never get to the bird itself.

The bird itself is the summer yellowbird, the dear, delightful
yellow warbler, whose very picture you see before you; the restless,
much-traveled bird, the bird who may not look exactly like himself
when his coat is worn and tumbled, but who comes by a new, fresh one
when it is most sorely needed. More dull of color is his mate, who
is just behind himself, somewhere in the tree out of range of the
camera. The two are never far apart in family times; where one flies
there goes the other, happy as clams--if clams ever are very happy,
which we doubt--nesting as they do deep down in the wet sand, and
never seeing a flower or a ripe peach or a raspberry all their lives.
However, it is supposed the clam knows something akin to happiness,
for he is always where he wants to be, save when he falls into the
pot, and here is where we will leave him.

Well, the yellow warbler is at home all over North America, migrating
from place to place, sometimes in twos and threes, sometimes in
flocks; at times journeying straight on, and again stopping in every
treetop for refreshments sure to be ready. Sometimes the birds travel
by night, coming in on the morning train like any travelers, hungry
for breakfast, and the first we know of their arrival is a quaint
little plea for something to eat. Not a highly melodious note that,
but curious and pleasing.

We always know summer is coming straight away when we see the
warbler, just as we know winter is here by the first snowflake. And
as soon as they arrive nesting begins. For that very purpose they
come, of course. As to the nests, they are very beautiful. The one in
the picture must have been built deep in the woods, where grasses and
dried leaf tatters were plenty.

But there is no set pattern to go by, when nests are made. That
is, there is no particular building material allowed, as with the
swallows and some others. The yellow warbler loves best to use things
that mat together readily, so the nest cup will be compact and
thick, like a piece of felt cloth--so different from the nest of the
grosbeak, transparent and open, like basketwork.

To get this cloth-like substance, the birds visit the sweet-fern
stalks of the pasture sides, pulling off the woolly furze bit by bit,
until a beakful is gathered. Then they make a trip to the brooks,
especially in early spring, where they wake up the catkins on the
pussy-willows and get loads of the soft fur. Oh, the secrets the
pussy-willows know, about bird and bat and butterfly cocoon, and
other winged people that frolic in their shadows! They could tell
you exactly how many beakfuls of pussy fur it takes to weave a crib
blanket for a yellow warbler's nest. Whole nests are made of it
sometimes; for the warbler loves to gather one particular kind of
material for a nest if sh& comes across enough of it in one spot.
That is why they build so rapidly, always getting it done in a
hurry. They love big loads of anything, and the male shows his mate
where she can find it with the least trouble. In places where sheep
pasture, rubbing against trees and catching their sides into thorns
and sticks at every turn, the yellowbird gathers the wool. She likes
this particularly, as it is light and clings to itself, and she can
carry large quantities at one trip.

The happy boy or girl who has a pasture near by home is rich.
There is nothing like a pasture to study nature in, especially
birds. A wood lot with trees of all sizes in it, a cranberry bog, a
huckleberry patch, a maple grove, a sweet-fern corner, with snake
vines running at random among young brakes--ah! this is the spot of
all the world for nature-lovers and birds. One can part the bushes
and find a warbler's nest most anywhere. One can peer up into the
treetops and find another. In the treetops the nest is fastened
securely, be it where the winds have a habit of blowing through
their fingers when it isn't necessary. But birds and winds are fair
play-fellows and seldom interfere with one another.

Here, in southern California, we have little wind, if any, in the
days of the summer yellowbird. So nests are often set in a crotch
without a bit of fastening.

Two years ago a pair came to the house grounds, the first we had seen
so near. We wondered what they would nest with first, knowing their
disposition to take the material close at hand. We knew they strip
the down from the backs of the sycamores in the mountain cañons,
and gather bits of wool fiber from tree trunks, or ravel lint from
late weed stems in the arroyos. So we anticipated and shook loose
cotton-batting in a bush. No sooner did father yellowbird spy the
fluffy, white stuff than he brought madam, and she was delighted.
This cotton could be pulled by beakfuls, and an afternoon or two
would make the entire nest.

And they used it, not getting another thing save some gray hairs
from a lady's head, which in combing had escaped, and were saved on
purpose for the birds.

The nest was placed in the crotch of a pepper-tree, just out of reach
of tiptoe inquirers. Just one pinch of cotton above another until
the cup was deep and true to the shaping of the mother's breast, she
turning round and round after the manner of nest-builders. Through
the layers ran separate hairs which held the cotton in shape.

It was a beautiful thing, that nest, even after it had served its
purpose, and we took it down when the birds had flown. That was a
mistake of ours. It was before we had come to know it is better to
leave old nests undisturbed. Many birds love to return the coming
season and repair last year's structures.

When the following summer came, and the yellowbirds returned from
their winter in Mexico, they went straight to the same old tree.
They crept up and down the trunk, peering into all the crotches,
and criticising every place where a nest might have been. Perhaps a
single speck of the cotton had 'remained and served for "a pointer";
anyway, the birds located the exact spot and went to work without
more ado.

Exactly as though they remembered, they went also to the supply
counter where we had placed more cotton in advance of their coming,
and with it they built exactly the same white nest in the very crotch
of last year's happy history.

It was a pretty sight to see the mother take the cotton. It looked
sparklingly white against her breast and dripping from her beak. And
all the time she was arranging it in the nest to suit her experienced
mind, her mate sang, warbling his sympathy, darting through the
leaves, and running up and down the branches. This running up and
down the boughs, so like their cousins, the creepers, makes this bird
look graceful of form and motion, as indeed he is, anywhere and at
anything he does. On this account he is often called the gem-bird,
his brilliant grace suggesting some precious and coveted stone.

These warblers of ours did not feign lameness, if we came near the
nest, as some of the family are said to do. From daily companionship
they came to know and trust us. Had the nest been a little lower we
should have succeeded in taming them completely, as we have many of
the wild birds at nesting-time.

We have left the nest where it is this fall, hoping the birds will
return and claim it another year. It being of cotton, however, and
having no threads to bind it in the crotch, we think the winter
storms will wreck it.

It has been claimed by good authority that the cow-bird loves to
deposit her eggs in the yellow warbler's nest. But this is of little
avail to the cow-bird's trick, for Madam Warbler sees the point and
the egg at a glance. She often builds above the intruder, imprisoning
the alien egg, and so leaves it to its fate. A single bird is said
to have built above the cow-bird's egg three times in succession, as
the intruder persisted, until there were four floors to the nest, on
the last of which the mother succeeded in laying her own eggs. If
she becomes discouraged by the persistency of her guilty neighbor,
she will leave the spot sometimes and search for another in which to
carry on her own affairs in peace.

Of the seventy-five or more species of this warbler family said to
occur in the United States, all resemble each other in points enough
to mark them as warblers. All are insect-eaters. Some are called
worm-eaters, others bug-eaters. They despise a vegetable diet. On
account of their sharp appetite for grubs and larvæ, the warblers are
the friends of all who live by the growth of green things and the
ripening of fruits and grains. With few exceptions all the birds are
small and very beautiful. Theirs is the second largest family among
our birds, ranking next to the sparrows.

Some of the warblers live near streams, playing boat on floating
driftwood, hunting for insects in the decaying timbers, running up
and down half-submerged logs atilt on the shore, after spiders and
water-beetles.

If they are missed we may be sure they will return in their own good
time, bringing their warble with them. They may only stay long enough
for breakfast or dinner, taking advantage of their stop-over tickets,
like any travelers of note. Perhaps the strong, courageous, singing
males of the party of travelers come in advance of the females and
young, as if to see that the country is ready and at peace. Nothing
can be said of them more beautiful and fitting than this quotation
from Elliott Coues:

"With tireless industry do the warblers defend the human race.
They visit the orchard when the apple and pear, the peach, plum,
and cherry, are in bloom, seeming to revel among the sweet-scented
blossoms, but never faltering in their good work. They peer into
crevices of the bark, and explore the very heart of the buds, to
detect, drag forth, and destroy those tiny creatures which prey upon
the hopes of the fruit-grower, and which, if undisturbed, would bring
all his care to naught. Some warblers flit incessantly in the tops of
the tallest trees, others hug close to the scored trunks and gnarled
boughs of the forest kings; some peep from the thickets and shrubbery
that deck the watercourses, playing at hide-and-seek; others, more
humble still, descend to the ground, where they glide with pretty
mincing steps and affected turning of the head this way and that,
their delicate flesh-tinted feet just stirring the layer of withered
leaves with which a past season carpeted the sod. We may see warblers
everywhere in their season and find them a continual surprise."

    "Sweet and true are the notes of his song:
     Sweet, and yet always full and strong;
     True, and yet they are never sad.
     Serene with that peace that maketh glad;
            Life! Life! Life!
            Oh, what a blessing is life!
                    Life is glad."

CHAPTER X

THE BLUEBIRD

    He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree.
      The red-flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blossoms;
    He snaps up destroyers wherever they be.
      And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms.
    He drags the vile worm from the corn it devours,
      The worms from their webs where they riot and welter;
    His song and his services freely are ours.
      And all that he asks is, in summer a shelter.

Wilson.

Yesterday the snow melted from the top of the great rocks in the
woods; the evergreens shading the rocks lost their white load that
had been bearing down the branches for a month; the fences straggled
their lean legs wide apart, as if it were summer, only the tips of
their toes resting on the surface snow; the north roof of the barn
fringed itself with icicles that tumbled down by noon, sticking up at
the base of the barn in the drifts head foremost; the top dressing
of white powder that for weeks had adorned the woodpiles sifted down
through the sticks in a wet scramble for the bottom. All around the
farm the buntings had picked the snow off, making the fields look as
if brown mats were spread all over the floor. But yesterday the south
wind puckered up its lips and blew all over everything in sight,
and the brown mats disappeared, or rather, grew into one big one.
The cows in the barn-yard look longingly over the fence toward the
pasture, and the fowls take a longer walk than they have dared for
months, away out in the garden, where lopping brown vines and nude
bush stalks bear witness to what they have suffered.

[Illustration: BLUE BIRD.]

The sun shines across the dooryard as it hasn't shone for so long,
making a thin coat of mud just at the edge of the chips and around
the doorsteps. But what matters? The children run in and out,
tracking up the clean floors, taking their scolding with good cheer.
Isn't spring here? and don't they hear the bluebird's note in the
orchard?

Run! run! and put up some more little boxes on the shed and the
fence-posts. Clean out the last year's nests in the hollow trees.
Tell the old cat to "keep mum" and "lie low," or she will be put in
a bag and dropped to the bottom of the very first hole in the ice.
Cats are all right in the dead of winter, when Old Boreas is frantic
in his annual mad fit. She can sit on the rug and purr to her heart's
content; but when the bluebirds come, if she bethinks herself of the
fact, and sharpens her claws against the trunk of a cherry-tree, she
would better look out. When the old cat sharpens her claws she means
business, especially if she turns her head in the direction of the
orchard. From the orchard comes a soft, agreeable, oft-repeated note,
there is a quivering of wings outspread, and "he" is here. There may
be only one or two or six singers. They have left the lady bluebirds
in a safe place until they are sure of the weather. If the outlook
be bad to-morrow, the birds will retire out of sight and wait for
another warm spell. But spring is really here, and the good work of
the sun goes on. In a day or two the lady birds appear modestly, of
paler hue than the males, quiet, but quick and glad of motion.

It is the time of sweethearts. A blue beauty, whose latest coat is
none the worse for winter wear, alights near the mate of his choice,
sitting on a twig. He goes very near her and whispers in her ear.
She listens. He caresses a drooping feather, torn in her wing as she
dodged the brush in the journey. She thinks it very kind of him to do
so.

Suddenly an early fly appears, traveling zigzag, slowly, somewhere,
probably on some family business of its own. Bluebird spies it
and makes for it. Not on his own account! Oh, no! He snatches it
leisurely and presents it to his love, still sitting on the tree. She
thanks him, and wipes her beak on a smaller twig.

So little by little, and by very winning ways, does this gentle
blue courtier pay his suit of Miss Bluebird. A chance acquaintance
of bluebird sidles up to the same branch on which the two have been
sitting. Bluebird courtier likes him not; he will have no rival, and
so he drives the intruder away as far as the next tree, returning
to his sweet and singing a low warble about something we do not
understand. Probably he is giving her to understand that he will "do
the right thing" by her all the time, never scolding (as indeed he
never does), and looking to the family supplies, and in all things
that pertain to faithful affection will prove himself worthy of her.
She consents, taking his word for it, and they set about the business
of the season.

Now they must hurry or the wrens will come and drive them out of
house and home. One of the bluebirds remains in the nesting-place, or
very near it; for if the house be empty of inmates, the wrens make
quick work of pulling out such straws and nesting material as have
been gathered.

If the people of the farm or other home be on the watch they can
lend a hand at this time. Offered inducements by way of many boxes
or nesting-places, with handfuls of fine litter, will attract the
wrens, and the bluebirds will be untroubled. It may be that a cold
snap will come up in a driving hurry after the nesting is well under
way. In this event the birds will disappear, probably to the deep,
warm woods, or the shelter of hollow trees, until the storm be past,
when they will come again and take up the work where they left off.

This sudden going and coming on account of the weather has always
been a mystery to those who study the bluebirds. Some imagine they
have a castle somewhere in the thickest of the woods, where they
hide, making meals on insects that love old, damp trees. Caves and
rock chambers have been explored in search of the winter bluebirds,
but not a bird was found in either place. They keep their own
secrets, whether they fly far off to a warmer spot, or whether they
hide in cell or castle.

If the work is not anticipated by human friends, and the
nesting-places cleaned out in advance of the birds, they will tidy up
the boxes themselves, both birds working at it. What do they want of
last year's litter with its invisible little mites and things that
wait for a genial warmth to hatch out? House-cleaning is a necessity
with the bluebirds. When the nest is done it is neat and compact,
composed of sticks and straws with a softer lining. The birds accept
what is ready to hand, making no long search for material. Being
neighbor to man and our habitations, it uses stable litter.

The three to six pale blue eggs contrast but slightly with the
mother's breast. The little ones grow in a hurry, for well it is
known that more broods must be attended to before summer is over.
Sometimes the nest is placed at the bottom of a box or passageway,
and the young birds have difficulty in making their way to freedom.
The old birds in such a case are said to pile sticks up to the door,
and the little ones walk up and out as if on a ladder!

The mother soon takes to preparing for another brood, and the father
assumes all the care of the young just out, leading them a short
distance from the mother, and teaching them to hunt insects and
berries. The little ones are not blue, as any one may see, but brown
with speckled breasts. These speckled breasts of young birds are
fashionable costumes for many other than bluebirds. They remind one
of infantile bibs, to be discarded as soon as the young things eat
and behave like their elders.

When the persimmons are ripe in the late fall whole families of
bluebirds collect in the trees for the fruit. They love apples as
well, but apples are hard unless in early spring after the frost has
thawed out of them. So the birds take the persimmons first. It is at
this time, when they are flitting from tree to tree, that any person
who will take the trouble of hiding underneath and keeping still
will catch glimpses of the yellow soles of the bluebird's feet. The
legs are dark above the soles. There is a legend about this that is
pleasing to know and half-way believed by lovers of legends.

And one need not be ashamed of one's fondness for legends. Legends
are as old as the hills, and folk-lore has preserved them. Now that
the printer has become the guardian of such things, we expect a
legend with every bird and beast, and a life history of either is
hardly complete without.

Nearly all the birds of North America are entitled to a legend
through the nature-loving Indians, the first inhabitants of our
country. They have left little data, but enough has been gleaned
from their folk-lore to put us on the trail of many a delightful
story. Some of our legends may be of recent date, but all have a
fascination of their own. The ancients loved myth and weird, fanciful
tales. We are descendants of the ancients, and we love the same
things.

Once upon a dreary time a flood of water covered all the earth. The
land birds were all huddled together in a little boat, twittering to
each other of a "bright to-morrow," as they do to this day. As the
storm grew harder the birds grew cold, not having any clothes up to
that date. This was the first rain that ever came, and caught many
things, of course, unprepared. The birds had been of naked skin, like
the lizards, but their beaks had grown, else how could they have been
twittering to one another of a bright to-morrow? On this very morrow
of song, the boat being far above the mountain-tops, a single ray of
sunshine appeared at a crack in the cabin-house. The bluebird always,
from the very first, being on the lookout for stray bits of sunshine,
sprang to the spot, which was just big enough for his two feet. When
the sun went back behind the clouds it was found that the stray bit
of it which the bluebird had hopped upon remained on the soles of his
feet. That is the way the bluebird came by his yellow soles.

And he came by his blue coat in this wise: When the storm had spent
itself the bluebird was the first to go out of the boat, straight
toward heaven, singing as he went. When he got to the blue sky he
stopped not, but pushed his way straight through, rubbing the tint of
the sky right into his uncolored feathers, that had grown in a flash
when he left the boat. His mate followed straight through the hole
her lord had made, but of course she did not get so much blue as he,
the hole being rubbed quite dry of its paint. Ever since the first
flight of the bluebird somewhere the sun has shone through the rift
he made in the sky and he carries hope of spring in his wake.

The bluebirds are good neighbors, never quarreling nor troubling
other birds. In the late fall his note changes to a plaintive one, as
if he were mourning for the dear, delightful days of summer-time and
nursery joys. It is now that he, with his large family, may be seen
on weed stalks in the open country, looking for belated insects and
searching for beetles and spiders among the stones.

In darting for winged insects the bluebird does not take a sudden
flight, but sways leisurely, as if he would not frighten his treasure
by quick movements.

Besides this particular bluebird, so well known all over North
America, there are two other members of the family, differing only
slightly in coloring and similar in habits. These are the Western and
the Arctic bluebirds.

The bluebirds are the morning-glories of our country. They are
companions of the violet of spring and the asters in autumn. They
belong to the blue sky and the country home and the city suburbs.
When the English sparrow is weary of being made into pot-pie and
baby-broth, it will go on its way to the North Pole or the Southern
Ocean, and our darling in blue will have no enemy in all the land.

    When all the gay scenes of the summer are o'er,
      And autumn slow enters, so silent and sallow,
    And millions of warblers that charmed us before
      Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow,
    The bluebird, forsaken, yet true to his home,
      Still lingers and looks for a milder to-morrow;
    Till forced by the horrors of winter to roam,
      He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow.

Wilson.

CHAPTER XI

THE TANAGER PEOPLE

    "Magic bird, but rarely seen,
       Phœnix in our forest green,
     Plumed with fire, and quick as flame--
       Phœnix, else thou hast no name."

It is a large tribe, of numerous species in America, but the scarlet
tanager alone may well be termed the Red Man of the forest. Native of
the New World, shy, a gypsy in his way, harmless to agriculture, a
hunter by nature, fascinating to all eyes that light on him.

It is as if Nature had a surplus of red and black the day she
painted him, and was determined to dip her brush in nothing else.
This contrast of color has made him one of our most familiar birds.
But, as with many another of striking hue, the scarlet tanager has
an indifferent song. Among our flowers like the scarlet geraniums
and hibiscus, we do not look for the fragrance that distinguishes
the pale violet or wild rose. It is as if the bright tint of bird
or blossom is sufficient of itself, and nature would not bestow all
virtues upon one individual.

Still the musical qualities of this tanager are not to be despised.
His few notes may be almost monotonous, but they are pensive, even
tender when addressed to his dear companion, for whom his little
breast holds warm affection. She, too, at nesting-time, utters the
same pensive note, and the two may be noticed in the treetops,
whispering to one another in low tones.

It is not for his song, therefore, that we seek the bird, but
hearing the song, we would see the singer. And who can blame us? We
love the deeper tints of sunset and sunrise, the red and yellow of
autumn leaves, the red glow of the prairie fire, the tint of the
Baldwin apple and the sops o' wine. A tree of dull green apples
in the orchard, though of finer flavor, will be neglected, more
especially by the "wandering boy," for its crimson-cheeked neighbor
of indifferent relish. The red apples of the naked winter bough, left
on purpose for Jack Frost and the birds to bite, are said to allure
the latter before the paler fruit of the next tree is disturbed.

Therefore, when a nature-lover wanders into the woods in dreamy
mood and the scarlet tanager flits above him amid the green of the
foliage, the thrush and the sparrow are forgotten.

The tanager is discreet by nature, for it is as if he knows that by
glimpses only is he best appreciated. Were he less retiring, as bold
in habit as in color, sitting on the roofs and fence-posts, swinging
the nest pendant from boughs, like the oriole, he would be less
fascinating. But the tanager is seldom more than half seen; he is
detected for an instant, like a flash, and disappears.

It is with the eye as with the hand. We would hold in the grasp of
our fingers what we covet to touch or own. And the eye would retain
in its deep fortress, if only for a moment, the tint it feasts on.
More especially is this the case if the thing we would hold or see is
transitory by nature.

[Illustration: SUMMER TANAGER.]

So when we sit down on a half-decayed log bedecked with toadstools,
and hear the note of a scarlet tanager overhead, we listen and are
moveless. It is repeated, and if we are unacquainted with the bird we
may think him to the right of us. Actually he is on the left, being
endowed with the gift of ventriloquism. By this gift or attainment
the beautiful creature eludes his human foes. For foes the tanager
surely has, the more's the pity! Not content to adore the bird as
part and parcel of generous nature, there are those who would pay
their homage to the wings only, set among feathers and plaited straw.
Such lose the fine art of tenderness. The face that would pale at
sight of a brown mouse shines with pride beneath a remnant of red
plumage literally dyed with the life-blood of their original owner.

    "Angelina has a hat
       With wings on every side;
     Slaughter o' the innocents
       Those pretty wings supplied.
            Sign of barbarity,
            Sign of vulgarity--
          That winged hat."

Well, let Angelina's hat pass for what it is worth to her. It is no
more than the redbirds have had to submit to all their life history.
There isn't a savage tribe but has made use of bright feathers for
dress, either in skins or quills. The dark-skinned native is "dressed
for church" if he wear a single feather tuft in his scalp-lock, or a
frail shoulder-cape of crimson breasts, stripped from the bird in the
bush.

It may be the tanager has a sort of dull instinct to hide himself
on this account in the deep foliage, deeming it the better part of
valor to keep out of harm's way when a nature-lover sits on the
toadstool-bedecked log to watch for him.

His mate, of dull greenish yellow, has less enemies in the disguise
of admirers, and her little heart has no call to flutter when the
so-called nature-lover haunts the woods. She goes on with her
nest-building on the arm of a maple or even lonely apple-tree, making
haste, for well she knows the season is short in which to raise
their single brood. By the middle of August they must be off, have
the wings of the young grown sufficient strength; and yet the old
birds only arrived from their warmer clime in the South when May was
half over, or later.

Like the grosbeak's, the tanager's nest is loosely built of twigs and
stalks, transparent from below, as if ventilation were more necessary
than softness. The dull blue eggs, spotted with brown or purple, may
be distinctly seen from beneath when the sun is shining overhead. But
why worry the mother bird by long gazing? She is in great distress.
Were the ear of the nature-lover properly tuned he would understand
her to be saying, "They're mine, they're mine. I beg, I beg. Don't
touch, don't take."

But in due time the young are juveniles, not nurslings, and they
leave the nest, too soon the worse for wear on account of its
careless build. At first the thin dress of the young is greenish
yellow, like the mother, and they may pass unnoticed amid the
late summer foliage. The male juveniles, during their first year,
somewhere change to brighter hues in spots and dashes of red and
black, as if their clothes had been patched with left-overs from
their fathers' wardrobes. The fathers themselves, before they fly to
the warm South, drop their scarlet feathers, like tatters, amid the
ferns and blue-berries, and girls pick them up for the adorning of
doll hats. No merrier sight, and none more innocent of character,
than this of little girls searching for what is left of the beautiful
summer visitor, picking up, as it were, the shreds of his memory.
These scarlet feathers, together with those of the summer yellowbird,
placed in layers or helter-skelter in a case of gauze, make a
fairy pillow for winter times, pretty to look at. They come with
thistle-down and milkweed tassels, and sumach droppings and maple
leaves, and the first oozing of spruce gum in the woods. Yes, and
beechnuts and belated goldenrod, and the first frosts that nip the
cheek of the cranberry in the bog.

And the huckleberry patch is littered with the tiny plumes, for
tanagers love the huckleberries that leave no stain on their greenish
yellow lips. These huckleberries are their chief food in late
berry-time, coming, as they do, when the juveniles need a change in
their meat diet before the long flight ahead of them. Up to this
date they made good, square meals from fat beetles and other insects
big enough to "pay for catching." That bumblebees and wasps are
endowed with sharp points in their character does not forbid the use
of them for tanager food; though it is presumed that the stings are
either squeezed out, or the insect killed, before it is fed to the
nestlings, as we have noticed in the case of the phœbes.

In these late summer days the singer punctuates his song often and
long, for he must recuperate for his autumn journey. More than this,
he must protect his young ones. He therefore loses the shyness of
spring, and follows the juveniles about, feeding them and teaching
them to shift for themselves, and protecting them with word and
sign. His whole care is for his family, and hard is a cruel world
indeed whose human inhabitants can molest him. His scarlet cloth is
forgotten. He will follow his young even into captivity, and there
feed them through bar or window. But not a fascinating prisoner is
the tanager; one grows accustomed to his bright coat, and as it is
seen against the pane in winter-time, contrasting with the whiteness
of the snow, seems to reproach the hand that imprisoned it. When one
stops to think of it, scarcely a bird in captivity, unless it be
the canary to the manner born, gives the satisfaction and amusement
anticipated. It is the going and coming of the wild birds that make
more than half the fun. The sudden surprise of spring; the reluctant
departure of autumn, with the hope of intermediate days--there is
charm in all this keeping of Nature's order.

Well, good by, sweet scarlet tanager. Sing us back your farewell note
of "Wait, wait." We shall see you again when the early cherries are
ripe, if not sooner. The beetles and bumbles and the grasshoppers
will be watching out for you, and the terrible hornet shall double
his armor-plate to suit the strength of your strong beak. It will be
of no avail for the big black beetle to hide beneath the iron kettle
he carries on his back, and the bum of the big, yellow bumblebee will
serve only as its call-note, while the broad sword of the hornet will
have no time to unsheath itself at sight of you. Good by, tanager.

CHAPTER XII

THE MEADOW-LARK

    Hark! the lark!

Shakespeare.

    Think, every morning when the sun peeps through
      The dim, leaf-latticed window of the grove.
    How jubilant the happy birds renew
      Their old, melodious madrigals of love.
    And when you think of this, remember too
      'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
    The awakening continents from shore to shore,
    Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.

Longfellow.

Never did any lark "lean its breast against a thorn" and sing. That
was the poet's sorry fancy. Larks are not in the habit of leaning
their breasts against anything when they sing. They stand tiptoe on
a stout grass stem or a fence-post or the highest bough, or sing as
they fly, or warble a simple ditty while running on the ground.

It is on account of this habit of his, always having his song at
his tongue's end, that the poets have made the lark the subject of
many a moral romance. "His feet are on the earth, while his song is
in the sky." "High or low, in joy and pain, warm or cold, wet or
dry, sing like the lark." And he is given the credit of "waking up
the morning," and also of "tucking in the night," and of "blowing
the noon whistle," and all sorts of intermediate duties. He doesn't
deserve it all more than other birds, however. But it is the poet
who sings as often as the mood takes him. If it be the lark that
inspires him at this particular moment, the lark is his theme. Or if
it be the raven or the wren or any other winged subject, it is one
and the same to the poet.

But country people are all poets. In their hearts they have enshrined
the meadow-lark, because he is very near them and gives them little
cause to despise him. He has no tooth for fruit or grain, unless he
happen to stumble on it unawares. He seems never to seek it, like the
sparrows. Resident in many places, even when the snow is up to his
knees; in the open field, in the margin of woods, where it is cool
and grassy; in damp meadows where the insect people have their summer
home; and if food be scarce, even in the barn-yard litter, may the
meadow-lark be seen.

Yes, seen and heard! Very often he is heard and not seen. And no one
need see him to know him. His song is his passport to everybody's
heart. "There's the meadow-lark!" exclaims a white-haired man, bent
with much listening and many sorrows, leaning on memory and his
strong cane for support. And his eye brightens, as no youthful eye
can shine, at sound of the familiar melody. "Yes," he says, "that is
the meadow-lark. He's somewhere down in the open. I knew him when I
was a boy."

And the old man, who is a boy again, walks weakly off to the nearest
field, bent on flushing the comrade of his childhood. He sits feebly
down on a log and rests. It is the same log he climbed when he was a
boy. It was not horizontal as long ago as that, but perpendicular,
and was green-topped and full of orioles' nests. It lies prone on the
ground now, long ago cut straight in two at the base. And it has laid
there so long it has grown black and mildewed. On account of this
mildew, and the toadstools that have ruffled and fluted and bedecked
its softened bark, the insect people have made their home in it.

[Illustration: MEADOW LARK.]

The old man sitting there, waiting for the meadow-lark to appear,
thinks not of the insect people, but of the lark. With the tip of his
strong cane he breaks off a piece of the serried bark, and a spider
scurries down the side of the log and into the grass. He chips off
another piece, and a bevy of sow-bugs make haste to tumble over and
"play dead," curling their legs under their sides, but recovering
their senses and scurrying off after the spider. The cane continues
to chip off the bark, and down tumble all sorts of wood people,
some of them hiding like a flash in the first moist earth they come
to; others never stopping until they are well under the log, where
experience has taught them they will be safe out of harm's way. And
they declare to themselves, and to each other, that they will never
budge from under that log until it is midnight "and that wicked
meadow-lark is fast asleep."

Of course it is no other than the meadow-lark the insect people are
running away from! They never saw the old man, nor the tip of his
cane that was doing all the mischief. They know their feathered foe
of old. What care they for his song? He is always on their trail. So
when the old man sat down heavily on the log, and the point of his
cane jarred the loose bark, out tumbled the tenants, expecting each
of them to be presented with a bill. But the bill of their dreaded
enemy is a rod or two away.

He has had his breakfast already. It was composed of all sorts of
winged and creeping folk, including many an insect infant bundled all
up in its swaddling-clothes and not half conscious of its fate.

It was for this very purpose that he was up so early. Of course
the poets did not take his breakfast into account when they wrote
verses about his "rising with the sun" and singing with "the first
beam of day." Nothing in the world brought him out of bed save his
ever-present appetite. And the farmers have cause to bless their
stars that the meadow-lark has an appetite of his own. Also, that he
and his spouse make their nest in the grass, and that the baby larks
get about on the ground long before they are able to fly fence-high.

But we are leaving the old man sitting too long on that damp log. He
may catch a cold. Of one thing we are certain, he will catch sight of
"that rogue lark" if he waits half an hour. He used to wait just that
way when he was a boy, though to keep still half as long in any other
place for any other purpose would have been a physical impossibility.
His specs are on the end of his nose now, for the old man has good
far sight, and he squints knowingly at a bunch of meadow-grass
three rods away. Who says the eye of the aged grows dim? The eye of
this particular old man never shone brighter even when he climbed
that identical elm and came near losing his balance, reaching after
the orchard oriole's nest that swung, empty, just at tantalizing
distance. What did the boy want of that nest? He just wanted to get
it, that was all.

And what does the old man want of the meadow-lark caroling at the
base of bunch-grass somewhere ahead of him? Why, he just wants his
nest, that is all! Suddenly up pops the bird, right out of the waving
mound he was "sure to be in," and he flies low to the nearest stone
heap, looking the old man right in the eyes as if he had as easy a
conscience as ever reposed in the breast of man or bird. And no
other conscience has the meadow-lark, to be sure. It is the same
conscience that has descended to him through his ancient family down
through countless generations.

But the old man isn't after the conscience of the dear bird. He
is after what may develop at the base of that grassy mound. Over
toward it he goes, feeling with his cane, poking the buttercups and
smartweed and yarrow aside. "Ha," he laughs, "I've got it, Mary!"

"Mary" isn't anywhere in sight; but the old man's habit of telling
"Mary" everything stands by him like any good friend. He has been
telling her everything all his life, and why shouldn't he tell her
about this lark's nest, the very latest discovery of his?

No deceiving this old boy! All these meadow-grasses, bent low and
forming a rather awkward archway over a possible corridor, hold
secrets. Out darts the mother lark with many a sign of maternal
anxiety. And the singer discontinues his morning carol.

The old man kneels very stiffly down in the meadow (he thinks he is
dropping down with a jerk, in boy fashion) and parts the grasses.
He peers in and sees something. He laughs, parting his gums wide,
exhibiting to a black and yellow bumblebee a solitary tooth, like the
last remaining picket on the garden gate he swung on when he was a
boy. Then he rises stiffly, and goes as fast as his legs can carry
him, exactly as he has always done for seventy-five years, more or
less, straight to "tell Mary."

Just as he reaches the doorstep and places his strong cane against
the corner, preparatory to lifting his right foot, he turns to take
a look at the spot he has just left, empty-handed, in the meadow.
He shades his eye from the nine-o'clock sun, and sees a crouching
form no bigger than was his own at the age of ten. He tries to shout,
but that one tooth standing in the door of his lips like a faithful
sentinel, or something back of and behind it in the years that are
gone, prevents his voice from reaching farther than the stone wall at
the garden's edge. "Mary," inside, darning hand-knit stockings, hears
the voice that is dear to her, lo! these many years; and she does the
shouting. Somehow her voice is the stronger of the two. "Get out of
that meadow, boy! No stealing lark's eggs in here."

The "boy" slinks back down to the road fence, and bethinks him of
another meadow "out of sight of folks," where no end of larks are
singing.

When the nesting-season is over--and maybe there were a couple of
broods--the larks will club together on a picnic excursion and wander
off and on, nobody knows just where. Perchance they will turn up in
the next town or the next county or the next state. As they wander,
they will sing plaintively, stopping for meals where meals are
served. Or they will chatter all together, recognized wherever their
happy lot is cast, loved by the loving, perhaps eaten by the sensual.

It will be remembered that the lark was a wedding guest of no
ordinary office at the marriage of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren. At the
very last feature of the beautiful ceremony the ballad runs this wise:

    "Then on her finger fair Cock Robin put the ring,
     While the lark aloud did sing:
      'Happy be the bridegroom,
         And happy be the bride;
       And may not man nor bird nor beast
         This happy pair divide.'"

After the cruel blunder was done, which was the fault of neither bird
nor beast nor man (by intention), and the question as to who should
act the part of clerk at the last sad burial rites was raised, it was
the lark who volunteered, though it is to be supposed that his heart
was breaking.

    "Who will be the clerk?
       'I,' said the lark,
       'If it's not in the dark,
     And I will be the clerk.'"

Now, why the lark should object to doing this very solemn service
for his dead friend the robin, if it should happen to be "dark," we
cannot tell. Perchance he really couldn't act the part of a clerk
at night on account of his family having been forbidden, centuries
and centuries ago, to lean any more against the moon in the first
quarter. It used to be a habit of theirs to sing that way, and that
is how they came by the crescent on their breast. The gods made up
their minds that if all the larks in the world took to leaning their
breasts against the moon all at one time it would result in toppling
the old moon over. The meadow-lark being the last of the family of
larks to obey the command, flew away with the shadow of the crescent
under his throat. Anybody can see it for himself in plain sight. So,
as intimated, the lark at the funeral, remembering that he couldn't
have a moon to lean against, refused to do the part asked of him, if
the ceremony occurred after dark. Though, come to think of it, this
legend about the crescent must be of very recent date, for the lark
of the ballad could have been no other than the English skylark,
which has no crescent. But the moon has a crescent, and so has our
meadow-lark, and so, if there be a grain of truth in the ballad and
the legend, our dear singer must have been spirited across the sea
for that special occasion.

Our interest in this old ballad of Cock Robin would have died before
it began had we not been informed of the whole affair with such
precision as to details.

For the benefit of those who doubt the event having ever occurred
"within the memory of man" and birds, we will refer our readers
to the inscription on a certain very old tomb-stone in Aldermary
Churchyard, England. If they do not find a single reference to Cock
Robin and the lark which acted the part of clerk at the funeral,
it will be because they have left their specs at home. Is is not a
well-known fact that tombstones tell no falsehoods?

Thinking all these things very calmly over, it occurs to us that,
after all, any other of the singing birds we have mentioned in this
book might be as well fitted to act the part allotted to the lark as
that bird himself. The plain, everyday facts are, it was a poet who
reported the affair, and he was at his wit's end to find a word to
rhyme with "clerk," and a clerk he must have at a funeral of that
date. Now the English tongue, wherever it is spoken, is a curious
language. It seems ready made to suit any figure, stout or slim, big
or little. The poet knew that any person of good sense, accustomed to
rhyming, would read the word "clerk" to sound like "dark." Hence the
immortal rhyme,

    "'I,' said the lark,
     'If it be not in the dark,
      And I will be clerk.'"

CHAPTER XIII

SKYLARK (HORNED LARK)

     "Under the greenwood-tree,
      Who loves to lie with me,
      And tune his merry note
      Unto the sweet bird's throat;
    Come hither, come hither, come hither;
      Here shall he see
      No enemy
    But winter and rough weather."

In Shakespeare's play, "As You Like It," scene v., Amiens, a close
student of nature, is made to sing this song.

It probably caused his companion, Jaques, to remember the skylark
of his own boyhood, for he besought Amiens to "sing it again." But
Amiens argued with his friend that it would make him "melancholy."
However, he sang again, and it is supposed that the two lived over
the days of their boyhood, when they lay on the grass under the
greenwood-tree, just on the edge of a corn-field, and listened to the
skylark tuning his merry note in his own sweet throat.

Dear to the heart of English boys and other people is the skylark, on
account of which, and for the reason that Britishers of any age may
like to meet an old friend should they chance to take up this book
in their travels, we are giving a chapter to this bird. In the play,
Jaques and Amiens sing later together all about their favorite lark
(it is presumed):

    "Who loves to live i' the sun,
     Seeking the food he eats
     And pleased with what he gets."

Surely the skylark loves to live i' the sun, for he is always in the
open, summer and winter, as if he would be sure to not miss a single
sunbeam. As is the case with most of our birds who dwell or nest near
our homes, the skylark does not seek man for his own sweet sake,
but for the sake of what the farm holds; though no marauder is this
lark, for it eats ground insects nearly the whole year--crickets, and
beetles, and grubs, and worms, and little folk who see no further
than their noses. To be sure, in late fall, after the farmer's
buck-wheat and other grains are ripened and mostly harvested, the
larks visit the fields in flocks to gather up the crumbs and grow fat
on the change from a meat to a vegetable diet.

This growing fat, by reason of his generous diet in late fall, just
before the snows come, serves the same purpose as does the fattening
of bear just before winter. The snow covers lark's "meat victuals"
all up, and the birds must fall back at times on their stores laid by
under their skin for this very season. Though they do not hibernate,
they still have use for their fat. So has the gunner, and the people
with snares ready to set for the unwary and hungry birds.

A recent writer, commenting on this autumn sport of the Englishman,
excuses their seemingly wanton destruction by observing that "were
they not thus taken, large numbers would doubtless meet natural death
in their autumn flights." To quote Shakespeare again, "Oftentimes,
excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse."

There seems to be a sort of inconsistency in the fact that, from
earliest times, the human family have been guilty of eating what most
they love--or what most they do declare they love. The flavor of the
flesh of a bobolink or skylark is hardly out of the mouth before the
tongue takes to praising the favorite bird with a psalm or hymn; in
due time the poet and singer bethinks him of his annual feast of
flesh, and his spiritual appreciation grows thin.

[Illustration: HORNED LARK.]

We are thankful, in spite of all this, that the poets and singers
sing on. They have immortalized the skylark of Europe as no other
known bird is immortalized.

Superstition claims the bird as peculiarly its own. Do not its
prophets divine things mysterious and darkly subtle by the skyward
flight of the bird? And its song! Any priest of the craft may read in
its varying notes all sorts of fortunes to people and clans.

And the eggs of the skylark! Were they not speckled and streaked
by passing night winds in the shape of fairies with garden gourds
filled with the ink juice of the deadly night-shade berries? Were the
skylark's eggs white they would be "moon-struck," and the hatchlings
would sing the song of the night-owl. In spite of the speckled eggs
and the usual grassy cover of the nest, these are too often the
successful object of the prowling boy. Though it must be confessed
that in this, as in the case of the robbery of other birds, it is
not always the original finder of the nest who is guilty of theft.
Shakespeare was aware of this fact, for in "Much Ado About Nothing"
he makes Benedick speak of "the flat transgression of a school-boy,
who, being overjoyed with finding a bird's nest, shows it his
companion, and _he_ steals it."

The mistake was in "showing it his companion." Though, should the
companion happen to be a girl, he need have no fear. The nest will be
undisturbed next time he visits the spot.

For eight months of the English year does the skylark sing, prodding
the lazy, comforting the sorrowful, accusing the guilty, making more
merry the glad. On account of its ever-circling upward flight, the
bird is believed to hold converse with heaven. In captivity it is
supposed to be "longing for the sky" when it flings itself against
the roof of its cage. To protect it against harm in this last, soft
cloth is sometimes used for the cover to its home.

In winter, when the skylarks cover the sandy plains of Great Britain,
they have but a single cry, having laid by their songs with which
to "wake the spring"; or it may be with them as in the case of
our bobolinks--after a diet of ripe grains they are "too full for
utterance." But when spring is actually astir, then are the larks
abroad in the sky. Francis Rabelais, as long ago as the fourteenth
century, loved the English spring for the sake of the skylark,
and the thoughts the bird inspired in him. Having no appetite,
apparently, for the bird when he is fattened for eating, the poet
longed for larks in the act of singing, as if, could he hold one
of them in his hand when it was articulating, he might come by its
written song, as the telegrapher reads the scroll as it unwinds. But
he wouldn't be content with one bird, oh, no!--if ever the "skies
should fall" he made up his mind to "catch larks" by the basketfuls.
But the heavens never were known to fall in lark-singing time, and
the poet is long since under the sod with the skylarks nesting above
him.

To be like a singing bird has been the longing of human hearts in
all ages; as if we realize that there is medicine in song as in
nothing else--medicine to the singer. And so there is. No higher
compliment could be paid by a poet to the memory of his friend than
the following, dated in the seventeenth century. There is a happy
lesson of work, and good nature, and lightness of heart in a trying
occupation too good to lose.

    "There was a jolly miller once,
       Lived on the River Dee;
     He work'd and sung from morn to night,
       No lark more blithe than he."

Several attempts to introduce the English skylark into America have
been made, with no satisfactory results. It is hoped to some day
have them feel at home on the Pacific coast, where the varying moist
and dry climates of north and south would give them the pleasures of
their natural migrations. But although we may never have the skylark
with us, we have its relative in our horned or shore larks. In its
habits it resembles its lark kindred in the Old World, singing on
the wing, nesting on the ground, feeding on the same food, walking
rapidly, reserving flight as the last resort when pursued.

The horned lark is so named on account of a little tuft of feathers
on each side of the forehead, which it raises or lowers at pleasure.
It nests in the North very early, even before the snow is all melted,
and brings off two or more broods in a season. In the autumn it
exchanges its beautiful song for a good appetite, and fattens itself
on grains and berries in anticipation of possible winter hunger. It
may be seen all over North America at some season of the year, in
fall and winter in flocks.

In California we have the Mexican horned larks, which cover the mesas
and rise reluctantly in large numbers when surprised. They love
to follow the open country roads, running out of the track while
we pass, but returning as soon as we have gone our way. On rainy
days--which, by the way, are the best of bird days--we have taken our
umbrellas and strolled out to the flat lands on purpose to see these
larks in their greatest numbers. They will fly, with a whirr of
sound, and alight almost at our feet, to repeat the act for a mile if
we choose.

In midsummer they are seen in the vicinity of their nesting-places,
standing in rows under fences or plants with mouths wide open,
seeming to choose hot sand to flying straight across the short desert
to mountain retreats. The horned larks, wherever seen, suggest
contentment, and pleasure in life as they find it.

CHAPTER XIV

BOBOLINK

    "June! dear June! Now God be praised for June."

     'Nuff said; June's bridesman, poet o' the year,
     Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here;
     Half hid in tiptop apple-blooms he sings,
     He climbs against the breeze with quiverin' wings.
     Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair.
     Runs down, a brook o' laughter, through the air.

Lowell.

He was just a bird to start with, half blackbird and the other half
sparrow, with some of the meadow-lark's ways of getting along. As to
the naming of him, everybody settled that matter at random, until one
day he grew tired of being called nicknames and named himself.

Think of having "skunk-blackbird" called after a fellow when he
deserved the title no more than half a dozen of his feathered
friends! He could never imagine what gave him the disagreeable
epithet, unless it be his own individual hatred for the animal whose
name clung to him like mud.

To be sure, the coat of the bird was striped, something like that of
the detestable beastie; but so were the coats of many other birds,
and he could never tell why he should be called a blackbird, either.

True, he loved the marshes for personal reasons; but who has seen a
blackbird twist its toes around a reed stalk and sing like mad?

[Illustration: BOBOLINK.]

So, as we said, he named himself, constituting himself a town crier
on behalf of his own concerns. "Bobolink! bobolink!" As often as
the blackbird attempted to talk of himself, bobolink chimed in and
drowned every other note. And he kept it up for two or three months,
until everybody understood that he had given himself a proper name.
And each year he returns to remind the skunk and blackbird that he is
no other than himself, and to assure people that he is deserving of
an original name, whatever else may be said of him.

But the skunk never has quite forgiven the bobolink his resentment
of the name, for the ugly little creature haunts the bird in marsh
and meadow, watching for the young bobolinks to get big enough for
eating, exactly as the bobolink waits for the dandelion seeds to get
ripe for his dinner. But dandelion seeds and little baby bobolinks
are two different sorts of victuals; and father bobolink, swaying on
his weed stem, wishes skunks were not so big, so he could turn on the
whole family and devour them as he does the bumblebees in the next
stone heap.

It is of no use wishing, for the old feud between the hated animal
and the coveted bird is still on. And skunk knows very well how to
get the best of the bobolink. Bobolinks see better by daytime, and
besides they are tired out with singing all day long, and they sleep
like Christians all night. It is then, when the moon is little, and
the flowers have closed their eyes, and the grass stems are growing
silently in the dew, and the cicada is absorbed in the courting of
his sweetheart--ah! it is then that skunk walks abroad, sniffing.
Tail straight out behind, gently swaying as he goes, nose well
pointed toward the nearest grass tufts, thoughts intent on supper,
and alas! baby bobolinks quietly sleeping. Skunk may take in the
mother as well, while she broods, she, no doubt, having a violent
attack of nightmare, could she but live to tell her mate about it.

Yes, indeed! poor bobolink has his trials, and he is entitled to all
the sweet melody of his family to help him rise above them. When he
is tired of New England polecats and takes a run down South, it is
but to meet his other enemy, the opossum. And he might as well be
given the name of opossum-bird--for, like the skunk, the opossum
loves the still, dark night--and fat old bobolinks.

Should the bobolink and his juvenile family take to a tree for a
roosting-place, provided his supper has not made his body heavier
than his wings are strong, opossum will climb after him.

So poor bobolink is pursued on every hand. Bird of the ground is he,
everywhere; he is born on the ground and dies on the ground, usually,
for the ground is his dinner-table. His human friends (or foes) take
him pitilessly at his meals when he is too full for utterance or
quick flight. And these human friends (or foes) dine upon him until
they in turn are too full for utterance.

Oh, the bobolink has a hard time! But still he named himself out of
the glee of his heart, and he sings a fourth part of the year as only
a bobolink can sing.

You can make almost anything you please of the song. Children sit on
the fence-rails and mimic him, and "guess" what he says, and cry,
"Spink, spank, spink," "meadow wink, meadow wink," "just think, just
think," "don't you wink, don't you wink," "want a drink, want a
drink?" Coming back to his real name, "bobolink, bobolink," as if,
after all, that were the nearest right.

Right under the swinging bare feet of the children, in a dark,
cool nest, Mother Skunk is fast asleep, making up for last night's
carousals among the bobolink nests.

June would be no June without the bobolinks, where they are expected,
and so ever so many things get ready for them. For what other purpose
than for the bobolinks do the ground-beetles air themselves, and the
crickets get out their violins, and the gray spiders spin yarn on
their doorsteps? Of course it is all for purposes of their own, since
nobody knows that beetles and crickets and spiders particularly love
to be gobbled up by a bobolink. But it is one and the same to the
bobolink family, who must have food of some sort. And they couldn't
at this season of the year, and under the peculiar conditions of
family life, get along reasonably well without meat of some sort.
Later on, when the dandelions bethink themselves to turn into round
white moons that fly away in the breeze, and the wild oats lift their
shoulder-capes, the bobolinks can turn vegetarians.

Shy, suspecting little birds, sharp of eye, fresh from a winter tour
in the West Indies, they come exactly when they are expected. They
never disappoint people. The very earliest to arrive may sing their
"Don't you wink, don't you wink," on April 1st. But bobolink makes no
April fool of himself or anybody else, unless it be Master Skunk in
his hollow tree, who rubs his eyes at the first word from Robert o'
Lincoln. But the male birds have come in advance of their women folk,
and roost high and dry out of reach of four-footed marauders. It is
as if the mother bobolinks would be quite sure the spring storms are
over before they put themselves in the way of housework.

Until their mates arrive, the male birds go on a lark, sailing low
over meadows, singing as they sail, each outdoing his friend,
sitting now on a fence-post, and now on the budding branch of a
maple or elm, calling their own names, and adding whole sentences or
stanzas in praise of the Middle West country, and of New England in
particular.

Then comes the fun of courtship, when the modest lady bobolinks
appear on the ground. With the praise of them on their lips, the
males come near and ask each for the hand of his lady-love. Should
a rival seek an accepted sweetheart, the rightful mate drives him
from the field, literally speaking, and the by no means dejected
lover goes to another meadow for a bride. And that is all right, for
aren't all lady bobolinks alike? No, indeed, they are not! or so
think their devoted mates, for never was closer tie than binds the
two to one another. The male never leaves the neighborhood of his
family, but sings to his mate as she attends fondly to those affairs
which gladden the heart of nature among bird or beast or insect. And
she has not far to go for nesting materials. She may even shorten
matters by shoving together a bunch of dry leaves and grass that
served for the nest of a field-mouse last fall. And she eats as she
works, for at every pull at blade or leaf an insect runs out of its
hiding-place, right into her mouth, as it were. And if the farmer
happen to be plowing, she will run along at the back of him, on the
margin of the last furrow, for grub or larva, slipping back into the
grass of the hay-field before ever he turns for the next furrow.

If the bobolinks flew north in the light of the moon they may expect
good luck; and sometime in June, where before there were a pair of
birds, there are now half a dozen or one more than that. The eggs are
five or six, but, as with most birds, "there's no telling," and if
the parents succeed in raising three or four children out of their
single brood for the summer, they do well.

There's no better June fun than hunting for bobolinks' nests. When it
comes to disturbing them, that is another question. The farmer may
not like to have his meadow-grass trodden down before it is piled
on the hay-wagon, but it can't be helped. And while the search is
going on, there are so many other things coming to pass at the same
time, quite unlooked for, that one sometimes laughs and sometimes
cries. There are the bumblebees, for instance! The boys hadn't taken
_them_ into account, and a fellow's shins begin to warn him of danger
that is mostly past. And there are the nettles hiding in their own
nooks on purpose to sting. And the little patches of smartweed which
one has to cross in going from the east end of the meadow to the
west end harbors crawling and hopping people that one doesn't see
in time to avoid; and though they don't bite at all, they _do_ look
and feel--well, most any boy knows how they feel if he cannot tell
it. O, yes, it is fun hunting bobolinks' nests, if one respects the
rights of one's neighbors in feathers. With note-book and pencil a
boy can put down the date of hatch, and growth of quill and beak and
strength, and a thousand things it is good to know about birds. Only,
as a rule, a single boy never goes on a bobolink hunt. And it's of no
use for a whole bevy of boys to load themselves with lead-pencils.
They never have been known to put down a single item of observation
under these circumstances. To make a business of studying bobolinks
or other birds, a person must be all alone. And there isn't the
temptation to pilfer when one is all alone. One catches sight of the
father bobolink swinging and swaying on a stout but yielding weed
stalk, singing for all he is worth, and one cannot steal, not _that_
time.

But a nest would seldom be found if the foolish birds would keep a
close mouth about the matter. It does seem as if they would learn
after a while, but they don't. As soon as a stranger with two legs
or four comes within sight of the spot, the birds set up what they
intend for a warning cry, but which is in reality an "information
call." Under its spell one can walk straight to the nest, which even
yet, on account of its color and surroundings, may be taken for an
innocent bunch of grass, provided one has as good eyes as the skunk
has nose.

But nesting-time passes, with all its pleasures and trials and
dangers and happy-go-lucky affairs. Late summer sees the young
bobolinks out of the nest and away to the weed stalks with their
parents. The young males set up an independent though weakly
melodious warble on their own account, though they have not yet
forgotten their baby ways, and still coax the parents for a good
bite of bug or beetle. It is about the only very young bird we are
acquainted with that is as precocious in regard to song. It is by
this only that it is recognized as a male in this first season, being
clothed like the mother and sisters. And, strange to say, about this
time the father bobolink begins to don another dress. His black and
white are inconspicuous, as if faded with the summer sun, and he
ceases to sing as formerly. The fact is, he has no time to sing now,
with the young birds to help along, as it is getting almost "time to
move." And this strange bird actually seems to forget which are his
own children, for the whole neighborhood gathers together, males,
females, and young, helter-skelter, each intent on gastronomic
affairs and the growing of feathers. As the days wear away, and the
sere and yellow leaf of sumac and beech and maple warn all good folk
that winter is getting ready to travel back home, the bobolinks
preen up. Slyly, like the Arab, they steal away; not suddenly as
they came in the spring, but slowly and deliberately. The wings of
the young must have time to expand, and season and endure fatigue.
Besides, bird families are not able to carry lunch-baskets on an
autumn outing. So the bobolinks pass slowly toward the South, feeding
as they go, never exercising enough to lose weight, but actually
fattening on the journey.

Now, taking all things into account, the bobolinks are the most
sensible of people. Persons who ought to know better by experience
and observation hurry on a journey, take no time to enjoy the scenery
and the people that live along the route. At the journey's end they
are depleted, tired, worn to skin and bone, and out of sorts with
travel. Not so the bobolinks! They have no bones at the journey's
end. They have fattened themselves into butter. They have put on
flesh as the bare spring trees put on leaves, and the butternut takes
in oil. All the way they eat and drink, and make as merry as they can
with so much fat on them.

The yesterday's bird of mad music is to-day the bird of mad appetite.
True, they may call out "chink" in passing, but "chink" means
"chock-full," and people who delight in bobolink table-fare recognize
the true meaning of the note.

Bobolink has forgotten to call his own name, so he answers to
any nickname the epicurean lovers of him please to call him
by--"rice-bird," "reed-bird," "butter-bird," anything or everything
that is appropriate. And "'possum" sits up on a stump and laughs.

Never mind, 'possum, it's your turn all the time. If bobolink
could imitate you in the art of making-believe dead, he would fare
better--until folks found him out. People have little use for a dead
bobolink, unless shot-gun or snare be in at the death. But bobolinks
never seem to learn of 'possums or anybody else. They follow in the
wake of their ancestor bobolinks, over the selfsame route to the
South; dining in the selfsame rice-fields; swinging on the selfsame
reed stalks, exactly as the reed stalks come up each year in the
place of last season's petiole.

It's a sad, pathetic tale. But wait! Spring is coming in the steps of
last year's spring-time; over the selfsame route, to the selfsame end
and fortunes. With the spring will return the bobolinks, as many as
have survived disaster. Before you know it he will be calling himself
in the meadows, exactly as he called last spring. The seasons and the
birds are but echoes of themselves.

Robert o' Lincoln, with his latest striped coat, will sway on the
stems and wait for his sweetheart. He will flirt with neither sparrow
nor thrush until she arrives. He is true, is the bobolink! So is the
polecat, growing lean under his winter stump, and licking his lips at
the sound of the farmer calling to his children, "The skunk-blackbird
has come!"

    "When you can pipe in that merry old strain,
     Robert o' Lincoln, come back again."

CHAPTER XV

AT NESTING-TIME

    "I pray you hear my song of a nest.
          For it is not long."

In the preceding chapters we have said little about the female or
mother birds. In referring to a single individual we have used the
pronoun he, as if "he" and no other were worthy of affectionate
notice.

As apology, we refer our readers to the title of our book, "Birds of
Song and Story."

As it is mostly the male who sings, and also the male who wears the
more beautiful plumage, we have given him the first or greater space.
It is the male who figures in myth or legend, since it is he who
speaks or is known for conspicuous markings.

But always, at the right season, is the wife bird or the mother bird
loyal and true, sweet and modest of color and habit. It is she who
"lives for a purpose"--if purpose ever moves the heart of a bird. It
is she who sacrifices her own individual preferences and joys for the
sake of others. It is she, mostly, who makes the family fortunes. It
is she, save in a few instances, who builds the nest, and warms the
eggs when once she has placed them where they ought to be.

As it is the vocation or pleasure of her mate to sing, it is hers to
listen. And surely her family cares would be dreary enough were it
not for the song she hears. It is always for her that her lord makes
music, as if he knows her "mother term" is long and monotonous. Many
a time his eye is on her, when the keenest human spy fails to "see
where that nest is." No hiding the exact spot from old father bird.
Didn't he help select it? Wasn't he there at the start? Of course he
was!

[Illustration: SONG SPARROW.]

In early spring, before actual nesting-time, a male bird is seen
coaxing his mate to think of the conveniences of some certain spot.
He flies to a corner or a crotch and turns and twists and makes
signs, and grows excited, as if urging his mate to commence at that
very moment and at that very spot. Wife bird, coming to his side,
considers and accepts his suggestions, or laughs at them, as the case
may be. Should she accept the site of his choice, it is not then, not
just at that moment. It is as if she fears the noise and bustle of
her companion may have attracted attention. She returns in some quiet
hour, and all by herself begins her summer work.

We have seen a boisterous oriole lead his lady to a banana leaf and
do his best to coax her into immediate acceptance of the location.
It is not until the following day that we notice the first swinging
threads. And it is the same with many other birds which nest near the
house. Perhaps the linnet, or house-finch, is the most persistent in
choosing a nest site. He is sometimes seen at the business late in
the fall and early winter, turning about in corners and nest-boxes,
chattering to his mate, and "making himself so silly." His mate,
of more sense, looks on and lets him talk, seeming to smile at his
foolishness. Doesn't he know, at his age, that she will be on hand at
the proper time?

As a rule, it is the mother bird who does all the nest-work. We have
seen her closely followed by the male, in the case of the linnet
and many of the other finches; the song-sparrow and chippie and
towhee and mocker and oriole each keeps at the side of his dear
companion and follows her on the wing, singing, while her mouth is
full of grass or other stuff. When she alights at the threshold of
her nursery he alights too, on a near twig, to follow her back to
the material in a moment or two. By hiding in the shrubbery one
can see so much of interest at nesting-time. But first of all,
would bird-lovers induce parent birds to choose the home grounds,
preparation must be made some time in advance.

Trees must be planted and allowed to grow naturally, not in clipped
or distorted forms. Birds love natural growth. They recognize wild
things and nooks when these are planned and made to grow in private
grounds. Now and then a tree root upturned; a pile of boughs; a
heap of cuttings and prunings the gardener would have condemned to
the fire; a bit of space overlooked by the lawn-mower, moist and
grass-tangled; woodpiles and logs left where they are until moss
and toadstools have covered them, and bugs have housed in them--a
thousand things people, in their love of order and neatness, dispose
of at sight--would prove untold attraction to the birds. Too many
homes in city and country are not frequented by these visitors, who
really prefer our grounds to the woods when once they learn their
welcome. When induced for a single season to build in cultivated
places, a pair of birds will return, often bringing several other
pairs with them.

It seems as if certain birds are popular among their people, and "set
the pace," as it were, in the matter of nesting habits. The places
they frequent are sought after by the rest; and not only by their own
kind or species, but by birds of different character.

It is with birds as with humankind--many different sorts make up a
popular neighborhood. Bird families do not choose to wander away to
some remote part of the country and make a settlement. Indeed, as we
have studied them, birds delight in fraternal good-fellowship.

Within an area of two hundred feet square in our grounds we have
counted thirty-three varieties in this single season. Of these,
fifteen have nested--the linnet, two varieties of goldfinch,
chipping-sparrow, song-sparrow, humming-bird, towhee, mocker, pewee,
phœbe, oriole, thrush, black-headed grosbeak, yellow warbler, and
bush-tit. Some of these have nested twice or three times in our long
season. These birds are not seen to quarrel nor to disagree as to the
locations chosen. Each respects the other's rights, even to keeping
guard over one another's children. Be a single family or even one
little bird in trouble, each and all of these birds mentioned come
to the rescue. At such times the varying notes are a sound both
interesting and amusing. Food and water are always before these birds
in shady places or in the sunshine. Materials for nest-building are
spread before them the whole six months of the nesting-season, from
horsehair and strings to mud, paper, rags, bark, feathers, cotton,
dry grasses, lint, and a general assortment of lichens. The linnets,
goldfinches, hummers, orioles, yellow warblers, and bush-tits lose
their wits over the fluffy white cotton. Our song-sparrows and phœbes
are not seen to use other than material of dark color, like brown
rootlets and mud for phœbes, and old grass blades and dark horsehair
for the sparrows. Mention has been made as to most of the others.

The linnets are the easier suited. A black last year's sparrow's nest
put in the box under the eaves in place of a new white cotton one is
accepted, with no questions asked. We have substituted nest for nest
many times, and find there is no choice. Also, we have substituted
young birds of the same species, and each and all are adopted.
Sometimes we find an orphan birdling, which is sure to be cared for
provided it be placed in the nest of any kind, motherly bird. Of
course, in thus trading or causing to be adopted young birds, we are
careful not to give a seed-eater to a meat-eater, and vice versa.

An insect fare would hardly agree with nurslings accustomed to
regurgitated food, like the finches and hummers. Once we rescued a
tiny young hummer from a "wicked boy," who had come to the treasure
by theft. The little thing was nearly dead with cold and hunger. But
we knew exactly where to find a dear, motherly old soul in the person
of a humming-bird, who had just completed her nest. We placed the
orphan in the frail cradle, so weak it could scarcely open its beak.
The old bird came at once, cuddled and coddled the baby as only a
humming-bird can do, with her small, soft breast. In ten minutes the
wee one was having its supper, and it was raised by the foster-parent.

There seems to be something in the breast of mother birds at the
nesting-season akin to human instinct. All these interesting studies
go on with us at our door. No cats are allowed within certain bounds.
And any home may be the same if the dwellers will take the trouble.
An ideal corner in a school-yard would be one in which birds were
taught confidence and dependence. Birds are subject to cultivation
and encouragement.

If one is just making a start toward this, quick movement in the
shrubbery should not be indulged in. Loud, sudden noises and throwing
balls or other things, at the commencing of the nest season,
frighten the birds. One must learn to stand stock-still and listen
and look. Birds notice movement more than sound. Sidewise motions
disturb, where straight, go-ahead methods are not noticed.

By gradually accustoming birds to one's presence, and then to one's
voice, and then to the near approach, one may succeed in taming
wild birds at nesting-time. We have had the finches and linnets and
towhees and bush-tits and humming-birds perfectly trustful, even to
some of the males, whose presence at the nests is not absolutely
essential. We have had the parent birds feed the young from our
hands, we standing at the nest. As to nesting itself, the fun to be
had of a spring morning is beyond description. After learning this
familiarity the birds will go on without noticing us. The towhee
straggles across the grass, tugging a long rag much too heavy to fly
with. The mocker pulls straws from the torn end of a garden cushion.
The bush-tit gathers bits of lichen from the bough on which our
hands rest. The phœbe scarcely waits for us to step aside that she
may bite the shreds from the jute door-mat, to mix with her mud. The
sparrow, scratching away under the tree for a bug and a bit of leaf
at one and the same time, treads on our toes in her fearlessness. The
hummer fans our faces with her wings, should we happen to be near the
"cotton-counter."

When the young birds are just big enough to tumble out of the nest,
then nursery-times fairly begin. The ground is alive with them. Of
many sizes and features, more especially as to beak, they peep and
scream and coax. By sundown those not old enough to hop or flutter
to a safe place are the source of great anxiety. We are obliged to
go out and help "put the babies to bed." And these twilight times,
more than the whole day, are the "cat-times." Pussy understands the
turmoil. She skulks and prowls, and scarcely dares to breathe in her
silent hopes. It is then that we dare breathe, and many other things.
This incessant war on the feline tribe must be kept up would any one
have birds around his home.

There is one thing at nesting-time that puzzles us. Why do mother
birds pass carelessly by so much good material? They pick up this
grass or string or feather, to drop it for another. And then, why do
they pass by this or that fly or other insect and pick up another?

They probably have their reasons, the same as they choose between
equally good nest locations. It is on this account that we are
particular to have a variety of everything in their way.

It is at nesting-time that we take especial care of the garden table.
We furnish everything we imagine acceptable. As soon as the young
of finches or sparrows are out of the nest they are brought to the
table by their parents. All the birds have a sweet tooth. They like
cookies and pie and sugar and (as will be remembered in the case of
the sparrows) good molasses. It was when the tourist robins were
here that we thought about the molasses. The robins wouldn't take it
_clear_, as the sparrows did, so we mixed it with meal. They came and
looked at it and tasted, and liked it very well. Thinking to score a
point for the temperance people, we mixed some old bourbon with the
pudding. A tipsy robin would be a funny sight! But not a morsel of
the meal would they ever touch. We kept up the game several days, it
resulting at last in all the robins leaving the grounds in disgust.
Then we tried it on the sparrows, but to no purpose. Every bird grew
suspicious, and we had to give it up. This proved to us that birds
cultivate the sense of smell.

Birds in general are like the donkey before whose nose is suspended
a wisp of hay tied to the end of a pole, "to make him go." Of course
in the case of the donkey the pole goes in advance of the nose, and
it's a long while before the wisp and the appetite have a passing
acquaintance. With the birds at our home the "wisp" is always out, so
they are in no hurry to migrate. They do not leave us for so much as
a short visit to their folks in Mexico until the molt is well under
way. Some summer visitants even molt completely with us, and it is a
sorry season. By the time a young bird is able to hustle for himself
he wouldn't know his own mother. She has shed the feathers around
the beak, leaving her nose or mouth so grotesque one has to laugh.
Seeming to understand the joke is at their expense; some of our birds
at this time keep well hidden, and come only to the edges of the
shrubbery for food, or if overtaken in the open, they run as fast as
their legs can carry them. A song-sparrow without a bit of tail is
hopping now under the window, chirping her happy note, but hiding if
we look at her.

A hummer, which yesterday took honey from the flowers we held in our
lips, sits on a tiny twig, the picture of despair because her neck
feathers are so thin. A mocker who has drank all summer from the dish
with the bees, peeps at her shadow and preens imaginary quills. Half
of them are on the ground by the table.

A phœbe sits alone on the housetop, wailing, thinking no doubt she is
singing, and looking the picture of distress, with one tail-feather,
and not enough of her ordinary neckerchief around her neck to cover
the bare skin of it. And the nests, where are they? Just where they
were. But they are faded and old and deserted. Never does a young
bird go back to the nest after it has once left it, though some
people believe they use it for a bed until long into the autumn.
We have not seen them do so. They scorn the old thing! Isn't it as
full of mites as it can hold? Of course it is, especially if it be
a linnet's nest. When the third brood came out in the same nest we
found it so infested with mites, almost invisible, that we could
not touch it. And the poor little birdlings had to bide their time
in getting away. It is supposed to be on account of these parasites
that some birds compose their nests of strong-smelling weeds.
However, we have not known any of the nests near us to be disturbed
by these parasites save those in which several broods are reared.
We have a seven-story flat, on each successive floor of which a
linnet and a phœbe have nested. Phœbe's nest is mud, linnet's is
straw and hair. Each builds atop of the others. It may grow to be a
sky-scraper yet. Many of the mother birds sing at nesting-time. The
house-finch, or linnet, keeps a continual twitter while incubating.
So also the goldfinches. These notes are low and very musical and
happy. The phœbe speaks her mournful note under the eaves while on
the nest. By close listening, when other things are noiseless, one
may detect the almost inaudible note of some of the hummers. The
ear of a nature-lover grows keen by practice. There are low, nearly
inarticulate whisperings among the birds in summer days never heard
by those who have not learned the art of listening. The nest of the
summer yellowbird may be within six feet of a person on the hunt for
it, who, though of keen eye, may never find it, for lack of as keen
an ear to hear the low note of the mother bird behind the foliage.

By close observation one may come to disprove many things said
against the birds. For instance, a neighbor told us to be careful how
we encouraged the orioles and phœbes to nest in our grounds if we
didn't want them to eat up all our honey-bees. As usual with us in
such cases, we accepted the warning "with a pinch of salt," and took
to making observations on our own account.

Locating ourselves behind an open window near the beehives, we
watched. A vine trellis with top bar uncovered offered safe footing
to phœbe; on she came with five young phœbes hatched on the
fourth-floor flat under the eaves. The young birds were whining for
food. As plain as any words can be, they cried, "Bees, bees, please!"
And bees they were to have for dinner! The mother led them to the
trellis bar, where they squatted in a row, peeping their longings.
Bees were flying thicker than hail. The mother canted her head
from side to side, the black eye of the upward cant searching the
homeward-bound insects. "Why don't you help yourself?" we wondered.
In a few minutes the bum, bum, of the drones was heard. Then mother
phœbe darted, and darted, and darted; each time she snapped a big,
sting-less, bumming drone, which she killed by banging its head
against the bar. Then it was taken by a little phœbe, or more often
by two phœbes, who tugged at the creature until it came in two
parts, or was cunningly appropriated as a whole by one of them. This
meal-time went on until all were, for the time being, appeased, and
the family flew off. By the middle of next day they returned and went
through the same performances, very amusing to the witnesses inside
the window. Now, not a single worker-bee was touched! And the mother
phœbe knew the exact hour for the flying of drones. These lazy,
shiftless, bumming fellows never leave the hives until the day is far
advanced and the sun has warmed things up. So, not breakfast, but
dinner, was made of the drones.

As for the orioles, we were willing to give them a chance to speak
for themselves. They appeared about April 10th, as usual. And
straight for the bee corner of the garden they went. "I told you
so!" said the neighbor. We watched. There were rose-bushes and vines
in that part of the grounds, and to these the orioles hastened as
fast as their wings could take them. The beehives sit under a row of
moss-roses so thickly covered with spines that one cannot take hold
of them without gloves. But this pair of orioles ran up and down
and in and out without fear. These and many other rose-bushes did
they examine minutely, pecking away as fast as they could move their
beaks. Right at the entrance to the hives they went, on straggling
briers, but not a bee did they touch. We were as close to them as
we wished to be. Suddenly we scared them away before they should
have devoured every secret, and there was retreat for our neighbor!
The orioles had been eating the little green plant-lice that infest
rose-bushes early in the spring.

Later they took to watching the bees, and we resumed our watch of the
orioles. It was midsummer, and the young birds were all about, crying
for bread, or rather for "bees," though their pronunciation was not
so distinct as that of the young phœbes. The parent orioles took
their stand right on the doorstep of the hives, and waited with head
slightly turned, alert, ready for "a bite." Not a worker did they
touch, but when a drone came bumming along he was nabbed as quick
as a wink. All drone-time (which lasts about two months with us)
did the orioles patronize the beehives. Unmolested did the tireless
workers come, pollen-loaded, and run in at the entrance.

When the summer yellowbirds have three or four hungry mouths to feed,
just watch at the open window behind the snowball-bush and "see what
you see." Little green caterpillars make nourishing food for baby
yellowbirds. The parents might be running up and down amid the green
and white of the bush, just for effect of color, but they are not.
Those little, soft, green biscuits are the objects of their ramble.

It has been an open question as to whether old birds carry water
to the young. In the case of tame canaries they have been seen to
regurgitate a whole cropful of the liquid into waiting "parched
throats." So we may conclude that young birds require water.

In the case of a very young humming-bird who was deprived of its
mother, we raised it for a while, at least, on milk sweetened with
honey, feeding it with an eye-dropper such as surgeons use. The milk
was a good substitute for such animal food as the young of hummers
are accustomed to. When young humming-birds come out of the nest, and
for many weeks, they are either very fearless or their sight is not
good. Surely it is not the latter, unless it be atoned for by greater
sense of smell; for they come to flowers we hold up to them, and even
light on our hands and faces, following us in the shrubbery.

As a rule, young birds are suspicious and wary. They know by instinct
how and where to hide. After sundown is the time to see interesting
events connected with supper and bedtime. By close and quiet watching
one may see for one's self where and how young birds sleep. Some
retire to the same bough or bush each night. A family of bush-tits
slept in a row on an orange twig every night for two weeks, in plain
sight of us, and as near as six feet from our hands. The parents had
been blessed with unusual success in this particular brood, bringing
off six. These all slept in a row, "heads and tails," whispering the
softest of notes until quite dark.

We have never been able to account for all the egg-shells that
disappear in nesting-times. Now and then cracked bits are found in
fields and woods, but only bits. One might get some information from
the ants that are always prowling about for detached morsels of
animal life. The birds themselves may eat or hide them, lest they
tell tales. We have found shells far away from any nests, as if they
had been carried on purpose. Sometimes they lie in the nest bottom in
powder.

It is worth while to take a peep into every nest, just to get
"pointers"--but never to get birdlings! And one's peeps should not
be too frequent. It disturbs family order and confidence. Besides,
if one takes to peeping when the birds are nearly fledged they often
become frightened, and leave the nest too immature to warrant freedom
and safety. Young birds are seen to sit or cling to the edge of the
nest long before they are able to fly. At night they snuggle down
into the warmth--and warmth as much as food is essential to young
birds. But nesting-time has an end, like all good times.

When the late peaches turn their rosiest cheek to the autumn sun, and
the husk of the beechnut opens its pale lips, then are the nests that
were so lately the center of attraction tenantless and neglected. Old
birds, in passing, take no notice of them, and the hungry juveniles
pay no visible heed. What care they for cradles, now that the
universal cry is "Bread and butter, please"?

Baby zephyrs nap on the worn-out linings, and the rain runs its slim
fingers through the fading meshes. Even the domestic feline, who
was wont to peep into the heart of every one of them, no longer is
discovered inquiring into the nesting habits of birds. Forsaken are
the nests. Naked are the boughs. We will leave them for the winter
winds to question--and the winter winds will ravel more bark for
next year's nests, and they will make the meadow-grasses molt their
softest wrappers for linings. And it is the winter winds that will
swirl the dead leaves into lint, and pull the weed stalks into fiber.

Therefore, long live the winter winds!

CHAPTER XVI

THE ROMANCE OF ORNITHOLOGY

    The birds must know. Who wisely sings
        Will sing as they.
    The common air has generous wings:
        Songs make their way.
    What bird is that? The song is good,
        And eager eyes
    Go peering through the dusky wood
        In glad surprise:
    The birds must know.

Helen Hunt Jackson.

As everybody knows, ornithology means a discourse about birds--and
people have discoursed about birds ever since spoken or written
language gave us the means of exchanging thoughts.

In the Biblical history of the creation, birds occurred in the fifth
epoch of time, when the evolution of grass and herbs and trees and
seeds and fruits had made for them a paradise. With the grass and
trees and seeds and fruits had evolved a variable diet for the
feathered folk, and by instinct they have continued to follow after
their food, migrating on merry tours the wide world over. Lovers of
them from earliest dates have discoursed of their ways and means,
of their habits, their favorite resorts, their uses relative to
cultivation of lands, their faults in connection with civilization.
Students of nature have divided the birds into "classes" and
"species," as the human race itself is divided. As "order is heaven's
first law," ornithologists have taught us to distinguish it in the
study of birds; and so we have the "groups," always with reference to
individual habits and anatomical peculiarities.

In the Old World, ornithology as a science dates perhaps from
Aristotle, 384 years before Christ. True, he was a teacher of A, B,
C's on the subject, but he set students to "thinking," But there were
students before Aristotle; if not students of science, they were
students of religion. It is to religion in many forms that we owe
the romance of ornithology. We may call this phase of the subject
"superstition." The word itself is almost gruesome to the unlettered
imagination. It suggests uncanny things, ghosts and goblins, and
other creatures that are supposed to wander around in the dark,
because they were never seen at midday or any other time. To the
educated person actual faith in ghosts and goblins has given place
to a mildly fanciful imagination which indulges in the flavor of
superstition, as one takes light desserts after a full meal. And so
we have the romance of superstition for the intelligent.

Stopping to consider that the word itself means a "standing still"
to "stare" at something, an attitude of reverence, so to speak,
we see how religion in ornithology preceded the romance of it.
Certain of the birds waited on the deities, or had access to their
presence, in consequence of which they were set apart and protected.
Sometimes they were prophets of the gods, foretelling future events
with accuracy. Their flights were noted by religious devotees, who,
unconsciously to themselves probably, and certainly unsuspected, by
their followers, were sure to be "out" at migration times. At such
times, should the birds choose a natural course past a city and be
seen only after they had left it behind them, the prophet knew, in
the depths of his religious being, that the gods had doomed that
city. It was only when the study of birds as an actual science
developed the fact that these denizens of the air depended more upon
climate and necessary diet than upon the will of gruesome gods that
the religion of ornithology gave place to romance. And romance is the
after-dinner course of real ornithology--romance lends a fanciful
touch to figures and data, and apologizes to the average student for
intermissions that seem dedicated to frolic.

In the universe of romance, North America has its full share.
Preceding the romance was, and still is (among the native tribes),
the religion of superstition. The deities foretell certain death of
persons among the Eskimos by the passing of a bluejay or the croak of
a raven.

Our own poet, Edgar Allan Poe, was not an Eskimo, but he indulged in
the well-known superstitions about the bird when he permitted the
raven to perch above his door. Many of the Arctic tribes are known to
protect the ominous bird to this day. The Indians of Alaska revere
and even fear it, like a black spirit from the land of demons.

Song and story among American aborigines are replete with bird
superstition. So prominent was it that early historians made mention
of it to preserve it, and students of languages are putting it into
books, so that romance and legend may not pass away with our native
Indians.

The government itself is preserving the history of American
superstition among its precious archives. Reports of the Ethnological
Bureau are entertaining reading for vacation times. True, they are
"heavy volumes" in some cases, but there are supplements. Were these
reports placed in more school and other libraries, the inclination
to read more objectionable and not half so entertaining literature
would go quickly out, like a fire-proof match, without burning the
fingers.

To those who find a fascination in prehistoric legends the study
of bird representation on the ancient pottery of some of our
western Indians, and in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, is
offered in some of these government reports. They are a very mine
of suggestion and information. Imagination, subtle guide to many a
self-entertaining mind, runs fast and faster on before while one
reads, and one wonders how it came to pass one never knew about
government reports before.

The Ethnological Bureau is the poet's corner of our government--the
romance of our dull facts and figures. Without its unsleeping eye
forever scanning the sky of unwritten literature for gems, how would
some of us know about the history of the human race as preserved by
the Iroquois Indians? And that birds had a wing, if not a hand, in
the peopling of America at least?

Of course America was "all the world" to these Indians, and naturally
enough their priests and poets combined to give some adequate genesis
for the people.

It is said that a story, once started on its rounds in civilized
society, gathers facts and things as it goes, until at last--and
not before very long--its own original parent "wouldn't recognize
it." Not so the legends that have come to us through savage tongues.
Simple to start with, they maintain their original type without a
trace of addition. What students gather for us of folk-lore is as
correct as though the first text had been copyrighted by its author.
Note this simplicity in all barbaric legends, the discourse coming
straight to the facts and leaving off when it is done.

This one legend referred to of the origin of the human race makes so
good a preface to the closing rhyme of our text, that we are tempted
to give it for that special purpose. According to this story of
the Iroquois Indians, it is to birds that woman owes her history.
Unconsciously to these natives of America, they identified woman
with birds and birds' wings for all time. Unconsciously, perhaps, to
herself, woman has also identified her sex with birds and bird wings,
though in a different relation to that of the Iroquois. The legend
will need no further introduction to the girl or woman of America who
may become interested in "Birds of Song and Story."

There was once a time when all the earth was hidden under great
waters. No island or continent gave foothold. No tree, torn from its
moorings, afforded rest to tired foot or wing; for finny and winged
people were all the inhabitants in being. Birds soared unceasingly
in the air, and fish disported their beautiful armor-plate in the
water. In the consciousness of bird and fish there was need of
higher intelligences than themselves. They watched and waited for
some hint, some glimpse, of other and superior beings. One day the
birds, congregating in the sky, discoursing on this very matter,
beheld a lovely woman dropping out of the far blue. Hurriedly they
talked of possible means of saving her from drowning, for they had a
subtle sense that this falling object, with arms outstretched like
wings, was the being they hoped for. One of their number, a prophet,
suggested the means. As the lovely being dropped toward the great
sea the birds came together and lapped wings over wings in a thick
feathered island. Upon the soft deck of this throbbing life-boat
the beautiful being descended and lay panting. Slowly and lovingly
her soft hand caressed the wings of her benefactors. She lifted the
variously tinted plumage of the breasts on which she reclined, and
kissed the down of them.

That was long, long ago! We will conclude our text with the ending
of the poem preceding the first chapter in our book, repeating four
lines of the same, and dedicating this same "ending" to the Birds.

    While the church-bell rings its discourse
      They are sitting on the spires;
    Psalm and anthem, song and carol,
      Quaver as from mystic lyres.

    Wing and throat are in a tremor,
      While they pay their Sunday dues,
    And escorted by the ushers.
      They are sitting in the pews.

    Oh, the travesty of worship!
      Perched above each reverent face.
    Sit these feathered sacrifices.
      Closely pinioned to their place.

    Chant a dirge for woman's pity,
      Choir, before the text is read!
    Sing a requiem for compassion,
      Woman's tenderness is dead.

    On her head are funeral emblems;
      She has made herself a bier
    For the martyred birds who, shroudless,
      Coffinless, are waiting here.

    Eyes dilate and forms distorted.
      Praying as in dumb distress,
    Poising, crouching, reeling, swooning.
      Supplicating wretchedness.

    Twisted into shapes so ghastly,
      Frightful, grim, disconsolate;
    Writhing in a moveless torture.
      Passion inarticulate.

    Call it "love of what is lovely,"
     "Choice of best in nature's grace,"
    Back of all the giddy tangle
      Lurks the tradesman's wily face,

E.G.

Index

[Transcriber Note: Although two unique copies of this volume are
stored at The Internet Archive and both of them list an Index at Page
151, neither one of them has an Index and both end at Page 150.]

Transcriber Note

In order to prevent images from splitting paragraphs, text was
reformatted. Minor typos may have been corrected.