A-Birding on a Bronco

by Florence Merriam Bailey

A Trying Moment.

On June 7 I noticed a remarkable thing. For more than five weeks, all through the building and brooding, the little lover had been acting as if on his honeymoon—as if the nest were a joke and there were nothing for him to do in the world but sing and make love to his pretty mate—as if life were all 'a-courtin'.' On this day he first came to the tree with food, sang out for his spouse, gave her the morsel, and flew off. Later in the morning he brought food and his mate carried it to the young. But afterwards, when she started to take a morsel from him, behold! he—the gay, frivolous little beau, the minstrel lover—actually acted as if he didn't want to give it up, as if he wanted to feed his own little birds himself. With wings trembling at his sides he turned his back on his mate and started to walk down the branch away from her! But he was too fond of her to even seem to refuse her anything, and so, coming back, gave her the morsel. She probably divined his thought, and, let us hope, was glad to have him show an interest in his children at last; at all events, when he came again with food and clung to the tip of a drooping twig waiting although she first lit above him and came down toward him with bill wide open and wings fluttering in the pretty, helpless, coquettish way female birds often tease to be fed; suddenly, as if remembering, she flew off, and—he went in to the nest himself! It was a conquest; the little lover was not altogether lacking in the paternal instinct after all! I looked at him with new respect.

On June 12 I wrote: "The wrens seem to have settled down to business." It was delightful to find the small father actually taking turns feeding the young. I saw him feed his mate only once or twice, and noticed much less of the quivering wings, though after leaving the nest he would sometimes light on a branch and move them tremulously at his sides for a moment. June 15 I wrote: "The birds are feeding rapidly to-day. I hear very little song from the male; probably he has all he can attend to. I'd like to know how many young ones there are in that hole." At all events, the voices of the young were getting stronger and more insistent, and it is no bagatelle to keep half a dozen gaping mouths full of spiders, as any mother bird can tell. This particular mother wren, however, seemed to enjoy her cares. She often called to the young from a branch in front of the nest before going in, and stopped to call back to them with a motherly-sounding krup-up-up as she stood in the entrance on leaving.

One day as one of the old birds stood in the doorway its mate flew into the nest right over its head. The astonished doorkeeper was so startled that it took to its wings.

Before this, in watching the wrens, I had looked off across a sunny field of golden oats, against the background of blue hills. On June 14, when I went to the nest, the mowers had been at work around the sycamores and the oat-field was full of cocks. Just as the wren was most anxious for peace and quietness, for a safe world into which to launch her brood, up came this rout of haymakers with all their clattering machines, laying low the meadows to her very door.

No wonder the little bird met me with nerves on edge. When the eggs had first hatched, she had objected to me, but mildly. To be sure, once when she found me staring she flew away over my head, scolding as much as to say, "Stop looking at my little birds," and finding me there when she came back, shook her wings at her sides and scolded hard, though her bill was full; but still her disapproval did not trouble me; it was too sociable. But now, for some time, affected by the shadow of coming events, she had been growing more and more fidgety under my gaze, darting inside, then whisking back to the door to look at me, in again to her brood and out to me, over and over like a flash—or, like a poor little troubled mother wren, distracted lest her unruly youngsters should pop out of the hole in the tree trunk when I was below to catch them.

On this day, when the wren came up from the dark nest pocket and found me below, she called back to her little ones in such distress that I felt reproached. By gazing fixedly through my glass into the dark hole I could see the head of a sprightly nestling pop up and turn alertly from side to side as if returning my inspection. The old wren's calls made me think of a human mother who can no longer control her big wayward offspring and has to entreat them to do as she bids. It was as if she said, "Oh, do be good children, do keep still; do put your heads back; you naughty children, you must do as I tell you!"

On June 16, six weeks after I had found the birds building, I wrote in my note-book: "I am astonished every morning when I come and find the wrens still here, but perhaps it's easier feeding them in one spot than it would be chasing around after them in half a dozen different places."

The young were chattering inside the nest. They all talked at once as children will, but one small voice assumed the tones of the mother; probably the oldest brother speaking with the air of authority featherless children sometimes assume with the weaker members of the family. When a parent came, I saw the big brother's head pop up from behind the wall,—the nest was in a pocket below,—and by the time the old bird got there with food the big throat blocked the way for the little ones down behind. Sometimes I could see a flutter of small wings and tails, when the birds were being fed.