it isn't good manners to sing at table

It's a tiny bird in the weed-tops, swinging and singing in a tiny voice. Listen!

From its winter home in South America, the dickcissel will be arriving in North America soon. Flying in small groups, many will pass through the Mississippi Valley on their way to Iowa; others will head to Kansas and Nebraska; some will make it farther. Most will seek meadows, cornfields, and open prairie, and although farmers might find them a pest and a nuisance, the dickie-birds will stop to rear their young, leaving before the first sign of cold weather to head back to their seasonal home. At one time, dickcissels were more numerous than any bird on the prairie, but their numbers went through a sharp decline thirty or so years ago, and while populations have stabilized, they have not recovered. As their numbers declined, so did their range; dickcissels have all but abandoned the east coast where they were once regular visitors.

Sometimes called the "black-throated bunting" or the "little field lark" the dickcissel isn't really a lark, but a finch. With its yellow breast and black throat markings, they do look similar to the meadowlark, but are much smaller in size, no more than 6 inches from tail to beak. In one of the existing drafts of Little House on the Prairie, Mary Ingalls commented that the dickcissel's "name was bigger than the bird." And, as Wilder wrote in the published version (Chapter 4, "Prairie Day"), dickcissels and meadowlarks are often seen in the same area. Male dickcissels have dingy white underparts; females have neither yellow breasts nor black throats, and their underparts are white and streaked with brown.

The dickcissel's song is short and simple ("dick dick cissel cissel"), even considered weak, and it grows monotonous when young birds are in the nest, because the male perches on a grass stem close by (the nests are messy grass cups on the ground or in clumps of weeds) and continuously warns other birds to stay away. Males no doubt are just boasting, since they can mate with 8 or more females in a season. Eggs are pale blue, and usually four or five are laid in a season. The eggs are a little over a half inch in length.

If the Ingallses really did hear dickcissels upon their arrival in Indian Territory, and those dickcissels were nesting, this pretty much puts a time-stamp on it as being from June to August, with August being quite late even for a second hatch of the season. Eggs are incubated for 12 to 15 days, and the fledglings remain in the nest for an average of 26 days. Females feed the fledglings in the vicinity of the nest for about two more weeks, so 50-54 days are needed for each hatching, and females sometimes attempt two broods per year.

I admit that I'm out of my research comfort zone as far as Little House on the Prairie is concerned, but luckily that's the area of expertise of my research partner, Penny Linsenmayer. In her "Kansas Settlers on the Osage Diminished Reserve: A Study of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie" (Kansas History, Autumn 2001 -- you can read her article in its entirety HERE), Penny writes that it is probable that the Ingallses settled in Kansas sometime in September or October 1869, when the Osage Indians were off on their fall buffalo hunt. The Ingallses were definitely in Chariton County (Missouri) in late August, because Charles Ingalls signed a Power of Attorney there on August 26.

There's not much overlap of Ingallses and dickcissels nesting in Indian Territory, with the Ingallses there after August 26, and August being really late for nest activity anyway.

Laura Ingalls Wilder may have mentioned dickcissel nests in Little House on the Prairie, but there were no nests mentioned in any of the existing drafts, just birds. Although Mary and Laura are said to touch nests they find in the grass, and those nests are full of hungry babies (see Chapter 10), there's no suggestion that these nests belong to dickcissels. Note that the dickie-birds are still everywhere when Laura and Mary go with Pa to get mud for the fireplace, and this is before cold weather sets in and dickcissels would have headed south.

Were there still dickie-birds in Montgomery County in September - October 1869, or was Laura fudging about the birds? Oh well, it's not like she remembered them, is it? She was too young. ;-)
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:30 PM