seized his victim and is back to his perch. There is no strife, no
pursuit,--one fell swoop and the matter is ended. That little sparrow,
as you will observe, is less skilled. It is the _Socialis_, and he
finds his subsistence properly in various seeds and the larvæ of
insects, though he occasionally has higher aspirations, and seeks to
emulate the pewee, commencing and ending his career as a fly-catcher
by an awkward chase after a beetle or "miller." He is hunting around
in the grass now, I suspect, with the desire to indulge this favorite
whim. There!--the opportunity is afforded him. Away goes a little
cream-colored meadow-moth in the most tortuous course he is capable
of, and away goes _Socialis_ in pursuit. The contest is quite comical,
though I dare say it is serious enough to the moth. The chase
continues for a few yards, when there is a sudden rushing to cover in
the grass,--then a taking to wing again, when the search has become
too close, and the moth has recovered his wind. _Socialis_ chirps
angrily, and is determined not to be beaten. Keeping, with the
slightest effort, upon the heels of the fugitive, he is ever on the
point of halting to snap him up, but never quite does it,--and so,
between disappointment and expectation, is soon disgusted, and returns
to pursue his more legitimate means of subsistence.
In striking contrast to this serio-comic strife of the sparrow and the
moth, is the pigeon-hawk's pursuit of the sparrow or the goldfinch. It
is a race of surprising speed and agility. It is a test of wing and
wind. Every muscle is taxed, and every nerve strained. Such cries of
terror and consternation on the part of the bird, tacking to the right
and left, and making the most desperate efforts to escape, and such
silent determination on the part of the hawk, pressing the bird so
closely, flashing and turning and timing his movements with those of
the pursued as accurately and as inexorably as if the two constituted
one body, excite feelings of the deepest concern. You mount the fence
or rush out of your way to see the issue. The only salvation for the
bird is to adopt the tactics of the moth, seeking instantly the cover
of some tree, bush, or hedge, where its smaller size enables it to
move about more rapidly. These pirates are aware of this, and
therefore prefer to take their prey by one fell swoop. You may see one
of them prowling through an orchard, with the yellow-birds hovering
about him, crying, _Pi-ty, pi-ty_, in the most desponding tone; yet he
seems not to regard them, knowing, as do they, that in the close
branches they are as safe as if in a wall of adamant.
August is the month of the high sailing hawks. The hen-hawk is the
most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days.
He is a bird of leisure, and seems always at his ease. How beautiful
and majestic are his movements! So self-poised and easy, such an
entire absence of haste, such a magnificent amplitude of circles and
spirals, such a haughty, imperial grace, and, occasionally, such
daring aërial evolutions!
With slow, leisurely movement, rarely vibrating his pinions, he mounts
and mounts in an ascending spiral till he appears a mere speck against
the summer sky; then, if the mood seizes him, with wings half-closed,
like a bent bow, he will cleave the air almost perpendicularly, as if
intent on dashing himself to pieces against the earth; but on nearing
the ground, he suddenly mounts again on broad, expanded wing, as if
rebounding upon the air, and sails leisurely away. It is the sublimest
feat of the season. One holds his breath till he sees him rise again.
If inclined to a more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes
his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither
bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and
boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; if
near, you hear the rush of his wings; his shadow hurtles across the
fields, and in an instant you see him quietly perched upon some low
tree or decayed stub in a swamp or meadow, with reminiscences of frogs
and mice stirring in his maw.
When the south wind blows, it is a study to see three or four of these
air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain,
balancing and oscillating upon the strong current: now quite
stationary, except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a
rope-dancer, then rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming
to resign themselves passively to the wind; or, again, sailing high
and level far above the mountain's peak, no bluster and haste, but, as
stated, occasionally a terrible earnestness and speed. Fire at one as
he sails overhead, and, unless wounded badly he will not change his
course or gait.
His flight is a perfect picture of repose in motion. It strikes the
eye as more surprising than the flight of the pigeon and swallow even,
in that the effort put forth is so uniform and delicate as to escape
observation, giving to the movement an air of buoyancy and perpetuity,
the effluence of power rather than the conscious application of it.
The calmness and dignity of this hawk, when attacked by crows or the
king-bird, are well worthy of him. He seldom deigns to notice his
noisy and furious antagonists, but deliberately wheels about in that
aërial spiral, and mounts and mounts till his pursuers grow dizzy and
return to earth again. It is quite original, this mode of getting rid
of an unworthy opponent, rising to heights where the braggart is
dazed and bewildered and loses his reckoning! I am not sure but it is
worthy of imitation.
But summer wanes, and autumn approaches. The songsters of the
seed-time are silent at the reaping of the harvest. Other minstrels
take up the strain. It is the heyday of insect life. The day is
canopied with musical sound. All the songs of the spring and summer
appear to be floating, softened and refined, in the upper air. The
birds in a new, but less holiday suit, turn their faces southward. The
swallows flock and go; the bobolinks flock and go; silently and
unobserved, the thrushes go. Autumn arrives, bringing finches,
warblers, sparrows and kinglets from the North. Silently the
procession passes. Yonder hawk, sailing peacefully away till he is
lost in the horizon, is a symbol of the closing season and the
departing birds.
[Illustration: Yellow-billed Cuckoo.]
[Illustration: Cat-bird.]
IN THE HEMLOCKS.
Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of
birds that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half
the number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We
little suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are
intruding upon,--what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from
Central and South America, and from the islands of the sea, are
holding their reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing
their pleasure on the ground before us.
I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau
dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which
Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when
Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They
did not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had
sons and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was a sound as
of suppressed hilarity.
I take it for granted that the forester was only saying a pretty thing
of the birds, though I have observed that it does sometimes annoy them
when Spaulding's cart rumbles through their house. Generally, however,
they are as unconscious of Spaulding as Spaulding is of them.
Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty
varieties of these summer visitants, many of them common to other
woods in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient
solitudes, and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite
unusual to find so large a number abiding in one forest,--and that not
a large one,--most of them nesting and spending the summer there. Many
of those I observed commonly pass this season much farther north. But
the geographical distribution of birds is rather a climatical one. The
same temperature, though under different parallels, usually attracts
the same birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to the
difference in latitude. A given height above the sea level under the
parallel of thirty degrees may have the same climate as places under
that of thirty-five degrees, and similar Flora and Fauna. At the
head-waters of the Delaware, where I write, the latitude is that of
Boston, but the region has a much greater elevation, and hence a
climate that compares better with the northern part of the State and
of New England. Half a day's drive to the southeast brings me down
into quite a different temperature, with an older geological
formation, different forest-timber, and different birds;--even with
different mammals. Neither the little gray rabbit nor the little gray
fox is found in my locality, but the great northern hare and the red
fox. In the last century a colony of beavers dwelt here, though the
oldest inhabitant cannot now point to even the traditional site of
their dams. The ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the
reader, are rich in many things beside birds. Indeed, their wealth in
this respect is owing mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable
growths, their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered retreats.
Their history is of an heroic cast. Ravished and torn by the tanner in
his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and
beaten back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken,
their energies never paralyzed. Not many years ago a public highway
passed through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees
fell across it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travelers
took the hint and went around; and now, walking along its deserted
course, I see only the foot-prints of coons, foxes, and squirrels.
Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them. Here she
shows me what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil
is marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant
aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom and am awed by
the deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently about
me.
No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these solitudes. The cows
have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing
is to be had. In spring the farmer repairs to their bordering of
maples to make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the
country about penetrate the old Bark-peelings for raspberries and
blackberries; and I know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid
stream casting for trout.
In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright June morning go I
also to reap my harvest,--pursuing a sweet more delectable than sugar,
fruit more savory than berries, and game for another palate than that
tickled by trout.
June, of all the months, the student of ornithology can least afford
to lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage.
And what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger
to speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard
its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human
interest to me. I have met the gray-cheeked thrush (_Turdus aliciæ_)
in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The
silence of the cedar-bird throws a mystery about him which neither
his good looks nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. A
bird's song contains a clew to its life, and establishes a sympathy,
an understanding, between itself and the listener.
I descend a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks through a large
sugar-bush. When twenty rods distant, I hear all along the line of the
forest the incessant warble of the red-eyed fly-catcher (_Vireosylvia
olivacea_), cheerful and happy as the merry whistle of a school-boy.
He is one of our most common and widely distributed birds. Approach
any forest at any hour of the day, in any kind of weather, from May to
August, in any of the Middle or Eastern districts, and the chances are
that the first note you hear will be his. Rain or shine, before noon
or after, in the deep forest or in the village grove,--when it is too
hot for the thrushes or too cold and windy for the warblers,--it is
never out of time or place for this little minstrel to indulge his
cheerful strain. In the deep wilds of the Adirondac, where few birds
are seen and fewer heard, his note was almost constantly in my ear.
Always busy, making it a point never to suspend for one moment his
occupation to indulge his musical taste, his lay is that of industry
and contentment. There is nothing plaintive or especially musical in
his performance, but the sentiment expressed is eminently that of
cheerfulness. Indeed, the songs of most birds have some human
significance, which, I think, is the source of the delight we take in
them. The song of the bobolink to me expresses hilarity; the
song-sparrow's, faith; the bluebird's, love; the cat-bird's, pride;
the white-eyed fly-catcher's, self-consciousness; that of the
hermit-thrush, spiritual-serenity; while there is something military
in the call of the robin.
The vireosylvia is classed among the fly-catchers by some writers, but
is much more of a worm-eater, and has few of the traits or habits of
the _Muscicapa_ or the true _Sylvia_. He resembles somewhat the
warbling vireo (_Vireo gilvus_), and the two birds are often
confounded by careless observers. Both warble in the same cheerful
strain, but the latter more continuously and rapidly. The red-eye is a
larger, slimmer bird, with a faint bluish crown, and a light line over
the eye. His movements are peculiar. You may see him hopping among the
limbs, exploring the under side of the leaves, peering to the right
and left, now flitting a few feet, now hopping as many, and warbling
incessantly, occasionally in a subdued tone, which sounds from a very
indefinite distance. When he has found a worm to his liking, he turns
lengthwise of the limb, and bruises its head with his beak before
devouring it.
As I enter the woods the slate-colored snow-bird (_Fringilla Hudsonia_)
starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed
is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed
a snow-bird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and
returns again in spring, like the song-sparrow, and is not in any way
associated with the cold and the snow. So different are the habits of
birds in different localities. Even the crow does not winter here, and
is seldom seen after December or before March.
The snow-bird, or "black chipping-bird," as it is known among the
farmers, is the finest architect of any of the ground-builders known
to me. The site of its nest is usually some low bank by the roadside
near a wood. In a slight excavation, with a partially concealed
entrance, the exquisite structure is placed. Horse and cow hair are
plentifully used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry
and firmness as well as softness.
Passing down through the maple arches, barely pausing to observe the
antics of a trio of squirrels,--two gray ones and a black one,--I
cross an ancient brush fence and am fairly within the old hemlocks,
and in one of the most primitive, undisturbed nooks. In the deep moss
I tread as with muffled feet, and the pupils of my eyes dilate in the
dim, almost religious light. The irreverent red squirrels, however,
run and snicker at my approach, or mock the solitude with their
ridiculous chattering and frisking.
This nook is the chosen haunt of the winter-wren. This is the only
place and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity.
His voice fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvelous
sounding-board. Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird
and unites in a remarkable degree brilliancy and plaintiveness. I
think of a tremulous vibrating tongue of silver. You may know it is
the song of a wren, from its gushing lyrical character: but you must
needs look sharp to see the little minstrel, especially while in the
act of singing. He is nearly the color of the ground and the leaves;
he never ascends the tall trees, but keeps low, flitting from stump to
stump and from root to root, dodging in and out of his hiding-places,
and watching all intruders with a suspicious eye. He has a very pert,
almost comical look. His tail stands more than perpendicular: it
points straight toward his head. He is the least ostentatious singer I
know of. He does not strike an attitude, and lift up his head in
preparation, and, as it were, clear his throat; but sits there on a
log and pours out his music, looking straight before him, or even down
at the ground. As a songster, he has but few superiors. I do not hear
him after the first week in July.
While sitting on this soft-cushioned log, tasting the pungent acidulous
wood-sorrel (_Oxalis acetellosa_), the blossoms of which, large and
pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies
quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me
with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for
your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly
speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft,
mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody
to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, or Wilson's
thrush. He is the least of the thrushes in size, being about that of the
common bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the
dimness of the spots upon his breast. The wood-thrush has very clear,
distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the hermit, the spots run more
into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish-white; in veery, the marks are
almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull
yellowish appearance. To get a good view of him you have only to sit
down in his haunts, as in such cases he seems equally anxious to get a
good view of you.
From those tall hemlocks proceeds a very fine insect-like warble, and
occasionally I see a spray tremble, or catch the flit of a wing. I watch
and watch till my head grows dizzy and my neck is in danger of permanent
displacement, and still do not get a good view. Presently the bird
darts, or, as it seems, falls down a few feet in pursuit of a fly or a
moth, and I see the whole of it, but in the dim light am undecided. It
is for such emergencies that I have brought my gun. A bird in the hand
is worth half a dozen in the bush, even for ornithological purposes; and
no sure and rapid progress can be made in the study without taking life,
without procuring specimens. This bird is a warbler, plainly enough,
from his habits and manner; but what kind of warbler? Look on him and
name him: a deep orange or flame-colored throat and breast; the same
color showing also in a line over the eye and in his crown; back
variegated black and white. The female is less marked and brilliant. The
orange-throated warbler would seem to be his right name, his
characteristic cognomen; but no, he is doomed to wear the name of some
discoverer, perhaps the first who robbed his nest or rifled him of his
mate,--Blackburn; hence, Blackburnian warbler. The _burn_ seems
appropriate enough, for in these dark evergreens his throat and breast
show like flame. He has a very fine warble, suggesting that of the
redstart, but not especially musical. I find him in no other woods in
this vicinity.
I am attracted by another warble in the same locality, and experience
a like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is
quite a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid
the old trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more
familiar sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird in hand,
one cannot help exclaiming, "How beautiful!" So tiny and elegant, the
smallest of the warblers; a delicate blue-back, with a slight
bronze-colored triangular spot between the shoulders; upper mandible
black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yellow, becoming a dark
bronze on the breast. Blue yellow-back he is called, though the yellow
is much nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate and beautiful,--the
handsomest as he is the smallest of the warblers known to me. It is
never without surprise that I find amid these rugged, savage aspects
of Nature creatures so fairy and delicate. But such is the law. Go to
the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and the savagest
you will find likewise the fairest and the most delicate. The
greatness and the minuteness of Nature pass all understanding.
Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser
songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has
reached my ears from out the depths of the forest that to me is the
finest sound in nature,--the song of the hermit-thrush. I often hear him
thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away, when only
the stronger and more perfect parts of his music reach me; and through
the general chorus of wrens and warblers I detect this sound rising pure
and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height were slowly chanting
a divine accompaniment. This song appeals to the sentiment of the
beautiful in me, and suggests a serene religious beatitude as no other
sound in nature does. It is perhaps more of an evening than a morning
hymn, though I hear it at all hours of the day. It is very simple, and I
can hardly tell the secret of its charm. "O spheral, spheral!" he seems
to say; "O holy, holy! O clear away, clear away! O clear up, clear up!"
interspersed with the finest trills and the most delicate preludes. It
is not a proud, gorgeous strain, like the tanager's or the grossbeak's;
suggests no passion or emotion,--nothing personal,--but seems to be the
voice of that calm sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments.
It realizes a peace and a deep solemn joy that only the finest souls may
know. A few nights ago I ascended a mountain to see the world by
moonlight; and when near the summit the hermit commenced his evening
hymn a few rods from me. Listening to this strain on the lone mountain,
with the full moon just rounded from the horizon, the pomp of your
cities and the pride of your civilization seemed trivial and cheap.
I have seldom known two of these birds to be singing at the same time
in the same locality, rivaling each other, like the wood-thrush or the
veery. Shooting one from a tree, I have observed another take up the
strain from almost the identical perch in less than ten minutes
afterward. Later in the day when I had penetrated the heart of the old
"Barkpeeling," I came suddenly upon one singing from a low stump, and
for a wonder he did not seem alarmed, but lifted up his divine voice
as if his privacy was undisturbed. I open his beak and find the inside
yellow as gold. I was prepared to find it inlaid with pearls and
diamonds, or to see an angel issue from it.
He is not much in the books. Indeed, I am acquainted with scarcely any
writer on ornithology whose head is not muddled on the subject of our
three prevailing song-thrushes, confounding either their figures or
their songs. A writer in the "Atlantic"[1] gravely tells us the
wood-thrush is sometimes called the hermit, and then, after describing
the song of the hermit with great beauty and correctness, coolly
ascribes it to the veery! The new Cyclopædia, fresh from the study of
Audubon, says the hermit's song consists of a single plaintive note, and
that the veery's resembles that of the wood-thrush! These observations
deserve to be preserved with that of the author of "Out-door Papers,"
who tells us the trill of the hair-bird (_Fringillia socialis_) is
produced by the bird fluttering its wings upon its sides! The
hermit-thrush may be easily identified by his color; his back being a
clear olive-brown becoming rufous on his rump and tail. A quill from his
wing placed beside one from his tail on a dark ground presents quite a
marked contrast.