We never know the precise time the birds leave us in the fall: they
do not go suddenly; their departure is like that of an army of
occupation in no hurry to be off; they keep going and going, and we
hardly know when the last straggler is gone. Not so their return
in the spring: then it is like an army of invasion, and we know the
very day when the first scouts appear. It is a memorable event.
Indeed, it is always a surprise to me, and one of the compensations
of our abrupt and changeable climate, this suddenness with which
the birds come in spring,--in fact, with which spring itself comes,
alighting, maybe, to tarry only a day or two, but real and genuine,
for all that. When March arrives, we do not know what a day may
bring forth. It is like turning over a leaf, a new chapter of
startling incidents lying just on the other side.
A few days ago, Winter had not perceptibly relaxed his hold; then
suddenly he began to soften a little, and a warm haze to creep up
from the south, but not a solitary bird, save the winter residents,
was to be seen or heard. Next day the sun seemed to have drawn
immensely nearer; his beams were full of power; and we said,
"Behold the first spring morning! And, as if to make the prophecy
complete, there is the note of a bluebird, and it is not yet nine
o'clock." Then others, and still others, were heard. How did they
know it was going to be a suitable day for them to put in an
appearance? It seemed as if they must have been waiting somewhere
close by for the first warm day, like actors behind the scenes,--
the moment the curtain was lifted, they were ready and rushed upon
the stage. The third warm day, and, behold, all the principal
performers come rushing in,--song sparrows, cow blackbirds,
grackles, the meadowlark, cedar-birds, the phbe-bird, and, hark!
what bird laughter was that? the robins, hurrah! the robins! Not
two or three, but a score or two of them; they are following the
river valley north, and they stop in the trees from time to time,
and give vent to their gladness. It is like a summer picnic of
school-children suddenly let loose in a wood; they sing, shout,
whistle, squeal, call, in the most blithesome strains. The warm
wave has brought the birds upon its crest; or some barrier has
given way, the levee of winter has broken, and spring comes like an
inundation. No doubt, the snow and the frost will stop the
crevasse again, but only for a brief season.
Between the 10th and the 15th of March, in the Middle and Eastern
States, we are pretty sure to have one or more of these spring
days. Bright days, clear days, may have been plenty all winter;
but the air was a desert, the sky transparent ice; now the sky is
full of radiant warmth, and the air of a half-articulate murmur and
awakening. How still the morning is! It is at such times that we
discover what music there is in the souls of the little slate-
colored snowbirds. How they squeal, and chatter, and chirp, and
trill, always in scattered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling
the air with a fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike
"chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. Through this medley
of finer songs and calls, there is shot, from time to time, the
clear, strong note of the meadowlark. It comes from some field or
tree farther away, and cleaves the air like an arrow. The reason
why the birds always appear first in the morning, and not in the
afternoon, is that in migrating they travel by night, and stop and
feed and disport themselves by day. They come by the owl train,
and are here before we are up in the morning.