THE YELLOW-BREASTED FLYCATCHER
“Come here! come here! come here!
My Philip dear, come here! come here!
Philip, my dear! Philip, Philip, my dear!”
Poor mournful Mrs. Flycatcher,
With ample breast of dainty buff,
Now don’t you think you’ve called your mate, —
To say the very least – enough?
I’m sorry for you, plaintive one;
I would be glad to make him fly
From his long tarrying place to you,
If that would stop your weary cry.
Can’t you decide to give him up?
All over town you’ve called his name;
I heard you calling this week, last,
The week before you called the same.
Perhaps some boy with “twenty-two”
Has shot him for his sister’s hat.
Go! search the churches through and through;
If he’s not there, accuse the cat.
THE TOWNSEND’S WARBLER
(Dendroica townsendi.)
Dr. Robert Ridgway, in the Ornithology of Illinois, uses the following words in speaking of that family of birds called the American Warblers (Mniotilidae), “No group of birds more deserves the epithet of pretty than the Warblers; Tanagers are splendid; Humming-birds are refulgent; other kinds are brilliant, gaudy or magnificent, but Warblers alone are pretty in the proper and full sense of that term.”
As they are full of nervous activity, and are “eminently migratory birds,” they seem to flit rather than fly through the United States as they pass northward in the spring to their breeding places, and southward in the fall to their winter homes among the luxuriant forests and plantations of the tropics. All the species are purely American, and as they fly from one extreme to the other of their migratory range they remain but a few days in any intermediate locality. Time seems to be an important matter with them. It would seem as if every moment of daylight was used in the gathering of food and the night hours in continuing their journey.
The American Warblers include more than one hundred species grouped in about twenty genera. Of these species nearly three-fourths are represented in North America at least as summer visitants, the remaining species frequenting only the tropics. Though woodland birds they exhibit many and widely separated modes of life, some of the species preferring only aquatic regions, while others seek drier soils. Some make their homes in shrubby places, while others are seldom found except in forests. As their food is practically confined to insects, they frequent our lawns and orchards during their migrations, when they fly in companies which may include several species. Mr. Chapman, in his Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, says, “Some species flit actively from branch to branch, taking their prey from the more exposed parts of the twigs and leaves; others are gleaners, and carefully explore the under surfaces of leaves or crevices in the bark; while several, like Flycatchers, capture a large part of their food on the wing.”
The Townsend’s Warbler is a native of Western North America, especially near the Pacific coast. Its range extends from Sitka on the north to Central America on the south, where it appears during the winter. In its migration it wanders as far east as Colorado. It breeds from the southern border of the United States northward, nesting in regions of cone-bearing trees. It is said that the nest of this Warbler is usually placed at a considerable height, though at times as low as from five to fifteen feet from the ground. The nest is built of strips of fibrous bark, twigs, long grasses and wool, compactly woven together. This is lined with hair, vegetable down and feathers.
The eggs are described as buffy white, speckled and spotted with reddish brown and lilac-gray, about three-fifths of an inch in length by about one-half of an inch in diameter.
THE STORY OF SOME BLACK BUGS
We were going to visit Aunt Bessie, and John and I like few things better than that. To begin with, she lives in the country, and there is always so much to do in the way of fun that the days never seem half long enough.
Then, besides, Aunt Bessie knows everything, and can tell such famous stories. So when she asked us one morning to go to the pond with her and see something interesting, you may be sure we were not slow in following her.
The rushes grew thickly along the sides, but the water was clear, and we could plainly see the black bugs she pointed out to us crawling, slowly and clumsily, over the muddy bottom.
“Those things!” said John, not a little disgusted. “I don’t think they are much. Are they tadpoles?”
“Tadpoles!” I echoed. “Why, whoever saw tadpoles with six legs and no tail?”
“The absence of a tail is very convincing,” laughed Aunt Bessie. “They are certainly not tadpoles. Now watch them closely, please, and tell me all about them.”
“They are abominably ugly. That is one thing,” broke in John. “They look black, and have six legs. But how funny their skin is. More like a crust, or lots of crusts laid one on the other. They are about the stupidest things I ever saw. They seem to do nothing but crawl over that mud and – Hello! they aren’t so stupid, after all. Did you see that fellow snatch a poor fly and gobble him up quicker than you could say Jack Robinson? And there’s another taken a mosquito just as quick. I’ll take back what I said about the slow business. But really, Auntie, do you think them very interesting?”
“I’ll ask you that question when you have learned something more about them,” was her answer. “Tell me now what you think of that Dragon-fly darting over the water?”
“Oh, he is a beauty,” we answered in a breath. “But please let us hear something about those things down there.”
“Not to-day, boys. I wish you to see something for yourselves first. Watch here for a few days and your patience will be rewarded, I promise you. Then I will have a story to tell you.”
I knew that Auntie never spoke without reason, so John and I kept a close watch on those bugs. For two days nothing happened. The old things just crawled over the mud or ate flies and mosquitoes, as usual.
But the third day one big fellow decided to try something new. It was nothing less than to creep up the stem of one of the rushes. I suppose it was hard work, for he took a long time to get to the surface of the water. Here he stopped a while and then seemed to make up his mind to go further. Soon he was quite out of the water and could breathe all the air and sunshine he wished. I believe he did not like it very well. He seemed so restless and uneasy. I was expecting to see him go back, when I heard John cry out:
“Look! oh, do look!”
I did look, and could scarcely believe my eyes.
His skin (the bug’s, I mean), was actually cracking right down the back, just as though the air and sunshine had dried it too much.
Poor fellow, he seemed in great trouble about it. Then, to make matters worse, a part of his coat broke off at the top and slipped down over his eyes, so that he could not see. After a moment, however, it dropped further, quite under the place where his chin would have been, had he had a chin.
“Oh! he is getting a new