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Title: Our Feathered Friends
Author: Grinnell, Elizabeth, Grinnell, Joseph
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Our Feathered Friends" ***
Transcriber's Note: Text emphasis is denoted by _Italics_.
[Illustration: THE WAX-WING]
OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS
BY
ELIZABETH GRINNELL
AND
JOSEPH GRINNELL
[Illustration]
BOSTON, U.S.A.
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
1899
Copyright, 1898,
By D. C. HEATH & CO.
TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & CO., NORWOOD, MASS.
PRESSWORK BY ROCKWELL & CHURCHILL, BOSTON.
INTRODUCTION.
This volume really needs little by way of introduction. No one can
mistake the evident love for our feathered friends, the kindly
assistance that has been given them, and the success of the authors
in imparting to others much of that pleasure which they have
undoubtedly derived from their studies.
The same recreation lies within the power of all who through
inattention and thoughtlessness neglect the almost priceless relief
from daily burdens afforded by such pursuits. Every one can learn
something of the ways and doings of our little friends, even though
he may never write a book or put a pen to paper concerning them.
Knowledge thus acquired is not wasted; it elevates the mind and
trains the senses, so that in after life the habits of observing and
noting frequently become of great use, and are never a detriment.
Our authors have set forth the wanton destruction of bird life
consequent upon the use of feathers and parts of birds to ornament
hats. They have in no way misstated; for tens of thousands of birds
are annually offered on the altar of fashion to gratify a cruel
and barbarous survival of savage adornment. Yet the male friend of
the lady who wears upon her head a gorgeous array of mutilated,
misshapen, and dyed birdskins may have done something to assist in
a similar destruction of bird life. As a boy perhaps he wantonly
deprived some bird of her eggs; and later, when possessed of a gun,
he may have shown little discretion or thought when depriving the
nestling of a mother or father who alone could feed and protect it.
And as a man, too often it may be, he has allowed savage instincts to
dominate his acts instead of the knowledge derived from experience
and thought.
It lies within the power of many who will read these pages to assist
in the distribution of evidence and in the enlightenment of others,
to the end that the useless slaughter of birds and the destruction of
their eggs may be prevented, or at least greatly mitigated.
Within a few years past efforts have been made to have one day a year
in the schools set aside to study and consider the ways and interests
of our feathered friends. The matter is of national importance, and
deserves the interest that has been taken in it; but without the
hearty cooperation of teachers and their efforts to interest and
instruct their charges, there is little likelihood of accomplishing
the end desired.
Each farmer or occupier of a tract of land has it within his power
to set aside some portion of otherwise non-usable land to afford
shelter and concealment for many birds, and to protect those useful
species that select and require special locations in which to rear
their young. The presence of birds in a locality lends a charm to
the landscape which nothing else can lend. An abundance of useful
and attractive species may be encouraged to remain and breed if heed
is paid to their requirements, and efforts to disturb them in their
orderly pursuits be prevented. With slight care such species as are
not a detriment or nuisance can be assisted, and thus the value of
birds as a feature of the landscape, as insect destroyers, and as
vocalists can be more and more demonstrated and appreciated.
There is a book, large and bulky, yet within the reach of every one;
little work is required to handle it, for its pages are always open,
and it is written in the universal language. It costs nothing to read
many chapters, yet, as in all good things, a little patience and some
experience will assist greatly in acquiring a fair understanding
of its contents. In this great Book of Nature will be found much
concerning that rich and varied division of animal life to which has
been given the name of Birds, and its relation to the welfare and
enjoyment of humanity.
Certain helps have been invented by the experiences and intelligence
of man to assist those who through inattention, unfavorable
environment, or otherwise, have been unable to acquire that knowledge
of this book essential to a correct understanding of their relation
to animated nature.
Such a help is this little volume, which it is hoped may prove
useful and instructive to many whose knowledge of bird life is
small, and also be well worth a reading by those whose more extended
opportunities have permitted a wider knowledge of ornithology.
WILLIAM PALMER.
National Museum, Washington, D.C.
Seek the children, little book:
Bid them love the bird's retreat,
By the brook and woodland nook,
In the garden, in the street,
In the tree above the shed,
Underneath the old barn eaves,
In their bed high overhead,
Where their crazy-quilts are leaves.
Bid them find their secrets out,
How to understand their words.
Play the scout in woods about.
Listen slyly for the birds.
Hark! I hear a child-bird say,
Piping softly in the dell,
"You may stay and see us play,
If you only love us well."
_Pasadena, Cal._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction iii
I. The Message of a Mocking-bird 1
II. Some People we like to Know 5
III. Civilized Birds 9
IV. How Birds Dress 13
V. How Madam Bird combs her Hair 18
VI. What Birds carry in their Pockets 22
VII. Child Birds 28
VIII. How Baby Birds are Fed 33
IX. At Meal-time 39
X. Seed-eaters and Meat-eaters 45
XI. Some Birds with a Bad Name 50
XII. Before Breakfast 57
XIII. Our Birds' Restaurant--Meals at All Hours 62
XIV. Umbrellas and Other Things 68
XV. Cradle Making 73
XVI. Our Screech Owl 78
XVII. Birds at Work and Play 83
XVIII. Some Other Birds at Work 89
XIX. A Pet Humming-bird 97
XX. How we took the Humming-birds' Pictures 100
XXI. Our Robin Redbreast 107
XXII. More about Our Robin 111
XXIII. Going to Bed and getting up 116
XXIV. Mrs. Towhee proposes a Garden Party 123
XXV. At the Garden Party 129
XXVI. Our Bird Hospital 137
XXVII. A Splendid Collection 141
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.
PAGE
Mocking-bird 2
The Young Mocking-bird that lost its Tail in the Door 4
Crow Blackbird 11
Turkey Buzzard 15
Mountain Quail 20
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 28
Short-eared Owl 24
Nest full of Young Birds 27
Linnet 30
Humming-bird feeding her Young 35
Blue Jay 38
Downy Woodpecker 42
Chimney Swift 46
Arkansas Goldfinch 47
King-bird 51
Loggerhead Shrike 53
English Sparrow 55
Brown Towhee 58
Song Sparrow 64
Baltimore Oriole 75
Ground Owl 77
Screech Owl 79
Barn Swallow 87
Marsh Owl 88
Costa's Humming-bird 89
Cat-bird 94
Brown Thrush 95
Anna's Humming-birds 105
Robin 108
Western Bluebird 117
Whip-poor-will 121
Phœbe 121
Flicker 127
California Bush-tit and Nest 132
Meadow Lark 135
Wax-wing 139
Snowy Heron 143
OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
THE MESSAGE OF A MOCKING-BIRD.
It was in the year 1877, before any of the children who read this
book were born. We were living on one of the great reservations in
the Indian Territory. Some one knocked at the door. When the door
was opened, there stood a little Indian girl, her head all covered
up in a bright shawl. She was shy, as Indian girls were before they
had seen many white people. Very timidly she drew her hand from under
her shawl and gave to us a baby mocking-bird. Then she turned and ran
down the prairie toward her buffalo-skin lodge not far away.
We understood. The little girl's name was Kitty-ka-tat. She had been
to our house often. She knew that we liked pets of all kinds, and
birds most of all, so she had captured this one for us by a kind of
snare or trap. Of course we kept it, for we did not know where its
nest was. We allowed it to use the whole house for a cage. It ate
wherever we ate, and slept at night on the curtain pole above the
window.
[Illustration: Mocking-bird.]
But the perch it liked best by day was the top of its master's head.
As soon as this gentleman came in and sat down in the rocking-chair
and put on his skullcap, the bird would fly to his shoulder.
Sometimes it would take a nip at his ear or his hair. Then it would
give a hop and a flutter, and land in the middle of the black
skullcap, where it would sit for an hour if no one disturbed it.
It liked to take crumbs from our hands, or bits of apple from our
lips, standing on our shoulders. It bathed every day in a large pan
of water placed in the middle of the carpet. Then, too wet to fly
farther, it would flutter all dripping to a low stool, where it would
dry its clothes after the wash. If a door chanced to be left open,
the bird would fly to the top of it and preen its feathers and look
about at us below in a very pretty way. So you see the little thing
really washed and dried and ironed its clothes.
One day when it was perched on the top of the hall door, as happy
as could be, a gust of wind quickly blew the door shut, with a loud
noise. The bird gave a sharp scream and flew to the window. We looked
and saw a strange sight,--a mocking-bird without a tail.
The little bundle of feathers had been shut in at the top of the door
when the wind closed it; and there sat poor birdie, a mere chunk of a
darling, turning its head from side to side and looking sadly back at
the place where its tail had once been.
We opened the door, and down fluttered every one of the beautiful
feathers. Birdie eyed them with a puzzled look, canting its head, as
though it were saying, "I don't understand it at all." Then it looked
backward again in a very pitiful way. We couldn't help laughing,
though we were so sorry for the bird. In a short time the feathers
grew again, and the little fellow showed great care in preening them
and placing them just as it thought they ought to grow.
After a while there came to be a little baby in the house, and the
mocking-bird seemed to understand. Two grown-up people had been its
only friends before, but it was never afraid of the stranger baby
from the first time it saw him. It would fly from any perch to where
the baby lay and peep into the baby's face in the sweetest way, as
if saying, "Glad to see you, little man." Then it would twitter a
low song, which sounded very much as if it were singing, "Little one,
when you grow up, be kind to the birds and love them."
[Illustration: The Young Mocking-Bird that lost its Tail in the Door.]
"Be kind to the birds and love them" was the little mocking-bird's
message, or so it seemed to us.
The baby and his mother never forgot the message of the mocking-bird.
They have loved birds ever since. That is why they are writing this
book about birds for the children.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
SOME PEOPLE WE LIKE TO KNOW.
We are always interested in our nearest neighbors. "Who lives in the
next house?" we ask. "Are they pleasant persons to know?" and "How
many children are there?"
These are questions one commonly asks. But we are not speaking just
now of men and women and children who live near us on our street. We
are speaking of people all about us in our yard, and in your yard
perhaps,--little, winged, beautiful people, who make it so pleasant
with song and chirp and flutter,--the birds.
We like to think of the birds as creatures better and more lovable
than lizards and worms and other crawling things. We know a lady who
calls them "Angels," because they have wings and seem to fly far off
into heaven. No one ever jumps away from a bird, as some foolish
people do from a snake or a mouse. Most snakes and mice are as
harmless as birds, but they do not win their way to our hearts as the
birds do.
The yard or field that has the most trees and shrubs in it will also
have the most and the merriest birds. Very few birds choose to live
on a desert. They like shade and grass and flowers as well as we do,
and fruit trees and berry bushes, and the sound of life and fun.
When we see a big tree chopped down, we think of the birds who will
miss it. Watch them yourselves. See how they light on the fallen
boughs, and peep sadly under the wilting leaves, and twitter about
their loss. Birds are like ourselves; they like to live in the places
that are familiar to them, because here they feel at home and safe.
We sometimes think we can hear them singing, "My country, 'tis of
thee,--of thee I sing."
Their "country" is our yard, and your yard, or the woods or the city
streets and house roofs, and they love it. We should respect their
rights and let them have their little "America" in peace. We can
apply the Golden Rule as well to our treatment of the birds as to one
another.
There are enemies which are very troublesome to the birds. Two or
three hawks, some owls, and a few boys, delight in scaring or killing
them. We have never seen a little girl harm a bird, and we know many
boys, as well, who would not hurt a bird "on purpose." Their worst
enemies are the cats.
These enemies do not come sailing over into the birds' country in
ships, or marching up the coast in troops, carrying guns and beating
drams and making a great noise. They are cowardly, sneaking enemies.
They jump one at a time over hedges and fences, and they crawl under
bushes barefoot, and dart across the street when no one is looking.
They are so still, gliding on their soft feet, that no one of the
bird family can hear them coming. So whole nestfuls of baby birds are
gone before their mothers know it.
Cats have learned that they are not welcome in our yard. If one of
them slips in before we are up in the morning, the birds tell us by
a sort of "shriek," and we hurry to help them. We have seen six or
seven different kinds of birds crying at a cat and flying at him at
one time. They even nip at his back, and dart up so quickly that the
cat has no chance to spring at them.
The orioles and mocking-birds are our best watch-dogs, screaming
with very angry voices at sight of a cat, and warning all the other
birds in the yard to "look out." In the orchard there were some stray
cats that nobody owned, and we thought it right to shoot the hungry,
thieving things. One mocking-bird, who had been robbed once by these
cats, would point out a cat to us, flying on ahead, and would not
jump away at the sharp bang of the gun. She seemed to understand
perfectly well that we were protecting her and aiming at the enemy
she feared so much.
We have read how wild beasts from the jungle prowl around the homes
of India to snatch the children and carry them off. How careful the
mothers must be, always watching for the cruel animals and dreading
their quick spring!
The mother birds in our yard are like those human mothers in India.
You have only to watch them when a cat comes prowling around to see
how very much like human mothers they are. They scream and dart about
in fright, and if you go near they will fly not from you, but toward
the cat. They are asking you for help.
Birds near your house soon learn to know the family if every one is
kind to them, when they have once learned that you are their friend.
They will allow you to call while they are eating their meals, or to
watch them while nest-building, although they may be almost within
reach of your hand. They will even wait around the door for you to
shake the tablecloth after dinner, or to throw out the contents of
the crumb-pan, hopping about at your feet without a thought of fear.
We never can learn all there is to know about birds. We can know only
a little about them if we study them all our lives.
There is a great professor in a California university who has been
trying all his life to get acquainted with fishes, and yet he says he
has much more to learn about them. Very little people, like birds and
fishes and insects, can interest very great men, and we often see the
greatest men the kindest to small creatures.
We speak of birds in this book as "people," because they seem very
near to us. They are beings who think and plan and love, and who know
what it is to be sorry or glad, just like ourselves.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
CIVILIZED BIRDS.
In new parts of the country we do not find so many birds living near
houses as we find in older towns. Where there is much wooded or
uncultivated land for them to live and nest in, the birds prefer to
stay at some distance from us. But after the fields are all ploughed,
and the trees cut down, they become civilized and learn to love our
gardens and barns and houses.
We speak of birds as "wild" or "civilized," just as we speak of the
races of men. The birds in our yard are civilized. They will eat
cooked food if we give it to them. They will bathe in a tub, if it is
handy, as if it were a brook in the woods. They will nest in cosey
nooks about the home in the vines and under the barn eaves, or in
little houses which we build for them and set up on poles or in the
arbors. They will follow the furrow which the plough makes, looking
for worms, and will help themselves to our fruit without waiting for
an invitation.
Many of them soon learn to prefer the barn-yard to the field, and
will hop about with the chickens under the horse's feet. The sparrows
and towhees come every day when the cow eats her pail of bran. They
gather about close to her head and watch for her to finish her meal,
very much as you have seen one dog watch another dog at his bone.
When the cow is done, the birds take possession of her pail and pick
out every crumb she has left.
The blackbird[1] is more civilized than most other birds. You are
all acquainted with him, for we find him at home almost everywhere.
Though he dresses differently in different parts of the country,
he is always a blackbird. Where we live he has a white eye, like
a tricky horse. He likes the company of sheep and cattle in our
pastures and lanes.
[1] In the west, Brewer's blackbird, _Scolecophagus cyanocephalus_;
in the east, purple grackle, _Quiscalus quiscula_.
We have seen these birds taking a free ride all over the fields,
while the good-natured animals seemed to like it and did not try to
shake them off. Once we laughed merrily when we saw a whole flock of
blackbirds taking a ride "pig back," while the pigs rooted away in
the ground, paying no attention to the birds on their backs.
Once when we were in Sitka, Alaska, a long way from home, we went out
very early to watch the birds. We saw a great black raven on the back
of a donkey that had been lying down all night on a bed of straw. The
raven pecked the donkey's back and made him get up from his warm bed.
Then the hungry bird made a breakfast of the insects that had crept
under the donkey during the cold night to share his warmth. We were
told that this raven was in the habit of getting his breakfast in
this way.
In nesting time civilized birds are glad to get the odds and ends of
strings and cotton which we give them. They chirp about it while they
pull at the twine, as if they were saying, "What a blessing it is to
live among civilized people, who give us strings and other things to
make our cradles of."
[Illustration: Crow Blackbird.]
They like to scratch in the hay and chaff for kernels of grain. When
you see the birds about the barn-doors, or under the shed at the
grain, watch them and notice that they do not really scratch, as at
first sight they seem to do, but hop quickly on both feet with their
toes spread far apart. They hop so fast that you can scarcely see
their feet through the flying chaff.
It is hard to be quite certain whether a bird walks or hops when it
is after its food on the ground. Some of them, like the sparrows and
towhees, have a quick, jerky pace that looks like a very fast run.
Some birds never run or hop on their feet. The fly-catchers and
humming-birds belong to this class. Yet these birds are not cripples.
Their tiny legs are fitted only to hold them on the perch. If they
wish to catch an insect the length of their bill away, they will fly
to get it, just as if it were across the yard. Their wings are so
strong and move so quickly that these birds do not need to walk or
run. They sip their honey or snatch flies and spiders while on the
wing.
All birds are alike in many habits, just as people all over the world
have some ways in common. Yet there are some birds who are very
different from all others. Indeed, there are so many things to know
about them, that it is difficult to know just where to begin.
What kind of clothes do birds wear? What do they eat, and when
is their meal-time, and how do they fly? How do they make their
nurseries or nests, and how do they know just how large these ought
to be? Do birds talk and laugh and play at games? What sort of a
mother does a bird make, and what do the father birds think of the
babies? Do birds have a childhood after their babyhood, and are they
allowed by their parents to grow up idle and helpless? Will our wild
birds grow tame and trustful if we love and pet them, and do they
learn to prefer such food as we eat ourselves? In short, does it pay
to cultivate the acquaintance of birds and to think of them as people?
We will talk about these things in this little book, and when we are
done, perhaps you will wonder that you did not get up earlier and
know more about the beautiful little winged people in your yard.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
HOW BIRDS DRESS.
In temperate climates like this birds do not dress in such bright
colors as they do in hot countries. Their coats and gowns are
plainer. There are few extremes in color here, as there are few
extremes in heat or cold.
We can tell almost any race or class of people by their style of
dress or lack of dress. We can name the trees and shrubs and vines by
their foliage, which is really their dress; so we know the different
kinds of birds by their plumage or dress.
Many birds resemble in color the haunts or places which they like the
best. Desert birds are pale or gray, like the sand. Many of those
in the tropics are dressed in gay colors, like the bright blossoms
about them, while many birds in the cold north are white like the
snow. By this we see that in all nature, and especially among the
bird people, dress is of great importance.
Some of the larger and coarser birds have been accused of being very
untidy about their dress. They do not seem to care how they look, and
do not show their clothes off proudly as others do. But people who
think this have not observed them very closely. Birds like the hawks
and vultures are really very neat and tidy.
Turkey buzzards[2] look very ugly and rough at first glance, but
their plumage is suited to their needs, and they take great pains to
be clean.
[2] Turkey vulture, _Cathartes aura_.
You will notice that the buzzard has no feathers on his head and
neck, and it is this lack of hat or bonnet that makes this bird
look so odd and unlovely. But we must not be in a hurry to blame
him for this, nor call him hard names because he does not happen to
wear a collar or head-dress. There are some things which we do not
understand unless we first ask questions or get better acquainted
with people.
You see the buzzard, like the scavengers who clean up our dirty
streets, is always at work on dead things and scraps of garbage
which we do not want. We respect him for doing a very necessary sort
of work. He must dress to suit his occupation, like other sensible
people, though we cannot help wishing the buzzard had a suit of
Sunday clothes.
[Illustration: Turkey Buzzard.]
He wears nothing on his head because he is obliged to reach far
in beneath bones and thick skin in search of food. If he wore
a head-dress, like his neighbors, it would get very foul and
ill-smelling, and we should think him far more untidy than he is. As
it is, he can slip his naked head into marrow bones and out again
without much trouble, and not be afraid of spoiling his hat, as other
birds would.
We would not care to be daily companions of the buzzard and the
carrion crow, although they are useful and interesting birds. We
would prefer to be in the company of better dressed and better bred
people.
Most of the birds we know think a great deal about their dress. They
work much of their time to keep it tidy and in good order. They mend
their clothes, too, although they do not use a needle and thread. A
little girl we know laughed heartily one day when we told her that
the robin mends her dress when it is torn.
The little girl had only to watch and see that Mrs. and Miss Robin,
and other birds as well, smooth out and fix up the torn and rumpled
feathers till they look as good as new.
Different kinds of birds have different fashions, but these fashions
never change. A bird to-day dresses exactly as its grandmother
did, and the birds never seem to make fan of one another for being
old-fashioned.
Once in a long while we find a solitary bird different in color from
others of its kind. We have seen a white blue jay, and there is in
our yard a brown towhee which has two white feathers in its wing.
Such birds are very rare, as are people who have a spot of white
hair on their heads when all the rest is dark; or albinos, that is,
persons with pink eyes and very white skin, although they belong to a
dark race.
Two suits of clothes a year are quite enough for most birds, while
one suit is all that others can afford. But birds are very careful of
their clothes, although they never try to dress more gaily than their
neighbors and friends. They only try to be clean, and so they set us
a very good example.
Sit down on the grass under a tree, or on a seat in the park, and see
the birds dress themselves. Every separate feather is cleaned and
pulled and looked over, just as a woman cleans and stretches delicate
lace and embroidery. See how the loose feathers are pulled out and
dropped, like so many useless ravellings or worn threads. The bird
watches the falling plume until it reaches the ground, canting her
head to one side to see what becomes of her tatters, and then she
goes on with her dressing.
Madam Bird manages very well to twist about and reach all of her
clothes except her head-dress. Have you wondered how a bird can turn
its head all around in a way that would cramp your own neck if you
should try it? The neck of a bird is more flexible than yours; that
is, it is furnished with more joints, so that the bird can turn its
head readily and dress itself with ease.
A bird never changes the whole of its dress at once. Little by little
the feathers drop out or are pulled away, so that they are not
missed. If they should all come out in one day or one week, the bird
would be helpless and unable to fly.
If you should attempt to smooth a bird's feathers without knowing
how, you would very likely make her look very ragged. Naturalists,
who know how because they have practised so much, can smooth and pull
the feathers as well as the bird herself. They can pick up a hurt
bird and by a few touches make her look respectable.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
HOW MADAM BIRD COMBS HER HAIR.
Madam Bird is not able to smooth her head-dress with her bill. What
does she do about it? Why, she uses her foot, which serves also as
her hand.
Birds are either-handed; that is, they can use the left hand or foot
as well as the right. Some people think that a parrot is left-handed,
because she always takes in her left hand the cracker or sugar which
you offer to her. The next time you feed her, stop and see what you
are doing. You are standing in front of the bird and offering her the
cracker in your right hand. She is facing you, and of course takes
the food with her left hand. Everybody gives her things in the same
way, and she naturally uses her left hand, because we teach her to do
so.
But wild birds are either handed. Watch and see how they comb their
hair, first on one side and then on the other, scratching very fast,
as if to get all the tangles out, but never crying, "Oh, don't!" when
it pulls. We call the fine feathers "hair," because they grow on the
bird's head as our hair does on our own.
See how Mrs. Bird lifts her crown and separates the soft feathers,
and fixes her frizzes or bangs, if she wears them. After she has
combed her hair this way long enough, she smoothes it down in good
order with her hair dressing, as you will see later on.
Did you ever notice a bird wash its ears? That is enough to make you
smile, but we assure you it does wash its ears and all around its
mouth after its meals, and between meals as often as it is necessary.
Watch your tame canary; he is very much like wild birds in habits
of neatness. See him stand on one foot and reach the other foot up
quickly between the long feathers of his wing and dig away at his
ears, just as if his mother had told him to "get ready for school."
We have laughed many a time to see him wash himself, he does it so
deftly and cheerfully, as if it were the greatest fun in the world.
Then, to get the corners of his mouth clean, he wipes them on his
towel. His towel is his perch or any cross-bar in the cage. You may
say he is "sharpening his bill," but he is really wiping his face. He
has probably washed it in his bath a few minutes before.
Some birds wear their hair done up high on their heads like a
"pug,"--the "crest" as we call it, standing out like the twist of the
fashion. Others, such as our mountain quail,[3] prefer something like
a Chinaman's queue or the revolutionary braids. Others still comb
their hair down plain and neat like little Quakers.
[3] In Southern California, _Oreortyx pictus plumiferus_.
But whichever way a bird dresses its head, it is always becoming
and pretty. We have watched birds dressing themselves, sitting
or standing on the edge of the tub under the hydrant, or at the
brook or puddle, and we have wondered if they were not looking at
themselves in the water, flirting and twisting and turning about just
like real people at a looking-glass.
Most birds wear short dresses or skirts in true walking style, while
a few prefer the trail. But one thing we have noticed: they never
allow the trail to drag in the dust or mud, not even the road-runner,
whose train is sometimes twelve inches long.
[Illustration: Mountain Quail.]
A mocking-bird or a robin will let her train just touch the ground
when she stretches up to look about her; but when she begins to walk
again she lifts it. So you never see the tip of the longest tail one
bit draggled, unless the bird is wounded or sick.
If you watch closely, you will learn to tell a male bird from a
female bird by its dress. To be sure, his coat skirts are cut so
much like the dress of his mate that we sometimes have to imagine a
good deal to see any difference.
But, as a rule, you can tell the male or gentleman bird because he
dresses so much more gayly than his mate, although we do not think he
spends quite so much time as she in fixing and mending his clothes
and in bathing. The lady bird works harder than her mate in going to
market to get lumber and nails for her house or cradle, and so she
soils her clothes more. Then she sits longer in the nest and works
harder in many ways, never once thinking about putting on an apron.
You must not think too hard of the gentleman birds for letting their
mates do the most of the home work, for you remember that it is the
male who must always be ready for his place in the orchestra at a
moment's notice. He is obliged to make most of the music, and if he
should neglect his duty he would probably lose his place and be put
out of the choir.
A singer bird has no notes spread out before him, but must go over
and over his part, until he knows it by heart with no one to prompt
him.
You need not be surprised because we said a bird must get lumber and
nails for her house or cradle. If she did not have lumber and nails,
she could not do her work. Of course you never hear her pounding with
a hammer, still she uses what may be called nails, as you shall see
by and by.
I should not have to change my dress
Were I a bird in yonder tree,
And say, "Excuse me, if you please,"
When callers come to visit me.
But I would fly upon a bough.
And say, "My dear, come right up here."
And we would sit and swing and chat
Beneath the sky so blue and clear.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT BIRDS CARRY IN THEIR POCKETS.
Some birds wear on their heads plumes, or bright and showy hats.
These they sometimes lift in true bird style. There is the
ruby-crowned kinglet[4] which one sees in the garden trees. When this
little king lifts his hat, he shows what looks like a ruby crown or
jewel on top of his head.
[4] _Regulus calendula._
Other birds wear cocked hats, or tall silk hats with waving plumes.
You can imagine almost anything you like in the dress of a bird, from
his hat to his shoes. When a bird who wears a hat is surprised by
another bird, or is angry, or when he wants to "show off" to his mate
while paying his respects to her, he lifts the feathers on the top of
his head; and this is what we call "lifting his hat."
Many of our merry little bird friends, both male and female, wear
bonnets or hoods, which we think are tied closely under the chin.
Others, like the woodpeckers, wear collars of lace. This lace is
made of loose, filmy feathers, as different from the feathers of the
breast or back as embroidery is different from closely woven cloth.
[Illustration: Ruby-crowned Kinglet.]
When a warm day comes, you will see the birds lift their wings and
hold their feathers close, and pant with their bills open. How tired
they look, and the song or twitter which you hear is a weary one, as
if they were saying, "The oldest inhabitant never saw so warm a day."
In a cold snap the dress fluffs out, and the bird looks much larger
than he did on the warm day. It seems as if he were saying, "See me
make my wraps as big and thick as I can."
Many of the birds that sit up and fly about all the long cold night
are more warmly clothed than most day birds, who tuck themselves into
bed as soon as the sun sets. Examine the owls and see how warmly they
dress. Many of them wear trousers of feathers, reaching to the knees
or coming low down to the ankles. Often their feet are covered with
feathers down to their sharp claws. Their necks, too, are all wrapped
up with feathers, like comforters or woollen scarfs, so that only the
bill may be seen.
[Illustration: Short-eared Owl.]
It gets pretty cold in the middle of the night, and Mr. Owl knows
how to wrap himself up. Besides, with these thick, soft feathers he
can fly after his prey without making any noise.
A bird's shoes and stockings are strong and never seem to wear out.
If they become worn, they are mended so quickly you never know the
difference. The foot and leg are covered with scales, like the scales
on a lizard.
Birds and lizards are much alike; in fact, they are a sort of cousin
or distant relative, so that they dress alike in the matter of shoes
and stockings. Only the lizard wears scales all over, while a bird
wears them only for shoes and stockings. The bird has found out that
feathers are better for flying in the air, while the lizard, crawling
as he always does, is perfectly happy with only scales for clothes.
All birds, big and little, wear warm, fleecy underclothes, better
and softer than flannel. You can see bits of these underclothes at
the bottoms of the knee trousers or dresses, or, if you happen to be
holding a bird in your hand, you can part the outer clothes and see
and feel the delicate down. Sometimes, when a bird ruffles his outer
garments in washing himself, the soft warm underclothes are in plain
sight.
Birds never use complexion powders; that, no doubt, would seem very
vulgar to them. But they do use hair oil every day. They carry this
mixture about with them in their pockets. By pockets we mean little
pouches or sacks which always lie on the back, near the tail. Birds
would not be quite dressed without their pockets, and they know where
to find them without any trouble. We suppose this is because birds'
pockets have always been in the same place.
If it looks like rain, the "hair oil," as we call it, is used more
freely. Suppose the lady bird wishes to oil the back of her head and
around her face. Of course she is not able to take up the bottle and
pour the oil into her hand; but she squeezes a little out with her
beak, as you would press a rubber bulb. Then she lays the oil on her
back just above her wings.
To get the oil all about where she wishes to put it, she rubs her
head against it, twisting and turning her neck, until all the
feathers of her head are straight and shining.
When a shower comes, the water falls or slides down the bird's back
and shoulders on the oil, never finding its wet way beneath to the
underclothing. Birds are like those people who live in the cold and
wet north. The Eskimo are said to rub their whole bodies with seal or
fish oil to keep themselves from being wet.
Bird babies seldom have any clothing to begin life with. A few, such
as the walkers and waders and most of the swimmers, like quail and
sandpipers and ducks, are covered with thick down when they come out
of their shell.
Many of the bird babies in our yard have hardly a trace of the finest
down, while others have a little of it in patches, like tiny shirts
or bibs. Birds which have no clothes are hatched in the warmest
nests, and are close to the mother's breast almost all the time,
until their clothes have time to grow. They do not have oil in their
pockets until they have feathers to put it on.
[Illustration]
A baby bird has such a wide mouth that he looks very odd. But then,
you see, his mouth is wide on purpose, so that the parent birds can
drop the food in quickly. If the parents had to hunt around to find
six or eight little mouths, many a nice bug or worm would get away
and the babies go hungry.
Look into a nest and see that four or five open bills are as much of
the young birds as you can catch sight of above the edge of the nest.
Each is trying to open his mouth a little wider than his brothers
and sisters so that it can get the first mouthful. We have often
wondered how the mother knows which bird to feed when she comes to
the nest. We spent two or three days once to be quite sure that she
fed all alike. She fed them in turn, even though she returned many
times, not once giving the last one another bite until she had been
all around. We do not know whether she counts them or calls them by
name, but she makes no mistake in feeding them.
We saw a humming-bird mother one day stand on the head of one little
baby birdling while she fed the other. Not all of her weight was on
the bird, of course, but quite enough to make him keep out of her way
while she fed his brother.
A baby bird gains nothing by teasing and coaxing; it must wait for
its turn to come, no matter how hungry it happens to be. It is
probably more greedy than hungry when it wants to get more than its
share.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII.
CHILD BIRDS.
During childhood, that is, during the first season, most birds look
quite different from their parents. Many of them do not get the color
or texture of grown-up birds for a year or more.
You can soon learn to tell which are the children among the birds by
what they wear and by the way they talk. Their voices are childish
and coaxing. They sometimes cry, and call in piping tones even after
they have learned to fly to the highest tree, or to soar far into the
blue sky, just to see how high they can go.
We have sometimes thought that bird children play at games of
hide-and-seek among the bushes, and that they try to see which one of
them can jump the farthest. Watch them for yourselves, and you will
see such fun as will make you laugh.
Birds are like other children, they get hungry very often at their
play. We have seen whole broods of young orioles following the
old birds about and teasing for food long after the next nest of
birdlings was hatched. These teasing children were as large as their
parents, and might better have been feeding their younger brothers
and sisters.
Parent birds often drive their young away from them, and eat the food
which they have caught themselves right before the children, as if to
say, "Go, find some for yourselves."
In Southern California, where we live, in midsummer the yard seems
full of young linnets[5] coaxing from day-light till dark. All the
limbs of the trees are alive with them. They stand in rows, with
their mouths wide open, and we wonder how the old birds can take care
of so many children at once. We see the young birds teasing one
another sometimes, as if they were saying, "Tommy dear," or, "Susy
dear, please divide your lunch."
[5] House finch, _Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis_.
[Illustration: Linnet.]
So we see that birds have a childhood as well as a babyhood, but
it is very short, for they are soon taught to work hard and to be
self-supporting.
A lazy young bird never gets on in the world. Parent birds are
very kind but firm. It sounds as if they were sometimes scolding
good-naturedly. We imagine them saying to their children, "We have
shown you the seeds and the berries, now go to work. If you want
food, help yourselves; for we have been to market for you long
enough. Dress yourselves, too. See how you each have a bottle of oil.
Now be neat and careful of your clothes, for it will be a long while
before you get any more."
We have seen young birds make very awkward attempts at dressing
themselves. Sitting in a tree, they try to imitate the old birds,
fluttering and turning about, and rubbing their small heads on their
shoulders, and falling off from the branch in their excitement.
It is this daily care of their clothes that makes birds so beautiful.
It seems to us that they know very well that they will not be able to
get a new suit very often, and that they must take good care of those
clothes they have. We have never seen child birds smear their food
over their faces and clothes, not even when they were eating bread
and butter and stewed blackberries. It may seem funny to you that
birds should eat bread and butter and stewed blackberries, as if they
were cooks and housekeepers. But they really do, as you shall see by
and by.
Little birds pay attention to what is said to them. They learn their
lessons well, and they "say their pieces" like any child, and, like
children, they seem to make mistakes at first. They do not take their
dinner-pails and go long distances to school. They learn at home
with their fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters.
The school-house is anywhere, in the yard or the woods or fields. If
you take the trouble to listen and keep very quiet in midsummer, you
will be able to see and hear these bird schools going on at a rate
that will make you smile and think that birds are real people.
You can see the children in the nests or on the branches of trees, or
even on the ground, learning musical notes, and the letters of their
alphabet, and running the bird scale, just like any class in school.
Every now and then you will see them skip out for a drink of water at
the pump or brook. They may not hurry back at once, but stop to look
at themselves in the water and to frolic about in the ferns and grass.
Birds have a very happy childhood. It will pay any child or grown
person to spend a whole summer or autumn in studying them and their
ways. This would be much better than wishing one could go somewhere,
when one hasn't the money to go with, or being unhappy because one
hasn't fine clothes and houses.
Young birds do not seem to be very much afraid of us. They only look
a little surprised and try to hop a bit faster if we go too near them.
See how queer the tops of their heads look, with the baby down still
sticking out in little tufts through the thicker feathers. Their
lips, too, along the edges of the bill!--how yellow they are, as
though they had just been eating new spring butter.
Those soft yellow lips will soon turn dark and hard from use, just as
a real baby's feet lose their pink softness and grow callous when the
child goes barefoot a while.
Altogether, bird children are very interesting, and one who loves
them never gets tired of watching them. There is something new and
charming to learn every day. We wonder that there are any unhappy or
cross or sulky people in the world, when they may have the birds to
teach them better.
There is many a kind little boy who picks up a child bird and puts it
in a high place out of reach of cats and naughty boys. These may be
sure that the mother bird will find her young one, and you may hear
her thanking you, if you listen. Besides, every time a boy is good to
a child bird he has made his own childhood richer and happier.
O happy little bird-child, full of life and glee,
Won't you stay this summer in the yard with me?
You shall have some berries when the berries grow;
Berries don't hurt children--mother told me so.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VIII.
HOW BABY BIRDS ARE FED.
Some of the baby birds are nurslings, like the lambs and colts. They
are dependent upon what the parent birds first eat and digest. Others
eat just what the old birds do from the start. Only you will notice
that the mother bird pounds and bruises the food she gives to her
young, tapping it on the edge of the nest or on a twig or the ground
until it is soft enough for the birds to swallow without danger of
scratching their tender throats.
Linnets, pigeons, humming-birds, and some of the finches, are
nurslings. The food is prepared for them by the parent birds, and the
young are fed by the old bird's bill. We imagine that the bill of
the parent bird is the nursing-bottle. The old birds first eat food
themselves, and then work it over in their crops into a sort of paste
or milky fluid. Then, when the meal is all ready, they alight on
the edge of the nest and feed the babies. We have seen humming-bird
mothers feed the babies while poised on their wings above the nest.
Perhaps there are four or five finches all clamoring for breakfast,
crying, and stretching their little necks up as high as possible. The
old bird on the edge of the nest looks at the open mouths of all her
babies, and begins at the one she thinks is the hungriest. She puts
the nursing-bottle, which is her bill, far down the throat of the
nursling, clinging fast to the nest or twig with her toes, and moving
her bill up and down, her own throat throbbing all the while.
We once saw a humming-bird feed one of her young ones and then fly
away. During her absence the little birds changed places in the
nest, turning completely around. When the mother came back to finish
giving them their breakfast, she made no mistake, but fed the hungry
one, though both had their bills wide open.
When the mother has fed one child as much as she thinks is its share,
she turns to the next open mouth. In this way she nurses the whole
cradleful, who seem never to be satisfied.
[Illustration: Humming-Bird feeding her Young.]
We have seen no "runts" or dwarf birds in a family, as are sometimes
seen in a nest of pigs or puppies. The parent birds seem to
understand, and to see that each baby has its proper share and not a
crumb more. They do not love one better than another.
Some birds keep on nursing their young long after we think the lazy
children are large enough to be looking out for themselves. It would
be no better than they deserve if they had to go hungry sometimes.
We think they often must get very hungry before they have learned to
work for their board. This is all right, for if the parents kept on
supporting them, what useless creatures they would be!
We shall tell you after a while about our bird's restaurant. We
have seen the young birds follow their mother to the table at
this restaurant and stand coaxing for the crumbs. At first the
mocking-bird mother picks up the food and puts it in the young bird's
mouth, and then she flies away. She has given it only a little,
just to show the little bird where the food is and how to pick it
up himself. There he will stand, looking at the cookie crumbs and
teasing as loud as he can, but the mother will not come back. She
sits in a tree near by watching to see how her bird child learns his
first lesson at helping himself.
After a while, the young bird gets very hungry and begins pecking
for the crumbs. At first he makes very awkward attempts at grabbing
a crumb, but he succeeds at last and swallows the rest of his
breakfast. We laugh, sitting in the shade watching him, and we think
his mother is laughing too, in the tree above.
Those birds that do not nurse their young with liquid food are
supposed to give them water as well as food, by bringing it to them
in their beaks, though we have not seen them do so. Probably the
babies are fed on soft worms and fruits until they have cut their
first teeth.
How can the little things eat hard seeds and bones before they have
any teeth? Does it make you smile and wonder when we speak of baby
birds cutting their teeth? Don't you suppose birds have teeth? Of
course they have.
Every bird has a set of false teeth working out of sight. Birds never
have the toothache, and they do not have to be brave and hold still
while somebody pulls their teeth out. They can have a new set of
teeth as often as they need them, without paying a good price to the
dentist.
Look along the path and you will see these teeth, lying as thick as
hail in some places. Little sharp stones, coarse gravel, and fine
sand,--these are the bird's teeth. When a bird picks them up, he
swallows them, and they go, without any trouble, right where they
belong, down to a kind of pouch or pocket called the gizzard. This
pocket is lined with very tough muscles. These muscles or rings look
something like a fluting-iron or washboard, and as they move they set
the teeth or little stones to rolling against the food in such a way
that it is soon ground into bits, or rather into paste.
It takes a baby bird a long time to learn to pick up anything with
its bill. It will peck and peck at the food without being able to
touch it, as we have seen many birds do when brought up in a cage,
and as the little mocking-birds do at the garden table.
Once we had some pet orioles, and before we noticed what he was
doing, one of them made his bill look like a hawk's bill, all curved
or crooked. He had pecked so hard at the food on the board floor of
his cage that the hard taps had bent his soft bill out of shape, and
it remained so after the bird had grown up. We have seen a blue jay
and a thrush and a towhee, each with his beak out of shape, twisted
to one side or broken. This must have been done when they were
little. Birds, like other people, must have the right start if they
are to be beautiful when they are older.
[Illustration: Blue Jay.]
Though young birds can see the food before them, they have to try
a long while before they know exactly how to take hold of it. They
make us think of real babies trying to pick up some toy with their
fat little hands. A bird's bill at first is very soft, like a baby's
bones. If you feel of it, you will see that to the touch it is like a
piece of rubber.
The difficulty is really more with the bird's eyes than with his
bill, for it seems that, although he sees the food which he wants to
eat, he cannot measure the distance correctly until he has learned
how to see straight and aim right.
"Let me look in your mouth, little bird;
How many white teeth have you?
No teeth? then how do you chew your food?
Be honest and tell me true."
"My teeth are all out of sight, little boy,
They are hard and white and firm;--
Out of sight, but they grind the seeds like a mill,
And the bug, and the nice fat worm."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX.
AT MEAL-TIME.
If we had twenty birds in a cage and had to hunt for all the food
they could eat, the same as they would do if they were free, we
should have a busy time of it, and very likely the birds would starve.
Birds have sharp eyes. Watch the finches and see how they hop from
twig to twig, pecking at tiny things which we cannot even see. These
birds seem to be near-sighted, finding their dinner right under their
eyes. We could not possibly see anything so near our faces.
Then there are some of the birds who seem far-sighted, seeing food
at a longer distance than we could, and darting for it as quick as a
flash.
It is a fact that most birds are both near-sighted and far-sighted.
Their eyes are both telescopes and microscopes. Watch Madam Mocker or
Mrs. Robin. She will see a grasshopper on the other side of the lawn,
or a daddy-long-legs taking a sun-bath at the far end of the picket
fence. The grasshopper and the daddy haven't time to get up and be
off before they are surprised by Madam Bird's sharp bill.
Birds, like other people, must work if they will eat, and so they go
in search of the cupboard or the cellar, and it is sometimes hard
work to find them. The cupboard is anywhere in a dry place, and the
door is never locked. The cellar is almost anywhere, too, where it is
cool and damp, under the grass and chips and down in cracks between
logs and boards. The food in the cellar is very unlike the food in
the cupboard.
There are some insects that never see the light and cannot bear the
sunshine. They are usually soft, tender things, and live where it is
moist and cool. We call these the food in the bird's cellar. There
are other insects that love the dry air, where it is warm, the bark
of trees and the hot sand, and these we call the food in the bird's
cupboard.
Birds spend nearly all their time in hunting for something to eat.
Life seems to be one long picnic for them. They digest rapidly. Their
food is found and picked up in very small quantities, excepting the
food of the gourmands like the buzzards. These birds are certainly
not very tidy or nice about their meals. They eat as much as they
possibly can, and then sit about on the low fences, or even on the
ground, too full and heavy to fly away.
Birds have sharp ears and can hear bugs and worms long before they
can be seen. The woodpecker listens for the grubs with his ear close
to the bark of the trees. But woodpeckers are not always after grubs
when you see them running up and down a tree trunk and pecking holes
in the bark. They like the inner skin of the bark for food, and the
sap-suckers drink the sap of the tree.
Watch the robin or the mocking-bird on the lawn. You have been
sprinkling that lawn for two weeks in midsummer, just to make the
grass nice and green. Perhaps you did not think that you were making
it easy for the birds to get something to eat in a dry time. But you
see that your sprinkling or watering has made the turf mellow and
soft, so that the worms can crawl up to the surface more easily than
if it were dry. And the birds are making the most of your kindness,
as you see.
See how that little bird cants his head and listens. We imagine him
holding up his hand and saying, "Don't move, please, nor do anything
to scare this worm away. I hear it coming up to the top of the
ground, and I am very hungry."
[Illustration: Downy Woodpecker.]
Once we saw a very funny sight. A mocking-bird in the yard had grown
very tame and had nested close by, taking no pains to fly away from
us. She soon came to know that we had something for her to eat when
we called, "Come, Chickie," and she would fly close to us with eager
eyes, not at all afraid.
Every night at sundown, which is the bird's supper-time, we went to
the summer-house and turned over the empty flower-pots. Under these
pots little black bugs were hiding, but more especially the saw-bugs,
soft, gray, crawling things. The mocking-bird would follow us as fast
as she could, picking up the bugs for her young. When she had a mouth
full of the wriggling insects, she would go and feed them to her
babies and come back again to the moist places under the pots, until
every bug was captured.
Once there were more bugs under one pot than she could possibly carry
at one time, and she was in great trouble to know what to do about
it. She swallowed as many as she wanted herself, and then she began
cramming her mouth full for the babies. The bugs looked so tempting,
and there were so many, she did not like to lose any of them, and so
she kept on picking them up. After her mouth was as full as it could
hold, the bugs kept falling out at the sides of her bill, and she
would pick them up again over and over without knowing it, until we
scared her away by our laughing.
Some birds, as we have said, such as the owls, take their food
whole. Of course, bones, hair, and feathers cannot be digested, so
after a time they are thrown up in the shape of little balls, called
"castings," and by examining them we can find out exactly what the
bird has been eating.
Most of the birds we are acquainted with pick their food very
carefully, and eat only that which will digest without trouble. You
can see them hold it down with one foot, looking at it closely to
be quite sure that it is really good to eat. They often pull it to
shreds and swallow it in little bits. If it is a butterfly dinner,
the wings are torn off and sent floating to the ground. If it is a
grasshopper supper, the tough, wiry legs of the insect are thrown
away, and only the rich, luscious breast and fat thighs are eaten.
In California we have the pepper tree, which is all covered with
clusters of red berries. Under the thin, red skin is a sweet, soft
pulp which covers the seed. The pulp is all there is of the pepper
berry which the birds can digest. But this is a very sweet morsel
indeed, and tourist birds come a long distance to get it.
Robin redbreasts,[6] come here in winter to eat our pepper berries,
and then, of course, they disgorge the hard seeds, which they cannot
possibly digest, just as the owls do the bones of their prey.
[6] _Merula migratoria propinqua._
We think the mocking-birds have taught the robins to do this, and we
have noticed the wax-wings[7] doing the same thing.
[7] _Ampelis cedrorum._
When the winter tourist birds make a raid on our yards, we can hear
the tiny pepper seeds fall in a shower on our tin roofs, under the
tall trees, and the door-steps will be covered. Sometimes the seeds
come down so thick and fast that we can think of nothing but a
hail-storm. The pepper berries ripen in midwinter, and it is worth
one's while to see a flock of robins and wax-wings come into our
yard. In a few days almost every pepper tree has been robbed, and
nothing is left us but the brown seeds.
These, and other birds from the north who come to pay us a visit in
winter, are tamer than they are at home. They seem to think that we
are on our honor to be polite to strangers, and so we are.
If you watch closely, wherever you live, at some time in the year you
will see visiting birds in your yard and you ought to be polite to
them.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER X.
SEED-EATERS AND MEAT-EATERS.
If we wish to keep one of the wild birds in a cage, we usually select
one of the seed-eaters. These birds are gentle and are readily tamed.
Our tame canaries are descended from the wild seed-eaters.
Seed-eating birds make us think of some nations of men who live on
rice or fruit. Those who have been among these people tell us that
they are gentle and kind and ready to learn.
Many birds are very fond of spiders. It is said that spiders are a
kind of "bird medicine," and that some birds could not live without
them. This seems rather hard for the spiders, but sometimes they pay
the birds back. There is said to be a spider in a certain part of
the world which is so large and strong that it eats birds. It lies
in wait and catches small, weak birds as if they were so many flies.
This seems very cruel, because we love the birds so much. But we
might learn to love the spiders just as well, if we should get better
acquainted with them.
[Illustration: Chimney Swift.]
When you are outdoors just after sundown, you will sometimes see a
great many swifts and swallows in the air, darting around in great
circles. They do not seem to be going anywhere or doing anything in
particular. But you will find that they really have something very
important on hand. They are eating their late suppers.
There are tiny insects high up where the birds are flying, whole
swarms of them, and these make a delicious supper for the hungry
birds.
[Illustration: Arkansas Goldfinch.]
The finches, or wild canaries,[8] as we call them in Southern
California, are among our commonest birds. These birds shell
plant-seeds before swallowing them, as one can see by watching flocks
of them in the sunflower patches. We have thrown hard crumbs out to
them in the yard, and they have been seen to crack these crumbs all
to pieces, thinking of course that there must be a shell.
[8] _Spinus psaltria_ and _Spinus tristis_.
The birds do not crack or break their teeth or beaks, be the seeds
ever so hard, as a child would be very likely to do on a walnut.
Every bird carries a nutcracker about with him wherever he goes. If a
finch gets hold of a very tough, hard seed, he slips it far back in
the beak, where the angle of the jaw gives better strength or force.
He can then break it easily, as you would crack the hardest nut by
placing it close to the hinge of the nutcracker.
If the seed is tender or brittle, the bird pushes it to the point of
his beak with his tongue and presses on it. Out drops the seed-cover
to the ground, leaving the meat in the bird's bill.
Our tame canary has an original way of preparing his food. We give
him cookie or bread, and he breaks off bits and carries them to
his water dish, into which he drops them. After they have soaked a
little while, he goes back and picks them out and eats them. Now his
teeth are not at all poor, for he cracks his canary seeds without
any trouble. We think he likes a little mush for a change, and so he
makes it for himself.
One sometimes wonders why our garden birds do not store away food
when it is plentiful, as squirrels do. There are ever so many nice
hiding-places all about. Some wild birds do hide their food, thus
"laying up something for a rainy day," which we think is about the
right thing for birds and other people to do.
One reason why our civilized birds do not store their food is that a
supply of one kind or another is almost always to be found. Besides,
many of our birds travel about so much, always going where food is,
that there is no need of storing it.
The seed-eaters do not travel much, as seeds may always be found, in
winter as well as in summer. Birds that depend for food upon insect
life must go in search of it as the seasons change.
One sometimes thinks the birds do little else but think about
meal-time. A singer will sometimes "make believe" forget, while he
sits on his swaying branch, pouring out his throat full of melody,
as if he did not care if he never tasted food again. But suddenly,
without a hint, there is a stop in the music that doesn't belong just
there, and the bird darts to the ground. He swallows a worm or a
blue-jacketed fly, and then back he goes to his perch and his song,
as if he had not been interrupted at all.
We do not think it is the worst fate in the world to be eaten by a
bird and made into song and chirp and flutter. We owe a good deal to
the insects, which the birds we love so much could not do without. We
ought to think of this and not step on a bug or worm in the path.
Some heartless people think it is a great treat to have a pot-pie
made of as many little birds as they can get by paying for them or
shooting them,--birds so small that it takes a whole one to make a
good mouthful.
We do not think it wrong to have a chicken dinner, or even a quail or
pigeon, if we are sick; because it takes only a bird or two to make
enough. But we do think it is wrong to take many happy lives just
to give one person a dinner, when he could make as good a meal on
beefsteak as on a dozen little birds.
Birds have so many enemies that they hardly ever die of old age. We
ought to think of this, and do what we can to prolong their lives.
There is hardly a spot on earth so desolate that birds are not found
there.
CHAPTER XI.
SOME BIRDS WITH A BAD NAME.
A good name is what we all want in this world. We like to have people
speak well of us behind our backs. There are a few birds which have a
bad name. Sometimes they deserve what is said of them, and sometimes
they are quite innocent. It is always well for us to find out for
ourselves if what we hear about birds is quite true.
There is a king-bird or bee-martin. Farmers think him a very wicked
little fellow, catching the bees on the wing and eating greedily
whole swarms of them. Mr. Farmer has not yet found out everything
about the bee-martin, or he would know that he eats a good many
enemies of the bees, even if he does swallow a few of the bees
themselves.
[Illustration: King-Bird.]
We once saw these birds around our beehive and felt certain that they
were eating the bees. They would dart close to the hives, snapping
their bills and looking very savage. But we were willing to watch a
long while, that we might be certain if we were not mistaken, and we
did just right.
There was some tall grass near the hives, and we noticed swarms of
strange looking black-and-blue flies all over the grass. We saw these
flies dart out to the front of the hive and kill the bees faster than
the birds could have done it.
Waiting a little longer, we found that the birds were on the watch
for these flies, and it was these they were catching instead of the
bees at that particular time.
A certain naturalist, who has spent a good deal of time trying to
find out if the bee-birds do really kill bees, has told us a little
secret, which is very interesting and may lead some other people to
investigate the matter. He says that he has never found a worker-bee
in the stomach of a bee-bird, though he has examined a great many of
them. He has found only drones, which the worker bees are very glad
to get rid of and often kill, because they are lazy and eat honey
without gathering any for winter.
Perhaps one reason why the bee-bird prefers the drone to the worker
is because the drones have no stings.
By all this you see that it pays us to take some trouble to find out
all the good there is about anybody.
However, it cannot be denied that the king-birds do eat bees, when
they can find nothing they like better. We have often wondered what
they do with so many stings, and why they are not poisoned by them.
We have not examined a king-bird's throat to find out this secret,
but a friend of ours did look at the throat of a toad which persisted
in eating his bees on warm summer evenings. This man found a good
many stings on the side of the toad's throat, which had caught there
when he swallowed the bees. Stings are probably not poisonous to
toads and bee-birds.
[Illustration: Loggerhead Shrike.]
Hardly anybody speaks a good word for the butcher-bird or shrike.[9]
Yet this bird is not half so bad as most people think he is. It
is true that he has been caught a few times in doing very naughty
things, such as making a dinner on a small chicken, or on birds
weaker than himself.
[9] _Lanius ludovicianus._
But his most common food consists of insects, especially Jerusalem
crickets. This great yellow cricket is an inch or two inches long,
and he looks as bad as he is reported to be, for he wears a suit of
clothes with brown and yellow stripes, running around, instead of
up and down in the usual way for stripes. This makes one think of a
convict or a convict's suit of clothes.
Now the shrike, or butcher-bird, does us a great favor by making as
many meals as he can of these great crickets. These crickets are
the fellows that dig holes in our potatoes while they are in the
ground and bite the roots off from our pansies and other plants. The
butcher-bird also eats grasshoppers and beetles, and other enemies to
our roots and grains. So we see that he is more our friend than our
enemy.
This bird, which we have all learned to despise so much, could teach
us a good lesson in his line of work, for he is a very merciful and
kind butcher. He is in the habit of killing his victim quickly, and
does not hang it up alive on a thorn, as some people think he does.
He probably fastens his dinner in that way that he may pull it to
pieces easier and know where to find it when he is hungry again.
The English sparrow[10] is another bird that has a bad name, and he
deserves what is said of him more than some of the other birds. He is
quarrelsome and selfish and very unlovable. But in spite of this we
have sometimes put him to a good use, and have grown to look upon
the little tyrant as quite capable of adding to the comfort of our
families.
[10] _Passer domesticus_, introduced into the United States from
Europe.
Once there was a sick child in our family, and we happened to think
that the sparrow would make a good supper for our little invalid. The
birds were "small fry," to be sure, but we cooked them, and they were
good eating.
[Illustration: English Sparrow.]
Then we gathered all the sparrows' eggs we could reach every morning,
and cooked them. They were delicious. We felt that it was not wrong
for us to take a good many of these eggs, for there were countless
more.
We found that we could tempt the hen birds to lay their eggs close
to the door, by placing hay above the sills and around the window
corners, just as you would make a hen's nest for Mistress Biddy.
This disposition of the English sparrow to become domesticated, like
our hens, once came near making trouble in money matters. Captain
R. H. Pratt, of the Carlisle Indian School, noting that the sparrows
were driving all the other birds away from the school grounds,
offered a penny a set for all the eggs which should be brought to him.
The little Indian students, two hundred or more of them, made a raid
on the grounds, and brought so many eggs to the captain that he began
to think he should have no money left. He thought, "Surely there
cannot be so many nests as there are sets of eggs." So he set himself
to work to find out the secret.
It had not taken the boys long to learn that Mrs. Sparrow would lay
right along, just like a hen, if the nest itself were not destroyed.
The eggs were taken out cautiously as often as four or five were
laid, and the industrious little Indian claimed his reward. It was a
good scheme at money-making, but the alert superintendent soon found
it out, and of course took back his offer. There was no more bounty
given for sparrows' eggs that summer.
California farmers complain a good deal about the linnets.[11] One
man whom we know spent whole days in March killing the linnets,
because he thought they were eating up his peach buds. In late summer
we went over to see him, and what do you think he was doing? We found
him pulling off half of the little peaches and throwing them on the
ground.
[11] Housefinch, _Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis_.
"Good morning, sir," we said, stopping at the street along the edge
of the field. "What are you doing?"
He looked up and answered, "Oh, I am thinning out the peaches. They
are too thick on the boughs, and they will grow larger if there are
only half as many left. We always have to thin them out in this way
before fall."
"But, sir," we said, "don't you think it would have saved you some
trouble if you had let the linnets thin the peaches for you in the
spring? They would have eaten more insects than peaches, too, and not
have charged you a dollar for all their work."
The man looked surprised and scratched his head in a sorry sort of
way. Then he said, "Why, I never thought of that. I was told that the
linnets do a great deal of damage. I will get them to take care of my
peach orchard next year. I am sorry I made such a mistake."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XII.
BEFORE BREAKFAST.
"Ring the breakfast bell," cried Madam Towhee, "the sun is nearly up.
Rap on your tree, Mr. Flicker, and wake up the linnets."
"You are late yourself, Mrs. Towhee," said Mrs. Linnet; "my children
have had their breakfast already."
Mr. Flicker opened his sharp eyes and admired his sharp tail shafts.
Then he peeped from behind his tree and called out, "Mr. Mocker kept
me awake an hour in the night serenading young Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow.
That is why I slept so late."
[Illustration: Brown Towhee.]
Mr. Mocker, in the top of his house, rang the breakfast bell. It
sounded like the linnet and the towhee and the flicker and the robin
all together. The mocker laughed, too, like a dozen birds, keeping
his clapper going until the other people in the yard could scarcely
hear their own voices.
Up jumped little Mrs. Humming-bird and snatched a dewdrop from the
cup of a morning-glory on the trellis. "I prefer to drink distilled
water," she said, wiping her mouth.
"I like to drink from the hydrant," said Madam Linnet. "Any water
is good enough for me." Then she tilted herself on the top of the
hydrant and swallowed three drops as they fell from the pipe.
"What makes you always turn a somersault on the top of the hydrant?"
asked Mrs. Towhee. "It doesn't look polite to stoop over like that,
and drink with your head down."
"I don't drink with my mouth on the edge of the cup, like some people
I know," she said in reply to Mrs. Towhee. "Besides, it doesn't wet
my face' when the drops fall right into my mouth like this. I like to
turn upside down, too; it is good exercise for the muscles. What's
the use of a bird always being so proper?"
"Tut, tut!" said Mrs. Sparrow, "see how I drink." And she stood on
the edge of the puddle under the hydrant, and laid her breast in the
water, and drank, and drank, wetting her face and throat all over.
"I'm not afraid of a wetting," she said.
"What's all this talk about drinking?" asked old Mr. Butcher-bird,
coming down on the party with a swoop of his wings that scared all
the other birds back to the trees. "Don't run away," he said kindly.
"I've had my breakfast." Then he began to pull tatters of lizard meat
out of his bill.
"Where do you suppose I got that lizard?" he asked of a goldfinch.
"I have no idea," she answered. "I never saw a lizard up in the
morning so early as this. Lizards are 'sun birds' and don't like
cold, wet grass."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the butcher. "I caught him yesterday asleep, and
killed him, and pinned him on a thorn. I always get my breakfast
ready over night."
"I wish I had some wine to drink," observed Mr. Oriole, sadly. "The
doctor says I ought to drink wine, I feel so weak."
"What do you know about wine?" asked old Mr. Warbler, hopping along
where the birds were talking. "I tasted some wine once from a broken
bottle at the back door of a dram-shop, and it made me so dizzy
I couldn't fly. I had to stay on the shed roof all the morning,
feeling so foolish, and expecting to be caught by a cat any minute. I
wouldn't drink wine."
"I would, whole bottles of it," declared Mr. Oriole, laughing till he
almost cried. Then all the frightened birds came back to the hydrant.
"Too bad! too bad!" cried the warbler, wiping his eyes. "Young man,
you will be sorry. I wouldn't have anything to do with a doctor who
advised a young man to drink wine because he felt weak. Better go out
in the field to work."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the oriole again, amused at his own joke. "See me
tap my wine bottles." Then he flew to the berry patch and sipped
the red juice of the ripe raspberries, until his mouth and downy
moustache were all stained, the little winebibber.
"A pretty drinker you are," said the mocker; "give us a treat."
Then all the other birds fell to tapping the berry bottles, till a
lady came out of the house and cried, "Shoo!" flirting her gingham
apron at them and rattling her tin pail against the sunflower stalks
in a way that made the birds know she was in earnest. Then the lady
began filling her pail, while the birds watched her from behind the
leaves.
"Keep still," said Mr. Robin; "she'll never see them all. There'll be
plenty left. There are always more under the leaves. Let's go off to
the strawberry bed."
So the birds flew off to the strawberry bed on the other side of
the garden, and picked the ripe red side out of ever so many of the
berries. Then a man came out of the house and cried, "Shoo!" just as
the lady had done. But he did not begin to pick the berries. He stuck
a great ugly scarecrow up in the middle of the strawberry bed, and
laughed to himself as he thought how scared the birds would be when
they saw it.
But the birds, sitting in the trees, laughed too, and gay old Mr.
Mocker said, "He can't deceive us. We know a scarecrow from a man any
day."
As soon as the man's back was turned, the birds came down and
chattered in the scarecrow's face, and sat on the rim of his hat, and
wiped their bills on his coat sleeve, and made themselves very well
acquainted with him. All the while the man in the house was saying
to his daughter, "I guess those birds will let my strawberries alone
now."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIII.
OUR BIRDS' RESTAURANT.--MEALS AT ALL HOURS.
One day in the middle of winter some one suggested that we set up a
"Birds' Restaurant" out on the lawn. It was such a funny idea that we
had to laugh. After we were done laughing, we went to work, while the
birds watched us, as they always do, expecting some surprise.
We set a rustic table under a tree by the summer-house. Then came the
question, "What shall we put on it?" We imagined the birds all about
were making remarks, and suggesting in an undertone, "Just what you
eat, if you please." We remembered that the birds in our yard are
civilized birds, and so of course we gave them civilized food.
If you are not well acquainted with the birds, we suppose you will be
amused at our mention of bread and butter. But the birds make food a
"matter of taste," like other people. They have learned to like the
flavor of things they never dreamed of eating when they were wild,
just as some races of men leave off eating raw flesh and eat cooked
foods when they have been to school a while.
We rolled some cracker crumbs very fine. Then we crumbled a couple of
seed cookies, and chopped some walnuts into bits. Then we put some
stewed blackberries in a saucer, and a slice of bread and butter on a
plate.
This seemed to us like a pretty "square meal" for February birds,
and we stood back and smiled at the spread. Some people passing in
the street smiled too, and asked if we were having "a picnic, such
weather." And we were sure we heard the birds twittering. Of course
chairs at our restaurant were out of the question, things were gotten
up in such a hurry, owing to the "hard times" among the birds.
We stood behind a hedge and watched to see if company would come. We
were not disappointed. First a pair of brown towhees[12] hopped along
and up to the edge of the table. They did not even look for chairs,
but went straight for the blackberries, pecking away at the sweet
morsels until they were all gone, and then looking as if they could
have taken more.
[12] Pipilo fuscus senicula.
"Now, Mrs. Towhee," we said, "you had better put up a few cans of
blackberries for yourself next summer, if you think they are so
nice." She made no answer, but looked as if she expected us to put up
enough for ourselves and her too.
Then along came the sparrows.[13] They took the bread and butter
and cracker crumbs. They actually picked the butter from the bread,
just as all children do who are very fond of butter, feeling sure of
another "spread"' when that is gone. In less than an hour that table
was cleared of every bit of food. The linnets took the walnuts and
what was left of the cookies. Our birds' restaurant was a success.
If we could have charged them the regular price for their meals, we
should have made money at the business. But though we knew that they
had pockets, we had never heard of their carrying money about with
them, and so we said nothing about it.
[13] Melospiza fasciata heermanni.
[Illustration: Song Sparrow.]
All we ever received from our little guests by way of payment was
song and twitter and pleasant company in the cold, sad part of the
year, but we thought that was good pay.
We set the table over and over again during the cold spell, watching
from the windows when it rained. The birds cared little if the crumbs
were wet. Every winter since then we have remembered to do the same
thing; and even in summer, especially in nesting time, we do not
forget the restaurant.
We usually set the table at night, the last thing before going to
bed, as some careful and busy house-wives do, and you should hear and
see the fun at sunrise. The table will be all covered with birds of
every size and color living near, and they are as good-natured as can
be. Food by the saucerful disappears in almost a twinkling, and the
birds surround the empty board when they are done, tamer than ever,
and asking in coaxing tones for "more."
There have come to be more birds in that corner of the yard than
anywhere else, just as you see a street thronged at meal-time about a
popular eating-house in the city. We have learned a great deal about
the tastes of different birds. Some of them have a "sweet tooth" as
truly as any child, for they always choose the cookies or gingerbread.
One day we thought we would see how far they really were civilized
in the matter of diet, and so we laid a mutton bone on the table. It
was a bone that had been cooked, and had just a suspicion of meat on
it left from our own dinner.
Along came the birds, of course, for they were always watching us,
canting their heads to get a good look at the strange object. "What
do you suppose it is?" they seemed to be asking each other. "Do you
think it is safe to taste?"
But they seemed to remember that we never played a joke on them when
they were hungry, and in a little while a sparrow pecked daintily at
the bone. After this they all fell to eating the meat as fast as they
could.
That was not the last bone that found its way to the birds'
restaurant. Now we put the bones all about in the apple trees, or
swing them on a string from the branches. It is great fun. If you can
spare a large beef bone that has some marrow in it, just offer it to
the birds in some quiet place. The first bird that gets to it will
put his head in at the round tunnel in the middle of the bone, where
the marrow is hidden, and you can come pretty near putting "salt on
his tail" without his knowing what you are about.
You have all read that queer song Mother Goose made about the
"blackbird pie." But that was a pleasant joke. The birds were never
baked at all. They were put under the crust alive and well, just to
surprise a great dinner party. It was only for ornament, as we put
flowers in a vase and set them on the table. Shut up in the dark, in
a great earthen pot, with just enough air for breathing coming in at
the small holes pricked in the crust, it was no wonder the "birds
began to sing" when the cover was lifted. Of course they all began to
fly around the room, they were so glad to be free once more and to
find that they were not "baked in a pie" at all.
It was a merry surprise for a great dinner party, and quite
satisfactory, since there was plenty of food to eat besides blackbird
pie. We never look at a field of blackbirds without thinking of the
old rhyme and stopping to count the birds, just to see if there are
exactly "twenty-four."
Here is a bit of rhyme in imitation of Mother Goose, which we fancy
will fit very well when birds are bigger than boys and have pot-pie
for dinner.
Sing a song o' sixpence;
A pocket full o' rye,
Four and twenty little boys
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened
The boys began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before a king?
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIV.
UMBRELLAS AND OTHER THINGS.
There is more fun than you can imagine in watching the birds in your
yard for just one single day. If you are a sick child and cannot go
to school, the day will never seem long when once you have begun to
get acquainted with these dear little people. If you look a bird
straight in the eye when you have a chance to hold one in your hand,
you cannot hurt him if you have a bit of a kind heart in your jacket.
Birds' faces are sweet and happy and beautiful, even if they are
covered with feathers. You will notice that they have different
expressions at different times. But a bird's eye, whether it is
black, or red, or white, will tell the story of its fear or happiness
as plainly as your own. You may wonder how that can be, when there
are no wrinkles to be seen about the face.
We have seen birds do a great many bright things, and we have seen
them do stupid things as well. There are wide cracks in our woodshed,
and the towhees go through these cracks to the inside in search of
something to eat, or just out of curiosity.
When we open the shed door suddenly, the birds are in a great fright.
They seem to have forgotten just where they came in, and they flutter
about to all the cracks, trying to squeeze their way through, until
they find the right one. They do this almost every day, never
learning to count or to mark the crack in any way. This is very
stupid of the towhees, and we laugh at their shrill squeaks, and
their silly way of trying every hole without regard to their size.
These towhees are full of curiosity. There is a rabbit's cage in
the yard, and the birds try all day to get in. Sometimes we leave
the door ajar, and in they hop. Then what a time. Squealing and
fluttering, they fly about as if they were scared nearly to death.
We let them out again, and they will hop to a log near by and preen
themselves, and in five minutes they have forgotten what happened.
Back they fly to the cage again, and are not satisfied till they find
a way to get in.
They wait coaxingly about the door, as if they would give anything
for a ticket of admission. Once a curious little towhee squeezed
itself into the owl's cage, and we had hard work to get it out alive;
and then what should the stupid little thing do but go straight for
the canary's cage, hanging under a tree on the lawn. If we want to
hold a towhee in our hands for any reason, we have but to set a cage
on the grass with the door open, and in a few minutes we have the
bird.
We are reminded of something about birds which John Webster wrote
more than two hundred years ago. He must have been a bird lover. When
speaking of a summer bird-cage in a garden, he observed, "The birds
that are without, despair to get in; and the birds that are within,
despair for fear they will never get out."
Did you ever stand at the window when it is raining and wonder what
the birds do without umbrellas? Of course you have, but you are
a little mistaken if you suppose they do not have umbrellas and
parasols. Their umbrellas are all about, in the trees and fence
corners and bushes, just where they are needed.
See the birds cuddle under a bunch of leaves during a smart shower.
See them hunt for the shadiest places when the sun shines warm. Of
course they do not carry their umbrellas about with them, tucked
under their arms, but they fly quickly to places where they are sure
the umbrellas are to be found.
Once in February a humming-bird built her frail little nest close to
the path on the low limb of a tree in our yard. Now this eucalyptus
tree was very nearly a hundred feet high, and we wondered that the
bird built so near the ground, when she might have been so far above.
We liked to fancy that she suspected we would not harm her, and
that we might possibly help her some if she should happen to be in
trouble. She was right, for we did help her in a way we could not
have done had she built her nest in the top of the tree.
A fierce hail storm came down from the mountains, and we knew the
eggs would be destroyed if we did not protect them. There sat the
tiny mother on her frail nest, the great drops of water running off
from the point of her slender bill and down over her soft, small
sides. We felt very sorry, but you know that just feeling sorry for
those who are in trouble doesn't help them very much. So we went to
the attic and found an old sunshade which we had put away under the
rafters at the close of the summer. We thought it would be just the
thing, and so it was.
We tied it to a twig just above the hummer's nest. The mother flew
off just for a moment, but came right back. Then she looked at
the black roof over the nest and settled down on her eggs quite
satisfied, while we stood close by her, wet to the skin in the rain
and sleet. It was a long storm, lasting until the eggs were hatched,
but the mother was safe, and the baby birds were never wet at all.
Since then we have looked all about the yard for humming-birds' nests
just before a storm, that we might shelter them.
You have noticed that there are different birds about your yard at
different times in the year. Birds are like other people, they like
to travel and see the world. They like to visit their friends and get
something to eat different from what they have at home.
But birds are very sensible people. They do not pack a valise or a
great trunkful of clothes when they go on a long journey. They have
one good travelling dress, and they keep that tidy. When they get to
the end of their trip, they do not have to annoy their friends with
baggage. Probably their visit is all the more welcome. And their
visits are usually short. It seems as if they do not want to wear out
their welcome.
Of course you have wondered how birds travel, never needing a street,
or a railroad track, or a bicycle, or a boat. Perhaps the birds
wonder, too, how it is that we never take a flight up into the blue
sky, or rest ourselves in the trees, always keeping on the ground in
the grass or dust, or in our houses. Perhaps they puzzle their tiny
brains to know how it is that we can walk so far without getting
tired, and how it is that we are obliged to climb a tree on all
fours, like a bear or a squirrel, if we wish to get the nuts which
are far up out of reach.
There is no telling what the birds think about us. The same Great One
who made the birds with hollow bones and quills, and who filled many
little cells of their bodies with air, so that the little creatures
might be light of weight and buoyant to fly, also made us of heavier
weight and greater strength of muscle.
The birds are not inventors, but man has invented the steam-engine,
and the bicycle, and the sail-boat, so that we have come as near
flying as we possibly can without being birds.
Almost every boy tries to fly, and he thinks there is some secret
about it which he can find out, if he is only patient enough. He gets
up on a high fence, and he flaps his arms for wings, and he plays
that he is going to fly to the next town. The birds, looking on, must
laugh heartily.
Perhaps if the boy's body were boat-shaped, like a bird's body, and
if his legs were put midway between the two ends of his body like a
bird's legs, the boy would come nearer flying. But more than all, he
would need a good strong pair of wings. We have never seen a boy yet
who had wings of any sort.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XV.
CRADLE MAKING.
There is a good deal said and written about the way birds build their
houses. But, really, birds do not build houses. Their houses or
dwellings are built for them by Mother Nature, and are the trees and
the bushes, and the sheltering rocks and the caves, and the cornices
of our own houses.
What birds really do build are their cradles,--little crib beds,
sometimes with rockers and sometimes without.
Birds do not make the cradle first and put the rockers on afterwards,
as a cabinet-maker would do. They first choose the best rockers in
the market, and then make the cradle on top of the rockers. Sometimes
they do a very queer thing; they find the rockers, and then build the
cradle under them. Birds have ways of their own, and they are very
good ways, as you shall see.
The rockers for a bird's cradle are of the branches of the sycamore,
or apple or orange trees, or they are of twigs of the elm or cypress,
or banana leaves. Any strong, firm twig or branch that will rock and
tilt in the breeze, makes a good rocker of the old-fashioned sort.
"Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down comes baby, cradle and all."
But it is a very hard wind that can break one of these rocker boughs
or blow a bird's cradle out of its place. Sometimes a crib is blown
out of the elbow of a tree, because the nest in the elbow is not
fastened by string, as it is in a bough, but is just tucked in
between the great branches.
Birds are very wise and select their boughs with great care. Lithe,
yielding branches are just right for rockers, they will spring and
swing so readily. Sometimes a young twig and a strong old twig,
joined together, make a pair of bird rockers.
A cradle of this kind is very handy for the mother bird. The wind
rocks the babies to sleep, and the leaves sing lullaby songs, while
the mother blinks away on the nest or goes off in search of food.
Sometimes the mother herself sings the babies to sleep, sitting in
the cradle with them. Some of the finches twitter a low musical
song over their little ones, and we have often found their nests by
hearing these soft, sweet notes. One must listen as well as look, to
learn these pleasant secrets.
Some mother birds do not approve of rockers for their babies. These
are very sensible mothers. They make their cradles in the firm, still
crotch of a tree, high up among the forked branches, or lower, right
in the hollow trunk. Other birds choose the ground or low shrubs.
[Illustration: Baltimore Oriole.]
Some cradles, like those of the oriole and titmouse, are curtained
all around with beautiful lace fibre or lattice work. Other cribs
have no curtains at all except drooping leaves and waving grass.
Those of us who can afford them have eider-down quilts on our beds.
But these are rare and costly, and not many people have them. Birds
do not have to think about the cost of anything. There must be downy
quilts in every nursery. These crib blankets are always on hand.
Sometimes they are soft gray or brown in color, and sometimes they
are "crazy quilts." It all depends upon what sort of a breast the
mother bird has.
At first thought one might fear that such a quilt might be too heavy.
You see the old bird fly to the nest and settle quickly down above
her young, as if she took her seat right on their frail little backs.
She does not take the trouble to explain to you that her feet are
below and between the young birds, and that she lifts her feathers
gently. She is really a very fluffy "comfortable," soothing and warm,
covering the delicate birds, or the still more delicate eggs.
Some birds, like the hummers, build their cradles of material which
is just the color of the branch or the rockers upon which they rest.
We have seen hummer's nests on orange trees covered on the outside
with the black scales which are so frequent on these trees. We have
seen them on the sycamore trees all covered with the light yellow
wool which grows on the backs of the sycamore leaves. The birds do
this that the nests may look like a part of the branch on which they
rest. In this way these shrewd little creatures hope to deceive the
shrikes and owls and hawks and boys. It is not easy to find a nest
that looks just like everything about it.
The ground owl[14] is a queer bird. She does not select a swinging
branch or a crotch of a tree for her babies; but she takes possession
of a ground squirrel's hole and lays her eggs there. So you see it
is rather a bed than a cradle. If you are in luck, you will find
the nest of the ground owl in the ground from four to twenty feet
away from the hole or doorway. It may not be more than a few inches
under the surface of the ground, but it is hard to know just where to
strike it.
[14] _Speotyto cunicularia hypogæa._
[Illustration: Ground Owl.]
When a merry schoolboy gets a spade and flings his jacket off and
begins in good earnest to dig out a ground owl, take our word for it,
he has a good piece of work on his hands. Ten to one he will dig
till sundown, and go home tired and cross, with nothing to show for
his pains. Mr. Owl, just an inch or two from the tip of the spade, is
no doubt holding on to his sides with laughter, if owls ever do laugh
in that way.
The nest of the ground owl is not much of an affair, only some coarse
stuff lining the hollow at the end of this long hole. Mrs. Owl is
lazy, and can leave her eggs in this warm place a long time and be
sure that they will not chill. She pays her rent to the squirrels by
eating any little squirrels she can lay hands on.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVI.
OUR SCREECH OWL.
Speaking of owls reminds us of a pet screech owl which once happened
to belong to us. One evening in midsummer we heard a thump against
the screen in front of the fireplace, as if something rather soft had
fallen down the chimney. Of course we hurried to see what it could
be, and there was a small mouse, not at all hurt.
We caught it as soon as we could, and found that it was covered with
soot from its long, dark journey. Then we began guessing how it
happened to get into the chimney-top. There was no possible way for
it to do this except by being carried there by some other creature.
We at once suspected that an owl had caught the mouse and taken it to
the top of the chimney to eat. Here the mouse had managed to escape,
falling down the long, gloomy shaft. This was what we imagined, you
know.
[Illustration: Screech Owl.]
Next morning we were under the trees in the garden, when all the
birds in another part of the yard commenced such a clatter that we
ran to find out the cause. It was a funny sight and a droll sound.
There were the mocking-birds, and the sparrows, and the linnets,
and the finches, and the bush-tits, and, last and least, the tiny
humming-birds, each and all screaming at the top of their voices and
hopping about in a certain tree.
We knew in a moment there must be an enemy there, and began to search
for him. The birds were not afraid, but flew toward us, looking us
in the face, while they screamed louder than before. By this we knew
that we must be very near the enemy.
It did not take much hunting to find the cause of the uproar. On a
low branch of the tree sat a screech owl,[15] blinking away sleepily.
He was not at all embarrassed by so many callers, nor frightened by
their noise.
[15] Megascops asio bendirei.
One of us reached up behind the bird and took hold of him around the
legs and tail, grabbing him firmly, so that he could not bite or get
away. Then we brought an unused robin's cage and put the owl in it.
He began to spit at us, as a cat does when it is angry or frightened,
and this excited the birds all the more. They followed us while we
took the cage to the back door-steps, and then they took their places
on the clothes-line and the pump and the bushes near by, chirping and
scolding in a bustling way that was quite laughable.
More birds came in from the neighboring yards, and the din they all
made grew so great that we had to shut the owl in the woodshed. Then
the birds seemed to hold a council to talk the trouble over, and
to devise ways and means of getting rid of the enemy. At last they
seemed to settle the matter, and went away. But we noticed a number
of linnets and a mocker in sight, as if they had been left in charge
as spies, and spies they were in fact.
As soon as we took the cage out again and attempted to pet the owl
and watch him, these spy birds gave a shrill call, when back came all
the other birds. We carried the cage to the upper balcony, and the
confusion was the same. At last we left it in the shed.
This owl had doubtless caught the mouse the night before and dropped
it down our chimney, so we thought we would keep him a while, to
teach him better than to be prowling around our house in the evening.
His feathers were very soft and thick, as are the feathers of most
owls. Being so soft, and able to fly without any noise, the owls
can catch their game on the sly, while the hawks depend upon their
swiftness for their food. It makes no difference, when a hawk is on
the hunt, whether he makes a noise with his coarse feathers or not;
he knows that he can be quick enough to catch his little victims, be
they birds or mice.
Well, we kept that screech owl just as long as we wanted his company.
He was not a beautiful or an interesting pet. In fact, he would not
be petted at all. He did cease to spit and growl at us in a day or
two, but he never seemed to return our good feeling or to place any
trust in us. He slept or blinked all day, and when night came he was
hungry. We taught him to take pieces of raw beef from the end of a
long stick, not daring to give it to him from our fingers. He seemed
to enjoy this food. But what suited him best was mice.
We caught these mice in a trap in the grain bin, and gave them to
the owl only when they were dead. As soon as the bird saw a mouse,
he would snatch it quickly and growl at it and shake it, and stick
his sharp claws through it, pinning it to the roost. It would take
him a long while, sometimes two or three hours, to eat a whole mouse,
but he never once let go of it with his claws. He would tear it to
pieces, skin and all, and eat the shreds. He seemed to be obliged
to rest after each mouthful, going to sleep between times, still
clinging to what was left of his supper, and growling if we tried to
take it away from him.
After a while he would disgorge or throw up the hard and hairy parts,
and then he would take more of his food.
We did not care to keep this owl, and so one evening we let him fly
away. He was seen in the yard many times that summer, and the birds
always told us where he was, though they never made quite so much
noise as at first. They grew used to having him around. He never
lighted on so low a bough again, probably remembering how he had been
taken the first time.
We did not care if he did choose to live in our yard, for we knew
very well his lazy habit of sleeping all day. When he woke up at
night we knew the little birds would all be in bed. He was welcome to
the mice and the crickets and June bugs.
We are not fond of owls. It is dismal to hear their "too-hoo,
too-hoo," as they try to sing. We are glad that they try, for even a
poor song is better than no song at all. Owls cannot sing any better
than turkeys. In fact, we prefer turkeys to owls for music. Don't you?
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVII.
BIRDS AT WORK AND PLAY.
It sounds very strange to speak of a bird at play. But you can
see that birds do play, if you will give yourself the pleasure
of watching them. They run along under the hedges and fences at
hide-and-seek. They will stop suddenly and scold at one another for
not playing "fair"; and they actually play at leap-frog, hopping over
one another's backs, never once using their hands.
Sometimes they play "tag" high up in the air, especially the
humming-birds and others of swift wing. You can see them playing when
they are so high that they look like bumble-bees. Then perhaps they
fly out of sight in the blue of the sky.
But the birds seem to do more work than play. It is as if they were
saying,
"All play and no work
Makes a bird a mere shirk."
Most father birds help their mates in the cradle making, whenever
they can get away for a few minutes from the orchestra. But the
mother has the care of everything and does the most and the finest
work. We have sometimes thought the mother would do better if left
all to herself, the fathers are so fussy and awkward at housekeeping.
Once, in the middle of winter, we saw a father linnet trying his
best to coax his mate to build a nest on a little shelf on the upper
balcony. He carried straws in his bill, and sat on the shelf, and
coaxed his mate to his side, whispering to her, as if he were saying,
"How nice this is," and urging her to "Go right to work." We guessed
all that, you know, about their talking together, while we stood and
watched them out of the window.
But the wise little mother bird just laughed provokingly and flew
away. We thought she was laughing, for the father bird looked a
little bit ashamed, and held his head down, though he still clung to
his straw and remained for a while sitting on the little shelf. He
might have known that was no time or place to build a cradle. It was
midwinter, and besides the shelf was slippery.
It is common for a pair of birds to talk about housekeeping, or even
to build, a long while before they need the nest. We have seen them
hunting for the best spot and chatting about it, as if they were
saying, "This will never do," or, "This will be just the right place
when the time comes."
We have seen towhees and other birds picking up pieces of sticks and
string in November, and carrying them about as if they did not know
what to do with their treasures. We should think better of them if
they would lay the sticks and twine away in a safe place until they
are ready to use them. They seem never to think of that, but drop the
things wherever they happen to be.
Birds like to pull at twine even if they have no use for it. They
pick at the ends of fibrous bark, as if they valued most highly what
costs them the most trouble to get.
A lady we knew was in the habit of throwing out of the window the
hairs which came out of her head when she used the comb and brash
in the morning. These hairs were caught in a bush, and the birds
discovered them. One day her son found a bird's nest near the window,
all lined with the white hairs which once grew on his dear mother's
head. You may be sure the son keeps that bird's nest among his
treasures.
Birds are very fond of hairs of any sort for their nest linings. We
have many times placed them within their reach and sight, and they
will take them up. They also use chicken feathers, if they are close
at hand, and bits of soft paper.
If you want to see something that will amuse you, fasten on a tree
or log a piece of old rope that has a ravelled end. Every day in
nesting time the birds will tug at that ravelled end of rope, turning
somersaults in their hurry, and spending more time chasing one
another away from it than in actual work.
When a bird begins to build her nest, she uses coarse materials
first, just as a house builder uses beams and timbers to begin with.
The bird and the house builder save all the fine stuff for the last.
Look closely at a nest when you find one. Pick up an old last year's
nest that has blown down. This year's nests do not belong to you.
See how there are, first, large sticks or weeds, or rolls of mud.
Between the large sticks or weeds there are small, short ones. You
can imagine that these pieces all together are nails and boards, and
help to hold the whole nest together. Perhaps these may be all bound
together with spiders' web or string, or even paper.
We have seen nests made of nothing but one kind of weed; usually a
weed that has a strong smell, like wild sage or yarrow, is chosen.
We think that the smell of these strong-scented weeds prevents lice
or mites from invading the nest. Perhaps the force of habit or taste
has led the bird to select this material. Probably her mother before
her made the same sort of a nest, and so she thinks that is about the
right thing to do.
Some birds, as the swallows, make mud houses, after the manner of the
Mexicans. We often wonder if these people got their idea of house
building from the birds.
[Illustration: Barn Swallow]
Other birds use sticks and cement, as a man does brick and mortar.
Some of the sea birds lay their eggs on a bare, flat rock. Even these
do not roll off from the rock, for all eggs are oblong and cannot
roll in a straight line. We have never seen a perfectly round egg. If
you take an egg of any kind, as a hen's egg, and try to roll it down
the floor or lawn, you will see what we mean. Then try a perfectly
round ball. You will see that it is better that birds' eggs are
oblong or elliptical.
[Illustration: Marsh Owl.]
The cactus wren[16] makes her nest in the middle of a great barbed
cactus in our mountain washes or desert places. The tiny Costa's
humming-bird[17] builds its frail nest in the prickly elbow of the
low cactus that grows in California all over the barren lowlands.
This is probably for safety. A snake could hardly reach a nest which
was built in the middle of a cactus whose needles, or thorns, are
sometimes an inch long.
[16] _Heleodytes brunneicapillus._
[17] _Calypte costæ._
[Illustration: Costa's Humming-Bird]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XVIII.
SOME OTHER BIRDS AT WORK.
Not many of the birds in our yard are quarrelsome. They seem to
respect one another's rights, especially at nesting time. It is not
so much our business to tell bad or unpleasant things about birds, as
to tell what is pleasant and what will make you love them. That is
why we spoke a good word for the shrikes and the hawks and the owls.
If a pair of birds have selected the limb of a tree upon which to
build a cradle, they are not often driven from it by other birds.
It seems to us that when a sparrow has put a piece of twine over a
bough, it is as if she had written her name on it or got a deed for
that particular bough.
If you should wish to tame a pair of birds that are building their
nest where you may watch them, wait until the nest is finished or
until the first egg is laid. Sometimes it is better to wait for the
little birds. A bird will desert an unfinished nest if she suspects
you are watching her. But she dislikes to throw away all of her
labor, and will often lay her eggs and hatch her young while you are
looking at her, rather than begin her nest all over again.
If you take just one egg from the nest of some birds, leaving all of
the others, the parents will never go to it again. There are other
timid, delicate birds who will leave their nest if you just go up
softly and peep into it. The parent birds may not be in sight, and
you may think they will never know. But they have been in hiding and
have seen you steal up, and they will desert the place and the nest.
Only a few birds will do this, however, and these are mostly those
which live far away, in a quiet dell or on a hill where people seldom
go.
We feel quite sure that we can tame almost any home bird at nesting
time. A goldfinch[18] has just built her nest in an apple tree near
our house. We have tamed the mother bird so that we can smooth her
feathers on her neck and breast with our fingers while she is sitting
on the nest. At first we took leaves in our hand and touched her with
them. She did not care for the leaves; they were all about her in the
tree. Gradually we dropped the leaves, until she was not afraid of
our hands.
[18] _Spinus psaltria._
We wished to take a photograph of her, and did so one very warm day.
She sat in the heat, with her wings lifted to let the air through,
and her bill parted as if she were panting. The father bird comes to
feed her on the nest, just as their young are fed, with his bill in
hers. These finches are nurslings, you know, and are fed on prepared
food.
The oriole[19] is a very interesting bird with us. She chooses to
hang her hammock or cradle beneath a festoon of thick leaves on a
swaying bough, or from a drooping twig. Here she prefers a broad
green banana leaf or the great leaf of a fan palm. These leaves are
good shelter from the sunshine.
[19] _Icterus cucullatus nelsoni._
The banana leaf is about five feet long, and doubles on its midrib
like a book cover during the middle of the day. At night and early in
the morning, when it is cool, the leaf opens better, and it is then
that the bird works at her hammock. When the pouch is finished, the
leaf is kept from doubling quite up and is like a sharp roof over the
heads of the young and their mother. The banana leaf is constantly
waving and trembling, even when there is scarcely a bit of breeze.
Another favorite place for an oriole to build her hammock is the
under side of the fan-palm leaf. You will wonder how a bird can weave
a thread in and out of a leaf, when she has no fingers or needles.
We have watched an oriole do this many a time, and this is how it is
done. She takes a thread in her beak and pushes it through the leaf
from one side. Then she flies to the other side and pushes the same
thread back through another opening in the leaf which she has made
with her bill. Thus she weaves a kind of cloth pouch on the under
side of the leaf, flying back and forth from the upper to the under
side. The pouch or hammock is lined, and there the eggs are laid.
You can see the mother's head sticking out from the nest, but if she
knows you are watching, she will draw her head out of sight, so you
will see nothing but the nest.
The thread most used by orioles here is the fibre which ravels from
the edges of the palm leaves. Where such thread is not to be had,
they use twine or string of any sort.
Young orioles meet with many dangers before they leave the hammock.
Sometimes their feet get tangled in the thread or horsehairs of which
the nest is partly made. When the little helpless things attempt to
fly out, they are sometimes caught by the toes, and there they bang.
We have rescued several which were caught this way.
It seems strange that a bird which can build so beautiful and fine
a nest of threads does not know enough to pull the strings off from
her baby's toes when it is caught in this way. They may do this
sometimes, but we have never seen them do anything but fly about in a
helpless way, chattering as orioles do.
Orioles keep no secrets to themselves. They are "tell-tales," and
keep up a constant chat among themselves and at intruders. They are
different in this respect from some other birds, who are as quiet
as mice, never whispering a word as to where their nests are, and
deceiving you, if they can, by limping away as if they were hurt.
Such quiet birds will raise a nest full of birds and be off while you
are wondering where they are.
We do not have chimney swifts in California; but we lived in New
England once, and we recollect very well what a racket they used
to make in the chimneys. Sometimes the nests fell down into the
fireplace, and then what a commotion!
Some swallows choose to build under the eaves, and in caves and
tunnels, and on the under side of bridges, or in crevices of rocks.
We have often wondered that a bird mother can tell her own nest among
so many that look just alike. We have stood and watched the barn
swallows, and felt sure that they count, "One, two, three, here's my
nest." How else do you suppose that a mother can be sure that she
has come to the right nest?
We have seen mother birds cry and call loudly, as if for help, when
the babies have fallen out of the nest. If you pick up one birdling
and place it back in the nest, the mother takes a quick glance at it,
and then goes on calling as before. She will not stop until she sees
every one of them safe back in the cradle. This makes us think that
some birds do count.
[Illustration: Cat-Bird.]
In Tennessee, where we once lived, the cat-birds and brown thrushes
used to build their nests in the porches and vines above the door.
Sometimes we would take the young birds from the nest and keep them
in the parlor for company, taming and feeding them, and allowing them
to flutter about on the floor to amuse strangers. Perhaps we would
have them in the house for an hour.
[Illustration: Brown Thrush.]
When we opened the door to take them home again, the old birds would
be standing close by, like dogs whose masters are in the house. When
they saw us, they would set up such a scolding that we felt quite
ashamed for having kidnapped their children even for so short a time.
They grew used to our ways before the summer was over, and would soon
let us take the young without so much ado.
Small birds, such as the goldfinches and humming-birds, use a good
deal of spider's web in making their cradles. This is very soft, and
when many strands are used together it is very strong. This web is
used to hold the mosses and plants down in place. When you see the
bushes and hedges all covered with web in a damp morning, think of
the little bird house-builders. Watch, in some quiet corner out of
sight of them, and you will see the mother humming-bird or goldfinch
dart up to the glistening webs and examine them in turn, just as a
lady who is out shopping examines the different goods in a store.
Madam Bird flies down to a small web, taking a bite at it with her
slender bill, as if she were feeling of it with her fingers.
Then she flies off to another spider's counter of goods and pecks at
another web. When she has found what suits her, she will take several
bird yards of it home with her.
In the nest of our goldfinch in the apple tree, we see some spider
web binding the grasses together, but the nest itself is lined with
horsehairs. We have one bay horse and one black horse. In this nest
lining there are hairs from the tails of both horses, woven round
with great care in a striped way, that looks as if the bird had
thought about how it would look, the red and the black together.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIX.
A PET HUMMING-BIRD.
Humming-bird mothers are very tender of their young and will seldom
go out of sight of them. We have ourselves picked the mother from the
nest and let her go, when she would immediately return to it.
If you see a humming-bird sitting on a twig napping, just clasp your
hands behind you and go straight up to the bird. You can almost touch
it with your face, but if you put out your hand the bird will dart
away. A hummer will alight on the flowers you may be carrying, if you
remain perfectly still. These birds seem to notice movement more than
form.
Humming-birds, like many others, do not seem to notice a person if he
is going toward them in a straight line. It is "sidewise" movement
that frightens them.
We have known a humming-bird to "play 'possum," though we are told,
by some one who ought to know, that it was really frightened almost
to death.
This bird had come in at an open window for some flowers left on the
sill. On leaving the room, by some mistake it flew up to the ceiling
instead of going out at the window. The ceiling was high, so we
took a long broom and chased the bird, catching it on the wisp end
and bringing it down. It did not stir, though we were sure we had
not hurt it. We took it in our hands, and it lay on its back with
its eyes shut, as if it were indeed dead. Then we carried it to the
garden, feeling very sorry. Suddenly one black eye opened, and then
the other, when, in a flash, the little bird was off.
One day in spring a certain professor whom we know, who is very fond
of hunting toadstools, caught sight of what he felt sure was a rare
one on the limb of a live-oak tree. The heart of the professor beat
with joy, for he would rather find a new kind of toadstool or lichen
than a gold mine, and he put out his hand to pick this new one off.
It moved, and he looked at it. It was a baby hummer, just fledged,
and very delicate. It did not know enough to be afraid of him, and
cuddled in his hand as if it were the nest.
He knew how much we like birds, and so the professor put the baby in
his pocket basket and brought it home to us. The bird was unhurt and
as free from fear as a real baby. Its face looked like a baby face,
as the faces of all young birds look, innocent and sweet, and full of
a helpless, not frightened, expression. You can look at the pictures
and see that this is true.
To feed this bird, which seemed hungry, we mixed some sugar and
water. It would not open its bill, so we held the sweet in a spoon
and dipped the beak into it. It tasted, and then put out its tongue
and lapped some. This very slender, thread-like tongue was long and
black and very quick of movement.
Every hour we fed it with this sweetened water, and it came to
know the spoon by sight and to look for it when we were coming. We
moistened our lips with the syrup, and the little thing would move
towards us, placing its bill on our lips and thrusting its dainty
tongue all around in a way that was very amusing.
We did not know as much about humming-birds then as we have learned
since, or we should have fed it as often as every fifteen minutes,
and used honey in place of water.
[Transcriber Note--Do NOT feed Humming-birds honey. Honey does not
have the same chemical composition as floral nectar and is more
difficult for Humming-birds to digest.]
It loved to perch on the edge of a wicker basket, whose rim was so
easy to cling to. It would shimmer in the sunshine like a piece of
silk, no larger than "a great big bumble-bee."
In a few days it could fly all about the room, but it could not fix
its toes on or around anything, and would fall helpless to the floor
or drop behind the pictures.
It was cold at night, though we covered it with warm things, and
often we would warm it in our hands before morning. It needed the
warmth of its mother's breast.
It learned to drink cold water, and to expect it after each meal of
syrup, as if it wanted to rinse its mouth. It lapped up the water
like a kitten, its queer, frail tongue looking like a bit of black
thread in the clear water.
We tried to get it to take tiny spiders, which we hunted in the
garden, but it refused, and did not live with us very long.
We think we ought to have given it a little milk to take the place
of spiders, which it must have missed. We shall never try to have
another pet so frail as this; these birds seem too delicate to touch.
Our fingers are not light enough. We have a friend who kept a young
hummer for three months, and they are said to live even longer than
this when in captivity.
Of all our bird friends, we think the humming-bird the most wonderful
and interesting. This perhaps is because it is the smallest and
wisest of all the birds we know.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XX.
HOW WE TOOK THE HUMMING-BIRDS' PICTURES.
There are seventeen or eighteen kinds of humming-birds in the United
States. Here in Southern California we have five of six. The largest
of these is the Anna's Humming-bird.[20] It was called "Anna's
Hummer" in honor of a lady of that name.
[20] _Calypte annae._
This bird measures about four inches from the tip of its beak to
the end of its tail. The female is a mixture of gray and green
underneath, with a shining green back. The male has a throat and
head of changeable bright colors, which shimmer like some metallic
substance as he turns about in the sunshine.
The bill of these birds is five-eighths of an inch long, and the
tongue is much longer. With this long, extensible tongue it can suck
the honey from the deepest flowers. It may be seen about the petunias
and the honeysuckle and the nasturtiums. There is plenty of sweet at
the end of these trumpet-like flowers which the bees cannot reach
with their shorter tongues.
[Illustration: WE LIKE SUGAR, TOO.]
_Page 100._
It was the Anna's Hummer which we photographed last year on purpose
to put the pictures in this book, that those who do not have
humming-birds nesting in their yards, or where they can study them,
may see just how they look.
We have no snow storms here, but in their place are long, cold rain
storms, with many days of bright, warm weather between. Flowers bloom
all the time, and the humming-birds see no reason why they should not
attend to their housekeeping. It is as if they thought, "Now this
storm is over, we will build our cradles," never once thinking of the
possibility of there coming another storm before the birdlings are
out of the nest.
We were walking about in the yard one bright morning late in
December, when a humming-bird poised herself above some pampas
grass and stole a single tuft. This pampas grass sends up its long
spikes of plumes in midsummer, and we always leave a few of them on
purpose for the birds to get for their nests. They are very dusty
and weather-beaten by winter, but that makes no difference, for the
little separate tufts are good for crib beds.
When we saw the bird at the pampas grass, we knew that she was
nesting, so we watched her. She flew to a low shrub near the path
and left the tuft. Then she darted to a cypress hedge where there
were plenty of spiders' webs. She gathered a bill full of this web
and returned to the shrub. In a moment she was off to the pampas
grass again, and we stole up to look. Not three feet from the ground
was the beginning of the smallest nest. As yet it was a mere filmy
platform set where two twigs joined hands, beneath a cluster of
bluish-green leaves.
The bird was shy and would not return while we were in sight, so we
went away and waited, knowing that we must be very careful not to
disturb her if we wished her to finish her nest.
Taming this little bird was the work of many days. At first we sat
perfectly still on the door-steps, not ten feet away. She saw us even
there, and would wait in the trees above for a long while before she
was quite sure we would not harm her. In a day or two we could sit
on the steps or move about, but not too near. Before the nest was as
large as a walnut the bird allowed us to watch her a few feet away,
provided we stood motionless. She was indeed a delicate creature,
winding the web around and around, so that the pampas tufts should be
thick and firm.
On New Year's day the first tiny oblong white egg was laid. It was
a gem, the size of a navy bean, in a nest-setting of silver-gray
softness. We clasped our hands in delight at this beginning of what
would be living rainbow tints. In four days its mate was laid by its
side. These birds always lay just two eggs. Every day the mother
bird was adding more web and lichens and pampas tufts, turning about
gently and rapidly to shape the nest around her.
We have never seen any birds except the hummers who add to their
nests during incubation and after the young are hatched. On the
twentieth day of January the first egg was hatched. We stole up to
look, and there at the bottom of the small cradle was what looked
like a tiny black grub, perfectly bare. We imagined the mother was
very happy and thinking in her dear little heart how much the baby
resembled its father.
The father, as is the custom of the males of these humming-birds,
was away in the foothills sucking sweets from the mountain flowers,
and leaving to his mate all the care of the household. It seems very
selfish of him, but the mother bird may be very glad to be without
him. What does a father humming-bird know about taking care of such
tiny babies?
One day later than its mate the other egg was hatched, and there were
a pair of black, bare grubs. They had no bills, except a tiny point
in the middle of the mouth, which they kept open in a coaxing way.
They could move nothing but their heads, and their eyes were shut
tight. How carefully the mother fed them. Many a time, looking on at
meal-time, we were tempted to caution the mother lest she thrust her
bill a little too far down the small throats. She winked her black
eye at us, while we stood with uplifted finger, as much as to say,
"Don't be afraid, I have nursed babies before."
As the birdlings grew, the nest had to be enlarged, and it took
every minute of the mother's time to keep the household matters in
order. In a few days down began to appear upon the birds, and then a
shimmering green on the backs, like that of the mother's dress. Young
male hummers do not get the bright head and throat until the first
moult. When the birds were thus clothed, the mother did not seem to
think it necessary to build the nest up about them any higher, so
the birds were crowded out gradually as they grew, until they were
obliged to sit on the edge, a pair of the sweetest twins one ever saw.
A storm came down from the mountains and surprised the faithful
little mother, but she sheltered the babies as best she could until
we came to the rescue with a gingham apron, which we pinned in place
above the nest, making a complete shelter for all. We kept this apron
in place for a week, or until the storm was over. People passing by
must have thought us very queer housekeepers to spread our washing in
the front yard, but we did not stop to explain.
By this time the bird had grown so trustful that we could do almost
anything without scaring her. We fed the young with syrup on the ends
of our fingers, while the mother looked on astonished. They would put
out their fine thread-like tongues and look at us from their tiny
black eyes, as if thanking us. Their bills had grown out until they
were quite respectable by the time the babies sat on the edge of the
nest.
[Illustration: LEAVING THE NEST.]
_Page 104._
[Illustration: Anna's Humming-Birds.]
As soon as the mother became tame enough, we took the pictures, as
you see them. While we stood at the nest, she would fly all about our
faces and look at our ears and eyes, and buzz at our hair in a very
funny way. Once we bent the twig from its place in the shrub, and
held it close to our faces, and the mother fed the young, brushing
our cheeks with her gauzy wings. Then we tied it back to its old
place when the mother had flown away. She came back and flew in our
faces, as if she expected to find the babies there. Not finding them
with us, she went back to the shrub as if nothing had happened.
It was a wonderful thing to have this shy bird so trustful and
willing to have her photograph taken.
The older of the two birds left the nest first, and we had hard work
to get him to be still enough for the last sitting. The mother came
down and sat between the two birds on the twig, and looked at the
bird who wouldn't keep still, as if she were scolding him.
She seemed just like a real person taking her baby to the artist's
to have his picture taken. Once two strange old hummers came when we
were taking the pictures, and bothered us a good deal. They made our
mother hummer nervous and cross, and she drove them away. It seemed
to us that these birds wanted to have their picture taken too, but
we could not quite catch them, because they were not well enough
acquainted with us and the camera.
One day the babies left the old battered nest and flew to the trees.
The rim of the nest was torn and worn away by the feet of the mother
as she stood to feed the young. We noticed that for a few days after
they were hatched she fed them every fifteen minutes, but as they
grew stronger she gave them their food only once an hour, or at even
longer intervals.
[Illustration: MOTHER BIRD POISED ON HUMMING WINGS.]
_Page 106._
After they had flown, there came a hard storm, and we went out in the
morning expecting to find the babies dead on the ground. But not so;
there they sat in the sunshine above our heads, as safe as could be.
They remained about in the yard for two or three weeks, when they
disappeared, no doubt going to the foothills to join their father at
sucking sweets and flitting among the vines.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXI.
OUR ROBIN REDBREAST.
Almost every child knows the robin redbreast. He is a great favorite
wherever he goes. We have him with us in Southern California only
in winter time for a few weeks after the rains have come. When our
ground is mellow with moisture, and the angle-worms have worked their
way to the top, leaving little loose hillocks all about the yard,
then we look out for a visit from the robins.
They come in companies great enough to fill the tree-tops, and their
constant song reminds us of old times when we lived in the New
England States.
Robins are "water birds" in a way, although they do not swim. They
are perfectly at home in wet grass or foliage, and even in a rain
storm. They never seem to have any use for umbrellas.
Once, while on a visit to some friends in the east, we found two
baby robins which were blown from their nest in a storm. We fed them
with bread soaked in milk, and fresh beef, and they thrived. We shut
them in an empty room upstairs, and they soon learned to look for us
and to know our step. They would fly to the crack of the doorway and
squeal when they heard us coming. Before we dared open the door, we
had to push the birds away, for fear they would be caught and hurt.
[Illustration: Robin.]
When we were ready to start for our California home, we put the
robins in a cage, taking as much food as we thought they would need
on the journey. In a day or two the meat gave out, and they grew
tired of bread and water. They coaxed constantly for beef, so we
asked a porter on our car to get some for them.
By this time most of the passengers had become interested in our
robins, and a gentleman offered to keep them in beef for the rest of
the journey. He would go out once a day, when the train stopped long
enough, and buy some beef. Our pets came to be quite an attraction
in the car, and everybody was anxious to do something for the little
travellers.
We took the birds to the dressing-room each day to clean the cage
and to give them a bath. We washed them one at a time, in our hands,
holding them under the gently flowing faucet. At first they objected,
but they soon grew to like it.
During the first year they never sang a note, for their unmusical
squeak could certainly not be called singing. The second spring
we gave them a large cage in the yard, that they might make the
acquaintance of other birds. In a short time an old mocking-bird came
and gave them music lessons.
The teacher would twist his toes around the wires of the cage, in
this way holding himself close to the birds. Then he would twitter
softly, until the young birds had learned to respond and to twitter
too.
When at last the robins did have a song, it was a mixture of robin
and mocking-bird notes. They did not speak pure robin all that year.
After they were grown-up birds, the mocker who had taught them music
took a great dislike to them. This was very strange, for he had been
so fond of his little pupils, dropping berries down through the cage
wires, and calling them all sorts of pet names in his own language.
Now he would scold them and peck at them and scare them, until we
were obliged to cover a part of the cage.
In a year or two the male robin got out of the cage and flew away. We
could hear him far out of sight in the trees, but he would not come
back, though we called to him in our kindest tones. He was out all
night, and we supposed he was dead, as he was at the mercy of the
mocking-birds.
What was our surprise early in the morning to find him on the
hitching-post near the house, with his bill wide open, screaming for
his breakfast. But he would not let us put our hands on him.
Then we thought of a plan to catch him, the same by which wild
animals are sometimes caught. We scattered some crumbs from the post
where he sat to the door of the cage, and Robin went to picking
them up, of course, being very hungry and not thinking about the
consequences. He followed the trail of the crumbs until, before he
knew it, he was safe within the cage and the door was shut.
Once again he got away from us, but we knew he would come back at
meal-time, if the shrikes and the mockers did not find him. Birds
which have lived for a while in a cage seem to be perfectly helpless
when out at liberty, not knowing how to find food for themselves, and
dying of hunger in the midst of plenty.
Sure enough, at supper time Robin came back, clamoring for his share.
There was a soft, moist place in the garden where we were in the
habit of digging worms for the robins at night. We took the cage and
set it down by this place, with the door tied back.
We went to work with the spade, pretending not to notice the little
runaway, who hopped close to us and screamed at his little innocent
mate in the cage. We threw some worms in at the open door for the
bird on the inside, who ate them, taking no notice of her companion
on the outside.
Suddenly the outsider hopped to the hole where we were digging and
tried to grab the worms before we had time to pick them up. But we
cheated him, understanding his little game, and dodged past him
with the coveted worms. He, standing on tiptoe, danced about in the
funniest fashion, still trying to snatch the worms. All at once,
taunting him with a good long-worm, we threw it past him into the
cage. Away the bird ran after it, and the little fellow who loved so
well to "play hookie" was caught once more.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXII.
MORE ABOUT OUR ROBIN.
When the robins were two years old, we noticed that they were picking
up straws from the bottom of the cage, and so we "took the hint." We
looked all about to find something that was the shape of a nest. We
were tempted at first to put a little open-work basket in the cage,
but we remembered an experience which we had some years before, and
did not use the basket.
The experience was this. We hung a tiny basket in the canary's cage,
and the birds made a thin nest in it and hatched their eggs. The male
had been very active, helping his mate in all the ways he could think
of, and he thought he would mend the nest one day. So he began to
peck at the string through the meshes of the basket, reaching up from
the bottom. We did not think he was doing any harm, till we noticed
what looked like a bird's foot hanging down through the bottom of
the basket. What was our astonishment to find that the old bird had
pulled off the legs of the young birds, stupidly thinking that he was
tugging at the twine.
Of course we did not put a basket in the robins' cage, but we found a
round butter mould, which answered just as well. The birds were very
much pleased with the butter mould, and began carrying straw and mud
which we gave to them, until they had quite a respectable robin's
nest. We do not know whether wild robins would nest in a butter
mould, if we should fasten it in the crotch of an apple tree or swing
it from the branches, but it would be quite worth one's while to try,
if one is living where there are wild robins.
One morning we found a blue egg in the nest. The birds were
surprised. They hopped on the rim of the butter mould and looked at
the egg and chirped at it, and then the male bird hopped in and sat
down on it. We clapped our hands and called to the whole family to
"come and see."
But what do you think that naughty bird did? Just as we were all
feeling sure of his good sense, he jumped suddenly out of the nest
and then back again. Then he began to scratch with both feet as fast
as he could, till the egg went out of the nest and lay in fragments
on the bottom of the cage. We expected to see his mate resent it, but
she took no notice, going on pecking at a peach as if nothing had
happened.
"It was an accident," we said, ready to excuse our pets. The days
went by, and seven blue eggs shared the fate of the first one. The
birds took turns at scratching them out of the nest, as if it were
great fun. We felt badly, of course, and scolded them. But they only
stared helplessly at us, and did not explain the secret about those
eggs.
When the robins were three years old, the male began to be sick. He
had "fits" or spasms of some sort, whirling around on the floor upon
his back, where he would lie as if dead for a few minutes. Then he
would jump up and begin eating, as well as ever.
These attacks grew less severe, and in a few days the bird got
well. His mate had taken excellent care of him, begging him to eat
something right in the middle of his fit, and flying about him just
like a nervous little woman. When she had nursed him back to life
and health, she was taken with the same disease and died in a short
time. We asked a doctor what he thought it was, and he said he
"guessed it was the grip."
The little widower did not pine away and die from grief; he was too
sensible for that, and life was very pleasant to him. He took to
singing with all his might as he had never sung before. For four
hours in the early morning he never rested his bulging little red
throat, not even to eat his breakfast. The old-fashioned robin notes,
which he had made believe he never knew before, came bubbling out
in a wild glee that made the neighborhood ring. People inquired all
around to know where that robin was.
He was very fond of spiders, and when we took the broom in our hands
he watched us closely. The large gray house spider was his favorite.
We think a good deal of these spiders, and were very sorry to give
them to the robin, but we were afraid he would die if he had none.
In whichever room we were when we found one of these spiders, we had
only to call out, "Here's a spider, Robby," and the bird would chirp
his answer, hopping to the corner of the cage nearest the door. Here
he would wait for us to give him the insect. If we found a bug or
a worm, we had but to call out, "Quick, Robby," and he would dart
nervously from side to side of his big cage in his eagerness not to
keep us waiting. He would take berries from our mouths, many a time
giving our lips a tweak as if he did it on purpose. Then he would
stare at us with his black eye full of fun.
A Chinaman with a vegetable cart came to our house three times a
week, and Robby grew to know him and his wagon. He knew the sound of
the wagon before it was in sight. He was always afraid of strangers,
but this Chinaman he loved and trusted. He would hop to his cage door
to meet him, and open his bill for the strawberry which "John" never
forgot in berry season.
He was fond of meat of any kind, taking it salted and cooked or raw.
But he would never touch bird flesh of any sort,--chicken or quail
or turkey,--though we many a time ran to the cage calling, "Quick,
Robby" just to surprise him. He would look disgusted and turn his
head away, as if to say, "No, thank you: I am not a cannibal." He
would not taste of sugar, but was fond of gingerbread and cake.
During our long dry season of many months, Robby had a way of his own
to keep cool and moist. His bath was an oblong china vegetable dish,
which held water enough to cover him at full length.
When the days were warm and dry, and Robin somehow missed the rain
which he had never seen in summer time, he would hop into the bath
and sit or lie down. The water covered him up to his ears; and there
he would sit for an hour at a time, blinking and dozing, as if he
were a real water bird. He would take food from our hands, too lazy
and contented to stir out of the water.
When the tourist robins came in winter, we imagined our pet would
remember his mate and be anxious to join the birds. But he took no
notice, caring not so much for the robins as for the brown towhees
who had always kept him company at the back door.
Perhaps he thought his house was small, and if all "his folk" were
intending to spend the winter with him he would be crowded "out of
house and home." He was not hospitable to them, nor had he "rooms to
rent." He not even answered them when the tourists chirped him a last
good-bye and went away in early April, after they had eaten up all
the pepper berries.
Well, the longest story has an end. When our robin was in his fifth
year he died, and we buried him beside our little humming-bird under
the fig tree. The bees in the orange blossoms all about him sang him
a dirge, and a royal mocking-bird carolled away with all his might.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXIII.
GOING TO BED AND GETTING UP.
As we told you before, birds do not live in houses or sleep in
bedrooms; though in some parts of the country they build their
cradles in little bird-houses and boxes or anything of the sort which
you will give them. But here we have never succeeded in making any of
them occupy a place which we have prepared for them, though we have
made the prettiest little houses, and nailed boxes in cosey places.
The western race of the house wren nests with us; so also does the
bluebird. But these birds have not become civilized and prefer to
stay in the mountains and far-off places.
[Illustration: Western Bluebird.]
Birds never call to one another to "Be sure to leave the window up
for fresh air," and they do not try to get more than their share of
the blankets, as some children do. Each bird carries his bedding
about on his back, like a tramp, and he takes the first warm,
sheltered nook he can find for his bed. Some birds appear to go to
the same place to sleep every night. We suppose they feel more at
home in one spot, if they have not been molested there. When we
find a particular spot where we know the birds are in the habit of
sleeping or roosting, we are careful not to disturb the bush or tree.
Some birds sleep with their heads all covered up with the
bed-clothes, as if they were afraid, like foolish children. Perhaps
they like a warm night-cap, though we do not see how they need one
with such a thick head of hair as they have. We call it "tucking
their heads under their wings."
It is a queer fashion to stand or squat on one foot all night,
instead of lying down like other people. We suppose they use one
foot at a time, so that the other may be rested. You have noticed
that anybody who must stand for a long while usually favors one limb
or foot, holding it up a little at the knee joint, and after a time
changing to the other. Try it yourself and see.
One very odd position in which some birds sleep is upright on the
bark of a tree trunk, clinging to the wood with their toes, and
propping themselves up with their strong, pointed tail-tips, as the
flickers and some of their friends do.
Going-to-bed-time and getting-up-time are happy hours with the birds.
About sundown you will hear them saying, "Just one more twitter,"
"One more worm, if you please," or, "One more flight to the highest
tree."
While you are watching them in the soft twilight, there is a sudden
hush and not a bird is in sight. If you have not been paying close
attention, with your eyes wide open, it will be impossible for you
to tell what has become of the birds, they go to bed so quickly
and silently. Not a sound will break the stillness, unless a merry
mocking-bird wakes you out of your sleep.
These mocking-birds sing to us all night long at some parts of the
year. You know these birds came by their name because they deserve
it. They mock or mimic every bird they hear, including the hens and
turkeys. We have wondered why they do not talk as well, but we have
never known them to.
One mocker in our yard gives us the postman's whistle every afternoon
an hour before it is due. Strangers rush to their gates, thinking
their mail has come, while the mocker laughs at them from the tip-top
branch of a eucalyptus tree, seventy or eighty feet above them.
If you have just come to California, you are likely to be waked up in
the middle of the night by the sound of your pet chickens peeping, or
the turkeys crying as if in distress, and you imagine all the fowls
in the coops are being carried off.
Perhaps you will snatch a broom or an apron and run out quickly, sure
of finding the marauder. From the top of his tree, safe out of your
reach, that little rascal of a mocker will "peep" again, and then
you will understand that it is only one of his jokes. Often they
sing beautiful songs by the hour, and we lie awake to hear, laughing
at the racket, or holding our breath to catch the last note of some
wonderful melody.
Besides the mocking-bird you may hear the owl, though you cannot be
quite sure that it is not the mocker again. In the dusk, when it is
just light enough to see a little, you may catch a glimpse of the
"Poor Will," darting about for his supper among the belated gnats and
flies.
When this bird came to California he left off saying "Whip Poor
Will,"[21] and so has but two notes. "Poor Will" is not whipped in
this beautiful land.
[21] _Phaenoptilus nuttalli californicus._
One will have to get up very early to see the fun among the birds in
the morning. A chirp in the twilight, the breakfast bell ringing from
the throat of the first bird up, and then how astir are the trees and
the bushes, and the whole yard or field! It is impossible for you to
tell where the little songsters came from so suddenly, just as it was
impossible for you to tell where they went to sleep the night before.
If there is a tub of water by the pump, the rim of it will soon be
covered by the birds; or, better still, if there is a leaky hydrant,
or a spring in the berry patch, or a puddle in the orchard, there you
will see what is sure to make you laugh.
The swishing and the diving and the twittering and the dressing of
the birds, and the flying particles of water like a shower bath, are
enough to make you glad that there are birds alive.
[Illustration: Whip-poor-will]
Let lazy people lie in bed on a bright morning. They will never know
what fun they miss, even though they may read about it. It is better
to see a fine thing for yourself than to depend upon what other
people have to say about it.
By the time ordinary people are up, the birds will have settled down
to the business of the day. Their dresses and coats are brushed, and
their hats and bonnets are on "straight."
The drip, drip, of the hydrant, or the babble of the brook do not
tell what they saw an hour ago. The old sun, looking down steadily in
your face, never hints at sights that made him smile so out of the
corner of his eye when he first got up at call of the birds.
It is a very odd thing that the birds have to wake the sun every
morning in California. Look about you early and see how it is where
you live.
"Get up, old Sun! get up, old Sun!" they all scream at once, and
they keep right on making as much noise as they can, until the lazy
old fellow is fairly out of bed. Tell your friends, if they do not
believe this, that they and old Sol himself had better take to
getting up earlier in the morning.
That is a queer old proverb, "Early birds get the worms." You have
all heard it, and it tells the truth.
Did you ever see the ground all covered with tiny little mounds of
fresh earth in the morning when it is damp? Angle-worms do not like
the sunshine; they will die if exposed to it. So they come up to
the surface of the ground in the night, while we and the sun are
asleep, just to get a bit of fresh air and to look around the world.
If they do not hurry back to their home in the ground, they will get
surprised by the "early birds," who help themselves to all the worms
they want.
That is a good proverb for the birds and the worms, but it has
another meaning for us all. "Early birds get the worms" means "If you
want to see pretty things, and hear fine music, and have a good time,
you must get up early in the morning." So if you would see all the
bird-fun in your yard, you must be up and out as soon as there is the
least bit of light, or you will be too late.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXIV.
MRS. TOWHEE PROPOSES A GARDEN PARTY.
"Let's give a garden party," said Mrs. Towhee to Mrs. Phœbe; "it is
lovely weather, and we haven't had a garden party for ever so long."
"Good! let's do it," answered Mrs. Phœbe. "You go and give out the
invitations, while I get things ready."
"There is a new family up in the eucalyptus house," said Mrs. Towhee,
calling her friend back. "They are little mites of people, almost as
small as the Hummers. I wonder if it would be proper to invite them
to our party. They are strangers here, and no one I have seen ever
heard of them before. You know we ought to be careful about the new
people we meet."
"Well, I don't know," the other said, smoothing her slate-colored
breast. "Ask Mrs. Mocker; she knows everybody."
So they called to Mrs. Mocker. "Do you know that new family up in
the great high house? They must be fine people to move into such a
handsome place. The Oriole family have rented that house for years."
[Illustration: Phœbe.]
"Oh, I know them," Mrs. Mocker said; "they are Mr. and Mrs.
Bush-tit from over in the mountains. They never lived in our city
before. They belong to the great Tit family, and their name means
a Tit-in-a-bush." Then Mrs. Mocker looked very knowing and put on
airs, as she always does. She knows that she is acquainted with
everybody, and she is proud of it.
Mrs. Towhee and Mrs. Phœbe nudged each other. Then they asked Mrs.
Mocker if she would "introduce the new neighbors at the party."
Mrs. Mocker agreed to do this, and then Mrs. Towhee went away to
invite all the people, and Mrs. Phœbe got the garden ready. She
swung on all the bough-swings she could think of, to see if they
were safe; and she hunted up all the nice nooks and corners to play
hide-and-seek in; and she tested the food which was sent in to see if
it was all right. Then she went upstairs into the top stories of the
tree-houses and waved her hand to all her bird friends.
It was a busy day among the bird people. They washed themselves,
and combed their frizzes, and cocked their hats, and trimmed their
bonnets, and flirted their coat-tails, and fixed their best trails,
and took especial pains to have their feet clean. They made their
nails look neat, too; strange a bird should think of that. But birds
are ladies and gentlemen, you know.
"Is my gorget all right?" asked Mr. Hummer of Mr. Sparrow.
"I don't know what you mean by your gorget," said Mr. Sparrow.
"Why, it's this shining patch I always wear under my throat. Really
it is a diamond scarf-pin which has always been in our family. It is
an heirloom. Rather large, isn't it? but all the gentlemen in our
family wear them, and that is what makes the fashion, you know." Then
the vain young hummer turned his head all about in the sunshine to
make his gorget shimmer.
"Oh, I see," said Mr. Sparrow. "How do you like my new garden hat?
You see it is striped,--two black stripes and three white stripes. It
is very costly, and I hope it will wear a whole year."
"Why, that is a beautiful hat," answered Mr. Hummer. "Do you suppose
those new people up in the big house will come to our garden party?"
"Oh, I hope so," said Mr. Sparrow. "And there are some
more new people here, tourists, just passing over the
Southern-Pacific-free-to-all bird route. They have stop-over tickets,
I understand, and I mean to ask Mrs. Mocker to invite them all. She
likes to get acquainted with strangers for the chance of mocking them
behind their backs. I can't help liking her, though."
"Tut, tut," said Mr. Sparrow, "it isn't right to gossip about one's
neighbors." Then in a low tone he added, "If you don't know anything
good to say about a person like Mrs. Mocker, it shows you do not know
her very well."
Mr. Mocker heard what they were saying about his wife, and he fell to
mimicking them in a low key till the gossipers all flew off.
Just then a red-shafted flicker called to his next neighbor, the
humming-bird, with a loud, harsh cry, which so frightened the little
hummer that he dropped straight down from the bough he was sitting
on, right into the lap of a rose that happened to be spreading her
skirts below.
[Illustration: Flicker.]
"You needn't be afraid of me," said the flicker, "that is my natural
voice. I was going to tell you how I scared an old lady in the white
house yonder. I flew up to the gable under the eaves and began
hammering away with all my might on the house-side. You know my hard,
stout bill is my hammer. It went 'rap, rap,' just like a man with a
hatchet.
"Out came the old lady, and she looked all around the house, thinking
to see a burglar, I suppose, and then she went back and locked the
door. Soon I began to hammer again. She came out, and this time she
looked straight at me and said, 'Shoo, you old bird!' Of course I
flew away. All I wanted was to make a hole in the roof over the
attic, so I could have a warm place to sleep in this winter."
"I don't think it was kind of you to scare an old lady," said the
hummer, sitting still in the lap of the pink rose. "That is the same
lady who left her pampas plumes standing in the yard when other
people had cut theirs down, on purpose that my wife might have the
feathers and tufts to line her nest with. They are splendid to make
a cradle of, they and the spider's web. It was that same old lady's
daughter who put the umbrella over our nest in the rain storm.
"That young lady thinks she can catch me. I go and sit on a low bush
and doze in the sunshine, showing off my gorget as well as I can,
when along comes the young lady. I blink away, and she thinks I am
fast asleep. As long as her hands are behind her I know I am safe,
and I let her get close to me. But the minute she puts out her hand
to catch me, I am off, and you ought to see how disappointed she
looks."
"That is a very long story for such a small bird as you are," said
Mr. Flicker to the hummer. "I could tell one twice as long."
Mr. Flicker was beginning his yarn all about how he scared some small
boys just at sundown in a grove. He said he flew up quickly, and his
flame-colored wing linings looked so much like fire that the boys
ran away.
Just then Mr. Mocker set up such a noise, squalling like a chicken
when it is caught, that the birds all flew away to their houses, all
but the hummer. He wasn't afraid of a chicken, and he sat still in
the lap of the sweet rose.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXV.
AT THE GARDEN PARTY.
The morning dew was not off from the lilacs and the sweet calamus in
the garden when the birds began to come to the party.
They came in pairs, and in groups, and in whole families. They were
turning their heads this way and that, whispering and chatting
and showing off their new spring suits, and looking shyly at the
different kinds of food, like people at a picnic.
"Good morning," said old Mrs. Goldfinch to Mrs. Hummer. "I see you
have a son almost as large as yourself. I do not understand how that
can be so early in the season."
"Oh, I am very proud of my son," remarked Mrs. Hummer. "I have a
daughter almost as large as my son. They are both very much like
their father. I had good luck in raising them. It stormed once right
into the nest, when they were very small and weak, but I kept
mending the cradle as well as I could with thread which I bought of
Mrs. Spider. I brought both of my children to the party with me."
"Oh, I never take my children to a party," said Mrs. Goldfinch. "I
leave them with their nurse."
Mrs. Goldfinch said this with a haughty air, which quite amused Mrs.
Hummer. She knew very well that Mrs. Goldfinch kept no nurse, but
took care of her children herself night and day. "Very likely the
cats will get them to-day," Mrs. Hummer was thinking.
"Good morning," said Mrs. Warbler to Mrs. Cliff Swallow. "I did not
know you had returned. Have you come to stay with us now?"
"Oh, yes; I have come to stay," answered Mrs. Cliff Swallow. "We have
taken rooms under the barn eaves. We are just making a cradle for the
young ones we hope to have by and by. We have had a hard time to get
all the mud we wanted, and thought we should be obliged to give up
nest-making for this year. There was a nice puddle in the road where
we were at work; you know we like road mud best, because it is so
fine and sticky. When school let out, the small boys threw stones at
us, hoping to hit some of us, I suppose, and so we had to go down to
the river to get our mud, and that wasn't half so good as the road
mud."
"That is too bad," said Mrs. Warbler.
Mrs. Cliff Swallow went on to say, "We have just heard such a
slander about our family. Mrs. Owl told us. She overheard it outside
of a window in the evening. Somebody has started the story that
we swallows have fleas and other vermin in our nests, and on that
account we ought not to be allowed to build around houses and barns.
It is a dreadful story, and so false. I wonder how it started. I felt
almost too ashamed to come to the party."
"Too bad; too bad," said Mrs. Warbler again. "I would not pay any
attention to it. Folks will say unkind things about us all, if they
happen to find just one of us in mischief. Of course all birds do
have a few little mites or fleas in their houses, and they can't
help that, any more than those great human people can help having
house-flies and mosquitoes about them where they live.
"Now some folks think I pick holes in the window screens, just
because I love to run over them, up and down and all around, after
the flies. To be sure, I do stick my toes through the meshes to hold
myself on, but what of that? I love to peep through the window at
people eating breakfast in the morning when the flies are stiff with
cold on the outside. I can catch my game easily then."
Just then the new birds came along, and all the rest stood in a row
to be introduced by Mrs. Mocker. "Mr. and Mrs. Bush-tit," she said,
"let me present you to all of your neighbors."
The strangers shook hands all around, and then the birds fell to
asking Mr. and Mrs. Bush-tit questions in true Yankee style.
[Illustration: California Bush-tit and Nest.]
"Yes," they answered, "we are going to stay all this season. We are
making a cradle in the eucalyptus house, which we have rented."
"Oh, I saw your cradle," said Mrs. Towhee; "it is such a queer
one. It looks just like a bag with a little round hole in one side
no bigger than a good-sized blackberry. What makes you build such a
queer cradle as that?"
"That is the kind of a cradle all our family make. The little ones
have to stay in until we boost them out, or until they are strong
enough to climb out. It is very safe and warm. It is strong, too. We
would not think of making such a cradle as you do, Mrs. Towhee. We
felt very sorry one day when we found one of your babies dead on the
ground, where it had fallen out of the nest when it was too weak to
fly."
"Well, we are glad to see you, anyway," said Mrs. Towhee, wiping the
tears out of her eyes. "Now make yourselves at home, and let your
little Tits come over and play with our little Towhees."
Mr. and Mrs. Bush-tit bowed politely, and then along came Mr.
Bluebird. "Why, how do you do?" he said. "What brought you here? I
thought you lived up in the mountain with the other Bush-tits."
"What brought you here?" they answered, laughing in the sweetest way.
And then they agreed that our yard is a very nice place, and they
thought they would "bring their friends" often and picnic.
"We never have rented a house in this street," said Mr. Bluebird,
"but we may do so some day. Do you think it would be safe to try to
raise a family so near those great people?"
"We think so," said Mrs. Bush-tit, "but you ought to see them stand
and stare at us. A big, kind-faced boy comes every day and writes in
a note-book, looking straight into our house. Once he climbed up on
a ladder and examined it. We were very much afraid, but he did us no
harm. His eye was so blue and clear we could see ourselves in it. It
looked just as if he couldn't hurt a bird.
"Then one day a lady came with the boy, and they both watched us and
tried to make pictures of us, but we wouldn't keep still long enough.
The lady is that boy's mother, and we heard her say, 'We'll tame
these bush-tits some day, Jo, just as we did the humming-birds, and
then we will write all about them for children to read.'"
Then Mr. Bluebird said, "Isn't it strange what queer things people
do write about us? Sometimes they are right, and sometimes they are
wrong. I wish some bird author would write a book about men and women
and their queer ways. Wouldn't it be interesting?"
Then Madam Bush-tit laughed a merry little giggle that made Mr.
Mocker look up in surprise, and he ran it over in an undertone before
he should forget it.
Just then a yellow-breasted meadow lark carolled his sweet ditty on
the tip-top of a pine tree. All the birds flew to welcome him to the
garden party, coaxing him to stay and offering him lemonade from the
cup of an orange blossom. They all loved Mr. Meadow Lark.
"No, thank you," he said; "I must be off. I love the fields better
than the door-yards, and the violets and the cream-cups look out for
my drink. I just came a minute to say good morning."
[Illustration: Meadow Lark.]
A whole flock of wax-wings took possession of a pepper tree and began
to throw the seeds down on the heads of the birds beneath. "Oh,
excuse us," they said, "we are tourists, and this yard looked so
inviting we stopped for a few moments. How much do you ask a dozen
for these pepper berries? We do not have any in our country. They are
good eating, we find, when one has learned how to manage them. You
ought not to charge us a great price, for they are almost all seed.
How much do you ask?"
All the birds laughed, and then Mr. Mocker imitated the wax-wings,
calling out in a saucy tone, "How much do you ask? How much do you
ask?" The wax-wings were offended and flew away, the bit of red
wax on the tip of their wing feathers showing very plainly in the
sunshine.
"As if we ever charge anybody anything for what they eat," said Mr.
Warbler. "I'm hungry myself." Then Mrs. Towhee, who had really gotten
up the garden party, called them to dinner.
All the birds helped themselves. The hummers dipped away down into
the honey-pot of a morning-glory, and the towhees and mockers ate
worms and crickets in the damp grass; the warblers snatched gnats on
the wing, and the bush-tits ran up and down on the tree boughs, in
search of bugs so small nobody else could see them. Each bird took
the sort of food it liked best, drinking at the hydrant and breaking
the bottles of the raspberry vines.
Suddenly along came Mr. Butcher-bird. "Go away, go away," all the
birds cried. "Nobody invited you to our garden party."
"But I am here," said Mr. Butcher, in an impudent manner. "I should
like to have a taste of that fat young hummer."
Mrs. Hummer screamed, and down swooped the butcher. Everybody thought
he was going to make a meal of the baby, when he surprised them by
grabbing up a great Jerusalem cricket and darting off with it.
Mr. Butcher-bird thought it was a good joke, and he laughed loudly
from the peach tree. But the birds were so scared that they all flew
away, and so the garden party broke up.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXVI.
OUR BIRD HOSPITAL.
Cities have their hospitals for the sick and wounded. When an
accident happens to a person in the street, or a man falls from a
building, or is burned, or is hurt in any way, he is taken to the
hospital, where the surgeon does what he can for him. Sometimes his
life is saved by the surgeon's care and the kindness of trained
nurses.
If a stranger in any city is taken sick, and has no friends to care
for him, he is carried to the hospital, where he is nursed back to
strength. If he has no money, he is quite welcome to all this.
A long while ago, when we first began to be interested in birds and
to think of them as "people," like ourselves, we found it necessary
to have a bird hospital.
Our native birds seldom meet with accidents unless they are killed
outright; but the tourist birds are often found injured in some
mysterious way, so that they cannot fly. We feel sorry for these
strangers so far from home, and so we pick them up and carry them to
our hospital.
We have several empty cages about, one being the big cage which used
to be "Robby's" house. When Robin died, we thought it was a pity to
give his cage away or to have it doing no good to anybody.
So we called it our hospital. This hospital is "In memory of Robin,"
as hospitals are sometimes built in "memory" of great men, or with
money which rich men have left for that purpose.
We do not remember how many birds have been taken to our hospital,
but there have been a great many. We use the "smaller wards"--the
little cages, you know--for little solitary birds.
The last patients which we had in the large hospital were two
wax-wings which we found maimed in some way so that they could not
fly. They could get along pretty well low on the ground, but we were
afraid the cats would steal them, and so our hospital nurse took
charge of them.
At first they were very wild and would scream when we touched them.
But they tamed readily, and in a day or two would sit on our fingers
and eat from our hands. We knew they were berry and insect eaters;
but, as it was winter, and the insects scarce, we could think of
nothing they would like but the pepper berries. They lived on these
for a few days, but evidently wanted other food.
We tried angle-worms, but these did not suit. One morning at
breakfast little Sister, the hospital nurse, was holding one of the
wax-wings on her finger, when it began to snatch at the bread crumbs.
It was as if the little bird had been used to home-made bread all its
life.
[Illustration: Wax-Wing.]
We kept these two beautiful patients in our hospital until they were
quite strong, and just before the last of the tourists went away they
joined their friends and flew off as if nothing had happened. We
thought we saw them in the trees once again, but were not certain,
all wax-wings look so very much alike.
At first, when we let them out of the cage, they would run back and
go in at the open door; but soon they heard their mates calling and
joined them. We had their photographs taken just before they went
away, as people have the pictures of their friends to "remember them
by."
The birds who are at liberty are very attentive to the birds in the
hospitals, and hop close to them, as if they were inquiring all about
their troubles.
Besides these sick birds in the hospital, we have the "out patients,"
young birds which we feed and look after when they happen to fall out
of the nests. They cry all about at nesting time, so that it is as
much as one person can do to keep the cats away and see that nothing
happens to them.
Boys in our neighborhood know how we love the birds, and often bring
them to us if they are hurt, so that they may have the benefit of
our hospital. This is better than to leave them where they happen to
fall, for the cats and dogs to worry. There are many ways in which we
can show our affection for these little people.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXVII.
A SPLENDID COLLECTION.
We could never finish a book if we told all there is to know about
birds. So we shall have to close our story about these people, hoping
that children who read it will love the birds better than they ever
did before.
The birds will stay with you wherever you live, even if it is on a
lonely island or a western prairie. There will be garden parties, and
morning concerts, and evening serenades, and visiting birds will drop
into your yards and stop awhile. Birds are just like other people;
they like to take a meal with a neighbor now and then. It makes good
feeling on both sides.
Any one can have a fine collection of beautiful birds without going
to the museums. Not dead, stuffed, songless creatures, who cannot say
"Thank you" for a crumb, or warble you a melody in return for a home
in your yard. You can have this splendid collection flying from tree
to tree, and making cradles among the flowers, and giving a garden
party every day in the year, even though the snow lies on the ground.
There are wise people who study birds all their lives, never killing
the little things to put away in a drawer with camphor balls. Such
people come to love the birds very much, and to know their sweet,
wise doings in a way that a person with a gun can never know them.
Sick people can sit in the sunshine or in the shade and study the
birds, and grow stronger as well as wiser.
There are some strange collections of birds to be found in milliners'
shops. The milliners are not to blame for these, for if good and kind
people did not want any out of their collection, they would not keep
so many.
Sometime on your way home from school, if your mother is not
wanting to see you early, look in at these show windows and see the
collections we are speaking of. These birds are sold to foolish women
and girls, and worn to church and everywhere else on hats and bonnets.
See how distressed the poor dead creatures seem to be,--how they
are twisted all out of shape. They are made to squat or perch in
positions that make them look as if they were in agony. Not one of
them all has a natural, happy look, because the people who put them
up to sell have never loved the birds nor studied their ways. All
they care about is the money they can get for them.
You will notice that some of the birds in ladies' bonnets have been
cut in two. Sometimes just the head and wings are to be seen. If
these ladies stopped to see what they were doing, and to think of how
ridiculous they look, they would never wear these ornaments, just
like savages.
[Illustration: Snowy Heron.]
Many of the birds that are very rare and beautiful have been nearly
or quite all killed for this fashion. Some of the most delicate
plumes you see have been taken from the egret, or white heron, at
nesting time. The mothers are shot or stoned to death very easily,
because they will not leave their young. It is said that many are
left wounded and yet alive after the plumes have been stripped off.
There is no one to care for the young which are left in their nests,
and so they die of cold and hunger. All this suffering is just to
satisfy the cruel pride of women and girls who must wear birds in
their bonnets.
If boys would resolve never to kill a bird, even though they could
get money by doing it; and if girls would resolve never to wear
a bird or a bird's wing on their hats, our country would be more
beautiful with song and color than it has ever been.
We sat in church the other day, and in front of us was a lady with
nine bird's wings on her bonnet. She was a tender-hearted lady, and
probably would not hurt a fly herself. Yet her pride had really
caused the death and suffering of five birds, and possibly of fifteen
or twenty birdlings. She did not stop to think. Will you, kind
reader, stop to think?
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Boards 30 cts. Set of six fraction cards for children to cut.
12 cts.
=White's Two Years with Numbers.= Number Lessons for second and
third year pupils. 40 cts.
=White's Junior Arithmetic.= For fourth and fifth year pupils.
Cloth. 50 cts.
=White's Senior Arithmetic.= _In press._
_For advanced work see our list of books in Mathematics._
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS,
BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO.
* * * * *
_ENGLISH LANGUAGE._
=Hyde's Lessons in English, Book I.= For the lower grades. Contains
exercises for reproduction, picture lessons, letter writing,
uses of parts of speech, etc. 40 cts.
=Hyde's Lessons in English, Book II.= For Grammar schools. Has
enough technical grammar for correct use of language. Co cts.
=Hyde's Lessons in English, Book II with Supplement.= Has, in
addition to the above, 118 pages of technical grammar. 70 cts.
Supplement bound alone, 35 cts.
=Hyde's Practical English Grammar.= For advanced classes in grammar
schools and for high schools. 60 cts.
=Hyde's Lessons in English, Book II with Practical Grammar.= The
Practical Grammar and Book II bound together. 80 cts.
=Hyde's Derivation of Words.= 15 cts.
=Penniman's Common Words Difficult to Spell.= Graded lists of
common words often misspelled. Boards. 25 cts.
=Penniman's Prose Dictation Exercises.= Short extracts from the
best authors. Boards. 30 cts.
=Spalding's Problem of Elementary Composition.= Suggestions for its
solution. Cloth. 45 cts.
=Mathews's Outline of English Grammar, with Selections for
Practice.= The application of principles is made through
composition of original sentences. 80 cts.
=Buckbee's Primary Word Book.= Embraces thorough drills in
articulation and in the primary difficulties of spelling and
sound. 30 cts.
=Sever's Progressive Speller.= For use in advanced primary,
intermediate, and grammar grades. Gives spelling,
pronunciation, definition, and use of words. 30 cts.
=Badlam's Suggestive Lessons in Language.= Being Part I and
Appendix of Suggestive Lessons in Language and Reading. 50 cts.
=Smith's Studies in Nature, and Language Lessons.= A combination
of object lessons with language work. 50 cts. Part I bound
separately, 25 cts.
=Meiklejohn's English Language.= Treats salient features with a
master's skill and with the utmost clearness and simplicity.
$1.30.
=Meiklejohn's English Grammar.= Also composition, versification,
paraphrasing, etc For high schools and colleges, go cts.
=Meiklejohn's History of the English Language.= 78 pages. Part III
of English Language above, 35 cts.
=Williams's Composition and Rhetoric by Practice.= For high school
and college. Combines the smallest amount of theory with an
abundance of practice. Revised edition. $1.00.
=Strang's Exercises in English.= Examples in Syntax, Accidence, and
Style for criticism and correction. 50 cts.
=Huffcutt's English in the Preparatory School.= Presents advanced
methods of teaching English grammar and composition in the
secondary schools. 25 cts.
=Woodward's Study of English.= From primary school to college. 25
cts.
=Genung's Study of Rhetoric.= Shows the most practical discipline.
25 cts.
_See also our list of books for the study of English Literature._
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS,
BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note
Text was relocated to prevent illustrations from splitting
paragraphs. Minor typos were corrected. The final footnote on Page
144 was missing and the anchor was deleted. Several cases of a
possible "æ" ligature were printed as individual characters and were
left that way.
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