Part 9

In England they may be seen on the great open plains following the sheep as they feed, very much as the Cowbird follows our cattle, and in that country are very beneficial as insect destroyers.

“They are birds that will feed at the lunch-counter in winter, for their food supply is cut off by snow, and, as strangers, they have not yet the resources of the Crows and Jays, neither are they as hardy.

“Boys, Jacob is ready for you in the workroom, and he may keep you till quarter-past ten. I do not think that you will really accomplish much to-day, except to choose the kind of house you wish to make, and plan out your work. Then you may all take a fifteen-minutes’ recess in the orchard before you come up for the bird lesson.”

“What birds are you going to tell about to-day? I hope that they won’t be hat birds and Martyrs,” said Eliza Clausen, with a sigh.

“No, not ‘hat birds’ this morning, although there are plenty more of them, and always will be so long as people insist upon wearing the feathers in their hats. I had not quite decided what birds to take up next, but the recess in the orchard gives me a new idea. Instead of taking the birds in any set order, when you come in you shall tell me what birds you have noticed this morning. By this means we shall be able to take the birds as they come with the seasons, and they will never grow tiresome. Then, too, if, between times, you see any birds that you cannot name, or about which you wish to know, remember to tell me, and we will try to learn something about the bird while it is fresh in your memory.

“Now,” as the boys went to the workroom, “the girl members of the Kind Hearts’ Club will please thread needles and begin. If any one of you has sticky fingers, Ann will show you where to wash them, because the very beginning of good sewing lies in clean hands, for they mean nice white thread and bright, shining needles.”

When the cover was lifted from the table, and the girls saw the dolls, and the little stack of clothes, they exclaimed in delight,—even those like Katie Lee, who really did not belong at school, for she had stopped playing with dolls and was ready for the eighth grade. Only, unfortunately, there was no eighth grade class at Foxes Corners, and as it was too far for them to walk to the Centre every day, they stayed on at school, and Miss Wilde helped them as far as her time allowed so that they might make up the required lessons at home.

ENGLISH STARLING

Here’s to the stranger, so lately a ranger, Who came from far over seas;— Whatever the weather, still in high feather, At top of the windy trees!

Here’s to the darling,—brave English Starling, Stays the long winter through; He would not leave us, would not bereave us,— Not he, though our own birds do!

Cold weather pinches—flown are the finches, Thrushes and warblers too! Here’s to the darling, here’s to the Starling,— English Starling true!

—Edith M. Thomas, in _Bird-Lore_.

X SOME MISCHIEF-MAKERS

_Crows and Jays, Starlings and Grackles_

The children came back very promptly after the mid-morning recess, considering the attraction offered outside. Though cheeks and all available pockets fairly bulged with apples, they had sufficient appetite to enjoy the crisp cookies, plates of which were set at intervals on the plain-topped table in the playroom, together with pitchers of milk or a delicious drink of Ann’s invention compounded of oranges and lemons and sweetened with honey.

Gray Lady breakfasted at eight, but she knew very well that most of the folk of the Hill Country had their first meal at six, except perhaps in the dead of winter, so that a bit of luncheon between that time and noon was what Goldilocks called “a comfy necessity.”

“Now tell me what birds you saw this morning, and what they were doing,” said Gray Lady, as soon as the children had settled down. “Sarah Barnes, you may begin.”

“We didn’t see anything new, that is nothing much; but, oh, such a lot of common birds in flocks, Crows and Blue Jays and Blackbirds; why, there were enough Blackbirds to make it dark for a minute when they picked up and flew over the tumble-down old house over there in the corner. Of course, those birds aren’t very interesting, ’cause we all know about them, and I guess even Zella, who hasn’t lived here long, can tell a Crow or a Jay and Blackbird when she sees one.”

“Yes, ma’am, Lady, I know him Crow,” cried Zella, in delight at having some information to impart, “for my papa he plant corn seed in the lot. Crows they come push it out vit de nose and eat him. Then my papa and my brudder shoot bang! bang! but they not get him, ’cause him too wise. My Grossmutter say von time Crows was people, bad thief people, and they was made in birds to shame dem, but dey made bad thief birds, too, and dey kept wise like dey was people yet, so dey is hard catching. Den papa he made of ole clothes a man, and sat him the fence on, and the Crows dey comes on trees near away, and dey looks so at the mans and dey laughs together, but dey not come no more very near yet.”

“Yes; I see that Zella knows and sees the Crow as almost every one who owns a bit of land sees and knows him, but there are sides to these birds that are so common hereabouts that perhaps you do not know, for I did not at your age, and it is only of late years that the wise men have been trying to find good points in some birds that have been always called bad. What they have discovered goes to prove what an unfortunate thing it is for any one, bird or person, to get a bad name.”

“My Grandma says a bad name sticks just like fly-paper,” said Ruth Barnes, eagerly, “’cause even if you can peel it off you, it always somehow feels as if it was there.”

At this every one laughed, because almost every child at one time or another had been through some sort of an experience with sticky fly-paper, and little Bobbie chuckled so long that Gray Lady asked him what he knew about fly-paper, and thus drew forth the explanation that his father had sat on a sheet of fly-paper in the dark best parlor one Sunday morning when he was waiting for the family to get ready to drive to church, and nobody noticed until he, being a deacon, got up _to pass the plate_!

“What were the Crows and Jays and Blackbirds in the orchard doing, Tommy; did you notice?” asked Gray Lady, as she arranged some papers between the leaves of her scrap-book.

“The Jays were hanging around your lunch-counter in the old apple tree, that is, most of them; some seemed to be bringing acorns or some sort of big seeds from the river-woods way, and taking them into the attic of the old Swallow Chimney house. I never saw so many Jays at once; I counted sixteen of them,” said Tommy.

“The Crows and Grackles were walking on the ground, some in the grass meadow, and some in the open ploughed field, and they were all searching about as if they had lost something, and they kept picking and eating all the time.”

“Were they eating corn that had dropped, or rye?” asked Gray Lady.

“Oh, no, there wasn’t any corn there, and the rye isn’t sown yet. They were eating bugs and things like that, I guess,” said Tommy, to whom a new idea had come as he spoke.

“That is precisely what I hoped that one of you would see for yourself—the fact that both of these birds eat many things besides corn and grain.

“By the way, what kind of Blackbirds were they?—for we have three sorts that are very common here. The Red-winged, those with red shoulders that come in such numbers about the swampy meadows early in spring. The Cowbird of the pastures who is smaller than the Red-wing, with a brown head, neck, and breast, the rest of him being gloomy black, with what Goldilocks calls all the ‘soap-bubble colours’ glistening over it, though the Wise Men call this ‘iridescence.’

“Then there is the Crow-Blackbird or Purple Grackle, the largest of the three, who is quite a foot in length from tail-tip to point of beak. This Blackbird has glistening jet feathers, with all the beautiful rainbow colours on his back and wings, that almost form bars of metallic hue, and he is a really beautiful bird that we should certainly appreciate better if it were not so common. Now, of course, it is one step on the way to bird knowledge if you can say surely this is a Blackbird, but it is necessary to go on then and say _which_ Blackbird.”

“They were the Purple Grackle kind,” said Tommy, immediately, “for they were bigger than Cowbirds, and they had handsome shiny feathers, and they did just creak and grackle like everything while they walked around.”

“Very good,” said Gray Lady; “now I think that there are several things that you do not know about these birds, whom it is perfectly safe to call ‘mischief-makers’ and undesirable garden friends, though our best knowledge will not allow us to condemn them altogether as criminals, as was once the custom.”

At this moment Jim Crow, who had been on an excursion first to the room, then, by way of the branches of an overhanging sugar-maple, quite down to the orchard lunch-counter and back, had crept in at the window unobserved, walked across the floor to the work-table, about which the girls sat, and, going under it, was concealed by the cloth. At this moment Eliza Clausen dropped her thimble. It rolled under the table, and as she stooped to get it she was just in time to see Jim seize it in his beak and half fly, half scramble to the back of Goldilocks’ chair, with his prize held fast.

“Oh, my thimble! Jim’ll swallow it!” she wailed, and the boys, with one impulse, started in pursuit. They could not have done a worse thing, for, seeing himself cornered, Jim’s hiding instinct came to his aid, and sidling along to the unceiled side of the attic, he quickly dropped the thimble between the studs, and you could hear it rattle down to the next story. Then he took refuge behind his mistress’ chair, from which he peeped inquisitively, with the sidewise look peculiar to Crows, so that it was impossible not to laugh at his quizzical expression.

“Do not worry about the thimble, Eliza,” said Gray Lady, “for those you are wearing for the sewing lessons are not prize thimbles, but merely penny affairs. This gives you a chance to see some of the little bits of mischief that a tame young Crow can do in his first season, so that you can imagine what a wild, old, wise, leader Crow can plot and plan in other ways. You all know the Crow, or rather, to be exact, the American Crow, for there is the Fish Crow and a southern relation, the Florida Crow, and in all there are twenty-five different kinds in North America alone. This Common Crow is very plentiful here, as he is in almost all parts of the United States, where he makes his home from the Mexican border up to the fur countries.

“But do you know that this Crow is cousin to the Blue Jay?”

“How funny! What makes them cousins?—for they don’t look a bit alike, and they’re not the same colour or anything,” said Sarah, Tommy, and Dave, almost together.

“Yes, that is true, but colour and feathers have nothing to do with bird relationship any more than coloured hair has to do with human families, and you can see that here among yourselves. The Baltimore Oriole, Meadowlark, Bobolink, and Purple Grackle all belong in one family, and yet how unlike they seem. It is the construction of the bird’s body and its habits and traits that serve the Wise Men as guides to their grouping, and in these traits the two are much alike, for Mr. Chapman, who knows all about these birds, whether as museum specimens, where he can study their bones, or as wild birds in the trees, where he watches them day in and day out, says, ‘Our Crows and Jays inhabit wooded regions, and, although they shift about to a limited extent, they are resident throughout the year, except at the northern limits of their range. They are omnivorous feeders, taking fruits, seeds, insects, eggs, nestlings, etc. Crows and Jays exhibit marked traits of character and are possessed of unusual intelligence. Some scientists place them at the top of the tree of bird-life, and if their mental development be taken into consideration they have undoubted claim to high rank.’

“You see, also, that here is a Wise Man who believes that birds have intelligence that implies thinking, and this is different from the mere inherited instinct that teaches animals how to obtain food, self-protection, etc. There are people who believe that they are the only wise animals, and deny that birds and beasts can think; while there are others who try to make these birds and beasts think on the same lines as ourselves rather than in their own way. Both these are wrong; both are like blind men that lead others into a ditch and leave them there. The only way for you and me to do is to watch out for ourselves, look carefully, and be very sure that we see what is, and not merely what we would like to see.

“Now I will tell you what I, myself, have seen and know, and what others, whose word is guaranteed by the Wise Men, have seen concerning Crows and Jays. When I was a child, twenty-five years ago, riding my pony, I wandered all over the country-side with my father, and I knew every Crow roost and Hawk’s nest for miles, and for many years after I watched their comings and goings. Late last winter, when I came back to the dear home to live, I went out to the nearest of the old Crow roosts in the cedar woods yonder across the river (you can see the tree-tops plainly from this window), and, in spite of time and changes, a flock of Crows was still there.

“To be sure, the flock was smaller, and there were fewer Cedars, many having been turned into fence and gate posts. But the Crows, big, black, solemn things as they are, seemed to give me a welcome.

“The life of the Crow is dull if judged, perhaps, from the standpoint of the birds that make long journeys, such as the Swallows, Humming-birds, and the Night Hawk (that isn’t a Hawk at all), who nest in the far North and go back to spend the winter in Central or South America.

“Yet all we stay-at-home people know how much can happen even here in Fair Meadows township, and, if we extend our territory from salt water, or the southeast, to the hickory woods beyond the Grist-Mill on the northwest, there is room enough for happenings that would make an exciting life for any pair of Crows. For in considering Crows, we must take the life of a pair, one of their good traits being their personal and race fidelity, and when they mate, it is usually for life.

“It is middle autumn now; what are the Crows doing? All through August and early fall they have been feeding good on grasshoppers, caterpillars, locusts, and cutworms. This flock that roost in the cedar woods are doing that which occupies most of a bird’s time in season and out, working for a living, and in doing this they are searching the grass meadows and ploughed fields for insects of every sort and description.

“Their time of mischief is over for the year. The corn is cut and stacked; they may if they please tear the husks from the cobs and then reach the corn, but they are not fond of tough, dry corn, though, of course, they eat it when really hungry. But just now there is plenty to be gleaned from the field, and when the winter hungry time comes, the good corn will be stored safe in the granaries.

“Every night, before sunset, the Crows of the flock leave the various feeding-places in twos and threes, and flap across country in a leisurely fashion toward the roost, where they spend their nights all the year except during the nesting season. They return thus in little parties, if there is no cause for fear, but should a man with a gun, a large Owl, or other suspicious object appear, either the Crow on the watch, for there is always one of these who guards the destiny of the flock, gives a signal by a sharp quavering Ca-ca-w or, if this seems too rash, the leader will simply take to wing and slip away silently, and, no matter how quietly the leader slips away, the rest of the flock know it and rise at once. How do they know this?”

“Maybe they smell, just as our rabbit hounds do when they start out after things that no one else sees or knows about,” said Tommy Todd.

“No, birds are not guided by scent as animals are,” said Gray Lady; “scent is held to the ground by moisture; it would be difficult to follow when it is blown about by air. Birds are led by their sight, which is many times keener than that of man or the lower animals. Then, too, they have another sense more fully developed than other animals, and that is what is called the ‘sense of direction.’ Knowing the spot to which they would go, they are able to reach it in the quickest, most direct manner, so that ‘as the Crow flies’ has come to mean the most direct way of reaching a place.

“When morning comes they leave the roost, and, breaking up into parties, begin the search for food again. As the supply near home gives out, they go farther and farther afield, sometimes going down to the shore, where they pick up clams, mussels, and any scraps of sea-food that they can find.

“After the corn has been taken in, they find scattered kernels of that and other grain left in the field, but at the first snowfall hard times set in for the Crow. He cannot search the bark crevices for insects like the small tree-trunk birds with slender bills; people do not welcome him to their farm-yards and scatter grain for him, or leave him free to glean, as they do the other winter birds. It is at this time, when the hand of man is turned against him, that the Crow really works in man’s interest by catching meadow-mice and many other small destructive animals.

“At this time, the Crow eats frozen apples, poison-ivy berries, acorns, beech and chestnuts, and the like. But now he grows poor and thin and his voice is querulous, and from November to March the Crow is put to it for a living. ‘Poor as a Crow’ is an apt saying.

THE CROW

Then it is a distant cawing, Growing louder—coming nearer, Tells of crows returning inland From their winter on the marshes.

Iridescent is their plumage, Loud their voices, bold their clamour. In the pools and shallows wading, Or in overflowing meadows Searching for the waste of winter— Scraps and berries freed by thawing. Weird their notes and hoarse their croaking Silent only when the night comes.

—Frank Bolles.

“With the thawing out of the ground in spring, the Crow begins to view the world differently. The search for insects still continues, and the corn now gleaned is more palatable, for it has been well soaked, and though a corn-eater by nature, the Crow does not like his too hard and dry.

“The flock life of the roost now ends. Every Jack chooses his Jill, and mingled with the harsh warning cries of the older birds are sounds that sometimes have a suggestion that their makers are trying to sing. The funniest thing in birdland is to see a Crow or a Purple Grackle making love, standing on tiptoe on a branch, raising their wings by jerks, like pump-handles that are stiff, while the sounds they make stick in the throat in a manner that suggests Crow croup.

“Once in a long time, however, I have heard a Crow begin with a high Caw, and then followed a series of soft, almost musical, notes, though without tune or finish, but this is the exception. But what, in his courting days, a Crow lacks in song, he makes up by wonderful feats of flight. For his size, the Crow is always a graceful bird on the wing. When he flaps slowly up against the wind, there is nothing laboured in his motions, but in the spring, in company with a desired mate, his swift dives into the air, wheels to right and left, circlings often finished by a series of somersaults across the sky, are really marvellous.

“Now the pair of Crows that we will call Jack and Jill, to save time, leave the cedar woods and begin hunting for a nesting-site. At first they looked through the hickory woods for an old Hawk’s nest for a foundation upon which to build, but this year there were two Red-tailed Hawks already in possession, and so they hurried away as quickly as possible, for Hawks do not like Crows, and tell them so very plainly.

“Next day they spied the great white pine back of Farmer Boardman’s barn. They liked the looks of the tree, for it had a bunch of closely knit branches near the top, and the neighbourhood in all respects promised good feeding, but before they had carried more than a few coarse sticks and put them in place, the farmer’s man saw them, and not only fired his gun at them to drive them away, but climbed the tree and threw the sticks away in order to be sure that they should not rest there.

“What did Jack and Jill do next? They came flying over here. The place was attractive, and it was easy to slip from the pine woods to the hickories, then across to the orchard, and up to the spruce trees outside the window here. Goldilocks was too ill to come up into the playroom then, and so the windows on this side of the attic were shut.

“The nest-building began in earnest, both birds working at it. First, a foundation of stout sticks, some of them being half-dead twigs from these same spruces; then, old weed stalks and vine tendrils, mixed with corn husks, until a heap was collected that would fill a half-bushel basket.

“This was the outside of the house; the nursery itself was hollowed in the centre of the moss and was about a foot across and quite deep. This hollow was well lined and soft; it had in it moss, soft grasses, and some horsehair. In due time the nest was finished and held six very handsome eggs, dull green with purplish brown markings, two being more thickly spattered with them than the other four. At this time I began to take an interest in the household affairs of Jack and Jill Crow.”

“How could you?—can you climb trees?” asked Eliza Clausen, evidently much surprised.

“No, I couldn’t climb as far as this Crow’s nest, Eliza, though I could have once,” laughed Gray Lady. “Stand up on that seat by the corner window and look straight down into the spruce with a crooked top and tell me what you see.”

Eliza jumped up on the seat, and, after gazing a minute, cried, “Why, it’s a big ’normous nest, and I can see every stick as plain as print.”

“Take this opera-glass, hold it to your eyes and move the screw to and fro until everything is very clear, and then tell me what you see,” said Gray Lady.

It took Eliza some time to manage the glass, but when she at last succeeded she cried, “Oh, I can see the moss and the grass and the hair; it comes as near as if I could touch it.” And one after another the children learned to adjust the focus and look, and it was the first, but not the last, time that glasses would open a new world to them.

“It was a little less than three weeks that the birds sat upon the eggs, sharing the work between them, before the little birds were hatched. Such ugly, queer little things as they were, both blind and featherless. In three weeks more they were well grown and able to fly, but their tails were still shorter than their parents’, and they were inclined to return to the nest on the slightest alarm.

“About this time Jacob Hughes told me that either Crows or Hawks were taking little chickens early every morning, for they could not get them during the daytime without being seen.

“I looked at the runs for the little chicks and saw that they stood in the open, not close to woods where Crows and Hawks could spy them out and sneak up or dash down according to their habits.

“I well knew the bad name that Crows and Hawks have among poultry-raisers, so Jacob roofed the chicken-runs with wire, for, even if he had seen Crows there, I would not allow shooting on the place during the nesting season.