Part 10

The confusion of the two birds is widespread, in spite of Audubon’s testimony that he had seldom seen a farmer or even a boy in the United States who did not know the difference between them. But, while they resemble each other closely, they are sufficiently unlike to be classified not only as separate species, but as species of different genera. As for the difference in their habits, it is such as any one may see and appreciate. The nighthawk, for all its name, is not a night bird. It is most active at twilight,--in other words, it is crepuscular instead of nocturnal,--but is often to be seen flying abroad at midday. The whip-poor-will, on the contrary, is quiet till after dark. Then it starts into fullness of life, singing with the utmost enthusiasm, till the listener wonders where it can find breath for such rapid and long-continued efforts. The nighthawk is not a musician. While flying it frequently utters a single note, of a guttural-nasal quality, almost indistinguishable from the so-called bleat of the woodcock; but, in place of singing, it indulges in a fine aerial tumbling performance, much in the manner of the snipe. This performance I have many times observed in early summer from the Public Garden in Boston. I have seen it also in September, though it is doubtless much less common at that season. The bird rises gradually to a considerable height, and presently drops like a stone almost to the ground. At the last moment it arrests itself suddenly, and then is heard a very peculiar “booming” noise, whether produced by the wings or by the voice, I will not presume to say.

The most attractive feature of the nighthawk, to my eye, is its beautiful and peculiar flight--a marvel of ease and grace, and sufficient to distinguish it at a glance from every other New England bird. It is a creature of the upper air, never skimming the ground, so far as I know, and as it passes overhead you may easily see the large white patch in the middle of each long wing--a beauty spot, by the way, which is common to both sexes, and is wanting in the whip-poor-will.

The whip-poor-will’s chief distinction is its song--a song by itself, and familiar to every one. Some people call it mournful, and I fear there are still a few superstitious souls who listen to it with a kind of trembling. I have heard of the bird’s being shot because the inhabitants of a house could not bear its doleful and boding cry, as they were pleased to consider it. To my ears it is sweet music. I take many an evening stroll on purpose to enjoy it, and am perennially thankful to Audubon for saying that he found the whip-poor-will’s “cheering voice” more interesting than the song of the nightingale.

It will surprise unscientific readers to be told that the nearest relatives of whip-poor-wills and nighthawks are the swifts and the hummingbirds. As if a chimney swift were more like a whip-poor-will than like a swallow! and, still more absurd, as if there were any close relationship between whip-poor-wills and hummingbirds! Put a whip-poor-will and a ruby-throated hummer side by side and they certainly do look very little alike--the big whip-poor-will, with its mottled plumage and its short, gaping beak, and the tiny hummingbird with its burnished feathers and its long needle of a bill. Evidently there is no great reliance to be placed upon outside show, or what scientific men call “external characters.” We might as well say that the strawberry vine and the apple-tree were own cousins. Yes, so we might, for the apple-tree and the strawberry vine are cousins--at least they are members of the same great and noble family, the family of the roses! We shall never get far, in science or in anything else, until we learn to look below the surface.

XVI

THE FLICKER

The flicker is the largest of our common American woodpeckers, being somewhat longer and stouter than the robin. It is known, by sight at least, to almost every one who notices birds at all, and perhaps for this reason it has received an unusual number of popular names. “Golden-winged woodpecker,” which is probably the best known of these, comes from the fact that the bird’s wings are yellow on the under side. “Harry Wicket,” “Highhole,”--because its nest is sometimes pretty far above the ground,--“Yellowhammer,” and “Pigeon-woodpecker” are also among its more familiar nicknames.

Unlike other birds of its family, the flicker passes much of its time on the ground, where it hops awkwardly about, feeding upon insects, especially upon ants. As you come near it, while it is thus engaged, it rises with a peculiar purring sound, and as it flies from you it shows a broad white patch on its rump--the lower back, above the root of the tail. Every one who has ever walked much over grassy fields must have seen the bird and been struck by this conspicuous light mark. He must have noticed, too, the bird’s peculiar up-and-down, “jumping” manner of flight, by which it goes swooping across the country in long undulations or waves.

The flicker’s general color is brown, with spottings and streakings of black, and more or less of violet or lilac shading. On the back of its neck it wears a band of bright scarlet, and across its breast is a conspicuous black crescent.

It is fond of old apple orchards, and often makes its nest in a decaying trunk. In some places, near the seashore, especially,--where it is commoner than elsewhere in winter, and where large trees are scarce,--it makes enemies by its habit of drilling holes in barns and even in churches. I remember a meeting-house on Cape Cod which had a good number of such holes in its front wall--or rather it had the scars of such holes, for they had been covered with patches of tin. That was a case where going to church might be called a bad habit.

In fall and winter, if not at other seasons, the flicker feeds largely upon berries. In years when the poison ivy bears a good crop, I am pretty sure to find two or three flickers all winter long about a certain farm, the stone walls of which are overrun with this handsome but unwholesome vine, although it is hard to imagine that the dry, stony fruit should yield much in the way of nourishment, even to a woodpecker.

As spring comes on, the flicker becomes numerous and very noisy. His best-known vocal effort is a prolonged hi-hi-hi, very loud and ringing, and kept up until the listener wonders where the author of it gets his wind. This, I think, is the bird’s substitute for a song. He has at all times a loud, unmusical yawp,--a signal, I suppose,--and in the mating season especially he utters a very affectionate, conversational wicker or flicker. Every country boy should be familiar with these three notes.

1. Male. 2. Females]

But besides being a vocalist,--we can hardly call him a singer,--the flicker is a player upon instruments. He is a great drummer; and if any one imagines that woodpeckers do not enjoy the sound of their own music, he should watch a flicker drumming with his long bill on a battered tin pan in the middle of a pasture. Morning after morning I have seen one thus engaged, drumming lustily, and then cocking his head to listen for an answer; and Paderewski at his daily practice upon the piano could not have looked more in earnest. At other times the flicker contents himself with a piece of resonant loose bark or a dry limb.

One proof that this drumming--which is indulged in by woodpeckers generally--is a true musical performance, and not a mere drilling for grubs, is the fact that we never hear it in winter. It begins as the weather grows mild, and is as much a sign of spring as the peeping of the little tree-frogs--hylas--in the meadow.

The flicker’s nest, as I have said, is built in a hole in a tree, often an apple-tree. Very noisy in his natural disposition, he keeps a wise silence while near the spot where his mate is sitting, and will rear a brood under the orchard-owner’s nose without betraying himself. The young birds are fed from the parent’s crop, as young pigeons and young hummingbirds are. The old bird thrusts its bill down the throat of the nestling and gives it a meal of partially digested food by what scientific people call a process of regurgitation. Farmers’ boys, who have watched pigeons feeding their squabs, will know precisely what is meant.

XVII

THE BITTERN

It was a great day for me when I first heard the so-called booming of the bittern. For more than ten years I had devoted the principal part of my spare hours to the study of birds, but though I had taken many an evening walk near the most promising meadows in my neighborhood, I could never hear those mysterious pumping or stake-driving noises of which I had read with so much interest, especially in the writings of Thoreau.

The truth was, as I have since assured myself, that this representative of the heron family was not a resident within the limits of my everyday rambles, none of the meadows thereabout being extensive and secluded enough to suit his whim.

There came a day, however, when with a friend I made an afternoon excursion to Wayland, Massachusetts, on purpose to form the stake-driver’s acquaintance. We walked up the railway track across the river toward Sudbury, and were hardly seated on the edge of the meadow, facing the beautiful Nobscot Hill, before my comrade said, “Hark! There he is!”

Yes, that certainly was the very sound--an old-fashioned wooden pump at work in the meadow.

We listened intently for perhaps half a dozen times; then I proposed going further up the track to get the notes at shorter range, and possibly--who could tell what unheard-of thing might happen?--to obtain a sight of the bird. We advanced cautiously, though as we were on the track, six feet or more above the level of the meadow, there was no chance of concealment, and the bittern went on with his performance.

Meanwhile we maintained a sharp lookout, and presently I descried a narrow brown object standing upright amidst the grass--a stick, perhaps. I lifted my opera-glass and spoke quickly to my friend: “I see him!”

“Where?” he asked; and when I lowered my glass and gave him the bird’s bearings as related to the remains of an old hayrick not far off, he said, “Why, I saw that, but took it for a stick.”

“Yes, but see the eye,” I answered.

Within half a minute the bird suddenly threw his head forward and commenced pumping. This was good luck indeed,--that I should surprise my very first bittern in his famous act, a thing which better men than I, after years of familiarity with the bird, had never once succeeded in accomplishing. Who says that Fortune does not sometimes favor the fresh hand?

The fellow repeated the operation three times, and between whiles moved stealthily through the grass toward the leavings of the haycock before mentioned.