Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [February, 1898]

THE SAW-WHET OWL

“Whew!” exclaims Bobbie. “Here’s another Owl. I never knew there were so many different species, mamma.”

Mamma smiled at that word “species.” It was a word Bobbie had learned in his study of Birds.

“The Saw-whet Owl,” said she, looking at the picture. “A good looking little fellow, but not handsome as the Snowy Owl in the number of Birds.”

“He was a beauty,” assented Bobbie, “such great yellow eyes looking at you out of a snow bank of feathers. This little fellow’s feet have on black shoes with yellow soles, not white fur overshoes like the Snowy Owl’s.”

“His eyes glow like topaz, though, just as the others did,” said mamma. “Let us see what he says about himself.

“As stupid as an Owl. That’s the way some people talk about us. Then again I’ve heard them say, ‘tough as a b’iled owl.’ B’iled Owls may be tough, I don’t know anything about that, for I have been too shy and wary to be caught.

“I had a neighbor once who was very fond of chickens. He was a Night Owl and said he found it easy to catch them when roosting out at night. Well he caught so many that Mr. Owl grew very fat, and the farmer whose chickens he ate, caught, cooked, and ate him. His flesh, the farmer said, was tender and sweet. So, my little friends, when you want to call anything ‘tough,’ don’t mention the Owl any more.

“A foreigner?

“Oh, my, no! I’m proud to say I am an American, and so are all my folks. A branch of the family, however, lives way up north in a region where they sing ‘God save the Queen’ instead of the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ They call themselves English Owls, I guess, because they live on British soil.

“Do I sing?

“Well, not exactly. I can hoot though, and my Ah-ee, ah-ee, ah-oo, ah-oo, has a pleasant sound, very much like filing a saw. That is the reason they call me the Saw-whet Owl. My mate says it doesn’t sound that way to her, but then as she hasn’t any ears maybe she doesn’t hear very well.

“You never see me out in the day time, no indeed! I know when the mice come out of their holes; I am very fond of mice, also insects. I like small birds, too – to eat – but I find them very hard to catch.

“Don’t you?”

THE BLACK SWAN

I advise you little folks to take a good look at me. You don’t often see a Black Swan. White Swans are very common, common as white Geese. I only wish I could have had my picture taken while gliding through the water. I am so stately and handsome there. My feet wouldn’t have shown either.

Really I don’t think my feet are pretty. They always remind me when I look down at them of a windmill or the sails of a vessel. But if they hadn’t been made that way, webbed-like, I wouldn’t be able to swim as I do. They really are a pair of fine paddles, you know.

There was a time when people in certain countries thought a Black Swan was an impossibility. As long as there were black sheep in the world, I don’t see why there shouldn’t have been Black Swans, do you?

Well, one day, a Dutch captain exploring a river in Australia, saw and captured four of the black fellows. That was way back in sixteen hundred and something, so that one of those very Black Swans must have been my great, great, great, great grandfather. Indeed he may have been even greater than that, but as I have never been to school, you know, I can’t very well count backward. I can move forward, however, when in the water. I make good time there, too.

Well, to go back to the Dutch captain. Two of the Swans he took alive to Dutchland and everybody was greatly surprised. They said “Ach!” and “Himmel,” and many other things which I do not remember. Since that time they say the Black Swans have greatly diminished in numbers in Australia. You will find us all over the world now, because we are so ornamental; people like to have a few of us in their ponds and lakes.

They say that river in Australia which the captain explored was named Swan river, and Australia took one of us for its armorial symbol. Well, a Black Swan may look well on a shield, but no matter how hard you may pull his tail-feathers, he’ll never scream like the American Eagle.

THE BLACK SWAN

AUSTRALIA is the home of the Black Swan, and it is invested by an even greater interest than attaches to the South American bird, which is white. For many centuries it was considered to be an impossibility, but by a singular stroke of fortune, says a celebrated naturalist, we are able to name the precise day on which this unexpected discovery was made. The Dutch navigator William de Vlaming, visiting the west coast of Southland, sent two of his boats on the 6th of January, 1697, to explore an estuary he had found. There their crews saw at first two and then more Black Swans, of which they caught four, taking two of them alive to Batavia; and Valentyn, who several years later recounted this voyage, gives in his work a plate representing the ship, boats, and birds, at the mouth of what is now known from this circumstance as the Swan River, the most important stream of the thriving colony of West Australia, which has adopted this Swan as its armorial symbol. Subsequent voyagers, Cook and others, found that the range of the species extended over the greater part of Australia, in many districts of which it was abundant. It has since rapidly decreased in number there, and will most likely soon cease to exist as a wild bird, but its singular and ornamental appearance will probably preserve it as a modified captive in most civilized countries, and it is said, perhaps even now there are more Black Swans in a reclaimed condition in other lands than are at large in their mother country.

The erect and graceful carriage of the Swan always excites the admiration of the beholder, but the gentle bird has other qualities not commonly known, one of which is great power of wing. The Zoologist gives a curious incident relating to this subject. An American physician writing to that journal, says that the first case of fracture with which he had to deal was one of the forearm caused by the blows of a Swan’s wing. It was during the winter of 1870, at the Lake of Swans, in Mississippi, that the patient was hunting at night, in a small boat and by the light of torches. In the course of their maneuvers a flock of Swans was suddenly encountered which took to flight without regard to anything that might be in the way. As the man raised his arm instinctively to ward off the swiftly rising birds, he was struck on his forearm by the wing of one of the Swans in the act of getting under motion, and as the action and labor of lifting itself were very great, the arm was badly broken, both bones being fractured.

When left to itself the nest of the Swan is a large mass of aquatic plants, often piled to the height of a couple of feet and about six feet in diameter. In the midst of this is a hollow which contains the eggs, generally from five to ten in number. They sit upon the eggs between five and six weeks.

It is a curious coincidence that this biographical sketch should have been written and a faithful portrait for the first time shown on the two hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Black Swan.