Categories
1860s Birds Essay

The Humming-Bird

The Humming-Bird

By Comte de Buffon, translated by Daniel Alexander Payne (Bishop Payne)
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Martin Johnson Heade. Amethyst Woodstar. Oil on canvas, ca. 1863-1864, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR). Public Domain.

Beautiful and useful translations from the French of Buffon. By BISHOP PAYNE. [Original byline in the Repository of Religion and Literature, and of Science and Art.]

Of all animated beings, behold the most elegant in form and the most brilliant in colors. The stones and the metals polished by our art, are not comparable to this jewel of nature: in the order of birds she has placed it, in the last degree of the scale of size; her master-piece is the little humming-bird: she has overwhelmed her, with all the gifts she has divided among other birds; lightness, rapidity, swiftness, grace, and rich attire, all appertain to this little favorite.[1] The emerald, the ruby, the topaz, glitter upon its robes: it never soils them with the dust of the earth, and in its life all aereal, one hardly sees it touch the grass by moments; it is always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has their freshness, as it has their brilliance; it lives upon their nectar, and it dwells in climates, where, without ceasing, it renews itself.

It is in the warmest countries of the New World, where one finds all the species of the humming-birds; they are very numerous, and appear to be confined between the two tropics; for those of them that advance into the temperate zones, there may be but a short sojourn: they seem to follow the movements of the sun, to advance, and to retire with him, and to fly upon the wings of zephyrs, in the retinue of an eternal spring.[2]

The Indians, smitten by the splendor of the fire which radiate from the colors of these brilliant birds, have given to them the name of rays and hues of the sun.[3] The smallest species of these birds are less than the ox-fly in length, and the drone-bee in thickness. [4] Their bill is like a fine needle, and their tongue, as a delicate thread; their little black eyes appear as just two brilliant points; the plumes of their wings are so delicate, that they appear transparent. Their feet are so short and small, that one with difficulty perceives them; they make but little use of them; they only set them down to sleep during the night, and during the day keep them pendant in the air; their flight is continuous, rapid, and humming; and some one has compared the noice of their wings to that of a spinning-wheel. Their clapping is so swift, that the bird in the air, stopping itself, appear not only immoveable, but all at once without action. One may see it thus arrest itself for a few moments before a flower, and then to dart from it like an arrow to another; it visits all; plunges its little tongue into their bosoms; caressing it with its wings, without alighting upon them, but also without ever quitting them.

He passes his inconstancies, but for the better to follow his loves, and to multiply its innocent enjoyments; for this lover, by slighting its flowers, lives at their expense, without withering them. He does but pump their honey, and it is to this use that his tongue seems to be so uniquely destined, it is composed of two hollow fibres, forming one little canal, divided at the end into two fillets; it has the form of a proboscis, and performs the functions of that instrument; the bird darts it out of his bill and plunges it into the bottom of the cup of the flowers, and thus extracts the nectar from them. Nothing equals the vivacity of these little birds, if it be not their courage, or rather, their audacity. One may often see them pursuing, with fury, some birds twenty times their size, attaching themselves to their bodies, and alluring them to carry them in their flight, peck them with repeated blows.[5]

Impatience seems to be their soul; if they approach a flower, and find it withered, they pluck out its petals, with a precipitation that marks its spite. The nest which they construct, respond to the delicacy of their bodies; it is made either of fine cotton or a silken hair, gathered from certain flowers; this nest is strongly tissued, and of the consistence of a soft and downy skin; the female charges herself with the work, and leave to the male the care of bringing the materials. One may see her at this cherished work, seeking, choosing, employing, blade by blade, such fibres as are proper to form the tissue of that soft cradle, which is designed for its progeny. She polishes the borders of it with her neck, and the interior with her tail; she coats it on the outside with little pieces of the bark of resinous plants, which she glues around it, to defend it from the injuries of the air, so as to render it more solid; the whole is attached to two leaves, or to a single blade of the orange or citron tree; or sometimes to a straw which hangs at the eves of a cottage. This nest is no bigger than the half of an apricot, and formed like a half cup. One there finds two eggs all white, and no larger than little peas, The male and the female cover them by turns, during twelve days; the little ones are hatched on the thirteenth, and are then no larger than some flies. “I have never been able to discover,” says P. Durterte, “what kind of billfull the mother gives them, only that she gives them her tongue to suck, while yet it is enameled with the sugar drawn from the flowers.” [6]

Martin Johnson Heade. Hummingbird and Passionflowers. Oil on canvas, ca. 1875-85, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, NY). Public Domain.
BUFFON (TRANSLATED BY BISHOP PAYNE). “THE HUMMING-BIRD.” REPOSITORY OF RELIGION AND LITERATURE, AND OF SCIENCE AND ART’S VOL. III, NO. 3 (JULY 1861): 122-4.

[1] “. . . in the last degree of the scale of size”: The Bee Hummingbird, which can be found in Cuba, is not only the smallest hummingbird, but also the smallest bird in the world.

[2] “It is in the warmest countries of the New World . . .”: There are almost 340 species of hummingbirds in the world, all of them occurring, in fact, in the American continent.

[3] “Indians,” in this case, refers to members of the Indigenous tribes of America. See “The Impact of Words and Tips for Using Appropriate Terminology: Am I Using the Right Word?

[4] The ox-fly, also known as warble fly, refers to a kind of large flies that lay their eggs on mammals. A drone-bee is a male honey bee.

[5] Hummingbirds can be aggressive and territorial. Males will usually fight each other to assert their breeding grounds. Interestingly, the symbols of authority of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of sun and war, are the hummingbird and fire. In fact, Huitzilopochtli means “blue hummingbird on the left.”

[6] Female hummingbirds regurgitate their food to feed their young.

The Repository of Religion and Literature, and of Science and Arts was a short-lived (1858-63) quarterly for Black children published by a group of African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) societies. Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne (1811-1893), who translated “The Humming-Bird,” was one of the magazine editors and a main figure in the A.M.E. He was also an educator, administrator, and author. George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1749-1788), was an influential French naturalist.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

aereal: Aerial. Dwelling, flying, or moving in the air, above the earth; occurring or taking place in the air; (spec. of birds or bats) spending much of the time airborne.

appertain: To belong as parts to the whole, or as members to a family or class, and hence, to the head of the family; to be related, akin to.

proboscis: Any of various elongated, tubular, and usually flexible mouthparts of insects, used for sucking liquids and sometimes for piercing, as in bees, flies, mosquitoes, bugs, and butterflies and moths (in which it is coiled when not in use).

progeny: Offspring, issue, children; descendants. Occasionally: a child, a descendant; a family.

Resources for Further Study
  • Visit BlackPast to learn more about Daniel Alexander Payne.
  • Interactive experience designed to accompany a 2020 exhibition about Martin Johnson Heade’s hummingbird paintings. Courtesy of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR).
Contemporary Connections

Learn how to keep your backyard hummingbird-friendly!

Categories
1860s Birds Essay

About Humming-Birds

About Humming-Birds

By T. M. (Thomas Mayo) Brewer
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Ernst Haeckel. Trochilidae. Illustration, 1904, Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

All the readers of Our Young Folks must remember Mrs. Stowe’s charming sketch of Hum the Son of Buz, which appeared in its first number.[1] It was an interesting account of the peculiar habits of a young Ruby-throated Humming-Bird, for several weeks her petted companion. Some novel facts in regard to the food and manner of life of these tiny specimens of bird-kind were there presented with a freshness that gave them great interest. We shall endeavor to give a general account of this wonderfully beautiful family of birds, although we cannot hope to invest it with an equal charm.

No birds are so universally attractive as the Humming-Birds. They are the smallest in size, the most brilliantly beautiful in plumage, and have the most numerous varieties of any of the feathered families.[2] They are found nowhere except in the New World, but here they may be met with anywhere, from the Falkland Islands of South America almost to Greenland in North America. They are most abundant in the warmer portions of the continent, especially in the West India Islands and in Central America and the northern states of South America.

More than three hundred different kinds of Humming-Birds have been already described, and our best-informed naturalists believe that not less than four hundred exist. So far as men of science have studied their habits, it has been found that all these different varieties have very nearly the same peculiarities, modified chiefly by the differences in their places of residence. Some Humming-Birds, like our common Ruby-throat, are found scattered over a very large extent of country. This variety occurs in all the United States, and as far north as the Arctic regions; other kinds are found only in small lonely islands. Some Humming-Birds remain all the year in the same localities; others only visit certain parts of America during the warm season.[3]

The food of Humming-Birds is now known to consist almost entirely of insects. They were once supposed to subsist chiefly on the sweets they obtained from honey-bearing flowers, and in confinement they have been made to live partly upon sweetened water; but the honey of plants is not alone their natural food, and is insufficient for them.

In order to obtain its insect-food the Humming-Bird is provided with a tongue of very peculiar structure, the anterior portions of which are made up of two long and hollow thread-like tubes. These unite behind and are closed at the end, as represented, magnified, in the figures below. This forked and hollow tongue the bird thrusts in and out of the tube-shaped flowers with the rapidity of a flash, and captures the minute insects lodged in their depths.[4]

M.E.D. Brown. Humming Birds / from Life & on Stone. Print: Lithograph, ca. 1832, Library of Congress. Public Domain.

These tiny birds are adorned with more brilliant plumage than any other family of the whole feathered tribe. It is impossible to give our young readers any adequate description of the beauty and variety of the bright colors of nearly all Humming- Birds. These colors excite wonder and admiration, even when prepared for exhibition in ornithological collections; but when living the brilliancy of their colors is far greater than when dead.

Travellers who have seen them flitting about like beams of variously tinted light in the dark green woods of their native forests tell us they know nothing in nature that can be compared with them. Even the colors of the topaz, the emerald, the ruby, and the amethyst, to which the bright tints of the Humming-Birds have been likened, pale in the comparison. The various hues of all these gems are often seen combined in the plumage of the same bird, now one appearing and now another, with the changes of light and shade.

Without attempting to give a learned account of the different classes into which naturalists now divide Humming-Birds, we will mention only a few of the more marked differences which distinguish them. Some have perfectly straight bills; others have bills very much curved. These are nearly all tropical varieties, living the year round in the same climate. A few varieties have bills which curve upwards in a very singular manner,—an admirable adaptation for reaching up into flowers growing in the forms of pendent tubes or bells. Formerly all Humming-Birds were divided into two classes,—those with straight bills and those with curved bills. But later writers have subdivided the straight-billed into two classes and the curved-billed into three. The first two are those with short rounded tail-feathers, and those with very long and forked tails. These are all or nearly all birds of temperate climates, migrating from them in the colder season. The three varieties of the curved-billed birds are those with long centre tail-feathers, those with curious sabre-like wing-feathers and rounded tails, and those with very short tails and very much rounded bills.

In the tropical regions of America Humming-Birds in great number and variety swarm throughout the forests. In other portions of the same country, where the forests have been cut down and the land tilled, the Humming-Birds equally abound, and seem to delight in the society of man. As we recede from the warm regions their numbers decrease. Some are found in very high northern latitudes, others in equally far southern regions, while others seem to prefer high mountains, where the temperature is quite low. We have the nest of a South American Humming-Bird, which the late Captain Couthouy found on the eastern slope of Mount Pichincha, at a height of ten thousand five hundred feet.[5] Another traveller met with Humming- Birds flying about in a snow-storm near the Straits of Magellan.[6]

Martin Johnson Heade. Two Humming Birds: “Copper-tailed Amazili.” Oil on canvas, ca. 1865-1875, Brooklyn Museum (NY). Public Domain.

The habits of all Humming-Birds are so very nearly alike that a description of the peculiarities of one will serve for them all. They are almost always on the wing, moving with great rapidity and ease. They flit about in short, quick flights. Like flashes of light they dart now this way and now that. Their wings are so constructed as to give them the power of hovering over a flower and keeping themselves in this position a long time; some writers say, for hours.[7]

Their boldness and intrepidity is surprising in birds so small. They do not hesitate to attack birds greatly their superiors in strength that approach too near their nests, or even to fly in the face of any intruder when they have young. This boldness and anxiety is often fatal, betraying their nests to the naturalist seeking them for his collection.

The nests of Humming-Birds are built with exquisite delicacy, of soft materials, and are warm, compact, and strong. They are placed on the horizontal branches of trees, a few feet from the ground, and are usually made of silky vegetable down. Over this they fasten, with their saliva, a strong covering of gray moss. This appears to be an instinctive endeavor to conceal their nest by making it resemble the moss-covered limb on which it is built. It is a curious fact that often this mossy covering is not put on until after the female has occupied the nest, her mate busying himself with completing the moss-work while she is sitting upon her eggs.

But the nests of Humming-Birds are not alike. Some vary in their materials, others in their shape. One kind builds a hanging nest under a large leaf. It is curiously wrought of spiders’ webs, and has its opening underneath. The smallest known bird of this family is found in the island of Jamaica.[8] It is only two inches long, and its outstretched wings are only three inches across. Its nest is not larger than a thimble, and is woven of spiders’ threads and silk and covered on the outside with fine moss. The eggs are very small, looking like little white homœopathic pills. The Humming- Bird’s eggs are always white, and only two in number.[9]

Many attempts have been made to domesticate Humming-Birds, but these have been only partially successful. The birds have soon died, probably from change of diet, or from inability to endure the extremes of cold and heat. If a substitute for their natural food could be found, they would probably live and thrive in confinement, and become very tame and familiar.[10]

Martin Johnson Heade. Hummingbird and Apple Blossoms. Oil on canvas, 1875, Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY). Public Domain.

Several instances are known of their being kept in this manner, and in every case they have been, like Mrs. Stowe’s pet, very docile and affectionate. A young Englishman, as he was about to sail from Jamaica, caught a Mango Humming-Bird on her nest, and, cutting off the twig on which the latter was built, brought nest, eggs, and parent on board. The bird was fed with honey and water, became tame, and hatched out two young birds during the passage. The mother died, but the young birds were brought to England, and were for some weeks in the possession of Lady Hammond, readily taking honey from her lips. One of them lived two months after its arrival.

Within the limits of the United States seven different kinds of Humming-Birds are found, though two of them are very rare and may not belong here.[11] These are the Black-throated or Mango Humming-Bird, one of the curved-billed or tropical forms.[12] This is a common West-Indian variety, and is only found in our most southern State, Florida, and rarely there. Its plumage is resplendent with a metallic lustre of green and gold.

The common Ruby-throat is familiar to us all.[13]

The Black-chinned Humming-Bird of California is similar to our common variety.[14]

The Red-backed Humming-Bird is the most common kind in the States on the Pacific, and is found from the Gulf of California to Nootka Sound.[15] It is very prettily marked, but is not a brilliant bird, having very little lustre in its plumage.

The Broad-tailed Humming-Bird is only found in Texas, and is also very much like the common Ruby-throat.[16]

Our most beautiful variety, the Anna Humming-Bird,—so called in honor of Anna, Duchess of Rivoli, a lady greatly distinguished for her love of natural history, —is very abundant in California.[17] Its entire head, neck, and throat are covered with feathers of a bright metallic amethystine red color. One other variety, with no common name, about which little is known, has been found on the southern borders of California. It most resembles the Anna Humming-Bird.

BREWER, T. M. [THOMAS MAYO]. “ABOUT HUMMING-BIRDS.” OUR YOUNG FOLKS. AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE’S VOL. V, NO. IX(SEPTEMBER 1869): 578-82.

[1] The author references Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sketch “Hum, the Son of Buz,” also included in our anthology.

[2] There are almost 340 species of hummingbirds in the world, all of them occurring in the American continent.

[3] Hummingbirds migrate yearly, with some species covering thousands of mile.

[4] Hummingbird’s tongues can stick out as far as the bill is long!

[5] In part IV of the series of essays “Bird Architecture,” published in Scribner’s Monthly on December, 1878, pp. 161-76, Thomas Brewer refers to a hummingbird nest he received from the late Captain Joseph Couthouy, “taken by him, with its owner, near the snow-line on Mount Pichincha, at a height of 10,500 feet” (p. 168). Brewer identifies the bird as an Eriocnemis luciani. Mount Pichincha is located in Ecuador.

[6] The Strait of Magellan (Estrecho de Magallanes) is a channel that links the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean in South America. It is 350 miles long and 2-20 miles wide.

[7] Watch hummingbirds in flight in this video from Terra Mater.

[8] The smallest hummingbird, which is also the smallest bird in the world, it is actually found in Cuba, not Jamaica. It is known as Bee Hummingbird.

[9] Although two is the typical size of hummingbird clutches, sometimes they will also lay either one or three eggs. Hummingbirds’ nests, the smallest bird nests in the world, are woven with spiderweb thread and camouflaged with other materials.

[10] Trapping or keeping hummingbirds in captivity is illegal in the United States. They are a protected species under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

[11] According to the American Bird Conservancy‘s website, there are fifteen types of hummingbirds in the United States, without counting nine vagrant species.

[12] Black-throated Mango Hummingbirds are usually found in open habitats like forest edges, woodlands, and shrubby growth.

John Abbot. Red Throated Hummingbird (Troculis Colubris). Transparent and opaque watercolor and graphite on paper, 1791, Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Public Domain.

[13] Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

[14] Black-chinned Hummingbird.

[15] The author is probably referring to the Rufous Hummingbird.

[16] Broad-tailed Humming-Bird.

[17] Anna’s Hummingbird.

Contexts

Thomas Mayo Brewer (1814-1880) was an American naturalist. Trained as a doctor, he gave up medicine and dedicated himself to the sudy of birds and their eggs. In the nineteenth century, Europe became fascinated with hummingbirds and “hundreds of thousands were hunted and killed for their skin.” In fact, the commercial trade in bird feathers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sparked the fierce conservation movement that led to the creation of the National Audubon Societies. Many activists were women who opposed the killing of birds for the sake of the latest fashions.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

amethystine: Of a colour: resembling amethyst. Of an object: amethyst-coloured; violet-purple. 

homœopathic: Very small or minute, like the doses usually given in homoeopathy. (Often humorous.)

ornithological: Of or relating to birds; avian.

pendent: Hanging; suspended from or as from the point of attachment, with the point or end hanging downwards; dependent. Of a tree: having branches that hang or droop down.

topaz: The name given (with or without distinguishing adjunct) to several highly valued precious stones. Also, the dark yellow colour of topaz.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Learn how to keep your backyard hummingbird-friendly!

Categories
1920s Birds Poem

Who Stole the Bird’s Nest

Who Stole the Bird’s Nest

By Lydia Maria Child
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
L. Prang & Co. Bird’s Nest with Vines. Chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Digital Commonwealth. Public Domain.
“To whit! To whit! To whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?”

“Not I,” said the cow, “moo, oo, moo, oo!
Such a thing I’d never do.
I gave you a wisp of hay,
But didn’t take your nest away:
Not I,” said the cow, “moo, oo, moo, oo!
Such a thing I’d never do!”

“To whit! To whit! To whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?”

“Bobolink! Bobolink!
Now, what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plum tree to-day?”

“Not I,” said the dog, “bow wow!
I couldn’t be so mean, I trow–
I gave hairs the nest to make,
But the nest I did not take.
Not I,” said the dog, “bow wow!
I couldn’t be so mean I trow.”

“To whit! To whit! To whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice warm nest I made?”

“Bobolink! Bobolink!
Now, what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plum tree to-day?”

“Coo, coo! Coo, coo! Coo, coo!
Let me speak a word, too–
Who stole that pretty nest
From little yellow-breast?”

“Not I,” said the sheep, “oh, no!
I would not treat a poor bird so.
I gave wool the nest to line,
But the nest was none of mine:
Baa, baa,” said the sheep, “oh, no!
I wouldn’t treat a poor bird so.”
Pages from “Who Stole the Bird’s Nest?” This accordion picture book was published by L. Prang & Company in 1864-65. In this edition, the text of the poem is slightly different from the original. There is no author or illustrator credit. Public Domain.
“To whit! To whit! To whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?”

“Bobolink! Bobolink!
Now, what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plum tree to-day?”

“Coo, coo! Coo, coo! Coo, coo!
Let me speak a word, too–
Who stole that pretty nest
From little yellow-breast?”

“Caw, caw,” cried the crow,
I should like to know,
What thief took away 
A bird’s nest to-day?”

“Cluck, cluck,” said the hen,
“Don’t ask me again,
Why! I haven’t a chick
That would do such trick.
We all gave her a feather,

And she wove them together.
I’d scorn to intrude
On her and her brood:
Cluck, cluck,” said the hen,
“don’t ask me again.”

“Chirr-a-whirr! Chirr-a-whirr!
All the birds make a stir!
Let us find out his name,
And all cry: ‘For shame!’”

“I would not rob a bird,”
    Said little Mary Green;
“I think I never heard
    Of anything so mean.”

“’T is very cruel, too,”
    Said little Alice Neal;
“I wonder if he knew,
    How sad the bird would feel!”

A little boy hung down his head,
And went and hid behind his bed;
For he stole that pretty nest,
From poor little yellow-breast;
And he felt so full of shame,
He didn’t like to tell his name.
L. Prang & Co. Bird’s Eggs. Chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Digital Commonwealth. Public Domain.
CHILD, LYDIA MARIA. “WHO STOLE THE BIRD’S NEST,” IN STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN, COMPILED BY SUSAN S. HARRIMAN, 117-21 [VOLUME ONE OF THE KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN’S HOUR, ED. BY LUCY WHEELOCK]. BOSTON, NEW YORK: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 1920.
Contexts

Lydia Maria Child’s “Who Stole the Bird’s Nest?” was initially published in 1844 in the second volume of Child’s Flowers for Children. Its inclusion in Lucy Wheelock’s anthology for kindergarteners, more than seventy years later, attests to Child’s cultural influence and to the timelessness of the conservation drive that animates her poem.


Wheelock (1857-1946), main editor of the The Kindergarten Children’s Hour, was at one point the president of the International Kindergarten Union. Through her pedagogical practice, she supported the kindergarten reform in the United States and helped bridge early disagreements about how to teach 5-year-olds. She believed that kindergarten education could help tackle the cycle of poverty, a concern that remains relevant today.


The Kindergarten Children’s Hour was comprised of five illustrated volumes. Susan S. Harriman was in charge of the first one, a collection of stories and rhymes for little children. In the second, Maude C. Nash suggests home activities, while in the third Winthrop Packard turns her interactions with her own children in a series of “Talks to Children.” Following a logical progression, the fourth volume consisted of “Talks to Mothers.” In the fifth and final book, Alice Wyman anthologized songs and music for children.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

trow: To believe in or on; to have confidence in; to trust to. Obsolete or rare (archaic).

wisp: A handful, bunch, or small bundle (of hay, straw, grass, etc.).

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

There is nothing birds will not try to integrate into their nests! Learn how to help them build safer nests by making safe materials available to them.

And here is what to do if you find a nest where it may not belong.

Categories
1910s Birds Poem Wild animals

Bread and Milk

Bread and Milk

By Gene Stratton-Porter
Annotations by Rene marzuk
Original photograph by Gene Stratton-Porter from Morning Face, p. 24.
Every morning before we eat,
My mother prays a prayer sweet.
    With folded hand and low-bowed head:
    “Give us this day our daily bread.”
But I’d like tarts and ginger cakes,
Puffs and pie like grandmother makes.
    So ’smorning I said my appetite
    Must have a cake, or ’twouldn’t eat a bite.
Then mother said: “’Fore you get through,
You’ll find just bread and milk will do.”

She always lets me think things out,
But I went to the yard to pout,
    What I saw there–Upon my word!
    I’m glad I’m a girl–not a bird.
Redbreast pulled up a slick fishworm,[1]
To feed her child: it ate the squirm.
    Bee-bird came flying close to me,[2]
    And caught a stinging honey bee.
She pushed it down her young, alive.
She must have thought him a beehive.

Old warbler searched the twigs for slugs,[3]
Rose Grosbeak took potato bugs.[4]
    Missus Wren snapped up a spider,[5]
    To feed her baby, close beside her.
Little Kingbirds began to squall,[6]
Their mother hurried at their call. 
    She choked them with dusty millers.[7]
    Cuckoos ate hairy caterpillars.[8]
Blue birds had worms, where I could see,[9]
For breakfast, in their hollow tree.
    Then little Heron made me squeal,
    Beside our lake he ate an eel. 
When young Screech Owl gulped a whole mouse,[10]
I started fast for our nice house.

Right over me–for pit-tee sake,
Home flew a hawk, with a big snake!
    So ’for my tummy got awful sick,
    I ran and kissed my mother quick.
I acted just as fine as silk
And asked polite for bread and milk. 
Original photograph by Gene Stratton-Porter from Morning Face, p. 26.
STRATTON-PORTER, GENE. “BREAD AND MILK,” IN MORNING FACE, 26-7. NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY, 1916.
John J. Audubon. American Robin. Aquatint in color, 1832, Brooklyn Museum. Public Domain.

[1] Robin red-breast is one of the many names of the American Robin, one of the most popular backyard birds in North America. Early European settlers named the American Robin after the European Robin because of its reddish breast. However, the American Robin is actually a thrush.

[2] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the name bee-bird can refer to either a Spotted Flycatcher or a hummingbird. Because the bird in Stratton-Porter’s poem catches a bee, we can safely assume the speaker refers to flycatchers, an heterogeneous group of migratory birds that breed in Indiana and feed on insects.

Wood Warbler, from the Birds of America Series (N4) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands. Commercial color lithograph, 1888, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

[3] North America is home to more than 53 species of warblers, small to medium-sized songbirds.

[4] Listen to the distinctive songs and calls of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. The potato bug, or Colorado potato beetle, is considered a pest of potato, eggplant, tomato, and pepper plants.

[5] A comprehensive resource on North American wrens.

[6] Listen to the distinctive songs and calls of the Eastern Kingbird.

[7] The speaker is probably referring to miller moths, a generic name for moths, mainly army cutworms, which proliferate around homes. Coincidentally, the dusty miller (known as silver dust or silver ragwort as well), is also a perennial plant that is popular with gardeners because of its striking silvery leaves.

[8] Overview of the Black-billed Cuckoo, the most common of the three types living in North America–the others are the Yellow-billed Cuckoo and the Mangrove Cuckoo.

[9] A guide to the Eastern Bluebird, courtesy of the Audubon Society.

[10] In addition to mammals like rats, mice, squirrels, moles, and rabbits, the Eastern screech-owl also feeds on insects, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, and other birds.

Contexts

In her introduction to the 1996 anthology Coming Through the Swamp: The Nature Writings of Gene Stratton Porter, Sydney Landon Plum reveals that, after the commercial success of Gene Stratton-Porter’s 1909 novel A Girl of the Limberlost, the author and conservationist talked Doubleday, Page & Company into publishing once nature work for each of her subsequent novels. Morning Face, a collection of prose and poems published by Doubleday in 1916, probably saw the light as a result of this agreement. Most of the book’s illustrations are photographs by the author herself, an accomplished self-taught photographer. In fact, according to Plum, Stratton Porter “ardently supported the use of photography for nature study as a substitute for the common practice of killing scores of the natural subjects in order to study them.” As evident in the quatrain that serves as the dedication of Morning Face, Stratton-Porter had a juvenile audience in mind for this book, although one can also make the case that, by identifying herself with the “little girl with a face of morning,” she is also extending her appeal to the inner children within readers of all ages:

One little girl with a face of morning,    
a wondering smile her lips adorning,    
wishes her pictures and stories to share,    
so she sends them to children, everywhere.
Resources for Further Study
  • Kathryn Aalto’s “The Legend of Limberlost,” available through the Smithsonian Magazine‘s website, offers a portrait of Stratton-Porter that emphasizes her love of nature and her conservationist efforts.
  • Gene Stratton-Porter’s Cabin at Wildflower Woods is a museum open to the public in Rome City, Indiana. Stratton-Porter designed the cabin, which was completed in 1914 and sits on 148 acres of fields, woods, and gardens.  
  • An extensive list of Indiana’s bird species. Stratton-Porter lived most of her life in this state.
  • Enjoy this 1915 brief recording of Charles C. Gorst’s impressive imitations of the songs and calls of American birds, including the American Robin, the bluebird, and the cuckoo, which Stratton-Porter includes in her poem.

Categories
1910s Birds Poem Wild animals

Horned Owl

Horned Owl

By Gene Stratton-Porter
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Original photograph by Gene Stratton-Porter from Morning Face, p. 62.
“When the moonlight floods the swampland, 
When the bittern’s wailing croak,[1]
   And the wildcat’s scream of anger
Clog the heart of forest folk,
   I search tall trees for frightened crows,[2]
Hunt ducks ’neath sedges, hares at play,
   Then I set late travelers trembling,
By demanding until break of day:

“‘Who, who, huh, whoo, who waugh?
   Don’t I make cold shivers run?
Who, huh, whoo? I’d question all day,
   If my eyes could bear the sun.’”[3]

STRATTON-PORTER, GENE. “HORNED OWL,” IN MORNING FACE, 63. NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY, 1916.

John James Audubon. The Birds of America, Plate #337: “American Bittern.” Hand-colored engraving and aquatint on paper [from a drawing by Audubon’s son John Woodhouse], 1827-1838. Public Domain.

[1] The American Bittern, protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, is a medium-sized heron commonly found in wetlands and most active at dusk and through the night. The website All About Birds includes audio samples of the American Bittern’s distinctive calls and songs.

[2] The Great Horned Owl is the most common owl in North America. Its “horns” are actually tufts of feathers that have nothing to with hearing, although their ultimate purpose still baffles and divides researchers. The Great Horned Owl is a powerful predator that is also known as the “tiger of the woods.” Its penetrating hoots are quite diverse, constituting a lexicon all of their own.

[3] Contrary to popular belief, owls’ pupils can contract in response to brightness, so they can also see in daylight.

Contexts

In her introduction to the 1996 anthology Coming Through the Swamp: The Nature Writings of Gene Stratton Porter, Sydney Landon Plum reveals that, after the commercial success of Gene Stratton-Porter’s 1909 novel A Girl of the Limberlost, the author and conservationist talked Doubleday, Page & Company into publishing once nature work for each of her subsequent novels. Morning Face, a collection of prose and poems published by Doubleday in 1916, probably saw the light as a result of this agreement. Most of the book’s illustrations are photographs by the author herself, an accomplished self-taught photographer. In fact, according to Plum, Stratton Porter “ardently supported the use of photography for nature study as a substitute for the common practice of killing scores of the natural subjects in order to study them.” As evident in the quatrain that serves as the dedication of Morning Face, Stratton-Porter had a juvenile audience in mind for this book, although one can also make the case that, by identifying herself with the “little girl with a face of morning,” she is also extending her appeal to the inner children within readers of all ages:

One little girl with a face of morning,
a wondering smile her lips adorning,
wishes her pictures and stories to share,
so she sends them to children, everywhere.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

bittern: A genus of grallatorial birds ( Botaurus), nearly allied to the herons, but smaller. spec. The species B. stellaris, a native of Europe and the adjoining parts of the Old World, but now rare in Great Britain on account of the disappearance of the marshes which it frequents. It is noted for the ‘boom’ which it utters during the breeding season, whence its popular names mire-drum, and bull of the bog, and the scientific term botaurus (see above). With qualifying adj., as American bittern n. Botaurus lentiginosus of N. America.  least bittern n. Ixobrychus exilis of N. America.  little bittern n. any of several small bitterns of the genus Ixobrychus.

sedge: A name for various coarse grassy, rush-like or flag-like plants growing in wet places.

waugh: An exclamation indicating grief, indignation or the like. Chiefly as attributed to North American Indians, etc.

Resources for Further Study

Kathryn Aalto’s “The Legend of Limberlost,” available through the Smithsonian Magazine‘s website, offers a portrait of Stratton-Porter that emphasizes her love of nature and her conservationist efforts.

Gene Stratton-Porter’s Cabin at Wildflower Woods is a museum open to the public in Rome City, Indiana. Stratton-Porter designed the cabin, which was completed in 1914 and sits on 148 acres of fields, woods, and gardens.  

Categories
1910s Birds Poem

The Wires Are So Still and High

The Wires Are So Still and High

By Annette Wynne
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Vocational training for S.A.T.C. in University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Class in Pole-Climbing in the course for telephone electricians, with some of their instructors. University of Michigan., ca. 1918. The U.S. National Archives. Public Domain.
The wires are so still and high
We never hear the words go by,
Yet messages fly far and near–
I wonder if the birds can hear.

And when they perch on wires and sing,
I wonder are they listening,
And telling out to earth and sky
A lovely word is going by![1]
Wynne, AnNette. “The Wires Are So Still and High,” in for Days and Days: A Year-Round Treasury of Child Verse, 14. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1919.

[1] Both telegraphs and telephones use electricity to transmit their signal through wires. Although Wynne’s image is very suggestive, sound is actually encoded—or translated—into electrical signals as it travels to its destination.

Contexts

Annette Wynne was an American poet who mainly wrote for children. In addition to For Days and Days: A Year Round of Treasury of Child Verse (1919), she also published Treasure Things (1922).

Resources for Further Study
  • This timeline gathers key moments from the development of telephone technology and infrastructure in the United States. Interestingly, many of the popular concerns and anxieties associated with the telephone in its early adoption stage are similar to those later inspired by internet.
  • A teacher’s guide from the Library of Congress on the Industrial Revolution in the United States helps contextualize the development of communication technologies beginning in the nineteenth century.
  • An informative video from the Natural Museum of American History shows how telegraphs and telephones work.
  • A Natural History of the Wooden Utility Pole,” by the California Public Utilities Commission. The document begins with an excerpt from John Updike’s 1963 poem “Telephone Poles.”
Contemporary Connections

Caira Wynn Blackwell writes about “The Racist History of Telephone Poles.”

Categories
1900s Birds Decade Poem

Pigeons out Walking

Pigeons out Walking

By Josephine Preston Peabody
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
[Feeding the Pigeons, Boston Common, Boston, Mass.] Photographic negative, bet. 1900 and 1920, Detroit Publishing Co., Library of Congress. Public Domain.
They never seem to hurry,—no,
  Even for the crowd.
They dip, and coo, and move as slow,[1]
  All so soft and proud!
You can see the wavy specks
Of bubble-color on their necks;
  —Little, little Cloud.

Cloud that goes, the very way
  All the Bubbles do:
Blue and green, and green and gray,
  Gold and rosy, too.
And they talk as Bubbles could
If they only ever would
  Talk and call and coo!

—Till you try to catch one so,
  Just to make it stay
While the colors turn. But Oh,
  Then they fly away!—
All at once, two, three, four, five—
Like a snowstorm all alive,—
  Gray and white, and gray!
Peabody, Josephine Preston. “Pigeons out Walking,” in The Book of the Little Past, 10. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908.

[1] Male pigeons coo to attract their mates.

Contexts

Josephine Preston Peabody’s The Book of the Little Past (1908), illustrated by Elizabeth Shippen Green, gathered previously published and unpublished poems in which the author touched upon various subjects from a child’s perspective. A favorable 1908 review from The Bellman, a Minneapolis literary magazine, asserted that the volume would be “read and remembered and quoted as few poems of children are,” and referred to Peabody as “one of the first of American lyric poets.”

Resources for Further Study

Categories
1830s Birds Essay Wild animals

The Wild Pigeon of America

The Wild Pigeon of America

By John James Audubon
Annotations by Josh Benjamin
Artist Unknown. Original illustration from Parley’s Magazine p. 94.

The wild pigeon of America, or, as it is often called, the passenger pigeon, is sixteen inches long, and twenty-four in extent. In the spring, multitudes of these birds are seen on the wing, speeding to the northern and western regions of the continent. Here, in the extensive forests, they collect in vast companies, and devote themselves to the rearing of their young. They build their nests in the tops of trees, and such is the almost incredible multitude sometimes assembled at a particular place, that they break the branches of the trees by their weight, and desolate the forest for miles around.

Towards autumn, these birds with the young ones now added to their number, set out for their return to the southern latitudes to spend the winter. The flocks that are sometimes seen, particularly in the Western States, contain many millions. A continued stream, for several miles in width, and many hours in duration, is often seen to pour along the air, sweeping forward with almost incredible swiftness. When the roosts of these birds are first discovered, the inhabitants from a considerable distance visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them. By the Indians a pigeon roost, or breeding place, is considered an important source of national profit and dependence for that season; and all their active ingenuity is exercised on the occasion.

The migrations of these birds are thus noticed by Mr. Audubon. “Their great power of flight enables them when in need, to survey and pass over an astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved by facts known to the greater number of observers in America. Pigeons for example have been killed in the neighborhood of New York with their crops still filled with rice, collected by them in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, the nearest point at which this supply could possibly have been obtained; and, as it is well ascertained, that owing to their great power of digestion, they will decompose food entirely in twelve hours, they must have travelled between three hundred and four hundred miles in six hours, making their speed at an average about one mile in a minute, and this would enable one of these birds, if so inclined, to visit the European continent, as swallows are undoubtedly able to do, in a couple of days.”

“This great power of flight is seconded by as great a power of vision, which enables them as they travel at that swift rate, to view objects below, to discover their food with facility, and thus put an immediate end to their journey. This I have also proved to be the case, by having observed the Pigeons, when passing over a destitute part of the country, keep high in air, and in such an extensive front, as to enable them to survey hundreds of acres at once. But if on the contrary, the land is richly covered with food, or the trees with mast, they will fly low, in order to discover the portion most plentifully supplied, and upon these they alight progressively.

United States National Museum Photographic Library. Passenger Pigeon “Martha.” Gelatin silver print, 1914. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.
audubon, john james. “The wild pigeon of America.” Parley’s Magazine 1 (March 1833): 94-95.
Contexts

The same year this article appeared in print, Audubon believed the passenger pigeon to have the highest population of all birds in North America. There may have been as many as three billion passenger pigeons worldwide in the early 1800s, which would have made it the most numerous bird species. By 1900, no passenger pigeons were left in the wild. The bird pictured above, Martha, was the last surviving passenger pigeon, and she died in September 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Advancements in genetic science have sparked conversations about the possibility of de-extinction. Scientific American looks at some of the issues surrounding restoring animals, such as the passenger pigeon, and Science.org examines how de-extinction may affect conservation efforts.

Categories
1940s African American Birds Outdoors Poem

Scarlet Trimming

Scarlet Trimming

By Effie Lee Newsome
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Audubon, J. J. “Red-Headed Woodpecker.” Colored Print. In Birds of America (1827-38).
The woodpecker folk are quite fond of bright red—
Poinsettia scarlet for neck or for head.[1]
And whether the costume is brown, black or gray,
They count on red hats or red scarfs to make gay.
The dignified flicker, with linings of gold,[2]
The black and gray downy that weathers the cold,[3]
The jaunty old red-head in jockey outfit—[4]
All choose blurs of scarlet to cheer up a bit.
Newsome, Effie Lee. “Scarlet Trimming.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 77.

[1] Poinsettia are flowers native to Mexico that for many symbolize the Christmas holiday. Ordinarily red, they now come in many colors.

[2] The Northern Flicker is a large brown and gray woodpecker with a spotted breast and red hat. Coloration varies across the United States, where they are year-round residents.

[3] The Downy Woodpecker is a small bird that lives year-round in most of the United States. Only males have the characteristic red cap.

[4] Both female and male Red-Headed Woodpeckers have an entirely red head. Their bodies are white, and their wings are bright white and deep black. Now in decline in the U.S., they defend their home territory fiercely.

Contexts

Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature. This poem, like many others in The Envious Lobster, whimsically enacts a natural history lesson, while it encourages children’s imagination.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).

Johnston, Amber O’Neal. “African American Poetry: Effie Lee Newsome. Heritage Mom blog.

Categories
1940s African American Birds Poem

Chimney Swift Runaway

Chimney Swift Runaway

By Effie Lee Newsome
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Print of chimney swift (top) and barn swallow, 19th century. Public Domain.
He looked like a closed umbrella[1]
Some fairy elf had swung
With the little end turned upward—
That was the way he hung,
Clasping my curtains with all his might,
Quivering like ferns in his funny fright.

He’d dropped from his chimney nursery,
And tried to fly through
My tin kitchen flue.[2]
I heard his wings lash,
And, quick as a flash,
I pulled off the tin
And let him fly in.

The new scenes made him quite uncertain,
That’s why he held fast to the curtain
Till I’d unhooked his claws with care
And turned him free to take the air.
Newsome, Effie Lee. “Chimney Swift Runaway.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 80.

[1] Chimney swifts are small birds that nest on vertical surfaces like chimneys and flues. Federally protected, they are famous fliers and often chatter when they are aloft. They travel thousands of miles from their winter homes in Peru to breed in North America during the summer.

[2] A flue takes stove exhaust from the house.

Contexts

Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature. This poem, like many others in The Envious Lobster, whimsically enacts a natural history lesson and speaks to animal welfare.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).

Johnston, Amber O’Neal. “African American Poetry: Effie Lee Newsome. Heritage Mom blog.

Photo of Chimney swifts hanging on chimney. Public Domain.
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