Chapter 7

With more artless inquisitiveness than fear, this lively little acrobat stops his hammering or hatcheting at your approach, and stretching himself out from the tree until it would seem he must fall off, he peers down at you, head downward, straight into your upturned opera-glasses. If there is too much snow on the upper side of a branch, watch how he runs along underneath it like a fly, busily tapping the bark, or adroitly breaking the decayed bits with his bill, as he searches for the spider's eggs, larvae, etc., hidden there; yet somehow, between mouthfuls, managing to call out his cheery quank! quank! hank! hank!

Titmice and nuthatches, which have many similar characteristics, are often seen in the most friendly hunting parties on the same tree. A pine woods is their dearest delight. There, as the mercury goes down, their spirits only seem to go up higher. In the spring they have been thought by many to migrate in flocks, whereas they are only retreating with their relations away from the haunts of men to the deep, cool woods, where they nest. With infinite patience the nuthatch excavates a hole in a tree, lining it with feathers and moss, and often depositing as many as ten white eggs speckled with red and lilac) for a single brood.

RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH (Sitta canadensis) Nuthatch family

Called also: CANADA NUTHATCH

Length -- 4 to 4.75 inches. One-third smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Lead-colored above; brownish on wings and tail. Head, neck, and stripe passing through eye to shoulder, black. Frontlet, chin, and shoulders white; also a white stripe over eye, meeting on brow. Under parts light, rusty red. Tail feathers barred with white near end, and tipped with pale brown. Female -- Has crown of brownish black, and is lighter beneath than male. Range -- Northern parts of North America. Not often seen south of the most northerly States. Migrations -- November. April. Winter resident.

The brighter coloring of this tiny, hardy bird distinguishes from the other and larger nuthatch, with whom it is usually seen, for the winter birds have a delightfully social manner, so that a colony of these Free masons is apt to contain not only both kinds of nuthatches and chickadees, but kinglets and brown creepers as well. It shares the family habit of walking about the trees, head downward, and running along the under side of limbs like a fly. By Thanksgiving Day the quank! quank! of the white-breasted species is answered by the tai-tai-tait! of the red-breasted cousin in the orchard, where the family party is celebrating with an elaborate menu of slugs, insects' eggs, and oily seeds from the evergreen trees.

For many years this nuthatch, a more northern species than the white-breasted bird, was thought to be only a spring and autumn visitor, but latterly it is credited with habits like its congener's in nearly every particular.

LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE (Lanius ludovicianus) Shrike family

Length -- 8.5 to 9 inches. A little smaller than the robin. Male and Female -- Upper parts gray; narrow black line across forehead, connecting small black patches on sides of head at base of bill. Wings and tail black, plentifully marked with white, the outer tail feathers often being entirely white and conspicuous in flight. Underneath white or very light gray. Bill hooked and hawk-like. Range -- Eastern United States to the plains. Migrations -- May. October. Summer resident.

It is not easy, even at a slight distance, to distinguish the loggerhead from the Northern shrike. Both have the pernicious habit of killing insects and smaller birds and impaling them on thorns; both have the peculiarity of flying, with strong, vigorous flight and much wing-flapping, close along the ground, then suddenly rising to a tree, on the lookout for prey. Their harsh, unmusical call-notes are similar too, and their hawk-like method of dropping suddenly upon a victim on the ground below is identical. Indeed, the same description very nearly answers for both birds. But there is one very important difference. While the Northern shrike is a winter visitor, the loggerhead, being his Southern counterpart, does not arrive until after the frost is out of the ground, and he can be sure of a truly warm welcome. A lesser distiction between the only two representatives of the shrike family that frequent our neighborhood -- and they are two too many -- is in the smaller size of the loggerhead and its lighter-gray plumage. But as both these birds select some high commanding position, like a distended branch near the tree-top, a cupola, house-peak, lightning-rod, telegraph wire, or weather-vane, the better to detect a passing dinner, it would be quite impossible at such a distance to know which shrike was sitting up there silently plotting villainies, without remembering the season when each may be expected.

NORTHERN SHRIKE (Lanius borealis) Shrike family

Called also: BUTCHER-BIRD; NINE-KILLER

Length -- 9.5 to 10.5 inches. About the size of the robin. Male -- Upper parts slate-gray; wing quills and tail black, edged and tipped with white, conspicuous in flight; a white spot on centre of outer wing feathers. A black band runs from bill, through eye to side of throat. Light gray below, tinged with brownish, and faintly marked with waving lines of darker gray. Bill hooked and hawk-like. Female -- With eye-band more obscure than male's, and with More distinct brownish cast on her plumage. Range -- Northern North America. South in winter to middle Portion of United States. Migrations -- November, April. A roving winter resident.

"Matching the bravest of the brave among birds of prey in deeds of daring, and no less relentless than reckless, the shrike compels that sort of deference, not unmixed with indignation, we are accustomed to accord to creatures of seeming insignificance whose exploits demand much strength, great spirit, and insatiate love for carnage. We cannot be indifferent to the marauder who takes his own wherever he finds it -- a feudal baron who holds his own with undisputed sway -- and an ogre whose victims are so many more than he can eat, that he actually keeps a private graveyard for the balance." Who is honestly able to give the shrikes a better character than Dr. Coues, just quoted? A few offer them questionable defence by recording the large numbers of English sparrows they kill in a season, as if wanton carnage were ever justifiable.

Not even a hawk itself can produce the consternation among a flock of sparrows that the harsh, rasping voice of the butcherbird creates, for escape they well know to be difficult before the small ogre swoops down upon his victim, and carries it off to impale it on a thorn or frozen twig, there to devour it later piecemeal. Every shrike thus either impales or else hangs up, as a butcher does his meat, more little birds of many kinds, field-mice, grasshoppers, and other large insects than it can hope to devour in a week of bloody orgies. Field-mice are perhaps its favorite diet, but even snakes are not disdained.

More contemptible than the actual slaughter of its victims, if possible, is the method by which the shrike often lures and sneaks upon his prey. Hiding in a clump of bushes in the meadow or garden, he imitates with fiendish cleverness the call-notes of little birds that come in cheerful response, hopping and flitting within easy range of him. His bloody work is finished in a trice. Usually, however, it must be owned, the shrike's hunting habits are the reverse of sneaking. Perched on a point of vantage on some tree-top or weather-vane, his hawk-like eye can detect a grasshopper going through the grass fifty yards away.

What is our surprise when, some fine warm day in March, just before our butcher, ogre, sneak, and fiend leaves us for colder regions, to hear him break out into song! Love has warmed even his cold heart, and with sweet, warbled notes on the tip of a beak that but yesterday was reeking with his victim's blood, he starts for Canada, leaving behind him the only good impression he has made during a long winter's visit.

BOHEMIAN WAXWING (Ampelis garrulus) Waxwing family

Called also: BLACK-THROATED WAX WING; LAPLAND WAX WING; SILKTAIL

Length -- 8 to 9.5 inches. A little smaller than the robin. Male and Female -- General color drab, with faint brownish wash above, shading into lighter gray below. Crest conspicuous. being nearly an inch and a half in length; rufous at the base, shading into light gray above, velvety-black forehead, chin, and line through the eye. Wings grayish brown, with very dark quills, which have two white bars; the bar at the edge of the upper wing coverts being tipped with red sealing-wax-like points, that give the bird its name. A few wing feathers tipped with yellow on outer edge. Tail quills dark brown, with yellow band across the end, and faint red streaks on upper and inner sides. Range -- Northern United States and British America. Most common in Canada and northern Mississippi region. Migrations -- Very irregular winter visitor.

When Charles Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, who was the first to count this common waxwing of Europe and Asia among the birds of North America, published an account of it in his "Synopsis," it was considered a very rare bird indeed. It may be these waxwings have greatly increased, but however uncommon they may still be considered, certainly no one who had ever seen a flock containing more than a thousand of them, resting on the trees of a lawn within sight of New York City, as the writer has done, could be expected to consider the birds "very rare."

The Bohemian waxwing, like the only other member of the family that ever visits us, the cedar-bird, is a roving gipsy. In Germany they say seven years must elapse between its visitations, which the superstitious old cronies are wont to associate with woful stories of pestilence -- just such tales as are resurrected from the depths of morbid memories here when a comet reappears or the seven-year locust ascends from the ground.

The goings and comings of these birds are certainly most erratic and infrequent; nevertheless, when hunger drives them from the far north to feast upon the juniper and other winter berries of our Northern States, they come in enormous flocks, making up in quantity what they lack in regularity of visits and evenness of distribution.

Surely no bird has less right to be associated with evil than this mild waxwing. It seems the very incarnation of peace and harmony. Part of a flock that has lodged in a tree will sit almost motionless for hours and whisper in softly hissed twitterings, very much as a company of Quaker ladies, similarly dressed, might sit at yearly meeting. Exquisitely clothed in silky-gray feathers that no berry juice is ever permitted to stain, they are dainty, gentle, aristocratic-looking birds, a trifle heavy and indolent, perhaps, when walking on the ground or perching; but as they fly in compact squads just above the tree-tops their flight is exceedingly swift and graceful.

BAY-BREASTED WARBLER (Dendroica castanea) Wood Warbler family

Length. -- 5.25 to 5.75 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- Crown, chin, throat, upper breast, and sides dull chestnut. Forehead, sides of head, and cheeks black. Above olive-gray, streaked with black. Underneath buffy. Two white wing-bars. Outer tail quills with white patches on tips. Cream white patch on either side of neck. Female -- Has more greenish-olive above. Range -- Eastern North America, from Hudson's Bay to Central America. Nests north of the United States. Winters in tropical limit of range. Migrations -- May. September. Rare migrant

The chestnut breast of this capricious little visitor makes him look like a diminutive robin. In spring, when these warblers are said to take a more easterly route than the one they choose in autumn to return by to Central America, they may be so suddenly abundant that the fresh green trees and shrubbery of the garden will contain a dozen of the busy little hunters. Another season they may pass northward either by another route or leave your garden unvisited; and perhaps the people in the very next town may be counting your rare bird common, while it is simply perverse.

Whether common or rare, before your acquaintance has had time to ripen into friendship, away go the freaky little creatures to nest in the tree-tops of the Canadian coniferous forests.

CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER (Dendroica pennsylvanica) Wood Warbler family

Called also: BLOODY-SIDED WARBLER

Length -- About 5 inches. More than an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Top of head and streaks in wings yellow. A black line running through the eye and round back of crown, and a black spot in front of eye, extending to cheeks. Ear coverts, chin, and underneath white. Back greenish gray and slate, streaked with black. Sides of bird chestnut. Wings, which are streaked with black and yellow, have yellowish-white bars. Very dark tail with white patches on inner vanes of the outer quills. Female -- Similar, but duller. Chestnut sides are often scarcely apparent. Range -- Eastern North America, from Manitoba and Labrador to the tropics, where it winters. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident, most common in migrations.

In the Alleghanies, and from New Jersey and Illinois northward, this restless little warbler nests in the bushy borders of woodlands and the undergrowth of the woods, for which he forsakes our gardens and orchards after a very short visit in May. While hopping over the ground catching ants, of which he seems to be inordinately fond, or flitting actively about the shrubbery after grubs and insects, we may note his coat of many colors -- patchwork in which nearly all the warbler colors are curiously combined. With drooped wings that often conceal the bird's chestnut sides, which are his chief distinguishing mark, and with tail erected like a redstart's, he hunts incessantly. Here in the garden he is as refreshingly indifferent to your interest in him as later in his breeding haunts he is shy and distrustful. His song is bright and animated, like that of the yellow warbler.

GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER (Helminthophila chrysoptera) Wood Warbler family

Length -- About 5 inches. More than an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Yellow crown and yellow patches on the wings. Upper parts bluish gray, sometimes tinged with greenish. Stripe through the eye and throat black. Sides of head chin, and line over the eye white. Underneath white, grayish on sides. A few white markings on outer tail feathers. Female -- Crown duller; gray where male is black, with olive Upper parts and grayer underneath. Range -- From Canadian border to Central America, where it winters. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.

After one has seen a golden-winged warbler fluttering hither and thither about the shrubbery of a park within sight and sound of a great city's distractions and with blissful unconcern of them all, partaking of a hearty lunch of insects that infest the leaves before one's eyes, one counts the bird less rare and shy than one has been taught to consider it. Whoever looks for a warbler with gaudy yellow wings will not find the golden-winged variety. His wings have golden patches only, and while these are distinguishing marks, they are scarcely prominent enough features to have given the bird the rather misleading name he bears. But, then, most warblers' names are misleading. They serve their best purpose in cultivating patience and other gentle virtues in the novice.

Such habits and choice of haunts as characterize the blue-winged warbler are also the golden-winged's. But their voices are quite different, the former's being sharp and metallic, while the latter's zee, zee, zee comes more lazily and without accent.

MYRTLE WARBLER (Dendroica coronata) Wood Warbler family

Called also: YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER [AOU 1998]; MYRTLE BIRD; YELLOW-CROWNED WARBLER

Length -- 5 to 5.5 inches. About an inch smaller than the English sparrow. Male -- In summer plumage: A yellow patch on top of head, lower back, and either side of the breast. Upper parts bluish slate, streaked with black. Upper breast black; throat white; all other under parts whitish, streaked with black. Two white wing bars, and tail quills have white spots near the tip. In winter: Upper parts olive-brown, streaked with black; the yellow spot on lower back the only yellow mark remaining. Wing-bars grayish. Female -- Resembles male in winter plumage. Range -- Eastern North America. Occasional on Pacific slope. Summers from Minnesota and northern New England northward to Fur Countries. Winters from Middle States south ward into Central America; a few often remaining at the northern United States all the winter. Migrations -- April. October. November. Also, but more rarely, a winter resident.

The first of the warblers to arrive in the spring and the last to leave us in the autumn, some even remaining throughout the northern winter, the myrtle warbler, next to the summer yellowbird, is the most familiar of its multitudinous kin. Though we become acquainted with it chiefly in the migrations, it impresses us by its numbers rather than by any gorgeousness of attire. The four yellow spots on crown, lower back, and sides are its distinguishing marks; and in the autumn these marks have dwindled to only one, that on the lower back or rump. The great difficulty experienced in identifying any warbler is in its restless habit of flitting about.

For a few days in early May we are forcibly reminded of the Florida peninsula, which fairly teems with these birds; they become almost superabundant, a distraction during the precious days when the rarer species are quietly slipping by, not to return again for a year, perhaps longer, for some warblers are notoriously irregular in their routes north and south, and never return by the way they travelled in the spring.

But if we look sharply into every group of myrtle warblers, we are quite likely to discover some of their dainty, fragile cousins that gladly seek the escort of birds so fearless as they. By the last of May all the warblers are gone from the neighborhood except the constant little summer yellowbird and redstart.

In autumn, when the myrtle warblers return after a busy enough summer passed in Canadian nurseries, they chiefly haunt those regions where juniper and bay-berries abound. These latter (Myrica cerifera), or the myrtle wax-berries, as they are sometimes called, and which are the bird's favorite food, have given it their name. Wherever the supply of these berries is sufficient to last through the winter, there it may be found foraging in the scrubby bushes. Sometimes driven by cold and hunger from the fields, this hardiest member of a family that properly belongs to the tropics, seeks shelter and food close to the outbuildings on the farm.

PARULA WARBLER (Compsothlypis americana) Wood Warbler family

Called also: BLUE YELLOW-BACKED WARBLER; [NORTHERN PARULA, AOU 1998] Length -- 4.5 to 4.75 inches. About an inch and a half shorter than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Slate-colored above, with a greenish-yellow or bronze patch in the middle of the back. Chin, throat, and breast yellow. A black, bluish, or rufous band across the breast, usually lacking in female. Underneath white, sometimes marked with rufous on sides, but these markings are variable. Wings have two white patches; outer tail feathers have white patch near the end. Range -- Eastern North America. Winters from Florida southward. Migrations -- April. October. Summer resident.

Through an open window of an apartment in the very heart of New York City, a parula warbler flew this spring of 1897, surely the daintiest, most exquisitely beautiful bird visitor that ever voluntarily lodged between two brick walls.

A number of such airy, tiny beauties flitting about among the blossoms of the shrubbery on a bright May morning and swaying on the slenderest branches with their inimitable grace, is a sight that the memory should retain into old age. They seem the very embodiment of life, joy, beauty, grace; of everything lovely that birds by any possibility could be. Apparently they are wafted about the garden; they fly with no more effort than a dainty lifting of the wings, as if to catch the breeze, that seems to lift them as it might a bunch of thistledown. They go through a great variety of charming posturings as they hunt for their food upon the blossoms and tender fresh twigs, now creeping like a nuthatch along the bark and peering into the crevices, now gracefully swaying and balancing like a goldfinch upon a slender, pendent stem. One little sprite pauses in its hunt for the insects to raise its pretty head and trill a short and wiry song.

But the parula warbler does not remain long about the gardens and orchards, though it will not forsake us altogether for the Canadian forests, where most of its relatives pass the summer. It retreats only to the woods near the water, if may be, or to just as close a counterpart of a swampy southern woods, where the Spanish or Usnea "moss" drapes itself over the cypresses, as it can find here at the north. Its rarely [found,] beautiful nest, that hangs suspended from a slender branch very much like the Baltimore oriole's, is so woven and festooned with this moss that its concealment is perfect.

BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER (Dendroica caerulescens) Wood Warbler family

Length -- 5.30 inches. About an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male -- Slate-color, not blue above; lightest on forehead and darkest on lower back. Wings and tail edged with bluish. Cheeks, chin, throat, upper breast, and sides black. Breast and underneath white. White spots on wings, and a little white on tail. Female -- Olive-green above; underneath soiled yellow. Wing-spots inconspicuous. Tail generally has a faint bluish tinge. Range -- Eastern North America, from Labrador to tropics, where It winters. Migrations -- May. September. Usually a migrant only in the United States.

Whoever looks for this beautifully marked warbler among the bluebirds, will wish that the man who named him had possessed a truer eye for color. But if the name so illy fits the bright slate-colored male, how grieved must be his little olive-and-yellow mate to answer to the name of black-throated blue warbler when she has neither a black throat nor a blue feather! It is not easy to distinguish her as she flits about the twigs and leaves of the garden in May or early autumn, except as she is seen in company with her husband, whose name she has taken with him for better or for worse. The white spot on the wings should always be looked for to positively identify this bird.

Before flying up to a twig to peck off the insects, the birds have a pretty vireo trick of cocking their heads on one side to investigate the quantity hidden underneath the leaves. They seem less nervous and more deliberate than many of their restless family.

Most warblers go over the Canada border to nest, but there are many records of the nests of this species in the Alleghanies as far south as Georgia, in the Catskills, in Connecticut, northern Minnesota and Michigan. Laurel thickets and moist undergrowth of woods in the United States, and more commonly pine woods in Canada, are the favorite nesting haunts. A sharp zip, zip, like some midsummer insect's noise, is the bird's call-note, but its love-song, zee, zee, zee, or twee, twea, twea-e-e, as one authority writes it, is only rarely heard in the migrations. It is a languid, drawling little strain, with an upward slide that is easily drowned in the full bird chorus of May.

BLUE AND BLUISH BIRDS