Bird Neighbors
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Neltje Blanchan >> Bird Neighbors
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Altogether, the cuckoo is a very different sort of bird from what our fancy
pictured. The little Swiss creatures of wood that fly out of the doors of
clocks and call out the bed-hour to sleepy children, are chiefly responsible
for the false impressions of our mature years. The American bird does not
repeat its name, and its harsh, grating "kuk, kuk," does not remotely suggest
the sweet voice of its European relative.
BANK SWALLOW (Clivicola riparia) Swallow family
Called also: SAND MARTIN; SAND SWALLOW
Length -- 5 to 5.5 inches. About an inch shorter than the English
sparrow, but apparently much larger because of its wide
wing-spread.
Male and Female -- Grayish brown or clay-colored above. Upper
wings and tail darkest. Below, white, with brownish band
across chest. Tail, which is rounded and more nearly square
than the other swallows, is obscurely edged with white.
Range -- Throughout North America south of Hudson Bay.
Migrations -- April. October. Summer resident.
Where a brook cuts its way through a sand bank to reach the sea is an ideal
nesting ground for a colony of sand martins. The face of the high bank shows a
number of clean, round holes indiscriminately bored into the sand, as if the
place had just received a cannonading; but instead of war an atmosphere of
peace pervades the place in midsummer, when you are most likely to visit it.
Now that the young ones have flown from their nests that your arm can barely
reach through the tunnelled sand or clay, there can be little harm in
examining the feathers dropped from gulls, ducks, and other water-birds with
which the grassy home is lined.
The bank swallow's nest, like the kingfisher's, which it resembles, is his
home as well. There he rests when tired of flying about in pursuit of insect
food. Perhaps a bird that has been resting in one of the tunnels, startled by
your innocent housebreaking, will fly out across your face, near enough for
you to see how unlike the other swallows he is: smaller, plainer, and with
none of their glinting steel-blues and buffs about him. With strong, swift
flight he rejoins his fellows, wheeling, skimming, darting through the air
above you, and uttering his characteristic "giggling twitter," that is one of
the cheeriest noises heard along the beach. In early October vast numbers of
these swallows may be seen in loose flocks along the Jersey coast, slowly
making their way South. Clouds of them miles in extent are recorded.
Closely associated with the sand martin is the Rough-winged Swallow
(Stelgidopteryx serripennis), not to be distinguished from its companion on
the wing, but easily recognized by its dull-gray throat and the absence of the
brown breast-band when seen at close range.
CEDAR BIRD (Ampelis cedrorum) Waxwing family
Called also: CEDAR WAXWING [AOU 1998]; CHERRY-BIRD; CANADA ROBIN; RECOLLET
Length -- 7 to 8 inches. About one-fifth smaller than the robin.
Male -- Upper parts rich grayish brown, with plum-colored tints
showing through the brown on crest, throat, breast, wings, and
tail. A velvety-black line on forehead runs through the eye and
back of crest. Chin black; crest conspicuous; breast lighter
than the back, and shading into yellow underneath. Wings have
quill-shafts of secondaries elongated, and with brilliant
vermilion tips like drops of sealing-wax, rarely seen on tail
quills, which have yellow bands across the end.
Female -- With duller plumage, smaller crest, and narrower
tail-band.
Range -- North America, from northern British provinces to
Central America in winter.
Migrations -- A roving resident, without fixed seasons for
migrating.
As the cedar birds travel about in great flocks that quickly exhaust their
special food in a neighborhood, they necessarily lead a nomadic life -- here
to-day, gone to-morrow -- and, like the Arabs, they "silently steal away." It
is surprising how very little noise so great a company of these birds make at
any time. That is because they are singularly gentle and refined; soft of
voice, as they are of color, their plumage suggesting a fine Japanese
water-color painting on silk, with its beautiful sheen and exquisitely blended
tints.
One listens in vain for a song; only a lisping "Twee-twee-ze," or "a dreary
whisper," as Minot calls their low-toned communications with each other,
reaches our ears from their high perches in the cedar trees, where they sit,
almost motionless hours at a time, digesting the enormous quantities of
juniper and whortleberries, wild cherries, worms, and insects upon which they
have gormandized.
Nuttall gives the cedar birds credit for excessive politeness to each other.
He says he has often seen them passing a worm from one to another down a whole
row of beaks and back again before it was finally eaten.
When nesting time arrives -- that is to say, towards the end of the summer --
they give up their gregarious habits and live in pairs, billing and kissing
like turtle-doves in the orchard or wild crabtrees, where a flat, bulky nest
is rather carelessly built of twigs, grasses, feathers, strings -- any odds
and ends that may be lying about. The eggs are usually four, white tinged with
purple and spotted with black.
Apparently they have no moulting season; their plumage is always the same,
beautifully neat and full-feathered. Nothing ever hurries or flusters them,
their greatest concern apparently being, when they alight, to settle
themselves comfortably between their over-polite friends, who are never guilty
of jolting or crowding. Few birds care to take life so easily, not to say
indolently.
Among the French Canadians they are called Recollet, from the color of their
crest resembling the hood of the religious order of that name. Every region
the birds pass through, local names appear to be applied to them, a few of the
most common of which are given above.
Of the three waxwings known to scientists, two are found in America, and the
third in Japan,
BROWN CREEPER (Certhia familiaris americana) Creeper family
Length -- 5 to 5.75 inches. A little smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male and Female -- Brown above, varied with ashy-gray stripes and
small, lozenge-shaped gray mottles. Color lightest on head,
increasing in shade to reddish brown near tail. Tail paler
brown and long; wings brown and barred with whitish. Beneath
grayish white. Slender, curving bill.
Range -- United States and Canada, east of Rocky Mountains.
Migrations -- April. September. Winter resident
This little brown wood sprite, the very embodiment of virtuous diligence, is
never found far from the nuthatches, titmice, and kinglets, though not
strictly in their company, for he is a rather solitary bird. Possibly he
repels them by being too exasperatingly conscientious.
Beginning at the bottom of a rough-barked tree (for a smooth bark conceals no
larvae, the creeper silently climbs upward in a sort of spiral, now lost to
sight on the opposite side of the tree, then reappearing just where he is
expected to, flitting back a foot or two, perhaps, lest he overlooked a single
spider egg, but never by any chance leaving a tree until conscience approves
of his thoroughness. And yet with all this painstaking workman's care, it
takes him just about fifty seconds to finish a tree. Then off he flits to the
base of another, to repeat the spiral process. Only rarely does he adopt the
woodpecker process of partly flitting, partly rocking his way with the help of
his tail straight up one side of the tree.
Yet this little bird is not altogether the soulless drudge he appears. In the
midst of his work, uncheered by summer sunshine, and clinging with numb toes
to the tree-trunk some bitter cold day, he still finds some tender emotion
within him to voice in a "wild, sweet song" that is positively enchanting at
such a time. But it is not often this song is heard south of his nesting
grounds.
The brown creeper's plumage is one of Nature's most successful feats of
mimicry -- an exact counterfeit in feathers of the brown-gray bark on which
the bird lives. And the protective coloring is carried out in the nest
carefully tucked under a piece of loosened bark in the very heart of the tree.
PINE SISKIN (Spinus pinus) Finch family
Called also: PINE FINCH; PINE LINNET
Length -- 4.75 to 5 inches. Over an inch smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male and Female -- Olive-brown and gray above, much streaked and
striped with very dark brown everywhere. Darkest on head and
back. Lower back, base of tail, and wing feathers pale
sulphur-yellow. Under parts very light buff brown, heavily
streaked.
Range -- North America generally. Most common in north latitudes.
Winters south to the Gulf of Mexico.
Migrations -- Erratic winter visitor from October to April.
Uncommon in summer.
A small grayish-brown brindle bird, relieved with touches of yellow on its
back, wings, and tail, may be seen some winter morning roving on the lawn from
one evergreen tree to another, clinging to the pine cones and peering
attentively between the scales before extracting the kernels. It utters a
call-note so like the English sparrow's that you are surprised when you look
up into the tree to find it comes from a stranger. The pine siskin is an
erratic visitor, and there is always the charm of the unexpected about its
coming near our houses that heightens our enjoyment of its brief stay.
As it flies downward from the top of the spruce tree to feed upon the brown
seeds still clinging to the pigweed and goldenrod stalks sticking out above
the snow by the roadside, it dips and floats through the air like its charming
little cousin, the goldfinch. They have several characteristics in common
besides their flight and their fondness for thistles. Far at the north, where
the pine siskin nests in the top of the evergreens, his sweet-warbled
love-song is said to be like that of our "wild canary's," only with a
suggestion of fretfulness in the tone.
Occasionally some one living in an Adirondack or other mountain camp reports
finding the nest and hearing the siskin sing even in midsummer; but it is,
nevertheless, considered a northern species, however its erratic habits may
sometimes break through the ornithologist's traditions.
SMITH'S PAINTED LONGSPUR (Calcarius pictus) Finch family
[Called also: SMITH'S LONGSPUR, AOU 1998]
Length -- 6.5 inches. About the size of a large English sparrow.
Male and Female -- Upper parts marked with black, brown, and
white, like a sparrow; brown predominant. Male bird with more
black about head, shoulders, and tail feathers, and a whitish
patch, edged with black, under the eye. Underneath pale brown,
shading to buff. Hind claw or spur conspicuous.
Range -- Interior of North America, from the arctic coast to
Illinois and and Texas; Migrations -- Winter visitor. Without
fixed season.
Confined to a narrower range than the Lapland longspur, this bird, quite
commonly found on the open prairie districts of the middle West in winter, is,
nevertheless, so very like its cousin that the same description of their
habits might very well answer for both. Indeed, both these birds are often
seen in the same flock. Larks and the ubiquitous sparrows, too, intermingle
with them with the familiarity that only the starvation rations of midwinter,
and not true sociability, can effect; and, looking out upon such a
heterogeneous flock of brown birds as they are feeding together on the frozen
ground, only the trained field ornithologist would find it easy to point out
the painted longspurs.
Certain peculiarities are noticeable, however. Longspurs squat while resting;
then, when flushed, they run quickly and lightly, and "rise with a sharp
click, repeated several times in quick succession, and move with an easy,
undulating motion for a short distance, when they alight very suddenly,
seeming to fall perpendicularly several feet to the ground." Another
peculiarity of their flight is their habit of flying about in circles, to and
fro, keeping up a constant chirping or call. It is only in the mating season,
when we rarely hear them, that the longspurs have the angelic manner of
singing as they fly, like the skylark. The colors of the males, among the
several longspurs, may differ widely, but the indistinctly marked females are
so like each other that only their mates, perhaps, could tell them apart.
LAPLAND LONGSPUR (Calcarius lapponicus) Finch family
Called also: LAPLAND SNOWBIRD; LAPLAND LARK BUNTING
Length -- 6.5 to 7 inches. trifle larger than the English sparrow.
Male -- Color varies with season. Winter plumage: Top of head
black, with rusty markings, all feathers being tipped with
white. Behind and below the eye rusty black. Breast and
underneath grayish white faintly streaked with black. Above
reddish brown with black markings. Feet, which are black, have
conspicuous, long hind claws or spur.
Female -- Rusty gray above, less conspicuously marked. Whitish
below.
Range -- Circumpolar regions; northern United States; occasional
in Middle States; abundant in winter as far as Kansas and the
Rocky Mountains.
Migrations -- Winter visitors, rarely resident, and without a
Fixed season.
This arctic bird, although considered somewhat rare with us, when seen at all
in midwinter is in such large flocks that, before its visit in the
neighborhood is ended, and because there are so few other birds about, it
becomes delightfully familiar as it nimbly runs over the frozen ground,
picking up grain that has blown about from the barn, when the seeds of the
field are buried under snow. This lack of fear through sharp hunger, that
often drives the shyest of the birds to our very doors in winter, is as
pathetic as it is charming. Possibly it is not so rare a bird as we think, for
it is often mistaken for some of the sparrows, the shore larks, and the snow
buntings, that it not only resembles, but whose company it frequently keeps,
or for one of the other longspurs.
At all seasons of the year a ground bird, you may readily identify the Lapland
longspur by its tracks through the snow, showing the mark of the long hind
claw or spur. In summer we know little or nothing about it, for, with the
coming of the flowers, it is off to the far north, where, we are told, it
depresses its nest in a bed of moss upon the ground, and lines it with fur
shed from the coat of the arctic fox.
CHIPPING SPARROW (Spizella socialis) Finch family
Called also: CHIPPY; HAIR-BIRD; CHIP-BIRD; SOCIAL SPARROW
Length -- 5 to 5.5 inches. An inch shorter than the English
sparrow.
Male -- Under the eye, on the back of the neck, underneath, and
on the lower back ash-gray. Gray stripe over the eye, and a
blackish brown one apparently through it. Dark red-brown crown.
Back brown, slightly rufous, and feathers streaked with black.
Wings and tail dusty brown. Wing-bars not conspicuous. Bill
black.
Female -- Lacks the chestnut color on the crown, which is
Streaked with black. In winter the frontlet is black. Bill
brownish.
Range -- North America, from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico
And westward to the Rockies. Winters in Gulf States and Mexico.
Most common in eastern United States.
Migrations -- April. October. Common summer resident, many birds
remaining all the year from southern New England southward.
Who does not know this humblest, most unassuming little neighbor that comes
hopping to our very doors; this mite of a bird with "one talent" that it so
persistently uses all the day and every day throughout the summer? Its high,
wiry trill, like the buzzing of the locust, heard in the dawn before the sky
grows even gray, or in the middle of the night, starts the morning chorus; and
after all other voices are hushed in the evening, its tremolo is the last
bed-song to come from the trees. But however monotonous such cheerfulness
sometimes becomes when we are surfeited with real songs from dozens of other
throats, there are long periods of midsummer silence that it punctuates most
acceptably.
Its call-note, chip! chip! from which several of its popular names are
derived, is altogether different from the trill which must do duty as a song
to express love, contentment, everything that so amiable a little nature might
feel impelled to voice.
But with all its virtues, the chippy shows lamentable weakness of character in
allowing its grown children to impose upon it, as it certainly does. In every
group of these birds throughout the summer we can see young ones (which we may
know by the black line-stripes on their breasts) hopping around after their
parents, that are often no larger or more able-bodied than they, and teasing
to be fed; drooping their wings to excite pity for a helplessness that they do
not possess when the weary little mother hops away from them, and still
persistently chirping for food until she weakly relents, returns to them,
picks a seed from the ground and thrusts it down the bill of the sauciest
teaser in the group. With two such broods in a season the chestnut feathers on
the father's jaunty head might well turn gray.
Unlike most of the sparrows, the little chippy frequents high trees, where its
nest is built quite as often as in the low bushes of the garden. The
horse-hair, which always lines the grass" up that holds its greenish-blue,
speckled eggs, is alone responsible for the name hair-bird, and not the
chippy's hair-like trill, as some suppose.
ENGLISH SPARROW (Passer domesticus) Finch family
Called also: HOUSE SPARROW [AOU 1998]
Length -- 6.33 inches.
Male -- Ashy above, with black and chestnut stripes on back and
shoulders. Wings have chestnut and white bar, bordered by faint
black line. Gray crown, bordered from the eye backward and on
the nape by chestnut. Middle of throat and breast black.
Underneath grayish white.
Female -- Paler; wing-bars indistinct, and without the black
marking on throat and breast.
Range -- Around the world. Introduced and naturalized in America,
Australia, New Zealand.
Migrations -- Constant resident.
"Of course, no self-respecting ornithologist will condescend to enlarge his
list by counting in the English sparrow -- too pestiferous to mention," writes
Mr. H. E. Parkhurst, and yet of all bird neighbors is any one more within the
scope of this book than the audacious little gamin that delights in the
companion ship of humans even in their most noisy city thoroughfares?
In a bulletin issued by the Department of Agriculture it is shown that the
progeny of a single pair of these sparrows might amount to 275,716,983,698 in
ten years! Inasmuch as many pairs were liberated in the streets of Brooklyn,
New York, in 1851, when the first importation was made, the day is evidently
not far off when these birds, by no means meek, "shall inherit the earth."
In Australia Scotch thistles, English sparrows, and rabbits, three most
unfortunate importations, have multiplied with equal rapidity until serious
alarm fills the minds of the colonists. But in England a special committee
appointed by the House of Commons to investigate the character of the alleged
pest has yet to learn whether the sparrow's services as an insect-destroyer do
not outweigh the injury it does to fruit and grain.
FIELD SPARROW (Spizella pusilla) Finch family
Called also: FIELD BUNTING; WOOD SPARROW; BUSH SPARROW
Length -- 5.5 to 5.75 inches. A little smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male -- Chestnut crown. Upper back bright chestnut, finely
streaked with black and ashy brown. Lower back more grayish.
Whitish wing-bars. Cheeks, line over the eye, throat, pale
brownish drab. Tail long. Underneath grayish white, tinged with
palest buff on breast and sides. Bill reddish.
Female -- Paler; the crown edged with grayish.
Range -- North America, from British provinces to the Gulf, and
westward to the plains. Winters from Illinois and Virginia
southward. Migrations -- April. November. Common summer
resident.
Simply because both birds have chestnut crowns, the field sparrow is often
mistaken for the dapper, sociable chippy; and, no doubt because it loves such
heathery, grassy pastures as are dear to the vesper sparrow, and has bay wings
and a sweet song, these two cousins also are often confused. The field sparrow
has a more reddish-brown upper back than any of its small relatives; the
absence of streaks on its breast and of the white tail quills so conspicuous
in the vesper sparrow's flight, sufficiently differentiate the two birds,
while the red bill of the field sparrow is a positive mark of identification.
This bird of humble nature, that makes the scrubby pastures and uplands
tuneful from early morning until after sunset, flies away with exasperating
shyness as you approach. Alighting on a convenient branch, he lures you on
with his clear, sweet song. Follow him, and he only hops about from bush to
bush, farther and farther away, singing as he goes a variety of strains, which
is one of the bird's peculiarities. The song not only varies in individuals,
but in different localities, which may be one reason why no two ornithologists
record it alike. Doubtless the chief reason for the amusing differences in the
syllables into which the songs of birds are often translated in the books, is
that the same Notes actually sound differently to different individuals. Thus,
to people in Massachusetts the white-throated sparrow seems to say,
"Pea-bod-y, Pea-bod-y, Pea-bod-y!" while good British subjects beyond the New
England border hear him sing quite distinctly, "Sweet Can-a-da, Can-a-da,
Can-a-da!" But however the opinions as to the syllables of the field sparrow's
song may differ, all are agreed as to its exquisite quality, that resembles
the vesper sparrow's tender, sweet melody. The song begins with three soft,
wild whistles, and ends with a series of trills and quavers that gradually
melt away into silence: a serene and restful strain as soothing as a hymn.
Like the vesper sparrows, these birds sometimes build a plain, grassy nest,
unprotected by over hanging bush, flat upon the ground. Possibly from a
prudent tear of field-mice and snakes, the little mother most frequently lays
her bluish-white, rufous -- marked eggs in a nest placed in a bush of a bushy
field. Hence John Burroughs has called the bird the ''bush sparrow."
FOX SPARROW (Passerella ilica) Finch family
Called also: FOX-COLORED SPARROW; FERRUGINOUS FINCH; FOXY FINCH
Length -- 6.5 to 7.25 inches. Nearly an inch longer than the
English sparrow.
Male and Female -- Upper parts reddish brown, varied with ash
gray, brightest on lower back, wings, and tail. Bluish slate
about the head. Underneath whitish; the throat, breast, and
sides heavily marked with arrow-heads and oblong dashes of
reddish brown and blackish.
Range -- Alaska and Manitoba to southern United States. Winters
chiefly south of Illinois and Virginia. Occasional stragglers
remain north most of the winter.
Migrations -- March. November. Most common in the migrations.
There will be little difficulty in naming this largest, most plump and reddish
of all the sparrows, whose fox-colored feathers, rather than any malicious
cunning of its disposition, are responsible for the name it bears. The male
bird is incomparably the finest singer of its gifted family. His faint tseep
call-note gives no indication of his vocal powers that some bleak morning in
early March suddenly send a thrill of pleasure through you. It is the most
welcome "glad surprise" of all the spring. Without a preliminary twitter or
throat-clearing of any sort, the full, rich, luscious tones, with just a tinge
of plaintiveness in them, are poured forth with spontaneous abandon. Such a
song at such a time is enough to summon anybody with a musical ear out of
doors under the leaden skies to where the delicious notes issue from the
leafless shrubbery by the roadside. Watch the singer until the song ends, when
he will quite likely descend among the dead leaves on the ground and scratch
among them like any barn-yard fowl, but somehow contriving to use both feet at
once in the operation, as no chicken ever could. He seems to take special
delight in damp thickets, where the insects with which he varies his seed diet
are plentiful.
Usually the fox sparrows keep in small, loose flocks, apart by themselves, for
they are not truly gregarious; but they may sometimes be seen travelling in
company with their white-throated cousins. They are among the last birds to
leave us in the late autumn or winter. Mr. Bicknell says that they seem
indisposed to sing unless present in numbers. Indeed, they are little inclined
to absolute solitude at any time, for even in the nesting season quite a
colony of grassy nurseries may be found in the same meadow, and small
companies haunt the roadside shrubbery during the migrations.
GRASSHOPPER SPARROW (Ammodramus savannarum passerinus) Finch
family
Called also: YELLOW-WINGED SPARROW
Length -- 5 to 5.4 inches. About an inch smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male and Female -- A cream-yellow line over the eye; centre of
crown, shoulders, and lesser wing coverts yellowish. Head
blackish; rust-colored feathers, with small black spots on back
of the neck; an orange mark before the eye. All other upper
parts varied red, brown, cream, and black, with a drab wash.
Underneath brownish drab on breast, shading to soiled white,
and without streaks. Dusky, even, pointed tail feathers have
grayish-white outer margins.
Range -- Eastern North America, from British provinces to Cuba.
Winters south of the Carolinas.
Migrations -- April. October. Common summer resident.
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