but it makes me both indignant and sick at heart to read the bloody
chronicles of most of the so-called “collectors.” How many embryo birds
they slay merely to gratify their morbid craze for gathering “clutches,”
as they suggestively call a set of eggs! Not long ago a collector
narrated, in an ornithological journal, the harrowing story of his
having rifled the nest of a hairy woodpecker five or six times in a
single season, the poor bird laying a new deposit after each burglary,
until at last she grew suspicious and sought a safer site for her nest.
The writer described his part of the performance with apparent gusto, as
if he had made a splendid contribution to science! If he must have a
collection of hairy woodpecker’s eggs, why not take a single “clutch,”
and then leave the bird to make her second deposit and rear her brood in
peace?
To my mind, many “professionals” shoot a score of birds where they ought
to shoot but one. The long record of slaughtered birds is sickening. The
Newgate Calendar scarcely furnishes a parallel. Even our most scientific
journals print many of these bloody annals. It is true, a reasonable
number of specimens must be collected for scientific purposes, but
surely no adequate excuse can be given for shooting hundreds of
individuals of the same species merely to have the honor of saying that
an astounding number of specimens were “taken.” If the cause of natural
history cannot be promoted without destroying the humane instincts of
the naturalist himself, the price is too great; it were better left
unpaid. A bird in the bush is worth forty in the hand, especially if the
forty are dead; worth more, too, I venture to add, to the cause of
science itself.
XVI.
THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION.
It is an open secret, and perhaps not a very profound one. I need not
prolong the reader’s suspense, if mayhap he should feel any, by assuming
a mysterious air, but may as well frankly divulge the secret at once.
There are times when melodrama is sadly out of place—if, indeed, it is
ever in place. What, then, is the secret of appreciation? It is simply
being _en rapport_ with the object or truth to be appreciated. No more
patent fact was ever declared than that which Saint Paul wrote:
“Spiritual things are spiritually discerned.” There must be mental
kinship, or there cannot be true valuation. Bring a depressed or
distracted mind to the most exhilarating service, and you will miss its
pith and point, and go away unrewarded.
The same truth obtains in our commerce with Nature, which, it would
seem, will not brook a rival in our hearts if we would win from her all
her treasured sweets. “Give me your whole mind, your whole attention,”
she says, “or I will close up every fountain of refreshment.” What
benefit will that man whose mind is absorbed in the affairs of the
market derive from a woodland stroll? What secret will the rustling
leaves speak to him, or the opening flowers, or the chirping birds? He
sees no transit of swift wings, and the sunshine dapples the
leaf-carpeted ground in vain for eyes that see only the ledger and
day-book in the sylvan haunt.
My own experience confirms the foregoing statements. For several months
one summer I felt depressed and abstracted on account of several
untoward circumstances which need not be described, for “every heart
knoweth its own bitterness.” In this mood I sometimes sauntered out to
my woodland haunts; but I saw very little, and what I did see bore the
stamp of triteness, and seemed as dull and languid as myself. My heart
was otherwhere. A secret, gnawing grief draws the thoughts inward, and
breaks the spell of the outer world, charm she never so sweetly. The
soul hopelessly hungering for the unattainable comes almost to despise
the blessings within its grasp. A-lack-a-day, that anything should ever
come between the heart and its gentle mistress, Nature! And so it was
that even the birds, my precious intimates, became a weariness both to
the flesh and the spirit.
Master Chickadee was nothing but a lump of flesh covered with
mezzo-tinted feathers, all prose, no poetry; a creature that I had once
invested with a rare charm (in my own mind), but now only a lout of a
bird, a buffoon, whose noisy chatter broke harshly into my gloomy
meditations. Once I had fairly revelled in the army of kaleidoscopic
warblers, and had called them to their faces all kinds of endearing
names, like a lover wooing a bride; but now, in my dejected frame of
mind, they were prosaic enough, and provokingly shy, and I felt too
indifferent even to ogle them with my glass as they tilted in the
tree-tops. What a humdrum life was the life of the birds, anyway, and
how indescribably humdrum my semi-frequent beat in the woods was
becoming!
But by and by, in the autumn, an event occurred that transformed my
inner world, dispelling the darkness, dissipating the clouds, bathing
all in sunshine. Then I hied to the fields and woods, and, behold, a
metamorphosis! The inner miracle had wrought an outer wonder. Never was
there “such mutual recognition vaguely sweet” between the autumn woods
and my appreciative heart. The ground, flecked with sunshine, filtering
through the browning leaves, became a work of mosaic fit for a king to
tread on, and the westerly breeze sang a pæan through the branches. And
how many birds there were! A flock of robins were chirping in the grove,
now and then breaking into song, as if they had forgotten that spring
was past and that it was unconventional for robin redbreast to sing in
the autumn; but they seemed to be willing to make a breach of the
_convenances_ to give me delight.
Numerous warblers chirped in the tree-tops, or swung out on the
upbuoying air to catch some ill-fated insect on the wing; and although I
could not identify many of them, I felt no annoyance, as I had at other
times, for I could truly “rejoice with those that do rejoice,” because I
had no sorrow of my own to distract my mind. I could have forgiven
almost any trick a bird had seen fit to play me. The brown creeper, just
from his haunt in some primeval forest of British America, went hitching
up a tree-bole in his own quaint way without even the courtesy of a
friendly how-d’-you-do; but I forgave the slight, and told him he was a
poet,—there was rhythm in every movement, and his feathers rhymed each
with its fellow.
Across the breezy hills to the river valley I made my way in lightsome
mood, finding birds a-plenty wherever I went. More than once the
song-sparrows broke into their autumnal twitter, aftermath of their
springtime choruses when they were in full tone; and occasionally the
Carolina wren uttered his stirring reveille, which, though perhaps not
tuneful in itself, seemed tuneful to me that day, because there was
music in my own mind. When you are in the right mood, even the distant
caw of the crow or the plaintive cry of the blue jay sets the harp of
your soul to melody; while the riotous piping of the cardinal grossbeak
makes you feel as if you were “married to immortal verse.”
But, alas! when “loathed melancholy, of Cerberus and blackest midnight
born,” is your unbidden companion, every overture of Nature is a burden,
an intrusion into the privacy of your grief, and—
“Vainly morning spreads her lure
Of a sky serene and pure.”
In a leaf-strewn arcade beneath the overarching bushes hard by the
river, were the merry juncos, my companions of the winter, which had
come back from their summer vacation in the north. How glad I was to
salute them and welcome them home! Their trig little forms, sprightly
motions, confident air of comradery, and merry trills were a joy to me.
And then I could not help wondering if any of them might be the same
birds I had met during the early summer on one of the green mountains of
Canada, where I had spent a day of rapturous delight. In the same
sequestered angle, autumn though it was, the phœbe bird brought back
reminiscences of spring, with his cheery whistle; while farther down the
valley his shy relative, the wood-pewee, complained dulcetly that winter
was coming to drive him from his pleasant summer haunts. Every sound,
whether joyful or sad, struck a responding chord in my heart, because
Nature had my undivided thought.
When the mind is distracted by sorrows it cannot shake off, it boots
little that the chirp of the chestnut-sided and cerulean warblers is
sharp and penetrating; that the call of the black-throated green,
black-throated blue and myrtle warblers is somewhat harsh; that the
Maryland yellow-throat expresses his alarm or disapproval in a note
still lower in the scale and quite rasping; that the Blackburnian and
parula warblers tilt about far up in the tree-tops, as if they scorned
the ground; that the black-throats and creepers dance airily about in
the bushes or lower branches of the trees, come confidingly near you, a
tiny interrogation point dangling from every eyelash, ask you what you
are about, what you do when you are at home, whether you have just come
from the hospital that you look so pale, and, having decided that you
are a harmless monomaniac, to say the worst, go about their playful toil
of capturing insects, apparently unmindful of your presence. But when
your heart is jolly and full of nature love, all these simple facts,
proving the large diversity of temperament in bird-land’s denizens, are
a source of joy to you; you note them, are glad on account of them,
though you scarcely know why.
In a quiet retreat just beyond a steep-graded railway-track the
black-throated green warblers were very abundant and unusually
rollicksome. It was strange how they could dash about in the thorn-trees
without impaling themselves on the terrible spears. One little fellow
swung out of a tree after a miller, which dropped upon a fence-post near
by. Why did the natty bird act so queerly? He danced about on the top of
the post, tried to pick up something, but was baffled in all his
efforts; then he scudded around the post a few inches below the top like
a nuthatch, uttering his harsh little chirp. At length I stepped up,
determined to solve the enigma. There was the solution; the miller had
wriggled into a deep hole in the post, so that the bird could not reach
it. With a slender stick I drew it out of its hiding-place, and placed
it on the top of the post; but whether the bird ever went back and
profited by my well-meant helpfulness I do not know. Begging the poor
miller’s pardon, I felt happy in befriending the charming fairy of a
bird. With gladness throbbing in every corpuscle, it was not in my place
to question Nature’s economy in making the sacrifice of one life
necessary to the sustenance of another.
Tramping on, I presently found myself in a marsh stretching back from
the river-bank. As I stood in the tangle of tall grass and weeds,
listening to the songs and twitters of various birds, the sentiment, if
not the precise lines, of Lowell, came to mind like a draught of
invigorating air,—
“Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight
Who cannot in their various incomes share,
From every season drawn, of shade and light,
Who sees in them but levels brown and bare.
Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free
On them its largess of variety,
For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare.”
But what was that sharp chirp? It instantly drew my thoughts from the
marsh itself and the poet’s tribute. Opera-glass in hand, I softly stole
near the bushy clump from which the sound came. Ah! there the bird was,
tilting uneasily on a slender twig. The swamp-sparrow! It was the first
time I had positively identified this bird in my own neighborhood,—not,
I suppose, because it had not been present often and again, but because
I had been too dull of sight to see it. Then came a glad memory. I
recalled the peculiar circumstances under which I had seen my first
swamp-sparrow, hundreds of miles away. During a visit to Boston and
vicinity, a year prior, I spent a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon with
Bradford Torrey, who needs no introduction to intelligent readers. We
walked out to some of his favorite haunts. It was an ideal October day,
and the charming New England landscape threw a spell over me that gave
me a kind of other-worldly feeling. My companion was all I had expected
him to be, and more,—a good talker and an appreciative listener,—and
even now, when I recall my saunter with this quiet, gentle bird-lover,
it seems more like a dream than a reality.
The afternoon had slipped well by when we came to a bush-fringed brook
and Mr. Torrey told me that there were swamp-sparrows in the thickets.
“How much I should like to see one!” I cried. “The swamp-sparrow is a
stranger to me.” “You shall have your wish gratified,” he replied; and
forthwith he climbed the fence, stalked to the other side of the stream,
and slowly, gently drove the chirping sparrows toward me, so that I
could see their markings plainly with my glass. How lovingly I ogled
them! I could not get my fill of the birds shown me by one whom I had
loved so long at a distance. It was an epoch in my poor life,—an epoch
in a double sense. Who will censure my feeling of gratified pride? In
the evening, after our stroll, as we walked to and fro on the platform
at the railway-station waiting for the train to start, I remarked: “Mr.
Torrey, I shall never forget my first meeting with the swamp-sparrow.”
“No,” he responded innocently, as if my humble remembrance would confer
an honor upon him; “whenever you see that bird hereafter, you will think
of me, won’t you?” I told him I should; and that evening in the marsh, a
year later, I kept my tryst with memory, while tears, half sad, half
glad, dimmed my eyes.
But hark! A little farther on, from the sparse bushes of a grassy bank,
came the swinging treble of a white-throated sparrow, like a votive
offering. What enchantment possessed the birds that evening? Had Orpheus
with his miracle-working harp come back to earth? I was half tempted to
believe for the nonce in the transmigration of souls, for the notes
drifted so sadly sweet on the still air, as if the fabled minstrel had
indeed returned to mundane realms. Among the thick clusters of weeds and
bushes that fringed a railway, which I pursued in my homeward walk, many
birds were going to roost,—sparrows, warblers, red-winged blackbirds,
and cardinal grossbeaks. My passing along alarmed them, and sent them
dashing from their leafy couches.
Thus the afternoon passed. I had not, perhaps, learned as many new
things about my kinsmen in plumes as on many other rambles, but I had
discovered the secret of appreciation; that the mind must be unharassed
by carking care or depressing sorrow to win the best from Nature. Give
me a lightsome heart, and I will trudge with any pedestrian. Give me a
heavy heart, and the weight clings to the soles of my feet like
barnacles to a ship’s bottom. Given the proper mood, the lines of an
American poet—no need to mention his name—have the ring of gospel
truth,—
“Nature, the supplement of man,
His hidden sense interpret can;
What friend to friend cannot convey
Shall the dumb bird instructed say.”
XVII.
BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS.
Even the most home-loving body may sometimes gain refreshment, and at
the same time have his mental vision broadened, by a jaunt to another
neighborhood; and if he has a hobby, he may beguile the days in riding
it, and thus evade, for a time at least, that most harrowing of all
maladies, homesickness. Well, to make a long story short, and a dull one
a little brighter, let me say at once that I have, more or less
recently, made several visits to various points of interest, and
everywhere have found delightful comradeship with the birds. First, I
shall speak of a trip to Montreal, that gem city on the St. Lawrence,
beautiful for situation as well as for other attractive features.
South of the city a mountain rears its green, symmetrical mass. True, it
is not very lofty as mountains go; but standing there alone in the midst
of a far stretching plain, it seems really majestic, especially to one
unused to great altitudes. It is a favorite pleasure-resort for
residents and visitors, having been converted into a beautiful park,
with winding paths and driveways, many shady nooks, with comfortable
benches to lounge on, and a tower on the summit, from which you can look
down upon a scene that is really enchanting. Nestling at the foot of the
mountain is the city, with its towers, steeples, well-laid streets, and
palatial residences; curving and gleaming far to the northeast and
southwest is the mighty St. Lawrence, its green banks holding it in
loving embrace far as the eye can reach; in another direction you trace
the Ottawa River meandering far to the northwest like a ribbon of
silver, and dividing into two branches a few miles away, thus forming
the island of Montreal; beyond the St. Lawrence is the Lake of Two
Mountains, and far away in the misty distance toward the south and
southwest, are the blue outlines of the Green and Adirondack ranges; in
other directions the plain stretches level until it melts in the hazy
distance, and is dotted with farm-houses, villages, well-cultivated
fields, and green woodlands.
One afternoon a few unoccupied hours were at my disposal. I determined
to spend them on Mount Royal, as the eminence is called. A car wheels
you up an inclined plane, almost perpendicular near the top, at least
two-thirds of the way to the summit. Having filled myself with the scene
from the tower, I was starting off to make a tour of the park, when my
footsteps were arrested by a quaint new song coming from a clump of
trees farther down the declivity. Interest in everything else vanished
in a moment. A good deal of time was spent before I could get a sight of
the minstrel. Much to my surprise, he turned out to be a thrush; the
species, however, could not be determined at the time for lack of my
opera-glass, as the bird was perched rather high in a tree. In the brief
time at my disposal just then, I saw a number of other birds, and
resolved to spend a day on the mountain studying them, as soon as other
duties would permit.
That day came in good time. An early morning hour found me skirting the
steep sides of the mountain, alert for feathered dwellers. It was the
tenth of July, too late for the best songs and for finding birds in the
nest, and yet I felt fairly well satisfied with the results of the day’s
excursion. Presently the song of the thrush, whose identity I had come
to settle, was heard in the copse. A look at him with my glass proved
him to be the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, only a migrant in my State, and
one that pursues his pilgrimage both to the north and south in
patience-trying silence.
To my ear the song was sweet, almost hauntingly so. Some notes were
quite like certain strains of the wood-thrush’s rich song, but others
seemed more ringing and bell-like, and the whole tune was more skilfully
and smoothly rendered,—that is, with less labored effort. Still, I am
loath to say that the general effect of this bird’s song is more
pleasing than that of the wood-thrush, for there is something far-away
and dreamy about the minstrelsy of the latter that one does not hear in
the song of any other species.
The veeries evidently had nests or younglings among the bushes, for they
called in harsh, alarmed tones as I entered their secluded haunts, but I
had not the good fortune to find a nest. Indeed, it was too late to
discover any nests at all, except such as had been deserted. But, to my
great delight, I found that the jolly juncos breed on the mountain, for
there they were carrying food to their little ones, which had left the
nursery and were ensconced in the thick foliage. These birds are winter
residents in my own neighborhood, but in the spring they hie to this and
other localities of the same and higher latitudes to spend the summer.
It was refreshing to meet my little winter intimates. They were quite
lyrical, but their little trills did not seem any more tuneful here in
their breeding-haunts than in their winter residences, especially when
Spring pours her subtle essence into their veins.
Nothing surprised me more than to find song-sparrows on the top of the
mountain, whereas they are usually the tenants of the swamps and other
lowlands in my neighborhood. Here they were rearing families on the
mountain’s crest as well as along the streams that laved the mountain’s
base. They also sang their tinkling roundels in both places, sometimes
ringing them out so loudly that they could be distinctly heard above the
clatter of the street cars.
At one place, in a cluster of half-dead trees and saplings, a colony of
warblers were tilting about; all of them only migrants about my home in
Ohio, but breeding here. There were old and young creeping warblers, the
elders singing their trills in lively fashion, and the young ones
twittering coaxingly for food. Here were also a number of
redstarts,—sonnets in black and gold,—the young beseeching their parents
constantly for more luncheon. A beautiful chestnut-sided warbler wheeled
into sight and reeled off his jolly little trill, and then gave his
half-grown baby a tidbit from his beak. On another part of the mountain
the song of a black-throated green warbler fell pensively on the ear,
coming from the thick branches of a tall tree, like a requiem from a
broken heart. Presently he flitted down into plain view, his curiosity
drawing him toward his auditor sitting beneath on the grass. No doubt
his mate was crouched on her nest far up in one of the trees.
In a thicket on the acclivity of the mountain, I heard a loud, appealing
call, which was new to me; and yet it evidently came from the throat of
a young bird pleading for its dinner. By dint of a good deal of peering
about and patient waiting, I at length found it to be a juvenile
chestnut-sided warbler. Lying on the ground beneath the green canopy of
the bushes, I watched it a long time, hoping to see the old bird feed
it; but she was too shy to come near, although the youngster grew almost
desperate in its entreaties. An old nest in the crotch of a sapling near
at hand announced where the little fellow had, no doubt, been hatched.
It was a beautiful nest, as compactly built as the cottage of a
goldfinch, and was decorated, like a red-eyed vireo’s nest, with tiny
balls of spider-web and strips of paper.
Not far away from this charmed spot a red-eyed vireo had hung her basket
to the horizontal fork of a small swaying branch. It was still fresh,
and in such good condition as to convince me that it had just been
completed by the little basket-maker, which had not yet deposited her
dainty eggs in the cup. No other bird on the mountain sang as much as
this vireo, with the sharp red eyes and golden breast. On the whole, I
doubt not that Mount Royal would be an almost ideal place for bird
study, if one could spend the month of June on its wooded summit,
slopes, and acclivities.
The next visit to be described was made to the somewhat celebrated
Zoölogical Garden at Cincinnati, Ohio, which contains a really
magnificent collection of animals and birds. However, a description of
the latter must suffice, although the animals interested me almost as
deeply. There are many cages and aviaries containing rare species of
feathered folk, the only difficulty being that they are not so
thoroughly labelled as they might be for the convenience of visitors,
many of whom are sufficiently interested to want to know at least the
common names of the birds. All curators and superintendents of such
institutions should recognize the importance of complete and systematic
labelling of the specimens in their care.
The first aviary at which I stopped consisted of a collection of
bright-hued and sweet-toned birds, most of them foreigners. Here one
could revel in variety; for there were crimson-eared waxbills from West
Africa, black-headed finches from India, cut-throat finches and other
dainty folk from across the sea, with indigo-birds, nonpareils,
goldfinches, and song-sparrows from our own land. Of these, the
nonpareils, or painted finches, were the most gifted singers, having
loud, clear voices that rang far above the voices of their
fellow-prisoners. No birds make daintier pets than these pretty
creatures, with their delicate blue and red costumes. The next best
singer in this collection was the American goldfinch, which was not far
behind the nonpareil, and really excelled him in one respect,—that is,
his song was more prolonged and varied.