Part 3

The song sparrow and the vesper sparrow not only sing alike, but look alike. The latter may be told at once, however, by his white outer tail-feathers, which show as he flies. These are two of our commonest and worthiest birds. The vesper sparrow, more generally known, perhaps, as the bay-winged bunting, likes a drier field than the song sparrow, and is especially noticeable for his trick of running along the path or the road directly in front of the traveler.

X

THE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK

There is never a May passes, of recent years, but some one comes to me, or writes to me, to inquire about a wonderfully beautiful bird that he has just seen for the first time. He does hope I can tell him what it is. It is a pretty large bird, he goes on to say,--but not so long as a robin, he thinks, if I question him,--mostly black and white, but with such a splendid rosy patch on his breast or throat! What can it be? He had no idea that anything so handsome was ever to be seen in these parts.

If all the questions that people ask about birds were as easily answered as this one, I should be thankful. It is a rose-breasted grosbeak, I tell the inquirer. Perhaps he noticed that its bill was uncommonly stout. If he did, the fact is exceptional, for somehow the shape of the bill is a point which the average person seems very seldom to notice, although it is highly important. Anyhow, the rosebreast’s beak is most decidedly “gross.” And he is every whit as beautiful as my inquirer represents him to be. In that respect he ranks with the oriole and the scarlet tanager.

He is distinguished also for his song, which is a flowing warble, wonderfully smooth and sweet. To most ears it bears a likeness to the robin’s song, but it is beyond comparison more fluent and delicious, although not more hearty. Keep your ear open for such a voice,--by the middle of May if you live in New England, a little earlier if your home is farther south,--and you will be likely to hear it; for at that time the bird is not only common, but a very free singer.

In addition to his song, the rosebreast has a short call-note, which sounds very much like the squeak of a pair of rusty shears--a kind of _hic_, which you will find no difficulty about remembering if you have once learned it. His nest is generally built in a bush, often within reach of the hand, but I have seen it well up in a rather tall tree. The two birds spell each other in brooding, and are not only mutually affectionate, but very brave. I have known the mother bird to keep her seat even when I took hold of the bush below the nest and drew her almost against my face. She, by the way, is a very modestly dressed body, being not only without the rose-color, but without the clear contrast of black and white. To look at her, you might take her for a large sparrow.

The rose-color of the male, it should be said, is not confined to the patch on the breast, but is found also on the lining of the wings, where it is mostly unnoticed by the world, but where his mate, of course, cannot help admiring it as he flutters about her; for it is certain that female birds have a good eye for color, and believe that fine feathers help, at least, to make fine birds. The shade is of the brightest and most exquisite, and the total effect of the male’s plumage--jet black, pure white, and vivid rose-red--is quite beyond praise.

The birds, happily, are not shy, and prefer a fairly open or broken country rather than a dense wood. Last season one sang day after day directly under my windows, and undoubtedly had a mate and a nest somewhere close by. The male, it should be added, has the very pretty though dangerous-seeming habit of singing as he sits upon the eggs.

XI

THE BLUE JAY

Some years ago, as the story comes to me, two collectors of birds met by accident in South America, one of them from Europe, the other from the United States. “There is one bird that I would rather see than any other in the world,” said the European. “It is the handsomest of all the birds that fly, to my thinking, although I know it only in the cabinet. You have it in North America, but I suppose you do not often see it. I mean the blue jay.”

What the American answered in words, I do not know; but I am pretty confident that he smiled. The European might almost as well have said that he supposed Boston people did not often see an English sparrow. Not that the blue jay swarms everywhere as the foreign sparrow swarms in our American cities; but it is so common, so noisy, so conspicuous, and so unmistakable, that it is, or ought to be, almost an everyday sight to all country dwellers.

Strange as it seems, however, I find many people who do not know the jay when they see it. In late winter, say toward the end of February, when I begin to be on the lookout for the first bluebird of the year, I am all but certain to have word brought to me by some one of the village school-teachers that bluebirds have already come. Johnny This or Jimmy That saw one near his house several weeks ago! That “several weeks ago” makes me suspicious, and on following up the matter I discover that John and James have seen a large blue bird, larger than a robin, with some black and white on him--_all_ white underneath--_and_ wearing a tall crest or topknot. Then I know that they have mistaken a blue _bird_ for a _blue_bird. They have seen a blue jay, a bird of a very different feather. He has been with us all winter, as he always is, and has been in sight from my windows daily. So easy is it for boys and men to guess at things, and guess wrong.

The jay is a relative of the crow, and has much of the crow’s cleverness, with more than the crow’s beauty. Like the crow, if he has an errand near houses, he makes a point of doing it in the early morning before the folks who live in the houses have begun to stir about. In fact, he knows us, in some respects at least, better than we know him, and habitually takes advantage of what no doubt seems to him a custom of very late rising on the part of human beings.

Among small birds of all sorts he bears a decidedly bad name. In nesting time you may hear them uttering a chorus of loud and bitter laments as often as he appears among them. Their eggs and young are in danger, and they join forces to worry him and drive him away. One bird sounds the alarm, another hears him and hastens to see what is going on, and in a few minutes the whole neighborhood is awake. And it stays awake till the jay moves off. After that piece of evidence, you do not need to _see_ him doing mischief. The little birds’ behavior is sufficiently convincing. As Thoreau said, the presence of a trout in the milk is something like proof.

And jays, in their turn, club together against enemies larger than themselves. Last autumn I was walking through the woods with a friend,--a city schoolmaster eager for knowledge, as every schoolmaster ought to be,--when we heard a great screaming of blue jays from a swampy thicket on our right hand.

“Now what do you suppose the birds mean by all that outcry?” said my friend.

I answered that very likely there was a hawk or an owl there.

“Let’s go and see,” said the master, and we turned in that direction. Sure enough, we soon came face to face with a large hen-hawk perched in one of the trees, while the jays, one after another, were dashing as near him as they dared, yelling at him as they passed.

At our nearer approach the hawk took wing; then the jays disappeared, and silence fell upon the woods. And I dare say the schoolmaster gave me credit for being a wondrously wise man!

The jay has many notes, and once in a great while may even be heard indulging in something like a warble. One of his most musical calls sounds to my ears a little like the word “lily.”

He seems to be very fond of acorns, and is frequently to be seen standing upon a limb, holding an acorn under his claw and hammering it to pieces with all the force of his stout bill. When angered, he scolds violently, bobbing up and down in a most ridiculous manner. In fact, he is of a highly nervous temperament, and as full of gesticulations as a Frenchman.

To me he is especially a bird of autumn. At that season the woods are loud with his clarion, and as I listen to it I can often feel myself a boy again, rambling in the woods that knew me in my school-days. With all his faults--his ill treatment of small birds, I mean--I should be sorry to have his numbers greatly diminished.

XII

THE KINGBIRD

As a very small boy I spent much time in a certain piece of rather low ground partly grown up to bushes. Here in early spring I picked bunches of pretty pink and white flowers, which I now know to have been anemones. In the same place, a month or two later, I gathered splendid red lilies, and admired, without gathering it, a tiny blue flower with a yellow centre. This would not bear taking home, but was always an attraction to me. I should have liked it better still, I am sure, if some one had been kind enough to tell me its pretty name--blue-eyed grass.

Here, also, I picked the first strawberries of the season and the first blueberries. They were luxuries indeed. A “gill-cup” full of either of them was good pay for an hour’s search.

In one corner of the place there were half a dozen or so of apple-trees, and on the topmost branches of these there used to perch continually two or three birds of a kind which some older boy told me were kingbirds. At these my brother and I--both of us small enough to be excusable for such mischief--were in the habit of throwing green apples; partly to see how near we could come to hitting them, partly for the fun of watching them rise into the air, circle about with sharp cries, and then settle back upon the perches they had left. Sometimes we stuck the half-grown apple on the end of a stick, swung the stick round our heads, and sent the apple flying to a tremendous distance. Stick or no stick, however, we were in no danger of killing anything, as I am glad now to remember.

What amazed us was that the birds did not go away. No matter how long we “appled” them, they were certain to be on hand the next day in the same place. We must have been very young and very green,--greener even than the apples,--for it never occurred to us that the birds had nests in the trees, and for that reason were not to be driven away by our petty persecutions.

Even then I noticed the peculiar flight of the birds--the short, quick strokes of their wings, and their habit of hovering. These are among the signs by which the kingbird can be recognized a long way off. He is dark-colored above,--almost black,--pure white underneath, and his tail, when outspread, shows a broad white border at the tip. On his crown is an orange-red patch, but you will probably never see it unless you have the bird in your hand and brush apart the feathers in search of it.

The kingbird’s Latin name has much the same meaning as his common English one. _Tyrannus tyrannus_ he is called by scientific people. He belongs to a family known as flycatchers, birds that catch insects on the wing. That is the reason why the kingbird likes a perch at the tip of something, so that he can dart out after a passing insect, catch it, and return to his perch to wait for another. _I_ should call him the “apple-tree flycatcher,” if the matter were referred to me.

He is not large,--little bigger than an English sparrow,--but he has plenty of courage and a strong disposition to “rule the roost,” as the saying goes. Every country boy has laughed to see the kingbird chasing a crow. And a very lively and pleasing sight it is: the crow making for the nearest wood as fast as his wings will carry him, and one or two kingbirds in hot pursuit. Their great aim is to get above him and swoop down upon his back. Sometimes you will see one actually alight on a crow’s back and, as boys say, “give it to him” in great style.

Another taking action of the kingbird is his trick of flying straight up in the air, almost perpendicularly, as if he were trying to see how near he could come to performing that impossible feat, and then tumbling about madly, with noisy outcries. Often it looks as if he actually turned somersaults. He cannot sing, and so has to let his high spirits bubble over in these half-crazy gymnastics. All in all, he is a very lively and entertaining customer.

His nest is built in a tree, often in an orchard, and is comparatively easy to find. The birds arrive in New England in the first week of May, having passed the winter in Central or South America, and remain till the end of August.

Like most birds, they are very punctual in their coming and going. No doubt they have an almanac of their own. You will do well to find one of them in Massachusetts after the first two or three days of September.

Toward the end of their stay, flycatchers though they are, they feed largely upon berries. I have seen a dozen in one small dogwood bush, all eating greedily.

XIII

THE HUMMINGBIRD

Hummingbirds are found only in America and on the islands near it. They are of many kinds, but only one kind is ever seen in the eastern United States. This is known as the ruby-throated hummingbird, because of a splendid red throat-patch worn by the male. To speak more exactly, the patch is red only in some lights. You see it one instant as black as a coal, and the next instant it flashes like a coal on fire. This ornament,--a real jewel,--with the lovely shining green of the bird’s back, makes him an object of great beauty.

Every one knows him, or would do so only that some people confuse him with bright-colored, long-tongued hummingbird moths that are seen hovering, mostly in the early evening, over the flowers of the garden.

The ruby-throat spends the winter south of the United States. He arrives in Florida in March, but does not reach New England till near the middle of May.

Many persons seem to imagine that the hummer lives on the wing. They have never seen one sitting still, they say. But the truth is that hummingbirds pass but a small part of the time in the air. They are so very small, however, that they are easily overlooked on a branch of a tree, and the average person never notices them except when the hum of their wings attracts his attention.

One of the prettiest sights in the world is a hummingbird hovering before a blossom, his wings vibrating so fast as to make a mist about him, and his long needle of a bill probing the flower with quick, eager thrusts. All his movements are of lightning-like rapidity, and even while your eyes are on him he is gone like a flash, you cannot say whither.

The hummingbird’s nest is built on a branch of a tree,--saddled on it,--and is not very hard to find after you have once seen one, and so have learned precisely what to look for. Generally it is placed well out towards the end of the limb. I have found it on pitch-pines in the woods, on roadside maples,--shade-trees,--and especially in apple and pear orchards. The mother bird is very apt to betray its whereabouts by buzzing about the head of any one who comes near it.

Last May, for example, I stopped in the middle of the road to listen for the voice of a house wren, when I caught instead the buzz and squeak of a hummer. Turning my gaze upward, I saw her fly to a half-built nest on a maple branch directly over my head.

The nest is a tiny thing, looking for size and shape like a cup out of a child’s toy tea-set. Its walls are thick, and on the outside are covered--shingled, we may say--with bits of gray lichen, which help to make the nest look like nothing more than a knot. Whether they are put on for that purpose, or by way of ornament, is more than I can tell.

The bird always lays two white eggs, about as large as peas. The young ones stay in the nest for three weeks, more or less, till they are fully grown and fledged, and perfectly well able to fly. I once saw one take his first flight, and a great venture it seemed. All these three weeks, and for another week afterward, the mother--no father is present--has her hands full to supply the little things with food, which she gives them from her crop, thrusting her long, sharp bill clean down their throats in the process, in a way to make a looker-on shiver. The only note I have ever heard from the ruby-throat is a squeak, which seems to be an expression of nervousness or annoyance, and is uttered whenever an intruder--a man, a cat, or a strange bird--comes near the tree in which her treasures are hidden.

Hummingbirds sometimes fly into open windows and are caught. At such times they become tame almost at once, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep them alive in captivity, and it is cruel to attempt it, except when the little creature is injured and plainly unable to look out for itself.

A lady of my acquaintance discovered a hummingbird under her piazza. It had flown in by accident, probably, and now was darting to and fro in a frantic attempt to get out. The piazza was open on three sides, to be sure, but the frightened bird kept up against the ceiling, and of course found itself walled in.

Fearful that it would injure itself, the lady brought a broom and tried to force it to come down and so discover its way out; but it was only the more scared. Then a happy thought came to her. She went to the garden, plucked a few flowers, and going back to the piazza, set them down for the bird to see. Instantly it flew toward them, and as it did so it saw the open world without, and away it went.

Another lady wrote me once a very pretty story of a hummer that came and probed a nasturtium which she held in her hand.

It is wonderful to think that so tiny a bird, born in New England or in Canada in June, should travel to Cuba or Central America in the autumn, and the next spring find its way back again to its birthplace.

XIV

THE CHIMNEY SWIFT

Every kind of bird is adapted to get its living in a particular way. It is strong in some respects, and weak in others. Some birds have powerful legs, but can hardly fly; others live on the wing, and can hardly walk. Of these flying birds none is more common than the chimney swift, or, as he is improperly called, the chimney swallow. No one ever saw him sitting on a perch or walking on the ground. In fact, his wings are so long, and his legs so short and weak, that if he were to alight on the ground, he would probably never be able to rise into the air again.

He hardly seems to need a description, and yet I suppose that many persons, not to say people in general, do not know him from a swallow. His color is sooty brown, turning to gray on the throat. His body, as he is seen in the air, is shaped like a bobbin, bluntly pointed at both ends. If he is carefully watched, however, it will be noticed that he spreads his tail for an instant whenever he changes suddenly the direction of his flight. In other words, he uses his tail as a rudder.

He shoots about the sky at a tremendous speed, much of the time sailing, with his long, narrow wings firmly set, and is especially lively and noisy toward nightfall. Very commonly two or three of the birds fly side by side, cackling merrily and acting very much as if they were amusing themselves with some kind of game.

They feed on the wing, and have wide, gaping mouths perfectly adapted to that purpose.

As their name implies, they build their nests and pass the night mostly in chimneys, although in the wilder parts of the country they still inhabit hollow trees. Numbers of pairs live together in a colony.

One of the chimneys of a certain house near the Charles River, in Newton, Massachusetts, has for many years been a favorite resort of swifts. I have many times visited the place to watch the birds go to roost. Little by little they gather in a flock, as twilight comes on, and then for an hour or more the whole company, hundreds in number, go sweeping over the valley in broad circles, having the chimney for a centre. Gradually the circles become narrower, and at the same time the excitement of the flock increases. Again and again the birds approach the chimney, as if they meant to descend into it. Then away they shoot for another round.

At length the going to roost actually begins. Half a dozen or a dozen of the birds drop one by one into the chimney. The rest sweep away, and when they come back, a second detachment drops in. And so the lively performance goes on till the last straggler folds his wings above the big black cavity and tumbles headlong out of sight.

The swift makes his nest of twigs, and as he cannot alight on the ground in search of them, he is compelled to gather them from the dead limbs of trees. Over and over again you will see the bird dart against such a limb, catching at a twig as he pauses for the merest instant before it. It is difficult to be sure whether he succeeds or not, his movements are so rapid, but it is certain that he must often fail. However, he acts upon the old motto, “Try, try again,” and in course of time the nest is built. And an extremely pretty nest it is, with the white eggs in it, the black twigs glued firmly together with the bird’s own saliva.

XV

NIGHTHAWK AND WHIP-POOR-WILL

Rustic people are a little shy of theories and “book-learning.” Not long ago--it was early in March--I met an old man who lives by himself in a kind of hermitage in the woods, and who knows me in a general way as a bird student. We greeted each other, and I inquired whether he had seen any bluebirds yet. No, he said, it wasn’t time.

“Oh, but they are here,” I answered. “I saw a flock of ten on the 26th of February.” Good-natured incredulity came out all over his face.

“Did you hear them sing?” he asked.

“Yes,” said I; “and, furthermore, I saw some this forenoon very near your house.”

“Well,” he remarked, “according to my experience, it is too early for bluebirds. Besides, they never go in flocks; and when anybody tells me at this time of the year that he has seen a flock of bluebirds, I always know that he has seen some blue snowbirds.”

He spoke with an air of finality which left me nothing to do but to smile and pass on.

This little incident called to mind another, and that put it into my head to write this article.

A farmer, who had seen me passing his house and loitering about his lanes and fields for several years, often with an opera-glass in my hand, one day hailed me to ask whether the nighthawk and the whip-poor-will were the same bird, as he had heard people say. I assured him (or rather I told him--it turned out that I had not made him sure) that they were quite distinct, and proceeded to remark upon some of the more obvious points of difference between the two, especially as to their habits and manner of life. He listened with all deference to what I had to offer, but as I concluded and turned to leave him, he said: “Well, some folks _say_ they’re the same. They say one’s the he one and t’ other’s the she one; but I guess they ain’t.”

Verily, thought I, popular science lectures are sometimes a failure. Not long afterward I was telling the story to a Massachusetts man, a man who had made a collection of birds’ eggs in his time.

“Why,” said he, “aren’t they the same? I always understood that they were the male and female of the same species. That was the common belief where I was brought up.”