CHAPTER X
BIRD RESERVES AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI
On June 7, 1915, I was the guest of my friend John M. Parker, of New Orleans, at his house at Pass Christian, Mississippi. For many miles west, and especially east, of Pass Christian, there are small towns where the low, comfortable, singularly picturesque and attractive houses are owned, some by Mississippi planters, some by city folk who come hither from the great Southern cities, and more and more in winter-time from the great Northern cities also, to pass a few months. The houses, those that are isolated and those in the little towns, stand in what is really one long row; a row broken by vacant reaches, but as a whole stretching for sixty miles, with the bright waters of the Gulf lapping the beach in front of them, and behind them leagues of pine forest. Between the Gulf and the waters lies a low ridge or beach of white sand. It is hard to make anything grow in this sand; but the owners of the houses have succeeded, using dead leaves and what manure is available; and in this leaf-mould the trees and grasses and flowers grow in profusion. Long, flimsy wooden docks stretch out into the waters of the Gulf; there is not much bad weather, as a rule, but every few years there comes a terrible storm which wrecks buildings and bridges, destroys human lives by the thousand, washes the small Gulf sailing craft ashore, and sweeps away all the docks.
Our host's house was cool and airy, with broad, covered verandas, and mosquito screens on the doors and the big windows. The trees in front were live-oaks, and others of his own planting—magnolias, pecans, palms, and a beautiful mimosa. The blooming oleanders and hydrangeas were a delight to the eye. Behind, the place stretched like a long ribbon to the edge of the fragrant pine forest, where the long-leaved and loblolly pines rose like tall columns out of the needle-covered sand. Five pairs of mocking-birds and one pair of thrashers had just finished nesting; at dawn, when the crescent of the dying moon had risen above the growing light in the east, the mockers sang wonderfully, and after a while the thrasher chimed in. Only the singing of nightingales where they are plentiful, as in some Italian woods, can compare in strength and ecstasy and passion, in volume and intricate change and continuity, with the challenging love-songs of many mockers, rivalling one another, as they perch and balance and spring upward and float downward through the branches of live-oak or magnolia, after sunset and before sunrise, and in the warm, still, brilliant moonlight of spring and early summer.
There were other birds. The soldierly looking red-headed woodpeckers, in their striking black, red, and white uniform, were much in evidence. Gaudy painted finches, or "non-pareils," were less conspicuous only because of their small size. Blue jays had raised their young in front of the house, and, as I was informed, had been successfully beaten off by the mockers and thrashers when they attempted assaults on the eggs and nestlings of the latter. Purple martins darted through the air. King-birds chased the big grackles and the numerous small fish-crows—not so very much bigger than the grackles—which uttered queer, hoarse croakings. A pair of crested flycatchers had their nest in a hollow in a tree; the five boldly marked eggs rested, as usual, partly on a shed snake skin. How, I wonder, through the immemorial ages, and why, did this particular bird develop its strange determination always, where possible, to use a snake's cast-off skin in building its nest? Every season, I was told, this flycatcher nested in the same hollow; and every season the hollow was previously nested in by a tufted titmouse. Loggerhead shrikes were plentiful. Insects were their usual food, but they also pounced on small birds, mice, and lizards, and once on a little chicken. They empale their prey on locust thorns and on the spines of other trees and bushes; and I have known a barbed-wire fence to be decorated with the remains of their victims. There were red cardinal-birds; and we saw another red bird also, a summer tanager.
But the most interesting birds on the place were not wild, being nothing more nor less than ordinary fowls engaged in what to me were most unordinary occupations. Parker had several hundred fowls, and had by trial discovered the truth of the statement that capons make far better mothers than do hens, especially for very young chicks. We saw dozens of broods of chickens, and one or two of young guinea-fowl, being taken care of by caponized bantams, game-cocks, and cochin-chinas. These improvised mothers looked almost precisely as they did before being caponized, the differences, chiefly in the color of the comb, being insignificant, for they were full-grown birds when operated on. But their natures had suffered the most extraordinary change, for they had developed not only the habits but the voices of unusually exemplary mother hens. They never crowed; they clucked precisely like hens; and they protected, covered, fed, and led about their broods just like hens. They were timid, except in defense of the chicks; but on their behalf they were really formidable fighters. The change in habits takes place with extraordinary rapidity. In a few hours the cock has completely changed and can be placed with a brood which he promptly adopts. In perhaps one case in ten he does not take readily to his duties as an ex-officio hen; and in such case the further measure adopted seems as incredible as the rest of the performance, for he is made drunk with whiskey, acts as if he were intoxicated, and then promptly develops maternal feelings, and zealously enters on his new career.
We saw game-cocks clucking and calling to their broods of little chicks, to get them to the crumbs we tossed to them, and then sitting with the chicks not only under their wings but on their backs. They kept the broods with them until the young were nearly as large as they were; in one case the brood consisted of guinea-fowl. Moreover, they welcomed any brood, no matter how large. One big rooster was leading around so many chickens—all, by what seemed a sardonic jest, his own progeny, the progeny of the days when he was a mere unregenerate father—that when they took shelter under him he had to spread his wings; "like a buzzard," said my host, to whom soaring buzzards were familiar sights. Of course, the extraordinary part of all this was not the loss of the male qualities but the immediate and complete acquirement of those of the female. It was as if steers invariably took to mothering calves, or geldings to adopting foals.
These capon-mothers, with their weight and long spurs, fought formidably for their chicks. In one case a Cooper's hawk swooped on a half-grown chick, whereupon the game-cock who was officiating as hen flew at the aggressor, striking it so hard as to injure the top of the wing. The hawk was unable to fly, and the cock pressed it too close to let it escape. Although the rooster could not kill the hawk, for the latter threw itself on its back with extended talons, he had rendered it unable to escape, and one of the men about the place came up and killed it, having been attracted by the noise of the fight. Another cock killed a big blacksnake which tried to carry off one of the chicks. The cock darted to and fro over the snake, striking it continually until it succumbed.