THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS.
"Everywhere
the blue sky belongs to them and is their appointed rest,
and their native country, and their own natural home which they
enter unannounced as lords that are certainly expected,
and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival."
| THE return of the birds to their
real home in the North, where they build their nests and
rear their young, is regarded by all genuine lovers of
earth's messengers of gladness and gayety as one of the
most interesting and poetical of annual occurrences. The
naturalist, who notes the very day of each arrival, in
order that he may verify former observation or add to his
material gathered for a new work, does not necessarily
anticipate with greater pleasure this event than do many
whose lives are brightened by the coming of the friends
of their youth, who alone of early companions do not
change. First of all — and ever the same delightful
warbler — the Bluebird, who, in 1895, did not appear
at all in many localities, though here in considerable
numbers last year, betrays himself. "Did he come
down out of the heaven on that bright March morning when
he told us so softly and plaintively that, if we pleased,
spring, had come?" Sometimes he is here a little
earlier, and must keep his courage up until the cold snap
is over and the snow is gone. Not long after the
Bluebird, comes the Robin, sometimes in March, but in
most of the northern states April is the month of his
arrival. With his first utterance the spell of winter is
broken, and the remembrance of it afar off. Then appears
the Woodpecker in great variety, the Flicker usually
arriving first. He is always somebody's old favorite,
"announcing his arrival by a long, loud call,
repeated from the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in
the fence — a thoroughly melodious April
sound." Few perhaps reflect upon the difficulties encountered by the birds themselves in their returning migrations. A voyager sometimes meets with many of our common birds far out at sea. |
Such
wanderers, it is said, when suddenly overtaken by a fog,
completely lose their sense of direction and become
hopelessly lost. Humming birds, those delicately
organized, glittering gems, are among the most common of
the land species seen at sea. The present season has been quite favorable to the protection of birds. A very competent observer says that not all of the birds migrated this winter. He recently visited a farm less than an hours ride from Chicago, where he found the old place, as he relates it, "chucked full of Robins, Blackbirds, and Woodpeckers," and others unknown to him. From this he inferred they would have been in Florida had indications predicted a severe winter. The trees of the south parks of Chicago, and those in suburban places, have had, darting through their branches during the months of December and January, nearly as many members of the Woodpecker tribe as were found there during the mating season in May last. Alas, that the Robin will visit us in diminished numbers in the approaching spring. He has not been so common for a year or two as he was formerly, for the reason that the Robins died by thousands of starvation, owing to the freezing of their food supply in Tennessee during the protracted cold weather in the winter of 1895. It is indeed sad that this good Samaritan among birds should be defenseless against the severity of Nature, the common mother of us all. Nevertheless the return of the birds, in myriads or in single pairs, will be welcomed more and more, year by year, as intelligent love and appreciation of them shall possess the popular mind. |