A Gathering of Birds

by Donald Culross Peattie

  Thrushes sing louder here than anywhere else; they really seem to sing louder, and they are all around. Thrushes appear to vary their notes with the period of the year, singing louder in the summer, and in the mild days of October when the leaves lie brown and buff on the sward under their perch more plaintively and delicately. Warblers and willow-wrens sing in the hollow in June, all out of sight among the trees—they are easily hidden by a leaf.

  At that time the ivy leaves which flourish up to the very tops of the oaks are so smooth with enamelled surface, that high up, as the wind moves them, they reflect the sunlight and scintillate. Greenfinches in the elms never cease love-making; and love-making needs much soft talking. A nightingale in a bush sings so loud the hawthorn seems too small for the vigour of the song. He will let you stand at the very verge of the bough; but it is too near, his voice is sweeter across the field.

  There are still, in October, a few red apples on the boughs of the trees in a little orchard beside the same road. It is a natural orchard—left to itself—therefore there is always something to see in it.

  The trees lean this way and that, and they are scarred and marked as it were with lichen and moss. It is the home of birds. A blackbird had its nest this spring in the bushes on the left side, a nightingale another in the bushes on the right, and there the nightingale sang under the shadow of a hornbeam for hours every morning while “City” men were hurrying past to their train.

  BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR

  TWO hawks come over the trees, and, approaching each other, rise higher into the air. They wheel about ‘ for a little without any apparent design, still rising, when one ceases to beat the air with his wings, stretches them to their full length, and seems to lean aside. His impetus carries him forward and upward, at the same time in a circle, something like a skater on one foot. Revolving round a centre, he rises in a spiral, perhaps a hundred yards across; screwing upwards, and at each turn ascending half the diameter of the spiral. When he begins this it appears perfectly natural, and nothing more than would necessarily result if the wings were held outstretched and one edge of the plane slightly elevated. The impulse of previous flight, the beat of strong pinions, and the swing and rush of the bird evidently suffice for two or three, possibly for four or five, winding movements, after which the retarding effects of friction and gravitation ought, according to theory, to gradually bring the bird to a stop. But up goes the hawk, round and round like a woodpecker climbing a tree; only the hawk has nothing tangible into which to stick his claws and to rest his tail against. Those winding circles must surely cease; his own weight alone must stop him, and those wide wings outstretched must check his course. Instead of which the hawk rises as easily as at first, and without the slightest effort—no beat of wing or flutter, without even a slip or jerk, easily round and round. His companion does the same; often, perhaps always, revolving the opposite way, so as to face the first. It is a fascinating motion to watch.

  The graceful sweeping curl holds the eye: it is a line of beauty, and draws the glance up into the heights of the air. The darker upper part of one is usually visible at the same time as the lighter under part of the other, and as the dark wheels again the sunlight gleams on the breast and under wing. Sometimes they take regular curves, ascending in an equal degree with each; each curve representing an equal height gained perpendicularly. Sometimes they sweep round in wide circles, scarcely ascending at all. Again, suddenly one will shoot up almost perpendicularly, immediately followed by the other. Then they will resume the regular ascent. Up, like the woodpecker round a tree, till now the level of the rainy scud which hurries over in wet weather has long been past; up till to the eye it looks as if they must soon attain to the flecks of white cloud in the sunny sky to-day. They are in reality far from that elevation; but their true height is none the less wonderful. Resting on the sward, I have watched them go up like this through a lovely morning atmosphere till they seemed about to actually enter the blue, till they were smaller in appearance than larks at their highest ascent, till the head had to be thrown right back to see them. This last circumstance shows how perpendicularly they ascend, winding round a line drawn straight up. At their very highest they are hardly visible, except when the under wing and breast passes and gleams in the light.

  All this is accomplished with outstretched wings held at full length, without flap, or beat, or any apparent renewal of the original impetus. If you take a flat stone and throw it so that it will spin, it will go some way straight, then rise, turn aside, describe a half-circle, and fall. If the impetus kept in it, it would soar like the hawk, but this does not happen. A boomerang acts much in the same manner, only more perfectly; yet, however forcibly thrown, the impetus soon dies out of a boomerang. A skater gets up his utmost speed, suddenly stands on one foot, and describes several circles; but in two minutes comes to a standstill, unless he “screws,” or works his skate, and so renews the impulse. Even at his best he only goes round, and does not raise his weight an inch from the ice. The velocity of a bullet rapidly decreases, and a ball shot from an express rifle, and driven by a heavy charge, soon begins to droop. When these facts are duly considered, it will soon be apparent what a remarkable feat soaring really is. The hawk does not always ascend in a spiral, but every now and then revolves in a circle—a flat circle—and suddenly shoots up with renewed rapidity. Whether this be merely sportive wantonness or whether it is a necessity, is impossible to determine; but to me it does not appear as if the hawk did it from necessity. It has more the appearance of variation: just as you or I might walk fast at one moment and slowly at another, now this side of the street and now the other. A shifting of the plane of the wings would, however, in all probability, give some impetus: the question is, would it be sufficient? I have seen hawks go up in sunny and lovely weather—in fact, they seem to prefer still, calm weather but, considering the height to which they attain, no one can positively assert that they do or do not utilise a current. If they do, they may be said to sail (a hawk’s wings are technically his sails) round half the circle with the wind fair and behind, and then meet it the other half of the turn, using the impetus they have gained to surmount the breeze as they breast it. Granting this mechanical assistance, it still remains a wonderful feat, since the nicest adjustment must be necessary to get the impetus sufficient to carry the birds over the resistance. They do not drift, or very little.

  My own impression is that a hawk can soar in a perfectly still atmosphere. If there is a wind he uses it; but it is quite as much an impediment as an aid. If there is no wind he goes up with the greater ease and to the greater height, and will of choice soar in a calm. The spectacle of a weight—for of course the hawk has an appreciable weight—apparently lifting itself in the face of gravitation and overcoming friction, is a very striking one. When an autumn leaf parts on a still day from the twig, it often rotates and travels some distance from the tree, falling reluctantly and with pauses and delays in the air. It is conceivable that if the leaf were animated and could guide its rotation, it might retard its fall for a considerable period of time, or even rise higher than the tree.

  X

  THOMAS NUTTALL

  QUIET as a hermit thrush in winter that, never uttering a sound, perpetually shuffles over old leaves with its claws, bends down its head to cock an eye at something interesting, moving with quick runs, slipping, dull of plumage, into thickets, and sleeping we never know where, Thomas Nuttall in the herbarium of the famous old Philadelphia Academy was known to all the American scientists of his day as a careful, thorough, rather pedantic systematic botanist, perpetually busied among sheets of dried specimens. But, personally, he was known to them scarcely at all. As some of them later remarked, they had no idea where he dwelt, or where he ate, whence he derived his evidently very modest little income. The appearance of this bachelor was, in general, quite untidy; he allowed, perhaps more from neglect than parsimony, his clothes to become worn and baggy. His associates knew that he was an Englishman, who ha
d formerly been a printer; they were unaware that he had been born on a Yorkshire estate (in 1786) to which he was heir. They knew him as a botanist who had travelled in the then-unmapped West, up the Missouri to Fort Mandan. But they probably had little idea that he had all the time been keeping a knowing eye on the birds.

  It was during his residence at Harvard (1825-1833) where he was curator of the botanical garden, that Nuttall seems to have formed the intention of writing his Manual of Ornithology, for in that book his earliest references to experiences with birds date to the period of his residence in Cambridge. In the botanic garden (so intimately known to me) the call of some passing bird voice from the trees would lure him from his plant specimens into the open. Here he studied birds not only as species, but as individuals, with identities and behaviors peculiar to each songster. He seems also to have kept a great many native birds in cages in his “cabinet,” for more intimate study. This was something little practiced by Audubon or Wilson, and the excellent results were subsequently to appear.

  At Harvard, Nuttall was just as much a recluse as in Philadelphia, perhaps more so since he was not surrounded by old friends. His house at that time stood where the Gray Herbarium is now; here Asa Gray lived after him, and when the building was removed across the street it was occupied by my late beloved teacher, Prof. B. L. Robinson, who has made some interesting remarks concerning the stamp which Nuttall left upon his residence:

  “While living at the house in the Garden he kept himself much secluded in apartments reserved for him. He had a separate entrance by which he could enter and leave his study, and in the lower part of the Garden a particular small, locked gate, of which he alone had the key. Tradition states that he kept his valuable scientific collections over his study in a close, ill-smelling garret, which also served him as a bedroom. To avoid, so far as possible, any intercourse with other inmates of the house, he had a sort of slide cut, through which his meals could be passed.”

  Now all these details make Nuttall sound like a fearful or preposterous pedant, and a most unsociable and even morbid recluse, and possibly he was not untinged with these crabbed failings. But reserve, shyness, withdrawal, and unobserved movements, however censored by the gregarious and chattering simian that is man, are definitely popular virtues with birds. If they show any preference for one sort of a human, it is usually for just such solitary and quiet souls. So as one reads on in the Manual of Ornithology, which starts out rather formally and is modelled upon Pennant and other didactic ornithologists of a still earlier age, one slowly comes to realize that Nuttall had found out an immense amount about birds. He knew them very intimately, with a beautiful and secret and sensitive appreciation and sympathy. It seems, too, that Nuttall had unobtrusively established great friendships with ornithologists of the time. He may have known Wilson; he was certainly the friend of Audubon and Charles Lucien Bonaparte. They mention him almost never—for they probably did all the talking and instructing. But he mentions them often; he seems to have absorbed bird lore from them as a clever child in a corner will absorb a wealth of adult information, making private deductions and judgments.

  Already famous for his botanical journeys, Nuttall made several expeditions entirely devoted to bird study. Apparently they passed almost unobserved in scientific circles at the time. Nuttall, whose presence was scarcely remarked, was gone before anyone noticed that he was not there; some of his trips are only inferred from the internal evidence of the Manual. At least twice (1829, 1830) he ransacked the southern states—much the richest part of the country for bird life, and the winter home of so many of our summer visitants. And many are the references to his lonely journeys. For no companion seems to have been at his side as he wandered the pine groves and the cypress swamps, listening for the fine lisping notes of very small shy Aves, or watching the ungainly dignity of marsh birds at their rites.

  The two volumes of the Manual appeared in 1832 and 1833 respectively. After his famous botanical trip across the Rockies (1833-1836) in Captain Wyeth’s expedition to the Columbia’s mouth, and down the coast of California to San Diego, he issued a new edition which included many western species about which nothing, beside some specimens, had ever been known before. In this wise he became acquainted with birds about which Wilson could then have known nothing, while Audubon was only to familiarize himself with some of them many years later. His fellow-traveller, John K. Townsend, gives a glimpse of him when on the prairies of western Nebraska an absolutely new flora burst upon the sight of the expedition:

  “Flowers of every hue were growing. It was a most enchanting sight; even the men noticed it, and more than one of our matter-of-fact people exclaimed, beautiful, beautiful! Mr. N. was here in his glory. He rode on ahead of the company, and cleared the passage with a trembling and eager hand, looking anxiously back at the approaching party, as though he feared it would come ere he had finished, and tread his lovely prizes under foot.”

  But in his experiences of bird life he took care, no doubt, that no one should be with him. His delights were solitary; only with restraint they emerge to us in the sensitive style of the Manual.

  Of that style I would speak one shielding word. Nuttall was not a poet, like Alexander Wilson, and not an ebullient genius like Audubon. A man of science, it was his instinct to moderate his raptures; he probably admired Gilbert White, the precise and elegant. Nuttall’s style must therefore be judged by a somewhat eighteenth century standard, and appreciated for its taste and discrimination. Romantic color must no more be asked of it than one would ask Gray to sound like Shelley.

  So far as I know, Nuttall never described, in systematic ornithology, an original species or even a variety. He seems to have left that entirely to others, though he was perhaps the soundest botanical systematist of his time in America. He devoted his labors and love entirely to the life histories of his birds, and he got them into a far more concise compass than his great contemporaries. In transcribing by various syllables the approximate songs of birds, and their various signals, he was particularly successful. If Audubon and Wilson had such sensitive and accurate ears as he, they certainly do not show it in their writings. Wilson, though something of a musician, hardly makes the attempt, and Audubon’s efforts are only fair or positively misleading and wretched.

  A recent reprint and revision of the Manual in one volume, edited to bring the work up to date, is available now under the title A Popular Handbook of the Birds of the United States and Canada (Boston, 1921).

  At the end of 1841, Nuttall left America for England. He had inherited Nut-Grove Hall, and the terms of the bequest demanded his residence there for nine months of every year. This seemed to prevent his return to America, in the days of sailing ships. Yet he contrived to circumvent these provisions once, by departing in September of one year and returning by March of the next. But at that season the flowers were dead in the fields, the birds silent or gone.

  Nuttall died in 1859 at Nut-Grove Hall. It is said that he overstrained himself in his eagerness to open a case of rhododendrons (his favorite genus of flowers which he was monographing). His departure was scarcely remarked in his native country.

  BALTIMORE ORIOLE

  THESE gay, lively, and brilliant strangers, leaving their hibernal retreat in South America, appear in New England about the first week in May, and more than a month earlier in Louisiana, according to the observations of Audubon. They were not seen, however, in West Florida by the middle of March, although vegetation had then so far advanced that the oaks were in leaf, and the white flowering cornel was in full blossom.

  It is here that they pass the most interesting period of their lives; and their arrival is hailed as the sure harbinger of approaching summer. Full of life and activity, these fiery sylphs are now seen vaulting and darting incessantly through the lofty boughs of our tallest trees; appearing and vanishing with restless inquietude, and flashing at quick intervals into sight from amidst the tender waving foliage, they seem like living gems intended to decorate th
e verdant garment of the new-clad forest.

  The mellow whistled notes which they are heard to trumpet from the high branches of our tallest trees and gigantic elms resemble, at times, ‘tshippe-tshayïa too too, and sometimes ‘tshippee ‘tshippee (lispingly), too too (with the two last syllables loud and full). Another bird I have occasionally heard to call for hours, with some little variation, tú tĕo tĕo tĕo tĕo too, in a loud, querulous, and yet almost ludicrously merry strain. At other intervals the sensations of solitude seem to stimulate sometimes a loud and interrogatory note, echoed forth at intervals, as k’rry keny? and terminating plaintively k’rry k’rry k’rry, tū; the voice falling off very slenderly in the last long syllable, which is apparently an imitation from the Cardinal Grosbeak, and the rest is derived from the Crested Titmouse, whom they have already heard in concert as they passed through the warmer States.

  There is nothing more remarkable in the whole instinct of our Golden Robin than the ingenuity displayed in the fabrication of its nest, which is, in fact, a pendulous cylindric pouch of five or seven inches in depth, usually suspended from near the extremities of the high, drooping branches of trees (such as the elm, the pear or apple tree, wild-cherry, weeping-willow, tulip-tree, or buttonwood). It is begun by firmly fastening natural strings of the flax of the silk-weed, or swamp-holyhock, or stout artificial threads, round two or more forked twigs, corresponding to the intended width and depth of the nest. With the same materials, willow down, or any accidental ravellings, strings, thread, sewing-silk, tow, or wool, that may be lying near the neighboring houses, or round the grafts of trees, it interweaves and fabricates a sort of coarse cloth into the form intended, towards the bottom of which is placed the real nest, made chiefly of lint, wiry grass, horse and cow hair, sometimes, in defect of hair, lining the interior with a mixture of slender strips of smooth vine-bark, and rarely with a few feathers, the whole being of a considerable thickness, and more or less attached to the external pouch. Over the top, the leaves, as they grow out, form a verdant and agreeable canopy, defending the young from the sun and rain. There is sometimes a considerable difference in the manufacture of these nests, as well as in the materials which enter into their composition. Both sexes seem to be equally adept at this sort of labor, and I have seen the female alone perform the whole without any assistance, and the male also complete this laborious task nearly without the aid of his consort,—who, however, in general, is the principal worker. I have observed a nest made almost wholly of tow, which was laid out for the convenience of a male bird, who with this aid completed his labor in a very short time, and frequently sang in a very ludicrous manner while his mouth was loaded with a mass larger than his head. So eager are these birds to obtain fibrous materials that they will readily tug at and even untie hard knots made of tow. In Audubon’s magnificent plates a nest is represented as formed outwardly of the long-moss; where this abounds, of course, the labor of obtaining materials must be greatly abridged. The author likewise remarks that the whole fabric consists almost entirely of this material, loosely interwoven, without any warm lining,—a labor which our ingenious artist seems aware would be superfluous in the warm forests of the lower Mississippi. A female, which I observed attentively, carried off to her nest a piece of lamp-wick ten or twelve feet long. This long string, and many other shorter ones, were left hanging out for about a week before both the ends were wattled into the sides of the nest. Some other little birds, making use of similar materials, at times twitched these flowing ends, and generally brought out the busy Baltimore from her occupation in great anger.