A-Birding on a Bronco

by Florence Merriam Bailey

It is unpleasant to be treated as if you needed detectives on your track. It strains your faith in human nature; the rest of the world must be very wicked if people suspect such extremely good creatures as you are! And then it reflects on the detectives; it shows them so lacking in discernment. Nevertheless, "A friend should bear his friend's infirmities," and I was determined to be friends with the woodpeckers. One of them kept me waiting an hour one morning. When I first saw it, it was on its tree trunk, but when it first saw me, it promptly left for parts unknown. I stopped at a respectful distance from its tree—several rods away—and threw myself down on the warm sand in the bed of the dry stream, between high hedges of exquisite lemon-colored mustard. Patient waiting is no loss, observers must remember if they would be consoled for their lost hours. In this case I waited till I felt like a lotus-eater who could have stayed on forever. A dove brooded her eggs on a branch of the spreading sycamore whose arms were outstretched protectingly above me; the sun rested full on its broad leaves, and bees droned around the fragrant mustard, whose exquisite golden flowers waved gently against a background of soft blue California sky.

But that was not the last day I had to wait. It was over a month before the birds put any trust in me. The nest hole was excavated before the middle of May; on June 15 I wrote in my note-book, "The woodpecker has gotten so that when I go by she puts her head out of the window, and when I speak to her does not fly away, but cocks her head and looks down at me."[3] That same morning the bird actually entered the nest in my presence. She came back to her sycamore while I was watching the wrens, and flew right up to the mouth of the nest. She was a little nervous. She poked in her bill, drew it back; put in her head, drew that back; then swung her body partly in; but finally the tip of her tail disappeared down the hole.

The next morning, in riding by, I heard weak voices from the woodpecker mansion. If young were to be fed, I must be on hand. Such luxurious observing! Riding Mountain Billy out into the meadow, I dismounted, and settled myself comfortably against a haycock with the bridle over my arm. It was a beautiful quiet morning. The night fog had melted back and the mountains stood out in relief against a sky of pure deep blue. The line of sycamores opposite us were green and still against the blue; the morning sun lighting their white trunks and framework. The songs of birds filled the air, and the straw-colored field dotted with haycocks lay sunning under the quiet sky. In the East we are accustomed to speak of "the peace of evening," but in southern California in spring there is a peculiar interval of warmth and rest, a langorous pause in the growth of the morning, between the disappearance of the night fog and the coming of the cool trade wind, when the southern sun shines full into the little valleys and the peace of the morning is so deep and serene that the labor of the day seems done. Nature appears to be slumbering. She is aroused slowly and gently by the soft breaths that come in from the Pacific. On this day I watched the awakening. Up to this time not a grass blade had stirred, but while I dreamed a brown leaf went whirling to the ground, the stray stalks of oats left from the mowing began to nod, and the sycamore branches commenced to sway. Then the breeze swelled stronger, coming cool and fresh from the ocean; the yellow primroses, around which the hummingbirds whirred, bowed on their stately stalks, and I could hear the wind in the moving treetops.

Mountain Billy grazed near me till it occurred to him that stubble was unsatisfactory, when he betook him to my haycock. Though I lectured him upon the rights of property and enforced my sermon with the point of the parasol, he was soon back again, with the amused look of a naughty boy who cannot believe in the severity of his monitor; and later, I regret to state, when I was engrossed with the woodpeckers, a sound of munching arose from behind my back.

The woodpeckers talked and acted very much like their cousins, the red-heads of the East. When they went to the nest they called chuck'-ah as if to wake the young, flying away with the familiar rattling kit-er'r'r'r'. They flew nearly half a mile to their regular feeding ground, and did not come to the nest as often as the wrens when bringing up their brood. Perhaps they got more at a time, filling their crops and feeding by regurgitation, as I have seen waxwings do when having a long distance to go for food.

I first heard the voices of the young on June 16; nearly three weeks later, July 6, the birds were still in the nest. On that morning, when I went out to mount Billy, I was shocked to find the body of one of the old woodpeckers on the saddle. I thought it had been shot, but found it had been picked up in the prune orchard. That afternoon its mate was brought in from the same place. Probably both birds had eaten poisoned raisins left out for the gophers. The dead birds were thrown out under the orange-trees near the house, and not many hours afterward, when I looked out of the window, two turkey vultures were sitting on the ground, one of them with a pathetic little black wing in his bill. The great black birds seemed horrible to me,—ugly, revolting creatures. I went outside to see what they would do, and after craning their long red necks at me and stalking around nervously a few moments they flew off.

Now what would become of the small birds imprisoned in the tree trunk, with no one to bring them food, no one to show them how to get out, or, if they were out, to feed them till they had learned how to care for themselves? Sad and anxious, I rode down to the sycamore. I rapped on its trunk, calling chuck'-ah as much like the old birds as possible. There was an instant answer from a strong rattling voice and a weak piping one. The weak voice frightened me. If that little bird's life were to be saved, it was time to be about it. The ranchman's son was pruning the vineyard, and I rode over to get him to come and see how we could rescue the little prisoners.

On our way to the tree we came on a gopher snake four feet long. It was so near the color of the soil that I would have passed it by, but the boy discovered it. The creature lay so still he thought it was dead; but as we stood looking, it puffed itself up with a big breath, darted out its tongue, and began to move off. I watched to see how it made the straight track we so often saw in the dust of the roads. It bent its neck into a scallop for a purchase, while its tapering tail made an S, to furnish slack; and then it pulled the main length of its body along straight. It crawled noiselessly right to the foot of the woodpecker tree, but was only hunting for a hole to hide in. It got part way down one hole, found that it was too small, and had to come backing out again. It followed the sand bed, taking my regular beat, from tree to tree! To be sure, gopher snakes are harmless, but they are suggestive, and you would rather their ways were not your ways.

Although the little prisoners welcomed us as rescuers should be welcomed, they did it by mistake. They thought we were their parents. At the first blow of the axe their voices hushed, and not a sound came from them again. It seemed as if we never should get the birds out.