Stray Feathers From a Bird Man's Desk

by Austin Loomer Rand

DUST AND SNOW BATHING

The taxidermist preparing a bird specimen for the museum sometimes has to deal with one whose plumage is soiled or stained. He may have to wash it with water. Then, to dry the plumage, fluff it, and help in arranging the plumage so it will lie smooth and natural, he may use a powder: corn meal, sawdust, plaster, or plaster and potato starch may be worked into the feathers, then dusted out again. It is interesting that birds themselves use and have used long before taxidermists a similar method of using dust in dressing their feathers, a fact that anyone who has watched domestic hens for any length of time must be aware.

A DIRTY BATH Recently I watched a house sparrow dusting by the railway track in the city of Chicago. The dust may have been in part "clean" earth, but in part it was soot, city dust, and soft-coal debris. The sparrows here were dingy, all had their plumage heavily impregnated with city grime, and looked very different from the sparrows in the country. And this sparrow I was watching when it had finished dusting was the worst of the lot. These city sparrows, even when they bathe in water, seem never to get much of the grime out of their feathers.

This reminded me that Oscar Heinroth once wrote that birds do not bathe to get themselves clean, but bathe as an aid in bringing their feathers into order and making them lie smoothly. Perhaps he is right. Certainly my sparrow did nothing to clean himself.

It is in arid countries, plains and deserts especially, where many of the birds take only dust baths. In more humid regions water bathing is the rule. But some birds do both, like our flicker and our house sparrow, bathing now in water, now in sand.

In northern climates, when the land is held in the grip of winter, the water frozen over, and the earth covered with snow, neither dust nor water bathing is possible. Then, it has been recorded, some birds find a substitute in snow. Among other cases, in Alaska the hawk owl has been seen to perch in the snow on the tops of telephone poles, and go through the motions of bathing; in England a rook was recorded as bathing "in crisp powdery snow as if it were taking a bath in dust or water"; and in New England in midwinter juncos have been recorded bathing "in light dry snow, just as other sparrows take dust baths in hot weather."

The snow evidently is used as a substitute for dust in these northern latitudes.

DECORATION IN THE HOME [Ref]

To use a bunch of flowers or a spray of leaves in decorating a room in a house is a refinement of civilization. As the flowers fade, or the leaves wilt, they are replaced with fresh ones. Sometimes a winter bouquet is used that will serve for months.

There are several birds that habitually deck their nests with green vegetation, and when it is wilted, it is renewed with fresh. The reason is not clear. It has been suggested it is to supply humidity and, by evaporation, coolness; it has also been suggested that its use serves a sanitary purpose. But whatever the reason in birds' eyes, it looks like decoration to human eyes.

This habit is common with a number of different hawks: for example, the red-tailed hawk is reported sometimes to have its nest, a bulky flat, basin-shaped structure in the crotch of a tree, "profusely and beautifully lined with fresh green sprigs of white pine, which are frequently renewed during incubation and during the earlier stages in the growth of the young." The golden eagle is said to add green grass, or green leaves often attached to the twigs from time to time to the lining of the nest, especially after the young are hatched; and the broad-winged hawk is said to add green leaves to the lining of its nest. In quite another group of birds the same thing also occurs. A carrion crow's nest in England was visited periodically from March to August. Strangely no eggs were laid during this whole period, but the birds remained in attendance. When found, fresh sprigs of oak leaves were interwoven around the rim of the nest. On subsequent visits the oak leaves were found to have been replaced with fresh ones, and the leaves were kept fresh until late August.

The purple martin supplies another example. The nest boxes we put up for them supply their main breeding places in some areas. "The parents have a habit of collecting many green leaves and placing them in the nest, a practice which may tend by evaporation to reduce the heat" in the next box. "Where large colonies are breeding they sometimes injure pear trees by stripping certain branches of their leaves," according to E. H. Forbush.

A Madagascar weaverbird provides an example of decorating the nest entrance of a quite different type of nest; in this case the nest is in the shape of an inverted retort, with the entrance through the spout. The entrance is decorated with green grass heads or with green leaves, and the males keep adding fresh green decorations even when the eggs are being incubated by the female.

It seems hard to believe that this is really decoration, that it is not for some purpose—either connected with the raising of the young, or more probably a leisure or substitute activity—something to keep the bird busy and strengthen the bond between bird and nest when it is not otherwise directly occupied with nesting activities.