Birds Every Child Should Know Part 15

Most birds will not touch the hairy, fuzzy caterpillars--very disagreeable mouthfuls, one would think. But happily cuckoos enjoy them as well as the smooth, slippery kind. "I guess they like the custard inside," said a little boy I know who had stepped on a fat caterpillar on the path. "Cuckoos might well be called caterpillar birds," wrote Florence Merriam Bailey, "for they are so given to a diet of the hairy caterpillars that the walls of their stomachs are actually permeated with the hairs, and a section of stomach looks like the smoothly brushed top of a gentleman's beaver hat." When you see the webs that the tent caterpillar stretches across the ends of the branches of fruit and nut trees toward the end of summer, or early autumn, watch for the cuckoo's visits. Orioles, also, tear open the webs to get at the wiggling morsels inside, but they leave dead and mutilated remains behind them, showing that their appet.i.te for web worms is less keen than that of the cuckoos, who eat them up clean.

Fortunately the caterpillar of the terribly destructive gypsy moth is another favourite dainty.

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The flicker.

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Two baby cuckoos on the rickety bundle of sticks that by courtesy we call a nest.

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Perhaps you have heard that the cuckoo, like the naughty cowbird, builds no nest and lays its eggs in other birds' cradles? This is true only of the European cuckoo. Its American cousin makes a poor apology for a nest, it is true, merely a loose bundle or platform of sticks, as flimsily put together as a dove's nest. The greenish-blue eggs or the naked babies must certainly fall through, one would think. Still it is all the cuckoos' own, and they are proud of it. But so sensitive and fearful are they when a human visitor inspects their nursery that they will usually desert it, never to return, if you touch it, so beware of peeping!

When the skinny cuckoo babies are a few days old, blue pin-feathers begin to appear, and presently their bodies are stuck full of fine, sharply pointed quills like a well-stocked pin cus.h.i.+on. Porcupine babies you might think them now. But presto! every pin-feather suddenly fluffs out the day before the youngsters leave the nest, and they are clothed in a suit of soft feathers like their parents. In a few months young cuckoos, hatched as far north as New England and Canada or even Labrador, are strong enough to fly to Central or South America to spend the winter.

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BELTED KINGFISHER

_Called also: The Halcyon_

This Izaak Walton of birddom, whom you may see perched as erect as a fish hawk on a snag in the lake, creek or river, or on a dead limb projecting over the water, on the lookout for minnows, chub, red fins, samlets or any other small fry that swims past, is as expert as any fisherman you are ever likely to know. Sharp eyes are necessary to see a little fish where sunbeams dance on the ripples and the refracted light plays queer tricks with one's vision. Once a victim is sighted, how swiftly the lone fisherman dives through the air and water after it, and how accurately he strikes its death-blow behind the gills! If the fish be large and l.u.s.ty it may be necessary to carry it to the snag and give it a few sharp knocks with his long powerful bill to end its struggles. These are soon over, but the kingfisher's have only begun. See him gag and writhe as he swallows his dinner, head first, and then, regretting his haste, brings it up again to try a wider avenue down his throat! Somebody shot a kingfisher which had tried to swallow so large a fish that the tail was sticking out of his mouth, while its head was safely stored below in the bird's stomach. After the meat digests, {209} the indigestible skin, bones, and scales of the fish are thrown up without the least nausea.

A certain part of a favourite lake or stream this fisherman patrols with a sense of owners.h.i.+p and rarely leaves it. Alone, but self-satisfied, he clatters up and down his beat as a policeman, going his rounds, might sound his rattle from time to time. The rattle-headed bird knows every pool where minnows play, every projection along the bank where a fish might hide, and is ever on the alert, not only to catch a dinner, but to escape from the sight of the child who intrudes on his domain and wants to "know" him. You cannot mistake this big, chunky bird, fully a foot long, with grayish-blue upper parts, the long, strong wings and short, square tail dotted in broken bars of white, and with a heavy, bluish band across his white breast. His mate and children wear rusty bands instead of blue. The crested feathers on top of his big, powerful head reach backward to the nape like an Indian chief's feather bonnet, and give him distinction. Under his thick, oily plumage, as waterproof as a duck's, he wears a suit of down under-clothing.

No doubt you have heard that all birds are descended from reptile ancestors; that feathers are but modified scales, and that a bird's song is but the glorified hiss of the serpent. Then {210} the kingfisher and the bank swallow retain at least one ancient custom of their ancestors, for they still place their eggs in the ground. The lone fisherman chooses a mate early in the spring and, with her help, he tunnels a hole in a bank next a good fis.h.i.+ng ground. A minnow pool furnishes the most-approved baby food. Perhaps the mates will work two or three weeks before they have tunnelled far enough to suit them and made a s.p.a.cious nursery at the end of the long hall. Usually from five to eight white eggs are laid about six feet from the entrance on a bundle of gra.s.s, or perhaps on a heap of ejected fish bones and refuse. While his queen broods, the devoted kingfisher brings her the best of his catch. At first their babies are as bare and skinny as their cuckoo relatives. When the father or mother bird flies up stream with a fish for them, giving a rattling call instead of ringing a dinner bell, all the hungry youngsters rush forward to the mouth of the tunnel; but only one can be satisfied each trip. Then all run backward through the inclined tunnel, like reversible steam engines, and keep tightly huddled together until the next exciting rattle is heard. Both parents are always on guard to drive off mink, rats and water snakes that are the terrors of their nursery.

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Waiting for mamma and fish

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Young belted kingfisher on his favourite snag

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Kingfisher on the look-out for a dinner

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CHAPTER XV

DAY AND NIGHT ALLIES OF THE FARMER

Turkey Vulture Red-shouldered Hawk Red-tailed Hawk Cooper's Hawk Bald Eagle American Sparrow Hawk American Osprey American Barn Owl Short-eared Owl Long-eared Owl Barred Owl Screech Owl

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TURKEY VULTURE

_Called also: Turkey Buzzard_

Every child south of Mason and Dixon's line knows this big buzzard that sails serenely with its companions in great circles, floating high overhead, now rising, now falling, with scarcely a movement of its wide-spread wings. In the air, it expresses the very poetry of motion. No other bird is more graceful and buoyant. One could spend hours watching its fascinating flight. But surely its earthly habits express the very prose of existence; for it may be seen in the company of other dusky scavengers, walking about in the roads of the smaller towns and villages, picking up refuse; or, in the fields, feeding on some dead animal. Relying upon its good offices, the careless farmer lets his dead pig or horse or chicken lie where it dropped, knowing that buzzards will speedily settle on it and pick its bones clean. Our soldiers in the war with Spain say that the final touch of horror on the Cuban battlefields was when the buzzards, that were wheeling overhead, suddenly dropped where their wounded or dead comrades fell.

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Because it is so helpful in ridding the earth of decaying matter, the law and the Southern people, white and coloured, protect the vulture.

Its usefulness is more easily seen and understood than that of many smaller birds of greater value which, alas! are a target for every gunner. Consequently, it is perhaps the commonest bird in the South, and tame enough for the merest tyro in bird lore to learn that it is about two and a half feet long, with a wing spread of fully six feet; that its head and neck are bare and red like a turkey's, and that its body is covered with dusky feathers edged with brown--an ungainly, unlovely creature out of its element, the air. Another sable scavenger, the black vulture or carrion crow, of similar habits, but with a more southerly range, is common in the Gulf States.

Because it feeds on carrion that not even a goat grudges it, and is too lazy and cowardly to pick a quarrel, the buzzard has no enemies.

Although cla.s.sed among birds of prey, it does not frighten the smallest chick in the poultry yard when it flops down beside it. With beak and claws capable of gas.h.i.+ng painful wounds, it never uses them for defence, but resorts to the disgusting trick of throwing up the contents of its stomach over any creature that comes too near. When a colony of the ever-sociable buzzards are nesting, you may be very sure {215} no one cares to make a close study of their young.

RED-SHOULDERED HAWK

_Called also: Hen Hawk; Chicken Hawk; Winter Hawk_

Let any one say "Hawk" to the average farmer and he looks for his gun.

For many years it was supposed that every member of the hawk family was a villain and fair game, but the white searchlight of science shows us that most of the tribe are the farmers' allies, which, with the owls, share the task of keeping in check the mice, moles, gophers, snakes, and the larger insect pests. Nature keeps her vast domain patrolled by these vigilant watchers by day and by night. Guns may well be turned on those blood-thirsty fiends in feathers. Cooper's hawk, the sharp-s.h.i.+nned hawk, and the goshawk, that not only eat our poultry, but every song bird they can catch: the law of the survival of the fittest might well be enforced with lead in their case. But do let us protect our friends, the more heavily built and slow-flying hawks with the red tails and red shoulders, among other allies in our ceaseless war against farm vermin!

In the court of last appeal to which all our {216} hawks are brought--I mean those scientific men in the Department of Agriculture, Was.h.i.+ngton, who examine the contents of birds' stomachs to learn just what food is taken in different parts of the country and at different seasons of the year--the two so-called "hen hawks" were proved to be rare offenders, and great helpers. Two hundred and twenty stomachs of red-shouldered hawks were examined by Dr. Fisher, and only three contained remains of poultry, while one hundred and two contained mice; ninety-two, insects; forty, moles and other small mammals; fifty-nine, frogs and snakes, and so on. The percentage of poultry eaten is so small that it might be reduced to nothing if the farmers would keep their chickens in yards instead of letting them roam to pick up a living in the fields, where the temptation to s.n.a.t.c.h up one must be overwhelming to a hungry hawk. Fortunately these two beneficent "hen hawks," are still common, in spite of our ignorant persecution of them for two hundred years or more.

Toward the end of summer, especially in September, when nursery duties have ended for the year and the hawks are care free, you may see them sailing in wide spirals, delighting in the cooler stratum of air high overhead. Balancing on wide, outstretched wings, floating serenely with no apparent effort, they enjoy {217} the slow merry-go-round at a height that would make any child dizzy. Sometimes they rise out of sight. _Kee you, kee you_, they scream as they sail. Does the teasing blue jay imitate the call for the fun of frightening little birds?

But the red-shouldered hawk is not on pleasure bent much of the time.

Perching is its specialty, and on an outstretched limb, or other point of vantage, it sits erect and dignified, its far-seeing eyes alone in motion trying to sight its quarry--a mouse creeping through the meadow, a mole leaving its tunnel, a chipmunk running along a stone wall, a frog leaping into the swamp, a gopher or young rabbit frisking around the edges of the wood--when, spying one, "like a thunderbolt it falls."

If you could ever creep close enough to a red-shouldered hawk, which is not likely, you would see that it is a powerful bird, about a foot and a half long, dark brown above, the feathers edged with rusty, with bright chestnut patches on the shoulders. The wings and dark tail are barred with white, so are the rusty-buff under parts, and the light throat has dark streaks. Female hawks are larger than the males, just as the squaws in some Indian tribes are larger than the braves. It is said that hawks remain mated for life; so do eagles and owls, for in their family life, at least, the birds of prey are remarkably devoted, gentle and loving.

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RED-TAILED HAWK

_Called also: Hen Hawk; Chicken Hawk; Red Hawk_