Birds and Nature, Vol. 10 No. 3 [October 1901]

SONNET – OCTOBER

 
The month of carnival of all the year,
When Nature lets the wild earth go its way,
And spend whole seasons on a single day.
The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;
The summer charily her reds doth lay
Like jewels on her costliest array;
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.
The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign
Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,
Or Empress wore, in Egypt’s ancient line,
October, feasting ’neath her dome of blue,
Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through
Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!
 

– Helen Hunt Jackson.

 
October comes, a woodman old,
Fenced with tough leather from the cold;
Round swings his sturdy axe, and lo!
A fir-branch falls at every blow.
 

– Walter Thornbury.

THE YELLOW-BELLIED FLYCATCHER
(Empidonax flaviventris.)

The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher with the kingbird, the phoebe and the wood pewee belongs to a family of birds peculiar to America – the family Tyrannidæ or the family of tyrants. No better name could be applied to these birds when we take into consideration the enormous number of insects, of all descriptions, that they capture and devour and their method of doing it. They resemble the hawks in some respects. They are at home only where there are trees, on the outer branches of which they can perch and await a passing insect, and when one appears they “launch forth into the air; there is a sharp, suggestive click of the broad bill and, completing their aerial circle, they return to their perch and are again en garde.”

In the tropics, the land of luxuriant vegetable growth, where the number and kinds of insects seem almost innumerable, the larger number of the three hundred and fifty known species are found. In the United States we are favored with the visits, during the warmer months, of but thirty-five species of these interesting and useful birds.

As we would naturally expect of birds of prey, whether hunters of insects or of higher animal life, these birds are not usually social, even with their own kind. They are also practically songless, a characteristic which seems perfectly fitted to the habits of the Flycatchers. Some of the species have sweet-voiced calls. This is the case with the wood pewee, of which Trowbridge has so beautifully written in the following verse:

 
“Long-drawn and clear its closes were —
As if the hand of Music through
The sombre robe of Silence drew
A thread of golden gossamer;
So pure a flute the fairy blew.
Like beggared princes of the wood,
In silver rags the birches stood;
The hemlocks, lordly counselors,
Were dumb; the sturdy servitors,
In beechen jackets patched and gray,
Seemed waiting spellbound all the day
That low, entrancing note to hear —
‘Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!’”
 

The Flycatchers are fitted both in the structure of their bills and in the colors of their plumage for the kind of life that they live. The bills are broad and flat, permitting an extensive gape. They live in trees and are usually plainly colored, either a grayish or greenish olive, being not so easily seen by the insects as if more brightly arrayed. This characteristic is known as deceptive coloration.

The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher has its summer home in eastern North America, breeding from Massachusetts northward to Labrador. In the United States it frequents only the forests of the northern portion and the mountain regions. In the winter it passes southward into Mexico and Central America. Like all the Flycatchers of North America, the very nature of its food necessitates extensive migrations.

Its generic name is very suggestive. It is Empidonax, from two Greek words, meaning mosquito and a prince – Mosquito Prince!

Major Bendire says: “In the Adirondack mountains, where I have met with it, it was observed only in primitive mixed and rather open woods, where the ground was thickly strewn with decaying, moss-covered logs and boles, and almost constantly shaded from the rays of the sun. The most gloomy looking places, fairly reeking with moisture, where nearly every inch of ground is covered with a luxuriant carpet of spagnum moss, into which one sinks several inches at every step, regions swarming with mosquitoes and black flies, are the localities that seem to constitute their favorite summer haunts.” Surely the name Empidonax is most appropriate.

The nest is usually constructed on upturned roots near the ground, or on the ground deeply imbedded in the long mosses. A nest belonging to the National Museum is thus described: “The primary foundation of the nest was a layer of brown rootlets; upon this rested the bulk of the structure, consisting of moss matted together with fine broken weed stalks and other fragmentary material. The inner nest could be removed entire from the outer wall, and was composed of a loosely woven but, from its thickness, somewhat dense fabric of fine materials, consisting mainly of the bleached stems of some slender sedge and the black and shining rootlets of ferns, closely resembling horsehair. Between the two sections of the structure and appearing only when they were separated, was a scant layer of the glossy orange pedicels of a moss not a fragment of which was elsewhere visible. The walls of the internal nest were about one-half an inch in thickness and had doubtless been accomplished with a view of protection from dampness.” The nests are sometimes made of dried grasses interwoven with various mosses and lined with moss and fine black wire-like roots. Again, the birds seem to have an eye for color and will face the outside of the nest with fresh and bright green moss. In every way the nest seems a large house for so small a bird.

To study this Flycatcher “one must seek the northern evergreen forests, where, far from human habitations, its mournful notes blend with the murmur of some icy brook tumbling over mossy stones or gushing beneath the still mossier decayed logs that threaten to bar the way. Where all is green and dark and cool, in some glen overarched by crowding spruces and firs, birches and maples, there it is we find him and in the beds of damp moss he skillfully conceals his nest.”

THE REIGN OF THE WHIPPOORWILLS

 
When dews begin to chill
The blossom throngs,
And soft the brooklets trill
Their slumber-songs,
We dusky Whippoorwills
In conquest hold the hills.
 
 
When, thro’ the midnight dells,
Wild star-beams glow,
Like wan-eyed sentinels,
We dreamward go,
And hear sung sweetly o’er
The songs we stilled before.
 
 
When waketh dawn, we flee
The slumber-main,
And bid the songsters be
With us again
To sing in praise of light
Above the buried night.
 
 
But O, when sunrise gleams,
We vanish fast,
And woo again in dreams
The starlit past,
Till, lo! at twilight gray,
We wail the dirge of day!
 

– Frank English.

RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET
(Regulus calendula.)

 
“What wondrous power from heaven upon thee wrought?
What prisoned Ariel within thee broods?”
 

– Celia Thaxter.

 
“Thou singest as if the God of Wine
Had helped thee to a valentine;
A song in mockery and despite
Of shades and dews and silent night,
And steady bliss and all the loves
Now sleeping in these peaceful groves.”
 

– Wordsworth.

Like a bee with its honey, when the Ruby-crown has unloaded his vocal sweetness, there is comparatively little left of him, and, ebullient with an energy that would otherwise rend him, his incredible vocal achievement is the safety valve that has so far preserved his atoms in their Avian semblance.

Dr. Coues says that his lower larynx, the sound-producing organ, is not much bigger than a good-sized pin’s head, and the muscles that move it are almost microscopic shreds of flesh. “If the strength of the human voice were in the same proportion to the size of the larynx, we could converse with ease at a distance of a mile or more.”

“The Kinglet’s exquisite vocalization,” he continues, “defies description; we can only speak in general terms of the power, purity and volume of the notes, their faultless modulation and long continuance. Many doubtless, have listened to this music without suspecting that the author was the diminutive Ruby-crown, with whose commonplace utterance, the slender, wiry ‘tsip,’ they were already familiar. This delightful role, of musician, is chiefly executed during the mating season, and the brief period of exaltation which precedes it. It is consequently seldom heard in regions where the bird does not rear its young, except when the little performer breaks forth in song on nearing its summer resorts.”

When Rev. J. H. Langille heard his first Regulus calendula, he said, “The song came from out of a thick clump of thorns, and was so loud and spirited that I was led to expect a bird at least as large as a thrush. Chee-oo, chee-oo, chee-oo, choo, choo, tseet, tseet, te-tseet, te-tseet, te-tseet, etc., may represent this wonderful melody, the first notes being strongly palatal and somewhat aspirated, the latter slender and sibilant and more rapidly uttered; the first part being also so full and animated as to make one think of the water-thrush, or the winter wren; while the last part sounded like a succeedant song from a slender-voiced warbler. Could all this come from the throat of this tiny, four-inch Sylvia? I was obliged to believe my own eyes, for I saw the bird many times in the act of singing. The melody was such as to mark the day on which I heard it.”

H. D. Minot says, “In autumn and winter their only note is a feeble lisp. In spring, besides occasionally uttering an indescribable querulous sound, and a harsh, ‘grating’ note, which belongs exclusively to that season, the Ruby-crowned wrens sing extremely well and louder than such small birds seem capable of singing. Their song begins with a few clear whistles, followed by a short, very sweet, and complicated warble, and ending with notes like the syllables tu-we-we, tu-we-we, tu-we-we. These latter are often repeated separately, as if the birds had no time for a prelude, or are sometimes prefaced by merely a few rather shrill notes with a rising inflection.”

Messrs. Baird, Brewer and Ridgway say that “The song of this bird is by far the most remarkable of its specific peculiarities,” and Mr. Chapman declares, “Taking the small size of the bird into consideration, the Ruby-crown’s song is one of the most marvellous vocal performances among birds; being not only surpassingly sweet, varied and sustained, but possessed of sufficient volume to be heard at a distance of two hundred yards. Fortunately he sings both on the spring and fall migrations.”

Mrs. Wright describes the call-note as “Thin and metallic, like a vibrating wire,” and quotes Mr. Nehrling, who speaks of the “Power, purity and volume of the notes, their faultless modulation and long continuance.”

Mr. Robert Ridgway wrote that this little king of song was one of our very smallest birds he also “ranks among the sweetest singers of the country. It is wonderfully powerful for one so small, but it is remarkable for its softness and sweet expression more than for other qualities. It consists of an inexpressibly delicate and musical warble, astonishingly protracted at times, and most beautifully varied by softly rising and falling cadences, and the most tender whistlings imaginable.”

Mr. Ridgway quotes from Dr. Brewer: “The notes are clear, resonant and high, and constitute a prolonged series, varying from the lowest tones to the highest, and terminating with the latter. It may be heard at quite a distance, and in some respects bears more resemblance to the song of the English skylark than to that of the canary, to which Mr. Audubon compares it.” Mr. Ridgway continues: “We have never heard the skylark sing, but there is certainly no resemblance between the notes of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet and those of the canary, the latter being as inferior in tenderness and softness as they excel in loudness.”

Mr. Audubon had stated: “When I tell you that its song is fully as sonorous as that of the canary-bird, and much richer, I do not come up to the truth, for it is not only as powerful and clear, but much more varied and pleasing to the ear.”

While the frequent sacrifice of the adult regulus and regina through their reckless absorption in their own affairs and obliviousness to the presence of enemies, lends color to the statement that “The spirits of the martyrs will be lodged in the crops of green birds,” yet by virtue of a talent other than vocal, they compel few of the human family to echo the remorseful lament of John Halifax, Gentleman,

 
“I took the wren’s nest,
Bird, forgive me!”
 

For but few of the most ardent seekers have succeeded in locating the habitation of the fairy kinglet, and the unsuccessful majority perforce exclaim with Wordsworth,

 
“Oh, blessed bird! The earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, fairy place,
That is fit home for thee!”
 

Juliette A. Owen.