PAS MEAIDW

 

LAS LORE SHARP

 

 

 
Roof and meadow,

 

 

 

 

 

CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

 

STEWART HENRY BURNHA

1943

M

 

 

 

 
RETURN TO
ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY

ITHACA, N. Y.
ROOF AND MEADOW
 

 

Roof and MNeadow

Ky Dallas Lore Sharp

Autbor of ‘Wild Wife fear home”

With Mlustrations
By Bruce thorstall

 

NEW YORK

The Century Co,
1904

 

 
Copyright, 1903, 1904, by
THE CENTURY Co.

Copyright, 1002, 1903, by Houvcnron, Mirriin anp Comrany.
Copyright, 1903, by Tae CuaprLe Pusuisuine Co. (Ltd. ).
Copyright, 1902, 1903, by W. W. Porrer Co, (Ltd.).
Copyright, 1902, 1903, by Perry Mason Company.

 

Published April, 190h.,
TO
MY MOTHER
CONTENTS

PAGE

BIRDS FROM A City Roor . ‘ . es ol
THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK . . 19
THREE SERMONS. : 4 A : . 3d
THE MARSH , ‘ ‘i ‘ ‘ . 45
CALICO AND THE KITTENS. : . - ‘7
THE SPARROW Roost . ‘ : ‘ . 91
“Mux” ; ; 4 , ‘ ‘ . 107
Racoon CREEK . i , , j . 121
THE DRAGON OF THE SWALE . ; . 147
TICKLE-BIRDS AND THE COCCINELLIDZ . 161
THE CRAZY FLICKER . ‘ : ; . 177
SoME FRIENDLY BIRDS . . - . 187
“THe LONGEST WAY ROUND” . i . 199
“ONE FLEW EAST AND ONE FLEW WEST” 213
CHICKAREE . ‘ ‘i : . ° . 231
BIRD FRIENDSHIPS . : . : . 251
FARM-YARD STUDIES . ‘ ‘ i . 261

I wish to thank the editors of ‘St. Nicholas,” the ‘“‘ National
Magazine,” the ‘“‘ Atlantic Monthly,” and the “ Youth’s Com-
panion ” for allowing me to reprint here the chapters of “ Roof
and Meadow ” that first appeared in their pages.
DALLAS LORE SHARP.
[ vii]
BIRDS FROM A CITY ROOF
 

 

 

ROOF AND MEADOW

&
BIRDS FROM A CITY ROOF

I LAID down my book and listened. It was
only the choking gurgle of a broken rain-
pipe outside: then it was the ripple and swish
of a meadow stream. To make out the voices of
redwings and marsh-wrens in the rasping notes
of the city sparrows behind the shutter required

[3]
much more imagination. But I did it. I wanted
to hear, and the splash of the water helped me.

The sounds of wind and water are the same
everywhere. Here at the heart of the city I
can forget the tarry pebbles and painted tin
whenever my rain-pipes are flooded. I can
never be wholly shut away from the open coun-
try and the trees so long as the winds draw
hard down the alley past my window.

But I have more than a window and a broken
rain-pipe. Along with my five flights goes a
piece of roof, flat, with a wooden floor, a fence,
and a million acres of sky. I could n’t possibly
use another acre of sky, except along the east-
ern horizon, where the top floors of some twelve-
story buildings intercept the dawn.

With such a roof and such a sky, when I must,
I can, with effort, get well out of the city. I
have never fished nor botanized here, but I have
been a-birding many times.

Stone wails do not a prison make,

nor city streets a cage—if one have a roof.
A roof is not an ideal spot for bird study. I
would hardly, out of preference, have chosen

[4]
this with its soot and its battlement of gaseous
chimney-pots, even though it is a university
roof with the great gilded dome of astate house
shining down upon it. One whose feet have
always been in the soil does not take kindly to
tar and tin. But anything open to the sky is
open to some of the birds, for the paths of many
of the migrants lie close along the clouds.

Other birds than the passing migrants, how-
ever, sometimes come within range of my look-
out. The year around there are English spar-
rows and pigeons; and all through the summer
scarcely an evening passes when a few chimney-
swallows are not in sight.

With the infinite number and variety of
chimneys hedging me in, I naturally expected
to find the sky alive with swallows. Indeed, I
thought that some of the twenty-six pots at the
corners of my roof would be inhabited by the
birds. Notso. While I can nearly always find
a pair of swallows in the air, they are surpris-
ingly scarce, aud, so far as I know, they rarely
build in the heart of the city. There are more
canaries in my block than chimney-swallows in
all my sky.

[5]
The swallows are not urban birds. The gas,
the smoke, the shrieking ventilators, and the
ceaseless sullen roar of the city are hardly to
their liking. Perhaps the flies and gnats which
they feed upon cannot live in the air above the
roofs. The swallows want a sleepy old town
with big thunderful chimneys, where there are
wide fields and a patch of quiet water.

Much more numerous than the swallows are
the night-hawks. My roof, in fact, is the best
place I have ever found to study their feeding
habits. These that flit through my smoky dusk
may not make city nests, though the finding of
such nests would not surprise me. Of course a
night-hawk’s nest, here or anywhere else, would
surprise me; for like her cousin, the whippoor-
will, she never builds a nest, but stops in the
grass, the gravel, the leaves, or on a bare rock,
deposits her eggs without even scratching aside
the sticks and stones that may share the bed,
and in three days is brooding them — brooding
the stones too.

It is likely that some of my hawks nest on
the buildings in the neighborhood. Night-
hawks’ eggs have occasionally been found

[6]
among the pebbles of city roofs. The high, flat
house-tops are so quiet and remote, so far away
from the noisy life in the narrow streets below,
that the birds make their nests here as if in a
world apart. The twelve- and fifteen-story
buildings are as so many deserted mountain
heads to them.

None of the birds build on my roof, however.
But from early spring they haunt the region so
constantly that their families, if they have fam-
ilies at all, must be somewhere in the vicinity.
Should I see them like this about a field or
thicket in the country it would certainly mean
a nest.

The sparrows themselves do not seem more at
home here than do these night-hawks. One even-
ing, after a sultry July day, a wild wind-storm
burst over the city. The sun was low, glaring
through a narrow rift between the hill-crests and
the clouds that spread green and heavy across the
sky. I could see the lower fringes of the clouds
working and writhing in the wind, but not a
sound or a breath was in the air about me.
Around me over my roof flew the night-hawks.
They were crying peevishly and skimming close

i
to the chimneys, not rising, as usual, to any
height.

Suddenly the storm broke. The rain fell as
if something had given way overhead. The
wind tore across the stubble of roofs and spires ;
and through the wind, the rain, and the rolling
clouds shot a weird, yellow-green sunlight.

I had never seen a storm like it. Nor had
the night-hawks. They seemed to be terrified,
and left the sky immediately. One of them,
alighting on the roof across the street, and
creeping into the lee of a chimney, huddled
there in sight of me until the wind was spent
and a natural sunlight flooded the world of roofs
and domes and spires.

Then they were all awing once more, hawk-
ing for supper. Along with the hawking they
got in a great deal of play, doing their tumbling
and cloud-coasting over the roofs just as they do
above the fields.

Mounting by easy stages of half a dozen rapid
strokes, catching flies by the way, and erying
peent-peent, the acrobat climbs until I look a
mere lump on the roof; then ceasing his whim-
pering peent, he turns on bowed wings and falls

[8]
—shoots roofward with fearful speed. The
chimneys! Quick!

Quick he is. Just short of the roofs the taut
wings flash a reverse, there is a lightning swoop,
a startling hollow wind-sound, and the rushing
bird is beating skyward again, hawking delib-
erately as before, and uttering again his peevish
nasal cry.

This single note, the only call he has besides a
few squeaks, is far from a song; farther still is
the empty-barrel-bung-hole sound made by the
air in the rushing wings as the bird swoops in
his fall. The night-hawk, alias “bull-bat,” does
not sing. What a name bull-bat would be for a
singing bird! But a “voice” was never intended
for the creature. Voice, beak, legs, head —
everything but wings and maw was sacrificed
for a mouth.- What a mouth! The bird can
almost swallow himself. Such a cleft in the
head could never mean a song; it could never
be utilized for anything but a fly-trap.

We have use for fly-traps. We need some
birds just to sit around, look pretty, and warble.
We will pay them for it in cherries or in what-
ever they ask. But there is also a great need

[9]
for birds that kill insects. And first among
these are the night-hawks. They seem to have
been designed for this sole purpose. Their end
is to kill insects. They are more like machines
than any other birds I know. The enormous
mouth feeds an enormous stomach, and this, like
a fire-box, makes the power that works the
enormous wings. From a single maw have been
taken eighteen hundred winged ants, to say
nothing of the smaller fry that could not be
identified and counted.

But if he never caught an ant, never one of
the fifth-story mosquitos that live and bite till
Christmas, how greatly still my sky would need
him! His flight is song. enough. His cry and
eery thunder are the very voice of the summer
twilight to me. And as I watch him coasting
in the evening dusk, that twilight often falls—
over the roofs, as it used to fall for me over the
fields and the quiet hollow woods.

There is always an English sparrow on my
roof—which does not particularly commend the
roof to bird-lovers, I know. I often wish the
sparrow an entirely different bird, but I never
wish him entirely away from the roof. When

[10]
there is no other defense for him, I fall back
upon his being a bird. Any kind of a bird in
the city! Any but a parrot.

A pair of sparrows nest regularly in an eaves-
trough, so close to the roof that I can overhear
their family talk. Round, loquacious, familiar
Cock Sparrow is a family man—so entirely a
family man as to be nothing else at all. He is
a success, too. It does me good to see him build.
He tore the old nest all away in the early winter,
so as to be ready. There came a warm springish
day in February, and he began. A blizzard
stopped him, but with the melting of the snow
he went to work again, completing the nest by
the middle of March.

He built for a big family, and he had it. Not
“it” indeed, but them; for there were three
batches of from six to ten youngsters each dur-
ing the course of the season. He also did a fa-
ther’s share of work with the children. I think
he hated hatching them. He would settle upon
the roof above the nest, and chirp in a crabbed,
imposed-upon tone until his wife came out. As
she flew briskly away, he would look disconso-
lately around at the bright busy world, ruffle his

it]
feathers, scold to himself, and then crawl duti-
fully in upon the eggs.

I knew how he felt. It is not in a cock spar-
row to enjoy hatching eggs. I respected him ;
for though he grumbled, as any normal husband
might, still he was “drinking fair” with Mrs.
Sparrow. He built and brooded and foraged
for his family, if not as sweetly, yet as faithfully,
as his wife. He deserved his blessed abundance
of children.

Is he songless, sooty, uninteresting, vulgar?
Not if you live on a roof. He may be all of
this, a pest even, in the country. But upon my
roof, for weeks at a stretch, his is the only bird
voice I hear. Throughout the spring, and far
into the summer, I watch the domestic affairs in
the eaves-trough. During the winter, at night-
fall, I see little bands and flurries of birds
scudding over and dropping behind the high
buildings to the east. They are sparrows on the
way to their roost in the elms of an old mid-
city burial-ground.

I not infrequently spy a hawk soaring calmly
far away above the roof. Not only the small
ones, like the sharp-shinned, but also the larger,

[12]
wilder species come, and winding up close to
the clouds, circle and circle there, trying appa-
rently to see some meaning in the maze of mov-
ing, intersecting lines of dots below yonder in
the cracks of that smoking, rumbling blur.

In the spring, from the trees of the Common,
which are close, but, except for the crown of
one noble English elm, are shut away from me,
I hear an occasional robin and Baltimore oriole.
Very rarely a woodpecker will go over. The
great northern shrike is a frequent winter visitor,
but by ill chance I have not been up when he
has called at the roof.

One of these fiend birds haunts a small court
only a block away, which is inclosed in a high
board fence, topped with.nails. He likes the
court because of these nails. They are sharp ;
they will stick clean through the body of a spar-
row. Sometimes the fiend has a dozen sparrows
run through with them, leaving the impaled
bodies to flutter in the wind and finally fall
away.

In sight from my roof are three tiny patches
of the harbor; sometimes a fourth, when the
big red-funneled liner is gone from her slip.

[13]
Down to the water of the harbor in flocks from
the north come other winter visitors, the her-
ring and black-backed gulls. Often during the
winter I find them in my sky.

One day they will cross silently over the city
in a long straggling line. Again they will fly
low, wheeling and screaming, their wild sea-
voices shrill with the sound of storm. If it is
thick and gray overhead, the snow-white bodies
of the herring-gulls toss in the wind above the
roofs like patches of foam. I hear the sea—
the wind, the surf, the wild, fierce tumult of the
shore—whenever the white gulls sail screaming
into my winter sky.

I have never lived under a wider reach of
sky than that above my roof. It offers a clear,
straight, six-minute course to the swiftest wedge
of wild geese. Spring and autumn the geese
and ducks go over, and their passage is the
most thrilling event in all my bird calendar.

It is because the ducks fly high and silent
that I see them so rarely. They are always a
surprise. You look, and there against the dull
sky they move, strange dark forms that set your
blood leaping. But I never see a string of them

[14]
winging over that I do not think of a huge
thousand-legger crawling the clouds.

My glimpses of the geese are largely chance,
too. Several times, through the open window
by my table, I have heard the faint, far-off
honking, and have hurried to the roof in time to
watch the travelers disappear. One spring day
I was upon the roof when a large belated flock
came over, headed north. It was the 20th of
April, and the morning had broken very warm.
I could see that the geese were hot and tired.
They were barely clearing the church spires.
On they came, their wedge wide and straggling,
until almost over me, when something happened.
The gander in the lead faltered and swerved,
the wedge lines wavered, the flock rushed to-
gether in confusion, wheeled, dropped, then
broke apart, and honking wildly, turned back
toward the bay.

It was instant and complete demoralization.
A stronger gander, I think, could have led the
wedge unbroken over the city to some neigh-
boring pond, where the weakest of the stragglers,
however, must have fallen from sheer exhaustion. :

Scaling lower and lower across the roofs, the

[15 ]
flock had reached the center of the city and had
driven suddenly into the roar and confusion of
the streets. Weary from the heat, they were
dismayed at the noise, their leader faltered, and,
at a stroke, the great flying wedge went to
pieces.

There is nothing in the life of birds quite so
stirring to the imagination as their migration:
the sight of gathering swallows, the sudden ap-
pearance of strange warblers, the call of passing
plovers—all are suggestive of instincts, move-
ments, and highways that are unseen, unaccount-
able, and full of mystery. Little wonder that
the most thrilling poem ever written to a bird
begins:

Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

The question, the mystery in that ‘certain
flight” I never felt so vividly as from my roof.
Here I have often heard the reed-birds and the
water-fowl passing. Sometimes I have heard
them going over in the dark. One night I re-

[16]
member particularly, the sky and the air were
-so clear and the geese so high in the blue.

Over the fields and wide silent marshes such
passing is strange enough. But here I stood
above a sleeping city of men, and far above me,
so far that I could only hear them, holding their
northward way through the starlit sky, they
passed—whither? and how guided? Was the
shining dome of the State House a beacon? Did
they mark the light at Marblehead ?

[17]
THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK
 

THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK

... the chylde may Rue that ys vn-born, it wos the
mor pitte.

HERE was murder in my heart. The wood-
chuck knew it. He never had had a
thought before, but he had one now. It came
hard and heavily, yet it arrived in time; and it
was not a slow thought for a woodchuck, either
—just a trifle better, indeed, than my own.
This was the first time I had caught the wood-
chuck away from his hole. He had left his old
burrow in the huckleberry hillside, and dug a
new hole under one of my young peach-trees.

[21]
I had made no objection to his huckleberry hole.
He used to come down the hillside and waddle
into the orchard in broad day, free to do and go
as he pleased; but not since he began to dig
under the peach-tree.

I discovered this new hole when it was only a
foot deep, and promptly filled it with stones.
The next morning the stones were out and the
cavity two feet deeper. I filled it up again,
driving a large squarish piece of rock into the
mouth, tight, certainly stopping all further
work, as I thought.

There are woodchucks that you can discourage
and there are those that you can’t. Three days
later the piece of rock and the stones were piled
about the butt of the tree and covered with
fresh earth, while the hole ran in out of sight,
with the woodchuck, apparently, at the bottom
of it.

I had tried shutting him out, now I would try
shutting him in. It was cruel—it would have
been to anything but a woodchuck; I was
ashamed of myself for doing it, and went back
the following day, really hoping to find the
burrow open.

[22]
Never again would I worry over an impris-
oned woodchuck ; but then I should never again
try to destroy a woodchuck by walling up his
hole, any more than Br’er Fox would try to
punish the rabbit by slinging him a second time
into the brier-patch.

The burrow was wide open. I had stuffed
and rammed the rocks into it, and buried deep
in its mouth the body of another woodchuck
that my neighbor’s dog had killed. All was
cleared away. The deceased relative was gone—
where and how I know not; the stones were
scattered on the farther side of the tree, and the
passage neatly swept of all loose sand and
pebbles.

Clearly the woodchuck had come to stay. I
meant that he should move. I could get him
into a steel trap, for his wits are not abiding ;
they come only on occasion. Woodchuck lives
too much in the ground and too constantly
beside his own door to grow very wise. He can
always be trapped. So can any one’s enemy.
You can always murder. But no gentleman
strikes from behind. I hate the steel trap. I
have set my last one. They would be bitter

[23 ]
peaches on that tree if they cost the woodchuck
what I have seen more than one woodchuck
suffer in the horrible jaws of such a trap.

But is it not perfectly legitimate and gentle-
manly to shoot such a woodchuck to save one’s
peaches? Certainly. So I got the gun and
waited—and waited—and waited. Did you ever
wait with a gun until a woodchuck came out of
his hole? I never did. A woodchuck has just
sense enough to go into his hole—and stay in.

There were too many woodchucks about and
my days were too precious for me to spend any
considerable part of my summer watching with
a gun for this one. Besides, I have been known
to fire and miss a woodchuck, anyway.

So I gave up the gun. It was while thinking
what I could do next that I came down the row
of young peach-trees and spied the woodchuck
out in the orchard, fifty yards away from his
hole. He spied me at the same instant, and
rose upon his haunches.

At last we were face to face. The time had
come. It would be a fight to the finish ; and a
fair fight, too, for all that I had about me in the
way of weapons was a pair of heavy, knee-high

[24]
hunting-boots, that I had put on against the
dew of the early morning. All my thought and
energy, all my hope, centered immediately in
those boots.

The woodchuck kept his thoughts in his head.
Into his heels he put what speed he had; and
little as that was, it counted, pieced out with the
head-work.

Back in my college days I ran a two-mile race
—the greatest race of the day, the judges said—
and just at the tape lost two gold medals and
the glory of a new intercollegiate record because
I did n’t use my head. Two of us out of twenty
finished, and we finished together, the other fel-
low twisting and falling forward, breaking the
string with his side, while I, pace for pace with
him— did n’t think.

For a moment the woodchuck and I stood
motionless, he studying the situation. I was at
the very mouth of his burrow. It was coming
to sure death for him to attempt to getin. Yet it
was sure death if he did not get in, for I should
run him down.

Had you been that woodchuck, gentle reader,
I wonder if you would have taken account of

[25]
the thick-strewn stones behind you, the dense
tangle of dewberry-vines off on your left, the
heavy boots of your enemy and his unthinking
rage?

I was vastly mistaken in that woodchuck. A
blanker, flabbier face never looked into mine.
Only the sudden appearance of death could have
brought the trace of intelligence across it that I
caught as the creature dropped on all fours and
began to wabble straight away from me over the
area of rough, loose stones.

With a jump and a yell I was after him, mak-
ing five yards to his one. He tumbled along the
best he could, and, to my great surprise, directly
away from his hole. It was steep downhill.
I should land upon him in half a dozen bounds
more.

On we went, reckless of the uneven ground,
momentum increasing with every jump, until,
accurately calculating his speed and the chang-
ing distance between us, I rose with a mighty
leap, sailed into the air and came down—just an
inch too far ahead—on a round stone, turned my
ankle, and went sprawling over the woodchuck
in a heap.

[26]
The woodchuck spilled himself from under me,
slid short about, and tumbled off for home by
way of the dewberry-patch.

He had made a good start before I was righted
and again in motion. Now it was steep, very
steep, uphill—which did not seem to matter
much to the woodchuck, but made a great differ-
ence to me. Then, too, I had counted on a
simple, straightaway dash, and had not saved
myself for this lap and climbing home-stretch.

Still I was gaining,—more slowly this time, —
with chances yet good of overtaking him short
of the hole, when, in the thick of the dewberry-
vines, I tripped, lunged forward three or four
stumbling strides, and saw the woodchuck turn
sharp to the right in a bee-line for his burrow.

I wheeled, jumped, cut after him, caught
him on the toe of my boot, and lifting him,
plopped him smoothly, softly into his hole.

It was gently done. And so beautifully! The
whole feat had something of the poetic accuracy
of an astronomical calculation. And the per-
fectly lovely dive I helped him make home!

I sat down upon his mound of earth to get
myself together and to enjoy it all. What a

[27]
woodchuck! Perhaps he never could do the
trick again; but, then, he won’t need to. All
the murder was gone from my heart. He had
beaten the boots. He had beaten them so neatly,
so absolutely, that simple decency compelled me
then and there to turn over that Crawford peach-
tree, root and stem, to the woodchuck, his heirs
and assigns forever.

By way of celebration he has thrown out
nearly a cart-load of sand from somewhere be-
neath the tree, deepening and enlarging his
home. My Swedish neighbor, viewing the hole
recently, exclaimed : ““Dose vuudshuck, I tink
him kill dem dree!” Perhaps so. As yet, how-
ever, the tree grows on without a sign of hurt.

But suppose the tree does die? Well, there is
no certainty of its bearing good fruit. There
was once a peddler of trees, a pious man and a
Quaker, who made a mistake, selling the wrong
tree. Besides, there are other trees in the
orchard ; and, if necessary, I can buy peaches.

Yes, but what if other woodchucks should seek
other roof-trees in the peach row? They won't.
There are no fashions, no such emulations, out-
of-doors. Because one woodchuck moves from

[28 ]
huckleberries to a peach-tree is no sign that all
the woodchucks on the hillside are going to for-
sake the huckleberries with him. Only humans
are silly enough for that.

If the woodchucks should come, all of them, it
would be extremely interesting —an event worth
many peaches.

[29]
THREE SERMONS
 

THREE SERMONS

I

Thou shalt not preach.

HE woods were as empty as some great
empty house; they were hollow and silent
and somber. I stood looking in among the leaf-
less trees, heavy in spirit at the quiet and gloom,
when close by my side spoke a tiny voice. I
started, so suddenly, so unexpectedly it broke
into the wide December silence, so far it echoed
through the empty forest halls.
“What!” I exclaimed, turning in my tracks

3 [33]
and addressing a small brown-leafed beech.
“What! little Hyla, are you still out? You!
with a snow-storm brewing and St. Nick due
here to-morrow night?” And then from within
the bush, or on it, or under it, or over it, came
an answer, Peep, peep, peep! small and shrill,
dropping into the silence of the woods and stir-
ring it as three small pebbles might drop into
the middle of a wide sleeping pond.

It was one of those gray, heavy days of the
early winter—one of the vacant, spiritless days
of portent that wait hushed and numb before a
coming storm. Not a crow, hor a jay, nor a
chickadee had heart enough to cheep. But little
Hyla, the tree-frog, was nothing daunted. Since
the last week in February, throughout the
spring and the noisy summer on till this dreary
time, he had been cheerfully, continuously pip-
ing. This was his last call.

Peep, peep, peep! he piped in February ; Peep,
peep, peep! in August; Peep, peep, peep! in De-
cember. But did he?

“He did just that,” replies the scientist, “and
that only.”

“Not at all,” I answer.

[34]
“What authority have you?” he asks. “You
are not scientific. You are merely a dreaming,
fooling hanger-on to the fields and woods; one
of those who are forever hearing more than they
hear, and seeing more than they see. We scien-
tists hear with our ears, see with our eyes, feel
with our fingers, and understand with our
brains—”

“Just so, just so,” I interrupt, “and you are a
worthy but often a pretty stupid set. Little
Hyla in February, August, and December cries
Peep, peep, peep! to you. But his cry to me in
February is Spring, spring, spring! And in De-
cember—it depends; for I cannot see with my
eyes alone, nor hear with my ears, nor feel with
my fingers only. You can, and so could Peter
Bell. To-day I saw and heard and felt the
world all gray and hushed and shrouded ; and
little Hyla, speaking out of the silence and
death, called Cheer, cheer, cheer !”

II

Ir is not because the gate is strait and the way
narrow that so few get into the kingdom of

[35]
the Out-of-Doors. The gate is wide and the way
is broad. The difficulty is that most persons go
in too fast.

If I were asked what virtue, above all others,
one must possess in order to be shown the mys-
teries of the kingdom of earth and sky, I should
say, there are several; I should not know
which to name first. There are, however, two
virtues very essential and very hard to acquire,
namely, the ability to keep quiet and to stand still.

Last summer a fox in two days took fifteen of
my chickens. I saw the rascal in broad day
come down the hill to the chicken-yard. I
greatly enjoy the sight of a wild fox ; but fifteen
chickens a sight was too high a price. So I got
the gun and chased about the woods half the
summer for another glimpse of the sinner’s red
hide. I saw him one Sunday as we were driving
into the wood road from church; but never a
week-day sight for all my chasing.

Along in the early autumn I got home one
evening shortly after sundown. I had left sev-
eral cocks of hay spread out in the little meadow,
and though it was already pretty damp, I took
the fork, went down, and cocked it up.

[36 ]
Returning, I climbed by the narrow, winding
path through the pines, out into the corner of
my pasture. It was a bright moonlight night,
and leaning back upon the short-handled fork,
I stopped in the shadow of the pines to look out
over the softly lighted field.

Off in the woods a mile away sounded the
deep, mellow tones of two foxhounds. Day and
night all summer long I had heard them, and
all summer long I had hurried to this knoll
and to that for a shot. But the fox always
took the other knoll.

The echoing cries of the dogs through the
silent woods were musical. Soon they sounded
sharp and clear—the hounds were crossing an
open stretch leading down to the meadow be-
hind me. As I leaned, listening, I heard near
by a low, uneasy murmuring from a covey of
quails sleeping in the brush beside the path, and
before I had time to think what it meant, a fox
trotted up the path I had just climbed, and
halted in the edge of the shadows directly at
my feet.

I stood as stiff as a post. He sniffed at my
dew-wet boots, backed away, and looked me over

[37]
curiously. I could have touched him with my
fork. Then he sat down with just his silver-
tipped brush in the silver moonlight, to study
me in earnest.

The loud baying of the hounds was coming
nearer. How often I had heard it, and, in spite
of my lost chickens, how often I had exclaimed,
“Poor little tired fox!” But here sat “poor
little tired fox” with his tongue in his head,
calmly wondering what kind of stump he had
run up against this time.

I could only dimly see his eyes, but his whole
body said: “TI can’t make it out, for it does n’t
move. But so long as it does n’t move I sha’n’t
be scared.” Then he trotted to this side and to
that for a better wind, somewhat afraid, but
much more curious.

His time was up, however. The dogs were
yelping across the meadow on his warm trail.
Giving me a last unsatisfied look, he dropped
down the path, directly toward the dogs, and
sprang lightly off into the thicket.

The din of their own voices must have deaf-
ened the dogs, or they would have heard him.
Round and round they circled, giving the fox

[38]
ample time for the study of another “stump”
before they discovered that he had doubled down
the path, and still longer time before they crossed
the wide scentless space of his side jump and
once more fastened upon his trail.

III

Back in my knickerbocker days I once went
off on a Sunday-school picnic, and soon, replete
with “copenhagen,” I sauntered into the woods
alone. in quest of less cloying sport. I had not
gone far when I picked up a dainty little ribbon-
snake, and having no bag or box along, I rolled
him up in my handkerchief, and journeyed on
with the wiggling reptile safely caged on top of
my head under my tight-fitting hat.

After a time I began to feel a peculiar move-
ment under the hat, not exactly the crawling of
a normal snake, but more like that of a snake
with legs. Those were the days when all my
soul was bent on the discovery of a new species—
of anything; when the whole of life meant a
journey to the Academy.of Natural Sciences
with something to be named. For just an in-

[39 ]
stant flashed the hope that I had found an un-
cursed snake, one of the original ones that went
on legs. I reached for the hat, bent over, and
pulled it off, and, lo! not a walking snake. Just
an ordinary snake, but with it a live wood-
frog !

This, at least, was interesting, the only real
piece of magic I have ever done. Into my hat
had gone only a live snake, now I brought forth
the snake and a live frog. This was a snake to
conjure with ; so I tied him up again and finally
got him home.

The next Sunday the minister preached a
temperance sermon, in which he said some
dreadful things about snakes. The creatures do
seem in some dark, horrible way to lurk in the
dregs of strong drink : but the minister was not
discriminating ; he was too fierce and sweeping,
saying, among other things, that there was a
universal human hatred for snakes, and that one
of the chief purposes of the human heel was to
bruise their scaly heads.

I was not born of my Quaker mother to share
this “universal human hatred for snakes” ; but
I did get from her a wild dislike for sweeping,

[40]
general statements. After the sermon I ven-
tured to tell the preacher that there was an ex-
ception to this “universal” rule; that all snakes
were not adders and serpents, but some were
just innocent snakes, and that I had a collection
of tame ones which I wished he would come out
to see.

He looked astonished, skeptical, then pained.
It was during the days, I think, of my “‘proba-
tion,” and into his anxious heart had come the
thought, Was I “running well”? But he dis-
missed the doubt and promised to walk over in
the morning.

His interest amazed me. But, then, preachers
quite commonly are different on Monday. As
we went from cage to cage, he said he had read
how boa-constrictors eat, and would n’t I show
him how these snakes eat?

We had come to the cage of the little ribbon-
snake from the picnic grove, and had arrived
just in time to catch him crawling away out of
a hole that he had worked in the rusty mosquito-
netting wire of the cover. I caught him, put
him back, and placed a brickbat over the hole.

I knew that this snake was hungry, because

[41]
he had had nothing to eat for nearly a week,
and the frog which appeared so mysteriously
with him in my hat was the dinner that he had
given up that day of his capture in his effort to
escape. é

The minister looked on without a tremor. I
took off the brick that he might see the better.
The snake was very long and small around and
the toad, which I had given him, was very short
and big around, so that when it was all over
there was a bunch in the middle of the snake
comparable to the lump a prime watermelon
would make in the middle of a small boy if
swallowed whole.

While we were still watching, the snake,
having comfortably (for a snake) breakfasted,
saw the hole uncovered and stuck out his head.
We made no move. Slowly, cautiously, with his
eye upon us, he glided out, up to the big bunch
of breakfast in his middle. This stuck. Fran-
tically he squirmed, whirled, and lashed about,
but in vain. He could not pull through. He
had eaten too much.

There was just one thing for him to do if he
would be free: give up the breakfast of toad

[42]
(which is much better fare according to snake
standards than pottage according to ours), as he
had given up the dinner of frog. Would he sell
his birthright?

Perhaps a snake cannot calculate ; perhaps he
knows no conflict of emotions. Yet something
very like these processes seemed to go on within
the scaly little reptile. He ceased all violent
struggle, laid his length upon the netting, and
seemed to think, to weigh the chances, to count
the cost.

Soon he softly drew back into the cage. A
series of severe contortions followed; the ob-
structing bunch began to move forward, up, far-
ther and farther, until at last, dazed, squeezed,
and half smothered, but entirely alive and un-
hurt, the toad appeared and once more opened
his eyes to the blessed light.

The snake quickly put his head through the
hole, slipped out again, and glided away into his
freedom. He had earned it. The toad deserved
his liberty too, and I took him into the straw-
berry-patch.

The minister looked on at it all. Perhaps he
did n’t learn anything. But I did.

[43]
THE MARSH
 

 

i MA THE MARSH

And breathe it free, and breathe it free,

I

ie was a late June day whose breaking found
me upon the edge of the great salt-marshes
which lie behind East Point Light, as the Dela-
ware Bay lies in front of it, and which run in a
wide, half-land, half-bay border down the cape.

[47]
I followed along the black sandy road which
goes to the Light until close to the old Zane’s
Place, —the last farm-house of the uplands, —when
I turned off into the marsh toward the river.
The mosquitos rose from the damp grass at
every step, swarming up around me in a cloud,
and streaming off behind like a comet’s tail,
which hummed instead of glowed. I was the
only male among them. It was a cloud of fe-
males, the nymphs of the salt-marsh; and all
through that day the singing, stinging, smother-
ing swarm danced about me, rested upon me,
covered me whenever I paused, so that my
black leggings turned instantly to a mosquito
brown, and all my dress seemed dyed alike.

Only I did not pause—not often, nor long.
The sun came up blisteringly hot, yet on I
walked, and wore my coat, my hands deep down
in the pockets and my head in a handkerchief.
At noon I was still walking, and kept on walk-
ing till I reached the bay shore, when a breeze
came up, and drove the singing, stinging fairies
back into the grass, and saved me.

I left the road at a point where a low bank
started across the marsh like a long protecting

[48]
arm reaching out around the hay-meadows,
dragging them away from the grasping river,
and gathering them out of the vast undrained
tract of coarse sedges, to hold them to the up-
land. Passing along the bank until beyond the
weeds and scrub of the higher borders, I stood
with the sky-bound, bay-bound green beneath
my feet. Far across, with sails gleaming white
against the sea of sedge, was a schooner, beating
slowly up the river. Laying my course by her,
I began to beat slowly out into the marsh
through the heavy sea of low, matted hay-grass.
There is no fresh-water meadow, no inland
plain, no prairie with this rainy, misty, early
morning freshness so constant on the marsh ; no
other reach of green so green, so a-glitter with
seas of briny dew, so regularly, unfailingly fed :

Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels
that flow
Here and there,
Every where,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks
and the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins!

4 [49]
I imagine a Western wheat-field, half-way to
head, could look, in the dew of morning, some-
what like a salt-marsh. It certainly would
have at times the purple-distance haze, that at-
mosphere of the sea which hangs across the
marsh. The two might resemble each other as
two pictures of the same theme, upon the same
scale, one framed and hung, the other not. It is
the framing, the setting of the marsh that gives
it character, variety, tone, and its touch of
mystery.

For the marsh reaches back to the higher
lands of fences, fields of corn, and ragged forest
blurs against the hazy horizon ; it reaches down to
the river of the reedy flats, coiled like a serpent
through the green; it reaches away to the sky
where the clouds anchor, where the moon rises,
where the stars, like far-off lighthouses, gleam
along the edge; and it reaches out to the bay,
and on, beyond the white surf-line of meeting,
on, beyond the line where the bay’s blue and
the sky’s blue touch, on, far on.

Here meet land and river, sky and sea; here
they mingle and make the marsh.

A prairie rolls and billows; the marsh lies

[ 50]
still, lies as even as a sleeping sea. Yet what
moods! What changes! What constant variety
of detail everywhere! In The Marshes of Glynn
there was

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad
in the blade,

Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light
or a shade,

but not in these Maurice River marshes. Here,
to-day, the sun was blazing, kindling millions of
tiny suns in the salt-wet blades ; and instead of
waist-high grass, there lay around me acres and
acres of the fine rich hay-grass, full-grown, but
without a blade wider than a knitting-needle or
taller than my knee. It covered the marsh like
a deep, thick fur, like a wonderland carpet into
whose elastic, velvety pile my feet sank and
sank, never quite feeling the floor. Here and
there were patches of higher sedges, green, but
of differing shades, which seemed spread upon
the grass carpet like long-napped rugs.

Ahead of me the even green broke suddenly
over a shoal of sand into tall, tufted grasses, into
rose, mallow, and stunted persimmon bushes,

[51]
foaming, on nearer view, with spreading dog-
bane blossoms. Off toward the bay another of
these shoals, mole-hill high in the distance, ran
across the marsh for half a mile, bearing a single
broken file of trees—sentinels they seemed, some
of them fallen, others gaunt and wind-beaten,
watching against the sea.

These were the lookouts and the resting-places
for passing birds. During the day, whenever I
turned in their direction, a crow, a hawk, or
some smaller bird was seen upon their dead
branches.

Naturally the variety of bird life upon the
marsh is limited; but there is by no means the
scarcity here which is so often noted in the for-
ests and wild prairies of corresponding extent.
Indeed, the marsh was birdy—rich in numbers
if not in species. Underfoot, in spots, sang the
marsh-wrens ; in larger patches the sharp-tailed
sparrows ; and almost as wide-spread and constant
as the green was the singing of the seaside spar-
rows. Overhead the fish-hawks crossed frequently
to their castle nest high on the top of a tall
white oak along the land edge of the marsh ; in
the neighborhood of the sentinel trees a pair of

[52]
crows were busy trying (it seemed to me) to
find an oyster, a crab—something big enough to
choke, for just one minute, the gobbling, gulping
clamor of their infant brood. But the dear de-
vouring monsters could not be choked, though
once or twice I thought by their strangling cries
that father crow, in sheer desperation, had
brought them oysters with the shells on. Their
awful gaggings died away at dusk. Besides the
crows and fish-hawks, a harrier would now and
thencome skimming closealong the grass. Higher
up, the turkey-buzzards circled all day long;
and. once, setting my blood leaping and the fish-
hawks screaming, there sailed over, far away in
the blue, a bald-headed eagle, his snowy neck
and tail flashing in the sunlight as he careened
among the clouds.

In its blended greens the marsh that morning
offered one of. the most satisfying drinks of color
my eyes ever tasted. The areas of different
grasses were often acres in extent, so that the
tints, shading from the lightest pea-green of the
thinner sedges to the blue-green of the rushes, to
the deep emerald-green of the hay-grass, merged
across their broad bands into perfect harmony.

[53 ]
As fresh and vital as the color was the breath
of the marsh. There is no bank of violets steal-
ing and giving half so sweet an odor to my nos-
trils, outraged by a winter of city smells, as the
salty, spray-laden breath of the marsh. It seems
fairly to line the lungs with ozone. I know how
grass-fed cattle feel at the smell of salt. I have
the concentrated thirst of a whole herd when I
catch that first whiff of the marshes after a win-
ter, a year it may be, of unsalted inland air.
The smell of it stampedes me. I gallop to meet
it, and drink, drink, drink deep of it, my blood
running redder with every draught.

II

I HAD waded out into the meadow perhaps
two hundred yards, leaving a dark bruised trail
in the grass, when I came upon a nest of the
long-billed marsh-wren. It was a bulky house,
and so overburdened its frail sedge supports that
it lay almost upon the ground, with its little
round doorway wide open to the sun and rain.
They must have been a young couple who built
it, and quite inexperienced. I wonder they had

[54]
not abandoned it; for a crack of light into a
wren’s nest would certainly addle the eggs.
They are such tiny, dusky, tucked-away things,
and their cradle is so deep and dark and hidden.
There were no fatalities, I am sure, following
my efforts to prop the leaning structure, though
the wrens were just as sure that it was all a
fatality—utterly misjudging my motives. Asa
rule, I have never been able to help much in
such extremities. Either I arrive too late, or
else I blunder.

I thought, for a moment, that it was the nest
of the long-billed’s cousin, the short-billed marsh-
wren, that I had found—which would have
been a gem indeed, with pearly eggs instead of
chocolate ones. Though I was out for the mere
joy of being out, I had really come with a hope
of discovering this mousy mite of a wren, and of
watching her ways. It was like hoping to watch
the ways of the “wunk.” Several times I have
been near these little wrens; but what chance
has a pair of human eyes with a skulking four
inches of brownish streaks and bars in the mid-
dle of amarsh! Such birds are the everlasting
despair of the naturalist, the salt of his earth.

[55]
The belief that a pair of them dwelt somewhere
in this green expanse, that I might at any step
come upon them, made me often forget the
mosquitos.

When I reached the ridge of rose and mallow
bushes, two wrens began muttering in the grass
with different notes and tones from those of the
long-billed. JI advanced cautiously. Soon one
flashed out and whipped back among the thick
stems again, exposing himself just long enough
to show me stellaris, the little short-billed wren
I was hunting.

I tried to stand still for a second glimpse and
a clue to the nest; but the mosquitos! Things
have come to a bad pass with the bird-hunter,
whose only gun is an opera-glass, when he can-
not stand stock-still for an hour. His success
depends upon his ability to take root. He
needs light feet, a divining mind, and many
other things, but most of all he needs patience.
There are few mortals, however, with mosquito-
proof patience—one that would stand the test
here. Remembering a meadow in New England
where stellaris nested, I concluded to wait till
chance took me thither, and passed on.

[56 ]
This ridge of higher ground proved to be a
mosquito roost—a thousand here to one in the
deeper, denser grass. As I hurried across I
noted with great satisfaction that the pink-white
blossoms of the spreading dogbane were covered.
with mosquito careasses. It lessened my joy
somewhat to find, upon examination, that all
the victims were males. Either they had drunk
poison from the flowers, or else, and more likely,
they had been unable to free their long-haired
antenne from the sticky honey into which they
had dipped their innocent beaks. Several single
flowers had trapped three, and from one blossom
I picked out five. If we could: bring the dog-
bane to brew a cup which would be fatal to the
females, it might be a good plant to raise in our
gardens along with the eucalyptus and the cas-
tor-oil plants.

Everywhere as I went along, from every
stake, every stout weed and topping bunch of
grass, trilled the seaside sparrows—a weak,
husky, monotonous song, of five or six notes, a
little like the chippy’s, more tuneful, perhaps,
but not so strong. They are dark, dusky birds,
of a grayish olive-green hue, with a conspicuous

[57]
yellow line before the eye, and yellow upon the
shoulder.

There seems to be a sparrow of some kind for
every variety of land between the poles. Moun-
tain-tops, seaside marshes, inland prairies,
swamps, woods, pastures—everywhere, from In-
dian River to the Yukon, a sparrow nests. Yet
one can hardly associate sparrows with marshes,
for they seem out of place in houseless, treeless,
half-submerged stretches. These are the haunts
of the shyer, more secretive birds. Here the
ducks, rails, bitterns, coots,—birds that can
wade and swim, eat frogs and crabs, —seem natu-
rally at home. The sparrows are perchers, grain-
eaters, free-fliers, and singers; and they, of all
birds, are the friends and neighbors of man.
This is no place for them. The effect of this
marsh life upon the flight and song of these two
species was very marked. Both showed unmis-
takable vocal powers which long ago would have
been developed under the stimulus of human
listeners ; and during all my stay (so long have
they crept and skulked about through the low
marsh paths) I did not see one rise a hundred
feet into the air, nor fly straight away for a

[58]
hundred yards. They would get up just above
the grass, and flutter and drop—a puttering,
short-winded, apoplectic struggle, very unbe-
coming and unworthy.

By noon I had completed a circle and re-
crossed the lighthouse road in the direction of
the bay. A thin sheet of lukewarm water lay
over all this section. The high spring tides had
been reinforced by unusually heavy rains during
April and May, giving a great area of pasture
and hay land back, for that season, to the sea.
Descending a copsy dune from the road, I sur-
prised a brood of young killdeers feeding along
the drift at the edge of the wet meadow. They
ran away screaming, leaving behind a pair of
spotted sandpipers, “‘till-tops,” that had been
wading with them in the shallow water. The
sandpipers teetered on for a few steps, then rose
at my approach, scaled nervously out over the -
drowned grass, and, circling, alighted near where
they had taken wing, continuing instantly with
their hunt, and calling Tweet-tweet, tweet-tweet,
and teetering, always teetering, as they tiptoed
along.

If perpetual motion is still a dream of the

[59]
physicist, he might get an idea by carefully ex-
amining the way the body of till-top is balanced
on its needle legs. If till-tops have not been
tilting forever, and shall not go on tilting for-
ever, it is because something is wrong with the
mechanism of the world outside their little
spotted bodies. Surely the easiest, least willed
motion in all the universe is this sandpiper’s
teeter, teeter, teeter, as it hurries peering and
prying along the shore.

Killdeers and sandpipers are noisy birds ; and
one would know, after half a day upon the
marsh, even if he had never seen these birds
before, that they could not have been bred here.
For however

candid and simple and nothing-withholding and
free

the marsh may seem to one coming suddenly
from the wooded uplands, it will not let one
enter far without the consciousness that silence
and secrecy lie deeper here than in the depths
of the forest glooms. The true birds of the
marsh, those that feed and nest in the grass,
have the spirit of the great marsh-mother.

[60]
The sandpiper is not her bird. It belongs to
the shore, living almost exclusively along sandy,
pebbly margins, the margins of any, of almost
every water, from Delaware Bay to the tiny
bubbling spring in some Minnesota pasture.
Neither is the killdeer her bird. The upland
claims it, plover though it be. A barren, stony
hillside, or even a last year’s corn-field left fal-
low, is a better-loved breast to the killdeer than
the soft brooding breast of the marsh. There
are no grass-birds so noisy as these two. Both
of them lay their eggs in pebble nests ; and both
depend largely for protection upon the harmony
of their colors with the general tone of their
surroundings.

I was still within sound of the bleating kill-
deers when a rather large, greenish-gray bird
flapped heavily but noiselessly from a muddy
spot in the grass to the top of a stake and faced
me. Here was a child of the marsh. Its bolt-
upright attitude spoke the watcher in the grass ;
then as it stretched its neck toward me, bringing
its body parallel to the ground, how the shape
of the skulker showed! This bird was not built
to fly nor to perch, but to tread the low, narrow

[61]
paths of the marsh jungle, silent, swift, and elu-
sive as a shadow.

It was the clapper-rail, the ‘‘marsh-hen.” One
never finds such a combination of long legs, long
toes, long neck and bill, with this long but heavy
hen-like body, outside the meadows and marshes.
The grass ought to have been alive with the
birds: it was breeding-time. But I think the
high tides must have delayed them or driven
them elsewhere, for I did not find an egg, nor
hear at nightfall their colony-cry, so common at
dusk and dawn in the marshes just across on the
coast about Townsend’s Inlet. There at sunset
in nesting-time one of the rails will begin to call
—a loud, clapping roll; a neighbor takes it up,
then another and another, the circle of cries
widening and swelling until the whole marsh is
a-clatter.

Heading my way with a slow, labored stroke
came one of the fish-hawks. She was low down
and some distance away, so that I got behind a
post before she saw me. The marsh-hen spied
her first, and dropped into the grass. On she
came, her white breast and belly glistening, and
in her talons a big glistening fish. It was a

[62]
magnificent catch. “Bravo!” I should have
shouted—rather I should n’t; but here she was
right over me, and the instinct of the boy, of the
savage, had me before I knew, and leaping out,
I whirled my cap and yelled to wake the marsh.
The startled hawk jerked, keeled, lifted with a
violent struggle, and let go her hold. Down fell
the writhing, twisting fish at my feet. It was a
splendid striped bass, weighing at least four
pounds, and still live enough to flop.

I felt mean as I picked up the useless thing
and looked far away to the great nest with its
hungry young. I was no better than the bald
eagle, the lazy robber-baron, who had stolen the
dinner of these same young hawks the day before.

Their mother had been fishing up the river
and had caught a tremendous eel. An eel can
hold out to wriggle a very long time. He has
no vitals. Even with talon-tipped claws he is
slippery and more than a clawful; so the old
hawk took a short cut home across the railroad-
track and the corner of the woods where stands
the eagle tree.

She could barely clear the tree-tops, and, with
the squirming of the eel about her legs, had

[ 63 ]
apparently forgotten that the eagle lived along
this road, or else in her struggle to get the prize
home she was risking the old dragon’s being
away. He was not away. I have no doubt that
he had been watching her all the time from
some high perch, and just as she reached the
open of the railroad-track, where the booty
would not fall among the trees, he appeared.
His first call, mocking, threatening, commanding,
shot the poor hawk through with terror. She
screamed ; she tried to rise and escape; but
without a second’s parley the great king drove
down upon her. She dropped the fish, dived, and
dodged the blow, and the robber, with a rushing
swoop that was glorious in its sweep, in its speed
and ease, caught the eel within a wing’s reach of
me and the track.

I did not know what to do with my spoil.
Somewhat relieved, upon looking around, to find
that even the marsh-hen had not been an eye-
witness to my knightly deed, I started with the
fish and my conscience toward the distant nest,
determined to climb into it and leave the catch
with the helpless, dinnerless things for whom it
was intended.

[64]
I am still carrying that fish, How seldom we
are able to restore the bare exaction, to say
nothing of the fourfold! My tree was harder
to climb than Zaccheus’s. Mine was an ancient
white oak, with the nest set directly upon its
dead top. I had stood within this very nest
twelve years before; but even with the help of
my conscience I could not get into it now. Not
that I had grown older or larger. Twelve years
do not count unless they carry one past forty.
It was the nest that had grown. Gazing up at
it, lreadily believed the old farmer in the Zane’s
house who said it would take a pair of mules to
haul it. He thought it larger than one that
blew down in the marsh the previous winter,
which made three cart-loads.

One thinks of Stirling and of the castles frown-
ing down upon the Rhine as he comes out of the
wide, flat marsh beneath this great nest, crown-
ing this loftiest eminence in all the region. But
no chateau of the Alps, no beetling crag-lodged
castle of the Rhine, can match the fish-hawk’s
nest for sheer boldness and daring. Only the
eagles’ nests upon the fierce dizzy pinnacles in
the Yosemite surpass the home of the fish-hawk

: [65]
in unawed boldness. The aery of the Yosemite
eagle is the most sublimely defiant of things
built by bird, or beast, or man.

A fish-hawk will makeits nestupon the ground,
or a hummock, a stump, a buoy, a chimney—
upon anything near the water that offers an
adequate platform; but its choice is the dead
top of some lofty tree where the pathway for its
wide wings is open and the vision range is free
for miles around.

How dare the bird rear such a pile upon so
slight and towering a support! How dare she
defy the winds, which, loosened far out on the
bay, come driving across the cowering, unresist-
ing marsh! She is too bold sometimes. I have
known more than one nest to fall in a wild May
gale. Many a nest, built higher and wider year
after year, while all the time its dead support
has been rotting and weakening, gets heavy
with the wet of winter, and some night, under
the weight of an ice-storm, comes crashing to
the earth.

Yet twelve years had gone since I scaled the
walls and stood within this nest; and with pa-
tience and hardihood enough I could have done

[66]
it again this time, no doubt. I remember one
nest along Maurice River, perched so high above
the gums of the swamp as to be visible from my
home across a mile of trees, that has stood a
landmark for the oystermen this score of years.
The sensations of my climb into this fish-hawk’s
nest of the marsh are vivid even now. Going
up was comparatively easy. When I reached
the forks holding the nest, I found I was under
a bulk of sticks and corn-stalks which was about
the size of an ordinary haycock or an unusually
large wash-tub. By pulling out, pushing aside,
and breaking off the sticks, I worked a precari-
ous way through the four feet or more of debris
and scrambled over the edge. There were two
eggs. Taking them in my hands, so as not to
crush them, I rose carefully to my feet.
Upright in a hawk’s nest! Sixty feet in the
air, on the top of a gaunt old white oak, high
above the highest leaf, with the screaming
hawks about my head, with marsh and river
and bay lying far around! It was a moment of
exultation ; and the thrill of it has been trans-
mitted through the years. My body has been
drawn to higher places since ; but my soul has

[67 ]
never quite touched that altitude again, for I
was a boy then.

Nor has it ever shot swifter, deeper into the
abyss of mortal terror than followed with my
turning to descend. I looked down into empty
air. Feet foremost I backed over the rim, clutch-
ing the loose sticks and feeling for a foothold.
They snapped with. the least pressure ; slipped
and fell if I pushed them, or stuck out into my
clothing. Suddenly the sticks in my hands
pulled out, my feet broke through under me,
and for an instant I hung at the side of the nest
in the air, impaled on a stub that caught my
blouse as I slipped.

There is a special Providence busy with the
boy. ;

This huge nest of the fish-hawks was more than
a nest ; it was a castle in very truth, in the shel-
tering crevices of whose uneven walls a small
community of purple grackles lived. Wedged
in among the protruding sticks was nest above
nest, plastering the great pile over, making it
almost grassy with their loose flying ends. I
remember that I counted more than twenty of
these crow-blacks’ nests the time I climbed the

[68 ]
tree, and that I destroyed several in breaking
my way up the face of the structure.

Do the blackbirds nest here for the protec-
tion afforded by the presence of the hawks? Do
they come for the crumbs which fall from these
great people’s table? Or is it the excellent op-
portunity for social life offered by this conve-
nient apartment-house that attracts?

The purple grackles are a garrulous, gossipy
set, as every one knows. They are able-bodied,
not particularly fond of fish, and inclined to
seek the neighborhood of man, rather than to
come out here away from him. They make very
good American rooks. So I am led to think it
is their love of “neighboring” that brings them
about the hawk’s nest. If this surmise is correct,
then the presence of two families of English
sparrows among them might account for there
being only eight nests now, where a decade ago:
there were twenty.

I was amused—no longer amazed —at finding
the sparrows here. The seed of these birds shall
possess the earth. Is there even now a spot into
which the bumptious, mannerless, ubiquitous
little pleb has not pushed himself? If you look

[69 ]
for him in the rain-pipes of the Fifth Avenue
mansions, he is there; if you search for him in
the middle of the wide, silent salt-marsh, he is
there; if you take—but it is vain to take the
wings of the morning, or of anything else, in the
hope of flying to a spot where the stumpy little
wings of the English sparrow have not already
carried him.

There is something really admirable in the
unqualified sense of ownership, the absolute want
of diffidence, the abiding self-possession and cool-
ness of these birds. One cannot measure it in
the city streets, where everybody jostles and
stares. It can be appreciated only in the marsh :
here in the silence, the secrecy, the withdraw-
ing, where even the formidable-looking fiddler-
crabs shy and sidle into their holes as you pass;
here, where the sparrows may perch upon the
rim of a great hawk’s nest, twist their necks,
ogle you out of countenance, and demand what
business brought you to the marsh.

I hunted round for a stone when one of them
buttonholed me. He was n’t insolent, but he
was impertinent. The two hawks and the
blackbirds flew off as I came up ; but the sparrows

[70]
stayed. They were the only ones in possession
as I moved away; and they will be the only
ones in possession when I return. If that is
next summer, then I shall find a colony of twenty
sparrow families around the hawk’s nest. The
purple grackles will be gone. And the fish-
hawks? Only the question of another year or
so when they, too, shall be dispossessed and ~
gone. But where will they go to escape the
sparrows ?

III

From a mile away I turned to look back at
the “cripple” where towered the tall white oak
of the hawks. Both birds were wheeling about
the castle nest, their noble flight full of the free-
dom of the marsh, their piercing cries voicing
its wildness. And how free, how wild, how un-
touched by human hands the wide plain seemed !
Sea-like it lay about me, circled southward from
east to west with the rim of the sky.

I moved on toward the bay. The sun had
dropped to the edge of the marsh, its level-lined
shafts splintering into golden fire against the
curtained windows of the lighthouse. It would

[71]
soon be sunset. For some time there had been
a quiet gurgling and lisping down in the grass,
but it had meant nothing, until, of a sudden, I
heard the rush of a wave along the beach: the
tide was coming in. And with it came a breeze,
a moving, briny, bay-cooled breeze that stirred
the grass with a whisper of night.

Once more I had worked round to the road.
It ran on ahead of me, up a bushy dune, and
forked, one branch leading off to the lighthouse,
the other straight out to the beach, out against
the white of the breaking waves.

The evening purple was deepening on the
bay when I mounted the dune. Bands of pink
and crimson clouded the west, a thin cold wash
of blue veiled the east ; and overhead, bayward,
landward, everywhere, the misting and the
shadowing of the twilight.

Between me and the white wave-bars at the
end of the road gleamed a patch of silvery
water—the returning tide. As I watched, a sil-
very streamlet broke away and came running
down the wheel track. Another streamlet, lag-
ging a little, ran shining down the other track,
stopped, rose, and creeping slowly to the middle

[72]
of the road, spread into a second gleaming patch.
They grew, met—and the road for a hundred
feet was covered with the bay.

As the crimson paled into smoky pearl, the
blue changed green and gold, and big at the
edge of the marsh showed the rim of the moon.

Weird hour! Sunset, moonrise, flood-tide,
and twilight together weaving the spell of the
night over the wide waking marsh. Mysterious,
sinister almost, seemed the swift, stealthy creep-
ing of the tide. It was surrounding and crawl-
ing in upon me. Already it stood ankle-deep in
the road, and was reaching toward my knees, a
warm thing, quick and moving. It slipped
among the grasses and into the holes of the crabs
with a smothered bubbling; it disturbed the
seaside sparrows sleeping down in the sedge and
kept them springing up to find new beds. How
high would it rise? Behind me on the road it
had crawled to the foot of the dune. Would it
let me through to the mainland if I waited for
the flood ?

It would be high tide at nine o’clock. Find-
ing a mound of sand on the shore that the water
could hardly cover, I sat down to watch the tide-

[73]
miracle ; for here, surely, I should see the won-
der worked, so wide was the open, so full, so
frank the moon.

In the yellow light I could make out the line
of sentinel trees across the marsh, and off on the
bay a ship, looming dim in the distance, coming
on with wind and tide. There were no sounds
except the long regular wash of the waves, the
stir of the breeze in the chafing sedges, and the
creepy stepping of the water weaving every-
where through the hidden paths of the grass.
Presently a night-hawk began to flit about me,
then another and another, skimming just above
the marsh as silent as the shadows. What was
that? Something moved across the moon. In
a moment, bat-like and huge against the great
yellow disk, appeared a marsh-owl. He was
coming to look at me. What was I that dared
remain abroad in the marsh after the rising of
the moon? that dared invade this eery realm,
this night-spread, tide-crept, half-sealand where
he was king? How like a goblin he seemed! I
thought of Grendel, and listened for the splash
of the fen-monster’s steps along the edge of the
bay. But only. the owl came. Down, down,

[74]
down he bobbed, till I could almost feel the
fanning of his wings. How silent! His long
legs hung limp, his body dangled between those
soft wide wings within reach of my face. Yet
I heard nosound. Mysterious creature! I was
glad when he ceased his ghostly dance about me
and made off.

It was nine o’clock. The waves had ceased to
wash against the sand, for the beach was gone;
the breeze had died away ; the stir of the water
in the grass was still. Only a ripple broke now
and then against my little island. The bay and
the marsh were one.

How still the plains of the waters be!

The tide is in his ecstasy.

The tide is at his highest height :
And it is night.

[75]
CALICO AND THE KITTENS
 

CALICO AND THE KITTENS

NE spring day I found myself the sole help

of two blind, naked infants—as near a real

predicament as a man could well get. What

did it matter that they had long tails and were

squirrels? They were infants just the same;

and any kind of an infant on the hands of any
mere man is a real tragedy.

As I looked at the two callow things in the
grass, a dismay and weak helplessness quite
overcame me. The way they squirmed and
shivered and squeaked worked upon me down
even to my knees. I felt sick and _ foolish.

[79]
Both of their parents were dead. Their loose
leaf-nest overhead had been riddled with shot.
I had climbed up and found them; I had
brought them down; I must—feed them! The
other way of escape were heathen.

But how could I feed them? Nipples, quills,
spoons—none of them would fit these mites of
mouths. Whata miserable mother I was! How
poorly equipped for foundlings! They were
dying for lack of food ; and as they pawed about
and whimpered in my hands I devoutly wished
the shot had put them all out of misery together.
I was tempted to turn heathen and despatch
them.

Unhappy but resolute, I started homeward,
determined to rear those squirrels, if it could be
done. On my way I remembered—and it came
to me with a shock—that one of my neighbor’s
eats had a new batch of kittens. They were
only a few days old. Might not Calico, their
mother, be induced to adopt the squirrels?

Nothing could be more absurd. The kittens
were three times larger than the squirrels.
Even had they been the same size, did I think
the old three-colored cat could be fooled? that

[80]
she might not know a kitten of hers from some
other mother’s—squirrel? I was desperate in-
deed. Calico was a hunter. She had eaten
more gray squirrels, perhaps, than I had ever
seen. She would think I had been foraging for
her—the mother of seven green kittens !—and
would take my charges as titbits. Still I was
determined to try.

My neighbor’s kittens were enough and to
spare. One of Calico’s last year’s lot still waited
a good home; and here were seven more to be
cared for. Might not two of these be spirited
away, far away; the two squirrels substituted,
and the old cat be none the wiser?

I went home by way of my neighbor’s, and
found Calico in the basement curled up asleep
with her babies. She roused and purred ques-
tioningly as we bent over the basket, and
watched with concern, but with no anxiety, as
two of her seven were lifted out and put inside
a hat upon a table. She was perfectly used to
having her kittens handled. True, strange
things had happened to them. But that was
long ago; and there had been so very many
kittens that no one mother could remember

6 [81]
about them all. She trusted us—with an ear
pricked and eyes watchful. But they were safe,
and in a prideful, self-conscious, young-mother
way she began to wash the five.

Some one stood between her and the hat when
the kittens were lifted out and the squirrels
were put in their place. Calico did not see.
For a time she thought no more about them;
she was busy washing and showing the others.
By and by it began to look as though she had
forgotten that there were more than five. She
could not count. But most mothers can number
their children, even if they cannot count, and
soon Calico began to fidget, looking up at the hat
which the hungry, motherless squirrels kept
rocking. Then she leaped out upon the floor,
purring, and bounded upon the table, going
straight to the young squirrels.

There certainly was an expression of surprise
and mystification on her face as she saw the
change that had come over those kittens. They
had shrunk and faded from two or three bright
colors to a single pale pink. She looked again
and sniffed them. Their odor had changed, too.
She turned to the watchers about the table, but

[82]
they said nothing. She hardly knew what to
think. She was half inclined to leave them and
go back to the basket, when one of the squirrels
whimpered—a genuine, universal baby whimper.
That settled it. She was a mother, and what-
ever else these things in the hat might be, they
were babies. That was enough, especially as
she needed just this much baby here in the hat
to make good what was lacking in the basket.
With a soft, caressing purr she stepped gently
into the hat, took one of the squirrels by the
neck, brought it to the edge of the table, and
laid it down for a firmer hold; then sprang
lightly to the floor. Over to the basket she
walked and dropped it tenderly among her
other babies. Then, having brought the remain-
ing one and deposited that with the same
mother-care, she got into the basket herself and
curled down contentedly —her heart all whole.
And this is how strange a thing mother-love
is! The performance was scarcely believable.
Could she be so love-blind as not to see what
they were and not eat them? But when she
began to lick the little interlopers and cuddle
them down to their dinner as if they were her

[83]
own genuine kittens, there could be no more
doubt or fear.

The squirrels do not know to this day that
Calico is not their real mother. From the first
they took her mother’s milk and mother’s love
as rightfully and thanklessly as the kittens,
growing, not like the kittens at all, but into the
most normal of squirrels, round and fat and
splendid-tailed.

Calico clearly recognized some difference be-
tween the two kinds of kittens, but what differ-
ence always puzzled her. She would clean up a
kitten and comb it slick, then turn to one of the
squirrels and wash it, but rarely, if ever, com-
pleting the work because of some disconcerting
un-catlike antic. As the squirrels grew older
they also grew friskier, and soon took the washing
as the signal for a frolic. As well try to wash a
bubble. They were bundles of live springs,
twisting out of her paws, dancing over her back,
leaping, kicking, tumbling as she had never seen
a kitten do in all her richly kittened experience.

I don’t know why, but Calico was certainly
fonder of these two freaks than of her own
normal children. Long after the latter were

[84]
weaned she nursed and mothered the squirrels.
I have frequently seen them let into the kitchen
when the old cat was there, and the moment
they got through the door they would rush
toward her, dropping chestnuts or cookies by
the way. She in turn would hurry to meet them
with a little purr of greeting full of joy and
affection. They were shamefully big for such
doings. The kittens had quit it long ago. Calico
herself, after a while, came to feel the impro-
priety of mothering these strapping young ones,
and in a weak, indulgent way tried to stop it.
But the squirrels were persistent and would not
go about their businessat all with an ordinary cuff.
She would put them off, run away from them, slap
them, and make believe to bite; but not until
she did bite, and sharply too, would they be off.

All this seemed very strange and unnatural ;
yet a stranger thing happened one day, when
Calico brought in to her family a full-grown
gray squirrel which she had caught in the woods.
She laid it down on the floor and called the
kittens and squirrels to gather around. They
came, and as the squirrels sniffed at the dead one
on the floor there was hardly a mark of differ-

[85 ]
ence in their appearance. It might have been
one of Calico’s own nursing that lay there dead,
so far as any one save Calico could see. And
with her the difference, I think, was more of
smell than of sight. But she knew her own ; and
though she often found her two out among the
trees of the yard, she never was mistaken, nor
for an instant made as if to hurt them.

Yet they could not have been more entirely
squirrel had their own squirrel mother nurtured
them. Calico’s milk and love went all to cat in
her own kittens, and all to squirrel in these that
she adopted. No single hair of theirs turned
from its squirrel-gray to any one of Calico’s
three colors ; no single squirrel trait became the
least bit catlike.

Indeed, as soon as the squirrels could run
about they forsook the clumsy-footed kittens
under the stove and scampered up back of the
hot-water tank, where they built a nest. When-
ever Calico entered the kitchen purring, out
would pop their heads, and down they would
come, understanding the mother language as
well as the kittens, and usually beating the kit-
tens to the mother’s side.

[86]
So far from teaching them to climb and build
nests behind water-tanks, their foster-mother
never got over her astonishment at it. All they
needed from her, all they needed and would
have received from their own squirrel mother,
was nourishment and protection until their teeth
and legs grew strong. Wits were born with
them; experience was sure to come to them ;
and with wits and experience there is nothing
known among squirrels of their kind that these
two would not learn for themselves.

And there was not much known to squirrels
that these two did not know, apparently without
even learning. As they grew in size they in-
creased exceedingly in naughtiness, and were
banished shortly from the kitchen to an ell or
back woodshed. They celebrated this distinction
by dropping some hickory-nuts into a rubber
boot hanging on the wall, and then gnawing a
hole through the toe of the boot in order to
extract the hidden nuts. Was it mischief that
led them to gnaw through rather than go down
the top? Or did something get stuffed into the
top of the boot after the nuts were dropped in?
And did the squirrels remember that the nuts

[87]
were in there, or did they smell them through
the rubber?

One woodshed is big enough only for two
squirrels. The family moved everything out
but the wood, and the squirrels took possession
for the winter. Their first nest had been built
behind the hot-water tank. They knew how to
build without any teaching. But knowing how
is not all there is to know about building;
knowing where is very important, and this they
had to learn.

Immediately on coming to the woodshed the
squirrels began their winter nest, a big, bulky,
newspaper affair, which they placed up in the
northwest corner of the shed directly under the
shingles. Here they slept till late in the fall.
This was the shaded side and the most exposed
corner of the whole house; but all went: well
until one night when the weather suddenly
turned very cold. A strong wind blew from the
northwest hard upon the squirrels’ nest.

The next day there was great activity in the
woodshed—a scampering of lively feet, that
began early in the morning and continued far
toward noon. The squirrels were moving. They

[88]
gathered up their newspaper nest and carried it

—diagonally—across the shed from the shaded

northwest to the sunny southeast corner, where

they rebuilt and slept snug throughout the
- winter.

Calico did not teach them this ; neither would
their own squirrel mother have taught them.
They knew how, to begin with. They knew
where after one night of experience, which in
this case had to be a night of shivers.

[89]
THE SPARROW ROOST
 

THE SPARROW ROOST

N early December twilight was settling
over Boston, a thick foggy murk that
soaked down full of smoke and smell and chill.
The streets were oozy with a wet snow which had
fallen through the afternoon and had been trod-
den into mud; and draughty with an east wind,
that would have passed unnoticed across the
open fields, but which drew up these narrow
flues and sent a shiver down one’s back in spite

[93]
of coats. It was half-past five. The stores were
closing, their clerks everywhere eddying into
the noisy streams of wheels and hoofs still pour-
ing up and down. The traffic tide had turned,
but had not yet ebbed away.

And this was evening! the coming night! I
moved along with the crowd, homesick for the
wideness and quiet of the country, for the sough-
ing of the pines, the distant bang of a barn door,
the night cry of guineas from some neighboring
farm, when, in the hurry and din, I caught the
cry of bird voices, and looking up, found that I
had stumbled upon a bird roost—at the very
heart of the city! I was in front of King’s
Chapel Burial Ground, whose half-dozen leafless
trees were alive with noisy sparrows.

The crowd swept on. I halted behind a waste-
barrel by the iron fence and forgot the soughing
pines and clacking guineas.

Bird roosts of this size are no common find.
I remember a huge fireplace chimney that stood
near my home, into which a cloud of swallows
used to swarm for a few nights preceding the
fall migration ; I lived some years close to the
pines at the head of Cubby Hollow, where great

[94]
flocks of crows slept nightly throughout the win-
ter; but these, besides now and again a tempo-
rary resting-place, a mere caravansary along the
route of the migrants, were all I had happened
upon. Here was another, bordering a city
street, overhanging the street, with a blazing
electric light to get into bed by!

Protected by the barrel from the jostle on the
sidewalk, I waited by the ancient graveyard
until the electric lights grew bright, until every
fussing sparrow was quiet, until I could see only
little gray balls and blurs in the trees through
the misty drizzle that came down with the night.
Then I turned toward my own snug roost, five
flights up, next the roof, and just a block away,
as the sparrows fly, from this roost of theirs. I
was glad to have them so near me.

The windows of my roost look out over roofs
of slate, painted tin, and tarry pebbles, into
a chimney-fenced plot of sky. Occasionally,
during the winter, a herring-gull from the har-
bor swims into this bit of smoky blue ; frequently
a pigeon, sometimes a flock, sails past; and in
the summer dusk, after the swallows quit it, a
city-haunting night-hawk climbs out of the for-

[95]
est of chimney-pots, up, up above the smoke for
his booming roofward swoop. But winter and
summer, save along through June, the sparrows,
as evening falls, cut across the sky field on their
way to the roost in the old burial-ground.
There go two, there twoscore in a whirling,
scudding flurry, like a swift-blown bunch of au-
tumn leaves. For more than an hour they keep
passing—till the dusk turns to darkness, till all
are tucked away in bed.

One would scarcely recognize the birds as
they sweep past in these flurries, their flight is
so unlike their usual clumsy scuttle as they get
out of one’s way along the street. They are
lumpish and short-winged on the street; they
labor and lumber off with a sidewise twist to
their bodies that reminds one of a rheumatic old
dog upon the trot. What suggestion of grace
or swiftness about them upon the ground? But
watch them in their evening flight. It is a
revelation. They rise above the houses and shoot
across my sky like a charge of canister. I can
almost hear them whizz. Down by the cemetery
I have seen them dash into view high up in the
slit of sky, dive for the trees, dart zigzag like

[96 ]
a madly plunging kite, and hurl themselves, as
soft as breaths, among the branches.

This is going to bed with a vengeance. I
never saw any other birds get to roost with such
velocity. It is characteristic, however; the
sparrow never does anything by halves. The
hurry is not caused by any mite of anxiety or
fear, rather from pure excess of spirit; for after
rearing three broods during the summer, he has
such a superabundance of vim that a winter of
foraging and fighting is welcome exercise. The
strenuous life is his kind of life. When the
- day’s hunt is over and he turns back to his bed,
why not race it out with his neighbors? And
so they come—chasing, dodging, tagging neck
and neck, all spurting to finish first at the roost.

We may not love him ; but he has constitution
and snap. And these things do count.

One April morning, the 6th, I went down to
the roost at three o’clock. The sparrows were
sleeping soundly. It was yet night. Had the
dawn been reaching up above the dark walls
that shut the east away from the high tree-tops,
the garish street light would have kept it dim.
The trees were silent and stirless, as quiet as the

1 [97]
graves beneath them—more quiet, in fact; for
there issued from a grated hole among the tombs
the sound of an anvil, deep down and muffled,
but unmistakably ringing, as if Governor Win-
throp were forging chains in his vault. Then
came a rush, a deadened roar, and an emanation
of dank gaseous breath, such as the dead alone
breathe.

It was only the passing of a tool-car in the
subway underneath the cemetery, and the
hammering of a workman at a forge in a niche
of the tunnel. But, rising out of the tombs, it
was gruesome and unearthly in the night-
quiet.

The sparrows did not mind the sound. Maybe
it ascended as a pleasant murmur to them and
shaped their dreams, as dream-stuff drifts to
their sweet-voiced cousins in the meadows with
the lap and lave of the streams. A carriage
rolled by. The clank of hoofs disturbed none of
them. Some one slammed the door of an apothe-
cary-shop across the street, and hurried off. Not
a sparrow stirred.

I was trying to see whether the birds slept
with their heads beneath their wings. Appa-

[98]
rently they did, for I could not make out a head,
though some of the sleepers hung over the street
within ten feet of the lamp-post. But they were
all above the light, with only their breasts out of
the shadows, and to be certain I must make a
bird move. Finding that the noises were not
likely to arouse them, I threw a stick against
one of the laden limbs. There were heads then,
plenty of them, and every one, evidently, had
been turned back and buried in the warm wing-
coverts.

My stick hit very near the toes of one of the
sparrows, and he flew. There was a twitter,
then a stir all over the tree ; but nothing further
happening, they tucked in their heads again and
went back to bed.

I waited. At four o’clock they still slept.
The moon had swung out from behind the high
buildings and now hung just above the slender
spire of Park Street Church, looking down into
the deep, narrow street gulch. A cat picked her
way among the graves, sprang noiselessly to the
top of a flat tomb beneath the sparrows, and
watched with me. The creature brought the
wilderness with her. After all, this was not so

[99]
far removed from the woods. In the empty
street, beneath the silent, shuttered walls, with
something still of the mystery of the night winds
in the bare trees, the scene, for an instant, was
touched with the spell of the dark and the un-
tamed.

After a swift warming walk of fifteen minutes
I returned to the roost. There were signs of
waking now: a flutter here, a twitter there,
then quiet again, with no general movement
until half-past four, when the city lights were
shut off. Then, instantly, from a dozen branches
sounded loud, clear chirps, and every sparrow
opened his eyes. The incandescent bulbs about
the border of the roost were moon and stars to
them, lights in the firmament of their heaven
to divide the night from the day. When they
blazed forth, it was evening—bedtime; when
they went out, it was morning—the time to
wake up.

The softness of dusk, how unknown to these
city dwellers! and the fresh sweet beauty of the
dawn!

Morning must have begun to break along
near four o’clock, for the cold gray across the

[100]
sky was already passing into pearl. The coun-
try birds had been up half an hour, I am sure.
However, the old cemetery was wide enough
awake now. There was chirping everywhere.
It grew louder and more general every moment,
till shortly the six thousand voices, and more,
were raised in the cheerful din—the matin, if
you please, for as yet only a few of the birds
were fighting.

But the fight quickly spread. It is the Eng-
lish sparrow’s way of waking up; his way of
whetting his appetite for breakfast ; his way of
digesting his dinner; his way of settling his
supper—his normal waking way.

To the clatter of voices was added the flutter
of wings; for the birds had begun to shift
perches, and to exchange slaps as well as to call
names—the movement setting toward the tree-
tops. None of the sparrows had left the roost.
The storm of chatter increased and the buzz of
wings quickened into a steady whir, the noise
holding its own with that of the ice-wagons
pounding past. The birds were filling the top-
most branches, a gathering of the clans, evi-
dently, for the day’s start. The clock in Scollay

[101]
Square station pointed to five minutes to five,
and just before the hour struck, two birds
launched out and spun away.

The exodus had commenced. The rest of
Boston was not stirring yet. It was still early ;
hardly a flush of warmth had washed the pearl.
But the sparrows had many matters to attend to
before all the milkmen and bakers got abroad :
they must take their morning dust-bath, for one
thing, in the worn places between the cobble-
stones, before the street-sprinkler began its
sloppy rounds.

There was a constant whirl out of the tree-
tops now. Occasionally a bird flew off alone,
but most of them left in small flocks, just as I
should see them return in the evening. Doubt-
less the members of these flocks were the birds
belonging to certain neighborhoods, those that
nested and fed about certain squares, large door-
yards, and leafy courts. They may indeed have
been families that were hatched last summer.

The birds that left singly went away, as a rule,
over the roofs toward the denser business sec-
tions of the city, while the bands, as I had no-
ticed them come in at night, took the opposite

[ 102]
course, toward Cambridge and Charlestown.
Not more than one in a hundred flew south
across the city.

Of course there are sparrows all over Boston.
There is no street too narrow, too noisy, too
dank with the smell of leather for them. They
seem as numerous where the rush of drays is
thickest as in the open breathing-places where ©
the fountains play. They are in every quarter,
yet those to the east and south of the old burial-
ground do not belong to the roost. Perhaps
they have graveyards of their own in their sec-
tions, though I have been unable to find them.
So far as I know, this is the only roost in or
about Boston. And this is the stranger since so
few of the total number of the Boston sparrows
sleep here. A careful estimate showed me that
there could not have been more than six or
seven thousand in the roost. One would almost
say there were as many millions in Boston.
And where do these millions sleep? For the
most part, each one alone behind his sign-board
or shutter near his local feeding-grounds.

Now, why should the sparrows of the roost
prefer King’s Chapel Burial Ground to the Old

[103 ]
Granary, astone’s throw up the street? I passed
the Old Granary yard on my way to the roost
and found the trees empty. I searched the
limbs with my glass ; there was not a sparrow to
be seen. Still, the Granary is the less exposed
of the two. It may not formerly have been so;
but at present high sheltering walls bend about
the trees like a well. Years ago, perhaps, when
the sparrows began to roost in the trees at
King’s Chapel, the Old Granary elms were more
open to the winds, and now force of habit and
example keep the birds returning to the first
lodge.

Back they come, no matter what the weather.
There are a thousand cozy corners into which a
sparrow might creep on a stormy night, where
even the winds that know their way through
Boston streets could not search him out. But
the instinct to do as he always has done is as
strong in the sparrow, in spite of his love for
pioneering, as it is in the rest of us. He was
brought here to roost as soon as he could fly,
when the leaves were on and the nights deli-
cious. If the leaves go and the nights change,
what of that? Here he began, here he will con-

[104]
tinue to sleep. Let it rain, blow, snow ; let the
sleet, like a slimy serpent, creep up the trunk
and wrap around the twigs: still he will hold
on. Many a night I have seen them sleeping
through a driving winter rain, their breasts to
the storm, their tails hanging straight down,
shedding every drop. Ifa gale is blowing, and
it is cold, they get to the leeward of the tree, as
close to the trunk as possible, and anchor fast,
every bill pointing into the wind, every feather
reefed, every tail lying out on the flat of the
storm.

As I watched the bands starting from the tree-
tops of the roost I wondered if they really
crossed the river into Cambridge and Charles-
town. A few mornings later I was again up
early, hastening down to the West Boston Bridge
to see if I could discover the birds going over. As
I started out I saw bunches moving toward the
river with a free and easy flight, but whether I
reached the bridge too late, or whether they
scattered and went over singly, I do not know.
Only now and then did a bird cross, and he
seemed to come from along the shore rather
than from above the house-tops.

[105]
I concluded that the birds of the roost were
strictly Bostonians. One evening, however, about
a week later, as I was upon this bridge coming
from Cambridge, a flock of sparrows whizzed
past me, dipped over the rail to the water,
swung up above the wall of houses, and disap-
peared toward the roost. They were on their
way from Cambridge, from the classic elms of
Harvard campus, who knows, to the elms of the
ancient burial-ground.

It was five that April morning when the first
sparrow left the roost. By half-past five the
trees were empty, except for the few birds whose
hunting-ground included the cemetery. By this
time the city, too, had yawned, and rubbed its
eyes, and tumbled out of bed.

[106 ]
“MUX ”
 

“MUX”

O, “Mux” is not an elegant name—not to

be compared with Ronald or Claudia, for
instance ; and I want to say it is not the name
of one of my children, though its owner was
once a member of my household. Mux was a
tame half-grown coon, with just the ordinary
number of rings around his tail, but with the
most extraordinary amount of mischief in his
little coon soul. Perhaps he had no real soul,
and I should have located his mischief some-
where else. If so, then I should say in his feet.
I never saw any other feet so expressive. The

[109]
essence of the little beast seemed concentrated
in his fore paws. If they made trouble, whose
fault was it? They were designed for trouble.
You could see this purpose in them as plainly
as you could see the purpose in a swallow’s
wings. Whenever Mux ran across the yard
these paws picked up trouble out of the turf,
just as if the grass were trouble-filings, and Mux
a kind of four-footed magnet. He never went
far before they clogged and stopped him.

One day, the first day that Mux was given the
liberty of the yard, who should he run foul of
but Tom! The struggle had to come sometime,
and it was just as well that it came thus early,
while Tom and Mux were on an equal footing
as to size, for Mux was young and growing.

Tom was boss of the yard. Every farmer’s
dog that went to town by our gate knew enough
to pass by on the other side. Tom had grown a
little lordly and opinionated. He was sleeping
in the sun on the shed-step as Mux ambled up.
At sight of the coon Tom rose in more than his
usual feline mightiness and cast such a look of
surprise, scorn, and annihilating intent upon the
interloper as ought to have struck terror to the

[110]
stoutest heart. But Mux hardly seemed to un-
derstand. On he came, right into certain de-
struction, a very lamb of innocence and meek-
ness. O you unsuspecting little stranger!
Don’t you see this awful monster swelling, swell-
ing-into this hideous hump? No, Mux did not
see him. Tom was raging. His teeth gleamed ;
his eyes blazed green; his claws worked in a
nervous way that made my flesh creep. He
was vanishing, not, like the Cheshire Cat, into a
long lovely grin, but vanishing from a four- :
legged cat into a yellow, one-legged hump. All
that was left of him now was hump.

Mux was only a few feet away. Tom began
to advance, not directly, but just a trifle on the
bias, across Mux’s bows so to speak, as if to give
him a broadside. They were within range.
Tom was heaving to. I trembled for the young
coon. Suddenly there was a hiss, a flash of yel-
low in the air, and—a very big surprise await-
ing Thomas! That little coon was no stupid
after all. He had not rolled up his sleeves, nor
doubled up his fists, nor put a chip upon his
shoulder; but he knew what was expected of
him, just the same. He snapped instantly upon

[111]
his back, received the cat with all four of his
feet, and gave Mr. Tom such a combing down
that his golden fur went flying off like thistle-
down in autumn.

It was all over in less than half a minute. I
think Tom must have made a new record for
himself in the running high jump when he broke
away from his ring-tailed antagonist. He struck
out across the yard and landed midway up the
clothes-post with a single bound. And Mux?
He ambled on around the yard, as calm and un-
concerned as if he had only stopped to scratch
himself.

Much of this unconcern, however, was a quiet
kind of swagger. When he thought no one
fiercer than a chicken or the humbled Mr. Tom
was looking, he would shuffle across the yard
with his coat collar turned up, his hat over his
eye, his elbows angled—just as if he had been
born and bred on the Bowery instead of in the
Bear Swamp. He was king of the yard, but I
could see that he wore his crown uneasily. He
kept a bold front, accepted every challenge, and
even went out of his way to pick a quarrel; yet
he quaked at heart continually. He feared and

[ite
hated the noises of the yard, particularly the
crowing of our big buff cochin rooster and the
screaming of the guineas. This was one of the
swamp-fears that he had brought with him and
could not outlive. It haunted him. If he had a
conscience, its only warnings were of coming
noises great and terrible.

But Mux had no conscience, unless it was one
that troubled him only when he was out of mis-
chief. His face was never so long and so solemn
as when I had caught him in some questionable
act or spoiled some wayward plan.

Mux, however, was possessed by a much stub-
borner spirit than this interesting mischief-devil.
Upon one point he was positively demented—
the only four-footed maniac I ever knew. He
had gone crazy on the subject of dirt, mad to
wash things, especially his victuals.

He was not particular about what he ate; al-
most anything that could be swallowed would
do, provided that it could be washed, and
washed by himself, after his own approved
fashion.

If I gave him half of my apple, he would
squat down by his wash-tub and begin to hunt

8 [113]
for dirt. He would look the apple over and
over, pick around the blossom end, inspect care-
fully, then pull out the stem, if there happened
to be a stem, dig out the seeds and peek into
the core, then douse it into the water and begin
to wash. He would rub with might and main
for a second or two, then rinse it, take a bite,
and douse it back again for more scrubbing,
until it was scrubbed and chewed away.

Even when the water was thick with mud,
this crazy coon persisted in washing his clean
cake and cabbage therein. Indeed, the muddier
the water, the more vigorously would he wash.
The habit was a part of him, as real a thing in
his constitution as the black ring in his fur. It
was a very dirty habit, here in captivity, even
if it went by the name of washing. Of course
Mux could not be blamed for his soiled wash-
water. That was my fault; only I could rt be
changing it every time he soaked up a fistful of
earth in his endeavor to wash something to eat
out of it. No; he was not at fault, altogether,
for the mud in his tub. Out in the Bear Swamp,
the streams that wandered about under the
great high-spreading gums, and lost their way

[114]
in the shadows, were crystal-clear and pure ; and
out there it was intended that he should dwell,
and in those sweet streams that he should wash.
But what a modicum of wit, of originality the
little. beast had, that, because he was born a
washer, wash he must, though he washed in mud,
nay, though he washed upon the upturned bot-
tom of his empty tub!—for this is what Mux |
did sometimes.

I never blamed Aunt Milly for insisting upon
this rather ill-sounding name of “Mux” for the
little coon. She was standing by his cage,
shortly after his arrival, watching him eat cab-
bage. He washed every clean white piece of it in
his oozy tub before tasting it, coating the bits over
with mud as you do the lumps of fondant with
chocolate in making “ chocolate creams.” Aunt
Milly looked at him for some time with scornful
face and finally exclaimed :

“Umph! Dat animile am a dumb beast shu’ !
Rubbin’ dirt right inter clean cabbage! Sich
muxin’! mux, mux, mux! Dat a coon? Dat
ain’t no coon. Dat ’sa mux!” And she scuffed
off to the house, mumbling, “ De muxinest thing
I done evah seen.” Hence his name.

[115]
If there is one sweetmeat sweeter than all
others to a coon, it is a frog. It was not mere
chance that Mux was born in the edge of the
Bear Swamp, close to the wide marshes that ran
out to the river. This was the great country of
the frogs—the milk-and-honey country to the
ring-tailed family in the hollow gum. But Mux
had never tasted frog. He had not been weaned
when I kidnapped him. One day, wishing to
see if he knew what a frog was, I carelessly
offered him a big spotted fellow that I had
caught in the meadow.

Did he know a frog? He fairly snatched the
poor thing from me, killed it, and started around
the cage with it in his mouth, dancing like a
cannibal. His long, serious face was more
thoughtful and solemn, however, than usual. I
was puzzled. I had heard of dancing at fune-
rals. Hither this was such a dance, or else some
wild orgy to propitiate the spirits that preside
over the destiny of coons. ‘

Throughout this gruesome rite Mux held the
frog in his mouth, and I watched, expecting,
hoping every moment that he would swallow it.
Suddenly he stopped, sat down by his tub,

[116]
pulled some dead grass out of it, plunged the
frog in, and began to scrub it—began to serub
the frog in the oozy contents of that tub, when
the poor amphibian had been soaking in spring-
water ever since it was a tadpole !

No matter. The frog must be washed. And
washed it was. It was scoured first with all his
might, then placed in the bottom of the tub,
under water, held down by one fore paw, until
the maniac could get in with his hind feet upon
it, and then danced upon ; from here it was laid
upon the floor of the cage and kneaded until as
limp as alump of dough; then lifted daintily, it
was shaken round and round in the water, rinsed
and wrung, and minutely inspected, and—swal-
lowed.

I felt justified in keeping this animal caged.
He was not fit to run loose even in the Bear
Swamp. Perhaps I have done him wrong in
this story of the frog. Frogs may need washing,
after all, despite the fact that they are never out
of the bath-tub long enough to dry off once in
their whole lives. Mux knew more about frogs
than I, doubtless. But Mux insisted upon wash-
ing oysters.

[117]
Now there are few people clothed in sane
minds who do not like raw oysters. Mark this, .
however: when you see a person wash raw oys-
ters, keep out of his way; he has lost either his
wits or his morals. The only two creatures I
ever knew to wash raw oysters were Mux and
an oyster-dealer in Cambridge Street, Boston. I
saw this dealer take up a two-gallon can that had
just arrived at his store, and dump the dark
salty shell-fish into a great colander, stick the
end of a piece of rubber hose in among them,
turn the water on, and stir and soak them. How
white they got! How fat they got! How their
ghastly corpses swelled !

Mux did not wash his to see them swell, but
simply that he might take no chances with dirt
—or poison, for I used to think sometimes that
he thought I was trying to poisonhim. He was
desperately fond of oysters. But who could cast
his pearls, or, to be scientifically and literally
correct, his mothers of pearls, before such a
swine? Mux had just one plateful of oysters
while I was his keeper. They were nice plump
fellows, and when I saw the maniac soak one all
stringy and -tasteless I poured his wash-water

[118]
out. Was he to be balked that way? No, no.
He took oyster number two, flopped it into the
empty tub, scoured it around on the muddy
bottom, looked it over as carefully as he had
done stringy number one, and swallowed sandy,
muddy number two with just as much relish.

This was too much. I cuffed him and took
away the tub. This I suppose was wrong, for
I understand you must never oppose crazy per-
sons. Well, Mux helped himself to oyster num-
ber three. There was no water, no tub. But
what were oysters for if not to be washed?
And who was he but Procyon lotor—Procyon
“the washer”? Can the leopard change his
spots or the racoon his habits? Can he? Shall
he? I could almost hear him muttering under
his breath, “To be, or not to be: that is the
question.” Then he darted a triumphantly ma-
licious glance at me, retreated to the back of his
cage, thrust his oyster out of sight beneath the
straw of his bed, and washed it—washed the oys-
ter in the straw, washed it into a fistful of sticks
and chaff, and gloated as he swallowed it.

, [119]
RACOON CREEK
 

RACOON CREEK

Into the wode to her the briddes sing.
I

VER the creek, and clearing it by a little,
Q hung a snow-white, stirless mist, its under
surface even and parallel with the face of the
water, its upper surface peaked and billowed half-
way to the tops of the shore-skirting trees.

As I dipped along, my head was enveloped in
the cloud ; but bending over the skiff, I could see
far up the stream between a mist-ceiling and a
water-floor, as through a long, low room. How
deep and dark seemed the water! And the

[123]
trees how remote, aérial, and floating! as if
growing in the skies, with no roots’ fast hold of
the earth. Filling the valley, conforming to
every bend and stretch of the creek, lay the
breath of the water, motionless and sheeted, a
spirit stream, hovering over the sluggish current
a moment, before it should float upward and
melt away. It was cold, too, as a wraith might
be, colder than the water, for the June sun had
not yet risen over the swamp.

At the bridge where the road crossed was a
dam which backed the creek out into an acre or
more of pond. Nota particle of mud discolored
the water; but it was dark, and as it came
tumbling, foaming over the moss-edged gates it
lighted up a rich amber color, the color of strong
tea. In the half chill of the dawn the old bridge
lay veiled in smoking spray, in a thin, rising
vapor of spicy odors, clean, medicinal odors, as
of the brewing of many roots, the fragrance of
shores of sedges, ferns, and aromatic herbs steeped.
in the slow, soft tide. And faint across the
creek, the road, and the fields lay the pondy smell
of spatter-docks.

I pushed out from the sandy cove and lay

[124]
with a reach of the lusty docks between me and
either shore. It was early morning. The yellow,
dew-laid road down which I came still slumbered
undisturbed ; the village cows had not been
milked, and the pasture slope, rounding with a
feminine grace of curve and form, lay asleep,
with its sedgy fingers trailing in the water; even
the locomotive in the little terminal round-
house over the hill was not awake and wheezing.
But the creek people were stirring—except the
frogs. They were growing sleepy. The long
June night they had improved, soberly, philo-
sophically ; and now, seeing nothing worth while
in the dawn of this wonder day, they had begun
to doze. But the birds were alive, full of the
crisp June morning, of its overflow of gladness,
and were telling their joy in chorus up and down
both banks of the creek.

Hearkneth thise blisful briddes how they singe.

Do you mean out in Finsbury Moor, Father
Chaucer? They were sweet along the banks of
the Walbrook, I know, for among them “maken
melodye”’ were the skylark, ethereal minstrel !
and the nightingale. But, Father Chaucer, you

[125 ]
should have heard the wood-thrushes, the orchard-
orioles—this whole morning chorus singing along
the creek! No one may know how blissful, how
wide, how thrilling the singing of birds can be
unless he has listened when the summer mists
are rising over Racoon Creek.

There is no song-hour after sunrise to compare
with this for spirit and volume of sound. The
difference between the singing in the dusk and
in the dawn is the difference between the slow,
sweet melody of a dirge and the triumphant,
full-voiced peal of a wedding march. Even one
who has always lived in the country can scarcely
believe his ears the first time he is afield in
June at the birds’ awaking-hour.

Robins led the singing along the creek. They
always do. In New Jersey, Massachusetts, Mich-
igan,—everywhere it is the same,—they out-
number all rivals three to one. It is necessary
to listen closely in order to distinguish the other
voices. This particular morning, however, the
wood-thrushes were all arranged up the copsy
hillside at my back, and so reinforced each other
that their part was not overborne by robin song.
One of the thrushes was perched upon a willow

[126]
stub along the edge of the water, so near that I
could see every flirt of his wings, could almost
count the big spots in his sides. Softly, calmly,
with the purest joy he sang, pausing at the end
of every few bars to preen and call. His song
was the soul of serenity, of all that is spiritual.
Accompanied by the lower, more continuous
notes from among the trees, it rose, a clear, pure,
wonderful soprano, lifting the whole wide chorus
nearer heaven.

Farther along the creek, on the border of
the swamp, the red-shouldered blackbirds were
massed ; chiming in everywhere sang the cat-
birds, white-eyed vireos, yellow warblers, or-
chard-orioles, and Maryland yellowthroats ; and
at short intervals, soaring for a moment high
over the other voices, sounded the thrilling,
throbbing notes of the cardinal, broken suddenly
and drowned by the roll of the flicker, the wild,
weird cry of the great-crested flycatcher, or the
rapid, hay-rake rattle of the belted kingfisher.

All at once a narrow breeze cut a swath through
the mist just across my bows, turned, spread,
caught the severed cloud in which I was drift-
ing, and whirled it up and away. The head of

[127]
the pond and the upper creek were still shrouded,
while around me only breaths of the white flecked
the water and the spatter-docks. The breeze
had not stirred a ripple; the current here in
the broad of the pond was imperceptible ; and I
lay becalmed on the edge of the open channel,
among the rank leaves and golden knobs of the
docks.

A crowd of chimney-swallows gathered over
the pond for a morning bath. Half a hundred
of them were wheeling, looping, and cutting
about me in a perfect maze of orbits, as if so
many little black shuttles had borrowed wings
and gone crazy with freedom. They had come
to wash—a very proper thing to do, for there
are few birds or beasts that need it more. It
was highly fitting for sooty little Tom, seeing he
had to turn into something, to become a Water
Baby. And if these smaller, winged sweeps of
our American chimneys are contemplating a
metamorphosis, it ought to be toward a similar
life of soaking.

They must have been particularly sooty this
morning. One plunge apiece, so far from sufficing,
seemed hardly a beginning. They kept diving

[128]
in over and over, continuing so long that finally
I grew curious to know how many dips they
were taking, and so, in order to count his dives,
I singled one out, after most of the flock had
done and gone off to hawk. How many he had
taken before I marked him, and how many more
he took after I lost him among the other birds,
I cannot say; but, standing up in the skiff, I
followed him around and around until he made
his nineteenth splash,—in less than half as many
minutes,—when I got so groggy that his twen-
tieth splash I came near taking with him.

The pond narrows toward the head, and just
before it becdmes a creek again the channel turns
abruptly through the docks in against the right
shore, where the current curls and dimples
darkly under the drooping branches of great red
_ maple; then it horseshoes into the middle, com-
ing down through small bush-islands and tangled
brush which deepen into an extensive swamp.

June seemed a little tardy here, but the elder,
the rose, and the panicled cornel were almost
ready, the button-bushes were showing ivory,
while the arrow-wood, fully open, was glistening
snowily everywhere, its tiny flower crowns fall-.

9 [129]
ing and floating in patches down-stream, its over-
sweet breath hanging heavy in the morning mist.
My nose was in the air all the way for magnolias
and water-lilies, yet never a whiff from either
shore, so particular, so unaccountably notional
are some of the high-caste flowers with regard
to their homes.

The skiff edged slowly past the first of the
islands, a mere hummock about a yard square,
and was turning a sharp bend farther up, when
I thought I had a glimpse of yellowish wings, a
mere guess of a bird shadow, dropping among the
dense maple saplings and elder of the islet.

Had I seen or simply imagined’ something?
If I had seen wings, then they were not those of
the thrasher, —the first bird that came to mind, —
for they slipped, sank, dropped through the
bushes, with just a hint of dodging in their
movement, not exactly as a thrasher would
have moved.

Drifting noiselessly back, I searched the tangle
and must have been looking directly at the bird
several seconds before cutting it out from the
stalks and branches. It was a least bittern, a
female. She was clinging to a perpendicular

[130]
stem of elder, hand over hand, wren fashion, her
long neck thrust straight into the air, absolutely
stiff and statuesque.

We were less than a skiff’s length apart, each
trying to outpose and outstare the other. I
won. Human eyes are none the strongest, nei-
ther is human patience, yet I have rarely seen a
creature that could outwait a man. The only
steady, straightforward eye in the Jungle was
Mowgli’s—because it was the only one with a
steady mind behind it. As soon as the bird let
herself look me squarely in the eye, she knew
she was discovered, that her little trick of turn-
ing into a stub was seen through; and immedi-
ately, ruffling her feathers, she lowered her head,
poked out her neck at me, and swaying from side
to side like a caged bear, tried to scare me, glar-
ing and softly growling.

Off she flopped as I landed. The nest might
be upon the ground or lodged among the bushes ;
but the only ground space large enough was
covered layer over layer with pearly clam-shells,
the kitchen-midden of some muskrat; and the
bushes were empty. I went to the other islets,
searched bog and tangle, and finally pulled away

[131]
disappointed, giving the least bittern credit for
considerable mother-wit and woodcraft. How
little wit she really had appeared on my return
down-creek that afternoon.

I had now entered the high, overhanging
swamp, where the shaggy trees, the looping vines,
and the rank, pulpous undergrowth grew thick
on both sides, reaching far back, a wet, heavy
wilderness without a path, except for the silent
feet of the mink and the otter, and the more
silent feet of the creek, here a narrow stream
winding darkly down through the shadows.

Every little while along the rooty, hummocky
banks of the creek I would pass a muskrat’s
slide. Here was one at the butt of a tulip-pop-
lar, its platform wet and freshly trodden, its
“dive” shooting sheer over a root into the
stream. Farther on stood a large tussock whose
top was trampled flat and covered with sedge-
roots. I could not resist putting my nose down
for a sniff, so good is the smell of a fresh trail,
so close are we to the rest of the pack. In the
thick of the swamp I stopped a moment to ex-
amine the footprints of an otter at a shallow,
shelving place along the bank, where, opening

[132]
through the skunk-cabbage and Indian turnip,
and covered almost ankle-deep with water, was
the creature’s runway.

I had moved leisurely along, yet not aim-
lessly. The whole June day was mine to waste ;
but it would not be well wasted if nothing more
purposeful than wasting were in mind.

One does not often drift to a port. Going
into the woods to see anything is a very sure
way of seeing little or nothing; and taking the
path to anywhere is certain to lead one nowhere
in particular. Many interested, nature-loving
people fail to enjoy the out-of-doors simply be-
cause they have no definite spot to reach, no
flower, bird, or bug to find when they enter the
fields and woods. Going forth “to commune
with nature” sounds very fine, but it is much
more difficult work than conversing with the
Sphinx. In order to draw near to nature I re-
quire a pole with a hook and line on the end of
it. While I watch the float and wait, if there
is any communion, it is nature who. holds it
with me through the medium of the pole. I
need to have an errand to do; some berries to
pick, a patch of potatoes to hoe (a very small

[133]
patch) ; an engagement to keep, like Thoreau,
with a tree, if I hope to squander with profit
even the laziest summer day.

I was heading up-stream toward a deep
sandy-sided pool that was bottomed, or rather
unbottomed, by the shadows of overhanging
beeches. The pool was alive with racoon-
perch. A few mornings before this, a boy from
a neighboring farm had come to fish here and
had found a fisher ahead of him. He was just
about to cast, when back under the limbs of the
beeches the water broke, and a mink rose to the
surface with a fine perch twisting in her jaws.
Straight toward the boy she swam till within
reach of his rod, when she recognized the hu-
man in him, turned a back-dive somersault,
and vanished.

Would she be fishing again this morning? I
hoped so. It was her hour—the hour of the
rising mist; visitors rarely found their way to
the pool ; and I knew the appearance of the ‘boy
had given her no lasting alarm.

Floating around the bend, I pulled in among
the shore bushes by a bit of grape-vine, and sit-
ting down upon it, made my boat fast. I had

[134]
planned the trip with the hope of seeing this
mink ; so I waited, quite hidden, though having
the pool in full view. An: hour passed, but no
mink appeared. Another hour, and the sun
was breaking upon the beeches, and the mist
was gone; yet no mink came to fish. And what
mink would? Of course you must have it in
mind to see a mink fish if you wish to see any-
thing; but the day you really catch the mink
fishing will likely be the day you went out to
watch for muskrats.

So an hour’s waiting is rarely fruitless. The
mink did not come, but another and quite as
expert a fisher did. All the way up the creek I
had been hearing the throaty ghouw-bhouw of a
great blue heron off in the swamp. It was he
that came for perch.

The flapping of the great blue heron is a
sight good for the soul—an unheard-of motion
these days, so moderate, unhurried, and time-
contemning! The wing-beats of this one, as he
came dangling down upon the meadow opposite
me, have often given me pause since. If I could
have the wings of the great blue heron and flap
to my fishing now and again!

[135 ]
On alighting, however, he was instantly all
nerve and tension. With the utmost caution he
came over the high sedges on his stilt-like legs
to the brink of the creek and posed. I doubt if
a frog or a minnow could have told he was a
thing of life. Stiff as a stub, every muscle taut,
all alert, he stood, till—flash! and the long
pointed bill pinned a perch, a foot and a half
beneath the water. He had quite made out a
breakfast, when, stepping upon a tall tussock, he
stood face to face with me—a human spectator !
It was only for a moment that I could keep mo-
tionless enough to puzzle him. Some muscle
must have twitched, for he understood and
leaped into the air with a croak of mortal fright.

II

THE creek was roped off by the sagging fox
grape-vines, and barred, from this point on, by
the alders, so that I gave up all attempt at far-
ther ascent. I had already given up the mink;
yet I waited under the beeches.

It was blazing overhead, growing hotter and
closer all the time, with hardly breeze enough to

[136 ]
disturb the sleep of the leaf shadows on the
sleepy stream. A rusty, red-bellied water-snake,
in a mat of briers near by, relaxed and straight-
ened slowly out,—and softly, that I might not be
attracted,—stretching himself to the warmth. I
could have broken his back with my paddle,
‘and perhaps, by so doing, saved the nestlings of
a pair of Maryland yellowthroats fidgeting about
near him. He had eaten many a young bird of
these bushes, I was sure—yet only circumstan-
tially sure. Catching him in the act of robbing
a nest would have been different ; I should have
felt justified then in despatching him. But to
strike him asleep in the sun simply because he
was a snake would have robbed the spot of part
of its life and spirit and robbed me of serenity
for the rest of the day. I should not have been
able to enjoy the quiet again until I had said
my prayers and slept.

And as between the hawks and other wild
birds, we need not interfere. While the water-
snake was spreading himself, a small hawk, a
sharp-shinned, I think, came beating over the
meadow and was met by a vigilance committee
of red-shouldered blackbirds. He did not stop

[137]
to eat any of them, but darted up, and they after
him. On up he went, round and round in a
rapid, mounting spiral, till only one of the dar-
ing redwings followed. I watched. Up they
went, higher than I had ever seen a blackbird
venture before. And against such unequal
odds! But the hawk was scared and had not
stopped to look back. He circled; the black-
bird cut across inside and caught him on almost
every round. And still higher in pure bravado
the redwing forced him. I began to tremble
for the plucky bird, when I saw him turn, half
fold his shining wings, and shoot straight down
—a meteor of jet with fire flying from its opposite
sides—down, down, while I held my breath.
Suddenly the wings flashed, and he was scaling
a steep incline; another flash, a turn, and he
was upon a slower plane—had thrown himself
against the air and settled upon the swaying top
of a brown cattail.

A quiet had been creeping over the swamp
and meadow. The dry rasp of a dragon-fly’s
wings was loud in the grass. The stream be-
neath the beeches darkened and grew moody as
the light neared its noon intensity ; the beech-

[138 ]
leaves hung limp and silent; a catbird settled
near me with dropped tail and head drawn in
between her shoulders, as mute as the leaves ;
the Maryland yellowthroat broke into a sharp
gallop of song at intervals,—he would have to
clatter a little on doomsday, if that day fell in
June,—but the intervals were far apart. The
meadow shimmered. No part of the horizon
was in sight—only the sky overhanging the
little open of grass, and this was cloudless,
though far from blue.

Perhaps there was not a real sign of uneasiness
anywhere except in my boat; yet I felt some-
thing ominous in this silent, stifled noon. After
all, I ought to have scotched the rusty, red-bel-
lied water-snake leering at me now. The croak
of the great blue heron sounded again ; then far
away, mysterious and spirit-like, floated a soft
qua, qua, qua—the cry of the least bittern out of
the heart of the swamp.

I loosed the grape-vine, put in my paddle, and
turned down-stream, with an urgent desire to
get out of the swamp, out where I could see
about me. I made no haste, lest the stream, the
swamp, the something that made me uneasy,

[139 ]
should know. Not that I am _ superstitious,
though I should have been had I lived when the
land was all swamp and wood and prairie; and
I should be now were I a sailor. My boat slipped
swiftly along under the thick-shadowing trees,
and rounding a sharp bend, brought me to the
open pond, to the sky, and to a sight that ex-
plained my disquietude. The west, half-way to
the zenith, was green—the black-and-blue green
of bruised flesh. Out of it shot a fork of light-
ning, and behind it rumbled muffled thunder.

There was no time to descend the pond. I
could already hear the wind across the silence
and suspense. It was one of the supreme mo-
ments of the summer. The very trees seemed
breathless and awe-struck. Pushing quickly
to the wooded shore, I drew out the boat, turned
it over, and crawled under it just as the leaves
stirred with the first cool, wet breath. _

There was an instant’s lull, a tremor through
the ground; then the rending and crunching of
the wind monster in the oaks, the shriek of the
forest victim—and the wind was gone. The
rain followed with fearful violence, the lightning
sizzled and cracked among the trees, and the

[140]
thunder burst just above the boat—all holding
on to finish the wind’s work.

It was soon over. The leaves were dripping
when I crept out of my shell; the afternoon sun
was blinking through a million gleaming tears,
and the storm was rumbling far away, behind
the swamp. A robin lighted upon a branch over
me, and set off its load of drops, which rattled
down on my boat’s bottom like a charge of shot.
I glided into the stream. Down the pond where
I had seen the sullen clouds was now an inde-
scribable freshness and glory of shining hills and
shining sky. The air had been washed and was
still hanging across the heavens undried. The
maple-leaves showed silver; the flock of chim-
ney-swifts had returned, and among them, twin-
kling white and blue and brown, were tree-
swallows and barn-swallows squeaking in their
flight like new harness; a pair of night-hawks
played back and forth across the water, too,
awakened, probably, by the thunder, or else mis-
taken in the green darkness of the storm, think-
ing it the twilight ; and the creek up and down
as far as I could hear was ringing with bird-
calls.

[141]
There had been a perceptible rise and quick-
ening of the current. It was slightly roiled and
carried a floatage of broken twigs, torn leaves,
with here and there a golden-green tulip-petal,
like the broken wings of butterflies.

I was in no hurry now, in no disquietude.
The swamp and the storm were at my back.
Before me lay the pond, the pastures, and the
roofs of a human village—all bathed in the
splendor of the year’s divinest hour. It had not
been a perfect day, but these closing hours were
perfect, so perfect that they redeemed the whole,
and not that day only: they were perfect
enough to have redeemed the whole of creation
travailing till then in pain.

Because I turned from all this sunset glory to
find out what little bird was making the very big
fuss near by, and because, parting the foliage of
an arrow-wood bush, I looked with exquisite
pleasure into the nest of a white-eyed vireo,
does it mean that I am still unborn as to soul?
For some reason it was a relief to look away
from that west of vast and burning color to the
delicately dotted eggs in the tiny cradle—the
same relief felt in descending from a mountain-

[142]
top to the valley ; in turning from the sweep of
the sea to watch beach-fleas hopping over the
sand ; in giving over the wisdom of men for the
gabble of my little boys.

How the vireo scolded! and her mate! He
half sang his threat and defiance. “Come, get
out of this! Come; do you hear?” he cried over
and over, as I peeked into the nest. It was a
thick-walled, exquisite bit of a basket, rimmed
round with green, growing moss, worked over
with. shredded bark and fragments of yellow
wood from a punky stump across the stream,
and suspended by spider-webs upon two parallel
twigs about three feet above the water. It was
not consciously worked out by the birds, of
course, but the patch of yellow-wood fragments
on the side of the nest exactly matched the size
and color of the fading cymes of arrow-wood
blossoms all over the bush, so that I mistook
the little domicile utterly on first parting the
leaves. A crow or a snake would never have
discovered it from that side.

Paddling down, I was soon out of earshot of
the scolding vireos, but the little cock’s vigor-
ous, ringing song followed me to the head of the

[143]
pond. Flying heavily over from the meadows
with folded neck and dangling legs came a little
green heron—the “poke.” I spun round be-
hind a big clump of elder to watch him ; but he
saw me, veered, gulped aloud, and pulled off
with a rapid stroke up the creek.

As I turned, my eye fell upon a soft, yellow-
ish something in the rose-bushes across the
docks. I was slow to believe. ‘ It was too good
to be credited all at once. Within three paddle-
lengths of my boat, in a patch of dark that must
be a nest, stood my least bittern.

I sat still for several seconds, tasting the joy of
my discovery and anticipating the look into the
nest. Then, upon my knees in the bow of the
skiff, I pulled up by means of the stout dock-
leaves until almost able to touch the bird, when
she walked off down a dead stalk to the ground,
clucking and growling at me.

It was n’t a nest to boast of; but she might
boast of her eggs, for there was more of eggs than
of nest—a great deal more. A few sticks had
been laid upon the ends of the bending rose-
bushes, and this flimsy, inadequate platform was
literally covered by the five dirty-white eggs.

[144]
The hen had to stand on the bushes straddling
the nest in order to brood. How she ever got as
close to the nest as that without spilling its con-
tents was hard to see; for I took an egg out and
had the greatest difficulty in putting it back, so
little room was there, so near to nothing for it
to rest upon.

Working back into the channel, I gave the
skiff to the easy current and drew slowly along
toward the foot of the pond.

The sun had gone down behind the hill; the
flame had faded from the sky, and over the
rim of the circling slopes poured the soft, cool
twilight, with a breeze as soft and cool, and a
spirit that was prayer. Drifting across the
pond as gently as the gray half-light fell a
shower of lint from the willow catkins. The
swallows had left; but from the leafy darkness
of the copse in front of me, piercing the dreamy,
foamy roar of the distant dam, came the notes
of a wood-thrush, pure, sweet, and peaceful,
speaking the soul of the quiet time. My boat
grated softly on the sandy bottom of the cove
andswung in. Out from the deep shadow of the
wooded shore, out over the pond, a thin white

10 [145]
veil was creeping—the mist, the breath of the
sleeping water, the spirit of the stream. And
away up the creek a distorted, inarticulate
sound—the hoarse, guttural croak of the great
blue heron, the weird, uncanny cry of the night,
the mock, the menace of the tangled, untamed
swamp !

[146]
THE DRAGON OF THE SWALE
 

THE DRAGON OF THE SWALE

M path to Cubby Hollow ran along a tum-
bling worm-fence, down a gravelly slope,
and across a strip of swale, through which flowed
the stream that farther on widened into the
Hollow. A small jungle of dog-roses, elder, and
blackberry tangled the banks of the stream,
spreading into flanks of cinnamon-fern that crept
well up the hillsides.

As I descended the gravelly slope, my path led
through the ferns into a tunnel of vines, to a
rail over the water, and on up to the woods. By
the middle of June the tangle, except by the
half-broken path, was almost rabbit-proof. The

[149]
rank ferns waved to my chin, and were so thick
that they left little trace of my passing until late
in the summer.

This bit of the swale from the lower edge of
the gravelly slope to the edge of the woods on
the opposite slope was the lair of a dragon. My
path cut directly across it.

Perhaps the dragon had been there ever since
I had known the swale, and summer after sum-
mer had allowed me to cross unchallenged. I
do not know. I only know that one day he rose
out of the ferns before me — the longest, ugliest,
boldest beast that ever withstood me in the quiet
walks about home.

It was a day in early July, hot and very close.
I was wading the sunken trail, much as one
“treads water,’ my head not always above the
surface of the fronds, when, suddenly, close to
my side the ferns in a single spot were violently
shaken. Instantly ahead of me they whirled
again; and before I could think, off across the
path was another rush and whirl — then stirless
silence.

I knew what it meant. These were not the
sudden, startled leaps of three animals, but the

[150]
lightning movements of one. I had crossed the
path of a swamp black-snake, and judging from
the speed and whirl, it was a snake of uncommon
size.

The path, a few paces farther on, opened into
a small patch of low grass. Just as I was getting
through the brake to this spot I stopped short
with a chill. In the ferns near me shrilled a
hissing whistle, a weird, creepy whistle that
made me cold—a fierce, menacing sound, all
edge, and so thin that it slivered every nerve
in me. And then, without a stir in the brake,
up out of the low grass in front of me rose a
blue-black, glittering head.

I have little faith in the spell of a snake’s eye,
yet for a moment I was held by the subtle, mas-
terful face that had risen so unexpectedly, so
coolly before me. It was lifted a foot out of the
grass. The head upon its lithe, round neck was
poised motionless, but set as with a hair-spring.
The flat, pointed face was turned upon me, so
that I could see a patch of white upon the throat.
Evidently the snake had just sloughed an old
skin, for the sunlight gleamed iridescent on the
shining jet scales. It was not a large head ; it

[151]
lacked the shovel-nose and the heavy, horrid
jaws of the rattle-snake. But it was clean-cut,
with power in every line of jaw and neck ; with
power and speed and certainty in the pose, so
easy, ready, and erect. There was no fear in
the creature’s eye, something rather of aggres-
siveness, and of such evil cunning that I stood
on guard.

Afraid of a snake? of a black-snake? No. I
think, indeed, there are few persons who really
do fear snakes. It is not fear, but nerves. I
have tamed more black-snakes than I have
killed. I should not care a straw if one bit me.
Yet, for all of that, the meeting with any black-
snake is so unlooked for as always to be unnerv-
ing. But let a huge one whip about you in the
brake, chill you with an unearthly hissing
whistle, then suddenly rise in front of you,
glittering, challenging, sinister! You will be
abashed. I was; and I shall never outgrow the
weakness.

It was a big snake. I had not been mistaken
in its size. There is nothing on earth that
shrinks as a dead snake ; and this one, so far as I
know, is still alive ; yet, allowing generously for

[152]
my imagination, I am sure the creature measured
six feet. His neck, just behind the jaws, was
nearly the size of a broom-handle, which meant
a long, hard length curved out in the ferns be-
hind. It was a male; I could tell by the peculiar
musk on the air, an odor like cut cucumbers.

Fully a minute we eyed each other. Then I
took a step forward. The glittering head rose
higher. Off in the ferns there beat a warning
tattoo — the loud whir of the snake’s tail against
a skunk-cabbage leaf.

In my hand was a slender dogwood switch
that I had been poking into the holes of the
digger-wasps up the hillside. If one thing more
than another will turn a snake tail to in a hurry
it is the song of a switch. Expecting to see this
overbold fellow jump out of his new skin and
lunge off into the swale, I leaned forward and
made the stick’ sing under his nose. But he did
not jump or budge. He only bent back out of
range, swayed from side to side, and drew more
of his black length out into the low grass to
better his position.

The lidless eyes and scale-cased face of a snake
might seem incapable of more than one set

[153]
expression. Can hate and fear show there?
They certainly can, at least to my imagination.
If ever hate and fear mantled a face, they did
this one in the grass. The sound of the switch
only maddened the creature. He had too long
dictated terms in this part of the swale to crawl
aside for me.

Nor would I give way to him. But I ceased
switching, drew back a step, and looked at him
with more respect than I ever before showed a
snake.

The curved neck straightened at that, the
glinting head swayed forward, and shivering
through me as the swish of a stick never shivered
through a snake, sounded that unearthly hissing
whistle. For a second — for just the fraction of
a second that it takes to jump—I was, not
seared, but shocked ; and I slipped on something
underfoot. In three directions I wallowed the
ferns before I got to my feet to watch the snake
again, and by that time the snake was gone.

T found myself somewhat muddy and breathing
a little hard; but I was not wholly chagrined.
I had heard and seen a black-snake whistle. I
had never even known of the habit before.

[154]
Since then I have seen one other snake do it,
and I think I have heard the sound three or
four times. It is almost indescribable. The
jaws were closed as it was made, not even the
throat moving, that I could see. The air seemed
to be blown violently through the nostrils,
though sounding as if driven through the teeth—
a Shrilling hiss, fine and piercing, which one not
so much hears as feels, crisping cold along his
nerves.

It may seem strange, but I believe this
whistle is a mating-call. Even the forked
tongue (or maybe the nose) of a snake grows
vocal with love. If only the Sphinx had not pos-
sessed a heart of stone! No matter about its
lips; with a heart to know the “spring running”
we should have heard its story long ago. Per-
haps, after all, the college sophomore was not
mixing his observations and Sunday-school mem-
ories when he wrote, describing the dawn of a
spring morning (I quote from his essay) : “Be-
neath in the water the little fishes darted about
the boat ; above the little birds twittered in the
branches ; while off on a sunny log in the pond
the soft, sibilant croak of the mud-turtle was

[155]
heard on the shore.” If we could happen upon
the mud-turtle mad with love, I am sure we
should find that he had a voice—a “soft, sibilant
croak,” who knows?

I had long known the tradition among the
farmers of the black-snake’s trailing its mate,
following her by scent through grass and brush,
persistent and sure as a sleuth-hound, until at
last she is won. I had been told of this by eye-
witnesses over and over, but I had always put it
down as a snake story, for these same witnesses
would also tell me the hoop-snake story, only it
was their grandfathers, always, who had seen
this creature take its tail in its mouth and roll,
and hit and kill a fifty-dollar apple-tree (the
tree was invariably worth fifty dollars). JI had
small faith in the trailing tale.

One day, the summer after my encounter in
the ferns, I was sitting upon a harrow at the
edge of the gravelly field that slopes to the
swale, when a large black-snake glided swiftly
across the lane and disappeared in the grass be-
yond. It had been gone perhaps a minute,
when J heard another stir behind me, and
turning, saw high above the weeds and dewberry-

[156]
vines the neck and head of a second black-
snake.

He was coming swiftly, evenly, carrying his
gleaming head over a foot from the ground, and
following hard upon the trail of the first snake.
He hit very near the smooth, flowing mark in
the dust of the lane. Here she had crossed.
Here he was about to cross when he caught
sight of me.

For a startled instant he stiffened, threw him-
self on the defensive, and showed a white patch
under his chin, an ugly, blazing light in his eye,
and a peculiarly aggressive attitude that there
was no mistaking. I had seen this snake before.
I knew him. He was the dragon of the swale.

Only pausing, he whirled, struck the track,
and sped on, his round black body stretching
from rut to rut of the lane. A hundred feet
beyond in the grass I saw his glittering head
rise and sway with a swimming motion as he
trailed the long, lithe beauty that was leading
him this lightning race across the fields.

This was not the last time he crossed my path.
He never withstood me again ; but he thwarted
me several times. Once as I was descending the

{157 ]
slope I saw him gliding down from a low cedar.
The distressing cries of two chippies told me
what he had been doing in the tree; I did not
need to look at the half-dislodged nest. Then
and there I vowed to kill him, but from that
moment I never set eyes on him again. His
evil work, however, went on. In a clump of
briers across the stream was the nest of a pair
of redbirds that I was watching. One day just
before the young could fly they were carried
off. I knew who did it. On the same side, up
under the fence by the woods, a litter of rabbits
was destroyed. The snake killed them. It
was he, too, who ate the eggs of the bluebirds
in the old apple-tree along the fence in the ad-
joining field.

There must be a dragon in the way, I sup-
pose—in the way even of nature study. There
are unpleasant, perhaps unnecessary, and evil
creatures—snakes!—in the fields and woods,
which we must be willing to meet and tolerate
for the love within us. Tick-seeds, beggar-
needles, mud, mosquitos, rain, heat, hawks, and
snakes haunt all our paths, hindering us some-
times, though never really blocking the way.

[158 J
But the dragon in the swale—ought I to tol-
erate him? No. There are moments when I
should be glad to kill him, yet I doubt if the
swale would be quite so wild and thrilling a
spot if I knew there was no dragon to meet me
as I crossed. But the redbirds, bluebirds, rab-
bits? I see no shrinking in their numbers be-
cause of the snake. A few of them breed as
they always have along the swale. There are
worse enemies than the dragon, though he is
bad enough.

[159]
TICKLE-BIRDS AND THE COCCINELLIDZ

11
 

TICKLE-BIRDS AND THE COCCINELLID:

ie a town where untrained observation rages,
so the story goes, au elderly lady met an
acquaintance in a shady avenue and asked her:

“ Do you know anything about birds?”

“No,” said the other; “I ’m sorry, but I
don’t.”

“Sorry! Oh, you ’re such a relief! I just
met Mrs. C., and she grasped my hand, gazed
upward, and exclaimed : ‘Oh, did you hear that
perfectly lovely spike-beaked, purple-eyed
tickle-bird?’

[ 163 ]
“T had n’t gone a block before I met Mrs. K.
‘Hush !’ she said ecstatically. ‘Don’t move a
muscle! Right up there on that branch is one
of those rare, exquisite, speckle-winged, ring-
tailed screamers.’

“You and I seem to be the only sane people
left.”

I happen to know the above Mrs. C. and Mrs.
K. personally. I meet them everywhere.
When they are not listening to the purple-eyed
tickle-bird, they are whispering “ Twinkle
twinkle” to the stars, or calling, as they pace
the beach, “ Roll on, thou deep and dark blue
Ocean.” They love the out-of-doors. They ex-
claim over nature with the lips of all the poets.
They adore her! AJ] the time they go about
looking for wonderful purple-eyed tickle-birds
and screamers, listening for wind voices, feeling
for wave pulses, and dreaming, forever dream-
ing, of how happy the morning stars must be
that they sing together.

All of which is good. An excellent thing it
is to have a turn of rapture now and again.
Nature herself will have one occasionally—in

[ 164]
June. But chronic ecstasy, the extreme and not
uncommon type of the afore-mentioned ladies, is
a disease, a mental, a moral disease indeed, which
must be cured before we can understand and
really love the out-of-doors. Nature hates cant.
We need to hear old Triton’s wreathed horn
—the oftener the better. The world of things,
mere things, is still very much with us. We are
in no danger from overmuch poetry. The
trouble with the tickle-bird-screamer persons.
is not that they find too much poetry in nature,
but that they really find none at all. For they
do not look in the right place for it. Poetry is
not in birds and sunsets and moonlight, —not in
things,—but, like the kingdom of heaven and
other things divine, it is in us, in ourselves. It
is a mistake to go about, like Orlando and Mrs.
C., sticking poems, the poets’ poems, over earth
and sea and sky, imagining that this is loving
nature, that this is knowing the out-of-doors.
How shall we see mice in the grass or hear
toads in the puddles with our heads cloud-
wreathed and our spirits afloat in the ether be-
yond the stars? Who wants to see mice or hear
toads? Not Mrs. C., nor Mrs. K., nor many of

[165 ]
the rest of us, for what we feel is necessary, when
loosed in the fields and woods, is to have those
blank misgivings of the creature that moved
about in worlds not realized. We have them,
too, many of them, and exceedingly blank ones.

Misgivings, of course, the naturalist will have.
But he never hunts for them, not the blank
species anyway. Nor does the poet. We think
of Coleridge and Wordsworth tramping the
Quantock Hills together seeking ecstasies and
verses as we should seek heather and daisies.
Far from it. A poet rarely has his raptures
out-of-doors ; and he never runs one down. He
roams the hills, seeing things. When he returns
and begins to think about them, then he drinks
the divine draught.

I gazed —and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought,

says. the poet, then adds:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude ;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

[166 ]
The poet and the naturalist seldom soar into
heaven when the open sky is directly over them.
They ride a centaur out-of-doors. They keep
Pegasus stalled in the study.

Every close, sympathetic observer of nature
ought to hope and patiently work for those rare
moments of wide, free vision when he stands
upon the heights, when the veil of distance falls,
shrouding all with largeness, mystery, and beauty.
It is his rignt to

Clasp the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands,

as truly as the eagle’s. Only he must not roost
and nest there. Such visions are vouchsafed
occasionally to prophets, poets, and at long in-
tervals to naturalists and to common men. Pis-
gah came but once to Moses, though his pathway
ran forty years through the wilderness. We shall
stand on Pisgah—but not until we have wan-
dered awhile in the Plains of Moab.

And what other way is there to Pisgah? The
only preparation of soul for the grand in nature
is the study of the small and the near at hand.
We must reckon infinite things in terms finite—

[167]
the Matterhorn by the hill in the old home pas-
ture.

I chanced to be on the summit of Mount
Washington when the tickle-bird-screamer ladies
arrived there. They came, as usual, with their
thoughts trailing the edges of the universe, and
climbed the mountain, as I knew they would,
on the crazy, snorting little engine, stepping at
once from the car into a world above the clouds.
Better that way than never to stand upon the
top at all. The railroad is a boon to the aged,
the weak-headed, and all with uncertain hearts.
But for the healthy, the vigorous, for all who
want to pray up there, the only road is the path
through the spruce to Hermit Lake, and up over
the Head Wall of Tuckerman’s Ravine.

There is no preparation for the summit like
the struggle through those narrow forest defiles
and the climb over the grim Head Wall, and,
just short of the peak, the sight of a tiny sand-
wort in the Alpine Garden on the edge of the
rent, rocky height.

If infinite majesty rolls in upon the soul from
the mountain-peak, no less does infinite beauty
breathe from the little blossom plucked on our

[ 168]
ascent. One who can climb the mountain blind
to the revelation, unaware of the mystery in the
humblest flower-cup, has no eyes for the far-
rolling mightiness of peak and plain and un-
blurred boundary of sky revolving round him on
the summit.

But it takes a trained eye to see the sand-
wort, while any eye not totally blind can shift
about in its socket and make out mountains from
the top of Washington.

The tickle-bird-screamer naturalists have a
mere passing, fashionable madness. It came
suddenly one day, during a parlor lecture on
birds ; it will go away with the next dog-show.

Such lovers are none the worse for their pas-
sion; only they never come to know the out-of-
doors. Poetry, lectures, nature-books are for
them, and museums of stuffed, made things.
The out-of-doors requires too much patience,
alertness, insight, and sincerity.

II

As they sat on the porch, so this story goes,
the school trustee casually called attention to a

[169 ]
familiar little orange-colored bug, with black
spots on its back, that was crawling on the floor.
“T s’pose you know what that is?” he said.
“Yes,” replied the applicant, with conviction ;
“that is a Coccinella septempunctata.”
“Young man,” was the rejoinder, ‘“a feller as
don’t know a ladybug when he sees it can’t get
my vote for teacher in this deestrict.”

Now it happens that I also know the young
school-teacher of the above story. Indeed, I
fall in with him oftener than with either Mrs. C.
or Mrs. K. of the tickle-birds. He is college-
bred. He observes nature “scientifically,” he
says. He knows what he knows, namely, that
Coccinella septempunctata is septempunctata and
not novemnotata. All he knows (and what else
is there to know?) is septempunctata and novem-
notata—the names of things, the places, parts,
laws, and theories of things. He is the text-book
naturalist.

We have been afield together a few times,
but I was never able to interest or surprise him,
because there were no surprises left: he knew
everything. He had dissected every flower,

[170]
measured every bird, stuck a pin through every
butterfly ; he had a glacial theory for every
pebble, a chemical theory for every glow-worm,
and a pile of science for the color of the autumn
leaves which made way with every fleck of their
glory.

The trustee was right : the young man was not
fit for a teacher. He had memorized Coccinella
septempunctata, but he did not know the ladybug.

Among my acquaintances are three nature-
students of this family Coccinellide, all of whom
are teachers. One of these used to go into the
woods carrying long lists of scientific names of
flowers written out on paper, which he conned
by the way. Along a familiar stretch of road,
across a plowed field, out came the roll of names,
and he would mumble: “ Pogonia ophioglossoides,
Pogonia ophioglossoides, ophioglossoides, ophiog—”
never seeing the waves chasing each other across
the heavy-headed wheat.

Of all the flowers beautiful, rare, and sweet,
his favorite, I think, was the everlasting, for he
said to me one day, with a show of real interest,
“The everlasting has the longest Latin name by
two letters of any flower I have analyzed.”

[171]
The second student: He never told me how it
happened ; whether he had been reading poetry,
had been advised by his doctor to get out-of-
doors, or had simply found himself without a
hobby. Anyhow, one winter night he deter-
mined that he would study birds. He waited
until morning, then started for Philadelphia,
where he bought all the bird-books he could
find.

I shall never forget the beautiful light on his
face as he told me the exact amount, to the cent,
that the enormous pile of volumes cost him.

He put the literature all away until June,—
until things were ablare with bird-song,—then
took himself and his library to Tuckahoe, the
birdiest spot in New Jersey, and there began.

This trip in June became a habit. One au-
tumn I met him in the city. “How did the
birding go last summer?” I inquired.

“Slow, slow,” he replied. ‘Did n’t do much.
But—” with an emphasis that surely meant he
had seen the ivory-billed woodpecker or the
great auk—‘‘but I paid expressage to Tuckahoe
on sixty-seven pounds of bird-books !”

Number three is a woman, and naturally less

[172]
moderate than either of the men. The most
scientific thing in this wide world is a scientific
woman. The discovery of a new plant in this
woman’s out-of-doors is like the finding of a new
pain or symptom of disease in her body. She
hurries to the doctors to have it identified, ut-
terly unhappy until they have told her its name.
I have known her to travel twenty-five miles
with a little watery, worthless mushroom in the
hope of finding it Mycena galericulata or M.
parabolica—or something, it did n’t matter what.
Her opera-glasses lie focused, ready. A bird
chirps among the trees. She snatches the glasses,
rushes out, then rushes in, exclaiming: “It flew
over the garden: a streak of black—a patch of
yellow—a short tail. A new one, I do believe!
It 11 make the hundred and tenth to my list.”
Once a thing is labeled, what more? She
loves the out-of-doors, yearns over it; yearns to
bring things and their Latin names together.
How she would have enjoyed Adam’s place—
having the animals file past her to get their
names! The joy of bending low at the approach
of the little orange-colored bug with black spots
on its back, and saying: ‘Your name, miss?

(i73]
You are Coccinella septempunctata. And you?”
—to her sister ladybug—“You are Coccinella,
also, but you are novemnotata.” The joy of it!
And something of that joy is hers, for she has a
nature-study class at a young ladies’ seminary.

I hardly know which state of mind is farther
from the mind of the true nature-lover—the
ecstatic, exclamatory one, that goes chanting
rimes and verses like priests and spring poets,
or the analytical, labeling mind, that scours the
country with a book, finding out what Linneus,
Audubon, and Gray called things.

Of course the lover of the out-of-doors wants
to know—even know that the ladybug is Cocci-
nella septempunctata ; but classifying the world of
field and wood is only the beginning of know-
ledge. How, for instance, does the fact that the
dandelion is Taraxacum officinale compare with
the discovery of its shining face in the cold, wet
death of some February roadside, or the finding
of its hoary hairs in the lining of a chebec’s
nest? And to the exclamatory, all-worshiping
ones what mean the loving lines:

Dear common flower that grow’st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,

[174]
if these worshipers never plucked the flower
beside a dusty road? if they never felt May-
time open in their hearts at sight of it? if no
memories of

Meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,

come to them as they pass it by?

The true nature-lover knows at least a little;
and keeps learning all the time; he goes afield
the seasons through ; he sees accurately, reports
honestly, interprets humanly, and loves sin-
cerely.

[175]
THE CRAZY FLICKER
 

 

 

THE CRAZY FLICKER

R. BURROUGHS somewhere has said that
if ever a flicker goes crazy, he will go crazy
boring holes. I never doubt anything Mr. Bur-
roughs says about birds and beasts, and so for a
good many years I have confidently expected
that when I found a crazy flicker I should find
him, as Mr. Burroughs predicted, boring holes.
Of course I never went armed with gun or
glass, expecting to meet a real crazy, mad-house
flicker, though I have long been convinced that
the whole flicker family is queer and, indeed,
somewhat crack-brained. But there are crazy
flickers, and at last I am able to report the cases
[179]
of two—two that bored holes in barns and tin
rain-pipes, for the fiends possessed them.

Out in the broad grain-fields near my home, a
farmer built a large barn. It was tight, well-
shingled, and sided with white pine-boards that
lapped at the edges, so that not a streak of day-
light crept in anywhere.

It was early spring. One day shortly after
the barn was finished, and while it was still
empty, a flicker lighted upon the ridge-pole and
hammered. She (I am not sure of the sex in
either of the cases) jumped into the air at the
first rap. How it sounded! Never before had
she struck anything with such a ring to it.
What a glorious hole for a nest there must be in
there! Why, if the brood should happen to
come twenty strong (which was not past hoping
for), each young one could have a bed and a
room all to himself—a condition of affairs alto-
gether unheard of, up to this time, in flickerdom.

Now I saw the flicker when she discovered this
barn, and while I must say that she did not
utter one of these exclamations, yet I do believe
she thought them all, for she instantly set to hunt-
ing for a good place at which to begin boring.

[180 ]
All of this was sane enough from the flicker
point of view. She was not a very experienced
bird certainly, or she would have known the
size of the rumbling cavern beneath; yet many
another flicker has had to dig through in order
to learn.

Next to the thud of soft punky wood—which
means fat grubs—the ring of hollow wood with
a thin hard shell is most musical to a flicker’s
ears, for this is the sound of a good nesting-place.
The flicker is very much of a family bird.

The roof of the barn did not suit. It is not
natural for a flicker to stand like ordinary
beings and work ; so she flew round to an end of
the barn where she could hang on to the per-
pendicular siding, bracing herself by her spine-
pointed tail. Choosing aspot here at the lapping
of two boards, she diligently began.

I wish I could have seen the expression on
her face and read her thoughts when she got
through and found herself inside an empty barn.
She must have been the most amazed and mysti-
fied bird in the region, if she was sane enough
to think at all. Instead of a neat, snug cavity
sufficient to turn round in, she had bored into

[181 ]
an empty hay-loft. Perhaps an English sparrow
would not have been daunted at the prospect of
filling up a haymow with a nest, but the flicker
was.

Or else she was not house-hunting, as I first
thought, but simply a demented flicker, crazy
over holes. For now her madness showed itself.
Out she came, hopped sidewise across, a few
boards, tapped, listened, and began a new hole.
This, of course, opened into the same mammoth
cave. What ofit? Not where the hole opened,
but the boring of it; that was the thing. So,
hopping along to another seam, she went through
again.

And not three times only. Day after day
either she or the other flickers in the neighbor-
hood kept boring away, until soon the barn be-
came riddled with holes as if it had received a
severe cannonading.

Tt was all very interesting for the naturalist.
The farmer, however, who had not built the barn
for the amusement of insane birds, saw no good
in the holes at all.

Of like mind with the farmer were the owners
of some fine houses in a town not far from me.

[182]
Here the holes were drilled into the rain-pipes.
I did not see the insane bird this time, but a
naturalist friend who did reported it a male
that had gone mad with love.

The bird came back early in the spring, and
announced himself by beating a thunderous
tattoo on a galvanized-iron chimney. The per-
sons in the rooms below jumped as if the roof
were falling. The passers-by on the street
halted to gaze around in wonder. There was
nothing to be seen. Again the rattling, ringing
roll, and up out of the chimney popped the
flicker, in an ecstasy over his new drum—his
“Spanish guitar,” for he was certainly calling a
mate, though not another flicker had yet re-
turned.

Then across thé way, on the top of a neighbor-
ing house, he spied another, larger drum, and gal-
loped over there. It was a big ventilator. He
hit it, and it boomed. Catching his toes around
an iron hoop that circled it, he began to beat a.
roll to wake the very dead.

The mystery is that his bill did not fly into
splinters. But it did not. The sound, however,
went to his head. He got stark mad with the

[183]
noise, crazier and crazier over galvanized iron,
until he went to boring holes into the rain-pipe.

At the first it was love, doubtless, that ailed
him; he was drumming up a bride. But that
his tender passion soon changed to an insane
delight in his own wonderful self is very evident.
He grew enamoured of his drumming. Nor is he
the first male bird I have known thus in love.
In the island park at Detroit, Michigan, I knew
a red-headed woodpecker to serenade himself
long after the mating season— up, in fact, to
September, the time I left the park woods. He
would get inside the zine ventilator of the club-
house and make the island ring.

It was several days after his arrival before this
second crazy flicker attacked the rain-pipes. Up
to that time the observers in the neighborhood
had looked upon him as a harmless, ardent lover
who could not express half his feeling upon an
ordinary rotten stub, and so had taken to the
hollow-sounding chimneys. They were amused.

Suddenlythat all changed. They had wakened
to the fact that the bird was a raving maniac;
for what did they see one morning but the
flicker high up under the corner of the roof,

[184]
clutching a small iron bracket in the side of the
house, and drilling a hole through the rain-pipe !

He was hammering like a tinsmith, and already,
when discovered, had cut a hole half as big as
one’s fist. He had not tried to drill before; he
had been happy with the sound. Something,
however, either the size, shape, or ring of the
pipe, suggested “holes” to his wild wits, and
right through the pipe he had gone.

It was not grubs that he was after. Maybe
somewhere in his mad head was the remote
notion of a nest. Where, however, could he
have found a mate as crazy as himself— crazy
enough to have built in such a place? Young
Mrs. Flicker is an exceedingly spoony bride;
love in a cottage is just to her liking; but I
have yet to see one who would go to the length
of a rain-pipe. .

The crazy bird was finally scared away, leaving
several indignant citizens behind, who heartily
wished they had taken the law into their hands
and slain him as a menace to the common-
wealth.

[185 ]
SOME FRIENDLY BIRDS
 

SOME FRIENDLY BIRDS

\ \ ) E have all heard the pack chanting :

Now this is the law of the jungle—as old and

as true as the sky ;

And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the
Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law
runneth forward and back —

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the
strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

We have seen the law at work in herd and
drove, in school and flock, and everywhere it is
the great law of necessity—obey or die. It
obtains among men as well as among beasts and
birds. But the man-pack has broken, because
we are no longer mere wolves, and a higher law

[189 ]
obtains. We have scattered as a pack and re-
formed as a community —a friendly mingling of
pack and herd and school and flock.

Nothing like this has happened to any great
extent among the birds and beasts, for the new
earth has not yet come; but many interesting
individual friendships have been recorded, to
which every close observer of the out-of-doors
can add a few.

Allowance must always be made for false
seeing and the temperament of the observer.
One’s interpretations are matters of nature and
—of constitution sometimes. The facts I must
see with the eyes of my neighbor; the meaning
of the facts I can see with no one’s eyes but my
own. The following observations I believe are
just as you would have made them ; their inter-
pretation is my own and may not agree with
yours at all.

One of my friends, a keen and trustworthy
naturalist, found recently that a pair of cat-
birds were building a nest in the thick tangle of
vines just outside her dining-room window.
She soon noticed that the pair of robins who
had eggs in a neighboring apple-tree showed

[190]
extraordinary interest in the work of the cat-
birds. The conduct of the robins was very un-
usual, and the woman began to watch.

Evidently, according to robin standards, some-
thing about the new nest was wrong, something
that ought to be changed over robinwise. The
catbirds were not building just right. They were
a young couple, doubtless ; this was their first nest,
and the robins, who had built scores of nests,
looked on critically, compassionately, and with a
desire to advise that was almost killing them.

The work went on for a day or two. Then it
chanced that both catbirds flew off together for
more building-material. The robins were watch-
ing. They could hold out no longer. Taking a
hasty look around to make sure that their young
neighbors were quite gone, one of the robins (the
woman in the window was too astonished to note
which) dropped to the ground, picked up a piece
of coarse grass, and hurried to the half-finished
nest. Stepping quickly in, she (it must have
been “she ”’) laid the straw along the rim of the
clumsy nest, and, cuddling down inside, drew the
ragged walls up to her round, shapely breast to
mold them into something like form.

[191 ]
It is almost too human a story to be true.
But I believe it to be true, though I never saw
anything among the birds quite equal to it.

The catbirds soon returned with some fine
rootlets, and did not seem to notice a robin, with
head cocked, eying them from a corner of the
grape-arbor.

If this was not a manifestation of friendship,
it surely was of good will—the kind of good will,
I must admit, that among us humans is not
always appreciated.

One can hardly imagine such a thing as mutual
benefit, to say nothing of friendship, in the com-
mon home life of fish-hawks, crow-blackbirds,
and English sparrows. The blackbirds and
hawks might get on together, but what saint
among the birds could live with an English
sparrow —could be friendly with him? Yet the
fish-hawks’ nest along the Delaware Bay which
I have spoken of in a previous chapter harbors,
besides the hawks, a small community of crow-
blackbirds and (at my last visit) two families of
English sparrows.

This huge nest, planted firmly upon the very
top of a tall oak, standing almost alone on the

[192]
edge of a vast salt-marsh, is not the natural nest-
ing-place for blackbirds and sparrows. This
marsh-land is the range of the hawks. They are
at home here. The blackbirds and sparrows, for
some reason, have broken away from the inland.
The blackbirds have nested here, to my know-
ledge, for thirteen years ; the sparrows discovered
the great nest only a year ago.

The walls of the nest are as big around as a
hogshead and as rough as the protruding ends of
corn-stalks, dead limbs, and small cord-wood can
make them. It is around in the crevices of these
uneven walls that the blackbirds and sparrows
lodge their nests.

I am by no means certain that all is harmoni-
ous in this queer colony. There was no appear-
ance of discord—none but the appearance of the
sparrows. Neither am I sure why these small
birds choose to live thus with the hawks. They
are bothindependent birds, not hangers-on at all ;
so it cannot be the mere convenience of a ready-
made nesting-site. That could be had anywhere ;
besides, naturally, neither grackles nor sparrows
would fly far away into a marsh in looking for
a place to build. It cannot be that they come

13 [193]
for the bits of fish left after the young hawks
have eaten. They are not particularly fond of
fish, and there would not be crumbs enough to
make their coming worth while, anyway.

I believe the blackbirds are like certain strange
persons : they enjoy living ina tenement. There
are extraordinary neighborhood advantages in a
big, round hawk’s nest —fine chances for company
and gossip. The sparrows found the grackles
living here and saw a fine chance to intrude.

But this is not generous nor even fair. Is it
not just as easy and as safe to put it all on the
score of friendly interest and good-fellowship?
I can believe that the hawks enjoy the cheerful
clatter of the garrulous crow-blacks and the
small impertinence of the sparrows. On the
other hand, the crow-blacks and sparrows feel a
certain protection in the presence of the hawks,
and may, who knows, appreciate the friendship
of such high and mighty folk.

Quite as interesting and unusual a show of
friendship, at least of friendliness, was seen re-
cently by bird-lovers on a telephone-pole in a
thickly settled town not far from Boston.

There were poles in plenty sticking up all

[194]
over the surrounding country; but passing by
all of these, a pair of flickers, a pair of chick-
adees, and a pair of red-headed woodpeckers
(erythrocephalus) selected the same pole for
their nests, prepared their holes, hatched and
brought up their large, noisy families together,
without a single quarrel so far as the curious
public knew. And they did all this with per-
sons coming from far and near to stare at them
through opera-glasses, for the red-headed wood-
peckers were the only pair with such heads re-
ported that season anywhere around.

Some day the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
which, of course, is much more of a wonder than
the kingbird’s dwelling peaceably with the or-
chard-oriole. But this, in its way, is no mean
wonder.

I was rowing up a little creek one day when
I found a kingbird’s nest in the low, drooping
branch of a red maple, swinging within three
feet of the water. The moment the kingbirds
saw me back water they knew I had discovered
their nest, and across the creek they started on
the four maddest wings. How they quivered !
The kingbirds never seem exactly placid; but

[195]
let Mrs. Kingbird catch you fooling around her
nest !

However, it was here in the maple that day
that I had a fresh glimpse into the heart of this
little-loved bird. He is not so quarrelsome and
ill-natured under his feathers as he appears. He
is splintery, but neighborly withal.

While I was holding to his nest-bough, the
skiff swung in and wedged its nose between the
forks of another limb that dragged the water.
Turning to get free, I put my hand fairly upona
second nest—the dainty cradle of an orchard-
oriole. The two nests were not five feet apart.

Kingbird and oriole friendly? It is hard to
imagine two birds with respectable bird ways so
ill assorted for neighbors as these two. Rather
is it hard to think of kingbirds living in peace
anywhere or with anybody.

The difference in the natures of the two birds
was strikingly exhibited in the style of these
two nests. The kingbird has n’t a particle of
imagination, not an atom of the artistic in his
soul. His shape, dress, and voice declare it. He
is hard-headed, straightforward, and serious,
somewhat overbearing, perhaps, and testy, but

[196 ]
businesslike and refined in all his tastes. His
nest is himself over again: strong, plain, ade-
quate, but, like its builder, refined. Contrast
the oriole’s. Romance, poetry, and that inde-
scribable touch—the light, easy, negligent touch
of the artist—in every line of it. Why, the
thing was actually woven of new-mown hay—
as if one should build his house of sandalwood —
with all the scent of the hay-field about it. I
put my nose near and took a deep, delicious
breath.

The birds had selected and cut the grass
themselves and worked it in while green. Some
of it was still uncured, still soft and sweet with
sap. One side, exposed to the sun through a
leaf rift, had gone a golden yellow; but the
other side, deeply shaded the day through, was
yet green and making more slowly under the
leaves. And this nest was woven, not built up
like the kingbird’s; it was hung, not saddled
upon the limb—suspended from the slenderest
of forks, so that every little breeze would rock
it. And so loosely woven, so deftly, slightly
tied !

There must have been a friendly understand-

[197 ]
ing between the two birds. If kingbird were
as ugly a neighbor as some that my friends have
heard of, the oriole could not have had the
heart to perch upon that maple’s top—the com-
mon front step to their double house—and sing
down into his own and the kingbird’s home.
Yet, up there that moment he sat, utterly care-
free, abandoned to happiness, the great maple-
tree adrip with his limpid, liquid song.

A state of things farther removed from a
chronic neighborhood quarrel, more like genu-
ine friendship, it would be hard anywhere to
find. One may certainly be allowed to believe
in a friendly agreement between the two birds,
to wit: that oriole provide music for the two
families, while kingbird guard the premises.
Whether the agreement was formally come to
or not (and of course it was not), this is exactly
what was doing, the fighting for both being at-
tended to by the cantankerous kingbird, and
the oriole furnishing all the song.

[198]
“THE LONGEST WAY ROUND”
 

“THE LONGEST WAY ROUND”

ROSTY weather and ripe persimmons had
come, with Thanksgiving close at hand.
Uncle Jethro and I were husking corn.

“What had you rather have for Thanksgiv-
ing, Uncle Jeth,” I asked, “one of Horner’s big
bronze gobblers or a nice young gander?”

The old darky paused, dropped his ear of
corn from a paralyzed hand, and looked me over
with annihilating scorn.

“Gobbler! gander! Dat—dat w’at I calls de
las’ ac’. Dat am de egregiousest misappreciation
of circumstance an’ de proprieties w’at ’s oc-
curred to my personal cognition, sure! Dar am

[201]
jes one time in de yhear fer no udder kin’ of
meat but possum, an’ dat time, boy, am de time
ter gib thanks.”

Though not exactly sure of the precise mean-
ing of Uncle Jethro’s words, I was duly apolo-
getic, and instant with my promise to bring
forth a big, fat possum for his Thanksgiving
dinner.

We had finished the shock and I had gone
ahead, broken the binding on the next one and
pushed it over, while Uncle Jethro was kicking
the stray ears into the pile.

As the stalks tumbled I looked down to see
the mice run, when, to my astonishment, I saw,
curled up in a bed of corn-blades, an enormous
possum. He had taken the shock of stalks for
his winter home, and made his nest at its very
center, snug and warm and weather-proof.

He half uncurled, yawned, and blinked as the
glaring light burst upon him, but showed no
sign of surprise nor evinced the least intention
of getting up. It was very inconvenient, dis-
tressing indeed, to have one’s house pulled down
like this. Would n’t I be gentleman enough to
spare him his bed?

[202]
“Uncle Jeth!” I called, as calmly as I knew
how. “Uncle Jeth, would you mind if I brought
you that possum to-day?”

“Mind, chil’, mind?” he chuckled. “Ol
Jethro shuttin’ his doo’ on Br’er Possum? Fetch
him up, honey, fetch him up. Jethro gwine
take him in.”

“Well, how will this one do?” I exclaimed,
catching the possum with a quick grab by the
tail and lifting him up fairly under the old man’s
nose.

“De golden chariot am a-comin’!” gasped
Uncle Jethro, jumping back, his unbelieving
eyes bulging half out of his head. ‘W’at dat,
yo’ chil’, yo?! Possum! De quails an’ de
manna an’ de water in de rock! Yo’’s de beat-
enes’, yo’ is. Yo’ ’s done been talkin’ wid ol’
Miss Owl las’ night, dat w’at yo’ has.”

But I stoutly denied this imputation. I had
not been hunting the night before and hidden
the possum here in order to surprise Uncle
Jethro, as he saw immediately on examining
the creature’s bed.

The great fat fellow had slept in that bed
more than one night, more than a month of

[203]
nights, in all probability. And here the shock
stood within a quarter of a mile of the house, and
directly along our beaten path to the woods.
Fifty times, at least, the dog had passed this
shock, had run round it, had sniffed at it, doubt-
less, and gone on, while the possum slept peace-
fully inside.

How?

Who knows the hows of possum ways? All
that Uncle Jethro himself is sure of with re-
gard to possum is that by Thanksgiving-time
there is nothing in the market to approach it
for a roast. You can trust Uncle Jethro’s ob-
servations on this point.

But how did the possum succeed in establishing
himself along the path and so near the house,
where, except for this accident to his shock,
which the longest-headed possum could not have
foreseen, he might have lived indefinitely?
How? In this way, partly: This corn-shock that
he had chosen was peculiar. Unlike any other
in the field, it stood close along an old worm-
fence and in such a position that one of the long
cross-stakes used for a post slanted out over its
top.

[ 204]
Now a rabbit. cannot walk the top rail of a
fence, nor climb out to the tip of a tall slanting
pole. Buta possum can. A rabbit would have
to creep under the shock from the bottom, going
in on the ground. A possum, however, would
not have to do that way. He could walk the
fence, climb out on the slanting stake, drop to
the top of the shock, and go straight down
through the middle.

And that is exactly what this possum did. He
came out the way he went in, too, never leaving
his track on the ground near the nest, nor his
scent where a dog could find it. He may not
have known that dogs cannot walk fences and
climb poles. Perhaps not. But he knew two
things, stupid as he looked: one was that a good
and sure road home lay atop the rail fence ; the
other, that a pretty safe way to hang out his
latch-string was through the chimney.

Yet perhaps this was only a cunning blunder,
and not real woods-wisdom at all; for it is
difficult to believe in the mentality of so much
fat and a chronic smile. One is not surprised at
a coon’s taking “‘the longest way round’’— the
way of the top rail; but that a sleepy, logy

[205 ]
possum should discover it to be ‘‘the surest way
home” comes as a real surprise.

I am inclined to think it was a blunder. He
happened to walk the fence, climb the stake, and
tumble off into a soft spot. And if once, why
not again? For let a notion get into a possum’s
head, and there it will stick. You can’t get it
out, nor get another one in; there is n’t room.

As an illustration take the case of “Pinky,” a
little possum we once possessed, who had a notion
that he wanted to be domesticated.

Most wild animals stoutly resist all of our well-
intentioned efforts to bring them up in dooryard
ways, and take to the woods again at the first
opportunity. I have tried one after another, but
every one of them sooner or later has escaped to
the wilds— every one but Pinky. He refused
to stay in the woods even when taken back there,
because, forsooth, into the little think-hole in his
head had got stuck the notion that he wanted to
be a domesticated possum, and that notion could
not be budged.

Pinky was one of a family of nine that I caught
several springs ago and carried home. In the
course of a few weeks eight of them were adopted

[206 J
by admiring friends ; but Pinky, because he was
the runt and looked very sorry and forlorn, was
not chosen. He was left withme. I kept him,—
his mother had choked to death on a fish-bone,—
and fed him milk until he caught up to the size
of the biggest mother-fed possum of his age in
the woods. Then I took him down to the old
stump in the brier-patch where he was born, and
left him to shift for himself.

Being thrown into a brier-patch was exactly
what tickled Br’er Rabbit half to death; and
any one would have supposed that being put
gently down in his home brier-patch would have
tickled this little possum even more.

Not he! I went home and forgot him. But
the next morning, when breakfast was preparing,
whom should we see but Pinky, curled up in the
feather cushion of the kitchen settee, sound
asleep.

He had found his way back during the night,
had climbed in through the trough of the pump-
box, and had gone to sleep like the rest of the
family. He gaped and grinned and looked about
him when awakened, altogether at home, and
really surprised that morning had come so soon.

[207]
He got down and took his saucer of milk under
the stove as if nothing unusual had happened.

We had had a good many possums, crows,
lizards, and the like ; so, in spite of this winsome
show of confidence and affection, Pinky was
borne away once more to the briers.

That night he did not creep in by the pump-
box trough. Nothing was seen of him, and he
passed quickly out of our minds. But he still
kept his notion. Two or three days after this,
as I was crossing the back yard, I stopped to pick
up a large calabash-gourd that I had left on the
woodpile. I had cut a round hole in the gourd
somewhat larger than a silver dollar, intending to
fasten the thing up for the bluebirds to nest in.

It ought to have been as light as so much air,
almost, but instead it was heavy—the children
had filled it with sand, no doubt. I turned it
over and looked into the hole, and lo! not sand,
but Pinky!

The notion had brought him back again.
How he ever managed to squeeze through the
opening, I don’t know ; but there he was, sleep-
ing away as soundly as ever.

He no longer possessed the notion ; the notion

[208 J
possessed him. And what happened finally?
A sad thing, of course. <A creature with such a
head on his shoulders could not come to a fine
and happy end.

I took Pinky back to the woods the third
time, and the third time he returned, but blun-
dered into a neighbor’s yard, and—and a little
later he was drawn up in a bucket of water from
the bottom of that neighbor’s well, still asleep,
only—they could not wake him up.

It is not easy to reconcile such wit as this
with the cunning of the fence-rail road and the
chimney entrance. Yet this one of the corn-
shock is not the only possum I have known to
take a roundabout way home for the sake of
hiding his trail. One autumn I was fooled over
and over,—we were fooled, the dog and I,—
until snow fell and the whole trick was written
out in signs that our stumbling wits had to
‘understand.

Around the rim of the steep wooded hillsides
circling Lupton’s Pond runs a rail fence, along
which grow a number of old chestnut-oak trees
with clusters of great stems from single spread-
ing stumps that are particularly gone to holes.

M4 [209]
Ordinarily, if one wanted a possum, about all
he had to do was to climb the hill, prod around
in the holes until he felt something soft that
hissed, then reach in and pull the possum out.

This fall they had all been pulled out. One
day five came forth from a single stump, which
seemed to exhaust the hillside’s crop for that
year, so that I quite ceased looking into the
stumps for more.

Several times the dog had started a trail in
the woods at the head of the pond, gone up the
hill to the crest, and halted, beating about,
fooled. What was it? At first I took it to be
a coon; for there is no other creature in our
woods so thoughtful of his steps. One whose
range is infested with dogs develops astonishing
care and cunning.

An old coon in such a country will never go
straight home, nor take a beaten path. Out on
the boundaries of his range he trots along with-
out minding how he steps. The dogs may have
fun with his trail here. He intends only that they
shall not follow him clear home, that they shall
not find his home-tree, nor even the vicinity of it.

So, as he enters his own neighborhood swamp

[210]
his movements change. The dogs may be hard
after him or not. If not close behind, he knows
by long experience that they may be expected,
and never so far forgets his precious skin as to
leave a clue pointing toward home.

Instead he trots along a boundary fence, or
up the swamp stream, leaping all the crossing
logs, and coming out, likely, on the bank away
from the nest-tree. Farther down he jumps
the stream, runs hard toward a big gum, and
from a dozen feet away takes a flying leap,
catching the trunk up just out of reach of the
keen-nosed dogs. On up he goes a little and
leaps again, touching the ground ten feet out,
thus leaving a gap, a blank, of twenty or more
feet in his trail.

The stream or fence has puzzled the dogs ; but
now they begin to worry. They circle and
finally pick up the scent beyond the first gap,
only to run instantly into a greater blank, one
that the widest circling does not cross. For the
coon has taken to another tree ; out on the limbs
of this to still another, and on, like a squirrel,
from tree to tree for perhaps a hundred yards, on,
it may be, to his own high hollow.

(ent
It was such a broken trail that I thought the
dog must be running. She could get no farther
than the top of the slope. Over the fence, under
it, and out far and wide she would go, but never
a sniff of the lost scent.

Then came a light snow, and on the white.
page of the hillside in his own hand was written
the story of a large possum, who had been along
the stream at the head of the pond, had gone
up the hill to a fallen pine, out along this by
way of the thick top to the fence-post, and down
the rails.

The writing was plain in the sticky snow, and
so was the mystery of the broken trail. I hur-
ried along the fence and saw ahead that a sag-
ging post leaned in against one of the large
chestnut-oaks. Instinctively I knew that my
possum was in that tree.

Sure enough, the snow was brushed from the
post; there were signs on the trunk, and down
petween the twin boles was the hole, smooth,
clean, and possumy. The crafty old fellow had
squeezed hard to get in and had left a hair or
two on the rim of his entrance.

[212]
“ONE FLEW EAST AND ONE FLEW
WEST”
 

 

“ONE FLEW EAST AND ONE FLEW
WEST”

ARLY dusk of a cold March night was fall-
ing. The two red maples in the little
alder swale beyond the pasture stood penciled
on the gray sky. A robin had been singing ; but
now the deep winter hush had crept back over
the fields.

Suddenly there was a hiss and winnow of
wings close above my head. I dodged. Past
me, lined for the swale, with an erratic, rotary
flight as if fired from a rifle, sped a bird.

“He’s back!” I exclaimed. ‘He escaped !”
And through my cold, rain-soaked world of wood

[215]
and field and swale shot a new, wild thrill of
life. It was the return of a woodcock that had
nested for several seasons along a slender, alder-
hidden stream about half a mile from my home.

I was not expecting him back this spring.
When the gunning season opened the previous
July, at least a score of men knew that a single
pair of woodcocks had nested in the swale; and
up and down, over and over, one after another
they beat it, beat it by clump, by tussock, by
square foot for the birds, killing five. Four of
these were the young of that summer; the fifth
was one of the parents.

The swale turned brown, and soon lay silent
and bleak. I could not pass it during the win-
ter without a feeling akin to anger. It was a
narrow strip, barely fifty feet across at its
widest, flanked by a wooded hillside and by
wide, tilled fields. But it was all the swamp,
all the meadow I had; and that this should be
robbed of its life, that all my out-of-doors within
vision range should never again hold a wood-
cock’s nest, was more than a grief.

I had been robbed. Twenty men against six
woodcocks! And they had been eager to kill

[216]
the last pair breeding in this last shrinking
covert.

They had been eager—but one of the pair, by
some miracle, had escaped. There he went
humming through the dusk, and all my world
was changed.

He would induce. some young, unmated female
on her way north to remain with him, and there
would yet be a home in the swale. At first I
feared lest this one should prove to be a female
that would be lured away ; if not, then that he
might be a migrant himself, who would halt
only to feed that night. But the next day I
found him along the stream, and I knew by
the way he got to cover that he was on familiar
ground and had come to stay.

What a queer, comical-looking bird he is! If
nature ever had any feeble-minded offspring,
you would surely put Woodcock down for one.
But he has a full share of bird sense. The
matter with him is partly his nocturnal habits.
Night does not seem the birds’ natural wake-
time, and those that turn it into day invariably
take on some odd, almost abnormal appearance
—the owl assumes his ridiculous show of wis-

parry
dom, and the woodcock wears a vacuous ex-
pression that is positively imbecile.

Yet it is neither imbecility nor wisdom, but
merely beaks and eyes. With eyes to the front
and a beak made for spectacles, the owl looks
very professorial. The woodcock’s eyes are
at the rear and in the top of his head. If he
wore glasses, they would rest on the back of his
neck.

This position for the bird’s eyes, however, is
a convenient one. He literally needs to see out
of the top of his head a part of the time. His
only food is angleworms, for the catching of
which nature provides him a three-inch probe
of a bill. Then, for his safety and comfort when
sounding for the worms, in order to keep his
eyes out of the mire, she puts them up on the
top of his head, just as a clam-digger rolls up
his sleeves when at his task in the mud.

Nature is preéminently practical, even at the
cost of appearance, as the eyes of the woodcock
attest. And she has done another practical
thing for this freak child which adds to his
oddity and interest—this time in connection
with his beak.

[218]
In the bare, damp spots among the alders and
along the edge of the corn-field, soon after
Woodcock arrived, I found his borings—groups
of a dozen or more holes where, in hunting
worms, he had plunged his bill into the earth up
to his eyes (up to the place where his eyes
would normally have been). I had always won-
dered how the bird, when he felt a worm, could
open his bill with it forced to the hilt in stiff, solid
earth, for surely he does not thrust it down
already open. Year after year I kept on won-
dering instead of investigating, until one day a
man showed me that there was a curious flexible
tip to the upper mandible which the bird could
move independently of the rest of the beak, and
thus grasp the luckless worm, though deep in
the mud.

This is distinction enough for one beak, and
we ought not to expect of it a song. Nor do
we. One cannot think of a hooked beak or a
flat beak or a long beak emitting music. It is
not for his singing that I should miss Woodcock
in the swale, but for his dancing. No festival
fires among the tepees, no barbecue among the
cabins, ever saw wilder, more frenzied dancing

[219]
than the alders witness night after night in early
spring.

And if the woodcock does not sing, he harps
his own accompaniment—a weird wing music,
half eolian, that sets you dancing, too, as no
other bird music you ever heard.

It is dusk in the swale. I am sitting on the
root of one of the red maples, now in misty
garnet bloom. A wavering line of piping hylas
marks the course of the stream. Scattered bird-
calls come from the covert, and out of the deep-
ening blue overhead falls a flock of notes, the
chinks of migrants winging north.

Presently, in the grassy level across the stream,
sounds a clear peent! peent! peent! I listen,
half rising. Peent! peent! peent! slow and
regular; then, bursting from cover with the
rush of a rocket, spins the woodcock. Out against’
the gray horizon he sweeps, and round on the
first turn of his soaring spiral. The hum of his
wings fills the swale. Round and round, swifter
and swifter, the hum rising shrill as he mounts
two hundred—three hundred—four hundred feet
into the dusky sky, and hangs—hangs a whirling
blur on the blue, and drops—headlong, with a

[220]
pitching, zigzag flight and the velocity of a
bullet, whistling, as he falls, a low, pearly trill of
love that smothers in the whir of his alighting
wings.

It is all over, and I am standing, my held
breath coming in gasps. Then there sounds
again that measured, preparatory peent! peent !
and I await the second burst, the looping spiral
flight, the drop, and the clear, low whistle of
love. And so the dance goes on as the darkness
thickens, until only a winnow whirls shrill
toward the stars, and a sweet, pearly whistle
ripples down through the gloom.

While waiting there in the twilight I saw the
last year’s nest of a wood-thrush in the leafless
top ofaslender sapling. I had not heard Wood-
thrush yet this spring. What if he should not
return to the strip of alder-bottom? Happily
there is no immediate danger. Yet I should
miss the wild love-dance of my woodcock almost
as much as I should the serene love-song of the
thrush. I should miss the personality of my
woodcock even more. He is so elusive, so unex-
pected, so suggestive of bog and stream. There
is a thrill in his break from cover like the thrill

[221]
one feels in the strike and whirl of a trout.
Fifty thrushes would fifty times sweeten the
swale; my single pair of woodcocks would keep
it all wild and untamed.

But they are gone. Like all birds, the wood-
cocks have many natural enemies ; they are one
of their own worst enemies in building so early
that snows and frosts destroy the eggs, and in
places where April freshets sweep them away.
Yet in spite of all this, they would flourish were
it not for the pot-hunter. They could be hunted
during the weeks of the fall migration, as the
New England States allow, and still flourish.
But in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Maryland, and several other States they are
shot in July, almost before the young are on the
wing. And in the Southern States, excepting
South Carolina and Alabama, no protection is
afforded them whatever. Here from the North
they congregate during the winter, and here all
winter long they are slaughtered and shipped
back to the North — to the States that are trying
to save them.

From everywhere over their wide range,
between the Atlantic coast and the line of the

[ 222

ao
Mississippi River, the woodcocks are disappear-
ing. Once. gone, they can hardly be restored,
largely because of their peculiar food, which
makes them migratory, and which cannot be
supplied them as grain can be supplied to the
quail and to other game-birds. The dangers of
their migrations and those which beset their
nesting-places, the fewness of their eggs, their
limited and easily hunted coverts, are causes
which are making rapidly toward the extinction
of the woodcocks, and which would greatly add
to the difficulty of their restoration.

Already these noble birds have gone from the
swale. There has been no love-dance over the
alders since those of my woodcock many springs
ago. The trees have been swept from the hill-
side, the little stream has shrunken, and rush and
sedge are now cropped close by the cattle. But
the birds were not driven away.

They were shot.

The night that my woodcock whizzed past on
his spring return to the swale, another bird
sailed low over the yard on his way back from
the swale. But his passing had lately become a
nightly occurrence. It was little Aix, a tame

[223]
wood-duck, belonging to the boys of my nearest
neighbor.

Little Aix, too, has a story, which is more
than his own in particular, for it is the story of
all the wood-ducks, just as the story of the
woodcock in the swale is that of the woodcocks
everywhere.

The wood-ducks are vanishing. Where a
score of years ago they were plentiful, to-day
they are almost unknown. And this is largely
because of the utter lack of protection in many
of the States, but more largely because only seven
of the States and three of the Canadian provinces
close the gunning season early enough in the
winter to prevent spring shooting on the breed-
ing-grounds. It is asad comment that we have
neither humaneness nor sportsmanlike spirit
enough to let the birds alone during the mating-
and nesting-time.

Among all our native game-birds there is no
other so beautiful as the wood-duck, and his sad
history is partly the history of his beauty. In
rhyme and story, since story-telling began, we
have seen how perilous a gift beauty is, and now
_we see it even in the woods. It is proving fatal

[224]
to the wood-duck. He is so graceful, so beautiful
in dress, that when any other duck would be
passed by, he is shot, in season and out, just to
be looked at, taken home, and stuffed.

His gracious, confiding nature and his peculiar
breeding-haunts have also to do with his threat-
ened extinction. Unlike the others of his fam-
ily (except in rare instances the goldeneye), the
wood-duck builds in hollow trees along wood-
land streams and small grassy ponds. He does
not seek the marshes, the open shore, or the wild,
far-northern lakes. There is something in the
society of man that attracts him. Except in
the wide, treeless plains and in the heart of the
Rocky Mountains, he is found scattered every-
where between Mexico and Hudson Bay; and
over all this wide range he breeds, being in
many localities the only duck to remain through
the summer, and hence his common name of
“summer duck.” He is naturally of a retiring
disposition, but not suspicious or shy. Being
thus a woods bird and easily approached, he
falls a frequent and an easy victim.

He is an interesting and peculiar duck. He
eats acorns; he is even called the “ acorn-duck.”

15 ~ [295]
If beechnuts or chestnuts are at hand, they will
do as well as acorns. He is fond of chicken-
grapes, insects, and seeds, too.

But what is even more unusual is the wood-
duck’s nesting-place. A duck’s nest? Down in
the soft, damp moss, on a bit of an island, or
hidden in the high grass along some wild lake-
side. Not so. The wood-duck builds in a hol-
low tree, high and dry, and even a long way
from water, it may be.

The wood-duck’s young, of course, are like all
ducklings, with feet and bills bigger than their
wings. They cannot possibly remain in the tree-
hollow until old enough to fly. How do they
get down to the water? Usually they scramble
down head over heels ; sometimes, it is said, the
mother carries them, and if so, then her solution
of this problem is one of the tenderest passages
in all the bird life of the woods. But I have
never seen it. I had hoped to see it the spring
that little Aix, the tame wood-duck of my
neighbor, was an egg,—hoped to see the mother
carry each fat, downy duckling to the ground,
dangling from her beak by its little flipper,
then, with her brood all safely landed, lead them

[226]
together to the water and launch them, —but
something happened.

And this happening concerns little Aix in
particular, and this is now his story only.

I had known little Aix since egghood. I
knew his parents before him. Where Silver
Run grows darkly silent and glides into the open
pond, there still leans the great maple stub
from the hollow top of which little Aix and
eleven others, in their buff-white shells, were
taken and carried away to my neighbor’s farm
to be hatched.

A sweeter, wilder home never was than this
along the run. A world of lake and swampy
wood lies ali around. Moss-grown oaks and
maples shadow the cedar-scented stream which
slips directly beneath the broken stub and
widens — first among a hundred tiny islands,
then into the quiet, unbroken surface of the
pond.

More than once I have pushed softly into the
run, led by one of the wood-ducks. Stemming
ahead of the skiff, with a grace that would make
me forget the charm of his exquisite dress, he
would quietly lead me to the bend beyond the

[227]
stub and go ashore, lost instantly in the thick
swamp tangle.

Or I would slip up and catch him half asleep,
when he should have been very wide awake,
for the one in the stub could not see out, and
he was on guard. Oec-eek! O¢c-eek! he would
whistle low in alarm. Then, recognizing me, he
would calmly watch while I edged past. Or I
would come up and find no one about. I would
tap. There in the splintered top she would
stand, interested, but not disturbed, and with a
look of trust in her eyes that I never could
betray.

Little Aix was the only one of the brood to
survive his motherless ducklinghood. But he
throve in the barn-yard, and came through the
winter to perfect and beautiful maturity. Up
to this time he had been content in the barn-
yard babel, but now a change came over him.
Ever since the first February wedge of wild
geese had passed honking through the skies, he
had been restless, and had fallen more and more
into the habit of flying over to the swale, where
he stayed until dusk.

He was dressed for a wedding, but his bride

[ 228]
was not among the big, overgrown ducks of the
yard. He sought her in the swale. Day after
day he sought her, but she was not there. He
waited for her coming. Others came. Line
after line beat northward, high overhead, and
he called; but they fanned on—they were
scooters or mallards or goosanders.

Little Aix had not been taken in the autumn
on the long south journey by his mother, where
he might have found a bride. But then, his
mother did not make the journey that fall.
The day that her eggs were stolen she was shot
from the top of the stub, and her world—and
mine—of lake and wood was robbed.

Istill can see her, if I wish, and her mate beside
her, wired to a board in a glass case. But I had
rather push quietly into the run and remember
them as they were alive here.

The spot is still wild and sweet, but the charm
of its life is gone. I hoped little Aix would find
a bride and bring her back to the old home tree.
He was my last. hope. There was no other
wood-duck around that I knew. Indeed, his
parents in the stub were the only pair I had
ever known in theirown home. He, now, alone

[229]
of his beautiful kind, was Ieft to me; and he
had no mate.

Day after day he waited for her in the swale;
night after night he returned. Then came a
night when he did not return. Morning came
and another night.

Anxiously I pulled up the lake and drew
softly into the run. There stood the old stub.
Had little Aix found his bride and brought her
home?

I caught a bit of bush by the bank and
waited. Then, drawing near, I tapped gently.
No, he had not come yet.

And that, too, was many springs ago.

The old maple stub still leans out over the
run; and still, whenever I can, I push quietly
in among the shadows and remember—for little
Aix, if he found a mate, never brought her back
to the old home tree.

[230]
CHICKAREE
 

CHICKAREE

sf UT, you rascal! You arrant thief!” I heard
some one shout in a high-pitched, feminine
voice, and hurrying through the lilac hedge, I
saw my hostess hurl an ear of corn into a pine-
tree that overhung the smoke-house. Her face
was burning with amazement and wrath.
“Think of it!” she cried. “I have fed and
petted those red squirrels, I don’t know how
long, and there goes one of them with a young
pheebe-bird in his mouth. Years and years
I’ve tried to lure the birds back to build in the
yard as they used to. I had banished every cat,
killed every snake, and bribed every boy in the
neighborhood. They would not come for all

[233 ]
that. I could n’t understand. But look at that!
The Judas !”

Thus, more and more is Chickaree’s true char-
acter being discovered. My hostess had heard
dark stories of Chickaree, but she had scouted
them. “Why, he’s a squirrel, not a monster!”
she had said. I had said that, too; and I was
unbelieving until I caught him deliberately kill-
ing a brood of young robins.

It is because he appears to be a squirrel that
we are so unwilling to think him evil. What
form in all the world, besides the dove’s, is more
suggestive of sweet innocence than the squirrel’s?
Yet here is this red-coated, red-handed little
wretch, having the form of godliness, but all
scarlet within. The revelation of his true in-
wardness is a real pain, a loss of so much faith
in the faithful out-of-doors. This squirrel has
been masking among us in sheep’s clothing. The
wolf! Out with him! Who knows what murder
he has not done? what he is capable of doing?

Where do you get your unholy and horrible
craving, Chickaree? Is there weasel blood
mingled with the squirrel in your veins? You

[234]
are depraved past belief—seven times worse
than the weasel, for his blood-thirst is natural.
The black-snake and turkey-buzzard are almost
moral compared with you. You are everything
wicked ; you have earned your evil reputation ;
you deserve to be shot.

Perhaps you do, though I am not just sure;
for it is very hard to say exactly what justice is.
We, your judges, what virtue have we more than
you, Chickaree? Is our blood-thirst natural?
are we kin to the weasel? We eat birds, young
birds sometimes ; we even eat you.

No, Chickaree, you are no worse than the rest
of us. You are bad enough, so bad that you
and your tribe will have to be exterminated, I
fear, because we righteous judges must needs
doom somebody for all this mischief that we and
our cats commit. I am sorry for you. I wish
you would repent and eat only nuts and pine-
buds, as befits an orthodox squirrel.

I am convinced that while we may not over-
estimate the havoc of the red squirrels among
the birds, we greatly underestimate that of the
cats. Reduce the number of cats ; stop shooting

[235 ]
the birds, and help them with their nesting,
and the red squirrels, hawks, and weasels will
only serve, as it seems they must have been in-
tended to serve, to maintain a proper balance
in the wild life out-of-doors.

For, after all, we do not want to lose any
creature from the few still left in our fields and
woods. The passing of the red squirrel would
be just as real a loss, and, in a way, as great a
loss, as the extinction of the redbird. I care to
hear him bluster in the pines. Itis as foolish to
ask which of the two I had rather lose, red
squirrel from the woods, or redbird from the
swale, as to ask which of my two children I had
rather give up, the three-year-old who can
whistle, or the one-year-old who can only jabber.

Chickaree has a wider acquaintance among
us humans than any other wild fellow in fur;
and more friends, too, despite the multiplying
of those who know his real nature. He has
friends because he has earned them. Who ever
saw a chickaree, if he were given the slightest
chance to be friendly, that was bashful, squeam-
ish, or unsociable? .

He spills over with loud talk and conceit, but

[ 236 ]
he never fails to be interesting. It is partly
because he is so frankly interested in one’s
affairs that he is so entertaining. A gossiping
gadabout, a busybody, a scold; manners of an
English sparrow (which alone is enough to have
him hanged), he—but what shall I say more?
This: that, in spite of his faults, I like him and
don’t want him hanged.

I often go into the woods when I deserve and
enjoy a scolding. Many a day, many an acre
hereabout, would utterly lack the sound and
form of any wild thing were it not for Chick-
aree. He is mostly sound, I know; yet he has
* agile legs, too, and quick wit and audacity. He
has a constitution and an ability to take care
of himself that I like to think of. See how he
thrives. You cannot find a deep wood, a shaded
roadside, a park, or a graveyard to which Chick-
aree does not dispute the title.

I once met one who claimed to own, if I
understood him, the whole north slope of Mount
Washington. This was really more than he
needed, but he was a very greedy squirrel, and
I smile now as I remember how his greed over-
reached itself and how it brought him low.

[237]
The mountain did not fall upon him, only
half a loaf of bread. But half a loaf of bread, if
it falls just right, may hurt, as every one knows
who has dropped even a slice of bread on his
toes—butter side down.

Descending the mountain by way of the car-
riage-road, we stopped at a little stone bridge
to eat our lunch, when this squirrel came forth
and ordered us on. He immediately smelled
the lunch, however, and grew silent, creeping
up within arm’s-reach of us, watching how we
ate. He showed no sign of timidity, only curi-
osity, then wonder, then deep, delighted sniff-
ings. The smells of molasses cookies and Summit
House rolls were new savors, new and gnawing.
They made him hungry, so madly hungry that,
when I turned and threw the lunch-box into
the dry bed of the stream, he was into it almost
as soon as it landed.

His first bite was of bread and butter. With-
out pausing to chew it, he seized the slice, scurried
off down a log, and disappeared in the forest.
“Where is he taking it?” we asked, Not far
away, for suddenly he popped over a rock, gave
us a quick glance, and jumped into the box again.

[238 ]
There were several cookies left in the box,
some slices of bread, and nearly half a loaf of
bread uncut.

Down the log ran Chickaree with a second
slice, I watching from where I sat, following
him by the gleam of the white bread, which
showed clearly in the tangle and dark of the
forest. It flashed, then vanished, then flashed
again into view—flash, flash, flash—round and
round and round up a tall spruce, till I lost it
in the top. We were trying to catch sight of
him returning, when he startled us by again
landing, with a sudden leap, right in the middle
of the bor.

This time he found the uncut loaf; and he
also found the measure of his wit and muscle.
Now he grew greedy. He should have been
content with the slices. Covetousness, also, goeth
before a fall.

There are some of us humans who will take
the half-loaf when we cannot get the whole;
but it were better for most.of us if even the
half-loaf were sliced. How much better it
would have been for Chickaree !

Here was a windfall, such a windfall as comes

[239 ]
but once to a mountain squirrel, and Chickaree
was excited. How was he to hide this big piece?
Yes, hide it; for it was plain to us that he meant
no other squirrel to share his luck, or even
know about it, else why his silence, excitement,
and hurry ?

Tilting the loaf up, he fixed his long teeth into
the top crust, and by dint of backing and pulling
got out of the gully, landing the loaf in time
upon the top of a flat rock. Unable to raise his
load clear, he came round behind it in order to
push. It was slow, hard work. Becoming more
and more anxious, he forgot that the rock, in
the direction he was going, ended abruptly with
a sheer fall of ten feet.

On he struggled across the rough, lichened
surface, inch by inch, until, catching a good foot-
hold, he gave a mighty shove and went over,
he and his loaf together, striking with a beauti-
ful splash in a little pool of water below.

We took a bit of wicked pleasure in his fall,
as we saw him scramble out unhurt. He came
out, however, still holding to his loaf. But it
was thoroughly soaked now,—a condition that
was evidently new to Chickaree,—and as he

[240]
dragged it up the crust came off, letting the loaf
tumble back into the water. He ran away to
hide the crust, then came back quickly to the
pool.

It was fun to see him fish for that queer piece
of bread. He would catch it in his paws, take
it in his mouth, scoop and pull and root, but
each time get only erumbs. The provoking
stuff had suddenly gone soft—or bewitched. It
would not come out.

But Chickaree was not bewitched. He was
angry—plain old-Adam anger. Up on the log
he jumped, flipped his tail, clawed the bark,
and, with a burst of passion, gave the whole
mountain a furious upbraiding. It was the
mountain, for he looked at nothing in particular,
nothing smaller. Herailed. After one terrible
minute he came back to us, coughing and husky
and sore in the throat.

When he reached the box, how quickly his
spirit changed! No April sky ever broke more
suddenly into rainy sunshine than Chickaree on
picking up one of the molasses cookies. He was
surprised and delighted. Never had he tasted
its like. Birch catkins and beechnuts? Flat!

16 [241]
Simply flat in comparison. Even the tender
terminal buds of the pine would be tasteless
now. And stale acorns? Dreadful!

All this we saw in his countenance as he took
the first mouthful and bolted with the cooky.
He bolted, but stopped short for another bite.
Then on he went, only to halt for a third bite ;
started again, but came to a dead stop on the end
of the log, and finished the cooky then and there.

I now went after him to see if I could find
where he had hidden the bread. As I stepped
upon the log, he turned and came down it toward
me. I have always wished since that I had not
flinched.

He drew near; walked over my foot and
smelled of me. Cookies! Where? He sniffed
and sniffed; then catching the odor of the hand
hanging at my side, he stood up to get a bite,
when the foolish hand twitched. That was
enough. It had moved. He would not approach
me again.

The two slices I found, but not the crust.
One of them was high up in the top of a spruce,
the other in the moss behind a stump.

Perhaps these were temporary hiding-places,

[242]
chosen hurriedly in his excitement, from which,
later on, he would collect his spoil for storage in
some secret hollow. Iam not certain, however,
that Chickaree has a barn, a winter storehouse.
I have often found collections of pignuts in old
tree-hollows that looked as if Chickaree had
stored them there. Still they were always shells
only. The whole nuts may have been carried
into the hollows for safety and convenience, a
few at a time, as they were to be eaten.

Yet, more than once I have caught Chickaree
stuffing hollow rails with corn. Perhaps he in-
tended to keep this store against the winter. I
suspect, for I know Chickaree, that it was more
mischief and itching for occupation, than pro-
vision against need.

He never finished the stuffing. Long before
the cavity was full the little scatterbrain would
be off at some other active but useless task, leav-
ing his store to be found and devoured by
the jays or the mice. Chickaree will never re-
member that the second rail from the bottom,
in the section between the stump and the sas-
safras-tree, holds a pint of golden corn.

All wild animals are mere children. They all

[243]
love to put things into holes. They all must be
busy —if with nothing else than their tails. But
they rarely work.

I knew a chickaree who lived in a little glen
by the side of Thorn Mountain Cabin, whose
activity took on the character ofreal work. But
why in August, two months before the end of
the harvest, he should pick green catkins from
the birch, I don’t know. You cannot store them
when they are dead ripe, perhaps, for they may
fall to pieces. As I watched him, however, I
concluded he was doing the work, not seriously,
but for fun. He must do something; and this
tree, full of little cones, appealed to him as a box
of buttons to a baby.

He owned this great single birch at the head
of the glen. He lived in it alone, and warred
against all trespassers, birds or beasts.

I have seen him chase a junco up and down
- and across the top until the bird flew off. A
flock of them settling among the branches drove
him frantic. I, too, called down his wrath; but
after a week of daily visits he allowed me to
stretch out upon the moss beneath the low wide
limbs and watch him work.

244]
His morning task was to hide about a pint of
catkins from this yellow birch in a secret crib
among the ferns of the glen. Morning after
morning I found him busy, sometimes arriving
early enough to see him begin; and I am quite
sure he often did his stint before he took break-
fast. :

Up and down the tree he would race, a round
trip every three minutes, loaded with a single
catkin each time down. After storing about
thirty he would stop with one upon a certain
bottom limb, and here, on the under side of the
leaning bole, safely hidden from overhead ene-
mies, he would begin breakfast, scattering the
winged seeds, as he ate the catkin, down in a
thin flaky shower upon me underneath. He
always ate squatting close upon this same limb
and backed up against the trunk. The ground
below was snowed under with the scales which
had fallen as he husked the seeds.

Here, too, he slept, I think, during the summer
nights. He may have had a hole among the
rocks, but I am sure he had no nest in the glen.
Having lived only part of the year with these
mountain squirrels, I am not so well acquainted

[ 245 ]
with their nesting habits as I am with those of the
squirrels in the piny woods of New Jersey. The
red squirrels are very abundant among the pines,
and here they live in nests the year around.

These beds are very bulky, built mostly of
cedar bark, stripped fine and matted into an
irregular mass the size of a hat. The doorways
open from the bottoms or sides, leaving the roofs
without a crack and perfectly waterproof.

Sometimes an abandoncd crow’s nest is taken
for the foundation. In this a deep, soft bed of
newly shredded bark is made, and a thatch of
the same material luid on above. Such a nest
will not rock and sway when the winds are high,
as the gray squirrel’s often will; for the crows
did not build out in the hands of the branches,
but close up on the shoulders. What it lacks of
that kind of thrill, however, will be more than
made good by the comfort and security obtained
from the thick nest-bottom of the crows.

About my home in New England Chickaree
is almost a ground-squirrel, rarely traveling a
road higher than a stone wall. But in the
Southern pines he runs the tree-tops, scam-
pering along the dizzy roads almost as fast as

[246]
one can run on the ground beneath. It makes
one pause to see him skip along a slender limb,
jump to a second, race out to its tip, and leap—
clearing fifteen feet—to catch the very ends of
another limb swaying in the air fifty feet above
one.

During the early summer the tender terminal
buds of the pine (barring young birds) furnish
Chickaree the bulk of his food. Acorns, chest-
nuts, corn, and the pine-cone seeds he eats later
on in the fall and winter.

He seems particularly abundant and particu-
larly at home among the pines. He and Scelop-
orus, the pine-tree lizard, are joint possessors
of the sandy barrens. And Chickaree fits his
surroundings. The gray squirrel’s color blends
naturally with the neutral, lichen-mottled boles
of the oak and maple woods. He is rarely
found in the pines; but that is partly because
he is afraid of Chickaree and hates him as he
hates poison. Chickaree’s color is piny, shading
perfectly with the dusky red-browns of the
barrens. These are his rightful realm. Fortu-
nately he does less harm here than almost any-
where else, for the small birds that nest in the

[247]
pines are comparatively few. Here he may live,
for we have no cause to carry our war with him
into the barrens.

There is a large clump of pines beyond Cubby
Hollow where I am always sure of a chickaree-
scolding. The moment I get within range one
of the little wretches will climb a tree and warn
me to keep out. He is instantly joined by
several others, and together they follow me over-
head, disputing every step with me, swaggering,
growling, and pouring forth a torrent of threat
and abuse until wheezy and winded.

It is bluster, most of it; they love to make a
noise. If I drop down at the foot of a low-
limbed pine, they gather round, anxious for a
look at me, close to. Once I remember that a
chipmunk joined them, and his daring lent them
courage. Then came an inquisitive little chick-
adee, behind whom one of the squirrels, now
only a bundle of curiosity, crept down within
reach of me, flattened himself to the trunk, and
began a running comment, a speculation as to
my character, in little broken snorts, sniffs,
coughs, and snickers, emphasizing it all with
jerky gesticulations of his tail.

[ 248 ]
What did he say about me? Slighting things,
I have no doubt ; deriding me, perhaps, because
I could not climb trees and bite off pine-buds.
I don’t know. But I do know this, that, what-
ever he said, I enjoyed having him near me, for
Iam sure that he half enjoyed my being near
him. And I like the pines better for his sake.
They would often be dull and silent if he were
gone, for the pines are not companionable trees.
He is their spirit of lightness, gaiety, and chatter.

[249]
BIRD FRIENDSHIPS
 

BIRD FRIENDSHIPS

[ is not the sight of mere numbers that inter-
ests us as the “gathering swallows twitter
in the skies,” but rather the gathering itself, and
the twittering—the feeling of kinship and com-
mon interest which we see in the flocking.
These birds are apparently social creatures ; and
social feelings are human. By so much are we
and the swallows one.

It shows a very pleasing quality in bird na-
ture, this need which leads them to flock; and
it seems sometimes to be a deeper, more human
feeling than mere bird-of-a-feather interest—
something close akin to friendship.

The autumn flocking of the swallows and the

[ 253}
blackbirds, while far from meaning friendship,
means a great deal more indeed than polite so-
ciability, a drawing-room gathering.

There seem to be such functions in birddom.
A very select and unspotted company of crows
in my neighborhood meet frequently throughout
late summer and in the autumn, for no other
reason, apparently, than the pleasure of one an-
other’s society. They are as decorous as they
are select, usually, though not always.

One day I will see them sitting about in the
top of a great solitary white oak beyond the
meadow and talking quietly. Gossip running
short, they adjourn to the meadow below for an
equally quiet feed along the little river. An-
other day I will hear them boisterously caw-
cawing in a very gale of good time. There is
fun awing. Somebody is “it.” Suddenly into
the air they scatter, and up, in the tumbling,
whirling confusion of some game, all cawing at
the top of their lungs. I am not versed in crow
sports, but this looks and sounds very much like
the rough-and-tumble of a college foot-ball
contest. On yet another day the loud cawing
will be furious and angry. Anybody can tell

[254]
when a crow is angry. If I wait now, I am
pretty certain to see the whole elect company
drumming a red-tailed hawk or a blundering
barred owl out of the neighborhood.

They are an exclusive lot, these corbies, and
highly sociable. As far as I can make out, how-
ever, they flock for the mere pleasure of it—
for the noise, the push, and the gossip of a crowd.
They are neighborly, but hardly show real
friendship.

It is somewhat different with the swallows
and with many of the migrants. The same
friendly class feelings draw the swallows together
as draw the crows. A swallow is aswallow. But
migrating swallows are often not all of one
feather. I have seen barn, bank, and tree
swallows together, and with them, in one mov:
ing flock, king-birds, martins, swifts, and chip-
pies. All of these, in a general way, were of the
same mind, liking and disliking the same things.
But, what was far more, at these migration-times
they were all of the same purpose: all going a
journey, a journey full of hardships and plea-
sures, common alike to every one upon the road.

In traveling this long unguarded highway

[ 255 }
mere feather distinctions are likely to disappear.
Mutual need and good-fellowship prevail. It
is enough to be a bird, any kind of a well-
disposed bird, going this southern journey. For
how does one migrating bird differ from an-
other? He does not sing now, nor wear his
fine feathers, nor do a hundred things that in
the summer made him sufficient unto himself.
He just travels, and takes what comes; and the
more to share it all, the merrier. A common
purpose started the birds off, and now a common
interest draws all of them together. They are
not a flock, but a company; not swallows and
swifts merely: they are bird pilgrims, of many
feathers, passing along the strange migration
road to a distant land.

Perhaps this camaraderie of the pilgrimage
never reaches down to real friendship. But
what about that fellow-feeling which is brought
out by the stress of winter? This at least must .
come very near to friendship. A lean, hungry
winter makes close comrades among the birds.
They will all flock then. The only solitary, de-
fiant bird I meet in the winter is the great
northern shrike. What a froward, stiff-necked

[256 ]
sinner he is!’ But how superb! No cheeping,
no cowering, no huddling together for him.
How I hate and admire him!

But birds that have hearts in their breasts,
though they were as foreigners to one another
in the summer, nesting in regions far apart, will
flock during the long deep snows and hard
weather. Every winter I see mixed bands of
goldfinches, juncos, and tree-sparrows whirling
over the snow, the goldfinches leading—all of
them in search of grass and seedy weed-heads.
Nuthatches, kinglets, and chickadees will yank-
yank, tee-tee, and phee-he-be by the hour together,
apparently to their great consolation and mu-
tual support.

This misery-made companionship, though real
and helpful at the time, is doubtless not quite’
self-forgetful enough to be called friendship. A
goaded friendship must lack something of friend-
ship’s virtue.

Of a different quality entirely seems the feel-
ing that holds the broods of certain birds to-
gether in a real, intimate family life. Family
life among the birds? We usually think of the
nestlings as being led out by the parent birds

Mi [257 ]
and fed until they learn to forage for them-
selves, then scattering, each going its separate
way. And so most nestlings do. But there are
exceptions. In some bird families the young
grow up together, leaving neither parents nor
home neighborhood until they mate and build
homes of their own. Every covey of quails is
such a family; so, too, I think, is every flock
of chickadees. Every wedge of wild geese is
either a family ora small neighborhood of fami-
lies on a journey.

One dare not let his fancy free with the
thought of such family life. It is too danger-
ously beautiful. What intimacies, what brother-
love and mother-love, what human home scenes,
could one not imagine? Not wholly imagine,
either. More than one tender passage I have
actually seen and heard.

And so have hundreds of observers, doubtless.
For who has not listened to a mother quail call-
ing her hunted family together when the snow
and the night were falling? It is most sweetly,
tenderly human—the little mother, standing
upon the fence or in the snow of the silent
fields, calling softly through the storm until the

[258]
young ones answer and, one by one, come hurry-
ing to her out of the dusk, and murmuring.
Some of them do not hear. They have been
frightened far away. Louder now she whistles :
Whir-rl-le, whir-r-ri-le, whir-r-r-rl-le! But there
is only the faint purr of the falling snow, only
darkness and the silent ghostly fields.

Like little children, the covey will sometimes
dream or be disturbed by some sound half
heard in their sleep. I have been near when
the mother soothed them. A covey lived down
the bushy hillside, just beneath the house.
Coming up from the meadow one September
night, I passed close to their roost, and stopped
in the moonlight just beyond. Off across the
meadow the hounds were baying on the trail of
a fox. They were coming fast toward me. As
they broke into the open on the hills beyond the
meadow, I heard a movement among the quails,
then a low murmuring. The cry of the hounds
was disturbing the brood; they were uneasy
and restless: and the mother was stilling their
fears, murmuring something low and soft to re-
assure them.

They quieted at once; and it was well. A

[259 ]
moment later, up the narrow path by the side of
which they were sleeping trotted the fox. Upon:
seeing me he paused, and so close to them that
their slightest stir would have been caught by
his keen, quick ears.

So throughout the winter and far into the
spring they live together, an intimate, happy
family—more intimate and happier, perhaps,
than many human families. For see what a
number of children there are! It is significant,
is it not, that only large bird families apparently
know the joy of family life?

Even here among the quail there may be no
real love and friendship, no affection, no sharing
among the children. But there must be true
mother-love in the breast of such a mother bird
as this. Then why not love in the children?

Interpret it as we please, with or without sen-
timent, we cannot deny the existence of this -
family life among the birds.

The need of guidance, of food and protection,
may explain it in the case of the migrating
geese ; but this is not enough for the quail and
the chickadee families.

[260]
FARM-YARD STUDIES
 

FARM-YARD STUDIES

I

E were tied up for the night. Dusk and
\ the swamp silence had settled—settled
with a distinctness and presence almost super-
natural. A banjo had been twanging, but the
breakdown was done, the shuffling feet quiet.
The little cotton-boat had become a part of the
moonlit silence and the river swamp.
Two or three roustabouts were sitting atop
the rosin-barrels near by, under the spell, appa-

[ 263 ]
rently, of the round autumnal moon. There was
frost in the air and a thousand fragrant odors
from the ripened swamp; but not a cry nor call
in the stillness, until, suddenly, breaking through
the hush with a jarring, eery echo, sounded the
hoot of a great horned owl.

One of the roustabouts dropped to the deck,
holding up his hand. We listened. Again the
weird, startling Whoo, hoo-hoo-hoo-whoo-you-ah-
ah!

“Dat de king owl,” whispered the darky.
“He’s. out for turkey. Ol gobbler done gone
hid. Listen! de king owl gwine make him
talk.”

We listened, waiting ; but there came no an-
swering talk, no gobble of challenge out of the
swamp. I sat up until the moon rode high
overhead, hoping “de king owl” would drive
one of the wild swamp turkeys from its tree-top
roost and send him fluttering and talking over
the open river. I was to have a sight of one the
next day,—a dead one,—but I am still waiting
to see and hear the great bronze bird alive in
its native haunts.

They were all about me here on the Savannah

[ 264 ]
—a few of them. The next day at one of the
landings a colored boy brought a fine gobbler
aboard which he had shot back in the swamp.
In the tops of the tall cottonwoods all through
the wilder stretches of the South and the great
Southwest, scattering flocks of the native wild
turkeys still roost. They are so few and wild,
however, that the naturalist who would study
the habits of the bird is almost compelled, nowa-
days, to go to the barn-yard, tame and unro-
mantic as that locality is.

If one does not mind the setting, he will find
the barn-yard a more convenient place of study
and quite as good as the primeval forests; for
the-turkey is a maddeningly perverse, persistent
creature, that centuries of civilizing still leave
as unchanged in habit as in looks. When wild
turkeys in the market hang side by side with
tame ones, only a keen-eyed naturalist can tell
from their appearance which birds had never
seen a barn-yard, and which had descended by a
traceable barn-yard line from the year 1526. No
less persistent have been the old wild habits of
the birds.

Like our house-cats, the turkeys wear a cloak

[ 265 ]
of domesticity ; but not even pussy could put
hers off and go utterly wild more readily than
the turkey. Not an original woods trait or
habit seems to have been radically changed—
hardly altered—by all our fine efforts:on the
birds at home and abroad. For the turkey has
traveled. He is strictly an American, —Mexi-
can, perhaps,—sailing first from Mexican shores
about 1526, and not returning until the Pilgrims
and early settlers came. He was brought back
a larger bird than when he first set out, but still
a turkey and unalterably American.

Which does not mean that he is a good
American, deserving the eagle’s national place.
The turkey is unalterable because he cannot
learn anything, so nearly brainless is he. The
father—it was the mother—of all the turkeys
was originally endowed with two wits and as
many crafty ways as she had toes. Since her
day no turkey-hen has gained a third wit, nor
learned a new way, nor forgotten one of the old
ones. No turkey-gobbler ever had or shall have
any wit at all.

From Spain, whence the turkey spread over
Europe, we can trace his wanderings back to the

[ 266 ]
West Indies, and farther back to Mexico, where
the parent stock still survives. It is from this
Southwestern variety, Meleagris mexicana, and
not from the variety in the East and North,
that our domestic turkey has sprung. The only
marked difference in the two varieties is that
mexicana has creamy-white tips to his tail-feath-
ers and to those over-lapping the base of the
tail, while gallopavo’s tips are chestnut-brown.
The Southwestern bird, too, is somewhat greener
than the Northern.

Both varieties are growing very rare, and be-
fore long will become extinct. Our Northern
bird was abundant in some parts as late as
Audubon’s day. He bought them for “ three-
pence each.” Yet he says, speaking of the
Alleghanies: ““While in the Great Pine Forest
in 1829, I found a single feather that had been
dropped from the tail of a female, but saw no
bird of the kind.” One can range half of the
country now and not find so much as a feather.

If they were wholly gone, if they had never
been studied wild by the naturalists, we still
could almost write the life-history of the bird
from the habits of our tame turkeys.

[267]
The tame turkey-hen is notorious for stealing
her nest. The wild hen steals hers—not to ex-
asperate her owner, of course, as is the common
belief about the domestic turkey, but to get
away from the gobbler, who, in order to prolong
the honeymoon, will break the eggs as fast as
they are laid. He would Jay him down and
die, almost, for female adoration. He has just
enough brains to be sentimental, jealous, and
boundlessly fond of himself. His wives, too,
are fools enough to worship him, until—there
comes an egg. That event makes them wise.
They understand this strutting coxcomb, and
quietly turning their backs on him, leave him
to parade to his precious self alone.

There are crows, also, and buzzards from whom
the hen must hide the eggs. Nor dare she for-
get her own danger while sitting, for there are
foxes, owls, and prowling lynxes ready enough
to pounce upon her. On the farm most of these
enemies have taken human form.

For a nest the wild hen, like her sister in the
pasture-woods, scratches a slight depression in
the ground, usually under a thick bush, some-
times in a hollow log, and lays from twelve to

[268]
twenty eggs, which are somewhat smaller and
more elongated than the tame turkey’s, but of
the same color: dull cream, sprinkled with red-
dish dots.

More than one hunt for the stolen turkey nest
has been futile because the cautious mother cov-
ered the eggs carefully when leaving them.
This is one of the wild habits that have persisted.
The wild hen, as the hatching approaches, will
not trust even this precaution, but remains with-
out food and drink upon the nest until the
chicks can be led off. She can scarcely be
driven from it, often allowing herself to be cap-
tured first.

Mother-love burns fierce in her. Such help-
less things are her chicks! She hears them
peeping in the shell and breaks it to help them
out. She preens and dries them and keeps them
close under her for days.

Not for a week after hatching does she allow
them out ina rain. After that, against the cold
of a wetting, the wild mother, it is said, will feed
the buds of the spice-bush to her brood, as our
grandmothers used to administer mint tea.

The tame hen seems to have lost much of this

[269]
native mother skill, doubtless because for many
generations she has been relieved of the larger
part of the responsibility. I never knew one to
doctor her infants for vermin. But the wild
hen will. The woods are full of ticks and de-
testable vermin as deadly as cold rains. When
her brood begins to lag and pine, the mother
knows, and leading them to some old ant-hill,
she gives them a sousing dust-bath. The vermin
hate the odor of the ant-scented dust, and after
a series of washings disappear.

This is wise; but if report be true, then the
wild turkey is as wise and far-seeing a mother as
the woods contain. One observer tells of three
hens that stole off together and fixed up a nest
between themselves. Each put in her eggs—
forty-two in all—and each took turns guarding,
so that the nest was never left alone.

What special enemy caused this unique part-
nership the naturalist does not say. The three
mothers built together, brooded together, and
together guarded the nest. But how did those
three mothers divide the babies?

Every one who has had the least to do with
turkeys knows their timidity and indecision.

[270]
How often, as a boy, I have watched them going
to roost in the apple-trees and counted the times
they have stretched their necks and bobbed,
preparatory to an upward move! I don’t re-
member the best record for false moves, but so
distinct is the impression of the hesitancy and
timid bobbing that I never see a live turkey
without saying mentally :

One for the money, two for the show,
Three to get ready, and four to—get ready again.

These traits lead the wild birds to very absurd
actions in the course of their autumn wan-
derings.

Late in October the turkeys of each neighbor-
hood get together in flocks of from ten to a
hundred and travel on foot through the rich
bottom-lands in search of food. In these jour-
neys the males go ahead, apart from the females,
and lead the way. The hens, each conducting
her family in a more or less separate group,
come straggling leisurely along in the rear. As
they advance, they meet other flocks, thus swell-
ing their numbers.

After a time they are sure to come to a river

[271]
—a dreadful thing, for, like the river of the
song, it is one to cross. Up and down the banks
stalk the gobblers, stretching their necks out
over the water and making believe to start, as
they do when going to roost in the apple-trees.

All day long, all the next day, all the third
day, if the river is wide, they strut and cluck
along the shore, getting up their courage. The
ridiculous creatures have wings; they can fly;
but they are afraid! By this time, however,
the whole flock has mounted the tallest trees
along the bank. One of the gobblers has come
forward as leader in the emergency. Suddenly,
from his perch, he utters a single cluck,—the
signal for the start,—and every turkey sails into
the air. There is a great flapping—and the
terrible river is crossed.

A few weak members fall on the way over,
but not to drown. Drawing the wings close in
against their sides, and spreading their round
fan-like tails to the breeze, they strike out as if
born to swim, and come quickly to land.

The hens tag along at the beginning of the
migration in order to keep their young out of
the way of the old ill-natured gobblers who will

[272]
kill them. . Toward the end of the wandering, in
late November, the young are heavy enough to
fight for themselves; and finally, at the finding
of a particularly rich mast of nuts or winter
grapes, the flocks mingle indiscriminately, and
remain united until the spring.

II

AT the tail-end of the line of farm-yard inhabi-
tants, far below the pig in interest and intelli-
gence, stands the gobbler. Of all our birds there
is in him the least to be commended. Roasting
alone redeems him. Strangely enough, asso-
ciated with him in the yard, served with him at
the same Thanksgiving table, is the bird at the
head of the line. I doubt if there is bird or
beast, wild or tame, that for real interest and
admirable nature approaches the gander.

Certainly no other bird voice comes to us
with a clearer call, no other flight so- quickens
us, no other life among birds reads so like an
epic as the wild gander’s, this voyageur of the
clouds, this ranger of the zones.

Farm-yard life for the goose is an entirely dif-

8 [273]
ferent thing from the wild, free life of his free
wild relatives. In this he differs from the tur-
key—because he has more sense, and hence is
more adaptable ; and because his farm-yard life
reaches farther back into the far-away past. He
has had more time to forget and to learn. Mor-
ally he has resisted the degenerating influences
of his human associations most marvelously. He
has not the wings of former days; but this is
not his fault. Even a goose, by taking thought,
cannot turn pounds of his over-fed body into
inches of wing.

The wild Canada geese, whose honking, as
they pass, still stirs vague longings in their fat
brothers of the farm-yard, and sets them honk-
ing in reply, will doubtless long outlast the
dwindling flocks of wild turkeys. Along with
the extreme dangers of migration, there seem to
go superior gifts of brain and wing and body
which more than compensate. The turkey
wanders a little on foot, but he is a serf, quite
fast to the soil. The goose is a migrant and
hence is free.

In February the Canada geese are scattered
along the margins of our Southern waters, al-

[274]
ready preparing for their flight northward to
Canada, Labrador, and Alaska. Early spring
finds them back in their breeding-haunts with
nests well under way. Then, by September, the
long return flight begins, the flocks passing over
the Middle States for a month or more, but all
reaching the warm shores of the South before
our Northern waters are closed.

This journey in the spring is a honeymoon
trip; in the fall, a family excursion. The wild
geese (this cannot be said of tame ones) are
ideally wedded. Nothing of the gobbler’s polyg-
amy, jealousy, and viciousness is shown by the
gander ; the goose does not steal away from him
to make her nest. She and he are “engaged”
before the spring migration begins. They sail
away in company with like lovers to wed and
go off together as soon as the flock reaches the
Northern nesting-meadows.

Housekeeping for the geese is a particularly
serious business. The gander assumes his full
share of the trouble. He never shirks nor leaves
his mate. Day and night he stands on duty,
guarding the mother and the nest—with his life
if need be—against all enemies. He even helps

[275]
hatch the eggs, which is the limit of faithful-
ness.

The nest is a collection of driftweed and
sticks lined with down, and placed, usually, on
the ground in a marsh or meadow. Occasion-
ally it is upon a stump, or even up in some old
fish-hawk’s nest on the top of a tree.

As soon as the goslings hatch they take to the
water, and life for goose and gander tangles fast
with trouble.

I once watched a pair, that had bred in cap-
tivity, as they were led about by one small gos-
ling—their only one left out of a brood of seven.
I cannot imagine their pulling through alive
had all seven lived. From sunrise to nightfall
their anxious day was spent trying to keep up
with Master Gosling. He went whither he would ;
they in single file waddled along behind, caution-
ing, chiding, lamenting, so uncomfortably hur-
ried as to have time only to snatch a blade of
grass here, a billful of water there, as the irre-
pressible infant straddled up and down his back-
yard world.

It is well along in August before the young
are able to fly. All this time the parents have

[276]
cared for them, and will continue to keep them
together as a family until the next spring.

No phase of the life of these great birds is so
pleasing as the thought of this family life—
gander, goose, and goslings a united family even
while mingling as part of some numerous flock.
Every wedge of wild geese that flies trumpeting
overhead in the autumn nights is either a family
or a neighborhood of families led by some strong
old gander.

The great event in the goose calendar is this
autumn flight. The life of all the rest of the
year seems incidental to this. Need for food and
escape from the deadly cold were doubtless the
first causes of the migration, but they are sec-
ondary now. The flight for its own sake seems
to have become a fever in their bones. For
weeks previous to the departure, restlessness and
strange desires possess the birds. The flight—
mile-high, for a thousand miles ; ordered, thrill-
ing; past changing belts of landscape to a new
world !—such a flight is the fulfilment of life.

‘The love of it is far more than the desire for
food. Next to the want of mate and offspring
is the need for this flight. It is not a desire of

[277]
the flesh, but of the spirit. Food does not fail
in the farm-yard; yet the tame Canada geese,
when the nights grow crisp and the wild flocks
go honking over, will scream and run and flap
their crippled wings with a wild longing to fly
away— high and far and long into the air.

It is little that most of us know of the wild
geese besides this passing. But who has not seen
the wonderful wedge, like a harrow moving
across the sky, or the long file, like a strange
many-oared shell, swimming the clouds? Who
has not heard the thrilling trumpet-call out
of the star-depths of the silent autumn night?
Even in the heart of a vast city I have awakened
at the cloud-echoed cry, far off, weird, and
haunting.

High and swift as they move, the passage still
is a long and dangerous one.

Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

True; but that height cannot always be sus-
tained. The bird is flesh: such speed, though

[278]
the stroke be timed, rapidly exhausts ; the wings
must rest; the flier must have food; and await-
ing the descent is a line of enemies as long and
almost as continuous as the course.

Fogs obscure the way ; storms ‘hinder, noises
confuse ; and often, most dangerous of all, across
the brittle, bracing air of the course blows a
thick, warm wind that sends the whole flock
reeling and sagging to the earth. Hundreds of
geese one day, overcome by a sudden wave of
heat, dropped upon a small pond back of my
home, and when the village turned out to the
slaughter, the poor things scattered about the
neighboring fields, too weak and heavy to rise
higher than the tree-tops.

There is not a single event in all the year of
the fields that I would not sooner forgo than the
sight and sound of the, flying geese. How it
takes hold of the imagination! There is no
vivider passage in all of Audubon than his de-
scription of the flight :

“ As each successive night the hoar-frosts cover
the country, and the streams are closed over by
the ice, the family joins that in their neighbor-
hood, which is also joined by others. At length

[279]
they espy the advance of a snow-storm, when
the ganders with one accord sound the order for
their departure.

“After many wide circlings, the flock has risen
high in the thin air, and an hour or more is
spent in teaching the young the order in which
they are to move. But now the host has been
marshaled, and off it starts. The old males
advance in front, the females follow, the young
come in succession according to their strength,
the weakest forming the rear. Should one feel
fatigued, his position is changed in the ranks,
and he assumes a place in the wake of another,
who cleaves the air before him; perhaps the
parent bird flies for a while by his side to
encourage him.”

What meaning, and yet what mystery, that line
of winging geese has for us when we remember
all this! The bare facts brought by the natu-
ralist are wonderful enough. But, besides the
naturalist, the poet also has watched that strange
winging wedge across the sky, and the facts are
forgotten in the deeper meaning, the deeper
mystery of his suggestions. Not the flight of the
birds themselves seems to me so perfect, so won-

[280]
derful, as the flight of these lines which a pass-
ing waterfowl inspired :

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast —
The desert and illimitable air —

Lone wandering, but not lost.

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain
flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

[281]