And early bees hum round the hive,
When woodchucks creep from out their lair
Right glad to find themselves alive,
When sheep go nibbling through the fields,
Then PhЕ“be oft her name reveals,
"PhЕ“be,
PhЕ“be, phЕ“be," a plaintive cry,
While jack-snipes call in morning sky.

When wild ducks quack in creek and pond
And bluebirds perch on mullein-stalks,
When spring has burst her icy bond
And in brown fields the sleek crow walks,
When chipmunks court in roadside walls,
Then PhЕ“be from the ridgeboard calls,
"PhЕ“be,
PhЕ“be, phЕ“be," and lifts her cap,
While smoking Dick doth boil the sap.




THE COWBIRD


The cow blackbird is a noticeable songster in April, though it takes a
back seat a little later. It utters a peculiarly liquid April sound.
Indeed, one would think its crop was full of water, its notes so bubble
up and regurgitate, and are delivered with such an apparent stomachic
contraction. This bird is the only feathered polygamist we have. The
females are greatly in excess of the males, and the latter are usually
attended by three or four of the former. As soon as the other birds
begin to build, they are on the _qui vive_, prowling about like gypsies,
not to steal the young of others, but to steal their eggs into other
birds' nests, and so shirk the labor and responsibility of hatching and
rearing their own young.

The cowbird's tactics are probably to watch the movements of the parent
bird. She may often be seen searching anxiously through the trees or
bushes for a suitable nest, yet she may still oftener be seen perched
upon some good point of observation watching the birds as they come and
go about her. There is no doubt that, in many cases, the cowbird makes
room for her own illegitimate egg in the nest by removing one of the
bird's own. I found a sparrow's nest with two sparrow's eggs and one
cowbird's egg, and another egg lying a foot or so below it on the
ground. I replaced the ejected egg, and the next day found it again
removed, and another cowbird's egg in its place. I put it back the
second time, when it was again ejected, or destroyed, for I failed to
find it anywhere. Very alert and sensitive birds, like the warblers,
often bury the strange egg beneath a second nest built on top of the
old. A lady living in the suburbs of an Eastern city heard cries of
distress one morning from a pair of house wrens that had a nest in a
honeysuckle on her front porch. On looking out of the window, she beheld
this little comedy,--comedy from her point of view, but no doubt grim
tragedy from the point of view of the wrens: a cowbird with a wren's egg
in its beak running rapidly along the walk, with the outraged wrens
forming a procession behind it, screaming, scolding, and gesticulating
as only these voluble little birds can. The cowbird had probably been
surprised in the act of violating the nest, and the wrens were giving
her a piece of their minds.

Every cowbird is reared at the expense of two or more song-birds. For
every one of these dusky little pedestrians there amid the grazing
cattle there are two or more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less.
It is a big price to pay,--two larks for a bunting,--two sovereigns for
a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate occasionally to contradict
herself in just this way. The young of the cowbird is disproportionately
large and aggressive, one might say hoggish. When disturbed, it will
clasp the nest and scream and snap its beak threateningly. One was
hatched out in a song sparrow's nest which was under my observation, and
would soon have overridden and overborne the young sparrow which came
out of the shell a few hours later, had I not interfered from time to
time and lent the young sparrow a helping hand. Every day I would visit
the nest and take the sparrow out from