T Bird By-Ways in July. BY EDWARD B. CLARK. HE man who would know the birds at their best must rise when the flicker is sounding his reveille on the hollow tree trunk drum just as the first flush comes into the East. The birds will refuse to tell their secrets to the laggard who lies abed and waits until the sun has dried the dew before starting afield to scrape acquaintance with his "little brothers of the air." The birds at matins have a full voiced choir, while the vesper service is one of a few solos. The ornithologists have put it down in the books that May and June are the months of bird song. This is not strictly true, as the bird lover will find whose paths lie in field and forest during the first half of hot July. The time of the singing of birds begins early but it lingers well into midsummer. The wood thrush rings his tinkling twilight bell until August first. The song sparrow, the little soloist who comes on to the scene in plain homespun, will sing to us every month in the year. The robin is telling everybody within hearing distance to "Cheer up" until long after the purple grapes are ripe in autumn. The red-eyed vireo's note is at its best in August, and the bluebird's mellow utterance has lost none of its soft significance until after the last brood of the summer is on the wing. on the family council is armed with an opera glass instead of a shot gun they lose their fear, give over their scoldings and accept the hulking bit of humanity who is staring at them as nothing more nor less than a landmark which, for some reason or other, they had overlooked before, but which they now regard much in the same light that they do the big stump yonder, in which the bluebird has builded him a home. The charm of July for him who would learn of the birds their ways lies in the fact that it is then the songsters' family life which he may have for his study in the schoolroom of field, orchard and forest. In the human household how the interest centers about the children! It is the same in the bird family. When the nestlings are in the homes under the shelter of the grass tufts or on the spreading limb of the oak, the father and mother birds dare everything in what they suppose to be the necessary defense of their young. They may be studied then almost within arm's length and when once they learn that the stumbler Let us take a walk this July morning. The sun has hardly yet bade the night retreat. We pass down the little lane to the orchard. There are few spots so beloved of the birds as an old time orchard whose trees have plenty of cavities for the "hole builders" and whose broad limbs and thick foliage offer strong foundations and close coverts for robin, kingbird, the cuckoos and the rest. The first song of the morning floats to us across from the field at the orchard's edge. It is the note of the song sparrow. The whip-poor-will has no sooner ceased calling than this little fellow takes his cue from the night bird's last note and tries to wake the sun. The song sparrow is a'favorite with every friend of the feathered folk. He is a plain little fellow in gray and brown and he wears a large shirt button of subdued color in the very center of his breast. His mate builds her nest generally on the ground, but occasionally in a low bush. While she is sitting on the spotted eggs her husband sits on a fence post or a low limb at a little distance and sings and sings and sings. When many of the other birds go into thicket retreats and into the dense shadows of the forest to change their summer clothing for the fall garb, the song sparrow stays in the open and still chants to the human wayfarer. We enter the orchard by the old gate that bars the lane's end. Here is a merry note that greets our ear. It has in it the very essence of jollity. There is something suggestive of sadness in a song sparrow's note, of a tree and challenges our approach. It is the kingbird, always alert when danger of any kind threatens. His scientific name is Tyrannus tyrannus, and if it should happen that a crow, a hawk or an owl appear while we are in the vicinity of the kingbird's home, we shall know how he won the name. If one of the hated birds appear-hated from the kingbird's point of view-Tyrannus will forget the human interlopers and start in hot pursuit after the feathered foe. The kingbird will literally ride on the back of a bird of prey and peck it about the head and neck until he has been carried as he thinks far enough from but here there is nothing of the kind. The bird that is singing we feel must have a bubbling joy in his heart that is finding a way through his throat. It is light enough. now to see. A pert little creature in brown, with a tail pointing almost at the zenith, is perched by a hole in a tree. It is the house wren. We know in an instant that his nest is inside the trunk of the tree of which he has made a perch, for he begins to chatter at us, and then to scold as only a wren can scold. Now if we will but stay a little while until this fidgety creature, who has much more fuss than feathers about him, has become accustomed to our presence, he will let us, perhaps unrebuked, take a look into the doorway of his apple-tree home. It is a little dark within, but when the eye becomes accustomed to the lack of light it can make out that the interior of the hollow trunk contains about half a peck of nesting material. The wren isn't much bigger than a man's thumb and a small man's thumb at that, but he wants nesting material enough to do service for an eagle. There will be from five to ten eggs within the ample bed of down and twigs. Father and Mother Wren believe in large families. If we watch his wrenship for thirty minutes we may see him indulge in one of his peculiar characteristics that the scientists have tried to explain for nearly a century and are now just as near giving a satisfactory explanation as they were when they started. The bird darts down to the ground, picks up a straw and flies with it to a hole in another tree. He is making believe house building. He may carry a dozen straws and twigs to this second hole, which he has no thought of occupying, before he gives over the amusement if such he consider it. While Mother Wren is sitting on her eggs Father Wren will often start the erection of a dozen different edifices within the immediate vicinity of the only home of which he had any intention at all of using as a dwelling. The marsh build several houses, completing each one before they decide upon which of the structures is best suited for housekeeping purposes. The house wren has something of this trait of his cousin, though developed in a much less degree. wrens We leave the wren reluctantly, for he is an interesting little chap, and pass on our way through the still wet grass. A bird with a gray-white breast and dark upper parts launches into the air from the top YELLOW WARBLER AND NEST. his home, and then he will leave the enemy, and with a sharp triumphant cry will hurry back to his wife, who is on her nest of hay and twigs at the very top of the apple tree. There is another bird friend of whom we must catch a glimpse and whose pretty little house we must visit before we leave the orchard. It is the yellow warbler, or as some people know him, the summer yellow bird. This little warbler is yellow, save for a tinge of olive and some light streaks on his breast, so light at times as to be almost imperceptible. It is doubtful if there YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO AND NEST. (Copyright by A. W. Mumford & Co., Chicago.) is a cheerier bird in existence than this little fellow whose feathers look as though they were made of buttercup petals or dandelion tops. You may hear his song almost incessantly through the day in the summer season in all the northern land. It is to be heard not only in the orchard, in the grove and along the hedgerows of the country, but from the tree tops that line the residence thoroughfares of the great cities. The little fellow is a common summer resident of Chicago, and he seems as much at home when he has placed his little down. cup of a nest in a tree overhanging a street where the electric cars clang by as he does when the homestead overhangs a country lane where the only sound is a bird song or the plashing of the brook's water. indication of looking for a luncheon where the same course is to be served. Now it is a well-known thing that the English cuckoo never builds a nest of its own, but deposits its eggs in the homes of smaller birds. The English cuckoo goes through the trees in the same stealthy manner as does his American cousin. The British bird is skulking and looking for the nest of some hedge sparrow. The American bird has the same manner and some scientists believe that not many centuries ago it had the habits of the English bird in not making a nest of its own. This theory is borne out to some extent by the fact that our cuckoo is a remarkably poor architect. Its nest is a ramshackle affair and so lightly built that at times the eggs can be seen through the structure's bottom. The American cuckoos are long, slender, fawn-colored birds, with white bars on the under side of the tail. The most noticeable difference between the two speciesthe English and the American-is that designated by their names, black-billed and yellow-billed. The Some of the other of the orchard's feathered guests during its season as a summer resort are more than likely to be the flicker which is a woodpecker of handsome garb and correct habits, the robin, too well known to need description, the cedar bird and both species of our American cuckoos, the blackbilled and the yellow-billed. The cuckoos are in their actions rather uncanny. They go through the trees like wraiths. first impression that one gets of the cuckoo when he is seen making his stealthy way through the trees is that the bird is on mischief bent. It is a hard thing to say, but the cuckoo when he is traveling abroad looks like a thief. He isn't a thief by a long way. His whole life is devoted to the service of the agriculturalist. He loves caterpillars, particularly of the "tent" kind. One cuckoo will think nothing of making a breakfast of two dozen of caterpillars and within half an hour thereafter show every The cedar bird is almost as silent as the sphynx. It occasionally utters a few sounds, but they are colorless and meaningless. If their expression can be put down as denoting anything it is merely that of a certain vacuity of mind. The cedar bird, however, makes up in plumage what he lacks in voice. He has a topknot and a beautiful soft fawnlike coat of feathers. On either wing is a red spot. This spot has nothing of the feather about it. It is a little hard substance, in appearance exactly like red sealing wax. The cedar birds like orchards for nesting places. With the single exception of the goldfinches, these birds start home-building later in the season than do any other of "the fowls of the air." Near the orchard's edge several of the trees planted in the long ago grow close together. Their branches are interlocked. The shade is dense enough for a section of wild woodland. We hear a dreary little note from a dead branch that extends above the dense foliage. Perhaps it were better to say plaintive rather than dreary when speaking of the note of the little somber feathered creature who repeats what he thinks is a song, so incessantly. The bird is the wood pewee who has been attracted to this spot in the orchard because the shade and the interlacing branches remind him of the wildwood's edge where he loves to pitch his tent. "Pe-wee, pe-wee, pe-wee," he says dolefully. He is happy though, for saddled on a great horizontal limb of one of the trees is his summer home and in it are his nestlings three. The wood pewee is a plain bird in voice and dress but he is an architect of architects. His house is a lichen cup as dainty as the home of any fairy. Not even the nest of the humming bird can surpass in beauty that of this sad voiced bird of the woodland. the shade was shining fellow he is in his gold and black livery! His wife is much more plainly clad, for if she wore the fire-like raiment of her husband she would attract predatory man and bird to her home, swinging at the elm's tips. Not far beyond the oriole's home we flush from the ground at our very feet a bird that goes fluttering away pretending to be disabled in order to lure us from the locality of her nest. We have seen the meadowlark's trick before, however, and we pay no attention to the mother bird, but search carefully the clump of grasses at our feet. There we find the nest carefully concealed Reluctantly, perhaps, the orchard is left behind. It is a rare place for the birds and congenial, for now the rays of the rapidly mounting sun have in them something more than a modicum of heat. Here is a far-stretching meadow. A sweet note comes from the top of an elm whose branches overhang the meadow's edge. It is the whistle of the flaming oriole, the bird of Lord Baltimore. The Baltimore oriole prefers to build its nest near the habitation of man, but where an elm tree offers its drooping branches as a safe lodgment for the swinging cradle of his little ones, the oriole will often take to the fields and shake civilization from his wings. What a WOOD PEWEE AND NEST. with an entrance and a runway opening at one side. Curiously enough the meadowlark is not a lark at all. He is a cousin of the oriole, whose whistle answers his from elm to meadow. Europeans first coming to this country named the birds that they found here from fancied resemblances to the songsters of the mother country. For this reason our robin became a robin, although in reality he is a thrush, and the meadowlark became a lark although he has few of the lark characteristics and is closely related to the orioles, the blackbirds and the bobolink. It is hard to mistake the ot far from the meadowlark's retreat seva te biri with a yellow shirt front and a black vollar button. He is on a mul are From the top of a stump in this field, where once grew a forest, we come across two nesting birds crouching side by side in their apology for a nest, and paying no heel to the passers. They are mourning dives, and instinct has taught them to remain thus motionless in the nest and to trust to their protective coloring to escape bservation. The muring dove, emblematic of peace as are all dives, has been taken recently from the list of birds protected by ten stalk and is insistently pr claiming law in the State of Incis and has been allel to the birds that it is legal to kill at certain seasons. We Christians should go to the Turk to learn our lesson in humanity. The Turk who would kill a dove would be an outcast from his friends forever. The Russians feel the same way, for they consi ler that in some one dove abides the Holy Spirit, and they fear that in killing the gentle creatures they might kill the one in whom the Spirit lives. It is perhaps not likely that on this July trip afield we shall find any members of the gull family. If our waik, however, be in the northern country in the latitude of Lake Superior we shall find near the water the herring gulls, the ring billed gulls, the Bonaparte gulls and the terns. One cannot willingly close an article on birds without saying a word for the protection of these "soft-breasted birds of the sea." All through the winter two of these species |