Part 1

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DOORYARD STORIES

by

CLARA DILLINGHAM PIERSON

Author of “Among the Forest People,” “Night People,” etc.

Illustrated by F. C. Gordon

New York E. P. Dutton And Company 31 West Twenty-Third Street

Copyright, 1903 by E. P. Dutton & Co.

Published Sept., 1903

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

To

MY FATHER

WHO FIRST TAUGHT ME TO LOVE MY DOORYARD FRIENDS

PREFACE

MY DEAR LITTLE FRIENDS:--These stories are of things which I have seen with my own eyes in my own yard, and the people of whom I write are my friends and near neighbors. Some of them, indeed, live under my roof, and Silvertip has long been a member of our family. So, you see, I have not had to do like some writers--sit down and think and think how to make the people act in their stories. These tales are of things which have really happened, and all I have done is to write them down for you.

Many of them have been told over and over again to my own little boy, and because he never tires of hearing of the time when Silvertip was a Kitten, and about the Wasps who built inside my shutters, I think you may care to hear also. He wants me to be sure to tell how the baby Swift tumbled down the chimney into his bedroom, and wishes you might have seen it in the little nest we made. When I tell these tales to him, I have great trouble in ending them, for there is never a time when he does not ask: “And what did he do then Mother?” But I am telling you as much as I can of how everything happened, and if there was more which I did not see and cannot describe, you will have to make up the rest to suit yourselves.

Besides, you know, there is always much which one cannot see or hear, but which one knows is happening somewhere in this beautiful great world. The birds do not stop living and working and loving when they leave us for the sunny south, and above us, around us, and even under our feet many things are done which we cannot see. As we become better acquainted with the little people who live in our dooryards, we shall see more and more interesting things, and I wish you might all grow to be like my little boy, who is never lonely or in need of a playmate so long as a Caterpillar or a Grasshopper is in sight.

See how many tiny neighbors you have around you, and how much you can learn about them. Then you will find your own dooryard as interesting as mine and know that there are playmates everywhere.

Your friend,

CLARA D. PIERSON.

STANTON, MICHIGAN,

_October 30, 1902_.

CONTENTS

PAGE SILVERTIP 1 THE FIGHT FOR THE BIRD-HOUSE 12 THE FIR-TREE NEIGHBORS 22 THE INDUSTRIOUS FLICKERS 36 PLUCKY MRS. POLISTES 48 SILVERTIP STOPS A QUARREL 68 A YOUNG SWIFT TUMBLES 78 THE VERY RUDE YOUNG ROBINS 96 THE SYSTEMATIC YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO 108 THE HELPFUL TUMBLE-BUGS 121 SILVERTIP LEARNS A LESSON 132 THE ROBINS’ DOUBLE BROOD 145 THE SPARROWS INSIDE THE EAVES 158 A RAINY DAY ON THE LAWN 173 THE PERSISTENT PHŒBE 183 THE SAD STORY OF THE HOG CATERPILLAR 199 THE CAT AND THE CATBIRD 210 THE FRIENDLY BLACKBIRDS 222

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE THE KITTEN LAPPED UP HIS MILK 6 THE FIGHT FOR THE BIRD HOUSE 18 A RED SQUIRREL ATE THEM 34 A VERY CRUEL THING TO DO 38 THE CHIMNEY-SWIFT’S HOME 78 THE VERY RUDE YOUNG ROBINS 100 STUFFED IT DOWN THE WIDE-OPEN BILL 116 MR. CHIPMUNK ON THE WOODPILE 142 “O MOTHER, IT IS RAINING!” 175 “YOU DESERVE TO BE EATEN” 218

SILVERTIP

A very small, wet, and hungry Kitten pattered up and down a board walk one cold and rainy night. His fur was so soaked that it dripped water when he moved, and his poor little pink-cushioned paws splashed more water up from the puddly boards every time he stepped. His tail looked like a wet wisp of fur, and his little round face was very sad. “Meouw!” said he. “Meouw! Meouw!”

He heard somebody coming up the street. “I will follow that Gentleman,” he thought, “and I will cry so that he will be sorry for me and give me a home.”

When this person came nearer he saw that it was not a Gentleman at all, but a Lady who could hardly keep from being blown away. He could not have seen her except that Cat’s eyes can see in the dark. “Meouw!” said the Kitten. “Meouw! Meouw!”

“Poor little Pussy!” said a voice above him. “Poor little Pussy! But you must not come with me.”

“Meouw!” answered he, and trotted right along after her. He was a Kitten who was not easily discouraged. He rubbed up against her foot and made her stop for fear of stepping on him. Then he felt himself gently lifted up and put aside. He scrambled back and rubbed against her other foot. And so it was for more than two blocks. The Lady, as he always called her afterward, kept pushing him gently to one side and he kept scrambling back. Sometimes she even had to stand quite still for fear of stepping on him.

“Meouw!” said the Kitten, and he made up his mind that anybody who spoke so kindly to strange Kittens would be a good mistress. “I will stick to her,” he said to himself. “I don’t care how many times she pushes me away, I _will_ scramble back.”

When they turned in at a gate he saw a big house ahead of him with many windows brightly lighted and another light on the porch. “I like that home,” he said to himself. “I will slip through the door when she opens it.”

But after she had turned the key in the door she pushed him back and closed the screen between them. Then he heard her say: “Poor little Pussy! I want to take you in, but we have agreed not to adopt another Cat.” Then she closed the door.

He wanted to explain that he was not really a Cat, only a little Kitten, but he had no chance to say anything, so he waited outside and thought and cried. He did not know that the Lady and her husband feared that Cats would eat the many birds who nested in the trees on the lawn. He thought it very hard luck for a tiny Kitten to be left out in the cold rain while the Lady was reading by a blazing grate fire. He did not know that as she sat by the fire she thought about him instead of her book, for she loved little Kittens, and found it hard to leave any out in the street alone.

While he was thinking and crying, a tall Gentleman with a black beard and twinkling brown eyes came striding up to the brightly lighted porch. “Well, Pussy-cat!” said the Gentleman, and took a bunch of shining, jingling things out of his pocket and stuck one of them into a little hole in the door and turned it. Then the door swung open, and the Gentleman, who was trying to close his umbrella and shake off the rain, called first to the Lady and then to the kitten. “O Clara!” he cried. “Come to see this poor little Kitten. Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty! I know you want to see him. Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty! I should have thought you would have heard him crying. Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!”

The Lady came running out and was laughing. “Yes, John,” she said, “I have had the pleasure of meeting him before. He was under my feet most of the way home from church to-night, and I could hardly bear to leave him outside. But you know what we promised each other, that we would not adopt another Cat, on account of the birds.”

The Gentleman sat down upon the stairs and wiped the Kitten off with his handkerchief. “Y-yes, I know,” he said weakly, “but Clara, look at this poor little fellow. He couldn’t catch a Chipping Sparrow.”

“Not now,” answered the Lady, “yet he will grow, if he is like most Kittens, and you know what we said. If we don’t stick to it we will soon have as many Cats as we did a few years ago.”

The Kitten saw that if he wanted to stay in this home he must insist upon it and be very firm indeed with these people. So he kept on crying and stuck his sharp claws into the Gentleman’s sleeve. The Gentleman said “Ouch!” and lifted him on to his coat lapel. There he clung and shook and cried.

“Well, I suppose we mustn’t keep him then,” said he; “but we will give him a warm supper anyway.” So they got some milk and heated it, and set it in a shallow dish before the grate. How that Kitten did eat! The Lady sat on the floor beside him, and the Gentleman drew his chair up close, and they said that it seemed hard to turn him out, but that they would have to do it because they had promised each other.

The Kitten lapped up his milk with a soft click-clicking of his little pink tongue, and then turned his head this way and that until he had licked all the corners clean. He was so full of warm milk that his sides bulged out, and his fur had begun to dry and stuck up in pointed wisps all over him. He pretended to lap milk long after it was gone. This was partly to show them how well he could wash dishes, and partly to put off the time when he should be thrust out of doors.

When he really could not make believe any longer, his tongue being so tired, he began to cry and rub against these two people. The Gentleman was the first to speak. “I cannot stand this,” he said. “If he has to go, I want to get it over.” He picked up the Kitten and took him to the door. As fast as he loosened one of the Kitten’s claws from his coat he stuck another one in, and at last the Lady had to help get him free. “He is a regular Rough Rider,” said the Gentleman. “There is no shaking him off.”

The Kitten didn’t understand what a Rough Rider was, but it did not sound like finding a home, so he cried some more. Then the door was shut behind him and he was alone in the porch. “Well,” he said, “I like that house and those people, even if they did put me out. I think I will make them adopt me.” So he cuddled down in a sheltered, dry corner, put his four feet all close together, and curled his tail, as far as it would go, around them. And there he stayed all night.

In the morning, when the rain had stopped and the sun was shining brightly, he trotted around the house and cried. He went up on to another porch, rubbed against the door and cried. The Maid opened the door and put out some milk for him. He could see into the warm kitchen and smell the breakfast cooking on the range. When she came out to get the empty dish, he slipped in through the open door. She said “Whish!” and “Scat!” and “Shoo!” and tried to drive him out, but he pretended not to understand and cuddled quietly down in a corner where she could not easily reach him. Just then some food began to burn on the range and the Maid let him alone. The Kitten did not cry now. He had other work to do, and began licking himself all over and scratching his ears with his hind feet.

When he heard the Gentleman and the Lady talking in the dining-room, he watched his chance and slipped in. He decided to pay the most attention to the Gentleman, for he had been the first to take him up. They were laughing and talking and saying how glad they were that the rain had stopped falling. “I believe, John,” the Lady said, “that if it had not been for me, you would really have kept that Kitten last night.”

“Oh, no,” answered the Gentleman. “We ought not to keep Cats. I think that if it had not been for me _you_ would have kept him.”

Just at that minute the Kitten began climbing up his trousers leg and crying. “Poor little Pussy,” said the Gentleman. “Clara, can’t we spare some of this cream?” He reached for the pitcher. The Kitten began to feel more sure of a home.

“O John, not here?” began the Lady, and the Maid came in to explain how it all happened. The Kitten stuck his claws into the Gentleman’s coat and would not let go. Then he cried some more and waved his tail. He had a very beautiful tail, marked just like that of a Raccoon, and he turned it toward the Lady. He had heard somewhere about putting the best foot forward, and thought that a tail might do just as well. While he was waving his tail at the Lady he rubbed his head against the Gentleman’s black beard.

“If we _should_ keep him, John,” said the Lady, “we ought to call him Silvertip, because he has such a pretty white tip to his tail.” The Kitten waved it again and began to purr.

“If you knew what a strong and fearless fellow he is, you would call him Teddy,” answered the Gentleman, turning over a paper which said in big black letters, “Our Teddy Wins.”

“Call him Teddy Silvertip then,” said the Lady, as she reached for the bell. When the Maid came in answer to her ring, she said, “Belle, please take our Kitten into the kitchen and feed him.” Then the Kitten let go and was carried away happy, for he had found a home. He had also learned how to manage the Lady and the Gentleman, and he was always _very_ firm with them after that.

THE FIGHT FOR THE BIRD-HOUSE

Under the cornice of the tool-house was an old cigar-box with a tiny doorway cut in one end and a small board nailed in front of it for a porch. This had been put up for a bird-house, and year after year a pair of Wrens had nested there, until they began to think it really their own. When they left it in the fall to fly south, they always looked back lovingly at it, and talked over their plans for the next summer.

“I think we might better leave this nest inside all winter,” Mrs. Wren always said. “It will seem so much more home-like when we return, and it will not be much trouble to clear it out afterward.”

“An excellent plan, my dear,” her cheerful little husband would reply. “You remember we did so last season. Besides,” he always added, “that will show other birds that Wrens have lived here, and they will know that we are expecting to return, since that is the custom in our family.”

“And then do you think they will leave it for us?” Mrs. Wren would ask. “You know they might want it for themselves.”

“What if they did want it?” Mr. Wren had said. “They could go somewhere else, couldn’t they? Do you suppose I would ever steal another bird’s nesting-place if I knew it?”

“N-no,” said Mrs. Wren, “but not everybody is as unselfish as you.” And she looked at him tenderly.

The Wrens were a most devoted couple,--all in all, about the nicest birds on the place. And that was saying a great deal, for there were many nesting there and others who came to find food on the broad lawn. They were small birds, wearing dark brown feathers on the upper parts of their bodies and lighter grayish ones underneath. Even their bills were marked in the same way, with the upper half dark and the lower half light. Their wings were short and blunt, and they had a habit of holding their tails well up in the air.

People said that Mrs. Wren was very fussy, and perhaps it was true, but even then she was not a cross person. Besides, if she wished to do a thing over five times in order to make it suit her, she certainly had a perfect right to do so. It was she who always chose the nesting-place and settled all the plans for the family. Mr. Wren was quite content to have it so, since that was the custom among Wrens, and it saved him much work. Mr. Wren was not lazy. He simply wanted to save time for singing, which he considered his own particular business. Besides, he never forgot what had happened to a cousin of his, a young fellow who found fault with his wife and insisted on changing to another nesting-place. It had ended in his going, and her staying there and marrying another Wren. So he had lost both his home and his wife by finding fault.

Now the April days had come, with their warm showers and green growing grass. A pair of English Sparrows, who had nested in the woodbine the summer before and raised several large broods of bad-mannered children, decided that they would like to try living in the bird-house. Having been on the place all winter, they began work early. The Blackbirds were already back, and one reminded them that it belonged to the Wrens.

“Guess not now,” said Mr. Sparrow, with a bad look in his eyes. “Nothing belongs to anybody else if I want it. Do you see?” Then he picked up and swallowed a fat Grub which the Blackbird had uncovered for himself and left lying there until he should finish talking. One could hardly blame the Blackbird for being vexed about this, for everybody knows that English Sparrows really prefer seeds, and that this one ate the Grub only to be mean. It did not make the Blackbird any happier to hear his relatives laugh at him in the evergreens above, and he made up his mind to get even with that Sparrow.

The Sparrows pitched all the old nest out of doors and began quarrelling with each other about building their own. They always quarrelled. Indeed, that was the way in which they had courted each other. Mrs. Sparrow had two lovers, and she married the one who would stand the worst pecking from her. “For,” she said, “what is the use of having a husband unless you can beat him when you fight with him?”

Now they stuffed the dainty little bird-house full of straws, sticks, feathers, and anything they could find, until there was hardly room left in which to turn around. They were just beginning to wonder if they must throw some out when they heard the happy song of Mr. Wren.

“Get inside!” cried Mr. Sparrow to his wife. “I will stand on the porch and fight them.”

Down flew Mr. and Mrs. Wren. “Oh, isn’t it pleasant to get home again?” she exclaimed. “But what is that Sparrow doing on our porch?”

“This is our home now,” said Mrs. Sparrow, “and we are very busy. Get out of my way.”

“Your home?” cried the Wrens. “How is that? You lived in the woodbine last season and knew that this was ours. You are surely not in earnest.”

Mr. Wren looked at his wife and she nodded. Then he flew at Mr. Sparrow and they fought back and forth on the grape trellis near by them, in the air, then on the ground. Mrs. Sparrow peeped out of the open door to see if her husband needed help. He was the larger of the two, but not so quick in darting and turning. Now they passed out of sight behind the tool-house and she forgot Mrs. Wren and flew down to see better. She was hardly off the tiny porch when Mrs. Wren darted in. Mrs. Sparrow saw when it was too late what a mistake she had made, and tried to get back. She reached the porch again just in time to have a lot of straws, twigs, and feathers poked into her face by the angry Mrs. Wren.

“I am cleaning house,” said Mrs. Wren. “My house, too! Get out of my way!” Then she pushed out more of the same sort of stuff. Mrs. Sparrow tried to get in, and every time she put her head through the doorway she was pecked by Mrs. Wren. And she deserved it. She called Mr. Sparrow, but he could not help her, and Mr. Wren was so pleased that he sat on top of the tool-house and sang and sang and sang. To look at him you would have thought he was trying to kill himself. He puffed up his throat and swelled up his body and sang so fast that he seemed to be saying about four words at a time.

“Good for you! Good for you! Good for you!” he sang. “Stick to it! Stick to it! Stick to it! I’m here! I’m here! I’m here, here, here!”

Mrs. Wren was too busy to say much, but she did a great deal. Every scrap of the nest was thrown out, and as she worked she decided to keep that house if she starved there.

This was in the middle of the morning and she could not get out to feed until late in the afternoon. Mr. Wren found some delicious insects on the grapevines, and tried to carry a few billfuls to his wife, but the Sparrows prevented him. He would have enjoyed his own dinner better if she could have eaten with him. When he asked how she was, she chirped back that she was hungry but would not give up. Mr. Wren spent most of his time walking around the roof of the tool-house in circles, dragging his wings on the shingles, and saying, “Tr-r-r-r-r-r!” He was so angry that sometimes he could not say anything else. The Sparrows sat on the grape trellis and said mean things.

They were still doing this late in the afternoon, while the tree shadows grew longer and longer on the lawn with the lowering of the sun. Suddenly a Blackbird alighted on the trellis. It was the same one whose fat Grub Mr. Sparrow had stolen.

“This has gone far enough,” said he. “This house belongs to the Wrens and they are going to have it. _I_ say so. If I catch either of you Sparrows around here again, I will drive you off the place. I can do it, too. You may think it over until the next time that grapevine is blown against the tool-house. If you do not go then, there will be _trouble_.” He ruffled up his feathers and glared with his yellow eyes. That was all he had to do. Before the grapevine swayed again, the Sparrows were far away.

The Wrens thanked him, even before Mrs. Wren ate her late dinner. “You are welcome,” he said. “It was just fun for me. I cannot bear those Sparrows, and I hoped they would stay and give me a chance to fight them. How I wish they had stayed!” He looked sad and disappointed.

“I’ll never have another such good chance,” said he. And he never did. Perhaps it was just as well, although there are times when it is not wrong to fight, and the Wrens think this would have been one.

THE FIR-TREE NEIGHBORS

With so many trees in the yard, it always seemed a little strange that three families should choose to build so close together in one. Still, it must also be remembered that there were many birds who liked to build near the big house, and thought of that yard as home.

The Lady spoke of this tree as “The Evergreen Apartment House.” The birds simply called it “The Tallest Fir Tree.”

Early in the spring a pair of English Sparrows decided to build there. Perhaps one should say that Mrs. Sparrow decided, since her husband had nothing to say about it, except to murmur “Yes, dear,” when she told him of her choice. They built well up in the tree, and had a big mass of hay, grass, and feathers together there when the Blackbirds came. This would have more than made a nest for most birds. Mrs. Sparrow called it only a beginning, and was always looking for more to add to it.

When the Blackbirds came in a dashing flock, they began hunting for building places and talking it all over among themselves. One mother Blackbird, who had nested on the place the year before, had counted on having that particular tree.

“I decided on it last fall,” said she, “before I went South, and I have been planning for it all winter. I shall build in it just the same.” She shut her bill in such a way that nobody could doubt her meaning exactly what she said. Her husband didn’t like the place particularly well, but she said something to him which settled it. “You need not ruffle up your feathers for me,” she said, “or stand on tip-toe to squeak at me, unless you are willing to live there.”

They built higher than the nest of the English Sparrows. “We have always been well up in the world,” she said, “and we do not care to come down now.” That was all right. One could not blame them for feeling above the English Sparrows.