Chapter 9
That is not all about the winter wrens. My first winter in Kansas was the severest I experienced in that state; yet it was the only winter of the five I spent in Kansas that brought me the winter wren. If it would do any good, one might ask again the question why. Although the winter wren is a migrant in Ohio, as he is for the most part in northeastern Kansas, yet I never heard his song in the former state, while in the latter I was fortunate enough to listen to his tinkling melody three times the first spring I spent there. After that I never heard him, and indeed saw him only a few times. But the sweet, silvery roulade--could there be anything more charming in the world of outdoor music?
My winter rambles--and winter is almost as good a time for bird study as summer--enabled me to note some variety of temperament in the avian realm. One thing we soon learn in our winter outings: Few birds are recluses. No, they are sociable creatures, living in what might be called nomadic communities. In the spring-time, during the mating season, they pair off and become more or less exclusive and secretive, keeping close to the precincts they have selected; but in winter they grow more neighborly, and move about in the woods or over the fields in flocks of various sizes.
The woodland flocks usually consist of a number of species all of which seem to be on the most cordial terms, having, no doubt, a community of interest. As we quietly pursue our way in this wooded vale, we see no birds for some distance. Presently a fine, protesting "chick-a-dee-dee! chick-a-dee-dee!" breaks the silence. It is the warning call of the tomtit or chickadee, which we soon espy tilting about on his trapeze of twigs in the trees or bushes. But you may depend upon it he is not alone; he is only a part of the rim of a feathered colony dwelling near at hand, and consisting, very likely, of tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, juncos, tree sparrows, blue jays, one or two downy woodpeckers, a pair of cardinals, a flicker or two, and a cackling red-breasted woodpecker. There may be even a song sparrow in the company and a couple of brown creepers, and possibly a flock of purple finches, chirping cheerily in the tops of the trees.
While, in the spring and summer, birds are to be found in nearly every part of the woods, never many at one place, the opposite condition prevails in the winter. Sometimes you may walk almost a half mile without seeing or hearing a single bird; then you suddenly come upon a good-sized company of them, somewhat scattered, it is true, but within easy hailing distance. Nor do they always remain in the same localities, but move about, now here, now there, like nomads looking for the best foraging places. For instance, on the first of January, after leaving the city, I saw not a bird until I reached a pleasant sylvan hollow at least a half mile away. Here a merry crowd greeted the pedestrian. It was composed of all the birds I have just named, with flocks of bluebirds and goldfinches thrown in for good measure. On the fourteenth of January a company--either the same or another--was found in a small copsy hollow only a quarter of a mile from the city, while the spot previously occupied was deserted. It is pleasant to think of these feathered troopers roaming about the country in search of Nature's choicest storehouses. The code that obtains in these movable birdvilles is this, as near as I am able to analyze it: Each one for himself, and yet all for one another.
The familiar adage, "Birds of a feather flock together," is not always true, for in winter birds of many a feather often flock together. It may be asked, Why? No doubt largely for social ends. Nothing is more evident to the observer than that most birds love company, and a good deal of it. Their genial conversation among themselves as they pursue their work and play fully proves that. Another object is undoubtedly protection. Birds have enemies, many of them, and when the woods are bare there is little chance for hiding, and so they must be especially on the alert. Let a hawk come gliding silently and slyly down the vale, and before he gets too near some keen little eye espies him, the alarm is sounded, and the whole company scurries into the thickets or trees for safety. The chickadees and titmice seem to be a sort of sentry for the company.
A large part of the time in birdland is spent in solving the "bread-and-butter" problem. And how do our feathered citizens solve this important problem in the cold weather? Nature has spread many a banquet for her avian children, although they must usually rustle for their food just as we must in the human world. The nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, and brown creepers find larvae, grubs, borers, and insects' eggs in the crannies of the bark and other nooks and niches; the goldfinches find something to their taste in the buds of the trees and also make many a meal of thistle and sunflower seeds; the juncos and tree sparrows, forming a joint stock company in winter, rifle all kinds of weeds of their seedy treasures; the blue jays lunch on acorns and berries when they cannot find enough juicy grubs to satisfy their appetites, and so on through the whole list.
By playing the spy on the birds we may learn much about their dietary habits. It is the first of January, and we are in a wooded hollow. There is a tufted titmouse; now he flits to the ground, picks up a tidbit, darts up to a twig, places his morsel under his claws, and proceeds to peck it to pieces. Our binocular shows that it is something yellow, but we cannot make out what it is. As we draw near, the bird seizes the fragment with his bill--perhaps he fears we will filch it from him--and flits about among the bushes on the steep bank, looking for a place to stow his "goody." Presently he pushes it into a crevice of the bark, hammers it tightly into place, and darts away with a merry chirp. We go to the spot and find that his hidden treasure is a grain of corn which he has purloined from the farmer's field on the slope. A few minutes later another tit--or the same one--slyly thrusts a morsel in among some leaves and twigs on the bank, even pulling the leaves down over it for a screen. It turns out to be a small acorn. That is one of Master Tit's ways--storing away provisions for a time of need. With his stout, conical beak he is able to break the shell of an acorn, peck a corn grain into swallowable bits, and tear open the toughest casing of a cocoon. He will even break the hard pits of the dogwood berry to secure the kernel within, the ground below often being strewn with the shell fragments. No danger of _Parus bicolor_ coming to want or going to the poorhouse.
Another day the juncos are feeding on the seeds of the foxtail or pigeon grass, in an old orchard hard by the border of the woods. Sometimes they will make a dinner of berries--the kinds too that are regarded as poisonous to man--eating the juicy pulp in their dainty way, and dropping the seeds and rind to the ground. In the ravine furrowed out by a stream--this is down in one of the hollows--there is a perfect network of bird tracks in the snow beneath a clump of weed stalks. How dainty they are, like tiny chains, twisted and coiled about on the white surface! They were made by the juncos and tree sparrows, and on examining the seed pods and clusters above the bank we note that they are torn and ragged. The feathered banqueters have been here, and while they were industriously culling the pods, some of the seeds fell to the white carpet below, and these have been carefully picked up by the birds, as we see, so that nothing should be wasted.
It is not often you catch a bird in the singing mood in the winter; yet on December 19, a purple finch was piping quite a vivacious tune in the woods. Of course, he was not in his best voice, but his performance was good enough to entitle it to the name of bird music. The finches, by the way, are strong flyers. At your approach, instead of flitting off a little way, perhaps to the next tree or bush, after the manner of the tits and nuthatches and many other birds, the finches tarry in the tree-tops as long as they deem it safe, then take to wing and fly to a distant part of the woods, and you may not see them again that day. However, they may come back to you after a while, as if they relished your company. The goldfinches are also long-distance flyers, not flitters. Usually they give some signal of their presence, either by their vivacious "pe-chick-o-pe" or their childlike and semi-musical calls; but there are times when a good-sized flock of them will suddenly appear in the tree-tops above you, and you cannot tell when they arrived, for you did not see them there at all a few minutes before.
WAYSIDE OBSERVATIONS
The previous chapter closed with some notes on the behavior of birds in the winter time. My home rambling grounds in northeastern Kansas were extremely undulating, cut up into ridges and ravines, most of which were covered with a thick growth of weeds, bushes, and timber. In some places the thickets were so dense as to be almost impenetrable. This diversity in the topography of the country afforded considerable variety in the faunal life of the region.
For example, in bitter winter weather most of the birds would hug the sheltered hollows, where they found coverts in the copses, and would avoid the hilltops, which were exposed to the nipping winds blowing from the western prairies. As the spring approached, bringing blander weather, they gradually moved up the hillsides, many of them finding billsome seeds and berries on the summits.
However, note a difference in the temperament of individuals of the same species. On the bitterest days of winter I would sometimes leave the sheltered hollows and lowlands and clamber to the summits of the wind-swept hills, and, oddly enough, on the exposed heights I occasionally flushed a solitary bird, which would spring up from the weeds or copses and dart away with a frightened cry. More than likely it would be an individual of the same species as some of the more socially disposed tenants of the lower grounds, but for some reason, what, I know not, it preferred the life of an anchorite; it did not care for society, even of its own kith. Invariably, too, these feathered recluses were extremely shy, scuttling away like frightened deer as I approached their cloistered haunts.
These notes stir several queries in one's mind. Is there such a thing as social ostracism in the bird world? Might these hilltop eremites have committed some crime or some breach of decorum that effected their banishment from respectable avicular society? Or were they simply of a sullen or retiring disposition, choosing seclusion rather than the company of their kind? These questions must be left unanswered. Most frequently the lone bird would be a song sparrow. Once a brilliant cardinal was trying to conceal himself in a clump of bushes and weeds far up the hillside, acting very much like a social outcast. For some reason that he did not see fit to explain he wanted to be alone.
If the song sparrows of eastern Kansas belie their name and seldom fall into the lyrical mood, as has been said, the like cannot be said of the robins, which, in the proper season, were very lavish of their minstrelsy. Their favorite singing time in the West, as in the East, was at the "peep of dawn." How often their ringing carols broke into my early morning dreams!
Have you ever noticed the tentative efforts of the robins in the early spring, at the beginning of the song season, before they get their harps in full tune? It is interesting and amusing to listen to their rehearsals, of which they need quite a number before they acquire full control of their voices. This is the method: Starting off on a tune, they will keep it up until their voices break; then they will stop a while to recover breath, and presently make another attempt with perhaps slightly better success. At first they are able to pipe only a syllable or two before their voices break. After a while they succeed in carrying the tune for a respectable little run, but sooner or later their voices will go all to pieces or slide up into a falsetto, making another pause necessary. By and by, however, after much practice, they gain perfect vocal control, and are able to sustain their songs for a long time without a mishap. When the voice of the rehearsing bird breaks, it apparently runs too high in the scale for the bird's register, just as the voice of a sixteen-year-old boy is apt to do, to his own confusion and the amusement of his friends.
Another fact about robin music may be of interest to those who have not observed it. In the early spring these birds are extremely lyrical, that being their season of courtship; then will follow a few weeks of comparative silence--the time when there are little ones in need of parental care. At this period the husbands, it would seem, are either too busy or too wary to sing a great deal. But now note: When the youngsters have flown from the nest and are able to take care of themselves, the silence in robindom is again broken, and there is a flood-tide of melody from early morning till eventide. The second lyrical period lasts until another nest has been built and another clutch of eggs has been hatched, when the choralists again relapse into comparative silence.
Since coming back to Ohio, I imagine that the eastern robins are better singers than their western relatives. Their voices, to my ear, are clearer and more ringing, less apt to break into a squeak at the top of their register, and there is more variety of expression as well as greater facility in managing the technique. I think this is not all fancy, yet I would not speak with the assurance of the dogmatist.
In the good Jayhawker state the orchard orioles are more abundant than they are in the eastern and northeastern part of the state of Ohio. Indeed, the range of this species is more southerly than that of their congeners, the Baltimore orioles. In their proper latitude no birds, or at least few of them, are more lavish of their melody than the orchard orioles. What a ringing voice the oriole possesses! His song has a saucy note of challenge running through it, and also a human intonation that makes it rarely attractive. All day long the male sings his cheery solos, scarcely pausing for breath or food, now sitting on the topmost twig of a dead apple tree in the orchard, now amid the screening foliage of a maple in the yard, and anon on the other side of the street in a stately cottonwood. But where is that modest little personage, his wife? She is seldom heard, and almost as seldom seen. It is really remarkable--her gift of concealment. When she builds her nest is a mystery. It is often so deftly hidden that you would not be likely to find it in a long hunt. In the spring of 1898 a pair of orchard orioles took up their residence in the trees about my house, the male singing his brisk overtures, the female seen only at flitting intervals and never heard. Watch as I would, I could not surprise her laying the timbers of her cottage, which I felt sure was being built somewhere in the trees. Indeed, I did not discover it until autumn came, long after the orioles, old and young, had taken flight to a balmier clime, and the trees were stripped of their leaves, when, lo! it appeared in plain view on one of the trees on the opposite side of the street, the very place where I had not thought of looking for it.
The Baltimore orioles as a rule are not so secretive; yet during the summer of 1898 a pair of these firebirds led me a fruitless chase. Their secret was not divulged until the leaves had fallen the next autumn, when there the nest hung in the midst of a tall cottonwood in my back yard close to the house. Lord Baltimore and his mate usually suspend their nests on the outer branches of the trees, where they are not hard to discover, but this pair did not follow the common formula, for the nest was placed in the thickest part of the foliage, so that it was impossible to see it from the ground until the branches were bare.
Of all the malaperts of birddom none excel and few equal the white-eyed vireo for volubility and downright audacity. All his songs--and he has quite a respectable list of them--seem to be either a protest or a challenge; a protest against your intrusion into his precincts, a challenge to find him and his nest if you can. Again and again in Kansas I crept into their bushy coverts just for the purpose of receiving a sound scolding. Such a berating did they give me, telling me of all my faults and foibles, that I certainly ought to remain humble all the rest of my days. A half dozen viragoes could not have done better--that is, worse. They would flit about in the bushes above my head, their little white eyes gleaming with fire, and call me all the names they could lay their tongues to. I wonder whether the white-eyes have a dictionary of epithets. Nature has done an odd thing in making the white-eyed vireo.
Their nests are not easy to find, although they do not always make a great deal of effort at concealment. Like all the vireo tribe, they suspend their tiny baskets from the fork or crotch of a horizontal twig. The nest is somewhat bulkier than the compact little cup of the red-eyed vireo, and is apt to be more carefully concealed in the foliage, although I have found more than one nest that was hung in plain sight. I remember one in particular. It was dangling from the outer twigs of a small bush by the side of the woodland path which I was pursuing. In fact, it could be distinctly seen from the path. In spite of the mother's pleadings, protests, and objurgations, I stepped over to inspect her pendant domicile, whose holdings were four baby white-eyes, their eyelids still glued together. As the twigs stirred, they opened their mouths for food, and I decided to accommodate them. Taking a bit of cracker from my haversack, I moistened it, and rolled it into a pellet between my finger and thumb; then, gently swaying the bushes, I induced the bantlings to open their mouths, when I dropped the morsel into one of the tiny throats. You ought to have seen the wry face baby made as it gulped down the new kind of food, which had such an odd taste. It was plain that the callow nestling was able to distinguish this morsel from the palatable diet it had been accustomed to. Possibly it suffered from a temporary fit of indigestion, but no permanent harm was done by my experiment, for when I called on them again a few days later, the birdkins four were safe and well, their eyes open, and their instincts sufficiently developed to cause them to cuddle low in their basket instead of opening their mouths.
The rambler who would hear a real outdoor concert should rise early, swallow a few bits of cracker and a cup of coffee, and seek some bird-haunted hollow or woodland just as day begins to break. One morning I pursued this plan, and was more than compensated for the loss of an hour or two of sleep. Just as the east began to blush I found myself in a favorite wooded hollow.
What a _potpourri_ of bird song greeted my ear! How many choralists took part in the matutinal concert I cannot say, but there were scores of them. The volume of song would sometimes swell to a full-toned orchestra, and then for a few moments it would sink almost to a lull, all of it like the flow and ebb of the tides of a sea of melody. It was interesting to note how several voices would sometimes run into a chime when they struck the same chord.
Let me call the roll of the members of that feathered choir. First, and most gifted of all, were a couple of brown thrashers, whose tones were as strong and sweet as those of a silver cornet, making the echoes ring across the hollow. I have listened to many a thrasher song in the North, the South, and the West, but have never heard a voice of better timbre than that of one of the tawny vocalists singing that morning, as he sat on the topmost twig of an oak tree and flung out his medley upon the morning air. It is wonderful, anyway, with what an ecstasy the thrasher will sometimes sing. Nothing could be plainer than that he sings for the pure pleasure of it--an artist deeply in love with his art.
Falling a little behind the thrashers in vocal power and technical execution were the catbirds, which sent up their cavatinas from the bushes in the hollow. Their voices lacked the volume and strength of their rivals, yet some of their strains were truly the quintessence of sweetness.
Conspicuous members of the early chorus were the wood thrushes, a dozen or more of which were often singing at the same time. From every part of the woods their peals arose. Of course, there was no attempt--at least, so far as I could discover--to sing in concert, but each minstrel followed his own sweet will, and so the combined result was not what you would call a harmony, but a medley, albeit a very pleasing one. If the wood thrush's execution were less labored, he would certainly be a marvelous songster, and even as it is, he furnishes unending delight to those whose ears are trained to appreciate avian minstrelsy.
Two or three rose-breasted grossbeaks piped their liquid, childlike arias; towhees, at least a half-dozen of them, flung forth their loud, explosive trills that have a real musical quality; several cardinals whistled as if they meant to drown out all the other voices; scarlet and summer tanagers drawled their good-natured tunes, while their rich robes gleamed in the level rays of the rising sun; running like silver threads through all the other music, could be heard the fine trills of the field sparrows; the swinging chant of the creeping warblers and the loud rattle of the Tennessee warblers ran high up in the scale, furnishing a gossamer tenor; that golden optimist, the Baltimore oriole, piped his cheery recitative in the tops of the trees; chickadees supplied the minor strains and tufted titmice the alto; four or five turtle doves soothed the ear with their meditative cooing; while the calls and songs of numerous jays and a few yellow-breasted chats made a kind of trombone accompaniment. Surely it is worth one's while to hie early to the haunts of the birds to hear such a tumult of song.
One spring I made up my mind to make a closer study than ever of the dainty creeping warbler, wishing to know just how he contrives to scuttle up and down the boles and branches of the trees with so much ease and grace. He is the only warbler we have in eastern North America that makes a habit of scaling the tree trunks and descending them head downward. How does he do this? The muscles of his legs and pelvis are as elastic as India rubber, so that he can twist and twirl about in a marvelous way, pointing his head one moment to the east and the next, without losing his hold, in the opposite direction. He is able to swing himself around almost as if he were hung on a pivot.