Hancock to Great Blue, and the chill of the fern-festooned shadow of the
cliff that I had just left seemed to go with me all along. It was
especially dark and chill in the little gully and I reached the summit
of the big hill too late to find the sun. There, where daybreak had
breathed of spring, nightfall shivered in the bite of winter winds. A
million electric glints splintered the purple dusk to northward, but
there was no warmth in them even when they fused into the glow of the
great city. With the shadow of night the cruel grip of winter had shut
down on the hilltop and I knew again, as I had known in the golden glow
of the morning, that it was midwinter. The dwarfed and storm-toughened
shrubs seemed to crouch a little closer to the adamantine earth, and
their frost-stiffened twigs sang in the bitter north wind. I felt the
chill in my own marrow and eagerly tramped the ringing granite toward
home.
SOME JANUARY BIRDS
It seems to be our lot this winter to have April continually smiling up
in the face of January. Again and again the north wind has come down
upon us and set his adamantine face against all such folly. The turf has
become flint; the ice has been eight inches thick on pond and placid
stream, and the very next morning, maybe, the soft air has breathed of
spring, and bluebirds have twittered deprecatingly as if glad to be
here, but altogether ashamed to be found so out of season. As a matter
of fact, of course, some bluebirds winter with us, but they don’t warble
“cheerily O” in the teeth of the north winds. On those days you must
seek them in the cuddly seclusion of dense evergreens, more than likely
among close-set cedars where the blue cedar-berries are still sweet and
plenty. But we have had many days in this January of 1909 when the
bluebirds have had a right to feel called to at least take a hurried
glimpse at the bird boxes or the holes in the old apple trees, just as
people take a flying trip to the summer cottage on a warm Sunday; they
know they can’t stay, but it is delightful to just look it over and
plan.
I think the crows, though they are tough old winter residents, have
something of the same impulse to plan nests and make eyes and cooing
conversation, one to another. To-day I heard, in the pine treetops of a
little pasture wood where several pair nest every year, the unmistakable
note. In that great song of Solomon which the whole out-door world will
chorus in the full tide of spring the crows have the bass part, no
doubt, but they sing it none the less musically. It is surprising what a
croak can become, between lovers.
I saw them slip away silently and shamefacedly as I approached, and I
knew them for callow youngsters, high-school age, let us say, to whom
shy love-making is never quite out of season. But they got their
come-uppance the moment they sailed out of the grove, for their
appearance was greeted with a wild and raucous chorus of crow
ha-ha-ha’s. High in the air, flapping round and round in silence above
the pines, a half dozen riotous youngsters of their own age had been
observing them, chuckling no doubt and winking to one another, and now
that the culprits were driven out into the open where all could see
them the chorus of jeers knew no bounds. It was as unmistakable as the
caressing tone, this jeering laughter. You had but to hear it to know
very well what they were saying. The crow language has but one word,
which in type is caw. But their inflections and tone qualities are such
that it is easy to make it express the whole diatonic scale of primitive
emotion.
Many of our summer birds whose winter range barely includes us seem to
be more than usually prevalent this winter. It may be that the mild
season has to do with this, but it is equally probable that a plenitude
of food is more directly responsible. Seed-eating birds are particularly
in luck this year. I do not know of a winter when the birch trees have
fruited so plentifully, nor have I noticed so many flocks of song
sparrows as this year. I find them twittering happily along through the
wood, hanging in quite unsparrow-like attitudes from slender birch
twigs, busy robbing the pendant cones of their tiny seeds. In the summer
you know the song sparrow as a very erect bird. He sits on some topmost
twig of cedar or berry bush and pours forth quite the cheeriest and
sweetest home song of the pasture land. Or perchance he flies, and the
usual short and oft-repeated refrain seems to be broken up by flutter of
his wings into a longer, softer, and more varied song that has less of
challenge and more of sweet content in it. In his winter notes, which
are really nothing but a cheery twittering, I always think I hear
something of the mellow singing quality of this song of the wing.
To-day I saw a sharp-shinned hawk, hunting noiselessly, no doubt for
these same sparrows. He flitted among the treetops like a nervous flash
of slaty gray, and was gone so quickly that had I not heard the welt of
his wing tips on the resisting air as he turned a sharp corner I should
never have seen him. Most of our hawks, though well known to take an
occasional chicken, are mouse and grasshopper eaters. The sharp-shinned
is the real chicken hawk, for he eats more birds than anything else,
though the small songsters of the thicket form the greater part of his
diet. I have rarely seen him here in winter, though his summer nest is
common in the deep woods, with its cream-buff eggs heavily blotched with
chocolate brown. Just as the plenitude of food of their kind kept the
song sparrows with us to enjoy the mild weather, so I think the
multitude of song sparrows and other succulent titbits made the
sharp-shinned hawk willing to winter where he had summered.
All these birds which are wintering as far north as they dare seem to
come out and cheer up in the April-like days, but in those which are
distinctly January you may tramp the woods for days and not see one of
them. The flicker is a rather common bird with us the winter through. In
a warm January rain you will often surprise him wandering about in the
thawed fields, looking for iced crickets and half concealed grubs and
chrysalids among the stubble. Let the snow come deep and the wind blow
out of the north and the flicker vanishes from the landscape. It is as
if he had gone into a hole and pulled his thirty-six nicknames in after
him, so completely has the flicker disappeared. He is a strong-winged
bird and I have always been willing to think that at such times he
simply whirled aloft on the northerly gale and never lighted till he was
a few hundred miles to the south. He could do it easily enough. He would
find bare ground and good feeding in the tidewater country of Virginia
when New England is three feet under snow and the zero gales are
drifting it deeper and freezing the heart out of the very trees in the
wood.
The other day, though, I caught one of them sitting in the hollow of an
ancient apple tree. There was an opening of some size facing the south
into which the midday sun shone with refreshing warmth. Here, sheltered
from the bite of the north wind the flicker had tucked himself away and
was enjoying his sunny nook much as pigeons do in just the right angle
of the city cornices. But he was better off than the pigeons for there
were fat grubs in the decaying wood that formed his shelter and he could
use his meal ticket without leaving his lodgings. Our woods are full of
such hostelries and they shelter more of the woodland creatures than we
know as we tramp carelessly by.
But if the bluebirds and flickers hide themselves securely through the
coldest winter days and the song sparrows and even the crows are apt to
be scarce and subdued, as is certainly the case in my woods, there are
other feathered folk who seem to delight in the cold and be never so gay
as when the sky is leaden, the wind bites, and the frost flakes of snow
squalls let the sun struggle through the upper atmosphere because it is
too bitter cold to really snow. Of these the chickadees lead. They seem
to be never so merry as when they hear the sweet music of the tinkle of
cold-tense snow crystals on the bare twigs.
In spite of the soft raiment in which the weather garbs itself to-day it
is only three days ago that the great organ of the woods piped to the
northerly wind as it breathed pedal notes through the pines and piped
shrill in the chestnut twigs. And there was more than organ music. The
white and red oaks, still holding fast to their brown leaves, gave forth
the rattling of a million delicate castanets, and the wind drew like a
soft bow across the finer strings of the birches so that all among
slender twigs you heard this fine tone of a muted violin singing a
little tender song of joy. For the trees were sadly weary of being
frozen one day and thawed the next. They thought the real winter was at
hand when the cold would
[Illustration: There are other feathered folk who seem to delight in the
cold]
be continuous and the snow deep. All we northern-bred folk love the real
winter and feel defrauded of our birthright if we do not get it.
Strangest of all were the beeches. They have held the lower of their
tan-pale leaves and with them have whispered of snow all winter long.
Whatever the day, you had but to stand among them with closed eyes and
you could hear the beech word for snow going tick, tick, tick, all
about. It seemed as if flakes must be falling and hitting the leaves so
plainly they spoke it. Now that the flakes were beginning the beeches
never said a word, but just stood mute and watched it come and listened
to the music of all the other trees. Or perhaps they listened to
something finer yet. It was only in their enchanted silence that I
thought I heard it. Now and then the wind held its breath and the oak
leaf castanets ceased, and then for a second I would be sure of it; an
elfin tinkle so crepuscular, so gossamer fine that it was less a sound
than a thought, the ringing of snow crystal on snow crystal as the
feathery flakes touched and separated in the frost-keen air. It surely
was there and the beech trees heard it and stood breathless in solemn
joy at the sound.
The chickadees were very happy that day. Little groups of half a dozen
flipped gaily from tree to tree, bustling awkwardly and jovially about
picking up food continually, though it is rarely possible to see what
they get as they glean from limb to limb. Winter is the time for
sociability, say the chickadees, and they welcome to their number the
red-breasted nuthatches that have followed the season down from the
Maine woods. The chickadee in his cheery endeavors to take his own in
the way of food where he finds it does some surprising acrobatic feats,
but they are almost always clumsy and you expect him momentarily to
break his neck. Not so the nuthatch. He runs along the under side of a
limb with his back to the ground as easily as he would run along the
upper side. He comes down the smooth trunk of a pine head down, just as
a squirrel does, his feet seeming to be reversible and to stick like
clamps wherever he cares to put them. All the time his busy little head
is poking here and there with sinuous agility and his slim, pointed bill
is gathering in the same invisible food, no doubt, that the chickadee is
after. And as he eats he talks, a quaint high-pitched, nasal drawl of
yna, yna, yna, that gets on your nerves after a while and you are glad
to see him let go his upside-down hold, turn a flip-flap in the air,
and light on another tree some distance away. I think Stockton got his
idea of negative gravity from watching the nuthatches. If I were mean
enough to shoot one I should as soon expect to see him fall up into the
sky as down to the earth, so usually regardless and defiant is he toward
the proper and accepted force of gravity.
Quite prim and upright as compared with these shifty wrigglers is the
third boon companion of these winter day expeditions, the downy
woodpecker. You are not so apt to find him as the other two, for his
work is deeper and more laborious and they are likely to flit flightily
away while he still drills and ogles. Yet you can hear him much farther
away than the others, and it is not difficult to slip quietly up and see
him at his work. Prim and erect he stands on some rotten stub, his
stiff tail-feathers jabbing it to hold him steady, his head now driving
his nail-like bill with taps like those of a busy carpenter’s hammer,
anon speeding up till it has almost the effect of an electric buzzer.
Then he looks solemnly with one eye in at the hole that he has made,
prods again eagerly and pulls out a fat white grub, gulps it, and goes
hop-toading up the stub looking for more probe possibilities. Or perhaps
he writes scrawly Ms. in the atmosphere as he flits jerkily over to the
next tree that pleases him.
Thus though not of a feather these three flock together in the biting
cold of winter days and seem to be cheery and courageous if not exactly
contented. They are all hole-born and hole-building birds and when night
overtakes them they know well where to find wind-proof hollow trunks
where they may snuggle, round and warm in their fluffed out feathers
till dawn calls them to work again.
Yet, with all the yearning of the trees and the joy of the woodland
creatures in the prospect of snow it ended in no snow storm. All day
long the sun shone palely through a frost fog and the frost crystals
sprang out of it at the touch of the icy wind and tinkled into
snowflakes right before your eyes. The wind swept a feathery fluff
together in corners but at nightfall when the moon shone through a
clearer air and a near-zero temperature the crystals had begun to
evaporate, and by morning hardly a trace of them was left. To-day it is
April-like; to-morrow we may have zero weather again and before these
words get into print perhaps the yearned-for snow will have come and
with its kindly shelter covered the succulent green things of pasture
and woodland that need it so badly.
It is wonderful, though, how they stand freezing and thawing and yet
remain green, firm in texture, and wholesome. The birds of the air have
feathers which they can fluff out and make into a down puff for a winter
night covering. Here in the pine grove is the pipsissewa starring the
ground with its rich green clumps. It is as full of color and sap,
seemingly, as it was in July when its fragrant wax-like blossoms starred
its green with pink. No cell of the fleshy texture of its green leaves
is broken nor is there a tarnish in their gloss. Its seedpod stands dry
on a dry scape in place of its flower, but that alone shows the
difference between summer and winter. Yet it stands naked to the north
wind protected by neither feathers nor fur. Who can tell me by what
principle it remains so? Why is the thin-leaved pyrola and the partridge
berry, puny creeping vine that it is, still green and unharmed by frost
when the tough, leathery leaves of the great oak tree not far off are
withered and brown?
Chlorophyl, and cellular structure, and fibro-vascular bundles in the
one plant wither and lose color and turn brown at a touch of frost. In
another not ten feet away they stand the rigors of our northern winters
and come out in the spring, seemingly unharmed and fit to carry on the
internal economy of the plant’s life until it shall produce new leaves
to take their places. Then in the mild air of early summer these winter
darers fade and die. Here in the swamp the tough and woody
cat-o’-nine-tails is brown and papery to the tip of its six-foot stalk.
The blue flag that was a foot high is brown and withered alongside it,
yet the tender young leaves of the _Ranunculus repens_ growing between
the two and not having a tenth of their strength are tender and young
and green and unharmed still. The first two died at a touch of the
frost. The buttercup leaves have been frozen and thawed a score of times
without hurt.
You might guess that the swamp water has an elixir in it that saves the
life of the repens; but how about the _Ranunculus bulbosus_, European
cousin of the repens? That grows on the sandy hillside, and even the
root tips that extend below its little white bulb have been frozen stiff
a score of times since the woody stemmed goldenrod beside it dropped
dead, sere and brown, at the first good freeze. Yet to-day in the
smiling sun I found the young leaves of the _Ranunculus bulbosus_ green
and succulent and unharmed of their cellular structure, and so I am sure
they will remain, under the snow or bare, as the case may be when the
first yellow bud pushes upward from that white bulb where it is now
patiently waiting the word. Our botanists who study heroically to find
some minute variation in form that they may add another Latin name to
their text-books might study these variations in habit and result and
tell me the reason for them. I’d be glad to buy some more books on
botany; but none that I have seen have so far within their pages any
explanation of this puzzle.
WHEN THE SNOW CAME
I haven’t seen my friend the cottontailed rabbit for some days. All the
winter, so far, he has frequented his little summer camp on the southern
slope of the hill, well up toward the top, among the red oaks. Here in a
little tangle of tiny undergrowth and brown leaves, with a fallen trunk
for overhead shelter, you might find him any forenoon. He had backed
into this place and trampled and snuggled till he had a round and cosy
form just a bit bigger than himself, where the sun might warm him until
he was drowsy and he could sit in a brown ball with his feet tucked
beneath his fluffy fur, his ears laid along his back, and his eyes half
closed in dreamy contentment.
I could step quietly up the path and see him sometimes a second before
he saw me, but only for a second. Then his dream of succulent bark of
wild apple trees and other delicacies of the winter woods would pass
with a single thump of his sturdy hind feet as he struck the earth a
half dozen feet away from his snug lodging, and more thumps and the
bobbing of a white tail would carry him out of sight in a flash. He bobs
and thumps just as a deer does when you surprise him in the forest, and
flies a white flag in just the same way. Both go jerking away like
sturdy but nervous sprites, and though a deer in the forest is supposed
to be the epitome of grace, I can never see it. The startled fawn and
the startled bunny are both too eager to get on to be graceful.
We have just had some touches of real
[Illustration: Here in a little tangle of tiny undergrowth and brown
leaves, with a fallen trunk for overhead shelter, you might find him
any forenoon]
winter and these have sent the cottontail to the seclusion of his
burrow, where he lacks the health-giving warmth of the sun, it is true,
but where he is snug and comfortable beneath the frost line. Like the
rabbit most of the wild creatures of the wood seem to endure the snow
with cheerful philosophy, but I am convinced that few of them like it.
It hides their food from them, and if it is deep or a strong crust makes
its surface difficult of penetration its long-continued presence mean
short rations or even starvation and death. The squirrels have some
stores within hollow trunks and these are available at any season, but
much of their winter food is buried helter-skelter beneath brown leaves
and too deep snow shuts them off from it. The fox must range farther and
pounce more surely, for the field mice which are his bread and butter
are squeaking about their usual business in pearly tunnels where he may
not reach them. The woodchucks are tucked away for the winter, the
skunks are dozing fitfully on short rations, hungry but inert, and even
Brer Rabbit does not venture out of his hole for days at a time when his
enemies, winter and rough weather, are upon him.
Yet if the furred and feathered people of pasture and woodland have no
occasion to love the snow it is far different with the trees and shrubs
and tender plants of the out-door world. These have yearned for it with
love and a faith that has rarely lacked fulfilment. They talked about it
incessantly, each in the voice of its kind, the big forest oaks with the
cheery rustle of sturdy burghers, the little scrub oaks with the
tittle-tattle of small-natured folk. Let the wind blow north or south
or high or low the birches sang a little silky song of snow and the
pines hummed or roared to the same refrain. Then it came, “announced by
all the trumpets of the sky,” as Emerson says, but muted trumpets that
blared without sound. The eyes saw the flourish of them, the nose mayhap
whiffed the rich odor of the storm. You could see it in the sky and feel
the light touch of its unwonted air on your cheek, but you could not say
that the wind blew north or blew south when the culmination of signs
made you sure of it. The storm may bleat along the hillside like a lost
lamb or roar high above in the clashings of the infinite skies after it
is well under way, but always before it begins is this little breathless
pause between the dying of one wind and the birth of another.
So it was that the first of this snow came to the woods. In the hush of
expectation there was a certain feeling of awe. The trees felt it as
much as I did and stood as breathless and expectant. Instead of clearly
defined clouds, the whole air seemed to thrill with the dusky gray
presence of a spirit out of unknown space, of whose beneficence we might
hope, but of whom we were not without dread. And so the dusk of the
storm we hoped for gloomed down on us in the breathless stillness and
tiny flakes slipped down so quietly that the touch of their ghost
fingers on my cheek was the first that I knew of their actual coming.
The pine boughs high over my head caught these first flakes and held
them lovingly and let them slip through their fingers only after many
caresses, and soon through all the pine wood you could hear a little
sigh that was a purr of contentment in the first faint breathing of the
north wind bearing many flakes.
Thus the snow comes to the woods. You can see its portent glooming in
the sky for hours beforehand, smell it in the rich, still air and feel
its touch on your cheek. When I stepped out from under the cathedral
gloom of the space beneath the pines, I found the air full of flakes
whirling down from the north and the field white with them.
Standing in the midst of the storm in the field, you have a chance to
see something of its color, for after all falling snow is only
relatively white. Looking toward the dense, dark foliage of the pine
wood, you see it at its best, especially across the wind, for the
contrast is most vivid and the color most distinct. Each individual
flake is so distinct and so white, from those near you, which go
scurrying earthward as if in a great hurry, to those of the distance,
which float leisurely down. Look again up the wind toward the gray of
the hard-wood forest and you shall find the falling hosts almost as gray
as the wood which they half blot out. But if you would see black snow,
you have but to lift your eyes to the leaden gray sky out of which, as
you see them from below, flakes float in black blots that erase
themselves only when they lie at your feet. In open wells in the deep
wood you can see this still more definitely as you look up, a black snow
falling all about you, to be changed to spotless white by some miracle
of contact with the earth.
In the deep woods, too, you hear the cry of the snow, not the song of
the trees in the joy of its coming, but the voices of the flakes
themselves, their little shrill cries as they touch leaf or twig. To
the pines that held up soft arms of welcome and clasp them close and
will not let them go away though each bough is weighted down, they
whisper a soft little cooing word that is surely “love” in any language.
No wonder it is warm under pine boughs in a snow-storm. The great trees
glow with the happiness of it and the radiance of their delight filters
down to you as you stand beneath. The flakes seem to love the bare,
smooth twigs of the hard-wood maples less, they give them just a pat and
a gentle word of greeting as they go by, and they touch the birches
almost flippantly. Among the fine pointed tridents of the pasture
cedars, however, they linger somewhat as they do among the pines, though
their song here is of jovial friendship only, with even something
waggish about it. They linger in groups among the cedar boughs for
awhile, but often start up in gentle glee and shake themselves clear,
leaving the tree in a sort of blank dismay until more of their fellows
come to take their places. There is a little swish of fairy laughter as
they do this, as of the snickering of fat bogles as they play pranks in
the white wilderness.