In Bird Land

by Leander S. Keyser

A week later my third and last call on the heron household was made. What an odd spectacle it presented! The young birds had grown wonderfully, though still covered with down, with very little sign of feathers. As my head appeared above the rim of the nest, they slowly craned up their India-rubber necks, then rose on their stilt-like legs, and looked at me with wondering, wide-open eyes that gleamed almost like gold. The spectacle made me think of ghouls, incongruous as the simile may seem. When I touched one of the birds, it huddled, half-alarmed, down to the bottom of the nest. Another slyly stalked off to the edge of the platform, upon a thick clump of twigs and leaves, eying me keenly as he moved away. I hurriedly climbed down, lest he should topple to the ground and dash himself to death; and thus, while I was on the brink of causing a tragedy, yet, as a sort of emollient to my conscience, I consoled myself with the thought that I had really prevented one.

Another interesting discovery of the same spring was a killdeer plover’s nest, which my farmer friend across-lots found in a clover-field. There had been a heavy rainfall, making the ploughed ground as soft as mush; but my tall rubber boots were mud-proof, and so I went to pay the plovers my respects. This was after six o’clock in the evening. I found one little bird in the shallow, pebble-lined nest, and three eggs, one of them slightly broken at the larger end. The plover nestling was an odd baby, with its large head, fluffy, square-shouldered body, and slender beak sticking straight out. A small piece of the egg-shell still clung to its back. On taking the tiny thing into my hand, what was this I saw? It had only three toes on each foot, instead of four, as most birds have; and those three were all fore toes, while the bird had no hind toe at all. Why the plover should have no hind toe is an enigma; but then, the ostrich has none, either, and only two in front,—“every species after its kind.”

Early the next morning two more youngsters had broken shell, and come forth to keep their more precocious brother company. The eldest was marked quite distinctly about the head and neck like its parents, having the characteristic white and black bands, thus early proclaiming the persistence of its type. When I set it down—for I had lifted it in my hand—it started to run over the soft ground, enhancing its speed by flapping its tiny wings. The picture was indescribably cunning. The bird was so small that it looked like a downy dot scudding over the undulations of the ground. Think of a baby only about fifteen hours old running away from home in that manner! I caught the infantile scapegrace and placed it back in its cradle, where it remained. During the night there had been a very heavy fall of rain, and yet these youngsters, small as they were, had not been drowned, having doubtless been covered by their parents. At six o’clock in the evening they had all left the nest, and, search as I would, I could find no clew to their whereabouts, though the parent birds were flying and scuttling about with loud cries of warning to me to keep my distance. Thus it would seem that young plovers, like young partridges, grouse, and ducks, leave the nest at a very tender age.

Before closing, I must mention something odd that befell a kingfisher’s nest. A year prior I had found a nest in a high bank in a sloping field, where the water had washed out a deep gully. In passing the bank one day I noticed that it had been partly broken down; there had been a landslide on a small scale, caused by the washing of the heavy spring rains. Half way to the top, on a narrow shelf, lay a clutch of kingfisher’s eggs, some of them broken by the caving of the bank. The landslide had occurred after the cavity had been made and the eggs deposited, thus blasting the hopes of the kingfishers. However, they had not become despondent, for, later in the season, they burrowed a hole for an underground nursery in another part of the bank.

III.
BIRD HIGH SCHOOLS.

It is not to be supposed that there is a regularly graded system of instruction in the school-life of the birds. There may be method in their learning, but it would be difficult to state positively just where the primary, grammar, high-school, and college grades merge into one another, or when diplomas of efficiency are granted, if granted at all. But that there is something of a system of pedagogy among birds, and that the juniors do receive instruction from their seniors, no observer of feathered life can doubt for a moment. In the systems of human instruction the child-life of the young learner usually ends with his high-school course; he then stands at the threshold of young manhood, ready to do a good deal of wrestling with his problems on his own account. Taking that fact as our cue, we should say that the high-school instruction of the youthful bird begins when he leaves the nest, and ends when he is able to fly with dexterity, and provide for his own support, at least in the main. It is not probable that the lecture system prevails in the bird community, or the method of class instruction now in vogue, or that books and charts and blackboards are used; but the instruction is chiefly individual, and is carried on mostly by example, coercion, and urgent appeal. There is not an inexhaustible number of branches to be pursued by the little undergraduates in plumes; but their efforts at obtaining an education consist chiefly in mastering three grand accomplishments,—flying, feeding, and singing.

If ever you have seen a bevy of young red-headed woodpeckers, led by several of their elders, taking their wing-exercises, choosing a certain tree in the woods for a point of departure, and then sailing around and around with loud cries of delight, you must have concluded that it was a veritable class in calisthenics. One seldom has an opportunity to see young birds taking their first lessons in flight, but it is worth one’s time and patience to be present at such a recitation. The parents set the example by flying from the nest to a perch near by, and then coax and scold their children to follow their example. If the little learners hesitate, as they usually do, their impatient teachers exclaim: “Why, just try it once. You never will learn to fly any younger. If you will only spread your wings, let go of the rim of the nest, and venture out on the air, you will find that it will bear you up. Don’t be afraid.” But perhaps the pupils complain that it makes their heads dizzy to look down from their awful height. Then the teachers pooh-pooh at their fears, and cry condescendingly, “The idea of being afraid! Why, just see here!” and they mount up into the air, poise, careen, and perform other extraordinary feats, while the youngsters gaze at them in wide-eyed wonder. At last, after much persuasion and many half-attempts, one of the youngsters spreads his pinions and flutters laboriously until he scrambles upon the nearest twig, with bated breath and throbbing pulses. He is frightened half to death, but he has found that the friendly air will support him if he makes proper use of his wings, and so he will soon make another effort, and another, until he begins really to enjoy the exercise. However, several days may elapse before the youngest and weakest member of the class can muster sufficient courage to take his first aerial journey.

Some species of birds graduate from the nest much sooner than others. In one case I observed that a family of goldfinches remained in the nest just seven days after a family of bush-sparrows, hatched on the same day, had taken their flight.[8] The yellow-billed cuckoo has given me no little surprise in this respect. When he first creeps out of his shell apartment, he is a callow, ungainly infant, black as coal, with a sparse covering of stiff bristles; but almost before a week has passed, he has hopped from his washed-out cradle to try the realities of the great world around him. Why the agile little goldfinch should remain in the crib so much longer than his less dexterous fellow-pupil, the cuckoo, is a problem of bird school-life that I must leave for solution to wiser heads.

Having gone from the nest, the young bird has not yet learned all about the art of flying; no, indeed! He must become perfect by practice. Many a blunder will he make. At first he cannot always nicely calculate the distance to the twig that he has in view, and so he fails to give himself the proper propulsive force; he misses his footing by going too far, or not far enough, and then where he will alight is a question of what he happens to strike first. Probably a wild, desperate scramble will ensue, which ends only when the youthful novice has fallen plump upon the ground. He may be very much alarmed; but as soon as he recovers his breath, his courage rises, and he tries again.

Although the young birds have the whole world for their larder, with victuals just to their taste constantly at their elbow, they must learn even the art of eating, and, until they do so, they demand that their parents be their caterers. For several weeks after they have passed the first term of school-life, they will still sit on a limb, open their mouths, twinkle their wings, and allow their patient victuallers to thrust morsel after morsel down their throats. My opinion is that the patience of their parents wears out after a time, and they leave the overgrown youngster to paddle for himself. How proud he must be of the exploit when he catches his first insect and successfully stows it away in his maw! In a deep, quiet glen I watched a family of young phœbes and their parents catching insects on the wing. It was amusing. The old birds evidently felt that it was about time for their pupils to learn to provide their own victuals, but the youngsters stoutly demanded that their luncheons be brought them in the accustomed manner. They must have noticed that the old birds would occasionally catch an insect and dispose of it themselves. Once when the parent bird darted out for a small cabbage butterfly, a young fellow swooped down at her with such force that she let the insect squirm out of her bill and flutter to the ground, and thus make good its escape before she could recover it. Both birds lost their dinner through the greed and rashness of the little gourmand. Another time an old bird caught a yellow butterfly, dashed to a limb, and quickly gulped it down, wings and all, before any of the presumptuous high-schoolers could reach him. The bearing of the bird was most laughable. Finally, several of the young birds darted out into the air for passing insects, proving that they were taking lessons in that fine art; but their gymnastics were far from perfect, and they hit the mark scarcely half the time.