The lover of birds who has spent the day in the field puts away his
glasses at nightfall, looking forward to a walk after dark only as a
chance to hear the call of nocturnal birds or to catch the whirr of a
passing wing. But some bright moonlight night in early May, or again in
mid September, unsheath your glasses and tie them, telescope-fashion, to a
window-ledge or railing. Seat yourself in an easy position and focus on
the moon. Shut out all earthly scenes from your mind and imagine yourself
wandering amid those arid wastes. What a scene of cosmic desolation! What
vast deserts, and gaping craters of barren rock! The cold, steel-white
planet seems of all things most typical of death.
But those specks passing across its surface? At first you imagine they are
motes clogging the delicate blood-vessels of the retina; then you wonder
if a distant host of falling meteors could have passed. Soon a larger,
nearer mote appears; the moon and its craters are forgotten and with a
thrill of delight you realise that they are birds--living, flying
birds--of all earthly things typical of the most vital life! Migration is
at its height, the chirps and twitters which come from the surrounding
darkness are tantalising hints telling of the passing legions. Thousands
and thousands of birds are every night pouring northward in a swift,
invisible, aerial stream.
As a projecting pebble in mid-stream blurs the transparent water with a
myriad bubbles, so the narrow path of moon-rays, which our glass reveals,
cute a swath of visibility straight through the host of birds to our eager
eyes. How we hate to lose an instant's opportunity! Even a wink may allow
a familiar form to pass unseen. If we can use a small telescope, the field
of view is much enlarged. Now and then we recognise the flight of some
particular species,--the swinging loop of a woodpecker or goldfinch, or
the flutter of a sandpiper.
It has been computed that these birds sometimes fly as much as a mile or
more above the surface of the earth, and when we think of the tiny,
fluttering things at this terrible height, it takes our breath away. What
a panorama of dark earth and glistening river and ocean must be spread out
beneath them! How the big moon must glow in that rarefied air! How
diminutive and puerile must seem the houses and cities of human
fashioning!
The instinct of migration is one of the most wonderful in the world. A
young bob-white and a bobolink are hatched in the same New England field.
The former grows up and during the fall and winter forms one of the covey
which is content to wander a mile or two, here and there, in search of
good feeding grounds. Hardly has the bobolink donned his first full dress
before an irresistible impulse seizes him. One night he rises up and up,
ever higher on fluttering wings, sets his course southward, gives you a
glimpse of him across the moon, and keeps on through Virginia to Florida,
across seas, over tropical islands, far into South America, never content
until he has put the great Amazon between him and his far distant
birthplace.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
William Cullen Bryant.
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