Birds and Nature Vol. 9 No. 3 [March 1901]

After giving the young ones two or three worms and other choice morsels, she brought a good-size red cherry and offered it to one of the nestlings. The little bird could not swallow it, so what did the mother do but take the cherry out of its mouth, remove the stone with her beak and feet, and then give it back to the nestling in a crushed state. This time it disappeared in a trice. The incident impressed me as being not only amusing but an excellent illustration of “bird sense.”

Chippies Dividing Crumbs: While sitting under a shade tree in the yard, I observed a pair of Chippies eating two crumbs of bread. One crumb was much larger than the other, and of course the bird having the smaller one finished first. Then what! Simply this, the other Chippy at once broke his crumb in half and proceeded to place a portion of it within reach of his mate. In this way each had nearly an equal amount. Beautiful incident; well might man take this lesson home to himself; what an exhibition of love and generosity; what a different world this would be if people acted more on the principle of these innocent little birds!

    Berton Mercer.

SEA-MEWS IN WINTER TIME

I walked beside a dark gray sea,
And said, “O world, how cold thou art!
Thou poor white world, I pity thee,
For joy and warmth from thee depart.

“Yon rising wave licks off the snow,
Winds on the crag each other chase,
In little powdery whirls they blow
The misty fragments down its face.

“The sea is cold, and dark its rim,
Winter sits cowering on the world,
And I, besides this watery brim,
Am also lonely, also cold.”

I spoke, and drew toward a rock,
Where many mews made twittering sweet;
Their wings upreared, the clustering flock
Did pat the sea-grass with their feet.

A rock but half submerged, the sea
Ran up and washed it while they fed;
Their fond and foolish ecstasy
A wondering in my fancy bred.

Joy companied with every cry,
Joy in their food, in that keen wind,
That heaving sea, that shaded sky,
And in themselves, and in their kind.

The phantoms of the deep at play!
What idless graced the twittering things;
Luxurious paddlings in the spray,
And delicate lifting up of wings.

Then all at once a flight, and fast
The lovely crowd flew out to sea;
If mine own life had been recast,
Earth had not looked more changed to me.

“Where is the cold? Yon clouded skies
Have only dropped their curtains low
To shade the old mother when she lies,
Sleeping a little, ’neath the snow.

“The cold is not in crag, nor scar,
Not in the snows that lap the lea,
Not in yon wings that beat afar,
Delighting, on the crested sea;

“No, nor in yon exultant wind
That shakes the oak and bends the pine.
Look near, look in, and thou shalt find
No sense of cold, fond fool, but thine!”

With that I felt the gloom depart,
And thoughts within me did unfold,
Whose sunshine warmed me to the heart:
I walked in joy, and was not cold.

    – Jean Ingelow.

SNAILS OF POND, RIVER AND BROOK

Many of my readers have doubtless kept an aquarium at some time in their life and have stocked it with several goldfish, a small turtle and some fresh-water snails. They have also, without doubt, stood in front of the aquarium and watched the strange antics of each of the three kinds of animals and have wondered at the swiftness with which the little snails progressed about the glass sides of the artificial pond. It is of these molluscan denizens of fresh water that I shall write in this article.

In the fresh-water species the shell is not often rounded like that of the land snails, but is more frequently long and pointed, the spire resembling a church steeple. The animal, too, differs very greatly, the tentacles being either flat and triangular or long and very tapering. The eyes are not placed at the end of the eye-peduncles, as in the land shells, but are generally situated on little swellings at the base of the tentacles. They may be found in almost any body of water, adhering to stones, sticks, and other submerged objects, or crawling over the sandy or muddy bottom.

Our fresh-water snails may be divided into two classes; first, those which breathe by means of a lung and which must come to the surface at regular intervals to take in a supply of air, and, second, those which breathe by means of plume-like gills which take the oxygen directly from the water.

One of the most common and best known of the first class is the Limnaeidae, comprising the pond snails. These animals have generally a long, graceful shell, horn-colored for the most part, but sometimes greenish without and reddish within the aperture. The animal has a broad, flat foot, an auriculate or eared head, and flat, triangular tentacles. The habits of these animals are very interesting. They will wander about the sides of an aquarium, eating the growths of green scum which have collected. At this time the mouth may be seen to open, exposing the radula and the operation of eating is not unlike the motions of a cat lapping milk. They are such voracious eaters that the dirtiest aquarium will be cleansed by them in a very short time. It is interesting to note that the young animals breathe air through the water for a long time, and finally acquire the normal characteristic of the family of breathing the air directly. While submerged, the mantle chamber containing the “lung” is tightly closed so that no water can possibly get in. It is thought by some that the species of Limnaea living at great depths retain the early habit of allowing the water to fill the mantle cavity and so breathe oxygen through the water and are not, therefore, compelled to come to the surface for air.

Limnaea lives under many varying conditions, being found in the arctic regions of Greenland and Iceland as well as in the tropics, in thermal springs and those containing mineral matter, as sulphur, as well as in brackish and fresh water. They have been found at a height of over fourteen thousand feet in Thibet and at a depth of eight hundred feet in Lake Geneva, Switzerland. During times of drought when the streams are dried up and the surface of the mud is sun-cracked, the species of this family bury themselves deeply in the mud and cover the aperture with an epiphragm, in much the same manner as the land shells. This fact accounts for the apparent disappearance of all life from a pond when it dries up, and its sudden and seemingly unaccountable reappearance when the pond is again filled with water.

A genus of pond snails closely allied to Limnaea, but having discoidal or spiral shells, is Planorbis, the flat-orb shells. Instead of dragging their shells after them, as in the last genus, they carry them perfectly perpendicular, or perhaps tilted a little to one side. The animals are very rapid in movement, more so than Limnaea, which are rather sluggish. They delight in gliding rapidly about, their long, filiform tentacles waving about like a whip in the hands of an impatient driver.

The Limnaeas of which we have been speaking have mostly dextral or right-handed shells, that is, have the aperture on the right side when you hold the shell in the position pictured on our plate. In the family Physidae the shell is left-hand or sinistral. The members of this family have shining, horn-colored shells, more or less fusiform. The tentacles are long and filiform and are constantly moving about as in the allied genus Planorbis. The animal is very active and moves about with a steady, gliding motion. It is very interesting to watch a number of Physae in an aquarium; as they are crawling along the bottom, one will be seen to rise suddenly to the top of the water and move along with the foot applied to the surface, the shell hanging down. Again, they may be seen descending, suspended by a thin thread of mucus. When the animal rises suddenly, the branchial cavity which contains the lung is heard to open with a faint, clicking sound, which is probably due to the pressure of air in the lung being suddenly liberated. Several of the species of Physa inhabit water as cold as the freezing point and they may be frequently seen in winter gliding over the bottom of a stream or pond when the surface is frozen. The little glairy, transparent masses of jelly-like matter which are seen attached to stones and the under side of sticks, are the eggs of Physa or Limnaea.

Not all of the fresh-water pulmonates have spiral shells. A whole family, the Ancylidae, have a conical shell formed like a rounded shield, and resembling the limpets, hence called the river limpets. They are generally quite small and live attached to the interior of dead river shells and to submerged plants and to rocks. They are very interesting, but hard to find on account of their small size and inconspicuous habitat.

The second class of mollusks or those that breathe air through the water, have a respiratory cavity instead of a lung, in which is placed a series of leaflets, arranged like the teeth of a comb in two series of lines, forming the so-called gills. The mouth, also, is placed at the end of a long rostrum, or proboscis, and not in the lower plane of the head, as in the first class. Among the most common of this class are the river snails, known as Strepomatids. There are about three hundred species in this family, and with two or three exceptions they are confined entirely to the United States in geographical distribution. The shells are more or less graceful, having long, turreted spires and small apertures. The color of the shells is generally a uniform greenish or yellowish, although some species have color bands, and the aperture is frequently tinged with purple or reddish.

The animal is very interesting in captivity. It is not very bold and will lie on the bottom of an aquarium with its head and foot half protruding from its shell, and its rostrum and tentacles slowly moving about. Frequently it may be seen moving along with its head and rostrum bent down and moving about like a hound on the scent.

A family closely allied to the last is the Melaniidae, the animals of which inhabit the entire world, except North America. They may be distinguished from the last family by the presence of little finger-like digitations on the edge of the mantle. The shells are generally larger and more highly colored than those of the last family, many of them being of a dark chocolate color and some are of a beautiful glossy black; some shells are smooth, while others are ornamented by knobs and spines. The genus Melania, a species of which is illustrated on the plate accompanying this article, is the most characteristic form.

The largest and handsomest of the fresh-water snails belong to the two families Viviparidae and Ampullariidae, the shells of the latter family frequently attaining a length of three inches. The animals of the first family prefer a sandy beach in a large lake or river, while those of the second generally live in more or less muddy rivers, ponds and creeks. A single genus of Viviparidae (Campelona) is confined solely to the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains. Their shells are generally of a rich grass green and in certain localities they may be collected by the thousands. Unlike many of the snails of which we have been writing, this family is viviparous, that is, brings forth its young alive, instead of laying eggs, as in the family Limnaeidae. This character has given the family its name, which is certainly well chosen. When born the shell is about one-sixteenth of an inch in length and is perfectly transparent. The animal is very active and eats voraciously of any vegetation within reach. Another handsome shell belonging to this group is the Vivipara contectoides, which is about an inch in length and is encircled by several color bands. It is a common shell in many of our ponds.

Somewhat larger and handsomer than the Viviparas are the Ampullarias, or apple-shells (also called idol-shells and pond snails). These animals live mostly in tropical and subtropical regions and are noted for the tenacity with which they retain their hold on life. So tenacious of life are they that instances are known of their living for several years away from the water, in this respect resembling some of the land snails. It is also recorded that hollow pieces of logwood from Honduras have frequently contained specimens of this family alive after a journey of thousands of miles. They may be said to be truly amphibious.

The writer has collected in Florida the large Ampullaria depressa in considerable numbers. It was noted particularly that this species furnished the principal food of the Everglade Kite, a bird inhabiting the southern part of Florida. Large quantities of these shells were found about the nesting places of these birds, from which the animal had been neatly extracted without damaging the shell in the least. The bird is, curiously enough, provided with a curved bill which easily fits into the aperture of the mollusk and extracts the animal with little difficulty, and the feet and claws are so constructed that the shell may be firmly held during the operation. This shell is figured on the plate.