others danced in bog tangle as will-o’-the-wisps might have done two
months ago. These quivered together in soft gray masses that shut out
the meadows and swamps, absorbing them and numbing them into a white
nothingness. It was neither a rising tide nor a growth, but a sort of
absorption. From my hilltop, in spite of the gathering darkness that
seemed to be crowded together by advancing day, I could see the world
gradually slipping back through chaos into the white glimmering
nothingness of the nebular hypothesis.
On such mornings, even after the white light of dawn has filtered
through this gray darkness and made its opaqueness visible, the world
stays chloroformed. The keen frost chill which has endured until the
coming of the fog is merged in the dense damp cold of this which goes
deep. The frost chill just touches the surface and does not penetrate.
It numbs your fingers or tingles your ears maybe, but it gives the blood
a fillip that makes it dance merrily, and you are warm though it is
cold. The fog chill works in your marrow and you are cold inside first.
I think the birds know the night before when one of these marrow-numbing
fogs that wrap all the ghosts of autumn in their folds are coming on,
for they seem to seek closer shelter than usual in the heart of the
evergreens, and even when the cold, gray light of dawn filters through
the opaqueness they still resolutely hold their heads under their wings.
There is no song on a morning like this, no cheery chirping even. They
all know that they will get bronchitis if they try it.
The red squirrels are a little hoarse already; they have been caught by
a little one earlier in the season and they have no mind to add to it.
So they stay snug. They have made their winter nests now, often in the
close, crinkly limbs of a large birch, often in a good-sized cedar that
stands well among other trees, that they may have easy access to the
squirrel highway. Some of them are in hollow trees and others still have
taken a crow’s nest for their foundation and have built a dome over it.
Wherever it is placed the material and architecture is the same,--a
soft, silky lining of the finest shreds of the loose-hanging outer bark
of the red cedar, wound round and round with coarser fiber of the same
material, the whole making a round ball as big as a derby hat, or
bigger, the walls being several inches thick. Entrance to this is by a
round hole, just big enough for the slender animal to squeeze in from a
convenient limb. The elasticity of the cedar fiber practically closes
this hole after the squirrel has passed, and the family may cuddle
together there snug through the coldest snap.
On a bright frosty morning you may hear the shrill pæan of the red
squirrel ringing through the wood as soon as he can see. Then he is out
and alert. On mornings like this when the chill fog hangs dense I never
hear him, and I am quite sure he sticks close to his family, cuddled up
in comfort in the middle of that warm nest.
The morning light breaks through such a vast cold cloud with difficulty,
indeed we may not truthfully say that the morning breaks. Rather, it
oozes, coming so slowly that without a watch in the pocket you would
not know the lateness of the hour. By-and-by, if you watch the east
carefully, you will be surprised to see how high the pale image of a
morning sun is riding.
On such a morning few leaves fall. The chill dampness seems to revive
their waning energies and they apply them to clinging just where they
are. Perhaps the chill reminds them dimly that they still are protectors
of next year’s leaf buds that nestle close under most leafstalks and may
be injured if the leaf is torn away too soon. These are well wrapped in
tiny fur overcoats or resinous wrappers, to be sure, but I think, as the
leaves seem to, that if anything could penetrate these clever coverings
it would be one of these morning fogs which mark the passing of
October.
But, though to us who stand at the bottom of the fog that ghostly image
of a morning sun looks pale and impotent, its work is really vigorous
and aggressive. Looking down on it from a sufficiently high hill we may
see it shredding the upper surface into breakfast food and eating its
way so rapidly downward that the rolling billows of mist ebb before its
rays like a Bay of Fundy tide.
Long before mid-forenoon it has finished its repast. From below the fog
seems to gradually grow warmer and to be dissolved in its own moisture.
The frost that crisped underfoot before the mists began to shiver
together in the lowlands now glistens as dew under the yellow sun. The
day warms toward the noon and we note with satisfaction what a perfect
one it is. But not till the little winds of afternoon begin to bustle in
among the trees do the leaves again begin to fall. The moisture is
again dried out of their petioles and the xylophone solo tattoos once
more the elfin tune to which they march on.
But now they do not go shuddering and in superstitious terror. Instead,
there is a lilt to the music and they dance their way down. Some jig it
alone. Others waltz cosily; but by far the larger number like best the
sociable square dance and foot it in groups to the merry-go-round of the
Portland Fancy. It is in such mood that we like best to say good-by to
them.
NOVEMBER WOODS
November is Nature’s stock-taking month, when she suspends her labors,
stands aloof from her work, and counts up the dozens, noting them all on
her list before she carefully puts them into the winter storehouse. To
the very last of October her factory is still running, though on part
time. By the first of December she has put things away.
November is the month in which she counts up the gain or loss and is
happy or disconsolate, according to the tally. Why else these wonderful
clear days on which you may see without a spyglass clear to the other
end of your universe? On some of these days Nature smiles in delight
over her success, and we say, this is the real Indian summer. She is
pleased with the perfection and profuseness of the product. On others
you will see her eyes cloud with tears, and sometimes a perfect passion
of northeast tempest blots the landscape and drowns the world in a flood
of rain. In this case she has discovered that the workers in some
special department have been lazy or hampered by some unfortunate
condition and their output is a failure.
There are years when the nuts do not mature and the squirrels must
migrate or starve. On others the drought so dries the upland grasses
that those of next year may not sprout as usual from the roots but must
be propagated by seed, which of itself is scarce also because of the
dryness. Or excessive rains so flood the lowlands that a thousand swamp
and meadow products rot and write the word failure large over a whole
department.
For Nature’s successes are by no means easily won. She lays such plans
for a hickory tree that if all the blossoms which open in May were to
produce fruit the trees’ tough limbs would be torn from their sockets
with the weight of it long before maturity. Some years, because of storm
or frost, the tree’s crop is a total failure, but the resourceful
mother, the moment she notes the death of the embryos, sets the wood to
making a more vigorous growth than would have been possible in a
fruiting season. Then, though she may weep in November over the loss of
nuts, she will be able to smile through her tears at the thought that
next year the tree will have far more ripe twigs for the bearing of
nuts. Or the tree may produce a thousand nuts and the squirrels be too
busy to plant more than a dozen of them. What is true of the hickory
tree is true of all other creatures of the vegetable and animal world.
Death stalks close upon the heels of birth, and a million fragile lives
pass out unnoticed to one that greets our eyes in maturity. No wonder
some years November is a month of wailing and Nature lets the storms of
December blot the tally sheet with the white forgiveness of the snow
before the almanac will agree that the month is half over.
The boundaries of the real month are thus not half so firmly set as that
which the calendar proclaims. October may on the one end and December on
the other so overlap it, some years, that Nature has hardly time for her
bookkeeping. This year I think November came a day or two earlier than
the calendar figures it, for the last days of the calendar month of
October went out with a perfect paroxysm of weeping.
Nature, even before she fairly got her tablets out for the tally, had a
terrible pet about something. I think her grief must be because of the
carelessness of man during the summer’s and autumn’s unprecedented
drought whereby he has killed with his fires so much of the woodland
growth. For other than this it seems to me that the year’s work has been
very successful. Never were wild fruits more plentiful. Only on the
driest of the upland pastures was there failure. There the fruit set in
more than the usual quantity, but in some cases shrivelled before coming
to maturity.
There was a tremendous crop of chestnuts this year, with enough hickory
and hazel nuts to make the squirrels smile and work overtime in laying
them up for the winter. From the June berries which purpled the shad
bush to the wild apples that still hang on the woodland trees, gleaming
pale-yellow among the rugged tracery of bare branches, production has
been plentiful and picking peaceful. Hardly a rainy night, never a rough
storm, did we have from the first of May until the end of September. All
those trees whose fruiting depends upon windborne pollen which can only
float in dry weather had perfect conditions for fertilization. So with
those plants, whether shrub or tree or annual or perennial herbs, that
depend on insects for the same service. There was no time lost on
account of rain.
As it was in the vegetable world, so it has been with animal life, and
particularly with those birds which nest on the ground. The mother bird
may conceal her nest so carefully that neither skunk nor fox nor
predatory boys can find it. She cannot conceal it from the
rapidly-rising water of a June flood which will drown her nestlings or
so chill her eggs that they will fail to hatch. A long heavy rain at
just about hatching time may almost wipe out the young birds of a season
among certain varieties. I read recently a report from Maine stating
that the partridges are particularly plentiful in that State this year.
This, the report went on to say, was because the hedgehog bounty of some
years ago had made a scarcity of hedgehogs. Therefore, as the hedgehogs
no longer ate the partridge eggs, partridges were increasing in number.
The State of Maine porcupine, commonly called hedgehog, though purists
decry the custom, will eat the handle off your canoe paddle, the floor
off your camp, or the boots off your feet. I dare say he eats partridge
eggs when in his short-sighted, clumsy wanderings he happens to find
them, but I doubt if he does enough of this to make him responsible for
a shortage in the partridge crop. I believe the partridges are
particularly plentiful Down East this year because there was never a
cloud in the sky nor a drenching rain from the time the eggs were laid
until the young birds were fully fledged. I know that is what happened
here in Massachusetts and, as a consequence, the young of ground-nesting
birds have had more than their usual opportunity to grow up.
This is true of partridges, and the application is apt, for the
partridge is not a migrating bird, nor even a wanderer. He clings to
the particular section of woodland where he was brought up with a
faithfulness which is apt to prevent his reaching a green old age. You
may drive him from his covert with all the racket you are able to make.
He may leave with vigor and directness that would seem to prove that he
has through tickets for Seattle. Yet, if you sit quietly by in a
position which commands a good view of the approaches, you will before
long see the flip of a brown wing that is bearing him back again. He has
gone no farther than the dense shelter of a neighboring pine grove,
whence he watches out until he thinks it safe to come home.
I take it that the same reason holds good for the plentifulness of
woodcock this fall in certain swamps which I frequent. You may know that
woodcock are plentiful in a place, even if you do not see them, by the
numbers of little round holes in moist, soft ground, usually where the
swamp begins to give way to sandy upland. Here the bird goes jabbing for
angleworms, which are his chief diet. I have never been able to catch
them at it, though I have often noticed the borings in the spot whence I
have just flushed the bird. In fact, I have never seen a live woodcock
on the ground anyway.
The bird is so built that I and other predatory creatures will not be
able to do it. His coloring is well adapted to blend with the
dusky-browns and black of the low ground which he frequents. He does not
have to look for his food. He feels for it. Given the proper piece of
ground to contain angleworms, he has but to probe with that long,
sensitive bill and haul them out when the sense of touch tells him that
one is there. For
[Illustration: He does not have to look for his food]
this purpose the end of the upper mandible is somewhat flexible and
moves so as to nip the worm when he feels it.
If we could see him thus engaged I think we would understand clearly why
a woodcock is so peculiarly built. His eyes are set so far back in his
head that the bird has a grotesque appearance. But in this very fact
lies a large factor of his safety. Wild animals that hunt woodcock may
not slip up on them unseen while they are feeding. The woodcock’s nose
may be in the mud, but his eyes, set absurdly far back on his head, are
then just right for seeing all that is going on. Let there be but the
slightest hint of danger near by and the bird goes straight up in the
air in a tremendous burst of speed.
Woodcock hunters claim that this speed is so great that the bird is
invisible till he reaches a height of four or five feet. I am inclined
to believe them for I have never yet seen a flushed bird till he got
shoulder high, though he may have come up right in front of my nose. So
vigorous are the strokes of his wings during this flight that the stiff
wing feathers make a shrill whistling which is peculiar to the bird.
Rapidity of flight seems to be in the main exhausted by this effort,
however, for after they get fairly launched they seem to go rather
slowly and clumsily. In the case of the woodcock, as in that of the
partridge, the rainless spring and early summer seem to have given the
birds a chance to bring their full complement of young through to
maturity.
So, looking over the result of harvest and round-up in pasture and
woodland, I can see no reason why Nature should shed many tears or go
into any tantrums over the results of her busy season. These seem to me
to be above the average, and I look forward to a bright and sunny
November, during which she will count up the finished product with all
good cheer.
The tally of young brought to successful maturity is all that the animal
world has to show for the success of its department during the season of
growth. But nuts and fruit and ripe seeds are only part of the work of
the trees and shrubs. All the time that they are busy producing that two
feet or less of woody growth, all the time the growing and ripening of
seeds is going on, there is a further and very important labor to be
attended to. That is the production of next year’s buds. This is no
haphazard matter, nor is it left until the other things are out of the
way, but is carefully begun and patiently carried on through the
summer, early autumn seeing everything complete.
The falling of leaves and ripe fruit shows these hopes for future
foliage and flower revealed for the first time. Stand on a knoll in the
pasture and look over the tops of shrubs and trees on these keen and
clear November days and you will see that the most beautiful colors of
the year are there waiting your eye after you thought that all color had
flamed to its climax and died in the dead ashes of autumn memories.
Grays that are incredibly soft and coot in the vigorous young limbs of
the maples warm into tender reds on the twig tips where the next year’s
buds sit snug.
All this year’s shoots of the swamp blueberry bushes are a restful
green, but at the tips these, too, ripen into red, while on the higher
ground the black huckleberries and the birches show the same color till
the landscape rolls away from you in a warm and cuddley glow that takes
the nip out of the wind. Looking on these you know that the pasture
cannot be cold, however deep the snows to come or however low the
mercury in the thermometer may fall. As the winter comes on this blanket
of warm red, spread all over the bare trees and shrubs, will deepen in
hue and with the first promise of spring flush into a lively pink that
melts again into slender green with the passing of frost from the roots
and the first soft rains of April. Herein is the better half of the
harvest of the year,--a harvest not of fruition but of promise. The
out-door world ripens hope in the same crop that has given us
fulfilment.
How full of hope, of promises, of matured plans and energy these rosy
buds are you may not know till you step down among them and test their
virility and perfection. Here is the azalia, its pinky twigs tipped with
swollen, soft green buds as big as your little finger tip. Till the
leaves fell nobody thought the azalia had been doing anything since its
rich-scented white flowers fell last July. Here is the proof of its
labors and foresight. In the hearts of these buds are next July’s
blossoms, in miniature it is true, but perfect in every appointment.
About them are the green young leaves, vividly colored already, both
only waiting for the mysterious thrill of spring sap to push forward to
maturity, promising the leaves softly green, the blossoms vividly white,
sticky with sweetness, and adorably fragrant. If you will pull one of
the larger of the azalia buds apart you may easily see all this, and as
you do it, be haunted by the ghost of a perfume, an infinitesimally
faint promise of the rich odor yet to be.
So, in large or small, it is with all the shrubs and trees. Each is
loaded and primed and waits but the touch of the match in the crescent
warmth of the spring sun. Then will come the yearly explosion. It is
hard to say which of these next-year promises shows most vigor, yet I
think on the whole I would give the prize to the sapling pines. Each
central shoot of these will go up in the season from fifteen to thirty
inches, and send out four or five laterals. Yet each young tree has from
eight to a dozen brown buds prepared for this, at least two centrals
which you will recognize as being larger and standing more erect. One of
these will get the start and continue the main trunk of the tree. The
other will fall back and be a lateral branch. Yet if, as often happens,
the central shoot is disabled the next strongest will take its place and
so on, if need be, till the last of the dozen buds has stepped into the
place of the lost leader.
Sometimes, though rarely with the white pine, more often with the fir
and spruce, two will compete with equal success for this lost leadership
and you have a tree with twin tops. Usually, however, one fails in the
race and the stronger goes ahead alone.
So, going abroad these keen November days, looking upon the world
stripped of the glamour of summer and the glory of autumn fruitage, we
see it by no means a dead and pulseless thing to be wept over and
buried. Instead, we wonder at and delight in the riot of life laid bare
by the passing of leaf and fruit. The woodland is more beautiful, the
pasture more enticing than ever. Beauty thus unadorned is adorned the
most, and we forget to sorrow over the ceasing of this year’s growth in
our joy in the promise of that for the year to be.
WINTER BIRDS’-NESTING
Last night the world was all soft with mist. Over on the brow of
Cemetery Hill you looked off into an illimitable distance of it. Horizon
after horizon loomed over the shoulder of its fellows as the gray-draped
hills rose one beyond the other and tiptoed softly away into the yonder
world,--so softly that you could not tell where the earth ended and the
heavens began.
The landscape passed like an elder saint from this world to the next,
you could scarce tell when, only that you were awed and soothed with the
soft serenity of the going. In the hush that followed the soft blue
mists changed their draperies for black, in mourning for the passing of
the twilight saint, and thus night came.
Last summer night on this hilltop was filled with voices. A million
insects chirped and sang. Tree toads trilled, amorous toads played
bagpipes all along the margin of the swamp below, and in deeper water a
thousand frogs shouted one to another in guttural diapason. A little
screech owl used to sit in the darker corner of the pines and ululate
all to himself far into the night, and here and there a songbird,
stirring in his sleep, would pipe a mellow note. A coon would whinny or
a fox would yap, and there were many other sounds whose source you might
not surely define. The forefathers who wait serenely beneath their slate
headstones all along the brow of the hill had much and pleasant company
when the year was in its prime. Now their nights are as silent as if
the world itself were dead, their company ghosts of mist as tenuous as
their own.
The morning after such a night does not break from above; it grows. It
rises out of the earth like a soft tide, as if the mists that went to
sleep in it last night were the first of all creatures up, making all
things gray again. These tiptoe up, tangling their soft garments in the
trees and roof tops till they slip from them and pass on into the upper
spaces, where their unclothed spirits become the morning light. The
garments, clinging still to all things, remain behind as hoar frost.
That is the way it was this morning. All the trees had white baby leaves
of infinite daintiness and ghosts of blossoms that were not real enough
for a promise. I might better call them remembrance, touched with hope.
Hardly was the touch of hope there at the earliest light. It was just
white and delicate remembrance. Then, with the thought of the sun, only
the thought for the sun himself was not to come for long, there came a
slender opalescence welling through these white garments, an iridescent
presence that you felt rather than saw, till I knew without looking to
the east that the dawn had grown out of the earth into the high heavens
and the miracle was complete.
Out of this miracle of the birth of morning light came two pleasant
things. One was the red sun, peeping robustly in among the pines, adding
his glow to the warmth of their shelter; the other was a bustle of merry
company heralded by a salvo of elfin trumpets. A company of chickadees
came breakfasting, and with them were nuthatches. I think no one has
ever see the trumpet which the nuthatch blows, but its tiny, tin toot
is a familiar sound in the pine woods at this time of year.
If some fay of the fairy orchestra, returning in haste from revels which
lasted till the gray of the morning, did not drop it, I cannot tell
where the nuthatch did pick it up. Its note is certainly more elfin than
bird-like and always seems to add a tiny touch of romantic mystery to
the day.
Such a November morning is fine for birds’-nesting. You may go hunting
birds’ nests in June if you wish to, but you will not find very many,
half so many in a day as I can find now almost in a glance. Down stream
there is a little island crowded with alder and elder, milkweed and
joe-pye weed, and garlanded with virgin’s bower, where I called many
days last summer to watch the insect life that rioted about it. A bed
of milkweed bloom was each day a busy and cosmopolitan community.
Right at my elbow as I stood in July watching this was a blackbird’s
nest. I must have brushed it more than once, but I never saw it until
to-day. To be sure, when I first went there the young blackbirds were
grown up and gone, for the nesting season with these birds is short, and
by July the young are flying about with the flock, learning to sing
“tchk, tchk, conkaree.” Had there been young or eggs in the nest the
distress of the parent birds would have warned me of its presence.
Lacking that, so cleverly was it placed for safety and concealment, I
never noticed it till the passing of the leaves left it bare.