Kitabı oku: «Birds and Nature Vol. 9 No. 1 [January 1901]», sayfa 2

THE YELLOW-BREASTED FLYCATCHER

 
“Come here! come here! come here!
My Philip dear, come here! come here!
Philip, my dear! Philip, Philip, my dear!”
 
 
Poor mournful Mrs. Flycatcher,
With ample breast of dainty buff,
Now don’t you think you’ve called your mate, —
To say the very least – enough?
 
 
I’m sorry for you, plaintive one;
I would be glad to make him fly
From his long tarrying place to you,
If that would stop your weary cry.
 
 
Can’t you decide to give him up?
All over town you’ve called his name;
I heard you calling this week, last,
The week before you called the same.
 
 
Perhaps some boy with “twenty-two”
Has shot him for his sister’s hat.
Go! search the churches through and through;
If he’s not there, accuse the cat.
 

– Carrie B. Sanborn.

THE TOWNSEND’S WARBLER
(Dendroica townsendi.)

Dr. Robert Ridgway, in the Ornithology of Illinois, uses the following words in speaking of that family of birds called the American Warblers (Mniotilidae), “No group of birds more deserves the epithet of pretty than the Warblers; Tanagers are splendid; Humming-birds are refulgent; other kinds are brilliant, gaudy or magnificent, but Warblers alone are pretty in the proper and full sense of that term.”

As they are full of nervous activity, and are “eminently migratory birds,” they seem to flit rather than fly through the United States as they pass northward in the spring to their breeding places, and southward in the fall to their winter homes among the luxuriant forests and plantations of the tropics. All the species are purely American, and as they fly from one extreme to the other of their migratory range they remain but a few days in any intermediate locality. Time seems to be an important matter with them. It would seem as if every moment of daylight was used in the gathering of food and the night hours in continuing their journey.

The American Warblers include more than one hundred species grouped in about twenty genera. Of these species nearly three-fourths are represented in North America at least as summer visitants, the remaining species frequenting only the tropics. Though woodland birds they exhibit many and widely separated modes of life, some of the species preferring only aquatic regions, while others seek drier soils. Some make their homes in shrubby places, while others are seldom found except in forests. As their food is practically confined to insects, they frequent our lawns and orchards during their migrations, when they fly in companies which may include several species. Mr. Chapman, in his Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, says, “Some species flit actively from branch to branch, taking their prey from the more exposed parts of the twigs and leaves; others are gleaners, and carefully explore the under surfaces of leaves or crevices in the bark; while several, like Flycatchers, capture a large part of their food on the wing.”

The Townsend’s Warbler is a native of Western North America, especially near the Pacific coast. Its range extends from Sitka on the north to Central America on the south, where it appears during the winter. In its migration it wanders as far east as Colorado. It breeds from the southern border of the United States northward, nesting in regions of cone-bearing trees. It is said that the nest of this Warbler is usually placed at a considerable height, though at times as low as from five to fifteen feet from the ground. The nest is built of strips of fibrous bark, twigs, long grasses and wool, compactly woven together. This is lined with hair, vegetable down and feathers.

The eggs are described as buffy white, speckled and spotted with reddish brown and lilac-gray, about three-fifths of an inch in length by about one-half of an inch in diameter.

THE STORY OF SOME BLACK BUGS

We were going to visit Aunt Bessie, and John and I like few things better than that. To begin with, she lives in the country, and there is always so much to do in the way of fun that the days never seem half long enough.

Then, besides, Aunt Bessie knows everything, and can tell such famous stories. So when she asked us one morning to go to the pond with her and see something interesting, you may be sure we were not slow in following her.

The rushes grew thickly along the sides, but the water was clear, and we could plainly see the black bugs she pointed out to us crawling, slowly and clumsily, over the muddy bottom.

“Those things!” said John, not a little disgusted. “I don’t think they are much. Are they tadpoles?”

“Tadpoles!” I echoed. “Why, whoever saw tadpoles with six legs and no tail?”

“The absence of a tail is very convincing,” laughed Aunt Bessie. “They are certainly not tadpoles. Now watch them closely, please, and tell me all about them.”

“They are abominably ugly. That is one thing,” broke in John. “They look black, and have six legs. But how funny their skin is. More like a crust, or lots of crusts laid one on the other. They are about the stupidest things I ever saw. They seem to do nothing but crawl over that mud and – Hello! they aren’t so stupid, after all. Did you see that fellow snatch a poor fly and gobble him up quicker than you could say Jack Robinson? And there’s another taken a mosquito just as quick. I’ll take back what I said about the slow business. But really, Auntie, do you think them very interesting?”

“I’ll ask you that question when you have learned something more about them,” was her answer. “Tell me now what you think of that Dragon-fly darting over the water?”

“Oh, he is a beauty,” we answered in a breath. “But please let us hear something about those things down there.”

“Not to-day, boys. I wish you to see something for yourselves first. Watch here for a few days and your patience will be rewarded, I promise you. Then I will have a story to tell you.”

I knew that Auntie never spoke without reason, so John and I kept a close watch on those bugs. For two days nothing happened. The old things just crawled over the mud or ate flies and mosquitoes, as usual.

But the third day one big fellow decided to try something new. It was nothing less than to creep up the stem of one of the rushes. I suppose it was hard work, for he took a long time to get to the surface of the water. Here he stopped a while and then seemed to make up his mind to go further. Soon he was quite out of the water and could breathe all the air and sunshine he wished. I believe he did not like it very well. He seemed so restless and uneasy. I was expecting to see him go back, when I heard John cry out:

“Look! oh, do look!”

I did look, and could scarcely believe my eyes.

His skin (the bug’s, I mean), was actually cracking right down the back, just as though the air and sunshine had dried it too much.

Poor fellow, he seemed in great trouble about it. Then, to make matters worse, a part of his coat broke off at the top and slipped down over his eyes, so that he could not see. After a moment, however, it dropped further, quite under the place where his chin would have been, had he had a chin.

“Oh! he is getting a new face. A prettier one, too, I am glad to say.”

It seemed as if John was always first to notice things, for it was just as he said; as the old face slipped away a new one came in its place.

I guess that by this time that old bug was as much astonished as we were. He was wriggling about in a very strange fashion, and at last quite wriggled himself out of his old shell. Then we saw two pairs of wings, which must have been folded away in little cases by his side, begin to open like fans. Next, he stretched his legs, and it was easy to see that they were longer and more beautiful than those he had had before.

Then, before we could admire his slender, graceful body, or fully realize the wonderful change that had occurred in him, he darted away before our astonished eyes, not a black bug, but a beautiful Dragon-fly.

“Hurrah!” we both shouted. The next second we were rushing at top speed to tell Auntie all about it; just as though she had not known all along what was going to happen.

She listened and then told us what we did not know.

How months before the mother Dragon-fly had dropped her tiny eggs in the water, where they hatched out the black bugs, which were so unlike their mother that she did not know them for her children, and had no word to say to them during the long hours she spent in skimming over the water where they lived.

These bugs were content at first to live in the mud. But soon came the longing for sun and air. And then followed the wonderful transformation from an ugly black bug to the beautiful dragon-fly.

If you will go beside some pond in the spring or early summer, and find among the water grasses such a bug as I have described, and will then watch long enough you will see just what John and I saw. Afterwards I am sure you will agree with us that it is very wonderful indeed.

Louise Jamison.

THE SOLITARY SANDPIPER

He is a curious little chap, the Solitary Snipe, and we used to call him Tip-up. He delights to “see-saw” and “teeter” down a clay bank, with a tiny “peep-po,” “peep-po,” just before he pokes in his long, slender bill for food.

He is very tough, and possesses as many lives as the proverbial cat. I have taken many a shot at him – fine sand-shot at that – and from a gun with a record for scattering, and I never succeeded in knocking over but one Tip-up while on a hunt for taxidermy specimens. I failed to secure even this one, though he flopped over in the water and floated down upon the surface of the shallows toward where I stood, knee-deep awaiting his coming. He was as dead as any bird should have been after such a peppering; yes, he was my prize at last, or so I thought as I reached out my hand to lift his limp-looking little body from the water. He was only playing possum after all. With a whirl of his wings and a shrill “peep-po,” “peep-po,” he darted away and disappeared up stream and out of sight beyond the alders. To add to my disappointment a red-headed woodpecker began to pound out a tantalizing tune upon the limb of a dead hemlock. No sand-shot could reach that fellow, desire him as much as I might. Then a bold kingfisher, with a shrill, saucy scream, darted down before me, grabbed a dace and sailed to a branch opposite to enjoy his feast, well knowing, the rascal! that I had an unloaded gun and had fired my last shell. How he knew this I am not able to say, but he did. Wiser fellows in bird lore than I may be able to explain this. I cannot.

The Solitary Sandpiper is well named. He is always at home wherever found, and always travels alone, be it upon the shelving rock-banks of a river or the clay-banks of a rural stream. He possesses, after a fashion, the gift of the chameleon and can moderately change the color of his coat, or feathers, rather. When he “teeters” along a blue clay bank he looks blue, and when he “see-saws” along brown or gray rocks he looks gray or brown, as the case may be.

The city boy who spends his vacation in the rural parts and fishes for dace, redfins or sunfish, knows the Solitary Sandpiper. To the country boy he is an old acquaintance, for he has taken many a shot, with stone or stick, at the spry little Tip-up, who never fails to escape scot free to “peep-po,” “peep-po” at his sweet content.

H. S. Keller.

THE KNOT OR ROBIN SNIPE
(Tringa canutus.)

The Knot or Robin Snipe is a bird of several names, as it is also called the Red-breasted Ash-colored Sandpiper, the Gray-back and the Gray Snipe. It is quite cosmopolitan, breeding in the far north of both hemispheres, but in winter migrating southward and wintering in the climate of the southern United States and Central America. The Knot belongs to the Snipe family (Scolopacidae), which includes one hundred or more species, about forty-five of which are inhabitants of North America. Nearly all the species breed in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere. These birds frequent the shores of large bodies of water and are seldom observed far from their vicinity. Their bills are long and are used in seeking food in the soft mud of the shore.

The Knot visits the great lakes during its migrations and is frequently observed at that time. Its food, which consists of the smaller crustaceans and shells, can be as readily obtained on the shores of these lakes as on those of the ocean, which it also follows.

Dr. Ridgway tells us that “Adult specimens vary individually in the relative extent of the black, gray and reddish colors on the upper parts; gray usually predominates in the spring, the black in midsummer. Sometimes there is no rufous whatever on the upper surface. The cinnamon color of the lower parts also varies in intensity.”

Little is known of the nest and eggs of the Knot owing to its retiring habits at the nesting time and the fact that it breeds in the region of the Arctic Circle, so little frequented by man. One authentic report, that of Lieutenant A. W. Greely, describes a single egg that he succeeded in obtaining near Fort Conger while commanding an expedition to Lady Franklin Sound. This egg was a little more than an inch in length and about one inch in diameter. Its color was a “light pea-green, closely spotted with brown in small specks about the size of a pinhead.”