to conduct us to a quail's nest. Anything in the shape of a nest is
always welcome, it is such a mystery, such a centre of interest and
affection, and, if upon the ground, is usually something so dainty and
exquisite amid the natural wreckage and confusion. A ground-nest seems
so exposed, too, that it always gives a little thrill of pleasurable
surprise to see the group of frail eggs resting there behind so slight
a barrier. I will walk a long distance any day just to see a song
sparrow's nest amid the stubble or under a tuft of grass. It is a jewel
in a rosette of jewels, with a frill of weeds or turf. A quail's nest
I had never seen, and to be shown one within the hunting-ground of
this murderous hawk would be a double pleasure. Such a quiet, secluded,
grass-grown highway as we moved along was itself a rare treat.
Sequestered was the word that the little valley suggested, and peace
the feeling the road evoked. The farmer, whose fields lay about us,
half grown with weeds and bushes, evidently did not make stir or noise
enough to disturb anything. Beside this rustic highway, bounded by old
mossy stone walls, and within a stone's throw of the farmer's barn,
the quail had made her nest. It was just under the edge of a prostrate
thorn-bush.
"The nest is right there," said the farmer, pausing within ten feet of
it, and pointing to the spot with his stick.
In a moment or two we could make out the mottled brown plumage of the
sitting bird. Then we approached her cautiously till we bent above her.
She never moved a feather.
Then I put my cane down in the brush behind her. We wanted to see the
eggs, yet did not want rudely to disturb the sitting hen.
She would not move.
Then I put down my hand within a few inches of her; still she kept her
place. Should we have to lift her off bodily?
Then the young lady put down her hand, probably the prettiest and the
whitest hand the quail had ever seen. At least it started her, and
off she sprang, uncovering such a crowded nest of eggs as I had never
before beheld. Twenty-one of them! a ring or disk of white like a
china tea-saucer. You could not help saying how pretty, how cunning,
like baby hens' eggs, as if the bird was playing at sitting as children
play at housekeeping.
If I had known how crowded her nest was, I should not have dared
disturb her, for fear she would break some of them. But not an egg
suffered harm by her sudden flight; and no harm came to the nest
afterward. Every egg hatched, I was told, and the little chicks, hardly
bigger than bumblebees, were led away by the mother into the fields.
In about a week I paid another visit to the hawk's nest. The eggs were
all hatched, and the mother bird was hovering near. I shall never
forget the curious expression of those young hawks sitting there on the
ground. The expression was not one of youth, but of extreme age. Such
an ancient, infirm look as they had,—the sharp, dark, and shrunken
look about the face and eyes, and their feeble, tottering motions! They
sat upon their elbows and the hind part of their bodies, and their
pale, withered legs and feet extended before them in the most helpless
fashion. Their angular bodies were covered with a pale yellowish down,
like that of a chicken; their heads had a plucked, seedy appearance;
and their long, strong, naked wings hung down by their sides till they
touched the ground: power and ferocity in the first rude draught, shorn
of everything but its sinister ugliness. Another curious thing was the
gradation of the young in size; they tapered down regularly from the
first to the fifth, as if there had been, as probably there was, an
interval of a day or two between the hatching of each.
The two older ones showed some signs of fear on our approach, and one
of them threw himself upon his back, and put up his impotent legs, and
glared at us with open beak. The two smaller ones regarded us not at
all. Neither of the parent birds appeared during our stay.
When I visited the nest again, eight or ten days later, the birds were
much grown, but of as marked a difference in size as before, and with
the same look of extreme old age,—old age in men of the aquiline
type, nose and chin coming together, and eyes large and sunken. They
now glared upon us with a wild, savage look, and opened their beaks
threateningly.
The next week, when my friend visited the nest, the larger of the
hawks fought him savagely. But one of the brood, probably the last to
hatch, had made but little growth. It appeared to be on the point of
starvation. The mother hawk (for the male seemed to have disappeared)
had doubtless found her family too large for her, and was deliberately
allowing one of the number to perish; or did the larger and stronger
young devour all the food before the weaker member could obtain any?
Probably this was the case.
Arthur brought the feeble nestling away, and the same day my little boy
got it and brought it home, wrapped in a woolen rag. It was clearly a
starved bantling. It cried feebly, but would not lift up its head.
We first poured some warm milk down its throat, which soon revived it,
so that it would swallow small bits of flesh. In a day or two we had it
eating ravenously, and its growth became noticeable. Its voice had the
sharp whistling character of that of its parents, and was stilled only
when the bird was asleep. We made a pen for it, about a yard square,
in one end of the study, covering the floor with several thicknesses
of newspapers; and here, upon a bit of brown woolen blanket for a
nest, the hawk waxed strong day by day. An uglier-looking pet, tested
by all the rules we usually apply to such things, would have been
hard to find. There he would sit upon his elbows, his helpless feet
out in front of him, his great featherless wings touching the floor,
and shrilly cry for more food. For a time we gave him water daily
from a stylograph-pen filler, but the water he evidently did not need
or relish. Fresh meat, and plenty of it, was his demand. And we soon
discovered that he liked game, such as mice, squirrels, birds, much
better than butcher's meat.
Then began a lively campaign on the part of my little boy against
all the vermin and small game in the neighborhood to keep the hawk
supplied. He trapped and he hunted, he enlisted his mates in his
service, he even robbed the cats to feed the hawk. His usefulness as a
boy of all work was seriously impaired. "Where is J——?" "Gone after
a squirrel for his hawk." And often the day would be half gone before
his hunt was successful. The premises were very soon cleared of mice,
and the vicinity of chipmunks and squirrels. Farther and farther he
was compelled to hunt the surrounding farms and woods to keep up with
the demands of the hawk. By the time the hawk was ready to fly he had
consumed twenty-one chipmunks, fourteen red squirrels, sixteen mice,
and twelve English sparrows, besides a lot of butcher's meat.
His plumage very soon began to show itself, crowding off tufts of the
down. The quills on his great wings sprouted and grew apace. What a
ragged, uncanny appearance he presented! but his look of extreme age
gradually became modified. What a lover of the sunlight he was! We
would put him out upon the grass in the full blaze of the morning sun,
and he would spread his wings and bask in it with the most intense
enjoyment. In the nest the young must be exposed to the full power of
the midday sun during our first heated terms in June and July, the
thermometer often going up to ninety-three or ninety-five degrees, so
that sunshine seemed to be a need of his nature. He liked the rain
equally well, and when put out in a shower would sit down and take it
as if every drop did him good.
His legs developed nearly as slowly as his wings. He could not stand
steadily upon them till about ten days before he was ready to fly. The
talons were limp and feeble. When we came with food he would hobble
along toward us like the worst kind of a cripple, dropping and moving
his wings, and treading upon his legs from the foot back to the elbow,
the foot remaining closed and useless. Like a baby learning to stand,
he made many trials before he succeeded. He would rise up on his
trembling legs only to fall back again.
One day, in the summer-house, I saw him for the first time stand for a
moment squarely upon his legs with the feet fully spread beneath them.
He looked about him as if the world suddenly wore a new aspect.
His plumage now grew quite rapidly. One red squirrel per day, chopped
fine with an axe, was his ration. He began to hold his game with his
foot while he tore it. The study was full of his shed down. His dark
brown mottled plumage began to grow beautiful. The wings drooped a
little, but gradually he got control of them, and held them in place.
It was now the 20th of July, and the hawk was about five weeks old.
In a day or two he was walking or jumping about the ground. He chose
a position under the edge of a Norway spruce, where he would sit for
hours dozing, or looking out upon the landscape. When we brought him
game he would advance to meet us with wings slightly lifted, and
uttering a shrill cry. Toss him a mouse or sparrow, and he would seize
it with one foot and hop off to his cover, where he would bend above
it, spread his plumage, look this way and that, uttering all the time
the most exultant and satisfied chuckle.
About this time he began to practice striking with his talons, as an
Indian boy might begin practicing with his bow and arrow. He would
strike at a dry leaf in the grass, or at a fallen apple, or at some
imaginary object. He was learning the use of his weapons. His wings
also,—he seemed to feel them sprouting from his shoulder. He would
lift them straight up and hold them expanded, and they would seem to
quiver with excitement. Every hour in the day he would do this. The
pressure was beginning to centre there. Then he would strike playfully
at a leaf or a bit of wood, and keep his wings lifted.
The next step was to spring into the air and beat his wings. He seemed
now to be thinking entirely of his wings. They itched to be put to use.
A day or two later he would leap and fly several feet. A pile of brush
ten or twelve feet below the bank was easily reached. Here he would
perch in true hawk fashion, to the bewilderment and scandal of all the
robins and catbirds in the vicinity. Here he would dart his eye in all
directions, turning his head over and glancing it up into the sky.
He was now a lovely creature, fully fledged, and as tame as a kitten.
But he was not a bit like a kitten in one respect,—he could not bear
to have you stroke or even touch his plumage. He had a horror of your
hand, as if it would hopelessly defile him. But he would perch upon
it, and allow you to carry him about. If a dog or cat appeared, he was
ready to give battle instantly. He rushed up to a little dog one day,
and struck him with his foot savagely. He was afraid of strangers, and
of any unusual object.
The last week in July he began to fly quite freely, and it was
necessary to clip one of his wings. As the clipping embraced only the
ends of his primaries, he soon overcame the difficulty, and by carrying
his broad, long tail more on that side, flew with considerable ease.
He made longer and longer excursions into the surrounding fields and
vineyards, and did not always return. On such occasions we would go
find him and fetch him back.
Late one rainy afternoon he flew away into the vineyard, and when, an
hour later, I went after him, he could not be found, and we never saw
him again. We hoped hunger would soon drive him back, but we have had
no clew to him from that day to this.
VIII
THE CHIPMUNK
The first chipmunk in March is as sure a token of the spring as the
first bluebird or the first robin; and it is quite as welcome. Some
genial influence has found him out there in his burrow, deep under the
ground, and waked him up, and enticed him forth into the light of day.
The red squirrel has been more or less active all winter; his track
has dotted the surface of every new-fallen snow throughout the season.
But the chipmunk retired from view early in December, and has passed
the rigorous months in his nest, beside his hoard of nuts, some feet
underground, and hence, when he emerges in March, and is seen upon his
little journeys along the fences, or perched upon a log or rock near
his hole in the woods, it is another sign that spring is at hand. His
store of nuts may or may not be all consumed; it is certain that he is
no sluggard, to sleep away these first bright warm days.
Before the first crocus is out of the ground, you may look for the
first chipmunk. When I hear the little downy woodpecker begin his
spring drumming, then I know the chipmunk is due. He cannot sleep after
that challenge of the woodpecker reaches his ear.
Apparently the first thing he does on coming forth, as soon as he
is sure of himself, is to go courting. So far as I have observed,
the love-making of the chipmunk occurs in March. A single female
will attract all the males in the vicinity. One early March day I
was at work for several hours near a stone fence, where a female had
apparently taken up her quarters. What a train of suitors she had that
day! how they hurried up and down, often giving each other a spiteful
slap or bite as they passed. The young are born in May, four or five at
a birth.
The chipmunk is quite a solitary creature; I have never known more
than one to occupy the same den. Apparently no two can agree to live
together. What a clean, pert, dapper, nervous little fellow he is! How
fast his heart beats, as he stands up on the wall by the roadside, and,
with hands spread out upon his breast, regards you intently! A movement
of your arm, and he darts into the wall with a saucy _chip-r-r_, which
has the effect of slamming the door behind him.
On some still day in autumn, the nutty days, the woods will often be
pervaded by an undertone of sound, produced by their multitudinous
clucking, as they sit near their dens. It is one of the characteristic
sounds of fall.
The chipmunk has many enemies, such as cats, weasels, black snakes,
hawks, and owls. One season one had his den in the side of the bank
near my study. As I stood regarding his goings and comings, one October
morning, I saw him, when a few yards away from his hole, turn and
retreat with all speed. As he darted beneath the sod, a shrike swooped
down and hovered a moment on the wing just over the hole where he
had disappeared. I doubt if the shrike could have killed him, but it
certainly gave him a good fright.
It was amusing to watch this chipmunk carry nuts and other food into
his den. He had made a well-defined path from his door out through the
weeds and dry leaves into the territory where his feeding-ground lay.
The path was a crooked one; it dipped under weeds, under some large,
loosely piled stones, under a pile of chestnut posts, and then followed
the remains of an old wall. Going and coming, his motions were like
clockwork. He always went by spurts and sudden sallies. He was never
for one moment off his guard. He would appear at the mouth of his den,
look quickly about, take a few leaps to a tussock of grass, pause a
breath with one foot raised, slip quickly a few yards over some dry
leaves, pause again by a stump beside a path, rush across the path to
the pile of loose stones, go under the first and over the second, gain
the pile of posts, make his way through that, survey his course a half
moment from the other side of it, and then dart on to some other cover,
and presently beyond my range, where I think he gathered acorns, as
there were no other nut-bearing trees than oaks near. In four or five
minutes I would see him coming back, always keeping rigidly to the
course he took going out, pausing at the same spots, darting over or
under the same objects, clearing at a bound the same pile of leaves.
There was no variation in his manner of proceeding all the time I
observed him.
He was alert, cautious, and exceedingly methodical. He had found safety
in a certain course, and he did not at any time deviate a hair's
breadth from it. Something seemed to say to him all the time, "Beware,
beware!" The nervous, impetuous ways of these creatures are no doubt
the result of the life of fear which they lead.
My chipmunk had no companion. He lived all by himself in true hermit
fashion, as is usually the case with this squirrel. Provident creature
that he is, one would think that he would long ago have discovered
that heat, and therefore food, is economized by two or three nesting
together.
One day in early spring, a chipmunk that lived near me met with a
terrible adventure, the memory of which will probably be handed
down through many generations of its family. I was sitting in the
summer-house with Nig the cat upon my knee, when the chipmunk came out
of its den a few feet away, and ran quickly to a pile of chestnut posts
about twenty yards from where I sat. Nig saw it, and was off my lap
upon the floor in an instant. I spoke sharply to the cat, when she sat
down and folded her paws under her, and regarded the squirrel, as I
thought, with only a dreamy kind of interest. I fancied she thought it
a hopeless case there amid that pile of posts. "That is not your game,
Nig," I said, "so spare yourself any anxiety." Just then I was called
to the house, where I was detained about five minutes. As I returned I
met Nig coming to the house with the chipmunk in her mouth. She had the
air of one who had won a wager. She carried the chipmunk by the throat,
and its body hung limp from her mouth. I quickly took the squirrel from
her, and reproved her sharply. It lay in my hand as if dead, though I
saw no marks of the cat's teeth upon it. Presently it gasped for its
breath, then again and again. I saw that the cat had simply choked it.
Quickly the film passed off its eyes, its heart began visibly to beat,
and slowly the breathing became regular. I carried it back, and laid it
down in the door of its den. In a moment it crawled or kicked itself
in. In the afternoon I placed a handful of corn there, to express my
sympathy, and as far as possible make amends for Nig's cruel treatment.
Not till four or five days had passed did my little neighbor emerge
again from its den, and then only for a moment. That terrible black
monster with the large green-yellow eyes,—it might be still lurking
near. How the black monster had captured the alert and restless
squirrel so quickly, under the circumstances, was a great mystery to
me. Was not its eye as sharp as the cat's, and its movements as quick?
Yet cats do have the secret of catching squirrels, and birds, and mice,
but I have never yet had the luck to see it done.
It was not very long before the chipmunk was going to and from her den
as usual, though the dread of the black monster seemed ever before
her, and gave speed and extra alertness to all her movements. In early
summer four young chipmunks emerged from the den, and ran freely about.
There was nothing to disturb them, for, alas! Nig herself was now dead.
One summer day I watched a cat for nearly a half hour trying her arts
upon a chipmunk that sat upon a pile of stone. Evidently her game was
to stalk him. She had cleared half the distance, or about twelve feet,
that separated the chipmunk from a dense Norway spruce, when I chanced
to become a spectator of the little drama. There sat the cat crouched
low on the grass, her big, yellow eyes fixed upon the chipmunk, and
there sat the chipmunk at the mouth of his den, motionless, with his
eye fixed upon the cat. For a long time neither moved. "Will the cat
bind him with her fatal spell?" I thought. Sometimes her head slowly
lowered and her eyes seemed to dilate, and I fancied she was about to
spring. But she did not. The distance was too great to be successfully
cleared in one bound. Then the squirrel moved nervously, but kept his
eye upon the enemy. Then the cat evidently grew tired and relaxed a
little and looked behind her. Then she crouched again and riveted her
gaze upon the squirrel. But the latter would not be hypnotized; it
shifted its position a few times and finally quickly entered its den,
when the cat soon slunk away.
In digging his hole it is evident that the chipmunk carries away the
loose soil. Never a grain of it is seen in front of his door. Those
pockets of his probably stand him in good stead on such occasions. Only
in one instance have I seen a pile of earth before the entrance to a
chipmunk's den, and that was where the builder had begun his house late
in November, and was probably too much hurried to remove this ugly
mark from before his door. I used to pass his place every morning in
my walk, and my eye always fell upon that little pile of red, freshly
dug soil. A little later I used frequently to surprise the squirrel
furnishing his house, carrying in dry leaves of the maple and plane
tree. He would seize a large leaf and with both hands stuff it into his
cheek pockets, and then carry it into his den. I saw him on several
different days occupied in this way. I trust he had secured his winter
stores, though I am a little doubtful. He was hurriedly making himself
a new home, and the cold of December was upon us while he was yet at
work. It may be that he had moved the stores from his old quarters,
wherever they were, and again it may be that he had been dispossessed
of both his house and provender by some other chipmunk.
When nuts or grain are not to be had, these thrifty little creatures
will find some substitute to help them over the winter. Two chipmunks
near my study were occupied many days in carrying in cherry pits
which they gathered beneath a large cherry-tree that stood ten or
twelve rods away. As Nig was no longer about to molest them, they
grew very fearless, and used to spin up and down the garden path to
and from their source of supplies in a way quite unusual with these
timid creatures. After they had got enough cherry pits, they gathered
the seed of a sugar maple that stood near. Many of the keys remained
upon the tree after the leaves had fallen, and these the squirrels
harvested. They would run swiftly out upon the ends of the small
branches, reach out for the maple keys, snip off the wings, and deftly
slip the nut or samara into their cheek pockets. Day after day in late
autumn, I used to see them thus occupied.
As I have said, I have no evidence that more than one chipmunk occupy
the same den. One March morning after a light fall of snow I saw where
one had come up out of his hole, which was in the side of our path
to the vineyard, and after a moment's survey of the surroundings had
started off on his travels. I followed the track to see where he had
gone. He had passed through my woodpile, then under the beehives, then
around the study and under some spruces and along the slope to the hole
of a friend of his, about sixty yards from his own. Apparently he had
gone in here, and then his friend had come forth with him, for there
were two tracks leading from this doorway. I followed them to a third
humble entrance, not far off, where the tracks were so numerous that I
lost the trail. It was pleasing to see the evidence of their morning
sociability written there upon the new snow.
One of the enemies of the chipmunk, as I discovered lately, is the
weasel. I was sitting in the woods one autumn day when I heard a small
cry, and a rustling amid the branches of a tree a few rods beyond me.
Looking thither I saw a chipmunk fall through the air, and catch on a
limb twenty or more feet from the ground. He appeared to have dropped
from near the top of the tree.
He secured his hold upon the small branch that had luckily intercepted
his fall, and sat perfectly still. In a moment more I saw a weasel—one
of the smaller red varieties—come down the trunk of the tree, and
begin exploring the branches on a level with the chipmunk.
I saw in a moment what had happened. The weasel had driven the squirrel
from his retreat in the rocks and stones beneath, and had pressed
him so closely that he had taken refuge in the top of a tree. But
weasels can climb trees, too, and this one had tracked the frightened
chipmunk to the topmost branch, where he had tried to seize him. Then
the squirrel had, in horror, let go his hold, screamed, and fallen
through the air, till he struck the branch as just described. Now
his bloodthirsty enemy was looking for him again, apparently relying
entirely upon his sense of smell to guide him to the game.
How did the weasel know the squirrel had not fallen clear to the
ground? He certainly did know, for when he reached the same tier of
branches he began exploring them. The chipmunk sat transfixed with
fear, frozen with terror, not twelve feet away, and yet the weasel saw
him not.
Round and round, up and down, he went on the branches, exploring them
over and over. How he hurried, lest the trail get cold! How subtle and
cruel and fiendish he looked! His snakelike movements, his tenacity,
his speed!
He seemed baffled; he knew his game was near, but he could not strike
the spot. The branch, upon the extreme end of which the squirrel sat,
ran out and up from the tree seven or eight feet, and then, turning a
sharp elbow, swept down and out at right angles with its first course.
The weasel would pause each time at this elbow and turn back. It
seemed as if he knew that particular branch held his prey, and yet its
crookedness each time threw him out. He would not give it up, but went
over his course again and again.