Chapter XVII: The Birds’ Christmas Tree

_Preparation_

The Christmas sale was over. It had been held in the play and work rooms the Saturday before Christmas, and was a great success. The dressed dolls, iron-holders, aprons, bird-houses, wooden spoons, racks for clothes, and little knickknacks had been ranged on the work-table and carpenter’s bench, and all the people of the neighbouring towns, as well as from Fair Meadows village itself, had been asked to come and see. When they came and saw, they stayed to buy.

The bird-houses proved the greatest novelty, and Tommy Todd and Dave, their cheeks red with excitement, were kept busy taking orders for more, to be finished by May or June, one customer said. She, however, was very much amused when Tommy told her that if she expected to have birds in the house (it was a box for Tree Swallows) the first season, she must have the house in place before April, so that it might “be weathered a little, and the birds find it when they first came, and not think it was a trap put up to catch them.”

Gray Lady donated some delicious cake of Ann’s make, and hot chocolate, and while the visitors enjoyed it, they asked many questions about the bird class, the school at Foxes Corners, and the motives of the Kind Hearts’ Club itself; for this name had been printed on the posters advertising the sale.

The result that concerned the public good was that other men and women resolved, even if they could not do it as thoroughly as Gray Lady, to supply the teachers in their various districts with charts and books, and before night settled down, Sarah Barnes, the treasurer of the Club, was hugging tight in her arms a small iron box, with a lock and key, wherein were fifty precious dollars, while orders that meant an equal sum before the close of the school year were being copied from a rather mussy paper into a blank-book, by Tommy Todd, the secretary, whose usually clear upright letters were made crooked by his excitement.

The next question was, How should the money be spent? Each child was asked to write his or her idea on a slip of paper and bring it to the birds’ Christmas festival that was to be held, as seemed fitting, in Birdland, the afternoon before Christmas, from two o’clock until four.

“Supposin’ it’s cold and snowy?—that’s a long time to be outdoors,” said Eliza Clausen, as she walked home between Sarah and Ruth Barnes.

“It may not be out-of-doors,” said Sarah, looking very wise.

“Then it can’t be in Birdland, as Gray Lady said,” persisted Eliza, who, though she was less critical since she had come under the older woman’s influence, could not resist once in a while, “hoping for the worst,” as Gray Lady called borrowing trouble.

“Yes; the party can be indoors, and yet in Birdland,” answered Sarah.

“Oh, you’re trying to catch me with a riddle or something.”

“If I am, I’ll tell you the answer at the birds’ Christmas tree next Tuesday,” called Sarah, as she turned in at her own gate.

* * * * *

A two-inch fall of soft, clinging snow fell during the night before Christmas eve, so that the next morning “everything looked as pretty as the pictures on a calendar,” as Sarah Barnes said, when she arrived at Gray Lady’s door, bright and early, to help decorate the birds’ tree.

Sarah did not enter the door, however, for she was joined on the porch by Goldilocks and Ann, and together they walked through the garden to Birdland.

Jacob Hughes had swept paths from the house in and out among the trees through the garden. In Birdland he had used the single-horse snow-plough to scrape a track running from the bird lunch-counter, about the edge of the orchard, and then through the centre down to the old farm-house of the Swallow Chimney, that stood in the lower corner facing on what had been a cross-road, but was now a pretty grass-grown lane, with the snow wreathing the bushes of black alder, with its red, glistening berries, giving out a real Christmas feeling.

What had happened to the old house of the Swallow Chimney, where the General’s father had lived, but which had now remained closed for so many years, merely a storage-place for old furniture?

Smoke was coming from the great stone chimney, new shingles stained to look old replaced the broken ones, new paint glistened on the window-sashes, and the quaint old panes of glass, bearing the rainbow tints of years, shone like mirrors. The front door was painted dark green, and the spread-eagle knocker of brass was as bright as polishing could make it; while around the deep front porch was a little fence of cedar bushes in boxes, all garlanded with vines of coral, bittersweet berries.

Goldilocks and Sarah went to the front door of the old house, while Ann disappeared in the woodshed that joined the side porch and well-house.

The girls had not touched the knocker when the door flew open, and who should stand there but Miss Rose Wilde, while beyond her, sitting by the blazing log-fire in the long, low living-room, that had once been the kitchen, was her mother, looking better and younger than she had for at least ten years!

This was the secret. Gray Lady had repaired the old house and established the faithful little teacher and her mother in it, so that instead of mother and daughter only meeting once a week, or less often in winter, and each having a good bit of heartache between, they had a real home once more. What was also a bit of good luck, Mrs. Wilde’s furniture, that had been stored away, was of the kind that seemed as if it had been made for the old homestead and had never been anywhere else.

Once inside, Rose Wilde led them into the kitchen, where everything was as neat as wax, and there, spread upon tables and half-covering the floor, were the decorations for the birds’ Christmas tree.

Where was the tree itself? Where trees are the best and healthiest, out-of-doors back of the house, a stout, young spruce, some twenty odd feet high, growing in the orchard corner where no one had planted it, the child of one of the spruces near the great house,—a half-wild tree, sprung from the seed of a cone dropped by a Crossbill, perhaps, or left by a squirrel who was making a winter store-house in the attic of the farm-house.

The dainties for the tree were selected to suit all the various needs and appetites of the winter birds likely to come to the orchard.

Gray Lady, Goldilocks, Rose Wilde, and Ann had strung quantities of popcorn upon the chance of the Jays and Crows liking it. They had used strong thread, but had only strung the corn by the very edge, so that it would detach easily. There were lumps of suet, and marrow-bones, securely bound with wire, ears of red and yellow corn, bunches of unthreshed rye, wheat, and oats, little open boxes filled with beechnuts, and various wild berries. Last of all, something that Goldilocks had suggested, the heads of a couple of dozen sunflowers, filled with the ripe, nutritious seeds, for she had noticed that all the autumn the Goldfinches and various Sparrows had stayed about the beds where the composite flowers like asters, marigolds, cornflowers, zinnias, and sunflowers grew, and that also the wild sunflowers and black-eyed Susans of waste fields were always surrounded by birds.

Jacob Hughes had his ladders all ready, but it was no small task to keep him supplied with material, and there were many mishaps before all the articles were in place, but to Goldilocks’ great joy, before Jacob had fairly finished and taken the ladder away, a Chickadee and a Goldfinch were both clinging to the same sunflower head, and a little Downy Woodpecker had discovered one of the bones fastened to a branch and was revelling, “up to his neck,” as Sarah expressed it, in the marrow.

Underneath the tree a place had been cleared for the gifts Gray Lady had in store for what she called “the featherless two-legged birds of the Kind Hearts’ Club.”

After they had rested a few minutes, and were thoroughly warmed, Gray Lady, Rose Wilde, Goldilocks, and Sarah Barnes set out for a stroll through the orchard, and the lane that ran back of it, up to the farm-barns, to see what feathered guests were in the neighbourhood, the walk taking them past a great pile of unhewn wood and a tent-shaped brush-heap at the end of the lane.

Gray Lady used her opera-glasses, but the others trusted to their eyes alone. These are the birds they saw and named easily: A flock of Goldfinches in their dull winter coats feeding on weed seeds in the lane; their old friends the Chickadees, three Blue Jays, two Flickers, and several Downy Woodpeckers; Gray Lady thought possibly from their markings, a whole Downy family,—Mr., Mrs., and four children.

As they neared the woodpile Goldilocks stopped, her hand on Gray Lady’s sleeve and a finger raised in caution. “I do believe there is a Jenny Wren that has not gone away or is lost, it is such a little bit of a thing.”

As they stood looking, the little, neat, brown bird, about four inches long, ran up and down among the logs like a mouse, then flew with a little short flapping of the wings to the bush, where it clung to a spray, bobbing to and fro, its comical bit of a tail pointing as close to its head as possible. Then it appeared to pick something very deliberately from the twigs and flew back again to the woodpile with a sharp, warning note.

“That is not a belated House Wren,” said Gray Lady, “but the Winter Wren, his cousin, who nests from the northern boundaries of the states northward, but comes down in winter to visit us in southern New England and travels as far south as Florida. A brave little fellow he is to weather storms and cold here, and one of our three smallest birds, the Golden-crowned Kinglet and the Humming-bird being the other two. In his nesting-haunts he has a beautiful song; I have never heard it, but one of his admirers who has says that it is ‘full of trills, runs, and grace notes, a tinkling, rippling roundelay.’”

A few minutes later it was Sarah’s turn to exclaim, as she pointed to a small, sparrow-like bird, perched on a giant stalk of seeded ragweed at the side of the lane. “It’s a Chippy or else a Song Sparrow,” she said, hesitatingly. “It’s bigger than a Chippy, and it’s got a spot on its breast like the Song Sparrow, only it isn’t as big. O dear me! I don’t think that I shall ever be sure of telling Sparrows apart,” she sighed.

“To be sure a bird _is_ a Sparrow is a step in the right direction,” said Gray Lady. “I have known some one older than you call me to see a big Sparrow which turned out to be a Wood Thrush. If you will remember one thing, it will help you in placing the smaller birds. Look at a bird’s beak; if it is thick, short, and cone-shaped, the bird is most likely to be a Sparrow, for this family are all seed-eaters except in the nesting season, while insect-eating birds, of all families, have longer and more slender bills.

“As for this little fellow, it is another of our winter visitors, the _Tree-sparrow_ or _Winter Chippy_, and there is probably quite a flock of his kin at this moment distributed over the wild fields below, doing the work of seed-destroying that the farmers have neglected; for, aside from the cheerful companionship of all these winter birds, the Sparrow tribe is working for us all winter as Weed Warriors,[3] just as the tree-trunk birds are Tree Trappers, the birds who take insects while on the wing, Sky Sweepers, and the silent birds of prey, who sit in wait for the field-mice and other vermin, Wise Watchers.

“Ah, it is my turn now to make discoveries,” said Gray Lady, as they turned into the orchard at the end opposite the lunch-counter tree. “Keep very quiet, and look at the mossy branch of that half-dead tree to which some frozen apples still hang; what do you see, Goldilocks? Take my glasses and look carefully before you answer.”

“Where?” said Goldilocks; “yes; I see. One is a little, fluffy, greenish gray bird with a dirty white breast. Oh! he has a red stripe edged with yellow on top of his head! He moves so quickly that I can’t seem to see the whole of him with one look, though he is small. The other bird is a little bigger, and not so fat; he has a yellow spot on his head, and a brighter one over the tail, and a yellow spot on each side; he is striped gray and black all over, except some white on his wings and underneath. How he flits about, just like that bird that looked like a red-and-black butterfly that we saw last summer that you said was a Redstart.”

“You have very sharp eyes,” said her mother, “for you saw at once the identifying marks of two birds that were new to you. The merry fellow of the flaming crown is the Golden-crowned Kinglet, another sturdy winter visitor, who breeds in the North, and finds our climate quite warm enough for him if the food holds out; for he is a tree trapper, giving his attention, like the Chickadee, to the smaller branches and twigs too slender to bear the weight of the heavier tree-trunk birds.

“His companion is the Myrtle or Yellow-rumped Warbler, a hardy cousin of the Redstart and Summer Yellowbird that Sarah, perhaps, does not yet know by name, though she has doubtless seen them. When you have once seen the male bird, you will never forget him, because of the four yellow spots. These warblers are great insect eaters, but lacking these, they will eat berries, the bayberries being their favourite, and I believe that we have to thank the bayberry bushes, in the rocky hill pastures hereabouts, for the numbers of the Myrtle Warblers that stay all winter, myrtle being a common title for the bay, giving them their name.”

At the garden end of Birdland, just inside the rustic gate, a flock of Juncoes or Gray Snowbirds were feeding, plump, cheerful, and contented, and giving vent to their satisfaction in their pleasant “tchip, tchip, tchip” call. Those who only know one winter bird know the Junco, for he belongs to city parks, village yards, and remote farms alike, anywhere that a frugal meal of grain or weed seeds may be found, with a piazza vine or brush-heap or haystack to creep into for shelter. His flesh-pink bill, slate-coloured coat, and neat white vest, together with the _two conspicuous white tail-feathers_, tell his name to any one who wishes to know it.

The Junco is an autumn and winter visitor only, being away from May until late September, as he nests northward from New York and Connecticut. When the flocks first return, you will be puzzled by many birds of the shape and build of Juncoes, but who are wearing more or less striped clothes; these are the young of the year.

“Five new birds in one morning! I wish Tommy had been here,” said Sarah; “but perhaps he knows them already; Tommy knows a lot you can’t see because it’s down so deep.”

“You must find us a new bird, too, before we go in to lunch, Miss Wilde,” said Goldilocks.

“I have been looking at, not one, but a dozen, while you have been watching the Kinglet and Myrtle Warbler. Look over the gate-arch across toward the house. Do you see something moving among the bunches of ripe spruce cones?”

“I see birds moving, but I want to go nearer.” So the party managed, by walking quietly, to reach the trees where the birds were feeding without disturbing them in the least.

“There are two kinds of birds up there,” said Sarah, presently, for it was her turn to use the opera-glasses. “They are both rather red. One is darker than the other and has no white on him. The other is lighter red and has some white on the wings and tail. Why, Gray Lady! their beaks are out of joint at the end and don’t shut tight. I wonder what can have happened to the poor things. I thought at first they might be wild parrots.”

Gray Lady and Miss Wilde both laughed, Sarah’s concern for the birds was so real.

“You are right about the bills not closing at the tip, but it is not owing to an accident. Nature developed this bill so that the bird, who is a lover of evergreen forests, might be able to wrench open the cones, the only winter food that is oftentimes to be found.

“The bird belongs to the Finch and Sparrow family, though you would never guess it, and is called the ‘Crossbill.’ The plain red one is the Red-winged Crossbill, and the lighter-coloured one, with white markings, the White-winged Crossbill. Both birds nest north of New England, but travel about the country in little flocks, sometimes going as far south as Virginia and the Gulf States.”

“Listen, I think I can hear the crackling as they tear the scales from the cones,” said Goldilocks.

“Yes, and you can see those that they have dropped lying on the fresh snow under the trees,” added Sarah.

At that moment an old-fashioned dinner-bell sounded from the direction of the farm-house in the orchard. It was Mrs. Wilde letting them know that luncheon was ready, for Gray Lady, Goldilocks, and Sarah were to lunch at “Swallow Chimney,” as Goldilocks had christened the restored home, by way of a house-warming.

As they left, the Crossbills, who had been climbing up and down, with all the adroitness of the Chickadees or the Upside-down birds themselves, suddenly took to wing, giving short, metallic-sounding cries, flew rapidly over the orchard, to alight—where do you suppose? On the birds’ Christmas tree. Here, after some inspection, they began to tear at the popcorn, their twisted beaks doing the work so well that they seemed fashioned for that purpose alone.

“Well,” said Goldilocks, her hands clasped in amazement, as they reached the farm-house, and saw what had happened, “I never knew anything _quite so quick_ to happen outside of a story-book!”

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[3] See _Citizen Bird_.