Birds and Nature, Vol. VIII, No. 2, September 1900

When frightened from her nest the mother-bird will endeavor to attract the attention of the intruder by slowly flying away and occasionally feigning injury by falling.

Mr. John Burroughs, in his little book, "Wake Robin," writes in an admirable manner of the song and habits of this little bird. He says: "Have you heard the song of the Field-Sparrow? If you have lived in a pastoral country, with broad upland pastures, you could hardly have missed him. Wilson, I believe, calls him the Grass-Finch, and was evidently unacquainted with his powers of song. The two white lateral quills of his tail, and his habit of running and skulking a few yards in advance of you as you walk through the fields, are sufficient to identify him. Not in meadows or orchards, but in high, breezy pasture grounds, will you look for him. His song is most noticeable after sundown, when other birds are silent, for which reason he has been aptly called the Vesper Sparrow. The farmer following his team from the field at dusk catches his sweetest strain. His song is not so brisk and varied as that of the Song-Sparrow, being softer and wilder, sweeter and more plaintive. Add the best parts of the lay of the latter to the sweet vibrating chant of the Wood Sparrow (Spizella pusilla), and you have the evening hymn of the Vesper-bird – the poet of the plain unadorned pastures. Go to those broad, smooth, uplying fields, where the cattle and sheep are grazing, and sit down on one of the warm, clean stones, and listen to this song. On every side, near and remote, from out the short grass which the herds are cropping, the strain rises. Two or three long, silver notes of rest and peace, ending in some subdued trills or quavers, constitute each separate song. Often you will catch only one or two of the bars, the breeze having blown the minor part away. Such unambitious, unconscious melody! It is one of the most characteristic sounds in Nature. The grass, the stones, the stubble, the furrow, the quiet herds, and the warm twilight among the hills, are all subtly expressed in this song; this is what they are at least capable of."

THE WORSHIP OF NATURE

The ocean looketh up to heavenAs 'twere a living thing;The homage of its waves is givenIn ceaseless worshiping.They kneel upon the sloping sand,As bends the human knee,A beautiful and tireless band,The priesthood of the sea!They pour the glittering treasures outWhich in the deep have birth,And chant their awful hymns aboutThe watching hills of earth.The green earth sends its incense upFrom every mountain-shrine,From every flower and dewy cupThat greeteth the sunshine.The mists are lifted from the rills,Like the white wing of prayer:They lean above the ancient hillsAs doing homage there.The forest-tops are lowly castO'er breezy hill and glen,As if a prayerful spirit pass'dOn nature as on men.The clouds weep o'er the fallen world,E'en as repentant love;Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurl'd,They fade in light above.The sky is as a temple's arch,The blue and wavy airIs glorious with the spirit-marchOf messengers at prayer.The gentle moon, the kindling sun,The many stars are given,As shrines to burn earth's incense on,The altar-fires of Heaven!John Greenleaf Whittier.

BIRD-STUDY

To be intimate with Nature is as important to the investigator as the ability to technically classify the things found therein.

In this connection we copy, by permission, the words of Olive Thorne Miller, from the "School Room Methods and Nature Study:"

"Recognizing a bird on sight or hearing, knowing his nest and eggs, when he arrives in the spring, and when he departs in the fall, does not by any means imply that one is acquainted with the bird himself. All these facts are easily acquired; they have been set down in the books these many years.

But whoso really desires to know the little being so beautifully enshrined; to see his home ways with his mate and little ones; to find out his personal habits; his likes and dislikes; his tastes; his disposition; in a word his personality, for him is something very different from book study. He must go into the field and observe for himself; for well as we may know our common birds by sight, glibly as we can explain their anatomy, give their scientific names, and their place in our classification, of their lives and habits we are in almost total ignorance.

This is a field of inquiry as fascinating as it is fresh and unexplored. Nothing but the greed of collecting and the passion for classifying, could so long have blinded men to the charm of studying life instead of death, the individual instead of the skin. And this is the beautiful work left for us to do, to make the world acquainted with the lives of our little brothers in feathers.

For this work are needed, patience that knows no fatigue, accuracy of observation, enthusiasm that scorns such trifles as wet feet, torn garments, insect bites and stings, burning sun or blistering wind, and above all – lacking which all else is useless – truthfulness that will report correctly, without exaggeration or coloring. To one possessing these qualities a whole world of delight is open.

Nor is this world so difficult to enter as it seems at first. Science – whose help is needed – has, to be sure, shrouded itself in technicalities, buried its facts under scientific terms, and hidden its names in a dead language. But all this, which perhaps was necessary, can be got over. With a little courage, and some perseverance, this bristling array of difficulties may be broken through, and the charming goldfinch be as lovely and bewitching under the name of Spinus tristis, as of thistle bird, or yellow bird.

How shall we go to work? This is the first question always. Let me give you a few hints: Some fine morning dress yourself in modest-hued array, dull olive of medium shade best; discard all conspicuous details of costume; take off ribbons and veils, and all fluttering things; reject the spring hat with its eccentricities of flowers, fruits, feathers, or general fluffiness, and put on a plain shade hat, as near the color of the dress as possible; leave parasol, bag or basket and book all at home. Slip into a flat pocket on the outside of your gown or coat, a small note book with sharpened pencil attached to it, and suspend by narrow ribbon around the neck, so that it will hang above the waist and be ready for instant use, an opera glass without its case. On your left arm carry a light folding camp stool – and start out.

Bid adieu to your friends, and go alone, for the temple of Nature can never be entered in crowds, nor even in pairs. Turn your steps to the best place you know of; an old orchard, a grove with underbrush near a house, a ravine, a swamp, or the edge of woods. Walk slowly and leisurely along, with little noise of footsteps, and without swinging arms.

Arrived in your chosen spot look sharply around for the flitting forms of the birds. When you see one, stop at once; quietly slip your stool off your arm and sit upon it, with as little motion as possible. If you place it against a tree trunk, to furnish a back, you can be comfortable in that one position an hour without moving.

Now slowly raise your opera glass to your eyes, adjust the focus to bring the bird clearly before you, and proceed to study him. First you want his description so that you can name him. Look very carefully at him, his size and shape, his coloring above and below, his peculiar markings, the shape of his tail at the end, and the color and shape of the beak. As you settle one point write it in your note book, which you have quietly drawn out of its pocket.

His description recorded, proceed to note his manners; whether quiet or restless, whether he jerks his tail, or his head; walks or hops. See what he is doing; picking up insects, digging them from bark or ground, seeking them among flowers or leaves, or whether he is eating seeds from the grass or weeds. Sit there as long as that bird is in sight, and note down everything he does, even his calls and his song as it sounds to you.

When you go home take your manual and look for a description that matches yours. This is where troubles begin, not only the obscure scientific terms, and the Latin names, but the knowing where in that big book to start. You will be helped by observing what the bird ate. If he hammered on the bark and picked his food from tree trunk or limb, look among the woodpeckers; if he flew out, made a turn or two and back to his perch seek him among the fly-catchers; if he was eating seeds, look among the finches; and so on.

When by a little work you have passed this Rubicon – where so many turn back discouraged – you will reap your reward, success. Having persevered, and named your bird without help, you will feel a new pleasure in his acquaintance, as if he belonged to you, and you will never forget him.

Then go out and make acquaintance with another. You will find him easier to identify, and as you will become familiar with its idiosyncrasies the manual will lose its terrors for you.

Of course all this trouble will be avoided if you begin with the study of scientific ornithology. But in that case you are in danger of becoming absorbed in the science, and getting to care more for the dry bones and the dead skin, than for the living bird, and thus adding one more to the ornithologists, and taking one from the students of life."

THE OREGON JUNCO

Residents of the Atlantic, Middle, Southern and Middle Western States are, doubtless, well acquainted with the slate-colored Junco. This little feathered specimen is more familiarly known as "Snowbird."

The Oregon Junco ("Junco hyemalis var. Oregonus") is a sub-species, and is found throughout the Pacific coast region from California to Sitka. It is, by no means, confined exclusively to Oregon. Its darkest-hued plumage makes the bird very conspicuous when the ground is covered with a soft and spotless mantle of snow.

The sooty-black head, flesh-colored bill and white breast, sharply contrast in color. On the sides are pinkish colored feathers; the back is rufous-brown and the two outer tail feathers pure white, showing when the bird flies. In western Oregon it is a winter visitant, arriving with the first cool days of autumn.

As winter approaches these snowbirds become more plentiful, hopping about in the small bushes in quest of food. A great deal of pleasure and interest may be found in studying these birds, especially when the ground is covered with snow. By casting bread crumbs on the snow, the little fellows flock around, and are easily tamed. In winter their only note is a sort of chirp, sometimes uttered several times in quick succession when alarmed. With the warm days of spring they begin their song, sometimes many singing at once, and soon the majority disappear to a higher altitude to breed.

The Oregon Junco builds its nest in hollows in the ground under low bushes. The nest is constructed flush with the surface and in holes among the roots of bushes and trees, and under woodpiles. Usually, the nest is made of dry grasses rather loosely placed together, with a lining of cowhair, and contains four and sometimes five handsome greenish-white eggs, spotted and wreathed with purple. – J. Mayne Baltimore.

Olive Thorne Miller, in her fascinating little book, "The First Book of Birds," speaking of how the birds work for us, says: "Chickadees like to eat the eggs of cankerworms; and for a single meal one of these tiny birds will eat two hundred and fifty eggs, and he will take several meals a day. Now, cankerworms destroy our apples. When they get into an orchard in force, it looks, as Miss Merriam says, as if it had been burned over. Robins, cat-birds, and shrikes, and several others, like to eat cutworms, which destroy grass and other plants. As many as three hundred of them have been found in the stomach of a robin, of course for one meal. Ants are very troublesome in many ways, and three thousand of them have been taken from the stomach of one flicker."

Why kill these birds that are so useful to us and so beautify nature? Many others are just as useful and some that occasionally do damage amply repay us in other ways.

THE CALICO BASS

The Calico Bass (Pomoxys sparoides) is so called because of the mottled and variegated coloring of the body and fins. It is also called the Strawberry Bass, the Grass Bass, the Bitter Head, the Lamp-lighter and the Barfish.

It is abundant in all the lakes and ponds of the region of the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi river, where it shows a preference for quiet, cool and clear water and grass covered bottoms.

The Calico Bass is closely related to the Crappie (Pomoxys annularis) of the lower Mississippi valley. It is, however, seldom seen where the Crappie is abundant, as the latter prefers muddy sloughs and bayous and is not found as far north as the former.

The body of the Calico Bass is elongated, is much compressed and of a bright, silvery olive-green color. The sides and fins are mottled with a darker green or brownish-green, the blotches being gathered into irregular bunches. The vertical fins also have markings in the form of a network surrounding paler spots. The mouth is large and oblique. The usual length of the adult is about twelve inches.

The Calico Bass obtains its food largely from the lower forms of animal life, such as crustaceans, worms and insects.

It is said that "from the fact that it thrives well in slow-moving waters, it deserves the favorable consideration of owners of large mill ponds, where there is a steady flow of water, as it requires very little care, except the first planting of it in waters suitable to its nature. It is not averse to an occasional minnow, but is not regarded as peculiarly aggressive, though provided by nature with an armature that enables it to defend itself against all comers."

"Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bayWith fry innumerable swarm, and shoalsOf fish, that with their fins and shining scalesGlide under the green wave, in sculls that oftBank the mid sea: part single, or with mate,Graze, the seaweed their pasture, and through grovesOf coral stray, or, sporting with quick glance,Show to the sun their waved coats, dropt with gold."– Milton, "Paradise Lost."

THE GROWTH AND VARIATION OF FISH

How can you tell the age of a fish? This question is often asked and just so often is the answer unsatisfactory.

A fish is a cold-blooded animal; that is, his temperature is nearly the same as that of the water in which he lives. His circulation is sluggish and his appetite is a variable quantity. He has the capacity to take in large quantities of food at one meal and properly assimilate it; on the other hand he is able to fast for weeks at a time. He has his own notions about eating, and it is quite impossible to induce him to change them, and all this has considerable influence on his rate of growth. It is out of the question to expect him to grow when he is fasting; on the other hand he must draw on the fat he has stored up in his body to furnish him energy for his muscular movements and to carry on the ordinary functions of nutrition. The fish here has an advantage over the warm-blooded animals, for he does not need to generate heat to keep his body at a constant temperature. The amount of food often eaten at one time is quite remarkable. I remember once of taking nearly one pound of sunfish from the stomach of a Large-mouthed Black Bass. This does not indicate that a bass must eat such meals three times each day, it only shows his capacity to make use of a large quantity of food when it is abundant and his stomach feels the need of it. A trout is a good feeder; his stomach and mouth are large, much in size like that of the black bass. From experiments conducted at Neosho, Missouri, by Mr. Page, he found that a young trout did best on a daily ration of solid food equal to about seventy-five per cent of its weight. On this amount the trout would reach an average length of six inches in one year. The average amount of solid food consumed daily by a man is from one and one-half to two per cent of his weight, or more than twice that consumed by our active, growing young trout. As mentioned before, the trout is relieved from generating heat to keep his body at a constant temperature, and at one usually much higher than the medium in which he lives.

As an example of the ability of fishes to go for some time without eating, we need only mention our Pacific salmon. There are five species of these large fishes on the Pacific coast. In the early spring (April) many of the largest species, the Chinook, start up the Columbia river for the purpose of spawning. They reach the headwaters of the Columbia in Idaho early in September. During this journey they eat nothing. We know they do not eat, for of the thousands caught each year for the canneries none are found with food in their stomachs; besides, this organ has become much shrunken. If they did eat on this journey there would not, I believe, be enough animal and plant life in the Columbia to furnish each salmon with more than one meal. Now many of them make the journey against a strong current for more than one thousand miles, and reach an elevation of about eight thousand feet above the sea. When they leave the ocean they are in excellent condition, by the time they have reached their journey's end they are thin and haggard, their vitality is so reduced that soon after spawning they die – literally die of starvation. Their eggs hatch during the winter. By the next winter the young salmon are from four to five inches in length, and by the following fall or early winter they go to the sea, having reached an average length of about ten inches. After leaving the fresh water, which only afforded them a scant subsistence for nearly two years, the generous ocean gives them plenty of sea room and an abundance of food, which in a few years prepares them to repeat the long journey of their parents. We are, in case of most fishes, ignorant of their life histories, as we are of the salmon's. We know the average rate of growth of the salmon for the first two years, but we know nothing more of them until they return to fresh water to spawn.

I mentioned that trout in the Neosho Fish Hatchery grew, under favorable circumstances, to a length of six inches in one year. It must not be taken for granted, however, that trout six inches in length are one year old. In their native streams, in cooler regions, they will not often attain this length in two or more years.

In general we do not find large fishes in small bodies of water; neither do we find the fish in our small aquaria growing at an alarming rate. The fish disdains to outgrow his surroundings; he may feel his importance, and consider himself in many ways superior to the other fishes in the pond with him, but he will not permit himself to grow to such a size as to make the question of securing a living a difficult or irksome one.

Fishes spawn but once each year, and the time and length of the spawning season is not the same for all species. With some species the season is short, while with others it may extend through three or more months. In the latter case those produced the first part of the spawning season are at the end of six months much larger than those which appear at the close. It is therefore evident that the fishes of any single brood by the end of the year will vary greatly in size, often to such an extent that the broods of one season cannot be separated from those of the preceding season; especially is this true of our smaller species. Mr. Moenkhaus, in making a study of the two species of darters, the Sand Darter or "Johnny," and the Log Perch, found by collecting a large, miscellaneous lot of these fishes, from a given locality, that it was possible to separate them in groups according to size of one, two or three years of age, which indicates a quite uniform rate of growth for these two species.

Mr. Voris collected a miscellaneous lot of over five hundred specimens of the Blunt-nosed Minnow from Turkey Lake in Indiana, varying from one to three inches in length. These, when separated as far as possible, according to sizes, did not fall into distinct groups of different ages. In my own collecting and study of fresh water fishes I have always been impressed with the difficulty of recognizing the age of fishes, except that the smallest taken was considered to be the product of the preceding spawning season. Here is an interesting question to which but little attention has been given. Any one will find much interest in studying the rate of growth of fishes under different circumstances. We know that the rate of growth is in no way uniform, as is the case with our warm-blooded animals. We also know that among fishes there is no uniform adult size, as there is in case of warm-blooded animals (birds and mammals). In general, we cannot speak of a fish as being full-grown; at the same time there seems to be a limit of size for each species in each body of water, beyond which only a few go. The Chinook salmon we mentioned reach an average weight of twenty to thirty pounds, although individuals are occasionally taken of forty, sixty or even one hundred pounds weight. These large fishes are by no means common, the other species of salmon never attain the size of the Chinook.

There is an interesting family of fishes in our fresh waters known as Minnows; these fishes are too small and too full of bones to become a favorite for the table. They are the most helpless of all our fresh water fishes, being soft, and, as they are slow swimmers, they become an easy prey to larger fishes, and form a large part of their food supply. They have been constantly driven into smaller streams and shallow water, until they have become exceedingly dwarfed. Their only use in the economy of fish life seems to be to assimilate small organisms, converting them into such shape that they can be taken by the larger fishes. Now the Minnows of all the United States east of the Rockies are small and, except in case of a few species, they are less than six inches in length. The predatory fishes, such as the Sunfishes and Perches, Pike and Pickerel, are their worst enemies. In the Rocky Mountains there are none of these fishes, and many minnows there grow to a length of two feet or more. The only enemy of importance they have is the trout, but the minnow finds a more congenial climate in the larger bodies of water, too warm for the trout. The struggle for existence has been a severe one, especially so in our streams where species of fish are the more numerous. It has greatly limited the growth of most species beyond an average size, and is in many places responsible for the fact that often a species may become dwarfed in certain bodies of water. In the Salmon river in Idaho it was not an uncommon thing to catch trout of three or four pounds weight. In the smaller tributaries and in the smaller mountain lakes it was unusual to catch one weighing over one-half pound, the average being less than one-fourth pound. I have no doubt that many of those from the small lakes of one-half pound were as old as the large ones taken from the Salmon river.

Fish eat and grow very irregularly. The average size of individuals, which we would ordinarily call adults, for some species, is different in different bodies of water. Their growth is influenced largely by the size and depth of the body of water in which they live, also by its temperature and the amount of suitable food it contains. The value or extent of each of these influences is imperfectly understood.

The forms of fishes are very numerous. Some are extremely long and slender, as many of the species of Eels, Pipe-fishes and the like, while others are extremely short, like Sunfish of the ocean. Others, like the Trunk Fishes, are nearly equal in all dimensions. The average form and the one which best suits our idea of a fish, is the Black Bass, or other fishes of similar pattern. To know the advantages of these forms one must study the fishes in their native element. The peculiar forms which many species take are the most noticeable in those found in the tropics. The struggle for existence there is the most severe, and it seems as if each species had labored to take on some peculiar form which would assist most in its preservation. In this respect color also plays an important factor. It is in the tropics and among the many species of corals that we find the most highly-colored fishes.

Many fishes have the power to change their color, and this they can do in a very short time. The flounders are a peculiar family, the young when born are symmetrical. Early in life they take on the habit of their parents and lie on one side, the eye on the underside disdains to look downwards and so begins to move toward the other side. The bones of the head suit themselves to this change and soon our flounder has both eyes on the same side of the head. The upper side is colored much to resemble sand, and the under side becomes nearly white. The flounder protects himself by covering his body, except the eyes, with sand. Flounders live on sandy bottoms, some in shallow water, while others are found in deepest parts of the ocean. If flounders are placed in an aquarium and arranged so the light can fall on the under side of their bodies, this, too, becomes dark, much like the other side.