Our bird friends; containing many things young folks ought to know--and likewise grown-ups

Contents

CHAPTEH PAGE!

I Facts About Birds 3

II More Facts About Birds . . . ... , .9

Chapter I Facts About Birds

LL birds lay eggs — otherwise they would not be birds. All birds are covered, or nearly covered, with feathers, but in a few cases the feathers are almost as fine as hair or fur. But all birds do not fly, although all of them have some kind of wings. Some birds are so large and have such small wings that the wings are not able to carry them. In such cases you will find either that the bird can run very fast or that it is a good swimmer, so that it is not necessary for it to fly, either in catching its food or escaping its enemies.

All animals, including birds, for birds belong to the animal kingdom, seem to be built for just one purpose — to live. In order to live it must get something to eat and be able to get out of the way of its enemies.

If you will take a bird — or any animal for that matter — and examine it, you will find that everything about it is useful in assisting it to live. For instance, the color of the quail is to enable it to hide, and its toe nails are to enable it to scratch for bugs and buried seeds.

Birds that can fly rapidly do not have to hide so well as other birds, to escape the enemies that lie in wait. The quail cannot fly so fast as a hawk, but it can hide so cleverly that a hawk cannot find it.

The bird's bill takes the place of teeth. People sometimes say that a duck has teeth, but that is not the case. A duck's bill is rough on the edges like a file, so that it can hold slippery frogs and little minnows, but it does not use its bill in chewing food— just in gathering it and holding it until it can get the food into its mouth and swallow it.

The skull of a bird is different from the skull of other animals. The skull of a squirrel is composed of several bones, fastened together in a sort of saw-tooth style, like the edges of two saws put together. A bird's skull is in one piece.

In some birds, the parrot for instance, the upper bill is a part of the skull, but in most birds the bill is only fastened to the

FACTS ABOUT BIRDS skull. In such cases there is generally a straight bill or a very long one — or one that is both straight and long.

And right there is a little thing worth knowing. Where a bird's bill is only fastened to its skull there is a soft, spongy growth that forms a sort of rubber ball. When such a bird pecks at a hard substance, it does not jar its head as would be the case if the bill were a part of the skull. If a parrot were to peck at a telegraph pole as hard as a woodpecker does, it would give him the headache, but a woodpecker never feels the jar because he has a rubber-tired bill, as you might say.

Many birds have a larger brain in proportion to their size than has man. A man's brain is from one twentieth to one thirtieth of his entire body — or ought to be — but the brain of a canary bird is one fourteenth of its entire body. But the same proportion does not hold good in all birds. A goose has a brain of only one three-hundred-and-sixtieth of its body, and an eagle of one two-hundred-and-sixtieth of its body, while the little old English sparrows have a brain of one twenty-fifth of their weight.

MORE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS

Chapter II More Facts About Birds

"AVE you ever noticed the framework of a bird? If you have noticed the carpenters putting up a new house you have seen a lot of planks and crosspieces and sills and rafters and all kinds of timbers and pipes, strung about in many ways.

Well, if you could see a bird before it gets its feathers and flesh on it, it would look like a new house — so many bones and strings and leaders running here and there. Every one of them serves some useful purpose, and in hardly any two birds are the rafters and sills and plumbing exactly alike.

It is no wonder that a chicken does not fall off of the limb when it goes to sleep ; it can't. It is built to sit upon a limb and sleep. When it sits down its toes close up and it cannot open them until it rises. The only way a chicken could fall off of a limb would be for it to stand up.

The leaders running down into the toes are too short, in one sense of the word. When the leg is bent the toes close. When an old rooster stands with one leg doubled up, the toes are closed. Watch an old hen walk; every time she raises her foot the toes close in. The birds that do not roost upon limbs have longer leaders in their legs and when they sit down their toes do not have to close.

Feathers do not grow upon anything but birds. When examined by the chemist, a feather is found to contain about the same substance as hair, or horn, or hoof. There is no blood in feathers, nor nerves. That is, there is no "feeling" in a feather. It does not hurt a bird to clip the feathers, but it must hurt some to pull them out, just as it hurts a boy to pull out his hair.

The small feathers, or down, upon the breast and sides of a duck or goose, however, grow so shallow and come out so easily, that it probably does not hurt the bird to pluck it as is done in the spring by the farmer's wife. Those small feathers would drop out any way, as a duck or goose does not need so many feathers in the summer.

Birds that live in water, or aquatic birds as they are called by people who know a great deal and want to use big words, have more feathers, and of a different kind, than other birds. The

MORE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS 11

feathers upon some water fowl are so thick and lie so closely to the bird that shot will not reach the skin. The feathers are also oily so that water will not go through them. The diving birds do not get wet, and if you will take a bird that has just come out of the water, you will find its skin nice and dry.

There are three separate parts to a feather. First, the quill, or hollow, bony-like substance at the bottom and which grows in the bird. Then the shaft, which is only a continuation of the quill and is the center of the feather. And the vane or beard, that fine, thin substance which protrudes from the shaft. There are other scientific parts of a feather, but we are not going into detail here.

Have you ever noticed that when you get frightened suddenly little bumps form upon the skin — goose bumps some people call them? Well, if you were a bird there would be a feather in each one of those little bumps, and, of course, when the bumps "raised up" your feathers would be ruffled. That is why the feathers upon a bird ruffle up when the bird is scared or mad. It is the same process which causes the hair upon a dog's back to rise when it gets mad — or an old cat. You know how the fur on her back stands up straight at times.

There are some birds that are dark in summer and snow white in winter. That is not because the feathers change color, but because new feathers grow out. New feathers are growing out on birds all the time.

HOW BIRDS FLY AND SING

Chapter III How Birds Fly And Sing

BIRD contains more air than any other animal in proportion to its size. It is a living balloon, almost. That is why it can fly so easily, and it is also the reason a small bird can make such a big noise with its throat.

Every bone in a bird is hollow and contains air. The quill of the feather is hollow and the shaft, while filled with a spongy substance, also contains much air. There are many air cells and passages in a bird and it can fill them or empty them directly from its lungs. In many birds there is actually a connection between the lungs and the feathers, so that such birds can pump the air into the quills or draw it out as it desires.

When it is remembered that a bird has such a splendid supply of air, it is not strange that it can make music. The throat of a songster is built very much as is a clarionet, containing a sort of reed over which the air flows and which makes a sound.

Although there are no mute birds, all of them do not sing. It is only the male bird, as a general thing, that sings. Women would probably say that the females are so busy they do not have time to sing. The female is the housekeeper with birds as with people. The male does most of the strutting around and bragging, and wears the most gorgeous costume — we are talking about birds, not about people — but the mother bird looks after the children most of the time — and it is a lot of worry to keep them from getting into trouble. The male does help to feed them, and will protect them while the female is absent, but it is the mother bird to whom the young ones owe most.

A bird has a double shutter to its eye. When a boy wants to look at the sun he has to get a piece of smoked glass, but when a bird wants to look at the sun it can just close the inside shutter — and there you are. Then, when it turns its head away from the sun — up goes the shutter.

A fish has no eyelids and cannot close its eyes at all. That is because a fish does not need any protection for its eyes, because the rays of the sun are not so intense after they pass through the water. But when the aquatic birds dive, they need something over their eyes to keep the water out of them, and they

HOW BIRDS FLY AND SING 17

draw down the inside shutter, through which they can still see a little.

All birds are not alike when they are first hatched. That is, some of them jump out of the shell and go running about and pick up things to eat, while others break through the shell while they are still blind and with never a feather to cover their little red bodies. There isn't much difference in the appearance of a young meadow lark and a young mouse — both of them are little, wormy-like naked things with big black dots where they are going to have eyes. But later on fur grows out upon one and feathers upon the other.

An ostrich comes out of the shell a great, awkward thing and gets up and runs around and eats, and if it ever stops eating it is because it can find nothing else to eat. That is why some folks say boys are as hungry as ostriches.

The song birds are all helpless when they are hatched and have to be brought up carefully. A baby quail can run almost as fast as a boy, when it is first hatched, and it can hide so quickly that a hawk cannot find it.

Birds do not have the sense of smell that other animals have. It used to be supposed that birds could smell an object when they were away off from it, but that is probably not true. An experiment has been tried many times with buzzards, which were supposed to be able to smell a dead animal for miles. A dead animal is hidden in the leaves or weeds so that it cannot be seen, and is permitted to decay. If it cannot be seen a buzzard will not find it. Then, stuffed skins of animals, wholly without odor, have been placed where they could be seen and it was only a little while until the buzzards flying over saw the objects and at once alighted upon them and began trying to eat the dummies.

Nor can all birds taste. There are a few that can, but as a rule birds do not taste their food. When a bird picks up something which it decides not to eat and puts it aside, it is not because the object does not taste exactly right. Birds can gobble down red peppers without knowing that they are hot.

But when it comes to seeing, a bird excels all other things. Its eyes are made like telescopes and are self-adjusting. In most birds the eyes are fixed in the side of the head, but that is not invariably the case. An owl's eyes are fixed in the front of its head and they are fixed to stay fixed. The owl has to turn its whole head when it wants to turn its eyes. They can

HOW BIRDS FLY AND SING not look out of the corners of their eyes, as we sometimes say about people.

There used to be a funny story told about an owl that sat upon the top of a pole. A boy found out that the owl would twist its head in any direction he walked, so he walked around and around the pole and the owl finally twisted its head off. But that is only a funny story and is not true.

THE FLICKER OR YELLOW-HAMMER mtimmmi 1

Chapter IV The Flicker Or Yellow-hammer

OME people call a flicker a yellow-hammer, and others call it a highholer. The people who know a great deal about birds say it is the pigeon woodpecker, and it is often described as a yellow-shafted woodpecker. But flicker is good enough name, for that is what it says more frequently than it says anything else.

A full-grown flicker is a foot long and has a wing spread of six inches more than its length — eighteen inches from tip to tip. It is a gorgeous bird, well marked, and unlike any other bird in coloring. There are all shades of yellow upon it, a little jet black, some bright red, and the feathers, individually, contain round spots and straight lines. It is a beauty, this flicker is, so far as coloring goes.

Its home is in the hollow of a tree. It pecks a round hole in a snag or pole or tree — generally dead wood, because the inside of dead wood is often decayed to the extent that after a bird gets a hole through the shell it has little trouble in rounding out a nest.

Whenever it is possible to do so, the flicker makes two entrances to its home, one above the other, and sometimes on opposite sides of the snag. When a bad boy climbs up and puts his hand over one hole the flicker can dart out of the other.

A flicker lays four eggs, pure white, and when the young birds are first hatched they are covered with down. The first feathers show some color, but it is not until the flicker gets full-grown that he comes out in his best suit.

When the mother bird is sitting upon the eggs the gentleman of the house is very attentive. He will catch a nice juicy ant and carry it to his wife. Occasionally he will take the place of the female upon the nest while she goes out for exercise and to get a little water, but if his good wife does not hurry home he will go out and look for her. He seems to get tired sitting there by himself.

It should have been stated that the flicker is also called the ground woodpecker, because it feeds upon the ground a great deal. Its feet are made for climbing trees and it can stick to

I

SS5

fe JS >R

THE FLICKER OR YELLOW-HAMMER 25

the side of a telegraph pole and scoot around on the other side as a boy comes in sight, but it enjoys getting down on the ground and hunting the nests of ants.

And because its foot is built for climbing trees, the flicker is a poor walker. It stumbles over the ground and cannot run at all. It does not scratch like the quail, but it has a long, sharp bill, and a tongue like a piece of wire with a barb upon the end, and it can reach down into an ant hole and draw out the insects.

The flicker's flesh is coarse and dark and strong — almost as dark as a piece of liver — and while some people eat them they are not considered good food. Where they are eaten at all, they ought to be parboiled thoroughly, but there is really no use in eating flickers. In many states it is against the law to kill them, and it ought to be against the law in all states.

After you get well acquainted with the flicker you can tell him as far as you can see him by the way he flies. He flies with a graceful swoop, flapping the wings a few times and then closing them as he coasts through the air for ten or twenty feet, again opening them and catching the air as he shoots upward for another flapping of the wings.

The flicker does not sing, but he is never quiet. He chatters and fusses and calls to his mate, and if an old red-headed woodpecker alights upon his snag he makes a great to-do about it, as if some one were robbing him of his rights.

THE ROBIN

Chapter V The Robin

OBIN is a pet name for Robert, and the name Robert means, according to the dictionary, "bright in fame," or bright and famous. So you see the robin's name describes him, for he is one of our most famous birds, even if he is not one of our brightest.

The robin would be known as a dull-colored bird. It is true that the males have a rich salmon-colored breast, and that they are sometimes referred to as robin red-breast, but taken as a whole the robin is dull colored. The English robin red-breast is a much redder bird than ours.

That is one reason why a robin does not have to be so careful about concealing its nest — because it is dull colored. The bright-colored birds, like the oriole, have to conceal their nests, otherwise when they are sitting upon the nest they could be easily seen by their enemies. But the back of a robin being dark, she can sit upon her nest and even a boy may pass right by without observing it.

The robin belongs to the thrush family and there are more than a hundred kinds of thrushes. All of them have soft bills, with nostrils covered by a membrane, at the base of the bill, and nearly all thrushes can sing.

The robin builds a substantial nest. It first lays a foundation of mud, generally in the forks of limbs, and then it lays some coarse sticks or straws and places mud over them, and then strings or fibers, all the time plastering the nest with soft mud that holds like cement.

The inside of the nest is filled with soft grasses and threads and hairs and feathers, and when it is completed it forms a perfectly round cup. A robin has no compass to work with, and no plans to go by, but man himself could not build a nest more scientifically round. The bird is able to get the nest round by getting on the inside as she builds and turning round and round and thus shaping it with her breast.

A robin lays four eggs, of a pale-blue color, without spots upon them. Birds whose nests are exposed lay colored eggs, and birds that conceal their nests lay white eggs, or eggs with only a 'S

J

THE ROBIN 31 splotches upon them. If a robin laid white eggs, don't you understand that they would be easily seen when the bird is not upon the nest? But with those beautifully tinted, soft blue eggs — they are not so noticeable as white ones would be. A flicker doesn't have to waste any Easter dyes upon her eggs, because they are inside of a tree, but a robin goes into the eggcoloring business.

During the summer the robins are quite tame. They have learned that people do not harm them at that time of the year. But as soon at the weather gets cold the robins become wild and go to the fields, and prepare for their southern journey.

People used to hunt robins and shoot them and eat them, and that made the robin shy in the fall and winter. There are still thousands and thousands of them shot for food, especially in the South — and a robin tastes pretty good, too, to a fellow who does not object to eating his friends.

People who talk about the rollicking life of a bird do not know much about birds. Birds are not in business just for the fun of it — any more than anybody else. They have to make their own living and sometimes that is pretty hard even for a bird to do. They have to build their own homes and bring up their young. They have to watch everything and everybody — the boys and the cats and the dogs, and snakes, and other birds. They lead busy lives and if one finds time occasionally to sit upon a limb and sing for us, well and good. But they are in no sense idlers.

The male bird sings for the benefit of his sweetheart, or out of vanity. Generally he gets out where he can be seen, when he warbles, and it seems that he sings to attract attention to himself as much as for anything else. Perhaps he wants to make his wife feel glad that she married him, so she can fly over to a neighbor's and tell her what a beautiful voice her husband has, and thus make the other bird envious. The robin doesn't sing after his family is grown; he sings only in the spring and summer.

If a mother robin is killed after the young ones are hatched, the father bird will feed the children and bring them up, but if the mother bird disappears before the eggs are hatched the male will sit upon the nest but a day or so and when he finds his mate is not going to return he deserts the nest.

Robins, as a rule, take a new mate every spring, but there are exceptions to the rule. One pair of robins has been known to return year after year for three or four years, but usually the

THE ROBIN 33 pair of robins that builds in your yard this year is not the pair that built there last year. It is pretty hard for one to keep up with one's mate in a big crowd and on a long march like the robins make every fall, and while we believe that all robins get along peacefully when mated, it may be that during the festival they have in the palm groves of the South, some of the robins desert their mates and take new ones just for fun.

THE HUMMING BIRD

MflflffK^sS

Chapter VI The Humming Bird

iHERE are more than four hundred varieties of humming birds, divided into three great families — the wedge-tailed humming birds, the curved-billed humming birds and the straight-billed humming birds. The most numerous family in this country is the straight-billed fellows, and there are some fifty varieties of it.

The humming bird is an easy one to study, after you know it and its ways. That is, it is easy to study if you know how to study it. If you will take your position by the side of a flower bush of some kind and stand perfectly still, the humming birds will come within two or three feet of you and may be easily seen. Frequently they will alight upon a branch right by your side and you can watch them brush up their feathers and wipe the honey off of their bills and primp up just like girls getting ready for a party,

It is a mistake to suppose that humming birds visit flowers only for the honey they find in the flowers. They do eat the honey they find, and are very fond of it, but what they really go to flowers for is for the purpose of gathering the little insects that get into the flowers. They have probably learned to like the honey by swallowing insects that are covered with it, for many insects actually drown in the sweet syrup found in flowers.

The humming bird has a long thread-like tongue, with barbs upon it. The bird can send its tongue down into the heart of a morning-glory and the small bugs and gnats that may have gotten into the flower are easily brought up and eaten by the bird.

The bill of the humming bird has a hole in the end of it, too, and is used as a boy uses a straw in drinking soda water. It can stick the bill down into a flower and suck out every particle of sweetness that is in there.

The humming bird builds the tiniest little nest that a boy ever saw. It is about an inch across and an inch deep and as delicately woven as a piece of silk. It is lined with the softest of downy stuff and there isn't a rough place in it. In this nest

THE HUMMING BIRD 39

the bird lays only one or two eggs, as she does not desire a large family.

When it is first hatched, a humming bird is no larger than the first joint of a baby's little finger, and is as much like a worm as anything else. The egg is about the size of a pea and hatches in ten or twelve days.

The humming bird is our most artistically colored bird. One great man has referred to it as a "glittering fragment of the rainbow," and that comes very nearly describing it. Along its back it is a beautiful metallic green, while around its throat is a collar of ruby red, tapering off into white. The female does not wear the ruby collar.

The lower part of the back tones down from the metallic green to a brownish violet. The whole appearance of the bird is that of polished steel whose hues have been fastened by fire — burnished until it glistens in the sun. It is easy to tell the male from the female by the fact that the tail of the male is forked, while that of the female is rounded.

It can fly so rapidly that its course cannot be followed, and yet it can poise in the air and seem to stand fixed against the background of the scene. It moves its wings so rapidly that it produces a humming sound, from which it gets its name, and when it hovers over a flower near you the wings appear as a halo about the bird.

The humming bird, small as it is, is a game little fighter, and can chase a hawk away from its nest. Often when you hear an old crow carrying on it is because one of these little streaks of color is after him. It has been known to attack boys who were fooling around its nest.

THE BLUE JAY

Chapter VII The Blue Jay

THE blue jay is a terror to the other birds, and does not receive any credit for the good it actually does. That may be because he does not know that he is doing any good. If he did he probably wouldn't do it, because he is a rascally fellow and is never so happy as when getting somebody into trouble.

One of the worst things charged up against the jay is that he robs other birds' nests and eats the eggs. He is a natural-born scrapper, as the boys would say, and delights in a fight, and is a loud-mouthed, arrogant bird that wants everybody in the woods to know exactly where he is. And right there is where he does something for the other birds and animals of the forest.

When a jay discovers a snake or a hawk or a crow, or anything that might do harm to the other things that live in the wood, he screams and yells and carries on at a great rate. The other birds have learned that and when they hear the jay fussing they get out of the way.

A man may be sneaking through the woods very softly,, trying to get within range of a squirrel, when a jay discovers him. Then the bird begins squalling at the top of his voice and the squirrel runs and hides. In that way he befriends the squirrel, of course, and it is possible that is why Nature gave the jay a disposition to quarrel and to make a to-do over everything and everybody.