Citizen Bird: Scenes from Bird-Life in Plain English for Beginners. Elliott Coues
on their way to South America."
"Suppose, Uncle Roy, when they are travelling, a storm comes up and it grows so foggy they can't see how to follow the rivers—don't they sometimes lose themselves?"
"Yes, very often they become confused and fly this way and that, but always toward the nearest place where they see a light, as if it meant escape for them. But this instinct is frequently their death, for they fly against the towers of great lighthouses, or the windows of tall buildings, or even electric wires, and thus break their necks or wings."
"That is why I have so often found dead birds along the turnpike under the telegraph wires," said Rap.
"Yes, Rap, the inventions of man are very wonderful, but some of them have been sad things for Bird People, and this is another reason why we should protect them whenever we can. These journeys that the birds make when they leave their nesting haunts for the winter season, and return again in spring, are called migrations. The word 'migrate' means to move from one country to another with the intention of remaining there for some time. The birds who only make little trips about the country, never staying long in one place, we call visitors.
"Birds may be divided according to their journeys into three groups, which will help you to place them:
"1. Citizens.
"Those Bird People whose families stay in or near the same place the year round, roving about somewhat according to the food-supply and weather.
"2. Summer Citizens.
"The families that, though they are with us but six or eight months of the year, make their homes here, and pay their rent and taxes by working for the common good. As they are almost all insect-eaters, they are even more useful than the stay-at-home Citizens, who are chiefly seed-eaters or cannibals.
"3. Winter Visitors.
"The birds who come down from the North in severe weather, but do not stay in one place for any particular time, arriving one day and disappearing the next. They glean for their scanty board and return to the cold countries, of which they are Citizens, before nesting-time."
"Please tell me the names of some of the birds that live here all the time," said Nat. "Have I seen any yet?"
"I think the Bluebird, the Robin, and the Song Sparrow are Citizens," said Rap, "because last winter I used to see one of two almost every day, unless the snow and ice were very thick."
"Yes," said the Doctor, "the Bluebird is a Citizen in the Middle and Southern States, and the Robin also. But in the more northerly parts they are Summer Citizens, returning early and staying late. But the Song Sparrow is a Citizen almost everywhere, and is known about every bushy garden from the east coast to the west, and from the cotton plantation to the land of snow."
"Please tell me the names of some winter visitors," said Rap. "Isn't the Great White Owl one of these?"
"Yes, the Snowy Owl is one of them; so is the Snowflake, who comes to us on the wings of the storm; the tiny Winter Wren, the Great Northern Shrike, and many others, who arrive when snow-tide is upon us in the temperate part of the country, after our song birds have flown to the warmer south. You shall hear of all these, and learn where each one lives, in the bird stories I am going to write for you. But now let us go down by the river and see what some of these newly arrived birds are doing after their long journey.
"Hark! I hear the notes of a Thrasher in those bushes, and the Red-winged Blackbirds are calling all through the marsh meadow. When I was a boy the alder bushes were always full of nests."
"They have nests there now," said Rap eagerly; "a great many nests, and they are very pretty. Ah! There is the big brown bird that you call a Thrasher, with his striped breast and long tail that spreads like a fan. I see him—he is building in that barberry bush!"
"Then the nest comes pretty soon after the up-journey," said Nat.
"Yes," answered the Doctor, as he watched the antics of the Thrasher; "right after the journey the mate, and next the nest. Do not forget the mate, Nat, for it is Mrs. Bird who usually makes the nest and always lays the eggs, besides working in the guilds with her husband, whose greatest distinction is in being the family musician."
"When do the Summer Citizens begin to come back to their nesting places?" asked Nat. "And when do they go away again?"
"The great bird procession begins the first of March with Bluebirds, Robins, Redwings, and Meadowlarks, but it is the first of June before the latest comers, the little Marsh Wrens, are settled. Then in autumn, from September until the first snows of December fall, the procession flutters back south again, one by one or in great flocks, dropping away like falling leaves in the forest, and the birds that we see later are likely to be Citizens.
"The early Robin may have a second brood and the Hummingbird eggs in her nest, before the Marsh Wrens have even been seen.
"In the Southern States the birds arrive and build sooner than in the Northern. A cold spring may delay the on-coming migration, or a warm autumn retard the return movement. But as you study birds you will soon see that each one has his own place in the procession, and usually keeps it. Year by year this vast procession goes on in the air, back and forth, night and day, like the ceaseless ebb and flow of the tides at sea. Bird-waves flow on forever, in their appointed times, and none of Nature's aspects are more regular or more unfailing. It almost seems, boys, as if birds made the seasons—as if winter in the Middle and Northern States might be called the 'songless season.'"
CHAPTER VII
THE BIRD'S NEST
"I wonder why some birds build their nests so very early, when it is cold, and there are no leaves on the trees, while others wait until it is almost summer," said Rap, as they walked down a narrow lane toward the river. There were bushes lining the path on each side, and from the singing you would think that every bush had a bird on each twig. In fact, there were so many birds in sight that Nat did not know which to ask about first, and so kept looking instead of talking.
"The birds who are Citizens are usually the first to build," answered the Doctor. "They merely roved about during the winter months, and had no long journey to make before they reached the home trees again, and then the hardy seed-eating birds can return from the South much earlier than their frailer kin."
"Last year," said Rap, "when the men were chopping trees in the great wood beyond the lake, the miller went up one day to hunt coons and took me with him. It was the beginning of March and terribly cold; there were long icicles hanging on the trees, and we were glad enough to go in by the fire in the lumbermen's camp. But what do you think?—if there wasn't an Owl's nest, up in a pine tree, with two eggs in it! It was in a very lonely place, and the miller said the Owl had borrowed an old Crow's nest and fixed it up a little."
"I should think the eggs would have frozen hard and been spoiled," said Nat.
"No, the old Owl sat on them ever so tight and would hardly budge to let the miller see them. We didn't stay long, for the Owl was a savage big thing, nearly two feet high, with yellow eyes and long feathers sticking up on its head like horns."
"A Great Horned Owl," said the Doctor. "I only wonder that it let the miller go near it at all; they are generally very wild and fierce."
"This one was sort of friends with the lumbermen," continued Rap, "for they used to hang lumps of raw meat on the bushes for it, and they said it kept the rats and mice away from the camp and was good company for them. It frightened me when I heard it first; it gave an awful scream, like a hurt person. After a while another one began to bark like a dog with a cold, just like this—'who-o-o-o—hoo—hoo—hoo.' And, Doctor, one of the lumbermen told me that with Owls and Hawks the female is mostly bigger than the male. Do you think that is so? Because with singing birds the male is the largest."
"Among cannibal birds the female