Some Summer Days in Iowa | Page 7

billows of the air, now folding their pinions
and shooting silently downward into the trough of the sea, then opening
their wings and beating their way upwards, singing meanwhile. Going
over the woods they fly twenty to thirty feet above the tops of the
tallest trees, but when they reach the meadow lands they drop to about
the same height above the surface of the ground. Only a few of them
are nesting yet. The tall thistle by the roadside is nearly ten feet high,
but its heads have not fully opened. They like its down for their nests
and its seeds to feed the fledgelings. They fly in pairs often and in the
evenings they cling prettily to the catnip by the pasture fence, digging
into each calyx for its four sweet nutlets. The woodthrush has a late
nest in a young elm; her first family was eaten by the blue-jays just
after the hatching,--so were the young grosbeaks in a nearby tree, but
the cedar waxwings were slain and eaten by the cannibalistic grackles.
A blue-jay is just approaching the wood pewee's nest in the burr oak,
but the doughty husband does battle with the fierceness of a kingbird
and chases him away. Three tiny birdlings, covered with hairs soft and
white as the down of a thistle, are in the nest, which is saddled snugly
to the fork of a horizontal tree. In another nest, near by, the three eggs
have only just been laid. The path which used to run under the
over-hanging trees is grown up with grasses. Here the slender rush
grows best, and makes a dark crease among the taller and lighter-green
grasses, showing where the path winds. Twenty feet overhead, on the
slender branch of a white oak, is a tiny knot, looking scarcely larger
than the cup of a mossy-cup acorn. It is the nest of the ruby-throated
hummingbird, so well concealed by the leaves and by the lichens
fastened to its exterior that it would not have been noticed at all but for
the whirling wings of the exquisite creature a month ago. Her two tiny
eggs have since been safely hatched and the young birds reared; now
the nest is empty, a prize to be taken and preserved for future study and
admiration.
At the foot of a figwort stalk in the pasture, shielded by a little sprig of
choke-cherry and a wisp of grasses, a new nest is being builded. That is
why the chewink sings so happily from dawn till dark. His summer
song is now heard more often than his spring song. Through April, May
and June he sings:

Fah do do'-do'-do'-do'-do'
But now, this song is heard more often:
Me' fah'-fah'-fah'-fah'-fah'
This song is more appropriate to the summer. There is more of fullness
and beauty in it, more of the quality of the woodthrush's songs, for
which it is often mistaken.
* * * * *
From a tiny hawthorne bush, no higher than a collie's back, a field
sparrow flies nervously to a low limb of a hickory tree and begs that
her nest be not disturbed. It is neatly placed in the middle of the bush
about a foot from the ground, made of medium grasses and rootlets and
lined with finer grasses and horsehair. The three bluish-white eggs with
rufous markings at the larger end are the field-sparrow's own. Into a
nest found a month ago, at the foot of a yarrow stalk, the cowbird had
sneaked three speckled eggs, leaving only one of the pretty eggs of the
field-sparrow. At that time the cowbirds were to be seen everywhere;
they chattered every morning in the trees, and the females left their
unwelcome eggs in nearly every nest. One little red-eyed vireo's nest
had five cowbirds' eggs,--none of her own. But the birds which are
building now are generally safe from the parasite. Only rarely is a
cowbird's egg found after the middle of July. No cowbirds have been
seen since the first week of the month, save the young one on the stump,
which the field-sparrow was feeding this morning. They disappear
early, seeking seclusion for the moulting. When they emerge from their
hiding places they form into flocks, spending their days in the
grain-fields and near the rivers where the food is most abundant and
easy to procure. At nightfall they congregate, like the red-winged
blackbirds, in the sand-bar willows on the river islands.
* * * * *
Daintily flitting from one branch to another, the redstart weaves threads
of reddish gold and black, like strands of night and noon, among the

old trees. He has wandered over through the woods from the creek,
where his mate built a cup-like nest in a crotch toward the top of a
slender