Under the Maples Part 4

From my barn-door outlook I behold meadows with their boundary line of stone fences that are like lakes and reservoirs of timothy and clover.

They are full to the brim, they ripple and rock in the breeze, the green inundation seems about to overwhelm its boundaries, all the surface inequalities of the land are wiped out, the small rocks and stones are hidden, the woodchucks make their roads through it, immersed like dolphins in the sea. What a picture of the plenty and the flowing beneficence of our temperate zone it all presents! Nature in her kinder, gentler moods, dreaming of the tranquil herds and the bursting barns.

Surely the vast army of the gra.s.s hath its victories, for the most part noiseless, peace-yielding victories that gladden the eye and tranquillize the heart.

The meadow presents a pleasing picture before it is invaded by the haymakers, and a varied and animated one after it is thus invaded; the mowing-machine sending a shudder ahead of it through the gra.s.s, the hay-tedder kicking up the green locks like a giant, many-legged gra.s.shopper, the horserake gathering the cured hay into windrows, the white-sleeved men with their forks pitching it into c.o.c.ks, and, lastly, the huge, soft-cheeked loads of hay, towering above the teams that draw them, brushing against the bar-ways and the lower branches of the trees along their course, slowly winding their way toward the barn. Then the great mows of hay, or the shapely stacks in the fields, and the battle is won. Milk and cream are stored up in well-cured hay, and when the snow of winter fills the meadows as gra.s.s fills them in summer, the tranquil cow can still rest and ruminate in contentment.

As the swallows sweep out and in near my head they give out an angry "Sleet, sleet," as if my presence had suddenly become offensive to them.

I know what makes the change in their temper. The young are leaving their nests, and at such eventful times the parent birds are always nervous and anxious. When any of our birds launch a family into the world they would rather not have spectators, and you are pretty sure to be abused if you intrude upon the scene. The swallow can put a good deal of sharp emphasis into that "Sleet, sleet," though she is not armed to make any of her threats good. Who knows that all will go well with them when they first make the plunge into s.p.a.ce with their untried wings? A careful parent should keep the coast clear.

They have been testing their wings for several days, clinging to the sides of the nest and beating the wings rapidly. And now comes the crucial moment of letting go and attempting actual flight. Several of them have already done it, and I see them resting on the dead limbs of a plum-tree across the road. But more are to follow, and parental anxiety is still rife. I shall be sorry when the s.p.a.cious hayloft becomes silent. That affectionate "Wit, wit" and that contented and caressing squeaking and chattering give me a sense of winged companionship. The old barn is the abode of friendly and delicate spirits, and the sight of them and the sound of them surely bring a suggestion of poetry and romance to these familiar scenes.

Is not the swallow one of the oldest and dearest of birds? Known to the poets and sages and prophets of all peoples! So infantile, so helpless and awkward upon the earth, so graceful and masterful on the wing, the child and darling of the summer air, reaping its invisible harvest in the fields of s.p.a.ce as if it dined on the sunbeams, touching no earthly food, drinking and bathing and mating on the wing, swiftly, tirelessly coursing the long day through, a thought on wings, a lyric in the shape of a bird! Only in the free fields of the summer air could it have got that steel-blue of the wings and that warm tan of the breast. Of course I refer to the barn swallow. The cliff swallow seems less a child of the sky and sun, probably because its sheen and glow are less, and its shape and motions less arrowy. More varied in color, its hues yet lack the intensity, and its flight the swiftness, of those of its brother of the haylofts. The tree swallows and the bank swallows are pleasing, but they are much more local and restricted in their ranges than the barn-frequenters. As a farm boy I did not know them at all, but the barn swallows the summer always brought.

After all, there is but one swallow; the others are particular kinds that we specify. How curious that men should ever have got the notion that this airy, fairy creature, this playmate of the sunbeams, spends the winter hibernating in the mud of ponds and marshes, the bedfellow of newts and frogs and turtles! It is an Old-World legend, born of the blindness and superst.i.tion of earlier times. One knows that the rain of the rainbow may be gathered at one's feet in a mud-puddle, but the fleeting spectrum of the bow is not a thing of life. Yet one would as soon think of digging up a rainbow in the mud as a swallow. The swallow follows the sun, and in August is off for the equatorial regions, where it hibernates on the wing, buried in tropical sunshine.

Well, this brilliant day is a good day for the swallows, a good day for the haymakers, and a good day for him who sits before his open barn door and weaves his facts and midsummer fancies into this slight literary fabric.

VI

NEAR VIEWS OF WILD LIFE

The wild life around us is usually so un.o.btrusive and goes its own way so quietly and furtively that we miss much of it unless we cultivate an interest in it. A person must be interested in it, to paraphrase a line of Wordsworth's, ere to him it will seem worthy of his interest. One thing is linked to another or gives a clue to another. There is no surer way to find birds' nests than to go berrying or fishing. In the blackberry or raspberry bushes you may find the bush sparrow's nest or the indigobird's nest. Once while fishing a trout-stream I missed my fish, and my hook caught on a branch over my head. When I pulled the branch down, there, deftly saddled upon it, was a hummingbird's nest. I unwittingly caught more than I missed. On another occasion I stumbled upon the nest of the water accentor which I had never before found; on still another, upon the nest of the winter wren, a marvel of mossy softness and delicacy hidden under a mossy log.

Along trout-streams with overhanging or shelving ledges the fisherman often sees the nest of the phbe-bird, which does not cease to please for the hundredth time, because of its fitness and exquisite artistry.

On the newly sawn timbers of your porch or woodshed it is far less pleasing, because the bird's art, born of rocky ledges, only serves in the new environment to make its nest conspicuous.

Sitting in my barn-door study I see a vesper sparrow fly up and alight on the telephone wire with nesting-material in her beak. I keep my eye upon her. In a moment she drops down to the gra.s.sy and weedy bank of the roadside in front of me and disappears. A few moments later I have her secret--a nest in a little recess in the bank. That straw gave the finishing touch. She kept her place on the nest until she had deposited her first egg on June 24th, probably for her second brood this season.

Some young vespers flitting about farther up the road are presumably her first brood. Each day thereafter for four consecutive days she added an egg. Incubation soon began and on the 10th of July the young were out, the little sprawling, skinny things looking, as a city girl said when she first beheld newly-hatched birds in a nest, as if they were mildewed.

These ground-builders among the birds, taking their chances in the great common of the open fields, at the mercy of all their enemies every hour--the hoofs of grazing cattle, prowling skunks, foxes, weasels, c.o.o.ns by night, and crows and hawks by day--what bird-lover does not experience a little thrill when in his walk he comes upon one of their nests? He has found a thing of art among the unkempt and the disorderly; he has found a thing of life and love amid the cold and the insensate.

Yet all so artless and natural! Every shred and straw of it serves a purpose; it fairly warms and vivifies the little niche in which it is placed. What a center of solicitude and forethought.

Not many yards below the vesper's nest, on the other side of the road, is a junco's nest. You may know the junco's nest from that of any other ground-builder by its being more elaborate and more perfectly hidden.

The nest is tucked far under the mossy and weedy bank, and only a nest-hunter pa.s.sing along the road, with "eye practiced like a blind man's touch" and with juncos in mind, would have seen it. A little screen of leaves of the hawkweed permits only the rim of one edge of the nest to be seen. Not till I stooped down and reached forth my hand did the mother bird come fluttering out and go down the road with drooping wings and spread tail, the white quills of the latter fairly lighting up the whole performance.

A very shy and artful bird is the junco. I had had brief glimpses of the male many times about the place. The morning I found the nest I had seen one male spitefully pursuing another male along the top of the stone wall opposite, which fact, paralleled in a human case, would afford a hint for detectives to work on. The junco is evidently a very successful bird. The swarms of them that one sees in the late fall and in the early winter going south is good evidence of this. They usually precede the white-throats north in the spring, but a few linger and breed in the high alt.i.tude of the Catskills.

When the sun shines hot the sparrow in front of my door makes herself into a sunshade to protect her nestlings. She pants with the heat, and her young pant too; they would probably perish were not the direct rays of the sun kept from them. Another vesper sparrow's nest yonder in the hill pasture, from which we flushed the bird in our walk, might be considered in danger from a large herd of dairy cows, but it is wisely placed in view of such a contingency. It is at the foot of a stalk of Canada thistle about a foot and a half high, and where, for a few square yards, the grazing is very poor. I do not think that the chances are one in fifty that the hoof of a cow will find it. I do not suppose that the problem presented itself to the bird as it does to me, but her instinct was as sure a guide as my reason is to me--or a surer one.

The vesper sparrow was thus happily named by a New England bird-lover, Wilson Flagg, an old-fashioned writer on our birds, fifty or more years ago. I believe the bird was called the gra.s.s finch by our earlier writers. It haunts the hilly pastures and roadsides in the Catskill region. It is often called the road-runner, from its habit of running along the road ahead when one is driving or walking--a very different bird, however, from the road-runner of the Western States. The vesper is larger than the song sparrow, of a lighter gray and russet, and does not frequent our gardens and orchards as does the latter. In color it suggests the European skylark; the two lateral white quills in its tail enhance this impression. One season a stray skylark, probably from Long Island or some other place where larks had been liberated, appeared in a broad, low meadow near me, and not finding his own kind paid court to a female vesper sparrow. He pursued her diligently and no doubt pestered her dreadfully. She fled from him precipitately and seemed much embarra.s.sed by the attentions of the distinguished-looking foreigner.

When the young of any species appear, the solicitude and watchfulness of the mother bird are greatly increased. Although my near neighbor the vesper sparrow in front of my door has had proof of my harmless character now for several weeks and, one would think, must know that her precious secret is safe with me, yet, when she comes with food in her beak while I am at my desk ten or eleven yards away, she maneuvers around for a minute or two, flying up to the telephone wire or a few yards up or down the road, and finally approaches the nest with much hesitation and suspicion, lest I see her in the act. When she comes again and again and again, she is filled with the same apprehension.

After a night of heavy but warm rain two of the half-fledged young were lying on the ground in front of the nest, dead. There were no murderous marks upon them, and the secret of the tragedy I could not divine.

What automatons these wild creatures are, apparently so wise on some occasions and so absurd on others! This vesper sparrow in bringing food to her young, going through the same tactics over and over, learns no more than a machine would. But, of course, the bird does not think; hence the folly of her behavior to a being that does. The wisdom of nature, which is so unerring under certain conditions, becomes to us sheer folly under changed conditions.

When the mother bird's suspicion gets the better of her, she often devours the food she has in her beak, so fearful is she of betraying her precious secret. But the next time she comes she may only maneuver briefly before approaching the nest, and then again hesitate and parley with her fears and make false moves and keep her eye on me, as if I had only just appeared upon the scene.

One of the best things a bird-lover can have in front of his house or cabin is a small dead tree with numerous leafless branches. Many kinds of birds love to perch briefly where they can look around them. I would not exchange the old dead plum-tree that stands across the road in front of my lodge for the finest living plum-tree in the world. It bears a perpetual crop of birds. Of course the strictly sylvan birds, such as the warblers, the vireos, the oven-bird, the veery and hermit thrushes, do not come, but many kinds of other birds pause there during the day and seem to enjoy the un.o.bstructed view.

All the field and orchard and grove birds come. In early summer the bobolink perches there, then tiptoes, or tip-wings, away to the meadows below, pouring out his ecstatic song. The rose-breasted grosbeak comes and shows his brilliant front. The purple finch, the goldfinch, the indigo bunting, the bluebird, the kingbird, the phbe-bird, the great crested flycatcher, the robin, the oriole, the chickadee, the high-hole, the downy woodp.e.c.k.e.r, the vesper sparrow, the social sparrow, or chippy, pause there in the course of the day, and some of them several times during the day. Occasionally the scarlet tanager lights it up with his vivid color.

But more than all it is the favorite perch of a song sparrow whose mate has a nest not far off. Here he perches and goes through his repertoire of three or four different songs from dawn till nightfall, pausing only long enough now and then to visit his mate or to refresh himself with a little food. He repeats his strain six times a minute, often preening his plumage in the intervals. He sings several hundred times a day and has been doing so for many weeks. The house wren during the breeding-season repeats his song thousands of times a day, while the red-eyed vireo sings continuously from morning till night for several months. How a conscious effort like that would weary our human singers and their hearers! But the birds are quite unconscious, in our sense, of what they are doing.

When we pause to think of it, what a spectacle this singing sparrow presents! A little wild bird sitting on a dead branch and lifting up its voice in song hour after hour, day after day, week after week.

In terms of science we say it is a secondary s.e.xual characteristic, but viewed in the light of the spirit of the whole, what is it except a song of praise and thanksgiving--joy in life, joy in the day, joy in the mate and brood, joy in the paternal and maternal instincts and solicitudes, a voice from the heart of nature that the world is good, thanksgiving for the universal beneficence without which you and I and the little bird would not be here? In foul weather as in fair, the bird sings. The rain and the cold do not silence him.

There are few or no pessimists among the birds. One might think the call of the turtle-dove, which sounds to us like "woe, woe, woe," a wail of despair; but it is not. It really means "love, love, love." The plaint of the wood pewee, pensive and like a human sigh, is far from pessimistic, although in a minor key. The cuckoo comes the nearest to being a pessimist, with his doleful call, and the catbird and the jay, with their peevish and complaining notes, might well be placed in that category, were it not for their songs when the love pa.s.sion makes optimists even of them. The strain of the hermit thrush which floats down to me from the wooded heights above day after day at all hours, but more as the shades of night are falling--what does this pure, serene, exalted strain mean but that, in Browning's familiar words,

G.o.d's in his heaven-- All's right with the world!

The bird may sing for his mate and his brood alone, but what puts it into his heart to do that? Certainly it is good to have a mate and a brood!

A new season brings new experiences with the same old familiar birds, or new thoughts about them. This season I have had new impressions of our cuckoos, which are oftener heard than seen. Of the two species, the black-billed and the yellow-billed, the former prevails in the lat.i.tude of New England, and the latter farther south. We cannot hail our black-billed as "blithe newcomer," as Wordsworth does his cuckoo.

"Doleful newcomer" would be a fitter t.i.tle. There is nothing cheery or animated in his note, and he is about as much a "wandering voice" as is the European bird. He does not babble of sunshine and of flowers. He is a prophet of the rain, and the country people call him the rain crow.

All his notes are harsh and verge on the weird. His nesting-instincts seem to lead him, or rather her, to the thorn-bushes as inevitably as the gra.s.s finch's lead her to the gra.s.s.

The cuckoo seems such an unpractical and inefficient bird that it is interesting to see it doing things. One of our young poets has a verse in which he sings of

The solemn priestly b.u.mble-bee That marries rose to rose.

He might apply the same or similar adjectives to the cuckoo. Solemn and priestly, or at least monkish, it certainly is. It is a real recluse and suggests the druidical. If it ever frolics or fights, or is gay and cheerful like our other birds, I have yet to witness it.

During the last summer, day after day I saw one of the birds going by my door toward the clump of thorn-trees with a big green worm in its bill.

One afternoon I followed it. I found the bird sitting on a branch very still and straight, with the worm still in its beak. I sat down on the tentlike thicket and watched him. Presently he uttered that harsh, guttural note of alarm or displeasure. Then after a minute or two he began to shake and bruise the worm. I waited to see him disclose the nest, but he would not, and finally devoured the worm. Then he hopped or flitted about amid the branches above me, uttering his harsh note every minute or two.

After a half-hour or more I gave it up and parted the curtain of th.o.r.n.y branches which separated the thicket from the meadow and stepped outside. I had moved along only a few paces when I discovered the nest on an outer branch almost in the sunshine. The mother bird was covering her half-grown young. As I put up my hand toward her, she slipped off, withdrew a few feet into the branches, and uttered her guttural calls.

In the nest were four young, one of them nearly ready to leave it, while another barely had its eyes open; the eldest one looked frightened, while the youngest lifted up its head with open mouth for food. The most mature one pointed its bill straight up and sat as still as if petrified. The whole impression one got from the nest and its contents was of something inept and fortuitous. But the cares of a family woke the parents up and they got down to real work in caring for their charge.

The young had a curious, unbirdlike aspect with threadlike yellow stripes, and looked as if they were wet or just out of the sh.e.l.l.

That strain of parasitism in the blood of the cuckoo--how long in the history of its race since it mastered it and became its own nest-builder? But a crude and barbarous nest-builder it certainly is.

Its "procreant cradle" is built entirely of the twigs of the thorn-tree, with all their sharp needle-like spines upon them, some of the twigs a foot long, bristling with spines, certainly the most forbidding-looking nest and nursery I ever beheld--a mere platform of twigs about four inches across, carpeted with a little shredded brown fibrous material, looking as if made from the inner bark of some tree, perhaps this very thorn.

In the total absence of the tent caterpillar or apple-tree worm, which is their favorite food, cuckoos seem to succeed in finding a large green worm here in the orchard. In the beech woods they can find a forest worm that is riddling the leaves of the beeches. The robins are there in force and I hope the cuckoos will join them in the destruction of the worms. It is interesting to see the cuckoo fly by several times a day with a big green worm in its beak. Inefficient as it seems, here it is doing things. It is like seeing a monk at the plough-handle. It is a solemn creature; its note is almost funereal.

Our indigo bunting is as artful and secretive about its nesting-habits as any of the sparrows. The male bird seems to know that his brilliant color makes him a shining mark, and he keeps far away from the nest, singing at all hours of the day in a circle around it, the radius of which must be more than fifty yards. In one instance the nest was near the house, almost under the clothes-line, in a low blackberry-bush, partly masked by tall-growing daisies and timothy. I chanced to pa.s.s near it, when off went the little brown bird with her sharp, chiding manners. She is a very emphatic creature. It is yea and nay with her every time.

The male seems like a bit of the tropics. He is not a very pleasing singer, but an all-day one and an all-summer one. He is one of our rarer birds. In a neighborhood where you see scores of sparrows and goldfinches you will see only one pair of indigobirds. Their range of food is probably very limited. I have never chanced to see them taking food of any kind.

How crowded with life every square rod of the fields and woods is, if we look closely enough! Beneath my leafy canopy on the edge of the beech woods where I now and then seek refuge from a hot wave, reclining on a cushion of dry leaves or sitting with my back against a cool, smooth exposure of the outcropping place rock, I am in a mood to give myself up to a day of little things. And the little things soon come trooping or looping along.

I see a green measuring-worm taking the dimensions of the rim of my straw hat which lies on the dry leaves beside me. It humps around it in an aimless sort of way, stopping now and then and rearing up on its hind legs and feeling the vacant s.p.a.ce around it as a blind man might hunt for a lost trail. I know what it wants: it is on its travels looking for a place in which to go through that wonderful transformation of creeping worm into a winged creature. In its higher stage of being it is a little silvery moth, barely an inch across, and, like other moths, has a brief season of life and love, the female depositing its eggs in some suitable place and then dying or falling a victim to the wood pewee or some other bird. After some minutes of groping and humping about on my hat and on dry twigs and leaves, it is lost to my sight.