It is Sunday, the 19th of January. A week ago I was sitting before a
fire, watching the snow fall outside, in winter-bound Massachusetts.
This forenoon I am reclining in the shade of a cocoanut palm, looking
across the smooth blue waters of Biscayne Bay to a line of woods, I
know not how many miles distant, broken in the midst by a narrow cut or
inlet (Norris Cut, a passer-by tells me it is called), through which is
to be seen the open Atlantic. The air is motionless, the sky cloudless,
the temperature ideal. “This is the day the Lord hath made,” I repeat
to myself. He has seldom done better.
I left Boston Monday morning, spent that night and the next day in
Washington, slept in St. Augustine Wednesday night, and on Thursday
took the long, all-day ride down the east coast of Florida, past miles
on miles of orange groves and pineapple plantations, to the terminus of
the railroad, the new and flourishing city of Miami.
My visit, it must be owned, began rather inauspiciously. It was
nobody’s fault, of course, but the “magic city” did not put its best
foot forward. Friday morning the mercury stood at forty-five, and
although the day was abundantly warm out of doors,--so warm that a
walker naturally took off his coat,--an oil stove proved a comfort at
nightfall. In short, the day was exactly like a White Mountain day in
late September, hot in the middle and cool at both ends. Yesterday,
however, was a piece of Massachusetts June, while this morning is so
perfect that every one, visitor or resident, passes comments upon it.
Perfection of any kind is a rare and precious thing,--in this world,
at least,--and though it be merely a bit of weather, it should never
go unspoken of. So I say to myself as I lie in the shade, and look and
breathe.
In truth, I can hardly feel it credible that I was in the midst of
snowstorms less than a week ago. For a long two days winter has seemed
a thing utterly past and forgotten. Only now and then it comes upon me,
with the shock of unexpected news, that this is not summer, but January.
The bay, for some reason to me unknown, is almost without birds. The
only one just now in sight is a cormorant pretty far offshore, diving
and swimming by turns. I imagine him to be a loon till suddenly he
takes wing, with outstretched neck, and after a long flight comes to
rest, not in the water, but at the top of a stake. Somewhere behind me
a flicker is shouting as in springtime, and on one side a mockingbird
is calling (“smacking” is the word that comes of itself to my pencil),
and a blue-gray gnatcatcher utters now and then a fine, thread-like
ejaculation.
The stillness is really a relief, even to my ornithological ears; for
though they had been starved for two or three months in Massachusetts,
they have been so dinned with bird voices for the last two days
that a brief period of silence is grateful. The centre of the town,
where I have taken up my abode, literally swarms with fish crows
and boat-tailed grackles, every one trying, as it seems, to outdo
its rivals in noisiness. I remember the day, eight or nine years
ago, when in the flatwoods of New Smyrna I spent an hour of almost
painful excitement in taking observations upon the first boat-tail
I had ever seen. It would have been hard at that moment for me to
imagine that so clever and interesting a bird could ever become a
nuisance. Fortunately, both crow and grackle retire to roost early and
are comparatively late risers; otherwise the people of Miami might
be driven to violent measures, as against a plague. As things are,
the birds have no fears. They alight in the shade trees before the
windows, or gather about the kitchen door, crows and blackbirds alike
(and the male blackbirds, with their overgrown tails, are almost or
quite as large as the crows), as fearless as so many English sparrows.
After them the abundant birds hereabout, so far as I have yet
discovered, are buzzards, carrion crows (black vultures), blue jays,
catbirds (which I have never seen half so plentiful), palm warblers,
myrtle warblers, and blue-gray gnatcatchers. Less numerous, but still
decidedly common, are flickers, red-bellied woodpeckers, mockingbirds,
Florida yellow-throats, hummingbirds, ground doves, and phœbes. Day
before yesterday a long procession of tree swallows straggled past me
as I wandered along the bay shore, and in the same place a flock of
masculine red-winged blackbirds were holding a vociferous mid-winter
convention in a thicket of tall reeds. White-eyed vireos are well
distributed, and sing as saucily as if the month were May instead of
January. Solitary vireos are present likewise, but I have seen only
one, and he was not yet in tune.
Out in the pine lands I came upon a single group of pine warblers and
half a dozen bluebirds, both singing freely. What a voice the bluebird
has! It does a Yankee’s heart good to hear it. I have yet to see a
robin or a chickadee.
All in all, notwithstanding the woods are alive with wings, there
is surprisingly little music. The season of song is not yet come.
Phœbes, for some reason, form a bright exception to the rule, and now
and then a cardinal grosbeak whistles with a sweetness that beggars
words. Twice, I think, I have heard a distant mockingbird singing, and
yesterday, in front of the hotel, I stopped to watch a pair that seemed
to be in what I should call a decidedly lyrical mood, though they were
silent as dead men. They stood on the pavement a foot or so apart, and
took turns in a very original and pretty kind of dance. One and then
the other suddenly hopped straight upward for an inch or two, both
feet at once. Between whiles they stood motionless, or sometimes one
(always the same) moved a little away from its partner. Plainly they
were much in earnest, and without question the ceremony, simple, and
almost laughable, as it looked, had some deep and perfectly understood
significance. Ritualism is not confined to churches. Everywhere the
heart speaks by attitude and gesticulation.
A noble concert it will be when all these thousands of song-birds
recover their voices. May I be here to enjoy it. For the present I am
contented to wait. It is sufficient just now to be in so strange a land
in so lovely a season, with acres of morning-glories and moon-flowers
all about, roses and marigolds in the gardens, birds in every bush (not
an English sparrow among them), airs gratefully cool from the sea, and
bright summer weather. For a winter-killed Yankee, this is what old
Omar would have called “Paradise enow.”