Birdseed

“ They will also eat hemp-seed and oats.
Breeding.—They lay ten or twelve rusty white eggs, spotted with reddish yellow, in a hole of a tree, on a bed of moss, hair, and feathers.
Mode of Taking.—In winter they will easily enter a trap baited with nut kernels or oats. A surer method is, to lay limed twigs on a sunflower plant, the seeds of which are ripe. If these tits do not enter the garden, a plant must be carried to a place much frequented by them. When once these birds have tasted these seeds, they appear quite contented in the house. It is only necessary to supply them freely ”

“ They tear up the down and withered petals of the ripening flowers with ease, leaning downwards upon them, eat off the seed, and allow the down to float in the air. The remarkable plumage of the male, as well as its song, are at this season very agreeable; and so familiar are these birds, that they suffer you to approach within a few yards, before they leave the plant on which they are seated. ”

“ Most of us know only by hearsay that there are tailor-birds, common enough in American orchards, who sew 6together broad pieces of grass to make their nests, working them through and through, as if actually done with a needle; but almost every one can say from his own knowledge, that there are weaver-birds, such as our common hedge-sparrow and chaffinch, who weave a circular piece of haircloth for the interior of their nests, each hair being collected and interwoven singly, and always bent so as to lie smoothly in the hollow of the nest. ”

“ Lord saw this bird pick the insects from the tree; and the stomachs of those he killed, on being opened, were filled with various kinds of winged insects. He found this bird lingering around lakes, pools, and swamps, where these birches grow. They generally build in the birch or alder, selecting the fork of a branch high up.
This species bears a very close resemblance in size, appearance, and markings, to the common eastern species, but is readily distinguishable by the difference in the color of the chin and the shape of the tail. ”

“ The yellowish-white tip of the bill remained unaltered and the light line through the lower margin of the lore was observed to still persist, but the plumage of the head was much subdued, the yellow plumes having been exchanged for mere inconspicuous grayish streaks on the sides of the head. As I came up I could see a young bird poking its head through her wing. She soon left the nest, with a startling rush, and swam rapidly away, leaving three eggs in the nest and two tiny youngsters in the water. The newly hatched downy young can both swim and dive in a feeble way. ”

“ This holds good of a considerable number of species, studied with special reference to their flight, as the robin, the wood-thrush, cedar-bird, cat-bird, pewee, and indigo-bird.
It is doubtful if young birds, while yet in their nests, are conscious of the use to be made of their wings. After long-continued experimenting, I find they make no use of them, in endeavoring to escape, but trust to their legs entirely, if removed from the nest, or defend themselves by pecking at the intruder. ”

“ I have watched a kingfisher flying again and again from a winding creek in the valley to her nest on a hillside nearly a half-mile distant, with a minnow in her bill, while the sun was pouring a sweltering deluge upon the fields. It kept her busy every moment to supply the imperious demands of her hungry brood in the bank. A common field-bird, which I watched one day for a long while, would often return to her nest every minute with an insect. ”

“ Even where the birds are many, it is only by patient waiting and watching that an occasional glimpse of one can be got. His food consists of small insects, caught on the wing and on the leaves and stems of the reeds and aquatic herbage. The nest is a deep, [80] beautiful structure, suspended on two or three, or more, slender reed-stems, or on the twigs of a willow, osier, or other plant growing near the water. It is made of long dry grass-leaves woven together, with finer grass-leaves and horsehair for a lining. ”

“ This truly elegant bird occurs throughout the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, frequenting most the cultivated and wooded districts, where it does a good deal of mischief by feeding upon the wheat, peas, barley, and other agricultural produce; it also partakes freely of beech-mast and acorns; it is graminivorous, that is, feeding on grass; as well as granivorous—feeding on grain. Its favourite resting-place is amid the thick branches of tall trees, especially beech, ash, and pine, in which most frequently its nest will be found; just a few twigs, loosely put together in a circular form ”

“ They came in small flocks in the coldest part of winter. Their food consisted of small seeds and insects. In some instances he found the crops so distended with seeds as to distort their shape. They become very fat, and are excellent eating. In one specimen, a young male, the plumage was almost black, as described at the beginning of this article. These birds were quite numerous, and nearly forty specimens were secured. He was not able to learn anything in reference to their breeding-places. ”

“ These beautiful fiery red and crested songsters are one of the most attractive of our birds, and in their range, nest about habitations as freely as among the thickets and scrubby brush of wood or hillside. Their nests are rarely placed higher than ten feet from the ground in bushes, branches, vines, brush piles or trees; they are loosely made of twigs, coarse grasses and weeds, shreds of bark, leaves, etc., and lined with fine grass or hair. They frequently lay two or three sets of eggs a season, the first being completed usually early in May ”

“ By an elaborate intertwining of these long fibres they form the principal part, sometimes the whole, of their nests. These structures are at once simple, beautiful, ingenious, and skilfully wrought. When first made, they are somewhat rude and unfinished, but as their family are gathered, the eggs deposited, incubated, and hatched, a change has been going on. Little by little has the male bird busied himself, when not procuring food for his mate, in improving, strengthening, and enlarging the nest. ”

“ These birds are familiar to every frequenter of the country, in their range; too familiar to many, for the enormous flocks do considerable damage to grain fields in the fall. They also do a great amount of good at other seasons in the destruction of injurious insects and weed seed. They breed from April in the southern parts of their range to May and June in the northern, making their nests of grasses, woven and twisted together and placing them in bushes in swamps or over water, and sometimes on the ground in clumps of grass. ”

“ After the breeding-season, when their young can take care of themselves, they eat almost exclusively the ripened seeds of the coarse water grasses and sedges. They are very devoted to their young, and often display great solicitude for their safety, even when able to take care of themselves, and often expose themselves to dangers they carefully avoid at other times, and are thus more easily procured. At all other times they are difficult to shoot, running, as they do, through the grass and tangled thickets, and rarely rising on the wing. ”

“ The following [Pg 40] are among its most frequent dupes, given somewhat in the order of the bird's apparent choice: song-sparrow, field-sparrow, yellow warbler, chipping-sparrow, other sparrows, Maryland yellow-throat, yellow-breasted chat, vireos, worm-eating warbler, indigo-bird, least-flycatcher, bluebird, Acadian flycatcher, Canada flycatcher, oven-bird, king-bird, cat-bird, phœbe, Wilson's thrush, chewink, and wood-thrush.
But one egg is usually deposited in a single nest ”

“ The nest is, in very many cases, conspicuous to the eye, but on the slightest alarm the sitting-bird quickly and deftly draws the dead, wet materials like a blanket over the eggs, and, slipping off, dives silently, to come up at a considerable distance, usually where it cannot be seen. The nest then presents the appearance of a mere bunch of dead and water-soaked weeds or grass floating on the surface. ”

“ They build a large and clumsy nest, made of very coarse and miscellaneous materials, chiefly sticks and fragments of dry weeds, sedges, and strips of bark, lined with finer stems, fibrous roots, and grasses, and have from three to five eggs.
It is a very singular but well-established characteristic of this species, that no sooner is their nest completed and incubation commenced than the male birds all desert their mates, and, joining one another in flocks, keep apart from the females, feeding by themselves, until they are joined by the young birds and their mothers in the fall. ”

“ They are difficult birds to shoot on the wing, the more so that they make sudden and unexpected changes in the direction of their flight. When they light on a tree, they are more readily followed and shot. The prevalent notion that, where several of these birds are in the same tree, several may be procured if you are careful to shoot the lowest one each time, was not verified by Mr. Audubon’s experience. ”

“ The eggs of the phœbe-bird are snow-white, and when, in threading the gorge of some mountain trout brook, or prowling about some high, overhanging ledge, one's eye falls upon this mossy structure planted with such matchless art upon a little shelf of the rocks, with its complement of five or six pearl-like eggs, he is ready to declare it the most pleasing nest in all the range of our bird architecture. ”

“ Their nests are hollows in the leaves under fallen trees, beside some stump or concealed among the small shoots at the base of a large tree. The bird sits very close, but when she does fly, goes with the familiar rumble and roar which always disconcerts the novice, the wind created by her sudden flight generally causing the leaves to settle in the nest and conceal the eggs. ”

“ Many seeds have hispid awns, hooks, or prickles which readily attach them to the feathers of birds, and a great number of aquatic birds nest inland on the ground; and as these are pre-eminently wanderers, they must often aid in the dispersal of such plants. ”

“ Its food is chiefly insects in various stages and of different kinds.
It builds its nest on the ground among the grass of the meadow, in fissures in rocks or decayed buildings, among the roots of trees, on the banks of streams, in piles of wood and fagots, or under the arch of a bridge. The nests are somewhat coarsely constructed of interwoven dry bent stems of plants and reeds, with a finer lining of the same. The eggs, six in number, are of a bluish-white ground thickly sprinkled with fine dottings, which are most usually of a blackish-brown color, sometimes ashy-gray or reddish-brown. ”

“ A great deal more could be said about the birds' work for us, not only of the robins and those I have spoken of, but cedar-birds, who are shot because they take part of our cherries, blackbirds, because they eat some grain, orioles, because they occasionally take green peas, and kingbirds, because they have the name of eating bees, though it has been proved that they eat only drones, which have no sting and make no honey. ”

“ The eggs are five in number, of a pure white with a few reddish spots about the larger end. When disturbed during incubation, the female is said to trail along the branches with drooping wings and plaintive notes, in the manner of D. æstiva. After the young have left the nest, they move and hunt together, in company with their parents, evincing great activity in the pursuit of insects. They are also said to have a great partiality for trees the tops of which are thickly covered with grapevines, and to occasionally alight on tall weeds, feeding upon their seeds. ”

“ On some dead limb convenient to the nest, a small hole the size of a lady’s thimble had been prepared, and into this improvised mortar the body of the insect was placed and pounded to a pulp before feeding. This care was not long continued, as the young birds were soon capable of eating whatever is given them.
The next ten days were full of business for my neighbors. Throughout the days they were constantly in pursuit of the passing life that filled the air. Each catch was quickly delivered to the baby birds, whose appetite seemed never to be satisfied. ”

“ It is when the water rises that the birds rise to the occasion, and get busy with nest building. Sedges, sticks, water plants with clinging soil, anything movable, is seized and forced under the threatened eggs. Indeed, so apprehensive is the bird of the growing necessity, that as often as she leaves the nest she will seize loose material and fling it over her shoulder for future use. The eggs themselves, protectively colored in bister and black, are mauled about and soiled in the mud ”

“ The farmer could have no better protection for his corn fields than the near-by nest of a pair of kingbirds. They eat some honeybees, but for every bee thus taken they destroy ten noxious insects. They can be easily frightened away from the vicinity of the hives without being killed.
The kingbird's nest is made of slender twigs, weed stalks, and grasses, and is placed among the branches of trees, fifteen to twenty-five feet from the ground. There are usually four or five eggs, white, spotted with brown. They have generally two broods a year. ”

“ By far the best shooting is to be had on flight birds, which are big and fat and strong on the wing. In warm weather they frequent the black alder thickets where there are bunches of grass and weeds, or the vicinity of brooks or springs where there is a growth of alders, willows, and birches. On crisp, cold days in October they may be found on sunny hillsides or ridges, among birches, bayberries, or huckleberries, on the sunny edges of the woods, in cedar pastures, in locust scrub, or even in old scrubby orchards. ”