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

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

SONNET – OCTOBER

THE YELLOW-BELLIED FLYCATCHER (Empidonax flaviventris.)

THE REIGN OF THE WHIPPOORWILLS

RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET (Regulus calendula.)

THE CORN SONG

THE OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER (Contopus borealis.)

THE COMING OF MISS OCTOBER MONTH

THE TREE SPARROW (Spizella monticola.)

THE SPARROWS’ BEDTIME

THE SPARROW FAMILY

MR. AND MRS. SPARROW’S BLUNDER

A WINDOW-PANE REVERIE

THE BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER (Dendroica virens.)

A LIBEL ON THE BIRDS

BERYL

SONG BIRDS OF THE SOUTHWEST

THE AFRICAN LION (Felis leo.)

TROUTING BAREFOOT

THE ALASKAN MOOSE (Alces gigas.)

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A DUCK. FOUNDED UPON FACT

A LOST FLOWER

THE POLAR BEAR (Ursus maritimus.)

Отрывок из книги

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.

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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.”

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