Part 17

Half an hour before, in almost the same place, I had stopped to look at six birds perched in a bare treetop. They were so silent, so motionless, and so closely bunched, that I put up my opera-glass expecting to find them cedar waxwings. Instead, they were nothing but blue jays. While my glass was still on them, the whole flock seemed to be taken with a dancing fit. This lasted for a quarter of a second, more or less, and was so quickly over that I cannot say positively that it was anything more than an optical illusion. The next moment all hands took flight with loud screams. They did not go far, and presently crossed the road in front of me, still screaming lustily, for no reason that I could discover signs of. However, the blue jay is as far as possible from being a fool, and whenever he talks it is safe concluding that he has something to say.

It has long been an opinion of mine that the jay language is worthy of systematic study. Some man with a gift of patience and a genius for linguistics should undertake a jay dictionary; setting down not only all jay words and phrases, but giving us, as far as possible, their meaning and their English equivalents. It would make a sizable volume, and would be a real contribution to knowledge.

All bird language, I have no doubt, is full of significance. It has been evolved exactly as human language has been, and while it is presumably less copious and less nicely shaded than ours, it is probably less radically unlike it than we may have been accustomed to assume. That it has something answering to our “parts of speech” we may almost take for granted. It could scarcely be intelligible--as it assuredly is--if some words did not express action, others things, and still others quality. Verbs, substantives, adjectives, and adverbs,--these, at least, all real language must possess. The jay tongue has them, I would warrant, in rudimentary forms, but in good number and of clearly defined significance.

Jays are natural orators; for among birds, as among men, there are “diversities of operations.” “All species are not equally eloquent,” said Gilbert White. And the same capable naturalist made another shrewd remark, which I would commend to the man, whoever he may be, who shall undertake the jay-English dictionary that I have been desiderating. “The language of birds,” said White, “is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical; little is said, but much is meant and understood.”

The blue jay, I am confident, though I do not profess to be a jay scholar, makes a large use of interjections. This will constitute one of the difficulties with which his lexicographer will have to contend; for interjections, as all students of foreign tongues know, are among the hardest words to render from one language to another. A literal translation is liable to convey almost no meaning. When a Spaniard grows red in the face and vociferates, “Jesús, María y José!” he is not thinking of the holy family, but in all likelihood of something very, very different; and when a devout New England deacon hears some surprising piece of news, and responds with “My conscience!” he is not thinking at all of the voice of God in the soul of man. Such phrases--and the jay language, I feel sure, is full of them--are not so much expressions of thought as vents for feeling. You may call them safety-valves. Emotion is like steam. If you stop the nose of the tea-kettle, off goes the cover. The hotter the blood, of course, the more need for such exclamatory outlets; and the jay, unless his behavior belies him, is Spaniard, Italian, and Frenchman all in one. I pity his lexicographer if he undertakes to render all his subject’s emotions in prim literary English. But I hope he will do the best he can, and I promise to buy his book.

The linnet’s was the first spring song, I said; but it was first by an inch only; for even while I was setting down the paragraph a white-breasted nuthatch broke into a whistle close by my window. I turned at once to look at him. There he stood, in the top of the elm, perched crosswise upon a small twig, just as a sparrow might have been, and every half a minute throwing forward his head and emitting that peculiar whistle, broken into eight or ten syllables. Between times he looked to right and left, as if he had been calling for some one and was expecting a response. No response came, and after a little he disappeared.

That was the second spring song, and a good one, though not to be compared with the linnet’s for musical quality. Now, say I, who bids for the third place? Perhaps it will be a bluebird, perhaps a robin, perhaps a song sparrow.

CHIPMUNKS, BLUEBIRDS, AND ROBINS

The season was opened, formally, on the 10th of March. I am speaking for myself. Friday, the 8th, brought genuine spring weather, sunny and warm, an ideal day for the first bluebird; but I was obliged to waste it in the city. The 9th was rainy and cold, and though I spent some hours out-of-doors, I saw no vernal signs. Birds of all sorts were never so few. The next morning--cloudy, with a raw northeasterly wind--I was fifteen minutes away from home when a squirrel came out of the woods on one side of the way and ran across the road before me. It was a chipmunk, my first one of the new year, wide-awake and quick on its legs; and it was hardly in the hazel bushes on the other side of the road before another joined it, and the two chased each other out of sight. Spring had come.

Chickarees and gray squirrels have been common enough throughout the cold weather, but the chipmunk, or striped squirrel, takes to its burrow in the late autumn, and sleeps away the winter. In other words, along with the woodchuck (the largest and the smallest of our New England squirrels being alike in this respect), it migrates--into the “land of Nod.” I imagine, however, that its sleep is not so sound but that it wakes up now and then to feed, though as to this point I know really nothing, my impression arising wholly from the fact that chipmunks store away food. They would hardly do this, I should think, unless they expected to find a use for it.

Late in September, five months ago, I went to visit friends in the White Mountains, and one of the first things I heard from them was that Betty had disappeared. She had not been seen for about two months. Betty was a chipmunk that had been in the habit of coming upon the piazza, and had grown tame under kind treatment till she would take food from her friends’ fingers and even climb into their laps. Once, indeed, the lady of the house, having gone upstairs, noticed the presence of something heavy in her pocket (she is a naturalist, and for that reason, I suppose, still wears a pocket in her gown), and on putting her hand into it, found Betty inside.

But, as I say, Betty had suddenly discontinued her visits, and there was mourning at the cottage. Worse yet, there was wrath, and the stable cat had barely escaped with his life. But now, on a Sunday noon, when the cottagers appeared at the hotel dinner-table, they announced with beaming faces that there was great news: Betty had returned! I must come over and see her; for up to this time I knew her charms only by report.

As soon as dinner was finished, therefore, we repaired to the cottage veranda, and pretty soon, while we were talking of one thing and another, the lady said, “Ah, here she is! Here’s Betty!” Filberts had been provided, and she began at once to climb into our laps after them. She carried them away three at a time,--one in each cheek-pouch and one between her teeth,--going and coming in the most industrious and businesslike manner. She would pass the winter in a state of hibernation, without a doubt, but her conduct obviously implied that she expected to see a time now and then when a bite of something to eat would “come handy.”

My 10th of March chipmunks were a welcome sight. I wondered how long they had been awake. For several days, probably. And I tried to imagine what it must be like to open one’s eyes after a five months’ nap. Hibernation has the look of a miracle. And yet, what is it but a longer sleep? Well, perhaps sleep itself is a miracle--as truly so as life or thought. Probably, the world being all of a piece, if we understood one thing we should understand everything. Who knows? Anyhow, spring had come.

But there were no bluebirds. I kept on for two hours, past the likeliest of places, but saw and heard nothing. It was too bad, but there was no help for it. Bluebirds, blackbirds, song sparrows, fox sparrows, all were still to be looked for.

Then I sat indoors for an hour or two; I would stay in till afternoon, I thought; books, also, are a world, as Wordsworth said; but pretty soon the sun shone out; things looked too inviting. “I will go over as far as Longfellow’s Pond,” said I. “Perhaps there will be something in that quarter.” That was a happy thought. I was hardly in the old cattle pasture, feeling it good to have the grass under my feet once more, all bleached and sodden though it was, when I stopped. Wasn’t that a bluebird’s note? No, it was probably nothing but my imagination. But the sound reached me again; faint, fugacious, just grazing the ear. I put up my hands to my ears’ help, and stood still. Yes, I certainly heard it; and this time I got its direction. A glance that way and I saw the bird, pretty far off, at the tip of an elm sapling standing by itself down in a sheltered hollow. I leveled my field-glass upon him (it was well I had brought it), made sure of his color, a piece of pure loveliness, and hastened to get nearer. Before I could turn the corner of the intervening wire fence, however, he took flight, and another with him. I followed hastily, and was approaching some roadside maples when the voice was heard anew, and the two birds, both calling, mounted into the air and vanished beyond the wood northward.

What a sweet voice the bluebird’s is! Calling or singing, it is the very soul of music. And the spring was really open. I went home in high spirits.

This happened on the 10th. Now it is the 13th. I have seen no more bluebirds, and song sparrows are still missing; but this morning an ecstatic purple finch warbled, and better still (for somehow, I do not know how or why, it gave me more pleasure), a flicker called again and again in his loud, peremptory, long-winded manner. He, or another like him, has been in the neighborhood all winter, but this was his first spring utterance. It was no uncertain sound.

The bluebird peeps in upon us, as it were. His air is timid. “Is winter really gone?” he seems to say; but the flicker is a breezier customer. His mood is positive. He pushes the door wide open, and slams it back against the wall. “Spring, spring!” he shouts, and all the world may hear him. Soon he and the downy will begin their amorous drumming on dry stubs and flakes of resonant bark.

This was early in the morning. Since then I have been over to the cattle pasture, and in it found a flock of ten or twelve robins. They were feeding in the grass, but at my approach flew into some savin trees and fell to eating berries. As seems to be always true at this time of the year, they were in splendid color, and apparently in the very pink of physical condition; their bills were never so golden, it seemed to me, nor their heads so velvety black, nor their eyelids so white. They would not sing, but it was like the best of music to hear them cackle softly as they flew from the grass into the cedars. Say what you will, the robin is a pretty fine bird, especially in March.

MARCH SWALLOWS

The birds are having their innings. They have been away and have come back, and even the most stolid citizen is for the moment aware of their presence. I rejoice to see them so popular.

Two or three mornings ago I met a friend in the road, a farmer, one of the happy men, good to talk with, who glory in their work. A phœbe was calling from the top of an elm, and as we were near the farmer’s house I asked, “How long has the phœbe been here?” He looked up, saw the bird, and answered with a smile, “He must have just come. I haven’t heard him before.” I made some remark about its being pleasant to have such creatures with us again, and he responded, as I knew he would, in the heartiest manner. “Oh, I do love to see them!” he said.

I was reminded of a lady of whom I had been told the day before. She had felt obliged, as I heard the story, to attend a meeting of the woman’s club, but remarked to one of her assembled sisters that she had had half a mind to stay at home. The truth was, she explained, that two or three meadow larks were singing gloriously in the rear of her house, and she could hardly bear to come away and leave them. I hope her self-denial was rewarded.

On the same day I heard of a servant who hastened into the sitting-room to say to her mistress, “Oh, Mrs. ----! there’s a little bird out in the hedge singing to beat the band.” The newcomer proved to be a song sparrow, and the lady of the house was fully as enthusiastic as the servant in her welcome of it, though I dare say she expressed herself in less picturesque language.

And I know another house, still nearer home, where a few days ago the dinner-table was actually deserted for a time, in the very midst of the meal. Three bluebirds, with snowbirds, goldfinches, and chickadees, had suddenly appeared under the windows. “There! there! In the maple! Will you look at him! Oh-h-h!” The dinner might “get cold,” as the prudent housewife suggested, but it did not matter. Such a color as those bluebirds displayed was better than anything that an eater could put into his mouth.

Yes, as I say, the birds are having their innings. In whichever direction I walk, in town or country, I am asked about them. A schoolgirl stopped me in the street the other day. “Can you tell me what that bird is?” she inquired. A white-breasted nuthatch was whistling over our heads in a shade tree. Possibly the study of live birds will be as fashionable a few years hence as the wearing of dead ones was a few years ago.

On the 22d of March, as I stood listening to a most uncommonly brilliant song sparrow (now is the time for such things, before the greater artists monopolize our attention) and the outgivings of a too chary fox sparrow, the first cowbird of the year announced himself. Polygamist, shirk, and, by all our human standards, general reprobate, I was still glad to hear him. He is what he was made. Few birds are more interesting, psychologically, if one wishes an object of study.