Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus) by Lee at Circle B
Mnemonics – What is That?
Tag Archives: Kids
How The Little Redbird Became Red
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) – ©WikiC
HOW THE LITTLE REDBIRD BECAME RED (Relocated)
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Riddlers – The Woodpeckers
The Woodpeckers, by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm
A Project Gutenberg EBook
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THE WOODPECKERS
BY
FANNIE HARDY ECKSTORM
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1901
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1901
Title: The Woodpeckers
Author: Fannie Hardy Eckstorm
Release Date: January 25, 2011 [EBook #35062]
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODPECKERS ***
(This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org)
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY FANNIE HARDY ECKSTORM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
To
MY FATHER
MR. MANLY HARDY
A Lifelong Naturalist
THE WOODPECKERS
FOREWORD: THE RIDDLERS
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Long ago in Greece, the legend runs, a terrible monster called the Sphinx used to waylay travelers to ask them riddles: whoever could not answer these she killed, but the man who did answer them killed her and made an end of her riddling.
To-day there is no Sphinx to fear, yet the world is full of unguessed riddles. No thoughtful man can go far afield but some bird or flower or stone bars his way with a question demanding an answer; and though many men have been diligently spelling out the answers for many years, and we for the most part must study the answers they have proved, and must reply in their words, yet those shrewd old riddlers, the birds and flowers and bees, are always ready for a new victim, putting their heads together over some new enigma (mystery) to bar the road to knowledge till that, too, shall be answered; so that other men’s learning does not always suffice. So much of a man’s pleasure in life, so much of his power, depends on his ability to silence these persistent questioners, that this little book was written with the hope of making clearer the kind of questions Nature asks, and the way to get correct answers.
This is purposely a little book, dealing only with a single group of birds, treating particularly only some of the commoner species of that group, taking up only a few of the problems that present themselves to the naturalist for solution, and aiming rather to make the reader acquainted with the birds than learned about them.
The woodpeckers were selected in preference to any other family because they are patient under observation, easily identified, resident in all parts of the country both in summer and in winter, and because more than any other birds they leave behind them records of their work which may be studied after the birds have flown.
The book provides ample means for identifying every species and subspecies of woodpecker known in North America, though only five of the commonest and most interesting species have been selected for special study. At least three of these five should be found in almost every part of the country. The Californian woodpecker is never seen in the East, nor the red-headed in the far West, but the downy and the hairy are resident nearly everywhere, and some species of the flickers and sapsuckers, if not always the ones chosen for special notice, are visitors in most localities.
Look for the woodpeckers in orchards and along the edges of thickets, among tangles of wild grapes and in patches of low, wild berries, upon which they often feed, among dead trees and in the track of forest fires. Wherever there are boring larvæ, beetles, ants, grasshoppers, the fruit of poison-ivy, dogwood, june-berry, wild cherry or wild grapes, woodpeckers may be confidently looked for if there are any in the neighborhood.
Be patient, persistent, wide-awake, sure that you see what you think you see, careful to remember what you have seen, studious to compare your observations, and keen to hear the questions propounded you. If you do this seven years and a day, you will earn the name of Naturalist; and if you travel the road of the naturalist with curious patience, you may some day become as famous a riddle-reader as was that OEdipus, the king of Thebes, who slew the Sphinx.
Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) by Raymond Barlow
Lee’s Addition:
This is the beginning of a series from The Woodpeckers book. Our writer, Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, wrote this in 1901. There are 16 chapters, plus this Forward, which are about the Woodpecker Family here in America. All the chapters can be found on The Woodpeckers page.
Woodpeckers belong to the Picidae – Woodpeckers Family.
Here are the upcoming chapter titles:
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| Foreword: the Riddlers | ||
| I. | How to know a Woodpecker | |
| II. | How the Woodpecker catches a Grub | |
| III. | How the Woodpecker courts his Mate | |
| IV. | How the Woodpecker makes a House | |
| V. | How a Flicker feeds her Young | |
| VI. | Friend Downy | |
| VII. | Persona non Grata. (Yellow-bellied Sapsucker) | |
| VIII. | El Carpintero. (Californian Woodpecker) | |
| IX. | A Red-headed Cousin. (Red-headed Woodpecker) | |
| X. | A Study of Acquired Habits | |
| XI. | The Woodpecker’s Tools: His Bill | |
| XII. | The Woodpecker’s Tools: His Foot | |
| XIII. | The Woodpecker’s Tools: His Tail | |
| XIV. | The Woodpecker’s Tools: His Tongue | |
| XV. | How each Woodpecker is fitted for his own Kind of Life | |
| XVI. | The Argument from Design |
APPENDIX
A. Key to the Woodpeckers of North America
B. Descriptions of the Woodpeckers of North America
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I trust you will enjoy reading about these fantastic birds and how the Lord has created them to be able to carry out their task.
See:
The Woodpeckers by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm
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The Wren Who Brought Fire
The Forgetful Kingfisher
Birdwatching Term – Nape
Blue-naped Mousebird at Cincinnati Zoo)
My son, listen to your father’s discipline, and do not neglect your mother’s teachings, because discipline and teachings are a graceful garland on your head and a golden chain around your neck. (Proverbs 1:8-9 GW)
Nape – An easy definition is the back of the neck.
Birdwatching Term – Nape (Relocated )
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Child’s Book of Water Birds ~ The Oyster Catcher
Birds Vol 2 #6 – The Volume II. July to December 1897 – Index
Yellow-Breasted Chat (Icteria virens) by USGS
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VOLUME II. JULY TO DECEMBER, 1897.
INDEX.
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How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! (Psalm 139:17 NKJV)
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Birds Illustrated by Color Photography – Revisited
The above article is an article in the monthly serial for October 1897 “designed to promote Knowledge of Bird-Live.” These include Color Photography, as they call them, today they are drawings. There are at least three Volumes that have been digitized by Project Gutenberg.
To see the whole series of – Birds Illustrated by Color Photography – Revisited
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Next Article – TBA
The Previous Article – The Yellow-breasted Chat
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Vol 2, #6 – The Yellow-breasted Chat
Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens) for Birds Illustrated
From col. F. M. Woodruff. Copyrighted by
chicago colortype co. Nature Study Pub. Co., 1897, Chicago.
THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT.
I am often heard, but seldom seen. If I were a little boy or a little girl, grown people would tell me I should be seen and not heard. That’s the difference between you and a bird like me, you see.
It would repay you to make my acquaintance. I am such a jolly bird. Sometimes I get all the dogs in my neighborhood howling by whistling just like their masters. Another time I mew like a cat, then again I give some soft sweet notes different from those of any bird you ever heard.
In the spring, when my mate and I begin house-keeping, I do some very funny things, like the clown in a circus. I feel so happy that I go up a tree branch by branch, by short flights and jumps, till I get to the very top. Then I launch myself in the air, as a boy dives when he goes swimming, and you would laugh to see me flirting my tail, and dangling my legs, coming down into the thicket by odd jerks and motions.
It really is so funny that I burst out laughing myself, saying, chatter-chatter, chat-chat-chat-chat! I change my tune sometimes, and it sounds like who who, and tea-boy.
You must be cautious though, if you want to see me go through my performance. Even when I am doing those funny things in the air I have an eye out for my enemies. Should I see you I would hide myself in the bushes and as long as you were in sight I would be angry and say chut, chut! as cross as could be.
Have I any other name?
Yes, I am called the Yellow Mockingbird. But that name belongs to another. His picture was in the June number of Birds, so you know something about him. They say I imitate other birds as he does. But I do more than that. I can throw my voice in one place, while I am in another.
It is a great trick, and I get lots of sport out of it.
Do you know what that trick is called? If not, ask your papa. It is such a long word I am afraid to use it.
About my nest?
Oh, yes, I am coming to that. I arrive in this country about May 1, and leave for the south in the winter. My nest is nothing to boast of; rather big, made of leaves, bark, and dead twigs, and lined with fine grasses and fibrous roots. My mate lays eggs, white in color, and our little ones are, like their papa, very handsome.
Yellow-Breasted Chat (Icteria virens) WikiC
THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT.
COMMON name for this bird, the largest of the warblers, is the Yellow Mockingbird. It is found in the eastern United States, north to the Connecticut Valley and Great Lakes; west to the border of the Great Plains; and in winter in eastern Mexico and Guatemala. It frequents the borders of thickets, briar patches, or wherever there is a low, dense growth of bushes—the thornier and more impenetrable the better.
“After an acquaintance of many years,” says Frank M. Chapman, “I frankly confess that the character of the Yellow-Crested Chat is a mystery to me. While listening to his strange medley and watching his peculiar actions, we are certainly justified in calling him eccentric, but that there is a method in his madness no one who studies him can doubt.”
By many observers this bird is dubbed clown or harlequin, so peculiar are his antics or somersaults in the air; and by others “mischief maker,” because of his ventriloquistic and imitating powers, and the variety of his notes. In the latter direction he is surpassed only by the Mockingbird.
The mewing of a cat, the barking of a dog, and the whistling sound produced by a Duck’s wings when flying, though much louder, are common imitations with him. The last can be perfectly imitated by a good whistler, bringing the bird instantly to the spot, where he will dodge in and out among the bushes, uttering, if the whistling be repeated, a deep toned emphatic tac, or hollow, resonant meow.
In the mating season he is the noisiest bird in the woods. At this time he may be observed in his wonderful aerial evolutions, dangling his legs and flirting his tail, singing vociferously the while—a sweet song different from all his jests and jeers—and descending by odd jerks to the thicket. After a few weeks he abandons these clown-like maneuvers and becomes a shy, suspicious haunter of the depths of the thicket, contenting himself in taunting, teasing, and misleading, by his variety of calls, any bird, beast, or human creature within hearing.
All these notes are uttered with vehemence, and with such strange and various modulations as to appear near or distant, in the manner of a ventriloquist. In mild weather, during moonlight nights, his notes are heard regularly, as though the performer were disputing with the echoes of his own voice.
“Perhaps I ought to be ashamed to confess it,” says Mr. Bradford Torrey, after a visit to the Senate and House of Representatives at Washington, “but after all, the congressman in feathers interested me most. I thought indeed, that the Chat might well enough have been elected to the lower house. His volubility and waggish manners would have made him quite at home in that assembly, while his orange colored waistcoat would have given him an agreeable conspicuity. But, to be sure, he would have needed to learn the use of tobacco.”
The nest of the Chat is built in a thicket, usually in a thorny bush or thick vine five feet above the ground. It is bulky, composed exteriorly of dry leaves, strips of loose grape vine bark, and similar materials, and lined with fine grasses and fibrous roots. The eggs are three to five in number, glossy white, thickly spotted with various shades of rich, reddish brown and lilac; some specimens however have a greenish tinge, and others a pale pink.
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Summary:
YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT.—Icteria virens.
Range—Eastern United States to the Great Plains, north to Ontario and southern New England; south in winter through eastern Mexico to Northern Central America.
Nest—In briar thickets from two to five feet up, of withered leaves, dry grasses, strips of bark, lined with finer grasses.
Eggs—Three or four, white, with a glossy surface.
Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens) by Daves BirdingPix
Lee’s Addition:
Like a crane or a swallow, so I chattered; I mourned like a dove; My eyes fail from looking upward. O LORD, I am oppressed; Undertake for me! (Isa 38:14 NKJV)
Oh, sing to the LORD a new song! Sing to the LORD, all the earth. (Psa 96:1 NKJV)
The Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens) is a large songbird in the Muscicapidae – Chats, Old World Flycatchers Family. They are one of 313 members of that family. Another one of the Lord’s beautiful creatures. I haven’t seen that many, but they would sure be a delight to see.
Identification Tips: From USGS
Length: 6.25 inches
The largest warbler
Thick bill
White spectacles
Yellow throat and breast
Whitish belly and undertail coverts
Olive upperparts
Fairly long tail
Dark legs
Females and males similar in plumage
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Yellow-Breasted Chat (Icteria virens) USGS
The song of this bird is an odd, variable mixture of cackles, clucks, whistles and hoots. Their calls are harsh chak’s. Unlike most warblers, this species has been known to mimic the calls of other birds. Thus, less experienced field birdwatchers sometimes overlook chats after mistaken their song for species such as Gray Catbirds and Brown Thrashers, which share similar habitat preferences and skulking habits, though are generally much more abundant. During the breeding season, Chats are at their most conspicuous as they will usually sing from exposed locations and even fly in the open while gurgling their songs.
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Birds Illustrated by Color Photography – Revisited
The above article is an article in the monthly serial for October 1897 “designed to promote Knowledge of Bird-Live.” These include Color Photography, as they call them, today they are drawings. There are at least three Volumes that have been digitized by Project Gutenberg.
To see the whole series of – Birds Illustrated by Color Photography – Revisited
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(Information from Wikipedia and other internet sources, with editing)
Next Article – Volume II. July to December 1897 Index
The Previous Article – More Bird Miscellany
Links:
- Yellow-breasted Chat – USGS
- Yellow-breasted Chat – WhatBird
- Yellow-breasted Chat – Wikipedia
- Yellow-breasted Chat – Audubon
- Yellow-breasted Chat – Alll About Birds
- Muscicapidae – Chats, Old World Flycatchers Family
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Child’s Book of Water Birds ~ The Goose
Vol 2, #6 – More Bird Miscellany
American Robin (Turdus migratorius) in nest ready to eat ©WikiC
BIRD MISCELLANY.
Knowledge never learned of schools
Of the wild bee’s morning chase,
Of the wild-flowers’ time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell;
How the woodchuck digs his cell;
And the ground-mole makes his well;
How the robin feeds her young;
How the oriole’s nest is hung.
—Whittier.
Mangrove Warbler (Dendroica petechia) (aka Yellow) by Anthony747
Consider the marvelous life of a bird and the manner of its whole existence…. Consider the powers of that little mind of which the inner light flashes from the round bright eye; the skill in building its home, in finding its food, in protecting its mate, in serving its offspring, in preserving its own existence, surrounded as it is on all sides by the most rapacious enemies….
When left alone it is such a lovely little life—cradled among the hawthorn buds, searching for aphidæ amongst apple blossoms, drinking dew from the cup of a lily; awake when the gray light breaks in the east, throned on the topmost branch of a tree, swinging with it in the sunshine, flying from it through the air; then the friendly quarrel with a neighbor over a worm or berry; the joy of bearing grass-seed to his mate where she sits low down amongst the docks and daisies; the triumph of singing the praise of sunshine or of moonlight; the merry, busy, useful days; the peaceful sleep, steeped in the scent of the closed flower, with head under one wing and the leaves forming a green roof above.
—Ouida.
Asian Openbill (Anastomus oscitans) on nest by Nikhil
THE BIRD’S STORY.
“I once lived in a little house,
And lived there very well;
I thought the world was small and round,
And made of pale blue shell.
I lived next in a little nest,
Nor needed any other;
I thought the world was made of straw,
And brooded by my mother.
One day I fluttered from the nest
To see what I could find.
I said: ‘The world is made of leaves,
I have been very blind.’
At length I flew beyond the tree,
Quite fit for grown-up labors;
I don’t know how the world is made,
And neither do my neighbors.”
Lee’s Addition:
By them the birds of the heavens have their home; They sing among the branches. (Psalm 104:12 NKJV)
These three miscellaneous articles give various lessons. The Bird Miscellany informs us that book learning only goes so far, then you need to go out and observe what is going on around you. Same way with bird watching. You can read all the books, but you won’t become a birdwatcher until you go watch birds.
The second segment talks of a peaceful bird just enjoying its life. Last, the Bird’s Story reminds us of growing up.
Depart from evil and do good; Seek peace and pursue it. (Psalm 34:14 NKJV)
Better is a dry morsel with quietness, Than a house full of feasting with strife. (Proverbs 17:1 NKJV)
If you have an opinion, leave a comment. Always interesting to hear different points of view.
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Birds Illustrated by Color Photography – Revisited
The above article is an article in the monthly serial for October 1897 “designed to promote Knowledge of Bird-Live.” These include Color Photography, as they call them, today they are drawings. There are at least three Volumes that have been digitized by Project Gutenberg.
To see the whole series of – Birds Illustrated by Color Photography – Revisited
*
(Information from Wikipedia and other internet sources, with editing)
Next Article – The Yellow-breasted Chat
The Previous Article – The Ring-necked Pheasant
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Birdwatching Term – Lobed Feet
Giant Coot (Fulica gigantea) Loped Feet ©©Flickr
Thou hast enlarged my steps under me, that my feet did not slip. (Psalms 18:36 KJV)
Birds of the Bible For Kids 