Birds and All Nature, Vol. V, No. 4, April 1899

Reynard, of all animals, in spite of the fact that he is accepted as the emblem of cunning, slyness, deceit, and mischief, is praised by proverb and tradition, and the greatest of German poets, Goethe, made him the subject of an epic. Pechuel-Loesche says:

"The fox of tradition and poetry and the fox in real life are really two very different animals. Whoever observes him with an unprejudiced mind fails to discover any extraordinary degree of that much-praised presence of mind, cleverness, cunning, and practical sense, or even an unusually keen development of the senses. In my opinion he is by no means superior in his endowments to other beasts of prey, especially the wolf. The most that can be truly said in his praise is to admit that, when he is pursued, he knows how to adapt himself to the surrounding circumstances, but scarcely more so than other sagacious animals. Like many other animals, including the harmless species, some old foxes may have their wits unusually sharpened by experience, but every huntsman who has had much to do with foxes will admit that there are a great many which are not ingenious, and some which may even be called stupid, and this refers not only to young, inexperienced foxes, but also to many old ones. The fox is a rascal and knows his trade, because he has to make a living somehow. He is impudent, but only when driven by hunger or when he has to provide for his little family; and in bad plights he shows neither presence of mind nor deliberation, but loses his head completely. He is caught in clumsy traps, and this even repeatedly. In the open country he allows a sled to approach him within gunshot; he permits himself to be surrounded in a hunt in spite of the noise and shots, instead of wisely taking to his heels; in short, this animal, which is more relentlessly pursued than any other inhabitant of the woods, still has not learned to see through all the tricks of men and shape his actions accordingly."

All of which may be literally true, nevertheless Reynard is the hero of a hundred stories and pictures and he will continue to be regarded as a remarkably clever and interesting animal.

The coat of the fox corresponds closely to his surroundings. Those species living on plains and deserts show the similarity of their color with that of the ground; the southern fox differs considerably from the northern and the fox of the mountains from that of the plains.

The fox usually selects his home in deep hollows, between rocks covered with branches, or between roots of trees. Whenever he can avoid doing so he does not dig a burrow himself, but establishes himself in some old, deserted badger's hole, or shares it with the badger in spite of the latter's objections. If it is possible, the fox excavates his burrows in mountain walls, so that the conduits lead upwards, without running close to the surface. In his prowlings he regards his security as paramount to every other consideration, according to fox hunters. He is suspicious, and only the pangs of hunger can goad him into reckless actions. Then he becomes bold. Once a fox, which was being hunted by hounds and had twice heard the shot whizzing by, seized a sick hare in his flight and carried it with him a considerable distance. Another was surrounded in a field; he came out, attacked a wounded hare, killed it before the eyes of the huntsmen, rapidly buried it in the snow, and then fled directly through the line formed by the sportsmen.

Litters of young foxes are born about the end of April or the beginning of May. Their number varies between three and twelve.

Lenz had a tame female fox which he received just as she was beginning to eat solid food, but had already become so vicious and so much addicted to biting that she always growled when eating her favorite food and bit right and left into straw and wood, even when nobody was disturbing her. Kind treatment soon made her so tame that she would allow him to take a freshly-killed rabbit out of her bloody mouth and insert his fingers instead. Even when grown up she liked to play with him, was demonstrative in her joy when he visited her, wagged her tail, whined, and jumped around. She was just as much pleased to see a stranger, and she distinguished strangers at a distance of fifty paces, when they were turning the corner of the house, and with loud cries would invite them to come up to her, an honor which she never accorded either to him or his brother, who usually fed her, probably because she knew they would do so anyway.

Reynard has been known to attack and kill young calves and lambs, and if the seashore is near will revel in oysters and shellfish. A group of rabbits are feeding in a clover-patch. He'll crawl along, nibbling the juicy flowers until near enough to make a grab. He'll stalk a bird, with his hind legs dragging behind him, until near enough to spring. How farmers dread his inroads in the poultry yard! Fasten the yard up tight and he will burrow a winding passage into the ground beneath and suddenly appear among the drowsy chickens and stupid geese, whose shrill and alarmed cries arouse the farmer from his bed to sally forth, finding all safe. Then the fox will sneak back and pack away with the plumpest pullet or the fattest goose.

AMONG ANIMALS

The deer really weeps, its eyes being provided with lachrymal glands.

Ants have brains larger in proportion to the size of their bodies than any other living creature.

There are three varieties of the dog that never bark – the Australian dog, the Egyptian shepherd dog and the "lion-headed" dog of Tibet.

The insect known as the water boatman has a regular pair of oars, his legs being used as such. He swims on his back, as in this position there is less resistance to his progress.

Seventeen parcels of ants' eggs from Russia, weighing 550 pounds, were sold in Berlin recently for 20 cents a pound.

The peacock is now kept entirely, it would seem, for ornament – for the ornament of garden terraces (among old-fashioned and trim-kept yew hedges he is specially in place) – in his living state, and for various æsthetic uses to which his brilliant plumage and hundred-eyed tailfeathers are put when he is dead or moulting. But we seldom eat him now, though he used to figure with the boar's head, the swan and the baron of beef on those boards which were beloved by our forefathers, more valiant trenchermen than ourselves. Yet young peahen is uncommonly good eating, even now, at the end of the nineteenth century, and in the craze that some people have for new birds – Argus pheasants, Reeve's pheasants, golden pheasants and what not – to stock their coverts, it is a wonder that some one has not tried a sprinkling of peacocks.

SPRING FASHIONS

ELLA GILBERT IVES

EVEN in birddom some of the styles come from Paris, where the rouge gorge smartens up his red waistcoat as regularly as the spring comes round. Our staid American robin tries to follow suit, though he never can equal his old-world models. Even the English redbreast excels him in beauty and song. I must tell the truth, as an honest reporter, though I am not a bit English, and would not exchange our Merula migratoria for a nightingale; for beauty is but feather-deep, and when our robin shines up his yellow bill – a spring fashion of his own – the song that comes from it is dearer than the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That little relative of his whom our forefathers called the "blue robin," has the same rufous color in his waistcoat, though it stops so short it always seems as if the stuff must have given out. No Parisian or London dandy set the style for his lovely coat. If ever a fashion came down from heaven, that did; and it came to the fresh, new world and stopped here. No blue-coats perch on the rails in old England; perhaps because there is never clear sky enough to spare for a bird's back. We have so much on this continent, that half a dozen birds dress in the celestial hue; some of them, like the jay, all the year round.

But indigo bunting, whose summer coat and vest seem interwoven of blue sky and a thunder cloud, and then dipped in a sea-wave of foamy green, is not so lavish of his beauty. His plain wife and children, who dress almost like common sparrows, have only shreds and patches of blue in their attire, and indigo pater puts on the same dull shade for his winter overcoat. But in spring, what a spruce old beau he is! – and how he does like to show off in the tasseled oaks! So beautiful is his changeable silk that one half suspects him of borrowing from the peacock's wardrobe. A grain of that lordly fowl's disposition may have mixed with the dye; for if there is a pointed spruce tree near, indigo is sure to perch on the tip-top and sing until you look at him. Still, he loves beauty for beauty's sake, and is not really vain like the tanager.

That gorgeous bird actually sings, "Here pretty, pretty here!" with variations, as if all loveliness focused in his feathers. He arrives just when the tender young foliage of May will half veil his vivid scarlet coat; and as it is less dependent on light than the indigo's, he does not affect tree-tops, but perches under a spray of golden oak leaves or the delicate green of an elm, and shines like a live coal in a bed of leaves. If he were a British trooper he could not be more resplendent in scarlet and black. Tanager is uniformed first for conquest, then for guard duty. He wears his bright trappings during courting and nesting time, and the rest of the year doffs his scarlet and wears olive-green like that of his modest mate. He still carries black wings and tail, however, to mark his sex.

So does gay little goldfinch, bird of winsome ways and a happy heart. He, too, dresses up for courting; and how do you think he does it? All winter long he has worn an olive-brown coat, as subdued as any finch's needs to be; but when the willows begin to hint at the fashionable spring color, and the spice bush breathes its name, and the dandelions print the news on the grass and the forsythia emblazons it on every lawn, and the sunset sky is a great bulletin board to announce it – then this dainty bird peels off his dull winter overcoat, each tiny feather dropping a tip, and lo! underneath a garb that a Chinese Chang might covet. To match his wings and tail, he puts on a black cap, and then you never saw a more perfect "glass of fashion and mold of form" – at least that is Mme. Goldfinch's opinion.

"No dis-pu-ting a-bout tastes!" chirps chipping sparrow. He prefers a dress of sober tints and thinks nothing so durable as gray and black and brown. Though not a slave to fashion, he does freshen up a bit in the spring and puts on a new cap of chestnut, not to be too old fogyish. But he believes in wearing courting clothes all the year round. Young chippies put on striped bibs until they are out of the nursery, but the old folks like a plain shirt front.

No such notion has the barn-swallow. He believes in family equality, even in the matter of clothes; and having been born in a pretty and becoming suit, wears it all the time. When the cinquefoil fingers the grass, you may look for his swallow-tailed coat in the air; and if the April sun strikes its steel-blue broadcloth, and discloses the bright chestnut muffler and the pale-tinted vest, you will rejoice that old fashions prevail in swallow-land. These swift-flying birds have something higher to think about than changing their clothes.

It seems otherwise with some birds of the meadow. That gay dandy, the bobolink, for instance, lays himself out to make a sensation in the breast of his fair one. When he started on his southern trip last autumn, he wore a traveling-suit of buff and brown, not unlike Mistress Bobolink's and the little Links'. No doubt he knew the danger lurking in the reeds of Pennsylvania and the rice-fields of Carolina, and hoped to escape observation while fattening there. In the spring, if fortunate enough to have escaped the gunner, he flies back to his northern home, "dressed to kill," in human phrase, happily not, in bird language. Robert o'Lincoln is a funny fellow disguised as a bishop. Richard Steele, the rollicking horse-guardsman, posing as a Christian hero, is a human parallel. With a black vest buttoned to the throat, a black cap and choker, bobolink's front is as solemn as the end-man's at a minstrel show. But what a coat! Buff, white and black in eccentric combination; and at the nape of the neck, a yellow posy, that deepens with the buttercups and fades almost as soon. Bobby is original, but he conforms to taste, and introduces no discordant color-tone into his field of buttercups and clover. In his ecstatic flight he seems to have caught a field flower on his back; and if a golden-hearted daisy were to speak, surely it would be in such a joyous tongue.

A red, red rose never blooms in a clover meadow, and the grosbeak does not go there for his chief spring adornment. Red roses do bloom all the year, though none so lovely as the rose of June; and so the grosbeak wears his distinctive flower at his throat the round year, but it is loveliest in early summer. I do not know a prettier fashion – do you? – for human kind or bird, than a flower over the heart. I fancy that a voice is sweeter when a breast is thus adorned. If ever the rich passion of a red, red rose finds expression, it is in the caressing, exultant love-song of the rose-breasted grosbeak. The one who inspires it looks like an overgrown sparrow; but grosbeak knows the difference, if you do not. If that wise parent should ever be in doubt as to his own son, who always favors the mother at the start, he has but to lift up the youngster's wings, and the rose-red lining will show at once that he is no common sparrow.

That pretty fashion of a contrast in linings is not confined to the grosbeak. The flicker, too, has his wings delicately lined with – a scrap of sunset sky. I do not know whether he found his material there or lower down in a marsh of marigolds; but when he flies over your head into the elm tree and plies his trade, you will see that he is fitly named, golden-winged woodpecker. He makes no fuss over his spring clothes. A fresh red tie, which, oddly enough, he wears on the back of his neck, a retinting of his bright lining, a new gloss on his spotted vest and striped coat, and his toilet is made. Madame Flicker is so like her spouse that you would be puzzled to tell them apart, but for his black mustache.

The flicker fashion of dressing alike may come from advanced notions of equality; whatever its source, the purple finch is of another mind. He sacrifices much, almost his own identity, to love of variety; and yet he is never purple. His name simply perpetuates a blunder for which no excuse can be offered. Pokeberry is his prevailing hue, but so variously is it intermingled with brown at different times and seasons and ages, that scarcely two finches look alike. The mother-bird wears the protective colors of the sparrow, while young males seem to be of doubtful mind which parent to copy; and so a purple finch family presents diversity of attire puzzling to a novice.

But why, pray, should a bird family wear a uniform, as if a charity school or a foundling hospital? The gay little warblers are not institutional to that degree. An example of their originality is redstart – another misnamed bird. He wears the colors of Princeton College, or rather, the college wears his; and a lordly male privilege it is, in both cases. His mate contents herself with pale yellow and gray, while the young male waits three years before putting on his father's coat. The first year he wears his mother's dress; the second, a motley betwixt and between; the third, he is a tree "candelita," or little torch, lighting up his winter home in a Cuban forest, and bringing Spanish fashions to New England with the May blossoms.

When dame nature in the spring
For her annual opening
Has her doors and windows washed by April showers;
When the sun has turned the key,
And the loosened buds are free
To come out and pile the shelving rocks with flowers;

When the maple wreathes her head
With a posy-garland red,
And the grass-blade sticks a feather in his cap;
When the tassels trim the birch,
And the oak-tree in the lurch
Hurries up to get some fringes for his wrap;

When the willow's yellow sheen
And the meadow's emerald green
Are the fashionable colors of the day;
When the bank its pledges old
Pays in dandelion gold,
And horse-chestnut folds its baby hands to pray —

Then from Cuba and the isles
Where a tropic sun beguiles,
And from lands beyond the Caribbean sea,
Every dainty warbler flocks
With a tiny music-box
And a trunk of pretty feathers duty-free.

And in colors manifold,
Orange, scarlet, blue, and gold,
Green and yellow, black, and brown and grays galore,
They will thread the forest aisles
With the very latest styles,
And a tune apiece to open up the score.

But they do not care to part
With their decorative art,
Which must always have the background of a tree;
And will surely bring a curse
To a grasping mind or purse,
Since God loves the birds as well as you and me.

BIRDS THAT DO NOT SING