In Bird Land

by Leander S. Keyser

That there’s no living with thee or without thee.”

One question—not a profound one, I confess—must bring this chapter to a close: Do the plumed ladies ever propose? One might imagine a lovelorn female bird throwing aside her maidenly reserve in a fit of desperation, and singing the lines of Mrs. Browning,—

“But I love you, sir;

And when a woman says she loves a man,

The man must hear her, though he love her not.”

II.
BIRD NURSERIES.

A bird’s nest is a bedroom, dining-room, sitting-room, parlor, and nursery all in one; for there the young birds sleep, eat, rest, entertain their guests (if they ever have any), and receive their earliest training. Yet there is no doubt that in treating the nest as a nursery we make use of the aptest simile that could be chosen. Those who have not given the matter special attention would scarcely suspect how many and varied are the interests that cluster around these dwellings of our little brothers and sisters of field and woodland. The growth of the bantling family, their mental development, their deportment in the nest, their chirpings and chatterings, their way of beguiling the time, the length of their stay in their childhood home,—all these, and many other problems of equally absorbing interest, can be solved only by the closest surveillance. But it is no light task to watch a nest at close enough range to study the natural, unrestrained ways of the young birds. The fact is, in many, perhaps most, cases it cannot be done.

But before describing the inmates of the nursery it would be well to give some attention to the nursery itself, its site and structure. By going to the books I might tell you of many quaint nests, of the nests of the tailor-bird, the water-ouzel, the parula warbler, the burrowing owl, and many others; but—begging pardon for my conceit—I prefer not to get my material second-hand. One would rather describe one’s own observations, even though one may not be able to present so rare a list of curios. The nest of the common wood-thrush, right here in my own neighborhood, is of far more personal interest than the remarkable nest of the fairy martin of Australia, which I have small hope of ever seeing.

Having mentioned the nest of the wood-thrush, I might as well begin with it. It is not a remarkable structure from an architectural point of view. It might be called a semi-adobe dwelling, thatched with various kinds of grasses and leaves, and lined with vegetable fibres. It is much like the nest of the robin, only Madam Thrush does not go quite so extensively into the plastering business. It has been interesting to study the ingenuity of these sylvan architects in choosing sites for their nests. They seem to know just where a nest may be built with the least labor in order to make it sit firmly in its place. In the woods that I most frequently haunt there is a sort of bushy sapling whose branches, at a certain point on the main stem, often grow out almost horizontally for a few inches, and then form an elbow by shooting up almost vertically, thus making an arbor, as it were, which says plainly to the thrush, “This is just the site for a nest.” In these crotches the wood-thrush rears her dwelling, its walls being firmly supported all around by the perpendicular branches. Do these saplings grow for the special benefit of the wood-thrush, or does the feathered artificer accommodate herself to the circumstances, or is there mutual adaptation between bird and bush? That is a problem for the evolutionist.

But the thrush often selects other sites for her nursery. One day I found a nest deftly placed on the point of intersection of two almost horizontal limbs. From the lower one several small branches grew up in an oblique direction, to give the walls of the mud cottage firm support. The intersecting boughs belonged to two different saplings. Another nest that did not have very strong external support was set down upon the short stub of a limb, which ran up into the mud floor and held the structure firmly in place.