A book on birds

FOR THE PEOPLE

FOR EDVCATION

FOR SCIENCE

LIBRARY

OF

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM

OF

NATURAL HISTORY

A Haunt of the Browx Thrasher

A BOOK ON BIRDS

BY

AUGUSTUS WIGHT BOMBERGER, M.A.

By WILLIAM L. BAILY

PHILADELPHIA

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

MCMXII

Copyright, 1912, by
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.

^nr.^(p^yj.<^'^

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction 9

I. Suggestions 15

II. Other Hints for the Be-
ginner 25

III. Bird Notes and Their Value 34

IV. In the Wake of the Brown

Thrasher 56

V. Rainy Weather and Wrens 72
VI. The Wood Warblers ... 83
VII. Tangle WOOD Lane and Skip-
pack Creek 93

VIII. Two ViREOs AND Some Friends 110

IX. At the End of June ... 119

X. Bird Songs After Dark . . 129

XL Midsummer Memoranda . . 136

XII. Birds on the Wing 163

XIII. Dick 175

XIV. In Winter 181

XV. Field Key 195

[iii]

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAQB

A Haunt of the Brown Thrasher

Frontispiece
Loath to Leave Her Nestlings

A Bluebird AVatching Both Them and

Their Visitor 21

Hungry and Cynical

Sparrow Hawk 32

Some First Fruits of Spring

Young Crows 37

Robin's Nest in a Rail Fence . . 39
^'Old Sam Peabody's" Home

Nest of the White-throated Sparrow . 46
The Catbird When He's Surly 48

Oh, So Sleepy!

Young Phoebes 53

Proving His Equilibrium

Kingfisher Twenty-three Days Old . 55
Breast to Breast with Mother Earth

Nighthawk on Eggs ". . 62

Illustrations

PAGE

The Eternal Vigilance of the Robin 64
At His Ever Open Door

The Flicker 85

The Last Meal at Home

Chestnut-sided Warbler and Young . 96
A Hermit Thrush's Hermitage . . . 101
Which Shall be First?

Catbird and Young 103

Resentful of Intrusion

Wood Thrush at Nest 105

A Swamp-Dweller's Home

Nest of the Red-winged Blackbird . 108
Half Crowded Out
Field Sparrow's Nest Cumbered with

Cowbird's Egg 110

A Bright Glance From the Leaves

Red-eyed Vireo 112

The Sweet Seclusion of the Oven-
bird's Nest 117

Three Who Would be Better Off in
Bed
Bed-eyed Vireos 119

[vij

Illustrations

PAGB

Homesick on a Cool Morning

Red-eyed Vireos 126

A Kingbird on Guard 128

The Littlest Mother of Them All

Ruby-throated Hummingbird . . . 133
Only Half Awake

The Vesper Sparrow at Home ... 134
Where Snowbirds Spend the Summer

Nest of the Slate-colored Junco . . . 143

The Chipping Sparrow 144

Female Kentucky Warbler . . . 165
Nest of the Nashville Warbler . 176
The Daintiest Bird Building Any-
where

Nest of the Wood Pewee 181

Surrounded by Laurel on the Edge
of a Wood

Nest of the Towhee 192

Swamp Sparrow's Nest 199

Supervising a Sand Bath

Wilson's Tern and Young 206

CviiJ

INTRODUCTION

THE acquisition of a definite knowledge
of birds through personal search and
study in the open air has no doubt
appeared in the minds of some too trivial
a matter for serious attention or any large
expenditure of time and energy.

And yet others have found it more
important than it seems; and this — not
only because of what it contains in itself,
but also by reason of the many other
things of value immediately associated with
it.

For, to come into close touch with the
very life of birds in field and forest, beside
the myriad delights it gradually unfolds
to the eye and ear and understanding
out of one bright kingdom of earth, means
also to feel the quickening thrill of all
nature under heaven's great dome; so

[9]

A Book on Birds

intimately is every other realm related to
this, and so sensitive and subtle are the
ties by which we ourselves have been
joined to all created things from the begin-
ning.

A genuine love of nature in its broad-
est, deepest, highest development — a love
which reaches with wide and eager vision
and extended hands toward the stars above,
and out unto the uttermost bounds of
land and sea, wakening, vivifying, sharpen-
ing every sense, and enkindling in the
heart a warmth of interest so genial and
pervasive as to make one under its influence
as a soul aroused to its real self from a
vague, dull dream of being — a love of nature
like this must inevitably start from some
first point of individual contact. And
the realm of birds is quite sufficient to
meet the requirement.

Indeed, we may go farther and say
that no other realm offers it more attrac-
tively than this, with its enchanting allure-
ments of music, color, motion, tenderness,
and the magic of an ideal, care-free existence.

[10]

Introduction

Moreover, there is perhaps less danger
of becoming a mere one-sided specialist
along this line in the natural world around
us than any other. It is hard to be narrow
and contracted of spirit amidst the sweet
and multitudinous voices of the winged
creatures of the air, all of them filled to
overflowing wdth much of the same pure
joy that presents itself appeahngly to us
in the sunlit breezes of a ]\Iay morning
or October afternoon, the fragrant blossoms
of an orchard, the varied flowers of verdant
meadow and mossy wood, the melody of
whispering trees and running brooks, the
mighty outlook of hill and mountain, and
the boundless sweep of the ocean. And
many to whom, perchance, this joy has
been as nothing will be led unconsciously
by the gentle persuasion of it in birds
into a high and liberal frame of mind,
which, taking note of all things though
pursuing but a single quest, will finally
embrace all in a large and generous com-
prehension and capacity.

The reader who has come only this

fill

A Book on Birds

far upon the threshold of my book will
of course perceive its purpose at once.

It is designed to arouse and inspire,
rather than instruct; to uplift and gladden
the heart by moving it to enter a pleasant
field of profitable diversion, rather than
to impart scientific knowledge. And the
author ventures to write while still but a
beginner himself because he has thought
he will thus keep more truly shoulder to
shoulder with beginners, and thereby help
them the more.

The first fresh enthusiasm of a new
outlook upon things of this kind must
be reckoned as no small factor in the
attainment of the object he has in mind.
And therefore — while not neglecting to
keep close to the line of authenticity and
fact in presenting his experiences, so that
those who may desire to follow may do so
smoothly, nor be misled; and, indeed,
even trying always, for this very reason,
to give an especially exact though con-
cise description of each bird and circum-
stance as he has seen it — he has at the

[12]

Introduction

same time counted of equal moment a
genuine reproduction in these pages of
the very atmosphere of healthful Hfe amidst
which everything here set down was
revealed to him. For he knows that this
alone can make the quest of birds for
others just what he has found it — not a
mechanical occupation at all, but a sen-
tient delight and an absolute blessing.

And, finally, rel^dng upon these con-
siderations, he hopes also that the reader
may not only bear with him for weaving
in threads of verse here and there, but,
lending a willing ear, may even be able
to detect some of the birds merely pic-
tured in the prose actually singing — if
but faintly — in the rhymes that appear;
so that the whole aspect of what this
volume lifts up to be laid hold of may
not be that of a task tending to repel,
through its magnitude and detail, any who
draw nigh, but rather of labor made play
by reason of its kindly compensations
and entire simphcity.

No reference has been made to Mr. Baily^s
[13]

A Book on Birds

work because the author believes that this
will at once commend itself without a word.
Nevertheless he is not content to close these
introductory paragraphs until he has added
one last line of cordial acknowledgment of
that gentleman's valued co-operation, not
only in the matter of pictures, but also at
many other essential points beyond those
made plain by his quick and clever camera.

[14]

Chapter I

SUGGESTIONS

IT goes without saying anywhere, but
especialty here, after what has been
set down in the preceding pages,
that the only real way to get acquainted
with birds is on the spot. Book knowledge
of them alone is as much unlike the knowl-
edge you obtain directly, in field and wood,
by brook and hedge, as the ideas of baseball
a girl gathers from reading of it differ from
those of the boy who plays the game.

Books on birds may be both interesting
and instructive; and also indispensable as
a help and a guide. But to find a bird for
yourself, in the early morning or at sunset,
and see for the first time the beauty of his
plumage close at hand, and hear and learn
his calls and his music, and be puzzled for
a bit, and run over your mental memo-
randa, referring to such colored plates as

[15]

A Book on Birds

you have been wise enough to bring along
— the while your feathered enigma skips
from twig to twig and poses at every pos-
sible angle; and then at last to place him
surely, mark for mark, and follow his secret
haunts to his very nest — this is vital and
satisfying; and this only.

Each acquaintance thus acquired will
stir you with the joy of new discovery.
He is yours — you will say. You have
made him so by dint of personal search
and observation. The book you have
at home was merely a preliminary; the
achievement is your own, and to you
belongs the credit of it.

This is the spirit that will ultimately make
a bird-lover and a field-lover of any one.
Lectures, essays, pictures — of themselves —
never; except as they incite you to pick up
your hat and field-glass and start right off
for the great open book of nature itself.
Here you will truly master your subject, if
you are in earnest, and be fascinated by it;
and your scant and vague and uncertain ideas
will grow, and become definite and reliable.

[16]

Suggestions

And do not be impatient in the matter,
or go on your first quest in a hurry; nor
in an automobile — except, perhaps, as your
means of conveyance to the actual field
of exploitation. Automobiles and birds
are both delightful. And if you Hke both,
well and good. That is your matter.
The point is, do not try to indulge in both
with equal interest at the same time.
They will not mix.

In a wooded country you can pass more
birds during an hour in an average ''ma-
chine^' without seeing a single one of them
to know it thoroughly than you could
find time to study in many months.

Bird students who ^^mean business^'
and want to amount to something must
walk.

Moreover, they must not expect to gain
more than just a little information each
trip they take. A dozen new species,
vividly seen and appreciated at their full
woodland value, will be rich reward for
a whole year's work; and quite enough
also to satisfy any ordinary observer.

[17]

A Book on Birds

The ideal season to study birds in this
climate is of course the spring, when most
of them sing to a greater extent, and make
themselves in every way more conspicuous
than when the hot summer months set in.

This, however, is true of each locality
only as to birds that nest within its limits.

For in our latitude the migratory birds
can be found in large numbers in the fall
also, when they often linger with us for
many days in flocks on their passage south-
ward, if the prevailing weather be pro-
pitious.

And the ideal time for best results is
that ^'witching" hour before breakfast
when the '^sun peeps over the hills;" at
which moment it seems to be instinctive
with every bird to lift his voice in melody,
even though he keep complete silence
(as many do) during the heat and burden
of the day. If sunrise, how^ever, is not
attractive to you, sunset will do nearly
as well — provided 3^ou do not count on
seeing many after the sun has actually
disappeared.

[18]

Suggestions

These, by the way, are merely the best
times to go. Any period of the day,
from middle-March to the depths of sum-
mer, is sure to produce some results — -
though it is surprising how few birds can
be found after ten o^clock in the morning
when the extremely warm weather has
come.

In that part of southern Pennsylvania
where I reside there lies immediately north
of my home a great stretch of open, roll-
ing country — broken into long valleys
garrisoned by splendid hills and traversed
by three fine streams of water, the Schuyl-
kill, the Perkiomen, and the Skippack —
which offers as fair and prolific a field of
observation in this study as anyone could
desire. Of course there are in the same
broad belt that takes in these streams,
and for hundreds of miles to the east
and west of it, other districts beyond
number just as rich — and equally attrac-
tive also to those in turn who count
them their own.

However, in this of mine, and it is at

[19]

A Book on Birds

least representative, you will probably find
after continued effort during several sea-
sons, nearly ninety species nesting; while
many more may be added to that total
in the spring and autumn from birds
of passage. And of these an average
amateur, using good judgment, may get as
many as forty or fifty in a half-dozen trips.

But never strive for mere numbers.
Rather take a single group at a time and
learn it thoroughly — so that you acquire
as quickly as possible an intimate, friendly
relationship with it, as it were; including
perhaps some awkward ability to whistle
the family language, and other woodland
accomplishments.

And if, perchance, any reader should
feel moved by this initial chapter, and
have the impulse to ^^ start ouf at once,
suppose he begin with the Sparrow family.

Not one in a score, even among those
of us who love the open air, knows this
charming company of songsters as he
should. Indeed, there have been cases
where the experts — the real naturalists

[20]

Loath to Leave Her Xesti.ings
A Bluebird Watching Them and Their Visitor

{See 'page 19)

Suggestions

whom we all follow and admire — have
fallen into mistakes over them.

And yet they are not hard to get on
speaking terms with, and prove delight-
ful little bodies when once they become
famihar to the eye and ear.

There are twelve or more, all told,
who honor us with their presence — though
some of these are so retiring and exclu-
sive (and, beside this, so rarely, if ever,
make their domicile here) that it will take
a long while, and you may lose patience at
times, before you are acquainted with them.

Those you ought to know, however,
and may know easily, are the Chipping
Sparrow (with his mahogany-brown cap
and no melody in his note); the Song
Sparrow (who often stays with us all
winter and furnishes our first spring music) ;
the Vesper Sparrow, or Grassfinch (with
his white tail feathers which always show
as he flies away from you); the Yellow-
winged Sparrow (smallest of the group,
whose voice is so like that of a grass-
hopper he has taken his name too, and

[21]

A Book on Birds

who can light on a tall weed with him
in the center of a field and not bend it
much more than he does; and whose
eggs — silver-white with a wreath of brown
and gold and hlac spots, circling the larger
end, are about the daintiest things in
ornithology); the Field Sparrow (whose
evening hymn — a series of exquisite minor-
thirds beginning very slowly and running
together at the end, like sparkling dew-
drops on a blade of grass — is so plaintive
and tender that once clearly heard it
will never be forgotten); — these five —
and then, less easily found, the Fox, the
Tree, the White-throated, the Swamp,
the Savannah sparrows, and several others
— not to include our town bird, the
English Sparrow, who cannot sing, has
bad manners, and really doesn't belong
in the group at all.

Taking these to begin with, you will
have plenty to do for many a day. Try
it and see — not neglecting the others
altogether (for you cannot do that), but
making these the chief subjects of study.

[22 1

Suggestions

They will pay you well for your work;
and on every trip you will get more than
you bargained for — both from them and
their environment.

For this does happen with those who
go forth into God's great out-of-doors,
bearing eager hearts and humble minds.

They learn that a love of birds leads
to a love of all nature, and a love of all
nature to the brightest, best and happiest
life under heaven.

[23]

A Book on Birds

The Heart of Winter

Hail, Springs of life within the silent rock!
I know the secret of your hiding-place,
I hear the hidden music of your flowing,
I see the vemal sunbeams brightly glowing
Above the limpid depths of your embrace.
And though no bolt of heaven nor thunder-shock

Hath aught of power to pierce your mighty prison.
Yet this, this too, I know, that by and by
Some messenger of song that God hath sent
Will seek these solid walls, and find their portal,
And gently call you forth, in faith immortal, —
Will gently call till every bar is rent.
And Earth awakens with the joyful cry,

"Behold, behold — the Springs of life are risen!"

[24

Chapter II

OTHER HINTS FOR THE BEGINNER

TO show from actual experience how
close and accessible to a bustling
town is the bird life we would know,
even upon an entirely un-springlike day,
let us proceed by a street in its outskirts
this breezy afternoon early in April, start-
ing about five o'clock, and walk toward
the west until we reach the country, there
picking a road to the right at a big, rest-
ful-looking house that stands amidst some
tall pines, and following it past an old
brick-works to the first cross-fence beyond,
as we go.

Here, the rails being down invitingly,
let us take to the fields.

Now, on such a quest as ours, there
are two good reasons for doing this just
at this cross-fence, in addition to the
alluring attitude of the rails.

[25]

A Book on Birds

First, the fence is hedged upon either
side — at some points to the depth of ten
feet — with a thick growth of sassafras,
elder, wild-cherry, hickory, blackberry
brambles, and '^ other things too numer-
ous to mention/' and if there is one place
which certain birds love more than any other,
and particularly in cool, windy weather, it
is a cross-fence thus reinforced.

And, second, the fence is the boundary
line of a broad meadow and leads gently
down, after a hundred yards or so, to a
little stream of running water, fringed
with more elder and ^^ other things,'' and
just of the sort to which these same birds
delight to come at evening-time to drink.
So we keep to the cross-fence.

And, sure enough, here are some, to
start with at least — even if they do happen
to be merely Snowbirds that have been
around all winter. They are recognizable
most easily by the light pinkish-yellow
of their broad beaks — which looks con-
spicuous against the dark slate color of
head and back and wings.

[26]

Other Hints for the Beginner

They engage us quite a Httle time —
for they will be taking their annual trip
northward by and by, and we and they
may not meet again for a while.

However, the minutes are precious this
afternoon, and we must proceed.

And now, because the rivulet happens
to spread a little farther on, where the
fence meets it, to somewhat of a morass,
too wide to cross, we are forced into a
short detour out through the open, until
we sight a rough foot-bridge of old rails,
laid from bank to bank, and head for it.

But just here are other friends to make
us forget those left behind. And a fine pair
at that, whom, perhaps, you do not know;
to wit, tv/o plump Killdeers — slaking their
thirst amidst the tall brown winter grass.

They seem not to notice our approach
until we are quite near, and then they
start to run away from us, going rapidly,
and keeping as close to the ground as
chipmunks, and all the while looking back
shrewdly — this being a characteristic per-
formance of the Vesper Sparrow also.

[27]

A Book on Birds

We follow — walking fast but very
stealthily — and they do not break into
flight until they reach an intercepting
lane, across which they wing their way,
uttering the quick, agitated cry from which
they take their name — ^^Killdeer, killdeer,
kiUdeer!''

They fly with an eccentric, irregular
motion, their dark pinions (with a crook
in them) showing snowy white underneath
as they go.

In thus proclaiming their name they
are Hke a number of other birds that are
quite easy to identify simply because they
announce themselves in this way to all
strangers who are on the alert to hear.
Indeed, almost immediately, we come upon
another feathered friend (also not as well
known with us as he might be) who does
the same thing — the Towhee bird.

This fellow reveals himself at the fence
(to which we have now returned) on the
other side of the meadow-brook. He is
probably first of the season, and his voice
is not strong as yet. But try to articulate

[28]

Other Hints for the Beginner

the word ^^Towhee^^ in a whistle, and
you have it exactly.

We find him handsome in appearance,
when we finally get a good glimpse. He
is a Httle smaller than the Robin; with
black head, throat, back, tail and wings;
the^ tail and wings, however, greatly
enriched by ghstening white feathers.
His shoulders and sides are brick-red,
while his breast is of pearl, and his eyes
of a brilliant ruby. He was in this hedge
last summer and has come to almost
exactly the same spot for another season.

For this, also, is a trait many birds
have that will help you in finding and get-
ting acquainted with them.

A Wood Warbler not much bigger than
your thumb will fly many miles from the
South during a night and arrive in the
early morning at the very haunt— on the
very limb perhaps— he picked for himself
the year before, and know it just as well
as the tired boy who has been out all
day knows his own home after dark.

With this trait to count on, every wise

[29]

A Book on Birds

bird-lover will soon have a locality for
many a species, and govern himself accord-
ingly in his expeditions.

After getting the Towhee to repeat him-
self a half dozen times by imitating his call,
we walk on to a point where another fence,
even more deeply hedged about, meets the
first at right angles on our left. Jumping
over, we explore this too, finding Song
Sparrows, Chipping Sparrows and Field
Sparrows, with a Sparrow-hawk sailing
around overhead, with a sharp eye on them,
no doubt, for other food is scarce as yet;
and then we cross a broad field, still going
westward, to a thick patch of second-
growth timber about fifteen feet high
(with a few old oaks still standing amongst
it) which hes on the other side.

We pass a score of Meadow Larks and
Robins on the way, and in the timber
find Blackbirds and Crows galore. The
young trees stand close together, and
the brown, leafy mold under foot is
brightly carpeted with the rue anemone,
blood-root and spring beauty, all in

[30]

Other Hints for the Beginner

bloom, with the tender green leaves of
the May apple peeping through every-
where. The spring beauties have already
gone to sleep in the woody twilight, although
it is only half after five by this time; but
the others, including a stray hepatica
here and there, are still almost as wide
awake as ever. After gathering up a
few of the widest-awake ones, we leave
the trees and start homeward by the same
route we came.

Two Golden-winged Flickers greet us
as we emerge — they also, by the way,
crying out their names; and we hear
a Bluebird's soft elusive note and sight
him sitting atop a fence post.

On our way across the meadow again an
enthusiastic Red-winged Blackbird circles
overhead and sings his flute-hke ''og-ill-ee"
refrain for our especial benefit; and near the
road, on an old rail, we find the first Wren
we have seen this season.

By quarter after six we are back again
at our starting point, having checked
fifteen different species on our bird list in

[311

A Book on Birds

a walk of less than a mile and a half, and
in but little more than an hoards time.

And this, quite ahead of the season
also; the walk we have described having
been taken in April, as stated, with results
precisely as here set down.

Let anyone cover the same course at
the same hour one month later and he
will meet from two to three times as many
varieties among the feathered songsters
he seeks, provided, of course, he knows
how to go about it.

For then the Thrush family, and Swal-
lows, and Orioles, and Wood Warblers,
and Vireos, and Flycatchers, and Pewees,
and many others will have arrived once
more, to make field and hedge and blue
sky, and the thick growth of new timber —
by that time a mass of fragrant foliage —
just as glad as ever before, in vernal days
gone by.

[32]

Hungry and Cynical
Sparrow Hawk

{See page 22)

In Joyous Faith

In Joyous Faith

In joyous faith, from mountain top and vale,

Hark, hark, they come — the myriad birds of
spring !
Swift as an arrow, at the Master's call

They pierce the frozen air with steady wing,
And laugh to shame the winter winds that rail

Against the precious promises they bring.
They wake the lonesome wood with sound of song;

They stir the drowsy violets with mirth,
And send a thrill of gladness into all

The dark and mournful silences of earth;
Until at last, a sweet, exultant throng.

They swell the triumph of perennial birth.

Oh, wondrous miracle of victory!

In joyous faith they win — and so may we.

[33

Chapter III

BIRD NOTES AND THEIR VALUE

TWO Robins, engaged in nest-build-
ing directly across the way from
my home, have started me to think-
ing about bird notes this morning.

The leaves everywhere have but just
emerged and are still little more than a
delicate mist of green over the trees.
Yet a spell of exceptionally warm weather,
following close upon a snow-storm and
lasting a fortnight, seems to have developed
certain native proclivities in these two
with such unusual rapidity that they have
gotten ahead of the foHage; and, unable
to wait for its privacy and shelter, have
begun work on their home in the topmost
fork of the unadorned branches of a maple,
where every detail of their proceedings
is quite open to the public gaze.

However, as I have indicated, it is

[34]

Bird Notes and their Value

not so much what they do that engrosses
my attention just now, as the wonderful
amount of melodious noise with which
they enhven their labors.

Some of it, without any doubt, is simply
music. But much more appears to have
definite meaning and purpose beyond this.

As I listen I count seven distinct strains
or sets of notes which they use repeatedly;
and these, furthermore, are marked by
many minor inflections and variations,
all plainly forming the medium through
which they communicate the one with the
other. It must be admitted, of course,
that it is all a very crude sort of language;
nevertheless it seems entirely sufficient to
enable them to get along quite smoothly,
delightfully, and with a perfect understand-
ing of what each is to do, as they put
together their rough, though strongly con-
structed habitation of mud and hay.

Moreover, I know well, from a long
acquaintance with the species, that the
warbling conversation of this pair con-
stitutes only part of the general fund of

[35 1

A Book on Birds

robin talk and robin music. Other
Robins (and even these, no doubt) have
many other notes and strains for other
experiences.

For example, in an entirely different
case of nest-building that came under
my observation the male bird, unless my
eyes deceived me, did very little, if any
of the actual labor, confining himself
instead to a sort of bustling superintend-
ence of things; and the notes here seemed
to be altogether in keeping with just what
might be looked for under such conditions.

And again; I have felt frequently that
there is no bird-cry in all the world which
is more truly intelligible than that of a
Robin bemoaning the loss of its young-
ling or its mate. Often, as it drops to a
cadence almost inaudible, it is so acutely
appeahng that it has appeared to me
the perfect intonation of hopeless grief.

Several years ago a friend of mine was
brought by this fact into an experience
having almost enough in it to move one
to tears of sympathy. Upon a stone

[36]

Bird Notes and their Value

step of the approach to a residence near
my home he came across one of these
birds standing beside its partner, lying
dead. Drawn close to it by the heart-
broken woe of its voice, he discovered to
his surprise that it was so utterly engrossed
with its sense of bereavement that he was
able to bend down and stroke its feathers
(even while the bird itself stroked with
its beak those of the inanimate form it
loved) without any apparent sign of con-
sciousness in the bereft one of what my
friend was doing.

It is not to be wondered at that a Robin's
notes of mourning so reach the soul some-
times, when upon occasion they can spring
from a grief as absolute as was exhibited
here.

But these random reflections are, of
course, aside from the main purpose of
this chapter.

Bird music has other — practical — values
for the ornithologist, beyond whatever
expression of joy or sorrow, or anything
else of this nature informing to the human

[37]

A Book on Birds

mind, it may contain. And (the indus-
trious pair of Red-breasts opposite having
disappeared for a bit) let us consider some
of these, during their absence, in a more
general way.

It will appear at once that all our quest-
ing, considered merel}^ for its purpose of
adding to our acquaintance with birds,
will be simplified and become easier as
we get clearly familiar with every possible
song and call as we proceed.

In many cases, of course, reliable
knowledge of this kind is difficult to acquire
and will come only after extended experi-
ence. Yet in just as many more it may be
gained upon the very threshold of things;
and long before you have reached that
expert stage where you can invariably
distinguish (let us say) the music of the
Song Sparrow from that of the Grass-
finch, you will have found, if patient,
that you have picked up a great deal of
other skill that is well worth while; birds,
which else would confuse you and escape
identification, now fixing themselves surely,

[38]

^

Bird Notes and their Value

ever and anon, the moment they give
voice.

This is Hkely to prove a source of
increased satisfaction upon nearly ever}^
new trip you take; and especially if your
progress be interfered with at places by
dense foliage, or the trip be continued,
perchance, into the dusk of evening —
conditions under which even good eyes
and field-glasses are of Httle account.

In addition to my own Hmited acquire-
ments along this line I have chosen a
method followed from time immemorial
by wiser ones than I, and learned that it
helps greatly to associate many songs
the moment your ear has them alertly,
with names and words which these others
have found in them, or even names
and words of your own. The whistling
Bob White (Quail), the Teacher-bird
(Golden-crowned Thrush), the Peabody-
bird (White-throated Sparrow), the Phoebe
(Bridge Pewee), the Towhee (Ground-robin),
the Bobolink, and the Killdeer are most
familiar among the birds that actually

[39]

A Book on Birds

fling their identity at you, more or less
melodiously, every time they open their
mouths to sing. And if you fail to get
acquainted with these very early in your
career, it will not be their fault at all.

Then there are many others to whom
poets, and prose writers also, though they
have not in fact given names, have attached
delightful words and phrases that will
cling to them always and will assist you
just as much in your questing.

The Maryland Yellow-throat, for in-
stance, first discovered himself to me only
when I realized, with sudden pleasure, that
he was warbling, "Witchery, witchery,
witchery, witchery !'' over and over again.

Moreover, he indeed was one of those
with whom I made assurance doubly sure,
and satisfactory, by permitting my own
personal fancy and power of invention
to participate in the experience — the bird
seeming, after a while on this well-remem-
bered occasion, to say, "Jessica, Jessica,
Jessica, Jessica!'^ to a certain member
of our party quite as plainly as the other

[40]

Bird Notes and their Value

word just quoted by which he is more
generally known.

This appreciation of the value of bird
notes in your search and study may natu-
rally be followed into many other details.

To illustrate: one can get into the habit
of judging the variations in key and
rhythmic time of this bird song and that,
and know them instantly by points of
similarity and contrast. As an example
here — the one-two-three ^^Bob White'' call
of the Quail, above mentioned, and so
familiar to all, is pitched generally in
the same tone as the notes of the Crested
Flycatcher, a bird not so well known to
many, but whom you will be quick to
recognize when this is remembered, because
his strain is altogether different in other
particulars.

And again, many notes and strains will
become easy to differentiate if you keep
your ear and heart open to whatever
human emotions and special traits of char-
acter they seem to express and convey.
I have already discussed the Robin's notes.

[41]

A Book on Birds

To me his only accomplishment worthy
to be called a song — the brief, warbling
canticle he repeats endlessly morning and
evening — is simply brave, trustful joy,
in its most primitive outpouring; and
the Wild Dove's strain — is resignation to
sorrow; and the Blue Jay's strident cry
— hate and cynicism; and the Kingfisher's
^^clack-e-ty-clack" — reckless, superficial jol-
lity; and the Meadow Lark's clear call —
serene contentment, with the Bluebird's
faint, ethereal voice as its lovely echo.

As for others — when my approach drives
the Catbird from his nest the noise he
emits is pure surliness to my ear; when
he is singing all alone, unaware of my pres-
ence, it is pure bliss. I know^ and love the
Wood Thrush especially (above other noble
traits) for the rehgious devotion of his
evening hymn; and the Hermit, just a little
more for an even deeper reverence. The
mellow richness of the Scarlet Tanager's
scant melody appeals to my mind as the
warmest passion of the w^oods; and so on —
and on, to the end of the long, sweet list.

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Bird Notes and their Value

Then, to turn to a different class of
characteristics, I find, say, that some bird
(like the Indigo Bunting) sings in a hurr}^
practically the same strain that another
(like the bright American Goldfinch) takes
far more leisurely; and in such cases
comparison helps me in telling which is
which. Or, the Bobohnk is a glad, effusive
fellow; and the merry House Wren, with
his spluttering crescendo, nothing more
than a dear little stammerer.

And last — and shall I say best of all? —
the Field Sparrow is naught less to me in
his music than a quiet stringer of pearls —
hquid pearls of peace, arising in his breast
with no effort and issuing one by one
from beginning to end without a ripple.
I have heard him keep at it at intervals
of a minute or so from the same spot for
nearly a half-hour — the while I approached
within thirty feet of him from every side
and watched through my glass at every
angle; and all the time he appeared
utterly undisturbed by my presence. The
notes, as to time and rhythm, are not

[43]

A Book on Birds

unlike those of the Chipping Sparrow;
but the latter lack entirely that flawless
music which makes the others so beau-
tiful.

I am free to admit that impressions
received by my readers in these and other
cases may differ, more or less, from my
ovm, with each individual; but, whatever
they may be, if you retain them as they
are made, they cannot fail to help you
much in securing sure data and verifying
it pleasantly, over and over again.

But, let this suffice by way of mere
disquisition — at least so far as the present
chapter is concerned.

A week has passed; the warm weather
has continued; the two Robins have about
finished their nest; and we are now away
out in the open, in an effort to prove what
we have been saying b}^ finding the \Miite-
throated Sparrow from the' sound of his
voice — a voice that is distinctive because
at this time of the year it is probably the
littlest and squeakiest under heaven.

That first bright patch of gold we are

[44]

Bird Xotes and their Value

coming to in the dry marsh beyond these
sparse blackberry brambles, with their
but half-grown leaves, is the yellow field-
mustard; and the other, larger one, fifty
paces farther on, of a deeper, richer hue,
is the meadow-parsnip.

As we pass them, going toward the
woods, we notice that the mustard bloom
is in racemes about the size of a long thim-
ble and the parsnip in fiat clusters, Hke
elderberry blossoms, but smaller.

And directly we think what a pity it
is that these bluets carpeting the ground
hem us in so that we cannot go around
them, but must trample them under foot!

Yet what does it matter, after all?
This is a bird-quest we are following just
at present, and other things must not be
permitted to divert us; for it is nearly
sunset and if we would have other light
than that of the stars in returning we
must keep right at it and hurry.

Which we do — and are rewarded even
earher than we thought to be; for we have
hardly entered a narrow, fragrant path

[45]

A Book on Birds

which leads through some hazel bushes and
tall buttonwood trees before the sharp,
thin chirp we have been expecting pierces
the ear from either side of us; and in a
few moments we succeed in locating several
of the chirpers themselves, and can scru-
tinize them adlibitum through our spy-
glasses.

And what beauties they are! — certainly
the handsomest, and almost the largest
of the Sparrow family.

The cleanly contrasted stripes of alter-
nate brown and white (we count three
of the former and two of the latter)
straight back from the beak across the
crown of the head seem to me their most
striking color mark, even though the broad
patch of white at the throat is quite dis-
tinctive. And, indeed, very conspicuous
also, to my mind, are both the pure steel-
gray underneath the flashing black eyes,
and the squirrel-like shades of back and
tail.

But it was the voice of the White-
throated Sparrow which brought us out

[46]

■ If

Bird Notes and their Value

this afternoon. And it is truly excep-
tional. Some notes of it are in the very
highest pitch to be found among birds
or animals. Naturalists who have meas-
ured them carefully, declare that they
are actually four full tones above those
of the Hyla (Pickering's frog), which other-
wise hold the record — being uttered ^'in
the note E of the fourth octave above the
middle C:'

With us the bird is mostly migratory,
nesting, as a rule, in the Pennsylvania
mountains and the latitude of middle
and northern New England; and while
passing through our fields and forests
he generally has but this one call which
we are now hearing every half minute,
or oftener. But now and then even with
us, and daily when once he gets to his
real home, he launches forth into real
music, even though some of it is keyed
up to a sort of White Mountain altitude;
and because this full song of his has been
thought to sound like

"Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody!"

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A Book on Birds

he has been given the other name we have
mentioned in a preceding paragraph — ''the
Peabody-bird.'*

And now — although it be a digression
from the special purpose of our trip and
the theme of this chapter, let us yield
nevertheless to the lure of the wild and
cast about in a general way for other
newcomers, while the twilight still permits.

These two Httle fellows hopping about
incessantly among the virgin leaves of the
big gum tree, just beyond the bushes where
the Sparrows first announced themselves,
are Myrtle, or Yellow-rump Warblers.
The MagnoUa Warbler has a ''yellow
rump" too; but these have in addition
a bright saffron spot on the crown of
the head which always fixes their identity
positively. Besides, the black along the
eyes, and the exquisite gold on the upper
part of a breast dappled and streaked
with rich brown, are marks clearly their
own.

Turning from the Warblers we notice
that some of the other smaller birds seem

[48]

Bird Notes and their Value

to take a special delight in the lavish white
flower-clusters of the black haw that
show through the thicket in three or four
different directions. Even the Goldfinch
(^^Wild-canary"), who appears to be
everywhere, swoops down to them occa-
sionally from the higher branches which
spread above these dwarf blooming trees,
and greatly enhances their beauty in his
lovely spring garb of yellow and black,
which has taken the place of the poor
dun and gray vestments he wore during
the winter.

What it is he and the others are finding
in the black haw that pleases them so is
a secret I cannot guess.

Listening suddenly with closer attention
I hear from some distance back of me a
call that is quite unmistakable, and most
agreeable to the ear after so many months
without it — that of the PhcBbe, or Bridge
Pewee, to whom we adverted some pages
back. He is easy to recognize just now
even if you do not catch his voice. For,
in our climate, whenever this early in the

[49]

A Book on Birds

season you come across a small feathered
specimen who has a trick of swooping
across from one tree to another with a
quick, snapping sound midway, as he
goes, you may be sure it is he. None
but flycatchers behave this way, and the
Phoebe is the only member of the family who
reaches us so soon — the others, including
the Kingbird, the Wood Pewee,the Crested,
the Acadian and the Least flycatchers,
not arriving until many weeks later.

In a few moments I find at the far end
of the woods the very one w^ho is calling.
He is dull of color, but lively of disposition;
is just a little larger in size than the Song
Sparrow, and places his nest (with its
snow-white eggs) against some wall sup-
porting a bridge or beneath the shelving
rocks of an embankment. I knew one
nest even under the eaves of a house,
at Valley Forge; for the Phoebe is often
very companionable indeed.

In the immediate rural environs of my
own town, he and the Crested have for
several seasons availed themselves of the

[50]

Bird Notes and their Value

peculiar advantages for home-building pre-
sented by the tumbling walls and other
ruins of a fire-swept tack-works, closely
surrounded by trees and bushes. The
Phoebe picks out the crannies of the dis-
mantled engine-house as exactly to his
fancy; while his cousin and friend uses
the deep recesses of an open stove-pipe
protruding from the half-demolished gable
of another building, finding it no doubt
just as rain-proof as his traditional hole
in a tree — and quite as comfortable.

Upon a hurried investigation, made one
day while the latter was off on a visit,
I discovered that he still indulges himself
the queer and inexplicable eccentricity
of weaving snake-skins into his nest which
his forbears probably had, even as far
back as the days of Noah.

However, (eccentric, or not) this same
Crested Flycatcher is assuredly a most
beautiful and distinguished-looking bird —
the coloring of his plumage being so exqui-
sitely delicate and varied as to defy intelli-
gible description. Its most striking hues are

[51]

A Book on Birds

the dull olive of the back, the ashen blue
of the throat, the bright sulphur yellow of
the breast, and the rare, pinkish-brown
beneath the long tail-feathers. Though a
trifle less in size than the Robin, his fine
crest makes him look larger, and gives
him an aspect of great energy and ani-
mation.

But dinner waits! — and I am still out
in the fields a mile away. Hurrying home-
ward, I notice that the two Belted King-
fishers, whose acquaintance I made years
ago along the winding reaches of that
Stony Creek I love, have reappeared in
their old haunts a week or two earlier than
usual. They are in splendid spirits and
have evidently had a good winter — prob-
ably spending it not very far south. You
can always be sure of their presence before
you see them from their cry, which is an
exact reproduction of a watchman's rattle,
heard at a distance.

They start up hurriedly upon my
approach and skurry along above the
surface of the water in precipitate flight;

[52]

ft. X

B o
O ^

Bird Notes and their Value

then, suddenly rising — their crest-feathers
standing up stiff and straight and their
long heads and necks and beaks stretched
forward as far as possible as if in alarm —
they mount above the tree-tops and make
a wide detour out over the meadows,
coming back to the stream again at a point
at some safe distance away.

The Kingfisher^s colors are steel-blue
and white. He is short of body and wide
of wing — averaging about twelve inches
one way and twenty-four the other; and
the mark from which he takes the fore-
part of his title is a narrow band of dark
gray across the upper portion of his broad
white breast.

When ready for nesting he digs a round
hole four inches or so in diameter in the
side of some clayey bank and about a
yard below the surface, excavating to the
depth of about six or seven feet, and
enlarging it to quite a commodious cavity
at the end — in which he fixes up for him-
self a very comfortable retreat of dried
grasses and feathers.

[53]

A Book on Birds

The Kingfisher is well named, for he
generally has in fact a royal time of it
when he turns to the piscatorial duties
of his daily routine. Sometimes he dives
into the water after his prey in the very
course of a long, swift flight close to its
surface; at others, he makes his plunge
from a favorable perch at the end of a
broken log projecting beyond the bank;
but, whatever the method, he is an adept
at the business and rarely fails to get what
he goes after; nor does he often neglect
to let out his rattling cry, as he emerges
dripping wet, especially if the finny victim
in his clutch be a big one; and it seems
to me on these occasions to have a rollick-
ing note of exultation in it, instead of
alarm.

[54]

My Morning Minstrel

My Morning Minstrel

In sackcloth clad, from hill and plain,
The day advances, bathed in tears;
But music stirs my sluggish ears, —

A Robin singing in the rain!

I rise, and in the dull gray light
I see him from my window-seat,
The leafless branches 'neath his feet

Half hid by lingering mists of night.

Against his draggled front, forlorn,

The chill March breezes moan and sigh;
But still, with head uplifted high,

He carols bravely to the morn.

Then I who listen feel a glow —

A quick thanksgiving — touch my heart;
The veil is rent, the mists depart,

Again the vernal zephyrs blow.

While, with the song, from everywhere,
A sudden flush of spring descends.
And, even as the singer ends,

Sweet breath of blossoms fills the air.

O happy-throated minstrel mine,

I bless the dawn that gave thee birth,
And set the tenderest chord of earth

Within that sturdy breast of thine!

55]

Chapter IV

IN THE WAKE OF THE BROWN THRASHER

THE finest woodland singer of the first
real days of spring in my neighbor-
hood, and the one most lavish with
his splendid store of song is undoubtedly
the Brown Thrasher— the ^^ Thrush'^ that is
not a Thrush at all, but a species of Mock-
ing-bird.

And he is a wise singer, too, — his habit of
ignoring the deceptive lures of the vernal
equinox and delaying his arrival until the
white cherry-blossoms have in fact appeared,
and fill the thicket with their fragrance,
and the clusters of the spicewood warm and
brighten it with gold, adding not a little
to the witchery of his wonderful voice.

He may be expected with almost absolute
certainty by the twentieth of April where
I live, along with the Chimney Swift and
the Wren; but scarcely an hour before that.

[56]

In the Wake of the Brown Thrasher

Then, however, and for several weeks
after, you may start out any sunht day
and be sure of finding him and hearing him
hold forth for you at length and unafraid;
provided, nevertheless, you go before ten
o^clock, if in the morning, or not earher
than four, if your trip be taken in the
afternoon.

And it is quite probable he will make
himself known while you are yet afar off;
for his notes have the clear quahty that
gives them carrying power.

Selecting a branch so located that there
shall be naught between him and the
slanting or level light from the east or
west, he pours forth a rich and varied
strain that loses little even by comparison
with that of his more aristocratic cousin
of the South — a strain which contains for
him such ecstasy of dehght that he over-
looks your approach until you are so
near you can discern the brilhant yellow
of his eyes, the surge of his mottled breast
and the opening and closing of his long and
slender beak.

[57]

A Book on Birds

Even when he sees you, and, alarmed by
the crackling of a twig or some sudden
and abrupt move you make as you draw
closer, flies off to a new perch, he is likely
to pick one but a short distance away and
keep on singing as he goes, unwilling to
check but for the moment or two of his
flight the lovely tide of melody within him.

Moreover, the advent of the Thrasher is
notable also for other reasons beside the
pleasure there is in it of itself. It is a sure
sign that things long delayed have finally
come to pass; that violets may be looked
for among the dead swamp grass and
briars; that the delicate anemone, some of
it pale pink and some pearl white, is
abloom in the leafy mold beneath the oak
trees, and the spring beauty farther on
above the dewy moss along the banks of the
stream; and, last, but not least, that the
best and most prolific time for the discovery
and observation of birds in this part of the
country is immediately at hand.

For, though it will seem otherwise to the
uninitiated, the month of June, when the

[58]

In the Wake of the Brown Thrasher

year has reached its full flood, will never
be found quite so rich in results as the
first two or three weeks in May; and this
for a special reason with which all orni-
thologists are well acquainted.

In considering opportunities for seeing
as many specimens as possible, birds divide
themselves into two general classes — those
that nest and make their home in our own
fields and forests, and those that are
merely migratory visitors. And we should
never forget that these latter must be
looked for while they are passing and loiter-
ing on the way, or most of us will never
have the chance to find and study them
at all.

It is because of this fact that the day of
the coming of our friend the Thrasher is
especially interesting. His clear, sweet
voice leads on not only the great multitude
of those that remain with us all summer,
but the multitude of birds of passage as
well, including the wonderful little Wood
Warblers (these alone numbering some
twenty-five kinds) and many others beside;

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A Book on Birds

all of whom may be searched out and
identified one by one to your delight, from
the day you first see him.

Therefore, now, if ever, sally forth upon
your questing. For just now the home
birds that await you — increased by new
arrivals every day — will be found in com-
pany almost everywhere with the migrants,
these displaying many exquisite charms of
briUiant plumage and voice that even the
others we love so well do not possess.

It is true, indeed, that some few of the
transient visitors reach us much earlier
than the Thrasher and have already pro-
ceeded northward. Among this number
is the Fox Sparrow — a bird every lover of
birds should know. He is quite the largest
of the nine different members of his clan
with whom I am familiar, and he is pretty
certain to reveal himself, before your eyes
detect him, by his ever-recurring and
wonderfully bright and warbling note, which
has a gentle tremolo in it, put there possibly
by the impulse of his short, quick, restless
flights from Umb to limb.

[60]

In the Wake of the Brown Thrasher

Let us look him up a bit. It is early
morning, clear but cool, and the trees are
still leafless. You have caught the mys-
terious lure of his voice (coming from every-
where and nowhere, like that of the Blue-
bird), and he has companions with him to
the number of a dozen or so; and yet
you find it impossible to fix any of them
longer than an instant, so shy and elusive
are they; until at last one actually does
sit quiet with his back toward you on
the gray and white branch of a button-
wood tree.

Then you find through your field-glass
that his feathers are streaked slate color
from the crown of his head to his rump,
and that here they change with absolute
abruptness to a strange cinnamon-brown
down to the end of his tail. He is almost
as large as the Hermit Thrush and his
white breast is conspicuously marked with
many rich brown blotches.

Up in Canada, where he spends the
summer, his music — which with us is but
a thrillingly sweet hint of a real song—

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A Book on Birds

develops, it is said, into strains of con-
siderable length and rare and entrancing
beauty.

Close in the wake of the Thrasher every
spring comes the exceptional and eccentric
Chimney Swift — a bird we see by the
thousand at a distance and yet know far
less of than we imagine.

By many he is called a Swallow; but
mistakenly, as he belongs to an entirely
different family of which, by the way, he
is the only representative in our climate.

Those who have never observed him
close at hand, but entirely on the wing,
in his wonderfully rapid and circling flight
through the sky (for he is hardly ever
known to alight on a tree — or anything
else, for that matter, than the inside of
a chimney) have no idea what an odd-
looking specimen he is.

His head is almost as flat as that of a
catfish, his beak is so stubby it is scarcely
any beak at all; his mouth is broad and
large, and what face he has is ridiculously
short, with a fullness on either side that

[62]

w

2 w

^ Si

75 2

In the Wake of the Brown Thrasher

is at once suggestive of the jolly, round
cheeks of a Brownie.

His body is so abbreviated and his
pinions are so long that when cleaving
the air (and no bird under heaven delights
more to do this nor has a merrier, livelier
time at it than he), this rollicking little
fellow of Hghtning speed looks not unlike
a large wishbone on the wing.

And who has not watched with fascinated
interest his bewildering capers in the sky?
Twittering incessantly as he goes, he seems
the very abandon of free and joyous motion
— never tiring, nor relaxing for rest, but
apparently bent each new moment on some
bolder and more startling tangent than any
undertaken before.

He even does all his eating on the wing,
so that his gyrations are not entirely for
pure sport after all; and — what is really
remarkable — he actually snaps off while
in flight the small, dead twigs of trees
which he uses in the construction of his
nest. This, in turn, is most strangely
made and quite as unique as the bird

[63]

A Book on Birds

himself, the twigs composing it being shied
together by him Hke wicker-work with a
gelatinous substance, secreted in his mouth,
and fastened rudely, without any Hning
of grass or feathers, against the inside of
the chimney — somewhat as a semi-circular
fungus to the bark of a tree.

In earlier times the Swift made his home
in caves and hollow trunks of the forest,
and resorted to chimneys when these ap-
peared because, probably, like many other
birds, he is of a social disposition and seeks
proximity to human habitations; and for
the further reason, no doubt, that he found
as caves and hollow trunks grew fewer
with the march of civilization, the number
of large, well-warmed and easily accessible
chimneys continually increased.

One of the most entertaining sights
imaginable is to watch a flock of Swifts at
evening in early autumn, circling some one
of these towering piles of brick or stone for
an hour or so after sunset, in a wild, merry-
go-round flight, and finally pouring down
into it in a great stream.

[64]

In the Wake of the Brown Thrasher

Some years ago two or three hundred of
them indulged in this performance nearly
every clear night during the month of Sep-
tember at All Saints' church, near my
home in Norristown, Pennsylvania, much
to the astonishment and dehght of a number
of small folk to whom it was entirely novel,
and who turned out regularly to see it.
The chimney here is capacious, or there
would not have been room for them all.

They go inside to find shelter and sleep,
of course, clinging close together along the
interior until sometimes it is lined com-
pletely, and getting additional support for
themselves from the stiff spikes or spines
with which they are provided for that
purpose in place of a tail.

The circumstance that Chimney Swifts
feed entirely on insects, which they take
while in flight (and they are able to do this
at night as well as during the day time),
results in season in their becoming indi-
rectly a sort of natural barometer. When
prevaiUng clear weather is to continue, the
bugs they reUsh fly high in the buoyant

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A Book on Birds

atmosphere; and so must they to get them.
While a heavy, moist air pulls both down
close to the surface of the earth. And who
has not seen this? The birds soaring at
times in a bright, blue sky so far aloft
they were almost invisible; and, again, on
a changeful day sweeping by so low as to
just graze the tops of the fences.

The Chimney Swift is very softly and
closely feathered, and in color is an ashen-
black above, and a pearl-gray upon throat
and upper breast.

What becomes of him in winter has
been a much-mooted question among orni-
thologists, some of whom, after repeated
unsuccessful efforts to find the terminus
of his annual migration southward, declare
that he seems to literally disappear from
the face of the earth during the entire time
cold weather prevails. Whether this means
that he hibernates somewhat after the habit
of snakes and bats; or, as is more likely,
seeks some congenial bourne thus far
unknown to us, is a matter still to be
exactly determined.

[66]

In the Wake of the Brown Thrasher

Another bird whose annual reappearance
is suggested by the Swift because he is
equally eccentric, is the Night-hawk. He,
too, may be seen quite easily in summer,
for he feeds in very much the same way
and has a habit of doing it at evening also,
and immediately over a town or city. His
head bears a marked resemblance in shape,
particularly about the thin, wide mouth, to
the head of a frog, and some of his habits
are very odd indeed. He builds no nest
at all, but his two darkly-spotted, oblong
eggs are laid directly on the ground — usually
on the side of some small hill, bare of grass,
at the stoniest and most unprotected place
he can find.

If you should discover them — and it is
hard to do so, because they blend with
their surroundings — he will occasionally
take them in his mouth one at a time,
at the first opportunity afterward, and
deposit them at some new point a little
distance away, where you will not be
likely to come across them again.

The Night-hawk is nearly the size of a

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A Book on Birds

small Blackbird; is dark in hue and finely
speckled; and has a conspicuous white
patch about the middle of each wing which
looks hke a hole when he is flying.

He may be identified at once during the
first half-hour of twilight by the way he
rises in the air in short, quick flights,
uttering a piping cry with each, and,
having reached an altitude satisfactory
to his taste, dives down, either in sport
or to capture some gnat he has sighted
below — the air rushing through his bristling
wings and making a hollow noise as he goes,
like that produced by blowing into the open
mouth of a bottle.

The sharp contrast between birds Hke the
Night-hawk and the Chimney Swift, who
somehow seem unpleasantly transformed
as if by the smoke and grime of centers
of human habitation, and all the others,
like the Thrasher, who suggest nothing but
the freshness and beauty of nature, just
as it was at the beginning, is always
apparent; and it stirs an instant, deeper
longing for orchard and meadow and rip-

[68]

In the Wake of the Brown Thrasher

phng brook, and wooded slope, and the
boundless firmament, where the myriads
a-wing that have never gotten beyond
these native elements for which alone
they are so evidently made, are joyfully
assembling as I write.

[69]

A Book on Birds

The Boy of the By- Way

One April morning, as I went

To work, depressed and uncontent,

I met a lad who made me glad

In a trice with some odd tricks he had.

The air was cool and brightly clear,
And he cried, the moment I drew near,
''Oh, uncle, say — isn't this a day? —
Turn off that street and come my way!"

"It's farther, I know, thro' the fields, but yet
You're early — and think of the fun you'll get!"
And he coaxed — and still he coaxed, until
I said at last "I believe I will!"

So over a fence we leaped and then
Ran down a hill and up again;
Then wheeled about and shouted out,
And looked back over our rambling route.

Then he did a handspring, and then a lot
Of other stunts I had half forgot;
And he stoned a mark, and whispered, "Hark—
While I whistle a bit and lure that Lark!"

And the more he did the better I felt.
And the sweeter the vernal breezes smelt;
Till, at last, when he sang till the echoes rang,
I tingled clean thro' with his own wild tang,

[70]

The Boy of the By-Way

And I vowed to myself I had never seen
The sky so blue or the grass so green;
Nor everywhere the earth so fair
And utterly free from pain and care!

And, feeling thus, when we came to part,

I thought, "Here's a youngster I've liked from the

start.
And henceforth — egad! — when I'm sour and sad
'Twill be well to remember this same lad."

So I called, as he vanished from sight, "Old man,
Let us meet some day again, if you can!"
"Sure! count on me" — with a laugh said he,
"For I'm simply the boy you used to be!"

[71]

Chapter V

RAINY WEATHER AND WRENS

THE ''bad days'' that so frequently in-
terrupt the vernal tide during April
and early May in our climate, check-
ing it with the chill of winter, are after
all of no mean value because of the way
they accentuate by contrast the glory of
the others. Indeed, I have sometimes
thought that with fewer of them spring
might even grow monotonous. It would at
least fail to stir within us that pecuhar
sense of appreciative joy we inevitably
feel upon the sunlit morning — fresh, frag-
rant, blossomy — which sooner or later is
sure to follow what we counted perhaps a
disastrous spell of unseasonable weather.

Furthermore, the abundant rains produce
a wealth of fohage and vegetation which, of
course, would otherwise be lacking.

My attention was particularly attracted

[72]

Rainy Weather and Wrens

to this latter fact during several years
(in every one of which long stretches of
these ''bad days^' — with peerlessly beauti-
ful breaks in them — were the prevaiHng
order well on toward June) whenever I
went forth from my home to a desolate tract
of land, not far away, which but recently
before had been the site of a noble wood.
I found here that the incessant showers
helped things in a marvelous manner,
hiding rapidly under their influence beneath
many a leafy covert the grievous hurt that
had been done in leveling the great trees
to make way for the extension and develop-
ment of the town.

Bushes, vines and saplings soon sprang
into profuse growth on all sides. And
then the birds came, as to few places else-
where, and helped along not a little, singing
daily the wraiths of the trees as it were
into deep forgetfulness.

And it happened somehow that, in the
whole throng of them, I learned to love
the Wrens best. This may have been, I
admit, because of previous prejudice in

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A Book on Birds

their favor; for they have a universal way
of getting near to the heart of man.

But in any event at this place their cheery
talk invariably appeared to invite and
attract me first.

Of course I encountered only one species
— the House Wren; and who does not know
it almost as well as he knows himself?

For, as his name suggests, he delights
in human companionship, this trait of his
being so pronounced that he is liable to
settle down and build his nest in almost
any place at all associated with the habita-
tions or haunts of men.

I remember once finding one of these little
fellows — after searching high and low in
vain for a half hour, lured on by his excited
chatter — most comfortably ensconced for
the summer, with his tiny brood of seven,
in the recesses of an old boot caught tight
fast in the branching forks of a big apple
tree at the rear door of a farmhouse up
in the country — the very last nook in the
whole neighborhood where I had thought of
looking.

[74]

Rainy Weather and Wrens

Following his usual methods he had
filled the boot chock-full of clean, dry
grass, lined with soft white feathers; and
as the top of it pointed downward a trifle,
he and his family were just as well sheltered
in it from the rain as in the holes in trees
and boxes to which they ordinarily resort.

The House Wren is so small (his actual
length of body not much exceeding two
inches, as a rule, exclusive of beak and tail)
that one of the most remarkable things
about him is the amount of noise he
makes — and this, too, notwithstanding the
fact he seems to have an impediment in his
speech.

He sings incessantly, his strain always
starting with an amount of splutter and
stammering that seems to give him a whole
lot of trouble, before he finally breaks
through into the whirling little cadenza of
true melody with which he brings it to a
close.

His back and head are brown and his
breast is of dull gray; but the marks by
which he may be most easily identified

[75]

A Book on Birds

(excepting always his diminutive size and
peculiar ^^ spiral'' music) are his narrow
beak and short, straight tail-feathers, tilted
upward at an angle that grows sharper as
you approach more closely to his nest.

No bird can be studied with less trouble
than he, for he will allow you to get as
near to him as any I know. And no
opportunity for meeting him on every hand
could possibly be better than that still
offered by this overgrown tract near my
own town.

Next to the Wrens in this same locality
I found the Brown Thrasher the most
interesting.

In the morning before eight o'clock, once
I had reached the bushes and saplings,
I generally heard his music coming from
three or four directions at once.

And I never failed to stop and listen a
little in enrapt silence.

For, as we have said in the preceding
chapter, it is music well worth while —
though only those who hear it in its first
freshness in the spring know it to the full.

[76]

Rainy Weather and Wrens

Then, however, I think it nearly on a par
with that of his kinsfolk, the Wood Thrush
or the Hermit — the latter rated by many the
most melodious in nature.

In support of this opinion I may mention
the case of a friend who, though a true
naturalist by instinct and education, came
to me once and declared he had heard a
Southern Mocking-bird singing in the wood
near his home the previous morning.

When I suggested that this one must have
lost his bearings completely to stray so far
up into Pennsylvania — and so early in the
season, too — he met my doubt by saying
that he would try to find it again and
examine it through his field-glass; the
result being that he reported a day or two
later that his '^Southern Mocking-bird^^
was simply a Brown Thrasher (as I sus-
pected), whose wonderful vocal powers
were a genuine revelation to him.

And so they will be to you — if you
approach his choir-loft (usually the top-
most branch of a small tree where he can
feel the early sunshine full upon his face)

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A Book on Birds

with ''light and airy tread/' until you are
very near; and then keep quiet long enough
to hear his performance to the end.

You will have no trouble in discovering
him — for he is a big bird (larger than the
Robin), his back and tail being of reddish,
rusty brown, the tail-feathers very long.

Moreover, in this quest for the Thrasher
you will by this time of the year be hkely
to meet many delightful diversions on
every side.

At almost the same point where I used to
hear the Thrashers a Flicker had his home
in a hole about eight feet from the ground
in an old wreck of a tree.

As often as I came there with friends
and knocked just below with a stick or a
stone he would come out very promptly
to find who it might be.

Whereupon, if these friends had not met
him before, they were always taken aback
with surprise at his appearance; for a full-
fledged Fhcker is a ''sight to see,'' being
"dressed to kill" in a lot of gaudy and
superfluous finery, stuck on haphazard,

[78]

Rainy Weather and Wrens

like that of a proud and very ancient old
maid.

His fixings are of six or seven colors, some
of which ''clash'' badly — the most con-
spicuous being the bluish-gray and faded
pink about his throat, the great patch of
scarlet at the nape of the neck, and the
flaming yellow of the under parts of the
wings.

In this fondness for gay apparel the male
and female FUckers are almost exactly
aUke, being in this an exception to the
rule among birds, which is that the head
of the family appropriates the brighter,
showier tints all to himself, leaving only
the dull and neutral shades as the humble
portion of his mate.

In flight also the Flicker differs markedly
from most birds, going up and down,
with a wave motion, like the Uttle American
Goldfinch.

And finally he is even more exceptional
in one other particular. His behavior in
the mating season when making overtures
to the lady of his choice is one of the most

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A Book on Birds

laughable spectacles in nature. Love seems
to set him daft completely, his idiotic ten-
dencies under its influence showing them-
selves chiefly in a most remarkable stretch-
ing and twisting of his long neck, with
many outlandish movements in every pos-
sible direction, whenever sitting near his
fiancee — the insanity of it all quickly com-
municating itself to her with similar results.
Two boys whom I once called to watch
a pair thus affected, and perched about a
yard apart on the branch of a cherry tree,
declared in astonishment that they acted
as though they had been drinking. But I
told them it was intoxication of another
kind.

[80]

My First Bobolink

My First Bobolink

At mid-morning yesterday, up in the hills

I met a strange bird with such wonderful trills

And magical blending of music and noise,

(Like the composite voice of a group of small boys,

Or perhaps, better still, like a half-dozen girls.
Some chatting, some singing, in eddies and whirls

Of small talk and melody, all in a mix).

He stopped and dumfounded me quite with his tricks.

Now who can he be, thought I, thus to pour forth
Such warm southern ecstas}^ here in the north?

He's new to me surely — yet surely I've read
Somewhere of those black and white wings, and that
head

Tilted upward so pert, with its saucy buff cap —
So far back and so small that the slightest mishap

Might, methought, jar it off in a trice to the ground —
Oh, who is this very bird-Babel of sound?

Thus I questioned in wonder — yet not lacking

delight.
As, with all its confusion, his voice charmed me

quite :

For the sunshine was in't — when the plashing of rain
Of a sweet April day — then the sunshine again;

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A Book on Birds

But, most, the great gladness of spring at the flood,
The quickening gladness one feels in the blood.

So, nearer and nearer I drew, loth to go
Unacquaint with my minstrel, still singing; when, lo,

(Mirahile didu!) the bird seemed to talk,

Saying, ''How-dy-do, friend! — you are out for a walk

''And can't guess who I am — that is easy to trace
From the puzzled expression all over your face.

"I'm a little far north, I'll admit; just the same
A field-lover, like you, should at once know my name.

''Here's a strain with a somersault in it, or two,
Pray, tell me, sir, don't that suggest it to you? —

"Or this, with a movement so much to my taste
I sing it both backward and forward, nor waste

"A note or a syllable doing it — see?
There — I've mentioned my name, and you missed
it — ah me!

"But I'll give you just one warble more, while you

think; —
Ho, you've hit it at last! — au revoir! — Bobolink!"

[82]

Chapter VI

THE WOOD WARBLERS

TO the newly initiated, seeking a knowl-
edge of birds in any part of that
wide expanse of territory, already
designated, which takes in my own stamp-
ing-ground (and which, to be more exact
this time, extends from the middle counties
of Pennsylvania to the upper boundaries
of Maryland and runs across into New
England on the one side and to the Missis-
sippi on the other) the fact of the existence
of the large and briUiant feathered family
styled '^Wood Warblers'' is always sure to
come at first with a deeply fascinating
surprise and interest.

For it seems almost unbelievable for
a while that these charming little winged
beauties should appear and depart year
after year, in great number and variety —
and yet the mass of people not be acquainted
with them, or, indeed, even see them at all.

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A Book on Birds

The circumstance is attributable of course
to their diminutive size, their extremely
quiet and retiring habits, and the fact that
most of them do not nest here — but farther
north, even unto Canada and Labrador
and the land of Evangeline.

But notwithstanding this, our lack of
knowledge is still remarkable — for in migrat-
ing they are with us sometimes as long as
three or four weeks, both spring and fall,
and most of them are so wonderfully bright
of color that they are nothing less than an
embodied joy to behold.

There are probably as many as twenty-
five species that pass our way, in these
silent, semi-annual flights of theirs; and
upon clear days, as the sunlight discloses
them amidst the foliage, they flash and
sparkle like precious stones — in their
incomparable hues of carmine and gold,
sapphire and emerald, brown and ebony,
orange and white.

In all this shining galaxy the Maryland
Yellow-throat, the American Redstart, the
Yellow-breasted Chat and the Golden-

[84]

At His Ever Opex Door
The Flicker

{See page 78)

The Wood Warblers

crowned Thrush (styled also the Oven-
bird, from the peculiar shape of his nest,
as well as the ^^ Teacher/^ from the resem-
blance his music bears to this word, pro-
nounced quickly a half dozen times and
with varying accent), and the Yellow
Warbler, are most numerous and familiar
because many of these build here.

But one other I have found very conspic-
uous in the wooded haunts I know; first,
by reason of his soHtary arrival about the
beginning of April, before all the rest;
and, second, because his contrasts of color
(at least, as I have seen him, for bird-
plumage is sometimes a very changeable
quantity) are so great as to make him
exceptional even among Wood Warblers.

I refer to the Palm Warbler — a delightful
bird to me, and most friendly, approach-
able, and charming to behold hopping
about quietly over the thickly-spread brown
leaves and through the naked branches, in
his lovely habiliments of yellow striped
with rich brown, below, and dusky olive
above, with touches of pure white here

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A Book on Birds

and there in wings and tail, and the bright,
distinctive crown (too chestnut in tint to
be red, and yet too red to be chestnut)
which covers the entire top of his graceful
little poll and is so warmly beautiful that
one's pulses quicken a bit every time a
vernal sunbeam finds it.

Would that every beginner might first
discover him as I did, with Hermit Thrushes
to keep him company and make the
morning glad!

If, however, you start forth into the
country at the season in which I am now
writing, do not expect him.

It is well on in May and he has probably
been gone for almost a month.

At present I think you will be far more
likely to meet at once the Maryland Yellow-
throat instead.

And suppose you really do start and see!

Unless he has changed his habits, he
has been disporting himself for some time
in these thickets, and the leafy, tangled
underbrush just over the fence, across the
road.

[86]

The Wood Warblers

And you will almost certainly hear him
before he reveals himself. For his note is
loud for so small a bird, though not by
any means unmusical; and, beside this, it
is so striking in its repetition that it will
not fail to attract your attention instantly.
It sounds to me, for reasons hereinbefore
stated, very like the name Jessica, reiterated
four times rapidly and in a high key —
having in it the distinct inflection of voice
of a Httle child calling in a tone of tearful
alarm and distress.

But when at last you find him, your eyes
will quicken to a vision of rare beauty;
for '' Solomon in all his glory, was not
arrayed Uke one of these.'' And that you
may judge of this the better here is his
^' color scheme'': Back — olive green; chin,
throat, breast, undercoverts and edge of
wings — bright yellow, fading into a soft
buff white; forehead, and a broad band
upon sides of neck — pure black, bordered
with gray; wings and tail glossed with
yellowish olive.

But, bright a picture as he makes, there

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A Book on Birds

are other Wood Warblers, and many of
them, even brighter than he. And Indian
Creek (a stream, well known to Audubon,
flowing into the Schuylkill river about two
miles above Norristown) is of all localities
within my own observation the place of
places to find them. Here they hnger in
the spring until Memorial Day, feeding and
flitting from twig to twig amidst the thick
branches shot with sunlight that overhang
the clear and rippling surface of the water.
And it was among these Uttle migrants
that Audubon came upon his rarest and
most beautiful ^' finds, ^^ along this very
stream during those days a century ago
when he found also his bride and made
his home in the famous house by the
Perkiomen, which still stands there in
perfect preservation and good order.

As we think of this our quest becomes
invested at once with a deeper, finer
interest; the velvety moss seems richer
beneath our tread, and the older forest
trees which tower to the sky along the high,
precipitous banks seem to tell faintly of

[881

The Wood Warblers

other, unforgotten footsteps; for Audubon
was unquestionably the truest bird-lover of
us all.

And if we have not thus far realized it
in Pennsylvania as we should^ there are
nevertheless signs we are approaching
gradually a full recognition of the fact.

Down in Louisiana, where he was born
while the Revolution was still in progress,
they have, at New Orleans, a magnificent
park bearing his name, which, with its
splendid Horticultural Hall filled with trop-
ical trees and plants, and its model sugar
and cotton farm fronting on the Mississippi,
constitutes an adequate monument to this
pioneer, who won kings for his patrons
that they might help him bring to successful
completion after many years a publication
which has commanded the admiration of
the world ever since.

And his position in the realm of natural
history has been marked almost as well in
New York and elsewhere. So that when
we, of my own State, who have larger claim
to him perhaps than any others, take steps

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A Book on Birds

in time to accord him further honor (as
we no doubt will), what we do will be
justified by many worthy precedents. Nor
will we find local inspiration lacking entirely.
The great naturalist's quaint but dignified
old mansion up in Montgomery county
has been nobly looked after for many
years by a well-known family; and every
ornithologist of the present generation who
has ever made it his Mecca has returned
thence with renewed zeal and enthusiasm.

However, this is parenthetical. Let us
return to the Wood Warblers at Indian
Creek, some of which Audubon first dis-
covered here, painting them into his im-
mortal series of more than a thousand
specimens.

As we come, the American Redstart
meets us directly, and almost before we are
well amongst the trees. Think of a bird only
about the size of your thumb in the brilliant
garb of the Baltimore Oriole — and you
have him; except that the flaming orange
red, which is his dominant color, is some-
times even more splendid than the Oriole's.

[90]

The Wood Warblers

But the Redstart is only the preliminary
relish to a very feast of sights for those
who press on through these dim-lit, winding
aisles.

The Magnolia, the Myrtle, the Chestnut-
sided, the Parula and three or four other
Warblers are here; and then beside these
you may see or hear, if you stay long
enough, the Wood Pewee, the Crested
Flycatcher, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, the
Kingbird, the Turtle Dove, the Red-eyed
Vireo, and the White-breasted Swallow;
and, perhaps, far outside in the meadows
somewhere — a few noisy, rollicking Bobo-
hnks.

For June, with her roses, is not far away;
the Goldfinches, after a whole month spent
among us in light-hearted idleness and
dissipation, have begun to think of nesting;
the Ruby-throated Humming-bird may be
looked for soon; and they who glory in
God's open air will ere long have come
again to their own full heritage.

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A Book on Birds

The Hermit Thrush

Sweet singer, in the high and holy place
Of this dim-lit cathedral of the hills;

With reverent brow and unuplifted face,
I quaff the cup thy melody distills.

What sparkling well of limpid music springs

Within thy breast, to quench my thirst like this!

What nameless chords are hid beneath thy wings.
That all my soul is quickened by thy bliss!

Perchance the same mysterious desire

Hath brought us both to this deep shrine as one;
For now it burns a single flame of fire,

Dropped through the branches from the setting
sun!

And as thou singest, lo, the voice is mine,

Each note a thought ; each thought, a silent prayer,

Of joy, of peace — of ecstasy divine,

Poured forth upon the fragrant woodland air.

And I, who stand aloof, am not alone,

Here in these great cathedral aisles untrod;

O, Hermit, thou has opened heaven, unknown.
And through thy song have I communed with God.

[92]

Chapter VII

TANGLEWOOD LANE AND SKIPPACK CREEK

IN the rural borough of CoUegeville,
only a short distance above my home
and as dear to my heart as some typi-
cal New England town like Concord to that
of an average Yankee, there is a sequestered
road which, just about the time it had drifted
back finally to primeval nature even in the
midst of civihzation, was, strange to say,
advanced in nomenclature to the proud
dignity of ''Fifth avenue/'

It is a case which proves that with roads
also, as with roses, there is nothing in a
name. At least not very much. ''Fifth
avenue '^ it may be for a square or so, if
you insist. But no farther. For, after
that, it shps around a sharp turn; shakes
off its ponderous, ill-fitting title with quick
impatience; plunges down a rocky hill,
just grazing a fine little patch of forest

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A Book on Birds

trees, and becomes in another moment the
very ^'Tangle wood lane'' of my boyhood
days; except that it seems even more
tangled and woodsy than ever.

Of course this village street which strays
so easily into wilding obhvion is still in
some measure (let us say to the extent of
two farm wagons a week) a traveled
thoroughfare; it being in fact the first real
cross-road you meet to the right, going
northward through the town. Yet permit
it to lead you but two hundred paces
toward the river and you will find, as I
have stated, that it is not at all what it is
paraded to be, but something vastly more
delightful; provided, of course, the season
be propitious, and you a lover of nature.

I myself have had a special affection for
it as long as I can remember; an affection
which has not diminished by any means as
with each succeeding summer, because of
encroaching growths of bush and briar
and sapling on either side, and grape and
honeysuckle overhead, it has become more
and more attractive to birds.

[94]

Tanglewood Lane and Skippack Creek

Its devious, vagrant course covers hardly
half a mile, all told, to the point where
it ends abruptly on the high, steep bank of
the Perkiomen. Yet, with these great
masses of fragrant foliage which it accumu-
lates by the middle of May for our winged
friends of earth and air, it is a widely sought
and ample rendezvous of theirs from then
on until October.

But, now that I have said this much,
let us stop off on our way thither to-day
and thus not only prolong your pleasure
of anticipation with regard to it, but reap
other pleasure beside.

And, suiting the action to the word, how
could we do better than turn aside just
where we are this minute and loiter along
Skippack creek a little, ere the sun goes
down? There is a passage-way open right
here, between the end of the bridge wall
and the fence that does not quite meet it;
and, going through, we are in a most bird-
like atmosphere at once.

June is so near you can feel her immediate
advent. The dark, mossy turf is bright

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A Book on Birds

with spring beauties and Quaker ladies and
white violets; the great, tall trees (beeches,
oaks, locusts, and sycamores) have gentle
breezes in them that make beautiful play
with the sunlight on the leaves; and the
slope of the banks beneath goes straight
down to the purhng water and the quiet
stone arch through which it flows.

Out be3^ond the trees there is a great
meadow, well shut in; and here the grass
is thick with buttercups and daisies and
more Quaker ladies, beside many patches
of the Star of Bethlehem, in its pure and
lovely garb of green and white. The
meadow is intersected by a tumbling wall,
with a line of half-dead willows running
through it; and the hills on the far side rise
sharply and are well covered with other
ancient trees, under which the perfume of
sweet cicely ascends everywhere, like
subtile incense through the overhanging
branches; and the May apple, with its
bloom in hiding, spreads like a deep,
broad carpet; and the yellow of the wild
mustard and the pale purple of the cranes-

[96]

I- >
ft CO

5 ffi

^ —

Tanglewood Lane and Skippack Creek

bill appear here and there and everywhere,
enlivening the gloom.

But we have not arrived at the woods
without many a pause as we came. And
just because we have simply sauntered along
silently, making these frequent halts by
the way, and sitting down indeed at several
points for nearly a half hour at a stretch,
the birds have been most numerous, familiar
and unafraid throughout the entire distance
between.

How hard it is to adhere to correct
methods of approach in anything! When
the amateur ornithologist is wise enough
to remember that the surest way to see
birds is merely to pick out a comfortable
place somewhere in the open and then
wait in patience until they actually come to
him — instead of thrashing about after them,
with fuss and fume, he generally has his
reward; for, after the lapse of only a com-
paratively short time, following this plan,
the spot that seemed entirely deserted will
as a rule show signs of life, if he but keep
quite still; and eyes, and wings, and voices

[97]

A Book on Birds

he wist not of will begin to manifest them-
selves.

Thus do we find it this afternoon. First
we hear the stealthy "chuck, chuck!"
of Wood Thrushes; then the two, high,
noisy notes of the Kingfisher, which, ming-
ling with those of the Blue Jay, seem very
like them to-day; then the creaky little
voice of the Downy Woodpecker. And
then we not only hear sounds but commence
to "see things''; and, behold, the emptiness
is peopled with our friends!

From under the bridge come two Phoebes;
immediately overhead the smooth gray
figure of a Catbird em^erges from the faintly
rustling foliage, the big spot of mahogany-
brown showing plain beneath the long tail-
feathers; over the tulip tree, right beyond
the fence a Kingbird hovers in that quick,
nervous flight of his resembhng exactly his
piercing note, and both of them in direct
contrast with the quiet movements and
voice of his crested cousin, who alights on
a hmb below. Then the sleek, well-groomed
Yellow-billed Cuckoo; and the Baltimore

[981

Tanglewood Lane and Skippack Creek

Oriole and his mate, both singing about the
same notes; and the dowdy Flicker; and
the Meadow Lark, with his black breast-
plate, one by one, show themselves, most
of them drawing nearer and nearer, by
easy stages.

How perfectly simple it all seems, com-
pared with some experiences we have had,
when, after long and tiresome walking,
up hill and down dale, we returned half-
disgusted, having seen and heard practically
no feathered folk worth speaking of !

Yet, come, come!— what of ''Tanglewood
lane''? We have started forward, and
after fifteen minutes' stiff climbing have
gained the rim of the woods, where we find
we have just about enough time left to reach
our CoUegeville haunt by sunset— a most
auspicious moment. So, through the fence
we go again and up the turnpike!

And, stepping along, we quite naturally
begin to recall some previous sunset experi-
ences. For sunsets play a larger part in
bird-questing than those who do not know
may imagine. And they assume especial
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A Book on Birds

importance when they come in a burst of
brightness to crown some dark and dismal
day; having very much the same effect
under such conditions upon bird-hearts
as the hearts of men and women; dispelling
their sadness and depression, filling them
with song, and often conjuring suddenly out
of absolute silence almost as much woodland
music as the most roseate dawn.

Moreover, our brisk tramp — tramp —
tramp — on the hard road-bed so quickens
both memory and imagination that we
recall in fact, on the instant as we proceed,
at least one sunset of this very sort — a
sunset many months previous above the
Hundred-mile- woods in the verdant Chester
valley.

As evening drew on it seemed that the
storm which had prevailed during the after-
noon was to have its unbroken will through-
out the night. But just in the fulness of
time every barrier of gloom gave way and
the heavens triumphed gloriously.

Only a few brief moments remained for
the victory when it came at length, and the

•[ 100 ]

W r>r

Tanglewood Lane and Skippack Creek

first bright banner of a royal host emerged
in joy and flung its radiance afar; yet
they were enough and to spare. For the
chariots of the sun and all God^s angels of
light and color that lead them on are as
swift as they are beautiful.

Aflame with gold, and violet, and crim-
son, of indescribable loveliness and many a
baffling hue, they swept from the purple
hills below and ascended toward the zenith.

In a twinkling the black and leaden
cloud-waste of the sky blossomed to
magnificent and rosy splendor — splendor
heaped up mightily, mass upon luminous
mass — splendor spread out through illimit-
able vistas, wave upon dazzling wave;
like the land and sea of Paradise com-
mingled and made one.

And then broad reaches of ethereal
verdure, rare and delicate of tint as earliest
leaves of spring, appeared upon the vast of
this celestial scene and extended into space;
while, floating toward the point of vision,
as though they had escaped on either side
from the rainbow chariots in their flight,

[101]

A Book on Birds

little fleecy clusters, white as snow and
shining like transparent silver, heightened
all the deeper and dominant effulgence
which held sway beneath them and beyond.

Thus — from shadowy river, and the
meadows drenched with rain, and the lower-
ing frown and menace of many wooded
summits the sun withdrew with transcend-
ent rejoicing; and yet almost as unnoticed
of humanity in the silence as though its
departure were at the very beginning of time
and the earth itself still unpeopled. Except,
perchance, that a home-bound toiler here
and there looked up a little and was rested
in his heart; or that some child paused
in its evening play with wide and wondering
eyes and was given, as it gazed, a vague,
sweet sense of Eden and the gardens of
the blest.

Except for this, and then, as I have said
(and indeed in keeping with it), the uni-
versal stirring and singing which followed
after, among the re-awakened birds.

But, behold !—^Tifth avenue^' at last; and
right around the corner ^Tanglewood lane^'!

[102]

^

.- be

Tanglewood Lane and Skippack Creek

And here too, in truth, is the rocky hill;
and so precipitous we must needs '^put on
the brakes" to keep from running as we
descend; and here also the crumbling ruin
of the old whitewashed stone house we boys
thought haunted; passing which, we are
once more brought to our old-time portal
of the very heart of things.

For at this point a brook of sparkling
water, coming through the trees to the right,
crosses our path; and just beyond it, where
the bank on the same side rises gradually
to a height of fifteen feet and is covered
thick with blackberry, there confronts our
vision a narrow vernal labyrinth with a most
alluring vista of leafy loveliness looking
at us from the far end and inviting us to
make the passage and take possession.

And now, as we respond and proceed,
we realize immediately that the birds have
truly gone before. In fact right over the
gateway itself, where the rill runs by, and
the branches are dense, and the level west-
ern sunlight creeps through but lazily, a
Wood Thrush, sitting calm and stately

[103]

A Book on Birds

on a broken willow limb extending above,
slackens and silences our footsteps with
his rich vesper song; nor takes his leave
until we are almost underneath.

Then the Wild Dove (who for some reason
is becoming a less familiar figure than
formerly in these parts) cooes thrice and
shps softly away to his nest of sticks and
two white eggs back in the apple-orchard;
and the Vesper Sparrow answers but holds
his perch; and a Red-eyed Vireo actually
comes nearer, sounding his rasping note;
and then we see in succession a Crested
Flycatcher; and a Chipping Sparrow; and
a Song Sparrow, and a Yellow-billed
Cuckoo, sad of voice; and a Catbird, in
sharp contrast; and a Robin or two, and
a Brown Thrasher, and the Baltimore
Oriole, gorgeous and lively; and his kins-
man of the orchard, not quite' so brilliant
but none the less alive; and a Yellow-
hammer; and a Meadow Blackbird, who
really ought to be out in the open; — these
and others, all abundant in music; and, as
we try to move in proper spirit with the

[104]

Tanglewood Lane and Skippack Creek

place and hour, most of it bidding us
'^welcome/'

And now, tempted by a little opening in
the bushes, we leave the road for a moment,
climb the bank, shaking down a shower
of blossoms in the effort, and, gaining the
top, disclose a broad field running along
the marge of a wood, and covered with
coarse weeds and briar and patches of
the mountain pink, with a fine panorama
of blue sky and miles of rolling country
out beyond.

Another irate Catbird forgets his manners
and flies at us fiercely as we pass through;
but we in turn forget him quickly upon
hearing a faint, far voice from the upper
air, and looking above discover two Night-
hawks sailing along in quick, broken flight,
and ever and anon swooping down with a
rush and roar to capture a new tidbit for
the evening meal.

But what is this that rises noiselessly
right at our feet and hurries away? Of a
truth the Field Sparrow, none other; and —
mirabile dictu! — here is his nest, without

[105]

A Book on Birds

hunting for it — snug and cozy and beauti-
ful— sheltered by a tuft of slender grasses
half drawn together at the top like an
Indian wigwam; and within its soft and
silvery retreat four of the daintiest and
rarest of eggs, of finer tint than many
pearls, and not so very much larger than
some, with delicate markings of five or six
shades of brown to add to their beauty.

We would fain linger a while in dehght at
the ^'find/' But there is a mellow, mys-
terious call from the shadowy wood just a
stone^s throw away and we follow on
eagerly.

And now great oaks again look down upon
us, and the lure sounds nearer and brighter
and more musical. What can it be? The
long days of absence have made us forgetful.
Ah, now we have it! There he is on that
hemlock just ahead, the Scarlet Tanager —
splendid flame of fire against the dusky
brown and green — his voice as rich and
warm as his matchless carmine vestments,
and far less concerned because of us than
we have ever known him before.

[1061

Tanglewood Lane and Skippack Creek

Over and over again he carols his golden
strain.

A pair of sleek, long-tailed Brown
Thrashers run along the ground, side by
side, some distance ahead and disappear;
a ''Wild canary'' chirps merrily and flies
rollicking away — up and down, up and
down, Hke a tiny canoe on the waves;
then two Blue Jays rustle by voiceless, the
only silent ones just now in all this dim-lit
chapel of the woods, as if they felt their
harsh and strident tones would be out of
place and spoil the evening harmony; and
far below — for the trees break off abruptly
and there is a sheer fall of nearly two
hundred feet as you look down — the limpid,
winding water flows in noisy, babbling
monotone over many a rock ancl shallow.

There is deep magic in it all. But across
the valley the sun has dropped behind the
hills; the Chimney Swifts outside are
gathering for their mad, twiUght frolic
until dark; Crow and Blackbird caw and
clack more drowsily, and we must up and
away.

[107]

A Book on Birds

The Phoebes say ^^good-bye!^^ But the
Larks call, ' ^ come again ! ' ' And as we count
the latter especially close friends we whistle
back to these, only, a promise that we will.

Yet, to be exact, we do not really accept
the invitation on their account alone but
for all the other charms of this almost
forgotten country road, so near the noise
and bustle of the world, and yet so removed
and secluded.

[108]

3 Z
ft —

2i

Man-o'-the-Wood and Golden-Throat

Mi»N-0'-THE-W00D AND GoLDEN-ThROAT

(Lines written upon meeting the Brown Thrasher)

''What are you singing for — Golden-throat?

The earth is empty here;
In all these forest aisles remote

There is not one listening ear.
That glorious strain, celestial bird,

Deserves a raptured throng;
To pour it forth alone, unheard,

Seems but a waste of song."

"What are you loving for — Man-o'-the-wood

With heaven in your face;
Amidst this utter solitude

All love is out of place.
Your Heart's-desire hath passed afar

To brighter realms above;
To keep on loving where you are

Seems but a waste of love."

"Just for the joy of it! — Golden-throat,

The joy a true love brings."
"And I, dear man, miss never a note

For the joy a true song sings." —
O, blithesome bird — thrice happy man!

Such love, such song as yours
Made life divine when life began,

And will, while life endures.

[109]

Chapter VIII

TWO VIREOS AND SOME FRIENDS

I ONE time watched at different periods
of the day for several weeks a pair of
Warbling Vireos that settled down for
the summer in a large maple tree right on
the turnpike road some three miles above
my home.

They had built their beautiful, cup-
shaped nest in an overhanging branch some
fifteen feet above the highwa}^, and were not
disturbed in the least by my ogling them
through a field-glass to my heart's content;
for the spot is a busy and noisy one in the
summer time, with its rural trolley-cars
thundering by and people getting off and
on, and the birds seemed to have grown
entirely unconscious of human affairs, and
indifferent to what was transpiring down
below their little aerial home.

While their music is still new to you,

[1101

V.

On

Two Vireos and Some Friends

you will probably mistake it for that of the
Wren. But after a bit you will notice that
it is considerably fuller and richer than the
smaller bird's strain, and altogether more
melodious— even though, like the other, it is
very much of a monotone.

In speaking of the Vireo's ''music,''
however, we must not confound it with its
''call" — which is simply one or two harsh,
rasping notes that are quite distinctive and
easily recognized. And just here it may
be well to remind ourselves of the impor-
tance of knowing if possible in every case
both these methods in which all birds find
voice, so that hearing them we may not
multiply new species out of the imagina-
tion, or make other mistakes by attributing
the mere call and the real song to different
birds.

The two Vireos of the maple tree showed
the same delightful trait which some other
species have of singing while sitting on
their nest, each hopping off now and then to
give place to the other. And they were of
course most easily studied while so engaged.
[1111

A Book on Birds

In general color they are a dull olive
upon the back and wings, and a beautifully
smooth dove tint over the rest of the body.
Their habits are very dainty — their nest
being a marvel of exquisite woven-work;
while — among other refined little tricks —
they have a most delightful way of slaking
their thirst in the morning from the dew-
drops on the surface of a leaf.

But let us also remember that there are
two others in the same family it is just as
pleasant to know — the White-eyed and the
Red-eyed Vireos. They are all three so
much ahke that you will probably some-
times get them mixed, as I do; unless it
is a bright day and you are near enough to
detect the difference of color of eye in the
several species, which really does exist not-
withstanding the doubts of people upon
this point. And do not fail to look for it
whenever you come across any one of these
birds, no matter how often it may fail to
disclose itself; for then, sooner or later,
you may duplicate my own experience
(and the rare pleasure of it), in seeing a

[112]

AS

Two Vireos and Some Friends

stray sunbeam sift through the branches
somewhere and actually strike the brilliant
ruby of the lovely eyes of the last named
of the three and set them all aglow like fire.

Nor, finally, must we forget an additional
member of this clan — the Yellow-throated.
He also resembles the rest except for the
bright sulphur hue of chin and throat and
his peculiar song of two quick notes whistled
at intervals.

Not more than a mile from the Warbling
Vireos' nest I once came upon the only
Bobolinks I ever saw in this particular
part of the country. They appeared in
quite a flock on several old cherry trees
in the midst of a meadow, and were giving
vent to all the indescribable musical noise
and chatter for which they are famous.

Moreover, it was early in May and they
were arrayed in their new spring vestments
— glistening black and white with a dull
buff cap far down on the back of the head.
For, be it remembered, the BoboHnk, hke
some others, changes his garb with the
seasons. And his name, too, by the way.
[113]

A Book on Birds

Just before fall he looks as plain as a
pipe-stem — in yellowish brown and gray —
and besides this has lost his music, and
under the nom de guerre of Reedbird — has
become the especial delight and victim of
sportsmen along the Delaware river and bay.

Then, a little later, and still farther
south, he assumes a new make-up even more
faded, and, as the dreaded Ricebird, covers
the country by tens of thousands and for
a while gives the plantation owners all the
trouble they can cope with.

But up our way — in the rare visits he
makes us — he is nothing more than the
jolly, rollicking Bobolink — always hand-
some to look at and a pleasure to hear.

And now — as a fanciful diversion in our
bird-questing — let us shift the scene a little
to get a sense of the weird and mysterious.

It still lacks a half hour of sunset; but
up here, along this winding creek, in these
dense, dewy thickets, rich with honeysuckle,
the twilight has already fallen. So luxuri-
ant indeed and tangled is the June under-
growth that you find difficulty in making

[114]

Two Vireos and Some Friends

your way and must retrace your steps here
and there to get through. And right in the
depths of it, where you are completely
surrounded and beset, and the leafy shadows
are creeping in, you hear a low, clear,
human whistle close behind you — ^just one,
uncanny note, with a certain suggestion
of meaning in it that makes you tingle —
hke the signal of some friend or foe.

Startled, you turn and look back, peering
through the vines and foliage; but see noth-
ing. Then you listen a minute, holding
your breath. It sounds, again, but this
time from in front, and you know now,
from a pecuhar inflection it has, that some-
where in that darkening mass of green a
hidden eye is watching you. The whistle
cannot be other than that of a bird, you
think; and yet it certainly does sound
like some man or boy.

Once more you hear it — directly over-
head; and again, so close it seems at your
very ear; and then, once more, farther
off, to the left; and again, and again —
from nowhere and everywhere!

[115]

A Book on Birds

Thoroughly baffled, you try your best,
but in vain, to locate the elusive sound,
with each repetition.

Then — just as you are giving up — you
see a bright red figure — like a diminutive
Mephistopheles — sitting absolutely motion-
less on a branch scarce ten feet away.

Of course you know him at once for
the brilliant, but erratic Cardinal, or Vir-
ginia Red-bird; the one who looks so like
the warm-blooded tropics, and yet insists
on staying right up here in the North
through our hardest winters, making him-
self at times, after a snowfall, glorious
to behold, above the dazzling whiteness
of the fields — a sort of hostage given by
May to December for the sure return of
spring; and whose second most distinguish-
ing trait, I think, is that he can hide better
and longer — making music all the time —
than any other feathered denizen of field
or forest.

Now that he sees you he sits as still as
a statue until you make a move toward
him; whereupon he flies off, to hide again

[116]

- OQ

Two Vireos and Some Friends

at a little distance, and pour forth enough
gymnastic variation in his wonderful whistle
to drive a boy-adept at the art to despair
with envy; all of which, however, is simply
an indication that you are near his nest
and he is alarmed about it. Moreover, he
stirs up some other sounds with his melodi-
ous noise that are not echoes — and in a
moment or two you have had a vision of
the Maryland Yellow-throat, the Yellow-
breasted Chat and the Indigo Bunting;
these — with the Cardinal added — forming
as rich and as rare a woodland symphony
in color as any one may wish to look upon;
and so brightening up the shadowy thicket
that you emerge at length with feelings very
different from those with which you were
held fast in it, or threaded cautiously its
wilding maze, but a little while before.

[117]

A Book on Birds

0 Love Divine

O Love Divine! — He came, and gently singing

At earliest dawn in secret to a bird,
Thrilled it with joy till it awoke, and winging
Its way aloft, proclaimed Him with no word,
Yet surely, sweetly, by the holy sign
Of His own melody. O Love Divine!

Then, in a little while, bent low and kneeling

Deep in a leafy wood with dew bedight.
He lured a wilding flower forth, unsealing

Its tomb with living touch, and toward the light
Turning its face, that these dull eyes of mine
Might trace His presence too. 0 Love Divine!

Nor this alone: but, where angelic fingers

Wove pearl and rose amidst the orchard trees.
He came again — to breathe the breath that lingers,
When Spring is at the flood, on every breeze;
That, deaf and sightless, I might not repine.
But still discover Him. 0 Love Divine!

And then — e'en at my hearth — when day was ended,

And in the dusk I soothed my suffering child.
He, crowning all His tenderness, descended
Once more, unseen, and where I sat beguiled
The little one to sleep. ''Ah — else than Thine —
There is no heaven!" I cried: Thou Love Divine!

[118

Chapter IX

AT THE END OF JUNE

WE have come at length in our
impromptu excursions out among
the birds to that deep and busy
season when, though just as numerous as
ever, they are very hard to find.

One bright, warm day when the first of
July was less than a week ahead, I sat in
a clean, cool, mossy wood which hes along
a cross-road on the way from my home
to the village four miles distant that now,
after many years, bears Audubon^s name,
and listened on a big log, about six in
the evening, until I heard the calls or the
singing of at least ten species, not one of
which (wait and search and lure them as
I would) was I able to get a ghmpse of.

Included in this number were the Blue
Jay, the Yellow-breasted Chat, the Red-
eyed Vireo, the Yellow-throat, the Crested

[119]

A Book on Birds

Flycatcher, the Wood Pewee, the Spotted
Sandpiper and the Yellow-billed Cuckoo,
all of them making considerable noise and
music, but not one of them ever in sight.
And the same condition, in a general way,
prevails everywhere at this time of the year.

Of course, there are reasons for this;
and tw^o of them — not to mention others —
are quite easily understood.

First, the density of the foliage by the
end of June conceals a bird over and over
again, even though he is not thinking of
it, or gives him unlimited opportunities to
hide when he is. And the fact of the
matter is that, as a rule these days when
you are around, he is actually trying to hide.

And with a wise purpose, too. Field
and forest are full of mystery in the month
of roses. There are gentle secrets almost
everywhere. And those the birds know
they are sparing no effort to keep to them-
selves.

It is on this account they are stealthy
and endeavor to baffle and mislead you
with elusive sounds.

[120]

At the End of June

You are in dangerous proximity to a
nest, perhaps, and they must draw you
away!

Or, it may be, only a yard or two from
your peering eyes — that search but see
not — is a fledghng spending his first day
from home on a branch where the leaves
are thickest and hardest to explore; and
the parent birds are hoping with all their
woodland hearts you may not discover him.

Moreover, they will resort at times to
art and strategy to divert you. I have been
convinced on one or two occasions that some
birds really become ventriloquists of a
sort, when driven to it. Their voice will
seem to fall from in front and from behind
at almost the same moment, until you
give up in despair trying to locate it.

And others have other tricks by which
to save their nests and their offspring
should occasion demand. Often have I
seen the Turtle Dove, when surprised upon
his nest, drop to the ground and go strug-
gling away, in short, quick hops and broken
flights, as if wounded, so that you may

[121]

A Book on Birds

follow after and try to catch him and thus
be led afar and wide from his rough home
of sticks, with its two white eggs. And
he is not the only bird who goes through
this performance, or many another, with
the same object in view.

So, going back to the point we started
with, do not be disappointed in your quest-
ing these golden hours, if you hear much
but see little.

And yet, after all, there will be excep-
tions to this rule and many a bright feast
for the eye even now. Indeed the brightest
of all awaits you if you go far enough;
for the Scarlet Tanager is about and I
have always thought it is he who likes to
sit still and be looked at and admired
more than any bird we have.

Nor can he fairly be blamed if he does,
his beauty being almost beyond descrip-
tion. All other color in the forest pales
before his splendid, royal carmine, made
almost luminous against the living green
by the sharp contrast of jet black eyes
and wings. Sometimes when the sunlight

[122]

At the End of June

strikes him he seems a very burning brand,
dropped from heaven through the tree-
tops to make us dream of the glory of the
God that made him, and worship just a
moment all alone, in His fragrant, dim-ht
temple. And, furthermore, your delight
in the beauty of this bird will be increased
should his mate, in her garb of faint
green and yellow, happen to join him as
you gaze, and heighten the picture he makes.
You may find the Tanager any evening
after June fifteenth, if you will, from six
until seven, or even later, at the very next
patch of woods beyond that which I have
already mentioned. The oak and hickory
trees here almost surround a little structure
known as the Indian Creek school house —
this, by the by, being about the most rural
and picturesque building of its kind one
could imagine, an ideal haunt for some new
Rip Van Winkle. Its outlook in every
direction is a charming one of leaves and
branches, several great, tall forest sentinels
standing apart from the rest right beside
it, and affording fine and ample shelter

[123]

A Book on Birds

for its pupils (it had thirteen all told, when
I was there) and teacher.

However, to return to the Tanager, just
a stone's throw away! You will not need
to go more than thirty or forty feet into
the woods before you hear him repeating
overhead his two sharp, unmusical notes —
^^chirp, churr! chirp, churr! chirp, churr!"
again and again. You have frightened him
from his nest, which is up on a horizontal
branch somewhere; but, exceptional fellow
that he is, he sits quite still and gives you
plenty of chance to study him till you
are tired.

Or, until your attention is diverted by
the call of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo —
or Rainbird; for he is here, too; but, like
the others, hard to find. He is a large,
fine bird, as smooth and quiet in voice and
every movement as in color, except, perhaps,
for the loud, melancholy cry, often heard of
a sultry afternoon, with which he is said to
prognosticate a thunder shower.

While you are trying in vain to locate
him, the big, sharp, saucy note of the

[124]

At the End of June

Ovenbird breaks forth close overhead.
And here, indeed, is a problem; for not one
time out of ten will you be able to get a
glimpse of this fellow, despite all the reck-
less noise he makes.

''Teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher,
teacher!'' he gushes out once more, the
notes increasing in rapidity, volume and
impudence to the end, and seeming so
close you feel you could stretch out your
hand and touch him, if you only knew
which way. But find him if you can — with
his httle golden crown!

And as to his nest, it is in a bank some-
where, with a roof over it, and is an even
harder proposition, so don't try; or, rather,
do not be disappointed if you try and fail.
For only the patient, expert naturahsts,
and not all of them, achieve the high dis-
tinction of actually discovering the nest
of this bird.

On my own way back from this patch
of woods I met a pair of Tyrant Flycatchers
(Kingbirds) still engaged in collecting out
of the ''circumambient air'' their evening

[125]

A Book on Birds

meal of moths and other insects from the
vantage of a telegraph wire. These are
the little fighters that may be seen circling
around a clumsy Crow on the wing and
harrying it to complete exhaustion. And
yet, in a fair contest, they are arrant
cowards notwithstanding.

You can identify them by their sharp,
quick cry in flight; the nervous, jerky
motion of their wings; the conspicuous
border of white, straight across the end of
the tail feathers; and the low tuft of
feathers, with its scarlet spot, adorning
the head.

Somewhere in the neighborhood also is
their near relative — the Crested Flycatcher,
top-knotted far more than they, and keep-
ing an eye on his nest in a tree-hole — with
its odd, chocolate-streaked eggs.

And then, where the stream crosses the
by-road, a Spotted Sandpiper sounds his
high-keyed cry and scurries along above
the water. The way in which his short,
flat tail bobs up and down unceasingly,
every time he alights upon a stone, on the

[126]

oq

C t^

At the End of June

bank or sticking above the tide, is one of
the funniest things in nature. He seems
to have lost his balance somewhere, away
back at the beginning, and never to have
been quite able to recover it since then,
try as he will. Yet he is a bright, clean,
handsome bird and gay of spirit, none
the less.

Just as his tinny note dies out in the
distance, my approach stirs up a httle
Screech Owl, who, first giving me a wooden
stare, as he sits straight, trim and dignified
on the dead branch of a willow, moves off
with slow-flapping wings, in soft, noiseless
flight through the deepening shadows.

And then, noting how close indeed the
dark has settled down, silent and furtive
as a Cedar Bird (of whom a word in another
chapter), I myself take the hint and move
off too — toward the highway and home.

[127]

A Book on Birds

The Oven-Bird

"Teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher!'*
Was there ever such a saucy creature? —
Boasting loud and clear, in your very ear,
That you cannot find him, far or near!

How he sets the forest aisles a-ringing

With his merry notes, more noise than singing!

And how impudent is his plain intent

To divert the quest on which you're bent!

Surely, now, you think, he's over yonder;
But, next moment, as you peer and ponder.
Quick and bright and gay as a boy at play,
He invites you, ''Look this other way!"

Yet, don't blame him; birds have many a reason
In the deep, mysterious summer season.
Thus to call and hide, and to lure aside
Those who seek and will not be denied.

In these ferny, redolent recesses.
Just where one least dreams of it, or guesses.
Nestling in the ground, he, the Golden-crowned,
Has a home 'twould grieve him were it found.

Yes, 'twould put him to complete confusion
Should you stumble on its sweet seclusion.
So be kind to him — have a mind to him,
As you tread these pathways cool and dim.

[128]

Chapter X

BIRD SONGS AFTER DARK

OUT on this broad Pennsylvania wheat-
field, at two o'clock in the morning,
with the yellow sheaves beneath
and around us, and the full-orbed moon
above — surely this is no place, no time,
for birds!

Were it merry England, a Nightingale
might come perchance and keep us com-
pany, with his matchless voice. But here it
seems folly to expect any winged creature
to waken and cheer the soUtude by so
much as a sound.

Yet, listen! That is more than mere
sound which thrills upon the air.

The flooding silver light from an almost
starless sky is wonderfully clear; and the
winding river, showing through the distant
trees beyond the sloping hillside, glistens
and flashes at times almost as if it were day.

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A Book on Birds

Listen again! That, indeed, is more than
mere sound. It is music; music sweeter
for the silence and the far spot whence it
is borne; music that we know!

Of a truth it is none else than our brave
little friend the Song Sparrow, warbling
as he sleeps, it may be; but in the same
happy tones which make his day-dreams
so melodious.

We quicken with pleasure as we hear
him. Some doubts are already dispelled.

We had known of course that many
American birds, including the Owls, give
voice at night; but we hesitated to believe
that any of our genuine songsters actually
sing. And here, sure enough, is one to
begin with; and we are put to shame for
our incredulity.

And yet it is not he for whom we really
came.

''Will his melody stir the slumbers and
the voice of another?'' It is this other
who brought us out; and he is still upper-
most in our thoughts. Will the Thrasher,
(the Brown Mockingbird) whom we admire

[130]

Bird Songs after Dark

as much as any Briton his noble Night-
ingale— will he add his tuneful testimony,
as we have been told we may expect him to?

The brooding stillness settles down again.
A half-hour goes by. The snugly packed
sheaves make a warm and comfortable
bed, and we are getting drowsy. When, lo,
behold — not the Thrasher indeed — but one
more, almost as worthy, our ^^ stringer
of pearls^' — the Spizella pusilla — breaks
forth, putting Morpheus to flight!

'^True — true — true! ever true to thee,
dear Heart !'^ fall his notes from a branch
just where the trees begin; not one bright
gem missing, but all of them lovelier for
the moonbeams and the eager ear of night.

And this time doubt diminishes to almost
nothing, while expectation rises high.
Will the Thrasher verily pour for us his
rich libation next?

The minutes wear on. We half nap
awhile, and waken to hear the ^^Peep, peep,
peep!'' of the Sandpiper, and the fuller
cry of the Killdeer, both exactly as they are
during the day.

[ 131 ]

A Book on Birds

Then comes another, longer period of
somnolence, from which a Robin, off in the
gloom somewhere, delivers us with his
most extended strain. And later on the
Flicker and the Grasshopper Sparrow sing.

But that one golden throat, which so
far surpasses all these, and which, heard in
the darkness, we had fancied might vie
with the Nightingale's, is still missing;
until doubt asserts itself again, and the
silver flood from the sky begins to seem
poor and pale and sorrowful for lack of it.

The '^Caw, caw, caw!'' of a Crow, flying
too high overhead to be visible, sounds like
mockery of our expectations. Then a
noticeable chill in the atmosphere creates
a creepy feeling; which increases as the
Yellow-breasted Chat flings out his weird,
uncanny notes, as if in actual derision.

And so the night passes; until a last long
interval of semi-consciousness is broken by
the clarion call of Sir Chanticleer from the
barnyard beyond the hill to which our
wheat-field is appurtenant; and, rising
suddenly, somewhat bewildered, we discover

[132]

X "^

O i)

H >,

Bird Songs after Dark

a faint crimson glory on the eastern horizon
and know our vigil out in the open is
practically over, with all present prospects
of a song in the dark from the Thrasher
at an end.

However, we do not feel that the exploit
has been in vain.

Have there not been other voices to
satisfy our ears? And if these, then why
indeed may we not hear also on some
future occasion the one which has been
conspicuous by its silence this time?

[133

A Book on Birds

The Meadow Lark

Clear, clear — far or near,

Bird o' the morning, call! — I hear.
Out of the swift advancing light
Rising brighter and more bright
At the end of each quick flight, —

Meadow Lark, call! — I hear.

Call, call!— for of all

Lures of melody, this the thrall
Dawn, awakening in thy breast.
Flings forth tenderly to the west,
This, oh, this is loveliest —

Loveliest lure of all.

Free, free — bush nor tree

Shut the goldening skies from^thee!
Deep in the clover-field abloom.
Fragrant, billowy, great with room.
Wide apart from the forest gloom.

Thither thy nest shall be!

There, where — all the air
Bloweth halcyon, hale and rare!
Up and on with the buoyant day —
On into noon and evening gray,
Seeking the mountains far away —
Hale and halcyon air!

[1341

"^^S^^-'^mA

The Meadow Lark

Joy, joy! — flute, hautboy.

Pipe, or piccolo seems a toy,

Poor and empty, with thy rich voice,
Caroling, silver-sweet, rejoice.
Silver-sweet, rejoice, rejoice —

Unto th' heights of joy!

Clear, clear — far or near.
Bird o' the morning, call! — I hear;
Finding with thee (out, out between
Th' boundless blue and rippling green)
My heaven not remote, but e'en
Gladsomely, gently near.

[135]

Chapter XI

MIDSUMMER MEMORANDA

THE wave of silence which submerges
bird music almost entirely in our cli-
mate, except in rarely cool weather,
by the end of the wheat harvest, is wont
to throw one back more or less upon those
earlier days when there was a call from
every meadow and a song from every tree.
Moreover, we are fortunate if there are
for us in truth some such unforgotten hours
to which we may revert at this season;
and doubly so if we retain any clear mental
memoranda gathered in them which may
still be marshaled in good order and
jotted down; as most of the very birds
themselves seem now to disappear along
with their music; and we should conse-
quently, if debarred from retrospection,
have often but a dull and lonely time of
it indeed.

[136]

Midsummer Memoranda

As for myself, I have always been able
to retain quite enough to occupy my mind
when necessary out of these things of the
past, which accumulated so rapidly while
they were transpiring that it was impos-
sible to keep full pace with them then.
Furthermore, this midsummer in which
I write seems to give fuller proof of the
fact than any of former years; a great
throng of recollections of this sort pressing
in upon me almost daily as never before.
And for some reason at the present moment
those of the charming little Acadian Fly-
catcher are in the lead.

However, the Acadian comes first prob-
ably because I have found him tamest
and most companionable of his clan.
His kinsfolk, the Crested and the Tyrant
Flycatchers, always treat your approach
as an unwelcome intrusion, the voice of
the former being marked by a tone of chill
surprise when he sees you, while the high-
keyed, nervous notes of the latter are full
of actual resentment and alarm. But he
himself, though much less in size than they,

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A Book on Birds

looks upon you quietly, and seems not
at all disturbed over your presence, but
pleased.

Once, toward evening in a deep thicket
redolent with the ivory-white clusters of
the wild-cherry, he was so interested in
the frequent short swoops he made through
the branches close to the ground, while
capturing gnats and flies for supper, that
he appeared almost inchned to invite my
co-operation with him in his efforts, nearly
touching my head several times, or even
alighting upon it when his victims flew
close to me; until I think he might have
taken them from my fingers had I tried
to catch them for him.

And he is not only tame with those whose
woodland manners are correct, but also
very beautiful of form and color. The
dark, rich olive of his back and tail makes
a charming foil for the wavy stripes of
pure white upon his wings, and the delicate
yellow of his breast. His head, which has
only a suggestion of the crest which is so
conspicuous in others of his family, is

[138]

Midsummer Memoranda

shapely, and he is as graceful and smooth
in every movement as a Wood Thrush,
and just as self-contained, though much
livelier of course.

Next in this bright, insistent throng
of recollections the merry, buff-capped
Bobolink presents himself.

He was always really a stranger to me
outside the books until I came across him
one peerless morning about the middle
of May up in the Raritan river country
of New Jersey. Since then, however, he
has been an unfading friend. Even as I
write I can recall him and his glorious en-
vironment that day with vivid distinctness.

Far out in the open, under the blue of
heaven, where snowy cloudships sail in
glistening splendor, the broad meadows —
supremely luxuriant after the freshening
rain of the night — stretch straight away
for a mile or more to where the silver
ribbon of the winding stream is hid by
a fringe of darkling trees. And in every
direction they unfold a soul-stirring vista
of living green made luminous with gold;

[139 1

A Book on Birds

for north and south, and to the eastward
where the ocean Hes afar, they are arrayed
just now in one rich covering of dande-
hons and clover.

Behind me, toward the west, billows
of perfume sweep by and pass beyond,
from an apple-orchard of a hundred trees,
each one of which is a mass of scented
bloom.

And ever in the foreground, flitting
from meadow to blossoms — where Wood
Warblers are feeding — and back again, the
Bobohnk keeps his gladdest holiday of
all the year, his last before nest-building,
while still the cares of life have not begun,
and he has naught to do but feed and fly
and ease himself of the music in his soul.

And how wild with joy he is! How
utterly carried away with the softly-swell-
ing tide of spring, spring, spring! He
cannot shut off for a single moment the
fountain of sparkling sound that leaps
and spurts and gurgles from his breast;
but, filled with exuberant ecstasy, lets it
flow right on, whether he is standing, half-

[140]

Midsummer Memoranda

hid, on the ground, or swaying daintily
on a tall weed, or is perched an instant
on a fence-rail, or even poised above you
in mid-air, with restless, palpitating wings.

There are not so many birds that sing
while in flight. But the Bobolink does
it to perfection, pouring forth his notes
from an altitude of fifteen or twenty feet
in such showering brilliance that you can
almost feel and see the flash of them as
they descend.

As he sings and flies, and flies and sings,
and circles about, quite agog with melodi-
ous excitement, you get the impression
that he is aflflicted with a foohsh fear that
you are unaware of his presence, or even
of the matcliless glory of the day. And
after a while you half feel like shouting
a little and breaking forth into rollicking
song yourself; or actually jumping around
a bit — with a toss of your hat in the air,
and several handsprings and a vault over
the fence thrown in — just to relieve his
apprehensions and show him you are alive
to the situation.

[141]

A Book on Birds

However, you don't do anything of the
sort; at least not on this initial occasion;
but simply look and listen in astonishment
and delight, thinking how much indeed
you missed by not getting thoroughly
acquainted with him until so late a day in
your ornithological career.

And now, from amidst the same mid-
summer flight of winged memories which
still encircles us, suppose we permit the
Barn Swallow to engage our attention.

Should you ever feel upon a particularly
vernal morning that you are advancing
in 3^ears, and, stirred by the sunlit air,
wonder to yourself whether any of the pure
spontaneity and freedom of childhood still
remain in your anatomy, let me suggest
that you sally forth and search till you
find a field near some farmhouse nestling
amidst the hills — a field with nothing
between it and the azure firmament but
one or two white and dazzhng ^^sky-
mountains,'' towering in great masses
toward the zenith — and there try a game
of ^^dodge-the-ball" with this jolly bird.

[142]

Midsummer Memoranda

If that test fails, your case is serious,
indeed, and you can hardly hope that the
deepest draughts you may drink from all
the fountains of youth this side eternity
will ever do you much good.

To make the test perfect the field should
spread out wide and beautiful upon a
gentle slope, beyond a wooded ravine,
faintly musical with laughing water; the
cool west wind should be blowing lightly
across it; there should be a wealth of
violets thickly scattered in amongst the
dewy grass under foot, and away over in
the open a single tall oak, still leafless,
should rise sharply clear in every black
outline against the far horizon, to give per-
spective to the scene and lift it heaven-
ward.

But, with these conditions around you,
the rest is easy.

Here he comes now! first from the hay-
loft— exactly when you have climbed the
round ascent sufficiently to get your vision
on a line with the level lay of the ground
at the top. Here he comes now! — skim-

[143]

A Book on Birds

ming over the clover, straight for your
face, his blue back glistening, his breast
warm and ruddy, his forked tail (and
he is the only bird in our climate that has
a genuinely forked tail) as stiff and straight
with the speed of his flight as the barbs
of an arrow. Here he comes now! Quick,
dodge! Good, you're safe!

Yet it was not your dodge that kept
him from hitting you, but his, when he
was scarcely ten feet away.

Look out! He's coming again; back
of you this time. Quick, dodge! There!
— he just missed your ear. But it was
his miss once more.

Yes, that's right! Make a swipe at
him with your hat as he passes; but don't
hit him — because you can't; and it's a
waste of energy to really try; for he will
escape you, even if it be only by the frac-
tion of an inch. But swipe away, never-
theless. The more of it you do, the quicker
and oftener he will return, being as fully
alert and alive to the game as you are,
and enjoying it quite as thoroughly. So

[144L

Midsummer Memoranda

dodge and strike to your heart's content,
until you have reached the fence on the
other side of the field and are ready to
take a rest on the top rail, and laugh at
Mr. Swallow^, as he gives you up reluctantly
and hies him off to his brown-speckled
eggs and nest of mud and feathers against
the rafters over the mow.

Who has not played the game that ever
loved the open air? — even to three-score-
and-ten, it may be— and who that ever
played it has not felt when it was over that
it did him good and made him at heart
for a while as a child again?

Of all the birds I knew in boyhood
days the Cedar Waxwing seemed the most
mysterious; and upon those rare occa-
sions when I came across his nest in the
dark recesses of his native tree, the find
never failed to give me just a little of the
creepy feeling a witch story produces when
properly told.

Undoubtedly the fact that he seems to
possess no voice at all, (or, if he has any,
neglects entirely to make it known) had

10 [ 145 ]

A Book on Birds

something to do with this. Throughout
my whole acquaintance with him I have
at no time heard him utter any semblance
of a song. Indeed, I might just as well
have said ^'any semblance of a sound'';
for in his smooth and stealthy gliding
about from twig to twig, and tree to tree
(his every motion furtive, yet calm and
dignified, too) he is absolutely noiseless,
as far as I have been able to discover.

And then his color-scheme also adds to
the weird impression he creates — although,
be it said in justice to him, he is never-
theless, after his ovv^n exceptional kind, a
most striking and shapel}^ fellow. It con-
sists of several dull, unnamable shades
of brown, the darkest on his fine topknot
or crest (which, to be exact, is neither of
these, but, rather, a broad though abbre-
viated plume) and the Hghtest upon his
breast and rump.

His other colors, however, are not dull
or quiet by any means, but most conspic-
uous— from the bright yellow border across
the end of his tail to the brilliant carmine

[1461

Midsummer Memoranda

of the horny substance (resembUng red
sealing wax) which tips the feathers that
terminate at the middle of each wing,
it being from this peculiar mark that he
takes his name. Then he boasts in addition
some striking dashes of black and white
around the eye, along the edges of the
wing, and upon the tail; these completing
an array which invests him with a truly
strange atmosphere of distinction in keep-
ing with his habits.

Notwithstanding his soKtary disposition,
the Cedar Bird is not at all impossible to
find in our climate by the end of May,
and he is well worth adding to your list
of intimate acquaintances, his very oddity
creating a special fascination and interest
which you will hardly fail to feel at once.

That loud, insolent whisthng you hear
from somewhere up in the buttonwood
tree is the voice of the Yellow-breasted
Chat; and at the moment, for special
reasons, his notes are at their worst.

Most Wood Warblers are entirely sweet
and subdued in all their music and bird-

[1471

A Book on Birds

talk. But the Maryland Yellow-throat,
the Ovenbird, and our present specimen,
the Chat, are pronounced exceptions to
this rule, the last-named in particular
being often noisy to the last degree, and
giving vent to sounds when excited (as
he is just now) of which he ought to be
ashamed. Some of them are an unpleasant
clash between the notes of the Robin and
those of a Parrot; while others are nothing
else than ugly, rasping, guttural expletives
— as you will observe — and all because we
have come too close to his nest, with its
white and brown eggs, in this wild-rose
bush on the edge of the swampy thicket.

And yet, despite his unfortunate, ill-
bred voice, the Chat is a very charming
bird, though, of course, the old adage about
^^fine feathers" must not be entirely for-
gotten. But, indeed, you ma}^ be the more
apt to forget it in his case, because his
plumage is not mere vulgar showiness, like
the Peacock's, but is delicately beautiful, in
its two dominant hues of olive green upon
the back, and soft, rich yellow underneath.

[ 148 ]

Midsummer Memoranda

Nor has he any other bad traits I know
of, save those his voice gives him. He
is devoted to his home, after he has once
completed it for himself; and — braver than
some others — will not desert it offhand
merely because you and your friends,
it may be, intrude a httle on its privacy.

This I can vouch for from personal
experience; for the nest in the rose bush,
to which I have referred, was not a myth,
but a nest I knew; and though my inner
circle of amateur ornithologists made it a
veritable Mecca for a week or two, creat-
ing a beaten path through the meadow-
grass to it and all around it by their
frequent trips, its owner, the Chat, stood
by his little castle just the same and raised
his brood of four right valiantly, even
beneath their very noses.

A very common bird-misnomer in my
country is that of calling the whistling
'^Bob White," or Quail, a Partridge.

Our one and only Partridge is the
Ruffed Grouse; or Pheasant — as many
term him here and in the South; and even

[149]

A Book on Birds

he is becoming rare in Pennsylvania, except
in some mountain districts, where the
drumming of his wings is still a well-known
and highly cheerful sound, especially in
winter.

However, Mr. ''Bob White" (Partridge,
or no Partridge) is a jolly good fellow just
the same; and it is a source of regret that
from causes not fully understood he also
should be gradually disappearing. His trick
of starting up like a flash at your near
approach and flying straight away with the
rush and roar of a misdirected rocket is
quite inspiriting. It is the very thing, in
fact, above all others, to enliven a bird-
quest which has lagged a little, perhaps;
never failing to put one on the alert again
for a while.

And Mrs. ''Bob White," in turn (be it
not overlooked) is interesting too; and
exceptionally so, I think, when in company
with her newl3^-hatched brood. Most birds
emerging from "the great unknown" are
naked and blind at first, and therefore
unattractive in appearance; but not these,

[150]

Midsummer Memoranda

who run about when but a day or two old
as wide-awake, chipper, and fluffy-clad as
chicks of that age, feeding and drinking
and helping themselves without assistance,
though only a trifle bigger than a thimble.

They consequently make about as dainty
and delightful a spectacle as may be found
in nature.

Years ago (really at an altogether remote
period in my career) I used to find that a
few full-grown Quail insisted occasionally in
getting into certain pyramidal wooden rab-
bit-traps of which I then had supervision
every winter. The statute of limitations
having run in the matter about a dozen
times over, both as to traps and birds,
I have no hesitation in saying that my duty
to release these victims was generally
honored in the breach — friends of mine in
those days considering quail-on-toast a
deHcacy not to be Hghtly disregarded.

The big, high-sailing birds that float
along through the upper atmosphere — with
widely-extended, motionless wings, above
the shimmering heat and stillness of an

[151]

A Book on Birds

August afternoon, are either Turkey Buz-
zards or Red-tailed Hawks in our latitude.
And often it is hard to tell them apart
under such conditions; not only their
manner of flight being practically the same,
but also their breadth of outspread pinions.
A marked point of dissimilarity, however,
for those who must identify them in the air,
if at all, is that the Buzzards appear entirely
dark in color underneath, while the Hawks
are of a light grayish hue which has the
effect of making them seem to vanish for a
moment whenever the sun shines full against
it. Beside this the former are longer of
neck, and, though assuming the same pose
when flying, proceed in a straighter course
than the latter, who move about as a rule
in great, sweeping circles.

The Red-tailed Hawk, whilst not nearly
as predatory as Cooper's Hawk, so much
dreaded by many farmers, is nevertheless
by no means as serene and peaceable at
close quarters as he purports to be from afar.

I remember well how as a boy of eight or
nine attending a very primitive little public-

[152]

Midsummer Memoranda

school up in the country I saw one drop
like a shot from just such a smooth and
quiet voyage, seize in his talons a fat hen
from amongst a small fiock of poultry in a
yard adjoining our play-ground, and rise
rapidly with it directly overhead.

Hungry and rapacious as he was, however,
the sound of fifty or sixty lusty young
voices, raised in a simultaneous shout, was
too much for him; and at a height of
probably two hundred feet he let go his
prey and it came flopping to earth, landing
with something of a thud, yet none the
worse for its sudden and unexpected excur-
sion.

Another vigorous bird of this same general
family is the American Osprey, or Fish
Hawk. He is rather handsome in appear-
ance, being brown of wing and tail and
white-breasted. Although really a shore-
bird, I have seen him take fish quite a
number of times in the Schuylkill and
Perkiomen, and on each occasion he went
into the water at an angle, and with a
great splash, and came up with the wriggling

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A Book on Birds

victim clutched in a position parallel with
his own body, probably because he found
it easier to fly this way.

The Great Blue Heron, or ^^Big Crane/ ^
is a very different sort of fisherman. He is
awkward on the wing, mounting up through
the tall trees in a wood with his long legs
dangling straight down below, and trailing
them clumsily after him as he moves
forward, when once he gets out in the open.

Yet he is not always ungraceful by any
means, but often distinctly dignified and
elegant, whether standing or walking, or
even while engaged in his ordinary pisca-
torial diversions. He goes into the water
only to his knees, and most deliberately, and
uses his long yellow bill with considerable
art. A full sized bird of this species will
sometimes measure nearly four feet in
height; more than half this dimension,
however, being of course mere neck and
legs.

In his case it is quite easy to understand
why walking is a better method of locomo-
tion than hopping, which would probably

[154]

Midsummer Memoranda

be about as difficult for him as for a young-
ster on stilts. But with many other
aquatic and semi-aquatic birds, all of whom
walk, the reason for it is not one whit
more plain than with the land-birds who
do so, like the Quail, Blackbird, Golden-
crowned Thrush and Meadow Lark.

My general observations as summer
advances toward a close, incline me to
the opinion that birds get more real fun
out of life well on in August than at any
other time of the year.

Having finally disposed of the thousand
and one cares of rearing a brood and train-
ing it to fly, they seem to relegate the
matter of music largely to the locusts,
that they may give themselves to pure
frolic with absolute abandon.

It is evidently their true vacation time,
just as with most men and women; and
with one accord they all appear disposed
to use every minute of it to the very best
advantage.

And how perfectly fitted for play they
are, indeed! I have watched squirrels

[155]

A Book on Birds

chasing each other merrily from Hmb to
limb and tree to tree in the deep woods
and found it delightful; but a pair of
wings (to my mind) must make mere sport
ideal.

I find that many of the smaller species
are already going about in flocks. In
fact the fun they have could scarcely be
quite so general or so jolly except for this.
Some games no doubt must be played with
only one or two — on the wing as elsewhere;
but nature shows a preference, at least
just at this season among birds, for the
more generous sort.

Companies of Chipping Sparrows, brown-
capped as ever and quite unchanged in
plumage either by rain or sunshine since
April, may be seen by almost every road-
side— each group numbering perhaps twenty-
five or more.

They prove that a Quaker garb does
not always indicate a lack of sprightli-
ness of spirit by any means; nor an empty
nest, a broken heart. They are as lively
and sociable as crickets, despite their plain

[156]

Midsummer Memoranda

clothes; and their deserted homes (woven
of dry grasses on the outside and horse-
hair within and just as neat as ever) do
not disconcert them in the least, though
they may be easily discerned in the larger
bushes or the lower branches of small
trees.

One of the special signs of the year
is that Goldfinches and Indigo Bunt-
ings are evidently increasing in number
in my locality, a circumstance rendered
very pleasant by the fact that both these
httle birds are of brilliant plumage and sing
a great deal, even on days when almost
all the others are silent. Their music
will become famihar when once you notice,
as I have hereinbefore hinted, that the
Indigo Bunting's strain is simply the Gold-
finch's rattled off in double-quick time.
I hear him doing it this moment as I
write — ^like a boy with a piece of cake,
hurrying as hard as he can to get through
with what he has in hand, that he may
instantly begin all over again on a new
effort.

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A Book on Birds

Notwithstanding his impetuousness, how-
ever, he is certainly a beauty; and I hke
him none the less for the way in which he
is beginning to come right into my town
itself with increasing famiharity almost
ever3n;vhere.

I recently met with more of these birds in
one place than I ever before saw in a single
afternoon. It was immediately following
a severe thunderstorm which caught my
car and held it up for a half hour near
the top of Skippack hill.

The approach of this storm — seen from
this eminence, with its angry, low-lying
clouds rent by great flashes of lightning
and its dense sheets of driving rain — was
a most magnificent and awe-inspiring spec-
tacle; and the down-pour when it reached
us was tremendous while it lasted, flood-
ing all the roads and turning every rut into
a rivulet.

But in a short half-hour the sun came
out more brightly than ever; and by the
time I arrived at Tanglewood lane, some
two miles farther on (a rendezvous which

[158]

Midsummer Memoranda

I have already described), the birds had
come out too — especially my iridescent
Indigo friends just mentioned.

As I entered our delightful by-way once
again — more secluded, more fragrant, more
woodsy than ever, I espied them in every
direction. Countless rain-drops sparkled
on all the vines and bushes and trees
around and above me (for I found the road
almost completely overarched now from
end to end by wild grape and cherry —
the branches of the latter laden with
ripened clusters) ; and this glittering splen-
dor, coupled with a hundred melodies of
running water from both sides, seemed to
fill the singers with great joy

They warbled incessantly and tumul-
tuously, and soon started many others
a-going — including even two big cracked-
voiced Blue Jays, who hurried right across
my path in their gayest plumage with a
young one trailing on behind; and then,
an anything but cracked-voiced Brown
Thrasher, who wouldn't let me see him,
yet sang his sweetest just the same. A

[ 159 1

A Book on Birds

Cardinal also whistled for me (this is a
favorite haunt of his), and by the time I
reached the Perkiomen I had heard or
seen many others, all apparently glad as
I was for the cooling and refreshing of the
rain.

[160]

Five Mile Run

Five Mile Run

(The Stony Creek)

Dear little man — do you mind the brook

Called ''Five Mile Run," and the route we took

To reach it by that last small street

Where the sky and the old town seemed to meet?

And how glad we were, little man — do you mind? —

To leave the noise and the heat behind,

And feel the houses were out of sight

And we needn't be back again till night!

How we stopped to hark, where the willows grew,

For its first, faint music stealing through? —

That limpid stream, with its rippling song,

That laughed with joy, as we came along.

Through bush and bramble, by vine and tree,

Lured by the wilding melody!

How we kept together, and, crouching low,

Caught deep, bright glimpses of its flow

Down, down through a dim and leafy maze,

All woven with branches overhead.

That closed at length on its silver thread

And set a bound to our eager gaze? —

Yet not to our feet which followed still,

Sure to find again our merry rill!

And then, do you mind — dear little man.

That break in the woods where the water ran

Right into the open for half a mile,

To go to sleep in the sun a while?

11

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A Book on Birds

How we loved those fields, so broad and fair,

With the blue above, and the Lark's clear call,

And the big, white clouds high over all.

And the fragrant, breezy, golden air!

And then — that place on its winding way,

Where the water spread to a little bay

On which the ducks kept holiday! —

Dear little man — do you mind that too?

Ah me, ah me, if I only knew!

For, behold, this very afternoon

Our brook is singing its old sweet tune;

And, lo, as I seek it, lone and sad,

I remember that woodland call we had,

And, hungry to hear you, fain would try

To lift it again through the trees to the sky.

Yet I will not doubt — I will not fear!

For at times in the stillness you seem quite near;

And your face is always so full of joy

That I think, with a thrill — my own dear boy —

You perhaps have discovered where you have gone

Some stream just as lovely as "Five Mile Run"!

[162]

Chapter XII

BIRDS ON THE WING

THE migration of birds, northward and
back again, spring and autumn,
across countries of the temperate
zone, is one of the deep and fascinating
mysteries of nature.

First of all, the fact that many species
make these semi-annual voyages of theirs
through the upper air entirely during the
silent watches of the night, sometimes
traveling perhaps as much as five hundred
miles through the darkness in one flight
from sundown to sunrise, is in itself both
surprising and wonderful.

They are probably passing by the tens
of thousands as I write (October tenth)
and have been since the middle or latter
part of September, every time I have given
myself to sleep; and, save for an occa-
sional '^ peep-peep-peep," heard faintly from
[163]

A Book on Birds

above, somewhere between me and the
stars, they sweep onward in absolute
silence amidst the encircling gloom.

And then — most strange in this whole
matter — the ones that choose the night
without exception for the journey are the
very smallest in size and those most
delicately formed — the beautiful little Wood
Warblers, many varieties of which may be
found in large numbers almost any sunlit
morning just now, in the immediate vicinity
of my own country town, or even in the
branches that overhang its very streets.

For be it remembered — though most
birds of passage do fly all night — they cry
a halt with each morning as it dawns, that
they may rest and feed in turn all day.

Twenty of the species known as the Blue-
winged Warbler were counted by me in one
big buttonwood tree a mile or so away
one morning — regaling themselves, with
alert eyes and incessant hopping from twig
to twig, upon some insect they seemed to
find in this sort of tree alone; for although
some were met with on each one of a dozen

[164]

Fe^iale Kextfckt Warbler

(See page 164)

Birds on the Wing

other trees of the same kind near by,
none were \dsible anywhere else.

And how hard it was to detect their
presence even with a good spy-glass to
help! Unless I had been looking for them
just in that neighborhood — ha\dng gained
some knowledge of their habits in former
3^ears — they must certainly have gone
undiscovered. One Httle, unmusical chirp
gave absolute assurance indeed of their
nearness amidst the autumnal silence; but,
nevertheless, it took sharp and patient
searching of the foliage after that to find
them out.

And this with good reason, too. The
God that fashioned the Blue- winged Warb-
ler knew quite well that in its long, laborious
flight straight as an arrow to the southland
guided by the instinct which He gave, it
must needs look to these very buttonwood
trees in the morning for sustenance; so
He arrayed it in color like unto the colors
of the trees themselves, that it might rest
undiscovered and in peace, and go unmo-
lested as it fed. \Mierefore its upper

[1651

A Book on Birds

breast is rich yellow and its back green,
like the tints of the frost-touched leaves;
its undercoverts are of that indefinable
hue of gray (like the shadow of an emerald)
which marks so strikingly the branches and
trunk of a buttonwood tree where the outer
bark has peeled off; whilst its wings are
made to match the blue and white of the
cloud-flecked sky showing high above,
through the foliage.

So baffling are these harmonies of color,
not only with this species, but many others
of entirely different tints (adapted also to
the trees frequented by them) that these
charming sojourners, even when they are
with us in very large numbers, are as a
matter of fact, seen by so few people that
in a general way they are practically
unknown. When they are pointed out the
first time to an untrained observer he is
nearly always incredulous for a while —
declaring he can discern nothing overhead
but the maze of branches and twinkling
leaves. However, let him be but patient
enough to fix just one winged beauty with

[1661

Birds on the Wing

his gaze — and others will be sure to reveal
themselves quickly thereafter, to convince
him beyond a doubt; for they rarely mi-
grate save in groups.

There can be no question that a prime
reason for their traveling only at night
is the remarkable length of time it takes
them to feed. The same birds may be
observed engaged at this quite important
occupation right through an entire day,
and just as busily too at dusk as at dawn —
with apparently no time for flight, even
w^ere they inclined to it; all of which indi-
cates that either their appetites are rela-
tively prodigious, or that the food they
feed on is infinitesimally dainty.

Another explanation for the migration
of these smaller birds by night is that the
darkness keeps them safe from attack by
hawks, that could take them with ease
on the wing were they above the trees in
daylight, but find it impossible to get at
them, or even discover their presence as
long as they stick close to the friendly
cover of bush or branch.

[167]

A Book on Birds

A most interesting exception, however, to
this rule of night-migration which prevails
among so many is found in the case of the
White-breasted, or Tree, Swallows, who
invariably travel only from sunrise to sun-
set. They also start on their annual trips
southward earlier than most of the others,
often gathering in great flocks along the
seashore by the middle of August and
beginning their flight soon after. When
once they are all marshaled and ready to
proceed their numbers are simply astound-
ing. A friend of the writer once saw tens
of thousands of them gathered together of a
September evening upon a stretch of beach
near Surf City, New Jersey. They covered
the sand thickly in every direction for sev-
eral acres, hke soldiers in serried ranks, all
facing a stiff wind which was blowing from
the northeast at the time, and he first
thought them Chimney Swifts; but this was
only because their backs were toward him
at the moment, their pure white breast-
feathers — snowy and spotless from chin to
tail — showing a little later and fixing their

[168]

Birds on the Wing

identity clearly; not to speak of the dis-
tinctively marvelous array in which he
found them.

Of course, very many larger birds also
migrate at night in addition to the smaller
species. In the fall they have been found
to move in three great flights, the first
beginning about the middle of September
and comprising those most sensitive to the
chilly descent of winter from the north;
and the last not taking place until late in
November, when the hardy ducks and geese
make the trip. It is said that the great
mass of migratory birds this side of the
Mississippi come east and follow the Atlan-
tic coast hne as they journey, most of
them going down through a belt within a
hundred miles of it. They keep at an
altitude of probably three to five hundred
feet in flying; and sometimes, if there be
no moon, or the night be stormy, they meet
with sad disaster by the way.

If you would know more upon this last
point look up the keeper of the great arc
lights at the famous William Penn tower

[169]

A Book on Birds

of the City Hall, in Philadelphia. You will
find him in a well-appointed office of his
own away down amidst the mighty founda-
tions, and he will tell you a most pathetic
tale, running over a long period, of how his
lofty circle of flaming lamps has wrought
ruin to the birds of passage every year.

His men have found as many as one hun-
dred and fifty-four dead or dying upon the
pavement below of a single morning; and
the total, since he has kept a record of
them, has run up into the thousands,
including about eighty different varieties,
and over twenty kinds of Wood Warblers
alone.

Moving through the air at a great speed
even at night — as most birds do, some going
as fast as a hundred miles an hour — the
sudden blaze of light across their path at
the tower bhnds them so that they fail to
see the grim and solid structure in the
midst and are dashed against it. Most of
them are killed outright, either by the
force of collision or the fall to the ground
in their stunned condition from so great

[170]

Birds on the Wing

a height. Some few, however, survive
under the tender care of the keeper or his
men — but only a pitiable few indeed.

The collection of stuffed birds and bird
skins at the Academy of Natural Sciences
in that city has had many additions from
the wayfarers that perish in this manner-
some very rare species being among them;
and the tower keeper himself will show you
quite a number of valuable specimens of his
own, gathered from the same sad harvest,
all finely mounted — the tiny and exquisitely
brilliant Redstart and Parula Warbler and
the Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned
Kinglets being among the number.

This same thing of course occurs to a
greater or less extent also at all high light-
houses on the coast. A friend who went
down to the Statue of Liberty in New York
harbor about nine o'clock one morning
several years ago found four Baltimore
Orioles lying dead at his feet as he stepped
out upon the observation platform at the
top. And similar stories come from other
places.

[171]

A Book on Birds

The aggregate number killed nevertheless
will appear comparatively insignificant when
one remembers how small a space all these
obstacles together must occupy in the
broad path of a hundred miles or so covered
by these winged itinerants of the night,
and how vast the multitude of them that
pass on unscathed must therefore be.

^^ Peep-peep-peep !^^ I hear a lone and
plaintive note or two even now through
my open window as I drop off to slumber;
and listening with a quick thrill of sympathy
I wish each little pilgrim (though he leave
the fields I love quite silent till the spring)
Godspeed upon his way.

[172]

^'I Travel Light"

"I Travel Light"

I travel light — that I may bear

The heat and burden of the day
More buoyantly, and better share

With others by the way
What strength is mine, untaxed by things

That heap the shoulders, and harass ,
The hands that would be free as wings

With healing, as I pass.
I travel light — not weighted down

With heavy harnessings of pride,
And leaden love of vain renown

And lust of gold beside;
But trig and trim from foot to crown,

With swift reliance for my blade,
I fare me on from town to town,

Alert and unafraid. —
I travel light!

I travel light — that I may get

The further on this pilgrimage
Of mine amidst a throng, nor let

It all my time engage;
But gain an hour — now and then^

For sweet excursions, far and wide
From th' loud multitude of men

And traffic's weary tide,

[173]

A Book on Birds

In helping of some heart more frail,

Or bowed beneath a deadlier blow
Than I have known — and fain to fail

For bitterness of woe —
Out, out to where the country yields

A calm surcease from toil and grief,
And all the fair and fragrant fields

Breathe rest and deep relief. —
I travel light!

I travel light — that I may keep,

Unhelmeted, my head on high
Toward the great hills of heav'n, where leap,

Eternal, to the sky.
Those upper fountain-springs of life,

Whose freshening waters fall below,
As dew, on pilgrims faint with strife,

To cheer them as they go
With an uplifting sense — and sure.

Of triumph even in defeat.
I travel light — who would endure

Must bear (for death is fleet)
Not weapons that but sap his strength

(Death-given, to betray his trust) —
But arms that in the end at length

Shall turn them not to dust. —
I travel light!

[174

Chapter XIII

DICK

HE was only a Yellow-bird. And not
a paragon of his kind at that;
but dull of color and even un-
gainly in appearance by reason of a droop
in one wing, caused through some hurt
before he found our fireside.

And yet he made himself altogether
lovable by seeming to discover directly
a beautiful mission amongst us.

Coming into a home enshadowed by
the thought of a vacant chair not far
away, around which the solemn silences of
autumn were deepening, he behaved at
once as though he knew all, and was de-
termined to brighten things, if possible, to
the best of his brave little heart.

And the measure of his success in this was
wonderful.

We were half unconscious of it for a while,

[175]

A Book on Birds

delightful as we found him; he was so subtle
and exquisitely delicate in his methods.

But before long we awoke to a realization
that he was illumining the season and our
souls with the renascent gladness of an
April sunbeam.

To begin with, he was the very quintes-
sence of music; — music of the rare sort;
not loud and noisy, like that of some of his
folk; but sweet and low, soft and appeahng
—like the faint call of a brook from moss and
fern through the forest, or the last echo
of an evening bell in a distant valley beyond
the hills; — music that drew you ever so
gently from soul-ensnaring dreams at dawn,
and lulled you back to them at night.

Sometimes it bubbled with the quiet
laughter of joy for you — sometimes with
the hghter and scarce audible laughter
of affection; but always for you, always for
you, — as if with every note he were thinking
of your sorrow and striving that the dark-
ness might never fall too heavily, nor the
bleak winds quite pierce to the secret of
your being.

[176]

Dick

And he — only a bit of a Yellow-bird you
could hold in the hollow of your hand!

Small wonder is it that the dwarf Cedar
from the glen with its frozen fountain —
the Cedar that keeps sturdy vigil all alone
in the snow out front — looks very stern
and grave this relentless afternoon because
of the tiny dead thing we have just hidden
in the brown earth at its feet! — small
wonder is it! For the dwarf Cedar was
kin to Yellow-bird, and stood near enough
the door to know of his doings within.

And, ah me, how charming they all were!

When he wearied of singing he would
call — wistfully, if you failed to hear; mer-
rily, when you came.

And such fluttering followed! — such de-
light!— such nestling and withdrawal! —
such kissing of the Ups, dainty as a snow-
flake on a rose! — such earnest scanning of
the face and peering into the eyes, and
chirping, and caressing and devotion!

Ah me. Yellow-bird! — was all this first
in the Father heart that made you, to teach
us how to love?

. [177]

A Book on Birds

And then, the even round of existence
you led! The eating and the drinking
and the bath; and the contented snugghng
of the drowsy head under the wing for
slumber in the dusk at close of day!

Ah me, Yellow-bird! — was this, this also,
first in the Father heart that made you,
to teach us how to live?

And then, finally, the brave front you
showed at the end; with Thanksgiving
day past; and Christmas; and even New
Yearns (when you circled radiant about the
happy room, from one dear hand to
another); with all these past, and death
gripping at your slender throat; the brave,
brave front you showed at the end! — till
the dauntless eyes grew dim, and the
saucy crest drooped down, and after a
little there was nothing that remained but
an embodied silence in feathery gold!

Ah me. Yellow-bird! — was all this too
— even this, first in the Father heart that
made you, to teach us how to die?

0, Yellow-bird, your coming and your
going seem less in the stillness than these

[1781

To Persephone Afar

brief lines that tell of you ! Yet they were
not in vain ! The pallid, silvery daylight of
the ^'weariest month of the year" has some-
thing in it this February we never felt
before; something of earth and heaven as
indefinably sweet as the ''shine of the soul
of a seraph from the face of a passer-by."

To Persephone Afar

Angel of the lengthening days,

Beautiful with bloom,
To this bleak domain of winter

Hasten through the gloom!

And with bird, and bud, and blossom

Following in your train,
Down upon its frozen fountains

Rain, rain, rain!

Rain your showers of love abundant,

Rain your floods of song;
Rain, oh, rain your joy resistless,

Till earth's captive throng,

[179]

A Book on Birds

Held awhile in icy thraldom,

Quicken to the sound;
Wake, arise, and — laughing gently,

Leave the bonds that bound.

Hark, I hear across the distance

Even now your wings,
Beating glad the empyrean

Where the South-wind sings!

And at times the evening air
Seemeth strangely bright,

As with some mirage, reflecting
Your imperial flight.

While a thrill of deep expectance

Stirs the silent waste:
Angel of the lengthening days,

Haste, haste, haste!

[180

Chapter XIV

IN WINTER

THROUGHOUT this northern cHme of
ours, winter would seem indeed an
entirely unpropitious time for the
study of life in nature.

And yet those to whom the tender ^^call
of the wild" comes seductively at every
season have found to their joy that field
and forest are never altogether desolate,
even in the bleakest weather, or amidst the
heaviest ice and snow.

For, in spite of these, earth still remains
bound to sum^mer by many a golden
link — each as subtle and lovely as the silken
skein that kept Theseus in touch with
Ariadne while he braved the black labyrinth
of the ]Minotaur; and each but the more
delightful when difficult to find.

It is probably true that the tracing of
these hidden and elusive ties in winter is
never easy.

[181]

A Book on Birds

And it is particularly hard, perhaps,
when we look to the birds for them.

Yet they do exist among the birds also —
as well as trees and plants and flowers;
and when once discovered they convince
us that in the great array of tender thoughts
from heaven above which make nature
precious to the soul, here verily is revealed
the tenderest of all.

How many of us, for example, have quick-
ened to the meaning of it, when we first
learned that the little American Gold-
finch, sunbeam of the tropics that he is! —
exquisitely fragile and delicate, remains
right at our doors through all the bitter
cold, when ten thousand others, sturdier
than he, have fled?

By the middle of February his bright
garb of yellow has turned completely gray
because of all he has endured; and yet he
holds his ground (his voice quite gone, but
his merry flight just as merry as ever) until
April showers shall have brought May
flowers once again, and with the flowers
all his vanished wealth of gold.

[1821

In Winter

And the Goldfinch is only one — though
in truth the most notable because he is
so frail — of a fine and courageous company,
all of whom remain, it seems, as cheery
reminders from the sky that summer
has not gone to stay, but is merely off on
a visit for a while.

It is these birds that are always with
us — these summer birds that make them-
selves our winter birds too — faithful in
foul weather as well as fair — in time of
hardship and privation, as well as sunny
hours of ease — it is these that appeal to
us most.

And there are two more in this class
that merit almost equal distinction; first,
the well-known Song Sparrow; and second,
the Cardinal, or Virginia Redbird, whose
flaming color on a snow-clad tree or hedge
is a splendid sight, that must be seen to
be fully appreciated. Several of these
brilliant aliens from the South that so
strangely forget their natural environment,
appeared one February upon the pine trees
of a large estate not far from my home —

[ 183 1

A Book on Birds

whistling away as though it were the middle
of July. And I have seen others at more
distant points — once as many as five or
six in a single flock.

As for the Song Sparrow, he is often in
evidence here and there and everywhere
during the winter. The while his voice is
gone he keeps in absolute seclusion. But
two or three warm days are sufficient to
thaw him out and bring it back in pretty
good shape; and just the moment this
happens, he loses no time in coming from
his hiding-places and making it known.

One of this species has been doing this
for several seasons on a vacant lot nearby
my house, using the same wild-cherry tree
on each succeeding occasion for his delight-
ful vocal preludes to spring.

And may he continue the charming habit
in other years to come — sturdiest, bravest
singer of the fields!

Others of these — our own summer birds
that never go away through the winter,
are the well-known English Sparrow, the
Crow, the Quail, the Downy Woodpecker,

[184]

In Winter

and the hawks — the Sparrow Hawk show-
ing himself perhaps most frequently of his
family.

And this last bird, by the w^ay, is some-
times as grossly misrepresented as any that
flies. Instead of making Sparrows his daily
prey and sustenance, as he is reputed to
do, he turns his attention to them only on
those rare occasions when he is absolutely
driven to it in sheer desperation for lack
of all other food, and is generally a quite
innocent and harmless sort of fellow. In
summer he subsists chiefly on grasshoppers
and other insects, and field mice, in captur-
ing which he often displays powers of
vision that are marvelous — sometimes pois-
ing as high as three hundred feet in the air
over a field of grass or clover, and then
dropping like a bullet, with unerring aim,
straight down upon the mouse he is after,
in the tangled growth below.

The Httle Downy Woodpecker is alto-
gether interesting and attractive. Further-
more he can be found almost everywhere
and in the very roughest kinds of weather.

[185]

A Book on Birds

Indeed he seems just built to brave the
elements — with his chunky, well-knit body,
big, comfortable wings, and thick coat of
feathers. Even without all these, however,
the amount of exercise he gets would of
itself keep him warm; for he is the
busiest and most energetic feeder in the
woods, and during the winter seems to
be eating simply all the time, working
away incessantly on tree trunks and
branches, with his tireless, red-tagged
hammer-head, at the rate of about fifty
pecks a minute.

His color scheme, though only black and
white, saving the little patch of red just
mentioned, is nevertheless brilliant because
of its sharp contrasts — the broad, trans-
verse bars on the wings being especially
conspicuous and giving him a military air.

As I take leave of him here, and the
others of this class who have long played
chief part in brightening things for me in
the open air while frost and snow prevail,
I am reminded that there are a few more
who, although not quite so sturdy and faith-

[186]

In Winter

ful, nevertheless keep right close to the
southern border-lines of my own country,
and are indeed never so far away but that
they are able to take quick advantage of
every mild spell of any length at all for a
stealthy excursion northward, even to my
very door.

Included in this number are the Meadow
Lark, Flicker, Kingfisher, the big, sweet-
voiced Carolina Wren, and, as a matter of
course, the Robin.

And now for the other class of birds
wintering in our middle-Atlantic zone —
those that spend their summers to the
north of us, and are therefore not our
own, but merely visitants during the cold
weather.

Included in it are the ubiquitous Snow
Bunting and the soHtary Winter Wren.

I find these two together by going to a
woods up along the Schuylkill, just this
side of that same Indian Creek I have
mentioned several times in these pages.

It is a picturesque place even in the
bleak, declining days of February.

[187]

A Book on Birds

The two men ahead, who look for all
the world like trappers of a century ago
and are threshing the likely-looking places
^'for a 'possum," in Hstless, half-frozen
style, declare, in response to my query,
that the brook of sparkling water which
comes winding down through the trees
over a half-dozen snowy cascades, ^^ never
had no name" — English which I once
thought deplorable from a ''newly-rich"
lady at a reception, but which sounds
all right out here.

The ice being broken (and the figure
was never more appropriate than on this
frosty afternoon), I switch off from the
unchristened brook to the subject of birds,
and find in a moment that the woods-
men know the Winter Wren and his
haunts and habits quite well. ''He hides
in fence holes, and stumps, and logs,"
they say; "and under the banks along
the water," I add, "where the half-exposed
roots of trees form an overhanging
shelter."

But just here you discontinue the dis-

[188]

In Winter

cussion, for the bird himself flits by. He
is very much Hke the House Wren in
appearance — except that his short tail is
even more than perpendicular, actually
pointing toward his head. He don't seem
^'si scrap worried" over the low temper-
ature, but is lively and active as a cricket
in June. In seasonable weather he is a
sweet singer — though just at this time of the
year his voice has dwindled to the faintest
echo of a chirp.

As he disappears and I proceed — I notice
that others before me have followed the
path I take; for the smooth, silvery bark
of the beech trees on every side is covered
with initials by the score.

In a minute or two the thin, rapid,
warbling note of the Snowbird rises here
and there in front of me — and then the
singers themselves start up and forward,
one at a time, right and left, to the number
of twenty-five or more, their broad, white,
lateral tail-feathers and bright buff beaks
very prominent in the solid dark slate
color of wings and back and head.

[189]

A Book on Birds

Snowbirds in our climate always move
about a great deal and usually in flocks,
and are therefore easy to find and study.

And upon some other occasions I have
seen them in even larger number and more
lively mood than I find them to-day.

Once, indeed, with a northeast wind
blowing and a snow storm imminent I came
across probably a hundred of them in some-
thing of the same wild exuberance of spirit
which marks a small boy when the first
winter flakes descend. Instead of hunting
for cover they were all in a mad frolic of
aimless flight most of the time, circling
after each other around and around in every
conceivable curve, and flirting their wings
as they alighted or started off again — the
glistening tail feathers just referred to
seeming like quick little flashes of light in the
performance. It was from these, while
perching here and there for an instant, that
I learned a new strain of three or four notes
with a clear metalUc quality, like the sound
produced by striking a small bar of iron
lightly with a hammer.

[190]

In Winter

And it was also on this same expedition,
if I recall correctly, that I was first able to
differentiate the music of the Tree Sparrow
(another winter visitant) from that of the
others of his family, two or three of this
species repeating their song for me, with its
two opening couplets, until I had succeeded
in fixing it definitely to my entire satisfac-
tion; yet not with the result of lessening
my love for another strain — his cousin's
cadenza, the bright and joyous one-two-
three-count-the-rest-if-you-can melody of
the Song Sparrow.

These few — home-birds and migrants —
with the rarely seen Purple Finch; the
little Brown Creeper, so hard to find
because he blends so wonderfully with the
bark of the tree to which he cHngs (being
the best example within my Imowledge of
what is called ^'protective coloration");
the Golden-crowned Kinglet; a few Owls,
and the merry, black-capped Chickadees,—
these, and perhaps one or two others, con-
stitute the full array of our winter birds;
not much of a showing, I grant you, and

[1911

A Book on Birds

yet quite sufficient to make God^s open air
tenderly suggestive on many a frosty after-
noon from December to middle March.

But really the interval of empty days
of absence in field and forest has had very
narrow Umits during the winter in which
I write.

Indeed, it was probably never before so
brief. Even the summer birds — the Robin,
the Blackbird, Meadow Lark, Golden-
winged Woodpecker, Killdeer, Bluebird
and others, remained, many of them, almost
until Christmas, and reappeared early in
February; so that they were at no time
very far away.

For nearly a month past, on sunlit
mornings, the note of the Bluebird — the
bird ^^with the earth tinge on his breast
and the sky tinge on his back,'' has fallen
mysteriously as I passed along the road,
'4ike a drop of rain when no cloud is vis-
ible"; and during quite as long a time the
spurting, gurgling strains of the Blackbird
— who has real music in his voice only in
earliest spring-time — have filled the tops

[192]

2: ^

=r o

^ M
I S

^ W

^ C

In Winter

of the pine trees. The vernal iridescence,
which appears Hke a reflection of the Hght
of April from afar upon his ebony feathers,
already flashes its color as he flies; and the
hope of better, brighter days in store
seems nearer fruition than it ever was
before while the year was still so young.

13

[193

A Book on Birds

To A Goldfinch

(Perched on a Thistle Weed above the Snow)

Little Yellow-bird, delaying

Bravely in a blighted land;
Left alone, but still obeying

Summer's sorrowful command;
She hath gone, but thou art token

Of her love, and wilt remain
Till, earth's icy thraldom broken,

She shall come to us again.

Winds may rail against thy gladness,

Fain to drive thee far away;
Winter hem thee in with sadness

Till thy gold be turned to gray;
All their hardship doth but make thee

Dearer than thou wast before.
And as field and sky forsake thee

We but cherish thee th' more.

Thine unfaltering devotion,

(Sweet remembrancer, and true!)
Kindleth a divine emotion

Making us courageous too;
And, upon our spirits stealing,

Cometh strength to do and dare; —
Little Yellow-bird revealing

Springtime in the frozen air!

[194

Chapter XV

FIELD KEY

THE following list has been prepared
as a special help and guide (ready at
hand and as condensed as possible)
for the use of readers of the foregoing pages.

It includes all those birds in the territory
covered by this volume which the average
amateur may look for with a well-grounded
expectation of seeing within a reasonable
period of time; but no others. And the
distinctive purpose running through it is to
characterize each species, not in a scientific
way, but by its easiest, surest, and most
obvious and apprehensible mark or marks
(whether of color, flight, song, or some pecu-
liar habit) for open-air identification by
those who are not experts and never
expect to be.

Within these limitations it is believed
it is both accurate and informing, and will
[195]

A Book on Birds

be found to contain practical clues to every
new specimen which the ordinary observer
is likely to meet with throughout this in-
land district of country.

The descriptive data of the entire Hst
are those of the male bird only, full-grown,
and also in his best plumage, which is
generally in the spring.

The one unspecified dimension given
is length of body from the end of the beak
or bill to the tip of the longest tail-feather.
It may be satisfactorily approximated off-
hand in each case by a beginner by com-
paring it with that of the Robin (our best-
known bird), which is ten inches.

No attempt at ornithological designation
has been made in the key, other than that
necessary to arrange the species in their
proper order by families; and the author
has even sought to lend to these fragmentary
portions of the general nomenclature (with
its odd Greek and Latin and many fanciful
ideas) an elementary and popular interest
by translating them into plain, everyday
English.

[196]

Field Key

Key

PODICIPID^ (The Rump-footed Family).

Pied-hilled Grebe (Little Dipper— Fish Duck). Migrant,
and occasional winter visitor. Bristly frontal
feathers. Upper parts, brown. Chin and throat,
black. Lower breast, white. When swimming,
moves as if walking in the water. 13 inches.

XJRINATORIDiE (The Family of Divers).

Loon. Rare winter visitor. Largest diver, and there-
fore most easily recognizable from size, which is that
of an average domestic goose. Back, black, spotted
with white. Breast, white. Will swim as far as
200 yards under water at a stretch, remaining down
as long as a minute and a haK. 32 inches.

LkRIDM (The Family of Sea Bh-ds).

Common Tern (Wilson's Tern). Back and wings, light
bluish-gray. Balance, white, with black crown.
The "sea-bird" which most frequently finds its
way up inland streams. 14 inches.

ANATIDiE (The Family of Ducks).

Mallard Duck. Migrant, and occasional winter visitor.

Largest Duck. "Deep-water" bird. Back, brown.

Under parts, pale, dusky gray. 24 inches.

Wood Duck. Rare resident. Green and purple crest.

Other colorings varied; some iridescent. Breast,

white. 18 inches.

Blue-winged Teal. Common migrant. Occasional

winter visitor. Dull lead color about neck and head.

Blue patch on wing. 16 inches.

[197]

A Book on Birds

ANATID^ (The Family of Ducks).— Continued.

Red-head Duck. Migrant. Rare winter visitor. Red
head. Black collar. White breast. 22 inches.

Canada Goose. Likely to be seen only in flight, and then
in this formation > . Black head and neck, with
white "cravat." Dark back. Breast, gray of a
varying tinge, making feathers appear hke scales.

21 inches.

ARDEID.® (The Family of Herons).

American Bittern. Rare. Faded brown and black.

24 inches.
Great Blue Heron ("Big Crane"). Body, dull blue.

Neck, white. Legs and neck, each about 16 inches

long. Total height nearly four feet.
Green Heron ("Fly-up-the-Creek"). Brown and black,

with black crest. 18 inches.

Black-crowned Night Heron. Black crest, out of which

issue three long, white, flowing, filamentous feathers.

26 inches.

RALLED.® (The Family of Rails).

Clapper Rail (Shore "Mud-hen"). Above, pale olive.

Wings and tail, grayish-brown. Breast, buff.

Chin, white. 14 inches.

American Coot (Inland "Mud-hen"). Head, black.

Rest, bluish slate-color. 15 inches.

SCOLOPACrD.^ (The Snipe-like Family).

Spotted Sandpiper ("Tilt-up"). Long bill and legs.
Abbreviated tail that bohs continually when he
alights. Smooth, sleek plumage. Spotted head
and cheeks. White breast. 7j inches.

[198]

^\mi

Field Key

SCOLOPACID^ (The Snipe-like Family).— Continued.

Bartramian Sandpiper (Field Plover). Speckled brown
all over, except lower breast, brownish-gray. Dis-
tinctly recognizable from his shrill whistle in couplets,
dropping from upper air, day or night. 12^ inches.

American Woodcock. Black, gray, russet, above. Brown-
ish-red below. Body, stout and heavy, with short
neck and long bill. 10 inches.

CHARADRIID^ (The Family of Cleft-Dwellers).

Killdeer. Upper parts brown. Under parts, pearl-
white, except black band across chest. Long,
pointed wings with a crook in them in flight.

10 inches.
TETRAONID.a; (The Pheasant Family).

Ruffed Grouse (Partridge). Black, brown, white; with
big neck-rufif of black. Crested. 18 inches.

Quail ("Bob White"). Speckled reddish-brown, varied
with white. Conspicuous throat patch; white in
male, buff in female. Clear, loud, distinct whistle,
deUberately given in a short series, one note at a
time, with accent on the last. 10 inches.

COLUMBIDiE (The Family of Doves).

Mourning Dove (Turtle Dove). Blue-gray and olive-
brown. Smooth, swift, noiseless flight. 13 inches.

CATHARTIDiE (The Family of Cleansers).

Turkey Buzzard. Entire plumage black, marked with
dull brown. Wings pointed at ends. The big bird
most frequently seen of those that float aloft with
motionless, wide-spread wings. 30 inches.

[199]

A Book on Birds

FALCONID^ (The Hooked-claw Family).

Sharp-shinned Hawk. Mottled gray breast. Red eyes.

14 inches.

Cooper^s Hawk. Grayish- white, brown-mottled breast;
back and tail very dark. 20 inches.

Red-tailed Hawk. Brown. Short, square tail, tipped
with white. Under parts, white. Wings rounded
at ends. The next most frequent motionless
* * high-sailer . " 24 inches.

American Sparrow Hawk. Black and brown striped,
above. Light buff, below. Flat head. Thick-set
neck. Shoulders humped in flight. 12 inches.

American Osprey (Fish Hawk). White, below. Brown,
above. 25 inches.

STRIGID^ (The Family of Creakers).

American Barn Owl. Ashen face, heart-shaped. "The
Monkey-faced Owl." 16 inches.

BUBONID^ (The Family of Horned Owls).

Snowy Owl. Rare. Largest of the Owls. Handsome
white plumage, flecked with brown. 24 inches.

American Long-eared Old. Round face, brown-cheeked;
ears rising up from forehead Hke plumes. 15 inches.

Screech Owl. Red and gray. Eye-brows and ears
forming a V on face. 10 inches.

Barred Owl. Ashen-browTi all over, with narrow, trans-
verse bands of white. 20 inches.

Great-horned Owl. Large, and wisest-looking. Mixed
black, brown, gray and white. "Horns" more like
ears, because at sides of forehead; also, very con-
spicuous. 22 inches.

[200]

Field Key

CUCULID^ (The Cuckoo Family).

Yellow-billed Cuckoo ("Rain Bird"). Above, grayish-
olive; below, white. Tail-feathers tipped with
big white spots, some an inch or more long. 12 inches.
Black-billed Cuckoo. Very like above in voice, markings
and size; but bill all black; and white tips of tail-
feathers very small. 12 inches.

ALCEDINID^ (The Family of "Halcyon Birds" of the
Winter Sea).

Belted Kingfisher. Above, steel-blue; below, white
with dark band across chest. "Pompadour" crest.
Long, thick neck. Short tail. 13 inches."

PICID^ (The Family of Painted Birds).

Downy Woodpecker. Transverse white bars on dark

wings. Short tail. Small red spot on nape of neck.

6 inches.
Hairy Woodpecker. Markings very like Downy; but

taU much longer. 9 ^^^j^^g^

Red-headed Woodpecker. Bright crimson head; rest,

sharply-contrasted black and white. 9 inches!

Flicker. Under surface of wings yellow. Wave-like

flight. Dark crescent patch on breast. Scarlet

at nape of neck. 12 inches.

CAPRIMULGID^ (The Family of Milkers of Goats).

Night-hawk. Thin, wide mouth. Grayish-brown and
black. Conspicuous ivhite spot on wing that looks
Hke a hole in flight. 10 inches.

Whip-poor-will. Very lilce above; but reddish-brown
and black, and no spot on wing. 10 inches.

[201]

A Book on Birds

MICROPODIDiE (The SmaU-footed Family).

Chimney Swift. Ashen-brown and black. Tail short,
with spines. Pearl-gray chest. 5^ inches.

TROCHILIDiE (The Family of Little Birds).

Ruby-throated Ilumining Bird. Green, above. White,
below. Ruby-red gorget. 3 inches.

TYRANNID^ (The Tyrant Family).

Kingbird. White, below. Blackish, above. Small

crest showing a red spot. Agitated flight. Piercing

notes. 8i inches.

Crested Flycatcher. Dull olive and brown, with light

yellow breast. Pinkish-brown under tail. Fine

top-knot. 8^ inches.

Phosbe. Olive-brown, above. Yellowish-white, below.

Repeats name continually. Sharp eye. Small

crest. 7 inches.

Wood Pewee. Olive-brown, above. Yellowish, below.

Two pale-white wing-bars. Wings much longer

than tail. 6 inches.

Acadian Flycatcher. Dark olive, above. Conspicuous

white wing-bars. Throat and belly, yellow-white.

6 inches.
Least Flycatcher. Very like last, but noticeably smaller.

5 inches.
CORVID^ (The Family of Ravens or Crows).

Blue Jay. Pale blue. Conspicuously crested. White
and black markings. Tail richly tipped with white.
Loud, harsh cry. "A reprobate." 12 inches.

American Crow. Black, with violet iridescence.

19 inches.

[202]

Field Key

ICTERID^ (The Family of Jaundice-Healers).

Bobolink. Glistening black and white, with buff cap,
well back toward nape of neck. 7 inches.

Cowbird. Rusty, iridescent black. Grayish head.
MetaUic luster all over. 8 inches.

Red-winged Blackbird. Black, with bright scarlet spot
on shoulders, often edged with yellow or white.

9^ inches.

Meadow Lark. Upper parts, black and brown. Throat
and breast yellow. Black crescent on chest. Outer
tail-feathers white. Very rapid wing motion.

10^ inches.

Orchard Oriole. Dull, faded red and black. 7 inches.

Baltimore Oriole ("Hang-nest"). Brilliant orange and
black. 8^ inches.

Purple Grackle. Common Crow Blackbird. 12 inches.

FRINGILLroiE (The Family of Sparrows and Finches).

(Many species of Sparrows will at first appear exactly alike to a
beginner, and the special effort here made is to give only the most dif-
ferentiating marks in each case.)

Song Sparrow. Gray and brown. Well-spotted breast,
with blotch in center. 6^ inches.

Tree Sparrow. In winter and early spring only. White
bar on wing. Brown back, streaked with black, like
scales. Breast, grayish-white with one indistinct
spot in center. Brown of head, not a well-defined
spot on crown like the Chippy's, but covering
entire poll, and running even below eyes. Outer
tail-feather, dull whitish. 6 inches.

Field Sparrow. Reddish bill. Bright, rufous brown
back. Very hght buff breast. Sweet, even, plaintive
song. 5i inches.

[203]

A Book on Birds

FRINGILLID^ (The Family of Sparrows and Finches).—
Continued.

Chipping Sparrow. Well-defined solid brown cap on
crown. No "ring" in bis notes. 5^ inches.

White-throated Sparrow. Dark brown stripes on head.
Clear white patch at throat. 7 inches.

White-crowned Sparrow. In winter only. White crown,
with rich black stripes. No throat patch. 7 inches.

Vesper Sparrow (Grass Finch). The sparrow that shows
white tail-feathers flying. 6 inches.

Grasshopper (or Yellow-winged) Sparrow. Sings exactly
like grasshopper. Crown, blackish. Bend of wing,
bright yellow. 5 inches.

Fox Sparrow. Back, dull slate-color changing at rump
to cinnamon-brown. Richly spotted breast. Largest
sparrow. 1\ inches.

English Sparrow. Brown and black, above. Chin and
throat, black. Under parts, ashen-gray. 6| inches.

Savannah Sparrow. Crown shows broad stripe of yellow-
gray. 5 inches.

Swamp Sparrow. Back broadly streaked with black.

6| inches.

Snowbird (Slate-colored Junco), Blackish-gray. Outer
tail-feathers, gUstening white. Flesh-colored beak.

6 inches.

Snow Bunting (White Snowbird). Beautiful glistening
white plumage, flecked and streaked with rich brown.
A most distinctive species, but rare. 7 inches.

Purple Finch. Dull drab and purpUsh-gray. Crown,
ruffled purple. Rare migrant. 6| inches.

American Goldfinch (Salad, or Thistle, bird). Yellow,
with black cap, wings and tail. 5 inches.

[204]

Field Key

FRINGILLIDiE (The Family of Sparrows and Finches).—
Continued.

Indigo Bunting. Iridescent indigo all over, but with
black markings. Sings canary's song as if hurriedly.

5^ inches.
Cardinal (Virginia Red-bird). Pale cardinal. "Dunce-
cap" crest. Aspirated whistle. 9 inches.
Towhee (Ground-Robin — Chewink). Brick-red and black,
with white markings. Whistles his name. 8| inches.
Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Black and white, with bright
rose running down from throat to breast.

8 inches.
TANAGRID^ (The Family of Tanagers).

Scarlet Tanager. BriUiant carmine body, with jet-black
wings. Female, lemon-yellow. 7^ inches.

HIRUNDINID^ (The Family of SwaUows).

(The distinctive mark of this family is their wonderful power of flight*
All of them spend most of their time by day on the wing.)

Purple Martin. Largest swallow. Glossy blue-black
all over. Tail notched, not forked; wings when
closed extend beyond it. 8 inches.

White-bellied Swallow (Tree Swallow). Pure white below,
from chin to tail; dark, metallic green above.

6 inches.

Barn Swallow. Deeply-forked tail. Steel-blue back.
Chestnut breast. 6| inches.

Bank Swallow. White breast, banded with brown.
Brown back. 5 inches.

AMPELIDiE (The Family of Vine-Haunters).

Cedar Waxwing (Cedar Bu-d). Flattened crest. Body,
light, dull drab and purplish-brown. Breast and edge
of tail, yellow. 71 inches.

[205]

A Book on Birds

LANIID-aE (The Butcher Family).

Loggerhead Shrike (Butcher Bird). Migrant. Slate-
colored, above. White, below. Wings and tail,
black. 9 inches.

VIREONID^ (The Family of Vireos).

Red-eyed Vireo. Largest Vireo. Dull olive, above.

Pearl, below. Eyes, ruby-red when sun strikes them.

6| inches.
White-eyed Vireo. Plumage very similar to above, but

eyes white. 5| inches.

Warbling Vireo. Plumage very similar to above, but eyes

black. 5 inches.

Yellow-throated Vireo. Colored like "Chat," but much

smaller. 5| inches.

MNIOTILTID^ (The Family of Moss-Pullers).

(Most membera of this family — the Wood Warblers — are merely spring
and fall migrants in our latitude, Nearly all the smaller ones have dark
brown eyes and are trim of body; and their most distinguishing family
mark while with us is their voice in the trees, day or night; which as a
rule is nothing more than a sharp little squeak.)

Black-throated Green Warbler. Cheeks and sides of neck,
rich yellow. Chin and throat, black. Outer tail-
feathers, white. 5 inches.

Black and White Warbler (Oeeper). Black and white
all over. 5^ inches.

Blue-winged Yellow Warbler. Yellow, with blue-gray
wings with two white bars. 5 inches.

Parula Warbler. Very small. Orange and yellow on
upper breast, with faint tinges of same over blue-
gray back. Two white wing-bars. Greenish-yellow
patch on back. 3| inches.

[206]

g?

3 >

o cd

J>Q

Field Key

MNIOTILTID-^ (The Family of Moss-Pu!lers).— Continued.

Yellow Warbler. Yellow all over with little flecks of
reddish-brown upon breast, 5^ inches.

Black-throated Blue Warbler. Black throat. White
breast. Dull blue back. White patch on dark
wings. 5 1 inches.

Myrtle Warbler. Yellow on crown. Also on rump and
sides of breast. Balance, blue, brown and white.

6 inches.

Magnolia Warbler. Crown gray and white. Yellow on
rump, throat and breast. 5| inches.

Chestnut-sided Warbler. Chestnut stripe along breast,
just below edge of wings. Crown, yellow. 5 inches.

Palm Warbler. Chestnut-red spot on crown. Back,
olive or grayish-brown. Breast, yellow, flecked with
brown. 5§ inches.

Kentucky Warbler. Yellow, ^ith black patch on face,
along eye, but entirely below it. 5§ inches.

Hooded Warbler. Yellow and olive with pronounced
hood of deep black, which leaves eyes free. 5^ inches.

Maryland Yellow-throat. Yellow and olive, with band
of black extended across forehead and eyes, like a
blindfold, or "leather spectacles." 5 inches.

Worm-eating Warbler. Brown and buff-striped crown,
something like that of White-throated Sparrow.
Back, drab; breast, cream. 5^ inches.

Nashville Warbler. Upper parts olive-green. Sides of
head, gray. Breast and edges of wings, yellow.

4| inches.

Golden-crowned Thrush (Oven Bird). Slender and grace-
ful. Mottled breast and other markings like Wood
Thrush, with stripe of brownish-yellow through
crown. 6 inches.

[207]

A Book on Birds

MNIOTILTID^ (The Family of Moss-Pullers).— Continued.
YeUoW'breasted Chat. Olive, above; bright yellow, below.

7^ inches.

American Redstart. Orange and black. 5^ inches.

Blackhurnian Warhler. Orange spot on top of head.
Chest, orange. Outer tail-feathers and wing-patch,
white. 5^ inches.

TROGLODYTrD^ (The Family of Cave, or Hole, Dwellers).
Catbird. Deep, smooth gray, with black markings.

Brown under tail. 9 inches.

Brown Thrasher. Rusty brown. Very long tail and

beak. Mottled breast. Golden-eyed. 11 inches.
Carolina Wren. Largest Wren. Reddish-brown.

Very long, curved bill. 6 inches.

House Wren. Grayish-brown speckled. 4-| inches.

Winter Wren. Speckled reddish-brown and black.

4 inches.

CERTHIID.® (The Family of Creepers).

Brown Creeper. Dull faded brown and gray. Whitish,
below. Long bill and tail. 5^ inches.

PARIDiE (The Titmouse Family).

White-breasted Nuthatch (Sapsucker). Gray, above.
White, below. Black crown. Short tail. 6 inches.

Tufted Titmouse. Gray, above. White, below. Con-
spicuous crest. 7 inches.

Chickadee (Black-cap Titmouse). Ashen-brown. Top
of head, chin, and throat, black. 5 inches.

[208]

Field Key

SYLVnD^ (The Fanuly of Forest Singers).

Golden-crowned Kinglet. Short, fat, trim. Dark green,
above. Whitish, below. Fine spot of gold on crown.

■4 inches.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Like above, but spot on crown

bright carmine. 4 inches.

TURDID-^ (The Thrush, or Fieldfare Family).

Wood Thrush. Brown. Pm-e white breast with rich

brown blotches. 8 inches.

Hermit Thrush. Brown of tail very different from back.

Marks on breast in faint streaks. 7 inches.

American Robin. Red breast. Gray and black, above.

10 inches.
Bluebird. Bright blue. Upper breast, dull red.

6^ inches.
Veery (Wilson's Thrush). Marked like first-named
Thrush, but no contrast between brown of tail and
back, which is of a dull cinnamon color. Slender and
shy. Center of throat, belly and sides, white.
Breast spotted. 7 inches.

[209]

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