48 Birds & Nature Magazine 



The May Home Coming 



By G. WILLIAM BEEBE 



FOR abundance and for perfection of 

 song and plumage, of the whole 

 year, May is the month of birds. 

 It is the migrants which we 

 should watch, and listen to, and "ogle" 

 with our opera glasses. Like many other 

 evanescent things, those birds which have 

 made their winter home in Central Amer- 

 ica — land yet beyond our travels — and 

 which use our groves merely as half-waj 

 houses on their journey to the land of their 

 birth, the balsams of Quebec, or the un- 

 known wastes of Labrador, seem most 

 precious, most worthy at this time of our 

 closest observation. 



The glories of our May bird life are the 

 wood warblers, and innumerable they must 

 seem to one who is just beginning his 

 studies; indeed, there are over seventy spe- 

 cies that find their way into the United 

 States. Many are named from the distri- 

 bution of color upon their plumage — the 

 blue-winged yellow, the black-throated 

 blue, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, and black 

 poll. Perhaps the two most beautiful — most 

 reflective of bright tropical skies and flowers 

 — are the magnolia and the blackburnian. 

 The first fairly dazzles us with its bluish 

 crown, white and black face, black and 

 olive-green back, with marked wings and 

 tail, yellow throat and rump, and strongly- 

 streaked breast. The blackburnian is an ex- 

 quisite little fellow, marked with black and 

 white, but with the crown, several patches 

 on the face, the throat and breast of a rich 

 warm orange that glows amid the green 

 foliage like a living coal of fire. The black 

 poll warbler is an easy bird to identify; but 

 do not expect to recognize it when it re- 

 turns from the North in the fall. Its 

 black crown has disappeared, and in gen- 

 eral it looks like a different bird. 



The flycatchers and vireos now appear in 

 force — little hunters of insects clad in leafy 

 greens and' browns, with now and then a 

 touch of brightness — as in the yellow- 

 throated vireo or in the crest of the king- 

 bird. 



The lesser sandpipers, both spotted and 



the solitary, teeter along the brooks and 

 ponds, and probe the shallows for tiny 

 worms. Near the woody streams the so- 

 called water thrushes spring up before us. 

 Strange birds these, in appearance like 

 thrushes, in their haunts and in their teeter- 

 ing motion like sandpipers, but in reality 

 belonging to the same family as the tree- 

 loving wood warblers. A problem not yet 

 solved by ornithologists is : What was the 

 mode of life of the ancestor of the many 

 warblers? Did he cling to and creep along 

 the bark, as the black-and-white warbler, or 

 feed from the ground or thicket as does the 

 worm-eating? Did he snatch flies on the 

 wing as the neck-laced Canadian warbler, 

 or glean from the brook's edge as our water 

 thrush ? The struggle for existence has not 

 been absent from the lives of these light- 

 hearted little fellows, and they have had 

 to be jack-of -all-trades in their search for 

 food. 



It would take too long to mention even 

 the names of the birds that we may observe 

 during a walk in May; and with bird book 

 and glasses we must see for ourselves the 

 bobolinks in the broad meadows, the cow- 

 birds and rusty blackbirds, and, pushing 

 through the lady-slipper marshes, we may 

 surprise the solitary great blue and the little 

 green herons at their silent fishing. 



No matter how late the spring may be, 

 saj^s Mr. Beebe in "The Log of the Sun," 

 the great migration host will reach its 

 height from the tenth to the fifteenth of the 

 month. From this until the first of June, 

 migrants will be passing, but in fewer and 

 fewer numbers, until the balance comes to 

 rest again, and we may cease from the 

 strenuous labors of the last few weeks, con- 

 fident that those birds that remain will be 

 the builders of the nests near our homes — 

 nests that they know so well to hide. Even 

 before the last day of May passes, we see 

 many young biids on their first weak- 

 winged flights, such as bluebirds and robins ; 

 but June is the great month of bird homes. 

 as to May belong the migrants. 



