CHAPTER XVII.. Birds At Work and Play.

BIRDS AT WORK AND PLAY.

It sounds very strange to speak of a bird at play. But you can see that birds do play, if you will give yourself the pleasure of watching them. They run along under the hedges and fences at hide-and-seek. They will stop suddenly and scold at one another for not playing "fair"; and they actually play at leap-frog, hopping over one another's backs, never once using their hands.

Sometimes they play "tag" high up in the air, especially the humming-birds and others of swift wing. You can see them playing when they are so high that they look like bumble-bees. Then perhaps they fly out of sight in the blue of the sky.

But the birds seem to do more work than play. It is as if they were saying,

"All play and no work Makes a bird a mere shirk."

Most father birds help their mates in the cradle making, whenever they can get away for a few minutes from the orchestra. But the mother has the care of everything and does the most and the finest work. We have sometimes thought the mother would do better if left all to herself, the fathers are so fussy and awkward at housekeeping.

Once, in the middle of winter, we saw a father linnet trying his best to coax his mate to build a nest on a little shelf on the upper balcony. He carried straws in his bill, and sat on the shelf, and coaxed his mate to his side, whispering to her, as if he were saying, "How nice this is," and urging her to "Go right to work." We guessed all that, you know, about their talking together, while we stood and watched them out of the window.

But the wise little mother bird just laughed provokingly and flew away. We thought she was laughing, for the father bird looked a little bit ashamed, and held his head down, though he still clung to his straw and remained for a while sitting on the little shelf. He might have known that was no time or place to build a cradle. It was midwinter, and besides the shelf was slippery.

It is common for a pair of birds to talk about housekeeping, or even to build, a long while before they need the nest. We have seen them hunting for the best spot and chatting about it, as if they were saying, "This will never do," or, "This will be just the right place when the time comes."

We have seen towhees and other birds picking up pieces of sticks and string in November, and carrying them about as if they did not know what to do with their treasures. We should think better of them if they would lay the sticks and twine away in a safe place until they are ready to use them. They seem never to think of that, but drop the things wherever they happen to be.

Birds like to pull at twine even if they have no use for it. They pick at the ends of fibrous bark, as if they valued most highly what costs them the most trouble to get.

A lady we knew was in the habit of throwing out of the window the hairs which came out of her head when she used the comb and brash in the morning. These hairs were caught in a bush, and the birds discovered them. One day her son found a bird's nest near the window, all lined with the white hairs which once grew on his dear mother's head. You may be sure the son keeps that bird's nest among his treasures.

Birds are very fond of hairs of any sort for their nest linings. We have many times placed them within their reach and sight, and they will take them up. They also use chicken feathers, if they are close at hand, and bits of soft paper.

If you want to see something that will amuse you, fasten on a tree or log a piece of old rope that has a ravelled end. Every day in nesting time the birds will tug at that ravelled end of rope, turning somersaults in their hurry, and spending more time chasing one another away from it than in actual work.

When a bird begins to build her nest, she uses coarse materials first, just as a house builder uses beams and timbers to begin with. The bird and the house builder save all the fine stuff for the last. Look closely at a nest when you find one. Pick up an old last year's nest that has blown down. This year's nests do not belong to you. See how there are, first, large sticks or weeds, or rolls of mud. Between the large sticks or weeds there are small, short ones. You can imagine that these pieces all together are nails and boards, and help to hold the whole nest together. Perhaps these may be all bound together with spiders' web or string, or even paper.

We have seen nests made of nothing but one kind of weed; usually a weed that has a strong smell, like wild sage or yarrow, is chosen. We think that the smell of these strong-scented weeds prevents lice or mites from invading the nest. Perhaps the force of habit or taste has led the bird to select this material. Probably her mother before her made the same sort of a nest, and so she thinks that is about the right thing to do.

Some birds, as the swallows, make mud houses, after the manner of the Mexicans. We often wonder if these people got their idea of house building from the birds.

Other birds use sticks and cement, as a man does brick and mortar. Some of the sea birds lay their eggs on a bare, flat rock. Even these do not roll off from the rock, for all eggs are oblong and cannot roll in a straight line. We have never seen a perfectly round egg. If you take an egg of any kind, as a hen's egg, and try to roll it down the floor or lawn, you will see what we mean. Then try a perfectly round ball. You will see that it is better that birds' eggs are oblong or elliptical.

The cactus wren makes her nest in the middle of a great barbed cactus in our mountain washes or desert places. The tiny Costa's humming-bird builds its frail nest in the prickly elbow of the low cactus that grows in California all over the barren lowlands. This is probably for safety. A snake could hardly reach a nest which was built in the middle of a cactus whose needles, or thorns, are sometimes an inch long.

Heleodytes brunneicapillus.

Calypte costæ.