In Bird Land :: V. ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS.

V. ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS.

Have any of my readers kept a record of the arrival of the birds during the spring? The northward procession of the battalions in feathers is an interesting study. Why do some birds begin their pilgrimage from the south so much earlier than others? What is there in their physical and mental make-up that gives them the northward impulse even before fair weather has come? Do they become homesick for their summer haunts sooner than their fellows? These are questions that are much more easily asked than answered. The size of the bird furnishes no clew to the solution, for some small birds are better able to resist the cold than many larger ones. There is the little black-capped titmouse—a mere mite of a bird—which generally remains in my neighborhood all winter, cheerfully braving the stormiest weather; while the brown thrasher, fully five times as large, is carefully warming his shins in the sunny south, and will not venture north until the spring has come to stay. Here, too, is Bewick’s wren on the first day of April,—with no thought of making an April fool of any one,—while the Baltimore orioles, rose-breasted grossbeaks, and scarlet tanagers, all larger than he, are tarrying in Georgia and Alabama. There is nothing in the size or color or form of the birds that makes this difference; it is doubtless in the blood.

I have kept a careful memorandum of the arrival of these feathered voyagers (this was during the spring of 1892), and know almost to a certainty the day, and sometimes the hour, when they cast anchor in this port. The winter had been unusually severe, and yet the migration began as early as the twenty-second of February, when the first meadow-larks put in appearance, and sent their wavering shafts of song across the frost-bound fields. They had left only on the last day of December, but had apparently remained away as long as they could. On the same day the killdeer plovers also arrived, making their presence known by their wailing cry. On the twenty-third I heard the Q-q-o-o-ka-l-e-e-e of the red-winged blackbirds, and on the morning of the twenty-fourth the first robins dropped from the sky after a “flying trip” in the night from some more southern stopping-place; but the weather was too cold for them to sing. Yet the song-sparrows and meadow-larks defied the cold with their cheerful melody. While the robin is a very gay and lavish songster, he wants favorable weather for his vocal rehearsals, and a “cold snap” will easily discourage him. He is evidently somewhat of a fair-weather minstrel. It was on February twenty-eighth, a pleasant day, that I caught the first strain of robin melody.

The towhee buntings dropped anchor on the seventh of March, filling the woods with their fine, explosive trills. It was a pleasant day, a sort of oasis in the midst of the stormy weather, and it did not seem inapt to speculate a little as to the thoughts of these birds on their arrival at their old summer haunts, after an absence of four or five months. Was the old brush-heap, where they had built their nest the previous spring, still there? Had the winter storms spared the twig on the sapling where Cock Bunting had sung erstwhile his sweetest trills to his dusky mate? “What if the woodman has cleared away our pleasant corner of the woods?” whispers Mrs. Towhee to her lord as they approach the sequestered spot. How their hearts must bound with joy when they find sapling and brush-heap and winding woodway all as they had left them in the autumn! No wonder they are so tuneful! Even the snow-storms that moan and howl through the woods a few days later cannot wholly repress their exuberant feelings.

On the same date a whole colony of young song-sparrows stopped at this station on their journey northward, although you must remember that quite a number of their elders remained here through the winter. What a twittering these year-old sparrows made in the bushes fringing the woods! I actually laughed aloud at their crude, tuneless, quasi-musical efforts. They were not in good voice, and, besides, had not yet fully learned the tunes that are sung in sparrowdom, and could not control their vocal chords. They made many sorry and amusing attempts to chant and trill, but their voices would break and catch in the most remarkable ways, now sliding up too high in the scale, now sliding down too low, and now veering too much to one side, so to speak. One tyro, I observed, sang the first part of a run very well, almost as well, in fact, as an adult musician could have sung it; but when he tried to finish, his voice seemed to fly all to flinders. He made the attempt again and again, but to no purpose. It was a day for which I have cut a notch in the tally-stick of memory. Leaving the company of young vocalists at their rehearsals at the border of the woods, I made my way to a swamp not far off, where a pleasant surprise lay in ambush. Here were no longer found young song-sparrows, but adults, and you should have heard them sing. What a contrast between the crude songs of the young birds and the loud, clear, splendidly intoned and executed trills of these trained musicians!

But I must return to the subject of migration. The fifteenth of March was a raw, blustering day, as its predecessors had been; but in the woods several fox-sparrows were singing, not their best, of course, but fairly well for such weather. They must have come during the night. But why had they come when the weather was so cold? Most birds wait until there is a bland air-current from the south on which they can ride triumphantly. Had this small band of fox-sparrows followed the example of a well-known American humorist, and gone to “roughing it”? Strange to say, I saw no more fox-sparrows until the twenty-eighth, when the weather had grown warm. That was also the day on which I saw the first winter wren scudding about in the brush-heaps and wood-piles and perking up his tail in the most approved bantam fashion. It may be a poor joke, but the thought came of its own accord, that if brevity is the soul of wit, this little wren must have a very witty tail; and it really is an amusing appendage, held up at an acute angle with the bird’s sloping back.

As I strolled along the edge of the woods on the same day, the fine rhythmic trill of the bush-sparrow reached my ear. He was celebrating his return to this sylvan resort, and his voice was in excellent trim; the fact is, I never heard him acquit himself quite so well, not even in May. Miss Lucy Larcom, of tender and sacred memory, has happily characterized this triller’s song in melodious verse:—

“One syllable, clear and soft

As a raindrop’s silvery patter,

Or a tinkling fairy-bell, heard aloft,

In the midst of the merry chatter

Of robin and linnet and wren and jay,—

One syllable oft repeated;

He has but a word to say,

And of that he will not be cheated.”

But why was not the grass-finch, his relative of the fields, in just as good voice when he arrived on the thirty-first? The last two springs this bird had to be on his singing-grounds several days before he recovered his full powers of voice. On the twenty-ninth the phoebe came with his burden of sweet song, and the first of April brought Bewick’s wren—sweet-voiced Arion of the suburbs—and the chipping sparrow, whose slender peal of song rang through my study window. Here my record stops for the present year; but by reference to my last year’s notes (1891) it appears that Bewick’s wren did not then arrive until April tenth, and chippy not until April twelfth. The difference in the seasons is doubtless the primary cause of this divergence in the time of arrival. April brings many other winged pilgrims,—the white-throated and white-crowned sparrows, the thrushes, the orioles, the tanagers, the cat-birds, the swallows and swifts, and some of the hardier warblers, while the great army of warblers delay their coming till the first and second weeks in May. And all the while we are having bird concerts, cantatas, oratorios, and opera festivals, mingled with some tragedy and a great deal of comedy, and there are love songs and cradle songs, matins and vespers, and twitterings expressive of every shade and variety of feeling.

I yield to the temptation to add a brief article entitled “Watching the Parade,” which was published in a New England journal in the summer of 1893, and contains a record of some observations made during the previous spring. By comparison with the preceding part of this chapter, it will indicate the versatile character of bird study in the same season of different years. I shall give it almost verbatim as first published, hoping the rather “free and easy” style will be generously overlooked by critical readers.

Every spring and autumn for many years I have been watching the parade; not a parade of soldiers, or of civic orders, or even of a menagerie; but one of far more interest to the naturalist,—the procession of the army in feathers. A wonderful cortÉge it is, this army in bright array; and every time you witness it, you add something new to your knowledge of bird life. The last spring has been no exception, although, when the pageant began, I wondered if I should see any new birds or hear any new songs, and even felt a little doubtful about it.

But quite early a new bird was added to my list. It was the blue-winged warbler, which carries about a scientific name big enough to break its dainty back. Just think of calling a tiny bird Helminthophila pinus! But happily it does not know its own name, and, like some of my readers, would not be able to pronounce it if it did, and therefore no serious harm is done. This bird may be known by the bright olive-green of its back, the pale blue of its wings, the pure yellow of its under parts, and the narrow black line running back through its eye. It seemed to be quite wary, yet I got near enough to see it catch insects on the wing like a wood-pewee, as well as pick them from the leaves of the trees.

The bird student must sometimes let problems go unsolved. For nearly, perhaps quite a week, three or four large, heavy-beaked birds flitted about in several tall tree-tops of the woods, but were so far up that, try as I would, I could not identify them even with my opera-glass. In my small collection of mounted birds there is a female evening grossbeak; and the tree-top flitters looked more like it than any other bird of my acquaintance. If they were evening grossbeaks, it was a rare find; for these birds are almost unknown in this part of the country, only a few having ever been discovered in this State. Their usual locale is thought to be west of Lake Superior. I was sorely tempted to use a gun, but decided that it was just as well not to know some things as to massacre an innocent bird.

However, other finds were more satisfactory. Strolling through the woods one day, I caught the notes of a bird song that did not sound familiar. Surely it was a vireo’s quaint, continuous lay; but which of the vireos could it be? It was different from any vireo minstrelsy I had ever heard. Peering about in the bushes for the author of those elusive notes, I at length espied a little bird form, and the next moment my glass revealed the blue-headed or solitary vireo. It was the first time I had ever heard this little vocalist sing in the spring, although we have met—he and I—on familiar terms every season for many years. Here is a query: Why was blue-head silent other years, and so tuneful that spring? For he was often heard after that day.

The song was varied and lively, sometimes running high in the scale, and had not that absent-minded air which marks the roundelay of the warbling vireo. It is much more intense and expressive, and some notes are quite like certain runs of the brown thrasher’s song. The bird did two other things that were a surprise: he chattered and scolded much like the ruby-crowned kinglet. Then he caught a miller, and, as it was too large to be swallowed whole, placed it under his claws precisely like a chickadee or blue jay, and pulled it to pieces. This was a new trick to me, nor have I ever read, in any of the bird manuals, of his taking his dinner in this way.

The red-eyed vireo also chanted a little roundel that spring, as he pursued his journey northward, his song being slower in movement and less expressive and varied than that of his cousin just referred to.

Indeed, the procession seemed to be especially musical during that spring. One day, in the last week in April, a new style of music rang out at the border of the woods, and I fairly trembled lest the jolly soloist should scud away before I could identify him; but he had no intention of making his escape, and giving the credit of his vocal efforts to somebody else in the bird world. At length I got my glass upon him. He proved to be the purple finch,—rosy little Mozart that he was! For years he has passed through these woods with the vernal procession, but this was the first time he had ever been obliging enough to sing in my hearing. And what a rolling, rollicking little song it was, just as full of good cheer as bird song could be! He continued his vocal rehearsal for many minutes on that day, but afterward he and his fellows were as mute as the inmates of a deaf and dumb asylum. A purple finch once sang here in the fall; but the music was quite harsh and squeaking, very different from his springtime melody.

One of the most beautiful birds that have a part in the vernal parade is the rose-breasted grossbeak,—a bird that you will recognize at once by his white-and-black coat and the rosy shield he so bravely bears on his bosom. In his summer home, farther north, I have often heard his vivacious music (this was in northern Indiana); but until the past spring he has always been silent as he passed through this neighborhood, save that he would sometimes utter his sharp, metallic Chip. However, on the fourteenth of May two of these grossbeaks sang a most vigorous duet in the grove near my house; and I wish you could have heard it, for it would have made you almost leap for joy, it was so jolly and rollicksome. At first you may be disposed to think the grossbeak’s song much like the robin’s, but you will soon find that it is finer in several respects, the tones being clearer and fuller, the utterance more rapid and varied, and the whole song much more spirited; and that is saying a good deal, considering Cock Robin’s cheery carols. No one should fail to hear this rosy-breasted minstrel, whatever else he may miss. It will make him feel that life is worth living; that if God made this bird so happy, he must intend that his rational creatures, who are of more value than a bird, should also be cheerful.

Never were the birds so gentle and confiding as they were during that spring. A female redstart took up her residence in my yard for fully a week, flitting about in the trees and grape-arbor, seeking for nits and worms; and you are to remember that I live in town (though in the outskirts), with many houses and people about, and an electric car whirling along the street every few minutes. A dainty bay-breasted warbler—little witch!—kept the redstart company, letting me stand beneath the trees on whose lower branches she tilted, and watch her agile movements; yet one of my bird books declares that the bay-breasted warblers remain in the highest tree-tops of the woods! Both these birds occasionally uttered a trill.

The goldfinches, too, were very familiar. They came with the procession as far north as my neighborhood, but stopped here for the summer, instead of continuing their pilgrimage. Some of their brothers and sisters remained with me all winter. Within a few feet of my rear door stands a small apple-tree, in whose branches these feathered gold-flakes flashed about, and sang their childlike ditties, and one little madam fluttered in the leafy crotches of the twigs, fitting her body into them as if trying to see if they would make good nesting-sites; the while Sir Goldfinch sang and sang at the top of his voice. Several white-crowned sparrows also came to eat seeds thrown out into the back yard. These handsome sparrows were not shy, but perched on the fence or the trees, and trilled their sweet refrains.

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