BIRDS OF MY WINTER GARDEN 



BERTHA CHAPMAN 



COME with me into my garden this clear November day, that I may 

 show you some of the cheery bird visitors enjoying its food and 

 shelter. I would have you know that we too have birds other than 

 the English sparrow in our cities. Strolling quietly along the path 

 leading by the hedge, we shall surely see many of the gentle white- 

 crowned sparrows feeding on the fallen seeds. They are trim-bodied birds, 

 gray, with streaks of brown and black, and as we watch them bobbing 

 their heads we catch sight of the pure white crown that gives them their 

 name. A few brown buntings, or California towhees, are feeding with the 

 sparrows. Sometimes his shy cousin, the Oregon towhee, slips like a 

 shadow among the bushes in the lower garden. You can surely recognize 

 that cheering song of the modest brown-streaked song-sparrow, tilting on 

 the rose-spray above the hedge. 



While we are listening to the sparrow's short but oft-repeated song, 

 a flock of social finches or wild canaries comes flitting over the hedge to 

 take possession of the drying stalks of cosmos left especially for this merry 

 band. A flash of white tail-feathers, and our eyes follow to the brush-pile 

 in the fence-corner and we know the juncos are here. On the corner of the 

 shed sits our melancholy black phoebe. We should miss his sad note were 

 he suddenly to leave us after all these years. From this same station he has 

 chased the gay-winged flies till he has become a part of our life. Suddenly, 

 with a long-sustained sweep of wing and loud squall, a bluejay swoops into 

 the tall eucalyptus tree behind the hedge. A flock of tiny gray bushtits has 

 been prying among the bushes by the gate, only visible on account of their 

 constant motion, and are now lost among the branches, uttering in unison 

 a shrill ear-confusing note. Look above to the telegraph-pole. The sharp 

 hooked bill, the queer bowing motion, the glint of barred gray and rusty 

 red tell the story, — it is the hawk! A host of angry English sparrows hurl 

 rude invective at this intruder in the manner of street gamins. Crowding 

 finally upon him to the last extreme, when with a quick cut of that marvel- 

 ous wing the villain is away to the wood. 



The delicate blue-gray, black-streaked Audubon's warblers are the 

 first to return to their feeding among the masses of white waxy berries of 

 the dracaena. A solitary dwarf hermit-thrush slips into the path just ahead 

 of us. He is here all the winter, hiding in the cool damp shadows of the 

 bamboo. This gentle lover of silence comes to take the place of our rus- 

 set-backed thrush, who builds her nest and rears her young in our valleys, 

 so quietly that we do not know when the change is made, and we are 

 always blessed with a thrush. Once my garden received a visit from that 

 weird, shadowy bird, the varied thrush. A persistent high-pitched, husky 

 lisp from the trees calls our attention, for we know it is the wee ruby- 

 crowned kinglet. 



For a few weeks in winter our hearts are made glad by the flash of 

 brilliant blue from our flocks of Western bluebirds on their way to warmer 

 lands. Another rare visitor is the cedar waxwing, coming for a brief visit 

 to our pepper-trees, eating the clusters of long-hanging red berries. The 

 voice of our meadow-lark floats'to us from across the brown fields, ringing 

 clear as the crisp air of this November morning. Our robin nests far from 

 our homes in the high altitudes of the Sierra, coming to us in the winter 

 months. 



The low "chuck-chuck" of the quail comes from the barnyard where 

 they feed with the friendly fowls. The blackbirds come there too at times 

 to hold their noisy councils. Once I saw a great red-shafted flicker pausing 

 for a moment in the poplar-tree. 



Here is the choicest gem of the garden, hovering in our very faces, as 

 if to chide us for leaving him till so near the end of our visit. Our Anna's 



