Birds and All Nature, Vol. VI, No. 1, June 1899. Various
one day to her door; two quarrelsome robins stopped to say good morning; and goldfinches lisped their soft love notes, while she only hugged her eggs more closely with the dear, delicious shyness of affection.
When my little house-builder left that morning I was sure that the edge of a white egg rose above the low rim of the nest. From the attic window it was plainly visible, the cradled egg rocking in the wind, but, though the warbler was close by, to his credit be it said he did not once trespass upon other people's property.
Twice that afternoon my lady buzzed through the trees without halting to look in at home, nor when night came down did the wanderer return. She was busy about the next morning, all work being done in the early hours, and by eight o'clock a second egg lay beside the first. By nine o'clock the following morning the regular brooding began, the finishing touches being given to the nest long before the breakfast hour.
It was a noisy location, what with the clatter of lawn mowers, the drumming of pianos, and the singing of canaries, to which she listened with neighborly interest. In that chosen place, directly over the path leading from the sidewalk to the door, it was impossible to find even a degree of seclusion. The weather was fine, the piazza rarely vacant, and there were few hours in the day but someone passed the nest.
Nor did the trouble end with daylight; bicycle parties made the yard a starting-point for evening excursions, lanterns flashed while parting guests halted beneath the little house-beautiful, until I trembled for poor "Queenie" thus barred away from her own door.
Though she unvaryingly left the nest, the persons passing were never once conscious of the nearness of bird or nest, swinging breezes often bringing the latter so near that it almost touched their faces.
I could see it hourly from my window, the overhanging leaf, the opalized lustre of the brooding bird, as if a store of sunshine was shivered, and falling over her feathers, then momentarily hidden as the swinging leaf intervened. More solid pursuits were forgotten or for the time regarded as of little importance; each delicate outline became familiar; the brooding leaf assumed a personality; it was a guardian of the home, vitalized, spiritualized, protective. It seemed to change position as the sun made the need apparent, shielding the little one in the long waiting days, so patient and passive in the sweet expectancy of nearing motherhood. My memory pictures her still, while a more tangible photograph upon my desk gives permanence to my "bird of the musical wing" as she brooded over the apple-tree nest.
With this home as a focus, lawn and garden seemed to hold the sunshine in suspension; uplifted grasses gave it recognition in smiling approval; shadows were invested with humane and beneficent attributes, and the very air was radiant with scent and gracious influence.
Sometimes the bird came to my window, her beak clicking against the glass in a vain effort to probe the flowers within.
There were visits, too, to the piazza, when the family were gathered there, poising above the embroidered flowers upon a lady's slipper and trying persistently to taste their illusive sweetness.
Thrice upon the fourth day of sitting she improved the nest with an extra beakful of cotton, holding it firmly for five or ten minutes before it was inwrought. This was repeated after two weeks when there was a decided change – the little, warm breast was pressed less closely against the nest treasures. Some amazing instinct, directly opposed to that dear experience by which we find a short path to a long wandering, taught her that their increased fragility would yield to her full weight, and her touch was of exquisite softness.
When three full weeks had passed a homely baby no bigger than a honey bee lay in the nest, a one day's advantage kept to the end, and noticeable in both size and strength. The next morning this mite was duplicated, their whole bodies trembling with every heart beat.
Life became now a problem of supply and demand, only a clearer expression of the one that has from all time agitated humanity. Then began that marvel of marvels, the feeding of the newly hatched birds. It was hardly worth while to question the wisdom of the process, though I confess that after each feeding I expected only two little mangled corpses would remain!
The food, partially digested in the mother's stomach, was given by regurgitation, her beak being thrust so far down their throats that I surmised it would pierce the bottom of the nest, to say nothing of the frail bodies churned violently up and down meanwhile. The great wonder was that the infants survived this seemingly brutal and dangerous exercise in which they were sometimes lifted above the nest, the food being given alternately at intervals of half an hour to an hour. They thrived, however, under a treatment that gave strength to the muscles, besides aiding in the digestion of food.
From the first, the comparative length of beak was their most noticeable feature, the proportion becoming less marked by the fourth day when fine hairy pin-feathers appeared, these increasing in size and reinforced by a decided plumage seen above the rim of the nest before the second week ended.
By the ninth day they attempted their first toilet, drawing the incipient feathers, mere hairs, through the beak, and on the tenth day, more surprising still, they had found their voices. Several times daily the branch was pulled down to the level of my eyes, the twins regarding me with the surprise and innocence of babyhood, sinking low into the nest meanwhile, and emitting a plaintive cry almost human in its pathos and expression.
So far as I know no observer has recorded this pleading, pathetic note from the infant hummers so noticeable whenever I came too near. The branch replaced and the disturbing element removed, they reappeared above the nest's rim, the slight form of the mother palpitant as she hovered near. Early in their lives when a cold rain followed the long drouth, her enforced absences were brief; hasty trips merely to the flower garden in the rear of the house, or to the flowering beans in the next yard, a favorite lunch counter patronized every hour ordinarily.
The leaf that served to so good purpose in the sunny days became heavy with raindrops, tilted to one side, and little streams trickled down upon her back and ran off her tail, while big drops splashing down from the higher branches threatened to annihilate the whole affair. Undaunted still, my Lilliputian mother hugged her precious charges, with drooping tail hanging over the edge of the nest, head drawn into her feathers, her whole appearance as limp and bedraggled as a hen caught out in a shower. When the infants had seen two weeks of life they refused to be longer brooded. From this time on they matured rapidly, filling the nest so full that my lady found no place for the sole of her foot, and often alighted upon their backs to give them food. In four days more their baby dresses were quite outgrown. These were replaced by green graduating gowns of stylish texture and fit, and, as my bird book stated that young hummers left the nest when a week old, I was watching eagerly for their debut.
Long before this the nest proper began to show signs of hard service. Before its occupants left it became a thing of the past, positively dissolving to a mere shelf or platform, and one side falling out entirely, the imperturbable twins sitting or standing upon what remained, content in the silence that all completed tasks deserve.
As I have said before, one of these little grown-ups surpassed the other in size and vigor, insisting gently or forcibly upon the best standing-place, and vibrating its wings for several seconds at a time. Plainly this one would be the first to launch upon the world.
Twenty-two days after hatching it spread its wings without apparent effort and alighted upon a neighboring twig. Clearly, life was regarded from a mature standard as it preened its plumage and looked about with an undaunted air.
Two days later the smaller twin followed the example, reaching the upper branches as easily as if flight were an every-day occurrence, both birds flitting about the familiar tree, and fed by the parent, until after the third day, they were seen no more.
There is something noble, simple, and pure in a taste for trees. It argues, I think, a sweet and generous nature to have this strong relish for beauties of vegetation, and this friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest. There is a grandeur of thought connected with this part of rural economy. It is worthy of liberal and freeborn and aspiring men. He who plants an oak looks forward to future ages, and plants for posterity. Nothing can be less selfish than this. He cannot expect to sit in its shade nor enjoy its shelter, but he exults in the idea that the acorn which he has buried in the earth shall grow up into a lofty pile and shall keep