Chapter XXIII: March

_Red-wings and Pussy-willows_

MARCH

March! March! March! They are coming
In troops to the tune of the wind;
Red-headed Woodpeckers drumming,
Gold-crested Thrushes behind.
Sparrows in brown jackets hopping
Past every gateway and door.
Finches with crimson caps stopping
Just where they stopped years before.

—Lucy Larcom.

“How do the birds know when spring has come? How can they tell the difference between a warm day in December and a warm day in March when the ground is still snow covered? We ourselves might be puzzled to tell the difference if we had not kept record of the days and weeks by the almanac.

“But the birds know. The Red-wings, Grackles, and Cowbirds will not return for the warmest December sun, but let the sun of early March but blink, and they are up and away, oftentimes stealing a march on shy Pussy-willow herself.

“Unless the season is very stormy, as we have seen for ourselves this year, a few Robins, Bluebirds, and Blackbirds are added to the winter residents in February. These, however, belong to a sort of roving advance-guard; the real procession comes in March, the exact time depending upon the weather, for the insect-eating birds cannot stay if their larder of field and air is ice locked.

“So we may look for larger flocks of the birds that drifted along in February, and in addition to these the Woodcock, the Great Fox Sparrow as big as the Hermit Thrush, Phœbe, Kingfisher, Mourning Dove, and Field Sparrow of the flesh-pink bill, rusty head and back, and buff breast, who sings his little strain, ‘cherwee-cher-wee-cherwee-iddle-iddle-iddle ee,’ as the sun goes down.

“The three birds that are the most noticeable in the latter part of March, that has made up its mind to go out like a lamb and let Pussy-willow wave in peace in moist pasture and the delicate blue-and-white hepaticas star the edges of dry woods, are the Red-winged Blackbirds, the Kingfishers, and the cheerful little Phœbe. All love the vicinity of water, but the Red-wing locates often in merely marshy ground, while the bird who is a fisherman by trade locates near a pond or stream of considerable size and the Phœbe comes to house or woodshed.

“‘Among all the birds that return to us in late March or April, which is the most striking and most compels attention?’ asked a bird-lover of a group of kindred spirits.

“‘The Fox Sparrow,’ said one, who lived on the edge of a village where sheltered wild fields stretched uphill to the woodlands. ‘Every morning when I open my window I can hear them almost without listening.’

Order—Passeres Family—Icteridæ
Genus—Agelaius Species—Phœniceus

“‘The Phœbe,’ said another, who was the owner of a pretty home, where many rambling sheds broke the way from cow-barn to pasture.

“‘The Whip-poor-will, but that does not come until late in the month,’ answered a third, a dweller in a remote colony of artists in a picturesque spot of cleared woodland, where the ground dropped quickly to a stream.

“‘No, the Woodcock,’ said her nearest neighbour, a man whose cottage was upon the upper edge of these same woods, where they were margined by moist meadows and soft bottom-lands,—a man who spent much time out-of-doors at dawn and twilight studying sky effects.

“‘And I think it’s Red-winged Blackbirds,’ cried the ten-year-old son of the latter; ‘for when I go out up back of the trout brook by the little path along the alders near the squashy place where the cat-tails grow in summer, you’ve just got to hear them. You can’t listen to them as you do to real singing-birds, for they make too much noise, and when you listen for a bird it’s got to be still, at least in the beginning. Sometimes they go it all together down in the bushes out of sight, then a few will walk out up to the dry Meadowlark’s field with Cowbirds, or maybe it’s their wives, and then one or two will lift up and shoot over the marsh back again, calling out just like juicy sky-rockets. Ah, they’re in it before the leaves come out to hide them even the least bit.’ And, in spite of difference of viewpoint, the group finally acknowledged that the boy was right.

“In point of colouring, the Red-wing is faultlessly plumed,—glossy black with epaulets of scarlet edged with gold, the uniform of a soldier,—and this, coupled with the three martial notes that serve him as a song, would make one expect to find in him all the manly and military virtues. But aside from the superficial matter of personal appearance, the Red-wing is lacking in many of the qualities that endear the feathered tribe to us and make us judge them, perhaps, too much by human standards.

“When Red-wings live in colonies it is often difficult to estimate the exact relationship existing between the members, though it is apparent that the sober brown-striped females outnumber the males; but in places where the birds are uncommon and only one or two male birds can be found, it is easily seen that the household of the male consists of from three to five nests, each presided over by a watchful female, and when danger arises, this feathered Mormon shows equal anxiety for each nest, and circles screaming about the general location. In colony life the males ofttimes act in concert as a general guard, being diverted oftentimes from the main issue, it must be confessed, to indulge in duels and pitched battles among themselves.

“The Red-wing belongs to a notable family,—that of the Blackbirds and Orioles,—and in spite of the structural semblances that group them together, the differences of plumage, voice, and breeding habits are very great.

“The Cowbird, the Red-wing’s next of kin, even lacks the rich liquid call-note of the latter, and the lack of marital fidelity, on the part of the male, is met in a truly progressive spirit by the female, who, shirking all domestic responsibility, drops her eggs craftily in the nests of other and usually smaller birds, who cannot easily resent the imposition; though a strong proof of the unconscious affinity of race lies in the fact that these young foundling Cowbirds invariably join the parent flocks in autumn instead of continuing with their foster-mothers.

“The Meadowlark, with the true spring song, who hides his nest in the dry grass of old fields, is also kin to the Red-wing, and the Bobolink, too, the vocal harlequin of the meadows and hillside pastures. The Orchard and Baltimore Orioles, also next of kin, are skilled musicians and model husbands.

“Still another plane is to be found in the Red-wing’s dismal cousins, the Grackles,—Purple, Rusty, Bronzed, and Boat-tailed,—all harsh of voice and furtive in action, as if a Crow fairy had been present at their creating and, endowing them with ready wits, had, at the same time, deprived them of all sense of humour and cast a shadow upon their happiness. For a Grackle is gloomy even during the absurd gyrations of his courtship, and when, in autumn, the great flocks settle on lawns and fields, and solemnly walk about, as they forage they seem like a party of feathered mutes waiting to attend the funeral of the year; and this trait somewhat tinctures the disposition of the Red-wing before and after the breeding season.

“The Red-wing in one of his many subspecific forms, and masquerading under many names,—Red-shouldered Blackbird, American Starling, and Swamp Blackbird,—lives in North America from Nova Scotia and the Great Slave Lake southward to Costa Rica. The Red-wing, as known to us of middle and eastern North America, breeds in all parts of its United States and Canadian range, though it is more numerous by far in the great prairies of the upper Mississippi Valley, with their countless back-water sloughs, than anywhere else. It is in regions of this sort that the great flocks turn both to the fall-sown grain, as well as that of the crop in the ear, causing the farmers the loss that puts a black mark against the Red-wings. Yet those that dwell east of this area, owing to the draining and ditching of their swampy haunts being in much reduced numbers, are comparatively harmless.

“During the winter months the Red-wings are distributed throughout the South, though stragglers may be occasionally seen in many parts of their summer range. Exactly why they begin the southward migration in September and end it with the falling of the leaves in late October, it is not easy to guess; for the food supply is not at an end, and they do not dread moderate cold, else why should they be in the front rank of spring migrants?

“The last of February will bring a few individuals of the advance-guard of males. In early March their calls are heard often before the ice has melted and the hylas found voice; yet in spite of this hurried return, the nesting season does not begin until the middle of May; and so for two months and more the flock life continues, and foraging, fighting, and general courting serve to kill time until the remote marshes show enough green drapery to hide the nests.

“As a nest-builder the Red-wing shows much of the weaver’s skill of its Oriole cousins, though the material they work with is of coarser texture, being fastened firmly to low bushes or reeds and woven of grass and the split leaves of reeds and flags, all nicely lined with soft grasses and various vegetable fibres. Often, like that of the Marsh Wren, the nest will be suspended between three or four reeds, and so firmly knit that it resembles one of the four-legged work-baskets that belonged to the ‘mother’s room’ of our youth. The pale blue eggs of the Red-wing are particularly noticeable from the character of the markings that thickly cover the larger end, for they seem the work of a sharp scratching pen dipped in purplish black ink and held by an aimless human hand, rather than the distribution of natural pigment.

“An eater of grain though the Red-wing is, and a menace to the farmer in certain regions, Professor Beal concedes to him a liberal diet of weed seeds and animal food, itself injurious to vegetation. Dr. B. H. Warren, who has made a wide study of the food habits of this Blackbird, says: ‘The Red-wing destroys large numbers of cutworms. I have taken from the stomach of a single Swamp Blackbird as many as twenty-eight cutworms. In addition to the insects, etc., mentioned above, these birds also, during their residence with us, feed on earthworms, grasshoppers, crickets, plant-lice, and various larvæ, so destructive at times in field and garden. During the summer season fruits of the blackberry, raspberry, wild strawberry, and wild cherry are eaten to a more or less extent. The young, while under parental care, are fed exclusively on an insect diet.’

“Mr. Forbush also tells us that Kalm states in his _Travels in America_, that in 1749, ‘after a great destruction among the Crows and Blackbirds for a legal reward of three pence per dozen, the northern states experienced a complete loss of their grass and grain crops. The colonists were obliged to import hay from England to feed their cattle. The greatest losses from the ravages of the Rocky Mountain Locust were coincident with, or followed soon after, the destruction by the people of countless thousands of Blackbirds, Prairie Chickens, Quail, Upland Plover, Curlew, and other birds. This coincidence seems significant, at least. A farmer from Wisconsin informed me that, the Blackbirds in his vicinity having been killed off, the white grubs increased in number and destroyed the grass roots, so that he lost four hundred dollars from this cause.’

“These facts should make us of the East welcome rather than discourage the Red-wing; for this is one of the species of familiar birds that must become extinct in many localities, owing to the circumstance, so desirable in itself, of reducing the waste marshlands, and though, later in the year, other birds replace him acceptably, March and April would seem lonely without the Red-wing, for then, as the child said, ‘you’ve just got to look at him.’

* * * * *

“The Kingfisher is certainly one of the most dashing birds that we have; without having the cruel and ferocious expression of some of the smaller Hawks, he has the swagger and dash of a feathered brigand.

Order—Coccyges Family—Alcedinidæ
Genus—Ceryle Species—Alcyon

“His plumage is beautiful in texture and soft in colour; bluish gray that sometimes looks quite blue in the bright light; wings and tail-feathers spotted with white, a white collar deep in front and narrow at the back, and a broad belt of the gray crossing the white breast and seeming to keep the gray mantle from slipping from his shoulders. The long head-feathers, also of the bluish gray, form a crest that the bird can raise at will and thus put on an expression of combined alertness and defiance.

“The Kingfisher’s plumage is more perfect than his form, his head, with its beak two inches in length, being out of proportion to his short tail, and his small, weak feet seeming too small to support a body more than a foot long.

“In disposition the Kingfisher seems to be rather remote and unfriendly; they never seem to travel in flocks, and even in the nesting season, the only time in which they associate in pairs, they seem to be quarrelling and wrangling, so very harsh are their notes. Hereabouts we have very few Kingfishers. Last summer a pair tunnelled a hole in the loamy bank of the river fifty feet below the grist-mill; for the Kingfisher does not build a tree nest, or, in fact, any nest, but, like the Bank Swallow, burrows sidewise into a bank of sufficiently stiff soil not to cave in for the depth of anywhere from three to fifteen feet. This burrow may be only a few feet below the surface, or if the bluff rises above the stream, the hole may be twenty feet from the top and close to high-water mark.

“Sometimes the hole runs straight, and then again it may have several turns before the nesting-chamber is reached, the turns probably being made to avoid stones or tough roots; though one[5] careful observer, whose account of this bird is so novel and charming (I will read it to you from the scrap-book), thought for a time that these turns might be for the purpose of keeping light from the nesting-chamber.

* * * * *

“A hole in a bank seems a strange place in which to build a nest, but although one may know it to be the home of a Kingfisher, he little imagines the singular course of the passage leading to the room at the other end, and is hardly aware of the six long weeks of faithful care bestowed by the parent birds upon their eggs and family.

“Early in April we may hear the Kingfisher’s voice, sounding like a policeman’s rattle, as he patrols the stream, and we often see him leaving a favourite limb, where he has been keeping watch for some innocent minnow in the water below. Off he goes in his slaty blue coat, shaking his rattle and showing his top-heavy crest, his abnormal bill, and pure white collar.

“The mother bird, as usual with the sex, does most of the work at home. The hole is generally located high upon the bank, is somewhat less than four inches in diameter, and varies from at least five to eight feet in length. It slightly ascends to the dark, mysterious den at the other end,—dark because the passage generally bends once or twice, thereby entirely excluding the light. The roof of the passage is vaulted from end to end, merging into a domed ceiling almost as shapely as that of the Pantheon. Such a home is built to stay, and if undisturbed would endure for years. Two little tracks are worn by the female’s feet the full length of the tunnel as she passes in and out.

“The Kingfisher’s knowledge of construction, her ingenious manner of hiding her eggs from molestation, and her constancy to her young arouse our interest and admiration. We must also appreciate the difficulty with which the digging is attended, the meeting of frequent stones to block the work, which, by the way, may be the cause of the change in direction of the hole, but which I was inclined to believe intentional until I found a perfectly straight passage, in which a brood was successfully raised.

“To get photographs of a series of the eggs and young was almost as difficult a task, I believe, as the Kingfisher had in making the hole. It was necessary to walk at least four miles and dig down to the back of the nest, through the bank above, and fill it in again four times, without deranging the nest or frightening away the parent birds. But we were well repaid for the trouble, for the pictures accurately record what could not be described.

“A photograph of the seven eggs was taken before they had even been touched, and numerous disgorgements of fish bones and scales show about the roomy apartment. The shapely domed ceiling, as well as the arch of the passage, is constructionally necessary for the safety of the occupants, the former being even more perfect than the pictures show. What is generally called instinct in birds has long since been to me a term used to explain what in reality is intelligence.

“Some writer has mentioned that as soon as the young Kingfishers are able, they wander about their little homes until they are able to fly, but evidently his experience was limited. My four pictures of the young birds were taken by lifting them out of their nests and placing them in a proper place to be photographed in the light, but the first two pictures were taken in the positions in which they were naturally found in the nest. The first, when they were about two days old, was obtained on the 21st of May, 1899, and the young were not only found wrapped together in the nest, but the moment they were put on the ground, one at a time, though their eyes were still sealed, they immediately covered one another with their wings and wide bills, making such a tight ball that when any one shifted a leg, the whole mass would move like a single bird. This is a most sensible method of keeping warm, since the mother bird’s legs are so short that she could not stand over them, but, as they are protected from the wind and weather, they have no need of her. Their appearance is comical in the extreme, and all out of proportion. This clinging to one another is apparently kept up for at least ten days, for a week later, when nine days old, they were found in exactly a similar position.

“When the young were first observed, they were absolutely naked, without the suggestion of a feather, and, unlike most young birds, showed no plumage of any kind until the regular final feathering, which was the same as that of the adult, began to appear. The growth of the birds was remarkably slow, and even when nine days old the feathers were just beginning to push through their tiny sheaths, but so distinctly showed their markings that I was able to distinguish the sexes by the colouring of the bands on the chest. They did not open their mouths in the usual manner for food, but tried to pick up small objects from the ground, and one got another by his foot, as the picture shows. I took two other photographs the same day, showing several birds searching on the ground with their bills, as if they were already used to this manner of feeding.

“When the birds were sixteen days old, they had begun to look like formidable Kingfishers, with more shapely bills and crests, but as yet they evidently knew no use for their wings. They showed little temper, though they appeared to be somewhat surprised at being disturbed.

“My next visit to the hole in the bank was when the birds were twenty-three days old, and, to ascertain whether they were still at home, I poked into the entrance of the hole a long, thin twig, which was quickly accepted by quite a strong bite. Taking the precaution to stop the hole with a good-sized stone, I proceeded to my digging for the last time on the top of the bank. This time I found the chamber had been moved, and I had some difficulty in locating it about a foot higher up and about the same distance to one side. The old birds had evidently discovered my imperfectly closed back door, and either mistrusted its security, or else a heavy rain had soaked down into the loosened earth and caused them to make alterations. They had completely closed up the old chamber and packed it tightly with earth and disgorged fish bones.

“The skill with which they met this emergency was of unusual interest, showing again the ingenuity and general intelligence which so often surprises us in the study of birds. Their home was kept perfectly clean by its constant caretaker. One of the full-grown birds, with every feather, as far as I could see, entirely developed, sat just long enough for me to photograph him, and then flew from the branch where I had placed him, down the stream, and out of sight, loudly chattering like an old bird. One more bird performed the same feat, but before I was able to get him on my plate. The rest I left in the nest, and no doubt they were all in the open air that warm, sunny day, before nightfall.

* * * * *

“It happens that but few of us may look into a Kingfisher’s home as Mr. Baily did, but it is very pleasant to know where this dashing bird goes when, on securing a fish, instead of swallowing it, he seems to dive, drop into the water, and disappear, when in reality he is taking his prey home to the nest.

“We must be content to enjoy the Kingfisher as a feature in the landscape, as the centre of a picture of woods, pond, or river, to which he gives the needful touch of life. The river scenery of March is lifeless and dreary, for, if the snow has melted and the ice broken up, the bushes alongshore are beaten down by the storms of winter or partly submerged by the spring freshets. Here and there, in sunny spots on the low shore, we may see the purple-pointed hood and bright green leaves of the skunk-cabbage, but if a Kingfisher is perching on a dead branch overhanging the water, crest erect, gazing into the water and on the alert for a fish to pass, the scene at once becomes full of interest. Of course the Kingfisher, as his name implies, is above all a fisherman, and complaints come sometimes from those who are stocking ponds and rivers with fish, and who object to his taking his tithe, but when pressed by hunger through the sudden skimming of their hunting ponds with ice in early winter, he has been known to eat berries of many kinds, and in time of drought when streams run low or dry up entirely, the Kingfisher will feed upon beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, frogs, lizards, etc. But here in the East, at any rate, the bird is not plentiful enough to be a danger to the fishing industry.”

“I’ve seen a Kingfisher fishing in the salt-water creek that goes into the bay. We camped right there on the point last summer,” said Tommy. “He must have lived up the river somewhere, for he used to come down early in the morning, and stay about all day, and I suppose he must have got through feeding his children, for it was along in August. I never saw but one,—the male, I guess, because it didn’t have any brown on its breast like what there is in the picture of the female.

“It was great fun to watch him. One day the rest all went off fishing to Middle Ground Light, and I stayed at home because I’d cut my finger with a fish-hook, and it hurt a lot, and the Doctor made me keep it soaking in medicine, so I just lay in the sand under the shady side of the tent, only moving enough to keep out of the sun, and watched out.

“When the Kingfisher first came, the tide was just turned and beginning to rush out of the creek like everything. Mr. Fisherman sat on a tall post that we tie the boats up to at night. It was close to the water, not where the strong current was, but a little to one side, where it was more still. He did pretty well for a while; the fish looked small, and he swallowed ’em without wriggling his throat so very much.

“One thing he did was very funny; he didn’t dive right down from the post after the fish, but he took a little fly up first and then folded his wings to his sides and dropped right in beak first, same as we fellows do when we jump off the spring board dad rigged to a raft and then dive. I couldn’t make out whether he always did it, or if it was because the post was too near the water.

“After a little, the water went down so that the post wasn’t near enough to the water; then what did he do but shift over to the bowsprit of an old oyster boat that was wrecked and half buried in the sand, right in the bank just inside the creek; this gave him a fine perch right over the channel. When he saw that there was no one about, he sort of settled down, and looking at him so long made me lazy, and I guess I fell asleep and didn’t see him dive, because the next thing I knew, there was the Kingfisher back on the perch, but he had an eel in his beak instead of a fish.

“Say, Gray Lady, did you ever try to hold an eel in your fingers, without rubbing wet sand on them first? Well, you should have seen that bird twist and flop about. It was only a little eel, not any bigger than a pencil, but, oh my!” And Tommy laughed heartily at the very memory of the fray.

“Kingfisher couldn’t stick to the perch, so he dropped right on to a piece of the deck of the boat that wasn’t buried, and began to beat the eel on the wood and dance about. The eel squirmed so, it didn’t hit often, and it acted as if it had legs and was dancing too. When the fun began, the bird had the eel about in the middle, but it pulled away until one end was longer than the other, and that made it harder to hold.”

“Which was the head end, the one that hung down?” asked Eliza, who always insisted on precise details.

“I didn’t know then,” said Tommy; “I couldn’t see, and it didn’t keep still long enough for me to ask!

“At last Kingfisher gave the eel a good bang, and it didn’t squirm so much (then I knew the head must have been on the long piece because it wouldn’t have hurt its tail), and the bird began to swallow and work his throat, just like when a snake begins to work a toad down. Once or twice he stopped, and I thought that he was going to choke and keel over. He didn’t, though, but after it was all down, he looked real sorry and uncomfortable and his feathers laid down almost flat to his head, and he crouched there on the boat quite a while before he flew up creek and didn’t fish any more that day.

“Maybe he’d never caught a salt-water eel before, and didn’t know how lively they are; you can’t measure them by mud eels out of still water any more’n you can match snakes with ground-worms.”

THE KINGFISHER

He laughs by the summer stream
Where the lilies nod and dream,
As through the sheen of water cool and clear
He sees the chub and sunfish cutting shear.

His are resplendent eyes;
His mien is kingliwise;
And down the March wind rides he like a king
With more than royal purple on his wing.

His palace is the brake
Where the rushes shine and shake;
His music is the murmur of the stream,
And the leaf-rustle where the lilies dream.

Such life as his would be
A more than heaven to me;
All sun, all bloom, all happy weather,
All joys bound in a sheaf together.

No wonder he laughs so loud!
No wonder he looks so proud!
There are great kings would give their royalty
To have one day of his felicity!

—Maurice Thompson.

“The very name of Phœbe calls us from the Red-wing in the marsh meadows and the Kingfisher by the waterways and brings us home again. Not only within the home acres, but close to the house, barns, and woodshed, for has she not been living in and about them quite as long as we have, or even longer? There was a Phœbe who always built her first nest on the deep sill of the dormer-window of the store-closet, and her second in the bracket that supports the hood of the north window in the guest-room.

“She was not very tidy about her work of nest-building (it seems more natural to call the Phœbe _she_ than _he_), but then, it must be very difficult to make a nest with a high foundation of crumbling moss and mud, with hairs and grass for a lining, without spilling some of the nesting material. My mother used to grumble about having the store-room window-sill remain in such a litter for so long, but she never disturbed the nest, even by brushing away the loose moss, and almost every day she would look through the window to see how the eggs or young were faring, and I thought it a great privilege to be allowed to go to the store-room and sit quite still inside the closed window and watch the Phœbe’s housekeeping.

“It was in this way that I first learned how the bird stands up in the nest and turns the white eggs over with its feet so that they may be evenly warmed through; how the young are fed and the droppings removed from the nest so that it need not become foul.

“In spite of great care and constant bathing, for Phœbe is very fond of a bath and was always a great patron of the log water-trough, the puddles that gathered in the gutter after rain, and upon occasion would dash into the bucket that always stood under the well-spout, the poor bird suffers greatly from insect parasites. The reason for this I cannot tell, unless it is that the foundation of the nest is so light and spongy on account of the moss, that the air does not pass through and the lice breed freely. One thing I remember, however, is that as soon as the birds had flown, mother always removed the empty nest and had its resting-place thoroughly cleansed.

“This is not so apt to happen when the bird chooses a fresh location and makes a new nest for a second brood, but upon the only occasion that the window-sill nest was used twice in a season, the lice crawled through the window-frame into the house, and of the second brood, only one lived to fly, and he was a miserable, emaciated little thing, so badly did the lice beset the young birds. After that, mother always gave them a hint that a new nest was best by making it impossible for them to use the old one.”

“I should think the Phœbes might have got mad and gone away for good,” said Sarah Barnes.

“No; they either understood that mother’s intentions were good, or else they appreciated the comfort and cleanliness of the new nest, for their children and grandchildren have occupied the two sites ever since, and this summer when I stood inside the store-room window showing the nest to Goldilocks, bird and nest were just the same as when my mother stood there by me.

“That is why the everyday birds that live about our homes are so precious and should be so carefully guarded. We never see them grow old, and so they help us to keep young in heart.

“Phœbe belongs to a very important family, that of the Flycatchers, songless birds with call-notes that are distinctive; these take their food upon the wing, diving from a perch into the air for it as the Kingfisher dives into the water for his. In this way the flycatchers are among the most valuable of the Sky Sweepers.

“Among Phœbe’s cousins you will find the _Kingbird_, who wears a slate-coloured coat and white vest, a crest on his head, and a white band on the end of his tail by which you may know him, as he sits on a fence rail, stump, or even on a tall mullen stalk and sallies out into the air, crying a shrill ‘Kyrie-Kyrie!’ The Great Crested Flycatcher, with an olive-brown coat, gray throat, and yellow belly, who builds in a tree hole well above the ground, and uses dried snake skins among his materials when he can get them, is another relative, and the largest of the family; while a third is the little Wood-pewee, of the dark olive-brown coat and two whitish wing-bars, who saddles his lichen-covered nest, as dainty as that of a Humming-bird high up on a limb, and calls his plaintive note, Pee-wee-pee-a-wee peer,’ through the aisles of the deep woods, as constantly as Phœbe lets her name be known in a more shrill and rasping voice to the barnyard flock.

“These and several other flycatchers do not come to us until May, but the Phœbe of all his tribes trusts his livelihood to the care of gusty March. Perhaps it is the early return that makes the Phœbe so friendly and causes it to choose either a site by the water or near a house. Insect life awakes much more quickly in gardens and about the farm-yards, or near open running water, than in the remote woods; for certain it is that no other member of the family is so easily domesticated.

“The Phœbe not only eats the earliest insects that appear, but it has peculiarly constructed eyes, like the Whip-poor-will and Night Hawk; it can catch its food until the end of twilight, so that it kills many bugs that hide all day. Among the hurtful insects that it catches are the click-beetle, brown-tail moth, canker-worm moth, and the elm beetle. As a berry-eater no one can find fault with it, as when late in a dry season it takes a little fruit, wild berries supply the need.

“All this should be a hint to us to leave a few nooks about the place for a pair of Phœbes to appropriate for a homestead; a little shelf under suitable shelter is all they ask, or, better yet, nail a few wide braces under the roof of a wagon, cattle, or wood shed, even if it does not need supporting. Then, before the first Robin or Chipping-sparrow awakens, when the first flush of light penetrates the darkness of night, you will have a home sentinel at hand to cry, ‘Phœbe! I see, all’s well!’ to the morning, and at evening she will blend her voice with the Whip-poor-will’s in wishing you good night, for though Phœbe is early to come in the spring and early to rise in the morning, she goes late to bed and meets the bats in the sky during her evening excursions.”

“Maybe Phœbes don’t really sing, but they think they do,” said Tommy, as Gray Lady looked in vain in her scrap-book for a poem that should do the bird justice and be catching in rhythm.

“Sometimes in May they get up on the roof or the telephone wire or something like that, and tumble somersaults into the air and cry ‘phœbe-phœbe-phœbe-phœbe,’ on and on and on and over again, like the Katydids and Katydidn’ts in the maples at night, only the Phœbe is so worked up she can only think of her own name.”

“Then this verse of Lowell’s at least is true,” said Gray Lady, closing the scrap-book.

“Phœbe is all it has to say
In plaintive cadence o’er and o’er,
Like children that have lost their way
And know their names, but nothing more.”

-----

[5] _The Kingfishers’ Home Life_, W. L. Baily in _Bird-Lore_.