silent, she in her place and I in mine. If this state of things could
only remain; if she would only accept me as a tree-trunk or a misshapen
bowlder, and pay no attention to me, what a beautiful study I should
have! Half an hour, perhaps more, passed without a sound, and then the
silence was broken by magpie calls from without. The sitting bird left
the nest and flew out of the grove, quite near the ground; I heard much
talk and chatter in low tones outside, and they flew. I slipped out as
quickly as possible, wishing indeed that I had wings as she had, and
went home, encouraged to think I should really be able to study the
magpie.
But I did not know my bird. The next day, before I knew she was about,
she discovered me, though it was plain that she hoped I had not
discovered her. Instantly she became silent and wary, coming to her nest
over the top of the trees, so quietly that I should not have known it
except for her shadow on the leaves. No talk or song now fell upon my
ear; calls outside were few and subdued. Everything was different from
the natural unconsciousness of the previous day; the birds were on
guard, and henceforth I should be under surveillance.
From this moment I lost my pleasure in the study, for I feel little
interest in the actions of a bird under the constraint of an unwelcome
presence, or in the shadow of constant fear and dread. What I care to
see is the natural life, the free, unstudied ways of birds who do not
notice or are not disturbed by spectators. Nor have I any pleasure in
going about the country staring into every tree, and poking into every
bush, thrusting irreverent hands into the mysteries of other lives, and
rudely tearing away the veils that others have drawn around their
private affairs. That they are only birds does not signify to me; for me
they are fellow-creatures; they have rights, which I am bound to
respect.
I prefer to make myself so little obvious, or so apparently harmless to
a bird, that she will herself show me her nest, or at least the leafy
screen behind which it is hidden. Then, if I take advantage of her
absence to spy upon her treasures, it is as a friend only,--a friend who
respects her desire for seclusion, who never lays profane hands upon
them, and who shares the secret only with one equally reverent and
loving. Naturally I do not find so many nests as do the vandals to whom
nothing is sacred, but I enjoy what I do find, in a way it hath not
entered into their hearts to conceive.
In spite of my disinclination, we made one more call upon the magpie
family, and this time we had a reception. This bird is intelligent and
by no means a slave to habit; because he has behaved in a certain way
once, there is no law, avian or divine, that compels him to repeat that
conduct on the next occasion. Nor is it safe to generalize about him, or
any other bird for that matter. One cannot say, "The magpie does thus
and so," because each individual magpie has his own way of doing, and
circumstances alter cases, with birds as well as with people.
On this occasion we placed ourselves boldly, though very quietly, in the
paths that run through the oak-brush. We had abandoned all attempt at
concealment; we could hope only for tolerance. The birds readily
understood; they appreciated that they were seen and watched, and their
manners changed accordingly. The first one of the black-and-white gentry
who entered the grove discovered my comrade, and announced the presence
of the enemy by a loud cry, in what somebody has aptly called a
"frontier tone of voice." Instantly another appeared and added his
remarks; then another, and still another, till within five minutes there
were ten or twelve excited magpies, shouting at the top of their voices,
and hopping and flying about her head, coming ever nearer and nearer, as
if they meditated a personal attack. I did not really fear it, but I
kept close watch, while remaining motionless, in the hope that they
would not notice me. Vain hope! nothing could escape those sharp eyes
when once the bird was aroused. After they had said what they chose to
my friend, who received the taunts and abuse of the infuriated mob in
meek silence, lifting not her voice to reply, they turned the stream of
their eloquence upon me.
I was equally passive, for indeed I felt that they had a grievance. We
have no right to expect birds to tell one human being from another, so
long as we, with all our boasted intelligence, cannot tell one crow or
one magpie from another; and all the week they had suffered persecution
at the hands of the village boys. Young magpies, nestlings, were in
nearly every house, and the birds had endured pillage, and doubtless
some of them death. I did not blame the grieved parents for the
reception they gave us; from their point of view we belonged to the
enemy.
After the storm had swept by, and while we sat there waiting to see if
the birds would return, one of the horses of the pasture made his
appearance on the side where I sat, now eating the top of a rosebush,
now snipping off a flower plant that had succeeded in getting two leaves
above the ground, but at every step coming nearer me. It was plain that
he contemplated retiring to this shady grove, and, not so observing as
the magpies, did not see that it was already occupied. When he was not
more than ten feet away, I snatched off my sun hat and waved it before
him, not wishing to make a noise. He stopped instantly, stared wildly
for a moment, as if he had never seen such an apparition, then wheeled
with a snort, flung out his heels in disrespect, and galloped off down
the field.
The incident was insignificant, but the result was curious. So long as
we stayed in that bit of brush, not a horse attempted to enter, though
they all browsed around outside. They avoided it as if it were haunted,
or, as my comrade said, "filled with beckoning forms." Nor was that all;
I have reason to think they never again entered that particular patch of
brush, for, some weeks after we had abandoned the study of magpies and
the pasture altogether, we found the spot transformed, as if by the wand
of enchantment. From the burned-up desert outside we stepped at once
into a miniature paradise, to our surprise, almost our consternation.
Excepting the footpaths through it, it bore no appearance of having ever
been a thoroughfare. Around the foot of every tree had grown up clumps
of ferns or brakes, a yard high, luxuriant, graceful, and exquisite in
form and color; and peeping out from under them were flowers, dainty
wildings we had not before seen there. A bit of the tropics or a gem out
of fairyland it looked to our sun and sand weary eyes. Outside were the
burning sun of June, a withering hot wind, and yellow and dead
vegetation; within was cool greenness and a mere rustle of leaves
whispering of the gale. It was the loveliest bit of greenery we saw on
the shores of the Great Salt Lake. It was marvelous; it was almost
uncanny.
Our daily trips to the pasture had ceased, and other birds and other
nests had occupied our thoughts for a week or two, when we resolved to
pay a last visit to our old haunts, to see if we could learn anything of
the magpies. We went through the pasture, led by the voices of the birds
away over to the farther side, and there, across another fenced pasture,
we heard them plainly, calling and chattering and making much noise, but
in different tones from any we had heard before. Evidently a magpie
nursery had been established over there. We fancied we could distinguish
maternal reproof and loving baby talk, beside the weaker voices of the
young, and we went home rejoicing to believe, that in spite of nest
robbers, and the fright we had given them, some young magpies were
growing up to enliven the world another summer.
XIX.
THE SECRET OF THE WILD ROSE PATH.
"Shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?"
Wordsworth's lines are addressed to the cuckoo of the Old World, a bird
of unenviable reputation, notorious for imposing his most sacred duties
upon others; naturally, therefore, one who would not court observation,
and whose ways would be somewhat mysterious. But the American
representative of the family is a bird of different manners. Unlike his
namesake across the water, our cuckoo never--or so rarely as practically
to be never--shirks the labor of nest-building and raising a family. He
has no reason to skulk, and though always a shy bird, he is no more so
than several others, and in no sense is he a mystery.
There is, however, one American bird for whom Wordsworth's verse might
have been written; one whose chief aim seems to be, reversing our
grandmothers' rule for little people, to be heard, and not seen. To be
seen is, with this peculiar fellow, a misfortune, an accident, which he
avoids with great care, while his voice rings out loud and clear above
all others in the shrubbery. I refer to the yellow-breasted chat
(_Icteria virens_), whose summer home is the warmer temperate regions of
our country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, and whose
unbirdlike utterances prepare one to believe the stories told of his
eccentric actions; this, for example, by Dr. Abbott:--
"Aloft in the sunny air he springs;
To his timid mate he calls;
With dangling legs and fluttering wings
On the tangled smilax falls;
He mutters, he shrieks--
A hopeless cry;
You think that he seeks
In peace to die,
But pity him not; 't is the ghostly chat,
An imp if there is one, be sure of that."
I first knew the chat--if one may be said to know a creature so shy--in
a spot I have elsewhere described, a deserted park at the foot of
Cheyenne Mountain. I became familiar with his various calls and cries
(one can hardly call them songs); I secured one or two fleeting glimpses
of his graceful form; I sought and discovered the nest, which thereupon
my Lady Chat promptly abandoned, though I had not laid a finger upon it;
and last of all, I had the sorrow and shame of knowing that my
curiosity had driven the pair from the neighborhood. This was the
Western form of _Icteria_, differing from the Eastern only in a greater
length of tail, which several of our Rocky Mountain birds affect, for
the purpose, apparently, of puzzling the ornithologist.
Two years after my unsuccessful attempt to cultivate friendly relations
with "the ghostly chat," the middle of May found me on the shore of the
Great Salt Lake, where I settled myself at the foot of the Wasatch
Mountains, at that point bare, gray, and unattractive, showing miles of
loose bowlders and great patches of sage-bush. In the monotonous
stretches of this shrub, each plant of which looks exactly like every
other, dwelt many shy birds, as well hidden as bobolinks in the meadow
grass, or meadow-larks in the alfalfa.
But on this mountain side no friendly cover existed from which I could
spy out bird secrets. Whatever my position, and wherever I placed
myself, I was as conspicuous as a tower in the middle of a plain; again,
no shadow of protection was there from the too-ardent sun of Utah, which
drew the vitality from my frame as it did the color from my gown; worse
than these, the everywhere present rocks were the chosen haunts of the
one enemy of a peaceful bird lover, the rattlesnake, and I hesitated to
pursue the bird, because I invariably forgot to watch and listen for the
reptile. Bird study under these conditions was impossible, but the place
presented a phase of nature unfamiliar to me, and for a time so
fascinating that every morning my steps turned of themselves "up the
stony pathway to the hills."
The companion of my walks, a fellow bird-student, was more than
fascinated; she was enraptured. The odorous bush had associations for
her; she reveled in it; she inhaled its fragrance as a delicious
perfume; she filled her pockets with it; she lay for hours at a time on
the ground, where she could bask in the sunshine, and see nothing but
the gray leaves around her and the blue sky above.
I can hardly tell what was the fascination for me. It was certainly not
the view of the mountains, though mountains are beyond words in my
affections. The truth is, the Rocky Mountains, many of them, need a
certain distance to make them either picturesque or dignified. The range
then daily before our eyes, the Wasatch, was, to dwellers at its feet,
bleak, monotonous, and hopelessly prosaic. The lowest foothills, being
near, hid the taller peaks, as a penny before the eye will hide a whole
landscape.
Let me not, however, be unjust to the mountains I love. There is a
range which satisfies my soul, and will rest in my memory forever, a
beautiful picture, or rather a whole gallery of pictures. I can shut my
eyes and see it at this moment, as I have seen it a thousand times. In
the early morning, when the level sun shines on its face, it is like one
continuous mountain reaching across the whole western horizon; it has a
broken and beautiful sky line; Pike's Peak looms up toward the middle,
and lovely Cheyenne ends it in graceful slope on the south; lights and
shadows play over it; its colors change with the changing sky or
atmosphere,--sometimes blue as the heavens, sometimes misty as a dream;
it is wonderfully beautiful then. But wait till the sun gets higher;
look again at noon, or a little later. Behold the whole range has sprung
into life, separated into individuals; gorges are cut where none had
appeared; chasms come to light; canyons and all sorts of divisions are
seen; foothills move forward to their proper places, and taller peaks
turn at angles to each other; shapes and colors that one never suspected
come out in the picture: the transformation is marvelous. But the sun
moves on, the magical moment passes, each mountain slips back into line,
and behold, you see again the morning's picture.
Indulge me one moment, while I try to show you the last picture
impressed upon my memory as the train bore me, unwilling, away. It was
cloudy, a storm was coming up, and the whole range was in deep shadow,
when suddenly through some rift in the clouds a burst of sunshine fell
upon the "beloved mountain" Cheyenne, and upon it alone. In a moment it
was a smiling picture,
"Glad
With light as with a garment it was clad;"
all its inequalities, its divisions, its irregularities emphasized, its
greens turned greener, its reds made more glowing,--an unequaled gem for
a parting gift.
To come back to Utah. One morning, on our way up to the heights, as we
were passing a clump of oak-brush, a bird cry rang out. The voice was
loud and clear, and the notes were of a peculiar character: first a
"chack" two or three times repeated, then subdued barks like those of a
distressed puppy, followed by hoarse "mews" and other sounds suggesting
almost any creature rather than one in feathers. But with delight I
recognized the chat; my enthusiasm instantly revived. I unfolded my camp
chair, placed myself against a stone wall on the opposite side of the
road, and became silent and motionless as the wall itself.
My comrade, on the contrary, as was her custom, proceeded with equal
promptness to follow the bird up, to hunt him out. She slipped between
the barbed wires which, quite unnecessarily, one would suppose, defended
the bleak pasture from outside encroachment, and passed out of sight
down an obscure path that led into the brush where the bird was hidden.
Though our ways differ, or rather, perhaps, _because_ our ways differ,
we are able to study in company. Certainly this circumstance proved
available in circumventing the wily chat, and that happened which had
happened before: in fleeing from one who made herself obvious to him, he
presented himself, an unsuspecting victim, to another who sat like a
statue against the wall. To avoid his pursuer, the bird slipped through
the thick foliage of the low oaks, and took his place on the outside, in
full view of me, but looking through the branches at the movements
within so intently that he never turned his eyes toward me. This gave me
an opportunity to study his manners that is rare indeed, for a chat off
his guard is something inconceivable.
He shouted out his whole _repertoire_ (or so it seemed) with great
vehemence, now "peeping" like a bird in the nest, then "chacking" like a
blackbird, mewing as neatly as pussy herself, and varying these calls by
the rattling of castanets and other indescribable sounds. His perch was
half way down the bush; his trim olive-drab back and shining golden
breast were in their spring glory, and he stood nearly upright as he
sang, every moment stretching up to look for the invader behind the
leaves. The instant she appeared outside, he vanished within, and I
folded my chair and passed on. His disturber had not caught a glimpse of
him.
My next interview with a chat took place a day or two later. Between the
cottage which was our temporary home and the next one was a narrow
garden bordered by thick hedges, raspberry bushes down each side, and a
mass of flowering shrubs next the street. From my seat within the house,
a little back from the open window, I was startled by the voice of a
chat close at hand. Looking cautiously out, I saw him in the garden,
foraging about under cover of the bushes, near the ground, and there for
some time I watched him. He had not the slightest repose of manner; the
most ill-bred tramp in the English sparrow family was in that respect
his superior, and the most nervous and excitable of wrens could not
outdo him in posturing, jerking himself up, flirting his tail, and
hopping from twig to twig. When musically inclined, he perched on the
inner side of the bushes against the front fence, a foot or two above
the ground, and within three feet of any one who might pass, but
perfectly hidden.
The performance of the chat was exceedingly droll; first a whistle,
clear as an oriole note, followed by chacks that would deceive a
red-wing himself, and then, oddest of all, the laugh of a feeble old
man, a weak sort of "yah! yah! yah!" If I had not seen him in the act, I
could not have believed the sound came from a bird's throat. He
concluded with a low, almost whispered "chur-r-r," a sort of private
chuckle over his unique exhibition. After a few minutes' singing he
returned to his foraging on the ground, or over the lowest twigs of the
bushes, all the time bubbling over with low joyous notes, his graceful
head thrown up, and his beautiful golden throat swelling with the happy
song. The listener and looker behind the screen was charmed to absolute
quiet, and the bird so utterly unsuspicious of observers that he was
perfectly natural and at his ease, hopping quickly from place to place,
and apparently snatching his repast between notes.
The chat's secret of invisibility was thus plainly revealed. It is not
in his protective coloring, for though his back is modest of hue, his
breast is conspicuously showy; nor is it in his size, for he is almost
as large as an oriole; it is in his manners. The bird I was watching
never approached the top of a shrub, but invariably perched a foot or
more below it, and his movements, though quick, were silence itself. No
rustle of leaves proclaimed his presence; indeed, he seemed to avoid
leaves, using the outside twigs near the main stalk or trunk, where they
are usually quite bare, and no flit of wing or tail gave warning of his
change of position. There was a seemingly natural wariness and
cautiousness in every movement and attitude, that I never saw equaled in
feathers.
Then, too, the clever fellow was so constantly on his guard and so alert
that the least stir attracted his attention. Though inside the house, as
I said, not near the window, and further veiled by screens, I had to
remain as nearly motionless as possible, and use my glass with utmost
caution. The smallest movement sent him into the bushes like a shot,--or
rather, like a shadow, for the passage was always noiseless. Suspicion
once aroused, the bird simply disappeared. One could not say of him, as
of others, that he flew, for whether he used his wings, or melted away,
or sank into the earth, it would be hard to tell. All I can be positive
about is, that whereas one moment he was there, the next he was gone.
After this exhibition of the character of the chat, his constant
watchfulness, his distrust, his love of mystery, it may appear strange
that I should try again to study him at home, to find his nest and see
his family. But there is something so bewitching in his individuality,
that, though I may be always baffled, I shall never be discouraged.
Somewhat later, when it was evident that his spouse had arrived and
domestic life had begun, and I became accustomed to hearing a chat in a
certain place every day as I passed, I resolved to make one more effort
to win his confidence, or, if not that, at least his tolerance.
The chat medley for which I was always listening came invariably from
one spot on my pathway up the mountain. It was the lower end of a large
horse pasture, and near the entrance stood a small brick house, in which
no doubt dwelt the owner, or care-taker, of the animals. The wide gate,
in a common fashion of that country, opened in the middle, and was
fastened by a link of iron which dropped over the two centre posts. The
rattle of the iron as I touched it, on the morning I resolved to go in,
brought to the door a woman. She was rather young, with hair cut close
to her head, and wore a dark cotton gown, which was short and scant of
skirt, and covered with a "checked apron." She was evidently at work,
and was probably the mistress, since few in that "working-bee" village
kept maids.
I made my request to go into the pasture to look at the birds.
"Why, certainly," she said, with a courtesy that I have found everywhere
in Utah, though with a slow surprise growing in her face. "Come right
in."
I closed and fastened the gate, and started on past her. Three feet
beyond the doorsteps I was brought to a standstill: the ground as far as
I could see was water-soaked; it was like a saturated sponge. Utah is
dominated by Irrigation; she is a slave to her water supply. One going
there from the land of rains has much to learn of the possibilities and
the inconveniences of water. I was always stumbling upon it in new
combinations and unaccustomed places, and I never could get used to its
vagaries. Books written in the interest of the Territory indulge in
rhapsodies over the fact that every man is his own rain-maker; and I
admit that the arrangement has its advantages--to the cultivator. But
judging from the standpoint of an outsider, I should say that man is not
an improvement upon the original providence which distributes the staff
of life to plants elsewhere, spreading the vital fluid over the whole
land, so evenly that every grass blade gets its due share; and as all
parts are wet at once, so all are dry at the same time, and the surplus,
if there be any, runs in well-appointed ways, with delight to both eye
and ear. All this is changed when the office of Jupiter Pluvius devolves
upon man; different indeed are his methods. A man turns a stream loose
in a field or pasture, and it wanders whither it will over the ground.
The grass hides it, and the walker, bird-student or botanist, steps
splash into it without the slightest warning. This is always unpleasant,
and is sometimes disastrous, as when one attempts to cross the edge of a
field of some close-growing crop, and instantly sinks to the top of the
shoes in the soft mud.
On the morning spoken of, I stopped before the barrier, considering how
I should pass it, when the woman showed me a narrow passage between the
house and the stone wall, through which I could reach the higher ground
at the back. I took this path, and in a moment was in the grove of young
oaks which made her out-of-doors kitchen and yard. A fire was burning
merrily in the stove, which stood under a tree; frying-pans and
baking-tins, dippers and dishcloths, hung on the outer wall of her
little house, and the whole had a camping-out air that was captivating,
and possible only in a rainless land. I longed to linger and study this
open-air housekeeping; if that woman had only been a bird!
But I passed on through the oak-grove back yard, following a path the
horses had made, till I reached an open place where I could overlook
the lower land, filled with clumps of willows with their feet in the
water, and rosebushes
"O'erburdened with their weight of flowers,
And drooping 'neath their own sweet scent."