A Gathering of Birds

by Donald Culross Peattie

  I had so often fruitlessly stalked these wary birds across the swash, that I was tempted to step out from my blind and address a word of triumph to the assembled multitude; but so sudden an alarm might not only have caused the destruction of many eggs, but might have resulted in the birds deserting their homes. Consequently, several hours after entering the blind, Mrs. Chapman, by arrangement, returned; the birds retreated to the lagoon, and I left my hiding place without their being the wiser.

  Encouraged by this surprisingly successful attempt to study these wary birds at close range, I determined to enter the very heart of the city. Consequently, when, at our approach the following morning, the birds left their nests, the blind was hurriedly moved, from its position at the border of the rookery to a point near its center, where a buttonwood bush afforded it some concealment.

  Nests were now within arm’s reach; the blind itself covered an abandoned one. It seemed wholly beyond the bounds of probability that the birds would take their places so near me; but, as before, the departure of my assistant was the signal to advance. The great red army with clanging of horns, again approached, reached, and this time surrounded me. I was engulfed in color and clarionings. The wildest imagination could not have conceived of so thrilling an experience. Seated on the deserted nest, I myself seemed to have become a Flamingo.

  The blind, strange to say, aroused no suspicion. Without hesitation and with evident recognition of their home, the splendid creatures reoccupied their nests. For a time I feared detection. It was impossible to look from the blind in any direction without seeming to meet the glance of a dozen yellow-eyed birds at my threshold. Fortunately, the uproar of their united voices was so great that the various sounds made in the manipulation of my two cameras were barely audible even to my ears. With the wind in the right quarter, this honking chorus could be plainly heard at our camp. The adults uttered three distinct calls, all goose-like in character. The usual note of the young bird is a whistling crow.

  The birds of this portion of the rookery had evidently begun to nest at an earlier date than those in the section before visited. Many of the nests contained an egg from which the chick was emerging, and in others were young evidently several days old; while birds which had left the nest were running about with their parents.

  On leaving the shell, and before the plumage was dry, some chicks had sufficient strength to respond to their evidently instinctive sense of fear. At my approach they crawled to the edge of the nest and dropped over to the ground or water below, though beyond this they could progress but little. Chicks a day old jumped nimbly from the nest and ran or swam rapidly away. On subsequent days, it became necessary to enter my blind with caution, to avoid frightening the young in the near-by nests. At the best, some would leave their homes and scurry away, but they returned to the place of their birth apparently in response to a call uttered by the parent as it stood on or near the deserted nest. The little chick reached the top of the nest unaided by the parent bird, using its bill, feet, and wings in the effort. The thumb and index finger are both provided with a somewhat recurved nail, which in this connection may be functional. The parents evidently recognized their own offspring, and when a youngster lost his way, his nape was promptly pinched by every old bird within whose reach he came, a method which was effective in keeping him on the move until he found his own home.

  The young stay in the nest until they are three or four days old. During this time they are brooded by the parents, one or the other of which is always in attendance. With a bill as large as their nestling’s body, it was of special interest to observe how the latter would be fed. What, in effect, is regurgitated clam broth, is taken drop by drop from the tip of the parent’s bill. At times the bird, standing above its chick, leans over and feeds it, or while brooding, a snowy head is pushed out from a vermilion wing, and with a swan-like movement the neck is gracefully curved as the food is administered.

  This is the young bird’s first meal. His next attempts at eating are of special interest. It will be observed that the bill in a newly hatched Flamingo bears small resemblance to the singular, decurved organ of the adult. In the chick the bill is short and straight, with no hint of future curvature; and at this stage of its existence the bird feeds in a manner wholly unlike that employed by the old birds. It picks up its food. The second meal, then, consists of bits of the egg-shell whence the chick has lately emerged. This bone-forming matter evidently now takes the place of the Cerithium shells which the parents seem to find essential to their well-being.

  When the bird is about three weeks old, the bill first shows signs of convexity, and the bird now feeds after the singular manner of the adult, standing on its head, as it were, the maxilla, or upper half of the bill, being nearly parallel with the ground. Contrary to the rule among birds the lower portion of the bill is immovable, but the upper portion, moving rapidly, forces little jets of water from each side of the base of the bill, washing out the sand and the mud through the strainers with which the sides of the bill are beset, and leaving the shells on which the bird subsists. Or, as Peter expressed it: “It seems to me, sir, when de Fillymingo feed dat de upper lip do all de wuk, sir, when he chomp, chomp, chomp, and grabble in de mud.”

  Young Flamingos, taken from the rookery for further study, subsequently gave an apparently instinctive exhibit of a characteristic habit of the adult bird when feeding. As I have said, the old birds live on a small spiral shell and its contents. This food is always obtained under water which may reach to the bird’s body. When the shells are apparently embedded in the marl, the feeding bird loosens them by a treading motion. It is the Flamingos’ one undignified action. Birds thus occupied seem to be engaged in some ridiculous kind of jig, which they dance with the head and neck submerged.

  The evidently excessive rainfall had flooded even the comparatively high ground on which their rookery was placed. Some nests were submerged, (my own particular nest had already crumbled before the unaccustomed usage to which it had been subjected), and all were surrounded by water. The necessity of erecting a structure of some height was thus plainly demonstrated.

  This second catastrophe to a nesting colony emphasized the adverse climatic conditions with which Flamingos have to contend during the nesting season. Laying but one egg, it is probable that under favorable circumstances they can barely hold their own, and it is therefore to be deplored that man should be numbered among their enemies.

  To my regret, our search for Flamingos so widely advertised the location of the rookery among the negroes of the island, that more than a dozen expeditions were planned to visit it for young birds.

  Fresh meat is rarer than pink pearls in the outer Bahama islands. Young Flamingos are excellent eating, and are, consequently, much sought after. As a result of this persecution on the nesting-ground, they are steadily diminishing in numbers.

  At this time neither they, nor any other Bahaman bird was protected by law, and I take no small pleasure in saying that when this matter was brought to the attention of the proper authorities, an adequate bill was prepared and passed at the next session of the colonial legislature.

  XVII

  SIR EDWARD GREY

  IF EVER Nature proved the solace of the man of I state and great affairs, it was so in the case of Edward Viscount Grey of Fallodon. Born to responsibilities of statesmanship, as so many English aristocrats are, rather than drawn to it by inclination, the young graduate of Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford, was twenty-three when he entered Parliament in 1885 as Liberal member for Berwick-on-Tweed. He was the type of the English gentleman of the late Victorian and Edwardian school, a lover of the country, an amateur champion of the tennis court, and an inveterate fisherman. The Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 describes his politics as “languid.” Heckled by women suffrage agitators, his reply was customarily a courteous evasion. By never deeply committing himself, he had for years few enemies, or few, rather, who could say precisely where he opposed them.

  If Europe
had not been headed for catastrophe, Grey would have been remembered by history as an ornament of the imperialistic cabinet of Mr. Asquith, who by reticence and firmness came gradually to dominate the councils of Europe. As Foreign Secretary he consummated the Triple Entente between Great Britain, France, and Russia, and against Austria and Germany he took an unrelenting stand in 1908 over the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in 1911 in the quarrel between France and Germany over the Moroccan affair. In 1912, as director behind the scenes of the Balkan Wars, Grey was recognized by the astute as the strong, and also the silent, man of Europe.

  But the whirlwind of the first World War was upon him. When he besought Austria to give Serbia time for consideration of the ultimatum of 1914, and Germany to withhold mobilization, the countries he had outmanoeuvred at the council table had not forgiven him. His failure was complete; some have placed a crushing load of blame for the whole disaster upon him—the Germans because of his “duplicity,” the western Allies because he did not, from the first, make it clear that England would fight if France were attacked. To me, a layman in matters of state, it would seem that the situation was not in his hands, hence the responsibility can scarcely rest upon his head.

  In 1916 his failing eyesight drove Grey to resignation, and to seek the solace of Fallodon. He emerged only to represent his country as temporary ambassador to Washington where he negotiated in 1919 toward the impending peace settlement.

  Up to this time Grey was the author only of Fly Fishing, a slender issue of 1899. But from the retreat of Fallodon, his estate in Northumberland, came forth in the sunset gleams of his life Fallodon Papers, which is brightened by many ornithological passages, and last, The Charm of Birds (1927) from which one selection is here made. Among bird lovers all over the English-speaking world this graceful volume has been making its way; today it is in a fair way to become a classic, not, of course, of natural history, for its author made no pretensions in that direction, but a classic of the literature of ornithophily.

  Failing sight is a crushing blow for a passionate bird watcher. But it had in Grey’s case the effect of sharpening all his other faculties. Since now he could not well observe the birds in the bush, the lord of Fallodon learned to bring them to his hand. It is a power that every one of us longs to possess. Our author makes the taming of wild birds sound quite easy, and just possibly it is easier with European birds than the shy Aves of the New World. But probably more than reasonable method explains Grey’s success in this Franciscan art; it is, it seems to me, a knack, practically a gift. Whatever name it should have, it was subtly developed in the man who had in vain held out the hand of peace to fellow humans.

  The man, and his generation, his class and his customs, are unconsciously revealed in the passage where he refers to the necessity of covering up one’s evening clothes, if observing birds after the dinner hour. To the trans-Atlantic reader this is provocation for a tender smile. Perhaps even to British ornithologists, if of professional stamp, this would today mark Grey for a gentle amateur. In that class Grey would have placed himself, no doubt. But he brings himself thereby warmly and humanly nearer to thousands of us—the peer and statesman in formal evening attire entering the twilit woods to seek refuge in the free commonalty of birds.

  ON TAMING BIRDS

  THIS is an age of curiosity. There is a desire to know about the private life of people who are much before the public; and birds, as well as men and women, are the subject of more curious and particular observation than they have ever endured before.

  My own experience has been mainly with robins. Several of these were tamed at different times, not with any intention of scientific observation, but solely for the pleasure of being on terms of intimacy with birds in a free and natural state. None of these robins were quite close to the house: none of them became house-birds, nor were they induced to lead an artificial life. They were visited once every day, each in its own territory, and offered meal-worms; but except for this supplement to their natural food, there was nothing to disturb or distort their natural habits.

  The first robin had a small white feather on the right wing by which it was easy to identify him. His territory included both sides of one end of a pond. He would sit on my fingers and eat meal-worms out of a little box held open on my hand. In the nesting season he was feeding young birds: about the middle of July he disappeared and was not seen again till well on in August, when he presented himself once more and came on the hand as usual, and reoccupied precisely the same territory. Here he remained tame, but alone, till the spring, when a female was admitted to the territory. She would make a small note and he would feed her with meal-worms, just as if she were a young bird. If I appeared and held out the box when he was not near, the female would sit in a bush uttering the little notes till he came and fed her. She never offered to help herself.

  Eventually the east side of the pond was annexed by another robin, and White Feather was restricted entirely to the west side. Here he was visited and fed. He had now become very tame, and after satisfying his appetite would sometimes sit on the hand so long that it was necessary to give him a gentle hint to go. On the last day of the year, he came to me at the usual spot; after that I never saw him again, and his place was taken by another robin. I searched in the hope that White Feather might only have been driven farther west; but there was no sign, and I fear that there had been combat to the death.

  There is a white seat by another pond, where it is the habit of some one to sit about midday to feed such waterfowl as care to come out of the water for bread. On the right of this seat and close to it is a clump of dogwood. Here in February a robin and his mate were tamed. The male bird would sit on the hand and eat several meal-worms; the female would only perch for a moment, snatch a single meal-worm at a time and fly off with it. As spring advanced the female ceased to feed herself, but sat in the dogwood, uttering the plaintive note, and was fed attentively by the male. In time the female ceased coming to the seat, and the male would pack his beak with meal-worms, fly with them over the water to some bushes a hundred yards away, and return time after time to get more. The nest was evidently in the distant bushes, but I made no search for it, lest by finding I should betray it to some enemy.

  Besides the white-seat robin I had three others that were hand-tame in the winter of 1925-26. Their territories adjoined and apparently met in a large spiraea bush. Two, and sometimes all three, birds came to this bush together, and whenever this was so, feeding was impossible; each bird as it perched on my hand was knocked off by another before it could eat. The incessant combats were wearisome, almost disgusting, and I had to manoeuvre to get each bird fed peacefully in its own territory. One of these birds I judged to be a female, for it would snatch meal-worms from the box and not sit on my hand and eat quietly as the other two birds did. By March one of the males was settled in a territory that adjoined the east end of a greenhouse. He was a particularly delightful bird and very tame. His singing place was high up in a sycamore tree. I would hold out the box; the singing would stop; there would be a short pause of silence, and then he would fly straight down to my hand and sit there, till satisfied; when he would again fly up to his sycamore perch and sing. If he saw me in the greenhouse he would come to me through the open ventilator at the top. Once after eating a few meal-worms he sang while on my hand: a full and proper song, loud and sustained, very ear-piercing at such close quarters. “White Feather” often sang a few notes before he left the hand, but this bird is the only one that has ever treated my hand as a real singing perch.

  Of the other two robins, the one that “snatched” was, as I had supposed, a female; they paired; their two territories, which were next to each other, were amalgamated: as in old days a king would marry the queen or heiress to the throne of a neighbouring country and combine the two kingdoms in one realm.

  Any male robin can be tamed; such at least is my experience. The bird is first attracted by crumbs of bread thrown on the ground; then a meal-worm is thro
wn to it; then a box—such as one of the small metal boxes in which chemists sell lozenges—is placed open on the ground with meal-worms in it. When the bird has become used to this, the next step is to kneel down and place the back of one hand flat upon the ground with the box open on the upturned palm, and the fingers projecting beyond the box. This is the most difficult stage, but robins will risk their lives for meal-worms, and the bird will soon face the fingers and stand on them. The final stage, that of getting the bird to come on to the hand when raised above the ground, is easy. The whole process may be a matter of only two or three days in hard weather, when birds are hungry; and when once it has been accomplished the robin does not lose its tameness: confidence has been established and does not diminish when weather becomes mild and food plentiful.

  A robin’s method of feeding is to pick up a meal-worm crosswise in its beak and hold it thus for a second or two; then suddenly—there is no meal-worm: the act of swallowing is so quick that it is hardly perceptible. The first meal-worms are taken one after the other with little delay; but after these the bird has long pauses and stands pensively on the hand. In cold weather it is disagreeable to keep the bare hand extended so long, but one does not like to disturb the bird. The last meal-worm is generally taken to a bush or to the ground to be eaten, and this is a sign that the bird is satisfied. I find that four tame robins are as many as are convenient; to visit each and feed it in its own territory once a day is a sufficient demand upon leisure. If natural food is very plentiful a robin may be satisfied with four meal-worms, but the usual number is about nine; the most that I ever knew to be taken by one bird at one standing was twenty-two. Each mealworm is eaten whole and alive. After several have been swallowed the sensations in the crop may account for the long pauses the bird makes and its thoughtful aspect.