Our Bird Comrades

by Leander S. Keyser

That is not all about the winter wrens. My first winter in Kansas was the severest I experienced in that state; yet it was the only winter of the five I spent in Kansas that brought me the winter wren. If it would do any good, one might ask again the question why. Although the winter wren is a migrant in Ohio, as he is for the most part in northeastern Kansas, yet I never heard his song in the former state, while in the latter I was fortunate enough to listen to his tinkling melody three times the first spring I spent there. After that I never heard him, and indeed saw him only a few times. But the sweet, silvery roulade—could there be anything more charming in the world of outdoor music?

My winter rambles—and winter is almost as good a time for bird study as summer—enabled me to note some variety of temperament in the avian realm. One thing we soon learn in our winter outings: Few birds are recluses. No, they are sociable creatures, living in what might be called nomadic communities. In the spring-time, during the mating season, they pair off and become more or less exclusive and secretive, keeping close to the precincts they have selected; but in winter they grow more neighborly, and move about in the woods or over the fields in flocks of various sizes.

The woodland flocks usually consist of a number of species all of which seem to be on the most cordial terms, having, no doubt, a community of interest. As we quietly pursue our way in this wooded vale, we see no birds for some distance. Presently a fine, protesting "chick-a-dee-dee! chick-a-dee-dee!" breaks the silence. It is the warning call of the tomtit or chickadee, which we soon espy tilting about on his trapeze of twigs in the trees or bushes. But you may depend upon it he is not alone; he is only a part of the rim of a feathered colony dwelling near at hand, and consisting, very likely, of tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, juncos, tree sparrows, blue jays, one or two downy woodpeckers, a pair of cardinals, a flicker or two, and a cackling red-breasted woodpecker. There may be even a song sparrow in the company and a couple of brown creepers, and possibly a flock of purple finches, chirping cheerily in the tops of the trees.

While, in the spring and summer, birds are to be found in nearly every part of the woods, never many at one place, the opposite condition prevails in the winter. Sometimes you may walk almost a half mile without seeing or hearing a single bird; then you suddenly come upon a good-sized company of them, somewhat scattered, it is true, but within easy hailing distance. Nor do they always remain in the same localities, but move about, now here, now there, like nomads looking for the best foraging places. For instance, on the first of January, after leaving the city, I saw not a bird until I reached a pleasant sylvan hollow at least a half mile away. Here a merry crowd greeted the pedestrian. It was composed of all the birds I have just named, with flocks of bluebirds and goldfinches thrown in for good measure. On the fourteenth of January a company—either the same or another—was found in a small copsy hollow only a quarter of a mile from the city, while the spot previously occupied was deserted. It is pleasant to think of these feathered troopers roaming about the country in search of Nature's choicest storehouses. The code that obtains in these movable birdvilles is this, as near as I am able to analyze it: Each one for himself, and yet all for one another.

The familiar adage, "Birds of a feather flock together," is not always true, for in winter birds of many a feather often flock together. It may be asked, Why? No doubt largely for social ends. Nothing is more evident to the observer than that most birds love company, and a good deal of it. Their genial conversation among themselves as they pursue their work and play fully proves that. Another object is undoubtedly protection. Birds have enemies, many of them, and when the woods are bare there is little chance for hiding, and so they must be especially on the alert. Let a hawk come gliding silently and slyly down the vale, and before he gets too near some keen little eye espies him, the alarm is sounded, and the whole company scurries into the thickets or trees for safety. The chickadees and titmice seem to be a sort of sentry for the company.

A large part of the time in birdland is spent in solving the "bread-and-butter" problem. And how do our feathered citizens solve this important problem in the cold weather? Nature has spread many a banquet for her avian children, although they must usually rustle for their food just as we must in the human world. The nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, and brown creepers find larvae, grubs, borers, and insects' eggs in the crannies of the bark and other nooks and niches; the goldfinches find something to their taste in the buds of the trees and also make many a meal of thistle and sunflower seeds; the juncos and tree sparrows, forming a joint stock company in winter, rifle all kinds of weeds of their seedy treasures; the blue jays lunch on acorns and berries when they cannot find enough juicy grubs to satisfy their appetites, and so on through the whole list.

By playing the spy on the birds we may learn much about their dietary habits. It is the first of January, and we are in a wooded hollow. There is a tufted titmouse; now he flits to the ground, picks up a tidbit, darts up to a twig, places his morsel under his claws, and proceeds to peck it to pieces. Our binocular shows that it is something yellow, but we cannot make out what it is. As we draw near, the bird seizes the fragment with his bill—perhaps he fears we will filch it from him—and flits about among the bushes on the steep bank, looking for a place to stow his "goody." Presently he pushes it into a crevice of the bark, hammers it tightly into place, and darts away with a merry chirp. We go to the spot and find that his hidden treasure is a grain of corn which he has purloined from the farmer's field on the slope. A few minutes later another tit—or the same one—slyly thrusts a morsel in among some leaves and twigs on the bank, even pulling the leaves down over it for a screen. It turns out to be a small acorn. That is one of Master Tit's ways—storing away provisions for a time of need. With his stout, conical beak he is able to break the shell of an acorn, peck a corn grain into swallowable bits, and tear open the toughest casing of a cocoon. He will even break the hard pits of the dogwood berry to secure the kernel within, the ground below often being strewn with the shell fragments. No danger of Parus bicolor coming to want or going to the poorhouse.

Another day the juncos are feeding on the seeds of the foxtail or pigeon grass, in an old orchard hard by the border of the woods. Sometimes they will make a dinner of berries—the kinds too that are regarded as poisonous to man—eating the juicy pulp in their dainty way, and dropping the seeds and rind to the ground. In the ravine furrowed out by a stream—this is down in one of the hollows—there is a perfect network of bird tracks in the snow beneath a clump of weed stalks. How dainty they are, like tiny chains, twisted and coiled about on the white surface! They were made by the juncos and tree sparrows, and on examining the seed pods and clusters above the bank we note that they are torn and ragged. The feathered banqueters have been here, and while they were industriously culling the pods, some of the seeds fell to the white carpet below, and these have been carefully picked up by the birds, as we see, so that nothing should be wasted.

It is not often you catch a bird in the singing mood in the winter; yet on December 19, a purple finch was piping quite a vivacious tune in the woods. Of course, he was not in his best voice, but his performance was good enough to entitle it to the name of bird music. The finches, by the way, are strong flyers. At your approach, instead of flitting off a little way, perhaps to the next tree or bush, after the manner of the tits and nuthatches and many other birds, the finches tarry in the tree-tops as long as they deem it safe, then take to wing and fly to a distant part of the woods, and you may not see them again that day. However, they may come back to you after a while, as if they relished your company. The goldfinches are also long-distance flyers, not flitters. Usually they give some signal of their presence, either by their vivacious "pe-chick-o-pe" or their childlike and semi-musical calls; but there are times when a good-sized flock of them will suddenly appear in the tree-tops above you, and you cannot tell when they arrived, for you did not see them there at all a few minutes before.