with rain pouring off his sleek coat, bade us "Be cheery! be cheery!"
the bluebird sat silent and motionless on a fence post; the "veery's
clarion" rang out all the evening from the valley below; many little
birds sang and called; and
"The gossip of swallows filled all the sky."
But the bluejays?
The bluejays, too, were there. One saucily flirted his tail at me from
the top of a tree; another sly rogue flaunted his blue robes over a wall
and disappeared the other side; a third shrieked in my face and slipped
away behind a tree; but one and all were far too wise to reveal their
domestic secrets. I knew mysteries were on foot among them, as we know
little folk are in mischief by their unnatural stillness, but I knew
also that not until every jay baby was out of the nest, and there was
nothing to hide, should I see that cunning bird in his usual noisy,
careless role.
The peculiarity of that particular corner of nature's handiwork was that
any way you went you had to climb, except east, where you might roll if
you chose; in fact, you could hardly do otherwise. The first day of my
hunt I started west. I climbed a hill devoted to pasture, passed through
the bars, and faced my mountain. It presented a compact front of
spruce-trees closely interlaced at the ground, and of course impassable.
But a way opened in the midst, the path of a mountain brook, deserted
now and dry. I sought an alpenstock. I abandoned all impedimenta. I
started up that stony path escorted on each side by a close rank of
spruce. It was exceedingly steep, for the way of a brook on this
mountain-side is a constant succession of falls. I scrambled over rocks;
I stumbled on rolling stones; I "caught" on twigs and dead branches; I
crept under fallen tree trunks; the way grew darker and more winding.
How merrily had the water rushed down this path, so hard to go up! How
easy for it to do so again! Nothing seemed so natural. I began to look
and listen for it.
A mysterious reluctance to penetrating the heart of the mountain by this
unknown and strangely hewn path stole over me. I felt like an intruder.
Who could tell what the next turn might reveal? On a fallen trunk that
barred my way I seated myself to rest. The silence was oppressive; not a
bird called, not a squirrel chattered, not an insect hummed. The whole
forest was one vast, deep, overwhelming solitude. I felt my slightest
rustle an impertinence; I could not utter a sound; surely the spirit of
the wood was near! A strange excitement, almost amounting to terror,
possessed me. I turned and fled--that is to say, crept--down my steep
and winding stair, back to the bars where I had taken leave of
civilization (in the shape of one farmhouse).
Here I paused, and again the legend of bluejays allured me. From the
bars, turning sharply to one side, were the tracks of cows. The strange
feeling of oppression vanished. Wherever the gentle beasts had passed, I
could go, sure of finding sunny openings, grassy spots, and nothing
uncanny. Meekly I followed in their footsteps; the solemn grandeur of
the forest had so stirred me that even the footprint of a cow was
companionable.
This path led down through a pleasant fringe of beech and birch and
maple trees to a beautiful brook, which was easily crossed on stones,
then up the bank on the other side into an open pasture with scattering
spruce and other trees. Now I began to look for my bluejays. I disturbed
the peace of a robin, who scolded me roundly from the top spire of a
spruce. I started out in hot haste a dainty bit of bird life--the black
and yellow warbler. I listened to the delightsome song of the
field-sparrow. I heard the far-off drumming of the partridge. I walked
and climbed myself tired.
Then I sat down to wait. I made a nosegay of blue violets and sweetbrier
leaves; I regaled myself with wintergreens in memory of my childhood; I
wrote up my note-book; but never a blue feather did I see.
The next day, between showers, I tried the north, with a guide--a
visiting Massachusetts ornithologist--to show me a partridge nest with
the bird sitting. We followed the ups and downs of the road for a mile,
passing a meadow full of bobolinks,
"Bubbling rapturously, madly,"
climbed by a grass-grown wood road a mountain-side pasture, and reached
the forest. Under a dead spruce sat my lady, in a snug bed among the
fallen leaves. She was wet; her lovely mottled plumage was disarranged
and draggled, but her head was drawn down into her feathers in patient
endurance, the mother love triumphant over everything, even fear. We
stood within six feet of the shy creature; we discussed her courage in
the face of the human monsters we felt ourselves to be. Not a feather
fluttered, not an eyelid quivered; truly it was the perfect love that
casteth out fear.
My guide went on up to the top of Greylock; I turned back to pursue my
search.
Eastward was my next trip, down toward the brook that made a valley
between Greylock and Ragged Mountain. My path was under the edge of the
woods that fringed a mountain stream. Not the smallest of the debt we
owe the bonny brook is that it wears a deep gully, whose precipitous
sides are clothed with a thick growth of waving trees--beech, white and
black birches, maple, and chestnut--in refreshing and delightful
confusion. The stream babbled and murmured at my side as I walked slowly
down, peering in every bush for nests, and at last I parted the branches
like a curtain and stepped within. It was a cool green solitude, a
shrine, one of nature's most enchanting nooks, sacred to dreams and
birds and--woodchucks, one of which sat straight up and looked solemnly
at me out of his great brown eyes.
I sat on the low-growing limb of a tree, and was rocked by the wind
outside. I forgot my object. What did it matter that I should find my
bluejay? Was it worth while to go on? Was anything worth while, indeed,
except to dream and muse, lulled by the music of the "laughing water"?
Ah! if one were a poet!
Then the birds came. A cat-bird first, with witching low song, eying me
closely with that calm, dark eye of his, the while he poured it out from
a shrub,
"Like dripping water falling slow
Round mossy rooks, in music rare;"
a vireo, repeating over and over his few notes in tireless warble; high
up in the maple across the chasm, a sweet-voiced goldfinch singing his
soul away outside; and lastly, a robin, who broke the charm by a
peremptory demand to know my business in his private quarters. I rose
to leave him in possession. In rising I disturbed another resident, a
red squirrel, who ran out on a branch and delivered as vehement a piece
of mind as I ever heard, stamping his little feet and jerking his bushy
tail with every word, scolding all over, to the tip of his longest hair.
I left them in their green paradise. I went to my room. I sat down in my
rocker to consider.
Then the winds got up. Through the "bellows pipe," as they suggestively
call the head of the valley, there poured such a gale that the birds
could hardly hold on to their perches. All day long it tossed the
branches, tore off leaves, beat the birds, rattled the windows, and
filled the blue cover to our green bowl of a valley with clouds, even
half way down the sides of the mountains themselves. And at last they
began to weep, and I spent my twilight by an open window, wrapped in a
shawl, listening to the
"Unrivaled one, the hermit-thrush,
Solitary, singing in the west,"
and looking out upon the hills, where I still hoped to find my bluejay.
VII.
IN THE WOOD LOT.
"There's blue jays a-plenty up in the wood lot," said the farmer's boy,
hearing me lament my unsuccessful search for that wily bird. "There's
one pair makes an awful fuss every time I passes."
I immediately offered to accompany the youth on his next trip up the
mountain, where he was engaged in dragging down to our level, sunshine
and summer breezes, winter winds and pure mountain air, in the shape of
the bodies of trees, whose noble heads were laid low by the axes last
winter. One hundred and fifty cords of beauty, the slow work of
unnumbered years, brought down to "what base uses"! the most beautiful
of nature's productions degraded to the lowest service--to fry our bacon
and bake our pies!
The farmer did not look upon it exactly in that way; he called it
"cord-wood," and his oxen dragged it down day by day. The point of view
makes such a difference!
The road that wound down through the valley, skirting its hills,
bridging its brooks, and connecting the lonely homestead with the rest
of the human world, had on one side a beautiful border of all sorts of
greeneries, just as Nature, with her inimitable touch, had placed them.
It was a home and a cover for small birds; it was a shade on a warm day;
it was a delight to the eye at all times. Yet in the farmer's eye it was
"shiftless" (the New Englander's bogy). The other side of the road he
had "improved;" it gloried in what looked at a little distance like a
single-file procession of glaring new posts, which on approaching were
found to be the supports of one of man's neighborly devices--barbed
wire. Rejoicing in this work of his hands on the left, he longed to turn
his murderous weapons against the right side. He was labored with; he
bided his time; but I knew in my heart that whoever went there next
summer would find that picturesque road bristling with barbed wire on
both sides. It will be as ugly as man can make it, but it will be "tidy"
(New England's shibboleth), for no sweet green thing will grow up beside
it. Nature doesn't take kindly to barbed wire.
The old stone wall at that time was an irresistible invitation to the
riotous luxuriance of vines. Elder-bushes, with their fine cream-colored
blossoms, hung lovingly over it; blackberry bushes, lovely from their
snowy flowering to their rich autumn foliage, flourished beside it; and
a thousand and one exquisite, and to me nameless, green things hung upon
it, and leaned against it, and nearly covered it up. And what a garden
of delight nestled in each protected corner of an old-fashioned zigzag
fence! Yet all these are under the ban--"shiftless."
Thanks be to the gods who sowed this country so full of stones and
trees, that the army of farmers who have worried the land haven't
succeeded in turning it into the abomination of desolation they admire!
And now, having relieved my mind, I'll go on with the bluejay hunt.
The next morning it was, for a rarity, fine. I started up the wood road
ahead of my guide, so that I might take my climb as easily as such a
thing can be taken. Passing through the bare pasture, I entered the
outlying clumps of spruce which form the advance-guard of the forests on
Greylock, and here my leader overtook me, urging his fiery steeds, with
their empty sled. Now horned beasts have had a certain terror for me
ever since an exciting experience with them in my childhood. I stood
respectfully on one side, prepared to fly should the "critters" (local)
show malicious intent. On they came, looking at me sharply with wicked
eyes. I made ready for a rush, when, lo! they turned from me, and
dashed madly into a spruce-tree, nearly upsetting themselves, and
threatening to run away. We were all afraid of each other.
The mortified driver apologized for their behavior on the ground that
"they ain't much used to seeing a lady up in the wood lot." I generously
forgave them, and then meekly followed in their footsteps, up, up, up
toward the clouds, till we reached the bluejay neighborhood. Here we
parted. My escort passed on still higher, and I seated myself to see at
last my bluejays.
Dead silence around me. Not a leaf stirred; not a bird peeped. I began
to make a noise myself--calls and imitations (feeble) of bird-notes to
arouse their curiosity; a bluejay is a born investigator. No sign of
heaven's color appeared except in the patches of sky between the leaves.
Other wood dwellers came; a rose-breasted grosbeak, with lovely rosy
shield, with much posturing and many sharp "clicks," essayed to find out
what manner of irreverent intruder this might be. Later his modest
gray-clad spouse joined him. They circled around to view the wonder on
all sides. They exchanged dubious-sounding opinions. They were as little
"used to seeing a lady" as the oxen. They slipped away, and in a moment
I heard his rich song from afar.
No one else paid the slightest attention to my coaxing, and I returned
by easy stages to the spruces, where I had the misfortune to arouse the
suspicion of a robin. Do you know what it is to be under robin
surveillance? Let but one redbreast take it into his obstinate little
head that you are a suspicious character, and he mounts the nearest
tree--the very top twig, in plain sight--and begins his loud "Peep!
peep! tut, tut, tut! Peep! peep! tut, tut, tut!"
This is his tocsin of war, and soon his allies appear, and then
"From the north, from the east, from the south and the west,
Woodland, wheat field, corn field, clover,
Over and over, and over and over,
Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven,
Nothing but robin-calls heard under heaven."
No matter what you do or what you don't do. One will perch on each side
of you, and join the maddening chorus, driving every bird in the
neighborhood either to join in the hue and cry (as do some of the
sparrows), or to hide himself from the monster that has been discovered.
I tried to tire them out by sitting absolutely motionless; but three,
who evidently had business in the vicinity, for each held a mouthful of
worms, guarded me to right and left and in front, and never ceased
their offensive remarks long enough to stuff those worms into the mouths
waiting for them.
I was not able to convince them that I had no designs on robin
households, and I had to own myself defeated again. Then and there I
abandoned the search for the bluejay.
VIII.
THE BLUEJAY BABY.
My time of triumph came, however, a little later. Birds may securely
hide their nests, but they cannot always silence their nestlings. So
soon as little folk find their voices, whether their dress be feathers,
or furs, or French cambric, they are sure to make themselves heard and
seen.
One morning, two or three weeks after I had given up the bluejay search,
and consoled myself with looking after baby cat-birds and thrushes, I
started out as usual for a walk. I turned naturally into a favorite path
beside a brook that danced down the mountain below the house. It was
near the bottom of a deep gully, where I had come to grief in my search
for a veery baby.
As I passed slowly up, looking well to my steps, and listening for
birds, I heard a note that aroused me at once,--the squawk of a bluejay.
It came from the higher ground, and I looked about for a pathway up the
steep bank on my right. At the most promising point I could select I
started my climb. Unfortunately that very spot had been already chosen
by a small rill, a mere trickle of water, to come down. It was not big
enough to make itself a channel and keep to it, but it sprawled all over
the land. Now it lingered in the cows' footprints and made a little
round pool of each; then it loitered on a level bit of ground, and
soaked it full; when it reached a comfortable bed between the roots of
trees, it almost decided to stay and be a pond, and it dallied so long
before it found a tiny opening and straggled out, that if it did not
result in a pond, it did accomplish a treacherous quagmire. In fact that
undecided, feeble-minded streamlet totally "demoralized" the whole
hillside, and with its vagaries I had to contend at every step of my
way.
I reached the top, but I left deep footprints to be turned into pools of
a new pattern, and as trophy I carried away some of the soil on my
dress. Of my shoes I will not speak; shall we not have souls above
shoe-leather?
As soon as I recovered breath after my hasty scramble to dry ground, I
started toward a thick-growing belt of spruce trees which came down from
the mountain and ended in a point,--one tree in advance, like the leader
of an army. Here I found the bird I was seeking, a much disturbed
bluejay, who met me at the door--so to speak--with a defiant squawk, a
warning to come no nearer.
"Ah ha!" said I, exultingly, "are your little folk in there? Then I
shall see them."
I slowly advanced; she disputed my passage at every step, but nothing
was to be seen till her anxiety got the better of her discretion and she
herself gave me the precious secret; she suddenly slipped through the
trees to the other side, and became perfectly silent.
I could not follow her path through the tangle of trees, but I could go
around, and I did. On a dead spruce wedged in among the living ones I
saw the object of her solicitude; a lovely sight it was! Two young
bluejays huddled close together on a twig. They were "humped up," with
heads drawn down into their shoulders, and breast feathers fluffed out
like snowy-white floss silk, completely covering their feet and the
perch. No wonder that poor little mother was anxious, for a more
beautiful pair I never saw, and to see them was to long to take them in
one's hands.
Silent and patient little fellows they appeared, looking at me with
innocent eyes, but showing no fear. They were a good deal more concerned
about something to eat, and when their mother came they reminded her by
a low peep that they were still there. She gave them nothing; she was
too anxious to get them out of my sight, and she disappeared behind a
thick branch.
In a moment I heard the cry of a bird I could not see. So also did the
twins on the tree, and to them it meant somebody being fed; they lifted
their little wings, spread out like fans their short beautiful tails,
and by help of both, half hopped, half flew through the branches to the
other side.
I followed, by the roundabout way again, and then I saw another one.
Three bonny bairns in blue were on that dead spruce tree; two close
together as before, and the third--who seemed more lively--sitting
alone. He lifted his crest a little, turned his head and looked squarely
at me, but seeing nothing to alarm him--wise little jay!--did not move.
Then again mamma came forward, and remonstrated and protested, but only
by her one argument, a squawk.
I quietly sat down and tried to make myself as much a part of the bank
as possible, for I wanted the distracted dame in blue to go on with her
household duties, and feed those babies. After a while she did calm down
a little, though she kept one distrustful eye on me, and now and then
came near and delivered a squawk at me, as if to assure me that she saw
through my manoeuvres, and despised them.
But I cared not at that moment for her opinion of me; she did not move
my sympathies as do many birds, for she appeared insulted and angry, not
in the least afraid. I wanted to see her feed, and at last I
did--_almost_; she was to the last too sharp for me.
She came with a mouthful of food. Each one of the three rose on his
sturdy little legs, fluttered his wings, opened his beak and cried. It
was a sort of whispered squawk, which shows that the bluejay is a wary
bird even in the cradle. When they were all roused and eager, the mother
used that morsel as a bait to coax them through the tree again. She did
not give it to either of her petitioners, but she moved slowly from
branch to branch, holding it before them, and as one bird they followed,
led by their appetite, like bigger folk,--
"Three souls with but a single thought,
Three hearts that beat as one!"
and as I had no desire to see them die of starvation, and leave the
world so much poorer in beauty, I came away and left them to their
repast.
That was not the end of the bluejay episode. A few days later a young
bird, perhaps one of this very trio, set out by himself in search of
adventures. Into the wide-open door of the barn he flew, probably to see
for what the swallows were flying out and in. Alas for that curious
young bird! He was noticed by the farmer's boy, chased into a corner,
still out of breath from his first flight, then caught, thrust into an
old canary cage, brought to the house, and given to the bird-student.
Poor little creature! he was dumb with fright, though he was not
motionless. He beat himself against the wires and thrust his beak
through the openings, in vain efforts to escape. We looked at him with
great interest, but we had not the heart to keep him very long. In a few
minutes he was taken out of the cage in a hand (which he tried to bite),
carried to the door and set free.
Away like a flash went the little boy blue and alighted in a tree beside
the house. For a few moments he panted for breath, and then he opened
his mouth to tell the news to whom it might concern. In rapid succession
he uttered half a dozen jay-baby squawks, rested a moment, then repeated
them, hopping about the tree in great excitement.
In less than thirty seconds his cries were answered. A bluejay appeared
on the barn; another was seen in a spruce close by; three came to a tall
tree across the road; and from near and far we heard the calls of
friends trooping to the rescue.
Meanwhile the birds of the neighborhood, where the squawk of a jay was
seldom heard, began to take an interest in this unusual gathering. Two
cedar birds, with the policy of peace which their Quaker garb suggests,
betook themselves to a safe distance, a cat-bird went to the tree to
interview the clamorous stranger, a vireo made its appearance on the
branches, and followed the big baby in blue from perch to perch, looking
at him with great curiosity, while a veery uttered his plaintive cry
from the fence below.
All this attention was too much for a bluejay, who always wants plenty
of elbow room in this wide world. He flew off towards the woods, where,
after a proper interval to see that no more babies were in trouble, he
was followed by his grown-up relatives from every quarter. But I think
they had a convention to talk it over, up in the woods, for squawks and
cries of many kinds came from that direction for a long time.
IN THE BLACK RIVER COUNTRY.
Where shall we keep the holiday?
Up and away! where haughty woods
Front the liberated floods:
We will climb the broad-backed hills,
Hear the uproar of their joy;
We will mark the leaps and gleams
Of the new-delivered streams,
And the murmuring river of sap
Mount in the pipes of the trees.
And the colors of joy in the bird
And the love in his carol heard.
Frog and lizard in holiday coats,
And turtle brave in his golden spots.
EMERSON.
IX.
THAT WITCHING SONG.
A year or two before setting up my tent in the Black River Country,
began my acquaintance with the author of the witching song.
The time was evening; the place, the veranda of a friend's summer
cottage at Lake George. The vireo and the redstart had ceased their
songs; the cat-bird had flirted "good-night" from the fence; even the
robin, last of all to go to bed, had uttered his final peep and vanished
from sight and hearing; the sun had gone down behind the mountains
across the lake, and I was listening for the whippoorwill who lived at
the edge of the wood to take up the burden of song and carry it into the
night.
Suddenly there burst upon the silence a song that startled me. It was
loud and distinct as if very near, yet it had the spirit and the echoes
of the woods in it; a wild, rare, thrilling strain, the woods themselves
made vocal. Such it seemed to me. I was strangely moved, and filled from
that moment with an undying determination to trace that witching song to
the bird that could utter it.
"I'm going to seek my singer," was the message I flung back next
morning, as, opera-glass in hand, I started down the orchard towards the
woods. I followed the path under the apple-trees, passed the daisy
field, white from fence to fence with beauty,--despair of the farmer,
but delight of the cottagers,--hurried across the pasture beyond,
skirting the little knoll on which the cow happened this morning to be
feeding, crossed the brook on a plank, and reached my daily walk.
This was a broad path that ran for half a mile on the edge of the lake.
Behind it, penetrated every now and then by a foot-path, was the bit of
old woods that the clearers of this land had the grace to leave, to
charm the eye and refresh the soul (though probably not for that
reason). Before it stretched the clear, sparkling waters of Lake George,
and on the other side rose abruptly one of the beautiful mountains that
fringe that exquisite piece of water.