Part 16

In a closely cropped pasture near the house, in early June, I found the eggs of the night-hawk. There was no nest, of course: the eggs lay upon the grass, and, for safety, had been left directly under the fence. The cows might not step on them here, but nothing prevented their crushing the fragile things with their noses.

Lengthwise, upon one of the rails, slept the mother. She zigzagged off at my approach, dazzled and uncertain in the white light of the noon, making no outcry nor stopping an instant to watch the fate of her eggs. She acted like a huge bat, slinking and dodging, out of her element in the light, and anxious to be hid. She did not seem like a creature that had a voice; and the way she flew would make one think that she did not know the use of her wings. But what a circus flier she is at night! and with what an uncanny noise she haunts the twilight! She has made more hair stand on end, with her earthward plunge and its unearthly boom through the dusk, than all the owls together. It is a ghostly joke. And who would believe in the daylight that this limp, ragged lump, dozing upon the fence or the kitchen roof, could play the spook so cleverly in the dark?

III

On the 25th of April, before the trees were in leaf, I heard the first true wood-note of the spring. It came from the tall oaks beyond the garden. "Clear, clear, clear up!" it rang, pure, untamed, and quickening. The solitary vireo! It was his whistle, inimitable, unmistakable; and though I had not seen him since last July, I hurried out to the woods, sure he would greet me.

Solitary is the largest, rarest, tamest, and sweetest-voiced of the vireos. I soon found him high in the tops of the trees; but I wanted him nearer. He would not descend. So I chased him, stoning and mocking him even, till, at last, he came down to the bushes and showed me his big blue head, white eye-rings, wing-bars, and yellow-washed sides.

He did more than show himself: he sang for me. Within ten feet of me, he began a quiet little warble of a tenderness and contentment I never heard before. Such variety of notes, such sweetness of melody, such easy, unconscious rendering! It was a love-song, but sung all to himself, for he knew that there was no gentle heart to listen this side of Virginia. He sang to his own happy heart as pure and sweet a song as the very angels know.

Solitary disappeared from that day. I concluded he had gone to heavier, wilder woods to nest. It was late in June that, passing through this brush-land, I saw hanging from an oak sapling, just above my head, a soft, yellowish basket. It was a vireo's nest; but it was too large, too downy, too yellow for Red-eye. There were no bunches of white spider-webs upon it, such as Red-eye hangs all over his nest. I stepped aside for a better view, and had just caught the glint of a large, white-ringed eye peering over the nest's edge at me, when, off in the woods behind me, the noon hush was startled by Solitary's whistle--a round, pure, pearly note that broke the quiet as pearly teeth break through the smile of a beautiful face. He soon appeared, coming on, a tree at a time, looking and asking, in no hurry and in no alarm. When he reached the pine overhead, his mate left the nest to confer with him. They scolded me mildly while I climbed for a look at the four delicately spotted eggs; but as soon as I lay down upon the ground, the mother, without fuss or fear, slipped into the nest and cuddled down over the eggs till her head hardly showed above the rim. Had a few bushes been removed I could have seen the nest from my front door.

Why do the wood-birds so persistently build their nests along the paths and roads? I said that even the hermit-thrush prefers a wood with a road through it. If he possibly can he will build along that road. And what one of the birds will not? Is it mere stupidity? Is it curiosity to see what goes on? Is there some safety here from enemies worse than boys and cats and dogs? Or is it that these birds take this chance for human fellowship? If this last is the reason for their rejecting the deep tangles for limbs that overhang roads and tufts of grass in constantly traveled foot-paths, then they can be pardoned; otherwise they are foolish--fatally foolish.

The first black-and-white warbler's nest I ever found was at the base of a clump of bushes in a narrow wood-path not ten feet from a highway. There were acres of bushes beyond, thick and pathless, all theirs to choose from.

In the same piece of scrub-oak the summer after I found another black-and-white warbler's nest. The loud talk of three of the birds attracted me. Two of them were together, and just mated, evidently; the third was a male, and just as plainly the luckless suitor. He was trying to start a quarrel between the young couple, doing his best to make the new bride break her vows. He flew just ahead of them, darting to the ground, scuttling under the brush, and calling out, "See here! Come here! Don't fool with him any longer! I have the place for a nest!"

But the pair kept on together, chatting brightly as they ran up and down the trees and hunted under the fallen limbs and leaves for a home-site. The male led the way and found the places; the female passed judgment. I followed them.

Every spot the cock peeped into was the finest in the woods; his enthusiasm was constant and unbounded. "Any place is heaven," he kept repeating, "any place, so long as I have you." But she was to do the housekeeping, and the ecstasies of the honeymoon were not to turn her head. She was house-hunting; and, like every woman, at her best. She said "no," and "no," and "no." I began to think they never would find the place, when the male darted far ahead and went out of sight beneath some low huckleberry-bushes near a stone wall. This wall ran between the woods and a pasture; and parallel with it, on the woods side, was a foot-path.

Up came the little hen, and together they scratched about under the leaves. Suddenly the cock flew away and fetched a strip of chestnut bark. This he turned over to his wife. Then both birds flew out to the chestnut limbs for bark, and brought their strips back. The home was founded.

It was the merest cavity, pushed into the dead leaves, with three shreds of bark for first timbers. In less than a week the structure was finished and furnished--with a tiny white egg thickly sprinkled with brown. I watched the spot daily, and finally saw the four young warblers safely out into their new woods-world. But from the day the first egg was laid until the nestlings left I constantly expected to find everything crushed under the foot of some passer-by.

When free from household cares the chickadee is the most sociable of the birds of the woods. But he takes family matters seriously, and withdraws so quietly to the unfrequented parts of the woods during nesting-time as to seem to have migrated. Yet of the four chickadees' nests found about the house, one was in a dead yellow birch in a bit of deep swamp, two others were in yellow birches along wood-roads, and the fourth was in a rotten fence-post by the main road, a long way from any trees.

A workman while mending the fence discovered this last nest. The post crumbled in his hands as he tried to pull it down, revealing the nest of moss and rabbit hair, with its five brown-and-white eggs. He left the old post, propped it up with a sound one, and, mending the broken walls of the cavity the best he could, hurried along with his task, that the birds might return. They came back, found the wreckage of dust and chips covering the eggs, tried the flimsy walls--and went away. It was a desecrated home, neither safe nor beautiful now; so they forsook it.

There is no eagle's nest in this collection of thirty-six. But if Mr. Burroughs is correct, there is the next thing to it--a humming-bird's nest; three of them, indeed, one of which is within a stone's throw of my door! This one is in the oaks behind my garden, but the other two are even nearer to houses. One of these is upon the limb of a pear-tree. The tip of this limb rubs against a woodshed connected with a dwelling. The third nest is in a large apple orchard, in the tree nearest the house, and saddled upon that branch of the tree which reaches farthest toward the dwelling. So close is this nest that I can look out of the garret window directly into it.

I believe that Ruby-throat is so far domesticated that he rejoices over every new flower-garden. There was nearly half an acre of gladioli in the neighborhood one summer, where all the humming-birds gathered from far and near. Here, for the only time in my life, I saw a flock of humming-birds. I counted eight one day; and the gardener told me that he had often seen a dozen of them among the spikes. They squeaked like bats, and played--about as bullets might play. In fact, I think I dodged when they whizzed past me, as a soldier does the first time he is under fire.

One of my friends had a cellar window abloom with geraniums. A ruby-throat came often to this window. One day the mistress of the flowers caught the wee chap in her hands. He knew at once that she meant no harm and quietly submitted. A few days later he returned and was captured again. He liked the honey, and evidently the fondling, too, for he came very regularly after that for the nectar and the lady's soft hands.

The nest behind my garden is in the top of a tall, slender maple, with oaks and chestnuts surrounding and overshadowing it. Finding a nest like this is inspiration for the rest of life. The only feat comparable to it is the discovery of a bee-tree. Finding wild bees, I think, would be good training for one intending to hunt humming-birds' nests in the woods. But no one ever had such an intention. No one ever deliberately started into the woods a-saying, "Go to, now; I'll find a humming-bird's nest in here!"

Humming-birds' nests are the gifts of the gods--rewards for patience and for gratitude because of commoner grants. My nests have invariably come this way, or, if you choose, by accident. The nearest I ever came to earning one was in the case of this one in the maple. I caught a glimpse of a humming-bird flashing around the high limbs of a chestnut, so far up that she looked no bigger than a hornet. I suspected instantly that she was gathering lichens for a nest, and, as she darted off, I threw my eyes ahead of her across her path. It was just one chance in ten thousand if I even saw her speeding through the limbs and leaves, if I got the line of her flight, to say nothing of a clue to her nesting-place. It was little short of a miracle. I had tried many times before to do it, but this is the only time I ever succeeded: my line of vision fell directly upon the tiny builder as she dropped to her nest in the sapling.

The structure was barely started. I might have stared at it with the strongest glass and never made it out a nest; the sapling, too, was no thicker at the butt than my wrist, and I should not have dreamed of looking into its tall, spindling top for any kind of a nest. Furthermore, as if to rob one of the last possibility of discovering it, a stray bud, two years before, had pushed through the bark of the limb about three inches behind where the nest was to be fixed, and had grown, till now its leaves hung over the dainty house in an almost perfect canopy and screen.

For three weeks the walls of this house were going up. Is it astonishing that, when finished, they looked like a growth of the limb, like part and parcel of the very tree? I made a daily visit to the sapling until the young birds flew away; then I bent the tree to the ground and brought the nest home. It now hangs above my desk, its thick walls, its downy bed, its leafy canopy telling still of the little mother's unwearied industry, of her infinite love and foresight. So faultlessly formed, so safely saddled to the limb, so exquisitely lichened into harmony with the green around, this tiniest nest speaks for all of the birds. How needless, how sorry, would be the loss of these beautiful neighbors of our copses and fields!

"MUS'RATTIN'"

"MUS'RATTIN'"

One November afternoon I found Uncle Jethro back of the woodshed, drawing a chalk-mark along the barrel of his old musket, from the hammer to the sight.

"What are you doing that for, Uncle Jeth?" I asked.

"What fo'? Fo' mus'rats, boy."