It was at twilight, and I stood on the edge of an old orchard where grew a white-oak tree. As I looked away across the valley, I heard a humming noise, and through the dimming light saw a tiny bird buzzing through the air just overhead. As I watched, she alighted on a long limb about ten feet from the ground, and even an ignoramus like myself could recognize the long curved beak of the hummingbird. This one had a white instead of a crimson throat, which, I was to learn, marked the female. For an instant the little bird perched on the limb just over my head, and then suddenly sidled toward what seemed a tiny knot, but was not. Lest I be betrayed into further puns unworthy the fair fame of a bird-student, I hasten to add that I had found the nest of a ruby-throated hummingbird.
It was too dark that evening to examine it more closely, but by sunrise the next morning I was on the spot with a step-ladder, and with more delight than I have ever had in a nest since, looked down into the tiny lichen-covered, cobweb-stitched, thistle-down-lined nest of this smallest of all our birds. Within were two tiny white eggs. The opening of the nest was just about the size of a quarter of a dollar, and it did not seem possible that two little birds could later be brooded and fed and reared in such a tiny cradle. The nest itself was saddled on the limb, which was perhaps four inches in diameter. It was so placed that the bottom of the nest did not rest directly on the limb, but hung a little to one side, so that the future little birds would rest in the swing of a hammock rather than on the hard foundation of the branch itself. The nest was lashed to the limb with strand after strand of cobwebs carried and wound around and around, until the whole structure was firmly anchored by myriads of almost invisible but tough little ropes. Inside, it was lined with the soft yellowish-white fluffy fleece found inside milkweed pods. Next came a layer of reddish-brown seed-husks, all bound and lashed together with a network of cobwebs. On the outside was a layer of dull ashy-green lichen-scales. Each minute separate fragment was fitted into a mosaic which covered the whole nest. Outside of everything was another almost invisible network of cobwebs, like the net of a balloon which holds the round globe within. There must have been hundreds of gossamer strands making up this network, all so fine that only by the closest examination could they be seen.
Every bird’s nest is a miracle, but I don’t know any that is such a marvel of industry and ingenuity and beauty as that of the ruby-throated bird. Later on, when Mrs. Hummingbird was through with her home, I collected it, and had an opportunity of seeing just what the building of that nest meant to her—for, sad to say, Mr. H. B. never moves a claw to help in home-building. The labor of collecting the spider-webs alone, to say nothing of the hundreds of lichen-flecks and seed-husks, would seem to be almost impossible. On the outside of the nest I counted over a hundred separate bits of lichen, and then undoubtedly overlooked many; while in the next layer of seed-husks there were probably at least three times as many. Bit by bit, flake by flake, the little worker had gathered her material, and from it had spun, and woven and built a nest which was not only soft and secure for her little ones, but, when finished, was absolutely disguised. No prowler on the ground or pirate of the air could tell that nest from a lichen-covered knot, unless, as had been my fortune, the little mother herself showed it to them.
So endeth the tale of my first treasure-hunting. If you are not one of us, don’t let another summer go by without joining our Order. You will find a wealth of happiness which no thief can steal nor misfortune lose, and which, as the years go by, pays ever-increasing dividends of joyous memories.
[VII]
BIRD’S-NESTING
It is the best of all out-of-door sports bar none. The thrill of hidden treasure, the lure of adventure, the joy of escape from in-door days—all these are part of it. Try it of a May day, or before sunrise some June morning. I have a friend who leads a double life. During business hours he is the president of a bank. Outside of them he is the most abandoned bird’s-nester of my acquaintance. If his depositors could see their president going up the side of a perpendicular oak-tree with climbing-irons, to look at the dizzy home of a red-tail hawk, or picking his way across bottomless bogs in search of the bittern’s nest, there would probably be a run on his bank.
I know a woman seventy-two years young, who took up bird’s-nesting in order to help forget a great sorrow. While her contemporaries are dozing their lives away in caps and easy-chairs, she is afield in all sorts of weather, and sees more birds and finds more nests in a year than the average woman meets in a lifetime. Incidentally she gets more health and happiness out of life than any woman of her age whom I have ever met.
Another woman, in a little town in New Jersey, by the sudden death of her husband was left alone with but little money and no friends. Moreover, her doctor advised her that she had only a year at most to live. One day she found the nest of a prairie warbler, that little jewel-casket lined with fern-wool. It held four eggs like pink-flecked pearls. The very next day she bought a bird-book, and forgot all about herself, and spent the happiest months of her life hunting nests. At the end of a year in the open, she notified her indignant physician that she had become too much interested in her hobby to confirm his diagnosis. To-day she supports herself happily by writing about what she sees and hears among the wild-folk.