Bird Stories from Burroughs

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John Burroughs. Bird Stories from Burroughs

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

THE BLUEBIRD

THE ROBIN

THE FLICKER

THE PHŒBE

THE COWBIRD

THE CHIPPING SPARROW

THE CHEWINK

THE BROWN THRASHER

THE HOUSE WREN

THE SONG SPARROW

THE CHIMNEY SWIFT

THE OVEN-BIRD

THE CATBIRD

THE BOBOLINK

THE WOOD THRUSH

THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE

THE WHIP-POOR-WILL

THE BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER A SEARCH FOR A RARE NEST

THE MARSH HAWK A MARSH HAWK'S NEST, A YOUNG HAWK, AND A VISIT TO A QUAIL ON HER NEST

THE WINTER WREN

THE CEDAR-BIRD

THE GOLDFINCH

THE HEN-HAWK1

THE RUFFED GROUSE, OR PARTRIDGE

THE CROW

THE NORTHERN SHRIKE

THE SCREECH OWL

THE CHICKADEE

THE DOWNY WOODPECKER

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It is sure to be a bright March morning when you first hear the bluebird's note; and it is as if the milder influences up above had found a voice and let a word fall upon your ear, so tender is it and so prophetic, a hope tinged with a regret.

I was much amused one summer day in seeing a bluebird feeding her young one in the shaded street of a large town. She had captured a cicada or harvest-fly, and, after bruising it awhile on the ground, flew with it to a tree and placed it in the beak of the young bird. It was a large morsel, and the mother seemed to have doubts of her chick's ability to dispose of it, for she stood near and watched its efforts with great solicitude. The young bird struggled valiantly with the cicada, but made no headway in swallowing it, when the mother took it from him and flew to the sidewalk, and proceeded to break and bruise it more thoroughly. Then she again placed it in his beak, and seemed to say, "There, try it now," and sympathized so thoroughly with his efforts that she repeated many of his motions and contortions. But the great fly was unyielding, and, indeed, seemed ridiculously disproportioned to the beak that held it. The young bird fluttered and fluttered, and screamed, "I'm stuck, I'm stuck!" till the anxious parent again seized the morsel and carried it to an iron railing, where she came down upon it for the space of a minute with all the force and momentum her beak could command. Then she offered it to her young a third time, but with the same result as before, except that this time the bird dropped it; but she reached the ground as soon as the cicada did, and taking it in her beak flew a little distance to a high board fence, where she sat motionless for some moments. While pondering the problem how that fly should be broken, the male bluebird approached her, and said very plainly, and I thought rather curtly, "Give me that bug," but she quickly resented his interference and flew farther away, where she sat apparently quite discouraged when I last saw her.

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Ted and I breathed freer. A burden had been taken from our minds and hearts, and we went cheerfully on our way. We had learned something, too; we had learned that when in the deep woods you think of bluebirds, bluebirds may be nearer you than you think.

One mid-April morning two pairs of bluebirds were in very active and at times violent courtship about my grounds. I could not quite understand the meaning of all the fuss and flutter. Both birds of each pair were very demonstrative, but the female in each case the more so. She followed the male everywhere, lifting and twinkling her wings, and apparently seeking to win him by both word and gesture. If she was not telling him by that cheery, animated, confiding, softly endearing speech of hers, which she poured out incessantly, how much she loved him, what was she saying? She was constantly filled with a desire to perch upon the precise spot where he was sitting, and if he had not moved away I think she would have alighted upon his back. Now and then, when she flitted away from him, he followed her with like gestures and tones and demonstrations of affection, but never with quite the same ardor. The two pairs kept near each other, about the house, the bird-boxes, the trees, the posts and vines in the vineyard, filling the ear with their soft, insistent warbles, and the eye with their twinkling azure wings.

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