A-Birding on a Bronco

by Florence Merriam Bailey

I watched this attack with great interest, not knowing that shrikes were concerned in blackbird matters, and also because it was welcome news that one of these strange characters had rented a lot of me. I made a note of the direction my outlaw tenant took when driven ignominiously home, and at my earliest convenience called. Such cruel tales are told of his cold-blooded way of impaling birds and beasts upon thorns and barbed wires that one naturally looks upon him as a monster; but I found that he, like many another villain, turns a gentle face to his nest.

He had pitched his tent on the farthest outpost of my ranch in a little bunch of willows, weeds, and mustard—long since converted into a well-kept prune orchard. The nest, which was a big round mass of sticks, was inside the willows in a clump of dry stalks about six feet from the ground. I had hardly found it before one of the builders swooped down to it right before my eyes, with the hardihood of one who fears no man; though it must be acknowledged that the shrikes, like other birds on the ranch, were so used to grazing horses they quite naturally took me for a cattle herder.

In this case Canello did not act as my ally. He had been quiet and docile most of the morning, but now was hungry and saw some grass he was bent on having, so took the bit in his teeth and made such an obstinate fight that, before I had conquered him, the shrikes had left the premises and my call was finished without my hosts.

On my next visit Canello behaved in more seemly manner, and permitted me to see something of the ways of the maligned birds. You would not have known them from any one else except for the remarkable stillness of their neighborhood. Some finches flew overhead as if meaning to stop, but saw the shrike and went on. I could hear the merry songs of the assembly down in the sycamores, but not a bird lit while we were there—the shrikes certainly have a bad name among their neighbors. They had a proud bearing and an imperative manner, but seemed so gentle and human in their domestic life that my prejudices were softened, as one's generally are by near acquaintance, and I became really very fond of my handsome tenants.

It looked as if the shrike fed his mate. At any rate, they worked together and rested together, perching in lordly fashion high on the willows overlooking their home. They did not object to observers when at work. One day, when Canello's nose appeared by the nest, the builder looked at him over her shoulder and then quietly slid off the nest, flying up on her perch to wait till he should leave. It was a temptation to keep her waiting some time, for the shrike's corner was a pleasant place to linger in. The sea-breeze was so strong it turned the willow leaves white side out, and the beautiful glistening mustard grew so high there that when Canello walked into it, the golden blossoms waved over our heads. We haunted the premises till the birds had finished their framework, put in a lining of snow-white plant cotton, and had laid four eggs.

But when getting to feel like an old friend of the family, on riding down one day I found the nest lying in the dust of the road broken and despoiled. It made me as unhappy as if the outlaws had been unimpeachable bird citizens—which comes of knowing both sides of a person's character! Do birds hand down traditions of ill luck? However it may be, five years later I found the nest of a pair in a dark mat of mistletoe at the end of a high oak branch, which was a much safer place than the low willow.

While I was watching the first shrike family, Canello had two scares. Once when we were standing still by the willow we heard what sounded like a rattlesnake springing its rattle. The nervous horse pricked up his ears, raised his head, and looked in the grass as if he saw snakes, and though I succeeded in quieting him, when we went home he started at every stick and was ready to shy at every shadow. Another morning he saw a Mexican riding along by the vineyard, a man with a very dark face and a red shirt. Canello acted much as he had when hearing the rattlesnake, and did not quiet down till horse and rider were out of sight. The ranchman told me he had been cruelly treated by the Mexican who broke him, so perhaps it was another case of association of ideas.

East of the willows, and separated from them by the dark green mallows and bright yellow California forget-me-nots, was the sycamore where the shrike was driven off by the blackbirds. Here a little brown wren had taken up her abode. The nest was in a dead limb with a lengthwise slit, and a scoop at the end like an apple-corer, so when one of the wrens flew down its hole with a stick, the twig stuck out of the crack as she ran along with it. She quite won my heart by her frank way of meeting her landlady. Instead of flying off, she looked me over and then quietly sat down in her doorway to wait for her mate.

On the road to my sycamores was a deserted whitewashed adobe. The place had become overgrown with weeds, vines, and bushes, and was taken possession of by squirrels and birds. Nature had reclaimed it, covering its ugly scars with garlands, and making it bloom under her tender touch. One morning, as I rode by, a black phœbe was perched on the old adobe chimney of the little house, while his mate sat on the board that covered the well, in a way that made it easy to jump to a conclusion. When she flew up to the acacia beside the well and looked down anxiously, I put the pair on my calling list. It did not take many visits to prove my conclusion—there was a nest down in the well with white eggs in it. The phœbes were most trustful birds, and not only let Canello tramp around their yard, but when a pump was put down the well, and water pumped up day by day, the brave parents, instead of deserting their eggs, went on brooding as if nothing had happened.

Black Phœbe. (One half natural size.)

Eastern Phœbe. (One half natural size.)