The Spring of the Year Part 3

For severe and methodical as Mother Nature must be (and what mother or teacher or ruler, who has great things to do and a mult.i.tude of little things to attend to, must not be severe and methodical?)--severe, I say, as Mother Nature must be in looking after her children's clothes, she has for all that a real motherly heart, it seems.

For see how she looks after their wedding garments--giving to most of the birds a new suit, gay and gorgeous, especially to the bridegrooms, as if fine feathers _did_ make a fine bird! Or does she do all of this to meet the fancy of the bride, as the scientists tell us? Whether so or not, it is a fact that among the birds it is the bridegroom who is adorned for his wife, and sometimes the fine feathers come by a special moult--an extra suit for him!

Take Bobolink, for instance. He has two complete moults a year, two new suits, one of them his wedding suit. Now, as I write, I hear him singing over the meadow--a jet-black, white, and cream-buff lover, most strikingly adorned. His wife, down in the gra.s.s, looks as little like him as a sparrow looks like a blackbird. But after the breeding-season he will moult again, changing color so completely that he and his wife and children will all look alike, all like sparrows, and will even lose their names, flying south now under the name of "reed-birds."

Bobolink pa.s.ses the winter in Brazil; and in the spring, just before the long northward journey begins, he lays aside his fall traveling clothes and puts on his gay wedding garments and starts north for his bride. But you would hardly know he was so dressed, to look at him; for, strangely enough, he is not black and white, but still colored like a sparrow, as he was in the fall. _Apparently_ he is. Look at him more closely, however, and you will find that the brownish-yellow color is all caused by a veil of fine fringes hanging from the edges of the feathers. The bridegroom wearing the wedding veil? Yes!

Underneath is the black and white and cream-buff suit. He starts northward; and, by the time he reaches Ma.s.sachusetts, the fringe veil is worn off and the black and white bobolink appears. Specimens taken after their arrival here still show traces of the brownish-yellow veil.

Many birds do not have this early spring moult at all; and with most of those that do, the great wing feathers are not then renewed as are bobolink's, but only at the annual moult after the nesting is done.

The great feathers of the wings are, as you know, the most important feathers a bird has; and the shedding of them is so serious a matter that Nature has come to make the change according to the habits and needs of the birds. With most birds the body feathers begin to go first, then the wing feathers, and last those of the tail. But the shedding of the wing feathers is a very slow and carefully regulated process.

In the wild geese and other water birds the wing feathers drop out with the feathers of the body, and go so nearly together that the birds really cannot fly. On land you could catch the birds with your hands. But they keep near or on the water and thus escape, though times have been when it was necessary to protect them at this season by special laws; for bands of men would go into their nesting-marshes and kill them with clubs by hundreds!

The shedding of the feathers brings many risks to the birds; but Nature leaves none of her children utterly helpless. The geese at this time cannot fly because their feathers are gone; but they can swim, and so get away from most of their natural enemies. On the other hand, the hawks that hunt by wing, and must have wings always in good feather, or else perish, lose their feathers so slowly that they never feel their loss. It takes a hawk nearly a year to get a complete change of wing feathers, one or two dropping out from each wing at a time, at long intervals apart.

Then here is the gosling, that goes six weeks in down, before it gets its first feathers, which it sheds within a few weeks, in the fall.

Whereas the young quail is born with quills so far grown that it is able to fly almost as soon as it is hatched. These are real mature feathers; but the bird is young and soon outgrows these first flight feathers, so they are quickly lost and new ones come. This goes on till fall, _several_ moults occurring the first summer to meet the increasing weight of the little quail's growing body.

I said that Nature was severe and methodical, and so she is, where she needs to be, so severe that you are glad, perhaps, that you are not a crow. But Nature, like every wise mother, is severe only where she needs to be. A crow's wing feathers are vastly important to him. Let him then take care of them, for they are the best feathers made and are put in to stay a year. But a crow's tail feathers are not so vastly important to him; he could get on, if, like the rabbit in the old song, he had no tail at all.

In most birds the tail is a kind of balance or steering-gear, and not of equal importance with the wings. Nature, consequently, seems to have attached less importance to the feathers of the tail. They are not so firmly set, nor are they of the same quality or kind; for, unlike the wing feathers, if a tail feather is lost through accident, it is made good, no matter when. How do you explain that? Do you think I believe that old story of the birds roosting with their tails out, so that, because of generations of lost tails, those feathers now grow expecting to be plucked by some enemy, and therefore have only a temporary hold?

The normal, natural way, of course, is to replace a lost feather with a new one as soon as possible. But, in order to give extra strength to the wing feathers, Nature has found it necessary to check their frequent change; and so complete is the check that the annual moult is required to replace a single one. The j.a.panese have discovered the secret of this check, and are able by it to keep certain feathers in the tails of their c.o.c.ks growing until they reach the enormous length of ten to twelve feet.

My crow, it seems, lost his three feathers last summer just after his annual moult; the three broken shafts he carries still in his wing, and must continue to carry, as the stars must continue their courses, until those three feathers have rounded out their cycle to the annual moult. The universe of stars and feathers is a universe of law, of order, and of reason.

CHAPTER VI

A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO DO THIS SPRING

I do not know where to begin--there are so many interesting things to do this spring! But, while we ought to be interested in all of the out-of-doors, it is very necessary to select some _one_ field, say, the birds or flowers, for _special_ study. That would help us to decide what to do this spring.

I

If there is still room under your window, or on the clothes-pole in your yard, or in a neighboring tree, nail up another bird-house. (Get "Methods of Attracting Birds" by Gilbert H. Trafton.) If the bird-house is on a pole or post, invert a large tin pan over the end of the post and nail the house fast upon it. This will keep cats and squirrels from disturbing the birds. If the bird-house is in a tree, saw off a limb, if you can without hurting the tree, and do the same there. Cats are our birds' worst enemies.

II

Cats! Begin in your own home and neighborhood a campaign against the cats, to reduce their number and to educate their owners to the need of keeping them well fed and shut up in the house from early evening until after the early morning; for these are the cats' natural hunting hours, when they do the greatest harm to the birds.

This does not mean any cruelty to the cat--no stoning, no persecution.

The cat is not at fault. It is the keepers of the cats who need to be educated. Out of every hundred nests in my neighborhood the cats of two farmhouses destroy ninety-five! The state must come to the rescue of the birds by some new rigid law reducing the number of cats.

III

Speaking of birds, let me urge you to begin your watching and study early--with the first robins and bluebirds--and to select some near-by park or wood-lot or meadow to which you can go frequently. There is a good deal in getting intimately acquainted with a locality, so that you know its trees individually, its rocks, walls, fences, the very qualities of its soil. Therefore you want a small area, close at hand.

Most observers make the mistake of roaming first here, then there, spending their time and observation in finding their way around, instead of upon the birds to be seen. You must get used to your paths and trees before you can see the birds that flit about them.

IV

In this haunt that you select for your observation, you must study not only the birds but the trees, and the other forms of life, and the shape of the ground (the "lay" of the land) as well, so as to know _all_ that you see. In a letter just received from a teacher, who is also a college graduate, occurs this strange description: "My window faces a hill on which straggle brown houses among the deep green of elms or oaks or maples, I don't know which." Perhaps the hill is far away; but I suspect that the writer, knowing my love for the out-of-doors, wanted to give me a vivid picture, but, not knowing one tree from another, put them all in so I could make my own choice!

Learn your common trees, common flowers, common bushes, common animals, along with the birds.

V

Plant a garden, if only a pot of portulacas, and _care_ for it, and watch it grow! Learn to dig in the soil and to love it. It is amazing how much and how many things you can grow in a box on the window-sill, or in a corner of the dooryard. There are plants for the sun and plants for the shade, plants for the wall, plants for the very cellar of your house. Get you a bit of earth and plant it, no matter how busy you are with other things this spring.

VI

There are four excursions that you should make this spring: one to a small pond in the woods; one to a deep, wild swamp; one to a wide salt marsh or fresh-water meadow; and one to the seash.o.r.e--to a wild rocky or sandy sh.o.r.e uninhabited by man.

There are particular birds and animals as well as plants and flowers that dwell only in these haunts; besides, you will get a sight of four distinct kinds of landscape, four deep impressions of the face of nature that are altogether as good to have as the sight of four flowers or birds.

VII

Make a calendar of _your_ spring (read "Nature's Diary" by Francis H.

Allen)--when and where you find your first bluebird, robin, oriole, etc.; when and where you find your first hepatica, arbutus, saxifrage, etc.; and, as the season goes on, when and where the doings of the various wild things take place.

VIII

Boy or girl, you should go fis.h.i.+ng--down to the pond or the river where you go to watch the birds. Suppose you do not catch any fish.

That doesn't matter; for you have gone out to the pond with a pole in your hands (a pole is a _real_ thing); you have gone with the _hope_ (hope is a _real_ thing) of catching _fish_ (fish are _real_ things); and even if you catch no fish, you will be sure, as you wait for the fish to bite, to hear a belted kingfisher, or see a painted turtle, or catch the breath of the sweet leaf-buds and cl.u.s.tered catkins opening around the wooded pond. It is a very good thing for the young naturalist to learn to sit still. A fish-pole is a great help in learning that necessary lesson.

IX

One of the most interesting things you can do for special study is to collect some frogs' eggs from the pond and watch them grow into tadpoles and on into frogs. There are gla.s.s vessels made particularly for such study (an ordinary gla.s.s jar will do). If you can afford a small gla.s.s aquarium, get one and with a few green water plants put in a few minnows, a snail or two, a young turtle, water-beetles, and frogs' eggs, and watch them grow.

X

You should get up by half past three o'clock (at the earliest streak of dawn) and go out into the new morning with the birds! You will hardly recognize the world as that in which your humdrum days (there are no such days, really) are spent! All is fresh, all is new, and the bird-chorus! "Is it possible," you will exclaim, "that this can be the earth?"

Early morning and toward sunset are the best times of the day for bird-study. But if there was not a bird, there would be the sunrise and the sunset--the wonder of the waking, the peace of the closing, day.