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Birds in the Bush

by Bradford Torrey · English · Gutenberg #28019 · 387,390 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Birds in the Bush

Author: Bradford Torrey


        
Release date: February 7, 2009 [eBook #28019]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28019

Credits: E-text prepared by Robin Monks, Joseph Cooper, Leonard Johnson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS IN THE BUSH ***


E-text prepared by Robin Monks, Joseph Cooper, Leonard Johnson, and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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BIRDS IN THE BUSH

by

BRADFORD TORREY

Sixth Edition







Boston
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893

Copyright, 1885,
by Bradford Torrey
All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.




Wherefore, let me intreat you to read it with favour and attention, and
to pardon us, wherein we may seem to come short of some words, which we
have laboured to interpret.

_The Prologue of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach._




CONTENTS


                             PAGE

   ON BOSTON COMMON             1

   BIRD-SONGS                  31

   CHARACTER IN FEATHERS       53

   IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS      75

   PHILLIDA AND CORIDON       103

   SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE      129

   MINOR SONGSTERS            155

   WINTER BIRDS ABOUT BOSTON  185

   A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL       211

   AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY      243

   A MONTH'S MUSIC            277




                           ON BOSTON COMMON.

    Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
    And hermits are contented with their cells;
    And students with their pensive citadels:
    Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
    Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
    High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
    Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
    In truth, the prison unto which we doom
    Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
    In sundry moods 't was pastime to be bound
    Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
    Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
    Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
    Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

                                         WORDSWORTH.


                           ON BOSTON COMMON.


Our Common and Garden are not an ideal field of operations for the
student of birds. No doubt they are rather straitened and public. Other
things being equal, a modest ornithologist would prefer a place where he
could stand still and look up without becoming himself a gazing-stock.
But "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps;" and if we are
appointed to take our daily exercise in a city park, we shall very
likely find its narrow limits not destitute of some partial
compensations. This, at least, may be depended upon,--our
disappointments will be on the right side of the account; we shall see
more than we have anticipated rather than less, and so our pleasures
will, as it were, come to us double. I recall, for example, the
heightened interest with which I beheld my first Boston cat-bird;
standing on the back of one of the seats in the Garden, steadying
himself with oscillations of his tail,--a conveniently long
balance-pole,--while he peeped curiously down into a geranium bed,
within the leafy seclusion of which he presently disappeared. He was
nothing but a cat-bird; if I had seen him in the country I should have
passed him by without a second glance; but here, at the base of the
Everett statue, he looked, somehow, like a bird of another feather.
Since then, it is true, I have learned that his occasional presence with
us in the season of the semi-annual migration is not a matter for
astonishment. At that time, however, I was happily more ignorant; and
therefore, as I say, my pleasure was twofold,--the pleasure, that is, of
the bird's society and of the surprise.

There are plenty of people, I am aware, who assert that there are no
longer any native birds in our city grounds,--or, at the most, only a
few robins. Formerly things were different, they have heard, but now the
abominable English sparrows monopolize every nook and corner. These wise
persons speak with an air of positiveness, and doubtless ought to know
whereof they affirm. Hath not a Bostonian eyes? And doth he not cross
the Common every day? But it is proverbially hard to prove a negative;
and some of us, with no thought of being cynical, have ceased to put
unqualified trust in other people's eyesight,--especially since we have
found our own to fall a little short of absolute infallibility. My own
vision, by the way, is reasonably good, if I may say so; at any rate I
am not stone-blind. Yet here have I been perambulating the Public Garden
for an indefinite period, without seeing the first trace of a
field-mouse or a shrew. I should have been in excellent company had I
begun long ago to maintain that no such animals exist within our
precincts. But the other day a butcher-bird made us a flying call, and
almost the first thing he did was to catch one of these same furry
dainties and spit it upon a thorn, where anon I found him devouring it.
I would not appear to boast; but really, when I saw what Collurio had
done, it did not so much as occur to me to quarrel with him because he
had discovered in half an hour what I had overlooked for ten years. On
the contrary I hastened to pay him a heart-felt compliment upon his
indisputable sagacity and keenness as a natural historian;--a measure of
magnanimity easily enough afforded, since however the shrike might excel
me at one point, there could be no question on the whole of my
immeasurable superiority. And I cherish the hope that my fellow
townsmen, who, as they insist, never themselves see any birds whatever
in the Garden and Common (their attention being taken up with matters
more important), may be disposed to exercise a similar forbearance
toward me, when I modestly profess that within the last seven or eight
years I have watched there some thousands of specimens, representing not
far from seventy species.

Of course the principal part of all the birds to be found in such a
place are transient visitors merely. In the long spring and autumn
journeys it will all the time be happening that more or less of the
travelers alight here for rest and refreshment. Now it is only a
straggler or two; now a considerable flock of some one species; and now
a miscellaneous collection of perhaps a dozen sorts.

One of the first things to strike the observer is the uniformity with
which such pilgrims arrive during the night. He goes his rounds late in
the afternoon, and there is, no sign of anything unusual; but the next
morning the grounds are populous,--thrushes, finches, warblers, and what
not. And as they come in the dark, so also do they go away again. With
rare exceptions you may follow them up never so closely, and they will
do nothing more than fly from tree to tree, or out of one clump of
shrubbery into another. Once in a great while, under some special
provocation, they threaten a longer flight; but on getting high enough
to see the unbroken array of roofs, on every side they speedily grow
confused, and after a few shiftings of their course dive hurriedly into
the nearest tree. It was a mistake their stopping here in the first
place; but once here, there is nothing for it save to put up with the
discomforts of the situation till after sunset. Then, please heaven,
they will be off, praying never to find themselves again in such a
Babel.

That most of our smaller birds migrate by night is by this time too well
established to need corroboration; but if the student wishes to assure
himself of the fact at first hand, he may easily do it by one or two
seasons' observations in our Common,--or, I suppose, in any like
inclosure. And if he be blest with an ornithologically educated ear, he
may still further confirm his faith by standing on Beacon Hill in the
evening--as I myself have often done--and listening to the _chips_ of
warblers, or the _tseeps_ of sparrows, as these little wanderers, hour
after hour, pass through the darkness over the city. Why the birds
follow this plan, what advantages they gain or what perils they avoid by
making their flight nocturnal, is a question with which our inquisitive
friend will perhaps find greater difficulty. I should be glad, for one,
to hear his explanation.

As a rule, our visitors tarry with us for two or three days; at least I
have noticed that to be true in many cases where their numbers, or
size, or rarity made it possible to be reasonably certain when the
arrival and departure took place; and in so very limited a field it is
of course comparatively easy to keep track of the same individual during
his stay, and, so to speak, become acquainted with him. I remember with
interest several such acquaintanceships.

One of these was with a yellow-bellied woodpecker, the first I had ever
seen. He made his appearance one morning in October, along with a
company of chickadees and other birds, and at once took up his quarters
on a maple-tree near the Ether monument. I watched his movements for
some time, and at noon, happening to be in the same place again, found
him still there. And there he remained four days. I went to look at him
several times daily, and almost always found him either on the maple or
on a tulip tree a few yards distant. Without question the sweetness of
maple sap was known to _Sphyropicus varius_ long before our human
ancestors discovered it, and this particular bird, to judge from his
actions, must have been a genuine connoisseur; at all events he seemed
to recognize our Boston tree as of a sort not to be met with every day,
although to my less critical sense it was nothing but an ordinary
specimen of the common _Acer dasycarpum_. He was extremely industrious,
as is the custom of his family, and paid no attention to the children
playing about, or to the men who sat under his tree, with the back of
their seat resting against the trunk. As for the children's noise, he
likely enough enjoyed it; for he is a noisy fellow himself and famous as
a drummer. An aged clergyman in Washington told me--in accents half
pathetic, half revengeful--that at a certain time of the year he could
scarcely read his Bible on Sunday mornings, because of the racket which
this woodpecker made hammering on the tin roof overhead.

Another of my acquaintances was of a very different type, a female
Maryland yellow-throat. This lovely creature, a most exquisite, dainty
bit of bird flesh, was in the Garden all by herself on the 6th of
October, when the great majority of her relatives must have been already
well on their way toward the sunny South. She appeared to be perfectly
contented, and allowed me to watch her closely, only scolding mildly now
and then when I became too inquisitive. How I did admire her bravery and
peace of mind; feeding so quietly, with that long, lonesome journey
before her, and the cold weather coming on! No wonder the Great Teacher
pointed his lesson of trust with the injunction, "Behold the fowls of
the air."

A passenger even worse belated than this warbler was a chipping sparrow
that I found hopping about the edge of the Beacon Street Mall on the 6th
of December, seven or eight weeks after all chippers were supposed to be
south of Mason and Dixon's line. Some accident had detained him
doubtless; but he showed no signs of worry or haste, as I walked round
him, scrutinizing every feather, lest he should be some tree sparrow
traveling in disguise.

There is not much to attract birds to the Common in the winter, since we
offer them neither evergreens for shelter nor weed patches for a
granary. I said to one of the gardeners that I thought it a pity, on
this account, that some of the plants, especially the zinnias and
marigolds, were not left to go to seed. A little untidiness, in so good
a cause, could hardly be taken amiss by even the most fastidious
taxpayer. He replied that it would be of no use; we hadn't any birds
now, and we shouldn't have any so long as the English sparrows were here
to drive them away. But it would be of use, notwithstanding; and
certainly it would afford a pleasure to many people to see flocks of
goldfinches, red-poll linnets, tree sparrows, and possibly of the
beautiful snow buntings, feeding in the Garden in midwinter.

Even as things are, however, the cold season is sure to bring us a few
butcher-birds. These come on business, and are now welcomed as public
benefactors, though formerly our sparrow-loving municipal authorities
thought it their duty to shoot them. They travel singly, as a rule, and
sometimes the same bird will be here for several weeks together. Then
you will have no trouble about finding here and there in the hawthorn
trees pleasing evidences of his activity and address. Collurio is
brought up to be in love with his work. In his Mother Goose it is
written,--

    Fe, fi, fo, farrow!
    I smell the blood of an English sparrow;

and however long he may live, he never forgets his early training. His
days, as the poet says, are "bound each to each by natural piety." Happy
lot! wherein duty and conscience go ever hand in hand; for whose
possessor

        "Love is an unerring light,
    And joy its own security."

In appearance the shrike resembles the mocking-bird. Indeed, a policeman
whom I found staring at one would have it that he _was_ a mocking-bird.
"Don't you _see_ he is? And he's been singing, too." I had nothing to
say against the singing, since the shrike will often twitter by the
half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning
the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were
talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn
bush, right under the shrike's perch. The latter was all attention
instantly, and, after waiting till the sparrow had moved a little out of
the thick of the branches, down he pounced. He missed his aim, or the
sparrow was too quick for him, and although he made a second swoop, and
followed that by a hot chase, he speedily came back without his prey.
This little exertion, however, seemed to have provoked his appetite;
for, instead of resuming his coffee-tree perch, he went into the
hawthorn, and began to feed upon the carcass of a bird which, it seemed,
he had previously laid up in store. He was soon frightened off for a few
moments by the approach of a third man, and the policeman improved the
opportunity to visit the bush and bring away his breakfast. When the
fellow returned and found his table empty, he did not manifest the
slightest disappointment (the shrike never does; he is a fatalist, I
think); but in order to see what he would do, the policeman tossed the
body to him. It lodged on one of the outer twigs, and immediately the
shrike came for it; at the same time spreading his beautifully bordered
tail and screaming loudly. Whether these demonstrations were intended to
express delight, or anger, or contempt, I could not judge; but he seized
the body, carried it back to its old place, drove it again upon the
thorn, and proceeded to devour it more voraciously than ever, scattering
the feathers about in a lively way as he tore it to pieces. The third
man, who had never before seen such a thing, stepped up within reach of
the bush, and eyed the performance at his leisure, the shrike not
deigning to mind him in the least. A few mornings later the same bird
gave me another and more amusing exhibition of his nonchalance. He was
singing from the top of our one small larch-tree, and I had stopped near
the bridge to look and listen, when a milkman entered at the
Commonwealth Avenue gate, both hands full of cans, and, without noticing
the shrike, walked straight under the tree. Just then, however, he heard
the notes overhead, and, looking up, saw the bird. As if not knowing
what to make of the creature's assurance, he stared at him for a moment,
and then, putting down his load, he seized the trunk with both hands,
and gave it a good shake. But the bird only took a fresh hold; and when
the man let go, and stepped back to look up, there he sat, to all
appearance as unconcerned as if nothing had happened. Not to be so
easily beaten, the man grasped the trunk again, and shook it harder than
before; and this time Collurio seemed to think the joke had been carried
far enough, for he took wing, and flew to another part of the Garden.
The bravado of the butcher-bird is great, but it is not unlimited. I saw
him, one day, shuffling along a branch in a very nervous, unshrikely
fashion, and was at a loss to account for his unusual demeanor till I
caught sight of a low-flying hawk sweeping over the tree. Every
creature, no matter how brave, has some other creature to be afraid of;
otherwise, how would the world get on?

The advent of spring is usually announced during the first week of
March, sometimes by the robins, sometimes by the bluebirds. The latter,
it should be remarked, are an exception to the rule that our spring and
autumn callers arrive and depart in the night. My impression is that
their migrations are ordinarily accomplished by daylight. At all events
I have often seen them enter the Common, alight for a few minutes, and
then start off again; while I have never known them to settle down for a
visit of two or three days, in the manner of most other species. This
last peculiarity may be owing to the fact that the European sparrows
treat them with even more than their customary measure of incivility,
till the poor wayfarers have literally no rest for the soles of their
feet. They breed by choice in just such miniature meeting-houses as our
city fathers have provided so plentifully for their foreign _protégés_;
and probably the latter, being aware of this, feel it necessary to
discourage at the outset any idea which these blue-coated American
interlopers may have begun to entertain of settling in Boston for the
summer.

The robins may be said to be abundant with us for more than half the
year; but they are especially numerous for a month or two early in the
season. I have counted more than thirty feeding at once in the lower
half of the parade ground, and at nightfall have seen forty at roost in
one tree, with half as many more in the tree adjoining. They grow
extremely noisy about sunset, filling the air with songs, cackles, and
screams, till even the most stolid citizen pauses a moment to look up at
the authors of so much clamor.

By the middle of March the song sparrows begin to appear, and for a
month after this they furnish delightful music daily. I have heard them
caroling with all cheerfulness in the midst of a driving snow-storm. The
dear little optimists! They never doubt that the sun is on their side.
Of necessity they go elsewhere to find nests for themselves, where they
may lay their young; for they build on the ground, and a lawn which is
mowed every two or three days would be quite out of the question.

At the best, a public park is not a favorable spot in which to study
bird music. Species that spend the summer here, like the robin, the
warbling vireo, the red-eyed vireo, the chipper, the goldfinch, and the
Baltimore oriole, of course sing freely; but the much larger number
which merely drop in upon us by the way are busy feeding during their
brief sojourn, and besides are kept in a state of greater or less
excitement by the frequent approach of passers-by. Nevertheless, I once
heard a bobolink sing in our Garden (the only one I ever saw there), and
once a brown thrush, although neither was sufficiently at home to do
himself justice. The "Peabody" song of the white-throated sparrows is to
be heard occasionally during both migrations. It is the more welcome in
such a place, because, to my ears at least, it is one of the wildest of
all bird notes; it is among the last to be heard at night in the White
Mountain woods, as well as one of the last to die away beneath you as
you climb the higher peaks. On the Crawford bridle path, for instance, I
remember that the song of this bird and that of the gray-cheeked
thrush[1] were heard all along the ridge from Mount Clinton to Mount
Washington. The finest bird concert I ever attended in Boston was given
on Monument Hill by a great chorus of fox-colored sparrows, one morning
in April. A high wind had been blowing during the night, and the moment
I entered the Common I discovered that there had been an extraordinary
arrival of birds, of various species. The parade ground was full of
snow-birds, while the hill was covered with fox-sparrows,--hundreds of
them, I thought, and many of them in full song. It was a royal concert,
but the audience, I am sorry to say, was small. It is unfortunate, in
some aspects of the case, that birds have never learned that a _matinée_
ought to begin at two o'clock in the afternoon.

These sparrows please me by their lordly treatment of their European
cousins. One in particular, who was holding his ground against three of
the Britishers, moved me almost to the point of giving him three cheers.

Of late a few crow blackbirds have taken to building their nests in one
corner of our domain; and they attract at least their full share of
attention, as they strut about the lawns in their glossy clerical suits.
One of the gardeners tells me that they sometimes kill the sparrows. I
hope they do. The crow blackbird's attempts at song are ludicrous in the
extreme, as every note is cracked, and is accompanied by a ridiculous
caudal gesture. But he is ranked among the oscines, and seems to know
it; and, after all, it is only the common fault of singers not to be
able to detect their own want of tunefulness.

I was once crossing the Common, in the middle of the day, when I was
suddenly arrested by the call of a cuckoo. At the same instant two men
passed me, and I heard one say to the other, "Hear that cuckoo! Do you
know what it means? No? Well, _I_ know what it means: it means that it's
going to rain." It did rain, although not for a number of days, I
believe. But probably the cuckoo has adopted the modern method of
predicting the weather some time in advance. Not very long afterwards I
again heard this same note on the Common; but it was several years
before I was able to put the cuckoo into my Boston list, as a bird
actually seen. Indeed it is not so very easy to see him anywhere; for he
makes a practice of robbing the nests of smaller birds, and is always
skulking about from one tree to another, as though he were afraid of
being discovered, as no doubt he is. What Wordsworth wrote of the
European species (allowance being made for a proper degree of poetic
license) is equally applicable to ours:--

    "No bird, but an invisible thing,
      A voice, a mystery."

When I did finally get a sight of the fellow it was on this wise. As I
entered the Garden, one morning in September, a goldfinch was calling so
persistently and with such anxious emphasis from the large sophora tree
that I turned my steps that way to ascertain what could be the trouble.
I took the voice for a young bird's, but found instead a male adult, who
was twitching his tail nervously and scolding _phee-phee_, _phee-phee_,
at a black-billed cuckoo perched near at hand, in his usual sneaking
attitude. The goldfinch called and called, till my patience was nearly
spent. (Small birds know better than to attack a big one so long as the
latter is at rest.) Then, at last, the cuckoo started off, the finch
after him, and a few minutes later I saw the same flight and chase
repeated. Several other goldfinches were flying about in the
neighborhood, but only this one was in the least excited. Doubtless he
had special reasons of his own for dreading the presence of this
cowardly foe.

One of our regular visitors twice a year is the brown creeper. He is so
small and silent, and withal his color is so like that of the bark to
which he clings, that I suspect he is seldom noticed even by persons who
pass within a few feet of him. But he is not too small to be hectored by
the sparrows, and I have before now been amused at the encounter. The
sparrow catches sight of the creeper, and at once bears down upon him,
when the creeper darts to the other side of the tree, and alights again
a little further up. The sparrow is after him; but, as he comes dashing
round the trunk, he always seems to expect to find the creeper perched
upon some twig, as any other bird would be, and it is only after a
little reconnoitring that he again discovers him clinging to the
vertical bole. Then he makes another onset with a similar result; and
these manoeoeuvres are repeated, till the creeper becomes disgusted,
and takes to another tree.

The olive-backed thrushes and the hermits may be looked for every spring
and autumn, and I have known forty or fifty of the former to be present
at once. The hermits most often travel singly or in pairs, though a
small flock is not so very uncommon. Both species preserve absolute
silence while here; I have watched hundreds of them, without hearing so
much as an alarm note. They are far from being pugnacious, but their
sense of personal dignity is large, and once in a while, when the
sparrows pester them beyond endurance, they assume the offensive with
much spirit. There are none of our feathered guests whom I am gladder to
see; the sight of them inevitably fills me with remembrances of happy
vacation seasons among the hills of New Hampshire. If only they would
sing on the Common as they do in those northern woods! The whole city
would come out to hear them.

During every migration large numbers of warblers visit us. I have noted
the golden-crowned thrush, the small-billed water-thrush, the
black-and-white creeper, the Maryland yellow-throat, the blue
yellow-back, the black-throated green, the black-throated blue, the
yellow-rump, the summer yellow-bird, the black-poll, the Canada
flycatcher, and the redstart. No doubt the list is far from complete,
as, of course, I have not used either glass or gun; and without one or
other of these aids the observer must be content to let many of these
small, tree-top-haunting birds pass unidentified. The two kinglets give
us a call occasionally, and in the late summer and early autumn the
humming-birds spend several weeks about our flower-beds.

It would be hard for the latter to find a more agreeable stopping-place
in the whole course of their southward journey. What could they ask
better than beds of tuberoses, Japanese lilies, _Nicotiana_ (against the
use of which they manifest not the slightest scruple), petunias, and the
like? Having in mind the Duke of Argyll's assertion that "no bird can
ever fly backwards,"[2] I have more than once watched these
humming-birds at their work on purpose to see whether they would respect
the noble Scotchman's dictum. I am compelled to report that they
appeared never to have heard of his theory. At any rate they very
plainly did fly tail foremost; and that not only in _dropping_ from a
blossom,--in which case the seeming flight might have been, as the duke
maintains, an optical illusion merely,--but even while backing out of
the flower-tube in an upward direction. They are commendably catholic in
their tastes. I saw one exploring the disk of a sunflower, in company
with a splendid monarch butterfly. Possibly he knew that the sunflower
was just then in fashion. Only a few minutes earlier the same bird--or
another like him--had chased an English sparrow out of the Garden,
across Arlington Street, and up to the very roof of a House, to the
great delight of at least one patriotic Yankee. At another time I saw
one of these tiny beauties making his morning toilet in a very pretty
fashion, leaning forward, and brushing first one cheek and then the
other against the wet rose leaf on which he was perched.

The only swallows on my list are the barn swallows and the
white-breasted. The former, as they go hawking about the crowded
streets, must often send the thoughts of rich city merchants back to the
big barns of their grandfathers, far off in out-of-the-way country
places. Of course we have the chimney swifts, also (near relatives of
the humming-birds!), but they are not swallows.

Speaking of the swallows, I am reminded of a hawk that came to Boston,
one morning, fully determined not to go away without a taste of the
famous imported sparrows. It is nothing unusual for hawks to be seen
flying over the city, but I had never before known one actually to make
the Public Garden his hunting-ground. This bird perched for a while on
the Arlington Street fence, within a few feet of a passing carriage;
next he was on the ground, peering into a bed of rhododendrons; then for
a long time he sat still in a tree, while numbers of men walked back
and forth underneath; between whiles he sailed about, on the watch for
his prey. On one of these last occasions a little company of swallows
came along, and one of them immediately went out of his way to swoop
down upon the hawk, and deal him a dab. Then, as he rejoined his
companions, I heard him give a little chuckle, as though he said, "There!
did you see me peck at him? You don't think I am afraid of such a
fellow as that, do you?" To speak in Thoreau's manner, I rejoiced in the
incident as a fresh illustration of the ascendency of spirit over
matter.

One is always glad to find a familiar bird playing a new _rôle_, and
especially in such a spot as the Common, where, at the best, one can
hope to see so very little. It may be assumed, therefore, that I felt
peculiarly grateful to a white-bellied nuthatch, when I discovered him
bopping about on the ground--on Monument Hill; a piece of humility such
as I had never before detected any nuthatch in the practice of. Indeed,
this fellow looked so unlike himself, moving briskly through the grass
with long, awkward leaps, that at first sight I failed to recognize him.
He was occupied with turning over the dry leaves, one after
another,--hunting for cocoons, or things of that sort, I suppose. Twice
he found what he was in search of; but instead of handling the leaf on
the ground, he flew with it to the trunk of an elm, wedged it into a
crevice of the bark, and proceeded to hammer it sharply with his beak.
Great is the power of habit! Strange--is it not?--that any bird should
find it easiest to do such work while clinging to a perpendicular
surface! Yes; but how does it look to a dog, I wonder, that men can walk
better on their hind legs than on all fours? Everything is a miracle
from somebody's point of view. The sparrows were inclined to make game
of my obliging little performer; but he would have none of their
insolence, and repelled every approach in dashing style. In exactly
three weeks from this time, and on the same hillside, I came upon
another nuthatch similarly employed; but before this one had turned up a
leaf to his mind, the sparrows became literally too many for him, and he
took flight,--to my no small disappointment.

It would be unfair not to name others of my city guests, even though I
have nothing in particular to record concerning them. The Wilson thrush
and the red-bellied nuthatch I have seen once or twice each. The chewink
is more constant in his visits, as is also the golden-winged woodpecker.
Our familiar little downy woodpecker, on the other hand, has thus far
kept out of my catalogue. No other bird's absence has surprised me so
much; and it is the more remarkable because the comparatively rare
yellow-bellied species is to be met with nearly every season.
Cedar-birds show themselves irregularly. One March morning, when the
ground was covered with snow, a flock of perhaps a hundred collected in
one of the taller maples in the Garden, till the tree looked from a
distance like an autumn hickory, its leafless branches still thickly
dotted with nuts. Four days afterward, what seemed to be the same
company made their appearance in the Common. Of the flycatchers, I have
noted the kingbird, the least flycatcher, and the phoebe. The two
former stay to breed. Twice in the fall I have found a kingfisher about
the Frog Pond. Once the fellow sprung his watchman's rattle. He was
perhaps my most unexpected caller, and for a minute or so I was not
entirely sure whether indeed I was in Boston or not. The blue jay and
the crow know too much to be caught in such a place, although one may
often enough see the latter passing overhead. Every now and then, in the
traveling season, a stray sandpiper or two will be observed teetering
round the edge of the Common and Garden ponds; and one day, when the
latter was drained, I saw quite a flock of some one of the smaller
species feeding over its bottom. Very picturesque they were, feeding and
flying in close order. Besides these must be mentioned the
yellow-throated vireo, the bay-winged bunting, the swamp sparrow, the
field sparrow, the purple finch, the red-poll linnet, the savanna
sparrow, the tree sparrow, the night-hawk (whose celebrated tumbling
trick may often be witnessed by evening strollers in the Garden), the
woodcock (I found the body of one which had evidently met its death
against the electric wire), and among the best of all, the chickadees,
who sometimes make the whole autumn cheerful with their presence, but
about whom I say nothing here because I have said so much elsewhere.

Of fugitive cage-birds, I recall only five--all in the Garden. One of
these, feeding tamely in the path, I suspected for an English robin but
he was not in full plumage, and my conjecture may have been incorrect.
Another was a diminutive finch, dressed in a suit of red, blue, and
green. He sat in a bush, saying _No, no!_ to a feline admirer who was
making love to him earnestly. The others were a mocking-bird, a cardinal
grosbeak, and a paroquet. The mocking-bird and the grosbeak might
possibly have been wild, had the question been one of latitude simply,
but their demeanor satisfied me to the contrary. The former's awkward
attempt at alighting on the tip of a fence-picket seemed evidence enough
that he had not been long at large. The paroquet was a splendid
creature, with a brilliant orange throat darkly spotted. He flew from
tree to tree, chattering gayly, and had a really pretty song. Evidently
he was in the best of spirits, notwithstanding the rather obtrusive
attentions of a crowd of house sparrows, who appeared to look upon such
a wearer of the green as badly out of place in this new England of
theirs. But for all his vivacity, I feared he would not be long in
coming to grief. If he escaped other perils, the cold weather must soon
overtake him, for it was now the middle of September, and his last state
would be worse than his first. He had better have kept his cage; unless,
indeed, he was one of the nobler spirits that prefer death to slavery.

Of all the birds thus far named, very few seemed to attract the
attention of anybody except myself. But there remains one other, whom I
have reserved for the last, not because he was in himself the noblest or
the most interesting (though he was perhaps the biggest), but because,
unlike the rest, he did succeed in winning the notice of the multitude.
In fact, my one owl, to speak theatrically, made a decided hit; for a
single afternoon he may be said to have been famous,--or at all events
notorious, if any old-fashioned reader be disposed to insist upon this
all but obsolete distinction. His triumph, such as it was, had already
begun when I first discovered him, for he was then perched well up in an
elm, while a mob of perhaps forty men and boys were pelting him with
sticks and stones. Even in the dim light of a cloudy November afternoon
he seemed quite bewildered and helpless, making no attempt to escape,
although the missiles were flying past him on all sides. The most he did
was to shift his perch when he was hit, which, to be sure, happened
pretty often. Once he was struck so hard that he came tumbling toward
the ground, and I began to think it was all over with him; but when
about half-way down he recovered himself, and by dint of painful
flappings succeeded in alighting just out of the reach of the crowd. At
once there were loud cries: "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" and while
the scamps were debating what to do next, he regained his breath, and
flew up into the tree again, as high as before. Then the stoning began
anew. For my part I pitied the fellow sincerely, and wished him well out
of the hands of his tormentors; but I found myself laughing with the
rest to see him turn his head and stare, with his big, vacant eyes,
after a stone which had just whizzed by his ear. Everybody that came
along stopped for a few minutes to witness the sport, and Beacon Street
filled up with carriages till it looked as if some holiday procession
were halted in front of the State House. I left the crowd still at their
work, and must do them the justice to say that some of them were
excellent marksmen. An old negro, who stood near me, was bewailing the
law against shooting; else, he said, he would go home and get his gun.
He described, with appropriate gestures, how very easily he could fetch
the bird down. Perhaps he afterwards plucked up courage to violate the
statute. At any rate the next morning's newspapers reported that an owl
had been shot, the day before, on the Common. Poor bird of wisdom! His
sudden popularity proved to be the death of him. Like many of loftier
name he found it true,--

    "The path of glory leads but to the grave."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] My identification of _Turdus Aliciæ_ was based entirely upon the
song, and so, of course, had no final scientific value. It was confirmed
a few weeks later, however, by Mr. William Brewster, who took specimens.
(See _Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club_, January, 1883, p.
12.) Prior to this the species was not known to breed in New England.

[2] _The Reign of Law_, p. 140.




                              BIRD-SONGS.

    Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
    Which make such delicate music in the woods?

                                        SHELLEY.


                              BIRD-SONGS.


Why do birds sing? Has their music a meaning, or is it all a matter of
blind impulse? Some bright morning in March, as you go out-of-doors, you
are greeted by the notes of the first robin. Perched in a leafless tree,
there he sits, facing the sun like a genuine fire-worshiper, and singing
as though he would pour out his very soul. What is he thinking about?
What spirit possesses him?

It is easy to ask questions until the simplest matter comes to seem,
what at bottom it really is, a thing altogether mysterious; but if our
robin could understand us, he would, likely enough, reply:--

"Why do you talk in this way, as if it were something requiring
explanation that a bird should sing? You seem to have forgotten that
everybody sings, or almost everybody. Think of the insects,--the bees
and the crickets and the locusts, to say nothing of your intimate
friends, the mosquitoes! Think, too, of the frogs and the hylas! If
these cold-blooded, low-lived creatures, after sleeping all winter in
the mud,[3] are free to make so much use of their voices, surely a bird
of the air may sing his unobtrusive song without being cross-examined
concerning the purpose of it. Why do the mice sing, and the monkeys, and
the woodchucks? Indeed, sir,--if one may be so bold,--why do you sing,
yourself?"

This matter-of-fact Darwinism need not frighten us. It will do us no
harm to remember, now and then, "the hole of the pit whence we were
digged;" and besides, as far as any relationship between us and the
birds is concerned, it is doubtful whether we are the party to complain.

But avoiding "genealogies and contentions," and taking up the question
with which we began, we may safely say that birds sing, sometimes to
gratify an innate love for sweet sounds; sometimes to win a mate, or to
tell their love to a mate already won; sometimes as practice, with a
view to self-improvement; and sometimes for no better reason than the
poet's,--"I do but sing because I must." In general, they sing for joy;
and their joy, of course, has various causes.

For one thing, they are very sensitive to the weather. With them, as
with us, sunlight and a genial warmth go to produce serenity. A bright
summer-like day, late in October, or even in November, will set the
smaller birds to singing, and the grouse to drumming. I heard a robin
venturing a little song on the 25th of last December; but that, for
aught I know, was a Christmas carol. No matter what the season, you will
not hear a great deal of bird music during a high wind; and if you are
caught in the woods by a sudden shower in May or June, and are not too
much taken up with thoughts of your own condition, you will hardly fail
to notice the instant silence which falls upon the woods with the rain.
Birds, however, are more or less inconsistent (that is, a part of their
likeness to us), and sometimes sing most freely when the sky is
overcast.

But their highest joys are by no means dependent upon the moods of the
weather. A comfortable state of mind is not to be contemned, but beings
who are capable of deep and passionate affection recognize a difference
between comfort and ecstasy. And the peculiar glory of birds is just
here, in the all-consuming fervor of their love. It would be commonplace
to call them models of conjugal and parental faithfulness. With a few
exceptions (and these, it is a pleasure to add, not singers), the very
least of them is literally faithful unto death. Here and there, in the
notes of some collector, we are told of a difficulty he has had in
securing a coveted specimen: the tiny creature, whose mate had been
already "collected," would persist in hovering so closely about the
invader's head that it was impossible to shoot him without spoiling him
for the cabinet by blowing him to pieces!

Need there be any mystery about the singing of such a lover? Is it
surprising if at times he is so enraptured that he can no longer sit
tamely on the branch, but must dart into the air, and go circling round
and round, caroling as he flies?

So far as song is the voice of emotion, it will of necessity vary with
the emotion; and every one who has ears must have heard once in a while
bird music of quite unusual fervor. For example, I have often seen the
least flycatcher (a very unromantic-looking body, surely) when he was
almost beside himself; flying in a circle, and repeating breathlessly
his emphatic _chebec_. And once I found a wood pewee in a somewhat
similar mood. He was more quiet than the least flycatcher; but he too
sang on the wing, and I have never heard notes which seemed more
expressive of happiness. Many of them were entirely new and strange,
although the familiar _pewee_ was introduced among the rest. As I
listened, I felt it to be an occasion for thankfulness that the
delighted creature had never studied anatomy, and did not know that the
structure of his throat made it improper for him to sing. In this
connection, also, I recall a cardinal grosbeak, whom I heard several
years ago, on the bank of the Potomac River. An old soldier had taken me
to visit the Great Falls, and as we were clambering over the rocks this
grosbeak began to sing; and soon, without any hint from me, and without
knowing who the invisible musician was, my companion remarked upon the
uncommon beauty of the song. The cardinal is always a great singer,
having a voice which, as European writers say, is almost equal to the
nightingale's; but in this case the more stirring, martial quality of
the strain had given place to an exquisite mellowness, as if it were,
what I have no doubt it was, a song of love.

Every kind of bird has notes of its own, so that a thoroughly practiced
ear would be able to discriminate the different species with nearly as
much certainty as Professor Baird would feel after an examination of the
anatomy and plumage. Still this strong specific resemblance is far from
being a dead uniformity. Aside from the fact, already mentioned, that
the characteristic strain is sometimes given with extraordinary
sweetness and emphasis, there are often to be detected variations of a
more formal character. This is noticeably true of robins. It may almost
be said that no two of them sing alike; while now and then their
vagaries are conspicuous enough to attract general attention. One who
was my neighbor last year interjected into his song a series of four or
five most exact imitations of the peep of a chicken. When I first heard
this performance, I was in company with two friends, both of whom
noticed and laughed at it; and some days afterwards I visited the spot
again, and found the bird still rehearsing the same ridiculous medley. I
conjectured that he had been brought up near a hen-coop, and, moreover,
had been so unfortunate as to lose his father before his notes had
become thoroughly fixed; and then, being compelled to finish his musical
education by himself, had taken a fancy to practice these chicken calls.
This guess may not have been correct. All I can affirm is that he sang
exactly as he might have been expected to do, on that supposition; but
certainly the resemblance seemed too close to be accidental.

The variations of the wood thrush are fully as striking as those of the
robin, and sometimes it is impossible not to feel that the artist is
making a deliberate effort to do something out of the ordinary course,
something better than he has ever done before. Now and then he prefaces
his proper song with many disconnected, extremely _staccato_ notes,
following each other at very distant and unexpected intervals of pitch.
It is this, I conclude, which is meant by some writer (who it is I
cannot now remember) when he criticises the wood thrush for spending too
much time in tuning his instrument. But the fault is the critic's, I
think; to my ear these preliminaries sound rather like the recitative
which goes before the grand _aria_.

Still another musician who delights to take liberties with his score is
the towhee bunting, or chewink. Indeed, he carries the matter so far
that sometimes it seems almost as if he suspected the proximity of some
self-conceited ornithologist, and were determined, if possible, to make
a fool of him. And for my part, being neither self conceited nor an
ornithologist, I am willing to confess that I have once or twice been so
badly deceived that now the mere sight of this _Pipilo_ is, so to speak,
a means of grace to me.

One more of these innovators (these heretics, as they are most likely
called by their more conservative brethren) is the field sparrow,
better known as _Spizella pusilla_. His usual song consists of a simple
line of notes, beginning leisurely, but growing shorter and more rapid
to the close. The voice is so smooth and sweet, and the acceleration so
well managed, that, although the whole is commonly a strict monotone,
the effect is not in the least monotonous. This song I once heard
rendered in reverse order, with a result so strange that I did not
suspect the identity of the author till I had crept up within sight of
him. Another of these sparrows, who has passed the last two seasons in
my neighborhood, habitually doubles the measure; going through it in the
usual way, and then, just as you expect him to conclude, catching it up
again, _Da capo_.

But birds like these are quite outdone by such species as the song
sparrow, the white-eyed vireo, and the Western meadow-lark,--species of
which we may say that each individual bird has a whole repertory of
songs at his command. The song sparrow, who is the best known of the
three, will repeat one melody perhaps a dozen times, then change it for
a second, and in turn leave that for a third; as if he were singing
hymns of twelve or fifteen stanzas each, and set each hymn to its
appropriate tune. It is something well worth listening to, common
though it is, and may easily suggest a number of questions about the
origin and meaning of bird music.

The white-eyed vireo is a singer of astonishing spirit, and his sudden
changes from one theme to another are sometimes almost startling. He is
a skillful ventriloquist, also, and I remember one in particular who
outwitted me completely. He was rehearsing a well-known strain, but at
the end there came up from the bushes underneath a querulous call. At
first I took it for granted that some other bird was in the underbrush;
but the note was repeated too many times, and came in too exactly on the
beat.

I have no personal acquaintance with the Western meadow-lark, but no
less than twenty-six of his songs have been printed in musical notation,
and these are said to be by no means all.[4]

Others of our birds have similar gifts, though no others, so far as I
know, are quite so versatile as these three. Several of the warblers,
for example, have attained to more than one set song, notwithstanding
the deservedly small reputation of this misnamed family. I have myself
heard the golden-crowned thrush, the black-throated green warbler, the
black-throated blue, the yellow-rumped, and the chestnut-sided, sing
two melodies each, while the blue golden-winged has at least three; and
this, of course, without making anything of slight variations such as
all birds are more or less accustomed to indulge in. The best of the
three songs of the blue golden-wing I have never heard except on one
occasion, but then it was repeated for half an hour under my very eyes.
It bore no resemblance to the common _dsee_, _dsee_, _dsee_, of the
species, and would appear to be seldom used; for not only have I never
heard it since, but none of the writers seem ever to have heard it at
all. However, I still keep a careful description of it, which I took
down on the spot, and which I expect some future golden-wing to verify.

But the most celebrated of the warblers in this regard is the
golden-crowned thrush, otherwise called the oven-bird and the wood
wagtail. His ordinary effort is one of the noisiest, least melodious,
and most incessant sounds to be heard in our woods. His _song_ is
another matter. For that he takes to the air (usually starting from a
tree-top, although I have seen him rise from the ground), whence, after
a preliminary _chip_, _chip_, he lets fall a hurried flood of notes, in
the midst of which can usually be distinguished his familiar _weechee_,
_weechee_, _weechee_. It is nothing wonderful that he should sing on
the wing,--many other birds do the same, and very much better than he;
but he is singular in that he strictly reserves his aerial music for
late in the afternoon. I have heard it as early as three o'clock, but
never before that, and it is most common about sunset. Writers speak of
it as limited to the season of courtship; but I have heard it almost
daily till near the end of July, and once, for my special benefit,
perhaps, it was given in full--and repeated--on the first day of
September. But who taught the little creature to do this,--to sing one
song in the forenoon, perched upon a twig, and to keep another for
afternoon, singing that invariably on the wing? and what difference is
there between the two in the mind of the singer?[5]

It is an indiscretion ever to say of a bird that he has only such and
such notes. You may have been his friend for years, but the next time
you go into the woods he will likely enough put you to shame by singing
something not so much as hinted at in your description. I thought I knew
the song of the yellow-rumped warbler, having listened to it many
times,--a slight and rather characterless thing, nowise remarkable. But
coming down Mount Willard one day in June, I heard a warbler's song
which brought me to a sudden halt. It was new and beautiful,--more
beautiful, it seemed at the moment, than any warbler's song I had ever
heard. What could it be? A little patient waiting (while the black-flies
and mosquitoes "came upon me to eat up my flesh"), and the wonderful
stranger appeared in full view,--my old acquaintance, the yellow-rumped
warbler.

With all this strong tendency on the part of birds to vary their music,
how is it that there is still such a degree of uniformity, so that, as
we have said, every species may be recognized by its notes? Why does
every red-eyed vireo sing in one way, and every white-eyed vireo in
another? Who teaches the young chipper to trill, and the young linnet to
warble? In short, how do birds come by their music? Is it all a matter
of instinct, inherited habit, or do they learn it? The answer appears to
be that birds sing as children talk, by simple imitation. Nobody
imagines that the infant is born with a language printed upon his brain.
The father and mother may never have known a word of any tongue except
the English, but if the child is brought up to hear only Chinese, he
will infallibly speak that, and nothing else. And careful experiments
have shown the same to be true of birds.[6] Taken from the nest just
after they leave the shell, they invariably sing, not their own
so-called natural song, but the song of their foster-parents; provided,
of course, that this is not anything beyond their physical capacity. The
notorious house sparrow (our "English" sparrow), in his wild or
semi-domesticated state, never makes a musical sound; but if he is taken
in hand early enough, he may be taught to sing, so it is said, nearly as
well as the canary. Bechstein relates that a Paris clergyman had two of
these sparrows whom he had trained to speak, and, among other things, to
recite several of the shorter commandments; and the narrative goes on to
say that it was sometimes very comical, when the pair were disputing
over their food, to hear one gravely admonish the other, "Thou shalt not
steal!" It would be interesting to know why creatures thus gifted do not
sing of their own motion. With their amiability and sweet peaceableness
they ought to be caroling the whole year round.

This question of the transmission of songs from one generation to
another is, of course, a part of the general subject of animal
intelligence, a subject much discussed in these days on account of its
bearing upon the modern doctrine concerning the relation of man to the
inferior orders.

We have nothing to do with such a theme, but it may not be out of place
to suggest to preachers and moralists that here is a striking and
unhackneyed illustration of the force of early training. Birds sing by
imitation, it is true, but as a rule they imitate only the notes which
they hear during the first few weeks after they are hatched. One of Mr.
Barrington's linnets, for example, after being educated under a titlark,
was put into a room with two birds of his own species, where he heard
them sing freely every day for three months. He made no attempt to learn
anything from them, however, but kept on practicing what the titlark had
taught him, quite unconscious of anything singular or unpatriotic in
such a course. This law, that impressions received during the immaturity
of the powers become the unalterable habit of the after life, is perhaps
the most momentous of all the laws in whose power we find ourselves.
Sometimes we are tempted to call it cruel. But if it were annulled, this
would be a strange world. What a hurly-hurly we should have among the
birds! There would be no more telling them by their notes. Thrushes and
jays, wrens and chickadees, finches and warblers, all would be singing
one grand medley.

Between these two opposing tendencies, one urging to variation, the
other to permanence (for Nature herself is half radical, half
conservative), the language of birds has grown from rude beginnings to
its present beautiful diversity; and whoever lives a century of
millenniums hence will listen to music such as we in this day can only
dream of. Inappreciably but ceaselessly the work goes on. Here and there
is born a master-singer, a feathered genius, and every generation makes
its own addition to the glorious inheritance.

It may be doubted whether there is any real connection between moral
character and the possession of wings. Nevertheless there has long been
a popular feeling that some such congruity does exist; and certainly it
seems unreasonable to suppose that creatures who are able to soar at
will into the heavens should be without other equally angelic
attributes. But, be that as it may, our friends, the birds, do
undeniably set us a good example in several respects. To mention only
one, how becoming is their observance of morning and evening song! In
spite of their industrious spirit (and few of us labor more hours
daily), neither their first nor their last thoughts are given to the
question, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink? Possibly their
habit of saluting the rising and setting sun may be thought to favor the
theory that the worship of the god of day was the original religion. I
know nothing about that. But it would be a sad change if the birds,
declining from their present beautiful custom, were to sleep and work,
work and sleep, with no holy hour between, as is too much the case with
the being who, according to his own pharisaic notion, is the only
religious animal.

In the season, however, the woods are by no means silent, even at
noonday. Many species (such as the vireos and warblers, who get their
living amid the foliage of trees) sing as they work; while the thrushes
and others, who keep business and pleasure more distinct, are often too
happy to go many hours together without a hymn. I have even seen robins
singing without quitting the turf; but that is rather unusual, for
somehow birds have come to feel that they must get away from the ground
when the lyrical mood is upon them. This may be a thing of sentiment
(for is not language full of uncomplimentary allusions to earth and
earthliness?), but more likely it is prudential. The gift of song is no
doubt a dangerous blessing to creatures who have so many enemies, and we
can readily believe that they have found it safer to be up where they
can look about them while thus publishing their whereabouts.

A very interesting exception to this rule is the savanna sparrow, who
sings habitually from the ground. But even he shares the common feeling,
and stretches himself to his full height with an earnestness which is
almost laughable, in view of the result; for his notes are hardly louder
than a cricket's chirp. Probably he has fallen into this lowly habit
from living in meadows and salt marshes, where bushes and trees are not
readily to be come at; and it is worth noticing that, in the case of the
skylark and the white-winged blackbird, the same conditions have led to
a result precisely opposite. The sparrow, we may presume, was originally
of a humble disposition, and when nothing better offered itself for a
singing-perch easily grew accustomed to standing upon a stone or a
little lump of earth; and this practice, long persisted in, naturally
had the effect to lessen the loudness of his voice. The skylark, on the
other hand, when he did not readily find a tree-top, said to himself,
"Never mind! I have a pair of wings." And so the lark is famous, while
the sparrow remains unheard-of, and is even mistaken for a
grasshopper.

How true it is that the very things which dishearten one nature and
break it down, only help another to find out what it was made for! If
you would foretell the development, either of a bird or of a man, it is
not enough to know his environment, you must know also what there is in
him.

We have possibly made too much of the savanna sparrow's innocent
eccentricity. He fills his place, and fills it well; and who knows but
that he may yet outshine the skylark? There is a promise, I believe, for
those who humble themselves. But what shall be said of species which do
not even try to sing, and that, notwithstanding they have all the
structural peculiarities of singing birds, and must, almost certainly,
have come from ancestors who were singers? We have already mentioned the
house sparrow, whose defect is the more mysterious on account of his
belonging to so highly musical a family. But _he_ was never accused of
not being noisy enough, while we have one bird who, though he is classed
with the oscines, passes his life in almost unbroken silence. Of course
I refer to the waxwing, or cedar-bird, whose faint, sibilant whisper can
scarcely be thought to contradict the foregoing description. By what
strange freak he has lapsed into this ghostly habit, nobody knows. I
make no account of the insinuation that he gave up music because it
hindered his success in cherry-stealing. He likes cherries, it is true;
and who can blame him? But he would need to work hard to steal more than
does that indefatigable songster, the robin. I feel sure he has some
better reason than this for his Quakerish conduct. But, however he came
by his stillness, it is likely that by this time he plumes himself upon
it. Silence is golden, he thinks, the supreme result of the highest
æsthetic culture. Those loud creatures, the thrushes and finches! What a
vulgar set they are, to be sure, the more's the pity! Certainly if he
does not reason in some such way, bird nature is not so human as we have
given it credit for being. Besides, the waxwing has an uncommon
appreciation of the decorous; at least, we must think so if we are able
to credit a story of Nuttall's. He declares that a Boston gentleman,
whose name he gives, saw one of a company of these birds capture an
insect, and offer it to his neighbor; he, however, delicately declined
the dainty bit, and it was offered to the next, who, in turn, was
equally polite; and the morsel actually passed back and forth along the
line, till, finally, one of the flock was persuaded to eat it. I have
never seen anything equal to this; but one day, happening to stop under
a low cedar, I discovered right over my head a waxwing's nest with the
mother-bird sitting upon it, while her mate was perched beside her on
the branch. He was barely out of my reach, but he did not move a muscle;
and although he uttered no sound, his behavior said as plainly as
possible, "What do you expect to do _here_? Don't you see _I_ am
standing guard over this nest?" I should be ashamed not to be able to
add that I respected his dignity and courage, and left him and his
castle unmolested.

Observations so discursive as these can hardly be finished; they must
break off abruptly, or else go on forever. Let us make an end,
therefore, with expressing our hope that the cedar-bird, already so
handsome and chivalrous, will yet take to himself a song; one sweet and
original, worthy to go with his soft satin coat, his ornaments of
sealing-wax, and his magnificent top-knot. Let him do that, and he shall
always be made welcome; yes, even though he come in force and in
cherry-time.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] There is no Historic-Genealogical Society among the birds, and the
robin is not aware that his own remote ancestors were reptiles. If he
were, he would hardly speak so disrespectfully of these batrachians.

[4] Mr. C. N. Allen, in _Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club_,
July, 1881.

[5] Since this paper was written I have three times heard the wood
wagtail's true song in the morning,--but in neither case was the bird in
the air. See p. 284.

[6] See the paper of Daines Barrington in _Philosophical Transactions_
for 1773; also, Darwin's _Descent of Man_, and Wallace's _Natural
Selection_.




                         CHARACTER IN FEATHERS.

    The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not
    graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms,
    constitutions, parts, and operations, which, aptly joined together,
    do make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters
    God calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam
    assigned to every creature a name peculiar to its nature.

                                                    SIR THOMAS BROWNE.


                         CHARACTER IN FEATHERS.


In this economically governed world the same thing serves many uses. Who
will take upon himself to enumerate the offices of sunlight, or water,
or indeed of any object whatever? Because we know it to be good for this
or that, it by no means follows that we have discovered what it was made
for. What we have found out is perhaps only something by the way; as if
a man should think the sun were created for his own private convenience.
In some moods it seems doubtful whether we are yet acquainted with the
real value of anything. But, be that as it may, we need not scruple to
admire so much as our ignorance permits us to see of the workings of
this divine frugality. The piece of woodland, for instance, which skirts
the village,--how various are its ministries to the inhabitants, each of
whom, without forethought or question, takes the benefit proper to
himself! The poet saunters there as in a true Holy Land, to have his
heart cooled and stilled. Mr. A. and Mr. B., who hold the deeds of the
"property," walk through it to look at the timber, with an eye to
dollars and cents. The botanist has his errand there, the zoölogist his,
and the child his. Oftenest of all, perhaps (for barbarism dies hard,
and even yet the ministers of Christ find it a capital sport to murder
small fishes),--oftenest of all comes the man, poor soul, who thinks of
the forest as of a place to which he may go when he wishes to amuse
himself by killing something. Meanwhile, the rabbits and the squirrels,
the hawks and the owls, look upon all such persons as no better than
intruders (do not the woods belong to those who live in them?); while
nobody remembers the meteorologist, who nevertheless smiles in his
sleeve at all these one-sided notions, and says to himself that he knows
the truth of the matter.

So is it with everything; and with all the rest, so is it with the
birds. The interest they excite is of all grades, from that which looks
upon them as items of millinery, up to that of the makers of
ornithological systems, who ransack the world for specimens, and who
have no doubt that the chief end of a bird is to be named and
catalogued,--the more synonyms the better. Somewhere between these two
extremes comes the person whose interest in birds is friendly rather
than scientific; who has little taste for shooting, and an aversion
from dissecting; who delights in the living creatures themselves, and
counts a bird in the bush worth two in the hand. Such a person, if he is
intelligent, makes good use of the best works on ornithology; he would
not know how to get along without them; but he studies most the birds
themselves, and after a while he begins to associate them on a plan of
his own. Not that he distrusts the approximate correctness of the
received classification, or ceases to find it of daily service; but
though it were as accurate as the multiplication table, it is based (and
rightly, no doubt) on anatomical structure alone; it rates birds as
bodies, and nothing else: while to the person of whom we are speaking
birds are, first of all, souls; his interest in them is, as we say,
personal; and we are none of us in the habit of grouping our friends
according to height, or complexion, or any other physical peculiarity.

But it is not proposed in this paper to attempt a new classification of
any sort, even the most unscientific and fanciful. All I am to do is to
set down at random a few studies in such a method as I have indicated;
in short, a few studies in the temperaments of birds. Nor, in making
this attempt, am I unmindful how elusive of analysis traits of character
are, and how diverse is the impression which the same personality
produces upon different observers. In matters of this kind every
judgment is largely a question of emphasis and proportion; and,
moreover, what we find in our friends depends in great part on what we
have in ourselves. This I do not forget; and therefore I foresee that
others will discover in the birds of whom I write many things that I
miss, and perhaps will miss some things which I have treated as patent
or even conspicuous. It remains only for each to testify what he has
seen, and at the end to confess that a soul, even the soul of a bird, is
after all a mystery.

Let our first example, then, be the common black-capped titmouse, or
chickadee. He is, _par excellence_, the bird of the merry heart. There
is a notion current, to be sure, that all birds are merry; but that is
one of those second-hand opinions which a man who begins to observe for
himself soon finds it necessary to give up. With many birds life is a
hard struggle. Enemies are numerous, and the food supply is too often
scanty. Of some species it is probable that very few die in their beds.
But the chickadee seems to be exempt from all forebodings. His coat is
thick, his heart is brave, and, whatever may happen, something will be
found to eat. "Take no thought for the morrow" is his creed, which he
accepts, not "for substance of doctrine," but literally. No matter how
bitter the wind or how deep the snow, you will never find the chickadee,
as the saying is, under the weather. It is this perennial good humor, I
suppose, which makes other birds so fond of his companionship; and their
example might well be heeded by persons who suffer from fits of
depression. Such unfortunates could hardly do better than to court the
society of the joyous tit. His whistles and chirps, his graceful feats
of climbing and hanging, and withal his engaging familiarity (for, of
course, such good-nature as his could not consist with suspiciousness)
would most likely send them home in a more Christian mood. The time will
come, we may hope, when doctors will prescribe bird-gazing instead of
blue-pill.

To illustrate the chickadee's trustfulness, I may mention that a friend
of mine captured one in a butterfly-net, and, carrying him into the
house, let him loose in the sitting-room. The little stranger was at
home immediately, and seeing the window full of plants, proceeded to go
over them carefully, picking off the lice with which such window-gardens
are always more or less infested. A little later he was taken into my
friend's lap, and soon he climbed up to his shoulder; where, after
hopping about for a few minutes on his coat-collar, he selected a
comfortable roosting place, tucked his head under his wing, and went to
sleep, and slept on undisturbed while carried from one room to another.
Probably the chickadee's nature is not of the deepest. I have never seen
him when his joy rose to ecstasy. Still his feelings are not shallow,
and the faithfulness of the pair to each other and to their offspring is
of the highest order. The female has sometimes to be taken off the nest,
and even to be held in the hand, before the eggs can be examined.

Our American goldfinch is one of the loveliest of birds. With his
elegant plumage, his rhythmical, undulatory flight, his beautiful song,
and his more beautiful soul, he ought to be one of the best beloved, if
not one of the most famous; but he has never yet had half his deserts.
He is like the chickadee, and yet different. He is not so extremely
confiding, nor should I call him merry. But he is always cheerful, in
spite of his so-called plaintive note, from which he gets one of his
names, and always amiable. So far as I know, he never utters a harsh
sound; even the young ones, asking for food, use only smooth, musical
tones. During the pairing season his delight often becomes rapturous. To
see him then, hovering and singing,--or, better still, to see the
devoted pair hovering together, billing and singing,--is enough to do
even a cynic good. The happy lovers! They have never read it in a book,
but it is written on their hearts,--

    "The gentle law, that each should be
    The other's heaven and harmony."

The goldfinch has the advantage of the titmouse in several respects, but
he lacks that sprightliness, that exceeding light-heartedness, which is
the chickadee's most endearing characteristic.

For the sake of a strong contrast, we may look next at the brown thrush,
known to farmers as the planting-bird and to ornithologists as
_Harporhynchus rufus_; a staid and solemn Puritan, whose creed is the
Preacher's,--"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." No frivolity and
merry-making for him! After his brief annual period of intensely
passionate song, he does penance for the remainder of the
year,--skulking about, on the ground or near it, silent and gloomy. He
seems ever on the watch against an enemy, and, unfortunately for his
comfort, he has nothing of the reckless, bandit spirit, such as the jay
possesses, which goes to make a moderate degree of danger almost a
pastime. Not that he is without courage; when his nest is in question he
will take great risks; but in general his manner is dispirited,
"sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Evidently he feels

    "The heavy and the weary weight
    Of all this unintelligible world;"

and it would not be surprising if he sometimes raised the question, "Is
life worth living?" It is the worst feature of his case that his
melancholy is not of the sort which softens and refines the nature.
There is no suggestion of saintliness about it. In fact, I am convinced
that this long-tailed thrush has a constitutional taint of vulgarity.
His stealthy, underhand manner is one mark of this, and the same thing
comes out again in his music. Full of passion as his singing is (and we
have hardly anything to compare with it in this regard), yet the
listener cannot help smiling now and then; the very finest passage is
followed so suddenly by some uncouth guttural note, or by some whimsical
drop from the top to the bottom of the scale.

In neighborly association with the brown thrush is the towhee bunting,
or chewink. The two choose the same places for their summer homes, and,
unless I am deceived, they often migrate in company. But though they are
so much together, and in certain of their ways very much alike, their
habits of mind are widely dissimilar. The towhee is of a peculiarly even
disposition. I have seldom heard him scold, or use any note less
good-natured and musical than his pleasant _cherawink_. I have never
detected him in a quarrel such as nearly all birds are once in a while
guilty of, ungracious as it may seem to mention the fact; nor have I
ever seen him hopping nervously about and twitching his tail, as is the
manner of most species, when, for instance, their nests are approached.
Nothing seems to annoy him. At the same time, he is not full of
continual merriment like the chickadee, nor occasionally in a rapture
like the goldfinch. Life with him is pitched in a low key; comfortable
rather than cheerful, and never jubilant. And yet, for all the towhee's
careless demeanor, you soon begin to suspect him of being deep. He
appears not to mind you; he keeps on scratching among the dry leaves as
if he had no thought of being driven away by your presence; but in a
minute or two you look that way again, and he is not there. If you pass
near his nest, he makes not a tenth part of the ado which a brown thrush
would make in the same circumstances, but (partly for this reason) you
will find half a dozen nests of the thrush sooner than one of his. With
all his simplicity and frankness, which puts him in happy contrast with
the thrush, he knows as well as anybody how to keep his own counsel. I
have seen him with his mate for two or three days together about the
flower-beds in the Boston Public Garden, and so far as appeared they
were feeding as unconcernedly as though they had been on their own
native heath, amid the scrub-oaks and huckleberry bushes; but after
their departure it was remembered that they had not once been heard to
utter a sound. If self-possession be four fifths of good manners, our
red-eyed Pipilo may certainly pass for a gentleman.

We have now named four birds, the chickadee, the goldfinch, the brown
thrush, and the towhee,--birds so diverse in plumage that no eye could
fail to discriminate them at a glance. But the four differ no more truly
in bodily shape and dress than they do in that inscrutable something
which we call temperament, disposition. If the soul of each were
separated from the body and made to stand out in sight, those of us who
have really known the birds in the flesh would have no difficulty in
saying, This is the titmouse, and this the towhee. It would be with them
as we hope it will be with our friends in the next world, whom we shall
recognize there because we knew them here; that is, we knew _them_, and
not merely the bodies they lived in. This kind of familiarity with birds
has no necessary connection with ornithology. Personal intimacy and a
knowledge of anatomy are still two different things. As we have all
heard, ours is an age of science; but, thank fortune, matters have not
yet gone so far that a man must take a course in anthropology before he
can love his neighbor.

It is a truth only too patent that taste and conscience are sometimes at
odds. One man wears his faults so gracefully that we can hardly help
falling in love with them, while another, alas, makes even virtue itself
repulsive. I am moved to this commonplace reflection by thinking of the
blue jay, a bird of doubtful character, but one for whom, nevertheless,
it is impossible not to feel a sort of affection and even of respect. He
is quite as suspicious as the brown thrush, and his instinct for an
invisible perch is perhaps as unerring as the cuckoo's; and yet, even
when he takes to hiding, his manner is not without a dash of boldness.
He has a most irascible temper, also, but, unlike the thrasher, he does
not allow his ill-humor to degenerate into chronic sulkiness. Instead,
he flies into a furious passion, and is done with it. Some say that on
such occasions he swears, and I have myself seen him when it was plain
that nothing except a natural impossibility kept him from tearing his
hair. His larynx would make him a singer, and his mental capacity is far
above the average; but he has perverted his gifts, till his music is
nothing but noise and his talent nothing but smartness. A like process
of depravation the world has before now witnessed in political life,
when a man of brilliant natural endowments has yielded to low ambitions
and stooped to unworthy means, till what was meant to be a statesman
turns put to be a demagogue. But perhaps we wrong our handsome friend,
fallen angel though he be, to speak thus of him. Most likely he would
resent the comparison, and I do not press it. We must admit that
juvenile sportsmen have persecuted him unduly; and when a creature
cannot show himself without being shot at, he may be pardoned for a
little misanthropy. Christians as we are, how many of us could stand
such a test? In these circumstances, it is a point in the jay's favor
that he still has, what is rare with birds, a sense of humor, albeit it
is humor of a rather grim sort,--the sort which expends itself in
practical jokes and uncivil epithets. He has discovered the school-boy's
secret: that for the expression of unadulterated derision there is
nothing like the short sound of _a_, prolonged into a drawl. _Yah_,
_yah_, he cries; and sometimes, as you enter the woods, you may hear
him shouting so as to be heard for half a mile, "Here comes a fool with
a gun; look out for him!"

It is natural to think of the shrike in connection with the jay, but the
two have points of unlikeness no less than of resemblance. The shrike
is a taciturn bird. If he were a politician, he would rely chiefly on
what is known as the "still hunt," although he too can scream loudly
enough on occasion. His most salient trait is his impudence, but even
that is of a negative type. "Who are you," he says, "that I should be at
the trouble to insult you?" He has made a study of the value of silence
as an indication of contempt, and is almost human in his ability to
stare straight by a person whose presence it suits him to ignore. His
imperturbability is wonderful. Watch him as closely as you please, you
will never discover what he is thinking about. Undertake, for instance,
now that the fellow is singing from the top of a small tree only a few
rods from where you are standing,--undertake to settle the long dispute
whether his notes are designed to decoy small birds within his reach.
Those whistles and twitters,--hear them! So miscellaneous! so different
from anything which would be expected from a bird of his size and
general disposition! so very like the notes of sparrows! They must be
imitative. You begin to feel quite sure of it. But just at this point
the sounds cease, and you look up to discover that Collurio has fallen
to preening his feathers in the most listless manner imaginable. "Look
at me," he says; "do I act like one on the watch for his prey? Indeed,
sir, I wish the innocent sparrows no harm; and besides, if you must know
it, I ate an excellent game-breakfast two hours ago, while laggards like
you were still abed." In the winter, which is the only season when I
have been able to observe him, the shrike is to the last degree
unsocial, and I have known him to stay for a month in one spot all by
himself, spending a good part of every day perched upon a telegraph
wire. He ought not to be very happy, with such a disposition, one would
think; but he seems to be well contented, and sometimes his spirits are
fairly exuberant. Perhaps, as the phrase is, he enjoys _himself_; in
which case he certainly has the advantage of most of us,--unless,
indeed, we are easily pleased. At any rate, he is philosopher enough to
appreciate the value of having few wants; and I am not sure but that he
anticipated the vaunted discovery of Teufelsdröckh, that the fraction of
life may be increased by lessening the denominator. But even the stoical
shrike is not without his epicurean weakness. When he has killed a
sparrow, he eats the brains first; after that, if he is still hungry, he
devours the coarser and less savory parts. In this, however, he only
shares the well-nigh universal inconsistency. There are never many
thorough-going stoics in the world. Epictetus declared with an oath
that he should be glad to see _one_.[7] To take everything as equally
good, to know no difference between bitter and sweet, penury and plenty,
slander and praise,--this is a great attainment, a Nirvana to which few
can hope to arrive. Some wise man has said (and the remark has more
meaning than may at once appear) that dying is usually one of the last
things which men do in this world.

Against the foil of the butcher-bird's stolidity we may set the
inquisitive, garrulous temperament of the white-eyed vireo and the
yellow-breasted chat. The vireo is hardly larger than the goldfinch, but
let him be in one of his conversational moods, and he will fill a smilax
thicket with noise enough for two or three cat-birds. Meanwhile he keeps
his eye upon you, and seems to be inviting your attention to his
loquacious abilities. The chat is perhaps even more voluble. _Staccato_
whistles and snarls follow each other at most extraordinary intervals of
pitch, and the attempt at showing off is sometimes unmistakable.
Occasionally he takes to the air, and flies from one tree to another;
teetering his body and jerking his tail, in an indescribable fashion,
and chattering all the while. His "inner consciousness" at such a moment
would be worth perusing. Possibly he has some feeling for the grotesque.
But I suspect not; probably what we laugh at as the antics of a clown is
all sober earnest to him.

At best, it is very little we can know about what is passing in a bird's
mind. We label him with two or three _sesquipedalia verba_, give his
territorial range, describe his notes and his habits of nidification,
and fancy we have rendered an account of the bird. But how should we
like to be inventoried in such a style? "His name was John Smith; he
lived in Boston, in a three-story brick house; he had a baritone voice,
but was not a good singer." All true enough; but do you call that a
man's biography?

The four birds last spoken of are all wanting in refinement. The jay and
the shrike are wild and rough, not to say barbarous, while the
white-eyed vireo and the chat have the character which commonly goes by
the name of oddity. All four are interesting for their strong
individuality and their picturesqueness, but it is a pleasure to turn
from them to creatures like our four common New England _Hylocichlæ_, or
small thrushes. These are the real patricians. With their modest but
rich dress, and their dignified, quiet demeanor, they stand for the
true aristocratic spirit. Like all genuine aristocrats, they carry an
air of distinction, of which no one who approaches them can long remain
unconscious. When you go into their haunts they do not appear so much
frightened as offended. "Why do you intrude?" they seem to say; "these
are our woods;" and they bow you out with all ceremony. Their songs are
in keeping with this character; leisurely, unambitious, and brief, but
in beauty of voice and in high musical quality excelling all other music
of the woods. However, I would not exaggerate, and I have not found even
these thrushes perfect. The hermit, who is my favorite of the four, has
a habit of slowly raising and depressing his tail when his mind is
disturbed--a trick of which it is likely he is unconscious, but which,
to say the least, is not a mark of good breeding; and the Wilson, while
every note of his song breathes of spirituality, has nevertheless a most
vulgar alarm call, a petulant, nasal, one-syllabled _yeork_. I do not
know anything so grave against the wood thrush or the Swainson; although
when I have fooled the former with decoy whistles, I have found him more
inquisitive than seemed altogether becoming to a bird of his quality.
But character without flaw is hardly to be insisted on by sons of Adam,
and, after all deductions are made, the claim of the _Hylocichlæ_ to
noble blood can never be seriously disputed. I have spoken of the four
together, but each is clearly distinguished from all the others; and
this I believe to be as true of mental traits as it is of details of
plumage and song. No doubt, in general, they are much alike; we may say
that they have the same qualities; but a close acquaintance will reveal
that the qualities have been mixed in different proportions, so that the
total result in each case is a personality strictly unique.

And what is true of the _Hylocichlæ_ is true of every bird that flies.
Anatomy and dress and even voice aside, who does not feel the
dissimilarity between the cat-bird and the robin, and still more the
difference, amounting to contrast, between the cat-bird and the
bluebird? Distinctions of color and form are what first strike the eye,
but on better acquaintance these are felt to be superficial and
comparatively unimportant; _the_ difference is not one of outside
appearance. It is his gentle, high-bred manner and not his azure
coat, which makes the bluebird; and the cat-bird would be a cat-bird
in no matter what garb, so long as he retained his obtrusive
self-consciousness and his prying, busy-body spirit; all of which, being
interpreted, comes, it may be, to no more than this, "Fine feathers
don't make fine birds."

Even in families containing many closely allied species, I believe that
every species has its own proper character, which sufficient intercourse
would enable us to make a due report of. Nobody ever saw a song-sparrow
manifesting the spirit of a chipper, and I trust it will not be in my
day that any of our American sparrows are found emulating the virtues of
their obstreperous immigrant cousin. Of course it is true of birds, as
of men, that some have much more individuality than others. But know any
bird or any man well enough, and he will prove to be himself, and nobody
else. To know the ten thousand birds of the world well enough to see
how, in bodily structure, habit of life, and mental characteristics,
every one is different from every other is the long and delightful task
which is set before the ornithologist.

But this is not all. The ornithology of the future must be ready to give
an answer to the further question how these divergences of anatomy and
temperament originated. How came the chickadee by his endless fund of
happy spirits? Whence did the towhee derive his equanimity, and the
brown thrush his saturnine temper? The waxwing and the vireo have the
same vocal organs; why should the first do nothing but whisper, while
the second is so loud and voluble? Why is one bird belligerent and
another peaceable; one barbarous and another civilized; one grave and
another gay? Who can tell? We can make here and there a plausible
conjecture. We know that the behavior of the blue jay varies greatly in
different parts of the country, in consequence of the different
treatment which he receives. We judge that the chickadee, from the
peculiarity of his feeding habits, is more certain than most birds are
of finding a meal whenever he is hungry; and that, we are assured from
experience, goes a long way toward making a body contented. We think it
likely that the brown thrush is at some special disadvantage in this
respect, or has some peculiar enemies warring upon him; in which case it
is no more than we might expect that he should be a pessimist. And, with
all our ignorance, we are yet sure that everything has a cause, and we
would fain hold by the brave word of Emerson, "Undoubtedly we have no
questions to ask which are unanswerable."

FOOTNOTES:

[7] This does not harmonize exactly with a statement which Emerson makes
somewhere, to the effect that all the stoics were stoics indeed. But
Epictetus had never lived in Concord.




                         IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

    Our music's in the hills.

                     EMERSON.


                         IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.


It was early in June when I set out for my third visit to the White
Mountains, and the ticket-seller and the baggage-master in turn assured
me that the Crawford House, which I named as my destination, was not yet
open. They spoke, too, in the tone which men use when they mention
something which, but for uncommon stupidity, you would have known
beforehand. The kindly sarcasm missed its mark, however. I was aware
that the hotel was not yet ready for the "general public." But I said to
myself that, for once at least, I was not to be included in that
unfashionably promiscuous company. The vulgar crowd must wait, of
course. For the present the mountains, in reporters' language, were "on
private view;" and despite the ignorance of railway officials, I was one
of the elect. In plainer phrase, I had in my pocket a letter from the
manager of the famous inn before mentioned, in which he promised to do
what he could for my entertainment, even though he was not yet, as he
said, keeping a hotel.

Possibly I made too much of a small matter; but it pleased me to feel
that this visit of mine was to be of a peculiarly intimate
character,--almost, indeed, as if Mount Washington himself had bidden me
to private audience.

Compelled to wait three or four hours in North Conway, I improved the
opportunity to stroll once more down into the lovely Saco meadows, whose
"green felicity" was just now at its height. Here, perched upon a
fence-rail, in the shadow of an elm, I gazed at the snow-crowned Mount
Washington range, while the bobolinks and savanna sparrows made music on
every side. The song of the bobolinks dropped from above, and the
microphonic tune of the sparrows came up from the grass,--sky and earth
keeping holiday together. Almost I could have believed myself in Eden.
But, alas, even the birds themselves were long since shut out of that
garden of innocence, and as I started back toward the village a crow
went hurrying past me, with a kingbird in hot pursuit. The latter was
more fortunate than usual, or more plucky; actually alighting on the
crow's back and riding for some distance. I could not distinguish his
motions,--he was too far away for that,--but I wished him joy of his
victory, and grace to improve it to the full. For it is scandalous that
a bird of the crow's cloth should be a thief; and so, although I reckon
him among my friends,--in truth, _because_ I do so,--I am always able to
take it patiently when I see him chastised for his fault. Imperfect as
we all know each other to be, it is a comfort to feel that few of us are
so altogether bad as not to take more or less pleasure in seeing a
neighbor's character improved under a course of moderately painful
discipline.

At Bartlett word came that the passenger car would go no further, but
that a freight train would soon start, on which, if I chose, I could
continue my journey. Accordingly, I rode up through the Notch on a
platform car,--a mode of conveyance which I can heartily and in all good
conscience recommend. There is no crowd of exclaiming tourists, the
train of necessity moves slowly, and the open platform offers no
obstruction to the view. For a time I had a seat, which after a little
two strangers ventured to occupy with me; for "it's an ill wind that
blows nobody good," and there happened to be on the car one piece of
baggage,--a coffin, inclosed in a pine box. Our sitting upon it could
not harm either it or us; nor did we wean any disrespect to the man,
whoever he might be, whose body was to be buried in it. Judging the
dead charitably, as in duty bound, I had no doubt he would have been
glad if he could have seen his "narrow house" put to such a use. So we
made ourselves comfortable with it, until, at an invisible station, it
was taken off. Then we were obliged to stand, or to retreat into a
miserable small box-car behind us. The platform would lurch a little now
and then, and I, for one, was not experienced as a "train hand;" but we
all kept our places till the Frankenstein trestle was reached. Here,
where for five hundred feet we could look down upon the jagged rocks
eighty feet below us, one of the trio suddenly had an errand into the
box-car aforesaid, leaving the platform to the other stranger and me.
All in all, the ride through the Notch had never before been so
enjoyable, I thought; and late in the evening I found myself once again
at the Crawford House, and in one of the best rooms,--as well enough I
might be, being the only guest in the house.

The next morning, before it was really light, I was lying awake looking
at Mount Webster, while through the open window came the loud, cheery
song of the white-throated sparrows. The hospitable creatures seemed to
be inviting me to come at once into their woods; but I knew only too
well that, if the invitation were accepted, they would every one of
them take to hiding like bashful children.

The white-throat is one of the birds for whom I cherish a special
liking. On my first trip to the mountains I jumped off the train for a
moment at Bartlett, and had hardly touched the ground before I heard his
familiar call. Here, then, was Mr. Peabody at home. Season after season
he had camped near me in Massachusetts, and many a time I had been
gladdened by his lively serenade; now he greeted me from his own native
woods. So far as my observations have gone, he is common throughout the
mountain region; and that in spite of the standard guide-book, which
puts him down as patronizing the Glen House almost exclusively. He knows
the routes too well to need any guide, however, and may be excused for
his ignorance of the official programme. It is wonderful how shy he
is,--the more wonderful, because, during his migrations, his manner is
so very different. Then, even in a city park you may watch him at your
leisure, while his loud, clear whistle is often to be heard rising above
a din of horse-cars and heavy wagons. But here, in his summer quarters,
you will listen to his song a hundred times before you once catch a
glimpse of the singer. At first thought it seems strange that a bird
should be most at home when he is away from home; but in the one case
he has nothing but his own safety to consult, while in the other he is
thinking of those whose lives are more to him than his own, and whose
hiding-place he is every moment on the alert to conceal.

In Massachusetts we do not expect to find sparrows in deep woods. They
belong in fields and pastures, in roadside thickets, or by fence-rows
and old stone-walls bordered with barberry bushes and alders. But these
white-throats are children of the wilderness. It is one charm of their
music that it always comes, or seems to come, from such a
distance,--from far up the mountain-side, or from the inaccessible
depths of some ravine. I shall not soon forget its wild beauty as it
rose out of the spruce forests below me, while I was enjoying an evening
promenade, all by myself, over the long, flat summit of Moosilauke. From
his habit of singing late at night this sparrow is in some places known
as the nightingale. His more common name is the Peabody bird; while a
Jefferson man, who was driving me over the Cherry Mountain road, called
him the Peverly bird, and told me the following story:--

A farmer named Peverly was walking about his fields one spring morning,
trying to make up his mind whether the time had come to put in his
wheat. The question was important, and he was still in a deep quandary,
when a bird spoke up out of the wood and said, "Sow wheat, Peverly,
Peverly, Peverly!--Sow wheat, Peverly, Peverly, Peverly!" That settled
the matter. The wheat was sown, and in the fall a most abundant harvest
was gathered; and ever since then this little feathered oracle has been
known as the Peverly bird.

We have improved on the custom of the ancients: they examined a bird's
entrails; we listen to his song. Who says the Yankee is not wiser than
the Greek?

But I was lying abed in the Crawford House when the voice of
_Zonotrichia albicollis_ sent my thoughts thus astray, from Moosilauke
to Delphi. That day and the two following were passed in roaming about
the woods near the hotel. The pretty painted trillium was in blossom, as
was also the dark purple species, and the hobble-bush showed its broad
white cymes in all directions. Here and there was the modest little
spring beauty (_Claytonia Caroliniana_), and not far from the Elephant's
Head I discovered my first and only patch of dicentra, with its delicate
dissected leaves and its oddly shaped petals of white and pale yellow.
The false mitrewort (_Tiarella cordifolia_) was in flower likewise, and
the spur which is cut off Mount Willard by the railroad was all aglow
with rhodora,--a perfect flower-garden, on the monochromatic plan now so
much in vogue. Along the edge of the rocks on the summit of Mount
Willard a great profusion of the common saxifrage was waving in the
fresh breeze:

    "Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
    Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."

On the lower parts of the mountains, the foliage was already well out,
while the upper parts were of a fine purplish tint, which at first I was
unable to account for, but which I soon discovered to be due to the fact
that the trees at that height were still only in bud.

A notable feature of the White Mountain forests is the absence of oaks
and hickories. These tough, hard woods would seem to have been created
on purpose to stand against wind and cold. But no; the hills are covered
with the fragile poplars and birches and spruces, with never an oak or
hickory among them. I suspect, indeed, that it is the very softness of
the former which gives them their advantage. For this, as I suppose, is
correlated with rapid growth; and where the summer is very short, speed
may count for more than firmness of texture, especially during the first
one or two years of the plant's life. Trees, like men, lose in one way
what they gain in another; or, in other words, they "have the defects
of their qualities." Probably Paul's confession, "When I am weak, then
am I strong," is after all only the personal statement of a general law,
as true of a poplar as of a Christian. For we all believe (do we not?)
that the world is a universe, governed throughout by one Mind, so that
whatever holds in one part is good everywhere.

But it was June, and the birds, who were singing from daylight till
dark, would have the most of my attention. It was pleasant to find here
two comparatively rare warblers, of whom I had before had only casual
glimpses,--the mourning warbler and the bay-breasted. The former was
singing his loud but commonplace ditty within a few rods of the piazza
on one side of the house, while his congener, the Maryland
yellow-throat, was to be heard on the other side, along with the
black-cap (_Dendroeca striata_), the black-and-yellow, and the
Canadian flycatcher. The mourning warbler's song, as I heard it, was
like this: _Whit whit whit_, _wit wit_. The first three notes were
deliberate and loud, on one key, and without accent. The last two were
pitched a little lower, and were shorter, with the accent on the first
of the pair; they were thinner in tone than the opening triplet, as is
meant to be indicated by the difference of spelling.[8] Others of the
family were the golden-crowned thrush, the small-billed water-thrush,
the yellow-rumped, the Blackburnian (with his characteristic _zillup_,
_zillup_, _zillup_), the black-throated green, the black-throated blue
(the last with his loud, coarse _kree_, _kree_, _kree_), the redstart,
and the elegant blue yellow-back. Altogether, they were a gorgeous
company.

But the chief singers were the olive-backed thrushes and the winter
wrens. I should be glad to know on just what principle the olive-backs
and their near relatives, the hermits, distribute themselves throughout
the mountain region. Each species seems to have its own sections, to
which it returns year after year, and the olive-backed, being, as is
well known, the more northern species of the two, naturally prefers the
more elevated situations. I have found the latter abundant near the
Profile House, and for three seasons it has had exclusive possession of
the White Mountain Notch,--so far, at least, as I have been able to
discover.[9] The hermits, on the other hand, frequent such places as
North Conway, Gorham, Jefferson, Bethlehem, and the vicinity of the
Flume. Only once have I found the two species in the same neighborhood.
That was near the Breezy Point House, on the side of Mount Moosilauke;
but this place is so peculiarly romantic, with its noble amphitheatre of
hills, that I could not wonder neither species was willing to yield the
ground entirely to the other; and even here it was to be noticed that
the hermits were in or near the sugar-grove, while the Swainsons were in
the forest, far off in an opposite direction.[10]

It is these birds, if any, whose music reaches the ears of the ordinary
mountain tourist. Every man who is known among his acquaintances to have
a little knowledge of such things is approached now and then with the
question, "What bird was it, Mr. So-and-So, that I heard singing up in
the mountains? I didn't see him; he was always ever so far off; but his
voice was wonderful, so sweet and clear and loud!" As a rule it may
safely be taken for granted that such interrogatories refer either to
the Swainson thrush or to the hermit. The inquirer is very likely
disposed to be incredulous when he is told that there are birds in his
own woods whose voice is so like that of his admired New Hampshire
songster that, if he were to hear the two together, he would not at
first be able to tell the one from the other. He has never heard them,
he protests; which is true enough, for he never goes into the woods of
his own town, or, if by chance he does, he leaves his ears behind him in
the shop. His case is not peculiar. Men and women gaze enraptured at New
Hampshire sunsets. How glorious they are, to be sure! What a pity the
sun does not sometimes set in Massachusetts!

As a musician the olive-back is certainly inferior to the hermit, and,
according to my taste, he is surpassed also by the wood thrush and the
Wilson; but he is a magnificent singer, for all that, and when he is
heard in the absence of the others it is often hard to believe that any
one of them could do better. A good idea of the rhythm and length of his
song may be gained by pronouncing somewhat rapidly the words, "I love, I
love, I love you," or, as it sometimes runs, "I love, I love, I love you
truly." How literal this translation is I am not scholar enough to
determine, but without question it gives the sense substantially.

The winter wrens were less numerous than the thrushes, I think, but,
like them, they sang at all hours of the day, and seemed to be well
distributed throughout the woods. We can hardly help asking how it is
that two birds so very closely related as the house wren and the winter
wren should have been chosen haunts so extremely diverse,--the one
preferring door-yards in thickly settled villages, the other keeping
strictly to the wildest of all wild places. But whatever the
explanation, we need not wish the fact itself different. Comparatively
few ever hear the winter wren's song, to be sure (for you will hardly
get it from a hotel piazza), but it is not the less enjoyed on that
account. There is such a thing as a bird's making himself too common;
and probably it is true even of the great _prima donna_ that it is not
those who live in the house with her who find most pleasure in her
music. Moreover, there is much in time and circumstance. You hear a song
in the village street, and pass along unmoved; but stand in the silence
of the forest, with your feet in a bed of creeping snowberry and oxalis,
and the same song goes to your very soul.

The great distinction of the winter wren's melody is its marked rhythm
and accent, which give it a martial, fife-like character. Note tumbles
over note in the true wren manner, and the strain comes to an end so
suddenly that for the first few times you are likely to think that the
bird has been interrupted. In the middle is a long in-drawn note, much
like one of the canary's. The odd little creature does not get far away
from the ground. I have never seen him sing from a living tree or bush,
but always from a stump or a log, or from the root or branch of an
overturned tree,--from something, at least, of nearly his own color.[11]
The song is intrinsically one of the most beautiful, and in my ears it
has the further merit of being forever associated with reminiscences of
ramblings among the White Hills. How well I remember an early morning
hour at Profile Lake, when it came again and again across the water from
the woods on Mount Cannon, under the Great Stone Face!

Whichever way I walked, I was sure of the society of the snow-birds.
They hopped familiarly across the railroad track in front of the
Crawford House, and on the summit of Mount Washington were scurrying
about among the rocks, opening and shutting their pretty white-bordered
fans. Half-way up Mount Willard I sat down to rest on a stone, and after
a minute or two out dropped a snow-bird at my feet, and ran across the
road, trailing her wings. I looked under the bank for her nest, but, to
my surprise, could find nothing of it. So I made sure of knowing the
place again, and continued my tramp. Returning two hours later, I sat
down upon the same bowlder, and watched for the bird to appear as
before; but she had gathered courage from my former failure,--or so it
seemed,--and I waited in vain till I rapped upon the ground over her
head. Then she scrambled out and limped away, repeating her innocent but
hackneyed ruse. This time I was resolved not to be baffled. The nest was
there, and I would find it. So down on my knees I got, and scrutinized
the whole place most carefully. But though I had marked the precise
spot, there was no sign of a nest. I was about giving over the search
ignominiously, when I descried a slight opening between the overhanging
roof of the bank and a layer of earth which some roots held in place
close under it. Into this slit I inserted my fingers, and there,
entirely out of sight, was the nest full of eggs. No man could ever have
found it, had the bird been brave and wise enough to keep her seat.
However, I had before this noticed that the snow-bird, while often
extremely clever in choosing a building site, is seldom very skillful in
keeping a secret. I saw him one day standing on the side of the same
Mount Willard road,[12] gesticulating and scolding with all his might,
as much, as to say, "Please don't stop here! Go straight along, I beg of
you! Our nest is right under this bank!" And one glance under the bank
showed that I had not misinterpreted his demonstrations. For all that, I
do not feel like taking a lofty tone in passing judgment upon Junco. He
is not the only one whose wisdom is mixed with foolishness. There is at
least one other person of whom the same is true,--a person of whom I
have nevertheless a very good opinion, and with whom I am, or ought to
be, better acquainted than I am with any animal that wears feathers.

The prettiest snow-bird's nest I ever saw was built beside the Crawford
bridle path, on Mount Clinton, just before the path comes out of the
woods at the top. It was lined with hair-moss (a species of
_Polytrichum_) of a bright orange color, and with its four or five
white, lilac-spotted eggs made so attractive a picture that I was
constrained to pause a moment to look at it, even though I had three
miles of a steep, rough footpath to descend, with a shower threatening
to overtake me before I could reach the bottom. I wondered whether the
architects really possessed an eye for color, or had only stumbled upon
this elegant bit of decoration. On the whole, it seemed more charitable
to conclude the former; and not only more charitable, but more
scientific as well. For, if I understand the matter aright, Mr. Darwin
and his followers have settled upon the opinion that birds do display an
unmistakable fondness for bright tints; that, indeed, the males of many
species wear brilliant plumage for no other reason than that their mates
prefer them in that dress. Moreover, if a bird in New South Wales adorns
her bower with shells and other ornaments, why may not our little
Northern darling beautify her nest with such humbler materials as her
surroundings offer? On reflection, I am more and more convinced that the
birds knew what they were doing; probably the female the moment she
discovered the moss, called to her mate, "Oh, look, how lovely! Do, my
dear, let's line our nest with it!"

This artistic structure was found on the anniversary of the battle of
Bunker Hill, a day which I had been celebrating, as best I could, by
climbing the highest hill in New England. Plunging into the woods within
fifty yards of the Crawford House, I had gone up and up, and on and on,
through a magnificent forest, and then over more magnificent rocky
heights, until I stood at last on the platform of the hotel at the
summit. True, the path, which I had never traveled before, was wet and
slippery, with stretches of ice and snow here and there; but the
shifting view was so grand, the atmosphere so bracing, and the solitude
so impressive that I enjoyed every step, till it came to clambering up
the Mount Washington cone over the bowlders. At this point, to speak
frankly, I began to hope that the ninth mile would prove to be a short
one. The guide-books are agreed in warning the visitor against making
this ascent without a companion, and no doubt they are right in so
doing. A crippling accident would almost inevitably be fatal, while for
several miles the trail is so indistinct that it would be difficult, if
not impossible, to follow it in a fog. And yet, if one is willing to
take the risk (and is not so unfortunate as never to have learned how to
keep himself company), he will find a very considerable compensation in
the peculiar pleasure to be experienced in being absolutely alone above
the world. For myself, I was shut up to going in this way or not going
at all; and a Bostonian must do something patriotic on the Seventeenth
of June. But for all that, if the storm which chased me down the
mountains in the afternoon, clouding first Mount Washington and then
Mount Pleasant behind me, and shutting me in-doors all the next day, had
started an hour sooner, or if I had been detained an hour later, it is
not impossible that I might now be writing in a different strain.

My reception at the top was none of the heartiest. The hotel was tightly
closed, while a large snow-bank stood guard before the door. However, I
invited myself into the Signal Service Station, and made my wants known
to one of the officers, who very kindly spread a table with such things
as he and his companions had just been eating. It would be out of place
to say much about the luncheon: the bread and butter were good, and the
pudding was interesting. I had the cook's word for it that the latter
was made of corn-starch, but he volunteered no explanation of its color,
which was nearly that of chocolate. As a working hypothesis I adopted
the molasses or brown-sugar theory, but a brief experiment (as brief as
politeness permitted) indicated a total absence of any saccharine
principle. But then, what do we climb mountains for, if not to see
something out of the common course? On the whole, if this department of
our national government is ever on trial for extravagance in the matter
of high living, I shall be moved to offer myself as a competent witness
for the defense.

A company of chimney-swifts were flying criss-cross over the summit, and
one of the men said that he presumed they lived there. I took the
liberty to doubt his opinion, however. To me it seemed nothing but a
blunder that they should be there even for an hour. There could hardly
be many insects at that height, I thought, and I had abundant cause to
know that the woods below were full of them. I knew, also, that the
swifts knew it; for while I had been prowling about between Crawford's
and Fabyan's, they had several times shot by my head so closely that I
had instinctively fallen to calculating the probable consequences of a
collision. But, after all, the swift is no doubt a far better
entomologist than I am, though he has never heard of Packard's Guide.
Possibly there are certain species of insects, and those of a peculiarly
delicate savor, which are to be obtained only at about this altitude.

The most enjoyable part of the Crawford path is the five miles from the
top of Mount Clinton to the foot of the Mount Washington cone. Along
this ridge I was delighted to find in blossom two beautiful Alpine
plants, which I had missed in previous (July) visits,--the diapensia
(_Diapensia Lapponica_) and the Lapland rose-bay (_Rhododendron
Lapponicum_),--and to get also a single forward specimen of _Potentilla
frigida_. Here and there was a humblebee, gathering honey from the small
purple catkins of the prostrate willows, now in full bloom. (Rather
high-minded humblebees, they seemed, more than five thousand feet above
the sea!) Professional entomologists (the chimney-swift, perhaps,
included) may smile at my simplicity, but I was surprised to find this
"animated torrid zone," this "insect lover of the sun," in such a
Greenland climate. Did he not know that his own poet had, described him
as "hot midsummer's petted crone"? But possibly he was equally surprised
at my appearance. He might even have taken his turn at quoting
Emerson:--

    "Pants up hither the spruce clerk
    From South Cove and City Wharf"?[13]

Of the two, he was unquestionably the more at home, for he was living
where in forty-eight hours I should have found my death. So much is
_Bombus_ better than a man.

In a little pool of water, which seemed to be nothing but a transient
puddle caused by the melting snow, was a tiny fish. I asked him by what
miracle he got there, but he could give no explanation. He, too, might
well enough have joined the noble company of Emersonians:--

    "I never thought to ask, I never knew;
    But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
    The self-same Power that brought me here brought you."

Almost at the very top of Mount Clinton I was saluted by the familiar
ditty of the Nashville warbler. I could hardly believe my ears; but
there was no mistake, for the bird soon appeared in plain sight. Had it
been one of the hardier-seeming species, the yellow-rumped for example,
I should not have thought it very strange; but this dainty
_Helminthophaga_, so common in the vicinity of Boston, did appear to be
out of his latitude, summering here on Alpine heights. With a good pair
of wings, and the whole continent to choose from, he surely might have
found some more congenial spot than this in which to bring up his little
family. I took his presence to be only an individual freak, but a
subsequent visitor, who made the ascent from the Glen, reported the same
species on that side also, and at about the same height.

These signs of life on bleak mountain ridges are highly interesting and
suggestive. The fish, the humblebees, the birds, and a mouse which
scampered away to its hole amid the rocks,--all these might have found
better living elsewhere. But Nature will have her world full. Stunted
life is better than none, she thinks. So she plants her forests of
spruces, and keeps them growing, where, with all their efforts, they
cannot get above the height of a man's knee. There is no beauty about
them, no grace. They sacrifice symmetry and everything else for the sake
of bare existence, reminding one of Satan's remark, "All that a man hath
will he give for his life."

Very admirable are the devices by which vegetation maintains itself
against odds. Everybody notices that many of the mountain species, like
the diapensia, the rose-bay, the Greenland sandwort (called the mountain
daisy by the Summit House people, for some inscrutable reason), and the
phyllodoce, have blossoms disproportionately large and handsome; as if
they realized that, in order to attract their indispensable allies, the
insects, to these inhospitable regions, they must offer them some
special inducements. Their case is not unlike that of a certain mountain
hotel which might be named, which happens to be poorly situated, but
which keeps itself full, nevertheless, by the peculiar excellence of its
_cuisine_.

It does not require much imagination to believe that these hardy
vegetable mountaineers love their wild, desolate dwelling-places as
truly as do the human residents of the region. An old man in Bethlehem
told me that sometimes, during the long, cold winter, he felt that
perhaps it would be well for him, now his work was done, to sell his
"place" and go down to Boston to live, near his brother. "But then," he
added, "you know it's dangerous transplanting an old tree; you're likely
as not to kill it." Whatever we have, in this world, we must pay for
with the loss of something else. The bitter must be taken with the
sweet, be we plants, animals, or men. These thoughts recurred to me a
day or two later, as I lay on the summit of Mount Agassiz, in the sun
and out of the wind, gazing down into the Franconia Valley, then in all
its June beauty. Nestled under the lee of the mountain, but farther from
the base, doubtless, than it seemed from my point of view, was a small
dwelling, scarcely better than a shanty. Two or three young children
were playing about the door, and near them was the man of the house
splitting wood. The air was still enough for me to hear every blow,
although it reached me only as the axe was again over the man's head,
ready for the next descent. It was a charming picture,--the broad, green
valley full of sunshine and peace, and the solitary cottage, from whose
doorstep might be seen in one direction the noble Mount Washington
range, and in another the hardly less noble Franconias. How easy to live
simply and well in such a grand seclusion! But soon there came a thought
of Wordsworth's sonnet, addressed to just such a mood, "Yes, there is
holy pleasure in thine eye," and I felt at once the truth of his
admonition. What if the cottage really were mine,--mine to spend a
lifetime in? How quickly the poetry would turn to prose!

An hour afterwards, on my way back to the Sinclair House, I passed a
group of men at work on the highway. One of them was a little apart from
the rest, and out of a social impulse I accosted him with the remark, "I
suppose, in heaven, the streets never will need mending." Quick as
thought came the reply: "Well, I hope not. If I ever _get_ there, I
don't want to work on the _road_." Here spoke universal human nature,
which finds its strong argument for immortality in its discontent with
matters as they now are. The one thing we are all sure of is that we
were born for something better than our present employment; and even
those who school themselves most religiously in the virtue of
contentment know very well how to define that grace so as not to
exclude from it a comfortable mixture of "divine dissatisfaction." Well
for us if we are still able to stand in our place and do faithfully our
allotted task, like the mountain spruces and the Bethlehemite
road-mender.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] He is said to have another song, beautiful and wren-like; but that I
have never heard.

[9] This is making no account of the gray-cheeked thrushes, who are
found only near the _tops_ of the mountains.

[10] I have since found both species at Willoughby Lake, Vermont and the
veery with them.

[11] True when written, but now needing to be qualified by one
exception. See p. 226.

[12] Beside this road (in June, 1883) I found a nest of the
yellow-bellied flycatcher (_Empidonax flaviventris_). It was built at
the base of a decayed stump, in a little depression between two roots,
and was partially overarched with growing moss. It contained four
eggs,--white, spotted with brown. I called upon the bird half a dozen
times or more, and found her a model "keeper at home." On one occasion
she allowed my hand to come within two or three inches of her bill. In
every case she flew off without any outcry or ruse, and once at least
she fell immediately to fly-catching with admirable philosophy. So far
as I know, this is the only nest of the species ever found in New
England outside of Maine. But it is proper to add that I did not capture
the bird.

[13] But by this time the clerk's appearance was, to say the least, not
reprehensibly "spruce." For one thing, what with the moisture and the
sharp stones, he was already becoming jealous of his shoes, lest they
should not hold together till he could get back to the Crawford House.




                         PHILLIDA AND CORIDON.

    Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song.

                                                   SPENSER.

    Much ado there was, God wot:
    He would love, and she would not.

                      NICHOLAS BRETON.


                         PHILLIDA AND CORIDON.


The happiness of birds, heretofore taken for granted, and long ago put
to service in a proverb, is in these last days made a matter of doubt.
It transpires that they are engaged without respite in a struggle for
existence,--a struggle so fierce that at least two of them perish every
year for one that survives.[14] How, then, can they be otherwise than
miserable?

There is no denying the struggle, of course; nor need we question some
real effect produced by it upon the cheerfulness of the participants.
The more rationalistic of the smaller species, we may be sure, find it
hard to reconcile the existence of hawks and owls with the doctrine of
an all-wise Providence; while even the most simple-minded of them can
scarcely fail to realize that a world in which one is liable any day to
be pursued by a boy with a shot-gun is not in any strict sense
paradisiacal.

And yet, who knows the heart of a bird? A child, possibly, or a poet;
certainly not a philosopher. And happiness, too,--is that something of
which the scientific mind can render us a quite adequate description? Or
is it, rather, a wayward, mysterious thing, coming often when least
expected, and going away again when, by all tokens, it ought to remain?
How is it with ourselves? Do we wait to weigh all the good and evil of
our state, to take an accurate account of it _pro_ and _con_, before we
allow ourselves to be glad or sorry? Not many of us, I think. Mortuary
tables may demonstrate that half the children born in this country fail
to reach the age of twenty years. But what then? Our "expectation of
life" is not based upon statistics. The tables may be correct, for aught
we know; but they deal with men in general and on the average; they have
no message for you and me individually. And it seems not unlikely that
birds may be equally illogical; always expecting to live, and not die,
and often giving themselves up to impulses of gladness without stopping
to inquire whether, on grounds of absolute reason, these impulses are to
be justified. Let us hope so, at all events, till somebody proves the
contrary.

But even looking at the subject a little more philosophically, we may
say--and be thankful to say it--that the joy of life is not dependent
upon comfort, nor yet upon safety. The essential matter is that the
heart be engaged. Then, though we be toiling up the Matterhorn, or swept
along in the rush of a bayonet charge, we may still find existence not
only endurable, but in the highest degree exhilarating. On the other
hand, if there is no longer anything we care for; if enthusiasm is dead,
and hope also, then, though we have all that money can buy, suicide is
perhaps the only fitting action that is left for us,--unless, perchance,
we are still able to pass the time in writing treatises to prove that
everybody else ought to be as unhappy as ourselves.

Birds have many enemies and their full share of privation, but I do not
believe that they often suffer from _ennui_. Having "neither storehouse
nor barn,"[15] they are never in want of something to do. From sunrise
till noon there is the getting of breakfast, then from noon till sunset
the getting of dinner,--both out-of-doors, and without any trouble of
cookery or dishes,--a kind of perpetual picnic. What could be simpler
or more delightful? Carried on in this way, eating is no longer the
coarse and sensual thing we make it, with our set meal-times and
elaborate preparations.

Country children know that there are two ways to go berrying. According
to the first of these you stroll into the pasture in the cool of the
day, and at your leisure pick as many as you choose of the ripest and
largest of the berries, putting every one into your mouth. This is
agreeable. According to the second, you carry a basket, which you are
expected to bring home again well filled. And this method--well, tastes
will differ, but following the good old rule for judging in such cases,
I must believe that most unsophisticated persons prefer the other. The
hand-to-mouth process certainly agrees best with our idea of life in
Eden; and, what is more to the purpose now, it is the one which the
birds, still keeping the garden instead of tilling the ground, continue
to follow.

That this unworldliness of the birds has any religious or theological
significance I do not myself suppose. Still, as anybody may see, there
are certain very plain Scripture texts on their side. Indeed, if birds
were only acute theologians, they would unquestionably proceed to turn
these texts (since they find it so easy to obey them) into the basis of
a "system of truth." Other parts of the Bible must be _interpreted_, to
be sure (so the theory would run); but _these_ statements mean just what
they say, and whoever meddles with them is carnally minded and a
rationalist.

Somebody will object, perhaps, that, with our talk about a "perpetual
picnic," we are making a bird's life one cloudless holiday;
contradicting what we have before admitted about a struggle for
existence, and leaving out of sight altogether the seasons of scarcity,
the storms, and the biting cold. But we intend no such foolish
recantation. These hardships are real enough, and serious enough. What
we maintain is that evils of this kind are not necessarily inconsistent
with enjoyment, and may even give to life an additional zest. It is a
matter of every-day observation that the people who have nothing to do
except to "live well" (as the common sarcasm has it) are not always the
most cheerful; while there are certain diseases, like pessimism and the
gout, which seem appointed to wait on luxury and idleness,--as though
nature were determined to have the scales kept somewhat even. And surely
this divine law of compensation has not left the innocent birds
unprovided for,--the innocent birds of whom it was said, "Your heavenly
Father feedeth them." How must the devoted pair exult, when, in spite
of owls and hawks, squirrels and weasels, small boys and full-grown
oölogists, they have finally reared a brood of offspring! The long
uncertainty and the thousand perils only intensify the joy. In truth, so
far as this world is concerned, the highest bliss is never to be had
without antecedent sorrow; and even of heaven itself we may not scruple
to say that, if there are painters there, they probably feel obliged to
put some shadows into their pictures.

But of course (and this is what we have been coming to through this long
introduction),--of course our friends of the air are happiest in the
season of mating; happiest, and therefore most attractive to us who find
our pleasure in studying them. In spring, of all times of the year, it
seems a pity that everybody should not turn ornithologist. For "all
mankind love a lover;" and the world, in consequence, has given itself
up to novel-reading, not knowing, unfortunately, how much better that
_rôle_ is taken by the birds than by the common run of story-book
heroes.

People whose notions of the subject are derived from attending to the
antics of our imported sparrows have no idea how delicate and beautiful
a thing a real feathered courtship is. To tell the truth, these
foreigners have associated too long and too intimately with men, and
have fallen far away from their primal innocence. There is no need to
describe their actions. The vociferous and most unmannerly importunity
of the suitor, and the correspondingly spiteful rejection of his
overtures by the little vixen on whom his affections are for the moment
placed,--these we have all seen to our hearts' discontent.

The sparrow will not have been brought over the sea for nothing,
however, if his bad behavior serves to heighten our appreciation of our
own native songsters, with their "perfect virtues" and "manners for the
heart's delight."

The American robin, for instance, is far from being a bird of
exceptional refinement. His nest is rude, not to say slovenly, and his
general deportment is unmistakably common. But watch him when he goes
a-wooing, and you will begin to feel quite a new respect for him. How
gently he approaches his beloved! How carefully he avoids ever coming
disrespectfully near! No sparrow-like screaming, no dancing about, no
melodramatic gesticulation. If she moves from one side of the tree to
the other, or to the tree adjoining, he follows in silence. Yet every
movement is a petition, an assurance that his heart is hers and ever
must be. The action is extremely simple; there is nothing of which to
make an eloquent description; but I should pity the man who could
witness it with indifference. Not that the robin's suit is always
carried on in the same way; he is much too versatile for that. On one
occasion, at least, I saw him holding himself absolutely motionless, in
a horizontal posture, staring at his sweetheart as if he would charm her
with his gaze, and emitting all the while a subdued hissing sound. The
significance of this conduct I do not profess to have understood; it
ended with his suddenly darting at the female, who took wing and was
pursued. Not improbably the robin finds the feminine nature somewhat
fickle, and counts it expedient to vary his tactics accordingly; for it
is getting to be more and more believed that, in kind at least, the
intelligence of the lower animals is not different from ours.

I once came unexpectedly upon a wood thrush, who was in the midst of a
performance very similar to this of the robin standing on the dead
branch of a tree, with his crown feathers erect, his bill set wide open,
and his whole body looking as rigid as death. His mate, as I perceived
the next moment, was not far away, on the same limb. If he was
attempting fascination, he had gone very clumsily about it, I thought,
unless his mate's idea of beauty was totally different from mine; for I
could hardly keep from laughing at his absurd appearance. It did not
occur to me till afterwards that he had perhaps heard of Othello's
method, and was at that moment acting out a story

                    "of most disastrous chances,
    Of moving accidents by flood and field,
    Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
    Of being taken by the insolent foe
    And sold to slavery."

How much depends upon the point of view! Here was I, ready to laugh;
while poor Desdemona only thought, "'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous
pitiful." Dear sympathetic soul! Let us hope that she was never called
to play out the tragedy.

Two things are very noticeable during the pairing season,--the scarcity
of females and their indifference. Every one of them seems to have at
least two admirers dangling after her,[16] while she is almost sure to
carry herself as if a wedding were the last thing she would ever consent
to think of; and that not because of bashfulness, but from downright
aversion. The observer begins to suspect that the fair creatures have
really entered into some sort of no-marriage league, and that there are
not to be any nests this year, nor any young birds. But by and by he
discovers that somehow, he cannot surmise how,--it must have been when
his eyes were turned the other way,--the scene is entirely changed, the
maidens are all wedded, and even now the nests are being got ready.

I watched a trio of cat-birds in a clump of alder bushes by the
roadside; two males, almost as a matter of course, "paying attentions"
to one female. Both suitors were evidently in earnest; each hoped to
carry off the prize, and perhaps felt that he should be miserable
forever if he were disappointed; and yet, on their part, everything was
being done decently and in order. So far as I saw, there was no
disposition to quarrel. Only let the dear creature choose one of them,
and the other would take his broken heart away. So, always at a modest
remove, they followed her about from bush to bush, entreating her in
most loving and persuasive tones to listen to their suit. But she, all
this time, answered every approach with a snarl; she would never have
anything to do with either of them; she disliked them both, and only
wished they would leave her to herself. This lasted as long as I stayed
to watch. Still I had little doubt she fully intended to accept one of
them, and had even made up her mind already which it should be. She
knew enough, I felt sure, to calculate the value of a proper maidenly
reluctance. How could her mate be expected to rate her at her worth, if
she allowed herself to be won too easily? Besides, she could afford not
to be in haste, seeing she had a choice of two.

What a comfortably simple affair the matrimonial question is with the
feminine cat-bird! Her wooers are all of equally good family and all
equally rich. There is literally nothing for her to do but to look into
her own heart and choose. No temptation has she to sell herself for the
sake of a fashionable name or a fine house, or in order to gratify the
prejudice of father or mother. As for a marriage settlement, she knows
neither the name nor the thing. In fact, marriage in her thought is a
simple union of hearts, with no taint of anything mercantile about it.
Happy cat-bird! She perhaps imagines that human marriages are of the
same ideal sort!

I have spoken of the affectionate language of these dusky lovers; but it
was noticeable that they did not sing, although, to have fulfilled the
common idea of such an affair, they certainly should have been doing so,
and each trying his best to outsing the other. Possibly there had
already been such a tournament before my arrival; or, for aught I know,
this particular female may have given out that she had no ear for
music.

In point of fact, however, there was nothing peculiar in their conduct.
No doubt, in the earlier stages of a bird's attachment he is likely to
express his passion musically; but later he is not content to warble
from a tree-top. There are things to be said which cannot appropriately
be spoken at long range; and unless my study of novels has been to
little purpose, all this agrees well with the practices of human
gallants. Do not these begin by singing under the lady's window, or by
sending verses to her? and are not such proceedings intended to prepare
the way, as speedily as possible, for others of a more satisfying,
though it may be of a less romantic nature?

Bearing this in mind, we may be able to account, in part at least, for
the inexperienced observer's disappointment when, fresh from the perusal
of (for example) the thirteenth chapter of Darwin's "Descent of Man," he
goes into the woods to look about for himself. He expects to find here
and there two or three songsters, each in turn doing his utmost to
surpass the brilliancy and power of the other's music; while a feminine
auditor sits in full view, preparing to render her verdict, and reward
the successful competitor with her own precious self. This would be a
pretty picture. Unfortunately, it is looked for in vain. The two or
three singers may be found, likely enough; but the female, if she be
indeed within hearing, is modestly hidden away somewhere in the bushes,
and our student is none the wiser. Let him watch as long as he please,
he will hardly see the prize awarded.

Nevertheless he need not grudge the time thus employed; not, at any
rate, if he be sensitive to music. For it will be found that birds have
at least one attribute of genius: they can do their best only on great
occasions. Our brown thrush, for instance, is a magnificent singer,
albeit he is not of the best school, being too "sensational" to suit the
most exacting taste. His song is a grand improvisation: a good deal
jumbled, to be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and
yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,--that is,
it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his
instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, at an occasional
grotesque or overwrought passage, but unless you are well used to it you
will surely be astonished. Such power and range of voice; such startling
transitions; such endless variety! And withal such boundless enthusiasm
and almost incredible endurance! Regarded as pure music, one strain of
the hermit thrush is to my mind worth the whole of it; just as a single
movement of Beethoven's is better than a world of Liszt transcriptions.
But in its own way it is unsurpassable.

Still, though this is a meagre and quite unexaggerated account of the
ordinary song of the brown thrush, I have discovered that even he can be
outdone--by himself. One morning in early May I came upon three birds of
this species, all singing at once, in a kind of jealous frenzy. As they
sang they continually shifted from tree to tree, and one in particular
(the one nearest to where I stood) could hardly be quiet a moment. Once
he sang with full power while on the ground (or close to it, for he was
just then behind a low bush), after which he mounted to the very tip of
a tall pine, which bent beneath his weight. In the midst of the
hurly-burly one of the trio suddenly sounded the whip-poor-will's call
twice,--an absolutely perfect reproduction.[17]

The significance of all this sound and fury,--what the prize was, if
any, and who obtained it,--this another can conjecture as well as
myself. I know no more than old Kaspar:----

    "'Why, that I cannot tell,' said he,
    But 'twas a famous victory.'"

As I turned to come away, the contest all at once ceased, and the
silence of the woods, or what seemed like silence, was really
impressive. The chewinks and field sparrows were singing, but it was
like the music of a village singer after Patti; or, to make the
comparison less unjust, like the Pastoral Symphony of Handel after a
Wagner tempest.

It is curious how deeply we are sometimes affected by a very trifling
occurrence. I have remembered many times a slight scene in which three
purple finches were the actors. Of the two males, one was in full adult
plumage of bright crimson, while the other still wore his youthful suit
of brown. First, the older bird suspended himself in mid air, and sang
most beautifully; dropping, as he concluded, to a perch beside the
female. Then the younger candidate, who was already sitting near by,
took his turn, singing nearly or quite as well as his rival, but without
quitting the branch, though his wings quivered. I saw no more. Yet, as I
say, I have often since thought of the three birds, and wondered whether
the bright feathers and the flying song carried the day against the
younger suitor. I fear they did. Sometimes, too, I have queried whether
young birds (who none the less are of age to marry) can be so very meek
or so very dull as never to rebel against the fashion that only the old
fellows shall dress handsomely; and I have tried in vain to imagine the
mutterings, deep and loud, which such a law would excite in certain
other quarters. It pains me to say it, but I suspect that taxation
without representation would seem a small injustice, in comparison.

Like these linnets in the exceptional interest they excited were two
large seabirds, who suddenly appeared circling about over the woods, as
I was taking a solitary walk on a Sunday morning in April. One of them
was closely pursuing the other; not as though he were trying to overtake
her, but rather as though he were determined to keep her company. They
swept now this way, now that,--now lost to sight, and now reappearing;
and once they passed straight over my head, so that I heard the
whistling of their wings. Then they were off, and I saw them no more.
They came from far, and by night they were perhaps a hundred leagues
away. But I followed them with my blessing, and to this day I feel
toward them a little as I suppose we all do toward a certain few
strangers whom we have met here and there in our journeyings, and
chatted with for an hour or two. We had never seen them before; if we
learned their names we have long ago forgotten them; but somehow the
persons themselves keep a place in our memory, and even in our
affection.

    "I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
    And a certain use in the world, no doubt;
    Yet a hand's breadth of it shines alone
    'Mid the blank miles round about:

    "For there I picked up on the heather,
    And there I put inside my breast,
    A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
    Well, I forget the rest."

Since we cannot ask birds for an explanation of their conduct, we have
nothing for it but to steal their secrets, as far as possible, by
patient and stealthy watching. In this way I hope, sooner or later, to
find out what the golden-winged woodpecker means by the shout with which
he makes the fields reëcho in the spring, especially in the latter half
of April. I have no doubt it has something to do with the process of
mating, but it puzzles me to guess just what the message can be which
requires to be published so loudly. Such a stentorian, long-winded cry!
You wonder where the bird finds breath for such an effort, and think he
must be a very ungentle lover, surely. But withhold your judgment for a
few days, till you see him and his mate gamboling about the branches of
some old tree, calling in soft, affectionate tones, _Wick-a-wick,
wick-a-wick_; then you will confess that, whatever failings the
golden-wing may have, he is not to be charged with insensibility. The
fact is that our "yellow-hammer" has a genius for noise. When he is
_very_ happy he drums. Sometimes, indeed, he marvels how birds who
haven't this resource are able to get through the world at all. Nor
ought we to think it strange if in his love-making he finds great use
for this his crowning accomplishment. True, we have nowhere read of a
human lover's serenading his mistress with a drum; but we must remember
what creatures of convention men are, and that there is no inherent
reason why a drum should not serve as well as a flute for such a
purpose.

    "All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
    Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
    _All_ are but ministers of Love,
      And feed his sacred flame."

I saw two of these flickers clinging to the trunk of a shell-bark tree;
which, by the way, is a tree after the woodpecker's own heart. One was
perhaps fifteen feet above the other, and before each was a strip of
loose bark, a sort of natural drum-head. First, the lower one "beat his
music out," rather softly. Then, as he ceased, and held his head back
to listen, the other answered him; and so the dialogue went on.
Evidently, they were already mated, and were now renewing their mutual
vows; for birds, to their praise be it spoken, believe in courtship
after marriage. The day happened to be Sunday, and it did occur to me
that possibly this was the woodpeckers' ritual,--a kind of High Church
service, with antiphonal choirs. But I dismissed the thought; for, on
the whole, the shouting seems more likely to be diagnostic, and in spite
of his gold-lined wings, I have set the flicker down as almost certainly
an old-fashioned Methodist.

Speaking of courtship after marriage, I am reminded of a spotted
sandpiper, whose capers I amused myself with watching, one day last
June, on the shore of Saco Lake. As I caught sight of him, he was
straightening himself up, with a pretty, self-conscious air, at the same
time spreading his white-edged tail, and calling, _Tweet, tweet,
tweet_.[18] Afterwards he got upon a log, where, with head erect and
wings thrown forward and downward, he ran for a yard or two, calling as
before. This trick seemed especially to please him, and was several
times repeated. He ran rapidly, and with a comical prancing movement;
but nothing he did was half so laughable as the behavior of his mate,
who all this while dressed her feathers without once deigning to look at
her spouse's performance. Undoubtedly they had been married for several
weeks, and she was, by this time, well used to his nonsense. It must be
a devoted husband, I fancy, who continues to offer attentions when they
are received in such a spirit.

Walking a log is a somewhat common practice with birds. I once detected
our little golden-crowned thrush showing off in this way to his mate,
who stood on the ground close at hand. In his case the head was lowered
instead of raised, and the general effect was heightened by his
curiously precise gait, which even on ordinary occasions is enough to
provoke a smile.

Not improbably every species of birds has its own code of etiquette;
unwritten, of course, but carefully handed down from father to son, and
faithfully observed. Nor is it cause for wonder if, in our ignorant
eyes, some of these "society manners" look a little ridiculous. Even the
usages of fashionable human circles have not always escaped the laughter
of the profane.

I was standing on the edge of a small thicket, observing a pair of
cuckoos as they made a breakfast out of a nest of tent caterpillars (it
was a feast rather than a common meal; for the caterpillars were
plentiful, and, as I judged, just at their best, being about half
grown), when a couple of scarlet tanagers appeared upon the scene. The
female presently selected a fine strip of cedar bark, and started off
with it, sounding a call to her handsome husband, who at once followed
in her wake. I thought, What a brute, to leave his wife to build the
house! But he, plainly enough, felt that in escorting her back and forth
he was doing all that ought to be expected of any well-bred,
scarlet-coated tanager. And the lady herself, if one might infer
anything from her tone and demeanor, was of the same opinion. I mention
this trifling occurrence, not to put any slight upon _Pyranga rubra_
(who am I, that I should accuse so gentle and well dressed a bird of bad
manners?), but merely as an example of the way in which feathered
politeness varies. In fact, it seems not unlikely that the male tanager
may abstain on principle from taking any active part in constructing the
nest, lest his fiery color should betray its whereabouts. As for his
kindness and loyalty, I only wish I could feel as sure of one half the
human husbands whom I meet.

It would be very ungallant of me, however, to leave my readers to
understand that the female bird is always so unsympathetic as most of
the descriptions thus far given would appear to indicate. In my memory
are several scenes, any one of which, if I could put it on paper as I
saw it, would suffice to correct such an erroneous impression. In one of
these the parties were a pair of chipping sparrows. Never was man so
churlish that his heart would not have been touched with the vision of
their gentle but rapturous delight. As they chased each other gayly from
branch to branch and from tree to tree, they flew with that delicate,
affected movement of the wings which birds are accustomed to use at such
times, and which, perhaps, bears the same relation to their ordinary
flight that dancing does to the every-day walk of men and women. The two
seemed equally enchanted, and both sang. Little they knew of the
"struggle for existence" and the "survival of the fittest." Adam and
Eve, in Paradise, were never more happy.

A few weeks later, taking an evening walk, I was stopped by the sight of
a pair of cedar-birds on a stone wall. They had chosen a convenient flat
stone, and were hopping about upon it, pausing every moment or two to
put their little bills together. What a loving ecstasy possessed them!
Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sounded a faint lisping note, and
motioned for another kiss. But there is no setting forth the ineffable
grace and sweetness of their chaste behavior. I looked and looked, till
a passing carriage frightened them away. They were only common
cedar-birds; if I were to see them again I should not know them; but if
my pen were equal to my wish, they should be made immortal.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Wallace, _Natural Selection_, p. 30.

[15] The shrike lays up grasshoppers and sparrows, and the California
woodpecker hoards great numbers of acorns, but it is still in dispute, I
believe, whether thrift is the motive with either of them. Considering
what has often been done in similar cases, we may think it surprising
that the Scripture text above quoted (together with its exegetical
parallel, Matthew vi. 26) has never been brought into court to settle
the controversy; but to the best of my knowledge it never has been.

[16] So near do birds come to Mr. Ruskin's idea that "a girl worth
anything ought to have always half a dozen or so of suitors under vow
for her."

[17]

    "That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over,
    Lest you should think he never could recapture
    The first fine careless rapture!"

The "authorities" long since forbade _Harporhynchus rufus_ to play the
mimic. Probably in the excitement of the moment this fellow forgot
himself.

[18] May one who knows nothing of philology venture to inquire whether
the very close agreement of this _tweet_ with our sweet (compare also
the Anglo-Saxon _swéte_, the Icelandic _soetr_, and the Sanskrit
_svad_) does not point to a common origin of the Aryan and sandpiper
languages?




                         SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE.

    A man that hath friends must show himself friendly.

                                    PROVERBS xviii. 24.


                         SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE.


As I was crossing Boston Common, some years ago, my attention was caught
by the unusual behavior of a robin, who was standing on the lawn,
absolutely motionless, and every few seconds making a faint hissing
noise. So much engaged was he that, even when a dog ran near him, he
only started slightly, and on the instant resumed his statue-like
attitude. Wondering what this could mean, and not knowing how else to
satisfy my curiosity, I bethought myself of a man whose letters about
birds I had now and then noticed in the daily press. So, looking up his
name in the City Directory, and finding that he lived at such a number,
Beacon Street, I wrote him a note of inquiry. He must have been amused
as he read it; for I remember giving him the title of "Esquire," and
speaking of his communications to the newspapers as the ground of my
application to him. "Such is fame!" he likely enough said to himself.
"Here is a man with eyes in his head, a man, moreover, who has probably
been at school in his time,--for most of his words are spelled
correctly,--and yet he knows my name only as he has seen it signed once
in a while to a few lines in a newspaper." Thoughts like these, however,
did not prevent his replying to the note (my "valued favor") with all
politeness, although he confessed himself unable to answer my question;
and by the time I had occasion to trouble him again I had learned that
he was to be addressed as Doctor, and, furthermore, was an ornithologist
of world-wide reputation, being, in fact, one of the three joint-authors
of the most important work so far issued on the birds of North America.

Certainly I was and am grateful to him (he is now dead) for his generous
treatment of my ignorance; but even warmer is my feeling toward that
city thrush, who, all unconscious of what he was doing, started me that
day on a line of study which has been ever since a continual delight.
Most gladly would I do him any kindness in my power; but I have little
doubt that, long ere this, he, too, has gone the way of all the earth.
As to what he was thinking about on that memorable May morning, I am as
much in the dark as ever. But there is no law against a bird's behaving
mysteriously, I suppose. Most of us, I am sure, often do things which
are inexplicable to ourselves, and once in a very great while, perhaps,
it would puzzle even our next-door neighbors to render a complete
account of our motives.

Whatever the robin meant, however, and no doubt there was some good
reason for his conduct, he had given my curiosity the needed jog. Now,
at last, I would do what I had often dreamed of doing,--learn something
about the birds of my own region, and be able to recognize at least the
more common ones when I saw them.

The interest of the study proved to be the greater for my ignorance,
which, to speak within bounds, was nothing short of wonderful; perhaps I
might appropriately use a more fashionable word, and call it phenomenal.
All my life long I had had a kind of passion for being out-of-doors;
and, to tell the truth, I had been so often seen wandering by myself in
out-of-the-way wood-paths, or sitting idly about on stone walls in
lonesome pastures, that some of my Philistine townsmen had most likely
come to look upon me as no better than a vagabond. Yet I was not a
vagabond, for all that. I liked work, perhaps, as well as the generality
of people. But I was unfortunate in this respect: while I enjoyed
in-door work, I hated to be in the house; and, on the other hand, while
I enjoyed being out-of-doors, I hated all manner of out-door
employment. I was not lazy, but I possessed--well, let us call it the
true aboriginal temperament; though I fear that this distinction will be
found too subtile, even for the well-educated, unless, along with their
education, they have a certain sympathetic bias, which, after all, is
the main thing to be depended on in such nice psychological
discriminations.

With all my rovings in wood and field, however, I knew nothing of any
open-air study. Study was a thing of books. At school we were never
taught to look elsewhere for knowledge. Reading and spelling, geography
and grammar, arithmetic and algebra, geometry and trigonometry,--these
were studied, of course, as also were Latin and Greek. But none of our
lessons took us out of the school-room, unless it was astronomy, the
study of which I had nearly forgotten; and that we pursued in the
night-time, when birds and plants were as though they were not. I cannot
recollect that any one of my teachers ever called my attention to a
natural object. It seems incredible, but, so far as my memory serves, I
was never in the habit of observing the return of the birds in the
spring or their departure in the autumn; except, to be sure, that the
semi-annual flight of the ducks and geese was always a pleasant
excitement, more especially because there were several lakes
(invariably spoken of as ponds) in our vicinity, on the borders of
which the village "gunners" built pine-branch booths in the season.

But now, as I have said, my ignorance was converted all at once into a
kind of blessing; for no sooner had I begun to read bird books, and
consult a cabinet of mounted specimens, than every turn out-of-doors
became full of all manner of delightful surprises. Could it be that what
I now beheld with so much wonder was only the same as had been going on
year after year in these my own familiar lanes and woods? Truly the
human eye is nothing more than a window, of no use unless the man looks
out of it.

Some of the experiences of that period seem ludicrous enough in the
retrospect. Only two or three days after my eyes were first opened I was
out with a friend in search of wild-flowers (I was piloting him to a
favorite station for _Viola pubescens_), when I saw a most elegant
little creature, mainly black and white, but with brilliant orange
markings. He was darting hither and thither among the branches of some
low trees, while I stared at him in amazement, calling on my comrade,
who was as ignorant as myself, but less excited, to behold the prodigy.
Half trembling lest the bird should prove to be some straggler from the
tropics, the like of which would not be found in the cabinet before
mentioned, I went thither that very evening. Alas, my silly fears! there
stood the little beauty's exact counterpart, labeled _Setophaga
ruticilla_, the American redstart,--a bird which the manual assured me
was very common in my neighborhood.

But it was not my eyes only that were opened, my ears also were touched.
It was as if all the birds had heretofore been silent, and now, under
some sudden impulse, had broken out in universal concert. What a
glorious chorus it was; and every voice a stranger! For a week or more I
was puzzled by a song which I heard without fail whenever I went into
the woods, but the author of which I could never set eyes on,--a song so
exceptionally loud and shrill, and marked by such a vehement crescendo,
that, even to my new-found ears, it stood out from the general medley a
thing by itself. Many times I struck into the woods in the direction
whence it came, but without getting so much as a flying glimpse of the
musician. Very mysterious, surely! Finally, by accident I believe, I
caught the fellow in the very act of singing, as he stood on a dead
pine-limb; and a few minutes later he was on the ground, walking about
(not hopping) with the primmest possible gait,--a small olive-brown
bird, with an orange crown and a speckled breast. Then I knew him for
the golden-crowned thrush; but it was not for some time after this that
I heard his famous evening song, and it was longer still before I found
his curious roofed nest.

"Happy those early days," those days of childish innocence,--though I
was a man grown,--when every bird seemed newly created, and even the
redstart and the wood wagtail were like rarities from the ends of the
earth. Verily, my case was like unto Adam's, when every fowl of the air
was brought before him for a name.

One evening, on my way back to the city after an afternoon ramble, I
stopped just at dusk in a grove of hemlocks, and soon out of the
tree-top overhead came a song,--a brief strain of about six notes, in a
musical but rather rough voice, and in exquisite accord with the quiet
solemnity of the hour. Again and again the sounds fell on my ear, and as
often I endeavored to obtain a view of the singer; but he was in the
thick of the upper branches, and I looked for him in vain. How delicious
the music was! a perfect lullaby, drowsy and restful; like the
benediction of the wood on the spirit of a tired city-dweller. I blessed
the unknown songster in return; and even now I have a feeling that the
peculiar enjoyment which the song of the black-throated green warbler
never fails to afford me may perhaps be due in some measure to its
association with that twilight hour.

To this same hemlock grove I was in the habit, in those days, of going
now and then to listen to the evening hymn of the veery, or Wilson
thrush. Here, if nowhere else, might be heard music fit to be called
sacred. Nor did it seem a disadvantage, but rather the contrary, when,
as sometimes happened, I was compelled to take my seat in the edge of
the wood, and wait quietly, in the gathering darkness, for vespers to
begin. The veery's mood is not so lofty as the hermit's, nor is his
music to be compared for brilliancy and fullness with that of the wood
thrush; but, more than any other bird-song known to me, the veery's has,
if I may say so, the accent of sanctity. Nothing is here of
self-consciousness; nothing of earthly pride or passion. If we chance to
overhear it and laud the singer, that is our affair. Simple-hearted
worshiper that he is, he has never dreamed of winning praise for himself
by the excellent manner in which he praises his Creator,--an absence of
thrift, which is very becoming in thrushes, though, I suppose, it is
hardly to be looked for in human choirs.

And yet, for all the unstudied ease and simplicity of the veery's
strain, he is a great master of _technique_. In his own artless way he
does what I have never heard any other bird attempt: he gives to his
melody all the force of harmony. How this unique and curious effect,
this vocal double-stopping, as a violinist might term it, is produced,
is not certainly known; but it would seem that it must be by an
_arpeggio_, struck with such consummate quickness and precision that the
ear is unable to follow it, and is conscious of nothing but the
resultant chord. At any rate, the thing itself is indisputable, and has
often been commented on.

Moreover, this is only half the veery's technical proficiency. Once in a
while, at least, he will favor you with a delightful feat of
ventriloquism; beginning to sing in single voice, as usual, and anon,
without any noticeable increase in the loudness of the tones, diffusing
the music throughout the wood, as if there were a bird in every tree,
all singing together in the strictest time. I am not sure that all
members of the species possess this power, and I have never seen the
performance alluded to in print; but I have heard it when the illusion
was complete, and the effect most beautiful.

Music so devout and unostentatious as the veery's does not appeal to the
hurried or the preoccupied. If you would enjoy it you must bring an ear
to hear. I have sometimes pleased myself with imagining a resemblance
between it and the poetry of George Herbert,--both uncared for by the
world, but both, on that very account, prized all the more dearly by the
few in every generation whose spirits are in tune with theirs.

This bird is one of a group of small thrushes called the _Hylocichlæ_,
of which group we have five representatives in the Atlantic States: the
wood thrush; the Wilson, or tawny thrush; the hermit; the olive-backed,
or Swainson; and the gray-cheeked, or Alice's thrush. To the unpracticed
eye the five all look alike. All of them, too, have the same glorious
voice, so that the young student is pretty sure to find it a matter of
some difficulty to tell them apart. Yet there are differences of
coloration which may be trusted as constant, and to which, after a
while, the eye becomes habituated; and, at the same time, each species
has a song and call-notes peculiar to itself. One cannot help wishing,
indeed, that he might hear the five singing by turns in the same wood.
Then he could fix the distinguishing peculiarities of the different
songs in his mind so as never to confuse them again. But this is more
than can be hoped for; the listener must be content with hearing two,
or at the most three, of the species singing together, and trust his
memory to make the necessary comparison.

The song of the wood thrush is perhaps the most easily set apart from
the rest, because of its greater compass of voice and bravery of
execution. The Wilson's song, as you hear it by itself, seems so
perfectly characteristic that you fancy you can never mistake any other
for it; and yet, if you are in northern New England only a week
afterwards, you may possibly hear a Swainson (especially if he happens
to be one of the best singers of his species, and, more especially
still, if he happens to be at just the right distance away), who you
will say, at first thought, is surely a Wilson. The difficulty of
distinguishing the voices is naturally greatest in the spring, when they
have not been heard for eight or nine months. Here, as elsewhere, the
student must be willing to learn the same lesson over and over, letting
patience have her perfect work. That the five songs are really
distinguishable is well illustrated by the fact (which I have before
mentioned), that the presence of the Alice thrush in New England during
the breeding season was announced as probable by myself, simply on the
strength of a song which I had heard in the White Mountains, and which,
as I believed, must be his, notwithstanding I was entirely unacquainted
with it, and though all our books affirmed that the Alice thrush was not
a summer resident of any part of the United States.

It is worth remarking, also, in this connection, that the _Hylocichlæ_
differ more decidedly in their notes of alarm than in their songs. The
wood thrush's call is extremely sharp and brusque, and is usually fired
off in a little volley; that of the Wilson is a sort of whine, or snarl,
in distressing contrast with his song; the hermit's is a quick, _sotto
voce_, sometimes almost inaudible _chuck_; the Swainson's is a mellow
whistle; while that of the Alice is something between the Swainson's and
the Wilson's,--not so gentle and refined as the former, nor so
outrageously vulgar as the latter.

In what is here said about discriminating species it must be understood
that I am not speaking of such identification as will answer a strictly
scientific purpose. For that the bird must be shot. To the maiden

                  "whose light blue eyes
    Are tender over drowning flies,"

this decree will no doubt sound cruel. Men who pass laws of that sort
may call themselves ornithologists, if they will; for her part she calls
them butchers. We might turn on our fair accuser, it is true, with some
inquiry about the two or three bird-skins which adorn her bonnet. But
that would be only giving one more proof of our heartlessness; and,
besides, unless a man is downright angry he can scarcely feel that he
has really cleared himself when he has done nothing more than to point
the finger and say, You're another. However, I am not set for the
defence of ornithologists. They are abundantly able to take care of
themselves without the help of any outsider. I only declare that, even
to my unprofessional eye, this rule of theirs seems wise and necessary.
They know, if their critics do not, how easy it is to be deceived; how
many times things have been seen and minutely described, which, as was
afterwards established, could not by any possibility have been visible.
Moreover, regret it as we may, it is clear that in this world nobody can
escape giving and taking more or less pain. We of the sterner sex are
accustomed to think that even our blue-eyed censors are not entirely
innocent in this regard; albeit, for myself, I am bound to believe that
generally they are not to blame for the tortures they inflict upon us.

Granting the righteousness of the scientist's caution, however, we may
still find a less rigorous code sufficient for our own non-scientific,
though I hope not unscientific, purpose. For it is certain that no great
enjoyment of bird study is possible for some of us, if we are never to
be allowed to call our gentle friends by name until in every case we
have gone through the formality of a _post-mortem_ examination.
Practically, and for every-day ends, we may know a robin, or a redstart,
or even a hermit thrush, when we see him, without first turning the bird
into a specimen.

Probably there are none of our birds which afford more surprise and
pleasure to a novice than the family of warblers. A well-known
ornithologist has related how one day he wandered into the forest in an
idle mood, and accidentally catching a gleam of bright color overhead,
raised his gun and brought the bird to his feet; and how excited and
charmed he was with the wondrous beauty of his little trophy. Were there
other birds in the woods as lovely as this? He would see for himself.
And that was the beginning of what bids fair to prove a life-long
enthusiasm.

Thirty-eight warblers are credited to New England; but it would be safe
to say that not more than three of them are known to the average
New-Englander. How should he know them, indeed? They do not come about
the flower-garden like the humming-bird, nor about the lawn like the
robin; neither can they be hunted with a dog like the grouse and the
woodcock. Hence, for all their gorgeous apparel, they are mainly left to
students and collectors. Of our common species the most beautiful are,
perhaps, the blue yellow-back, the blue golden-wing, the Blackburnian,
the black-and-yellow, the Canada flycatcher, and the redstart; with the
yellow-rump, the black-throated green, the prairie warbler, the summer
yellow-bird, and the Maryland yellow-throat coming not far behind. But
all of them are beautiful, and they possess, besides, the charm of great
diversity of plumage and habits; while some of them have the further
merit, by no means inconsiderable, of being rare.

It was a bright day for me when the blue golden-winged warbler settled
in my neighborhood. On my morning walk I detected a new song, and,
following it up, found a new bird,--a result which is far from being a
thing of course. The spring migration was at its height, and at first I
expected to have the pleasure of my new friend's society for only a day
or two; so I made the most of it. But it turned out that he and his
companion had come to spend the summer, and before very long I
discovered their nest. This was still unfinished when I came upon it;
but I knew pretty well whose it was, having several times noticed the
birds about the spot, and a few days afterwards the female bravely sat
still, while I bent over her, admiring her courage and her handsome
dress. I paid my respects to the little mother almost daily, but
jealously guarded her secret, sharing it only with a kind-hearted woman,
whom I took with me on one of my visits. But, alas! one day I called,
only to find the nest empty. Whether the villain who pillaged it
traveled on two legs, or on four, I never knew. Possibly he dropped out
of the air. But I wished him no good, whoever he was. Next year the
birds appeared again, and more than one pair of them; but no nest could
I find, though I often looked for it, and, as children say in their
games, was sometimes very warm.

Is there any lover of birds in whose mind certain birds and certain
places are not indissolubly joined? Most of us, I am sure, could go over
the list and name the exact spots where we first saw this one, where we
first heard that one sing, and where we found our first nest of the
other. There is a piece of swampy woodland in Jefferson, New Hampshire,
midway between the hotels and the railway station, which, for me, will
always be associated with the song of the winter wren. I had been making
an attempt to explore the wood, with a view to its botanical treasures,
but the mosquitoes had rallied with such spirit that I was glad to beat
a retreat to the road. Just then an unseen bird broke out into a song,
and by the time he had finished I was saying to myself, A winter wren!
Now, if I could only see him in the act, and so be sure of the
correctness of my guess! I worked to that end as cautiously as possible,
but all to no purpose; and finally I started abruptly toward the spot
whence the sound had come, expecting to see the bird fly. But apparently
there was no bird there, and I stood still, in a little perplexity.
Then, all at once, the wren appeared, hopping about among the dead
branches, within a few yards of my feet, and peering at the intruder
with evident curiosity; and the next moment he was joined by a hermit
thrush, equally inquisitive. Both were silent as dead men, but plainly
had no doubt whatever that they were in their own domain, and that it
belonged to the other party to move away. I presumed that the thrush, at
least, had a nest not far off, but after a little search (the mosquitoes
were still active) I concluded not to intrude further on his domestic
privacy. I had heard the wren's famous song, and it had not been
over-praised. But then came the inevitable second thought: had I really
heard it? True, the music possessed the wren characteristics, and a
winter wren was in the brush; but what proof had I that the bird and the
song belonged together? No; I must see him in the act of singing. But
this, I found, was more easily said than done. In Jefferson, in Gorham,
in the Franconia Notch, in short, wherever I went, there was no
difficulty about hearing the music, and little about seeing the wren;
but it was provoking that eye and ear could never be brought to bear
witness to the same bird. However, this difficulty was not insuperable,
and after it was once overcome I was in the habit of witnessing the
whole performance almost as often as I wished.

Of similar interest to me is a turn in an old Massachusetts road, over
which, boy and man, I have traveled hundreds of times; one of those
delightful back-roads, half road and half lane, where the grass grows
between the horse-track and the wheel-track, while bushes usurp what
ought to be the sidewalk. Here, one morning in the time when every day
was disclosing two or three new species for my delight, I stopped to
listen to some bird of quite unsuspected identity, who was calling and
singing and scolding in the Indian brier thicket, making, in truth, a
prodigious racket. I twisted and turned, and was not a little astonished
when at last I detected the author of all this outcry. From a study of
the manual I set him down as probably the white-eyed vireo,--a
conjecture which further investigation confirmed. This vireo is the very
prince of stump-speakers,--fluent, loud, and sarcastic,--and is well
called the politician, though it is a disappointment to learn that the
title was given him, not for his eloquence, but on account of his habit
of putting pieces of newspaper into his nest. While I stood peering into
the thicket, a man whom I knew came along the road, and caught me thus
disreputably employed. Without doubt he thought me a lazy
good-for-nothing; or possibly (being more charitable) he said to
himself, "Poor fellow! he's losing his mind."

Take a gun on your shoulder, and go wandering about the woods all day
long, and you will be looked upon with respect, no matter though you
kill nothing bigger than a chipmunk; or stand by the hour at the end of
a fishing-pole, catching nothing but mosquito-bites, and your neighbors
will think no ill of you. But to be seen staring at a bird for five
minutes together, or picking roadside weeds!--well, it is fortunate
there are asylums for the crazy. Not unlikely the malady will grow upon
him; and who knows how soon he may become dangerous? Something must be
wrong about that to which we are unaccustomed. Blowing out the brains
of rabbits and squirrels is an innocent and delightful pastime, as
everybody knows; and the delectable excitement of pulling half-grown
fishes out of the pond to perish miserably on the bank, that, too, is a
recreation easily enough appreciated. But what shall be said of enjoying
birds without killing them, or of taking pleasure in plants, which, so
far as we know, cannot suffer even if we do kill them?

Of my many pleasant associations of birds with places, one of the
pleasantest is connected with the red-headed woodpecker. This showy bird
has for a good many years been very rare in Massachusetts; and
therefore, when, during the freshness of my ornithological researches, I
went to Washington for a month's visit, it was one of the things which I
had especially in mind, to make his acquaintance. But I looked for him
without success, till, at the end of a fortnight, I made a pilgrimage to
Mount Vernon. Here, after visiting the grave, and going over the house,
as every visitor does, I sauntered about the grounds, thinking of the
great man who used to do the same so many years before, but all the
while keeping my eyes open for the present feathered inhabitants of the
sacred spot. Soon a bird dashed by me, and struck against the trunk of
an adjacent tree, and glancing up quickly, I beheld my much-sought
red-headed woodpecker. How appropriately patriotic he looked, at the
home of Washington, wearing the national colors,--red, white, and blue!
After this he became abundant about the capital, so that I saw him
often, and took much pleasure in his frolicsome ways; and, some years
later, he suddenly appeared in force in the vicinity of Boston, where he
remained through the winter months. To my thought, none the less, he
will always suggest Mount Vernon. Indeed, although he is certainly
rather jovial, and even giddy, he is to me the bird of Washington much
more truly than is the solemn, stupid-seeming eagle, who commonly bears
that name.

To go away from home, even if the journey be no longer than from
Massachusetts to the District of Columbia, is sure to prove an event of
no small interest to a young naturalist; and this visit of mine to the
national capital was no exception. On the afternoon of my arrival,
walking up Seventh Street, I heard a series of loud, clear, monotonous
whistles, which I had then no leisure to investigate, but the author of
which I promised myself the satisfaction of meeting at another time. In
fact, I think it was at least a fortnight before I learned that these
whistles came from the tufted titmouse. I had been seeing him almost
daily, but till then he had never chanced to use that particular note
while under my eye.

There was a certain tract of country, woodland and pasture, over which I
roamed a good many times, and which is still clearly mapped out in my
memory. Here I found my first Carolina or mocking wren, who ran in at
one side of a woodpile and came out at the other as I drew near, and
who, a day or two afterwards, sang so loudly from an oak tree that I
ransacked it with my eye in search of some large bird, and was
confounded when finally I discovered who the musician really was. Here,
every day, were to be heard the glorious song of the cardinal grosbeak,
the insect-like effort of the blue-gray gnatcatcher, and the rigmarole
of the yellow-breasted chat. On a wooded hillside, where grew a
profusion of trailing arbutus, pink azalea, and bird-foot violets, the
rowdyish, great-crested flycatchers were screaming in the tree-tops. In
this same grove I twice saw the rare red-bellied woodpecker, who, on
both occasions, after rapping smartly with his beak, turned his head and
laid his ear against the trunk, evidently listening to see whether his
alarm had set any grub a-stirring. Near by, in an undergrowth, I fell in
with a few worm-eating warblers. They seemed of a peculiarly
unsuspicious turn of mind, and certainly wore the quaintest of
head-dresses. I must mention also a scarlet tanager, who, all afire as
he was, one day alighted in a bush of flowering dogwood, which was
completely covered with its large white blossoms. Probably he had no
idea how well his perch became him.

Perhaps I ought to be ashamed to confess it, but, though I went several
times into the galleries of our honorable Senate and House of
Representatives, and heard speeches by some celebrated men, including at
least half a dozen candidates for the presidency, yet, after all, the
congressmen in feathers interested me most. I thought, indeed, that the
chat might well enough have been elected to the lower house. His
volubility and waggish manners would have made him quite at home in that
assembly, while his orange-colored waistcoat would have given him an
agreeable conspicuity. But, to be sure, he would have needed to learn
the use of tobacco.

Well, all this was only a few years ago; but the men whose eloquence
then drew the crowd to the capitol are, many of them, heard there no
longer. Some are dead; some have retired to private life. But the birds
never die. Every spring they come trooping back for their all-summer
session. The turkey-buzzard still floats majestically over the city; the
chat still practices his lofty tumbling in the suburban pastures,
snarling and scolding at all comers; the flowing Potomac still yields "a
blameless sport" to the fish-crow and the kingfisher; the orchard oriole
continues to whistle in front of the Agricultural Department, and the
crow blackbird to parade back and forth over the Smithsonian lawns.
Presidents and senators may come and go, be praised and vilified, and
then in turn forgotten; but the birds are subject to no such mutations.
It is a foolish thought, but sometimes their happy carelessness seems
the better part.




                            MINOR SONGSTERS.

    The lesser lights, the dearer still
    That they elude a vulgar eye.

                              BROWNING.

                         Listen too,
    How every pause is filled with under-notes.

                                       SHELLEY.


                            MINOR SONGSTERS.


Among those of us who are in the habit of attending to bird-songs, there
can hardly be anybody, I think, who has not found himself specially and
permanently attracted by the music of certain birds who have little or
no general reputation. Our favoritism may perhaps be the result of early
associations: we heard the singer first in some uncommonly romantic
spot, or when we were in a mood of unusual sensibility; and, in greater
or less degree, the charm of that hour is always renewed for us with the
repetition of the song. Or if may be (who will assert the contrary?)
that there is some occult relation between the bird's mind and our own.
Or, once more, something may be due to the natural pleasure which
amiable people take (and all lovers of birds may be supposed, _a
priori_, to belong to that class) in paying peculiar honor to merit
which the world at large, less discriminating than they, has thus far
failed to recognize, and in which, therefore, as by "right of
discovery," they have a sort of proprietary interest. This, at least, is
evident: our preference is not determined altogether by the intrinsic
worth of the song; the mind is active, not passive, and gives to the
music something from itself,--"the consecration and the poet's dream."

Furthermore, it is to be said that a singer--and a bird no less than a
man--may be wanting in that fullness and scope of voice and that large
measure of technical skill which are absolutely essential to the great
artist, properly so called, and yet, within his own limitations, may be
competent to please even the most fastidious ear. It is with birds as
with other poets: the smaller gift need not be the less genuine; and
they whom the world calls greatest, and whom we ourselves most admire,
may possibly not be the ones who touch us most intimately, or to whom we
return oftenest and with most delight.

This may be well illustrated by a comparison of the chickadee with the
brown thrush. The thrush, or, as he is sometimes profanely styled, the
thrasher, is the most pretentious, perhaps I ought to say the greatest,
of New England songsters, if we rule out the mocking-bird, who is so
very rare with us as scarcely to come into the competition; and still,
in my opinion, his singing seldom produces the effect of really fine
music. With all his ability, which is nothing short of marvelous, his
taste is so deplorably uncertain, and his passion so often becomes a
downright frenzy, that the excited listener, hardly knowing what to
think, laughs and shouts. Bravo! by turns. Something must be amiss,
certainly, when the deepest feelings of the heart are poured forth in a
manner to suggest the performance of a _buffo_. The chickadee, on the
other hand, seldom gets mention as a singer. Probably he never looked
upon himself as such. You will not find him posing at the top of a tree,
challenging the world to listen and admire. But, as he hops from twig to
twig in quest of insects' eggs and other dainties, his merry spirits are
all the time bubbling over in little chirps and twitters, with now and
then a _Chickadee, dee_, or a _Hear, hear me_, every least syllable of
which is like "the very sound of happy thoughts." For my part, I rate
such trifles with the best of all good music, and feel that we cannot be
grateful enough to the brave tit, who furnishes us with them for the
twelve months of every year.

So far as the chickadee is concerned, I see nothing whatever to wish
different; but am glad to believe that, for my day and long after, he
will remain the same unassuming, careless-hearted creature that he now
is. If I may be allowed the paradox, it would be too bad for him to
change, even for the better. But the bluebird, who like the titmouse is
hardly to be accounted a musician, does seem to be somewhat blameworthy.
Once in a while, it is true, he takes a perch and sings; but for the
most part he is contented with a few simple notes, having no semblance
of a tune. Possibly he holds that his pure contralto voice (I do not
remember ever to have heard from him any note of a soprano, or even of a
mezzo-soprano quality) ought by itself to be a sufficient distinction;
but I think it likelier that his slight attempt at music is only one
manifestation of the habitual reserve which, more than anything else
perhaps, may be said to characterize him. How differently he and the
robin impress us in this particular! Both take up their abode in our
door-yards and orchards; the bluebird goes so far, indeed, as to accept
our hospitality outright, building his nest in boxes put up for his
accommodation, and making the roofs of our houses his favorite perching
stations. But, while the robin is noisily and jauntily familiar, the
bluebird maintains a dignified aloofness; coming and going about the
premises, but keeping his thoughts to himself, and never becoming one of
us save by the mere accident of local proximity. The robin, again, loves
to travel in large flocks, when household duties are over for the
season; but although the same has been reported of the bluebird, I have
never myself seen such a thing, and am satisfied that, as a rule, this
gentle spirit finds a family party of six or seven company enough. His
reticence, as we cheerfully admit, is nothing to quarrel with; it is all
well-bred, and not in the least unkindly; in fact, we like it, on the
whole, rather better than the robin's pertness and garrulity; but, none
the less, its natural consequence is that the bird has small concern for
musical display. When he sings, it is not to gain applause, but to
express his affection; and while, in one aspect of the case, there is
nothing out of the way in this,--since his affection need not be the
less deep and true because it is told in few words and with unadorned
phrase,--yet, as I said to begin with, it is hard not to feel that the
world is being defrauded, when for any reason, however amiable, the
possessor of such a matchless voice has no ambition to make the most of
it.

It is always a double pleasure to find a plodding, humdrum-seeming man
with a poet's heart in his breast; and a little of the same delighted
surprise is felt by every one, I imagine, when he learns for the first
time that our little brown creeper is a singer. What life could possibly
be more prosaic than his? Day after day, year in and out, he creeps up
one tree-trunk after another, pausing only to peer right and left into
the crevices of the bark, in search of microscopic tidbits. A most
irksome sameness, surely! How the poor fellow must envy the swallows,
who live on the wing, and, as it were, have their home in heaven! So it
is easy for us to think; but I doubt whether the creeper himself is
troubled with such suggestions. He seems, to say the least, as well
contented as the most of us; and, what is more, I am inclined to doubt
whether any except "free moral agents," like ourselves, are ever wicked
enough to find fault with the orderings of Divine Providence. I fancy,
too, that we may have exaggerated the monotony of the creeper's lot. It
can scarcely be that even his days are without their occasional
pleasurable excitements. After a good many trees which yield little or
nothing for his pains, he must now and then light upon one which is like
Canaan after the wilderness,--"a land flowing with milk and honey."
Indeed, the longer I think of it the more confident I feel that every
aged creeper must have had sundry experiences of this sort, which he is
never weary of recounting for the edification of his nephews and nieces,
who, of course, are far too young to have anything like the wide
knowledge of the world which their venerable three-years-old uncle
possesses. _Certhia_ works all day for his daily bread; and yet even of
him it is true that "the life is more than meat." He has his inward
joys, his affectionate delights, which no outward infelicity can touch.
A bird who thinks nothing of staying by his nest and his mate at the
sacrifice of his life is not to be written down a dullard or a drudge,
merely because his dress is plain and his occupation unromantic. He has
a right to sing, for he has something within him to inspire the strain.

There are descriptions of the creeper's music which liken it to a
wren's. I am sorry that I have myself heard it only on one occasion:
then, however, so far was it from being wren-like that it might rather
have been the work of one of the less proficient warblers,--a somewhat
long opening note followed by a hurried series of shorter ones, the
whole given in a sharp, thin voice, and having nothing to recommend it
to notice, considered simply as music. All the while the bird kept on
industriously with his journey up the tree; and it is not in the least
unlikely that he may have another and better song, which he reserves for
times of more leisure.[19]

Our American wood-warblers are all to be classed among the minor
songsters; standing in this respect in strong contrast with the true Old
World warblers, of whose musical capacity enough, perhaps, is said when
it is mentioned that the nightingale is one of them. But, comparisons
apart, our birds are by no means to be despised, and not a few of their
songs have a good degree of merit. That of the well-known summer
yellow-bird may be taken as fairly representative of the entire group,
being neither one of the best nor one of the poorest. He, I have
noticed, is given to singing late in the day. Three of the New England
species have at the same time remarkably rough voices and black
throats,--I mean the black-throated blue, the black-throated green, and
the blue golden-wing,--and seeing that the first two are of the genus
_Dendroeca_, while the last is a _Helminthophaga_, I have allowed
myself to query (half in earnest) whether they may not, possibly, be
more nearly related than the systematists have yet discovered. Several
of the warbler songs are extremely odd. The blue yellow-back's, for
example, is a brief, hoarse, upward run,--a kind of scale exercise; and
if the practice of such things be really as beneficial as music teachers
affirm, it would seem that this little beauty must in time become a
vocalist of the first order. Nearly the same might be said of the
prairie warbler; but his _étude_ is a little longer and less hurried,
besides being in a higher key. I do not call to mind any bird who sings
a downward scale. Having before spoken of the tendency of warblers to
learn two or even three set tunes, I was the more interested when, last
summer, I added another to my list of the species which aspire to this
kind of liberal education. It was on the side of Mount Clinton that I
heard two Blackburnians, both in full sight and within a few rods of
each other, who were singing two entirely distinct songs. One of
these--it is the common one, I think--ended quaintly with three or four
short notes, like _zip_, _zip_, _zip;_ while the other was not unlike a
fraction of the winter wren's melody. Those who are familiar with the
latter bird will perhaps recognize the phrase referred to if I call it
the _willie, willie, winkie,_--with a triple accent on the first
syllable of the last word. Most of the songs of this family are rather
slight, but the extremest case known to me is that of the black-poll
(_Dendroeca striata_), whose _zee, zee, zee_ is almost ridiculously
faint. You may hear it continually in the higher spruce forests of the
White Mountains; but you will look a good many times before you discover
its author, and not improbably will begin by taking it for the call of
the kinglet. The music of the bay-breasted warbler is similar to the
black-poll's, but hardly so weak and formless. It seems reasonable to
believe not only that these two species are descended from a common
ancestry, but that the divergence is of a comparatively recent date:
even now the young of the year can be distinguished only with great
difficulty, although the birds in full feather are clearly enough
marked.

Warblers' songs are often made up of two distinct portions: one given
deliberately, the other hurriedly and with a concluding flourish.
Indeed, the same may be said of bird-songs generally,--those of the song
sparrow, the bay-winged bunting, and the wood thrush being familiar
examples. Yet there are many singers who attempt no climax of this sort,
but make their music to consist of two, or three, or more parts, all
alike. The Maryland yellow-throat, for instance, cries out over and
over, "What a pity, what a pity, what a pity!" So, at least, he seems to
say; though, I confess, it is more than likely I mistake the words,
since the fellow never appears to be feeling badly, but, on the
contrary, delivers his message with an air of cordial satisfaction. The
song of the pine-creeping warbler is after still another fashion,--one
simple short trill. It is musical and sweet; the more so for coming
almost always out of a pine-tree.

The vireos, or greenlets, are akin to the warblers in appearance and
habits, and like them are peculiar to the western continent. We have no
birds that are more unsparing of their music (prodigality is one of the
American virtues, we are told): they sing from morning till night,
and--some of them, at least--continue thus till the very end of the
season. It is worth mentioning, however, that the red-eye makes a short
day; becoming silent just at the time when the generality of birds grow
most noisy. Probably the same is true of the rest of the family, but on
that point I am not prepared to speak with positiveness. Of the five New
England species (I omit the brotherly-love greenlet, never having been
fortunate enough to know him) the white-eye is decidedly the most
ambitious, the warbling and the solitary are the most pleasing, while
the red-eye and the yellow-throat are very much alike, and both of them
rather too monotonous and persistent. It is hard, sometimes, not to get
out of patience with the red-eye's ceaseless and noisy iteration of his
trite theme; especially if you are doing your utmost to catch the notes
of some rarer and more refined songster. In my note-book I find an entry
describing my vain attempts to enjoy the music of a rose-breasted
grosbeak,--who at that time had never been a common bird with me,--while
"a pesky Wagnerian red-eye kept up an incessant racket."

The warbling vireo is admirably named; there is no one of our birds that
can more properly be said to warble. He keeps further from the ground
than the others, and shows a strong preference for the elms of village
streets, out of which his delicious music drops upon the ears of all
passers underneath. How many of them hear it and thank the singer is
unhappily another question.

The solitary vireo may once in a while be heard in a roadside tree,
chanting as familiarly as any red-eye; but he is much less abundant than
the latter, and, as a rule, more retiring. His ordinary song is like the
red-eye's and the yellow-throat's, except that it is pitched somewhat
higher and has a peculiar inflection or cadence, which on sufficient
acquaintance becomes quite unmistakable. This, however, is only the
smallest part of his musical gift. One morning in May, while strolling
through a piece of thick woods, I came upon a bird of this species, who,
all alone like myself, was hopping from one low branch to another, and
every now and then breaking out into a kind of soliloquizing song,--a
musical chatter, shifting suddenly to an intricate, low-voiced warble.
Later in the same day I found another in a chestnut grove. This last was
in a state of quite unwonted fervor, and sang almost continuously; now
in the usual disconnected vireo manner, and now with a chatter and
warble like what I had heard in the morning, but louder and longer. His
best efforts ended abruptly with the ordinary vireo call, and the
instantaneous change of voice gave to the whole a very strange effect.
The chatter and warble appeared to be related to each other precisely as
are those of the ruby-crowned kinglet; while the warble had a certain
tender, affectionate, some would say plaintive quality, which at once
put me in mind of the goldfinch.

I have seldom been more charmed with the song of any bird than I was on
the 7th of last October with that of this same _Vireo solitarius_. The
morning was bright and warm, but the birds had nearly all taken their
departure, and the few that remained were silent. Suddenly the stillness
was broken by a vireo note, and I said to myself with surprise, A
red-eye? Listening again, however, I detected the solitary's inflection;
and after a few moments

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