Chapter 5
Besides the horned larks, many other birds were found on the plain. Next in abundance were the western meadow-larks. Persons who live in the East and are familiar with the songs of the common meadow-lark, should hear the vocal performances of the westerners. The first time I heard one of them, the minstrelsy was so strange to my ear, so different from anything I had ever heard, I was thrown into an ecstasy of delight, and could not imagine from what kind of bird larynx so quaint a medley could emanate. The song opened with a loud, fine, piercing whistle, and ended with an abrupt staccato gurgle much lower in the musical staff, sounding precisely as if the soloist's performance had been suddenly choked off by the rising of water in the windpipe. It was something after the order of the purple martin's melodious sputter, only the tones were richer and fuller and the music better defined, as became a genuine oscine. His sudden and emphatic cessation seemed to indicate that he was in a petulant mood, perhaps impatient with the intruder, or angry with a rival songster.
Afterwards I heard him--or, rather, one of his brothers--sing arias so surpassingly sweet that I voted him the master minstrel of the western plains, prairies, and meadows. One evening as I was returning to Colorado Springs from a long tramp through one of the cañons of the mountains, a western meadow-lark sat on a small tree and sang six different tunes within the space of a few minutes. Two of them were so exquisite and unique that I involuntarily sprang to my feet with a cry of delight. There he sat in the lengthening shadows of Cheyenne Mountain, the champion phrase-fluter of the irrigated meadow in which he and a number of his comrades had found a summer home.
On the plain, at the time of my visit, the meadow-larks were not quite so tuneful, for here the seasons are somewhat earlier than in the proximity of the mountains, and the time of courtship and incubation was over. Still, they sang enough to prove themselves members of a gifted musical family. Observers in the East will remember the sputtering call of the eastern larks when they are alarmed or their suspicions are aroused. The western larks do not utter alarums of that kind, but a harsh "chack" instead, very similar to the call of the grackles. The nesting habits of the eastern and western species are the same, their domiciles being placed on the ground amid the grass, often prettily arched over in the rear and made snug and neat.
It must not be thought, because my monograph on the western larks is included in this chapter, that they dwell exclusively on the arid plain. No; they revel likewise in the areas of verdure bordering the streams, in the irrigated fields and meadows, and in the watered portions of the upper mountain parks.
An interesting question is the following: Are the eastern and western meadow-larks distinct species, or only varieties somewhat specialized by differences of locality and environment? It is a problem over which the scientific professors have had not a little disputation. My own opinion is that they are distinct species and do not cohabit, and the conviction is based on some special investigations, though not of the kind that are made with the birds in hand. It has been my privilege to study both forms in the field. In the first place, their vocal exhibitions are very different, so much so as to indicate a marked diversity in the organic structure of their larynxes. Much as I have listened to their minstrelsy, I have never known one kind to borrow from the musical repertory of the other. True, there are strains in the arias of the westerners that closely resemble the clear, liquid whistle of the eastern larks, but they occur right in the midst of the song and are part and parcel of it, and therefore afford no evidence of mimicry or amalgamation. Even the trills of the grassfinch and the song-sparrow have points of similarity; does that prove that they borrow from each other, or that espousals sometimes occur between the two species?
The habiliments of the two forms of larks are more divergent than would appear at first blush. Above, the coloration of _neglecta_ (the western) is paler and grayer than that of _magna_, the black markings being less conspicuous, and those on the tertials and middle tail-feathers being arranged in narrow, isolated bars, and not connected along the shaft. While the flanks and under tail-coverts of _magna_ are distinctly washed with buff, those of _neglecta_ are white, very faintly tinged with buff, if at all. The yellow of the throat of the eastern form does not spread out laterally over the malar region, as does that of the western lark. All of which tends to prove that the two forms are distinct.
Early in the spring of 1901 the writer took a trip to Oklahoma in the interest of bird-study, and found both kinds of meadow-larks extremely abundant and lavish of their melodies on the fertile prairies. He decided to carry on a little original investigation in the field of inquiry now under discussion. One day, in a draw of the prairie, he noticed a western meadow-lark which was unusually lyrical, having the skill of a past-master in the art of trilling and gurgling and fluting. Again and again I went to the place, on the same day and on different days, and invariably found the westerner there, perching on the fence or a weed-stem, and greeting me with his exultant lays. But, mark: no eastern lark ever intruded on his preserve. In other and more distant parts of the broad field the easterners were blowing their piccolos, but they did not encroach on the domain of the lyrical westerner, who, with his mate--now on her nest in the grass--had evidently jumped his claim and held it with a high hand. In many other places in Oklahoma and Kansas where both species dwell, I have noticed the same interesting fact--that in the breeding season each form selects a special precinct, into which the other form does not intrude. They perhaps put up some kind of trespass sign. These observations have all but convinced me that _S. magna_ and _S. neglecta_ are distinct species, and avoid getting mixed up in their family affairs.
Nor is that all. While both forms dwell on the vast prairies of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, yet, as you travel eastward, the western larks gradually diminish in number until at length they entirely disappear; whereas, if you journey westward, the precise opposite occurs. I have never heard _neglecta_ east of the Missouri River,[4] nor _magna_ on the plains of Colorado. Therefore the conclusion is almost forced upon the observer that there are structural and organic differences between the two forms.
[4] He sometimes ventures, though sparingly, as far east as Illinois and Wisconsin; still my statement is true--I have never heard the western lark even in the bottoms and meadows of the broad valley east of the Missouri River, while, one spring morning, I did hear one of these birds fluting in the top of a cottonwood tree in my yard on the high western bluff of that stream.
After the foregoing deductions had been reached, the writer bethought him of consulting Ridgway's Manual on the subject, and was gratified to find his views corroborated by a footnote answering to an asterisk affixed to the name of the western lark:
"Without much doubt a distinct species. The occurrence of both _S. neglecta_ and _S. magna_ together in many portions of the Mississippi Valley, each in its typical style (the ranges of the two overlapping, in fact, for a distance of several hundred miles), taken together with the excessive rarity of intermediate specimens and the universally attested radical difference in their notes, are facts wholly incompatible with the theory of their being merely geographical races of the same species."
This has been a long _excursus_, and we must get back to our jaunt on the plain. While I was engaged in watching the birds already named, my ear was greeted by a loud, clear, bell-like call; and, on looking in the direction from which it came, I observed a bird hovering over a ploughed field not far away, and then descending with graceful, poising flight to the ground. It proved to be the Arkansas flycatcher, a large, elegant bird that is restricted to the West. I had never seen this species. Nothing like him is known in the East, the crested flycatcher being most nearly a copy of him, although the manners of the two birds are quite unlike. The body of the western bird is as large as that of the robin, and he must be considerably longer from tip of beak to tip of tail. He is a fine-looking fellow, presenting a handsome picture as he stands on a weed-stalk or a fence-post, his yellow jacket gleaming in the sun. He is the possessor of a clear, musical voice, and if he had the vocal organs of some of the oscines, he certainly would be one of the best feathered lyrists of America. Unfortunately he is able to do nothing but chirp and chatter, although he puts not a little music into his simple vocal exercises.
It was surprising to note on how slender a weed-stalk so large a bird was able to perch. There being few trees and fences in this region, he has doubtless gained expertness through practice in the art of securing a foot-hold on the tops of the weed-stems. Some of the weeds on which he stood with perfect ease and grace were extremely lithe and flexible and almost devoid of branches.
But what was the cause of this particular bird's intense solicitude? It was obvious there was a nest in the neighborhood. As I sought in the grass and weed-clumps, he uttered his piercing calls of protest and circled and hovered overhead like a red-winged blackbird. Suddenly the thought occurred to me that the flycatchers of my acquaintance do not nest on the ground, but on trees. I looked around, and, sure enough, in the shallow hollow below me stood a solitary willow tree not more than fifteen or twenty feet high, the only tree to be seen within a mile. And that lone tree on the plain was occupied by the flycatcher and his mate for a nesting place. In a crotch the gray cottage was set, containing three callow babies and one beautifully mottled egg.
In another fork of the same small tree a pair of kingbirds--the same species as our well-known eastern bee-martins--had built their nest, in the downy cup of which lay four eggs similarly decorated with brown spots. The birds now all circled overhead and joined in an earnest plea with me not to destroy their homes and little ones, and I hurriedly climbed down from the tree to relieve their agitation, stopping only a moment to examine the twine plaited into the felted nests of the kingbirds. The willow sapling contained also the nest of a turtle dove.
"If there are three nests in this small tree, there may be a large number in the cluster of trees beyond the swell about a mile away," I mused, and forthwith made haste to go to the place indicated. I was not disappointed. Had the effort been made, I am sure two score of nests might have been found in these trees, for they were liberally decorated with bird cots and hammocks. Most of these were kingbirds' and Arkansas flycatchers' nests, but there were others as well. On one small limb there were four of the dangling nests of Bullock's orioles, one of them fresh, the rest more or less weather beaten, proving that this bird had been rearing broods here for a number of seasons.
Whose song was this ringing from one of the larger trees a little farther down the glade? I could scarcely believe the testimony of my ears and eyes, yet there could be no mistake--it was the vivacious mimicry of the mocking-bird, which had travelled far across the plain to this solitary clump of trees to find singing perches and a site for his nests. He piped his musical miscellany with as much good-cheer as if he were dwelling in the neighborhood of some embowered cottage in Dixie-land. In suitable localities on the plains of Colorado the mockers were found to be quite plentiful, but none were seen among the mountains.
A network of twigs and vines in one of the small willows afforded a support and partial covert for the nest of a pair of white-rumped shrikes. It contained six thickly speckled eggs, and was the first nest of this species I had ever found. The same hollow,--if so shallow a dip in the plain can be called a hollow,--was selected as the home of several pairs of red-winged and Brewer's blackbirds, which built their grassy cots in the low bushes of a slightly boggy spot, where a feeble spring oozed from the ground. It was a special pleasure to find a green-tailed towhee in the copse of the draw, for I had supposed that he always hugged close to the steep mountain sides.
A walk before breakfast the next morning added several more avian species to my roll. To my surprise, a pair of mountain bluebirds had chosen the village for their summer residence, and were building a nest in the coupler of a freight car standing on a side track. The domicile was almost completed, and I could not help feeling sorry for the pretty, innocent couple, at the thought that the car would soon be rolling hundreds of miles away, and all their loving toil would go for naught. Bluebirds had previously been seen at the timber-line among the mountains, and here was a pair forty miles out on the plain--quite a range for this species, both longitudinally and vertically.
During the forenoon the following birds were observed: A family of juvenile Arkansas flycatchers, which were being fed by their parents; a half-dozen or more western grassfinches, trilling the same pensive tunes as their eastern half-brothers; a small, long-tailed sparrow, which I could not identify at the time, but which I now feel certain was Lincoln's sparrow; these, with a large marsh-harrier and a colony of cliff-swallows, completed my bird catalogue at this place. It may not be amiss to add that several jack-rabbits went skipping over the swells; that many families of prairie dogs were visited, and that a coyotte galloped lightly across the plain, stopping and looking back occasionally to see whether he were being pursued.
It was no difficult task to study the birds on the plain. Having few hiding-places in a locality almost destitute of trees and bushes, where even the grass was too short to afford a covert, they naturally felt little fear of man, and hence were easily approached. Their cousins residing in the mountains were, as a rule, provokingly wary. The number of birds that had pre-empted homesteads on the treeless wastes was indeed a gratifying surprise, and I went back to the mountains refreshed by the pleasant change my brief excursion upon the plains had afforded me.
A PRETTY HUMMER
Where do you suppose I got my first glimpse of the mite in feathers called the broad-tailed humming-bird? It was in a green bower in the Rocky Mountains in plain sight of the towering summit of Pike's Peak, which seemed almost to be standing guard over the place. Two brawling mountain brooks met here, and, joining their forces, went with increased speed and gurgle down the glades and gorges. As they sped through this ravine, they slightly overflowed their banks, making a boggy area of about an acre as green as green could be; and here amid the grass and bushes a number of birds found a pleasant summer home, among them the dainty hummer.
From the snow-drifts, still to be seen in the sheltered gorges of Pike's Peak, the breezes would frequently blow down into the nook with a freshness that stimulated like wine with no danger of intoxicating; and it was no wonder that the white-crowned sparrows, Lincoln's sparrows, the robins and wrens, and several other species, found in this spot a pleasant place to live. One of the narrow valleys led directly up to the base of the massive cone of the Peak, its stream fed by the snow-fields shining in the sun. Going around by the valley of Seven Lakes, I had walked down from the summit, but nowhere had I seen the tiny hummer until I reached the green nook just described. Still, he sometimes ascends to an elevation of eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea.
_ONE OF THE SEVEN LAKES_
_PIKE'S PEAK shows dimly in the background, more plainly in the reflection. Viewed from the peak, the lakes sparkle like opaline gems in the sun. The waters are so clear that an inverted world is seen in their transparent depths. The valley is an elysium for many kinds of birds, most of them described in the text. The white-crowned sparrows love the shores of these beautiful lakes, which mirror the blithe forms of the birds. The pine forests of the mountain sides are vocal with the refrains of the hermit thrushes._
Our feathered dot is gorgeous with his metallic green upper parts, bordered on the tail with purplish black, his white or grayish under parts, and his gorget of purple which gleams in bright, varying tints in the sun. He closely resembles our common ruby-throated humming-bird, whose gorget is intense crimson instead of purple, and who does not venture into the Rocky Mountain region, but dwells exclusively in the eastern part of North America. It is a little strange that the eastern part of our country attracts only one species of the large hummer family, while the western portion, including the Rocky Mountain region, can boast of at least seventeen different kinds as summer residents or visitors.
My attention was first directed to the broad-tailed hummer by seeing him darting about in the air with the swiftness of an arrow, sipping honey from the flower cups, and then flying to the twigs of a dead tree that stood in the marsh. There he sat, turning his head this way and that, and watching me with his keen little eyes. It was plain he did not trust me, and therefore resented my presence. Though an unwelcome guest, I prolonged my call for several hours, during which I made many heroic but vain attempts to find his nest.
But what was the meaning of a sharp, insect-like buzzing that fell at intervals on my ear? Presently I succeeded in tracing the sound to the hummer, which utters it whenever he darts from his perch and back again, especially if there is a spectator or a rival near at hand, for whom he seems in this way to express his contempt. It is a vocal sound, or, at least, it comes from his throat, and is much louder and sharper than the _susurrus_ produced by the rapid movement of his wings. This I ascertain by hearing both the sounds at the same time.
But the oddest prank which this hummer performs is to dart up in the air, and then down, almost striking a bush or a clump of grass at each descent, repeating this feat a number of times with a swiftness that the eye can scarcely follow. Having done this, he will swing up into the air so far that you can scarcely see him with the naked eye; the next moment he will drop into view, poise in mid-air seventy-five or a hundred feet above your head, supporting himself by a swift motion of the wings, and simply hitching to right and left in short arcs, as if he were fixed on a pivot, sometimes meanwhile whirling clear around. There he hangs on his invisible axis until you grow tired watching him, and then he darts to his favorite perch on the dead tree.
No doubt John Vance Cheney had in mind another species when he composed the following metrical description, but it aptly characterized the volatile broad-tail as well:
"Voyager on golden air, Type of all that's fleet and fair, Incarnate gem, Live diadem, Bird-beam of the summer day,-- Whither on your sunny way?
* * * * *
Stay, forget lost Paradise, Star-bird fallen from happy skies."
After that first meeting the broad-tailed hummers were frequently seen in my rambles among the Rockies. In some places there were small colonies of them. They did not always dwell together in harmony, but often pursued one another like tiny furies, with a loud z-z-z-zip that meant defiance and war. The swiftness of their movements often excited my wonder, and it was difficult to see how they kept from impaling themselves on thorns or snags, so reckless were their lightning-like passages through the bushes and trees. When four or five of them were found in one place, they would fairly thread the air with green and purple as they described their circles and loops and festoons with a rapidity that fairly made my head whirl. At one place several of them grew very bold, dashing at me or wheeling around my head, coming so close that I could hear the _susurrus_ of their wings as well as the sharp, challenging buzz from their throats.
Perhaps it would interest you to know where the rambler found these tiny hummers. They were never in the dark cañons and gorges, nor in the ravines that were heavily wooded with pine, but in the open, sunshiny glades and valleys, where there were green grass and bright flowers. In the upper part of both North and South Cheyenne Cañons they were plentiful, although they avoided the most scenic parts of these wonderful mountain gorges. Another place where they found a pleasant summer home was in a green pocket of the mountain above Red Cliff, a village on the western side of the great range. On descending the mountains to the town of Glenwood, I did not find them, and therefore am disposed to think that in the breeding season they do not choose to dwell in too low or too high an altitude, but seek suitable places at an elevation of from seven thousand to nine thousand feet.
_SUMMIT OF PIKE'S PEAK_
_Only a small portion of the peak is shown in the view. The comparatively level area referred to in the text lies back of the signal station on the crest. At a garbage heap near the building a flock of leucostictes were seen, and the writer was told that they came there regularly to feed. From this sublime height the American pipits rise on resilient wings hundreds of feet into the air until they disappear in the cerulean depths of the sky, singing all the while at "heaven's gate."_
One day, while staying at Buena Vista, Colorado, I hired a saddle-horse and rode to Cottonwood Lake, twelve miles away, among the rugged mountains. The valley is wide enough here to admit of a good deal of sunshine, and therefore flowers studded the ground in places. It was here I saw the only female broad-tailed hummer that was met with in my rambles in the Rockies. She was flitting among the flowers, and did not make the buzzing sound that the males produce wherever found. She was not clad so elegantly as were her masculine relatives, for the throat-patch was white instead of purple, and the green on her back did not gleam so brightly. But, oddly enough, her sides and under tail-coverts were stained with a rufous tint--a color that does not appear at all in the costume of the male.
A curious habit of these hummers is worth describing. The males remain in the breeding haunts until the young are out of the nest and are beginning to be able to shift for themselves. Then the papas begin to disappear, and in about ten days all have gone, leaving the mothers and the youngsters to tarry about the summer home until the latter are strong enough to make the journey to some resort lower in the mountains or farther south. The reason the males do this is perhaps evident enough, for at a certain date the flowers upon whose sweets the birds largely subsist begin to grow scant, and so if they remained there would not be enough for all.