THE GOLDEN PHEASANT

They call me the Golden Pheasant, because I have a golden crest. It is like a king’s crown. Don’t you think my dress is beautiful enough for a king?

See the large ruff around my neck. I can raise and lower it as I please.

I am a very large bird. I am fourteen inches tall and twenty-eight inches long. I can step right over your little robins and meadow larks and blue jays and not touch them.

Sometimes people get some of our eggs and put them under an old hen. By and by little pheasants hatch out, and the hen is very good to them. She watches over them and feeds them, but they do not wish to stay with her; they like their wild life. If they are not well fed they will fly away.

I have a wife. Her feathers are beginning to grow like mine. In a few years she will look as I do. We like to have our nests by a fallen tree.

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HE well-known Chinese Pheasant, which we have named the Golden Pheasant, as well as its more sober-colored cousin, the Silver Pheasant, has its home in Eastern Asia.

China is pre-eminently the land of Pheasants; for, besides those just mentioned, several other species of the same family are found there. Japan comes next to China as a pheasant country and there are some in India.

In China the Golden Pheasant is a great favorite, not only for its splendid plumage and elegant form, but for the excellence of its flesh, which is said to surpass even that of the common pheasant. It has been introduced into Europe, but is fitted only for the aviary.

For purposes of the table it is not likely to come into general use, as there are great difficulties in the way of breeding it in sufficient numbers, and one feels a natural repugnance to the killing of so beautiful a bird for the sake of eating it. The magnificent colors belong only to the male, the female being reddish brown, spotted and marked with a darker hue. The tail of the female is short. The statement is made, however, that some hens kept for six years by Lady Essex gradually assumed an attire like that of the males.

Fly-fishers highly esteem the crest and feathers on the back of the neck of the male, as many of the artificial baits owe their chief beauty to the Golden Pheasant.

According to Latham, it is called by the Chinese Keuki, or Keukee, a word which means gold flower fowl.

-Nature Study Publishing Company CHICAGO

THE SHORT-EARED OWL

MARSH OWL, Meadow Owl, and Prairie Owl, are some of the names of this species of an interesting family, which is found throughout North America at large, though in greater numbers in the Arctic regions during the nesting season than in the United States. It is believed that no land bird has so extensive a range as this species, occurring, as it does, throughout all the grand divisions of the earth’s surface, except Australia. In America it is found everywhere in favorable localities, from Alaska and Greenland to Cape Horn. Truly a cosmopolitan bird, observed by the inhabitants of nearly all countries.

The Short-eared Owl is seen in the marshes, the thickets of bottom lands, and Davie says it seems to be particularly common in the tall weeds and grass of fields and meadows. In the west it is found on the extensive prairies, along sloughs, hiding in the day-time among the sage bushes and tall grass. It is a night wanderer, but often hunts its food on dark days, and field mice, moles, shrews, and other small rodents are captured by it while on noiseless wing, or while standing motionless watching for its prey.

The nest of the Short-eared Owl is made on the ground in the matted grass of marsh land; sometimes in a depression at the foot of a bush, beside a log, or in a burrow made by a rabbit or a muskrat. A few sticks, soft grasses, and some of its own feathers usually comprise the nest proper, though the eggs are not infrequently laid on the bare ground. These are from four to seven, white and oval. In Ohio they are laid in April, sometimes as early as the latter part of March, or as late as the middle of May, within which dates it doubtless may be found breeding throughout the United States.

Mr. Nelson says that this is the most abundant species of the Owl family. They are common everywhere in Illinois during the winter, remaining concealed in a bunch of grass or weeds until almost two o’clock p.m., when they commence flying low over the ground in search of food. When approached, while standing on the ground, they crouch and try to escape observation. They are harmless and are easily tamed, and as a rule, are silent. Mr. Nelson heard one of the birds, in Alaska, utter rapidly a loud cry which sounded like the syllables Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, in a higher key than the note of the Horned Owl, and in a much less sonorous tone. When alarmed for their young, they have been heard to utter a shrill hollow cry, and at the same time make quite a noise by spitefully snapping their bills.

We fancy the Owl family alone will enable Birds to furnish a collection of pictures—perhaps forty in number—that will fascinate the bird lover, and make him eager to possess other groups for study, wonder, and delight.

-Nature Study Pub. Co., 1898, Chicago

THE PASSENGER PIGEON

IF the reader is interested in numbers, he will appreciate the statement written about 1808 by Wilson, who estimated that a flock of Wild Pigeons observed by him near Frankfort, Kentucky, contained at least 2,230,272,000 individuals. If he is also interested in the aspect presented by these birds in flight, cloud-like in form and apparently boundless in extent, he will read the full and graphic descriptions given by Audubon. In 1863, when the writer was a boy, he remembers seeing the birds brought to town in barrels and sold at a price which did not justify transportation to market. What appeared to be a cloud, dark and lowering, was not infrequently seen approaching, soon to shut out the light of the sun, until the birds which composed it, on the way to or from their feeding or roosting places, had passed on. Now hear what Major Bendire, as late as 1892, says: “It looks now as if their total extermination might be accomplished within the present century. The only thing which retards their complete extinction is that it no longer pays to net these birds, they being too scarce for this now, at least in the more settled portions of the country, and also, perhaps, that from constant and unremitting persecution on their breeding grounds, they have changed their habits somewhat, the majority no longer breeding in colonies, but scattering over the country and breeding in isolated pairs.”

The natural home of the Wild Pigeon is within the wooded lands, and they are seldom met with upon the broad prairies. Audubon observed that it was almost entirely influenced in its migrations by the abundance of its food, that temperature had little to do with it, as they not infrequently moved northward in large columns as early as the 7th of March, with a temperature twenty degrees below the freezing point.

“The Wild Pigeons are capable of propelling themselves in long continued flights and are known to move with an almost incredible rapidity, passing over a great extent of country in a very short time.” Pigeons have been captured in the state of New York with their crops still filled with the undigested grains of rice that must have been taken in the distant fields of Georgia or South Carolina, apparently proving that they must have passed over the intervening space within a very few hours. Audubon estimated the rapidity of their flight as at least a mile a minute.

The Wild Pigeon is remarkable for its ease and grace, whether on the ground or the limbs of trees. Though living, moving, and feeding together in large companies, they mate in pairs. Several broods are reared in a season, nesting beginning very early in the spring. The nests are placed on trees, being a slight platform structure of twigs, without any material for lining whatever. Two white eggs are laid.

Mr. Goss says (1891) that the Passenger Pigeon is still to be found in numbers within the Indian Territory and portions of the southern states, and in Kansas a few breed occasionally in the Neosho Valley.

-Nature Study Pub. Co., 1898, Chicago.

BOB WHITE

BOB WHITE is a plump, fine-looking fellow, known in the New England and Middle States as the Quail and in the Southern States as the Partridge. It is said, however, that these names belong to other and quite different birds, and at the suggestion of Prof. Baird, Bob White, which is its call note, has become its accepted and present name. In the language of Mr. N. S. Goss these birds appear to thrive best in the presence of man, and were they protected during our cold winters, would soon become quite tame. They often nest near our dwellings. “In the spring of 1867,” says Mr. Goss, “I was shown on Owl Creek, Woodson County, Kansas, a nest containing nineteen eggs. It was placed in the dooryard, and not over twenty-five yards from the house; several dogs were running about the yard, and the house cat was purring near the doorway. Fearing the eggs would be destroyed, I suggested the building of a high, tight fence round the nest. ‘Oh,’ said the farmer, ‘that is not necessary; our cats and dogs will not harm them, for they know them well, as they have for a long time run about with the chickens, and feed with them from food thrown from the doorstep.’ I am confident that if man were as friendly to the birds as they are to man, they would soon become thoroughly domesticated. Trapped and hunted as they are with dog and gun it is not strange that as a whole they remain timid and mistrustful, and were they not naturally birds of civilization would rapidly disappear with the settlement of the country. As it is, they seem to realize that man is only at times their enemy, and that his cultivated fields afford them a safe refuge from many other enemies, and insure a more certain and bountiful supply of food than found elsewhere.”

Quails destroy injurious insects and seeds of weeds, upon which they largely feed. When startled they rise with a loud whirring sound, their flight being very swift, low, and direct, a rather laborious effort. They move about in small coveys or family groups, pairing during the nesting season, and share alike in the duties of protecting and rearing the young.

The nest is placed on the ground, in a depression, usually in the grass upon the prairies, sometimes in a thicket, under a low bush. It is usually arched over with grass, with entrance on the side.

From fifteen to twenty pure white eggs are usually laid.

S. P. Cheney pleasantly says: “Familiar as I have been with almost all parts of Vermont for more than thirty years, I have seen only one Quail in the state, and he was evidently a ‘tramp.’ I heard him just at night, the first day of July, 1884. Did not get sight of him till the next morning, when he came out into the sun, stood on the top rail of a fence, warmed himself, and whistled his spirited, forceful tune, his solid little body swelling and throbbing at every note, especially when he rose to the tonic. I was prepared for him, and made an exact copy of what he gave: Bob, Bob, White! Bob White! Bob, Bob, White! After the performance he stood, evidently listening for a reply; none came, and without another note he disappeared, to be seen no more.”

-Nature Study Pub. Co., 1898, Chicago

THE FOX-COLORED SPARROW

IN “Wood Notes Wild,” S. P. Cheney says this song-loving Sparrow has a sweet voice and a pleasing song, which he has set to music. No Sparrow, he says, sings with a better quality of tone. A distinguished musician himself, no one was better qualified to give a final opinion upon the subject. Others have spoken in praise of it, Burroughs characterizing it as “a strong, richly modulated whistle, the finest Sparrow note I have ever heard.” Baird says, “in the spring the male becomes quite musical, and is one of our sweetest and most remarkable singers. His voice is loud, clear, and melodious; his notes full, rich, and varied; and his song is unequalled by any of this family that I have ever heard.” Mr. Torrey finds a “Thrush-like” quality in the song of the Fox Sparrow. In his “Birds in the Bush” Mr. Torrey describes an interesting contest as follows:

“One afternoon I stood still while a Fox Sparrow and a Song Sparrow sang alternately on either side of me, both exceptionally good vocalists, and each doing his best. The songs were of about equal length, and as far as theme was concerned were not a little alike; but the Fox Sparrow’s tone was both louder and more mellow than the others, while his notes were longer,—more sustained,—and his voice was ‘carried’ from one pitch to another. On the whole, I had no hesitation about giving him the palm; but I am bound to say that his rival was a worthy competitor.”

The Fox-colored Sparrow is also one of the largest and finest of his tribe, breeding from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Labrador north into Alaska; in winter it is met with south over the whole of the eastern United States to the Gulf coast. Audubon found it nesting in Labrador from the middle of June to the 5th of July. Its nest has been found in trees and on the ground in the Arctic regions, on the Yukon river in July. According to many observers, the nests are, for the most part, placed on the ground, usually concealed by the drooping branches of evergreens. They are made of grass and moss, lined with fine grass and feathers. Some nests are three or four inches in depth, strong, compact, and handsome. The eggs are three or five, oval in form, of a clayey greenish ground color, dotted with dull reddish brown and chocolate. They vary in coloration.

In the early spring the Fox Sparrow is often seen associated with small parties of Juncos, in damp thickets and roadside shrubbery; later, according to Mr. Bicknell, it takes more to woodsides, foraging on leaf-strewn slopes where there is little or no undergrowth. In the autumn it is found in hedgerows, thickets and weedy grainfields, rarely however, straying far from some thickety cover. It is a great scratcher among dead leaves, and “can make the wood rubbish fly in a way which, in proportion to its size, a barn-yard fowl could scarcely excel.”

The Sparrows are worthy of close study, many of them possessing habits of great beauty and interest.

-Nature Study Pub. Co., 1898, Chicago.

THE RED EYED VIREO

RED-EYED VIREO, Red-eyed Greenlet, and Red-eyed Fly-catcher are the names variously applied to this pretty representative of his family, of which there are about fifty species. The Red-eye is an inhabitant of Central America and Mexico, its northern limit being the lower Rio Grande valley in Texas.

The exquisite little creature is tinted even more delicately than the Wax-wing, but with much the same glossy look and elegant air. The ruby-tinted eye, and the conspicuous white line above it, with its border, are good characteristics by which to distinguish it from its relatives.

The Red-eyed Vireo is found alike in the shade trees of lawns, in orchards or woodlands, and is especially fond of sycamore groves along streams. The male is a tireless songster, and even at noon-tide of a sultry summer-day, when all other warblers are silent, his monotonous song will be heard.He-ha-wha, or he, ha, whip, in rising inflection, and he, ha, whee, in falling cadence. He has also achip, a chatter like a miniature of the Oriole’s scold, heard only in the season of courtship, and a peculiarly characteristic querulous note which, like others, can not be described with accuracy.

“The Preacher,” a name which Wilson Flagg has given this Vireo, exactly reflects the character of the bird and its song. “His style of preaching is not declamation,” says the writer. “Though constantly talking, he takes the part of a deliberate orator who explains his subject in a few words and then makes a pause for his hearers to reflect upon it. We might suppose him to be repeating moderately, with a pause between each sentence, ‘You see it—You know it—Do you hear me?—Do you believe it?’ All these strains are delivered with a rising inflection at the close, and with a pause, as if waiting for an answer.”

From morning till night this cheery bird sings as he works, from May to September. “His tender and pathetic utterances,” says Brewer, “are in striking contrast to the apparent indifference or unconsciousness of the little vocalist who, while thus delighting the ear of the listener, seems to be all the while bent on procuring its daily food, which it pursues with unabated ardor.”

As noxious and destructive insects constitute the Vireo’s chief food he may properly be classed among the beneficent birds. Seeking for these is his constant occupation, as he hops along a branch, now peering into some crevice of the bark or nook among the foliage, ever uttering his pretty song during the interval between swallowing the last worm and finding the next.

The nest of the Red-eye is built in a horizontal branch of a tree, usually in a small sapling that responds to all the caprices of the wind, thus acting as a cradle for the little ones within. The nest is cup-like in shape, and always dependent from small twigs, around which its upper edges are firmly bound, with a canopy of leaves overhead. It is woven of a variety of materials, fine strips of bark, fibres of vegetables, and webs of spiders and caterpillars. It is said that two nests of the same species are rarely found alike. Some are built of paper fibres, and bits of hornets’ nests, and another may be a perfect collection of scraps of all sorts.

The eggs are three or four, white with a few black or umber specks about the larger end.

It was in the nest of the Red-eyed Vireo that Hamilton Gibson found twisted a bit of newspaper, whose single legible sentence read: “* * * have in view the will of God.”*

-Nature Study Pub. Co., 1898, Chicago.

THE CROWNED PIGEON

WE regret that a full monograph of this remarkable bird cannot be given in this number. It is the giant among Pigeons and has some characteristics, on account of its great size, not common to the family. Very little has been written about it, and it would be a real service to ornithology if some one familiar with the subject would communicate his knowledge to the public. These birds pair for life, and the loss or death of a mate is in many cases mourned and grieved over, the survivor frequently refusing to be consoled.

The Pigeon family is an exceedingly interesting one, of great variety of form and color, undergoing constant change by inter-breeding. There are about three hundred known species of Pigeons and Doves, about one third of which number are found in the New World. In North America but twelve species occur, a family small enough to find room in Birds to sit for their pictures. Some of these birds, says Chapman, are arboreal, others are strictly terrestrial. Some seek the forests and others prefer the fields and clearings. Some nest in colonies, others in isolated pairs, but most species are found in flocks of greater or less size after the nesting season. When drinking, they do not raise the head as others do to swallow, but keep the bill immersed until the draught is finished. The young are born naked and are fed by regurgitation.

Living specimens of this the largest species of Pigeons may some day be brought to the United States and made to increase as the Ring-necked English Pheasant has already been domesticated in their own country. It has been suggested that their introduction among us would be a comparatively easy matter.

-Nature Study Publishing Co. chicago.