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Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained
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[Illustration: "The feast is finished and the games are on."]
A WATCHER
IN THE WOODS
BY DALLAS LORE SHARP
Author of "Wild Life Near Home"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY BRUCE HORSFALL
[Illustration: logo]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1901, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published November, 1903_
3101
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
TO
THE TWO LITTLE WATCHERS
AT HOME
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
Leading superintendents of schools and teachers have been pointing out
that in "Wild Life Near Home," by Dallas Lore Sharp, there is much
valuable supplementary reading for schools, and no less an authority
than Mr. John Burroughs, in his recent article in the "Atlantic
Monthly" entitled "Real and Sham Natural History," made the statement
that "of all the nature books of recent years, I look upon Mr. Sharp's
as the best."
The present volume will be found to contain carefully selected
chapters from "Wild Life," arranged with special reference to nature
study in the schools, where it is hoped that it will become popular
with both teachers and pupils.
October 15, 1903
CONTENTS
PAGE
BIRDS' WINTER BEDS 1
SOME SNUG WINTER BEDS 17
"MUS'RATTIN'" 35
FEATHERED NEIGHBORS 51
FROM RIVER-OOZE TO TREE-TOP 109
RABBIT ROADS 135
SECOND CROPS 161
IN THE OCTOBER MOON 191
ILLUSTRAIONS
PAGE
The feast is finished and the games are on Frontispiece
The cheerful little goldfinches, that bend the
dried ragweeds 7
There she stood in the snow with head high,
listening anxiously And--dreamed 16
I shivered as the icy flakes fell thicker and faster 22
The meadow-mouse 25
It was Whitefoot 30
From his leafless height he looks down into the Hollow 33
Uncle Jethro limbered his stiffened knees and went
chuckling down the bank 36
The big moon was rising over the meadows 39
Section of muskrat’s house 40
The snow has drifted over their house till only a
tiny mound appears 43
They rubbed noses 45
Two little brown creatures washing calamus. 46
They probe the lawns most diligently for worms 57
Even he loves a listener 58
She flew across the pasture 61
A very ordinary New England "corner" 64
They are the first to return in the spring 67
Where the dams are hawking for flies 70
They cut across the rainbow 75
The barn-swallows fetch the summer 77
From the barn to the orchard 78
Across the road, in an apple-tree, built a pair of
redstarts 80
Gathered half the gray hairs of a dandelion into
her beak 83
In the tree next to the chebec's was a brood of
robins. The crude nest was wedged carelessly
into the lowest fork of the tree, so that the cats
and roving boys could help themselves without
trouble 85
I soon spied him on the wires of a telegraph-pole 88
He will come if May comes 91
Within a few feet of me dropped the lonely frightened
quail 92
On they go to a fence-stake 94
It was a love-song 96
But the pair kept on together, chatting brightly 101
In a dead yellow birch 103
So close I can look directly into it 104
"Spring! spring! spring!" 114
A wretched little puddle 117
Calamity is hot on his track 140
Bunny, meantime, is watching just inside the
next brier-patch 143
The squat is a cold place 145
The limp, lifeless one hanging over the neck of
that fox 148
His drop is swift and certain 153
Seven young ones in the nest 159
I knew it suited exactly 166
With tail up, head cocked, very much amazed,
and commenting vociferously 168
In a solemn row upon the wire fence 171
Young flying-squirrels 172
The sentinel crows are posted 174
She turned and fixed her big black eyes hard on
me 179
Wrapped up like little Eskimos 180
It is no longer a sorry forest of battered, sunken
stumps 183
Even the finger-board is a living pillar of ivy 186
In October they are building their winter lodges 199
The glimpse of Reynard in the moonlight 202
BIRDS' WINTER BEDS [Illustration: snowy]
BIRDS' WINTER BEDS
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.
A storm had been raging from the northeast all day. Toward evening the
wind strengthened to a gale, and the fine, icy snow swirled and
drifted over the frozen fields.
I lay a long time listening to the wild symphony of the winds,
thankful for the roof over my head, and wondering how the hungry,
homeless creatures out of doors would pass the night. Where do the
birds sleep such nights as this? Where in this bitter cold, this
darkness and storm, will they make their beds? The lark that broke
from the snow at my feet as I crossed the pasture this afternoon--
What comes o' thee?
Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
An' close thy e'e?
The storm grew fiercer; the wind roared through the big pines by the
side of the house and swept hoarsely on across the fields; the pines
shivered and groaned, and their long limbs scraped over the shingles
above me as if feeling with frozen fingers for a way in; the windows
rattled, the cracks and corners of the old farm-house shrieked, and a
long, thin line of snow sifted in from beneath the window across the
garret floor. I fancied these sounds of the storm were the voices of
freezing birds, crying to be taken in from the cold. Once I thought I
heard a thud against the window, a sound heavier than the rattle of
the snow. Something seemed to be beating at the glass. It might be a
bird. I got out of bed to look; but there was only the ghostly face of
the snow pressed against the panes, half-way to the window's top. I
imagined that I heard the thud again; but, while listening, fell
asleep and dreamed that my window was frozen fast, and that all the
birds in the world were knocking at it, trying to get in out of the
night and storm.
The fields lay pure and white and flooded with sunshine when I awoke.
Jumping out of bed, I ran to the window, and saw a dark object on the
sill outside. I raised the sash, and there, close against the glass,
were two quails--frozen stiff in the snow. It was they I heard the
night before fluttering at the window. The ground had been covered
deep with snow for several days, and at last, driven by hunger and
cold from the fields, they saw my light, and sought shelter from the
storm and a bed for the night with me.
Four others, evidently of the same covey, spent the night in the
wagon-house, and in the morning helped themselves fearlessly to the
chickens' breakfast. They roosted with the chickens several nights,
but took to the fields again as soon as the snow began to melt.
It is easy to account for our winter birds during the day. Along near
noon, when it is warm and bright, you will find the sparrows,
chickadees, and goldfinches searching busily among the bushes and
weeds for food, and the crows and jays scouring the fields. But what
about them during the dark? Where do they pass the long winter
nights?
Why, they have nests, you say. Yes, they _had_ nests in the summer,
and then, perhaps, one of the parent birds may be said to have slept
in the nest during the weeks of incubation and rearing of the young.
But nests are cradles, not beds, and are never used by even the young
birds from the day they leave them. Muskrats build houses, foxes have
holes, and squirrels sleep in true nests; but of the birds it can be
said, "they have not where to lay their heads." They sleep upon their
feet in the grass, in hollow trees, and among the branches; but, at
best, such a bed is no more than a roost. A large part of the year
this roost is new every night, so that the question of a
sleeping-place during the winter is most serious.
The cheerful little goldfinches, that bend the dried ragweeds and
grass-stalks down and scatter their chaff over the snow, sleep in the
thick cedars and pines. These warm, close-limbed evergreens I have
found to be the lodging-houses of many of the smaller winter
birds--the fox-colored sparrow, snowbird, crossbill, and sometimes of
the chickadee, though he usually tucks his little black cap under his
wing in a woodpecker's hole.
[Illustration: "The cheerful little goldfinches, that bend the dried
ragweeds."]
The meadow-larks always roost upon the ground. They creep well under
the grass, or, if the wind is high and it snows, they squat close to
the ground behind a tuft of grass or thick bush and sleep while the
cold white flakes fall about them. They are often covered before the
morning; and when housed thus from the wind and hidden from prowling
enemies, no bird could wish for a cozier, warmer, safer bed.
But what a lonely bed it is! Nothing seems so utterly homeless and
solitary as a meadow-lark after the winter nightfall. In the middle of
a wide, snow-covered pasture one will occasionally spring from under
your feet, scattering the snow that covered him, and go whirring away
through the dusk, lost instantly in the darkness--a single little life
in the wild, bleak wilderness of winter fields!
Again, the grass is often a dangerous bed. On the day before the great
March blizzard of 1888, the larks were whistling merrily from the
fences, with just a touch of spring in their call. At noon I noted no
signs of storm, but by four o'clock--an hour earlier than usual--the
larks had disappeared. They rose here and there from the grass as I
crossed the fields, not as they do when feeding, far ahead of me, but
close to my feet. They had gone to bed. By early evening the snow
began to fall, and for two days continued furiously.
A week later, when the deep drifts melted, I found several larks that
had perished from cold or starvation or had smothered under the weight
of snow.
There is something of awe in the thought of a bird nestling close
beneath a snow-laden bush in a broad meadow, or clinging fast to a
limb in the swaying top of some tall tree, rocked in its great arms
through the night by a winter gale. All trees, even the pines and
cedars, are fearfully exposed sleeping-places, and death from cold is
not infrequent among the birds that take beds in them.
The pine barrens, and especially certain pine clumps along Cohansey
Creek and at the head of Cubby Hollow, used to be famous crow-roosts.
Thousands of the birds, a few years ago, frequented these pieces of
wood in the winter. About the middle of the afternoon, during the
severest weather, they begin to fly over to the roost at the head of
the Hollow, coming in from the surrounding fields, some of them from
miles away, where they have been foraging all day for food. You can
tell the character of the weather by the manner of their flight. In
the fall and spring they went over cawing, chasing each other and
performing in the air; they were happy, and life was as abundant as
the spring promise or the autumn fullness everywhere. But in January
the land is bare and hard, and life correspondingly lean and
cheerless. You see it in their heavy, dispirited flight; all their
spring joyousness is gone; they pass over silent and somber, reluctant
to leave the fields, and fearful of the night. There is not a croak as
they settle among the pines--scores, sometimes hundreds of them, in a
single tree.
Here, in the swaying tops, amid the heavy roar of the winds, they
sleep. You need have no fear of waking them as you steal through the
shadows beneath the trees. The thick mat of needles or the sifted snow
muffles your footfalls; and the winds still the breaking branches and
snapping twigs. What a bed in a winter storm! The sky is just light
enough for you to distinguish the dim outlines of the sleepers as they
rock in the waves of the dark green that rise and fall above you; the
trees moan, the branches shiver and creak, and high above all, around
and beneath you, filling the recesses of the dark wood rolls the
volume of the storm.
But the crows sleep on, however high the winds. They sit close to the
branches, that the feathers may cover their clinging feet; they tuck
their heads beneath their wing-coverts, thus protecting the whole
body, except one side of the head, which the feathers of the wing
cannot quite shelter. This leaves an eye exposed, and this eye, like
the heel of Achilles, proves to be the one vulnerable spot. It freezes
in very severe weather, causing a slow, painful death. In the morning,
after an unusually cold night, you can find dozens of crows flapping
piteously about in the trees of the roost and upon the ground, with
frozen eyes. In January, 1895, I saw very many of them along the
Hollow, blind in one eye or in both eyes, dying of pain and
starvation. It was pitiful to see their sufferings. The snow in places
was sprinkled with their broken feathers, and with pine-needles which
they had plucked off and tried to eat. Nothing could be done for the
poor things. I have tried time and again to doctor them; but they were
sure to die in the end.
Who has not wondered, as he has seen the red rim of the sun sink down
in the sea, where the little brood of Mother Carey's chickens skimming
round the vessel would sleep that night? Or who, as he hears the
_honking_ of geese overhead in the darkness, has not questioned by
what
... plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side,
they will find rest?
In winter, when a heavy southeast wind is blowing, the tides of
Delaware Bay are high and the waters very rough. Then the ducks that
feed along the reedy flats of the bay are driven into the quieter
water of the creeks, and at night fly into the marshes, where they
find safe beds in the "salt-holes."
The salt-holes are sheets of water having no outlet, with clean
perpendicular sides as if cut out of the grassy marsh, varying in size
from a few feet wide to an acre in extent. The sedges grow luxuriantly
around their margins, making a thick, low wall in winter, against
which the winds blow in vain. If a bird must sleep in the water, such
a hole comes as near to being a perfect cradle as anything could be,
short of the bottom of a well.
The ducks come in soon after dark. You can hear the whistle of their
wings as they pass just above your head, skimming along the marsh.
They settle in a hole, swim close up to the windward shore, beneath
the sedges, and, with their heads under their wings, go fast asleep.
And as they sleep the ice begins to form--first, along their side of
the hole, where the water is calmest; then, extending out around them,
it becomes a hard sheet across the surface.
A night that will freeze a salt-hole is not one in which there is
likely to be much hunting done by man or beast. But I have been on the
marshes such nights, and so have smaller and more justified hunters.
It is not a difficult feat to surprise the sleeping ducks. The ice is
half an inch thick when you come up, and seals the hole completely,
save immediately about the bodies of the birds. Their first impulse,
when taken thus at close range, is to dive; and down they go, turning
in their tracks.
Will they get out? One may chance to strike the hole which his warm
body kept open, as he rises to breathe; but it is more likely that he
will come up under the ice, and drown. I have occasionally found a
dead duck beneath the ice or floating in the water of a salt-hole. It
had been surprised, no doubt, while sleeping, and, diving in fright,
was drowned under the ice, which had silently spread like a strange,
dreadful covering over its bed.
Probably the life of no other of our winter birds is so full of
hardship as is that of the quail, Bob White.
In the early summer the quails are hatched in broods of from ten to
twenty, and live as families until the pairing season the next spring.
The chicks keep close to the neighborhood of the home nest, feeding
and roosting together, under the guidance of the parent birds. But
this happy union is soon broken by the advent of the gunning season.
It is seldom that a bevy escapes this period whole and uninjured.
Indeed, if _one_ of the brood is left to welcome the spring it is
little less than a miracle.
I have often heard the scattered, frightened families called together
after a day of hard shooting; and once, in the old pasture to the
north of Cubby Hollow, I saw the bevy assemble.
It was long after sunset, but the snow so diffused the light that I
could see pretty well. In climbing the fence into the pasture, I had
started a rabbit, and was creeping up behind a low cedar, when a
quail, very near me, whistled softly, _Whirl-ee!_ The cedar was
between us. _Whirl-ee, whirl-ee-gig!_ she whistled again.
[Illustration: "There she stood in the snow with head high, listening
anxiously."]
It was the sweetest bird-note I ever heard, being so low, so liquid,
so mellow that I almost doubted if Bob White could make it. But there
she stood in the snow with head high, listening anxiously. Again she
whistled, louder this time; and from the woods below came a faint
answering call: _White!_ The answer seemed to break a spell; and on
three sides of me sounded other calls. At this the little signaler
repeated her efforts, and each time the answers came louder and
nearer. Presently something dark hurried by me over the snow and
joined the quail I was watching. It was one of the covey that I had
heard call from the woods.
Again and again the signal was sent forth until a third, fourth, and
finally a fifth were grouped about the leader. There was just an
audible twitter of welcome and gratitude exchanged as each new-comer
made his appearance. Once more the whistle sounded; but this time
there was no response across the silent field.
The quails made their way to a thick cedar that spread out over the
ground, and, huddling together in a close bunch under this, they
murmured something soft and low among themselves and--dreamed.
Some of the family were evidently missing, and I crept away, sorry
that even one had been taken from the little brood.
[Illustration: "And--dreamed."]
[Illustration: bird in flight]
SOME SNUG WINTER BEDS
It was a cold, desolate January day. Scarcely a sprig of green showed
in the wide landscape, except where the pines stood in a long blur
against the gray sky. There was not a sign that anything living
remained in the snow-buried fields, nor in the empty woods, shivering
and looking all the more uncovered and cold under their mantle of
snow, until a solitary crow flapped heavily over toward the pines in
search of an early bed for the night.
The bird reminded me that I, too, should be turning toward the pines;
for the dull gray afternoon was thickening into night, and my bed lay
beyond the woods, a long tramp through the snow.
As the black creature grew small in the distance and vanished among
the trees, I felt a pang of pity for him. I knew by his flight that he
was hungry and weary and cold. Every labored stroke of his unsteady
wings told of a long struggle with the winter death. He was silent;
and his muteness spoke the foreboding and dread with which he faced
another bitter night in the pines.
The snow was half-way to my knees; and still another storm was
brewing. All day the leaden sky had been closing in, weighed down by
the snow-filled air. That hush which so often precedes the severest
winter storms brooded everywhere. The winds were in leash--no, not in
leash; for had my ears been as keen as those of the creatures about
me, I might even now have heard them baying far away to the north. It
was not the winds that were still; it was the fields and forests that
quailed before the onset of the storm.
I skirted Lupton's Pond and saw the muskrat village, a collection of
white mounds out in the ice, and coming on to Cubby Hollow, I crossed
on the ice, ascended the hill, and keeping in the edge of the swamp,
left the pines a distance to the left. A chickadee, as if oppressed by
the silence and loneliness among the trees, and uneasy in his stout
little heart at the threatening storm, flew into the bushes as near to
me as he could get, and, apparently for the sake of companionship,
followed me along the path, cheeping plaintively.
As I emerged from the woods into a cornfield and turned to look over
at the gloomy pines, a snowflake fell softly upon my arm. The storm
had begun. Now the half-starved crows came flocking in by hundreds,
hurrying to roost before the darkness should overtake them. A biting
wind was rising; already I could hear it soughing through the pines.
There was something fascinating in the oncoming monster, and backing
up behind a corn-shock, I stopped a little to watch the sweep of its
white winds between me and the dark, sounding pines.
[Illustration: "I shivered as the icy flakes fell thicker and
faster."]
I shivered as the icy flakes fell thicker and faster. How the wild,
unhoused things must suffer to-night! I thought, as the weary
procession of crows beat on toward the trees. Presently there was a
small stir within the corn-shock. I laid my ear to the stalks and
listened. Mice! I could hear them moving around in there. It was with
relief that I felt that here, at least, was a little people whom the
cold and night could not hurt.
These mice were as warmly sheltered inside this great shock as I
should be in my furnace-warmed home. Their tiny nests of corn-silk,
hidden away, perhaps, within the stiff, empty husks at the shock's
very center, could never be wet by a drop of the most driving rain nor
reached by the most searching frosts. And not a mouse of them feared
starvation. A plenty of nubbins had been left from the husking, and
they would have corn for the shelling far into the spring--if the
fodder and their homes should be left to them so long.
I floundered on toward home. In the gathering night, amid the swirl of
the snow, the shocks seemed like spectral tents pitched up and down
some ghostly camp. But the specters and ghosts were all with me, all
out in the whirling storm. The mice knew nothing of wandering,
shivering spirits; they nibbled their corn and squeaked in snug
contentment; for only dreams of the winter come to them in there.
These shock-dwellers were the common house-mice, _Mus musculus_. But
they are not the only mice that have warm beds in winter. In fact,
bed-making is a specialty among the mice.
_Zapus_, the jumping-mouse, the exquisite little fellow with the long
tail and kangaroo legs, has made his nest of leaves and grass down in
the ground, where he lies in a tiny ball just out of the frost's
reach, fast asleep. He will be plowed out of bed next spring, if his
nest is in a field destined for corn or melons; for _Zapus_ is sure to
oversleep. He is a very sound sleeper. The bluebirds, robins, and
song-sparrows will have been back for weeks, the fields will be
turning green, and as for the flowers, there will be a long procession
of them started, before this pretty sleepy-head rubs his eyes, uncurls
himself, and digs his way out to see the new spring morning.
Does this winter-long sleep seem to him only as a nap overnight?
[Illustration: The meadow-mouse.]
_Arvicola_, the meadow-mouse, that duck-legged, stump-tailed,
pot-bellied mouse whose paths you see everywhere in the meadows and
fields, stays wide awake all winter. He is not so tender as _Zapus_.
The cold does not bother him; he likes it. Up he comes from his
underground nest,--or home, rather, for it is more than a mere
sleeping-place,--and runs out into the snow like a boy. He dives and
plunges about in the soft white drifts, plowing out roads that
crisscross and loop and lady's-chain and lead nowhere--simply for the
fun of it.
Fairies do wonderful things and live in impossible castles; but no
fairy ever had a palace in fairy-land more impossible than this
unfairy-like meadow-mouse had in my back yard.
One February day I broke through the frozen crust of earth in the
garden and opened a large pit in which forty bushels of beets were
buried. I took out the beets, and, when near the bottom, I came upon a
narrow tunnel running around the wall of the pit like the Whispering
Gallery around the dome of St. Paul's. It completely circled the pit,
was well traveled, and, without doubt, was the corridor of some small
animal that had the great beet-pit for a winter home.
There were numerous dark galleries branching off from this main
hallway, piercing out into the ground. Into one of these I put my
finger, by way of discovery, thinking I might find the nest. I did
find the nest--and more. The instant my finger entered the hole a
sharp twinge shot up my arm, and I snatched away my hand with a large
meadow-mouse fastened to the end of my finger, and clinging
desperately to her, lo! two baby mice, little bigger than thimbles.
In this mild and even temperature, four feet below the frozen surface
of the garden, with never a care as to weather and provisions, dwelt
this single family of meadow-mice. What a home it was! A mansion,
indeed, with rooms innumerable, and a main hall girdling a very
mountain of juicy, sugary beets. This family could not complain of
hard times. Besides the beets, the mice had harvested for themselves a
number of cribs of clover-roots. These cribs, or bins, were in the
shape of little pockets in the walls of the great gallery. Each
contained a cupful of the thick, meaty tap-roots of clover, cut into
lengths of about half an inch. If the beets should fail (!), or cloy
upon them, they had the roots to fall back on.
It was absolutely dark here, and worse; there was no way to get fresh
air that I could see. Yet here two baby mice were born in the very
dead of winter, and here they grew as strong and warm and happy as
they would have grown had the season showered rose-petals instead of
snowflakes over the garden above.
_Hesperomys_ is the rather woodsy name of the white-footed or
deer-mouse, a shy, timid little creature dwelling in every wood, who,
notwithstanding his abundance, is an utter stranger to most of us. We
are more familiar with his tracks, however, than with even those of
the squirrel and rabbit. His is that tiny double trail galloped across
the snowy paths in the woods. We see them sprinkled over the snow
everywhere; but when have we seen the feet that left them? Here goes a
line of the wee prints from a hole in the snow near a stump over to
the butt of a large pine. Whitefoot has gone for provender to one of
his storehouses among the roots of the pine; or maybe a neighbor lives
here, and he has left his nest of bird-feathers in the stump to make a
friendly call after the storm.
A bed of downy feathers at the heart of a punky old stump beneath the
snow would seem as much of a snuggery as ever a mouse could build; but
it is not. Instead of a dark, warm chamber within a hollow stump,
Whitefoot sometimes goes to the opposite extreme, and climbs a
leafless tree to an abandoned bird's nest, and fits this up for his
winter home. Down by Cubby Hollow I found a wood-thrush's nest in a
slender swamp-maple, about fifteen feet from the ground. The young
birds left it late in June, and when Whitefoot moved in I do not know.
But along in the winter I noticed that the nest looked suspiciously
round and full, as if it were roofed over. Perhaps the falling leaves
had lodged in it, though this was hardly likely. So I went up to the
sapling and tapped. My suspicions were correct. After some thumps, a
sleepy, frightened face appeared through the side of the nest, and
looked cautiously down at me. No one could mistake that pointed nose,
those big ears, and the round pop-eyes so nearly dropping out with
blinking. It was Whitefoot. I had disturbed his dreams, and he had
hardly got his wits together yet, for he had never been awakened thus
before. And what could wake him? The black-snakes are asleep, and
there is not a coon or cat living that could climb this spindling
maple. Free from these foes, Whitefoot has only the owls to fear, and
I doubt if even the little screech-owl could flip through these
interlaced branches and catch the nimble-footed tenant of the nest.
[Illustration: "It was Whitefoot."]
In spite of the exposure this must be a warm bed. The walls are thick
and well plastered with mud, and are packed inside with fine, shredded
bark which the mouse himself has pulled from the dead chestnut limbs,
or, more likely, has taken from a deserted crow's nest. The whole is
thatched with a roof of shredded bark, so neatly laid that it sheds
water perfectly. The entrance is on the side, just over the edge of
the original structure, but so shielded by the extending roof that the
rain and snow never beat in. The thrushes did their work well; the
nest is securely mortised into the forking branches; and Whitefoot can
sleep without a tremor through the wildest winter gale. Whenever the
snow falls lightly a high white tower rises over the nest; and then
the little haycock, lodged in the slender limbs so far above our
heads, is a very castle indeed.
High over the nest of the white-footed mouse, in the stiffened top of
a tall red oak that stands on the brow of the hill, swings another
winter bed. It is the bulky oak-leaf hammock of the gray squirrel.
A hammock for a winter bed? Is there anything snug and warm about a
hammock? Not much, true enough. From the outside the gray squirrel's
leaf bed looks like the coldest, deadliest place one could find in
which to pass the winter. The leaves are loose and rattle in the wind
like the clapboards of a tumble-down house. The limb threatens every
moment to toss the clumsy nest out upon the storm. But the moorings
hold, and if we could curl up with the sleeper in that swaying bed, we
should rock and dream, and never feel a shiver through the homespun
blankets of chestnut bark that wrap us round inside the flapping
leaves.
Be it never so cozy, a nest like this is far from a burrow--the bed of
a fat, thick-headed dolt who sleeps away the winter. A glance into the
stark, frozen top of the oak sends over us a chill of fright and
admiration for the dweller up there. He cannot be an ease-lover;
neither can he know the meaning of fear. We should as soon think of a
sailor's being afraid of the shrieking in the rigging overhead, as of
this bold squirrel in the tree-tops dreading any danger that the
winter winds might bring.
There are winters when the gray squirrel stays in the hollow of some
old tree. A secure and sensible harbor, this, in which to weather the
heavy storms, and I wonder that a nest is ever anchored outside in the
tree-tops. The woodsmen and other wiseacres say that the squirrels
never build the tree-top nests except in anticipation of a mild
winter. But weather wisdom, when the gray squirrel is the source, is
as little wise as that which comes from Washington or the almanac. I
have found the nests in the tree-tops in the coldest, fiercest
winters.
[Illustration: "From his leafless height he looks down into the
Hollow."]
It is not in anticipation of fine weather, but a wild delight in the
free, wild winter, that leads the gray squirrel to swing his hammock
from the highest limb of the tallest oak that will hold it. He dares
and defies the winds, and claims their freedom for his own. From his
leafless height yonder he looks down into the Hollow upon the tops of
the swamp trees where his dizzy roads run along the angled branches,
and over the swamp to the dark pines, and over the pines, on, on
across the miles of white fields which sweep away and away till they
freeze with the frozen sky behind the snow-clouds that drift and pile.
In his aery he knows the snarl and bite of the blizzard; he feels the
swell of the heaving waves that drive thick with snow out of the cold
white north. Anchored far out in the tossing arms of the strong oak,
his leaf nest rocks in the storm like a yawl in a heaving sea.
But he loves the tumult and the terror. A night never fell upon the
woods that awed him; cold never crept into the trees that could chill
his blood; and the hoarse, mad winds that swirl and hiss about his
pitching bed never shook a nerve in his round, beautiful body. How he
must sleep! And what a constitution he has!
[Illustration: "Uncle Jethro limbered his stiffened knees and went
chuckling down the bank."]
"MUS'RATTIN'"
One November afternoon I found Uncle Jethro back of the woodshed,
drawing a chalk-mark along the barrel of his old musket, from the
hammer to the sight.
"What are you doing that for, Uncle Jeth?" I asked.
"What fo'? Fo' mus'rats, boy."
"Muskrats! Do you think they'll walk up and toe that mark, while you
knock 'em over with a stick?"
"G'way fum yhere! What I take yo' possumin' des dozen winters fo', en
yo' dunno how to sight a gun in de moon yit? I's gwine mus'rattin' by
de moon to-night, en I won't take yo' nohow."
Of course he took me. We went out about nine o'clock, and entering the
zigzag lane behind the barn, followed the cow-paths down to the
pasture, then cut across the fields to Lupton's Pond, the little
wood-walled lake which falls over a dam into the wide meadows along
Cohansey Creek.
It is a wild, secluded spot, so removed that a pair of black ducks
built their nest for several springs in the deep moss about the upper
shore.
It is shallow and deeply crusted over with lily-pads and
pickerel-weed, except for a small area about the dam, where the water
is deep and clear. There are many stumps in the upper end; and here,
in the shallows, built upon the hummocks or anchored to the submerged
roots, are the muskrats' houses.
The big moon was rising over the meadows as we tucked ourselves snugly
out of sight in a clump of small cedars on the bank, within easy range
of the dam and commanding a view of the whole pond. The domed houses
of the muskrats--the village numbered six homes--showed plainly as the
moon came up; and when the full flood of light fell on the still
surface of the pond, we could see the "roads" of the muskrats, like
narrow channels, leading down through the pads to the open space about
the dam.
[Illustration: "The big moon was rising over the meadows."]
A muskrat's domestic life is erratic. Sometimes there will be a large
village in the pond, and, again, an autumn will pass without a single
new house being built. It may be that some of the old houses will be
fitted up anew and occupied; but I have known years when there was not
a house in the pond. At no time do all of the muskrats build winter
houses. The walls of the meadow ditches just under the dam are
honeycombed with subterranean passages, in which many of the muskrats
live the year round. Neither food nor weather, so far as I have found,
influence them at all in the choice of their winter quarters. In low,
wet meadows where there are no ditches, the muskrats, of course, live
altogether in mud and reed houses above ground, for the water would
flood the ordinary burrow. These structures are placed on the tussocks
along a water-hole, so that the dwellers can dive out and escape under
water when danger approaches. But here in the tide-meadows, where the
ditches are deep, the muskrats rear their families almost wholly in
underground rooms. It is only when winter comes, and family ties
dissolve, that a few of the more sociable or more adventurous club
together, come up to the pond, and while away the cold weather in
these haystack lodges.
[Illustration: Section of muskrat's house.]
These houses are very simple, but entirely adequate. If you will lift
the top off an ordinary meadow lodge you will find a single room, with
a bed in the middle, and at least one entrance and one exit which are
always closed to outsiders by water.
The meadow lodge is built thus: The muskrat first chooses a large
tussock of sedge that stands well out of the water for his bedstead.
Now, from a foundation below the water, thick walls of mud and grass
are erected inclosing the tussock; a thatch of excessive thickness is
piled on; the channels leading away from the doors are dug out if
necessary; a bunch of soaking grass is brought in and made into a bed
on the tussock--and the muskrat takes possession.
The pond lodges at the head of Lupton's are made after this fashion,
only they are much larger, and instead of being raised about, a
tussock of sedge, they are built upon, and inclose, a part of a log
or stump.
This lodge life is surely a cozy, jolly way of passing the winter. The
possums are inclined to club together whenever they can find stumps
that are roomy enough; but the muskrats habitually live together
through the winter. Here, in the single room of their house, one after
another will come, until the walls can hold no more; and, curling up
after their night of foraging, they will spend the frigid days
blissfully rolled into one warm ball of dreamful sleep. Let it blow
and snow and freeze outside; there are six inches of mud-and-reed wall
around them, and, wrapped deep in rich, warm fur, they hear nothing of
the blizzard and care nothing for the cold.
Nor are they prisoners of the cold here. The snow has drifted over
their house till only a tiny mound appears; the ice has sealed the
pond and locked their home against the storm and desolation without:
but the main roadway from the house is below the drifting snow, and
they know where, among the stumps and button-bushes, the warm-nosed
watchers have kept breathing-holes open. The ice-maker never finds
their inner stair; its secret door opens into deep, under-water paths,
which run all over the bottom of the unfrozen pond-world.
[Illustration: "The snow has drifted over their house till only a tiny
mound appears."]
Unless roused by the sharp thrust of a spear, the muskrats will sleep
till nightfall. You may skate around the lodge and even sit down upon
it without waking the sleepers; but plunge your polo-stick through the
top, and you will hear a smothered _plunk, plunk, plunk_, as one
after another dives out of bed into the water below.
The moon climbed higher up the sky and the minutes ran on to ten
o'clock. We waited. The night was calm and still, and the keen, alert
air brought every movement of the wild life about us to our ears. The
soft, cottony footfalls of a rabbit, hopping leisurely down the
moonlit path, seemed not unlike the echoing steps on silent, sleeping
streets, as some traveler passes beneath your window; a wedge of wild
geese _honked_ far over our heads, holding their mysterious way to the
South; white-footed mice scurried among the dried leaves; and our ears
were so sharpened by the frosty air that we caught their thin, wiry
squeaks.
Presently there was a faint plash among the muskrat houses. The
village was waking up. Uncle Jethro poked the long nose of his gun
cautiously through the bushes, and watched. Soon there was a wake in
one of the silvery roads, then a parting of waves, and stemming
silently and evenly toward us, we saw the round, black head of a
muskrat.
It was a pretty sight and a pretty shot; but I would not have had the
stillness and the moonlit picture spoiled by the blare of that
murderous musket for the pelts of fifty muskrats, and as the gun was
coming to Uncle Jethro's shoulder, I slipped my hand under the lifted
hammer.
With just an audible grunt of impatience the old negro understood,--it
was not the first good shot that my love of wild things had spoiled
for him,--and the unsuspecting muskrat swam on to the dam.
[Illustration: "They rubbed noses."]
A plank had drifted against the bank, and upon this the little
creature scrambled out, as dry as the cat at home under the roaring
kitchen stove. Down another road came a second muskrat, and, swimming
across the open water at the dam, joined the first-comer on the plank.
They rubbed noses softly--the sweetest of all wild-animal
greetings--and a moment afterward began to play together.
[Illustration: "Two little brown creatures washing calamus."]
They were out for a frolic, and the night was splendid. Keeping one
eye open for owls, they threw off all other caution, and swam and
dived and chased each other through the water, with all the fun of
boys in swimming.
On the bottom of the pond about the dam, in ten or twelve feet of
water, was a bed of unios. I knew that they were there, for I had cut
my feet upon them; and the muskrats knew they were there, for they had
had many a moonlight lunch of them. These mussels the muskrats reckon
sweetmeats. They are hard to get, hard to crack, but worth all the
cost. I was not surprised, then, when one of the muskrats sleekly
disappeared beneath the surface, and came up directly with a mussel.
There was a squabble on the plank, which ended in the other muskrat's
diving for a mussel for himself. How they opened them I could not
clearly make out, for the shells were almost concealed in their paws;
but judging from their actions and the appearance of other shells
which they had opened, I should say that they first gnawed through the
big hinge at the back, then pried open the valves, and ate out the
contents.
Having finished this first course of big-neck clams, they were joined
by a third muskrat, and, together, they filed over the bank and down
into the meadow. Shortly two of them returned with great mouthfuls of
the mud-bleached ends of calamus-blades. Then followed the washing.
They dropped their loads upon the plank, took up the stalks, pulled
the blades apart, and soused them up and down in the water, rubbing
them with their paws until they were as clean and white as the whitest
celery one ever ate. What a dainty picture! Two little brown
creatures, humped on the edge of a plank, washing calamus in moonlit
water!
One might have taken them for half-grown coons as they sat there
scrubbing and munching. Had the big barred owl, from the gum-swamp
down the creek, come along then, he could easily have bobbed down upon
them, and might almost have carried one away without the other knowing
it, so all-absorbing was the calamus-washing.
Muskrats, like coons, will wash what they eat, whether washing is
needed or not. It is a necessary preliminary to dinner--their
righteousness, the little Pharisees! Judging from the washing disease
which ailed two tame muskrats that I knew, it is perfectly safe to say
that had these found clean bread and butter upon the plank, instead of
muddy calamus, they would have scoured it just the same.
Before the two on the plank had finished their meal, the third muskrat
returned, dragging his load of mud and roots to the scrubbing. He was
just dipping into the water when there was a terrific explosion in my
ears, a roar that echoed round and round the pond. As the smoke
lifted, there were no washers upon the plank: but over in the quiet
water floated three long, slender tails.
"No man gwine stan' dat shot, boy, jis t' see a mus'rat wash hi'
supper"; and Uncle Jethro limbered his stiffened knees and went
chuckling down the bank.
[Illustration: telephone wire]
FEATHERED NEIGHBORS
I
The electric cars run past my door, with a switch almost in front of
the house. I can hear a car rumbling in the woods on the west, and
another pounding through the valley on the east, till, shrieking,
groaning, crunching, crashing, they dash into view, pause a moment on
the switch, and thunder on to east and west till out of hearing. Then,
for thirty minutes, a silence settles as deep as it lay here a
century ago. Dogs bark; an anvil rings; wagons rattle by; and
children shout about the cross-roads. But these sounds have become the
natural voices of the neighborhood--mother-tongues like the chat of
the brook, the talk of the leaves, and the caw of the crows. And these
voices, instead of disturbing, seem rather to lull the stillness.
But the noise of the cars has hardly died away, and the quiet come,
when a long, wild cry breaks in upon it. _Yarup! yarup!
yarup-up-up-up-up_! in quick succession sounds the call, followed
instantly by a rapid, rolling beat that rings through the morning hush
like a reveille with bugle and drum.
It is the cry of the "flicker," the "high-hole." He is propped against
a pole along the street railroad, nearly a quarter of a mile away. He
has a hole in this pole, almost under the iron arm that holds the
polished, pulsing wire for the trolley. It is a new house, which the
bird has been working at for more than a week, and it must be finished
now, for this lusty call is an invitation to the warming. I shall go,
and, between the passing of the cars, witness the bowing, the
squeaking, the palaver. A high-hole warming is the most utterly polite
function in birddom.
Some of my friends were talking of birds, not long ago, when one of
them turned to me and said hopelessly:
"'Tis no use. We can't save them even if we do stop wearing them upon
our hats. Civilization is bound to sweep them away. We shall be in a
birdless world pretty soon, in spite of laws and Audubon societies."
I made no reply, but, for an answer, led the way to the street and
down the track to this pole which High-hole had appropriated. I
pointed out his hole, and asked them to watch. Then I knocked.
Instantly a red head appeared at the opening. High-hole was mad enough
to eat us; but he changed his mind, and, with a bored, testy flip,
dived into the woods. He had served my purpose, however, for his red
head sticking out of a hole in a street-railway pole was as a rising
sun in the east of my friends' ornithological world. New light broke
over this question of birds and men. The cars drive High-hole away?
Not so long as cars run by overhead wires on wooden poles.
High-hole is a civilized bird. Perhaps "domesticated" would better
describe him; though domesticated implies the purposeful effort of man
to change character and habits, while the changes which have come over
High-hole--and over most of the wild birds--are the result of
High-hole's own free choosing.
If we should let the birds have their way they would voluntarily fall
into civilized, if not into domesticated, habits. They have no
deep-seated hostility toward us; they have not been the aggressors in
the long, bitter war of extermination; they have ever sued for peace.
Instead of feeling an instinctive enmity, the birds are drawn toward
us by the strongest of interests. If nature anywhere shows us her
friendship, and her determination, against all odds, to make that
friendship strong, she shows it through the birds. The way they
forgive and forget, their endless efforts at reconciliation, and their
sense of obligation, ought to shame us. They sing over every acre that
we reclaim, as if we had saved it for them only; and in return they
probe the lawns most diligently for worms, they girdle the apple-trees
for grubs, and gallop over the whole wide sky for gnats and
flies--squaring their account, if may be, for cherries, orchards, and
chimneys.
[Illustration: "They probe the lawns most diligently for worms."]
The very crows, in spite of certain well-founded fears, look upon a
new farm--not upon the farmer, perhaps--as a godsend. In the cold and
poverty of winter, not only the crows, but the jays, quails, buntings,
and sparrows, help themselves, as by right, from our shocks and cribs.
Summer and winter the birds find food so much more plentiful about the
farm and village, find living in all respects so much easier and
happier here than in remote, wild regions, that, as a whole, they
have become a suburban people.
[Illustration: "Even he loves a listener."]
But life is more than meat for the birds. There is a subtle yet real
attraction for them in human society. They like its stir and change,
its attention and admiration. The shyest and most modest of the birds
pines for appreciation. The cardinal grosbeak, retiring as he is,
cannot believe that he was born to blush unseen--to the tip of his
beautiful crest. And the hermit-thrush, meditative, spiritual, and
free as the heart of the swamp from worldliness--even he loves a
listener, and would not waste his sweetness any longer on desert
forest air. I do not know a single bird who does not prefer a wood
with a wagon-road through it.
My friends had smiled at such assertions before their introduction to
the bird in the pole. They knew just enough of woodpeckers to expect
High-hole to build in the woods, and, when driven from there, to
disappear, to extinguish himself, rather than stoop to an existence
within walls of hardly the dignity and privacy of a hitching-post.