A Birds' Free Lunch

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Title:     A Birds' Free Lunch
Author: John Burroughs [More Titles by Burroughs]

One winter, during four or five weeks of severe weather, several of our winter birds were pensioners upon my bounty,--three blue jays, two downy woodpeckers, three chickadees, and one kinglet,--and later a snowbird--junco--appeared.

I fastened pieces of suet and marrow-bones upon the tree in front of my window, then, as I sat at my desk, watched the birds at their free lunch. The jays bossed the woodpeckers, the woodpeckers bossed the chickadees, and the chickadees bossed the kinglet.

Sometimes in my absence a crow would swoop down and boss the whole crew and carry off the meat. The kinglet was the least of all,--a sort of "hop-o'-my-thumb" bird. He became quite tame, and one day alighted upon my arm as I stood leaning against the tree. I could have put my hand upon him several times. I wonder where the midget roosted. He was all alone. He liked the fare so well that he seemed disposed to stop till spring. During one terrible night of wind and snow and zero temperature I feared he would be swept away. I thought of him in the middle of the night, when the violence of the storm kept me from sleep. Imagine this solitary atom in feathers drifting about in the great arctic out-of-doors and managing to survive. I fancied him in one of my thick spruces, his head under his tiny wing, buffeted by wind and snow, his little black feet clinging to the perch, and wishing that morning would come.

The fat meat is fuel for him; it keeps up the supply of animal heat. None of the birds will eat lean meat; they want the clear fat. The jays alight upon it and peck away with great vigor, almost standing on tiptoe to get the proper sweep. The woodpecker uses his head alone in pecking, but the jay's action involves the whole body. Yet his blows are softer, not so sharp and abrupt as those of the woodpecker. Pecking is not exactly his business.

He swallows the morsel eagerly, watching all the time lest some enemy surprise him in the act. Indeed, one noticeable thing about all the birds is their nervousness while eating. The chickadee turns that bead-like eye of his in all directions incessantly, lest something seize him while he is not looking. He is not off his guard for a moment. It is almost painful to observe the state of fear in which he lives. He will not keep his place upon the bone longer than a few seconds at a time lest he become a mark for some enemy,--a hawk, a shrike, or a cat. One would not think the food would digest when taken in such haste and trepidation.

While the jays are feeding, swallowing morsel after morsel very rapidly, the chickadees flit about in an anxious, peevish manner, lest there be none left for themselves.

I suspect the jays carry the food off and hide it, as they certainly do corn when I put it out for the hens. The jay has a capacious throat; he will lodge half a dozen or more kernels of corn in it, stretching his neck up as he takes them, to give them room, and then fly away to an old bird's-nest or a caterpillar's nest and deposit them in it. But in this respect the little kettle cannot call the big pot black. The chickadee also will carry away what it cannot eat. One day I dug a dozen or more white grubs--the larvae of some beetle--out of a decayed maple on my woodpile and placed them upon my window-sill. The chickadees soon discovered them, and fell to carrying them off as fast as ever they could, distributing them among the branches of the Norway spruces. Among the grubs was one large white one half the size of one's little finger. One of the chickadees seized this; it was all he could carry, but he made off with it. The mate to this grub I found rolled up in a smooth cell in a mass of decayed wood at the heart of the old maple referred to; it was full of frost. I carried it in by the fire, and the next day it was alive and apparently wanted to know what had brought spring so suddenly.

How rapidly birds live! Their demand for food is almost incessant. This colony of mine appear to feed every eight or ten minutes. Their little mills grind their grist very rapidly. Once in my walk upon the sea beach I encountered two small beach birds running up and down in the edge of the surf, keeping just in the thin, lace-like edging of the waves, and feeding upon the white, cricket-like hoppers that quickly buried themselves in the sand as the waters retreated. I kept company with the birds till they ceased to be afraid of me. They would feed eagerly for a few minutes and then stop, stand on one leg and put their heads under their wings for two or three minutes, and then resume their feeding, so rapidly did they digest their food. But all birds digest very rapidly.

My two woodpeckers seldom leave the tree upon which the food is placed. One is a male, as is shown by his red plume, and the other a female. There is not a bit of kindness or amity between them. Indeed, there is open hostility. The male will not allow the female even to look at the meat while he is feeding. She will sidle around toward it, edging nearer and nearer, when he will suddenly dart at her, and often pursue her till she leaves the tree. Every hour in the day I see him trying to drive her from the neighborhood. She stands in perpetual dread of him, and gives way the instant he approaches. He is a tyrant and a bully. They both pass the night in snug chambers which they have excavated in the decayed branch of an old apple-tree, but not together.

But in the spring what a change will come over the male. He will protest to the female that he was only in fun, that she took him far too seriously, that he had always cherished a liking for her. Last April I saw a male trying his blandishments upon a female in this way. It may have been the same pair I am now observing. The female was extremely shy and reluctant; evidently she was skeptical of the sincerity of so sudden a change on the part of the male. I saw him pursue her from tree to tree with the most flattering attention. The flight of the woodpecker is at all times undulating, but on such occasions this feature is so enhanced and the whole action so affected and studied on the part of the male that the scene becomes highly amusing. The female flew down upon a low stump in the currant-patch and was very busy about her own affairs; the male followed, alighted on something several rods distant, and appeared to be equally busy about his affairs. Presently the female made quite a long flight to a tree by the roadside. I could not tell how the male knew she had flown and what course she had taken, as he was hidden from her amid the thick currant-bushes; but he did know, and soon followed after in his curious exaggerated undulatory manner of flight. I have little doubt that his suit was finally successful.

I watch these woodpeckers daily to see if I can solve the mystery as to how they hop up and down the trunks and branches without falling away from them when they let go their hold. They come down a limb or trunk backward by a series of little hops, moving both feet together. If the limb is at an angle to the tree and they are on the under side of it, they do not fall away from it to get a new hold an inch or half inch farther down. They are held to it as steel to a magnet. Both tail and head are involved in the feat. At the instant of making the hop the head is thrown in and the tail thrown out, but the exact mechanics of it I cannot penetrate. Philosophers do not yet know how a backward-falling cat turns in the air, but turn she does. It may be that the woodpecker never quite relaxes his hold, though to my eye he appears to do so.

Birds nearly always pass the night in such places as they select for their nests,--ground-builders upon the ground, tree-builders upon trees. I have seen an oriole ensconce himself for the night amid the thick cluster of leaves on the end of a maple branch, where soon after his mate built her nest.

My chickadees, true to this rule, pass the arctic winter nights in little cavities in the trunks of trees like the woodpeckers. One cold day, about four o'clock, while it was snowing and blowing, I heard, as I was unharnessing my horse near the old apple-tree, the sharp, chiding note of a chickadee. On looking for the bird I failed to see him. Suspecting the true cause of his sudden disappearance, I took a pole and touched a limb that had an opening in its end where the wrens had the past season had a nest. As I did so, out came the chickadee and scolded sharply. The storm and the cold had driven him early to his chamber. The snow buntings are said to plunge into the snow-banks and pass the night there. We know the ruffed grouse does this.

[The end]
John Burroughs's essay: Birds' Free Lunch

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