It is very seldom that a mixed family is raised. Usually the children of the home perish, and then how the young cowbird does continually call to the foster parents, “hungry, hungry, I’m hungry,” and how the little birds must work to satisfy the fast-growing changeling. At last one day the parents find their darling has disappeared; their summer’s work is finished; four cunning little vireo nestlings have met an untimely fate, and one arrogant young cowbird is well started upon his infamous career. Despite his careful rearing his blood will tell just as surely as if he were human.
Over yonder, a stone’s throw from my sleeping-porch, stands the stump of a hardwood tree, now soft from years of exposure to the elements. First the slender twigs decaying dropped one by one, then limb after limb, until all that remained of the noble tree, the growth of years, was this stump, where one bright morning in March I heard from my bed the familiar tapping sound characteristic of the woodpecker family. It was a flicker (Colaptes auratus luteus). The mating season was due, the ardent lovers were busy making holes here and there, as is customary, until finally they accomplished one to their liking and began their domestic duties in earnest. Some weeks later, in answer to my tapping on the stump, a head appeared at the door looking from side to side for the cause of the noise. It was the father of the family who reconnoitered the situation. The characteristic broad streaks of black throat feathers, commonly referred to as his “dark mustache,” served to identify him. For some time we had suspected the young were soon to leave their home. Tom climbed the tree in search of “data,” for the accumulation of which he is quite eager, but before he got half way up, shouted, “There goes one of the kids,—there goes another.” While their intentions were good, through lack of training “the kids” soon came to the ground. It is said of the flicker family that the parents coax and coax the young birds to leave the hole, but the latter are very reluctant to do so, and at times the parents are constrained to resort to starving or practically kicking them out. In the hole three were left. Tom brought them out and took them to a slanting tree. It was interesting to watch them. Like all climbers, they have two toes in front and two behind and in climbing are assisted by their rigid tail feathers. Tom was kept busy trying to arrange them within focus of the camera. For some time it was impossible to make them stay “posed”; they insisted on climbing the tree. After a while they got tired and then posed nicely for their picture. During the whole time they called in plaintive tone and the parent birds answered as they hovered around. After being photographed the birds were returned to their home, where they seemed well satisfied to remain.
Young Flickers
This member of the woodpecker family has some individuality. While the other woodpeckers stay in the trees, he spends a great deal of his time on the ground, some of it in feeding, and some of it certainly in amusement. He finds the latter on tree and ground alike. I have seen them going through various contortions and maneuvers, some of which closely resembled the figures in a minuet. On one occasion I witnessed a fight between two males on the ground. How they parried, juked, and dodged to avoid the sally of the adversary, until finally one got the better of the other and the vanquished took to flight. Every spring for several years a flicker takes up his abode near the home of a friend of mine, who relates with a great deal of interest how the bird attracts attention by visiting at frequent intervals a tin box on top of an arc-light pole, where he takes much delight in spending considerable time drumming away, as though the musician of the regiment were practicing his favorite tattoo.
Nest and Eggs of Tanager
Of all the birds of Pennsylvania the male scarlet tanager (Piranga erythromelas) is the most beautifully and attractively colored. Seldom seen by the occasional visitor to the woods, like a “Will o’ the wisp” he flits through the thick foliage, uttering his peculiar “chirp churr.” I remember well finding my first nest of the tanager after several years of search. On a horizontal limb of an elm tree about ten feet from the ground I noticed a few twigs and roots placed on the limb. So frail was the structure that even the sunlight shone through. Although I saw the female fluttering around considerably disturbed, I did not give it much thought, but left the location, only to return again to investigate. Imagine my agreeable surprise when, on climbing the tree, I saw four handsome bluish-green speckled eggs in the frail structure of twigs and rootlets. I have no doubt the scanty nest is a protection, for it requires a close observer to distinguish it as the living habitation of a bird.