Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed According to Their Principle of Construction

The bird is essentially a storm-lover, for by the violence of the wind upon the waves the substances on which the bird feeds are thrown to the surface, and can be snapped up before they sink again. The Petrel knows by some innate faculty the approach of a storm, and its appearance is the signal for the careful mariner to reduce his sails. The ignorant sailors, who know, from long experience, that the Petrel is the forerunner of a storm, salute it by the title of Devil's bird, together with sundry other epithets, all very forcible, but on that very account not to be printed.

Throughout the breeding season the Petrel is indefatigable in search of food, and will follow ships for considerable distances, in hopes of obtaining some of the offal that is thrown overboard by the cook. Even if a cupful of oil be emptied into the water, the Petrel will scoop it up in its bill, and take it home to its young. During the night it mostly remains with its offspring, feeding it, and making a curious grunting noise, something like the croaking of frogs. This noise is continued throughout the night, and those who have visited the great nesting-places of the Petrel, unite in mentioning it as a loud and peculiar sound. The ordinary cry is low and short, something like the quacking of a young duck. By day, however, the birds are silent, and only those who keep nightly watch on the ship's deck can have an opportunity of hearing their chattering cry.

The burrow in which the young Petrel is hatched is extremely odoriferous, the oily food on which the bird lives having itself a very rancid and unsavory scent; and in consequence of feeding upon this substance, both the habitation and the inmates are extremely offensive to the nostrils. The young bird is at first very helpless, and remains in its excavated home until it is several weeks of age. One of these birds was seen on the Thames in the month of December, 1823, where it attracted some attention, its peculiar mode of pattering over the water causing it to be taken for a wounded land bird, and inducing many persons to go in vain pursuit of the supposed cripple.

THE birds that have hitherto been mentioned are either burrowers into the earth, or adopters of burrows which have been made and deserted by fossorial mammalia. Those which now come before us are burrowers into wood, and either form their tunnels with their own beaks, or adapt to their purposes the excavations made by other creatures, and the hollows formed by natural decay.

The first in order of these birds are necessarily the WOODPECKERS, examples of which are found in most parts of the world. They are easily distinguished from any other birds by the peculiar construction of the beak, the feet, and the tail; the beak enabling them to chip away the bark and wood, the feet giving them the power of clinging to the tree-trunk, and the tail helping to support them in the attitude which gives to their strokes the greatest force. Their beaks are long, powerful, straight, and pointed; their feet are formed for grasping, and are set far back upon the body; and their tails are short and stiff, and act as props when pressed against the rough bark.

From England, the Woodpeckers are fast disappearing, and except in the few forests and woods that still remain, a Woodpecker is now seldom seen in this country. The birds, however, possess that remarkable instinct which tells them where they will be safe;

Woodpecker.

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and any one who possesses a sufficiency of trees surrounded by a wall, and who will not permit a gun to be fired within those precincts, will not have to wait very long before his eyes are gladdened by the bright colors of the Woodpecker's plumage as it darts from tree to tree, and his ears gratified by the rapid tattoo of its beak upon the wood.

We should probably have possessed many more specimens of the Woodpecker, had it not been subjected to such persecution. It was universally thought to be very hurtful to trees, and its reiterated blows were considered as so many direct injuries. If the observer could quietly make his way to a tree on which the Woodpecker was at work, he would find great flakes of bark lying on the ground, as marks of the bird's industry, and might be led to suppose that, in separating them from the trunk, the bird was inflicting a positive injury upon it. If, however, he should examine the flakes of bark, he would find that they had already been separated from the tree in the course of nature, and that they were mere useless excrescences upon its surface. Under these bark-flakes whole tribes of insects find a shelter, and it is in order to obtain the insects that the Woodpecker removes the flakes.

As is well known, this bird makes its nest in a tunnel which it hollows in the tree, and to a superficial observer might easily be reckoned among the enemies of the forest. If it were to burrow into sound timber, as is often supposed to be the case, it would certainly rank among the deadliest foes of our trees; for, in the spots where it still resides, its burrows may be seen in plenty, perforating the trunks and branches of the finest and most picturesque trees. But, in point of fact, none of the British Woodpeckers are able to cut so deep a tunnel into sound and growing wood, and are perforce obliged to choose timber which is already dead, and which has begun to decay.

Sometimes, the bird selects a spot where a branch has been blown down, leaving a hollow in which the rain has lodged and eaten its way deeply into the stem. In such places the wood is so soft that it can be broken away with the fingers, or scraped out with a stick; and in many a noble tree, which seems to the eye to be perfectly sound, the very heart-wood is being slowly dissolved by the action of water, which has gained access through some unsuspected hole. Water, when thus admitted to the interior of a tree, fills its centre with decay; and if a perforation be made through the trunk, so as to let out the contained fluid, gallon after gallon of dark brown water will gush forth, mixed with fragments of decayed wood, and betray, by its volume and consistency, the extent of the damage which it has occasioned.

Oftentimes a large fungus will start from a tree, and in some mysterious manner will sap the life-power of the spot on which it grows. When the fungus falls in the autumn, it leaves scarcely a trace of its presence, the tree being apparently as healthy as before the advent of the parasite. But the whole character of the wood has been changed by the strange power of the fungus, being soft and cork-like to the touch. Although the eye of man can not readily perceive the injury, the instinct of the Woodpecker soon leads the bird to the spot, and it is in this dead, soft, and spongy wood that the burrow is made. Mr. Waterton, who, I believe, was the first to point out this fact, has shown me many examples of the fungus and its ravages among the trees, several fine ash-trees and sycamores having been reduced to mere stumps by the silent operation of the vegetable parasite.

It is, by the way, a rather remarkable fact, that a tree which has been penetrated by water can be relieved of its burden by the hand of man. An auger, or long-shanked centre-bit, judiciously inserted, will draw off the water, and if the aperture through which it gained admission be carefully trimmed and covered, so as to prevent any further lodgment of moisture, the bark will roll over the orifice, and soon obliterate it. The same process of self-repair will heal the smaller aperture made by the auger. Sometimes, when a semi-burrowing bird, such as the titmouse, enters a hollow thus formed, and builds its nest therein, the bark grows over the entrance, and so buries the nest in the hollow of the tree. Sawyers not unfrequently find various objects in the trunks of trees, which have been imbedded by the curative powers of the tree.

Should, however, a fungus show itself, the tree is doomed. Perhaps the parasite may fall in the autumn, and the tree may show no symptoms of decay; but at the first tempest that it may have to encounter, the trunk snaps off at the spot where the fungus has been, and the extent of the injury is at once disclosed. As long as any portion of that tree retains life, it will continue to throw out these destructive fungi, and even when a mere stump is left in the ground, the fungi will push themselves out in profusion.

The pickaxe-like beak of the Woodpecker finds no difficulty in making its way through the decayed wood, and thus the bird is enabled to excavate its burrow without very much trouble. The nest itself can scarcely be called by that name, being nothing more than a collection of the smaller chips which have fallen to the extremity of the tunnel while the bird was engaged in the task of excavating. The burrow of the Woodpecker is as unpleasantly odorous as that of the kingfisher. The eggs are pure white.

In the British Museum may be seen samples of the burrows made by this bird, a portion of the tree having been cut off, and a section made, so as to show the shape, direction, and interior aspect of the hole. The specimens were obtained by Mr. Gould, the celebrated ornithologist, and the illustration was drawn from them.

According to Wilson and Audubon, some of the Woodpeckers of North America are able to excavate tunnels in the sound and still undecayed wood. They do not, however, select the hard wood in preference to that which is decayed, but always give the precedence to the latter. Still, they are often obliged to bore through several inches of solid wood, in order to reach the decayed portion in the centre. The burrowing powers of the great Ivory-billed Woodpecker are marvelous, its chisel-like beak having been known to chip splinters from a mahogany table, and to cut a hole fifteen inches in width through a lath-and-plaster partition. Even the small Downy Woodpecker is able to bore its way through solid wood, and to make a most ingenious nest, the burrow sloping for some six or eight inches, and then being driven perpendicularly down the tree. The bird takes care to make the sloping tunnel only just large enough to admit the passage of its body; but the perpendicular hole, in which it resides, is quite large and roomy, so as to deserve the name of a chamber. When first made, the hole through which the bird enters its nest is as truly circular as if cut by a centre-bit; but it loses the sharpness of its outline after it has been in use for any length of time. Both the male and female Woodpecker work at this task of excavation, laboring alternately, relieving each other in regular rotation, and pecking continually until the burrow is finished, even though they should occupy several days in completing their home. They are so intent upon their labor, that they work all day and far into the evening, hammering away like carpenters at the bench.

The nest is not unfrequently stormed and seized by a usurper, diminutive in size, but unconquerable in spirit. This is the common house-wren, which is fond of building in holes and crannies, and is by no means particular as to its domicile. Kindhearted persons are in the habit of nailing boxes to poles in their gardens for the use of this little bird, which is sure to take immediate possession, and to repay them for their benevolence by ridding their plants of noxious insects. Empty cocoa-nuts, gourds, earthen pots, and similar objects, are eagerly appropriated by the wren; and, in default of better premises, it will build in old hats, or in the sleeves of coats that have been hanging undisturbed on their pegs.