Bird Stories Part 12

[Ill.u.s.tration: _It was time for the Feast of the Vagabonds._]

Besides, it was time for the Feast of the Vagabonds, a ceremony that must be performed during the first weeks of the Migrant Flight; for it is a custom of the bobolinks, come down to them through no one knows how many centuries, to hold a farewell feast before leaving North America.

If you will glance at a map of the Bobolink Route, you will see the names of the states they pa.s.sed through. Our travelers did not know these names; but for all that, they found the Great Rice Trail and followed it. They found wild rice in the swamps of Maryland and the neighboring states. In South Carolina they found acres of cultivated rice. For rice is the favorite food during the Feast of the Vagabonds, and to them Nature has a special way of serving it. This same grain is eaten in many lands; taken in one way or another, it is said to be the princ.i.p.al food of about one half of all the people in the world. Bob didn't eat his in soup or pudding or chop-suey. He used neither spoon nor chop-sticks. He took his in the good old-fashioned way of his own folk--unripe, as most of us take our sweet corn, green and in the tender, milky stage, fresh from the stalk. He had been having a rather heavy meat diet in Maine, the meadow insects being abundant, and he relished the change. There was doubtless a good healthy reason for the ceremony of the Feast of the Vagabonds, as anyone who saw Bob may have guessed; for by the time he left South Carolina he was as fat as b.u.t.ter.

In following the Great Rice Trail, Bob went over the same road that he had taken the spring before when he was northward bound; but one could hardly believe him to be the same bird, for he looked different and he acted differently. In the late summer, the departing bird was dull of hue and, except for a few notes that once in a great while escaped him, like some nearly forgotten echo of the spring, he had no more music in him than his mate, May. And when they went southward, they went all together--the fathers and mothers and sons and daughters in one great company.

In the spring it had all been different: Bob had come north with his vagabond brothers a bit ahead of the sister-folk. And the vagabond brothers had been gay of garb--fresh black and white, with a touch of buff. And Bob and his band had been gay of voice. The flock of them had gathered in tree-tops and flooded the day with such mellow, laughing melodies as the world can have only in springtime--and only as long as the bobolinks last.

The ways of the springtime are for the spring, and those of the autumn for the fall of the year. So Bob, who, when northward bound a few months before, had taken part in the grand Festival of Song, now that he was southward bound, partook of the great Feast of the Vagabonds, giving himself whole-heartedly to each ceremony in turn, as a bobolink should, for such are the time-honored customs of his folk.

Honored for how long a time we do not know. Longer than the memory of man has known the rice-fields of South Carolina! Days long before that, when elephants trod upon that ground, did those great beasts hear the spring song of the bobolinks? Is the answer to that question buried in the rocks with the elephants? Bob didn't know. He flew over, with never a thought in his little head but for the Great Rice Trail leading him southward to Florida.

While there, some travelers would have gone about and watched men cut sponges, and have found out why Florida has a Spanish name. But not Bob!

The Feast of the Vagabonds, which had lasted well-nigh all the way from Maryland, was still being observed, and even the stupidest person can see that rice is better to eat than sponges or history.

Then, as suddenly as if their "c.h.i.n.k, c.h.i.n.k, c.h.i.n.k" meant "One, two, three, away we go," the long feast was over, and their great flight again called them to wing their way into the night. How they found Cuba through the darkness, without knowing one star from another; what brought them to an island in the midst of the water that was everywhere alike--no man knows. But in Cuba they landed in good health and spirits.

This was in September,--a very satisfactory time for a bird-visit,--and Bob and his comrades spent some little time there, it being October, indeed, when they arrived on the island of Jamaica. Now Jamaica, so people say who know the place, has a comfortable climate and thrilling views; but it didn't satisfy Bob. Not for long! Something south of the Amazon kept calling to him. Something that had called to his father and to his grandfather and to all his ancestors, ever since bobolinks first flew from North America to South America once every year.

How many ages this has been, who knows? Perhaps ever since the icy glaciers left Maine and made a chance for summer meadows there. Long, long, long, it has been, that something south of the Amazon has called to bobolinks and brought them on their way in the fall of the year. So the same impulse quickened Bob's heart that had stirred all his fathers, back through countless seasons. The same quiver for flight came to all the Band of Vagabonds. Was it homesickness? We do not know.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Something south of the Amazon kept calling to him._]

We only know that a night came when Bob and his companions left the mountains of Jamaica below them and then behind them. Far, far behind them lay the island, and far, far ahead the coast they sought. Five hundred miles between Jamaica and a chance for rest or food. Five hundred miles; and the night lay about and above them and the waters lay underneath. The stars shone clear, but they knew not one from another. No guide, no pilot, no compa.s.s, such as we can understand, gave aid through the hours of their flight. But do you think they were afraid? Afraid of the dark, of the water, of the miles? Listen, in your fancy, and hear them call to one another. "c.h.i.n.k," they say; and though we do not know just what this means, we can tell from the sound that it is not a note of fear. And why fear? There was no storm to buffet them that night. They pa.s.sed near no dazzling lighthouse, to bewilder them.

No danger threatened, and something called them straight and steady on their way.

Oh, they were wonderful, that band! Perhaps among all living creatures of the world there is nothing more wonderful than a bird in his migrant flight--a bird whose blood is fresh with the air he breathes as only a bird can breathe; whose health is strong with the wholesome feast that he takes when and where he finds it; whose wings hold him in perfect flight through unweary miles; whose life is led, we know not how, on, on, on, and ever in the right direction.

Yes, Bob was wonderful when he flew from the mountains of Jamaica to the great savannas of Venezuela; but he made no fuss about it--seemed to feel no special pride. All he said was, "c.h.i.n.k," in the same matter-of-fact way that his bobolink forefathers had spoken, back through all the years when they, too, had taken this same flight over sea in the course of their vagabond journey.

From Venezuela to Paraguay there was no more ocean to cross, and there were frequent places for rest when Bob and his band desired. Groves there were, strange groves--some where Brazil nuts grew, and some where oranges were as common as apples in New England. There were chocolate trees and banana palms. There were pepper bushes, gay as our holly trees at Christmastime. Great flowering trees held out their blossom cups to brilliant hummingbirds hovering by hundreds all about them. Was there one among them with a ruby throat, like that of the hummingbird who feasted in the Cardinal-Flower Path near Peter Piper's home? Maybe 't was the self-same bird--who knows? And let's see--Peter Piper himself would be coming soon, would he not, to teeter and picnic along some pleasant Brazilian sh.o.r.e?

Perhaps Bob and Peter and the hummingbird, who had been summer neighbors in North America, would meet again now and then in that far south country. But I do not think they would know each other if they did. They had all seemed too busy with their own affairs to get acquainted.

Besides the groves where the nuts and fruit and flowers grew, the vagabonds pa.s.sed over forests so dense and tangled that Bob caught never a glimpse of the monkeys playing there: big brown ones, with heads of hair that looked like wigs, and tiny white ones, timid and gentle, and other kinds, too, all of them being very wise in their wild ways--as wise, perhaps, as a hand-organ monkey, and much, much happier.

No, I don't think Bob saw the monkeys, but he must have caught glimpses of some members of the Parrot Family, for there were so many of them; and I'm sure he heard the racket they made when they talked together.

One kind had feathers soft as the blue of a pale hyacinth flower, and a beak strong enough to crush nuts so hard-sh.e.l.led that a man could not easily crack them with a hammer. But all that was as nothing to Bob. For 't was not grove or forest or beast or bird that the vagabonds were seeking.

When they had crossed the Amazon River, some of the band stopped in places that seemed inviting. But Bob and the rest of the company went on till they crossed the Paraguay River; and there, in the western part of that country, they made themselves at home. A strange, topsy-turvy land it is--as queer in some ways as the Wonderland Alice entered when she went through the Looking-Gla.s.s; for in Paraguay January comes in the middle of summer; and the hot, muggy winds blow from the north; and the cool, refreshing breezes come from the south; and some of the wood is so heavy that it will not float in water; and the people make tea with dried holly leaves! But to the Band of Vagabond Bobolinks it was not topsy-turvy, for it was home; and they found the Paraguay prairies as well suited to the comforts of their January summer as the meadows of the North had been for their summer of June.

Bob was satisfied. He had flown four thousand miles from a meadow and had found a prairie! And if, in all that wonderful journey, he had not paid over much attention to anything along the way except swamps and marshes, do not scorn him for that. Remember always that Bob _found_ his prairie and that Peter _found_ his sh.o.r.e.

It is somewhere written, "Seek and ye shall find." 'Tis so with the children of birds--they find what Nature has given them to seek. And is it so with the children of men? Never think that Nature has been less kind to boys and girls than to birds. Unto Bob was given the fields to seek, and he had no other choice. Unto Peter the sh.o.r.es, and that was all. But unto us is given a chance to choose what we will seek. If it is as far away as the prairies of Paraguay, shall we let a dauntless little vagabond put our faith to shame? If it is as near as our next-door meadow, shall we not find a full measure of happiness there--mixed with the bobolink's music of June?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Nature has kept faith with him and brought him safely back to his meadow._]

For Bob comes back to the North again, bringing with him springtime melodies, which poets sing about but no human voice can mimic. Bob, who has dusted the dull tips from his feathers as he flew, and who, garbed for the brightness of our June, makes a joyful sound; for Nature has kept faith with him and brought him safely back to his meadow, though the journey from and to it numbered eight thousand miles!

His trail is the open lane of the air, And the winds, they call him everywhere; So he wings him North, dear burbling Bob, With throat aquiver and heart athrob; And he sings o' joy in the month of June Enough to keep the year in tune.

Then, when the rollicking young of his kind Yearn for the paths that the vagabonds find, He leads them out over loitering ways Where the Southland beckons with luring days; To wait till the laughter-like lilt of his song Is ripe for the North again--missing him long!

NOTES

CONSERVATION

We cannot read much nature literature of the present day without coming upon a plea, either implied or expressed, for "conservation." Even the child will wish to know--and there is grave need that he should know--why many people, and societies of people, are trying to save what it has so long been the common custom to waste. Boys and girls living in the Eastern States will be interested to know who is Ornithologist to the Ma.s.sachusetts State Board of Agriculture, and what his duties are; those in the West will like to know why a publication called "California Fish and Game" should have for its motto, "Conservation of Wild Life through Education"; those between the East and the West will like to learn what is being done in their own states for bird or beast or blossom.

Fortunately the idea is not hard to grasp. Conservation is really but doing unto others as we would that others should do unto us--so living that other life also may have a fair chance. It was a child who wrote, from her understanding heart:--

"When I do have hungry feels I feel the hungry feels the birds must be having. So I do have comes to tie things on the trees for them. Some have likes for different things. Little gray one of the black cap has likes for suet. And other folks has likes for other things."--From _The Story of Opal._

CHICK, D.D.

_Penthestes atricapillus_ is the name men have given the bird who calls himself the "Chickadee."

_The Bird_ (Beebe), page 186. "The next time you see a wee chickadee, calling contentedly and happily while the air makes you shiver from head to foot, think of the hard-sh.e.l.led frozen insects pa.s.sing down his throat, the icy air entering lungs and air-sacs, and ponder a moment on the wondrous little laboratory concealed in his mite of a body, which his wings bear up with so little effort, which his tiny legs support, now hopping along a branch, now suspended from some wormy twig.

"Can we do aught but silently marvel at this alchemy? A little bundle of muscle and blood, which in this freezing weather can trans.m.u.te frozen beetles and zero air into a happy, cheery little Black-capped Chickadee, as he names himself, whose trustfulness warms our hearts!

"And the next time you raise your gun to needlessly take a feathered life, think of the marvellous little engine which your lead will stifle forever; lower your weapon and look into the clear bright eyes of the bird whose body equals yours in physical perfection, and whose tiny brain can generate a sympathy, a love for its mate, which in sincerity and unselfishness suffers little when compared with human affection."

_Bird Studies with a Camera_ (Chapman), pages 47-61.

_Handbook of Nature-Study_ (Comstock), pages 66-68.

_Nature Songs and Stories_ (Creighton), pages 3-5.

_American Birds_ (Finley), pages 15-22.

_Winter_ (Sharp), chapter VI.

_Educational Leaflet No. 61._ (National a.s.sociation of Audubon Societies.)

This story was first published in the _Progressive Teacher_, December, 1920.

THE FIVE WORLDS OF LARIE

_Larus argentatus_, the Herring Gull.

Larie's "policeman," like Ardea's "soldier," is usually called a "warden." No thoughtful or informed person can look upon "bird study"

as merely a pleasant pastime for children and a harmless fad for the outdoor man and woman. It is a matter that touches, not only the aesthetic, but the economic welfare of the country: a matter that has concern for legislators and presidents as well as for naturalists. In this connection it is helpful to read some such discussion as is given in the first four references.