CORNELL LAB of ORNITHOLOGY LIBRARY at Sapsucker Woods > Illustration of Bank Swallow by Louis Agassiz Fuertes t I ' 1 i Cornell University Library QL 676.E18 MT orm All books are subject to recall after two weeks DATE DUE “GAYLORD | PRINTED IN U.S.A. THE BIRD BOOK BY FANNIE HARDY ECKSTORM —089¢00— Laboratory of Ornithology 1159 Sapsucker Woods Road Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14850 D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO ‘ ORN ITH ort E18 COPYRIGHT, 1901, By D. C. Heatu & Co, 268 Printed in U.S. A. PREFACE. ScrENcE is the green pasture of enthusiasms, and in the study of it there is no denying Shakespeare’s dictum, — ‘* No projit grows where is no pleasure ta’en.”’ ‘So if we adopt bird-study as the representative of zodlogical science, as we seem likely to do, it must be not only because it is fairly illustrative of zodlogical principles, and because its materials are abundant and easily referred to, but because it is pleasurable to beginners. Bird-study, or any other special science, is justified in de- manding an educational hearing if it contribute generously either to a knowledge of the principles and methods of science in general or to the training of the powers of observation. As far as possible I have tried to open opportunities for work in both directions, dwelling upon what to see and how to see it, but not neglecting those larger problems which are, after all, the non-personal end of all observation; and I have tried to do this in such a way that the pupils might be led to work independently and intelligently if so minded, or, at the least, to acquire, even if unconsciously, some notion of scientific method. To keep the nature study free from memorization of any text-book, however good, to deliver it from the incubus of ranking per centum, to put a premium upon the child’s own efforts at discovery, is to make the nature work effective. If the author has a message, it is that a child’s value, or a man’s value as for that, is rated by his self-reliance, —not by what im iv PREFACE. he guesses he knows, but by what he knows he knows, which for most of us does not so very much exceed the limits of what we have seen and experienced. To have seen something clearly, to be able to tell about it with precision, to have done something as well as it could be done, even if the sight, the tale, the deed, were not notable, gives power and poise. All studies that increase this effective force of the student are profitable. Theoretically, all studies do increase it,—but not for all students. But nature study, under any except the poorest instruction, must give a first-handed acquaintance with facts and an assurance of knowledge. It should be remembered, too, that the collection and study of facts by direct observation is scientific work. The com- parison and analysis of them also is scientific work. Observa- tion and comparison —not learning hard names— is science. Therefore the pupil who can tell one new fact about a bird has done more real work of the kind that counts than the other pupil who has learned all its Latin names. Yet I am not discouraging the acquisition of the scientific terminology. Intelligent children find the Latin names as easy to learn as the English, and, with a little assistance, can master all the commoner botanical, or ornithological, or ento- mological names. This, however, is not the science that the teacher is supposed to teach, and it should not be required, but only permitted to those who desire to do extra work. It has been urged against many books on birds that they are New England treatises. In making this one, special care has been taken to have a book that could be used in any part of the country. It is true that the author has frankly “harked back” to a childhood spent in Maine, — “East, West, Hame’s best ; ? — but all the birds selected for special study, with the exceptions of the sooty grouse and the pine grosbeak, are birds that are PREFACE. v well-known, abundant, easily observed, and resident in nearly all parts of the country. The arrangement of the book has two ends in view: to adapt the study to the school year, and to present it so that when the pupil begins field work he shall be able to do it with some general idea of what is worth observing. The study of unfa- miliar types gives some notion of the breadth of the subject, — its extent; and it furnishes a store of facts to be applied to its intent, the study of comparisons, in the next section; it also helps to fix in mind the definite relation between a living organism and its environment, which, treated from the evolu- tionary standpoint, forms the subject of the third section. When spring appears the pupil is ready for field work, which can be successfully begun only when the birds are in full song and full plumage; he comes to it as an unhackneyed subject, put one concerning which he already has a store of knowledge. The authenticity of the text has been an object of solicitude. Whatever is not my own —and most of it is mine — is given on the authority and by the permission of some of our best field naturalists. For such permissions I am indebted to Mr. William Brewster, whose admirable treatise on migration I have quoted freely, because his words could hardly be either condensed or simplified; also to Mr. A. W. Anthony, Mr. Chase A. Littlejohn, and Captain D. P. Ingraham, by whose courtesy several valuable papers are quoted almost entire. Some lesser obligations are noted in their places. The manu- script was read by the well-known author and ornithologist, Mr. C. J. Maynard, to whom hearty thanks are due. FANNIE HARDY ECKSTORM. CONTENTS. PART I. WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES: Little Studies in Environment. Amonc THE REEDS anp Rusnes— The Grebe; The Loon An Axvaskan IsLanp— The Ancient Murrelet Orr Granp Manan — Jaegers . ‘ : i r : . Tur Herring Gute. . 4 2 é % ‘ ' ‘ On THE FarraLones — Feeding Habits of Gulls on the Pacific Coast Tue Litrte PeorpLe or tHE JunK 0’ Pork — Leach’s Petrel Freepine Hasirs oF THE FULMARS OFF THE Coast oF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 7 ‘ ‘i ‘ 2 Tue NeicuBporHoop or Perct — Gannets A Cypress Swamp — The Anhinga . Tar Lire Hisrory or THE AMERICAN FLAMINGO . 4 Tue SEa-BIpps OF THE Puains—Pelicans . ‘ : ‘ . PART II. STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON: Little Studies in Differentiation. Comparine Bones . 5 ‘ < ‘i ‘ : - 5 3 Tue Foot or a Swimmine Birp. ‘ ‘i : : i Toe Wine or A Bird. 7 2 - 5 a ‘ ‘ a A FEATHER * f . * ‘ . . ‘ é . Tue Birp In THE AIR. a 3 . . = ‘ . . PAGE 14 18 23 30 33 38 42 48 52 57 67 71 75 81 84 viii CONTENTS. PAGE Comparinc Frrr. : ‘ 5 é , : 5 ‘ . 98 ComparRiINnG BILLS. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 5 . * ' - 99 Eyres anp CAMERAS . . ‘ ‘ * : , * - 108 Tue Iris oF Birps . ‘ ‘ ‘ i ‘ Ay . . - 112 Waite BLackBirDs AND OTHER FREAKS a . . - 116 PART III. PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE: Little Studies in Zodlogical Theory. Tue Basis or CLASSIFICATION. ‘ . 5 5 ‘ ' » 121 Tue DEGREES IN CLASSIFICATION . ; ‘ ¥ . ¥ - 126 How Birps ARE NAMED . . ‘ ; : & ‘ ; - 128 ConcERNING THE Birp’s Latin NAME . ‘4 3 ‘ . 130 A SUBSPECIES . ‘ ‘ : ‘ ‘ ‘i 3 , % . 1382 Tue Turee Great Prosiems or Birp Lire ‘ . - 185 Tue First Prospitem oF Birp Lire Fs ‘ A ; 7 . 188 Tae Seconp ProBLEM OF Birp Lire. é ‘ ‘ r - 142 Tue Tairp ProsLem oF Birp LiFe 3 ‘ 3 ‘ a . 146 Protection By Coton . ‘ ‘ ‘ é ; s : . 149 ZOOGEOGRAPHY . 5 ‘ je . 3 ‘ 3 . i . 155 DISTRIBUTION . ‘ ‘ Gi é ‘ ; . ri . 157 MicRATION . ‘ é ‘ 5 é a : : . - 163 PART IV. SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS: Little Studies in the Art of Observation. Azovur Birps’ Drinx1ne . ‘ ° ‘ : é ‘ . - 175 How a Hawk EAtTs uIs Foop. é F ‘ : 7 . . 179 Tae Smatyt FLycatTcHERS 5 7 . . . . . - 183 CONTENTS. Serine 1n Western Orecon — The Booming of the Sooty Grouse A Winter Resipent — The Ruffed Grouse . 3 : s Tue Eaves-8SWALLOW: TOW SHE CAME AND BUILT HER Nest Tue Eaves-SwALLOW: HOW SHE CHANGED HER STYLE OF BUILDING Kyicuts anp Castres — The Purple Martin . . : Some Cacrep Pine Grospeaks « ‘ ‘ ‘i ‘ . Tue Birp Invisisre — The Cuckoo. 4 ‘i i ‘ a ., A Deap Brat— The Cow-bird $ Tue Nest In THE Pasture SPRUCE How tue SHRIKE HUNTS. ‘i a How tue Rosin Gers nis Worm Tue Strance Tunes Birps po anp THE STRANGE THINGS THEY SAY s ‘ é i - 3 : ‘ APPENDIX. ZobGEOGRAPHICAL Divisions or THE WorLD 7 . z : MiGcRraTIon : . Sean) é : ¥ Hints on oBservine Brrps Hints on rpentiryinc Strance Live Birps . CERTAIN QUESTIONS ANSWERED ‘ : 5 . . : : Lists or Books ‘ F ‘ . i . . . : ix PAGE 188 194 201 208 213 219 225 230 236 242 248 253 263 264 267 269 270 273 SO! IO) SY ACR ION 2G 8S) ies bo wP hw WwW WH DY DH HB BY HY Be eB eB Be BP Sek ENE SSHANAAE WHS ILLUSTRATIONS. Pied-bill Grebe . és f F 3 . ¢ . Facing Loon . 7 : : i . ri ‘ - A ee Ancient Murrelets ‘i ‘ ‘ ‘ F : : ee Jaeger 7 3 : A ‘ . r is . ns Cormorant and Herring-Gull . . 2 ‘ i . Petrel . e ‘ : P _ Fs 5 3 of Gannets. : F F 4 3 . é o Anhinga . 5 : * , . ° 2 7 fe Flamingoes ‘ : : ‘ ; ‘ z - et . Head of White Pelican in Breeding Season . Skeletons of Man and Bird Bones of Wing of Bird and Arm of Man Leg Bones of the Loon Wing Bones of Bat Wing of Bird Diagram of Technical Terms . Gulls flying Gulls flying (from an instantaneous ipa Gulls flying (fifty images per second) . Semi-palmate Foot of Sandpiper . Lobate Foot of Phalarope . ; . Excised Webbed Foot of Black Tern . . Palmate or Webbed Foot of Duck . Toti-palmate Foot of Gannet ‘ . Zygodactyl (or Yoke-toed) Foot of ee . Syndactylous Foot of Kingfisher ; ‘ i . xi PAGE 4 10 14 18 30 34 42 48 52 63 67 69 72 75 76 78 85 86 87 94 94 95 95 95 96 97 xil ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 27. Foot of Longspur 5 ‘ : 7 7 , 2 . - 97 28. Head of Swift . : : ‘ . ‘ i - . 99 29. Head of Long-billed Curlew - 5 . 100 30. Bills of Frigate Bird, Hawk, Shrike, Vireo, ca Bluebird - 102 81. Head of Black Skimmer . 4 3 : 2 ‘ , - 104 82. Spoon-billed Sandpiper j ‘ . : ; . Facing 105 33. Head of Roseate Spoonbill . 5 c : 5 ‘ A - 106 34. Bill of Crook-billed Plover . : : i ‘ é . 106 35. Diagram of Human Eye . _ é ‘ , - 108 36. The Eye of the Hawk and of the owl . : 1 : . 110 37. Head of Goosander (male) . 5 . - ; ‘ - 118 38. Head of Goosander (female) . ‘ ‘ 3 ‘i 3 . 118 39. Head of Hooded Merganser (male) . ‘ : . Facing 114 40. Head of Red-breasted Merganser (male) . 5 é 6 114 41. Sharp-shinned Hawk . F < 3 . F - f 181 42. Phoebe : 7 ‘ : 7 7 7 é : oe 185 43. Sooty Grouse . : s . ‘ : ; ee 188 44, Ruffed Grouse . ° , a se , : ‘ as 194 45. Nests of Eaves-Swallows . é : H ‘ ‘ ; . 208 46. Purple Martins . a , r : F ‘ . Facing 213 47. Pine Grosbeak . A : ‘ ‘ ‘ i ‘ ae 219 48. Cuckoo é : . ‘ 2 : ‘ ‘ . as 225 49. Cow-bird . é ‘ ‘ 2 ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ te 230 50. Shrike ‘ 5 2 : 5 : . ee 236 51. Sparrow hung up by Shrike - 3 ‘ 2 ‘ 5 . 243 52. Centipede impaled by Shrike . ; i j A 3 - 246 538. Robin . 3 . , : 3 F . : . Facing 248 54. Hermit Thrush . . : z a 7 ‘ : ee 255 55. Vireo . : : * 5 pi : 5 ae 256 56. White-throated cares ‘ . : ‘ : c 258 Map, SHOWING ZOOGEOGRAPHICAL Divisions OF THE WoRLD - 262 PART I. WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. LITTLE STUDIES IN ENVIRONMENT. “His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind, — was connected with nature,—and the meaning of nature was never attempted to be defined by him. He would never offer a memoir of his observations to the Natural History Society. ‘Why should I? To detach the description from its connections in my mind would make it no longer true or valuable.’” — Emerson on Thoreau. THE BIRD BOOK. AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. THE GREBE. *¢Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight Who cannot in their various incomes share. * * * * * * * In spring they lie one broad expanse of green, O’er which the light winds run with glimmering feet : Here yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, There darker growths o’er hidden ditches meet ; And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, As if the silent shadow of a cloud Hung there becalmed with the next breath to fleet.” —James Russet Lowe ut, An Indian Summer Revery. Birps that cannot fly we may have heard of, but did you ever hear of birds that cannot walk? Here is a picture of one of them. Iam sure it cannot walk, for I once had one for a short time as a pet, and it never made an attempt to escape. Had I left it over night on a table, I should have found it in the same place in the morning. No worse accident could happen to this poor bird than to be dropped on the land a little distance from water; she could not rise from the land to fly, and she could not reach the water unless the slope toward it were steep. Most birds would die if they had to spend their whole life in the water, but the grebe would die on the land. 3 4 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. Would you like to see her at home? Then early some summer morning, if you live near a meadow stream that wanders off behind beds of bulrushes and thickets of alders, and widens out between broad, grassy meadows, take a little voyage in your boat up the stream, paddling slowly and quietly. There are carpets of lily leaves, both the round pad of the white water-lily, dark green above and red beneath, and the long, lighter green leaves of the yellow “cow-lily,” or spatterdock; by the water’s edge there are scattered spears of arrow-head with its white blossoms and clumps of tall pontederia, which in Maine we call both “ pickerel-weed ” and “moose-ear,” the latter name being given because its long, pointed leaves look like the ears of the moose. Its blue spikes of gold-spotted flowers draw the insects to it, and the ducks love to hide in the thick cover of its leaves. Perhaps from behind the ranks of tall moose-ear that stand up off the end of yonder point our grebe may come swimming out. Perhaps we may see her settle slowly into the water among that patch of floating water-target that spreads its little oval pads like a carpet. Perhaps she may be up the side-run, whose course is marked by a line of the tall red thoroughwort, and by waving ribbons of cat-tail leaves. Watching motionless, we may sometime see her glide out from such a place as this, floating like a little duck, for which you would at first mistake her. She picks up an insect from the water, or rises to snatch one from the stalk of some water- plant. Many a gauze-winged blue and green dragon-fly goes to satisfy her appetite. For insects form by far the larger portion of her diet, though she sometimes eats fish. Indeed, in the West, the grebes are often found in alkaline ponds where no fish can live. But why does the grebe swallow her own feathers? The gizzard of the grebe as commonly con- og UT es “SAK i adead Lay 7 LF sf Facing page 4. amt Psi otis lg i Fic. 1.— PIED-BILLED GREBE. AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. 5 tains a small mass of feathers as that of the domestic fowl contains gravel. The fact is known to every naturalist, but no one is sure of the reason for it. The commoner grebe of our streams and ponds is a plain little brown-eyed bird, grayish brown above, and grayish white below. In the spring, for a few weeks, a black band encircles the bill, which gives it the name of “ pied-billed”; and it has then a throatpatch of jetty black that also dis- appears later in the year. The other grebe, not so common as this except in the North, is a red-eyed bird with a grayish black upper and a pure white under surface. In the spring this bird also puts on a bridal dress, which entirely alters its appearance. Above it is glossy black; the throat and front of the neck become rich chestnut, which follows down each side in a stripe near the wings; around the head, back of the eyes, springs a great muffle of black silky plumes that stand out like the frill to a bonnet, and long, buffy-brown plumes start out near the ears. These feather ornaments give the bird its name of “horned” grebe. All the grebes put on a gay breeding dress in the spring. It is odd that after wearing these fine feathers only a few weeks, they should shed them and put on their plain everyday dress. In the West the horned grebe is replaced by the American eared grebe, with golden tufts instead of brown ones. It is scarcely likely that you will learn much about the colors of the grebe in one trip or in two or three; probably you will not be able to decide which species you are observ- ing, for she is a suspicious little body, and if she does not like your looks she will glide back under the cover of the plants, or will sink slowly beneath the surface of the water. If you do not watch her every moment, she will disappear 6 WATER-BIRDS [N THEIR HOMES. without leaving a ripple, and you may never see her again; for she can swim a long way with only her bill out of the water. If she is suddenly alarmed, she will plunge in with a splash, head down and heels up, and so quickly that she can dodge a bullet after she sees the flash of the gun. So the com- monest names of the grebe are “devil-diver,” or “hell-diver,” or “ water-witch.” The grebe builds her nest in the water, making it of rushes and water-plants, which she nips off with her sharp bill and piles together, either upon the bottom, upon the shore close to the water’s edge, or around some tall reed which securely moors the little floating nest. On leaving the nest she covers it with grass and weeds, so that it may be less easily detected. The nest is usually wet, and often the eggs lie partly in the water that gathers in it. But this seems to make no difference to the little grebes, who, as soon as they are hatched, are ready to sail off after their mother. What avery damp life a grebe must lead, always in the water, whether asleep or awake, and even when in the shell hatched in a leaky cradle! Yet it is not an unpleasant life. The grebe has few enemies, and the most of these she can escape by diving. Food is always abundant. Those pleasant little excursions among the giant bulrushes and the fields of lily-pads bring her many a gay dragon-fly and dancing may-fly and swift water-skater. It is fun for her to follow a school of minnows, nipping them right and left. Besides, she has many games with her mates, running upon the water and diving just for the fun of it. The grebe’s nearest neighbors among the rushes are two. solemn, long-legged fellows called the heron and the stake- driver, or bittern, who fish in the shallow water; a family of wood-ducks that paddle around among the pads and cat-tails, AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. 7 or sit sunning themselves on a slanting drift-log; a big gray bird called a coot and his smaller cousins, the rails, that come stealing through the tall grass, or walk out on the lily-pads with slow placing of their long-toed feet, or when they are invisible, grunt and whistle among the fowl meadow-grass and wild rice jungle; and two kinds of busy, scolding marsh wrens, which make the snuggest little round nests you ever saw, and hang them among the stout stalks of bulrushes, cat-tails, and tall grasses. These nests are made of coarse grasses, reeds, and flags, and some of them are woven most curiously out of the flat, dry leaves of the cat-tail. They are as waterproof as our own houses, for the nest is spherical and the doorway is a little round hole in the side. Such are the life and the home surroundings of the grebe. She is fit for no other. Her broad, flat breast and long body make her float like a little boat, and her silky, elastic feathers, with a full undersuit of thick down, keep her warm and dry in all weathers. To keep out of the rain she need only go beneath the surface of the water! She can swim under the surface as well as above it, and her feet, affixed at the very end of her body, serve both as rudder and propeller. Strange feet they are; they look as if the grebe had once been like other birds, but its feet had afterward been laid down sidewise and stamped upon. They seem to be crushed flat. The toes are thin, the shank is like a knife-blade, and the flattened toenails seem to have been driven into the flesh. The whole foot is neither horny like a crow’s, nor plump and fleshy like a duck’s; but a smooth-scaled, fleshless, unnatural foot. It always seems to me to feel “fishy.” Yet for its use it is admirable. How swiftly it drives the bird ahead, cutting the water with the least possible resistance! How well it enables the bird to run upon the surface or to dive beneath! 8 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. But the grebe cannot fly well. Her wings are small, her breast muscles very weak, her body so badly balanced that when she is getting upon the wing it drags down like that of a hornet until she is fairly under way; after that, with neck straight out in front, and legs as stiffly stretched back to steer her, she flies fairly well. Even then she cannot fly under all conditions: she must get her start by flapping and spattering along the surface, working with both wings and feet; and she must have some space to run in, and a breeze to run against, or she cannot mount upon the wing. Indeed, but for two circumstances, we may suppose the grebe would never fly at all. In the fall of the year she sees that she must leave her summer home. Soon the ponds will be frozen, and her food supply will be killed or covered with ice. If she is not frozen to death, she will be starved, unless she leaves before winter. So when a breezy day comes the grebes mount and are off—the pied-billed grebes to southern quarters, the horned grebes to the ocean which never freezes. But with the spring back come the grebes. For those that winter in the ocean this is almost as necessary as their going south. Nor is it hard to see why it should be so. As the grebe cannot walk she must always nest close to the water’s edge. But at the seashore the water’s edge at high tide may be half a mile away from the low-tide mark. Even where there are but a few rods between the two the grebe would have to take her choice between a day on the nest and a day in the water, as it is twelve hours from tide to tide. So if she would raise a brood, she must fly to some pond or inland lake where there is no tide to incommode birds that cannot walk. Therefore, , while the grebe lives in the North in summer she must be able to make these journeys. To-be unable to fly would mean the extermination of the race by cold and starvation. AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. 9 THE LOON. ‘Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow mist. Their halos, wavering thistledowns of light. The loon that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, Laughed, and the echoes, huddled in affright, Like Odin’s hounds, fled baying down the night.” —James Russett Lowe tt, The Washers of the Shroud. Tue loon can fly more easily than the grebe, though it needs a breeze and a run on the water before it can mount unsteadily on its short and narrow wings. Though it cannot walk at all, it has a shuffling movement on land that is better than the grebe’s utter helplessness, and it can get on shore and build a nest out of reach of the water. Unlike the grebe, the loon does not nest on a raft of grass, but on “a right little, tight little island.” Those on which I have known loons to nest were islets a rod or two across, sometimes marshy, but more often dry and rocky and covered with a thick growth of grass. All Mother Loon asked was grass enough for a nest, and to conceal herself while sitting. The nest is not very well made, but there is a slight hollow that holds the two big mud-colored eggs dotted with dark brown spots. In time there come out two of the smuttiest- colored little youngsters you ever saw, about the size of gos- lings, dusty black all over at first but later with a whitish belly and with comical little bills entirely unlike their mother’s. But perhaps you are not acquainted with Mother Loon. She is a large bird, as big as a Christmas turkey; that is, she will weigh ten pounds if in good condition. It always seems to me that there is something very motherly about her stout, heavy body, squatting close down upon her big feet, with her wise old green head, as soft as the softest plush, and her two white 10 WATER- BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES: striped collars at the throat; a much milder-looking, more do. mestic bird on her little island than when she is sailing around in the big lake, hallooing to wake echoes. She is very fond of her little loon chicks, and has more worries than most land-birds. We hardly realize the number of their enemies. Hawks are always ready to devour them (and whatever may be said in favor of hawks, they leave many feathers along the pond sides where they have picked and eaten water-fowl). The old herring gulls would not hesitate to stoop and take one, for fat young loon is a delicious morsel to them. Then the big pickerel in the lakes often catch young birds, much oftener than you imagine. The great bull-frogs of the Northern ponds also gobble up little ducks. (Do not be surprised; for if you ever saw one of those great frogs, you would readily believe the statement, and I know it to be true.) The great mud-turtles that root about in the ooze of the pond bottoms, huge fellows, that will walk off with a man standing on their back, eat many water-fowl; and there are mink and otter and men as occasional dangers, so that the poor Mother Loon has a constant worry for a few weeks. Still, every other water-bird has just the same, and most of them have more children to look after. Mother Loon has a great advantage over other birds, in her size and courage. She is afraid of nothing, can swim better under water than upon the surface, and is armed with a terri- ble bill that can be driven entirely through the body of the largest fish in the lake. She eats nothing but fish, and is very expert at catching them. As it often is not convenient to swallow a fish tail fore- most on account of its fins and spines, she is clever in tossing them in air and catching them head first, so that they slide down her throat as smoothly as if they were sardines. Fic. 2.—LOON. Facing page 10, AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. 11 Though there are several species of loons in North America, only one is common in the United States, and this one varies so much in color with age and the season that we might easily suppose that we had seen two kinds of loons. Young and winter birds are gray above, indistinctly spotted, and the white of the breast runs up to the chin, while the head and neck are no darker than the back. The “gray loon” of the fishermen is a smaller species, the red-throated diver, which lives farther north, and comes as a winter visitor to the seacoast of the United States. If you ever get well acquainted with the loons you will always be wondering whether they are the jolliest people afloat, or the most lonesome maniacs that ever lived outside an asylum. Sometimes they have little parties with races run from a given starting-point toa set goal. Great is the shout- ing and clamor as they run on the water, feet and wings both helping, each one plainly doing his best to get first to the win- ning post — an imaginary post of course, but it will be noticed that all stop at just the same point. Then they put their heads together and talk it over with merry ha-ha-has and chucklings that set the observer to laughing too, and all swim slowly back to the starting-point to run once more. Often when alone the loon laughs to himself, and often, lift- ing his head, he gives his long, wild call —“ not his laughter, but his looning,” as Thoreau puts it in his book on the “Maine Woods.” Except when he is at play with others the loon’s heart never seems to bein his laughter; and you wonder if this terrible crazy yell, hollow, mad, and meaningless, echoed back by the woods and mountains that surround the lake, does not better tell you what a desperately lonesome and demented creature he is. “As crazy as a loon” is a current Northern saying. Yet of all the mad noises the bird can make, nothing 12 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. compares with the hoarse haw-haw-haw, haw-haw-haw, of a flock of loons flying in a strong breeze. I well recollect a trip we once made down Caucomgomoc Lake in the northern Maine wilderness. The morning broke squally and threatening more wind, but as we had been de- tained by heavy rains, and as the wind was aft, we hoped by starting early to make the run before the sea’ rose dan- gerously. In that we did not succeed. The clouds flocked thicker, the waves ran white as sheep, and before we were halfway over they were washing level with the gunwales of the canoe, and slopping in-board, to remind us that there would be worse ahead. The land-line began to waver in the rising steam until we could not tell whether it was near or far away. The sun, “drawing water,” sent down a great fan of purple bars edged with coppery reflections that made both sky and water black. It was a wild-looking lake and sky, and for us every moment was worse than the last. We were not only driving into a heavier sea, but in making the outlet we must cross a half mile or more of shoal ground, where on our trip up the lake we had seen many sharp rocks sticking above the water and more just beneath the surface. The waves were now running so high that as the canoe rode over them she split them, and they stood in hills of water above either rail. The canoe grew hard to handle in such a flawy wind and broken sea, and we could get no clew to the dangers hidden where we knew we must run. Meanwhile, three loons had mounted and were racing on the wing. A fiendish glee seemed to fill them. Under the black sky they looked as black as ink. Round and round they coursed, necks and legs extended, their pointed wings beating a double quick, as they cackled their malevolent laughter, and called for more speed and a better breeze. It was a witches’ AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. 13 carnival in broad day, and under its spell the stormy lake seemed to grow more tempestuous. But we drove through all right, just dodged the upright fluke of an old anchor left by the river-drivers in the outlet, rounded in beneath the lee of a bank, and safe in a sheltered nook where no wind disturbed the calm, blew the water from our noses and wiped it from our eyes with much love of the land. The loon is the spirit of the lake. Nothing in our Northern waters so entirely fits the framework of the wild, mysterious forest that hems them round. To hear the loon’s cry at night is almost as if the lake were speaking. Once, while camping on the shores of Chesuncook Lake in Maine, I witnessed an impressive incident. It was late after- noon before a rain, and I had stepped down to the shore and stood looking at Big Spenser Mountain across the lake, feeling the quiet and grayness and flatness that falls upon a landscape with an approaching storm. There was no sound but that of a cricket; no ripple on the great smooth lake; nothing had moved recently enough to leave a circle on its surface within half a mile; yet, slowly, not five rods from me, out of the heart of the quiet water, rose the green head and neck of a loon. I could see its velvety softness, every white line on its little collars, the keen bill and the keener red eye, a head without a body, alone in the vastness of the great lake. Then it sank, slow, noiseless, mysterious, without a wake. So sank the sword Excalibur when Sir Bedivere at Arthur’s bidding cast it in the lake. ‘¢Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him ; But when I looked again, behold, an arm, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, That caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under in the mere.” AN ALASKAN ISLAND. ‘¢ There dark they lie and stark they lie — rookery, dune, and floe, And the Northern Lights come down o’ nights to dance with the house. less snow, And God who clears the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe He hears the cry of the little kit fox and the lemning in the snow.” — Rupyarp Kipiine, The Rhyme of the Three Sealers. THE ANCIENT MURRELET, Tuer Ancient Murrelet, or the “Old Man,” as the Russians call him, is one of the sea-birds of the Alaskan and Siberian coast. The following account of his habits is so good that we may make place for him : — ‘We were about one hundred and eighty miles east by south from Unga (a small island off the Alaskan peninsula) when these hardy birds were first seen. At first one would think they were amusing themselves, for they would fly a short dis- tance ahead of the ship, dropping into the water, and swim- ming so as to be near the vessel’s bows as she passed; then diving beneath the hull and coming up just under the stern. After they had dropped astern a few hundred feet, they took wing and repeated this manceuvre with unvarying precision throughout the entire day. By close watching I found that it was not for pleasure they did this, but that they were feeding on small invertebrates, such as are found on ships’ bottoms. By June second their nesting grounds were reached, but no birds were to be found, and to one unacquainted with their 1 Abridged by permission of the author, Mr. Chase Littlejohn, from an article published in The Auk. 14 hy “yt ~ HY x 4 ob) Vj Fic. 3.— ANCIENT MURRELETS. Facing page 14. AN ALASKAN ISLAND. 15 habits there was no sign of their having arrived. Nevertheless, we land, pitch our tent, and wait until the close of that long twilight which is found only in the far North; and just as it merges into the night we see a bat-like form flit by, and pres- ently from somewhere in the gloom comes an abrupt and starting kroo-kroo-coo, which is at once answered with a like call, or with the nerve-destroying kweé-ké-ké-ké in a very high, shrill key, the call note of the Leach’s petrel. Presently we hear a whirr of wings in different directions, then more voices, pitched in various keys, and before we are fairly aware of it, both heaven and earth seem to vibrate with rumbling noises and whirring wings. As we step out of our tent perfectly astonished at this sud- den change, and move to the foot of a small knoll near by, listening to the violent outburst of noises, a muffled sound comes from right under our feet. We stoop and discover a small burrow in the earth, and from it come the cooing love. notes of a petrel, k+-r-r, k-r-7-r. This is its home. From a somewhat larger burrow, only a few feet to our right, comes another sound, and moving cautiously in this direction we listen to the love-notes of Cassin’s auklet, which remind me of the sounds produced by a squeaky saw while passing through a hard knot, somewhat like kwéé-kew, kwéé- kew, which fortunately lasts only for three or four hours each night. These noises, coming from hundreds of auklets and thousands of petrels, become almost distracting, and effectually banish sleep for the first few nights on the island. These, then, are some of our murrelet’s neighbors, but where is he? We listen in vain for some note of his, but hear none. As we walk on a little distance among the tall grass of last year’s growth, we notice a small dark object flapping about, and after a short chase we manage to capture it, and discover 16 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. our Old Man, but fail to locate his nest. We did not then know the places — under rank, matted grass — which are mostly preferred by the murrelet for nesting sites. We remained on this desolate, wind-swept island for two weeks. After losing about a week’s sleep, owing to their squeaking, I, at least, felt like choking the whole lot. As if not satisfied with the constant babble of their neighbors, the murrelets took especial delight in alighting at the foot of our A-shaped tent, toe-nailing it up to the ridgepole, resting there a moment, and then sliding down the other side. This exer- cise seemed to amuse them, and it certainly did us until the novelty wore off. In a short time after the first birds arrive on their breeding grounds, and before one has time to realize it, the entire sur- face of certain favorite islands is literally alive with murrelets and auklets, and both Leach’s and fork-tailed petrels. When one walks about at this time the murrelets and auklets become frightened, running, flopping, and flying about in such numbers that one has to be careful when he steps lest they be crushed under foot. If it is windy, and it usually is, they are on the wing as soon as disturbed; but when a calm prevails they have to flop to the side of a steep bank, from which they can jump and thereby gain sufficient headway to keep on the wing. In their frantic efforts to be off, they become bewildered and are as apt to fly in one’s face, or against the cliffs, as anywhere. We soon discovered that the murrelets were not especially particular in the selection of a nesting site. An abandoned burrow of Cassin’s anklet, a deep crevice in the cliffs, under large broken rocks which had fallen from the latter, or under rank tussocks of grass, with which the higher portion of the island was covered, would answer equally well. Under these AN ALASKAN ISLAND. 17 almost solid bunches (the grass remaining from many years) the murrelets would force their way, leaving only a slight hole in the mass, which was usually very hard to detect. After once gaining an entrance into this matted vegetation, and working their way in for two or three feet, a shallow cavity about five inches in diameter and two or three inches deep was scratched out. This was nicely lined with dry grass of last year’s growth, carried in from the outside, making a neat and snug home in which two beautiful eggs, comprising a set, were deposited. Some of their nests were found fully two hundred yards from the water. In the other situations mentioned little and often no nest is made, and the eggs are deposited on the bare rocks, in soft sand, or on the wet, muddy soil. I even took several sets on the bare ice at the bottom of some auklets’ burrows, the ground being still frozen immediately beneath the grass and moss on July third, when I left the island. Like the auklets, they exchange places nightly, and while one attends to the home cares, the other is usually a number of miles out at sea on the feeding grounds. What their food consists of at this time of the year I am unable to say. Great numbers of these birds are taken by Peale’s falcon. As I have already stated, the murrelets are mainly found at some distance from land during the day; and here, too, this falcon pursues them, watching for a chance to seize any mur- relet he succeeds in driving from the water. After having secured its prey, the falcon circles about for a short time, and then partakes of its meal. Todo this he hovers, remaining almost stationary for several minutes at a time; in the mean- time the prey is raised well up to the beak with both feet and promptly devoured. When the murrelets return to land at nightfall, the falcon is there also to meet them, and soon again secures his nightly repast. © OFF GRAND MANAN. “ From gray sea-fog, from icy drifts, From peril and from pain, The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, O hundred-harbored Maine !” —Joun G. WuittiER, The Dead Ship of Harpswell. JAEGERS.! Tue life of the great séa is not to be realized from the deck of an ocean liner. You must be close down to the heave of the ocean, tossed by it, and fully at its mercy, to know the sea. Suppose some day we were to join the porpoise fleet of the Passamaquoddy Indians as they set out at sunrise in their birch-bark canoes from the summer camp at Grand Manan Isl- and — the great bluff island off the mouth of the St. Croix River. Theirs is a dangerous trade, but there are no bolder or more skilful navigators of small boats in the world than these Indians, who take the risks of a rock-bound coast, with sunken ledges, sudden storms, the densest fogs, and a tide of almost incredible height, that rushes through the narrows and sets in motion great tidal currents and whirlpools. All sailors meet hardships and see strange sights, but these Indians, hunters of the ocean, see and know more strange and wonderful things and take greater risks than the ordinary seafarer. What might befall us if we started with them some summer morning at sunrise, when the surface of the sea is smooth and 1 Pronounced ya-ger, with g hard; also spelled jager. 18 Fic. 4. — JAEGER. Facing page 18, OFF GRAND MANAN. 19 oily-looking, and a morning fog hangs over it, smoking in thin curtains that narrow the horizon to a little circle, and make the sun a bright blur in the mist? Mile after mile we are paddled, steered by the compass, breaking the fog before us and seeing it close in behind, lifted on the long ocean rollers that pulse in from outside as smooth as glass, twenty feet from trough to roll, — the slow, long heave of the slumbering ocean. This “old swell,” which follows a blow or rolls in from a distant oceanic gale, is rarely absent from the open sea on our Eastern coasts. It throbs contin- ually even in the calmest weather, and the “rote” of it as it breaks against the cliffs, or drags down the rounded stones upon the seaward beaches and rolls them up again, is a ceaseless din. The long swells, green and bubbly like thick glass, as you look into them under the shadow of the rosy fog, make no noise, for they do not break; but out of sight in the mist we hear them thunder upon a sunken ledge. We hear, too, the snuffling and snarling of the seals fishing in shallow water, which the Indian always regards as a warn- ing to “’ Ware there!” For the seal spends most of his idle time lying upon the ledges, or else swimming around, waiting for the tide to go down and uncover some half-tide rock. A black guillemot—a “sea-pigeon,” an Indian or fisherman would call him — bobs upon the surface, or flies by on short, quick-moving wings that, being party-colored, look like two pairs of wings, one white, the other black. He is a useless, harmless, confiding little bird, with his red feet and pretty, soft, mottled feathers, one of the auk family, and the only one common along this coast in summer. Perhaps there is a tide ‘streak where opposing currents throw up a line of seaweed and ocean-drift in a long, winding 20 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. ribbon; and on this we may at times see a flock of Bonaparte’s gulls sitting quietly on the water like white doves, or a troop of phalaropes feeding with nervous, uncertain actions. These tiny creatures, dainty in all their ways and colors, stretch up their necks to an astonishing length, suspicious of our inten- tions. We see now why the fishermen call them “sea-geese,” though they are no more geese than they are robins. Gulls and terns pass and repass continually, growing out of the mist and melting into it; and perhaps a shark’s fin cuts the water, or we hear the puff of a porpoise off under the fog; or, of a sudden, a roller larger than the rest, and rising from a deeper trough, trips on a sunken ledge, and rears a straight wall of water with a comb of foam, before it thrashes down roaring. This is one of the dangers of a sealer’s life; and no peril of storm or wreck is more dreaded by the fishermen than these “blind breakers,” unless it is the sudden looming of a steamer’s sides above them in the fog. While paddling in this way over a smooth, almost silent sea, suddenly a little group of gulls dashes across the opening in the fog, screaming wildly and hurrying at top speed. Behind them, silent but swifter of wing, darts a blackish bird of medium size. We may see a glimpse of yellowish about the throat and catch sight of its tail, carried fully spread, with the two middle tail feathers sticking out beyond all the rest but held close to each other. The Indians call it the “ gull-hawk,” because it chases the gulls as hawks do smaller land-birds. Indeed, he resembles a hawk not only in his habits, but in his bill, which is hooked at the tip and provided with a cere, or waxy plate, at the base. This bill serves at once to distinguish him from all the gulls and terns with which he associates. The books call him the jaegar (which means hunter), or the skua; the fishermen name him the “marlingspike,” from his long middle tail OFF GRAND MANAN. 21 feathers. He is the gull’s robber cousin, a dreaded foe of theirs, the pirate of the sea. It is interesting to know that the jaegers, or jagers, from whom the birds get their name, were not peace- ful hunters, but a wild tribe of robbers who lived in Germany centuries ago, and got their living by plunder. The jaeger well deserves the name of pirate. He is perfectly able to get his own living, but all observers agree that he seldom if ever fishes for himself, although he is reported to pick up worms and mollusks. It would seem far easier to get an honest living than to follow the trade he does, for every fish he obtains by robbery means a long chase. The terns may be fishing together, plunging and screaming, without thought of interruption, when suddenly this black rob- ber, swift and silent, is seen among the flock, following the one that has just caught a fish. If the fish is already swallowed it makes no difference to him, and he never mistakes an empty bird for a full one. How, when he appears so suddenly, so unexpectedly, he can always tell just which birds have been successful, has been a puzzle to observers, but it seems easily answered. ‘There is no panic except among the terns that have just caught fish, and perhaps their terror reveals their secret to the pirate’s quick eye. Having once selected his victim, he pursues that one and no other, flying now above him, now beneath him, threatening him with his bill until the frightened tern at last disgorges what he has eaten, and the victorious jaeger snatches it up as his prize. So quick is he that he often catches the coveted morsel before it can reach the water. The jaeger is not a mild or a docile bird. His disposition is naturally fierce and his temper intractable. Something in his look, aside from the hooked beak, reminds us of the birds of prey. Therefore it is probable that, loving the chase for its 92 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. own sake, and for the excitement it brings, the jaeger has taken up his parasitic habits, not because they secure him an easier livelihood, but because they gratify his love of the chase. One very curious fact which characterizes some families of sea-birds, but is rarely observed of the land-birds, must be noted of the jaegers. The species have two different colora- tions or “color-phases.” Some birds will be dark all their lives, others will be light-colored for life. They are the same bird in everything but color, although some are almost as light as a sea-gull, and some look nearly black. The light birds much resemble gulls, except in having more or less pale yellow about the throat and head, a darker upper surface which is not a “mantle,” as in the gulls, but extends down over the rump and tail end, and a dark crown, which no gull has. The elongated middle tail feathers are a sure mark, as is also the habit of carrying the tail spread. The dark phase is a sooty brown, sometimes, but not always, with a little yellow about the head. The younger birds are mottled brown and white. There are three species of jaegers found in the United States, and while not often seen, even offshore, they sometimes travel in winter far to the south along the coast, and are occasionally seen about the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi Valley, always the same bold pirates that we met off Grand Manan. THE HERRING GULL. ‘« The low bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea at flood, Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to upland wood ; The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk’s rise and fall, The drift of the fog in moon-shine, over the dark coast-wall.”’ —Joun G. Wuittier, Marguerite. Tue best known of all seagulls is the herring gull. He ranges from the warm regions in winter to the Arctic Circle in summer, inland and coastwise, in both eastern and western hemispheres. On the Pacific. the American herring gull is duplicated by a relative, so nearly similar in size and color that only a scientist could mark the difference, and he associates with the Western gull, of the same size and appearance but with a slightly darker mantle. Even those who live in the largest cities know the herring gull as he flies up and down the channels among the shipping, or floats lightly in the city reservoirs, a winter visitor who finds it easier to make a living near city wharves than in the open sea. In summer he is up and away, far to the North, to the ledges along the coast of Maine and Labrador, or to the Great Lakes in the interior. Along the Maine coast, however, there is usually an abundance of herring gulls in summer, and at one place their numbers have becomea proverb. “ As thick as the gulls at Eastport” is not an uncommon saying for num- bers beyond computation. Indeed, it is a beautiful sight at times to see the immense numbers of gulls that throng “Quoddy Bay,” as Passama- 23 24 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. quoddy Bay, on the eastern coast of Maine, is usually called by the people living coastwise. The sun shining on them lights every bird, so that even when two miles away you can see them filling the air like a snowstorm, rising, falling, hovering, set- tling, a cloud of white flakes. There may be ten thousand, or there may be a hundred thousand of them, but the mind does not grasp the number, and any estimate is a guess. Nearer to the flock, instead of a cloud of silent white flakes, we discover a busy, screaming tangle of birds, each intent on looking out for himself. All is excitement, and their enormous appetites make them able to find fun in their fishing long after it would seem they must be gorged with food. The gentle little Bonaparte’s gull loves to sit and rest on the water for long intervals; the kittiwake will often float and eat what is floating beside him; but the herring gull, when in large flocks, is nervous and fierce, and rarely rests long, but takes its prey while on the wing, patting the water with its feet, arching its neck down to the water level while its uplifted wings hold it steady above the waves. Unlike the terns the gulls do not dive. While there usually are ex- ceptions to all rules, it is almost certain that an uninjured herring gull never dives. If you were to ask what brings these great numbers of gulls together, and I were to tell you that the tides do it, the answer, though correct, would seem frivolous. The tides of Eastport are the highest of any place upon the sea- coast of the United States —twice as high as those of Bos- ton, five times those of New York, and seven times those of San Francisco. In filling and emptying this great bay twice a day through narrow channels, tremendous whirlpools and currents are formed, and immense quantities of fish are borne back and THE HERRING GULL. 25 forth with the tides. Incalculable numbers of little herring are swept along, and these are followed by the larger fish and by the gulls that feed upon the herring. At times the water boils with the rushes of great armies of young herring try- ing to escape their enemies, while the pollock striking them from below or leaping out of the water, until the sea seems planted with fishes standing on their heads, and the screaming gulls dipping from above to seize the little fish as the pollock drive them up, make a scene not soon forgotten. Nor are the birds and fishes the only enemies the little herring have to fear. Thousands of hogsheads of them are taken in the nets of the fishermen and become sardines in oil or sardines in mustard. The chief industry of the towns upon Quoddy Bay is packing sardines. The gulls nest both inland and along the ocean shore. While canoeing on the great lakes of Maine, I have found their nests on the ledges far out from shore. The prettiest were little rims of reindeer moss laid upon a bed of the same dainty material, surrounding three dark eggs, larger than a hen’s eggs, blotched with darker brown. Along the seacoast the nest is made of dried seaweed. It is the habit of gulls to nest upon the ground, but when robbed and persecuted, they both build and roost in trees. The herring gull is one of our wariest and most suspicious birds, its only superior in these traits being the great black- backed gull, which can scarcely be snared, trapped, shot, or poisoned. So alert are the black-backed gulls that even the wary black ducks, themselves among the shyest and most cautious of birds, sometimes have a black-backed gull act as sentinel for them, and warn them of danger while they sleep or feed. When Pau-Puk-Keewis, in the story of Hiawatha, kills the 26 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. birds, and flings their bodies down the crag, it is Kayoshk, the sea gull, that discovers them and gives the alarm. ‘¢ Till at once Kayoshk, the sea gull, Perched upon a crag above them, Shouted: ‘It is Pau-Puk-Keewis ! He is slaying us by hundreds ! Send a message to our brother, Tidings send to Hiawatha !’’’ The poet makes a mistake when he says that the gull makes his outcry “from a crag”; it is his custom to give the alarm on the wing. But nothing could be more appropriate than choosing the sea gull to raise the alarm. Many a time the Indian seal- hunter creeping over the tide-ledges of the .bay, with every advantage of wind and sun, hears the harsh scream of a gull or tern flying over, and curses Kayoshk for betraying him. Every bird and beast about the seashore knows that warning, just as in the woods every creature halts and scurries off when the little chipmunk raises his sharp alarm. “A man! aman!” he seems to say; “run! run! a man!” and the old crow, flapping over, adds gruffly, “Go! go! go!” Thus it is that the birds and beasts stand guard for each other. Again Longfellow speaks of the sea gulls as they work upon the carcass of the great sturgeon within which Hiawatha is imprisoned, and in the description we mark two fine points and one little error. ‘Then he heard a clang and flapping, As of many wings assembling, Heard a screaming and confusion, As of birds of prey contending, Saw a gleam of light above him, Shining through the ribs of Nahma, Saw the glittering eyes of sea gulls, THE HERRING GULE. 27 Of Kayoshk, the sea gulls peering, Gazing at him through the opening, Heard them saying to each other, Tis our brother, Hiawatha ! * * * * * * * And the wild and clamorous sea gulls, Toiled with beak and claws together.’? This vigorous and truthful picture is not at all what we who are not poets would have imagined. Because of its white- ness most of us think the gull the emblem of purity and gentleness, and would not have written — ‘* As of birds of prey contending.”” Yet that just describes the fierceness and rapacity of sea gulls. Few of our most savage hawks are more bloodthirsty than sea gulls, just as the crow is hardly more shrewd and ingen- ious, and as no bird is at once so bold and so wary. Nor is the error in the line — ‘+ Saw the glittering eyes of sea gulls ;”” for the kind the poet is describing—the kind he must be describing, both because his words fit that and no other, and because it is the gull he used oftenest to see when he was a boy and man along the Portland shore and up the river Charles —has yellow eyes that are as fierce and unflinching as a hawk’s. (The eyes of young gulls and of the smaller species are brown.) But does the gull work with his feet? Not unless he braces with them to get tearing-hold. His nails are not made for scratching, and his thumb or fourth toe is too high up on his leg to help him grasp any object. This is the touch over- much in the description, something the poet remembered in- correctly, or added from his imagination. But there are few naturalists equal to the poets. 28 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. When we are at the seashore we may be puzzled to see so many different kinds of gulls. But while there are very many species of gulls, it is rare for more than three or four to be seen in one locality, and these may be better distinguished by their size than by their colors. Adult gulls are always pure white, with or without a pearl-gray “ mantle” on the back and upper surface of the wings, and with or without black wing- tips. Adult gulls never show any other colors except upon the bill and feet, which may be flesh-color, red, or yellow. The only other conspicuous marking is a black or dark gray head which is seen in some of the smaller species during the breeding season, and which disappears later. Young gulls are more or less brown according to their age, and the young of some species show a black bar across the end of the tail, a black crescent between the shoulders, or a brown mantle. These are all sure marks of immature birds. The largest of our common gulls is the American herring gull, which is seen on both seacoasts, about the Great Lakes, and near most of the large lakes of the interior. The Western gull which largely replaces it upon the Pacific coast, is scarcely distinguishable in life. Of the medium-sized gulls —those about eighteen inches long—the kittiwake of the northern Atlantic, the black-headed laughing gull of the southern Atlantic, the ring-billed gull of the plains and interior states, and the beautiful Heerman’s gull of the Pacific, with its gray body, white head, and red feet and bill, are the more conspicuous. The black-headed Franklin’s rosy gull of the interior, often called the “prairie dove” by the farmers, be- longs to the group of small-sized gulls, and the black-headed Bonaparte’s gull is a smaller bird, everywhere well known, both East, West, and in the interior. However, we very rarely see a Bonaparte’s gull with a black head, as this is the mark THE HERRING GULL. 29 of the breeding season and is worn only for a few weeks. The Bonaparte’s gull is the common small species of the Atlantic coast, so often seen floating in large flocks on the water. It is not difficult to distinguish gulls from terns, which somewhat resemble them in color. All our United States gulls are square-tailed and blunt-billed, and float on the water but never dive, while all our terns are fork-tailed, sharp-billed, and dive from the air but do not float upon the surface. The terns commonly have very brilliant red or yellow feet and bills, and in the adult plumage a black cap, but never a black head. Young terns lack the cap but do not show any brown markings like the young gulls. ON THE FARRALONES. FEEDING HABITS OF GULLS ON THE PACIFIC COAST.) ‘¢ For of all runes and rhymes Of all times, Best like I the ocean’s dirges, When the old harper heaves and rocks, His hoary locks Flowing and flashing in the surges.’ — Henry W. Lonerettow, The Saga of King Olaf. Tue Farralones are a group of rough and barren islands thirty miles out from San Francisco. No tree grows on them, and scarcely a plant, except the long, spongy weed called Farralone weed, can hold its own against the sea storms in that infer- tile soil. On one of the islands is a lighthouse. No other houses are there, and few men except those who gather eggs for the market ever visit the place. Thus being comparatively undisturbed, birds nest here in vast numbers. There are great colonies of cormorants, black as midnight, stretching up their long necks; companies of tufted puffins with their gay red and green bills and yellow ear-plumes curling like a ram’s horns; murres by the myriad, lifting their brown necks above their snowy breasts; pigeon guillemots, much like the “sea pigeon” of the East; Cassin’s auklets and petrels mingle with them according to their na- tures, solitary or in companies; and everywhere the snowy 1 Facts drawn from Dr. Walter E. Bryant’s ‘‘ Birds of the Farralones ” and H. W. Taylor’s ‘‘ Story of the Farralones.”’ 30 Fic. 5.—CORMORANT AND HERRING GULL. Facing page 80. ON THE FARRALONES. 31 Western gull, in size and color almost the counterpart of the herring gull of the East, stands his watch over a nest that is safer from intruders than any of the other nests. The gull of the East is a persecuted creature. He is robbed of his eggs; he is killed by gunners for his wings and feathers, to put into feather-beds when they are not put on hats; he is forced from his chosen home, and is even compelled to build his nest in trees, contrary to his nature. Our sympathies are too much with the gull of the East to make us inquire if he has faults; but when we see the gull of the West, free, secure, little molested, we find his honesty ques- tionable and a trait of low cunning highly developed. The sea gull is so like our old friend the crow in his boldness, impudence, and intelligence, that it is easy to believe that he is honest only under compulsion; and that the Western gull acts out his real nature while the Eastern one lacks opportunity. As soon as the breeding season opens the gulls begin repair- ing their old nests, which are large, comfortable affairs, made of the dry, ravelled Farralone weed. At the very outset they show their nature; for they steal their materials from the cormorants that nest near them. The cormorant is heavy, long-necked, ill-balanced, and awkward, so that picking up nesting stuff is hard work for him, while the active gulls can gather it as readily as any land-birds. In their feeding we find the gulls eating their own honestly earned fish and crabs and sea-urchins, and also the fish that they steal from the nests of the cormorants. Not content with this, they eat the cormorants’ eggs, and later in the season their black, bare-skinned, greasy-looking babies. It is almost incredible that a bird so spotless and dainty in its appearance can have so black a heart, but live young cormorant is part of the gull’s bill of fare. 32 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. When the cormorants’ eggs are all hatched, and the gull still wishes to mix a little egg with his diet, he torments the murres. Now the murres are foolish birds that bow their long, brown necks and silly heads continually, and grunt harshly, but they love their one big, pear-shaped egg. Always one or the other stays by it, hugging it between his or her long thighs and brooding over it. For all their folly they know enough not to trust a gull. As they are more than half the size of the gulls, the gulls prefer stratagem to force. A number of them combine to attack the murre in concert, and so harass and frighten her that she tries either to escape or to confront them. This is the gull’s opportunity. The big egg must be exposed for a moment. While the rest keep up their clamor and feigned attacks, one of the gulls steals in and seizes the egg in his bill. It must be a very large mouthrul, for a murre’s egg is much larger than a hen’s egg, and the gull’s bill is but little over two inches long. He breaks the egg by rolling it about the rocks until dented by rough usage, after which he sucks its contents. Not only do the gulls rob the birds, but they rob the eggers. Unless the heaps of eggs which the eggers pile up are covered very closely, the gulls will work their way under the cloths and carry off every egg. But eggs are not all their plunder. They just as willingly take the live young murres or a dead old bird. And they have a particular fondness for young rabbits. They will sit and watch by the rabbit burrows an hour waiting for the little rabbit to come out, and then will work fifteen minutes in trying to swallow him. THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE JUNK O’ PORK. LEACH’S PETREL. ‘¢ Well, ah fare you well, and it’s Ushant! gives the door to us, Whirling like a windmill on the dirty scud to lea: Till the last, last flicker goes From the tumbling water-rows, And we’re off to Mother Carey (Walk her down to Mother Carey !) Oh, we’re bound for Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at sea !” — Rupyarp Kiriine, Anchor Song. Near the entrance to Casco Bay, on the coast of Maine, close by the route of steamers going into Portland, is a curious island which never fails to attract the attention of the tourist. At low tide it may show half an acre, but at high water there appears only a bluff-sided island perhaps twenty-five feet above the sea and forty feet in length, slightly curving, and on top bare of house, or tree, or bush, but green with short grass. Some facetious sailor in years gone by, remembering the fat “rounds” that were always kept in the pickle barrel of the farm-houses, called it the “Junk o’ Pork.” It looks very much like a piece of fat pork, twice as long as it is thick, lying rind toward you. The little island is uninhabited, and almost inaccessible by man. A few years since, and probably it is the same to-day, all that lived 1 An island off the coast of France, whose lighthouse is the last sighted as the ship steers out into the Atlantic. D 33 384 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. on it were birds and field-mice; and chief among the birds were the Leach’s petrel, which fifty years ago was found on all our outer islands. The Scotch have a pretty way of speaking of fairies as “the good people” or “the little people,” to win their good- will; and when we recollect the superstitious respect all seafaring folk have for the petrels, or “Mother Carey’s chickens,” it seems quite fitting to give them the same title. That there are to-day few petrels breeding where there used to be hundreds is due to city gunners and scientists; for even a few years ago not a fisherman or island gunner anywhere along the coast could be induced to kill a petrel lest ill-luck should follow. These “little people” are small and dark-colored and flit about toward evening like little shadows, coming from and going to their nesting-place. Dusk and dawn are their hours of greatest activity, though all day long one of the pair will be out at sea feeding, while its mate is at home on the nest. It is the custom of the petrels to lay their eggs in under- ‘ground burrows about two feet in depth. In this dark chamber, when there are eggs to be hatched, one bird sits all day long sleeping and brooding; and at evening, welcom- ing her mate with a harsh-sounding but loving greeting, she changes places and goes out to seek her own food. Apparently the petrels see better in the twilight than in broad day, as one might imagine from their large full eyes, which have a near-sighted look, and a pupil so large that the eye appears to be black, though the iris really is brown. There is something wonderfully soft and dove-like about the petrels. Their plumage, though dark colored and greasy, is as full and deep as a gull’s. Their manners are gentle and winning, and they do not resent being handled, but look at me i tng Pre Fic. 6.— PETREL. Facing page 84. THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE JUNK O’ PORK. 35 you with their great round, liquid eyes, or go tiptoeing about the floor with an audible patter of their soft feet. Having no hind toe, and being unused to spreading their feet upon a level surface, they walk unsteadily on the outer joints of their toes, bending forward with awkward bobs, and partly spreading their wings to balance themselves. I have never seen one of those I have had in captivity try to fly, though I have had a dozen of them at atime moving about like dusky little shadows. But for the impossibility of get- ting them the proper food, and for their rank, oily smell, they would make pretty pets. All sea-birds keep their feathers well oiled to exclude the water, but the petrels and their near relatives are provided with an oil that has an odor quite unmistakable and not attractive. In addition to what is used upon the feathers, the Leach’s petrel has in its stomach from a teaspoonful to a tablespoonful of heavy, oily liquid, exceedingly limpid and of an unpleasant odor. He can disgorge this at will, and sometimes, in captivity at least, becomes much bedraggled with it. The use of this supply is hard to determine. How the petrels with their weak, webbed feet, which seem wholly unfit for such work, can dig such holes in the hard earth of our outer islands is a mystery. Of course the holes remain from one year to another, so that unless a colony is largely increased it is not necessary to dig new ones; but I think they have a helper whose services have received little credit in books. All our outer islands are overran with field- mice, whose holes are found on all sides. On landing on an uninhabited island, almost the first thing one notices is the scampering of mice through the short grass. It seems likely that the petrels often take possession of these mouse-holes, enlarging them to meet their own needs. 36 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. The petrel lays but one large white egg, and the parents, as we have said, share the work of hatching it. Rarely both parents are found in the burrow, and more rarely still the egg is found alone, yet it is still unknown which parent takes the responsibility. With most birds it is the mother that cares for the eggs and nestlings; but there are cases known, as among the phalaropes, where the female leaves all the work to her mate. With the petrels no one knows certainly what hap- pens. Some naturalists report that nearly all the birds found with eggs were females and others that the majority of those they saw on the nest were males. Out of eighteen old birds that I examined one season twelve were males, and there was a curious indication that the male did a large share of the work. Among sea-birds it is custom- ary for the female to tear off a patch of feathers from her body just the size of the egg, so that the warmth of the body may heat the egg directly. Often the exact number of eggs can be told by the number of these “brooding spots.” It is usually taken for granted that the bird with these incubating spots is the female; but in every Leach’s petrel that I have examined during the breeding season, the male had the “ brooding spot” and the female lacked it. However, we must know more about their habits before we can say that all the housework is left for the male to do. Often on a sea voyage, even a short one, if it take us outside of harbors, one may see the petrels following the vessel or dancing over the waves in little groups. Their flight, which is graceful and easy, resembles that of a purple martin; and, as the birds are about the size of swallows and dark colored, it would be natural to mistake them for swallows unless we knew the habits of both birds. When they find food the petrels gather around, raising their THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE JUNK O° PORK. 387 wings above their backs and dropping their long, thin legs. They hold themselves stationary by fluttering their wings and pattering with their webbed feet, much as a boy balances him- self on a barrel by keeping both feet and hands in motion. The name “ petrel,” or little Peter, is an allusion to St. Peter’s attempt to walk upon the water. The Germans call them “Petersvogel,” or Peter’s birds, from the same pretty conceit. Can we understand the life of these petrels? The glimpse we have had of them is their one visit to the land in all the year. After their little chick is out of the shell and able to go to sea, the petrel never comes to shore again unless driven in by storms. No birds are so near to the sailor in all his voyages nor so remote from the landsman’s travels as the petrels and their near relatives. Their peculiar odor gives us a hint — and a strong one — of train oil, and whaling voyages, and long months out of sight of land. Day after day, month after month, they are alone upon the ocean. Picture to yourself the solemn loneliness of such a life. All they eat must come by fishing, or from the ocean drift, and when they drink it must be salt water. They can never alight on anything more stable than the rocking billows. Does it storm? ‘There is no protection to them from rain or cold un- less they fly above the storm or beyond it. They sleep on the wing or on the wave, homeless wanderers, driven up and down the sea with no rest except in motion. What a solitary life, fit only for a savage bird that hates man and his own kind! Yet these houseless and homeless creatures are more sociable than solitary, more confiding than morose; they seek the neighborhood of ships, are easily caught, readily tamed; and the smaller kinds are gentle in disposition, if not affectionate. It is one of the mysteries of the great ocean, what makes its loneliness and immensity so dear to these little sailor birds. FEEDING HABITS OF THE FULMARS OFF THE COAST OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. ‘*Sun, wind, and cloud shall not fail from the face of it, Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free; And the ships shall go abroad To the glory of the Lord Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea! *? —Rupyarp Kipuine, The Last Chantey. Tren miles west of Point Loma, at the entrance of San Diego Bay, is an extensive fishing bank extending parallel with the coast for a distance of several miles. This bank is resorted to during fair weather from October first to March first by the San Diego fishermen, who obtain large quantities of rock-cod there for the markets of southern California. The fishing is all done in from seventy-five to one hundred fathoms of water. There are often large schools of small fish on the surface which attract great numbers of sea-birds, including the fulmars, and it is along this bank that fulmars are to be found if anywhere near shore. Some time about the last of September the first of them make their appearance, the exact date being somewhat uncer- tain and due in a measure to the food supply, and quite possi- bly also to the weather. They are hardly what one would call gregarious, although several are often seen in company flying along in a loose, straggling flock. More often they are seen in 1 Abridged, with author’s permission, from an article by A. W. Anthony in The Auk, April, 1895. 38 FEEDING HABITS OF THE FULMARS. 389 flocks of black-vented shearwaters, one or two in a flock of fifty. Unlike the shearwaters, however, they seldom pass a craft without turning aside at least to make a circuit about it before flying on. If the vessel is a fishing sloop, sounding on the banks, the chances are in favor of the shearwaters being forgot- ten and allowed to disappear in the distance while the fulmar settles lightly down on the water within a few yards of the fisherman. The next fulmar that passes will, after having made the regulation circuit, join the first, until within a few minutes a flock of six or eight of these most graceful and handsome petrels have collected, dancing about on the waves as light and buoyant as corks. As the lines are hauled up after a successful sound, the long string of often twenty or thirty golden-red fish is seen through the limpid water while still several fathoms down, and great excitement prevails. Any fulmars that have grown uneasy and have started out on the periodical circuit of the craft, immediately alight a few yards to the windward. Those that are on the water and have drifted away hasten to the spot, with wings outspread and feet pattering along on the water. It is more than likely that in hauling up the line one or more fish have become detached from the hooks; such fish, if loosened after having been raised from twenty fathoms, are sure to rise to the surface a few feet to the windward of the boat. The pressure of the deep water being suddenly removed, the air in the air-bladder expands so quickly that the fish is greatly distended, and rises helpless to the surface. With a hoarse croak and wings outspread the nearest ful- mar pounces upon the unfortunate cod, keeping all others at bay with threatening beak. A few hasty snaps at the eyes, 40 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. or air-bladder protruding from the mouth, convinces him that codfish are tough, and the first floater, if a large one, is aban- doned for a moment for the second, should there be more than one, or for a snap at the bait on the hooks. Their excitement by this time has attracted the attention of several Western and American herring gulls, which hover screaming over the sloop, too shy to attempt to touch the fish while it is so near. Another ocean wanderer meantime has arrived; a short-tailed albatross, sweeping along, has noticed the commotion among his lesser brethren, and with a groan- ing note settles down by the floating fish, keeping all trespass- ers away by a loud clattering of his mandibles; though not infrequently a fulmar will dispute possession for some time with an albatross before leaving a fish he has torn open, and I think a fulmar will usually rout a Western gull completely. In attacking a fish under the above conditions, the eyes and air-bladder are first eaten, after which the abdomen is torn open, if possible, and the entire contents of the skin torn out piecemeal. I have, however, seen birds seated on the water by the side of a fish from which they had eaten the eyes, though they were unable to tear open the tough skin. In diving the fulmars use both feet and wings, the latter only half open, the primaries seeming to be used very little, if any, but kept drawn back with the secondaries. Once under water they make good headway, seizing the fish, which is swallowed immediately upon reaching the surface. Although mention has been made of their following fishing sloops, fish form a very small part of their diet while on the coast. In fact it is the exception. I have never found a small fish in the stomachs of those I have taken, nor have I seen them catch fish themselves, though I have no doubt regarding their ability to do so, should they fall in with a FEEDING HABITS OF THE FULMARS. 41 school of small herring or anchovies; and from their associat- ing with flocks of shearwaters I infer that they derive a part of their food from such schools of small fry when they are common. There is, however, a large jellyfish that is usually abun- dant along the coast during the time of the fulmars’ sojourn, and these are never disregarded by the ever hungry birds. I have often seen a fulmar sitting on the water by the side of a jellyfish, part of which it had eaten, so tilled that it could scarcely move out of the way of the boat. I think the ful- mars enjoy a monopoly of this diet, for I have never seen any other species eating it; nor will gulls, nor any of the sea-birds that I have observed, pay any attention to a fulmar that is eating a jellyfish, though they all claim their share if the food is of a kind that they care for. In flight the fulmars much more resemble the shearwaters than the albatrosses, though they have the habit, common to all these families, of sailing over the water at an angle of about forty-five degrees, with the tip of the lower wing but just above the waves. The wing-beats are rapid, about as with the shearwaters; and there is at a distance little to distinguish the fulmars in the dark phases from the dark-bodied shear- waters, except the shorter, less pointed wings and heavier body of the fulmars. In rising from the water the fulmars, shearwaters, and both species of albatross found with us (the black-footed and short- tailed albatrosses) spread the wings and run along the water for a distance to gain sufficient momentum to lift them clear of the waves. The fulmars will almost invariably, according to my observations, rise toward an approaching boat; while both the shearwaters and albatrosses always fly from any- thing disturbing them, and rise preferably against the wind. THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PERCE: GANNETS. ‘¢Now, brothers, for the icebergs Of frozen Labrador, : Floating spectral in the moonshine Along the low, black shore ! Where like snow the gannets’ feathers On ’Brador’s rocks are shed And the noisy murres are flying Like black scuds overhead.”’ —Joun G. Wuirtier, The Fishermen. You may go with me to the coast of Labrador, sailing among the bluff and dangerous islands off the mouth of the St. Lawrence in a cold wind, a chilling fog, and a short, chop- ping sea. This was the region that Jacques Cartier visited hundreds of years ago, and the scene is not so very different now from that he saw then. It does not take much imagina- tion to fancy ourselves in his rude ship, beating up to the shores of this new-found and dangerous land. Still we find the rough rocks, topped with dark evergreens, stunted by the cold winds, still the same sullen sea and inhospitable climate, and still the hosts of gannets whitening the tops of the ledges — “a great and infinite number of gannets which are white and bigger than any geese,” wrote Cartier, “and which bite even as dogs.” Within the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, formed by the open jaws of the bay and the great island of Newfoundland, are the 1 Pronounced per-say, in two syllables, though the fishermen make but one syllable, perse. 42 ‘Gp ased Bure SLANNVD —"L “OL THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PERCE. 43 breeding-places of the gannets — the Bird Rocks of the Magda- len Island group and Bonaventure Island near the Isle Percé off the north shore of the Baie des Chaleurs. “Warm Bay ” it means, but we may judge the warmth of the region when the first of June sees the stunted little cattle dragging the wooden ploughs through ground hardly thawed as yet, while snow- drifts still lie in the fields. It is a bleak and sterile land, pinched with cold, and chilled with vapor steaming up from the melting icebergs that drift past in summer. But sometimes a clear morning of midsummer comes to glad- den the poor fishermen of the coast. The sea is as blue as the sky, and as calm too; the rough rocks and stunted trees bask in sunshine, and, a clear note of color in a scene usually too gloomy, shines out the red mass of Percé Rock. Nearly three hundred feet high, steep from the sea, springs the great Arch Rock, inaccessible except to the birds that cover it. A thousand feet long, and nearly a third as wide, its broad and nearly level top harbors myriads of .birds that scream and fish about. They nest there by the acre, black for the cormorants and white for the sea-gulls, sitting in colonies as close as they can huddle; and a mile off is Bonaventure, whose whiteness is the snowy backs of gannets that breed here by themselves. The great Arch Rock, or Pierced Rock, in literal translation, gets its name from a lofty arch like a great doorway worn through it near one end—an open door, as it were, through which boats may pass, and we may see the blue water beyond. Perse Rock it is called by the fishermen, who ignore the second syllable in this as they do in’the little town of Percé (or Perse) which you can find on your maps. Imagine the low rude huts of this hamlet strewn about with nets, spars, lobster traps, and fishing-gear, and the little fleet of black-hulled, broad-bowed 44 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. boats, with red, tanned sails, making ready at sunrise for a day’s fishing. A fair day is a day of gladness in that region ; air and sea are full of life. At dawn the cormorants set out on heavy wings for their fishing grounds, flapping laboriously and stretching out their long necks against the flush of morning red, as black them- selves as midnight spectres. To Gaspé Bay and Baie Chaleurs they go a-fishing, and with them go the white gannets from Bonaventure. There is a turmoil of gulls clamoring and bark- ing, and the shrill screams of restless terns, ever noisy and sus- picious, keeping up an incessant alarm or complaint. On the water about the bases of the crags little guillemots bob like corks, diving and fishing, and a solitary loon comes up to shout a prolonged halloo to some invisible mate; or a big seal lifts above the water like a mermaid, and, tossing a fish in air, catches it as it descends head foremost and swallows it with a groan. All day long the gulls wheel and scream about the Great Arch Rock, the cormorants crane their long black necks over the beetling walls, and gannets plunge about it; but in gen- eral both cormorants and gannets prefer to go farther for their fishing, to the shoal water of the bays, where the tremendous tides sweep great schools of fishes this way and that. Neither of these birds ever tires of fishing or can ever be satisfied with eating. They will eat till the tails of the little fishes stick out of the corners of their mouths before they will stop. There isa record of a cormorant which was seen to catch and eat one hundred and eighty fishes in one and a half hours, or two fish a minute. All fish-eating birds have these insatia- ble appetites, and the amount they consume is beyond compu- tation, though it should be said that they do not much disturb the species most prized by man. THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PERCE. 45 Gannets are not found everywhere. Their only breeding- places in numbers, if the small breeding-ground near Grand Manan has been broken up, are in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, although they not infrequently visit the coast of Maine, where they can be easily distinguished from gulls by their shape and habits. Their bold and beautiful action on the wing at once calls attention to them, as do their habits of flying in lines and plunging from the wing. Larger, longer-winged than a gull, longer-necked and longer-billed, with a longer tail, they more resemble gigantic terns in their graceful flight and easy evolu- tions on the wing. A most beautiful, bold, fierce bird is our great gannet, with his cold, white eye, and his taper, knife- edged bill that bites, not “like a dog,” as Cartier says, but a great deal worse, cutting to the bone. A terrible weapon it is against man or fish, yet sometimes it brings the gannet to grief. It used to be the custom in the Bay of Gaspé to fasten a dead fish to a floating shingle or bit of driftwood just large enough to buoy him. The gannets, seeing the fish, and diving like an arrow, often from a great height, would spear not only the fish, but the board as well, and become victims to their too headlong speed. It is the gannet’s peculiar way of diving that makes such a capture possible. Most diving birds, if they wish to dive deep, spring from the water and take a header exactly as a boy would do. The loon and the cormorant dive in this way. The gull fishes from the wing without diving. But the tern and gannet dive with a splash. The gannet is incomparably the bolder and more expert of the two. He hunts on the wing at all distances above the water, but oftenest at seventy-five or a hundred feet above the surface, if the fish are swimming deep, flying in straggling flocks. When a fish is seen the gannet draws in his wings till they 46 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. are nearly closed, thus leaving little surface to bear the body up, and, throwing himself headlong in the air, he falls like a plummet. Just above the water the nearly closed wings are flexed tight to the body to remove all resistance to the water, and, with a slight splash, the gannet cleaves the water and secures his prey. It is a bold but wise plan, for any swimmer will tell you that in diving from a great height it is ab- solutely necessary to take a perpendicular course in order not to “knock the breath out of one.” The gannet has a peculiar provision for his needs in the abun- dant and very large air cells which lie like cushions between his skin and his flesh, taking the place of the fat layer which we find on most birds. Itis supposed that these break the jar of his plunge from so great a height. When the fish are swimming near the surface the gannet alters his methods of pursuit, flies low, and dives at a slant, knowing that he will not have to use much force, nor sustain any great shock, in order to penetrate the water far enough to get his prey. The adult gannet is pure white, with black ends to the wings and a yellowish wash about the head,—the only color other than black, white, and brown, it may be remarked, that is ever found on any of the strictly seafaring birds (the eider drake only excepted), unless about their bills and feet. The gannets of the year are a dark brown, speckled with white as if by tiny snowflakes. The baby gannet in the nest, like the cormorant’s young, is a naked, greasy, helpless squab, very slow to learn how to care for itself, and therein entirely unlike the little gulls, terns, and ducks, which chip the shell only to take up active life at once. The gannets are some nine or ten weeks in the nest, and at the end of eight weeks are still covered with down and have wings only feebly developed. So slowly do they come to the possession of their wonderful THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PERCE. 47 powers of flight that we are reminded of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the discouragements that befell the ugly duckling which was after all born a swan. What they are at their prime we can best learn from the words of Mr. William Brewster, one of our most distinguished naturalists, who describes them as he saw them, “floating idly on the blue sea; skimming close to the waves in the teeth of a stiff breeze; hovering excitedly over schools of capelin, among which they plunged with fierce energy; and at evening stringing out in long lines against the sunset sky, as they flapped their way homeward to the rookery. But most vivid of all is the recollection of their presence on a certain occasion when our vessel was overtaken by a squall in the middle of the Gulf. At the height of the confusion, when the voices of the men struggling to take in sail were drowned by the rush of the wind, and the sea, a moment before so calm, was furrowed by furious gusts, overhead, against the black storm clouds, where lightning flashed and thunder rolled incessantly, a score of the majestic birds sailed; calm, impassive, emotionless, breasting the gale as easily as if it were the gentlest summer breeze. How often must such a group have been the sole witnesses of still wilder scenes, when vessels less fortunate than ours have foundered and sunk with all on board.” A CYPRESS SWAMP. THE ANHINGA. ‘¢Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and the trailing mosses in mid-air Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals, Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons Home to their roosts in the cedar trees returning at sunset, Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter.” — Henry W. Lonereitiow, Evangeline. To Florida next, the home of the herons and that strange cousin of the gannet and the cormorant, the darter, or anhinga, or snake-bird, or water-turkey. The cypress swamp is the home of these birds, who build their nests among the hummocks. To seek them we must have a boat; for these swamps are vast morasses largely over- flowed in the rainy part of the year, and always threaded with black, winding creeks full of alligators and poisonous water- snakes. The scene is semi-tropical. Vegetation luxuriates. The trees grow so tall and are so thickly leaved that the stn is shut out; and beneath the canopy of their tops, among the great gray trunks which rise like pillars, there is a gloom, so- lemnity, and grandeur like that of some many-columned cathe- dral, religiously quiet and dim. The cypress trees, rising from the water, among large-leaved water-plants, grow to gigantic size, and are draped with banners of the hanging gray tilland- sia, which we know as “Spanish moss,” or with air-plants that trail their tendrils and blossoms from trunk and branches. 48 £ S Fic. 8. — ANHINGA. Facing page 48, A CYPRESS SWAMP. 49 Here and there the land rises a little above the level of the water into green mounds called “hummocks,” where grow scat- tered palmettoes, waving their palm-like crests above the sur- rounding trees. Here the great ivory-billed woodpecker, the largest and most beautiful of his race, may perhaps be heard knocking with his great white beak to rout out the palmetto- borer. In the fringe of buttonwood, and other brush about the edges of the hummocks, herons breed, or did breed before they were so nearly exterminated for millinery. There was a time when hundreds and thousands of them—the great blue Ward’s heron, nearly like our largest heron of the North, the medium-sized reddish egret, the little blue heron, and the little white egret, with the whole tribe of night herons —used to be here in countless numbers, building their loose platforms of sticks among the branches, and keeping their awkward guard over the beautiful blue-green eggs and squabby young. What a clamor rose! What a smell of de- cayed fish from the fragments dropped beneath the nests! A few remnants of the former host remain still and breed in the bushes. The fish-crows lurk about picking up the leavings on the ground, or stealing an egg or a young heron from the nest when they can. The boat-tailed grackle, — the “jackdaw ” of the South,—croaks in the willows, and a Florida white- breasted nuthatch, inspecting the larger trees, threads his way up and down, indifferent which end of him is uppermost. It may be that a flock of white ibises, distinguished from the white herons by their black wing-tips and outstretched necks, a roseate spoon-bill,—the “pink curlew” of the South, a great bald-headed wood ibis, —locally known as a “ gannet,” —or a hoarse-voiced brown crane will pass by where they can be seen through the tree-tops. And off in the distance, low down among the water-plants E 50 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. or on the plashy border of the hummock, one hears the melan- choly mourning of that gigantic rail, the limpkin or courlan, a curious brown and white striped bird, not exactly rail and hardly a crane, whose doleful wailing gives it the local name of the “crying bird” or “ mourning widow.” Among such neighbors lives the anhinga, the cousin of the gannet and the cormorant of the rocks. Seeing them side by side you would not admit the relationship until you looked at their feet. For while the gannet is shapely and graceful, a heavy bird strongly built, this slender relative looks as if he were patched up out of the pieces left over after all the other totipalmate birds were made. ‘They are alike, however, in both having the webbing of their feet.extend along the inner side of the foot, from the hind toe to the inner front toe, which gives them three webs instead of two, like ducks and other swimming birds. The anhinga has a long neck, excessively slender, drawn out into a sharp.and slender bill; a light, long, thin body; wings like great fans; fully webbed feet apparently unfit for tree-perching, and a great, stiff tail, like corrugated sheet-iron. His color is inconspicuous — black for the ground color, usu- ally glossed with green reflections, with gray stripes down the shoulders. The female has a brown neck and breast. Concealment is easy for the anhinga. The cypress swamp is full of gloomy, half-lighted corners, and his black and slender figure fits into shadowy recesses of the forest swamp. Even the light stripes on his back, though they look conspicu- ous, are a protection to him, resembling as they do the ridges on the cypress bark with their light tops and darker grooves between. But the snake-bird does not rely entirely upon his color for protection. When alarmed he drops quietly from his perch, A CYPRESS SWAMP. 61 and the water closes over him without a ripple. If he is floating high, according to his custom when undisturbed, he will disappear like a grebe, sinking in the exact spot where he has been floating. He can swim at any depth. Some- times the whole long neck will be above the surface, rising from the black swamp water like some venomous serpent, whence the name of “snake-bird.” Often only the bill is put up for breathing, and for a considerable time he can swim under water without coming up to breathe. In common with many other birds, the anhinga can fly under water, and will at times rise from the water-flight into the air-flight without a break in the motion. We would hardly expect that a bird so expert in the water would fly strongly and well, but the snake-bird is easy on the wing; and when seen with its broad wings and tail extended, and its slender neck and body lying between the three nearly equal lobes, it looks, as one observer says, “like an ace of clubs on the wing.” Fishing in these dark waters, flying over the hummocks, sitting with wings half outstretched to dry, in social little groups, or caring for their blue eggs in their nest that is always built overhanging the water, the anhinga is a bird of the swamps, and may be seen only in some such place as we have described. THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FLAMINGO. My first experience with these birds was in the winter of 1884-85. We were east of the easternmost Cape Sable, the extreme south point of Florida, when late in the afternoon we entered a bay about seven by fifteen miles in extent, almost every rod of which was shallow enough to be waded by the flamingo. The bottom largely consisted of a soft, sticky clay, as though composed of fine particles of disintegrated coral, so soft that with one hand I could set a pole two fathoms down into the mud, and so sticky that one cannot wash the mud from any- thing without rubbing it. Although the water in these bays is so shallow, much of it being not above eighteen inches deep, it is so permeated with this soft white mud, which is stirred up by the action of the wind, that it is impossible to see the bottom, and after a day or two of more than usually heavy wind the whole bay reminds one of a large bow] of milk. When about halfway across this bay —it being abb-tide — our boat stuck in the mud and we could go no farther. After lowering sail, I climbed to the mast-head to learn if anything could be seen. Almost to the east of us, where the setting sun reflected the light to the best advantage, was a long line of red extending fully a half mile, reminding one of a prairie fire at night. 1 Abridged, by the author’s permission, from Captain D. P. Ingraham’s “Observations on the American Flamingo,” a paper presented before the World’s Congress on Ornithology, 1893. 52 Fic. 9. — FLAMINGOES. Facing page 52, LIFE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FLAMINGO. 538 I doubt whether De Soto felt any more pride when he first saw the broad waters of the Mississippi than I did at the sight before me. I took off my hat and swung it, and shouted, “The flamingoes! the flamingoes!” It was then that I first recognized the import of the name “ flamingo,” — flame-colored. The flock was fully four miles away, and consisted of not less than twenty-five hundred birds. I had spent fully two months each of the two preceding years to find these birds; and I now felt I almost had them in my grasp— vain delusion. For six successive days each week, and for six successive weeks, did we devise every plan that we could conceive of, every day looking out upon that beautiful flock of not less than twenty-five hundred birds. In all that time we could never get within eight hundred yards of them. Then our water supply became exhausted, and we set sail for Key West, about one hundred and twenty miles away, for new supplies; and thus ended the flamingo campaign of 1884. The bird is related to the Anatide, or duck family, crush- ing its food between the mandibles, and sifting out such portions as it does not wish to swallow, as does the duck. This leads the natives in the West Indies to say that the flamingo lives on dirt. Its food is small mollusks, crusta- ceans, and other marine animals gathered from the mud. The peculiar shape of the beak is specially adapted to its manner of feeding. With its long legs to wade, and its long neck to reach down into the water to collect its food, it brings the upper portion of the upper mandible directly on the bottom, so that it may be almost literally said to stand on its head when it eats. It is very interesting to see a flock feeding, especially when the bottom chances to be a little hard, so that they have to dig their food out from the earth. The water prevents their 54 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. scratching like a fowl, but they go through the same motions, only not so fast; and as their long legs go up and down it re- minds one of a regiment of soldiers marking time. After they have stirred up the earth for a while, they put their heads down into the water, gather up the results of their labor, and then “mark time” again, constantly swinging around and gathering the earth up into a mound. When they are through, there will frequently be a mound five or six inches high and three or four feet across. The nesting habits of the flamingo are peculiar. They nest in great colonies, and when not disturbed occupy the old nests the following year, — not perhaps the same bird using its own nest of the former year, but the colony as a whole occupying the same nests. I have seen not less than four thousand nests im one group, as close together as they could be placed. The most desirable locality seems to be some very shallow and very muddy lagoon, where the nests are almost unap- proachable. They are made of soft mud which is worked up into a pyramid, eighteen or twenty inches across at the base, perhaps fifteen inches high the first season, and about ten inches across on top. This mud dries and becomes exceed- ingly hard, so as to retain its form for years. The birds each year add a little to the top of the nest, so that the nests fre- quently become two feet high or more. The nest is hollowed out a little on top, and the eggs, usually two, are deposited on the bare earth. The egg is large, averag- ing about three and a half by four and a half inches, and when first laid is pure white, being covered with a flaky substance, but it becomes bluish when this is removed. The bird takes a position on the nest like that of most other birds, but sits a little farther back on account of its long legs, thus bringing the eggs a little more toward the breast. It does not sit LIFE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FLAMINGO. 55 astride of the nest, as it has so often been represented, but doubles its legs under its body like other long-legged birds. I know of no authentic data as to the age the flamingo may reach, but I judge that its life must be fully fifty years. The bird of the first year is nearly gray, but after it sheds its first winter plumage, it assumes a reddish color. One familiar with flamingoes can easily distinguish their ages, at least to the fourth year, and it is evident that they do not reach their full brightness before the seventh year. The natives used to be in the habit of taking large numbers of them for food during the moulting season, when the birds cannot fly, the feathers being so few and the body so heavy. The plan adopted was for a number of persons to go out with long ropes, surround a flock, drive them together in a huddle, then stretch a line of rope around them, and at a given signal rush toward the flock. The birds, in their efforts to escape, attempted to run past their pursuers, but were tripped up by the rope. When thrown down into the water it took them some moments to regain their feet, and thus their captors gathered them in. Fifty years ago they used to be taken in large numbers and carried to Key West, where they were sold for food, and about the same time they were not uncommon in almost every suit- able locality from the mouth of the Rio Grande to Cape Florida. In these days the only locality in the United States where they are common, so far as I have been able to learn, is the extreme western and southern coast of Florida. One of the most interesting observations I made was dur- ing my last year’s work. We always called it the “dress parade.” We were watching a flock of three hundred or more, standing at rest some four hundred yards from shore. About an hour after sunset a few birds commenced to feed, and soon 56 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. a dozen or two of the largest males began to march backward and forward in the rear of the flock. Nearly every male soon joined in this concourse. The line of the flock lay about parallel with the shore, and the males took their position directly in the rear in a solid body. As though ata given signal every bird commenced to march, passed to the extreme farther end of the flock, and halted, making a great noise, as if every bird in his loudest voice said, “Don’t I wear a splendid uniform?” After a moment’s pause, all faced about, marched back to the other end of the line, and then cried again, “Am I not a beautiful bird?” When marching back and forth, they moved in almost as perfect order as a platoon of soldiers. Thus the parade con- tinued for nearly an hour, until one by one the birds dropped out of the ranks and began to feed again. THE SEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS. PELICANS. ‘The wondrous, beautiful prairies, Billowy waves of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas. Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck ; Over them wandered the wolves and herds of riderless horses ; Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel ; Over them wandered the scattered tribes of Ishmael’s children, Staining the desert with blood ; and above their terrible war-trails Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens.’’ — Henry W. Lonerettow, Evangeline. Ir you were to ask me the best place in the world to study sea birds, I would tell you to go to our Western plains and prairies. It is strange, but true, that nowhere else can one find as many kinds of water-birds as in the interior of the country. Rare ducks, found on the Maine coast only in winter, breed among the Rocky Mountains; the little phalaropes that we met floating off Grand Manan, flock more abundantly to the prairies ; the cormorant of the North builds her nest among the inland lakes beside the pelican of the South; and swans, cranes, plovers, sandpipers, terns, and sea-gulls breed in vast numbers about all the little ponds of water that dot the prairie. Birds that never mingle upon the coasts dwell there side by side. It is a pretty sight to see their white plumage shining about the blue pools, the green uneven prairie behind. How shall I 57 58 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. make you see it—the Prairie du Coteau du Missouri, the hill and lake country of northeastern Dakota and of the British province just to the northward? The broad prairie, treeless except along the river courses, which thus outline themselves as in a map, rolls away in low, melting ridges that shut out the sky more than would seem possible to you who imagine that the prairie is as flat as the ocean. And so it is —but sometimes monotonously level like an ocean calm, and sometimes breaking in ripples and swells and ridges of green grass like the green waves of the sea, capped with the white foam of flowers. In color it varies according to the latitude, from the gray barrens of Assiniboia, where, the last of June, the whole country is as brown as a mouse’s ear, to the lively green of Dakota that at the same season ripples in grass and wheat. Not that our expectations of wheat to the saddlebow and grass above a horse’s head are met there. The wheat of Dakota is shorter strawed than the Eastern grain; it has too much to do in filling its heavy head in the short summer season to grow the long stalks that we find in wheat and grass farther south. The abundant wild flowers bloom on a level with the prairie — little striped pink and white roses scarcely six inches high, but sweet as a June morning, the light blue prairie crocus, the purple wild indigo, and a multitude of showy blossoms, among them that treacherous cactus, the prickly pear, with its yellow flowers. An eye that knows the signs will see everywhere on the prairies the buffalo-wallows and buffalo-trails trod out in years past by millions of the great shaggy bison, of whom nothing is now left but these worn paths that led them to water, the saucer-shaped wallows where they rolled in the mud, and their white bones, lying where they fell or gathered into great heaps THE SEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS. 59 to be carried to market for use in sugar refining. In a few years these too will have vanished. Everywhere over the prairies near or far, in all the little hollows, are pools of water. Some are alkaline and unwhole- some to drink; some are salt, and there grow about them the same plants that you pick by the sea-shore; some are fresh, with little streams flowing in and out. About the first two is generally a whitish rim of salt or soda left by the evap- oration of the water; the fresh-water pools are oftener edged with water plants and rushes. Here the sea birds congregate. Great pelicans spread their broad pinions in graceful flight or sit in rows with their bills upon their breasts meditating over a good meal. The gulls fly swiftly back and forth, with a strong rowing motion; terns clip past in sharp zigzags, like those of the dragon-flies they follow; ducks, grebes, and loons float on the ponds or dive for food; sandpipers and plovers trip about the borders of the pools with melancholy pipings; little rails skulk in and out of the water weeds; and great white and brown cranes stalk about over the plains like birds on stilts, eating rose-hips or dancing uncouth dances to woo their mates. Here the birds live and breed, building nests upon the open prairies of such materials as they can find. A photograph of a Foster’s tern’s nest from South Dakota shows that it is built principally of sticks, some of them large and long, a much more substantial nest than the scooped-out hollow in the sand or the trivial fencing of twigs that I have found among the Eastern terns. Their food, too, varies much from their diet in the East; less fish because fish is not always easy to find even in fresh-water ponds, and more insects of different sorts. In Minnesota, the beautiful Franklin’s gull follows the plough, and picks up 60 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. grubs as a crow or a blackbird might, whence the pretty name the farmers there give it of Prairie Dove. The gulls are good grasshopper catchers, and the terns eat dragon-flies in large numbers. But the pelican is the bird most unlike any we know in the East. His great bulky figure and fully webbed feet, his wrinkled, swinging pouch and long, flat bill, though familiar enough to city children, are quite unknown to those who do not live near parks or menageries. Any child who lives near Lincoln Park. in Chicago, where the water-birds are given full liberty, and neither confined nor maimed, but trusted to remain where they are well treated, may see them fishing in the ponds, or sitting quietly about the shores preening their feathers. In Central Park, New York, where the birds are not so well eared for, but have their wing-tips cut off at the joint, and their liberty largely taken from them, the chief interest is to watch them fight. A gannet and crane there used to have a perpetual difference of opinion, and to carry on a most amusing duel. The long-legged, long-necked crane appeared to have every advantage of his short-legged, short-necked antagonist, which could not reach up to the crane’s body. The crane would torment the gannet until the latter opened his mouth, when the crane would strike with the evident intention of spearing the gannet down the throat. But the gannet was always a little too quick, and in the end he revenged himself on the crane’s legs. He used also to punish that notorious bully, the black swan, till only interference saved the swan’s life. Yet the keeper said that the slow, unwieldy European pelican was the master even among these fighting characters. ‘In this country we have two pelicans differing much in color and in habits. The white pelican is more abundant in the THE SEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS. 61 interior than on the coast, while the brown pelican is common along the-Gulf of Mexico and less abundant inland. All along the Florida coast the brown pelicans may be seen soaring above the blue water, or fishing in flocks, and sunning themselves on the sand bars. In the West the great white pelican takes its place. Their habits are rather similar, except in a single particular. The brown pelican plunges from the wing after its fish, but the white pelican hunts its prey by swimming. Often a flock will band together and drive a school of fishes into shallows, where they gather up large numbers at every scoop of their big bag. The water taken in is allowed to drain out of the corners of their mouths, and the fish are swallowed. If the bird is fishing to feed her young, she still does the same, and afterward disgorges the fish; for she could not fly if her pouch were filled with fishes, as many books teach us, because then her body would be out of balance. Though they live together in large flocks, the pelican so naturally seeks dreary and lonesome places that it has been taken as an emblem of desolation. “And the pelican of the wilderness shall possess it,” says the Scripture, frequently choosing the pelican and the bittern, because they dwell in remote and sedgy marsh-lands, to typify utter ruin and desolation. For centuries the pelican has been chosen as the symbol of one thing or another. An odd conceit in its natural history is connected with the days of chivalry. When knights used to ride out in full armor, each man carried a shield, and on it, partly because few could read, and partly because it was im- portant to know friend or foe while still a long way off, each man painted some device which stood instead of his name. Usually it was a bird or an animal in a certain attitude,—a 62 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. lion rampant, a lion couchant, a pelican “in her piety,” a peacock “in his pride.” In such a device the pelican was represented above a nestful of young with upturned bills, her own head turned down upon her breast. She was the symbol of fostering care and self- sacrifice, for, so the fable ran, she fed her young with the life-blood drawn from her own breast. It is a pretty tale, though untrue, and may have arisen from a curious error in observation. Those medieval heralds were poor naturalists, never careful to see all they might, and perhaps unable to approach very near to so shy a bird as the pelican. Thus what they thought they saw was all one to them with what they actually did see. If you notice, the pelican in her piety is usually painted with the beak and the talons of a hawk instead of with webbed feet. The state seal of Louisiana which bears a pelican in her piety does not fall into this old error — perhaps because pelicans live in Louisiana and the people there know how they look. It may interest any child living near one of our large parks to see how the heralds made their mistake. Watch the old pelicans sunning themselves, standing erect, with their long, straight bills laid low on their white breasts, and their pale eyes squinting at you across their noses. The pelican of Europe has a pinkish bill with a bright red nail at the-tip. The heralds, having seen this at a distance as it lay against the white plumage, called it a streak of blood; whence rose the fable of the pelican “in her piety.” Much poor natural his- tory has become current because men did not see things as they are. A far more interesting and curious characteristic of our Amer- ican white pelican may be observed by any child who will take the pains to make a few trips to the park. Go first in early THE SEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS. 63 spring. If you are looking at our American white pelican you will see a bird without a crest, and with a yellowish bill, very flat on top. Go again in May or June and observe the same bird. He has a mane of white feathers nearly the whole length of his neck ; his bill and the bare skin about his eyes are blood-red, and on the top of his bill, as seen in the picture, rises a jagged “ centre-board,” perhaps two inches tall and three inches long. Fic. 10. Hzap or Waite PELican IN BREEDING SEASON. Both sexes show the centre-board, the red bill, and the breed-. ing plumes, and both lose them soon after the mating season is over. The crest and the “horn” fall off, the bill fades to yellow again, and by July or August the pelican is once more without adornment, except the little grayish crest, quite unlike his white mane; this, in turn, is shed a little later in the year. It is hardly more than twenty years since this interesting fact 64 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. was discovered, and we cannot get a better idea of the way in which sea-birds formerly thronged the prairie than by quot- ing from the original discoverer, Mr. Robert Ridgway. In July, 1867, Mr. Ridgway visited Pyramid Lake, Nevada, and saw the whole beach covered “with a dense crowd of these gigantic snow-white creatures, who scarcely heeded us as we arose; as we approached them, however, they pushed one another awkwardly into the water, or rose heavily and con- fusedly from the ground, and flying some distance out upon the lake, alighted upon the water.” The next year, in May, when Mr. Ridgway returned, he was surprised to find most of the pelicans had a “conspicuous prominence on the top of the upper mandible, known among the white people of the neighborhood as the ‘centre-board,’ so called from some fancied resemblance to the centre-board of a sailboat. At this season both sexes were highly colored, the naked soft skin of the face and feet being fiery crange-red, or almost blood-red, instead of pale, ashy straw-yellow, as in all, both old and young, in August. ... Soon the number of birds distinguished by the ‘centre-board’ daily decreased, while, to account for this phenomenon, a corresponding num- ber of the cast-off ones was found upon the ground. Some of these loosened ornaments had been but recently dropped, as was plainly shown by their freshness, while others, which had been cast for some time, were dry and warped by the sun. Toward the last of the month no birds possessing this excres- cence were to be seen, but the appendages themselves were scattered so numerously over the ground that a bushel could have been gathered in a short time, though upon our first arrival in the island not one was to be seen.” PART IL STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. LITTLE STUDIES IN DIFFERENTIATION. ‘‘The point of the comparative method is that it brings before us a great number of objects so nearly alike that we are bound to assume for them an origin and general history in common, while at the same time they present such differences in detail as to suggest that some have advanced further than others in the direction in which all are travelling ; some, again, have been abruptly arrested, others perhaps even turned aside from the path. In the attempt to classify such phenomena the conception of development is presented to the student with irresistible force.” —Joun Fiske, A Century's Progress in Science. COMPARING BONES. WHEN we have plucked the feathers off our Thanksgiving turkey and have eaten the meat, there are the bones left. We do not always realize that under our own skin and flesh there Fic. 11. SkeLetons or Man anv Birp, (By courtesy of McOlure’s Magazine. Copyrighted, 1897, by the 8. 8. McClure Co.) are bones, too. This picture of the bones of a bird and of a man, drawn to the same scale, reminds us that after all we are much like the bird. If you will save the leg-bones, the breast-bone, and the wing and shoulder bones of a cooked fowl, —a boiled 67 68 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. fowl is cleanest, — and also the feet which have been cut off in dressing the fowl, you will be able to see wherein your bones are like a bird’s. Let us take the leg and compare it with our own. First, we notice that there are the same number of joints, but not the same number of toes nor of bones. I am not sure, however, but you will disagree with me as to the number of the joints, and we are likely to have trouble in naming them unless we begin at the right end of the leg, — first the hip, then the knee, then the heel. But where is the bird’s knee and where is his heel ? There is an old Greek tale that the rival philosopher, at- tempting to make fun of Plato for calling man a featherless biped, presented a cock plucked of his feathers to Plato’s students with the explanation that this was Plato’s man. Thoreau’s ready-witted Canadian woodchopper thought that the philosopher overlooked the fact that the cock’s knees bent the wrong way. Most of us have the same impression — that a bird’s knees bend the wrong way. But let us begin at the hip and count downward, — hip, knee, heel, and we shall see where we find the chicken’s knee. Where is his heel ? Where is a dog’s knee? a horse’s? a cat’s? and which way do they bend? (Only remember that a four-footed creature’s fore legs are arms and their joints correspond to the joints of our arm numbered from the shoulder.) A knee always hinges forward, an elbow backward; a wrist always hinges forward, a heel backward. Therefore a horse’s “fore knees” are his wrists, and what you have been calling the chicken’s knee is really his heel. ' Having determined the principal joints, we may look at the larger bones of the leg. There is the thigh-bone, which lies between the hip and the knee, the shin-bone, or “ drumstick ” COMPARING BONES. 69 (called in birds the tibio-tarsus), which runs from knee to ankle, and the tarso-metatarsus (usually called the “ tarsus”), which is the part of the leg between the heel and the toe joints, the part we see in life and call the “leg” of the bird. You will not find anything in your own body resembling this, though it really takes the place of the bones in your own foot and instep, and is made up by the welding together of several little bones. All you need to remember is that the name is tarsus and the plural of it is tarsi. The name is important because it means just that part of the leg between the heel and Fie. 12. Bones or Wine oF Birp anp ARM oF Man, (By courtesy of McClure’s Magazine. Copyrighted, 1897, by the 8.S. McClure Co.) the toes, the exposed, scaly portion that we commonly see in the live bird. It is frequently highly colored, so that books often speak of “ tarsi red,” or of “ yellow tarsi.” We will not delay to study the chicken’s foot, — except to notice that it has only four toes, — but will take up the wing, with its shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints clearly equivalent to our own, an upper arm-bone and two fore-arm bones very similar though differently modelled at the joints, and two long hand-bones unlike our five in being solidly fastened together at the end. There are three fingers in place of our five, though little nestling birds show traces of the other two fingers 70 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. which, not being needed, do not develop. The only name we need to learn here is carpus, the scientific name for the wrist, whether in man, birds, or mammals. As this is sometimes marked by a band of bright color, books on birds sometimes speak of the carpus, or carpal joints, or the “bend of the wing,” as being brown or yellow. Next, let us turn to the breast- and shoulder-bones. We have a breast-bone, — a little straight slip of a bone that we cannot feel distinctly, — but it has no ridge down the centre like the great keel of the chicken’s breast-bone, for we have not the heavy muscles that need such a bone to support them. Do we have a wish-bone? Yes, or something that corresponds. Our two collar-bones do the same work as the chicken’s wish-bone, in bracing the shoulder out. Perhaps some of you may re- member what happens to the arm when the collar-bone is broken. Did you ever notice the differences in wish-bones? Collect a few of different game birds and see how they brace the shoulder in different ways. The bird has shoulder blades, much longer and narrower than our own; and, in addition, he has “shoulder blades in front,” — the coracoids, those flat, wide, straight bones that are braced against the top of the keel to hold the shoulder up and out. Study the relation of these bones as they lie on the carcass of the fowl, and you will see how much it reminds you of the rowlock of a racing scull, heavily braced far out from the side of the boat, so as to give a greater purchase to the oar. By means of this tripod of bones the shoulder is held far enough out from the centre of the body for the muscles to get a good purchase. We see that while the larger bones of a bird are about the same as our own in number, they are different in shape and proportions. Now we are ready to go on and learn how they are fitted to the life the bird leads and how he swims and flies. THE FOOT OF A SWIMMING BIRD. How do birds swim? Why do some swim better than others ? We must not think that in order to swim a bird must be web-footed. The phalaropes, with only a little border of webbing along the toes, are expert swimmers; so are the gallinules, with round toes entirely unwebbed; the sandpipers, with their long, slender toes, can swim when it is necessary, and the water ouzel, a near relative of the cat-bird, plunges in boldly and dives and swims fearlessly. In the palm house of Lincoln Park, Chicago, there used to be a number of little rails wandering freely among the tropical plants and swimming in their little pool, a proof to any Chicago child who watched them that webbed feet may be a convenience but are not a necessity to a swimming bird. Yet for birds that live much in the water, and especially for those that fly poorly, it is scarcely more important to be able to swim at all than to be able to swim well. Speed is essential. Therefore, because it is the simplest device for securing swift- ness, the webbed foot is the typical swimming foot. We find the webs of all shapes and extent from the scalloped lobes of the coot and the narrow web of some terns to the extra-ample webbing of the gannets, pelicans, and cormorants, where all four toes are connected by the membrane. If we wish to understand how a bird swims, we should think of aboat. Let us say that the bird’s body is paddled by his feet just as a man paddles a boat, and we shall understand how the 71 72 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. bird reaches his foot forward and pulls until he has drawn his body ahead of his feet, and then (continuing the stroke but changing the kind of action) pushes against the water until his feet trail behind. If we think of the water as less easily moved than the bird’s body, we can easily understand the paddling motion. In order to paddle faster a man must take either more strokes or longer strokes in a minute, or else use a longer or a wider paddle; that is, he must displace more water in a given time. The bird, in order to swim fast, must do the same, — quicken his stroke, or lengthen it, or oppose a greater surface to the water. The bird that can do all three without exhausting his strength is an expert swimmer. Fic. 138. Luc-nongs or a Loon. A Thigh-bone. B Knee. C Tarsus. D Heel. If you will compare your chicken’s leg-bones with this picture of the leg-bones of a loon, you will observe some marked differences in the relative length of bones, the arrange- ment of toes, and in that little bony spur that stands up in front of the knee joint, which the chicken does not have. THE FOOT OF A SWIMMING BIRD. 73 Though the loon appears to be a short-legged bird, on account of its very short thigh, we see by the length of the bones that it can swim with a very long stroke. Its large, webbed foot presses back a great amount of water. And the little bony splinter at the front of the knee is a capital device (found only in the grebes and the loons) for quickening the stroke. The tendons fastened to the point of this extension throw the foot forward with great force and quickness, as any boy can see who makes a tip-up with uneven arms, and tries to raise the long arm by strings tied at different places along the short arm. The farther from the central pivot the string is tied the less force will be required to move the arm; and so, the farther beyond the knee joint the pulling tendon is attached, the less force will be required to draw the loon’s leg forward into position for the stroke. The short thigh is also an advantage in the backward stroke. But the man paddling has one great advantage over the bird. When he has finished his stroke he carries his paddle back through the air, while the bird’s foot must return through the water to make its forward stroke. The paddle meets little resistance on the return, but the foot will meet nearly as much as it created on the stroke, unless there is some special remedy. The folding of the foot, which diminishes the surface, meets this difficulty. In all web-footed birds the toes fold close together on the return so that the webs do not catch the water; but in the loon and grebe they are not only arranged to fold one behind the other but are flattened besides, so that they make the least pos- sible resistance. And in both the loon and grebe the tarsus is compressed until it is scarcely thicker than a knife-edge at the back, and cuts the water before it. The last device for speed is the arrangement of the legs at the very end of the body, 74 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. where they sweep past each other alternately in long straight strokes, giving the greatest possible force and efficiency. Everything that could give speed in the water has been adopted in the grebe and the loon, and with what wonderful success! In all kinds of aquatic feats they lead all other birds. Yet at what a cost do they hold this supremacy in one particular! When we see the grebe’s foot, put on at the very hinder end of the body, flattened as if crushed by a boot heel, with its toes set in the same straight line as its shank, and its flexed heels nipping close together so that the toes turn out- ward, we see at once that this bird cannot walk. A perfect swimmer, fitted with all appliances for speed and endurance in swimming, he has been over-developed in one direction, and is-good for nothing but swimming. He is put at the very foot of the list as the lowest organization of all, while our little bluebird and robin, that seem to have no special accomplishments but are good “all-round” birds, stand at the very top. It is a harm to a bird as well as to a man to be so much developed along one line that he is weak in other directions. So in science we say that “the most special- ized”? forms are the lower, and the “most generalized” forms —that is, the “good all-round” forms—are the higher structures. THE WING OF A BIRD. Now we will see how wings are fitted for flying. That a good wing must be large, strong, light, and safe against accidents hardly needs to be said; and yet not until we compare a bird’s wing with a bat’s do we observe that a wing may have all these points and yet be an inferior wing. The great skinny hand of the bat is badly shaped for speed and it bafiles with the wind, not being made to Fic. 14. Wzsnc-Bones oF Bat, shed it on the upward stroke. The superiority of the bird’s wing is that it is practically made of slats which swing in their places to let the air pass through on the up-stroke. A very simple change it seems to be, and yet to make it practical there have been a hundred and one alterations from the primitive hand-wing of the bats and of the ancient flying 76 76 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. lizards. The bat’s wing was the simplest possible device; the bird’s wing is a great invention. The bird’s wing was not made hit-or-miss, but by the nicest adjustments and by the correct solution of many prob- lems. First of all, the use to be made of it, which decides its shape. Then, its size, which depends largely, but not entirely, upon the weight of the bird’s body. Then there are the problems of making the wing strong ehough to resist the pressure of the air; of making it as light as possible; of giving to the individual feather lightness, stiffness, and a firm attachment to the bone; of making the feather impervious to the air on the downward stroke; of making it shed the air on the upward beat; of providing muscles strong enough to spread these great fans and to keep them moving; of placing these Fic. 15. Wine or Biro. (By courtesy of McClure’s Magazine. Copyrighted, 1895, by the 8. 8. McClure Co.) muscles where they will not make the bird top-heavy; of pro- viding lungs large enough to keep the blood fresh and warm, and of devising some way of breathing that will not interfere with the motions of flying. The invention and construction of a great locomotive are simplicity itself to the skill required to make it possible for a bird to fly with a bird’s wings. THE WING OF A BIRD. TT The problems come under two heads,—how the wing is made and how it is managed,— which we will take up separately. Let us study the wing as it looks in life, and see what we can discover. The one here pictured is the same from which the bones figured on page 69 were drawn and lies with the bones in the same position as in that cut. We notice first that when the wing is spread the bones are not stretched out as straight as those in our arms when they are fully extended, but that there is a permanent crook at the elbow which is filled in with skin covered with feathers. A plucked chicken shows us that this extension is a fold of skin with a stout tendon running along the double of it like the drawstring of a bag. When the wing is closed this tendon puckers up and holds the wing. neatly folded by the bird’s side. When the wing is extended this skinny flap greatly increases its area, and the tendon makes a firm selvedge along the margin. Even the bat has such a membrane along the front edge of the wing, and undoubtedly it assists both bird and bat in steering their flight up or down, while it probably aids, as a jib aids the mainsail of a vessel, in equalizing the pressure of the wind against the after part of the wing. In examining the covering of feathers we see that they are of different lengths, differently attached. There are the short ones which cover the skinny portions of the wing in over- lapping layers, and the long ones which are attached to the back edge from tip to body in a single line of strong, wide, long quills whose use is to increase the area of the wing by adding the least possible weight. These quills are arranged in series according to the place where they grow. Those that spring from the tip of the wing, or hand, are called primaries ; those that are attached to the forearm are the secondaries, and 78 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. those that lie along the upper arm-bone are the tertiaries, or scapulars, as they are sometimes called, that is, shoulder feathers. The primaries are always either nine or ten in number, and never vary in birds of the same family; they are also unevenly webbed and often have the broader web sheared { H G F EODCB A Fic. 16. Diacram or TecunicaL TERMS. A Primaries. B Secondaries. C Primary Coverts. D Greater Coverts. E Tertiaries. F Throat. G Chin. HA Bill. JZ Front. J Crown. K Lesser Coverts. Z Interscapular region. M Leg (tarsus). NW Abdomen. O Rump. P Upper tail coverts. Q Under tail coverts. away toward the tip, making emarginate primaries. The second- aries vary much in number, are evenly webbed or nearly so, are never emarginate, and differ from the primaries in one other important respect, — they are movable. With the bird’s wing in our hand we should notice one other THE WING OF A BIRD. 79 point, —its extreme lightness. Here are strong bones, power- ful muscles, stiff, long quills, a wing of large extent made to bear up a heavy bird and to propel him faster than a railroad train can travel; yet the whole machine weighs but a few ounces even in a bird of the largest size. We have noticed how a membrane stretched out in front and a band of feathers thrown out behind, without any heavy frame to support them, save weight; but the same economy is even more apparent when we observe that the wing-bones themselves are hollow. The general shape of the wing is such as to beat down the air with a firm, clean stroke, for which it is concave below to hold the air on the downward, convex above to shed it on the upward beat. We must not conceive of the air as having no weight and no resistance; on the contrary, every time the wing rises it has to lift all the air above it, and special provisions are made, not only in the shape but also in the structure of the wing, to relieve it of as much weight as possible. The second- aries are movable, and lie between little ridges across the larger fore-arm bone, in which they turn, like oars in rowlocks, edge up on the upward stroke, face down on the descending beat. It is generally believed that the hollow bones of a bird help it to rise in the air, and that all a bird’s bones are hollow. This is a gross error, as you will see if you examine the leg- bones of a chicken or a duck. Indeed, I do not now remember any bird of this country which has not marrow in its leg-bones. On the other hand, the leg-bones of the ostrich, which cannot fly at all, contain more air-cells than those of our strongest flyers. While nearly all a bird’s bones are full of air-cells, none but the wing-bones are hollow, and even these in some of our strongest fliers are solid. The swifts, for example, have long, slender, solid wing-bones. The swallows have only the upper arm-bone hollow. Hollow bones, therefore, 80 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. are not necessary. The first thing absolutely required is strength to stand all strains put upon the wing; the second is surface enough to fasten the muscles, tendons, and strong flight feathers firmly. We can imagine the wing-bones as being made of the right size and shape, and then bored out inside until the weight is reduced as much as is safe. We can see thus that a long and very slender wing-bone like the swift’s or swallow’s might not perhaps be bored out at all without making it liable to break. Lightness is only an advantage, not a necessity in the wing. Safety is the prime essential. To secure this the weight is never reduced to the danger point, and a number of neat devices are arranged to guard against accidents. If you examine the wing of a chicken you will see that while there is considerable freedom of movement in the joints as they lie by the side in the closed wing, as soon as the wing is extended the joints lock and become rigid, so that the wing cannot be twisted back by any sudden flaw. Only at the shoulder is there any flexibility, and this is guarded by the strong muscles that draw the wing up and down. Thus we see how perfectly the bird’s wing is planned to secure speed and safety with the least exertion. It is not so simple as at first appeared, and there is still more which we shall have no time to study. A FEATHER. In order to understand how the bird’s wing can resist the pressure of the air, we must examine the wing-quill of some large bird. Our Christmas or Thanksgiving turkey may furnish us with a stout wing-feather, or we may pick some up in the parks in summer when the ducks and geese are moulting, or we may, if nothing better can be obtained, pull a feather from the turkey-tail duster, remembering always that we have a tail-feather, not a wing-feather. But having pro- cured a broad-webbed feather, study it carefully. Rub your finger along the webs to test its elasticity. Notice the effect of pressing it in different directions and observe how it stretches under pressure like a piece of jersey cloth, breaking apart only under rough usage or great strain, and readily being coaxed back into place again. What makes the web of the feather so elastic? The ques- tion is not easy to answer clearly, for a feather is complicated and its parts are minute. With the unaided eye we see too little and with the microscope we see too much. We shall understand best by taking for the first a feather whose parts can be readily made out without a microscope. An ostrich plume, for example, is made up of a multitude of little plumes, called barbs, attached to a quill, or shaft; and each of these barbs is itself a miniature plume with its own shaft and barbs, to which is given the name of barbules. Few feathers show the barbules as plainly as these plumes of the ostrich, but the ostrich’s barbules are not connected, so the G 81 82 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. plumes would be wholly useless for flight even if the wings were large enough to lift the bird. In the long feathers of the peacock’s tail-coverts we see a feather that is fringed with scattered disconnected barbs near the base, but is tipped with interlocking barbs. We notice too that the barbs are set upon the shaft at an angle, so that where they come close together they overlap like clapboards on a house; and the barbules, being hooked at the end, catch hold of the barb next in front of them, and hold to it. Thus at the tip of the peacock’s feather there is the beginning of a true web. The barbules, we notice, are all upon the upper side of the barb, or upon the upper edge of the barb-shaft, if we observe more closely ; for the barb-shafts have been greatly flattened, and they lie side by side like the thin leaves we see beneath a toadstool on turning it over. This is an arrangement to give stiffness without increasing the weight, and it greatly strengthens the feather to bear the upward pressure of the air. In the hawk and eagle this arrangement is even more remark- able, though we cannot see it so easily. And in these strong- flying birds the barbules interlock much more firmly, so that the feather is impervious to air, and is stiff enough to resist the pressure of the wind. Without a microscope we cannot see the little barbicels, split up like shavings partly cut from a stick, and like them hooked at the ends, which reach out from barbule to barbule binding the feather together still more closely. Some of the other arrangements are too minute to be seen by the naked eye and not easily understood from description, but in every part we find the feather wonderfully planned to resist the pressure of the air without the slightest unnecessary weight. These little barbules have to hold tight to each other; for if they lost their grip the wind would blow up through the A FEATHER. 83 gap, and much of the effectiveness of the feather would be lost. If a bird is to fly well it must have firmly webbed feathers, and all flying birds have them. If the ostrich had wings as large as thunderclouds, he could not fly unless his airy plumes were replaced by good quills fit to beat down the air under them. We observe that all the long quills overlap each other like the shingles of a roof, and that the unevenly webbed primaries lie with their narrow edge uppermost, and their wide web caught under the quill next nearer to the body. This greatly aids in making the wing air-tight; for, on the downward stroke, the wide web is pressed so. firmly against the strong quill and stiff outer web of the next feather that the air cannot pass through. But on the up stroke there is nothing to hold the weak web, which is borne down by the air, and thus the pressure on the wing is relieved. While this would happen anyway, it is such a help to the bird in flying that a special appa- ratus is provided along the back of the forearm for turning the secondaries on edge to let the air pass through on the upward stroke. By these arrangements the bird is able to press down a large quantity of air with every wing-beat, but is not required to lift an almost equally large amount when the wing rises. The inability to do this is what makes the bat so much less swift and capable upon the wing, although in comparison with the weight of his body his wing area is very much greater than the bird’s. THE BIRD IN THE AIR. As long ago as King Solomon, who was the first naturalist, “the way of the bird in the air” was one of the stock mysteries for men to wonder over. How does a bird fly? It is only recently that the secret has been discovered. In order to fly a bird must have wings large enough to support his weight, and muscles strong enough to move his wings; there seems to be nothing else required beyond a proper adjustment of power and supporting surface. We do not at first observe any such wonderful adaptations in wings as we saw in the loon’s foot to fit it for a life in the water — merely more or less wing, longer or shorter, pointed or rounded. But the wonderful thing is that the bird can fly at all. Here we have the problem in its simplest form: how is an eagle, weighing ten pounds, to raise himself in the air by flapping two broad fans that spread from tip to tip some seven feet? Some say that his hollow bones and the air-sacs in his body help to lift him,—as if a bird were a balloon. But a balloon, if filled with air, would rise no more than a grocery bag blown full and tied; a balloon is always filled with a gas lighter than air. An eagle can never, by any kind of puffing himself up with air, diminish that ten pounds in weight, even by a single ounce. The balloon theory finds two other obstacles—-a balloon must sail before the wind, and it can travel no faster than the breeze that bears it, while the bird’s speed is voluntary, and he usually prefers to fly against the wind. The bird’s power to fill himself with air does not account for his flying. 84 85 86 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. Others say that the bird flies like a kite, and this is partly right. The bird’s body does act very much like the string of the kite, serving as a weight to hold it steady. But the kite cannot lift the boy at the end of the string; if it could, the kite would fall just as we see it do when the string breaks. That laughable story for boys, “Phaeton Rogers,” tells us how Phaeton made his great kite draw his wagon down the road, and how the kite ran away with him while the whole town raced after to find out what the matter was. Now we know that the kite would not fly at all unless it could keep a taut string; and the faster the wagon moved the nearer it would be to outrunning the kite, so that it is hardly probable that Phaeton’s wagon would travel as fast as the story says. Did you never underrun your kite and bring it down even Fie. 18. Guiis Frying— From Instanranrous PuHotToGRaAPnH. (Arter Marry.) (The dotted line shows successive positions of wrist joint in flight.) when there was a good breeze? Now in most instances a bird outruns the breeze, and he has no stationary weight; for his body, the weight, travels as fast as the wings. So we see that a bird does not resemble the kite. More nearly does the bird resemble the swimmer, who supports himself in the water by striking out with his arms, pushing him- self up and forward by the resistance of the water to his stroke. The bird rises and moves ahead by the forward and downward sweep of his wings, falls a little in air as he again raises them, and once more moves ahead and up with the new stroke. THE BIRD IN THE AIR. 87 Like the swimmer he advances by a series of undulations, a long incline upward (Fig. 19) when his wings press the air, a little drop downward as he raises them to get them in position once more. But the bird’s stroke is different from the swim- mer’s. As soon as his wings are at their highest point, they begin to turn forward and downward with a strong, even sweep that lifts the body and carries it ahead. The air is driven backward less by the direction in which the wing is moved than by the curvature of the under surface, by its general shape, and by the rotary motion at the shoulder joint. When it is necessary to recover for the next stroke, see by the picture how neatly it is done. The wing bends at the joint, leaving only half as great a resisting surface, the Fie. 19. Guiis Fryine¢ —60 Imaces per Seconp. (Arrer Margy.) (The line shows the centre of gravity in successive positions.) secondaries roll on edge, removing still more pressure; the body drops a little by its own weight, and up flies the wing into place so quickly that the camera can get but two pictures, though it takes four of the descending stroke. Please notice carefully that the wing-beat is a forward motion; the tip of the wing never drags far back; even when it is ready to be raised it is still on a line with the eye. The bird is always reaching ahead to cut into air not yet disturbed by his own movement. We know that the bird rises by the resistance of the air, using his wings as levers and the air as a fulcrum. But how 88 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. does he get his start? How does he guide his course? How does he stop ? Watch different birds taking flight. The old crow on the fence-rail, if there is no breeze, throws himself forward and drops a little, which gives him his first wing stroke with all the momentum of his falling body. When there is a wind he turns to face it, even if he intends to fly in the other direction, stretches up on his legs to his full height, and lifts his wings. The wind fills them. He leans down upon it, and his first stroke gives him headway and bears him up. Many birds give a little leap in air as a help in rising from the ground. From a tree it is easy for any bird to get upon the wing, but starting from a level surface the difficulties are greater and they increase with the weight of the bird, whether he be a good flyer or not. The turkey-buzzard, a majestic bird on the wing, makes a slow, ungraceful start. The eagle, even when in danger of his life, has been reported to stop to run in awkward leaps several rods because he could not at once gain momentum enough for his wings to get their leverage. The loon is habitually in a worse plight, for he can get no chance to spring from the water, and must get his momentum by running along the surface, flapping his wings. Even then his wings are too small to lift his heavy body unless there is a breeze blowing. What is momentum ?—an impulse to go ahead. A body at rest has only a tendency to stay still, its inertia, until some- thing sets it moving. The bird starting to fly must overcome its inertia. If it can once get the going-ahead motion, all it needs to do is to hold its body in the right position and lift itself with its wings. Holding the body in this or that position alters the direction of the bird’s flight. If he wishes to rise he throws the body THE BIRD IN THE AIR. 89 into a more or less vertical position, according to the angle at which he wants to ascend; if he wishes to glide down, he just lets himself fall forward. The straighter the body is held the straighter up the bird goes. The straighter it is held the more directly he descends. If you should ever see a game bird “tower ” you will notice how erect the body is. I know no flight among our American birds so nearly vertical as the towering of the ruffed grouse, but it is an exhibition not often seen unless one is with a gun- ner, as the birds seldom or never tower unless wounded in the head. We have already described the forward movement of the bird in studying the stroke. Let us notice again the peculiar folding of the upraised wing and the rolling secondaries which spill the air and make the work of lifting the wing both quick and easy. Speed in flight is attained in two ways — by the shape of the wings, and by the quickness with which they are moved. A small-winged bird may fly very fast by moving its wings with great rapidity, and a large-winged bird may be a slow flyer if it move its wings very slowly. But if two birds move their wings the same number of times a minute, that one will fly the faster which has the longer wings, because it has the greater leverage on the air. We shall notice too that all swift- flying birds have very strong primaries, and the stronger flyers have also very long primaries. Long wings, long primaries, strong primaries, make the work easier for the bird. Very swift birds one may expect to find with narrow wings. The reason is that the wings are levers and their length and strength give them their efficiency without regard to their width. So the swifts and swallows and terns have very long, narrow wings. Birds with wings both wide and long must 90 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. either be rather slow flyers or else in the habit of soaring, for which they need a large area of wing. Buta very long-winged bird, even though its wings are narrow, may be able to soar if, like the albatross and man-of-war bird, its wings are long enough to furnish the required area in spite of their narrowness. In steering the tail does most of the work, though a part of the work is, and the whole may be, done by the wings. Birds making quick evolutions are commonly long-tailed. The terns, goshawk, Cooper’s and sharp-shinned hawks are good examples of this. On the other hand, the chimney-swift is rather short- tailed. Birds with short tails and long legs usually trail the legs behind in flight, so that a boy of my acquaintance described a heron as “a big bird with only one tail feather, which was a yard long.” The loon also, though his legs are not long, stretches them out behind him with the webs of the feet held close together to steer him. Finally, a bird that loses his tail has to learn how to steer himself. A cat-bird that I once knew, having lost his tail by accident, was hard put to tell where he was going until he learned to steer a more certain course with his wings. In hovering, also, the tail plays an important part. Watch the humming-bird before the flower, the king-bird over the grass, the sparrow-hawk above the hole of the meadow-mouse. You will see that the tail is held full spread and nearly at right angles to the body, unless the body itself is dropped, as it often is in the humming-birds. Thus the tail holds a large part of the air fanned back by the wings, and acts as a drag on the bird to hold him stationary or nearly so. One of the prettiest sights I ever saw was a common tern that, attracted by my fishing, came and hovered within ten feet of me, keenly curious, his scarlet bill and feet, black cap, silvery mantle, and white body gay as a picture against the THE BIRD IN THE AIR. 91 blue water of the bay. For nearly a minute he held himself as stationary as if suspended on a wire, hovering with head bent down, wings partly flexed, and his long forked tail dipped almost at right angles to the body and spread so wide that it looked nearly square across the end —a position in which the forces that naturally would have borne him ahead were bal- anced by others that held him back. Stopping is accomplished by both wings and tail. A bird in swift flight, wishing to check his course immediately, spreads his tail to the fullest extent, throws up his wings, and drops as nearly vertically as his momentum will permit him. Watch pigeons and you will observe that they are experts in this method of alighting. But commonly a bird merely draws in his wings, spreads his tail more or less to check his motion, and comes gliding down on an easy slant. Aside from these necessary motions the bird has a number of tricks no more a part of flying than riding on one wheel is a part of bicycling, but very pretty sport. We sometimes see a bird glide until his momentum is gone, when, with a stroke or two, he sends himself forward and rests on his wings till the new impulse is exhausted. Sometimes birds play with the wind, mounting by merely turning to face it, and then sliding down the breeze a short distance, when they turn once more to the wind and let it raise them. Again one bird, the tumbler pigeon, is noted for its habit of falling backward in mid-air, a habit thought by some to have its root in the method by which wild pigeons some- times escape the onslaught of a hawk. But the most beautiful flight trick of all is the common one of soaring. No one knows all about it, and yet it is easy to see that under most conditions the bird is playing with a breeze, letting himself be borne up as he faces it, gliding downward a 92 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. little as he wheels about the circle, which will once more bring him breast to the wind. Hawks are among our best soaring land-birds; but some sea-birds excel all others in the sport, wheeling about hour after hour on motionless pinions, keeping their course and their elevation entirely by some slight adjust- ment of the body or by an inclination of the tail. Sailors declare that an albatross will follow a ship for days together, circling above her without rest. It is certain that on moon- light nights the man-of-war bird may be seen for hours to- gether floating far above the sea. Nor is a soaring bird easily disturbed. I have seen a soaring goshawk, when a bullet clipped a secondary from one of its wings, answer with its wild scream of defiance, and without haste or change of motion fill out an unbroken curve of its ascending spiral. COMPARING FEET. Nor until we see many birds together do we realize how very unlike they are. No bird looks out of place in its own home unless we catch it doing something quite out of the ordinary. When a wounded heron tries to swim, or a breeding sandpiper alights in a tree, it looks strange and uncouth. But what could be more in keeping than a sandpiper trotting along a pond-side, or a still heron standing in a pool? Structure and habits are so interwoven that from either one something may be inferred of the other. Does a bird spend his life on the wing chasing fish or insects? Then look to find him furnished with very long wings and very short legs. Short legs, as in the humming- birds, the night-hawks, the swifts, the terns, and others may be taken as almost certainly indicating that the bird has long wings; for if he does not get his food afoot he must get it on the wing, or else spend all his time in the water. Almost the only exception to this is the woodpecker family, where short legs indicate nothing as to the shape of the wings, their convenience in climbing being enough to explain why they are short. On the other hand, long legs are a sign that they have some peculiar use, probably to help the birds to get their food. Though long-legged birds often have very good wings, we find that they use their wings chiefly for safety, and depend upon their legs in picking up a living. It is always safe to infer that a long-legged bird finds most of its food in shallow water, 93 94 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. and that a web-footed bird seeks its living in water too deep for wading. When we compare all the different birds, we see that there are no great jumps from one extreme to another, — from very short legs to those ridiculously long, from tiny bills to those enormously long or thick or wide. Somewhere in nature we may expect to find a bird which just fills in the gap and makes a graded series. From the man-of-war bird with his abbreviated legs, for which, short as they are, he seems to have almost no use at all, to the stilt perched up on his absurd, artificial-looking shanks, extends all the long procession of birds—the terns and gulls and the whole race of sandpipers and others that take their food less and less by pursuing it on the wing, and more and more by running or wading after it. The changes, after all, are gradual. Watch the growth of the idea of a swim- ming foot and see how the need of more or less surface to oppose the water is met in different ways. The first hint we get of MATE Foor oF ete : Sanpriver (Lire web-foot is in the slight semipalmation of Size). some of the sandpipers. We need not suppose necessarily that this is a sign that the sandpiper swims much, for we find semipalmation in some land-birds, even in the hen, and we know that this is to bear them up in walking over snow. Perhaps in the sandpipers the principal use of this slight webbing is to help them in walking over soft ple eee oe mud. But soon it becomes evident that it joo. (surdHTLy aids in swimming, and the little phalaropes, _—_ repucep). Fie. 20. Semripar- Fie. 21. Lopate COMPARING FEET. 95 close cousins of the sandpipers, have the webbing extended along both sides of their toes, in a scalloped edge. Again we find another variation for increasing the surface in the excised wed, in which the space between the toes is stil] Semi See Fic. 22, Excisrp Wes Foortor Fic. 23. PaLMATE OR WEBBED Foor Brack Tern (Lire Size). or Duck (REDUCED). more filled up, though the word signifies that the foot looks as if it had once been full-webbed and then cut out, or excised. In the ducks and geese we see the webbing carried out to the ‘toe-nails, and the surface increased by spreading the toes wide apart. In the loons it is still further increased by lengthening , the toes, which make the webs long as well as wide. But one other device seems possible, and that we find in the totipalmate birds, where all four toes are joined by the web. Observe, please, that in these the outer toe is longest while in all other web-footed birds the third, or middle, toe exceeds the others. Most palmate birds swim with alternate strokes, now right, now left, or with one foot a little behind the other, seldom with both exactly together. The swans often swim with only AU ee lips Cir KN XX Fie, 24. TorrpatmMate Foot oF GANNET (GREATLY REDUCED). 96 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. one foot, sticking the other up behind. To keep a straight course a swan swimming with one foot must “bear off” with every stroke, just as a canoeman does when using a single- bladed paddle; otherwise he would swim in a circle. Some of the totipalmate birds are said to swim with both feet together. We can see that such a stroke would be a very strong, effective one. The feet would be held together like an inverted triangle; and the longest, strongest toes, the outer ones, would form the lower edge of a V where the greatest resistance would be met. With feet so placed a powerful backward and downward stroke would bring every part of the webbing into full use, and give a great impulse to the bird. Fie. 25, Zyeopactyi (or Yoxs-rorp) Foot or WooprrckEeR (Lire §1ze). After we get into the higher orders the feet differ less noticeably; yet many oddities occur. Notice the yoke-toed foot of the woodpeckers, the cuckoos, and the parrots, or the still odder foot of the kingfisher, in which two of the toes are grown together for a part of their length. What is the origin or use of such a foot never seems to have 4‘ COMPARING FEET. 97 been guessed. We can see, however, that the kingfishers use their feet only in clasping small perches, and that parts so little exercised would naturally be small and weak as we find these. Instead of learning the hard names for these forms of feet, it may be better to tell you that dactyl comes from an old Greek word for a finger or toe, and that any word of which it forms a part always tells you something of Fic. 26. Synpactrtous Foor or fingers or toes. Syndactylous HONERIanER. (EE Bin), means “with toes joined together”; zygodactylous means “ yoke-toed”; now what does pterodactyl mean ? Look it up, and you will have mastered another word from the Greek, which is often used in science, as in apteryx and in other compounds. We must not forget to notice the differences in birds’ claws. Here, too, are all sorts of variations, hinting something of the bird’s ways of living. Do not a hen’s short, stubby nails look like those of a hand that has scratched in the ground? The crooked claws of the hawk and owl, sharp and shining, indicate a very different mode of living. Birds of prey keep their claws in scrupulously neat condition, never pressing them against any hard perch but lifting them as a cat lifts her claws, or turning them to one side that they may not be blunted. Whenever we see a bird with extremely long nails on the hind toes, like the long- Fic. 27. Foor or Lonesrur (Lire spurs, the skylarks, the horned Sit) larks, and the meadow lark, we may be sure that the bird frequents the ground. Probably he will be found to be strictly terrestrial. Hq MOON 77 cm} Fp 98 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. While most birds have claws that are flattened or hollowed beneath, the claws of birds of prey are generally rounded. Yet hawks’ claws have a slight groove beneath, owls’ claws have a flange on one side, and the foot of the fish-hawk, or osprey, has a rounded or terete claw without either groove or flange. Why these differences? Perhaps no one can explain them any more than why the long-legged heron and the short- legged night-hawk — birds of utterly dissimilar habit and form — should each have a comb-like ridge along the inner edge of the middle toenail. The fact that differences exist in birds of similar habits and that likenesses are found in birds of dis- similar habits shows how hard it is to make a theory that will cover all cases. COMPARING BILLS. To walk through a museum, looking at the different kinds of bills that the birds have, and wondering how they are used, is almost as much fun as choosing the pretty things in a store window. Until one tries it, it is hard to believe that there can be so many shapes,—noses that tip up and tip down, Roman-nosed and straight-nosed birds, and a hundred noses that we have no name for. For bills are noses—and mouths too. The bird’s nostrils always open somewhere along the upper portion of the bill, so that the whole upper mandible forms an exaggerated nose. Indeed, one of our commonest names for describing a certain kind of nose, the word aquiline, indicates the resemblance of a bold, humped nose to the hooked beak of agquila, the eagle. Fig. 28. Heap or Swirt. Among our North American birds the smallest bills of all are those of insect-hunters like the swifts, swallows, and night-hawks, which have merely a tiny triangle of bill pierced by the two nostrils. But what a mouth they have! Open it 99 100 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. and the whole head seems to have disappeared down its own throat. Though the bill itself is so small, the fissure, or gape, of the mouth extends nearly the whole length of the jaws, so that the mouth begins to open as far back as the eye. The night-hawks and whip-poor-wills, which fly with their mouths open, have the sides of the gape fenced in with rows of bristles which prevent insects trapped in the wide mouth from escaping at the sides. The swallows and swifts, which fly with closed mouths and catch each insect separately with a snap, have few bristles, or, in most cases, none. These birds that hawk after insects have very small tongues. The swifts have a pouch just be- neath the tongue, in which they keep the flies that they carry home to their little ones. Fig. 29. Heap or Lone-BitLtEp CuRLEW. Of the long-billed birds in this country none compares with the long-billed curlew, which uses his sensitive slender probe in searching out food that lies deeply buried in the mud. Near relatives of his, as the snipe and the woodcock, have COMPARING BILLS. 101 bills, equally sensitive and nearly as long in proportion to their own size, and capable of being opened at the tip with- out opening the whole length of the gape. I have noticed the same peculiarity in woodpeckers’ bills, and these, like the snipe, seek their food by digging it out of deep holes. Sometimes when walking through alder ground, or in muddy places, we may see the “borings” made by woodcock and snipe where they have fed at night. At first we might mistake them for wormholes, but there are no “casts” about, and they are too numerous and too near together to be made by worms, and if you look intently perhaps you may see the prints of a bird’s foot. The white pelican’s is the longest bill without reference to the bird’s size. Watch him some day in the park and see the flat upper mandible pointing straight down his breast as he sits thinking, or lifted with its pendulous pouch beneath as he looks up in anger or expectation. Surely this bird with a bag is grotesque enough. A bill hooked at the tip is almost a sure sign that the bird lives on animal food, and the sharpness of the tip and decision of the curve are guides to the strength and liveliness or to the toughness of the flesh of the prey it contends with. So we find a slight hook at the tip of the bill of the insect-eating flycatchers, a stronger point to the fish-eating frigate pelican’s, and an abrupt hook in the bills of the hawks, owls, and eagles. Some fish-eating and insect-eating birds, as the terns, herons, and humming-birds, have straight bills; but a hooked beak, which is the characteristic mark of the raptores or birds of prey, often indicates a more or less raptorial character. Sometimes a hooked beak may have another use, as in parrots and cross-bills. But you will notice that the hawk’s bill is 102 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. made for tearing food, the parrot’s for crushing it, and the cross-bill’s for reaching into out-of-the-way crevices, and that the hawk’s beak is really far less like a parrot’s, for example, than it is like a shrike’s, whose habits are more like the hawk’s. Fie. 30. Bitus or () Frigate Birp, @) Hawn, © Sarinz, |) ViREO, anp ©) BLUEBIRD. Of the compressed bills, —that is, those that are very deep but thin, — the puffin’s is a prominent example; but even odder is the bill of the ani, or tick-eater, a bird sometimes seen in Florida, which is thinner for its height than the puffin’s, and more rounded at the tip. The bird is a relative of the cuckoos, and, as its name shows, gets part of its food by eating the COMPARING BILLS. 108 ticks and other vermin that cling to the legs and hides of cattle in hot countries. The opposite of this form, the depressed or flattened bill, is well shown in the duck tribe, some of which have very broad, flat bills. The broadest of these are ridged along the inside with little lamine, or plates, that act like a strainer, holding the selected morsels tight, while the mud and water are drained away. This is a convenience to birds that pick up most of their food under water and must take it without cleansing. The flamingo’s bill is furnished with a similar strainer. In spite of its size, the flamingo’s bill is extremely light, being made up of a spongy, bony tissue, full of air-cells. Few large bills are as heavy as they look to be, since, unless great strength is needed, the interior of the bill is made up of this cellular or aerated bone, as it is called. If you were to draw all the kinds of bills you could imagine, I could agree to match most of them from birds now living in some part of the world. Do you make one that turns down at the tip? You have already seen the long-billed curlew’s; and the bills of some of the foreign humming- birds and sun-birds are curved in a quarter-circle at the tip. But if you make one that curves up, we can match that, too, in the avocet, a bird of our shores and prairies, with his tilted bill, and as great an oddity as any. With such a bill one would suppose that any bird must be handicapped in getting a living, yet the avocet seems to fare well. “Tt is a beautiful sight,” writes one who knows them, “to see a, flock of these birds feeding. Wading along in the shal- lows, the bills are moved regularly from side to side, through the water or mud, with the motion a man makes when mowing, each bird keeping to the side and a little behind the leader, and if the water is deep the head and neck are frequently immersed. 104 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. They advance into the water up to their bellies, and if it should suddenly deepen they keep right on by swimming, not at all incommoded by the loss of their foothold.” Here is a shape you would hardly have dared invent, a bird with the under mandible much longer than the upper and as thin as a knife-edge. There are but three such bills in the world, and all belong to different species of skimmers. Fic. 81. Hap or Buack SKIMMER. “This bird,” says Wilson, “is formed for skimming, while on the wing, the surface of the sea for its food, which consists of small fish, shrimps, young fry, etc., whose usual haunts are near the shore and towards the surface. That the lower man- dible, when dipped into and cleaving the water, might not retard the bird’s way, it is thinned and sharpened like the blade of a knife; the upper mandible, teing at such times elevated above the water, is curtailed in its length, as being less necessary, but tapering gradually to a point, that, on shutting, it may offer less opposition. To prevent inconvenience from the rushing of the water, the mouth is confined to the mere open- ing of the gullet, which indeed prevents mastication taking place there; but the stomach, or gizzard, to which this business is solely allotted, is of uncommon hardness, strength, and “GOT osud Sapeg ‘MAdIdGNVS GAHTIIG-NOOdS — Ge “OL COMPARING BILLS. 105 muscularity ; far surpassing, in these respects, any other water- bird with which I am acquainted. To all these is added a vast expansion of wing to enable the bird to sail with sufficient celerity, while dipping in the water.” It is interesting to know that the young skimmers have the mandibles very nearly equal in length. Fy. 33. Huap or RosEATE SPOONBILL. Of spoonbilled birds we have in this country the well-known roseate spoonbill, or pink curlew, of the South, with his bald head, and this rare little sandpiper (Fig. 32), that a few times has straggled over to our coasts from its Asiatic home. See what a dainty poise it has upon the slippery ledge, confident and alert, not at all awkward, —a true shore-bird, although its blunt-ended bill is so unlike the delicate little probe of its sandpiper cousins. It looks like an accident to find a bill otherwise unknown except among the family of spoonbills, in a group of birds that are noted for the length and true taper of their bills; yet undoubtedly the reason for this form would be 106 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. fully explained if we knew what food the bird preferred when at home. We have had bills that turned up and down, but no one would admit that a bill that, turned sideways could be possible except by accident. Yet here is that “ac- cident.” Every egg laid by this little plover produces a bird with Fie. 34. Bitz or Croox-’ the bill crooked to the right. It BILLED PLOVER. is a New Zealand bird, but unlike the spoon-billed sandpiper, it has never strayed to our shores. What is a bird with such a bill todo? How can any bird be better fitted for his work by having a bill bent to one side so that he cannot feed unless his food is on the right side of him? But this bird gets his food by trotting along rocky river-beds and picking up small forms of animal life that creep in under the loose stones of the dry channels for greater security and moisture. Therefore, since his course lies never in a straight line and usually in a circular direction, it is no disad- vantage to him to travel always in one direction, or perhaps it is a decided advantage not to have to turn in his tracks so as to face the stone at every stop he makes. A very curious point about this bird’s coloration is worthy of notice. His constant habit of turning to the right leaves the left side open to danger; all his foes must approach him on that side. He has across his breast for ornament a black band; and it has been noticed that while this is three-fourths of an inch wide on the right side, it is not more than half an inch wide and is much lighter in shade on the exposed left side, thus varying both in width and color. Think of it, —all the other birds in the world are bisymmetrical; that is, alike COMPARING BILLS. 107 on both sides, so that a picture of one side of them is precisely like a picture of the other; but this, the only bird in the world that is colored unsymmetrically, is also the only bird that moves always in the same direction while feeding, thus keeping the same side exposed to its enemies. This is a wonderful instance of what is called protective coloration, about which we shall soon study. EYES AND CAMERAS. Wuen you have longed to own a camera, did it ever occur to you that you already had two, and that you could not avoid taking pictures all day long unless you closed your eyes ? The eye, like the camera, is a box, blackened on the inside and divided into two unequal chambers by a partition with a lens in it that, like a little round window, is directly in line with a hole in the front. These are the essentials of a good camera, though the little “ pin-hole” cameras that boys some- times use are even simpler. Fie. 35. Dracram or Human Eve. C Cornea. Z Lens. J Iris. ON Optic nerve. CP Ciliary processes. But some one who has owned a camera and who knows all about them says that though our eyes may be black inside, and 108 EYES AND CAMERAS. 109 may have lenses and even holes in them (though he has yet to see the hole), they cannot be good cameras unless they have a shutter to keep out light when not in use, a diaphragm before the lens to exclude the light when it is too strong, a movable lens so that they may be focussed, and a sensitive plate or film for the picture to fall upon. “And eyes,” says the man who owns the camera, “have no shutters, nor diaphragms, nor focus-screws, nor sensitive fitms.” But our eyelids are shutters; whenever we open our eyes we “make an exposure,” and we take pictures till we close the lids over them. The eye is the first and best of cameras, more wonderful than any other. That colored ring, the iris, which sometimes is narrow and sometimes wide, is the device which lets in more or less light as it is required. It adjusts itself without thought on our part. The black spot in the centre, the pupil, is the hole we spoke of. It is covered by a transparent plate, the cornea, which keeps out the dust, but through which we can look just as we do through a window. The blackness of the pupil is merely a portion of the black lining of the inner surface of the eyeball which we see through the opening in the iris. Watch the eye of your cat, your dog, or any other creature, and observe the way in which the iris expands and contracts, and notice the varying shape of the pupil. How does the pupil of a horse’s or a cow’s eye differ from a cat’s, and how do both differ from a dog’s? But if an eye is a camera, how is it focussed? Not by turning a screw to regulate the distance of the lens from the object pictured, but by changing the shape of the lens itself. We need not think about this change at all, for it acts of itself, or automatically, as we say. It will be long before any camera is advertised with an automatic focus. As to sensitive films, our eyes are furnished with the best to be had, one that does 110 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. not need to be renewed, and on which any number of pictures may be taken, one after the other, and carried to the brain to be developed. And the retina, as it is called, takes not only form and light and shade, but color. We have not tried to explain how we see, because that would need much study. It is enough for us to know that our eyes have all the parts of a perfect camera, and that they take pictures in just the same way. nd not only our eyes, but those of all beasts, birds, fishes, and reptiles are formed on the same plan. The eye of the vertebrate animal is a little camera. We must not conclude that all eyes are alike, only that they all are made on the same plan. They vary in shape and size and in some points of construction, just as cameras do, but the essential parts are the same. These diagrams of the Fie. 36. Tue Eve or tHe Hawk AnD OF THE OwL. CP Ciliary processes. ON Optic nerve. P Pecten. eyes of a hawk and an owl show the differences in shape. In structure they are almost precisely like our own eyes except EYES AND CAMERAS. 111 that they have inside them a little folded membrane called the pecten, which our eyes lack. Its use is not known, but it has been suggested that it helps to focus the eye instantaneously, so that the hawk, swooping from a height, or the gannet, diving from the air like an arrow, may always keep a clear and un- blurred vision of its prey. Our own eyes could not be adjusted for such rapid motion. .It is interesting to compare the elon- gated eyeball and round lens of the nocturnal owl with the flattened eyeball and lens of the diurnal hawk. Contrary to popular opinion, the owl can see very well by day also, because his eye is capable of great adjustment to the amount of light, and can either collect the scattered, feeble rays of dusk and darkness, or exclude the strong glare of day. Eyes are not only the most perfect cameras, but they are also the smallest. Small as our own eyes are, there are others far tinier. Think of the birds about us, the swallow chasing the fly, the vireo tripping along a bough, the chickadee clinging to a twig, searching for food too small for us to discover. Probably the smallest cameras known are the eyes of the humming-birds. The tiny Princess Helena humming-bird of Cuba is only two and a quarter inches from bill-tip to tail-end, and its eye is about the size of the head of a round-headed black pin. Can there be a smaller camera than this? But the little humming- birds, when they first open their eyes, are not nearly as large as their mother, and yet their eyes are as perfect as hers. Surely these are the smallest cameras in all the world. THE IRIS OF BIRDS. Ir we look at the birds about us, we shall soon notice that not all of them have the same colored eyes. Can you tell the color of a dove’s iris? of a crow-blackbird’s? of a gray parrot’s? You will find more difference among them than among boys and girls with their brown, blue, and gray eyes. When we begin to observe these differences, we ask certain questions as: How many colors do birds’ eyes have? Is the color always the same in the same kind of bird? Is it the same all through the bird’s life? There are birds with white, blue, green, red, purple, orange, yellow, and brown eyes. Black eyes are among the rarest, for most of our black-eyed birds, like our black-eyed boys and girls, have a dark brown iris. If you ever held an English sparrow in your hand, you may have noticed what a clear brown the iris is. The old pelican waddling about the park has a white iris; the puffins are blue-eyed; cormorants are green-eyed; most wild pigeons have eyes of some shade of pink or purple; while owls and herons are usually yellow-eyed, and hawks are either yellow, red, or brown eyed. Nearly all our small birds have dark brown eyes. We must remember that it is only the iris which is colored; the pupil of every healthy eye is black. Notice the eyes of different animals. Did you ever see a white-eyed horse? or a blue-eyed cat? ora yellow-eyed dog? What are the commonest colors seen in the eyes of horses, dogs, and cats ? Naturalists think that wild birds and animals of the same 112 THE IRIS OF BIRDS. 113 kind and the same age always have the same colored eyes. Often this makes an easy way to tell one species from another. The red-eyed vireo and the white-eyed vireo could easily be distin- guished by the color of the eye alone. So, too, the common towhee of the North with his red eye is readily distin- guished from the white-eyed towhee of the South, which otherwise is almost precisely similar. But here we find a curious fact. The white-eyed towhee is not a distinct spe- cies, but is a race of the red-eyed, and we find that part way between the northern and the southern limits of the two forms,—in Geor- / gia, for example, —the towhees are neither Fy. 37.— Heap oF white-eyed nor red-eyed, but have brownish @0084nDER (Maxx). eyes. A curious in- stance of seasonal change has been observed in the ¢ Louisiana egret. - In the spring, during nesting time, both the male and female have a red eye, surrounded by bare blue skin. In the female the iris gradually changes to yellow after the breeding season is over, while the blue skin becomes yellow also. The male keeps pon eeeteuean cn: his red eye. ANDER (FEMALE). I 114 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. A notable difference in colors in the two sexes is that of the sheldrake, or goosander, which we have already studied. The male’s eye is red, the female’s yellow. The red-breasted mer- ganser, however, has a red eye in both sexes, and the hooded merganser has a yellow eye in both sexes. What is odd is that though the males of the first two species are remarkably different, the females are so nearly alike that they can hardly be told apart except by the color of their eyes and by their nesting habits. There is sometimes a change of color with age in birds as in cats. A young crow, or raven, is as blue-eyed as a kitten, but as he grows older his eye becomes as black as his reputation. I have seen a young goshawk, taken from the nest, which was blue-eyed, though at a later period the goshawk’s eyes are yellow, and at maturity they are red. From blue to yellow, yellow to red, what a change for one bird! We have seen that the color may vary with age, sex, and season, or may even form a racial mark, as in the towhee, yet that it is usually constant in the same individual and species through life. There is another interesting thing about birds’ eyes. Any one who has watched an owl will remember the third eyelid, or “winking membrane,” which the owl draws sleepily over his eyes. You may observe something similar, though not nearly so complete, in your cat when she is lying on the rug half asleep. Even in your own eye there is a trace of this winking membrane in the little folds of membrane in the inner corner of the eye; but you have no power to draw it over the eye as the cat and the owl do. Fic. 39.—HEAD OF HOODED MERGANSER Fie. 40.—HEAD OF RED-BREASTED MERGANSER (MALE), (MALE) Facing page 114. WHITE BLACKBIRDS AND OTHER FREAKS. Ir is the hope of seeing something new and strange that keeps the naturalist always enthusiastic: there is always a chance of seeing white blackbirds, and he lives in expectation of the rare chance falling to him. White blackbirds are not of uncommon occurrence. I have seen the cowbird, the rusty grackle, the Brewer’s blackbird, and the red-winged blackbird — besides crows and meadow- larks, which are relatives of the blackbird’s —either partially or entirely white. Of course these were mounted birds, for so much good luck would not fall to any one person in the field. It is an accident of nature, but by no means a rare one, that every now and then a bird will be hatched without the usual amount of coloring matter in its feathers, in which case it will be either wholly or partly white. These accidents are called albinos, or partial albinos, as the case may be. When the bird is an entire albino, it usually has pink eyes. Similar accidents occur among animals with the same accompaniment of pink eyes if the albinism is entire. The white of such birds is seldom pure white, oftener a yellowish, or grayish, or dirty white, and oftener only partial, being confined to a few wing or tail feathers, or a patch of grayish white about the head and neck. Among English sparrows it is not unusual to see a bird thus marked Take note of such birds to see whether you ever meet them again; they are curious, but have no other interest. It is very odd that albinism appears to run in some genera of birds more than it does in others. White crows are not un- 115 116 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. common, nor are white blackbirds, as has been said. I have seen a white meadow-lark also almost pure white with only a faint yellow tinge on the breast, yet I have never heard of an albino among the jays and orioles, though they are nearly related. Ducks are frequently albinistic, and so are quail and grouse; but hawks are rarely, if ever, affected in this way. Sparrows are another family among which albinos are com- mon. I have had a snow-white eaves swallow brought to me, and have seen a cherry bird all white except the yellow tip of the tail. Thrushes also not infrequently show signs of albi- nism, but I have never seen an albino warbler nor a white fly- catcher. This is not saying that these freaks will not be discovered by sharp eyes; rather it shows that in certain groups the accident is rarer than in others. Even rarer than albinism and certainly far prettier is an occasional paleness of plumage that gives the whole bird a delicate café-au-lait color — just the shade of coffee with cream. I have seen this in ducks, and a remarkable case of it in a robin, where the whole head and upper parts were delicate creamy brown, while the breast was as red as in an ordinary robin. Another accident sometimes noticed is just the reverse of albinism. Instead of being white, the bird is black or much darker colored than usual, sometimes a dark chocolate or deep blackish brown. This is called melanism, from the Greek word for black, just as albinism comes from the Latin for white. Melanism is most frequent among the hawks, which so seldom show traces of unusual whiteness. In certain hawks, as the red-tailed, Swainson’s, and the rough-legged, this occurs so often that it is probably not an accident, but a “color phase.” Robins are particularly subject to melanotic changes. Some- times they have been reported “as black as grackles.” While albinism seems to be permanent, melanism is not WHITE BLACKBIRDS AND OTHER FREAKS. 117 always so. Caged birds sometimes turn dark in moulting, and then moult back again. A robin that was black in infancy afterward acquired white wings and a white tail; while another that was caged for six years was normally colored for the first two years, on the third showed some white and some black feathers, on the fourth, white wings and tail and a black breast, with red under the wings and a white belly. The fifth year it was normally colored, and the last year it was red below and black above, with white wings and tail. The “color phases” already mentioned form another class of oddities. No one knows, the reason, but among certain groups of birds it is common or usual for individuals to be some of one color, some of another, all their lives. They look like entirely different species of birds, and yet scientists agree that they are not. This is a very common freak among some of the sea-birds, especially the jegers and the shearwaters, in which the light and dark phases are well recognized. In one genus of owls, and in one or two of the heron kind, something like it occurs. Of two little screech owls from the same nest, one will sometimes be gray and the other reddish brown, and so far as is known they will keep their color all their lives. This phenomenon is sometimes called dichromatism or double coloring. In one of the little bitterns a supposed black di- chromatism has been discovered, while in the reddish egret a white dichromatism has been known for many years. The young of certain herons are white, while the old birds are very dark colored; but this is not called dichromatism, because the color depends upon the age of the bird. However, among the reddish egrets specimens are frequently seen which are white all their life. It is not albinism, because the white is always pure white, and the iris is not pink, but white. The dark 118 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. phase of the bird has a white iris also, and a dark and a light bird will frequently mate together. These are some of the oddities of the coloring of birds which scientific men are now investigating in the hope of discovering a reason for them. PART III. PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. LITTLE STUDIES IN ZOOLOGICAL THEORY. *« Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.’? — Hux.ey. THE BASIS OF CLASSIFICATION. WE come now to another kind of science work. We are no longer asking: What is this? or, How does this happen? but Why is this so? Our eyes will not help us as much now, but if we have used them to train our imaginations and have laid up a good store of facts, we are ready to begin these more diffi- cult but far more interesting studies. As you study, you will see more and more that science is not purposely dry and hard and uninteresting, but that it is an attempt to make study easier by grouping together related facts so that you will have fewer of them to remember. A scientific arrangement is always the easiest arrangement.