Birds and Nature, Vol. 12 No. 4 [September 1902]

The Starling belongs to an interesting family of birds, represented in America by but one species and that one only recently introduced. In the Old World, however, there are about two hundred species which are widely distributed throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.

The common Starling is a native of Europe and northern Asia and is admitted to the bird fauna of North America both because of its accidental occurence in Greenland and of its introduction into the parks of New York city. Regarding its introduction into this country, Mr. Chapman says that it has been brought across the ocean on several occasions, but only in the case of the last importation was the effort to make it establish a home within our borders a success. “The birds included in this lot, about sixty in number, were released in Central Park, New York city, in 1890. They seem to have left the park and to have established themselves in various favorable places in the upper part of the city. They have bred for three successive years in the roof of the Museum of Natural History and at other points in the vicinity. In the suburbs about the northern end of the city they are frequently observed in flocks containing as many as fifty individuals.” From the fact that it is a resident throughout the year and has endured our most severe winters Mr. Chapman thinks that the species may be regarded as thoroughly naturalized.

The common Starling easily adapts itself to its environment and can withstand quite a diversity of climatic conditions. However, while it was introduced with difficulty in the eastern United States, efforts made to introduce it into the State of Oregon have not met with success. Wherever the conditions are favorable it breeds rapidly and not uncommonly a pair will rear two broods in a season.

This engaging bird has commanded the attention of observers for centuries. Pliny speaks of it in his Natural History, and one writer has said that “its varied song, its sprightly gestures, its glossy plumage, and, above all its character as an insecticide – which last makes it a friend of the agriculturist and the grazier – render it an almost universal favorite.” Some of the notes of the Starling’s song are harsh but on the whole the song is pleasing and “heard as they are, at a season when every sign of returning spring is eagerly looked for and welcomed, are certainly one of the most cheerful sounds that greet the ear.” Its whole energy is thrown into the song, which is uttered with ruffled feathers. It is also a mimic of no mean order. One authority says that it delights “in reproducing familiar sounds with the greatest fidelity to truth. We have heard individual Starlings reproduce the call notes of the skylark, goldfinch, wagtail, and other small birds; sometimes we have been startled on a winter’s day to recognize the cry of the common sandpiper or the grating call note of a fern owl in the middle of a crowded city, and have discovered the author of our astonishment in the person of a Starling, that is pouring forth his rhapsodies from some neighboring chimney top.” Pliny says: “Agrippina, the wife of Claudius Caesar, had a thrush that could imitate the human speech, a thing that was never known before. At the moment that I am writing this, the young Caesars have a Starling and some nightingales that are being taught to talk in Greek and Latin; besides which, they are studying their task the whole day, continually repeating the new words that they have learnt, and giving utterance to phrases even of considerable length.” The young birds are very noisy and while feeding and training them the parents are scarcely less so. So great, in fact, is this noisy babble that it often becomes very unpleasant.

The Starling is a gregarious bird at all times, but this habit is more marked after the breeding season has passed. It has its favorite haunts and, though a flock may be dispersed during the daytime while feeding, all will congregate in the favorite locality at nightfall. Mr. William Yarrell, in his “British Birds,” gives an interesting anecdote regarding the abundance and social habits of the Starling. Speaking of an English estate, he says, “This locality is an evergreen plantation covering several acres, to which these birds repair in an evening – I was going to say, and I believe I might truly say – by millions, from the low ground about the Severn, where their noise is something altogether unusual. By packing in such myriads upon the evergreens, they have stripped them of their leaves, except just at the tops, and have driven the pheasants, for whom the plantation was intended, quite away from the grounds.”

Regarding their nesting and mating habits Mr. Henry Seebohm says: “Early in April, sometimes not until the beginning of May, the Starlings have mostly mated and gone to their breeding holes. Previous to this, however, much quarreling goes on for the choice of suitable sites. The strong gain the best holes, while the weak seek quarters elsewhere. The Starling will build its nest almost anywhere, and it needs but slight encouragement to take up its quarters in any suitable hole or box placed for its reception. It will even dislodge large tiles and burrow considerable distances under the eaves, and its bulky nest often stops up some spout, to the dismay of the householder. A hole in the gable or inside the dovecot are also favorite places, while its partiality for holes in the trees is none the less. It also commonly breeds in ruins, churches, and old masonry of every description. In the wilder portions of the country the Starling selects a hole either in a tree or a rock for its purpose, and it will often breed in great numbers in caves or in crevices of the ocean cliffs.” The nest is not a fine piece of bird architecture. It is coarse and slovenly constructed with dry grass, fibers, twigs, small roots, rags, twine, paper and in fact of any substance that strikes the fancy of the bird. It is lined, though not always, with wool, vegetable down and feathers. At times when the nest is placed in hollow trees the bedding consists of powdered wood. The Starling returns to the same site year after year, but always builds a new nest.

Though the Starling will often pilfer fruit trees, especially late in the season, it is of great service to man, for its chief food consists of worms, larvae and various adult insects. It is a voracious feeder and thus destroys a large number of forms of insect life, many of which are very destructive to plant life. It “is almost as closely associated with man as the sparrow,” but unlike the sparrow it is much more able to adapt itself to a change of surroundings.

NOVEMBER

November sits at the door of her wayside tent looking out upon the valleys and mountain tops. She has torn from the trees their faded banners of yellow and their worn fringes of crimson. November is an old dame, gray-haired, somber-eyed and strong-featured. Clad in garments of dun and dusky brown, she sits resting and smoking; and that is why we get such smoky days toward the last of her stay.

Yes, November is an old gypsy dame, but she is not always melancholy. She is the month of whom artists are especially fond. While she lacks the glow of midsummer, there is compensation for the absence of bloom and radiance in the ripening of all vegetation; there is still a touch of splendid color on the hills, and the grass is green with the aftermath of summer. Beautiful mists veil the mountain tops. There is an exquisite beauty in the tints of sepia and the rich brown tones of the landscapes and in the tender grays and clear blues of November skies.

Ah, she knows, does November, that she, too, in her old age, gives promise of something sweet to come. All the trees are filled with next year’s buds; the trailing things of the woods, too, are budded and wait but a few months until the first snows are gone to blossom in fragrance and gladden the bright wedding days of Spring.

Calmly she smokes, the dear old dame, sitting at the door of her tent. Near by, dim and misty, are the marshy fens, in which stand the herons like sculptured figures, where the bulrushes have turned yellow amongst the tawny tussocks. Around her the Indian creeper weaves its still brilliant strands of red and gold. Softly the willow bands drop their trailing leaves. Heavy and purple still hang the berries on the elder boughs that languidly wave in the faint breeze as if they still felt the ghosts of summer kisses.

The nut-brown face of old November looks impassively on all the changes of her season. She knows nothing is dying about her that shall not live again. Her eyes, dark, liquid, somberly deep and tranquil, have seen all the things beautiful that our eyes have missed – the wild flowers trodden down by careless feet; moonlight on far off lakes at midnight; the first pink flush of dawn on stately mountains. Ah, yes, she knows of Love; of dead folded hands, and she remembers the buds of her last year’s reign. She knows that, like the sleeping buds about her now, Love shall give all things back again in the sweet springtime of Paradise, even as these same buds shall waken to bloom and beauty when their winter sleep is over.

But now the night is coming on. Deep shadows are filling the dusky stalls of the drooping hemlocks on yonder hill. Faint spicy odors of sweet fern and illusive witch hazel rise on the misty air. Dame November rises slowly, knocks the ashes from her pipe, gazes broodingly for a few moments over the fading landscape, then turns and softly closes her door. All night the solemn winds intone the requiem of Spring and Summer glories past, but at intervals listen and you will hear the sweet, thin flute of the wood-frog, faintly but hopefully voicing the promise of another Spring, with more bloom, more gladness and glory to come.

Dear old Dame November! A few more days and she will no longer be sitting at the door of her wayside tent. We love her mists, her mellow rains, her dull, rich tones of brown and faded gold. December shall disturb the brooding calm that she has left with us, but we know he cannot harm with his icy mail and glittering frost spears the tightly folded promises which the gypsy November has prepared for next year’s blooming.

    Belle A. Hitchcock.

THE ARKANSAS GOLDFINCH

(Spinus psaltria.)

The Goldfinch, social, chirping, bright,
Takes in those branches his delight.
A troop like flying sunbeams pass
And light among the vivid grass,
Or in the end of some long branch,
Like acrobats, in air they launch,
And in the wild wind sway and swing,
Intent to twitter, glance and sing.

    – Rose Terry Cooke, “My Apple Tree.”
These lines of the poet were inspired by the beautiful goldfinch so familiar to all, and usually called yellow-bird and thistle-bird. They form an appropriate introduction to a few words regarding the thistle-bird’s sister species of the Pacific coast – the Arkansas Goldfinch. This bright and sprightly bird enlivens the shrubby ravines and weedy places from Oregon southward through the United States, and from the Pacific coast eastward into Colorado. Throughout its range it is quite common and nests on the plains and also in the mountains to a height of nine thousand feet. Abundant in many mountainous regions, it has been given the name Rocky Mountain Goldfinch, and the olive-green color of the plumage of its back has given it the very appropriate name Arkansas Green-backed Goldfinch.

Like the common thistle-bird, it has a social disposition and feeds with its fellows in flocks of a greater or less number. Not infrequently several individuals will alight on the same plant and immediately begin a diligent search for their food of seeds. Active and of a seemingly impatient temperament, it seldom remains long in any one locality, yet a garden rich in sunflower blossoms or a field full of blooming thistles furnished so tempting a larder that a flock may patiently labor therein for some time, gathering an abundance of goldfinch dainties.

Its notes are similar to those of the thistle-birds. “The ordinary note is a plaintive mellow, whistling call, impossible to describe and so inflected as to produce a very mournful effect.” While pursuing its undulating flight, it utters a sweet song which is in harmony with the rise and fall of its onward motion and is indicative of its sweet disposition. Its nest is a dainty structure built of fine bark and other vegetable fibers, fine grasses and moss compactly bound together and quite thickly lined with plant down.

TRAGEDY IN BIRD LIFE

For the friends of birds there are, in cold days of wind and storm, opportunities of loving service.

In the drama of bird-life the scenes are ever shifting, and struggle for existence is not always under sun-lighted, genial skies.

It is true that creative love has endowed the birds with facilities for resisting the havoc of storms. The feathered tribes, nested in chosen coverts, defy the elements and shake out their plumage in fearless defiance of tempests before which man stands in dismay.

A little bit of feathered anatomy will sway cheerily on unprotected twigs, disdaining the shelter close at hand, while the storm beats on wayside.

The endurance of these creatures of the air may well astonish men, who, with all their vitality and size, succumb, of necessity, to the warring elements.

But, in spite of their powers of endurance, the storm-periods are for the birds bitter intervals of life, when hunger and thirst and cold combine to sweep them into the vortex of the lost.

It is not the cold, unaccompanied by other influences, which devastates the ranks of the birds during extreme winter storm-periods, however; it is, chiefly, the dearth of food.

While the harvest of seeds over the meadows is available the bleak blast moans about our birds innoxiously; but it is when the feathery snowflakes cover this well-stocked granary, clinging about the seed-vessels of weed and flower, and closing it in a frozen locker, or the ice-storm wraps it in glittering ice, that the lairds are beaten before the winds, and perish of cold and starvation.

There are few, if any, bird lovers who have not some scene of tragedy to recount; some memory of storm-periods when the birds flew to the habitations of men for help, finding no hope but in the fragments cast away by some human hand.

That more thought is not given to the needs of the birds about our doors, at such periods, is due more to the prevailing impression that the birds have the means of providing, even in times of emergency, for their own needs, than to a disregard of the interests of these little friends of the air.

Unless we have awakened to pathetic struggle of bird life under some conditions we are not apt to be aroused to any obligation in the matter of aiding in providing for birds in seasons of peril.

But it is true, nevertheless, that the little visitor upon our doorsill who stays with us during the long winter suffers the anguish of cold and hunger, frequently of starvation, during the periods of intense cold and storm – anguish which might be prevented by a little thoughtfulness on man’s part, in casting a trifle of food in sheltered nooks – crumbs from the table; cracked corn or coarse meal; cracked nuts; a bit of suet, the latter being best served by being nailed upon some neighboring tree, high enough to be beyond the reach of any but the intended guests.

By such provision one phase of the tragedy of bird-life would be abated, and the friendliness of the little strangers developed, to the pleasure of many bird lovers, who would receive in return for their kindness the gladness sure to be theirs in watching the feast of the joyous birds.

The day when earth and sky meet in one maze of blinding snow, or in the mist of rain which freezes where it falls, is hard enough for the birds; but while there is light there is also a hope of a scanty meal to be caught somewhere through the swirl of the storm. But, when this hope fails and darkness lowers into deepening night; when bleak winds rage on every side; the forests creak and moan; the tormented air sobs and wails like a tortured soul; when every sound is swept into the cadence of despair and the outposts of hills are lost in the labyrinth of tumultuous night, then how bitter is life’s tragedy for the hunger-racked birds; how marvelous it is that so many little storm-beaten breasts survive to meet the struggle for existence at the dawn of a new storm-beaten day.

    George Klingle.

THE LIFE OF AIRY WINGS

One beautiful day last May my mother laid a tiny green egg on the under side of a leaf on a milkweed plant. I know that its color was green and that it was laid on the back of the leaf because Mother Milkweed Butterfly did not want any fly or worm to eat me up, so she made its green like the leaf and hid it away in a safe place. There I rested quietly within the egg for about four days, when I burst open the shell to see what was out in the world.

I shook myself and found that I could crawl. I was also very hungry. I had come out a green caterpillar with a black head. How strange that was! Now I expected to be a butterfly with wings to sail through the air. Never mind, I thought, if I am a caterpillar I must do all that a caterpillar ought to do, and not make a fuss because I am not a handsome butterfly.

The first thing a caterpillar has to do is to eat his eggshell so that the ichneumon fly – the fellow is an enemy to my family – will not be able to find any traces of him on the leaf. Where did I learn that? I think Mother B. must have folded that thought in the eggshell, for it came out with me. After doing that duty I was so hungry that I ate the leaf on which I found myself, all day long and far into the night. Then I curled up and went to sleep feeling very quiet and comfortable.

When I awakened the sun was up. I was warm and hungry, so I began to eat again. Suddenly I heard a buzzing noise overhead. Oh, dear me! I was frightened and kept perfectly still, for I thought it was that miserable fly after me, but it proved to be only a jolly bumble-bee, and I went on eating.

After several days of this life – eating, and watching for enemies – something happened. I suppose that I had eaten so much milkweed that my skin got too tight to hold me, for it felt very uncomfortable and then began to crack. I had spun a little silk on the leaf to get a better foot-hold and remained very quiet for I did not feel like moving. I stretched my head a little, after awhile, and the old head-case came off, falling to the ground. Then I made violent exertions, or movements, with the muscles of my body, and finally the old skin came off. I was very much fatigued and was quiescent, not caring to stir, for several hours. I thought of the fly too, that might sting me now while my new jacket was soft, and that kept me still also. When it became harder I had to eat up the old one, and then was hungry as ever.

Eat! Why I did nothing for about four weeks but devour milkweed, keep a watch out for enemies and grow too big for my jacket. I moulted four times in all, and at the end you should have seen me. My body was striped yellow, black and green, and was nearly two inches long. My head was black-banded; my face yellow with two parallel black bows, and I had two pairs of long slender, flexible filaments, like a hair, on my body.

I had grown so large and strong that I wanted to see more of the world. I crawled off my leaf, down the stalk of the plant onto the ground. What a queer sensation it was, to be sure, to feel the grass and the ground! There was a rail-fence near my old home. I began to feel very weary and sleepy. I crept cautiously along until I reached the fence; crawled up to next the top rail and under it to rest awhile. My, how tired I was! I did not want anything to eat. I did not care to move, nor to speak. I caught hold of the rail and hung there for about twelve days.