The sweet, hot, wild scent of the marsh came up to us. It was
compounded of sun and wind and the clean dry smell of miles and miles
of bleaching sedges, all mingled with the seethe and steam of a green
blaze of growth that had leaped from the ooze to meet the summer.
Through it all drifted tiny elusive puffs of fragrance from flowers
hidden under thickets of willow and elderberry. The smooth petals of
wild roses showed among the rushes, like coral set in jade. On the
sides of burnt tussocks, where the new grass grew sparse as hair on a
scarred skull, rue anemones trembled above their trefoil leaves. When
the world was young they sprang from the tears which Aphrodite shed
over the body of slain Adonis. Still the pale wind-driven flowers sway
as if shaken by her sobs, and have the cold whiteness of him dead.
The leaves of the meadow rue, like some rare fern, showed here and
there, but the clustered white flowers had not yet bloomed, nor the
flat yellow blossoms of the shrubby cinquefoil. There were thickets of
aronia or chokeberry, whose flat white blossoms and reddish bark
showed its kinship to the apple tree. Among the pools gleamed marsh
marigolds fresh from the mint of May, while deep down in the grass at
the foot of the tussocks were white violets, short-stemmed and with
the finest of umber-brown traceries at the centre of their petals. The
blues and purples may or may not be sweet, but one can always count on
the faint fragrance of the white.
We lay on the turf covering a ledge of smoky quartz thrust like a
wedge into the marsh. Across a country of round green hills and
fertile farms its squat bulk stretched unafraid, an untamed monster of
another age. Beyond the long levels we could see Wolf Island, where a
hunted wolf-pack, protected by quagmires and trembling bogs, made its
last stand two centuries ago. Where a fringe of trees showed the
beginning of solid ground, a pair of hawks with long black-barred
tails wheeled and screamed through the sky. "Geck, geck, geck, geck,"
they called, almost like a flicker, except that the tone was flatter.
As they circled, both of them showed a snowy patch over the rump, the
field-mark of the marsh hawk. The male was a magnificent blue-gray
bird, whose white under-wings were tipped with black like those of a
herring gull. We watched them delightedly, for the rare nest of the
marsh hawk, the only one of our hawks which nests on the ground, was
one of the possibilities of the marsh.
Suddenly we heard from behind us a sound that sent us crawling
carefully up to the crest of the ridge. It was like the pouring of
water out of some gigantic bottle or the gurgling suck of an
old-fashioned pump: "Bloop--bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop"--it came to us
with a strange subterranean timbre. The last time I had heard that
note was in the pine-barrens three years before. Then it sounded like
the thudding of a mallet on a stake, for its quality always depends on
the nature of the country across which it travels. From the top of our
knoll we saw a rare sight. In the open pasture by the edge of the
marsh stood a bird between two and three feet high, of a streaked
brown color, with a black stripe down each side of its neck. Even as
we watched, the bird began a series of extraordinary actions. Hunching
its long neck far down between its shoulders, it suddenly thrust it
up. As each section straightened, there came to us across the pasture
the thudding, bubbling, watery note which we had first heard. It
seemed impossible that a bird could make such a volume of sound. At
times, after each "bloop," would come the sharp click of the bill as
it rapidly opened and shut. Finally the singer convulsively
straightened the last kink out of its neck and with a last retching
note thrust its long yellow beak straight skyward. We had seen an
American bittern boom--a rarer sight even than the drumming of a
ruffed grouse or the strange flight-song of the woodcock at twilight.
Suddenly the bittern stopped and, hunching its neck, stepped
stealthily, like a little old bent man, into the sedges. With its long
beak pointing directly upward, it stood motionless and seemed to melt
into the color of the withered rushes. One look away, and it was
almost impossible for the eye to pick the bird out from its cover.
I turned to look at the marsh hawks just in time to see the female
alight on the ground by a stunted willow bush far across the marsh. I
waited, one, two, three minutes, but no bird rose. Evidently she was
on the nest. Keeping my eye fixed on that special bush, which looked
like a score of others, I plunged into the marsh, intending to bound
like a chamois from crag to crag. On the second bound I slipped off a
tussock and went up to my knees in mud and water. The rest of the way
I ploughed along, making a noise at each step like the bittern's note.
Half-way to the bush, the mother hawk rose and circled around us,
screaming monotonously. For half an hour we searched back and forth
without finding any nest. At last we hid in a willow thicket, thinking
that perhaps the hawk might go back to her nest. Instead, both birds
disappeared in some distant woods. The sun was getting low and we were
miles from our inn; yet as this was the nearest either of us had ever
been to finding a marsh hawk's nest, we decided to hunt on until dark.
[Illustration: THE MARSH HAWK'S NEST]
I laid out a route from my bush to another about thirty yards away,
and between those two as bounds planned to quarter back and forth over
every square foot of ground, moving toward the woods where the hawks
had gone. It seemed an almost hopeless hunt, for the marsh at this
point was dry, with patches of bushes, masses of sedge, and piled
heaps here and there of dry rushes. As I reached my farther boundary
and was about to return, I straightened my aching back and looked
beyond the bush. There, directly ahead, in a space fringed by spirea
bushes but in plain sight, lay a round nest on the ground--about
eight inches across and three inches deep, made of coarse grasses
ringed around with rushes. Beneath the nest was a well-packed platform
several inches thick. I think that this was a natural pile of rushes
pressed down by the bird. There, under the open sky, were five large
eggs of a dirty bluish-white, nearly ready to hatch. They were the
size of a small hen's egg. The very second I caught sight of the nest
the mother hawk came dashing through the air, from some unseen perch
where she had been watching me with her telescopic eyes. Fifty feet
away, she folded her wings and dived at my head, falling through the
air like a stone. With her fierce unflinching eyes, half-open beak,
and outspread claws, she looked dangerous. Ten feet away, however, she
swooped up and circled off in ever-widening rings, screaming
mournfully. Beside the nest was one barred tail-feather.
I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.
Something of this we felt as we lingered over this long-sought nest,
making notes and photographs--our way of collecting.
Just at sunset we waded back and stopped at the little arm of the
swamp where we had first heard the bittern. Suddenly from the sedges
came a scolding little song that sounded like "Chop, chip-chop,
chp'p'p'p'," and we caught the merest glimpse of a tiny bird with a
tip-tilted tail and brown back whose undersides seemed yellowish. It
was none other than the rare short-billed marsh wren, next to the
smallest of our Eastern birds, only the hummingbird being tinier.
Neither of us had ever seen this marsh wren before, and we tramped
back three long miles to town with a new bird, a new nest, and a new
note to our credit in our out-of-doors account.
That night over a good dinner we were joined by the other two of our
Four who for many happy years have hunted together. Just at dawn the
next day, we all stole out of the sleeping inn and along the silent
village streets, sweet with the scent of lilacs. Right in front of the
town hall we found the first nest of the day. Cunningly hidden in the
crotch of a sugar maple, just over the heads of hundreds of unseeing
passers-by, a robin had brooded day by day over four eggs whose
heavenly blue made a jewel-casket of her mud nest. I hope that the
brave silent bird raised her babies and sent them out to add to the
world's store of music and beauty.
Beyond the village we dragged a meadow. A long cord was tied to the
ankles of two of us, and each walked away from the other until it was
taut and then marched slowly through the fields. The moving line just
swished the top of the long grass and flushed any ground birds that
might be nesting within the area covered by the fifty-foot cord. Our
first haul was a vesper sparrow's nest with one egg--the bird breaking
cover near my end. Later in the day another of our party found a
better nest of the same bird in the middle of a field, made and lined
with grass and set in a little hollow in the ground. It held three
eggs of a bluish white, blotched and clouded with umber and lavender
at the larger ends. Two of the eggs were marked with black
hieroglyphics like those seen in the eggs of an oriole or red-winged
blackbird. The vesper is that gray sparrow which shows two white
tail-feathers when it flies, and sings an alto song whose first two
notes are always in a different key from the rest of the strain.
In another field we flushed a bobolink. Unfortunately the Artist,
whose duty it was to watch the rope, was at the moment gazing skywards
at cloud-effects, and though we burrowed and peered for a full hour in
the fragrant dripping grass, we never found that nest. The home of a
bobolink is one of the best hidden of all of our common
ground-builders. I remember one Decoration Day when I highly resolved
to find a bobolink's nest in a field where several pairs were nesting.
Early in my hunt I decided that the gay black-and-white males, which
seemed to be flying and singing aimlessly, were really signaling my
approach to the females on the nests. At any rate, the mother birds
would rise far ahead as I came near, evidently after having run for
long distances through the grass, and gave me no clue as to the
whereabouts of their nests. I decided, however, that my only chance
was to watch these females, knowing that an incubating bird will not
leave her eggs for any great length of time. Accordingly, when the
next streaked brown bird flew up far ahead of me, I settled down in
the long grass with a field-glass and carefully watched her flight.
She crossed the meadow and alighted some three hundred yards away. In
about fifteen minutes she came back and settled in the grass on a
slope some distance from where she had flown out. Almost immediately
she flew out again, probably warned by the male on guard. Once more
she crossed the meadow, and this time stayed away so long that I
nearly fell asleep in the drowsy, scented grass. In the meantime, one
by one, the songs of the males, like the tinkling, gurgling notes of a
trout-brook, ceased, and my part of the meadow seemed deserted.
Finally through my half-shut eyes I saw Mrs. Bobolink come flying low
over the tops of the waving grass. As I lay perfectly still, she made
a half-circle around the slope and suddenly disappeared in the ripple
of a green wave that rose to meet the wind. I marked the place by a
tall weed stalk, and waited a minute to see whether this was another
feint. As she did not appear, I ran up as rapidly and silently as
possible before the father bird could spy me from the other side of
the pasture and cry the alarm. Perhaps he had become careless while
rollicking with his friends. At any rate, when I reached the place
there was no sign of any bobolink near me.
When I was a couple of yards away from the weed-stalk, up sprang the
female bobolink, apparently from almost the very spot I had noted.
This was encouraging; it showed that she had not run through the grass
any distance this time, either when flushed or when alighting. Almost
immediately the truant father bird appeared and sang gayly near me,
occasionally diving mysteriously and impressively into the grass in
different places, as if visiting a nest. I was not to be distracted by
any such tactics, but threw my hat to the exact spot from which, as I
judged, the female had started. With this as a centre I pushed back
the long grass and began to search the area of a five-foot circle,
first looking hurriedly under the hat to make sure that it had not
covered the nest. My search was all in vain, although it seemed to me
that I examined every square inch of that circle. At last I decided
that the sly birds had again deceived me. Taking up my hat, I was
about to begin another watch, when, in the very spot where the hat had
lain, I noticed that the long leaves of a narrow-leafed plantain at
one place had been parted, showing a hole underneath. I carefully
separated the leaves, and before me lay the long-desired nest. It was
only a shallow hollow under the leaves, lined with fine dry grass and
containing four dark eggs heavily blotched and marbled with red-brown.
It is probable that ordinarily, when the mother bird left the nest,
she would arrange the leaves so as entirely to cover the hole beneath.
If this were done, it would seem impossible that they concealed
anything, for they would be apparently flat on the surface of the
ground. My unexpected approach had flushed her before she had time to
put back the leaves.
The pleasure of finding such a skilfully concealed nest is
indescribable. The hunt is a contest between intelligence and
instinct, where victory by no means always inclines to the human. As I
looked down at the nest, I knew just how the talented recluse in "The
Gold Bug" felt when, after solving the cryptogram and disposing of
every difficulty, he at last gazed into the open treasure-chest.
To-day there was to be no such glorious experience, and we finally
gave up the hunt and started back across the meadow. As we moved
through the swishing grass, suddenly we heard a curious clicking
bird-note. "See-lick, see-lick, see-lick," it sounded, and we
recognized the unfamiliar notes of that rare little black-striped
sparrow, the Henslow. The last time we four had heard that note
together was on a trip into the heart of the pine-barrens, when we not
only identified this bird for the first time, but also found its nest,
a treasure-trove indeed. To-day we did not even get a glimpse of the
bird.
Beyond the meadows we came face to face with the marsh itself, and
plunged in to show the Banker and the Architect our marsh hawk's nest.
On the way back the Artist made a discovery. Waist-deep among the
sedges, with the tiny marsh wrens chipping and bubbling all around
him, he suddenly espied a round ball made of green grass fastened to
the rushes with a little hole in one side.
"The nest of the short-billed marsh wren!" he declared loudly. We
hurried to him. The nest was empty, but, as it was early for the wrens
to be laying, this fact had no effect on his triumph. We admired the
nest, the bird, and the discoverer freely--all except the Architect,
who lingered behind the rest of us, regarding the nest with much
suspicion. Suddenly he noted a movement in the grass, and as he
watched, a tawny little meadow mouse climbed up the grass-stems and
popped into the hole in the side, to find out what this inquisitive
race of giants had been doing to his house. It was pitiful to see the
Artist. At first he denied the mouse. Then, when it dashed out in
front of us, he claimed that its presence had nothing to do with the
question of the ownership of the nest.
"Isn't it possible," he demanded bitterly, "that a well-behaved meadow
mouse may make a neighborly call on a marsh wren?"
"No," replied the Architect decisively; and we started away from the
discredited nest.
Later on, the Artist had his revenge. We were hunting everywhere for
the bittern's nest. Suddenly, as the Artist stepped on a tussock, a
large squawking bird flew out from under his foot. No wonder she
squawked. He had stepped so nearly on top of her that, as she escaped,
she left behind a handful of long, beautifully mottled tail-feathers,
unmistakably those of an English pheasant. The nest was at the side
of the tussock, entirely covered over with the arched reeds, and
contained fifteen eggs, three of which the clumsy foot of the Artist
had broken. They were of a chocolate color and, curiously enough,
almost identical in color and size with those of the American bittern,
except that the inside of the shell of the broken eggs was a light
blue. The nest itself was nearly eight inches across and about three
inches deep, made entirely of grass. Hurriedly clearing away the
broken eggs, we called the Architect from the far side of the marsh.
He hastened up, took one look at the nest, and then told us solemnly
that this was one of the most unusual occurrences known in
ornithology. Three pairs of bitterns had joined housekeeping and laid
eggs in the same nest. It was hard on the Architect that we should
have flushed probably the only bird in the world whose eggs are almost
identical in color and size with those of the American bittern, and it
was not until the Artist produced the pheasant's tail-feathers that
our friend would admit that there was anything wrong with his theory.
As we started to leave the place, I saw on the other side of the
tussock the largest wood-turtle I have ever met. Its legs and tail
were of a bright brick-red, while the shell was beautifully carved in
deep intaglios of dingy black and yellow. This turtle ranks next to
the terrapin in taste, a fact which I proved the next day. As Mr.
Wood-Turtle is fond of bird's eggs, I strongly suspect that my capture
of him was all that saved the lives of a round dozen of prospective
pheasants. We had a leisurely lunch near one of the coldest bubbling
springs in the world, seated on a high, dry ridge under the shade of a
vast black-walnut tree. After lunch we crossed quaking, treacherous
bogs, that lapped at our feet as we passed, and reached Wolf Island.
It was made up of a series of rocky ridges, shaded with trees and
masked by a dense undergrowth. Beneath the great boulders and at the
base of tiny cliffs, we could trace dark holes and burrows where two
centuries ago the celebrated pack made their home.
Beyond the Island a tawny bird slipped out of a tussock ahead of me,
like a shadow. Hurrying to the place, I found the perfectly rounded
nest of a veery thrush, lined with leaves and entirely arched over by
the long marsh-grass. From the brown leaf-bed the four vivid blue eggs
gleamed out of the green grass like turquoises set in malachite. The
eggs of a catbird are of a deeper blue, and those of a hermit thrush
of a purer tone, but of all the blue eggs, of robin, wood thrush,
hermit thrush, bluebird, cuckoo, or catbird, there is none so vivid in
its coloring as that of the veery. That nest with its beautiful
setting stands out in my mind as a notable addition to my collection
of out-of-door memories.
More searchings followed without results, until the sun was westering
well down the sky. Five miles lay between us and clean clothes and a
bath. Reluctantly we left the marsh, with our bittern's nest still
unfound. As we approached the village, we saw showing over the meadows
the edge of a continuation of the marsh, and decided that we had time
for just one more exploring trip. Here we found the worst going of the
day. In front of us were innumerable dry cat-tail stalks and hollow
reed-stems, while the mud was deeper and the mosquitoes were fiercer
than in the main swamp.
At last the Banker and the Architect sat down exhausted under a tree,
while the Artist and myself planned to cross to a fringe of woods on
the farther side before giving up. In the middle of the marsh we
separated, and before long I found myself on the trail of another
marsh hawk's nest. It was evidently close at hand, for both the birds
swooped down and circled around my head, calling frantically all the
time. Look as I would, however, I could find no trace of the nest. We
reached the woods without finding anything and came back together.
When we were within two hundred yards of where the other two were
luxuriously waiting for us in the shade, from under my very feet
flapped a monstrous bird nearly three feet high. It was the bittern. I
was so close that I could see the yellow bill, and the glossy black on
the sides of the neck and tips of the wings, and the different shades
of brown on back, head, and wings. As it sprang up, it gave a hoarse
cry and flapped off with labored strokes of its broad wings. Right
before me was a flat platform of reeds about a foot in diameter, well
packed down and raised about five inches from the water. On this
platform were a shred or so of down and four eggs of a dull coffee
color. In a moment the Banker and the Architect were splashing and
crackling through the mud and reeds, and we spent the last
quarter-hour of our trip in admiring and photographing the
much-desired nest.
So ended our visit to Wolf Island Marsh with a list of fifty-one birds
seen and heard, and seven nests found, photographed, and enjoyed.