Every observer of birds and animals has doubtless amassed many facts of intense interest—at all events, of intense interest to himself—which he has not been able to adjust to any systematic arrangement he may have made of his material. That is true of the incidents described in this chapter. It will, therefore, necessarily partake of the nature of bric-À-brac. If it were not so self-complimentary, I should dub it bird mosaic, and have done. The reader will perhaps be more disposed to trace a resemblance to an eccentric old woman’s “crazy quilt;” and if he prefers the homelier and less poetical title, I shall not complain.

But even a bit of patchwork must be begun somewhere, and so I shall plunge at once in medias res.

The day was one of the fairest of early spring. How shall I describe it? No sky could have been bluer, no fields greener. The earth smiled under the favoritism of the radiant heavens in happy recognition. My steps were bent along the green banks of a winding creek in northern Indiana. Suddenly a loud, varied bird song fell on my ear and brought me to a full stop. It swept down liltingly from a high, bushy bank some rods back from the stream, and at once proclaimed itself as the rhapsody of the cat-bird. Anxious to watch the brilliant vocalist in his singing attitudes, I approached the acclivity, and soon espied him in the midst of the dense copse, which was not yet covered with foliage. He redoubled his efforts when he saw an appreciative auditor standing near. Presently a quaint impulse seized his throbbing, music-filled bosom. He swung gracefully to the ground, picked up a fragment of newspaper, leaped up to his perch again, and then, holding the paper harp in his beak, resumed his song with more vigor than before. All the while his beady eyes sparkled with good-natured raillery, as if he expected me to laugh at his unique performance; and, of course, I was able to accommodate him without half an effort. An errant gust of wind suddenly wrenched the bit of paper from his bill and bore it to the ground. The minstrel darted after, and straightway recovered his elusive prize, flew up to his perch, and again roused the echoes of woodland and vale with his rollicking song, the paper harp imparting a peculiar resonance to his tones; while his air of banter seemed to challenge me to a musical contest. I laughingly declined in the interest of my own reputation.

He was one of the choicest minstrels of bird land I have ever heard,—barring the sex, a Jenny Lind or an Adelina Patti,—his voice being of excellent timbre, his tones pure and liquid, and his technical execution almost perfect. Ever since that day I have been the avowed friend of the catbird,—in truth, his champion, ready at any moment, in season and out, to take up the glove in his defence against every assailant. Some very self-conscious human performers—people who themselves live in glass houses—have accused him of singing to be heard, making him out vain and ambitious. Well, what if he does? Why do his human compeers sing or speak or write? Certainly not purely for their own delectation, but also, in part at least, to catch the appreciative ear and eye of the public, and win a bit of applause. “Let him that is without sin among you first cast a stone.” He who scoffs at my plumbeous-hued choralist makes me his enemy,—not the choralist’s, but the scoffer’s. So let the latter beware!

I leave the cat-bird, however, to his own resources—he is well able to take care of himself—to tell what the birds were doing during a recent spring, which fought in a very desultory manner its battle with the north winds. Special attention is called to the laggard character of the season because a tardy spring is a sore ordeal to the student of bird life, postponing many of his most longed-for investigations. The spring to which I refer (1892) was provokingly slow in its approach, and yet it developed some traits of bird character that were interesting. For instance, the first week in April was a seducer, being quite bland, starting the buds on many trees, and putting the migrating fever into the veins of a number of species of birds. But the snow-storms and fierce northern blasts that came later were very hard on both birds and buds. Many a chorus was sung during the pleasant weather, but on more than one day afterward the cheerful voices of the feathered choir were hushed, while the songsters themselves sought refuge from the storm in every available nook, where they sat shivering. One cannot always repress the interrogatory why Nature so frequently stirs hopes only to blast them; but it is not the business of the empirical observer to question her motives or her manners,—rather to study her as she is, without asking why.

Cold as April was, some birds were hardy enough to go to nest-building. Among these were the robins, whose blushing bosoms could be seen everywhere in grove and field. On the seventh of the month a robin was carrying grass fibres to a half-finished nest in the woodland near my house. A week later she was sitting on the nest, hugging her eggs close beneath her warm bosom, while the tempests howled mercilessly about her roofless homestead. It seemed to me, one cold morning after a snow-storm, that her body shivered as she sat there, and I feared more than once that she would freeze to death; but no such fatality befell her, and she resolutely kept her seat in her adobe cottage.

And this reminds me of a bird tragedy described to me by a professor in the college located in my town. He said that a number of years ago a robin built a nest in a tree not far from the site on which some workmen were erecting a new college building. In May a very fierce snow-storm came. One day the workmen noticed a half-dozen robins darting about the nest on which the hatching bird sat, flying at her with sharp cries, striking her with their wings, and making use of various other devices to dislodge her from the nest. They seemed to realize that she was in peril of her life through long inactivity and exposure to the cold. But their efforts were unsuccessful: she would not leave her nest; her eggs or young must have her care at whatever cost. However, the poor bird paid dearly for her devotion. The next morning—the night had been very cold—the workmen found her dead upon the nest. My informant vouches for the truthfulness of the story, and says that he himself saw the faithful mother on the nest after she had been frozen stiff.

On the twentieth of April I saw another robin sitting close on her nest, which was built on a horizontal branch of a willow-tree, not more than eight feet from the ground. The raw east wind lifted the feathers on her back, as if determined to creep through her thick clothing to the sensitive skin. A few days earlier a blue jay was seen carrying lumber to her partly erected nursery in the crotch of an oak-tree. A pair of bluebirds, sighing out their sorrows and joys, began building in one of my bird-boxes during the pleasant early April weather; but when the cold spell came, they wisely suspended operations until the storms were overpast and they could proceed with safety. A killdeer plover’s nest was found by my farmer neighbor on the ninth of April. It was on the ground in an open field, with not so much as a spear of grass for protection.

That year the crow blackbirds arrived from the south in February, all bedecked in holiday attire, the rich purple of their necks scintillating in the sunshine. You have perhaps observed the droll antics of these birds as they sing their guttural O-gl-ee. It is amusing to see them fluff up their feathers, spread out their wings and tails, bend their heads forward and downward with a spasmodic movement, and then emit that queer, gurgling, half-musical note. It would seem that the little they sing requires a superhuman—more precisely, perhaps, a super-avian—effort, coming aqueously, one might almost say, from some deep fountain in their windpipes. These contortions do not invariably accompany their vocal performances, but certainly occur quite frequently. The red-wings also often behave in a like manner; and both species always spread out their tails like a fan when they sing, whether they fluff up their plumes and twist their necks or not.

Another bit of bird behavior gave me not a little surprise during the same spring. It started this query in my mind: Is the white-breasted nuthatch a sap-sucker? It has been proved by Mr. Burroughs and Mr. Frank Bolles, I think, that the yellow-bellied woodpecker is. But how about the frisky nuthatch, so versatile in ways and means? Here is an incident. One day I saw a nuthatch thrusting his slender bill into a hole in the bark of a young hickory-tree. Nuthatches often hunt for grubs in that way, but something about this fellow’s conduct prompted me to watch him closely for some minutes. He bent over the hole with a lingering movement, as if sipping something. Presently I slowly approached the tree, keeping my eye intent on the bird.

Of course, he flew away on my approach, but my eye was never taken from the spot to which he had been clinging. Being forced to climb the trunk of the tree a few feet, what discovery do you suppose awaited me? There was a small hole pierced through the bark from which the sap was flowing down the crannies, and into that fount the little wassailer had been thrusting his bill, with a sort of lingering motion, precisely as if he had been sipping the sweet liquor. The evidence was sufficient to convince me that he had been doing this very unorthodox thing. The real sap-suckers, no doubt, had dug the well, for there were a number of them in the woods, and the nuthatch had been stealing the nectar. Perhaps, however, I wrong him; he may have asked permission of the owner to drink from the saccharine fountain.

The next autumn I took occasion to pry into the affairs of my beloved intimates of the woods, and had more than one surprise. Some species of birds, like some other animals, lay by a supply of food for winter, proving that they do take some thought for the morrow. So far as my observation goes, this provident care is displayed only by those birds that are winter residents in our more northern latitudes. I have never seen any of the vast company of migrants making such provision for the proverbial rainy day; and, indeed, it would be unnecessary. To them sufficient unto the day is the care as well as the evil thereof, and so they take their “daily bread” as they happen to find it.

Our winter residents, however, are more thrifty, as I have observed again and again. Here is an instance which once came under my eye. While sauntering along the border of the woods one day in September, I noticed several nuthatches and black-capped titmice busily gathering seeds from a clump of sunflower stalks, and flying with them to the trees near by. I found a seat and watched them for a long while. A nuthatch would dart over to a sunflower stalk, cry, Yak! yak! in his familiar way, as if talking affectionately to himself, deftly pick out a seed from its encasement, fly with it to the trunk of an oak-tree, and then thrust it into a crevice of the bark with his long slender beak. He would then hurry back for another seed, which he would treat in the same way.

The behavior of one of these little toilers was especially interesting. By mistake he pushed a seed into a cranny which seemed to be too deep for his purpose, and so he proceeded in his vigorous way to pry and chisel it out. He seemed to say to himself: “That would be too hard to dig out on a cold winter day; I think I’d better get it out now.” When he had secured it, he put it into another crevice, which also proved too deep; and so his dainty had to be recovered once more. The third attempt, however, proved a charm, for that time he found a little pocket just to his liking. To make very sure he did not eat the seed, I did not take my eye from him for a single moment. The fact is, during the entire time spent in watching the birds, I did not see them eat a single seed. The titmice flew farther into the woods with their winter “goodies,” where the foliage was so dense, while the birds were so quick in movement, that it was impossible to see just where they hid their store; but they returned too soon for a new supply to allow time for eating the seeds.

One autumn I spent a week in a part of Kentucky where beechnuts were very plentiful, and saw the hairy and red-headed woodpeckers putting away their hoard of “mast” for the winter, industrious husbandmen that they were. A farmer said that he had often seen the woodpeckers carrying these nuts to a hole in a tree and dropping them into it. He once found such a winter store that must have contained fully a quart of beechnuts. In my own neighborhood the hairy woodpecker often hides tidbits in gullies of the bark, after the manner of the nuthatch. The crested tit also stows corn and various kinds of seeds in some safe niche for a time of exigency. Several times in the winter, when the ground was covered with snow, I have surprised this bird eating a corn grain in the very depth of the woods, a considerable distance from the neighboring cornfields.

One winter day a nuthatch picked three grains of corn in succession from the fissures of an oak, and greedily devoured them. On another occasion one of these nuthatches was seen diving into a hole on the under side of a limb. Presently he emerged with a nut of some kind in his bill, and flew away, remaining just about long enough to eat it, when he returned for another. This he repeated until his dinner was finished.

No doubt, when cold and stormy weather comes, these birds have many a luscious mouthful because of their forehandedness, and no doubt they enjoy their well-kept stores as much as the farmer and his family relish their dish of mellow apples around the glowing hearth on a winter evening. It is no fancy flight, but a literal truth, that many a niche and cleft is made to do duty as larder for the feathered and furred tenants of the woods.

With the birds that migrate, autumn is the season for gathering in large convocations, holding “windy congresses in trees,” as Lowell aptly puts it. The aerial movements of some of these feathered armies are often worthy of observation. Memory lingers fondly about a day in autumn when two friends and myself were clambering up the side of a steep hill or ridge that bounded a green hollow on the south. We had gone half-way to the top when we turned to admire the panorama spread out picturesquely before us. Our exclamations of pleasure at the scene were soon interrupted by a shadow hurtling across the hollow, and on looking up, we saw a vast army of crow blackbirds sweeping overhead, moving about fifty abreast. How long the column was I cannot say, but it extended over the hollow from hilltop to hilltop and some distance beyond in both directions. The odd feature about the ebon army’s evolutions was this: The vanguard had gone on far beyond the ravine, and was pushing over the opposite ridge, when there was a peculiar swaying movement near the centre directly above the hollow; then that part of the column dropped gracefully downward toward the trees below them; at the same moment those in the van swung lightly around to the right and returned, while the rear part of the column advanced rapidly, and then all swept grandly down into the tops of the tall trees in the ravine. It was a splendid military pageant, and might well start several queries in the interrogative mind. Where was the commander-in-chief of that sable army? Was he near the centre of the column? If so, why should he station himself there instead of at the head? Again, how could the message to return be sent so speedily to the vanguard? Do birds employ some occult method of telegraphy? But these are questions more easily asked than answered; for no one, so far as I know, has yet given special attention to the military tactics of the armies in feathers.

It may be a somewhat abrupt transition from a crowd to an individual, but the reader must bear in mind that a close logical unity cannot be preserved in a chapter composed of bric-À-brac; and, besides, is not every crowd made up of individuals? How great was my surprise, one summer day, to see a purple grackle stalking about in his regal manner on the flat rocks of a shallow woodland stream, and then suddenly wheel about, pull a crab out of the water, and fly off with it to a log, where he beat it to pieces and devoured it! I doubt if many persons are aware that this bird dines on crab. On the same day another grackle, striding pompously about in the shallow water, suddenly sprang up into the air, some six or eight feet, and caught an insect on the wing. This was a performance on the part of a crow blackbird never before witnessed by me.

One day in the woods my saucy little madcap, the crested titmouse, was tilting about on the twigs of a sapling like a trapeze performer in a circus. Sometimes, he hung lightly to the under side of a spray, and pecked nits and other dainties from the lower surface of a leaf. While doing so, he happened to catch sight of an insect buzzing by; he flung himself at it like a feathered arrow; but for some reason he missed his mark, and the insect, in its efforts to escape, let itself drop toward the ground. An interesting scuffle followed; the titmouse whirled around and around, dashing this way and that like zigzag lightning, in hot pursuit, fluttering his wings very rapidly until he alighted on the ground on the dry leaves, where he at last succeeded in capturing his prize. He gulped it down with a sly wink, as much as to say: “Wasn’t that a clever trick, sir? Beat it if you can!” Then he picked up a seed and flew with it to a twig in a dogwood sapling, where he placed it under his claws, holding it firmly as he nibbled it with his stout little beak. His meal finished, he suddenly pretended to be greatly alarmed at something, called loudly, Chick, chick-a-da! chick-a-da-da! and darted away like an Indian’s arrow.

On the same day a golden-crowned kinglet—my Lilliputian of the woods—surprised me by dropping from a twig above me to the ground, right at my feet, passing within two or three inches of my face. Quick as a flash he leaped to a sapling before me, and I saw that he held a worm in his tiny bill. Of course, that was the prize for which he had dashed in such a headlong way to the ground.

Few birds have charmed me more than the jolly red-headed woodpecker, and many a quaint antic has he performed with all the nonchalance of a sage or a stoic. He has a queer way of taking his meals. The first time it came to my notice I was walking home, on a hot summer day, along a railway, when a red-head bounded across the track before me, holding a ripe, blood-red cherry in his beak. He made a handsome picture with his pure white and velvety black coat and vest, his crimson cap and collar, and his—here my tropes fail, and I am forced to become literal—long, black beak, tipped with the scarlet berry. Swinging gracefully across the railway, he presently alighted on a stake of the meadow fence, where he seemed to place the cherry in a sort of crevice, and then sip from it in a somewhat dainty, half-caressing way, as if it were rarely billsome. My curiosity being excited, I eyed him awhile, and then, determined to reconnoitre, climbed the wire fence over into the meadow, and drove him away from his menu. There, in a small pocket of the fence-stake, apparently hollowed out, at least partially, by the bird himself, lay the cherry, its rind punctured in several places, where the diner-out had thrust in his bill to sip the juicy pulp underneath,—a sort of woodpecker’s table d’hÔte. The crevice had a rank odor of cherries dried in the sun,—a proof that it had been used for a dining-table for some time. The legs and wings of several kinds of insects were also strewn about. Since that day I have found many of these pockets in fence-stakes, posts, dead tree-boles, and old stumps, where woodpeckers have placed their dainties to be eaten at their convenience.

You have doubtless, seen these red-heads catching insects on the wing. This they do with as much agility as the wood-pewee, sometimes performing evolutions that are little short of marvellous. From my study window I once watched one of these aeronauts as he sprang from the top of a tall oak-tree in the grove near by, and mounted up, up, up in graceful terraces of flight, until he had climbed at least twice the height of the tree, when he suddenly stopped, poised a moment airily, wheeled about, and plunged downward headlong with a swiftness that made my head swim, closing the descent with a series of bounds, as if he were going down an aerial stairway. Whether he performed this feat in pursuit of an insect, or to display his skill, or only to give vent to his exuberance of feeling, I am unable to say.

The red-head has an odd way of taking a bath during a light shower, which he does by clinging lengthwise to an upright or oblique branch, fluffing up his plumes as much as possible, and then flapping his wings slowly back and forth, thus allowing the refreshing drops thoroughly to percolate and rinse his handsome feathers. And, by the way, the subject of bird baths is one of no small degree of interest to the ogler of the feathered creation. It has been my good fortune to see a brilliant company of warblers of various species—lyrics in color, one might call them—performing their ablutions at a small pond in the woods. How their iridescent hues flashed and danced in the sunshine, as they dipped their dainty bosoms into the water, twinkled their wings, and fluttered their tails, sending the spray like pearl-mist into the air! One sylvan picture like that is worth many a mile’s tramping.

I once saw several myrtle warblers taking a dew-bath. Do you wonder how they did it? They leaped from a twig in the trees upon the dew-covered leaves,—it was early morning,—and fluttered about until their plumes were thoroughly drenched, then flitted to a perch to dry their bedraggled feathers and carefully arrange their dainty toilets.[2]

Besides, it has been my chance to witness my little confidant, Bewick’s wren, taking a dust-bath, which he did in this manner: he would squat flat on his belly on the ground in the lane, completely hiding his feet, and then glide about rapidly and smoothly over the little undulations, stirring the dust in volatile cloudlets. Never have I seen any performance, even in the bird realm so varied and versatile, more absolutely charming; so charming, indeed, that I believe my brief description of it will fittingly bring this rambling chapter on “Bird Curios” to a close.