The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers Part 3

One may walk for hours through the winter woods and not see or hear a bird. Then he may come upon a troop of chickadees, with a nuthatch or two in their wake, and maybe a downy woodp.e.c.k.e.r.

Birds not of a feather flock together at this inclement season.

The question of food is always an urgent one. Evidently the nuthatch thinks there must be food where the chickadees flit and call so cheerily, and the woodp.e.c.k.e.r is probably drawn to the nuthatch for a similar reason.

Together they make a pretty thorough search,--fine, finer, finest. The chickadee explores the twigs and smaller branches; what he gets is on the surface, and so fine as to be almost microscopic. The nuthatch explores the trunks and larger branches of the trees; he goes a little deeper, into crevices of the bark and under lichens. Then comes Downy, who goes deeper still. He bores for larger game through the bark, and into the trunks and branches themselves.

In late fall this band is often joined by the golden-crowned kinglet and the brown creeper. The kinglet is finer-eyed and finer-billed than even the chickadee, and no doubt gathers what the latter overlooks, while the brown creeper, with his long, slender, curved bill, takes what both the nuthatch and the woodp.e.c.k.e.r miss. Working together, it seems as if they must make a pretty clean sweep. But the trees are numerous and large, and the birds are few. Only a mere fraction of tree surface is searched over at any one time. In large forests probably only a mere fraction of the trees are visited at all.

One cold day in midwinter, when I was walking through the snowless woods, I saw chickadees, nuthatches, and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs upon the ground, and upon roots and fallen branches. They were looking for the game that had fallen, as a boy looks for apples under the tree.

The winter wren is so called because he sometimes braves our northern winters, but it is rarely that one sees him at this season. I think I have seen him only two or three times in winter in my life. The event of one long walk, recently, in February, was seeing one of these birds. As I followed a byroad, beside a little creek in the edge of a wood, my eye caught a glimpse of a small brown bird darting under a stone bridge. I thought to myself no bird but a wren would take refuge under so small a bridge as that. I stepped down upon it and expected to see the bird dart out at the upper end. As it did not appear, I scrutinized the bank of the little run, covered with logs and brush, a few rods farther up.

Presently I saw the wren curtsying and gesticulating beneath an old log. As I approached he disappeared beneath some loose stones in the bank, then came out again and took another peep at me, then fidgeted about for a moment and disappeared again, running in and out of the holes and recesses and beneath the rubbish like a mouse or a chipmunk. The winter wren may always be known by these squatting, bobbing-out-and-in habits.

As I sought a still closer view of him, he flitted stealthily a few yards up the run and disappeared beneath a small plank bridge near a house.

I wondered what he could feed upon at such a time. There was a light skim of snow upon the ground, and the weather was cold. The wren, so far as I know, is entirely an insect-feeder, and where can he find insects in midwinter in our climate? Probably by searching under bridges, under brush heaps, in holes and cavities in banks where the sun falls warm. In such places he may find dormant spiders and flies and other hibernating insects or their larvae. We have a tiny, mosquito-like creature that comes forth in March or in midwinter, as soon as the temperature is a little above freezing. One may see them performing their fantastic air-dances when the air is so chilly that one b.u.t.tons his overcoat about him in his walk. They are darker than the mosquito,--a sort of dark water-color,--and are very frail to the touch. Maybe the wren knows the hiding-place of these insects.

With food in abundance, no doubt many more of our birds would brave the rigors of our winters. I have known a pair of bluebirds to brave them on such poor rations as are afforded by the hardhack or sugarberry,--a drupe the size of a small pea, with a thin, sweet skin. Probably hardly one per cent. of the drupe is digestible food. Bluebirds in December will also eat the berries of the poison ivy, as will the downy woodp.e.c.k.e.r.

Robins will pa.s.s the winter with us when the cover of a pine or hemlock forest can be had near a supply of red cedar berries. The cedar-bird probably finds little other food in the valley of the Hudson and in New England, yet I see occasional flocks of them every winter month.

Sometimes the chickadees and nuthatches, hunting through the winter woods, make a discovery that brings every bird within hearing to the spot,--they spy out the screech owl hiding in the thick of a hemlock-tree. What an event it is in the day's experience! It sets the whole clan agog.

While I was walking in the December woods, one day, my attention was attracted by a great hue and cry among these birds. I found them in and about a hemlock-tree,--eight or ten chickadees and four or five red-bellied nuthatches. Such a chiding chorus of tiny voices I had not heard for a long time. The tone was not that of alarm so much as it was that of trouble and displeasure.

I gazed long and long up into the dark, dense green ma.s.s of the tree to make out the cause of all this excitement. The chickadees were clinging to the ends of the sprays, as usual, apparently very busy looking for food, and all the time uttering their shrill plaint. The nuthatches perched about upon the branches or ran up and down the tree trunks, incessantly piping their displeasure. At last I made out the cause of the disturbance,--a little owl on a limb, looking down in wide-eyed intentness upon me. How annoyed he must have felt at all this hullabaloo, this lover of privacy and quiet, to have his name cried from the treetops, and his retreat advertised to every pa.s.ser-by!

I have never known woodp.e.c.k.e.rs to show any excitement at the presence of hawk or owl, probably because they are rarely preyed upon by these marauders. In their nests and in their winter quarters, deeply excavated in trunk or branch of tree, woodp.e.c.k.e.rs are beyond the reach of both beak and claw.

The day I saw the winter wren I saw two golden-crowned kinglets fly from one sycamore to another in an open field, uttering their fine call-notes. That so small a body can brave the giant cold of our winters seems remarkable enough. These are mainly birds of the evergreens, although at times they frequent the groves and the orchards.

How does the ruby-crowned kinglet know he has a brilliant bit of color on his crown which he can uncover at will, and that this has great charms for the female? During the rivalries of the males in the mating season, and in the autumn also, they flash this brilliant ruby at each other. I witnessed what seemed to be a compet.i.tive display of this kind one evening in November. I was walking along the road, when my ear was attracted by the fine, shrill lisping and piping of a small band of these birds in an apple-tree. I paused to see what was the occasion of so much noise and bl.u.s.ter among these tiny bodies. There were four or five of them, all more or less excited, and two of them especially so. I think the excitement of the others was only a reflection of that of these two. These were hopping around each other, apparently peering down upon something beneath them. I suspected a cat concealed behind the wall, and so looked over, but there was nothing there. Observing them more closely, I saw that the two birds were entirely occupied with each other.

They behaved exactly as if they were comparing crowns, and each extolling his own. Their heads were bent forward, the red crown patch uncovered and showing as a large, brilliant cap, their tails were spread, and the side feathers below the wings were fluffed out. They did not come to blows, but followed each other about amid the branches, uttering their thin, shrill notes and displaying their ruby crowns to the utmost. Evidently it was some sort of strife or dispute or rivalry that centred about this brilliant patch.

Few persons seem aware that the goldfinch is also a winter bird,--it is so brilliant and familiar in summer and so neutral and withdrawn in winter. The call-note and manner of flight do not change, but the color of the males and their habits are very different from their color and habits in summer. In winter they congregate in small, loose flocks, both s.e.xes of a dusky yellowish brown, and feed upon the seeds of gra.s.ses and weeds that stand above the snow in fields and along fences.

Day after day I have observed a band of five or six of them feeding amid the dry stalks of the evening primrose by the roadside. They are adepts in extracting the seed from the pods.

How pretty their call to each other at such times,--_paisley_ or _peasely_, with the rising inflection!

The only one of our winter birds that really seems a part of the winter, that seems to be born of the whirling snow, and to be happiest when storms drive thickest and coldest, is the snow bunting, the real s...o...b..rd, with plumage copied from the fields where the drifts hide all but the tops of the tallest weeds,--large s.p.a.ces of pure white touched here and there with black and gray and brown. Its twittering call and chirrup coming out of the white obscurity is the sweetest and happiest of all winter bird sounds. It is like the laughter of children. The fox-hunter hears it on the snowy hills, the farmer hears it when he goes to fodder his cattle from the distant stack, the country schoolboy hears it as he breaks his way through the drifts toward the school. It is ever a voice of good cheer and contentment.

One March, during a deep snow, a large flock of buntings stayed about my vineyards for several days, feeding upon the seeds of redroot and other weeds that stood above the snow. What boyhood a.s.sociations their soft and cheery calls brought up! How plump and well-fed and hardy they looked, and how alert and suspicious they were! They evidently had had experiences with hawks and shrikes. Every minute or two they would all spring into the air as one bird, circle about for a moment, then alight upon the snow again. Occasionally one would perch upon a wire or grapevine, as if to keep watch and ward.

Presently, while I stood in front of my study looking at them, a larger and darker bird came swiftly by me, flying low and straight toward the buntings. He shot beneath the trellises, and evidently hoped to surprise the birds. It was a shrike, thirsting for blood or brains. But the buntings were on the alert, and were up in the air before the feathered a.s.sa.s.sin reached them. As the flock wheeled about, he joined them and flew along with them for some distance, but made no attempt to strike that I could see.

Presently he left them and perched upon the top of a near maple.

The birds did not seem to fear him now, but swept past the treetop where he sat as if to challenge him to a race, and then went their way. I have seen it stated that these birds, when suddenly surprised by a hawk, will dive beneath the snow to escape him. They doubtless roost upon the ground, as do most ground-builders, and hence must often be covered by the falling snow.

VIII

A BIRDS' FREE LUNCH

One winter, during four or five weeks of severe weather, several of our winter birds were pensioners upon my bounty,--three blue jays, two downy woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, three chickadees, and one kinglet,--and later a s...o...b..rd--junco--appeared.

I fastened pieces of suet and marrow-bones upon the tree in front of my window, then, as I sat at my desk, watched the birds at their free lunch. The jays bossed the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs bossed the chickadees, and the chickadees bossed the kinglet.

Sometimes in my absence a crow would swoop down and boss the whole crew and carry off the meat. The kinglet was the least of all,--a sort of "hop-o'-my-thumb" bird. He became quite tame, and one day alighted upon my arm as I stood leaning against the tree.

I could have put my hand upon him several times. I wonder where the midget roosted. He was all alone. He liked the fare so well that he seemed disposed to stop till spring. During one terrible night of wind and snow and zero temperature I feared he would be swept away. I thought of him in the middle of the night, when the violence of the storm kept me from sleep. Imagine this solitary atom in feathers drifting about in the great arctic out-of-doors and managing to survive. I fancied him in one of my thick spruces, his head under his tiny wing, buffeted by wind and snow, his little black feet clinging to the perch, and wis.h.i.+ng that morning would come.

The fat meat is fuel for him; it keeps up the supply of animal heat. None of the birds will eat lean meat; they want the clear fat. The jays alight upon it and peck away with great vigor, almost standing on tiptoe to get the proper sweep. The woodp.e.c.k.e.r uses his head alone in pecking, but the jay's action involves the whole body. Yet his blows are softer, not so sharp and abrupt as those of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r. Pecking is not exactly his business.

He swallows the morsel eagerly, watching all the time lest some enemy surprise him in the act. Indeed, one noticeable thing about all the birds is their nervousness while eating. The chickadee turns that bead-like eye of his in all directions incessantly, lest something seize him while he is not looking. He is not off his guard for a moment. It is almost painful to observe the state of fear in which he lives. He will not keep his place upon the bone longer than a few seconds at a time lest he become a mark for some enemy,--a hawk, a shrike, or a cat. One would not think the food would digest when taken in such haste and trepidation.

While the jays are feeding, swallowing morsel after morsel very rapidly, the chickadees flit about in an anxious, peevish manner, lest there be none left for themselves.

I suspect the jays carry the food off and hide it, as they certainly do corn when I put it out for the hens. The jay has a capacious throat; he will lodge half a dozen or more kernels of corn in it, stretching his neck up as he takes them, to give them room, and then fly away to an old bird's-nest or a caterpillar's nest and deposit them in it. But in this respect the little kettle cannot call the big pot black. The chickadee also will carry away what it cannot eat. One day I dug a dozen or more white grubs--the larvae of some beetle--out of a decayed maple on my woodpile and placed them upon my window-sill. The chickadees soon discovered them, and fell to carrying them off as fast as ever they could, distributing them among the branches of the Norway spruces. Among the grubs was one large white one half the size of one's little finger. One of the chickadees seized this; it was all he could carry, but he made off with it. The mate to this grub I found rolled up in a smooth cell in a ma.s.s of decayed wood at the heart of the old maple referred to; it was full of frost. I carried it in by the fire, and the next day it was alive and apparently wanted to know what had brought spring so suddenly.

How rapidly birds live! Their demand for food is almost incessant. This colony of mine appear to feed every eight or ten minutes. Their little mills grind their grist very rapidly. Once in my walk upon the sea beach I encountered two small beach birds running up and down in the edge of the surf, keeping just in the thin, lace-like edging of the waves, and feeding upon the white, cricket-like hoppers that quickly buried themselves in the sand as the waters retreated. I kept company with the birds till they ceased to be afraid of me. They would feed eagerly for a few minutes and then stop, stand on one leg and put their heads under their wings for two or three minutes, and then resume their feeding, so rapidly did they digest their food. But all birds digest very rapidly.

My two woodp.e.c.k.e.rs seldom leave the tree upon which the food is placed. One is a male, as is shown by his red plume, and the other a female. There is not a bit of kindness or amity between them. Indeed, there is open hostility. The male will not allow the female even to look at the meat while he is feeding. She will sidle around toward it, edging nearer and nearer, when he will suddenly dart at her, and often pursue her till she leaves the tree. Every hour in the day I see him trying to drive her from the neighborhood. She stands in perpetual dread of him, and gives way the instant he approaches. He is a tyrant and a bully. They both pa.s.s the night in snug chambers which they have excavated in the decayed branch of an old apple-tree, but not together.

But in the spring what a change will come over the male. He will protest to the female that he was only in fun, that she took him far too seriously, that he had always cherished a liking for her.

Last April I saw a male trying his blandishments upon a female in this way. It may have been the same pair I am now observing. The female was extremely shy and reluctant; evidently she was skeptical of the sincerity of so sudden a change on the part of the male. I saw him pursue her from tree to tree with the most flattering attention. The flight of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r is at all times undulating, but on such occasions this feature is so enhanced and the whole action so affected and studied on the part of the male that the scene becomes highly amusing. The female flew down upon a low stump in the currant-patch and was very busy about her own affairs; the male followed, alighted on something several rods distant, and appeared to be equally busy about his affairs. Presently the female made quite a long flight to a tree by the roadside. I could not tell how the male knew she had flown and what course she had taken, as he was hidden from her amid the thick currant-bushes; but he did know, and soon followed after in his curious exaggerated undulatory manner of flight. I have little doubt that his suit was finally successful.

I watch these woodp.e.c.k.e.rs daily to see if I can solve the mystery as to how they hop up and down the trunks and branches without falling away from them when they let go their hold. They come down a limb or trunk backward by a series of little hops, moving both feet together. If the limb is at an angle to the tree and they are on the under side of it, they do not fall away from it to get a new hold an inch or half inch farther down. They are held to it as steel to a magnet. Both tail and head are involved in the feat. At the instant of making the hop the head is thrown in and the tail thrown out, but the exact mechanics of it I cannot penetrate. Philosophers do not yet know how a backward-falling cat turns in the air, but turn she does. It may be that the woodp.e.c.k.e.r never quite relaxes his hold, though to my eye he appears to do so.

Birds nearly always pa.s.s the night in such places as they select for their nests,--ground-builders upon the ground, tree-builders upon trees. I have seen an oriole ensconce himself for the night amid the thick cl.u.s.ter of leaves on the end of a maple branch, where soon after his mate built her nest.

My chickadees, true to this rule, pa.s.s the arctic winter nights in little cavities in the trunks of trees like the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs.

One cold day, about four o'clock, while it was snowing and blowing, I heard, as I was unharnessing my horse near the old apple-tree, the sharp, chiding note of a chickadee. On looking for the bird I failed to see him. Suspecting the true cause of his sudden disappearance, I took a pole and touched a limb that had an opening in its end where the wrens had the past season had a nest. As I did so, out came the chickadee and scolded sharply.

The storm and the cold had driven him early to his chamber. The snow buntings are said to plunge into the snow-banks and pa.s.s the night there. We know the ruffed grouse does this.

IX

BIRD-NESTING TIME

The other day I sat for an hour watching a pair of wood thrushes engaged in building their nest near "Slabsides." I say a pair, though the female really did all the work. The male hung around and was evidently an interested spectator of the proceeding. The mother bird was very busy bringing and placing the material, consisting mainly of dry maple leaves which the winter had made thin and soft, and which were strewn over the ground all about.

How pretty she looked, running over the ground, now in shade, now in suns.h.i.+ne, searching for the leaves that were just to her fancy! Sometimes she would seize two or more and with a quick, soft flight bear them to the fork of the little maple sapling.

Every five or six minutes during her absence, the male would come and inspect her work. He would look it over, arrange a leaf or two with his beak, and then go his way. Twice he sat down in the nest and worked his feet and pressed it with his breast, as if shaping it. When the female found him there on her return, he quickly got out of her way.