experiences revealed an unusual degree of sagacity in this animal. One
April, when the weather began to get warm and thawy, an old bear left
her den in the rocks and built a large, warm nest of grass, leaves, and
the bark of the white cedar, under a tall balsam fir that stood in a
low, sunny, open place amid the mountains. Hither she conducted her two
cubs, and the family began life in what might be called their spring
residence. The tree above them was for shelter, and for refuge for the
cubs in case danger approached, as it soon did in the form of Uncle
Nathan. He happened that way soon after the bear had moved. Seeing her
track in the snow, he concluded to follow it. When the bear had passed,
the snow had been soft and sposhy, and she had "slumped," he said,
several inches. It was now hard and slippery. As he neared the tree the
track turned and doubled, and tacked this way and that, and led through
the worst brush and brambles to be found. This was a shrewd thought of
the old bear; she could thus hear her enemy coming a long time before he
drew very near. When Uncle Nathan finally reached the nest, he found it
empty, but still warm. Then he began to circle about and look for the
bear's footprints or nail-prints upon the frozen snow. Not finding them
the first time, he took a larger circle, then a still larger; finally he
made a long detour, and spent nearly an hour searching for some clew
to the direction the bear had taken, but all to no purpose. Then he
returned to the tree and scrutinized it. The foliage was very dense, but
presently he made out one of the cubs near the top, standing up amid the
branches, and peering down at him. This he killed. Further search only
revealed a mass of foliage apparently more dense than usual, but a
bullet sent into it was followed by loud whimpering and crying, and
the other baby bear came tumbling down. In leaving the place, greatly
puzzled as to what had become of the mother bear, Uncle Nathan followed
another of her frozen tracks, and after about a quarter of a mile saw
beside it, upon the snow, the fresh trail he had been in search of. In
making her escape the bear had stepped exactly in her old tracks that
were hard and icy, and had thus left no mark till she took to the snow
again.
During his trapping expeditions into the woods in midwinter, I was
curious to know how Uncle Nathan passed the nights, as we were twice
pinched with the cold at that season in our tent and blankets. It was
no trouble to keep warm, he said, in the coldest weather. As night
approached, he would select a place for his camp on the side of a hill.
With one of his snow-shoes he would shovel out the snow till the ground
was reached, carrying the snow out in front, as we scrape the earth out
of the side of a hill to level up a place for the house and yard. On
this level place, which, however, was made to incline slightly toward
the hill, his bed of boughs was made. On the ground he had uncovered he
built his fire. His bed was thus on a level with the fire, and the heat
could not thaw the snow under him and let him down, or the burning logs
roll upon him. With a steep ascent behind it the fire burned better, and
the wind was not so apt to drive the smoke and blaze in upon him. Then,
with the long, curving branches of the spruce stuck thickly around three
sides of the bed, and curving over and uniting their tops above it, a
shelter was formed that would keep out the cold and the snow, and that
would catch and retain the warmth of the fire. Rolled in his blanket in
such a nest, Uncle Nathan had passed hundreds of the most frigid winter
nights.
One day we made an excursion of three miles through the woods to Bald
Mountain, following a dim trail. We saw, as we filed silently along,
plenty of signs of caribou, deer, and bear, but were not blessed with a
sight of either of the animals themselves. I noticed that Uncle Nathan,
in looking through the woods, did not hold his head as we did, but
thrust it slightly forward, and peered under the branches like a deer or
other wild creature.
The summit of Bald Mountain was the most impressive mountain-top I had
ever seen, mainly, perhaps, because it was one enormous crown of nearly
naked granite. The rock had that gray, elemental, eternal look which
granite alone has. One seemed to be face to face with the gods of the
fore-world. Like an atom, like a breath of to-day, we were suddenly
confronted by abysmal geologic time,--the eternities past and the
eternities to come. The enormous cleavage of the rocks, the appalling
cracks and fissures, the rent boulders, the smitten granite floors, gave
one a new sense of the power of heat and frost. In one place we
noticed several deep parallel grooves, made by the old glaciers. In the
depressions on the summit there was a hard, black, peaty-like soil that
looked indescribably ancient and unfamiliar. Out of this mould, that
might have come from the moon or the interplanetary spaces, were growing
mountain cranberries and blueberries or huckleberries. We were soon so
absorbed in gathering the latter that we were quite oblivious of the
grandeurs about us. It is these blueberries that attract the bears. In
eating them, Uncle Nathan said, they take the bushes in their mouths,
and by an upward movement strip them clean of both leaves and berries.
We were constantly on the lookout for the bears, but failed to see
any. Yet a few days afterward, when two of our party returned here and
encamped upon the mountain, they saw five during their stay, but failed
to get a good shot. The rifle was in the wrong place each time. The
man with the shot-gun saw an old bear and two cubs lift themselves
from behind a rock and twist their noses around for his scent, and then
shrink away. They were too far off for his buckshot. I must not forget
the superb view that lay before us, a wilderness of woods and waters
stretching away to the horizon on every band. Nearly a dozen lakes and
ponds could be seen, and in a clearer atmosphere the foot of Moosehead
Lake would have been visible. The highest and most striking mountain to
be seen was Mount Bigelow, rising above Dead River, far to the west,
and its two sharp peaks notching the horizon like enormous saw-teeth.
We walked around and viewed curiously a huge boulder on the top of the
mountain that had been split in two vertically, and one of the halves
moved a few feet out of its bed. It looked recent and familiar, but
suggested gods instead of men. The force that moved the rock had plainly
come from the north. I thought of a similar boulder I had seen not long
before on the highest point of the Shawangunk Mountains in New York, one
side of which is propped up with a large stone, as wall-builders prop up
a rock to wrap a chain around it. The rock seems poised lightly, and has
but a few points of bearing. In this instance, too, the power had come
from the north.
The prettiest botanical specimen my trip yielded was a little plant that
bears the ugly name of horned bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta), and
which I found growing in marshy places along the shores of Moxie Lake.
It has a slender, naked stem nearly a foot high, crowned by two or
more large deep yellow flowers,--flowers the shape of little bonnets or
hoods. One almost expected to see tiny faces looking out of them. This
illusion is heightened by the horn or spur of the flower, which projects
from the hood like a long tapering chin,--some masker's device. Then
the cape behind,--what a smart upward curve it has, as if spurned by
the fairy shoulders it was meant to cover! But perhaps the most notable
thing about the flower was its fragrance,--the richest and strongest
perfume I have ever found in a wild flower. This our botanist, Gray,
does not mention; as if one should describe the lark and forget its
song. The fragrance suggested that of white clover, but was more rank
and spicy.
The woods about Moxie Lake were literally carpeted with Linnæa. I had
never seen it in such profusion. In early summer, the period of its
bloom, what a charming spectacle the mossy floors of these remote woods
must present! The flowers are purple rose-color, nodding and fragrant.
Another very abundant plant in these woods was the Clintonia borealis.
Uncle Nathan said it was called "bear's corn," though he did not know
why. The only noticeable flower by the Maine roadsides at this season
that is not common in other parts of the country is the harebell. Its
bright blue, bell-shaped corolla shone out from amid the dry grass and
weeds all along the route. It was one of the most delicate roadside
flowers I had ever seen.
The only new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated woodpecker, or black
"log cock," called by Uncle Nathan "wood cock." I had never before seen
or heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about Moxie was
a new sound to me. It is the wildest and largest of our northern
woodpeckers, and the rarest. Its voice and the sound of its hammer are
heard only in the depths of the northern woods. It is about as large as
a crow, and nearly as black.
We stayed a week at Moxie, or until we became surfeited with its trout,
and had killed the last Merganser duck that lingered about our end of
the lake. The trout that had accumulated on our hands we had kept alive
in a large champagne basket submerged in the lake, and the morning we
broke camp the basket was towed to the shore and opened; and after we
had feasted our eyes upon the superb spectacle, every trout, twelve or
fifteen in number, some of them two-pounders, was allowed to swim back
into the lake. They went leisurely, in couples and in trios, and were
soon kicking up their heels in their old haunts. I expect that the
divinity who presides over Moxie will see to it that every one of those
trout, doubled in weight, comes to our basket in the future.
WINTER NEIGHBORS.
The country is more of a wilderness, more of a wild solitude, in
the winter than in the summer. The wild comes out. The urban, the
cultivated, is hidden or negatived. You shall hardly know a good field
from a poor, a meadow from a pasture, a park from a forest. Lines and
boundaries are disregarded; gates and bar-ways are unclosed; man lets go
his hold upon the earth; title-deeds are deep buried beneath the snow;
the best-kept grounds relapse to a state of nature; under the pressure
of the cold all the wild creatures become outlaws, and roam abroad
beyond their usual haunts. The partridge comes to the orchard for buds;
the rabbit comes to the garden and lawn; the crows and jays come to
the ash-heap and corn-crib, the snow-buntings to the stack and to
the barn-yard; the sparrows pilfer from the domestic fowls; the pine
grosbeak comes down from the north and shears your maples of their buds;
the fox prowls about your premises at night, and the red squirrels find
your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts from your attic. In fact,
winter, like some great calamity, changes the status of most creatures
and sets them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes us acquainted with
strange bedfellows.
For my part, my nearest approach to a strange bedfellow is the little
gray rabbit that has taken up her abode under my study floor. As she
spends the day here and is out larking at night, she is not much of a
bedfellow after all. It is probable that I disturb her slumbers more
than she does mine. I think she is some support to me under there-a
silent wild-eyed witness and backer; a type of the gentle and harmless
in savage nature. She has no sagacity to give me or lend me, but that
soft, nimble foot of hers, and that touch as of cotton wherever she
goes, are worthy of emulation. I think I can feel her good-will through
the floor, and I hope she can mine. When I have a happy thought I
imagine her ears twitch, especially when I think of the sweet apple
I will place by her doorway at night. I wonder if that fox chanced to
catch a glimpse of her the other night when he stealthily leaped over
the fence near by and walked along between the study and the house?
How clearly one could read that it was not a little dog that had passed
there. There was something furtive in the track; it shied off away from
the house and around it, as if eying it suspiciously; and then it had
the caution and deliberation of the fox--bold, bold, but not too bold;
wariness was in every footprint. If it had been a little dog that
had chanced to wander that way, when he crossed my path he would have
followed it up to the barn and have gone smelling around for a bone; but
this sharp, cautious track held straight across all others, keeping five
or six rods from the house, up the hill, across the highway towards
a neighboring farmstead, with its nose in the air and its eye and ear
alert, so to speak.
A winter neighbor of mine in whom I am interested, and who perhaps lends
me his support after his kind, is a little red owl, whose retreat is
in the heart of an old apple-tree just over the fence. Where he keeps
himself in spring and summer I do not know, but late every fall, and
at intervals all winter, his hiding-place is discovered by the jays and
nut-hatches, and proclaimed from the tree-tops for the space of half an
hour or so, with all the powers of voice they can command. Four times
during one winter they called me out to behold this little ogre feigning
sleep in his den, sometimes in one apple-tree, sometimes in another.
Whenever I heard their cries, I knew my neighbor was being berated.
The birds would take turns at looking in upon him and uttering their
alarm-notes. Every jay within hearing would come to the spot and at once
approach the hole in the trunk or limb, and with a kind of breathless
eagerness and excitement take a peep at the owl, and then join the
outcry. When I approached they would hastily take a final look and then
withdraw and regard my movements intently. After accustoming my eye to
the faint light of the cavity for a few moments, I could usually make
out the owl at the bottom feigning sleep. Feigning, I say, because this
is what he really did, as I first discovered one day when I cut into
his retreat with the axe. The loud blows and the falling chips did not
disturb him at all. When I reached in a stick and pulled him over on his
side, leaving one of his wings spread out, he made no attempt to recover
himself, but lay among the chips and fragments of decayed wood, like a
part of themselves. Indeed, it took a sharp eye to distinguish him. Nor
till I had pulled him forth by one wing, rather rudely, did he abandon
his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then, like a detected pickpocket,
he was suddenly transformed into another creature. His eyes flew wide
open, his talons clutched my finger, his ears were depressed, and every
motion and look said, "Hands off, at your peril." Finding this game did
not work, he soon began to "play 'possum" again. I put a cover over my
study wood-box and kept him captive for a week. Look in upon him any
time, night or day, and he was apparently wrapped in the profoundest
slumber; but the live mice which I put into his box from time to time
found his sleep was easily broken; there would be a sudden rustle in the
box, a faint squeak, and then silence. After a week of captivity I gave
him his freedom in the full sunshine: no trouble for him to see which
way and where to go.
Just at dusk in the winter nights, I often hear his soft bur-r-r-r, very
pleasing and bell-like. What a furtive, woody sound it is in the winter
stillness, so unlike the harsh scream of the hawk. But all the ways
of the owl are ways of softness and duskiness. His wings are shod with
silence, his plumage is edged with down.
Another owl neighbor of mine, with whom I pass the time of day more
frequently than with the last, lives farther away. I pass his castle
every night on my way to the post-office, and in winter, if the hour
is late enough, am pretty sure to see him standing in his doorway,
surveying the passers-by and the landscape through narrow slits in
his eyes. For four successive winters now have I observed him. As the
twilight begins to deepen he rises out of his cavity in the apple-tree,
scarcely faster than the moon rises from behind the hill, and sits in
the opening, completely framed by its outlines of gray bark and dead
wood, and by his protective coloring virtually invisible to every eye
that does not know he is there. Probably my own is the only eye that has
ever penetrated his secret, and mine never would have done so had I not
chanced on one occasion to see him leave his retreat and make a
raid upon a shrike that was impaling a shrew-mouse upon a thorn in a
neighboring tree and which I was watching. Failing to get the mouse,
the owl returned swiftly to his cavity, and ever since, while going
that way, I have been on the lookout for him. Dozens of teams and
foot-passengers pass him late in the day, but he regards them not, nor
they him. When I come alone and pause to salute him, he opens his eyes a
little wider, and, appearing to recognize me, quickly shrinks and fades
into the background of his door in a very weird and curious manner. When
he is not at his outlook, or when he is, it requires the best powers
of the eye to decide the point, as the empty cavity itself is almost
an exact image of him. If the whole thing had been carefully studied
it could not have answered its purpose better. The owl stands quite
perpendicular, presenting a front of light mottled gray; the eyes are
closed to a mere slit, the ear-feathers depressed, the beak buried in
the plumage, and the whole attitude is one of silent, motionless waiting
and observation. If a mouse should be seen crossing the highway, or
scudding over any exposed part of the snowy surface in the twilight, the
owl would doubtless swoop down upon it. I think the owl has learned to
distinguish me from the rest of the passers-by; at least, when I stop
before him, and he sees himself observed, he backs down into his den, as
I have said, in a very amusing manner. Whether bluebirds, nut-hatches,
and chickadees--birds that pass the night in cavities of trees--ever
run into the clutches of the dozing owl, I should be glad to know. My
impression is, however, that they seek out smaller cavities. An old
willow by the roadside blew down one summer, and a decayed branch broke
open, revealing a brood of half-fledged owls, and many feathers and
quills of bluebirds, orioles, and other songsters, showing plainly
enough why all birds fear and berate the owl.
The English house sparrows, that are so rapidly increasing among us, and
that must add greatly to the food supply of the owls and other birds of
prey, seek to baffle their enemies by roosting in the densest evergreens
they can find, in the arbor-vitæ, and in hemlock hedges. Soft-winged as
the owl is, he cannot steal in upon such a retreat without giving them
warning.
These sparrows are becoming about the most noticeable of my winter
neighbors, and a troop of them every morning watch me put out the hens'
feed, and soon claim their share. I rather encouraged them in their
neighborliness, till one day I discovered the snow under a favorite
plum-tree where they most frequently perched covered with the scales of
the fruit-buds. On investigating I found that the tree had been nearly
stripped of its buds--a very unneighborly act on the part of the
sparrows, considering, too, all the cracked corn I had scattered for
them. So I at once served notice on them that our good understanding was
at an end. And a hint is as good as a kick with this bird. The stone I
hurled among them, and the one with which I followed them up, may have
been taken as a kick; but they were only a hint of the shot-gun that
stood ready in the corner. The sparrows left in high dungeon, and were
not back again in some days, and were then very shy. No doubt the
time is near at hand when we shall have to wage serious war upon these
sparrows, as they long have had to do on the continent of Europe. And
yet it will be hard to kill the little wretches, the only Old World bird
we have. When I take down my gun to shoot them I shall probably remember
that the Psalmist said, "I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the
house-top," and maybe the recollection will cause me to stay my hand.
The sparrows have the Old World hardiness and prolificness; they are
wise and tenacious of life, and we shall find it by and by no small
matter to keep them in check. Our native birds are much different, less
prolific, less shrewd, less aggressive and persistent, less quick-witted
and able to read the note of danger or hostility--in short, less
sophisticated. Most of our birds are yet essentially wild, that is,
little changed by civilization. In winter, especially, they sweep by
me and around me in flocks,--the Canada sparrow, the snow-bunting, the
shore-lark, the pine grosbeak, the red-poll, the cedar-bird,--feeding
upon frozen apples in the orchard, upon cedar-berries, upon maple-buds,
and the berries of the mountain ash, and the celtis, and upon the seeds
of the weeds that rise above the snow in the field, or upon the hay-seed
dropped where the cattle have been foddered in the barn-yard or about
the distant stack; but yet taking no heed of man, in no way changing
their habits so as to take advantage of his presence in nature. The pine
grosbeak will come in numbers upon your porch, to get the black drupes
of the honeysuckle or the woodbine, or within reach of your windows to
get the berries of the mountain-ash, but they know you not; they look
at you as innocently and unconcernedly as at a bear or moose in their
native north, and your house is no more to them than a ledge of rocks.
The only ones of my winter neighbors that actually rap at my door are
the nut-hatches and woodpeckers, and these do not know that it is my
door. My retreat is covered with the bark of young chestnut-trees, and
the birds, I suspect, mistake it for a huge stump that ought to hold
fat grubs (there is not even a bookworm inside of it), and their loud
rapping often makes me think I have a caller indeed. I place fragments
of hickory-nuts in the interstices of the bark, and thus attract the
nut-hatches; a bone upon my window-sill attracts both nut-hatches and
the downy woodpecker. They peep in curiously through the window upon me,
pecking away at my bone, too often a very poor one. A bone nailed to a
tree a few feet in front of the window attracts crows as well as lesser
birds. Even the slate-colored snow-bird, a seed-eater, comes and nibbles
it occasionally.
The bird that seems to consider he has the best right to the bone both
upon the tree and upon the sill is the downy woodpecker, my favorite
neighbor among the winter birds, to whom I will mainly devote the
remainder of this chapter. His retreat is but a few paces from my own,
in the decayed limb of an apple-tree which he excavated several autumns
ago. I say "he" because the red plume on the top of his head proclaims
the sex. It seems not to be generally known to our writers upon
ornithology that certain of our woodpeckers--probably all the winter
residents--each fall excavate a limb or the trunk of a tree in which
to pass the winter, and that the cavity is abandoned in the spring,
probably for a new one in which nidification takes place. So far as I
have observed, these cavities are drilled out only by the males. Where
the females take up their quarters I am not so well informed, though I
suspect that they use the abandoned holes of the males of the previous
year.