Birds Every Child Should Know Part 9

Mounting by erratic, short flights from the weedy places and bushy tangles he hunts among to the branches of a convenient tree, singing as he goes higher and higher, he remains for a time on a conspicuous perch and rapidly and repeatedly sings. When almost every other bird is moulting and moping, he warbles with the same fervour and timbre.

Possibly because he has the concert stage almost to himself in August, he gets the credit of being a better performer than he really is. Only the pewee and the red-eyed vireo, whom neither midday nor midsummer heat can silence, share the stage with him then.

TOWHEE

_Called also: Chewink; Ground Robin; Joree_

From their hunting-ground in the blackberry tangle and bushes that border a neighbouring wood, a family of chewinks sally forth boldly to my piazza floor to pick up seed from the canary's cage, hemp, cracked corn, sunflower seed, split pease, and wheat scattered about for their especial benefit. One fellow grew bold enough to peck open a paper bag. It is a daily happening to see at least one of the family close {130} to the door; or even on the window-sill. The song, the English, the chipping, the field, and the white-throated sparrows--any one or all of these cousins--usually hop about with the chewinks most amicably and with no greater ease of manner; but the larger chewink hops more energetically and precisely than any of them, like a mechanical toy.

Heretofore I had thought of this large, vigorous bunting as a rather shy or at least self-sufficient bird with no desire to be neighbourly.

His readiness to be friends when sure of the genuineness of the invitation, was a delightful surprise. From late April until late October my softly-whistled _towhee_ has rarely failed to bring a response from some pensioner, either in the woodland thicket or among the rhododendrons next to the piazza where the seeds have been scattered by the wind. _Chewink_, or _towhee_ comes the brisk call from wherever the busy bunting is foraging. The chickadee, whippoorwill, phoebe and pewee also tell you their names, but this bird announces himself by two names, so you need make no mistake.

Because he was hatched in a ground nest and loves to scratch about on the ground for insects, making the dead leaves and earth rubbish fly like any barnyard fowl, the towhee it often called the ground robin.

He is a little smaller than robin-redbreast. Looked down upon from {131} above he appears to be almost a black bird, for his upper parts, throat and breast are very dark where his mate is brownish; but underneath both are grayish white with patches of rusty red on their sides, the colour resembling a robin's breast when its red has somewhat faded toward the end of summer. The white feathers on the towhee's short, rounded wings and on the sides of his tail are conspicuous signals, as he flies jerkily to the nearest cover. You could not expect a bird with such small wings to be a graceful flyer.

Rarely does he leave the ground except to sing his love-song. Then, mounting no higher than a bush or low branch, he entrances his sweetheart, if not the human critic, with a song to which Ernest Thompson Seton supplies the well-fitted words: _Chuck-burr, pill-a will-a-will-a._

RED-BREASTED GROSBEAK

Among birds, as among humans, it is the father who lends his name to the family, however difficult it may be to know the mother and children by it. Who that had not studied the books would recognise Mrs. Scarlet Tanager by her name? or Mrs. Purple Finch? or Mrs. Indigo Bunting? or Mrs. Rose-breasted Grosbeak? {132} The latter lady has not a rose-coloured feather on her. She is a streaked, brown bird, resembling an overgrown sparrow, with a thick, exaggerated finch bill and a conspicuous, white eyebrow. When her husband wears his winter clothes in the tropics, his feathers are said to be similar to hers, so that even his name, then, does not fit. But when he returns to the United States in May he is, in very truth, a rose-breasted grosbeak.

His back is as black as a chewink's; underneath he is grayish white, and a patch of lovely, brilliant, rose colour on his breast, with wing linings of the same shade, make him a splendidly handsome fellow.

Perhaps before you get a glimpse of the feathers that are his best means of introduction, you may hear a thin _eek_ call-note from some tree-top, or better still, listen to the sweet, pure, mellow, joyously warbled song, now loud and clear, now softly tender, that puts him in the first rank of our songsters.

Few birds so conspicuously dressed risk the safety of their nests either by singing or by being seen near it, but this gentle cavalier not only carries food to his brooding mate but actually takes his turn at sitting upon the pale-greenish, blue-speckled eggs. As a lover, husband, and father he is irreproachable.

A friend who reared four orphan grosbeaks says that they left the nest when about eleven {133} days old. They were very tame, even affectionate toward him, hopping over his shoulders, head, knees, and hands without the least fear, and eating from his fingers. When only ten weeks old the little boy grosbeaks began to warble. On being released to pick up their own living in the garden, these pets repaid their foster-father by eating quant.i.ties of potato-bugs, among other pests. Some people call this grosbeak the potato-bug bird.

CARDINAL GROSBEAK

_Called also: Crested Redbird: Virginia Nightingale._

It was on a cold January day in Central Park, New York, that I first met a cardinal and was warmed by the sight. Then I supposed that he must have escaped from a cage, for he is uncommon north of Was.h.i.+ngton.

With tail and crest erect, he was hopping about rather clumsily on the ground near the bear's cage, and picking up bits of broken peanuts that had missed their mark. Presently a dove-coloured bird, lightly washed with dull red, joined him and I guessed by her crest that she must be his mate. Therefore both birds were permanent residents in the park and not escaped pets. Although they look as if they belonged {134} in the tropics, cardinals never migrate as the rose-breasted grosbeak and so many of our fair-weather feathered friends do. That is because they can live upon the weed seeds and the buds of trees and bushes in winter as comfortably as upon insects in summer. It pays not to be too particular.

In the Southern States every child knows the common cardinal and could tell you that he is a little smaller than a robin (not half so graceful), that he is red all over, except a small black area around his red bill, and that he wears his head-feathers crested like the blue jay and the t.i.tmouse. In a Bermuda garden, a shelf restaurant nailed up in a cedar tree attracted cardinals about it every hour of the day. If you can think of a prettier sight than that dark evergreen, with the brilliant red birds hopping about in its branches and the sparkling sapphire sea das.h.i.+ng over gray coral rocks in the background, do ask some artist to paint it!

Few lady birds sing--an accomplishment usually given to their lover's only, to help woo them. But the female cardinal is a charming singer with a softer voice than her mate's--most becoming to one of her s.e.x--and an individual song quite different from his loud, clear whistle.

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Cardinal

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That dusky rascal, the cowbird

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CHAPTER IX

THE ILL-a.s.sORTED BLACKBIRD FAMILY

Bobolink Cowbird Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Meadowlark Orchard Oriole Baltimore Oriole Purple and Bronzed Grackles

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BOBOLINK

_Called also: Reedbird; Ricebird; Ortolan; Maybird_

Such a rollicking, jolly singer is the bobolink! On a May morning, when b.u.t.tercups spangle the fresh gra.s.ses in the meadows, he rises from their midst into the air with the merriest frolic of a song you ever heard. Loud, clear, strong, full of queer kinks and twists that could not possibly be written down in our musical scale, the rippling, reckless music seems to keep his wings in motion as well as his throat; for when it suddenly bursts forth, up he shoots into the air like a skylark, and paddles himself along with just the tips of his wings while it is the "mad music" that seemingly propels him:--then he drops with his song into the gra.s.s again. Frequently he pours out his hilarious melody while swaying on the slender stems of the gra.s.ses, propped by the stiff, pointed feathers of his tail. A score or more of bobolinks rising in some open meadow all day long, are worth travelling miles to hear.

If you were to see the mate of one of these merry minstrels apart from him, you might easily mistake her for another of those tiresome {138} sparrows. A brown, streaked bird, with some buff and a few white feathers, she shades into the colours of the ground as well as they and covers her loose heap of twigs, leaves and gra.s.ses in the hay field so harmoniously that few people ever find it or the clever sitter.

As early as the Fourth of July, bobolinks begin to desert the choir, being the first birds to leave us. Travelling southward by easy stages, they feed on the wild rice in the marshes until, late in August, enormous flocks reach the cultivated rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia.

On the way, a great transformation has gradually taken place in the male bobolink's dress. At the North he wore a black, buff and white wedding garment, with the unique distinction of being lighter above than below; but this he has exchanged, feather by feather, for a striped, brown, sparrowy winter suit like his mate's and children's, only with a little more buff about it.

In this inconspicuous dress the reedbirds, or ricebirds, as bobolinks are usually called south of Mason and Dixon's line, descend in hordes upon the rice plantations when the grain is in the milk, and do several millions of dollars' worth of damage to the crop every year, sad, sad to tell. Of course, the birds are snared, shot, poisoned. In southern markets half {139} a dozen of them on a skewer may be bought, plucked and ready for the oven, for fifty cents or less. Isn't this a tragic fate to overtake our joyous songsters? Birds that have the misfortune to like anything planted by man, pay a terribly heavy penalty.

Such bobolinks as escape death, leave this country by way of Florida and continue their four thousand mile journey to southern Brazil, where they spend the winter; yet, nothing daunted by the tragedies in the rice fields, they dare return to us by the same route in May. By this time the males have made another complete change of feather to go a-courting. Most birds are content to moult once a year, just after nursery duties have ended; some, it is true, put on a partially new suit in the following spring, retaining only their old wing and tail feathers; but a very few, the bobolink, goldfinch, and scarlet tanager among them, undergo as complete a change as Harlequin.

COWBIRD

This contemptible bird every child should know if for no better reason than to despise it. You will see it alone or in small flocks walking about the pastures after the cattle; or, in the {140} West, boldly perching upon their backs to feed upon the insect parasites--a pleasant visitor for the cows. So far, so good.

The male is a s.h.i.+ning, greenish-black bird, smaller than a robin, with a coffee-brown head and neck. His morals are awful, for he makes violent love to any brownish-gray cowbird he fancies but mates with none. What should be his song is a squeaking _kluck tse-e-e_, squeezed out with difficulty, or a gurgle, like water being poured from a bottle. When he goes a-wooing, he behaves ridiculously, parading with spread wings and tail and acting as if he were violently nauseated in the presence of the lady. Fancy a cousin of the musical bobolink behaving so!

And nothing good can be said for the female cowbird. s.h.i.+rking as she does every motherly duty, she sneaks about the woods and thickets, slyly watching her chance to lay an egg in the cradle of some other bird, since she never makes a nest of her own. Thus she scatters her prospective family throughout the neighbourhood. The yellow warbler, who is a famous sufferer from her visits, sometimes outwits her, as we have seen; but other warblers, less clever, the vireos, some sparrows, and, more rarely, woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, flycatchers, orioles, thrushes and wrens, seem to accept the unwelcome gift without a protest. If you were a bird so imposed upon, wouldn't {141} you peck holes in that egg, or roll it out of your nest, or build another cradle rather than hatch a big, greedy interloper that would smother and starve your own babies? Probably every cowbird you see has sacrificed the lives of at least part of a brood of valuable, insectivorous songsters. Without the least spark of grat.i.tude in its cold heart, a young cowbird grafter forsakes its over-kind foster parents as soon as it can pick up its living and remains henceforth among its own kin--of whom only cows could think well.

RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD

_Called also: Swamp Blackbird_

When you are looking for the first p.u.s.s.y willows in the frozen marshes, or listening to the peeping of young frogs some day in early spring, you will, no doubt, become acquainted with this handsome blackbird, with red and orange epaulettes on his shoulders, who has just returned, from the South. _"Ke, kong-ker-ee,"_ he flutes from the willows and alders about the reedy meadows where he and his bachelor friends flock together and make them ring "with social cheer and jubilee." A little later, flocks of dingy, brown, streaked birds, {142} travelling northward, pause to rest in the marshes. Wholesale courting takes place shortly after and every red-wing in a black uniform chooses one of the plain, streaked, matter-of-fact birds for his mate. The remainder continue their unmaidenly journey in search of husbands, whom they find waiting in cheerful readiness in almost any marsh. By the first of May all have settled down to home life.

Then how constant are the rich, liquid, sweet _o-ka-lee_ notes of the red-wing! Ever in foolish fear for the safety of his nest, he advertises its whereabouts in musical headlines from the top of the nearest tree, or circles around it on fluttering wings above the sedges, or _chucks_ at any trespa.s.ser near it until one might easily torture him by going straight to its site.

But how short-lived is this excessive devotion to his family! In July, the restless young birds flock with the mothers, but the now indifferent fathers keep apart by themselves. Strange conduct for such fussy, solicitous birds! They congregate in large numbers where the wild rice is ripening and make short excursions to the farmers'

fields, where they destroy some grain, it is true, but so little as compared with the quant.i.ty of injurious insects and weed seed, that the debt is largely in the red-wings' favour.