A-Birding on a Bronco

by Florence Merriam Bailey

Five years later, on going back to the ranch, I found the phœbes around the old place, but hunted in vain for the nest. A schoolhouse had been built in the interval, near the old adobe, and the birds perched on its gables, on the hitching posts in front of it, and on my prune-trees, that had taken the place of the willows, across the road. They even came up to my small ranch-house and filled me with delightful anticipations by inspecting the beams of the piazza; but they could not find what they wanted and flew off to build elsewhere. Later in the season, a neighbor whose ranch was opposite mine showed me a phœbe's nest inside his whitewashed chicken house. It was a mud pocket like a swallow's, made of large pellets of mud plastered against a board in the peak of the house. Of course I could never prove that these birds were my old friends, but it seemed very probable.

The smallest of my tenants was a hummingbird. I saw it fly into a low spray, and it stayed there so long that when it left I rode up to look, and found that it was building on the tip of a twig under a sycamore leaf umbrella, one whose veining showed against the light. By rising in the saddle I could just reach the twig and pull it down to look inside the nest; but afterwards I found so many other hummers who could be watched with fewer gymnastics, I rested content with knowing that this little friend was there.

One morning, when on the way to the sycamores, I found an oriole's nest high in a tree. Canello was hungry, but when permitted to eat barley under the branches kept reasonably quiet. There were two species of orioles in the valley; and not knowing to which the nest belonged, I prepared to wait for the return of the owner. The heat was so oppressive that I took off my hat, and a bird flew into the tree with bill open, gasping. After my hot ride down the valley the shade of the big tree was very grateful; and the cool trade wind coming through a gap in the hills most refreshing.

Suddenly there was a flash—we all waked up—was that the house owner? What a remarkable bird! and what a display of color!—it had a red head, fiery in the sun; a black back, and a vivid yellow breast. On looking it up in Ridgway the stranger proved to be the Louisiana tanager, a high mountain bird. That was a red letter day for me. No one can know, without experiencing it, the delight of such discoveries. The pleasure is as genuine as if the world were made anew for you. In the excitement the oriole's nest was neglected; but ordinarily the rare unknown birds did not detract from the enjoyment of the old, more familiar ones.

So when the brilliant stranger flew away and was seen no more I turned with pleasure to the pair of sparrow hawks who had come to live on the ranch. A branch had fallen from one of the trees, and the hawks found its hollow just suited to their needs. It was a good, spacious house, but a pair of their cousins who had built in a tree over the whitewashed hovel had made a sad mistake in choosing their dwelling—for the front door was so small they could hardly enter! I used to stop to watch them, and was very much amused at their efforts to make the best of it.

Canello could stand up to his knees in alfilaree clover under their tree, so he allowed me to watch the birds in peace. The first day the male sparrow hawk flew to the tree with what looked like a snake dangling from his bill, and as he alighted screamed kit-kit'ar' r' r' r', spreading his wings and shaking them with emphasis. When this brought no response, he flew from branch to branch, crying out lustily. He revolved around the end of a broken limb in whose small hollow was framed the head of Madame Falco. From her height she looked like a rag doll at her window. Her funny round face, which filled the doorway, had black spots for bill and eyes, and dark lines down the cheeks that might have simulated rag doll tattooing.

Evidently there was some reason why she did not want to come to breakfast. Once she started to turn back into the nest, but at last laboriously wedged her way out of the hole and flew to a branch. Her mate was at her side in an instant, and handed her the snake. She took it greedily and flew off with it, let us hope because she was afraid of me, not because she did not want to divide with him, or thought he would ask her to, after all his devotion and patience!

When the bird went back to her nest, her hesitation about leaving it was explained. For a long time she sat on a limb near by with tail bobbing, apparently trying to make up her mind to go in. When she did fly up at the hole she could not get in, and half fell down. After this failure she sat down on a branch, her tail tilting as violently as a pipit's, and when Canello moved around too much, took the excuse and flew off. Her mate came back with her, but when he saw us, he screamed and flew away, leaving her to her fate.

She sat looking at her hole a long time before she tried it again, and when she did try, failed. It was not till her fourth attempt that she succeeded. The hole was very much too small for her, and the surface of the branch below it was so smooth and slippery that it gave her nothing to hold to in trying to wedge herself in. She would fly against the hole and attempt to hook her bill over the edge, and so draw herself up, but her shoulders were too big for the space. She tried to make them smaller by drawing down her wings lengthwise. Once, in her efforts, she spread her tail like a fan. After her third struggle, she sat for a long time smoothing her ruffled feathers, shaking herself, scratching her face with her foot and trying to get her plumes in order.

While making her toilet she apparently thought of a new plan. She went back to the hole and, raising her claw, fastened it inside the hole and with a spasmodic effort wedged in her body and disappeared down the black hollow. Her mate came a moment after, but she did not even appear in the doorway when he called. Again he came, crying keek' keek' kick-er' r' r', in tender falsetto; but it was no use. Madame Falco had had altogether too hard a time getting in, to go out again in a hurry. He held a worm in his bill till he was tired, changed it to his claw, letting it dangle from that for a while; and then, as she would make no sign, finally flew off.