While I am watching a pair of pewees gather lichens from an old maple for their beautiful shallow nest, the barn-swallows shoot by with mud for their adobe huts. Now and then one pulls from the mud a few fine rootlets—perhaps of the white violet or gold thread growing there—and carries them off. They evidently know their trade. A chestnut warbler appears with some plant-fiber in her bill, and gives a cluck of surprise and disgust to find some one on the ground where she thought to have her secluded and private estate. She hesitates with the down still in her bill; it is evident what she must be thinking; but at length she decides to risk it, and enters the huckleberries. She has, of course, gone into the bushes a long way from the nest. One has great sympathy with the birds in their little circumventions and dissimulations, knowing their tribulations. They live among their numerous foes much as did the early settlers in this land,—that is to say, in spite of them. The weasel, the owl, and the cat—the terrible cat—are appointed to decimate the population of birds.
In the several nests of warblers, I am observing, the thrifty housewife is evidently the home-builder, whereas the male seems to take it upon himself merely to cheer and encourage her. After she has constructed a framework she settles herself in this and builds the wall around her, quite as if she were fitting a garment to herself. Her little ways while so engaged are distinctly feminine. To think that she has never been taught her trade, has perhaps never before fitted such a garment, and she is already deft and expert! The pair seem to take an almost human satisfaction in their home. Now and again they appear to talk it over together. Who can doubt they have some pleasure in this preparation, that they have bird-plans and bird-hopes?
We do not really know, a bird till we have found its nest and seen it at home. When I came upon the nest of the snowbird in the midst of a clearing in the mountains, it was like visiting the house for the first time of one I had known for years—a person of some distinction at that. It was placed high and dry on a tussock in a flaming patch of hawkweed. She had an eye for the practical, and knew better than to put her house where the cellar might be flooded. The four greenish mottled eggs were her one priceless treasure, which was to her as life itself. They were warm, and the whole aspect of the nest was sweet and inviting. It appeared to breathe some feminine element, so dainty was it, so begirt with flowers.
A humming-bird's nest that I have been watching the present season is placed on a pitch pinecone, and appears to a casual view to be the cone itself. It seems as if the bird had it in mind to simulate this or she would not have chosen such a peculiar site, for it affords no advantage from a structural point of view. If this be true it is a departure from all traditions, and shows a bird of some character and originality. In other respects it is like any humming-bird's nest—one of the most exquisite of all natural objects.
BIRD LIFE
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY RUDOLF EICKEMEYER
In the course of ten days, in place of one of the eggs appeared a small and peculiarly homely object which resembled a spider as much as anything. Two days later the other egg was hatched. At this stage the bills of the young birds were very short, but day by day they lengthened and grew more needlelike. At length one bird opened its minute and shining black eyes for the first time. The other fell from the nest on the following day, before its eyes were opened, so that all it had known of life was the consciousness of hunger.
The female fed her young with much less frequency than do other birds. When so engaged she perched upon the rim of the nest and pumped the food into them after the manner of her kind. As she flew to and fro, she appeared to move always at the same speed, as if her wings were keyed to a definite rate of vibration and could not vary. Gradually the young bird emerged from its gruesome infancy, and day by day became more sylphlike. Heavy winds prevailed, but the diminutive cradle remained unharmed, though branches were everywhere blown from the trees. So was the wind tempered in that case at least, till one day the sylph left the nest, as a thistle-down might detach itself and sail away on the breeze.