Tailorbird

“ When the bird desires to direct its course to the right or the left, it strikes strongly with the opposite wing, which impels it to the proper side. In the motions of the animal, too, the tail takes a prominent part, and acts like the rudder of a ship, except that, instead of sideways, it moves upwards and downwards. If the bird wishes to rise, it raises its tail; and if to fall, it depresses it; and, whilst in a horizontal position, it keeps it steady. There are few who have not observed a pigeon or a crow preserve, for some time, a horizontal flight without any apparent motion of the wings. ”

“ The twine-like fibres of which it is woven are the filaments of the gigantic palm. The threads break away from the leaf, and hang like fringe to the magnificent foliage.
The Tailor-birds are the best nest-builders of all the feathered tribes. They interweave their nests between the twigs and branches of shrubs, or suspend the nests from them; and some of these birds have exercised arts from the creation which man has found of the greatest benefit to him since he discovered them. These birds, indeed, may be called the inventors of the several arts of the weaver, the sempstress, and the tailor ”

“ His colors are gray, black, and white, his tail is long, and his bill is hooked like a hawk’s.
He likes a perch from which he can see a good distance about him. A telegraph wire answers his purpose very well, but his commonest seat is the very tip of a tallish tree. If you look across a field in winter and descry a medium-sized bird swaying on the topmost twig of a lonesome tree, balancing himself by continual tiltings of his long tail, you may set him down as most likely a butcher-bird. ”

“ It was a beautiful sight to see the old birds proudly puffing out their chestnut-coloured throats in the sunshine, and flirting their tails admiringly round their young hopefuls, evidently too scared on their part to enjoy it, much like small boys just emerging from a first swimming lesson, who shiver afterwards on the brink. At this moment we have a pet blackbird with white-barred tail-feathers hopping over it. ”

“ Supporting and emphasising this, we have the absence, in the tail of the young bird, of those lance-like feathers which give so marked a character to, and add so infinitely to the grace of, the old one. Of what use can this thin projection, an inch or so beyond the serviceable fan of the tail, be to the bird? Seeing how well every other bird does without it, can we suppose it to be of any service? Its beauty, however—which one misses dreadfully in the young flying bird—is apparent to any one, and it goes hand in hand with an ascending scale of beauty in colour. ”

“ The birds seemed utterly out of place among the vivacious tanagers, creepers, and finches, and seemed to belong more properly to some remote and unrecorded past. Their flight is slow and uncertain, the birds flapping their wings and sailing alternately; when alighting they strike a most ludicrous pose and barely avert falling over frontward before finally securing their balance. The long tail helps the bird to keep its equilibrium, although adding to the awkwardness of its appearance. ”

“ In one respect, the beginner has a great advantage over an old hand. He has the pleasure of more excitement and surprise.
The bird to be looked for is a little longer than a bluebird, of a superb scarlet color except for its wings and tail, which, as I have said, are jet black. I speak of the male in full spring costume. His mate does not show so much as a red feather, but is greenish yellow, or yellowish green, with dark—not black—wings and tail. ”

“ It took but a minute to get the large, flat-bottomed row-boat ready for the start, and we were soon gliding along, an oar’s-length from shore, scanning every tree, bush, and bunch of rushes, in search of nests, those of the Red-winged Blackbird being very plenty and placed both in bushes or rushes in about equal numbers. A pair of Kingbirds had selected as the place for their summer home, a large, low willow limb which projected over the water; a peep into the nest revealed three eggs, common, yet so beautiful in their bed of wool and feathers. ”

“ As soon as its tail is fully grown, he begins about an inch from the extremity of the two longest feathers in it and cuts away the web on both sides of the shaft, making a gap about an inch long. Both male and female wear their tails in this manner, which gives them a remarkable appearance among all other birds.
To observe this bird in his native haunts, one must be in the forest at dawn. He shuns the society of man. ”

“ The bird cannot rebel, but does it not acquiesce? Does a lyre bird submit to its tail—wear it under protest, so to speak? Believe me, every bird that has an aesthetic tail knows the fact, and tries to live up to it. We may push the argument even further, for the motmot of Brazil is not content with a ready-made tail, but actually strips the web off the two long side feathers with its own beak, except a little patch at the end, so as to get the pattern which Nature, if one must use the phrase, gave to the racket-tailed drongo. ”

“ When we come to examine woven nests, such as the Baltimore oriole and the red-eyed vireo, as well as some other small birds, build, there is offered a great deal more to study, for how they accomplish what they do, with their only tools their feet and beak, is not wholly known. That the tropical tailor-bird should run a thread through a leaf and so bring the edges together and make a conical-shaped bag, is not so very strange. ”

“ People like much better to see that beautiful tail in their rooms, where it will soon get spoilt and dusty, or to put some feathers of it in their hats, than to know that the bird is running about with it, alive and happy, holding it down like a pheasant's when he walks through the bushes, but raising it in the air when he stands on his little hillock, for the hen Lyre-bird to see, and singing her a song as well. ”

“ His enormously long tail feathers are so fantastic, so almost grotesque! They render him a kind of monstrosity. One feels as if he had been made, not born; and some Oriental must have been the maker.
Yet if ever a bird was alive, he is. His spirits are effervescent and apparently inexhaustible. Few birds are noisier or more continually on the move. When six or eight scissor-tails meet for consultation in one small tree, even though it be in a cemetery, there are “great doings,” as the country phrase is. ”

“ They do not come about the flower-garden like the humming-bird, nor about the lawn like the robin; neither can they be hunted with a dog like the grouse and the [Pg 145] woodcock. Hence, for all their gorgeous apparel, they are mainly left to students and collectors. Of our common species the most beautiful are, perhaps, the blue yellow-back, the blue golden-wing, the Blackburnian, the black-and-yellow, the Canada flycatcher, and the redstart; with the yellow-rump, the black-throated green, the prairie warbler, the summer yellow-bird, and the Maryland yellow-throat coming not far behind. ”

“ All the comings and goings took place in silence, over the top of the tree, and I have watched the nest an hour at a time without being able to see a sign of its occupancy, except the one thing a sitting bird cannot hide, the tail. And, by the way, how providential—from the bird student's point of view—that birds have tails! They can, it is true, be narrowed to the width of one feather and laid against a convenient twig, but they cannot be wholly suppressed, nor drawn down out of sight into the nest with the rest of the body. ”

“ Even the females and the young assume something of the same pompous demeanor, spreading out their tails, running round one another, and making a loud purring noise. At length, after this prolonged preparation for the passage, they all mount to the top of a high tree, and, at a signal given by their leader, take flight for the opposite shore. Occasionally some fall into the water, when these bring the wings close to the body, spread out the tail, and plying their legs with great vigor move rapidly towards the shore, where, by a violent effort, they extricate themselves from the water. ”

“ In the sky, the swift looks unlike any other bird. The wings are long and flap like those of a mechanical toy-bird. The tail appears rounded, not forked, like those of swallows.
Male and Female: Brownish-gray, lighter gray on throat; a black spot before each eye; wings longer than tail; tail short, with ribs of the feathers extending beyond the vanes, giving the effect of sharp needle- or pin-points. The bird has a sooty appearance. ”

“ A second bluebird is caroling. Every additional one is cause for thankfulness. Imagine a place where bluebirds should be as thick as English sparrows are in our American cities! Imagine heaven! A crested flycatcher screams, an olive-side calls pip, pip, a robin cackles, an oven-bird recites his piece with schoolboy emphasis, an alder flycatcher queeps, and a vesper sparrow sings. And at the end, as if for good measure, a Maryland yellow-throat adds his witchery, witchery. ”

“ For how pretty it looked, though dead, lying on its back, the little black legs stuck stiffly up, the long wings pressed against the sides, their black tips touching together like the clasped hands of a corpse; and the fan-like black and white tail, half open as in life, moved perpetually up and down by the wind, as if that tail-flirting action of the bird had continued after death. ”

“ The appearance of the bird, except the superb tail, is not remarkable; but paradoxical as it may be, the tail is the bird's crowning glory, at once giving it a name and fame. Like many other cumbersome things, the lyre-bird's tail is used for ornament during a part of the year only, being donned at the mating season and doffed at the close of the nesting period. It assumes the lyre-shape only when voluntarily spread, appearing simply as a long, greatly developed tail at other times. ”

“ The kingbird is plentifully endowed not only with spirit, but with spirits. A goldfinch sang and twittered in the softest voice, and a catbird mewed. From a quince bush, a little farther off, a wild bobolinkian strain was repeated again and again,—an orchard oriole, I thought most likely. I went nearer (to the shade of a low cedar) , and soon had him in sight,—a young male in yellow plumage, with a black throat-patch. ”

“ The middle of the back is the same color in both, but instead of becoming lighter and tinged with ash on the rump and upper tail-coverts, these parts very rarely differ in color from the back. The markings on the wings, instead of being dirty white, are decidedly olivaceous-grayish. The yellow of the lower parts is deeper. The tail-feathers are rather broad, acuminate, and pointed; in minimus they are narrow and more rounded, while the tail itself is emarginated, instead of square, as in the present bird. The bill is larger and fuller. The legs are decidedly shorter in proportion. ”

“ The half-fish, half-frog could neither sup like an infant nor eat like a man. In this extremity it fed on its own tail—absorbed it as a camel is said to absorb its hump when travelling in the foodless desert—and so it entered on its new life without one.
Aeronautics have changed the whole perspective of life for birds, as they may for us shortly; so it is no surprise to find that birds have, almost with one consent, converted their tails into steering-gear. A commonplace bird, like a sparrow, scarcely requires this except as a brake when in the act of alighting ”

“ In this plaiting of the natural growing grass into a fabric, one might think that the height of bird architecture had been reached, but there is a Tailor-bird as well as a Weaver-bird, and what he does is perhaps even more wonderful, since he uses a needle and thread, his bill doing duty for the needle. ”

“ On his crown is an orange-red patch, but you will probably never see it unless you have the bird in your hand and brush apart the feathers in search of it.
The kingbird’s Latin name has much the same meaning as his common English one. Tyrannus tyrannus he is called by scientific people. He belongs to a family known as flycatchers, birds that catch insects on the wing. That is the reason why the kingbird likes a perch at the tip of something, so that he can dart out after a passing insect, catch it, and return to his perch to wait for another. ”

“ Lower tail-coverts white. Whole of the wing posterior to the greater coverts slaty-ash, almost black along end of inner webs of primaries, the outer webs of which are narrowly edged with hoary whitish. Tail slate passing into black terminally, tipped with a broad, sharply defined band of gamboge-yellow. A broad stripe of intense velvety-black on side of head, starting from nostril, passing across lore, and involving the eye, continued from it beneath the crest to the occiput; chin dull black, blending gradually into the brownish of the throat. ”

“ He never walks down. Up, up, he goes, and if you look sharply enough, you will see that whenever he pauses he makes use of his sharp, stiff tail-feathers as a rest—a kind of camp-stool, as it were, or, better still, a bracket. He is built for his work; color, bill, feet, tail-feathers—all were made on purpose for him.
He is a native of the northern country, and therefore to most readers of this book he is a winter bird only. ”