Bird Day; How to prepare for it Part 5

There on the very topmost twig, that rises and falls with willowy motion, sits that ridiculous, sweet-singing bobolink, singing as a Roman candle fizzes, showers of sparkling notes.--_Ibid._

This poet affirms that our bobolink is superior to the nightingale:--

Bobolink, that in the meadow, Or beneath the orchard's shadow, Keepest up a constant rattle Joyous as my children's prattle, Welcome to the North again, Welcome to mine ear thy strain, Welcome to mine eye the sight Of thy buff, thy black and white.

Brighter plumes may greet the sun By the banks of Amazon; Sweeter tones may weave the spell Of enchanting Philomel; But the tropic bird would fail, And the English nightingale, If we should compare their worth With thine endless, gus.h.i.+ng mirth.

--THOMAS HILL.

The mocking bird is a singer that has suffered much from its powers of mimicry. On ordinary occasions, and especially in the daytime, it insists on playing the harlequin. But when free in its own favorite haunts at night, it has a song, or rather songs, which are not only purely original, but are also more beautiful than any other bird music whatsoever.

Once I listened to a mocking bird singing the livelong spring night, under the full moon, in a magnolia tree; and I do not think I shall ever forget its song.

The great tree was bathed in a flood of s.h.i.+ning silver; I could see each twig, and mark every action of the singer, who was pouring forth such a rapture of ringing melody as I have never listened to before or since. Sometimes he would perch motionless for many minutes, his body quivering and thrilling with the outpour of music. Then he would drop softly from twig to twig till the lowest limb was reached, when he would rise, fluttering and leaping through the branches, his song never ceasing for an instant until he reached the summit of the tree and launched into the warm scent-laden air, floating in spirals, with outspread wings, until, as if spent, he sank gently back into the tree and down through the branches, while his song rose into an ecstasy of ardor and pa.s.sion. His voice rang like a clarionet in rich, full tones, and his execution covered the widest possible compa.s.s; theme followed theme, a torrent of music, a swelling tide of harmony, in which scarcely any two bars were alike. I stayed till midnight listening to him; he was singing when I went to sleep; he was still singing when I woke a couple of hours later; he sang through the livelong night.--THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Amid the thunders of Sinai G.o.d uttered the rights of cattle, and said that they should have a Sabbath. "Thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy cattle." He declared with infinite emphasis that the ox on the thres.h.i.+ng-floor should have the privilege of eating some of the grain as he trod it out, and muzzling was forbidden. If young birds were taken from the nest for food, the despoiler's life depended on the mother going free. G.o.d would not let the mother-bird suffer in one day the loss of her young and her own liberty. And he who regarded in olden time the conduct of man toward the brutes, to-day looks down from heaven and is interested in every minnow that swims the stream, and every rook that cleaves the air.--DEWITT TALMAGE, D.D.

And how refres.h.i.+ng is the sight of the birdless bonnet! The face beneath, no matter how plain it may be, seems to possess a gentle charm. She might have had birds, this woman, for they are cheap enough and plentiful enough, heaven knows; but she has them not, therefore she must wear within things infinitely precious, namely, good sense, good taste, good feeling. Does any woman imagine these withered corpses (cured with a.r.s.enic), which she loves to carry about, are beautiful? Not so; the birds lost their beauty with their lives.--CELIA THAXTER.

I walked up my garden path as I was coming home from shooting. My dog ran on before me; suddenly he went slower and crept carefully forward as if he scented game. I looked along the path and perceived a young sparrow, with its downy head and yellow bill. It had fallen from a nest (the wind was blowing hard through the young birch trees beside the path) and was sprawling motionless, helpless, on the ground, with its little wings outspread. My dog crept softly up to it, when suddenly an old black-breasted sparrow threw himself down from a neighboring tree and let himself fall like a stone directly under the dog's nose, and, with ruffled feathers, sprang with a terrified twitter several times against his open, threatening mouth. He had flown down to protect his young at the sacrifice of himself. His little body trembled all over, his cry was hoa.r.s.e, he was frightened to death; but he sacrificed himself. My dog must have seemed to him a gigantic monster, but for all that, he could not stay on his high, safe branch. A power stronger than himself drove him down. My dog stopped and drew back; it seemed as if he, too, respected this power. I hastened to call back the amazed dog, and reverently withdrew. Yes, don't laugh; I felt a reverence for this little hero of a bird, with his paternal love.

Love, thought I, is mightier than death and the fear of death; love alone inspires and is the life of all.--IVAN TOURGUENEFF.

The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint, silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the redwing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell!--H. D. Th.o.r.eAU.

I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,--the same sweet, powerful song as of yore.--_Ibid._

Walden is melting apace. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow from the bushes on the sh.o.r.e,--_olit, olit, olit--chip, chip, chip, che char--che wis, wis, wis_. He, too, is helping to crack the ice.--_Ibid._

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.--_Ibid._

6. One of the most interesting features of a Bird Day program will be the personations of birds.

The following was given by a boy in the seventh grade:--

One day in February a gentleman and his wife stopped beside the wall of old Fort Marion, in St. Augustine, to listen to my song. The sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly, and little white flowers were blooming in the green turf about the old fort.

It was not time yet to build my nest, so I had nothing to do but sing and get my food and travel a little every day toward my Northern home.

I am about as large as a robin, and although there is nothing brilliant in my plumage I am not a homely bird. I like the songs of other birds and sometimes sing them. I frequently sing like my cousins, the catbirds and robins and thrushes. But I have my own song, which is unlike all the others. My mate and I build a large nest of small sticks, pieces of string, cotton, and weeds, in thick bushes or low trees. We have five eggs that are greenish blue and spotted with brown. We eat many beetles, larvae, and many kinds of insects which we find feeding upon plants. The worst enemy we have is man. He steals our children almost before we have taught them to sing, and puts them in cages. He is a monster.

Many poems have been written about me. One of the finest is by Sidney Lanier, in which he calls me "yon trim Shakespeare on the tree."

Any one who has heard my song can never forget me.

What is my name?

7. Bird facts and proverbs form a valuable part of a program and may be given by some of the children. Let the pupils search for them and bring some similar to these:--

Birds flock together in hard times.

A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand.

The American robin is not the same bird as the English.

The bluebird and robin may be harbingers of spring, but the swallow is the harbinger of summer.

The dandelion tells me to look for the swallow; the dog-toothed violet when to expect the wood thrush.--JOHN BURROUGHS.

It is not thought that any one bird spends the year in one locality, but that all birds migrate, if only within a limited range.

A loon was caught, by a set line for fis.h.i.+ng, sixty-five feet below the surface of a lake in New York, having dived to that depth for a fish.

The wood pewee, like its relative, the phoebe, feeds largely on the family of flies to which the house fly belongs.

The birds of prey, the majority of which labor night and day to destroy the enemies of the husbandman, are unceasingly persecuted.

Seventy-five per cent of the food of the downy woodp.e.c.k.e.r is insects.

The cow blackbird lays its eggs in other birds' nests, one in a nest. What happens afterwards?

Why should not a man love a bird? If the palm of one could clasp the pinion of the other, there would come together two of the greatest implements G.o.d and nature have ever given any two creatures to explore the world with, and when two bipeds gaze at each other, eye to eye, the intelligence in the one might well take off its hat to the subtle instincts in the other.--JAMES NEWTON BASKETT.

A bird on the bonnet means so much less bread on the table.

A bird in the orchard is a sort of scavenger and pomologist combined, and does his share in giving you a dish of fruit for dinner. The scarlet tanager looks like a living ruby in a green tree; but--I speak bluntly--it looks like a chunk of gore on a woman's bonnet. In behalf of good taste and the birds, I enter my protest against this barbarous Custom.--LEANDER T. KEYSER.

What does it cost, this garniture of death?

It costs the life which G.o.d alone can give; It costs dull silence, where was music's breath; It costs dead joy, that foolish pride may live.

Ah, life, and joy, and song, depend upon it, Are costly tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs for a woman's bonnet.

--MAY RILEY SMITH.

The program may be diversified by songs about birds. Many suitable for this occasion will be found in a collection called "Songs of Happy Life," made by Sarah J. Eddy. It is published by the Nature Study Publis.h.i.+ng Company, of Providence, R. I.

VIII

THE POETS AND THE BIRDS

"The birds are the poets' own," says Burroughs. How could it be otherwise? The bird, with his large brain, quick circulation, and high temperature, is possessed of a tropical, ecstatic soul that blossoms into music as naturally as a bulb bursts into bloom and fragrance. He is a creature of marvelous inheritance. Poetry is a true bird-land, where you shall hear the birds as often as in any meadow or orchard on a May morning. All poets have been their lovers, from the psalmist of old, who knew "all the birds of the mountains," to our own Lowell with his "Gladness on wings--the bobolink is here."

The poets, who voice our deepest thoughts, have studied birds with the utmost care. It is astonis.h.i.+ng to note the mention made of them in the pages of Browning, Tennyson, and in fact of every great maker of verse. Not merely as adjuncts of the landscape are they mentioned, but with intensity of feeling, as in William Watson's poem on his recovery from temporary loss of mind--one of the most pathetic poems ever written--where he thanks the Heavenly Power for letting him feel once again at home in nature and again related to the birds and to human life. Dr. Van d.y.k.e's wish that, when his twilight hour is come, he "may hear the wood note of the veery" finds response in the heart of every one who has listened to that song. Frequently the poet seems to have entered into the life of the bird and to have found his inner secret, as Keats in the "Ode to a Nightingale":--

Immortal bird, thou wast not born for death, No hungry generations tread thee down.

Sometimes the words seem to have caught the rhythm and ripple of the song, as in Browning's reference to the thrush:--

The wise thrush, he sings each song twice over, Lest you think he never could recapture That first fine careless rapture.