Part 11

But for birds that invariably choose old mother earth for the foundation of their houses, commend me to the American meadow-larks. In this respect they are certainly groundlings, though not in a bad sense. All their nests are constructed on the same general plan, it is true; but the details are quite diverse, proving that architectural designs in the lark guild of builders are almost as numerous as the builders themselves. My young farmer friend found a nest early in the spring, with not a blade of grass near it for protection, while the structure itself was arched over only a very little in the rear. Another nest was situated in a pasture, and was almost as devoid of roofing as was the first nest. But rather late in the spring a nest was found, hidden most deftly in the clover and plantain leaves, which were woven together in the most intricate manner so as to form a canopy over the cosey cot. At one side there was a tunnel, some two feet long, forming the only entrance to the apartment. The nest proper was arched over from the rear for fully one half its width. Not ten feet away was another lark’s nest that was almost wholly exposed to the light and air. In the lark world there is evidently a good deal of room for originality. There seem to be many larks of many minds.

My quest for cuckoos’ nests during the summer of 1892 was well rewarded, but I shall stop to describe only one of these finds. The young birds having left, I lifted the nest from the swaying branch on which it hung, and examined it. The foundation was composed of twigs and sticks intertwined and plaited together with some degree of skill, but it was the lining that stirred my interest. First, it consisted of a number of dead forest leaves from which the cellular texture had been completely stripped, leaving only the petiole, midrib, and veins; underneath this was a more compact carpet of the same kind of leaves, of which the blade, instead of being stripped off, was perforated with innumerable small holes, making them look like extremely fine sieves. In some cases the blades seemed to be split, leaving the veins and veinlets exposed, so that one could trace their intricate net-work. Another cuckoo nest had both the stripped and perforated leaves, but fewer of each kind. Whether the birds themselves did the artistic work on these leaves or not,—that is a question. The stripping of the upper layer of their blades would allow the dust and scaly substance shed by the young birds, to sift through to the second layer, where it would not come in direct contact with the nurslings. The two carpets were laid, no doubt, in the interests of health and cleanliness.

But it is time to turn our attention to the children of the nursery. The life of young birds in the nest,—what a field for study! One thing they learn very early, probably almost as soon as they emerge from the shell; that is, to open their mouths for food. No tutor or professor needed for that! Most young birds soon become quite clamorous for their rations. Lowell must have looked into more than one bird nursery, or he scarcely would have thought of writing the lines,—

“Blind nestlings, unafraid, Stretch up, wide-mouthed, to every shade By which their downy dream is stirred, Taking it for the mother-bird.”

A nestful of half-callow younglings, standing on tiptoe, craning up their necks, wabbling from side to side, opening their mouths to the widest extent of their “gapes,” knocking heads and beaks together, and chirping at the top of their voices,—I confess it makes a picture more grotesque than attractive. By and by, as the pin-feathers begin to grow, the infant brood seem to feel an itching sensation, which causes them to pick the various parts of their bodies to remove the scaly substance that gathers on the skin and at the bases of the sprouting feathers. But how awkwardly they go about this exercise! Their heads seem to be too heavy for their long, slender necks, and go waggling and rolling from side to side, often missing the mark aimed at. However, the muscles of the nurslings are developing all the while. Soon they lift themselves to their full height, stretch themselves, jerk their tails higher than their heads in a most amusing way (you smile, but they don’t), and then squat down upon the floor of the nest again. A day or so later the most advanced youngster feels the flying impulse stirring in his veins, and so, after stretching himself as previously described, he extends his wings to their utmost reach, and flaps them in a joyous way over his cuddling companions, sometimes rapping them smartly on the head. Soon there comes a day when he hops to the edge of the nest, looks out upon the wide, beckoning world like a young satrap, and flaps his wings with a semi-conscious feeling of strength. Ere long, encouraged by his parents, he spreads his wings, and takes a header for the nearest twig. Why, his wings will bear him up on the buoyant air! He has graduated from the nursery and the grammar grade into the high school.

Every year has its eccentricities, so to speak; that is, the character of the weather and other modifying causes afford the faunal life an occasion for a development that is peculiar. Thus the observations made by the naturalist one year are not necessarily mere repetitions of those made other years. Nature is not often guilty of tautology. I yield therefore to the temptation to add a few chronicles made during the spring of 1893, which, I hope, will not destroy the unity of this article on bird nurseries. One day in June, while strolling through the woods, I heard the song of a red-eyed vireo. It was a kind of talking song, or recitative, as if the bird were discoursing on some favorite theme, and improvising his music as he went. His voice was so loud and clear that I could hear it far away, drifting through the green, embowered aisles of the woods. This vigorous chanson was a surprise, for I have never before known this vireo to remain in my neighborhood during the summer. He mostly hies farther north. But a still greater surprise lay in ambush for me a few days later, in one of my rambles through the woods. Suddenly there was a light flutter of wings near my head, and there hung a tiny nest on the low, swaying branches of a sapling.

That it was a vireo’s nest was evident, for it was fastened to the twigs by the rim, without any support below, swinging there like a dainty basket. Presently I got my glass on the bird herself, and found her to be a red-eyed vireo. That was my first nest of this species, and proud enough I was of the discovery. The outside of the little cot was prettily ornamented with tufts of spider-webs. As usual with this bird, a piece of white paper was wrought into the lower part of the nest. Three vireo’s eggs and one cow-bunting’s lay in the bottom of the cup.

Every few days I called on the bird, going close enough only to see her plainly, without driving her off the nest. She made a pretty picture sitting there, one fit for an artist’s brush, with her head and tail pointing almost straight up, her body gracefully curved to fit the deep little basket, and her eyes growing large and wild at her visitor’s approach. At length, one day, I felt sure there must be little ones in the nest, and so I went very close to her; yet she did not fly. Then I moved my hand toward her, and finally touched her back before she flitted away. A featherless cow-bunting lay in the hammock, but the vireo’s eggs were not yet hatched. A few days later the nest was robbed. Some heartless villain, probably a blue jay, had destroyed all the children. I could have wept, so keen was my sense of bereavement.

The cow-buntings imposed a great deal on other kind-hearted bird parents that spring. Almost every nest contained one or two of this interloper’s eggs, and, as if Nature abetted the designs of the parasite, these eggs were almost always hatched first. One wood-thrush’s nest contained two bunting and three thrush eggs. As soon as the bantlings had broken from the shell, the buntings could be readily distinguished from the thrushes, for the former feathered much more rapidly than the latter. When the youngsters were about half grown, they crowded one another considerably in their adobe apartment, but, to all intents and purposes, they lived together in beautiful domestic harmony. At all events, no unseemly family wrangles came under my eye. By and by, on one of my visits, I found that the buntings had left the maternal roof (to speak with a good deal of poetic license), while the thrush trio still sat contentedly on the nest, and did not display any fear when I caressingly stroked their brown backs, but looked up at me in a _naïve_, confiding way that was very gratifying. Quite different was the conduct of the inmates of a bush-sparrow’s nest, hidden in the grass at the woodland’s border. The baby sparrows rushed pell-mell from their pretty homestead when I came near, leaving a bunting, which had been hatched and reared with them, alone in the nest. He was not nearly so far developed as his brothers and sisters, and had no intention of being driven from home.

But here is an instance more like that of the bunting-wood-thrush episode just described. A pretty basket, woven of fine fibrous material, swung from the lower branches of an apple-tree in the orchard of one of my farmer friends, and contained three young orchard orioles and one cow-bunting. One day I procured a step-ladder and climbed up to the nest, when the bunting sprang out with a wild cry and toppled to the ground, while the young orioles, not yet half-fledged, merely pried open their mouths for food. Yet these birds, when grown, are fully as dexterous on the wing as their foster relatives, the buntings.

During the same spring some observations on youthful blackbirds were made. They may be of sufficient interest to register in this place. Did you know that a part of the heads of infant blackbirds remains bare a week or two after the other portions of their bodies are well feathered? This is true of the three species of my acquaintance,—the purple grackles, the red-winged blackbirds, and the cow-buntings. The bald portion includes the forehead, part of the crown, the chin, and throat, and extends behind and below the ears, which are covered with a tiny tuft of fuzz. Had this unfeathered portion been red instead of black, the youngsters would have looked quite like diminutive turkey-buzzards. One may be pardoned for being somewhat puzzled over the childish conundrum, Why young blackbirds, of all the birds in the circle of one’s acquaintance, must go bareheaded during the first few weeks of their life. By and by, however, the feathers grow out on this space as thickly as on the remainder of their bodies.

Strange that I have found so few black-capped titmice’s nests, familiar and abundant as they are in my neighborhood, both summer and winter; but my quest was rewarded in two instances during the spring of 1893,—the first nest being in the top of a truncated sassafras-tree. The snag was perhaps twenty feet high. On one of my visits the birds were hollowing out their little apartment. They would dart into the narrow opening, and presently emerge, carrying small fragments of partly decayed wood in their beaks and dropping them to the ground. Some weeks later, I climbed the tree (with much fear and trembling, be it said), but the birds had made the cavity so deep that I could not see the bottom, and break open their sylvan nursery I would not. The second titmouse nest was in a very slender branch of a sassafras-tree,—so slender, indeed, that it was a wonder the birds were able to make a hollow in it. At first it looked precisely like a black patch burned on the bough’s surface. When one of the feathered atoms stood in the tiny doorway and looked out, she made a pretty picture,—one that would have put a throb of joy into an artist’s bosom.

Yet there is another picture that I should prefer to have painted, not on account of its attractiveness, but on account of its quaintness; it was the nest, eggs, and young of a pair of green herons in an orchard. The nest was built high in an apple-tree, and was only a loose platform of sticks. Although anything but an expert climber, I contrived to scale that tree three times to satisfy my curiosity. The first time there were four eggs of a greenish-blue cast—not jewels by any means—in the nest. On my second visit four of the oddest birdlings I ever looked upon greeted me with wide-open eyes and mouths. They were covered with light yellowish down, and the space about the eyes was of a greenish hue,—one of the characteristic markings of the adult birds. When they opened their mouths, expecting to be fed, their throats puffed out somewhat like the throats of croaking frogs, making a good-sized pocket inside to receive chunks of food. The thought struck me that perhaps the pocket was designed as a sort of temporary storage place for victuals until the nestling was ready to swallow them. The birds made a low, quaint noise that cannot be represented phonetically. Indeed, the picture they made was slightly uncanny, so I did not linger about it overlong.

A week later my third and last call on the heron household was made. What an odd spectacle it presented! The young birds had grown wonderfully, though still covered with down, with very little sign of feathers. As my head appeared above the rim of the nest, they slowly craned up their India-rubber necks, then rose on their stilt-like legs, and looked at me with wondering, wide-open eyes that gleamed almost like gold. The spectacle made me think of ghouls, incongruous as the simile may seem. When I touched one of the birds, it huddled, half-alarmed, down to the bottom of the nest. Another slyly stalked off to the edge of the platform, upon a thick clump of twigs and leaves, eying me keenly as he moved away. I hurriedly climbed down, lest he should topple to the ground and dash himself to death; and thus, while I was on the brink of causing a tragedy, yet, as a sort of emollient to my conscience, I consoled myself with the thought that I had really prevented one.

Another interesting discovery of the same spring was a killdeer plover’s nest, which my farmer friend across-lots found in a clover-field. There had been a heavy rainfall, making the ploughed ground as soft as mush; but my tall rubber boots were mud-proof, and so I went to pay the plovers my respects. This was after six o’clock in the evening. I found one little bird in the shallow, pebble-lined nest, and three eggs, one of them slightly broken at the larger end. The plover nestling was an odd baby, with its large head, fluffy, square-shouldered body, and slender beak sticking straight out. A small piece of the egg-shell still clung to its back. On taking the tiny thing into my hand, what was this I saw? It had only three toes on each foot, instead of four, as most birds have; and those three were all fore toes, while the bird had no hind toe at all. Why the plover should have no hind toe is an enigma; but then, the ostrich has none, either, and only two in front,—“every species after its kind.”

Early the next morning two more youngsters had broken shell, and come forth to keep their more precocious brother company. The eldest was marked quite distinctly about the head and neck like its parents, having the characteristic white and black bands, thus early proclaiming the persistence of its type. When I set it down—for I had lifted it in my hand—it started to run over the soft ground, enhancing its speed by flapping its tiny wings. The picture was indescribably cunning. The bird was so small that it looked like a downy dot scudding over the undulations of the ground. Think of a baby only about fifteen hours old running away from home in that manner! I caught the infantile scapegrace and placed it back in its cradle, where it remained. During the night there had been a very heavy fall of rain, and yet these youngsters, small as they were, had not been drowned, having doubtless been covered by their parents. At six o’clock in the evening they had all left the nest, and, search as I would, I could find no clew to their whereabouts, though the parent birds were flying and scuttling about with loud cries of warning to me to keep my distance. Thus it would seem that young plovers, like young partridges, grouse, and ducks, leave the nest at a very tender age.

Before closing, I must mention something odd that befell a kingfisher’s nest. A year prior I had found a nest in a high bank in a sloping field, where the water had washed out a deep gully. In passing the bank one day I noticed that it had been partly broken down; there had been a landslide on a small scale, caused by the washing of the heavy spring rains. Half way to the top, on a narrow shelf, lay a clutch of kingfisher’s eggs, some of them broken by the caving of the bank. The landslide had occurred after the cavity had been made and the eggs deposited, thus blasting the hopes of the kingfishers. However, they had not become despondent, for, later in the season, they burrowed a hole for an underground nursery in another part of the bank.

III. BIRD HIGH SCHOOLS.

It is not to be supposed that there is a regularly graded system of instruction in the school-life of the birds. There may be method in their learning, but it would be difficult to state positively just where the primary, grammar, high-school, and college grades merge into one another, or when diplomas of efficiency are granted, if granted at all. But that there is something of a system of pedagogy among birds, and that the juniors do receive instruction from their seniors, no observer of feathered life can doubt for a moment. In the systems of human instruction the child-life of the young learner usually ends with his high-school course; he then stands at the threshold of young manhood, ready to do a good deal of wrestling with his problems on his own account. Taking that fact as our cue, we should say that the high-school instruction of the youthful bird begins when he leaves the nest, and ends when he is able to fly with dexterity, and provide for his own support, at least in the main. It is not probable that the lecture system prevails in the bird community, or the method of class instruction now in vogue, or that books and charts and blackboards are used; but the instruction is chiefly individual, and is carried on mostly by example, coercion, and urgent appeal. There is not an inexhaustible number of branches to be pursued by the little undergraduates in plumes; but their efforts at obtaining an education consist chiefly in mastering three grand accomplishments,—flying, feeding, and singing.

If ever you have seen a bevy of young red-headed woodpeckers, led by several of their elders, taking their wing-exercises, choosing a certain tree in the woods for a point of departure, and then sailing around and around with loud cries of delight, you must have concluded that it was a veritable class in calisthenics. One seldom has an opportunity to see young birds taking their first lessons in flight, but it is worth one’s time and patience to be present at such a recitation. The parents set the example by flying from the nest to a perch near by, and then coax and scold their children to follow their example. If the little learners hesitate, as they usually do, their impatient teachers exclaim: “Why, just try it once. You never will learn to fly any younger. If you will only spread your wings, let go of the rim of the nest, and venture out on the air, you will find that it will bear you up. Don’t be afraid.” But perhaps the pupils complain that it makes their heads dizzy to look down from their awful height. Then the teachers pooh-pooh at their fears, and cry condescendingly, “The idea of being afraid! Why, just see here!” and they mount up into the air, poise, careen, and perform other extraordinary feats, while the youngsters gaze at them in wide-eyed wonder. At last, after much persuasion and many half-attempts, one of the youngsters spreads his pinions and flutters laboriously until he scrambles upon the nearest twig, with bated breath and throbbing pulses. He is frightened half to death, but he has found that the friendly air will support him if he makes proper use of his wings, and so he will soon make another effort, and another, until he begins really to enjoy the exercise. However, several days may elapse before the youngest and weakest member of the class can muster sufficient courage to take his first aerial journey.

Some species of birds graduate from the nest much sooner than others. In one case I observed that a family of goldfinches remained in the nest just seven days after a family of bush-sparrows, hatched on the same day, had taken their flight.[8] The yellow-billed cuckoo has given me no little surprise in this respect. When he first creeps out of his shell apartment, he is a callow, ungainly infant, black as coal, with a sparse covering of stiff bristles; but almost before a week has passed, he has hopped from his washed-out cradle to try the realities of the great world around him. Why the agile little goldfinch should remain in the crib so much longer than his less dexterous fellow-pupil, the cuckoo, is a problem of bird school-life that I must leave for solution to wiser heads.

Having gone from the nest, the young bird has not yet learned all about the art of flying; no, indeed! He must become perfect by practice. Many a blunder will he make. At first he cannot always nicely calculate the distance to the twig that he has in view, and so he fails to give himself the proper propulsive force; he misses his footing by going too far, or not far enough, and then where he will alight is a question of what he happens to strike first. Probably a wild, desperate scramble will ensue, which ends only when the youthful novice has fallen plump upon the ground. He may be very much alarmed; but as soon as he recovers his breath, his courage rises, and he tries again.