Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-04-13

likely to come mild winters as severe
ones. Later in the day the birds came
about my study. 1 sat reading with my
back to the window when 1 was advised
of their presence by catching a glimpse
of one reflected in my eye glasses as it
flew up from the ground to the branch of
an apple tree only a few feet away. I
only mention the circumstances to show
how quick an observer is to take the hint.
I was absorbed in my reading, but the
moment that little shadow fitted athwart
that luminous reflection of the window in
the corne Of my glasses, something said
''that was a Bird Approaching the
window 1 saw several of them sitting not
five feet away. 1 could inspect them
perfectly. They were a slate color with
a tinge Of bronze upon the head and
rump. In full plumage the old males
are a dusky red. Hence these were all
either young males or females. Oc-
casionally among these focks an old
male may be seen. It would seem as if
only a very few Of the older and wiser
birds accompanied these younger
birds in their excursions into more
Southern chimes.
Presently the birds left the apple bough
that nearly brushed my window and with
q dozen or more of their fellows that 1
had not seen settled in a Norway spruce
a few yards away and began to feed upon
the buds. They looked very pretty there
amid the driving snow. 1 was fattered
that these visitauts from the far North
should find entertainment on my prem
ises. How plump, contented and en-
tirely at home they looked. But they
made such havoc with the spruce buds
that after awhile l began to fear a bud
would not be left upon the trees, the
spruces would be checked in their growth
the next year. So 1 presently went out
to demonstrate with them and ask them
to move on. 1 approached them very
slowly, and when beside the tree within
a few feet of several of them they needed
me not. One bird kept its position and
went on shipping off the buds till 1 raised
my hand ready to seize it before it moved
a yard or two higher up; 1 think it was
only my white uncovered hand that dis
turbed it. Indeed, ''They were so I'M
acquainted with man their tameness was
shocking to see.' The snow was COW
cred with the yellow chaffy scales of the
bud and still the birds sifted them down
till 1 was compelled to ''shoo'' them
away, when they moved to a tree nearer
the house, beneath which they left more
yellow chaff upon the snow.
The mind of an observer is like a gun
with a hair trigger-it goes at a touch,
while the minds of most persons require
very vigorous nudging. You must take
the hint, and take it quickly, if you
would get up any profitable intimacy with
nature. Above all, don't jump to con-
clusions; look again aud again; verify
your observations. Be sure the crow is
pulling corn, and not probing for grubs,
before you kill him. Be sure it is the
oriole p%urlOining your grapes, and not
the sparrows, before you declare them
your enemies. I one day saw humming
birds apparently probing the ripe, yellow
cheeks of my finest peaches, but 1 was
not satisfied till I saw a bird lowering
over a particular peach, and then mount
ing Upon a ladder, / examined it, when,
sure enough, the golden cheek was full
OF pin holes. The orioles destroy many
of my earliest pears, but it required
much watching to catch them in the very
act. I nee saw a phoebe bird swoop
upon a raspberry bush and carry a berry
to a rail on a lear fence, but I did not,
therefore, jump to the conclusion that
the phoebe was a be~rry-eater. What it
wanted was the worm in the berry. How
l know? Because I saw it extract
something from the berry and fly away.
Tbs belief was at one time all but uni
Yersal that swallows passed the winter in
a torpid state in the mud at the bottom
of ponds and rivers. Even Gilbert White,
an observer as he was, more than
half believed it. AS no man ever found
a swallow in such a state and place, how
could the notion ever get started? Gil
bert White could offer as his reason but
the merest shadow of evidence that such
was the case, such as seeing swallows
lurking about ponds and marshes late in
the season. Find your bird in the mud,
torpid and not dead, before you enter
tain such a notion. A French missionary,
to have been a good naturalist, also
in this country in 1884, makes
this curious statement about our hum
bird: 'tThis bird, as one might
say, dies, or to speak more correctly,
puts itself to sleep in the month Of Octo-
Der, living fastened to some little
branchlet OF a tree by the feet, and
wakes up in the month OF April when the
are in abundance, and sometimes
later, and for that cause is called in the
tongue the Revived - How
could the good missionary ever be led to
such a statement? The actual
OF the bird wintering In that way
would a been the proof science de-
mands, and nothing short of that.
English sparrows have been found
dead suspended to a limb by a thread or
string about the neck. and some people
AVE therefore tried to persuade them
selves that sparrows either execute their
in the approved fashion OF else
that an occasional bird commits suicide
probably from jealousy or disappoint-
ment in love. But it is quite a common
for birds that make use of
in building their nests to get |
hung. Sometimes q horse hair will get
wound around the legs of young birds in
the nest so tightly as to completely am
putate them.
A boy in the interior of the state wrote
to me the other day that while in the
feld looking after Indian arrow-heads
ne had seen a brown and a gray bird
With a black mark running through the
aye, and that the bird walked in |
OF hoped. He said it had a
nigh shrill whistle and few like a mead
'w-lark. This boy is a natural observer;
noted that the bird was a walker.
Most of the birds hop or jump, keeping
@AA So a. 49, 4