Part 7

SOME APRIL SPARROWS

For the first three weeks of April the ornithologist goes comparatively seldom into the woods. Millions of birds have come up from the South, but the forest is still almost deserted. May, with its hosts of warblers, will bring a grand change in this respect; meanwhile the sparrows are in the ascendant, and we shall do well to follow the road for the most part, though with frequent excursions across fields and into gardens and orchards. Of eighty-four species of birds seen by me in April, a year ago, twenty-one were water birds, and of the remaining sixty-three, twenty, or almost one third, were members of the sparrow family, while only five were warblers. In May, on the other hand, out of one hundred and twenty-five species seen twenty-three were warblers, and only eighteen were sparrows. To represent the case fairly, however, the comparison should be by individuals rather than by species, and for such a comparison I have no adequate data. My own opinion is that of all the birds commonly seen in April, more than half, perhaps as many as four fifths, are members of the sparrow family. There are days, indeed, when the song sparrows alone seem to outnumber all other birds, and other days when the same is true of the snowbirds.

The large and noble sparrow family, which includes not only the sparrows, commonly so called, but finches, grosbeaks, crossbills, snowbirds, buntings, and the like, is represented in North America by more than ninety species, and in Massachusetts by about forty. It is preëminently a musical family, and, with us at least, April is the best month of the twelve in which to appreciate its lyrical efforts, notwithstanding the fact that one of its most distinguished songsters, the rose-breasted grosbeak, is still absent.

Among the more gifted of its April representatives are the fox sparrow,--so named from his color,--the purple finch, the song sparrow, the vesper sparrow, the tree sparrow, the field sparrow, and the white-throated sparrow--seven common birds, every one of them deserving to be known by any who care for sweet sounds.

One of the seven, the purple finch, also called the linnet, is unlike all the others, and easily excels them all in the fluency and copiousness of his music. He is readily distinguishable--in adult male plumage--as a sparrow whose head and neck appear to have been dipped in carmine ink, or perhaps in pokeberry juice. His song is a prolonged, rapid, unbroken warble, which he is much given to delivering while on the wing, hovering ecstatically and singing as if he would pour out his very soul. He is a familiar bird, a lover of orchards and roadside trees, but is not so universally distributed, probably, as most of the other species I have named.

In contrast with the purple finch, all the six sparrows here mentioned with him have brief and rather formal songs. Those of the fox sparrow and the tree sparrow bear a pretty strong resemblance to each other, especially as to cadence or inflection; the song sparrow’s and the vesper sparrow’s are still more closely alike, and will almost certainly confuse the novice, while those of the field sparrow and the white-throat are each quite unique.

The fox sparrow visits Massachusetts as a migrant only, and the same might be said of the white-throat, only that it breeds in Berkshire County and single birds are often seen in the eastern part of the State during the winter. The tree sparrow is a winter resident, going far north to rear its young, and the remaining four species are with us for the summer.

The fox sparrow is to be heard from the 20th of March (I speak roughly) to the middle of April. In respect to voice and cadence, he is to me the finest of our sparrows proper, though I do not think him so finished an artist as the song and vesper sparrows. He may be recognized by his superior size and his bright rusty-red (reddish brown) color. Indeed, these two features give him at first sight the appearance of a thrush. He is one of the sparrows--like the song, the vesper, the savanna, and the Ipswich--which are thickly streaked upon the breast.

The tree sparrow passes the winter with us, as I have said, but abounds only during the two migrations. He is in full song for the greater part of April. His distinctive marks are a bright reddish (“chestnut”) crown, conspicuous white wing-bars, and an obscure round blotch in the middle of his unstreaked breast.

The white-throat, commonly a very abundant migrant, arrives about the 20th of April and remains till about the middle of May. His loud, clear song is remarkable for its peculiar and strongly marked rhythm. It consists of two comparatively long introductory notes, followed by three sets of triplets in monotone--like see, see, peabody, peabody, peabody. This bird, too, perplexing as the sparrows are usually thought to be, is perfectly well marked, with a white throat (not merely a white chin, as in the swamp sparrow) and a broad white stripe on each side of the crown, turning to yellow in front of the eyes. The crown itself is dark, with a white line through the middle, and each wing is adorned with two white bars. In size the white-throat comes next to the fox sparrow.

The song sparrow and the vesper sparrow not only sing alike, but look alike. The latter may be told at once, however, by his white outer tail-feathers, which show as he flies. These are two of our commonest and worthiest birds. The vesper sparrow, more generally known, perhaps, as the bay-winged bunting, likes a drier field than the song sparrow, and is especially noticeable for his trick of running along the path or the road directly in front of the traveler.

THE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK

There is never a May passes, of recent years, but some one comes to me, or writes to me, to inquire about a wonderfully beautiful bird that he has just seen for the first time. He does hope I can tell him what it is. It is a pretty large bird, he goes on to say,--but not so long as a robin, he thinks, if I question him,--mostly black and white, but with such a splendid rosy patch on his breast or throat! What can it be? He had no idea that anything so handsome was ever to be seen in these parts.

If all the questions that people ask about birds were as easily answered as this one, I should be thankful. It is a rose-breasted grosbeak, I tell the inquirer. Perhaps he noticed that its bill was uncommonly stout. If he did, the fact is exceptional, for somehow the shape of the bill is a point which the average person seems very seldom to notice, although it is highly important. Anyhow, the rosebreast’s beak is most decidedly “gross.” And he is every whit as beautiful as my inquirer represents him to be. In that respect he ranks with the oriole and the scarlet tanager.

1. Males. 2. Female. 3. Young Male]

He is distinguished also for his song, which is a flowing warble, wonderfully smooth and sweet. To most ears it bears a likeness to the robin’s song, but it is beyond comparison more fluent and delicious, although not more hearty. Keep your ear open for such a voice,--by the middle of May if you live in New England, a little earlier if your home is farther south,--and you will be likely to hear it; for at that time the bird is not only common, but a very free singer.

In addition to his song, the rosebreast has a short call-note, which sounds very much like the squeak of a pair of rusty shears--a kind of hic, which you will find no difficulty about remembering if you have once learned it. His nest is generally built in a bush, often within reach of the hand, but I have seen it well up in a rather tall tree. The two birds spell each other in brooding, and are not only mutually affectionate, but very brave. I have known the mother bird to keep her seat even when I took hold of the bush below the nest and drew her almost against my face. She, by the way, is a very modestly dressed body, being not only without the rose-color, but without the clear contrast of black and white. To look at her, you might take her for a large sparrow.

The rose-color of the male, it should be said, is not confined to the patch on the breast, but is found also on the lining of the wings, where it is mostly unnoticed by the world, but where his mate, of course, cannot help admiring it as he flutters about her; for it is certain that female birds have a good eye for color, and believe that fine feathers help, at least, to make fine birds. The shade is of the brightest and most exquisite, and the total effect of the male’s plumage--jet black, pure white, and vivid rose-red--is quite beyond praise.

The birds, happily, are not shy, and prefer a fairly open or broken country rather than a dense wood. Last season one sang day after day directly under my windows, and undoubtedly had a mate and a nest somewhere close by. The male, it should be added, has the very pretty though dangerous-seeming habit of singing as he sits upon the eggs.

THE BLUE JAY

Some years ago, as the story comes to me, two collectors of birds met by accident in South America, one of them from Europe, the other from the United States. “There is one bird that I would rather see than any other in the world,” said the European. “It is the handsomest of all the birds that fly, to my thinking, although I know it only in the cabinet. You have it in North America, but I suppose you do not often see it. I mean the blue jay.”

What the American answered in words, I do not know; but I am pretty confident that he smiled. The European might almost as well have said that he supposed Boston people did not often see an English sparrow. Not that the blue jay swarms everywhere as the foreign sparrow swarms in our American cities; but it is so common, so noisy, so conspicuous, and so unmistakable, that it is, or ought to be, almost an everyday sight to all country dwellers.

Strange as it seems, however, I find many people who do not know the jay when they see it. In late winter, say toward the end of February, when I begin to be on the lookout for the first bluebird of the year, I am all but certain to have word brought to me by some one of the village school-teachers that bluebirds have already come. Johnny This or Jimmy That saw one near his house several weeks ago! That “several weeks ago” makes me suspicious, and on following up the matter I discover that John and James have seen a large blue bird, larger than a robin, with some black and white on him--all white underneath--and wearing a tall crest or topknot. Then I know that they have mistaken a blue bird for a bluebird. They have seen a blue jay, a bird of a very different feather. He has been with us all winter, as he always is, and has been in sight from my windows daily. So easy is it for boys and men to guess at things, and guess wrong.

The jay is a relative of the crow, and has much of the crow’s cleverness, with more than the crow’s beauty. Like the crow, if he has an errand near houses, he makes a point of doing it in the early morning before the folks who live in the houses have begun to stir about. In fact, he knows us, in some respects at least, better than we know him, and habitually takes advantage of what no doubt seems to him a custom of very late rising on the part of human beings.

Among small birds of all sorts he bears a decidedly bad name. In nesting time you may hear them uttering a chorus of loud and bitter laments as often as he appears among them. Their eggs and young are in danger, and they join forces to worry him and drive him away. One bird sounds the alarm, another hears him and hastens to see what is going on, and in a few minutes the whole neighborhood is awake. And it stays awake till the jay moves off. After that piece of evidence, you do not need to see him doing mischief. The little birds’ behavior is sufficiently convincing. As Thoreau said, the presence of a trout in the milk is something like proof.

And jays, in their turn, club together against enemies larger than themselves. Last autumn I was walking through the woods with a friend,--a city schoolmaster eager for knowledge, as every schoolmaster ought to be,--when we heard a great screaming of blue jays from a swampy thicket on our right hand.

“Now what do you suppose the birds mean by all that outcry?” said my friend.

I answered that very likely there was a hawk or an owl there.