serve as props. Feet are muscular, and have exceedingly sharp claws. Range -- Peculiar to North America east of the Rockies, and from Labrador to Panama. Migrations -- April. September or October. Common summer resident.

The chimney swift is, properly speaking, not a swallow at all, though chimney swallow is its more popular name. Rowing towards the roof of your house, as if it used first one wing, then the other, its flight, while swift and powerful, is stiff and mechanical, unlike the swallow's, and its entire aspect suggests a bat. The nighthawk and whippoorwill are its relatives, and it resembles them not a little, especially in its nocturnal habits.

So much fault has been found with the misleading names of many birds, it is pleasant to record the fact that the name of the chimney swift is everything it ought to be. No other birds can surpass and few can equal it in its powerful flight, sometimes covering a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, it is said, and never resting except in its roosting places (hollow trees or chimneys of dwellings), where it does not perch, but rather clings to the sides with its sharp claws, partly supported by its sharper tail. Audubon tells of a certain plane tree in Kentucky where he counted over nine thousand of these swifts clinging to the hollow trunk.

Their nest, which is a loosely woven twig lattice, made of twigs of trees, which the birds snap off with their beaks and carry in their beaks, is glued with the bird's saliva or tree-gum into a solid structure, and firmly attached to the inside of chimneys, or hollow trees where there are no houses about. Two broods in a season usually emerge from the pure white, elongated eggs.

What a twittering there is in the chimney that the swifts appropriate after the winter fires have died out! Instead of the hospitable column of smoke curling from the top, a cloud of sooty birds wheels and floats above it. A sound as of distant thunder fills the chimney as a host of these birds, startled, perhaps, by some indoor noise, whirl their way upward. Woe betide the happy colony if a sudden cold snap in early summer necessitates the starting of a fire on the hearth by the unsuspecting householder! The glue being melted by the fire, "down comes the cradle, babies and all" into the glowing embers. A prolonged, heavy rain also causes their nests to loosen their hold and fall with the soot to the bottom.

Thrifty New England housekeepers claim that bedbugs, commonly found on bats, infest the bodies of swifts also, which is one reason why wire netting is stretched across the chimney tops before the birds arrive from the South.

KINGBIRD (Tyrannus tyrannus) Flycatcher family

Called also: TYRANT FLYCATCHER; BEE MARTIN; [EASTERN KINGBIRD, AOU 1998]

Length -- 8 inches. About two inches shorter than the robin. Male -- Ashy black above; white, shaded with ash-color, beneath A concealed crest of orange-red on crown. Tail black, Terminating with a white band conspicuous in flight. Wing feathers edged with white. Feet and bill black. Female -- Similar to the male, but lacking the crown. Range -- United States to the Rocky Mountains. British provinces To Central and South America. Migrations -- May. September. Common summer resident.

If the pugnacious propensity of the kingbird is the occasion of its royal name, he cannot be said to deserve it from any fine or noble qualities he possesses. He is a born fighter from the very love of it, without provocation, rhyme, or reason. One can but watch with a degree of admiration his bold sallies on the big, black crow or the marauding hawk, but when he bullies the small inoffensive birds in wanton attacks for sheer amusement, the charge is less entertaining. Occasionally, when the little victim shows pluck and faces his assailant, the kingbird will literally turn tail and show the white feather. His method of attack is always when a bird is in flight; then he swoops down from the telegraph pole or high point of vantage, and strikes on the head or back of the neck, darting back like a flash to the exact spot from which he started. By these tactics he avoids a return blow and retreats from danger. He never makes a fair hand-to-hand fight, or whatever is equivalent in bird warfare. It is a satisfaction to record that he does not attempt to give battle to the catbird, but whenever in view makes a grand detour to give him a wide berth.

The kingbird feeds on beetles, canker-worms, and winged insects, with an occasional dessert of berries. He is popularly supposed to prefer the honeybee as his favorite tidbit, but the weight of opinion is adverse to the charge of his depopulating the beehive, even though he owes his appellation bee martin to this tradition. One or two ornithologists declare that he selects only the drones fur his diet, which would give him credit for marvellous sight in his rapid motion through the air. The kingbird is preeminently a bird of the garden and orchard. The nest is open, though deep, and not carefully concealed. Eggs are nearly round, bluish white spotted with brown and lilac. With truly royal exclusiveness, the tyrant favors no community of interest, but sits in regal state on a conspicuous throne, and takes his grand flights alone or with his queen, but never with a flock of his kind.

WOOD PEWEE (Contopus virens) Flycatcher family

Length -- 6.50 inches. A trifle larger than the English sparrow. Male -- Dusky brownish olive above, darkest on head; paler on throat, lighter still underneath, and with a yellowish tinge on the dusky gray under parts. Dusky wings and tail, the wing coverts tipped with soiled white, forming two indistinct bars. Whitish eye-ring. Wings longer than tail. Female -- Similar, but slightly more buff underneath. Range -- Eastern North America, from Florida to northern British provinces. Winters in Central America. Migrations -- May. October. Common summer resident

The wood pewee, like the olive-sided flycatcher, has wings decidedly longer than its tail, and it is by no means a simple matter for the novice to tell these birds apart or separate them distinctly in the mind from the other members of a family whose coloring and habits are most confusingly similar. This dusky haunter of tall shady trees has not yet learned to be sociable like the phoebe; but while it may not be so much in evidence close to our homes, it is doubtless just as common. The orchard is as near the house as it often cares to come. An old orchard, where modern insecticides are unknown and neglect allows insects to riot among the decayed bark and fallen fruit, is a happy hunting ground enough; but the bird's real preferences are decidedly for high tree-tops in the woods, where no sunshine touches the feathers on his dusky coat. It is one of the few shade-loving birds. In deep solitudes, where it surely retreats by nesting time, however neighborly it may be during the migrations, its pensive, pathetic notes, long drawn out, seem like the expression of some hidden sorrow. Pe-a-wee, pe-a-wee, pewee-ah-peer is the burden of its plaintive song, a sound as depressing as it is familiar in every walk through the woods, and the bird's most prominent characteristic.

To see the bird dashing about in his aerial chase for insects, no one would accuse him of melancholia. He keeps an eye on the "main chance," whatever his preying grief may be, and never allows it to affect his appetite. Returning to his perch after a successful sally in pursuit of the passing fly, he repeats his "sweetly solemn thought" over and over again all day long and every day throughout the summer.

The wood pewees show that devotion to each other and to their home, characteristic of their family. Both lovers work on the construction of the flat nest that is saddled on some mossy or lichen-covered limb, and so cleverly do they cover the rounded edge with bits of bark and lichen that sharp eyes only can detect where the cradle lies. Creamy-white eggs, whose larger end is wreathed with brown and lilac spots, are guarded with fierce solicitude.

Trowbridge has celebrated this bird in a beautiful poem.

PHOEBE (Sayornis phoebe) Flycatcher family

Called also: DUSKY FLYCATCHER; BRIDGE PEWEE; WATER PEWEE; [EASTERN PHOEBE, AOU 1998]

Length -- 7 inches. About an inch longer than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Dusky olive -- brown above darkest on head, Which is slightly crested. Wings and tail dusky, the outer edges of some tail feathers whitish. Dingy yellowish white underneath. Bill and feet black. Range -- North America, from Newfoundland to the South Atlantic States, and westward to the Rockies. Winters south of the Carolinas, into Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. Migrations -- March. October. Common summer resident.

The earliest representative of the flycatcher family to come out of the tropics where insect life fairly swarms and teems, what does the friendly little phoebe find to attract him to the north in March while his prospective dinners must all be still in embryo? He looks dejected, it is true, as he sits solitary and silent on some projecting bare limb in the garden, awaiting the coming of his tardy mate; nevertheless, the date of his return will not vary by more than a few days in a given locality year after year. Why birds that are mated for life, as these are said to be, and such devoted lovers, should not travel together on their journey north, is another of the many mysteries of bird-life awaiting solution.

The reunited, happy couple go about the garden and outbuildings like domesticated wrens, investigating the crannies on piazzas, where people may be coming and going, and boldly entering barn-lofts to find a suitable site for the nest that it must take much of both time and skill to build.

Pewit, phoebe, phoebe; pewit, phoebe, they contentedly but rather monotonously sing as they investigate all the sites in the neighborhood. Presently a location is chosen under a beam or rafter, and the work of collecting moss and mud for the foundation and hair and feathers or wool to line the exquisite little home begins. But the labor is done cheerfully, with many a sally in midair either to let off superfluous high spirits or to catch a morsel on the wing, and with many a vivacious outburst of what by courtesy only we may name a song.

When not domesticated, as these birds are rapidly becoming, the phoebes dearly love a cool, wet woodland retreat. Here they hunt and bathe; here they also build in a rocky bank or ledge of rocks or underneath a bridge, but always with clever adaptation of their nest to its surroundings, out of which it seems a natural growth. It is one of the most finished, beautiful nests ever found.

A pair of phoebes become attached to a spot where they have once nested; they never stray far from it, and return to it regularly, though they may not again occupy the old nest. This is because it soon becomes infested with lice from the hen's feathers used in lining it, for which reason too close relationship with this friendly bird-neighbor is discouraged by thrifty housekeepers. When the baby birds have come out from the four or six little white eggs, their helpless bodies are mercilessly attacked by parasites, and are often so enfeebled that half the brood die. The next season another nest will be built near the first, the following summer still another, until it would appear that a colony of birds had made their homes in the place.

Throughout the long summer -- for as the phoebe is the first flycatcher to come, so it is the last to go -- the bird is a tireless hunter of insects, which it catches on the wing with a sharp click of its beak like the other members of its dexterous family.

Say's Phoebe (Sayornis saya) is the Western representative of the Eastern species, which it resembles in coloring and many of its habits. It is the bird of the open plains, a tireless hunter in midair sallies from an isolated perch, and has the same vibrating motion of the tail that the Eastern phoebe indulges in when excited. This bird differs chiefly in its lighter coloring, but not in habits, from the black pewee of the Pacific slope.

GREAT-CRESTED FLYCATCHER (Myiarchus crinitus) Flycatcher family

Called also: CRESTED FLYCATCHER; [GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER, AOU 1998]

Length -- 8.50 to 9 inches. A little smaller than the robin. Male and female -- Feathers of the head pointed and erect. Upper parts dark grayish-olive, inclining to rusty brown on wings and tail. Wing coverts crossed with two irregular bars of yellowish white. Throat gray, shading into sulphur-yellow underneath, that also extends under the wings. Inner vane of several tail quills rusty red. Bristles at base of bill. Range -- From Mexico, Central America, and West Indies northward to southern Canada and westward to the plains. Most common in Mississippi basin; common also in eastern United States, south of New England. Migrations -- May. September. Common summer resident.

The most dignified and handsomely dressed member of his family, the crested flycatcher has, nevertheless, an air of pensive melancholy about him when in repose that can be accounted for only by the pain he must feel every time he hears himself screech. His harsh, shrill call, louder and more disagreeable than the kingbird's, cannot but rasp his ears as it does ours. And yet it is chiefly by this piercing note, given with a rising inflection, that we know the bird is in our neighborhood; for he is somewhat of a recluse, and we must often follow the disagreeable noise to its source in the tree-tops before we can catch a glimpse of the screecher. Perched on a high lookout, he appears morose and sluggish, in spite of his aristocratic-looking crest, trim figure, and feathers that must seem rather gay to one of his dusky tribe. A low soliloquy, apparently born of discontent, can be overheard from the foot of his tree. But another second, and he has dashed off in hot pursuit of an insect flying beyond our sight, and with extremely quick, dexterous evolutions in midair, he finishes the hunt with a sharp click of his bill as it closes over the unhappy victim, and then he returns to his perch. On the wing he is exceedingly active and joyous; in the tree he appears just the reverse. That he is a domineering fellow, quite as much of a tyrant as the notorious kingbird, that bears the greater burden of opprobrium, is shown in the fierce way he promptly dashes at a feathered stranger that may have alighted too near his perch, and pursues it beyond the bounds of justice, all the while screaming his rasping cry into the intruder's ears, that must pierce as deep as the thrusts from his relentless beak. He has even been known to drive off woodpeckers and bluebirds from the hollows in the trees that he, like them, chooses for a nest, and appropriate the results of their labor for his scarcely less belligerent mate. With a slight but important and indispensable addition, the stolen nest is ready to receive her four cream-colored eggs, that look as if a pen dipped in purple ink had been scratched over them.