Birds Every Child Should Know Part 12

Time for these young phoebes to leave the nest

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Young phoebes on a bridge trestle

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He and his mate were certainly frantic with fear, however, when I climbed into their apple tree one June morning, determined to have a peep at the five creamy-white eggs, speckled with brown and pale lilac, that had just been laid in the nest in a crotch near the end of a stout limb. Whirling and das.h.i.+ng about my head, the pair made me lose my balance, and I tumbled ten feet or more to the ground. As the intruder fell, they might well have exclaimed--perhaps they did--_"Sic semper tyrannis!"_

CRESTED FLYCATCHER

Far more tyrannical than the kingbird is this "wild Irishman," as John Burroughs calls the large flycatcher with the tousled head and harsh, uncanny voice, who prowls around the woods and orchards startling most feathered friends and foes with a loud, piercing exclamation that sounds like _What!_ Unlike good children, he is more often heard than seen.

That the solitary, unpopular bird takes a mischievous delight in scaring its enemies, you may know when I tell you that it likes better than any other lining for its nest, a cast snake skin. Is it any wonder that the baby flycatchers' hair stands on end? If the great-crest cannot find the skin of a snake to coil {166} around her eggs, or to hang out of the nest, she may use onion skins, or oiled paper, or even fish scales; for what was once a protective custom, sometimes becomes degraded into a cheap imitation of the imitation in the furnis.h.i.+ng of her house. Into an abandoned woodp.e.c.k.e.rs' hole or a bluebirds' cavity after the babies of these early nesters have flown, or into some unappropriated hollow in a tree, this flycatcher carries enough gra.s.ses, weeds and feathers to keep her nestlings cozy during those rare days of June beloved by Lowell, but which Dr. Holmes observed are often so rare they are raw.

PHOEBE

_Called also: Bridge Pewee; Dusky Flycatcher; Water Pewee_

The first of its family to come North, as well as the last to leave us for the winter, the phoebe appears toward the end of March to snap up the first insects warmed into life by the spring suns.h.i.+ne. Grackles in the evergreens, red-wings in the swampy meadows, bluebirds in the orchard may a.s.sure us that summer is on the way; but the homely, confiding phoebe, who comes close about our houses and barns, brings the good news home to us every hour.

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_Pewit--phoebe, pewit--phoebe_, he calls continually. As he perches on the peak of a building or other point of vantage, notice how vigorously he wags his tail when he calls, and turns his head this way and that, to keep an eye in all directions lest a bite should fly by him unawares.

Presently a mate comes from somewhere south of the Carolinas where she has pa.s.sed the winter; for phoebes are more hardy than the rest of the family and do not travel all the way to the tropics. With unfailing accuracy she finds the region where she built her nest the previous season or where she herself was hatched. This instinct of returned direction is marvellous, is it not? Sometimes it is hard enough for us humans to find the way home when not ten miles away. Did you ever get lost? Birds almost never do.

Phoebes like a covering over their heads to protect their nests from spring rains, so you will see a domesticated couple going about the place like a pair of wrens, investigating niches under the piazza roof, beams in an empty barn loft and projections under bridges and trestles. By the middle of April a neat nest of moss and lichen, plastered together with mud and lined with long hair or wool, if sheep are near, is made in the vicinity of their home of the year before.

{168} The nursery is exquisitely fas.h.i.+oned--one of the best pieces of bird architecture you are likely to find.

Some over-thrifty housekeepers, nevertheless, tear down nests from their piazzas, because the poor little phoebes are so afflicted with lice that they are considered objectionable neighbours. Many wild birds, like chickens, have their life-blood drawn by these minute pests. But a thorough dusting of the phoebe's nest with Persian powder would bring relief to the tormented birds, save their babies, perhaps, from death and keep the piazza free from vermin. No birds enjoy a bath in your fountain or water pan more than these tormented ones.

From purely selfish motives it pays to cultivate neighbours ever on the lookout for flies, wasps, May beetles, click beetles, elm destroyers and the moth of the cutworm. The first nest is usually so infested that the phoebes either tear it down in July, and build a new one on its site, or else make the second nest at a little distance from the first. The parents of two broods of from four to six ravenously hungry, insectivorous young, with an instinctive desire to return to their old home year after year, should surely meet no discouragement from thinking farmers' wives.

Shouldn't you think that baby phoebes, reared in nests under railroad bridges, would {169} be fearfully frightened whenever a train thundered overhead?

WOOD PEWEE

When you have been wandering through the summer woods did you ever, like Trowbridge, sit down

"Beside the brook, irresolute, And watch a little bird in suit Of sombre olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple branches, mute?

With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender starred.

'Dear bird,' I said, 'what is thy name?'

And thrice the mournful answer came.

So faint and far, and yet so near-- 'Pewee! pe-wee! peer!'"

Doubtless this demure, gentle little cousin of the noisy, aggressive, crested flycatcher has no secret sorrow preying at its heart, but the tender pathos of its long-drawn notes would seem to indicate that it is rather melancholy. And it sings (in spite of the books which teach us that the flycatchers are "songless, perching birds") from the time of its arrival from Central America in May until only the tireless indigo bunting and the red-eyed vireo are left in the choir in August.

But how suddenly its melancholy languor {170} departs the instant an insect flies within sight! With a cheerful, sudden sally in mid-air, it snaps up the luscious bite, for it can be quite as active as any of the family. While not so ready to be neighbourly as the phoebe, the pewee condescends to visit our orchards and shade trees.

When nesting time comes, it looks for a partly decayed, lichen-covered branch, and on to this saddles a compact, exquisite cradle of fine gra.s.s, moss and shreds of bark, binding bits of lichen with spiders'

web to the outside until the sharpest of eyes are needed to tell the stuccoed nest from the limb it rests on. Only the tiny hummingbird, who also uses lichen as a protective and decorative device, conceals her nest so successfully.

LEAST FLYCATCHER

_Called also: Chebec_

It is not until he calls out his name, _Chebec! Chebec!_ in clear and business-like tones from some tree-top that you could identify this fluffy flycatcher, scarcely more than five inches long, whose dusky coat and light vest offer no helpful markings. Not a single gay feather relieves his sombre suit. Isn't this a queer, Quakerly taste for a bird that spends half his life {171} in the tropics among gorgeously feathered friends? Even the plain vireos, as a family, wear finer clothes than the dusky flycatchers. You may know that the chebec is not one of those deliberate searchers of foliage by his sudden, murderous sallies in mid-air.

Abundant from Pennsylvania to Quebec, the least flycatchers are too inconspicuous to be much noticed. They haunt apple orchards chiefly at nesting time, fortunately for the crop, and at no season secrete themselves in shady woods as pewees do. A little chebec neighbour of mine used to dart through the spray from the hose that played on the lawn late every every afternoon during a drought, and sit on the tennis net to preen his wet feathers; but he nearly put out my eyes in his excitement and anger when I presumed on so much friendliness to peep into his nest.

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CHAPTER XII

SOME QUEER RELATIONS

Whip-poor-will Nighthawk Chimney Swift Ruby-throated Hummingbird

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WHIP-POOR-WILL

A queer, shadowy bird, that sleeps all day in the dense wood and flies about through open country after dark as softly as an owl, would be difficult for any child to know were it not for the weird, snappy triplets of notes that tell his name. Every one knows him far better by sound than by sight. _Whip-poor-will (chuck) whip-poor-will (chuck) whip-poor-will (chuck)_ he calls rapidly for about two hours, just after sunset or before sunrise from some low place, fluttering his wings at each announcement of his name. But you must be near him to hear the _chuck_ at the end of each vigorous triplet; most listeners don't know it is there.

You might be very close indeed without seeing the plump bird, about the size of a robin, who has flattened himself lengthwise against a lichen-covered branch until you cannot tell bird from bark. Or he may be on a rock or an old, mossy log, where he rests serene in the knowledge that his mottled, dull dark-brown, gray, buff, black and white feathers blend perfectly with his resting place. He must choose a spot broad enough to support his {176} whole body, for, like his cousin, the nighthawk, and his more distant relatives, the hummingbird and the swift, his feet are too small and weak for much perching. You never see him standing erect on a twig with his toes clasped around it, but always squatting when at rest.

A narrow white band across his throat makes his depressed head look as if it had been separated from his body--a queer effect that may remind you of the Ches.h.i.+re Cat in "Alice in Wonderland." The whip-poor-will's three outer tail feathers have white ends which help to distinguish him from the nighthawk. He has a funny little short beak, but his large mouth stretches from ear to ear, and when he flies low above the fields after sunset, this trap is kept open, like the swift's and the swallow's, to catch any night-flying insects--mosquitoes, June bugs, gnats, katydids and little moths--that cross his path. Long, stiffened bristles at the ends of his mouth prevent the escape of a victim past the gaping trap. On the wing the bird is exceedingly swift and graceful. Some children mistake him for a bat or a nighthawk.

Relying upon the protective covering of her soft plumage, the mother whip-poor-will builds no nest, but lays a pair of mottled eggs directly on the ground in the dark woods where a carpet of dead leaves and decayed wood makes concealment perfect.

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Least flycatchers in a rose bush.