Chapter XXIV: The Tide Has Turned

THE MASQUERADING CHICKADEE

I came to the woods in the dead of the year,
I saw the wing’d sprite thro’ the green-brier peeping:
“Darling of Winter, you’ve nothing to fear,
Though the branches are bare and the cold earth is sleeping!”

With a _dee, dee, dee_! the sprite seemed to say,
“I’m friends with the Maytime as well as December,
And I’ll meet you here on a fair-weather day;
Here, in the green-brier thicket,—remember!”

* * * * * *

I came to the woods in the spring of the year,
And I followed a voice that was most entreating:
_Phebe! Phebe!_ (and yet more near),
_Phebe! Phebe!_ it kept repeating!

I gave up the search, when, not far away,
I saw the wing’d sprite thro’ the green-brier peeping,
With a _Phebe! Phebe!_ that seemed to say,
“I told you so! and my promise I’m keeping.”

“You’ll know me again, when you meet me here,
Whether you come in December or Maytime:
I’ve a _dee, dee, dee!_ for the Winter’s ear,
And a _Phebe! Phebe!_ for Spring and Playtime!”

—Edith M. Thomas.

* * * * *

“When the Chickadee, who has persistently told us his name all winter, and has assured us also in the darkest weather that it was ‘day-day-day,’ changes his call for the flute-like spring song of ‘Phewe-Phe-wee,’ clear as the wind blowing through a reed, we know that at last the springtide has really turned. Chickadee occasionally gives this note in autumn as if in anticipation, but it is really a love-song of tender accent.

“Another spring sign comes to us in April, a sign to be seen. It comes out of a clear sky and has all the mystery about it that still shrouds the bird migrations. Spring and fall I see it, but it always fills me with awe. This morning I stood out in the open meadow below the orchard, looking at the sky to see if the clouds were going to break away, or if it was to be a day of April showers. To the southwest a curious fine black bar appeared high up against the clouds. Quickly it drew nearer, and I saw what seemed to be a great letter that moved rapidly and yet kept its shape printed on the sky,—a letter V coming toward me, point on. In another minute the line proved to be made of separate marks, then each mark developed a long neck and rapidly moving wings.”

Tommy Todd could stand it no longer; without giving the usual school “hand up” warning he cried out, “The V was Wild Geese, with the wise old gander that leads them for the point, and maybe if he wanted them to shift and change their way, he gave a big honk, honk, like the automobiles when they turn the sharp corner at the foot of our hill.

“We saw Wild Geese yesterday, grandpa and I; they were flying so low over the mill-pond that grandpa said maybe they had been resting somewhere. They do stop in fall sometimes, but in spring they generally go right over in a big hurry. This time I could see their feathers pretty well, black, gray, and light underneath, and a white mark around the neck as if it was tied up for a sore throat. Grandpa says he shot one once that was a yard long, but their necks looked all of that. How far away do they have to go before they can stop to nest, please, Gray Lady?”

“They nest only in our most northern states, and from there up through British America; but as the country is settled they have to shift their haunts very often, for you can well imagine that a colony, even in the nesting season, would have but little peace if hunters could reach it easily. These great birds on their journeys are one of the most thrilling sights that everyday people can see, for they travel the thousands of miles that separate their summer and winter homes, straight through the night as well as the day, without chart or compass, but with the same lack of fear and unfailing directness as a train would follow the rails upon the road-bed.

“We hear and read stories of Nature that are inventions, and could not have happened because they are not according to the plan of creation,—so the people who tell these instead of being clever are really very stupid,—but not one of these is as wonderful as the simple truth, or as awe-inspiring as the flight of Wild Geese that goes on before our sight year after year in the April sky, or that we know by their cries and the rush of wings is passing overhead in the gloom of a wild and stormy night.

WILD GEESE

A far, strange sound through the night,
A dauntless and resolute cry,
Clear in the tempest’s despite,
Ringing so wild and so high.

Darkness and tumult and dread,
Rain and the battling of gales,
Yet cleaving the storm overhead,
The wedge of the Wild Geese sails.

Pushing their perilous way,
Buffeted, beaten, and vexed;
Steadfast by night and by day,
Weary, but never perplexed;

Sure that the land of their hope
Waits beyond tempest and dread,
Sure that the dark where they grope
Shall glow with the morning red!

O birds in the wild, wild sky!
Would I could so follow God’s way
Through darkness, unquestioning why,
With only one thought to obey!

—Celia Thaxter.

Nest-Building

“Though a few of our common birds, like the Robin, Bluebird, Woodcock, Crow, Grackle, and some of the Hawks and Owls, begin to nest in April, May and June are the real nesting months.

“When the spring migration is over, we call those birds who have decided to stay with us and build their homes Summer Residents, and it is from these that we must learn of the home life of birds.

“The visitors who stop awhile on their way to other places we may learn to call by name, but we can never really know them any more than we can a chance visitor who boards a few weeks in our vicinity.

“The nesting habits of birds and the manner in which they build their homes vary according to the necessity and skill of the species. (See _Citizen Bird_.)

“In their house-building you will find that the birds know almost as many trades as human beings, for among them are weavers, basket-makers, masons, and carpenters, as well as workers in felt, hair, and feathers.

“Many water-birds merely make a hollow in the sand or gather a few bits of grass together for a nest.

“The Grouse, Quail, and Woodcock scratch up a few leaves in a ground hollow or between stumps, for, like domestic fowl, they always nest on the ground and their colour, being dull, blends with it, and you may almost step on one of these birds when it is on its nest and never know it.

“The dull brown Sparrows build nests of grasses set in a low bush or between its roots, but the flaming Oriole weaves himself a snug hammock high out on a swaying elm bough, and the Scarlet Tanager builds high in an oak. The Blue Jay weaves small roots into a firm nest set well above reach, while the Bluebird lines a hollow in a tree or takes an abandoned Woodpecker’s hole for his house. The Woodpeckers chisel out homes in tree-trunks, and Robins and Cliff and Barn Swallows use more or less mud, and plaster the inside of their homes. If you watch carefully now when the birds are building, and associate the various nests with the birds that build them, in autumn, when the young have flown, you can collect many of these nests and study their beautiful workmanship. But pray keep your hands off them while they are in use, for it is not being either kind or polite to meddle.

“How do you think your mother would feel if somebody climbed in at the window and tumbled up your baby brother’s crib, perhaps spilling him out on the floor, or at least frightening him badly, in order to find out if he slept on a mattress or a feather bed, or if the crib itself was made of wood or metal?

“At the time of the spring migration the birds that have been living in flocks all winter put on fresh feathers, and court and separate into pairs just as people do when they marry and begin housekeeping. Naturally they feel very happy, and have a great deal to say to each other, and this is what makes birds break into song when the spring comes to give them new life.

“Though some few females can sing, it is the males who make the beautiful music that we hear in the spring mornings. The female is too busy with her housekeeping to do more than answer, but her husband’s song cheers her while she is brooding, and he probably tells her how pretty her new feathers are, and how much he loves her, too.

“Among our gayly coloured birds, unlike people, it is the male who wears the brightest clothes. You have heard of this all through our fall and winter lessons, and you have seen the difference in pictures; now that the birds themselves have come, you will have a chance to see how well you remember, and if you can name the birds as they fly. The Scarlet Tanager and the Goldfinch both have plain greenish olive-coloured wives. The female Blue Jay is of a less bright hue than her mate, and the mate of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak wears a buff, brownish streaked vest.

“Why? Because, as the mother bird spends more time about the nest than the father, if she wore bright clothes she would attract too much attention, and cruel Hawks, squirrels, and thieving people would find it too easily; and Nature’s first thought is always of the care and protection of young life, whether of plant, bird, or beast.

“Almost all of our birds feed the young nestlings with animal food, even if they themselves are seed-eaters; for little birds must grow quickly, and you would hardly believe the number of worms and flying things it takes to turn one little Robin from the queer, helpless, featherless thing that it is when it hatches from the egg, into the clumsy, clamouring ball of feathers, with awkward wings and hardly a bit of tail to balance it, that it is when it leaves the nest.

“No human father and mother work harder to feed their children than do these feathered parents, who toil ceaselessly from sunrise until sunset to bring food, and share by turns the protection of the nest.

THE NEST

When oaken woods with buds are pink,
And new-come birds each morning sing,
When fickle May on summer’s brink
Pauses, and knows not which to fling,
Whether fresh bud and bloom again,
Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain,

Then from the honeysuckle gray
The Oriole with experienced quest
Twitches the fibrous bark away,
The cordage of his hammock-nest,
Cheering his labour with a note
Rich as the orange of his throat.

High o’er the loud and dusty road
The soft gray cup in safety swings,
To brim ere August with its load
Of downy breasts and throbbing wings,
O’er which the friendly elm tree heaves
An emerald roof with sculptured eaves.

Below, the noisy world drags by
In the old way, because it must;
The bride with heartbreak in her eye,
The mourner following hated dust;
Thy duty, winged flame of spring,
Is but to love, and fly, and sing.

O happy life, to soar and sway
Above the life by mortals led,
Singing the merry months away,
Master, not slave of daily bread,
And, when the autumn comes, to flee
Wherever sunshine beckons thee!

—James Russell Lowell.

OUT OF THE SOUTH

A migrant song-bird I,
Out of the blue, between the sea and the sky,
Landward blown on bright, untiring wings;
Out of the South I fly,
Urged by some vague, strange force of destiny,
To where the young wheat springs,

And the maize begins to grow,
And the clover fields to blow.
I have sought
In far wild groves below the tropic line
To lose old memories of this land of mine;
I have fought
This vague, mysterious power that flings me forth
Into the North;
But all in vain. When flutes of April blow,
The immemorial longing lures me, and I go.

—Maurice Thompson.

WHAT TO EXPECT

“In April we may look for the coming of a score or more of different birds. How quickly they come and in what numbers depends upon the season. If it is mild, they come gradually; if stormy, by fits and starts, and sometimes in strangely mixed flocks.

“These belong to the first half of the month:—

_The Great Blue Heron._ Cousin to the white Egret; we always used to have a pair of them by the upper mill-pond.

_The Purple Finch._ A large sparrow with a beautiful voice; the fully grown male having a rosy flush to his feathers as if, it has been said, the juice of crimson berries had been squeezed over him.

_The Vesper-sparrow._ The wayside Sparrow of our afternoon walk that we have known as long as the Song Sparrow and Bluebird; famous for his clear, ringing song at twilight and dawn. Rather light in color, with _rust-red wing-markings and white outside tail-feathers_ that show conspicuously as he flits along and tells his name.

THE VESPER-SPARROW

It comes from childhood land,
Where summer days are long
And summer eves are bland—
A lulling good-night song.

Upon a pasture stone,
Against the fading west,
A small bird sings alone,
Then dives and finds its nest.

The evening star has heard
And flutters into sight.
Oh, childhood’s vesper bird,
My heart calls back good night.

—Edith M. Thomas.

_The Chipping-sparrow._ Our least Sparrow, who wears a little chestnut velvet cap, gray back, and black bill, and has a mild, innocent expression in keeping with his friendly ways. He puts his dainty hair-lined nest (from which he is sometimes called Hair-bird) in a near-by shrub or rose-bush in the garden, and then hops about the door, picking up almost invisible bits of food, calling “chip-chip-chip.” His courting song is a long trill that begins at dawn almost with the Phœbe, and the dear little bird often sings as he sits on the ground.

_The Tree Swallow._ This we saw last fall in the migration, and we may hope that it will take lodging in some of the new bird-boxes.

“In the second half of the month:—

_The Barn Swallow._

_Spotted Sandpiper._

_Bank Swallow._

_Purple Martin._

_Whip-poor-will._ One of the birds of the air that, together with its brother the Nighthawk and its cousins the Chimney Swift and Humming-bird, may well be called winged mysteries.

_Towhee-Chewink, or Ground-robin_, of the tribe of Sparrows and Finches, but, like the Cardinal, without stripes, and having a stout beak. Head, throat, back, and breast black; white belly and rust-red sides. Black tail with white outer feathers. A handsome, vigorous bird and a lover of bushes and thickets, where he scratches among the leaves. Call-note, “Tow-hee-tow-hee.”

_Black-and-white Warbler._ This you will at first take to be a small Woodpecker from its black-and-white stripes and tree-creeping habits that remind one of the Brown Creeper of winter, but its slender bill names it a warbler; one of the “lispers,” who, though they have musical names, whisper or lisp a few notes as if to themselves.

_Ovenbird._ Also a warbler, but, though it sings high among the trees, nests on the ground among the leaves, the nest being closed at the top and open on the sides like an oven. A shy bird with a _golden brown crown edged by a black line_. Plain olive above, white beneath, with thrush-like black streaks on breast and sides.

_House Wren._ Dear little Jenny Wren, of several nests and a large family, who lives in our bird-boxes, outbuildings, and garden trellises. Gowned in reddish brown, with fine black bars and a pert little tail that she jerks nervously as she flies. Johnny Wren is the singing partner, for Jenny has no voice left of a morning after she has spluttered and scolded her bird neighbours and attended to her housekeeping.

_Brown Thrasher._

_Catbird._

_Wood Thrush._

_Veery._—No matter how familiar with them we may be, we must always pause to look and listen when we meet one of this wonderful quartette of vocalists, whose voices belong with the gorgeously apparelled singers of the opera; but the quiet plumage and demeanour of three of the four mark them for peaceful home life and seclusion.

WINGED MYSTERIES

“Four birds there are that live under one roof, so to speak, for they belong to one order divided into three different families. They are perfectly familiar to most of us who have lived in the real country, and yet they awaken our curiosity anew every season when they return. These birds are the Whip-poor-will, Chimney Swift, Nighthawk, and Humming-bird. The two first return to New England late in April; the two last during the first part of May, but it is better for us to take them all together now in April so as to be ready to recognize the first one that comes.

“The _Whip-poor-will_ comes first. It is a bird of the woods; in size a little less than the Robin, but of a build peculiar to its own family, long and low, a contrast heightened by its short legs and its habit of sitting length-wise on a limb and close to it. In short, it does not perch, it ‘squats.’ Its general colour is black, white, and buff, much streaked and mottled. Its tail is _round_, half of the three outer feathers white, giving the effect of a white spot.

“All of you children of this wooded hill country know this bird that flies about the house and across the fields to the woods before dawn or soon after dark, making no more noise than the bats, until, stopping to rest, he mechanically jerks out his name, ‘Whip-poor-will-Whip-poor-will-Chuck!’ So lonely and mournful does the cry sound in the distance that many weird stories have been told about the bird. But when the call comes close at hand, it is more cheerful, though always startling.

“This bird builds no nest, but lays its pair of dull white eggs, so marked that they blend with the earth like lichens and mosses, on the bare ground, or at best among a few leaves. But rash as this seems, the protective colour that nature has given to the parents, eggs, and young serves to keep them as safe as many another bird in a well-woven tree nest.

“Then, too, aside from its picturesque qualities, the Whip-poor-will, as Mr. Forbush says of it, ‘is an animated insect trap. Its enormous mouth is surrounded by long bristles which form a wide fringe about a yawning cavity, and the bird flies rather low among the trees and over the undergrowth, snapping up nocturnal insects in flight. It is, perhaps, the greatest enemy of night-moths, but is quite as destructive to May beetles and other leaf-eating beetles.’

THE WOOD THRUSH AND THE WHIP-POOR-WILL

When the faintest flush of morning
Overtints the distant hill,
_If you waken, if you listen_,
You may hear the Whip-poor-will.
Like an echo from the darkness,
Strangely wild across the glen,
Sound the notes of his finale,
And the woods are still again.

Soon upon the dreamy silence
There will come a gentle trill,
Like the whisper of an organ,
Or the murmur of a rill,
And then a burst of music,
Swelling forth upon the air,
Till the melody of morning
Seems to come from everywhere.
A Thrush, as if awakened by
The parting voice of night,
Gives forth a joyous welcome to
The coming of the light.

In early evening twilight
Again the Wood Thrush sings,
Like a voice of inspiration
With the melody of strings;
A song of joy ecstatic,
And a vesper hymn of praise,
For the glory of the summer
And the promise of the days.

* * * * * *

And when his song is ended,
And all the world grows still,
As if but just awakened,
Calls again the Whip-poor-will.

—Garrett Newkirk, in _Bird-Lore_.

“_The Nighthawk_, when perching, bears a general resemblance to the Whip-poor-will. The white band on its throat is wider, the tail is _not_ round, and it has white band near the end. There is a white bar across the quills of the wings that in flight looks like a round white spot or a hole.

“These four white patches, throat, wings, and tail tell you his name plainly, so when he is on the wing the Nighthawk should never be mistaken for a Whip-poor-will. Then, too, their habits are unlike. The Nighthawk does not belong to the night, neither is he a Hawk, which is a Bird of Prey with talons and a hooked beak. Early morning and late afternoon are his favourite times for hunting the sky for insects, for he also is one of our most valuable sky sweepers.

“Having no song, the cry of Skirk-skirk! given when on the wing, has a wild and eerie sound which is often followed by a booming noise of the quality that can be imitated by placing tissue-paper over a long, coarse comb and then blowing rapidly across it from one end to the other. This noise is made by the rush of the wind through the wing quills as the bird drops through the air after its winged food.

“The Nighthawk builds no nest, but lays its eggs on a bare rock in a field, amid the stones of rocky ground, on roofs even of city houses. Again does colour protection aid a bird, for the arrangements of its markings blend the Nighthawk with granite as perfectly as those of the Whip-poor-will conceal it in the woods.

“The Nighthawk, whose erratic flight makes it a target that piques the skill of a certain class of sportsmen, has frequently been shot at for prowess, the excuse being that it ‘wasn’t any good, anyway.’ Aside from the list of insects harmful to agriculture and domestic animals that it destroys, let us remember its crowning virtue, and cry ‘Hands off!’ It kills mosquitoes, and has thus earned the local name of Mosquito-hawk.

“It is hard to believe that any one should insist that the Nighthawk and the Whip-poor-will are one and the same bird, but such has been the case, and among intelligent people also, though the mistake has been definitely settled by one of the Wise Men.

A NIGHTHAWK INCIDENT

A discussion of the specific distinctness of the Whip-poor-will and Nighthawk, following an address to Connecticut agriculturists some years ago, led to my receipt, in July, 1900, of an invitation from a gentleman who was present, to come and see a bird then nesting on his farm that he believed combined the characters of both the Whip-poor-will and Nighthawk; in short, was the bird to which both these names applied.

Here was an opportunity to secure a much-desired photograph, and armed with the needed apparatus, as well as specimens of both the Nighthawk and Whip-poor-will, I boarded an early train for Stevenson, Connecticut, prepared to gain my point with bird as well as with man.

The latter accepted the specimens as incontrovertible facts, and readjusted his views as to the status of the birds they represented, and we may therefore at once turn our attention to the Nighthawk, who was waiting so patiently on a bit of granite out in the hayfields. The sun was setting when we reached the flat rock on which her eggs had been laid and young hatched, and where she had last been seen; but a fragment of egg-shell was the only evidence that the bare-looking spot had once been a bird’s home. The grass had lately been mowed, and there was no immediately surrounding cover in which the bird might have hidden. It is eloquent testimony of the value of her protective colouring, therefore, that we should almost have stepped on the bird, who had moved to a near-by flat rock as we approached the place in which we had expected to find her.

Far more convincing, however, was her faith in her own invisibility. Even the presence of a dog did not tempt her to flight, and when the camera was erected on its tripod within three feet of her body, squatting so closely to its rocky background, her only movement was occasioned by her rapid breathing.

There was other cause, however, besides the belief in her own inconspicuousness to hold her to the rock: one little downy chick nestled at her side, and with instinctive obedience was as motionless as its parent.

So they sat while picture after picture was made from various points of view, and still no movement, until the parent was lightly touched, when, starting quickly, she spread her long wings and sailed out over the fields. Perhaps she was startled, and deserted her young on the impulse of sudden fear. But in a few seconds she recovered herself, and circling, returned and spread herself out on the grass at my feet. Then followed the evolutions common to so many birds but wonderful in all. With surprising skill in mimicry, the bird fluttered painfully along, ever just beyond my reach, until it had led me a hundred feet or more from its young, and then, the feat evidently successful, it sailed away again, to perch first on a fence and later on a limb in characteristic (length-wise) Nighthawk attitude.

How are we to account for the development in so many birds of what is now a common habit? Ducks, Snipe, Grouse, Doves, some ground-nesting Sparrows and Warblers, and many other species also feign lameness, with the object of drawing a supposed enemy from the vicinity of their nest or young. Are we to believe that each individual who in this most reasonable manner opposes strategy to force, does so intelligently? Or are we to believe that the habit has been acquired through the agency of natural selection, and is now purely instinctive? Probably neither question can be answered until we know beyond question whether this mimetic or deceptive power is inherited.—Frank M. Chapman, in _Bird-Lore_.

* * * * *

“Now comes the _Chimney Swift_, universally called the Chimney Swallow; with small, compact body, only a little larger than a Bank Swallow, and long, strong wings, it dominates the air in which it lives and feeds, and so little does it use its feet that it does not perch on them, but brackets itself against post, wall, or chimney, Woodpecker fashion, the sharp, pointed quills of its short tail acting as a brace.

“In colour the Chimney Swift is sooty gray, and as it darts about the sky it looks like a winged spruce cone, the wings being held further forward in flight than those of the average bird.

“Like their cousins the Nighthawks, they feed chiefly in early morning and late afternoon, though in the nesting season this work continues all day. In the old wild days, like many another bird, this Swift built its basket nest of twigs and bird glue on the inside wall of hollow trees, but when man came, hollow trees went, and so, with the happy adaptability of Heart of Nature himself, the bird moved to the hollow chimneys of man’s own invention, and so, unwittingly, descended from his sky parlour and became the one real fireside bird that we have. And for this companionship he is willing to brave the risk of being smoked out and having sparks scorch his nest.

“Now that wide-mouthed stone chimneys are also disappearing, what remains for this Swift? We do not know, unless he changes his home to the open air and builds his bracket nests on outside walls.

“The Swift folds his wings and dives down the chimney to his nest silently as a bird cleaves the water, but when he rises, a roar of rapidly whirring wings marks the ascent, so that sometimes it annoys the people in whose rooms the chimney opens. Last summer, in the old orchard-house where Miss Wilde lives, we used to sit before the wide fireplace and listen to the Swifts twittering and whirling in and out of the chimney, and by looking up on a bright day their nests could be seen plainly. Once in a while an accident would happen, and Goldilocks will show you a beautiful bracket nest and five white eggs that became loosened after a storm and fell out on to the hearth.”

“But now that there is a fire all the time and a coal stove at Swallow Chimney, won’t the birds choke if they live there?” asked Sarah Barnes. “Grandma says they can stand wood smoke, but that coal-gas ‘spixiates’ ’em; ’cause we’ve never had any at our house since we’ve been burning coal.”

“I believe that your grandmother is right,” said Gray Lady, “and for this reason I have planned to have a new outside chimney for the cooking stove, so that the real ‘Swallow Chimney’ may be only used for the wood hearth fires, and so continue to be their home for as long as I live or the birds wish to rent it.

TO A CHIMNEY SWIFT

Uncumbered neighbour of our race!
Thou only of thy clan
Hast made thy haunt and dwelling-place
Within the walls of man.

Thy haughty wing, which rides the storm,
Hath stooped to Earth’s desires,
And round thy eery rises warm
The smoke of human fires.

Still didst thou come from lands afar
In childhood days as now,—
Yet alien as the planets are,
And elfin-strange art thou.

Thy little realm of quick delights,
Fierce instincts, untaught powers—
What unimagined days and nights
Cut off that realm from ours!

Thy soul is of the dawn of Earth,
And thine the secrets be
Of sentient being’s far-off birth
And round-eyed infancy.

With thee, beneath our sheltering roof,
The starry Sphinx doth dwell,
Untamed, eternally aloof
And inaccessible!

—Dora Read Goodale.

THE RUBY-THROATED HUMMING-BIRD

“The last and least of the four-winged mysteries is also the smallest of our birds, lacking a quarter of being four inches long. But it does not need size to proclaim its beauty any more than a glowing ruby or emerald; and indeed it wears both of these gems, the one on its throat and the other on its back. Its world is the garden where everything is brightest, its food nectar, and such little aphis as gather in it, and its home lashed by cobwebs to a slender branch, a fairy nest of plant, wool, and lichens, soft as feather down, wherein lie two eggs, white and opaque and glistening like some fresh-water pearls.

“When on the wing it either darts about like a ray of feathered light, or else, poised before a deep-throated flower, remains apparently motionless, though its wings vibrate with the mechanical hum of a fly-wheel of perfect workmanship.

“In spite of the fact that Father Humming-bird takes himself to parts unknown and leaves his mate to tend both eggs and birds, the mother is neither put out nor discouraged, and makes a model parent, who gathers and swallows the food for her tiny offspring and then, by a pumping process called regurgitation, brings it up and, taking no chances of spilling a drop, literally rams it into the little throat! This bird is to me the greatest mystery of all. It comes and it goes, but how does it endure the stress of weather and travel? Many a moth outspans it in breadth of wings. If the flight of the Wild Goose is wonderful in its courage, what of the Humming-bird? Is Puck of Pook’s Hill still alive, and has he feathered playfellows?

THE HUMMING-BIRD

Is it a monster bee,
Or is it a midget bird,
Or yet an air-born mystery
That now yon marigold has stirred,
And now on vocal wing
To a neighbour bloom has whirred
In an aëry ecstasy, in a passion of pilfering?

Ah! ’tis the Humming-bird,
Rich-coated one,
Ruby-throated one,
That is not chosen for song,

But throws its whole rapt sprite
Into the secrets of flowers
The summer days along,
Into most odorous hours
It’s a murmurous sound of wings too swift for sight.

—Richard Burton.

THE WOOD THRUSH

He has a coat of cinnamon brown,
The brightest on his head and crown,
A very low-cut vest of white
That shines like satin in the light,
And on his breast a hundred spots,
As if he wore a veil with dots;
With movement quick and full of grace,
The highbred manner of his race;
A very prince of birds is he
Whose form it is a joy to see.

And _music_—was there ever heard
A sweeter song from any bird?
Now clarion-like, so loud and clear,
Now like a whisper low and near,
And now, again, with rhythmic swells
And tinkling harmony of bells,
He seems to play accompaniment
Upon some harp-like instrument.

—Garrett Newkirk, in _Bird-Lore_.

MOCKERS AND THRUSHES

“How many of you know the _Wood Thrush_, or, if you do not know his name, can recognize him by aid of these verses?”

“I know it,” answered little Clary; “I know his colour and the way his song tinkles, but up at our house we call him Song Thrush. Why, Gray Lady, he doesn’t live in the woods; we haven’t any woods. He stays right around the garden and orchard, and last summer they made a nest in the crotch of a sugar-maple so low that I could see into it by standing on the fence. It looked just like Robin’s nest, and it had some rags woven into it, and the eggs are like the Robin’s, too.

“Mother said that I mustn’t watch too long, or they might not come back next year, but that if we didn’t bother them, they might come back, and the children, too, and bring their wives.

“This pair seemed real tame; they used to hop all round on the grass where the clothes dry, and they drank out of Roy’s dish. He’s a Collie dog, you know, and they don’t bother birds at all the way bird-dogs will sometimes.

“The Thrushes did eat some strawberries and currants, but mother said to credit those to company, for they pleasured her when she sat sewing on the porch of afternoons more than all the company she ever had to tea, for they had to have sugar and cream on their berries, and left plates and spoons to wash up, and the Thrushes cleared up after themselves and gave a concert every night.

“You know, Gray Lady, it isn’t nice to have company and not give them any lunch, so mother says if you have nice garden birds, why should you expect more of them than of folks?”

“Why, indeed,” said Gray Lady. “I will go and see your mother and ask her to come to Birdland. A mother in a community who thinks as she does is better than half a dozen bird wardens.”

“I know that bird, too,” said Dave, “but on the hill where I live he stays in the river woods and only comes out to the lane edge to get wild cherries and blackcaps and shadberries. We call it Wood Robin, ’cause it’s shaped like a Robin and runs on the ground like one, only it’s different in colour. Do you suppose they are the same bird? Or are there two that seem alike, like the Nighthawk and Whip-poor-will?”

“Wood Thrush, Song Thrush, Wood Robin, are all one; the shy bird of river woods or the lovely musician of gardens and home grounds, where they are protected and dogs reign instead of cats. This place is vocal with them all through May, June, and well into July. Not only Birdland and the orchard, but the garden and trees on the lawn.

“One afternoon last June, when Goldilocks lay in her hammock under the spruces, four were singing where I could see all at once,—and oh, that song! As the bird sits in a tree-top with head thrown back and pours it forth,

‘the song of the Wood Thrush is one of the finest specimens of
bird music that America can produce. Among all the bird songs I
have ever heard, it is second only in quality to that of the
Hermit Thrush. Its tones are solemn and serene. They seem to
harmonize with the sounds of the forest, the whispering breeze,
the purling water, or the falling of raindrops in the summer
woods.’

—E. H. Forbush.

* * * * *

“This Thrush has a sharp alarm note, ‘Pit! Pit!’ and a sort of whistle that he seems to use as a signal. Fruit he does eat at times, but he has as long a list of evil insects to his credit as the Robin himself. Unfortunately, owing to his size and plumpness, southern vandals shoot him in the fall and winter. Fancy silencing his heavenly voice for a pitiful mouthful of meat.

“There is another Thrush that lives in your river woods, Dave, smaller than the Wood Thrushes, tawny of back, and a buffy breast with faint arrow-shaped spots upon it, the Wilson’s Thrush, or Veery. It has not so long and varied a song as either the Wood Thrush or the more northern Hermit Thrush, is really but an echo song, wonderfully pure and spiritual in quality. One of the Wise Men gives in syllables this ‘Ta-weel-ah-ta-weel-ah,’ pronounced in whispering head tones, and then repeated a third lower, ending with the twang of a stringed instrument.

“At evening and until quite late into the night these birds echo themselves and each other. It is not a song to hear amid laughter and talking, but for the heart that is alone, even if not lonely. To at least one of our poets, he who best interprets the song-life of birds, it rivals the famous English Nightingale.

“Aside from its musical value, the Veery, feeding as it does almost altogether on insects, has a practical side as a neighbour. It also has a most penetrating call-note, a ‘Whew! Whew!’ heard after the song is over, that is at once resentful, critical, and challenging, as if questioning your right to be in its woodland retreat in the nesting time, and condemning your persistence. Many people, who do not know the bird by sight, know both its echo song and its note of alarm and challenge.

THE INCREDULOUS VEERY

Two hunters chanced one day to meet
Near by a thicket wood;
They paused each other there to greet,
Both in a playful mood.
Said one, “I had to wade a stream,
Now, this you must not doubt,
And when I reached the other shore
My boots were full of trout.”

_Whew!_ cried a Veery perched in view
To hear if what they said were true. _Whew!_

The other’s wit was now well whet.
Said he, “Let me narrate:
I bought three hundred traps and set
For fur both small and great;
Now, when next morning came, behold,
Each trap contained a skin;
And other disappointed game
Stood waiting to get in.”

The astonished Veery whistled, _Whew!_
I hardly think that story true. _Whew!!!_

—Florence A. Van Sant, in _Bird-Lore_.

* * * * *

THE BROWN THRASHER

“Also called _Brown Thrush_, _Red Mavis_, _Planting Bird_. Brown of back, with his white throat and belly speckled with black arrow marks, a long, curved bill, and long, restless tail, whose thrashing gives the bird his name, this bird combines the markings of the Thrush with the general build of a true Mockingbird, while in varied and rich song it rivals the Catbird, its shorter song season, however, leaving its gray-backed neighbour in the lead.

“This spring Brown Thrasher came to the bushy end of the orchard the last of April, and scratched about in the leaves like a Grouse. In a few days I saw him in the back of the garden, where Jacob had a great pile of pea-brush. This the bird looked at favourably. Birds know how to get in and out of pea-brush, but cats are afraid of the sharp twigs.

“For a couple of weeks or more I heard him singing every day in the tree-tops, and I wondered where he would locate.

“Jacob, one morning, told me that he wished to use the pea-brush, but that a ‘pair of great brown birds that beat their tails and “sassed” him when he came near’ had built a nest of twigs in the back of the heap. ‘My friends, the Thrashers,’ said I, ‘will need that brush for a couple of months. Have you no more in the lot?’ Jacob had plenty with only the trouble of carting.

“Now hardy vines have grown over the brush and tangled into what Goldilocks calls a lovely ‘Thrashery’ that will last for several years.”

“I know them,” said Jack Todd; “they are mockers and jeerers for certain; when Dad and I plant the big south field with corn every spring, they come in the berry-bushes by the fence and tell us how to do it, and that if we’re smart and take their advice, we won’t cut the fence brush until they are done with nesting.

“But can’t they pick cherries to beat the band? Last summer I was up in the ox-heart tree and they came in the top and picked ’em off, just as they grew in pairs, and flew away with them as pleased and satisfied as if they were picking them for market and were a week ahead of the season. Dad was awfully down on them once, but one morning about two years ago he got up at daylight to try and get the cutworms that were spoiling his early cauliflowers, and there were Thrashers and Catbirds doing the work for him, watching out for the worms to move ground just as clever as a man could.

“As for the _Catbird_ or _New England Mockingbird_, trim of shape, and shrewd of eye, what should we do without him? He is a graphophone in feathers, that gives us selections from all the popular bird songs of the day, with this addition—there is no mechanical twang to mar the melody, and when the repertoire is ended he improvises by the hour.

“Ah, the merry, mischievous Mocker, all dressed in a parson’s suit of gray, with a solemn black cap on his head that is as full of tricks as his throat is of music.

“You say, ‘Yes, I know that he is a jolly musician, but my father says that he bites the best strawberries and cherries, and always on the ripest cheek!’

“Well, so he does _sometimes_; but his ancestors lived on that spot where your garden stands before yours did, and you have more ways of earning a living than he has. Give him something else to eat. Plant a little wild fruit along your fences.

“Some people think that he likes to live in seclusion, but he doesn’t; he likes to be near people and perch on a clothes-pole to plume and sing. Yes, indeed, and he shall nest in the syringa nearest my garden, where he gets his fresh fruit for breakfast, and be the only thing with anything catlike about it on my premises!”

THE CATBIRD

He sits on a branch of yon blossoming bush,
This madcap cousin of Robin and Thrush,
And sings without ceasing the whole morning long
Now wild, now tender, the wayward song
That flows from his soft, gray, fluttering throat.
But often he stops in his sweetest note,
And, shaking a flower from the blossoming bough,
Drawls out, “Mi-ew, mi-ou!”