Birds and Nature, Vol 10 No. 2 [September 1901]

This appearance Alexander Wilson pictures thus:

“While richest roses though in crimson drest,
Spring from the splendors of his gorgeous breast.
What heavenly tints in mingling radiance fly!
Each rapid movement gives a different dye;
Like scales of burnished gold they dazzling show,
Now sink to shade, now like a furnace glow!”

It is little wonder that Buffon exclaimed, “Nature has loaded it with all the gifts of which she has only given other birds a share!” Yet Mr. Ridgway considers the Count de Buffon’s laudation as excessive because the “absence of melodious voice is, as a rule, a conspicuous deficiency of the tribe”; and in 1693 Mr. Hammersley of Coventry stated, “God, in many of his creatures, is bountiful, but not lavish, for I did observe the hummingbirds for several years, and never heard them sing.”

Goldsmith says that all travelers agree that they have a little interrupted chirrup, but Labat asserts that they have a most pleasing melancholly melody in their voices, though small and proportioned to the organs that produce it.

It is known that a few of the more robust species of Jamaica and Mexico warble a pigmy melody, and Mr. Gosse says that the Vervain hummingbird of Jamaica is the only one known to him that has a real song, warbling in a very weak but very sweet tone a continuous melody for ten minutes at a time.

But the poet Rogers apprehended something more than is perceptible to the scientific consciousness, for he exclaims in The Voyage of Columbus:

“ – There quivering rise
Wings that reflect the glow of evening skies!
Half bird, half fly, the fairy king of flowers
Reigns there, and revels through the fragrant hours;
Gem full of life and joy and song divine!”

Could the compressed, intense, vehement little sprite be expanded to the dimensions of the ordinary folk of air, would the magnified musical and physical representation be as entrancing as are the fleeting glimpses of the fairy and the elusive hints of melody that so nearly escape us now?

For this electric spark, like an erratic meteorite of topaz and ruby and gold,

“As if inlaid
With brilliants from the mine, or made
Of tearless rainbows, such as span
Th’ unclouded skies of Peristan,”

hovering between heaven and earth in a mist created by its own prismatic wings, might almost be believed an exemplification of light itself as scientifically defined, “a form of radiant energy,” and it is the nearest approach to a disembodied spirit that lies within the range of mortal vision. So while it is believed that its song is but a feeble twittering, it may yet be as much musician as it is bird, and emit strains of melody too exquisite and finely drawn for human apprehension, and of which the notes that reach us are but the deeper tones of a delicate and etherial ariose.

    Juliette A. Owen

EACH IN ITS OWN WAY

There’s never a rose in all the world
But makes some green spray sweeter;
There’s never a wind in all the sky
But makes some bird-wing fleeter;
There’s never a star but brings to heaven
Some silver radiance tender;
And never a rosy cloud but helps
To crown the sunset splendor;
No robin but may thrill some heart
His dawnlight gladness voicing;
God gives us all some small, sweet way
To set the world rejoicing.

    – Selected.

THE PARULA WARBLER

(Compsothlypis americana.)

Hither the busy birds shall flutter,
With the light timber for their nests,
And, pausing from their labor, utter
The morning sunshine in their breasts.

    – James Russell Lowell.
The Parula or Blue Yellow-backed Warbler, as it is sometimes called, is one of the smallest and daintiest representatives of the family of wood warblers. Like the other species of warblers it is one of the last spring migrants to reach its Northern summer home. Retiring and unobtrusive in its habits, it is to be admired for its “plain and modest beauty.” Though delicately colored, its plumage is not nearly so striking as that of many of the other species of the family. It enjoys the higher branches of its woodland retreat, and here it seeks its food. Graceful in all its motions, it flits from branch to branch; hanging by its feet, it peers under the leaves and along the twigs.

In the summer the Parula is a resident of Eastern North America, but in the winter it seeks the warmer climate of Florida and southward. While migrating it is well distributed over its range, and may frequently be seen flying from shrub to shrub. Like the other warblers its flights are short and most of the time it is hidden by the foliage. The longer flights are by night. The days are spent in seeking insects, upon which it feeds almost exclusively. This, the habit of all the warblers, explains the Parula’s sudden disappearance from a locality where it may have been common for a single day.

Near the end of May it retires to the swampy woodlands where the gray Spanish moss hangs pendant from the branches and shrubs. Here the Parula makes its nest, a globular or pencil home, usually in bunches of the festooned moss. The four or five white eggs are marked near the larger end with specks of light brown and lilac. Its song is neither interesting nor striking, but is peculiarly in harmony with the voices of spring and as Mr. Chapman says: “When the cypresses are enveloped in a haze of lace-like blossoms and the woods are fragrant with the delicious odor of yellow jasmine, the dreamy softness of the air is voiced by the Parula’s drowsy song.”

Neltje Blanchan has most charmingly written about this dainty bird. She says: “A number of such airy, tiny beauties flitting about among the blossoms of the shrubbery on a bright May morning and swaying on the slenderest branches with their inimitable grace, is a sight that the memory should retain into old age. They seem the very embodiment of life, joy, beauty, grace; of everything lovely that birds by any possibility could be. Apparently they are wafted about the garden; they fly with no more effort than a dainty lifting of the wings, as if to catch the breeze that seems to lift them as it might a bunch of thistledown. They go through a great variety of charming posturings as they hunt for their food upon the blossoms and tender, fresh twigs, now creeping like a nuthatch along the bark and peering into the crevices, now gracefully swaying and balancing like a goldfinch upon a slender, pendant stem. One little sprite pauses in its hunt for insects to raise its pretty head and trill a short and wiry song.”

A DAINTY LOVER

All animal life is wonderful and much of it is beautiful, but it seems to me there can be nothing prettier or more subtle in all the immense accumulation of the folk lore of human courtship and marriage than the following practice of a certain Mexican bird.

He belongs to a rarely beautiful species of the Paradise family.

To shield the privacy of his wooing and wedding he builds a dainty little cone-shaped hut, about which he contrives a marvelous little landscape garden.

First he makes a sward of green moss and beds and parterres of crimson berries, tiny bright flowers and gold and silver sand and grains. Here and there he puts a pearly pebble or tiny pink shell. And so long as his love making lasts he drags away and replaces each flower as it fades, keeping the little Eden tidy, gay and sweet for his tiny love.

This sounds like fiction, but is scientific fact.

    Louise Jamison.

A BIRD NOTE

Robin Feeding Young: Scene, the base of a large pine tree in the corner of a lawn; actors, a mother robin and two of her young.

I was much interested in their proceedings and watched them for some time. One of the young ones did not seem to understand matters very clearly and often failed to do what mother robin wished it to. The other one, however, was a very apt pupil, and did many bright things. Finally it began to gather food on its own account and succeeded in capturing several worms, small butterflies, etc. But it did not stop here; it remembered its nest mate, and, following the example of the mother bird, collected food and placed it in the mouth of the less active learner. A very good example of how closely parents are imitated, in the bird world, as well as in the human subject.

The above incident as witnessed and recorded in the writer’s note book, seem too good to be lost sight of, and I trust they may prove of interest to all.

    Berton Mercer.

GOLDENROD

As nature lifts her gates from week to week,
New beauties rise God’s wondrous power to speak;