Big Joe’s Hummingbird Nest

“Interest the child in Nature and you will unconsciously teach him humaneness, for no child can know the life-history of a bird or animal, and not become more humane toward that bird or animal." This advice was given in a class in Nature-study, by that grand "Mother of the Nature-study Movement," Anna Botsford Comstock. And how many times since can we draw such valuable returns from putting that precept into effect! One never forgets how it helped when big Joe Chinchuck, the oversized fifteen-year-old in the third grade of my one room country school, succumbed to birds. Joe had stubbornly and scornfully—and seemingly proudly—held out all year against "dat stuff." which the other children had found fascinating.

One day in late May in a studied, off-hand manner, and very secretively, Big Joe had come to me. "If you wanna come down the Barden Road wit' me, I'll show you somepin!" And in the end it was Joe—big, awkward, slow moving, slow-minded Joe—who had found a hummingbird's nest. The children had been seeking such a nest all through the school year! "Even an old one, teacher," they had said, during the fall and winter.

In the spring the hunt was on again, for a hummingbird's nest just must be found. The experience of John Burroughs, indicating how rarely a nest was discovered, had challenged them. Finding the nest was Big Joe's first experience with pride of accomplishment. He, too, was an explorer, and no Balboa standing upon a peak of Darien was ever any prouder.

First, he showed teacher, carefully and gently pushing aside the sprays of the svringa bush by Aunt Mattie's house. There, cleverly concealed, was the tiny nest, a veritable bit of fairy architecture, with its two small, white, bean-shaped eggs. Big Joe had learned much by watching. He knew what the mother-bird looked like; how she lacked the ruby throat; that she had small white spots on her tail. He had observed, too, that the male was nowhere around, that the lady bird had been alone in building her nest, incubating her eggs and would apparently have to rear her young without any aid or protection from her mate.

"He ain't no good to her. He oughta be ashamed a' hisself," said Joe, matter-of- factly. Joe, slow though he was, was learning that, even in the bird world, it is best to be cooperative.

By: davidbunch

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