This picture gives some idea of the thousands and thousands of birds that nest in this part of the country. These are Pelicans. They are large birds, with large bodies and long crooked necks. Their peculiarity is a funny bill with its great punch on the under jaw. These are fish eaters. They next on the ground and when the sound are hatched they wander about back and forth among these nests. The old birds go off every day to fish, and when they return they hunt around until they find their own youngsters. They seem to be able to tell their own as easily as a mother can identify her own child. How they do this, no one seems to know. When they feed the nestlings, they open this great mouth and allow the young bird to thrust his beak down the throat and help himself to whatever he finds. It is a rather curious sight—the young bird’s head and beak is thrust so far down the mother’s throat that it looks as though the mother was trying to swallow the young one.
The killdeer is everywhere too common to need description, and even its name, called to us from roadside puddles, barnyard and meadow in the shrill kill-dee, kill-dee, kill-dee, becomes sometimes almost tiresome. “Vociferous at all times, the plover becomes doubly so when the little downy striped young are trotting about in the short grass. Then the cries and frantic endeavors of the old birds to limping, falling over, fluttering the speed wings and tail, and uttering low notes of pain, would be ludicrous if not done in tragic earnest.” — Vernon Bailey.
The cormorant is abundant along the Pacific coast, breeding in large colonies on rocky islands. The Farralone, a smaller species, breeds abundantly on the Farralone Islands, California; also in the interior, nesting in extensive colonies in trees near some of the large lakes. A colony of this species has been reported at Tule Lake, Oregon. The young are hatched entirely naked, their skin resembling a greasy black kid glove. In this condition, and even after the down is on them, they are an irresistible morsel to the hungry gulls.
The Cross-bill belongs to the Finch family. It lives in the very high mountains. Only occasionally, during the fall and winter migrations, do we see it in the lower parts of the valley. Here in Eugene, which is practically at sea level, it sometimes appears during the early winter about the outskirts of town among the fir trees, or even around the farm buildings. The Cross-bill has many of the characteristics of the Purple Finch. The male is more or less reddish; the female is a greenish gold. Peculiarly characteristic is the fact that the lower and the upper bill do not meet as they do in ordinary birds, but cross each other, much like pruning shears. Its diet consists largely of seeds of pine cones, to the extracting of which this sort of bill is well-adapted. When feeding the bird gives out a sort of intermittent cry, sometimes called a titter; when in flight it emits a short clear whistle. A flock composed entirely of Cross-bills will make considerable noise as they fly by. It has no regular nesting time, but seems to nest whenever the whim takes it — sometimes in January or February, and sometimes as late as July. The communal instinct is very well developed among them. They live in large flocks. Occasionally, however, a few will leave the flock to take care of their nestlings.
This is one of the friendly birds you will meet in your walks out in the country. It lives by the roadside, in the brush, in the leaves, in the thick undergrowth of our hillsides. He likes to come out into a little rosebush thicket where the sun is shining, and into the leaves, and there you will hear him scratching around and making a terrific noise. He scratches with both feet, backwards, and throwing the leaves at a great rate. At the same time he chirps out three little guttural, shrill notes. He can easily be recognized by his black head, chestnut-brown sides, and white breast. He is not quite as large as a robin, but a little larger than a sparrow.
The Sierra Hermit Thrush is a bird of the mountains, living and nesting habitually above 5000 feet. It frequents thick, damp woods and loves the company of rushing mountain streams. There are several species of hermit thrushes found in the northwestern part of the continent, but this is the only one that is common in Oregon in summer. The Sierra hermit thrush is considered the finest songster of all the Pacific coast birds. It has a more reddish cast to its plumage than the russet-backed thrush.
Our song sparrow is very much darker than this one, but the picture gives you some idea of the bird we know here. Mottled above and streaked below, it has a noticeably larger splotch of brown in the center of the breast. As his name denotes, the song sparrow is one of the most tuneful of the sparrow family. He is not a great or showy musician, but a singer of songs, plain every-day home songs with the heart left in them. His content and good cheer are so contagious that you welcome his voice wherever you hear it. Usually it sings from some high perch, and quite often in the evening.
These are the ones that should really be called the “Cherry Birds.” They get into the cherry trees when in flower an dip off the blossoms. Just why they do it, or what they accomplish thereby, is still a matter of doubt. The male is brightly tinged with cherry red, or with purplish colored feathers, while the female is grayer, like an ordinary sparrow, her feathers tinged with a greenish color. The Purple Finches can be heard in the fruit trees singing their song all day long. You notice the peculiar kind of beak they have — that short, conical beak that is characteristic of all the sparrow family.
Here are the male and the female Red-wing Blackbird. These birds live commonly in swamps, around tule grass areas, or along the side of a river, slough, or some such place. The male is black all over except on the tips of his shoulder where he has some bright red feathers, which may be edged with yellow in some cases. The female is gray mottled with darker brown. She has no dark colors. This bird may be distinguished from the ordinary Blackbird of our fields, the Brewer’s Blackbird, which has a white eye that can be seen a a very long distance.