IN THE MIDDLE COUNTRY.
For all the woods are shrill with stress of song,
Where soft wings flutter down to new-built nests,
And turbulent sweet sounds are heard day long,
As of innumerable marriage feasts.
Charles Lotin Hildreth.
VIII.
AT FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.
Four o'clock in the morning is the magical hour of the day. I do not offer this sentiment as original, nor have I the slightest hope of converting any one to my opinion; I merely state the fact.
For years I had known it perfectly well; and fortified by my knowledge, and bristling with good resolutions, I went out every June determined to rise at that unnatural hour. Nothing is easier than to get up at four o'clock—the night before; but when morning comes, the point of view is changed, and all the arguments that arise in the mind are on the other side; sleep is the one thing desirable. The case appeared hopeless. Appeals from Philip drunk (with sleep) to Philip sober did not seem to avail; for whatever the latter decreed, the former would surely disobey.
But last June I found my spur; last summer I learned to get up with eagerness, and stay up with delight. This was effected by means of an alarm, set by the evening's wakefulness, that had no mercy on the morning's sleepiness. The secret is—a present interest. What may be going on somewhere out of sight and hearing in the world is a matter of perfect indifference; what is heard and seen at the moment is an argument that no one can resist.
I got my hint by the accident of some shelled corn being left on the ground before my window, and so attracting a four o'clock party, consisting of blackbirds, blue jays, and doves. I noticed the corn, but did not think of the pleasure it would give me, until the next morning, when I was awakened about four o'clock by loud and excited talk in blackbird tones, and hurried to the window, to find that I had half the birds of the neighborhood before me.
Most in number, and most noisy, were the common blackbirds, who just at that time were feeding their young in a grove of evergreens back of the house, where they had set up their nurseries in a crowd, as is their custom. It is impossible to take this bird seriously, he is so irresistibly ludicrous. His manners always suggest to me the peculiar drollery of the negro; one of the old-fashioned sort, as we read of him, and I promised myself some amusement from the study of him at short range; I was not disappointed.
My greeting as I took my seat at the open window, unfortunately without blinds to screen me, was most comical. A big pompous fellow turned his wicked-looking white eye upon me, drew himself into a queer humped-up position, with all his feathers on end, and apparently by a strong effort squeezed out a husky and squeaky, yet loud cry of two notes, which sounded exactly like "Squee-gee!"
I was so astounded that I laughed in his face; at which he repeated it with added emphasis, then turned his back on me, as unworthy of notice away up in my window, and gave his undivided attention to a specially large grain of corn which had been unearthed by a meek-looking neighbor, and appropriated by him, in the most lordly manner. His bearing at the moment was superb and stately in a degree of which only a bird who walks is capable; one cannot be dignified who is obliged to hop.
I thought his greeting was a personal one to show contempt—which it did emphatically—to the human race in general, and to me in particular, but I found later that it was the ordinary blackbird way of being offensive; it was equivalent to "Get out!" or "Shut up!" or some other of the curt and rude expressions in use by bigger folk than blackbirds.
If a bird alighted too near one of these arrogant fellows on the ground, he was met with the same expletive, and if he was about the same size he "talked back." The number and variety of utterances at their command was astonishing; I was always being surprised with a new one. Now a blackbird would fly across the lawn, making a noise exactly like a boy's tin trumpet, and repeating it as long as he was within hearing, regarding it, seemingly, as an exceptionally great feat. Again one would seize a kernel of corn, burst out with a convulsive cry, as if he were choking to death, and fly off with his prize, in imminent danger of his life, as I could not but feel.
The second morning a youngster came with his papa to the feast, and he was droller, if possible, than his elders. He followed his parent around, with head lowered and mouth wide open, fairly bawling in a loud yet husky tone.
The young blackbird does not appear in the glossy suit of his parents. His coat is rusty in hue, and his eye is dark, as is proper in youth. He is not at all backward in speaking his mind, and his sole desire at this period of his life being food, he demands it with an energy and persistence that usually insures success.
In making close acquaintance with them, one cannot help longing to prescribe to the whole blackbird family something to clear their bronchial tubes; every tone is husky, and the student involuntarily clears his own throat as he listens.
I was surprised to find the blackbirds so beautiful. When the sun was near setting, and struck across the grass its level rays, they were really exquisite; their heads a brilliant metallic blue, and all back of that rich bronze or purple, all over as glossy as satin. The little dames are somewhat smaller, and a shade less finely dressed than their bumptious mates; but that does not make them meek—far from it! and they are not behind their partners in eccentric freaks. Sometimes one would apparently attempt a joke by starting to fly, and passing so near the head of one of the dignitaries on the ground that he would involuntarily start and "duck" ingloriously. On one occasion a pair were working peaceably together at the corn, when she flirted a bit of dirt so that it flew toward him. He dashed furiously at her. She gave one hop which took her about a foot away, and then it appeared that she coveted a kernel of corn that was near him when the offense was given, for she instantly jumped back and pounced upon it as if she expected to be annihilated. He ran after her and drove her off, but she kept her prize.
Eating one of those hard grains was no joke to anybody without teeth, and it was a serious affair to one of the blackbirds. He took it into his beak, dropped both head and tail, and gave his mind to the cracking of the sweet morsel. At this time he particularly disliked to be disturbed, and the only time I saw one rude to a youngster was when struggling with this difficulty. While feeding the nestlings, they broke the kernels into bits, picked up all the pieces, filling the beak the whole length, and then flew off with them.
But they were not always allowed to keep the whole kernel. They were generally attended while on the ground by a little party of thieves, ready and waiting to snatch any morsel that was dropped. These were, of course, the English sparrows. They could not break corn, but they liked it for all that, so they used their wits to secure it, and of sharpness these street birds have no lack. The moment a blackbird alighted on the grass, a sparrow or two came down beside him, and lingered around, watching eagerly. Whenever a crumb dropped, one rushed in and snatched it, and instantly flew from the wrath to come.
The sparrows had not been at this long before some of the wise blackbirds saw through it, and resented it with proper spirit. One of them would turn savagely after the sparrow who followed him, and the knowing rascal always took his departure. It was amusing to see a blackbird working seriously on a grain, all his faculties absorbed in the solemn question whether he should succeed in cracking his nut, while two or three feathered pilferers stood as near as they dared, anxiously waiting till the great work should be accomplished, the hard shell should yield, and some bits should fall.
About five days after the feast was spread, the young came out in force, often two of them following one adult about on the grass, running after him so closely that he could hardly get a chance to break up the kernel; indeed, he often had to fly to a tree to prepare the mouthfuls for them. The young blackbird has not the slightest repose of manner; nor, for that matter, has the old one either. The grown-ups treated the young well, almost always; they never "squee-gee'd" at them, never touched them in any way, notwithstanding they were so insistent in begging that they would chase an adult bird across the grass, calling madly all the time, and fairly force him to fly away to get rid of them.
Once two young ones got possession of the only spot where corn was left, and so tormented their elders who came that they had to dash in and snatch a kernel when they wanted one. One of the old ones danced around these two babies in a little circle a foot in diameter, the infants turning as he moved, and ever presenting open beaks to him. It was one of the funniest exhibitions I ever saw. After going around half a dozen times, the baffled blackbird flew away without a taste.
When the two had driven every one else off the ground by their importunities, one of them plucked up spirit to try managing the corn for himself. Like a little man he stopped bawling, and began exercising his strength on the sweet grain. Upon this his neighbor, instead of following his example, began to beg of him! fluttering his wings, putting up his beak, and almost pulling the corn out of the mouth of the poor little fellow struggling with his first kernel!
Sometimes a young one drove his parent all over a tree with his supplications. Higher and higher would go the persecuted, with his tormentor scrambling, and half flying after, till the elder absolutely flew away, much put out.
Long before this time the corn had been used up. But I could not bear to lose my morning entertainment, for all these things took place between four and six A. M.—so I made a trip to the village, and bought a bag of the much desired dainty, some handfuls of which I scattered every night after birds were abed, ready for the sunrise show. Blackbirds were not the only guests at the feast; there were the doves,—mourning, or wood-doves,—who dropped to the grass, serene as a summer morning, walking around in their small red boots, with mincing steps and fussy little bows. Blue jays, too, came in plenty, selected each his grain and flew away with it. Robins, seeing all the excitement, came over from their regular hunting-ground, but never finding anything so attractive as worms, they soon left.
The corn feast wound up with a droll excitement. One day a child from the house took her doll out in the grass to play, set it up against a tree trunk, and left it there. It had long light hair which stood out around the head, and it did look rather uncanny, but it was amusing to see the consternation it caused. Blue jays came to trees near by, and talked in low tones to each other; then one after another swooped down toward it; then they all squawked at it, and finding this of no avail, they left in a body.
The robins approached cautiously, two of them, calling constantly, "he! he! he!" One was determined not to be afraid, and came nearer and nearer, till within about a foot of the strange object and behind it, when suddenly he started as though shot, jumped back, and both flew in a panic.
Soon after this a red-headed woodpecker alighted on the trunk of the elm, preparatory to helping himself to a grain of corn. The moment his eyes fell upon madam of the fluffy hair, he burst out with a loud, rapid woodpecker "chitter," gradually growing higher in key and louder in tone. The blue jay flew down from the nest across the yard, and another came from behind the house; both perched near and stared at him, and then began to talk in low tones. A robin came hastily over and gazed at the usually silent red-head, and apparently it was to all as strange a performance as it was to me, or possibly they recognized that it was a cry of warning against danger.
After he had us all aroused, the bird suddenly fell to silence, and resumed his ordinary manner, but he did not go after corn. I suppose the harangue was addressed to the doll.
That was the last scene in the first act of the corn feast, for the blackbirds had become so numerous and so noisy that they made morning hideous to the whole household, and I stopped the supplies for several days, till these birds ceased to expect anything, and so came no more, and then I spread a fresh breakfast-table for more interesting guests, whose manners and customs I studied for weeks.
I was invariably startled wide awake on these mornings by a bird note, and sprang up, to see at one glance that
"Day had awakened all things that be,
The lark and the thrush, and the swallow free,"
and that my party was already assembled; one or two cardinals—or redbirds, as they are often called—on the grass, with the usual attendance of English sparrows, and the red-headed woodpecker in the elm, surveying the lawn, and considering which of the trespassers he should fall upon. It was the work of one minute to get into my wraps and seat myself, with opera glass, at the wide-open window.
My first discovery made, however, during the blackbird reign, was that four o'clock is the most lovely part of the day. All the dust of human affairs having settled during the hours of sleep, the air is fresh and sweet, as if just made; and generally, just before sunrise, the foliage is at perfect rest,—the repose of night still lingering, the world of nature as well as of men still sleeping.
The first thing one naturally looks for, as birds begin to waken, is a morning chorus of song. True bird-lovers, indeed, long for it with a longing that cannot be told. But alas, every year the chorus is withdrawing more and more to the woods, every year it is harder to find a place where English sparrows are not in possession; and it is one of the most grievous sins of that bird that he spoils the song, even when he does not succeed in driving out the singer. A running accompaniment of harsh and interminable squawks overpowers the music of meadow-lark and robin, and the glorious song of the thrush is fairly murdered by it. One could almost forgive the sparrow his other crimes, if he would only lie abed in the morning; if he would occasionally listen, and not forever break the peace of the opening day with his vulgar brawling. But the subject of English sparrows is maddening to a lover of native birds; let us not defile the magic hour by considering it.
The most obvious resident of the neighborhood, at four o'clock in the morning, was always the golden-winged woodpecker, or flicker. Though he scorned the breakfast I offered, having no vegetarian proclivities, he did not refuse me his presence. I found him a character, and an amusing study, and I never saw his tribe so numerous and so much at home.
Though largest in size of my four o'clock birds, and most fully represented (always excepting the English sparrows), the golden-wing was not in command. The autocrat of the hour, the reigning power, was quite a different personage, although belonging to the woodpecker family. It was a red-headed woodpecker who assumed to own the lawn and be master of the feast. This individual was marked by a defect in plumage, and had been a regular caller since the morning of my arrival. During the blackbird supremacy over the corn supply he had been hardly more than a spectator, coming to the trunk of the elm and surveying the assembly of blue jays, doves, blackbirds, and sparrows with interest, as one looks down upon a herd with whom he has nothing in common. But when those birds departed, and the visitors were of a different character, mostly cardinals, with an occasional blue jay, he at once took the place he felt belonged to him—that of dictator.
The Virginia cardinal, a genuine F. F. V., and a regular attendant at my corn breakfast, was a subject of special study with me; indeed, it was largely on his account that I had set up my tent in that part of the world. I had all my life known him as a tenant of cages, and it struck me at first as very odd to see him flying about freely, like other wild birds. No one, it seemed to me, ever looked so out of place as this fellow of elegant manners, aristocratic crest, and brilliant dress, hopping about on the ground with his exaggerated little hops, tail held stiffly up out of harm's way, and uttering sharp "tsips." One could not help the feeling that he was altogether too fine for this common work-a-day existence; that he was intended for show; and that a gilded cage was his proper abiding-place, with a retinue of human servants to minister to his comfort. Yet he was modest and unassuming, and appeared really to enjoy his life of hard work; varying his struggles with a kernel of hard corn on the ground, where his color shone out like a flower against the green, with a rest on a spruce-tree, where
"Like a living jewel he sits and sings;"
and when he had finished his frugal meal, departing, if nothing hurried him, with a graceful, loitering flight, in which each wing-beat seemed to carry him but a few inches forward, and leave his body poised, an infinitesimal second for another beat. With much noise of fluttering wings he would start for some point, but appear not to care much whether he got there. He was never in haste unless there was something to hurry him, in which he differed greatly from some of the fidgety, restless personages I have known among the feathered folk.
The woodpecker's way of making himself disagreeable to this distinguished guest, was to keep watch from his tree (an elm overlooking the supply of corn) till he came to eat, and then fly down, aiming for exactly the spot occupied by the bird on the ground. No one, however brave, could help "getting out from under," when he saw this tricolored whirlwind descending upon him. The cardinal always jumped aside, then drew himself up, crest erect, tail held at an angle of forty-five degrees, and faced the woodpecker, calm, but prepared to stand up for his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of his breakfast. Sometimes they had a little set-to, with beaks not more than three inches apart, the woodpecker making feints of rushing upon his vis-à-vis, and the cardinal jumping up ready to clinch, if a fight became necessary. It never went quite so far as that, though they glared at each other, and the cardinal uttered a little whispered "ha!" every time he sprang up.
The Virginian's deliberate manner of eating made peace important to him. He took a grain of hard corn in his mouth, lengthwise; then working his sharp-edged beak, he soon succeeded in cutting the shell of the kernel through its whole length. From this he went on turning it with his tongue, and still cutting with his beak, till the whole shell rolled out of the side of his mouth in one long piece, completely cleared from its savory contents.
The red-head, on the contrary, took his grain of corn to a branch, or sometimes to the trunk of a tree, where he sought a suitable crevice in the bark or in a crotch, placed his kernel, hammered it well in till firm and safe, and then proceeded to pick off pieces and eat them daintily, one by one. Sometimes he left a kernel there, and I saw how firmly it was wedged in, when the English sparrow discovered his store, fell upon it, and dug it out. It was a good deal of work for a strong-billed, persistent sparrow to dislodge a grain thus placed. But of course he never gave up till he could carry it off, probably because he saw that some one valued it; for since he was unable to crack a grain that was whole, it must have been useless to him. Sometimes the woodpecker wedged the kernel into a crevice in the bark of the trunk, then broke it up, and packed the pieces away in other niches; and I have seen an English sparrow go carefully over the trunk, picking out and eating these tidbits. That, or something else, has taught sparrows to climb tree trunks, which they do, in the neighborhood I speak of, with as much ease as a woodpecker. I have repeatedly seen them go the whole length of a tall elm trunk; proceeding by little hops, aided by the wings, and using the tail for support almost as handily as a woodpecker himself.
The red-head's assumption of being monarch of all he surveyed did not end with the breakfast-table; he seemed to consider himself guardian and protector of the whole place. One evening I was drawn far down on the lawn by a peculiar cry of his. It began with a singular performance which I have already described, a loud, rapid "chit-it-it-it-it," increasing in volume and rising in pitch, as though he were working himself up to some deed of desperation. In a few minutes, however, he appeared to get his feelings under control, and dropped to a single-note cry, often repeated. It differed widely from his loud call, "wok! wok! wok!" still more from the husky tones of his conversation with others of his kind; neither was it like the war-cries with which he intimated to another bird that he was not invited to breakfast. I thought there must be trouble brewing, especially as mingled with it was an occasional excited "pe-auk!" of a flicker. When I reached the spot, I found a curious party, consisting of two doves and three flickers, assembled on one small tree, with the woodpecker on an upper branch, as though addressing his remarks to them.
As I drew near the scene of the excitement, the doves flew, and then the golden-wings; but the red-head held his ground, though he stopped his cries when he saw help coming. In vain I looked about for the cause of the row; everything was serene. It was a beautiful quiet evening, and not a child, nor a dog, nor anything in sight to make trouble. The tree stood quite by itself, in the midst of grass that knew not the clatter of the lawn-mower.
I stood still and waited; and I had my reward, for after a few minutes' silence I saw a pair of ears, and then a head, cautiously lifted above the grass, about fifteen feet from the tree. The mystery was solved; it was a cat, whom all birds know as a creature who will bear watching when prowling around the haunts of bird families. I am fond of pussy, but I deprecate her taste for game, as I do that of some other hunters, wiser if not better than she. I invited her to leave this place, where she plainly was unwelcome, by an emphatic "scat!" and a stick tossed her way. She instantly dropped into the grass and was lost to view; and as the woodpecker, whose eyes were sharper and his position better than mine, said no more, I concluded she had taken the hint and departed.
IX.
THE LITTLE REDBIRDS.
When the little redbirds began to visit the lawn there were exciting times. At first they ventured only to the trees overlooking it; and the gayly dressed father who had them in charge reminded me of nothing so much as a fussy young mother. He was alert to the tips of his toes, and excited, as if the whole world was thirsting for the life of those frowzy-headed youngsters in the maple. His manner intimated that nobody ever had birdlings before; indeed, that there never had been, or could be, just such a production as that young family behind the leaves. While they were there, he flirted his tail, jerked himself around, crest standing sharply up, and in every way showed his sense of importance and responsibility.
As for the young ones, after they had been hopping about the branches a week or so, and papa had grown less madly anxious if one looked at them, they appeared bright and spirited, dressed in the subdued and tasteful hues of their mother, with pert little crests and dark beaks. They were not allowed on the grass, and they waited patiently on the tree while their provider shelled a kernel and took it up to them. The cardinal baby I found to be a self-respecting individual, who generally waits in patience his parents' pleasure, though he is not too often fed. He is not bumptious nor self-assertive, like many others; he rarely teases, and is altogether a well-mannered and proper young person. After a while, as the youngsters learned strength and speed on the wing, they came to the table with the grown-ups, and then I saw there were three spruce young redbirds, all under the care of their gorgeous papa.
No sooner did they appear on the ground than trouble began with the English-sparrow tribe. The grievance of these birds was that they could not manage the tough kernels. They were just as hungry as anybody, and just as well-disposed toward corn, but they had not sufficient strength of beak to break it. They did not, however, go without corn, for all that. Their game was the not uncommon one of availing themselves of the labor of others; they invited themselves to everybody's breakfast-table, though, to be sure, they had to watch their chances in order to secure a morsel, and escape the wrath of the owner thereof.
The cardinal was at first a specially easy victim to this plot. He took the whole matter most solemnly, and was so absorbed in the work, that if a bit dropped, in the process of separating it from the shell, as often happened, he did not concern himself about it till he had finished what he had in his mouth, and then he turned one great eye on the ground, for the fragments which had long before been snatched by sparrows and gone down sparrow throats. The surprise and the solemn stare with which he "could hardly believe his eyes" were exceedingly droll. After a while he saw through their little game, and took to watching, and when a sparrow appeared too much interested in his operations, he made a feint of going for him, which warned the gamin that he would better look out for himself.
It did not take these sharp fellows long to discover that the young redbird was the easier prey, and soon every youngster on the ground was attended by a sparrow or two, ready to seize upon any fragment that fell. The parent's way of feeding was to shell a kernel and then give it to one of the little ones, who broke it up and ate it. From waiting for fallen bits, the sparrows, never being repulsed, grew bolder, and finally went so far as actually to snatch the corn out of the young cardinals' beaks. Again and again did I see this performance: a sparrow grab and run (or fly), leaving the baby astonished and dazed, looking as if he did not know exactly what had happened, but sure he was in some way bereaved.
One day, while the cardinal family were eating on the grass, the mother of the brood came to a tree near by. At once her gallant spouse flew up there and offered her the mouthful he had just prepared, then returned to his duties. She was rarely seen on the lawn, and I judged that she was sitting again.
Sometimes, when the youngsters were alone on the ground, I heard a little snatch of song, two or three notes, a musical word or two of very sweet quality. The woodpecker, autocrat though he assumed to be, did not at first interfere with the young birds; but as they became more and more independent and grown up, he began to consider them fair game, and to come down on them with a rush that scattered them; not far, however; they were brave little fellows.
At last, after four weeks of close attention, the cardinal made up his mind that his young folk were babies no longer, and that they were able to feed themselves. I was interested to see his manner of intimating to his young hopefuls that they had reached their majority. When one begged of him, in his gentle way, the parent turned suddenly and gave him a slight push. The urchin understood, and moved a little farther off; but perhaps the next time he asked he would be fed. They learned the lesson, however, and in less than two days from the first hint they became almost entirely independent.
One morning the whole family happened to meet at table. The mother came first, and then the three young ones, all of whom were trying their best to feed themselves. At last came their "natural provider;" and one of the juveniles, who found the grains almost unmanageable, could not help begging of him. He gently but firmly drove the pleader away, as if he said, "My son, you are big enough to feed yourself." The little one turned, but did not go; he stood with his back toward his parent, and wings still fluttering. Then papa flew to a low branch of the spruce-tree, and instantly the infant followed him, still begging with quivering wings. Suddenly the elder turned, and I expected to see him annihilate that beggar, but, to my surprise, he fed him! He could not hold out against him! He had been playing the stern parent, but could not keep it up. It was a very pretty and very human-looking performance.
A day or two after the family had learned to take care of themselves, the original pair, the parents of the pretty brood, came and went together to the field, while the younglings appeared sometimes in a little flock, and sometimes one alone; and from that time they were to be rated as grown-up and educated cardinals. A brighter or prettier trio I have not seen. I am almost positive there was but one family of cardinals on the place; and if I am right, those youngsters had been four weeks out of the nest before they took charge of their own food supply. From what I have seen in the case of other young birds, I have no doubt that is the fact.
X.
THE CARDINAL'S NEST.
While I had been studying four o'clock manners, grave and gay, other things had happened. Most delightful, perhaps, was my acquaintance with a cardinal family at home. From the first I had looked for a nest, and had suffered two or three disappointments. One pair flaunted their intentions by appearing on a tree before my window, "tsipping" with all their might; she with her beak full of hay from the lawn below; he, eager and devoted, assisting by his presence. The important and consequential manner of a bird with building material in mouth is amusing. She has no doubt that what she is about to do is the very most momentous fact in the "Sublime Now" (as some college youth has it). Of course I dropped everything and tried to follow the pair, at a distance great enough not to disturb them, yet to keep in sight at least the direction they took, for they are shy birds, and do not like to be spied upon. But I could not have gauged my distance properly; for, though I thought I knew the exact cedar-tree she had chosen, I found, to my dismay and regret afterward, that no sign of a nest was there, or thereabout.
Another pair went farther, and held out even more delusive hopes; they actually built a nest in a neighbor's yard, the family in the house maintaining an appearance of the utmost indifference, so as not to alarm the birds till they were committed to that nest. For so little does madam regard the labor of building, and so fickle is she in her fancies, that she thinks nothing of preparing at least two nests before she settles on one. The nest was made on a big branch of cedar, perhaps seven feet from the ground,—a rough affair, as this bird always makes. In it she even placed an egg, and then, for some undiscovered reason, it was abandoned, and they took their domestic joys and sorrows elsewhere.
But now, at last, word came to me of an occupied nest to be seen at a certain house, and I started at once for it. It was up a shady country lane, with a meadow-lark field on one side, and a bobolink meadow on the other. The lark mounted the fence, and delivered his strange sputtering cry,—the first I had ever heard from him (or her, for I believe this is the female's utterance). But the dear little bobolink soared around my head, and let fall his happy trills; then suddenly, as Lowell delightfully pictures him,—
"Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops,
Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink,
And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops,
A decorous bird of business, who provides
For his brown mate and fledglings six besides,
And looks from right to left, a farmer mid his crops."
Nothing less attractive than a cardinal family could draw me away from these rival allurements, but I went on.
The cardinal's bower was the prettiest of the summer, built in a climbing rose which ran riot over a trellis beside a kitchen door. The vine was loaded with buds just beginning to unfold their green wraps to flood the place with beauty and fragrance, and the nest was so carefully tucked away behind the leaves that it could not be seen from the front. Whether from confidence in the two or three residents of the cottage, or because the house was alone so many hours of the day,—the occupants being students, and absent most of the time,—the birds had taken no account of a window which opened almost behind them. From that window one could look into, and touch, if he desired, the little family. But no one who lived there did desire (though I wish to record that one was a boy of twelve or fourteen, who had been taught respect for the lives even of birds), and these birds became so accustomed to their human observers that they paid no attention to them.
The female cardinal is so dainty in looks and manner, so delicate in all her ways, that one naturally expects her to build at least a neat and comely nest, and I was surprised to see a rough-looking affair, similar to the one already mentioned. This might be, in her case, because it was the third nest she had built that summer. One had been used for the first brood. The second had been seized and appropriated to their own use by another pair of birds. (As this was told me, and I cannot vouch for it, I shall not name the alleged thief.) This, the third, was made of twigs and fibres of bark,—or what looked like that,—and was strongly stayed to the rose stems, the largest of which was not bigger than my little finger, and most of them much smaller.
On my second visit I was invited into the kitchen to see the family in the rosebush. It appeared that this was "coming-off" day, and one little cardinal had already taken his fate in his hands when I arrived, soon after breakfast. He had progressed on the journey of life about one foot; and a mere dot of a fellow he looked beside his parents, with a downy fuzz on his head, which surrounded it like a halo, and no sign of a crest. The three nestlings still at home were very restless, crowding, and almost pushing each other out. They could well spare their elder brother, for before he left he had walked all over them at his pleasure; and how he could help it in those close quarters I do not see.
While I looked on, papa came with provisions. At one time the food consisted of green worms about twice as large as a common knitting needle. Three or four of them he held crosswise of his beak, and gave one to each nestling. The next course was a big white grub, which he did not divide, but gave to one, who had considerable difficulty in swallowing it.
I said the birds did not notice the family, but they very quickly recognized me as a stranger. They stood and glared at me in the cardinal way, and uttered some sharp remonstrance; but business was pressing, and I was unobtrusive, so they concluded to ignore me.
The advent of the first redbird baby seemed to give much pleasure, for the head of the family sang a good deal in the intervals of feeding; and both of the pair appeared very happy over it, often alighting beside the wanderer, evidently to encourage him, for they did not always feed. The youngster, after an hour, perhaps, flew about ten feet to a peach-tree, where he struggled violently, and nearly fell before he secured a hold on a twig. Both parents flew to his assistance, but he did not fall, and soon after he flew to a grape trellis, and, with a little clambering, to a stem of the vine, where he seemed pleased to stay,—perhaps because this overlooked the garden whence came all his food.
I stayed two or three hours with the little family, and then left them; and when I appeared the next morning all were gone from the nest. I heard the gentle cries of young redbirds all around, but did not try to look them up, both because I did not want to worry the parents, and because I had already made acquaintance with young cardinals in my four o'clock studies.
The place this discerning pair of birds had selected in which to establish themselves was one of the most charming nooks in the vicinity. Kept free from English sparrows (by persistently destroying their nests), and having but a small and quiet family, it was the delight of cardinals and catbirds. Without taking pains to look for them, one might see the nests of two catbirds, two wood doves, a robin or two, and others; and there were beside, thickets, the delight of many birds, and a row of spruces so close that a whole flock might have nested there in security. In that spot "the quaintly discontinuous lays" of the catbird were in perfection; one song especially was the best I ever heard, being louder and more clear than catbirds usually sing.
As I turned to leave the grounds, the relieved parent, who had not relished my interest in his little folk, mounted a branch, and,
"Like a pomegranate flower
In the dark foliage of the cedar-tree,
Shone out and sang for me."
And thus I left him.
XI.
LITTLE BOY BLUE.
"The crested blue jay flitting swift."
To know the little boy blue in his domestic life had been my desire for years. In vain did I search far and wide for a nest, till it began to look almost as if the bird intentionally avoided me. I went to New England, and blue jays disappeared as if by magic; I turned my steps to the Rocky Mountains, and the whole tribe betook itself to the inaccessible hills. In despair I abandoned the search, and set up my tent in the middle country, without a thought of the bonny blue bird. One June morning I seated myself by my window, which looked out upon a goodly stretch of lawn dotted with trees of many kinds, and behold the long-desired object right before my eyes!
The blue jay himself pointed it out to me; unconsciously, however, for he did not notice me in my distant window. From the ground, where I was looking at him, he flew directly to a pine-tree about thirty feet high, and there, near the top, sat his mate on her nest. He leaned over her tenderly; she fluttered her wings and opened her mouth, and he dropped into it the tidbit he had brought. Then she stepped to a branch on one side, and he proceeded to attend to the wants of the young family, too small as yet to appear above the edge.
The pine-tree, which from this moment became of absorbing interest, was so far from my window that the birds never thought of me as an observer, and yet so near that with my glass I could see them perfectly. It was also exactly before a thick-foliaged maple, that formed a background against which I could watch the life of the nest, wherever the sunlight fell, and whatever the condition of the sky; so happily was placed my blue jay household.
I observed at once that the jay was very gallant and attentive to his spouse. The first mouthful was for her, even when babies grew clamorous, and she took her share of the work of feeding. Nor did he omit this little politeness when they went to the nest together, both presumably with food for the nestlings. She was a devoted mother, brooding her bantlings for hours every day, till they were so big that it was hard to crowd them back into the cradle; and he was an equally faithful father, working from four o'clock in the morning till after dusk, a good deal of the time feeding the whole family. I acquired a new respect for Cyanocitta cristata.
I had not watched the blue jays long before I was struck with the peculiar character of the feathered world about me, the strange absence of small birds. The neighbors were blackbirds (purple grackles), Carolina doves, golden-winged and red-headed woodpeckers, robins and cardinal grosbeaks, and of course English sparrows,—all large birds, able to hold their own by force of arms, as it were, except the foreigner, who maintained his position by impudence and union, a mob being his weapon of offense and defense. Beside him no small bird lived in the vicinity. No vireo hung there her dainty cup, while her mate preached his interminable sermons from the trees about; no phœbe shouted his woes to an unsympathizing world; no sweet-voiced goldfinch poured out his joyous soul; not a song-sparrow tuned his little lay within our borders. Unseen of men, but no doubt sharply defined to clearer senses than ours, was a line barring them out.
Who was responsible for this state of things? Could it be the one pair of jays in the pine, or the colony of blackbirds the other side of the house? Should we characterize it as a blue jay neighborhood or a blackbird neighborhood? The place was well policed, certainly; robins and blue jays united in that work, though their relations with each other bore the character of an armed neutrality, always ready for a few hot words and a little bluster, but never really coming to blows. We never had the pleasure of seeing a stranger among us. We might hear him approaching, nearer and nearer, till, just as the eager listener fancied he might alight in sight, there would burst upon the air the screech of a jay or the war-cry of a robin, accompanied by the precipitate flight of the whole clan, and away would go the stranger in a most sensational manner, followed by outcries and clamor enough to drive off an army of feathered brigands. This neighborhood, if the accounts of his character are to be credited, should be the congenial home of the kingbird,—tyrant flycatcher he is named; but as a matter of fact, not only were the smaller flycatchers conspicuous by their absence, but the king himself was never seen, and the flying tribes of the insect world, so far as dull-eyed mortals could see, grew and flourished.
Close scrutiny of every movement of wings, however, revealed one thing, namely, that any small bird who appeared within our precincts was instantly, without hesitation, and equally without unusual noise or special publicity, driven out by the English sparrow; and I became convinced that he, and he alone, was responsible for the presence of none but large birds, who could defy him.
One of the prettiest sights about the pine-tree homestead was the way the jay went up to it. He never imitated the easy style of his mate, who simply flew to a branch below the three that held her treasure, and hopped up the last step. Not he; not so would his knightly soul mount to the castle of his sweetheart and his babies. He alighted much lower, often at the foot of the tree, and passed jauntily up the winding way that led to them, hopping from branch to branch, pausing on each, and circling the trunk as he went; now showing his trim violet-blue coat, now his demure Quaker-drab vest and black necklace; and so he ascended his spiral stair.
There is nothing demure about the blue jay, let me hasten to say, except his vest; there is no pretension about him. He does not go around with the meek manners of the dove, and then let his angry passions rise, in spite of his reputation, as does that "meek and gentle" fellow-creature on occasion. The blue jay takes his life with the utmost seriousness, however it may strike a looker-on. While his helpmeet is on the nest, it is, according to the blue jay code, his duty, as well as it is plainly his pleasure, to provide her with food, which consequently he does; later, it is his province not only to feed, but to protect the family, which also he accomplishes with much noise and bluster. Before the young are out comes his hardest task, keeping the secret of the nest, which obliges him to control his naturally boisterous tendencies; but even in this he is successful, as I saw in the case of a bird whose mate was sitting in an apple-tree close beside a house. There, he was the soul of discretion, and so subdued in manner that one might be in the vicinity all day and never suspect the presence of either. All the comings and goings took place in silence, over the top of the tree, and I have watched the nest an hour at a time without being able to see a sign of its occupancy, except the one thing a sitting bird cannot hide, the tail. And, by the way, how providential—from the bird student's point of view—that birds have tails! They can, it is true, be narrowed to the width of one feather and laid against a convenient twig, but they cannot be wholly suppressed, nor drawn down out of sight into the nest with the rest of the body.
When the young blue jays begin to speak for themselves, and their vigilant protector feels that the precious secret can no longer be kept, then he arouses the neighborhood with the announcement that here is a nest he is bound to protect with his life; that he is engaged in performing his most solemn duty, and will not be disturbed. His air is that so familiar in bigger folk, of daring the whole world to "knock a chip off his shoulder," and he goes about with an appearance of important business on hand very droll to see.
The bearing of the mother of the pine-tree brood was somewhat different from that of her mate, and by their manners only could the pair be distinguished. Whatever may be Nature's reason for dressing the sexes unlike each other in the feathered world,—which I will leave for the wise heads to settle,—it is certainly an immense advantage to the looker-on in birddom. When a pair are facsimiles of each other, as are the jays, it requires the closest observation to tell them apart; indeed, unless there is some defect in plumage, which is not uncommon, it is necessary to penetrate their personal characteristics, to become familiar with their idiosyncrasies of habit and manner. In the pine-tree family, the mother had neither the presence of mind nor the bluster of the partner of her joys. When I came too near the nest tree, she greeted me with a plaintive cry, a sort of "craw! craw!" at the same time "jouncing" herself violently, thus protesting against my intrusion; while he saluted me with squawks that made the welkin ring. Neither of them paid any attention to me, so long as I remained upon a stationary bench not far from their tree; they were used to seeing people in that place, and did not mind them. It was the unexpected that they resented. Having established our habits, birds in general insist that we shall govern ourselves by them, and not depart from our accustomed orbit.
On near acquaintance, I found the jay possessed of a vocabulary more copious than that of any other bird I know, though the flicker does not lack variety of expression. When some aspiring scientist is ready to study the language of birds, I advise him to experiment with the blue jay. He is exceedingly voluble, always ready to talk, and not in the least backward in exhibiting his accomplishments. The low-toned, plaintive sounding conversation of the jays with each other, not only beside the nest, but when flying together or apart, or in brief interviews in the lilac bush, pleased me especially, because it was exactly the same prattle that a pet blue jay was accustomed to address to me; and it confirmed what I had always believed from his manner, that it was his most loving and intimate expression, the tone in which he addresses his best beloved.
Beside the well-known squawk, which Thoreau aptly calls "the brazen trump of the impatient jay," the shouts and calls and war-cries of the bird can hardly be numbered, and I have no doubt each has its definite meaning. More rarely may be heard a clear and musical two-note cry, sounding like "ke-lo! ke-lo!" This seems to be something special in the jay language, for not only is it peculiar and quite unlike every other utterance, but I never saw the bird when he delivered it, and I was long in tracing it home to him. Aside from the cries of war and victory, jays have a great variety of notes of distress; they can put more anguish and despair into their tones than any other living creature of my acquaintance. Some, indeed, are so moving that the sympathetic hearer is sure that, at the very least, the mother's offspring are being murdered before her eyes; and on rushing out, prepared to risk his life in their defense, he finds, perhaps, that a child has strayed near the tree, or something equally dreadful has occurred. Jays have no idea of relative values; they could not make more ado over a heart-breaking calamity than they do over a slight annoyance. Some of their cries, notably that of the jay baby, sound like the wail of a human infant. As to one curious utterance in the jay répertoire, I could not quite make up my mind whether it was a real call to arms, or intended as a joke on the neighborhood. When a bird, without visible provocation, suddenly burst out with this loud two-note call, instantly every feathered individual was on the alert,—sprang to arms, as it were. Blue jays joined in, robins hurried to the tops of the tallest trees and added their excited notes, with jerking wings and tail, and at the second or third repetition the whole party precipitated itself as one bird—upon what? Nothing that I could discover.
XII.
STORY OF THE NESTLINGS.
While I was studying the manners and customs of the bird in blue, babies were growing up in the pine-tree nest. Five days after I began to observe, I saw little heads above the edge. On the sixth day they began, as mothers say, to "take notice," stirring about in a lively way, clambering up into sight, and fluttering their draperies over the edge. Now came busy and hungry times in the jay family; the mother added her forces, and both parents worked industriously from morning till night.
On the seventh day I was up early, as usual, and, also as usual, my first act was to admire the view from my window. I fancied it was the most beautiful in the early morning, when the sun, behind the rampart of locust and other trees, threw the yard into deep shade, painting a thousand shadow pictures on the grass; but at still noon, when every perfect tree stood on its own shadow, openings looked dark and mysterious, and a bird was lost in the depths, then I was sure it was never so lovely; again at night, when wrapped in darkness, and all silent except the subdued whisper of the pine, with its
"Sound of the Sea,
O mournful tree,
In thy boughs forever clinging,"
I knew it could not be surpassed. I was up early, as I said, when the dove was cooing to his mate in the distance, and before human noises had begun, and then I heard the baby cry from the pine-tree,—a whispered jay squawk, constantly repeated.
On this day the first nestling mounted the edge of his high nursery, and fluttered his wings when food approached. Every night after that it grew more and more difficult to settle the household in bed, for everybody wanted to be on top; and no sooner would one arrange himself to his mind than some "under one," not relishing his crushed position, would struggle out, step over his brothers and sisters, and take his place on top, and then the whole thing would have to be done over. I think that mamma had often to put a peremptory end to these difficulties by sitting down on them, for frequently it was a very turbulent-looking nest when she calmly placed herself upon it.
Often, in those days, I wished I could put myself on a level with that little castle in the air, and look into it, filled to the brim with beauty as I knew it was. But I had not long to wait, for speedily it became too full, and ran over into the outside world. On the eighth day one ambitious youngster stepped upon the branch beside the nest and shook himself out, and on the ninth came the plunge into the wide, wide world. While I was at breakfast he made his first effort, and on my return I saw him on a branch about a foot below the nest, the last step on papa's winding stair. Here he beat his wings and plumed himself vigorously, rejoicing, no doubt, in his freedom and in plenty of room. Again and again he nearly lost his balance, in his violent attempts to dress his beautiful plumage, and remove the last remnant of nest mussiness. But he did not fall, and at last he began to look about him. One cannot but wonder what he thought when he
"First opened wondering eyes and found
A world of green leaves all around,"
looking down upon us from his high perch, complete to the little black necklace, and lacking only length of tail of being as big as his parents.
After half an hour of restless putting to rights, the little jay sat down patiently to wait for whatever might come to him. The wind got up and shook him well, but he rocked safely on his airy seat. Then some one approached. He leaned over with mouth open, and across the yard I heard his coaxing voice. But alas! though he was on the very threshold, the food-bearer omitted that step, and passed him by. Then the little one looked up wistfully, apparently conscious of being at a disadvantage. Did he regret the nest privileges he had abandoned? Should he retrace his steps and be a nestling? That the thought passed through his head was indicated by his movements. He raised himself on his legs, turned his face to his old home, and started up, even stepped one small twig nearer. But perish the thought! he would not go back! He settled himself again on his seat.
All things come in time to him who can wait, and the next provision stopped at the little wanderer. His father alighted beside him and fed him two mouthfuls. Thus fortified, his ambition was roused, and his desire to see more, to do more. He began to jump about on his perch, facing first this way, then that; he crept to the outer end of the branch he was on, and was lost to view behind a thick clump of pine needles. In a few minutes he returned, considered other branches near, and, after some study, did really go to the nearest one. Then, step by step, very deliberately, he mounted the winding stair of his father, using, however, every little twig that the elder had vaulted over at a bound. Finally he reached the branch opposite his birthplace, only the tree-trunk between. The trunk was small, home was invitingly near, he was tired; the temptation was too great, and in a minute he was cuddled down with his brothers, having been on a journey of an hour. In the nest, all this time, there had been a hurry and skurry of dressing, as though the house were to be vacated, and no one wished to be late. After a rest and probably a nap, the ambitious young jay took a longer trip: he flew to the next tree, and, I believe, returned no more.
The next day was spent by all the nestlings in hopping about the three branches on which their home was built, making beautiful pictures of themselves every moment; but whenever the bringer of supplies drew near, each little one hastened to scramble back to the nest, to be ready for his share. The last day in the old home had now arrived. One by one the birdlings flew to the maple, and turned their backs on their native tree forever; and that night the "mournful tree" was entirely deserted.
The exit was not accomplished without its excitement. After tea, as I was congratulating myself that they were all safely out in the world, without accident, suddenly there arose a terrible outcry, robin and blue jay voices in chorus. I looked over to the scene of the fray, and saw a young jay on the ground, and the parents frantic with anxiety. Naturally, my first impulse was to go to their aid, and I started; but I was saluted with a volley of squawks that warned me not to interfere. I retired meekly, leaving the birds to deal with the difficulty as they best could, while from afar I watched the little fellow as he scrambled around in the grass. He tried to fly, but could not rise more than two feet. Both the elders were with him, but seemed unable to help him, and night was coming on. I resolved, finally, to "take my life in my hands," brave those unreasoning parents, and place the infant out of the way of cats and boys.
As I reached the doorstep I saw that the youngster had begun to climb the trunk of a locust-tree. I stood in amazement and saw that baby climb six feet straight up the trunk. He did it by flying a few inches, clinging to the bark and resting, then flying a few inches more. I watched, breathless, till he got nearly to the lowest branch, when alas! his strength or his courage gave out, and he fell back to the ground. But he pulled himself together, and after a few minutes more of struggling through the grass he came to the trunk of the maple next his native pine. Up this he went in the same way, till he reached a branch, where I saw him sitting with all the dignity of a young jay (old jays have no dignity). While he was wrestling with fate and his life was in the balance, the parents had kept near him and perfectly silent, unless some one came near, when they filled the air with squawks, and appeared so savage that I honestly believe they would have attacked any one who had tried to lend a hand.
But still the little blue-coat had not learned sufficient modesty of endeavor, for the next morning he found himself again in the grass. He tried climbing, but unfortunately selected a tree with branches higher than he could hold out to reach; so he fell back to the ground. Then came the inexorable demands of breakfast, with which no one who has been up since four o'clock will decline to comply. On my return, the straggler was mounted on a post that held a tennis net, three or four feet from the ground. One of the old birds was on the rope close by him, and there I left them. Once more I saw him fall, but I concluded that since he had learned to climb, and the parents would not accept my assistance any way, he must take care of himself. I suppose he was the youngest of the brood, who could not help imitating his elders, but was not strong enough to do as they did. On the following day he was able to keep his place, and he came to the ground no more.
From that day I saw, and, what was more evident, heard the jay babies constantly, though they wandered far from the place of their birth. Their voices waxed stronger day by day; from morning to night they called vigorously; and very lovely they looked as they sat on the branches in their brand-new fluffy suits, with their tails a little spread, and showing the snowy borderings beautifully. Twenty-two days after they bade farewell to the old home before my window they were still crying for food, still following their hard-working parents, and, though flying with great ease, never coming to the ground (that I could see), and apparently having not the smallest notion of looking out for themselves.
XIII.
BLUE JAY MANNERS.
Early in my acquaintance with the jay family, wishing to induce the birds of the vicinity to show themselves, I procured a quantity of shelled corn, and scattered a few handfuls under my window every night. This gave me opportunity to note, among other things, the jay's way of conducting himself on the ground, and his table manners. To eat a kernel of dry corn, he flew with it to a small branch, placed it between his feet (the latter of course being close together), and, holding it thus, drew back his head and delivered a blow with that pickaxe beak of his that would have broken a toe if he had missed by the shadow of an inch the grain for which it was intended. I was always nervous when I saw him do it, for I expected an accident, but none ever happened that I know of. When the babies grew clamorous all over the place, the jay used to fill his beak with the whole kernels. Eight were his limit, and those kept the mouth open, with one sticking out at the tip. Thus loaded he flew off, but was back in two minutes for another supply. The red-headed woodpecker, who claimed to own the corn-field, seemed to think this a little grasping, and protested against such a wholesale performance; but the overworked jay simply jumped to one side when he came at him, and went right on picking up corn. When he had time to spare from his arduous duties, he sometimes indulged his passion for burying things by carrying a grain off on the lawn with an air of most important business, and driving it into the ground, hammering it well down out of sight.
The blue jay's manner of getting over the ground was peculiar, and especially his way of leaving it. He proceeded by high hops, bounding up from each like a rubber ball; and when ready to fly he hopped farther and bounded higher each time, till it seemed as if he were too high to return, and so took to his wings. That is exactly the way it looked to an observer; for there is a lightness, an airiness of bearing about this apparently heavy bird impossible to describe, but familiar to those who have watched him.
Some time after the blue jay family had taken to roaming about the grounds, I had a pleasing little interview with one of them in the raspberry patch. This was a favorite resort of the neighboring birds, where I often betook myself to see who came to the feast. This morning I was sitting quietly under a spruce-tree, when three blue jays came flying toward me with noise and outcries, evidently in excitement over something. The one leading the party had in his beak a white object, like a piece of bread, and was uttering low, complaining cries as he flew; he passed on, and the second followed him; but the third seemed struck by my appearance, and probably felt it his duty to inquire into my business, for he alighted on a tree before me, not ten feet from where I sat. He began in the regular way, by greeting me with a squawk; for, like some of his bigger (and wiser?) fellow-creatures, he assumed that a stranger must be a suspicious personage, and an unusual position must mean mischief. I was very comfortable, and I thought I would see if I could not fool him into thinking me a scarecrow, companion to those adorning the "patch" at that moment. I sat motionless, not using my glass, but looking him squarely in the eyes. This seemed to impress him; he ceased squawking, and hopped a twig nearer, stopped, turned one calmly observant eye on me, then quickly changed to the other, as if to see if the first had not deceived him. Still I did not move, and he was plainly puzzled to make me out. He came nearer and nearer, and I moved only my eyes to keep them on his. All this time he did not utter a sound, but studied me as closely, and to all appearances as carefully, as ever I had studied him. Obviously he was in doubt what manner of creature it was, so like the human race, yet so unaccountably quiet. He tried to be unconcerned, while still not releasing me from strict surveillance; he dressed his feathers a little, uttering a soft whisper to himself, as if he said, "Well, I never!" then looked me over again more carefully than before. This pantomime went on for half an hour or more; and no one who had looked for that length of time into the eyes of a blue jay could doubt his intelligence, or that he had his thoughts and his well-defined opinions, that he had studied his observer very much as she had studied him, and that she had not fooled him in the least.
The little boy blue is one of the birds suffering under a bad name whom I have wished to know better, to see if perchance something might be done to clear up his reputation a bit. I am not able to say that he never steals the eggs of other birds, though during nearly a month of hard work, when, if ever, a few eggs would have been a welcome addition to his resources, and sparrows were sitting in scores on the place, I did not see or hear anything of the sort. I have heard of his destroying the nest, and presumably eating the eggs or young of the English sparrow, but the hundred or two who raised their broods and squawked from morning to night in the immediate vicinity of the pine-tree household never intimated that they were disturbed, and never showed hostility to their neighbors in blue. Moreover, there is undoubtedly something to be said on the jay's side. Even if he does indulge in these little eccentricities, what is he but a "collector"? And though he does not claim to be working "in the interest of science," which bigger collectors invariably do, he is working in the interest of life, and life is more than science. Even a blue jay's life is to him as precious as ours to us, and who shall say that it is not as useful as many of ours in the great plan?
The only indications of hostilities that I observed in four weeks' close study, at the most aggressive time of bird life, nesting-time, I shall relate exactly as I saw them, and the record will be found a very modest one. In this case, certainly, the jay was no more offensive than the meekest bird that has a nest to defend, and far less belligerent than robins and many others. On one occasion a strange blue jay flew up to the nest in the pine. I could not discover that he had any evil intention, except just to see what was going on, but one of the pair flew at him with loud cries, which I heard for some time after the two had disappeared in the distance, and when our bird returned, he perched on an evergreen, bowing and "jouncing" violently, his manner plainly defying the enemy to "try it again." At another time I observed a savage fight, or what looked like it, between two jays. I happened not to see the beginning, for I was particularly struck that morning with the behavior of a bouquet of nasturtiums which stood in a vase on my table. I never was fond of these flowers, and I noticed then for the first time how very self-willed and obstinate they were. No matter how nicely they were arranged, it would not be an hour before the whole bunch was in disorder, every blossom turning the way it preferred, and no two looking in the same direction. I thought, when I first observed this, that I must be mistaken, and I took them out and rearranged them as I considered best; but the result was always the same, and I began to feel that they knew altogether too much for their station in the vegetable world. I was trying to see if I could discover any method in their movements, when I was startled by a flashing vision of blue down under the locusts, and, on looking closely, saw two jays flying up like quarrelsome cocks,—only not together, but alternately, so that one was in the air all the time. They flew three feet high, at least, all their feathers on end, and looking more like shapeless masses of blue feathers than like birds. They did not pause or rest till one seemed to get the other down. I could not see from my window well enough to be positive, but both were in the grass together, and only one in sight, who stood perfectly quiet. He appeared to be holding the other down, for occasionally there would be a stir below, and renewed vigilance on the part of the one I could see. Several minutes passed. I became very uneasy. Was he killing him? I could stand it no longer, so I ran down. But my coming was a diversion, and both flew. When I reached the place, one had disappeared, and the other was hopping around the tree in great excitement, holding in his beak a fluffy white feather about the size of a jay's breast feather. I did not see the act, and I cannot absolutely declare it, but I have no doubt that he pulled that feather from the breast of his foe as he held him down; how many more with it I could not tell, for I did not think of looking until it was too late.
Again one day, somewhat later, when blue jay and catbird babies were rather numerous, I saw a blue jay dive into a lilac bush much frequented by catbirds, young and old together. Instantly there arose a great cry of distress, as though some one were hurt, and a rustling of leaves, proclaiming that a chase, if not a fight, was in progress. I hurried downstairs, and as I appeared the jay flew, with two catbirds after him, still crying in a way I had never heard before. I expected nothing less than to find a young catbird injured, but I found nothing. Whether the blue jay really had touched one, or it was a mere false alarm on the part of the very excitable catbirds, I could not tell. This is the only thing I have seen in the jay that might have been an interference with another bird's rights; and the catbirds made such a row when I came near their babies that I strongly suspect the only guilt of the jay was alighting in the lilac they had made their headquarters.
The little boy blue in the apple-tree, already spoken of, did not get his family off with so little adventure as his pine-tree neighbor. The youngling of this nest came to the ground and stayed there. The people of the house returned him to the tree several times, but every time he fell again. Three or four days he wandered about the neighborhood, the parents rousing the country with their uproar, and terrorizing the household cat to such a point of meekness that no sooner did a jay begin to squawk than he ran to the door and begged to come in. At last, out of mercy, the family took the little fellow into the house, when they saw that he was not quite right in some way. One side seemed to be nearly useless; one foot did not hold on; one wing was weak; and his breathing seemed to be one-sided. The family, seeing that he could not take care of himself, decided to adopt him. He took kindly to human care and human food, and before the end of a week had made himself very much at home. He knew his food provider, and the moment she entered the room he rose on his weak little legs, fluttered his wings violently, and presented a gaping mouth with the jay baby cry issuing therefrom. Nothing was ever more droll than this sight. He was an intelligent youngster, knew what he wanted, and when he had had enough. He would eat bread up to a certain point, but after that he demanded cake or a berry, and his favorite food was an egg. He was exceedingly curious about all his surroundings, examined everything with great care, and delighted to look out of the window. He selected his own sleeping-place,—the upper one of a set of bookshelves,—and refused to change; and he watched the movements of a wounded woodcock as he ran around the floor with as much interest as did the people. Under human care he grew rapidly stronger, learned to fly more readily and to use his weak side; and every day he was allowed to fly about in the trees for hours. Once or twice, when left out, he returned to the house for food and care; but at last came a day when he returned no more. No doubt he was taken in charge again by his parents, who, it was probable, had not left the neighborhood.
After July came in, and baby blue jays could hardly be distinguished from their parents, my studies took me away from the place nearly all day, and I lost sight of the family whose acquaintance had made my June so delightful.
XIV.
THE GREAT CAROLINIAN.
All through June of that summer I studied the birds in the spacious inclosure around my "Inn of Rest." But as that month drew near its end,
"The happy birds that change their sky
To build and brood, that live their lives
From land to land,"
almost disappeared. Blue jay babies wandered far off, where I could hear them it is true, but where—owing to the despair into which my appearance threw the whole jay family—I rarely saw them; orchard and Baltimore orioles had learned to fly, and carried their ceaseless cries far beyond my hearing; catbirds and cardinals, doves and golden-wings, all had raised their broods and betaken themselves wherever their fancy or food drew them, certainly without the bounds of my daily walks. It was evident that I must seek fresh fields, or remove my quarters to a more northerly region, where the sun is less ardent and the birds less in haste with their nesting.
Accordingly I sought a companion who should also be a guide, and turned my steps to the only promising place in the vicinity, a deep ravine, through which ran a little stream that was called a river, and dignified with a river's name, yet rippled and babbled, and conducted itself precisely like a brook.
The Glen, as it was called, was a unique possession for a common work-a-day village in the midst of a good farming country. Long ago would its stately trees have been destroyed, its streamlet set to turning wheels, and Nature forced to express herself on those many acres, in corn and potatoes, instead of her own graceful and varied selection of greenery; or, mayhap, its underbrush cut out, its slopes sodded, its springs buried in pipes and put to use, and the whole "improved" into dull insipidity,—all this, but for the will of one man who held the title to the grounds, and rated it so highly, that, though willing to sell, no one could come up to his terms. Happy delusion! that blessed the whole neighborhood with an enchanting bit of nature untouched by art. Long may he live to keep the deeds in his possession, and the grounds in their own wild beauty.
The place was surrounded by bristling barbed fences, and trespassers were pointedly warned off, so when one had paid for the privilege, and entered the grounds, he was supposed to be safe from intrusion, except of others who had also bought the right. The part easily accessible to hotel and railroad station was the scene of constant picnics, for which the State is famous, but that portion which lay near my place of study was usually left to the lonely kingfisher—and the cows. There the shy wood dwellers set up their households, and many familiar upland birds came with their fledglings; that was the land of promise for bird-lovers, and there one of them decided to study.
We began with the most virtuous resolves. We would come at five o'clock in the morning; we would catch the birds at their breakfast. We did; it was a lovely morning after a heavy rain, on which we set out to explore the ravine for birds. The storm in passing had taken the breeze with it, and not a twig had stirred since. Every leaf and grass blade was loaded with rain-drops. Walking in the grass was like wading in a stream; to touch a bush was to evoke a shower. But though our shoes were wet through, and our garments well sprinkled, before we reached the barbed fence, over or under or through or around which we must pass to our goal, we would not be discouraged; we went on.
As to the fence, let me, in passing, give my fellow drapery-bearers a hint. Carry a light shawl, or even a yard of muslin, to lay across the wire you can step over (thus covering the mischievous barbs), while a good friend holds up with strong hand the next wire, and you slip through. Thus you may pass this cruel device of man without accident.
Having circumvented the fence, the next task was to descend the steep sides of the ravine. The difficulty was, not to get down, for that could be done almost anywhere, but to go right side up; to land on the feet and not on the head was the test of sure-footedness and climbing ability. We conquered that obstacle, cautiously creeping down rocky steps, and over slippery soil, steadying ourselves by bushes, clasping small tree-trunks, scrambling over big ones that lay prone upon the ground, and thus we safely reached the level of the stream. Then we passed along more easily, stooping under low trees, crossing the beds of tiny brooks, encircling clumps of shrubbery (and catching the night's cobwebs on our faces), till we reached a fallen tree-trunk that seemed made for resting. There we seated ourselves, to breathe, and to see who lived in the place.
One of the residents proclaimed himself at once,
"To left and right
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills,"—
and in a moment we saw him, busy with his breakfast. His manner of hunting was interesting; he stood perfectly still on a branch, his beak pointed upward, but his head so turned that one eye looked downward. When something attracted him, he almost fell off his perch, seized the morsel as he passed, alighted on a lower branch, and at once began looking around again. There was no frivolity, no flitting about like a little bird; his conduct was grave and dignified, and he was absolutely silent, except when at rare intervals he mounted a branch and uttered his call, or song, if one might so call it. He managed his long tail with grace and expression, holding it a little spread as he moved about, thus showing the white tips and "corners."
While we were absorbed in cuckoo affairs the sun peeped over the trees, and the place was transfigured. Everything, as I said, was charged with water, and looking against the sun, some drops hanging from the tip of a leaf glowed red as rubies, others shone out blue as sapphires, while here and there one scintillated with many colors like a diamond, now flashing red, and now yellow or blue.
"The humblest weed
Wore its own coronal, and gayly bold
Waved jeweled sceptre."
In that spot we sat an hour, and saw many birds, with whom it was evidently a favorite hunting-ground. But no one seemed to live there; every one appeared to be passing through; and realizing as we did, that it was late in the season, our search for nests in use was rather half-hearted anyway. As our breakfast-time drew near we decided to go home, having found nothing we cared to study. Just as we were taking leave of the spot I heard, nearly at my back, a gentle scolding cry, and glancing around, my eyes fell upon two small birds running down the trunk of a walnut sapling. A few inches above the ground one of the pair disappeared, and the other, still scolding, flew away. I hastened to the spot—and there I found my great Carolinian.
The nest was made in a natural cavity in the side of a stump six or eight inches in diameter and a foot high. It seemed to be of moss, completely roofed over, and stooping nearer its level I saw the bird, looking flattened as if she had been crushed, but returning my gaze, bravely resolved to live or die with her brood. I noted her color, and the peculiar irregular line over her eye, and then I left her, though I did not know who she was. Nothing would have been easier than to put my hand over her door and catch her, but nothing would have induced me to do so—if I never knew her name. Time enough for formal introductions later in our acquaintance, I thought, and if it happened that we never met again, what did I care how she was named in the books?
I did not at first even suspect her identity, for who would expect to find the great Carolina wren a personage of less than six inches! even though he were somewhat familiar with the vagaries of name-givers, who call one bird after the cat, whom he in no way resembles, and another after the bull, to whom the likeness is, if possible, still less. What was certain was that the nest belonged to wrens, and was admirably placed for study; and what I instantly resolved was to improve my acquaintance with the owners thereof.
The little opening in the woods, which became the Wren's Court, when their rank was discovered, was a most attractive place, shaded enough to be pleasant, while yet leaving a goodly stretch of blue sky in sight, bounded on one side by immense forest trees—walnut, butternut, oak, and others—which looked as if they had stood there for generations; on the other side, the babbling stream, up and down which the kingfisher flew and clattered all day. One way out led to the thicket where a wood-thrush was sitting in a low tree, and the other, by the Path Difficult, up to the world above. The seat, across the court from the nest, had plainly been arranged by some kind fate on purpose for us. It was the trunk of a tree, which in falling failed to quite reach the ground, and so had bleached and dried, and it was shaded and screened from observation by vigorous saplings which had sprung up about it. The whole was indeed an ideal nook, well worthy to be named after its distinguished residents.
Thoreau was right in his assertion that one may see all the birds of a neighborhood by simply waiting patiently in one place, and into that charming spot came "sooner or later" every bird I had seen in my wanderings up and down the ravine. There sang the scarlet tanager every morning through July, gleaming among the leaves of the tallest trees, his olive-clad spouse nowhere to be seen, presumably occupied with domestic affairs. There the Acadian flycatcher pursued his calling, fluttering his wings and uttering a sweet little murmur when he alighted. Into that retired corner came the cries of flicker and blue jay from the high ground beyond. On the edge sang the indigo-bird and the wood-pewee, and cardinal and wood-thrush song formed the chorus to all the varied notes that we heard.
Upon our entrance the next morning, my first glance at the nest was one of dismay—the material seemed to be pulled out a little. Had it been robbed! had some vagabond squirrel thrust lawless paws into the little home! I looked closely; no, there sat, or rather there lay the little mother. But she did not relish this second call. She flew, fluttering and trailing on the ground, as if hurt, hoping, of course, to attract us away from her nest. Seeing that of no avail, however, which she quickly did, she retreated to a low branch, threw back her head, and uttered a soft "chur-r-r," again and again repeated, doubtless to her mate. But that personage did not make his appearance, and we examined the nest. There were five eggs, white, very thickly and evenly specked with fine dots of dark color. An end of one that stuck up was plain white, perhaps the others were the same; we did not inquire too closely, for what did we care for eggs, except as the cradles of the future birds?
Very soon we retired to our seat across the court and became quiet, to wait for what might come. Suddenly, with almost startling effect,
"A bird broke forth and sung
And trilled and quavered and shook his throat."
It was a new voice to us, loud and clear, and the song, consisting of three clauses, sounded like "Whit-e-ar! Whit-e-ar! Whit-e-ar!" then a pause, and the same repeated, and so on indefinitely. It came nearer and still nearer, and in a moment we saw the bird, a tiny creature, red-brown on the back, light below—the image of the little sitter in the stump, as we remarked with delight; we hoped he was her mate. He did not seem inclined to go to the nest, but stayed on a twig of a dead branch which hung from a large tree near by.
While the stranger was pouring out his rhapsody, head thrown back, tail hanging straight down, and wings slightly drooped, I noticed a movement by the nest, and fixed my eyes upon that. The little dame had stolen out of her place, and now began the ascent of the sapling which started out one side of her small stump. Up the trunk she went with perfect ease, running a few steps, and then pausing a moment before she took the next half-dozen. She did not go bobbing up like a woodpecker, nor did she steady herself with her tail, like that frequenter of tree-trunks; she simply ran up that almost perpendicular stick as a fly runs up the wall. Meanwhile her mate, if that he were, kept up his ringing song, till she reached the top of the sapling, perhaps seven or eight feet high, and flew over near him. In an instant the song ceased, and the next moment two small birds flew over our heads, and we heard chatting and churring, and then silence.
Without this hint from the wren we should rarely have seen her leave the nest; we should naturally have watched for wings, and none might come or go, while she was using her feet instead. She returned in the same way; flying to the top, or part way up her sapling, she ran down to her nest as glibly as she had run up. The walnut-trunk was the ladder which led to the outside world. This pretty little scene was many times repeated, in the days that we spent before the castle of our Carolinians; the male announcing himself afar with songs, and approaching gradually, while his mate listened to the notes that had wooed her, and now again coaxed her away from her sitting, for a short outing with him. Sometimes, though rarely, she came out without this inducement, but during her sitting days she usually went only upon his invitation.
Before many days we had fully identified the pair. The song had puzzled me at first, for though extraordinary in volume for a bird of his size, and possessing that indefinable wren quality, that abandon and unexpectedness, as if it were that instant inspired, it had yet few notes, and I missed the exquisite tremolo that makes the song of the winter-wren so bewitching. But I "studied him up," and learned that his finest and most characteristic song is uttered in the spring only. After nesting has begun, he gives merely these musical calls, which, though delightful, do not compare—say the books—with his ante-nuptial performance. I was too late for that, but I was glad and thankful for these.
Moreover, the wren varied his songs as the days went on. There were from two to five notes in a clause, never more, and commonly but three. This clause he repeated again and again during the whole of one visit; but the next time he came he had a new one, which likewise he kept to while he stayed. Again, when, some days later, he took part in feeding, he frequently changed the song as he left the nest. Struck by the variety he gave to his few notes, after some days I began to take them down in syllables as they expressed themselves to my ear, for they were sharp and distinct. Of course, these syllables resemble his sound about as a dried flower resembles the living blossom, but they serve the same purpose, to reproduce them in memory. In that way I recorded in three days eighteen different arrangements of his notes. Doubtless there were many more; indeed, he seemed to delight in inventing new combinations, and his taste evidently agreed with mine, for when he succeeded in evolving a particularly charming one, he did not easily change it. One that specially pleased me I put down as "Shame-ber-ee!" and this was his favorite, too, for after the day he began it, he sang it oftener than any other. It had a peculiarly joyous ring, the second note being a third below the first, and the third fully an octave higher than the second. I believe he had just then struck upon it, his enjoyment of it was so plain to see.
The Wren's Court was a distracting spot to study one pair of small birds. So many others came about, and always, it seemed, in some crisis in wren affairs, when I dared not take my eyes from my glass, lest I lose the sequence of events. There appeared sometimes to be a thousand whispering, squealing, and smacking titmice in the trees over my head, and a whole regiment of great-crested flycatchers and others on one side. I was glad I was familiar with all the flicker noises, or I should have been driven wild at these moments, so many, so various, and so peculiar were their utterances; likewise thankful that I knew the row made by the jay on the bank above was not a sign of dire distress, but simply the tragic manner of the family.
Again, when the wind blew, it was impossible to see the little folk that chattered and whispered and "dee-dee'd" overhead, and though we were absolutely certain a party of tufted tits and chickadees and black and white creepers, who always seemed to travel in company, were frolicking about, we could not distinguish them from the dancing and fluttering leaves.
When the day was favorable, and the wren had gone his way, foraging in silence over the low ground at our back, and an old stump that stood there, and the sitter had settled herself in her nest for another half hour, we could look about at whoever happened to be there. Thus I made further acquaintance with the great-crested flycatcher. Hitherto I had known these birds only as they travel through a neighborhood not their own, appearing on the tops of trees, and crying out in martial tones for the inhabitants to bring on their fighters, a challenge to all whom it may concern. It was a revelation, then, to see them quietly at home like other birds, setting up claims to a tree, driving strangers away from it, and spending their time about its foot, seeking food near the ground, and indulging in frolics or fights, whichever they might be, with squealing cries and a rushing flight around their tree. In the latter part of our study, the great-crest babies were out, noisy little fellows, who insisted on being fed as peremptorily as their elders demand their rights and privileges.
To make the place still more maddening for study, the birds seemed to sweep through the woods in waves. For a long time not a peep would be heard, not a feather would stir; then all at once
"The air would throb with wings,"
and birds would pour in from all sides, half a dozen at a time, making us want to look six ways at once, and rendering it impossible to confine ourselves to one. Then, after half an hour of this superabundance, one by one would slip out, and by the time we began to realize it, we were alone again.
We had watched the wren for nine days when there came an interruption. It happened thus: A little farther up the glen we had another study, a wood-thrush nest in a low tree, and every day, either coming or going, we were accustomed to spend an hour watching that. Our place of observation was a hidden nook in a pile of rocks, where we were entirely concealed by thick trees, through which, by a judicious thinning out of twigs and leaves, we had made peepholes, for the thrush mamma would not tolerate us in her sight. To reach our seats and not alarm the suspicious little dame, we always entered from the back, slowly and cautiously climbed the rocks by a rude path which already existed, and slipped in under cover of our leafy screen.
On the morning of the tenth day we entered the ravine from the upper end, and made our first call upon the thrush. We had been seated in silence for ten or fifteen minutes, and I was beginning to get uneasy because no bird came to the nest, when a diversion occurred that drove thrush affairs out of our minds. We heard footsteps! It must be remembered that we were alone in this solitary place, far from a house, and naturally we listened eagerly. The steps drew nearer, and then we heard loud breathing. We exchanged glances of relief—it was a cow! But while we were congratulating ourselves began a crashing of branches, a fiercer breathing, a rush, and a low bellow!
This was no meek cow! we turned pale,—at any rate we felt pale,—but we tried to encourage each other by suggesting in hurried whispers that he surely would not see us. Alas! the next instant he broke through the bushes, and to our horror started at once up our path to the rocks; in a moment he would be upon us! We rose hastily, prepared to sell our lives dearly, when, as suddenly as he had come, he turned and rushed back. Whether the sight of us was too much for his philosophy, or whether he had gone for reinforcements, we did not inquire. We instantly lost our interest in birds and birds' nests; we gathered up our belongings and fled, not stopping to breathe till we had put the barbiest of barbed wire fences between us and the foe.
Once outside, however, we paused to consider: To give up our study was not to be thought of; to go every day in fear and dread was equally intolerable. I wrote to the authorities of whom I had purchased the right to enter the place. They promptly denied the existence of any such animal on the premises. I replied to the effect that "seeing is believing," but they reaffirmed their former statement, assuring me that there were none but harmless cows in the glen. I did not want to waste time in an unprofitable correspondence, and I did want to see the wrens, and at last a bright thought came,—I would hire an escort, a country boy used to cattle, and warranted not afraid of them. I inquired into the question of day's wages, I looked about among the college students who were working their way to an education, and I found an ideal protector,—an intelligent and very agreeable young man, brought up on a farm, and just graduated, who was studying up mathematics preparatory to school-teaching in the fall. The bargain was soon made, and the next morning we started again for the glen, our guardian armed with his geometry and a big club. Three days, however, had been occupied in perfecting this arrangement, and I approached the spot with anxiety; indeed, I am always concerned till I see the whole family I am watching, after only a night's interval, and know they have survived the many perils which constantly threaten bird-life, both night and day.
XV.
THE WRENLINGS APPEAR.
The moment we entered the court I saw there was news. My eyes being attracted by a little commotion on a dogwood-tree, I saw a saucy tufted titmouse chasing with cries one of the wrens who had food in its beak. With most birds this proclaims the arrival of the young family as plainly as if a banner had been hung on the castle walls. Whether the tit was after the food, or trying to drive the wren off his own ground, we could not tell, nor did we much care; the important fact was that babies were out in the walnut-tree cottage. The food bearer went to the nest, and in a moment came up the ladder, so joyous and full of song that he could not wait to get off his own tree, but burst into a triumphant ringing "Whit-e-ar!" that must have told his news to all the world—who had ears to hear.
The mother did not at once give up her brooding, nor did I wonder when I peeped into the nest while she was off with her spouse, and saw what appeared to be five big mouths with a small bag of skin attached to each. Nothing else could be seen. She sat an hour at a time, and then her mate would come and call her off for a rest and a change, while he skipped down the ladder and fed the bairns. His way in this matter, as in everything else, was characteristic. He never went to the nest till he had called her off by his song. It was not till several days later, when she had given up brooding, that I ever saw the pair meet at the nest, and then it seemed to be accidental, and one of them always left immediately.
During the first few days the young parents came and went as of old, by way of the ladder, and I learned to know them apart by their way of mounting that airy flight of steps. He was more pert in manner, held his head and tail more jauntily, though he rarely pointed his tail to the sky, as do some of the wren family. He went lightly up in a dancing style which she entirely lacked, sometimes jumping to a small shoot that grew up quite near the walnut, and running up that as easily as he did the tree. Her ascent was of a business character; she was on duty, head and tail level with her body, no airs whatever. He was so full of happiness in these early days that frequently he could not take time to go to the top, but, having reached a height of two or three feet, he flew, and at once burst into rapturous song, even sang while flying over to the next tree. From this time they almost abandoned the ladder they had been so fond of, and flew directly to the nest from the ground, where they got all their food. This change was not because they were hard worked; I never saw birds who took family cares more easily. At the expiration of three days the mother brooded no more, and indeed it would have troubled her to find a place for herself, the nest was so full.
Every morning on entering the court I called at the nest, and always found five yellow beaks turned to the front. On the third day the heads were covered with slate-colored down; on the fourth, wing-feathers began to show among the heads, but the body was still perfectly bare; on the fifth, the eyes opened on the green world about them,—they were then certainly five days old, and may have been seven; owing to our unfortunate absence at the critical time I cannot be sure. On the seventh day the red-brown of the back began to show, and the white of the breast made itself visible, while the heads began to look feathery instead of fuzzy. Even then, however, they took no notice when I put my finger on them.
Long before this time the manner of the parents had changed. In the first place, they were more busy; foraging industriously on the ground, coming within ten or fifteen feet of us, without appearing to see us at all. In fact they had, after the first day, paid no attention to us, for we never had disturbed them, never went to the nest till sure that both were away, and kept still and quiet in our somewhat distant seat.
About this time they began to show more anxiety in their manner. The first exhibition was on the fourth day since we knew the young were hatched (and let me say that I believe they were just out of the shell the morning that we found the father feeding). On this fourth day the singer perched near the nest-tree, three or four feet from the ground, and began a very loud wren "dear-r-r-r! dear-r-r-r! dear-r-r-r!" constantly repeated. He jerked himself about with great apparent excitement, looking always on the ground as if he saw an enemy there. We thought it might be a cat we had seen prowling about, but on examination no cat was there. Gradually his tone grew lower and lower, and he calmed down so far as a wren can calm, though he did not cease his cries. I did not know he could be still so long, but I learned more about wren possibilities in that line somewhat later.
During this performance his mate came with food in her beak, and evidently saw nothing alarming, for she went to the nest with it. Still he stood gazing on the ground. Sometimes he flew down and returned at once, then began moving off, a little at a time, still crying, exactly as though he were following some one who went slowly. The call, when low, was very sweet and tender; very mournful too, and we got much wrought up over it, wishing—as bird students so often do—that we could do something to help. He was roused at last by the intrusion of a bird into his domain, and his discomfiture of this foe seemed to dispel his unhappy state of mind, for he at once broke out in joyous song, to our great relief. That was not the last exhibition of the wren's idiosyncrasy; he repeated it day after day, and finally he went so far as to interpolate low "dear-r-r's" into his sweetest songs. Perhaps that was his conception of his duty as protector to the family; if so, he was certainly faithful in doing it. It was ludicrously like the attitude of some people under similar circumstances.
While the young father was manifesting his anxiety in this way, the mother showed hers in another; she took to watching, hardly leaving the place at all. When she had her babies well fed for the moment, she went up the trunk a little, in a loitering way that I had never seen her indulge in before,—and a loitering wren is a curiosity. It was plain that she simply wished to pass away the time. She stepped from the trunk upon a twig on one side, stayed a little while, then passed to one on the other side, lingered a few moments, and so she went on. When she arrived at the height of two feet she perched on a small dead twig, and remained a long time—certainly twenty minutes—absolutely motionless. It was hard to see her, and if I had not watched her progress from the first, I should not have suspected her presence. A leaf would hide her, even the crossing of two twigs was ample screen, and when she was still it was hopeless to look for her. The only way we were able to keep track of either of the pair was by their incessant motions.
The Great Carolinian had a peculiar custom which showed that his coming with song was a ceremony he would not dispense with. He would often start off singing, gradually withdraw till fifty or seventy-five feet away, singing at every pause, and then, if one watched him closely, he might see him stop, drop to the ground, and hunt about in silence. When he was ready to come again, he would fly quietly a little way off, and then begin his singing and approaching, as if he had been a mile away. He never sang when on the ground after food, but so soon as he finished eating, he flew to a perch at least two feet high, generally between six and ten, and sometimes as high as twenty feet, and sang.
After a day or two of the wren's singular uneasiness, we discovered at least one object of his concern. It was a chipmunk, whom we had often noticed perched on the highest point of the little ledge of rocks near the nest. He seemed to be attending strictly to his own affairs, but after a good deal of "dear-r-r"-ing, the wren flew furiously at him, almost, if not quite, hitting him, and doing it again and again. The little beast did not relish this treatment and ran off, the bird following and repeating the assault. This was undoubtedly the foe that he had been troubled about all the time.
On the tenth or eleventh day of their lives (as I believe) I examined the babies in the nest a little more closely than before. I even touched them with my finger on head and beak. They looked sleepily at me, but did not resent it. If the mother were somewhat bigger, I should suspect her of giving them "soothing syrup," for they had exactly the appearance of being drugged. They were not overfed; I never saw youngsters so much let alone. The parents had nothing like the work of the robin, oriole, or blue jay. They came two or three times, and then left for half an hour or more, yet the younglings were never impatient for food.
The morning that the young wrens had reached the age of twelve days (that we knew of) was the 22d of July, and the weather was intensely warm. On the 21st we had watched all day to see them go, sure that they were perfectly well able. Obviously it is the policy of this family to prepare for a life of extraordinary activity by an infancy of unusual stillness. Never were youngsters so perfectly indifferent to all the world. In storm or sunshine, in daylight or darkness, they lay there motionless, caring only for food, and even that showed itself only by the fact that all mouths were toward the front. The under one of the pile seemed entirely contented to be at the bottom, and the top ones not to exult in their position; in fact, so far as any show of interest in life was concerned, they might have been a nestful of wooden babies.
On this morning, as we dragged ourselves wearily over the hot road to the ravine, we resolved that no handful of wrenlings should force us over that road again. Go off this day they should, if—as my comrade remarked—"we had to raise them by hand." My first call was at the nest, indifferent whether parents were there or not, for I had become desperate. There they lay, lazily blinking at me, and filling the nest overfull. The singer came rushing down a branch, bristled up, blustering, and calling "Dear-r-r-r!" at me, and I hoped he would be induced to hurry up his very leisurely brood.
We took our usual seats and waited. Both parents remained near the homestead, and little singing was indulged in; this morning there was serious business on hand, as any one could see. We were desirous of seeing the first sign of movement, so we resolved to cut away the last few leaves that hid the entrance to the nest. We had not done it before, partly not to annoy the birds, and partly not to have them too easily discovered by prowlers.
Miss R—— went to the stump, and cut away half a dozen leaves and twigs directly before their door. The young ones looked at her, but did not move. Then, as I had asked her to do, she pointed a parasol directly at the spot, so that I, in my distant seat, might locate the nest exactly. This seemed to be the last straw that the birdlings could endure; two of them flew off. One went five or six feet away, the other to the ground close by. Then she came away, and we waited again. In a moment two more ventured out and alighted on twigs near the nest. Then the mother came home, and acted as surprised as though she had never expected to have them depart. She went from a twig beside the tree to the nest, and back, about a dozen times, as if she really could not believe her eyes.
Anxious to see everything that went on, we moved our seats nearer, but this so disconcerted the pair that we did not stay long. It was long enough to hear the wren baby-cry, a low insect-like noise, and to see something that surprised and no less disgusted me, namely, every one of those babies hurry back to the tree, climb the trunk, and scramble back into the nest!—the whole exit to be begun again! It could not be their dislike of the "cold, cold world," for a cold world would be a luxury that morning.
Of any one who would go back into that crowded nest, with the thermometer on the rampage as it was then, I had my opinion, and I began to think I didn't care much about wrens anyway; we stayed, however, as a matter of habit, and I suppose they all had a nap after their tremendous exertion. But they manifestly got an idea into their heads at last, a taste of life. After a proper amount of consideration, one of the nestlings took courage to move again, and went so far as a twig that grew beside the door, looked around on the world from that post for a while, then hopped to another, and so on till he encircled the home stump. But when he came again in sight of that delectable nest, he could not resist it, and again he added himself to the pile of birds within. This youth was apparently as well feathered as his parents, and, except in length of tail, looked exactly like them; many a bird baby starts bravely out in life not half so well prepared for it as this little wren.
After nearly three hours of waiting, we made up our minds that these young folk must be out some time during the day, unless they had decided to take up permanent quarters in that hole in the stump, and what was more to the point, that the weather was too warm to await their very deliberate movements. So we left them, to get off the best way they could without us, or to stay there all their lives, if they so desired.
The nest, which at first was exceedingly picturesque—and I had resolved to bring it away, with the stump that held it—was now so demolished that I no longer coveted it. The last and sweetest song of the wren, "Shame-ber-ee!" rang out joyously as we turned our faces to the north, and bade a long farewell to the Great Carolinians.
XVI.
THE APPLE-TREE NEST.
All day long in the elm, on their swaying perches swinging,
New-fledged orioles utter their restless, querulous notes.
Harriet Prescott Spofford.
The little folk let out the secret, as little folk often do, and after they had called attention to it, I was surprised that I had not myself seen the pretty hammock swinging high up in the apple boughs.
It was, however, in a part of the grounds I did not often visit, partly because the trees close by, which formed a belt across the back of the place, grew so near together that not a breath of air could penetrate, and it was intolerable in the hot June days, and partly because my appearance there always created a panic. So seldom did a human being visit that neglected spot, that the birds did not look for guests, and a general stampede followed the approach of one.
On the eventful day of my happy discovery I was returning from my daily call upon a blue jay who had set up her home in an apple-tree in a neighbor's yard. The moment I entered the grounds I noticed a great outcry. It was loud; it was incessant; and it was of many voices. Following the sound, I started across the unmown field,
"Through the bending grasses,
Tall and lushy green,
All alive with tiny things,
Stirring feet and whirring wings
Just an instant seen,"
and soon came in sight of the nest near the topmost twig of an old apple-tree.
It was about noon of a bright, sunny day, and I could see only that the nest was straw-color, apparently run over with little ones, and both the parents were industriously feeding. The cries suggested the persistence of young orioles, but it was not a Baltimore's swinging cradle, and the old birds were so shy, coming from behind the leaves, every one of which turned itself into a reflector for the sunlight, that I could not identify them.
Later in the day I paid them another visit, and finding a better post of observation under the shade of a sweet-briar bush, I saw at once they were orchard orioles, and that the young ones were climbing to the edge of the nest; I had nearly been too late!
Four o'clock was the unearthly hour at which I rose next morning to pursue my acquaintance with the little family in the apple-tree, fearful lest they should get the start of me. The youngsters were calling vociferously, and both parents were very busy attending to their wants and trying to stop their mouths, when I planted my seat before their castle in the air, and proceeded to inquire into their manners and customs. My call was, as usual, not received with favor. The mother, after administering the mouthful she had brought, alighted on a twig beside the nest and gave me a "piece of her mind." I admitted my bad manners, but I could not tear myself away. The anxious papa, very gorgeous in his chestnut and black suit, scenting danger to the little brood in the presence of the bird-student with her glass, at once abandoned the business of feeding, and devoted himself to the protection of his family,—which indeed was his plain duty. His way of doing this was to take his position on the tallest tree in the vicinity, and fill the serene morning air with his cry of distress, a two-note utterance, with a pathetic inflection which could not fail to arouse the sympathy of all who heard it. It was not excited or angry, but it proclaimed that here was distress and danger, and it had the effect of making me ashamed of annoying him. But I hardened my heart, as I often have to do in my study, and kept my seat. Occasionally he returned to the lower part of his own tree, to see if the monster had been scared or shamed away, but finding me stationary, he returned to his post and resumed his mournful cry.
At length the happy thought came to me that I might select a position a little less conspicuous, yet still within sight, so I moved my seat farther off, away back under a low-branched apple-tree, where a redbird came around with sharp "tsip's" to ascertain my business, and a catbird behind the briar-bush entertained me with delicious song. The oriole accepted my retirement as a compromise, and returned to his domestic duties, coming, as was natural and easiest, on my side of the tree. His habit was to cling to the side of the nest, showing his black and red-gold against it, while his mate alighted on the edge, and was seen a little above it. After feeding, both perched on neighboring twigs and looked about for a moment before the next food-hunting trip. I thought the father of the family exhibited an air of resignation, as if he concluded that, since the babies made so much noise, there was no use in trying longer to preserve the secret.
As a matter of fact, both our orioles need a good stock of patience as well as of resignation, for the infants of both are unceasing in their cries, and fertile in inventing variations in manner and inflection, that would deceive those most familiar with them. Two or three times in the weeks that followed, I rushed out of the house to find some very distressed bird, who, I was sure, from the cries, must be impaled alive on a butcher-bird's meat-hook, or undergoing torture at the hands—or beak of somebody. It was rather dangerous going out at that time (just at dusk), for it was the chosen hour for young men and maidens, of whom there were several, to wander about under the trees. Often, before I gave up going out at that hour, my glass, turned to follow a flitting wing, would bring before my startled gaze a pair of sentimental young persons, who doubtless thought I was spying upon them. My only safety was in directing my glass into the trees, where nothing but wings could be sentimental, and if a bird flitted below the level of branches, to consider him lost. On following up the cry, I always found a young oriole and a hard-worked father feeding him. The voice did not even suggest an oriole to me, until I had been deceived two or three times and understood it.
The young ones of the orchard oriole's nest lived up to the traditions of the family by being inveterate cry-babies, and making so much noise they could be heard far around. Sometimes their mother addressed them in a similar tone to their own, but the father resigned himself to the inevitable, and fed with dogged perseverance.
The apple-tree nest looked in the morning sun of a bright flax color, and two of the young were mounted on the edge, dressing their yellow satin breasts, and gleaming in the sunshine like gold.
A Baltimore oriole, passing over, seemed to be attracted by a familiar quality of sound, for he came down, alighted about a foot from the nest, and looked with interest upon the charming family scene. The protector of the pretty brood was near, but he kept his seat, and made no objections to the friendly call. Indeed, he flew away while the guest was still there, and having satisfied his curiosity, the Baltimore also departed upon his own business.
When the sun appeared over the tree-tops, he came armed with all his terrors. The breeze dwindled and died; the very leaves hung lifeless on the trees, and though, knowing that
"Somewhere the wind is blowing,
Though here where I gasp and sigh
Not a breath of air is stirring,
Not a cloud in the burning sky,"
the memory might comfort me, it did not in the slightest degree make me comfortable—I wilted, and retired before it. How the birds could endure it and carry on their work, I could not understand.
At noon I ventured out over the burning grass. The first youngster had left the nest, and was shouting from a tree perhaps twenty feet beyond the native apple. The others were fluttering on the edge, crying as usual. As is the customary domestic arrangement with many birds, the moment the first one flew, the father stopped coming to the nest, and devoted himself to the straggler, which was a little hard on the mother that hot day, for she had four to feed.
While I looked on, the second infant mustered up courage to start on the journey of life. A tall twig led from the nest straight up into the air, and this was the ladder he mounted. Step by step he climbed one leaf-stem after another, with several pauses to cry and to eat, and at last reached the topmost point, where he turned his face to the west, and took his first survey of the kingdoms of the earth. A brother nestling was close behind him, and the pretty pair, seeing no more steps above them, rested a while from their labors. In the mean time the first young oriole had gone farther into the trees, and papa with him.
The little dame worked without ceasing, though it must have been an anxious time, with nestlings all stirring abroad. I noticed that she fed oftenest the birdlings who were out, whether to strengthen them for further effort, or to offer an inducement to those in the nest to come up higher where food was to be had, she did not tell. I observed, also, that when she came home she did not, as before, alight on the level of the little ones, but above them. Perhaps this was to coax them upward; at any rate, it had that effect: they stretched up and mounted the next stem above, and so they kept on ascending. About three o'clock I was again obliged to surrender to the power of the sun, and retire for a season to a place he could not enter, the house.
Some hours passed before I made my next call, and I found that oriole matters had not rested, if I had; the two nestlings had taken flight to the tree the first one had chosen, and three were on the top twig above the nest, which latter swung empty and deserted. Mamma was feeding the three in her own tree, while papa attended as usual to the outsiders, and found leisure to drop in a song now and then.
While I watched, number three took his life in his hands (as it were) and launched out upon the air. He reached a tree not so far away as his brothers had chosen, and his mother sought him out and fed him there. But he did not seem to be satisfied with his achievement, or possibly he found the position rather lonely; at any rate, the next use of his wings was to return to his native apple, to the lower part. During this visit, the mother of the little brood, seeing, I suppose, her labors growing lighter, indulged herself and delighted me with a scrap of song, very sweet, as the song of the female oriole always is.
It was with forebodings that I approached the tree the next morning, foreboding speedily confirmed—the whole family was gone! Either I had not stayed late enough or I had not got up early enough to see the flitting; that song, then, meant something—it was my good-by.
Indeed it turned out to be my farewell, as I thought, for the whole tribe seemed to have vanished. Usually it is not difficult to hunt up a little bird family in its wanderings, during the month following its leaving the nest, but this one I could neither see nor hear, and I was very sure those oriole babies had not so soon outgrown their crying; they must have been struck dumb or left the place.
Nearly three weeks later I was wandering about in what was called the glen, half a mile or more from where the apple-tree babies had first seen the light. It was a wild spot, a ravine, through which ran a stream, where many wood-birds sang and nested. On approaching a linden-tree loaded with blossoms, and humming with swarms of bees, I was saluted with a burst of loud song, interspersed with scolding. No one but an orchard oriole could so mix things, and sure enough! there he was, scrambling over the flowers. Something he found to his taste, whether the blossoms or the insects, I could not decide. On waiting a little, I heard the young oriole cry, much subdued since nesting days, and the tender "ye-ep" of the parent. The whole family was evidently there together, and I was very glad to see them once more.
The nest, which I had brought down, was a beautiful structure, made, I think, of very fine excelsior of a bright straw-color. It was suspended in an upright fork of four twigs, and lashed securely to three of them, while a few lines were passed around the fourth. Though it was in a fork, it did not rest on it, but was suspended three inches above it, a genuine hanging nest. It was three inches deep and wide, but drawn in about the top to a width of not more than two inches, with a bit of cotton and two small feathers for bedding. How five babies could grow up in that little cup is a problem. The material was woven closely together, and in addition stitched through and through, up and down, to make a firm structure. Around and against it hung still six apples, defrauded of their manifest destiny, and remaining the size of hickory-nuts. Three twigs that ran up were cut off, but the fourth was left, the tallest, the one sustaining the burden of the nest, and upon which the young birds, one after another, had mounted to take their first flight.
This pretty hammock, in its setting of leaves and apples, still swinging from the apple boughs, I brought home as a souvenir of a charming bird study.
XVII.
CEDAR-TREE LITTLE FOLK.
'T is there that the wild dove has her nest,
And whenever the branches stir,
She presses closer the eggs to her breast,
And her mate looks down on her.
Clare Beatrice Coffey.
One of the voices that helped to make my June musical, and one more constantly heard than any other, was that of the
"Mourning dove who grieves and grieves,
And lost! lost! lost! still seems to say,"
as the poet has it.
Now, while I dearly love the poets, and always long to enrich my plain prose with gems from their verse, it is sometimes a little embarrassing, because one is obliged to disagree with them. If they would only look a little into the ways of birds, and not assert, in language so musical that one can hardly resist it, that
"The birds come back to last year's nests,"
when rarely was a self-respecting bird known to shirk the labor of building anew for every family; or sing, with Sill,
"He has lost his last year's love, I know,"
when he did not know any such thing; and add,
"A thrush forgets in a year,"
which I call a libel on one of our most intelligent birds; or cry, with another singer,
"O voiceless swallow,"
when not one of the whole tribe is defrauded of a voice, and at least one is an exquisite singer; or accuse the nightingale of the superfluous idiocy of holding his (though they always say her) breast to a thorn as he sings, as if he were so foolish as to imitate some forms of human self-torture,—if they would only be a little more sure of their facts, what a comfort it would be to those who love both poets and birds!
No bird in our country is more persistently misrepresented by our sweet singers than the Carolina or wood dove—mourning dove, as he is popularly called; and in this case they are not to be blamed, for prose writers, even natural history writers, are quite as bad.
"His song consists," says one, "of four notes: the first seems to be uttered with an inspiration of the breath, as if the afflicted creature were just recovering its voice from the last convulsive sob of distress, and followed by three long, deep, and mournful moanings, that no person of sensibility can listen to without sympathy." "The solemn voice of sorrow," another writer calls it. All this is mere sentimentality, pure imagination; and if the writers could sit, as I have, under the tree when the bird was singing, they would change their opinion, though they would thereby lose a pretty and attractive sentiment for their verse. I believe there is
"No beast or bird in earth or sky,
Whose voice doth not with gladness thrill,"
though it may not so express itself to our senses. Certainly the coo of the dove is anything but sad when heard very near. It has a rich, far-off sound, expressing deep serenity, and a happiness beyond words.
First in the morning, and last at night, all through June, came to me the song of the dove. As early as four o'clock his notes began, and then, if I got up to look out on the lawn, where I had spread breakfast for him and other feathered friends, I would see him walking about with dainty steps on his pretty red toes, looking the pink of propriety in his Quaker garb, his satin vest smooth as if it had been ironed down, and quite worthy his reputed character for meekness and gentleness.
But I wanted to see the dove far from the "madding crowd" of blackbirds, blue jays, and red-heads, who, as well as himself, took corn for breakfast, and I set out to look him up. At first the whole family seemed to consist of the young, just flying about, sometimes accompanied by their mother. Apparently the fathers of the race were all off in the cooing business.
So early as the second of June I came upon my first pair of young doves, two charming little creatures, sitting placidly side by side. Grave, indeed, and very much grown-up looked these drab-coated little folk, silent and motionless, returning my gaze with an innocent openness that, it seemed to me, must disarm their most bitter enemy. When I came upon such a pair, as I frequently did, on the low branch of an apple-tree or a limb of their native cedar, I stopped instantly to look at them. Not an eyelid of the youngsters would move; if a head were turned as they heard me coming, it would remain at precisely that angle as long as I had patience to stay. They were invariably sitting down with the appearance of being prepared to stay all day, and almost always side by side, though looking in different directions, and one was always larger than the other. A lovely and picturesque group they never failed to make, and as for any show of hunger or impatience, one could hardly imagine they ever felt either. In every way they were a violent contrast to all their neighbors, the boisterous blue jays, lively catbirds, blustering robins, and vulgar-mannered blackbirds.
Sometimes I chanced upon a mother sitting by her youngling, and although when I found her alone she always flew, beside her little charge she was dignified and calm in bearing, and looked at me with fearless eyes, relying, as it appeared, upon absolute stillness, and the resemblance of her color to the branches, to escape observation; a ruse which must generally be successful.
The nest, the remains of which I often saw on the tree where I found an infant, was the merest apology, hardly more than a platform, just enough to hold the pair of eggs which they are said always to contain. Indeed, no baby but a serene dove, with the repose of thirty generations behind it, could stay in it till his wings grew. As it is, he must be forced to perch, whether ready or not, for the structure cannot hold together long. The wonder is that the eggs do not roll out before they are hatched.
Several things made the bird an interesting subject for study; his reputation for meekness, his alleged silence,—except at wooing time,—and the halo of melancholy with which the poets have invested him. I resolved to make acquaintance with my gentle neighbor, and I sought and found a favorite retreat of the silent family. This was a grove away down in the southeast corner of the grounds, little visited by people, and beloved by birds of several kinds. Till June was half over, the high grass, that I could not bear to trample, prevented exploration in that direction, but as soon as it was cut I made a trip to the little grove, and found it a sort of doves' headquarters, and there, in many hours of daily study, I learned to know him a little, and respect him a good deal.
It was a delightful spot the doves had chosen to live in, and so frequented by birds that whichever way I turned my face, in two minutes I wished I had turned it the other, or that I had eyes in the back of my head. With reason, too, for the residents skipped around behind me, and all the interesting things went on at my back. I could hear the flit of wings, low, mysterious sounds, whispering, gentle complaints and hushings, but if I turned—lo! the scene shifted, and the drama of life was still enacted out of my sight. Yet I managed, in spite of this difficulty, to learn several things I did not know before.
No one attends to his own business more strictly than the dove. On the ground, where he came for corn, he seemed to see no other bird, and paid not the slightest heed to me in my window, but went about his own affairs in the most matter-of-fact way. Yet I cannot agree with the common opinion, which has made his name a synonym for all that is meek and gentle. He has a will of his own, and a "mild but firm" way of securing it. Sometimes, when all were busy at the corn, one of my Quaker-clad guests would take a notion, for what reason I could not discover, that some other dove must not stay, and he would drive him (or her) off. He was not rude or blustering, like the robin, nor did he make offensive remarks, after the manner of a blackbird; he simply signified his intention of having his neighbor go, and go he did, nolens volens.
It was droll to see how this "meek and gentle" fellow met blackbird impudence. If one of the sable gentry came down too near a dove, the latter gave a little hop and rustled his feathers, but did not move one step away. For some occult reason the blackbird seemed to respect this mild protest, and did not interfere again.
Would one suspect so solemn a personage of joking? yet what else could this little scene mean? A blackbird was on the ground eating, when a dove flew down and hovered over him as though about to alight upon him. It evidently impressed the blackbird exactly as it did me, for he scrambled out from under, very hastily. But the dove had no intention of the sort; he came calmly down on one side.
The first dove baby who accompanied its parent to the ground to be fed was the model of propriety one would expect from the demure infant already mentioned. He stood crouching to the ground in silence, fluttering his wings a little, but making no sound, either of begging, or when fed. A blackbird came to investigate this youngster, so different from his importunate offspring, upon which both doves flew.
There is a unique quality claimed for the dove: that with the exception of the well-known coo in nesting time he is absolutely silent, and that the noise which accompanies his flight is the result of a peculiar formation of the wing that causes a whistle. Of this I had strong doubts. I could not believe that a bird who has so much to say for himself during wooing and nesting time could be utterly silent the rest of the year; nor, indeed, do I believe that any living creature, so highly organized as the feathered tribes, can be entirely without expression.
I thought I would experiment a little, and one day, observing that a young dove spent most of his time alone on a certain cedar-tree, where a badly used-up nest showed that he had probably been hatched, or feeding on the ground near it, I resolved to see if I could draw him out. I passed him six times a day, going and coming from my meals, and I always stopped to look at him—a scrutiny which he bore unmoved, in dove fashion. So one morning, when I stood three feet from him, I began a very low whistle to him. He was at once interested, and after about three calls he answered me, very low, it is true, but still unmistakably. Though he replied, however, it appeared to make him uneasy, for while he had been in the habit of submitting to my staring without being in any way disconcerted, he now began to fidget about. He stood up, changed his place, flew to a higher branch, and in a few moments to the next tree; all the time, however, answering my calls.
I was greatly interested in my new acquaintance, and the next day I renewed my advances. As before, he answered, looking bright and eager, as I had never seen one of his kind look, and after three or four replies he became uneasy, as on the previous day, and in a moment he flew. But I was surprised and startled by his starting straight for me. I thought he would certainly alight on me, and such, I firmly believe, was his inclination, but he apparently did not quite dare trust me, so he passed over by a very few inches, and perched on the tree I was under. Then—still replying to me—he flew to the ground not six feet from me, and step by step, slowly moved away perhaps fifteen feet, when he turned and flew back to his own tree beside me. I was pleased to notice that the voice of this talkative dovekin was of the same quality as the "whistling" said to be of the wings, when a dove flies.
The last interview I had with the dear baby, I found him sitting with his back toward me, but the instant I whistled he turned around to face me, and seated himself again. He replied to me, and fluttered his wings slightly, yet he soon became restless, as usual. He did not fly, however, and he answered louder than he had done previously, but I found that my call must be just right to elicit a response. I might whistle all day and he would pay no attention, till I uttered a two-note call, the second note a third above the first and the two slurred together. I was delighted to find that even a dove, and a baby at that, could "talk back." He was unique in other ways; for example, in being content to pass his days in, and around, his own tree. I do not believe he had ever been farther than a small group of cedars, ten feet from his own. I always found him there, though he could fly perfectly well. This interview was, I regret to say, the last; the next morning my little friend was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps mamma thought he was getting too friendly with one of a race capable of eating a baby dove.
After this episode in my dove acquaintance, I was more than ever interested in getting at the mode of expression in the family, and I listened on every occasion. One day two doves alighted over my head when I was sitting perfectly still, and I distinctly heard very low talk, like that of my lost baby; there was, in addition, a note or two like the coo, but exceedingly low. I could not have heard a sound ten feet from the tree, nor if I had been stirring myself. I observed also that a dove can fly in perfect silence; and, moreover, that the whistle of the wings sometimes continues after the bird has become still. I heard the regular coo—the whole four-note performance—both in a whisper and in the ordinary tone, and the latter, though right over my head, sounded a mile away. At the end of my month's study I was convinced that the dove is far from being a silent bird; on the contrary, he is quite a talker, with the "low, sweet voice" so much desired in other quarters. And further, that the whistling is not produced wholly (if at all) by the wings, and it is a gross injustice to assert that he is not capable of expressing himself at all times and seasons.