[Transcriber's notes]
This is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/birdsthateverych00doub
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book.
Obvious spelling errors have been corrected but "inventive" and inconsistent spelling is left unchanged.
Thanks to Kathy Danek for introducing me to this book.
[End Transcriber's notes]

{cover}

BIRDS
Every Child Should Know
by Neltje Blanchan

{i}

BIRDS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW

[{ii}]

Red-Eyed Vireo.

{iii}

BIRDS THAT EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW
BY
NELTJE BLANCHAN

Author of

"Bird Neighbours,"
"Birds that Hunt and Are Hunted,"
"Nature's Garden," and
"How to Attract the Birds."

SIXTY-THREE PAGES OF PHOTOGRAPHS FROM LIFE
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

{iv}

Copyright, 1907, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.

{v}

PREFACE

If all his lessons were as joyful as learning to know the birds in the fields and woods, there would be no

"...whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell And shining morning face creeping like Snaile Unwillingly to schoole."

Long before his nine o'clock headache appears, lessons have begun. Nature herself is the teacher who rouses him from his bed with an outburst of song under the window and sets his sleepy brain to wondering whether it was a robin's clear, ringing call that startled him from his dreams, or the chipping sparrow's wiry tremulo, or the gushing little wren's tripping cadenza. Interest in the birds trains the ear quite unconsciously. A keen, intelligent listener is rare, even among grown-ups, but a child who is becoming acquainted with the birds about him hears every sound and puzzles out its meaning with a cleverness that amazes those with ears who hear not. He responds to the first alarm note from the nesting blue birds in the orchard and dashes out of the house to chase away a prowling cat. He knows from {vi} afar the distress caws of a company of crows and away he goes to be sure that their persecutor is a hawk. A faint tattoo in the woods sends him climbing up a tall straight tree with the confident expectation of finding a woodpecker's nest within the hole in its side.

While training his ears, Nature is also training every muscle in his body, sending him on long tramps across the fields in pursuit of a new bird to be identified, making him run and jump fences and wade brooks and climb trees with the zest that produces an appetite like a saw-mill's and deep sleep at the close of a happy day.

When President Roosevelt was a boy he was far from strong, and his anxious father and mother naturally encouraged every interest that he showed in out-of-door pleasures. Among these, perhaps the keenest that he had was in birds. He knew the haunts of every species within a wide radius of his home and made a large collection of eggs and skins that he presented to the Smithsonian Museum when he could no longer endure the evidences of his "youthful indiscretion," as he termed the collector's mania. But those bird hunts that had kept him happily employed in the open air all day long, helped to make him the strong, manly man he is, whose wonderful physical endurance is not the least factor of his greatness. No one abhors the killing of birds and the {vii} robbing of nests more than he; few men, not specialists, know so much about bird life.

Nature, the best teacher of us all, trains the child's eyes through study of the birds to quickness and precision, which are the first requisites for all intelligent observation in every field of knowledge. I know boys who can name a flock of ducks when they are mere specks twinkling in their rapid rush across the autumn sky; and girls who instantly recognise a goldfinch by its waving flight above the garden. The white band across the end of the kingbird's tail leads to his identification the minute some sharp young eyes perceive it. At a considerable distance, a little girl I know distinguished a white-eyed from a red-eyed vireo, not by the colour of the iris of either bird's eye, but by the yellowish white bars on the white-eyed vireo's wings which she had noticed at a glance. Another girl named the yellow-billed cuckoo, almost hidden among the shrubbery, by the white thumb-nail spots on the quills of his outspread tail where it protruded for a second from a mass of leaves. A little urchin from the New York City slums was the first to point out to his teacher, who had lived twenty years on a farm, the faint reddish streaks on the breast of a yellow warbler in Central Park. Many there are who have eyes and see not.

What does the study of birds do for the {viii} imagination, that high power possessed by humans alone, that lifts them upward step by step into new realms of discovery and joy? If the thought of a tiny hummingbird, a mere atom in the universe, migrating from New England to Central America will not stimulate a child's imagination, then all the tales of fairies and giants and beautiful princesses and wicked witches will not cause his sluggish fancy to roam. Poetry and music, too, would fail to stir it out of the deadly commonplace.

Interest in bird life exercises the sympathies. The child reflects something of the joy of the oriole whose ecstasy of song from the elm on the lawn tells the whereabouts of a dangling "cup of felt" with its deeply hidden treasures. He takes to heart the tragedy of a robin's mud-plastered nest in the apple tree that was washed apart by a storm, and experiences something akin to remorse when he takes a mother bird from the jaws of his pet cat. He listens for the return of the bluebirds to the starch-box home he made for them on top of the grape arbour and is strangely excited and happy that bleak day in March when they re-appear. It is nature sympathy, the growth of the heart, not nature study, the training of the brain, that does most for us.

Neltje Blanchan.
Mill Neck, 1906.

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CONTENTS

{xi}

[Transcriber's note: Scroll down for even pages and scroll up for odd pages.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[{3}]

CHAPTER I
OUR ROBIN GOODFELLOW AND HIS RELATIONS:

American Robin
Bluebird
Wood Thrush
Wilson's Thrush

[{4}]

[{5}]

THE AMERICAN ROBIN
Called also: Red-breasted Thrush; Migratory Thrush; Robin Redbreast

It is only when he is a baby that you could guess our robin is really a thrush, for then the dark speckles on his plump little yellowish-white breast are prominent thrush-like markings, which gradually fade, however, as he grows old enough to put on a brick-red vest like his father's.

The European Cock Robin—a bird as familiar to you as our own, no doubt, because it was he who was killed by the Sparrow with the bow and arrow, you well remember, and it was he who covered the poor Babes in the Wood with leaves—is much smaller than our robin, even smaller than a sparrow, and he is not a thrush at all. But this hero of the story books has a red breast, and the English colonists, who settled this country, named our big, cheerful, lusty bird neighbour a robin, simply because his red breast reminded them of the wee little bird at home that they had loved when they were children.

When our American robin comes out of the [{6}] turquoise blue egg that his devoted mother has warmed into life, he usually finds three or four baby brothers and sisters huddled within the grassy cradle. In April, both parents worked hard to prepare this home for them. Having brought coarse grasses, roots, and a few leaves or weed stalks for the foundation, and pellets of mud in their bills for the inner walls (which they cleverly managed to smooth into a bowl shape without a mason's trowel), and fine grasses for the lining of the nest, they saddled it on to the limb of an old apple tree. Robins prefer low-branching orchard or shade trees near our homes to the tall, straight shafts of the forest. Some have the courage to build among the vines or under the shelter of our piazzas. I know a pair of robins that reared a brood in a little clipped bay tree in a tub next to a front door, where people passed in and out continually. Doubtless very many birds would be glad of the shelter of our comfortable homes for theirs if they could only trust us. Is it not a shame that they cannot? Robins, especially, need a roof over their heads. When they foolishly saddle their nest on to an exposed limb of a tree, the first heavy rain is likely to soften the mud walls, and wash apart the heavy, bulky structure, when

"Down tumble babies and cradle and all."

[{7}]

It is wiser of them to fit the nest into the supporting crotch of a tree, as many do, and wisest to choose the top of a piazza pillar, where boys and girls and cats cannot climb to molest them, nor storms dissolve their mud-walled nursery. There are far too many tragedies of the nests after every heavy spring rain.

Suppose your appetite were so large that you were compelled to eat more than your weight of food every day, and suppose you had three or four brothers and sisters, just your own size, and just as ravenously hungry. These are the conditions in every normal robin family, so you can easily imagine how hard the father and mother birds must work to keep their fledglings' crops filled. No wonder robins like to live near our homes where the enriched land contains many fat grubs, and the smooth lawns, that they run across so lightly, make hunting for earth worms comparatively easy. It is estimated that about fourteen feet of worms (if placed end to end) are drawn out of the ground daily by a pair of robins with a nestful of babies to feed. When one of the parents alights near its home, every child must have seen the little heads, with wide-stretched, yellow bills, pop up suddenly like Jacks-in-the-box. How rudely the greedy babies push and jostle one another to get the most dinner, and how noisily they clamour for it! Earth worms are the staff of [{8}] life to them just as bread is to children, but robins destroy vast quantities of other worms and insects more injurious to the farmers' crops, so that the strawberries and cherries they take in June should not be grudged them.

A man of science, who devoted many hours of study to learn the great variety of sounds made by common barnyard chickens in expressing their entire range of feeling, from the egg shell to the axe, could entertain an audience delightfully for an evening by imitating them. Similar study applied to robins would reveal as surprisingly rich results, but probably less funny. No bird that we have has so varied a repertoire as Robin Goodfellow, and I do not believe that any boy or girl alive could recognise him by every one of his calls and songs. His softly warbled salute to the sunrise differs from his lovely even-song just as widely as the rapturous melody of his courting days differs from the more subdued, tranquil love song to his brooding mate. Indignation, suspicion, fright, interrogation, peace of mind, hate, caution to take flight—these and a host of other thoughts, are expressed through his flexible voice.

"It is only when he is a baby that you could guess our robin is really a thrush."

Young bluebirds taking their first walk.

[{9}]

Toward the end of June, you may see robins flying in flocks after sun-down. Old males and young birds of the first brood scatter themselves over the country by day to pick up the best living they can, but at night they collect in large numbers at some favourite roosting place. Oftentimes the weary mother birds are now raising second broods. We like to believe that the fathers return from the roosts at sun-up to help supply those insatiable babies with worms throughout the long day.

After family cares are over for the year, robins moult, and then they hide, mope, and keep silent for awhile. But in September, in a suit of new feathers, they are feeling vigorous and cheerful again; and, gathering in friendly flocks, they roam about the woodland borders to feed on the dogwood, choke cherries, juniper berries, and other small fruits. You see they change their diet with the season. By dropping the undigested berry seeds far and wide, they plant great numbers of trees and shrubs as they travel. Birds help to make the earth beautiful. With them every day is Arbour Day.

It is a very dreary time when the last robin leaves us, and an exceptionally cold winter when a few stragglers from the south-bound flocks do not remain in some sheltered, sunny, woodland hollow.

THE BLUEBIRD

Is there any sign of spring quite so welcome as the glint of the first bluebird unless it is his [{10}] softly whistled song? Before the farmer begins to plough the wet earth, often while the snow is still on the ground, this hardy little minstrel is making himself very much at home in our orchards and gardens while waiting for a mate to arrive from the South.

Now is the time to have ready on top of the grape arbour, or under the eaves of the barn, or nailed up in the apple tree, or set up on poles, the little one-roomed houses that bluebirds are only too happy to occupy. More enjoyable neighbours it would be hard to find. Sparrows will fight for the boxes, it is true, but if there are plenty to let, and the sparrows are persistently driven off, the bluebirds, which are a little larger though far less bold, quickly take possession. Birds that come earliest in the season and feed on insects, before they have time to multiply, are of far greater value in the field, orchard, and garden than birds that delay their return until warm weather has brought forth countless swarms of insects far beyond the control of either bird or man. Many birds would be of even greater service than they are if they received just a little encouragement to make their homes nearer ours. They could save many more millions of dollars' worth of crops for the farmers than they do if they were properly protected while rearing their ever-hungry families. As two or even three broods [{11}] of bluebirds may be raised in a box each spring, and as insects are their most approved baby food, you see how much it is to our interest to set up nurseries for them near our homes.

But when people are not thoughtful enough to provide them before the first of March, the bluebirds hunt for a cavity in a fence rail, or a hole in some old tree, preferably in the orchard, shortly after their arrival, and proceed to line it with grass. From three to six pale blue eggs are laid. At first the babies are blind, helpless, and almost naked. Then they grow a suit of dark feathers with speckled, thrush-like vests similar to their cousin's, the baby robin's; and it is not until they are able to fly that the lovely deep blue shade gradually appears on their grayish upper parts. Then their throat, breast, and sides turn rusty red. While creatures are helpless, a prey for any enemy to pounce upon, Nature does not dress them conspicuously, you may be sure. Adult birds, that are able to look out for themselves, may be very gaily dressed, but their children must wear sombre clothes until they grow strong and wise.

Young bluebirds are far less wild and noisy than robins, but their very sharp little claws discourage handling. These pointed hooks on the ends of their toes help them to climb out of the tree hollow, that is their natural home, into the big world that their presence makes so cheerful.

[{12}]

As you might expect of creatures so heavenly in colour, the disposition of bluebirds is particularly angelic. Gentleness and amiability are expressed in their soft, musical voice. Tru-al-ly, tru-al-ly, they sweetly assert when we can scarcely believe that spring is here; and tur-wee, tur-wee they softly call in autumn when they go roaming through the country side in flocks of azure, or whirl through Southern woods to feed on the waxy berries of the mistletoe.

THE WOOD THRUSH
Called also: Song Thrush; Wood Robin; Bell Bird

Much more shy and reserved than the social, democratic robin is his cousin the wood thrush, whom, perhaps, you more frequently hear than see. Not that he is a recluse, like the hermit thrush, who hides his nest and lifts up his heavenly voice in deep, cool, forest solitudes; nor is he even so shy as Wilson's thrush, who prefers to live in low, wet, densely overgrown Northern woods. The wood thrush, as his name implies, certainly likes the woodland, but very often he chooses to stay close to our country and suburban homes or within city parks with a more than half-hearted determination to be friendly.

BABY WOOD THRUSHES
Notice the family resemblance between them and the baby robins and bluebirds.

A wood thrush startled by the click of the camera.

[{13}]

He is about two inches shorter than the robin. Above, his feathers are a rich cinnamon brown, brightest on his head and shoulders and shading into olive brown on his tail. His white throat and breast and sides are heavily marked with heart-shaped marks of very dark brown. He has a white eye ring.

"Here am I" come his three clear, bell-like notes of self-introduction. The quality of his music is delicious, rich, penetrative, pure and vibrating like notes struck upon a harp. If you don't already know this most neighbourly of the thrushes—as he is also the largest and brightest and most heavily spotted of them all—you will presently become acquainted with one of the finest songsters in America. Wait until evening when he sings at his best. Nolee-a-e-o-lee-nolee-aeolee-lee! peals his song from the trees. Love alone inspires his finest strains; but even in July, when bird music is quite inferior to that of May and June, he is still in good voice. A song so exquisite proves that the thrush comes near to being a bird angel, very high in the scale of development, and far, far beyond such low creatures as ducks and chickens.

Pit-pit-pit you may hear sharply, excitedly jerked out of some bird's throat, and you wonder if a note so disagreeable can really come from the wonderful songster on the branch above your head. By sharply striking two small stones [{14}] together you can closely imitate this alarm call. Whom can he be scolding so severely? It is yourself, of course, for without knowing it you have come nearer to his low nest in the beech tree than he thinks quite safe. While sitting, the mother bird is, however, quite tame. A photographer I know placed his camera within four feet of a nest, changed the plates, and clicked the shutter three times for as many pictures without disturbing the gentle sitter who merely winked her eye at each chick.

Wood thrushes seem to delight in weaving bits of paper or rags into their deep cradles which otherwise resemble the robins.' A nest in the shrubbery near a bird-lover's home in New Jersey had many bits of newspaper attached to its outer walls, but the most conspicuous strip in front advertised in large letters "A House to be Let or Sold." The original builders happily took the next lease, and another lot of nervous, fidgety baby tenants came out of four light greenish-blue eggs; but, as usual, they moved away to the woods, after ten days, to join the choir invisible.

WILSON'S THRUSH

The veery, as the Wilson's thrush is called in New England, is far more common there than [{15}] the wood thrush, whose range is more southerly. During its spring and fall migrations only is it at all common about the elms and maples that men have planted. Take a good look at its tawny coat and lightly spotted cream buff breast before it goes away to hide. Like Kipling's "cat that walked by himself," the veery prefers the "wild, wet woods," and there its ringing, weird, whistling monotone, that is so melodious without being a melody, seems to come from you can't guess where. The singer keeps hidden in the dense, dark undergrowth. It is as if two voices, an alto and a soprano, were singing at the same time: Whee-you, whee-you:—the familiar notes might come from a scythe being sharpened on a whetstone, were the sound less musical than it is. The bird is too wise to sing very near its well-hidden nest, which is placed either directly on the damp ground or not far above it, and usually near water. Throughout its life the veery seems to show a distrust of us that, try as we may, few have ever overcome.

If you have thought that the thrush-like, cinnamon brown, speckle-breasted bird, with a long twitching tail like a catbird's, and a song as fine as a catbird's best, would be mentioned among the robin's relations, you must guess again, for he is the brown thrasher, not a thrush at all. You will find him in the Group of Lively Singers.

[{16}]

[{17}]

CHAPTER II
SOME NEIGHBOURLY ACROBATS

Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Golden-crowned Kinglet

[{18}]

[{19}]

THE CHICKADEE
Called also: Black-capped Titmouse

Bitterly cold and dreary though the day may be, that "little scrap of valour," the chickadee, keeps his spirits high until ours cannot but be cheered by the oft-repeated, clear, tinkling silvery notes that spell his name. Chicka-dee-dee: chicka-dee-dee: he introduces himself. How easy it would be for every child to know the birds if all would but sing out their names so clearly! Oh, don't you wish they would?

"Piped a tiny voice near by
Gay and polite—a cheerful cry—
Chick-chickadeedee! Saucy note
Out of sound heart and merry throat.
As if it said, 'Good day, good Sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places
Where January brings few faces.'"

No bird, except the wren, is more cheerful than the chickadee, and his cheerfulness, fortunately, is just as "catching" as measels. None will respond more promptly to your whistle in imitation of his three very high, clear call notes, and come nearer and nearer to make quite sure you [{20}] are only a harmless mimic. He is very inquisitive. Although not a bird may be in sight when you first whistle his call, nine chances out of ten there will be a faint echo from some far distant throat before very long; and by repeating the notes at short intervals you will have, probably, not one but several echoes from as many different chickadees whose curiosity to see you soon gets the better of their appetites and brings them flying, by easy stages, to the tree above your head. Where there is one chickadee there are apt to be more in the neighbourhood; for these sociable, active, cheerful little black-capped fellows in gray like to hunt for their living in loose scattered flocks throughout the fall and winter. When they come near enough, notice the pale rusty wash on the sides of their under parts which are more truly dirty white than gray. Chickadees are wonderfully tame: except the chipping sparrow, perhaps the tamest birds that we have. Patient people, who know how to whistle up these friendly sprites, can sometimes draw them close enough to touch, and an elect few, who have the special gift of winning a wild bird's confidence, can induce the chickadee to alight upon their hands.

Blessed with a thick coat of fat under his soft, fluffy gray feathers, a hardy constitution and a sunny disposition, what terrors has the winter for him? When the thermometer goes down, [{21}] his spirits seem to go up the higher. Dangling like a circus acrobat on the cone of some tall pine tree; standing on an outstretched twig, then turning over and hanging with his black-capped head downward from the high trapeze; carefully inspecting the rough bark on the twigs for a fat grub or a nest of insect eggs, he is constantly hunting for food and singing grace between bites. His day, day, day, sung softly over and over again, seems to be his equivalent for "Give us this day our daily bread."

How delightfully he and his busy friends, who are always within call, punctuate the snow-muffled, mid-winter silence with their ringing calls of good cheer! The orchards where chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and kinglets have dined all winter, will contain few worm-eaten apples next season. Here is a puzzle for your arithmetic class: If one chickadee eats four hundred and forty-four eggs of the apple tree moth on Monday, three hundred and thirty-three eggs of the canker worm on Tuesday, and seven hundred and seventy-seven miscellaneous grubs, larvae, and insect eggs on Wednesday and Thursday, how long will it take a flock of twenty-two chickadees to rid an orchard of every-unspeakable pest? One very wise and thrifty fruit grower I know attracts to his trees all the winter birds from far and near, by keeping on several shelves nailed up in his orchard, [{22}] bits of suet, cheap raisins, raw peanuts chopped fine, cracked hickory nuts and rinds of pork. The free lunch counters are freely patronised. There is scarcely an hour in the day, no matter how cold, when some hungry feathered neighbour may not be seen helping himself to the heating, fattening food he needs to keep his blood warm.

At the approach of warm weather, chickadees retreat from public gaze to become temporary recluses in damp, deep woods or woodland swamps where insects are most plentiful. For a few months they give up their friendly flocking ways and live in pairs. Long journeys they do not undertake from the North when it is time to nest; but Southern birds move northward in the spring. Happily the chickadee may find a woodpecker's vacant hole in some hollow tree; worse luck if a new excavation must be made in a decayed birch—the favourite nursery. Wool from the sheep pasture, felt from fern fronds, bits of bark, moss, hair, and the fur of "little beasts of field and wood"—anything soft that may be picked up goes to line the hollow cradle in the tree-trunk. How the crowded chickadee babies must swelter in their bed of fur and feathers tucked inside a close, stuffy hole! Is it not strange that such hardy parents should coddle their children so?

The chickadee at her front door.

Young nuthatches learning their first lesson in balancing on a horizontal bar.

[{23}]

TUFTED TITMOUSE
Called also: Peto Bird; Crested Tomtit; Crested Titmouse

Don't expect to meet the tufted titmouse if you live very far north of Washington. He is common only in the South and West.

This pert and lively cousin of the lovable little chickadee is not quite so friendly and far more noisy. Peto-peto-peto comes his loud, clear whistle from the woods and clearings where he and his large family are roving restlessly about all through the autumn and winter. A famous musician became insane because he heard one note ringing constantly in his overwrought brain. If you ever hear a troupe of titmice whistling Peto over and over again for hours at a time, you will pity poor Schumann and fear a similar fate for the birds. But they seem to delight in the two tiresome notes, uttered sometimes in one key, sometimes in another. Another call—day-day-day—reminds you of the chickadee's, only the tufted titmouse's voice is louder and a little hoarse, as it well might be from such constant use.

Few birds that we see about our homes wear a top knot on their heads. The big cardinal has a handsome red one, the larger blue jay's is bluish gray, the cedar waxwing's is a Quaker [{24}] drab; but the little titmouse, who is the size of an English sparrow, may be named at once by the gray pointed crest that makes him look so pert and jaunty. When he hangs head downward from the trapeze on the oak tree, this little gray acrobat's peaked cap seems to be falling off; whereas the black skull cap on the smaller chickadee fits close to his head no matter how much he turns over the bar and dangles.

Neither one of these cousins is a carpenter like the woodpecker. The titmouse has a short, stout bill without a chisel on it, which is why it cannot chip out a hole for a nest in a tree trunk or old stump unless the wood is much decayed. You see why these birds are so pleased to find a deserted woodpecker's hole. Not alone are they saved the trouble of making one, but a deep tunnel in a tree-trunk means security for their babies against hawks, crows, jays, and other foes, as well as against wind and rain.

When you find a flock of either chickadees or titmice, you may be sure it is made up chiefly, if not entirely, of the birds of one or two broods of the same parents. Their families are usually large and the members devoted to one another. Titmice nest in April so that you cannot tell the brothers and sisters from the father and mother when the troupe of acrobats leave the woods in [{25}] early autumn and whistle lustily about your home.

WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH
Called also: Tree Mouse; Devil Downhead.

When it comes to acrobatic performances in the trees, neither the chickadee nor the titmouse can rival their relatives, the little bluish gray nuthatches. Indeed, any circus might be glad to secure their expert services. Hanging fearlessly from the topmost branches of the tallest pine, running along the under side of horizontal limbs as comfortably as along the top of them, or descending the trunk head foremost, these wonderful little gymnasts keep their nerves as cool as the thermometer in January. From the way they travel over any part of the tree they wish, from top and tip to the bottom of it, no wonder they are sometimes called Tree Mice. Only the fly that walks across the ceiling, however, can compete with them in clinging to the under side of boughs.

Why don't they fall off? If you ever have a chance, examine their claws. These, you will see, are very much curved and have sharp little hooks that catch in any crack or rough place in the bark and easily support the bird's weight. As a general rule the chickadee keeps to the [{26}] end of the twigs and the smaller branches; the tufted titmouse rids the larger boughs of insects, eggs, and worms hidden in the scaly bark; but the nuthatches can climb to more inaccessible places. With the help of the hooks on their toes it does not matter to them whether they run upward, downward, or sidewise; and they can stretch their bodies away from their feet at some very queer angles. Their long bills penetrate into deep holes in the thick bark of the tree trunks and older limbs and bring forth from their hiding places insects that would escape almost every other bird except the brown creeper and the woodpecker. Of course, when you see any feathered acrobat performing in the trees, you know he is working hard to pick up a dinner, not exercising merely for fun. The most familiar nuthatch, in the eastern United States, is the one with the white breast; but in the Northern States and Canada there is another common winter neighbour, a smaller compactly feathered, bluish gray gymnast with a pale rusty breast, a conspicuous black line running apparently through his eye from the base of his bill to the nape of his neck, and heavy white eyebrows. This is the hardy little red-breasted nuthatch. His voice is pitched rather high and his drawling notes seem to come from a lazy bird instead of one of the most vigorous and spry little creatures in the wood. The [{27}] nasal ank-ank of his white-breasted cousin is uttered, too, without expression, as if the bird were compelled to make a sound once in a while against his will. Both of these cousins have similar habits. Both are a trifle smaller than the English sparrow. In summer they merely hide away in the woods to nest, for they are not migrants. It is only when nesting duties are over in the autumn that they become neighbourly.

Who gave them their queer name? A hatchet would be a rather clumsy tool for us to use in opening a nut, but these birds have a convenient, ever-ready one in their long, stout, sharply pointed bills with which they hack apart the small thin-shelled nuts like beech nuts and hazel nuts, chinquapins and chestnuts, kernels of corn and sunflower seeds. These they wedge into cracks in the bark just big enough to hold them. During the summer and early autumn when insects are plentiful, the nuthatches eat little else; and then they thriftily store away the other items on their bill of fare, squirrel fashion, so that when frost kills the insects, they may vary their diet of insect eggs and grubs with nuts and the larger grain. Flying to the spot where a nut has been securely wedged, perhaps weeks before, the bird scores and hacks and pecks it open with his sharp little hatchet, whose hard blows may be heard far away.

[{28}]

Although this tool is a great help to the nuthatches in making their nests, they appear to be quite as ready to accept a deserted woodpecker's hole as the chickadee with a smaller bill. A natural cavity will answer, or, if they must, they will make one in some forest tree. The red-breasted nuthatches have a curious habit of smearing the entrance to the hole with fir-balsam or pitch. Why do you suppose they do it? Perhaps they think this will discourage egg suckers, like snakes, mice, or squirrels; but, in effect, the sticky gum often pulls the feathers from their own breasts as they go in and out attending to the wants of their family.

RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET

Count that a red-letter day on your calendar when first you see either this tiny, dainty sprite, or his next of kin, the golden-crowned kinglet, fluttering, twinkling about the evergreens. In republican America we don't often have the chance to meet two crowned heads. Energetic as wrens, restless as warblers, and as perpetually looking for insect food, the kinglets flit with a sudden, jerking motion from twig to twig among the trees and bushes, now on the lawn, now in the orchard and presently in the hedgerow down the lane. They have a pretty [{29}] trick of lifting and flitting their wings every little while. The bluebird and pine grosbeak have it too, but their much larger, trembling wings seem far less nervous.

Happily the kinglets are not at all shy; no bird is that is hatched out so far north that it never sees a human being until it travels southward to spend the winter. Alas! It is the birds that know us too well that are often the most afraid. When the leaves are turning crimson and russet and gold in the autumn, keep a sharp look out for the plump little grayish, olive green birds that are even smaller than wrens, and not very much larger than hummingbirds. Although members of quite a different family—the kinglets are exclusive—they condescend to join the nuthatches and chickadees in the orchard to help clean the farmer's fruit trees or pick up a morsel at the free lunch counter in zero weather. Love or war is necessary to make the king show us his crown. But vanity or anger is sufficient excuse for lifting the dark feathers that nearly conceal the beauty spot on the top of his head when the midget's mind is at ease. If you approach very near—and he will allow you to almost touch him—you may see the little patch of brilliant red feathers, it is true, but you will probably get an unexpected, chattering scolding from the little king as he flies away.

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In the spring his love song is as surprisingly strong in proportion to his size as the wren's. It seems impossible for such a volume of mellow flute-like melody to pour from a throat so tiny. Before we have a chance to hear it again the singer is off with his tiny queen to nest in some spruce tree beyond the Canadian border.

The noisy contents of a soap box: a family of house wrens.

The marsh wren's round cradle swung among the rushes.

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CHAPTER III
A GROUP OF LIVELY SINGERS

House Wren
Carolina Wren
Marsh Wren
Brown Thrasher
Catbird
Mockingbird

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THE HOUSE WREN

If you want some jolly little neighbours for the summer, invite the wrens to live near you year after year by putting up small, one-family box-houses under the eaves of the barn, the cow-shed, or the chicken-house, on the grape arbour or in the orchard. Beware of a pair of nesting wrens in a box nailed against a piazza post: they beat any alarm clock for arousing the family at sunrise.

Save the starch boxes, cover them with strips of bark, or give them two coats of paint to match the building they are to be nailed on. Cut a hole that you have marked on one end of each box by drawing a lead pencil around a silver quarter of a dollar. A larger hole would mean that English sparrows, who push themselves everywhere where not invited, would probably take possession of each house as fast as you nailed it up. Of course the little one-roomed cottages should have a number of small holes bored on the sides near the top to give the wrens plenty of fresh air. Have the boxes in place not later than the first of April—then watch. Would it not be a pity for any would-be tenants to pass by your home because they could [{34}] not find a house to let? Wrens really prefer boxes to the holes in stumps and trees they used to occupy before there were any white people with thoughtful children on this continent. But the little tots have been known to build in tin cans, coat pockets, old shoes, mittens, hats, glass jars, and even inside a human skull that a medical student hung out in the sun to bleach!

When you are sound asleep some April morning, a tiny brown bird, just returned from a long visit south of the Carolinas, will probably alight on the perch in front of one of your boxes, peep in the doorhole, enter—although his pert little cocked-up-tail has to be lowered to let him through—look about with approval, go out, spring to the roof and pour out of his wee throat a gushing torrent of music. The song seems to bubble up faster than he can sing. "Foive notes to wanst" was an Irishman's description of it. After the wren's happy discovery of a place to live, his song will go off in a series of musical explosions all day long, now from the roof, now from the clothesposts, the fence, the barn, or the wood-pile. There never was a more tireless, spirited, brilliant singer. From the intensity of his feelings, he sometimes droops that expressive little tail of his, which is usually so erect and saucy.

Like "Brer Rabbit" the catbird is usually "bred and bawn in a brier patch."

Another tragedy of the nests: what villain ate the catbird's eggs?

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With characteristic energy, he frequently begins to carry twigs into the house before he finds a mate. The day little Jenny Wren appears on the scene, how he does sing! Dashing off for more twigs, but stopping to sing to her every other minute, he helps furnish the cottage quickly, but, of course, he overdoes—he carries in more twigs and hay and feathers than the little house can hold, then pulls half of them out again. Jenny gathers too, for she is a bustling housewife and arranges matters with neatness and despatch. Neither vermin nor dirt will she tolerate within her well-kept home. Everything she does to suit herself pleases her ardent little lover. He applauds her with song; he flies about after her with a nervous desire to protect; he seems beside himself with happiness. Let any one pass too near his best beloved, and he begins to chatter excitedly: "Chit-chit-chit-chit" as much as to say, "Oh, do go away; go quickly! Can't you see how nervous and fidgety you make me?"

If you fancy that Jenny Wren, who is patiently sitting on the little pinkish chocolate spotted eggs in the centre of her feather bed, is a demure, angelic creature, you have never seen her attack the sparrow, nearly twice her size, that dares put his impudent head inside her door. Oh, how she flies at him! How she chatters and scolds! What a plucky little shrew she is, after all! Her piercing, chattering, [{36}] scolding notes are fairly hissed into his ears until he is thankful enough to escape.

THE LITTLE BROWN WREN
From "Boy's Book of Rhyme," by Clinton Scollard

There's a little brown wren that has built in our tree,
And she's scarcely as big as a big bumble-bee;
She has hollowed a house in the heart of a limb,
And made the walls tidy and made the floors trim
With the down of the crow's foot, with tow, and with straw
The cosiest dwelling that ever you saw.
This little brown wren has the brightest of eyes
And a foot of a very diminutive size.
Her tail is as trig as the sail of a ship.
She's demure, though she walks with a hop and a skip;
And her voice—but a flute were more fit than a pen
To tell of the voice of the little brown wren.
One morning Sir Sparrow came sauntering by
And cast on the wren's house an envious eye;
With a strut of bravado and toss of his head,
"I'll put in my claim here," the bold fellow said;
So straightway he mounted on impudent wing,
And entered the door without pausing to ring.
An instant—and swiftly that feathery knight
All towsled and tumbled, in terror took flight,
While there by the door on her favourite perch,
As neat as a lady just starting for church.
With this song on her lips, "He will not call again
Unless he is asked," sat the little brown wren.

If the bluebirds had her courage and hot, quick temper, they would never let the sparrows drive them away from their boxes. Unfortunately a hole large enough to admit a [{37}] bluebird will easily admit those grasping monopolists; but Jenny Wren is safe, if she did but know it, in her house with its tiny front door. It is amusing to see a sparrow try to work his shoulders through the small hole of an empty wren house, pushing and kicking madly, but all in vain.

What rent do the wrens pay for their little houses? No man is clever enough to estimate the vast numbers of insects on your place that they destroy. They eat nothing else, which is the chief reason why they are so lively and excitable. Unable to soar after flying insects because of their short, round wings, they keep, as a rule, rather close to the ground which their finely barred brown feathers so closely match. Whether hunting for grubs in the wood-pile, scrambling over the brush heap after spiders, searching among the trees to provide a dinner for their large families, or creeping, like little feathered mice, in queer nooks and crannies among the outbuildings on the farm, they are always busy in your interest which is also theirs. It certainly pays, in every sense, to encourage wrens.

THE CAROLINA WREN

The house wrens have a tiny cousin, a mite of a bird, called the winter wren, that is so shy [{38}] and retiring you will probably never become well acquainted with it. It delights in mossy, rocky woods near running water. But a larger chestnut brown cousin, the Carolina wren, with a prominent white eyebrow, a bird which is quite common in the Middle and Southern States, sometimes nests in outbuildings and in all sorts of places about the farm. However, he too really prefers the forest undergrowths near water, fallen logs, half decayed stumps, and mossy rocks where insects lurk but cannot hide from his sharp, peering eyes. Now here, now there, appearing and disappearing, never at rest, even his expressive tail being in constant motion, he seems more nervously active than Jenny Wren's fidgety husband.

Some people call him the mocking wren, but I think he never deliberately tries to imitate other birds. Why should he? It is true that his loud-ringing, three-syllabled whistle, "Tea-ket-tle, Tea-ket-tle, Tea-ket-tle" suggests the crested titmouse's "peto" of two syllables, but in quality only; and some have thought that his whistled notes are difficult to distinguish from the one-syllabled, but oft-repeated, long-drawn quoit of the cardinal. These three birds are frequently to be heard in the same neighbourhood and you may easily compare their voices; but if you listen carefully, I think you will not accuse the wren of trying to mock either of the [{39}] others. In addition to his ringing, whistled notes, he can make other sounds peculiarly his own: trills and quavers, scolding cacks, rattling kringggs, something like the tree toad's, besides the joyful, lyrical melody that has given him his reputation as a musician. Even these do not complete his repertoire. To deliver his famous song, he chooses a conspicuous position in the top of some bush or low tree; then, with head uplifted and tail drooping—a favourite posture of all these lively singers—he makes us very glad indeed that we heard him. Happily he sings almost as many months in the year as the most cheerful bird we have, the song sparrow.

THE MARSH WREN

Hidden among the tall grasses and reeds along the creeks and rivers, lives the long-billed marsh wren, a nervous, active little creature that you know at a glance. With tail cocked up and even tilted forward toward her head in the extreme of wren fashion, or suddenly jerked downward to help keep her balance, she sways with the grass as it blows in the wind—a dainty little sprite. With no desire to make your acquaintance, she flies with a short, jerky motion (because of her short wings) a few rods away, [{40}] then drops into the grasses which engulf her as surely as if she had dropped into the sea. You may search in vain to find her now. Like the rails, she has her paths and runways among the tall sedges and cat-tails, where not even a boy in rubber boots may safely follow.

But she does not live alone. Withdraw, sit down quietly for awhile and wait for the excitement of your visit to subside; for every member of the wren colony, peering sharply at you through the grasses, was watching you long before you saw the first wren. Presently you hear a rippling, bubbling song from one of her neighbours; then another and another and still another from among the cat-tails which, you now suspect, conceal many musicians. The song goes off like a small explosion of melody whose force often carries the tiny singer up into the air. One explosion follows another, and between them there is much wren talk—a scolding chatter that is as great a relief to the birds' nervous energy as the exhaust from its safety valve is to a steam engine. The rising of a red-winged blackbird from his home in the sedges, the rattle of the kingfisher on his way up the creek, or the leisurely flapping of a bittern over the marshes is enough to start the chattering chorus.

Why are the birds so excited? This is their nesting season, May, and really they are too [{41}] busy to be bothered by visitors. Most birds are content to make one nest a year but not these, who, in their excess of wren energy, keep on building nest after nest in the vicinity of the one preferred for their chocolate brown eggs. Bending down the tips of the rushes they somehow manage to weave them, with the weeds and grasses they bring, into a bulky ball suspended between the rushes and firmly attached to them. In one side of this green grassy globe they leave an entrance through which to carry the finer grasses for the lining and the down from last season's bursted cat-tails. When a nest is finished, its entrance is often cleverly concealed. If there are several feet of water below the high and dry cradle, so much the better, think the wrens—fewer enemies can get at them; but they do sometimes build in meadows that are merely damp. In such meadows the short-billed marsh wren, a slightly smaller sprite, prefers to live.

THE BROWN THRASHER
Called also: Brown Thrush; Long Thrush; Ground Thrush; Red Thrush; French Mocking-bird; Mavis.

People who are not very well acquainted with the birds about them usually mistake the [{42}] long-tailed brown thrasher for a thrush because he has a rusty back and a speckled white breast, which they seem to think is an exclusive thrush characteristic, which it certainly is not. The oven-bird and several members of the sparrow tribe, among other birds, have speckled and streaked breasts, too. The brown thrasher is considerably larger than a thrush and his habits are quite different. Watch him nervously twitch his long tail, or work it up and down like one end of a see-saw, or suddenly jerk it up erect while he sits at attention in the thicket, then droop it when, after mounting to a conspicuous perch, he lifts his head to sing, and you will probably "guess right the very first time" that he is a near relative of the wrens, not a thrush at all. As a little sailor-boy once said to me, "He carries his tell-tail on the stern."

Like his cousin, the catbird, the brown thrasher likes to live in bushy thickets overgrown with vines. Here, running over the ground among the fallen leaves, he picks up with his long slender bill, worms, May beetles and scores of other kinds of insects that, but for him, would soon find their way to the garden, orchard, and fields. Yet few farmers ever thank him. Because they don't often see him picking up the insects in their cultivated land, they wrongly conclude that he does them no benefit, only mischief, [{43}] because, occasionally, he does eat a little fruit. It seems to be a dreadful sin for a fellow in feathers to help himself to a strawberry or a cherry or a little grain now and then, although, having eaten quantities of insects that, but for him, would have destroyed them, who has earned a better right to a share of the profits?

Do you think the brown thrasher looks any more like a cuckoo than he does like a thrush? Simply because he is nearly as long as the dull brownish cuckoo and has a brown back, though of quite a different tawny shade, some boys and girls say it is difficult to tell the two birds apart. The cuckoo glides through the air as easily as if he were floating down stream, whereas the thrasher's flight, like the wren's, is tilting, uneven, flapping, and often jerky. If you make good use of your sharp eyes, you will be able to tell many birds by their flight alone, long before you can see the colour of their feathers. The passive cuckoo has no speckles on his light breast, and the yellow-billed cuckoo, at least, has white thumb-nail spots on his well-behaved tail, which he never thrashes, twitches, and balances as the active, suspicious thrasher does his. Moreover the cuckoo's notes sound like a tree-toad's rattle, while the thrasher's song—a merry peal of music—entrances every listener. He seems rather proud of it, to tell the truth, for although at [{44}] other times he may keep himself concealed among the shrubbery, when about to sing, he chooses a conspicuous perch as if to attract attention to his truly brilliant performance.

The thrasher has been called a ground "thrush" because it so often chooses to place its nest at the roots of tall weeds in an open field; but a low bush frequently suits it quite as well. Its bulky nest is not a very choice piece of architecture. Twigs, leaves, vine tendrils, and bits of bark form its walls, and the speckled, greenish blue eggs within are usually laid upon a lining of fine black rootlets.

THE CATBIRD

Slim, lithe, elegant, dainty, the catbird, as he runs lightly over the lawn or hunts among the shrubbery, appears to be a fine gentleman among his kind—a sort of Beau Brummel in smooth, gray feathers who has preened and prinked until his toilet is quite faultless. You would not be surprised to hear that he slept on rose petals and manicured his claws. He is among the first to discover the bathing dish or drinking pan that you have set up in your garden, for he is not too squeamish, in spite of his fine appearance, to drink from his bath. With well-poised, black-capped head erect, and [{45}] tail up too, wren fashion, he stands at attention on the rim of the dish, alert, listening, tense—the neatest, trimmest figure in birddom.

After he has flown off to the nearest thicket, what a change suddenly comes over him! Can it be the same bird? With puffed out, ruffled feathers, hanging head, and drooping tail, he now suggests a fat, tousled schoolboy, just tumbled out of bed. Was ever a bird more contradictory? One minute, from the depths of the bushy undergrowth where he loves to hide, he delights you with the sweetest of songs, not loud like the brown thrasher's, but similar; only it is more exquisitely finished, and rippling. "Prut! Prut! coquillicot!" he begins. "Really, really, coquillicot! Hey, coquillicot! Hey, victory!" his inimitable song goes on like a rollicking recitative. The next minute you would gladly stop your ears when he utters the disagreeable cat-call that has given him his name. "Zeay, Zeay"—whines the petulant cry. Now you see him on the ground calmly looking for grasshoppers, or daintily helping himself to a morsel from the dog's plate at the kitchen door. Suddenly, with a jerk and a jump, he has sprung into the air to seize a passing moth. There is always the pleasure of variety and the unexpected about the catbird.

He is very intelligent and friendly, like his cousin, the mockingbird. One catbird that [{46}] comes to visit me at least ten times every day, can scarcely wait for the milk to be poured into the dog's bowl before he has flown to the brim for the first drink. Once, in his eagerness, he alighted on the pitcher in my hand. He has a pretty trick of flying to the sun dial as if he wished to learn the time of day. From this point of vantage, he will sail off suddenly, like a flycatcher, to seize an insect on the wing. He has a keen appetite for so many pests of the garden and orchard—moths, grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars, spiders, flies and other insects—that his friendship, you see, is well worth cultivating. Five catbirds, whose diet was carefully watched by scientific men in Washington, ate thirty grasshoppers each for one meal.

Yet how many people ignorantly abuse the catbird! Because he has the good taste to like strawberries and cherries as well as we do, is he to be condemned on that account? If he kills insects for us every waking hour from April to October, don't you think he is entitled to a little fruit in June? The ox that treadeth out the corn is not to be muzzled, so that he cannot have a taste of it, you remember. A good way to protect our strawberry patches and cherry trees from catbirds, mockingbirds, and robins, is to provide fruit that they like much better—the red mulberry. Nothing attracts so many birds to a place. A mulberry tree in the chicken [{47}] yard provides a very popular restaurant, not only for the song birds among the branches, but for the scratchers on the ground floor.

Like the yellow-breasted chat, the catbird likes to hide its nest in a tangle of cat brier along the roadside undergrowth and in bushy, woodland thickets. Last winter, when that vicious vine had lost every leaf, I counted in it eighteen catbird nests within a quarter of a mile along a country lane. Long before the first snowstorm, the inmates of those nests were enjoying summer weather again from the Gulf States to Panama. If one nest should be disturbed in May or June, when the birds are raising their families, all the catbird neighbours join in the outcry of mews and cat-calls. Should a disaster happen to the parents, the orphans will receive food and care from some devoted foster-mother until they are able to fly. You see catbirds are something far better than intelligent, musical dandies.

THE MOCKINGBIRD

What child is there who does not know the mockingbird, caged or free? In the North you very rarely see one now-a-days behind prison bars, for, happily, several enlightened states have made laws to punish people who keep our wild birds in cages or offer them for sale, dead or [{48}] alive. When all the states make and enforce similar laws, there will be an end to the barbaric slaughter of many birds for no more worthy end than the trimming of hats for thoughtless girls and women. Birds of bright plumage have suffered most, of course, but the mocking-birds' nests have been robbed for so many generations to furnish caged fledglings for both American and European bird dealers, that shot guns could have done no work more deadly. Where the people are too ignorant to understand what mockingbirds are doing for them every day in the year by eating insects in their gardens, fields, parks, and public squares, they are shot in great numbers for the sole offence of helping themselves to a small fraction of the very fruit they have helped to preserve. Even the birds ought to have a "square deal" in free America: don't you think so?

Although not afflicted with "the fatal gift of beauty," at least not the gaudy kind, like the cardinal's and scarlet tanager's, the mocking-bird's wonderful voice has brought upon him an equal quantity of troubles. Keenly intelligent though he is, he does not know enough to mope and refuse to sing in a cage, but whiles away the tedious hours of his captivity by all manner of amusing and delightful sounds. Indeed it has been found that the household pet is apt to be a better mocker than the wild bird—a [{49}] most unfortunate discovery. Not only does he imitate the notes of birds about him, but he invents all manner of quips and vocal jugglery.

His love song is entrancing. "Oft in the stilly night," when the moonlight sheds a silvery radiance about every sleeping creature, the mockingbird sings to his mate such delicious music as only the European nightingale can rival. Perhaps the stillness of the hour, the beauty and fragrance of the place where the singer is hidden among the orange blossoms or magnolia, increase the magic of his almost pathetically sweet voice; but surely there is no lovelier sound in nature on this side of the sea. Our poet Lanier declared that this "heavenly bird" will be hailed as "Brother" by Beethoven and Keats when he enters the choir invisible in the spirit world.

Ever alert, on the qui vive, the mockingbird can no more suppress the music within him, night or day, than he can keep his nervous, high-strung body at rest. From his restlessness alone you might know he is the cousin of the catbird and brown thrasher and is closely related to the wrens. Flitting from perch to perch (fluttering is one of his chief amusements even in a cage), taking short flights from tree to tree, and so displaying the white signals on his wings and tail, hopping lightly, swiftly, gracefully over the ground, bounding into the air, [{50}] or the next minute shooting his ashy gray body far across the garden and leaving a wake of music behind as he flies, he seems to be perpetually in motion. If you live in the South you can encourage no more delightful neighbour than this star performer in the group of lively singers.

"MAMMA!"
Young mockingbird calling for breakfast

All is well with this yellow warbler's nest

Dinner for one: a black-and-white warbler feeding her baby

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CHAPTER IV
THE WARBLERS

Yellow Warbler
Black and White Creeping Warbler
Oven-bird
Maryland Yellow-throat
Yellow-breasted Chat
Redstart

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YELLOW WARBLER
Called also: Summer Yellowbird; Wild Canary.

Rather than live where the skies are gray and the air is cold, this adventurous little warbler will travel two thousand miles or more to follow the sun. A trip from Panama to Canada and back again within five months does not appall him. By living in perpetual sunshine his feathers seemed to have absorbed some of it, so that he looks like a stray sunbeam playing among the shrubbery on the lawn, the trees in the orchard, the bushes in the roadside thicket, the willows and alders beside the stream. He is shorter than the English sparrow by an inch. Although you may not get close enough to see that his yellow breast is finely streaked with reddish brown, you may know by these marks that he is not what you at first suspected he was—somebody's pet canary escaped from a cage. It is not he but the goldfinch—the yellow bird with the black wings—who sings like a canary. Happily he is so neighbourly that every child may easily become acquainted with this most common member of the large warbler family.

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I don't believe there is anybody living who could name at sight every one of the seventy warblers that visit the United States. Some are very gaily coloured and exquisitely marked, as birds coming to us from the tropics have a right to be. Some are quietly clad; some, like the redstart, are dressed quite differently from their mates and young; others, like the yellow warbler, are so nearly alike that you could see no difference between the male and female from the distance of a few feet. Some live in the tops of evergreens and other tall trees; others, like the Maryland yellow-throat, which seems to prefer low trees and shrubbery, are rarely seen over twelve feet from the ground. A few, like the oven-bird, haunt the undergrowth in the woods or live most of the time on the earth. With three or four exceptions all the warblers dwell in woodlands, and it is only during the spring and autumn migrations that we have an opportunity to become acquainted with them; when they come about the orchard and shrubbery for a few days' rest and refreshment during their travels. Fortunately the cheerful little yellow warbler stays around our homes all summer long. Did you ever know a family so puzzling and contradictory as the Warblers?

The great majority of these fascinating and exasperating relatives are nervous, restless little sprites, constantly flitting from branch to [{55}] branch and from twig to twig in a never-ending search for small insects. As well try to catch a weasel asleep as a warbler at rest. People who live in the tropics, even for a little while, soon become lazy. Not so the warblers, whose energy, like a steam engine's, seems to be increased by heat. Of course they do not undertake long journeys merely for pleasure, as wealthy human tourists do. They must migrate to find food; and as insects are most plentiful in warm weather, you see why these atoms of animation keep in perpetual motion. They are among the last migrants to come north in the spring and among the first to leave in the autumn because insects don't hatch out in cool weather, and the birds must always be sure of plenty to eat. Travelling as they do, chiefly by night, they are killed in numbers against the lighthouses and electric light towers which especially fascinate these poor little victims.

Who first misled us by calling these birds warblers? The truth is there is not one really fine singer, like a thrush, in the whole family. The yellow-breasted chat has remarkable vocal ability, but he is not a real musician like the mockingbird, who also likes to have fun with his voice. The warblers, as a rule, have weak, squeaky, or wiry songs and lisping tseep call notes, neither of which ought to be called a warble. The yellow warbler sings as acceptably [{56}] as most of his kin. Seven times he rapidly repeats "Sweet—sweet—sweet—sweet—sweet—sweeter—sweeter" to his sweetheart, but this happy little lovemaker's incessant song is apt to become almost tiresome to everybody except his mate.

What a clever little creature she is! More than any other bird she suffers from the persecutions of that dusky rascal, the cowbird. In May, with much help from her mate, she builds an exquisite little cradle of silvery plant fibre, usually shreds of milkweed stalk, grass, leaves, and caterpillars' silk, neatly lined with hair, feathers, and the downy felt of fern fronds. The cradle is sometimes placed in the crotch of an elder bush, sometimes in a willow tree; preferably near water where insects are abundant, but often in a terminal branch of some orchard tree.

Scarcely is it finished before the skulking cowbird watches her chance to lay an egg in it that she may not be bothered with the care of her own baby. She knows that the yellow warbler is a gentle, amiable, devoted mother, who will probably work herself to death, if necessary, rather than let the big baby cowbird starve. But she sometimes makes a great mistake in her individual. Not all yellow warblers will permit the outrage. They prefer to weave a new bottom to their nest, over the [{57}] cowbird's egg, although they may seal up their own speckled treasures with it. Suppose the wicked cowbird comes back and lays still another egg in the two-storied nest: what then? The little Spartan yellow bird has been known to weave still another layer of covering rather than hatch out an unwelcome, greedy interloper to crowd and starve her own precious babies. Two and even three-storied nests are to be found by bright-eyed boys and girls.

BLACK AND WHITE CREEPING WARBLER

You may possibly mistake this little warbler for a downy woodpecker when first you see him creeping rapidly over the bark of trees, or hanging from the under side of the branches. But when he flits restlessly from twig to twig and from tree to tree without taking time to examine spots thoroughly; especially when he calls a few thin wiry notes—zee-zee-zee-zee—you may know he is no woodpecker, but a warbler. Woodpeckers have thick set, high shouldered bodies which they flatten against the tree trunks; the males wear red in their caps, and all have larger, stouter bills than the warbler's. Moreover, no woodpecker is so small as this streaked and speckled little creature who is usually too intent [{58}] on feeding to utter a single zee. You could not possibly confuse him with the diligent, placid brown creeper or with the slate-blue nuthatch which also creeps along the branches on the under or upper side. Some children I know call this black and white warbler the little zebra bird. Would that all warblers were so easily identified!

OVEN-BIRD
Called also: The Teacher; Golden-crowned Thrush; The Accentor.

"Teacher—Teacher—TEACHER—TEACHER—TEACHER!" resounds a penetrating, accented voice from the woods. Who calls? Not an impatient scholar, as you might suppose, but a shy little thrush-like warbler who has no use whatever for any human being, especially at the nesting season in May and June, when he calls most loudly and frequently. Beginning quite softly, he gradually increases the intensity of each pair of notes in a crescendo that seems to come from a point much nearer than it really does. Once heard it is never forgotten, and you can always be sure of naming at least one bird by his voice alone. However, his really exquisite love song—a clear, ringing, vivacious melody, uttered while the singer is fluttering, hovering, high among the tree-tops—is rarely heard, or if heard is not recognised as the teacher's aerial serenade. He is a warbler, let it be recorded, who really can sing, and beautifully, however rarely.

The ovenbird who calls
"Teacher, Teacher, TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER!"

Ovenbird in her cleverly hidden nest. Some of the leaves and sticks have been pulled away from the front to secure her picture.

Young ovenbirds on day of leaving nest.

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Why is he called the oven-bird? A little girl I know was offered five dollars by her father if she could find the bird's nest in the high dry woods near her home. ''Teacher!'' was the commonest sound that came from them. It rang in her ears all day, so of course she thought it would be "too easy" to earn the money. Every afternoon, when school was out, she tramped through the woods hour after hour, poking about among the dead leaves, the snapping twigs, the velvety moss, the fallen logs, the young spring growth of the little plants and creepers, always keeping her eyes on the ground where she knew the nest would be found. Day after day she continued the search. Every time she saw a little hump of dead leaves or twigs and grasses her heart bounded with hope, but on closer examination she found no nest at all. Finally, one day when she was becoming discouraged, she spied in the path a little brownish olive bird, about the size of an English sparrow, but with a speckled, thrush-like breast and a dull orange V-shaped patch, bordered by black lines, on the top of his head. He was walking about on the ground, nodding his head as if [{60}] marking time, not hopping, sparrow-fashion; and he took very dainty, pretty steps that suggested a French dancing master. Occasionally he would scratch the path for insects, like a tiny chicken. Although she had never seen the teacher, and had expected that the loud voice came from a much larger bird, she felt sure that this must be he, so she sat down on a log and watched and waited. Presently she saw him tug at a fine black hair-like root that lay across the path, and, snapping it off, quickly fly away, away—oh, where did he go with it? She ran stumbling after him through the undergrowth to a little clearing. There another bird, just like him, whom she instantly guessed was his mate, flew straight toward her, dropped to the ground, ran about distractedly, dragging one wing as if it were broken, and uttering sharp, piteous notes of alarm. The little girl didn't like to distress the birds, of course, but how could she resist the temptation to find their nest? So on she tramped around and around in an ever widening circle, the excited birds still hovering near and sharply scolding her. You may be sure she was quite as excited as they.

At last, a little dome-shaped mound of grasses, half hidden among the dry brown oak leaves and wild geranium, gladdened her eyes. Running around to the opposite side she knelt down on the grass, peeped under the arched roof [{61}] and into the nest, which was shaped like an old-fashioned Dutch oven. Was ever a sight so welcome? She almost screamed with joy. Through the opening on one side, that was about three inches high, she could see the lining of fine black rootlets, just like the one she had watched the bird snap off and carry away. Then she flew home, as if she too had wings, and, calling breathlessly "Oh Father! Father! I've found it!" burst into the house. A week before even one white speckled egg had been laid in the oven-bird's nest, there was a golden half eagle in a happy little girl's palm. A fortnight later a man with a camera took a picture of the patient mother-bird, whose pretty striped head you see peeping out from under the dome.

MARYLAND YELLOW-THROAT
Called also: Black-masked Ground Warbler

This gay little warbler looks as if he were dressed for a masquerade ball with a gray-edged black mask over his face and the sides of his throat, a brownish green coat and a bright yellow vest. He is smaller than a sparrow. How sharply the inquisitive fellow peers at you through his mask whenever you pass the damp thicket, bordering the marshy land, where he [{62}] likes best to live! And how quickly he hops from twig to twig and flies from one clump of bushes to another clump, in restless, warbler fashion, as he leads you a dance in pursuit! Not for a second does he stop watching you.

If you come too close, a sharp pit-pit or chock is snapped out by the excited bird, whose familiar, oft-repeated, sprightly, waltzing triplet has been too freely translated, he thinks, into, Fol-low-me, fol-low-me, fol-low-me. Pursuit is the last thing he really desires, and of course he issues no such invitation. What he actually says almost always sounds to me like Witchee-tee, witch-ee-tee, witch-ee-tee. You will surely hear him if you listen in his marshy retreats. He sings almost all summer. Except when nesting he comes into the garden, picks minute insects out of the blossoming shrubbery, hops about on the ground, visits the raspberry tangle, and hides among the bushes along the roadside. Only the yellow warbler, of all his numerous tribe, is disposed to be more neighbourly. In spite of his local name, he is to be found in winter from Georgia to Labrador and Manitoba westward to the Plains. You see he is something of a traveller.

The little bird who bewitches him, and to whom he sings the witch's song, wears no black mask, so it is not easy to name her if her mate is not about. Her plumage is duller than his and [{63}] the sides of her plump little body, which are yellowish brown, shade into grayish white underneath. Sometimes you may catch her carrying weeds, strips of bark, broad grasses, tendrils, reeds, and leaves for the outside of her deep cradle, and finer grasses for its lining, to a spot on the ground where plants and low bushes help conceal it. She does not build so beautiful a nest as the yellow warbler, but like her she, too, poor thing, sometimes suffers from the sneaking visits of the cowbird. Unhappily, she is not so clever as her cousin, for she meekly consents to hatch out the cowbird's egg and let the big, greedy interloper crowd and worry and starve her own brood. Why does the cowardly cowbird always choose a victim smaller than herself?

THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT

"Now he barks like a puppy, then quacks like a duck, then rattles like a kingfisher, then squalls like a fox, then caws like a crow, then mews like a cat—C-r-r-r-r-r-whrr—that's it—Chee-quack, cluck, yit-yit-yit-now—hit it—tr-r-r-r-wheu-caw-caw-cut, cut-tea-boy-who, who-mew, mew," writes John Burroughs of this rollicking polyglot, the chat; but not even that close student of nature could set down on [{64}] paper all the multitude of queer sounds with which the bird amuses himself. He might be mistaken for a dozen different birds and animals in as many minutes.

Such a secretive roysterer is he that you may rarely see him, however often you may hear his voice when he is hidden beyond sight in partial clearings or the bushy, briery, thickety openings in the woods. As he seems to delight in keeping pursuers off by a natural fence of barbed wire, the cat brier, wild blackberry, raspberry, and rose bushes are among his favourite plants. But if you will sit down quietly near his home, your patience will probably be rewarded by the sight of this largest of the warblers, with olive green upper parts, a conspicuous white line running from his bill around his eye and another along his throat, and a bright yellow breast shading to grayish white underneath. He is over an inch longer than the English sparrow. His wife looks just like him.

The zany at the circus can go through no more clownish tricks than the chat. See him, a mere bunch of feathers, dance and balance in the air, now fluttering, now falling as if he had been shot, or turning aerial somersaults, now rising and trailing his legs behind him like a stork, now dropping out of sight in the thickest part of the thicket. The instant he spies you, Chut-Chut, he scolds from the briars. Shy, [{65}] eccentric, absurd, but inspired with a "fine frenzy," which is a passionate love for his mate and their nest, all his queer notes and equally queer stunts centre about his home. On moonlight nights, Punchinello entertains himself and Columbine with a series of inimitable performances which have earned him the title of yellow mockingbird. He can throw his voice so that it seems to come from quite a different direction, as you may sometime have heard a human ventriloquist do.

THE REDSTART

When this exquisite little warbler flashes his brilliant salmon flame and black feathers among the trees, darting hither and thither, fluttering, spinning about in the air after insects caught chiefly on the wing, you will surely agree that he is the most beautiful as well as the most lively bird in the woods. The colour scheme of his clothes suggests the Baltimore oriole's, only the flaming feathers on the sides of his body, wings, and tail are a pinker shade of flame, and the black ones which cover his back, throat, and upper breast, are more glossy, with bluish reflections. Underneath he is white, tinged with salmon. But you could not possibly mistake this lovely little sprite for the oriole, he is so much smaller—about an inch [{66}] shorter than the sparrow. His cousin, the Blackburnian warbler, a much rarer bird, with a colour scheme of black, white, and beautiful rich orange, not salmon flame, can be named instantly by the large amount of white in his tail feathers. There are so few brilliantly coloured birds that find their way to us from the tropics, that it should not take any boy or girl longer to learn them than it does to learn the first multiplication table. In Cuba the redstart is known as "El Candelita"—the little candle flame that flashes in the deep, dark, tropical forest.

Who would believe that this small firebrand, half glowing, half charred, whirling about through the trees, as if blown by the wind, is a cousin of the sombre oven-bird that walks so daintily and leisurely over the ground? The redstart keeps perpetually in motion that he may seize gnats and other gauzy winged mouthfuls in mid-air—not as the flycatchers do, by waiting on a fence rail or limb of a tree for a dinner to fly past, then dashing out and seizing it, but by flitting about constantly in search of insect prey. The bristles at the base of his bill prevent many an insect from getting past it. He rests on the trees only long enough to snatch a morsel, then away he goes again. No wonder the Spaniards call all the gaily coloured, tropical wood warblers "Mariposas"—butterflies.

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CHAPTER V
THE VIREOS:
ANOTHER STRICTLY AMERICAN FAMILY

Red-Eyed Vireo
White-Eyed Vireo
Yellow-Throated Vireo
Warbling Vireo

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THE VIREOS

You know that if the birds should suddenly perish, there wouldn't be a leaf, a blade of grass, or any green thing left upon the earth within a few years—it would be uninhabitable.

When Dame Nature, the most thorough of housekeepers, gave to the birds the task of restraining insects within bounds so that man and beast could live, she gave the care of foliage to the vireos. It is true that most of the warblers, and a few other birds too, hunt for their food among the leaves, but with nothing like the vireo's painstaking care and thoroughness. The nervous, restless warblers flit from twig to twig without half exploring the foliage; whereas the deliberate, methodical vireos search leisurely above and below it, cocking their little heads so as to look up at the under side of the leaf above them and to peck off the destroyers hidden there—bugs of many kinds and countless little worms, caterpillars, weevils, inchworms, May beetles, and leaf-eating beetles. Singing as they go, no birds more successfully combine work and play.

Because they spend their lives among the foliage, the vireos are protectively coloured; with [{70}] soft grayish or olive green on their backs, wings, and tail, whitish or yellow below. Some people call them greenlets. They are all a little smaller than sparrows. More inconspicuous birds it would be hard to find or more abundant, although so commonly overlooked except by people on the look-out for them. Where the new growth of foliage at the ends of the branches is young and tender, many insects prefer to lay their eggs that their babies may have the most dainty fare as soon as they are hatched. They do not reckon upon the vireos' visits.

Toward the end of April or the first of May, these tireless gleaners return to us from Central and South America where they have spent the winter, which of course you know, is no winter on the other side of the equator, but a continuation of summer for them. Competition for food being more fierce in the tropics than it is here, millions of birds besides the warblers and vireos travel from beyond the Isthmus of Panama to the United States and back again every year in order that they may live in perpetual summer with an abundance of food. If any child thinks that birds are mere creatures of pleasure, who sing to pass the time away, he doesn't begin to understand how hard they must work for a living. They cannot limit their labours to an eight-hour day. However, they keep cheerful through at least sixteen busy hours.

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THE RED-EYED VIREO

Almost everywhere in the Eastern United States and Canada, the red-eyed vireo is the most common member of his family. The only individual touch to his costume that helps to distinguish him is a gray cap edged with a black line which runs parallel to his conspicuous white eyebrow. He wears a dull olive coat and a white vest. But listen to the Preacher! You have no need to meet him face to face in order to know him: "You see it—you know it—do you hear me?—do you believe it?" he propounds incessantly through the long summer days, even after most other birds are silent. You cannot mistake his voice. With a rising inflection at the end of each short, jerky sentence, he asks a question very distinctly and sweetly, then pauses an instant as if waiting for a reply—an unusually courteous orator. His monotonous monologue, repeated over and over again, comes to us from the elms and maples in the village street, the orchard and woodland, where he keeps steadily and deliberately at work. Some boys say they can whittle better if they whistle. Vireos seem to hunt more thoroughly if they sing.

Like the rest of his kin, the red-eyed vireo is quite tame. A little girl I know actually stroked the pretty head of a mother bird as she sat brooding in her exquisite nest, and a week later [{72}] carried one of the young birds all around the garden on a rake handle.

Vireos are remarkably fine builders—among the very best. Although their nests are not so deep as the Baltimore orioles', the shape and weave are similar. The red-eye usually prefers to swing her cradle from a small crotch in an oak or apple tree or sapling, and securely lace it through the rim on to the forked twigs. Nests vary in appearance, but you will notice that these weavers show a preference for dried grass as a foundation into which are wrought bits of bark, lichen, wasps' nest "paper," spider web, plant down, and curly vine tendrils.

THE WHITE-EYED VIREO

It is not often that you can get close enough to any bird to see the white of his eyes, but the brighter olive green of this vivacious little white-eyed vireo's upper parts, his white breast, faintly washed with yellow on the sides, and the two yellowish white bars on his wings help you to recognise him at a distance. Imagine my surprise to meet him in Bermuda, over six hundred miles out at sea from the Carolina coast, where he, too, was taking a winter vacation! In those beautiful islands, where our familiar catbirds and cardinals also abound, [{73}] the white-eyed vireo is the most common bird to be seen. His sweet, vigorous, irregular interrogation may be heard all day. But there he is known by quite a different name—"Chick of the Village." It was a pleasant shock to hear, "Now, who are you, eh?" piquantly sung out at me, a stranger in the islands, by this old acquaintance in a hibiscus bush within a few steps of the pier where the steamer landed.

In the United States where he nests, his manners are less sociable; in fact they are rather pert, even churlish at times, and never very friendly. Here he loves to hide in such low, briery, bushy tangles as the chat and catbird choose. By no stretch of the imagination would his chic Bermuda name fit him here, for he has little to do with villages and he resents your advances toward more intimate acquaintance with harsh, cackling scoldings, half to himself, half to you, until you, in turn, resent his impertinence and leave him alone— just what the independent little fellow wanted. He has a strong, decided character, you perceive.

His precious nest, so jealously guarded, is a deeper cup than that of his cousin with the red eye, deeper than that of any of the other vireos, and it usually contains three favourite materials in addition to those generally chosen by them: they are bits of wood usually stolen from some woodpecker's hole, shreds of paper, [{74}] and yards and yards of fine caterpillar silk, by which the nest is hung from its slender fork in the thicket. It also contains, not infrequently, alas! a cowbird's most unwelcome egg.

THE YELLOW-THROATED VIREO

In a family not conspicuous for its fine feathers, this is certainly the beauty. The clear lemon yellow worn at its throat spreads over its vest; its coat is a richer and more yellowish green than the other vireos wear, and its two white wing-bars are as conspicuous as the white-eyed vireo's. Moreover its mellow and rich voice, like a contralto's, is raised to a higher pitch at the end of a sweetly sung triplet. "See me; I'm here; where are you?" the singer inquires over and over again from the trees in the woodland, or perhaps in the village when nesting duties are not engrossing. Don't mistake it for the chat simply because its throat is yellow.

As this is the beauty of the family, so is it also the best nest builder.

THE WARBLING VIREO

High up in the top of elms and maples that line village streets where the red-eyed vireo loves [{75}] to hunt, even among the trees of so busy a thoroughfare as Boston Common, an almost continuous warble in the early summer indicates that some unseen singer is hidden there; but even if you get a glimpse of the warbling vireo you could not tell him from his red-eyed cousin at that height. Modestly dressed, without even a white eye-brow or wing-bars to relieve his plain dusty olive and whitish clothes, he is the least impressive member of his retiring, inconspicuous family. He asks you no questions in jerky, colloquial triplets of song, so you may know by his voice at least that he is not the red-eyed vireo. Some self-conscious birds, like the song sparrow, mount to a conspicuous perch before they begin to sing, as if they had to deliver a distinct number on a programme before a waiting audience. Not so with this industrious little gleaner to whom singing and dining seem to be a part of the same performance—one and inseparable. He sings as he goes, snatching a bit of insect food between warbles.

Although towns do not affright him, he really prefers wooded border-land and clearings, especially where birch trees abound, when it is time to rear a family.

A red-eyed vireo baby in his cradle

Out of it

Home of the loggerhead shrike, with plenty of convenient hooks for this butcher bird to hang meat on.

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CHAPTER VI
BIRDS NOT OF A FEATHER

Two Butcher-birds
Cedar Waxwing
Scarlet Tanager

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THE BUTCHER-BIRDS OR SHRIKES

Is it not curious that among our so-called song birds there should be two, about the size of robins, the loggerhead and the northern shrike, with the hawk-like habit of killing little birds and mice, and the squirrel's and blue jay's trick of storing what they cannot eat? They are butchers, with the thrifty custom of hanging up their meat, which only improves in flavour and tenderness after a day or two of curing. Then, even if storms should drive their little prey to shelter and snow should cover the fields, they need not worry nor starve seeing an abundance in their larder provided for the proverbial rainy day.

In the Southern and Middle States, where the smaller loggerhead shrike is most common, some children say he looks like a mockingbird; but the feathers on his back are surely quite a different gray, a light-bluish ash, and pearly on his under parts, with white in his black wings and tail which is conspicuous as he flies. His powerful head, which is large for his size, has a heavy black line running from the end of his mouth across his cheek, and his strong bill has a hook on the end which is useful in tearing the [{80}] flesh from his victim's bones. He really looks like nothing but just what he is—a butcher-bird. See him, quiet and preoccupied, perched on a telegraph pole on the lookout for a dinner! A kingbird, or other flycatcher which chooses similar perches, would sail off suddenly into the air if a winged insect hove in sight, snap it up, make an aerial loop in its flight and return to its old place. Not so the solitary, sanguinary shrike. When his wonderfully keen eyes detect a grasshopper, a cricket, a big beetle, a lizard, a little mouse, or a sparrow at a distance in a field, he drops like an eagle upon the victim, seizes it with his strong beak, and flies with steady flapping strokes of the wings, close along the ground, straight to the nearest honey locust or spiny thorn; then rises with a sudden upward turn into the tree to impale his prey. Hawks, who use the same method of procuring food, have very strong feet; their talons are of great help in holding and killing their victims; but the shrikes, which have rather weak, sparrow-like feet, for perching only, are really compelled in many cases to make use of stout thorns or sharp twigs to help them quiet the struggles of their victims. Weather-vanes, lightning rods, bare branches, or the outermost or top branches of tall trees, high poles, and telegraph wires, which afford a fine bird's eye-view of the surrounding hunting ground, are favourite points [{81}] of vantage for both shrikes. When it is time to husk the corn, every farmer's boy must have seen a shrike sitting on a fence-rail or hovering in the air ready to seize the little meadow mice that escape from the shocks.

It is sad to record that sometimes shrikes also sneak upon their prey. When they resort to this mean method of securing a dinner they leave the high perches and secrete themselves in clumps of bushes in the open field. Luring little birds within striking distance by imitating their call notes, they pounce upon a terror-stricken sparrow before you could say "Jack Robinson." Shrikes seem to be the only creatures that really rejoice in the rapid increase of English sparrows. In summer they prefer large insects, especially grasshoppers, but in winter when they can get none, they must have the fresh meat of birds or mice. At any season they deserve the fullest protection for the service they do the farmer. Shrikes kill only that they themselves may live, and not for the sake of slaughter, which is a so-called sport reserved for man alone, who in any case, should be the last creature to condemn them.

The loggerhead's call-notes are harsh, creaking, and unpleasant, but at the approach of the nesting season he proves that he really can sing, although not half as well as his cousin, the northern shrike, who astonishes us with a fine [{82}] song some morning in early spring. Before we become familiar with it, however, the wandering minstrel is off to the far north to nest within the arctic circle. It is only in winter that the northern shrike visits the United States, travelling as far south as Virginia and Kansas between October and April. He is larger than the loggerhead, being a little over ten inches long, a goodlooking winter visitor in a gray suit with black and white trimmings on his wings and tail and wavy bars on his breast. Bradford Torrey used to visit a vireo that would drink water from a teaspoon which he held out to her while she sat brooding on her nest. I know a lady who fed bits of raw meat to a wounded shrike from the tines of a fork, the best substitute for a thorn she could find, because he found it awkward to eat from a dish.

THE CEDAR WAXWING
Called also: Cedarbird; Cherry-bird; Bonnet bird, Silk-tail.

So few birds wear their head feathers crested that it is a simple matter to name them by their top-knots alone, even if you did not see the gray plumage of the little tufted titmouse, the dusky hue of the crested flycatcher, the blue [{83}] of the jay and the kingfisher, the red of the cardinal, and the richly shaded grayish-brown of the cedar waxwing, which is, perhaps, the most familiar of them all. His neat and well-groomed plumage is fine and very silky, almost dove-like in colouring, and although there are no gaudy features about it, few of our birds are so exquisitely dressed. The pointed crest, which rises and falls to express every passing emotion, and the velvety black chin, forehead, and line running apparently through the eye, give distinction to the head. The tail has a narrow yellow band across its end, and on the wings are the small red spots like sealing wax that are responsible for the bird's queer name. The waxwing is larger than a sparrow and smaller than a robin.

But it is difficult to think of a single bird when one usually sees a flock. Sociable to a degree, the waxwings rove about a neighbourhood in scattered companies, large and small, to feed on the cedar or juniper berries, choke-cherries, dog-wood and woodbine berries, elder, haw, and other small wild fruits on which they feed very greedily; then move on to some other place where their favourite fruit abounds. Happily, they care very little about our cultivated fruit and rarely touch it. A good way to invite many kinds of birds to visit one's neighbourhood is to plant plenty of [{84}] berry-bearing trees and shrubs. The birds themselves plant most of the wild ones, by dropping the undigested berry seeds far and wide. How could the seeds of many species be distributed over thousands of miles of land without their help? It will surprise you to count the number of trees about your home that have been planted, quite unconsciously, by birds many years before you were born. Cedarbirds are responsible for no small part of the beauty of the lanes and hedgerows throughout their wide range from sea to sea and from Canada to Mexico and Central America. Nature, you see, makes her creatures work for her, whether they know they are helping her plans or not.

When a flock of cedarbirds enters your neighbourhood, there is no noisy warning of their coming. Gentle, refined in manners, courteous to one another, almost silent visitors, they will sit for hours nearly motionless in a tree while digesting a recent feast. An occasional bird may shift his position, then, politely settling himself again without disturbing the rest of the company, remain quiet as before. Lisping, Twee-twee-zee call notes, like a hushed whispered whistle, are the only sounds the visitors make. How different from a roving flock of screaming, boisterous blue jays!

The cedar waxwing

The gorgeous scarlet tanager who sang in this tree was killed by a sling-shot. The nest was deserted by his terrified mate.

[{85}]

When rising to take wing, the squad still keeps together, flying evenly and swiftly in close ranks on a level with the tree-tops along a straight course; or, wheeling suddenly, the birds dive downward into a promising, leafy, restaurant. Enormous numbers of insects are consumed by a flock. The elm-beetle, which destroys the beauty, if not the life, of some of our finest shade trees, would be exterminated if there were cedarbirds enough. One flock within a week rid a New England village of this pest that had eaten the leaves on the double row of elms which had been the glory of its broad main street for over a hundred years. When you see these birds in an orchard, look for better apples there next year. Canker-worms are a bon bouche to them; so are grubs and caterpillars, especially cutworms.

Sometime after all the other birds, except the tardy little goldfinch, have nested, the waxwings give up the flocking habit and live in pairs. Toward the end of June, when many birds are rearing the second brood, you may see a couple begin to carry grass, shreds of bark, twine, fine roots, catkins, moss or rags—any or all of these building materials—to some tree, usually a fruit tree or a cedar; and then, if you watch carefully, you will find what is not always the case with humans—the birds' manners at home are even better than when moving in society abroad. The devoted male brings dainties to his brooding mate and helps her feed [{86}] their family. Moreover, cedarbirds are very good to feathered orphans.

THE SCARLET TANAGER
Called also: Black-winged Redbird

People who are now living can remember when scarlet tanagers were as common as robins. Where are they now? You see a redbird at the north so rarely that a thrill of excitement is felt when a flash of scarlet among the tree-tops makes the day a red-letter one on your bird calendar. Alas! He has, what has certainly proved to be, the fatal gift of beauty. A scarlet coat with black wings and tail, worn by a bird larger than a sparrow, makes a shining mark among the foliage for the shot gun and sling shot. Thousands of tanagers have been slaughtered to be worn on the unthinking heads of vain girls and women. Many are killed every year, during the spring and autumn migrations, by flying against the great lighthouses along our coasts, the birds' highway of travel. Tanagers, who are only summer visitors from the tropics, are peculiarly susceptible to cold; a sudden change in the weather, a drop in the thermometer some time in May just after they have come here from a warmer [{87}] climate and are still especially sensitive, will kill off great numbers in the north woods and in Canada. They really should postpone their journey a little while until the weather becomes settled and there are fewer fogs on the coast.

The male tanager, in his wedding garment, is sometimes mistaken for a cardinal by people who only half see any object they look at. Bird study sharpens the sight wonderfully, and teaches boys and girls the importance of accurate observation. The cardinal, a larger bird, is almost as large as a robin; he is a rich, deep red all over, and not a scarlet shade. Moreover he wears a pointed crest by which you may always know him, while the tanager, whose head is smooth, may be certainly named by his black wings and tail. After the nesting season, the tanager begins to moult and then he is a queer looking object indeed in his motley coat. Only little patches and streaks of scarlet remain here and there among the olive green feathers that gradually replace the red ones until, in winter, he becomes completely transformed into an olive bird with black wings, looking like his immature sons. How tiresome to have to change his feathers again toward spring before he can hope to woo and win a mate!

The exacting little lady bird, who demands such fine feathers, is herself quietly clad in light olive green with a more yellowish tinge on her [{88}] lighter breast that she may be in perfect colour harmony with the leaves she lives and nests among. If she, too, wore scarlet, I fear the tanager tribe would have disappeared years ago. Happily her protective colouring, which betrays no nest secrets, has saved the species. Is it not strange that birds, who spend the rest of their lives among the tree-tops, hunting among the foliage for insects and small fruit, should nest so low? Sometimes they place their cradle on a limb only six feet from the ground. It is a rather shabby, poorly made affair which very lively tanager youngster might easily tumble apart. "Chip—churr" calls the gorgeous father from the tree top, and a reassuring reply that all is well with the nest floats up to him from his mate. He does not often risk its safety by showing himself near the nest, securely hidden by the foliage below. If, toward the end of May, you hear him singing his real song, which is somewhat like an oriole's mellow, cheery carol, you may be sure he is planning to spend the summer in your neighbourhood. Not many miles from New York there is a house built on the top of a hill, whose sides are covered with oak and chestnut woods, where one may be sure to see tanagers among the tree tops from any window at any hour of any day from May to October. Several nests in those woods are saddled on to the horizontal [{89}] limbs of the white oak. Not many people are blessed with such beautiful, interesting neighbours.

In the Southern States, one of the most familiar birds in the orange groves, orchards, and woods of pine and oak, is the summer tanager, another smooth-headed redbird, but without a black feather on him. He is fire red all over. Of the three hundred and fifty species of tanagers in the tropics, only two think it worth while to visit the Eastern United States and one of these frequently suffers because he starts too early. Suppose all should suddenly decide to come north some spring and spend the summer with us! Our woods would be filled with some of the most brilliant and gorgeous birds in the world. Don't you wish all the members of the family were as adventurous as the scarlet tanager?

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CHAPTER VII
THE SWALLOWS

Purple Martin
Barn Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Bank Swallow
Tree Swallow

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THE SWALLOWS

If you were a bird, could you think of any way of earning a living more delightful than sailing about in the air all day, playing cross-tag on the wing with your companions, skimming low across the meadows, ponds and marshes, or rising high above them and darting hither and thither wherever you pleased, without knowing what it means to feel tired? Swallows are as much in their element when in the air as fish are in water; but don't imagine they are there simply for fun. Their long, blade-like wings, which cut the air with such easy, but powerful strokes, propel them enormous distances before they have collected enough mosquitoes, gnats and other little gauzy-winged insects to supply such great energy and satisfy their hunger. With mouth widely gaping, leaving an opening in the front of their broad heads that stretches from ear to ear, they get a tremendous draught down their little throats, but they gather in a dinner piece-meal just as the chimney swift, whip-poor-will and night-hawk do. Viscid saliva in the bird's mouth glues the little victims as fast as if they were caught on sticky fly-paper; then, when [{94}] enough have been trapped to make a pellet, the swallow swallows them in a ball, although one swallow does not make a dinner, any more than one swallow makes a summer.

These sociable birds delight to live in companies, even during the nesting season when most feathered couples, however glad to flock at other times, prefer to be alone. As soon as the young birds can take wing, one family party unites with another, one colony with another, until often enormous numbers assemble in the marshes in August and September. You see them strung like beads along the telegraph wires, perched on the fences, circling over the meadows and ponds, zigzagging across the sky. Millions of swallows have been noted in some of these autumnal flocks. Usually they go to sleep among the reeds and grasses in a favourite marsh where the bands return year after year; but some prefer trees. Comparatively little perching is done except at night, for swallows' feet are very small and weak.

At sunrise, the birds scatter in small bands to pick up on the wing the long continued meal, which lasts till late in the afternoon. Those who have gone too far abroad and must travel back to the roost after sundown shoot across the sky with incredible swiftness lest darkness overtake them. Relying upon their speed of flight to carry them beyond the reach of [{95}] enemies, they migrate boldly by daylight instead of at night as the timid little vireos and warblers do. During every day the swallows are with us they must consume billions and trillions of blood-sucking insects that would pester other animals beside ourselves. Think of the mosquito bites alone that they prevent! Every one of us is greatly in their debt.

Male and female swallows are dressed so nearly alike that you can scarcely tell one from the other. Both twitter merrily but neither really sings.

THE PURPLE MARTIN

There is a picturesque old inn beside a post road in New Jersey with a five-storied martin house set up on a pole above its quaint swinging sign. For over thirty years a record was kept on the pole showing the dates of the coming and going of the martins in April and September, which did not vary by more than two or three days during all that time. The inn-keeper locked up in his safe every night the registers on which were entered the arrivals and departures of his human guests, but he valued far more the record of his bird visitors which interested everybody who stopped at his inn.

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One day, while he was away, a man who was painting a fence for him thought he would surprise him by freshening up the old, weather-beaten pole. Alas! He painted over every precious mark. You may be sure the surprise recoiled upon him like a boomerang when the wrathful inn-keeper returned. However, the martins continue to come back to their old home year after year and rear their broods on little heaps of leaves in every room in the house, which is the cheerful fact of the story.

These glossy, blue-black iridescent swallows, grayish white underneath, the largest of their graceful tribe, have always been great favourites. Even the Indians in the Southern States used to hang gourds for them to nest in about their camps—a practice continued by the Negroes around their cabins to this day. Strangely enough these birds which nested and slept in hollow trees before the coming of the white men, were among the first to take advantage of his presence. Now, in the Eastern United States, at least, the pampered darlings of luxury positively refuse to live where people do not put up houses for their comfort. In the sparsely settled West, however, they still condescend to live in trees, but only when they must, like the chimney-swifts, who, by the way are no relation. Plenty of people persist in calling them chimney swallows, which is precisely what they are not. Not even the little house wren has adapted itself so quickly to civilised men's homes, as the swift and purple martin.

Young barn swallows cradled under the rafters.

Baby barn swallows learning to walk a plank.

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Intelligent people, who are only just beginning to realise what birds do for us and how very much more they might be induced to do, are putting up boxes for the martins, not only near their own houses, that the birds may rid the air of mosquitoes, but in their gardens and orchards that incalculable numbers of injurious pests in the winged stage may be destroyed. When martins return to us in spring from Central and South America, where they have passed the winter, insects are just beginning to fly, and if they can be captured then, before they have a chance to lay their eggs, you see how much trouble and money are saved for the farmers by their tireless allies, the swallows. Unfortunately, purple martins are not so common at the North as they were before the coming of those saucy little immigrants, the English sparrows, who take possession, by fair means or by foul, of every house that they can find. In the South, where the martins are still very numerous, a peach grower I know has set up in his orchard rows of poles, with a house on each, either for them or for bluebirds. He says these bird partners are of inestimable value in keeping his fruit trees free from insects.

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The curculio, one of the worst enemies every fruit grower has to fight, destroying as it does millions of dollars worth of crops every year, is practically unknown in that Georgia planter's orchard. Some day farmers all over the United States will wake up and copy his good idea.

A colony of martins circling about a house give it a delightful home-like air. Their very soft, sweet conversation with one another as they fly, sounds like rippling, musical laughter.

THE BARN SWALLOW

Do you know where there is an old-fashioned, weather-worn barn, with its hospitable doors standing open, where you could not find at least one pair of barn swallows at home beneath its roof? These birds, you will notice, prefer dilapidated old farm buildings, whose doors are off their hinges, and whose loose shingles or broken clapboards offer plenty of entrances and exits. If you like to play around a barn as well as every child I know, you must be already acquainted with the exquisite, dark steel-blue swallows with glistening reddish buff breasts, and deeply forked tails, that dart and glide in and out of the openings, merrily twittering as they fly. While you tumble about in the [{99}] hay among the rafters the swallows go and come, so that, quite unconsciously, you will associate them with happy hours as long as you live.

High up on some beam, too high for the children to reach, let us hope, a pair of barn swallows will plaster their mud cradle. Did you ever see them gathering pellets of wet soil in their bills at some roadside puddle? It is, perhaps, the only time you can ever catch them with their feet on the earth. Each mud pill must be carried to the barn and fastened on to the rafter. Countless trips are made to the puddle before a sufficient number of pellets are worked into the deep mud walls of the ample nursery. Usually grass is mixed with the mud, but some swallows make their bricks without straw. A lining of fine hay and plenty of feathers from the chicken yard seem to be essential for their comfort, which is a pity, because almost always chicken feathers are infested with lice, and lice kill more young birds than we like to think about. When there is a nestful of fledglings to feed, sticky little pellets of insects, caught on the wing, are carried to them by both parents from daylight to dusk. Do notice how tirelessly they work!

In a family famous for graceful, rapid flight, the barn swallow easily excels all his relations. The deep fork in his tail enables him to steer [{100}] himself with those marvellously quick, erratic turns, which make his course through the air resemble forked lightning. But with what exquisite grace he can also glide and skim across the water, fields and meadows without an apparent movement of the wing! His flight seems the very poetry of motion. The ease of it accounts for the very wide distribution of barn swallows from southern Brazil in winter to Greenland and Alaska in summer. What a journey to take twice a year!

THE EAVE OR CLIFF SWALLOW

More than any other bird family, the swallows are becoming increasingly dependent for shelter upon man, at least when they are nesting; and as this is the season when they are most valuable to him because of the enormous numbers of insects they prevent from multiplying, let us hope that familiarity with us will never breed contempt and cause them to return to their old, uncivilised building sites. In the sparsely settled West, the cliff swallow still fastens its queer, gourd-shaped, mud nest against projecting rocks, but in the East it is so quick to take advantage of the eaves of the barns and other out-buildings, that its old name does not apply, and we know it here only as an eave swallow.

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The barn swallow, as we have seen, chooses to nest upon the rafters inside the barn, but the eave swallow is content to stay outside under the shelter of a projecting roof. In such a place you find not one, but several or many mud tenements plastered in a row against the wall, for eave swallows are always remarkably sociable, even at the nesting season. A photograph of a colony I have seen shows one hundred and fifteen nests nearly all of which touch one another.

Although so often noticed circling about barns, you may know by the rusty patch on the lower part of his steel-blue back, the crescent-shaped white mark on his forehead, and the notched, not deeply forked tail, that the eave swallow is not the barn swallow, which it otherwise resembles.

THE BANK SWALLOW
Called also: Sand Martin; Sand Swallow

Perhaps you have seen a sand bank somewhere, probably near a river or pond, where the side of the bank was filled with holes as if a small cannon had been trained against it as a target. In and out of the holes fly the smallest of the swallows, with no lovely metallic blue or glistening buff in their dull [{102}] plumage, which is plain brownish gray above, white underneath, with a grayish band across the breast. Only their cousin, the rough-winged swallow, whose breast is brownish gray, is so plainly dressed.

The giggling twitter of the bank swallows as they wheel and dart through the air above you, proves that they are never too busy hunting for a dinner to speak a cheerful word to their friends. Year after year a colony will return to a favourite bank, whose face has been honey-combed with such care. Think of the labour and patience required for so small a bird to dig a tunnel two feet deep, more or less! Some nests have been placed as far as four feet from the entrance. You are not surprised at the big kingfisher, who also tunnels a hole in a bank for his family, because his long, strong bill makes digging comparatively easy; but for the small-billed, weak-footed swallow, the work must be difficult indeed. What a pity they cannot hire moles to make the tunnels with their strong, flat, spade-like feet. No wonder the birds become attached to the tunnels that have cost so much labour. When there are no longer any baby swallows on the heaps of twigs, grass and feathers at the end of them, the birds use them as resting places by day as well as by night until it is time to gather in vast flocks and speed away to the tropics.

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THE TREE SWALLOW
Called also: White-breasted Swallow

Probably this is the most abundant swallow that we have; certainly countless numbers assemble every year in the Long Island and Jersey marshes, perch on the telegraph wires and skim, with much circling, above the meadows and streams in a perfect ecstasy of flight. At a little distance the bird appears to be black above and white below, but as he suddenly wheels past, you see that his coat is a lustrous dark steel green. Immature birds are brownish gray. All have white breasts.

As the tree swallows are the only members of their family who spend the winter in the Southeastern United States, they can easily arrive at the North some time before their relatives from the tropics overtake them. And they are the last to leave. Myriads remain in the vicinity of New York until the middle of October. There is plenty of time to rear two broods, which accounts for the great size of the flocks. By the Fourth of July the young of the first broods are off hunting for little gauzy-winged insects over the low lands; and about a month later the parents join their flock, bringing with them more youngsters than you could count. They sleep every night in the marshes, clinging to the reeds.