Birds and Nature, Vol 10 No. 2 [September 1901]

Topsy does her part towards making the poor cat’s life miserable, and I guess Tony thinks she is quite successful.

She tips over his saucer of milk, pecks at his tail, swoops down upon him when he is eating, seizes his meat and flies to a place of safety before Tony realizes that he has been robbed. Topsy then proceeds to eat her booty, chattering to herself as though she had done a brave deed.

Tony stands in fear of Topsy, and she knows it, and is not slow in taking advantage of the knowledge whenever an opportunity presents itself.

When Topsy calls, “Tony, Tony,” the cat lengthens the distance between himself and the artful crow, for he knows by experience that she only wants the tuft of fur at the tip of his tail or a piece of the rim of his ear.

There is no trouble about feeding Topsy. As long as she has plenty to eat it does not matter what the food might be and she never stops to inquire whether it is fresh or not.

She is very fond of fish, and it is amusing to watch her when a fish cart comes along.

Mrs. Tyler patronizes a certain man that sells fish, and he stops in front of the house and blows his horn so that she will know he is there. Topsy has learned to associate the blast from the horn with “fish,” and the minute she hears a horn blown she starts for the street.

She always receives a piece of fish if it is Mrs. Tyler’s fish monger that is passing, but it often happens that it is a stranger going by and then Topsy follows the cart down the street to see if he will not throw her a piece of fish. If he does not, she comes back chattering angrily at being cheated out of so enjoyable a meal.

Ethel will call, “Topsy, Topsy,” and the crow will come hopping to her. “Shake hands,” and Topsy will raise one of her black feet and put it in Ethel’s hand for her to shake.

When Topsy wishes to go into the house she stands on the door step and calls, “Mamma, Papa or Ethel” until some one comes and lets her in.

She has many opportunities to leave the place and shift for herself, but she never goes far from the house and seems to prefer making her home with the Tyler family.

Martha R. Fitch.

THE WALRUS

(Trichechus rosmarus.)

The Walrus (Trichechus rosmarus) is a very fat, clumsy brute, much uglier than his picture, with a coarse, oily skin all wrinkled and scarred; long, protruding tusks; bristly whiskers and scuffling flippers that barely serve to move his bulky body over the land. In the water he is more at home, and though it does not require a high degree of strength and skill to dig clams, that being his daily occupation, yet he is able to keep very fat on the fruits of his industry and has much leisure to swim about or doze on ice floes and sea beaches.

It is only in the arctic regions that Walrus are found. Before the attacks of whalers and ivory hunters they were found as far south as Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but now they have retreated as far as possible into the frozen north, living in limited numbers about Hudson’s Bay, Davis Straits and Greenland and in Spitzbergen and Northern Europe. In the northern Pacific before the slaughter began the Walrus swarmed by thousands in the broad, shallow bays from the Alaskan Peninsula to Point Barrow, where the ice never melts.

The food of the Walrus consists of mollusks and crustaceans, which he digs from the muddy bottom with his long tusks, and the roots and stalks of sea-weed. He crushes the clams, shells and all, and swallows the mass, leaving digestion to proceed as it may. The stomach of a Walrus killed in Bering Sea by Mr. Henry W. Elliott contained more than a bushel of crushed clams in their shells, with enough other food to make half a barrel.

It is principally for its ivory tusks and the accumulated fat which comes from heavy eating that the Walrus is now being exterminated by whalers and hunters. To the Eskimo the Walrus means life itself. He eats the flesh, burns the fat for fuel and light, makes his boats, houses, harness and harpoon lines from the hide and trades what ivory he has not made into implements for the guns and whisky so acceptable to primitive man. The extermination of the Walrus will probably mean the extermination of the Eskimos, or at least an entire change in their habits of life.

Although a very fierce looking animal, the Walrus is reputed to be peaceful and inoffensive except when attacked in the water. At such times he has been known to hook his tusks over the edge of the boat and swamp it or even to call in his friends by bull-like roars and smash the boat to pieces. Besides man, his one enemy is the polar bear, which creeps upon him as he sleeps and worries him to death. As the Walrus’ skin is anywhere from half an inch to two inches thick and padded out by an average of six inches of fat, it is almost impossible to reach a vital place even with long teeth and bear claws, and the Walrus is often able to flounder into the deep water and escape by remaining under water until the bear has to come up for breath.

One of the favorite amusements of the Walrus is to float in the water with his hind flippers hung down and his nose comfortably above the wash and either fall asleep or indulge in deep roarings which are said to sound like something between the mooing of a cow and the baying of a mastiff and which often serve, like whistling buoys, to warn sailors from rocks and shoals.

The young are born in the spring, and generally on the ice floes, but being born fat the ice floes are probably as warm to them as is a nest to a little mouse. The mothers show great affection for their young, and will not abandon them in danger, even allowing themselves to be speared while protecting their offspring. As the Walrus are social by nature, wandering about in great herds, and as they also show a marked sympathy for each other’s misfortunes, it is very dangerous to wound one in the water lest the whole herd join in a common defense.

An adult male Walrus measures about twelve feet from the end of his nose to that of his very short tail, or fourteen feet to the end of his hind flippers, and weighs something over a ton. His girth is as great as his length, in fact, it has been often observed that his great circumference and too-loose skin seem rather a source of annoyance than otherwise to him, especially when he tries to land on a sandy beach. Even with the wash of the breakers he is rarely able to get beyond the water line, except as the tide goes down and leaves him, dry perhaps, but yet at the mercy of men and polar bears.

Dane Coolidge.

TOUCHING INCIDENTS ABOUT PIGEONS

The homing pigeon has proved that locality is a faculty fully developed in the bird’s little brain, but I heard, the other day, an instance of memory in the species that was most touching. A lady living in the top story of a Boston skyscraper had been in the habit of feeding the pigeons and sparrows who flew to the little balcony before her window, and had succeeded in taming some of her pensioners, one or two pigeons even eating out of her hand. One day, while passing along Park street, this lady was surprised to see a pigeon flutter away from some companions strutting in the middle of the road, and come upon the sidewalk, where it almost tripped her up in its efforts to attract her attention. It fluttered around her, evincing every sign of pleasure and recognition, and when she called it by name the little creature fairly flew at her! Now, in the midst of all that passing throng the pigeon knew its benefactor, who, with tears in her eyes, says its recognition gave her more joy than if the queen had saluted her. Under the circumstances, it was to her great regret that she had no crumbs to give him then and there. But who ever dreamed of being accosted in the street by a pigeon?

Our attention has been called by a traveling friend to an incident which occurred recently in the family of G. F. Marsh, a member of the Pacific Coast Pigeon Society. It certainly proved to him, and to all his friends in that region, in a most impressive manner the valuable services which may sometimes be rendered by the carrier pigeon, and probably explains some of his enthusiasm in that direction. His little baby boy was taken suddenly sick with most alarming symptoms of diphtheria.

The mother, watching by the bedside of the little one, dispatched a message tied on a carrier pigeon to her husband at his store on Market street, San Francisco. In the message she wrote the nature of the child’s alarming illness, and made an urgent appeal for medicine to save its life. The bird was started from the home of the family near the Cliff House, five miles from Mr. Marsh’s store.

The bird flew swiftly to the store, where Mr. Marsh received it. He read the message, called a doctor, explained the child’s symptoms as his wife had detailed them in her message, and received the proper medicine. Then tying the little vial containing the precious restorative to the tail of the pigeon, he let it go.

The pigeon sped away swiftly through the air straight for the Cliff. It made the distance, five miles, in ten minutes, a distance which would have required the doctor three-quarters of an hour to cover.

In twenty minutes from the time the mother’s message was sent to her husband the baby was taking the medicine.

Naturally enough Mr. Marsh is partial to pigeons, for he considers that he owes his baby’s life to one.

George Bancroft Griffith.

ON THE SAN JOAQUIN

It was in the latter part of the month of March that we started out from Fresno for a day’s outing on the San Joaquin river, hunting for hawk and owl eggs. The day was bright and warm, and we keenly enjoyed the ride of nine miles across the plains. Out past the old, deserted Holland Colony, where stumps of vines showed that the settlers had once made an honest attempt to win their daily bread out of the hard pan. The last half of the way lay across the hog-wallow country, that peculiar effect which has puzzled many scientists, but which all attribute to the action of water in long past ages. The rolling motion of rising over and descending these mounds was like the riding of a small boat over the waves of the sea. Here and there a burrow in the top of one of the mounds, the domicile of the frisky ground-squirrel or the billy owl, gave the landscape the appearance of a dish of mush cooking, with the air bubbles swelling up, and some bursting, leaving the little holes. On across canals, past a wheat country, and then the virginal hog-wallow lands that no plowshare has ever touched, covered with a short green growth which gives nourishment to bands of sheep, dirty, and with numerous lambkins, guarded by a few sagacious shepherd dogs and lonely, and equally dirty, bearded Mexican herders.

The mounds grow higher and the hollows deeper until we wonder if they stretch on forever and if we are lost among them, when all at once we come out right on the top of a high bluff overlooking the San Joaquin. The unexpectedness is quite startling. One could not possibly have suspected a moment before that we were within miles of a great river bed more than a mile wide, with steep bluffs more than 300 feet high on either side and a swift river sweeping down its channel in the center, but here we were right on the edge of it. We can look down almost perpendicularly and see, three or four hundred feet below us, great green meadows stretching to the north and south and to the trees and thickets that edge the river. The river from this distance and height seems but a thread in its once vast bed. What a sight – what a power it must have been when once it filled all this vast bed, which often is more than a mile across from bluff to bluff. On the further side a few trees grow right on the edge of the water, and then the bluff rises abruptly even higher than on our side. Buzzards and hawks are sweeping around us in the air, and dark spots in the tops of far-off trees betoken the presence of the objects of our search, the nests of the hawks. We begin the descent, which at first seems extremely hazardous, and even on further trial sufficiently steep to make walking down more of a pleasure than riding, as we find. The road or path winds around and around, as necessarily it must unless one would go head-first to the bottom. It is narrow and steep and the ruts deeply worn in places by the action of water. About half way down we come upon what was once a canal, and we can see the level ridge of its embankment stretching away above and below us along the side of the bluff, as it curves in and out. What a vast undertaking it must have been to build this great waterway along the face of the bluff. As we near the bottom clumps of elderberry and scraggly greasewood appear, and we come upon two little white eggs of the dove, laid in a hollow in the ground – an early bird surely.

At last we are safely down in the valley and across the meadow, which is one vast bed of poppies, a field of the cloth of gold. Then we come down among the huge cottonwoods and river oaks that line the river bank and unharness our horse and tie him where the grazing is good and then start on our search. We first make our way down to the river’s edge and, lying flat on the sand and rocks, drink to our content of the cool water fresh from the snow of the Sierras. The river is about five hundred feet wide and varies from two hundred to a thousand at this point. It is not high now, for the spring floods come later, with the melting of the snow, and in its deepest part is not probably over eight or ten feet, but it is swift – terribly swift. It is a good swimmer that can hold his own with the current for five minutes, and in the swiftest part it is impossible for a man to make any headway. The bottom is of shifting sand and the channel is ever changing. It is a deceitful and treacherous river, though laughing and sparkling in the sun to-day. It has taken value for value for all the gold it has given up. Here and there in the deep places under the shadow of the bank we can see catfish and big carp moving lazily about. The catfish and a fish known as the river trout can be caught with a hook and line, but the carp never touches bait, but there is considerable sport in spearing them.

We pass up the stream with our eyes directed at the tree tops, but now and then at the ever-changing aspect of the river, taking in all the beauties of nature and the curious formation of the steep sides of the bluff. The face of the bluff represents excellently the different geological layers of soil and stone, here chalky, there slaty, and here gaudily daubed with all the brilliant hues of a clay formation. The cottonwood and the willows are just beginning to show green. Now and then we come upon a nest in the cottonwood trees, far out over the water. Sometimes it is an old one, but often we are convinced otherwise by the sudden departure of a screaming hawk as we throw a dead limb in that direction. Then comes the hard climb, the toilsome shin to reach the first limb, with knees and elbows hugging tightly the smooth, slippery bark, taking advantage of every little knot and twig, and then, the limb gained, up from limb to branch, up into the air, into the cooling breeze, feeling for the instant the life of the birds, up into the swaying lesser branches, up to the tip-top, where the big, rough nest of sticks is firmly placed, the nether end of a jackrabbit carcass half hanging over the edge, and numerous ears, paws and small bones along the rim, and inside four handsome, large, speckled brown eggs of the squirrel hawk. Into our little sack they go, regardless of the remonstrances of the angry hawk, which is circling around overhead, and with the sack firmly held in our teeth we descend to the ground, pack the eggs into our case and go on. Sometimes in the distance huge clumps of mistletoe on the river oaks look like nests, but nearer approach shows the difference. Mistletoe is very plentiful here. What a place for a party of girls and boys to spend Christmas. Now we come upon a bend in the river where the ground is all strewed with driftwood left by some winter freshet. There is enough to keep many families in fuel for a long time, but it lies there untouched, inaccessible, to be carried on at the next flood – on to where? Who knows the ending of the travels of a piece of driftwood that starts from the mills far up in the Sierras? The wood is washed smooth and round and into every conceivable shape. At places we pass through thickets of rose bushes, blackberry vines, and elderberry, which grow profusely all along the river. In a many-limbed willow tree, an easy climb and not a high one, we find the nest of a horned owl, with five round white eggs within. The old bird stayed on the nest until we were nearly to it and then, with a peculiar cry, scrambled over the side and fell to the ground as if shot, then arose to a neighboring branch and sat there, uttering a cry like a cat and swelling out her feathers angrily, but all in vain. Further up the river ran in close to the bluff on our side, and as the traveling was rather difficult along land that lay at an angle of only five or ten degrees from the vertical, we scrambled to the top, at times slipping, and often pulling ourselves up by the weeds, so steep it was. A misstep would have sent us rolling into the river below. In the face of the bluff squirrels had their homes, and we found the dwellings therein of two handsome big snowy owls, but they had wisely chosen them in places where the five degrees of slope was in under us and a crumbling of the sand meant a straight drop of fifty or sixty feet, so we left them with “requiescat in pace.” For a quarter of a mile we followed along the top of the bluff, watching the river and the tree tops below us. Flocks of ducks were flying up and down the river, quacking vigorously. Now and then a big, ugly “shack” rose from a stump and flapped across the river. Isles big and little and middlesized were dotted in the stream, all heavily covered with underbrush, an excellent refuge for the ducks in their nesting season a little later on. A big white pelican sat on a log watching its victims in the water. The river curves and bends and doubles on itself, and never goes straight for forty yards at a time. At a bend we came upon a scene that delighted our ornithological eyes. One hundred feet below us, in the tops of a clump of cottonwoods, was a heronry. Dozens of big, basket-like nests blackened the tree tops, and perched on the very topmost branches were dozens of long-legged, crooked-necked, great blue herons. As we came upon them they started up, flapping their wings, stretching out their necks and pulling in their legs behind them. Uttering cries like those of the seagulls, they flapped off and lit away upon the plains, but within sight of us, and seemed to be holding a consultation. We could see into the most of the nests, and they were all empty. It was a little too early for the birds to begin nesting, and they were evidently mating and perhaps deciding who should have first choice. Some nests looked like old family residences of many generations, for they had several stories and additions, porticos and dormer windows, so to speak, in abundance.

We passed on, and when the valley widened out again we descended and sat down under the oaks to eat our luncheon. It soon disappeared, the last morsel, and we were on our way again. At long intervals farm houses appeared on the edge of the bluff, and in the river below one of them, on the opposite side of the stream from us, was a curious old water-wheel on a flatboat securely moored to the trees on the bank, and which laboriously and noisily jerked water up through a pipe to the bluff above. The meadows along the river are the pasturage of big herds of horses and cattle, and one is lucky if one’s perambulations are not interrupted by some inhospitable bull. As we ascend the river it grows swifter and more rocky and the top of the bluff rolls higher and higher and the hills appear in the distance. When we came to the first of these low hills we climbed the bluff and ascended it. It was a peculiar formation of stone resembling sand in softness or sand resembling stone in hardness, we could hardly determine which. It was seamed and ribbed, projecting cliff-like into the air, with boulders lying about and with caverns and precipitous sides. As we scaled to the top of it we scared away a number of turkey buzzards that had been watching our ascent, and it was evidently their nesting place, as we discovered traces of old nests and a good many bones of the hapless denizens of the plains. We started several of the big boulders at the edge rolling and plunging down, and, though most of them broke up in their downward career, they stopped only when, after a great plunge, they settled in the bed of the river. Sometimes as they thundered down they would startle a rabbit from his repose, and off he would scamper in great affright. But it was getting near sundown and we were miles from our wagon, and even when we reached that we would be ten miles from home, so we set out on our return with spirits not lacking, but appetites sorely pressing. The miles of climbing up hill and down hill in the pure air had done us more good than months in a gymnasium, and when, long after dark, we reached our home in Fresno town, what a supper we did eat.

Charles Elmer Jenney.

THE BENGAL TIGER

(Felis tigris.)

The Bengal Tiger (Felis tigris) inhabits the hotter regions of Southern Asia, but the species is found with certain color variations throughout the lower levels of all Asia from Siberia to the River Euphrates and as far south as Sumatra and Java. Next to the lion it is the strongest and most ferocious of carnivorous animals, and, on account of the heavily wooded country in which it lives being densely populated, the Tiger is even more destructive of human life. In Bengal alone three hundred and forty-seven persons were reported killed by Tigers in a single year, and this in spite of the best efforts of the government and people to mitigate the evil by poisoning, hunting and trapping.

Mr. William T. Hornaday, who hunted Tigers on his collecting trip in India, says in his book, “Two Years in the Jungle,” that only a limited number of Tigers, and those of the old and decrepit sort, ever kill men at all, but once they have tasted human flesh they continue to kill until some hunter reciprocates and brings peace again to the ravaged district. According to their habits in procuring food the people of India divide Tigers into three classes – the “game killer,” the “cattle lifter” and the “man killer.” The “game killer” lives in the dense forest, catches his own deer and wild hogs and is very self-respecting and honest, for a Tiger. The “cattle lifter” is a fat and lazy cat, who hangs around villages and kills a steer from the herds whenever he is hungry. Dragging away the carcass he returns to it until it is all eaten, when he kills again, while the timid and defenseless natives flee in terror or hover about, unable to protect their herds. It is after these fat “cattle lifters” get old and mangy that they turn “man eater,” finding it easier to catch the herdsman than to drag off a bullock. Then after the first taste they haunt the paths and villages, pouncing upon men, women and children until there is no safety, except within doors, until some hunter has slain the foe.

Among the English of India Tiger hunting is a favorite sport. A most picturesque and safe way is to mount on an Elephant and be driven about through the country beating up the Tigers from cover and shooting them with the huge four-bore rifles which the English sportsmen affect. The principal danger lies in the stampeding of the elephant or the attack of a wounded Tiger on the elephant himself. The more common way is to build a shooting platform by some water hole or carcass and lie in wait for the Tiger, or, better yet, have a small army of beaters drive him from his lair and past the spot where the platform has been erected.

Sometimes men who like to take chances follow the Tigers on foot and shoot them where they find them, which is often coming straight through the air. A glance at the illustration will show what powerful forearms and shoulders the tiger has. One blow from that paw will break a bullock’s back, and a wounded Tiger is more dangerous than one unhurt. Unless the brain is reached or the spinal column broken a Tiger will not stop in his charge, and the most active man can hardly avoid his clutches.

An adult Bengal Tiger measures ten feet from tip to tip, stands over three and a half feet in height and weighs five hundred pounds. If we consider the strength, activity and ferocity of the ordinary house cat and then think of it multiplied a hundred times we can form some conception of the Bengal Tiger as he lies down by his water hole and wonders what he will kill next.