Part 71

While May bedecks the naked trees With tassels and embroideries, And many blue-eyed violets beam Along the edges of the stream,

I hear a voice that seems to say, Now near at hand, now far away, “Witchery-witchery-witchery!”

* * * * * *

An incantation so serene, So innocent, befits the scene; There’s magic in that small bird’s note. See! there he flits—the Yellowthroat; A living sunbeam, tipped with wings, A spark of light that shines and sings, “Witchery-witchery-witchery!”

—Henry van Dyke, in The Builders and Other Poems.

“A whistle comes out of the bushes that line the wood lane perhaps when you are gathering the pink Wild Azalea. If you have a dog with you, he will get up and sniff about. The whistle is repeated, and you yourself think it is one of your companions who has rounded the turn calling you. No; then it is merely a Catbird mocking half a dozen other songsters and then jeering at them.

“By mere chance, glancing at a tree close above, you see a bird of good size with brilliant yellow throat, breast, and wing-linings, and a strong curved beak that appears almost hooked. Perching there is a Yellow-breasted Chat. He it is who is doing the mocking and jeering, but throws his voice in such a way that it seems to come from the opposite bushes. It is this power that gives him the name of ‘Ventriloquist.’ Being observed, he slips quickly out of sight, and then you notice the olive-green colour on his back. He has a song of his own as well as the power of imitating others and in the nesting season floats out upon the air, with spread wings and legs trailing behind, in a wild ecstasy of singing, looking to us humans very foolish, but is doubtless very fascinating to his mate on her nest hidden amid briers and bushes and thoroughly protected by vines.

Singers in Costume

“Among the birds many of the best vocalists are choir singers, as it were. We hear their voices first, and from hearing them desire to know and name the singers. The Thrushes belong to the first group. Others there are who come on the stage in brilliant costume; we see them first, then desire to hear them sing, and afterward remember them as pleasing both to eye and ear. These are the gentlemen of the Opera, and four of them made the garden and orchard their music-hall last summer and I do not doubt will do so again. In fact the Goldfinches have never left, but a flock in sober winter suits have fed at the lunch-counter on the sunflower heads and fluttered over the weed seeds in the fields all winter.

“The Baltimore Oriole is the first of the quartet to settle down to family life late in May. The Rose-breast follows him closely. But the Tanager waits for the heavy leafage of June to cover his brilliant colours while, for some reason not yet understood, the American Goldfinch keeps his bachelor freedom longer than any bird except the Cedar Waxwing. And though he wears his handsome yellow wedding-clothes from late April, he waits until he has feasted well on dandelion-down and the best grass seeds before he ceases to rove and takes to a bush, high maple, or other tree, to locate his soft nest made of moss and grasses and lined with thistle-down.

THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE

How falls it, Oriole, thou hast come to fly In tropic splendour through our northern sky?

At some glad moment was it Nature’s choice To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?

Or did an orange tulip flaked with black, In some forgotten ages back,

Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard, Desire unspeakably to be a bird?

—Edgar Fawcett.

“The Baltimore Oriole should be first mentioned, for his voice is that of the bugler that heralds actual spring, the long-expected, long-delayed mellow period, distinct from the almanac spring, that, when it once comes to us of the middle and north country, is quickly absorbed by the ardour of summer herself. Also is this Oriole the gloriously illuminated initial letter wrought in ruddy gold and black pigments heading the chapter that records the season; and when we see him high in a tree against a light tracery of fresh foliage, we know in very truth that not only is winter over, that the treacherous snow-squalls of April are past, but that May is working day and night to complete the task allotted.

“For as the Indian waited for the blooming of the dogwood, Cornus florida, before planting his maize, so does the prudent gardener wait for the first call of the Oriole before she trusts her cellar-wintered geraniums and lemon balms once more to the care of Mother Earth.

“This Oriole has history blended with his name; for it is said that George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, tired and discouraged by many of the troubles of his Newfoundland colony, in visiting the Virginia settlement in 1628, explored the waters of the Chesapeake, where he found the shores and woods alive with birds, and conspicuous among them, vast flocks of Orioles. These so pleased him that he took their colours for his own and they ever afterward bore his name—a fair exchange.

“The Baltimore Oriole comes of a party-coloured American family—Icteridæ—that to the eye of the uninitiated at least would appear to be a hybrid clan drawn from all quarters of the bird world. Yet it is typically American, even in this variety; for what other race would have the temerity to harbour the Bobolink, Orchard and Baltimore Orioles, Red-wing, Meadowlark, various Grackles, together with the vagrant Cowbird, in the branches of the same family tree?

“One of the many welcome facts concerning the Oriole is the ease with which he is identified; and I say he advisedly, for his more industrious half, who is the expert weaver of the pair, is much the more sombre of hue. In early May, or even as late as the middle of the month in backward seasons, you will hear a half-militant, half-complaining note from the high tree branches. As you go out to find its origin, it will be repeated, and then a flash of flame and black will shoot across the range of vision toward another tree, and the bird, chiding and complaining, begins a minute search along the smaller twigs for insects. This is the Oriole, Icterus galbula, as he first appears in full spring array,—his head, throat, and top of back and wings black, except a few margins and quills that are white edged. The breast and underparts, lower part of back, and lesser wing-coverts are orange flame, while his tail is partly black and partly orange.

“Two other tree-top birds that arrive at about the same time, one to remain and one to pass on, wear somewhat the same combination of red and black,—the Redstart and the Blackburnian Warbler. But, besides being much smaller birds, they both belong to the pretty tribe of Warblers that, with a few notable exceptions, such as the Chat and Water-thrushes, should be more properly called ‘lispers’ and not be confused with the clear-toned Oriole.

“Once the female Oriole arrives, usually several days after the male, his complaining call, ‘Will you? Will you really, truly?’ gradually lessens: and after a few weeks, when nest-building begins, it quite disappears, or rather, is appropriated by the songless female, who, while she weaves the nest, is encouraged by the clarion song of her mate. The plumage of the female is brown and gray blended with orange above, the head, back, and throat being mottled with black, while the underparts are a dull orange, with little of the flaming tints of the male.

“Though the Oriole exposes himself more freely to view than most of our highly coloured birds and in fact seems to regard his gift of beauty anything but seriously, he takes no chances, however, in the locating of his nest, which is not only from twenty feet above the ground upward, but is suspended from a forked branch that is at once tough yet so slender that no marauding cat would dare venture to it. This pensile nest is diligently woven of grasses, twine, vegetable fibres, horsehair, bits of worsted, or anything manageable and varies much in size and shape, as if the matter of individual taste entered somewhat into the matter. It has been fairly well proven that location enters largely into this matter, and that nests in wild regions, where birds of prey, etc., abound, are smaller at the top and have a more decided neck than those in the trees of home lawns and orchard. Of the many nests that I have found and handled or else observed closely with a glass, the majority have been quite open at the top like the one pictured, and the only one with a narrow and funnel-like opening came from a wayside elm on the edge of a dense wood.

“The female seems to be weaver-in-chief, using both claw and bill, though I have seen the male carry her material. It is asserted that Orioles will weave gayly coloured worsteds into their nests. This I very much doubt, or if they do, I believe it is for lack of something more suitable. I have repeatedly fastened varicoloured bunches of soft linen twine, carpet-thread, flosses, and the like under the bark of trees frequented by Orioles, and with one exception, it has been the more sombre tints that were selected, though I am told that nests are found made of very bright colours.

“In the exceptional case a long thread of scarlet linen floss was taken and woven into the nest for about half its length, the remainder hanging down; but on resuming my watch the next day, I found that the weaver had left the half-finished task and crossed the lawn to another tree. Whether it was owing to the presence of red squirrels close by, or that the red thread had been a subject for domestic criticism and dissension, we may not know.

“Be this as it may, in spite of the bright hues of the parent birds and the hanging shape of the nest that is never concealed by a branch upon which it is saddled, like the home of so many birds, an Oriole’s nest is exceedingly difficult to locate unless one has noticed the trips to and fro in the building process; but once the half-dozen white, darkly etched and spotted eggs it contains hatch out, the vociferous youngsters at once call attention to the spot and make their whereabouts known, in spite of sky cradle and carefully adjusted leaf umbrellas.

“If their parents bring them food, they squeal (yes, that is the only word for it); if they are left alone, they do likewise. Their baby voices can be heard above the wind, and it is only either at night or during a heavy shower, when a parent would naturally be supposed to be upon the nest, that they are silent.