Riverby

The same thing may be observed in other fields. The idea of the flying fish, the fish that leaves the water and takes for a moment to the air, does not seem to have exhausted itself till we reach the walking fish of tropical America, or the tree-climbing fish of India. From the protective coloring of certain insects, animals, and birds, the step is not far to actual mimicry of certain special forms and colors. The naturalists find in Java a spider that exactly copies upon a leaf the form and colors of bird droppings. How many studies of honey-gathering bees did nature make before she achieved her masterpiece in this line in the honey-bee of our hives? The skunk's peculiar weapon of defense is suggested by the mink and the weasel. Is not the beaver the head of the series of gnawers, the loon of divers, the condor of soarers? Always one species that goes beyond any other. Look over a collection of African animals and see how high shouldered they are, how many hints or prophecies of the giraffe there are before the giraffe is reached. After nature had made the common turtle, of course she would not stop till she had made the box tortoise. In him the idea is fully realized. On the body of the porcupine the quills are detached and stuck into the flesh of its enemy on being touched; but nature has not stopped here. With the tail the animal strikes its quills into its assailant. Now if some animal could be found that actually threw its quills, at a distance of several feet, the idea would be still further carried out.

The rattlesnake is not the only rattler. I have seen the black snake and the harmless little garter snake vibrate their tails when disturbed in precisely the same manner. The black snake's tail was in contact with a dry leaf, and it gave forth a loud humming sound which at once put me on the alert.

I met a little mouse in my travels the other day that interested me. He was on his travels also, and we met in the middle of a mountain lake. I was casting my fly there when I saw just sketched or etched upon the glassy surface a delicate V-shaped figure, the point of which reached about the middle of the lake, while the two sides as they diverged faded out toward the shore. I saw the point of this V was being slowly pushed toward the opposite shore. I drew near in my boat, and beheld a little mouse swimming vigorously for the opposite shore. His little legs appeared like swiftly revolving wheels beneath him. As I came near he dived under the water to escape me, but came up again like a cork and just as quickly. It was laughable to see him repeatedly duck beneath the surface and pop back again in a twinkling. He could not keep under water more than a second or two. Presently I reached him my oar, when he ran up it and into the palm of my hand, where he sat for some time and arranged his fur and warmed himself. He did not show the slightest fear. It was probably the first time he had ever shaken hands with a human being. He was what we call a meadow mouse, but he had doubtless lived all his life in the woods, and was strangely unsophisticated. How his little round eyes did shine, and how he sniffed me to find out if I was more dangerous than I appeared to his sight.

After a while I put him down in the bottom of the boat and resumed my fishing. But it was not long before he became very restless and evidently wanted to go about his business. He would climb up to the edge of the boat and peer down into the water. Finally he could brook the delay no longer and plunged boldly overboard, but he had either changed his mind or lost his reckoning, for he started back in the direction he had come, and the last I saw of him he was a mere speck vanishing in the shadows near the other shore.

Later on I saw another mouse while we were at work in the fields that interested me also. This one was our native white-footed mouse. We disturbed the mother with her young in her nest, and she rushed out with her little ones clinging to her teats. A curious spectacle she presented as she rushed along, as if slit and torn into rags. Her pace was so precipitate that two of the young could not keep their hold and were left in the weeds. We remained quiet and presently the mother came back looking for them. When she had found one she seized it as a cat seizes her kitten and made off with it. In a moment or two she came back and found the other one and carried it away. I was curious to see if the young would take hold of her teats again as at first and be dragged away in that manner, but they did not. It would be interesting to know if they seize hold of their mother by instinct when danger threatens, or if they simply retain the hold which they already have. I believe the flight of the family always takes place in this manner, with this species of mouse.

VII

The other day I was walking in the silent, naked April woods when I said to myself, "There is nothing in the woods."

I sat down upon a rock. Then I lifted up my eyes and beheld a newly constructed crow's nest in a hemlock tree near by. The nest was but little above the level of the top of a ledge of rocks only a few yards away that crowned the rim of the valley. But it was placed behind the stem of the tree from the rocks, so as to be secure from observation on that side. The crow evidently knew what she was about. Presently I heard what appeared to be the voice of a young crow in the treetops not far off. This I knew to be the voice of the female, and that she was being fed by the male. She was probably laying, or about beginning to lay, eggs in the nest. Crows, as well as most of our smaller birds, always go through the rehearsal of this act of the parent feeding the young many times while the young are yet a long way in the future. The mother bird seems timid and babyish, and both in voice and manner assumes the character of a young fledgeling. The male brings the food and seems more than usually solicitous about her welfare. Is it to conserve her strength or to make an impression on the developing eggs? The same thing may be observed among the domestic pigeons, and is always a sign that a new brood is not far off.

When the young do come the female is usually more active in feeding them than the male. Among the birds of prey, like hawks and eagles, the female is the larger and more powerful, and therefore better able to defend and to care for her young. Among all animals, the affection of the mother for her offspring seems to be greater than that of her mate, though among the birds the male sometimes shows a superabundance of paternal regard that takes in the young of other species. Thus a correspondent sends me this curious incident of a male bluebird and some young vireos. A pair of bluebirds were rearing their second brood in a box on the porch of my correspondent, and a pair of vireos had a nest with young in some lilac bushes but a few feet away. The writer had observed the male bluebird perch in the lilacs near the young vireos, and, he feared, with murderous intent. On such occasions the mother vireo would move among the upper branches much agitated. If she grew demonstrative the bluebird would drive her away. One afternoon the observer pulled away the leaves so as to have a full view of the vireo's nest from the seat where he sat not ten feet away. Presently he saw the male bluebird come to the nest with a worm in its beak, and, as the young vireos stretched up their gaping mouths, he dropped the worm into one of them. Then he reached over and waited upon one of the young birds as its own mother would have done. A few moments after he came to his own brood, with a worm or insect, and then the next trip he visited the nest of the neighbor again, greatly to the displeasure of the vireo, who scolded him sharply as she watched his movements from a near branch. My correspondent says: "I watched them for several days; sometimes the bluebird would visit his own nest several times before lending a hand to the vireos. Sometimes he resented the vireos' plaintive fault-finding and drove them away. I never saw the female bluebird near the vireos' nest."

That the male bird should be broader in his sympathies and affections will not, to most men at least, seem strange.

Another correspondent relates an equally curious incident about a wren and some young robins. "One day last summer," he says, "while watching a robin feeding her young, I was surprised to see a wren alight on the edge of the nest in the absence of the robin, and deposit a little worm in the throat of one of the young robins. It then flew off about ten feet, and it seemed as if it would almost burst with excessive volubility. It then disappeared, and the robin came and went, just as the wren returned with another worm for the young robins. This was kept up for an hour. Once they arrived simultaneously, when the wren was apparently much agitated, but waited impatiently on its previous perch, some ten feet off, until the robin had left, when it visited the nest as before. I climbed the tree for a closer inspection, and found only a well-regulated robin household, but nowhere a wren's nest. After coming down I walked around the tree and discovered a hole, and upon looking in saw a nest of sleeping featherless wrens. At no time while I was in the vicinity had the wren visited these little ones."

Of all our birds, the wren seems the most overflowing with life and activity. Probably in this instance it had stuffed its own young to repletion, when its own activity bubbled over into the nest of its neighbor. It is well known that the male wren frequently builds what are called "cock-nests." It is simply so full of life and joy and of the propagating instinct, that after the real nest is completed, and while the eggs are being laid, it gives vent to itself in constructing these sham, or cock-nests. I have found the nest of the long-billed marsh wren surrounded by half a dozen or more of these make-believers. The gushing ecstatic nature of the bird expresses itself in this way.

I have myself known but one instance of a bird lending a hand in feeding young not its own. This instance is to be set down to the credit of a female English sparrow. A little "chippie" had on her hands the task of supplying the wants of that horseleech, young cow-bunting. The sparrow looked on from its perch a few yards away, and when the "chippie" was off looking up food, it would now and then bring something and place it in the beak of the clamorous bunting. I think the "chippie" appreciated its good offices. Certainly its dusky foster-child did. This bird, when young, seems the most greedy of all fledgelings. It cries "More," "More," incessantly. When its foster parent is a small bird like "chippie" or one of the warblers, one would think it would swallow its parent when food is brought it. I suppose a similar spectacle is witnessed in England when the cuckoo is brought up by a smaller bird, as is always the case. Sings the fool in "Lear: " —

"The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,That it had its head bit off by it young."

Last season I saw a cow-bunting fully grown following a "chippie" sparrow about, clamoring for food, and really looking large enough to bite off and swallow the head of its parent, and apparently hungry enough to do it. The "chippie" was evidently trying to shake it off and let it shift for itself, for it avoided it and flew from point to point to escape it. Its life was probably made wretched by the greedy monster it had unwittingly reared.

1

Strange to say, the plant did not appear in that locality the next season, and has never appeared since. Perhaps it will take another dynamite earthquake to wake it up.

2

This observation was made ten years ago. I have since learned that the plant is Hieracium aurantiacum from Europe, a kind of hawkweed. It is fast becoming a common weed in New York and New England. (1894.)

3

"A bumblebee came along and lit upon a cluster of asters. Leaving these, it next visited a head of gentians, and with some difficulty thrust its tongue through the valves of the nearest blossom; then it pushed in its head and body until only the hind legs and the tip of the abdomen were sticking out. In this position it made the circuit of the blossom, and then emerged, resting a moment to brush the pollen from its head and thorax into the pollen-baskets, before flying again to a neighboring aster. The whole process required about twenty seconds." Ten New England Blossoms and their Insect Visitors, Clarence Moores Weed, pp. 93, 94.

4

Bicknell's thrush turns out to be the more southern form of the gray-cheeked thrush, and is found on the higher mountains of New York and New England.

5

My correspondent was Mrs. Beardslee of Manchester, Iowa. She died in October, 1885.