Birds and Nature Vol. 11 No. 4 [April 1902]

Over the distant hills; the breeze
Shivers and stirs in the leafy trees,
And a single star beholds.

The brook murmurs low in the tangled copse,
The jewel-weed stands with its feet in the stream,
By my lantern light the dew-drops gleam
On the leaves like diamond drops.

And lo! like the shuddering wind-stirred leaves,
Like the trembling weed where the waters glide,
A voice from the depths where the wood-birds hide
Its thrilling melody weaves.

What shakes the harp-strings in thy throat?
Is it joy or woe? Is it love or fear?
The mystery of the woods I hear
In the passion of your note.

Do you cry, Woe! Woe! Do you cry, Rejoice!
Joy and sorrow no longer twain,
Hope and despair in one wild strain,
And the night has found a voice.

    – Isabella T. M. Blake.

THE SPRING MIGRATION

II. IN CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI

In the former article under this title attention was paid to the warblers only. In the present one I will try to give you some idea of the other birds that in spring take part in this general movement northward. A few birds that cannot properly be classed among the winter residents visit us now and then on warm summery days in January and February; they may be called the advance guard of the great army of migration. Conspicuous among these are the bluebird and the hermit thrush, two birds closely related, but very different both in coloring and disposition.

The bluebird is one of the first birds to be learned by the country children; his bright colors, cheerful music and affectionate, trusting disposition make him a general favorite. Right here permit me to digress enough to say that too little encouragement is given the children of our public schools, especially in the country, to learn the names and habits of our common birds. A little time and effort judiciously expended by the teacher in guiding the pupils to an understanding and love of the bird life about them would be an investment paying large dividends in quickened perceptions and increased interest in the too often dull and distasteful round of school work.

The hermit thrush is a lover of the deep, dark shades where he can sit on a twig and watch the stirring life about him without being a part of it – a kind of chimney corner philosopher, if you please. The rufous tail in sharp contrast to the olive brown head and back will tell you his name every time, for he is the only member of the thrush family found in these regions in which the color of the tail differs materially from that of the back. I remember one afternoon in February seeing one in the shade of a thick-topped holly; here he remained quite unconscious while we peered at him through the opera glass, discussed his coloring and consulted the pocket manual to see what Chapman said about him, an occasional jerk of the tail or a slight movement of the head being the only indication of life in the graceful figure before us.

Late in March or early in April come the purple martin, the bank swallow and chimney swift, all cheerful birds whose only apparent aim in life is to sail about through the air in pursuit of gnats and flies. The noisy chatter of the martins as they wheel and turn about near the house is one of the most agreeable sounds in all the gamut of bird voices. They are very numerous in parts of Mississippi, but the only place in the North where I have ever seen them in any considerable numbers is on the Maumee, not far from the little town of Waterville, Ohio. The bank swallow and chimney swift are smaller and less conspicuous than the martin, less noisy but quite as useful.

Soon after the swallows appear the flycatchers, the tyrant wood pewee, phœbe bird, Acadian and great crested. What figure is more familiar on hot summer days than the kingbird or tyrant flycatcher perched on a mullein stalk, now and then darting down from his perch to capture some straying gnat? The Acadian stops for only a very short stay; you will find him in the deepest shades, where the gloom and dampness suit his somber fancy. The wood pewee is also a gloomy soul, possessing no gift of color or song to attract the eye or hold the fancy; his long drawn out monotonous note always reminds me of hot August afternoons when all other bird voices are silent as the grave and summer reigns with undisputed sway. The prince of woodland flycatchers, both from point of coloring and attractive personality, is the great crested; his olive brown back, whitish breast and sulphur-yellow belly give him a more brilliant appearance than the others just mentioned. His character, too, is better, for he is neither as belligerent as the kingbird or as gloomy as the Acadian and wood pewee. His call is not unmelodious, though it would be misleading to call it a song.

April brings the orioles to play their not insignificant part in the great color scheme of Nature at this resurrection season. I always associate the coming of the orchard oriole with the opening of the Chickasaw roses, and the arrival of the Baltimore with the blooming of the yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera). For several seasons I caught my first glimpse of the Baltimore’s flame and black in the top of a tall poplar, and heard his cheery whistle as he dodged in and out among the great cups, making a breakfast on the insects whose hum made the whole woods drowsy. A few brief days of rest and pleasure in this land of flowers and the orioles are gone, except a few pairs that stay to rear their families in these solitudes.

A long, slim, brown body, a stealthy way of sliding in and out among the vines and limbs, and a shy, suspicious air mark the black billed cuckoo or raincrow. He, too, stays but a few days. When you see the raincrow it is time to look for the Wilson’s thrush; but it was never my privilege to hear him sing in these forests. Perhaps he is tired out with the long journey from the land of eternal summer and wishes to be seen, not heard. Writers tell us that this thrush is very plentiful in certain localities, but in this section of the South I saw only two specimens in four years.

The musician of the thrush family, of the whole woods for that matter, in some points a successful rival of the mocking bird, is the wood thrush. Dark cinnamon brown, of quite a uniform tint above and white breast spotted with round, black, or dark brown enable one to pick him out easily from the rest of the thrush family. I remember hearing one sing at a negro “baptizing” just at sunset of an April day. After the immersion had taken place, as the officiating “elder” led the candidate to the bank of the pond, clear negro voices raised one of the good old hymns. As the words of the last verse died away on the evening air and the elder raised his hand to pronounce the benediction, a wood thrush in the nearby forest began his vespers. Sweet, clear as a silver bell, the notes arose, tinkling, reverberating, tender but dignified, voicing in a half-unconscious way the solemn emotions of the hour. What is there in the singing of even the best of trained choirs to compare with this simple voice of Nature, without affectation or conceit, arousing the feelings and appealing to the noblest instincts of our common nature.

Birds crowd in upon us, bull bat, chuck-wills-widow, turtle dove, gray-cheeked thrush and titlark come to see us, some to stop and add their own individual element to the local coloring, others after a few hours of rest to continue their way northward. Multitudes of sparrows, jays, thrashers, nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, etc., that have enjoyed our hospitality during the winter and part of the spring pack up their effects and leave, for summer is almost here.

The bird that to my mind is distinctly the advance agent of summer has well been called the summer tanager. He delays his coming until straw hats and linen suits appear; then what a dash of warm color he brings. Seated on the topmost bough of a tall oak, where the sun’s rays fall full upon him, he gives such intense, palpitating color that one’s eyes are almost blinded looking at him. Rich as is the red of the cardinal it appears soiled and tarnished beside the summer tanager.

With a sigh we realize that the spring migration is over for this year; but there is one consolation, only a part of its music is hushed – the soul of Southern bird life, the mocking bird, is left. Inconspicuous by reason of his Quaker-gray suit, he makes up in attractive manners and variety of musical gifts what he lacks in other respects. It is quite impossible to do justice to this bird either in describing his bubbling, effervescent life during the nesting season or in giving an adequate idea of the effect produced upon the senses by his exquisitely beautiful nocturnes. One March night some noise just outside my window awakened me. I arose and raising the window listened. The full moon, almost in the zenith, was flooding the landscape with a weird, soft light; the shadows of the cedar hedge a few yards away lay black as ink; the very air was heavy with the perfume of the jessamine abloom in a neighboring forest. In the cedars a mocking bird sang to himself a sweet, dreamy song, giving more complete expression to the mystery, the romance, the passion, the rapturous content of a Southern moonlit night than any poem that poet’s hand has ever written.

    James Stephen Compton.

ANTICS OF A HUMMINGBIRD

As the writer was standing one May morning near a clump of bushes in the suburbs of a city in Maine he witnessed, for the first time in a long experience of bird study, the courting antics of a male hummingbird. Two of the tiny creatures appeared, apparently evolved from mid-air, and one alighted in the bush. She was the female. The male immediately began to disport himself in the air in the following remarkable manner:

He dashed back and forth over the head of the female in long, curving swoops such as one describes in a swing, all the time giving utterance to a low, pleasing twitter. He thus swept back and forth ten times, rising at the ends of the curve to a height of perhaps fifteen feet, sustaining himself there a moment, with his ruby throat flashing in the sun, and then darting down the double toboggan slide and up to the other end. Though he flew very swiftly, yet his speed was not the usual flash and his movements could be plainly seen. I had never before seen a hummingbird fly so slowly nor heard from one of them such a prolonged vocal sound. Indeed, it is very rare that one hears the hummingbird’s voice, even if one is on the alert for it. After the tenth swoop there was a buzz of wings and both birds had vanished. A minute after I found the male in a cherry tree sipping honey from the blossoms.

There is evidently a rivalry between the bees and the hummingbirds in their quest for honey. This bird, with an angry dash, expressed its disapproval of the presence of a big bumblebee in the same tree. The usually pugnacious bee incontinently fled, but he did not leave the tree. He dashed back and forth among the branches and white blossoms, the hummingbird in close pursuit. Where will you find another pair that could dodge and turn and dart equal to these? They were like flashes of light, yet the pursuer followed in the track of the pursued, turning when the bee turned. There was no cutting across, for there was no time for that. In short, the bird and the bee controlled the movement of their bodies more quickly and more accurately than the writer could control the movement of his eyes. The chase was all over in half the time that it has taken to tell it, but the excitement of a pack of hounds after a fox is as nothing, in comparison. The bee escaped, the bird giving up the chase and alighting on a twig. It couldn’t have been chasing the bee for food, and there is no possible explanation of its unprovoked attack except that it wished to have all the honey itself. So even as little a body as a hummingbird can show selfishness in a marked degree. However, Mr. Bee continued to take his share of Nature’s bounty, though doubtless he had his weather eye open against another attack. Both scenes afforded me a delightful study and were a rare privilege.

    George Bancroft Griffith.

CALAMUS

(Acorus calamus L.)

Another goblet! quick! and stir
Pomegranate juice and drops of myrrh
And calamus therein.

    – Longfellow: Golden Legend, III.
Acorus calamus, commonly known as Calamus, sweet flag and cinnamon sedge, is a reed-like plant common in Europe and Northern United States. It grows in swamps, marshes and very moist places. It is a herbaceous perennial growing from spreading fleshy rhizomes. The long, sword-like, deep green, pointed leaves grow up from the rhizomes.

The history of this plant dates back to remote antiquity, yet there is considerable uncertainty as regards the identity of the various plants which have at various periods been supposed to be sweet flag. There is no doubt that some reedlike plant in many respects similar if not identical with calamus was used by the ancient Egyptians in the preparation of incense as recorded in the papyri of Ebers. These Egyptian records date back to the eighteenth dynasty, or from 1800 to 2000 years B. C. Vague references to a similar plant are to be found in the ancient sacred writings of the Hindoos. It is likely that the plant referred to and that which is mentioned in the Bible is a species of Andropogon, and not Acorus. In Exodus, 30:23, we find: “Take thou also unto thee principal spices of pure myrrh, of sweet cinnamon, and of sweet Calamus.”

Our first reliable information of Calamus is from Plinius, who received specimens from the country about the Black Sea and who described it under the name of Acorus calamus. Acorus, derived from the Greek a for, and corus, the eye, because the plant was highly recommended in the treatment of diseases of the eye. Calamus, also derived from the Greek, means a reed or reed-like plant. Dioscorides and Theophrastus also describe the plant with special reference to the rhizome and its uses.

The rhizomes should be collected late in the autumn, carefully cleaned of dirt, leaf remnants, leaf scales and roots and dried in the sun or in an oven at a moderate temperature. The aromatic odor increases greatly on drying.

Calamus has ever been a favorite popular remedy. Its principal use seems to have been that of a tonic and blood purifier, for which purpose bits of the dried rhizomes are masticated and the saliva swallowed. It undoubtedly is a tonic and it also has a beneficial, stimulating and antiseptic effect upon gums and teeth. Chewing the rhizomes is also said to clear the voice. Calamus is, or has been, used in flavoring beer and gin. Country, people add it to whisky, wine and brandy to make a tonic bitters for the weak and dyspeptic. It is said that the Turks employ it as a preventive against contagious diseases. In India it is used to destroy vermin, especially fleas. In England it is employed in the treatment of malaria.

At the present time Calamus is no longer extensively employed in medicine. It is considered as a stimulating, aromatic and bitter tonic. It is perhaps true that its value as a tonic is at present somewhat underestimated by the medical profession. It is also serviceable in flatulent colic, and in what is designated as atonic dyspepsia. It is added to other medicines, either as a corrective, or adjuvant.

    Albert Schneider.

THE BIRDS

They are swaying in the marshes,
They are swinging in the glen,
Where the cat-tails air their brushes
In the zephyrs of the fen;
In the swamp’s deserted tangle,
Where the reed-grass whets its scythes;
In the dismal, creepy quagmire,
Where the snake-gourd twists and writhes.

They are singing in arroyos,
Where the cactus mails its breast,