SONG SPARROW
XII
MY BIRD FAMILY
A great big family—that’s what my bird neighbors are to me. This large family is made up of smaller families. Let me set them all down in a row: There are the bluebirds, meadowlarks, killdeers, song sparrows, robins, purple martins, goldfinches, wrens, orioles, thrashers, thrushes, waxwings, flycatchers, pewee, phœbe, and the redheaded woodpecker. Oh, there is one more. I would by no means slight the humble chimney swift. When I hear that “Gitse gitse” twitter, then I know that they, too, have come. From early March when the first bluebird arrives, until late May when pewee comes, I am like a mother who waits at evening, unsatisfied until all her children are in for the night. When I hear the call of the latest comer, the sweet-voiced pewee, then I know that my absent ones have all returned.
Add to these the Bob Whites, the cardinals, bluejays, and flickers, who stay the year round, and the chickadees, nuthatches, downy and hairy woodpeckers, and juncos, who come in autumn to spend the winter, and you have my bird family, a wonderful family, of musicians, of workmen, of homemakers—fathers and mothers and children.
To me the ways of birds are more entertaining than the best play I have ever attended. They enact real life, not make-believes. Then, too, what music can be compared to the sunrise and sunset concerts of birds in springtime and in early summer? To know each singer by name adds much to the enjoyment.
The ways of birds are also wonderful, past finding out. Who can explain how they make their nests so pretty, when the only tools they have are beak and feet? Then, how gingerly they hide their nests, some with dainty curtains of leaves, others by blending colors! To find a bird’s nest always fills me with reverence. It is a little home, a sacred place to its owners. It shall be sacred to me. The mother-wit and father-wisdom that birds show in rearing their young and in protecting them from harm makes me believe that they do think and plan and reason out things much as we human beings do. The most wonderful thing about birds is the long journey that so many of them make every year, generally with several babies only a few months old in the family.
It has been proved that birds will return year after year to the same orchard, garden, yard, or porch. I know my birds by their actions. I do not need to tie bands on their legs to know them. When they return they visit all their familiar haunts, not cautiously as a stranger would, but boldly, and with the joyousness of those who have returned home after a long absence. They call to me as if they would say: “Here we are again! Are you still here, too?”
Then what curiosity they display when they find a new bath! How they fly over and around it, trying to satisfy themselves that it is a safe place to alight! What joy they express by their splashing!
It was while taking her bath that Mother Oriole was caught one day by the camera. Most wonderful to tell, her own babies whom she often brought with her took this picture. How did they do it? They tried to perch on the thread leading from the camera over to the house, where I sat waiting for Mrs. Oriole to come out of the water before taking her picture. The thread was not strong enough to hold the young birds. They went down with it, and in so doing snapped the spring which operated the shutter. This took the picture of Mother Oriole in the bath.
Those of my bird family who inhabit houses are sure every spring to find either some new houses, or their old ones cleaned and repaired.