render themselves all the more interesting. They are like other species
with which we deem ourselves well acquainted, but which suddenly appear
in some quite unlooked-for time or place. The long-expected and the
unexpected have both an especial charm. I have elsewhere avowed my
favoritism for the white-throated sparrow; but I was never more
delighted to see him than on one Christmas afternoon. I was walking in a
back road, not far from the city, when I descried a sparrow ahead of me,
feeding in the path, and, coming nearer, recognized my friend the
white-throat. He held his ground till the last moment (time was precious
to him that short day), and then flew into a bush to let me pass, which
I had no sooner done than he was back again; and on my return the same
thing was repeated. Far and near the ground was white, but just at this
place the snow-plough had scraped bare a few square feet of earth, and
by great good fortune this solitary and hungry straggler had hit upon
it. I wondered what he would do when the resources of this garden patch
were exhausted, but consoled myself with thinking that by this time he
must be well used to living by his wits, and would probably find a way
to do so even in his present untoward circumstances.
The snow-birds (not to be confounded with the snow buntings) should have
at least a mention in such a paper as this. They are among the most
familiar and constant of our winter guests, although very much less
numerous at that time than in spring and autumn, when the fields and
lanes are fairly alive with them.
A kind word must be said for the shrike, also, who during the three
coldest months is to be seen on the Common oftener than any other of our
native birds. _There_, at all events, he is doing a good work. May he
live to finish it!
The blue jay stands by us, of course. You will not go far without
hearing his scream, and catching at least a distant view of his splendid
coat, which he is too consistent a dandy to put off for one of a duller
shade, let the season shift as it will. He is not always good-natured;
but none the less he is generally in good spirits (he seems to enjoy
his bad temper), and, all in all, is not to be lightly esteemed in a
time when bright feathers are scarce.
As for the jay's sable relatives, they are the most conspicuous birds in
the winter landscape. You may possibly walk to Brookline and back
without hearing a chickadee, or a blue jay, or even a goldfinch; but you
will never miss sight and sound of the crows. Black against white is a
contrast hard to be concealed. Sometimes they are feeding in the street,
sometimes stalking about the marshes; but oftenest they are on the ice
in the river, near the water's edge. For they know the use of friends,
although they have never heard of Lord Bacon's "last fruit of
friendship," and would hardly understand what that provident philosopher
meant by saying that "the best way to represent to life the manifold use
of friendship is to cast and see how many things there are which a man
cannot do himself." How aptly their case illustrates the not unusual
coexistence of formal ignorance with real knowledge! Having their
Southern brother's fondness for fish without his skill in catching it,
they adopt a plan worthy of the great essayist himself,--they court the
society of the gulls; and with a temper eminently philosophical, not to
say Baconian, they cheerfully sit at their patrons' second table. From
the Common you may see them almost any day (in some seasons, at least)
flying back and forth between the river and the harbor. One morning in
early March I witnessed quite a procession, one small company after
another, the largest numbering eleven birds, though it was nothing to
compare with what seems to be a daily occurrence at some places further
south. At another time, in the middle of January, I saw what appeared to
be a flock of herring gulls sailing over the city, making progress in
their own wonderfully beautiful manner, circle after circle. But I
noticed that about a dozen of them were black! What were these? If they
could have held their peace I might have gone home puzzled; but the crow
is in one respect a very polite bird: he will seldom fly over your head
without letting fall the compliments of the morning, and a vigorous
_caw, caw_ soon proclaimed my black gulls to be simply erratic specimens
of _Corvus Americanus_. Why were they conducting thus strangely? Had
they become so attached to their friends as to have taken to imitating
them unconsciously? Or were they practicing upon the vanity of these
useful allies of theirs, these master fishermen? Who can answer? The
ways of shrewd people are hard to understand; and in all New England
there is no shrewder Yankee than the crow.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] See a letter by Dr. Fritz Müller, "Butterflies as Botanists:"
_Nature_, vol. xxx. p. 240. Of similar import is the case, cited by Dr.
Asa Gray (in the _American Journal of Science_, November, 1884, p. 325),
of two species of plantain found in this country, which students have
only of late discriminated, although it turns out that the cows have all
along known them apart, eating one and declining the other,--the bovine
taste being more exact, it would seem, or at any rate more prompt, than
the botanist's lens.
[21] Unlike the snow bunting and the red-poll, however, the pine
grosbeak is believed to breed sparingly in Northern New England.
A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL
There shall be
Beautiful things made new, for the surprise
Of the sky-children.
KEATS.
Everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed
rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which
they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and
yet these is a silent joy at their arrival.
COLERIDGE.
A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL.
It began on the 29th of March; in the afternoon of which day, despite
the authority of the almanac and the banter of my acquaintances (March
was March to them, and it was nothing more), I shook off the city's dust
from my feet, and went into summer quarters. The roads were
comparatively dry; the snow was entirely gone, except a patch or two in
the shadow of thick pines under the northerly side of a hill; and all
tokens seemed to promise an early spring. So much I learned before the
hastening twilight cut short my first brief turn out-of-doors. In the
morning would be time enough to discover what birds had already reported
themselves at my station.
Unknown to me, however, our national weather bureau had announced a
snow-storm, and in the morning I drew aside the curtains to look out
upon a world all in white, with a cold, high wind blowing and snow
falling fast. "The worst Sunday of the winter," the natives said. The
"summer boarder" went to church, of course. To have done otherwise might
have been taken for a confession of weakness; as if inclemency of this
sort were more than he had bargained for. The villagers, lacking any
such spur to right conduct, for the most part stayed at home; feeling it
not unpleasant, I dare say, some of them, to have a natural inclination
providentially confirmed, even at the cost of an hour's exercise with
the shovel. The bravest parishioner of all, and the sweetest
singer,--the song sparrow by name,--was not in the meeting-house, but by
the roadside. What if the wind did blow, and the mercury stand at
fifteen or twenty degrees below the freezing point? In cold as in heat
"the mind is its own place."
Three days after this came a second storm, one of the heaviest
snow-falls of the year. The robins were reduced to picking up seeds in
the asparagus bed. The bluebirds appeared to be trying to glean
something from the bark of trees, clinging rather awkwardly to the trunk
meanwhile. (They are given to this, more or less, at all times, and it
possibly has some connection with their half-woodpeckerish habit of
nestling in holes.) Some of the snow-birds were doing likewise; I
noticed one traveling up a trunk,--which inclined a good deal, to be
sure,--exploring the crannies right and left, like any creeper. Half a
dozen or more phoebes were in the edge of a wood; and they too seemed
to have found out that, if worst came to worst, the tree-boles would
yield a pittance for their relief. They often hovered against them,
pecking hastily at the bark, and one at least was struggling for a
foothold on the perpendicular surface. Most of the time, however, they
went skimming over the snow and the brook, in the regular flycatcher
style. The chickadees were put to little or no inconvenience, since what
was a desperate makeshift to the others was to them only an every-day
affair. It would take a long storm to bury their granary.[22] After the
titmice, the fox-colored sparrows had perhaps the best of it. Looking
out places where the snow had collected least, at the foot of a tree or
on the edge of water, these adepts at scratching speedily turned up
earth enough to checker the white with very considerable patches of
brown. While walking I continually disturbed song sparrows, fox
sparrows, tree sparrows, and snow-birds feeding in the road; and when I
sat in my room I was advised of the approach of carriages by seeing
these "pensioners upon the traveler's track" scurry past the window in
advance of them.
It is pleasant to observe how naturally birds flock together in hard
times,--precisely as men do, and doubtless for similar reasons. The edge
of the wood, just mentioned, was populous with them: robins, bluebirds,
chickadees, fox sparrows, snow-birds, song sparrows, tree sparrows,
phoebes, a golden-winged woodpecker, and a rusty blackbird. The last,
noticeable for his conspicuous light-colored eye-ring, had somehow
become separated from his fellows, and remained for several days about
this spot entirely alone. I liked to watch his aquatic performances;
they might almost have been those of the American dipper himself, I
thought. He made nothing of putting his head and neck clean under water,
like a duck, and sometimes waded the brook when the current was so
strong that he was compelled every now and then to stop and brace
himself against it, lest he should be carried off his feet.
It is clear that birds, sharing the frailty of some who are better than
many sparrows, are often wanting in patience. As spring draws near they
cannot wait for its coming. What it has been the fashion to call their
unerring instinct is after all infallible only as a certain great public
functionary is,--in theory; and their mistaken haste is too frequently
nothing but a hurrying to their death. But I saw no evidence that this
particular storm was attended with any fatal consequences. The snow
completely disappeared within a day or two; and even while it lasted the
song sparrows, fox sparrows, and linnets could be heard singing with all
cheerfulness. On the coldest day, when the mercury settled to within
twelve degrees of zero, I observed that the song sparrows, as they fed
in the road, had a trick of crouching till their feathers all but
touched the ground, so protecting their legs against the biting wind.
The first indications of mating were noticed on the 5th, the parties
being two pairs of bluebirds. One of the females was rebuffing her
suitor rather petulantly, but when he flew away she lost no time in
following. Shall I be accused of slander if I suggest that possibly her
_No_ meant nothing worse than _Ask me again?_ I trust not; she was only
a bluebird, remember. Three days later I came upon two couples engaged
in house-hunting. In this business the female takes the lead, with a
silent, abstracted air, as if the matter were one of absorbing interest;
while her mate follows her about somewhat impatiently, and with a good
deal of talk, which is plainly intended to hasten the decision. "Come,
come," he says; "the season is short, and we can't waste the whole of
it in getting ready." I never could discover that his eloquence produced
much effect, however. Her ladyship will have her own way; as indeed she
ought to have, good soul, considering that she is to have the discomfort
and the hazard. In one case I was puzzled by the fact that there seemed
to be two females to one of the opposite sex. It really looked as if the
fellow proposed to set up housekeeping with whichever should first find
a house to her mind. But this _is_ slander, and I hasten to take it
back. No doubt I misinterpreted his behavior; for it is true--with
sorrow I confess it--that I am as yet but imperfectly at home in the
Sialian dialect.
For the first fortnight my note-book is full of the fox-colored
sparrows. It was worth while to have come into the country ahead of
time, as city people reckon, to get my fill of this Northern songster's
music. Morning and night, wherever I walked, and even if I remained
in-doors, I was certain to hear the loud and beautiful strain; to which
I listened with the more attention because the birds, I knew, would soon
be off for their native fields, beyond the boundaries of the United
States.
It is astonishing how gloriously birds may sing, and yet pass
unregarded. We read of nightingales and skylarks with a self-satisfied
thrill of second-hand enthusiasm, and meanwhile our native songsters,
even the best of them, are piping unheeded at our very doors. There may
have been half a dozen of the town's people who noticed the presence of
these fox sparrows, but I think it doubtful; and yet the birds, the
largest, handsomest, and most musical of all our many sparrows, were, as
I say, abundant everywhere, and in full voice.
One afternoon I stood still while a fox sparrow and a song sparrow sang
alternately on either side of me, both exceptionally good vocalists, and
each doing his best. The songs were of about equal length, and as far as
theme was concerned were not a little alike; but the fox sparrow's tone
was both louder and more mellow than the other's, while his notes were
longer,--more sustained,--and his voice was "carried" from one pitch to
another. On the whole, I had no hesitation about giving him the palm;
but I am bound to say that his rival was a worthy competitor. In some
respects, indeed, the latter was the more interesting singer of the two.
His opening measure of three _pips_ was succeeded by a trill of quite
peculiar brilliancy and perfection; and when the other bird had ceased
he suddenly took a lower perch, and began to rehearse an altogether
different tune in a voice not more than half as loud as what he had
been using; after which, as if to cap the climax, he several times
followed the tune with a detached phrase or two in a still fainter
voice. This last was pretty certainly an improvised cadenza, such a
thing as I do not remember ever to have heard before from _Melospiza
melodia_.
The song of the fox sparrow has at times an almost thrush-like quality;
and the bird himself, as he flies up in front of you, might easily be
mistaken for some member of that noble family. Once, indeed, when I saw
him eating burning-bush berries in a Boston garden, I was half ready to
believe that I had before my eyes a living example of the development of
one species out of another,--a finch already well on his way to become a
thrush. Most often, however, his voice puts me in mind of the cardinal
grosbeak's; his voice, and perhaps still more his cadence, and
especially his practice of the _portamento_.
The 11th of the month was sunny, and the next morning I came back from
my accustomed rounds under a sense of bereavement: the fox sparrows were
gone. Where yesterday there had been hundreds of them, now I could find
only two silent stragglers. They had been well scattered over the
township,--here a flock and there a flock; but in some way--I should be
glad to have anybody tell me how--the word had passed from company to
company that after sundown Friday night all hands would set out once
more on their northward journey. There was one man, at least, who missed
them, and in the comparative silence which followed their departure
appreciated anew how much they had contributed to fill the wet and
chilly April mornings with melody and good cheer.
The snow-birds tarried longer, but from this date became less and less
abundant. For the first third of the month they had been as numerous, I
calculated, as all other species put together. On one occasion I saw a
large company of them chasing an albino, the latter dashing wildly round
a pine-tree, with the whole flock in furious pursuit. They drove him
off, across an impassable morass, before I could get close enough really
to see him, but I presumed him to be of their own kind. As far as I
could make out he was entirely white. For the moment it lasted, it was
an exciting scene; and I was especially gratified to notice with what
extreme heartiness and unanimity the birds discountenanced their wayward
brother's heterodoxy. I agreed with them that one who cannot be content
to dress like other people ought not to be allowed to live with them.
The world is large,--let him go to Rhode Island!
On the evening of the 6th, just at dusk, I had started up the road for a
lazy after-dinner saunter, when I was brought to a sudden halt by what
on the instant I took for the cry of a night-hawk. But no night-hawk
could be here thus early in the season, and listening further, I
perceived that the bird, if bird it was, was on the ground, or, at any
rate, not far from it. Then it flashed upon me that this was the note of
the woodcock, which I had that very day startled upon this same
hillside. Now, then, for another sight of his famous aerial courtship
act! So, scrambling down the embankment, and clambering over the
stone-wall, I pushed up the hill through bushes and briers, till, having
come as near the bird as I dared, I crouched, and awaited further
developments. I had not long to wait, for after a few _yaks_, at
intervals of perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds, the fellow took to wing,
and went soaring in a circle above me; calling hurriedly _click, click,
click_, with a break now and then, as if for breath-taking. All this he
repeated several times; but unfortunately it was too dark for me to see
him, except as he crossed a narrow illuminated strip of sky just above
the horizon line. I judged that he mounted to a very considerable
height, and dropped invariably into the exact spot from which he had
started. For a week or two I listened every night for a repetition of
the yak; but I heard nothing more of it for a month. Then it came to my
ears again, this time from a field between the road and a swamp.
Watching my opportunity, while the bird was in the air, I hastened
across the field, and stationed myself against a small cedar. He was
still _clicking_ high overhead, but soon alighted silently within twenty
yards of where I was standing, and commenced to "bleat," prefacing each
_yak_ with a fainter syllable which I had never before been near enough
to detect. Presently he started once more on his skyward journey. Up he
went, in a large spiral, "higher still and higher" till the cedar cut
off my view for an instant, after which I could not again get my eye
upon him. Whether he saw me or not I cannot tell, but he dropped to the
ground some rods away, and did not make another ascension, although he
continued to call irregularly, and appeared to be walking about the
field. Perhaps by this time the fair one for whose benefit all this
parade was intended had come out of the swamp to meet and reward her
admirer.
Hoping for a repetition of the same programme on the following night, I
invited a friend from the city to witness it with me; one who, less
fortunate than the "forest seer," had never "heard the woodcock's
evening hymn," notwithstanding his knowledge of birds is a thousand-fold
more than mine, as all students of American ornithology would
unhesitatingly avouch were I to mention his name. We waited till dark;
but though _Philohela_ was there, and sounded his _yak_ two or three
times,--just enough to excite our hopes,--yet for some reason he kept to
_terra firma_. Perhaps he was aware of our presence, and disdained to
exhibit himself in the _rôle_ of a wooer under our profane and curious
gaze; or possibly, as my more scientific (and less sentimental)
companion suggested, the light breeze may have been counted unfavorable
for such high-flying exploits.
After all, our matter-of-fact world is surprisingly full of romance. Who
would have expected to find this heavy-bodied, long-billed,
gross-looking, bull-headed bird singing at heaven's gate? _He_ a
"scorner of the ground"? Verily, love worketh wonders! And perhaps it is
really true that the outward semblance is sometimes deceptive. To be
candid, however, I must end with confessing that, after listening to the
woodcock's "hymn" a good many times, first and last, I cannot help
thinking that it takes an imaginative ear to discover anything properly
to be called a song in its monotonous _click, click_, even at its
fastest and loudest.[23]
While I was enjoying the farewell _matinée_ of the fox-colored sparrows
on the 11th, suddenly there ran into the chorus the fine silver thread
of the winter wren's tune. Here was pleasure unexpected. It is down in
all the books, I believe, that this bird does not sing while on his
travels; and certainly I had myself never known him to do anything of
the sort before. But there is always something new under the sun.
"Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru?
Or who in venturous vessell measurèd
The Amazon's huge river, now found trew?
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever vew?"
I was all ear, of course, standing motionless while the delicious music
came again and again out of a tangle of underbrush behind a dilapidated
stone-wall,--a spot for all the world congenial to this tiny recluse,
whose whole life, we may say, is one long game of hide-and-seek.
Altogether the song was repeated twenty times at least, and to my
thinking I had never heard it given with greater brilliancy and fervor.
The darling little minstrel! he will never know how grateful I felt. I
even forgave him when he sang thrice from a living bush, albeit in so
doing he spoiled a sentence which I had already committed to "the
permanency of print." Birds of all kinds will play such tricks upon us;
but whether the fault be chargeable to fickleness or a mischievous
spirit on their part, rather than to undue haste on the part of us their
reporters, is a matter about which I am perhaps not sufficiently
disinterested to judge. In this instance, however, it was reasonably
certain that the singer did not show himself intentionally; for unless
the whole tenor of his life belies him, the winter wren's motto is,
Little birds should be heard, and not seen.
Two days afterward I was favored again in like manner. But not by the
same bird, I think; unless my hearing was at fault (the singer was
further off than before), this one's tune was in places somewhat broken
and hesitating,--as if he were practicing a lesson not yet fully
learned.
I felt under a double obligation to these two specimens of _Anorthura
troglodytes hiemalis_: first for their music itself; and then for the
support which it gave to a pet theory of mine, that all our singing
birds will yet be found to sing more or less regularly in the course of
the vernal migration.
Within another forty-eight hours this same theory received additional
confirmation. I was standing under an apple-tree, watching a pair of
titmice who were hollowing out a stub for a nest, when my ear caught a
novel song not far away. Of course I made towards it; but the bird flew
off, across the road and into the woods. My hour was up, and I
reluctantly started homeward, but had gone only a few rods before the
song was repeated. This was more than human nature could bear, and,
turning back upon the run, I got into the woods just in time to see two
birds chasing each other round a tree, both uttering the very notes
which had so roused my curiosity. Then away they went; but as I was
again bewailing my evil luck, one of them returned, and flew into the
oak, directly over my head, and as he did so fell to calling anew, _Sue,
suky, suky_. A single glance upward revealed that this was another of
the silent migrants,--a brown creeper! Only once before had I heard from
him anything beside his customary lisping _zee_, _zee_; and even on
that occasion (in June and in New Hampshire) the song bore no
resemblance to his present effort. I have written it down as it sounded
at the moment, _Sue_, _suky_, _suky_, five notes, the first longer than
the others, and all of them brusque, loud, and musical, though with
something of a warbler quality.[24]