CHAPTER IV

THE FOLKLORE OF BIRD MIGRATION

I was sitting on a hillside in the Catskill Mountains a few years ago in June, when a hawk came sailing over the field below me. Instantly a kingbird sprang from the edge of the woods and rushed, in the cavalier manner of that flycatcher, to drive the hawk away, presumably from its nesting neighborhood. The hawk tried to avoid the pecking and wing-beating of its furious little foe, but the tormenter kept at it; and before long I saw the kingbird deliberately leap upward and alight on the hawk’s broad back, where it rode comfortably until both birds were out of sight. I have seen a hummingbird indulge in the same piece of impudence.

The Arawak Indians of Venezuela relate that their ancestors obtained their first tobacco-plants from Trinidad by sending a hummingbird, mounted on a crane, to snatch and bring back the jealously guarded seeds. The association of these birds in this way seems significant.

It was doubtless because adventures similar to that of the kingbird were noticed long ago, that there grew up the very ancient fable that on one occasion a general assembly of birds resolved to chose for their king that bird which could mount highest into the air. This the eagle apparently did, and all were ready to accept his rule when a loud burst of song was heard, and perched upon the eagle’s back was seen an exultant wren that, a stowaway under its wing, had been carried aloft by the kingly candidate. This trickiness angered the eagle so much, says one tradition, that he struck the wren with his wing, which, since then, has been able to fly no higher than a hawthorn-bush. In a German version a stork, not an eagle, carries the wren aloft concealed under its wing.

W. H. Hudson, the authority on Argentine zoology, says that the boat-tailed grakle, or “chopi,” pursues all sorts of predatory birds, even the great caracara eagle, “pouncing down and fastening itself on the victim’s back, where it holds its place till the obnoxious bird has left its territory.” Sir Samuel Baker encountered in Abyssinia bands of cranes walking about in search of grasshoppers, every crane carrying on its back one or more small flycatchers that from time to time would fly down, seize an insect in the grass, and then return to a crane’s shoulders. Precisely the same thing has been recorded of bustards and starlings in South Africa.

Bird-students are well aware that certain ducks that nest in trees, and such marine birds as guillemots breeding on sea-fronting cliffs, sometimes carry down their young from these lofty birth-places by balancing them on their backs; also that it is a common thing to see water-fowls, especially grebes and swans, swimming about with a lot of little ones on deck, that is, on the broad maternal back.

These facts prepare us somewhat for examining the widely credited assertion that various large birds of powerful flight transport small birds on their semiannual migrations—a speculation accepted since classic times, or before them. In _Deuteronomy_, xxxii, II, we read: “As the eagle fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings,” etc. Modern ornithologists scout the notion. Thus Alfred Newton[55] refers to it in a scornful way, but admits that it is the conviction not only of Egyptian peasants but of Siberian Tartars, who assured the ornithologist Gmelin, in 1740, that in autumn storks and cranes carried southward on their backs all the Siberian corncrakes. In a Gaelic folk-tale of Cathal O’Couchan a falcon, knowing that the wren of the story has a long way to go, says: “Spring up between my wings, and no other bird will touch thee till thou reach home.”

In fact, this popular notion is almost world-wide, and it is useful to assemble such evidence as may be had as to the basis of it, for one cannot well dismiss with a gesture of disdain a theory that appears to have arisen independently, and from observation, among peoples so widely separated as those of Siberia and Egypt, of Crete and the Hudson Bay country; and which continues to be held by competent observers. A German man of letters, Adolph Ebeling, who published a book of his experiences in Egypt in 1878, was surprised to find the wagtail there at that season. This is a small, ground-keeping bird that flits about rather than flies; and he expressed to an old Arab his astonishment that such birds should be able to get across the Mediterranean. “The Bedouin,” Ebeling relates, “turned to me with a mixture of French and Arabic as follows: ‘Do you not know, noble sir, that these small birds are borne over the sea by the larger ones?’”

I laughed, but the old man continued quite naturally:

“Every child among us knows that. Those little birds are much too weak to make the long sea-journey with their own strength. This they know very well, and therefore wait for the storks and cranes and other large birds, and settle themselves upon their backs. In this way they allow themselves to be borne over the sea. The large birds submit to it willingly, for they like their little guests who by their merry twitterings help to kill the time on the long voyage.”

Ebeling met that evening, he says, in Cairo, the African explorer Theodor von Heuglin, who, as all know, was a specialist in African ornithology, related to him the conversation with the Bedouin, and asked his opinion on it. “Let others laugh,” said von Heuglin. “I do not laugh, for the thing is known to me. I should have recently made mention of it in my work if I had had any strong personal proof to justify it. We must be much more careful in such matters than a mere story-teller or novelist.”

A Swedish traveller, Hedenborg, is quoted by August Petermann, the geographer, as stating that in autumn on the Island of Rhodes, in the Ægean Sea, when the storks came in flocks across the water he often heard birds singing that he was unable to discover. “Once he followed a flock of storks, and as they alighted he saw small birds fly up from their backs.”

There was published in London in 1875 a book entitled _Bible Lands and Bible Customs_, the author of which was the Rev. Henry J. Van Lennep, D.D. Dr. Lennep informs his readers that many small birds are unable to fly across the Mediterranean, “and to meet such cases the crane has been provided.... In the autumn numerous flocks may be seen coming from the north ... flying low and circling over the plains. Little birds of various species may then be seen flying up to them, while the twittering songs of those comfortably settled on their backs may then be distinctly heard.” (Quoted in _Nature_, March 24, 1881). We may smile at the good man’s faith that God “provided” big birds as carriers for little ones—especially as we know that the weakest warblers are able to cross from Europe to Africa; but other equally modern and more matter-of-fact testimony comes from the same quarter of the world. In _The Evening Post_, of New York City, dated November 20, 1880, a long letter appeared on this topic, written by an anonymous correspondent who gave his own similar experience in Crete in the autumn of 1878, part of which reads:

“On several occasions the village priest—a friendly Greek with whom I spent the greater part of my time—directed my attention to the twittering and singing of small birds which he distinctly heard when a flock of sand-cranes passed by on their southward journey. I told my friend that I could not see any small birds, and suggested that the noise came from the wings of the large ones. This he denied, saying ‘No, no! I know it is the chirping of small birds. They are on the backs of the cranes. I have seen them frequently fly up and alight again, and they are always with them when they stop to rest and feed.’ I was still sceptical, for with the aid of a field-glass I failed to discover the ‘small birds’ spoken of. I inquired of several others and found the existence of these little feathered companions to be a matter of general belief. ‘They come over from Europe with them.’ One day, while fishing about fifteen miles from shore, a flock of cranes passed quite near the yacht. The fishermen, hearing the ‘small birds,’ drew my attention to their chirping. Presently one cried out, ‘There’s one!’ but I failed to catch sight of it, whereupon one of the men discharged his flintlock. Three small birds rose up from the flock and soon disappeared among the cranes.”

This letter, despite its column-length and its anonymity, was copied in full by that highly scientific journal _Nature_, of London, and this immediately brought out a note from John Rae, one of the wisest explorers of northwestern Canada, who related (_Nature_, March 3, 1881) that it was the general belief among the Maskegan (Cree) Indians dwelling along the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay that “a small bird, one of the Fringillidae, performs its northward migration in spring on the back of the Canada goose. These geese reach Hudson Bay about the last of April, and the Indians state that when they are fired at little birds are seen flying away from them.” Mr. Rae adds: “An intelligent, truthful and educated Indian, named George Rivers ... assured me that he had witnessed this, and I believe I once saw it occur.”

Almost simultaneously _Forest and Stream_ (New York, March 10, 1881) printed a communication from J. C. Merrill of Fort Custer, Montana, alleging “a general belief among the Crow Indians of Montana that the sandhill crane performs the same office for a bird they call _napite-shu-utl_, or crane’s back.” Mr. Merrill continued:

“This bird I have not seen, but from the description it is probably a small grebe. It is ‘big medicine’ and when obtained is rudely stuffed and carefully preserved.... About ten or fifteen per cent of cranes are accompanied by the ‘crane-back,’ which, as the crane rises from the ground, flutters up and settles on the back between the wings, remaining there until the crane alights. Such is the Indian account, and many of their hunters and chiefs have assured me that they have frequently seen the birds carried off in this way. At these times the bird is said to keep up a constant chattering whistle, which is the origin of the custom of the Crow warriors going out to battle, each with a small bone whistle in his mouth; this is continually blown, imitating the notes of the ‘crane’s-back,’ and, as they believe, preserves their ponies and themselves from wounds, so that in case of defeat they may be safely carried away as is the napite-shu-utl.

“The Cree Indians are said to observe the same habit in the white crane.”

Now there is no good reason to deny the honesty or sneer at the value of these widely distributed observations so long as they are regarded as descriptive of exceptions and not of a rule of migration. Neither the observers nor the reporters had any motive for deception, and are not likely to deceive themselves in every case—moreover, new witnesses continually arise. For example: Mr. E. Hagland, of Therien, Alberta, wrote to me as follows in a casual way, without any prompting, in April, 1919:

“One fall a flock of cranes passed over me flying very low, and apart from their squawking I could distinctly hear the twittering of small birds, sparrows of some kind. The chirping grew louder as the cranes drew towards me, and grew fainter as they drew away; and as the cranes were the only birds in sight I concluded that little birds were taking a free ride to the south.”

The manner of flight of sandhill cranes as described by Dr. Elliott Coues[50] suggests why they might well be utilized as common carriers by small birds going their way. “Such ponderous bodies, moving with slowly beating wings, give a great idea of momentum from mere weight ... for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves.” This would make it easy and tempting for a tired little migrant to rest its feet on the crane’s broad back—and once settled there, why not stay?

The flaw in this whole matter is the unwarranted inference made by the Bedouins who talked with Herr Ebling, and by wiser persons, namely, that _all_ the wagtails and other little birds annually perform their overseas journeys by aid of stronger-winged friends. That is reasoning from some to all, which is bad logic. It is as if a stranger in town noticed a few schoolboys hopping on the back of a wagon, and immediately noted down that in Pequaket boys in general rode to school on the tailboards of farm-wagons. Little birds, like small boys, have sense enough in their migrations to utilize a convenience when it is going their way—in other words a very few lucky ones each year manage to “steal a ride.”

Thus far we have been dealing with a matter pretty close to actual ornithology; but it is only within recent years that study has made clear to us “the way of an eagle in the air,” which, as a symbol of the semiannual movement of bird-hosts, was such a mystery to our forefathers. They imagined many quaint explanations, often no more sensible than the theory of the Ojibway Indians, who say that once bird-folk played ball with the North Wind. The latter won the game, and those kinds of birds who were on his side now stay in the North all winter, while those of the defeated side are obliged to flee southward every autumn, as their ancestors did at the end of the great ball-game.

Sir Walter Scott recalls in one of his novels the fond conceit of the little nuns in the abbey of Whitby, on the Northumberland coast, that the wee immigrants arriving there after their flight across the North Sea fluttered to earth not in weariness of wings but to do homage to Hilda, their saintly abbess. That was fifteen long centuries ago; but the story is true, for you may still see the ruins, at least, of Hilda’s abbey, and still, spring by spring, do tired birds pause beside it as if to pay their devotions.

Much less pleasant is the dread inspired in the hearts of those who listen to the Seven Whistlers. Formerly no Leicestershire miner would go down into a pit, after hearing them, until a little time had elapsed, taking the sounds as a warning that an accident was impending; and doubtless coincident mishaps occurred often enough to confirm faith in the presentiment. Level-headed men knew well enough what the Seven Whistlers were—“it’s them long-billed curlews, but I never likes to hear ’em,” said one. The northern name of these birds is “whimbrel,” a form of the English _whimperer_. As these curlews when migrating often travel low on dark nights, and are unseen, it is not strange that their unearthly cries should chill the imagination of the superstitious, and that the Scotch should call them “corpse-hounds.” “Gabble retchet” is another Scotch term; and probably the Irish banshee had a similar origin. Still another name is “Gabriel hounds,” originating, it is thought in Scandinavia, and explained by the fact that there the calling to one another of bean-geese in their nocturnal journeys, in spring, have a singular resemblance to the yelping of beagles; and the story is that Gabriel is obliged to follow his spectral pack, said to be human-headed, high in the dark air, as a punishment for having once hunted on Sunday.

Wordsworth in one of his sonnets connects this belief with the German legend of the Wild Huntsman, “doomed the flying hart to chase forever on aërial grounds.” A Lancashire explanation, quoted by Moncure D. Conway is that these migrants, there deemed to be plovers, were “Wandering Jews,” so called because they contained the souls of Jews who assisted at the Crucifixion, and in consequence were condemned to float in the air forever. A curious coincidence, given by Skeat,[7] is that the Malays have an elaborate story of a spectral huntsman, and hear him in the nocturnal notes of the birikbirik, a nightjar.

It is hardly more than a century ago that intelligent men abandoned the belief that certain birds hibernated in hollow trees, caverns, or even buried themselves every autumn in the mud at the bottom of ponds, and then recovered in the spring. This theory is of great antiquity, and was applied especially to the swallows, swifts, nightingales and corncrakes of the Mediterranean region; but even Aristotle doubted whether it was true of all birds. He discusses at some length in his _Natural History_[41] the winter retreat of fishes and other creatures that hibernate, and continues:

“Many kinds of birds also conceal themselves, and they do not all, as some suppose, migrate to warmer climes ... and many swallows have been seen in hollow places almost stripped of feathers; and kites, when they first showed themselves, have come from similar situations.... Some of the doves conceal themselves; others do not, but migrate along with the swallows. The thrush and the starling also conceal themselves.”

I have an unverified memorandum from the pen of Antonio Galvano, who resided in Mexico, long ago, that in his time hummingbirds “live of the dew, and the juyce of flowers and roses. They die or sleepe every yeere in the moneth of October, sitting upon a little bough in a warme and close place: they revive or wake againe in the moneth of April after that the flowers be sprung, and therefore they call them the revived birds.”

Even Gilbert White,[45] was inclined to think hibernation might be true, at least of British swallows; and Cowper sings—

The swallows in their torpid state Compose their useless wings.

Alexander Wilson[46] thought it necessary to combat vigorously the same fiction then persistent among Pennsylvania farmers, and did so at length in his _American Ornithology_ published in 1808.

But the wildest hypothesis was the one prevalent in the Middle Ages and alluded to by Dryden in his poem _The Hind and The Panther_, speaking of young swallows in autumn:

They try their fluttering wings and trust themselves in air, But whether upward to the moon they go, Or dream the winter out in caves below, Or hawk for flies elsewhere, concerns us not to know. Southwards, you may be sure, they bent their flight, And harbored in a hollow rock by night.

Or as Gay’s shepherd surmises:[8]

He sung where woodcocks in the summer feed, And in what climates they renew their breed; Some think to northern coasts their flight tend, Or to the moon in midnight hours ascend: When swallows in the winter season keep, And how the drowsy bat and dormouse sleep.

A quaint theological justification of this theory that birds fly to the moon as a winter-resort is to be found in Volume VI of _The Harleian Miscellany_. It is entitled “An Inquiry into the Physical and Literal Sense of the Scriptures,” and is an exegesis of Jeremiah viii, 7: “The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time, and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming.” The reverend commentator, whose name is lost, begins at once to explain migration among birds. He first assures his readers that many birds, including storks, often fly on migration at a height that renders them indiscernible. Now, he argues, if the flight of storks had been in a horizontal direction flocks of birds would have been seen frequently by travellers—ignoring the fact that they are and always have been observed. But, he goes on, as the flight is not horizontal it must be perpendicular to the surface of the earth, and, therefore, it becomes clear that the moon would be the first resting-place the birds would be likely to strike, whereupon he draws this conclusion: “Therefore the stork, and the same may be said of other season-observing birds, till some place more fit can be assigned to them, does go unto, and remain in some one of the celestial bodies; and that must be the moon, which is most likely because nearest, and bearing most relation to this our earth, as appears in the Copernican scheme; yet is the distance great enough to denominate the passage thither an itineration or journey.”

The author next clinches the matter by taking the time that the stork is absent from its nesting-place, and showing how it is utilized. Two months are occupied in the upward flight, three for rest and refreshment, and two more for the return passage. Thus this ingenious writer lays what he considers a solid scientific foundation beneath an ancient and vague theory.

The sudden vanishing of some migratory birds while others resembling them remained in view gave to ancient ignorance—not yet altogether dissipated, even in these United States—the belief that a bird might change into the form of another. The difference noticed in plumage in some species in summer and winter was accounted for in the same way, as many old Greek myths illustrate. Thus Sophocles, trying in one of his dramas to explain an inconsistency between two versions of the myth of Tereus, declares that the hoopoe of the older story is the hawk of the newer one—the birds were altered, not the narrative. He was easily believed, for to the Greeks of his day it appeared plain that birds might become transformed into others birds. Aristotle took great pains to show the absurdity of this notion, yet it has held on. Swann tells of an Englishman who declared that it was well-known that sparrow-hawks changed into cuckoos in spring; and another old belief is that the European land-rail becomes in winter the water-rail, resuming its own form in spring. A French name for the land-rail, by the way, is “king of the quails,” because the quails chose it as leader in their migrations.

One of the most picturesque incidents in the story of the wilderness-roving of the Children of Israel, who were “murmuring” for the fleshpots of Egypt, is the sudden coming of quails that “filled the camp.” The interpretation is plain that a migratory host of these birds had settled for the night where the Hebrews, or some of them, were; and the notable point is their abundance, and that they had disappeared when morning came, which is characteristic. These quails visit Europe in summer in prodigious numbers from south of the Mediterranean, and are netted for market by tens of thousands. It is said that in old times the bishops of Capri—Italy receives the greatest flight—derived a large part of their wealth from a tax on the catching of quails. Pliny alleges, as an example of the immense migrations of these quails in his time, that often, always at night, they settled on the sails of ships and so sank them. This really seems possible when one thinks of the small size of the “ships” of that period, and recalls that flights of our own migrating pigeons (now extinct) used to smash down stout branches of trees by the weight of the crowds of birds that settled on them.

Cranes are birds of striking characteristics, as we have seen, and seem to have impressed very forcibly the ancient Greeks as well as recent Orientals, the latter finding in them an extraordinary symbolism. The Greeks believed that during their winter absence the cranes were in constant battle with the Pygmies—“That small infantry warred on by cranes,” as Milton characterized those diminutive, but pugnacious folks who lived no one knew exactly where, but certainly at the ends of the earth. “The cranes travel,” Aristotle records, “from Scythia to the marshes in the higher parts of Egypt from which the Nile originates. This is the place where the Pygmies dwell; and this is no fable, for there is really, it is said, a race of dwarfs, both men and horses, which lead the life of troglodytes.”

When the shrill clouds of Cranes do give alarmes, The valiant _Pigmy_ stands unto his armes: Straight, too weak for the _Thracian_ bird, he’s swept, And through the eye in crooked tallons rapt.[48]

But this is only one item in the crane’s list of wonders. When this bird migrates it always flies against the wind, according to ancient bird-minders, and carries a swallowed stone as ballast so that it may not be swept out of its course by a change of wind; and this stone when it is vomited up is useful as a touchstone for gold. Aristotle had heard of this ballasting precaution, and expressly denies it, but he says nothing about other stones associated with the history of the bird, perhaps because they had not been discovered in his day. The sagacious cranes were also said to post sentinels, while halting at night, and to insure their necessary vigilance these sentinels were required to stand on one foot, and to hold in the other, uplifted one a large stone. Should one of these sentinel-birds drowse the stone would drop and by its noise awaken the sleepy sentry. This explains the fact that in British heraldry the crane is always represented with a bit of rock in its fist, the pose signifying “vigilance.”

Lyly,[49] in that queer old book _Euphues_, confesses: “What I have done was only to keep myselfe from sleepe, as the Crane doth the Stone in her foote; and I would also, with the same Crane, that I had been silent, holding a Stone in my mouth.” His 16th-century readers understood this second simile, for they remembered that cranes were said to be thus gagged when migrating, so as not to utter any cries that would bring eagles or other birds of prey to attack them.

This, perhaps, will be the most appropriate place to mention some other quaint but widely credited stories of birds possessed of stones, although they are not usually connected with migratory habits.

The people of Rome in the old days were told of a crystalline stone called _alectorius_, as large as a bean, to be found in the gizzard of the barnyard cock. It was held to have wonderful properties, endowing its possessor with strength, courage, and success with women and money, and to this apparently complete list of virtues is added by one historian the quality of invisibility. This last virtue also pertained to the stone placed by the raven in the throat of its fledgling, but the formalities described as necessary for anyone who sought to obtain it were quite impossible to fulfil. “It may, indeed,” as Hulme[38] remarks, “have had the same effect on the original owner, as there could scarcely be an authentic instance of such peculiar property being found.” On the other hand we are told that a stone from the hoopoe, when laid upon the breast of a sleeping man, forced him to reveal any rogueries he might have committed.

It is stated in Cassell’s _Natural History_ (Vol. IV), that in India exists a popular superstition that if you will split the head of an adjutant stork before death you may extract from the skull “the celebrated stone called _zahir mora_, or ‘poison-killer,’ of great virtue and repute as an antidote to all kinds of poison.” One would suppose that all the adjutants in India would long ago have been exterminated, but in fact this is one of the most numerous of birds there—the scavenger of every village.

The common swallow was once believed to have two of these miraculous stones stowed away somewhere in its interior. One was red, and cured an invalid instantly: the other, a black one, brought good fortune. Also, it was reported, swallows found on a seabeach, by some sort of inspiration, a particular kind of stone which would restore sight to the blind; and it was to this legend that Longfellow alluded in _Evangeline_—

Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone which the swallow Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of her fledglings.

Various birds also gave, or strengthened, sight to their young by means of certain plants mentioned by old herbalists. Finally, it should not be overlooked that on page 152 of the most recent edition of Cruden’s celebrated _Concordance_[51] to the Bible, among the generally astonishing notes beneath the word “eagle” is printed the following: “It is said that it preserves its nest from poison, by having therein a precious stone, named Aetites (without which it is thought the eagle cannot lay her eggs, and which some use to prevent abortion and help delivery in women, by tying it above or below the navel) and keepeth it clean by the frequent use of the herb maiden-hair.”

Now it is all well enough to find this information in the writings of Pliny senior, who alleges that these “eagle-stones” (in fact natural hollow nodules of iron-impregnated clay) were transported by nesting eagles to their domiciles to assist them in ovulation, whence by analogy—recognizing unwittingly the kinship of men and animals—they would aid women in travail, and to smile over it with the shrewd editor of _Vulgar Errors_,[33] but it is odd to find such an absurdity recommended by a modern clergyman as “profitable” material for sermons.

Let me round out this chapter with that recognition of bird-migration in the custom among the Vikings of the 8th and 9th centuries of saying as they embarked upon some raid upon the coasts south of them that they were “following the swan’s path.”