The vesper sparrow was thus happily named by a New England bird-lover, Wilson Flagg, an old-fashioned writer on our birds, fifty or more years ago. I believe the bird was called the grass finch by our earlier writers. It haunts the hilly pastures and roadsides in the Catskill region. It is often called the road-runner, from its habit of running along the road ahead when one is driving or walking—a very different bird, however, from the road-runner of the Western States. The vesper is larger than the song sparrow, of a lighter gray and russet, and does not frequent our gardens and orchards as does the latter. In color it suggests the European skylark; the two lateral white quills in its tail enhance this impression. One season a stray skylark, probably from Long Island or some other place where larks had been liberated, appeared in a broad, low meadow near me, and not finding his own kind paid court to a female vesper sparrow. He pursued her diligently and no doubt pestered her dreadfully. She fled from him precipitately and seemed much embarrassed by the attentions of the distinguished-looking foreigner.
When the young of any species appear, the solicitude and watchfulness of the mother bird are greatly increased. Although my near neighbor the vesper sparrow in front of my door has had proof of my harmless character now for several weeks and, one would think, must know that her precious secret is safe with me, yet, when she comes with food in her beak while I am at my desk ten or eleven yards away, she maneuvers around for a minute or two, flying up to the telephone wire or a few yards up or down the road, and finally approaches the nest with much hesitation and suspicion, lest I see her in the act. When she comes again and again and again, she is filled with the same apprehension.
After a night of heavy but warm rain two of the half-fledged young were lying on the ground in front of the nest, dead. There were no murderous marks upon them, and the secret of the tragedy I could not divine.
What automatons these wild creatures are, apparently so wise on some occasions and so absurd on others! This vesper sparrow in bringing food to her young, going through the same tactics over and over, learns no more than a machine would. But, of course, the bird does not think; hence the folly of her behavior to a being that does. The wisdom of nature, which is so unerring under certain conditions, becomes to us sheer folly under changed conditions.
When the mother bird's suspicion gets the better of her, she often devours the food she has in her beak, so fearful is she of betraying her precious secret. But the next time she comes she may only maneuver briefly before approaching the nest, and then again hesitate and parley with her fears and make false moves and keep her eye on me, as if I had only just appeared upon the scene.
One of the best things a bird-lover can have in front of his house or cabin is a small dead tree with numerous leafless branches. Many kinds of birds love to perch briefly where they can look around them. I would not exchange the old dead plum-tree that stands across the road in front of my lodge for the finest living plum-tree in the world. It bears a perpetual crop of birds. Of course the strictly sylvan birds, such as the warblers, the vireos, the oven-bird, the veery and hermit thrushes, do not come, but many kinds of other birds pause there during the day and seem to enjoy the unobstructed view.
All the field and orchard and grove birds come. In early summer the bobolink perches there, then tiptoes, or tip-wings, away to the meadows below, pouring out his ecstatic song. The rose-breasted grosbeak comes and shows his brilliant front. The purple finch, the goldfinch, the indigo bunting, the bluebird, the kingbird, the ph[oe]be-bird, the great crested flycatcher, the robin, the oriole, the chickadee, the high-hole, the downy woodpecker, the vesper sparrow, the social sparrow, or chippy, pause there in the course of the day, and some of them several times during the day. Occasionally the scarlet tanager lights it up with his vivid color.
But more than all it is the favorite perch of a song sparrow whose mate has a nest not far off. Here he perches and goes through his repertoire of three or four different songs from dawn till nightfall, pausing only long enough now and then to visit his mate or to refresh himself with a little food. He repeats his strain six times a minute, often preening his plumage in the intervals. He sings several hundred times a day and has been doing so for many weeks. The house wren during the breeding-season repeats his song thousands of times a day, while the red-eyed vireo sings continuously from morning till night for several months. How a conscious effort like that would weary our human singers and their hearers! But the birds are quite unconscious, in our sense, of what they are doing.
When we pause to think of it, what a spectacle this singing sparrow presents! A little wild bird sitting on a dead branch and lifting up its voice in song hour after hour, day after day, week after week.
In terms of science we say it is a secondary sexual characteristic, but viewed in the light of the spirit of the whole, what is it except a song of praise and thanksgiving—joy in life, joy in the day, joy in the mate and brood, joy in the paternal and maternal instincts and solicitudes, a voice from the heart of nature that the world is good, thanksgiving for the universal beneficence without which you and I and the little bird would not be here? In foul weather as in fair, the bird sings. The rain and the cold do not silence him.