waiting. From across the brook comes the unceasing cry of the Maryland
yellow-throat, "Witches here! witches here!" and you can readily believe
him, especially as with your best efforts you can see scarcely more than
a suggestion of his quaint black mask, as a small form dives into the
thick bushes.
Nor are birds the only attraction in this most fascinating nook; there
are flowers. Through the dead pine leaves on which we sit, here and
there thrusts itself up a slender stem, holding upright one of
Colorado's matchless blossoms. This is the chosen nook of the rare
gilia, which hides itself under the edge of a bush, or close against a
low tree, bearing its pink and coral treasures modestly out of sight,
until a flower-seeking eye spies it, glowing like a gem in the green
world about it. Under the shrubs which hem in our nook on one side grows
here and there a rosy cyclamen; out in the sunshine are bunches of
bluebells; down the bank beside the water are great masses of golden
columbine, while a fragrant veil of blooming clematis is flung over the
weeds between. It is a rarely lovely and flowery spot.
[Sidenote: _SAUCY LITTLE WRENS._]
We are not far from the world, however; this canon-like valley of the
Minnelowan is narrow, and through it passes the road. Moreover, there
are many openings that might reveal us to the procession of tourists on
their way up the canon. But happily the sun is on our side, and the sun
of Colorado is not to be despised: a screen of umbrellas and parasols
and carriage curtains shuts us from view as completely as if the
passers-by had no eyes on that side. If seen, we should be classed among
the "sights," and the legitimate prey of the sight seeker. We should
certainly be stared at, perhaps have glasses turned upon us, possibly be
kodaked, and without doubt take prominent place in all the newspaper
letters that go from here. But we may be sure of solitude till the sun
crosses the road.
Yet this is far from solitude. Here comes a whole bevy reviling us, six
or seven of them, running up and down the branches of a great bush, all
scolding at the top of their voices,--a family of house wrens lately
emancipated from their wooden castle in that old stump across the
brook,--pert and saucy little parents, and droll babies imitating them
with spirit.
The wrens were not the only tenants of that old tree-trunk; I have spent
many hours beside it. Such conveniences for bird homes are rare in this
country, and that one was well occupied, and offered a problem I was
never able to solve. Beside the deserted woodpecker home to which the
wrens had succeeded, there were two freshly made woodpecker doors, and
both led to homes of the red-shafted woodpecker or western flicker, who
differs from our familiar flicker only in having red instead of yellow
shafts to his wing and tail feathers, and wearing the red badge of his
family on his "mustaches" instead of on his collar, as does our bird.
One day when I was watching the stump, a male flicker came with food,
and alighted at the lower door, upon which a young bird put his bill out
and was fed in the murderous-looking fashion of the flickers. Papa
thrust his long beak down baby's throat, and gave several
vicious-looking pokes, as if to hammer something down. While I was
musing over this strange way of feeding, the bird left, and a female
flicker appeared. She glanced into the open door, and then to my
surprise slipped half around the trunk and a foot higher, and stopped
before the other hole, which I had not noticed till then. Instantly a
head came out, much bigger than the first one, uttered the familiar
flicker baby-cry, and was fed.
Then the question that interested me was, Were there two nests, or one
of two stories with babies of different ages? Did both belong to one
pair, or was that little dame peeping into her neighbor's house? Much
time I spent before that castle in the air, but never was able to answer
my own questions. No two old birds came at the same time, and no
difference could I discover in looks or manners, that answered the
query whether there were one or two pairs at work. Now they have all
flown, and only the laugh of the flicker and the call of the young ones
all around remain to tell that woodpecker babies grew up in the tree.
[Sidenote: _THE GLORY OF THE WEST._]
Now let us close our glasses, fold our camp-chairs, and go back to the
camp, our present home. As we turn into the gate another voice strikes
our ear, louder, richer, more attention-compelling than any we have
heard. Listen: It is the wonder and the glory of the West; it is the
most intoxicating, the most soul-stirring of bird voices in the land
where thrushes are absent; it embodies the solitude, the vastness, the
mystery of the mesa; it is the western meadow lark. This is his
nesting-time, and we may be treated to his love-song, the exquisite,
whispered aria he addresses to his mate. As I have heard it when very
close to him, he sings his common strain several times, and then drops
to a very low twittering and trilling warble, in which now and then is
interpolated a note or two of the usual score, yet the whole altogether
different in spirit and execution. He ends by a burst into the loud
carol he offers to the world. There is nothing beyond that to hear, even
in my beloved nook.
XI.
THE IDYL OF AN EMPTY LOT.
A CITY STUDY.
Opposite my study windows is an empty lot. It is of generous size; six
residences facing another street, with high board fences, stretch across
the back; a large apartment-house towers above it on the right, and a
tight fence defines it on the left. The front is open to the street, but
the whole is so given up to weeds, such a tangle of rank vegetation,
that few people penetrate it, and it is the great out-of-doors for the
animal life of the neighborhood. Looking down upon it as I do,
constantly spread out under my windows, I cannot choose but see
everything that goes on.
Last summer was the blossoming-time of the empty lot. It had but one
summer of romance--just one--between the building of the brick row
behind it and the beginning of the new row which shall hide it from the
sun for ages, perhaps.
[Sidenote: _A RELAPSE INTO BARBARISM._]
It was not attractive in the spring, for man had done what he could to
deface it. Here is a curious fact: the human being is capable of a
certain amount of civilization under the pressure of the necessities of
city life. He--or she--will learn to dispose inoffensively of the waste
and rubbish that drag after him like a trail wherever he goes. He--and
always likewise she--can be taught to burn his waste paper, to bag his
rags, to barrel his ashes, to burn the refuse from his table, to hide
the relics of china and glass. In fact, he _can_ live in a modern house
with no back yard, no "glory-hole" whatever.
Yet if one would see how superficial his culture, how easy his relapse
into barbarism, he need only open his windows upon an empty lot. This
tempting space, this unguarded bit of the universe, brings out all the
savage within him. Ashes and old boots, broken glass, worn-out tin pans,
and newspapers whose moment is over, alike drift naturally into that
unfortunate spot. The lot under my window had suffered at the hands of
lawless men,--not to say women,--for it offered the eternal oblivion of
"over the back fence" to no less than ten kitchens with their presiding
genii.
Nor was this all. The lot and all the land about it had belonged to an
unsettled estate, and for years had been a dumping-ground for carts,
long before the surrounding buildings had begun their additions to its
stores.
But last spring a change came to it. Its nearly fenced condition for the
first time allowed Mother Nature a chance, and anxious, like other
mothers, to hide the evil deeds of her children, she went busily to
work,
"With a hand of healing to cover the wounds
And strew the artificial mounds
And cuttings with underwood and flowers."
We may call them weeds, but forever blessed be the hardy, rapid-growing,
ever-ready plants we name so scornfully! What else could so quickly
answer the mother's purpose? She had not time to evolve a century-plant,
or elaborate an oak-tree, before man would be upon it again. She did the
best she could, and the result was wonderful.
When I returned from the country I found, to my delight, in place of the
abomination of desolation I have described, a beautiful green oasis in
the world of stone and brick. From fence to fence flourished and waved
in the breeze an unbroken forest. The unsightly heaps had become a range
of hills, sloping gently down to the level on one side, and ending on
the other in an abrupt declivity, with the highest peak bare and rocky,
overhanging a deep and narrow ravine. The bordering fences were veiled
by luxurious ailanthus shoots, chicory blossoms opened their sweet blue
eyes to every morning sun, and it was beside
"Rich in wild grasses numberless, and flowers
Unnamed save in mute Nature's inventory."
[Sidenote: _A NOBLE FOREST._]
In the air above, myriads of dainty white butterflies sported, ever
rising in little agitated parties of two or three, climbing gayly the
invisible staircase till at an immense height, and then fluttering back
to earth no wiser than they went up, so far as the human eye could see.
The forest, as I have called it, was, to be sure, by measurement of man,
not more than three or four feet high. But all things are relative, and
to the frequenters of that pleasant bit of woodland, far above whose
head it towered, it was as the deep woods to us. I chose to look at it
from their point of view, and to them it was a noble forest, resembling
indeed a tropical jungle, so thickly grown that paths were made under
it, where might be enjoyed leisurely walks, given up to quiet and
meditation. For there were inhabitants in plenty,--the regulars, the
transients, the stragglers,--in furs, in feathers, in wings.
In this nook, secluded from the world which every day swept by without a
glance, a constant drama of life went on, which I could see and be
myself unseen. I soon became absorbed in the study of it. The actors
were of that mysterious race which lives with us, and yet is rarely of
us; whose real life is to us mostly a sealed book, and of whom
Wordsworth delightfully sings,--
"Think of the beautiful gliding form,
The tread that would scarcely crush a worm,
And the soothing song by the winter fire
Soft as the dying throb of the lyre."
Yes, the cats, whose ways are ever the unexpected, and of whom I am so
fond that one of the most touching objects unearthed at Pompeii--to
me--is the skeleton of a woman holding in her arms the skeleton of a
cat, whom perhaps she gave her life to save.
The builder of the fences at the back of this Cat's Eden very
considerately capped them all with a board three inches wide, thus
making a highway for the feline race, not only across the back, but from
that to each house door. On this private path, above the heads of boys
and dogs, they spent much time. This was their Broadway, and at the same
time their point of outlook, where they might survey the landscape and
decide when and where to enter their secluded domain. How admirable the
facility with which these mysterious beasts pass up or down high fences!
Ladders or stairs are superfluous. How can one possibly walk several
steps down a perpendicular board without falling headlong to the ground?
And still more strange,--how can one leap squarely against the same
fence, and run right up to the top?
[Sidenote: _THREE REGULARS._]
Soon after breakfast on every fair day the houses around began to give
up their cats. There were three in whose actions I became specially
interested. The most important, and the one to whom I felt the place
belonged by right of appreciating it, was a personage of dignified
manners, and evidently of rank in his own world, a magnificent silver
tabby, the beauty of the neighborhood. Next in interest was a
white-and-black cat for whom I had sincere respect because she lived
most amicably with two canaries whose cages were always within reach and
never disturbed. The third was to my eyes anything but attractive, being
a faded-looking gray tabby, who entered the place by a hole under the
fence next the apartment-house. She looked ill-used, as if her home life
was troubled by bad children, or a frivolous, teasing dog, or a raging
housekeeper who left no peace to man or beast.
For whatever cause, when, soon after breakfast, Madam Grey appeared on
the scene, she proceeded at once and in silence to the highest bare peak
of the hills, a sightly place where she could overlook the thick green
forest, with its shady walks and cool retreats, and have timely notice
of any approach from the street. On that point she found or made a
slight depression, and there she calmly dressed her fur, and then,
wrapping her robe around her (so to speak), slept hours at a time.
She never did anything on the lot except sleep, and she seemed totally
blind to the attractions of nature. I never saw her notice anything. As
soon as she awoke she went back through the humble portal to her flat.
This piece of woods was not merely a pleasure-ground. It was a
hunting-field as well, and the denizens of its quiet shades were not at
all averse to a little excitement of the chase, nor to a taste now and
then of wild game of their own catching. What was there I know not, but
I judge from the spasmodic character of the hunt that it was
grasshoppers.
The silver tabby and the white-and-black, who were daily visitors to the
place, never quarreled with each other, and their intercourse, when they
happened to meet on the common highway, was conducted in the courteous
and dignified manner of the race.
Cats are popularly supposed to dislike wet, but I have seen two of them
in a steady rain conduct an interview with all the gravity and
deliberation for which these affairs are celebrated. The slow approach,
with frequent pauses to sit down and meditate, or "view the landscape
o'er," the earnest and musical--if melancholy--exchange of salutations,
the almost imperceptible drawing nearer, with the slightly waving tail
the only sign of excitement, and at last the instantaneous dash, the
slap or scratch (so rapid one can never tell which), the fiery expletive
and retort, and the instant retreat, to sit down again. There seems to
be some canon of feline etiquette which forbids two to meet and pass
without solemn formalities of this sort, reminding one of the
ceremonious greetings of the Orient, where time is of no particular
value.
[Sidenote: _A WAY OF HIS OWN._]
The silver tabby was an original, and had a way of his own. He seemed
impatient of these serious rites, and when within three feet of his
_vis-a-vis_ he usually gave one great leap over the intervening space,
administered his salute,--whatever it was,--and passed on. This cat was
peculiar in other ways. Sometimes he had the whole wood to himself, and
it was charming to see him wander in his leisurely way all over it,
smelling daintily of this and that, now tasting a leaf, now looking
intently at some creeper or crawler on the ground, now sitting down to
enjoy the seclusion and the silence of the wood. He was a philosopher,
or a lover of nature,
"A lover who knows by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart."
One of the accusations brought against this reserved little beast is
that he does not love man. Has he reason to do so? Tragedies I have seen
on the lot, which I try to forget and shall not repeat, in which small
boys demonstrated in their treatment of the abused race how much more
brutal than a brute the human animal can be. Cats show their
intelligence by being wary of mankind.
When October at last stripped the woods of their summer glory, and the
weather was no longer warm, the heat-loving creatures deserted the empty
lot, except the silver tabby, who often came out and sauntered through
its lonely paths, smelling of the weeds here and there, seating himself
in a bower that was still green, rubbing his face against something he
found there, and evidently enjoying sufficient society in his own
thoughts, for to him plainly it was still
"A woodland enchanted."
Then came a week of unwonted glory, of distinguished visitors. All the
summer birds had hovered over it; toward evening the night hawk circled
high in air above it, uttering his wild, quaint cry, collecting food for
his little family, no doubt safely reposing on some gravel roof near by.
[Sidenote: _A RARE VISITOR._]
And there were always the city sparrows. They had taken possession of a
vine, which, clambering up the back of one of the houses bordering the
lot, had burst into sudden luxuriance when it found itself without
further support at the eaves, spreading out each side, and clinging for
dear life to the roof, making a delightful screen, as well as a
comfortable site for many bird homes. Indeed, there seemed to be a
populous bird village behind the green curtain, and great disturbances
sometimes occurred, and I could hear the excited voices of the residents
till darkness put an end to their discussions. One cool October day, as
I sat at my window I heard a strange bird note, and my ready glass in a
moment revealed a rare visitor indeed,--a thrasher. He stood on the edge
of a roof silhouetted against the sky, tossing his tail in excitement,
and peering eagerly into the yards opened out before him. Suddenly he
dashed into a tall rosebush leaning on the back fence of the empty lot,
and busied himself a few moments, perhaps with the rose hips; then
finding that too near the four-footed inhabitants, he retired to the
roof, looked to see that no plebeian sparrows were at home in the vine,
then plunged into that and disappeared behind its ample foliage. Here he
spent some time getting the berries, as I could see, and during his
occupancy no sparrow entered, though some flew by. All day he remained
in the vicinity; but at night I suppose he resumed his journey
southward, for I saw him no more.
One day a pair of juncos appeared on the scene, mingling fraternally
with the sparrows, and sharing their usual pickings around back doors
and along the back fence, and white-throated sparrows showed themselves
on the shrubs and small trees which overhung the division walls.
But the crowning day of the empty lot came still later, when a
fairy-like kinglet hunted over the rosebushes, and that shy woods
dweller, the hermit thrush, condescended to show his graceful form on
the fence, until the silver tabby, seeming to regard their calls as
intrusions, took up his station on the cats' highway and I saw the birds
no more.
IN THE BIRD-ROOM.
XII.
THE SOLITAIRE.
Give sunlight for the lark and robin,
Sun and sky, and mead and bloom;
But give for this rare throat to throb in,
And this lonesome soul to sob in,
Wildwoods with their green and gloom.
COATES KINNEY.
For three years there lived in my house one of the remarkable birds
described in their native land as "invisible, mysterious birds with the
heavenly song." I have hesitated to write of him, because I feel unable
to do justice either to himself or to his musical abilities; and,
moreover, I am certain that what I must say will appear extravagant. Yet
when I find grave scientific books indulging in a mild rapture over him;
when learned travelers, unsuspected of sentimentality or exaggeration,
rave over him; when the literary man, studying the customs, the history,
and the government of a nation, goes out of his way to eulogize the song
of this bird, I take heart, and dare try to tell of the wonderful song
and the life no less noble and beautiful.
Among eight or ten American birds of as many kinds, the solitaire, or,
as he is called, the clarin, reminds one of a person of high degree
among the common herd. This may sound absurd; but such is the reserve of
his manner, the dignity of his bearing, the mystery of his utterances,
and the unapproachable beauty of his song, that the comparison is
irresistible. The mockingbird is a joyous, rollicking, marvelous
songster; the wood thrush moves the very soul with his ecstatic notes;
the clarin equals the latter in quality, with a much larger variety. He
is an artist of the highest order; he is "God's poet," if any bird
deserves the name; he strikes the listener dumb, and transports him with
delight.
The solitaires, _Myadestes_, or fly-catching thrushes, are natives of
the West Indies and Mexico, with one branch in the Rocky Mountains. My
bird was _M. obscurus_, and came from Mexico. I found him in a New York
bird-store, where he looked about as much at home among the shrieking
and singing mob of parrots and canaries as a poet among a howling rabble
of the "great unwashed."
[Sidenote: _NO DESIRE TO LIVE._]
Upon a casual glance he might be mistaken for a catbird, being about his
size, with plumage of the same shade of dark slate, with darker wings
and tail and slightly lighter breast; but a moment's examination showed
his great difference from that interesting bird. His short, sharp, and
wide beak indicated the flycatcher, and his calm dark eyes were
surrounded with delicate lines of minute white feathers, a break at each
corner just preventing their being perfect rings.
Being a warm admirer of the catbird, I noticed the stranger first for
the resemblance; but a few moments' study of his look and manner drew me
strongly to himself, and though I desired only our native birds, I could
not resist him.
When introduced to his new quarters in my house, the clarin did not
flutter; he did not resist. He rested on the bottom of the cage where he
was placed, and looked at me with eyes that said, "What are _you_ going
to do with me?" He had already accepted his imprisonment; he did not
expect to be free, and it was plain that he no longer cared for his
life. If he were to be subjected to the indignity of traveling in a box
among common birds, as he had been sent from the bird-store where I
found him, he had no desire to live. It required much coaxing to make
him forget the outrage, and I am glad to say it was the last affront he
suffered. From that day he was treated as lie deserved, being always at
liberty in the room, and enjoying the distinguished consideration of a
houseful of people and birds. Before he came to understand that his life
had changed, however, I feared he would die. He did not mope, he simply
cared for nothing. For more than twenty-four hours he crouched on the
floor of his cage, utterly indifferent even to a comfortable position;
food he would not look at. I talked to him; I screened him from noisy
neighbors; I made his cage attractive; I spared no effort to win
him,--and at last I succeeded. He took up again the burden of life,
hopped upon a perch, and began to dress his feathers. Soon he was
induced to eat, and then he began to notice the bird voices about him.
Like other of the more intelligent birds, once won, he was entirely won.
He was never in the least wild with me after that experience; never
hesitated to put himself completely in my power, or to avail himself of
my help if he needed it in any way. Says another bird-lover, "Let but a
bird--that being so free and uncontrolled--be willing to draw near and
conclude a friendship with you, and lo, how your heart is moved!"
[Sidenote: _A MYSTICAL CALL._]
It is hard to tell in what way this bird impressed every one with a
sense of his imperial character, but it is true that he did. He never
associated with the other birds, and he selected for his perches those
in the darker part of the room, where his fellows did not go. Favorite
resting-places were the edge of a hanging map, the top of a gas fixture,
and a perch so near my seat that most birds were shy of it. Though
extravagantly fond of water, requiring his bath daily, he greatly
disliked to bathe in the dishes common to all. Like a royal personage,
he preferred his bath in his own quarters.