Outings at Odd Times

by Charles C. Abbott

While some of our birds content themselves with but shallow depressions in the ground, and many others place together so few sticks (and these ill-arranged) that the nest might readily be overlooked, there is one bird that is too lazy to do even so much, but drops an egg in the nest of another bird. This is the habit, too, of the European cuckoo, but our cuckoos are nest-builders, and the bird to which I have referred belongs to a very different group. Few people seem to know it at all, and yet it is abundant over a wide range of country, and has a dozen names, mostly meaningless. The best, perhaps, of them is “cowpen bird,” a name derived, I suppose, from the fact that the bird is often found in pastures where there are cattle or sheep. Indeed, I have often seen them standing upon the backs of cows and sheep, catching flies, I presume, though they seem to be quite inactive when upon such a perch. Although not nest-builders, they have something to do with the building of nests. When that tireless songster the red-eyed vireo builds its pensile nest on the hillside, the necessity for concealment does not occur to the bird, and so its home is often invaded by the female cow-bird, and a single egg dropped into the structure as soon as, if not before, it is finished. Sometimes this is put up with, sometimes not. I have many times found nests that were two-storied, the intrusive egg being, of course, in the basement, and destroyed. This is one of the best examples of bird wit of which I know. A vast deal is taken into consideration while the decision is being reached to build a floor over the obnoxious egg, and so prevent its hatching. There can be nothing of all this ascribed to instinct, for then all such eggs would be destroyed by this means, and the bird become extinct. On the other hand, it is but a very small percentage that have the wit or courage to undertake the work, which is evidence enough that, of a given species of bird, the variation in intelligence among individuals is very marked. This, indeed, we see on every hand when birds are building. Particularly noticeable is it when the female bird stays at home and arranges the material which her mate brings to her. This is mere drudgery to the male bird, and too often worthless bits are brought which the toiling builder promptly rejects, and not always with becoming patience either. She speaks her mind in unmistakable tones, and if not heeded after the second or third scolding, open war is declared on the spot, followed too often by a wreck of all their hopes.

A word more. If people, young or old, would get a correct knowledge of a wild bird’s ways, would know what is meant by animal intelligence, let them study a pair of nest-building birds while they are at work. Let them draw near, but not too near, and see how carefully the work progresses, how skillfully many a difficulty is overcome, how completely the finished structure meets all requirements. Do this, but do nothing more. Refrain from disturbing the timid builders; abstain from robbing them when their work is done. By gentleness prove yourselves the friends of birds, and they will return your kindness with a measure heaped up and overflowing.

A Meadow Mud-Hole.

The least suggestive spot in the world to most people is a mud-hole. The common impression seems to be that fish avoid it, that frogs and birds pass it by, and plants decline to cover its nakedness. This, like a great many other common impressions, is really very wide of the mark. If the water be not unutterably filthy, fish will condescend to tenant the shallow depths, frogs will thrive therein, bitterns and the little rail-bird find such a spot attractive, and many an aquatic plant grows nowhere else so vigorously.

There are, as all know, mud-holes that are but blotchy remnants of man’s interference—mere accidents, as it were, which do not concern us; and also those deeper scars where the fair face of the landscape has been wounded severely, as when the ice-gorged river bursts its proper bounds, leaving a shallow pool in my pasture meadow: such as these are never beneath the notice of a contemplative rambler. The truth is, in the valley of the Delaware the average mud-hole is eminently respectable. Giving the matter a sober second thought, one will see that mud is not necessarily offensive. That of the meadows, if analyzed, proves to be compounded of very worthy entities—water, clay, sand, and leaf-mold. Why, because they are associated, should they be so studiously shunned? No chemical change has taken place resulting in the formation of a dangerous mixture. Mud is unlovable only when you are made its prisoner; but even a fool knows it is best to remain outside the bars when he comes to a lion’s cage. The lily loves the mud from which it springs, and who in the wide world loves not the lily? Let us accept her as an authority that this mud has merit.

There is a typical earth scar of the worthier sort within easy reach of my dooryard. I chanced upon it one February morning when the surrounding meadows were frost-bound, but the water was free, sparkling, and full of aquatic life; and there is not a month that it has not its growth of green, if not a wealth of blossoms. Even the plant life of the preceding summer serves as a covering in winter, and a January thaw starts the hardier grasses as surely as it quickens the sheltered upland dandelions into bloom. And on this bleak February day, when the meadows were like smooth rock, the river a glacier, and with scarce a trace of green to be seen on the hillside, the expanding spathe of the fetid cabbage—a plant full worthy of a better name—was well above the ground, darkly green and beautifully streaked with purple and gold; and a foot or more below the surface of the water were even greener growths, tangles of thread-like vine that quivered whenever a frightened fish rushed by. Indeed, these delicate growths are a delight to our many hardy fishes that, scorning to hibernate when food and shelter are so accessible, must laugh, I think, at the darting ice-crystals that gather and grow strong until they shut out the sun, but never reach their weed-grown habitations.

It was greener still in March; but in April, when the meadow ditches are being decked with splatter-dock and calla, arrow-head and sweet-flag, golden-club and equisetum, then from the bottom of more than one small pond spring up sharp, spear-pointed rolls of rank green leaves, growing until the water’s quiet surface is pierced, and a stout stem bears into view two parallel rolls of delicate leaf tissue. I refer to the rare yellow lotus. Perhaps not for all time a native, but it has long since earned its right to a place in our flora.

Most interesting is the beautiful adaptation of the leaf to its surroundings at the outset of its growth. Tightly twisted and pointed obliquely upward, it meets with no resistance from the water, and runs no risk of entanglement with other growths. Once at the surface, the unrolling is rapidly effected, and a bronze chalice with an emerald lining is ready to catch the dew as it falls. The circular perfected leaf, often twenty inches in diameter, is usually supported on a foot-stalk five or six feet in height, and among them often many floating leaves. Certainly no other of our aquatic plants has so striking an appearance, not even the wild-rice at its best—

That tangled, trackless, wind-tossed waste,

Above a watery wilderness.