of me, so vigorous a piece of work that I was persuaded the workman
could be nobody but a pileated woodpecker. A long time I stood with my
gaze fastened upon the tree from which the noise seemed to come. Would
the fellow never show himself? Yes, he put his head out from behind
a limb at last (what a fiery crest!), saw me on the instant, and was
gone like a flash. Then from a little distance he set up a resounding
halloo. This was only the second time that birds of his kind had been
seen hereabout, but the voice had been heard daily, and more than once
I had noticed what I could have no doubt were nest-holes of their
making. One of these, on Buck Hill,--freshly cut, if appearances went
for anything,--I undertook to play the spy upon; but if the nest was
indeed in use the birds were too wary for me, or I was very unfortunate
in my choice of hours. Time was precious, and the secret seemed likely
to cost more than it would bring, with so many other matters inviting
my attention. Nest or no nest, I was glad to be within the frequent
sound of that wild, ringing, long-drawn shout, a true voice of the
wilderness; as if the Hebrew prophecy were fulfilled, and the mountains
and the hills had found a tongue.
It was not until the sixth day that I went to Lincoln Heights, a place
worth all the rest of the countryside, I soon came to think, with the
single exception of Cedar Creek ravine. A winding wood road carried me
thither (the distance may be two miles; but I have little idea what it
is, though I covered it once or twice a day for the next four days),
and might have been made--half made, just to my liking--for my private
convenience. I believe I never met any one upon it, going or coming.
The glory of the spot is its trees; but with me, as things fell out,
these took in the order of time a second place. My first admiration
was not for them, admirable as they were, but for a few birds in the
tops of them. In short, at my first approach to the Heights (there
is no thought of climbing, but only the most gradual of ascents) I
began to hear from the branches overhead, now here, now there, an
occasional weak warbler’s song that set my curiosity on edge. It was
not the parula’s (blue yellow-back’s), but like it. What should it
be, then, except the cerulean’s? By and by I caught a glimpse of a
bird, clear white below, with a dark line across the breast; and yes,
I saw what I was looking for,--though the bird flew to another branch
the next moment,--black streaks along the sides of the body. There
were at least eight or ten others like him in the treetops; and it was
a neck-breaking half-hour that I passed in watching them, determined
as I was to gain a view not only of the under parts, but of the back
and wings. The labor and difficulty of the search were increased
indefinitely by the confusing presence of numerous other warblers of
various kinds in the same lofty branches, making it inevitable that
many opera-glass shots should be wasted. It is no help to a man’s
equanimity at such a time to spend a priceless three minutes--any one
of which may be the last--in getting the glass upon a tiny thing that
flits incessantly from one leafy twig to another, only to find in the
end that it is nothing but a myrtle warbler; a pretty creature, no
doubt, but of no more consequence just now than an English sparrow.
To-day, however, the birds favored me; no untimely whim hurried them
away to another wood, and patience had its reward. Little by little my
purpose was accomplished and my mind cleared of all uncertainty. Then
I took out my pencil to characterize the song while it was still in my
ears, and still new. “Greatly like one of the more broken forms of the
parula’s,” I wrote, a bird repeating it at that very instant by way of
confirmation. “I can imagine a fairly sharp ear being deceived by it,
especially in a place like this, where parulas have been singing from
morning till night, until the listener has tired of them and become
listless.” This sentence the reader may keep in mind, if he will,
to glance back upon for his amusement in the light of a subsequent
experience which it will be my duty to relate before I have done with
my story.
Between the migratory “transients” and the birds already at home, the
place was pretty full of wings. A Swainson thrush sang, and from a
bushy slope came a nasal thrush voice that should have been a veery’s.
I took chase at once, and caught a glimpse of a reddish-brown bird
darting out of sight before me. Do my best, I could find nothing more
of it. If it was a veery, as I suppose, it was the only one I saw in
Virginia, where the species, from Dr. Rives’s account of the matter,
seems to be a rather uncommon migrant. Unhappily, I could not bring my
scientific conscience to list it on so hurried a sight, even with the
note as corroborative testimony. That, for aught I could positively
assert, might have been a gray-cheek’s, while the reddish color might
with equal possibility have belonged to a wood thrush, clear as it had
seemed at the moment that what I was looking at was the back of the
bird itself, and not the back of its head. Doubt is credulous. All
kinds of negatives are plausible to it, and once it has adopted one it
will maintain it in the face of the five senses.
On the opposite side of the path, in the bushy angles of a Virginia
fence, a hooded warbler showed himself, furtive and silent,--my
only Bridge specimen, to my great surprise; and near him was a
female black-throated blue, a queer-looking body, like nothing
in particular, yet labeled past mistake, which I can never see
without a kind of wonder. Among the treetop birds were Blackburnian
warblers, black-throated greens and blues, chestnut-sides, redstarts,
myrtle-birds, red-eyed and yellow-throated vireos, and indigo-birds.
Many white-throated sparrows still lingered; singing flat, as
usual,--the only birds I know of that find it impossible to hold the
pitch. The defect has its favorable side; it makes their concerts
amusing. I remember seeing a quiet gentleman thrown into fits of
uncontrollable laughter by the rehearsal of a spring flock, bird after
bird starting the tune, and not one in ten of them keeping its whistle
true to the conclusion of the measure. All these things,--though they
may seem not many,--with the long rests and numerous side excursions
that went with them, consumed the morning hours before I knew it, so
that I was hardly at the end of the way before it was time to return
for dinner.
For the afternoon nothing was to be thought of but another visit to the
same place,--“the finest place I have seen yet, and the finest walk.”
So I had put down the morning’s discovery. The cerulean warbler I
found spoken of by Dr. Rives as “accidental or very rare;” in the light
of which entry the dozen or so of specimens seen and heard during the
forenoon acquired a fresh interest.
The second jaunt, because it _was_ a second one, could be taken more
at leisure; and as the birds gave me less employment, my eyes were
more upon the trees. These, as I had felt before, were a wonder and
a comfort; it was a benediction to walk under them, as if one were
within the precincts of a holy place: oaks for the most part (of
several kinds), with black walnut, shagbark, tulip, chestnut, and other
species, set irregularly, or rather left standing irregularly, two or
three deep, beside the road on either hand; a royal uphill avenue,
which near the top became an open grove. Except in Florida, I had never
seen a more magnificent growth. Some of the trees had grapevines and
Virginia creeper clinging about them. Up one huge oak, with strange
flaky bark, like a shagbark-tree’s (a white oak, nevertheless, to judge
from its half-grown leaves), a grapevine had mounted for a height of
forty feet, as I estimated the distance, not making use of the bole,
but of the limbs, seeming to leap from one to another, even when they
were ten feet apart. It must have been of the tree’s age, I suppose,
and had grown with its growth. In the shadow of these giants, yet not
overshadowed by them, were flowering dogwoods and redbuds. It is a
pretty habit these two have of growing side by side, as if they knew
the value of contrasted colors.
At a point on the edge of the grove I turned to enjoy the prospect
southward: mountains everywhere, with the more pointed of the twin
Peaks of Otter showing between two oaks that barely gave it room; all
the mountains radiantly beautiful, with cloud shadows flecking their
wooded slopes. Not a house was in sight; but in one place beyond the
middle-distance hills a thin blue smoke was rising. There, doubtless,
lay the valley of the James. Just before me, on the left of the open
field, stood a peculiarly graceful dogwood, all in a glory of white,
one fan-shaped branch above another,--a miracle of loveliness. The
eye that saw it was satisfied with seeing. Beyond it a chat played
the clown (knowing no better, even to-day), and a rose-breast began
warbling. It seemed a tender story,--sweetness beyond words, and
happiness without a shadow. From a second point, a little farther on,
the entire southern horizon came into view, with both the Peaks of
Otter visible; a truly enchanting picture, the sky full of sunlight and
floating white clouds.
In a treetop behind me a cerulean warbler had been singing, but flew
away as I turned about. My only sight of him was on the wing, a mere
speck in the air. Afterward a parula gave out his tune, running the
notes straight upward and snapping them off at the end in whiplash
fashion, as much as to say, “Now see if you can tell the difference.”
And then, just as I was ready to leave the grove, stepping along a
footpath through a bramble patch, I descried almost at my feet a
warbler,--a female by her look and demeanor, and a stranger; blue and
white, with dark streakings along the sides. I lost her soon; but she
had seemed to be looking for nest materials, and of course I waited for
her to return. This she presently did, and now I saw her strip bits
of bark from plant stems till she had her bill full of short pieces.
Carrying these, she disappeared in a bramble and grapevine thicket. I
waited, but she did not come back. Then I stole into the place after
her, and in a moment there she was before me; but without complaint or
any symptom of perturbation she passed quietly along, and again I lost
her. I kept my position till I was tired, and then went back to the
wood and sat down; and in a few minutes--how it happened I could not
tell--there she stood once more, wearing the same innocent, preoccupied
air. This time I saw her fly down the slope and disappear in a clump
of undergrowth. I followed, took a seat, waited, and continued to
wait. All was in vain. That was the last of her. She had played her
cards well, or perhaps I had played mine poorly; and finally I turned
my steps homeward, where a comparison of my notes with Dr. Coues’s
description proved the bird to be, as I had believed, a female cerulean
warbler. Her nest would probably be the first one of its kind ever
found in Virginia.
On the way a male sang and showed himself. Now, too, I discovered
for the first time that there were tupelo-trees among the large
oaks and walnuts; much smaller than they, and for that reason, it
is to be supposed, not noticed in my three previous passages along
the avenue. They are particular favorites of mine, and I made them
sincere apologies. In another place was a patch of what I knew must
be the fragrant sumach, something I had wished to see for many years:
low, upright shrubs, yet resembling poison ivy so closely that for
a minute I shrank from gathering a specimen, although I was certain
beyond a peradventure that the plant was not poison ivy and could not
be noxious to the touch; just as people in general, through force of
early instruction and example (miscalled instinct), shiver at the
thought of handling a snake, though it be of some kind which they know
to be as harmless as a kitten. While in chase of the cerulean, also, I
had stumbled on several bunches of cancer-root (_Conopholis_), rising
out of the dead leaves, a dozen or more of stems in each close bunch;
queer, unwholesome-looking, yellowish things, reminding me of ears of
rice-corn, so called. I had never seen the plant till the day before.
The next morning my course was beyond discussion or argument. I must
go again to Lincoln Heights. The thought of the female cerulean warbler
and her nest would not suffer me to do anything else. But for that
matter, I should probably have taken the same path had I never seen
her. The trees, the prospects, and the general birdiness of the place
were of themselves an irresistible attraction. On the way I skirted a
grove of small pines, standing between the road and the edge of Cedar
Creek ravine: dull, scrubby trees, like pitch-pines, but less bright
in color; of the same kind as those amid which, on Cameron Hill and
Lookout Mountain, in Tennessee, there had been so notable a gathering
of warblers the year before. _Pinus pungens_, Table Mountain pine, I
suppose they were, though it must be acknowledged that I was never
at the pains to settle the point. Here at Natural Bridge I had found
all such woods deserted day after day, till I had ceased to think
them worth looking into. Now, however, as I idled past, I caught the
faint sibilant notes of a bird-song, and stopped to listen. Not a
blackpoll’s, I said to myself, but wonderfully near it. And then it
flashed into my mind what a friend had told me a few years before.
“When you hear a song that is like the blackpoll’s, but different,” he
had said, “look the bird up. It will most likely be a Cape May.” He
was one of the lucky men (almost the only one of my acquaintance) who
had heard that rare warbler’s voice. I turned aside, of course, and
made a cautious entry among the pines. The bird continued its singing.
Yes, it was like the blackpoll’s, but with a _zip_ rather than a _zee_.
Nearer and nearer I crept, inch by inch. If the fellow _were_ a Cape
May, it would be carelessness inexcusable not to make sure of the
fact. And soon I had my glass upon him,--in high plumage, red cheeks
and all. He had not been disturbed in the least, and kept up his music
till I had had my fill and could stay no longer,--all the while in low
branches and in clear view. Few songs could be less interesting in
themselves, but few could have been more welcome,--for the better part
of twenty years I had been listening for it: about five notes, a little
louder and more emphatic than the blackpoll’s, it seemed to me, but
still faint and, as I expressed it to myself, “next to nothing.” The
handsome creature--olive and bright yellow, boldly marked with black
and white--remained the whole time in one tree, traveling over the
limbs in a rather listless fashion, and singing almost incessantly. He
was my hundredth Virginia bird,--as my list then stood, question marks
included,--and the second one whose song I had heard for the first time
on this vacation trip. The day had begun prosperously.
After such a stirring up, a man’s ears are apt to be abnormally
sensitive, not to say imaginative; then, if ever, he will hear wonders:
for which reason, it may be, I had turned but a corner or two before I
was stopped by another set of notes, a strain that I knew, or felt that
I ought to know, but could not place a name upon at the moment. This
bird, too, was run down without difficulty, and proved to be a magnolia
warbler,--another yellow-rump, like the Cape May and the myrtle-bird.
The song, unlike its owner, is but slightly marked, and to make matters
worse, is heard by me only in the season of the bird’s spring passage;
but I laughed at myself for not recognizing it. I was still in a mood
for discoveries, however, and within half an hour was again in eager
chase, this time over a crazy zigzag fence into a dense thicket, all
for a black-and-white creeper (my fiftieth specimen, perhaps, in the
last fortnight), whose notes, as they came to me from a distance,
sounded like a creeper’s, to be sure, but with such a measure of
difference as kept me on nettles till the author of them was in sight.
I felt like a fool, as the common expression is, but was having “a good
time,” notwithstanding.
Here were the first trailing blackberry blossoms. The season was making
haste. “Come, children, it is the 7th of May,” I seemed to hear the
“bud-crowned spring” saying. The woods had burst into almost full leaf
within a week. This morning, also, I found the first flowers of the
_Dodecatheon_; three plants, each with only one bloom as yet; white,
odd-looking, pointed,--like a stylographic pen, my profane clerical
fancy suggested. American cowslip and shooting star the flower is
called in the Manual. American cyclamen would hit it pretty well, I
thought, its most striking peculiarity being the reflexed, cyclamenic
carriage of the petals. I had been wondering what those broad
root-leaves were, as I passed them here and there in the woods. The
present was only my second sight of the blossom in a wild state, the
first one having been on the battlefield of Chickamauga. It is matter
for thankfulness, an enrichment of the memory, when a pretty flower is
thus associated with a famous place.
Among the old trees on the Heights a cerulean warbler and a blue
yellow-back were singing nearly in the same breath. If I did not become
lastingly familiar with the distinction between the two songs, it was
not to be the birds’ fault. A second cerulean (or possibly the same
one; it was impossible to be certain on that point, nor did it matter)
was near the grapevine tangle, and at the moment of my approach was
holding a controversy with a creeper. He had reserved the spot, as it
appeared, and was insisting upon his claim. My spirits rose. It was
this clump of shrubbery that I had come to sit beside, on the chance
of seeing again, and tracking to her nest, the female whose behavior
had so excited my hopes the afternoon before. “Nest small and neat, in
fork of a bough 20-50 feet from the ground:” so I had read in the Key,
and henceforth knew what I was to look for. For a full hour I remained
on guard. Twice the male cerulean chased some other bird about in a
manner extremely suspicious; but he kept her (or him) so constantly on
the move that I had no fair sight of her plumage. Beyond that my vigil
went for nothing. I must try again. If a man cannot waste an hour once
in a while, he had better not undertake the finding of birds’ nests.
For the walk homeward I took a course of my own down the open face of
the hill, climbing a fence or two (I could tell far in advance the
safest places at which to get over--the soundest spots--by seeing
the lumps of dry red clay left on the rails by the boots of previous
travelers across lots), past prairie warblers and my first Natural
Bridge bluebird, to the bottom of the valley. Then, finding myself
ahead of time, I turned aside to see what might be in the woods of Buck
Hill. There was little to mention: a blossom of the exquisite vernal
fleur-de-lis, not before noticed here, and at the top two cerulean
warblers in full song. I had begun by this time to believe that this
rare Virginia species would turn out to be pretty common hereabout in
appropriate places.
Partly to test the truth of this opinion I planned an afternoon trip
to a more distant eminence, which, like Buck Hill and Lincoln Heights,
was covered with a deciduous forest. In the valley woods a grouse
was drumming--a pretty frequent sound here--and Swainson thrushes
were singing. These “New Hampshire thrushes,” by the bye, are singers
of the most generous sort, not only at home, but on their travels,
all statements to the contrary notwithstanding. From May 5 to May
12--including the latter half of my stay at Natural Bridge, two days
at Afton, and one day in the cemetery woods at Arlington--I have them
marked as singing daily, and one day at the Bridge they were heard in
four widely separate places.
The hill for which I had set out lay on the left of the road, and
between me and it stood a row of negro cabins. As I came opposite
them I suddenly caught from the hillsides the notes of a Nashville
warbler,--or so I believed. This was a bird not yet included in my
Virginia list. I had puzzled over its absence--the country seeming in
all respects adapted to it--till I consulted Dr. Rives, by whom it
is set down as “rare.” Even then, emboldened by more than one happy
experience, I told myself that I ought to find it. It is common enough
in New England; why should it skip Virginia? And here it was; only
I must go through the formality of a visual inspection, especially
as just now the song came from rather far away. I entered one of the
house-yards,--nobody objecting except a dog,--climbed the rear fence,
and posted up the steep, rocky hill, past a humming-bird sipping at
a violet, and by and by lifted my glass upon the singer, which had
been in voice all the while. By this time I was practically sure of
its identity. In imagination I could already see its bright yellow
breast. The name was as good as down in my book,--_Helminthophila
ruficapilla_. But the glass, having no imagination, showed me a white
breast with a dark line across it,--a cerulean warbler! Verily, an ear
is a vain thing for safety. See your bird, I say, and take a second
look; and then go back and look again. In another tree a parula warbler
was singing. About him, by good luck, I made no mistake. As for the
other bird, even after I had seen his white breast, his tune--with
which he was literally spilling over--continued to sound amazingly
Nashvillian; though there are few warbler songs with which I should
have supposed myself more thoroughly acquainted than with this same
clearly characterized Nashville ditty,--a hurried measure followed by a
still more hurried trill. Perhaps this particular cerulean had a note
peculiarly his own. I should be glad to think so. Perhaps, on the other
hand, the fault was all with the man who heard it; in which case the
less said the better. In either event, my theory as to the cerulean’s
commonness was in a fair way to be verified. It was well I had that
comfort.
Before I could get down the hill again I must stop to listen to a
gnatcatcher’s squeaky voice, and the next moment I saw the bird,
and another with him. The second one proceeded immediately to a
nest,--conspicuously displayed on an oak branch,--while her mate
hovered about, squeaking in the most affectionate manner. Then away
they flew in company, and after a long absence were back again for
another turn at building. They were making a joy of their labor, the
male especially; but it is true he made little else of it. With him
I was at once taken captive,--so happy, so proud, and so devoted. A
paragon of amorous behavior, I called him; having the French idea of
“assistance,” no doubt, but a lover in every movement. Never was the
good old-fashioned phrase “waiting upon her” more prettily illustrated.
Birds are imaginative creatures, says Richard Jefferies, and I believe
it; and this fellow, I am sure, had endowed his spouse with all the
graces of all the birds that ever were or ever will be. In other words,
he was truly in love. The nest was already shingled throughout with
bits of gray lichen, laid on so skillfully that Father Time himself
might have done it. That is the right way. Let the house look as if it
were a growth, a something native to the spot, only less old than the
ground it rests on. The gnatcatcher’s nest is always a work of art.
Gnatcatcher eggs could hardly be counted upon to hatch in any other.
As I passed up the road, on my way homeward, a flock of eight
night-hawks were swimming overhead. Their genius runs, not to
architecture, but to grace of aerial motion. They do not shoot like the
swifts, nor skim and dart like the swallows, nor circle on level wings
like the hawks, but have an easy, slow-seeming, wavering, gracefully
“limping” flight, which is strictly their own. At the same time two
buzzards met in midair, one going with the breeze, the other against
it. I could have told the fact, without other knowledge of the wind’s
course, by the different carriage of the two pairs of wings. So “the
bird trims her to the gale.”
Having the cerulean warbler question still upon my mind, and seeing
another hardwood hill within easy reach, I turned my steps thither.
Yes, I was hardly there before I heard a bird singing; but the reader
may be sure I did not take my ear’s word for it. This was the fourth
hilltop I had visited to-day, and on every one the “rare” warbler (but
it is well known to be abundant in West Virginia) had been found
without so much as a five-minute search.