Our Bird Comrades

by Leander S. Keyser

Going back to Kansas in winter, we note that the song sparrows, instead of remaining at one place, shifted about a good deal more than I had ever known them to do in the East. In December a pair found a dwelling in the weed clumps and brush heaps of a hollow a short distance from the Missouri River; but they soon deserted this spot, well sheltered as it was, none being seen there until the twenty-third of February. It surprised me to find another pair, and sometimes two pairs, in a thicket right on the bank of the wide river, where they were exposed to many of the winter blasts, especially those that swept down from the frozen north. Up in the deep, winding ravine they might have had excellent shelter and, so far as I could see, just as good feeding. However, I have long ago learned that there is no accounting for tastes in the bird realm any more than in the human realm.

The hardiest of the Mniotiltidae tribe are the myrtle warblers, which dapple the whitened edges of winter, both autumn and spring, with their golden rumps and amber brooches. Evidently these birds are shyer of the rigorous Ohio winters than of the more mild-mannered Kansas weather. In the former state I never saw a myrtle warbler after the first or second week in November, while in Kansas I came upon a flock of them in a wooded hollow by the river on the eighth of December, 1897, and then after a severe snowstorm had swept over the region from the western prairies. It seemed odd to find these dainty featherland blossoms when the whole country was covered with an ermine of snow.

Then they disappeared, and I did not expect to see them again until the next spring; but on the fourteenth of February, which was a warm, vernal day thrust into the midst of winter, a flock of perhaps a dozen were flitting and chirping among the trees in the suburbs of the city, their hoarse little chep, always giving one the impression that the birds have taken a cold which has affected their vocal cords, sounding as familiar as of old. However, that very evening at dusk a black cloud, charged with electricity and bellowing with anger, came up out of the west like a young Lochinvar, and hurled a fierce storm across the hills and valleys, and the next day not a myrtle warbler was to be seen in all the countryside, though I tramped weary miles in search of them. The tempest had doubtless frightened them away to the suaver southland, from which they did not return until the following spring.

One of my most pleasing observations was made on December 19, 1902. There had been a number of days of severe weather, accompanied by hard storms. Six inches of snow lay on the ground. Now the storm had spent its force, the sun was shining genially, and the snow was melting. Warm as it was, I was greatly surprised to find a flock of myrtle warblers in the woods so late in the season. They had braved the storms of the preceding week, and were as chipper and active as myrtle warblers could be. But their employment was a still greater surprise. They were darting about in the air among the treetops, as well as amid the bushes in the deep ravine, catching insects on the wing. That insects should be flying after the wintry weather of the previous week was still more surprising than that the warblers should be here to dine upon them. Soon after that day, however, the little yellow-rumps must have taken the wing route to a more genial climate, for they were seen no more that winter.

Of a more permanent character was the residence of the jolly juncos, which dwelt all winter in northeastern Kansas, let the weather be never so lowering. Always active and alert, flitting from bush to weed, and from the snow-carpeted ground to the gnarled oak saplings, now pilfering a dinner of wild berries and now a luncheon of weed seeds, they seemed to generate enough warmth in their trig little bodies to defy old Boreas to do his best. Water flowing from melting snow must be ice-cold, yet the juncos plunged into the crystal pools and rinsed their plumes with as much apparent relish as if their lavatory were tepid instead of icy, and as if balmy instead of nipping winds were blowing.

One day I watched a member of this family taking his dinner of wild grapes. Finding a dark red cluster, he would pick off the juiciest berry he could reach, press it daintily between his white mandibles for a few moments, swallow a part of the pulp, and drop the rest to the ground. What part of the grape did he eat? That is the precise problem I could not solve with certainty, for on examining the rejected portions that had been flung to the ground I found that one seed still remained, together with part of the pulp and all of the broken rind. I half suspect, though, that Master Junco likes to tipple a little—never enough, however, be it remembered, to make him reel or lose his senses. No! no! a toper Master Junco is not; he is too sane a bird for that! Would that all the citizens of our republic would display as much sound judgment and self-control.

Where all the birds sleep on biting winter nights it would be difficult to say, but the acute little juncos lease the farmer's corn shocks hard by the woods. At dusk you may startle a dozen of them from a single shock. They dart pellmell from their hiding places, chippering their protest, and when you examine the shock you find cozy nooks and ingles among the leaves and stalks, where they find couches and at the same time coverts from the sharp winds. As you stand at the border of the woods in the gloaming you can hear the rustling of the fodder as the juncos move about in their tepees, trying to find the choicest and snuggest berths. Usually they select the tops of the standing shocks, perhaps for safety; yet some may be found also in the shocks that have partly fallen to the ground.

In the latter part of February the juncos began to rehearse their spring songs, which were a welcome sound in the almost unbroken silence of the winter. The nearer the spring approached, the higher they mounted in the trees, and the more prolonged was their flight, as if they were practicing their wing exercises to inure their muscles to the strain that would be put upon them when they undertook their long journey to their northern summer homes; for, of course, the juncos do not breed in our central latitudes, but hie to the northern part of the United States and the Dominion of Canada.

In Ohio the brown creepers and the golden-crowned kinglets were constant winter companions in the woods; but, although Kansas is considerably farther south, they do not seem to be winter residents there—at least, not in the northeastern part of the state—the only exception being that in January, 1903, several creepers were observed in my yard. One may well wonder why these birds are winter residents in Ohio and only migrants in a latitude that is two degrees farther south.

There was some scant compensation in the presence of the winter wren one winter in the Sunflower state. The fourteenth of December brought one of these brown Lilliputians to a deep hollow in town, where he chattered petulantly and scampered along an old paling fence. No more winter wrens were seen until January seventh, when one darted out of some bushes on the bank of a stream about two miles south of town. My next jaunt to this hollow took place on the twenty-seventh, when, to my surprise, a hermit thrush was seen in a clump of bushes and saplings—a bird that I supposed had been sunning himself for at least a month in the genial South. While tramping about trying to get another view of the unconventional thrush, I frightened a winter wren from a cluster of weeds and bushes. My! how alarmed he was! Uttering a loud chirp, he darted down to the center of the stream and slipped into a little cave formed by ice and snow frozen over a clump of low bushes. There he hid himself like an Eskimo in his snow hut. My trudging near by frightened the bird out of the farther doorway, and he dashed away pellmell, hurling a saucy gird of protestation at me, and was seen by me no more. I examined the little snow house. It was very cunning indeed, and might well have made a cozy shelter for the little wren in stormy weather. My next meeting with a winter wren occurred on the fifteenth of February, in the same hollow, but about an eighth of a mile nearer the river. A query arises here: Did I see four different winter wrens during the winter, or only one in four different localities? Who can tell?