The woods have changed from the purple of swelling buds to the tender
grayish green of opening leaves, and the sward is green again with new
grass, when this pied troubadour, more faithful to the calendar than
leaf or flower, comes back from his southern home to New England meadows
to charm others than his dusky ladylove with his merry song. He seldom
disappoints us by more than a day in the date of his arrival, and never
fails to receive a kindly welcome, though the fickle weather may be
unkind.
"The bobolinks have come" is as joyful a proclamation as announces the
return of the bluebird and robin. Here no shotted salute of gun awaits
him, and he is aware that he is in a friendly country. Though he does
not court familiarity, he tolerates approach; and permits you to come
within a dozen yards of the fence stake he has alighted on, and when
you come nearer he goes but to the next, singing the prelude or finale
of his song as he flies. Fewer yards above your head he poises on wing
to sing it from beginning to end, you know not whether with intent to
taunt you or to charm you, but he only accomplishes the latter. He seems
to know that he does not harm us and that he brings nothing that we
should not lose by killing him. Yet how cunningly he and his mate hide
their nest in the even expanse of grass. That is a treasure he will not
trust us with the secret of, and, though there may be a dozen in the
meadow, we rarely find one.
Our New England fathers had as kindly a feeling for this blithe comer to
their stumpy meadows, though they gave him the uncouth and malodorous
name of skunk blackbird. He sang as sweetly to them as he does to us,
and he too was a discoverer and a pioneer, finding and occupying meadows
full of sunshine where had only been the continual shade of the forest,
where no bobolink had ever been before. Now he has miles of grassy
sunlit fields wherein he sings violet and buttercup, daisy and clover
into bloom and strawberries into ripeness, and his glad song mingles
with the happy voices of the children who come to gather them, and also
chimes with the rarer music of the whetted scythe.
Then, long before the summer is past, he assumes the sober dress of his
mate and her monosyllabic note, and fades so gradually out of our sight
and hearing that he departs without our being aware of it. Summer still
burns with unabated fervor, when we suddenly realize that there are no
bobolinks. Nor are there any under the less changeful skies whither our
changed bird has flown to be a reed-bird or rice-bird and to find
mankind his enemies. He is no longer a singer but a gourmand and valued
only as a choice morsel, doubtless delicious, yet one that should choke
a New Englander.