Charadrius vociferus, Killdeer, a medium-sized plover. Larger.
"In the appreciation of Nature," wrote bird enthusiast William L Dawson, "everything depends upon perspective." Especially, it would seem, when it comes to the more vocal species.
Writing about California's myriad bird species, William L. Dawson often found just the right prose rhythm to match a bird's unique personality, as in this rollicking description of the Killdeer, Oxyechus vociferours vociferous.
Oxechus is the noisemaker extraordinary, the profesional scold, the yap yap artist, the irrepressible canine of the bird world. In season and out of season her (or his) shrill cries arouse the countryside to attention, and in nine cases out of ten the object of her vociferous spite is a human being. Vocifereous is the arch accuser of the human race, and as sure as a mere man sets foot upon a portion of the domain which she counts her own, every ingenuity of alarm is brought to bear upon him, every passion and prejedice of the wild things is appealed to, and the miserable son of Adam is denounced as a wrecker of homes, an ogre and an outcast. This is unfortunate, whether one's intentions happen to be honest or not. Nobody enjoys being barked at. But be you Beauty's self, or a burglar, it is easer to placate a barking cur than it is to silence the clamorous guardian of the meadows, this self-constituted tutelary of all lesser fowls.
W. L. Dawson published his massive four volume Birds of California in 1923.
Observing the peculiar behavior of a male Sage Grouse in search of a mate, California ornithologist William Leon Dawson wonders if birds and humans are not, in fact, as unrelated as they seem.
Opera star Enrico Caruso photographed by A. Dupont, c. 1908. Larger.
In the courting antics of this valiant son of the desert, Nature has indulged a fresh fancy. Indeed, it is to be expected that the Dame takes a special delight in making some of the most staid and prosaic of her male progeny appear in a ridiculous light, when under the influence of the tender passion. This grizzled veteran of the wormwood does not express his sentiment with either dignity or grace. No; he first inflates the air sacs which line his neck until they assume alarming proportions, meeting in front and frequently engulfing his head; the tail with his spiny feathers is spread to the utmost and pointed skyward; then the gallant pitches forward and casts off for a bellybuster slide over the ground, not without much assistance of propulsive feet in approved "kid" fashion. As a result of this ridiculous dryland swim, the feathers of the breast are worn off at the tips till only the quills protrude. These ragged quill ends, in being forced over the earth, produce a mild roar which passes for an aria by Caruso with the gray lady in the sage box. La! but it is absurd! Do you supposeónow do you suppose we ever make such fools of ourselves?
Dawson completed his mammoth four-volume The Birds of California, a compendium on 580 species, in 1923. A portion of his famous collection of bird eggs can be viewed in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
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