discovered. If the definition be correct there are few weeds. For the
researches of others beside human investigators must be taken into the
account. What we complacently call the world below us is full of
intelligence. Every animal has a lore of its own; not one of them but
is--what the human scholar is more and more coming to be--a specialist.
In these days the most eminent botanists are not ashamed to compare
notes with the insects, since it turns out that these bits of animate
wisdom long ago anticipated some of the latest improvements of our
modern systematists.[20] We may see the red squirrel eating, with real
epicurean zest, mushrooms, the white and tender flesh of which we have
ourselves looked at longingly, but have never dared to taste. How amused
he would be (I fear he would even be rude enough to snicker) were you to
caution him against poison! As if _Sciurus Hudsonius_ didn't know what
he were about! Why should men be so provincial as to pronounce anything
worthless merely because _they_ can do nothing with it? The clover is
not without value, although the robin and the oriole may agree to think
so. We know better; and so do the rabbits and the humblebees. The wise
respect their own quality wherever they see it, and are thankful for a
good hint from no matter what quarter. Here is a worthy neighbor of mine
whom I hear every summer complaining of the chicory plants which
disfigure the roadside in front of her windows. She wishes they were
exterminated, every one of them. And they are homely, there is no
denying it, for all the beauty of their individual sky-blue flowers. No
wonder a neat housewife finds them an eyesore. But I never pass the spot
in August (I do not pass it at all after that) without seeing that hers
is only one side of the story. My approach is sure to startle a few
goldfinches (and they too are most estimable neighbors), to whom these
scraggy herbs are quite as useful as my excellent lady's apple-trees
and pear-trees are to her. I watch them as they circle about in musical
undulations, and then drop down again to finish their repast; and I
perceive that, in spite of its unsightliness, the chicory is not a
weed,--its use has been discovered.
In truth, the lover of birds soon ceases to feel the uncomeliness of
plants of this sort; he even begins to have a peculiar and kindly
interest in them. A piece of "waste ground," as it is called, an untidy
garden, a wayside thicket of golden-rods and asters, pig-weed and
evening primrose,--these come to be almost as attractive a sight to him
as a thrifty field of wheat is to an agriculturalist. Taking his cue
from the finches, he separates plants into two grand divisions,--those
that shed their seeds in the fall, and those that hold them through the
winter. The latter, especially if they are of a height to overtop a
heavy snow-fall, are friends in need to his clients; and he is certain
to have marked a few places within the range of his every-day walks
where, thanks to somebody's shiftlessness, perhaps, they have been
allowed to flourish.
It is not many years since there were several such winter gardens of the
birds in Commonwealth Avenue,--vacant house-lots overgrown with tall
weeds. Hither cause flocks of goldfinches, red-poll linnets, and snow
buntings; and thither I went to watch them. It happened, I remember,
that the last two species, which are not to be met with in this region
every season, were unusually abundant during the first or second year of
my ornithological enthusiasm. Great was the delight with which I added
them to the small but rapidly increasing list of my feathered
acquaintances.
The red-polls and the goldfinches often travel together, or at least are
often to be found feeding in company; and as they resemble each other a
good deal in size, general appearance, and ways, the casual observer is
very likely not to discriminate between them. Only the summer before the
time of which I speak I had spent a vacation at Mount Wachusett; and a
resident of Princeton, noticing my attention to the birds (a taste so
peculiar is not easily concealed), had one day sought an interview with
me to inquire whether the "yellow-bird" did not remain in Massachusetts
through the winter. I explained that we had two birds which commonly
went by that name and asked whether he meant the one with a black
forehead and black wings and tail. Yes, he said, that was the one. I
assured him, of course, that this bird, the goldfinch, did stay with us
all the year round, and that whoever had informed him to the contrary
must have understood him to be speaking about the golden warbler. He
expressed his gratification, but declared that he had really entertained
no doubt of the fact himself; he had often seen the birds on the
mountain when he had been cutting wood there in midwinter. At such
times, he added, they were very tame, and would come about his feet to
pick up crumbs while he was eating his dinner. Then he went on to tell
me that at that season of the year their plumage took on more or less of
a reddish tinge: he had seen in the same flock some with no trace of
red, others that were slightly touched with it, and others still of a
really bright color. At this I had nothing to say, save that his red
birds, whatever else they were, could not have been goldfinches. But
next winter, when I saw the "yellow-birds" and the red-poll linnets
feeding together in Commonwealth Avenue, I thought at once of my
Wachusett friend. Here was the very scene he had so faithfully
described,--some of the flock with no red at all, some with red crowns,
and a few with bright carmine crowns and breasts. They remained all
winter, and no doubt thought the farmers of Boston a very good and wise
set, to cultivate the evening primrose so extensively. This plant, like
the succory, is of an ungraceful aspect; yet it has sweet and beautiful
blossoms, and as an herb bearing seed is in the front rank. I doubt
whether we have any that surpass it, the birds being judges.
Many stories are told of the red-polls' fearlessness and ready
reconciliation to captivity, as well as of their constancy to each
other. I have myself stood still in the midst of a flock, until they
were feeding round my feet so closely that it looked easy enough to
catch one or two of them with a butterfly net. Strange that creatures so
gentle and seemingly so delicately organized should choose to live in
the regions about the North Pole! Why should they prefer Labrador and
Greenland, Iceland and Spitzbergen, to more southern countries? Why?
Well, possibly for no worse a reason than this, that these are the lands
of their fathers. Other birds, it may be, have grown discouraged, and
one after another ceased to come back to their native shores as the
rigors of the climate have increased; but these little patriots are
still faithful. Spitzbergen is home, and every spring they make the long
and dangerous passage to it. All praise to them!
If any be ready to call this an over-refinement, deeming it incredible
that beings so small and lowly should come so near to human sentiment
and virtue, let such not be too hasty with their dissent. Surely they
may in reason wait till they can point to at least one country where the
men are as universally faithful to their wives and children as the birds
are to theirs.
The red-poll linnets, as I have said, are irregular visitors in this
region; several years may pass, and not one be seen; but the goldfinch
we have with us always. Easily recognized as he is, there are many
well-educated New-Englanders, I fear, who do not know him, even by
sight; yet when that distinguished ornithologist, the Duke of Argyll,
comes to publish his impressions of this country, he avers that he has
been hardly more interested in the "glories of Niagara" than in this
same little yellow-bird, which he saw for the first time while looking
from his hotel window at the great cataract. "A golden finch, indeed!"
he exclaims. Such a tribute as this from the pen of a British nobleman
ought to give _Astragalinus tristis_ immediate entrance into the very
best of American society.
It is common to say that the goldfinches wander about the country during
the winter. Undoubtedly this is true in a measure; but I have seen
things which lead me to suspect that the statement is sometimes made too
sweeping. Last winter, for example, a flock took up their quarters in a
certain neglected piece of ground on the side of Beacon Street, close
upon the boundary between Boston and Brookline, and remained there
nearly or quite the whole season. Week after week I saw them in the same
place, accompanied always by half a dozen tree sparrows. They had found
a spot to their mind, with plenty of succory and evening primrose, and
were wise enough not to forsake it for any uncertainty.
The goldfinch loses his bright feathers and canary-like song as the cold
season approaches, but not even a New England winter can rob him of his
sweet call and his cheerful spirits; and for one, I think him never more
winsome than when he bangs in graceful attitudes above a snow-bank, on a
bleak January morning.
Glad as we are of the society of the goldfinches and the red-polls at
this time of the year, we cannot easily rid ourselves of a degree of
solicitude for their comfort; especially if we chance to come upon them
after sunset on some bitterly cold day, and mark with what a nervous
haste they snatch here and there a seed, making the utmost of the few
remaining minutes of twilight. They will go to bed hungry and cold, we
think, and were surely better off in a milder clime. But, if I am to
judge from my own experience, the snow buntings awaken no such
emotions. Arctic explorers by instinct, they come to us only with real
arctic weather, and almost seem to be themselves a part of the
snow-storm with which they arrive. No matter what they are doing:
running along the street before an approaching sleigh; standing on a
wayside fence; jumping up from the ground to snatch the stem of a weed,
and then setting at work hurriedly to gather the seeds they have shaken
down; or, best of all, skimming over the snow in close order, their
white breasts catching the sun as they veer this way or that,--whatever
they may be doing, they are the most picturesque of all our cold-weather
birds. In point of suspiciousness their behavior is very different at
different times, as, for that matter, is true of birds generally. Seeing
the flock alight in a low roadside lot, you steal silently to the edge
of the sidewalk to look over upon them. There they are, sure enough,
walking and running about, only a few rods distant. What lovely
creatures, and how prettily they walk! But just as you are wishing,
perhaps, that they were a little nearer, they begin to fly from right
under your feet. You search the ground eagerly, right and left, but not
a bird can you discover; and still they continue to start up, now here,
now there, till you are ready to question whether, indeed, "eyes were
made for seeing." The "snow-flakes" wear protective colors, and, like
most other animals, are of opinion that, for such as lack the receipt of
fern-seed, there is often nothing safer than to sit still. The worse the
weather, the less timorous they are, for with them, as with wiser heads,
one thought drives out another; and it is nothing uncommon, when times
are hard, to see them stay quietly upon the fence while a sleigh goes
past, or suffer a foot passenger to come again and again within a few
yards.
It gives a lively touch to the imagination to overtake these beautiful
strangers in the middle of Beacon Street; particularly if one has lately
been reading about them in some narrative of Siberian travel. Coming
from so far, associating in flocks, with costumes so becoming and yet so
unusual, they might be expected to attract universal notice, and
possibly to get into the newspapers. But there is a fashion even about
seeing; and of a thousand persons who may take a Sunday promenade over
the Mill-dam, while these tourists from the North Pole are there, it is
doubtful whether a dozen are aware of their presence. Birds feeding in
the street? Yes, yes; English sparrows, of course; we haven't any other
birds in Boston nowadays, you know.
With the pine grosbeaks the case is different. When a man sees a company
of rather large birds about the evergreens in his door-yard, most of
them of a neutral ashy-gray tint, but one or two in suits of rose-color,
he is pretty certain to feel at least a momentary curiosity about them.
Their slight advantage in size counts for something; for, without
controversy, the bigger the bird the more worthy he is of notice. And
then the bright color! The very best men are as yet but imperfectly
civilized, and there must be comparatively few, even of Bostonians, in
whom there is not some lingering susceptibility to the fascination of
red feathers. Add to these things the fact that the grosbeaks are
extremely confiding, and much more likely than the buntings to be seen
from the windows of the house, and you have, perhaps, a sufficient
explanation of the more general interest they excite. Like the snow
buntings and the red-polls, they roam over the higher latitudes of
Europe, Asia, and America, and make only irregular visits to our corner
of the world.[21]
I cannot boast of any intimate acquaintance with them. I have never
caught them in a net, or knocked them over with a club, as other
persons have done, although I have seen them when their tameness
promised success to any such loving experiment. Indeed, it was several
years before my lookout for them was rewarded. Then, one day, I saw a
flock of about ten fly across Beacon Street,--on the edge of
Brookline,--and alight in an apple-tree; at which I forthwith clambered
over the picket-fence after them, heedless alike of the deep snow and
the surprise of any steady-going citizen who might chance to witness my
high-handed proceeding. Some of the birds were feeding upon the rotten
apples; picking them off the tree, and taking them to one of the large
main branches or to the ground, and there tearing them to pieces,--for
the sake of the seeds, I suppose. The rest sat still, doing nothing. I
was most impressed with the exceeding mildness and placidity of their
demeanor; as if they had time enough, plenty to eat, and nothing to
fear. Their only notes were in quality much like the goldfinch's, and
hardly louder, but without his characteristic inflection. I left the
whole company seated idly in a maple-tree, where, to all appearance,
they proposed to observe the remainder of the day as a Sabbath.
Last winter the grosbeaks were uncommonly abundant. I found a number of
them within a few rods of the place just mentioned; this time in
evergreen trees, and so near the road that I had no call to commit
trespass. Evergreens are their usual resort,--so, at least, I gather
from books,--but I have seen them picking up provender from a
bare-looking last year's garden. Natives of the inhospitable North, they
have learned by long experience how to adapt themselves to
circumstances. If one resource fails, there is always another to be
tried. Let us hope that they even know how to show fight upon, occasion.
The purple finch--a small copy of the pine grosbeak, as the indigo bird
is of the blue grosbeak--is a summer rather than a winter bird with us;
yet he sometimes passes the cold season in Eastern Massachusetts, and
even in Northern New Hampshire. I have never heard him sing more
gloriously than once when the ground was deep under the snow; a
wonderfully sweet and protracted warble, poured out while the singer
circled about in the air with a kind of half-hovering flight.
As I was walking briskly along a West End street, one cold morning in
March, I heard a bird's note close at hand, and, looking down,
discovered a pair of these finches in a front yard. The male, in bright
plumage, was flitting about his mate, calling anxiously, while she, poor
thing, sat motionless upon the snow, too sick or too badly exhausted to
fly. I stroked her feathers gently while she perched on my finger, and
then resumed my walk; first putting her into a little more sheltered
position on the sill of a cellar window, and promising to call on my way
back, when, if she were no better, I would take her home with me, and
give her a warm room and good nursing. When I returned, however, she was
nowhere to be found. Her mate, I regret to say, both on his own account
and for the sake of the story, had taken wing and disappeared the moment
I entered the yard. Possibly he came back and encouraged her to fly off
with him; or perhaps some cat made a Sunday breakfast of her. The truth
will never be known; our vigilant city police take no cognizance of
tragedies so humble.
For several years a few song sparrows--a pair or two, at least--have
wintered in a piece of ground just beyond the junction of Beacon street
and Brookline Avenue. I have grown accustomed to listen for their
_tseep_ as I go by the spot, and occasionally I catch sight of one of
them perched upon a weed, or diving under the plank sidewalk. It would
be a pleasure to know the history of the colony: how it started; whether
the birds are the same year after year, as I suppose to be the case; and
why this particular site was selected. The lot is small, with no woods
or bushy thicket near, while it has buildings in one corner, and is
bounded on its three sides by the streets and the railway; but it is
full of a rank growth of weeds, especially a sturdy species of aster and
the evergreen golden-rod, and I suspect that the plank walk, which on
one side is raised some distance from the ground, is found serviceable
for shelter in severe weather, as it is certainly made to take the place
of shrubbery for purposes of concealment.
Fortunately, birds, even those of the same species, are not all exactly
alike in their tastes and manner of life. So, while by far the greater
part of our song sparrows leave us in the fall, there are always some
who prefer to stay. They have strong local attachments, perhaps; or they
dread the fatigue and peril of the journey; or they were once
incapacitated for flight when their companions went away, and, having
found a Northern winter not so unendurable as they had expected, have
since done from choice what at first they did of necessity. Whatever
their reasons,--and we cannot be presumed to have guessed half of
them,--at all events a goodly number of song sparrows do winter in
Massachusetts, where they open the musical season before the first of
the migrants make their appearance. I doubt, however, whether many of
them choose camping grounds so exposed and public as this in the rear
of the "Half-way House."
Our only cold-weather thrushes are the robins. They may be found any
time in favorable situations; and even in so bleak a place as Boston
Common I have seen them in every month of the year except February. This
exception, moreover, is more apparent than real,--at the most a matter
of but twenty-four hours, since I once saw four birds in a tree near the
Frog Pond on the last day of January. The house sparrows were as much
surprised as I was at the sight, and, with characteristic urbanity,
gathered from far and near to sit in the same tree with the visitors,
and stare at them.
We cannot help being grateful to the robins and the song sparrows, who
give us their society at so great a cost; but their presence can
scarcely be thought to enliven the season. At its best their bearing is
only that of patient submission to the inevitable. They remind us of the
summer gone and the summer coming, rather than brighten the winter that
is now upon us; like friends who commiserate us in some affliction, but
are not able to comfort us. How different the chickadee! In the worst
weather his greeting is never of condolence, but of good cheer. He has
no theory upon the subject, probably; he is no Shepherd of Salisbury
Plain; but he knows better than to waste the exhilarating air of this
wild and frosty day in reminiscences of summer time. It is a
pretty-sounding couplet,--
"Thou hast no morrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year,"--
but rather incongruous, he would think. _Chickadee, dee_, he
calls,--_chickadee, dee_; and though the words have no exact equivalent
in English, their meaning is felt by all such as are worthy to hear
them.
Are the smallest birds really the most courageous, or does an
unconscious sympathy on our part inevitably give them odds in the
comparison? Probably the latter supposition comes nearest the truth.
When a sparrow chases a butcher-bird we cheer the sparrow, and then when
a humming-bird puts to flight a sparrow, we cheer the humming-bird; we
side with the kingbird against the crow, and with the vireo, against the
kingbird. It is a noble trait of human nature--though we are somewhat
too ready to boast of it--that we like, as we say, to see the little
fellow at the top. These remarks are made, not with any reference to the
chickadee,--I admit no possibility of exaggeration in his case,--but as
leading to a mention of the golden-crested kinglet. He is the least of
all our winter birds, and one of the most engaging. Emerson's "atom in
full breath" and "scrap of valor" would apply to him even better than to
the titmouse. He says little,--_zee, zee, zee_ is nearly the limit of
his vocabulary; but his lively demeanor and the grace and agility of his
movements are in themselves an excellent language, speaking infallibly a
contented mind. (It is a fact, on which I forbear to moralize, that
birds seldom look unhappy except when they are idle.) His diminutive
size attracts attention even from those who rarely notice such things.
About the first of December, a year ago, I was told of a man who had
shot a humming-bird only a few days before in the vicinity of Boston. Of
course I expressed a polite surprise, and assured my informant that such
a remarkable capture ought by all means to be put on record in "The
Auk," as every ornithologist in the land would be interested in it. On
this he called upon the lucky sportsman's brother, who happened to be
standing by, to corroborate the story. Yes, the latter said, the fact
was as had been stated. "But then," he continued, "the bird didn't have
a _long bill_, like a humming-bird;" and when I suggested that perhaps
its crown was yellow, bordered with black, he said, "Yes, yes; that's
the bird, exactly." So easy are startling discoveries to an observer who
has just the requisite amount of knowledge,--enough, and (especially)
not too much!
The brown creeper is quite as industrious and good-humored as the
kinglet, but he is less taking in his personal appearance and less
romantic in his mode of life. The same may be said of our two
black-and-white woodpeckers, the downy and the hairy; while their more
showy but less hardy relative, the flicker, evidently feels the weather
a burden. The creeper and these three woodpeckers are with us in limited
numbers every winter; and in the season of 1881-82 we had an altogether
unexpected visit from the red-headed woodpecker,--such a thing as had
not been known for a long time, if ever. Where the birds came from, and
what was the occasion of their journey, nobody could tell. They arrived
early in the autumn, and went away, with the exception of a few
stragglers, in the spring; and as far as I know have never been seen
since. It is a great pity they did not like us well enough to come
again; for they are wide-awake, entertaining creatures, and gorgeously
attired. I used to watch them in the oak groves of some Longwood
estates, but it was not till our second or third interview that I
discovered them to be the authors of a mystery over which I had been
exercising my wits in vain, a tree-frog's note in winter! One of their
amusements was to drum on the tin girdles of the shade trees; and
meanwhile they themselves afforded a pastime to the gray squirrels, who
were often to be seen creeping stealthily after them, as if they
imagined that _Melanerpes erythrocephalus_ might possibly be caught, if
only he were hunted long enough. I laughed at them; but, after all,
their amusing hallucination was nothing but the sportsman's instinct;
and life would soon lose its charm for most of us, sportsmen or not, if
we could no longer pursue the unattainable.
Probably my experience is not singular, but there are certain birds,
well known to be more or less abundant in this neighborhood, which for
some reason or other I have seldom, if ever, met. For example, of the
multitude of pine finches which now and then overrun Eastern
Massachusetts in winter I have never seen one, while on the other hand I
was once lucky enough to come upon a few of the very much smaller number
which pass the summer in Northern New Hampshire. This was in the White
Mountain Notch, first on Mount Willard and then near the Crawford House,
at which latter place they were feeding on the lawn and along the
railway track as familiarly as the goldfinches.
The shore larks, too, are no doubt common near Boston for a part of
every year; yet I found half a dozen five or six years ago in the marsh
beside a Back Bay street, and have seen none since. One of these stood
upon a pile of earth, singing to himself in an undertone, while the rest
were feeding in the grass. Whether the singer was playing sentinel, and
sounded an alarm, I was not sure, but all at once the flock started off,
as if on a single pair of wings.