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NESTS AND
OTHER MATTERS WITH the
first of April approaching, the life of Arizona birds takes on a busier
complexion. The idle season is over; now there are nests to be built (no small
undertaking, in itself, as a man may easily find out by setting himself to
build one), and a family to be watched over and defended. Now the human visitor
begins to understand what cactuses were made for. As he walks among the
whitish-green chollas, giving them elbow-room, he has only to glance to right
and left to see what a considerable proportion of them are inhabited; this one
by a pair of thrashers, the other by a pair of cactus wrens. In neither case is
there any serious attempt at concealment; partly because the attempt would be
useless; partly, we may guess, because concealment is unnecessary. If your safe
is burglar proof, why be at the trouble to hide it? Neither squirrel nor snake
is likely to climb a cholla cactus, and even a man knows enough to approach it
with caution. Of the two
species of thrasher that live in the desert the larger one, known as Palmer’s,
seems to be the earlier breeder. I found a nest with eggs on the first day of
March; and on the ninth, I came upon a brood of young birds already out of the
nest. They were still new to the world, acting as if they found it a strange,
unintelligible place; but they were fully fledged, and when put to it, flew
from one cholla to another without difficulty. Still, they had more faith in
cactus thorns than in wing-power, and allowed me almost to lay hands on them
before taking flight. The two
desert-inhabiting thrashers, by the by, Palmer’s and Bendire’s, are so much
alike (the Palmer being somewhat longer and darker than its neighbor), that it
was some time before I felt sure of myself in discriminating between them. As
to the question of comparative length (one of the most uncertain points on
which an observer can base a determination), I fell back upon an old method,
which it seems worth while to mention here, because I have never seen it
referred to in print. It has served one man well, and may do as much for
another. Two of our
Eastern birds that are most troublesome to beginners in ornithology are the
downy and the hairy woodpecker, the only difference between them — the only one
that can ordinarily be seen in the field, I mean to say — being one of size.
Well, I long ago discovered for myself that it was much easier to carry in my
eye the comparative measurements of the two birds’ bills than the comparative
measurements of the birds themselves. Let me see the head in profile, and I
could name its owner almost beyond mistake. This
method, as I say, I resorted to in the case of my two desert thrashers, and
little by little (time itself being of great service in such matters), I
settled the question with myself. And still there remained a certain fact that
cast a shade of doubt over my determination. In Mrs. Bailey’s Handbook, the
only authority I had brought with me, Mr. Herbert Brown, after twenty years’
experience with Tucson birds, is quoted as saying that the Bendire thrasher
almost never sings, whereas the birds that I was calling by that name were in
song continually. What was I to think? It seemed a case for a gun. Without it,
how could I ever be sure of my reckoning? I was in a box, as we say. But there
was a way out. There almost always is. The two species lay eggs of different
colors. I must find them; and with patience I did; first, the blue-green eggs
of Palmer, and then (two sets in one day), the whitish eggs of Bendire; and my
identification of the owners, made before the eggs were examined, turned out to
be correct in all cases. In the way
of music, neither bird is equal to the brown thrasher of the East. In fact, if
I am to be judge, one Massachusetts thrasher, in his cinnamon-colored suit (and
in the top of a gray birch), could outsing any half-dozen of the birds in this
Arizona desert. It is to be said, however, that there is a third species here
(not on the face of the desert itself, but in the thickets along the Rillito
River), the crissai thrasher so called, whose song I have yet to make sure of.
He is larger even than the Palmer, and to look at him should have a fuller
voice. And this
reminds me that I had been in Tucson more than a month before I saw a
mockingbird; and even now, when I have been here almost two months, I have seen
but three. The people generally seem to mistake the thrashers for mockers. If I
speak to them about the strangeness of the mocker’s absence, they declare that
mockers are common here. At least two persons have turned upon me with the
assertion, “Why, there’s one singing out there at this minute.” And they point
to a thrasher, a bird that wears not one of the mocker’s three colors, — gray,
black, and white, — and for music is as much like him as a child’s tin whistle
is like a master’s flute. And still it is true, at least the systematists tell
us so, and I have no thought of questioning it, that the mockingbird is only a
nobler kind of thrasher. And thrashers, the mocker included, are only larger
kinds of wrens. Arizona is the wrens’ country. During my short stay in Tucson I have
seen ten species: the sage thrasher, the Western mockingbird, the Bendire
thrasher, the Palmer thrasher, the crissal thrasher, the cactus wren, the rock
wren, the canyon wren, the Baird wren, and the interior tule wren. The sage thrashers,
whose mysterious silence was commented upon in a previous article, are only now
beginning to find their voices; for they are still (March 21) in the desert,
though they will go elsewhere to breed. Two days ago, while returning from the
Rillito Valley, I came upon a group of them, and to my great pleasure two or
three were in song; not letting themselves out, to be sure, but running over a
medley of a tune under their breath in a kind of dumb rehearsal. I could barely
hear it, but I saw at once why the birds, for all their short bills and
unthrasher-like ways, are called sometimes sage thrashers and sometimes
mountain mockingbirds. I hope their sotto voce preludings will not
outlast my stay among them. One of my
particular favorites here is the Say phoebe. From the first he took my fancy.
All his ways please me. As the homely phrase is, I like the cut of his jib. His
plaintive call is never wearisome, though he is exceedingly free with it. And I
have grown to like him and his mate the better because they are fond of certain
places where I myself am given to spending now and then an idle hour. There are
four abandoned shanties in different parts of the desert, in the shade of which
I often rest; and every one of them has its pair of Say phoebes. I saw the
birds with building materials in their bills, and began by expecting to find
the nest inside the open building; but by and by I discovered that they liked
best of all a site down in a well! It seems a safe position to begin with — as
long as the nest contains nothing but eggs; but I ask myself about the danger
to the little ones when they become big enough to be uneasy. If they are
anything like young robins, for example, a pitiful share of them must perish
sixty feet underground. However, the birds may be presumed to understand their
own business better than any outsider can teach it to them; and they
unquestionably prefer the well. Of the four pairs just mentioned, three have
built in that position (the wells, it should be understood, are not stoned),
and the fourth would have done likewise, I dare say, only that the well in
their case happens to be covered. As it is, the nest is on one of the joists of
a shed, and an impertinent stranger has been known to clamber up and examine
the eggs. “Oh, if that well had only been left open!” the birds probably
thought, as they saw what he was doing. One kind
of nest that is common here is set so out in sight that none but a blind man
could miss it, though from its color it might readily be passed as an old one, not
worth investigation. I do not remember just how many I have seen, — half a
dozen, it may be, — but I have never looked into one. They cannot be looked
into, unless they are first torn to pieces. I speak of
the verdin’s nest. It is a marvel of workmanship: globular, or roughly so, with
an entrance neatly roofed over well down on one side; constructed outwardly — I
cannot speak beyond that, of course — of countless small thorny sticks, and in
size and general color resembling a large paper-wasps’ nest. The bird, as I
say, plants it in full sight, in a leafless cat’s-claw bush, by preference,
though I have seen one beauty in a palo-verde tree. My first
one I was directed to by the outcries of the owner. The foolish thing — if she
was foolish — actually went inside, and while there scolded me. She took it for
granted, I suppose, that I had seen her, go in, and was determined to let me
know what she thought of such despicable espionage. As a matter of fact, I was
busy just then with a rarer bird, and might have passed her pretty house
unnoticed had she held her peace. But the verdin is a nervously loquacious
body, and perhaps would rather talk than keep a secret. Such cases have been
heard of. Whatever else we may say of her, she is an architect of something
like genius. |
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