Part 38

Peent, -peent, -peent, -peent, From the thick grass on the hill; Peent, -peent, -peent, -peent, At eve when the world is still.

Then a sudden whistle of whirring wings,— A rush to the upper air,— And a rain of maddening music falls From the whole sky,—everywhere!

—Winifred Ballard Blake in Bird-Lore.

“Dave, please tell us about the bird that you saw on the nest,” said Gray Lady, “and how you came to find it.”

“Half a dozen of us went out to hunt for May-flowers (Trailing Arbutus) one Wednesday along the first part of April last year. Miss Wilde thought Zella had measles, and school was closed two days, but doctor found it was only a cold and eating too much sausage meat and sweet pickles, and so they broke out, and he gave her rhubarb.” (Dave, having been asked to tell all about it, was bound to omit no detail.)

“The others of our crowd stayed along by the path that runs through the wood, where you saw the birds dance, because there are black snakes through the brush there that begin to crawl out to sun in April, and the girls were scared of them.

“I went on ahead a little piece, and turned up a side hill where there was an old rail fence that divides our woods from the Cobbs’ piece. Right in front of me I found a bully patch of May-flowers, and I sat down and began cutting them with my knife (’cause they have wiry sort of stems) and made them in a nice even bunch, when something ahead sort of made me keep my eyes glued to it. It was under the slant of the lowest fence rail. I thought it was a striped snake curled up round, at first, because I felt eyes were looking at me, though it was too dark to see them, at first. Did you ever have that feeling, Gray Lady?”

“Yes, I have had it, Dave, and I know what a strange sensation it is. The last time I had it I felt no better when I saw the eyes; in fact, little cold shivers went all over, for I was far away from here, and the eyes were those of a rattlesnake that was coiled up, amid the stones of a ledge, where I was gathering some rare wild flowers.”

“Oh, what did you do?” cried all the children, together.

“I backed away as fast as I could, keeping my eyes upon the snake, until I was at a safe distance, where he could not spring at me, and then I very foolishly ran! What did you do, Dave?”

“I crept up nearer until I got a good look, and then I saw that it was a bird. It was sitting ever so still, with its head well down on its shoulders and its long beak close to its breast. It had queer, big eyes set up on top of its head, and round like a frog’s, not like any other bird that I know of.”

“The eyes of the Woodcock and its cousins, the Snipe, are set in this way, so that, when they are boring in the mud for food, they can keep watch behind them as well as in front,” said Gray Lady.

“First, I thought the bird was dead, it kept so still,” continued Dave, “but I could see its breast raised a little with its breathing.”

“If it had been dead, its eyes would have been closed,” said Gray Lady. “It is one of the many mysterious and unaccountable facts about a bird, that it is the only animal that closes its own eyes when death touches it.”

“It wasn’t afraid, so I thought that I would just smooth its feathers,” said Dave. “I did, and it didn’t fly, only just puffed up a little, so I thought I would lift it very carefully to see if there were any eggs under it, and there were four nice, sort of round, light, brown eggs, the colour that our Plymouth Rocks lay, only mottled. But the bird didn’t like to be lifted, and she sort of growled inside, the way a hen does, so I set her down and went away.”

“That was a very pleasant experience of yours, Dave, and shows how tame game-birds will become if they are kindly treated. This Woodcock has an advantage over the Grouse and Bob-white, his cousin, because it travels South in winter and constantly shifts its feeding-places, but it suffers from other dangers: it is hunted in all the states through which it passes, and the eggs are large enough to be very attractive, not only to foxes and all the gnawing creatures of the woods, but to people as well. If that nest and eggs had been seen by one of those foreign-born poachers who come here thinking that everything they find out-of-doors, and they can pocket, belongs to them, the poor Woodcock would have lost her entire brood and perhaps her own life as well.

* * * * *

“These three land-birds, together with a number of wild ducks, that live some on fresh and some near salt water, travelling North and South according to season, are the legitimate game-birds of the country. Of the wild ducks, the most of these breed in the far North, and are hunted in their migrations. If this hunting is done fairly, as the law prescribes, and the birds are not chased and shot at from moving boats, or with repeating guns, or when startled from their sleep with flashing lights, they seem able to hold their own. Humanity, however, demands that they should not be hunted on their spring journeys on the way to their nesting-haunts and when they may have already chosen mates.

“One Duck there is, however, of exquisite plumage, gentle disposition, and quiet, domestic habits, nesting about inland ponds and streams, in the inhabited parts of the United States, from Florida up to Hudson Bay, that is in danger of swift extinction if the protection given song-birds is not extended to it. This is the Wood Duck, called in Latin ‘Aix Sponsa’—‘Bridal Duck’—from the fact that the beauty of his plumage was fit for a bridal garment.

“Look at that bird, mounted on a mossy stump, in that case by the window. When I was a girl, I have seen a half-dozen pairs in the pond above the grist-mill, and I knew as surely where I could always find a pair nesting as where I could find a Robin or Song Sparrow, but now it is fast becoming a bird of the past, only to be seen in pictures. Why is this? The reasons are many, and some, such as the settlement of the country, and the draining of ponds and waterways, and the cutting down of river brush, cannot be helped.

“The Wood Duck nests in a tree hole, and, when the young are able to leave the nest, the parents hold them in their bills and carry them to the ground in somewhat the way in which cats remove their kittens from place to place. Consequently, if the lumber is cleared, and no suitable trees are left, what is this Duck to do? He cannot take to the chimneys as the Swifts have. Still, this Duck, whose beauty alone is a sufficient and patriotic reason for saving him to his country, might adapt his nesting to other conditions if it could be protected as the Grouse, Quail, and Woodcock are in New England, or, better yet, not be hunted in any way for a number of years, so that the Wood Ducks, wherever located, should have, a chance to increase once more and reëstablish themselves.

Order—Anseres Family—Anatidæ Genus—Aix Species—Sponsa

“For, when we come to look closely at the matter, there is really no fair hunting, for the killing inventions of man—the magazine guns, etc.,—are on the increase, while the power of poor game-birds to protect themselves lessens both on land and water. Think of it, in some states there are no laws to protect this bird, even in summer, and, as Wood Ducks are fond of their nesting-places, and are very unsuspicious birds, it often happens that an entire family is killed the moment the young are large enough to furnish the pitiful thing, in this case, that is called ‘sport.’

“As it happens, the woods on this side of the river from above the pond to the sawmill belong to the General’s farm, and, Tommy and Dave, the water right on the other side belongs to your fathers.

“Will you not ask them if they will help me to protect their birds, if I can get half a dozen pairs from one of the Wise Men who is trying to reëstablish them in their old haunts?

“The Grouse and Quail are growing friendly again under protection, and I am in hopes that we may have a drummer, as well as a fifer and his family, in the orchard and near-by woods next spring.

“There are many hollow willows near the upper pond like the ones in which the Wood Ducks used to nest. If these are left, the ducks will soon become attached to them, and, if they escape peril elsewhere, for this Duck’s greatest danger is in the vicinity of home, then we shall all have a chance, possibly, some day to see a sight that ever the Wise Men argue about,—the parent Duck bringing her young from the tree hole to take their first swim!”

The boys promised to ask the question, and Tommy reported at the schoolhouse, the next Friday, that “grandpa thinks it would be just bully to have Wood Ducks again, and he’ll sit round the pond, with a shot-gun, all he’s able, to keep folks away. He says he’s seen the old ones yank the young, one by one, right out of the nest by the wing, and set ’em on the ground, and when they were all down, lead ’em to the water. And once, when the tree was close over the pond, the old bird flew down and set ’em right on the water. He says weasels and water-rats and snakes and snapping-turtles help kill off the ducklings, because until they get big enough to fly they’ve got no way of lighting-out.” All of which goes to prove that Tommy Todd had inherited some of his keenness of eye in “watching out” for the doings of wild things.