I do not think many animals show their kinship to us by_The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers

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[Illustration: [Signature: John Burroughs]]

The Riverside Literature Series

THE WIT OF A DUCK

AND OTHER PAPERS

JOHN BURROUGHS

The Riverside Press Cambridge

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

CONTENTS

I. THE WIT OF A DUCK 5

II. AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE 10

III. HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS 14

IV. THE DOWNY WOODPECKER 22

V. A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK 27

VI. WILD LIFE IN WINTER 47

VII. BIRD LIFE IN WINTER 54

VIII. A BIRDS' FREE LUNCH 63

IX. BIRD-NESTING TIME 70

X. A BREATH OF APRIL 77

XI. THE WOODCOCK'S EVENING HYMN 83

XII. THE COMING OF SUMMER 89

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

U . S . A

JOHN BURROUGHS

John Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, in a little farmhouse

among the Catskill Mountains. He was, like most other country

boys, acquainted with all the hard work of farm life and enjoyed

all the pleasures of the woods and streams. His family was poor,

and he was forced at an early date to earn his own living, which

he did by teaching school. At the age of twenty-five he chanced

to read a volume of Audubon, and this proved the turning-point in

his life, inspiring a new zeal for the study of birds and

enabling him to see with keener eyes not only the birds

themselves, but their nests and surroundings, and to hear with

more discernment the peculiar calls and songs of each.

About the time of the Civil War he accepted a clerkship in the

Treasury Department at Washington, where he remained nine years.

It was here that he wrote his first book, "Wake-Robin," and a

part of the second, "Winter Sunshine." He says: "It enabled me to

live over again the days I had passed with the birds and in the

scenes of my youth. I wrote the book sitting at a desk in front

of an iron wall. I was the keeper of a vault in which many

millions of banknotes were stored. During my long periods of

leisure I took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from the

iron wall in front of me, and sought solace in memories of the

birds and of summer fields and woods!" In 1873 he exchanged the

iron wall in front of his desk for a large window overlooking the

Hudson, and the vault for a vineyard. Since then he has lived on

the banks of the Hudson in the midst of the woods and fields

which he most enjoys, adding daily to his fund of information

regarding the ways of nature. His close habit of observation,

coupled with his rare gift of imparting to the reader something

of his own interest and enthusiasm, has enabled him to interpret

nature in a most delightfully fascinating way. He gives the key

to his own success when he says, "If I name every bird I see in

my walk, describe its color and ways, etc., give a lot of facts

or details about the bird, it is doubtful if my reader is

interested. But if I relate the bird in some way to human life,

to my own life,--show what it is to me and what it is in the

landscape and the season,--then do I give my reader a live bird

and not a labeled specimen."

Mr. Burroughs thoroughly enjoys the country life, and in his

strolls through the woods or in the fields he is always ready to

stop and investigate anything new or interesting that he may

chance to see among the birds, or squirrels, or bees, or insects.

His long life of observation and study has developed remarkably

quick eyesight and a keen sense of hearing, which enable him to

detect all the activities of nature and to place a correct

interpretation upon them to an extent that few other naturalists

have realized.

When he writes he is simply living over again the experiences

which have delighted him, and the best explanation of the rare

pleasure that is imparted by his writings to every reader is

given in his own words: "I cannot bring myself to think of my

books as 'works,' because so little 'work' has gone to the making

of them. It has all been play. I have gone a-fishing or camping

or canoeing, and new literary material has been the result....

The writing of the book was only a second and finer enjoyment of

my holiday in the fields or woods; not till the writing did it

really seem to strike in and become part of me"; and so the

reader seems to participate in this "finer enjoyment" of a

holiday in the fields or woods, walking arm-in-arm with the

naturalist, feeling the influence of his poetic temperament,

learning something new at every turn, and sharing the master's

enthusiasm.

THE WIT OF A DUCK

The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most

remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill

in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems

at times as if they possessed some extra sense--the home

sense--which operates unerringly. I saw this illustrated one

spring in the case of a mallard drake.

My son had two ducks, and to mate with them he procured a drake

of a neighbor who lived two miles south of us. He brought the

drake home in a bag. The bird had no opportunity to see the road

along which it was carried, or to get the general direction,

except at the time of starting, when the boy carried him a few

rods openly.

He was placed with the ducks in a spring run, under a tree in a

secluded place on the river slope, about a hundred yards from the

highway. The two ducks treated him very contemptuously. It was

easy to see that the drake was homesick from the first hour, and

he soon left the presence of the scornful ducks.

Then we shut the three in the barn together, and kept them there

a day and a night. Still the friendship did not ripen; the ducks

and the drake separated the moment we let them out. Left to

himself, the drake at once turned his head homeward, and started

up the hill for the highway.

Then we shut the trio up together again for a couple of days, but

with the same results as before. There seemed to be but one

thought in the mind of the drake, and that was home.

Several times we headed him off and brought him back, till

finally on the third or fourth day I said to my son, "If that

drake is really bound to go home, he shall have an opportunity to

make the trial, and I will go with him to see that he has fair

play." We withdrew, and the homesick mallard started up through

the currant patch, then through the vineyard toward the highway

which he had never seen.

When he reached the fence, he followed it south till he came to

the open gate, where he took to the road as confidently as if he

knew for a certainty that it would lead him straight to his mate.

How eagerly he paddled along, glancing right and left, and

increasing his speed at every step! I kept about fifty yards

behind him. Presently he met a dog; he paused and eyed the animal

for a moment, and then turned to the right along a road which

diverged just at that point, and which led to the railroad

station. I followed, thinking the drake would soon lose his

bearings, and get hopelessly confused in the tangle of roads that

converged at the station.

But he seemed to have an exact map of the country in his mind; he

soon left the station road, went around a house, through a

vineyard, till he struck a stone fence that crossed his course at

right angles; this he followed eastward till it was joined by a

barbed wire fence, under which he passed and again entered the

highway he had first taken. Then down the road he paddled with

renewed confidence: under the trees, down a hill, through a

grove, over a bridge, up the hill again toward home.

Presently he found his clue cut in two by the railroad track;

this was something he had never before seen; he paused, glanced

up it, then down it, then at the highway across it, and quickly

concluded this last was his course. On he went again, faster and

faster.

He had now gone half the distance, and was getting tired. A

little pool of water by the roadside caught his eye. Into it he

plunged, bathed, drank, preened his plumage for a few moments,

and then started homeward again. He knew his home was on the

upper side of the road, for he kept his eye bent in that

direction, scanning the fields. Twice he stopped, stretched

himself up, and scanned the landscape intently; then on again. It

seemed as if an invisible cord was attached to him, and he was

being pulled down the road.

Just opposite a farm lane which led up to a group of farm

buildings, and which did indeed look like his home lane, he

paused and seemed to be debating with himself. Two women just

then came along; they lifted and flirted their skirts, for it was

raining, and this disturbed him again and decided him to take to

the farm lane. Up the lane he went, rather doubtingly, I thought.

In a few moments it brought him into a barnyard, where a group

of hens caught his eye. Evidently he was on good terms with hens

at home, for he made up to these eagerly as if to tell them his

troubles; but the hens knew not ducks; they withdrew suspiciously,

then assumed a threatening attitude, till one old "dominic" put up

her feathers and charged upon him viciously.

Again he tried to make up to them, quacking softly, and again he

was repulsed. Then the cattle in the yard spied this strange

creature and came sniffing toward it, full of curiosity.

The drake quickly concluded he had got into the wrong place, and

turned his face southward again. Through the fence he went into a

plowed field. Presently another stone fence crossed his path;

along this he again turned toward the highway. In a few minutes

he found himself in a corner formed by the meeting of two stone

fences. Then he turned appealingly to me, uttering the soft note

of the mallard. To use his wings never seemed to cross his mind.

Well, I am bound to confess that I helped the drake over the

wall, but I sat him down in the road as impartially as I could.

How well his pink feet knew the course! How they flew up the

road! His green head and white throat fairly twinkled under the

long avenue of oaks and chestnuts.

At last we came in sight of the home lane, which led up to the

farmhouse one hundred or more yards from the road. I was curious

to see if he would recognize the place. At the gate leading into

the lane he paused. He had just gone up a lane that looked like

that and had been disappointed. What should he do now? Truth

compels me to say that he overshot the mark: he kept on

hesitatingly along the highway.

It was now nearly night. I felt sure the duck would soon discover

his mistake, but I had not time to watch the experiment further.

I went around the drake and turned him back. As he neared the

lane this time he seemed suddenly to see some familiar landmark,

and he rushed up it at the top of his speed. His joy and

eagerness were almost pathetic.

I followed close. Into the house yard he rushed with uplifted

wings, and fell down almost exhausted by the side of his mate. A

half hour later the two were nipping the grass together in the

pasture, and he, I have no doubt, was eagerly telling her the

story of his adventures.

AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE

One summer, while three young people and I were spending an

afternoon upon a mountaintop, our dogs treed a porcupine. At my

suggestion the young man climbed the tree--not a large one--to

shake the animal down. I wished to see what the dogs would do

with him, and what the "quill-pig" would do with the dogs. As the

climber advanced the rodent went higher, till the limb he clung

to was no larger than one's wrist. This the young man seized and

shook vigorously. I expected to see the slow, stupid porcupine

drop, but he did not. He only tightened his hold. The climber

tightened his hold, too, and shook the harder. Still the bundle

of quills did not come down, and no amount of shaking could bring

it down. Then I handed a long pole up to the climber, and he

tried to punch the animal down. This attack in the rear was

evidently a surprise; it produced an impression different from

that of the shaking. The porcupine struck the pole with his tail,

put up the shield of quills upon his back, and assumed his best

attitude of defense. Still the pole persisted in its persecution,

regardless of the quills; evidently the animal was astonished: he

had never had an experience like this before; he had now met a

foe that despised his terrible quills. Then he began to back

rapidly down the tree in the face of his enemy. The young man's

sweetheart stood below, a highly interested spectator. "Look out,

Sam, he's coming down!" "Be quick, he's gaining on you!" "Hurry,

Sam!" Sam came as fast as he could, but he had to look out for

his footing, and his antagonist did not. Still, he reached the

ground first, and his sweetheart breathed more easily. It looked

as if the porcupine reasoned thus: "My quills are useless against

a foe so far away; I must come to close quarters with him." But,

of course, the stupid creature had no such mental process, and

formed no such purpose. He had found the tree unsafe, and his

instinct now was to get to the ground as quickly as possible and

take refuge among the rocks. As he came down I hit him a slight

blow over the nose with a rotten stick, hoping only to confuse

him a little, but much to my surprise and mortification he

dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill dead, having

succumbed to a blow that a woodchuck or a coon would hardly have

regarded at all. Thus does the easy, passive mode of defense of

the porcupine not only dull his wits, but it makes frail and

brittle the thread of his life. He has had no struggles or

battles to harden and toughen him.

That blunt nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and he is

snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any

other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish

non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort,

from struggle is always purchased with a price.

Certain of our natural history romancers have taken liberties

with the porcupine in one respect: they have shown him made up

into a ball and rolling down a hill. One writer makes him do this

in a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the woods, and

at the bottom he is a ragged mass of leaves which his quills have

impaled--an apparition that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its

wits. Let any one who knows the porcupine try to fancy it

performing a feat like this!

Another romancer makes his porcupine roll himself into a ball

when attacked by a panther, and then on a nudge from his enemy

roll down a snowy incline into the water. I believe the little

European hedgehog can roll itself up into something like a ball,

but our porcupine does not. I have tried all sorts of tricks with

him, and made all sorts of assaults upon him, at different times,

and I have never yet seen him assume the globular form. It would

not be the best form for him to assume, because it would partly

expose his vulnerable under side. The one thing the porcupine

seems bent upon doing at all times is to keep right side up with

care. His attitude of defense is crouching close to the ground,

head drawn in and pressed down, the circular shield of large

quills upon his back opened and extended as far as possible, and

the tail stretched back rigid and held close upon the ground.

"Now come on," he says, "if you want to." The tail is his weapon

of active defense; with it he strikes upward like lightning, and

drives the quills into whatever they touch. In his chapter called

"In Panoply of Spears," Mr. Roberts paints the porcupine without

taking any liberties with the creature's known habits. He

portrays one characteristic of the porcupine very felicitously:

"As the porcupine made his resolute way through the woods, the

manner of his going differed from that of all the other kindreds

of the wild. He went not furtively. He had no particular

objection to making a noise. He did not consider it necessary to

stop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument of

immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air

for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming,

and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of

biting spears he felt himself secure, and in that security he

moved as if he held in fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous

woodland world."

III

HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS

That there is a deal of human nature in the lower animals is a

very obvious fact; or we may turn the proposition around and say,

with equal truth, that there is a deal of animal nature in us

humans. If man is of animal origin, as we are now all coming to

believe, how could this be otherwise? We are all made of one

stuff, the functions of our bodies are practically the same, and

the workings of our instincts and our emotional and involuntary

natures are in many ways identical. I am not now thinking of any

part or lot which the lower orders may have in our intellectual

or moral life, a point upon which, as my reader may know, I

diverge from the popular conception of these matters, but of the

extent in which they share with us the ground or basement story

of the house of life--certain fundamental traits, instincts, and

blind gropings.

Man is a bundle of instincts, impulses, predilections, race and

family affinities, and antagonisms, supplemented by the gift of

reason--a gift of which he sometimes makes use. The animal is a

bundle of instincts, impulses, affinities, appetites, and race

traits, without the extra gift of reason.

The animal has sensation, perception, and power of association,

and these suffice it. Man has sensation, perception, memory,

comparison, ideality, judgment, and the like, which suffice him.

There can be no dispute, I suppose, as to certain emotions and

impulses being exclusively human, such as awe, veneration,

humility, reverence, self-sacrifice, shame, modesty, and many

others that are characteristic of what we call our moral nature.

Then there are certain others that we share with our dumb

neighbors--curiosity, jealousy, joy, anger, sex love, the

maternal and paternal instinct, the instinct of fear, of

self-preservation, and so forth.

There is at least one instinct or faculty that the animals have

far more fully developed than we have--the homing instinct, which

seems to imply a sense of direction that we have not. We have

lost it because we have other faculties to take its place, just

as we have lost that acute sense of smell that is so marvelously

developed in many of the four-footed creatures. It has long been

a contention of mine that the animals all possess the knowledge

and intelligence which is necessary to their self-preservation

and the perpetuity of the species, and that is about all. This

homing instinct seems to be one of the special powers that the

animals cannot get along without. If the solitary wasp, for

instance, could not find her way back to that minute spot in the

field where her nest is made, a feat quite impossible to you or

me, so indistinguishable to our eye is that square inch of ground

in which her hole is made; or if the fur seal could not in spring

retrace its course to the islands upon which it breeds, through a

thousand leagues of pathless sea water, how soon the tribe of

each would perish!

The animal is, like the skater, a marvel of skill in one field

or element, or in certain fixed conditions, while man's varied

but less specialized powers make him at home in many fields. Some

of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him,

outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special

powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has

the resourcefulness of reason, and is at home in many different

fields. The condor "houses herself with the sky" that she may

have a high point of observation for the exercise of that

marvelous power of vision. An object in the landscape beneath

that would escape the human eye is revealed to the soaring

buzzard. It stands these birds in hand to see thus sharply; their

dinner depends upon it. If mine depended upon such powers of

vision, in the course of time I might come to possess it. I am

not certain but that we have lost another power that I suspect

the lower animals possess--something analogous to, or identical

with, what we call telepathy--power to communicate without words,

or signs, or signals. There are many things in animal life, such

as the precise concert of action among flocks of birds and fishes

and insects, and, at times, the unity of impulse among land

animals, that give support to the notion that the wild creatures

in some way come to share one another's mental or emotional

states to a degree and in a way that we know little or nothing

of. It seems important to their well-being that they should have

such a gift--something to make good to them the want of language

and mental concepts, and insure unity of action in the tribe.

Their seasonal migrations from one part of the country to another

are no doubt the promptings of an inborn instinct called into

action in all by the recurrence of the same outward conditions;

but the movements of the flock or the school seem to imply a

common impulse that is awakened on the instant in each member of

the flock. The animals have no systems or methods in the sense

that we have, but like conditions with them always awaken like

impulses, and unity of action is reached without outward

communication.

The lower animals seem to have certain of our foibles, and

antagonisms, and unreasoning petulancies. I was reminded of this

in reading the story President Roosevelt tells of a Colorado bear

he once watched at close quarters. The bear was fussing around a

carcass of a deer, preparatory to burying it. "Once the bear lost

his grip and rolled over during the course of some movement, and

this made him angry and he struck the carcass a savage whack,

just as a pettish child will strike a table against which it has

knocked itself." Who does not recognize that trait in himself:

the disposition to vent one's anger upon inanimate things--upon

his hat, for instance, when the wind snatches it off his head and

drops it in the mud or leads him a chase for it across the

street; or upon the stick that tripped him up, or the beam

against which he bumped his head? We do not all carry our anger

so far as did a little three-year-old maiden I heard of, who, on

tripping over the rockers of her chair, promptly picked herself

up, and carrying the chair to a closet, pushed it in and

spitefully shut the door on it, leaving it alone in the dark to

repent its wrong-doing.

Our blind, unreasoning animal anger is excited by whatever

opposes or baffles us. Of course, when we yield to the anger, we

do not act as reasonable beings, but as the unreasoning animals.

It is hard for one to control this feeling when the opposition

comes from some living creature, as a balky horse or a kicking

cow, or a pig that will not be driven through the open gate. When

I was a boy, I once saw one of my uncles kick a hive of bees off

the stand and halfway across the yard, because the bees stung him

when he was about to "take them up." I confess to a fair share of

this petulant, unreasoning animal or human trait, whichever it

may be, myself. It is difficult for me to refrain from jumping

upon my hat when, in my pursuit of it across the street, it has

escaped me two or three times just as I was about to put my hand

upon it, and as for a balky horse or a kicking cow, I never could

trust myself to deal reasonably with them. Follow this feeling

back a few thousand years, and we reach the time when our

forbears looked upon all the forces in nature as in league

against them. The anger of the gods as shown in storms and winds

and pestilence and defeat is a phase of the same feeling. A wild

animal caught in a steel trap vents its wrath upon the bushes and

sticks and trees and rocks within its reach. Something is to

blame, something baffles it and gives it pain, and its teeth

and claws seek every near object. Of course it is a blind

manifestation of the instinct of self-defense, just as was my

uncle's act when he kicked over his beehive, or as is the

angler's impatience when his line gets tangled and his hook gets

fast. If the Colorado bear caught his fish with a hook and line,

how many times would he lose his temper during the day!

I do not think many animals show their kinship to us by

exhibiting the trait I am here discussing. Probably birds do not

show it at all. I have seen a nest-building robin baffled and

delayed, day after day, by the wind that swept away the straws

and rubbish she carried to the top of a timber under my porch.

But she did not seem to lose her temper. She did not spitefully

reclaim the straws and strings that would persist in falling to

the porch floors, but cheerfully went away in search of more. So

I have seen a wood thrush time after time carrying the same piece

of paper to a branch from which the breeze dislodged it, without

any evidence of impatience. It is true that when a string or a

horsehair which a bird is carrying to its nest gets caught in a

branch, the bird tugs at it again and again to free it from

entanglement, but I have never seen any evidence of impatience or

spite against branch or string, as would be pretty sure to be the

case did my string show such a spirit of perversity. Why your dog

bites the stone which you roll for him when he has found it, or

gnaws the stick you throw, is not quite clear, unless it be from

the instinct of his primitive ancestors to bite and kill the game

run down in the chase. Or is the dog trying to punish the stick

or stone because it will not roll or fly for him? The dog is

often quick to resent a kick, be it from man or beast, but I have

never known him to show anger at the door that slammed to and hit

him. Probably, if the door held him by his tail or his limb, it

would quickly receive the imprint of his teeth.

In reading Bostock on the "Training of Wild Animals," my

attention was arrested by the remark that his performing lions

and tigers are liable to suffer from "stage fright," like

ordinary mortals, but that "once thoroughly accustomed to the

stage, they seem to find in it a sort of intoxication well known

to a species higher in the order of nature;" and furthermore,

that "nearly all trainers assert that animals are affected by the

attitude of an audience, that they are stimulated by the applause

of an enthusiastic house, and perform indifferently before a cold

audience." If all this is not mere fancy, but is really a fact

capable of verification, it shows another human trait in animals

that one would not expect to find there. Bears seem to show more

human nature than most other animals. Bostock says that they

evidently love to show off before an audience: "The conceit and

good opinion of themselves, which some performing bears have, is

absolutely ridiculous." A trainer once trained a young bear to

climb a ladder and set free the American flag, and so proud did

the bear become of his accomplishment, that whenever any one was

looking on he would go through the whole performance by himself,

"evidently simply for the pleasure of doing it." Of course there

is room for much fancy here on the part of the spectator, but

bears are in so many ways--in their play, in their boxing, in

their walking--such grotesque parodies of man, that one is

induced to accept the trainer's statements as containing a

measure of truth.

THE DOWNY WOODPECKER

It always gives me a little pleasurable emotion when I see in the

autumn woods where the downy woodpecker has just been excavating

his winter quarters in a dead limb or tree-trunk. I am walking

along a trail or wood-road when I see something like coarse new

sawdust scattered on the ground. I know at once what carpenter

has been at work in the trees overhead, and I proceed to

scrutinize the trunks and branches. Presently I am sure to detect

a new round hole about an inch and a half in diameter on the

under side of a dead limb, or in a small tree-trunk. This is

Downy's cabin, where he expects to spend the winter nights, and a

part of the stormy days, too.

When he excavates it in an upright tree-trunk, he usually

chooses a spot beneath a limb; the limb forms a sort of rude

hood, and prevents the rainwater from running down into it. It is

a snug and pretty retreat, and a very safe one, I think. I doubt

whether the driving snow ever reaches him, and no predatory owl

could hook him out with its claw. Near town or in town the

English sparrow would probably drive him out; but in the woods, I

think, he is rarely molested, though in one instance I knew him

to be dispossessed by a flying squirrel.

On stormy days I have known Downy to return to his chamber in

mid-afternoon, and to lie abed there till ten in the morning.

I have no knowledge that any other species of our woodpeckers

excavate these winter quarters, but they probably do. The

chickadee has too slender a beak for such work, and usually

spends the winter nights in natural cavities or in the abandoned

holes of Downy.

As I am writing here in my study these November days, a downy

woodpecker is excavating a chamber in the top of a chestnut post

in the vineyard a few yards below me, or rather, he is enlarging

a chamber which he or one of his fellows excavated last fall; he

is making it ready for his winter quarters. A few days ago I saw

him enlarging the entrance and making it a more complete circle.

Now he is in the chamber itself working away like a carpenter. I

hear his muffled hammering as I approach cautiously on the grass.

I make no sound and the hammering continues till I have stood for

a moment beside the post, then it suddenly stops and Downy's head

appears at the door. He glances at me suspiciously and then

hurries away in much excitement.

How did he know there was some one so near? As birds have no

sense of smell it must have been by some other means. I return to

my study and in about fifteen minutes Downy is back at work.

Again I cautiously and silently approach, but he is now more

alert, and when I am the width of three grape rows from him he

rushes out of his den and lets off his sharp, metallic cry as he

hurries away to some trees below the hill.

He does not return to his work again that afternoon. But I feel

certain that he will pass the night there and every night all

winter unless he is disturbed. So when my son and I are passing

along the path by his post with a lantern about eight o'clock in

the evening, I pause and say, "Let's see if Downy is at home." A

slight tap on the post and we hear Downy jump out of bed, as it

were, and his head quickly fills the doorway. We pass hurriedly

on and he does not take flight.

A few days later, just at sundown, as I am walking on the

terrace above, I see Downy come sweeping swiftly down through the

air on that long galloping flight of his, and alight on the big

maple on the brink of the hill above his retreat. He sits

perfectly still for a few moments, surveying the surroundings,

and, seeing that the coast is clear, drops quickly and silently

down and disappears in the interior of his chestnut lodge. He

will do this all winter long, coming home, when the days are

stormy, by four o'clock, and not stirring out in the morning till

nine or ten o'clock. Some very cold, blustering days he will

probably not leave his retreat at all.

He has no mate or fellow lodger, though there is room in his

cabin for three birds at least. Where the female is I can only

conjecture; maybe she is occupying a discarded last year's lodge,

as I notice there are a good many new holes drilled in the trees

every fall, though many of the old ones still seem intact.

During the inclement season Downy is anything but chivalrous or

even generous. He will not even share with the female the marrow

bone or bit of suet that I fasten on the maple in front of my

window, but drives her away rudely. Sometimes the hairy

woodpecker, a much larger bird, routs Downy out and wrecks his

house. Sometimes the English sparrows mob him and dispossess him.

In the woods the flying squirrels often turn him out of doors and

furnish his chamber cavity to suit themselves.

III

I am always content if I can bring home from my walks the least

bit of live natural history, as when, the other day, I saw a

red-headed woodpecker having a tilt with a red squirrel on the

trunk of a tree.

Doubtless the woodpecker had a nest near by, and had had some

experience with this squirrel as a nest-robber. When I first saw

them, the bird was chasing the squirrel around the trunk of an

oak-tree, his bright colors of black and white and red making his

every movement conspicuous. The squirrel avoided him by darting

quickly to the other side of the tree.

Then the woodpecker took up his stand on the trunk of a tree a

few yards distant, and every time the squirrel ventured timidly

around where he could be seen the woodpecker would swoop down at

him, making another loop of bright color. The squirrel seemed to

enjoy the fun and to tempt the bird to make this ineffectual

swoop. Time and again he would poke his head round the tree and

draw the fire of his red-headed enemy. Occasionally the bird made

it pretty hot for him, and pressed him closely, but he could

escape because he had the inside ring, and was so artful a

dodger. As often as he showed himself on the woodpecker's side,

the bird would make a vicious pass at him; and there would follow

a moment of lively skurrying around the trunk of the old oak;

then all would be quiet again.

Finally the squirrel seemed to get tired of the sport, and ran

swiftly to the top and off through the branches into the

neighboring trees. As this was probably all the woodpecker was

fighting for, he did not give chase.

A BARN-DOOR OUTLOOK

I have a barn-door outlook because I have a hay-barn study, and I

chose a hay-barn study because I wanted a barn-door outlook--a

wide, near view into fields and woods and orchards where I could

be on intimate terms with the wild life about me, and with free,

open-air nature.

Usually there is nothing small or stingy about a barn door, and a

farmer's hay-barn puts only a very thin partition between you and

the outside world. Therefore, what could be a more fit place to

thresh out dry philosophical subjects than a barn floor? I have a

few such subjects to thresh out, and I thresh them here, turning

them over as many times as we used to turn over the oat and rye

sheaves in the old days when I wielded the hickory flail with my

brothers on this same barn floor.

What a pleasure it is to look back to those autumn days,

generally in September or early October, when we used to thresh

out a few bushels of the new crop of rye to be taken to the

grist-mill for a fresh supply of flour! How often we paused in

our work to munch apples that had been mellowing in the haymow by

our side, and look out through the big doorway upon the sunlit

meadows and hill-slopes! The sound of the flail is heard in the

old barn no more, but in its stead the scratching of a pen and

the uneasy stirring of a man seated there behind a big box,

threshing out a harvest for a loaf of much less general value.

As I sit here day after day, bending over my work, I get many

glimpses of the little rills of wild life that circulate about

me. The feature of it that impresses me most is the life of fear

that most of the wild creatures lead. They are as alert and

cautious as are the picket-lines of opposing armies. Just over

the line of stone wall in the orchard a woodchuck comes

hesitatingly out of his hole and goes nibbling in the grass not

fifty feet away. How alert and watchful he is! Every few moments

he sits upright and takes an observation, then resumes his

feeding. When I make a slight noise he rushes to the cover of the

stone wall. Then, as no danger appears, he climbs to the top of

it and looks in my direction. As I move as if to get up, he drops

back quietly to his hole.

A chipmunk comes along on the stone wall, hurrying somewhere on

an important errand, but changing his course every moment. He

runs on the top of the wall, then along its side, then into it

and through it and out on the other side, pausing every few

seconds and looking and listening, careful not to expose himself

long in any one position, really skulking and hiding all along

his journey. His enemies are keen and watchful and likely to

appear at any moment, and he knows it, not so much by experience

as by instinct. His young are timid and watchful the first time

they emerge from the den into the light of day.

Then a red squirrel comes spinning along. By jerks and nervous,

spasmodic spurts he rushes along from cover to cover like a

soldier dodging the enemy's bullets. When he discovers me, he

pauses, and with one paw on his heart appears to press a button,

that lets off a flood of snickering, explosive sounds that seem

like ridicule of me and my work. Failing to get any response from

me, he presently turns, and, springing from the wall to the

bending branch of a near apple-tree, he rushes up and disappears

amid the foliage. Presently I see him on the end of a branch,

where he seizes a green apple not yet a third grown, and, darting

down to a large horizontal branch, sits up with the apple in his

paws and proceeds to chip it up for the pale, unripe seeds at its

core, all the time keenly alive to possible dangers that may

surround him. What a nervous, hustling, highstrung creature he

is--a live wire at all times and places! That pert curl of the

end of his tail, as he sits chipping the apple or cutting through

the shell of a nut, is expressive of his character. What a

contrast his nervous and explosive activity presents to the more

sedate and dignified life of the gray squirrel! One of these

passed us only a few yards away on our walk in the woods the

other day--a long, undulating line of soft gray, silent as a

spirit and graceful as a wave on the beach.

A little later, in the fine, slow-falling rain, a rabbit suddenly

emerges into my field of vision fifty feet away. How timid and

scared she looks! She pauses a moment amid the weeds, then hops

a yard or two and pauses again, then passes under the bars

and hesitates on the edge of a more open and exposed place

immediately in front of me. Here she works her nose, feeling of

every current of air, analyzing every scent to see if danger is

near. Apparently detecting something suspicious in the currents

that drift from my direction, she turns back, pauses again, works

her nose as before, then hurries out of my sight.

Yesterday I saw a rat stealing green peas from my garden in the

open day. He darted out of the stone wall six or eight feet away

to the row of peas, rushed about nervously among the vines; then,

before I could seize my rifle, darted back to the cover of the

wall. Once I cautiously approached his hiding-place in the wall

and waited. Presently his head emerged from the line of weeds by

the fence, his nose began working anxiously, he sifted and

resifted the air with it, and then quickly withdrew; his nose had

detected me, but his eye had not. The touchstone of most animals

is the nose, and not the eye. The eye quickly detects objects in

motion, but not those at rest; this is the function of the nose.

A highhole alights on the ground in full view in the orchard

twenty yards away, and, spying my motionless figure, pauses and

regards me long and intently. His eye serves him, and not his

nose. Finally concluding that I am not dangerous, he stoops to

the turf for his beloved ants and other insects, but lifts his

head every few seconds to see that no danger is imminent. Not one

moment is he off his guard. A hawk may suddenly swoop from the

air above, or a four-footed foe approach from any side. I have

seen a sharp-shinned hawk pick up a highhole from the turf in a

twinkling under just such conditions. What a contrast between the

anxious behavior of these wild creatures and the ease and

indifference of the grazing cattle!

All the wild creatures evidently regard me with mingled feelings

of curiosity and distrust. A song sparrow hops and flirts and

attitudinizes and peers at me from the door-sill, wondering if

there is any harm in me. A ph[oe]be-bird comes in and flits

about, disturbed by my presence. For the third or fourth time

this season, I think, she is planning a nest. In June she began

one over a window on the porch where I sleep in the open air. She

had the foundation laid when I appeared, and was not a little

disturbed by my presence, especially in the early morning, when I

wanted to sleep and she wanted to work. She let fall some of her

mortar upon me, but at least I had no fear of a falling brick.

She gradually got used to me, and her work was progressing into

the moss stage when two women appeared and made their beds upon

the porch, and in the morning went to and fro with brooms, of

course. Then Ph[oe]be seemed to say to herself, "This is too

much," and she left her unfinished nest and resorted to the empty

hay-barn. Here she built a nest on one of the bark-covered end

timbers halfway up the big mow, not being quite as used to barns

and the exigencies of haying-times as swallows are, who build

their mud nests against the rafters in the peak. She had

deposited her eggs, when the haymakers began pitching hay into

the space beneath her; sweating, hurrying haymakers do not see or

regard the rights or wants of little birds. Like a rising tide

the fragrant hay rose and covered the timber and the nest, and

crept on up toward the swallow's unfledged family in the peak,

but did not quite reach it.

Ph[oe]be and her mate hung about the barn disconsolate for days,

and now, ten days later, she is hovering about my open door on

the floor below, evidently prospecting for another building-site.

I hope she will find me so quiet and my air so friendly that she

will choose a niche on the hewn timber over my head. Just this

moment I saw her snap up a flying "miller" in the orchard a few

rods away. She was compelled to swoop four times before she

intercepted that little moth in its unsteady, zigzagging flight.

She is an expert at this sort of thing; it is her business to

take her game on the wing; but the moths are experts in zigzag

flying, and Ph[oe]be missed her mark three times. I heard the

snap of her beak at each swoop. It is almost impossible for any

insectivorous bird except a flycatcher to take a moth or a

butterfly on the wing.

Last year in August the junco, or common snowbird, came into the

big barn and built her nest in the side of the haymow, only a few

feet from me. The clean, fragrant hay attracted her as it had

attracted me. One would have thought that in a haymow she had

nesting material near at hand. But no; her nest-building

instincts had to take the old rut; she must bring her own

material from without; the haymow was only the mossy bank or the

wood-side turf where her species had hidden their nests for

untold generations. She did not weave one spear of the farmer's

hay into her nest, but brought in the usual bits of dry grass and

weeds and horsehair and shaped the fabric after the old pattern,

tucking it well in under the drooping locks of hay. As I sat

morning after morning weaving my thoughts together and looking

out of the great barn doorway into sunlit fields, the junco wove

her straws and horsehairs, and deposited there on three

successive days her three exquisite eggs.

Why the bird departed so widely from the usual habits of

nest-building of her species, who can tell? I had never before

seen a junco's nest except on the ground in remote fields, or in

mossy banks by the side of mountain roads. This nest is the

finest to be found upon the ground, its usual lining of horsehair

makes its interior especially smooth and shapely, and the nest in

the haymow showed only a little falling-off, as is usually the

case in the second nest of the season. The songs of the birds,

the construction of their nests, and the number of their eggs

taper off as the season wanes.

The junco impresses me as a fidgety, emphatic, feather-edged sort

of bird; the two white quills in its tail which flash out so

suddenly on every movement seem to stamp in this impression. My

junco was a little nervous at first and showed her white quills,

but she soon grew used to my presence, and would alight upon the

chair which I kept for callers, and upon my hammock-ropes.

When an artist came to paint my portrait amid such rustic

surroundings, the bird only eyed her a little suspiciously at

first, and then went forward with her own affairs. One night the

wind blew the easel with its canvas over against the haymow where

the nest was placed, but the bird was there on her eggs in the

morning. Her wild instincts did not desert her in one respect, at

least: when I would flush her from the nest she would drop down

to the floor and with spread plumage and fluttering movements

seek for a moment to decoy me away from the nest, after the habit

of most ground-builders. The male came about the barn frequently

with three or four other juncos, which I suspect were the first or

June brood of the pair, now able to take care of themselves, but

still held together by the family instinct, as often happens in

the case of some other birds, such as bluebirds and chickadees.

My little mascot hatched all her eggs, and all went well with

mother and young until, during my absence of three or four days,

some night-prowler, probably a rat, plundered the nest, and the

little summer idyl in the heart of the old barn abruptly ended. I

saw the juncos no more.

While I was so closely associated with the junco in the old barn

I had a good chance to observe her incubating habits. I was

surprised at the frequent and long recesses that she took during

school-hours. Every hour during the warmest days she was off from

ten to twelve minutes, either to take the air or to take a bite,

or to let up on the temperature of her eggs, or to have a word

with her other family; I am at a loss to know which. Toward the

end of her term, which was twelve days, and as the days grew

cooler, she was not gadding out and in so often, but kept her

place three or four hours at a time.

When the young were hatched they seemed mainly fed with

insects--spiders or flies gathered off the timbers and clapboards

of the inside of the barn. It was a pretty sight to see the

mother-bird making the rounds of the barn, running along the

timbers, jumping up here and there, and seizing some invisible

object, showing the while her white petticoats--as a French girl

called that display of white tail-feathers.

Day after day and week after week as I look through the big,

open barn door I see a marsh hawk beating about low over the

fields. He, or rather she (for I see by the greater size and

browner color that it is the female), moves very slowly and

deliberately on level, flexible wing, now over the meadow, now

over the oat or millet field, then above the pasture and the

swamp, tacking and turning, her eye bent upon the ground, and no

doubt sending fear or panic through the heart of many a nibbling

mouse or sitting bird. She occasionally hesitates or stops in her

flight and drops upon the ground, as if seeking insects or frogs

or snakes. I have never yet seen her swoop or strike after the

manner of other hawks. It is a pleasure to watch her through the

glass and see her make these circuits of the fields on effortless

wing, day after day, and strike no bird or other living thing, as

if in quest of something she never finds. I never see the male.

She has perhaps assigned him other territory to hunt over. He is

smaller, with more blue in his plumage. One day she had a scrap

or a game of some kind with three or four crows on the side of a

rocky hill. I think the crows teased and annoyed her. I heard

their cawing and saw them pursuing the hawk, and then saw her

swoop upon them or turn over in the air beneath them, as if to

show them what feats she could do on the wing that were beyond

their powers. The crows often made a peculiar guttural cawing and

cackling as if they enjoyed the sport, but they were clumsy and

awkward enough on the wing compared to the hawk. Time after time

she came down upon them from a point high in the air, like a

thunderbolt, but never seemed to touch them. Twice I saw her

swoop upon them as they sat upon the ground, and the crows called

out in half sportive, half protesting tones, as if saying, "That

was a little too close; beware, beware!" It was like a skillful

swordsman flourishing his weapon about the head of a peasant; but

not a feather was touched so far as I could see. It is the only

time I ever saw this hawk in a sportive or aggressive mood. I

have seen jays tease the sharp-shinned hawk in this way, and

escape his retaliating blows by darting into a cedar-tree. All

the crow tribe, I think, love to badger and mock some of their

neighbors.