A-Birding on a Bronco Part 3

One morning when a gnat was in the nest a leaf blew down past it, startling it so it hopped out in such a hurry that the first I knew it was seated beneath the nest, flashing its tail.

Back and forth the dainty pair flew across the s.p.a.ce of blue sky between the oak and the brush. They went so fast and carried so little it seemed as if they might have made their heads save their heels--they brought so little I couldn't see that they brought anything; but I feel delicate about telling what I know about nest-making, and it may be that this was just the secret of the wonderfully compact solid walls of the nest; a little at a time, and that drilled in to stay.

When one of the small builders flew down near me--within two yards--for material, I felt greatly pleased and flattered. Her mate warned her, but she paid no particular attention to him, and with jaunty twists and turns hopped about on the dead limbs, giving hurried jabs at the cobwebs she was gathering. Once she rubbed her little cheek against a twig as if a thread of the cobweb had gotten in her eye. She dashed in among the dead leaves after something, but flew back with a start as if she had seen a ghost. She was not to be daunted, however, and after whipping her tail and peering in for a moment, hopped bravely down again. Sometimes, when collecting cobweb, the gnat would whip its tail and snap its bill snip, snip, snip, as if cutting the web with a pair of scissors.

I was amused one day by seeing a gnat fly down from the oak to the brush with what looked like a long brown caterpillar. The worm dangling from the tip of his beak was almost as large as the bird, and the little fellow had to crook his tail to keep from being overbalanced and going on his bill to the ground.

As the nest went up, the leaves hid it; but I could still see the small wings and tails flip up in the air over the edge of the cup and jerk about as the bird moulded. I watched the workers so long that I felt quite competent to build a nest myself, till happening to remember that it required gnatcatcher tools.

Ornithologists are discouraging people to wait for, and Mountain Billy got so restless under the gnat tree that he had to invent a new fly-brush for himself. On one side of the oak the branches hung low to the ground, and he pushed into the tangle till the green boughs rested on his back and he was almost hidden from view. Meanwhile I sat close beside the chaparral wall, where all sorts of sounds were to be heard, suggestive of the industries of the population hidden within the brush at my back. Hearing small footsteps, I peered in through the brown twigs, and to my delight saw a pair of stately quail walking over the ground, promenading through the brush avenues. Afterwards I caught sight of a gray animal, probably a wood rat, running down a branch behind me, and heard queer m.u.f.fled sounds of gnawing.

Suddenly, looking back, I was startled to see a big ringed brown and yellow snake lying like a rope at the foot of the gnat's tree, just where I had sat. He was about four feet long, and had twenty-three rings. He started to wind into the crotch of the oak as if meaning to climb the tree, but instead, crept to a stump and festooned himself about it worming around the holes as he might do if looking for nest holes. Imagine how a mother bird would feel to have him come stealing upon her little brood in that horrid way! When he crawled over the dead leaves I noted with a shiver that he made no sound. Thinking of the gnats, I watched his every movement till he had left the premises and wormed his way off through the brush. Though quite engrossed with the gnats, it was finally forced upon me that there is more than one family in the world. The blue-gray's oak was a favored one. A pair of hang-birds had built there before the gnats came, and now two more families had come, making four for the big oak.

When first suspecting a house on the north side of the tree, I moved my chair over there. Presently a vireo with disordered breast feathers flew down on a dead twig close to the ground and leaned over with a tired anxious look, and craning her neck, turned her head on one side, and bent her eyes on the ground scrutinizingly. Then she hopped down, picked up something, threw it away, picked up another piece and flew back to her perch with it, as if to make up her mind if she really wanted that.

Then her mate came, raised his crown and looked down at the bit of material with a puzzled air as if wishing he knew what to say; as if he felt he ought to be able to help her decide. But he seemed helpless and could only follow her around when she was at work, singing to her betimes, and keeping off friends or enemies who came too near. When the young hatched I noticed a still more marked difference between the nervous manners of the gnats, and the repose of vireos. While the gnat flipped about distractedly, the vireo sat calmly beside her nest, an exquisite white basket hanging under the leaves in the sun, or walked carefully over the branches looking for food for the young. Some days before finding out the facts, I suspected that the wood pewee perching on the old tree had more important business there, for the way he and his mate flew back and forth to the oak top was very pointed. So again I moved my chair. To my delight the wood pewee flew up in the tree, sat down on a horizontal crotch, and went through the motions of moulding.

There were two birds, however, that simply used the tree as a resting-place, as far as I ever knew. A hummingbird perched on the tip of a twig, looking from below like a good sized b.u.mblebee as he preened his feathers and looked off upon the world below. At the other side of the oak a pretty pink dove perched on a sunny branch that arched against the blue sky. It sat close to the branch beside the green leaves and dressed its feathers or dozed quietly in the sun. We had other visitors that the house owners did not accept so willingly. The gnatcatchers up the sand ditch whose nest had been broken up by the thief-in-the-night did not object to brown chippies, but perhaps, if this were the same pair, they had been made suspicious by their trouble. In any case, when a brown chippie lit on a limb near the nest, quite accidentally I believe, and turned to look at the pretty structure, quite innocently I feel sure, the little gnats fell on him tooth and nail, and when he hid under the leaves where they could not reach him they fluttered above the leaves, and the moment he ventured from under cover were both at him again so violently that at the first opportunity he took to his wings.

There was one curious thing about this attack and expulsion; the gnats did not utter a word during the whole affair! I had never known them to be silent before when anything was going on--rarely when there wasn't.

Another morning when I rode in there was a great commotion up in the oak. A chorus of small scolding voices, and a fluttering of little wings among the branches told that something was wrong, while a large form moving deliberately about in the tree showed the intruder to be a blue jay! Aha! the gossips would wag their heads. I disapprove of gossip, but as a truthful reporter am obliged to say that I saw the blue jay pitch down into the brush with something white in his bill--perhaps a coc.o.o.n--and that thereupon a great weeping and wailing arose from the little folk up in the treetop. A big brown California chewink stood by and watched the--robbery(?), great big fellow that he was; and not once offered to take the little fellows' part. I felt indignant. Why didn't he pitch into the big bully and drive him off before he had stolen the little birds' egg--if it was an egg. A grosbeak called _ick'_ from the treetop, but thought he'd better not meddle; and--it was a pair of wren-t.i.ts who looked out from a brush screen and then skulked off, chuckling to themselves, I dare say, that some one else was up to their tricks. It gave my faith in birds a great shock, this, together with the pillage of the gnat's nest by the thief-in-the-night. My spleen was especially turned against the brown chewink; he certainly was a good fighter, and might at least have helped to clear the neighborhood of such a suspicious character.

Where did the egg--if it was an egg--come from? The vireos and pewees and gnats were still building, I reflected thankfully, though trembling for their future; and fortunately the hangbird had young. Perhaps the jay had found a nest that I could not discover.

After that, things went on quietly for several days. The gnats got through with their building, and went off for a holiday until it should be time to begin brooding. They flitted about the branches warbling, as if having nothing special to do; dear little souls, at work as at play, always together. One of them unexpectedly found himself near me one day; but when he saw it was only I, whipped his tail and exclaimed "_Oh, it's you'. I'm' not afraid._"

This peace and quietness, however, did not last. The gnats' house was evidently haunted, and they did not like--blue--ghosts. One morning when I got to the oak it was all in a hubbub, and the vireo was scolding loudly at a blue jay. When the giant pitched into the brush the wren-t.i.t chattered, and I thought perhaps the jay was teaching him how it feels to have a shoe pinch. A few moments later I was amazed to see a gnat jab at the wall till it got a bill full of material and then fly off to the brush with it! My little birds had moved! Evidently the neighborhood was too exciting for them. More than ten days of hard work--no one can tell how hard until after watching a gnatcatcher build--had been spent in vain on this nest; and if, as suspected, this was their second, how much more work did that mean? It was a marvel that the birds could get courage to start in again, especially if they had had two homes broken up already.

From my position at the big oak I could see that the gnats were carrying the frame of the old house to a small oak in the brush. The wood pewee had moved too, and to my surprise and pleasure I found it had begun its nest on a branch under the gnats, so that both families could be watched at the same time. I nearly got brushed off the saddle promenading through the stiff chaparral to find a place where the nests could be seen from the ground; but when at last successful, I too, like the rest of the old oak's floating population, moved to pastures new. Hanging my chair on the saddle, I made Billy carry it for me; then I buckled the reins around the trunk of the oak and withdrew into the brush to watch my birds. It was a cozy little nook, from which Billy could be heard stamping his feet to shake off the flies. The little crack in the chaparral was a pleasant place to sit in, protected as it was from the wind, with the sun only coming in enough to touch up the brown leaves on the ground and warm the fragrant sage, bringing out its delicious spicy aromatic smell.

The pewee did not altogether relish having us established under its vine and fig-tree. When it saw Billy under the tree it whistled, and the bit of gra.s.s it had brought for its nest went sailing down to the brush disregarded. It did not think us as bad as the blue jay, however, for it came back with a long stem of gra.s.s in its bill, and, lighting on a high branch, called _pee-ree_. To be sure, when it had gone to the nest and I was inconsiderate enough to turn a page in my note-book, it dashed off.

But if murder will out, so will good intentions; and before long the timid bird was brooding its nest with Billy and me for spectators.

The gnat's nest here was so much lower than the other one that it was much easier to watch. The first day the birds built rapidly. One of them got his spider's web from beside the pewee's nest, when the pewee was away. He started to go for it once after the owner had returned, caught sight of him, stopped short, and much to my amus.e.m.e.nt concluded to sit down and preen his feathers! The pewee had one special bare twig of his own that he used for a perch, and when the gnat seated himself there in his neighbor's absence he looked so small that I realized what a mite of a bird he really was. He sometimes sat there and talked while his mate moulded the nest.

When the gnats got to brooding, many of the same pretty performances were repeated that had marked the first nest of all, up in the sand ditch. When the bird on the nest hopped out and called, "Come, come,"

its mate, who had been wandering around in the sunny green treetop, called out in sweet tones, "Good-by, good-by."

When waiting for the gnats to do something, I heard a little sound in the oak brush by my side, and, looking through the brown branches, saw a wren-t.i.t come hopping toward me. It came up within three feet of me, near enough to see its bright yellow eyes. I began to wonder if it had a nest near by, and felt my prejudices melting away and my heart growing tender. Some thieves are very honest fellows; it is largely a difference in ethical standards! I began to feel a keen interest in the bird and its affairs, for the wren-t.i.t was really a most original bird, and one I was especially anxious to study.

My newly awakened interest was not chilled by any second tragedy; all went well with the little blue-grays. The day the gnat's eggs hatched, the old folks performed most ludicrously. Perhaps they were young parents, and this being their first brood, maternal and paternal love had not yet blinded their eyes to the ridiculous; so that they looked down on these skinny, squirming, big-eyeballed prodigies with mingled emotions. It looked very much as if they were surprised to find that their smooth pretty eggs had suddenly turned into these ugly, weak, hungry things they did not know what to do with. At first it seemed that something must be wrong at the nest; the little gnat shook her wings and tail beside it as if afraid of soiling herself; and when she hopped into it, jerked out again and flitted around distractedly. Every time the birds looked into the nest they got so excited that, had they been girls, they surely would have hopped up and down wringing their hands. I laughed right out alone in the brush, they acted so absurdly.

They began feeding the nestlings in the most remarkable way I had ever witnessed. When the young mother was on the nest her mate came and brought her the food, whereupon, instead of jumping off the nest and feeding the young in the conventional way, she simply raised up on her feet and, apparently, poked the food backwards into the bills of the young under her breast! Even when the gnats got to feeding more in the ordinary way, they did it nervously. They fed as if expecting the young to bite them. They would fly up on the branch beside the nest, give a jab down at the youngsters, whip tails and flee. You would have thought the young parents had been playing house before, and their dolls had suddenly turned into live hungry nestlings.

I watched this family till the house was deserted, and I had to ride along a line of brush before finding them. The young were now pretty silvery-breasted creatures who sat up in a small oak while the old birds hunted through the brush for food for them. Though I rode Billy into the chaparral after them, and got near enough to see the black line over the bill of the father bird, they did not mind, but hunted away quite unconcernedly; for we had been through many things together, and were now old and fast friends.

V.

LITTLE PRISONERS IN THE TOWER.

I HAD not spent many days in The Little Lover's door-yard before realizing that there was something in the wind. If an inoffensive person fancies sitting in the shade of a sycamore with her horse grazing quietly beside her, who should say her nay? If, at her approach, a--feathered--person steals away to the top of the highest, most distant oak within sight and, silent and motionless, keeps his eye on her till she departs; if, as she innocently glances up at the trees, she discovers a second--feathered--person's head extended cautiously from behind a trunk, its eyes fixed on hers; or if, as she pa.s.ses along a--sycamore--street, a person comes to a window and cranes his neck to look at her, and instantly leaves the premises; then surely, as the world wags, she is quite justified in having a mind of her own in the matter. Still more, when it comes to finding chips under a window--who could do aught but infer that a carpenter lived within? Not I. And so it came about that I discovered that one of the apartments in the back of the wren sycamore had been rented by a pair of well-meaning but suspicious California woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, first cousins of the eastern red-heads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: California Woodp.e.c.k.e.r.

(One half natural size.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Red-headed Woodp.e.c.k.e.r--Eastern.

(One half natural size.)]

It is unpleasant to be treated as if you needed detectives on your track. It strains your faith in human nature; the rest of the world must be very wicked if people suspect such extremely good creatures as you are! And then it reflects on the detectives; it shows them so lacking in discernment. Nevertheless, "A friend should bear his friend's infirmities," and I was determined to be friends with the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs.

One of them kept me waiting an hour one morning. When I first saw it, it was on its tree trunk, but when it first saw me, it promptly left for parts unknown. I stopped at a respectful distance from its tree--several rods away--and threw myself down on the warm sand in the bed of the dry stream, between high hedges of exquisite lemon-colored mustard. Patient waiting is no loss, observers must remember if they would be consoled for their lost hours. In this case I waited till I felt like a lotus-eater who could have stayed on forever. A dove brooded her eggs on a branch of the spreading sycamore whose arms were outstretched protectingly above me; the sun rested full on its broad leaves, and bees droned around the fragrant mustard, whose exquisite golden flowers waved gently against a background of soft blue California sky.

But that was not the last day I had to wait. It was over a month before the birds put any trust in me. The nest hole was excavated before the middle of May; on June 15 I wrote in my note-book, "The woodp.e.c.k.e.r has gotten so that when I go by she puts her head out of the window, and when I speak to her does not fly away, but c.o.c.ks her head and looks down at me."[3] That same morning the bird actually entered the nest in my presence. She came back to her sycamore while I was watching the wrens, and flew right up to the mouth of the nest. She was a little nervous.

She poked in her bill, drew it back; put in her head, drew that back; then swung her body partly in; but finally the tip of her tail disappeared down the hole.

The next morning, in riding by, I heard weak voices from the woodp.e.c.k.e.r mansion. If young were to be fed, I must be on hand. Such luxurious observing! Riding Mountain Billy out into the meadow, I dismounted, and settled myself comfortably against a hayc.o.c.k with the bridle over my arm. It was a beautiful quiet morning. The night fog had melted back and the mountains stood out in relief against a sky of pure deep blue. The line of sycamores opposite us were green and still against the blue; the morning sun lighting their white trunks and framework. The songs of birds filled the air, and the straw-colored field dotted with hayc.o.c.ks lay sunning under the quiet sky. In the East we are accustomed to speak of "the peace of evening," but in southern California in spring there is a peculiar interval of warmth and rest, a langorous pause in the growth of the morning, between the disappearance of the night fog and the coming of the cool trade wind, when the southern sun shines full into the little valleys and the peace of the morning is so deep and serene that the labor of the day seems done. Nature appears to be slumbering.

She is aroused slowly and gently by the soft breaths that come in from the Pacific. On this day I watched the awakening. Up to this time not a gra.s.s blade had stirred, but while I dreamed a brown leaf went whirling to the ground, the stray stalks of oats left from the mowing began to nod, and the sycamore branches commenced to sway. Then the breeze swelled stronger, coming cool and fresh from the ocean; the yellow primroses, around which the hummingbirds whirred, bowed on their stately stalks, and I could hear the wind in the moving treetops.

Mountain Billy grazed near me till it occurred to him that stubble was unsatisfactory, when he betook him to my hayc.o.c.k. Though I lectured him upon the rights of property and enforced my sermon with the point of the parasol, he was soon back again, with the amused look of a naughty boy who cannot believe in the severity of his monitor; and later, I regret to state, when I was engrossed with the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, a sound of munching arose from behind my back.

The woodp.e.c.k.e.rs talked and acted very much like their cousins, the red-heads of the East. When they went to the nest they called _chuck'-ah_ as if to wake the young, flying away with the familiar rattling _kit-er'r'r'r'_. They flew nearly half a mile to their regular feeding ground, and did not come to the nest as often as the wrens when bringing up their brood. Perhaps they got more at a time, filling their crops and feeding by regurgitation, as I have seen waxwings do when having a long distance to go for food.

I first heard the voices of the young on June 16; nearly three weeks later, July 6, the birds were still in the nest. On that morning, when I went out to mount Billy, I was shocked to find the body of one of the old woodp.e.c.k.e.rs on the saddle. I thought it had been shot, but found it had been picked up in the prune orchard. That afternoon its mate was brought in from the same place. Probably both birds had eaten poisoned raisins left out for the gophers. The dead birds were thrown out under the orange-trees near the house, and not many hours afterward, when I looked out of the window, two turkey vultures were sitting on the ground, one of them with a pathetic little black wing in his bill. The great black birds seemed horrible to me,--ugly, revolting creatures. I went outside to see what they would do, and after craning their long red necks at me and stalking around nervously a few moments they flew off.

Now what would become of the small birds imprisoned in the tree trunk, with no one to bring them food, no one to show them how to get out, or, if they were out, to feed them till they had learned how to care for themselves? Sad and anxious, I rode down to the sycamore. I rapped on its trunk, calling _chuck'-ah_ as much like the old birds as possible.

There was an instant answer from a strong rattling voice and a weak piping one. The weak voice frightened me. If that little bird's life were to be saved, it was time to be about it. The ranchman's son was pruning the vineyard, and I rode over to get him to come and see how we could rescue the little prisoners.

On our way to the tree we came on a gopher snake four feet long. It was so near the color of the soil that I would have pa.s.sed it by, but the boy discovered it. The creature lay so still he thought it was dead; but as we stood looking, it puffed itself up with a big breath, darted out its tongue, and began to move off. I watched to see how it made the straight track we so often saw in the dust of the roads. It bent its neck into a scallop for a purchase, while its tapering tail made an S, to furnish slack; and then it pulled the main length of its body along straight. It crawled noiselessly right to the foot of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r tree, but was only hunting for a hole to hide in. It got part way down one hole, found that it was too small, and had to come backing out again. It followed the sand bed, taking my regular beat, from tree to tree! To be sure, gopher snakes are harmless, but they are suggestive, and you would rather their ways were not your ways.

Although the little prisoners welcomed us as rescuers should be welcomed, they did it by mistake. They thought we were their parents. At the first blow of the axe their voices hushed, and not a sound came from them again. It seemed as if we never should get the birds out.

It looked easy enough, but it wasn't. The nest was about twelve feet above the ground. The sycamore was so big the boy could not reach around it, and so smooth and slippery he could not get up it, though he had always been a good climber. He clambered up a drooping branch on the back of the tree,--the nest was in front,--but could not swing himself around when he got up. Then he tried the hollow burned at the foot of the tree. The charred wood crumbled beneath his feet, but at last, by stretching up and clinging to a knothole, he managed to reach the nest.

As his fingers went down the hole, the young birds grabbed them, probably mistaking them for their parents' bills. "Their throats seem hot," the boy exclaimed; "poor hungry little things!" His fingers would go through the nest hole, but not his knuckles, and the knothole where he steadied himself was too slippery to stand on while he enlarged the hole. It was getting late, and as he had his ch.o.r.es to do before dark I suggested that we feed the birds and leave them in the tree till morning; but the rescuer exclaimed resolutely, "We'll get them out to-night!" and hurried off to the ranch-house for a step-ladder and axe.

The ladder did not reach up to the first knothole, four or five feet below the nest; but the boy cut a notch in the top of the knot and stood in it, practically on one foot, and held on to a small branch with his right hand--the first limb he trusted to broke off as he caught it--while with the left hand he hacked away at the nest hole. It was a ticklish position and genuine work, for the wood was hard and the hatchet dull.

I stood below holding the carving-knife,--we hadn't many tools on the ranch,--and as the boy worked he entertained me with an account of an accident that happened years before, when his brother had chopped off a branch and the axe head had glanced off, striking the head of the boy who was watching below. I stood from under as he finished his story, and inquired with interest if he were sure his axe head was tight! Before the lad had made much impression on the hard sycamore, he got so tired and looked so white around the mouth that I insisted on his getting down to rest, and tried to divert him by calling his attention to the sunset and the voices of the quail calling from the vineyard. When he went up again I handed him the carving-knife to slice off the thinner wood on the edge of the nest hole, warning him not to cut off the heads of the young birds.

At last the hole was big enough, and, sticking the hatchet and knife into the bark, the lad threw one arm around the trunk to hold on while he thrust his hand down into the nest. "My, what a deep hole!" he exclaimed. "I don't know as I can reach them now. They've gone to the bottom, they're so afraid." Nearly a foot down he had to squeeze, but at last got hold of one bird and brought it out. "Drop him down," I cried, "I'll catch him," and held up my hands. The little bird came fluttering through the air. The second bird clung frightened to the boy's coat, but he loosened its claws and dropped it down to me. What would the poor old mother woodp.e.c.k.e.r have thought had she seen these first flights of her nestlings!

I hurried the little scared brothers under my jacket, my best subst.i.tute for a hollow tree, and called _chuck'-ah_ to them in the most woodp.e.c.k.e.r-like tones I could muster. Then the boy shouldered the ladder, and I took the carving-knife, and we trudged home triumphant; we had rescued the little prisoners from the tower!

When we had taken them into the house the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs called out, and the cats looked up so savagely that I asked the boy to take the birds home to his sister to keep till they were able to care for themselves.