A-Birding on a Bronco Part 8

XII.

HUMMERS.

CALIFORNIA is the land of flowers and hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are there the winged companions of the flowers. In the valleys the airy birds hover about the filmy golden mustard and the sweet-scented primroses; on the blooming hillsides in spring the air is filled with whirring wings and piping voices, as the fairy troops pa.s.s and repa.s.s at their mad gambols. At one moment the birds are circling methodically around the whorls of the blue sage; at the next, hurtling through the air after a distant companion. The great wild gooseberry bushes with red fuchsia-like flowers are like bee-hives, swarming with noisy hummers.

The whizzing and whirring lead one to the bushes from a distance, and on approaching one is met by the brown spindle-like birds, darting out from the blooming shrubs, gleams of green, gold, and scarlet glancing from their gorgets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Little Hummer on her Bow-Knot Nest.

(From a photograph.)]

The large brown hummers probably stop in the valley only on their way north, but the little black-chinned ones make their home there, and the big spreading sycamores and the great live-oaks are their nesting grounds. In the big oak beside the ranch-house I have seen two or three nests at once; and a ring of live-oaks in front of the house held a complement of nests. From the hammock under the oak beside the house one could watch the birds at their work. If the front door was left open, the hummers would sometimes fly inside; and as we stepped out they often darted away from the flowers growing under the windows.

California is the place of all places to study hummingbirds. The only drawback is that there are always too many other birds to watch at the same time; but one sees enough to want to see more. I never saw a hummingbird courts.h.i.+p unless--perhaps one performance I saw was part of the wooing. I was sitting on Mountain Billy under the little lover's sycamore when a buzzing and a whirring sounded overhead. On a twig sat a wee green lady and before her was her lover (?), who, with the sound and regularity of a spindle in a machine, swung shuttling from side to side in an arc less than a yard long. He never turned around, or took his eyes off his lady's, but threw himself back at the end of his line by a quick spread of his tail. She sat with her eyes fixed upon him, and as he moved from side to side her long bill followed him in a very droll way. When through with his dance he looked at her intently, as if to see what effect his performance had had upon her. She made some remark, apparently not to his liking, for when he had answered he flew away. She called after him, but as he did not return she stretched herself and flew up on a twig above with an amusing air of relief.

This is all I have ever seen of the courts.h.i.+p; but when it comes to nest-building, I have often been an eye-witness to that. One little acquaintance made a nest of yellow down and put it among the green oak leaves, making me think that the laws of protective coloration had no weight with her, but before the eggs were laid she had neatly covered the yellow with flakes of green lichen. I found her one day sitting in the sun with the top of her head as white as though she had been diving into the flour barrel. Here was one of the wonderful cases of 'mutual help' in nature. The flowers supply insects and honey to the hummingbirds, and they, in turn, as they fly from blossom to blossom probing the tubes with the long slender bills that have gradually come to fit the shape of the tubes, brush off the pollen of one blossom to carry it on to the next, so enabling the plants to perfect their flowers as they could not without help. It is said that, in proportion to their numbers, hummingbirds a.s.sist as much as insects in the work of cross-fertilization.

Though this little hummer that I was watching let me come within a few feet of her, when a lizard ran under her bush she craned her neck and looked over her shoulder at him with surprising interest. She doubtless recognized him as one of her egg-eating enemies, on whose account she put her nest at the tip of a twig too slender to serve as a ladder.

Another hummingbird who built across the way was still more trustful--with people. I used to sit leaning against the trunk of her oak and watch the nest, which was near the tip of one of the long swinging branches that drooped over the trail. When the tiny worker was at home, a yard-stick would almost measure the distance between us. As she sat on the nest she sometimes turned her head to look down at the dog lying beside me, and often hovered over us on going away.

The nest was saddled on a twig and glued to a glossy dark green oak leaf. Like the other nest, it was made of a spongy yellow substance, probably down from the underside of sycamore leaves; and like it, also, the outside was coated with lichen and wound with cobweb. The bird was a rapid worker, buzzing in with her material and then buzzing off after more. Once I saw the cobweb hanging from her needle-like bill, and thought she probably had been tearing down the beautiful suspension bridges the spiders hang from tree to tree.

It was very interesting to see her work. She would light on the rim of the nest, or else drop directly into the bottom of the tiny cup, and place her material with the end of her long bill. It looked like trying to sew at arm's length. She had to draw back her head in order not to reach beyond the nest. How much more convenient it would have been if her bill had been jointed! It seemed better suited to probing flower tubes than making nests. But then, she made nests only in spring, while she fed from flowers all the year round, and so could afford to stretch her neck a trifle one month for the sake of having a good long fly spear during the other eleven. The peculiar feature of her work was her quivering motion in moulding. When her material was placed she moulded her nest like a potter, twirling around against the sides, sometimes pressing so hard she ruffled up the feathers of her breast. She shaped her cup as if it were a piece of clay. To round the outside, she would sit on the rim and lean over, smoothing the sides with her bill, often with the same peculiar tremulous motion. When working on the outside, at times she almost lost her balance, and fluttered to keep from falling.

To turn around in the nest, she lifted herself by whirring her wings.

When she found a bit of her green lichen about to fall, she took the loose end in her bill and drew it over the edge of the nest, fastening it securely inside. She looked very wise and motherly as she sat there at work, preparing a home for her brood. After building rapidly she would take a short rest on a twig in the sun, while she plumed her feathers. She made nest-making seem very pleasant work.

One day, wanting to experiment, I put a handful of oak blossoms on the nest. They covered the cup and hung down over the sides. When the small builder came, she hovered over it a few seconds before making up her mind how it got there and what she had better do about it. Then she calmly lit on top of it! Part of it went off as she did so, but the rest she appropriated, fastening in the loose ends with the cobweb she had brought.

She often gave a little squeaky call when on the nest, as if talking to herself about her work. When going off for material she would dart away and then, as if it suddenly occurred to her that she did not know where she was going, would stop and stand perfectly still in the air, her vibrating wings sustaining her till she made up her mind, when she would shoot off at an angle. It seemed as if she would be worn out before night, but her eyes were bright and she looked vigorous enough to build half a dozen houses.

"There's odds in folks," our great-grandmothers used to say; and there certainly is in bird folks; even in the ways of the same one at different times. Now this hummingbird was content to build right in front of my eyes, and the hummer down at the little lover's tree, with her first nest, was so indifferent to Billy and me that I took no pains to keep at a distance or disguise the fact that I was watching her. But when her nest was destroyed she suddenly grew old in the ways of the world, and apparently repented having trusted us. In any case, I got a lesson on being too prying. The first nest had not been down long before I found that a second one was being built only a few feet away--by the same bird? I imagined so. The nest was only just begun, and being especially interested to see how such buildings were started, I rode close up to watch the work. A roll of yellow sycamore down was wound around a twig, and the bottom of the nest--the floor--attached to the underside of this beam; with such a solid foundation, the walls could easily be supported.

The small builder came when Billy and I were there. She did not welcome us as old friends, but sat down on her floor and looked at us--and I never saw her there again. Worse than that, she took away her nest, presumably to put it down where she thought inquisitive reporters would not intrude. I was disappointed and grieved, having already planned---on the strength of the first experience--to have the mother hummer's picture taken when she was feeding her young on the nest.

At first I thought this suspicion reflected upon the good sense of hummingbirds, but after thinking it over concluded that it spoke better for hummingbirds than for Billy and me. If this were, as I supposed, the same bird who had to brood her young with Billy grazing at the end of her bill, and if she had been present at the unlucky moment when he got the oak branches tangled in the pommel of the saddle, although her branch was not among them, I can but admire her for moving when she found that the Philistines were again upon her, for her new house was hung at the tip of a branch that Billy might easily have swept in pa.s.sing.

These nests had all been very low, only four or five feet above the ground; but one day I found young in one of the common treetop nests. I could see it through the branches. Two little heads stuck up above the edge like two small Jacks-in-boxes. Billy made such a noise under the oak when the bird was feeding the youngsters that I took him away where he could not disturb the family, and tied him to an oak covered with poison ivy, for he was especially fond of eating it, and the poison did not affect him.

Before the old hummer flew off, she picked up a tiny white feather that she found in the nest, and wound it around a twig. On her return, in the midst of her feeding, she darted down and set the feather flying; but, as it got away from her, she caught it again. The performance was repeated the next time she came with food; but she did it all so solemnly I could not tell whether she were playing or trying to get rid of something that annoyed her.

She fed at the long intervals that are so trying to an observer, for if you are going to sit for hours with your eyes glued to a nest, it really is pleasant to have something happen once in a while! Though the mother bird did not go to the nest often, she sometimes flew by, and once the sound of her wings roused the young, and they called out to her as she pa.s.sed. When they were awake, it was amusing to see the little midgets stick out their long, thread-like tongues, preen their pin-feathers, and stretch their wings over the nest.

One fine morning when I went to the oak I heard a faint squeak, and saw something fluttering up in the tree. When the mother came, she buzzed about as though not liking the look of things, for her children were out of the nest, and behold!--a horse and rider were under her tree. She tried to coax the unruly nestlings to follow her into the upper stories, but they would not go.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Swing Nest of the Hummer.

(From a Photograph.)]

Although not ready to be led, one of the infants soon felt that it would be nice to go alone. When a bird first leaves the nest it goes about very gingerly, but this little fellow now began to feel his strength and the excitement of his freedom. He wiped his tongue on a branch, and then, to my astonishment, his wings began to whirl as if he were getting up steam, and presently they lifted him from his twig, and he went whirring off as softly as a hummingbird moth, among the oak sprays. His nerves were evidently on edge, for he looked around at the sound of falling leaves, started when Billy sneezed, and turned from side to side very apprehensively, in spite of his out-in-the-world, big-boy airs. He may have felt hampered by his unused wings, for, as he sat there waiting for his mother to come, he stroked them out with his bill to get them in better working order. That done, he leaned over, rounded his shoulders, and pecked at a leaf as if he were as much grown up as anybody.

Of all the beautiful hummingbirds' nests I saw in California, three are particularly noteworthy because of their positions. One cup was set down on what looked like an inverted saucer, in the form of a dark green oak leaf wound with cobweb. That was in the oak beside the ranch-house.

Another one was on a branch of eucalyptus, set between two leaves like the knot in a bow of stiff ribbon. To my great satisfaction, the photographer was able to induce the bird to have a sitting while she brooded her eggs. The third nest I imagined belonged to the bird who took up her floor because Billy and I looked at her. If she were, her fate was certainly hard, for her eggs were taken by some one, boy or beast. Her nest was most skillfully supported. It was fastened like the seat of a swing between two twigs no larger than knitting-needles, at the end of a long drooping branch. It was a unique pleasure to see the tiny bird sit in her swing and be blown by the wind. Sometimes she went circling about as though riding in a merry-go-round; and at others the wind blew so hard her round boat rose and fell like a little s.h.i.+p at sea.

XIII.

IN THE SHADE OF THE OAKS.

THERE were half a dozen places in the valley, irrigated by the spring rains, where I was always sure of finding birds. Among them, on the west side, was the big sycamore, standing at the lower end of the valley; while above, in the northwest corner, was the mouth of Twin Oaks canyon where the migrants flocked in the brush around the large twin oak that overlooked the little old schoolhouse. On the east side was the Ughland canyon, at the mouth of which the little lover and his neighbors nested; while below it straggled the line of sycamores that followed the Ughland stream down through my ranch. But up at the head of the valley beyond the ranch-house was the most delightful place of all. There I was always sure of finding interesting nests to study.

Surrounded by a waste of chaparral, it was a little oasis of great blooming live-oaks, and in their shade I used often to spend the hot afternoon hours. In the spring the water that flowed down the hills at the head of the valley formed a fresh mountain stream that ran down the Oden canyon and so on through the centre of this grove, feeding the oaks and spreading out to enrich the valley below. In summer, like the rest of the canyon streams, only its dry sandy bed remained. Then, when the meadows were oppressively hot, my leafy garden was a shady bower to linger in. Its long drooping branches hung to the ground, dainty yellow warblers flitted about the golden ta.s.sels of the blossoming trees, and the air was full of the happy songs of mated birds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SHADY BOWER]

The trail from the ranch-house to the oaks was a line through the low gra.s.s in which grew yellow fly flowers and orange poppies; and over them every spring, day after day, processions of migrating b.u.t.terflies drifted slowly up the canyon. At the entrance of the garden was a sentinel oak whose dark green foliage contrasted well with the yellow flowers in the gra.s.s outside. It was the chosen hunting-ground of many birds. Its dead upper branches offered the bee-birds and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs an un.o.bstructed view of pa.s.sing insects, and gave the jays and flickers a chance to overlook the brush, and take their bearings. The lower limbs offered perches where doves might come to rest, finches to chatter, and chewinks to sing; while its hanging boughs and elm-like feathered sides attracted wandering warblers and songful wrens.

The happy days spent among these beautiful California oaks are now far in the past, but as I sit in my study in the East and dream back over those hours my mind is filled with memory pictures. Sauntering through this oaken gallery, each tree recalls some pleasant hour--the sight of a new bird, the sound of a new song, the prolonged delight of some cozy home that I watched till accepted as a friend, when the little family's fears and joys were my own.

That big double oak, spreading across the middle of the garden, was the haunted tree whose blue ghost drove away the pewees and gnatcatchers after they had begun to build; though the vireos and bush-t.i.ts braved it out, and the tiny hummer and gentle dove were not afraid to perch there.

This was hummingbird lane--that small oak held the nest in which the two wee nestlings sat up like Jacks-in-the-box; these blue sage bushes growing in the sand were the ones the honey bees and hummers used to haunt, the hummers probing each lavender lip as they circled round the whorls; in front of this bush I saw a fairy dancer perform his airy minuet,--swing back and forth, and then sweep up in the air to dive whirring down with gorget puffed out and tail spread wide; and here, when watching a procession of ants, I discovered a tiny hummingbird building in a drooping branch that overhung the trail. That dead limb was the perch of a wood pewee, a silent grave bird with a sad call, who flew on when he was still only a lonely stranger. That oak top was made memorable by the sight of a flaming oriole, though he came on a cold foggy morning and answered my calls with a broken song and a half-hearted scold as he sat with his feathers ruffled up about him.

Under the low spreading branches of that tree the chewinks used to scratch--I can hear the brown leaves rustle now--the branches were so low that, if the shy birds flew up to rest from their labors, they could quickly drop down and disappear in the brush.

On ahead, where the garden narrows to the trail between the walls of brush, when I was hidden behind a screen of branches, the timid white-crowned sparrows used to venture out, hopping along quietly or stopping to sing and pick up seeds on the path. Back a few steps was the tree where the bush-t.i.ts came to build their second nest after the roof of the first one fell in; the nest which hung on such a low limb that I watched it from the sand beneath, looking up through the branches at the blue sky, the canyon walls covered with sun-whitened bowlders, and the turkey buzzards circling over the mountains.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Green-tailed Chewink.

(One half natural size.)]

Just there, in that small open place between the trees,--how well I remember the afternoon,--I saw a new bird come out of the bushes; the green-tailed chewink he proved to be, on his way back to the Rocky Mountains. He was a beautiful stranger with a soft glossy coat touched off with yellowish green, while his high-bred gentle manners have made me remember him with affectionate interest all these years. Across the garden I heard my first song from that unique rhapsodist, the yellow-breasted chat. The same place marks another interesting experience. While I was sitting in the crotch of an oak a thrasher came out of the brush into an open s.p.a.ce in front of me. Her feathers were disordered and apparently she had come from her nest. She walked with wings tight at her sides and her tail up at an angle well out of the way of the rustling leaves; altogether a neat alert figure that contrasted sharply with the lazy brown chippie which appeared just then in characteristic negligee, its wings hanging and tail dragging on the ground. The thrashers of Twin Oaks have bills that are curved like a sickle, and this bird used her tool most skillfully. Instead of scratching up the leaves and earth with her feet as chewinks and sparrows do, the thrasher used her bill almost exclusively. First she cleared a s.p.a.ce by sc.r.a.ping the leaves away, moving her bill through them rapidly from side to side. Then she made two holes in the ground, probing deep with her long bill. After taking what she could get from the second hole, she went back to the first again, as if to see if anything had come to the surface there. Then she lay down on the sand to sun herself and acted as though going to take a sun bath, when suddenly she discovered me and fled.

When watching the bird at work I got a pretty picture in the round disk of my opera-gla.s.s. The gla.s.s was focused on the digging thrasher, but a goldfinch came into the picture and pulled at some stems for its nest and a cottontail ran rapidly across from rim to rim. I lifted the gla.s.s to follow him and saw him go trotting down the path between the bushes.

The thrasher's curved bill gives a most ludicrous look to the bird when singing. He looks as if he were trying to turn himself inside out. I once saw an adult thrasher tease its mate for food, and wondered how it would be possible for one curved bill to feed another curved bill; but a few days later I came on a family of young, and discovered for myself that _they_ have straight bills; a most curious and interesting instance of adaptation.

At the head of the garden stands a tree that always reminds me of the horses I rode in California. I watched my first bush-t.i.t's nest under it, with Canello grazing near; and five years later watched another bush-t.i.t's nest there, sitting in the crotch of the oak with Mountain Billy looking over my shoulder. Although Billy was, in his prime, a bucking mustang, he became more of a petted companion than Canello had been; and when we were out alone together, we were a great deal of company for each other. As soon as I dismounted he would put his head down to have me slip the reins off over his ears, so that he could graze by himself. Sometimes, when he stood behind me he rested his bridle on my sun-hat, and once went so far as to take a bite out of the brim--in consideration of its being straw. If I were sitting on the ground and he was grazing near, he would at times walk up and gravely raise his face to look into mine. When he got tired, he would rub up against my arm and yawn, looking down at me with a friendly smile in his eyes.

Birding was rather dull for Billy--when there was neither gra.s.s nor poison ivy at hand, but he had one never-failing source of enjoyment--rolling. He tried it in the sand under the oak, one day, with the saddle on. Before I knew what he was about he was down on his knees, sitting still, with a comical, helpless look in his eyes, as if quite at a loss to know what to do next, having become conscious of the saddle.

When I had gotten him on his feet and finished lecturing him I uncinched the saddle, laid it one side on the ground, took hold of the end of the long bridle, and told him to roll. A droll abstracted look came into his eyes, he dropped on his knees and, with a sudden convulsion, threw his heels into the air and rolled back and forth, rubbing his backbone vigorously on the sand. After that, the first thing every morning when we got to the oaks, I unsaddled him and let him roll, and then he would stand with bare back keeping cool in the shade of the trees.

One morning as we stood under the bush-t.i.t's tree, I discovered a pair of turtle doves looking out at me from the leaves of the small oak opposite, craning their necks and moving their heads uneasily. One of them seemed to be shaping a nest of twigs. I drew Billy around between us, so that my staring would seem less pointed, and when one of the pair flew to the ground to spy at me, hurriedly looked the other way to remove his anxiety. His mate soon joined him, and the two doves walked away together, fixed their feathers in the sun, stretched their wings, and lazily picked at the ground. When one whirred back to the nest, the other soon followed. The gentle lovers put their bills together, while, unnoticed, I stood behind Billy, looking on and thinking that it was little wonder such birds should rise from the ground with a musical whirr.

Billy's oak was the last of the high trees in the garden. Above it was a gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce where bright wild flowers bloomed, and pretty cottontail rabbits often went ambling over the soft turf. On one side of the opening was a low stocky oak, full of b.a.l.l.s of mistletoe, and on the other a great blossoming bush buzzing with hummingbirds. The mistletoe had begun to sap the little oak, and on one of its dead twigs a hummingbird had taken to perching. I wondered if he were the idle mate of one of my small garden builders, but he sat and sunned himself as if his conscience were quite clear.

My first experience with gnatcatchers had been here. I suspected a nest, and the ranchman's daughter went with me to hunt through the brush. She cautioned me to look out for rattlesnakes, but the brush was so dense and the ground so covered with crooked snake-like sticks that it was not an easy matter to tell what you were stepping on. Then, the poison oak was so thick that I felt like holding up my hands to avoid it. We pushed our way through the dense chaparral, and my fearless companion got down on her hands and knees to look through the tangle for the nest. It was hard disagreeable work, even if one did not object to snakes, and we were soon so tired that we were ready to sit down and let the birds show us to their house. We might have saved ourselves all the trouble if we had done this to begin with, for it was only a few moments before the little pair went to the mistletoe oak, out in plain sight and within easy reach--how they would have laughed in their sleeves had they known what we were hunting for back in the brus.h.!.+ The nest was about the size of a chilicothe pod, and so covered with lichen that it looked just like a knot on the tree.