THE SIMPLE ART OF SAPSUCKING
The yellow-bellied sapsucker is, at this time of year, one of our most abundant woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, and in its life we have an excellent example of that individuality which is ever cropping out in Nature--the trial and acceptance of life under new conditions.
In the spring we tap the sugar maples, and gather great pailfuls of the sap as it rises from its winter resting-place in the roots, and the sapsucker likes to steal from our pails or to tap the trees for himself.
But throughout part of the year he is satisfied with an insect diet and chooses the time when the sap begins to flow downward in the autumn for committing his most serious depredations upon the tree. It was formerly thought that this bird, like its near relatives, the downy and hairy woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, was forever boring for insects; but when we examine the regularity and symmetry of the arrangement of its holes, we realise that they are for a very different purpose than the exposing of an occasional grub.
Besides drinking the sap from the holes, this bird extracts a quant.i.ty of the tender inner bark of the tree, and when a tree has been encircled for several feet up and down its trunk by these numerous little sap wells, the effect becomes apparent in the lessened circulation of the liquid blood of the tree; and before long, death is certain to ensue. So the work of the sapsucker is injurious, while the grub-seeking woodp.e.c.k.e.rs confer only good upon the trees they frequent.
And how pitiful is the downfall of a doomed tree! Hardly has its vitality been lessened an appreciable amount, when somehow the word is pa.s.sed to the insect hordes who hover about in waiting, as wolves hang upon the outskirts of a herd of buffalo. In the spring, when the topmost branches have received a little less than their wonted amount of wholesome sap and the leaves are less vigorous, the caterpillars and twig-girdlers attack at once. Ichneumen flies and boring beetles seem to know by signs invisible to us that here is opportunity. Then in the fall come again the sapsuckers to the tree, remorselessly driving hole after hole through the still untouched segments of its circle of life. When the last sap-channel is pierced and no more can pa.s.s to the roots, the tree stands helpless, waiting for the end. Swiftly come frost and rain, and when the April suns again quicken all the surrounding vegetation into vigorous life, the victim of the sapsuckers stands lifeless, its branches reaching hopelessly upward, a naked mockery amid the warm green foliage around. Insects and fungi and lightning now set to work unhindered, and the tree falls at last,--dust to dust--ashes to ashes.
A sapsucker has been seen in early morning to sink forty or fifty wells into the bark of a mountain ash tree, and then to spend the rest of the day in sidling from one to another, taking a sip here and a drink there, gradually becoming more and more lethargic and drowsy, as if the sap actually produced some narcotic or intoxicating effect. Strong indeed is the contrast between such a picture and the same bird in the early spring,--then full of life and vigour, drawing musical reverberations from some resonant hollow limb.
Like other idlers, the sapsucker in its deeds of gluttony and harm brings, if anything, more injury to others than to itself. The farmers well know its depredations and detest it accordingly, but unfortunately they are not ornithologists, and a p.e.c.k.e.rwood is a p.e.c.k.e.rwood to them; and so while the poor downy, the red-head, and the hairy woodp.e.c.k.e.rs are seen busily at work cutting the life threads of the injurious borer larvae, the farmer, thinking of his dying trees, slays them all without mercy or distinction.
The sapsucker is never as confiding as the downy, and from a safe distance sees others murdered for sins which are his alone.
But we must give sapsucker his due and admit that he devours many hundreds of insects throughout the year, and though we mourn the death of an occasional tree, we cannot but admire his new venture in life,--his cunning in choosing only the dessert served at the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs"
feasts,--the sweets which flow at the tap of a beak, leaving to his fellows the labour of searching and drilling deep for more substantial courses.
WILD WINGS
The ides of March see the woodc.o.c.k back in its northern home, and in early April it prepares for nesting. The question of the nest itself is a very simple matter, being only a cavity, formed by the pressure of the mother"s body, among the moss and dead leaves. The formalities of courtship are, however, quite another thing, and the execution of interesting aerial dances entails much effort and time.
It is in the dusk of evening that the male woodc.o.c.k begins his song,--plaintive notes uttered at regular intervals, and sounding like _peent!_ _peent!_ Then without warning he launches himself on a sharply ascending spiral, his wings whistling through the gloom. Higher and higher he goes, balances a moment, and finally descends abruptly, with zigzag rushes, wings and voice both aiding each other in producing the sounds, to which, let us suppose, his prospective mate listens with ecstasy. It is a weird performance, repeated again and again during the same evening.
So p.r.o.nounced and loud is the whistling of the wings that we wonder how it can be produced by ordinary feathers. The three outer primaries of the wing, which in most birds are usually like the others, in the woodc.o.c.k are very stiff, and the vanes are so narrow that when the wing is spread there is a wide s.p.a.ce between each one. When the wing beats the air rapidly, the wind rushes through these feather slits,--and we have the accompaniment of the love-song explained.
The feather-covered arms and hands of birds are full of interest; and after studying the wing of a chicken which has been plucked for the table, we shall realise how wonderful a transformation has taken place through the millions of years past. Only three stubby fingers are left and these are stiff and almost immovable, but the rest of the forearm is very like that of our own arm.
See how many facts we can acc.u.mulate about wings, by giving special attention to them, when watching birds fly across the sky. How easy it is to identify the steady beats of a crow, or the more rapid strokes of a duck; how distinctive is the frequent looping flight of a goldfinch, or the longer, more direct swings of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r!
Hardly any two birds have wings exactly similar in shape, every wing being exquisitely adapted to its owner"s needs. The gull soars or flaps slowly on his long, narrow, tireless pinions, while the quail rises suddenly before us on short, rounded wings, which carry it like a rocket for a short distance, when it settles quickly to earth again. The gull would fare ill were it compelled to traverse the ocean with such brief spurts of speed, while, on the other hand, the last bob-white would shortly vanish, could it escape from fox or weasel only with the slow flight of a gull.
How splendidly the sickle wings of a swift enable it to turn and twist, bat-like, in its pursuit of insects!
You may be able to identify any bird near your home, you may know its nest and eggs, its song and its young; but begin at the beginning again and watch their wings and their feet and their bills and you will find that there are new and wonderful truths at your very doorstep. Try bringing home from your walk a list of bill-uses or feet-functions. Remember that a familiar object, looked at from a new point of view, will take to itself unthought-of significance.
Whither midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?
William Cullen Bryant.
THE BIRDS IN THE MOON
The lover of birds who has spent the day in the field puts away his gla.s.ses at nightfall, looking forward to a walk after dark only as a chance to hear the call of nocturnal birds or to catch the whirr of a pa.s.sing wing. But some bright moonlight night in early May, or again in mid September, unsheath your gla.s.ses and tie them, telescope-fashion, to a window-ledge or railing. Seat yourself in an easy position and focus on the moon. Shut out all earthly scenes from your mind and imagine yourself wandering amid those arid wastes. What a scene of cosmic desolation! What vast deserts, and gaping craters of barren rock! The cold, steel-white planet seems of all things most typical of death.
But those specks pa.s.sing across its surface? At first you imagine they are motes clogging the delicate blood-vessels of the retina; then you wonder if a distant host of falling meteors could have pa.s.sed. Soon a larger, nearer mote appears; the moon and its craters are forgotten and with a thrill of delight you realise that they are birds--living, flying birds--of all earthly things typical of the most vital life! Migration is at its height, the chirps and twitters which come from the surrounding darkness are tantalising hints telling of the pa.s.sing legions. Thousands and thousands of birds are every night pouring northward in a swift, invisible, aerial stream.
As a projecting pebble in mid-stream blurs the transparent water with a myriad bubbles, so the narrow path of moon-rays, which our gla.s.s reveals, cute a swath of visibility straight through the host of birds to our eager eyes. How we hate to lose an instant"s opportunity! Even a wink may allow a familiar form to pa.s.s unseen. If we can use a small telescope, the field of view is much enlarged. Now and then we recognise the flight of some particular species,--the swinging loop of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r or goldfinch, or the flutter of a sandpiper.
It has been computed that these birds sometimes fly as much as a mile or more above the surface of the earth, and when we think of the tiny, fluttering things at this terrible height, it takes our breath away. What a panorama of dark earth and glistening river and ocean must be spread out beneath them! How the big moon must glow in that rarefied air! How diminutive and puerile must seem the houses and cities of human fashioning!
The instinct of migration is one of the most wonderful in the world. A young bob-white and a bobolink are hatched in the same New England field.
The former grows up and during the fall and winter forms one of the covey which is content to wander a mile or two, here and there, in search of good feeding grounds. Hardly has the bobolink donned his first full dress before an irresistible impulse seizes him. One night he rises up and up, ever higher on fluttering wings, sets his course southward, gives you a glimpse of him across the moon, and keeps on through Virginia to Florida, across seas, over tropical islands, far into South America, never content until he has put the great Amazon between him and his far distant birthplace.
He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.
William Cullen Bryant.
MAY
THE HIGH TIDE OF BIRD LIFE
For abundance and for perfection of song and plumage, of the whole year, May is the month of birds. Insects appear slowly in the spring and are numerous all summer; squirrels and mice are more or less in evidence during all the twelve months; reptiles unearth themselves at the approach of the warm weather, and may be found living their slow, sluggish life until late in the fall. In eggs, coc.o.o.ns, discarded bird"s-nests, in earthen burrows, or in the mud at the bottom of pond or stream, all these creatures have spent the winter near where we find them in the spring. But birds are like creatures of another world; and, although in every summer"s walk we may see turtles, birds, b.u.t.terflies, and chipmunks, all interweaving their life paths across one another"s haunts, yet the power of extended flight and the wonderful habit of continental migration set birds apart from all other living creatures. A bird during its lifetime has almost twice the conscious existence of, say, a snake or any hibernating mammal. And now in early May, when the creatures of the woods and fields have only recently opened their sleepy eyes and stretched their thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap--the height of the grand symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels"
chatter were only the first notes of the prelude.
Tantalus-like is the condition of the amateur bird-lover, who, book in hand, vainly endeavours to identify the countless beautiful forms which appear in such vast numbers, linger a few days and then disappear, pa.s.sing on to the northward, but leaving behind a goodly a.s.semblage which spends the summer and gives abundant opportunity for study during the succeeding months. In May it is the migrants which we should watch, and listen to, and "ogle" with our opera gla.s.ses. Like many other evanescent things, those birds which have made their winter home in Central America--land yet beyond our travels--and which use our groves merely as half-way houses on their journey to the land of their birth, the balsams of Quebec, or the unknown wastes of Labrador, seem most precious, most worthy at this time of our closest observation.
More confusing--albeit the more delightful--is a season when continued cold weather and chilly rains hold back all but the hardiest birds, until--like the dammed-up piles of logs trembling with the spring freshets--the tropic winds carry all before them, and all at once winter birds which have sojourned only a few miles south of us, summer residents which should have appeared weeks ago, together with the great host of Canadian and other nesters of the north, appear within a few days" time.
A backward season brings strangers into close company for a while. A white-throat sings his clear song of the North, and a moment later is answered by an oriole"s melody, or the sweet tones of a rose-breasted grosbeak--the latter one of those rarely favoured birds, exquisite in both plumage and song.
The glories of our May bird life are the wood warblers, and innumerable they must seem to one who is just beginning his studies; indeed, there are over seventy species that find their way into the United States. Many are named from the distribution of colour upon their plumage--the blue-winged yellow, the black-throated blue, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, and black poll. Perhaps the two most beautiful--most reflective of bright tropical skies and flowers--are the magnolia and the blackburnian. The first fairly dazzles us with its bluish crown, white and black face, black and olive-green back, white marked wings and tail, yellow throat and rump, and strongly streaked breast. The blackburnian is an exquisite little fellow, marked with white and black, but with the crown, several patches on the face, the throat and breast of a rich warm orange that glows amid the green foliage like a living coal of fire. The black poll warbler is an easy bird to identify; but do not expect to recognise it when it returns from the North in the fall. Its black crown has disappeared, and in general it looks like a different bird.
At the present time when the dogwood blossoms are in their full perfection, and the branches and twigs of the trees are not yet hidden, but their outlines only softened by the light, feathery foliage, the tanagers and orioles have their day. Nesting cares have not yet made them fearful of showing their bright plumage, and scores of the scarlet and orange forms play among the branches.
The flycatchers and vireos now appear in force--little hunters of insects clad in leafy greens and browns, with now and then a touch of brightness--as in the yellow-throated vireo or in the crest of the kingbird.
The lesser sandpipers, both the spotted and the solitary, teeter along the brooks and ponds, and probe the shallows for tiny worms. Near the woody streams the so-called water thrushes spring up before us. Strange birds these, in appearance like thrushes, in their haunts and in their teetering motion like sandpipers, but in reality belonging to the same family as the tree-loving wood warblers. A problem not yet solved by ornithologists is: what was the mode of life of the ancestor of the many warblers? Did he cling to and creep along the bark, as the black-and-white warbler, or feed from the ground or the thicket as does the worm-eating? Did he s.n.a.t.c.h flies on the wing as the necklaced Canadian warbler, or glean from the brook"s edge as our water thrush? The struggle for existence has not been absent from the lives of these light-hearted little fellows, and they have had to be jack-of-all-trades in their search for food.
The gnats and other flying insects have indeed to take many chances when they slip from their coc.o.o.ns and dance up and down in the warm sunlight!
Lucky for their race that there are millions instead of thousands of them; for now the swifts and great numbers of tree and barn swallows spend the livelong day in swooping after the unfortunate gauzy-winged motes, which have risen above the toad"s maw upon land, and beyond the reach of the trout"s leap over the water.
It would take an article as long as this simply to mention hardly more than the names of the birds that we may observe during a walk in May; and with bird book and gla.s.ses we must see for ourselves the bobolinks in the broad meadows, the cowbirds and rusty blackbirds, and, pushing through the lady-slipper marshes, we may surprise the solitary great blue and the little green herons at their silent fishing.
No matter how late the spring may be, the great migration host will reach its height from the tenth to the fifteenth of the month. From this until June first, migrants will be pa.s.sing, but in fewer and fewer numbers, until the balance comes to rest again, and we may cease from the strenuous labours of the last few weeks, confident that those birds that remain will be the builders of the nests near our homes--nests that they know so well how to hide. Even before the last day of May pa.s.ses, we see many young birds on their first weak-winged flights, such as bluebirds and robins; but June is the great month of bird homes, as to May belong the migrants.