APRIL
No days such honored days as these! While yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April’s name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.
And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,
Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth,
A holier symbol still in seal and sign,
Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,
When Christ ascended, in the time of birth
Of spring anemones, in Palestine.
I come, like a hope to a gloomy breast,
With comforting smiles, and tears
Of sympathy for the earth’s unrest;
And news that the summer nears,
For the feet of the young year every day
Patter and patter and patter away.
I thrill the world with a strange delight;
The birds sing out with a will,
And the herb-lorn lea is swift bedight
With cowslip and daffodil;
While the rain for an hour or two every day
Patters and patters and patters away.
THE CURASSOW
An interesting race of birds, known as the Curassows, has its range throughout that part of South America, east of the Andes Mountain range and north of Paraguay. All the species are confined to this region except one, which is found in Central America and Mexico. This is the bird of our illustration (Crax globicera).
The Curassows belong to the order of Gallinaceous birds and bear the same relation to South America that the pheasants and grouse bear to the Old World. They are in every respect the most important and the most perfect game birds of the district which they inhabit. In all there are twelve species placed under four genera. As the hind toes of the feet are placed on a level with the others they resemble the pigeon and are unlike many of the other gallinaceous birds.
The Curassows are very large and rather heavy birds and some of them are larger than our turkey. They have short wings and a strong bill. At the base of the upper mandible and on the upper side there is a large tubercle-like excrescence which is of a yellow color and quite hard. Upon the head there is a gracefully arched crest of feathers which is made of curled feathers, the tips of which are white in some of the species. This crest can be lowered or raised at the will of the bird. The plumage of the species illustrated is a beautiful and velvety black, except the white on the lower portion of the body. It is said that their motions are much more graceful than are those of our common domestic turkey. “They live in small flocks, and are arboreal in their habits, only occasionally descending to the ground, while roosting and building their nests on the branches of trees.” The nests are large and made of twigs and willowy branches held in place by the stems of grasses, which are neatly interwoven between them. The nest is lined with down, feathers and leaves.
It is said that they are easily domesticated and that in some parts of South America they may be found in tame flocks around the homes of the planters. One authority states that at about the beginning of the present century a large number of Curassows were taken from Dutch Guiana to Holland, where they became thoroughly domesticated, breeding as readily as any other kind of domestic poultry. Though a tropical bird, it would seem that they might be acclimatized. They would certainly form a valuable addition to the list of our farm fowls, for their flesh is said to be “exceedingly white and delicate.”
The female is not as large as the male and is usually reddish in color. Their food consists almost entirely of fruit and insects.
About the middle of the eighteenth century Eleazar Albin wrote “A Natural History of Birds,” in which he gives a very interesting account of the Curassow and an excellent illustration of the bird. He says: “I took a pourtray of this bird at Chelmsford in Essex; it was very tame and sociable, eating and drinking with any company. The Cock I had of a man from the West Indies. They are generally brought from Carasow, from whence they take their Name. They are called by the Indians Tecuecholi, Mountain-Bird or American Pheasant.”
SOME NOTABLE NESTS
The Clymer boys and girls, of Cloverdale, New England, belonged to a Bird Club; they were proposed to membership by their neighbors, the Walkers; in fact, the two families composed the club, and it partook of the nature of a secret society.
All this was before the young people of Cloverdale knew of Clark University, and Dr. Hodges’ “Ten to One Clubs,” wherein the members pledged themselves to strive by all imaginable means – provided they were also practical – to induce ten song birds to live and sing each year, where only one was found the year before.
It was not necessary for the Cloverdale Club to put up carefully constructed and artistic bird houses, or to hang cotton and the like fine nest-building materials in choicest ornamental shade trees – not at all. The English Sparrow had not found the village in those days; the song birds were there, they knew all the good locations and just where to find the best stuffs for constructing, furnishing and decorating their homes; the work of the club was to find these homes, to study them, with the ways and habits of their occupants, and to record their discoveries in a big book labeled, “Things Not Generally Known.”
Many of the statements in this book were as broad and conclusive as scientific dogmas, but the Cloverdale Club did not waste its time searching for hundreds of instances to establish a single truth; one was enough to be worthy of record; then, if some time the big book should be given to the public, and some naturalist or investigator should choose to confirm its statements by patient research, of course he would be welcome so to do. The club had the distinction of discovery, that was enough.
One interesting item recorded was this: “Birds – such as Orioles – who build in conspicuous places, like to decorate the outside of their nests, and in so doing are known to use manufactured materials and patterns.” Strange statement, but of course thereby hangs a tale, and here it is.
At the spring house-cleaning time, Mrs. Clymer had the big, bright sitting-room carpet taken out under one of the old colonial elms, at the east of the house, to be cleaned. Mrs. Baltimore Oriole was up in the elm that morning looking for a building spot that should be a bit superior to the old one; she had spent three summers in that tree, was familiar with the ways of the club, and habits of the family; like the birds of Eugene Field’s boyhood, “she knew her business when she built the old fire-hang-bird’s nest.”
No one was near when Mrs. Oriole fixed her eyes on the great red, green and white ingrain carpet, and admired it; what she thought we know not, but when she glanced at the hitching post under the tree, she instantly descended from high, waving branch, to lowly square post, for exactly covering the top of the same was a miniature carpet, a piece just six by six inches which Patrick should have left indoors; not having done so, he laid it on the inviting post for safe-keeping. That bit of wool fabric was very valuable, it exactly filled a jog right by the fireplace, in which, alas! ever after was seen an ugly piece of oil cloth!
All summer long the club girls and boys gazed with wonder at the gay nest in the elm, hanging like a solitary blossom among the leaves; their speculations about it would fill a long chapter; but after the birds were flown far to the south, and the leaves were gone, that nest was finally cut down and told its story: thread by thread, just as pulled from the bit of carpet, had been woven into a decoration for the outer wall of that hanging house, till a rude reproduction