Some Spring Days in Iowa Part 2

In later May, the season "betwixt May and June," beauty and fragrance and melody comes in a rich flood. The flaming breast of the oriole and the wondrous mingling of colors in the multiplied warblers glint like jewels among the ever enlarging leaves. The light in the woodlands becomes more subdued and the carpet of ferns and flowers grows richer and more beautiful. The vireos, the cardinal and the tanager add to the brilliancy and the ovenbird and veery to the melody. As good old John Milton once wrote: "In these vernal seasons of the year, when the air is clear and pleasant, it were an injury and a sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake of her rejoicing with heaven and earth."

The beauty of the world is at every man's door, if he will only pause to see. It offers every man real riches if only he will now and then quit his muckraking or pause from paying his life for a cap and bells. It sweetens honest labor, helps earthly endeavor, strengthens human affection and leads the soul naturally from the beauty of this world to the greater beauty of that which is to come.

WALKS IN JUNE WOODS AND FIELDS

VI. WALKS IN JUNE WOODS AND FIELDS.

_Whether we look or whether we listen We can hear life murmur or see it glisten._ --LOWELL.

As we walk along the bank of the creek on a warm afternoon in June we realize how true are these lines of Lowell. The frog chorus is dying down, though now and then we catch sight of a big fellow blowing out his big balloon throat and filling the air with a hoa.r.s.e ba.s.s, while another across the creek has a bagpipe apparently as big but pitched in a higher key. Two months ago one could not get near enough to see this queer inflation, but now the frogs do not seem so shy. Garter snakes wiggle through the gra.s.s down the bank of the creek and the crickets are just beginning to chirp the love chorus which is soon to swell incessantly till the fall frosts come. b.u.t.terflies, dragon flies, saw flies and gall flies are busy and we see evidences of their work in the crimson galls on the willow leaves and the purple-spotted oak apples, some of which have fallen to the ground from the scarlet oak above. Nature's first great law is the perpetuation of species, and everything we see in the June woods and fields, from the giant white oak to the busy ant, is diligently obeying that law. The red-winged blackbird circles over our heads with sharp, anxious chirps, for we have disturbed the young red-wings down in the sedge who are taking their first lessons in flying.

The catbird's nest, with four greenish-blue eggs, is in a wild gooseberry bush and the catbird is up among the shad-trees feasting on the ripening June berries. The gentle notes of soft pedal music come floating sweetly down. Did you ever stop long enough to listen to the full song of the catbird? First, the brilliant, ringing strains, often softening into a subdued sympathetic melody, and then, just as the music seems almost divine, the long cat-like squeal which ends it all--much like an old organist and choirmaster of boyhood days who used to break in with a horrible discord at the lower end of the keyboard when the anthem rehearsal wasn't going to his liking.

A fruit-lover is the catbird, beginning with the June berries on the banks of streams near which she often builds her nest and continuing with wild strawberries, blackberries, wild grapes and the berries of the Virginia creeper--sometimes also seen busily scooping out a big hole on the rosy side of a tempting apple in the orchard. Some observers say the catbird eats the eggs of the fly-catcher and other birds, but this must be seen to be believed.

There comes an outbreak of melody from the top of a tall black willow, much like the tones of the robin and yet suggestive of the warbling vireo, but finer than the former, clearer, louder and richer than the latter. We lift our eyes and see the pointed carmine shield of the rose-breasted grosbeak, one of the most beautiful, useful and music-full birds in the forest or the garden. Many mornings and evenings during the month of May one of these handsome fellows was busy in my garden, diligently picking the potato bugs from the young vines, stopping now and then, especially in his morning visits, to pour out a happy, ringing lyric and to show his handsome plumage. On one occasion he took a couple of potato bugs in his "gros" beak as he flew to the nearby woodland, probably a tempting morsel for his spouse's breakfast. A bird that can sing better than a warbling vireo, whose carmine breast is comparable only to the rich, red rose of June, who picks bugs from potato vines, singing chansons meanwhile and who is so good to his wife that he does a large share of the incubation, and takes largely upon himself the care of their children is surely a "rara avis" and worth having for a friend. He is a typical bird of June. His color matches the June roses, his songs are full and sweet and rich as the June days, and the eggs of his soberly dressed spouse are usually laid and hatched in June. There is a nest in a hawthorn bush where the wild grape twines her crimson-green cl.u.s.ters and by the time the blossoms break and fill the air with fragrance, no accidents coming meanwhile, four young grosbeaks will be the pride of as warm a paternal heart as ever beat in bird or human breast.

Perceiving that we are watching him the grosbeak ceases his ringing tones and drops into that dreamy, soft, melodious warble, which is characteristic of this songster as it is of the catbird. But he leaves when a belted kingfisher comes screaming along the stream.

But there is more of interest on the willow. Unseen till now, no fewer than three nighthawks are squatted lengthwise on its lower limbs, two on one limb and one on another. Strange we did not see them before, but the explanation is the grosbeak was singing. They are as motionless and apparently lifeless as if they had been mummified or petrified for a thousand years. Their mottled back and rusty feathers, their heads drawn down and eyes almost closed, make them look like uncanny visitants from beyond the Styx. Poe's raven was not so ominous and strangely silent; these will not say even the one word, "Nevermore." They look like relics of a Saturnian reign before beauty and music and joy were known upon the earth. If there were charred stumps of trees in the Bracken which was shown to Faust, we should expect to see nighthawks squatted on them, wholly indifferent to the lamentations of lost souls. We go directly under the branch where one of them is sitting ten feet above and still he makes no sign. We throw a clod, but yet there is no movement of his wings. Not till a stick hits the limb close to where he is sitting does he stretch his long wings with their telltale white spots and fly rapidly away. And the other two sit unmoved. But some night we hear the whirr of the nighthawk's wings as he drops rapidly from a great height, or we see him skimming close to the surface of the stream in search of insects in some twilight hour and then he is the embodiment of strength, agility, and swiftness. And some day we perchance find the two dirt colored eggs on the bare ground, or the tiny young, like bits of rabbit fur, with only the earth beneath them and the sky above them, apparently as deserted and dest.i.tute as Romulus and Remus; and all this adds wonderfully to our interest in this strange bird, which is so common in the June woods.

The whip-poor-will is much like the nighthawk. Both are of about the same size and color. Both sit lengthwise on limbs. Both are weird creatures that sleep by day and hunt by night. But the nighthawk has a V-shaped patch of white on his throat; the large mouth of the whip-poor-will is fringed with bristles. The nighthawk has a patch of white extending through his long wings; the whip-poor-will has none. The nighthawk is not usually heard after the twilight hours; the whip-poor-will is heard much later. The whip-poor-will calls its name aloud, sometimes startlingly close to the chamber window; the nighthawk only screams.

We cautiously approach a sand flat and are fortunate to see one of the sights of a lifetime. The mud turtle is preparing to lay her eggs in the moist sand. She digs the hole almost entirely with her hind feet, using first one and then the other, working rapidly for perhaps eight or ten minutes until the hole is about six inches in diameter and apparently about three or four inches deep. Then she draws in her head, and drops, at intervals of two or three minutes, five eggs into the hole. That done, she sc.r.a.pes the moist sand back into the hole, pressing it and patting it from time to time with her hind feet. This process takes much longer than digging the hole. When it is done to her satisfaction she waddles towards the creek. You might have some trouble to find the eggs but the skunk often gets them. Does the mother turtle watch over them till they are hatched by the sun or is it a mere picked-up crowd of youngsters that we sometimes see in the early fall sitting with her on a boulder in the pond?

We follow the scarlet tanager up a wide glen where wholesome smelling brake grows almost shoulder high. Suddenly there comes from our feet a sharp, painful cry, as of a human being in distress, and the ruffed grouse, commonly called pheasant, leaves her brood of tiny, ginger-yellow chicks--eight, ten, twelve--more than we can count,--little active bits of down about the size of a golf ball, scattering here, there, and everywhere to seek the shelter of bush, bracken, or dried leaves, while their mother repeats that plaintive whine, again and again, as she tries to lead us up the hillside away from them. When we look for them again they are all safely hidden; not one can be seen. The mother desperately repeats her whining cry to entice us away and we walk on up to the top of the hill and away to relieve her anxiety. Anon we hear her softly clucking as she gathers her scattered brood.

The scarlet tanager's nest is on the horizontal limb of a big white oak.

But it is not the familiar, striking, scarlet, black-winged bird, which sits on the ragged nest. The female is dressed in sober olive-green above and olive-yellow below, with dusky wings and tail. Probably many an amateur has found this bird down by the river and tried to cla.s.sify her among the fly-catchers until the coming of her handsome husband caused him to remember that in birdland it is usually only the male part of the population which wears the handsome clothes, just as the Indian braves wear the gaudiest paint and the showiest feathers. It is not till we get to the higher stages of civilization that this rule is reversed.

The foliage of the June woods has not the delicacy of tints which was so exquisite in May, nor the strength of color which will be so striking in September. But it has a beauty no less admirable. The chlorophyll in the leaf-cells is now at its prime and the leaves very closely approach a pure green, especially those of the sycamore, which is the nearest to a pure green of any tree in the forest. Standing in the wood road which runs along the top of a timbered crest we look across a broad, wooded valley where the leaves seem to exhale a soft, yellowish green in the bright sunlight. Beyond and above them, five miles away, and yet apparently very near, a belt of bluish green marks the timber fringe of the next water course. Still farther, another unseen stretch of corn land intervening, the forest crowned ridge meets the soft sky in a line of lavender, as if it were a strata cloud lying low on the horizon. From this distance the lavender and purple are almost changeless every sunny day the year around. Always the Enchanted Land and the Delectable Mountains over across the valley. How like the alluring prospect across the valley of years! Always the same soft lavender haze there, while the woods here run through all the gamut of color, from the downy pinks and whites and the tender greens of spring through the deeper greens of summer to the crimson and scarlet of the fall, and the russets, grays, and coffee-browns of the winter. When the foliage of the forest has deepened into one dark shade of verdure then we know that June is far spent, spring has gone and summer is here. The uniform green is not monotonous. See the woods in the hour before sunset when the slanting light gives the foliage consummate glory. See them again in the white light of a clear noon when the glazed leaves seem to reflect a white veil over the pure verdure; and again when the breeze ripples through the leafy canopy, showing the silvery under-surfaces of the maple leaves, the neat spray of the river birches, the deeply cleft leaves of the scarlet oak and the finely pinnate leaves of the honey locust. Each has a glory now peculiar to itself and to June.

There is much beauty of color in the woodland undergrowth. Tall torches touched with the crimson of the sunset sky are made of the sh.e.l.l-bark hickory whose inner bud scales enlarge into enormous, leathery bracts, often crimsoning into rare brilliance. Circles of creamy white here and there among the hazel brush mark the later blossoms of the sweet viburnum. Sweeping curves like sculptured arms bearing thickly cl.u.s.tered hemispheres of purplish white are seen on the rocky slope where the nine-bark grows above the lingering columbines. White wands which look so beautiful are merely the ends of the common tall blackberry, and the wild rose sweetens the same banks. Flattish cl.u.s.ters of creamy white blossoms are the loose cymes of the red osier dogwood, but it is not nearly so beautiful now as it was last January when its blood-red stems made a striking contrast with the snow. The bright carmine bark has faded to a dull green and the shrub is a disappointment now, despite its blossoms.

So is the cottonwood a disappointment. Its wealth of shining green foliage is beautiful, yet we sigh for the lost glory of the midwinter days when the horizontal rays of the setting sun made aureoles of golden light around its yellow, shining limbs.

It is worth while on a walk in June to sit and look at the gra.s.s. How tame and dreary would be the landscape without it! How soul starved would have been mankind, condemned to live without the restfulness of its un.o.btrusive beauty! That is why the first command, after the waters had been gathered into one place and the dry land appeared, was, "Let the earth bring forth gra.s.s." The gra.s.ses cover the earth like a beautiful garment from Kerguelen land in the Antarctic regions to the extreme limit of vegetation beyond the Polar circle. They climb the Andes, the Rockies, and the Himalayas to the very line of eternal snow, and they creep to the bottom of every valley where man dares set his foot. They come up fresh and green from the melting snows of earliest spring and linger in sunny autumn glens when all else is dead and drear. They give intense interest to the botanist as he remembers that there are thirty-five hundred different species, a thousand of which are in North America and a fourth of that number in our own state. They give him delightful studies as he patiently compares their infinite variations of culms and glumes, spikes, racemes, and panicles. They give joy to the farmer with their wealth of protein and fat and alb.u.minoid, the material to do the work and make the wealth of the world bulging from their succulent stems. And they are fascinating most of all to the nature-lover as he sees them gently wave in the June sunshine or flow like a swift river across the field before a quick gust of wind. Such variety of color! Here an emerald streak and there a soft blue shadow, yonder a matchless olive green, and still farther a cool gray: spreading like an enamel over the hillside where the cattle have cropped them, and waving tall and fine above the crimsoning blossoms of the clover; glittering with countless gems in the morning dews and musicful with the happy songs and call notes of the quail and prairie chicken, the meadow lark, the bob-o-link, and the d.i.c.kcissel whose young are safe among the protection of the myriad stems. Tall wild rice and wild rye grow on the flood-plain and by the streams where the tall b.u.t.tercups shine like bits of gold and the blackbirds have their home; bushy blue stem on the prairies and in the open woods where the golden squaw weed and the wild geranium make charming patterns of yellow and pink and purple and some of the painted cup left over from May still glows like spots of scarlet rain; tall grama gra.s.s on the dry prairies and gravelly knolls, whitened by the small spurge and yellowed by the creeping cinquefoil; nodding fescue in the sterile soils where the robin's plantain and the sheep sorrel have succeeded the early everlasting; satin gra.s.ses in the moist soil of the open woodlands where the fine white flowers of the Canada anemone blow, and slough gra.s.s in the marshy meadows where the white-crossed flowers of the sharp spring are fading, and the woolly stem of the bitter boneset is lengthening; reed gra.s.s and floating manna gra.s.s in the swamps where the broad arrow leaves of the sagittaria fringe the sh.o.r.e and the floating leaves and fragrant blossoms of the water lilies adorn the pond. The three days'

rain beginning with a soft drizzle and increasing into a steady storm which drives against the face with cutting force and shakes in sheets like waving banners across the wind-swept prairie only adds more variety to the beauties of the gra.s.s; and when the still, sweet morning comes, the pure green prairies make us feel that all stain of sin and shame has been washed from the world.

Where the gra.s.ses grow the best, there Providence has provided most abundantly for the wealth and the comfort of mankind. The rich verdure of the meadows is the visible sign of the fruitful soil beneath the fattening clouds above. The clover and the early hay fill the June fields with fragrance and the gra.s.s in the parks and lawns invite toil-worn bodies to rest and comfort. What wonder Bryant wished to die in June, the month when the gra.s.ses tenderly creep over the mounds above tired dust and gently soothe the grief of the loved ones left behind.

The cold May seemed to detract little from the beauty and interest of the woodlands. The warblers, the humming bird, the tanager, the bob-o-link, the ovenbird, the vireos, the chat, the red start, the oriole, the d.i.c.kcissel, the black-billed cuckoo, all greeted their friends as numerously as ever. So with the flowers: the columbine, the shooting star, the painted cup, the pucc.o.o.n, the beautiful though inodorous large white trillium, the delicate little corydalis, the star gra.s.s and the lady's slipper, all came within a week of their average time in spite of the cold, and the showy orchis was only just over into June. May added fifty-four new species of flowers to the April list, according to the record of a single observer whose leisure is limited. Those who added the forty odd May arrivals in bird land to their April lists may have no such thrilling walks in June, but they may study their feathered friends of the summer, which is better, and if pa.s.sion for new lists is not satiated, try the flowers instead of the birds. June should yield a list of a hundred twenty-five different species, not including the gra.s.ses, and a very diligent flower-lover will make it much longer.