_October 10th._
The game-law has relaxed its authority. The gun is set free. I hear it
in the woods, in the fields, on the hills, Sundays and week-days,
bang! bang! bang! as if it could not express its joy, and even
celebrating its own emancipation.
Well, let them fire, only so they keep off my hill. It is true that
the birds have finished their service, and are now of little use,
either as songsters or as worm-exterminators—more’s the pity! But are
their past services to be forgotten?
Let me speak of the robin.
He is an immense feeder, and omnivorous. Nothing seems to come
amiss—fruit, worm, or seed. Glutton he is not, for he does not eat
more than he really needs; but he needs more than most birds of his
size.
It is a disputed question, among farmers, whether the robin is a
profitable bird. Whether he does not damage the fruit crop out of all
proportion to his services in the crusade against insects, I grieve to
say, that my own household is divided, and that I am the only one that
is openly and wholly a friend to the robin. He is an early riser, and
no sooner has he sung his morning hymn than he begins breakfast. Now,
in the month of June cherries ripen. I have a cherry orchard. When
fully grown, there will be enough for robins and men. But at present
my trees are like precocious children; they blossom enormously, but
set little fruit. The question now is, Whose is that fruit? The people
in the house declare that it belongs to us. The robins out of doors
say little about it, but actions speak louder than words. Rising
earlier than we do, they get their breakfast before the smoke rises
from my chimneys. I will not permit them to be driven away, and still
less to be shot. I plead their services. I recount their deeds of
valor against insects; their service of song. But it is all in vain. I
am voted down. All manner of threats are thrown out by the boys, “if I
would only let them.” But I won’t let them!
There are two distinct grounds on which these birds are to be
preserved and encouraged. The first ground is the refining pleasure
which they give to every person of true susceptibility. Thousands
there are who live in the country who will regard this as sheer
sentimentality. They are robust people, who drive around all day with
vigorous industry, and have always done so, until at length their very
standard of manhood is made up of some kind of physical force. He is a
man that can lift the largest weight, run the longest and fastest, cut
the most grain, climb most lithely, wrestle the most dextrously. And
if he can make a shrewd bargain, has an eye for the points in an ox or
horse, has the knack of making money, and a good-natured way of
pushing about among men, he is considered, and considers himself, to
be a real up-and-down man!
But where are the finer traits? God made blossom bulbs in every
nature, and if men do not blossom they are deficient in the higher
elements.
To disregard qualities of beauty, in form, color, motion, and song, is
so far to indicate a deformity of one’s own nature. We never think one
to be more manly who cares nothing for the unmarketable graces of the
natural world, than he who makes them a part of his daily enjoyment.
The argument is conclusive to a fine nature, when one says, “Birds are
too beautiful to be killed.” It may be replied that noxious insects
and animals are beautiful, too, and yet are destroyed by the humane
and refined, because they are mischievous. We admit the statement, and
are willing to apply it to birds. When they are really destructive to
crops, or when they are, at proper seasons, needful for food, it is no
inhumanity to take their lives. They must take their part and lot with
the whole creation, which everywhere eats and is eaten.
But to return to our robin. There is no season of the year when the
robin does not prevent more mischief than he accomplishes. He is an
enormous eater, and, for the most part, he prefers a meat diet. No one
who has not taken pains to observe and estimate can form any
conception of the insects and worms devoured by the robin between
March and August—that is, during the whole nesting period. One robin
eats, in a single season, what, if built into a solid form, would be
more than a whole ox. Fruit is but a small part of his diet; cherries,
strawberries, and grapes, for a while, suffer from his depredations.
Yet, if there were no birds these very things would suffer far more.
Insects are more to be dreaded than birds. They elude our vigilance,
they work secretly, they swarm in such numbers as to defy man’s power.
But birds keep them down. They destroy myriads of eggs, of grubs, of
tender worms, and of fruit-loving insects. To destroy birds for the
sake of saving fruit is like throwing down the fence about one’s
garden to keep the pigs out! Even admit, as some do and we do not,
that blackbirds and crows deserve to be shot for destroying the
planter’s seed. We claim that the robin does not belong to their
company. He preserves a hundred-fold more than he destroys.
On every ground, then, of humanity, of good taste, and of thrift,
robins should be spared. They are our best friends. They are, beyond
all question, the finest song-bird of the temperate zone. They are a
watch and guard against insect depredations in orchard and garden,
and, with other birds, they make possible the raising of fruit, which,
without them, it is no exaggeration to say, would be utterly
impossible. They are, next to the wren and sparrows, the most
companionable of birds, hovering about the dwellings of man, and
following him, step by step, as he subdues the wilderness, and singing
the song of triumph for the axe and the plow.
One word as to the robin’s song. Whoever has read Audubon’s
description of the wood-thrush’s song, and the still more glowing
account by a writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of two or three years
ago, will surely be disappointed on first hearing it. In any proper
sense, it has no _song_, but only a few sweet sentences, which it
utters in a sad and almost melancholy way, sitting solitary in some
forest edge, or tree overhanging a brook. The bird is a recluse. So,
one imagines a tender-hearted woman, disappointed in love, yet not
embittered, might sing from the casement of a nunnery a hymn of
mingled resignation and regret. But, to compare this monosyllabic song
of the wood-thrush to the robin’s, is like comparing a ballad to an
oratorio, or the tinkling of a guitar to the sweet tone of a
piano-forte under the hands of some Perabo.
The robin is an out-door bird. He lives in the sunshine. He attracts
no sympathy by delicate ways. He is altogether robust, and full of
dashing life. When twenty or thirty robins between three and four
o’clock in a June morning are at full voice, it would be no
exaggeration to compare it to a rain of music. It is no dainty
thrumming,—no parceling out of a sweet note or two, with more rests
than notes. It is a musical rush, the exultation of a healthy, hearty
bird, that sings by the half-hour, without pause, and is ever ready to
sing again.
The evening song of the robin I most love to hear. Heard from the top
of some orchard tree, or of some meadow maple, while his note has the
fire and brilliancy of his morning song, there is in it a slight
undertone of sadness. Indeed, this evening song seems to be a
mate-call. For ten or fifteen minutes the bird will send out its
mellow call over all the region, if peradventure the truant mother may
come home. A slight impatience mixes with its closing notes. He flies
to a neighboring tree, utters two or three sharp single notes, and
then, beginning again, swells out his long call louder than before,
warbling five to ten minutes. He pauses. No bird returns. He sits
silent.
Perhaps he remembers that there had been a little domestic quarrel
during the day, and if his mate is dead, he may never be able to say
to her, “I am sorry.” A nest full of little birds needs the mother.
The twilight is deepening. Once more, its brilliance now toned down by
an unmistakable sadness, he sends out far and near through the
dew-damp air a song which is more a lamentation than a call. If there
be no response, he flies silently away, and the air rests.
But, sometimes, just as his song is ending, it breaks out into a sharp
note of surprise. A flutter is heard, and two birds fly hastily away.
The wanderer has come home again!
Can one, all summer long, follow birds with sympathy, and enter into
their gentle life, throwing around it, by the imagination, the charm
of the affections, and then consent to their destruction as if they
had been mere birds from a coop? Shoot and eat my birds? It is but a
step this side of cannibalism. The next step beyond, and one would
hanker after Jenny Lind or Miss Kellogg.