Part 8
A discovery was also made in regard to the sleeping-apartments of the red-headed woodpecker. As the dusk was gathering, a red-head dashed in front of me into the border of the woods, alighting on a sapling stem, and then began to shuffle upward toward a hole plainly visible from where I sat; but just as he reached the hole, another red-head appeared with a challenging air on the inside of the cavity, and red-head number one darted away with a cry of alarm. Now was my time to discover, if possible, where red-head number two would roost. So I kept a close watch on the cavity, waiting about, as previously said, until nightfall, and then, keeping my eye on the hole, so that the bird could not fly out without being seen, I made my way to the sapling. Intently watching the hole with my glass, I tapped the stem of the tree with my heel, when, in the moonlight, a red head and long, black beak were protruded from the opening above. The woodpecker was within, that much was proved; and when I had beaten against the tree, he had sprung up to the orifice to see who was thus impolitely disturbing his evening slumbers. He turned his head sidewise, and looked down at me with his keen beady eyes; but although I tapped against the tree again and again, he would not leave the cavity. There can be no doubt that it was his bedroom,—that cosey apartment in the sapling,—for it was still too early in the season for the bird to begin nesting, as he had arrived only two or three days before from his winter residence in the south. Very likely most woodpeckers roost in the cavities which they hew in trees, for I do not see why the one into whose private affairs I pried that evening should have been an exception. He most probably was only following the customs of his tribe from time immemorial.[5]
A number of experiments made with young birds purloined from the nest—I must beg the feathered parents’ forgiveness—have added several interesting facts to the subject in hand. One spring I became guardian, purveyor, and man-of-all-work to a pair of young flickers, taken from a cavity in an old apple-tree. They were kept in a large cage, in which I placed sapling boughs of considerable size. They had not become my protégés many days before they insisted on converting these upright branches into sleeping-couches, clinging to the vertical boles with their stout claws, and pillowing their heads in the feathers of their backs. In this position they slept as comfortably as the thrushes and orioles confined in other cages slept on their horizontal perches, or, for that matter, as I slept in my own bed. They even slept on the under side of an oblique branch. One of them passed one night on a horizontal perch, although apparently his slumbers were not quite so sound and refreshing as they would have been had he roosted in the wonted upright position. Queerest of all, these woodpeckers sometimes selected the side of the cage itself for a roosting-place, thrusting their claws into the crevice between the door and its frame. Wherever they roosted, their tails were made to do duty as braces, by being pressed tightly against the wall to which they clung. A pair of young red-headed woodpeckers behaved in much the same way, always preferring to sleep on an upright perch.
During the spring of 1893 I placed in a cage the following birds, all taken while in a half-callow state, from the nest: Two cat-birds, one red-winged blackbird, one cow-bunting, and two meadow-larks. In a few days all of them proclaimed their species, as well as the inexorable law of heredity, by selecting such roosts as were best adapted to them, and that without any instruction whatever from adult birds. The meadow-larks almost invariably squatted on the grass with which the floor of the cage was lined, usually scratching and waddling from side to side until they had made cosey hollows to fit their bodies; while the remaining inmates flew up to the perches when bed-time came.
It was quite interesting to look in upon my group of sleeping pets of an evening, part of them roosting in the lower story of the cage and the rest in the upper story. Several times, however, one of the larks slept on a perch, and the red-wing, after the cat-birds and bunting had been removed from the cage, occasionally seemed to think the upstairs a little lonely, and so he cuddled down on the grass below, edging up close to the larks. The strangely assorted bedfellows slept together in this way like happy children.
XI. THE WOOD-PEWEE. A MONOGRAPH.
Almost every person living in the country or the suburbs of a town is familiar with the house-pewee, or phœbe-bird. It is usually looked upon as the sure harbinger of spring. In my boyhood days my parents and grandparents were wont to say, “Spring is here; the phœbe is singing.” And if blithesomeness of tone and good cheer have anything to do with the advent of the season of song and bursting blossoms, the pewit, as he is often called, must be a true herald and prophet. He seems to carry the “subtle essence of spring” in his tuneful larynx, and in the graceful sweep of his flight as he pounces upon an insect. It is quite easy to make the transition from his familiar song of _Phe-e-by_ to the exclamation, _Spring’s here!_ by a little stretch of the fancy.
But the phœbe has a woodland relative, a first cousin, with which most persons are not so well acquainted, because he is more retiring in his habits, and seeks out-of-the-way places for his habitat. I refer to the wood-pewee. If your eyes and ears are not so sharp as they should be, you may get these two birds confounded; yet there is no need of making such a blunder. The woodland bird is smaller, slenderer, and of a darker cast than his relative; and, besides, there is a marked difference in the musical performances of these birds. The song of the phœbe is sprightly and cheerful, and the syllables are uttered rather quickly, while the whistle of the wood-pewee is softer and more plaintive, and is repeated with less emphasis and more deliberation. There is, indeed, something inexpressibly sad and dreamy about the strain of the wood-pewee, especially if heard at a distance in the “emerald twilight” of the “woodland privacies.” Mr. Lowell seldom erred in his attempts to characterize the songs and habits of the birds, but in his exquisite poem entitled “Phœbe” he certainly must have referred to the wood-pewee and not to the phœbe-bird, as his description applies to the former but not to the latter. He calls this bird “the loneliest of its kind,” while the pewit is a familiar species about many a country home. Taking it for granted that he meant the wood-pewee, how happy is his description!
“It is a wee sad-colored thing, As shy and secret as a maid; That ere in choir the robins ring, Pipes its own name like one afraid.
“It seems pain-prompted to repeat The story of some ancient ill, But _Phœbe! Phœbe!_ sadly sweet, Is all it says, and then is still.
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“_Phœbe!_ it calls and calls again; And Ovid, could he but have heard, Had hung a legendary pain About the memory of the bird.
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“_Phœbe!_ is all it has to say In plaintive cadence o’er and o’er, Like children who have lost their way, And know their names, but nothing more.”
This poetical tribute is certainly very graceful, and would be true to life if the phonetic representation were a little more accurate. Instead of _Phœbe_, imagine the song to be _Pe-e-w-e-e-e_ or _Phe-e-w-e-e-e_, and you will gain a clear idea of the minstrelsy of this songster of the wildwood. However, he frequently varies his tune,—to prevent its becoming monotonous, I opine. He sometimes closes his refrain with the falling inflection or circumflex, and sometimes with the rising, as the mood prompts him. In the former case the first syllable receives the greater emphasis and is the more prolonged, and in the latter this order is precisely reversed. When the last syllable is uttered with the rising circumflex, it is usually, if not always, cut off somewhat abruptly. Moreover, this minstrel often runs the two syllables of his song together,—a peculiarity that I have represented in my notes, taken while listening to the song, in this way: _Phe-e-e-o-o-w-e-e-e!_ There is a characteristic swing about the melody that refuses to be caught in the mesh of letters and syllables.
In some of the pewee’s vocal efforts he does not get farther than the end of the first syllable. The song seems to be cut off short, as if the notes had stuck fast in the singer’s throat, or as if something had occurred to divert his mind from the song. Perhaps this hiatus is caused by the sudden appearance of an insect glancing by, which attracts the musician’s attention. This bird usually chooses a dead twig or limb in the woods as a perch, on which he sits and sings, turning his head from side to side, so that no flitting moth may escape him.
And what a persistent singer he is! He sings not only in the spring when other vocalists are in full tune, but also all summer long, never growing disheartened, even when the mercury rises far up into the nineties. What a pleasant companion he has been in my midsummer strolls as I have wearily patrolled the woods! On the sultriest August days, when all other birds were glad to keep mute, sitting on their shady perches with open mandibles and drooping wings, the dreamful, far-away strain of the wood-pewee has drifted, a welcome sound, to my ears through the dim aisles. He seems to be a friend in need. How often, when the heat has almost overcome me, as I pursued my daily beat, that song has put new vigor into my veins! When Mr. Lowell wrote that
“The phœbe scarce whistles Once an hour to his fellow,”
he must have been listening to a far lazier specimen than those with which I am acquainted.
Most birds fall occasionally into a kind of ecstasy of song, and the wood-pewee is no exception. One evening, after it had grown almost dark, a pewee flew out into the air directly above my head from a tree by the wayside, and began to sing in a perfect transport as he wheeled about; then he swung back into the tree, keeping up his song in a continuous strain, and in sweet, half-caressing tones, until finally it died away, as if the bird had fallen into a doze during his vocal recital. I lingered about for some time, but he did not sing again. Why should he repeat his good-night song?
I have frequently heard young pewees in midsummer singing in a continuous way, instead of whistling the intermittent song of their elders. It sounds very droll, giving you the impression that the little neophyte has begun to turn the crank of his music-box and can’t stop. His voice is quite sweet, but his execution is very crude. Wait, however, until he is eight or nine months older, and he will show you what a winged Orpheus can do. My notes say that on the thirtieth of July, 1891, I heard a “pewee’s quaint, prolonged whistle, interlarded with his ordinary notes.” Thus it will be seen that he is a somewhat versatile songster, proving the poet’s lines half true and half untrue:—
“The birds but repeat without ending The same old traditional notes, Which some, by more happily blending, Seem to make over new in their throats.”
Younger readers may, perhaps, need to be informed that the wood-pewee belongs to the family of flycatchers, as do also the king-bird or bee-martin, the phœbe-bird, the great-crested flycatcher, and a number of other interesting species, all of which have a peculiar way of taking their prey. The pewee will sit almost motionless on a twig, lisping his plaintive tune at intervals, until a luckless insect comes buzzing near, all unconscious of its peril, when the bird will make a quick dash at it, seize it dexterously between his mandibles, and then circle around gracefully to the same or another perch, having made a splendid “catch on the fly.” If the quarry he has taken is small, it slips at once down his throat; but should it be too large to be disposed of in that summary way, he will beat it into an edible form upon a limb before gulping it down. Agile as he is, he sometimes misses his aim, being compelled to make a second, and occasionally even a third attempt to secure his prize. I have witnessed more than one comedy which turned out to be a tragedy for the ill-starred insect. Sometimes the insect will resort to the ruse of dropping toward the ground when it sees the bird darting toward it, and then a scuffle ensues that is really laughable, the pursuer whirling, tumbling, almost turning somersault in his desperate efforts to capture his prize. Once an insect flew between me and a pewee perched on a twig, when the bird darted down toward me with a directness of aim that made me think for a moment he would fly right into my face; but he made a dexterous turn in time, caught his quarry, and swung to a bough near by. If one were disposed to be speculative, one might well raise Sidney Lanier’s pregnant inquiry at this point, the reference being to the southern mocking-bird, and not to our pewee,—
“How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakspeare, on the tree?”
It has been my good fortune to find one, but only one, nest of this bird. It was placed on a horizontal branch about fifteen feet above the ground, and was a neat, compact structure, decorated on the outside with grayish lichens and moss, giving it the appearance of an excrescence on the limb.[6] It is said by those who have closely examined the nests, that they are handsomely built and ornamented, and are equalled only by the dainty houses of the humming-bird and the blue-gray gnat-catcher. The eggs, usually four in number, are of a creamy white hue, beautifully embellished with a wreath of lavender and purplish-brown around the larger end or near the centre.
Though our bird prefers solitary places for his home, he is far from shy, if you call on him in his haunt in the wildwood. He will sit fearless on his perch, even if you come quite near, looking at you in his staid, philosophical way, as if you were scarcely worth noticing. Nor will he hush his song at your approach, although he does not seem to care whether you listen to him or not. It is seldom that he can be betrayed into doing an undignified act; and even if he does almost turn a somersault in pursuing a refractory miller, he recovers his poise the next moment, and settles upon his perch with as much _sang froid_ as if nothing unusual had occurred. Altogether, the wood-pewee is what Bradford Torrey would call a “character in feathers.”
XII. A PAIR OF NIGHT-HAWKS.
The night-hawk and the whippoorwill are often confounded by persons of inaccurate habits of observation. It is true, both birds are members of the goatsucker family; but they belong to entirely different genera, and are therefore of much more distant kin than many people suppose. The whippoorwill is a forest bird, while the night-hawk prefers the open country. Besides, the whippoorwill is decidedly nocturnal in his habits, making the woods ring at night, as every one knows, with his weird, flutelike melody; whereas the night-hawk is a bird of the day and evening. Then, a peculiar mark of the night-hawk is the round white spot on his wings, visible on the under surface as he performs his wonderful feats overhead,—a mark that does not distinguish his woodland relative.
As a rule, the gloaming is the favorite time for the night-hawk’s wing-exercises; then he may be seen whirling, curveting, mounting, and plunging, often at a dizzy height, gathering his supper of insects as he flies; but his petulant call is often heard at other hours of the day, perhaps at noon when the sun is shining with fierce warmth. Even during a shower he seems to be fond of haunting the cloudy canopy, toying with the wind.
His call, as he tilts overhead, is difficult to represent phonetically, both the vowels and consonants being provokingly elusive and hard to catch. To me he seems usually to say _Spe-ah_. Sometimes the _S_ appears to be omitted, or is enunciated very slightly, while at other times his call seems to have a decidedly sibilant beginning. On several occasions he seemed to pronounce the syllable _Scape_.
I had often watched the marvellous flight of these birds, as they passed like living silhouettes across the sky; but they had always seemed so shy and unapproachable that, prior to the summer of 1891, I had despaired of ever finding a night-hawk’s nest. However, one evening in June, while stalking about in the marsh, I suddenly became aware of a large bird fluttering uneasily about me in the gathering darkness. Presently it was joined by its mate, and then the two birds circled and hovered about, often coming into uncomfortable proximity with my head, and muttering under their breath, _Chuckle! chuckle!_ Several times one of them alighted for a few moments on the rail-fence near by, and then resumed its circular flight. Even in the darkness I recognized that my uncanny companions were night-hawks, and felt convinced that there must be a nest in the neighborhood, or they would not display so much anxiety. It was too late to discover their secret that evening, and, besides, I really felt a slight chill creeping up my back, with those dark, ghostly forms wheeling about my head, and so I went reluctantly home.
Two days later I found time to visit the marsh. On reaching the spot where the two birds had been seen, presto! a dark feathered form started up before me from the ground. It was the female night-hawk; and there on the damp earth, without the least trace of a nest or a covering of any kind, lay two eggs. At last I had found a night-hawk’s nest! The ground-color of the eggs, which were quite large, was of a dirty bluish-gray cast, mottled and clouded with darker gray and brown.
The behavior of the mother bird was curious. She had fluttered away a few rods, pretending to be hurt, and then dropped into the grass. On my driving her from her hiding-place, she rose in the air and began to hover about above my head, and then, to my utter surprise, she swooped down toward me savagely, as if she really had a mind to attack me. As I walked away, she seemed to grow angrier and bolder, making a swift dash at me every few minutes, and actually coming so near my head as to cause me involuntarily to raise my cane in self-defence. A quaver of uneasiness went through me. I really believe she would have struck me had I given her sufficient provocation. There was a brisk shower falling at the time, and so, fearing the eggs might become addled, I hurried to the remote end of the marsh. Suddenly my feathered pursuer disappeared. Wondering if she had resumed her place on the nest, I sauntered back to settle the doubt, but presently espied her sitting lengthwise on a top rail of the fence, while her eggs lay unprotected in the rain. Her dark, mottled form and sleepy, half-closed eyes made a quaint picture. I slowly withdrew, and as long as I could see her with my glass, she kept her perch on the rail without moving a pinion.
On the twenty-third of June another call was made on the night-hawk family, when I found two odd-looking bairns in the nest, if nest it could be called. They were covered with soft down, the black and white of which presented a wavy appearance. Their short, thick bills were covered with a speckled fuzz, except the tips. I stooped down and smoothed their downy backs with my hand, but there was no expression of fear in their sluggish eyes.
Both parents were present on the twenty-sixth of June. For a while the male bird pursued his mate savagely through the air, as if venting on her his anger at my intrusion, and then, mounting far up toward the sky and poising a moment, he plunged toward the earth with a velocity that made my head dizzy, checking himself, as is his wont, with a loud resounding _Bo-o-m-m_. The female again pursued her unwelcome visitor, swooping so near my head two or three times that I could have reached her with my cane. The cock bird, curiously enough, never displayed so much courage, but kept at a safe distance.
On the twenty-ninth the young birds had been moved about a half rod from the original site of the nest, and hopped off awkwardly into the grass when I tried to clasp them with my hand. The benedict was absent this time, and was never seen on any of my subsequent visits while the young birds were fledging. By the first of July the bantlings hopped about in a lively manner at my approach to their domicile, and wheezed in a frightened way, spreading out their mottled pinions. On the seventh of July neither of the parents was to be seen, and the youngsters sat so cosily side by side on the ground that I had not the heart to disturb their slumbers. Approaching cautiously on the tenth, I almost stepped on the mother bird before she flew up. At the same moment both young birds started from the ground, and fluttered away in different directions on their untried wings, their flight being awkward and labored. A few weeks later four night-hawks were circling about above the marsh,—no doubt the family that had been affording me such an interesting study. What was my surprise when one of them resented my presence by swooping down toward me, as the female had done a few weeks before!
Reference has already been made incidentally to the night-hawk’s curious habit of “booming,” as it is called. This sound is always produced as he plunges in an almost perpendicular course from a dizzy height,—or, more correctly, at the end of that headlong plunge, just as he sweeps around in a graceful curve. There is something almost sepulchral about the reverberating sound. How it is produced is a problem over which there has been no small amount of discussion in ornithological circles. But after considerable study of this queer performance, I am persuaded that it is a vocal outburst, produced either for its musical effect (though it is far from musical), or else to give vent to the bird’s exuberance of feeling as he makes his swift descent.
His thick, curved bill seems admirably adapted to produce this sound, as do also his arched throat and neck. It has seemed to me, too, that his mandibles fly open at the moment the boom is heard, although I cannot be sure such is the case. Besides, the peculiar _chuckle_, previously referred to, had about it a quality of sound suggestive of kinship with the bird’s resounding boom. The hollow, wheezy alarm-call of the young birds, heard on several of my visits to the nest in the marsh, corroborates this theory. But there is still further proof that this hypothesis is correct. The night-hawk often makes his headlong plunge without booming at all, but merely utters his ordinary rasping, aerial call, which has been translated by the syllable _Spe-ah_. Then he sometimes combines the two calls, and on such occasions both of the sounds are uttered with a diminished loudness, as one would expect if both are vocal performances, but as one would _not_ expect if the booming were made by the concussion of the bird’s wings with the resisting air, as some ornithologists suppose. The female sometimes booms, but her voice obviously lacks the strong, resounding quality that characterizes the voice of her liege lord.
XIII. A BIRDS’ GALA-DAY.
In Mr. Emerson’s poem entitled “May Morning” this stanza occurs:—
“When the purple flame shoots up, And Love ascends the throne, I cannot hear your songs, O birds, For the witchery of my own.”