Sitting on my porch recently, wrapped in my blanket, recovering from a
slight indisposition, I was in a mood to be interested in the everyday
aspects of nature before me--in the white and purple lilacs, in the
maple-leaves nearly full grown, in the pendent fringe of the
yellowish-white bloom of the chestnut and oak, in the new shoots of the
grapevines, and so forth. All these things formed only a setting or
background for the wild life near by.
The birds are the little people that peep out at me, or pause and regard
me curiously in this great temple of trees,--wrens, chippies, robins,
bluebirds, catbirds, redstarts, and now and then rarer visitants. A few
days earlier, for a moment, a mourning ground warbler suddenly appeared
around the corner, on the ground, at the foot of the steps, and glanced
hastily up at me. When I arose and looked over the railing, it had gone.
Then the speckled Canada warbler came in the lilac bushes and syringa
branches and gave me several good views. The bay-breasted warbler was
reported in the evergreens up by the stone house, but he failed to
report to me here at "The Nest." The female redstart, however, came
several times to the gravel walk below me, evidently looking for
material to begin her nest. And the wren, the irrepressible house wren,
was and is in evidence every few minutes, busy carrying nesting-material
into the box on the corner of the veranda. How intense and emphatic she
is! And the male, how he throbs and palpitates with song! Yesterday an
interloper appeared. He or she climbed the post by the back way, as it
were, and hopped out upon the top of the box and paused, as if to see
that the coast was clear. He acted as if he felt himself an intruder.
Quick as a flash there was a brown streak from the branch of a maple
thirty feet away, and the owner of the box was after him. The culprit
did not stop to argue the case, but was off, hotly pursued. I must not
forget the pair of wood thrushes that are building a nest in a maple
fifty or more feet away. How I love to see them on the ground at my
feet, every motion and gesture like music to the eye! The head and neck
of the male fairly glows, and there is something fine and manly about
his speckled breast.
A pair of catbirds have a nest in the barberry bushes at the south end
of the house, and are in evidence at all hours. But when the nest is
completed, and the laying of eggs begins, they keep out of the public
eye as much as possible. From the front of the stage they retreat behind
the curtain.
One day as I sat here I heard the song of the olive-backed thrush down
in the currant-bushes below me. Instantly I was transported to the deep
woods and the trout brooks of my native Catskills. I heard the murmuring
water and felt the woodsy coolness of those retreats--such magic hath
associative memories! A moment before a yellow-throated vireo sang
briefly in the maple, a harsh note; and the oriole with its insistent
call added to the disquieting sounds. I have no use for the oriole. He
has not one musical note, and in grape time his bill is red, or purple,
with the blood of our grapes.
But the most of these little people are my benefactors, and add another
ray of sunshine to the May day. I shall not soon forget the spectacle
of that rare little warbler peeping around the corner of the porch,
like a little fairy, and then vanishing.
The mere studying of the birds, seeking mere knowledge of them, is not
enough. You must live with the birds, so to speak; have daily and
seasonal associations with them before they come to mean much to you.
Then, as they linger about your house or your camp, or as you see them
in your walks, they are a part of your life, and help give tone and
color to your day.