Part 3

Round about there is an awakening as from an enchanted sleep; the drowsy world yawns and stretches. The highhole is in evidence, and his rattling call is calculated to awake the sleepers in that pasture at least. Soon the chipmunk is on the wall, and the woodchuck warily pokes his head from his burrow. This note of the highhole is irrepressibly exuberant and ringing with energy. If it does not prove a tonic to you, nothing else will. He is even more emphatic in his drumming. His lively tattoo goes well with his vigorous call. Time to be up and doing! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Presently the first flock of fox-sparrows drop down from somewhere and go to scratching among the leaves, like so many chickens. The present season a flock of perhaps fifty settled in and around a thicket on March 24th. Their bold clear notes could be heard some distance away, and drew one in that direction. Numbers of them were hopping about, and occasionally a bird would rise to a branch overhead and sing, looking like a hermit-thrush as his back was turned. The place was given over to the sparrows, and never was thicket more tuneful. There was the sound of unceasing revelry--a sylvan and melodious revelry.

At this season the impulse to expression is natural and daily becomes more evident. Even the crow begins to affect music and to show off his accomplishments. But it is Mlle. Corbeau, and not M. Reynard, that incites him to this exhibition of vanity. You may hear him in the pine grove, apparently gargling his throat, which is meant for a gay roulade to please the ear of some dusky beauty lingering near and perhaps affecting indifference. This is only a prelude to the astonishing falsetto that sometimes follows, and which, be it hoped, may prove more acceptable to Mlle. Corbeau than to our more critical ears. It is very evident something is going on. The large flocks of winter have given away to small and excited bands which keep up a perpetual clamor. It is no surprise, then, some day in March to detect a crow carrying twigs.

At no other time is there such concerted singing among the song-sparrows as in these first days of the arrival of any considerable flocks. From bare fields and brown hedgerows arises this simple and spontaneous expression of joy, a primitive invocation to the goddess Spring, fresh and clear and innocent as the morning itself. As they hop about among the dry weeds, one will now and then pick up a straw and hold it meditatively a moment with some premonition of the nest. Presently they will be flitting among the still leafless brambles and briers with an air of secrecy and importance. Some bright morning in March there comes to the listening ear the song of the purple finch--a wild sweet strain with the abandon of gipsy music, which thrills with its very wildness and unrestraint. Anon Phoebe arrives with dry little voice and familiar swoop after the first incautious fly.

Every season has its characteristic song. More than all others is the voice of the hyla, essentially springlike and to be associated with no other time. For several days there has been an occasional desultory chirp from the woods, when of a sudden, some clear evening, there comes out of the stillness that wonderfully sweet piping of little frogs. Fresh and ringing as child voices, it has, at a distance, a certain rhythm, a soothing cadence, which lulls the ear like the musical patter of rain-drops in summer showers. Put your ear close to one--if you can find him--and the sound is deafening, so loud and shrill it pierces to the very marrow. The small creature sits in some low shrub in the swamp, grasping a twig on either side as with tiny hands, while it inflates its air-sac from time to time and sings the love-song of its race. Heard afar, how soft and pleasing are these answering calls of the hylas which are the very voice of the evening itself.

About the time the hylas begin to sing in chorus, you may look for the appearance of the leopard-frog. He is to be heard at midday in his pond uttering a most deliberate and prolonged snore, evenly and smoothly drawn out, as if his sleep were dreamless and content. Presently there is an answering snore, full as deliberate and serene, from across the pond, followed by long intervals of silence. Very different from this somnolent song of the leopard-frog is the shrilling of garden-toads. Not every one would recognize the solemn and dusty toad of the flower-beds, that flops from under the feet in the dusk, in this brighter colored creature, floating at full length in the shallow water, his air-sac inflated before him like a parti-colored bubble. The shrilling of toads fills the air; they are under a spell, a witchery, which has set them all to chanting this single strain--high-pitched and subdued--with a sort of mild frenzy.

April brings the twittering of tree-swallows, and spreads a tinge of color like a faint red mist over the swamps. This flower of the maple is one whose virtues are seldom sung, as though the blossoms of trees counted for little. Surely the bursting of silver-gray rods into this vivid bloom is an event worthy the muse. It is not only in autumn the red maple graces the swamp. These modest blossoms of the early year--willow, alder, poplar, elm, maple--must have their place in the flower calendar, are worthy a Festival of Trees, to be associated with the song of the hyla.

Anything like an exact flower calendar is out of the question, for much depends on the locality and the season. We look for bloodroot and hepatica to follow arbutus, and yet I have on occasion found bluets several weeks in advance of these. The saxifrage is perhaps quite as early as any, though I have seen the buds of the marsh-marigold about to open on the 25th of March. Much depends on which has the more favorable spot in any locality. In a warm nook, on the 13th of April, bloodroot, hepatica, spring-beauty, early saxifrage, dicentra, wood-and rue-anemones and adder's-tongue, as well as common blue and long-spurred violets, were blooming together in profusion. The saxifrage and bloodroot might, of course, have been seen a week earlier. In the same spot several days later, columbines, miterwort and groundnut, and also sweet white violets, downy yellow and lance-leaved violets, were added to the list and were followed by bellworts and wood-betony. This was in northern New Jersey. Meanwhile I had seen only the common blue violets in the Connecticut Valley, while in eastern Massachusetts the wood-anemones were not in bloom, and the leaf of the columbine had just appeared above the soil. This particular spot was evidently a sort of natural forcing ground where the columbine was made to bloom with the bloodroot. What becomes of your flower calendar here? Looking still for signs of spring, I came full upon the fickle goddess herself.

Before we know it, the migration of warblers has begun and the keen ear detects their thin wiry notes. But this is not so much a sign as it is the fulfilling of prophecies.

BIRD LIFE

Walking through bare fields in the chill and birdless world some winter days, it is brought home to us what an essential feature of our surroundings the birds are, what a lack there is when they are absent! A certain poverty lies over the earth; the sky is no longer complete without a swift or a martin. Birds are part of the landscape; it is they which animate it. Rarely, when it seems most destitute, a flock of snow-buntings will come swirling over the pasture, like great snowflakes driven before the blast. Again, as the wind will pick up dry snow and blow it over the field, they are off and whirling away, glittering in the pale yellow light of the winter day as they wheel and come to the ground. But their presence has redeemed and softened the austere landscape, made the earth habitable once more and the bare fields friendly and companionable.

The first snipe and plover in the spring remind us what stay-at-homes are we, what wanderers they. We must appear to them but poor mollusks, as they come and go each year on their way from Patagonia to the Arctic Circle. In how many States, in what diversity of climes they are at home! And wherever they may be they get their own living by no one's favor. This prodigious self-reliance affects one as a species of heroism, whereas it is as unconscious as the falling rain.

What familiarity with the elements and with natural features of the earth the migrating birds must acquire--with winds and clouds, with mountain chains and rivers and coast lines! They know the landmarks and guide-posts of two continents and can find their own way. The whistle of curlew, or the honk of wild geese high in the air, seems a greeting out of the clouds from these cosmopolites, to us, sitting rooted to the earth beneath. A flock of wild geese on the wing is no less than an inspiration. When that strong-voiced, stout-hearted company of pioneers pass overhead, our thoughts ascend and sail with them over the roofs of the world. As band after band come into the field of vision--minute glittering specks in the distant blue--to cross the golden sea of the sunset and disappear in the northern twilight, their faint melodious honk is an Orphean strain drawing irresistibly.

A sort of noble madness seizes the birds in the spring, so that an exodus of inconceivable extent takes place toward the North, as though the Pole were a magnet to them. There is a suggestion of epic splendor in this vast impulse, this flight of the feathered tribes of the earth. We may well ask the bobolink, What news from Brazil? and the returning plover, What of the Frozen Sea? What bird-memories do they cherish of these remote regions? It casts a halo of romance about them, that they should thus be at home in lands that may perhaps remain ever unvisited by us.

As if actuated by a sublime faith, in the midst of plenty they arise and depart, drawn ever to the remote solitudes to rear their young, like those citizens who return to their own country that their children may be born in the Fatherland. I do not know if our affinity is greater with the bob-white and the ruffed grouse, which hear no call to depart, or with these nomads of the earth. In the coldest weather, redpolls, crossbills and snow-buntings come to us as to a land of plenty. This is near enough the equator for these hardy birds--this is their genial South. It is pleasant to reflect that the falling mercury, which deprives us of the last of the summer residents, will at the same time bring us some dweller in the far North which perhaps otherwise we should not see.

The advancing season makes itself known through the songsters; they have keener perceptions and receive other intimations than come to us. Day by day, as by appointment, they reappear from Florida, from the Amazon and the Orinoco, and make themselves at home again in northern pastures. I have come to look for the tree-swallows as regularly on the 1st of April, as for the oriole on the 10th of May, as if these were calendar events of real importance. Between the middle of April and the 20th of May lie the incomparable days of the migrating warblers--days of discovery and adventure, when the torpor of indifference slips away, and, like a subtle fire in the blood, is felt that enthusiasm the years do not diminish. When, at night, the small birds pass overhead, their faint silvery "tseeps" come out of the silence with a weird suggestion of voices from the unseen world.

Now, the days are full of pleasing suggestions because of little birds shyly flitting with plant-down and with rootlets and dried grasses. Some are unmistakably house-hunting, and the female turns herself about in the crotch of a limb, trying if it be of the right proportions. Interest in bird life centers about this season. This is their life; the rest is a preparation or a waiting. It is only natural there should be an air of secrecy about them now. They are doing their best to conceal and elude, as indeed they must, and this necessity, being uppermost in their minds, becomes evident in their manner.

While I am watching a pair of pewees gather lichens from an old maple for their beautiful shallow nest, the barn-swallows shoot by with mud for their adobe huts. Now and then one pulls from the mud a few fine rootlets--perhaps of the white violet or gold thread growing there--and carries them off. They evidently know their trade. A chestnut warbler appears with some plant-fiber in her bill, and gives a cluck of surprise and disgust to find some one on the ground where she thought to have her secluded and private estate. She hesitates with the down still in her bill; it is evident what she must be thinking; but at length she decides to risk it, and enters the huckleberries. She has, of course, gone into the bushes a long way from the nest. One has great sympathy with the birds in their little circumventions and dissimulations, knowing their tribulations. They live among their numerous foes much as did the early settlers in this land,--that is to say, in spite of them. The weasel, the owl, and the cat--the terrible cat--are appointed to decimate the population of birds.

In the several nests of warblers, I am observing, the thrifty housewife is evidently the home-builder, whereas the male seems to take it upon himself merely to cheer and encourage her. After she has constructed a framework she settles herself in this and builds the wall around her, quite as if she were fitting a garment to herself. Her little ways while so engaged are distinctly feminine. To think that she has never been taught her trade, has perhaps never before fitted such a garment, and she is already deft and expert! The pair seem to take an almost human satisfaction in their home. Now and again they appear to talk it over together. Who can doubt they have some pleasure in this preparation, that they have bird-plans and bird-hopes?

We do not really know, a bird till we have found its nest and seen it at home. When I came upon the nest of the snowbird in the midst of a clearing in the mountains, it was like visiting the house for the first time of one I had known for years--a person of some distinction at that. It was placed high and dry on a tussock in a flaming patch of hawkweed. She had an eye for the practical, and knew better than to put her house where the cellar might be flooded. The four greenish mottled eggs were her one priceless treasure, which was to her as life itself. They were warm, and the whole aspect of the nest was sweet and inviting. It appeared to breathe some feminine element, so dainty was it, so begirt with flowers.

A humming-bird's nest that I have been watching the present season is placed on a pitch pinecone, and appears to a casual view to be the cone itself. It seems as if the bird had it in mind to simulate this or she would not have chosen such a peculiar site, for it affords no advantage from a structural point of view. If this be true it is a departure from all traditions, and shows a bird of some character and originality. In other respects it is like any humming-bird's nest--one of the most exquisite of all natural objects.

In the course of ten days, in place of one of the eggs appeared a small and peculiarly homely object which resembled a spider as much as anything. Two days later the other egg was hatched. At this stage the bills of the young birds were very short, but day by day they lengthened and grew more needlelike. At length one bird opened its minute and shining black eyes for the first time. The other fell from the nest on the following day, before its eyes were opened, so that all it had known of life was the consciousness of hunger.

The female fed her young with much less frequency than do other birds. When so engaged she perched upon the rim of the nest and pumped the food into them after the manner of her kind. As she flew to and fro, she appeared to move always at the same speed, as if her wings were keyed to a definite rate of vibration and could not vary. Gradually the young bird emerged from its gruesome infancy, and day by day became more sylphlike. Heavy winds prevailed, but the diminutive cradle remained unharmed, though branches were everywhere blown from the trees. So was the wind tempered in that case at least, till one day the sylph left the nest, as a thistle-down might detach itself and sail away on the breeze.

Birds have their home-trees, and one whose traditions are of the pine is not drawn to build in hardwoods. The woodthrush is associated with the dogwood, as the catbird with the smilax, and the oriole with the elm. There are ancient apple orchards which have come to serve only the bees and the birds; but what temples of music in May with the hum of bees, and in June with the song of wrens! At this season you cannot do better than to set out for one of these old-time orchards, neglected of man and favored of heaven.

The virile hum of honey-and carpenter-bees descends from the flowery summits to the listener beneath, the contented music of a race dwelling overhead and nearer the skies than we. It is such an apple--Baldwin, pippin, or russet--gnarled and archaic in trunk and a bower of beauty above, which becomes the home-tree of that feathered gnome, the house-wren, a sprightly elf, living in the depths of a tree trunk and yet full to the brim of song. He may derive of the flowing sap some genial trait and takes to the apple as a swift to the chimney, or a redwing to the swamp. After the cold rains of late May have taken off the blossoms and with them the bees, the place becomes melodious with his song. It is thenceforth his estate, and he dominates it with his small personality. With him his house is his castle, and in true medieval fashion he barricades his door. Within is snug enough, but without it has a feudal and forbidding look,--a formidable barrier of twigs, erected perhaps against the house-sparrow or for fear the robber-owl may peer too closely.

In this choice of a building site the bird reveals something of itself. Contrast the wren with the phoebe, a cliff-dweller, loving the contact of the ledge itself better than any bush or tree. The song-sparrow has an eye for the wild rose and the yellow warbler for apple blossoms, but the phoebe has some austere traits which make the stern rock more congenial to her. Some birds are architects, others builders merely. The vireos are a family of artists, whereas the improvident cuckoo will not even lay a proper floor to her nest.

A look into some nests is a glance at the domestic life of a savage people, and yet we find the virtues we most esteem--patience, perseverance and fortitude. Hour in and hour out the faithful kingfisher flies from the nest to the fishing-ground, bringing each time a small fish. He is a primitive and industrious fisherman who gets an honest living by his skill and supports his family, yet he is under ban, while the dilettante whips the stream for his pleasure. The hoarse rattle of the kingfisher is an altogether barbarous chant with which he beguiles himself as with a hunting song. His is an austere temperament with no room for melody. But that he returns every year to the same nest--the ancestral hall--is evidence of some more domestic and kindly trait in his character.

This nest is an excavation in the sand, high in a bluff, and is perhaps five feet deep,--a true cave, and its inmate a cave-dweller. We have thus both cave-and cliff-dwellers among us--primitive states of man still exemplified by birds. The cave-dweller had something in common with the kingfisher, which led him to burrow in the earth for a home.