the chestnut grove, where a month ago the wood thrush, the rose-breasted
grosbeak, and the scarlet tanager were singing, the loiterer now hears
nothing but the wood pewee's pensive whistle and the sharp monotony of
the red-eyed vireo. The thrasher is silent in the berry pasture, and the
bobolink in the meadow. The season of jollity is over. Orioles, to be
sure, after a month of silence, again have fits of merry fifing. The
field sparrow and the song sparrow are still in tune, and the meadow
lark whistles, though rarely. Catbirds still practice their feeble
improvisations and mimicries in the thickets along the brooksides as
evening comes on, and of the multitudes of robins a few are certain to
be heard warbling before the day is over. Goldfinches have grown
suddenly numerous, or so it seems, and not infrequently one of them
breaks out in musical canary-like twitterings. On moonlight evenings the
tremulous, haunting cry of the screech-owl comes to your ears, always
from far away, and if you walk through the chestnut grove aforesaid in
the daytime you may chance to catch his faint, vibratory, tree-frog
whistle. For myself, I never enter the grove without glancing into the
dry top of a certain tall tree, to see whether the little rascal is
sitting in his open door. More than half the time he is there, and
always with his eye on me. What an air he has!--like a judge on the
bench! If I were half as wise as he looks, these essays of mine would
never more be dull. For his and all other late summer music let us be
thankful; but it is true, nevertheless, that the year is waning. How
short it has been! Only the other day the concert opened, and already
the performers are uneasy to be gone. They have crowded so much into so
brief a space! The passion of a life-time into the quarter of a year!
They are impatient to be gone, I say; but who knows how many of them
are gone already? Where are the blue golden-winged warblers that sang
daily on the edge of the wood opposite my windows, so that I listened to
them at my work? I have heard nothing of their rough _dsee, dsee_ since
the 21st of June, and in all that time have seen them but once--a single
bird, a youngling of the present year, stumbled upon by accident while
pushing my way through a troublesome thicket on the first day of August.
Who knows, I say, how many such summer friends have already left us? An
odd coincidence, however, warns me at this very moment that too much is
not to be made of merely negative experiences; for even while I was
penciling the foregoing sentence about the blue golden-wing there came
through the open window the hoarse upward-sliding chant of his close
neighbor, the prairie warbler. I have not heard that sound before since
the 6th of July, and it is now the 22d of August. The singers had not
gone, I knew; I saw several of them (and beautiful creatures they are!)
a few days ago among the pitch pines; but why did that fellow, after
being dumb for six or seven weeks, pipe up at that precise moment, as
if to punctuate my ruminations with an interrogation point? Does he like
this dog-day morning, with its alternate shower and sunshine, and its
constant stickiness and heat? In any case I was glad to hear him, though
I cannot in the spirit of veracity call him a good singer. Whist! There
goes an oriole, a gorgeous creature, flashing from one elm to another,
and piping in his happiest manner as he flies. It might be the middle of
May, to judge from his behavior. _He_ likes dog-day weather, there can
be no question of that, however the rest of the world may grumble.
This is a time when one sees many birds, but few species. Bluebirds are
several times as abundant as in June. The air is sweet with their calls
at this moment, and once in a while some father of the flock lets his
happiness run over in song. One cannot go far now without finding the
road full of chipping sparrows, springing up in their pretty,
characteristic way, and letting the breeze catch them. The fences and
wayside apple-trees are lively with kingbirds and phoebes. I am
already watching the former with a kind of mournful interest. In ten
days, or some such matter, we shall have seen the last of their saucy
antics. Gay tyrants! They are among the first birds of whom I can
confidently say, "They are gone;" and they seem as wide-awake when they
go as when they come. Being a man, I regret their departure; but if I
were a crow, I think I should be for observing the 31st of August as a
day of annual jubilee.
A few years ago, in September, I saw the white-breasted swallows
congregated in the Ipswich dunes,--a sight never to be forgotten. On the
morning of the 9th, the fourth day of our visit, a considerable
flock--but no more, perhaps, than we had been seeing daily--came
skimming over the marshes and settled upon a sand-bar in the river,
darkening it in patches. At eight o'clock, when we took the straggling
road out of the hills, a good many--there might be a thousand, I
guessed--sat, upon the fence wires, as if resting. We walked inland, and
on our return, at noon, found, as my notes of the day express it, "an
innumerable host, thousands upon thousands," about the landward side of
the dunes. Fences and haycocks were covered. Multitudes were on the
ground,--in the bed of the road, about the bare spots in the marsh, and
on the gray faces of the hills. Other multitudes were in the bushes and
low trees, literally loading them. Every few minutes a detachment would
rise into the air like a cloud, and anon settle down again. As we stood
gazing at the spectacle, my companion began chirping at a youngster who
sat near him on a post, as one might chirp to a caged canary. The effect
was magical. The bird at once started toward him, others followed, and
in a few seconds hundreds were flying about our heads. Round and round
they went, almost within reach, like a cloud of gnats. "Stop! stop!"
cried my companion; "I am getting dizzy." We stopped our squeakings, and
the cloud lifted; but I can see it yet. Day after day the great
concourse remained about the hills, till on the 13th we came away and
left them. The old lighthouse keeper told me that this was their annual
rendezvous. He once saw them circle for a long time above the dunes, for
several hours, if I remember right, till, as it seemed, all stragglers
had been called in from the beach, the marsh, and the outlying grassy
hills. Then they mounted into the sky in a great spiral till they
passed out of sight; and for that year there were no more swallows.
This, he insisted, took place in the afternoon, "from three to four
o'clock." He was unquestionably telling a straightforward story of what
he himself had seen, but his memory may have been at fault; for I find
it to be the settled opinion of those who ought to know, that swallows
migrate by day and not by night, while the setting out of a great flock
late in the afternoon at such a height would seem to indicate a
nocturnal journey. Morning or evening, I would give something to witness
so imposing a start.
The recollection of this seaside gathering raises anew in my mind the
question why, if swallows and swifts migrate exclusively in the daytime,
we so rarely see anything of them on the passage. Our Ipswich birds were
all tree swallows,--white-breasted martins,--and might fairly be
supposed to have come together from a comparatively limited extent of
country. But beside tree swallows there are purple martins, barn
swallows, sand martins, cliff swallows, and chimney swifts, all of which
breed to the northward of us in incalculable numbers. All of them go
south between the middle of July and the first of October. But who in
New England has ever seen any grand army of them actually on the wing?
Do they straggle along so loosely as to escape particular notice? If so,
what mean congregations like that in the Ipswich dunes? Or are their
grand concerted flights taken at such an altitude as to be invisible?
On several afternoons of last September, this time in an inland country,
I observed what might fairly be called a steady stream of tree swallows
flying south. Twice, while gazing up at the loose procession, I suddenly
became aware of a close bunch of birds at a prodigious height, barely
visible, circling about in a way to put a count out of the question, but
evidently some hundreds in number. On both occasions the flock vanished
almost immediately, and, as I believed, by soaring out of sight. The
second time I meant to assure myself upon this point, but my attention
was distracted by the sudden appearance of several large hawks within
the field of my glass, and when I looked again for the swallows they
were nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers which I had for some time
been watching, flying high, but well within easy ken, and these dense,
hardly discernible clusters--hirundine nebulae, as it were--were all
these but parts of one innumerable host, the main body of which was
passing far above me altogether unseen? The conjecture was one to
gratify the imagination. It pleased me even to think that it _might_ be
true. But it was only a conjecture, and meantime another question
presented itself.
When this daily procession had been noticed for two or three afternoons,
it came to me as something remarkable that I saw it always in the same
place, or rather on the same north and south line, while no matter where
else I walked, east or west, not a swallow was visible. Had I stumbled
upon a regular route of swallow migration? It looked so, surely; but I
made little account of the matter till a month afterward, when, in
exactly the same place, I observed robins and bluebirds following the
same course. The robins were seen October 26th, in four flocks,
succeeding each other at intervals of a few minutes, and numbering in
all about 130 birds. They flew directly south, at a moderate height,
and were almost certainly detachments of one body. The bluebird movement
was two days later, at about the same hour, the morning being cold, with
a little snow falling. This time, too, as it happened, the flock was in
four detachments. Three of these were too compact to be counted as they
passed; the fourth and largest one was in looser order and contained a
little more than a hundred individuals. In all, as well as I could
guess, there might have been about three hundred birds. They kept a
straight course southward, flying high, and with the usual calls, which,
in autumn at least, always have to my ears a sound of farewell. Was it a
mere coincidence that these swallows, bluebirds, and robins were all
crossing the valley just at this point?
This question, too, I count it safer to ask than to answer, but all
observers, I am sure, must have remarked so much as this,--that birds,
even on their migrations, are subject to strong local preferences. An
ornithologist of the highest repute assures me that his own experience
has convinced him so strongly of this fact that if he shoots a rare
migrant in a certain spot he makes it a rule to visit the place again a
year afterward on the same day, and, if possible, at the same hour of
the day. Another friend sends me a very pretty story bearing upon the
same point. The bird of which he speaks, Wilson's black-cap warbler, is
one of the less common of our regular Massachusetts migrants. I count
myself fortunate if I see two or three specimens during its spring or
autumn passage. My correspondent shall tell the story for himself.
"While I was making the drawings for the 'Silva,' at the old Dwight
house, I was in the habit of taking a turn every pleasant day in the
gardens after my scanty lunch. On the 18th of May, 1887, in my daily
round I saw a Wilson's black-cap for the first time in my life. He was
in a bush of _Spiraea media_, which grew in the midst of the rockery, and
allowed me to examine him at near range with no appearance of fear.
Naturally I made a note of the occurrence in my diary, and talked about
it with my family when I got home. The seeing of a new bird always makes
a red-letter day.
"The next spring, as I was looking over my notebook of the previous
year, I came upon my entry of May 18th, and thought I would be on the
lookout for a black-cap on that date. Several times during the morning I
thought of the matter, and after my lunch I sauntered into the rockery
just as I had done the year before. Imagine my start when there, in the
very same bush, was the black-cap peering at me; and I found on looking
at my watch that it was precisely the same hour,--half past one! I
rubbed my eyes and pinched myself to make sure it was not a dream. No,
it was all real. Of course, I thought the coincidence very singular, and
talked about it, not only with my family, but also with other people.
You must remember that I had never seen the bird elsewhere.
"Well, another spring came round. The 18th of May was fixed in my mind,
and I thought many times of my black-cap (I called it _my_ black-cap
now), and wondered if it would keep tryst again. On the morning of the
18th, the first thing I thought of when I awoke was my black-cap. That
forenoon I actually felt nervous as the time approached, for I felt a
sort of certainty (you smile) that I should see my bird again. My lunch
was hastier than usual, and I was about to sally forth when it flashed
across me--'Suppose the bird should be there again, who would believe my
story? Hold! I will have a witness.' I called to Mr. J----, who was at
work upstairs, and after explaining what I wanted, invited him to
accompany me. We cautiously entered the rockery, and within a few
minutes there flitted from a neighboring thicket into that very Spiraea
bush my black-cap! I took out my watch. It was just half past one!"
My own experiences in this kind have been much less striking and
dramatic than the foregoing, but I may add that a few years ago I
witnessed the vernal migration in a new piece of country--ten miles or
so from my old field--and found myself at a very considerable
disadvantage. I had never realized till then how much accustomed I had
grown to look for particular birds in particular places, and not in
other places of a quite similar character.
I speak of witnessing a migration; but what we see for the most part
(ducks and geese being excepted) is not the actual movement northward
or southward. We see the stragglers, more or less numerous, that happen
to have dropped out of the procession in our immediate neighborhood,--a
flock of sandpipers about the edge of the pond, some sparrows by the
roadside, a bevy of warblers in the wood,--and from these signs we infer
the passing of the host.
Unlike swallows, robins, bluebirds, blackbirds, and perhaps most of the
sparrows, our smaller wood birds, the warblers and vireos especially,
appear to move as a general thing in mixed flocks. Whenever the woods
are full of them, as is the case now and then every spring and fall, one
of the most striking features of the show is the number of species
represented. For the benefit of readers who may never have observed such
a "bird wave," or "rush," let me sketch hastily one which occurred a few
years ago, on the 22d of September. As I started out at six o'clock in
the morning, in a cool northwest wind, birds were passing overhead in an
almost continuous stream, following a westerly course. They were chiefly
warblers, but I noted one fairly large flock of purple finches. All were
at a good height, and the whole movement had the air of a diurnal
migration. I could only conjecture that it was the end of the nocturnal
flight, so far, at least, as the warblers were concerned; in other
words, that the birds, on this particular occasion, did not finish their
nightly journey till a little after sunrise. But if many were still
flying, many others had already halted; for presently I came to a piece
of thin, stunted wood by the roadside, and found in it a highly
interesting company. Almost the first specimen I saw was a Connecticut
warbler perched in full view and exposing himself perfectly. Red-bellied
nuthatches were calling, and warblers uncounted were flitting about in
the trees and underbrush. A hurried search showed black-polls,
black-throated greens, blue yellow-backs, one redstart, one
black-and-white creeper, one Blackburnian, one black-and-yellow, one
Canadian flycatcher (singing lustily), one yellow redpoll, and one
clearly-marked bay-breast. The first yellow-bellied woodpecker of the
season was hammering in a tree over my head, and not far away was the
first flock of white-throated sparrows. After breakfast I passed the
place again, and the only bird to be found was one phoebe! Within
half a mile of the spot, however, I came upon at least three goodly
throngs, including scarlet tanagers (all in yellow and black),
black-throated blue warblers, pine warblers, olive-backed and
gray-cheeked thrushes, a flock of chewinks (made up exclusively of adult
males, so far as I could discover), red-eyed vireos, one solitary vireo,
brown thrashers, with more redstarts, a second Blackburnian, and a
second black-and-yellow. Every company had its complement of chickadees.
Of the morning's forty species, thirteen were warblers; and of these
thirteen, four were represented by one specimen each. For curiosity's
sake I may add that a much longer walk that afternoon, through the same
and other woods, was utterly barren. Except for two or three flocks of
white-throated sparrows; there was no sign whatever that the night
before had brought us a "flight."
Autumnal ornithology may almost be called a science by itself. Not only
are birds harder to find (being silent) and harder to recognize in
autumn than in spring, but their movements are in themselves more
difficult of observation. A few years of note-taking will put one in
possession of the approximate dates of arrival of all our common vernal
migrants. Every local observer will tell you when to look for each of
the familiar birds of his neighborhood; but he will not be half so ready
with information as to the time of the same birds' departure. Ask him
about a few of the commonest,--the least flycatcher and the oven-bird,
or the golden warbler and the Maryland yellow-throat. He will answer,
perhaps, that he has seen Maryland yellow-throats in early October, and
golden warblers in early September; but he will very likely add that
these were probably voyagers from the North, and that he has never made
out just when his own summer birds take their leave.
After the work of nidification is over, birds as a rule wander more or
less from their breeding haunts; and even if they do not wander they are
likely to become silent. If we miss them, therefore, we are not to
conclude as a matter of course that they have gone south. Last year,
during the early part of the season, cuckoos were unusually plentiful,
as it seemed to me. Then I discovered all at once that there were none
to be found. After the first of July I neither saw nor heard a cuckoo of
either species! Had they moved away? I do not know; but the case may be
taken as an extreme illustration of the uncertainty attaching to the
late-summer doings of birds in general. Every student must have had
experiences of a sort to make him slow to dogmatize when such points are
in question. Throughout May and June, for example, he has heard and seen
wood thrushes in a certain grove. After that, for a whole month, he
hears and sees nothing, though he is frequently there. The thrushes have
gone? So it would seem. But then, suddenly, they are singing again in
the very same trees, and he is forced to conclude that they have not
been away, but during their period of midsummer silence have eluded his
notice. On the whole, therefore, after making allowance for particular
cases in which we may have more precise information, it would be hard, I
think, to say just when our nocturnal travelers set out on their long
journey. As the poet prayed Life to do,--
They steal away, give little warning,
Choose their own time;
Say not good-night,--but in May's brighter clime
Bid us good-morning.
Their departure bereaves us, but, all in all, it must be accounted a
blessing. Like the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart with a
pleasing sadness,--a sadness more delicious, if one is born to enjoy it,
than all the merry-making of springtime. And even for the most
unsentimental of naturalists the autumnal season has many a delightful
hour. The year is almost done; but for the moment the whole feathered
world is in motion, and the shortest walk may show him the choicest of
rarities. Thanks to the passing of the birds, his local studies are an
endless pursuit. "It is now more than forty years that I have paid some
attention to the ornithology of this district, without being able to
exhaust the subject," says Gilbert White; "new occurrences still arise
as long as any inquiries are kept alive." A happy man is the bird-lover;
always another species to look for, another mystery to solve. His
expectations may never be realized; but no matter; it is the hope, not
its fulfillment, that makes life worth having. How can any New
Englander imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existence
so long as he has never seen the Lincoln finch and the Cape May warbler?
But "I speak as a fool." Our happiness, if we are bird-lovers indeed,
waits not upon novelties and rarities. All such exceptional bits of
private good fortune let the Fates send or withhold as they will. The
grand spectacle itself will not fail us. Even now, through all the
northern country, the procession is getting under way. For the next
three months it will be passing,--millions upon millions: warblers,
sparrows, thrushes, vireos, blackbirds, flycatchers, wrens, kinglets,
woodpeckers, swallows, humming-birds, hawks; with sandpipers, plovers,
ducks and geese, gulls, and who knows how many more? Night and day, week
days and Sundays, they will be flying: now singly or in little groups,
and flitting from one wood or pasture to another; now in great
companies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who could
ask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing of
this mighty host? Each member of it knows his own time and his own
course. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the golden
plover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way. Numbers
uncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by human
agency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I can see
the sea-beaches and the marshes lined with guns. But the army will push
on; they will come to their desired haven; for there is a spirit in
birds, also, "and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
understanding."
A GREAT BLUE HERON.
"Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness?"
SHAKESPEARE.
The watcher of birds in the bush soon discovers that they have
individual as well as race characteristics. They are not things, but
persons,--beings with intellect, affections, and will,--and a strong
specific resemblance is found to be consistent with no small measure of
personal variation. All robins, we say, look and act alike. But so do
all Yankees; yet it is part of every Yankee's birthright to be different
from every other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it would seem, almost as
badly as she abhors a vacuum. Perhaps, if the truth were known, a copy
_is_ a vacuum.
I walked down the bay shore of Cape Cod one summer morning, and at a
certain point climbed the steep cliff to the railway track, meaning to
look into a large cranberry meadow where, on previous visits, I had
found a few sandpipers and plovers. Near one end of the perfectly level,
sand-covered meadow was a little pool, and my first glance in that
direction showed me a great blue heron wading about its edge. With as
much quietness as possible I stole out of sight, and then hastened up
the railway through a cut, till I had the sun at my back and a hill
between me and the bird. Then I began a stealthy approach, keeping
behind one object after another, and finally going down flat upon the
ground (to roll in the soil is an excellent method of cleansing one's
garments on Cape Cod) and crawling up to a patch of bayberry bushes, the
last practicable cover.
Here let me say that the great blue heron is, as its name implies, a big
bird, standing almost as high as an ordinary man, and spreading its
wings for nearly or quite six feet. Its character for suspiciousness may
be gathered from what different writers have said about it. "He is most
jealously vigilant and watchful of man," says Wilson, "so that those who
wish to succeed in shooting the heron must approach him entirely unseen,
and by stratagem." "Extremely suspicious and shy," says Audubon.
"Unless under very favorable circumstances, it is almost hopeless to
attempt to approach it. To walk up towards one would be a fruitless
adventure." Dr. Brewer's language is to the same effect,--"At all times
very vigilant and difficult of approach."
This, then, was the bird which I now had under my field-glass, as I lay
at full length behind the friendly bayberry bushes. Up to this point,
for aught that appeared, he was quite unaware of my espionage. Like all
the members of his family that I have ever seen, he possessed so much
patience that it required much patience to watch him. For minutes
together he stood perfectly still, and his movements, as a rule, were
either so slow as to be all but imperceptible, or so rapid as almost to
elude the eye. Boys who have killed frogs--which was pretty certainly my
heron's present employment--will need no explanation of his behavior.
They know very well that, if the fatal club is to do its work, the
slowest kind of preliminary motion must be followed by something like a
flash of lightning.
I watched the bird for perhaps half an hour, admiring his handsome blue
wings as now and then he spread them, his dainty manner of lifting his
long legs, and the occasional flashing stroke of his beak. My range was
short (for a field-glass, I mean), and, all in all, I voted it "a fine
show."