Our Wood Pewee 



By Edward B. Clark 



It is better to hear the wood pewee than to see him, unless you be a student 

 of character and can look beneath the ughness of externals to find the internal 

 charm. 



Ill-shaped and with neither beauty of dress nor grace of manner to commend 

 him to the eye, the wood pewee goes apart as if feeling that his appearance 

 is an ofifense. He does not, however, resent human intrusion into his solitudes. 

 His manner plainly is: "I took myself out of your paths, but if you come to 

 me the pain of my presence be yours." 



And there in the leafy hermitage the pewee, after one sidelong glance and a 

 moment's pause in his work, will again take up his trade, which is that of a 

 snapper-up of unconsidered insect trifles. The boundaries of his hunting grounds 

 are not ten yards removed from the nest where broods his mate. His hunting 

 methods are those of the deerslayer who watches at a runway until the game is 

 passing and then strikes it down. 



It is a luckless winged insect that makes thoroughfare near the perch of the 

 wood pewee. The bird's eye detects the tiniest of the quarry and he launches out 

 from the limb, and snap! the thing is over and an unfortunate is done for. 



Probably not even the close friend of this solitary bird would claim for him 

 the gift of song. The wood pewee has only two notes, and they give him his 

 name, for he syllables "pe-wee" all the day long and at times when his shad- 

 owed home has fallen under the deeper shadow of night. 



In truth, the bird has no song, but no songster of the whole feathered range 

 can put into so small a compass a sweeter utterance. True enough, it is melan- 

 choly, but it is in close keeping with the dim surroundings and with the subdued 

 sound of the wind in the forest. The wood pewee is known to many persons 

 as a voice rather than as a bird. They have heard the plaintive call time after 

 time, but have never traced the sound to its source. No question oftener is put 

 to the student of birds than that which asks the identity of the owner of the 

 voice which almost invariably is described as possessing above all other qual- 

 ities those of sweetness and melancholy. 



As another compensation for denying anything of grace of form or manner 

 to the bird, nature taught him to build a nest that has no rival for beauty and 

 delicacy save the house of the ruby-throated humming-bird. 



The wood pewee's domicile is built of lichens woven into a fabric with fine 

 craft. In shape and size it is a small teacup, cut ofif midway of its height. 

 The nest rests upon the upper side of a horizontal limb, and a keen eye is needed 

 to detect it so closely does it resemble the lichen-covered base of a severed 

 branch. The method of its building the wood pewee holds as a secret that is 

 beyond the cunning of man to discover. 



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