The Children's Book of Birds Part 5

One of the first to stop singing is the bobolink. He is rarely heard after June is past. The veery is another whose singing days are over early. You may hear his call in the woods, if you know it, but not a song will you hear after the middle of July.

By the time August comes in, almost every bird is silent, except for his calls or "talk." The birds to be heard then are the red-eyed vireo, who seems never to tire, and now and then the indigo-bird, or the wood pewee, and best of all, the dear little song sparrow, who keeps up his cheery songs till the very last.

Then you will know that all the birds are busy putting on their new suits for their long journey.

XII

WHAT HE EATS

WHAT the bird eats and where he gets his food are useful things for us to know. It has only lately been found out that birds are the most valuable of helpers to us.

What we cannot eat ourselves, they are happy to live on, and things that make us a great deal of trouble are their daily food.

Some of the things they are fond of are little animals, like mice and ground squirrels, that eat our crops. Others are insects which spoil our fruit and eat up our vegetables, cankerworms and cutworms, and a hundred more.

Besides these, many birds eat the seeds of certain weeds that farmers have to fight all the time.

One reason this helps us so greatly is that birds eat much more for their size than we do. A boy of six or eight years could not possibly eat a whole sheep in one day, but a young bird can easily eat more than his own weight every day.

They want more than three meals too. They need to eat very often. One catbird will take thirty gra.s.shoppers for his breakfast, and in a few hours he will want thirty more. So he destroys a great many in a day.

Birds begin eating long before we are out of bed, and keep it up till night comes again, or as long as they can see.

You must not think the birds are greedy, as a person would be if he ate every few minutes all day. They are made to do so. It is their business to destroy insects, small animals, and weeds that trouble us so much, and the more they eat the better for us.

Let us see where they go for food. Each bird has his own place to work.

The catbird watches the fruit-trees, and all day long eats insects that are spoiling our fruit or killing the trees. When the cherries are ripe, we should not forget that he has saved the fruit from insects, and has well earned a share for himself.

If you spent days and weeks picking off insects, would you not think you had earned part of the fruit? "For every cherry he eats" (says a man who has watched him), "he has eaten at least one thousand insects."

The robin eats great numbers of cankerworms, which destroy our apples, and cutworms, which kill the corn.

The bluebird sits on the fence keeping sharp watch, and every few minutes flies down and picks up a gra.s.shopper or a cricket, or some such gra.s.s-eating insect.

Woodp.e.c.k.e.rs hunt over the trunks and limbs of trees. They tap on the bark and listen, and if they hear a grub stir inside, they cut a hole in the bark and drag it out. The downy is fond of insects that infest our apple-trees, and he makes many holes in the trunks. But it does not hurt the trees. It is good for them, for it takes away the creatures that were eating them.

Orioles go over the fruit-trees, and pick out tiny insects under the leaves, and when they find great nests on the branches, they tear them open and kill the caterpillars that made them.

Little warblers, such as the pretty summer yellow-bird, help to keep our trees clear, doing most of their work in the tops, where we can hardly see them.

Swallows fly about in the air, catching mosquitoes and tiny flies that trouble us.

Very useful to us are the birds who feed upon dead animals, such as the turkey buzzards, who may be seen any day in our Southern States, soaring about high in the air, looking for their food.

What they eat is so very unpleasant to us that we are apt to despise the birds. But we should cherish and feel grateful to them instead. For they are doing us the greatest kindness. In many of the hot countries people could not live, if these most useful birds were killed.

Some persons think buzzards find their food by seeing it, and others are just as sure that they smell it. Perhaps they use both senses.

XIII

MORE ABOUT HIS FOOD

SOME of the big birds work all the time for us. When you see a hawk sitting very still on a dead limb, what do you suppose he is doing?

A good deal of the time he is looking on the ground for a mouse, or a ground squirrel, or a rat, or some creature that he likes to eat.

When he sees one of them move in the gra.s.s, he flies down and pounces upon it. Thus he helps the farmer greatly, for all of these little animals destroy crops.

When it grows dark, hawks stop work and go to sleep. Then the owls, who can see better in the dusk, come out of the holes where they have been half sleeping all day. They hunt the same little creatures, most of all rats and mice, which like best to run about in the night.

Perhaps you have heard that hawks and owls carry off chickens. Many people who keep chickens shoot every hawk and owl they see. But if they knew more about them they would not do so. Only two of the common hawks and one owl[1] disturb chickens. All the others kill thousands of the little animals that give the farmers so much trouble.

Owls have a curious way of eating mice. They swallow them whole, and after a while they throw up a queer-looking little ball made of the bones and fur of the mouse.

You may some time have seen a long-legged heron walking about on the seash.o.r.e or in the salt marsh. Now and then he would thrust his long, sharp bill into something, and lift up his head and swallow. Or you have noticed a little sandpiper running along on the beach or the bank of a river.

The heron was probably eating frogs or fish, and the sandpiper some of the small sea creatures thrown up by the waves. If these were not taken away they would be very bad for us, and perhaps make us sick.

Not less useful to us than these birds are the whole family of finches.

The goldfinch in bright yellow coat, the purple finch in red, and the sparrows in plain brown. All of these are fond of seeds as well as insects, and most of all they like the seeds of some weeds that are hard to get rid of.

The goldfinch is called the thistle-bird, because he likes best the seeds of thistles, though he eats the beggar's-ticks too.

The chipping sparrow, the little red-headed bird who comes about our doors, eats the seeds of fox-tail and crab gra.s.ses, that spoil our lawns.

The white-throated sparrow, a large and very pretty bird, eats the seeds of smartweed and ragweed. Other finches like bittersweet, sorrel, and amaranth, all of which we are glad to have them eat.

The seed-eating birds can find their food in winter, even when snow covers the ground, because the dead weeds hold on to their seeds, and the snow is not often deep enough to cover them.

Some birds gather their food in the fall, and hide it away where they can find it in winter. Blue jays collect acorns and beech-nuts, and store them in a hole in a tree, or some other safe place, to eat when food is scarce. A woodp.e.c.k.e.r who lives in the West picks holes in the bark of a tree, and puts an acorn into each one.

The oddest store I know of was made by a woodp.e.c.k.e.r. He found a long crack in a post, and stuffed it full of live gra.s.shoppers. He did not like dead gra.s.shoppers. He wedged them into the crack so tightly that they could not get out, and I do not know that they wanted to. When gra.s.shoppers were scarce in the fields, he came day after day to his queer storehouse, till he had eaten every one.

One of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r family who lives in Mexico stores nuts and acorns in the stems of plants. These stems are hollow and made in joints like bamboo. The bird cuts a hole at the upper end of a joint, and stuffs it full. When he wants his nuts, he cuts a hole at the lower end of the joint and pulls them out.

I once had a tame blue jay, who was fond of saving what he could not eat, and putting it safely away. The place he seemed to think most secure was somewhere about me, and he would come slyly around me as I sat at work, and try to hide his treasure about my clothes.

When it was a dried currant or bit of bread, I did not care; but when he came on to my shoulder, and tried to tuck a dead meal worm into my hair or between my lips, or a piece of raw beef under a ruffle or in my ear, I had to decline to be used as a storehouse, much to his grief.