THERE is always a new page to be turned in natural history, if one
is sufficiently on the alert. I did not know that the eagle
celebrated his nuptials in the air till one early spring day I saw
a pair of them fall from the sky with talons hooked together. They
dropped a hundred feet or more, in a wild embrace, their great
wings fanning the air, then separated and mounted aloft, tracing
their great circles against the clouds. "Watch and wait" is the
naturalist's sign. For years I have been trying to ascertain for a
certainty the author of that fine plaintive piping to be heard more
or less frequently, according to the weather, in our summer and
autumn woods. It is a note that much resembles that of our small
marsh frog in spring,--the hyla; it is not quite so clear and
assured, but otherwise much the same. Of a very warm October day I
have heard the wood vocal with it; it seemed to proceed from every
stump and tree about one. Ordinarily it is heard only at
intervals throughout the woods. Approach never so cautiously the
spot from which the sound proceeds, and it instantly ceases, and
you may watch for an hour without again hearing it. Is it a frog,
I said, the small tree-frog, the piper of the marshes, repeating
his spring note, but little changed, amid the trees? Doubtless it
is, yet I must see him in the very act. So I watched and waited,
but to no purpose, till one day, while bee-hunting in the woods, I
heard the sound proceed from beneath the leaves at my feet.
Keeping entirely quiet, the little musician presently emerged,
and, lifting himself up on a small stick, his throat palpitated and
the plaintive note again came forth. "The queerest frog ever I
saw," said a youth who accompanied me, and whom I had enlisted to
help solve the mystery. No; it was no frog or toad at all, but
the small red salamander, commonly called lizard. The color is
not strictly red, but a dull orange, variegated with minute specks
or spots. This was the mysterious piper, then, heard from May till
November through all our woods, sometimes on trees, but usually on
or near the ground. It makes more music in the woods in autumn
than any bird. It is a pretty, inoffensive creature, walks as
awkwardly as a baby, and may often be found beneath stones and old
logs in the woods, where, buried in the mould, it passes the
winter. (I suspect there is a species of little frog--Pickering's
hyla [footnote: A frequent piper in the woods throughout the
summer and early fall.]--that also pipes occasionally in the
woods.) I have discovered, also, that we have a musical spider.
One sunny April day, while seated on the borders of the woods, my
attention was attracted by a soft, uncertain, purring sound that
proceeded from the dry leaves at my feet. On investigating the
matter, I found that it was made by a busy little spider. Several
of them were traveling about over the leaves, as if in quest of
some lost cue or secret. Every moment or two they would pause, and
by some invisible means make the low, purring sound referred to.
Dr. J. A. Alien says the common turtle, or land tortoise, also has
a note,--a loud, shrill, piping sound. It may yet be discovered
that there is no silent creature in nature.