If we represent the winter of our northern climate by a rugged snow-clad
mountain, and summer by a broad fertile plain, then the intermediate
belt, the hilly and breezy uplands, will stand for spring, with March
reaching well up into the region of the snows, and April lapping well
down upon the greening fields and unloosened currents, not beyond
the limits of winter's sallying storms, but well within the vernal
zone,--within the reach of the warm breath and subtle, quickening
influences of the plain below. At its best, April is the tenderest of
tender salads made crisp by ice or snow water. Its type is the first
spear of grass. The senses--sight, hearing, smell--are as hungry for
its delicate and almost spiritual tokens as the cattle are for the first
bite of its fields. How it touches one and makes him both glad and sad!
The voices of the arriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of
pigeons sweeping across the sky or filling the woods, the elfin horn of
the first honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear
piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the campfire in
the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of
green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full
translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun,--how these things and
others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear! April is my natal
month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at
each return of it. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two
syllables are like the calls of the first birds,--like that of the
phoebe-bird, or of the meadowlark. Its very snows are fertilizing, and
are called the poor man's manure.
Then its odors! I am thrilled by its fresh and indescribable odors,--the
perfume of the bursting sod, of the quickened roots and rootlets, of the
mould under the leaves, of the fresh furrows. No other month has odors
like it. The west wind the other day came fraught with a perfume that
was to the sense of smell what a wild and delicate strain of music is to
the ear. It was almost transcendental. I walked across the hill with my
nose in the air taking it in. It lasted for two days. I imagined it came
from the willows of a distant swamp, whose catkins were affording the
bees their first pollen: or did it come from much farther,--from beyond
the horizon, the accumulated breath of innumerable farms and budding
forests? The main characteristic of these April odors is their uncloying
freshness. They are not sweet, they are oftener bitter, they are
penetrating and lyrical. I know well the odors of May and June, of the
world of meadows and orchards bursting into bloom, but they are not so
ineffable and immaterial and so stimulating to the sense as the incense
of April.
The season of which I speak does not correspond with the April of the
almanac in all sections of our vast geography. It answers to March in
Virginia and Maryland, while in parts of New York and New England it
laps well over into May. It begins when the partridge drums, when the
hyla pipes, when the shad start up the rivers, when the grass greens in
the spring runs, and it ends when the leaves are unfolding and the last
snowflake dissolves in midair. It may be the first of May before the
first swallow appears, before the whip-poor-will is heard, before the
wood thrush sings; but it is April as long as there is snow upon the
mountains, no matter what the almanac may say. Our April is, in fact,
a kind of Alpine summer, full of such contrasts and touches of wild,
delicate beauty as no other season affords. The deluded citizen fancies
there is nothing enjoyable in the country till June, and so misses the
freshest, tenderest part. It is as if one should miss strawberries
and begin his fruit-eating with melons and peaches. These last are
good,--supremely so, they are melting and luscious,--but nothing so
thrills and penetrates the taste, and wakes up and teases the papillae
of the tongue, as the uncloying strawberry. What midsummer sweetness
half so distracting as its brisk sub-acid flavor, and what splendor of
full-leaved June can stir the blood like the best of leafless April?
One characteristic April feature, and one that delights me very much,
is the perfect emerald of the spring runs while the fields are yet brown
and sere,--strips and patches of the most vivid velvet green on the
slopes and in the valleys. How the eye grazes there, and is filled
and refreshed! I had forgotten what a marked feature this was until I
recently rode in an open wagon for three days through a mountainous,
pastoral country, remarkable for its fine springs. Those delicious
green patches are yet in my eye. The fountains flowed with May. Where no
springs occurred, there were hints and suggestions of springs about
the fields and by the roadside in the freshened grass,--sometimes
overflowing a space in the form of an actual fountain. The water did not
quite get to the surface in such places, but sent its influence.
The fields of wheat and rye, too, how they stand out of the April
landscape,--great green squares on a field of brown or gray!
Among April sounds there is none more welcome or suggestive to me than
the voice of the little frogs piping in the marshes. No bird-note
can surpass it as a spring token; and as it is not mentioned, to my
knowledge, by the poets and writers of other lands, I am ready to
believe it is characteristic of our season alone. You may be sure April
has really come when this little amphibian creeps out of the mud and
inflates its throat. We talk of the bird inflating its throat, but you
should see this tiny minstrel inflate _its_ throat, which becomes like a
large bubble, and suggests a drummer-boy with his drum slung very high.
In this drum, or by the aid of it, the sound is produced. Generally the
note is very feeble at first, as if the frost was not yet all out of the
creature's throat, and only one voice will be heard, some prophet bolder
than all the rest, or upon whom the quickening ray of spring has first
fallen. And it often happens that he is stoned for his pains by the yet
unpacified element, and is compelled literally to "shut up" beneath
a fall of snow or a heavy frost. Soon, however, he lifts up his voice
again with more confidence, and is joined by others and still others,
till in due time, say toward the last of the month, there is a shrill
musical uproar, as the sun is setting, in every marsh and bog in the
land. It is a plaintive sound, and I have heard people from the city
speak of it as lonesome and depressing, but to the lover of the country
it is a pure spring melody. The little piper will sometimes climb a
bulrush, to which he clings like a sailor to a mast, and send forth his
shrill call. There is a Southern species, heard when you have reached
the Potomac, whose note is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the
verge of a swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call
of the Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: The
Southern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard them in my
neighborhood on the Hudson.]
Then is there anything like a perfect April morning? One hardly knows
what the sentiment of it is, but it is something very delicious. It is
youth and hope. It is a new earth and a new sky. How the air transmits
sounds, and what an awakening, prophetic character all sounds have! The
distant barking of a dog, or the lowing of a cow, or the crowing of
a cock, seems from out the heart of Nature, and to be a call to come
forth. The great sun appears to have been reburnished, and there is
something in his first glance above the eastern hills, and the way his
eye-beams dart right and left and smite the rugged mountains into gold,
that quickens the pulse and inspires the heart.
Across the fields in the early morning I hear some of the rare April
birds,--the chewink and the brown thrasher. The robin, the bluebird, the
song sparrow, the phoebe-bird, come in March; but these two ground-birds
are seldom heard till toward the last of April. The ground-birds are all
tree-singers or air-singers; they must have an elevated stage to speak
from. Our long-tailed thrush, or thrasher, like its congeners the
catbird and the mockingbird, delights in a high branch of some solitary
tree, whence it will pour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour
together. This bird is the great American chipper. There is no other
bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and military
decision as this yellow-eyed songster. It is like the click of a giant
gunlock. Why is the thrasher so stealthy? It always seems to be going
about on tiptoe. I never knew it to steal anything, and yet it skulks
and hides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees it flying aloft
in the air and traversing the world openly, like most birds, but
it darts along fences and through bushes as if pursued by a guilty
conscience. Only when the musical fit is upon it does it come up into
full view, and invite the world to hear and behold.
The chewink is a shy bird also, but not stealthy. It is very
inquisitive, and sets up a great scratching among the leaves, apparently
to attract your attention. The male is perhaps the most conspicuously
marked of all the ground-birds except the bobolink, being black above,
bay on the sides, and white beneath. The bay is in compliment to the
leaves he is forever scratching among,--they have rustled against his
breast and sides so long that these parts have taken their color; but
whence come the white and the black? The bird seems to be aware that his
color betrays him, for there are few birds in the woods so careful about
keeping themselves screened from view. When in song, its favorite perch
is the top of some high bush near to cover. On being disturbed at such
times, it pitches down into the brush and is instantly lost to view.
This is the bird that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Wilson about, greatly
exciting the latter's curiosity. Wilson was just then upon the threshold
of his career as an ornithologist, and had made a drawing of the Canada
jay which he sent to the President. It was a new bird, and in reply
Jefferson called his attention to a "curious bird" which was everywhere
to be heard, but scarcely ever to be seen. He had for twenty years
interested the young sportsmen of his neighborhood to shoot one for him,
but without success. "It is in all the forests, from spring to fall,"
he says in his letter, "and never but on the tops of the tallest trees,
from which it perpetually serenades us with some of the sweetest notes,
and as clear as those of the nightingale. I have followed it for miles,
without ever but once getting a good view of it. It is of the size
and make of the mockingbird, lightly thrush-colored on the back, and a
grayish white on the breast and belly. Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law, was
in possession of one which had been shot by a neighbor," etc. Randolph
pronounced it a flycatcher, which was a good way wide of the mark.
Jefferson must have seen only the female, after all his tramp, from his
description of the color; but he was doubtless following his own great
thoughts more than the bird, else he would have had an earlier view. The
bird was not a new one, but was well known then as the ground-robin. The
President put Wilson on the wrong scent by his erroneous description,
and it was a long time before the latter got at the truth of the case.
But Jefferson's letter is a good sample of those which specialists often
receive from intelligent persons who have seen or heard something in
their line very curious or entirely new, and who set the man of science
agog by a description of the supposed novelty,--a description that
generally fits the facts of the case about as well as your coat fits the
chair-back. Strange and curious things in the air, and in the water, and
in the earth beneath, are seen every day except by those who are looking
for them, namely, the naturalists. When Wilson or Audubon gets his eye
on the unknown bird, the illusion vanishes, and your phenomenon turns
out to be one of the commonplaces of the fields or woods.
A prominent April bird, that one does not have to go to the woods or
away from his own door to see and hear, is the hardy and ever-welcome
meadowlark. What a twang there is about this bird, and what vigor! It
smacks of the soil. It is the winged embodiment of the spirit of our
spring meadows. What emphasis in its _"z-d-t, z-d-t"_ and what character
in its long, piercing note! Its straight, tapering, sharp beak is
typical of its voice. Its note goes like a shaft from a crossbow; it
is a little too sharp and piercing when near at hand, but, heard in the
proper perspective, it is eminently melodious and pleasing. It is one
of the major notes of the fields at this season. In fact, it easily
dominates all others. _"Spring o' the year! spring o' the year!"_ it
says, with a long-drawn breath, a little plaintive, but not complaining
or melancholy. At times it indulges in something much more intricate and
lark-like while hovering on the wing in midair, but a song is beyond the
compass of its instrument, and the attempt usually ends in a breakdown.
A clear, sweet, strong, high-keyed note, uttered from some knoll or
rock, or stake in the fence, is its proper vocal performance. It has the
build and walk and flight of the quail and the grouse. It gets up before
you in much the same manner, and falls an easy prey to the crack shot.
Its yellow breast, surmounted by a black crescent, it need not be
ashamed to turn to the morning sun, while its coat of mottled gray is
in perfect keeping with the stubble amid which it walks. The two lateral
white quills in its tail seem strictly in character. These quills spring
from a dash of scorn and defiance in the bird's make-up. By the aid
of these, it can almost emit a flash as it struts about the fields and
jerks out its sharp notes. They give a rayed, a definite and piquant
expression to its movements. This bird is not properly a lark, but a
starling, say the ornithologists, though it is lark-like in its habits,
being a walker and entirely a ground-bird. Its color also allies it to
the true lark. I believe there is no bird in the English or European
fields that answers to this hardy pedestrian of our meadows. He is a
true American, and his note one of our characteristic April sounds.
Another marked April note, proceeding sometimes from the meadows, but
more frequently from the rough pastures and borders of the woods, is
the call of the high-hole, or golden-shafted woodpecker. It is quite as
strong as that of the meadowlark, but not so long-drawn and piercing.
It is a succession of short notes rapidly uttered, as if the bird said
_"if-if-if-if-if-if-if."_ The notes of the ordinary downy and hairy
woodpeckers suggest, in some way, the sound of a steel punch; but
that of the high-hole is much softer, and strikes on the ear with real
springtime melody. The high-hole is not so much a wood-pecker as he is
a ground-pecker. He subsists largely on ants and crickets, and does not
appear till they are to be found.
In Solomon's description of spring, the voice of the turtle is
prominent, but our turtle, or mourning dove, though it arrives in April,
can hardly be said to contribute noticeably to the open-air sounds.
Its call is so vague, and soft, and mournful,--in fact, so remote and
diffused,--that few persons ever hear it at all.
Such songsters as the cow blackbird are noticeable at this season,
though they take a back seat a little later. It utters a peculiarly
liquid April sound. Indeed, one would think its crop was full of water,
its notes so bubble up and regurgitate, and are delivered with such
an apparent stomachic contraction. This bird is the only feathered
polygamist we have. The females are greatly in excess of the males, and
the latter are usually attended by three or four of the former. As soon
as the other birds begin to build, they are on the _qui vive,_ prowling
about like gypsies, not to steal the young of others, but to steal their
eggs into other birds' nests, and so shirk the labor and responsibility
of hatching and rearing their own young. As these birds do not mate, and
as therefore there can be little or no rivalry or competition between
the males, one wonders--in view of Darwin's teaching--why one sex should
have brighter and richer plumage than the other, which is the fact. The
males are easily distinguished from the dull and faded females by their
deep glossy-black coats.
The April of English literature corresponds nearly to our May. In Great
Britain, the swallow and the cuckoo usually arrive by the middle of
April; with us, their appearance is a week or two later. Our April,
at its best, is a bright, laughing face under a hood of snow, like the
English March, but presenting sharper contrasts, a greater mixture of
smiles and tears and icy looks than are known to our ancestral climate.
Indeed, Winter sometimes retraces his steps in this month, and unburdens
himself of the snows that the previous cold has kept back; but we are
always sure of a number of radiant, equable days,--days that go before
the bud, when the sun embraces the earth with fervor and determination.
How his beams pour into the woods till the mould under the leaves is
warm and emits an odor! The waters glint and sparkle, the birds gather
in groups, and even those unused to singing find a voice. On the streets
of the cities, what a flutter, what bright looks and gay colors! I
recall one preeminent day of this kind last April. I made a note of it
in my note-book. The earth seemed suddenly to emerge from a wilderness
of clouds and chilliness into one of these blue sunlit spaces. How
the voyagers rejoiced! Invalids came forth, old men sauntered down the
street, stocks went up, and the political outlook brightened.
Such days bring out the last of the hibernating animals. The woodchuck
unrolls and creeps out of his den to see if his clover has started yet.
The torpidity leaves the snakes and the turtles, and they come forth and
bask in the sun. There is nothing so small, nothing so great, that it
does not respond to these celestial spring days, and give the pendulum
of life a fresh start.
April is also the month of the new furrow. As soon as the frost is gone
and the ground settled, the plow is started upon the hill, and at each
bout I see its brightened mould-board flash in the sun. Where the last
remnants of the snowdrift lingered yesterday the plow breaks the sod
to-day. Where the drift was deepest the grass is pressed flat, and there
is a deposit of sand and earth blown from the fields to windward. Line
upon line the turf is reversed, until there stands out of the neutral
landscape a ruddy square visible for miles, or until the breasts of the
broad hills glow like the breasts of the robins.
Then who would not have a garden in April? to rake together the rubbish
and burn it up, to turn over the renewed soil, to scatter the rich
compost, to plant the first seed, or bury the first tuber! It is not the
seed that is planted, any more than it is I that is planted; it is not
the dry stalks and weeds that are burned up, any more than it is my
gloom and regrets that are consumed. An April smoke makes a clean
harvest.
I think April is the best month to be born in. One is just in time, so
to speak, to catch the first train, which is made up in this month. My
April chickens always turn out best. They get an early start; they have
rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot stand the heavy dews, or
withstand the predaceous hawks. In April all nature starts with you. You
have not come out of your hibernaculum too early or too late; the time
is ripe, and, if you do not keep pace with the rest, why, the fault is
not in the season.