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I have heard it objected against these thrushes, whose extreme commonness renders them less highly esteemed than they would otherwise be, that they find their voices too early in the morning. But I am not myself prepared to second the criticism. They are not often at their matins, I think, until the eastern sky begins to flush, and it is not quite certain to my mind that they are wrong in assuming that daylight makes daytime. I have questioned before now whether our own custom of sitting up for five or six hours after sunset, and then lying abed two or three hours after sunrise, may not have come down to us from times when there were still people in the world who loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil; and whether, after all, in this as in some other respects, we might not wisely take pattern of the fowls of the air.
Individually, the phoebes were almost as noisy as the robins, but of course their numbers were far less. They are models of perseverance. Were their voice equal to the nightingale's they could hardly be more assiduous and enthusiastic in its use. As a general thing they are content to repeat the simple Phoebe, Phoebe (there are moods in the experience of all of us, I hope, when the repetition of a name is by itself music sufficient), but it is not uncommon for this to be heightened to Phoebe, O Phoebe; and now and then you will hear some fellow calling excitedly, Phoebe, Phoebe-be-be-be-be,—a comical sort of stuttering, in which the difficulty is not in getting hold of the first syllable, but in letting go the last one. On the 15th I witnessed a certain other performance of theirs,—one that I had seen two or three times the season previous, and for which I had been on the lookout from the first day of the month. I heard a series of chips, which might have been the cries of a chicken, but which, it appeared, did proceed from a phoebe, who, as I looked up, was just in the act of quitting his perch on the ridge-pole of a barn. He rose for perhaps thirty feet, not spirally, but in a zigzag course,—like a horse climbing a hill with a heavy load,—all the time calling, chip, chip, chip. Then he went round and round in a small circle, with a kind of hovering action of the wings, vociferating hurriedly, Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe; after which he shot down into the top of a tree, and with a lively flirt of his tail took up again the same eloquent theme. During the next few weeks I several times found birds of this species similarly engaged. And it is worthy of remark that, of the four flycatchers which regularly pass the summer with us, three may be said to be, in the habit of singing in the air, while the fourth (the wood pewee) does the same thing, only with less frequency. It is curious, also, on the other hand, that not one of our eight common New England thrushes, as far as I have ever seen or heard, shows the least tendency toward any such state of lyrical exaltation. Yet the thrushes are song birds par excellence, while the phoebe, the least flycatcher, and the kingbird are not supposed to be able to sing at all. The latter have the soul of music in them, at any rate; and why should it not be true of birds, as it is of human poets and would-be poets, that sensibility and faculty are not always found together? Perhaps those who have nothing but the sensibility have, after all, the better half of the blessing.
The golden-winged woodpeckers shouted comparatively little before the middle of the month, and I heard nothing of their tender wick-a-wick until the 22d. After that they were noisy enough. With all their power of lungs, however, they not only are not singers; they do not aspire to be. They belong to the tribe of Jubal. Hearing somebody drumming on tin, I peeped over the wall, and saw one of these pigeon woodpeckers hammering an old tin pan lying in the middle of the pasture. Rather small sport, I thought, for so large a bird. But that was a matter of opinion, merely, and evidently the performer himself had no such scruples. He may even have considered that his ability to play on this instrument of the tinsmith's went far to put him on an equality with some who boast themselves the only tool-using animals. True, the pan was battered and rusty; but it was resonant, for all that, and day after day he pleased himself with beating reveille upon it. One morning I found him sitting in a tree, screaming lustily in response to another bird in an adjacent field. After a while, waxing ardent, he dropped to the ground, and, stationing himself before his drum, proceeded to answer each cry of his rival with a vigorous rubadub, varying the programme with an occasional halloo. How long this would have lasted there is no telling, but he caught sight of me, skulking behind a tree-trunk, and flew back to his lofty perch, where he was still shouting when I came away. It was observable that, even in his greatest excitement, he paused once in a while to dress his feathers. At first I was inclined to take this as betraying a want of earnestness; but further reflection led me to a different conclusion. For I imagine that the human lover, no matter how consuming his passion, is seldom carried so far beyond himself as not to be able to spare now and then a thought to the parting of his hair and the tie of his cravat.
Seeing the great delight which this woodpecker took in his precious tin pan, it seemed to me not at all improbable that he had selected his summer residence with a view to being near it, just as I had chosen mine for its convenience of access to the woods on the one hand, and to the city on the other. I shall watch with interest to see whether he returns to the same pasture another year.
A few field sparrows and chippers showed themselves punctually on the 15th; but they were only scouts, and the great body of their followers were more than a week behind them. I saw no bay-winged buntings until the 22d, although it is likely enough they had been here for some days before that. By a lucky chance, my very first bird was a peculiarly accomplished musician: he altered his tune at nearly every repetition of it, sang it sometimes loudly and then softly, and once in a while added cadenza-like phrases. It lost nothing by being heard on a bright, frosty morning, when the edges of the pools were filmed with ice.
Only three species of warblers appeared during the month: the pine-creeping warblers, already spoken of, who were trilling on the 14th; the yellow-rumped, who came on the 23d; and the yellow red-polls, who followed the next morning. The black-throated greens were mysteriously tardy, and the black-and-white creepers waited for May-day.
A single brown thrush was leading the chorus on the 29th. "A great singer," my note-book says: "not so altogether faultless as some, but with a large voice and style, adapted to a great part;" and then is added, "I thought this morning of Titiens, as I listened to him!"—a bit of impromptu musical criticism, which, under cover of the saving quotation marks may stand for what it is worth.
Not long after leaving him I ran upon two hermit thrushes (one had been seen on the 25th), flitting about the woods like ghosts. I whistled softly to the first, and he condescended to answer with a low chuck, after which I could get nothing more out of him. This demure taciturnity is very curious and characteristic, and to me very engaging. The fellow will neither skulk nor run, but hops upon some low branch, and looks at you,—behaving not a little as if you were the specimen and he the student! And in such a case, as far as I can see, the bird equally with the man has a right to his own point of view.
The hermits were not yet in tune; and without forgetting the fox-colored sparrows and the linnets, the song sparrows and the bay-wings, the winter wrens and the brown thrush, I am almost ready to declare that the best music of the month came from the smallest of all the month's birds, the ruby-crowned kinglets. Their spring season is always short with us, and unhappily it was this year shorter even than usual, my dates being April 23d and May 5th. But we must be thankful for a little, when the little is of such a quality. Once I descried two of them in the topmost branches of a clump of tall maples. For a long time they fed in silence; then they began to chase each other about through the trees, in graceful evolutions (I can imagine nothing more graceful), and soon one, and then the other, broke out into song. "'Infinite riches in a little room,'" my note-book says, again; and truly the song is marvelous,—a prolonged and varied warble, introduced and often broken into, with delightful effect, by a wrennish chatter. For fluency, smoothness, and ease, and especially for purity and sweetness of tone, I have never heard any bird-song that seemed to me more nearly perfect. If the dainty creature would bear confinement,—on which point I know nothing,—he would make an ideal parlor songster; for his voice, while round and full,—in contrast with the goldfinch's, for example,—is yet, even at its loudest, of a wonderful softness and delicacy. Nevertheless, I trust that nobody will ever cage him. Better far go out-of-doors, and drink in the exquisite sounds as they drop from the thick of some tall pine, while you catch now and then a glimpse of the tiny author, flitting busily from branch to branch, warbling at his work; or, as you may oftener do, look and listen to your heart's content, while he explores some low cedar or a cluster of roadside birches, too innocent and happy to heed your presence. So you will carry home not the song only, but "the river and sky."
But if the kinglets were individually the best singers, I must still confess that the goldfinches gave the best concert. It was on a sunny afternoon,—the 27th,—and in a small grove of tall pitch-pines. How many birds there were I could form little estimate, but when fifteen flew away for a minute or two the chorus was not perceptibly diminished. All were singing, twittering, and calling together; some of them directly over my head, the rest scattered throughout the wood. No one voice predominated in the least; all sang softly, and with an indescribable tenderness and beauty. Any who do not know how sweet the goldfinch's note is may get some conception of the effect of such a concert if they will imagine fifty canaries thus engaged out-of-doors. I declared then that I had never heard anything so enchanting, and I am not certain even now that I was over-enthusiastic.
A pine-creeping warbler, I remember, broke in upon the choir two or three times with his loud, precise trill. Foolish bird! His is a pretty song by itself, but set in contrast with music so full of imagination and poetry, it sounded painfully abrupt and prosaic.
I discovered the first signs of nest-building on the 13th, while investigating the question of a bird's ambi-dexterity. It happened that I had just been watching a chickadee, as he picked chip after chip from a dead branch, and held them fast with one claw, while he broke them in pieces with his beak; and walking away, it occurred to me to ask whether or not he could probably use both feet equally well for such a purpose. Accordingly, seeing another go into an apple-tree, I drew near to take his testimony on that point. But when I came to look for him he was nowhere in sight, and pretty soon it appeared that he was at work in the end of an upright stub, which he had evidently but just begun to hollow out, as the tip of his tail still protruded over the edge. A bird-lover's curiosity can always adapt itself to circumstances, and in this case it was no hardship to postpone the settlement of my newly raised inquiry, while I observed the pretty labors of my little architect. These proved to be by no means inconsiderable, lasting nearly or quite three weeks. The birds were still bringing away chips on the 30th, when their cavity was about eleven inches deep; but it is to be said that, as far as I could find out, they never worked in the afternoon or on rainy days.
Their demeanor toward each other all this time was beautiful to see; no effusive display of affection, but every appearance of a perfect mutual understanding and contentment. And their treatment of me was no less appropriate and delightful,—a happy combination of freedom and dignified reserve. I took it for an extremely neat compliment to myself, as well as incontestable evidence of unusual powers of discrimination on their part.
On my second visit the female sounded a call as I approached the tree, and I looked to see her mate take some notice of it; but he kept straight on with what he was doing. Not long after she spoke again, however; and now it was amusing to see the fellow all at once stand still on the top of the stub, looking up and around, as much as to say, "What is it, my dear? I see nothing." Apparently it was nothing, and he went head first into the hole again. Pretty soon, while he was inside, I stepped up against the trunk. His mate continued silent, and after what seemed a long time he came out, flew to an adjacent twig, dropped his load, and returned. This he did over and over (the end of the stub was perhaps ten feet above my head), and once he let fall a beakful of chips plump in my face. They were light, and I did not resent the liberty.
Two mornings later I found him at his task again, toiling in good earnest. In and out he went, taking care to bring away the shavings at every trip, as before, and generally sounding a note or two (keeping the tally, perhaps) before he dropped them. For the fifteen minutes or so that I remained, his mate was perched in another branch of the same tree, not once shifting her position, and doing nothing whatever except to preen her feathers a little. She paid no attention to her husband, nor did he to her. It was a revelation to me that a chickadee could possibly sit still so long.
Eight days after this they were both at work, spelling each other, and then going off in company for a brief turn at feeding.
So far they had never manifested the least annoyance at my espionage; but the next morning, as I stood against the tree, one of them seemed slightly disturbed, and flew from twig to twig about my head, looking at me from all directions with his shining black eyes. The reconnoissance was satisfactory, however; everything went on as before, and several times the chips rattled down upon my stiff Derby hat. The hole was getting deep, it was plain; I could hear the little carpenter hammering at the bottom, and then scrambling up the walls on his way out. One of the pair brought a black tidbit from a pine near by, and offered it to the other as he emerged into daylight. He took it from her bill, said chit,—chickadese for thank you,—and hastened back into the mine.
Finally, on the 27th, after watching their operations a while from the ground, I swung myself into the tree, and took a seat with them. To my delight, the work proceeded without interruption. Neither bird made any outcry, although one of them hopped round me, just out of reach, with evident curiosity. He must have thought me a queer specimen. When I drew my overcoat up after me and put it on, they flew away; but within a minute or two they were both back again, working as merrily as ever, and taking no pains not to litter me with their rubbish. Once the female (I took it to be she from her smaller size, not from this piece of shiftlessness) dropped her load without quitting the stub, a thing I had not seen either of them do before. Twice one brought the other something to eat. At last the male took another turn at investigating my character, and it began to look as if he would end with alighting on my hat. This time, too, I am proud to say, the verdict was favorable.
Their confidence was not misplaced, and unless all signs failed they reared a full brood of tits. May their tribe increase! Of birds so innocent and unobtrusive, so graceful, so merry-hearted, and so musical, the world can never have too many.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] In the titmouse's cosmological system trees occupy a highly important place, we may be sure; while the purpose of their tall, upright method of growth no doubt receives a very simple and logical (and correspondingly lucid) explanation.
[23] While this book is passing through the press (April 30th, 1885) I am privileged with another sight and sound of the woodcock's vespertine performance, and under peculiarly favorable conditions. In the account given above, sufficient distinction is not made between the clicking noise, heard while the bird is soaring, and the sounds which signalize his descent. The former is probably produced by the wings, although I have heretofore thought otherwise, while the latter are certainly vocal, and no doubt intended as a song. But they are little if at all louder than the click, click of the wings, and as far as I have ever been able to make out are nothing more than a series of quick, breathless whistles, with no attempt at either melody or rhythm.
In the present instance I could see only the start and the "finish," when the bird several times passed directly by and over me, as I stood in a cluster of low birches, within two or three rods of his point of departure. His angle of flight was small; quite as if he had been going and coming from one field to another, in the ordinary course. Once I timed him, and found that he was on the wing for a few seconds more than a minute.
[24] Still further to corroborate my "pet theory," I may say here in a foot-note, what I have said elsewhere with more detail, that before the end of the following month the hermit thrushes, the olive-backed thrushes, and the gray-cheeked thrushes all sang for me in my Melrose woods.
Let me explain, also, that when I call the brown creeper a silent migrant I am not unaware that others beside myself, and more than myself, have heard him sing while traveling. Mr. William Brewster, as quoted by Dr. Brewer in the History of North American Birds, has been exceptionally fortunate in this regard. But my expression is correct as far as the rule is concerned; and the latest word upon the subject which has come under my eye is this from Mr. E. P. Bicknell's "Study of the Singing of our Birds," in The Auk for April, 1884: "Some feeble notes, suggestive of those of Regulus satrapa, are this bird's usual utterance during its visit. Its song I have never heard."
AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY.
Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intends, and what the French.
MILTON.
AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY.
My trip to Lake Memphremagog was by the way, and was not expected to detain me for more than twenty-four hours; but when I went ashore at the Owl's Head Mountain-House, and saw what a lodge in the wilderness it was, I said to myself, Go to, this is the place; Mount Mansfield will stand for another year at least, and I will waste no more of my precious fortnight amid dust and cinders. Here were to be enjoyed many of the comforts of civilization, with something of the wildness and freedom of a camp. Out of one of the windows of my large, well-furnished room I could throw a stone into the trackless forest, where, any time I chose, I could make the most of a laborious half-hour in traveling half a mile. The other two opened upon a piazza; whence the lake was to be seen stretching away northward for ten or fifteen miles, with Mount Orford and his supporting hills in the near background; while I had only to walk the length of the piazza to look round the corner of the house at Owl's Head itself, at whose base we were. The hotel had less than a dozen guests and no piano, and there was neither carriage-road nor railway within sight or hearing. Yes, this was the place where I would spend the eight days which yet remained to me of idle time.
Of the eight days five were what are called unpleasant; but the unseasonable cold, which drove the stayers in the house to huddle about the fire, struck the mosquitoes with a torpor which made strolling in the woods a double luxury; while the rain was chiefly of the showery sort, such as a rubber coat and old clothes render comparatively harmless. Not that I failed to take a hand with my associates in grumbling about the weather. Table-talk would speedily come to an end in such circumstances if people were forbidden to criticise the order of nature; and it is not for me to boast any peculiar sanctity in this respect. But when all was over, it had to be acknowledged that I, for one, had been kept in-doors very little. In fact, if the whole truth were told, it would probably appear that my fellow boarders, seeing my persistency in disregarding the inclemency of the elements, soon came to look upon me as decidedly odd, though perhaps not absolutely demented. At any rate, I was rather glad than otherwise to think so. In those long days there must often have been a dearth of topics for profitable conversation, no matter how outrageous the weather, and it was a pleasure to believe that this little idiosyncracy of mine might answer to fill here and there a gap. For what generous person does not rejoice to feel that even in his absence he may be doing something for the comfort and well-being of his brothers and sisters? As Seneca said, "Man is born for mutual assistance."
According to Osgood's "New England," the summit of Owl's Head is 2,743 feet above the level of the lake, and the path to it is a mile and a half and thirty rods in length. It may seem niggardly not to throw off the last petty fraction; and indeed we might well enough let it pass if it were at the beginning of the route,—if the path, that is, were thirty rods and a mile and a half long. But this, it will be observed, is not the case; and it is a fact perfectly well attested, though perhaps not yet scientifically accounted for (many things are known to be true which for the present cannot be mathematically demonstrated), that near the top of a mountain thirty rods are equivalent to a good deal more than four hundred and ninety-five feet. Let the guide-book's specification stand, therefore, in all its surveyor-like exactness. After making the climb four times in the course of eight days, I am not disposed to abate so much as a jot from the official figures. Rather than do that I would pin my faith to an unprofessional-looking sign-board in the rear of the hotel, on which the legend runs, "Summit of Owl's Head 2-1/4 miles." For aught I know, indeed (in such a world as this, uncertainty is a principal mark of intelligence),—for aught I know, both measurements may be correct; which fact, if once it were established, would easily and naturally explain how it came to pass that I myself found the distance so much greater on some days than on others; although, for that matter, which of the two would be actually longer, a path which should rise 2,743 feet in a mile and a half, or one that should cover two miles and a quarter in reaching the same elevation, is a question to which different pedestrians would likely enough return contradictory answers.[25]
Yet let me not be thought to magnify so small a feat as the ascent of Owl's Head, a mountain which the ladies of the Appalachian Club may be presumed to look upon as hardly better than a hillock. The guide-book's "thirty rods" have betrayed me into saying more than I intended. It would have been enough had I mentioned that the way is in many places steep, while at the time of my visit the constant rains kept it in a muddy, treacherous condition. I remember still the undignified and uncomfortable celerity with which, on one occasion, I took my seat in what was little better than the rocky bed of a brook, such a place as I should by no means have selected for the purpose had I been granted even a single moment for deliberation.
"Hills draw like heaven" (as applied to some of us, it may be feared that this is rather an under-statement), and it could not have been more than fifteen minutes after I landed from the Lady of the Lake—the "Old Lady," as one of the fishermen irreverently called her—before I was on my way to the summit.
I was delighted then, as I was afterwards, whenever I entered the woods, with the extraordinary profusion and variety of the ferns. Among the rest, and one of the most abundant, was the beautiful Cystopteris bulbifera; its long, narrow, pale green, delicately cut, Dicksonia-like fronds bending toward the ground at the tip, as if about to take root for a new start, in the walking-fern's manner. Some of these could not have been less than four feet in length (including the stipe), and I picked one which measured about two feet and a half, and bore twenty-five bulblets underneath. Half a mile from the start, or thereabouts, the path skirts what I should call the fernery; a circular space, perhaps one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, set in the midst of the primeval forest, but itself containing no tree or shrub of any sort,—nothing but one dense mass of ferns. In the centre was a patch of the sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis), while around this, and filling nearly the entire circle, was a magnificent thicket of the ostrich fern (Onoclea struthiopteris), with sensibilis growing hidden and scattered underneath. About the edge were various other species, notably Aspidium Goldianum, which I here found for the first time, and Aspidium aculeatum, var. Braunii. All in all, it was a curious and pretty sight,—this tiny tarn filled with ferns instead of water,—one worth going a good distance to see, and sure to attract the notice of the least observant traveler.[26]
Ferns are mostly of a gregarious habit. Here at Owl's Head, for instance, might be seen in one place a rock thickly matted with the common polypody; in another a patch of the maiden-hair; in still another a plenty of the Christmas fern, or a smaller group of one of the beech ferns (Phegopteris polypodioides or Phegopteris Dryopteris). Our grape-ferns or moonworts, on the other hand, covet more elbow-room. The largest species (Botrychium Virginianum), although never growing in anything like a bed or tuft, was nevertheless common throughout the woods; you could gather a handful almost anywhere; but I found only one plant of Botrychium lanceolatum, and only two of Botrychium matricariaefolium (and these a long distance apart), even though, on account of their rarity and because I had never before seen the latter, I spent considerable time, first and last, in hunting for them. What can these diminutive hermits have ever done or suffered, that they should choose thus to live and die, each by itself, in the vast solitude of a mountain forest?
It was already the middle of July, so that I was too late for the better part of the wood flowers. The oxalis (Oxalis acetosella), or wood-sorrel was in bloom, however, carpeting the ground in many places. I plucked a blossom now and then to admire the loveliness of the white cup, with its fine purple lines and golden spots. If each had been painted on purpose for a queen, they could not have been more daintily touched. Yet here they were, opening by the thousand, with no human eye to look upon them. Quite as common (Wordsworth's expression, "Ground flowers in flocks," would have suited either) was the alpine enchanter's night-shade (Circaea alpina); a most frail and delicate thing, though it has little other beauty. Who would ever mistrust, to see it, that it would prove to be connected in any way with the flaunting willow-herb, or fire-weed? But such incongruities are not confined to the "vegetable kingdom." The wood-nettle was growing everywhere; a juicy-looking but coarse weed, resembling our common roadside nettles only in its blossoms. The cattle had found out what I never should have surmised,—having had a taste of its sting,—that it is good for food; there were great patches of it, as likewise of the pale touch-me-not (Impatiens pallida), which had been browsed over by them. It seemed to me that some of the ferns, the hay-scented for example, ought to have suited them better; but they passed these all by, as far as I could detect. About the edges of the woods, and in favorable positions well up the mountain-side, the flowering raspberry was flourishing; making no display of itself, but offering to any who should choose to turn aside and look at them a few blossoms such as, for beauty and fragrance, are worthy to be, as they really are, cousin to the rose. On one of my rambles I came upon some plants of a strangely slim and prim aspect; nothing but a straight, erect, military-looking, needle-like stalk, bearing a spike of pods at the top, and clasped at the middle by two small stemless leaves. By some occult means (perhaps their growing with Tiarella had something to do with the matter) I felt at once that these must be the mitrewort (Mitella diphylla). My prophetic soul was not always thus explicit and infallible, however. Other novelties I saw, about which I could make no such happy impromptu guess. And here the manual afforded little assistance; for it has not yet been found practicable to "analyze," and so to identify plants simply by the stem and foliage,—although I remember to have been told, to be sure, of a young lady who professed that at her college the instruction in botany was so thorough that it was possible for the student to name any plant in the world from seeing only a single leaf! But her college was not Harvard, and Professor Gray has probably never so much as heard of such an admirable method.
On the whole, it is good to have the curiosity piqued with here and there a vegetable stranger,—its name and even its family relationship a mystery. The leaf is nothing extraordinary, perhaps, yet who knows but that the bloom may be of the rarest beauty? Or the leaf is of a gracious shape and texture, but how shall we tell whether the flower will correspond with it? No; we must do with them as with chance acquaintances of our own kind. The man looks every inch a gentleman; his face alone seems a sufficient guaranty of good-breeding and intelligence; but none the less,—and not forgetting that charity thinketh no evil,—we shall do well to wait till we have heard him talk and seen how he will behave, before we put a final label upon him. Wait for the blossom and the fruit (the blossom is the fruit in its first stage); for the old rule is still the true one,—alike in botany and in morals,—"By their fruits ye shall know them."
What a world within a world the forest is! Under the trees were the shrubs,—knee-high rock-maples making the ground verdant for acres together, or dwarf thickets of yew, now bearing green acorn-like berries; while below these was a variegated carpet, oxalis and the flower of Linnaeus, ferns and club-mosses (the glossy Lycopodium lucidulum was especially plentiful), to say nothing of the true mosses and the lichens.
Of all these things I should have seen more, no doubt, had not my head been so much of the time in the tree-tops. For yonder were the birds; and how could I be expected to notice what lay at my feet, while I was watching intently for a glimpse of the warbler that flitted from twig to twig amid the foliage of some beech or maple, the very lowest branch of which, likely enough, was fifty or sixty feet above the ground. It was in this way (so I choose to believe, at any rate) that I walked four or five times directly over the acute-leaved hepatica before I finally discovered it, notwithstanding it was one of the plants for which I had all the while been on the lookout.
I said that the birds were in the tree-tops; but of course there were exceptions. Here and there was a thrush, feeding on the ground; or an oven-bird might be seen picking his devious way through the underwoods, in paths of his own, and with a gait of studied and "sanctimonious" originality. In the list of the lowly must be put the winter wrens also; one need never look skyward for them. For a minute or two during my first ascent of Owl's Head I had lively hopes of finding one of their nests. Two or three of the birds were scolding earnestly right about my feet, as it were, and their cries redoubled, or so I imagined, when I approached a certain large, moss-grown stump. This I looked over carefully on all sides, putting my fingers into every possible hole and crevice, till it became evident that nothing was to be gained by further search. (What a long chapter we could write, any of us who are ornithologists, about the nests we did not find!) It dawned upon me a little later that I had been fooled; that it was not the nest which had been in question at all. That, wherever it was, had been forsaken some days before; and the birds were parents and young, the former distracting my attention by their outcries, while at the same moment they were ordering the youngsters to make off as quickly as possible, lest yonder hungry fiend should catch and devour them. If wrens ever laugh, this pair must have done so that evening, as they recalled to each other my eager fumbling of that innocent old stump. This opinion as to the meaning of their conduct was confirmed in the course of a few days, when I came upon another similar group. These were at first quite unaware of my presence; and a very pretty family picture they made, in their snuggery of overthrown trees, the father breaking out into a song once in a while, or helping his mate to feed the young, who were already able to pick up a good part of their own living. Before long, however, one of the pair caught sight of the intruder, and then all at once the scene changed. The old birds chattered and scolded, bobbing up and down in their own ridiculous manner (although, considered by itself, this gesture is perhaps no more laughable than some which other orators are applauded for making), and soon the place was silent and to all appearance deserted.
Notwithstanding Owl's Head is in Canada, the birds, as I soon found, were not such as characterize the "Canadian Fauna." Olive-backed thrushes, black-poll warblers, crossbills, pine linnets, and Canada jays, all of which I had myself seen in the White Mountains, were none of them here; but instead, to my surprise, were wood thrushes, scarlet tanagers, and wood pewees,—the two latter species in comparative abundance. My first wood thrush was seen for a moment only, and although he had given me a plain sight of his back, I concluded that my eyes must once more have played me false. But within a day or two, when half-way down the mountain path, I heard the well-known strain ringing through the woods. It was unquestionably that, and nothing else, for I sat down upon a convenient log and listened for ten minutes or more, while the singer ran through all those inimitable variations which infallibly distinguish the wood thrush's song from every other. And afterward, to make assurance doubly sure, I again saw the bird in the best possible position, and at short range. On looking into the subject, indeed, I learned that his being here was nothing wonderful; since, while it is true, as far as the sea-coast is concerned, that he seldom ventures north of Massachusetts, it is none the less down in the books that he does pass the summer in Lower Canada, reaching it, probably, by way of the valley of the St. Lawrence.
A few robins were about the hotel, and I saw a single veery in the woods, but the only members of the thrush family that were present in large numbers were the hermits. These sang everywhere and at all hours. On the summit, even at mid-day, I was invariably serenaded by them. In fact they seemed more abundant there than anywhere else; but they were often to be heard by the lake-side, and in our apple orchard, and once at least one of them sang at some length from a birch-tree within a few feet of the piazza, between it and the bowling alley. As far as I have ever been able to discover, the hermit, for all his name and consequent reputation, is less timorous and more approachable than any other New England representative of his "sub-genus."
On this trip I settled once more a question which I had already settled several times,—the question, namely, whether the wood thrush or the hermit is the better singer. This time my decision was in favor of the former. How the case would have turned had the conditions been reversed, had there been a hundred of the wood thrushes for one of the hermits, of course I cannot tell. So true is a certain old Latin proverb, that in matters of this sort it is impossible for a man to agree even with himself for any long time together.
The conspicuous birds, noticed by everybody, were a family of hawks. The visitor might have no appreciation of music; he might go up the mountain and down again without minding the thrushes or the wrens,—for there is nothing about the human ear more wonderful than its ability not to hear; but these hawks passed a good part of every day in screaming, and were bound to be attended to by all but the stone-deaf. A native of the region pointed out a ledge, on which, according to his account, they had made their nest for more than thirty years. "We call them mountain hawks," he said, in answer to an inquiry. The keepers of the hotel, naturally enough, called them eagles; while a young Canadian, who one day overtook me as I neared the summit, and spent an hour there in my company, pronounced them fish-hawks. I asked him, carelessly, how he could be sure of that, and he replied, after a little hesitation, "Why, they are all the time over the lake; and besides, they sometimes dive into the water and come up with a fish." The last item would have been good evidence, no doubt. My difficulty was that I had never seen them near the lake, and what was more conclusive, their heads were dark-colored, if not really black. A few minutes after this conversation I happened to have my glass upon one of them as he approached the mountain at some distance below us, when my comrade asked, "Looking at that bird?" "Yes," I answered; on which he continued, in a matter-of-fact tone, "That's a crow;" plainly thinking that, as I appeared to be slightly inquisitive about such matters, it would be a kindness to tell me a thing or two. I made bold to intimate that the bird had a barred tail, and must, I thought, be one of the hawks. He did not dispute the point; and, in truth, he was a modest and well-mannered young gentleman. I liked him in that he knew both how to converse and how to be silent; without which latter qualification, indeed, not even an angel would be a desirable mountain-top companion. He gave me information about the surrounding country such as I was very glad to get; and in the case of the hawks my advantage over him, if any, was mainly in this,—that my lack of knowledge partook somewhat more fully than his of the nature of Lord Bacon's "learned ignorance, that knows itself."
Whatever the birds may have been, "mountain hawks," "fish-hawks," or duck-hawks, their aerial evolutions, as seen from the summit, were beautiful beyond description. One day in particular three of them were performing together. For a time they chased each other this way and that at lightning speed, screaming wildly, though whether in sport or anger I could not determine. Then they floated majestically, high above us, while now and then one would set his wings and shoot down, down, till the precipitous side of the mountain hid him from view; only to reappear a minute afterward, soaring again, with no apparent effort, to his former height.
One of these noisy fellows served me an excellent turn. It was the last day of my visit, and I had just taken my farewell look at the enchanting prospect from the summit, when I heard the lisp of a brown creeper. This was the first of his kind that I had seen here, and I stopped immediately to watch him, in hopes he would sing. Creeper-like he tried one tree after another in quick succession, till at last, while he was exploring a dead spruce which had toppled half-way to the ground, a hawk screamed loudly overhead. Instantly the little creature flattened himself against the trunk, spreading his wings to their very utmost and ducking his head until, though I had been all the while eying his motions through a glass at the distance of only a few rods, it was almost impossible to believe that yonder tiny brown fleck upon the bark was really a bird and not a lichen. He remained in this posture for perhaps a minute, only putting up his head two or three times to peer cautiously round. Unless I misjudged him, he did not discriminate between the screech of the hawk and the ank, ank of a nuthatch, which followed it; and this, with an indefinable something in his manner, made me suspect him of being a young bird. Young or old, however, he had learned one lesson well, at all events, one which I hoped would keep him out of the talons of his enemies for long days to come.
It was pleasant to see how cheerfully he resumed work as soon as the alarm was over. This danger was escaped, at any rate; and why should he make himself miserable with worrying about the next? He had the true philosophy. We who pity the birds for their numberless perils are ourselves in no better case. Consumption, fevers, accidents, enemies of every name are continually lying in wait for our destruction. We walk surrounded with them; seeing them not, to be sure, but knowing, all the same, that they are there; yet feeling, too, like the birds, that in some way or other we shall elude them a while longer, and holding at second hand the truth which these humble creatures practice upon instinctively,—"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
Not far from this spot, on a previous occasion, I had very unexpectedly come face to face with another of the creeper's blood-thirsty persecutors. It happened that a warbler was singing in a lofty birch, and being in doubt about the song (which was a little like the Nashville's, but longer in each of its two parts and ending with a less confused flourish), I was of course very desirous to see the singer. But to catch sight of a small bird amid thick foliage, fifty feet or more above you, is not an easy matter, as I believe I have already once remarked. So when I grew weary of the attempt, I bethought myself to try the efficacy of an old device, well known to all collectors, and proceeded to imitate, as well as I could, the cries of some bird in distress. My warbler was imperturbable. He had no nest or young to be anxious about, and kept on singing. But pretty soon I was apprised of something in the air, coming toward me, and looking up, beheld a large owl who appeared to be dropping straight upon my head. He saw me in time to avoid such a catastrophe, however, and, describing a graceful curve, alighted on a low branch near by, and stared at me as only an owl can. Then away he went, while at the same instant a jay dashed into the thicket and out again, shouting derisively, "I saw you! I saw you!" Evidently the trick was a good one, and moderately well played; in further confirmation of which the owl hooted twice in response to some peculiarly happy efforts on my part, and then actually came back again for another look. This proved sufficient, and he quickly disappeared; retiring to his leafy covert or hollow tree, to meditate, no doubt, on the strange creature whose unseasonable noises had disturbed his afternoon slumbers. Likely enough he could not readily fall asleep again for wondering how I could possibly find my way through the woods in the darkness of daylight. So difficult is it, we may suppose, for even an owl to put himself in another's place and see with another's eyes.
This little episode over, I turned again to the birch-tree, and fortunately the warbler's throat was of too fiery a color to remain long concealed; though it was at once a pleasure and an annoyance to find myself still unacquainted with at least one song out of the Blackburnian's repertory. In times past I had carefully attended to his music, and within only a few days, in the White Mountain Notch, I had taken note of two of its variations; but here was still another, which neither began with zillup, zillup, nor ended with zip, zip,—notes which I had come to look upon as the Blackburnian's sign-vocal. Yet it must have been my fault, not his, that I failed to recognize him; for every bird's voice has something characteristic about it, just as every human voice has tones and inflections which those who are sufficiently familiar with its owner will infallibly detect. The ear feels them, although words cannot describe them. Articulate speech is but a modern invention, as it were, in comparison with the five senses; and since practice makes perfect, it is natural enough that every one of the five should easily, and as a matter of course, perceive shades of difference so slight that language, in its present rudimentary state, cannot begin to take account of them.
The other warblers at Owl's Head, as far as they came under my notice, were the black-and-white creeper, the blue yellow-backed warbler, the Nashville, the black-throated green, the black-throated blue, the yellow-rumped, the chestnut-sided, the oven-bird (already spoken of), the small-billed water thrush, the Maryland yellow-throat, the Canadian flycatcher, and the redstart.
The water thrush (I saw only one individual) was by the lake-side, and within a rod or two of the bowling alley. What a strange, composite creature he is! thrush, warbler, and sandpiper all in one; with such a bare-footed, bare-legged appearance, too, as if he must always be ready to wade; and such a Saint Vitus's dance! His must be a curious history. In particular, I should like to know the origin of his teetering habit, which seems to put him among the beach birds. Can it be that such frequenters of shallow water are rendered less conspicuous by this wave-like, up-and-down motion, and have actually adopted it as a means of defense, just as they and many more have taken on a color harmonizing with that of their ordinary surroundings?[27]
The black-throated blue warblers were common, and like most of their tribe were waiting upon offspring just out of the nest. I watched one as he offered his charge a rather large insect. The awkward fledgeling let it fall three times; and still the parent picked it up again, only chirping mildly, as if to say, "Come, come, my beauty, don't be quite so bungling." But even in the midst of their family cares, they still found leisure for music; and as they and the black-throated greens were often singing together, I had excellent opportunities to compare the songs of the two species. The voices, while both very peculiar, are at the same time so nearly alike that it was impossible for me on hearing the first note of either strain to tell whose it was. With the voice the similarity ends, however; for the organ does not make the singer, and while the blue seldom attempts more than a harsh, monotonous kree, kree, kree, the green possesses the true lyrical gift, so that few of our birds have a more engaging song than his simple Trees, trees, murmuring trees, or if you choose to understand it so, Sleep, sleep, pretty one, sleep.[28]
I saw little of the blue yellow-backed warbler, but whenever I took the mountain path I was certain to hear his whimsical upward-running song, broken off at the end with a smart snap. He seemed to have chosen the neighborhood of the fernery for his peculiar haunt, a piece of good taste quite in accord with his general character. Nothing could well be more beautiful than this bird's plumage; and his nest, which is "globular, with an entrance on one side," is described as a wonder of elegance; while in grace of movement not even the titmouse can surpass him. Strange that such an exquisite should have so fantastic a song.
I have spoken of the rainy weather. There were times when the piazza was as far out-of-doors as it was expedient to venture. But even then I was not without excellent feathered society. Red-eyed vireos (one pair had their nest within twenty feet of the hotel), chippers, song sparrows, snow-birds, robins, waxwings, and phoebes were to be seen almost any moment, while the hermit thrushes, as I have before mentioned, paid us occasional visits. The most familiar of our door-yard friends, however, to my surprise, were the yellow-rumped warblers. Till now I had never found them at home except in the forests of the White Mountains; but here they were, playing the role which in Massachusetts we are accustomed to see taken by the summer yellow-birds, and by no others of the family. At first, knowing that this species was said to build in low evergreens, I looked suspiciously at some small spruces which lined the walk to the pier; but after a while I happened to see one of the birds flying into a rock-maple with something in his bill, and following him with my eye, beheld him alight on the edge of his nest. "About four feet from the ground," the book said (the latest book, too); but this lawless pair had chosen a position which could hardly be less than ten times that height,—considerably higher, at all events, than the eaves of the three-story house. It was out of reach in the small topmost branches, but I watched its owners at my leisure, as the maple was not more than two rods from my window. At this time the nestlings were nearly ready to fly, and in the course of a day or two I saw one of them sitting in a tree in the midst of a drenching rain. On my offering to lay hold of him he dropped into the grass, and when I picked him up both parents began to fly about me excitedly, with loud outcries. The male, especially, went nearly frantic, entering the bowling alley where I happened to be, and alighting on the floor; then, taking to the bole of a tree, he fluttered helplessly upon it, spreading his wings and tail, seeming to say as plainly as words could have done, "Look, you monster! here's another young bird that can't fly; why don't you come and catch him?" The acting was admirable,—all save the spreading of the tail; that was a false note, for the youngster in my hand had no tail feathers at all. I put the fellow upon a tree, whence he quickly flew to the ground (he could fly down but not up), and soon both parents were again supplying him with food. The poor thing had not eaten a morsel for possibly ten minutes, a very long fast for a bird of his age. I hoped he would fall into the hands of no worse enemy than myself, but the chances seemed against him. The first few days after quitting the nest must be full of perils for such helpless innocents.
For the credit of my own sex I was pleased to notice that it was the father-bird who manifested the deepest concern and the readiest wit, not to say the greatest courage; but I am obliged in candor to acknowledge that this feature of the case surprised me not a little.
In what language shall I speak of the song of these familiar myrtle warblers, so that my praise may correspond in some degree with the gracious and beautiful simplicity of the strain itself? For music to be heard constantly, right under one's window, it could scarcely be improved; sweet, brief, and remarkably unobtrusive, without sharpness or emphasis; a trill not altogether unlike the pine-creeping warbler's, but less matter-of-fact and business-like. I used to listen to it before I rose in the morning, and it was to be heard at intervals all day long. Occasionally it was given in an absent-minded, meditative way, in a kind of half-voice, as if the happy creature had no thought of what he was doing. Then it was at its best, but one needed to be near the singer.
In a clearing back of the hotel, but surrounded by the forest, were always a goodly company of birds, among the rest a family of yellow-bellied woodpeckers; and in a second similar place were white-throated sparrows, Maryland yellow-throats, and chestnut-sided warblers, the last two feeding their young. Immature warblers are a puzzling set. The birds themselves have no difficulty, I suppose; but seeing young and old together, and noting how unlike they are, I have before now been reminded of Launcelot Gobbo's saying, "It is a wise father that knows his own child."
While traversing the woods between these two clearings I saw, as I thought, a chimney swift fly out of the top of a tree which had been broken off at a height of twenty-five or thirty feet. I stopped, and pretty soon the thing was repeated; but even then I was not quick enough to be certain whether the bird really came from the stump or only out of the forest behind it. Accordingly, after sounding the trunk to make sure it was hollow, I sat down in a clump of raspberry bushes, where I should be sufficiently concealed, and awaited further developments. I waited and waited, while the mosquitoes, seeing how sheltered I was from the breeze, gathered about my head in swarms. A winter wren at my elbow struck up to sing, going over and over with his exquisite tune; and a scarlet tanager, also, not far off, did what he could—which was somewhat less than the wren's—to relieve the tedium of my situation. Finally, when my patience was well-nigh exhausted,—for the afternoon was wearing away and I had some distance to walk,—a swift flew past me from behind, and, with none of that poising over the entrance such as is commonly seen when a swift goes down a chimney, went straight into the trunk. In half a minute or less he reappeared without a sound, and was out of sight in a second. Then I picked up my rubber coat, and with a blessing on the wren and the tanager, and a malediction on the mosquitoes (so unjust does self-interest make us), started homeward.
Conservatives and radicals! Even the swifts, it seems, are divided into these two classes. "Hollow trees were good enough for our fathers; who are we that we should assume to know more than all the generations before us? To change is not of necessity to make progress. Let those who will, take up with smoky chimneys; for our part we prefer the old way."
Thus far the conservatives; but now comes the party of modern ideas. "All that is very well," say they. "Our ancestors were worthy folk enough; they did the best they could in their time. But the world moves, and wise birds will move with it. Why should we make a fetish out of some dead forefather's example? We are alive now. To refuse to take advantage of increased light and improved conditions may look like filial piety in the eyes of some: to us such conduct appears nothing better than a distrust of the Divine Providence, a subtle form of atheism. What are chimneys for, pray? And as for soot and smoke, we were made to live in them. Otherwise, let some of our opponents be kind enough to explain why we were created with black feathers."
So, in brief, the discussion runs; with the usual result, no doubt, that each side convinces itself.
We may assume, however, that these old-school and new-school swifts do not carry their disagreement so far as actually to refuse to hold fellowship with one another. Conscience is but imperfectly developed in birds, as yet, and they can hardly feel each other's sins and errors of belief (if indeed these things be two, and not one) quite so keenly as men are accustomed to do.
After all, it is something to be grateful for, this diversity of habit. We could not spare the swifts from our villages, and it would be too bad to lose them out of the Northern forests. May they live and thrive, both parties of them.
I am glad, also, for the obscurity which attends their annual coming and going. Whether they hibernate or migrate, the secret is their own; and for my part, I wish them the wit to keep it. In this age, when the world is in such danger of becoming omniscient before the time, it is good to have here and there a mystery in reserve. Though it be only a little one, we may well cherish it as a treasure.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] The guide-book allows two hours for the mile and a half on Owl's Head, while it gives only an hour and a half for the three miles up Mount Clinton—from the Crawford House.
[26] To bear out what has been said in the text concerning the abundance of ferns at Owl's Head, I subjoin a list of the species observed; premising that the first interest of my trip was not botanical, and that I explored but a very small section of the woods:—
Polypodium vulgare. Adiantum pedatum. Pteris aquilina. Asplenium Trichomanes. A. thelypteroides. A. Filix-foemina. Phegopteris polypodioides. P. Dryopteris. Aspidium marginale. A. spinulosum, variety undetermined. A. spinulosum, var. dilatatum. A. Goldianum. A. acrostichoides. A. aculeatum, var. Braunii. Cystopteris bulbifera. C. fragilis. Onoclea struthiopteris. O. sensibilis. Woodsia Ilvensis. Dicksonia punctilobula. Osmunda regalis. O. Claytoniana. O. cinnamomea. Botrychium lanceolatum. B. matricariaefolium. B. ternatum. B. Virginianum.
[27] This bird (Siurus naevius) is remarkable for the promptness with which he sets out on his autumnal journey, appearing in Eastern Massachusetts early in August. Last year (1884) one was in my door-yard on the morning of the 7th. I heard his loud chip, and looking out of the window, saw him first on the ground and then in an ash-tree near a crowd of house sparrows. The latter were scolding at him with their usual cordiality, while he, on his part, seemed under some kind of fascination, returning again and again to walk as closely as he dared about the blustering crew. His curiosity was laughable. Evidently he thought, considering what an ado the sparrows were making, that something serious must be going on, something worth any bird's while to turn aside for a moment to look into. The innocent recluse! if he had lived where I do he would have grown used to such "windy congresses."
[28] After all that has been said about the "pathetic fallacy," so called, it remains true that Nature speaks to us according to our mood. With all her "various language" she "cannot talk and find ears too." And so it happens that some, listening to the black-throated green warbler, have brought back a report of "Cheese, cheese, a little more cheese." Prosaic and hungry souls! This voice out of the pine-trees was not for them. They have caught the rhythm but missed the poetry.
A MONTH'S MUSIC
And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, That makes the heavens be mute.
COLERIDGE.
A MONTH'S MUSIC.
The morning of May-day was bright and spring-like, and should have been signalized, it seemed to me, by the advent of a goodly number of birds; but the only new-comer to be found was a single black-and-white creeper. Glad as I was to see this lowly acquaintance back again after his seven months' absence, and natural as he looked on the edge of Warbler Swamp, bobbing along the branches in his own unique, end-for-end fashion, there was no resisting a sensation of disappointment. Why could not the wood thrush have been punctual? He would have made the woods ring with an ode worthy of the festival. Possibly the hermits—who had been with us for several days in silence—divined my thoughts. At all events, one of them presently broke into a song—the first Hylocichla note of the year. Never was voice more beautiful. Like the poet's dream, it "left my after-morn content."
It is too much to be expected that the wood thrush should hold himself bound to appear at a given point on a fixed date. How can we know the multitude of reasons, any one of which may detain him for twenty-four hours, or even for a week? It is enough for us to be assured, in general, that the first ten days of the month will bring this master of the choir. The present season he arrived on the 6th—the veery with him; last year he was absent until the 8th; while on the two years preceding he assisted at the observance of May-day.
All in all, I must esteem this thrush our greatest singer; although the hermit might dispute the palm, perhaps, but that he is merely a semi-annual visitor in most parts of Massachusetts. If perfection be held to consist in the absence of flaw, the hermit's is unquestionably the more nearly perfect song of the two. Whatever he attempts is done beyond criticism; but his range and variety are far less than his rival's, and, for my part, I can forgive the latter if now and then he reaches after a note lying a little beyond his best voice, and withal is too commonly wanting in that absolute simplicity and ease which lend such an ineffable charm to the performance of the hermit and the veery. Shakespeare is not a faultless poet, but in the existing state of public opinion it will hardly do to set Gray above him.
In the course of the month about which I am now writing (May, 1884) I was favored with thrush music to a quite unwonted degree. With the exception of the varied thrush (a New-Englander by accident only) and the mocking-bird, there was not one of our Massachusetts representatives of the family who did not put me in his debt. The robin, the brown thrush, the cat-bird, the wood thrush, the veery, and even the hermit (what a magnificent sextette!)—so many I counted upon hearing, as a matter of course; but when to these were added the Arctic thrushes—the olive-backed and the gray-cheeked—I gladly confessed surprise. I had never heard either species before, south of the White Mountains; nor, as far as I then knew, had anybody else been more fortunate than myself. Yet the birds themselves were seemingly unaware of doing anything new or noteworthy. This was especially the case with the olive-backs; and after listening to them for three days in succession I began to suspect that they were doing nothing new,—that they had sung every spring in the same manner, only, in the midst of the grand May medley, my ears had somehow failed to take account of their contribution. Their fourth (and farewell) appearance was on the 23d, when they sang both morning and evening. At that time they were in a bit of swamp, among some tall birches, and as I caught the familiar and characteristic notes—a brief ascending spiral—I was almost ready to believe myself in some primeval New Hampshire forest; an illusion not a little aided by the frequent lisping of black-poll warblers, who chanced just then to be remarkably abundant.
It was on the same day, and within a short distance of the same spot, that the Alice thrushes, or gray-cheeks, were in song. Their music was repeated a good many times, but unhappily it ceased whenever I tried to get near the birds. Then, as always, it put me in mind of the veery's effort, notwithstanding a certain part of the strain was quite out of the veery's manner, and the whole was pitched in decidedly too high a key. It seemed, also, as if what I heard could not be the complete song; but I had been troubled with the same feeling on previous occasions, and a friend whose opportunities have been better than mine reports a similiar experience; so that it is perhaps not uncharitable to conclude that the song, even at its best, is more or less broken and amorphous.
In their Northern homes these gray-cheeks are excessively wild and unapproachable; but while traveling they are little if at all worse than their congeners in this respect,—taking short flights when disturbed, and often doing nothing more than to hop upon some low perch to reconnoitre the intruder.
At the risk of being thought to reflect upon the acuteness of more competent observers, I am free to express my hope of hearing the music of both these noble visitors again another season. For it is noticeable how common such things tend to become when once they are discovered. An enthusiastic botanical collector told me that for years he searched far and near for the adder's-tongue fern, till one day he stumbled upon it in a place over which he had long been in the habit of passing. Marking the peculiarities of the spot he straightway wrote to a kindred spirit, whom he knew to have been engaged in the same hunt, suggesting that he would probably find the coveted plants in a particular section of the meadow back of his own house (in Concord); and sure enough, the next day's mail brought an envelope from his friend, inclosing specimens of Ophioglossum vulgatum, with the laconic but sufficient message, Eureka! There are few naturalists, I suspect, who could not narrate adventures of a like sort.
One such befell me during this same month, in connection with the wood wagtail, or golden-crowned thrush. Not many birds are more abundant than he in my neighborhood, and I fancied myself pretty well acquainted with his habits and manners. Above all, I had paid attention to his celebrated love-song, listening to it almost daily for several summers. Thus far it had invariably been given out in the afternoon, and on the wing. To my mind, indeed, this was by far its most interesting feature (for in itself the song is by no means of surpassing beauty), and I had even been careful to record the earliest hour at which I had heard it—three o'clock P. M. But on the 6th of May aforesaid I detected a bird practicing this very tune in the morning, and from a perch! I set the fact down without hesitation as a wonder,—a purely exceptional occurrence, the repetition of which was not to be looked for. Anything might happen once. Only four days afterwards, however, at half-past six in the morning, I had stooped to gather some peculiarly bright-colored anemones (I can see the patch of rosy blossoms at this moment, although I am writing by a blazing fire while the snow is falling without), when my ear caught the same song again; and keeping my position, I soon descried the fellow stepping through the grass within ten yards of me, caroling as he walked. The hurried warble, with the common Weechee, weechee, weechee interjected in the midst, was reiterated perhaps a dozen times,—the full evening strain, but in a rather subdued tone. He was under no excitement, and appeared to be entirely by himself; in fact, when he had made about half the circuit round me he flew into a low bush and proceeded to dress his feathers listlessly. Probably what I had overheard was nothing more than a rehearsal. Within a week or two he would need to do his very best in winning the fair one of his choice, and for that supreme moment he had already put himself in training. The wise-hearted and obliging little beau! I must have been the veriest churl not to wish him his pick of all the feminine wagtails in the wood. As for the pink anemones, they had done me a double kindness, in requital for which I could only carry them to the city, where, in their modesty, they would have blushed to a downright crimson had they been conscious of one-half the admiration which their loveliness called forth.
Before the end of the month (it was on the morning of the 18th) I once more heard the wagtail's song from the ground. This time the affair was anything but a rehearsal. There were two birds,—a lover and his lass,—and the wooing waxed fast and furious. For that matter, it looked not so much like love-making as like an aggravated case of assault and battery. But, as I say, the male was warbling, and not improbably (so strange are the ways of the world), if he had been a whit less pugnacious in his addresses, his lady-love, who was plainly well able to take care of herself, would have thought him deficient in earnestness. At any rate, the wood wagtail is not the only bird whose courtship has the appearance of a scrimmage; and I believe there are still tribes of men among whom similar practices prevail, although the greater part of our race have learned, by this time, to take somewhat less literally the old proverb, "None but the brave deserve the fair." Love, it is true, is still recognized as one of the passions (in theory at least) even among the most highly civilized peoples; but the tendency is more and more to count it a tender passion.
While I am on the subject of marriage I may as well mention the white-eyed vireo. It had come to be the 16th of the month, and as yet I had neither seen nor heard anything of this obstreperous genius; so I made a special pilgrimage to a certain favorite haunt of his—Woodcock Swamp—to ascertain if he had arrived. After fifteen minutes or more of waiting I was beginning to believe him still absent, when he burst out suddenly with his loud and unmistakable Chip-a-wee-o. "Who are you, now?" the saucy fellow seemed to say, "Who are you, now?" Pretty soon a pair of the birds appeared near me, the male protesting his affection at a frantic rate, and the female repelling his advances with a snappish determination which might have driven a timid suitor desperate. He posed before her, puffing out his feathers, spreading his tail, and crying hysterically, Yip, yip, yaah,—the last note a downright whine or snarl, worthy of the cat-bird. Poor soul! he was well-nigh beside himself, and could not take no for an answer, even when the word was emphasized with an ugly dab of his beloved's beak. The pair shortly disappeared in the swamp, and I was not privileged to witness the upshot of the battle; but I consoled myself with believing that Phyllis knew how far she could prudently carry her resistance, and would have the discretion to yield before her adorer's heart was irremediably broken.
In this instance there was no misconceiving the meaning of the action; but whoever watches birds in the pairing season is often at his wit's end to know what to make of their demonstrations. One morning a linnet chased another past me down the road, flying at the very top of his speed, and singing as he flew; not, to be sure, the full and copious warble such as is heard when the bird hovers, but still a lively tune. I looked on in astonishment. It seemed incredible that any creature could sing while putting forth such tremendous muscular exertions; and yet, as if to show that this was a mere nothing to him, the finch had no sooner struck a perch than he broke forth again in his loudest and most spirited manner, and continued without a pause for two or three times the length of his longest ordinary efforts. "What lungs he must have!" I said to myself; and at once fell to wondering what could have stirred him up to such a pitch of excitement, and whether the bird he had been pursuing was male or female. He would have said, perhaps, if he had said anything, that that was none of my business.
What I have been remarking with regard to the proneness of newly discovered things to become all at once common was well illustrated for me about this time by these same linnets, or purple finches. One rainy morning, while making my accustomed rounds, enveloped in rubber, I stopped to notice a blue-headed vireo, who, as I soon perceived, was sitting lazily in the top of a locust-tree, looking rather disconsolate, and ejaculating with not more than half his customary voice and emphasis, Mary Ware!—Mary Ware! His indolence struck me as very surprising for a vireo; still I had no question about his identity (he sat between me and the sun) till I changed my position, when behold! the vireo was a linnet. A strange performance, indeed! What could have set this fluent vocalist to practicing exercises of such an inferior, disconnected, piecemeal sort? Within the next week or two, however, the same game was played upon me several times, and in different places. No doubt the trick is an old one, familiar to many observers, but to me it had all the charm of novelty.
There are no birds so conservative but that they will now and then indulge in some unexpected stroke of originality. Few are more artless and regular in their musical efforts than the pine warblers; yet I have seen one of these sitting at the tip of a tree, and repeating a trill which toward the close invariably declined by an interval of perhaps three tones. Even the chipping sparrow, whose lay is yet more monotonous and formal than the pine warbler's, is not absolutely confined to his score. I once heard him when his trill was divided into two portions, the concluding half being much higher than the other—unless my ear was at fault, exactly an octave higher. This singular refrain was given out six or eight times without the slightest alteration. Such freaks as these, however, are different from the linnet's Mary Ware, inasmuch as they are certainly the idiosyncrasies of single birds, not a part of the artistic proficiency of the species as a whole.
During this month I was lucky enough to close a little question which I had been holding open for a number of years concerning our very common and familiar black-throated green warbler. This species, as is well known, has two perfectly well-defined tunes of about equal length, entirely distinct from each other. My uncertainty had been as to whether the two are ever used by the same individual. I had listened a good many times, first and last, in hopes to settle the point, but hitherto without success. Now, however, a bird, while under my eye, delivered both songs, and then went on to give further proof of his versatility by repeating one of them minus the final note. This abbreviation, by the way, is not very infrequent with Dendroeca virens; and he has still another variation, which I hear once in a while every season, consisting of a grace note introduced in the middle of the measure, in such a connection as to form what in musical language is denominated a turn. At my first hearing of this I looked upon it as the private property of the bird to whom I was listening,—an improvement which he had accidentally hit upon. But it is clearly more than that; for besides hearing it in different seasons, I have noticed it in places a good distance apart. Perhaps, after the lapse of ten thousand years, more or less, the whole tribe of black-throated greens will have adopted it; and then, when some ornithologist chances to fall in with an old-fashioned specimen who still clings to the plain song as we now commonly hear it, he will fancy that to be the very latest modern improvement, and proceed forthwith to enlighten the scientific world with a description of the novelty.
Hardly any incident of the month interested me more than a discovery (I must call it such, although I am almost ashamed to allude to it at all) which I made about the black-capped titmouse. For several mornings in succession I was greeted on waking by the trisyllabic minor whistle of a chickadee, who piped again and again not far from my window. There could be little doubt about its being the bird that I knew to be excavating a building site in one of our apple-trees; but I was usually not out-of-doors until about five o'clock, by which time the music always came to an end. So one day I rose half an hour earlier than common on purpose to have a look at my little matutinal serenader. My conjecture proved correct. There sat the tit, within a few feet of his apple-branch door, throwing back his head in the truest lyrical fashion, and calling Hear, hear me, with only a breathing space between the repetitions of the phrase. He was as plainly singing, and as completely absorbed in his work, as any thrasher or hermit thrush could have been. Heretofore I had not realized that these whistled notes were so strictly a song, and as such set apart from all the rest of the chickadee's repertory of sweet sounds; and I was delighted to find my tiny pet recognizing thus unmistakably the difference between prose and poetry.
But we linger unduly with these lesser lights of song. After the music of the Alice and the Swainson thrushes, the chief distinction of May, 1884, as far as my Melrose woods were concerned, was the entirely unexpected advent of a colony of rose-breasted grosbeaks. For five seasons I had called these hunting-grounds my own, and during that time had seen perhaps about the same number of specimens of this royal species, always in the course of the vernal migration. The present year the first comer was observed on the 15th—solitary and, except for an occasional monosyllable, silent. Only one more straggler, I assumed. But on the following morning I saw four others, all of them males in full plumage, and two of them in song. To one of these I attended for some time. According to my notes "he sang beautifully, although not with any excitement, nor as if he were doing his best. The tone was purer and smoother than the robin's, more mellow and sympathetic, and the strain was especially characterized by a dropping to a fine contralto note at the end." The next day I saw nothing of my new friends till toward night. Then, after tea, I strolled into the chestnut grove, and walking along the path, noticed a robin singing freely, remarking the fact because this noisy bird had been rather quiet of late. Just as I passed under him, however, it flashed upon me that the voice and song were not exactly the robin's. They must be the rose-breast's then; and stepping back to look up, I beheld him in gorgeous attire, perched in the top of an oak. He sang and sang, while I stood quietly listening. Pretty soon he repeated the strain once or twice in a softer voice, and I glanced up instinctively to see if a female were with him; but instead, there were two males sitting within a yard of each other. They flew off after a little, and I resumed my saunter. A party of chimney swifts were shooting hither and thither over the trees, a single wood thrush was chanting not far away, and in another direction a tanager was rehearsing his chip-cherr with characteristic assiduity. Presently I began to be puzzled by a note which came now from this side, now from that, and sounded like the squeak of a pair of rusty shears. My first conjecture about the origin of this hic it would hardly serve my reputation to make public; but I was not long in finding out that it was the grosbeaks' own, and that, instead of three, there were at least twice that number of these brilliant strangers in the grove. Altogether, the half hour was one of very enjoyable excitement; and when, later in the evening, I sat down to my note-book, I started off abruptly in a hortatory vein,—"Always take another walk!"
In the morning, naturally enough, I again turned my steps toward the chestnut grove. The rose-breasts were still there, and one of them earned my thanks by singing on the wing, flying slowly—half-hovering, as it were—and singing the ordinary song, but more continuously than usual. That afternoon one of them was in tune at the same time with a robin, affording me the desired opportunity for a direct comparison. "It is really wonderful," my record says, "how nearly alike the two songs are; but the robin's tone is plainly inferior,—less mellow and full. In general, too, his strain is pitched higher; and, what perhaps is the most striking point of difference, it frequently ends with an attempt at a note which is a little out of reach, so that the voice breaks." (This last defect, by the bye, the robin shares with his cousin the wood thrush, as already remarked.) A few days afterwards, to confirm my own impression about the likeness of the two songs, I called the attention of a friend with whom I was walking, to a grosbeak's notes, and asked him what bird's they were. He, having a good ear for matters of this kind, looked somewhat dazed at such an inquiry, but answered promptly, "Why, a robin's, of course." As one day after another passed, however, and I listened to both species in full voice on every hand, I came to feel that I had overestimated the resemblance. With increasing familiarity I discerned more and more clearly the respects in which the songs differed, and each came to have to my ear an individuality strictly its own. They were alike, doubtless,—as the red-eyed vireo's and the blue-head's are,—and yet they were not alike. Of one thing I grew, better and better assured: the grosbeak is out of all comparison the finer musician of the two. To judge from my last-year's friends, however, his concert season is very short—the more's the pity.
I begin to perceive (indeed it has been dawning upon me for some time) that our essay is not to fulfill the promise of its caption. Instead of the glorious fullness and variety of the month's music (for May, in this latitude, is the musical month of months) the reader has been put off with a few of the more exceptional features of the carnival. He will overlook it, I trust; and as for the great body of the chorus, who have not been honored with so much as a mention, they, I am assured, are far too amiable to take offense at any such unintentional slight. Let me conclude, then, with transcribing from my note-book an evening entry or two. Music is never so sweet as at the twilight hour; and the extracts may serve at least as a convenient and quasi-artistic ending for a paper which, so to speak, has run away with its writer. The first is under date of the 19th:—
"Walked, after dinner, in the Old Road, as I have done often of late, and sat for a while at the entrance to Pyrola Grove. A wood thrush was singing not far off, and in the midst a Swainson thrush vouchsafed a few measures. I wished the latter would continue, but was thankful for the little. A tanager called excitedly, Chip-cherr, moving from tree to tree meanwhile, once to a birch in full sight, and then into the pine over my head. As it grew dark the crowd of warblers were still to be seen feeding busily, making the most of the lingering daylight. A small-billed water thrush was teetering along a willow-branch, while his congeners, the oven-birds, were practicing their aerial hymn. One of these went past me as I stood by the roadside, rising very gradually into the air and repeating all the way, Chip, chip, chip, chip, till at last he broke into the warble, which was a full half longer than usual. He was evidently doing his prettiest. No vireos sang after sunset. A Maryland yellow-throat piped once or twice (he is habitually an evening musician), and the black-throated greens were in tune, but the rest of the warblers were otherwise engaged. Finally, just as a distant whippoorwill began to call, a towhee sang once from the woods; and a moment later the stillness was broken by the sudden outburst of a thrasher. 'Now then,' he seemed to say, 'if the rest of you are quite done, I will see what I can do.' He kept on for two or three minutes in his best manner, and at the same time a pair of cat-birds were whispering love together in the thicket. Then an ill-timed carriage came rattling along the road, and when it had passed, every bird's voice was hushed. The hyla's tremulous cry was the only musical sound to be heard. As I started away, one of these tree-frogs hopped out of my path, and I picked him up at the second or third attempt. What did he think, I wonder, when I turned him on his back to look at the disks at his finger-tips? Probably he supposed that his hour was come; but I had no evil designs upon him,—he was not to be drowned in alcohol at present. Walking homeward I heard the robin's scream now and again; but the thrasher's was the last song, as it deserved to be."
Two days later I find the following:—
"Into the woods by the Old Road. As I approached them, a little after sundown, a chipper was trilling, and song sparrows and golden warblers were singing,—as were the black-throated greens also, and the Maryland yellow-throats. A wood thrush called brusquely, but offered no further salute to the god of day at his departure. Oven-birds were taking to wing on the right and left. Then, as it grew dark, it grew silent,—except for the hylas,—till suddenly a field sparrow gave out his sweet strain once. After that all was quiet for another interval, till a thrasher from the hillside began to sing. He ceased, and once more there was stillness. All at once the tanager broke forth in a strangely excited way, blurting out his phrase two or three times and subsiding as abruptly as he had commenced. Some crisis in his love-making, I imagined. Now the last oven-bird launched into the air and let fall a little shower of melody, and a whippoorwill took up his chant afar off. This should have been the end; but a robin across the meadow thought otherwise, and set at work as if determined to make a night of it. Mr. Early-and-late, the robin's name ought to be. As I left the wood the whippoorwill followed; coming nearer and nearer, till finally he overpassed me and sang with all his might (while I tried in vain to see him) from a tree or the wall, near the big buttonwood. He too is an early riser, only he rises before nightfall instead of before daylight."
INDEX
Blackbird, crow, 17; red-winged, 183; rusty, 216.
Bluebird, 14, 72, 160, 184, 214, 217.
Blue-gray gnatcatcher, 152.
Bobolink, 16, 78.
Bunting, bay-winged, 27, 174, 234; snow, 190, 195; towhee, 25, 39, 62, 178.
Butcher-bird, 5, 11, 66, 208.
Cat-bird, 3, 72, 114.
Cedar-bird, 26, 50, 126, 269.
Chat, yellow-breasted, 69, 152, 153.
Chewink, 25, 39, 62, 178.
Chickadee, 27, 58, 158, 202, 215, 237, 291.
Chimney swift, 23, 96, 272.
Cowbird, 183.
Creeper, brown, 20, 161, 205, 227, 262; black-and-white, 21, 266, 279.
Crow, common, 26, 78, 209; fish, 154, 209.
Cuckoo, black-billed, 18.
Finch, grass, 27, 174, 234; purple, 27, 119, 173, 199, 217, 287; pine, 206.
Flicker, 25, 121, 232.
Flycatcher, great-crested, 152; least, 26, 36, 231; phoebe, 26, 215, 230, 269; wood pewee, 36, 231, 257; yellow-bellied, 91.
Goldfinch, 16, 19, 60, 173, 188, 190, 193, 236.
Grosbeak, cardinal, 27, 37, 152, 173; pine, 197; rose-breasted, 173, 292.
Humming-bird, ruby-throated, 21.
Indigo-bird, 177.
Jay, blue, 26, 65, 208, 264; Canada, 257.
Kingbird, 26, 78, 231.
Kingfisher, 26, 154.
Kinglet, golden-crested, 21, 203; ruby-crowned, 21, 235.
Lark, western meadow, 40, 41; shore, 206.
Linnet, 27, 119, 173, 199, 217, 287; red-poll, 27, 190, 192.
Maryland yellow-throat, 9, 21, 85, 166, 266, 296.
Mocking-bird, 27.
Night-hawk, 27, 183.
Nuthatch, red-bellied, 25; white-bellied, 24.
Oriole, Baltimore, 16, 181; orchard, 154.
Oven-bird, 21, 42, 86, 124, 136, 256, 283, 296.
Pewee, wood 36, 231, 257.
Phoebe, 26, 215, 230, 269.
Red-poll linnet, 27, 190, 192.
Redstart, 21, 86, 135.
Robin, 15, 16, 35, 38, 111, 131, 160, 202, 229, 294, 298.
Sandpiper, spotted, 123.
Scarlet tanager, 125, 153, 171, 257, 296, 298.
Shrike, 5, 11, 66, 208.
Small-billed water thrush, 21, 86, 266.
Snow-bird, 90, 176, 208, 214, 221, 269.
Snow bunting, 190, 195.
Sparrow, chipping, 10, 16, 126, 173, 233, 289; field, 27, 40, 173, 233; fox-colored, 17, 173, 176, 215, 217, 218; house (or "English"), 14, 17, 20, 22, 45, 110; savanna, 27, 49, 78; song, 15, 40, 173, 174, 200, 214, 217, 219; swamp, 27; tree, 27, 215; white-throated, 16, 80, 207, 271.
Swallow, barn, 23; white-bellied, 23, 228.
Swift, chimney, 23, 96, 272.
Tanager, scarlet, 125, 153, 171, 257, 296, 298.
Thrush, brown, 16, 61, 117, 158, 184, 234, 297; gray-cheeked (or Alice's), 17, 140, 141, 281; golden-crowned, 21, 42, 86, 124, 136, 256, 283, 296; hermit, 20, 71, 86, 140, 234, 258, 279; olive-backed (or Swainson's), 20, 86, 88, 140, 281; small-billed water, 21, 86, 266; Wilson's (or veery), 25, 71, 138; wood, 38, 112, 140, 258, 279.
Titmouse, black-capped, 27, 58, 158, 202, 215, 237, 291; tufted, 151.
Towhee bunting, 25, 39, 62, 178.
Veery, 25, 71, 138.
Vireo, (or greenlet), blue-headed, 167, 168; red-eyed, 16, 167, 268; solitary, 167, 168; yellow-throated, 27, 167; warbling, 16, 167, 168; white-eyed, 40, 41, 69, 148, 167, 170, 286.
Warbler, bay-breasted, 85, 166; Blackburnian, 86, 165, 265; black-and-yellow, 85; black-poll, 21, 85, 165; black-throated blue, 21, 41, 86, 164, 267; black-throated green, 21, 41, 86, 137, 164, 267, 290; blue golden-winged, 42, 145, 164; blue yellow-backed, 21, 86, 164, 268; Canada, 21, 85, 266; chestnut-sided, 42, 266, 271; golden, 21, 164; golden-crowned wagtail, 21, 42, 86, 124, 136; mourning, 85; Nashville, 98, 266; pine-creeping, 166, 228, 237, 289; prairie, 165; summer yellow-bird, 21, 164; worm-eating, 152; yellow red-poll, 234; yellow-rumped, 21, 42, 43, 86, 269.
Waxwing, 26, 50, 126, 269.
Whippoorwill, 183, 298.
Woodcock, 27, 222.
Woodpecker, downy, 25; golden-winged, 25, 121, 232; red-bellied, 152; red-headed, 150, 205; yellow-bellied, 8, 26, 271.
Wren, great Carolina, 152; winter, 88, 146, 225, 256, 272.
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The Gypsies.
By CHARLES G. LELAND.
Containing accounts of the Russian, Austrian, English, Welsh, and American Gypsies; together with Papers on the Gypsies in the East, Gypsy Names and Family Characteristics, the Origin of the Gypsies, a Gypsy Magic Spell, Shelta, the Tinker's Talk; beside Gypsy Stories in Romany, with Translations. In one volume, crown 8vo, red top, $2.00.
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From the New York Tribune.
Mr. Leland thoroughly understands the love of the gypsy for the free and picturesque life out-of-doors; he feels it too; his pages glow with it; his fragments of description borrow from it an irresistible charm. He brings therefore to the writing of these fascinating chapters the rare qualifications of an exquisite sympathy with his subject and a poetic intuition of its inner character. But his enthusiasm is tempered by his shrewdness, and saved from extravagance by his keen sense of humor. It is impossible to read such a book without sharing the author's delight in the queer and not over reputable but highly romantic company to which it introduces us; and yet it is a great storehouse of serious and recondite information.
From The Independent (New York).
A volume beautiful for type and paper, fresh and full with the strange, mysterious history of the race of which it treats. It abounds in interesting studies of the language, in which the author is at home, and of the people. His sketches embrace experiences among gypsies of different nations,—Russian, Austrian, English, Welsh, and American,—and are original and immensely entertaining. The volume contains a number of excellent gypsy songs, well translated.
From The Churchman (New York).
The book is, on many accounts, both valuable and fascinating, and is undoubtedly the fullest and most reliable account of the gypsies ever written.
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*** For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price by the Publishers,
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., BOSTON, MASS.
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