Bird Neighbors Part 25

Called also: THE PREACHER

Length -- 5.75 to 6.25 inches. A fraction smaller than the English sparrow.

Male and Female -- Upper parts light olive-green; well-defined slaty-gray cap, with black marginal line, below which, and forming an exaggerated eyebrow, is a line of white. A brownish band runs from base of bill through the eye. The iris is ruby-red. Underneath white, shaded with light greenish yellow on sides and on under tail and wing coverts.

Range -- United States to Rockies and northward. Wnters in Central and South America.

Migrations -- April. October. Common summer resident.

"You see it -- you know it -- do you hear me? Do you believe it?" is Wilson Flagg's famous interpretation of the song of this commonest of all the vireos, that you cannot mistake with such a key. He calls the bird the preacher from its declamatory style; an up-and-down warble delivered with a rising inflection at the close and followed by an impressive silence, as if the little green orator were saying, "I pause for a reply."

Notwithstanding its quiet coloring, that so closely resembles the leaves it hunts among, this vireo is rather more noticeable than its relatives because of its slaty cap and the black-and-white lines over its ruby eye, that, in addition to the song, are its marked characteristics.

Whether she is excessively stupid or excessively kind, the mother-vireo has certainly won for herself no end of ridicule by allowing the cowbird to deposit a stray egg in the exquisitely made, pensile nest, where her own tiny white eggs are lying and though the young cowbird crowd and worry her little fledglings and eat their dinner as fast as she can bring it in, no displeasure or grudging is shown towards the dusky intruder that is sure to upset the rightful heirs out of the nest before they are able to fly.

In the heat of a midsummer noon, when nearly every other bird's voice is hushed, and only the locust seems to rejoice in the fierce suns.h.i.+ne, the little red-eyed vireo goes persistently about its business of gathering insects from the leaves, not flitting nervously about like a warbler, or taking its food on the wing like a flycatcher, but patiently and industriously dining where it can, and singing as it goes.

When a worm is caught it is first shaken against a branch to kill it before it is swallowed. Vireos haunt shrubbery and trees with heavy foliage, all their hunting, singing, resting, and home-building being done among the leaves -- never on the ground.

WHITE-EYED VIREO (Vireo noveboracensis) Vireo or Greenlet family

Male -- 5 to 5.3 inches. An inch shorter than the English sparrow.

Male and Female -- Upper parts bright olive-green, washed with grayish. Throat and underneath white; the breast and sides greenish yellow; wings have two distinct bars of yellowish white. Yellow line from beak to and around the eye, which has a white iris. Feathers of wings and tail brownish and edged with yellow.

Range -- United States to the Rockies, and to the Gulf regions And beyond in winter.

Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.

"Pertest of songsters," the white-eyed vireo makes whatever neighborhood it enters lively at once. Taking up a residence in the tangled shrubbery or thickety undergrowth, it immediately begins to scold like a crotchety old wren. It becomes irritated over the merest trifles -- a pa.s.sing b.u.mblebee, a visit from another bird to its tangle, an unsuccessful peck at a gnat -- anything seems calculated to rouse its wrath and set every feather on its little body a-trembling, while it sharply snaps out what might perhaps be freely constructed into "cuss-words."

And yet the inscrutable mystery is that this virago meekly permits the lazy cowbird to deposit an egg in its nest, and will patiently sit upon it, though it is as large as three of her own tiny eggs; and when the little interloper comes out from his sh.e.l.l the mother-bird will continue to give it the most devoted care long after it has shoved her poor little starved babies out of the nest to meet an untimely death in the smilax thicket below.

An unusual variety of expression distinguishes this bird's voice from the songs of the other vireos, which are apt to be monotonous, as they are incessant. If you are so fortunate to approach the white-eyed vireo before he suspects your presence, you may hear him amusing himself by jumbling together s.n.a.t.c.hes of the songs of the other birds in a sort of potpourri; or perhaps he will be scolding or arguing with an imaginary foe, then dropping his voice and talking confidentially to himself. Suddenly he bursts into a charming, simple little song, as if the introspection had given him reason for real joy. All these vocal accomplishments suggest the chat at once; but the minute your intrusion is discovered the sharp scolding, that is fairly screamed at you from an enraged little throat, leaves no possible shadow of a doubt as to the bird you have disturbed. It has the most emphatic call and song to be heard in the woods; it snaps its words off very short. "Chick-a-rer chick" is its usual call-note, jerked out with great spitefulness.

Wilson thus describes the jealously guarded nest: "This bird builds a very neat little nest, often in the figure of an inverted cone; it is suspended by the upper end of the two sides, on the circular bend of a p.r.i.c.kly vine, a species of smilax, that generally grows in low thickets. Outwardly it is constructed of various light materials, bits of rotten wood, fibres of dry stalks, of weeds, pieces of paper (commonly newspapers, an article almost always found about its nest, so that some of my friends have given it the name of the politician); all these materials are interwoven with the silk of the caterpillars, and the inside is lined with fine, dry gra.s.s and hair."

WARBLING VIREO (Vireo gilvus) Vireo or Greenlet family

Length -- 5.5 to 6 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow.

Male and Female -- Ashy olive-green above, with head and neck ash-colored. Dusky line over the eye. Underneath whitish, faintly washed with dull yellow, deepest on sides; no bars on wings.

Range -- North America, from Hudson Bay to Mexico.

Migrations -- May. Late September or early October. Summer resident.

This musical little bird shows a curious preference for rows of trees in the village street or by the roadside, where he can be sure of an audience to listen to his rich, continuous warble. There is a mellowness about his voice, which rises loud, but not altogether cheerfully, above the bird chorus, as if he were a gifted but slightly disgruntled contralto. Too inconspicuously dressed, and usually too high in the tree-top to be identified without opera-gla.s.ses, we may easily mistake him by his voice for one of the warbler family, which is very closely allied to the vireos. Indeed, this warbling vireo seems to be the connecting link between them.

Morning and afternoon, but almost never in the evening, we may hear him rippling out song after song as he feeds on insects and berries about the garden. But this familiarity lasts only until nesting time, for off he goes with his little mate to some unfrequented lane near a wood until their family is reared, when, with a perceptibly happier strain in his voice, he once more haunts our garden and row of elms before taking the southern journey.

OVENBIRD (Seiurus aurocapillus) Wood Warbler family

Called also: GOLDEN-CROWNED THRUSH; THE TEACHER; WOOD WAGTAIL; GOLDEN-CROWNED WAGTAIL; GOLDEN-CROWNED ACCENTOR

Length -- 6 to 6.15 inches. Just a shade smaller than the English sparrow.

Male and Female -- Upper parts olive, with an orange-brown crown, bordered by black lines that converge toward the bill. Under parts white; breast spotted and streaked on the sides. White eye-ring.

Range -- United States, to Pacific slope.

Migrations -- May. October. Common summer resident.

Early in May you may have the good fortune to see this little bird of the woods strutting in and out of the garden shrubbery with a certain mock dignity, like a child wearing its father's boots. Few birds can walk without appearing more or less ridiculous, and however gracefully and prettily it steps, this amusing little wagtail is no exception. When seen at all -- which is not often, for it is shy -- it is usually on the ground, not far from the shrubbery or a woodland thicket, under which it will quickly dodge out of sight at the merest suspicion of a footstep. To most people the bird is only a voice calling, "TEACHER TEACHER. TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER!" as Mr. Burroughs has interpreted the notes that go off in pairs like a series of little explosions, softly at first, then louder and louder and more shrill until the bird that you at first thought far away seems to be shrieking his penetrating crescendo into your very ears. But you may look until you are tired before you find him in the high, dry wood, never near water.

In the driest parts of the wood, here the ground is thickly carpeted with dead leaves, you may some day notice a little bunch of them, that look as if a plant, in pus.h.i.+ng its way up through the ground, had raised the leaves, rootlets, and twigs a trifle.

Examine the spot more carefully, and on one side you find an opening, and within the ball of earth, softly lined with gra.s.s, lie four or five cream-white, speckled eggs. It is only by a happy accident that this nest of the ovenbird is discovered. The concealment could not be better. It is this peculiarity of nest construction -- in shape like a Dutch oven -- that has given the bird what DeKay considers its "trivial name." Not far from the nest the parent birds scratch about in the leaves like diminutive barnyard fowls, for the grubs and insects hiding under them. But at the first suspicion of an intruder their alarm becomes pitiful. Panic-stricken, they become fairly limp with fear, and drooping her wings and tail, the mother-bird drags herself hither and thither over the ground.

As utterly bewildered as his mate, the male darts, flies, and tumbles about through the low branches, jerking and wagging his tail in nervous spasms until you have beaten a double-quick retreat.

In nesting time, at evening, a very few have heard the "luxurious nuptial song" of the ovenbird; but it is a song to haunt the memory forever afterward.

Burroughs appears to be the first writer to record this "rare bit of bird melody." "Mounting by easy flight to the top of the tallest tree," says the author of "Wake-Robin," "the ovenbird launches into the air with a sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the finches, and bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song -- clear, ringing, copious, rivalling the goldfinch's in vivacity and the linnet's in melody."

WORM-EATING WARBLER (Helmintherus vermivorus) Wood Warbler family

Length -- 5.50 inches. Less than an inch shorter than the English sparrow.

Male and Female -- Greenish olive above. Head yellowish brown, With two black stripes through crown to the nape; also black Lines from the eyes to neck. Under parts buffy and white.

Range -- Eastern parts of United States. Nests as far north as southern Illinois and southern Connecticut. Winters in the Gulf States and southward.

Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.

In the Delaware Valley and along the same parallel, this inconspicuous warbler is abundant, but north of New Jersey it is rare enough to give an excitement to the day on which you discover it. No doubt it is commoner than we suppose, for its coloring blends so admirably with its habitats that it is probably very often overlooked. Its call-note, a common chirp, has nothing distinguis.h.i.+ng about it, and all ornithologists confess to having been often misled by its song into thinking it came from the chipping sparrow. It closely resembles that of the pine warbler also. If it were as nervously active as most warblers, we should more often discover it, but it is quite as deliberate as a vireo, and in the painstaking way in which it often circles around a tree while searching for spiders and other insects that infest the trunks, it reminds us of the brown creeper. Sunny slopes and hillsides covered with thick undergrowth are its preferred foraging and nesting haunts. It is often seen hopping directly on the dry ground, where it places its nest, and it never mounts far above it. The well-drained, sunny situation for the home is chosen with the wisdom of a sanitary expert.

ACADIAN FLYCATCHER (Empidonax virescens) Flycatcher family

Called also: SMALL GREEN-CRESTED FLYCATCHER; SMALL PEWEE

Length -- 5.75 to 6 inches. A trifle smaller than the English sparrow.

Male -- Dull olive above. Two conspicuous yellowish wing-bars.

Throat white, shading into pale yellow on breast. Light gray or white underneath. Upper part of bill black; lower mandible flesh-color. White eye-ring.

Female -- Greener above and more yellow below.

Range -- From Canada to Mexico, Central America, and West Indies.

Most common in south temperate lat.i.tudes. Winters in southerly limit of range.

Migrations -- April. September. Summer resident.

When all our northern landscape takes on the exquisite, soft green, gray, and yellow tints of early spring, this little flycatcher, in perfect color-harmony with the woods it darts among, comes out of the south. It might be a leaf that is being blown about, touched by the suns.h.i.+ne filtering through the trees, and partly shaded by the young foliage casting its first shadows.

Woodlands, through which small streams meander lazily, inviting swarms of insects to their boggy sh.o.r.es, make ideal hunting grounds for the Acadian flycatcher. It chooses a low rather than a high, conspicuous perch, that other members of its family invariably select; and from such a lookout it may be seen launching into the air after the pa.s.sing gnat -- darting downward, then suddenly mounting upward in its aerial hunt, the vigorous clicks of the beak as it closes over its tiny victims testifying to the bird's unerring aim and its hearty appet.i.te.

While perching, a constant tail-twitching is kept up; and a faint, fretful "Tshee-kee, tshee-kee" escapes the bird when inactively waiting for a dinner to heave in sight.

In the Middle Atlantic States its peeping sound and the clicking of its particolored bill are infrequently heard in the village streets in the autumn, when the shy and solitary birds are enticed from the deep woods by a prospect of a more plentiful diet of insects, attracted by the fruit in orchards and gardens.

Never far from the ground, on two or more parallel branches, the shallow, unsubstantial nest is laid. Some one has cleverly described it as "a tuft of hay caught by the limb from a load driven under it," but this description omits all mention of the quant.i.ties of blossoms that must be gathered to line the cradle for the tiny, cream white eggs spotted with brown.