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IN THE ESTERO MIDSUMMER is out of
comparison the dullest part of the year with a Santa Barbara bird-lover. Even
the linnets and the meadowlarks have fallen silent after nine or ten months of
music. But the story of a morning in early August will show how agreeable an
hour one may now and then spend about a tract of city-bounded mud-flats and
tide-pools even in a time of relative dearth, a time between times, as we may
call it. For an outdoor man who will take what he can get, there is always
something provided. As I left the beach
and descended the low railway embankment to the Estero, some large wading-bird
(for a wading-bird is recognizable as such by the cut of its jib almost as
readily when flying as when on its feet) was approaching at a good height from
the opposite direction. It described a circle or two, reconnoitring, and then
dropped into the middle of a large open pool so shallow that the black water
barely covered its toes. Once on its legs it
straightened itself up, following the general habit of birds in such a case,
and again looked about. “Is everything safe here? No enemy in sight?” it might
have been asking. Assured upon that point, it began dressing its feathers after
its flight, which not unlikely had been a long one, while I, glass in hand, was
cautiously drawing near enough to name it; the caution consisting solely of
extreme slowness, motion as near to no motion as my native human awkwardness
could make it, since the space between us was as level as a billiard-table, and
offered not so much as a blade of grass as a means of cover. To my relief the
bird gave no sign of resenting my advances; and a step or two at a time,
shuffling along with no unnecessary lifting of the feet, I presently came close
enough for my twelve-power glass to make out its points with all needful
distinctness. A marbled godwit it proved to be, a migrant that shows itself
none too often here, though at San Diego, on the bay shore in winter, I have
seen godwits and willets together lining the grassy edge of the flats for a
long distance, and so densely massed that I mistook them at first for a border
of some kind of herbage. Thousands there must have been; and when they rose at
my approach, they made something like a cloud; gray birds and brown birds so
contrasted in color as to be discriminated beyond risk of error, even when too
far away for the staring white wing-patches of the willets to be longer
discernible. As a flock there
was no getting near them; I proved the fact to my dissatisfaction more than
once; but sitting quietly on the same bay shore I have repeatedly known a
single godwit or willet to feed carelessly past me within the distance of a rod
or two. So much easier is
it to come to close quarters with a solitary bird than with a numerous body.
Some member of any sizable flock is sure to be of a timid, panic-stricken turn
of mind (like the fool who is always ready to cry “Fire!” in a crowded
theatre), and, taking alarm, is prompt to communicate the same to its fellows.
A distinguished ornithologist (Mr. John H. Bowles) has told me, for example, of
knocking over a solitary goose with a stone, though in all probability he could
not have stolen within gunshot of a flock of birds of the same kind. It is the habit of geese, he assures me, when
happened upon singly, to act in this idiotic, incomprehensible manner, as if
their intelligence, and even their inherited common sense, sometimes called
instinct, were purely a collective affair. I myself, on the
Santa Barbara beach, have more than once found a single goose not quite so much of a goose, perhaps, as Mr. Bowles’s
description would indicate, but readily approachable on the bare sand within a
very few rods. One of our baseball pitchers, I am sure, would have bowled him
over in a twinkling, and made nothing of it. He was so stupidly tame, indeed,
that I considered the possibility of his being a domesticated fowl run loose, a
possibility by no means to be ignored in cases of this kind. I once saw, though
I could hardly believe my eyes, a black swan swimming at his ease, perfectly at
home, as it seemed, well in the Santa Barbara Channel! He was a runaway past question, since
there is no wild swan of his color anywhere in North America. Noble birds the
godwits are, nearly the largest of our shore-birds, with beautifully marbled
upper parts, and prodigiously long particolored bills slightly uptilted at the
tip, perfect tools, no doubt, for the carrying on of their particular line of
industry. If, as we are told, a man who is to sup with the devil needs a long
spoon (though in such disagreeable company I cannot conceive that the shape or
dimensions of one’s table utensils would be of much account), a bird which gets
its living out of the depths of mud must needs have a long bill. Whether the two
colors of the bill — flesh‑color at the base and dusky toward the end — are
designed for utility or ornament (or for neither) I hazard no guess. And I may
say the same regarding its slight upward inclination, which gives its owner a
pleasingly rakish air, especially in certain of its attitudes; when, for
instance, it poses on one of its long legs with its neck drawn in and its bill
held halfway level, exactly as Audubon pictured it. I once saw one on our beach
who looked for all the world as if he had stepped out of the book. “Yes, sir,”
he might have said, “I am Audubon’s bird.” And nobody could have denied it. My bird of
yesterday was an exceptionally handsome specimen, or so I thought; decidedly
handsome at all events, whether or not he had any actual preëminence in that
respect. It was one of those cases, perhaps, where something must be allowed
for the play of an excited imagination. For some minutes he
fed quietly; at least, he went through all the appropriate motions, thrusting
his bill into the mud again and again. But as an angler may cast by the hour
and catch nothing, so we may presume it will sometimes fare with a godwit — if
he is equally patient, or equally simple. For some reason, at any rate, this
fellow soon took wing again with a succession of raucous cries, and made off
beyond the railway seaward, where he speedily became a speck, and then vanished
altogether. “Good-bye, and
thank you for small favors,” I called after him. There was no one by to smile
at my enthusiasm. And even if there had been, why not thank a bird as well as a
man or a dog? His departure,
regrettable as it was, did not leave me without plenty of congenial society.
The place was alive with smaller birds — Western sandpipers, least sandpipers,
snowy plovers (fifty or more), killdeers, and, much the most interesting of
all, the others being matters of every day, two kind of phalaropes, one red
phalarope — or so I called it, with something short of certainty at the time,
and more still in the retrospect — and three of the kind known as Wilson’s or
the American. The red one — in
autumnal dress, sporting not so much as a single red feather, and suspiciously
ahead of its schedule — kept strictly by itself off in one corner, while the
three Wilson’s flocked together in the midst of the sandpipers. One of them was
in gray, as to the upper parts, I mean, the other two in motley, much like the
sandpipers, to my ignorant surprise. All had rather
bright yellow legs, a mark of youth, like the mottled wings, and a novel
feature to my eye, as I had met with the species hitherto only in spring, when
it not only wears a different coat, but has black legs. To dress according to
age and season is as much a rule with many birds, especially water-birds, as it
is with human kind. If the custom has no other advantage, it at least renders
field ornithology a far more intricate and therefore a more interesting study. In spring, too,
there is a more pronounced difference between the sexes, the female phalarope,
which is a full size larger than the male, being also, as with human beings,
much the more showily attired. It is reported, likewise (at which point,
needless to say, the human comparison fails), that she lords it effectually
over her mate, throwing upon his shoulders all the burden — no light one — of
the household drudgery. “You are more
protectively colored,” she is supposed to say to him, “and therefore the eggs
and the darling little ones will be safer if you attend to the brooding.” A wise bird, you
perceive, is the female phalarope, a very thoughtful and affectionate mother.
And the male, by all accounts, is so impressed by her reasoning, or so deeply
in love, or otherwise of so amiable a temper, that he raises not the least
objection. “Quite right, my
dear, quite right, as you always are.” And down he drops
upon the eggs, while she gads about — to the Browning Club or where not — at
her own good pleasure. A pattern of a spouse, a model ménage, and conjugal felicity without a
jar! For anything I can see, birds are about as well off as their superiors in
matters of this delicate and more or less uncertain nature. I confess,
notwithstanding, that the case of the phalaropes is so extremely exceptional
(among birds), that, whenever I have been watching a pair side by side in
springtime, I have found myself continually saying “he” of the bigger and
brighter one, — an ungallant lapse for which, if I knew how to do it, I would
tender her my best apologies. It has been no
slight gratification to find all three species — the entire family, in short,
for there is no fourth one the world over — present twice a year on my Santa
Barbara stamping-grounds. Wilson’s is the
largest and to my taste the most attractive of the three, although, where all
are so lovely, the very perfection of daintiness and grace, it is perhaps
presumptuous to affect a choice. It is strictly an American bird also (which
its patriotic fellow countrymen may take as another consideration in its favor),
breeding mostly inland, and comparatively rare on both coasts even in its
migrations, which, like others of our North American water-birds, it extends
for some, to me unimaginable, reason as far south as Patagonia. The two other
species are summer residents of the arctic and sub-arctic portions of the
northern hemisphere in general, eastern and western, and winter nobody knows
where, supposedly on the southern oceans. The commonest one
hereabout is the Northern, as it is also the smallest. It is to be hoped that
they will be as numerous this season as they were a year ago, and stay with us
as long. Then they remained for many weeks, or were many weeks in passing (from
August 16 to October 21 by my records), and could be seen almost any day, a dozen
or more at once, swimming in small pools close beside the boulevard, where, as
they well deserved, they attracted much attention even from the occupants of
carriages and automobiles, which went rattling and booming past almost
continuously. At that season, in
undress uniform, they are best distinguished from the red phalarope (called
also, from its winter dress, the gray phalarope) by their smaller heads and
their peculiarly slim necks, which they habitually carry upright at full
length, so that, as I have heard more than one person remark, they have much
the appearance of miniature swans. The red phalarope,
on the other hand, as I have seen it, is a stouter, bigger-headed, “chunkier”
looking bird, though this last is a point of difference which I was compelled
to find out for myself; and, having done so, as I believed, in autumn, I was
compelled to wait for its verification till the following spring, when I had
unquestioned examples of both species before me in complete nuptial plumage. Any phalarope, however
dressed, may be identified at once by the bill and feet, provided you have the
bird in hand; but this, of course, to a consistent “field-glass man” seldom or
never happens. And, moreover, what he desires, and what he cannot be satisfied
without, is to know his bird whenever he sees it, alive and out of doors. To
accomplish this he must exercise all patience and have recourse to all possible
expedients; and even then, in the case of species so confusingly alike as these
two autumnal phalaropes, he must be contented, for a long time at least, till
belief little by little settles into certainty, as luckily it has a way of
doing, to list his migrants with an unpleasant degree of questioning. It is not the worst
thing in the world for a man to have a reasonable, or even a slightly
unreasonable, measure of confidence in himself; it contributes to the joy of
living; but it is a bad sign when he begins to suspect himself of
infallibility. Sooner or later he will probably find himself out, or, if he
doesn’t, so much the worst for him. All phalaropes are
remarkably unsuspicious so far as human beings are concerned, as if they had
never had occasion to look upon men as more dangerous than so many wolves or
oxen. My first acquaintance with the family was with a solitary Wilson’s many
years ago in the mountains of North Carolina, and I have narrated elsewhere my
repeated and all but successful attempts to take it out of the water in my
hand. The first couple of
the same species that I saw in Santa Barbara (a lovely pair they were, in their
prettiest honeymoon dress) were not quite so tame as that, but charmingly
trustful. And my first undoubted Santa Barbara red one allowed me to move so
closely about him on the bare sand that finally I could no longer focus my glass
upon him, and was compelled to withdraw a few yards for a nicer examination, —
to get farther away, that is, in order to get a nearer view, which is what we
may call the field-glass paradox. Indeed, I thought the creature must surely be
crippled, and was pitying him accordingly, when a dog suddenly ran near, and
whiff! away went the bird as lively as a cricket. The next morning, to my
intense delight, both he and his splendid high-colored mate were in the same
spot, the only pair of the kind
that I have ever seen together. They flew away together, and let us hope are
together still. Northern phalaropes
have resort to a remarkably taking and ingenious device when feeding in shallow
water. Seated on the surface, they whirl rapidly round and round like a top or
a dancing dervish. I have seen numbers of them thus curiously engaged in a
small pool. Two that I noticed a few days ago within a yard of each other were
revolving in opposite directions, one from right to left, the other from left
to right. It was almost dizzying to look at them. In fact, a fellow observer,
by no means a weakling, has assured me that on one occasion the sight actually
affected him with nausea, so that he was obliged to turn away his head to
recover himself. Northern phalaropes
have this habit, I say. I happen never to have seen either of the two other
species indulging in it. But not for a moment will I think of asserting that
they never do, lest to-morrow or the day after, to my chagrin, I go out and
find them hard at it. I have had mortifying experiences in this line, and hope
I have learned wisdom. Sometimes I have
been tempted to imagine that wild creatures amuse themselves by laying up
little surprises of one sort and another for our humiliation, so often do we
find them doing something wholly unexpected — building a nest in some
preposterous situation, breaking out with some absolutely uncharacteristic
song, or otherwise conducting themselves in a manner which after years of
intimate acquaintance we should have pronounced impossible. Tell what you have
seen, say I; but if you value your self-respect as what is called an observer
(a word I have wearied of), beware of negative assertions. Better know less and
be sure of it. As for this clever
rotatory method of stirring up the bottom of shallow pools, it is most likely
common to phalaropes in general, like the preeminence by them so gallantly
accorded to the feminine sex. If this should turn out to be true, I should be
in favor of naming them the whirligig family, according to the good old
aboriginal custom of descriptive cognomens. “Whirligig birds”; yes, I think
that would be excellent — rememberable and expressive. So far I wrote in
the summer of 1911, telling what I had seen; but with the autumn came increase
of knowledge. September and October brought thousands of Northern phalaropes,
and in November, ten days after the last of these had taken their departure,
came a flock of two hundred, more or less, of the so-called red species, — as
much to our surprise as to our pleasure, since nothing of the kind had been
witnessed during the three previous seasons. Day by day their numbers were
augmented till the whole Estero, on both sides of the railroad, was thick with
them. Every pool had its quota. And in the matter of whirling they proved to be
not a whit behind their Northern relatives. Scores of them could be seen
practising the vertiginous game at once. In more senses than one it was a
stirring spectacle; and “whirligig birds” seemed more than ever appropriate as
a family cognomen. |
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