Birds and Nature Vol. 10 No. 5 [December 1901]

We hide the stony mountain side with green,
And grow in beauty where the plain was bare;
We cling to crannies of the walled ravine,
And through faint valleys waft a strengthening air.

On coastings gray we stay the creeping sand;
We lift our spears and halt the shifting dunes;
Our bounteous youth makes glad the scanty land,
While it transforms rank fens, and salt lagunes.

We veil the prairies from the heat, while slow
Across their farmsteads breathes our Summer balm,
And shield them when the winds of Winter blow,
And all our aisles and pleasant rooms are calm.

Through charming days we spread our branches wide,
And live through drouths, and floods, and whirling storms,
Till comes to man his merry Christmas tide,
That lays in myriad deaths our fairest forms.

Men drag us from our fragrant winding vales,
They fell us on the mountain slopes, and bare
The prairies unto heat, and freezing gales,
And thinned, the chaparral plains fail unaware.

They tear us from the wall-chinks of the glens,
And hew us on the marsh we helped to drain,
And where our beauty graced, the tawny fens
Shall lapse to weeds and sworded flags again.

Up coastings, line the lisping, creeping sands,
While inland move the dunes we bravely stayed,
When we are borne away by wasteful hands,
To tower in rooms, with lights and gifts arrayed.

Spare us! – oh! spare our youth, with verdure crowned —
Our groves return to deserts when we pass;
The coasts which we revived, in sands are drowned;
Bare slopes but yield their stones and bitter-grass.

Spare us! we bring you beauty, shelter, wealth,
Oh! waste us not. Oh! keep with guiltless show
The Holy Time; and life, and joy, and health,
Be gifts to you, while winds of Winter blow.

    – Eliza Woodworth.

THE RIVOLI HUMMINGBIRD.

(Eugenes fulgens.)

In that wonderful and magnificent book “A Monograph of the Trochilidæ,” the family of hummingbirds, Mr. John Gould, the author, writing of his experiences with these mites of bird life, says:

“How vivid is my recollection of the first hummingbird which met my admiring gaze! With what delight did I examine its tiny body and feast my eyes on its glittering plumage! These early impressions, I well remember, gradually increased into an earnest desire to attain a more intimate acquaintance with the lovely group of birds to which it pertained. During the first twenty years of my acquaintance with these wonderful works of creation my thoughts were often directed to them in the day, and my dreams have not unfrequently carried me to their native forests in the distant country of America.”

These birds have ever been an inspiration to the poet. How beautiful are these lines of Maurice Thompson, addressed to the hummingbird:

Zephyr loves thy wings
Above all lovable things,
And brings them gifts with rapturous murmurings.
Thine is the golden reach of blooming hours;
Spirit of flowers!

Thou art a winged thought
Of tropical hours,
With all the tropics’ rare bloom-splendor frought;
Surcharged with beauty’s indefinable powers,
Angel of flowers!

It seems cruel and strange that any person should kill these tiny creatures especially for ornamental purpose. They are the gems of nature, yet one day, in the year 1888, over twelve thousand skins of hummingbirds were sold in London. “And in one week during the same year there were sold at auction, in that city, four hundred thousand hummingbirds and other birds from North and South America, the former doubtless comprising a very considerable percentage of the whole number.” When we remember that the hummingbird lays but two eggs, the rapid extermination of some of the species is evident unless this wholesale slaughter is stopped. Even the tropics, where bird life is wonderfully abundant, cannot support such wanton destruction.

The Rivoli, or the Refulgent hummingbird, as it is frequently called, has a very limited range. It is found in the “mountains of southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and over the table lands of Mexico,” southward to Nicaragua. It is one of the largest and most beautiful of the hummingbirds that frequent the United States. Its royal appearance led Lesson, in the year 1829, to name it Rivoli, in honor of M. Massena, the Duke of Rivoli. It is noted “for the beauty of its coloring and the bold style of its markings.”

Mr. Salvin, writing of the pugnacious character of this species, says: “Many a time have I thought to secure a fine male, which I had, perhaps, been following from tree to tree, and had at last seen quietly perched on a leafless twig, when my deadly intention has been anticipated by one less so in fact, but to all appearances equally so in will. Another hummingbird rushes in, knocks the one I covet off his perch, and the two go fighting and screaming away at a pace hardly to be followed by the eye. Another time this flying fight was sustained in midair, the belligerents mounting higher and higher, until the one worsted in battle darts away seeking shelter, followed by the victor, who never relinquishes the pursuit till the vanquished, by doubling and hiding, succeeds in making his escape.” Not only do they resent the presence of their own kind, but also of other hummingbirds.

Mr. H. W. Henshaw, who was the first scientist to discover that the Rivoli was a member of the bird fauna of the United States, thus describes its nest: “It is composed of mosses nicely woven into an almost circular cup, the interior possessing a lining of the softest and downiest feathers, while the exterior is elaborately covered with lichens, which are securely bound on by a network of the finest silk from spiders’ webs. It was saddled on the horizontal limb of an alder, about twenty feet above the bed of a running mountain stream, in a glen which was overarched and shadowed by several huge spruces, making it one of the most shady and retired nooks that could be imagined.”

The note of this bird gem of the pine-clad mountains is a “twittering sound, louder, not so shrill and uttered more slowly than those of the small hummers.”

As the Rivoli hovers over the mescal and gathers from its flowers the numerous insects that infest them; or, as it takes the sweets from the flowers of the boreal honeysuckle, one is reminded of the words of the poet:

“Art thou a bird, a bee, or butterfly?”
“‘Each and all three – a bird in shape am I,
A bee collecting sweets from bloom to bloom,
A butterfly in brilliancy of plume.’”

THE SEA-GULL

From the frozen Pole to the Tropic sea
Thou wingest thy course with the drifting clouds;
O’er ghostly bergs and vessels’ shrouds
The beat of thy wings is strong and free.
Alone, or with thy tribe a host
Thou spreadest the bars of the low-ebbed tide.
On the wave-washed drift of wrecks canst ride
Or crowd the cliffs of a rock bound coast.

No home is thine save the ocean’s waste;
Unrestrained o’er thousands of miles dost roam;
And follow the trail of the liners’ foam