osprey circled. The odds were against him, and he let go the fish. As it
fell, the old eagle swooped after it, missed it, swooped again, and this
time, long before it could reach the water, had it fast in his claws.
Then off he went, the younger one in pursuit. They passed out of sight
behind the trees of an island, one close upon the other, and I do not
know how the controversy ended; but I would have wagered a trifle on the
old white-head, the bird of Washington.
The scene reminded me of one I had witnessed in Georgia a fortnight
before, on my way south. The train stopped at a backwoods station; some
of the passengers gathered upon the steps of the car, and the usual
bevy of young negroes came alongside. "Stand on my head for a nickel?"
said one. A passenger put his hand into his pocket; the boy did as he
had promised,--in no very professional style, be it said,--and with a
grin stretched out his hand. The nickel glistened in the sun, and on
the instant a second boy sprang forward, snatched it out of the sand,
and made off in triumph amid the hilarious applause of his fellows. The
acrobat's countenance indicated a sense of injustice, and I had no doubt
that my younger eagle was similarly affected. "Where is our boasted honor
among thieves?" I imagined him asking. The bird of freedom is a great
bird, and the land of the free is a great country. Here, let us hope,
the parallel ends. Whether on the banks of Newfoundland or elsewhere, it
cannot be that the great republic would ever snatch a fish that did not
belong to it.
I admired the address of the fish-hawks until I saw the gannets. Then I
perceived that the hawks, with all their practice, were no better than
landlubbers. The gannets kept farther out at sea. Sometimes a scattered
flock remained in sight for the greater part of a forenoon. With their
long, sharp wings and their outstretched necks,--like loons, but with a
different flight,--they were rakish-looking customers. Sometimes from
a great height, sometimes from a lower, sometimes at an incline, and
sometimes vertically, they plunged into the water, and after an absence
of some seconds, as it seemed, came up and rested upon the surface. They
were too far away to be closely observed, and for a time I did not feel
certain what they were. The larger number were in dark plumage, and it
was not till a white one appeared that I said with assurance, "Gannets!"
With the bright sun on him, he was indeed a splendid bird, snowy white,
with the tips of his wings jet black. If he would have come inshore like
the ospreys, I think I should never have tired of his evolutions.
The gannets showed themselves only now and then, but the brown pelicans
were an every-day sight. I had found them first on the beach at St.
Augustine. Here at Daytona they never alighted on the sand, and seldom
in the water. They were always flying up or down the beach, and, unless
turned from their course by the presence of some suspicious object, they
kept straight on just above the breakers, rising and falling with the
waves; now appearing above them, and now out of sight in the trough of
the sea. Sometimes a single bird passed, but commonly they were in small
flocks. Once I saw seventeen together,--a pretty long procession; for,
whatever their number, they went always in Indian file. Evidently some
dreadful thing would happen if two pelicans should ever travel abreast.
It was partly this unusual order of march, I suspect, which gave such an
air of preternatural gravity to their movements. It was impossible to see
even two of them go by without feeling almost as if I were in church.
First, both birds flew a rod or two with slow and stately flappings;
then, as if at some preconcerted signal, both set their wings and scaled
for about the same distance; then they resumed their wing-strokes;
and so on, till they passed out of sight. I never heard them utter a
sound, or saw them make a movement of any sort (I speak of what I saw
at Daytona) except to fly straight on, one behind another. If church
ceremonials are still open to amendment, I would suggest, in no spirit
of irreverence, that a study of pelican processionals would be certain
to yield edifying results. Nothing done in any cathedral could be more
solemn. Indeed, their solemnity was so great that I came at last to find
it almost ridiculous; but that, of course, was only from a want of faith
on the part of the beholder. The birds, as I say, were _brown_ pelicans.
Had they been of the other species, in churchly white and black, the
ecclesiastical effect would perhaps have been heightened, though such a
thing is hardly conceivable.
Some beautiful little gulls, peculiarly dainty in their appearance
("Bonaparte's gulls," they are called in books, but "surf gulls"
would be a prettier and apter name), were also given to flying along
the breakers, but in a manner very different from the pelicans'; as
different, I may say, as the birds themselves. They, too, moved steadily
onward, north or south as the case might be, but fed as they went,
dropping into the shallow water between the incoming waves, and rising
again to escape the next breaker. The action was characteristic and
graceful, though often somewhat nervous and hurried. I noticed that the
birds commonly went by twos, but that may have been nothing more than
a coincidence. Beside these small surf gulls, never at all numerous, I
usually saw a few terns, and now and then one or two rather large gulls,
which, as well as I could make out, must have been the ring-billed. It
was a strange beach, I thought, where fish-hawks invariably outnumbered
both gulls and terns. Of beach birds, properly so called, I saw none but
sanderlings. They were no novelty, but I always stopped to look at them;
busy as ants, running in a body down the beach after a receding wave, and
the next moment scampering back again with all speed before an incoming
one. They tolerated no near approach, but were at once on the wing for
a long flight up or down the coast, looking like a flock of snow-white
birds as they turned their under parts to the sun in rising above the
breakers. Their manner of feeding, with the head pitched forward, and
a quick, eager movement, as if they had eaten nothing for days, and
were fearful that their present bit of good fortune would not last, is
strongly characteristic, so that they can be recognized a long way off.
As I have said, they were the only true beach birds; but I rarely failed
to see one or two great blue herons playing that role. The first one
filled me with surprise. I had never thought of finding him in such a
place; but there he stood, and before I was done with Florida beaches I
had come to look upon him as one of their most constant _habitués_. In
truth, this largest of the herons is well-nigh omnipresent in Florida.
Wherever there is water, fresh or salt, he is certain to be met with
sooner or later; and even in the driest place, if you stay there long
enough, you will be likely to see him passing overhead, on his way to
the water, which is nowhere far off. On the beach, as everywhere else,
he is a model of patience. To the best of my recollection, I never saw
him catch a fish there; and I really came to think it pathetic, the
persistency with which he would stand, with the water half-way to his
knees, leaning forward expectantly toward the breakers, as if he felt
that this great and generous ocean, which had so many fish to spare,
could not fail to send him, at last, the morsel for which he was waiting.
But indeed I was not long in perceiving that the Southern climate
made patience a comparatively easy virtue, and fishing, by a natural
consequence, a favorite avocation. Day after day, as I crossed the
bridges on my way to and from the beach, the same men stood against the
rail, holding their poles over the river. They had an air of having been
there all winter. I came to recognize them, though I knew none of their
names. One was peculiarly happy looking, almost radiant, with an educated
face, and only one hand. His disability hindered him, no doubt. I never
saw so much as a sheep-head or a drum lying at his feet. But inwardly, I
felt sure, his luck was good. Another was older, fifty at least, sleek
and well dressed. He spoke pleasantly enough, if I addressed him;
otherwise he attended strictly to business. Every day he was there,
morning and afternoon. He, I think, had better fortune than any of the
others. Once I saw him land a large and handsome "speckled trout,"
to the unmistakable envy of his brother anglers. Still a third was a
younger man, with a broad-brimmed straw hat and a taciturn habit; no less
persevering than Number Two, perhaps, but far less successful. I marveled
a little at their enthusiasm (there were many beside these), and they,
in their turn, did not altogether conceal their amusement at the foibles
of a man, still out of Bedlam, who walked and walked and walked, always
with a field-glass protruding from his side pocket, which now and then
he pulled out suddenly and leveled at nothing. It is one of the merciful
ameliorations of this present evil world that men are thus mutually
entertaining.
These anglers were to be congratulated. Ordered South by their
physicians,--as most of them undoubtedly were,--compelled to spend the
winter away from friends and business, amid all the discomforts of
Southern hotels, they were happy in having at least one thing which they
loved to do. Blessed is the invalid who has an outdoor hobby. One man,
whom I met more than once in my beach rambles, seemed to devote himself
to bathing, running, and walking. He looked like an athlete; I heard him
tell how far he could run without getting "winded;" and as he sprinted
up and down the sand in his scanty bathing costume, I always found him a
pleasing spectacle. Another runner there gave me a half-hour of amusement
that turned at the last to a feeling of almost painful sympathy. He was
not in bathing costume, nor did he look particularly athletic. He was
teaching his young lady to ride a bicycle, and his pupil was at that most
interesting stage of a learner's career when the machine is beginning to
steady itself. With a very little assistance she went bravely, while at
the same time the young man felt it necessary not to let go his hold upon
her for more than a few moments at once. At all events, he must be with
her at the turn. She plied the pedals with vigor, and he ran alongside
or behind, as best he could; she excited, and he out of breath. Back and
forth they went, and it was a relief to me when finally he took off his
coat. I left him still panting in his fair one's wake, and hoped it would
not turn out a case of "love's labor's lost." Let us hope, too, that he
was not an invalid.
While speaking of these my companions in idleness, I may as well mention
an older man,--a rural philosopher, he seemed,--whom I met again and
again, always in search of shells. He was from Indiana, he told me with
agreeable garrulity. His grandchildren would like the shells. He had
perhaps made a mistake in coming so far south. It was pretty warm, he
thought, and he feared the change would be too great when he went home
again. If a man's lungs were bad, he ought to go to a warm place, of
course. _He_ came for his stomach, which was now pretty well,--a capital
proof of the superior value of fresh air over "proper" food in dyspeptic
troubles; for if there is anywhere in the world a place in which a
delicate stomach would fare worse than in a Southern hotel,--of the
second or third class,--may none but my enemies ever find it. Seashell
collecting is not a panacea. For a disease like old age, for instance,
it might prove to be an alleviation rather than a cure; but taken long
enough, and with a sufficient mixture of enthusiasm,--a true _sine qua
non_,--it will be found efficacious, I believe, in all ordinary cases of
dyspepsia.
My Indiana man was far from being alone in his cheerful pursuit. If
strangers, men or women, met me on the beach and wished to say something
more than good-morning, they were sure to ask, "Have you found any
pretty shells?" One woman was a collector of a more businesslike turn.
She had brought a camp-stool, and when I first saw her in the distance
was removing her shoes, and putting on rubber boots. Then she moved
her stool into the surf, sat upon it with a tin pail beside her, and,
leaning forward over the water, fell to doing something,--I could not
tell what. She was so industrious that I did not venture to disturb her,
as I passed; but an hour or two afterward I overtook her going homeward
across the peninsula with her invalid husband, and she showed me her pail
full of the tiny coquina clams, which she said were very nice for soup,
as indeed I knew. Some days later, I found a man collecting them for the
market, with the help of a horse and a cylindrical wire roller. With
his trousers rolled to his knees, he waded in the surf, and shoveled the
incoming water and sand into the wire roller through an aperture left for
that purpose. Then he closed the aperture, and drove the horse back and
forth through the breakers till the clams were washed clear of the sand,
after which he poured them out into a shallow tray like a long bread-pan,
and transferred them from that to a big bag. I came up just in time to
see them in the tray, bright with all the colors of the rainbow. "Will
you hold the bag open?" he said. I was glad to help (it was perhaps the
only useful ten minutes that I passed in Florida); and so, counting quart
by quart, he dished them into it. There were thirty odd quarts, but he
wanted a bushel and a quarter, and again took up the shovel. The clams
themselves were not canned and shipped, he said, but only the "juice."
Many rudely built cottages stood on the sand-hills just behind the beach,
especially at the points, a mile or so apart, where the two Daytona
bridge roads come out of the scrub; and one day, while walking up the
beach to Ormond, I saw before me a much more elaborate Queen Anne house.
Fancifully but rather neatly painted, and with a stable to match, it
looked like an exotic. As I drew near, its venerable owner was at work
in front of it, shoveling a path through the sand,--just as, at that
moment (February 24), thousands of Yankee householders were shoveling
paths through the snow, which then was reported by the newspapers to be
seventeen inches deep in the streets of Boston. His reverend air and
his long black coat proclaimed him a clergyman past all possibility of
doubt. He seemed to have got to heaven before death, the place was so
attractive; but being still in a body terrestrial, he may have found the
meat market rather distant, and mosquitoes and sand-flies sometimes a
plague. As I walked up the beach, he drove by me in an open wagon with
a hired man. They kept on till they came to a log which had been cast
up by the sea, and evidently had been sighted from the house. The hired
man lifted it into the wagon, and they drove back,--quite a stirring
adventure, I imagined; an event to date from, at the very least.
The smaller cottages were nearly all empty at that season. At different
times I made use of many of them, when the sun was hot, or I had been
long afoot. Once I was resting thus on a flight of front steps, when a
three-seated carriage came down the beach and pulled up opposite. The
driver wished to ask me a question, I thought; no doubt I looked very
much at home. From the day I had entered Florida, every one I met had
seemed to know me intuitively for a New Englander, and most of them--I
could not imagine how--had divined that I came from Boston. It gratified
me to believe that I was losing a little of my provincial manner, under
the influence of more extended travel. But my pride had a sudden fall.
The carriage stopped, as I said; but instead of inquiring the way, the
driver alighted, and all the occupants of the carriage proceeded to do
the same,--eight women, with baskets and sundries. It was time for me to
be starting. I descended the steps, and pulled off my hat to the first
comer, who turned out to be the proprietor of the establishment. With a
gracious smile, she hoped they were "not frightening me away." She and
her friends had come for a day's picnic at the cottage. Things being
as they were (eight women), she could hardly invite me to share the
festivities, and, with my best apology for the intrusion, I withdrew.
Of one building on the sand-hills I have peculiarly pleasant
recollections. It was not a cottage, but had evidently been put up as a
public resort; especially, as I inferred, for Sunday-school or parish
picnics. It was furnished with a platform for speech-making (is there
any foolishness that men will not commit on sea beaches and mountain
tops?), and, what was more to my purpose, was open on three sides. I
passed a good deal of time there, first and last, and once it sheltered
me from a drenching shower of an hour or two. The lightning was vivid,
and the rain fell in sheets. In the midst of the blackness and commotion,
a single tern, ghostly white, flew past, and toward the close a bunch
of sanderlings came down the edge of the breakers, still looking for
something to eat. The only other living things in sight were two young
fellows, who had improved the opportunity to try a dip in the surf. Their
color indicated that they were not yet hardened to open-air bathing,
and from their actions it was evident that they found the ocean cool.
They were wet enough before they were done, but it was mostly with fresh
water. Probably they took no harm; but I am moved to remark, in passing,
that I sometimes wondered how generally physicians who order patients
to Florida for the winter caution them against imprudent exposure. To
me, who am no doctor, it seemed none too safe for young women with
consumptive tendencies to be out sailing in open boats on winter
evenings, no matter how warm the afternoon had been, while I saw one
case where a surf bath taken by such an invalid was followed by a day of
prostration and fever. "We who live here," said a resident, "don't think
the water is warm enough yet; but for these Northern folks it is a great
thing to go into the surf in February, and you can't keep them out." The
rows of cottages of which I have spoken were in one sense a detriment to
the beach; but on the whole, and in their present deserted condition,
I found them an advantage. It was easy enough to walk away from them,
if a man wanted the feeling of utter solitude (the beach extends from
Matanzas Inlet to Mosquito Inlet, thirty-five miles, more or less); while
at other times they not only furnished shadow and a seat, but, with
the paths and little clearings behind them, were an attraction to many
birds. Here I found my first Florida jays. They sat on the chimney-tops
and ridgepoles, and I was rejoiced to discover that these unique and
interesting creatures, one of the special objects of my journey South,
were not only common, but to an extraordinary degree approachable. Their
extreme confidence in man is one of their oddest characteristics. I heard
from more than one person how easily and "in almost no time" they could
be tamed, if indeed they needed taming. A resident of Hawks Park told
me that they used to come into his house and stand upon the corners of
the dinner table waiting for their share of the meal. When he was hoeing
in the garden, they would perch on his hat, and stay there by the hour,
unless he drove them off. He never did anything to tame them except to
treat them kindly. When a brood was old enough to leave the nest, the
parents brought the youngsters up to the doorstep as a matter of course.
The Florida jay, a bird of the scrub, is not to be confounded with the
Florida _blue_ jay (a smaller and less conspicuously crested duplicate of
our common Northern bird), to which it bears little resemblance either
in personal appearance or in voice. Seen from behind, its aspect is
peculiarly striking; the head, wings, rump, and tail being dark blue,
with an almost rectangular patch of gray set in the midst. Its beak is
very stout, and its tail very long; and though it would attract attention
anywhere, it is hardly to be called handsome or graceful. Its notes--such
of them as I heard, that is--are mostly guttural, with little or nothing
of the screaming quality which distinguishes the blue jay's voice. To my
ear they were often suggestive of the Northern shrike.
On the 23d of February I was standing on the rear piazza of one of the
cottages, when a jay flew into the oak and palmetto scrub close by. A
second glance, and I saw that she was busy upon a nest. When she had
gone, I moved nearer, and waited. She did not return, and I descended the
steps and went to the edge of the thicket to inspect her work: a bulky
affair,--nearly done, I thought,--loosely constructed of pretty large
twigs. I had barely returned to the veranda before the bird appeared
again. This time I was in a position to look squarely in upon her. She
had some difficulty in edging her way through the dense bushes with a
long, branching stick in her bill; but she accomplished the feat, fitted
the new material into its place, readjusted the other twigs a bit here
and there, and then, as she rose to depart, she looked me suddenly in the
face and stopped, as much as to say, "Well, well! here's a pretty go!
A man spying upon me!" I wondered whether she would throw up the work,
but in another minute she was back again with another twig. The nest, I
should have said, was about four feet from the ground, and perhaps twenty
feet from the cottage. Four days later, I found her sitting upon it. She
flew off as I came up, and I pushed into the scrub far enough to thrust
my hand into the nest, which, to my disappointment, was empty. In fact,
it was still far from completed; for on the 3d of March, when I paid it
a farewell visit, its owner was still at work lining it with fine grass.
At that time it was a comfortable-looking and really elaborate structure.
Both the birds came to look at me as I stood on the piazza. They perched
together on the top of a stake so narrow that there was scarcely room for
their feet; and as they stood thus, side by side, one of them struck its
beak several times against the beak of the other, as if in play. I wished
them joy of their expected progeny, and was the more ready to believe
they would have it for this little display of sportive sentimentality.
It was a distinguished company that frequented that row of narrow back
yards on the edge of the sand-hills. As a new-comer, I found the jays
(sometimes there were ten under my eye at once) the most entertaining
members of it, but if I had been a dweller there for the summer, I should
perhaps have altered my opinion; for the group contained four of the
finest of Floridian songsters,--the mocking-bird, the brown thrasher,
the cardinal grosbeak, and the Carolina wren. Rare morning and evening
concerts those cottagers must have. And besides these there were
catbirds, ground doves, red-eyed chewinks, white-eyed chewinks, a song
sparrow (one of the few that I saw in Florida), savanna sparrows, myrtle
birds, redpoll warblers, a phœbe, and two flickers. The last-named birds,
by the way, are never backward about displaying their tender feelings. A
treetop flirtation is their special delight (I hope my readers have all
seen one; few things of the sort are better worth looking at), and here,
in the absence of trees, they had taken to the ridgepole of a house.
More than once I remarked white-breasted swallows straggling northward
along the line of sand-hills. They were in loose order, but the movement
was plainly concerted, with all the look of a vernal migration. This
swallow, the first of its family to arrive in New England, remains in
Florida throughout the winter, but is known also to go as far south as
Central America. The purple martins--which, so far as I am aware, do not
winter in Florida--had already begun to make their appearance. While
crossing the bridge, February 22, I was surprised to notice two of them
sitting upon a bird-box over the draw, which just then stood open for
the passage of a tug-boat. The toll-gatherer told me they had come "from
some place" eight or ten days before. His attention had been called to
them by his cat, who was trying to get up to the box to bid them welcome.
He believed that she discovered them within three minutes of their
arrival. It seemed not unlikely. In its own way a cat is a pretty sharp
ornithologist.