THE POCKET BIRD.
About the middle of May a gaily colored bird from his winter home in neo-tropical regions visits the United States. His body is bright scarlet, his slightly forked tail and his wings intense black and his bill sea green. The ornithologist names him the scarlet tanager—tanager being a Brazilian word applied to this class of birds. But he is also sometimes called the “pocket bird,” because his jetty wings when closed upon his red sides are fancifully thought to resemble pockets. He is also known as the black-winged redbird. It takes three years for his gaudy plumage to become perfect. His mate is clad in green, so that she is easily concealed when on her nest amid the leaves of the swamp oak or some other favorite nesting tree. The nest is shallow and loosely woven, so that the eggs may be seen from beneath. But it is strong enough to hold the young birds securely until fledged. The eggs, three to five in number, are greenish-blue, spotted with brown and purple. The young birds are a clownish looking set in parti-colored robes of scarlet yellow and olive green. The song of the tanager somewhat resembles that of the robin in modulation; but the quality of the song is so soft and wavering that there are observers who call him a lazy bird, too lazy to sing. But others declare that it is worth while to take a long tramp in order to listen to his beautiful notes. Mr. Abbott calls him a “gayly colored blunder” without peculiarity of voice or manner. His song has been translated “Pshaw—wait—wait—wait for me.” His call note is “Chirp-chirr.”
There are some three hundred and eighty species of tanagers, and they are peculiar to America. They are perching birds and have usually conical bills, triangular at the base, with cutting edges near the tip of the upper mandible: this distinguishes them from the finches, to which they are closely allied. It is said that this genus is remarkable in having no gizzard.
The tanagers feed chiefly on ripe fruits and insects.
The organist tanager of San Domingo is purplish black, with forehead, rump and underparts yellow, and a cap of blue. Its tones are said to be extremely rich and full. But if our scarlet tanager is not so fine a musician as his cousin, if he has no such organ-like tones, yet we could ill spare the blaze of his scarlet coat and the sight of his black pockets, as he sits on the hedge very early in the morning—the rising sun emphasizing his brilliancy. Then he is an early riser I am sure, as I have seen him before four o’clock in the morning. But he has always been silent at that time as if not wide awake yet. In manners he is a most unobtrusive bird. He is rightly entitled to some of the plunder of the fruit trees. For there is no doubt that we owe all kinds of fruit to the agency of birds as seed distributors. Besides, the tanager is very destructive to larvae that injure fruit.
Belle Paxson Drury.
THE BIRDS IN THEIR WINTER HOME. II.
(In the Fields.)
A half day’s tramp through the pastures and fields of a Mississippi “second bottom” any sunshiny day from the first of December till the first of March will reveal some of the reasons why this is a veritable birds’ paradise in winter. Fields once in cultivation, but now abandoned to sedge and Bermuda grass, cultivated fields, where giant cockle burrs wrestle with morning glory vines for the possession of the soil, tracts of palmlike palmeto and marshy jungles of willows, pampass grass and briars afford attractive feeding grounds by day and safe roosting places by night to myriads of winter visitants. In such places are found abundant supplies of the insects, berries and seeds which this humid, semi-tropical climate produces in great profusion. Good shelter and plenty to eat settle the problem of living for the present for our little feathered friends.
Walk out on these broad savannas about the first of February before a tint of white or pale green has appeared on the chicasaw plum (Prunus chicasa) and take note of the abundance and vigor of bird life before spring has begun to make serious inroads upon it. In the drier parts of these lowlands, especially where stubby plum bushes and haws abound, our old friend the field sparrow meets us with the same innocent, confiding air that we remember as characteristic of him in the region of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. He is one of the birds that we can talk about in the indicative mood without “ifs” or apologies; the good that he does in disposing of surplus insect life is not offset by tolls levied on our ripest and juiciest fruit; he never goes over to the enemy to plunder those who trust him. Even the robin, whose praises are in everybody’s mouth, becomes a pirate when our cherries and mulberries ripen, and we wish he would stay away from our premises till the berry season is over.
The pale red or horn-colored beak of this bird will help us to distinguish him from another, often mistaken for him—the chippy, or chipping sparrow, a bird of the same general appearance and size. Even with the naked eye you can detect differences enough to distinguish the two species. Both are small birds with chestnut or rufous crown caps; the chippy has a patch of black on his forehead and bill of the same color; his brother of the fields wears no black, and his bill, as before stated, is a pale red or horn color. In Central Mississippi, as in parts of Northern Ohio, field sparrows are very numerous, but chippies quite rare.