Darkness descends in shadowy folds
Over the distant hills; the breeze
Shivers and stirs in the leafy trees,
And a single star beholds.
The brook murmurs low in the tangled copse,
The jewel-weed stands with its feet in the stream,
By my lantern light the dew-drops gleam
On the leaves like diamond drops.
And lo! like the shuddering wind-stirred leaves,
Like the trembling weed where the waters glide,
A voice from the depths where the wood-birds hide
Its thrilling melody weaves.
What shakes the harp-strings in thy throat?
Is it joy or woe? Is it love or fear?
The mystery of the woods I hear
In the passion of your note.
Do you cry, Woe! Woe! Do you cry, Rejoice!
Joy and sorrow no longer twain,
Hope and despair in one wild strain,
And the night has found a voice.
—Isabella T. M. Blake.
THE SPRING MIGRATION.
II. IN CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI.
In the former article under this title attention was paid to the
warblers only. In the present one I will try to give you some idea of
the other birds that in spring take part in this general movement
northward. A few birds that cannot properly be classed among the winter
residents visit us now and then on warm summery days in January and
February; they may be called the advance guard of the great army of
migration. Conspicuous among these are the bluebird and the hermit
thrush, two birds closely related, but very different both in coloring
and disposition.
The bluebird is one of the first birds to be learned by the country
children; his bright colors, cheerful music and affectionate, trusting
disposition make him a general favorite. Right here permit me to digress
enough to say that too little encouragement is given the children of our
public schools, especially in the country, to learn the names and habits
of our common birds. A little time and effort judiciously expended by
the teacher in guiding the pupils to an understanding and love of the
bird life about them would be an investment paying large dividends in
quickened perceptions and increased interest in the too often dull and
distasteful round of school work.
The hermit thrush is a lover of the deep, dark shades where he can sit
on a twig and watch the stirring life about him without being a part of
it—a kind of chimney corner philosopher, if you please. The rufous tail
in sharp contrast to the olive brown head and back will tell you his
name every time, for he is the only member of the thrush family found in
these regions in which the color of the tail differs materially from
that of the back. I remember one afternoon in February seeing one in the
shade of a thick-topped holly; here he remained quite unconscious while
we peered at him through the opera glass, discussed his coloring and
consulted the pocket manual to see what Chapman said about him, an
occasional jerk of the tail or a slight movement of the head being the
only indication of life in the graceful figure before us.
Late in March or early in April come the purple martin, the bank swallow
and chimney swift, all cheerful birds whose only apparent aim in life is
to sail about through the air in pursuit of gnats and flies. The noisy
chatter of the martins as they wheel and turn about near the house is
one of the most agreeable sounds in all the gamut of bird voices. They
are very numerous in parts of Mississippi, but the only place in the
North where I have ever seen them in any considerable numbers is on the
Maumee, not far from the little town of Waterville, Ohio. The bank
swallow and chimney swift are smaller and less conspicuous than the
martin, less noisy but quite as useful.
Soon after the swallows appear the flycatchers, the tyrant wood pewee,
phœbe bird, Acadian and great crested. What figure is more familiar on
hot summer days than the kingbird or tyrant flycatcher perched on a
mullein stalk, now and then darting down from his perch to capture some
straying gnat? The Acadian stops for only a very short stay; you will
find him in the deepest shades, where the gloom and dampness suit his
somber fancy. The wood pewee is also a gloomy soul, possessing no gift
of color or song to attract the eye or hold the fancy; his long drawn
out monotonous note always reminds me of hot August afternoons when all
other bird voices are silent as the grave and summer reigns with
undisputed sway. The prince of woodland flycatchers, both from point of
coloring and attractive personality, is the great crested; his olive
brown back, whitish breast and sulphur-yellow belly give him a more
brilliant appearance than the others just mentioned. His character, too,
is better, for he is neither as belligerent as the kingbird or as gloomy
as the Acadian and wood pewee. His call is not unmelodious, though it
would be misleading to call it a song.
April brings the orioles to play their not insignificant part in the
great color scheme of Nature at this resurrection season. I always
associate the coming of the orchard oriole with the opening of the
Chickasaw roses, and the arrival of the Baltimore with the blooming of
the yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera). For several seasons I
caught my first glimpse of the Baltimore’s flame and black in the top of
a tall poplar, and heard his cheery whistle as he dodged in and out
among the great cups, making a breakfast on the insects whose hum made
the whole woods drowsy. A few brief days of rest and pleasure in this
land of flowers and the orioles are gone, except a few pairs that stay
to rear their families in these solitudes.
A long, slim, brown body, a stealthy way of sliding in and out among the
vines and limbs, and a shy, suspicious air mark the black billed cuckoo
or raincrow. He, too, stays but a few days. When you see the raincrow it
is time to look for the Wilson’s thrush; but it was never my privilege
to hear him sing in these forests. Perhaps he is tired out with the long
journey from the land of eternal summer and wishes to be seen, not
heard. Writers tell us that this thrush is very plentiful in certain
localities, but in this section of the South I saw only two specimens in
four years.
The musician of the thrush family, of the whole woods for that matter,
in some points a successful rival of the mocking bird, is the wood
thrush. Dark cinnamon brown, of quite a uniform tint above and white
breast spotted with round, black, or dark brown enable one to pick him
out easily from the rest of the thrush family. I remember hearing one
sing at a negro “baptizing” just at sunset of an April day. After the
immersion had taken place, as the officiating “elder” led the candidate
to the bank of the pond, clear negro voices raised one of the good old
hymns. As the words of the last verse died away on the evening air and
the elder raised his hand to pronounce the benediction, a wood thrush in
the nearby forest began his vespers. Sweet, clear as a silver bell, the
notes arose, tinkling, reverberating, tender but dignified, voicing in a
half-unconscious way the solemn emotions of the hour. What is there in
the singing of even the best of trained choirs to compare with this
simple voice of Nature, without affectation or conceit, arousing the
feelings and appealing to the noblest instincts of our common nature.
Birds crowd in upon us, bull bat, chuck-wills-widow, turtle dove,
gray-cheeked thrush and titlark come to see us, some to stop and add
their own individual element to the local coloring, others after a few
hours of rest to continue their way northward. Multitudes of sparrows,
jays, thrashers, nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, etc., that have
enjoyed our hospitality during the winter and part of the spring pack up
their effects and leave, for summer is almost here.
The bird that to my mind is distinctly the advance agent of summer has
well been called the summer tanager. He delays his coming until straw
hats and linen suits appear; then what a dash of warm color he brings.
Seated on the topmost bough of a tall oak, where the sun’s rays fall
full upon him, he gives such intense, palpitating color that one’s eyes
are almost blinded looking at him. Rich as is the red of the cardinal it
appears soiled and tarnished beside the summer tanager.
With a sigh we realize that the spring migration is over for this year;
but there is one consolation, only a part of its music is hushed—the
soul of Southern bird life, the mocking bird, is left. Inconspicuous by
reason of his Quaker-gray suit, he makes up in attractive manners and
variety of musical gifts what he lacks in other respects. It is quite
impossible to do justice to this bird either in describing his bubbling,
effervescent life during the nesting season or in giving an adequate
idea of the effect produced upon the senses by his exquisitely beautiful
nocturnes. One March night some noise just outside my window awakened
me. I arose and raising the window listened. The full moon, almost in
the zenith, was flooding the landscape with a weird, soft light; the
shadows of the cedar hedge a few yards away lay black as ink; the very
air was heavy with the perfume of the jessamine abloom in a neighboring
forest. In the cedars a mocking bird sang to himself a sweet, dreamy
song, giving more complete expression to the mystery, the romance, the
passion, the rapturous content of a Southern moonlit night than any poem
that poet’s hand has ever written.
James Stephen Compton.