The Children's Book of Birds Part 22

After that she kept close watch, and saw the cedar-bird feed them every day, and take care of the nestlings till they could fly. He no doubt taught them to take care of themselves, but this she could not see, for they flew away.

The ordinary food of this bird is insects that are found on trees, especially among fruit. But they have taken to fly-catching also. A party of them may often be seen busily at work catching flies. This is a very good thing for them as well as for us. The birds or beasts who can eat only one sort of food are called "single-food" animals, and they are growing scarcer every day. They need a change of diet to flourish.

We should be sorry to have cedar-birds become scarce.

Cedar-birds are fond of cherries,--as I said,--but they eat hundreds of cankerworms to one cherry. So they earn all they have. Besides, if they can get wild cherries, they prefer them. They have been proved to be among our most useful birds. In one hundred and fifty-two stomachs that were examined, only nine had cultivated cherries.

Cedar-birds eat caterpillars and grubs, and are very fond of the elm-leaf beetle. They have been known to clear the elm-trees of a whole town, where the trees had been stripped for several years before they came. Besides insects, they eat the berries of many wild bushes and trees, such as wild cherry, dogwood, June-berry, elder, and others. They always prefer wild to cultivated berries.

One spring I saw a little flock of cedar-birds in an orchard full of blossoming apple-trees. They spent nearly all their time going over the trees, and working among the blossoms. One who was careless about it might have thought they were destroying apple buds, for they did eat many of the white petals of the flowers. But I wanted to be sure, so I watched carefully with my gla.s.s. Then I stayed by that orchard till October, and I never saw trees so loaded with apples as they were. Many branches lay on the ground with their weight of fruit, and in the whole orchard there was but one insect nest. That showed not only that the cedar-birds had done no harm, but that probably they had destroyed thousands of insects that would have done harm.

A bird cla.s.sed with the waxwings is a California bird, the PHAINOPEPLA, or SHINING CRESTED FLYCATCHER. He is glossy bluish black in color, with large white spots in the wings, which show only when flying. His mate is brownish gray. They are rather slim birds, nearly as big as a catbird.

The phainopepla is a beautiful fellow, with an elegant pointed crest, and plumage shining like satin. He sits up very straight on his perch, but he is a rather shy bird, and so not much is known about his ways. He is a real mountain lover, living on mountains, or in canons, or the borders of small streams of California, Arizona, and Texas.

As you see by one of his names, he is a flycatcher. Sometimes thirty or forty of them may be seen in a flock, all engaged in catching flies.

But like the cedar-bird, he is also fond of berries. When berries are ripe on the pepper-trees, he comes nearer to houses to feast on the beautiful red cl.u.s.ters.

The song of this bird is said to be fine, and like many other birds, he sometimes utters a sweet whisper song.

The nest is placed on a branch, not very high up in a tree, and is often, perhaps always, made of flower stems with the flowers on, with fine strips of bark, gra.s.ses, and plant down.

What is curious, and rare among birds, the male phainopepla insists on making the nest himself. He generally allows his mate to come and look on, and greets her with joyous song, but he will not let her touch it till all is done. Sometimes he even drives her away. When all is ready for sitting, he lets her take her share of the work, but even then he appears to sit as much as she. Miss Merriam found a party of these birds on some pepper-trees, and to her we owe most of what we know of their habits.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] See Appendix, 11.

XIV

THE SWALLOW FAMILY

(_Hirundinidae_)[13]

IT is very easy to know this family. They are small birds with long pointed wings, always sailing around in the air as if they could never tire. Their beaks are short, but very wide at the head, and the mouth opens as far back as the eyes. They have small and weak feet, so when they alight, it is usually on a small twig or telegraph wire, or on the flat top of a fence or roof.

Swallows wear no gay colors. Nearly all of them look black and white as they sail about in the air. But when you see them closely, you see they are glossy dark blue or green, sometimes with changeable colors, but all dark, on the back.

The BARN SWALLOW has a dull reddish breast, and his back is rich blue, almost black. He has a deeply forked tail, and a row of white spots on the shorter tail feathers. When he spreads his tail, it is very beautiful.

He is called barn swallow because he prefers a barn for a nesting-place.

Up on the beams, close under the roof, the pair build their mud cradle.

It is interesting to see them at work. When they have chosen a place, they go to some puddle in the road. They stand around it on their tiny feet, holding their wings straight up like a b.u.t.terfly's. Then they take up some of the wet earth in their beaks, and work it around till it is made into a little pill. With this pill they fly to the place they have selected, and stick it on to the beam. Then they go back for more. So they go on, till they have built up the walls of the nest, an inch thick, and three or four inches high. Sometimes they put layers of fine gra.s.s in, but often they use nothing but mud. Then they line it with feathers which they pick up in the chicken yard.

Some swallows build a platform beside the nest, where one of the pair can rest at night; and when the little ones get big enough to fill up the nest, both parents can sleep there.

When the swallows are flying about low over the gra.s.s, looking as if they were at play, they are really catching tiny insects as they go. And when they have nestlings to feed, they collect a mouthful which they make up into a sort of little ball. Then they fly to the nest and feed it to one of the little ones.

Thus they keep the air clear and free from insects, and they do not a bit of harm, for they never touch our fruit or vegetables.

Barn swallows are social, and always go in flocks. They sing, too,--a sweet little song, but not very loud. It is charming to hear them in a barn when five or six of them sing together. But one may often hear the little song from a single bird flying over.

They are friendly among themselves, and they like to alight on a roof and chatter away a long time. In one place where I was staying, they liked to gather on a piazza roof right under my window. They often woke me in the morning with their sweet little voices.

One morning the sound was so near, it seemed as if they must be in the room, and I opened my eyes to see. There on the sill close to the screen was one of the pretty fellows. He was looking in at the open window, and evidently keeping watch of me. When I moved a little, he gave the alarm, and the whole party flew away.

The chatter of barn swallows always seems to me like talk, and men who study bird ways agree that birds have some sort of language. The swallows have many different notes. One is a general warning of danger, but there is another note for a man, another for a cat, and a still different one when they find something good to eat, which they call the others to share.

"The variety of bird speech," says a man who has studied birds a long time, "is very great." And of all bird voices, swallows' are the most like human speech. If you lie on the hay in the barn very quiet, and listen to them when they come in and fly about, you will see that this is true. It seems sometimes as if you could almost make out words.

Swallows more than any other birds like to make use of our buildings for their own homes. Barn swallows take the beams inside the barns, EAVE SWALLOWS settle under the eaves outside, and PURPLE MARTINS, the largest of the family, choose bird-houses which we put up for them.

It is said that purple martins will not stay anywhere that men have not made houses for them. But I have seen them living in a place not put up for them, though perhaps they thought it was. It was under a terra-cotta covering to a cornice on a business block in the middle of a busy city.

The terra-cotta was shaped like a large pipe cut in half, the long way.

This half cylinder was laid on top of the brick cornice, and that made a little roof, you see. The whole length of that cornice was thus made into one long room, with a brick floor and terra-cotta roof, and an entrance at the end. That room must have had a dozen martin nests, for a flock was all the time sailing about in the air, above the roofs of the houses.

As these birds eat only flying insects, they cannot stay with us when it is too cool for insects to fly abroad. So they leave us very early. When the little ones are out of the nest and can fly well, swallows from all the country around collect in great flocks, and go to some swamp, or lonely place where people do not go much. There the young ones are taught and exercised every day in flying. And some day we shall go out and find them all gone, not a swallow to be seen. They have started for their winter home, which is far south, in tropical countries, where insects never fail; but it is a comfort to think that next summer we shall have them back with us again.

The swallows I have mentioned, barn swallow, eave swallow, and purple martin, are found all over our country.

Let me tell you a story that shows the purple martin has a good deal of sense. One of these birds built in a box under a window, fixed so that the owner could open it and take out eggs. He took out several, one at a time, and at last he took out one of the birds.

The mate of the stolen bird went off and in a few days came back with another mate. The box was too good to give up, so both the birds went to work to make it safe against the nest robber. They built up a wall of mud before the too handy back door. The egg thief could not get in without breaking down the wall, and he was ashamed to do that. So the birds kept their pleasant home, and reared their family there.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] See Appendix, 12.

XV

THE TANAGER FAMILY

(_Tanagridae_)[14]

THIS is a large family of between three and four hundred species, all dressed in gay colors. But we have only three of them in our country.

Their home is in the warmer parts of the world. We have the scarlet tanager in the East, the Louisiana tanager in the West, and the summer tanager in the South. Tanagers are a little larger than sparrows, and live in the trees. They feed on insects and fruit; sometimes, it is said, on flowers.