Chapter II: Part 2

The rose-color of the male, it should be said, is not confined to the patch on the breast, but is found also on the lining of the wings, where it is mostly unnoticed by the world, but where his mate, of course, cannot help admiring it as he flutters about her; for it is certain that female birds have a good eye for color, and believe that fine feathers help, at least, to make fine birds. The shade is of the brightest and most exquisite, and the total effect of the male’s plumage--jet black, pure white, and vivid rose-red--is quite beyond praise.

The birds, happily, are not shy, and prefer a fairly open or broken country rather than a dense wood. Last season one sang day after day directly under my windows, and undoubtedly had a mate and a nest somewhere close by. The male, it should be added, has the very pretty though dangerous-seeming habit of singing as he sits upon the eggs.

XI

THE BLUE JAY

Some years ago, as the story comes to me, two collectors of birds met by accident in South America, one of them from Europe, the other from the United States. “There is one bird that I would rather see than any other in the world,” said the European. “It is the handsomest of all the birds that fly, to my thinking, although I know it only in the cabinet. You have it in North America, but I suppose you do not often see it. I mean the blue jay.”

What the American answered in words, I do not know; but I am pretty confident that he smiled. The European might almost as well have said that he supposed Boston people did not often see an English sparrow. Not that the blue jay swarms everywhere as the foreign sparrow swarms in our American cities; but it is so common, so noisy, so conspicuous, and so unmistakable, that it is, or ought to be, almost an everyday sight to all country dwellers.

Strange as it seems, however, I find many people who do not know the jay when they see it. In late winter, say toward the end of February, when I begin to be on the lookout for the first bluebird of the year, I am all but certain to have word brought to me by some one of the village school-teachers that bluebirds have already come. Johnny This or Jimmy That saw one near his house several weeks ago! That “several weeks ago” makes me suspicious, and on following up the matter I discover that John and James have seen a large blue bird, larger than a robin, with some black and white on him--_all_ white underneath--_and_ wearing a tall crest or topknot. Then I know that they have mistaken a blue _bird_ for a _blue_bird. They have seen a blue jay, a bird of a very different feather. He has been with us all winter, as he always is, and has been in sight from my windows daily. So easy is it for boys and men to guess at things, and guess wrong.

The jay is a relative of the crow, and has much of the crow’s cleverness, with more than the crow’s beauty. Like the crow, if he has an errand near houses, he makes a point of doing it in the early morning before the folks who live in the houses have begun to stir about. In fact, he knows us, in some respects at least, better than we know him, and habitually takes advantage of what no doubt seems to him a custom of very late rising on the part of human beings.

Among small birds of all sorts he bears a decidedly bad name. In nesting time you may hear them uttering a chorus of loud and bitter laments as often as he appears among them. Their eggs and young are in danger, and they join forces to worry him and drive him away. One bird sounds the alarm, another hears him and hastens to see what is going on, and in a few minutes the whole neighborhood is awake. And it stays awake till the jay moves off. After that piece of evidence, you do not need to _see_ him doing mischief. The little birds’ behavior is sufficiently convincing. As Thoreau said, the presence of a trout in the milk is something like proof.

And jays, in their turn, club together against enemies larger than themselves. Last autumn I was walking through the woods with a friend,--a city schoolmaster eager for knowledge, as every schoolmaster ought to be,--when we heard a great screaming of blue jays from a swampy thicket on our right hand.

“Now what do you suppose the birds mean by all that outcry?” said my friend.

I answered that very likely there was a hawk or an owl there.

“Let’s go and see,” said the master, and we turned in that direction. Sure enough, we soon came face to face with a large hen-hawk perched in one of the trees, while the jays, one after another, were dashing as near him as they dared, yelling at him as they passed.

At our nearer approach the hawk took wing; then the jays disappeared, and silence fell upon the woods. And I dare say the schoolmaster gave me credit for being a wondrously wise man!

The jay has many notes, and once in a great while may even be heard indulging in something like a warble. One of his most musical calls sounds to my ears a little like the word “lily.”

He seems to be very fond of acorns, and is frequently to be seen standing upon a limb, holding an acorn under his claw and hammering it to pieces with all the force of his stout bill. When angered, he scolds violently, bobbing up and down in a most ridiculous manner. In fact, he is of a highly nervous temperament, and as full of gesticulations as a Frenchman.

To me he is especially a bird of autumn. At that season the woods are loud with his clarion, and as I listen to it I can often feel myself a boy again, rambling in the woods that knew me in my school-days. With all his faults--his ill treatment of small birds, I mean--I should be sorry to have his numbers greatly diminished.

XII

THE KINGBIRD

As a very small boy I spent much time in a certain piece of rather low ground partly grown up to bushes. Here in early spring I picked bunches of pretty pink and white flowers, which I now know to have been anemones. In the same place, a month or two later, I gathered splendid red lilies, and admired, without gathering it, a tiny blue flower with a yellow centre. This would not bear taking home, but was always an attraction to me. I should have liked it better still, I am sure, if some one had been kind enough to tell me its pretty name--blue-eyed grass.

Here, also, I picked the first strawberries of the season and the first blueberries. They were luxuries indeed. A “gill-cup” full of either of them was good pay for an hour’s search.

In one corner of the place there were half a dozen or so of apple-trees, and on the topmost branches of these there used to perch continually two or three birds of a kind which some older boy told me were kingbirds. At these my brother and I--both of us small enough to be excusable for such mischief--were in the habit of throwing green apples; partly to see how near we could come to hitting them, partly for the fun of watching them rise into the air, circle about with sharp cries, and then settle back upon the perches they had left. Sometimes we stuck the half-grown apple on the end of a stick, swung the stick round our heads, and sent the apple flying to a tremendous distance. Stick or no stick, however, we were in no danger of killing anything, as I am glad now to remember.

What amazed us was that the birds did not go away. No matter how long we “appled” them, they were certain to be on hand the next day in the same place. We must have been very young and very green,--greener even than the apples,--for it never occurred to us that the birds had nests in the trees, and for that reason were not to be driven away by our petty persecutions.

Even then I noticed the peculiar flight of the birds--the short, quick strokes of their wings, and their habit of hovering. These are among the signs by which the kingbird can be recognized a long way off. He is dark-colored above,--almost black,--pure white underneath, and his tail, when outspread, shows a broad white border at the tip. On his crown is an orange-red patch, but you will probably never see it unless you have the bird in your hand and brush apart the feathers in search of it.

The kingbird’s Latin name has much the same meaning as his common English one. _Tyrannus tyrannus_ he is called by scientific people. He belongs to a family known as flycatchers, birds that catch insects on the wing. That is the reason why the kingbird likes a perch at the tip of something, so that he can dart out after a passing insect, catch it, and return to his perch to wait for another. _I_ should call him the “apple-tree flycatcher,” if the matter were referred to me.

He is not large,--little bigger than an English sparrow,--but he has plenty of courage and a strong disposition to “rule the roost,” as the saying goes. Every country boy has laughed to see the kingbird chasing a crow. And a very lively and pleasing sight it is: the crow making for the nearest wood as fast as his wings will carry him, and one or two kingbirds in hot pursuit. Their great aim is to get above him and swoop down upon his back. Sometimes you will see one actually alight on a crow’s back and, as boys say, “give it to him” in great style.

Another taking action of the kingbird is his trick of flying straight up in the air, almost perpendicularly, as if he were trying to see how near he could come to performing that impossible feat, and then tumbling about madly, with noisy outcries. Often it looks as if he actually turned somersaults. He cannot sing, and so has to let his high spirits bubble over in these half-crazy gymnastics. All in all, he is a very lively and entertaining customer.

His nest is built in a tree, often in an orchard, and is comparatively easy to find. The birds arrive in New England in the first week of May, having passed the winter in Central or South America, and remain till the end of August.

Like most birds, they are very punctual in their coming and going. No doubt they have an almanac of their own. You will do well to find one of them in Massachusetts after the first two or three days of September.

Toward the end of their stay, flycatchers though they are, they feed largely upon berries. I have seen a dozen in one small dogwood bush, all eating greedily.

XIII

THE HUMMINGBIRD

Hummingbirds are found only in America and on the islands near it. They are of many kinds, but only one kind is ever seen in the eastern United States. This is known as the ruby-throated hummingbird, because of a splendid red throat-patch worn by the male. To speak more exactly, the patch is red only in some lights. You see it one instant as black as a coal, and the next instant it flashes like a coal on fire. This ornament,--a real jewel,--with the lovely shining green of the bird’s back, makes him an object of great beauty.

Every one knows him, or would do so only that some people confuse him with bright-colored, long-tongued hummingbird moths that are seen hovering, mostly in the early evening, over the flowers of the garden.

The ruby-throat spends the winter south of the United States. He arrives in Florida in March, but does not reach New England till near the middle of May.

Many persons seem to imagine that the hummer lives on the wing. They have never seen one sitting still, they say. But the truth is that hummingbirds pass but a small part of the time in the air. They are so very small, however, that they are easily overlooked on a branch of a tree, and the average person never notices them except when the hum of their wings attracts his attention.

One of the prettiest sights in the world is a hummingbird hovering before a blossom, his wings vibrating so fast as to make a mist about him, and his long needle of a bill probing the flower with quick, eager thrusts. All his movements are of lightning-like rapidity, and even while your eyes are on him he is gone like a flash, you cannot say whither.

The hummingbird’s nest is built on a branch of a tree,--saddled on it,--and is not very hard to find after you have once seen one, and so have learned precisely what to look for. Generally it is placed well out towards the end of the limb. I have found it on pitch-pines in the woods, on roadside maples,--shade-trees,--and especially in apple and pear orchards. The mother bird is very apt to betray its whereabouts by buzzing about the head of any one who comes near it.

_1, 2. Males. 3. Female. 4. Young_]

Last May, for example, I stopped in the middle of the road to listen for the voice of a house wren, when I caught instead the buzz and squeak of a hummer. Turning my gaze upward, I saw her fly to a half-built nest on a maple branch directly over my head.

The nest is a tiny thing, looking for size and shape like a cup out of a child’s toy tea-set. Its walls are thick, and on the outside are covered--shingled, we may say--with bits of gray lichen, which help to make the nest look like nothing more than a knot. Whether they are put on for that purpose, or by way of ornament, is more than I can tell.

The bird always lays two white eggs, about as large as peas. The young ones stay in the nest for three weeks, more or less, till they are fully grown and fledged, and perfectly well able to fly. I once saw one take his first flight, and a great venture it seemed. All these three weeks, and for another week afterward, the mother--no father is present--has her hands full to supply the little things with food, which she gives them from her crop, thrusting her long, sharp bill clean down their throats in the process, in a way to make a looker-on shiver. The only note I have ever heard from the ruby-throat is a squeak, which seems to be an expression of nervousness or annoyance, and is uttered whenever an intruder--a man, a cat, or a strange bird--comes near the tree in which her treasures are hidden.

Hummingbirds sometimes fly into open windows and are caught. At such times they become tame almost at once, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep them alive in captivity, and it is cruel to attempt it, except when the little creature is injured and plainly unable to look out for itself.

A lady of my acquaintance discovered a hummingbird under her piazza. It had flown in by accident, probably, and now was darting to and fro in a frantic attempt to get out. The piazza was open on three sides, to be sure, but the frightened bird kept up against the ceiling, and of course found itself walled in.

Fearful that it would injure itself, the lady brought a broom and tried to force it to come down and so discover its way out; but it was only the more scared. Then a happy thought came to her. She went to the garden, plucked a few flowers, and going back to the piazza, set them down for the bird to see. Instantly it flew toward them, and as it did so it saw the open world without, and away it went.

Another lady wrote me once a very pretty story of a hummer that came and probed a nasturtium which she held in her hand.

It is wonderful to think that so tiny a bird, born in New England or in Canada in June, should travel to Cuba or Central America in the autumn, and the next spring find its way back again to its birthplace.

XIV

THE CHIMNEY SWIFT

Every kind of bird is adapted to get its living in a particular way. It is strong in some respects, and weak in others. Some birds have powerful legs, but can hardly fly; others live on the wing, and can hardly walk. Of these flying birds none is more common than the chimney swift, or, as he is improperly called, the chimney swallow. No one ever saw him sitting on a perch or walking on the ground. In fact, his wings are so long, and his legs so short and weak, that if he were to alight on the ground, he would probably never be able to rise into the air again.

He hardly seems to need a description, and yet I suppose that many persons, not to say people in general, do not know him from a swallow. His color is sooty brown, turning to gray on the throat. His body, as he is seen in the air, is shaped like a bobbin, bluntly pointed at both ends. If he is carefully watched, however, it will be noticed that he spreads his tail for an instant whenever he changes suddenly the direction of his flight. In other words, he uses his tail as a rudder.

He shoots about the sky at a tremendous speed, much of the time sailing, with his long, narrow wings firmly set, and is especially lively and noisy toward nightfall. Very commonly two or three of the birds fly side by side, cackling merrily and acting very much as if they were amusing themselves with some kind of game.

They feed on the wing, and have wide, gaping mouths perfectly adapted to that purpose.

As their name implies, they build their nests and pass the night mostly in chimneys, although in the wilder parts of the country they still inhabit hollow trees. Numbers of pairs live together in a colony.

One of the chimneys of a certain house near the Charles River, in Newton, Massachusetts, has for many years been a favorite resort of swifts. I have many times visited the place to watch the birds go to roost. Little by little they gather in a flock, as twilight comes on, and then for an hour or more the whole company, hundreds in number, go sweeping over the valley in broad circles, having the chimney for a centre. Gradually the circles become narrower, and at the same time the excitement of the flock increases. Again and again the birds approach the chimney, as if they meant to descend into it. Then away they shoot for another round.

At length the going to roost actually begins. Half a dozen or a dozen of the birds drop one by one into the chimney. The rest sweep away, and when they come back, a second detachment drops in. And so the lively performance goes on till the last straggler folds his wings above the big black cavity and tumbles headlong out of sight.

The swift makes his nest of twigs, and as he cannot alight on the ground in search of them, he is compelled to gather them from the dead limbs of trees. Over and over again you will see the bird dart against such a limb, catching at a twig as he pauses for the merest instant before it. It is difficult to be sure whether he succeeds or not, his movements are so rapid, but it is certain that he must often fail. However, he acts upon the old motto, “Try, try again,” and in course of time the nest is built. And an extremely pretty nest it is, with the white eggs in it, the black twigs glued firmly together with the bird’s own saliva.

XV

NIGHTHAWK AND WHIP-POOR-WILL

Rustic people are a little shy of theories and “book-learning.” Not long ago--it was early in March--I met an old man who lives by himself in a kind of hermitage in the woods, and who knows me in a general way as a bird student. We greeted each other, and I inquired whether he had seen any bluebirds yet. No, he said, it wasn’t time.

“Oh, but they are here,” I answered. “I saw a flock of ten on the 26th of February.” Good-natured incredulity came out all over his face.

“Did you hear them sing?” he asked.

“Yes,” said I; “and, furthermore, I saw some this forenoon very near your house.”

“Well,” he remarked, “according to my experience, it is too early for bluebirds. Besides, they never go in flocks; and when anybody tells me at this time of the year that he has seen a flock of bluebirds, I always know that he has seen some blue snowbirds.”

He spoke with an air of finality which left me nothing to do but to smile and pass on.

This little incident called to mind another, and that put it into my head to write this article.

A farmer, who had seen me passing his house and loitering about his lanes and fields for several years, often with an opera-glass in my hand, one day hailed me to ask whether the nighthawk and the whip-poor-will were the same bird, as he had heard people say. I assured him (or rather I told him--it turned out that I had not made him sure) that they were quite distinct, and proceeded to remark upon some of the more obvious points of difference between the two, especially as to their habits and manner of life. He listened with all deference to what I had to offer, but as I concluded and turned to leave him, he said: “Well, some folks _say_ they’re the same. They say one’s the he one and t’ other’s the she one; but I guess they ain’t.”

Verily, thought I, popular science lectures are sometimes a failure. Not long afterward I was telling the story to a Massachusetts man, a man who had made a collection of birds’ eggs in his time.

“Why,” said he, “aren’t they the same? I always understood that they were the male and female of the same species. That was the common belief where I was brought up.”

The confusion of the two birds is widespread, in spite of Audubon’s testimony that he had seldom seen a farmer or even a boy in the United States who did not know the difference between them. But, while they resemble each other closely, they are sufficiently unlike to be classified not only as separate species, but as species of different genera. As for the difference in their habits, it is such as any one may see and appreciate. The nighthawk, for all its name, is not a night bird. It is most active at twilight,--in other words, it is crepuscular instead of nocturnal,--but is often to be seen flying abroad at midday. The whip-poor-will, on the contrary, is quiet till after dark. Then it starts into fullness of life, singing with the utmost enthusiasm, till the listener wonders where it can find breath for such rapid and long-continued efforts. The nighthawk is not a musician. While flying it frequently utters a single note, of a guttural-nasal quality, almost indistinguishable from the so-called bleat of the woodcock; but, in place of singing, it indulges in a fine aerial tumbling performance, much in the manner of the snipe. This performance I have many times observed in early summer from the Public Garden in Boston. I have seen it also in September, though it is doubtless much less common at that season. The bird rises gradually to a considerable height, and presently drops like a stone almost to the ground. At the last moment it arrests itself suddenly, and then is heard a very peculiar “booming” noise, whether produced by the wings or by the voice, I will not presume to say.

The most attractive feature of the nighthawk, to my eye, is its beautiful and peculiar flight--a marvel of ease and grace, and sufficient to distinguish it at a glance from every other New England bird. It is a creature of the upper air, never skimming the ground, so far as I know, and as it passes overhead you may easily see the large white patch in the middle of each long wing--a beauty spot, by the way, which is common to both sexes, and is wanting in the whip-poor-will.

The whip-poor-will’s chief distinction is its song--a song by itself, and familiar to every one. Some people call it mournful, and I fear there are still a few superstitious souls who listen to it with a kind of trembling. I have heard of the bird’s being shot because the inhabitants of a house could not bear its doleful and boding cry, as they were pleased to consider it. To my ears it is sweet music. I take many an evening stroll on purpose to enjoy it, and am perennially thankful to Audubon for saying that he found the whip-poor-will’s “cheering voice” more interesting than the song of the nightingale.

It will surprise unscientific readers to be told that the nearest relatives of whip-poor-wills and nighthawks are the swifts and the hummingbirds. As if a chimney swift were more like a whip-poor-will than like a swallow! and, still more absurd, as if there were any close relationship between whip-poor-wills and hummingbirds! Put a whip-poor-will and a ruby-throated hummer side by side and they certainly do look very little alike--the big whip-poor-will, with its mottled plumage and its short, gaping beak, and the tiny hummingbird with its burnished feathers and its long needle of a bill. Evidently there is no great reliance to be placed upon outside show, or what scientific men call “external characters.” We might as well say that the strawberry vine and the apple-tree were own cousins. Yes, so we might, for the apple-tree and the strawberry vine _are_ cousins--at least they are members of the same great and noble family, the family of the roses! We shall never get far, in science or in anything else, until we learn to look below the surface.

XVI

THE FLICKER

The flicker is the largest of our common American woodpeckers, being somewhat longer and stouter than the robin. It is known, by sight at least, to almost every one who notices birds at all, and perhaps for this reason it has received an unusual number of popular names. “Golden-winged woodpecker,” which is probably the best known of these, comes from the fact that the bird’s wings are yellow on the under side. “Harry Wicket,” “Highhole,”--because its nest is sometimes pretty far above the ground,--“Yellowhammer,” and “Pigeon-woodpecker” are also among its more familiar nicknames.

Unlike other birds of its family, the flicker passes much of its time on the ground, where it hops awkwardly about, feeding upon insects, especially upon ants. As you come near it, while it is thus engaged, it rises with a peculiar purring sound, and as it flies from you it shows a broad white patch on its rump--the lower back, above the root of the tail. Every one who has ever walked much over grassy fields must have seen the bird and been struck by this conspicuous light mark. He must have noticed, too, the bird’s peculiar up-and-down, “jumping” manner of flight, by which it goes swooping across the country in long undulations or waves.

The flicker’s general color is brown, with spottings and streakings of black, and more or less of violet or lilac shading. On the back of its neck it wears a band of bright scarlet, and across its breast is a conspicuous black crescent.

It is fond of old apple orchards, and often makes its nest in a decaying trunk. In some places, near the seashore, especially,--where it is commoner than elsewhere in winter, and where large trees are scarce,--it makes enemies by its habit of drilling holes in barns and even in churches. I remember a meeting-house on Cape Cod which had a good number of such holes in its front wall--or rather it had the scars of such holes, for they had been covered with patches of tin. That was a case where going to church might be called a bad habit.

In fall and winter, if not at other seasons, the flicker feeds largely upon berries. In years when the poison ivy bears a good crop, I am pretty sure to find two or three flickers all winter long about a certain farm, the stone walls of which are overrun with this handsome but unwholesome vine, although it is hard to imagine that the dry, stony fruit should yield much in the way of nourishment, even to a woodpecker.

As spring comes on, the flicker becomes numerous and very noisy. His best-known vocal effort is a prolonged _hi-hi-hi_, very loud and ringing, and kept up until the listener wonders where the author of it gets his wind. This, I think, is the bird’s substitute for a song. He has at all times a loud, unmusical _yawp_,--a signal, I suppose,--and in the mating season especially he utters a very affectionate, conversational _wicker_ or _flicker_. Every country boy should be familiar with these three notes.

_1. Male. 2. Females_]

But besides being a vocalist,--we can hardly call him a singer,--the flicker is a player upon instruments. He is a great drummer; and if any one imagines that woodpeckers do not enjoy the sound of their own music, he should watch a flicker drumming with his long bill on a battered tin pan in the middle of a pasture. Morning after morning I have seen one thus engaged, drumming lustily, and then cocking his head to listen for an answer; and Paderewski at his daily practice upon the piano could not have looked more in earnest. At other times the flicker contents himself with a piece of resonant loose bark or a dry limb.

One proof that this drumming--which is indulged in by woodpeckers generally--is a true musical performance, and not a mere drilling for grubs, is the fact that we never hear it in winter. It begins as the weather grows mild, and is as much a sign of spring as the peeping of the little tree-frogs--hylas--in the meadow.

The flicker’s nest, as I have said, is built in a hole in a tree, often an apple-tree. Very noisy in his natural disposition, he keeps a wise silence while near the spot where his mate is sitting, and will rear a brood under the orchard-owner’s nose without betraying himself. The young birds are fed from the parent’s crop, as young pigeons and young hummingbirds are. The old bird thrusts its bill down the throat of the nestling and gives it a meal of partially digested food by what scientific people call a process of regurgitation. Farmers’ boys, who have watched pigeons feeding their squabs, will know precisely what is meant.

XVII

THE BITTERN

It was a great day for me when I first heard the so-called booming of the bittern. For more than ten years I had devoted the principal part of my spare hours to the study of birds, but though I had taken many an evening walk near the most promising meadows in my neighborhood, I could never hear those mysterious pumping or stake-driving noises of which I had read with so much interest, especially in the writings of Thoreau.

The truth was, as I have since assured myself, that this representative of the heron family was not a resident within the limits of my everyday rambles, none of the meadows thereabout being extensive and secluded enough to suit his whim.

There came a day, however, when with a friend I made an afternoon excursion to Wayland, Massachusetts, on purpose to form the stake-driver’s acquaintance. We walked up the railway track across the river toward Sudbury, and were hardly seated on the edge of the meadow, facing the beautiful Nobscot Hill, before my comrade said, “Hark! There he is!”

Yes, that certainly was the very sound--an old-fashioned wooden pump at work in the meadow.

We listened intently for perhaps half a dozen times; then I proposed going further up the track to get the notes at shorter range, and possibly--who could tell what unheard-of thing might happen?--to obtain a sight of the bird. We advanced cautiously, though as we were on the track, six feet or more above the level of the meadow, there was no chance of concealment, and the bittern went on with his performance.

Meanwhile we maintained a sharp lookout, and presently I descried a narrow brown object standing upright amidst the grass--a stick, perhaps. I lifted my opera-glass and spoke quickly to my friend: “I see him!”

“Where?” he asked; and when I lowered my glass and gave him the bird’s bearings as related to the remains of an old hayrick not far off, he said, “Why, I saw that, but took it for a stick.”

“Yes, but see the eye,” I answered.

Within half a minute the bird suddenly threw his head forward and commenced pumping. This was good luck indeed,--that I should surprise my very first bittern in his famous act, a thing which better men than I, after years of familiarity with the bird, had never once succeeded in accomplishing. Who says that Fortune does not sometimes favor the fresh hand?

The fellow repeated the operation three times, and between whiles moved stealthily through the grass toward the leavings of the haycock before mentioned.

When he reached the hay, we held our breath. Would he actually mount it? Yes, that was undoubtedly his intention; but he meant to do it in such a way that no mortal eye should see him. All the time glancing furtively to left and right, as if the grass were full of enemies, he put one foot before the other with almost inconceivable slowness,--as the hour hand turns on the clock’s face. It was an admirable display of an art which this race of frog, mouse, and insect catchers has cultivated for untold generations--an art on which its livelihood depends, the art of invisible motion.

There was no resisting the ludicrousness of his manner. He was in full view, but so long as he kept still he seemed to think himself quite safe from detection. Like the hand of the clock, however, if he was slow he was sure, and in time he was fairly out of the grass, standing in plain sight upon his hay platform.

Once in position he fell to pumping in earnest, and kept it up for more than an hour, while two enthusiasts sat upon the railway embankment, twelve or thirteen rods distant, with opera-glasses and note-books, scrutinizing his every motion, and felicitating themselves again and again on seeing thus plainly what so few had ever seen at all. What would Thoreau have given for such an opportunity?

“The stake-driver is at it in his favorite meadow,” he writes in his journal, in 1852. “I followed the sound, and at last got within two rods, it seeming always to recede, and drawing you, like a will-o’-the-wisp, farther away into the meadows. When thus near, I heard some lower sounds at the beginning like striking on a stump or a stake, a dry, hard sound, and then followed the gurgling, pumping notes fit to come from a meadow.

“This was just within the blueberry and other bushes, and when the bird flew up, alarmed, I went to the place, but could see no water, which makes me doubt if water is necessary to it in making the sound. Perhaps it thrusts its bill so deep as to reach water where it is dry on the surface.”

This notion that water is employed in the production of the bittern’s notes has been generally entertained. The notes themselves are of a character to suggest such an hypothesis, and at least one witness has borne circumstantial testimony to its truth. In Thoreau’s essay on the “Natural History of Massachusetts,” he says:--

“On one occasion, the bird has been seen by one of my neighbors to thrust its bill into the water, and suck up as much as it could hold; then, raising its head, it pumped it out again with four or five heaves of the neck, throwing it two or three feet, and making the sound each time.”

Similar statements have been made as to the corresponding notes of the European bittern. None of our systematic writers upon American ornithology have ever witnessed the performance, as far as appears, and being too honest to draw upon their imaginations, they have left the matter a mystery. Now, on this auspicious May afternoon, if we learned nothing else, we could at all events make quite sure whether or not the bittern did really spout water from his beak.

My readers will have guessed already that our bird, at least, did nothing of the sort. His bill was never within reach of water. The operation is a queer one, hard to describe.

The bittern has been standing motionless, perhaps in the humpbacked attitude in which the artists, following Audubon’s plate, have commonly represented him; or quite as likely, he has been making a stick or a soldier of himself, standing bolt upright at full stretch, his long neck and bill pointed straight at the zenith.

Suddenly he lowers his head, and instantly raises it again and throws it forward with a quick, convulsive jerk. This movement is attended by an opening and shutting of the bill, which in turn is accompanied by a sound which has been well compared to a violent hiccough. The hiccough--with which, I think, the click of the big mandibles may sometimes be heard--is repeated a few times, each time a little louder than before; and then succeed the real pumping or stake-driving noises.

These are in sets of three syllables each, of which the first syllable is the longest, and somewhat separated from the others. The accent is strongly upon the middle syllable, and the whole, as oftenest heard, is an exact reproduction of the sound of a wooden pump, as I have already said, the voice having that peculiar hollow quality which is produced, not by the flow of the water, but by the suction of the air in the tube when the pump begins to work.

But the looker-on is likely to be quite as much impressed by what he sees as by what he hears. During the whole performance, but especially during the latter part of it, the bird is engaged in the most violent contortions, suggestive of nothing but a patient suffering from uncontrollable nausea. Moreover, as soon as the preliminary hiccoughs begin, the lower throat or breast is seen to be swelling; the dilatation grows larger and larger till the pumping is well under way, and so far as my companion and I could detect, does not subside in the least until the noises have ceased altogether.

How are the unique, outlandish notes produced? I cannot profess to know. Our opinion was that the bird swallowed air into his gullet, gulping it down with each snap of the beak. To all appearance it was necessary for him to inflate the crop in this way before he could pump, or boom. As to how much of the grand booming was connected with the swallowing of the air, and how much, if any, with the expulsion of it, my friend and I did not agree, and of course neither of us could do more than guess.

I made some experiments afterwards, by way of imitating the noises; and these experiments, together with the fact that the grand booming seemed to be really nothing more than a development of the preliminary hiccoughs, and the further fact that the swelling of the breast did not go down gradually during the course of the performance, but suddenly at the close,--all these incline me to believe that the notes are mainly if not entirely caused by the inhalation or swallowing of the air; and I am somewhat strengthened in this opinion by perceiving that when a man takes air into his stomach the act is attended by a sound not altogether unlike the bittern’s note in quality, while the expulsion of it gives rise to noises of an entirely dissimilar character.

That the sounds in question were not made entirely by any ordinary action of the vocal organs was the decided opinion of both my friend and myself.

As I have said, we watched the performance for more than an hour. We were sitting squarely upon the track, and once were compelled to get up to let a train pass; but the bittern evidently paid no attention to matters on the railway, being well used to thunder in that direction, and stood his ground without wincing.

When he had pumped long enough,--and the operation surely looked like pretty hard work,--he suddenly took wing and flew a little distance down the meadow. The moment he dropped into the grass he pumped, and on making another flight he again pumped immediately upon coming to the ground. This trick, which surprised me not a little in view of the severe exertion required, is perhaps akin to the habit of smaller birds, who in seasons of excitement will very often break into song at the moment of striking a perch.

As we came down the track on our way back to the station, three bitterns were in the air at once, while a fourth was booming on the opposite side of the road. One of the flying birds persistently dangled his legs instead of drawing them up in the usual fashion and letting the feet stick out behind, parallel with the tail. Probably he was “showing off,” as is the custom of many birds during the season of mating.

Our bird across the road, by the bye, was not pumping, but driving a stake. The middle syllable was truly a mighty whack with a mallet on the head of a post, so that I could easily enough credit Mr. Samuels’s statement that he once followed the sound for half a mile, expecting to find a farmer setting a fence.

In the midst of the hurly-burly we saw a boy coming toward us on the track.

“Let’s ask him about it,” said my companion.

So, with an air of inquisitive ignorance, he stopped the fellow, and inquired, “Do you know what it is we hear making that curious noise off there in the meadow?”

The boy evidently took us for a pair of ignoramuses from the city.

“I guess it’s a frog,” he answered. But when the sounds were repeated he shook his head and confessed honestly that he didn’t know what made them.

It was too bad, I thought, that he did not stick to his frog theory. It would have made so much better a story! He appeared to feel no curiosity about the matter, and we allowed him to pass on unenlightened.

Not all Wayland people are thus poorly informed, however, and we shortly learned, to our considerable satisfaction, that they have a most felicitous local name for the bird. They call him “plum-pudd’n’,” which is exactly what he himself says, only that his _u_ is in both words somewhat long, like the vowel in “full.” To get the true effect of the words they should be spoken with the lips nearly closed, and in a deep voice.

A few days after this excursion I found a bittern in a large wet meadow somewhat nearer home. At the nearest he was a long way off, and as I went farther and farther away from him, I remarked the very unexpected fact that the last syllable to be lost was not the second, which bears so sharp an accent, but the long first syllable. It seemed contrary to reason, but such was unquestionably the truth, and later experiments confirmed it.

This was in the spring of 1888. In May of the next year, if all went well, we would see the show again. So we said to each other; but a veteran ornithologist remarked that we should probably be a good many years older before we had another such piece of good fortune.

It is a fact familiar to all naturalists, however, that when you have once found a new plant, or a new bird, or a new nest, the experience is likely to be soon repeated. You may have spent a dozen years in a vain search, but now, for some reason, the difficult has all at once become easy, and almost before you can believe your eyes the rarity has grown to be a drug in the market. Something like this proved to be true of the bittern’s boom.

On the afternoon of the 2d of May, 1889, I went to one of my favorite resorts, a large cat-tail swamp surrounded by woods. My particular errand was to see whether the least bittern had arrived,--a much smaller, and in this part of the country, at least, a much less common bird than his relative of whose vocal accomplishments I am here treating.

I threw myself down upon the cliff overhanging the edge of the swamp, to listen for the desired _coo-coo-coo-coo_, and had barely made myself comfortable when I heard the _plum-pudd’n’_ of the bittern himself, proceeding, as it seemed, from the reeds directly at my feet. Further listening satisfied me that the fellow was not far from the end of a rocky peninsula which juts into the swamp just at this point.

I slipped down the cliff as quietly as possible, picked my way across the narrow neck leading to the main peninsula, and by keeping behind rocks and trees managed to reach the very tip without disturbing the bird. Here I posted myself among the thick trees, and awaited a repetition of the boom. It was not long in coming, and plainly proceeded from a bunch of flags just across a little stretch of clear water.

I looked and looked, while the bittern continued to pump at rather protracted intervals; but I could see nothing whatever, till presto! there the creature stood in plain sight.

Whether he had moved into view, or had all the time been visible, I cannot tell. He soon pumped again, and then again, for perhaps six times. Then he stalked away out of sight, and I heard nothing more. He was much nearer than last year’s bird had been, but was still a pumper, not a stake-driver, and his action was in all respects the same as I had before witnessed.

There had been no bittern in this swamp the season previous, nor did any breed here this summer. I visited the place too often for him to have escaped my notice, had he been present. This bird, then, was a migrant, and his booming was of interest as showing that the bittern, like the song-birds, does not wait to get into summer quarters before beginning to rehearse his love music.

Two days after this my companion of the year before went with me again to Wayland, and, not to prolong a long story, we sat again upon the railway and watched a bittern pump for more than an hour. This time, to be sure, he was partially concealed by the grass, besides being farther away than we could have wished.

It was curious, and illustrated strikingly the utility of the bird’s habit of standing motionless, that my friend, who is certainly as sharp-eyed an observer as I have ever known, was once more completely taken in. As luck would have it, I caught sight of the bird first, and when I pointed him out to the other man he replied, “Why, of course I saw that, but it never occurred to me but that it was a stake.”

We returned from this excursion fairly well convinced that in the early part of the season, while the grass is still short, one may hope to see a bittern pump almost any day, if he will go to a suitable meadow which has a railroad running through it. The track answers a double purpose: it gives the observer an outlook, such as cannot be obtained from a boat, and furthermore, the birds are quite unsuspicious of things on the track, while the presence of a man in the grass or on the river would almost inevitably attract their attention.

XVIII

BIRDS FOR EVERYBODY

Some birds belong exclusively to specialists. They are so rare, or their manner of life is so seclusive, that people in general can never be expected to know them except from books. The latest list of the birds of Massachusetts includes about three hundred and fifty species and sub-species. Of these, seventy-five or more are so foreign to this part of the country as to have appeared here only by accident, while many others are so excessively rare that no individual observer can count upon seeing them, however close a lookout he may keep. Other species are present in goodly numbers, but only in certain portions of the State; and still others, though generally distributed and fairly numerous, live habitually in almost impenetrable swamps or in deep forests, and of necessity are seen only by those who make it their business to look for them.

It is something for which busy men and women may well be thankful, therefore, that so many of the most pleasing, or otherwise interesting, of all our birds are among those which may be called birds for everybody. Such are the robin, the bluebird, the Baltimore oriole,--or golden robin,--the blue jay, the crow, and the chickadee. Of all these we may say that they are common; they come in every one’s way, and, what is still more to the point, they cannot be mistaken for anything else. Others are equally common, and are easily enough seen, but their identity is not so much a matter of course.

The song sparrow, for example, is abundant in Massachusetts from the middle of March to the end of October. Outside of the forest it is almost ubiquitous; it sings beautifully and with the utmost freedom; it ought, one would say, to be universally known. But it is _a_ sparrow, not _the_ sparrow. In other words, it is only one of many, and so, common as it is, and freely as it sings (it is to be heard in every garden and by every roadside in the latter half of March, when few other birds are in tune), it passes unrecognized by the generality of people. They read in books of song sparrows, chipping sparrows, field sparrows, tree sparrows, swamp sparrows, vesper sparrows, white-throated sparrows, fox sparrows, yellow-winged sparrows, savanna sparrows, and the like, and when they see any little mottled brown bird, they say, “Oh, it’s a sparrow,” and seek to know nothing more.

The family of warblers--among the loveliest of all birds--are in a still worse case, and much the same may be said of swallows and blackbirds, thrushes and vireos. The number of species and their perplexing similarity, which are such an attraction to the student, prove an effectual bar to those who have time and money for newspapers and novels, but can spare neither for a manual of local ornithology.