which converged a dozen deep trails. Like the hub of an immense wheel
it seemed: the radiating paths were the spokes, and somewhere beyond
the horizon was the unseen rim. From the depths of the spring came a
surprising volume of clear, coffee-colored water, bubbling over
joyously as it leaped from the dark earth into the light, and then
stealing quietly away under bending grasses to keep my pond brim full.
Around the spring the earth was pitted by the feet of deer, and
everywhere about its edges were holes lapped in the peat by eager
tongues. Here, beyond a doubt, was what called so many animals to my
pond,—a mineral spring or salt-lick, such as we read about in stories
of pioneer days, when game was everywhere abundant, but such as one now
rarely finds.
After that happy discovery I shifted my blind to another larch with
low-drooping branches, beneath which one might rest comfortably and
look out through a screen of lace upon a gathering of the deer. They
are creatures of habit as well as of freedom; and one of their habits
is to rest at regular intervals, the hours being hard to forecast,
since they vary not only with the season of lengthening or shortening
days, but also each month with the changes of the moon. Thus, when the
moon fulls and weather is clear, deer are abroad most of the night. At
dawn they seek their day-beds, instinctively removing far from where
they have left their scent in feeding; and during the day they are apt
to remain hidden save for one brief hour, when they take a comforting
bite here or there, giving the impression that they eat now from habit
rather than from hunger. As the moon wanes they change their hours to
take advantage of its shining; and on the “dark of the moon” they
browse only in the early part of the night, then rest many hours, and
have two periods of feeding or roaming the next day.
Such seems to be the rule in the North, with plenty of exceptions to
keep one guessing,—as in the November mating-season, when bucks are
afoot at all hours; or during a severe storm, which keeps deer and all
other wild animals close in their coverts.
Because of this regularity of habit at irregular hours, the only
certainty about the salt-lick was that the animals would come if one
waited long enough. As I watched expectantly from my larch bower, the
morning shadows might creep up to me, halt, and lengthen away on the
other side, while not a deer showed himself in the open. Then there
would be a stir in the distant larches, a flash of bright color; a doe
would emerge from one of the game-trails, hastening her springy steps
as she neared the spring. As my eyes followed her, noting with pleasure
her graceful poses, her unwearied alertness, her frequent turning of
the head to one distant spot in the woods where she had left her fawn,
there would come another flash of color from another trail, then two or
three in a flecking of light and shadow, till half a dozen or more deer
were gathered at the lick, some lapping the mud eagerly, others
sipping, sipping, as if they could never have enough of the water.
After a time they would slip away as they had come, singly or in
groups; the spring would be deserted, and one could never tell how many
hours or days might pass before another company began to gather.
However eager for salt they might be, the deer came or went in that
mysteriously silent way of theirs, appearing without warning in one
trail, or vanishing down another without a sound to mark their passing.
Now and then, however, especially if one watched at the exquisite
twilight hour, a very different entrance might be staged on the lonely
bog,—a gay, prancing “here I come: get out of the way” kind of
entrance, which made one glad he had stayed to witness it. On the slope
of the nearest ridge your eye would catch an abrupt motion, the upward
surge of a bough or the spring-back of a smitten bush; presently to
your ears would come a rapid thudding of earth, or a sqush, sqush,
sqush of water; the larches would burst open and a buck leap forth,
flourishing broad antlers or kicking up mad heels as he went gamboling
down the game-trail. If other deer were at the spring, they would throw
up their heads, set their ears at the dancing buck, take a last quick
sip from the spring, and move aside as he jumped in to muzzle the mud
as if famished. For it was the mud rather than the water which first
claimed his attention, no doubt because it held more of the magic salt.
He often gave the impression, as he approached in high feather, that he
had been tasting the stuff in anticipation and could hardly wait to get
his tongue into it.
The first time I saw that frisky performance I went over to taste the
mud for myself, but found little to distinguish it from the mud of any
other peat-bog. The water from the spring was wholesome, with a faint
taste of something I could not name; and I drank it repeatedly without
learning its secret. That it held a charm of some kind, which chemistry
might reveal, was evident from the fact that deer came from miles
around to enjoy its flavor. Some of the trails could be traced clear
across the bog to distant ridges and a broken country beyond; and in
following these trails, to learn what creatures used them and where
they came from, I repeatedly came upon a deer asleep in his day-bed.
Whether the animals couched here before drinking at the spring, or
after drinking, or “just by happentry” I could not tell.
Once the sleeper was a buck with noble antlers. He was resting beside a
great log on the edge of an opening, half surrounded by dense fir
thickets. I speak of him as asleep; but that is mere habit of speech or
poverty of language. Of a score of wild birds or beasts that I have
found “asleep” in the woods, not one seemed to lose touch with the
waking world even for an instant. The buck’s eyelids were blinking, his
head nodding heavily; yet all the while his feet were curled in
readiness for an instant jump; and somehow those expressive feet gave
the impression of being as wide awake as a squirrel. Occasionally as I
watched him, fascinated by the rare sight, his head would drop almost
to the ground, only to be jerked up with an air of immense surprise;
then the sleepy fellow would stare in a filmy, unseeing, “who said I
was asleep” kind of way at a little tree that stood in the opening. The
stare would end with a slow closing of the eyelids, and in a moment he
would be nodding again.
XIII
BLACK MALLARDS
Next to the deer, the wild ducks were the chief attraction of my pond.
Indeed, they might well be placed first, since they were always at home
there, and much of the time engaged in one or another of the little
comedies that make ducks the most amusing of all birds. Eight summers
in succession, and again after an interval of two years, I found my
pond occupied by a pair of black mallards with their brood; and I
fancied, since migratory birds return to the place of their birth, and
their nestlings after them, that one of the pair was the lineal
descendant of ducks that had held the place in undisputed possession
for tens of thousands of years. Here was a succession, modest like all
true nobility, which made the proud family trees of Mayflower folk or
English kings or Norman barons look like young berry-bushes in the
shade of a towering pine.
Until late midsummer the family had the pond all to themselves. Never a
stranger-duck appeared to share or challenge their heritage; while day
after day the mother watched over the little brood as they fed or
played or learned the wild-duck signals. Like our dogs, every manner of
beast or bird has its own tribal ways or customs, some of which do not
appear in the young until they begin to roam abroad or to mingle with
their kind. So, as I watched the brood emerge from down to
pin-feathers, there would come a red-letter day when two of them,
meeting as they rounded a grassy point, would raise their wings as if
in salutation; and a later day when, the pin-feathers having grown to
fair plumage, their young cheepings or whistlings would change to a
decided quack.
Thereafter their talk was endlessly entertaining, if one took the
trouble to creep near enough to appreciate its modulations, expressive
of every emotion between drowsiness and tense alarm; for it cannot be
heard, except as a meaningless sound, beyond a few yards. The little
hen-ducks got on famously, having the mother’s quacking as a model; but
male ducks cannot or will not learn to quack, and since a male voice
was rarely heard on the pond at this season, each little drake was a
law unto himself, and made a brave show of his liberty. Climbing on a
tussock, as if for more room, he would stretch his wings, make odd
motions with his neck, and finally pump out a funny wheekle, wheekle,
as if he had swallowed a whistle.
Meanwhile the old drake and father of the family was seldom about; only
two or three times did I see him enter the pond, stay a brief while,
and then wing away over the tree-tops in the direction of a larger
lake, some three miles to the eastward. On that lake there was never a
brood of young ducks, so far as I could learn; but when trout-fishing
there I often surprised the drake, at times taking precious care of his
own skin in solitude, again clubbing sociably with three or four other
drakes, who had run away each from a family and the cares thereof on
some other lonely pond.
As the summer waned, a new sound of quacking, joyous and exultant,
would greet me when I drew near my pond. Creeping to my blind under the
larches, I would find a second brood making merry acquaintance with the
family I had watched over; then a third and a fourth company of
strangers, as young ducks of all that region began to traffic about in
preparation for the autumn flight. A little later the flocks fairly
reveled in sociability, gathering here or there with increasing
numbers, till on a late-September day I might find my pond deserted,
the owners being on a visit elsewhere, or I might catch breath at sight
of so many ducks that I could not accurately count them or distinguish
one brood from another.
At such a time my little pond seemed to awaken, to shed its silence
like a garment, to put on its most animated expression, as at a happy
festival or family reunion. The air was never still from the gabble of
meeting groups (probably all more or less related), or from the
resounding quank, quank, quank of some old gossip who went about
proclaiming her opinion to the whole company. Everywhere the still
water was broken into undulating wakes as the drakes swept grandly over
it, with that rhythmic, forward-and-back motion of their heads which is
like duck poetry,—a motion that is not seen when the birds are feeding,
but only when they are well satisfied with themselves or their
audience. Through the shadows under the bank glided knots or ribbons of
young birds which had not yet quite satisfied their appetites, some
exploring every crevice for ripened seeds, others tip-tilting their
tails to the blue sky as they probed the bottom for water-bugs and
other titbits. In an open space a solitary hen-duck bobbed and teetered
ecstatically, dipping the fore part of her body under, then heaving it
up quickly so as to send the cleansing water in a foamy wave over her
back and wings. Here or there on a tussock stood a quiet group of the
splendid birds, oiling their glossy feathers, setting a wing-cover just
right, or adding some other last touch to an elaborate toilet before
settling down for a nap.
The glassy water reflected every form, color, motion of these
untroubled ducks as in a glass, doubling the graceful effect. Around
them stretched the gloriously colored bog; and beyond the bog were the
nebulous-green larches, the somber black growth and the lifting hills,
on which autumn had laid its golden touch. Truly a beautiful sight, a
sight to make the heart of hunter or naturalist tremble with expectancy
as he fingered his gun. I have known that trembling, that expectancy;
but there was greater pleasure, perhaps greater freedom also, in
leaving the happy comedy undisturbed.
Because of its solitude, its utter wildness, my pond seemed to be the
chosen resting-place of the flocks on an autumn day (they feed or
travel mostly by night), and perhaps for the same reason the ducks that
frequented it were among the wildest creatures I have ever tried to
stalk. A black mallard is not an easy bird to outwit at any time or
place; but here some magic mirror or sounding-board seemed to
supplement his natural eyes or ears. The slightest unnatural voice or
appearance, the snap of a twig or the quiver of a leaf or the glimpse
of a face in the larches, would send a flock away on the instant; and
sometimes, when I was sure no sound or motion of mine had broken the
perfect quiet, they would take wing in such incomprehensible fashion as
to leave me wondering what extra sense had warned them of danger.
Several times in the course of a summer, when I wanted to observe the
little duck family more nearly, or to learn the meaning of some queer
play that I could not understand from a distance, I would creep out of
the larches unseen, worming my way along a sunken deer-path, and
stopping whenever heads were turned in my direction. One might think it
an easy matter to approach any game by such methods; yet almost
invariably, before I could be safe behind a bush or a tuft of grass at
the water’s edge, the old mother-duck would become uneasy, like a deer
that catches a vague hint of you floating far down the wind. That she
could not see or hear me was certain; that she could not smell me I had
repeatedly proved; nevertheless, after searching the shores narrowly
she would stretch her neck straight up from the water, as if attentive
to some wireless message in the air.
A wild duck does not take that alert attitude unless she is suspicious;
and a curious thing was, that though the mother was silent, uttering
never a word, the young would crouch and remain motionless wherever
they happened to be. Suddenly, as if certain of danger but unable to
locate it, the mother would spring aloft to go sweeping in wide circles
over the bog. She seemed to know it by heart, every pool and bump and
shadow of it; and when her keen eyes picked up an unfamiliar shadow on
a certain deer-path she would come at it with a rush, whirling over it
in an upward-climbing spiral till she became sure of me, as of
something out of place, when she would speed away with a warning note
over the tree-tops. If the young were strong of wing, they would follow
her swiftly, giving wide berth to the deer-path as if she had told them
beware of it; but if they did not yet trust themselves in the air, they
would skulk away, their heads down close to the water, and hide in one
of the grassy bogans of the pond, where because of the quaking shore it
was impossible to come near them.
Once, when the mother left in this way, I waited till the ducklings had
been some minutes hidden before creeping back to my blind in the
larches. An hour or more passed in the timeless quiet; while the water
became as glass under the afternoon sun, and a deer moved near the
hidden brood without flushing them or even bringing a head up where I
could see it. Then the mother returned, calling as she came; and the
first thing she did was to circle warily over the same deer-path,
stretching her neck down for a close inspection. “Aha! that thing is
gone, but where?” she said in every line and motion of her inquisitive
head or pulsating wings, as she sped away to find the answer.
Twice she circled the bog, her eyes searching every cranny and shadow
of it. From her high flight she slanted straight down and pitched fair
in the middle of the pond, where for some moments she sat motionless,
her head up, looking, listening,—a perfect image of alertness in the
midst of wildness. Satisfied at last that no trouble was near, she
turned to the shore with a low call; and out of the bogan pell-mell
rushed the little ones, splashing, cheeping, half lifting themselves
with their tiny wings as they scurried over the water to join the
mother. For a full hour I had kept my glasses almost continuously on
that bogan; then with divided attention I cast expectant glances at it
when I heard the mother’s incoming note, the whish of her wings as she
circled the bog and the splash as she took the water; but not till the
right signal came did I see a motion or a sign of life from the hidden
brood.
The pond was shaped, as we have noticed, like a pair of spectacles; and
a favorite place for the autumn flock to rest or preen or sleep was at
the bend between the two lobes. Down into that bend ran a screen of
alder-bushes, the only good cover between woods and water on the entire
pond; and it was so dense that a cat could hardly have crept through it
without making a disturbance. That was one reason, I suppose, why the
ducks felt safe at the outer end of the tangle: they could see
everything in front or on either side, and hear anything that moved
behind them.
One day, when the shore at this bend was freshly starred by ducks’ feet
and littered with feathers, showing that a large flock had just left
the roost, I began at the fringe of larches and cut a passageway, a
regular beaver’s tunnel, down the whole length of the alder run, making
an end in a point of grass, where the water came close on three sides.
One had to consider only the birds’ keen ears, the alder screen being
so thick that not even a duck’s eye could penetrate it; therefore I
smoothed the way most carefully, leaving no stick below to crack under
my weight, and no branch reaching down to rustle or quiver as I crawled
beneath it. When the tunnel was well finished I left the pond to its
solitude a few days, thinking that the birds would surely notice some
telltale sign of my work, some fresh-cut stick or wilted bough that my
eyes had overlooked, and be wary of the alders for a little time.
And why such pains to get near a bird, you ask, since one might better
observe or shoot him from a comfortable distance? Oh, just a notion of
mine, an odd notion, which can hardly be appreciated till one has
proved it in the open. As you can seldom “feel” the quality of a
stranger while he remains even a few yards away, so with any wild bird
or beast: there is an impression arising from nearness, from contact,
which cannot be had in any other way; and that swift impression, which
is both physical and mental, a judgment as it were of the entire
nature, is often more illuminating than hours of ordinary observation
or speculation.
Such an impression is not new or strange, or even modernly
psychological. On the contrary, it is the simplest matter in the world
of sense, I think, and perhaps also the surest. Most animals have a
significant way of touching their noses to one of their own kind at
meeting; not to smell him, as we imagine (they can smell him, or even
his tracks, at a distance), but in order to receive a more intimate or
convincing message than the sense of smell can furnish. Likewise, a man
naturally pats the head of a dog, or fingers an object after minutely
scanning it with his eyes; and in this instinctive action is the
ancient touch of recognition. Touch is the oldest and most universal of
the bodily senses, sight, smell, taste and hearing being later
specializations thereof; by it the living creature first became aware
of a world outside of self; and to it we all return for verification of
our sense impressions. Therefore it happens most naturally that,
despite warning signs or penalties, thoughtless men will put their
hands into the bear or monkey cage, where animals are no longer natural
or to be trusted, and our children must be forever lectured, or
sometimes spanked, for handling things which they have been told to let
alone.
Besides, when one is very near a strange bird or beast, one becomes
vaguely conscious of an extra sense at work,—that real but uncatalogued
sense-of-presence (to coin a name for it) which makes two persons in a
room aware of each other at every instant, even while both are absorbed
in quiet work or reading. The “feel” of the same room when one occupies
it alone is very different; and the difference may help to explain why
gregarious animals are uncomfortable, uneasy, unless they are near
their own kind,—near enough, that is, not simply to hear or see them
but to feel their bodily presence. A herd-animal is always restless,
and often sickens, if his herd is not close about him. The same
mysterious sense (mysterious to us, because we do not yet know the
organ through which it works) often warns the solitary man in the woods
or in the darkness that some living creature is near him, at a moment
when his eyes or ears are powerless to verify his impression.
But that is another and more subtle matter, familiar enough to a few
sensitive persons and natural woodsmen, but impossible of demonstration
to others; you cannot explain color to a man born blind. The simple
answer is, that for my own satisfaction I wanted to touch one of the
wary birds of my pond, as I had before touched eagle and crow, bear and
deer, and many another wild creature in his native woods. Such was the
notion. In other places I had several times tried to indulge it; but
save in one instance, when I found a winter flock weakened by hunger, I
had never laid my hand fairly on a black mallard when he had the free
use of his wits and wings.
When I returned to my pond, and from a distance swept my glasses over
it, the water was alive with ducks; never before had I seen so many
there at one time. Single large birds, the drakes undoubtedly, were
moving leisurely over the open spaces. Groups of five or six, each a
brood from some neighboring pond, were gliding in an exploring kind of
way under the banks or through the weed-beds; and scattered along the
shore at the end of the alder run were wisps or companies of the birds,
all preening or dozing with an air of complete security. Here at last
was my chance, my perfect chance, I told myself, as I carefully marked
one brood standing at the tip of the grassy point where my tunnel
ended.
More carefully than ever I stalked a bear, I circled through the black
growth, crept under the fringe of larches, and entered the alder run
unobserved. Inch by inch I wormed along the secret passageway, flat to
the ground, not once raising my head, hardly daring to pull a full
breath, till, just as I emerged from the alder shade into the grass, a
gamy scent in my nose and a low gabble in my ears told me that I was
almost near enough, that the birds were all around me, and that for the
rest of the way I must move as a shadow.
From under my hat-brim I located the gabblers, a large family of black
mallards outside the fringe of grass on my left. They were abreast of
me, not more than five or six feet away. I had not marked these birds
when I began my stalk; they were hidden in a tiny cove or bend of the
shore, and had it not been for their voices I would surely have crept
past without seeing them. At the mouth of the cove was a single
tussock, on which stood the mother-duck, wavering between dreams and
watchfulness as the sunshine poured full upon her, making her very
sleepy. On the bare earth beneath her the others were getting ready for
a nap, so near that I could see every motion, the settling of a head,
the blink of an eyelid. Occasionally through the tangle of grass stems
came the penetrating gleam of their eyes,—marvelously bright eyes,
alert and intelligent.