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Babes In The Woods

from Good Stories For Great Holidays - BIRD DAY

BY JOHN BURROUGHS

One day in early May, Ted and I made an expedition to the Shattega, a
still, dark, deep stream that loiters silently through the woods not far
from my cabin. As we paddled along, we were on the alert for any bit of
wild life of bird or beast that might turn up.

There were so many abandoned woodpecker chambers in the small dead
trees as we went along that I determined to secure the section of a tree
containing a good one to take home and put up for the bluebirds. "Why
don't the bluebirds occupy them here?" inquired Ted. "Oh," I replied,
"blue birds do not come so far into the woods as this. They prefer
nesting-places in the open, and near human habitations." After carefully
scrutinizing several of the trees, we at last saw one that seemed to
fill the bill. It was a small dead tree-trunk seven or eight inches in
diameter, that leaned out over the water, and from which the top had
been broken. The hole, round and firm, was ten or twelve feet above us.
After considerable effort I succeeded in breaking the stub off near the
ground, and brought it down into the boat.

"Just the thing," I said; "surely the bluebirds will prefer this to an
artificial box." But, lo and behold, it already had bluebirds in it! We
had not heard a sound or seen a feather till the trunk was in our hands,
when, on peering into the cavity, we discovered two young bluebirds
about half grown. This was a predicament indeed!

Well, the only thing we could do was to stand the tree-trunk up again as
well as we could, and as near as we could to where it had stood before.
This was no easy thing. But after a time we had it fairly well replaced,
one end standing in the mud of the shallow water and the other resting
against a tree. This left the hole to the nest about ten feet below and
to one side of its former position. Just then we heard the voice of one
of the parent birds, and we quickly paddled to the other side of the
stream, fifty feet away, to watch her proceedings, saying to each other,
"Too bad! too bad!" The mother bird had a large beetle in her beak.
She alighted upon a limb a few feet above the former site of her nest,
looked down upon us, uttered a note or two, and then dropped down
confidently to the point in the vacant air where the entrance to her
nest had been but a few moments before. Here she hovered on the wing
a second or two, looking for something that was not there, and then
returned to the perch she had just left, apparently not a little
disturbed. She hammered the beetle rather excitedly upon the limb a few
times, as if it were in some way at fault, then dropped down to try for
her nest again. Only vacant air there! She hovers and hovers, her blue
wings flickering in the checkered light; surely that precious hole MUST
be there; but no, again she is baffled, and again she returns to her
perch, and mauls the poor beetle till it must be reduced to a pulp. Then
she makes a third attempt, then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, till
she becomes very much excited. "What could have happened? Am I dreaming?
Has that beetle hoodooed me?" she seems to say, and in her dismay she
lets the bug drop, and looks bewilderedly about her. Then she flies away
through the woods, calling. "Going for her mate," I said to Ted. "She is
in deep trouble, and she wants sympathy and help."

In a few minutes we heard her mate answer, and presently the two birds
came hurrying to the spot, both with loaded beaks. They perched upon the
familiar limb above the site of the nest, and the mate seemed to say,
"My dear, what has happened to you? I can find that nest." And he dived
down, and brought up in the empty air just as the mother had done. How
he winnowed it with his eager wings! How he seemed to bear on to that
blank space! His mate sat regarding him intently, confident, I think,
that he would find the clue. But he did not. Baffled and excited, he
returned to the perch beside her. Then she tried again, then he rushed
down once more, then they both assaulted the place, but it would not
give up its secret. They talked, they encouraged each other, and they
kept up the search, now one, now the other, now both together. Sometimes
they dropped down to within a few feet of the entrance to the nest,
and we thought they would surely find it. No, their minds and eyes were
intent only upon that square foot of space where the nest had been. Soon
they withdrew to a large limb many feet higher up, and seemed to say to
themselves,

"Well, it is not there, but it must be here somewhere; let us look
about." A few minutes elapsed, when we saw the mother bird spring from
her perch and go straight as an arrow to the nest. Her maternal eye had
proved the quicker. She had found her young. Something like reason and
common sense had come to her rescue; she had taken time to look about,
and behold! there was that precious doorway. She thrust her head into
it, then sent back a call to her mate, then went farther in, then
withdrew. "Yes, it is true, they are here, they are here!" Then she went
in again, gave them the food in her beak, and then gave place to her
mate, who, after similar demonstrations of joy, also gave them his
morsel.

Ted and I breathed freer. A burden had been taken from our minds and
hearts, and we went cheerfully on our way. We had learned something,
too; we had learned that when in the deep woods you think of bluebirds,
bluebirds may be nearer you than you think.

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Previous: The Busy Blue Jay

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