Young Thrasher
Photo by C. H. Brown
A friend of mine found a nest with eggs on the ground among some mandrakes. Selecting a dark night he visited the nest and, by keeping the bird bewildered under the rays of a pocket flash-light, was able to set up his camera at a distance of perhaps ten feet, arrange a reflector and touch off a flash powder, by the light of which he succeeded in getting a flash-light of the bird while incubating. She seemed to be unconcerned, and in fact did not leave the nest. The intruder decamped and left the serenity of her domestic life undisturbed.
The young of the thrasher are instantly recognized, for they have all the family characteristics of the parent birds so well defined. Frequently as late as the month of August, and long after most birds have turned their attention to other matters, the thrasher devotes its time to domestic duties. Indeed after the song season of many birds has passed, I have found in the Ohio Valley region the nests of thrashers and chewinks with eggs and young.
Measured by the birds and their customs, the springtime may extend, as we have seen, far into the calendar summer. We begin paying our devotions to the goddess while yet the snow is on the ground, and we are still doing homage at the shrine when the mercury hovers about the ninety-five-in-the-shade mark, but the change has come so gradually that from one day to another we have hardly noticed it. If to our worship we brought receptive hearts, stimulated by keen vision and hearing, we have learned much of practical economic value.
Without ever having opened the craw of one of the feathered tribe, observation with a good glass has taught us a multitude of things in regard to the feeding of the different species and their economic worth to the human race. From a commanding position by the nest of the yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus), we have learned that this bird is an invaluable ally in the war against the tent caterpillar. The grosbeak is the arch enemy of the potato bug; young bobwhites devour untold numbers of the eggs of the Hessian fly, that great ravager of the western grainfields; the woodpeckers save many an orchard and lawn tree from early death as a victim of one or another of the borers. Indeed, the tons of destruction, if we may apply the term, devoured by our birds in a single summer day, if it could be estimated, would make an appalling figure.
But beyond all the mass of facts gathered, which go to make up the sum total of the world’s knowledge, is that oxygenation of spirit, that freshness of vigor, bodily and mental, which we derive from having left behind the busy world for these hours of devotion at the shrine. I have always thought that there was a more spiritual quality in the religion of the Druids than in that of most ancient heathen faiths, due probably to the fact that their rites and ceremonies were performed in the woods and forests, and that in their seeking after a Force beyond that which they saw, they received some measure of the revelation which comes to every one who loves the woods and fields. To us who have the light of other revelation, the contact with Nature brings a closer touch and keener sympathy with the great scheme of the Author of all creation. And who can contemplate this without gaining dignity in the contemplation?