As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I picked up for change another of Petersen's Bird Books, this time it was Bird Nests of North America. This was an interesting addition to my library, as it delighted me in the color prints of all of these birds which I am always bird watching for.
This is wonderful book for people who love nature and relish the chance to explore an untouched world. It reminds me of President Teddy Roosevelt on the former buffalo range of the Badlands of Dakota Territory when the terror Indians had been subdued from slaughtering Americans.
He wrote often of the Skylark, his favorite bird, or Sprague's Pipet, a high flying, sweet sounding avian of the plains.
President Theodore Roosevelt
Mr. Roosevelt was a prolific writer though, and he had many journals, some of which were in limited form or never published. One of my favorites is Avians of the Sciorra, a Hunter's Sojourn in the Buffalo Grass Wilds.
Roosevelt's Far Tweet
In it, TR writes fondly of the Titwhistle or as it was later called, Roosevelt's Far Tweet, in the genus of cyanus.
After summer showers, bring the prairie rose flowers, there appears the melodic vespers of Far Tweet, upon the distance. Usually perched upon Buffalo Berry shrubs, a companion of grouse, the long song resembles a flute whistle , rising and falling in cheerful crescendos filling the twilight with welcome to the rising full moon.
He goes on to explain the mating and nesting habits of his namesake.
Seen in the early morning, the vespers of this union alert a ready ear to the calls of nature in all her splendor. Often perched on the stalk of the season's past sunflower, the male sings cheerfully, looking up to his mate, perched on the long emptied seed head, always with head cocked, intently listening without moving as the song carries on.
The nest of the Far Tweet is located in menacing search among the lobes of the desert prickly pear cactus. Often nestled in the understory, the little pink eggs glisten like solar orbs, illuminated among the pale green orbs of the cactus.
Roosevelt goes on to say:
The Titwhistle has an exemplary diet, in being seasonal. Searching out early remaining grass seeds, it shifts to the locust of summer to feed it's fledglings, and then retires to dining upon the seeds of thistle, before it's long flight to warmer climes in October.
According to naturalists, the Far Tweet winters in the Aztec Mountains of Mexico, stretching into Guatemala and Honduras. It prefers the dry mountain jungle, where it dines upon native seeds and insects. It particularly has quinoa as a mainstay of it's diet in this period. The natives call it, textli pipiotzin, little bird eating seeds.
I highly recommend the field guide to bird nests, as a most enjoyable small coffee table book.
agtG
