Nature's Invitation: Notes of a Bird-Gazer, North and South

Part 1

Books by Mr. Torrey.

NATURE’S INVITATION. 16mo, $1.10, net. Postage extra.

THE CLERK OF THE WOODS. 16mo, $1.10, net. Postpaid, $1.20.

FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA. 16mo, $1.10, net. Postpaid, $1.19.

EVERYDAY BIRDS. Elementary Studies. With twelve colored Illustrations reproduced from Audubon. Square 12mo, $1.00.

BIRDS IN THE BUSH. 16mo, $1.25.

A RAMBLER’S LEASE. 16mo, $1.25.

THE FOOT-PATH WAY. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.

A FLORIDA SKETCH-BOOK. 16mo, $1.25.

SPRING NOTES FROM TENNESSEE. 16mo, $1.25.

A WORLD OF GREEN HILLS. 16mo, $1.25.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

NATURE’S INVITATION

NATURE’S INVITATION

NOTES OF A BIRD-GAZER NORTH AND SOUTH

BY BRADFORD TORREY

“On Nature’s invitation do I come.”--WORDSWORTH.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1904

COPYRIGHT 1904 BY BRADFORD TORREY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published October 1904

PREFATORY NOTE

Of the chapters here brought together the two longest, the first and the last, are reprinted from the “Atlantic Monthly.” The others were originally contributed, by way of weekly letters, to three newspapers,--the “Evening Transcript” of Boston, and the “Mail and Express” and the “Evening Post” of New York.

CONTENTS

NEW HAMPSHIRE

PAGE

A MAY VISIT TO MOOSILAUKE 3 A WEEK ON MOUNT WASHINGTON 32 ABOVE THE BIRDS 41 MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY 50 IN THE MOUNT LAFAYETTE FOREST 57 ON BALD MOUNTAIN 65 BIRDS AND BRIGHT LEAVES 72

FLORIDA

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MIAMI 83 A FROSTY MORNING 89 BEWILDERMENT 96 WAITING FOR THE MUSIC 104 PERIPATETIC BOTANY 111 A PEEP AT THE EVERGLADES 120 THE BEGINNINGS OF SPRING 128 FAIR ORMOND 136 A DAY IN THE WOODS 142 PICTURE AND SONG 151

Part 2

TEXAS AND ARIZONA

IN OLD SAN ANTONIO 161 A BIRD-GAZER’S PUZZLES 171 LUCK ON THE PRAIRIE 179 OVER THE BORDER 188 FIRST DAYS IN TUCSON 196 MOBBED IN ARIZONA 205 AN IDLE AFTERNOON 215 SHY LIFE IN THE DESERT 224 A NEW ACQUAINTANCE 233 THE DESERT REJOICES 242 NESTS AND OTHER MATTERS 251 A FLYCATCHER AND A SPARROW 259 A BUNCH OF BRIGHT BIRDS 266

INDEX 295

NEW HAMPSHIRE

A MAY VISIT TO MOOSILAUKE

When a man sets forth on an out-of-door pleasure jaunt, his prayer is for weather. If he is going to the mountains, let him double his urgency. In the mountains, if nowhere else, weather is three fifths of life.

My first trip to New Hampshire the present season was made under smooth, high clouds, which left the distance clear, so that the mountains stood up grandly beyond the lake as we ran along its western border. Not a drop of rain fell till I stepped off the car at Warren. At that moment the world grew suddenly dark, and before I could get into the open carriage the clouds burst, and with a rattling of thunder bolts a deluge of rain and hail descended upon us. There was no contending with such an adversary, though a good woman across the way, commiserating our plight, came to the door with proffers of an umbrella. I retreated to the station, while the driver hastened down the street to put his team under shelter. So a half hour passed. Then we tried again, and half frozen, in spite of a winter overcoat and everything that goes with it (the date was May 17), I reached my destination, five miles away, at the foot of Moosilauke.

All this would hardly deserve narration, perhaps (the story of travelers’ discomforts being mostly matter for skipping), only that it marked the setting in of a cold, rainy “spell” that hung upon us for four days. Four sunless days out of seven was a proportion fairly to be complained of. The more I consider it, the truer seems the equation just now stated, that mountain weather is three fifths of life. For those four days I did not even see Moosilauke, though we were living, so to speak, upon its shoulder, and I knew by hearsay that the summit house was visible from the back doorstep.

My first brief walk before supper should reasonably have been in the clearer valley country; but if reason spoke inclination did not hear it, and my feet--which seem to feel that they are old enough by this time to know their master’s business for him--took of their own motion an opposite course. The mountain woods, as I entered them, had the appearance of early March: only the merest sprinkling of new life,--clintonia leaves especially, with here and there a round-leaved violet, both leaves and flowers,--upon a ground still all defaced by the hand of Winter. Dead leaves make an agreeable carpet, as they rustle cheerfully-sadly under one’s feet in autumn; but there was no rustle here; the snow had pressed every leaf flat and left it sodden. One thing consoled me: I had not arrived too late. The “bud-crowned spring,” for all my fears, was yet to “go forth.”

The next morning it was not enough to say that it was cloudy. That impersonal expression would have been quite below the mark. We were cloudy. In short, the cloud was literally around us and upon us. As I stepped out of doors, a rose-breasted grosbeak was singing in one direction, and a white-throated sparrow in another, both far away in the mist. It was strange they should be so happy, I was ready to say. But I bethought myself that their case was no different from my own. It was comparatively clear just about me, while the fog shut down like a curtain a rod or two away, leaving the rest of the world dark. So every bird stood in a ring of light, an illuminated chantry all his own,

And sang for joy, good Christian bird, To be thus marked and favored.

Strange had he not been happy. To be blest above one’s fellows is to be blest twice over.

This time I took the downward road, turning to the left, and found myself at once in pleasant woods, with hospitable openings and bypaths; a birdy spot, or I was no prophet, though just now but few voices were to be heard, and those of the commonest. Here stood new-blown anemones, bellworts, and white violets, an early flock, with one painted trillium lording it over them; a small specimen of its kind, but big enough to be king (or shepherd) in such company. A brook, or perhaps two, with the few birds, sang about me, invisible. I knew not whither I was going, and the all-embracing cloud deepened the mystery. Soon the road took a sudden dip, and a louder noise filled my ears. I was coming to a river? Yes, for presently I was on the bridge, with a raging mountain torrent, eighty feet, perhaps, underneath, foaming against the boulders; a bare, perpendicular cliff on one side, and perpendicular spruces and hemlocks draping a similar cliff on the other side. It was Baker’s River, I was told afterward,--the same that I had looked at here and there, the day before, from the car window. It was good to see it so young and exuberant; but even a young river need not be so much in haste, I thought. It would get to the sawmills soon enough, and by and by would learn, too late, that it is only a little way to the sea.

Once over the bridge, the road climbed quickly out of the narrow gorge, and at the first turn brought me in sight of a small painted house, with a small orchard of thrifty-looking small trees behind it. Here a venerable collie came running forth to bark at the stranger, but yielded readily to the usual blandishments, and after sniffing again and again at my heels, just to make sure of knowing me the next time, went back, contented, to lie down in his old place before the window. He was the only person that spoke to me--the only one I met--during the forenoon, though I spent it all on the highway.

Another patch of woods, where a distant Canadian nuthatch is calling (strange how I love that nasal, penetrating, far-reaching voice, whose quality my reasoning taste condemns), and I see before me another house, standing in broad acres of cleared land. This one is not painted, and, as I presently make out, is uninhabited, its old tenant gone, dead or discouraged, and no new one looked for; an “abandoned farm,” such as one grows used to seeing in our northern country. It is beautiful for situation, one of those sightly places which the city-worn passer-by in a mountain wagon pitches upon at once as just the place he should like to buy and retire to--some day; in that autumn of golden leisure of which, now and then,

“When all his active powers are still,”

he has a pleasing vision. Oh yes, he means to do something of that kind--some day; and even while he talks of it he knows in his heart that “some day” is only another name for “next day after never.”

A few happy barn swallows (wise enough, or simple enough, to be happy now) go skimming over the grass, and a pair of robins and a pair of bluebirds seem to be at home in the orchard; which they like none the worse, we may be sure,--the bluebirds, especially,--because, along with the house and the barn, it is falling into decay. What are apple trees for, but to grow old and become usefully hollow? Otherwise they would be no better than so many beeches or butternuts. It is impossible but that every creature should look at the world through its own eyes; and no bluebird ever ate an apple. A purple finch warbles ecstatically, a white-throated sparrow whistles in the distance, and now and then, from far down the slope, I catch the upliftings of a hermit thrush.

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