Birds and all Nature, Vol. VII, No. 4, April 1900

Then my troubles began. It seemed to take all of my time to feed this one bird, and I could not imagine how Jack and Jill could take care of it and four others.

For awhile it seemed very much frightened, but at length began to chirp. The old birds answered at once and soon came to the screen on the window and called to it. Knowing they would feed it if they could reach it I had to keep it away from them, for, should they discover it was a prisoner, they would give it poison.

We named it Chippy and it soon became a great pet. Whenever anyone entered the room where it was its mouth flew open, and from its shrill "chee-chee-chee," one might easily imagine it was on the verge of starvation.

When I had had it a week it would try to fly from the floor to the lower rounds of a chair. When it had learned to fly, if left alone it would call until someone answered, and then follow the sound until it found them. I have known it to fly through two rooms, a downstairs hall, up the stair-steps, through the upper hall, and into my room in response to my whistle.

When it first made this journey it could fly only two or three feet at a time and had to fly from step to step up the stairway.

Soon after this I took Chippy out of doors. He was very much delighted when placed in a young hackberry tree, where he could fly from branch to branch. When he reached the top of the tree Jill flew into a tree near by and tried to coax him to come to her. I saw Chippy spread his wings and supposed I had lost my pet. Imagine my surprise when he gave a shrill scream and flew straight to me, lighting on my shoulder and nestling against my face.

Jill followed him, resting in a vine some three or four feet from me. When coaxing failed she flew away but soon returned with a grasshopper in her bill.

I drove Chippy away from me, hoping he would return to his own family, where his education could be carried on according to their ideas.

He flew into a tree, ate the grasshopper which Jill fed to him, and then flew on the roof of the porch outside my window, where he sat calling me. Going to my room I opened the screen to let him in, but this startled him and he flew away.

The sun had gone down by this time and I supposed he had at last returned to the nest. As I sat at the supper table I heard him calling to me and went outside.

He was in a tree in a neighbor's yard, but when he saw me he at once flew down on my head, and it was comical to see him try to express his joy.

After that he spent his days among the trees, but at sunset always came to the house and slept in a box in my room.

Whenever he was hungry he would come to the window and call for food.

His favorite resting-place was on my shoulder or head and he seemed to be very fond of company.

One morning I saw Jack and Jill flying from tree to tree with him and that is the last I ever saw of any of them.

BIRDLAND SECRETS

SARA E. GRAVESTell me what the bluebird singsWhen from Southland up he springsInto March's frosty skiesAnd to our New England flies,Where, upon some sunny mornHear we first his note lovelorn.Now he 'mong the maple flits,Now upon a fencepost sits,Lifting wings of heaven's own blueAs he warbles, clear and true,Song so plaintive, soft and sweet,All our hearts with welcome beat.What the message full he bringsWhen in March's ear he sings?Tell me what our robins thinkWhen our April airs they drink,Following close in Bluebird's trainWith their blither, bolder strain.Sit they high on maple tallChirping loud their earnest call,Redbreasts glowing in the sun,Then across the sward they runScampering briskly, then upright,Flirt their tails and spring to flight.Or, when drops the light of dayDown the westward golden way,Robin mounts the tallest branchTouched by sunset's quivering lance;Carols forth his evening tuneBlithe as Earth were in her June.Tell me what the sparrow saysIn those first glad springtime days,When the maples yield their sweet,When Earth's waking pulses beat,When the swollen streams and rillsFrolic down the pasture hills.Winter birds and squirrels thenGrow more lively in the glen,And, when warmer airs arise,Sparrow sings her sweet surpriseFrom the lilac bushes near,Song of faith and hope and cheer.Tell me, when the longer trainUp from Southland sweeps again,Filling fields and glens and woods —Wildest, deepest solitudes —With more brilliant life and song,Golden lyre and silver tongue,Bells that ring their morning chimesWood nymphs voicing soothing rhymesStirring all the sun-filled airWith hymns of praise and love and prayer.Tell me whence their motive power,Tell me whence so rich a dower,Tell me why are birds so gifted;Whence their imprisoned spirits drifted;Whither swells this tide of loveFlooding all the air above?Whither these enchantments tend?A brief bird life – is this its end?

THE MASSENA QUAIL

(Cyrtonyx Massena.)

THIS beautiful species is said to be by far the most gentle and unsuspicious of our quails, and will permit a very close approach by man, showing little or no fear of what most animals know so well to be their most deadly enemy. While feeding they keep close together, and constantly utter a soft clucking note, as though talking to one another.

This species is about the size of the eastern variety. Its head is ornamented with a beautifully full, soft occipital crest. The head of the male is singularly striped with black and white. The female is smaller and is quite different in color, but may be recognized by the generic characters. The tail is short and full, and the claws very large.

The quail makes a simple nest on the ground, under the edge of some old log, or in the thick grass on the prairie, lined with soft and well-dried grass and a few feathers. From fifteen to twenty-four white eggs are laid. The female sits three weeks. The young brood, as soon as they are fairly out of the shell, leave the nest and seem abundantly strong to follow the parent, though they are no bigger than the end of one's thumb – covered with down. The massena quail is an inhabitant of the western and southwestern states.

IN THE OLD LOG HOUSE

BY BERTHA SEAVEY SAUNIER

THE big orchard on the Triggs place was also the old orchard. Grandpa Triggs had planted it long ago in his young days when the country was new. The year before he had hauled logs from yonder forest with his ox-team and built the strong little house that still stands at the foot of the orchard.

He brought young crab trees, too, and set them all about the house and though, after the orchard was started, he often threatened to cut them down, he never did it and they grew into a tangle of friendship and protection until the little one-roomed house was nearly hidden.

The house was desolate now. The catbirds built their nests in the crotches of the crabs and the jays came over from the woods across the river and quarreled with them. An old zigzag rail fence separated the orchard from the hay-field at one end and a tall uncared-for osage hedge did scant duty at two sides. Once in a great while a sheep would leave the aftermath and step through the wide spaces of the hedge and, entering the doorless house, would walk curiously about and then return. But that was all – no, not quite all. The children built fires in the great fireplace and roasted potatoes or experimented at cooking carrots, artichokes, apples and occasionally a pair of kidneys rolled each in several thicknesses of brown paper and slowly cooked under the hot ashes and coals. To be sure, the smoke came out into the room and got into the children's eyes and passed out at the door – for the chimney had crumbled to half its old time height – but the playtimes went on in spite of that and the birds shouted and sang outside.

One would expect that all this activity above board to be happily interested without looking for new and startling circumstances under ground. But, withal, life went on among the "underground lights," with its busy unconcern of affairs which it could not share or even comprehend. Rarely when the fire warmed the bricks about the fireplace did comely, plump Mrs. Acre Tidae fail to raise her song. She had a way of building a home had Mrs. House Cricket. She tossed out a few grains of earth from under the brick tiling of the hearth and presto! she entered in backward and sat down waving her long slender antennæ with a happy content that would shame many a one who, having more, is not satisfied. Mr. Field Cricket, who happens also to be named Acre Tidae, had built his home at the edge of the path in the sandy loam just without the door. Two bodies of the same name and family would be expected to live in the same house, but they couldn't quite come to do that on account of tastes. For one thing they differed in the matter of dress, though that was the least objection one to the other. Mrs. House Cricket wore a grayish yellow dress, marked a little with brown and Mr. Field Cricket wore darker colors. He built his home deeper, too, which would never suit Mrs. Acre Tidae at all. Sometimes his home is twelve inches deep, and six it is sure to be. And then, big fellow that he is, quite a bit larger than she, he does not mind the cold. He snuggles down in the deep darkness as soon as he sees the dew frozen in the tiny crystals all over the long grass blades, and sleeps the time away, however long and cold the winter may be; and such a life is scorned by bright Mrs. House Cricket, who chooses the hearth on account of the warmth and who chirps joyfully throughout the year, except when the fire goes out, as it often does in the little old log house; for there were days and days when the children did not come to play. At such times Mrs. House Cricket was forced unwillingly to fall asleep. "Shameful!" she would mutter, as the last flicker of feeling departed. "Such a waste of time. If I had built in a bakery or by a brick oven how much busier I might be – and happier. I'm no better than those cousins of mine who make it a business to sleep half the year around." These last words were so soft as she scraped them off on the ridges of her wing covers that the children, who were just going home, stopped and Linsey said, "Do hear the cricket – it says, 'Good night; good night.'"

"By-by, Crick!" called Harry, as he leaped through the hedge and ran to the brook to stamp on the thin ice with his heel. "I shall move out," moaned Mrs. Cricket with her faintest note. But moving day did not arrive for many weeks and Mrs. Cricket awoke and went to sleep as many times; and finally the long hot days found her contentedly basking in the field among the warm grasses, having forgotten the troubles of the winter. "Dear me," she was softly drumming with her wing covers as she stopped in her evening search for food. "Dear, dear! how that big cousin of mine does scream! Perhaps he calls it music, but I don't."

She crept along slowly and hid in a fold of rain-worn paper near the home of her much criticized relative. He was sitting in his doorway singing his evening song as loud as he could, for he was singing with a purpose. The source of his music lay within his wing covers. Nearly one hundred and thirty fine ridges were on the under side of one wing cover (which is hard and horny), and these are hastily scraped over a smooth nervure which projects from the under side of the other wing cover. And that is how he sings. His song is bound to be a love-song and Mrs. House Cricket finding a few crumbs within the paper and deciding to stay all night suddenly heard the loud, harsh tones softened and, looking out, she saw her big cousin standing close to another dark form like his own. He was crooning softly as he caressed her with his slender, delicate antennæ – his mate, whom he had won to himself with his song. Mrs. House Cricket looked on for a moment and changed her mind about staying all night. "I'll creep under a leaf," she said, "and leave the lovers to themselves." So she slipped away and saw them no more until, some weeks later, she passed and, seeing her cousin in his door, stopped:

"I have all my eggs laid," she said, "and I'm going up toward the big house to stay until the weather gets cold."

"Mrs. Field Cricket has two hundred eggs right here under this long grass," he answered with great pride. "She is welcome," returned his cousin; "for my part I prefer quality to quantity." And she turned away to take a peep at the nursery which was warmed and nourished only by the sun.

"They will soon hatch out and dig homes each for himself like my own little ones," she said as she left them and began her long journey toward the farmhouse. "But mine will be wise enough to get near to a barn or house when they are grown up," she mused, "so that they need not sleep all winter, and they can be busy and useful to the world – busy, useful, cheerful, hopeful." She stopped to say one or the other of these good words often as she traveled on and sometimes she said them all at one time, as she pruned her wings which when folded, extended beyond her body into long, slender filaments like the antennæ.

At length, just as the maple leaves, all brown and dry, were blowing into heaps against the rosebushes and the lilacs, Mrs. Acre Tidae reached the farmhouse and slipped unobserved into the warm, clean kitchen.

She found a wide crack in the floor near the big chimney and squeezed in, digging it out to suit her body.

"The babies are all safe in their little holes by this time," she said, "safe for the winter. Perhaps by next fall they will be with me and we will all go out at night to eat crumbs," and she began singing, "Useful, cheerful – busy, hopeful." "Do hear the cricket," said Linsey, "It sounds like the one in the old log house."

"They are all alike, I guess," returned Harry, who was eating apples. "They are always jolly sad, I reckon." "Use-ful, cheer-ful, hope-ful," sang Mrs. Cricket.

ANIMALS AS PATIENTS

M. LEPINAY, the presiding genius of the bird hospital in Paris, has found by experience that his feathered patients chiefly exhibit a tendency toward apoplexy – the dove is particularly addicted to this complaint; consumption follows in order of unpopularity, with internal complaints occupying the third place. In the case of apoplexy, blood-letting – so popular a remedy in the days of our great-grandparents – is resorted to by means of a diminutive lancet inserted in a fleshy portion of the bird, and this is followed by small doses of such drugs as quinine, bromide of camphor, etc.

Apropos of dog's teeth, about a year ago there was exhibited at a certain show a very interesting and aged schipperke, who was at that time the only dog in the world boasting a complete set of false teeth. His owner, Mr. Moseley, is a dentist as well as a lover of animals, and it is entirely due to his skill that the little dog is able to eat with perfect comfort by the aid of the artificial molars provided for him by his master, who, on another occasion, provided a dog who had lost a limb in an accident with an artificial leg. The only horse possessing a full set of false teeth was the property of Mr. Henry Lloyd of Louisville, Ky., who had its diseased teeth extracted and replaced by a set of false ones.

A swan that had had a leg run over by a cart-wheel, causing a compound fracture, was recently successfully treated at Otley, England, while yet another swan had an operation performed at Darlington some little time ago that was very much out of the ordinary. In this instance, the unlucky bird had the principal bone in its right wing fractured in several places, the fracture presumably being caused by a brutal blow dealt by some unknown ruffian. A veterinary surgeon was asked to give his advice, and on his recommendation an amputation was decided upon, and this he successfully performed. The bird, sans a wing, was, when last heard of, well on the road to recovery.

THE TRIPLET TREE

CHARLES COKE WOODS, PH.D

MATTER per se is an evidence of mind. Every material thing enshrines a thought. Essential nature has no superfluities. To the thinker everything means something. In nature nothing happens. Everything is ordered. There can be no portrait of a landscape without a painter. There can be no landscape without a maker.

The visible forms that nature takes may be changed. Her invisible forms are changeless. The search for the changeless is the great and delightful task of art, literature, science, philosophy and religion. The ultimate in nature and in art is divine. The permanent principle survives the fleeting form. Nature's principles are relatively few. Her forms are multifarious. Tree life is true life. It is natural. It is therefore true. Nature's garb may be odd. It may even be deformed. But her inner self is never false. Sap, fiber, leaf, blossom, fruit; this is nature's apocalypse. It is Queen Beauty's progressive revelation.

Trees usually grow singly. Under certain conditions they may as naturally grow otherwise. The unusual is not necessarily the unnatural. Nature's resources are vast. She may at any time manifest herself in an unfamiliar form.

A triplet tree grows on what is known as "Green's Ranch" in Cowley County, Kansas. The ranch is located five miles northeast of Arkansas City. The trees are about three hundred yards from the west bank of the Walnut River. They range in a line running north and south. They are between forty-five and fifty feet high. The first two on the north are eighteen inches apart. The third tree standing at the south end of the row is fifteen feet from the middle one. They are water elms, and average about three and one-half feet in girth. The tree standing at the north end of the row is hollow at the base and, leaning over southward intersects the central tree two feet from the ground; thence it extends to the one at the south end of the row, and intersects it with a limb from either side twelve feet above the ground. The segment of the circle described by the leaning tree is about twenty feet. At the points where the cross tree intersects the other two, it is not merely a case of contiguity, but of actual identification.

Another feature of the leaning tree is that half way between its base and the trunk of the second, and on the lower side is an unsightly knot about as large as a half bushel measure. Half way between the center tree and the one on the south, and on the under side of the leaning tree is another lump similar to the first, about half the size. These unsightly warts appear to have been produced by a congestion of sap in the tissue of the intersecting tree. This triplet tree is a curiosity. It presents a strange phenomenon in tree formation. But nature is everywhere full of mystery and surprises.

COUNTRIES DEVOID OF TREES

ANYONE who has traveled through the comparatively treeless countries around the Mediterranean, such as Spain, Sicily, Greece, northern Africa, and large portions of Italy, must fervently pray that our own country may be preserved from so dismal a fate, says President Charles W. Eliot. It is not the loss of the forests only that is to be dreaded, but the loss of agricultural regions now fertile and populous, which may be desolated by the floods that rush down from the bare hills and mountains, bringing with them vast quantities of sand and gravel to be spread over the lowlands.

Traveling a few years ago through Tunisie, I came suddenly upon a fine Roman bridge of stone over a wide, bare, dry river bed. It stood some thirty feet above the bed of the river and had once served the needs of a prosperous population. Marveling at the height of the bridge above the ground, I asked the French station master if the river ever rose to the arches which carried the roadway of the bridge. His answer testified to the flooding capacity of the river and to the strength of the bridge. He said: "I have been here four years, and three times I have seen the river running over the parapets of that bridge. That country was once one of the richest granaries of the Roman empire. It now yields a scanty support for a sparse and semi-barbarous population." The whole region round-about is treeless. The care of the national forests is a provision for future generations, for the permanence over vast areas of our country of the great industries of agriculture and mining upon which the prosperity of the country ultimately depends. A good forest administration would soon support itself. —From January Atlantic.

SNOW PRISONS OF GAME BIRDS

A LATE season snowstorm, with the heavy precipitation that marked the storm of Feb. 28, gives the heart of the sportsman as well as that of the bird protector a touch of anxiety on the score of the ruffed grouse and quail. A downfall of that kind, followed by a thaw and then by a freeze at night, means the death of hundreds of game birds. The quail simply get starved and cold killed, while the ruffed grouse, or partridges, get locked up by Jack Frost and die of hunger in their prisons.

There is a patch of woods not far from Delavan, Wis., where there was until recently an abundance of these game birds. There was a local snowstorm there late in February last year, which was followed by a day of sunshine and then by a frost which covered the snow with a heavy crust. Grouse have a habit of escaping from the cold and blustering winds by burying themselves in the big snow drifts at the edges of the woods. There they lie snug and warm and are perhaps loath to leave their comfortable quarters. They sometimes stay in the drift until the delay costs them their lives, the crust forming and walling them in. It so happened to sixteen partridges in the woodland patch near Delavan. With the melting of the season's snows the bodies of the birds were found. They were separated from one another by only a few feet. It was a veritable grouse graveyard. —Tribune.

Warm grows the wind, and the rain hammers daily,Making small doorways to let in the sun;Flowers spring up, and new leaves flutter gaily;Back fly the birdlings for winter is done.– Justine Sterns.

THE RING-BILLED DUCK

(Aythya collaris.)

THIS duck has many popular synonyms, among others ring-necked, ring-billed shuffler, ring-necked scaup duck, or blue-bill fall duck (Minnesota), black jack (Illinois), moon-bill (South Carolina). It is found throughout the whole of North America, south to Guatemala and the West Indies; breeding from Iowa, southern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Maine northward. It is accidental in Europe.

The chief variation in the plumage of this species consists in the distinctness of the chestnut collar in the male, which is usually well defined, particularly in front. There is very little in its habits to distinguish it from the other "black-heads." Like them, it usually associates in small flocks. Its flesh is excellent, being fat, tender and juicy.

A STRANGE BIRD HOUSE

ADDIE L. BOOKER

WRENS are famous for choosing queer places for nesting-sites. They will nest in almost any situation about the house or yard that can be entered through any semblance of a hole. I place all kinds of odd receptacles about the yard for them every spring, which they seldom fail to occupy. These friendly and interesting little creatures appreciate such thoughtfulness, and repay it by fairly bubbling over with grateful song.

But the pair that afforded me the most amusement pre-empted a homestead that was not intended for them.

Our acquaintance began when preparing to remove the cook stove to the summer kitchen in May. In winter this kitchen is used as a sort of lumber room, and when clearing it of various odd and ends it was found that a pair of wrens had taken possession of an overshoe and laid the foundation of a home. The pair of overshoes had been tied together and hung on a nail in the wall, about five feet from the floor.

Needless to say they were left undisturbed, though not without many doubts of the feasibility of the enterprise, on account of the proximity of the stove. The shoes were the ordinary kind, fleece-lined rubber, and were only a few feet from where the stove would be set. These conditions warranted the expectation of disastrous results from extreme heat – at least so it seemed to me, but my little neighbors thought otherwise, and nest-building progressed rapidly. Being remarkably industrious midgets, the nest of sticks was soon finished and lined with soft feathers from the poultry yard.

Wrens are noted for their industry; unless in a very restricted situation the outside dimensions of the nest are enormous when compared with the interior, or cavity. And the twigs that compose the structure are out of all proportion to the size of the architects. I have seen twigs a foot long and half the size of a lead pencil, used in the construction of their nests. That birds so diminutive could carry such burdens in their tiny bills is indeed wonderful. It is said that a single pair have been known to fill a barrel, but no nest quite so mammoth as this has ever come under my observation.