In Nesting Time

Produced by Robin Monks, Joseph Cooper, Leonard Johnson
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net








IN NESTING TIME

BY

OLIVE THORNE MILLER

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893


Copyright, 1888,
BY H. M. MILLER.

_All rights reserved._

_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.


_"Very few people have the least idea what wild creatures are like.
Their notion generally is to shoot them, and then pick them up for
examination; which is the same thing as if some being of superior race,
seeing children at play, were to shoot a few at long range, and then
turn them over and describe them and consider himself learned in their
structure, habits, and appearance."_--JEAN INGELOW.




INTRODUCTORY.


The sketches of bird manners and customs in this little collection are
the record of careful observation, and scrupulously true in every
particular. The facts may not all be new to Science, but since they are
genuine studies from life, and each bird whose acquaintance I make is as
truly a discovery to me as if he were totally unknown to the world, I
venture to hope that lovers of birds may find in these pages real, live,
individuals in feathers, honestly "brothers of ours."

OLIVE THORNE MILLER.




CONTENTS.


                                                                  PAGE

I. BABY BIRDS                                                        1

  Purple Crow Blackbird. _Quiscalus quiscula._
  Redwing Blackbird. _Ageloeus phoeniceus._
  Yellow-Throated Warbler. _Dendroica dominica._
  Baltimore Oriole. _Icterus galbula._
  White-Bellied Nuthatch. _Sitta carolinensis._
  American Robin. _Merula migratoria._
  Phoebe. _Sayornis phoebe._

II. BIRD-STUDY IN A SOUTHERN STATE                                  19

  Great White Heron. _Ardea occidentalis._
  Bald Eagle. _Haliaeetus leucocephalus._
  Wilson's Tern. _Sterna hirundo._
  Ring Plover. _AEgialitis hiaticula._

III. THE MOCKING-BIRD'S NEST                                        33

  Mocking-Bird. _Mimus polyglottos._

IV. A TRICKSY SPIRIT                                                65

  Mocking-Bird. _Mimus polyglottos._

V. THE "WISE BLUEBIRD"                                              95

  Bluebird. _Sialia sialis._

VI. THE GOLDEN-WING                                                113

  Golden-Wing Woodpecker. _Colaptes auratus._

VII. A STORMY WOOING                                               129

  Orchard Oriole. _Icterus spurius._

VIII. FLUTTERBUDGET                                                145

  Brown Thrush, or Thrasher. _Harporhynchus rufus._

IX. "O WONDROUS SINGERS"                                           159

  Wilson's Thrush. _Turdus fuscescens._
  Gray-Cheeked Thrush. _Turdus aliciae._

X. A BIRD OF AFFAIRS                                               173

  Blue-Jay. _Cyanocitta cristata._

XI. THE BLUE-JAY AGAIN                                             189

XII. VIRGINIA'S WOOING                                             205

  Virginia Cardinal. _Cardinalis cardinalis._

XIII. FRIENDSHIP IN FEATHERS                                       221

  Scarlet Tanager. _Piranga erythromelas._
  English Goldfinch. _Fringilla carduelis._

XIV. THE ROSY SHIELD                                               237

  Rose-Breasted Grosbeak. _Habia ludoviciana._

XV. THE BIRD OF MYSTERY                                            251

  Birds of Paradise. _Paradisaea._




BABY BIRDS.

                        And oft an unintruding guest,
      I watched her secret toils from day to day;
    How true she warped the moss to form the nest,
      And modeled it within with wood and clay.
    And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,
      There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers,
    Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue:
      And there I witnessed in the summer hours
    A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly,
    Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.

    JOHN CLARE.




I.

BABY BIRDS.


"Ears have they, but they hear not," may be said of all the world.
Tragedies and comedies go on continually before us which we neither see
nor hear; cries of distress and prattle of infants, songs of love and
screams of war, alike fall upon deaf ears, while we calmly discuss the
last book or the news from Borriboo-lah-Gha, as completely oblivious as
if all this stirring life did not exist.

To be sure these things take place in the "upper stories," as Thoreau
says, but they are none the less audible, and one is tempted to believe
that bird voices are on a scale to which the untrained ear is not
attuned. Once learn to hear, and nature is full of life and interest.
The home affairs of our little neighbors whose modest cottage swings on
a branch of the elm beside the door are more attractive than those of
our fellow creatures in the house across the way partly because they are
so open in their lives that our attentions do not seem intrusive, but
more because their ways are not so familiar.