The Animal World, A Book of Natural History Part 59

A walk in midsummer is a stroll through what seems a quiet world compared with the noise and brightness of May. Then every leaf was green and crisp, every bird in full song, and the world seemed to have an air of gay youth, like a vigorous boy or girl full of eagerness and activity.

Now as July draws toward its end the eagerness has subsided and the year, like a lad grown a little older and more serious, has settled down to regular work. Had our walk been taken before breakfast, we should have heard no end of birds singing, it is true; but about the time the dew dried from the gra.s.s most of them ceased their music. One reason, besides the noonday heat, is that they are too busy to sing, for the husband and father--and he is the singer of the family--must now help his mate feed her young. We fear, however, he is not a very good provider after the fledglings quit the nest, leaving most of their support and schooling to the mother. At this season one may often come upon and watch a little family group of this kind, and perhaps we may do so.

Meanwhile let us sit down for a moment on this gra.s.sy bank--not too near that fence-post, for do you not see twined about it that vine with the reddish hairy stem, and the shining leaves in groups of threes? That is the poison-ivy, which may cause an itching rash to break out upon your skin if you touch it. You must learn to recognize and avoid this "ivy"--which is not a true ivy, but a kind of climbing sumach--before you go poking around in the fields, or you will be sorry. Do you notice the delicious beeswax-like odor in the air? That comes from the big yellow branches of blossoms on another and perfectly harmless kind of sumach--that scraggly sort of bush just beyond the fence.

See how the bees are humming about it--some of them honey-bees from a farmer's hive, others big b.u.mblebees and small burrowing kinds. All are in search of the minute drops of sweet liquid which each of the tiny flowers in the blossom-head contains, and which turns into honey after it has been carried a little while in the insect's crop, or lower part of the throat, where it lodges. Then it is suitable to be really swallowed, or to be coughed up and fed to the young bees at home, or stored away in the cells of such bees as store up honey, for many wild bees do not make such stores.

Besides its nectar, however, every flower contains a quant.i.ty of small particles, like dust, which are produced in the heads of the little thread-like interior parts of the blossom called the stamens; and in order that the flower shall turn to a seed it is needful that some grains of this dust, or pollen, shall fall upon another hollow part called the pistil, and so pa.s.s down into its base. It is much better that the pollen of one flower shall get into the pistil of another than into its own. The wind manages this to some extent--especially for the gra.s.ses--by shaking or blowing the loose pollen out of one flower and into another.

But the bees help this process greatly, and so may be said to pay for the sweets they use. Watch this one buzzing in front of that clump of jewelweed. Suddenly the loud humming ceases, and the bee crowds herself into the hanging, bell-like blossom, searching for the nectar. Now she is backing slowly out, and you may see how her furry body is half-powdered with yellow dust. That is pollen; and when she dives into another "jewel" she will brush some of it off against the pistil there, which is right in her way, and is very glad to accept her gift. So the bees and other insects humming about the flowers in this hot sunshine are not only getting their living but helping the plants to keep vigorous and produce lots of healthy seed.

Now let us move on. The sky is filled with swallows. There are the fork-tailed ones that make their nests inside the barn; the square-tailed ones that form their curious bottle-shaped nests of mud on the outside, under the eaves; and the purple martins that live in our bird-house in the garden. They are darting and dashing and skimming about in mid-air as though they did not know what it is to be tired; and if only they were a little closer we should see that every one of them has its mouth wide open. The reason is that these birds have very sticky tongues, and that all the time they are in the air they are chasing flying insects, bothersome gnats and mosquitoes among the rest. As soon as one of these insects is touched by the tongue, it sticks to it. Then, without swallowing it, the bird tucks it away in the upper part of its throat, and goes off to hunt for another. After a time it has quite a ball of little bugs packed away in this curious manner, and can carry no more; so it flies off to its nest, and divides them among its little ones.

Do you see that small olive-green bird sitting very erect on that fence-post? There--it suddenly springs into the air, flutters up and down for just half a moment, and then returns to the post. It is a flycatcher, and for hours together it will go on catching insects just in that same way. As it alights it tells us its name, calling _Phoe-e-be, Phoe-e-be_ in a sad sort of voice, though there is no reason to think it is sorrowful at all. If we should go down to that bridge over the stream in the valley we would find its solid nest of moss and mud among the stones of one of the piers.

The woodland path is not so good a place for birds as are more open s.p.a.ces; but one hears here the distant cooing of a dove, the _chip-chur-r-r_ shout of the scarlet tanager, as red as fire everywhere except on its black wings and tail, and often the tapping of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r. There is one at work now on that tall dead stub. If you want to see him you must keep perfectly still, for if he notices that he is watched he begins to think some harm may follow, and either flies away or stops work, scrambling around the trunk and peering out from behind it with one eye to see what you mean to do next. See how firmly he clings to the trunk. If you were close enough you could see that two of the large-clawed toes at the end of his short strong legs and feet were straight forward and two straight backward; and that he is also propping himself up by means of his short stiff little tail, which is bent inward, and really serves as a kind of natural camp-stool! Now he is pecking away at the bark with his strong chisel-like beak, and making the chips fly in all directions. Most likely the grub of some burrowing beetle is lying hidden in the wood below, and he is trying to dig it out. But he will not have to dig down to the very bottom of its tunnel, for he has a very long slender tongue with a brush-like tip; and this tip is very sticky. And with this, after he has enlarged the mouth of the burrow, he will lick out the little grub which is lying hidden away within it.

Now let us make our way to the path by the side of the stream.

What a number of galls there are on these oak-trees--some on the leaves, some hanging down from the twigs in cl.u.s.ters, like currants, and some growing on the twigs themselves! Do you know what causes them?

Well, a very tiny fly p.r.i.c.ks a hole in a leaf, or a young shoot, by means of a kind of sharp sting at the end of her body, and in that hole she places an egg, together with a very small drop of a peculiar liquid.

This liquid has an irritating effect on the leaf, or twig, and causes a swelling to grow; and when this has reached its full size, and become what we call a gall, a little grub hatches out of the egg, and begins to feed upon it. Sometimes there are several grubs in one gall. If we were to cut one of those large red and white "oak-apples" to pieces, probably we should find as many as a dozen, each lying curled up in a hollow which it had eaten out.

If a naturalist had to choose some one place in which to carry on his outdoor studies, he could find none better than the course of a small rural river, and a year's work would not exhaust it. Just now, in midsummer, he would be most interested in the nesting of the sunfish and minnows. Let us steal quietly to the brink, where the turf forms a little bank, a foot or so high, to which the bottom slopes up in clear sand and gravel, with here and there a clump of bulrushes. Let us lie down and scan this bottom through the clear water rippling gently by, keeping very quiet, so as not to alarm any fishes which may swim near, for they are the very fellows we wish to see.

Here comes a little one--a common shiner--no, a golden one--stealing cautiously toward an open s.p.a.ce. A much smaller fish--not so big as your little finger--shoots past him and stops as suddenly as if it had run against a wall, then an instant later is off again so swiftly you can hardly see it move. No wonder it is called Johnny Darter! Meanwhile the shiner, a minnow in a scale-armor of burnished gold, moves slowly on.

Where is he aiming? Ah! look over there. Do you see that low ring of sand, about as large as a dinner-plate, running about some clear gravel, as though the plate were strewn with small pebbles?

That is a nest of a sunfish; and look! did you see the swoop of that gray shadow from the bulrushes? The shiner turned and fled like a bright streak through the water; and now the gray shadow is poised over the dish-like nest, and we see that it is the blue-eared sunfish, or "punkin-seed," as you say the boys call it when they go a-fishing.

See how with its breast-fins it fans the gravel among which its eggs are lying. They are so small and transparent that we cannot see them, but they are there, and must be kept clean. So the fish stirs the water and the current sweeps away everything which may have lodged there while the owner was away for a few minutes. But he never goes far, for he must guard his treasures against enemies like the shiner and other fishes, salamanders, water-bugs, and the like, which would eat them if they dared.

b.u.t.terflies innumerable greet us and dance along the roadside, as if to see us safely home. Many are small and yellow, or white and yellow, with handsomely bordered wings, and they are greatly interested in the clover. Then we see plenty of little blues, very regular in outline, and with them various coppers, distinguished by their orange and brown colors, each with a coppery tinge and set off by black markings. The hair-streaks are brown, too, with delicate stripes for ornaments on the lower surface, which are shown neatly when the wings are closed upright above the back. Did you know this was one of the distinctive marks of a b.u.t.terfly? A moth never holds its wings on high in that fashion.

But it is the larger b.u.t.terflies that first catch the eye, such as the monarch and the viceroy, the fritillaries, fox-red and black, with tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of silver; the red admiral, and other anglewings, beautiful in outline as well as in colors; the delicately pretty meadow-browns, and the magnificent swallowtails and mourning-cloaks.

Don't you think it would be interesting and delightful to study these exquisite creatures?

III

AUTUMN

It is a bright warm day in October; and once more, as we go for our ramble, everything seems changed. The autumn flowers are blooming, the autumn tints are in the leaves; and again there are different animals, and different birds, and different insects almost everywhere around us.

We hardly take ten steps before there is a sudden commotion in a clump of tall gra.s.s by the path, and a red-backed mouse leaps almost over our toes and dives down a little hole which otherwise we should not have noticed. Doubtless he carried a mouthful of gra.s.s-seeds to add to his granary under ground. All over the country mice and gophers and squirrels are doing the same thing. There's a big gray squirrel, now, scratching a hole in the ground as busily as a terrier who thinks he smells a mole. Suddenly he stops, drops a hickory-nut into the little grave, paws the dirt and leaves over it, pats them down, and canters away. All day he is burying nuts so that when, next winter, the trees are bare, he may dig them up and feed upon their meat. Sometimes he doesn't need to, or forgets, and then a tree may spring up. Many a fine hickory or chestnut was planted in this way by squirrels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHICKADEE AND WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH.]

What is that red squirrel doing under the chestnut-tree by the side of the lane? He is hard at work collecting chestnuts, stuffing his big cheeks with them and carrying them away to hide for use next winter. He seems to realize that although he will sleep in his bed under the stone fence almost the whole time from Thanksgiving to Easter, he will wake up now and then, on warm days, and will feel dreadfully hungry. But then there will be little to be found in the way of food. So he is now gathering nuts and acorns and dry mushrooms, and hiding them away so as to be prepared. Some he puts in a hole in the trunk of a tree, others in crevices in the stone wall; others he takes into his hole underground, where his cousin, the saucy chipmunk, stores all of _his_ savings.

Notice how the pretty little animal uses his bushy tail as he scampers along a branch. Do you see that he holds it stretched out behind him, and keeps on turning it slightly first to one side and then to the other? The fact is that it helps him to keep his balance. When a man walks upon the tight rope he generally carries in his hands a long pole, which is weighted at each end with lead. Then if he feels that he is losing his balance, he can almost always recover it again by tilting up his pole. The squirrel's tail serves _him_ as a sort of balancing-pole, and by turning it a little bit to one side, or a little bit to the other, he can run along the slenderest branches at full speed without any danger of falling.

Everywhere we go we hear the whirring of gra.s.shoppers, the chirping of black crickets, and the shrill declarations of the katydids. A blind man who could not see the scarlet of the maples, the deep crimson and purple of sumachs, the pepperidge and the blackberry thickets, or the golden glow in the birches as the sunlight strikes through them, would know the season of the year by the sounds.

How do the insects make their noise--for one can hardly call it singing?

That will be a good subject for you to look up in your books. The air is filled with the droning and humming of other insects; how are these sounds produced?

We notice the insect-noises more, perhaps, because other animals are so quiet. It is rare to hear the croak of a frog, or the piping of a tree-toad or the note of a bird. What has become of the birds? When we see a few they are in flocks, and seem very intent on traveling somewhere. The truth is they are gathering in companies and journeying away to the south, where winter, with its cold and snow and hunger, cannot follow them. Next spring they will come back again, to spend the summer with us.

Only those birds remain which can live upon seeds, or pick up rough fare along the sea-sh.o.r.e. A band of small winged friends are flitting about among the weeds ahead of us. Do you not know them? Look closely. Aren't the canary-like form and black wings familiar? You would say they were goldfinches if they were more yellow, wouldn't you? Now you see that that is what they are, but in an olive dress. The fact is that all birds molt their feathers twice a year. In spring the new feathers come out in bright colors, and in autumn there worn gay coats are lost, and feathers of duller hue take their place. Thus the brilliant yellow and black goldfinch of summer becomes a quiet Quaker in winter. Such a change is very advantageous to the birds--how, you may study out for yourselves.

b.u.t.terflies are scarce, too, but these have died, not run away, as the birds are doing. One sees a good many sluggish caterpillars, however; and sharp eyes may begin to find coc.o.o.ns hanging from the bushes, or tucked into crevices of bark, or plastered against rocks and the boards of old fences. If you were to keep account of all the different kinds you could find, you would soon have a long list; and if you were to learn how to keep them properly and care for the b.u.t.terflies and moths which will come out of them in the spring, you could start an admirable cabinet.

Here is a patch of milkweed. Examine each plant thoroughly because there may be a gift for you hidden among the leaves. You have found "something pretty," you say? What is it like? "Like a green thimble, with rows of gold b.u.t.tons on it." That is a pretty accurate description; only your thimble is closed at the top, where it hangs by a short thread, and it is heavy and alive, for it is the lovely chrysalis of the milkweed b.u.t.terfly. Next summer you must learn the appearance of that species, which you can easily do, for it is one of our largest and commonest ones.

Where the milkweeds grow you are pretty sure to see also ma.s.ses of goldenrod, and towering high above them the great, flowering pillars of joepye-weed. Such clumps are good hunting-places for autumnal insects.

There gather the soldier-beetles, brilliant in uniforms of yellow and black. They are sometimes so numerous as to bend down the plants by their weight, and are in constant motion, crawling about the blossoms, or flying from spray to spray. Here, too, come locust-boring beetles, black with a line of yellow V's on the back, whose eggs are laid in the soft inner bark of locust-trees; and fat short-winged blister-beetles, or oil-beetles, which leave such a bad odor on the hands when touched.

This is due to an acrid oil which oozes out of the joints of the beetle's legs when it is handled and thinks itself in danger. It is a protection, for it both smells and tastes so nasty that no bird will ever attempt to eat an oil-beetle. And its body is so very big because it lays such an enormous number of eggs. How many eggs do you think an oil-beetle will lay? Why, something like thirty thousand! She lays them in batches in little holes in the ground, and a few days afterward a tiny little grub hatches out of each egg, and begins to hunt about for some flower that bees are likely to visit. When it finds one, it climbs up the stem, hides among the petals, and waits. Then as soon as a bee settles upon the flower it springs upon her and clings to her hairy body. The bee is very busy collecting nectar and pollen, and the grub is very tiny; so she never seems to notice that the long-legged little creature is clinging to her, and carries it back with her to her nest.

Then the grub lets go, and proceeds to eat all the "bee-bread" which the bee had stored up so carefully for her own little ones.

How is it that all the trees, bushes, and plants are covered with threads of spider's silk, which often annoys us by getting on our hands or faces? Let us help you to an answer. This is the time of year when spiders are most numerous and most active; and many a spider trails behind it a thread of gossamer wherever it goes, and leaves it there. On many of the plants, bushes, trees, and fences you may see, if you look closely, very small spiders resting. Those little spiders have been taking a journey through the air--a sort of balloon trip. During the summer a number of spiders, all living near one another, had big families--a hundred or more in each. Perhaps you noticed in July and August spiders dragging about large white bundles: they were packets of eggs from which the young hatched. So many coming into the world together made it difficult to find food. So, one by one, the little spiders climbed low bushes or tall plants, and perched themselves on the tips of the topmost leaves. Then each poured out from the end of its body a slender thread of silk, which floated straight up in the warm air rising from the heated ground.

At last each little spider had seven or eight feet of thread rising up into the air above it. Then suddenly it loosed its hold of the leaf, and mounted into the air at the end of its own thread, higher, and higher, and higher, till it had risen several hundreds of feet into the air.

Then it met a gentle breeze traveling slowly overhead, and traveled along with it, mile after mile, still resting on its thread. And when it wanted to come down, all that it had to do was to roll up the thread till there was not quite enough left to support it, and so it came floating gently down to the ground below. Then, having no more use for the thread, it broke loose from it and left it lying like a fallen telegraph wire across the tops of the bushes and fences and other things, where our faces brush against it.

What a pretty green fly this is sitting upon the fence, with delicate gauzy wings looking like the most delicate lacework!

Yes, that is a lacewing fly. Just notice what wonderful eyes it has.

They look like little globes of crimson fire, and it is quite difficult to believe that a tiny lamp is not alight inside the head. This fly lays its eggs in a most curious way. Settling on a twig, she pours out a drop of a kind of thick gum from the end of her body. Then, jerking her body suddenly upward, she draws out this gum into a slender thread, which hardens as soon as it comes into contact with the air; and just as she lets go she fastens an egg to the tip. She then lays another egg in the same manner, and then another, and then another, and so she goes on till she has laid quite a little cl.u.s.ter of eggs--perhaps ninety or a hundred altogether. You would not think that they were eggs if you were to see them. You would be almost sure to think that the little cl.u.s.ter was a tuft of moss. Indeed, for a great many years even botanists thought that these eggs were a kind of moss, and put pictures of them in books of botany accordingly!

Look at these odd little black and white spiders. How jerkily they run; never moving more than an inch or so at a time, then stopping to rest, and then generally darting off again in a different direction. They are hunting-spiders, and are so called because they hunt for insects instead of trying to catch them in a web. You may see one of these spiders "stalking" a fly very much as a cat creeps up to a bird, and then suddenly springing upon it and leaping into the air with its victim firm in its grip.

Slowly the days grow shorter, the rains come more frequently, flowers wither, and the herbage shrivels. Insects die off, the birds one by one disappear quietly, or gather in flocks to journey southward, and the woods grow quiet and gray.

IV

WINTER

As we look out of the window on a landscape of snow, or of half-bare earth, frozen roads, and leafless trees, the world seems lifeless. But one who starts out for a walk, anxious to discover whether all nature is really dead, will soon find that it is very much alive, though much of it is buried in slumber. Let us test it.

As we take the well-accustomed path we cannot but contrast the bareness and silence with the activity and color and cheerful noise about us when a few weeks ago we strolled this way. The thought saddens and discourages us a little, when suddenly there comes to our ears

"_Chick-chick-a-dee-dee!_ Saucy note, Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said: 'Good day, good sir!

Fine afternoon, old pa.s.senger!

Happy to meet you in these places Where January brings few faces.'"