Our Bird Comrades Part 4

But what is to be said of the screaming cowbird? Instead of inflicting its eggs on its more distant avian relatives, it watches its chance and slyly drops them into the domicile of its bay-winged cousins, and actually makes them hatch and rear its offspring! This seems to be carrying imposture to the extreme of refinement, or possibly developing it into a fine art, and reminds one of those human good-for-naughts who "sponge" off their relatives rather than go among strangers.

Before closing this chapter I must call attention to one of the most surprising discoveries ever made by an American observer of bird ways.

It was reported some time after my article on the cowbird was first published in Appleton's "Popular Science Monthly." The observer was Joseph F. Honecker, whose statement was printed in "American Ornithology" for June, 1902, and runs as follows:

"As ornithologists and all bird students think and believe that the cowbird will build no nest, but always lays in the nests of other birds, I am glad to give the results of my experiments. In order to get the desired results, in the spring of 1899 I secured a pair of cowbirds and placed them in a large cage, cared well for them, and supplied them with plenty of nesting material. To my surprise, the female built a nest, laid four eggs, hatched them, and reared the young, and on July twenty-eighth, young and old were given their freedom. This will show that the cowbird will build a nest and care for its young in captivity, while in its wild life it has never been known to do so."

A BLUE CANNIBAL*

*Reprinted by permission from "The Evening Post," New York.

In his coat of light blue, trimmed with white and black, bearing his crest jauntily atop of his head, the blue jay presents an attractive picture. And, indeed, although I myself feel that the Baltimore oriole, the scarlet tanager, the ruby-throated hummingbird, and many of the wood warblers carry off the palm for brilliancy of plumage, there are persons who declare that the jay is the most handsomely colored bird in our temperate regions.

While the jay dons an engaging attire, not much can be said in the way of eulogy for his vocal talents or acquirements. Many of his calls are harsh, penetrating, and even raucous. Frequently, too, he indulges in a great to-do over nothing, fairly splitting your ears with his noisy cries. I have said it is a to-do over nothing, though Mr. Jay may think he has the best reason in the world for making a fuss. Often espying some coveted prize on the ground in my back yard, instead of quietly dropping down and taking it, he and his companions would dash about in the trees, swing their bodies sidewise and up and down in an excited way, and scream at the top of their voices, sometimes drawing me out of the house to see what had gone wrong in Jaydom. They seemed to be determined to attract the attention of every person on the premises to the fact that they wanted that morsel on the ground, but were afraid to venture down after it. Perhaps they meant by their objurgations to test their human neighbors, to ascertain whether any of them were prowling about with a gun or a sling, ready to do them harm.

If there should be any such prowlers, probably the jays meant to induce them to come out of their ambush, to show themselves in the open, and give their jays.h.i.+ps a chance to escape. Bird psychology, as you will have occasion to note more than once, is a good deal of an enigma. How often we would give a handsome bonus to a bird if he would let us know precisely what he was thinking about!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Blue Jay]

Although no musician, the jay has quite an extensive vocal repertory.

Besides his loud, challenging call, he frequently utters a series of calls that have a pensive quality and that fill the mind with an indefinable foreboding, especially on chill autumn days when all the woods are bare and gray and the wind is moaning through the boughs.

Sometimes when a jay is hidden in a copse, he utters a low, scolding sputter, that seems to express the very quintessence of disgust. It is simply his way of telling you what he thinks of a man who goes prowling about without leave in the precincts of the birds.

Have you ever heard the jay's brief musical roulade? It is only a wisp of melody, rarely rich and suggestive, heard a moment, then gone. You know something sweet has pa.s.sed by, but something so brief and elusive that you scarcely know what it was. Long after it has dropped on your ear, it continues to haunt your memory, and you try again and again to reproduce it, but in vain. It has a kind of gurgling quality, as if the bird were pressing his notes through an aqueous lyre, if such a conception is possible. Besides, I have, on more than one occasion, heard a jay warble a soft, reserved little lay that was continued for many minutes. It sounded very like the song of the brown thrasher, much modulated and partly uttered under its breath--a sort of flowing, rythmical melody.

A question that disturbs all bird lovers more or less is this: Does the fine white vest of the jay cover a bad heart? Is he really a thief, a nest robber, or even worse, a cannibal, in plumes? May the guardian spirit of all feathered folk forbid that I should blacken the reputation of any bird, yet honesty compels me to give an affirmative answer to the foregoing question. I hasten, however, to say that I do not believe he is as black as he has been painted by some observers, who seem to delight in making out a verdict of capital guilt against him. Although a predatory bird, he is not engaged all the time in bloodthirsty pursuits, but only while his young are in the nest clamoring for food. What are some of the proofs of his vandalism? I will mention a few of them.

First, almost all the small birds make uncompromising war upon him, especially in the breeding season, and many of them show signs of dire distress when he goes near their nests. They often utter pitiful cries, droop their wings, and the bravest of them dash at him savagely, giving him many a cuff on the head and back. The wood pewee and the kingbird succeed, I think, in driving him away; but the vireos and warblers, being so much smaller, suffer greatly from his depredations.

If there were no real cause for it, these birds would not be filled with panic and rage on account of the jay's presence. There is strong presumptive evidence that they know him for an outlaw only too well.

The following incident will furnish positive proof of the jay's cannibalistic proclivities: One spring my little boy brought home from the country a young house wren, thinking it would make a delightful pet. It was quite well fledged, but its short tail and white mouth border proclaimed the tenderness of its youth. Fearing that the little thing could not be reared by hand, as it refused all our proffered tidbits, and chirped continually for its parents, I persuaded the lad to give it its freedom. A mother wren living on our premises seemed inclined to adopt the little waif, and we decided to put it under her care. No sooner was the youngling let out of the cage than it flew to the side of the house and began to scramble up the brick wall. It had a hard tug, but at length succeeded in reaching a resting place on a window-shutter of the second story.

Presently the mother wren heard its calls and paid it a visit; but instead of feeding it, she seemed very anxious to drive it away, knowing, no doubt, that there were predaceous enemies in the neighborhood. In her attempts to drive it into hiding, she pecked it on the head and in the mouth. Then she dropped down into a thicket and secured a green worm, with which she flew up to the chirping waif's perch; but I could not make out that she fed the birdling, though she thrust the worm toward its open mouth. Soon after she had gone off the second time, the little bird clambered around the corner of the wall to the lower side of the house, where it rested a while on a narrow shelf.

All this time my boy and I were watching it intently. Suddenly a blue jay came flying over from one of the trees of an adjacent yard, moving in a rapid, stealthy way. First it plunged into an apple tree at the corner of the house; then, before I could collect my wits enough to know what was happening, it darted over to the brick wall, seized the little wren with its bill, and bore it off. The mother wren followed, uttering a pitiful chatter, while the little victim called loudly for help. The blue kidnapper darted to a tree in my neighbor's yard, where he put his booty under his claw on a limb, holding it by one slender leg, while its body dangled below. Hoping still to rescue the little captive, I sprang over into the adjacent yard with a loud shout and much waving of my hands; but my vigorous efforts only caused the jay to pick up the wren in its bill and continue its flight, and neither wren nor jay was seen by me again. This incident furnishes unimpeachable testimony against the character of the blue-coated Robin Hood. There was no faltering or hesitancy in his conduct, but he seized and carried off his little victim as if he were to the manner born, and had become hardened by practice in depredations of the sort.

A farmer once related the following incident to me: A pair of chipping sparrows had built a nest in a bush in his front yard. One day after the little ones had arrived, he heard a distressed chirping coming from the parent birds, and on going to the front yard, he caught a blue jay in the act of picking a callow bantling from the chippie's nest.

Holding it in his bill, the jay flew across the field with his prize, and presently returned and bore off a second nestling. By this time the farmer's ire was aroused; he bolted into the house and secured his shotgun, and when the marauding jay came back on the third trip on robbery intent, the man brought him to the ground with a shot that ended his career.

Yet the jay is not wholly bad--indeed, not even half bad. Before me lies a valuable pamphlet ent.i.tled "The Blue Jay and His Food," written by F. E. L. Beal, a.s.sistant Biologist of the Department of Agriculture at Was.h.i.+ngton, whose researches have converted him into something of an apologist for our blue gentleman in feathers. He dissected the stomachs of 292 jays, collected during every month of the year in twenty-two states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. After stating that mineral substances in the stomachs examined averaged over 14 per cent of the total contents, Mr. Beal says:

"The real food is composed of 24.3 per cent of animal matter and 75.7 per cent of vegetable matter, or a trifle more than three times as much vegetable as animal. The animal food is chiefly made up of insects, with a few spiders, myriapods, snails, and small vertebrates, such as fish, salamanders, tree frogs, mice, and birds. Everything was carefully examined which might by any possibility indicate that birds or eggs had been eaten, but remains of birds were found in only two, and the sh.e.l.ls of small birds' eggs in only three of the 292 stomachs.

One of these, taken on February tenth, contained the bones, claws, and a little skin of a bird's foot. Another, taken on June twenty-fourth, contained the remains of a young bird. The three stomachs with bird's eggs were collected in June, August, and October, respectively. The sh.e.l.l eaten in October belonged to the egg of some larger bird like the ruffed grouse and, considering the time of year, was undoubtedly merely an empty sh.e.l.l from an old nest. Sh.e.l.ls of eggs which were identified as those of domesticated fowls, or some bird of equal size, were found in eleven stomachs, collected at irregular times during the year. This evidence would seem to show that more eggs of domesticated fowls than of wild birds are destroyed, but it is much more probable that these sh.e.l.ls were obtained from refuse heaps about farm-houses."

Mr. Beal's dissections are very significant, proving that the jay is not only not so destructive of eggs and bantlings as was supposed, but also that he destroys many noxious insects, and is, therefore, a bird of real economic value. The great bulk of his insect diet consists of beetles, gra.s.shoppers, and caterpillars, with a few bugs, wasps, and flies, and an occasional spider and myriapod. The average of insect food for the whole year was 23 per cent, varying from less than 1 per cent in January to over 66 per cent in August, and it is gratifying to know that predaceous beetles and tent caterpillars form a large part of the jay's bill of fare.

His demands upon domesticated fruits and grains are comparatively light. He cares more for acorns and mast than for corn. The last he does not greatly relish, but eats it chiefly when the snow covers his favorite food. It is a little surprising that he occasionally varies his diet with fish, salamanders, tree frogs, mice, and shrews. Mr.

Beal's conclusion is put in the following sentence, which closes his valuable monograph: "In fact, the examination of nearly three hundred stomachs shows that the blue jay does far more good than harm."

An important question, therefore, from more than one point of view is: Should we ever kill the blue jay? Perhaps as sensible an answer to that question as can be given is this: We should by no means engage in a war of extermination upon the jays, but it might be wise, when they become too abundant, to thin out their numbers somewhat by shooting some of them or driving them away. It can scarcely be denied that if they are permitted to thrive without hindrance, and grow to large numbers, they will become sorely destructive of the eggs and nestlings of more desirable birds. I a.s.sure you, however, that I make this statement with reluctance and reserve, for the handsome blue-coat is one of our most cunning and interesting birds, and would be greatly missed if he were exterminated.

The blue jay is also a plucky bird, as I discovered one day not so very long ago. A pair of jays had a nest in a little park in front of my house, and one day one of the youngsters, which were still unable to fly, dropped to the ground. Fearing the cats or evilly disposed boys might catch the little fellow, I thought to do him and his parents a good turn by catching him and putting him up in one of the trees beyond the reach of his enemies. After quite a chase I succeeded in catching him. But the parent birds, flitting and calling in the trees, did not understand my well-meant intentions, and so one of them swung down and struck me on the top of the head with so much force that, either with his bill or his claws; he punctured the skin and made the blood come, leaving a scar on my crown for quite a while. The pesky thing! I think he might have known that I was his friend--but he didn't, his instinct not being a sure guide that time. But who can blame him? Not an hour afterwards the youngling again fell to the ground, when some children found it and killed it without the least excuse for their action. In such a case how could the parent birds distinguish between friend and foe? They found their little one lying dead on the ground, and mourned for it with heart-broken cries.

Some things cause a great to-do in the jay world. One day, while I was living in Kansas, the skeleton of a jay, with the feathers still attached, was found in the rubbish of an ash-pile in my rear yard, and exposed to view. An hour later a half dozen or more jays were flinging about in the peach tree above the feathers of their dead comrade, screaming at the top of their voices, "juking" their bodies, as is their wont when excited, and glaring at the disheveled plumes on the ground. If it was a funeral service, it certainly was a demonstrative one, and I do not believe that their grief and terror were affected.

A HANDSOME SCISSORSTAIL*

*Reprinted by permission from "American Ornithology," with important additions.

In order to study the scissorstailed flycatcher (_Milvulus forficatus_), of which some friends had told me again and again in a glow of enthusiasm, I made a trip to southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma. Several days pa.s.sed before an individual of this species put in appearance, as the scissorstails, which are migrants, had not yet returned from their winter quarters in a more southern clime, and so I had to wait for their arrival.

One day a friend and I were driving along a country road over the prairie, when a quaint bird form went swinging from the wire fence by the roadside toward a clump of willows in a shallow dip of the prairie.

Das.h.i.+ng after him, I heard a clear, musical call that proclaimed a bird with which I had not yet become acquainted.

In a few moments he flew from the tree. My binocular was fixed upon him as he went flitting across the field and presently alighted on the ground. My surmise was correct; it was the scissorstail flycatcher, one of the most unique and handsome birds belonging to our American avifauna, one that merits more than a pa.s.sing notice. To see him perched on a fence, or swinging gracefully through the air, and hear his bell-like calls and whistles makes you feel as if you were suddenly transported to a foreign land, like Australia or Borneo, where so many feathered curios are to be found.

In a fever of excitement I followed the bird, which presently flew back to the fence by the roadside. He flitted from point to point as my friend and I slowly pursued him, giving us an exhibition of his scissoring process. Sometimes he would alight on a post, then on the barbed wire, usually sitting flat on his breast. When open, the tail is bicolored, the outer border all around being white and the inner black. His general color is h.o.a.ry ash, paler, almost white, below, giving out a slight iridescence in the suns.h.i.+ne; his wings are blackish, with white tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs; his flanks are stained with salmon-red, and when his wings are spread, there appears a large blotch of scarlet at the inner angle of the intersection with the body. One individual that I afterwards saw wore a scarlet epaulet, which was almost concealed by the other plumes when the wing was closed, but was clearly seen when it was extended. An orange or scarlet gem adorns the crown, but is so well hidden by the other crest feathers that it is seldom noticed.

My friend and I were privileged to witness a rare and attractive scissorstail show, more gratifying than any circus performance. A loggerhead shrike suddenly appeared on the scene, and made an a.s.sault on the flycatcher. The two birds went gyrating, zigzagging, see-sawing through the air in a perfect jumble of white and black and ash. It must be remembered that the shrike himself makes a handsome picture on the wing, and when you come to mix up a scissorstail and a shrike in inextricable confusion, you have a feathery display worth seeing.

Nor was that the end of the exhibition, for in a moment a second scissorstail, the precise _facsimile_ of the first, appeared from somewhere, and the two flycatchers combined against their enemy. Then for a few minutes there was such a chaos of shrike and scissorstail that we could scarcely tell which was which. By and by the shrike wheeled away, when, as if to bring the gladiatorial show to a climax, the scissorstails engaged in a set-to that was really wonderful, coming together in the air, whirling around and around, rising in a spiral course, opening and closing their beautiful forked tails in quick succession, the black and white tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs flas.h.i.+ng momentarily, then disappearing, until the contestants finally descended, parted in the most graceful manner, and alighted on separate fence posts, none the worse for their _melee_.

In the evening I returned to the enchanted spot, but the scissorstails had disappeared. Not having had my fill of these charmers, I stopped, on my return home, for a day at Wellington, Kansas, where I was so fortunate as to find three birds of this species, who permitted me to watch them to my heart's content. They are not shy birds, but fly in a graceful, leisurely way from post to post along the fence as you walk or drive, sometimes sitting quietly to let you pa.s.s by. In this respect their habits are much like those of their cousin, the kingbird.

As his name indicates, our bird is the proud possessor of a genuine scissorstail, composed of two long, slender p.r.o.ngs that are spread far apart under certain conditions of flight. Let me describe the process minutely, for it is unique here in North America where fork-tailed birds are rare.

When the bird starts up from a perch, he spreads apart the p.r.o.ngs of his tail for a moment, as if to give himself a spring; then he closes them in a single slender stem, tapering outward to a point, keeping them closed during prolonged flight, and just as he sweeps down to another perch, he opens his ornamental scissors again, shutting them up as soon as he has settled upon his resting place. He does not open and close his tail at regular intervals during flight, as might be supposed, but keeps it closed until he descends to a perch, when it is opened for a moment in the act of alighting. However, if he has occasion to wheel or make a sudden turn in the air, either for an insect or in a playful prank, his scissors fly open, one might almost say spontaneously, no doubt serving the double purpose of rudder and balancing pole. When closed, the tail is very narrow, looking almost like a single plume. On the perch (except when he desires to s.h.i.+ft his position, when he also makes use of his wings) his tail is closed.

Therefore the picture of this bird in Dr. Coues's "Key to North American Birds" is not accurate, for it represents our bird in the sitting posture with the tines of his fork spread apart. If the wings were outstretched, representing the bird in the act of alighting or s.h.i.+fting his position, the picture would be true to scissorstail life.

The range of these birds is somewhat restricted, and for that reason, doubtless, so little is known about their habits. According to Ridgway, their proper home is in eastern Mexico and the southwestern prairie districts of the United States, though many of them come north as far as southern Kansas and southwestern Missouri to spend the summer and rear their families. In winter they go as far south as Costa Rico.

Restricted as their habitat is, it is curious to note that they are "accidental" in a few unexpected places, such as Key West, Fla., Norfolk, Va., and also in several localities in New England, Manitoba, and Hudson Bay Territory. Prof. W. W. Cooke, of Colorado, says they are "rare, if not accidental," in that state. To show that our birds are unique, it is relevant to say that there are only two species of scissors-tailed flycatchers in North America, which have the genus _Milvulus_ all to themselves. The other member of the genus is the forked-tailed flycatcher (_Milvulus tyrannus_), a resident of tropical America, migrating north normally as far as southern Mexico. He is a sort of southern twin of our scissorstail.

The nests of the scissorstails are set in the crotches of trees in the neighborhood of country homes on the prairie. Considering the size of the birds, their nests are quite small, not so large as those of the brown thrashers, though the cup is deeper and the architecture more compact and elaborate. A friend describes a nest which he found on a locust tree about sixteen feet from the ground. It was made mostly of dry gra.s.s and locust blossoms, with here and there a piece of twine braided into the structure. It had no special lining, but the gra.s.s was more evenly woven on the inside of the cup than elsewhere.

From three to five eggs are deposited. The ground color is white, either pure or creamy, sparingly mottled with rich madder-brown and lilac-gray, the spots being thicker and larger on the larger end.

While the nest is undergoing examination, the owners circle and hover overhead, much after the fas.h.i.+on of the red-winged blackbirds, expressing their disapproval in loud and musical calls, and displaying their rich scarlet decorations.

My descriptions have related only to the male bird, whose beautiful forked tail is nine to ten inches long, and whose colors are clear and more or less intense. His spouse resembles him, but is slightly smaller, while her tail, though forked like her mate's, is from two and a half to three inches shorter. The salmon and scarlet ornaments on the sides, flanks, and axillars are paler than those of her lord, and the scarlet spot shows very indistinctly on her occiput. The young of both s.e.xes don the dress of the mother bird during the first season, save that they fail to adorn themselves with a scarlet gem on the crown.

Like all the members of the flycatcher group, the scissorstails capture insects while on the wing, making many an attractive picture as they perform their graceful and interesting evolutions in the air.

It was a year or two later that I saw a scissorstail performing his ablutions in the northwestern part of Arkansas. How do you suppose he went about it? Not in the way birds usually do, by squatting down in the shallow water, twinkling their wings and tail, and sprinkling the liquid all over their plumage. No; this bird has a reputation to maintain for originality, and therefore he took his bath in this manner: First he perched on a telegraph wire by the roadside; then he swung gracefully down to a little pond, dashed lightly into the water, giving himself a slight wetting, after which he flew up to his original perch on the wire. A minute or less was then spent in preening his plumes; but they were not moist enough to suit his purpose, so he darted down to the pond again, making the spray rise as lie struck the water; then up to his perch he swung again, to arrange his feathers; and this was repeated a number of times, till his toilet was completed.

It would not be safe to risk saying that the scissorstail always takes his bath in this way; but I know this one did. I once saw a kingbird doing the same thing, and so it may be a fas.h.i.+on in flycatcher circles.

I am minded, in order to make this monograph more complete, to borrow a couple of paragraphs from Mrs. Bailey's "Handbook of Birds of the Western United States." She has studied the bird in the Southwest, and gives the following graphic description of the bird and its habits: