USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Standard history of New Orleans, Louisiana, giving a description of the natural advantages, natural history settlement, Indians, Creoles, municipal and military history, mercantile and commercial interests, banking, transportation, etc. > Part 34
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season, are an invading army during their three weeks of passage through the vicinity of New Orleans. Their day is about over when the Kiltdeers are be- ginning to come, a few at a time, to the pastures. Out upon the fields to profit by the plentiful grasshoppers and other insects, making a final rally in the still warm sun, are the Sparrow Hawk and the Loggerhead Shrike, the latter undoubt- edly with an eye to the small birds that stay along the edges of the thickets or in the weeds. Never absent from these scenes, but unconcerned in the affairs of the other birds, White-bellied Swallows float and sail all day.
About October 20 the occurrence of the most perfect examples of the days peculiar to these middle weeks of October ceases, though possibly a little later than that date there is often a very bright, fresh-aired day, its atmosphere less akin to true fall weather than to the days of the earlier winter. This is the time for the coming of the first Titlarks, which are heard during the day, flying by at a con- siderable height. If many pass at once, there is a conglomerated twittering, but the voices of the single birds are rather decisive. After this there is a continual approach to Indian summer, whose absolute fulfillment comes some time after all summer birds are gone, and the fall transient migrants, too. The last birds of these two classes with a few exceptions, stay scarcely until November 1. In the last week or ten days of October there is a tremendous exodus of Indigo-birds, Chimney Swifts, Nighthawks, Hummingbirds, many Warblers, noticeably, the Hooded, Parula, Redstart, Magnolia and Tennessee, and sometimes the Black- throated Green and associated species; all remaining Catbirds, Wood Thrushes, Tanagers, Red-eyed, Yellow-throated and Philadelphia Greenlets, Barn Swallows, Green-crested Flycatchers, Wood Pewees and Cuckoos. For a short while there are not many birds to take the place of these, but soon White-throated Sparrows and Goldfinches troop through the woods and thickets, reinforced by the many Myrtle Warblers. The Robins, with hardly any exceptions, are the most cautious about installing themselves here for winter, the Rusty Blackbirds, however, being of about the same mind. The completest representation of this array is found, perhaps, in December, for the whole fall from October is signalized by a series of southward, deliberate advances. In the migration of the White-throated Spar- rows this is especially well seen; each new invasion of winter, severer than the one before, brings detachments of them; those before welcome those forced on, this order being repeated until all the White-throats are transported, and in the face of the winter's later biting winds no fresh voices are added to the call notes of the hosts. Specifically described, the first White-throats appear furtively and
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uneertainly the last half of October among the great numbers of birds about ; by All Saints day the numbers swell, and Thanksgiving passes with an aeeompaniment that comes universally from the thiekets.
After the sudden eold breath that initiates eaeh ehange whereby the country is more seeurely held under the grasp of winter conditions, not those of tem- perature alone, there is generally a lapse into a period of mild, half bright, some- times steaming weather, which seems to afford great pleasure to the birds. They associate a great deal at this season, as there is an evenness of taste among them about where to disport themselves ; the smaller growths along the edges of the low woods, preferably with a eover of briers near, suits the needs of nearly all. Here, when summer walks in his sleep among his despoiled domains, lively birds beeome jubilant over the nearness of his presenee; there are Kinglets, Titmiee, Wrens, a Thrasher or Hermit Thrush, and far less frequently a Bluebird ; Myrtle Warblers, White-throats, Swamp Sparrows, Cardinals and sometimes in these lower levels of the woods a floek of Goldfinehes, and, as a sentinel for the whole body, the ever-same Phobe-bird. Two birds that are thoroughly at home in this eompany, but that are found with it more rarely, are the Orange-erowned Warbler, and the Blue-headed Greenlet. The latter is an interesting bird as a winter resident, the general supposition appearing to be that it does not remain within the United States after fall; while rarely met with here in the migrations, it is regular in midwinter.
Going just outside of New Orleans in winter to the first woods we find, we are at onee in the midst of the normal conditions of bird life here in winter. There is such a thorough agreement between the birds and the surroundings that it is hard to realize that the majority of the former belong only secondarily to the soil, brought to it by the progressive ehanges of the year. In addition to the Ruby- crowned Kinglet, and the Myrtle Warbler, the Swamp and White-throated Sparrows form the body of these winter sojourners. The last two speeies and the Savanna Sparrows, however, are of equal importanee outside of the woods, being, in faet, immeasurably the most plentiful winter sparrows in distriets of Louisiana similar to those near New Orleans. Any field that is wet or marshy in spots and that has thiekets of dead weeds or briers is the absolutely eertain abode of all three speeies. The Vesper Sparrow is seldom found in the fields at New Orleans, and the Fox-eolored Sparrow is ordinarily a rarity, most likely to appear with and after the oeeasional spells of rigorous weather experieneed at the end of our winter ; the same is true in the main of the glowingly bright Purple Fineh. February
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is a eontradietory month in its bird movements ; at one time there seems undeniable progress towards spring eonditions and without warning eomes a retrogression to a temporary winter siege. The balmy breezes on eloudy days may induce the arrival of venturesome Purple Martins by February 10, or even sooner, and the middle of the month, at least, usually brings the first of this species. Representa- tive of nearly the other extreme of weather, at all events of the inelement February days, are the Cedar-birds seeking out the berry-bearing trees of the eity that will yield the best repast for their small amount of trouble. However, Cedar-birds show no inelination to go after the disagreeable February weather is long for- gotten in the realization of spring.
When the blizzards keep hands off long enough for our woods to show what they ean do with a fair ehanee, many of the trees are in a very inviting condition almost by Mareh 1, especially live oaks and willows. Following the advent of the month by from four days to a week come the first summer birds that are in any sense wood birds, the Parula Warblers. The faint musie of the seouts swells in a day or two into the delieate symphony of scores. This is always the first fact of unequivoeal importance in the growth of winter into spring. With the coming of this bird breaks the spell which made it seem as though in the matter of birds our winter had not eaused us many deprivations. The reputation of a balmy, Southern elimate has not appeared more than deserved; as we have followed the birds through the winter, their homes have eome to seem a veritable bird metropolis, with plentiful animated dwellers; but how low the ebb of all this life even, how little thrill in it, when we are brought face to face with the unbroken inpouring of spring's birds. This follows the slight pause after the Parulas enter the woods, and after the passage through them of the magieian, warm spring moisture, who unseals the buds and drapes the twigs with filmy, fluttering leaves. As we have seen, other signs of spring's beginning have been vouehsafed before this, but when the trees in the primitive swamps and level woods bceome misty with young foliage, the inerease in spring's votaries is almost immediate. The Hooded Warbler is in the forefront of this invasion from the tropies. For the first two or three days after Mareh 10 or 12 one may go through the woods and find the birds only here and there, singing modestly, but others have erowded in by the end of a week, and their musie is not seriously rivaled in the woods except by that of the White-eyed Greenlet and the Parula Warbler. If the latter speeies were represented by only a few of its kind in a small area, its notes would not tell, though they are very ineisive; but as there are such numbers of Parulas, their
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songs form almost a background for other notes. As one of the louder-voiced musicians ceases to sing, it happens half the time that there is the unfinished trill from one of a score of Parulas distant a hundred yards or more to punctuate the other song.
Another bright Warbler that soon follows the Hooded Warbler in its occu- pancy of the woods, especially those that are swampy, is the Prothonotary Warbler, which arrives with lively habits, and a gleesome heart that often overflows with a short rippling song, direct, and as bright and simple as a nosegay of spring wild flowers. Its feathers, indeed, are a bouquet of colors, yellow, blue and white, dispersed in that order from head to tail.
The new leaves now are past the stage when to a human eye each one is a marvel; a deeper green is stealing into them, and the gaunt tree frames which have stood out so sturdily against winter's assaults are already well screencd. Hardly later than the Prothonotary Warbler comes the Red-eyed Greenlet ; as it slinks about in the heart of the foliage it is a particularly inconspicuous bird; it is slim, green above, with darker cap, bordered by strong lines, and white below, tinted, especially about the sides, with pale greenish yellow. The notes commonly . heard from it at this time comprise a much accentuated double whistle, often immediately repeated in another key. As sounds impress us, these are just a little wistful.
It would not do to be all of the time within the cover of the woods at this season ; one would miss then as pleasant a sight as spring affords, the first Chimney ' Swift cutting quickly across the sky or vacillating as it coquets with the breeze. It has returned with others of its kind in time to dance in the air, filling with the rising spring incense from locusts, sweet olives, and magnolia fuscatas in city gardens. The Swift is an easy figure to recognize under nearly any circumstances ; the long black wings form a crescent, whose perfection of outline is scarcely broken by the small, dark short-tailed body. As almost a responding voice to the Swift's homelike, often excited twitter, we hear the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher's per- suasive lisp, nearer the earth, among suburban trees, the smaller live oaks seeming especially to be given over to it. This is one of the frailest of North American birds, and apparently absolutely fearless, besides. Its white underparts, washed with light gray, the ashy blue upperparts, and the long white and black tail call attention to this mite of a bird, which is always remembered by what might be said to be its grown-up ways, some of them appearing as if copied from its larger relatives-the Mockingbird and the Catbird.
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Acquaintance with the Sandpipers and other small wading birds in their more usual environment of the seashore would scarcely suggest the possibility of their conveying as truc a spring flavor as surrounds them when they tarry in migration at inland feeding tracts. By the middle of March, under the full sway of bahn-bearing winds and genial rains, they are induced to range far and wide over wet or pond-splotched pastures. In their quick transits from spot to spot they often come within the shadow of the fresh woodland borders. Two of the kinds most conspicuous arc commoner inhabitants, it is true, of wet or only grassy localities away from the scashore than they are of coasts. Solitary Sand- pipers, or Tattlers, in companies of only two or three, to irresponsible flocks of as many as twenty, are probable lingerers about any good-sized puddle or muddy pond. They often permit a close approach and after flying rise high, or, making a small detour, slant on half-closed wings to the ground again, silently, though with great earnestness. But their leave-taking of any spot from which they are frightened is made known to every creature within many stones' throws; time after time the clear "peet-wect" whips the air.
Among the pleasant evening spring sounds the soft note of the Bartramian Tattler, famous as the "Papabotte," is prominent for part of the spring after March 25; the marvel of this bird's call is that a voice absolutely free from all the harsh clements of sound can travel so far ; calmness is its pre-eminent quality. In clover pastures this species may become a familiar sight throughout April, though it is during the southward migration late in summer and in the fall that it attracts such attention from hunters, caterers, and epicures successively. The only really common flocking Sandpiper at New Orleans in spring is the "Grass Snipe," properly the Pectoral Sandpiper. Quickly moving, compact bodies of this species fly restlessly and noisily among marshy pastures.
The same side of bird-life in spring as the Sandpipers exhibit, the bird-life that chafes at narrower limits than those of fresh, open green places, has for its further exponents the Swallows, glittering and multitudinous in the soothing brightness of spring sunshine. The White-bellied, as at nearly every time of the year, is the commoncst species, though Barn Swallows are often astonishingly plentiful in April; brown Rough-winged, and Bank Swallows are lost in the out- numbering crowds of the two other species. At New Orleans the Cliff Swallow appears to be almost unknown.
The woods are well filled a few days before April 1, yet an important group of summer residents have yet to come, and numberless transients. The month of
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showers is followed by a retinue of bright and graceful birds to bring smiles the quicker when the tears have been shed. Ordinarily just preceding the inception of the woodland gayeties of these later migrants a curious example of bird travel can be noticed in the city. When a week's growth of the potency of spring air appears to occur between the morning and evening of a day in late March, hun- dreds of Chimney Swifts arrive; the air thickens with them in the later hours of afternoon. Then come whole troops of Orchard Orioles, the Wood Thrush, the Summer Tanager, the Yellow Warbler, the Kentucky Warbler and the Indigo- bird, famous for their melody and their plumage, with other less noted fellow travelers. That class of woodland near New Orleans distinguished by the greater variety of its growth,, and the absence of low, wet tracts, draws the majority of these birds. The largest number of birds seen in a single day is noted when the birds recorded in such woods the first week or ten days of April form part of the number. Ovenbirds, Water Thrushes, Catbirds, Thrashers, Red-eyed and White- eyed Greenlets, the Crested Flycatcher, and the Wood Pewee swell the concourse of the more beautiful species and of those Warblers that have been noticed already as customary in spring. Despite the wealth of color distributed among the birds then present, and the pleasant condition of the woods, the charm of this chapter in the spring story does not originate wholly with those circumstances. The soft showers that make the earth and growing things mellow set the birds in almost as cheerful and as beautiful an aspect as the sunlight; boughs dripping with warm moisture become mysterious from the scores of small, feathered forms that continue with unallayed industry their fruitful explorations ; there is a suppression of music, but not of activities in these early April showers that produces a curious effect ; in the light of the lower part of the woods Catbirds, Ovenbirds, Wood Thrushes and others of the larger birds engage in a continual restless moving about that seems almost like a romp among them, except that their notes seldom disturb the silence. 1
Still, the consummation of spring in southern localities from an ornithological standpoint is in some ways very imperfect. The final result of so many migratory advances is not woodland and fields filled with the welcome birds that have come back one after another; on the contrary, the country is poorer in many birds at the end of the season than in its early part, for our districts are not by any means the goals of many of the migrants.
One odd feature of the supplying of our woods with their summer birds is that several species should not arrive until the height of the direct course of the
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spring migration is over, carrying past birds that will nest well to the northward, and that would not seem, therefore, to have precedence in travel over those kinds that are to be perfectly fitted to Louisiana's summer conditions. The Cuckoo and the Yellow-breasted Chat exemplify this matter. At the same time, their eoming does not bring the migrations to a close, for while their advent has been later even than the dates we should aseribe for the first passage of many birds nesting northerly, actual experience with such kinds has shown that their travels through our land, when apparent, usually occur at the very end of spring. It is very likely that the earlier part of the migrating of such birds does not take place along tracks of travel through the belt of country in which New Orleans lies. The most noticeable of the birds that are finally swept along by the reeeding of perfect spring conditions that have had a temporary extension far southward are several of the Thrushes. In the last third of April and a few days in May their graceful ways are half hid by the pleasant shade of the thiekets and forest. No songs come from their throats at this time, but their forms and wood-brown colors have the refinement of beautiful music. The Olive-backed and Gray-cheeked Thrushes are nearly always associated at this time, and the Wilson's Thrush is often with them.
It is commonly during the early part of this period, in which the late migrants take advantage of the last opportunity of resting here during weather suitable to their needs, that the meadows of Audubon Park grow doubly cheerful with the odd ditties of the Black-throated Bunting. There is no need of searching deeply for the source of its song; there it is, right among the pink clovers, and the soft, wavy breeze. Barn Swallows add the pleasure of the eye to what the Black- throated Bunting has done for the ear. The highest piteh to which this short burst of delights rises comes always very near April 20. It sometimes happens that a succession of warm thunderstorms occurs a few days later than this. It is char- aeteristic of this loeality to find Spotted Sandpipers in the warm, bright days following such disturbances. These alert birds start out from the banks of canals and basins as one approaches.
May is still very young when these and other birds, moving northward under like circumstances, the less common Thrushes and Warblers, occasional Searlet Tanagers, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and Baltimore Orioles, cease to be seen. Then there is only the even round of the lives of birds quartered in our woods and suburbs for the summer. Excepting the Woodland species the Orchard Orioles are more prominent than any other birds, though the Yellow-billed Cuckoos are eommendably industrious in oceupying many shady retreats.
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The maturing forees of summer continue steadily until after the middle of June, when slight indieations of restlessness rise to the surface. A few of the birds are then beginning to range a little more widely from the elose bounds of their nesting neighborhood. Purple Martins collect in considerable flocks about dead trees ; but after three weeks or a month more it is no longer by faint intimations that a turn in the year is made apparent. When the sea breezes of July die at nights they leave an open way of invasion for innumerable Warblers of eertain species, which need very little eneouragement to press southward. The fairly substantial resemblance to autumnal conditions produced by the north airs that often blow after dark is eertain to be followed by the eoming of the Yellow and the Black-and-White Warblers, the Redstart, sometimes one or two speeies of Greenlets, several of the Sandpipers and Swallows. Though migratory move- ments do not continue as apparent at all times in the remainder of the summer, it is doubtful whether they ever eease long previous to the regular fall migration. More than half of September may pass, however, without conspicuous influxes of birds ; but between the 20th and 25th of the month important events are occurring. Usually, when the cool shadows lie under the thiekets and groves on bright days in late September, the Olive-baeked Thrush and the Catbird are back once more, the Redstart plays airily on the under boughs, and Kingbirds colleet in the more open places for a final rally.
During these times it is particularly noticeable what good observation grounds weedy fields about the eity make in fall, especially where there are thiekets or higher growths of some kind. Nearly all the birds present stop in them at one time or another ; the Warblers, as the Magnolia, the Tennessee, and the Yellow, gravitate most naturally to these repositories of inseet or vegetable dainties.
When the woods are comparatively unfruitful for the observer whose purpose is to extend his experienee to as many different birds as possible, the eireumstanee of finding an unusually fresh coneourse of birds in the commonest weeds is strong argument in proof of the unusual conditions of bird-life about New Orleans.
In faet, the peculiarities here are very plain when it is reealled that the country is such as can effeetually invite inhabitanee of Catbirds at eertain times in the year, can harbor all summer the Wood Thrushes, and that it is the very stronghold of the White-throats from autumn to spring, yet that it seldom sees a Baltimore Oriole or a Bluebird, and that a Song Sparrow or a Chipping Sparrow is praetically unknown within its limits. Further, it overflows with Tennessee Warblers in autumn and more than oeeasionally displays in that season a deeided
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commonness of several Warblers of Dendroeca that are limited in nesting time to northern districts, but in spring affords glimpses of such birds most infrequently.
The matter of the rarity of several of our birds is interesting because it is the limitations of their surroundings here that prevent their greater abundance. They are set completely into these surroundings but occasionally, when all favor- able circumstances occur at the same time. Then they are no rarer than birds constantly found in our districts. Good fortune for the ornithologist in these cases is to be in the right places at the right time.
To be able to see the unusual among the birds at New Orleans requires experience in watching the weather and the progress of spring and fall as they affect migratory movements. The success of trips out of the city, measured by the variety of birds seen, is only conditional if, as is generally true, the expeditions are planned of necessity for a definite date without reference to the probability of favorable circumstances. One might go into the woods here for years, even in spring and fall, without ever coming upon certain birds, if the expeditions were made on days lacking the element of the weather necessary for brisk and all- embracing migration. On the other hand, during a flurry of intense migratory ac- tivity the suburbs fulfill nearly all the requirements of satisfactory observation. For detaining many of the Warblers, the normally constituted and usual woods do not surpass many peculiar spots whose condition has arisen somewhat through human means; for instance, growths, not native, planted with some special object, but which are not held to the exact state intended for them, are moulded back as a whole by nature to a likeness of themselves where they exist naturally. These often supply the very harbors which the passing migrants, accustomed to such growths in the land of their nesting life, are seeking. Examples of spots distinguished by this peculiarity are many of the suburban gardens in New Orleans; groves and high hedges about sparingly cultivated fields are likewise interesting places for the bird-lover in migration.
The best woods for observation near New Orleans are across the river from the city, in Jefferson Parish, especially those about a mile back from the river and from half a mile to nearly two miles west of the Harvey's Canal. The woods on the New Orleans side of the Mississippi are rather poor in varieties of birds, but some suburban localities repay many visits. In the upper districts of New Orleans, the neighborhood of Nashville and St. Charles avenues, particularly the unopened street called "Blue Alley," is visited by many unexpected birds. North of this neighborhood, out among the cut-up fields and generally moist pastures, are suf-
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