In all my wanderings in Dyer's Hollow, only once did I see anything of that pest of the seashore, the sportsman; then, in the distance, two young fellows, with a highly satisfactory want of success, as well as I could make out, were trying to take the life of a meadow lark. No doubt they found existence a dull affair, and felt the need of something to enliven it. A noble creature is man,—"a little lower than the angels!" Two years in succession I have been at the seashore during the autumnal migration of sandpipers and plovers. Two years in succession have I seen men, old and young, murdering sandpipers and plovers at wholesale for the mere fun of doing it. Had they been "pot hunters," seeking to earn bread by shooting for the market, I should have pitied them, perhaps,—certainly I should have regretted their work; but I should have thought no ill of them. Their vocation would have been as honorable, for aught I know, as that of any other butcher. But a man of twenty, a man of seventy, shooting sanderlings, ring plovers, golden plovers, and whatever else comes in his way, not for money, nor primarily for food, but because he enjoys the work! "A little lower than the angels!" What numbers of innocent and beautiful creatures have I seen limping painfully along the beach, after the gunners had finished their day's amusement! Even now I think with pity of one particular turnstone. Some being made "a little lower than the angels" had fired at him and carried away one of his legs. I watched him for an hour. Much of the time he stood motionless. Then he hobbled from one patch of eel-grass to another, in search of something to eat. My heart ached for him, and it burns now to think that good men find it a pastime to break birds' legs and wings and leave them to perish. I have seen an old man, almost ready for the grave, who could amuse his last days in this way for weeks together. An exhilarating and edifying spectacle it was,—this venerable worthy sitting behind his bunch of wooden decoys, a wounded tern fluttering in agony at his feet. Withal, be it said, he was a man of gentlemanly bearing, courteous, and a Christian. He did not shoot on Sunday,—not he. Such sport is to me despicable. Yet it is affirmed by those who ought to know—by those, that is, who engage in it—that it tends to promote a spirit of manliness.

But thoughts of this kind belong not in Dyer's Hollow. Rather let me remember only its stillness and tranquillity, its innocent inhabitants, its gray hills, its sandy road, and the ocean at the end of the way. Even at the western extremity, near the railway and the busy harbor, the valley was the very abode of quietness. Here, on one of my earlier excursions, I came unexpectedly to a bridge, and on the farther side of the bridge to a tidy house and garden; and in the garden were several pear-trees, with fruit on them! Still more to my surprise, here was a little shop. The keeper of it had also the agency of some insurance company,—so a signboard informed the passer-by. As for his stock in trade,—sole leather, dry goods, etc.,—that spoke for itself. I stepped inside the door, but he was occupied with an account book, and when at last he looked up there was no speculation in his eyes. Possibly he had sold something the day before, and knew that no second customer could be expected so soon. We exchanged the time of day,—not a very valuable commodity hereabout,—and I asked him a question or two touching the hollow, and especially "the village," of which I had heard a rumor that it lay somewhere in this neighborhood. He looked bewildered at the word,—he hardly knew what I could mean, he said; but with a little prompting he recollected that a few houses between this point and North Truro (there used to be more houses than now, but they had been removed to other towns,—some of them to Boston!) were formerly called "the village." I left him to his ledger, and on passing his house I saw that he was a dealer in grain as well as in sole leather and calico, and had telephonic communication with somebody; an enterprising merchant, after all, up with the times, in spite of appearances.

The shop was like the valley, a careless tourist might have said,—a sleepy shop in Sleepy Hollow. To me it seemed not so. Peaceful, remote, sequestered,—these and all similar epithets suited well with Longnook; but for myself, in all my loitering there I was never otherwise than wide awake. The close-lying, barren, mountainous-looking hills did not oppress the mind, but rather lifted and dilated it, and although I could not hear the surf, I felt all the while the neighborhood of the sea; not the harbor, but the ocean, with nothing between me and Spain except that stretch of water. Blessed forever be Dyer's Hollow, I say, and blessed be its inhabitants! Whether Western Islanders or "regular Cape Cod men," may they live and die in peace.



FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

"Lead him through the lovely mountain-paths, And talk to him of things at hand and common." MATTHEW ARNOLD.

I went up the mountain from the village of Stowe in very ignoble fashion,—in a wagon,—and was three hours on the passage. One of the "hands" at the Summit House occupied the front seat with the driver, and we were hardly out of the village before a seasonable toothache put him in mind of his pipe. Would smoking be offensive to me? he inquired. What could I say, having had an aching tooth before now myself? It was a pleasure almost beyond the luxury of breathing mountain air to see the misery of a fellow-mortal so quickly assuaged. The driver, a sturdy young Vermonter, was a man of different spirit. He had never used tobacco nor drunk a glass of "liquor," I heard him saying. Somebody had once offered him fifty cents to smoke a cigar.

"Why didn't you take it?" asked his companion in a tone of wonder.

"Well, I'm not that kind of a fellow, to be bought for fifty cents."

As we approached the base of the mountain, a white-throated sparrow was piping by the roadside.

"I love to hear that bird sing," said the driver.

It was now my turn to be surprised. Our man of principle was also a man of sentiment.

"What do you call him?" I inquired, as soon as I could recover myself.

"Whistling Jack," he answered; a new name to me, and a good one; it would take a nicer ear than mine to discriminate with certainty between a white-throat's voice and a school-boy's whistle.

The morning had promised well, but before we emerged from the forest as we neared the summit we drove into a cloud, and, shortly afterward, into a pouring rain. In the office of the hotel I found a company of eight persons, four men and four women, drying themselves about the stove. They had left a village twenty miles away at two o'clock that morning in an open wagon for an excursion to the summit. Like myself, they had driven into a cloud, and up to this time had seen nothing more distant than the stable just across the road, within a stone's toss of the window, and even that only by glimpses. One of the party was a doctor, who must be at home that night. Hour after hour they watched the clouds, or rather the rain (we were so beclouded that the clouds could not be seen), and debated the situation. Finally, at three o'clock, they got into their open wagon, the rain pelting them fiercely, and started for the base. Doubtless they soon descended into clear weather, but not till they were well drenched. Verily the clouds are no respecters of persons. It is nothing to them how far you have come, nor how worthy your errand. So I reflected, having nothing better to do, when my wagonful of pilgrims had dropped out of sight in the fog—as a pebble drops into the lake—leaving me with the house to myself; and presently, as I sat at the window, I heard a white-throated sparrow singing outside. Here was one, at least, whom the rain could not discourage. A wild and yet a sweet and home-felt strain is this of "Whistling Jack,"—a mountain bird, well used to mountain weather, and just now too happy to forego his music, no matter how the storm might rage. I myself had been in a cloud often enough to feel no great degree of discomfort or lowness of spirits. I had not decided to spend the precious hours of a brief vacation upon a mountain-top without taking into account the additional risk of unfavorable weather in such a place. Let the clouds do their worst; I could be patient and wait for the sun. But this whistling philosopher outside spoke of something better than patience, and I thanked him for the timely word.

Toward noon of the next day the rain ceased, the cloud vanished, and I made haste to clamber up the rocky peak—the Nose, so called—at the base of which the hotel is situated. Yes, there stretched Lake Champlain, visible for almost its entire length, and beyond it loomed the Adirondacks. I was glad I had come. I could sing now. It does a man good to look afar off.

Even before the fog lifted I had discovered, to my no small gratification, that the evergreens immediately about the house were full of gray-cheeked thrushes, a close colony, strictly confined to the low trees at the top of the mountain. They were calling at all hours, yeep, yeep, somewhat in the manner of young chickens; and after supper, as it grew dark, I stood on the piazza while they sang in full chorus. At least six of them were in tune at once. Wee-o, wee-o, tit-ti wee-o, something like this the music ran, with many variations; a most ethereal sound, at the very top of the scale, but faint and sweet; quite in tune also with my mood, for I had just come in from gazing long at the sunset, with Lake Champlain like a sea of gold for perhaps a hundred miles, and a stretch of the St. Lawrence showing far away in the north. During the afternoon, too, I had been over the long crest of the mountain to the northern peak, the highest point, belittled in local phraseology as the Chin; a delightful jaunt of two miles, with magnificent prospects all the way. It was like walking on the ridge-pole of Vermont, a truly exhilarating experience.

All in all, though the forenoon had been so rainy, I had lived a long day, and now, if ever, could appreciate the singing of this characteristic northern songster, himself such a lover of mountains as never to be heard, here in New England, at least, and in summer-time, except amid the dwindling spruce forests of the upper slopes. I have never before seen him so familiar. On the Mount Washington range and on Mount Lafayette it is easy enough to hear his music, but one rarely gets more than a flying glimpse of the bird. Here, as I say, he was never out of hearing, and seldom long out of sight, even from the door-step. The young were already leaving the nest, and undoubtedly the birds had disposed themselves for the season before the unpainted, inoffensive-looking little hotel showed any signs of occupancy. The very next year a friend of mine visited the place and could discover no trace of them. They had found their human neighbors a vexation, perhaps, and on returning from their winter's sojourn in Costa Rica, or where not, had sought summer quarters on some less trodden peak.

Not so was it with the myrtle warblers, I venture to assert, though on this point I have never taken my friend's testimony. Perfectly at home as they are in the wildest and most desolate places, they manifest a particular fondness for the immediate vicinity of houses, delighting especially to fly about the gutters of the roof and against the window panes. Here, at the Summit House, they were constantly to be seen hawking back and forth against the side of the building, as barn swallows are given to doing in the streets of cities. The rude structure was doubly serviceable,—to me a shelter, and to the birds a fly-trap. I have never observed any other warbler thus making free with human habitations.

This yellow-rump, or myrtle bird, is one of the thrifty members of his great family, and next to the black-poll is the most numerous representative of his tribe in Massachusetts during the spring and fall migrations; a beautiful little creature, with a characteristic flight and call, and for a song a pretty trill suggestive of the snow-bird's. Within two or three years he has been added to the summer fauna of Massachusetts, and as a son of the Bay State I rejoice in his presence and heartily bid him welcome. We shall never have too many of such citizens. I esteem him, also, as the only one of his delicate, insectivorous race who has the hardihood to spend the winter—sparingly, but with something like regularity—within the limits of New England. He has a genius for adapting himself to circumstances; picking up his daily food in the depths of a mountain forest or off the panes of a dwelling-house, and wintering, as may suit his fancy or convenience, in the West Indies or along the sea-coast of Massachusetts.

One advantage of a sojourn at the summit of any of our wooded New England mountains is the easy access thus afforded to the upper forest. While I was here upon Mount Mansfield I spent some happy hours almost every day in sauntering down the road for a mile or two, looking and listening. Just after leaving the house it was possible to hear three kinds of thrushes singing at once,—gray-cheeks, olive-backs, and hermits. Of the three the hermit is beyond comparison the finest singer, both as to voice and tune. His song, given always in three detached measures, each higher than the one before it, is distinguished by an exquisite liquidity, the presence of d and l, I should say, as contrasted with the inferior t sound of the gray-cheek. If it has less variety, and perhaps less rapture, than the song of the wood-thrush, it is marked by greater simplicity and ease; and if it does not breathe the ineffable tranquillity of the veery's strain, it comes to my ear, at least, with a still nobler message. The hermit's note is aspiration rather than repose. "Peace, peace!" says the veery, but the hermit's word is, "Higher, higher!" "Spiritual songs," I call them both, with no thought of profaning the apostolic phrase.

I had been listening to thrush music (I think I could listen to it forever), and at a bend of the road had turned to admire the wooded side of the mountain, just here spread out before me, miles and miles of magnificent hanging forest, when I was attracted by a noise as of something gnawing—a borer under the bark of a fallen spruce lying at my feet. Such an industrious and contented sound! No doubt the grub would have said, "Yes, I could do this forever." What knew he of the beauties of the picture at which I was gazing? The very light with which to see it would have been a torture to him. Heaven itself was under the close bark of that decaying log. So peradventure, may we ourselves be living in darkness without knowing it, while spiritual intelligences look on with wondering pity to see us so in love with our prison-house. Well, yonder panorama was beautiful to me, at all events, however it might look to more exalted beings, and, like my brother under the spruce-tree bark, I would make the best of life as I found it.

This way my thoughts were running when all at once two birds dashed by me—a black-poll warbler in hot pursuit of an olive-backed thrush. The thrush alighted in a tree and commenced singing, and the warbler sat by and waited, following the universal rule that a larger bird is never to be attacked except when on the wing. The thrush repeated his strain once or twice, and then flew to another tree, the little fellow after him with all speed. Again the olive-back perched and sang, and again the black-poll waited. Three times these manoeuvres were repeated, before the birds passed out of my range. Some wrong-doing, real or fancied, on the part of the larger bird, had excited the ire of the warbler. Why should he be imposed upon, simply because he was small? The thrush, meantime, disdaining to defend himself, would only stop now and then to sing, as if to show to the world (every creature is the centre of a world) that such an insect persecution could never ruffle his spirit. Birds are to be commiserated, perhaps, on having such an excess of what we call human nature; but the misfortune certainly renders them the more interesting to us, who see our more amiable weaknesses so often reflected in their behavior.

For the sympathetic observer every kind of bird has its own temperament. On one of my jaunts down this Mount Mansfield road I happened to espy a Canada jay in a thick spruce. He was on one of the lower branches, but pretty soon began mounting the tree, keeping near the bole and going up limb by limb in absolute silence, exactly in the manner of our common blue jay. I was glad to see him, but more desirous to hear his voice, the loud, harsh scream with which the books credit him, and which, a priori, I should have little hesitation in ascribing to any member of his tribe. I waited till I grew impatient. Then I started hastily toward him, making as much commotion as possible in pushing through the undergrowth. It was a clever scheme, but the bird was not to be surprised into uttering so much as an exclamation. He dropped out of his tree, flew a little distance to a lower and less conspicuous perch, and there I finally left him. Once before, on Mount Clinton, I had seen him, and had been treated with the same studied silence. And later, I fell in with a little family party on the side of Mount Washington, and they, too, refused me so much as a note. Probably I was too near the birds in every case, though in the third instance there was no attempt at skulking, nor any symptom of nervousness. I have often been impressed and amused by the blue jay's habit in this respect. No bird could well be noisier than he when the noisy mood takes him; but come upon him suddenly at close quarters, and he will be as still as the grave itself. He has a double gift, of eloquence and silence,—silver and gold—and no doubt his Canadian cousin is equally well endowed.

The reader may complain, perhaps, that I speak only of trifles. Why go to a mountain-top to look at warblers and thrushes? I am not careful to justify myself. I love a mountain-top, and go there because I love to be there. It is good, I think, to be lifted above the every-day level, and to enjoy the society—and the absence of society—which the heights afford. Looking over my notes of this excursion, I come upon the following sentence: "To sit on a stone beside a mountain road, with olive-backed thrushes piping on every side, the ear catching now and then the distant tinkle of a winter wren's tune, or the nearer zee, zee, zee of black-poll warblers, while white-throated sparrows call cheerily out of the spruce forest—this is to be in another world."

This sense of distance and strangeness is not to be obtained, in my case at all events, by a few hours' stay in such a spot. I must pitch my tent there, for at least a night or two. I cannot even see the prospect at first, much less feel the spirit of the place. There must be time for the old life to drop off, as it were, while eye and ear grow wonted to novel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did take note of trivial things,—the call of a bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was a pleasing relief after living so long with men whose minds were all the time full of those serious and absorbing questions, "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"

I remember with special pleasure a profusion of white orchids (Habenaria dilatata) which bordered the roadside not far from the top, their spikes of waxy snow-white flowers giving out a rich, spicy odor hardly to be distinguished from the scent of carnation pinks. I remember, too, how the whole summit, from the Nose to the Chin, was sprinkled with the modest and beautiful Greenland sandwort, springing up in every little patch of thin soil, where nothing else would flourish, and blossoming even under the door-step of the hotel. Unpretending as it is, this little alpine adventurer makes the most of its beauty. The blossoms are not crowded into close heads, so as to lose their individual attractiveness, like the florets of the golden-rod, for example; nor are they set in a stiff spike, after the manner of the orchid just now mentioned. At the same time the plant does not trust to the single flower to bring it into notice. It grows in a pretty tuft, and throws out its blossoms in a graceful, loose cluster. The eye is caught by the cluster, and yet each flower shows by itself, and its own proper loveliness is in no way sacrificed to the general effect. How wise, too, is the sandwort in its choice of a dwelling-place! In the valley it would be lost amid the crowd. On the bare, brown mountain-top its scattered tufts of green and white appeal to all comers.

To what extent, if at all, the sandwort depends upon the service of insects for its fertilization, I do not know, but it certainly has no scarcity of such visitors. "Bees will soar for bloom high as the highest peak of Mansfield;" so runs an entry in my notebook, with a pardonable adaptation of Wordsworth's line; and I was glad to notice that even the splendid black-and-yellow butterfly (Turnus), which was often to be seen sucking honey from the fragrant orchids, did not disdain to sip also from the sandwort's cup. This large and elegant butterfly—our largest—is thoroughly at home on our New England mountains, sailing over the very loftiest peaks, and making its way through the forests with a strong and steady flight. Many a time have I taken a second look at one, as it has threaded the treetops over my head, thinking to see a bird. Besides the Turnus, I noted here the nettle tortoise-shell butterfly (Vanessa Milberti—a showy insect, and the more attractive to me as being comparatively a stranger); the common cabbage butterfly; the yellow Philodice; the copper; and, much more abundant than any of these, a large orange-red fritillary (Aphrodite, I suppose), gorgeously bedecked with spots of silver on the under surface of the wings. All these evidently knew that plenty of flowers were to be found along this seemingly barren, rocky crest. Whether they have any less sensuous motive for loving to wander over such heights, who will presume to determine? It may very well be that their almost ethereal structure—such spread of wing with such lightness of body—is only the outward sign of gracious thoughts and feelings, of a sensitiveness to beauty far surpassing anything of which we ourselves are capable. What a contrast between them and the grub gnawing ceaselessly under the spruce-tree bark! Can the highest angel be as far above the lowest man? And yet (how mysteriously suggestive would the fact be, if only it were new to us!) this same light-winged Aphrodite, flitting from blossom to blossom in the mountain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly, crawling thing, close cousin to the borer. Since then it has fallen asleep and been changed,—a parable, past all doubt, though as yet we lack eyes to read it.

I have spoken hitherto as if I were the only sojourner at the summit, but there was another man, though I seldom saw him; a kind of hermit, living in a little shanty under the lee of the Nose. Almost as a matter of course he was reputed to be of good family and to read Greek, and the fact that he now and then received a bank draft evidently gave him a respectable standing in the eye of the hotel clerk. Something—something of a very romantic nature, we may be sure—had driven him away from the companionship of his fellows, but he still found it convenient to be within reach of human society. Like all such solitaries, he had some half-insane notions. He could not sleep indoors, not for a night; it would ruin his health, if I understood him correctly; and because of wild animals—bears and what not—he made his bed on the roof of his hermitage. I had often dreamed of the enjoyment of a life in the woods all by one's self, but such a mode of existence did not gain in attractiveness as I saw it here in the concrete example. On the whole I was well satisfied to sleep in the hotel and eat at the hotel table. Liberty is good, but I thought it might be undesirable to be a slave to my own freedom.

Two or three times a wagon-load of tourists appeared at the hotel. They strolled about the summit, admired the prospect, picked a bunch of sandwort, perhaps, but especially they went to see the snow. They had been at much trouble to stand upon the highest land in Vermont, and now that they were here, they wished to do or see something unique, something that should mark the day as eventful. So they were piloted to a cave midway between the Nose and the Chin, into which the sun never peeped, and wherein a snow-bank still lingered. The mountain was grand, the landscape was magnificent, but to eat a handful of snow and throw a snow-ball in the middle of July—this was almost like being at the North Pole; it would be something to talk about after getting home.

One visitor I rejoiced to see, though a stranger. I was on the Nose in the afternoon, enjoying once more the view of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks, when I descried two men far off toward the Chin. They had come up the mountain, not by the carriage road, but by a trail on the opposite side, and plainly were in no haste, though the afternoon was wearing away. As I watched their movements, a mile or two in the distance, I said to myself, "Good! they are botanists." So it proved; or rather one of them was a botanist,—a college professor on a pedestrian collecting-excursion. We compared notes after supper and walked together the next morning, enjoying that peculiar good fellowship which nothing but a kindred interest and an unexpected meeting in a lonesome place can make possible. Then he started down the carriage road with the design of exploring Smugglers' Notch, and I have never seen or heard from him since. I hope he is still botanizing on the shores of time, and finding many a precious rarity; and should he ever read this reference to himself, may it be with a feeling as kindly as that with which the lines are written.

That afternoon I followed him, somewhat unexpectedly. I went down, as I had come up, on wheels; but I will not say in ignoble fashion, for the driver—the hotel proprietor himself—was in haste, the carriage had no brake, and the speed with which we rattled down the steep pitches and round the sharp curves, with the certainty that if anything should break, the horse would run and our days would be ended,—these things, and especially the latter consideration, of which I thought and the other man spoke, made the descent one of pleasurable excitement. We reached the base in safety and I was left at the nearest farmhouse, where by dint of some persuasion the housewife was induced to give me a lodging for the night, so that on the morrow I might make a long day in Smugglers' Notch, a famous botanical resort between Mount Mansfield and Mount Sterling, which I had for years been desirous of visiting.

I would gladly have stayed longer on the heights, but it was pleasant also to be once more in the lowlands; to walk out after supper and look up instead of down, while the chimney swifts darted hither and thither with their merry, breathless cacklings. How welcome, too, were the hearty music of the robin and the carol of the grass finch! After all, I thought, home is in the valley; but the whistle of the white-throat reminded me that I was not yet back in Massachusetts.



A WIDOW AND TWINS.

"The fatherless and the widow ... shall eat and be satisfied."—DEUTERONOMY xiv. 29.

On the 1st of June, 1890, I formally broke away from ornithological pursuits. For two months, more or less,—till the autumnal migration should set in,—I was determined to have my thoughts upon other matters. There is no more desirable plaything than an outdoor hobby, but a man ought not to be forever in the saddle. Such, at all events, had always been my opinion, so that I long ago promised myself never to become, what some of my acquaintances, perhaps with too much reason, were now beginning to consider me, a naturalist, and nothing else. That would be letting the hobby-horse run away with its owner. For the time being, then, birds should pass unnoticed, or be looked at only when they came in my way. A sensible resolve. But the maker of it was neither Mede nor Persian, as the reader, if he have patience enough, may presently discover for himself.

As I sat upon the piazza, in the heat of the day, busy or half busy with a book, a sound of humming-bird's wings now and then fell on my ear, and, as I looked toward the honeysuckle vine, I began after a while to remark that the visitor was invariably a female. I watched her probe the scarlet tubes and dart away, and then returned to my page. She might have a nest somewhere near; but if she had there was small likelihood of my finding it, and, besides, I was just now not concerned with such trifles. On the 24th of June, however, a passing neighbor dropped into the yard. Was I interested in humming-birds? he inquired. If so, he could show me a nest. I put down my book, and went with him at once.

The beautiful structure, a model of artistic workmanship, was near the end of one of the lower branches of an apple-tree, eight or ten feet from the ground, saddled upon the drooping limb at a point where two offshoots made a good holding-place, while an upright twig spread over it a leafy canopy against rain and sun. Had the builders sought my advice as to a location, I could hardly have suggested one better suited to my own convenience. The tree was within a stone's toss of my window, and, better still, the nest was overlooked to excellent advantage from an old bank wall which divided my premises from those of my next-door neighbor. How could I doubt that Providence itself had set me a summer lesson?

At our first visit the discoverer of the nest—from that moment an ornithologist—brought out a step-ladder, and we looked in upon the two tiny white eggs, considerately improving a temporary absence of the owner for that purpose. It was a picture to please not only the eye, but the imagination; and before I could withdraw my gaze the mother bird was back again, whisking about my head so fearlessly that for a moment I stood still, half expecting her to drop into the nest within reach of my hand.

This, as I have said, was on the 24th of June. Six days later, on the afternoon of the 30th, the eggs were found to be hatched, and two lifeless-looking things lay in the bottom of the nest, their heads tucked out of sight, and their bodies almost or quite naked, except for a line of grayish down along the middle of the back.

Meanwhile, I had been returning with interest the visits of the bird to our honeysuckle, and by this time had fairly worn a path to a certain point in the wall, where, comfortably seated in the shade of the hummer's own tree, and armed with opera-glass and notebook, I spent some hours daily in playing the spy upon her motherly doings.

For a widow with a house and family upon her hands, she took life easily; at frequent intervals she absented herself altogether, and even when at home she spent no small share of the time in flitting about among the branches of the tree. On such occasions, I often saw her hover against the bole or a patch of leaves, or before a piece of caterpillar or spider web, making quick thrusts with her bill, evidently after bits of something to eat. On quitting the nest, she commonly perched upon one or another of a certain set of dead twigs in different parts of the tree, and at once shook out her feathers and spread her tail, displaying its handsome white markings, indicative of her sex. This was the beginning of a leisurely toilet operation, in the course of which she scratched herself with her feet and dressed her feathers with her bill, all the while darting out her long tongue with lightning-like rapidity, as if to moisten her beak, which at other times she cleansed by rubbing it down with her claws or by wiping it upon a twig. In general she paid little attention to me, though she sometimes hovered directly in front of my face, as if trying to stare me out of countenance. One of the most pleasing features of the show was her method of flying into the nest. She approached it, without exception, from the same quarter, and, after an almost imperceptible hovering motion, shut her wings and dropped upon the eggs.

When the young were hatched I redoubled my attentions. Now I should see her feed them. On the first afternoon I waited a long time for this purpose, the mother conducting herself in her customary manner: now here, now there, preening her plumage, driving away a meddlesome sparrow, probing the florets of a convenient clover-head (an unusual resource, I think), or snatching a morsel from some leaf or twig. Suddenly she flew at me, and held herself at a distance of perhaps four feet from my nose. Then she wheeled, and, as I thought, darted out of the orchard. In a few seconds I turned my head, and there she sat in the nest! I owned myself beaten. While I had been gazing toward the meadow, she had probably done exactly what I had wasted the better part of the afternoon in attempting to see.

Twenty-four hours later I was more successful, though the same ruse was again tried upon me. The mother left the nest at my approach, but in three minutes (by the watch) flew in again. She brooded for nine minutes. Then, quite of her own motion, she disappeared for six minutes. On her return she spent four minutes in dressing her feathers, after which she alighted on the edge of the nest, fed the little ones, and took her place upon them. This time she brooded for ten minutes. Then she was away for six minutes, dallied about the tree for two minutes longer, and again flew into the nest. While sitting, she pecked several times in quick succession at a twig within reach, and I could plainly see her mandibles in motion, as if she were swallowing. She brooded for thirteen minutes, absented herself for three minutes, and spent six minutes in her usual cautionary manoeuvres before resuming her seat. For the long interval of twenty-two minutes she sat still. Then she vanished for four minutes, and on her return gave the young another luncheon, after a fast of one hour and six minutes.

The feeding process, which I had been so desirous to see, was of a sort to make the spectator shiver. The mother, standing on the edge of the nest, with her tail braced against its side, like a woodpecker or a creeper, took a rigidly erect position, and craned her neck until her bill was in a perpendicular line above the short, wide-open, upraised beak of the little one, who, it must be remembered, was at this time hardly bigger than a humble-bee. Then she thrust her bill for its full length down into his throat, a frightful-looking act, followed by a series of murderous gesticulations, which fairly made one observer's blood run cold.

On the day after this (on the 2d of July, that is to say) I climbed into the tree, in the old bird's absence, and stationed myself where my eyes were perhaps fifteen feet from the nest, and a foot or two above its level. At the end of about twenty minutes, the mother, who meantime had made two visits to the tree, flew into place, and brooded for seventeen minutes. Then she disappeared again, and on her return, after numberless pretty feints and sidelong approaches, alighted on the wall of the nest, and fed both little ones. The operation, though still sufficiently reckless, looked less like infanticide than before,—a fact due, as I suppose, to my more elevated position, from which the nestlings' throats were better seen. After this she brooded for another seventeen minutes. On the present occasion, as well as on many others, it was noticeable that, while sitting upon the young, she kept up an almost incessant motion, as if seeking to warm them, or perhaps to develop their muscles by a kind of massage treatment. A measure of such hitchings and fidgetings might have meant nothing more than an attempt to secure for herself a comfortable seat; but when they were persisted in for fifteen minutes together, it was difficult not to believe that she had some different end in view. Possibly, as human infants get exercise by dandling on the mother's knee, the baby humming-bird gets his by this parental kneading process. Whether brooding or feeding, it must be said that the hummer treated her tiny charges with no particular carefulness, so far as an outsider could judge.

The next day I climbed again into the tree. The mother bird made off at once, and did not resume her seat for almost an hour, though she would undoubtedly have done so earlier but for my presence. Again and again she perched near me, her bill leveled straight at my face. Finally she alighted on the nest, and, after considerable further delay, as if to assure herself that everything was quite safe, fed the two chicks from her throat, as before. "She thrust her bill into their mouths so far" (I quote my notes) "that the tips of their short little beaks were up against the root of her mandibles!"

Only once more, on the 4th of July, I ventured into the apple-tree. For more than an hour and a half I waited. Times without number the mother came buzzing into the tree, made the circuit of her favorite perches, dressed her plumage, darted away again, and again returned, till I was almost driven to get down, for her relief. At last she fed the nestlings, who by this time must have been all but starved, as indeed they seemed to be. "The tips of their bills do come clean up to the base of the mother's mandibles." So I wrote in my journal; for it is the first duty of a naturalist to verify his own observations.

On the 10th we again brought out the ladder. Though at least eleven days old, the tiny birds—the "widow's mites," as my facetious neighbor called them—were still far from filling the cup. While I stood over it, one of them uttered some pathetic little cries that really went to my heart. His bill, perceptibly longer than on the 5th, was sticking just above the border of the nest. I touched it at the tip, but he did not stir. Craning my neck, I could see his open eye. Poor, helpless things! Yet within three months they would be flying to Central America, or some more distant clime. How little they knew what was before them! As little as I know what is before me.

The violence of the feeding act was now at its height, I think, but it would be impossible to do justice to it by any description. My neighbor, who one day stood beside me looking on, was moved to loud laughter. When the two beaks were tightly joined, and while the old bird's was being gradually withdrawn, they were shaken convulsively,—by the mother's attempts to disgorge, and perhaps by the young fellow's efforts to hasten the operation. It was plain that he let go with reluctance, as a boy sucks the very tip of the spoon to get the last drop of jam; but, as will be mentioned in the course of the narrative, his behavior improved greatly in this respect as he grew older.

On the 12th, just after the little ones had been fed, one of them got his wings for the first time above the wall of the nest, and fluttered them with much spirit. He had spent almost a fortnight in the cradle, and was beginning to think he had been a baby long enough.

From the first I had kept in mind the question whether the feeding of the young by regurgitation, as described briefly by Audubon, and more in detail by Mr. William Brewster,[9] would be continued after the nestlings were fully grown. On the 14th I wrote in my journal: "The method of feeding remains unchanged, and, as it seems, is likely to remain so to the end. It must save the mother much labor in going and coming, and perhaps renders the cooperation of the male parent unnecessary." This prediction was fulfilled, but with a qualification to be hereafter specified.

[9] The Auk, vol. vii. p. 206.

Every morning, now, I went to the apple-tree uncertain whether the nest would not be found empty. According to Audubon, Nuttall, Mr. Burroughs, and Mrs. Treat, young humming-birds stay in the nest only seven days. Mr. Brewster, in his notes already cited, says that the birds on which his observations were made—in the garden of Mr. E. S. Hoar, in Concord—were hatched on the 4th of July,[10] and forsook the nest on the 18th. My birds were already fifteen days old, at least, and, unless they were to prove uncommonly backward specimens, ought to be on the wing forthwith. Nevertheless they were in no haste. Day after day passed. The youngsters looked more and more like old birds, and the mother grew constantly more and more nervous.

[10] But Mr. Hoar, from whom Mr. Brewster had his dates, informs me that the time of hatching was not certainly known; and from Mr. Brewster's statement about the size of the nestlings, I cannot doubt that they had been out of the shell some days longer than Mr. Hoar then supposed.

On the 18th I found her in a state of unprecedented excitement, squeaking almost incessantly. At first I attributed this to concern at my presence, but after a while it transpired that a young oriole—a blundering, tailless fellow—was the cause of the disturbance. By some accident he had dropped into the leafy treetop, as guiltless of any evil design as one of her own nestlings. How she did buzz about him! In and out among the branches she went, now on this side of him, now on that, and now just over his back; all the time squeaking fiercely, and carrying her tail spread to its utmost. The scene lasted for some minutes. Through it all the two young birds kept perfectly quiet, never once putting up their heads, even when the mother, buzzing and calling, zigzagged directly about the nest. I had seen many birds in the tree, first and last, but none that created anything like such a stir. The mother was literally in a frenzy. She went the round of her perches, but could stay nowhere. Once she dashed out of the tree for an instant, and drove a sparrow away from the tomato patch. Ordinarily his presence there would not have annoyed her in the least, but in her present state of mind she was ready to pounce upon anybody. All of which shows once more how "human-like" birds are. The bewilderment of the oriole was comical. "What on earth can this crazy thing be shooting about my ears in this style for?" I imagined him saying to himself. In fact, as he glanced my way, now and then, with his innocent baby face, I could almost believe that he was appealing to me with some such inquiry.

The next morning ("at 7.32," as my diary is careful to note) one of the twins took his flight. I was standing on the wall, with my glass leveled upon the nest, when I saw him exercising his wings. The action was little more pronounced than had been noticed at intervals during the last three or four days, except that he was more decidedly on his feet. Suddenly, without making use of the rim of the nest, as I should have expected him to do, he was in the air, hovering in the prettiest fashion, and in a moment more had alighted on a leafless twig slightly above the level of the nest, and perhaps a yard from it. Within a minute the mother appeared, buzzing and calling, with answering calls from the youthful adventurer. At once—after a hasty reconnaissance of the man on the wall—she perched beside him, and plunged her bill into his throat. Then she went to the nest, served the other one in the same way, and made off. She had no time to waste at this juncture of affairs.

When she had gone, I stepped up to the trunk of the tree to watch the little fellow more closely. He held his perch, and occupied himself with dressing his plumage, though, as the breeze freshened, he was compelled once in a while to keep his wings in motion to prevent the wind from carrying him away. When the old bird returned,—in just half an hour,—she resented my intrusion (what an oppressor of the widow and the fatherless she must by this time have thought me!) in the most unmistakable manner, coming more than once quite within reach. However, she soon gave over these attempts at intimidation, perched beside the percher, and again put something into his maw. This time she did not feed the nestling. As she took her departure, she told the come-outer—or so I fancied—that there was a man under the tree, a pestilent fellow, and it would be well to get a little out of his reach. At all events, she had scarcely disappeared before the youngster was again on the wing. It was wonderful how much at home he seemed,—poising, backing, soaring, and alighting with all the ease and grace of an old hand. One only piece of awkwardness I saw him commit: he dropped upon a branch much too large for his tiny feet, and was manifestly uncomfortable. But he did not stay long, and at his next alighting was well up in the tree, where it was noticeable that he remained ever after.

With so much going on outside, it was hard to remain indoors, and finally I took a chair to the orchard, and gave myself up to watching the drama. The feeding process, though still always by regurgitation, was by this time somewhat different from what it had been when the bills of the young were less fully developed. In my notes of this date I find the following description of it: "Number Two is still in the nest, but uneasy. At 10.25 the mother appeared and fed him.[11] Her beak was thrust into his mouth at right angles,—the change being necessitated, probably, by the greater length of his bill,—and he seemed to be jerking strenuously at it. Then he opened his beak and remained motionless, while the black mandibles of the mother could be seen running down out of sight into his throat."

[11] For convenience, I use the masculine pronoun in speaking of both the young birds; but I knew nothing as to the sex of either of them, though I came finally to believe that one was a male and the other a female.

The other youngster, Number One, as I now called him, stayed in the tree, or at most ventured only into the next one, and was fed at varying intervals,—as often, apparently, as the busy mother could find anything to give him. Would he go back to his cradle for the night? It seemed not improbable, notwithstanding he had shown no sign of such an intention so long as daylight lasted. At 3.50 the next morning, therefore, I stole out to see. No: Number Two was there alone.

At seven o'clock, when I made my second visit, the mother was in the midst of another day's hard work. Twice within five minutes she brought food to the nestling. Once the little fellow—not so very little now—happened to be facing east, while the old bird alighted, as she had invariably done, on the western side. The youngster, instead of facing about, threw back his head and opened his beak. "Look out, there!" exclaimed my fellow-observer; "you'll break his neck if you feed him in that way." But she did not mind. Young birds' necks are not so easily broken. Within ten minutes of this time she fed Number One, giving him three doses. They were probably small, however (and small wonder), for he begged hard for more, opening his bill with an appealing air. The action in this case was particularly well seen, and the vehement jerking, while the beaks were glued together, seemed almost enough to pull the young fellow's head off. Within another ten minutes the mother was again ministering to Number Two! Poor little widow! Between her incessant labors of this kind and her overwhelming anxiety whenever any strange bird came near, I began to be seriously alarmed for her. As a member of a strictly American family, she was in a fair way, I thought, to be overtaken by the "most American of diseases,"—nervous prostration. It tired me to watch her.

With us, and perhaps with her likewise, it was a question whether Number Two would remain in the nest for the day. He grew more and more restless; as my companion—a learned man—expressed it, he began to "ramp round." Once he actually mounted the rim of the nest, a thing which his more precocious brother had never been seen to do, and stretched forward to pick at a neighboring stem. Late that afternoon the mother fed him five times within an hour, instead of once an hour, or thereabouts, as had been her habit three weeks before. She meant to have him in good condition for the coming event; and he, on his part, was active to the same end,—standing upon the wall of the nest again and again, and exercising his wings till they made a cloud about him. A dread of launching away still kept him back, however, and shortly after seven o'clock I found him comfortably disposed for the night. "He is now on his twenty-first day (at least) in the nest. To-morrow will see him go." So end my day's notes.

At 5.45 the next morning he was still there. At 6.20 I absented myself for a few minutes, and on returning was hailed by my neighbor with the news that the nest was empty. Number Two had flown between 6.25 and 6.30, but, unhappily, neither of us was at hand to give him a cheer. I trust that he and his mother were not hurt in their feelings by the oversight. The whole family (minus the father) was still in the apple-tree; the mother full, and more than full, of business, feeding one youngster after the other, as they sat here and there in the upper branches.

Twenty-four hours later, as I stood in the orchard, I heard a hum of wings, and found the mother over my head. Presently she flew into the top of the tree, and the next instant was sitting beside one of the young ones. His hungry mouth was already wide open, but before feeding him she started up from the twig, and circled about him so closely as almost or quite to touch him with her wings. On completing the circle she dropped upon the perch at his side, but immediately rose again, and again flew round him. It was a beautiful act,—beautiful beyond the power of any words of mine to set forth; an expression of maternal ecstasy, I could not doubt, answering to the rapturous caresses and endearments in which mothers of human infants are so frequently seen indulging. Three days afterward, to my delight, I saw it repeated in every particular, as if to confirm my opinion of its significance. The sight repaid all my watchings thrice over, and even now I feel my heart growing warm at the recollection of it. Strange thoughtlessness, is it not, which allows mothers capable of such passionate devotion, tiny, defenseless things, to be slaughtered by the million for the enhancement of woman's charms!

At this point we suddenly became aware that for at least a day or two the old bird had probably been feeding her offspring in two ways,—sometimes by regurgitation, and sometimes by a simple transfer from beak to beak. The manner of our discovery was somewhat laughable. The mother perched beside one of the young birds, put her bill into his, and then apparently fell off the limb head first. We thought she had not finished, and looked to see her return; but she flew away, and after a while the truth dawned upon us. Thereafter, unless our observation was at fault, she used whichever method happened to suit her convenience. If she found a choice collection of spiders,[12] for instance, she brought them in her throat (as cedar-birds carry cherries), to save trips; if she had only one or two, she retained them between her mandibles. It will be understood, I suppose, that we did not see the food in its passage from one bird to the other,—human eyesight would hardly be equal to work of such nicety; but the two bills were put together so frequently and in so pronounced a manner as to leave us in no practical uncertainty about what was going on. Neither had I any doubt that the change was connected in some way with the increasing age of the fledgelings; yet it is to be said that the two methods continued to be used interchangeably to the end, and on the 28th, when Number Two had been out of the nest for seven days, the mother thrust her bill down his throat, and repeated the operation, just as she had done three weeks before.

[12] Mr. E. H. Eames reports (in The Auk, vol. vii. p. 287) that, on dissecting a humming-bird, about two days old, he found sixteen young spiders in its throat, and a pultaceous mass of the same in its stomach.

For at least two days longer, as I believe, the faithful creature continued her loving ministrations, although I failed to detect her in the act. Then, on the 1st of August, as I sat on the piazza, I saw her for the last time. The honeysuckle vine had served her well, and still bore half a dozen scattered blossoms, as if for her especial benefit. She hovered before them, one by one, and in another instant was gone. May the Fates be kind to her, and to her children after her, to the latest generation! Our intercourse had lasted for eight weeks,—wanting one day,—and it was fitting that it should end where it had begun, at the sign of the honeysuckle.

The absence of the father bird for all this time, though I have mentioned it but casually, was of course a subject of continual remark. How was it to be explained? My own opinion is, reluctant as I have been to reach it, that such absence or desertion—by whatever name it may be called—is the general habit of the male ruby-throat. Upon this point I shall have some things to say in a subsequent paper.



THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

"Your fathers, where are they?"—ZECHARIAH i. 5.

While keeping daily watch upon a nest of our common humming-bird, in the summer of 1890, I was struck with the persistent absence of the head of the family. As week after week elapsed, this feature of the case excited more and more remark, and I turned to my out-of-door journal for such meagre notes as it contained of a similar nest found five years before. From these it appeared that at that time, also, the father bird was missing. Could such truancy be habitual with the male ruby-throat? I had never supposed that any of our land birds were given to behaving in this ill-mannered, unnatural way, and the matter seemed to call for investigation.

My first resort was, of course, to books. The language of Wilson and Audubon is somewhat ambiguous, but may fairly be taken as implying the male bird's presence throughout the period of nidification. Nuttall speaks explicitly to the same effect, though with no specification of the grounds on which his statement is based. The later systematic biographers—Brewer, Samuels, Minot, and the authors of New England Bird Life—are silent in respect to the point. Mr. Burroughs, in Wake-Robin, mentions having found two nests, and gives us to understand that he saw only the female birds. Mrs. Treat, on the other hand, makes the father a conspicuous figure about the single nest concerning which she reports. Mr. James Russell Lowell, too, speaks of watching both parents as they fed the young ones: "The mother always alighted, while the father as uniformly remained upon the wing."

So far, then, the evidence was decidedly, not to say decisively, in the masculine ruby-throat's favor. But while I had no desire to make out a case against him, and in fact was beginning to feel half ashamed of my uncomplimentary surmises, I was still greatly impressed with what my own eyes had seen, or rather had not seen, and thought it worth while to push the inquiry a little further.

I wrote first to Mr. E. S. Hoar, in whose garden Mr. Brewster had made the observations cited in my previous article. He replied with great kindness, and upon the point in question said: "I watched the nest two or three times a day, from a time before the young were hatched till they departed; and now you mention it, it occurs to me that I never did see the male, but only the white-breasted female."

Next I sought the testimony of professional ornithologists; and here my worst suspicions seemed in a fair way to be confirmed, although the greater number of my correspondents were unhappily compelled to plead a want of knowledge. Dr. A. K. Fisher had found, as he believed, not less than twenty-five nests, and to the best of his recollection had never seen a male bird near one of them after it was completed. He had watched the female feeding her young, and, when the nests contained eggs, had waited for hours on purpose to secure the male, but always without result.

Mr. William Brewster wrote: "I have found, or seen in situ, twelve hummers' nests, all in Massachusetts. Of these I took nine, after watching each a short time, probably not more than an hour or two in any case. Of the remaining three, I visited one three or four times at various hours of the day, another only twice, the third but once. Two of the three contained young when found. The third was supposed to have young, also, but could not be examined without danger to its contents. I have never seen a male hummer anywhere near a nest, either before or after the eggs were laid, but, as you will gather from the above brief data, my experience has not been extensive; and in the old days, when most of my nests were found, the methods of close watching now in vogue were unthought of. In the light of the testimony to which you refer, I should conclude, with you, that the male hummer must occasionally assist in the care of the young, but I am very sure that this is not usually, if indeed often, the case."

Mr. H. W. Henshaw reported a similar experience. He had found four nests of the ruby-throat, but had seen no male about any of them after nidification was begun. "I confess," he says, "that I had never thought of his absence as being other than accidental, and hence have never made any observations directly upon the point; so that my testimony is of comparatively little value. In at least one instance, when the female was building her nest, I remember to have seen the male fly with her and perch near by, while she was shaping the nest, and then fly off with her after more material. I don't like to believe that the little villain leaves the entire task of nidification to his better half (we may well call her better, if he does); but my memory is a blank so far as testimony affirmative of his devotion is concerned." Mr. Henshaw recalls an experience with a nest of the Rivoli humming-bird (Eugenes fulgens), in Arizona,—a nest which he spent two hours in getting. "I was particularly anxious to secure the male, but did not obtain a glimpse of him, and I remember thinking that it was very strange." He adds that Mr. C. W. Richmond has told him of finding a nest and taking the eggs without seeing the father bird, and sums up his own view of the matter thus:—

"Had any one asked me offhand, 'Does the male hummer help the female feed the young?' I am quite sure I should have answered, 'Of course he does.' As the case now stands, however, I am inclined to believe him a depraved wretch."

Up to this point the testimony of my correspondents had been unanimous, but the unanimity was broken by Dr. C. Hart Merriam, who remembers that on one occasion his attention was called to a nest (it proved to contain a set of fresh eggs) by the flying of both its owners about his head; and by Mr. W. A. Jeffries, who in one case saw the father bird in the vicinity of a nest occupied by young ones, although he did not see him feed or visit them. This nest, Mr. Jeffries says, was one of five which he has found. In the four other instances no male birds were observed, notwithstanding three of the nests were taken,—a tragedy which might be expected to bring the father of the family upon the scene, if he were anywhere within call.

In view of the foregoing evidence, it appears to me reasonably certain that the male ruby-throat, as a rule, takes no considerable part in the care of eggs and young. The testimony covers not less than fifty nests. Some of them were watched assiduously, nearly all were examined, and the greater part were actually taken; yet of the fifty or more male proprietors, only two were seen; and concerning these exceptions, it is to be noticed that in one case the eggs were just laid, and in the other, while the hungry nestlings must have kept the mother bird extremely busy, her mate was not observed to do anything in the way of lightening her labors.

As against this preponderance of negative testimony, and in corroboration of Mr. Lowell's and Mrs. Treat's circumstantial narratives, there remain to be mentioned the fact communicated to me by Mr. Hoar, that a townsman of his had at different times had two hummers' nests in his grounds, the male owners of which were constant in their attentions, and the following very interesting and surprising story received from Mr. C. C. Darwin, of Washington, through the kindness of Mr. Henshaw. Some years ago, as it appears, a pair of ruby-throats built a nest within a few feet of Mr. Darwin's window and a little below it, so that they could be watched without fear of disturbing them. He remembers perfectly that the male fed the female during the entire period of incubation, "pumping the food down her throat." All this time, so far as could be discovered, the mother did not once leave the nest (in wonderful contrast with my bird of a year ago), and of course the father was never seen to take her place. Mr. Darwin cannot say that the male ever fed the young ones, but is positive that he was frequently about the nest after they were hatched. While they were still too young to fly, a gardener, in pruning the tree, sawed off the limb on which the nest was built. Mr. Darwin's mother rescued the little ones and fed them with sweetened water, and on her son's return at night the branch was fixed in place again, as best it could be, by means of wires. Meanwhile the old birds had disappeared, having given up their children for lost; and it was not until the third day that they came back,—by chance, perhaps, or out of affection for the spot. At once they resumed the care of their offspring, who by this time, it is safe to say, had become more or less surfeited with sugar and water, and gladly returned to a diet of spiders and other such spicy and hearty comestibles.

Mr. Henshaw, with an evident satisfaction which does him honor, remarks upon the foregoing story as proving that, whatever may be true of male hummers in general, there are at least some faithful Benedicts among them. For myself, indeed, as I have already said, I hold no brief against the ruby-throat, and, notwithstanding the seemingly unfavorable result of my investigation into his habits as a husband and father, it is by no means clear to me that we must call him hard names. Before doing that, we ought to know not only that he stays away from his wife and children, but why he stays away; whether he is really a shirk, or absents himself unselfishly and for their better protection, at the risk of being misunderstood and traduced. My object in this paper is to raise that question about him, rather than to blacken his character; in a word, to call attention to him, not as a reprobate, but as a mystery. To that end I return to the story of my own observations.

In last month's article[13] I set forth somewhat in detail (if the adverb seem inappropriate, as I fear it will, I can only commend it to the reader's mercy) the closeness of our watch upon the nest there described. For more than a month it was under the eye of one or other of two men almost from morning till night. We did not once detect the presence of the father, and yet I shall never feel absolutely sure that he did not one day pay us a visit. I mention the circumstance for what it may be worth, and because, whatever its import, it was at least a lively spectacle. It occurred upon this wise: On the 19th of July, the day when the first of the young birds bade good-by to its cradle, I had gone into the house, leaving my fellow-observer in the orchard, with a charge to call me if anything noteworthy should happen. I was hardly seated before he whistled loudly, and I hastened out again. Another hummer had been there, he said, and the mother had been chasing him (or her) about in a frantic manner; and even while we were talking, the scene was re-enacted. The stranger had returned, and the two birds were shooting hither and thither through the trees, the widow squeaking and spreading her tail at a prodigious rate. The new-comer did not alight (it couldn't), and there was no determining its sex. It may have been the recreant husband and father, unable longer to deny himself a look at his bairns,—who knows? Or it may have been some bachelor or widower who had come a-wooing. One thing is certain,—husband, lover, or inquisitive stranger, he had no encouragement to come again.

[13] These two humming-bird papers were printed in consecutive numbers of The Atlantic Monthly, June and July, 1891.

As if to heighten the dramatic interest of our studies (I come now to the promised mystery), we had already had the singular good fortune to find a male humming-bird who seemed to be stationed permanently in a tall ash-tree, standing by itself in a recent clearing, at a distance of a mile or more from our widow's orchard. Day after day, for at least a fortnight (from the 2d to the 15th of July), he remained there. One or both of us went almost daily to call upon him, and, as far as we could make out, he seldom absented himself from his post for five minutes together! What was he doing? At first, in spite of his sex, it was hard not to believe that his nest was in the tree; and to satisfy himself, my companion "shinned" it, schoolboy fashion,—a frightful piece of work, which put me out of breath even to look at it,—while I surveyed the branches from all sides through an opera-glass. All was without avail. Nothing was to be seen, and it was as good as certain, the branches being well separated, and easily overlooked, that there was nothing there.

Four days later I set out alone, to try my luck with the riddle. As I entered the clearing, the hummer was seen at his post, and my suspicions fastened upon a small wild apple-tree, perhaps twenty rods distant. I went to examine it, and presently the bird followed me. He perched in its top, but seemed not to be jealous of my proximity, and soon returned to his customary position; but when I came back to the apple-tree, after a visit to a clump of oaks at the top of the hill, he again came over. I could find no sign of a nest, however, nor did the female show herself, as she pretty confidently might have been expected to do had her nest been near by. After this I went to the edge of the wood, where I could keep an eye upon both trees without being myself conspicuous. The sentinel spent most of his time in the ash, visiting the apple-tree but once, and then for a few minutes only. I stayed an hour and a half, and came away no wiser than before. The nest, if nest there was, must be elsewhere, I believed. But where? And what was the object of the male's watch?

My curiosity was fully roused. I had never seen or heard of such conduct on the part of any bird, and the next forenoon I spent another hour and a half in the clearing. The hummer was at his post, as he always was. We had never to wait for him. Soon after my arrival he flew to the apple-tree, the action seeming to have no connection with my presence. Presently he went back to the ash, and drove out of it two intruding birds. A moment later two humming-birds were there, and in another moment they flew away in a direction opposite to the apple-tree. Here, then, was a real clue. The birds were probably our sentinel and his mate. I made after them with all speed, pausing under such scattered trees as had been left standing in that quarter. Nothing was to be found, and on my return there sat the male, provokingly, at the top of the apple-tree, whence he soon returned to the ash. A warbler entered the tree, and after a while ventured upon the branch where the hummer was sitting. Instead of driving her away he took wing himself, and paid another visit to the apple-tree,—a visit of perhaps five minutes,—at the end of which he went back to the ash. Then two kingbirds happened to alight in the apple-tree. At once the hummer came dashing over and ordered them off, and in his excitement dropped for a moment into the leafy top of a birch sapling,—a most unnatural proceeding,—after which he resumed his station in the ash. What could I make of all this? Apparently he claimed the ownership of both trees, and yet his nest was in neither! He sat motionless for five minutes at a time upon certain dead twigs of the ash, precisely as our female was accustomed to sit in her apple-tree. For at least seven days he had been thus occupied. Where was his mate? On the edge of the wood, perhaps. But, if so, why did I hear nothing from her, as I passed up and down? Again my hour and a half had been spent to no purpose.

Not yet discouraged, I returned the next morning. For the three quarters of an hour that I remained, the hummer was not once out of the ash-tree for five minutes. I am not sure that he left it for five minutes altogether. As usual, he perched almost without exception on one or other of two dead limbs, while a similar branch, on the opposite side of the trunk, he was never seen to touch. A Maryland yellow-throat alighted on one of his two branches and began to sing, but had repeated his strain only three or four times before the hummer, who had been absent for the moment, darted upon him and put him to flight. A little afterward, a red-eyed vireo alighted on his other favorite perch, and he showed no resentment. The day before, a warbler had sat on the same branch which the yellow-throat now invaded, and the hummer not only did not offer to molest him, but flew away himself. These inconsistencies made it hard to draw any inference from his behavior. During my whole stay he did not once go to the apple-tree, although, for want of anything better to do, I again scrutinized its branches. This time I was discouraged, and gave over the search. His secret, whatever it might be, was "too dear for my possessing." But my fellow-observer kept up his visits, as I have said, and the hummer remained faithful to his task as late as July 15th, at least.

Some readers may be prompted to ask, as one of my correspondents asked at the time, whether the mysterious sentry may not have been the mate of our home bird. I see no ground for such a suspicion. The two places were at least a mile apart, as I have already mentioned, and woods and hills, to say nothing of the village, lay between. If he was our bird's mate, his choice of a picket station was indeed an enigma. He might almost as well have been on Mount Washington. Nor can I believe that he had any connection with a nest found two months afterward in a pitch-pine grove within a quarter of a mile, more or less, of his clearing. It was undoubtedly a nest of that season, and might have been his for aught I know, so far as the mere fact of distance was concerned; but here again an intervening wood must have cut off all visual communication. If his mate and nest were not within view from his ash-tree perch, what could be the meaning of his conduct? Without some specific constraining motive, no bird in his normal condition was likely to stay in one tree hour after hour, day after day, and week after week, so that one could never come in sight of it without seeing him. But even if his nest was in the immediate neighborhood, the closeness and persistency of his lookout are still, to my mind, an absolute mystery. Our female bird, whether she had eggs or offspring, made nothing of absenting herself by the half hour; but this male hardly gave himself time to eat his necessary food; indeed, I often wondered how he kept himself alive. Is such a course of action habitual with male hummers? If so, had our seemingly widowed or deserted mother a husband, who somewhere, unseen by us, was standing sentry after the same heroic, self-denying fashion? These and all similar questions I must leave to more fortunate observers, or postpone to a future summer. Meantime, my judgment as to the male ruby-throat's character remains in suspense. It is not plain to me whether we are to call him the worst or the best of husbands.



ROBIN ROOSTS.

"From every side they hurried in, Rubbing their sleepy eyes." KEATS.

Of all the nearly eight hundred species of North American birds, the robin is without question the one most generally known. Its great commonness and wide distribution have something to do with this fact, but can hardly be said to account for it altogether. The red-eyed vireo has almost as extensive a range, and at least in New England is possibly more numerous; but except among ornithologists it remains a stranger, even to country-bred people. The robin owes its universal recognition partly to its size and perfectly distinctive dress, partly to its early arrival in the spring, but especially to the nature of its nesting and feeding habits, which bring it constantly under every one's eye.

It would seem impossible, at this late day, to say anything new about so familiar a bird; but the robin has one interesting and remarkable habit, to which there is no allusion in any of our systematic ornithological treatises, so far as I am aware, although many individual observers must have taken notice of it. I mean the habit of roosting at night in large flocks, while still on its breeding grounds, and long before the close of the breeding season.[14]

[14] Mr. William Brewster has been aware of this habit for twenty-five years, but, like myself, has never seen it mentioned in print. He devotes to it a paper in The Auk for October, 1890, to which I am happy to refer readers who may wish a more thorough discussion of the matter than I have been able to give. My own paper was printed at the same time, in The Atlantic Monthly, and had been accepted by the editor before I knew of Mr. Brewster's intention to write. References to a roost in Belmont, Mass., discovered by Mr. Brewster six years before, are frequent in the following pages.

Toward the end of summer, two years ago, I saw what looked like a daily passage back and forth of small companies of robins. A friend, living in another town, had noticed similar occurrences, and more than once we discussed the subject; agreeing that such movements were probably not connected in any way with the grand southward migration, which, so far as we could judge, had not yet commenced, but that the birds must be flying to and from some nightly resort. The flocks were small, however, and neither of us suspected the full significance of what we had seen.

On the 19th of July, 1889, the same friend informed me that one of our Cambridge ornithologists had found a robin roost in that city,—a wood in which great numbers of birds congregated every night. This led me to keep a sharper eye upon my own robins, whom I had already noticed repeating their previous year's manoeuvres. Every evening, shortly before and after sunset, they were to be seen flying, now singly, now by twos and threes, or even by the half dozen, evidently on their way to some rendezvous. I was suspicious of a rather distant hill-top covered with pine-trees; but before I could make it convenient to visit the place at the proper hour, I discovered, quite unexpectedly, that the roost was close by the very road up and down which I had been walking; an isolated piece of swampy wood, a few acres in extent, mostly a dense growth of gray birches and swamp white oaks, but with a sprinkling of maples and other deciduous trees. It is bounded on the further side by a wet meadow, and at the eastern end by a little ice-pond, with a dwelling-house and other buildings beside it, all within a stone's throw of the wood.

This discovery was made on the evening of July 25th, and I at once crossed a narrow field between the wood and the highway, and pushed in after the birds. It was too dark for me to see what was going on, but as I brushed against the close branches the robins set up a lively cackling, and presently commenced flying from tree to tree before me as I advanced, though plainly with no intention of deserting their quarters. The place was full of them, but I could form no estimate of their number.

On the following evening I took my stand upon a little knoll commanding the western end of the wood. According to my notes, the birds began to arrive about sunset,—but this was pretty certainly an error,—and though I did not undertake an exact count until the flight was mainly over, it seemed likely that at least three hundred passed in at that point. This would have made the total number twelve hundred, or thereabout, on the assumption that my outlook had covered a quarter of the circuit. After the flight ceased I went into the wood, and from the commotion overhead it was impossible not to believe that such a calculation must be well within the truth.

The next day was rainy, but on the evening of the 28th I stood by the shore of the pond, on the eastern side of the wood, and made as accurate a count as possible of the arrivals at that point. Unfortunately I was too late; the robins were already coming. But in fifty minutes, between 6.40 and 7.30, I counted 1072 birds. They appeared singly and in small flocks, and it was out of the question for me to make sure of them all; while I was busy with a flock on the right, there was no telling how many might be passing in on the left. If my observations comprehended a quarter of the circle, and if the influx was equally great on the other sides (an assumption afterward disproved), then it was safe to set the whole number of birds at five thousand or more. Of the 1072 actually seen, 797 came before the sunset gun was fired,—a proportion somewhat larger than it would have been had the sky been clear.

On the afternoon of the 29th I again counted the arrivals at the eastern end; but though I set out, as I thought, in good season, I found myself once more behind time. At 6.30 robins were already dropping in, notwithstanding the sky was cloudless. In the first five minutes eighteen birds appeared; at sunset 818 had been counted; and at 7.30, when I came away, the figures stood at 1267. "The robins came more rapidly than last night," I wrote in my notebook, "and for much of the time I could keep watch of the southeastern corner only. My vision then covered much less than a quarter of the circuit; so that if the birds came as freely from other directions, at least five thousand must have entered the wood between 6.30 and 7.30. As long as it was light they avoided passing directly by me, going generally to the left, and slipping into the roost behind some low outlying trees; though, fortunately, in doing this they were compelled to cross a narrow patch of the illuminated western sky. I suspect that the number increases from night to night. Between 6.40 and 7.30, 1235 birds came, as compared with 1072 last evening."

Two days afterward (July 31st) I went to the western end of the wood, and found the influx there much smaller than on the opposite side; but I arrived late, and made a partial count only. After sunset 186 birds were seen, whereas there had been 455 entries at the eastern end, two nights before, during the same time.

Thus far I had always been too late to witness the beginning of the flight. On the evening of August 1st I resolved to be in season. I reached the border of the pond at 5.15, and at that very moment a single robin flew into the wood. No others were seen for eighteen minutes, when three arrived together. From this time stragglers continued to appear, and at 6.30 I had counted 176. In the next ten minutes 180 arrived; in the next five minutes, 138. Between 6.45 and 7, I counted 549; then, in six minutes, 217 appeared. At 7.25, when I concluded, the figures stood at 1533 birds. For about twenty minutes, as will be noticed, the arrivals were at the rate of thirty-six a minute. Throughout the thickest of the flight I could keep a lookout upon only one side of me, and, moreover, the gathering darkness was by that time making it more and more difficult to see any birds except such as passed above the dark tree line; and from what went on just about me, it was evident that the number of arrivals was increasing rather than diminishing as my count fell off. There seemed to be no good reason for doubting that at least two thousand robins entered the wood at the eastern end.

Two nights later I stationed myself in the meadow southwest of the roost. Here I counted but 935 entries. The movement appeared to be fully as steady as on the opposite side, but as darkness came on I found myself at a great disadvantage; a hill occupied the background, giving me no illuminated sky to bring the birds into relief, so that I could see only such as passed close at hand. Of the 935 birds, 761 came before seven o'clock, but it was reasonably certain that the flight afterward was nearly or quite as great, only that I wanted light wherewith to see it.

On the evening of August 4th I went back to the eastern end, and as the sky was perfectly clear I hoped to make a gain upon all my previous figures. But the fair weather was perhaps a hindrance rather than a help; for the robins came later than before, and more in a body, and continued to arrive long after it was impossible to see them. I counted 1480,—53 less than on the 1st.

I attempted no further enumeration until the 18th. Then, in an hour and ten minutes, 1203 birds were seen to enter the roost at the eastern end. But they arrived more than ever in flocks, and so late that for much of the time I missed all except the comparatively small number that passed in my immediate vicinity. Many were flying at a great height,—having come from a long distance, as I inferred,—and sometimes I knew nothing of their approach till they dropped out of the sky directly over the wood. On this occasion, as well as on many others,—but chiefly during the latter part of the season,—it was noticeable that some of the robins appeared to be ignorant of the precise whereabouts of the roost; they flew past it at first, and then, after more or less circling about, with loud cackling, dived hurriedly into the wood. I took special note of one fellow, who came from the south at a great altitude, and went directly over the wood. When he was well past it he suddenly pulled himself up, as if fancying he had caught a signal. After a moment of hesitation he proceeded on his northerly course, but had not gone far before he met half a dozen birds flying south. Perhaps he asked them the way. At all events, he wheeled about and joined them, and in half a minute was safe in port. He had heard of the roost, apparently (how and where?), but had not before visited it.

This count of August 18th was the last for nearly a month, but I find a minute of August 27th stating that, while walking along the highway on the westerly side of the roost,—the side that had always been the least populous,—I saw within less than two minutes (as I calculated the time) more than eighty robins flying toward the wood. Up to this date, then, there could not have been any considerable falling off in the size of the gathering. Indeed, from my friend's observations upon the Belmont roost, to be mentioned later, it seems well-nigh certain that it was still upon the increase.

Toward the close of August I became interested in the late singing of several whippoorwills, and so was taken away from the robins' haunt at the hour of sunset. Then, from the 5th to the 13th of September, I was absent from home. On the night of my return I went to the shore of the pond, where, on the 1st of August, I had counted 1533 entries. The weather was favorable, and I arrived in good season and remained till the stars came out, but I counted only 137 robins! It was plain that the great majority of the congregation had departed.