SMALL COUNTRY NEIGHBORS
There is ample room for more complete life histories of many small
beasts that are common enough around our country homes; and fortunately
the need is now being met by various good field naturalists. Just last
summer, in mid-July, 1907, I had an entirely novel experience with
foxes, which illustrates how bold naturally shy creatures sometimes are
after nightfall. Some of the boys and I were camping for the night on
the beach by the Sound, under a clay bluff, having gone thither in the
dory and the two light rowing skiffs; it was about a quarter of a mile
from the place where we had seen the big red fox four or five years
previously. The fire burned all night, and one or other of the party
would now and then rise and stand by it; nevertheless, two young foxes,
evidently cubs of the year, came round the fire, within plain sight,
half a dozen times. They were picking up scraps; two or three times they
came within ten yards of the fire. They were very active, scampering up
the bluffs; and when in the bushes made a good deal of noise, whereas a
full-grown fox generally moves in silence even when in dead brush.
Small mammals, with the exception of squirrels, are so much less
conspicuous than birds, and indeed usually pass their lives in such
seclusion, that the ordinary observer is hardly aware of their presence.
At Sagamore Hill, for instance, except at haying time I rarely see the
swarming meadow mice, the much less plentiful pine mice, or the little
mole-shrews, alive, unless they happen to drop into a pit or sunken area
which has been dug at one point to let light through a window into the
cellar. The much more graceful and attractive white-footed mice and
jumping mice are almost as rarely seen, though if one does come across a
jumping mouse it at once attracts attention by its extraordinary leaps.
The jumping mouse hibernates, like the woodchuck; and so does the
chipmunk, though not always. The other little animals just mentioned are
abroad all winter, the meadow mice under the snow, the white-footed
mice, and often the shrews, above the snow. The tell-tale snow, showing
all the tracks, betrays the hitherto unsuspected existence of many
little creatures; and the commonest marks upon it are those of the
rabbit and especially of the white-footed mouse. The shrew walks or
trots and makes alternate footsteps in the snow. White-foot, on the
contrary, always jumps, whether going slow or fast, and his hind feet
leave their prints side by side, often with the mark where the tail has
dragged. I think white-foot is the most plentiful of all our furred wild
creatures, taken as a whole. He climbs trees well; I have found his nest
in an old vireo’s nest; but more often under stumps or boards. The
meadow mice often live in the marshes, and are entirely at home in the
water.
The shrew-mouse which I most often find is a short-tailed, rather
thickset little creature, not wholly unlike his cousin the shrew-mole,
and just as greedy and ferocious. When a boy I captured one of these
mole-shrews and found to my astonishment that he was a bloodthirsty and
formidable little beast of prey. He speedily killed and ate a partially
grown white-footed mouse which I put in the same cage with him. (I think
a full-grown mouse of this kind would be an overmatch for a shrew.) I
then put a small snake in with him. The shrew was very active but seemed
nearly blind, and as he ran to and fro he never seemed to be aware of
the presence of anything living until he was close to it, when he would
instantly spring on it like a tiger. On this occasion he attacked the
little snake with great ferocity, and after an animated struggle in
which the snake whipped and rolled all around the cage, throwing the
shrew to and fro a dozen times, the latter killed and ate the snake in
triumph. Larger snakes frequently eat shrews, by the way.
Once last summer, while several of us were playing on the tennis ground,
a mole-shrew suddenly came out on the court. I first saw him near one of
the side lines, and ran after him; I picked him up in my naked hand,
whereupon he bit me, and I then took him in my handkerchief. After we
had all looked at him I put him down, and he scuttled off among the
grass and went down a little hole. We resumed our game, but after a few
minutes the shrew reappeared, and this time crossed the tennis court
near the net, while we gathered about him. He was an absurd little
creature and his motion in running was precisely like that of one of
those mechanical toys in the shape of mice or little bears which are
wound up and run around on wheels. When we put our rackets before him he
uttered little, shrill, long-continued squeals of irritation. We let him
go off in the grass, and this time he did not reappear for the day; but
next afternoon he repeated the feat.
My boys have at intervals displayed a liking for natural history, and
one of them during some years took to trapping small mammals,
discovering species that I had no idea existed in certain places; near
Washington, but on the other side of the Potomac, he trapped several of
those very dainty little creatures, the harvest mice.[7] One of my other
boys—the special friend of Josiah the badger—discovered a
flying-squirrel’s nest, in connection with which a rather curious
incident occurred. The little boy had climbed a tree which is hollow at
the top; and in this hollow he discovered a flying-squirrel mother with
six young ones. She seemed so tame and friendly that the little boy for
a moment hardly realized that she was a wild thing, and called down that
he had “found a guinea pig up the tree.” Finally, the mother made up her
mind to remove her family. She took each one in turn in her mouth and
flew or sailed down from the top of the tree to the foot of another tree
near by; ran up this, holding the little squirrel in her mouth; and
again sailed down to the foot of another tree some distance off. Here
she deposited her young one on the grass, and then, reversing the
process, climbed and sailed back to the tree where the nest was; then
she took out another young one and returned with it, in exactly the same
fashion as with the first. She repeated this until all six of the young
ones were laid on the bank, side by side in a row, all with their heads
the same way. Finding that she was not molested she ultimately took all
six of the little fellows back to her nest, where she reared her brood
undisturbed.
Footnote 7:
A visit of this same small boy, when eleven years old, to John
Burroughs, is described by the latter in “Far and Near,” in the
chapter called “Babes in the Woods.”
Flying squirrels become very gentle and attractive little pets if taken
into the house. I cannot say as much for gray squirrels. Once when a
small boy I climbed up to a large nest of dry leaves in the fork of a
big chestnut tree, and from it picked out three very young squirrels.
One died, but the other two I succeeded in rearing on a milk diet, which
at first I was obliged to administer with a syringe. They grew up
absolutely tame and would climb all over the various members of the
household; but as they grew older they grew cross. If we children did
something they did not like they would not only scold us vigorously,
but, if they thought the provocation warranted it, would bite severely;
and we finally exiled them to the woods. Gray squirrels, I am sorry to
say, rob nests just as red squirrels do. At Sagamore Hill I have more
than once been attracted by the alarm notes of various birds, and on
investigation have found the winged woodland people in great agitation
over a gray squirrel’s assault on the eggs or young of a thrush or
vireo; and once one of these good-looking marauders came up the hill to
harry a robin’s nest near the house. Many years ago I had an
extraordinary experience with a gray squirrel. I was in the edge of some
woods, and, seeing a squirrel, I stood motionless. The squirrel came to
me and actually climbed up me; I made no movement until it began to
nibble at my elbow, biting through my flannel shirt. When I moved, it of
course jumped off, but it did not seem much frightened and lingered for
some minutes in view, about thirty yards away. I have never understood
the incident.
Among the small mammals at Sagamore Hill the chipmunks are the most
familiar and the most in evidence; for they readily become tame and
confiding. For three or four years a chipmunk—I suppose the same
chipmunk—has lived near the tennis court; and it has developed the
rather puzzling custom of sometimes scampering across the court while we
are in the middle of a game. This has happened two or three times every
year, and is rather difficult to explain, for the chipmunk could just as
well go round the court, and there seems no possible reason why he
should suddenly run out on it while the game is in full swing. If we see
him, we all stop to watch him, and then he may himself stop and look
about; but we may not see him until just as he is finishing a frantic
scurry across, in imminent danger of being stepped on.
[Illustration:
AUDREY TAKES THE BARS
From a photograph, copyright, 1907, by Clinedinst
]
The most attractive and sociable pet among wild creatures of its size I
have found to be a coon. One which when I was a boy I brought up from
the time it was very young, was as playful and affectionate as any
little dog, and used its little black paws just as if they were hands.
Coons, by the way, sometimes appear in political campaigns. Frequently
when I have been on the stump in places where there was still a strong
tradition of the old Whig party as it was in the days of Henry Clay and
Tippecanoe Harrison, I have reviewed processions in which log cabins and
coons were prominent features. The log cabins were usually miniature
representations, mounted on wheels, but the coons were genuine. Each was
usually carried by some enthusiast, who might lead it by a chain and
collar, but more frequently placed it upon a platform at the end of a
pole, chained up short. Most naturally the coon protested violently
against the proceedings; his only satisfaction being the certainty that
every now and then some other parader would stumble near enough to be
bitten. At one place an admirer suddenly presented me with one of these
coons and was then swept on in the crowd; leaving me gingerly holding by
the end of a chain an exceedingly active and short-tempered little
beast, which I had not the slightest idea how to dispose of. On two
other occasions, by the way, while off on campaign trips I was presented
with bears. These I firmly refused to receive. One of them was brought
to a platform by an old mountain hunter who, I am afraid, really had his
feelings hurt by the refusal. The other bear made his appearance at
Portland, Ore., and, of all places, was chained on top of a wooden
platform just aft the smokestack of an engine, the engine being
festooned with American flags. He belonged to the fireman, who had
brought him as a special gift; I being an honorary member of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. His owner explained that normally he
was friendly; but the surroundings had curdled his temper.
Usually birds are very regular in their habits, so that not only the
same species but the same individuals breed in the same places year
after year. In spite of their wings they are almost as local as mammals
and the same pair will usually keep to the same immediate neighborhood,
where they can always be looked for in their season. There are wooded or
brush-grown swampy places not far from the White House where in the
spring or summer I can count with certainty upon seeing wrens, chats,
and the ground-loving Kentucky warbler, an attractive little bird,
which, by the way, itself looks much like a miniature chat. There are
other places, in the neighborhood of Rock Creek, where I can be almost
certain of finding the blue-gray gnatcatcher, which ranks just next to
the humming-bird itself in exquisite daintiness and delicacy. The few
pairs of mocking-birds around Washington have just as sharply defined
haunts.
Nevertheless it is never possible to tell when one may run across a rare
bird; and even birds that are not rare now and then show marked
individual idiosyncrasy in turning up, or even breeding, in unexpected
places. At Sagamore Hill, for instance, I never knew a purple finch to
breed until the summer of 1906. Then two pairs nested with us, one right
by the house and the other near the stable. My attention was drawn to
them by the bold, cheerful singing of the males, who were spurred to
rivalry by one another’s voices. In September of the same year, while
sitting in a rocking-chair on the broad veranda looking out over the
Sound, I heard the unmistakable “ank-ank” of nuthatches from a young elm
at one corner of the house. I strolled over, expecting to find the
white-bellied nuthatch, which is rather common on Long Island. But
instead there were a couple of red-bellied nuthatches, birds familiar to
me in the Northern woods, but which I had never before seen at Sagamore
Hill. They were tame and fearless, running swiftly up and down the
tree-trunk and around the limbs while I stood and looked at them not ten
feet away. The two younger boys ran out to see them; and then we hunted
up their picture in Wilson. I find, by the way, that Audubon’s and
Wilson’s are still the most satisfactory large ornithologies, at least
for nature lovers who are not specialists; of course any attempt at
serious study of our birds means recourse to the numerous and excellent
books and pamphlets by recent observers. Bendire’s large work gives
admirable biographies of all the birds it treats of; unfortunately it
was never finished.
In May, 1907, two pairs of robins built their substantial nests, and
raised their broods, on the piazza at Sagamore Hill; one over the
transom of the north hall door and one over the transom of the south
hall door. Another pair built their nest and raised their brood on a
rafter in the half-finished new barn, quite undisturbed by the racket of
the carpenters who were finishing it. A pair of scarlet tanagers built
near the tennis ground; the male kept in the immediate neighborhood all
the time, flaming among the branches, and singing steadily until the
last part of July. To my ears the song of the tanager is like a louder,
more brilliant, less leisurely rendering of the red-eyed vireo’s song;
but with the characteristic “chip-churr” every now and then
interspersed. Only one pair of purple finches returned to us last
summer; and for the first time in many years no Baltimore orioles built
in the elm by the corner of the house; they began their nest but for
some reason left it unfinished. The red-winged blackbirds, however, were
more plentiful than for years previously, and two pairs made their nests
near the old barn, where the grass stood lush and tall; this was the
first time they had ever built nearer than the wood-pile pond, and I
believe it was owing to the season being so cold and wet. It was perhaps
due to the same cause that so many black-throated green warblers spent
June and July in the woods on our place; they must have been breeding,
though I only noticed the males. Each kept to his own special tract of
woodland, among the tops of the tall trees, seeming to prefer the
locusts, and throughout June, and far into July, each sang all day
long—a drawling, cadenced little warble of five or six notes, the first
two being the most noticeable near by, though, rather curiously, the
next two were the notes that had most carrying power. The song was
usually uttered at intervals of a few seconds; sometimes while the
singer was perched motionless, sometimes as he flitted and crawled
actively among the branches. With the resident of one particular grove I
became well acquainted, as I was chopping a path through the grove.
Every day when I reached the grove, I found the little warbler singing
away, and at least half the time in one particular locust tree. He paid
not the slightest attention to my chopping; whereas a pair of downy
woodpeckers and a pair of great-crested fly-catchers, both of them
evidently nesting near by, were much put out by my presence. While
listening to my little black-throated friend, I could also continually
hear the songs of his cousins, the prairie warbler, the redstart, the
black-and-white creeper and the Maryland yellow-throat; not to speak of
oven-birds, towhees, thrashers, vireos, and the beautiful golden-voiced
wood thrushes.
The black-throated green warblers have seemingly become regular summer
residents of Long Island, for after discovering them on my place I found
that two or three bird-loving neighbors were already familiar with them;
and I heard them on several different occasions as I rode through the
country roundabout. I already knew as summer residents in my
neighborhood the following representatives of the warbler family: the
oven-bird, chat, black-and-white creeper, Maryland yellow-throat, summer
yellow-bird, prairie warbler, pine warbler, blue-winged warbler,
golden-winged warbler (very rare), blue yellow-backed warbler and
redstart.
The black-throated green as a breeder and summer resident is a newcomer
who has extended his range southward. But this same summer I found one
warbler, the presence of which, if more than accidental, means that a
southern form is extending its range northward. This was the Dominican
or yellow-throated warbler. Two of my bird-loving neighbors are Mrs. E.
H. Swan, Jr., and Miss Alice Weekes. On July 4th Mrs. Swan told me that
a new warbler, the yellow-throated, was living near their house, and
that she and her husband had seen it there on several occasions. I was
rather skeptical, and told her I thought that it must be a Maryland
yellow-throat. Mrs. Swan meekly acquiesced in the theory that she might
have been mistaken; but two or three days afterward she sent me word
that she and Miss Weekes had seen the bird again, had examined it
thoroughly through their glasses, and were sure that it was a
yellow-throated warbler. Accordingly on the morning of the 8th I walked
down and met them both near Mrs. Swan’s house, about a mile from
Sagamore Hill. We did not have to wait long before we heard an
unmistakably new warbler’s song, loud, ringing, sharply accented, just
as the yellow-throat’s song is described in Chapman’s book. At first the
little bird kept high in the tops of the pines, but after a while he
came to the lower branches and we were able to see him distinctly. Only
a glance was needed to show that my two friends were quite right in
their identification and that the bird was undoubtedly the Dominican or
yellow-throated warbler. Its bill was as long as that of a
black-and-white creeper, giving the head a totally different look from
that of any of its brethren, the other true wood-warblers; and the
olive-gray back, yellow-throat and breast, streaked sides, white belly,
black cheek and forehead, and white line above the eye and spot on the
side of the neck, could all be plainly made out. The bird kept
continually uttering its loud, sharply modulated, and attractive warble.
It never left the pines, and though continually on the move, it yet
moved with a certain deliberation like a pine warbler, and not with the
fussy agility of most of its kinsfolk. Occasionally it would catch some
insect on the wing, but most of the time kept hopping about among the
needle-clad clusters of the pine twigs, or moving along the larger
branches, stopping from time to time to sing. Now and then it would sit
still on one twig for several minutes, singing at short intervals and
preening its feathers.
[Illustration:
THE STONE WALL
From a photograph by Mrs. Herbert Wadsworth
]
After looking at it for nearly an hour we had to solve the rather
difficult ethical question as to whether we ought to kill it or not. In
these cases it is always hard to draw the line between heartlessness and
sentimentality. In our own minds we were sure of our identification, and
did not feel that we could be mistaken, but we were none of us professed
ornithologists, and as far as I knew the bird was really rare thus far
north; so that it seemed best to shoot him, which was accordingly done.
I was influenced in this decision, in the first place because warblers
are so small that it is difficult for any observer to be absolutely
certain as to their identification; and in the next place by the fact
that the breeding season was undoubtedly over, and that this was an
adult male, so that no harm came to the species. I very strongly feel
that there should be no “collecting” of rare and beautiful species when
this is not imperatively demanded. Mocking-birds, for instance, are very
beautiful birds, well known and unmistakable; and there is not the
slightest excuse for “collecting” their nests and eggs or shooting
specimens of them, no matter where they may be found. So, there is no
excuse for shooting scarlet tanagers, summer redbirds, cardinals, nor of
course any of the common, well-known friends of the lawn, the garden and
the farm land; and with most birds nowadays observations on their habits
are of far more value than their skins can possibly be. But there must
be some shooting, especially of obscure and little-known birds, or we
would never be able to identify them at all; while most laymen are not
sufficiently close observers to render it possible to trust their
identification of rare species.
In one apple tree in the orchard we find a flicker’s nest every year;
the young make a queer, hissing, bubbling sound, a little like the
boiling of a pot. This same year one of the young ones fell out; I
popped it back into the hole, whereupon its brothers and sisters
“boiled” for several minutes like the cauldron of a small and friendly
witch. John Burroughs, and a Long Island neighbor, John Lewis Childs,
drove over to see me, in this same June of 1907, and I was able to show
them the various birds of most interest—the purple finch, the
black-throated green warbler, the redwings in their unexpected nesting
place by the old barn, and the orchard orioles and yellow-billed cuckoos
in the garden. The orchard orioles this year took much interest in the
haying, gleaning in the cut grass for grasshoppers. The barn swallows
that nest in the stable raised second broods, which did not leave the
nest until the end of July. When the barn swallows gather in their great
flocks just prior to the southward migration, the gathering sometimes
takes place beside a house, and then the swallows seem to get so excited
and bewildered that they often fly into the house. When I was a small
boy I took a keen, although not a very intelligent, interest in natural
history, and solemnly recorded whatever I thought to be notable. When I
was nine years old we were passing the summer near Tarrytown, on the
Hudson. My diary for September 4, 1868, runs as follows: “Cold and
rainy. I was called in from breakfast to a room. When I went in there
what was my surprise to see on walls, curtains and floor about forty
swallows. All the morning long in every room of the house (even the
kitchen) were swallows. They were flying south. Several hundred were
outside and about seventy-five in the house. I caught most of them (and
put them out of the windows). The others got out themselves. One flew on
my pants where he stayed until I took him off.”
At the White House we are apt to stroll around the grounds for a few
minutes after breakfast; and during the migrations, especially in
spring, I often take a pair of field glasses so as to examine any bird
as to the identity of which I am doubtful. From the end of April the
warblers pass in troops—myrtle, magnolia, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted,
blackburnian, black-throated blue, blue-winged, Canadian, and many
others, with at the very end of the season the black-poll—all of them
exquisite little birds, but not conspicuous as a rule, except perhaps
the blackburnian, whose brilliant orange throat and breast flame when
they catch the sunlight as he flits among the trees. The males in their
dress of courtship are easily recognized by any one who has Chapman’s
book on the warblers. On May 4, 1906, I saw a Cape May warbler, the
first I had ever seen. It was in a small pine. It was fearless, allowing
a close approach, and as it was a male in high plumage, it was
unmistakable.
In 1907, after a very hot week in early March, we had an exceedingly
late and cold spring. The first bird I heard sing in the White House
grounds was a white-throated sparrow on March 1st, a song sparrow
speedily following. The white-throats stayed with us until the middle of
May, overlapping the arrival of the indigo buntings; but during the last
week in April and first week in May their singing was drowned by the
music of the purple finches, which I never before saw in such numbers
around the White House. When we sat by the south fountain, under an
apple tree then blossoming, sometimes three or four purple finches would
be singing in the fragrant bloom overhead. In June a pair of wood
thrushes and a pair of black-and-white creepers made their homes in the
White House grounds, in addition to our ordinary homemakers, the
flickers, redheads, robins, catbirds, song sparrows, chippies, summer
yellow-birds, grackles, and, I am sorry to say, crows. A handsome
sapsucker spent a week with us. In the same year five night herons spent
January and February in a swampy tract by the Potomac, half a mile or so
from the White House.
At Mount Vernon there are of course more birds than there are around the
White House, for it is in the country. At present but one mocking-bird
sings around the house itself, and in the gardens and the woods of the
immediate neighborhood. Phœbe birds nest at the heads of the columns
under the front portico; and a pair—or rather, doubtless, a succession
of pairs—has nested in Washington’s tomb itself, for the twenty years
since I have known it. The cardinals, beautiful in plumage, and with
clear ringing voices, are characteristic of the place. I am glad to say
that the woods still hold many gray—not red—foxes; the descendants of
those which Washington so perseveringly hunted.
At Oyster Bay on a desolate winter afternoon many years ago I shot an
Ipswich sparrow on a strip of ice-rimmed beach, where the long coarse
grass waved in front of a growth of blue berries, beach plums and
stunted pines. I think it was the same winter that we were visited not
only by flocks of cross-bills, pine linnets, red-polls and pine
grossbeaks, but by a number of snowy owls, which flitted to and fro in
ghost-like fashion across the wintry landscape and showed themselves far
more diurnal in their habits than our native owls. One fall about the
same time a pair of duck-hawks appeared off the bay. It was early,
before many ducks had come, and they caused havoc among the night
herons, which were then very numerous in the marshes around Lloyd’s
Neck, there being a big heronry in the woods near by. Once I saw a
duck-hawk come around the bend of the shore, and dart into a loose gang
of young night herons, still in the brown plumage, which had jumped from
the marsh at my approach. The pirate struck down three herons in
succession and sailed swiftly on without so much as looking back at his
victims.[8] The herons, which are usually rather dull birds, showed
every sign of terror whenever the duck-hawk appeared in the distance;
whereas, they paid no heed to the fish-hawks as they sailed overhead. I
found the carcass of a black-headed or Bonaparte’s gull which had
probably been killed by one of these duck-hawks; these gulls appear in
the early fall, before their bigger brothers, the herring gulls, have
come for their winter stay. The spotted sand-pipers often build far away
from water; while riding, early in July, 1907, near Cold Spring, my
horse almost stepped on a little fellow that could only just have left
the nest. It was in a dry road between upland fields; the parents were
near by, and betrayed much agitation. The little fish-crows are not rare
around Washington, though not so common as the ordinary crows; once I
shot one at Oyster Bay. They are not so wary as their larger kinsfolk,
but are quite as inveterate destroyers of the eggs and nestlings of more
attractive birds. The soaring turkey buzzards, so beautiful on the wing
and so loathsome near by, are seen everywhere around the Capital.
Footnote 8:
Dr. Lambert last fall, on a hunting trip in Northern Quebec, found a
gyrfalcon on an island in a lake which had just killed a great blue
heron; the heron’s feathers were scattered all over the lake. Lambert
also shot a great horned owl in the dusk one evening, and found that
it had a half-eaten duck in its claws.
Bird songs are often puzzling, and it is nearly impossible to write them
down so that any one but the writer will recognize them. Moreover, as we
ascribe to them qualities, such as plaintiveness or gladness, which
really exist in our own minds and not in the songs themselves, two
different observers, equally accurate, may ascribe widely different
qualities to the same song. To me, for instance, the bush sparrow’s song
is more attractive than the vesper sparrow’s; but I think most of my
friends feel just the reverse way about the two songs. To most of us the
bobolink’s song bubbles over with rollicking merriment, with the glad
joy of mere living; whereas the thrushes, the meadow lark, the
white-throated sparrow, all have a haunting strain of sadness or
plaintiveness in their melody; but I am by no means sure that there is
the slightest difference of this kind in the singers. Most of the songs
of the common birds I recognize fairly well; but even with these birds
there will now and then be a call, or a few bars, which I do not
recognize; and if I hear a bird but seldom, I find much difficulty in
recalling its song, unless it is very well marked indeed. Last spring I
for a long time utterly failed to recognize the song of a water thrush
by Rock Creek; and later in the season I on one occasion failed to make
out the flight song of an oven-bird until in the middle of it the singer
suddenly threw in two or three of the characteristic “teacher, teacher”
notes. Even in neighborhoods with which I am familiar I continually hear
songs and calls which I cannot place.
In Albemarle County, Virginia, we have a little place called Pine Knot,
where we sometimes go, taking some or all of the children, for a three
or four days’ outing. It is a mile from the big stock farm, Plain
Dealing, belonging to an old friend, Mr. Joseph Wilmer. The trees and
flowers are like those of Washington, but their general close
resemblance to those of Long Island is set off by certain exceptions.
There are osage orange hedges, and in spring many of the roads are
bordered with bands of the brilliant yellow blossoms of the flowering
broom, introduced by Jefferson. There are great willow oaks here and
there in the woods or pastures, and occasional groves of noble tulip
trees in the many stretches of forest; these tulip trees growing to a
much larger size than on Long Island. As at Washington, among the most
plentiful flowers are the demure little Quaker Ladies, which are not
found at Sagamore Hill—where we also miss such northern forms as the
wake robin and the other trilliums, which used to be among the
characteristic marks of spring-time at Albany. At Pine Knot the red bug,
dogwood and laurel are plentiful; though in the case of the last two no
more so than at Sagamore Hill. The azalea—its Knickerbocker name in New
York was pinkster—grows and flowers far more luxuriantly than on Long
Island. The moccasin flower, the china-blue Virginia cowslip with its
pale pink buds, the blood-red Indian pink, the painted columbine and
many, many other flowers somewhat less showy carpet the woods.
The birds are, of course, for the most part the same as on Long Island,
but with some differences. These differences are, in part, due to the
more southern locality; but in part I cannot explain them, for birds
will often be absent from one place seemingly without any real reason.
Thus around us in Albemarle County song-sparrows are certainly rare and
I have not seen savanna sparrows at all; but the other common sparrows,
such as the chippy, field sparrow, vesper sparrow, and grasshopper
sparrow abound; and in an open field where bind-weed morning glories and
evening primroses grew among the broom sedge, I found some small
grass-dwelling sparrows, which with the exercise of some little patience
I was able to study at close quarters with the glasses; as I had no gun
I could not be positive about their identification, though I was
inclined to believe that they were Henslow’s sparrows. Of birds of
brilliant color there are six species—the cardinal, the summer redbird
and the scarlet tanager, in red, and the bluebird, indigo bunting, and
blue grossbeak, in blue. I saw but one pair of blue grossbeaks; but the
little indigo buntings abound, and bluebirds are exceedingly common,
breeding in numbers. It has always been a puzzle to me why they do not
breed around us at Sagamore Hill, where I only see them during the
migrations. Neither the rosy summer redbirds nor the cardinals are quite
as brilliant as the scarlet tanagers, which fairly burn like live
flames; but the tanager is much less common than either of the others in
Albemarle County, and it is much less common than it is at Sagamore
Hill. Among the singers the wood thrush is not common, but the meadow
lark abounds. The yellow-breasted chat is everywhere and in the spring
its clucking, whistling and calling seem never to stop for a minute. The
white-eyed vireo is found in the same thick undergrowth as the chat and
among the smaller birds it is one of those most in evidence to the ear.
In one or two places I came across parties of the long-tailed Bewick’s
wren, as familiar as the house wren but with a very different song.
There are gentle mourning doves; and black-billed cuckoos seem more
common than the yellow-bills. The mocking-birds are, as always, most
interesting. I was much amused to see one of them following two crows;
when they lit in a plowed field the mocking-bird paraded alongside of
them six feet off, and then fluttered around to the attack. The crows,
however, were evidently less bothered by it than they would have been by
a kingbird. At Plain Dealing many birds nest within a stone’s throw of
the rambling attractive house, with its numerous outbuildings, old
garden, orchard, and venerable locusts and catalpas. Among them are
Baltimore and orchard orioles, purple grackles, flickers and red-headed
woodpeckers, bluebirds, robins, kingbirds and indigo buntings. One
observation which I made was of real interest. On May 18, 1907, I saw a
small party of a dozen or so of passenger pigeons, birds I had not seen
for a quarter of a century and never expected to see again. I saw them
two or three times flying hither and thither with great rapidity, and
once they perched in a tall dead pine on the edge of an old field. They
were unmistakable; yet the sight was so unexpected that I almost doubted
my eyes, and I welcomed a bit of corroborative evidence coming from
Dick, the colored foreman at Plain Dealing. Dick is a frequent companion
of mine in rambles around the country, and he is an unusually close and
accurate observer of birds, and of wild things generally. Dick had
mentioned to me having seen some “wild carrier pigeons,” as he called
them; and, thinking over this remark of his, after I had returned to
Washington, I began to wonder whether he too might not have seen
passenger pigeons. Accordingly I wrote to Mr. Wilmer, asking him to
question Dick and find out what the “carrier pigeons” looked like. His
answering letter runs in part as follows:
“On May 12th last Dick saw a flock of about thirty wild pigeons,
followed at a short distance by about half as many, flying in a
circle very rapidly, between the Plain Dealing house and the
woods, where they disappeared. They had pointed tails and
resembled somewhat large doves—the breast and sides rather a
brownish red. He had seen them before, but many years ago. I think
it is unquestionably the passenger pigeon—_Ectopistes
migratorius_—described on p. 25 of the 5th volume of Audubon. I
remember the pigeon roosts as he describes them, on a smaller
scale, but large flocks have not been seen in this part of
Virginia for many years.”
I fear, by the way, that the true prairie chicken, one of the most
characteristic American game birds, will soon follow the passenger
pigeon. My two elder sons have now and then made trips for prairie
chickens and ducks to the Dakotas. Last summer, 1907, the second boy
returned from such a trip—which he had ended by a successful deer hunt
in Wisconsin—with the melancholy information that the diminution in the
ranks of the prairie fowl in the Dakotas was very evident.
The house at Pine Knot consists of one long room, with a broad piazza,
below, and three small bedrooms above. It is made of wood, with big
outside chimneys at each end. Wood rats and white-footed mice visit it;
once a weasel came in after them; now a flying squirrel has made his
home among the rafters. On one side the pines and on the other side the
oaks come up to the walls; in front the broom sedge grows almost to the
piazza and above the line of its waving plumes we look across the
beautiful rolling Virginia farm country to the foothills of the Blue
Ridge. At night whippoorwills call incessantly around us. In the late
spring or early summer we usually take breakfast and dinner on the
veranda listening to mocking-bird, cardinal, and Carolina wren, as well
as to many more common singers. In the winter the little house can only
be kept warm by roaring fires in the great open fireplaces, for there is
no plaster on the walls, nothing but the bare wood. Then the table is
set near the blazing logs at one end of the long room which makes up the
lower part of the house, and at the other end the colored cook—Jim Crack
by name—prepares the delicious Virginia dinner; while around him cluster
the little darkies, who go on errands, bring in wood, or fetch water
from the spring, to put in the bucket which stands below where the gourd
hangs on the wall. Outside the wind moans or the still cold bites if the
night is quiet; but inside there is warmth and light and cheer.
There are plenty of quail and rabbits in the fields and woods near by,
so we live partly on what our guns bring in; and there are also wild
turkeys. I spent the first three days of November, 1906, in a finally
successful effort to kill a wild turkey. Each morning I left the house
between three and five o’clock, under a cold brilliant moon. The frost
was heavy; and my horse shuffled over the frozen ruts as I rode after
Dick. I was on the turkey grounds before the faintest streak of dawn had
appeared in the east; and I worked as long as daylight lasted. It was
interesting and attractive in spite of the cold. In the night we heard
the quavering screech owls; and occasionally the hooting of one of their
bigger brothers. At dawn we listened to the lusty hammering of the big
logcocks, or to the curious coughing or croaking sound of a hawk before
it left its roost. Now and then loose flocks of small birds straggled
past us as we sat in the blind, or rested to eat our lunch; chickadees,
tufted tits, golden-crested kinglets, creepers, cardinals, various
sparrows and small woodpeckers. Once we saw a shrike pounce on a field
mouse by a haystack; once we came on a ruffed grouse sitting motionless
in the road.
[Illustration:
ROSWELL BEHAVES LIKE A GENTLEMAN
From a photograph, copyright, 1907, by Clinedinst
]
The last day I had with me Jim Bishop, a man who had hunted turkeys by
profession, a hard-working farmer, whose ancestors have for generations
been farmers and woodmen; an excellent hunter, tireless, resourceful,
with an eye that nothing escaped; just the kind of a man one likes to
regard as typical of what is best in American life. Until this day, and
indeed until the very end of this day, chance did not favor us. We tried
to get up to the turkeys on the roost before daybreak; but they roosted
in pines and, night though it was, they were evidently on the lookout,
for they always saw us long before we could make them out, and then we
could hear them fly out of the tree-tops. Turkeys are quite as wary as
deer, and we never got a sight of them while we were walking through the
woods; but two or three times we flushed gangs, and my companion then at
once built a little blind of pine boughs in which we sat while he tried
to call the scattered birds up to us by imitating, with marvellous
fidelity, their yelping. Twice a turkey started toward us, but on each
occasion the old hen began calling some distance off and all the
scattered birds at once went toward her. At other times I would slip
around to one side of a wood while my companion walked through it, but
either there were no turkeys or they went out somewhere far away from
me.
On the last day I was out thirteen hours. Finally, late in the
afternoon, Jim Bishop marked a turkey into a point of pines which
stretched from a line of wooded hills down into a narrow open valley on
the other side of which again rose wooded hills. I ran down to the end
of the point and stood behind a small oak, while Bishop and Dick walked
down through the trees to drive the turkey toward me. This time
everything went well; the turkey came out of the cover not too far off
and sprang into the air, heading across the valley and offering me a
side shot at forty yards as he sailed by. It was just the distance for
the close-shooting ten-bore duck gun I carried; and at the report down
came the turkey in a heap, not so much as a leg or wing moving. It was
an easy shot. But we had hunted hard for three days; and the turkey is
the king of American game birds; and, besides, I knew he would be very
good eating indeed when we brought him home; so I was as pleased as
possible when Dick lifted the fine young gobbler, his bronze plumage
iridescent in the light of the westering sun.
Formerly we could ride across country in any direction around Washington
and almost as soon as we left the beautiful, tree-shaded streets of the
city we were in the real country. But as Washington grows, it
naturally—and to me most regrettably—becomes less and less like its
former, glorified-village, self; and wire fencing has destroyed our old
cross-country rides. Fortunately there are now many delightful bridle
trails in Rock Creek Park; and we have fixed up a number of good jumps
at suitable places—a stone wall, a water jump, a bank with a ditch, two
or three posts-and-rails, about four feet high, and some stiff brush
hurdles, one of five feet seven inches. The last, which is the only
formidable jump was put up to please two sporting members of the
administration, Bacon and Meyer. Both of them school their horses over
it; and my two elder boys, and Fitzhugh Lee, my cavalry aide, also
school my horses over it. On one of my horses, Roswell, I have gone over
it myself; and as I weigh two hundred pounds without my saddle I think
that the jump, with such a weight, in cold blood, should be credited to
Roswell for righteousness. Roswell is a bay gelding; Audrey a black
mare; they are Virginia horses. In the spring of 1907 I had photographs
of them taken going over the various jumps. Roswell is a fine jumper,
and usually goes at his jumps in a spirit of matter-of-fact enjoyment.
But he now and then shows queer kinks in his temper. On one of these
occasions he began by wishing to rush his jumps, and by trying to go
over the wings instead of the jumps themselves. He fought hard for his
head; and as it happened that the best picture we got of him in the air
was at this particular time, it gives a wrong idea of his ordinary
behavior, and also, I sincerely trust, a wrong idea of my hands.
Generally he takes his jumps like a gentleman.
Many of the men with whom I hunted or with whom I was brought in close
contact when I lived on my ranch, and still more of the men who were
with me in the Rough Riders, have shared in some way or other in my
later political life. Phil Stewart was one of the Presidential Electors
who in 1904 gave me Colorado’s vote; Merrifield filled the same position
in Montana and is now Marshal of that State. Cecil Lyon and Sloan
Simpson, of Texas, were delegates for me at the National Convention
which nominated me in 1904. Sewell is Collector of Customs in Maine;
Sylvans and Joe Ferris are respectively Register of the Land Office and
Postmaster in North Dakota; Dennis Shea with whom I worked on the Little
Missouri round-up holds my commission as Marshal of North Dakota.
Abernathy the wolf hunter is my Marshal in Oklahoma. John Willis
declined to take any place; when he was last my guest at the White House
he told me, I am happy to say, that he does better with his ranch than
he could have done with any office. Johnny Goff is a forest ranger near
the Yellowstone Park. Seth Bullock is Marshal of South Dakota; he too is
an old friend of my ranch days and was sheriff in the Black Hills when I
was deputy sheriff due north of him in Billings County, in the then
Territory of Dakota. Among the people that we both arrested, by the way,
was a young man named “Calamity Joe,” a very well-meaning fellow but a
wild boy who had gone astray, as wild boys often used to go astray on
the frontier, through bad companionship. To my great amusement his uncle
turned up as United States Senator some fifteen years later, and was one
of my staunch allies. Of the men of the regiment Lieutenant Colonel
Brodie I made Governor of Arizona, Captain Frantz, Governor of Oklahoma,
and Captain Curry Governor of New Mexico. Ben Daniels I appointed
Marshal of Arizona; Colbert, the Chickasaw, Marshal in the Indian
Territory. Llewellyn is District Attorney in New Mexico. Jenkins is
Collector of Internal Revenue in South Carolina. Fred Herrig, who was
with me on the Little Missouri, where we hunted the blacktail and the
bighorn together, and who later served under me at Santiago, is a forest
ranger in Montana; and many other men of my old regiment have taken up
with unexpected interest occupations as diverse as those of postmaster,
of revenue agent, of land and forest officers of various kinds. Joe Lee
is Minister to Ecuador; John McIlhenny is Civil Service Commissioner;
Craig Wadsworth is Secretary of Legation at the Court of St. James;
Mason Mitchell is Consul in China, having already been Consul at
Mozambique, where he spent his holidays in hunting the biggest of the
world’s big game.
[Illustration:
ROSWELL FIGHTS FOR HIS HEAD
From a photograph, copyright, 1907, by Clinedinst
]
Appointments to public office must of course be made primarily because
of the presumable fitness of the man for the position. But even the most
rigid moralist ought to pardon the occasional inclusion of other
considerations. I am glad that I have been able to put in office certain
outdoor men who were typical leaders in the old life of the frontier,
the daring adventurous life of warfare against wild man and wild nature
which has now so nearly passed away. Bat Masterson, formerly of Dodge
City and the Texas cattle trail, the most famous of the oldtime
marshals, the iron-nerved gun-fighters of the border, is now a deputy
marshal in New York, under District Attorney Stimson—himself a big game
hunter, by the way. Pat Garret, who slew Billy the Kid, I made Collector
of Customs at El Paso; and other scarred gun-fighters of the vanished
frontier, with to their credit deeds of prowess as great as those of
either Masterson or Garret, now hold my commissions, on the Rio Grande,
in the Territories, or here and there in the States of the Rocky
Mountains and the Great Plains.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.