A-Birding on a Bronco

by Florence Merriam Bailey

One of the birds that nested in the trees by the ranch-house was the bee-bird, who was soft gray above and delicate yellow below, instead of dark gray above and shining white below, like his eastern relative, the kingbird. The birds used to perch on the bare oak limbs, flycatching. It was interesting to watch them. They would fly obliquely into the air and then turn, with bills bristling with insects, and sail down on outstretched wings, their square tails set so that the white outer feathers showed to as good advantage as the white border of the kingbird's does in similar flights. They made a bulky untidy nest in the oaks by the barn, using a quantity of string borrowed from the ranchman. Their voices were high-keyed and shrill with an impatient emphasis, and at a distance suggested the shrill yelping of the coyote. Kee'-ah, kee-kee' kee'-ah, they would cry. The wolves were so often heard around the ranch-house that in the early morning I have sometimes mistaken the birds for them.

One of the favorite hunting-grounds of the bee-birds was the orchard, where they must have done a great deal of good destroying insects. They were quarrelsome birds, and were often seen falling through the air fighting vigorously. I saw one chase a sparrow hawk and press it so hard that the hawk cried out lustily. The ranchman's son told me of one bee-bird who defended his nest with his life. Two crows lit in a tree where the flycatcher had a nest containing eggs. The crows had difficulty in getting to the tree to begin with, for the bee-birds fought them off; and though they lighted, were soon dislodged and chased down the vineyard. The man was at work there, and as the procession passed over his head the bee-bird dove at the crow; the crow struck back at him, crushing his skull, and the flycatcher dropped through the air, dead! The other bee-bird followed its dead mate to the ground, and then, without a cry, flew to a tree and let the crows go on their way.

The bee-bird was one of the noisiest birds about the ranch-house, but commoner than he; in fact, the most abundant bird, next to the linnet and blackbird, was the California chewink, or, as the ranchman appropriately called him, the 'brown chippie;' for he does not look like the handsome chewink we know, but is a fat, dun brown bird with a thin chip that he utters on all occasions. He is about the size of the eastern robin, and, except when nesting, almost as familiar. There were brown chippies in the door-yard, brown chippies around the barns, and brown chippies in the brush till one got tired of the sight of them.

The temptations that come to conscientious observers are common to humanity, and one of the subtlest is to undervalue what is at hand and overvalue the rare or distant. Unless a bird is peculiarly interesting, it requires a definite effort to sit down and study him in your own dooryard, or where he is so common as to be an every-day matter. The chippies were always sitting around, scratching, or picking up seeds; or else quarreling among themselves. Feeling that it was my duty to watch them, I reasoned with myself, but they seemed so mortally dull and uninteresting it was hard work to give up any time to them. When they went to nesting, their wild instincts asserted themselves, and they hid away so closely I was never sure of but one of their nests, and that only by most cautious watching. Then for the first time they became interesting! To my surprise, one day I heard a brown chippie lift up his voice and sing. It was in a sunny grove of oaks, and though his song was a queer squeaky warble, it had in it a good deal of sweetness and contentment; for the bird seemed to find life very pleasant. The ranchman's son told me that up in the canyons at dusk he had sometimes heard towhee concerts, the birds answering each other from different parts of the canyon.

California Chewink. (One half natural size.)

Eastern Chewink. (One half natural size.)

There was a nest in the chaparral which probably belonged to these chewinks. It was in a mass of poison ivy that had climbed up on a scrub-oak. I spent the best part of a morning waiting for the birds to give in their evidence. Brown sentinels were posted on high bare brush tops, where they chipped at me, and once a brown form flew swiftly away from the nest bush; but like most people whose conversation is limited to monosyllables, the towhees are good at keeping a secret. While watching for them, I heard a noise that suggested angry cats spitting at each other; and three jack-rabbits came racing down the chaparral-covered knoll. One of them shot off at a tangent while the other two trotted along the openings in the brush as if their trails were roads in a park. Then a cottontail rabbit came out on a spot of hard yellow earth encircled by bushes, and lying down on its side kicked up its heels and rolled like a horse; after which the pretty thing stretched itself full length on the ground to rest, showing a pink light in its ears. After a while it got up, scratched one ear, and with a kick of one little furry leg ran off in the brush. Another day, when I sat waiting, I saw a jack-rabbit's ears coming through the brush. He trotted up within a few feet, when he stopped, facing me with head and ears up; a noble-looking little animal, reminding me of a deer with antlers branching back. He stood looking at me, not knowing whether to be afraid or not, and turning one ear trumpet and then the other. But though smiling at him, I was a human being, there was no getting around that; and after a few undecided hops, this way and that, he ran off and disappeared in the brush. Near where he had been was a spot where a number of rabbit runways came to a centre, and around it the rabbit council had been sitting in a circle, their footprints proved.

Brown chippies were not much commoner around the ranch-house than western house wrens were, but the big prosaic brown birds seemed much more commonplace. The wrens were strongly individual and winning wherever they were met. They nested in all sorts of odd nooks and corners about the buildings. One went so far as to take up its abode in the wire-screened refrigerator that stood outside the kitchen under an oak! Another pair stowed their nest away in an old nosebag hanging on a peg in the wine shed; while a third lived in one of the old grape crates piled up in the raisin shed.

The crate nest was delightful to watch. The jolly little birds, with tails over their backs and wings hanging, would sing and work close beside me, only three or four feet away. They would look up at me with their frank fearless eyes and then squeeze down through their crack into the crate, and sit and scold inside it—such an amusing muffled little scold! The nest was so astonishingly large I was interested to measure it. Twigs were strewn loosely over one end of the box, covering a square nearly sixteen inches on a side. The compact high body of the nest measured eight by ten inches, and came so near the top of the crate that the birds could just creep in under the slats. Some of the twigs were ten inches long, regular broom handles in the bills of the short bobbing wrens. One of the birds once appeared with a twig as long as itself. It flew to the side of a beam with it, at sight of me, and stood there balancing the stick in its bill, in pretty fashion. Another time it flew to the peak of the shed to examine an old swallow's nest now occupied by linnets, and amused itself throwing down its neighbors' straws—the naughty little rogue!

Such jolly songsters! They were fairly bubbling over with happiness all the time. They had an old stub in front of the shed that might well have been called the singing stub, for they kept it ringing with music when they were not running on inside the shed. They seemed to warble as easily as most birds breathe; in fact, song seemed a necessity to them. There was a high pole in front of the shed, and one day I found my ebullient little friend squatting on top to hold himself on while he sang out at the top of his lungs! Another time I came face to face with a pair when the songster was in the midst of his roundelay. He stopped short, bobbed nervously from side to side, and then, rising to his feet and putting his right foot forward with a pretty courageous gesture, took up his song again. When the pair were building in the crate, I stuck some white hen's feathers there, thinking they might like to use them. Mr. Troglodytes came first, and seeing them, instead of turning tail as I have known brave guardians of the nest to do, burst out singing, as if it were a huge joke. Then he hopped down on the rim of the box to scrutinize the plumes, after which he flew out. But he had to stop to sing atilt of an elder stem before he could go on to tell his spouse about them.