Birds and all Nature Vol VII, No. 3, March 1900

The artist who dabbles with color and brush
Sees but the reflection of nature's flush.

The skilled musician knows not pure tone;
He hears but the resonance of his own.

'Tis the peasant girl, as she hurries along,
Who hears the lark's good morning song.

She hears it with gladness; her heart is gay;
All nature greets her in festal array.

The lark makes her world a world of song
His notes in her heart sing her whole life long.

She's the true musician, artist and seer;
She looks upon nature with vision clear.

The lark brings her day without shade or sorrow,
And crowns each day with a sweet tomorrow.

He gives a joy only nature can,
A boon sent down from heaven to man.

O little lark, sing on! sing on!
The country dark new life will don.
The tones thou'lt hurl from thy tiny heart
Peace will unfurl and new joy impart.

THE HERALD OF SPRING

CHARLES E. JENNEY

Before the snow flies
A bit of Summer skies
Comes flitting down
Through Winter's frown
To cheer up waiting eyes.

ONE gray February day, when dirty patches of snow are still lingering on the north side of rocks and walls, as you gaze across a dreary landscape, you espy a bit of bright color on the bar-post that brightens up your spirit. 'Tis the first bluebird, and that means that spring is coming. His cheery little ditty seems to say, "Spring is coming, spring is coming, spring is here." He has been farther south during the winter, for he seldom stays in Massachusetts in December and January and he thinks it a little chilly just now, for his feathers are all fluffed up around him so that he looks like an animated dumpling.

He has come back to locate his nest site – to see first if the old nest hole of past years is suitable, for he is a great home-lover, and, if not, to select a new one.

In March you will see the bluebirds often investigating rotten bar-posts, hollow cedars, old woodpecker holes, and decayed apple-tree stumps. And in the latter part of the month the females are with them.

Then one April day Mr. Bluebird sings always from a limb of a certain apple-tree, and down in the trunk, in an abandoned woodpecker's hole, are four pretty light blue eggs.

Every old orchard has its family of bluebirds, and they come back to the same nest every year until something happens to scare them away from it. A rotten bar-post or fence rail is a promising site also, and they peck out a hole with their short bills and round it out quite as neatly as that feathered carpenter, the woodpecker. When they get in a little ways you may see the chips flying out of the aperture, though no worker is in sight, and when it is almost done every now and then a blue head will pop out with a beak full of loose wood, which is tossed away. Then a few clean chips are left and the bird's own soft down lines the home.

Often they will make use of wooden boxes set on poles or placed in the trees for their benefit. They are very quiet, peaceful birds, so the entrance to their homes should never be much larger than their own small bodies require for admittance.

The scrubby cedars that grow along the New England coast make excellent nooks and corners for the bluebird's home and the berries provide him with food late in the season. I have even found a pair nesting in a cedar grove on the extreme end of a rocky point exposed to the full force of the southeast storms that sweep up Buzzard's bay. Usually, however, they prefer the green fields and orchards of further inland.

One pair for five or six years nested in a hollow about twelve inches deep formed in the crotch where a cedar tree branched into two parts. It could not have been a comfortable or well-chosen home, for it was open to the weather at the top and it would seem as if it must be flooded in a heavy rain-storm. But it was only abandoned by the birds when it had become known to every boy and egg collector in the village as the hereditary estate of this family.

During April and May the bluebird is everywhere visible and audible, but in midsummer he is not so often seen. He is essentially a bird of the spring with us. His familiar contemporaries are the catbird and the robin, but he is the earliest in the year of them all. Sometimes, though not often, he stops all winter with us, and his red breast warms the winter landscape which it dares to challenge.

See him dash from that old fence post after a mouthful of flies or gnats; or hopping from twig to twig in the cedar tree, selecting the choicest of the spicy berries. Sometimes he will venture in among the crowd of talkative sparrows that are harvesting the crumbs in your dooryard, but if they dispute his right he keeps away. The piece of suet hung in the tree near the bird-box, however, is his own, and he views the intruding buntings and trespassing jays from his front porch or dormer window with much indignation.

However, he says very little, uses no bad language like that of the jay, and soon regains the sereneness of temper natural to him. And we like him all the better for it, for, although it is not nice to be imposed upon and we like to see offenders get their deserts, the one who takes life cheerfully and uncomplainingly overlooks or forgets the wrongs he cannot right is the one we like to have as a friend.

MARCH

It is the first day of March,
Each minute sweeter than before;
The red-breast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside the door.

There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth;
It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than fifty years of reason;
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

    – Wordsworth.

TAMING BIRDS

GUY STEALEY

BUT very few of the boys and girls who watch the many species of our birds flit about in the summer time and who listen in delight to their singing, know that by expending a little time and patience they can make these sweet songsters quite tame. I do not mean that the birds are to be caught and confined; I never could bear to see a bird in captivity, and indeed most wild ones will live but a brief time when so served, but that they can be made gentle in their natural state. Where I live, in the Rocky Mountains, there are countless numbers of birds throughout the spring and summer months and, being a great lover of them, I have naturally observed their habits closely. Trusting, therefore, that some of the boys and girls who entertain the affection for them that I do, will see these lines, I venture to give some of my experiences along the path of bird-life.

Some five years ago I constructed several miniature cottages, with verandas, chimneys and all, and placed them on the fences around our garden. The first season two pairs of wrens selected and occupied two of them; a third was chosen by a pair of bluebirds, and the fourth left vacant. Wrens, as you all know, are never much afraid of anyone, but bluebirds are inclined to be shy. After a short time, however, the pair I spoke of would alight within a few feet of where I was weeding vegetables, and soon came to know that where the ground was freshly turned, there were to be found the most worms. Before the summer was over the wrens and bluebirds and I were the firmest of friends. Daily they ran and hopped and peeped under the plants and flowers. And besides giving me their companionship they did a vast amount of good in the garden by keeping it clear of bugs and worms. It was astonishing the number of these they carried to their little ones.

But time stops not, and finally there came cold and frosty nights that warned my little friends, now comprising three families, that the day of their departure for warmer lands was drawing near; and soon I was all alone.

Every year since then has been a repetition of this first, only that I have more houses around now and consequently more tenants. I firmly believe too, that the first three couples still return to their old homes, for the same houses are taken by the wrens every spring and the same one by the bluebirds.

During the winter also, I sometimes have a few bird pets, though they are others than snow birds. The latter I have never been able to make friends with. When the weather is severe I often try to feed them, but with poor success, as they are always very wild. The pets I have reference to are bluejays and campbirds, or as they are more usually called, camp-robbers. Both species stay here the year around.

Last winter I had a laughable time with them. Shortly after the first snow I noticed a pair of camp-robbers – they seem to go in pairs both summer and winter – around our meat-house. If you have never seen them you cannot know what comical birds they are, so solemn and innocent appearing, yet when it comes to stealing – well, they are the greatest and boldest thieves you can find. If they are about and you chance to have anything eatable around and turn your back for a moment you are pretty sure to find it gone when you look again. I remember while camping one fall, of seeing one of them dart down from a tree and take a slice of meat right out of the frying-pan on the fire! But it was too hot to hold long, and Mr. Camp-robber was obliged to relinquish his dainty dinner before reaching his perch again. Arriving there he sat for a long while, looking down at me with a wry face.