Nature's Serial Story

by Edward Payson Roe

"More than you would suppose. But you would not be apt to meet many of them unless you sought for them. At this time they are gathered in sheltered localities abounding in their favorite food. Shall I tell you about some that I have observed throughout several successive winters?"

Having received eager encouragement, he resumed: "My favorites, the bluebirds, we have considered quite at length. They are very useful, for their food in summer consists chiefly of the smaller beetles and the larvae of little butterflies and moths. Many robins stay all winter. It is a question of food, not climate, with them. In certain valleys of the White Mountains there is an abundance of berries, and flocks of robins feed on them all winter, although the cold reaches the freezing-point of mercury. As we have said, they are among the most useful of the insect destroyers. The golden-crested kinglet is a little mite of a bird, not four inches long, with a central patch of orange-red on his crown. He breeds in the far North, and wintering here is for him like going to the South. In summer he is a flycatcher, but here he searches the bark of forest trees with microscopic scrutiny for the larvae of insects. We all know the lively black-capped chickadees that fly around in flocks throughout the winter. Sometimes their search for food leads them into the heart of towns and cities, where they are as bold and as much at home as the English sparrow. They also gather around the camps of log-cutters in the forest, become very tame, and plaintively cry for their share in the meals. They remain all the year, nesting in decayed logs, posts, stumps, and even in sides of houses, although they prefer the edge of a wood. If they can find a hole to suit them, very well; if they can't, they will make one. Their devotion to their young is remarkable. A nest in a decayed stump was uncovered, and the mother bird twice taken off by hand, and each time she returned and covered her brood. She uttered no cries or complaints, but devotedly interposed her little form between what must have seemed terrific monsters and her young, and looked at the human ogres with the resolute eyes of self-sacrifice. If she could have known it, the monsters only wished to satisfy their curiosity, and were admiring her beyond measure. Chickadees are exceedingly useful birds, and make great havoc among the insects.

"Our next bird is merely a winter sojourner, for he goes north in spring like the kinglet. The scientists, with a fine sense of the fitness of things, have given him a name in harmony, Troglodytes parvulus, var. Hyemalis."

"What monster bird is this?" cried Amy.

"He is about as big as your thumb, and ordinary mortals are content to call him the winter wren. He is a saucy little atom of a bird, with his tail pointing rakishly toward his head. I regret exceedingly to add that he is but a winter resident with us, and we rarely hear his song. Mr. Burroughs says that he is a 'marvellous songster,' his notes having a 'sweet rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced.' By the way, if you wish to fall in love with birds, you should read the books of John Burroughs. A little mite of a creature, like the hermit-thrush, he fills the wild, remote woods of the North with melody, and has not been known to breed further south than Lake Mohunk. The brown creeper and the yellow-rumped warbler I will merely mention. Both migrate to the North in the spring, and the latter is only an occasional winter resident. The former is a queer little creature that alights at the base of a tree and creeps spirally round and round to its very top, when it sweeps down to the base of another tree to repeat the process. He is ever intent on business. Purple finches are usually abundant in winter, though, not very numerous in summer. I value them because they are handsome birds, and both male and female sing in autumn and winter, when bird music is at a premium. I won't speak of the Carolina wax-wing, alias cedar or cherry bird, now. Next June, when strawberries and cherries are ripe, we can form his intimate acquaintance."

"We have already made it, to the cost of both our patience and purse," said Webb. "He is one of the birds for whom I have no mercy."

"That is because you are not sufficiently acquainted with him. I admit that he is an arrant thief of fruit, and that, as his advocate, I have a difficult case. I shall not plead for him until summer, when he is in such imminent danger of capital punishment He's a little beauty, though, with his jaunty crest and gold-tipped tail. I shall not say one word in favor of the next bird that I mention, the great Northern shrike, or butcher-bird. He is not an honest bird of prey that all the smaller feathered tribes know at a glance, like the hawk; he is a disguised assassin, and possessed by the very demon of cruelty. He is a handsome fellow, little over ten inches long, with a short, powerful beak, the upper mandible sharply curved. His body is of a bluish-gray color, with 'markings of white' on his dusky wings and tail. Three shrikes once made such havoc among the sparrows of Boston Common that it became necessary to take much pains to destroy them. He is not only a murderer, but an exceedingly treacherous one, for both Mr. Audubon and Mr. Nuttall speak of his efforts to decoy little birds within his reach by imitating their notes, and he does this so closely that he is called a mocking-bird in some parts of New England. When he utters his usual note and reveals himself, his voice very properly resembles the 'discordant creaking of a sign-board hinge.' A flock of snow-birds or finches may be sporting and feeding in some low shrubbery, for instance. They may hear a bird approaching, imitating their own notes. A moment later the shrike will be seen among them, causing no alarm, for his appearance is in his favor. Suddenly he will pounce upon an unsuspecting neighbor, and with one blow of his beak take off the top of its head, dining on its brains. If there is a chance to kill several more, he will, like a butcher, hang his prey on a thorn, or in the crotch of a tree, and return for his favorite morsel when his hunt is over. After devouring the head of a bird he will leave the body, unless game is scarce. It is well they are not plentiful, or else our canary pets would be in danger, for a shrike will dart through an open window and attack birds in cages, even when members of the family are present. In one instance Mr. Brewer, the ornithologist, was sitting by a closed window with a canary in a cage above his head, and a shrike, ignorant of the intervening glass, dashed against the window, and fell stunned upon the snow. He was taken in, and found to be tame, but sullen. He refused raw meat, but tore and devoured little birds very readily. As I said before, it is fortunate he is rare, though why he is so I scarcely know. He may have enemies in the North, where he breeds; for I am glad to say that he is only a winter resident.

"It gives one a genuine sense of relief to turn from this Apache, this treacherous scalper of birds, to those genuinely useful little songsters, the tree and the song sparrow. The former is essentially a Northern bird, and breeds in the high arctic regions. He has a fine song, which we hear in early April as his parting souvenir. The song sparrow will be a great favorite with you, Miss Amy, for he is one of our finest singers, whose song resembles the opening notes of a canary, but has more sweetness and expression. Those that remain with us depart for the North at the first tokens of spring, and are replaced by myriads of other migrants that usually arrive early in March. You will hear them some mild morning soon. They are very useful in destroying the worst kinds of insects. A fit associate for the song sparrow is the American goldfinch, or yellow-bird, which is as destructive of the seeds of weeds as the former is of the smaller insect pests. In summer it is of a bright gamboge yellow, with black crown, wings, and tail. At this time he is a little olive-brown bird, and mingles with his fellows in small flocks. They are sometimes killed and sold as reed-birds. They are brilliant singers.

"The snow-bird and snow-bunting are not identical by any means; indeed, each is of a different genus. The bunting's true home is in the far North, and it is not apt to be abundant here except in severe weather. Specimens have been found, however, early in November, but more often they appear with a late December snowstorm, their wild notes suggesting the arctic wastes from which they have recently drifted southward. The sleigh tracks on the frozen Hudson are among their favorite haunts, and they are not often abundant in the woods on this side of the river. Flocks can usually be found spending the winter along the railroad on the eastern shore. Here they become very fat, and so begrimed with the dirt and grease on the track that you would never associate them with the snowy North. They ever make, however, a singular and pretty spectacle when flying up between one and the late afternoon sun, for the predominant white in their wings and tail seems almost transparent. They breed at the extreme North, even along the Arctic Sea, in Greenland and Iceland, and are fond of marine localities at all times. It's hard to realize that the little fellows with whom we are now so familiar start within a month for regions above the Arctic Circle. I once, when a boy, fired into a flock feeding in a sleigh track on the ice of the river. Some of those that escaped soon returned to their dead and wounded companions, and in their solicitude would let me come very near, nor, unless driven away, would they leave the injured ones until life was extinct. On another occasion I brought some wounded ones home, and they ate as if starved, and soon became very tame, alighting upon the table at mealtimes with a freedom from ceremony which made it necessary to shut them up. They spent most of their time among the house plants by the window, but toward spring the migratory instinct asserted itself, and they became very restless, pecking at the panes in their eagerness to get away. Soon afterward our little guests may have been sporting on an arctic beach. An effort was once made in Massachusetts to keep a wounded snow-bunting through the summer, but at last it died from the heat. They are usually on the wing northward early in March.

"The ordinary snow-bird is a very unpretentious and familiar little friend. You can find him almost any day from the 1st of October to the 1st of May, and may know him by his grayish or ashy black head, back, and wings, white body underneath from the middle of his breast backward, and white external tail-feathers. He is said to be abundant all over America east of the Black Hills, and breeds as far south as the mountains of Virginia. There are plenty of them in summer along the Shawangunk range, just west of us, in the Catskills, and so northward above the Arctic Circle. In the spring, before it leaves us, you will often hear its pretty little song. They are very much afraid of hawks, which make havoc among them at all times, but are fearless of their human—and especially of their humane—neighbors. Severe weather will often bring them to our very doors, and drive them into the outskirts of large cities. They are not only harmless, but very useful, for they devour innumerable seeds, and small insects with their larvae. Dear me! I could talk about birds all night."