Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes, and Other PapersBurroughs, John
History
Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers
Burroughs, John
Bees; Birds; Natural history -- Outdoor books
not separable, except by closest scrutiny, from the one of the
meadow-bottom. That nest prospered, as bobolinks' nests doubtless
generally do; for, notwithstanding the enormous slaughter of the birds
during their fall migrations by Southern sportsmen, the bobolink
appears to hold its own, and its music does not diminish in our Northern
meadows.
Birds with whom the struggle for life is the sharpest seem to be more
prolific than those whose nest and young are exposed to fewer dangers.
The robin, the sparrow, the pewee, etc., will rear, or make the attempt
to rear, two and sometimes three broods in a season; but the bobolink,
the oriole, the kingbird, the goldfinch, the cedar-bird, the birds of
prey, and the woodpeckers, that build in safe retreats, in the trunks
of trees, have usually but a single brood. If the boblink reared two
broods, our meadows would swarm with them.
I noted three nests of the cedar-bird in August in a single orchard,
all productive, but all with one or more unfruitful eggs in them. The
cedar-bird is the most silent of our birds having but a single fine
note, so far as I have observed, but its manners are very expressive at
times. No bird known to me is capable of expressing so much silent alarm
while on the nest as this bird. As you ascend the tree and draw near it,
it depresses its plumage and crest, stretches up its neck, and becomes
the very picture of fear. Other birds, under like circumstances, hardly
change their expression at all till they launch into the air, when by
their voice they express anger rather than alarm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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