assembly in the trees, which began to scatter, each one departing upon
his own business in a moment. But the humming-bird refused to be so
easily pacified; he was bound to see the end of the affair, and he
followed me out of the grove, still vigorously speaking his mind about
the enemy in fur. I suspected that the little creature had wandered away
from the house on the hill above, and I went up to see. The hummer
accompanied me every step of the way, sometimes flying over my head, and
again alighting for a minute on a branch under which I passed. Not until
he saw me deliver pussy into the hands of her own family, and return to
my usual seat in the grove, did he release me from surveillance and take
his leave.
The yellow-breasted chat, the long-tailed variety belonging to the West,
delivers his strange medley of "chacks" and whistles, and rattles and
other indescribable cries, in a voice that is loud and distinct, as well
as sweet and rich. He is a bird of humor, too, with a mocking spirit not
common in his race. One day, while sitting motionless in a hidden nook,
trying to spy upon the domestic affairs of this elusive individual, I
was startled by the so-called "laugh" of a robin, which was instantly
repeated by a chat, unseen, but quite near. The robin, apparently
surprised or interested, called again, and was a second time mocked.
Then he lost his temper, and began a serious reproof to the levity of
his neighbor, which ended in a good round scolding, as the saucy chat
continued to repeat his taunting laugh. This went on till the red-breast
flew away in high dudgeon.
Why our little brothers in feathers are so much more boisterous than
elsewhere,
"Up in the parks and the mesas wide,
Under the blue of the bluest sky,"
has not, so far as I know, been discovered.
Whether it be the result of habitual opposition to the strong winds
which, during the season of song, sweep over the plains every day, or
whether the exhilaration of the mountain air be the cause--who can
tell?
IV.
THE TRAGEDY OF A NEST.
Near to the Camp, a little closer to beautiful Cheyenne Mountain, lay a
small park. It was a continuation of the grove, through which the brook
came roaring and tumbling down from the canyons above, and, being several
miles from the town, it had never become a popular resort. A few winding
paths, and a rude bench here and there, were the only signs of man's
interference with its native wildness; it was practically abandoned to
the birds--and me.
The birds had full possession when I appeared on the scene, and though I
did my best to be unobtrusive, my presence was not so welcome as I could
have wished. Every morning when I came slowly and quietly up the little
path from the gate, bird-notes suddenly ceased; the grosbeak, pouring
out his soul from the top of a pine-tree, dived down the other side; the
towhee, picking up his breakfast on the ground, scuttled behind the
bushes and disappeared; the humming-bird, interrupted in her morning
"affairs," flew off over my head, scolding vigorously; only the
vireo--serene as always--went on warbling and eating, undisturbed.
Then I made haste to seek out an obscure spot, where I could sit and
wait in silence, to see who might unwittingly show himself.
I was never lonely, and never tired; for if--as sometimes happened--no
flit of wing came near to interest me, there before me was beautiful
Cheyenne, with its changing face never twice alike, and its undying
associations with its poet and lover, whose lonely grave makes it
forever sacred to those who loved her. There, too, was the wonderful sky
of Colorado, so blue it looked almost violet, and near at hand the
"Singing Water," whose stirring music was always inspiring.
One morning I was startled from my reverie by a sudden cry, so loud and
clear that I turned quickly to see what manner of bird had uttered it.
The voice was peculiar and entirely new to me. First came a scolding
note like that of an oriole, then the "chack" of a blackbird, and next a
sweet, clear whistle, one following the other rapidly and vehemently, as
if the performer intended to display all his accomplishments in a
breath. Cheyenne vanished like "the magic mountain of a dream," blue
skies were forgotten, the babbling brook unheard, every sense was
instantly alert to see that extraordinary bird,--
"Like a poet hidden,
Singing songs unbidden."
But he did not appear. Not a leaf rustled, not a twig bent, though the
strange medley kept on for fifteen minutes, then ceased as abruptly as
it had begun, and not a whisper more could be heard. The whole thing
seemed uncanny. Was it a bird at all, or a mere "wandering voice"? It
seemed to come from a piece of rather swampy ground, overgrown with
clumps of willow and low shrubs; but what bird of earthly mould could
come and go, and make no sign that a close student of bird ways could
detect? Did he creep on the ground? Did he vanish into thin air?
Hours went by. I could not go, and my leafy nook was "struck through
with slanted shafts of afternoon" before I reluctantly gave up that I
should not see my enchanter that day, and slowly left the grove, the
mystery unexplained.
Very early the next morning I was saluted by the same loud, clear calls
near the house. Had then the Invisible followed me home? I sprang up and
hurried to the always open window. The voice was very near; but I could
not see its author, though I was hidden behind blinds.
This time the bird--if bird it were--indulged in a fuller _repertoire_.
I seized pencil and paper, and noted down phonetically the different
notes as they were uttered. This is the record: "Rat-t-t-t-t" (very
rapid); "quit! quit! quit!" (a little slower); "wh-eu! wh-eu!" (still
more deliberately); "chack! chack! chack!" (quite slow); "cr[=e],
cr[=e], cr[=e], cr[=e]" (fast); "hu-way! hu-way!" (very sweet). There
was a still more musical clause that I cannot put into syllables, then a
rattle exactly like castanets, and lastly a sort of "Kr-r-r! kr-r-r!" in
the tone of a great-crested flycatcher. While this will not express to
one who has not heard it the marvelous charm of it all, it will at least
indicate the variety.
Hardly waiting to dispose of breakfast, I betook myself to my "woodland
enchanted," resolved to stay till I saw that bird.
"All day in the bushes
The woodland was haunted."
The voice was soon on hand, and once more I was treated to the
incomparable recitative.
This day, too, my patience was rewarded; the mystery was solved; I saw
the Unknown! While my eyes were fixed upon a certain bush before me, the
singer incautiously ventured too near the top of a twig, and I saw him
plainly, standing almost upright, and vehemently chanting his fantasia,
opening his mouth very wide with every call. I knew him at once, the
rogue! from having read of him; he was the yellow-breasted chat. It was
well, indeed, that I happened to be looking at that very spot, and that
I was quick in my observation; for in a moment he saw the blunder he had
made, and slipped back down the stem, too late for his secret--I had him
down in black and white.
From that time the little park was never lonely, nor did I spend much
time dreaming over Cheyenne. The moment I appeared in the morning my
lively host began his vocal gymnastics, while I sat spellbound,
bewitched by the magic of his notes. In spite of being absorbed in
listening to him, I retained my faculties sufficiently to reflect that
the chat had probably other employment than entertaining me, and that
doubtless his object was to distract my attention from looking about me,
or to reproach me for intruding upon his private domain. In either case
there was, of course,
"A nest unseen
Somewhere among the million stalks;"
and, delightful as I found the unseen bird, his nest was a treasure I
was even more anxious to see.
Not to disturb him more than necessary, I spent part of an evening
studying up the nesting habits of the chat,--the long-tailed,
yellow-breasted, as I found him to be,--and the next morning made a
thorough search through the swamp, looking into every bush and examining
every thicket. An hour or two of this hard work satisfied me for the
day, and I went home warm and tired, followed to the very door by the
mocking voice, triumphing, as it seemed, in my failure.
The next day, however, fortune smiled upon me; I came upon a nest, not
far above the ground, among the stems of a clump of shrubs, which
exactly answered the description of the one I sought. Careful not to lay
a finger on it, I slightly parted the branches above, and looked in upon
three pinkish-white eggs, small in size and dainty as tinted pearls.
Happy day, I thought, and the forerunner of happy to-morrows when I
should watch
"The green nest full of pleasant shade
Wherein three speckled eggs were laid,"
and see and delight in the family life centring about it.
To study a bird so shy required extraordinary precautions; I therefore
sought, and found, a post of observation a long way off, where I could
look through a natural vista among the shrubs, and with my glass bring
the bush and its precious contents into view. For greater seclusion in
my retreat, so that I should be as little conspicuous as possible, I
drew down a branch of the low tree over my seat, and fastened it with a
fine string to a stout weed below. Then I thought I had a perfect
screen; I devoutly hoped the birds would not notice me.
Vain delusion! and labor as vain! Doubtless two pairs of anxious eyes
watched from some neighboring bush all my careful preparations, and then
and there two despairing hearts bade farewell to their lovely little
home, abandoned it and its treasures to the spy and the destroyer, which
in their eyes I seemed to be.
This conclusion was forced upon me by the experiences of the next few
days. The birds absolutely would not approach the nest while I was in
the park. The first morning I sat motionless for nearly two hours, and
not a feather showed itself near that bush; it was plainly "tabooed."
During the next day the chat called from this side and that, moving
about in his wonderful way, without disturbing a twig, rustling a leaf,
or flitting a wing--as silently, indeed, as if he were a spirit
unclothed.
While waiting for him to show himself, making myself as nearly a part of
nature about me as a mortal is gifted to do, I congratulated myself upon
the one good look I had secured, for, with all my efforts and all my
watching, I saw him but twice more all summer. The enigma of that
remarkable voice would have been maddening indeed, if I could not have
known to whom it belonged.
After several days of untiring observation I had but two glimpses to
record. On one occasion a chat alighted on the top sprig of the fateful
shrub, as if going to the nest, but almost on the instant vanished. The
same day, a little later, one of these birds flitted into my view,
without a sound. So perfectly silent were his movements that I should
not have seen him if he had not come directly before my eyes. He, or
she, for the pair are alike, alighted in a low bush and scrambled about
as if in search of insects, climbing, not hopping. He stayed but a few
seconds and departed like a shadow, as he had come.
On the tenth day after my discovery of the nest with its trio of eggs I
went out as usual, for I could not abandon hope. In passing the nest I
glanced in and saw one egg; I could never see but one as I went by, but,
not liking to go too near, I presumed that the other two were there, as
I had always found them, and slipped quietly into my usual place.
In a few moments the chat shouted a call so near that it fairly startled
me. From that he went on to make his ordinary protest, but, as happened
nearly every time, I was not able to see him. I saw something--something
that took my breath away. A shadowy form creeping stealthily through the
shrubs five or six feet from me. It glided across the opening in front,
and in a moment went to the bush I was watching. In silence, but with
evident excitement, it moved about, approached the nest, and in a few
seconds flew quickly across the path in plain sight, holding in its mouth
something white which was large for its beak. I was reminded of an
English sparrow carrying a piece of bread as big as his head, a sight
familiar to every one. In a minute or two the same bird, or his twin,
came to the nest again and disappeared on the other side.
When I left my place to go home, I looked with misgivings into the nest
on which I had built so many hopes. Lo! it was empty!
Now I identified that stealthy visitor absolutely, but I shall never
name him. I have never heard him accused of nest-robbing, and I shall
not make the charge; for I am convinced that the chat had deserted the
nest, and that this abstracter of eggs knew it, and simply took the good
things the gods threw in his way--as would the best of us.
After that unfortunate ending the chat disappeared from the little park;
but a week later I came upon him, or his voice, in a private and rarely
visited pasture down the road, where many clumps of small trees and much
low growth offered desirable nesting-places. He made his usual protest,
and feeling that I had been the cause of the tragedy of the first nest,
though I had grieved over it as much as the owners could, the least I
could do, to show my regret, was to take myself and my curiosity out of
his neighborhood. So I retired at once, and left the whole broad pasture
to the incorrigible chat family, who, I hope, succeeded at last in
enriching the world by half a dozen more of their bewitching kind.
V.
A FEAST OF FLOWERS.
When first the crocus thrusts its point of gold
Up through the still snow-drifted garden mould,
And folded green things in dim woods unclose
Their crinkled spears, a sudden tremor goes
Into my veins and makes me kith and kin
To every wild-born thing that thrills and blows.
T. B. ALDRICH.
My feast of flowers began before I entered Colorado. For half the
breadth of Kansas the banks of the railroad were heavenly blue with
clustered blossoms of the spiderwort. I remember clumps of this flower
in my grandmother's old-fashioned garden, but my wildest dreams never
pictured miles of it, so profuse that, looking backward from the train,
the track looked like threads of steel in a broad ribbon of blue.
Through the same State, also, the Western meadow-larks kept us company,
and I shall never again think of "bleeding Kansas," but of smiling
Kansas, the home of the bluest of blossoms and the sweetest of singers.
The latter half of the way through the smiling State was golden with
yellow daisies in equal abundance, and beside them many other flowers.
Beginning at noon, I counted twenty-seven varieties, so near the track
that I could distinguish them as we rushed past.
The Santa Fe road enters Colorado in a peculiarly desolate region.
Flowers and birds appear to have stayed behind in Kansas, and no green
thing shows its head, excepting one dismal-looking bush, which serves
only to accentuate the poverty of the soil. As we go on, the mud is
replaced by sand and stones, from gravel up to big bowlders, and flowers
begin to struggle up through the unpromising ground.
Nothing is more surprising than the amazing profusion of wild-flowers
which this apparently ungenial soil produces. Of a certainty, if
Colorado is not the paradise of wild-flowers, it is incomparably richer
in them than any State east of the Mississippi River and north of "Mason
and Dixon's Line." To begin with, there is a marvelous variety. Since I
have taken note of them, from about the 10th of June till nearly the
same date in July, I have found in my daily walk of not more than a mile
or two, each time from one to seven new kinds. A few days I have found
seven, many times I have brought home four, and never has a day passed
without at least one I had not seen before. That will average, at a low
estimate, about a hundred varieties of flowers in a month, and all
within a radius of four miles. What neighborhood can produce a record
equal to this?
Then, again, the blossoms themselves are so abundant. Hardly a root
contents itself with a single flower. The moccasin-plant is the only one
I have noticed as yet. One root will usually send up from one to a dozen
stems, fairly loaded with buds--like the yucca--which open a few every
day, and thus keep in bloom for weeks. Or if there is but one stem, it
will be packed with buds from the ground to the tip, with new ones to
come out for every blossom that falls.
One in the vase on my stand at this moment is of this sort. It is a stem
that sometimes attains a height of four or five feet. I think it
lengthens as long as it is blossoming, and, to look at its preparations,
that must be all summer. Every two or three inches of the stout stem is
a whorl of leaves and buds and blossoms. Except the number of buds, it
is all in fours. Opposite each other, making a cross, are four leaves,
like a carnation leaf at first, but broadening and lengthening till it
is two inches at the base and eight or ten long. Rising out of the axil
of each leaf are buds, of graduated size and development up to the open
blossom. That one stem, therefore, is prepared to open fresh flowers
every day for a long time.
The plant is exquisitely beautiful, for the whole thing, from the stem
to the flower petals, is of a delicate, light pea-green. The blossom
opens like a star, with four stamens and four petals. The description
sounds mathematical, but the plant is graceful--a veritable symphony in
green.
A truly royal bouquet stands on my table--three spikes of yucca flowers
in a tall vase, the middle one three feet high, bearing fifty blossoms
and buds, of large size and a pink color; on its right, one a little
less in size, with long creamy cups fully open; and on the left another,
set with round greenish balls, not so open as cups. They are distinctly
different, but each seems more exquisite than the other, and their
fragrance fills the room. In fact it is so overpowering that when at
night I close the door opening into the grove, I shut the vase and its
contents outside.
This grand flower is the glory of the mesa or table-land at the foot of
this range of the Rocky Mountains--the Cheyenne Range. Where no
grass--that we name grass--will grow, where trees die for want of water,
these noble spikes of flowers dot the bare plains in profusion.
It is the rich possessor of three names. To the flower-lover it is the
yucca; to the cultivator, or whosoever meddles with its leaves, it is
the Spanish-bayonet; to the utilitarian, who values a thing only as it
is of use to him, it is the soap-weed--ignoble name, referring to
certain qualities pertaining to its roots. When we remember that this
flower is not the careful product of the garden, but of spontaneous
growth in the most barren and hopeless-looking plains, we may well
regard it as a type of Colorado's luxuriance in these loveliest of
nature's gifts.
Of a surly disposition is the blossom of a cactus--the "prickly-pear,"
as we call it in Eastern gardens, where we cultivate it for its oddity,
I suppose. When the sojourner in this land of flowers sees, opening on
all sides of this inhospitable-looking plant, rich cream-colored cups,
the size of a Jacqueminot bud, and of a rare, satiny sheen, she cannot
resist the desire to fill a low dish with them for her table.
Woe to her if she attempts to gather them "by hand"! Properly warned,
she will take a knife, sever the flower from the pear (there is no stem
to speak of), pick it up by the tip of a petal, carry it home in a paper
or handkerchief, and dump it gently into water--happy if she does not
feel a dozen intolerable prickles here and there, and have to extract,
with help of magnifying-glass and tweezers, as many needle-like barbs
rankling in her flesh. She may as well have spared herself the trouble.
The flowers possess the uncompromising nature of the stock from which
they sprung; they will speedily shut themselves up like buds again--I
almost believe they close with a snap--and obstinately refuse to display
their satin draperies to delight the eyes of their abductors. This
unlovely spirit is not common among Colorado flowers; most of them go on
blooming in the vase day after day.
Remarkable are the places in which the flowers are found. Not only are
they seen in crevices all the way up the straight side of rocks, where
one would hardly think a seed could lodge, but beside the roads, between
the horses' tracks, and on the edge of gutters in the streets of a city.
One can walk down any street in Colorado Springs and gather a bouquet,
lovely and fragrant, choice enough to adorn any one's table. I once
counted twelve varieties in crossing one vacant corner lot on the
principal street.
One of the richest wild gardens I know is a bare, open spot in a
cottonwood grove, part of it tunneled by ants, which run over it by
millions, and the rest a jumble of bowlders and wild rosebushes,
impossible to describe. In this spot, unshaded from the burning sun,
flourish flowers innumerable. Rosebushes, towering far above one's head,
loaded with bloom; shrubs of several kinds, equally burdened by delicate
white or pink blossoms; the ground covered with foot-high pentstemons,
blue and lavender, in which the buds fairly get in each other's way; and
a curious plant--primrose, I believe--which opens every morning, a few
inches from the ground, a large white blossom like the magnolia, turns
it deep pink, and closes it before night; several kinds of yellow
flowers; wild geraniums, with a look of home in their daintily penciled
petals; above all, the wonderful golden columbine. I despair of
picturing this grand flower to eyes accustomed to the insignificant
columbine of the East. The blossom is three times the size of its
Eastern namesake, growing in clumps sometimes three feet across, with
thirty or forty stems of flowers standing two and a half feet high. In
hue it is a delicate straw color, sometimes all one tint, sometimes with
outside petals of snowy white, and rarely with those outsiders of
lavender. It is a red-letter day when the flower-lover comes upon a
clump of the lavender-leaved columbine. Far up in the mountains is found
still another variety of this beautiful flower, with outside petals of a
rich blue. This, I believe, is the State flower of Colorado.
I am surprised at the small number of flowers here with which I am
familiar. I think there are not more than half a dozen in all this
extraordinary "procession of flowers" that I ever saw before. In
consequence, every day promises discoveries, every walk is exciting as
an excursion into unknown lands, each new find is a fresh treasure.
VI.
A CINDERELLA AMONG FLOWERS.
Like torches lit for carnival,
The fiery lilies straight and tall
Burn where the deepest shadow is;
Still dance the columbines cliff-hung,
And like a broidered veil outflung
The many-blossomed clematis.
SUSAN COOLIDGE.
A rough, scraggy plant, with unattractive, dark-green foliage and a
profusion of buds standing out at all angles, is, in July, almost the
only growing thing to be seen on the barren-looking mesa around Colorado
Springs. Anything more unpromising can hardly be imagined; the coarsest
thistle is a beauty beside it; the common burdock has a grace of growth
far beyond it; the meanest weed shows a color which puts it to shame.
Yet if the curious traveler pass that way again, late in the afternoon,
he shall find that "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these." He will see the bush transfigured; its angular form hidden under
a mass of many pointed stars of snowy whiteness, with clusters of pale
gold stamens. Then will stand revealed the "superb mentzelia," a true
Cinderella, fit only for ignominious uses in the morning, but a suitable
bride for the fairy prince in the evening.
To look at the wide-stretching table-lands, where, during its season,
this fairy-story transformation takes place daily, so burned by the sun,
and swept by the wind, that no cultivated plant will flourish on it, one
would never suspect that it is the scene of a brilliant "procession of
flowers" from spring to fall. "There is always something going on
outdoors worth seeing," says Charles Dudley Warner, and of no part of
the world is this more true than of these apparently desolate plains at
the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Rich is the reward of the daily
stroller, not only in the inspiration of its pure, bracing air, the
songs of its meadow-larks, and the glory of its grand mountain view, but
in its charming flower show.