THE CROW
Then it is a distant cawing,
Growing louder—coming nearer,
Tells of crows returning inland
From their winter on the marshes.
Iridescent is their plumage,
Loud their voices, bold their clamour.
In the pools and shallows wading,
Or in overflowing meadows
Searching for the waste of winter—
Scraps and berries freed by thawing.
Weird their notes and hoarse their croaking
Silent only when the night comes.
—Frank Bolles.
“With the thawing out of the ground in spring, the Crow begins to view the world differently. The search for insects still continues, and the corn now gleaned is more palatable, for it has been well soaked, and though a corn-eater by nature, the Crow does not like his too hard and dry.
“The flock life of the roost now ends. Every Jack chooses his Jill, and mingled with the harsh warning cries of the older birds are sounds that sometimes have a suggestion that their makers are trying to sing. The funniest thing in birdland is to see a Crow or a Purple Grackle making love, standing on tiptoe on a branch, raising their wings by jerks, like pump-handles that are stiff, while the sounds they make stick in the throat in a manner that suggests Crow croup.
“Once in a long time, however, I have heard a Crow begin with a high Caw, and then followed a series of soft, almost musical, notes, though without tune or finish, but this is the exception. But what, in his courting days, a Crow lacks in song, he makes up by wonderful feats of flight. For his size, the Crow is always a graceful bird on the wing. When he flaps slowly up against the wind, there is nothing laboured in his motions, but in the spring, in company with a desired mate, his swift dives into the air, wheels to right and left, circlings often finished by a series of somersaults across the sky, are really marvellous.
“Now the pair of Crows that we will call Jack and Jill, to save time, leave the cedar woods and begin hunting for a nesting-site. At first they looked through the hickory woods for an old Hawk’s nest for a foundation upon which to build, but this year there were two Red-tailed Hawks already in possession, and so they hurried away as quickly as possible, for Hawks do not like Crows, and tell them so very plainly.
“Next day they spied the great white pine back of Farmer Boardman’s barn. They liked the looks of the tree, for it had a bunch of closely knit branches near the top, and the neighbourhood in all respects promised good feeding, but before they had carried more than a few coarse sticks and put them in place, the farmer’s man saw them, and not only fired his gun at them to drive them away, but climbed the tree and threw the sticks away in order to be sure that they should not rest there.
“What did Jack and Jill do next? They came flying over here. The place was attractive, and it was easy to slip from the pine woods to the hickories, then across to the orchard, and up to the spruce trees outside the window here. Goldilocks was too ill to come up into the playroom then, and so the windows on this side of the attic were shut.
“The nest-building began in earnest, both birds working at it. First, a foundation of stout sticks, some of them being half-dead twigs from these same spruces; then, old weed stalks and vine tendrils, mixed with corn husks, until a heap was collected that would fill a half-bushel basket.
“This was the outside of the house; the nursery itself was hollowed in the centre of the moss and was about a foot across and quite deep. This hollow was well lined and soft; it had in it moss, soft grasses, and some horsehair. In due time the nest was finished and held six very handsome eggs, dull green with purplish brown markings, two being more thickly spattered with them than the other four. At this time I began to take an interest in the household affairs of Jack and Jill Crow.”
“How could you?—can you climb trees?” asked Eliza Clausen, evidently much surprised.
“No, I couldn’t climb as far as this Crow’s nest, Eliza, though I could have once,” laughed Gray Lady. “Stand up on that seat by the corner window and look straight down into the spruce with a crooked top and tell me what you see.”
Eliza jumped up on the seat, and, after gazing a minute, cried, “Why, it’s a big ’normous nest, and I can see every stick as plain as print.”
“Take this opera-glass, hold it to your eyes and move the screw to and fro until everything is very clear, and then tell me what you see,” said Gray Lady.
It took Eliza some time to manage the glass, but when she at last succeeded she cried, “Oh, I can see the moss and the grass and the hair; it comes as near as if I could touch it.” And one after another the children learned to adjust the focus and look, and it was the first, but not the last, time that glasses would open a new world to them.
“It was a little less than three weeks that the birds sat upon the eggs, sharing the work between them, before the little birds were hatched. Such ugly, queer little things as they were, both blind and featherless. In three weeks more they were well grown and able to fly, but their tails were still shorter than their parents’, and they were inclined to return to the nest on the slightest alarm.
“About this time Jacob Hughes told me that either Crows or Hawks were taking little chickens early every morning, for they could not get them during the daytime without being seen.
“I looked at the runs for the little chicks and saw that they stood in the open, not close to woods where Crows and Hawks could spy them out and sneak up or dash down according to their habits.
“I well knew the bad name that Crows and Hawks have among poultry-raisers, so Jacob roofed the chicken-runs with wire, for, even if he had seen Crows there, I would not allow shooting on the place during the nesting season.
“Still the chickens disappeared, and for several nights Jacob sat up and watched, and what do you suppose—cats and weasels were the guilty ones, not the Hawks and Crows!
“But late in May the Crows prepared to raise their second brood, mending their old nest, and Jacob said, ‘Something is robbing the nests in the orchard; I think surely it is the Crows and Jays, for when they come around all the song-birds chase them and say right out as plain as possible, “They’re thieves—they’re thieves!” ’ So I watched from behind the blinds yonder, and in every spot where I could see into the tree-tops and be unobserved—and then I knew it was true that the Crows and Jays were detestable cannibals.
“One single morning I saw the Crow take three robin’s eggs and bring a tiny little robin squab to his mate on the nest, and one day, as a Crow flew high over my head, I thought I saw something strange in its beak, and clapped my hands sharply, when—what do you think? A poor little half-dead Wood Thrush, big enough to have its eyes open and some feathers, dropped almost on my upturned face, and thus the Crow was caught in the very act of killing. So, then, I said to myself, we can put tar on the seed-corn and protect our young chickens with wire, but we cannot make up for the death of young nestlings and the loss of eggs. I will not have the Crows shot, because they do good in the far meadows and hayfields, but the lonely woods, where few small birds nest, is the place for them. I shall see that they never again build in my garden orchard or woods, and if every one will do this, the danger to song-birds will be less, and in the winter, when they come about, there are no nestlings to be eaten.
“It was not long after that, owing to the evidence of my own eyes, I was obliged to say the same thing to the Blue Jay.
“The Wise Men say that, take it all in all, the Crow should have a chance, and that part of his faults come from our own shiftlessness. This is true, but if he feeds upon song-birds the Crow must go.
The Blue Jay
“That the Blue Jay is a handsome fellow goes without saying, as well as that he has plenty of assurance and is somewhat of a bully. We may imagine that he knows that his uniform of blue, gray, and white, with black bands and markings, is very becoming, and if any one of you should tell me that he had seen a Jay admiring his reflection in a pond or little pool, I should be ready to believe him. Certain it is that not one of our birds, not even the glowing Scarlet Tanager, presents a more neat and military appearance.
BLUE JAY
Order—Passeres Family—Corvidæ
Genus—Cyanocitta Species—Cristata
“The only awkward thing about the Blue Jay is his flight. Although alert and agile in slipping through the trees, when he takes to wing his progress seems laboured, as if either his body was too heavy for his wings, or that the wings were stiff.
“Like the Crow, his cousin, this Jay belongs to all north-eastern America, making its home from Florida to Newfoundland, and, like the Crow, we have some members of its family with us in New England all the winter, when it is certainly a pleasure to see them flying through the bare trees or gathering food on the pure white snow.
“The Jay does not annoy the farmer by pulling corn, nor trouble the chicken yard; for eight or nine months he earns an honest living, largely of vegetable food and harmful insects, snails, tree frogs, mice, small fish, and lizards, but in the breeding season, alas! he is a nest robber, and here in my own garden and orchard I have seen him this summer dodging and trying to avoid the angry birds that were pursuing him.
“Twice I heard nestling Robins twittering as they do when their parents come with food, but, like the wolf disguised as Red Riding-Hood’s Grandmother, it was a Jay who came to the nest and seized a squab, as my eyes saw and the cries of the parent birds told.
“Then I said to Jacob, ‘We will not let the Jays build in Birdland; they must be outcasts and go out and live in the far-away woods with the Crows, where there are few small birds.’
“How can we keep them out, you ask? It does take a little time and patience, to be sure, but if we watch when they begin to build and take away the sticks, you may be very sure that they will take the hint and go elsewhere, for they are quick-witted birds. So, perhaps, in time they would learn, at least in some regions, to inhabit places where mice and other harmful rodents and bugs are more plentiful than song-birds.
“Then in the winter we of the Kind Hearts’ Club can make up for this seeming unkindness, and pay them for the real good they do by feeding them through the hungry time, when nuts, berries, and even frozen apples are not to be found.”
“What is a Blue Jay’s nest like? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one,” asked Tommy Todd.
“It is not very easy to find, for they usually build rather high up, in a place where the limb is crotched and has many small branches. The nest itself is well made of fibres and roots, and is usually quite cleverly hidden, and the eggs are dull green, very thickly spotted.
“Aside from the Jay’s unaccountable cannibal habit of egg and squab hunting, he has many good qualities, both as a parent and a friend to those of his own kind, and though his call is harsh, and, like the creaking of the Grackles, a reminder of coming frosts and bare trees, in spring he has some pretty melodious notes and another call totally different from the harsh jay, jay. This cry is like the resonant striking of two bits of metal, a clink without exactly the ring that a bell has,—yet I call it the ‘bell note,’ though perhaps the double sound produced by hammer and anvil is a better comparison.
“In the fall, however, the Jay’s voice is certainly harsh, and not only lacks anything like musical quality, but is so harsh that when there are many about the noise is really annoying. The poet Lathrop describes the change so well that I will read it to you.