As the whirling winds of winter's edge strip the trees bare of their last
leaves, the leaden sky of the eleventh month seems to push its cold face
closer to earth. Who can tell when the northern sparrows first arrive? A
whirl of brown leaves scatters in front of us; some fall back to earth;
others rise and perch in the thick briers,--sombre little white-throated
and tree sparrows! These brown-coated, low-voiced birds easily attract our
attention, the more now that the great host of brilliant warblers has
passed, just as our hearts warm toward the humble poly-pody fronds
(passing them by unnoticed when flowers are abundant) which now hold up
their bright greenness amid all the cold.
But all the migrants have not left us yet by any means, and we had better
leave our boreal visitors until mid-winter's blasts show us these hardiest
of the hardy at their best.
We know little of the ways of the gaunt herons on their southward journey,
but day after day, in the marshes and along the streams, we may see the
great blues as they stop in their flight to rest for a time.
The cold draws all the birds of a species together. Dark hordes of
clacking grackles pass by, scores of red-winged blackbirds and cowbirds
mingle amicably together, both of dark hue but of such unlike matrimonial
habits. A single male red-wing, as we have seen, may assume the cares of a
harem of three, four, or five females, each of which rears her
brown-streaked offspring in her own particular nest, while the valiant
guardian keeps faithful watch over his small colony among the reeds and
cat-tails. But little thought or care does mother cowbird waste upon her
offspring. No home life is hers--merely a stealthy approach to the nest of
some unsuspecting yellow warbler, or other small bird, a hastily deposited
egg, and the unnatural parent goes on her way, having shouldered all her
household cares on another. Her young may be hatched and carefully reared
by the patient little warbler mother, or the egg may spoil in the deserted
nest, or be left in the cold beneath another nest bottom built over it;
little cares the cowbird.
The ospreys or fish hawks seem to circle southward in pairs or trios, but
some clear, cold day the sky will be alive with hawks of other kinds. It
is a strange fact that these birds which have the power to rise so high
that they fairly disappear from our sight choose the trend of terrestrial
valleys whenever possible, in directing their aerial routes. Even the
series of New Jersey hills, flattered by the name of the Orange Mountains,
seem to balk many hawks which elect to change their direction and fly to
the right or left toward certain gaps or passes. Through these a raptorial
stream pours in such numbers during the period of migration that a person
with a foreknowledge of their path in former years may lie in wait and
watch scores upon scores of these birds pass close overhead within a few
hours, while a short distance to the right or left one may watch all day
without seeing a single raptor. The whims of migrating birds are beyond
our ken.
Sometimes, out in the broad fields, one's eyes will be drawn accidentally
upward, and a great flight of hawks will be seen--a compact flock of
intercircling forms, perhaps two or three hundred in all, the whole number
gradually passing from view in a southerly direction, now and then sending
down a shrill cry. It is a beautiful sight, not very often to be seen near
a city--unless watched for.
To a dweller in a city or its suburbs I heartily commend at this season
the forming of this habit,--to look upward as often as possible on your
walks. An instant suffices to sweep the whole heavens with your eye, and
if the distant circling forms, moving in so stately a manner, yet so
swiftly, and in their every movement personifying the essence of wild and
glorious freedom,--if this sight does not send a thrill through the
onlooker, then he may at once pull his hat lower over his eyes and concern
himself only with his immediate business. The joys of Nature are not for
such as he; the love of the wild which exists in every one of us is, in
him, too thickly "sicklied o'er" with the veneer of convention and
civilisation.
Even as late as November, when the water begins to freeze in the tiny cups
of the pitcher plants, and the frost brings into being a new kind of
foliage on glass and stone, a few insect-eaters of the summer woods still
linger on. A belated red-eyed vireo may be chased by a snowbird, and when
we approach a flock of birds, mistaking them at a distance for purple
finches, we may discover they are myrtle warblers, clad in the faded
yellow of their winter plumage. In favoured localities these brave little
birds may even spend the entire winter with us.
One of the best of November's surprises may come when all hope of late
migrants has been given up. Walking near the river, our glance falls on
what might be a painter's palate with blended colours of all shades
resting on the smooth surface of the water. We look again and again,
hardly believing our eyes, until at last the gorgeous creature takes to
wing, and goes humming down the stream, a bit of colour tropical in its
extravagance--and we know that we have seen a male wood, or summer, duck
in the full grandeur of his white, purple, chestnut, black, blue, and
brown. Many other ducks have departed, but this one still swims among the
floating leaves on secluded waterways.
Now is the time when the woodcock rises from his swampy summer home and
zigzags his way to a land where earthworms are still active. Sometimes in
our walks we may find the fresh body of one of these birds, and an upward
glance at the roadside will show the cause--the cruel telegraph wires
against which the flight of the bird has carried it with fatal velocity.
One of the greatest pleasures which November has to give us is the joy of
watching for the long lines of wild geese from the Canada lakes. Who can
help being thrilled at the sight of these strong-winged birds, as the
V-shaped flock throbs into view high in air, beating over land and water,
forest and city, as surely and steadily as the passing of the day behind
them. One of the finest of November sounds is the "Honk! honk!" which
comes to our ears from such a company of geese,--musical tones "like a
clanking chain drawn through the heavy air."
At the stroke of midnight I have been halted in my hurried walk by these
notes. They are a bit of the wild north which may even enter within a
city, and three years ago I trapped a fine gander and a half a dozen of
his flock in the New York Zoological Park, where they have lived ever
since and reared their golden-hued goslings, which otherwise would have
broken their shells on some Arctic waste, with only the snowbirds to
admire, and to be watched with greedy eyes by the Arctic owls.
A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite tender sky,
The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields,
And the wild geese sailing high;
And ever on upland and lowland,
The charm of the goldenrod--
Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.
W. H. Carruth.