The birds do not make a nest, but lay their eggs on a heap of these pellets instead; and they have an odd way of laying them at intervals, so that sometimes half-fledged little ones, newly hatched little ones, and freshly laid eggs may all be found together.
When the young owls are waiting for their parents to return with a mouse, they always get very much excited and make most odd noises, something like loud hisses followed by loud snores. And when at last one of the old birds returns with a mouse in its talons the outcry grows louder than ever.
One of the oddest members of the family is the burrowing owl, or coquimbo, as the South American form is known. This inhabits only the open plains of Western North America and Southern South America, and as it can find no trees or rocky niches in which to nest, it scratches out shallow burrows in little banks of earth, or takes possession of the deserted burrows of some digging animal. It is therefore a constant citizen of the "towns" of the prairie-dogs of the North and viscachas of the South, where numbers of burrowing owls may sometimes be seen, some hunting about for beetles and gra.s.shoppers, on which they chiefly feed, and others sitting at the entrances of the burrows and surveying the surrounding country. They are not at all timid, and if a man approaches them they will remain where they are until he is quite close, bobbing up and down from time to time as though they were politely bowing to him.
If he continues to walk toward them they will rise into the air, fly two or three times round his head, screaming loudly as they do so, and then settle down on another mound a few yards away and bow to him again. But if he walks round them instead they will turn their heads to look after him, without moving their bodies, until one would almost think that they would twist them off altogether.
When neither prairie-dogs nor viscachas live in the neighborhood, these queer little owls will sometimes take up their quarters in the burrow of a wolf, a fox, or a badger. They make a very rough nest of gra.s.s and feathers, in which they lay from six to eleven white eggs.
CHAPTER XXI
CUCKOOS, NIGHTJARS, HUMMING-BIRDS, WOODp.e.c.k.e.rS, AND TOUCANS
In Europe the cuckoo is one of the most familiar and well-known birds, and every one recognizes its note, and regards it as a sure sign that summer is near. The bird usually reaches England about the second week in April, and very soon after that time the c.o.c.k bird may be heard uttering his cry, which is one of the most familiar sounds of the country, until two months later. Then the bird"s voice breaks, and after crying "cuck-cuck-cuck-oo" for a few days, instead of the simple "cuckoo," he becomes quite dumb, and is quite unable to utter his note again until the following spring.
This cuckoo is famous for its singular habit of placing its egg in the nest of some other bird, instead of making a nest of its own. The hen bird seems, first of all, to lay her egg on the ground; then, picking it up in her beak, she flies off to look for a suitable nest in which to put it. Having found one, she waits her opportunity, when the occupant is absent, and then slips in the egg and flies away. The owner of the nest, strange to say, hardly ever seems to notice when she comes back that there is a strange egg among her own, although very often it is not in the least like them in color and markings. So before very long a young cuckoo is hatched out, together with her own little ones. Then on the very day of its birth the cuckoo seems to make up its mind that before long there will be no room in the nest for any one but itself, and actually pushes all its little foster brothers and sisters over the side, one after the other! And, strange to say, the mother bird does not seem to mind, but just gives all the food which her own young would have eaten to the cuckoo, and takes the greatest care of it in every way until it is able to fly.
The cuckoo family is a large and varied one, with representatives in all parts of the world, and few of them show this extraordinary disposition to impose upon their neighbors, though all are careless home-makers. In the United States we have two kinds of cuckoos, the black-billed and the yellow-billed, which have much the same slim form and plain yet elegant dress as their European cousin, but a different note, uttering a loud rattling cry instead of the soft _cuck-oo_; and both of these make nests, lay eggs in them, and rear their young as faithfully as other birds. The nests, however, are merely loose platforms of twigs set among the branches of some small tree, through which, often, the greenish-blue eggs are distinctly visible.
NIGHTJARS
The nightjars are another world-wide family, with great similarity in both appearance and habit among its members. All are nocturnal, have big heads, large eyes, and very small beaks, although the mouth opens very wide. They hunt their food by night, resting during the day in shady forests or caves; and like owls they have plumage so plainly brown and gray, and so soft, that their flight is noiseless and almost invisible.
The name--which refers to its jarring cry, which is more or less characteristic of the whole family--was given first to the British species, which is often called fern-owl in England. Late in the evening you may often hear it uttering its curious note--"chur-r-r-r-r-r"--which sometimes goes on without any break for three or four minutes.
This continuous calling is one of the most characteristic things about our American nightjar, the whippoorwill, whose loud, musical cry is heard in summer from almost every hillside in the land, during the dusk of evening or morning or when the woods are whitened with moonlight; and sometimes two or three birds will sing against one another, as if in jealous rivalry, repeating the call several hundred times without a pause. In the Western United States, and in tropical America, are several kinds of whippoorwills; and in the Southern States a bigger cousin which calls its name loudly through the darkness--_chuck-will"s-widow_. More nearly deserving the name nightjar, however, is our night-hawk, or bullbat, which is often seen flying swiftly about, high in the air, even before sunset, uttering a hoa.r.s.e scream, or a queer-booming note, as it rushes, open-mouth, after unlucky insects.
All the birds of this group are insect catchers and eaters, and their mouths, which have only a tiny pretence of a beak, open exceedingly wide, so that they may scoop in a dozen little flies at once, or seize and swallow a great moth. Then the tongue is exceedingly sticky, like that of an ant-eater; besides this, the sides of the beak are fringed with long, stiff bristles. So, when the bird catches an insect, its victim nearly always sticks firmly to its tongue, while, if it should break away from that, the bristles act just like a cage, and prevent it from escaping.
The nightjars make no nest at all, but lay their eggs in a small hollow in the ground, generally under the shelter of a fern, or a tuft of bramble or heather. These eggs are never more than two in number, and are grayish white in color, mottled and marbled with gray and buff.
SWIFTS
In these arrangements and habits the nightjars show how nearly they are related to the very differently appearing chimney-swifts, which look so much like swallows that we often call them chimney-swallows, but this is wrong. Before this country was inhabited by white men, the swifts dwelt in companies in hollow trees, but as fast as the settlers built houses and chimneys the swifts left the trees and made their homes in the chimneys, where they fasten to the bricks little shelf-shaped nests composed of their glue-like saliva and bits of twigs. In the East Indies a kind of swift makes such a nest wholly out of its saliva, which hardens into a whitish material like isingla.s.s. This is fastened against the wall or roof of some cave by the sea, and the Malays and Chinese gather these nests at the peril of their lives, where they are built in hundreds in dark caverns, and sell them as delicacies to be made into bird"s-nest soup.
The swift feeds upon flies and small beetles, which it catches in the air, and on any fine summer"s day you may see it hawking for prey. It well deserves its name, for it dashes through the air with most wonderful speed, and is said to be able to fly at the rate of two hundred miles an hour! And as it flies it keeps twisting and turning after the fashion of a bat, and is evidently snapping up insect after insect as it goes.
Yet, strange to say, the bird never seems to be tired. It is often on the wing before three o"clock in the morning, and is still darting about as actively as ever after sunset.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FOUR HANDSOME BIRDS.
1. American Pileated Woodp.e.c.k.e.r, or Logc.o.c.k. 2. European Roller.
3. European Kingfisher. 4. European Jay.]
HUMMING-BIRDS
Although they are not very much like swifts, the humming-birds are closely related to them, and have powers of flight which are really almost as wonderful. Indeed, if you alarm one of these birds when it is hovering over a flower, it will dart away with such astonishing speed that it is almost impossible for the eye to follow its course. And even while it is hovering the wings vibrate so rapidly that you cannot see them, all that is visible being a faint blur on either side of the body.
These exquisite little birds are found in Central and South America, in the West Indies, and in the warmer parts of the United States. Several very beautiful species are known west of the Rocky Mountains, but only one, the ruby-throat, visits the Eastern States. As a rule they are most beautifully colored, their plumage shining with metallic gold, and copper, and bronze, and purple, and crimson, and blue, and green.
Sometimes, too--for there are a great many different species--there is a ruff round the neck, or long tufts upon the head; or perhaps two of the tail-feathers may be produced until they are longer than the head and body and the rest of the tail put together.
As a rule, the beaks of humming-birds are very long, in order that they may be poked into flowers in search of any insects which may be lying hidden within them. And the bird will hover over a bush, and move on from one blossom to another, until every one has been thoroughly explored.
The nests of humming-birds are nearly always very small and cup-shaped, and are made of little bits of lichen and moss neatly fastened together with the silken threads of certain spiders. Only two eggs are laid, which are quite white, and so tiny that it seems impossible that a bird could be hatched out of them. At least five hundred kinds of these beautiful little birds have already been discovered.
WOODp.e.c.k.e.rS
North America has a large population of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, including the biggest and finest one in the world. This is the great ivory-bill--twenty inches in length, and jet-black, with white wing-tips, a grand scarlet topknot, and a beak like an ivory pickax. It used to be abundant all over the Southern States, but now is nearly extinct. Almost as fine, and still frequently seen all over the eastern parts of the United States and Canada, is the similar but smaller logc.o.c.k, or pileated woodp.e.c.k.e.r, as it is named in the books, whose shrill scream may be heard half a mile.
Most of our familiar woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, however, are much smaller, and their plumage is a checker of black and white. Everywhere common in town, as well as among the farmlands, are three or four species, of which the most often seen, and the smallest, is the downy woodp.e.c.k.e.r, which gets its name from the broad stripe of soft white feathers up and down the middle of its back. It is not so large as a sparrow, and haunts the woods, the farmer"s orchards, the shade-trees along the rural roads or beside the streets of our villages, and often makes itself a welcome visitor to the city parks and gardens. From morning till night, and all the year round, it scrambles up and down the trunks of the trees and round and round their branches, cleverly finding and dragging out insects or their young concealed under the scales of the bark; and though it digs many pits none is deep enough to injure the tree, as the only woodp.e.c.k.e.r which digs deep enough to do harm is the yellow-bellied one, which appears only in the spring, going far north to breed, and which country people call the sapsucker. The downy and its relatives, on the other hand, are doing good every day. Especially welcome is this active little visitor in winter, often with such small companions as the chickadee and nuthatch, when birds, or any other sort of living things are scarce, and we are longing for their return.
If you sit down for awhile at the foot of a tree, and keep very still indeed, without moving even so much as a finger, it will very likely come and sit on the trunk of another tree close by and begin to peck away with its long, sharp beak in search of insects.
How it makes the chips fly! Its beak is just like a chisel, and when the bird finds that a beetle or a grub has burrowed into the trunk, it does not take very long to dig it out. And it also has an extremely odd tongue, which is very long and slender, and very sticky, and has a curious tip. By means of this tongue the bird can often drag an insect out of its burrow without being obliged to dig right down to it.
Sometimes woodp.e.c.k.e.rs make a most amusing mistake. They hear the humming of a telegraph wire, and think that it must be caused by insects living in the posts. So they set to work with the utmost energy to dig them out, and are so diligent and so persevering that they have often been known to cut a big hole right through a telegraph post before finding out that there were no insects there after all!
There is another thing that we wish you especially to notice about the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, and that is the way in which it is enabled to sit on an upright tree-trunk for a long time without getting tired. The fact is that it really sits on its own tail, which serves as a kind of camp-stool! If you look at a woodp.e.c.k.e.r"s tail you will find that the feathers are very short and very stiff, and that they are bent downward.
When the bird perches on the trunk of a tree the tips of these feathers rest upon the bark and prop it up, so that there is very little strain upon the muscles of the feet and legs.
Downy, after the manner of its kind, uses its chisel-beak to form a deep and safe home in some old tree or stump, and often has enough confidence in its friends of the village or farm to choose a tall fence-post; and therein it deposits its pure white eggs and shelters its babies.
Moreover, Papa Downy often digs near by a more shallow tunnel for himself, where he spends the night in safety and comfort as his mate is doing in her own snug chamber.
The hairy woodp.e.c.k.e.r is very similar to the downy in dress, but one-half larger, and by no means so numerous or familiar. There are several northern and far-western kinds of checkered woodp.e.c.k.e.r such as the three-toed, the arctic and others, but their habits are very similar, and we may pa.s.s them by to speak of two species more notable in every way.
THE REDHEAD AND THE FLICKER
The redhead is most strikingly colored, for its whole head and neck are scarlet, its shoulders and back black, its wing-quills and rump white, and the tail black. It is a fairly large bird and a bold one, though like all woodp.e.c.k.e.rs it will slip around to the other side of the tree when it hears your step, and then peep out with comical caution to see whether you are dangerous. If you keep quiet it is likely soon to scuttle back and go on hammering, making the chips fly and the forest ring with its busy search after some buried grub. The Indians made a good deal of use of the scarlet feathers of this bird; and it is always a tempting mark for the wandering gunner, so that it is no wonder it is becoming rare in thickly settled regions.
A much less handsome but more numerous woodp.e.c.k.e.r in all parts of the country is the golden-winged, or flicker, or high-hole, for it goes by many names among the boys who love to trace it to its nesting-hole in some tall stub, and take, if they can, the pearly eggs that lie on a bed of chips in the bottom of the cavity. This nesting-hole, with its accurately round doorway and hall, goes straight into the tree-trunk for two inches or so, and then turns downward sometimes to the depth of a foot. This large woodp.e.c.k.e.r is not black and white, like most of the others, but wears a dress of greenish brown with wing-quills that look just as though they were gilded, and a small bonnet of red on the back of its head where there is no crest. In fact, the flicker is a queer sort of woodp.e.c.k.e.r generally, for it spends quite as much time in fields and gardens as in the woods, and much of this on the ground in search of insects--mostly ants.
Woodp.e.c.k.e.rs are noisy birds, both in their hammering and in their rough cries, and this one is perhaps the noisiest of all; but its call is so joyous that one cannot hear it without a sense of cheer.
TOUCANS
We now come to a group of really extraordinary birds. They are found in the forests of Central and South America, and are chiefly remarkable for their beaks, which in the first place are so enormous that they look as if they had been intended for birds at least six times as big, and in the second place are most gaudily colored. It is not very easy to describe them, because there are a good many kinds of toucans, and each has its bill differently colored. In one the beak is partly orange and partly black, with a lilac base. In another it is light green, with the tip and edges of the most brilliant scarlet. In a third it is half scarlet and half bright yellow; while in a fourth it is creamy white with a broad streak of crimson running along the middle; and in a fifth is a most singular mixture of orange and blue and chocolate brown and white.
Owing to the great size of their bills these birds are most ungainly in appearance, and one cannot help wondering how they manage to hold up their heads. But in reality these huge beaks are not at all heavy, for instead of being made of solid horn, the whole of the interior is broken up into cells, the divisions between which are no thicker than paper--a structure which gives them not only great lightness but great strength.
Toucans live chiefly in the trees, and spend most of their time in the topmost branches, where they are fond of gathering together in large flocks. They are very noisy birds, for they not only utter hoa.r.s.e cries and loud yells in chorus, but have a way of clattering their beaks together as well. Owing to this habit the natives of South America sometimes call them "preacher-birds."