Further acquaintance with the barred owl makes his voice seem less spooklike. A neighbor of mine has that rarity in southern Florida, a big fireplace with a genuine brick chimney above it. On the top of this chimney of a moonlight night a barred owl loves to sit and there hoots companionably in a subdued, almost conversational tone. He has an eye out for the main chance, though, for if I watch him from outside while my neighbor squeaks like a rat in the big fireplace, I see him cock his head like a flash and glare down chimney with one eye, hoping to get it fixed on the cause of this invitation to dinner. So far we have not been able to get him to come down chimney after it. The voice of the barred owl is a familiar night sound at almost any time of the year in Florida, but it is particularly prevalent now that the birds are breeding.
Under such sounds and sights as these fades the full moon of February, and with March mornings comes a blustering vigor into the trade winds which blow up from the southeast full of the freshness of salt spray, driving scuds of clouds that smell of the brine torn from Bahama reefs. This has none of the rough frigidity of the Northern March wind which seems to hurl javelins through its uproar, following them with threatening words. These winds bluster words of good cheer and jovial invitation and slap your face with scent of roses pickled in fresh brine. It is as much difference as there is between galloping horses when the one bears the sheriff approaching with a warrant, the other your true love with a rose.
It has taken this bluster of winds to make some birds know that it is time to sing. We had just
The gray of dawn on the Indian River
a touch of them in late February, and after the touch had passed I heard my first mocking bird for months. Mocking birds were singing in November in the northern part of the State, but they ceased when December cold came in and I did not hear one till that March bluster started them up. This morning I had but to go out in the gray of dawn to hear golden melodies from a half dozen, sitting in tops of sapling pines among the long leaves, swelling gray throats and flirting long tails that remind me always of the pump handle in the old-time organ loft. I do not know if it is the power of good example which sets the loggerhead shrike to singing or not. He rarely gets beyond a few rather insipid notes, before he sees a grasshopper or some other defenseless creature which he needs in his collection, and which he proceeds to capture and impale on the thorn of a sprout in his favorite orange tree. The butcher bird does now and then capture a small bird and add it to this collection, but I am convinced that he is not so bad a sinner, after all. Most of his prey is insects. Looking at my own butterfly collection I have almost a fellow feeling for him.
Another great insect destroyer is the little sparrow-hawk which winters in the savannas in countless numbers. If one would see sparrow-hawks he should go to a fire. The birds do not flock at ordinary times but may be seen singly, watching for game much as the butcher bird does. But let a wisp of smoke appear in the air and you find them sailing in on swift wings from all directions. As the fire gathers headway in the dry grass and young pine growth they sail about like bats, whirling down into dense smoke and darting back again to a perch not far from the fire, always with a fat, flying grasshopper or other insect driven to flight by the fire. These they seize in their talons in true hawk fashion and devour when perched.
How such small birds—the sparrow-hawk is only ten inches long, no bigger than a robin—manage to include as many fat grasshoppers as I have seen one pick as brands from the burning, it is hard to tell. He who shoots a sparrow-hawk shoots a bird whose main record as a destroyer of insects outweighs his sparrow killing a thousand to one. But the sparrow-hawk is hardly a morning singer, though he does sometimes pipe up “killy-killy-killy-killy,” whence the name in some sections, “killy-hawk.”
With the coming of the first spring month I am convinced that the northward movement of migrating birds has begun. The redwing blackbirds have already gone, so far as the migrating flocks are concerned. Yet this morning a redwing sat up on the tree-top and showed me his handsome epaulette and sang lustily. He was a trifle smaller than the average blackbird of my northern meadow-side acquaintance and his bill seemed slenderer. Moreover on the end of his song was just an extra gleeful twist that changed “konkaree” into “konkareedle” and marked the difference between the Florida redwing who stays at home in the State, summers and brings up his children there, and the migrants who are already on the way to distant Northern swamps. In the same way I heard a robin singing for the first time. The world has been alive with robins in huge flocks that scatter during the day and regather at night for roosting. These are half way home already, perhaps just stopping off at Washington to see what is doing in conservation legislation, which is a matter of vital interest to all birds.