c wags a= = Ve Te o 0 Ch Neltj Eve BY a he . » Hoa 7 oP , wri tly a BIRDS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW be EA Pans ua Ai poe Sy si by) hy aM 4 d . Pig ides , Mi ! 5 “§ ra we - Red-Eyed Vireo ) Oke. pie \2IBIRDS THAT EVERY ~ CHILD SHOULD Oe BY. Sel rjrt BLANCHAN Author of ‘‘ Bird Neighbours,” ‘* Birds that Hunt and Are Hunted,’’ ‘‘ Nature’s Garden,’’ and ‘‘ How to Attract the Birds.’’ SIXTY-THREE PAGES OF PHOTOGRAPHS FROM LIFE Double day, Ne|\ie Blane Rory hp. Pe é cd +‘ NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1907, by Doubleday, Page & Company All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages. including the Scandinavian PREFACE IF ALL his lessons were as joyful as learn- ing to know the birds in,the fields and woods, there would be no ‘* . . . whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell And shining morning face creeping like Snaile Unwillingly to schoole.’’ Long before his nine o’clock headache ap- pears, lessons have begun. Nature herself is the teacher who rouses him from his bed with an outburst of song under the window and sets his sleepy brain to wondering whether it was a robin’s clear, ringing call that startled him from his dreams, or the chipping sparrow’s wiry tremulo, or the gushing little wren’s tripping cadenza. Interest in the birds trains the ear quite unconsciously. A keen, intelligent listener is rare, even among grown-ups, but a child who is becoming acquainted with the birds about him hears every sound and puzzles out its meaning with a cleverness that amazes those with ears who hear not. He responds to the first alarm note from the nesting blue birds in the orchard and dashes out of the house to chase away a prowling cat. He knows from Vi vi Birds Every Child Should Know afar the distress caws of a company of crows and away he goes to be sure that their perse- cutor is a hawk. A faint tattoo in the woods sends him climbing up a tall straight tree with the confident expectation of finding a wood- pecker’s nest within the hole in its side. While training his ears, Nature is also training every muscle in his body, sending him on long tramps across the fields in pursuit of a new bird to be identified, making him run and jump fences and wade brooks and climb trees with the zest that produces an appetite like a saw-mill’s and deep sleep at the close of a happy day. When President Roosevelt was a boy he was far from strong, and his anxious father and mother naturally encouraged every interest that he showed in out-of-door pleasures. Among these, perhaps the keenest that he had wasin birds. He knew the haunts of every species within a wide radius of his home and made a large collection of eggs and skins that he pre- sented to the Smithsonian Museum when he could no longer endure the evidences of his “youthful indiscretion,’’ as he termed the col- lector’s mania. But those bird hunts that had kept him happily employed in the open air all day long, helped to make him the strong, manly man he is, whose wonderful physical endurance is not the least factor of his greatness. No one abhors the killing of birds and the rob- Preface | vii bing of nests more than he; few men, not spec- cialists, know so much about bird life. Nature, the best teacher of us all, trains the child’s eyes through study of the birds to quickness and precision, which are the first requisites for all intelligent observation in every field of knowledge. I know boys who can name a flock of ducks when they are mere specks twinkling in their rapid rush across the autumn sky; and girls who instantly recognise a gold- finch by its waving flight above the garden. The white band across the end of the kingbird’s tail leads to his identification the minute some sharp young eyes perceive it. At a consider- able distance, a little girl I know distinguished a white-eyed from a red-eyed vireo, not by the ' colour of the iris of either bird’s eye, but by the yellowish white bars on the white-eyed vireo’s wings which she had noticed at a glance. An- other girl named the yellow-billed cuckoo, al- most hidden among the shrubbery, by the white thumb-nail spots on the quills of his out- spread tail where it protruded for a second from a mass of leaves. A little urchin from the New York City slums was the first to point out to his teacher, who had lived twenty years on a farm, the faint reddish streaks on the breast of a yellow warbler in Central Park. Many there are who have eyes and see not. What does the study of birds do for the viii Birds Every Child Should Know imagination, that high power possessed by hu- mans alone, that lifts them upward step by step into new realms of discovery and joy? If the thought of a tiny hummingbird, a mere atom in the universe, migrating from New England to Central America will not stimulate a child’s imagination, then all the tales of fairies and giants and beautiful princesses and wicked witches will not cause his sluggish fancy to roam. Poetry and music, too, would fail to stir it out of the deadly commonplace. Interest in bird life exercises the sympathies. The child reflects something of the joy of the oriole whose ecstasy of song from the elm on the lawn tells the whereabouts of a dangling “cup of felt’? with its deeply hidden treasures. He takes to heart the tragedy of a robin’s mud- plastered nest in the apple tree that was washed apart by a storm, and experiences something akin to remorse when he takes a mother bird from the jaws of his pet cat. He listens for the return of the bluebirds to the starch-box home he made for them on top of the grape arbour and is strangely excited and happy that bleak day in March when they re-appear. It is nature sympathy, the growth of the heart, not nature study, the training of the brain, that does most for us. NELTJE BLANCHAN. Mill Neck, 1906. CHAPTER I. II. VII. VIII. CONTENTS Our RoBIN GOODFELLOW AND His RELA- TIONS Robin, Bluebird, Wood Thrush, Wilson's S Thrush. Some NEIGHBOURLY ACROBATS Chickadee, Nuthatches, Titmouse, Kinglets. A Group oF LIVELY SINGERS Mockingbird, Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Wrens. THE WARBLERS. Yellow Warbler, Black and White Creep- ing Warbler, Ovenbird, Maryland Yellow- throat, Yellow-breasted Chat. ANOTHER STRICTLY AMERICAN FAMILY The Vireos. Birps Not oF A FEATHER Butcherbirds, Cedar Waxwing, Tanagers. THE SWALLOWS ; Purple Martin, Barn Swallow, Cliff Swallow, Tree sallow, Bank Swallow. THE SPARROW TRIBE. Purple Finch, English Sparrow, Goldfinch, Vesper Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Tree Sparrow, Chippy, Field Sparrow, Junco, Song ix PAGE 17 31 51 62 77 or 105 x CHAPTER IX. XII. XVII. XVIII. Contents Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Towhee, Cardinal, Rose-breasted Gros- beak, Indigo Bunting, Snowfiake. THE ILL-ASSORTED BLACKBIRD FAMILY Bobolink, Cowbird, Red-wing, Meadow- lark, Orioles, Blackbirds. RascaLts WE Must ADMIRE . Crow, Blue Jay and Canada Jay. THE FLYCATCHERS : Kingbird, Crested eens Pheebe, Pewee, Least Flycatcher. . SOME QUEER RELATIONS . ; Nighthawk, Whip-poor-will, Chimney Swift, Hummingbird. NON-UNION CARPENTERS Our Five Common Woodpeckers. Cuckoo AND KINGFISHER Day AND NIGHT ALLIES OF THE FARMER. : Buzzards, Hawks, and Owls. WHISTLER AND DRUMMER Bob-white and Ruffed Grouse. BIRDS OF THE SHORE AND MARSHES Snipe, Sandpiper, Plover, Rails and Coots, Bitterns and Herons. THE FASTEST FLYERS Gulls, Ducks, and Geese. INDEX ; : 2 7 : PAGE 135 Se 159 - 173 a es 3 12) a2, = a — ol oO Fa = il 3 eo) headed woodpecker The red Hairy Woodpecker 193 cats; then watch for the downy woodpecker’s and the chickadee’s visits to your free-lunch counter. HAIRY WOODPECKER Light woods, with plenty of old trees in them, suit this busy carpenter better than orchards or trees close to our homes, for he is more shy than his sociable little cousin, downy, whom he as closely resembles in feathers as in habits. He is three inches longer, however, yet smaller than a robin. In spite of his name, he is covered with black and white feathers, not hairs. He has a hairy stripe only down the middle of his broadly striped back. After he and his mate have decided to go to housekeeping, they select a tree—a hollow- hearted or partly decayed one is preferred—and begin the hard work of cutting out a deep cavity. Try to draw freehand a circle by making a series of dots, as the woodpecker outlines his round front door, and see, if you please, whether you can make so perfect a ring. Downy’s en- trance need be only an inch and a half across; the hairy’s must be a little larger, and the flicker requires a hole about four inches in diameter to admit his big body. Both mates work in turn at the nest hole. How the chips fly! Braced in position by stiff tail feathers and 194 Birds Every Child Should Know clinging by his stout toes, the woodpecker keeps hammering and chiselling at his home more hours every day than a labour union would allow. Two inches of digging with his strong combination tool means a hard day’s work. The hole usually runs straight in for a few inches, then curves downward into a _ pear-shaped chamber large enough for a comfortable nursery. A week or ten days may be spent by a couple in making it. The chips by which this good work- man is known are left on the nursery floor, for woodpeckers do not pamper their babies with fine grasses, feathers or fur cradle linings, as the chickadee and some other birds do. A well-regulated woodpecker’s nest contains five glossy-white eggs. Sheltered from the rain, wind and sun, hidden from almost every enemy except the red squirrel, woodpecker babies lie secure in their dark, warm nursery, with no excitement ex- cept the visits of their parents with a fat grub. Then how quickly they scramble up the walls toward the light and dinner! YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER This woodpecker I am sorry to introduce to you as the black sheep of his family, with scarcely a friend to speak a good word for him. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 195 Murder is committed on his immensely useful relatives, who have the misfortune to look ever so little like him, simply because ignorant people’s minds are firmly fixed in the belief that every woodpecker is a sapsucker, therefore a tree-killer, which only this miscreant is, and very rarely. The rest of the family who drill holes in a tree harmlessly, even beneficially, do so because they are probing for insects. The sapsucker alone drills rings or belts of holes for the sake of getting at the soft inner bark and drinking the sap that trickles from it. Mrs. Eckstorm, who has made a careful study of the woodpeckers in a charming little book that every child should read, tells of a certain sapsucker that came silently and early in the autumn mornings to feed on a favourite moun- tain ash tree near her dining-room window. In time this rascal killed the tree. “Early in the day he showed considerable activity,’’ writes Mrs. Eckstorm, ‘‘flitting from limb to limb and sinking a few holes, three or four in a row, usual- ly above the previous upper girdle of the limbs he selected to work upon. After he had tapped several limbs, he would sit patiently waiting for the sap to flow, lapping it up quickly when the drop was large enough. At first he would be nervous, taking alarm at noises and wheeling away on his broad wings till his fright was over, when he would steal quietly back to his 196 Birds Every Child Should Know sapholes. When not alarmed, his only movement was from one row of holes to another, and he tended them with considerable regularity. As the day wore on he became less excitable, and clung cloddishly to his tree trunk with ever in- creasing torpidity, until finally he hung motion- less as if intoxicated, tippling in sap, a dishevelled, smutty, silent bird, stupefied with drink, with none of that brilliancy of plumage and light-hearted gaiety which made hm the noisiest and most conspicuous bird of aur April woods.”’ But it must be admitted that very rarely does the sapsucker girdle a tree with holes enough to sap away its life. He may have an orgie of in- temperance once in awhile, but much should be forgiven a bird as dexterous as a flycatcher in taking insects on the wing and with a hearty appetite for pests. Wild fruit and soft-shelled nuts he likes too. He never bores a tree to get insects as his cousins do, for only when a nest must be chiselled out is he a wood pecker in the strict sense. You may know this erring one by the pale, sulphur-yellow tinge on his white under parts, the white patch above the tail on his mottled black and white back, his spotted wings with conspicuous white coverts, the broad black patch on his breast extending to the corners of his mouth in a chin strap, and the lines of crimson Red-headed Woodpecker 197 on forehead, crown, chin and throat. He is smaller than a robin by two inches, yet larger than the English sparrow, who shares with him a vast amount of public condemnation. RED-HEADED WOODPECKER A pair of red-headed woodpeckers I know, who made their home in an old tree next the station yard at Atlanta, where locomotives clanged, puffed, whistled and shrieked all day long, evidently enjoyed the noise, for the male liked nothing better than to add to it by tapping on one of the glass non-conductors around which a telegraph wire ran. When first I saw the handsome, tri-coloured fellow he was almost enveloped in a cloud of smoke escaping from a puffing locomotive on the track next the tele- graph pole, yet he tapped away unconcerned and as merrily as you would play a two-step on the piano. When the vapour blew away, his glossy bluish black and white feathers, laid on in big patches, were almost as conspicuous as his red head, throat and upper breast. His mate is red-headed, too. All the woodpeckers have musical tastes. A flicker comes to my verandah to tap a galvan- ised rain gutter, for no other reason than the excellent one that he enjoys the sound. Tin 198 Birds Every Child Should Know roofs everywhere are popular tapping places. Certain dry, dead, seasoned limbs of hardwood trees resound better than others and a wood- pecker in love is sure to find out the best one in the spring when he beats a rolling tattoo in the hope of charming his best beloved. He has no need to sing, which is why he doesn’t. Fence posts are the red-head’s favourite rest- ing places. From these he will make sudden sallies in mid-air, like a fly-catcher, after a pass- ing insect; then return to his post. You remember that the blue jay has the thrifty habit of storing nuts for the proverbial rainy day, and that the shrike hangs up his meat to cure on a thorn tree like a butcher. Red-headed woodpeckers, who are especially fond of beechnuts, acorns and grasshoppers, hide them away, squirrel fashion, in tree cavi- ties, in fence holes, crevices in old barns, be- tween shingles on the roof, behind bulging boards, in the ends of railroad ties, in all sorts of queer places, to feast upon them in winter when the land is lean. Who knows whether other woodpeckers have hoarding places? The sapsucker, the hairy and the downy wood- peckers also like beechnuts; the flicker prefers acorns; but do they store them for winter use? The red-head’s thrifty habit was only recently discovered: has it been only recently acquired? It must be simpler to store the summer’s sur- The sapsucker Baby flickers just out of their hole Flicker 199 plus than to travel to a land of plenty when winter comes. Heretofore this red-headed cousin has been reckoned a migratory member of the home-loving woodpecker clan, but only where he could not find plenty of beechnuts to keep him through the winter. FLICKER Called also: High-hole; Clape; Golden-winged Woodpecker; Yellow-hammer; Yucker Why should the flicker discard family tradi- tions and wear clothes so different from those of his relations? His upper parts are dusty brown, narrowly barred with black, and the large white patch on his lower back, so con- spicuous as he flies from you, is one of the best marks of identification on his big handsome body. His head is gray with a black streak below the eye, and a scarlet band across the nape of the neck, while the upper side of the wing feathers is black relieved by golden shafts. Underneath, the wings are a lovely golden yel- low, seen only when the bird flies toward you. His breast, which is a pale, pinkish brown, is divided from the throat by a black crescent, smaller than the meadowlark’s, and below this half-moon of jet there are many black spots. 200 «Birds Every Child Should Know He is quite a little larger than a robin, the larg- est and the commonest of our five non-union carpenters. See him feeding on the ground instead of on the striped and mottled tree trunks, where his black and white striped relatives are usually found, and you will realise that he wears brown clothes, finely barred, because they harmonise so perfectly with the brown earth. What does he find on the ground that keeps him there so much of the time? Look at the spot he has just flown from and you will doubtless find ants. These are chiefly his diet. Three thousand of them, for a single meal, he has been known to lick out of a hill with his long, round, extensile, sticky tongue. Evidently this lusty fellow needs no tonic. His tail, which is less rounded than his cousins’, proves that he has little need to prop himself against tree trunks to pick out a dinner; and his curved bill, which is more of a pickaxe than a hammer, drill, or chisel, is little used as a carpenter’s tool except when a nest is to be dug out of soft, decayed wood. Although he can beat a rolling tattoo in the spring, he has a variety of call notes for use the year through. Did you ever see the funny fellow spread his tail and dance when he goes courting? Flickers condescend to use old holes deserted by their relatives who possess better tools. You must have noticed Flicker 201 all through these bird biographies that the structure and colouring of every bird are adapted to its kind of life, each member of the same family varying according to its habits. The kind of food a bird eats and its method of getting it, of course, bring about most, if not all, of the variations from the family type. Each is fitted for its own life, “even as you and [.”’ Like your pet pigeon, the hummingbird, and several other birds, parent flickers pump partly digested food from their own stomachs into those of their hungry babies. Imagine how many trips would have to be taken to a nest if ants were carried there one by one! How can the birds be sure they will not thrust their bills through the eyes of their blind, naked and helpless babies in so dark a hole? It must be very difficult to find the mouths and be sure none is neglected. Like the little pig you all know about, I suspect there is always at least one little flicker in the dark tree-hollow that “gets none” each trip. CHAPTER XIV CUCKOO AND KINGFISHER YELLOW-BILLED CuCKOO BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO BELTED KINGFISHER YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO Called also: Rain Crow O YOU own a cuckoo clock with a little bird inside that flies out of a door every hour and tells you the time? Except when it is time to go toschool or to bed you are doubtless amused to hear him hiccough cuckoo, cuckoo, the me- chanical notes that tell his name. Cuckoo clocks were first made in Europe where the common species of cuckoo calls in this way, but don’t imagine its American cousins do. Our yellow-billed cuckoo’s unmusical, guttural notes sound something like a tree toad’s rattle, kuk-kuk, kuk-kuk, kuk-kuk, kr-r-r-uck, kr- r-r-uck, kr-r-r-uck, kr-r-ruck, cow, cow, cow, cow! ‘This is his complete “song,’’ but usually one hears only a portion of it. The black- billed cuckoo’s voice is softer, and its cow notes run together, otherwise their “songs”’ are alike. Both of our common cuckoos are slim, grace- ful birds about twelve inches long—longer than a robin. They are solitary creatures and glide silently among the foliage of trees and shrub- bery, rarely giving you a good look at their satiny, grayish-brown backs and dull-white 20%. 206 Birds Every Child Should Know breasts. You may know the yellow-billed cuckoo by the yellow lower-half of his long, curved bill, his cinnamon-brown wings and the conspicuous white thumb-nail spots on his dark tail feathers. If you were to dip your thumb in white paint, then pinch these outer quills, you would leave similar marks. Most birds will not touch the hairy, fuzzy caterpillars—very disagreeable mouthfuls, one would think. But happily cuckoos enjoy them as well as the smooth, slippery kind. “I guess they like the custard inside,”’ said a little boy I know who had stepped on a fat caterpillar on the path. “Cuckoos might well be called caterpillar birds,’’ wrote Florence Merriam Bailey, “for they are so given to a diet of the hairy caterpillars that the walls of their stom- achs are actually permeated with the hairs, and a section of stomach looks like the smoothly brushed top of a gentleman’s beaver hat.’ When you see the webs that the tent cater- pillar stretches across the ends of the branches of fruit and nut trees toward the end of summer, or early autumn, watch for the cuckoo’s visits. Orioles, also, tear open the webs to get at the wiggling morsels inside, but they leave dead and mutilated remains behind them, showing that their appetite for web worms is less keen than that of the cuckoos, who eat them up clean. Fortunately the caterpillar of the terribly The flicker Two baby cuckoos on the rickety bundle of sticks that by courtesy we call a nest Yellow-billed Cuckoo 207 destructive gypsy moth is another favourite dainty. Perhaps you have heard that the cuckoo, like the naughty cowbird, builds no nest and lays its eggs in other birds’ cradles? This is true only of the European cuckoo. Its Ameri- can cousin makes a poor apology for a nest, it is true, merely a loose bundle or platform of sticks, as flimsily put together as a dove’s nest. The greenish-blue eggs or the naked babies must certainly fall through, one would think. Still it is all the cuckoos’ own, and they are proud of it. But so sensitive and fearful are they when a human visitor inspects their nursery that they will usually desert it, never to return, if you touch it, so beware of peep- ing! When the skinny cuckoo babies are a few days old, blue pin-feathers begin to appear, and presently their bodies are stuck full of fine, sharply pointed quills like a well-stocked pin cushion. Porcupine babies you might think them now. But presto! every pin-feather suddenly fluffs out the day before the youngsters leave the nest, and they are clothed in a suit of soft feathers like their parents. In a few months young cuckoos, hatched as far north as New England and Canada or even Labrador, are strong enough to fly to Central or South America to spend the winter. 208 Birds Every Child’ Should Know BELTED KINGFISHER Called also: The Halcyon This Izaak Walton of birddom, whom you may see perched as erect as a fish hawk on a snag in the lake, creek or river, or on a dead limb projecting over the water, on the lookout for minnows, chub, red fins, samlets or any other small fry that swims past, is as expert as any fisherman you are ever likely to know. Sharp eyes are necessary to see a little fish where sunbeams dance on the ripples and the refracted light plays queer tricks with one’s vision. Once a victim is sighted, how swiftly the lone fisherman dives through the air and water after it, and how accurately he strikes its death-blow behind the gills! If the fish be large and lusty 1t may be necessary to carry it to the snag and give it a few sharp knocks with his long powerful bill to end its struggles. These are soon over, but the kingfisher’s have only begun. See him gag and writhe as he swallows his dinner, head first, and then, re- gretting his haste, brings it up again to try a wider avenue down his throat! Somebody shot a kingfisher which had tried to swallow so large a fish that the tail was sticking out of his mouth, while its head was safely stored below in the bird’s stomach. After the meat digests, a ee ee — oo Belted Kingfisher 209 the indigestible skin, bones, and scales of the fish are thrown up without the least nausea. A certain part of a favourite lake or stream this fisherman patrols with a sense of ownership and rarely leaves it. Alone, but self-satisfied, he clatters up and down his beat as a police- man, going his rounds, might sound his rattle from time to time. The rattle-headed bird knows every pool where minnows play, every projection along the bank where a fish might hide, and is ever on the alert, not only to catcha dinner, but to escape from the sight of the child who intrudes on his domain and wants to “know” him. You cannot mistake this big, chunky bird, fully a foot long, with grayish- blue upper parts, the long, strong wings and short, square tail dotted in broken bars of white, and with a heavy, bluish band across his white breast. His mate and children wear rusty bands instead of blue. The crested feathers on top of his big, powerful head reach backward to the nape like an Indian chief’s feather bonnet, and give him _ distinction. Under his thick, oily plumage, as waterproof as a duck’s, he wears a suit of down under- clothing. No doubt you have heard that all birds are descended from reptile ancestors; that feathers are but modified scales, and that a bird’s song is but the glorified hiss of the serpent. Then 210 ©Birds Every Child Should Know the kingfisher and the bank swallow retain at least one ancient custom of their ancestors, for they still place their eggs in the ground. The lone fisherman chooses a mate early in the spring and, with her help, he tunnels a hole in a bank next a good fishing ground. A minnow pool furnishes the most-approved baby food. Per- haps the mates will work two or three weeks before they have tunnelled far enough to suit them and made a spacious nursery at the end of the long hall. Usually from five to eight white eggs are laid about six feet from the en- trance on a bundle of grass, or perhaps ona heap of ejected fish bones and refuse. While his queen broods, the devoted kingfisher brings her the best of his catch. At first their babies are as bare and skinny as their cuckoo relatives. When the father or mother bird flies up stream with a fish for them, giving a rattling call in- stead of ringing a dinner bell, all the hungry youngsters rush forward to the mouth of the tunnel; but only one can be satisfied each trip. Then all run backward through the inclined tunnel, like reversible steam engines, and keep tightly huddled together until the next exciting rattle is heard. Both parents are always on guard to drive off mink, rats and water snakes that are the terrors of their nursery. ee etre 2: | 3 SI a tee Es Niet eas oes he eae Snir TS ee Young belted kingfisher on his favourite snag Kingfisher on the look-out for a dinner CHAPTER XV DAY AND NIGHT ALLIES OF THE FARMER TURKEY VULTURE RED-SHOULDERED HAWK RED-TAILED HAWK CoopEer’s Hawk BaLpD EAGLE AMERICAN SPARROW Hawk AMERICAN OSPREY AMERICAN BARN OWL SHORT-EARED OWL LONG-EARED OWL BARRED OWL ScREECH OWL TURKEY VULTURE Called also: Turkey Buzzard VERY child south of Mason and Dixon’s line knows this big buzzard that sails serenely with its companions in great circles, floating high overhead, now rising, now falling, with scarcely a movement of its wide-spread wings. In the air, it expresses the very poetry of motion. No other bird is more graceful and buoyant. One could spend hours watching its fascinating flight. But surely its earthly habits express the very prose of existence; for it may be seen in the company of other dusky scavengers, walk- ing about in the roads of the smaller towns and villages, picking up refuse; or, in the fields, feeding on some dead animal. Relying upon its good offices, the careless farmer lets his dead pig or horse or chicken lie where it dropped, knowing that buzzards will speedily settle on it and pick its bones clean. Our soldiers in the war with Spain say that the final touch of horror on the Cuban battlefields was when the buz- zards, that were wheeling overhead, suddenly dropped where their wounded or dead comrades fell. 213 214 Birds Every Child Should Know Because it is so helpful in ridding the earth of decaying matter, the law and the Southern people, white and coloured, protect the vulture. Its usefulness is more easily seen and understood than that of many smaller birds of greater value which, alas! area target forevery gunner. Con- sequently, it is perhaps the commonest bird in the South, and tame enough for the merest tyro in bird lore to learn that it is about two and a half feet long, with a wing spread of fully six feet; that its head and neck are bare and red like a turkey’s, and that its body is covered with dusky feathers edged with brown—an ungainly, unlovely creature out of its element, the air. Another sable scavenger, the black vulture or carrion crow, of similar habits, but with a more southerly range, is common in the Gulf States. Because it feeds on carrion that not even a goat grudges it, and is too lazy and cowardly to pick a quarrel, the buzzard has no enemies. Although classed among birds of prey, it does not frighten the smallest chick in the poultry yard when it flops down beside it. With beak and claws capable of gashing painful wounds, it never uses them for defence, but resorts to the disgusting trick of throwing up the contents of its stomach over any creature that comes too near. When a colony of the ever-sociable — buzzards are nesting, you may be very sure Red-shouldered Hawk 215 no one cares to make a close study of their young. RED-SHOULDERED HAWK Called also: Hen Hawk; Chicken Hawk; Win- ter Hawk Let any one say “‘ Hawk’’ to the average far- mer and he looks for his gun. For many years it was supposed that every member of the hawk family was a villain and fair game, but the white searchlight of science shows us that most of the tribe are the farmers’ allies, which, with the owls, share the task of keeping in check the mice, moles, gophers, snakes, and the larger insect pests. Nature keeps her vast domain patrolled by these vigilant watchers by day and by night. Guns may well be turned on those blood-thirsty fiends in feathers, Cooper’s hawk, the sharp-shinned hawk, and the goshawk, that not only eat our poultry, but every song bird they can catch: the law of the survival of the fittest might well be enforced with lead in their case. But do let us protect our friends, the more heavily built and slow-flying hawks with the red tails and red shoulders, among other allies in our ceaseless war against farm vermin! In the court of last appeal to which all our 216 Birds Every Child Should Know hawks are brought—I mean those scientific men in the Department of Agriculture, Washing- ton, who examine the contents of birds’ stom- achs to learn just what food is taken in different parts of the country and at different seasons of the year—the two so-called “hen hawks” were proved to be rare offenders, and great helpers. Two hundred and twenty stomachs of red-shouldered hawks were examined by Dr. Fisher, and only three contained remains of poultry, while one hundred and two con- tained mice; ninety-two, insects; forty, moles and other small mammals; fifty-nine, frogs and snakes, and so on. The percentage of poultry eaten is so small that it might be reduced to nothing if the farmers would keep their chickens in yards instead of letting them roam to pick up a living in the fields, where the temptation to snatch up one must be overwhelming to a hungry hawk. Fortunately these two benefi- cent “hen hawks,” are still common, in spite of our ignorant persecution of them for two hundred years or more. Toward the end of summer, especially in September, when nursery duties have ended for the year and the hawks are care free, you may see them sailing in wide spirals, delighting in the cooler stratum of air high overhead. Balancing on wide, outstretched wings, floating serenely with no apparent effort, they enjoy Red-shouldered Hawk 217 the slow merry-go-round at a height that would make any child dizzy. Sometimes they rise out of sight. Kee you, kee you, they scream as they sail. Does the teasing blue jay imitate the call for the fun of frightening little birds? But the red-shouldered hawk is not on pleasure bent much of the time. Perching is its specialty, and on an outstretched limb, or other point of vantage, it sits erect and digni- fied, its far-seeing eyes alone in motion trying to sight its quarry—a mouse creeping through the meadow, a mole leaving its tunnel, a chip- munk running along a stone wall, a frog leap- ing into the swamp, a gopher or young rabbit frisking around the edges of the wood—when, spying one, “like a thunderbolt it falls.” If you could ever creep close enough to a red-shouldered hawk, which is not likely, you would see that it is a powerful bird, about a foot and a half long, dark brown above, the feathers edged with rusty, with bright chestnut patches on the shoulders. The wings and dark tail are barred with white, so are the rusty-buff under parts, and the light throat has dark streaks. Female hawks are larger than the males, just as the squaws in some Indian tribes . are larger than the braves. It is said that hawks remain mated for life; so do eagles and owls, for in their family life, at least, the birds of prey are remarkably devoted, gentle and loving. 218 Birds Every Child Should Know RED-TAILED HAWK Called also: Hen Hawk; Chicken Hawk; Red Hawk This larger relative of the red-shouldered hawk (the female red-tail measures nearly two feet in length) shares with it the hatred of all but the most enlightened farmers. Before con- demning either of these useful allies, everyone should read the report of Dr. Fisher, published by the Government, and to be had for the ask- ing. This expert judge tells of a pair of red- tailed hawks that reared their young for two successive seasons in a birch tree in some swampy woods, about fifty rods from a poultry farm, where they might have helped themselves to eight hundred chickens and half as many ducks; yet they were never known to touch one. Occasionally, in winter especially, when other food is scarce, a red-tail will steal a chicken— probably a maimed or sickly one that cannot get out of the way—or drop on a bob-white; but ninety per cent. of its food consists of injurious mammals and insects. Both of these slandered “hen hawks”’ prefer to live in low, wet, wooded places with open meadows for hunting grounds near by. Cooper’s Hawk 219 COOPER’S HAWK Called also: Chicken Hawk; Big Blue Darter Here is no ally of the farmer, but his foe, the most bold of all his robbers, a blood-thirsty villain that lives by plundering poultry yards, and tearing the warm flesh from the breasts of game and song birds, one of the few members of his generally useful tribe that deserves the punishment ignorantly meted out to his inno- cent relatives. Unhappily, it is perhaps the most common hawk in the greater part of the United States, and therefore does more harm than all the others. It is mentioned in this chapter that concerns the farmers’ allies, only because every child should know foe from friend. The female Cooper’s hawk is about nineteen inches long and her mate a finger-length smaller, but not nearly so small as the little blue darter, the sharp-shinned hawk, only about a foot in length, but which it very closely resembles in plumage and villainy. Both species have slaty-gray upper parts with deep bars across their wings and ashy-gray tails The latter differ in outline, however, Cooper’s hawk having a rounded tail with whitish tip, and the sharp- shinned hawk a square tail. In maturity Cooper’s hawk wears a blackish crown. Both species have white throats with dark streaks 220 Bird; Every Child Should Know and the rest of their under parts are much barred with buff and white. Instead of spending their time perching on lockouts, as the red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks do, these two reprobates dash after their victims on the wing, chasing them across open stretches where such swift, dexterous, dodging flyers are sure to overtake them. Or they will flash out of a clear sky like feathered lightning and boldly strike a chicken, though it be peck- ing corn near a farmer’s feet. These two marauders, and the big slate-coloured goshawk, also called the blue hen hawk or partridge hawk, stab their cruel talons though the vitals of more valuable poultry, song and game birds, than any child would care to read about. BALD EAGLE Every American boy and girl knows our national bird, which is the farmer’s ally, how- ever, only when it appears on the money in his pocket. Without an eagle on that, you must know it would be of little use to him. Truth to tell, this majestic emblem of our republic (borrowed from imperial Rome) that spreads itself gloriously over our coins, flag poles, public buildings and government docu- ments, is, in real life, not the bravest of the brave, nor the most intelligent, nor the noblest, Bald Eagle 221 nor the most enterprising of birds, as one fain would believe. On the contrary, it often uses its wonderful eyesight to detect a bird more skilful than itself in the act of catching a fish, and then puts forth its superb strength to rob the successful fisher of his prey. The osprey is a frequent sufferer, although some of the water fowl, that patiently course over the waves hour after hour, in search of a dinner, may be robbed of it by the overpowering pirate. Dead fish cast up on the beach are not rejected. When fish fail, coots, ducks, geese and gulls— the fastest of flyers—are likely to be snatched up, plucked clean of their feathers, and torn apart by the great bird that drops suddenly upon them from the clouds like Jove’s thunder- bolt. Rarely small animals are seized, but there is probably no well-authenticated case of an eagle carrying off a child. It is in their family life that hawks and eagles, however cruel at other times, show some truly lovable traits. Once mated, they know neither divorce nor family quarrels all their lives. Home is the dearest spot on earth to them. They become passionately attached to the great bundle of trash that is at once their nest and their abode. A tall pine tree, near water, or the rocky ledge of some steep cliff, is the favourite site for an eagle eyrie. Here the de- voted mates will carry an immense quantity of 222 Birds Every Child Should Know sticks, sod, cornstalks, pine twigs, weeds, bones, and other coarse rubbish, until, after annual repairs for several seasons, the broad, flat nest may grow to be almost as high as it is wide and look something like a New York sky-scraper. Both parents sit on the eggs in turn and devote themselves with zeal to feeding the eaglets. These spoiled children remain in the nest several months without attempting to fly, expecting to be waited upon even after they are actually larger than the old birds. The cast- ings of skins, bones, hair, scales, etc., in the vicinity of a hawk’s or eagle’s nest, will indicate, almost as well as Dr. Fisher’s analysis, what food the babies had in their stomachs to make them grow so big. Immature birds are almost black all over. Not until they are three years old do the feathers on their heads and necks turn white, giving them the effect of being bald. Any eagle seen in the eastern United States is sure to be of this species. In the West and throughout Asia and Africa lives the golden eagle, of which Tennyson wrote the lines that apply equally well to our East- ern ‘“‘bird of freedom”: “He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls: He watches from his mountain walls, And, like a thunderbolt, he falls.”’ American Sparrow Hawk 223 AMERICAN SPARROW HAWK Called also: Killy Hawk; Rusty-crowned Falcon; Mouse Hawk Just such an extended branch as a shrike or a kingbird would use as a lookout while searching the landscape o’er for something to eat, the little sparrow hawk chooses for the same purpose. He is not much larger than either of these birds, scarcely longer than a robin. Because he is a hawk, with the family possession of eyes that are both telescope and miscroscope, he can detect a mouse, sparrow, garter snake, spider or grasshopper, farther away than seems to us possible. Every farmer’s boy knows this beautiful little rusty-red hawk, with slaty-blue cap and wings, and creamy-buff spotted sides, if not by sight then by sound, as it calls kzll-ee, kzll-ce kill-ee, across the fields. It does not soar and revolve in a merry-go-round on high like its cousins, but flies swiftly and gracefully, keeping near enough to the ground to see everything that creeps or hops through the grass. Dropping suddenly, like a stone, upon its victim (usually a grasshopper) it seizes it in its small, sharp, fatal talons and bears it away to a favourite perch, there to enjoy it at leisure. 224 Birds Every Child Should Know This is the hawk that is so glad to find a deserted woodpecker’s hole for its nest. How many other birds gratefully accept those skil- ful carpenters’ vacant tenements! AMERICAN OSPREY Called also: Fish Hawk A pair of these beautiful big hawks, that had nested year after year in the top of a tall pine tree on the Manasquan River, New Jersey, were great pets in that region. An old fisherman of Barnegat Bay told me that when he was hauling in his seine one day, he saw the male osprey strike the water with a splash, struggle an instant with a great fish that had been fol- lowing his net, and disappear below the waves, never toriseagain. ‘The bird more than met his match that time. The fish was far larger than he expected, so powerful that it easily dragged him under, once his talons were imbedded in the fish’s flesh. For the rest of the summer the widowed osprey always stayed about when the fisherman hauled his net on the beach, and bore away to her nest the worthless fish he left in it for her special benefit. But after rearing her family—a prolonged process for all the hawks, eagles, and owls—she never returned to the Owls 225 neighbourhood. Perhaps old associations were too painful; perhaps she was shot on her way South that winter; or perhaps she took another mate with more sense and less greed, who pre- ferred to reside elsewhere. As you may imagine, fish hawks always live near water. In summer they frequent the in- lets along the Atlantic coast, but over inland lakes and rivers also, many fly back and forth. You may know by their larger size—they are almost two feet long—and by their slow flight that they are not the winter gulls. Their dusky backs and white under parts harmonise well with the marine picture, Northor South. Their plum- age contains more white than that of any other hawk. No matter how foggy the day or how quietly the diving osprey may splash to catch his fish dinner, any bald-headed eagle in the vicinity is sure to detect him in the act of seiz- ing it, and then to relieve him of it instantly. OWLS Like many children I know, owls begin to be especially lively toward night, only they make no noise as they fly about. Very soft, fluffy plumage muffles their flight so that they can drop upon a meadow mouse creeping through the grass in the stilly night before this wee, 226 Birds Every Child Should Know timorous beastie suspects there is a foe abroad. As owls live upen mice, mostly, it is important they should be helped to catch them with some device that beats our traps. If mice should change their nocturnal habits, the owl’s whole scheme of existence would be upset, and the hawks would get the quarry that they now enjoy: mice, rats, moles, bats, frogs and the larger insects. You see the farmer has in- valuable day and night allies in these birds of prey which take turns in protecting his fields from rodents, one patrol working while the other sleeps. On the whole, owls are the more valuable to him. They usually continue their good work all through the winter after the hawks have gone South. Can you think of any other birds that work for him at night? Not only can owls fluff out their loose, mottled plumage, but they can draw it in so close as to change their shape and size in an instant, so that they look like quite different birds, or rather not like birds at all, but stumps of trees. Altering their outlines, changing their shape and size at will, is one of these queer birds’ peculiarities. Their eyes, set in the centre of feathered discs, do not revolve in their sockets, but are so fixed that they look only straight ahead, which is why an owl must turn his head every time he wishes to glance to the right or left. Another peculiarity is the owls’ method Turkey buzzard: one ot Nature’s house cleaners Ss ess a ME DS iO ELL a gS ad Be oe Ea 2 sac | The beautiful little sparrow hawk Barn Owl 227 of eating. Bolting entire all the food they catch, head first, they digest only the nutritious portions of it. Then, bowing their heads and shaking them very hard, they eject the bones, claws, skin, hair and fur in matted pellets, with- out the least distress. ‘Some children I know, who swallow their food in a hurry—cherry stones, grape skins, apple cores and all—need a similar, merciful digestive apparatus. Like the hawks, owls are devoted, life-long mates. The females are larger than the males. some like to live in dense evergreens that hide them from teasing blue jays and other foes by day; some, like the barn owl, prefer towers, church steeples or the tops of barns and other buildings; some hide in hollow trees or deserted woodpeckers’ holes, but all naturally prefer to take their long, daily naps where the sunlight does not penetrate. They live in their homes more hours than woodpeckers or any other birds. No doubt we pass by many sleeping owls without suspecting their presence. BARN OWL Called also: Monkey-jaced Owl This is the shy, odd-looking, gray and white mottled owl with the triangular face and slim 228 Birds Every Child Should Know body, about a foot and a half long, that comes out of its hole at evening with a wild scream, startling timid and superstitious people into the belief that it is uncanny. The American coun- terpart of “wise Minerva’s only fowl,”’ its large eye-discs and solemn blink certainly make it look like a fit companion for the goddess of wisdom. A tame barn owl, owned by a gentleman in Philadelphia, would sit on his shoulder for hours atatime. It felt offended if its master would not play with it. The only way the man could gain time for himself during the bird’s waking hours, was to feed it well and leave a stuffed bird for it to play with when he went out of the room, just as Jimmy Brown left a doll with his baby sister when he went out to play; only the man could not tack the owl’s petticoats to the floor. A pair of barn owls lived for many years in the tower of the Smithsonian Institution, Wash- ington. Dr. Fisher found the skulls of four hundred and fifty-four small mammals in the pellets cast about their home. Another pair lived in a tower and on the best of terms with some tame pigeons. Happily the owls had no taste for squab, but the debris of several thousand mice and rats about their curious dwelling proved that their appetite neede@ ne coaxing with such a delicacy. Short-eared Owl 229 SHORT-EARED OWL Called also: Marsh Owl; Meadow Owl This owl, and its long-eared cousin, wear the tufts of feathers in their ears that resemble harm- less horns. Unlike its relatives, the short- eared owl does some hunting by daylight, especially in cloudy weather, and like the marsh hawk it prefers to live in grassy, marshy places frequented by meadow mice. On the other hand, the long-eared owl respects family traditions, and goes about only after dark. “It usually spends the day in some evergreen woods, thick willow copse or alder swamp, although rarely it may be found in open places,”’ says Dr. Fisher. “The bird is not wild and will allow itself to be closely approached. When conscious that its presence is recognised, it sits upright, draws the feathers close to its body, and erects the ear-tufts, resembling in ap- pearance a piece of weather-beaten bark more than a bird.’’ The long and the short of it is, that few people, except professional bird stu- dents, know very much about these or any other owls, for few find them by day or forsake their couches when they are abroad. We may take Dr. Johnson’s advice and “give our days and nights to the study of Addison,” but few of us give even a part of our days and less of our nights to the study of the birds about us. 230 birds Every Child Should Know BARRED OWL Called also: Hoot Owl If “a good child should be seen and not heard’’ what can be said for this owl? Its deep-toned whoo-whoo-who-whoo-to-whoo-ah, like the wail of some lost soul asking the way, is the only indication you are likely to have that a hoot owl lives in your neighbourhood. You can imitate its voice and deliberately “hoot it up.’’ Few people who know its voice will ever see its smooth, round, bland, almost human face. “As useless as a last year’s nest’’ can have no meaning to a pair of these large hardy owls that go about toward the end of winter looking for a deserted woodpecker’s nest or a hawk’s, crow’s, or squirrel’s bulky cradle in some tree top. Ever after they hold it as their own. Farmers shoot the owl that occasionally takes one of their broilers or a game bird, not knowing that the remainder of its diet really leaves them in its debt. SCREECH OWLS A boy I know had a pair of little screech owls invite themselves to live in a box he had nailed ” Screech Owls 232 up for bluebirds in his father’s orchard. Al- though they had full liberty, in time they be- came tame pets, even pampered darlings, with a willing slave to trap mice for them in the corn crib and hay loft. At first mice were plentiful enough, and every day after school the boy would empty the traps, climb the apple tree and feed the owls. But presently the mice learned the danger that may lurk behind an innocent looking lump of cheese. One foolish, hungry mouse now and then was all the boy could catch. This he would carry by the tail to his sleeping pets, arouse them by dangling it against their heads, at which, while half asleep, they would click their beaks like castanets. When both were wide awake he would allow one of them to bolt the mouse while he still held on firmly to the tail. Then, jerking the mouse back out of the owl’s throat, he would allow the other owl to really swallow it. When next he caught a mouse, the operation was reversed: the owl that had been satisfied be- fore now gulped the mouse first, only to have it jerked away and fed to its mate. In this way, strange to say, the boy kept on friendly terms with the pair for several weeks, when he discovered that they liked bits of raw beef quite as well as mice. After that he carried his queer pets to the house and kept them in his room all winter. Early in the spring they 232 Birds Every Child Should Know returned to the bird house and raised a family of funny, fluffy, plump little owlets. | This boy discovered for himself the screech owls’ strange characteristic of changing their colour without changing their feathers, as moulting song birds change theirs. They have a rusty, reddish-brown phase and a mottled- gray phase. So far as is known, these changes of colour are not dependent upon age, sex, or season. No one understands what causes them or what they mean. Sometimes the same family will contain birds with plumage that is rusty- brown or gray or intermediate. But you may always know a screech owl by its small size (it is only about as long as a robin) and by the ear tufts that make it look wide-awake and very wise. By day it keeps well hidden in some deserted woodpecker’s hole or a hollow in some old orchard tree, which is its favourite residence; but some mischievous little birds, with sharper eyes than ours, often discover its hiding place, wake it up, and chase it, blinking and bewil- dered, all about the farm. By night, when its tormentors are asleep, this little owl goes forth for its supper, and then we hear its weird, sweet, shivering, tremulous cry. Because it lives near our homes and is, perhaps, the com- monest of the owls all over our country, every child can know it by sound, if not by sight. Father and mother barn owls s]Mo ureq Sunod : SUIM] A[UaAveYy 94], CHAPTER XVI MOURNER, WHISTLER, AND DRUMMER MouRNiNG DOVE BoB-WHITE RuFFED GROUSE MOURNING DOVE Called also: Carolina Dove D° NOT waste any sympathy on this m- cessant love-maker that slowly sings C00-0-0, Ah-C00-0-0-000-0-0-000-0-0, in a sweetly sad voice. Really he is no more melan- choly than the plaintive pewee but, on the contrary, is so happy in his love that his de- votion has passed into a proverb. Neverthe- less, the song he sings to his “turtle dove’’ sounds more like a dirge than a rapture. While she lives, there is no more contented bird in the woods. Dove lovers are quite self-sufficient. Their larger cousins, the wild pigeons, that once were so abundant, depended on friends for much of their happiness and lived in enormous flocks. Now only a few pairs survive in this land of liberty to refute the adage “In union there is strength.’’ Because millions of pigeons slept in favourite roosts many miles in extent, they were all too easily netted, and it did not take greedy men long to turn the last flock into cash. Happily, doves preserved their race by scat- tering in couples over a wide area—from 235 236 Birds Every Child Should Know Panama, in winter, as far north as Ontario in warm weather. Not until nursery duties, which begin early in the spring, are over, late in summer, do they give up their shy, unsocial habits to enjoy the company of a few friends. When they rise on whistling wings from tree- bordered fields, where they have been feeding on seeds and grain, not a gun is fired: no one cares to eat them. Only the cuckoo of our common birds builds so flimsy a nest as the dove’s adored darling. Iam sorry to tell you she isa slack, incompetent housekeeper, but evidently her lover is blind to every fault. What must the expert phoebe think of such a poorly made, untidy cradle, or that bustling, energetic housewife, Jenny Wren, or the tiniest of clever architects, the humming- bird? It isa wonder that the dove’s two white eggs do not fall through the rickety, rimless, unlined lattice. How scarred and bruised the naked bodies of the twins must be by the sticks! Like pigeons, hummingbirds, flickers, and some other feathered parents, doves feed their fledg- lings by pumping partly digested food—“pig- eon’s milk’’—from their own crops into theirs. When they leave the open woodlands to take a dust bath in the road, or to walk about and collect gravel for their interior grinding machines, or to get a drink of water before going to sleep, you may have a good look at A little screech owl in the sunlight where only a photog- rapher could find him yored AraqMes-pliM oq} WOLy Jo 0} SapIstym qog aftqyM sou Joy wo OTM ‘SIT Bob-white 237 them. As they walk, they bob their heads in a funny manner of theirown. They are bluish, fawn-coloured birds about a foot long. The male has some exquisite metallic colours on his neck, otherwise he resembles his best be- loved. Both wear black crescent patches on their cheeks. All the feathers on their long, pointed tails, except the two largest central ones, have a narrow, black band across the end and are tipped with white. The breast feathers shade from pinkish fawn to pale buff below. Beautiful birds these, in spite of their quiet, Quaker clothes. BOB-WHITE Called Also: “ Quatl-on-Toast’’; Partridge What a cheerful contrast is Bob White’s clear, staccato whistle to the drawling coo of the amorous dove! Character is often ex- pressed in a bird’s voice as well as in ours. From their voices alone you might guess that the dove and the quail are no relation. They do not belong even to the same order, bob- white being a scratching bird and having the ruffed grouse and barnyard chicken for his kin. Pheasants and turkeys are distantly related. In the South people call him a partridge; in 238 Birds Every Child Should Know New England it is the ruffed grouse that is known by that name; therefore, to save con- fusion, why not always give bob-white the name by which he calls himself? The chickadee, phoebe, peewee, towhee, whip-poor-will and bobolink, who tell their names less plainly than he, save every child who tries to know them much trouble. Don’t you wish every bird would introduce himself? The boy who ‘‘Drives home the cows from the pasture, Up through the long, shady lane, Where the quail whistles loud in the wheat fields, That are yellow with ripening grain,” probably “whistles up’’ those bob-whites on his way home as you would start up the roosters in the barnyard by imitating their crow. Bob White! Ah, Bob White! rings from some plump little feathered gallant on the outskirts of almost any farm during the long nesting season. A slight depression in some dry, grassy field ' or a hole at the foot of an old stump or weed- hedged wall will be lined with leaves and grasses by both mates in May to receive from ten to eighteen brilliant white eggs that are packed in, pointed end downwards, to economise space. If an egg were removed, it would be difficult indeed to re-arrange the clutch with such economy. Would it not be cruel to touch a Bob-white 239 nest which the outraged owners would at once desert? Just as baby chickens follow the mother about, so downy bob-whites run after both their parents and learn which seeds, grain, in- sects and berries they may safviy ect. Man, with his gun and dog and mowing machines, is their worst enemy, of course; then comes the sly fox and sneaking weasel that spring upon them from ambush, and the hawk that drops upon them like a thunderbolt. Birds have enemies above, below, and on every side. Is it any wonder that they are timid and shy? A note of alarm from Mamma White summons the chicks, half-running, half-flying, to huddle close to her or to take shelter beneath her short wings. Their little grouse cousins find pro- tection in a more original way. When the mother is busy sitting on a second or third clutch of eggs, it is Bob himself, a pattern of all the domestic virtues, who takes full charge of the family. When the last chicks are ready to join their older brothers and sisters, the bevy may contain three or four dozen birds, all de- votedly attached to one another. At bed time they squat in a circle on the ground, tails toward the centre of the ring, heads pointing outward to detect an enemy coming from any direction. As if their vigilance were not enough, Bob usually remains outside the ring to act as 240 Birds Every Child Should Know sentinel. At the sign of danger the bunch of birds will rise with loud whirring of the wings, as suddenly as a bomb might burst. From November onward, every gun in the country will be trained against them. There is sufficient reason for poor people, who rarely have any really good food, or enough to eat, shooting game birds in season; but who has any patience with the pampered epicures for whose order “‘ quail-on-toast’’ are cooked by the hun- dred thousand at city clubs, restaurants, and private tables, already over-supplied? No chef could ever tempt me to eat this friendly little song bird that stays about the farm with his family through the coldest winter to pick up the buckwheat, cheap raisins, and sweepings from the hay loft that keep him as neighbourly asarobin. Every farmer who does not post his place, and who allows this useful ally in his eternal war against weeds and insect pests to be shot, impoverishes himself more than he 1s aware, RUFFED GROUSE Called also: Partridge Bob-white and ruffed grouse are the fife and drum corps of the woods. That some birds are wonderful musicians everybody knows. Ruffed Grouse 241 No other orchestra contains a member who can drum without a drum. Even that famous drummer, the woodpecker, needs a dead, dry, resonant, hardwood limb to tap on before he can produce his best effects. How does the grouse beat his deep, muffled, thump, thump, thumping, rolling tattoo? Some scientists have staked their reputation on the claim that they have seen him drum by rapidly striking his wings against the sides of his body; but other later-day scientists, who contend that he beats only the air when his wings vibrate so fast that the sight cannot quite follow them, are un- doubtedly right. On a fallen log, a stump, a rail fence or a wall, that may have been used as a drumming stand for many years, the male grouse will strut with a jerking, dandified gait, puff out his feathers, ruff his neck frills, raise and spread his fan- shaped tail like a turkey cock, blow out his cheeks and neck, then suddenly halt and begin to beat his wings. After a few slow, measured thumps, the stiff, strong wings whir faster and faster, until there is only a blur where they vibrate. This is the grouse’s love song that summons a mate to their trysting place. It serves also as a challenge toa rival. Blood and feathers may soon be strewn around the ground, for in the spring grouse will fight as fiercely as game-cocks. Sportsmen in the autumn woods 242 Birds Every Child Should Know often hear grouse drumming at the old stand, merely from excess of vigour and not because they take the slightest interest then in a mate. After the mating season is over, they have less chivalry than barnyard roosters. Shy, wary birds of wooded, hilly country, grouse are rarely thought of as possible pets, but the gentle little girl in the picture won the heart of a drummer and subdued his wildness, as you see. Some people are trying to domes- ticate grouse in wire-enclosed poultry yards. Sometimes when, like “the cat that walked by himself ”’ you wander “in the wild wet woods,”’ perhaps you will be suddenly startled by the loud whirring roar of a big brown grouse that suddenly hurls itself from the ground near your feet. If it were shot from the mouth of a can- non it could surprise you no less. Then it sails away, dodging the trees and disappears. Gun- ners have “educated”’ the intelligent bird into being, perhaps, the most wily, difficult game in the woods. Like the meadowlark, flicker, sparrows and other birds that spend much time on the ground, the bob-white and ruffed grouse wear brown feathers, streaked and barred, to harmonise perfectly with their surroundings. “To find a hen grouse with young is a memorable experience,’’ says Frank M. Chapman. “While the parent is giving us a lesson in mother love ‘asnoid poyna :yod orel § [Its oT] VW ming The drummer drum Ruffed Grouse 243 and bird intelligence, her downy chicks are teach- ing us facts in protective colouration and hered- ity. How the old one limps and flutters! She can barely drag herself along the ground. But while we are watching her, what has become of the ten or a dozen little yellow balls we had almost stepped on? Not a feather do we see, until, poking about in the leaves, we find one little chap hiding here and another squatting there, all perfectly still, and so like the leaves in colour as to be nearly invisible.”’ CHAPTER XVII BIRDS OF THE SHORE AND MARSHES KILLDEER SEMIPALMATED OR RING-NECKED PLOVER LEAST SANDPIPER SPOTTED SANDPIPER W oopcock CLAPPER RAIL Sora RAIL GREAT BLUE HERON LITTLE GREEN HERON BLACK-CROWNED NiGHT HERON AMERICAN BITTERN KILLDEER F YOU don’t know the little killdeer plover, it is surely not his fault, for he is a noisy sentinel, always ready, night or day, to tell you his name. Kzulldee, killdee, he calls with his high voice when alarmed—and he is usually beset by fears, real or imaginary—but when at peace, his voice is sweet and low. Much per- secution from gunners has made the naturally gentle birds of the shore and marshes rather shy and wild. Most plovers nest in the Arctic regions, where man and his wicked ways are unknown. When the young birds reach our land of liberty and receive a welcome of hot shot, the survivors learn their first lesson in shyness. Some killdeer, however, are hatched in the United States. No sportsman worthy the name would waste shot on a bird not larger than a robin; one, moreover, with musky flesh; yet I have seen scores of killdeer strung over the backs of gunners in tide-water Virginia. Their larger cousins, the black-breasted, the piping, the golden and Wilson’s plovers, who travel from the tundras of the far North to south America and back again every year, have now become rare because too much cooked 247 248 Birds Every Child Should Know along their long route. You can usually tell a flock of plovers in flight by the crescent shape of the rapidly moving mass. With a busy company of friends, the killdeer haunts broad tracts of grassy land, near water- uplands or lowlands, or marshy meadows beside the sea. Scattered over a chosen feeding ground, the plovers run about nimbly, nervously, looking for trouble as well as food. Because worms, which are their favourite supper, come out of the ground at nightfall, the birds are especially active then. Grasshoppers, crickets, and other insects content them during the day. SEMIPALMATED PLOVER The killdeer, which is our commonest plover, has a little cousin scarcely larger than an English sparrow that is a miniature of himself, except that the semipalmated (half-webbed) or ring- necked plover has only one dark band across the upper part of his white breast, while the killdeer wears two black rings. This dainty little beach bird has brownish-gray upper parts so like the colour of wet sand, that, as he runs along over it, just in advance of the frothing ripples, he is in perfect harmony with his sur- roundings. Relying upon that fact for pro- Least Sandpiper 249 tection, he will squat behind a tuft of beach grass if you pass too near rather than risk flight. When the tide is out, you may see the tiny forms of these common ring-necks mingled with the ever-friendly little sandpipers on the ex- posed sand bars and wide beaches where all keep up a constant hunt for bits of shell fish, fish eggs and sand worms. General Greely found them nesting in Grinnell Land in July, the males doing most of the incubating as is customary in the plover family, whose females certainly have advanced ideas. Downy little chicks run about as soon after leaving the egg as they are dry. In August the advance guard of southbound flocks begin to arrive in the United States en route for Brazil—quite a journey in the world to test the fledgling’s wings. LEAST SANDPIPER Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit,— One little sandpiper and I. 250 Birds Every Child Should Know Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white light-houses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,~— One little sandpiper and I. i I watch him as he skims along Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; He starts not at my fitful song, Or flash of fluttering drapery. He has no thought of any wrong; He scans me with a fearless eye. Stanch friends are we, well-tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I. Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter canst thou fly? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky: For are we not God’s children both, Thou, little sandpiper, and I? Almost every child I know is more familiar with Celia Thaxter’s poem about the little sand- piper than with the bird itself. But if you have the good fortune to be at the seashore in the late summer, when flocks of the friendly mites come to visit us from the Arctic regions on their way south, you can scarcely fail to become acquainted with the companion of Mrs. Thax- ter’s lonely walks along the beach at the Isles of Shoals where her father kept the lighthouse. Spotted Sandpiper 251 The least sandpipers, peeps, ox-eyes or stints, as they are variously called, are only about the size of sparrows—too small for any self- respecting gunner to bag, therefore they are still abundant. Their light, dingy-brown and gray, finely speckled backs are about the colour of the mottled sand they run over so nimbly, and their breasts are as white as the froth of the waves that almost never touch them. Beach birds become marvellously quick in reckoning the fraction of a second when they must run from under the combing wave about to break over their little heads. Plovers rely on their fleet feet to escape a wetting. Least sandpipers usually fly upward and onward if a deluge threatens; but they have a cousin, the semipalmated (half-webbed) sandpiper that swims well when the unexpected water sud- denly lifts it off its feet. These busy, cheerful, sprightly little peepers are always ready to welcome to their flocks other birds—ring-necked plovers, turnstones, snipe and phalaropes. If by no other sign, you may distinguish sandpipers by their con- stant call, peep-peep. SPOTTED SANDPIPER Do you know the spotted sandpiper, teeter, tilt-up, teeter-tail, teeter-snipe, or tip-up, which- 252 Birds Every Child Should Know ever you may choose to call it? As if it had not yet decided whether to be a beach bird or a woodland dweller, a wader or a perching songster, it is equally at home along the sea- shore or on wooded uplands, wherever ditches, pools, streams, creeks, swamps, and wet mea- dows furnish its favourite foods. It stays with us through the long summer. Did you ever see it go through any of the queer motions that have earned for itsomany names? Jerk- ing up first its head, then its tail, it walks with a funny, bobbing, tipping, see-saw gait, as if it were self-conscious and conceited. Still another popular name was given from its sharp call peet-weet, peet-weet, rapidly repeated, and usually uttered as the bird flies in graceful curves over the water or inland fields. WOODCOCK Called alsc: Blind, Wall-eyed, Mud, Bigheaded, Wood, and Whistling Snipe; Bog-sucker; Bog- bird; Timber Doodle Whenever you see little groups of clean-cut holes dotted over the earth in low, wet ground, you may know that either the woodcock or Wilson’s snipe has been there probing for worms. Not even the woodpecker’s combination tool Woodcock 253 is more wonderfully adapted to its work than the bill of these snipe, which is a long, straight boring instrument, its upper half fitted with a flexible tip for hooking the worm out of its hole as you would lift a string out of a jar on your hooked finger. Down goes the bill into the mud, sunk to the nostrils; then the upper tip feels around for its slippery victim. You need scarcely hope to see the probing performance because earth-worms, like mice, come out of their holes after dark, which is why snipe are most active then. A little boy once asked me this conundrum of his own making: “ What is the difference between Martin Luther and a woodcock?” Just a few differences suggested themselves, but I did not guess right the very first time; can you? “One didn’t like a Diet of Worms and the other does,” was the small boy’s answer. After the ground freezes hard in the north- ern United States and Canada, the woodcock is compelled to go south to Virginia. But by the time the skunk cabbage and bright-green, fluted leaves of hellebore are pushing through the bogs and wet woodlands in earliest spring, back he comes again. An odd-looking, thick- necked, chunky fellow he is, less than a foot in length, his long, straight, stout bill sticking far out from his triangular head; his eyes placed eo far back in the upper corners that he must 254 Birds Every Chile Should Know be able to see behind him quite as well as he can look ahead; the streaks and bars of his mottled russet-brown, gray and buff and black upper parts being so laid on that he is in per- fect harmony with the russet leaves, earth and underbrush of his woodland home. When his mate is sitting on her nest, the mimicry of her surroundings is so perfect it is well-nigh im- possible to find her. Sportsmen pursue both the woodcock and Wilson’s snipe relentlessly, but happily they are no easy targets. Rising on short, stiff, whistling wings they fly in a zig-zag, erratic flight, and quickly drop to cover again, con- tinually breaking the scent for a pursuing dog. RAILS Rails are such shy, skulking hiders among the tall marsh grasses that “every child’’ need never hope to know them all; but a few mem- bers of the family that are both abundant and noisy, may be readily recognised by their voices alone. All rails prefer to escape from an intruder through the sedges in well-worn runways rather than trust their short, rounded wings to bear them beyond danger; and for forcing their way through grassy jungles, their narrow-breasted, Hy 4 ! M i] t th i t Ratls 255 wedge-shaped bodies are perfectly adapted. Compressed almost to a point in front, but broad and blunt behind where their queer little short-pointed tails stand up, the rails’ small figures thread their way in and out of the mazes over the oozy ground with wonderful rapidity. “As thin as a rail’? means much to the cook who plucks one. It offers even a smaller bite than a robin to the epicure. When a gunner routs a rail it reluctantly rises a few feet above the grasses, flies with much fluttering, trailing its legs after it, but quickly sinks in the sedges again. Except in game bags, you rarely see a rail’s varied brown and gray back or its barred breast. The bill is longer than the head. The long, widespread, flat toes help the owner to tread a dinner out of the mud as well as to swim across an inlet; and the short hind toes enable him to cling when he runs up the rushes to reach the tassels of grain at the top. No doubt you once played with some mechanical toy that made a noise something like the peculiar, rolling cackle of the clapper rail. This “marsh hen,’’ which is common in the salt meadows along our coast from Long Island southward, continually betrays itself by its voice; otherwise you might never suspect its presence unless you are in the habit of pushing a punt up a creek to get acquainted with the 256 Birds Every Child Should Know interesting shy creatures that dwell in what Thoreau called “ Nature’s sanctuary.” The clapper’s cousin, the sora, or Carolina rail, so well known to gunners, alas! if not to “every child,”’ delights to live wherever wild rice grows along inland lakes and rivers or along the coast. Its sweetly whistled spring song ker-wee, ker-wee, and “rolling whinny’’ give place in autumn to the ’kuk, kuk, ’k-’k-’k- ’kuk imitated by alleged sportsmen in search of a mere trifle of flesh that they fill with shot. As Mrs. Wright says of the bobolinks (neigh- bours of the soras in the rice fields) so may it be written of them; they only serve “to length- en some weary dinner where a collection of animal and vegetable bric-a-brac takes the place of satisfactory nourishment.” GREAT BLUE HERON Standing motionless as the sphinx, with his neck drawn in until his crested head rests between his angular shoulders, the big, long- legged, bluish-gray heron depends upon his stillness and protective colouring to escape the notice of his prey, and of his human foes (for he has no others). In spite of his size—and he stands four feet high without stockings—it takes the sharpest eyes to detect him as he waits in ee eee Great Blue Heron Ey some shallow pool among the sedges along the creek or river side, silently, solemnly, hour after hour, for a little fish, frog, lizard, snake, or some large insect to come within striking dis- tance. Witha sudden stroke of his long, strong, sharp bill, he either snaps up his victim, or runs it through. A fish will be tossed in the air before being swallowed, head downward, that the fins may not scratch his very long, slender throat. When you are eating ice cream, don’t you wish your throat were as long as this heron’s? A gunner, who wantonly shoots at any living target, will usually try to excuse himself for striking down this stately, picturesque bird into a useless mass of flesh and feathers, by saying that herons help themselves to too many fish. (He forgets about all the mice and reptiles they destroy.) But perhaps birds, as well as men, are entitled to.a fair share of the good things of the Creator. Some people would prefer the sight of this majestic bird to the small, worthless fish he eats. What do you think about protecting him by law? Any one may shoot him now. The broad side of a barn would be about as good a test of a marksman’s skill. ‘The evil that birds do surely lives after them; the good they do for us is far too little ap- preciated. Almost the last snowy heron and 258 Birds Every Child Should Know the last egret of Southern swamps have yielded their bodies to the knife of the plume hunter, who cuts out the exquisite decorations these birds wear during the nesting season. Inas- much as all the heron babies depend upon their parents through an unusually long, help- less infancy, the little orphans are left to die by starvation. For what end is the slaughter of the innocents? Merely that the unthinking heads of vain women may be decked out with aigrettes! Don’t blame the poor hunters too much when the plumes are worth their weight in gold. LITTLE GREEN HERON Called also: Poke; Chuckle-head This most abundant member of his tropical tribe that spends the summer with us, is a shy, solitary bird of the swamps where you would lose your rubber boots in the quagmire if you attempted to know him too intimately. But you may catch a glimpse of him as he wades about the edge of a pond or creek with slow, calculated steps, looking for his supper. All herons become more active toward evening because their prey does. By day, this heron, like his big, blue cousin, might be mistaken for SuIpeM Ul SauosuIn} pue siodidpues A[puswy Jo yoop YW One fittfe sandpiper ae ke pee | i The coot 208 tm a ——s Little Green Heron 259 a stump or snag among the sedges and bushes by the waterside, so dark and stillis he. Herons are accused of the tropical vice of laziness; but surely a bird that travels from northern Canada to the tropics and back again every year to earn its living, as the little green heron does, is not altogether lazy. Startle him, and he springs into the air with a loud squawk, flap- ping his broad wings and trailing his greenish- yellow legs behind him, like the storks you see painted on Japanese fans. Heand his mate have long, dark-green crests on their odd-shaped, receding heads and some lengthened, pointed feathers between the shoul- ders of their green or grayish-green hunched backs. Their figures are rather queer. The reddish-chestnut colour on their necks fades into the brownish-ash of their under parts, divided by a line of dark spots on the white throat that widen on the breast. Although the little green heron is the smallest member of this tribe of large birds that we see in the Northern States and Canada, it is about a foot and a half long, larger than any bird, except one of its own cousins, that you are likely to see in its marshy haunts. Unlike many of their kind a pair of these herons prefer to build their rickety nests apart by themselves rather in one of those large, sociable, noisy and noisome colonies which we 260 Birds Every Child Should Know associate with the heron tribe. Flocking is sometimes a fatal habit. BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON Called also: Quawk; Qua Bird When the night herons return to us from the South in April, they go straight to the home of their ancestors, to which they are devotedly attached—rickety, ramshackle heronries, mere bundles of sticks in the tops of trees in some swamp—and begin at once to repair them. The cuckoo’s and the dove’s nests are fine pieces of architecture compared with a heron’s. Is it not a wonder that the helpless heron babies do not tumble through the loose twigs? When they are old enough to climb around their lat- ticed nursery, they still make no attempt to leave it, and several more weeks must pass be- fore they attempt to fly. If there is an ancient heronry in your neighbourhood, as there is in mine, don’t attempt to visit the untidy, ill- smelling place on a hot day. One would like to spray the entire colony with a deodoriser. Thanks to the night heron’s habits that keep him concealed by day when gunners are abroad, a few large heronries still exist within an hour’s ride of New York, in spite of much persecution. a ee . . | J UY WL . At Yq UdI1 | IT “~*~ egy * Cites apered ssoip UO SUOJeY Weald I[}{I] UMOIS-J[e FT American Bittern 261 Unlike the solitary little green cousin, the black- crowned heron delights in company, and a hundred noisy pairs may choose to nest in some favourite spot. How they squawk over their petty quarrels! Wilson likened the noise to that of “two or three hundred Indians choking one another.” Only when they have young fledglings to feed do these herons hunt for food in broad day- light. But as the light fades they become in- creasingly active and noisy; even after it is pitch dark, when the fishermen go eeling, you may hear them quawking continually as they fly up and down the creek. Big, pearly-gray birds (they stand fully two feet high) with black-crowned heads, from which their long, narrow, white wedding feathers fall over the black top of the back, the night herons so harmonise with the twilight as to seem a part of it. AMERICAN BITTERN Called also: Stake-driver; Poke; Freckled Heron; Booming Bittern; Indian Hen Even if you have never seen this shy hermit.of large swamps and marshy meadows you must know him by his remarkable “barbaric yawp.”’ Not a muscle does this brown and blackish and 262 Birds Every Child Should Know buff freckled fellow move as he stands waiting for prey to come within striking distance of what appears to bea dead stump. Sometimes he stands with his head drawn in until it rests on his back; or, he may hold his head erect and pointed upward when he looks like a sharp snag. While he meditates pleasantly on the flavour of a coming dinner, he suddenly snaps and gulps, filling his lungs with air, then loudly bellows forth the most unmusical bird cry you are ever likely to hear. You may recognise it across the marsh half a mile away or more. A nauseated child would go through no more con- vulsive gestures than this happy hermit makes every time he lifts up his voice to call, pump- er-lunk, pump-er-lunk, pump-er-lunk. Still another noise has earned him one of his many popular names because it sounds like a stake being driven into the mud. A booming bittern I know sits hour after hour, almost every day in summer, ycar after year, on a dark, decaying pile of an old dock in the creek. Our canoe glides over the water so silently it rarely disturbs him. The timid bird relies on his protective colouring to con- ceal him in so exposed a place and profits by his fearlessness in broad daylight next to an excellent feeding ground. At low tide he walks about sedately on the muddy flats treading out a dinner. Kingfishers rattle up and down the American Bittern 263 creek, cackling rails hide in the sedges behind it, red-winged blackbirds flute above the phalanxes of rushes on its banks: but the bit- tern makes more noise, especially toward even- ing, than all the other inhabitants of the swampy meadows except the frogs, whose voices he forever silences when he can. Frogs, legs and all, are his favourite delicacy. CHAPTER XVIII THE FASTEST FLYERS CANADA GOOSE WiLp Ducks HERRING GULL CANADA GOOSE Oy THE millions of migrants that stream across the sky every spring and autumn, none attract so much attention as the wild geese. How their mellow honk, honk thrills one when the birds pass like ships in the night! Such big, strong, rapid flyers have little to fear in travelling by daylight too, but gunners have taught them the wisdom of keeping up so high that they look like mere specks. It must be a very dull child without imagination, who is not stirred by the flight of birds that are launched on a journey of at least two thousand miles. Don’t you wish you were as familiar with the map as these migrants must be? Usually geese travel in a wedge-shaped flock, headed by some old, experienced leader; but sometimes, with their long necks outstretched, they follow one another in Indian file and shoot across the clouds as straight as an arrow. Geese spend much more time on land than ducks do. If you will study the habits of the common barnyard goose you will learn many of the ways of its wild relations that nest too far north to be watched by “every child.” Canada geese that have been wounded by ~MuTIO. 267 268 Birds Every Child Should Know sportsmen in the fall, can be kept on a farm perfectly contented all winter; but when the honking flocks return from the south in March or April, they rarely resist “ the call of the wild,”’ and away they go toward their kin and freedom. WILD DUCKS Birds that spend their summers for the most part north of the United States and travel past us faster than the fastest automobile racer or locomotive—and an hundred miles an hour is not an uncommon speed for ducks to fly—need have little to fear, you might suppose. But so mercilessly are they hunted whenever they stop to rest, that few birds are more timid. River and pond ducks, that have the most delicious flavour because they feed on wild rice, celery and other dainty fare, frequent sluggish streams and shallow ponds. There they tip up their bodies in a funny way to probe about the muddy bottoms, their heads stuck down under water, their tails and flat, webbed feet in the air directly above them, just as you have seen barnyard ducks stand on their heads. They like to dabble along the shores, too, and draw out roots, worms, seeds and tiny shellfish imbedded in the banks. Of course they get a good deal of mud in their mouths, but fortun- Black-crowned night heron rising from a morass RENO ne SE eT PD ee S ~y > ee ” ay eg ES ada ia ade = oa PPP OIE Po Wild Ducks 269 ately their broad, flat bills have strainers on the sides, and merely by shutting them tight, the mud and water are forced out of the gutters. After nightfall they seem especially active and noisy. In every slough where mallards, blue- and green-winged teal, widgeons, black duck and pintails settle down to rest in autumn, gunners wait concealed in the sedges. Decoying the sociable birds by means of painted wooden images of ducks floating on the water near the blind, they commence the slaughter at day- break. But ducks are of all targets the most difficult, perhaps, for the tyro to hit. On the slightest alarm they bound from the water on whistling wings and are off at a speed that only the most expert shot overtakes. No self- respecting sportsman would touch the little wood duck—the most beautiful member of its family group. It is as choicely coloured and marked as the Chinese mandarin duck, anda possible possession for every one who has a country place with woods and water on it. Unlike its relatives, the wood duck nests in hollow trees and carries its babies to the water in its mouth asa cat carries its kittens. The large group of sea and bay ducks, con- tains the canvas-back, red-head and other vegetarian ducks, dear to the sportsman and epicure. These birds may, perhaps, be familiar 270 Birds Every Child Should Know to ‘every child” as they hang by the necks in butcher-shop windows, but rarely in life. Enormous flocks once descended upon the Chesapeake Bay region. To Virginia and Maryland, therefore, hastened all the gunners in the East until the canvas-back, at least, is even more rare in the sportsman’s paradise than it is on the gourmand’s plate. Every kind of duck is now served up as canvas-back. Some sea ducks, however, which are fish eaters, have flesh too tough, rank, and oily for the table. They dive for their food, often to a great depth, pursuing and catching fish under water like the saw-billed mergansers or shelldrakes which form a distinct group. The surf scoters, or black coots, so abundant off the Atlantic coast in winter, dive constantly to feed on mussels, clams or scallops. Naturally such athletic birds are very tough. With the exception of the wood duck, all ducks nest on the ground. Twigs, leaves and grasses form the rude cradle for the eggs, and, as a final touch of devotion, the mother bird plucks feathers from her own soft breast for the eggs to he in. When there is any work to be done the selfish, dandified drakes go off by themselves, leaving the entire care of raising the family to their mates. Then they moult and sometimes lose so many feathers they are un- able to fly. But by the time the ducklings are Herring Gull 271 well grown and strong of wing, the drake joins the family, one flock joins another, and the ducks begin their long journey southward. But very few children, even in Canada, can ever hope to know them in their inaccessible swampy homes. HERRING GULL Called also: Winter Gull “Every child’’ who has crossed the ocean or even a New York ferry in winter, knows the big, pearly-gray and white gullsthat come from north- ern nesting grounds in November, just before the ice locks their larder, to spend the winter about our open waterways. On the great Jakes and the larger rivers and harbours along our coast, you may see the scattered flocks sailing about serenely on broad, strong wings, gliding and skimming and darting with a poetry of motion few birds can equal. There are at least three things one never tires of watching: the blaze of a wood fire, the breaking of waves on a beach, and the flight of a flock of gulls. Not many years ago gulls became alarmingly scarce. Why? Because silly girls and women, to follow fashion, trimmed their hats with gull’s wings until hundreds of thousands of these 272 Birds Every Child Should Know birds and their exquisite little cousins, the terns or sea-swallows, had been slaughtered. Then some people said the massacre must stop and happily the law now sayssotoo. Paid keep- ers patrol some of the islands where gulls and terns nest, which is the reason why you may see ashy-brown young gulls in almost every flock. When they mature, a deep-pearl mantle covers their backs and wings, and their breasts, heads and tails become snowy white. Their colour- ing now suggests fogs and white-capped waves. Why protect birds that are not fit for food and that kill no mice nor insects in the farmer’s fields? is often asked. A wise man once said “the beautiful is as useful as the useful,’’ but the picturesque gulls are not preserved merely to enliven marine pictures and to please the eye of travellers. They fill the valuable office of scavengers of the sea. Lobsters and crabs, among many other creatures under the ocean, gulls, terns and petrels, among many creatures over it, do for the water what the turkey buz- zard does for the land—rid it of enormous quantities of refuse. When one watches hun- dreds of gulls following the garbage scows out of New York harbour, or sailing in the wake of an ocean liner a thousand miles or more away from land, to pick up the refuse thrown over- board from the ship’s kitchen, one realises the excellence of Dame Nature’s housecleaning. Yonp pid & Jo ysou poulj-Jaqyeey ot], 2 joven asnjor Suyvoy JO mMoqiey YIOX MON Sursuvspo Moos osequed wv jo oyea oq} UI S][Nd Bag a. — ea eee Oy sige wae Herring Gull 273 Gulls are greedy creatures. No sooner will one member of a flock swoop down upon a morsel of food, than a horde of hungry com- panions, in hot pursuit, chase after him to try to frighten him into dropping his dinner. With a harsh, laughing cry, akak, kak, akak, kak, kak, they wheel and float about a feeding ground for hours at a time. And they fly incredibly far and fast. A flock that has followed an ocean greyhound all day will settle down to sleep at night “bedded” on the rolling water like ducks while “rocked in the cradle of the deep.’”’ After a rest that may last till dawn, they rise refreshed, fly in the direction of the vanished steamer and actually overtake it with apparent ease in time to pick up the scraps from the breakfast table. Reliable sailors say the same birds follow a ship from our shores all the way across the Atlantic. INDEX INDEX Accenter, 58. Bellbird, 12. Bittern, 40, 263. American, 261. Booming, 261, 262. Blackbird, 149. Crow, 148. Red-winged, 40, 111, FAI, 242, 143, 71206, 263. Rusty, 143. Swamp, 141. Thrush, 143. Bluebird, iii, vi, 9, 10, 11, 12, 29, 30, 97, 104, E20, 145) ukOO, IO, 231. Blue Jay, 23, 24, 79, 83, 84, P26.) 34, 753, 1256, ES 7) BOS LOS, 2E7, A Ty Ie oe Bobolink, 137, 138,139, 140, 150, 190, 238, 256. Bob-white, 144, 218, 237, 239, 230, 240, 242: Bog-bird, 252. Bog-sucker, 252. Bonnet-bird, 82. Bull-bat, 177. Bunting, 130. Bay-winged, 113. Indigo, 128, 131, 169. Snow, 124. Butcherbird, 79, 80. Buzzard, 214. Turkey, 213, 272. Canary, 115, 128. Wald; 53, 324,. 125, Canvas-back, 270. Cardinal, 23, 38, 48, 72, 83, 87, 133, 134. Catbird, 15, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 72, 163. Cedarbird, 82, 84, 85, 86. Chat, Yellow-breasted, 47, 55, 63, 64, 74, 128. Chebec, 161, 170, 171. Cherry-bird, 82. Chewink, 129, 130, 132. Chickadee, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 130, -189,. 1901, 1O5, 238. Chimneyswift, 180. CHR PD: 4xG, 417, 118. inter, IIg. Chuckle-head, 258. Chuck-will’s-widow, 177. Clape, 199. Coot, 221. Black, 270. Cowbird, 56, 57, 63, 74, 139; E40; -I41, 140,» 150, 277,180; (207. Creeper, Brown, 26, 58. Crow, iv, 24, 63, 149. American, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 163, 230. Carrion, 214. Rain, 205. Cuckoo, 207, 210, 236, 260. Black-billed, 205. Yellow-billed, v, 43, 205, 206. Darter, Big Blue, 2rg. Little Blue, 219. 277 278 Devil Downhead, 25. Dove, 236, 237, 260. Carolina, 235. Mourning, 235. Duck, v, 63, 221, 271, 473- Black, 269. Canvas-back, 269. Chinese mandarin, 269. Red-headed, 269. Wild, 268. Wood, 269, 270. Eagle, 80, 221, 222, 224. Bald, 220, 225. Golden, 222. Falcon, Rusty-crowned, 223. Finch, 108. Grass, 113. Purple, 126, 127, 131. Firebird, 146, 193. Flicker, 144, 189, 193, 198, 199, 200, 201, 242. Flycatcher, 46, 66, 80, 140, 16x, ).162,' TOO, EOS: Crested, 82, 161, 165, TOO, TOG," Tor: Dusky, 166, 170. Least; 161, 170,171. Goatsucker, 179. Goldfinch, v, 53, 85. American, 124, Lop, D270 Fo. Goose, 221. Canada, 267. Goshawk, 215, 220. Grackle, 143, 150, Bronzed, 148. Purple, 148. Grosbeak, 108. Blue, 128. Cardinal, 133. Pine, 29. Red-breasted, 131. Rose-breasted, 114, 13%, 132, 133, 134. Grouse, 192, 238, 241, 242. 125, 166. Index Grouse, Ruffed, 237, 238, 240, 242. Gull 221,226,992; 273: Herring, 271. Winter, 271. Halcyon, 208. Hang-nest, 146. Hawk, iv, 24, 80, 162, 163, 227, 222, 224, 226; 227, 230, 239. American Sparrow, Lge, 223. Chicken, 215, 218, 219. Cooper’s, 215, 219. Fish, 208, 224, 225. Hen, 215, 216, 218. Killy, 223. Marsh, 229. Mosquito, 177. Mouse, 223. Partridge, 220. Red, 218. Red-shouldered, 215, 216, 217,’ 216,) 2a! Red-tailed, 218, 220. Sharp-shinned, 215, 219. Winter, 215. Hen-hawk, Blue, 220. Hen, Indian, 261. Marsh, 255. Heron, 257, 258, 259, 26r. Black-crowned Night, 260, 261. Freckled, 261. Great Blue, 256. Little Green, 258, 259. High-hole, rgo9. Hummingbird, vi, 29, 170, 1476, 190, 201, 236: Ruby-throated, 183, 184, 185, 186. Indigo-bird, 128. 1 Canada, 157, 158. enny Wren, 236. Index 279 oree, 129. unco, 120, 122, 123, 124, Kingbird, v, 80, 145, 161, 163, 164, 165, 223, Kingfisher, 40, 63, 83, 102, £28, aro, 362: Belted, 208. Kinglet, 21, 29, 189. Golden-crowned, 28. Ruby-crowned, 28, 29. Lark, Old-field, 143. Lettuce-bird, 124. Linnet, 126. Logger-head, 79, 81, 82. Mallard, 269. Martin, 104. Bee, 163. Purple, 95, 96, 97, 98. Sand, rox. Mavis, 41. Maybird, 137. Meadowlark, 113, 143, 144, 145, 150, 178, 199, 242. Meatbird, 157. Merganser, 270. Mockingbird, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49,55, 79- French, 41. Yellow, 65. Moose-bird, 157. Nighthawk, 93, 176, 1775 170, 282: Nightingale, 49. Virginia, 133. Nightjar, 177. Nuthatch, 21, 26, 28, 29, 58, 189, Igr. Red-breasted, 26, 28. White-breasted, 25, 27. Oriole, vi, 88, 140, 148, 206, Baltimore, 65, 72, 145, 146, 147, 149, I50. Oriole, Golden, 146. Orchard, 145, 146, 147. Ortolan, 137. Osprey, 221, 224, 225. Oven-bird, 42, 54, 5% 59, 61, 66, 529, 528, 177: Owl, 191, 215, 224, 225, 226, 227, 231. Barn, 227, 228. Barred, 230. Hoot, 230. Long-eared, 229. Marsh, 229. Meadow, 229. Monkey-faced, 227. Screech, 230, 232. Short-eared, 229. Ox-eye, 251. Partridge, 237, 240. Peabody-bird, 120. Peep, 251. Peto-bird, 23. Petrel, 272. Pewee, 129, 130, 235, 238. Bridge, 166. Water, 166. Wood, 161,169,170,171. Phalarope, 251. Pheasant, 237. Phoebe, 130, 161, 166, 167, 168, 170, 236, 238. Pigeon, 201, 236. Wild, 235. Pintail, 269. Plover, 251. Black-breasted, 247. Golden, 247. Killdeer, 247, 248. Piping, 247. Ring-necked, 248, 249, aey, Semipalmated, 248. Wilson’s, 247. Poke, 258, 26r. Quail, 237, 238, 240. ua-bird, 260. wk, 260. 280 Rail, 40, 111, 254, 255, 262. Carolina, 256. Red-bird, Black- winged, 86. Crested, 133. Redstart, 65, 66, 147. Reedbird, 137, 138. Ricebird, 137, 138. Robin, iii, vi, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, Ei; /h2)5s, £5, 46,90, $3, 86; 87, P07, 117; 130, 134, 249,. 145, 175, I97; .200,, 205, 225, h2ae2; 24750 2552 Golden, 146. Ground, 129, 130. Redbreast, 5, 130. Wood, 12. Sandpiper, 249, 250. east, 249, 251. Semipalmated, 251. Spotted, 251. Sapsucker, 195, 196, 198. Yellow-bellied, 194. Scoter, Surf, 270. Sea-swallow, 272. Sheldrake, 270. Shrike, 80, 81, 198, 223. Northern, 79, 81, 82. Silk-tail, 82. Skylark, 137. Snipe, 251, 253. Big-headed, 252. Blind, 252. Mud, 252. Wall-eyed, 252. Whistling, 252. Wilson’s, 252, 254. Wood, 252. Snow-bird, Slate-coloured, 123: Snowflake, 124. Sora, 256. Sparrow, 5, 10, 35, 36, 42, 61, 66, 70, 80, 83, 86, 104, (107; 527, 128; 132) 228,' 740; 263, 242, 251. Index Sparrow, Canada, 120. Chipping, iii, 20, 112, 116) 1E7; 116, 130: Door-step, 116. English, 24, 27, 33, 53, 59 64, 81,097, 108, TIO; DEI, “Eig, ores, 116, FEO, 225,130, r61; 763) (‘F927 207, 248. Field, 112, 114, 119, 130. Fox): 122,723) Hair, 116. Song, 39, 109, 110, 111, LEO, 123, beyy ee so: Swamp, III, 112. Tree, 119, 120. Vesper, I13, I14. White-crowned, 121. White- throated, 120, E2122, 030: Stake- driver, 261. Starling, Meadow, 143- Stint, 251. Swallow, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 108, 176, 162,. res: Bank, 101, 102, 210. Barn, 98, 99, 100, Ior. Chimney, 180. Eave or Cliff, 100, ror, 104. Rough-winged, 102. Sand, ror, Tree, 103, 104, IgI. White-breasted, 103. Swift, 97, 176, 180, 181, 182, 183. Chimney, 93, 96, 190. Tanager, Scarlet, 48, 86, 87, 83, 86; 13%, "E30. Summer, 89. Teacher, 58, 59, 60. Teal, Blue-winged, 269. Green-winged, 269. Teeter, 251. Teeter-snipe, 251. Index Teeter-tail, 251. Pern, 272. Thistlebird, 124. Thrasher, Brown, 15, 41; 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, I12. Thrush, 42, 43, 55, 122, 140, EGS: Brown, 4I. Golden-crowned, 58. Ground, 41, 44. Hermit, 12. Long, 41. Migratory, 5- Red, 41. Red-breasted, 5. Song, 12. Wilson’s, 12, 14. Woud)) 22, /13. FA, 5S. Tilt-up, 251. Timber Doodle, 252. Tip-up, 251. Titmouse, 21, 24, 25, 134; 189, FOr. Black-capped, 1 Crested, 23, 38. Tufted, 23, 26, 82. Tomtit, Crested, 23. Towhee, 112, 122, 129, 130, nar, /238. Tree Mouse, 25. Turkey, 214. Turnstone, 251. Veery, 14, 15. Wareo, 69, 70,82; 95; 124, 140, 145, 162, 171. Red-eye, v, 71,72, 74, 75,129, 169. Warbling, 74, 75. White-eyed, v, 72, 73, 74. Yellow-throated, 74. Vulture, 214. Black, 214. Turkey, 213. 281 Warbler, 28, 54, 55, 59, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70,95, 162. Black and White Creep- ing, 57, 58, 189. Blackburnian, 66. Black-masked,Ground, 61. aes V, 53) 54,55, 56, 57, 9 2, 63, 125, 140. Waxwing, 23. Cedar, 82, 83, 85, 126, 145. Whip-poor-will, 93, 175,176, £77, 578,170,102,230- Whiskey Jack, 157. Widgeon, 269. Wren, ili, 19, 28, 209, 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, 42, 43, 45, AQ; £04, 167, Tor. Carolina, 37, 38. House, 33, 97. Marsh, 39, 40, 41, III. Winter, 37. Woodcock, 128, 252,253,254. Woodpecker, iv, 22, 24, 2 28, 57, 73, 140, 166, E81)! £00, (190)! 192, 194, 195, 198, 224, 227, 230,, 232, 24%, 252. Downy, 57, 189, 191, £O2, 103. Loo: Golden-winged, 199. pean FOh,y £02; 203) Red- aed 197, 1098, 199. Yellow-bird, Black-winged, 124. Summer, 53. Yellowhammer, 199. Yellow-throat, Maryland, SA 1OT) Laks Yucker, 199. arch nee Seeeeiech rire aeeene rest Satay Sree eases eat aetgee ete etetats we sitrttes, 6353535 ear were oe Seotoss = SS = sit ste r : aeitdiatt ait rertity 3 aes + Listeidt sata thes fit Css) 7 i aH sath HT eee Hay Ratatat Tia apap rad ogra Hyatt Nb peasie teeta teitas se daarta tea aye ne ha Paria eieaeae x ra) Haase rated sietbtatapaede tye) a estig) Spe reitis nist} sesee ewreghrseeess rs tay i i tts ie seas teie sty afer gateiise Taam t sje £ ry stats Aaiireaseh i Ht Hagtiseysyaiitiee Peed eit Pati rta Bit tity : Rath 4 Hatt aera) ret = crererers pee st aree rgscsem = a3 ~~ it SSE ns. a= Sige seieas SEPT S3 > He ’ yy ty a Careers sesecen ss Sarsieas se Sisred Seete Sais ESS peecot Seat ieee tere ISS ca ret pees os 3 =. = 3 or re So eras Sree ee Sana ey Tare ie sete cere whee MSssaiestie ae See ceo ar Seater earn ne yereer are. Seiseter Snes sat fu He Han aye i i Hite nae hi HEH tit ees eet if u at] ca aaa i ) 4 ih) aH + ane id} tt ay y t Se abiS iG rege b eb 1a att felts 4 ana f nt ph aia Palitt Het he z + sya if i fit 4} i ri pia) Ee Hat ait it ¢3 tet i : i i. Hy Heian Saree a) Thy " it 4 STS sagae dint + i 7 : ts i if i eaeur rf 2 i Wie} yee]? * 4 tite * ii tay Hit Ht a Dat NTE ie t iat : i 4 sit dit i SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION LIBRARIES il i ST poet sat tibsieity rites tet bt et ye hese 4 He 4 aueist sit 4 + ais i i datitess te pepe + es Hate Hp} n / q; ; trey ae #