CRESTED CURASSOW.
(Crax globicera.)
⅕ Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.
SOME NOTABLE NESTS.
The Clymer boys and girls, of Cloverdale, New England, belonged to a Bird Club; they were proposed to membership by their neighbors, the Walkers; in fact, the two families composed the club, and it partook of the nature of a secret society.
All this was before the young people of Cloverdale knew of Clark University, and Dr. Hodges’ “Ten to One Clubs,” wherein the members pledged themselves to strive by all imaginable means—provided they were also practical—to induce ten song birds to live and sing each year, where only one was found the year before.
It was not necessary for the Cloverdale Club to put up carefully constructed and artistic bird houses, or to hang cotton and the like fine nest-building materials in choicest ornamental shade trees—not at all. The English Sparrow had not found the village in those days; the song birds were there, they knew all the good locations and just where to find the best stuffs for constructing, furnishing and decorating their homes; the work of the club was to find these homes, to study them, with the ways and habits of their occupants, and to record their discoveries in a big book labeled, “Things Not Generally Known.”
Many of the statements in this book were as broad and conclusive as scientific dogmas, but the Cloverdale Club did not waste its time searching for hundreds of instances to establish a single truth; one was enough to be worthy of record; then, if some time the big book should be given to the public, and some naturalist or investigator should choose to confirm its statements by patient research, of course he would be welcome so to do. The club had the distinction of discovery, that was enough.
One interesting item recorded was this: “Birds—such as Orioles—who build in conspicuous places, like to decorate the outside of their nests, and in so doing are known to use manufactured materials and patterns.” Strange statement, but of course thereby hangs a tale, and here it is.
At the spring house-cleaning time, Mrs. Clymer had the big, bright sitting-room carpet taken out under one of the old colonial elms, at the east of the house, to be cleaned. Mrs. Baltimore Oriole was up in the elm that morning looking for a building spot that should be a bit superior to the old one; she had spent three summers in that tree, was familiar with the ways of the club, and habits of the family; like the birds of Eugene Field’s boyhood, “she knew her business when she built the old fire-hang-bird’s nest.”
No one was near when Mrs. Oriole fixed her eyes on the great red, green and white ingrain carpet, and admired it; what she thought we know not, but when she glanced at the hitching post under the tree, she instantly descended from high, waving branch, to lowly square post, for exactly covering the top of the same was a miniature carpet, a piece just six by six inches which Patrick should have left indoors; not having done so, he laid it on the inviting post for safe-keeping. That bit of wool fabric was very valuable, it exactly filled a jog right by the fireplace, in which, alas! ever after was seen an ugly piece of oil cloth!