places are not indissolubly joined? Most of us, I am sure, could go over
the list and name the exact spots where we first saw this one, where we
first heard that one sing, and where we found our first nest of the
other. There is a piece of swampy woodland in Jefferson, New Hampshire,
midway between the hotels and the railway station, which, for me, will
always be associated with the song of the winter wren. I had been making
an attempt to explore the wood, with a view to its botanical treasures,
but the mosquitoes had rallied with such spirit that I was glad to beat
a retreat to the road. Just then an unseen bird broke out into a song,
and by the time he had finished I was saying to myself, A winter wren!
Now, if I could only see him in the act, and so be sure of the
correctness of my guess! I worked to that end as cautiously as possible,
but all to no purpose; and finally I started abruptly toward the spot
whence the sound had come, expecting to see the bird fly. But apparently
there was no bird there, and I stood still, in a little perplexity.
Then, all at once, the wren appeared, hopping about among the dead
branches, within a few yards of my feet, and peering at the intruder
with evident curiosity; and the next moment he was joined by a hermit
thrush, equally inquisitive. Both were silent as dead men, but plainly
had no doubt whatever that they were in their own domain, and that it
belonged to the other party to move away. I presumed that the thrush, at
least, had a nest not far off, but after a little search (the mosquitoes
were still active) I concluded not to intrude further on his domestic
privacy. I had heard the wren's famous song, and it had not been
over-praised. But then came the inevitable second thought: had I really
heard it? True, the music possessed the wren characteristics, and a
winter wren was in the brush; but what proof had I that the bird and the
song belonged together? No; I must see him in the act of singing. But
this, I found, was more easily said than done. In Jefferson, in Gorham,
in the Franconia Notch, in short, wherever I went, there was no
difficulty about hearing the music, and little about seeing the wren;
but it was provoking that eye and ear could never be brought to bear
witness to the same bird. However, this difficulty was not insuperable,
and after it was once overcome I was in the habit of witnessing the
whole performance almost as often as I wished.
Of similar interest to me is a turn in an old Massachusetts road, over
which, boy and man, I have traveled hundreds of times; one of those
delightful back-roads, half road and half lane, where the grass grows
between the horse-track and the wheel-track, while bushes usurp what
ought to be the sidewalk. Here, one morning in the time when every day
was disclosing two or three new species for my delight, I stopped to
listen to some bird of quite unsuspected identity, who was calling and
singing and scolding in the Indian brier thicket, making, in truth, a
prodigious racket. I twisted and turned, and was not a little astonished
when at last I detected the author of all this outcry. From a study of
the manual I set him down as probably the white-eyed vireo,--a
conjecture which further investigation confirmed. This vireo is the very
prince of stump-speakers,--fluent, loud, and sarcastic,--and is well
called the politician, though it is a disappointment to learn that the
title was given him, not for his eloquence, but on account of his habit
of putting pieces of newspaper into his nest. While I stood peering into
the thicket, a man whom I knew came along the road, and caught me thus
disreputably employed. Without doubt he thought me a lazy
good-for-nothing; or possibly (being more charitable) he said to
himself, "Poor fellow! he's losing his mind."
Take a gun on your shoulder, and go wandering about the woods all day
long, and you will be looked upon with respect, no matter though you
kill nothing bigger than a chipmunk; or stand by the hour at the end of
a fishing-pole, catching nothing but mosquito-bites, and your neighbors
will think no ill of you. But to be seen staring at a bird for five
minutes together, or picking roadside weeds!--well, it is fortunate
there are asylums for the crazy. Not unlikely the malady will grow upon
him; and who knows how soon he may become dangerous? Something must be
wrong about that to which we are unaccustomed. Blowing out the brains
of rabbits and squirrels is an innocent and delightful pastime, as
everybody knows; and the delectable excitement of pulling half-grown
fishes out of the pond to perish miserably on the bank, that, too, is a
recreation easily enough appreciated. But what shall be said of enjoying
birds without killing them, or of taking pleasure in plants, which, so
far as we know, cannot suffer even if we do kill them?
Of my many pleasant associations of birds with places, one of the
pleasantest is connected with the red-headed woodpecker. This showy bird
has for a good many years been very rare in Massachusetts; and
therefore, when, during the freshness of my ornithological researches, I
went to Washington for a month's visit, it was one of the things which I
had especially in mind, to make his acquaintance. But I looked for him
without success, till, at the end of a fortnight, I made a pilgrimage to
Mount Vernon. Here, after visiting the grave, and going over the house,
as every visitor does, I sauntered about the grounds, thinking of the
great man who used to do the same so many years before, but all the
while keeping my eyes open for the present feathered inhabitants of the
sacred spot. Soon a bird dashed by me, and struck against the trunk of
an adjacent tree, and glancing up quickly, I beheld my much-sought
red-headed woodpecker. How appropriately patriotic he looked, at the
home of Washington, wearing the national colors,--red, white, and blue!
After this he became abundant about the capital, so that I saw him
often, and took much pleasure in his frolicsome ways; and, some years
later, he suddenly appeared in force in the vicinity of Boston, where he
remained through the winter months. To my thought, none the less, he
will always suggest Mount Vernon. Indeed, although he is certainly
rather jovial, and even giddy, he is to me the bird of Washington much
more truly than is the solemn, stupid-seeming eagle, who commonly bears
that name.
To go away from home, even if the journey be no longer than from
Massachusetts to the District of Columbia, is sure to prove an event of
no small interest to a young naturalist; and this visit of mine to the
national capital was no exception. On the afternoon of my arrival,
walking up Seventh Street, I heard a series of loud, clear, monotonous
whistles, which I had then no leisure to investigate, but the author of
which I promised myself the satisfaction of meeting at another time. In
fact, I think it was at least a fortnight before I learned that these
whistles came from the tufted titmouse. I had been seeing him almost
daily, but till then he had never chanced to use that particular note
while under my eye.
There was a certain tract of country, woodland and pasture, over which I
roamed a good many times, and which is still clearly mapped out in my
memory. Here I found my first Carolina or mocking wren, who ran in at
one side of a woodpile and came out at the other as I drew near, and
who, a day or two afterwards, sang so loudly from an oak tree that I
ransacked it with my eye in search of some large bird, and was
confounded when finally I discovered who the musician really was. Here,
every day, were to be heard the glorious song of the cardinal grosbeak,
the insect-like effort of the blue-gray gnatcatcher, and the rigmarole
of the yellow-breasted chat. On a wooded hillside, where grew a
profusion of trailing arbutus, pink azalea, and bird-foot violets, the
rowdyish, great-crested flycatchers were screaming in the tree-tops. In
this same grove I twice saw the rare red-bellied woodpecker, who, on
both occasions, after rapping smartly with his beak, turned his head and
laid his ear against the trunk, evidently listening to see whether his
alarm had set any grub a-stirring. Near by, in an undergrowth, I fell in
with a few worm-eating warblers. They seemed of a peculiarly
unsuspicious turn of mind, and certainly wore the quaintest of
head-dresses. I must mention also a scarlet tanager, who, all afire as
he was, one day alighted in a bush of flowering dogwood, which was
completely covered with its large white blossoms. Probably he had no
idea how well his perch became him.
Perhaps I ought to be ashamed to confess it, but, though I went several
times into the galleries of our honorable Senate and House of
Representatives, and heard speeches by some celebrated men, including at
least half a dozen candidates for the presidency, yet, after all, the
congressmen in feathers interested me most. I thought, indeed, that the
chat might well enough have been elected to the lower house. His
volubility and waggish manners would have made him quite at home in that
assembly, while his orange-colored waistcoat would have given him an
agreeable conspicuity. But, to be sure, he would have needed to learn
the use of tobacco.
Well, all this was only a few years ago; but the men whose eloquence
then drew the crowd to the capitol are, many of them, heard there no
longer. Some are dead; some have retired to private life. But the birds
never die. Every spring they come trooping back for their all-summer
session. The turkey-buzzard still floats majestically over the city; the
chat still practices his lofty tumbling in the suburban pastures,
snarling and scolding at all comers; the flowing Potomac still yields "a
blameless sport" to the fish-crow and the kingfisher; the orchard oriole
continues to whistle in front of the Agricultural Department, and the
crow blackbird to parade back and forth over the Smithsonian lawns.
Presidents and senators may come and go, be praised and vilified, and
then in turn forgotten; but the birds are subject to no such mutations.
It is a foolish thought, but sometimes their happy carelessness seems
the better part.
MINOR SONGSTERS.
The lesser lights, the dearer still
That they elude a vulgar eye.
BROWNING.
Listen too,
How every pause is filled with under-notes.
SHELLEY.
MINOR SONGSTERS.
Among those of us who are in the habit of attending to bird-songs, there
can hardly be anybody, I think, who has not found himself specially and
permanently attracted by the music of certain birds who have little or
no general reputation. Our favoritism may perhaps be the result of early
associations: we heard the singer first in some uncommonly romantic
spot, or when we were in a mood of unusual sensibility; and, in greater
or less degree, the charm of that hour is always renewed for us with the
repetition of the song. Or if may be (who will assert the contrary?)
that there is some occult relation between the bird's mind and our own.
Or, once more, something may be due to the natural pleasure which
amiable people take (and all lovers of birds may be supposed, _a
priori_, to belong to that class) in paying peculiar honor to merit
which the world at large, less discriminating than they, has thus far
failed to recognize, and in which, therefore, as by "right of
discovery," they have a sort of proprietary interest. This, at least, is
evident: our preference is not determined altogether by the intrinsic
worth of the song; the mind is active, not passive, and gives to the
music something from itself,--"the consecration and the poet's dream."
Furthermore, it is to be said that a singer--and a bird no less than a
man--may be wanting in that fullness and scope of voice and that large
measure of technical skill which are absolutely essential to the great
artist, properly so called, and yet, within his own limitations, may be
competent to please even the most fastidious ear. It is with birds as
with other poets: the smaller gift need not be the less genuine; and
they whom the world calls greatest, and whom we ourselves most admire,
may possibly not be the ones who touch us most intimately, or to whom we
return oftenest and with most delight.
This may be well illustrated by a comparison of the chickadee with the
brown thrush. The thrush, or, as he is sometimes profanely styled, the
thrasher, is the most pretentious, perhaps I ought to say the greatest,
of New England songsters, if we rule out the mocking-bird, who is so
very rare with us as scarcely to come into the competition; and still,
in my opinion, his singing seldom produces the effect of really fine
music. With all his ability, which is nothing short of marvelous, his
taste is so deplorably uncertain, and his passion so often becomes a
downright frenzy, that the excited listener, hardly knowing what to
think, laughs and shouts. Bravo! by turns. Something must be amiss,
certainly, when the deepest feelings of the heart are poured forth in a
manner to suggest the performance of a _buffo_. The chickadee, on the
other hand, seldom gets mention as a singer. Probably he never looked
upon himself as such. You will not find him posing at the top of a tree,
challenging the world to listen and admire. But, as he hops from twig to
twig in quest of insects' eggs and other dainties, his merry spirits are
all the time bubbling over in little chirps and twitters, with now and
then a _Chickadee, dee_, or a _Hear, hear me_, every least syllable of
which is like "the very sound of happy thoughts." For my part, I rate
such trifles with the best of all good music, and feel that we cannot be
grateful enough to the brave tit, who furnishes us with them for the
twelve months of every year.
So far as the chickadee is concerned, I see nothing whatever to wish
different; but am glad to believe that, for my day and long after, he
will remain the same unassuming, careless-hearted creature that he now
is. If I may be allowed the paradox, it would be too bad for him to
change, even for the better. But the bluebird, who like the titmouse is
hardly to be accounted a musician, does seem to be somewhat blameworthy.
Once in a while, it is true, he takes a perch and sings; but for the
most part he is contented with a few simple notes, having no semblance
of a tune. Possibly he holds that his pure contralto voice (I do not
remember ever to have heard from him any note of a soprano, or even of a
mezzo-soprano quality) ought by itself to be a sufficient distinction;
but I think it likelier that his slight attempt at music is only one
manifestation of the habitual reserve which, more than anything else
perhaps, may be said to characterize him. How differently he and the
robin impress us in this particular! Both take up their abode in our
door-yards and orchards; the bluebird goes so far, indeed, as to accept
our hospitality outright, building his nest in boxes put up for his
accommodation, and making the roofs of our houses his favorite perching
stations. But, while the robin is noisily and jauntily familiar, the
bluebird maintains a dignified aloofness; coming and going about the
premises, but keeping his thoughts to himself, and never becoming one of
us save by the mere accident of local proximity. The robin, again, loves
to travel in large flocks, when household duties are over for the
season; but although the same has been reported of the bluebird, I have
never myself seen such a thing, and am satisfied that, as a rule, this
gentle spirit finds a family party of six or seven company enough. His
reticence, as we cheerfully admit, is nothing to quarrel with; it is all
well-bred, and not in the least unkindly; in fact, we like it, on the
whole, rather better than the robin's pertness and garrulity; but, none
the less, its natural consequence is that the bird has small concern for
musical display. When he sings, it is not to gain applause, but to
express his affection; and while, in one aspect of the case, there is
nothing out of the way in this,--since his affection need not be the
less deep and true because it is told in few words and with unadorned
phrase,--yet, as I said to begin with, it is hard not to feel that the
world is being defrauded, when for any reason, however amiable, the
possessor of such a matchless voice has no ambition to make the most of
it.
It is always a double pleasure to find a plodding, humdrum-seeming man
with a poet's heart in his breast; and a little of the same delighted
surprise is felt by every one, I imagine, when he learns for the first
time that our little brown creeper is a singer. What life could possibly
be more prosaic than his? Day after day, year in and out, he creeps up
one tree-trunk after another, pausing only to peer right and left into
the crevices of the bark, in search of microscopic tidbits. A most
irksome sameness, surely! How the poor fellow must envy the swallows,
who live on the wing, and, as it were, have their home in heaven! So it
is easy for us to think; but I doubt whether the creeper himself is
troubled with such suggestions. He seems, to say the least, as well
contented as the most of us; and, what is more, I am inclined to doubt
whether any except "free moral agents," like ourselves, are ever wicked
enough to find fault with the orderings of Divine Providence. I fancy,
too, that we may have exaggerated the monotony of the creeper's lot. It
can scarcely be that even his days are without their occasional
pleasurable excitements. After a good many trees which yield little or
nothing for his pains, he must now and then light upon one which is like
Canaan after the wilderness,--"a land flowing with milk and honey."
Indeed, the longer I think of it the more confident I feel that every
aged creeper must have had sundry experiences of this sort, which he is
never weary of recounting for the edification of his nephews and nieces,
who, of course, are far too young to have anything like the wide
knowledge of the world which their venerable three-years-old uncle
possesses. _Certhia_ works all day for his daily bread; and yet even of
him it is true that "the life is more than meat." He has his inward
joys, his affectionate delights, which no outward infelicity can touch.
A bird who thinks nothing of staying by his nest and his mate at the
sacrifice of his life is not to be written down a dullard or a drudge,
merely because his dress is plain and his occupation unromantic. He has
a right to sing, for he has something within him to inspire the strain.
There are descriptions of the creeper's music which liken it to a
wren's. I am sorry that I have myself heard it only on one occasion:
then, however, so far was it from being wren-like that it might rather
have been the work of one of the less proficient warblers,--a somewhat
long opening note followed by a hurried series of shorter ones, the
whole given in a sharp, thin voice, and having nothing to recommend it
to notice, considered simply as music. All the while the bird kept on
industriously with his journey up the tree; and it is not in the least
unlikely that he may have another and better song, which he reserves for
times of more leisure.[19]
Our American wood-warblers are all to be classed among the minor
songsters; standing in this respect in strong contrast with the true Old
World warblers, of whose musical capacity enough, perhaps, is said when
it is mentioned that the nightingale is one of them. But, comparisons
apart, our birds are by no means to be despised, and not a few of their
songs have a good degree of merit. That of the well-known summer
yellow-bird may be taken as fairly representative of the entire group,
being neither one of the best nor one of the poorest. He, I have
noticed, is given to singing late in the day. Three of the New England
species have at the same time remarkably rough voices and black
throats,--I mean the black-throated blue, the black-throated green, and
the blue golden-wing,--and seeing that the first two are of the genus
_Dendroeca_, while the last is a _Helminthophaga_, I have allowed
myself to query (half in earnest) whether they may not, possibly, be
more nearly related than the systematists have yet discovered. Several
of the warbler songs are extremely odd. The blue yellow-back's, for
example, is a brief, hoarse, upward run,--a kind of scale exercise; and
if the practice of such things be really as beneficial as music teachers
affirm, it would seem that this little beauty must in time become a
vocalist of the first order. Nearly the same might be said of the
prairie warbler; but his _étude_ is a little longer and less hurried,
besides being in a higher key. I do not call to mind any bird who sings
a downward scale. Having before spoken of the tendency of warblers to
learn two or even three set tunes, I was the more interested when, last
summer, I added another to my list of the species which aspire to this
kind of liberal education. It was on the side of Mount Clinton that I
heard two Blackburnians, both in full sight and within a few rods of
each other, who were singing two entirely distinct songs. One of
these--it is the common one, I think--ended quaintly with three or four
short notes, like _zip_, _zip_, _zip;_ while the other was not unlike a
fraction of the winter wren's melody. Those who are familiar with the
latter bird will perhaps recognize the phrase referred to if I call it
the _willie, willie, winkie,_--with a triple accent on the first
syllable of the last word. Most of the songs of this family are rather
slight, but the extremest case known to me is that of the black-poll
(_Dendroeca striata_), whose _zee, zee, zee_ is almost ridiculously
faint. You may hear it continually in the higher spruce forests of the
White Mountains; but you will look a good many times before you discover
its author, and not improbably will begin by taking it for the call of
the kinglet. The music of the bay-breasted warbler is similar to the
black-poll's, but hardly so weak and formless. It seems reasonable to
believe not only that these two species are descended from a common
ancestry, but that the divergence is of a comparatively recent date:
even now the young of the year can be distinguished only with great
difficulty, although the birds in full feather are clearly enough
marked.
Warblers' songs are often made up of two distinct portions: one given
deliberately, the other hurriedly and with a concluding flourish.
Indeed, the same may be said of bird-songs generally,--those of the song
sparrow, the bay-winged bunting, and the wood thrush being familiar
examples. Yet there are many singers who attempt no climax of this sort,
but make their music to consist of two, or three, or more parts, all
alike. The Maryland yellow-throat, for instance, cries out over and
over, "What a pity, what a pity, what a pity!" So, at least, he seems to
say; though, I confess, it is more than likely I mistake the words,
since the fellow never appears to be feeling badly, but, on the
contrary, delivers his message with an air of cordial satisfaction. The
song of the pine-creeping warbler is after still another fashion,--one
simple short trill. It is musical and sweet; the more so for coming
almost always out of a pine-tree.