HAPPENINGS BY THE WAY
If one were to keep on writing monographs of all our interesting avian species, the books that would result would make a good-sized library. The few examples that have been given will illustrate what can be done in this direction with the help of the field glass and the handbook. A few chapters will now be given on what might be called "odds and ends of bird life," and these are written not only for the information they may impart, but also for the purpose of showing how many interesting facts can be gathered along the way by the method of bird study commended in our opening chapter.
The prince of American ornithologists, Dr. Elliott Coues, has somewhere said that he would travel a long distance to discover a new kind of bird, or even to ascertain a new fact about a familiar species. I would applaud and echo that sentiment, for by all means let us have bird news that really is news, instead of revamping the familiar facts again and again, as some amateurish writers do. While I am not able to add any new species to science, I have made note of many pleasing incidents in the bird realm, and these, I venture to hope, may be of not a little general interest.
[Illustration: Pewee, or Phoebe (missing from book)]
There is the companionable white-breasted nuthatch which goes scudding up and down the tree trunks with as much ease and aplomb as a fly gliding over a window-pane. I have already told you something about him. I had long been aware that he wedged grains of corn, sunflower seeds, and kernels of nuts in the crannies of the bark; but one day he invented a trick that was a surprise to me. It occurred at a summer resort in northern Indiana, where I noticed a nuthatch hitching up and down and around the slender stem of a sapling, pausing at intervals to thrust something into the crevices of the bark. My curiosity led me to pry into the bird's affairs. Stepping smartly forward, I drove him away, not heeding his vigorous protest of "yank, yank," and examined the bark of the sapling. What did I discover? A colony of black ants were scuttling up and down the tree, apparently under stress of great excitement; and good reason they had, for here and there one of their number was tightly wedged into a chink of the bark, often doubled up into a bow or an angle. They were not killed, at least not all of them, for they were still wiggling their legs and antennas; but they were evidently benumbed, or some of their backs were broken, and they were fastened so securely in the fissures that they could not escape. Does it not look as if the forehanded nuthatch was laying by a supply of ants for a coming time of hunger?
One day a family of wood pewees visited the dooryard of my tent. A multitude of gnats circling about in the air, seemed to be precisely to the taste of the pewee parents and their hungry bairns. The bantlings sat chirping in the saplings, or flitted from twig to twig, twinkling their wings in the coaxing way that is characteristic of young birds, while the papa and mamma swung out into the air, nabbed the insects on the wing, and flew back to the trees, describing many circles, ellipses, and festoons of rare grace and beauty. The snapping of their mandibles could often be heard as they closed upon the fated insects. Most of the gnats thus captured were thrust into the mouths of the young birds, the parents dashing up to them and feeding them without alighting. As lavish a minstrel as the pewee pater familias is under most circumstances, that morning he was too busy to tune his wind harp.
Speaking of the voracious appetites of birds, as exhibited by the young pewees, which never seemed to get enough, I am reminded of something I witnessed one day in a deep, wooded hollow. A red-eyed vireo suddenly appeared in the branches above me, holding an immense green worm in his beak. Then followed a tussle for the "upper hand" that was worth seeing. The bird, holding its squirming victim by one end, proceeded to beat it against the limb, though it was almost too big and recalcitrant for him to handle. Presently the vireo, after a good deal of effort, succeeded in passing his quarry through his bill from end to end, thus reducing it to somewhat smaller dimensions. Still, it was a large morsel for so small a diner.
However, there were some intimations that the bird intended to bolt the worm whole. And that was just what he was planning to do! What a struggle ensued! I would have wagered that the little gourmand had reckoned without his host when he undertook to swallow that immense worm. He twisted his neck this way and that, gulped and squeezed and pried, until I feared he would burst his throat open. At length the worm was partly bolted, but it seemed to stick fast, and the bird stood there with his mandibles pressed far apart, the end of his dinner bulging out of his mouth, and I felt uneasy for a time lest he should choke to death before my very eyes. But, after resting a minute, he gave his neck a number of convulsive twists, and at last succeeded in forcing the unwilling worm down his throat, after which he wiped his bill on the limb with a self-satisfied air and flitted away as happy as a lark, knowing that his faithful craw would do the rest.
A slate-colored junco did a pretty thing in the woods one day of early spring—much more pleasing to see than the incident just described. He had rinsed his feathers in a pool of the little stream down in the hollow, and now he was squatting flat on his belly on the ground in a soft bed of brown leaves, preening and primping his plumes with his little white, conical bill. Now he gave his quills a deft touch, now the feathers of his wing, now those of his dainty breast. Lying there in the sun he presented a perfect picture of feathery laziness. Many a bird I have seen arranging his toilet after a bath while perching on a limb or a twig, and even, as in the case of the brown creeper, while clinging to the bole of a tree, but never before did I see one doing this while lolling on the ground. He was not sick or hurt, simply lazy; for when I went near him he flew away as chipper as a bird could be.
The rambler not only sees many of these pretty bird ways, but he sometimes has a hearty laugh at the birds' expense. During one of my outings a blustering whirlwind started on the summit of a small hill scantily covered with scrub oak. It seized the dead leaves and twirled them about as if in a spasm of anger; then it went scurrying noisily down the steep incline, flinging itself against a couple of large brush heaps in the hollow where a number of fox and Harris sparrows were concealed. They had imagined themselves safe in their brushy covert. Suddenly the whirlwind struck their hiding place with a clang and clatter, sending the birds in a wild panic in every direction. They did not seem to know what had struck them, and, as the wanton breezes tossed them this way and that, they expressed their astonishment in loud and frightened chirping. All over and no harm done, the bird lover burst into a peal of laughter at the discomfiture of his feathered neighbors, who looked at him as if they did not know what to make of his untimely hilarity.
Then, too, one cannot be an observing rambler without stumbling upon some exceedingly odd avian pranks, as the following description will indicate: One day I was sitting on the steep bank of a wooded ravine watching several rare little birds, hoping to discover some of their nests. Presently the susurrus of the hummingbird was heard, and a moment later two ruby-throats, a male and a female, flashed into view on the slope below me. The tiny madam settled on a twig near the ground, while her ruby-throated spouse performed one of the queerest antics I have ever witnessed in featherland. He began to swing back and forth in an arc of almost half a circle, the diameter of which was at least twelve feet, just grazing his mate whenever he reached the lowest point of his concentric movements. Back and forth he swung at least a dozen times, looking like a tiny pendulum moving in an immense arc, and, oddly enough, the segment seemed to be perfectly formed every time. Had the bird wheeled entirely around, he would, I feel sure, have described a circle and not an ellipse. The movement was exceedingly swift, and might well have been called the embodiment of grace. Suddenly, as the diminutive acrobat reached the highest point of his arc, he dashed off to the right in a straight line, followed by his mate, and in a moment both had disappeared. Whether other observers have been witnesses of this curious gambol, I am unable to say.
Have you ever been ill-mannered enough to watch the birds going to bed? I remember spending an evening in the woods playing the role of Paul Pry on my feathered neighbors. The sun was just sinking behind the bluffs on the other side of a broad river—the Missouri—and the moon, which was half full, was hanging high in the blue sky. What were those two large black objects over yonder in the woods? My glass soon revealed their identity—a pair of turkey buzzards perched side by side on a limb, one of them squatted flat on his belly ready to take his first nap. My curiosity led me to go near them, when they spread their broad, sable wings, flew a few rods, and alighted on another horizontal bar. There they sat as long as I could see them in the thickening darkness, turning their heads now and then to see whether their ill-bred visitor was still spying upon them. They made no efforts to conceal themselves, as the small birds do in roosting, for they knew, no doubt, that nothing would carry off fowls of their size.
A little later on the same evening a whip-poor-will darted up from the roadside and flew into the woods a short distance, alighting on a white flag of good size, so that I could plainly see his dark form in the moonlight. Then I was witness of this uncanny bird's table manners, which were entirely unknown to me and may be to others. At irregular intervals he leaped into the air, now in one direction, now in another, captured an insect, and flew back to the top of the flag. Some of his evolutions were quite wonderful, and all of them were the perfection of grace. He described all kinds of curves and loops. On alighting he uttered a low, hollow chuck suggestive of the sepulchral. Another notch had to be cut in the tally-stick of my ornithological journey—I had learned how the whip-poor-will takes his nocturnal dinner of moths and beetles, and I felt that there was still such a thing as news to be gathered in birdland.
Most birds, however, do not take their dinner at night, and therefore it is easier to watch them at their table d'hote. One day a red-headed woodpecker was giving a strapping youngster as large as herself his noonday meal. She came close to him with a morsel in her long bill, and, after pounding it awhile against a limb, she thrust it into the screaming youngling's mouth. But she had failed to reduce it to a swallowable size; it stuck in his throat, and, do what he would, he could not bolt it. It was so large that he was choking; what should be done? The simplest thing you can conceive. The mother bird reached over and impatiently jerked the refractory morsel out of her baby's throat, thumped it vigorously several times against the branch, then gave it to him again, as much as to say, "Now try it! I guess you can manage it this time." And he did, for down his gullet it went with very little effort. Then she went after more provender for his spacious craw. Whenever she came with a tidbit, she would first drop it into a kind of pocket in the bark, and pound it a while to reduce it to a proper consistency; the while the youngster would sit near and watch her with hungry eyes, and often scream in his coaxing way and twinkle his wings, until she was ready to deliver up the tempting fragment.
Once, after she had given him all she had brought, he still opened his mouth and whimpered for more. At this exhibition of gluttony she lost her patience. Would he never be satisfied, the great, greedy, overgrown lubber? He was simply making a slave and a drudge of her. She looked at him for a moment with a savage glitter in her dark eyes, then began to peck him angrily right in the mouth, and drove him peremptorily backward down the limb. Mother patience has its limitations in the bird world as well as elsewhere.
On the same day a bank swallow was feeding her little ones, a half dozen or so, which were ranged on a willow stem at the margin of the river. Every time she flew toward them they set up a vigorous calling to be fed. She procured her food by skimming airily over the river and catching the insects that rose from its surface. Having nabbed one, she would dart with it to her little family, and, without alighting, and scarcely pausing in her swift flight, would thrust it into the mouth of one of the birdkins. Thus she fed them one by one until she had gone the round of the little circle, though sometimes, oddly enough, she would serve the same infant twice in succession.
The little family, all perched in a row, looked very attractive, and I was watching them closely most of the time. Suddenly the mother bird disappeared, and was gone for several minutes. I forgot to keep my eye steadily on the youngsters sitting six in a row, and, to my great surprise, when she reappeared they had left their perch, which was in plain sight, and I could not rediscover them for some time. Finally, however, I espied them cuddling among some leafy twigs a few feet away, where the mother resumed her duties of purveyor. My opinion is that she had begun to feel uneasy for their safety in the exposed place where I could see them so plainly, and so, while I was looking elsewhere, had persuaded them to shift their position. Now they were partly screened by the intervening leaves, and she felt that they were secure.
There can be no doubt that birds have a language which the youngsters soon come to understand, however simple and inarticulated it may be. In a shady hollow, one day of early spring, a pair of tufted titmice were supplying the wants of a family of famishing children, and I invited myself to the family reunion. The young birds had left the nest and were perched in a leafy tree. Most of the time they kept up a great clamor for food—or, perhaps, they shrieked merely from force of habit; but every few minutes one of the parent birds would utter a shrill, commanding cry, at which all the noisy clamorings of the youthful family would suddenly cease, and for a few moments perfect quiet would reign in titmouse town; then the hubbub would begin again, and continue until another order for perfect silence was given. So far as I could see, there was no danger from raptorial foes at hand, but the little family seemed to be in training against the approach of a marauder.
It may be a far cry, but from green-robed spring fancy yourself suddenly flung into the lap of snow-bound winter, to look upon scenes quite different from the foregoing. The Frost King had been playing a good many pranks for a week or two, and once, in a spasm of frigid ill humor, had jammed the mercury in our thermometers a dozen or more degrees below zero, and had held it there quite too long for our comfort. More than once had he shrieked and blustered and stamped his feet incontinently, and more than once sent his legions of wind, sleet, and snow howling through the leafless woods. Everybody in our central latitudes knows what an explosive old fellow the Frost King is, and how fierce and savage he can become let the mood once seize him.
Sometimes, too, by the hour he had ground his ice crystals to powder in mid-air and hurled them to the earth, covering its surface with a robe of purest white, thus proving that, with all his rudeness and bluster, he is an old gentleman of aesthetic tastes. One evening his mood became blander, and he dropped his crystals from the sky in large, damp flakes, which clung tenaciously to the branches and twigs; then during the night his breath became chilled and froze the snowy cylinders, and when morning broke the woods were a miracle of loveliness, every leaf and twig bearing a ridge of gleaming pearls, while the sylvan floor was pure white. Soon the sun was shining from an unmarred sky, and the snow-clad earth smiled back in shimmering recognition. It was a day for worship in God's first sanctuary.
Yet it was a day for watching the gambols of the birds, and such occupation by no means interfered with the spirit of worship. In the depths of the woods the white-breasted nuthatches were holding a friendly interview. How affectionately they talked to one another in idioms all their own, saying "Hick! hick!" and "Yank! yank!" and "Ha-ha! ha-ha! ha-ha!" which may mean anything that is kind and cordial and confidential. They were either playing at a game of tag, or were having a peep-show among the bushes, hiding for a moment in some leafy cluster, then dashing in pursuit of one another in the most frolicksome way. I crept in under the arches of the snow-clad bushes to watch their caperings more closely, but the birds at once quieted down, and went about their more prosaic vocation of grub gathering. They were no doubt "aching" to frisk about among the snowy bushes, but would not indulge their playful mood under the eye of a human spectator.
Presently one of them was seen carefully primping his feathers—a function that I had not previously seen a nuthatch perform. His plumes seemed to be really quite damp, and, as there was no water at hand—the streams being mailed with ice as well as nearly a half mile away—he must have used a snowbank for his lavatory. But you ask how he arranged his toilet. I had several times seen the little brown creeper clinging to the vertical wall of a tree and preening his plumes after a bath, and it was natural to suppose that his congener, the nuthatch, being also a bird of reptatory habits, would follow the same formula. But not so! Instead of clinging to the upright bole of a tree, Master Nuthatch perched crosswise on a twig like a robin or a chickadee, and smoothed his ruffled plumes.
After this interesting interview with the nuthatches, I trudged about in the woods for some time without seeing any birds. What had become of my feathered neighbors, my companions in every ramble throughout the winter? Had the storm driven them to other climes where bland winds prevailed? Oh, no! See what prudent creatures they were that wintry day. At the eastern border of the woods, where the sun shone warmly and the keen westerly breeze was broken and tempered, my little friends were found in goodly numbers, well knowing where the Frost King's anger would be softened.
Here were nuthatches and chickadees in plenty, and also tufted tits, tree sparrows, juncos, downy woodpeckers, and, to make the complement as nearly full as possible, a hairy woodpecker drummed and chir-r-r-red, several blue jays complained in the distance, and a goldfinch swinging overhead threaded the air with festoons of black and gold. And here I witnessed a new and pretty antic of a tree sparrow, which flew over from a cornfield hard by and perched on a dogwood sapling only a few feet away; then it plunged its beak into the little snowbank on the twig before it and ate greedily of the snow, some of the crystals clinging to its mandibles, just as the crumbs adhere to the lips of a hungry boy. Had the exclamation not been so much like slang, I would have cried "Next!" And there was a "next," as sure as you live, for the little bird soon flitted to another twig in the same tree and, reaching up, daintily sipped from the dripping underside of the branch just above and in front of it. Its thirst having been assuaged, it flew over into the adjoining field to resume its winter feast of seeds and berries.
And what was happening over in the field? Something worth noting, to be sure. A coterie of juncos and tree sparrows were breakfasting on the seeds of a clump of tall weeds, a few of the little feasters perched on the swaying stems, while others stood on the snow on the ground and picked the seeds from the racemes that were bent down by their burden of crystals. When I went to the place, I could see the delicate tracery of their feet on the snow, as if they had been writing their autographs on an untarnished scroll. Two tiny footprints at regular intervals, one a little before the other, and each pair connected with the next by a slender thread or two traced by the bird's claws—that is a junco's or a tree sparrow's trail in the snow.
A little later a scattering flock of tree sparrows were skipping about on the snowy floor of the woods, picking up at quick intervals a palatable tidbit. Birds often find edibles on the surface of the snow when our duller eyes can see nothing but immaculate whiteness. What long leaps the little birds took across the snow, which looked like a marble pavement with fairies dancing upon it! Near by, on one of the lower twigs of a thorn bush, a sparrow sat with feathers fluffed up and wings hanging negligently at his side, as if he were taking a siesta after a hearty meal of weed seeds and winter berries. Two of his companions soon joined him in his noonday rest, the trio making a pretty picture sitting there within an inch or two of the ground.
It was not very long before a tree sparrow perpetrated another surprise, proving that this species is not without character, as indeed no species is. He leaped to the bole of a sapling, clinging there a few moments like a chickadee or a wren, while he pecked an appetizing morsel from the bark; then he dropped down to the snow for a brief breathing spell, after which he sprang up again to the sapling for a few more bits, repeating the little performance a number of times.
In the same part of the woods a company of chickadees was flitting about in the trees, plunging into the little snowbanks on the twigs, sometimes standing in them up to their white bosoms, and often brushing a segment to the ground, thus making numerous breaches in the white drifts. The racket they made with their scolding and piping might have been called a musical din. Deciding to watch them a while, I flung myself down upon the snow. This act was the signal for a precious to-do among the nervous little potherers. Did any one ever hear or read of such a performance in all the annals of birdland? What in the world did it mean—a man lying flat on the ground out there in the woods? I was highly amused at the hurly-burly, and decided to add still more variety to it. Suddenly I sprang to my feet with a shout. Several of the birds dropped, as if shot, into a thorn bush below them, where they set up a hubbub that would have made on old-time Puritan laugh, even at the risk of being censured for levity. By and by they quieted down, and one of them began to whistle his pretty minor tune with as much serenity as if he had never been excited in his life. My winter outing proved that the Frost King and the hardy birds often go cheek by jowl, as if they were on terms of the most cordial fraternity.