Koskomenos the kingfisher is a kind of outcast among the birds. I think
they regard him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed high enough
in the bird scale to deserve recognition; so they let him severely
alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before taking a swoop at him, not
knowing quite whether the gaudy creature is dangerous or only uncanny.
I saw a great hawk once drop like a bolt upon a kingfisher that hung on
quivering wings, rattling softly, before his hole in the bank. But the
robber lost his nerve at the instant when he should have dropped his
claws to strike. He swerved aside and shot upward in a great slant to a
dead spruce top, where he stood watching intently till the dark beak of
a brooding kingfisher reached out of the hole to receive the fish
that her mate had brought her. Whereupon Koskomenos swept away to his
watchtower above the minnow pool, and the hawk set his wings toward
the outlet, where a brood of young sheldrakes were taking their first
lessons in the open water.
No wonder the birds look askance at Kingfisher. His head is ridiculously
large; his feet ridiculously small. He is a poem of grace in the air;
but he creeps like a lizard, or waddles so that a duck would be ashamed
of him, in the rare moments when he is afoot. His mouth is big enough
to take in a minnow whole; his tongue so small that he has no voice, but
only a harsh klr-rr-r-ik-ik-ik, like a watchman's rattle. He builds no
nest, but rather a den in the bank, in which he lives most filthily
half the day; yet the other half he is a clean, beautiful creature, with
never a suggestion of earth, but only of the blue heavens above and the
color-steeped water below, in his bright garments. Water will not wet
him, though he plunge a dozen times out of sight beneath the surface.
His clatter is harsh, noisy, diabolical; yet his plunge into the stream,
with its flash of color, its silver spray, and its tinkle of smitten
water, is the most musical thing in the wilderness.
As a fisherman he has no equal. His fishy, expressionless eye is yet the
keenest that sweeps the water, and his swoop puts even the fish-hawk to
shame for its certainty and its lightning quickness.
Besides all these contradictions, he is solitary, unknown,
inapproachable. He has no youth, no play, no joy except to eat; he
associates with nobody, not even with his own kind; and when he catches
a fish, and beats its head against a limb till it is dead, and sits with
head back-tilted, swallowing his prey, with a clattering chuckle
deep down in his throat, he affects you as a parrot does that swears
diabolically under his breath as he scratches his head, and that you
would gladly shy a stone at, if the owner's back were turned for a
sufficient moment.
It is this unknown, this uncanny mixture of bird and reptile that has
made the kingfisher an object of superstition among all savage peoples.
The legends about him are legion; his crested head is prized by savages
above all others as a charm or fetish; and even among civilized peoples
his dried body may still sometimes be seen hanging to a pole, in the
hope that his bill will point out the quarter from which the next wind
will blow.
But Koskomenos has another side, though the world as yet has found
out little about it. One day in the wilderness I cheered him quite
involuntarily. It was late afternoon; the fishing was over, and I sat
in my canoe watching by a grassy point to see what would happen next.
Across the stream was a clay bank, near the top of which a hole as
wide as a tea-cup showed where a pair of kingfishers had dug their long
tunnel. "There is nothing for them to stand on there; how did they begin
that hole?" I wondered lazily; "and how can they ever raise a brood,
with an open door like that for mink and weasel to enter?" Here were two
new problems to add to the many unsolved ones which meet you at every
turn on the woodland byways.
A movement under the shore stopped my wondering, and the long lithe form
of a hunting mink shot swiftly up stream. Under the hole he stopped,
raised himself with his fore paws against the bank, twisting his head
from side to side and sniffing nervously. "Something good up there," he
thought, and began to climb. But the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped
back half a dozen times without rising two feet. Then he went down
stream to a point where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly
up till under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the
clay bank. There he crept cautiously along till his nose found the nest,
and slipped down till his fore paws rested on the threshold. A long
hungry sniff of the rank fishy odor that pours out of a kingfisher's
den, a keen look all around to be sure the old birds were not returning,
and he vanished like a shadow.
"There is one brood of kingfishers the less," I thought, with my glasses
focused on the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed, when a fierce
rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot out, a streak of
red showing plainly across his brown face. After him came a kingfisher
clattering out a storm of invective and aiding his progress by vicious
jabs at his rear. He had made a miscalculation that time; the old mother
bird was at home waiting for him, and drove her powerful beak at his
evil eye the moment it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That
took the longing for young kingfisher all out of Cheokhes. He plunged
headlong down the bank, the bird swooping after him with a rattling
alarm that brought another kingfisher in a twinkling. The mink dived,
but it was useless to attempt escape in that way; the keen eyes above
followed his flight perfectly. When he came to the surface, twenty feet
away, both birds were over him and dropped like plummets on his head. So
they drove him down stream and out of sight.
Years afterward I solved the second problem suggested by the
kingfisher's den, when I had the good fortune, one day, to watch a pair
beginning their tunneling. All who have ever watched the bird have, no
doubt, noticed his wonderful ability to stop short in swift flight and
hold himself poised in midair for an indefinite time, while watching
the movements of a minnow beneath. They make use of this ability in
beginning their nest on a bank so steep as to afford no foothold.
As I watched the pair referred to, first one then the other would hover
before the point selected, as a hummingbird balances for a moment at the
door of a trumpet flower to be sure that no one is watching ere he goes
in, then drive his beak with rapid plunges into the bank, sending down a
continuous shower of clay to the river below. When tired he rested on a
watch-stub, while his mate made a battering-ram of herself and kept up
the work. In a remarkably short time they had a foothold and proceeded
to dig themselves in out of sight.
Kingfisher's tunnel is so narrow that he cannot turn around in it. His
straight, strong bill loosens the earth; his tiny feet throw it
out behind. I would see a shower of dirt, and perchance the tail of
Koskomenos for a brief instant, then a period of waiting, and another
shower. This kept up till the tunnel was bored perhaps two feet, when
they undoubtedly made a sharp turn, as is their custom. After that they
brought most of the earth out in their beaks. While one worked, the
other watched or fished at the minnow pool, so that there was steady
progress as long as I observed them.
For years I had regarded Koskomenos, as the birds and the rest of the
world regard him, as a noisy, half-diabolical creature, between bird and
lizard, whom one must pass by with suspicion. But that affair with the
mink changed my feelings a bit. Koskomenos' mate might lay her eggs like
a reptile, but she could defend them like any bird hero. So I took to
watching more carefully; which is the only way to get acquainted.
The first thing I noticed about the birds--an observation confirmed
later on many waters--was that each pair of kingfishers have their own
particular pools, over which they exercise unquestioned lordship. There
may be a dozen pairs of birds on a single stream; but, so far as I have
been able to observe, each family has a certain stretch of water on
which no other kingfishers are allowed to fish. They may pass up and
down freely, but they never stop at the minnow pools; they are caught
watching near them, they are promptly driven out by the rightful owners.
The same thing is true on the lake shores. Whether there is some secret
understanding and partition among them, or whether (which is more
likely) their right consists in discovery or first arrival, there is no
means of knowing.
A curious thing, in this connection, is that while a kingfisher will
allow none of his kind to poach on his preserves, he lives at peace with
the brood of sheldrakes that occupy the same stretch of river. And the
sheldrake eats a dozen fish to his one. The same thing is noticeable
among the sheldrakes also, namely, that each pair, or rather each mother
and her brood, have their own piece of lake or river on which no others
are allowed to fish. The male sheldrakes meanwhile are far away, fishing
on their own waters.
I had not half settled this matter of the division of trout streams when
another observation came, which was utterly unexpected. Koskomenos, half
reptile though he seem, not only recognizes riparian rights, but he is
also capable of friendship--and that, too, for a moody prowler of the
wilderness whom no one else cares anything about. Here is the proof.
I was out in my canoe alone looking for a loon's nest, one midsummer
day, when the fresh trail of a bull caribou drew me to shore. The trail
led straight from the water to a broad alder belt, beyond which, on the
hillside, I might find the big brute loafing his time away till evening
should come, and watch him to see what he would do with himself.
As I turned shoreward a kingfisher sounded his rattle and came darting
across the mouth of the bay where Hukweem the loon had hidden her two
eggs. I watched him, admiring the rippling sweep of his flight, like the
run of a cat's-paw breeze across a sleeping lake, and the clear blue
of his crest against the deeper blue of summer sky. Under him his
reflection rippled along, like the rush of a gorgeous fish through the
glassy water. Opposite my canoe he checked himself, poised an instant in
mid-air, watching the minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped
bill first--plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden
bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by this
sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for a brief
instant; the ripples gathered and began to dance over the spot where
Koskomenos had gone down, when they were scattered rudely again as he
burst out among them with his fish. He swept back to the stub whence he
had come, chuckling on the way. There he whacked his fish soundly on
the wood, threw his head back, and through the glass I saw the tail of a
minnow wriggling slowly down the road that has for him no turning. Then
I took up the caribou trail.
I had gone nearly through the alders, following the course of a little
brook and stealing along without a sound, when behind me I heard the
kingfisher coming above the alders, rattling as if possessed, klrrr,
klrrr, klrrr-ik-ik-ik! On the instant there was a heavy plunge and
splash just ahead, and the swift rush of some large animal up the
hillside. Over me poised the kingfisher, looking down first at me, then
ahead at the unknown beast, till the crashing ceased in a faint rustle
far away, when he swept back to his fishing-stub, clacking and chuckling
immoderately.
I pushed cautiously ahead and came presently to a beautiful pool below
a rock, where the hillside shelved gently towards the alders. From the
numerous tracks and the look of the place, I knew instantly that I had
stumbled upon a bear's bathing pool. The water was still troubled and
muddy; huge tracks, all soppy and broken, led up the hillside in big
jumps; the moss was torn, the underbrush spattered with shining water
drops. "No room for doubt here," I thought; "Mooween was asleep in
this pool, and the kingfisher woke him up--but why? and did he do it on
purpose?"
I remembered suddenly a record in an old notebook, which reads:
"Sugarloaf Lake, 26 July.--Tried to stalk a bear this noon. No luck.
He was nosing alongshore and I had a perfect chance; but a kingfisher
scared him." I began to wonder how the rattle of a kingfisher, which is
one of the commonest sounds on wilderness waters, could scare a bear,
who knows all the sounds of the wilderness perfectly. Perhaps Koskomenos
has an alarm note and uses it for a friend in time of need, as gulls
go out of their way to alarm a flock of sleeping ducks when danger is
approaching.
Here was a new trait, a touch of the human in this unknown, clattering
suspect of the fishing streams. I resolved to watch him with keener
interest.
Somewhere above me, deep in the tangle of the summer wilderness, Mooween
stood watching his back track, eyes, ears, and nose alert to discover
what the creature was who dared frighten him out of his noonday bath.
It would be senseless to attempt to surprise him now; besides, I had
no weapon of any kind.--"To-morrow, about this time, I shall be coming
back; then look out, Mooween," I thought as I marked the place and stole
away to my canoe.
But the next day when I came to the place, creeping along the upper edge
of the alders so as to make no noise, the pool was clear and quiet, as
if nothing but the little trout that hid under the foam bubbles had ever
disturbed its peace. Koskomenos was clattering about the bay below as
usual. Spite of my precaution he had seen me enter the alders; but he
gave me no attention whatever. He went on with his fishing as if he knew
perfectly that the bear had deserted his bathing pool.
It was nearly a month before I again camped on the beautiful lake.
Summer was gone. All her warmth and more than her fragrant beauty still
lingered on forest and river; but the drowsiness had gone from the
atmosphere, and the haze had crept into it. Here and there birches and
maples flung out their gorgeous banners of autumn over the silent water.
A tingle came into the evening air; the lake's breath lay heavy and
white in the twilight stillness; birds and beasts became suddenly
changed as they entered the brief period of sport and of full feeding.
I was drifting about a reedy bay (the same bay in which the almost
forgotten kingfisher had cheated me out of my bear, after eating a
minnow that my paddle had routed out for him) shooting frogs for my
table with a pocket rifle. How different it was here, I reflected, from
the woods about home. There the game was already harried; the report of
a gun set every living creature skulking. Here the crack of my little
rifle was no more heeded than the plunge of a fish-hawk, or the groaning
of a burdened elm bough. A score of fat woodcock lay unheeding in that
bit of alder tangle yonder, the ground bored like a colander after their
night's feeding. Up on the burned hillside the partridges said, quit,
quit! when I appeared, and jumped to a tree and craned their necks
to see what I was. The black ducks skulked in the reeds. They were
full-grown now and strong of wing, but the early hiding habit was not
yet broken up by shooting. They would glide through the sedges, and
double the bogs, and crouch in a tangle till the canoe was almost upon
them, when with a rush and a frightened hark-ark! they shot into the air
and away to the river. The mink, changing from brown to black, gave up
his nest-robbing for honest hunting, undismayed by trap or deadfall;
and up in the inlet I could see grassy domes rising above the bronze and
gold of the marsh, where Musquash was building thick and high for winter
cold and spring floods. Truly it was good to be here, and to enter for a
brief hour into the shy, wild but unharried life of the wood folk.
A big bullfrog showed his head among the lily pads, and the little
rifle, unmindful of the joys of an unharried existence, rose slowly to
its place. My eye was glancing along the sights when a sudden movement
in the alders on the shore, above and beyond the unconscious head of
Chigwooltz the frog, spared him for a little season to his lily pads and
his minnow hunting. At the same moment a kingfisher went rattling by
to his old perch over the minnow pool. The alders swayed again as
if struck; a huge bear lumbered out of them to the shore, with a
disgruntled woof! at some twig that had switched his ear too sharply.
I slid lower in the canoe till only my head and shoulders were visible.
Mooween went nosing along-shore till something--a dead fish or a mussel
bed--touched his appetite, when he stopped and began feeding, scarcely
two hundred yards away. I reached first for my heavy rifle, then for
the paddle, and cautiously "fanned" the canoe towards shore till an
old stump on the point covered my approach. Then the little bark jumped
forward as if alive. But I had scarcely started when--klrrrr! klrrr!
ik-ik--ik! Over my head swept Koskomenos with a rush of wings and an
alarm cry that spoke only of haste and danger. I had a glimpse of
the bear as he shot into the alders, as if thrown by a catapult; the
kingfisher wheeled in a great rattling circle about the canoe before
he pitched upon the old stump, jerking his tail and clattering in great
excitement.
I swung noiselessly out into the lake, where I could watch the alders.
They were all still for a space of ten minutes; but Mooween was there, I
knew, sniffing and listening. Then a great snake seemed to be wriggling
through the bushes, making no sound, but showing a wavy line of
quivering tops as he went.
Down the shore a little way was a higher point, with a fallen tree that
commanded a view of half the lake. I had stood there a few days before,
while watching to determine the air paths and lines of flight that
sheldrakes use in passing up and down the lake,--for birds have runways,
or rather flyways, just as foxes do. Mooween evidently knew the spot;
the alders showed that he was heading straight for it, to look out on
the lake and see what the alarm was about. As yet he had no idea what
peril had threatened him; though, like all wild creatures, he had obeyed
the first clang of a danger note on the instant. Not a creature in the
woods, from Mooween down to Tookhees the wood mouse, but has learned
from experience that, in matters of this kind, it is well to jump to
cover first and investigate afterwards.
I paddled swiftly to the point, landed and crept to a rock from which I
could just see the fallen tree. Mooween was coming. "My bear this time,"
I thought, as a twig snapped faintly. Then Koskomenos swept into the
woods, hovering over the brush near the butt of the old tree, looking
down and rattling--klrrrik, clear out! klrrr-ik, clear out! There was a
heavy rush, such as a bear always makes when alarmed; Koskomenos swept
back to his perch; and I sought the shore, half inclined to make my next
hunting more even-chanced by disposing of one meddlesome factor. "You
wretched, noisy, clattering meddler!" I muttered, the front sight of my
rifle resting fair on the blue back of Koskomenos, "that is the third
time you have spoiled my shot, and you won't have another chance.--But
wait; who is the meddler here?"
Slowly the bent finger relaxed on the trigger. A loon went floating by
the point, all unconscious of danger, with a rippling wake that sent
silver reflections glinting across the lake's deep blue. Far overhead
soared an eagle, breeze-borne in wide circles, looking down on his
own wide domain, unheeding the man's intrusion. Nearer, a red squirrel
barked down his resentment from a giant spruce trunk. Down on my left
a heavy splash and a wild, free tumult of quacking told where the black
ducks were coming in, as they had done, undisturbed, for generations.
Behind me a long roll echoed through the woods--some young cock
partridge, whom the warm sun had beguiled into drumming his spring
love-call. From the mountain side a cow moose rolled back a startling
answer. Close at hand, yet seeming miles away, a chipmunk was chunking
sleepily in the sunshine, while a nest of young wood mice were calling
their mother in the grass at my feet. And every wild sound did but
deepen the vast, wondrous silence of the wilderness.
"After all, what place has the roar of a rifle or the smell of
sulphurous powder in the midst of all this blessed peace?" I asked half
sadly. As if in answer, the kingfisher dropped with his musical plash,
and swept back with exultant rattle to his watchtower.--"Go on with your
clatter and your fishing. The wilderness and the solitary place shall
still be glad, for you and Mooween, and the trout pools would be lonely
without you. But I wish you knew that your life lay a moment ago in the
bend of my finger, and that some one, besides the bear, appreciates your
brave warning."
Then I went back to the point to measure the tracks, and to estimate how
big the bear was, and to console myself with the thought of how I would
certainly have had him, if something had not interfered--which is the
philosophy of all hunters since Esau.
It was a few days later that the chance came of repaying Koskomenos with
coals of fire. The lake surface was still warm; no storms nor frosts had
cooled it. The big trout had risen from the deep places, but were not
yet quickened enough to take my flies; so, trout hungry, I had gone
trolling for them with a minnow. I had taken two good fish, and was
moving slowly by the mouth of the bay, Simmo at the paddle, when a
suspicious movement on the shore attracted my attention. I passed the
line to Simmo, the better to use my glasses, and was scanning the alders
sharply, when a cry of wonder came from the Indian. "O bah cosh, see!
das second time I catchum, Koskomenos." And there, twenty feet above
the lake, a young kingfisher--one of Koskomenos' frowzy-headed,
wild-eyed-youngsters--was whirling wildly at the end of my line. He had
seen the minnow trailing a hundred feet astern and, with more hunger
than discretion, had swooped for it promptly. Simmo, feeling the tug but
seeing nothing behind him, had struck promptly, and the hook went home.
I seized the line and began to pull in gently. The young kingfisher came
most unwillingly, with a continuous clatter of protest that speedily
brought Koskomenos and his mate, and two or three of the captive's
brethren, in a wild, clamoring about the canoe. They showed no lack of
courage, but swooped again and again at the line, and even at the
man who held it. In a moment I had the youngster in my hand, and had
disengaged the hook. He was not hurt at all, but terribly frightened; so
I held him a little while, enjoying the excitement of the others, whom
the captive's alarm rattle kept circling wildly about the canoe. It was
noteworthy that not another bird heeded the cry or came near. Even in
distress they refused to recognize the outcast. Then, as Koskomenos
hovered on quivering wings just over my head, I tossed the captive close
up beside him. "There, Koskomenos, take your young chuckle-head, and
teach him better wisdom. Next time you see me stalking a bear, please go
on with your fishing."
But there was no note of gratitude in the noisy babel that swept up the
bay after the kingfishers. When I saw them again, they were sitting on
a dead branch, five of them in a row, chuckling and clattering all at
once, unmindful of the minnows that played beneath them. I have no doubt
that, in their own way, they were telling each other all about it.