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BIRDS IN THE BUSH
by
BRADFORD TORREY
Sixth Edition
Boston
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893
Copyright, 1885,
by Bradford Torrey
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
Wherefore, let me intreat you to read it with favour and attention, and
to pardon us, wherein we may seem to come short of some words, which we
have laboured to interpret.
_The Prologue of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach._
CONTENTS
PAGE
ON BOSTON COMMON 1
BIRD-SONGS 31
CHARACTER IN FEATHERS 53
IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 75
PHILLIDA AND CORIDON 103
SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE 129
MINOR SONGSTERS 155
WINTER BIRDS ABOUT BOSTON 185
A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL 211
AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY 243
A MONTH'S MUSIC 277
ON BOSTON COMMON.
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels:
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods 't was pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
WORDSWORTH.
ON BOSTON COMMON.
Our Common and Garden are not an ideal field of operations for the
student of birds. No doubt they are rather straitened and public. Other
things being equal, a modest ornithologist would prefer a place where he
could stand still and look up without becoming himself a gazing-stock.
But "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps;" and if we are
appointed to take our daily exercise in a city park, we shall very
likely find its narrow limits not destitute of some partial
compensations. This, at least, may be depended upon,--our
disappointments will be on the right side of the account; we shall see
more than we have anticipated rather than less, and so our pleasures
will, as it were, come to us double. I recall, for example, the
heightened interest with which I beheld my first Boston cat-bird;
standing on the back of one of the seats in the Garden, steadying
himself with oscillations of his tail,--a conveniently long
balance-pole,--while he peeped curiously down into a geranium bed,
within the leafy seclusion of which he presently disappeared. He was
nothing but a cat-bird; if I had seen him in the country I should have
passed him by without a second glance; but here, at the base of the
Everett statue, he looked, somehow, like a bird of another feather.
Since then, it is true, I have learned that his occasional presence with
us in the season of the semi-annual migration is not a matter for
astonishment. At that time, however, I was happily more ignorant; and
therefore, as I say, my pleasure was twofold,--the pleasure, that is, of
the bird's society and of the surprise.
There are plenty of people, I am aware, who assert that there are no
longer any native birds in our city grounds,--or, at the most, only a
few robins. Formerly things were different, they have heard, but now the
abominable English sparrows monopolize every nook and corner. These wise
persons speak with an air of positiveness, and doubtless ought to know
whereof they affirm. Hath not a Bostonian eyes? And doth he not cross
the Common every day? But it is proverbially hard to prove a negative;
and some of us, with no thought of being cynical, have ceased to put
unqualified trust in other people's eyesight,--especially since we have
found our own to fall a little short of absolute infallibility. My own
vision, by the way, is reasonably good, if I may say so; at any rate I
am not stone-blind. Yet here have I been perambulating the Public Garden
for an indefinite period, without seeing the first trace of a
field-mouse or a shrew. I should have been in excellent company had I
begun long ago to maintain that no such animals exist within our
precincts. But the other day a butcher-bird made us a flying call, and
almost the first thing he did was to catch one of these same furry
dainties and spit it upon a thorn, where anon I found him devouring it.
I would not appear to boast; but really, when I saw what Collurio had
done, it did not so much as occur to me to quarrel with him because he
had discovered in half an hour what I had overlooked for ten years. On
the contrary I hastened to pay him a heart-felt compliment upon his
indisputable sagacity and keenness as a natural historian;--a measure of
magnanimity easily enough afforded, since however the shrike might excel
me at one point, there could be no question on the whole of my
immeasurable superiority. And I cherish the hope that my fellow
townsmen, who, as they insist, never themselves see any birds whatever
in the Garden and Common (their attention being taken up with matters
more important), may be disposed to exercise a similar forbearance
toward me, when I modestly profess that within the last seven or eight
years I have watched there some thousands of specimens, representing not
far from seventy species.
Of course the principal part of all the birds to be found in such a
place are transient visitors merely. In the long spring and autumn
journeys it will all the time be happening that more or less of the
travelers alight here for rest and refreshment. Now it is only a
straggler or two; now a considerable flock of some one species; and now
a miscellaneous collection of perhaps a dozen sorts.
One of the first things to strike the observer is the uniformity with
which such pilgrims arrive during the night. He goes his rounds late in
the afternoon, and there is, no sign of anything unusual; but the next
morning the grounds are populous,--thrushes, finches, warblers, and what
not. And as they come in the dark, so also do they go away again. With
rare exceptions you may follow them up never so closely, and they will
do nothing more than fly from tree to tree, or out of one clump of
shrubbery into another. Once in a great while, under some special
provocation, they threaten a longer flight; but on getting high enough
to see the unbroken array of roofs, on every side they speedily grow
confused, and after a few shiftings of their course dive hurriedly into
the nearest tree. It was a mistake their stopping here in the first
place; but once here, there is nothing for it save to put up with the
discomforts of the situation till after sunset. Then, please heaven,
they will be off, praying never to find themselves again in such a
Babel.
That most of our smaller birds migrate by night is by this time too well
established to need corroboration; but if the student wishes to assure
himself of the fact at first hand, he may easily do it by one or two
seasons' observations in our Common,--or, I suppose, in any like
inclosure. And if he be blest with an ornithologically educated ear, he
may still further confirm his faith by standing on Beacon Hill in the
evening--as I myself have often done--and listening to the _chips_ of
warblers, or the _tseeps_ of sparrows, as these little wanderers, hour
after hour, pass through the darkness over the city. Why the birds
follow this plan, what advantages they gain or what perils they avoid by
making their flight nocturnal, is a question with which our inquisitive
friend will perhaps find greater difficulty. I should be glad, for one,
to hear his explanation.
As a rule, our visitors tarry with us for two or three days; at least I
have noticed that to be true in many cases where their numbers, or
size, or rarity made it possible to be reasonably certain when the
arrival and departure took place; and in so very limited a field it is
of course comparatively easy to keep track of the same individual during
his stay, and, so to speak, become acquainted with him. I remember with
interest several such acquaintanceships.
One of these was with a yellow-bellied woodpecker, the first I had ever
seen. He made his appearance one morning in October, along with a
company of chickadees and other birds, and at once took up his quarters
on a maple-tree near the Ether monument. I watched his movements for
some time, and at noon, happening to be in the same place again, found
him still there. And there he remained four days. I went to look at him
several times daily, and almost always found him either on the maple or
on a tulip tree a few yards distant. Without question the sweetness of
maple sap was known to _Sphyropicus varius_ long before our human
ancestors discovered it, and this particular bird, to judge from his
actions, must have been a genuine connoisseur; at all events he seemed
to recognize our Boston tree as of a sort not to be met with every day,
although to my less critical sense it was nothing but an ordinary
specimen of the common _Acer dasycarpum_. He was extremely industrious,
as is the custom of his family, and paid no attention to the children
playing about, or to the men who sat under his tree, with the back of
their seat resting against the trunk. As for the children's noise, he
likely enough enjoyed it; for he is a noisy fellow himself and famous as
a drummer. An aged clergyman in Washington told me--in accents half
pathetic, half revengeful--that at a certain time of the year he could
scarcely read his Bible on Sunday mornings, because of the racket which
this woodpecker made hammering on the tin roof overhead.
Another of my acquaintances was of a very different type, a female
Maryland yellow-throat. This lovely creature, a most exquisite, dainty
bit of bird flesh, was in the Garden all by herself on the 6th of
October, when the great majority of her relatives must have been already
well on their way toward the sunny South. She appeared to be perfectly
contented, and allowed me to watch her closely, only scolding mildly now
and then when I became too inquisitive. How I did admire her bravery and
peace of mind; feeding so quietly, with that long, lonesome journey
before her, and the cold weather coming on! No wonder the Great Teacher
pointed his lesson of trust with the injunction, "Behold the fowls of
the air."
A passenger even worse belated than this warbler was a chipping sparrow
that I found hopping about the edge of the Beacon Street Mall on the 6th
of December, seven or eight weeks after all chippers were supposed to be
south of Mason and Dixon's line. Some accident had detained him
doubtless; but he showed no signs of worry or haste, as I walked round
him, scrutinizing every feather, lest he should be some tree sparrow
traveling in disguise.
There is not much to attract birds to the Common in the winter, since we
offer them neither evergreens for shelter nor weed patches for a
granary. I said to one of the gardeners that I thought it a pity, on
this account, that some of the plants, especially the zinnias and
marigolds, were not left to go to seed. A little untidiness, in so good
a cause, could hardly be taken amiss by even the most fastidious
taxpayer. He replied that it would be of no use; we hadn't any birds
now, and we shouldn't have any so long as the English sparrows were here
to drive them away. But it would be of use, notwithstanding; and
certainly it would afford a pleasure to many people to see flocks of
goldfinches, red-poll linnets, tree sparrows, and possibly of the
beautiful snow buntings, feeding in the Garden in midwinter.
Even as things are, however, the cold season is sure to bring us a few
butcher-birds. These come on business, and are now welcomed as public
benefactors, though formerly our sparrow-loving municipal authorities
thought it their duty to shoot them. They travel singly, as a rule, and
sometimes the same bird will be here for several weeks together. Then
you will have no trouble about finding here and there in the hawthorn
trees pleasing evidences of his activity and address. Collurio is
brought up to be in love with his work. In his Mother Goose it is
written,--
Fe, fi, fo, farrow!
I smell the blood of an English sparrow;
and however long he may live, he never forgets his early training. His
days, as the poet says, are "bound each to each by natural piety." Happy
lot! wherein duty and conscience go ever hand in hand; for whose
possessor
"Love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security."
In appearance the shrike resembles the mocking-bird. Indeed, a policeman
whom I found staring at one would have it that he _was_ a mocking-bird.
"Don't you _see_ he is? And he's been singing, too." I had nothing to
say against the singing, since the shrike will often twitter by the
half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning
the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were
talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn
bush, right under the shrike's perch. The latter was all attention
instantly, and, after waiting till the sparrow had moved a little out of
the thick of the branches, down he pounced. He missed his aim, or the
sparrow was too quick for him, and although he made a second swoop, and
followed that by a hot chase, he speedily came back without his prey.
This little exertion, however, seemed to have provoked his appetite;
for, instead of resuming his coffee-tree perch, he went into the
hawthorn, and began to feed upon the carcass of a bird which, it seemed,
he had previously laid up in store. He was soon frightened off for a few
moments by the approach of a third man, and the policeman improved the
opportunity to visit the bush and bring away his breakfast. When the
fellow returned and found his table empty, he did not manifest the
slightest disappointment (the shrike never does; he is a fatalist, I
think); but in order to see what he would do, the policeman tossed the
body to him. It lodged on one of the outer twigs, and immediately the
shrike came for it; at the same time spreading his beautifully bordered
tail and screaming loudly. Whether these demonstrations were intended to
express delight, or anger, or contempt, I could not judge; but he seized
the body, carried it back to its old place, drove it again upon the
thorn, and proceeded to devour it more voraciously than ever, scattering
the feathers about in a lively way as he tore it to pieces. The third
man, who had never before seen such a thing, stepped up within reach of
the bush, and eyed the performance at his leisure, the shrike not
deigning to mind him in the least. A few mornings later the same bird
gave me another and more amusing exhibition of his nonchalance. He was
singing from the top of our one small larch-tree, and I had stopped near
the bridge to look and listen, when a milkman entered at the
Commonwealth Avenue gate, both hands full of cans, and, without noticing
the shrike, walked straight under the tree. Just then, however, he heard
the notes overhead, and, looking up, saw the bird. As if not knowing
what to make of the creature's assurance, he stared at him for a moment,
and then, putting down his load, he seized the trunk with both hands,
and gave it a good shake. But the bird only took a fresh hold; and when
the man let go, and stepped back to look up, there he sat, to all
appearance as unconcerned as if nothing had happened. Not to be so
easily beaten, the man grasped the trunk again, and shook it harder than
before; and this time Collurio seemed to think the joke had been carried
far enough, for he took wing, and flew to another part of the Garden.
The bravado of the butcher-bird is great, but it is not unlimited. I saw
him, one day, shuffling along a branch in a very nervous, unshrikely
fashion, and was at a loss to account for his unusual demeanor till I
caught sight of a low-flying hawk sweeping over the tree. Every
creature, no matter how brave, has some other creature to be afraid of;
otherwise, how would the world get on?
The advent of spring is usually announced during the first week of
March, sometimes by the robins, sometimes by the bluebirds. The latter,
it should be remarked, are an exception to the rule that our spring and
autumn callers arrive and depart in the night. My impression is that
their migrations are ordinarily accomplished by daylight. At all events
I have often seen them enter the Common, alight for a few minutes, and
then start off again; while I have never known them to settle down for a
visit of two or three days, in the manner of most other species. This
last peculiarity may be owing to the fact that the European sparrows
treat them with even more than their customary measure of incivility,
till the poor wayfarers have literally no rest for the soles of their
feet. They breed by choice in just such miniature meeting-houses as our
city fathers have provided so plentifully for their foreign _protégés_;
and probably the latter, being aware of this, feel it necessary to
discourage at the outset any idea which these blue-coated American
interlopers may have begun to entertain of settling in Boston for the
summer.
The robins may be said to be abundant with us for more than half the
year; but they are especially numerous for a month or two early in the
season. I have counted more than thirty feeding at once in the lower
half of the parade ground, and at nightfall have seen forty at roost in
one tree, with half as many more in the tree adjoining. They grow
extremely noisy about sunset, filling the air with songs, cackles, and
screams, till even the most stolid citizen pauses a moment to look up at
the authors of so much clamor.
By the middle of March the song sparrows begin to appear, and for a
month after this they furnish delightful music daily. I have heard them
caroling with all cheerfulness in the midst of a driving snow-storm. The
dear little optimists! They never doubt that the sun is on their side.
Of necessity they go elsewhere to find nests for themselves, where they
may lay their young; for they build on the ground, and a lawn which is
mowed every two or three days would be quite out of the question.
At the best, a public park is not a favorable spot in which to study
bird music. Species that spend the summer here, like the robin, the
warbling vireo, the red-eyed vireo, the chipper, the goldfinch, and the
Baltimore oriole, of course sing freely; but the much larger number
which merely drop in upon us by the way are busy feeding during their
brief sojourn, and besides are kept in a state of greater or less
excitement by the frequent approach of passers-by. Nevertheless, I once
heard a bobolink sing in our Garden (the only one I ever saw there), and
once a brown thrush, although neither was sufficiently at home to do
himself justice. The "Peabody" song of the white-throated sparrows is to
be heard occasionally during both migrations. It is the more welcome in
such a place, because, to my ears at least, it is one of the wildest of
all bird notes; it is among the last to be heard at night in the White
Mountain woods, as well as one of the last to die away beneath you as
you climb the higher peaks. On the Crawford bridle path, for instance, I
remember that the song of this bird and that of the gray-cheeked
thrush[1] were heard all along the ridge from Mount Clinton to Mount
Washington. The finest bird concert I ever attended in Boston was given
on Monument Hill by a great chorus of fox-colored sparrows, one morning
in April. A high wind had been blowing during the night, and the moment
I entered the Common I discovered that there had been an extraordinary
arrival of birds, of various species. The parade ground was full of
snow-birds, while the hill was covered with fox-sparrows,--hundreds of
them, I thought, and many of them in full song. It was a royal concert,
but the audience, I am sorry to say, was small. It is unfortunate, in
some aspects of the case, that birds have never learned that a _matinée_
ought to begin at two o'clock in the afternoon.
These sparrows please me by their lordly treatment of their European
cousins. One in particular, who was holding his ground against three of
the Britishers, moved me almost to the point of giving him three cheers.
Of late a few crow blackbirds have taken to building their nests in one
corner of our domain; and they attract at least their full share of
attention, as they strut about the lawns in their glossy clerical suits.
One of the gardeners tells me that they sometimes kill the sparrows. I
hope they do. The crow blackbird's attempts at song are ludicrous in the
extreme, as every note is cracked, and is accompanied by a ridiculous
caudal gesture. But he is ranked among the oscines, and seems to know
it; and, after all, it is only the common fault of singers not to be
able to detect their own want of tunefulness.
I was once crossing the Common, in the middle of the day, when I was
suddenly arrested by the call of a cuckoo. At the same instant two men
passed me, and I heard one say to the other, "Hear that cuckoo! Do you
know what it means? No? Well, _I_ know what it means: it means that it's
going to rain." It did rain, although not for a number of days, I
believe. But probably the cuckoo has adopted the modern method of
predicting the weather some time in advance. Not very long afterwards I
again heard this same note on the Common; but it was several years
before I was able to put the cuckoo into my Boston list, as a bird
actually seen. Indeed it is not so very easy to see him anywhere; for he
makes a practice of robbing the nests of smaller birds, and is always
skulking about from one tree to another, as though he were afraid of
being discovered, as no doubt he is. What Wordsworth wrote of the
European species (allowance being made for a proper degree of poetic
license) is equally applicable to ours:--
"No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery."
When I did finally get a sight of the fellow it was on this wise. As I
entered the Garden, one morning in September, a goldfinch was calling so
persistently and with such anxious emphasis from the large sophora tree
that I turned my steps that way to ascertain what could be the trouble.
I took the voice for a young bird's, but found instead a male adult, who
was twitching his tail nervously and scolding _phee-phee_, _phee-phee_,
at a black-billed cuckoo perched near at hand, in his usual sneaking
attitude. The goldfinch called and called, till my patience was nearly
spent. (Small birds know better than to attack a big one so long as the
latter is at rest.) Then, at last, the cuckoo started off, the finch
after him, and a few minutes later I saw the same flight and chase
repeated. Several other goldfinches were flying about in the
neighborhood, but only this one was in the least excited. Doubtless he
had special reasons of his own for dreading the presence of this
cowardly foe.
One of our regular visitors twice a year is the brown creeper. He is so
small and silent, and withal his color is so like that of the bark to
which he clings, that I suspect he is seldom noticed even by persons who
pass within a few feet of him. But he is not too small to be hectored by
the sparrows, and I have before now been amused at the encounter. The
sparrow catches sight of the creeper, and at once bears down upon him,
when the creeper darts to the other side of the tree, and alights again
a little further up. The sparrow is after him; but, as he comes dashing
round the trunk, he always seems to expect to find the creeper perched
upon some twig, as any other bird would be, and it is only after a
little reconnoitring that he again discovers him clinging to the
vertical bole. Then he makes another onset with a similar result; and
these manoeoeuvres are repeated, till the creeper becomes disgusted,
and takes to another tree.
The olive-backed thrushes and the hermits may be looked for every spring
and autumn, and I have known forty or fifty of the former to be present
at once. The hermits most often travel singly or in pairs, though a
small flock is not so very uncommon. Both species preserve absolute
silence while here; I have watched hundreds of them, without hearing so
much as an alarm note. They are far from being pugnacious, but their
sense of personal dignity is large, and once in a while, when the
sparrows pester them beyond endurance, they assume the offensive with
much spirit. There are none of our feathered guests whom I am gladder to
see; the sight of them inevitably fills me with remembrances of happy
vacation seasons among the hills of New Hampshire. If only they would
sing on the Common as they do in those northern woods! The whole city
would come out to hear them.
During every migration large numbers of warblers visit us. I have noted
the golden-crowned thrush, the small-billed water-thrush, the
black-and-white creeper, the Maryland yellow-throat, the blue
yellow-back, the black-throated green, the black-throated blue, the
yellow-rump, the summer yellow-bird, the black-poll, the Canada
flycatcher, and the redstart. No doubt the list is far from complete,
as, of course, I have not used either glass or gun; and without one or
other of these aids the observer must be content to let many of these
small, tree-top-haunting birds pass unidentified. The two kinglets give
us a call occasionally, and in the late summer and early autumn the
humming-birds spend several weeks about our flower-beds.
It would be hard for the latter to find a more agreeable stopping-place
in the whole course of their southward journey. What could they ask
better than beds of tuberoses, Japanese lilies, _Nicotiana_ (against the
use of which they manifest not the slightest scruple), petunias, and the
like? Having in mind the Duke of Argyll's assertion that "no bird can
ever fly backwards,"[2] I have more than once watched these
humming-birds at their work on purpose to see whether they would respect
the noble Scotchman's dictum. I am compelled to report that they
appeared never to have heard of his theory. At any rate they very
plainly did fly tail foremost; and that not only in _dropping_ from a
blossom,--in which case the seeming flight might have been, as the duke
maintains, an optical illusion merely,--but even while backing out of
the flower-tube in an upward direction. They are commendably catholic in
their tastes. I saw one exploring the disk of a sunflower, in company
with a splendid monarch butterfly. Possibly he knew that the sunflower
was just then in fashion. Only a few minutes earlier the same bird--or
another like him--had chased an English sparrow out of the Garden,
across Arlington Street, and up to the very roof of a House, to the
great delight of at least one patriotic Yankee. At another time I saw
one of these tiny beauties making his morning toilet in a very pretty
fashion, leaning forward, and brushing first one cheek and then the
other against the wet rose leaf on which he was perched.
The only swallows on my list are the barn swallows and the
white-breasted. The former, as they go hawking about the crowded
streets, must often send the thoughts of rich city merchants back to the
big barns of their grandfathers, far off in out-of-the-way country
places. Of course we have the chimney swifts, also (near relatives of
the humming-birds!), but they are not swallows.
Speaking of the swallows, I am reminded of a hawk that came to Boston,
one morning, fully determined not to go away without a taste of the
famous imported sparrows. It is nothing unusual for hawks to be seen
flying over the city, but I had never before known one actually to make
the Public Garden his hunting-ground. This bird perched for a while on
the Arlington Street fence, within a few feet of a passing carriage;
next he was on the ground, peering into a bed of rhododendrons; then for
a long time he sat still in a tree, while numbers of men walked back
and forth underneath; between whiles he sailed about, on the watch for
his prey. On one of these last occasions a little company of swallows
came along, and one of them immediately went out of his way to swoop
down upon the hawk, and deal him a dab. Then, as he rejoined his
companions, I heard him give a little chuckle, as though he said, "There!
did you see me peck at him? You don't think I am afraid of such a
fellow as that, do you?" To speak in Thoreau's manner, I rejoiced in the
incident as a fresh illustration of the ascendency of spirit over
matter.
One is always glad to find a familiar bird playing a new _rôle_, and
especially in such a spot as the Common, where, at the best, one can
hope to see so very little. It may be assumed, therefore, that I felt
peculiarly grateful to a white-bellied nuthatch, when I discovered him
bopping about on the ground--on Monument Hill; a piece of humility such
as I had never before detected any nuthatch in the practice of. Indeed,
this fellow looked so unlike himself, moving briskly through the grass
with long, awkward leaps, that at first sight I failed to recognize him.
He was occupied with turning over the dry leaves, one after
another,--hunting for cocoons, or things of that sort, I suppose. Twice
he found what he was in search of; but instead of handling the leaf on
the ground, he flew with it to the trunk of an elm, wedged it into a
crevice of the bark, and proceeded to hammer it sharply with his beak.
Great is the power of habit! Strange--is it not?--that any bird should
find it easiest to do such work while clinging to a perpendicular
surface! Yes; but how does it look to a dog, I wonder, that men can walk
better on their hind legs than on all fours? Everything is a miracle
from somebody's point of view. The sparrows were inclined to make game
of my obliging little performer; but he would have none of their
insolence, and repelled every approach in dashing style. In exactly
three weeks from this time, and on the same hillside, I came upon
another nuthatch similarly employed; but before this one had turned up a
leaf to his mind, the sparrows became literally too many for him, and he
took flight,--to my no small disappointment.
It would be unfair not to name others of my city guests, even though I
have nothing in particular to record concerning them. The Wilson thrush
and the red-bellied nuthatch I have seen once or twice each. The chewink
is more constant in his visits, as is also the golden-winged woodpecker.
Our familiar little downy woodpecker, on the other hand, has thus far
kept out of my catalogue. No other bird's absence has surprised me so
much; and it is the more remarkable because the comparatively rare
yellow-bellied species is to be met with nearly every season.
Cedar-birds show themselves irregularly. One March morning, when the
ground was covered with snow, a flock of perhaps a hundred collected in
one of the taller maples in the Garden, till the tree looked from a
distance like an autumn hickory, its leafless branches still thickly
dotted with nuts. Four days afterward, what seemed to be the same
company made their appearance in the Common. Of the flycatchers, I have
noted the kingbird, the least flycatcher, and the phoebe. The two
former stay to breed. Twice in the fall I have found a kingfisher about
the Frog Pond. Once the fellow sprung his watchman's rattle. He was
perhaps my most unexpected caller, and for a minute or so I was not
entirely sure whether indeed I was in Boston or not. The blue jay and
the crow know too much to be caught in such a place, although one may
often enough see the latter passing overhead. Every now and then, in the
traveling season, a stray sandpiper or two will be observed teetering
round the edge of the Common and Garden ponds; and one day, when the
latter was drained, I saw quite a flock of some one of the smaller
species feeding over its bottom. Very picturesque they were, feeding and
flying in close order. Besides these must be mentioned the
yellow-throated vireo, the bay-winged bunting, the swamp sparrow, the
field sparrow, the purple finch, the red-poll linnet, the savanna
sparrow, the tree sparrow, the night-hawk (whose celebrated tumbling
trick may often be witnessed by evening strollers in the Garden), the
woodcock (I found the body of one which had evidently met its death
against the electric wire), and among the best of all, the chickadees,
who sometimes make the whole autumn cheerful with their presence, but
about whom I say nothing here because I have said so much elsewhere.
Of fugitive cage-birds, I recall only five--all in the Garden. One of
these, feeding tamely in the path, I suspected for an English robin but
he was not in full plumage, and my conjecture may have been incorrect.
Another was a diminutive finch, dressed in a suit of red, blue, and
green. He sat in a bush, saying _No, no!_ to a feline admirer who was
making love to him earnestly. The others were a mocking-bird, a cardinal
grosbeak, and a paroquet. The mocking-bird and the grosbeak might
possibly have been wild, had the question been one of latitude simply,
but their demeanor satisfied me to the contrary. The former's awkward
attempt at alighting on the tip of a fence-picket seemed evidence enough
that he had not been long at large. The paroquet was a splendid
creature, with a brilliant orange throat darkly spotted. He flew from
tree to tree, chattering gayly, and had a really pretty song. Evidently
he was in the best of spirits, notwithstanding the rather obtrusive
attentions of a crowd of house sparrows, who appeared to look upon such
a wearer of the green as badly out of place in this new England of
theirs. But for all his vivacity, I feared he would not be long in
coming to grief. If he escaped other perils, the cold weather must soon
overtake him, for it was now the middle of September, and his last state
would be worse than his first. He had better have kept his cage; unless,
indeed, he was one of the nobler spirits that prefer death to slavery.
Of all the birds thus far named, very few seemed to attract the
attention of anybody except myself. But there remains one other, whom I
have reserved for the last, not because he was in himself the noblest or
the most interesting (though he was perhaps the biggest), but because,
unlike the rest, he did succeed in winning the notice of the multitude.
In fact, my one owl, to speak theatrically, made a decided hit; for a
single afternoon he may be said to have been famous,--or at all events
notorious, if any old-fashioned reader be disposed to insist upon this
all but obsolete distinction. His triumph, such as it was, had already
begun when I first discovered him, for he was then perched well up in an
elm, while a mob of perhaps forty men and boys were pelting him with
sticks and stones. Even in the dim light of a cloudy November afternoon
he seemed quite bewildered and helpless, making no attempt to escape,
although the missiles were flying past him on all sides. The most he did
was to shift his perch when he was hit, which, to be sure, happened
pretty often. Once he was struck so hard that he came tumbling toward
the ground, and I began to think it was all over with him; but when
about half-way down he recovered himself, and by dint of painful
flappings succeeded in alighting just out of the reach of the crowd. At
once there were loud cries: "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" and while
the scamps were debating what to do next, he regained his breath, and
flew up into the tree again, as high as before. Then the stoning began
anew. For my part I pitied the fellow sincerely, and wished him well out
of the hands of his tormentors; but I found myself laughing with the
rest to see him turn his head and stare, with his big, vacant eyes,
after a stone which had just whizzed by his ear. Everybody that came
along stopped for a few minutes to witness the sport, and Beacon Street
filled up with carriages till it looked as if some holiday procession
were halted in front of the State House. I left the crowd still at their
work, and must do them the justice to say that some of them were
excellent marksmen. An old negro, who stood near me, was bewailing the
law against shooting; else, he said, he would go home and get his gun.
He described, with appropriate gestures, how very easily he could fetch
the bird down. Perhaps he afterwards plucked up courage to violate the
statute. At any rate the next morning's newspapers reported that an owl
had been shot, the day before, on the Common. Poor bird of wisdom! His
sudden popularity proved to be the death of him. Like many of loftier
name he found it true,--
"The path of glory leads but to the grave."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] My identification of _Turdus Aliciæ_ was based entirely upon the
song, and so, of course, had no final scientific value. It was confirmed
a few weeks later, however, by Mr. William Brewster, who took specimens.
(See _Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club_, January, 1883, p.
12.) Prior to this the species was not known to breed in New England.
[2] _The Reign of Law_, p. 140.
BIRD-SONGS.
Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
Which make such delicate music in the woods?
SHELLEY.
BIRD-SONGS.
Why do birds sing? Has their music a meaning, or is it all a matter of
blind impulse? Some bright morning in March, as you go out-of-doors, you
are greeted by the notes of the first robin. Perched in a leafless tree,
there he sits, facing the sun like a genuine fire-worshiper, and singing
as though he would pour out his very soul. What is he thinking about?
What spirit possesses him?
It is easy to ask questions until the simplest matter comes to seem,
what at bottom it really is, a thing altogether mysterious; but if our
robin could understand us, he would, likely enough, reply:--
"Why do you talk in this way, as if it were something requiring
explanation that a bird should sing? You seem to have forgotten that
everybody sings, or almost everybody. Think of the insects,--the bees
and the crickets and the locusts, to say nothing of your intimate
friends, the mosquitoes! Think, too, of the frogs and the hylas! If
these cold-blooded, low-lived creatures, after sleeping all winter in
the mud,[3] are free to make so much use of their voices, surely a bird
of the air may sing his unobtrusive song without being cross-examined
concerning the purpose of it. Why do the mice sing, and the monkeys, and
the woodchucks? Indeed, sir,--if one may be so bold,--why do you sing,
yourself?"
This matter-of-fact Darwinism need not frighten us. It will do us no
harm to remember, now and then, "the hole of the pit whence we were
digged;" and besides, as far as any relationship between us and the
birds is concerned, it is doubtful whether we are the party to complain.
But avoiding "genealogies and contentions," and taking up the question
with which we began, we may safely say that birds sing, sometimes to
gratify an innate love for sweet sounds; sometimes to win a mate, or to
tell their love to a mate already won; sometimes as practice, with a
view to self-improvement; and sometimes for no better reason than the
poet's,--"I do but sing because I must." In general, they sing for joy;
and their joy, of course, has various causes.
For one thing, they are very sensitive to the weather. With them, as
with us, sunlight and a genial warmth go to produce serenity. A bright
summer-like day, late in October, or even in November, will set the
smaller birds to singing, and the grouse to drumming. I heard a robin
venturing a little song on the 25th of last December; but that, for
aught I know, was a Christmas carol. No matter what the season, you will
not hear a great deal of bird music during a high wind; and if you are
caught in the woods by a sudden shower in May or June, and are not too
much taken up with thoughts of your own condition, you will hardly fail
to notice the instant silence which falls upon the woods with the rain.
Birds, however, are more or less inconsistent (that is, a part of their
likeness to us), and sometimes sing most freely when the sky is
overcast.
But their highest joys are by no means dependent upon the moods of the
weather. A comfortable state of mind is not to be contemned, but beings
who are capable of deep and passionate affection recognize a difference
between comfort and ecstasy. And the peculiar glory of birds is just
here, in the all-consuming fervor of their love. It would be commonplace
to call them models of conjugal and parental faithfulness. With a few
exceptions (and these, it is a pleasure to add, not singers), the very
least of them is literally faithful unto death. Here and there, in the
notes of some collector, we are told of a difficulty he has had in
securing a coveted specimen: the tiny creature, whose mate had been
already "collected," would persist in hovering so closely about the
invader's head that it was impossible to shoot him without spoiling him
for the cabinet by blowing him to pieces!
Need there be any mystery about the singing of such a lover? Is it
surprising if at times he is so enraptured that he can no longer sit
tamely on the branch, but must dart into the air, and go circling round
and round, caroling as he flies?
So far as song is the voice of emotion, it will of necessity vary with
the emotion; and every one who has ears must have heard once in a while
bird music of quite unusual fervor. For example, I have often seen the
least flycatcher (a very unromantic-looking body, surely) when he was
almost beside himself; flying in a circle, and repeating breathlessly
his emphatic _chebec_. And once I found a wood pewee in a somewhat
similar mood. He was more quiet than the least flycatcher; but he too
sang on the wing, and I have never heard notes which seemed more
expressive of happiness. Many of them were entirely new and strange,
although the familiar _pewee_ was introduced among the rest. As I
listened, I felt it to be an occasion for thankfulness that the
delighted creature had never studied anatomy, and did not know that the
structure of his throat made it improper for him to sing. In this
connection, also, I recall a cardinal grosbeak, whom I heard several
years ago, on the bank of the Potomac River. An old soldier had taken me
to visit the Great Falls, and as we were clambering over the rocks this
grosbeak began to sing; and soon, without any hint from me, and without
knowing who the invisible musician was, my companion remarked upon the
uncommon beauty of the song. The cardinal is always a great singer,
having a voice which, as European writers say, is almost equal to the
nightingale's; but in this case the more stirring, martial quality of
the strain had given place to an exquisite mellowness, as if it were,
what I have no doubt it was, a song of love.
Every kind of bird has notes of its own, so that a thoroughly practiced
ear would be able to discriminate the different species with nearly as
much certainty as Professor Baird would feel after an examination of the
anatomy and plumage. Still this strong specific resemblance is far from
being a dead uniformity. Aside from the fact, already mentioned, that
the characteristic strain is sometimes given with extraordinary
sweetness and emphasis, there are often to be detected variations of a
more formal character. This is noticeably true of robins. It may almost
be said that no two of them sing alike; while now and then their
vagaries are conspicuous enough to attract general attention. One who
was my neighbor last year interjected into his song a series of four or
five most exact imitations of the peep of a chicken. When I first heard
this performance, I was in company with two friends, both of whom
noticed and laughed at it; and some days afterwards I visited the spot
again, and found the bird still rehearsing the same ridiculous medley. I
conjectured that he had been brought up near a hen-coop, and, moreover,
had been so unfortunate as to lose his father before his notes had
become thoroughly fixed; and then, being compelled to finish his musical
education by himself, had taken a fancy to practice these chicken calls.
This guess may not have been correct. All I can affirm is that he sang
exactly as he might have been expected to do, on that supposition; but
certainly the resemblance seemed too close to be accidental.
The variations of the wood thrush are fully as striking as those of the
robin, and sometimes it is impossible not to feel that the artist is
making a deliberate effort to do something out of the ordinary course,
something better than he has ever done before. Now and then he prefaces
his proper song with many disconnected, extremely _staccato_ notes,
following each other at very distant and unexpected intervals of pitch.
It is this, I conclude, which is meant by some writer (who it is I
cannot now remember) when he criticises the wood thrush for spending too
much time in tuning his instrument. But the fault is the critic's, I
think; to my ear these preliminaries sound rather like the recitative
which goes before the grand _aria_.
Still another musician who delights to take liberties with his score is
the towhee bunting, or chewink. Indeed, he carries the matter so far
that sometimes it seems almost as if he suspected the proximity of some
self-conceited ornithologist, and were determined, if possible, to make
a fool of him. And for my part, being neither self conceited nor an
ornithologist, I am willing to confess that I have once or twice been so
badly deceived that now the mere sight of this _Pipilo_ is, so to speak,
a means of grace to me.
One more of these innovators (these heretics, as they are most likely
called by their more conservative brethren) is the field sparrow,
better known as _Spizella pusilla_. His usual song consists of a simple
line of notes, beginning leisurely, but growing shorter and more rapid
to the close. The voice is so smooth and sweet, and the acceleration so
well managed, that, although the whole is commonly a strict monotone,
the effect is not in the least monotonous. This song I once heard
rendered in reverse order, with a result so strange that I did not
suspect the identity of the author till I had crept up within sight of
him. Another of these sparrows, who has passed the last two seasons in
my neighborhood, habitually doubles the measure; going through it in the
usual way, and then, just as you expect him to conclude, catching it up
again, _Da capo_.
But birds like these are quite outdone by such species as the song
sparrow, the white-eyed vireo, and the Western meadow-lark,--species of
which we may say that each individual bird has a whole repertory of
songs at his command. The song sparrow, who is the best known of the
three, will repeat one melody perhaps a dozen times, then change it for
a second, and in turn leave that for a third; as if he were singing
hymns of twelve or fifteen stanzas each, and set each hymn to its
appropriate tune. It is something well worth listening to, common
though it is, and may easily suggest a number of questions about the
origin and meaning of bird music.
The white-eyed vireo is a singer of astonishing spirit, and his sudden
changes from one theme to another are sometimes almost startling. He is
a skillful ventriloquist, also, and I remember one in particular who
outwitted me completely. He was rehearsing a well-known strain, but at
the end there came up from the bushes underneath a querulous call. At
first I took it for granted that some other bird was in the underbrush;
but the note was repeated too many times, and came in too exactly on the
beat.
I have no personal acquaintance with the Western meadow-lark, but no
less than twenty-six of his songs have been printed in musical notation,
and these are said to be by no means all.[4]