A-Birding on a Bronco

by Florence Merriam Bailey

EUCALYPTUS WOOD STORED FOR MARKET, IN A EUCALYPTUS GROVE NEAR LOS ANGELES

Mountain Billy and I both liked to wander among the blue gums. Billy liked it, perhaps, for association's sake, for we had ridden through the eucalyptus at his home in northern California. I too had pleasant memories of the northern gums, but my first interest was in finding out who lived in my little woods. A dog had once been seen driving a coyote wolf out of it, but that was merely in passing. I did not expect to meet wolves there. It was said, however, to be a good place for tarantulas, so at first I stepped over the dead leaf carpet with great caution; but never seeing any of the big spiders, grew brave and sat indifferently right on the ground before the nests, or leaning up against the trees. The ground was almost as hard as a rock, for the eucalyptus absorbed all the moisture, and that may have had something to do with its freedom from snakes and scorpions, though it would not explain the absence of caterpillars and spiders, which just then were so common outside. Though in the grove a great deal, I never ran into but one cobweb, and was conscious of the pleasant freedom from falling caterpillars. Moreover, I never saw a lizard in the blue gums, though dozens of them were to be seen about the oaks and in the brush.

It was a surprise to find so many feathered folks living in the eucalyptus, and I took a personal interest in each one of the inhabitants. The first time we started to go up and down the avenues we scared up a pair of turtle doves, beautiful, delicately tinted gentle creatures, fit tenants of the lovely grove. They did not know my friendly interest in them, and flew to the ground trailing and trying to decoy me away in such a marked manner that when we passed a young dove a few yards farther on, it was easy to put two and two together.

Yellow-birds called cheet'-tee, ca-cheet'-ta-tee, and the grove became musical with the sweet calls of the young brood. There was one nest with a roof of shaggy bark, and I wondered if the birds thought it would be pleasant to live under a roof, or whether the bark had fallen down on them after they built. I could get no trace of the owners of the nest, and it troubled me, not liking to have any little homes in my wood that I did not know all about. As we went down one aisle, a big bird went blundering out ahead of us, probably an owl, for afterwards we stumbled on a skeleton and feathers of one of the family.

In one of the trees we came to an enormous nest made of the unusual materials that are sometimes chosen by that strange bird, the road-runner. It was an exciting discovery, for that was before the road-runner had come to the ranch-house, and I had been pursuing phantom runners over the hills in the vain attempt to learn something about them; while here, it seemed, one had been living under my very vine and fig-tree! To make sure about the nest, I spoke to my neighbor ranchman, and he told me that when he had been milking during the spring he had often seen the birds come out of the blue gums, and had also seen them perching there on the trees. How exasperating! If I had only come earlier! Now they had gone, and my chance of a nest study was lost.

But my doll was not stuffed with sawdust, for all of that. There was still much to enjoy, for a mourning dove flew from her nest of twigs almost over Billy's head, and it made me quite happy to know that the gentle bird was brooding her eggs in my woods. Then it was delightful to see a lazuli bunting on her nest down another aisle. It seemed odd, for there was her little cousin nesting out in the weeds in the bright sun, while she was raising her brood in the shady forest. The two nests were as unlike as the sites. The bird outside had used dull green weeds, while this one used beautiful shining oak stems. I thought the pretty bird would surely be safe here, but one day when I called, expecting to see a growing family, I was shocked to find a pathetic little skeleton in the nest.

One afternoon in riding down the rows, I came face to face with two mites of hummingbirds seated on a branch. Their grayish green suits toned in with the color of the blue gums. It was a surprise when one of them turned to the other and fed it—the mother hummer was small enough to be taken for a nestling! She sat beside her son and fed him in the conventional way, by plunging her bill down his open mouth. When she had flown off, he stretched his wings, whirred them as if for practice, and then moved his bill as if still tasting the dainty he had had for supper. He sat very unconcernedly on a low branch right out in the middle of the road, but Billy did not run over him.

I found two hummers' nests in the eucalyptus during the summer. One builder was the one the photographer was fortunate enough to catch brooding; her nest, the one so charmingly placed on a light blue branch between two straight spreading leaves, like the knot between two bows of stiff ribbon.

The second nest was on a drooping branch, and, to make it stand level, was deepened on the down side of the limb, making it the highest hummingbird's nest I had ever seen. It was attached to a red leaf—to mark the spot, perhaps—one often wonders how a bird can come back twice to the same leaf in a forest. How one little home does make a place habitable! From a bare silent woods it becomes a dwelling-place. Everything seemed to centre around this little nest, then the only one in the grove; the tiny pinch of down became the most important thing in the woods. It was the castle which the trees surrounded.