Birds Every Child Should Know Part 11

No bird is so well known to "every child," so admired by artists, so hated by farmers, as the crow, who flaps his leisurely way above the cornfields with a _caw_ for friend and foe alike, not caring the least for anyone's opinion of him, good or bad. Perhaps he knows his own true worth better than the average farmer, who has persecuted him with bounty laws, shotgun, and poison for generations. The crow keeps no account of the immense numbers of grubs and larvae he picks up as he walks after the plough every spring, nor does the farmer, who nevertheless counts the corn stolen as fast as it is planted, and as fast as it ripens, {154} you may be very sure, and puts a price on the robber's head. Yet he knows that corn, dipped in tar before it is put in the ground, will be left alone to sprout. But who is clever enough to keep the crows out of the field in autumn?

How humiliated would humans feel if they realised what these knowing birds must think of us when we set up in our cornfields the absurd-looking scares they so calmly ignore! Some crows I know ate every kernel off every ear around the scare-crow in a neighbour's field, but touched no stalk very far from it, as much as to say: "We take your dare along with your corn, Mr. Silly. If the ox that treadeth out his corn is ent.i.tled to his share of it, ought not we, who saved it from gra.s.shoppers, cutworms, May beetles and other pests, be sharers in the profits?" Granted; but what about eating the farmer's young chickens and turkeys as well as the eggs and babies of little song birds? At times, it must be admitted, the crow's heart is certainly as dark as his feathers; he is as black as he is painted, but happily such cannibalism is apt to be rare. Strange that a bird so tenderly devoted to his own fledglings, should be so heartless to others'!

Toward the end of winter, you may see a pair of crows carrying sticks and trash to the top of some tall tree in the leafless woods, {155} and there, in this bulky cradle, almost as bulky as a squirrel's nest, they raise their family. Young crows may be easily tamed and they make interesting, but very mischievous pets. It is only when crows are nesting that they give up their social, flocking habit.

In winter, if the fields be lean, large picturesque flocks may be seen at dawn streaking across the sky to distant beaches where they feed on worms, refuse and small sh.e.l.lfish. More than one crow has been watched, rising in the air with a clam or a mussel in his claws, dropping it on a rock, then falling after it, as soon as the sh.e.l.l is smashed, to feast upon its contents. The fish crow, a distinct species, never found far inland, although not necessarily seen near water, may be distinguished from our common crow by its hoa.r.s.er _car_.

In some cases it joins its cousins on the beaches. With punctual regularity at sundown, the flocks straggle back inland to go to sleep, sometimes thousands of crows together in a single roost. Many birds have more regular meal hours and bed-time than some children seem to care for. Because crows eat almost anything they can find, and pick up a good living where other birds, more finical or less clever, would starve, they rarely need to migrate; but they are great rovers. There is not a day in the year when you could not find a crow.

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BLUE JAY

This vivacious, das.h.i.+ng fellow, harsh-voiced and noisy, cannot be overlooked; for when a brightly coloured bird, about a foot long, roves about your neighbourhood with a troop of screaming relatives, everybody knows it. In summer he keeps quiet, but throws off all restraint in autumn. Hear him hammering at an acorn some frosty morning! How vigorous his motions, how alert and independent! His beautiful military blue, black and white feathers, and crested head, give him distinction.

He is certainly handsome. But is his beauty only skin deep? Does it cover, in reality, a mult.i.tude of sins? Shocking stories of murder in the song bird's nest have branded the blue jay with quite as bad a name as the crow's. The brains of fledglings, it has been said, are his favourite tid-bits. But happily scientists, who have turned the searchlight on his deeds, find that his sins have been very greatly exaggerated. Remains of young birds were found in only two out of nearly three hundred blue jays' stomachs a.n.a.lysed. Birds' eggs are more apt to be sucked by both jays and squirrels than are the nestlings to be eaten. Do you ever enjoy an egg for breakfast? Fruit, grain, thin-sh.e.l.led nuts, and the larger seeds of trees {157} and shrubs, gathered for the most part in Nature's open store-room, not in man's, are what the jay chiefly delights in; and these he hides away, squirrel-fas.h.i.+on, to provide for the rainy day. More than half of all his food in summer consists of insects, so you see he is then quite as useful as his cousin, the crow.

Jays are fearful teasers. How they love to chase about some poor, blinking, bewildered owl, in the daylight! _Jay-jay-jay_, you may hear them scream through the woods. They mimic the hawk's cry for no better reason, perhaps, than that they may laugh at the panic into which timid little birds are thrown at the terrifying sound. A pet jay I knew could whistle up the stupid house-dog, who was fooled again and again. This same jay used to carry all its beech nuts to a piazza roof, wedge them between the s.h.i.+ngles, and open them there with ease.

An interesting array of hair pins, matches, b.u.t.tons, a thimble and a silver spoon were raked out of his favourite cache under the eaves.

CANADA JAY

_Called also: Whiskey Jack; Moose-bird; Meat-bird_

Anyone who has camped in the northern United States and over the Canadian border knows that the crow and blue jay have a rogue for {158} a cousin in this sleek, bold thief, the Canada jay. He is a fluffy, big, gray bird, without a crest, with a white throat and forehead and black patch at the back of his neck. This rascal will walk alone or with his gang into your tent, steal your candles, matches, venison, and collar-b.u.t.tons before your eyes, or help himself to the fish bait while he perches on your canoe, or laugh at you with an impudent _ca-ca-ca_ from the mountain ash tree where he and his friends are feasting on the berries; then glide to the ground to slyly pick a trap set for mink or marten. Fortunate the trapper who, on his return, does not find either bait gone, or game damaged.

Fearless, amazingly hardy (having been hatched in zero weather), mischievous and clever to a maddening degree, this jay, like his cousins, compels admiration, although we know all three to be rogues.

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Blue jay on her nest

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Five little teasers get no dinner from Mamma blue jay

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Not afraid of the camera: baby blue jay out for their first airing

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CHAPTER XI

THE FLYCATCHERS

Kingbird Crested Flycatcher Phoebe Pewee Least Flycatcher

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THE FLYCATCHERS

When you see a dusky bird, smaller than a robin, lighter gray underneath than on its sooty-brown back, with a well-rounded, erect head, set on a short, thick neck, you may safely guess it is one of the flycatchers--another strictly American family. If the bird has a white band across the end of its tail it is probably the fearless kingbird. If the feathers on top of its head look as if they had been brushed the wrong way into a pointed crest; moreover, if some chestnut colour shows in its tail when spread, and its pearly gray breast shades into yellow underneath, you are looking at the noisy "wild Irishman" of birddom, the crested flycatcher. Confiding Phoebe wears the plainest of dull clothes with a still darker, dusky crown cap, and a line of white on her outer tail feathers. She and the plaintive wood pewee, who has two indistinct whitish bars across her extra-long wings, are scarcely larger than an English sparrow; while the least flycatcher, who calls himself _Chebec_, is, as you may suppose, the smallest member of the tribe to leave the tropics and spend the summer with us. Male and female members of this {162} family wear similar clothes, fortunately for "every child" who tries to identify them.

You can tell a flycatcher at sight by the way he collects his dinner.

Perhaps he will be sitting quietly on the limb of a tree or on a fence as if dreaming, when suddenly off he dashes into the air, clicks his broad bill sharply over a winged insect, flutters an instant, then wheels about and returns to his favourite perch to wait for the next course to fly by. He may describe fifty such loops in mid-air and make as many fatal snap-shots before his hunger is satisfied. A swallow or a swift would keep constantly on the wing; a vireo would hunt leisurely among the foliage; a warbler would restlessly flit about the tree hunting for its dinner among the leaves; but the dignified, dexterous flycatcher, like a hawk, waits patiently on his lookout for a dinner to fly toward him. "All things come to him who waits," he firmly believes.

None of the family is musically gifted, but all make a more or less pleasing noise. Flycatchers are solitary, sedentary birds, never being found in flocks; but when mated, they are devoted home lovers.

We are apt to think of tropical birds as very gaily feathered, but certainly many that come from warmer climes to spend the summer with us are less conspicuous than Quakers.

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The das.h.i.+ng, great crested flycatcher

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Baby kingbirds in an apple tree

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KINGBIRD

_Called also: Bee Martin_

In spite of his scientific name, which has branded him the tyrant of tyrants, the kingbird is by no means a bully. See him high in air in hot pursuit of that big, black, villainous crow, who dared try to rob his nest, darting about the rascal's head and pecking at his eyes until he is glad to leave the neighbourhood! There seems to be an eternal feud between them. Even the marauding hawk, that strikes terror to every other feathered breast, will be driven off by the plucky little kingbird. But surely a courageous home defender is no tyrant. A kingbird doesn't like the scolding catbird for a neighbour, or the teasing blue jay, or the meddlesome English sparrow, but he simply gives them a wide berth. He is no Don Quixote ready to fight from mere bravado. _Tyrannus tyrannus_ is a libel.

For years he has been called the bee martin and some scientific men in Was.h.i.+ngton determined to learn if that name, also, is deserved. So they collected over two hundred kingbirds from different parts of the country, examined their stomachs and found bees--mostly drones--in only fourteen. The bird is too keen sighted and clever to snap up knowingly a bee with a {164} sting attached, you may be sure; but occasionally he makes a mistake when, don't you believe, he is more sorry for it than the beekeeper? He destroys so many robber flies--a pest of the hives--that the intelligent apiarist, who keeps bees in his orchard to fertilise the blossoms, always likes to see a pair of kingbirds nesting in one of his fruit trees. The gardener welcomes the bird that eats rose chafers; the farmer approves of him because he catches the gadfly that torments his horses and cattle, as well as the gra.s.shoppers, katydids and crickets that would destroy his field crops if left unchecked.

From a favourite lookout on a tall mullein stalk, a kingbird neighbour of mine would detect an insect over one hundred and seventy feet away, where no human eye could see it, dash off, snap it safely within his bill, flutter uncertainly an instant, then return to his perch ready to "loop the loop" again any moment. The curved clasp at the tip of his bill and the stiff hairs at the base helped hold every insect his prisoner. While waiting for food to fly into sight the watcher did a good deal of calling. His harsh, chattering note, _ching, ching_, which penetrated to a surprising distance, did not express alarm, but rather the exultant joy of victory.

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Four crested flycatchers who need to have their hair brushed

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