A-Birding on a Bronco Part 5

When in the hammock under the oak one day, I saw a pair of the odd-looking Arizona hooded orioles busily going and coming to a drooping branch on the edge of the tree. They had a great deal to talk about as they went and came, and when they had gone I found, to my great satisfaction, that they had begun a nest. They often use the gray Spanish moss, but here had found a good subst.i.tute in the orange-colored parasitic vine of the meadows known among the people of the valley as the 'love-vine' (dodder). The whole pocket was composed of it, making a very gaudy nest.

Linnets nested in the same old tree. Indeed, it is hard to say where these pretty rosy house finches, cousins of our purple finches, would not take it into their heads to build. They nested over the front door, in the vines over the windows, in the oaks and about the outbuildings, and their happy musical songs rang around the ranch-house from morning till night. As I listened to their merry roundelay day after day during that beautiful California spring, it sounded to me as though they said, "_How-pretty-it-is'-out, how-pretty-it-is'-out, how-pretty-it-is'!_" The linnets are ardent little wooers, singing and dancing before the indifferent birds they would win for their mates. I once saw a rosy lover throw back his pretty head and hop about before his brown lady till she was out of patience and turned her back on him. When that had no effect, she opened her bill, spread her wings, and leaned toward him as if saying, "If you don't stop your nonsense, I'll----" But the fond linnets' gallantry and tenderness are not all spent in the wooing. When the mother bird was brooding her nest over our front door, her crimson-throated mate stood on the peak of the ridgepole above and sang blithely to her, turning his head and looking down every little while to make sure that she was listening to his pretty prattle.

One of the birds that nested in the trees by the ranch-house was the bee-bird, who was soft gray above and delicate yellow below, instead of dark gray above and s.h.i.+ning white below, like his eastern relative, the kingbird. The birds used to perch on the bare oak limbs, flycatching. It was interesting to watch them. They would fly obliquely into the air and then turn, with bills bristling with insects, and sail down on outstretched wings, their square tails set so that the white outer feathers showed to as good advantage as the white border of the kingbird's does in similar flights. They made a bulky untidy nest in the oaks by the barn, using a quant.i.ty of string borrowed from the ranchman.

Their voices were high-keyed and shrill with an impatient emphasis, and at a distance suggested the shrill yelping of the coyote. _Kee'-ah, kee-kee' kee'-ah_, they would cry. The wolves were so often heard around the ranch-house that in the early morning I have sometimes mistaken the birds for them.

One of the favorite hunting-grounds of the bee-birds was the orchard, where they must have done a great deal of good destroying insects. They were quarrelsome birds, and were often seen falling through the air fighting vigorously. I saw one chase a sparrow hawk and press it so hard that the hawk cried out l.u.s.tily. The ranchman's son told me of one bee-bird who defended his nest with his life. Two crows lit in a tree where the flycatcher had a nest containing eggs. The crows had difficulty in getting to the tree to begin with, for the bee-birds fought them off; and though they lighted, were soon dislodged and chased down the vineyard. The man was at work there, and as the procession pa.s.sed over his head the bee-bird dove at the crow; the crow struck back at him, crus.h.i.+ng his skull, and the flycatcher dropped through the air, dead! The other bee-bird followed its dead mate to the ground, and then, without a cry, flew to a tree and let the crows go on their way.

The bee-bird was one of the noisiest birds about the ranch-house, but commoner than he; in fact, the most abundant bird, next to the linnet and blackbird, was the California chewink, or, as the ranchman appropriately called him, the 'brown chippie;' for he does not look like the handsome chewink we know, but is a fat, dun brown bird with a thin _chip_ that he utters on all occasions. He is about the size of the eastern robin, and, except when nesting, almost as familiar. There were brown chippies in the door-yard, brown chippies around the barns, and brown chippies in the brush till one got tired of the sight of them.

The temptations that come to conscientious observers are common to humanity, and one of the subtlest is to undervalue what is at hand and overvalue the rare or distant. Unless a bird is peculiarly interesting, it requires a definite effort to sit down and study him in your own dooryard, or where he is so common as to be an every-day matter. The chippies were always sitting around, scratching, or picking up seeds; or else quarreling among themselves. Feeling that it was my duty to watch them, I reasoned with myself, but they seemed so mortally dull and uninteresting it was hard work to give up any time to them. When they went to nesting, their wild instincts a.s.serted themselves, and they hid away so closely I was never sure of but one of their nests, and that only by most cautious watching. Then for the first time they became interesting! To my surprise, one day I heard a brown chippie lift up his voice and sing. It was in a sunny grove of oaks, and though his song was a queer squeaky warble, it had in it a good deal of sweetness and contentment; for the bird seemed to find life very pleasant. The ranchman's son told me that up in the canyons at dusk he had sometimes heard towhee concerts, the birds answering each other from different parts of the canyon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: California Chewink.

(One half natural size.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Eastern Chewink.

(One half natural size.)]

There was a nest in the chaparral which probably belonged to these chewinks. It was in a ma.s.s of poison ivy that had climbed up on a scrub-oak. I spent the best part of a morning waiting for the birds to give in their evidence. Brown sentinels were posted on high bare brush tops, where they chipped at me, and once a brown form flew swiftly away from the nest bush; but like most people whose conversation is limited to monosyllables, the towhees are good at keeping a secret. While watching for them, I heard a noise that suggested angry cats spitting at each other; and three jack-rabbits came racing down the chaparral-covered knoll. One of them shot off at a tangent while the other two trotted along the openings in the brush as if their trails were roads in a park. Then a cottontail rabbit came out on a spot of hard yellow earth encircled by bushes, and lying down on its side kicked up its heels and rolled like a horse; after which the pretty thing stretched itself full length on the ground to rest, showing a pink light in its ears. After a while it got up, scratched one ear, and with a kick of one little furry leg ran off in the brush. Another day, when I sat waiting, I saw a jack-rabbit's ears coming through the brush. He trotted up within a few feet, when he stopped, facing me with head and ears up; a n.o.ble-looking little animal, reminding me of a deer with antlers branching back. He stood looking at me, not knowing whether to be afraid or not, and turning one ear trumpet and then the other. But though smiling at him, I was a human being, there was no getting around that; and after a few undecided hops, this way and that, he ran off and disappeared in the brush. Near where he had been was a spot where a number of rabbit runways came to a centre, and around it the rabbit council had been sitting in a circle, their footprints proved.

Brown chippies were not much commoner around the ranch-house than western house wrens were, but the big prosaic brown birds seemed much more commonplace. The wrens were strongly individual and winning wherever they were met. They nested in all sorts of odd nooks and corners about the buildings. One went so far as to take up its abode in the wire-screened refrigerator that stood outside the kitchen under an oak! Another pair stowed their nest away in an old nosebag hanging on a peg in the wine shed; while a third lived in one of the old grape crates piled up in the raisin shed.

The crate nest was delightful to watch. The jolly little birds, with tails over their backs and wings hanging, would sing and work close beside me, only three or four feet away. They would look up at me with their frank fearless eyes and then squeeze down through their crack into the crate, and sit and scold inside it--such an amusing m.u.f.fled little scold! The nest was so astonis.h.i.+ngly large I was interested to measure it. Twigs were strewn loosely over one end of the box, covering a square nearly sixteen inches on a side. The compact high body of the nest measured eight by ten inches, and came so near the top of the crate that the birds could just creep in under the slats. Some of the twigs were ten inches long, regular broom handles in the bills of the short bobbing wrens. One of the birds once appeared with a twig as long as itself. It flew to the side of a beam with it, at sight of me, and stood there balancing the stick in its bill, in pretty fas.h.i.+on. Another time it flew to the peak of the shed to examine an old swallow's nest now occupied by linnets, and amused itself throwing down its neighbors' straws--the naughty little rogue!

Such jolly songsters! They were fairly bubbling over with happiness all the time. They had an old stub in front of the shed that might well have been called the singing stub, for they kept it ringing with music when they were not running on inside the shed. They seemed to warble as easily as most birds breathe; in fact, song seemed a necessity to them.

There was a high pole in front of the shed, and one day I found my ebullient little friend squatting on top to hold himself on while he sang out at the top of his lungs! Another time I came face to face with a pair when the songster was in the midst of his roundelay. He stopped short, bobbed nervously from side to side, and then, rising to his feet and putting his right foot forward with a pretty courageous gesture, took up his song again. When the pair were building in the crate, I stuck some white hen's feathers there, thinking they might like to use them. Mr. Troglodytes came first, and seeing them, instead of turning tail as I have known brave guardians of the nest to do, burst out singing, as if it were a huge joke. Then he hopped down on the rim of the box to scrutinize the plumes, after which he flew out. But he had to stop to sing atilt of an elder stem before he could go on to tell his spouse about them.

One day, when riding back to the ranch, I saw half a dozen turkey buzzards soaring over the meadow--perhaps there was a dead jack-rabbit in the field. It was astonis.h.i.+ng to see how soon the birds would discover small carrion from their great height. The ranchman never thought of burying anything, they were such good scavengers. A few hours after an animal was thrown out in the field the vultures would find it.

They would stand on the body and pull it to pieces in the most revolting way. The ranchman told me he had seen them circle over a pair of fighting snakes, waiting to devour the one that was injured. They were grotesque birds. I often saw them walk with their wings held out at their sides as if cooling themselves, and the unbird-like att.i.tude together with the horrid appearance of their red skinny heads made them seem more like harpies than before.

They were most interesting at a distance. I once saw three of them standing like black images on a granite bowlder, on top of a hill overlooking the valley. After a moment they set out and went circling in the sky. Although they flew in a group, it seemed as if the individual birds respected one another's lines so as not to cover the same ground.

Sometimes when soaring they seemed to rest on the air and let themselves be borne by the wind; for they wobbled from one side to the other like a cork on rough water.

One of the most interesting birds of the valley is the road-runner or chaparral c.o.c.k, a grayish brown bird who stands almost as high as a crow and has a tail as long as a magpie's. He is noted for his swiftness of foot. Sometimes, when we were driving over the hills, a road-runner would start out of the brush on a lonely part of the road and for quite a distance keep ahead of the horses, although they trotted freely along.

When tired of running he would dash off into the brush, where he stopped himself by suddenly throwing his long tail over his back. A Texan, in talking of the bird, said, "It takes a right peart cur to catch one,"

and added that when a road-runner is chased he will rise but once, for his main reliance is in his running, and he does not trust much to his short wings. The chaparral c.o.c.ks nested in the cactus on our hills, and were said to live largely on lizards and horned toads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Valley Quail and Road-Runner.]

It became evident that a pair of these singular birds had taken up quarters in the chaparral on the hillside back of the ranch-house, for one of them was often seen with the hens in the dooryard. One day I was talking to the ranchman when the road-runner appeared. He paid no attention to us, but went straight to the hen-house, apparently to get coc.o.o.ns. Looking between the laths, I could see him at work. He flew up on the hen-roosts as if quite at home; he had been there before and knew the ways of the house. He even dashed into the peak of the roof and brought down the white coc.o.o.n b.a.l.l.s dangling with cobweb. When he had finished his hunt he stood in the doorway, and a pair of blackbirds lit on the fence post over his head, looking down at him wonderingly. Was he a new kind of hen? He was almost as big as a bantam. They sat and looked at him, and he stood and stared at them till all three were satisfied, when the blackbirds flew off and the road-runner walked out by the kitchen to hunt among the buckets for food.

These curious birds seem to be of an inquiring turn of mind, and sometimes their investigations end sadly. The windmills, which are a new thing in this dry land, naturally stimulate their curiosity. A small boy from the neighboring town--Escondido--told me that he had known four road-runners to get drowned in one tank; though he corrected himself afterwards by saying, "We fished out _one_ before he got drowned!"

Another lad told me he had seen road-runners in the nesting season call for their mates on the hills. He had seen one stand on a bowlder fifteen feet high, and after strutting up and down the rock with his tail and wings hanging, stop to call, putting his bill down on the rock and going through contortions as if pumping out the sound. The lad thought his calls were answered from the brush below.

In April the ranchman reported that he had seen dusky poor-wills, relatives of our whip-poor-wills, out flycatching on the road beyond the ranch-house after dark. He had seen as many as eight or nine at once, and they had let him come within three feet of them. Accordingly, one night right after tea I started out to see them. The poor-wills choose the most beautiful part of the twenty-four hours for their activity.

When I went out, the sky above the dark wall of the valley was a quiet greenish yellow, and the rosy light was fading in the north at the head of the canyon. White ma.s.ses of fog pushed in from the ocean. Then the constellations dawned and brightened till the evening star shone out in her full radiant beauty. Locusts and crickets droned; bats zigzagged overhead; and suddenly from the dusty road some black objects started up, fluttered low over the barley, and dropped back on the road again.

At the same time came the call of the poor-will, which, close at hand, is a soft burring _poor-will, poor-wil'-low_. Two or three hours later I went out again. The full moon had risen, and shone down, transforming the landscape. The road was a narrow line between silvered fields of headed grain, and the granite bowlders gleamed white on the hills inclosing the sleeping valley. For a few moments the shrill barking of coyote wolves disturbed the stillness; then again the night became silent; peace rested upon the valley, and from far up the canyon came the faint, sad cry, _poor-wil'-low, poor-wil'-low_.

VIII.

POCKET MAKERS.

THE bush-t.i.ts are cousins of the eastern chickadees, which is reason enough for liking them, although the California fruit growers have a more substantial reason in the way the birds eat the scale that injures the olive-trees. The bush-t.i.ts might be the little sisters of the chickadee family, they are so small. They look like gray b.a.l.l.s with long tails attached, for they are plump fluffy tots, no bigger than your thumb, without their tails. One of them, when preoccupied, once came within three feet of where I stood. When he discovered me a comical look of surprise came into his yellow eyes and he went tilting off, for his long tail gave him a pitching flight as if he were about to go on his bill, a flight that reminds one of the tail that wagged the dog.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nest of the Bush-t.i.t.]

There were so many of the gray pocket nests in the oaks that it was hard to choose which to watch, but one of the most interesting hung from a branch of the big double oak of the gnatcatchers, above the ranch-house, where I could see it when sitting in the crotch of the tree. While watching it I looked beyond over the chaparral wall away to a dark purple peak standing against a sky flecked with sun-whitened clouds. The nest was like an oriole's, but nearly twice as long, though the builders were less than half the size of the orioles. Instead of being open at the top, it was roofed over, and the only entrance was a small round hole, the girth of the bird, about two inches under the roof.

One might imagine that such big houses would be dark with only one small dormer window, and the valley children a.s.sured me that the birds hung living firefly lamps on their walls! I suggested that a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fireflies would be needed if that were the case; but when it comes to that, what bird would choose to brood by gaslight?

When I first saw the bush-t.i.t in its round doorway, it suggested Jack Horner's famous plum, comical little ball of feathers! When first watching the nest the small pair put me on their list of enemies, along with small boys, blue jays, and owls. To go down into the pocket under my stare seemed a terrible thing. When one of them came with a bit of moss for lining, it started for the front door, saw me, stopped, and turned to go to the back of the nest. Then it tried to get up courage to approach the house from the side, got in a panic and dashed against the wall as if expecting a door would open for it. When at last it did make bold to dart into the nest it was struck with terror, and, whisking around, jabbed the moss into the outside wall and fled!

Seeing that nothing awful happened, the birds finally took me off the black list and allowed me to oversee their work, as long as I gave no directions. Sometimes both little tots went down into the bag to work together; surely there was plenty of room for many such as they. But it is not always a matter of cubic inches, and one morning when the second bird was about to pop in, apparently it was advised to wait a minute.

There was no ill feeling, though, for when the small builder came out it flew to the twig in front of the door, where its mate was waiting, and sat down beside it, a little Darby by his Joan.

They worked busily. Sometimes they popped in only to pop out again; at other times they stayed inside as long as if they had been human housekeepers, hanging pictures, straightening chairs, and setting their bric-a-brac in order for the fortieth time; each change requiring mature deliberation.

One morning--after the birds had been putting in lining long enough to have wadded half a dozen nests--if my judgment is of any value in such matters--I discovered that the roof was falling in; it was almost on top of the front door! The next day, to my dismay, the door had vanished.

What was the trouble? Were the pretty pair young builders; was this their first nest, and had they paid more attention to decorating their house inside than to laying strong foundations; or had their pocket been too heavy for its frame?

However it came about, the wise birds concluded that they would not waste time crying over spilt milk. They calmly went to work to tear the first nest to pieces and build a second one out of it. One of them tweaked out its board with such a jerk it sent the pocket swinging like a pendulum. But the next time it wisely planted its claw firmly to steady itself, while it cautiously pulled the material out with its bill.

If the birds were inexperienced, they were bright enough to profit by experience. This time they hung their nest between the forks of a strong twig which had a cross twig to support the roof, so that the accident that had befallen them could not possibly occur again. They began work at the top, holding onto the twig with their claws and swinging themselves down inside to put in their material; and they moulded and shaped the pocket as they went along.

After watching the progress of the new nest, I went to see what had become of the old one. It was on the ground. On taking it home and pulling it to pieces, I found that the wall was from half an inch to an inch thick, made of fine gray moss and oak blossoms. There was a thick wadding of feathers inside. I counted _three hundred_, and there were a great many more! The amount of hard labor this stood for amazed me. No wonder the nest pulled down, with a whole feather-bed inside! Why had they put it in? I asked some children, and one said, "To keep the eggs warm, I guess;" while the other suggested, "So the eggs wouldn't break."

Most of the feathers were small, but there must have been several dozen chicken's feathers from two to three inches long. Among them was a plume of an owl.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POCKET NEST IN AN OAK]

Much to my surprise, in the bush-t.i.t's nest there was a broken eggsh.e.l.l.

Had the egg broken in falling, or had a snake been there? One of the boys of the valley told me about seeing a racer snake go into a bush-t.i.t's pocket. The cries of the birds rallied several other pairs, and they all flew about in distress, though not one of them dared touch the dreadful tail that hung out of the nest hole. As the snake was about three feet long, the pocket bulged as it moved around inside. There were four nestlings about a quarter grown, and the relentless creature devoured them all. The boy waited below with a stick, and when it came out, killed it and shook it by the tail till the small birds popped out of its mouth. If my broken eggsh.e.l.l pointed to any such tragedy, it cleared the birds of the accusation of being poor builders.

The nest, which the first day was a filmy spot in the leaves, by the next day had become a gray pocket over eight inches long, although I could still see daylight through it. In working, the birds flew to the top of the open bag and hopped down inside. I could see the pocket shake and bulge as they worked within. When they flew away to any distance, on their return they almost always came with their little call of _schrit, schrit_.

This nest was so low that I used to throw myself on the sand beneath the tree to watch it, taking many a sunbath there, with hat drawn down till I could just see the nest in the pendent branches, and watch the changing mosaics made by the sky through the moving leaves. When resting on the sand the thought of rattlesnakes came to me, for the brush on either side was a shelter for them, and they might easily have crept up beside me without my hearing them.

The second bush-t.i.t's nest was shorter than the first one. Perhaps the builders thought the length had something to do with the fall of the first; or perhaps they didn't feel like collecting three hundred more feathers, with oak blossoms and moss to match. They first put the frame of the front door below the supporting cross twig, and then, as if they thought it needed more support, changed it and put the door above the twig, so that the roof could not possibly close the hole, even if it did fall in. The doorway was also made much larger than that of the first nest.

After making away with the old nest, my conscience smote me. Perhaps the little pocket makers were not through with it, even if it was on the ground; so I brought a piece of it back and tied it with a gra.s.s stem to a twig below the nest they were at work on, to save them as much trouble as might be. When my bird came, her bright eyes were quick to espy the old nest. She looked around, bewildered, as if wondering whether she was really awake, and making sure that this strange looking affair were not her second nest, come to grief in her absence. Being rea.s.sured by her examination, she came back and hopped from twig to twig inspecting the old piece of nest. At last she caught sight of a feather.

That, apparently, was just what she wanted. She quickly flew over, pulled out the white plume, and went straight to the new house with it!