Bird Stories

by Edith M. Patch

She wore, draped from her shoulders, snowy plumes of rare beauty.

The Soldier watched her as she stood alone at the edge of the water, so small and white and slender against the great cypress trees bearded with Spanish moss, and thought she made a picture he could never forget. And when her mate came out to her, in a white wedding-robe like her own, with its filmy cape of mist-fine plumes, Ardea's Soldier smiled gently, for he loved Heron Camp and shared, in his heart, the joys of their home-coming.

Ardea and her mate took a pleasant trip, looking for a building place at the edge of a swamp. They did not object to neighbors; which was fortunate, as there were so many other herons in the camp that it would have been hard to find a very secret spot for their nest. After looking it over and talking about it a bit, they chose a mangrove bush for their very own. They had never built a house before, but they wasted no time in hunting for a carpenter or teacher, but went to work with a will, just as if they knew how. It was like playing a game of "five-six, pick up sticks"; only they did not lay them straight but in a scraggly criss-cross sort of platform, with big twigs twelve inches long at the bottom and smaller ones on top. Then, when it looked all ready for a nice soft lining, Ardea laid an egg right on the rough sticks. Rather lazy and shiftless, don't you think? or maybe they didn't know any better, poor young things who had never had a home before! Ah, but there was another pair of snowy herons building in the bush next door, and they didn't put in anything soft for their eggs, either; and six or eight bushes farther on, a little blue heron was already sitting on her blue eggs in almost exactly the same sort of nest.

So that is the kind of carpenters herons are! Sticks laid tangled up in a mass is the way they build! Yes, that is all—just some old dead twigs. I mean that is all you could see; but never think for a minute that there wasn't something else about that nest; for Ardea and her mate had lined it well with love, and so it was, indeed, a home worth building.

Near Ardea's Home.

In less than a week there were four eggs beneath the white down comforter that Ardea tucked over them; and the little mother was as well pleased as if she had had five, like her neighbors, the other snowy heron and the little blue heron.

If the eggs of the little blue heron were blue, would not those of the snowy herons be pure white? No, the color of eggs does not need to match the color of feathers; and Ardea's eggs and those of her next-bush neighbor were so much like the beautiful blue ones of the little blue heron, that it would be very hard for you to tell one from the other. Perhaps Ardea could not have told her own eggs if she had not remembered where she had built her nest. As it was, she made no mistake, but snuggled cosily over her pretty eggs, doubling up her long slender black legs and her yellow feet as best she could.

If she found it hard to sit there day after day, she made no fuss about it; and probably she really wanted to do that more than anything else just then, since the quiet patience of the most active birds is natural to them when they are brooding their unhatched babies. Then, too, there was her beautiful mate for company and help; for when Ardea needed to leave the nest for food and a change, the father-bird kept house as carefully as need be.

To her next-bush neighbors and the little blue herons Ardea paid no attention, unless, indeed, one of them chanced to come near her own mangrove bush. Then she and her mate would raise the feathers on the top of their heads until they looked rather fierce and bristly, and spread out their filmy capes of dainty plumes in a threatening way. That criss-cross pile of old dead twigs was a dear home after all, being lined, you will remember, with the love of Ardea and her mate; and they both guarded it as well as they were able.