Birds and Nature, Vol. 12 No. 1 [June 1902]

Various

Various

Birds and Nature, Vol. 12 No. 1 [June 1902]

JUNE

O month whose promise and fulfillment blend,

And burst in one! it seems the earth can store

In all her roomy house no treasure more;

Of all her wealth no farthing have to spend

On fruit, when once this stintless flowering end.

And yet no tiniest flower shall fall before

It hath made ready at its hidden core

Its tithe of seed, which we may count and tend

Till harvest. Joy of blossomed love, for thee

Seems it no fairer thing can yet have birth?

No room is left for deeper ecstasy?

Watch well if seeds grow strong, to scatter free

Germs for thy future summers on the earth.

A joy which is but joy soon comes to dearth.

    – Helen Hunt Jackson.

WAY OF JUNE

Dark-red roses in a honeyed wind swinging,

Silk-soft hollyhock, colored like the moon;

Larks high overhead lost in light, and singing —

That’s the way of June.

Dark red roses in the warm wind falling

Velvet leaf by velvet leaf, all the breathless noon;

Far off sea waves calling, calling, calling —

That’s the way of June.

Sweet as scarlet strawberry under wet leaves hidden,

Honeyed as the damask rose, lavish as the moon,

Shedding lovely light on things forgotten, hopes forbidden —

That’s the way of June.

    – Pall Mall Gazette.

THE SWALLOW-TAILED KITE

(Elanoides forficatus.)

Hawks in highest heaven hover,

Soar in sight of all their victims:

None can charge them with deception,

All their crimes are deeds of daring.

    – Frank Bolles, “The Blue Jay.”

The late Dr. Cones enthusiastically writes of the beauty of the Swallow-tailed Kite in the following words:

“Marked among its kind by no ordinary beauty of form and brilliancy of color, the Kite courses through the air with a grace and buoyancy it would be vain to rival. By a stroke of the thin-bladed wings and a lashing of the cleft tail, its flight is swayed to this or that side in a moment, or instantly arrested. Now it swoops with incredible swiftness, seizes without a pause, and bears its struggling captive aloft, feeding from its talons as it flies. Now it mounts in airy circles till it is a speck in the blue ether and disappears. All its actions, in wantonness or in severity of the chase, display the dash of the athletic bird, which, if lacking the brute strength and brutal ferocity of some, becomes their peer in prowess – like the trained gymnast, whose tight-strung thews, supple joints, and swelling muscles, under marvelous control, enable him to execute feats that to the more massive or not so well conditioned frame would be impossible. One cannot watch the flight of the Kite without comparing it with the thorough-bred racer.”

The Swallow-tailed Kite inhabits the southern United States as far north as the Carolinas. In the interior, it frequents the Mississippi valley, commonly as far north as Minnesota and westward to the Great Plains. As a casual visitor, it is found in New York, New England and Canada. Though some may winter within the United States, the majority make their winter home in Central and South America.

Swallow-like, this Kite never seems contented unless coursing through the air. There is its home and it seems to frequent trees but little except during the breeding season, when “flocks consisting of from two or three to ten or twelve birds, but oftener of three, may be seen following one another around, frequently uttering their calls and circling in and out among the tree tops so fast as to make one dizzy to look at them.” It captures its food, eats and drinks while on the wing, and some one has said that he often wondered if it did not, at times, even sleep while flying. Its wonderful endurance and power of flight have more than once taken it across the ocean, where it has happily surprised the ornithologists of Europe.

The legs of the Swallow-tailed Kite are so short that they are practically useless for locomotion and it seldom lights on the ground.