A-Birding on a Bronco

by Florence Merriam Bailey

Green-tailed Chewink.
(One half natural size.)

Just there, in that small open place between the trees,—how well I remember the afternoon,—I saw a new bird come out of the bushes; the green-tailed chewink he proved to be, on his way back to the Rocky Mountains. He was a beautiful stranger with a soft glossy coat touched off with yellowish green, while his high-bred gentle manners have made me remember him with affectionate interest all these years. Across the garden I heard my first song from that unique rhapsodist, the yellow-breasted chat. The same place marks another interesting experience. While I was sitting in the crotch of an oak a thrasher came out of the brush into an open space in front of me. Her feathers were disordered and apparently she had come from her nest. She walked with wings tight at her sides and her tail up at an angle well out of the way of the rustling leaves; altogether a neat alert figure that contrasted sharply with the lazy brown chippie which appeared just then in characteristic negligée, its wings hanging and tail dragging on the ground. The thrashers of Twin Oaks have bills that are curved like a sickle, and this bird used her tool most skillfully. Instead of scratching up the leaves and earth with her feet as chewinks and sparrows do, the thrasher used her bill almost exclusively. First she cleared a space by scraping the leaves away, moving her bill through them rapidly from side to side. Then she made two holes in the ground, probing deep with her long bill. After taking what she could get from the second hole, she went back to the first again, as if to see if anything had come to the surface there. Then she lay down on the sand to sun herself and acted as though going to take a sun bath, when suddenly she discovered me and fled.

When watching the bird at work I got a pretty picture in the round disk of my opera-glass. The glass was focused on the digging thrasher, but a goldfinch came into the picture and pulled at some stems for its nest and a cottontail ran rapidly across from rim to rim. I lifted the glass to follow him and saw him go trotting down the path between the bushes.

The thrasher's curved bill gives a most ludicrous look to the bird when singing. He looks as if he were trying to turn himself inside out. I once saw an adult thrasher tease its mate for food, and wondered how it would be possible for one curved bill to feed another curved bill; but a few days later I came on a family of young, and discovered for myself that they have straight bills; a most curious and interesting instance of adaptation.

At the head of the garden stands a tree that always reminds me of the horses I rode in California. I watched my first bush-tit's nest under it, with Canello grazing near; and five years later watched another bush-tit's nest there, sitting in the crotch of the oak with Mountain Billy looking over my shoulder. Although Billy was, in his prime, a bucking mustang, he became more of a petted companion than Canello had been; and when we were out alone together, we were a great deal of company for each other. As soon as I dismounted he would put his head down to have me slip the reins off over his ears, so that he could graze by himself. Sometimes, when he stood behind me he rested his bridle on my sun-hat, and once went so far as to take a bite out of the brim—in consideration of its being straw. If I were sitting on the ground and he was grazing near, he would at times walk up and gravely raise his face to look into mine. When he got tired, he would rub up against my arm and yawn, looking down at me with a friendly smile in his eyes.

Birding was rather dull for Billy—when there was neither grass nor poison ivy at hand, but he had one never-failing source of enjoyment—rolling. He tried it in the sand under the oak, one day, with the saddle on. Before I knew what he was about he was down on his knees, sitting still, with a comical, helpless look in his eyes, as if quite at a loss to know what to do next, having become conscious of the saddle. When I had gotten him on his feet and finished lecturing him I uncinched the saddle, laid it one side on the ground, took hold of the end of the long bridle, and told him to roll. A droll abstracted look came into his eyes, he dropped on his knees and, with a sudden convulsion, threw his heels into the air and rolled back and forth, rubbing his backbone vigorously on the sand. After that, the first thing every morning when we got to the oaks, I unsaddled him and let him roll, and then he would stand with bare back keeping cool in the shade of the trees.

One morning as we stood under the bush-tit's tree, I discovered a pair of turtle doves looking out at me from the leaves of the small oak opposite, craning their necks and moving their heads uneasily. One of them seemed to be shaping a nest of twigs. I drew Billy around between us, so that my staring would seem less pointed, and when one of the pair flew to the ground to spy at me, hurriedly looked the other way to remove his anxiety. His mate soon joined him, and the two doves walked away together, fixed their feathers in the sun, stretched their wings, and lazily picked at the ground. When one whirred back to the nest, the other soon followed. The gentle lovers put their bills together, while, unnoticed, I stood behind Billy, looking on and thinking that it was little wonder such birds should rise from the ground with a musical whirr.

Billy's oak was the last of the high trees in the garden. Above it was a grassy space where bright wild flowers bloomed, and pretty cottontail rabbits often went ambling over the soft turf. On one side of the opening was a low stocky oak, full of balls of mistletoe, and on the other a great blossoming bush buzzing with hummingbirds. The mistletoe had begun to sap the little oak, and on one of its dead twigs a hummingbird had taken to perching. I wondered if he were the idle mate of one of my small garden builders, but he sat and sunned himself as if his conscience were quite clear.

My first experience with gnatcatchers had been here. I suspected a nest, and the ranchman's daughter went with me to hunt through the brush. She cautioned me to look out for rattlesnakes, but the brush was so dense and the ground so covered with crooked snake-like sticks that it was not an easy matter to tell what you were stepping on. Then, the poison oak was so thick that I felt like holding up my hands to avoid it. We pushed our way through the dense chaparral, and my fearless companion got down on her hands and knees to look through the tangle for the nest. It was hard disagreeable work, even if one did not object to snakes, and we were soon so tired that we were ready to sit down and let the birds show us to their house. We might have saved ourselves all the trouble if we had done this to begin with, for it was only a few moments before the little pair went to the mistletoe oak, out in plain sight and within easy reach—how they would have laughed in their sleeves had they known what we were hunting for back in the brush! The nest was about the size of a chilicothe pod, and so covered with lichen that it looked just like a knot on the tree.