Upon The Tree-Tops Part 10

In gathering flowers, one needs to select with discretion, for they, no less than their winged neighbors in the pasture, have an individuality of their own. The wild rose, for example, is most amiable in lending itself to our enjoyment. Not only does it submit to being torn from the parental stem, but it will flourish perfectly, and go on opening bud after bud, so long as it has one to open, as lovely and as fragrant as its sisters on the bush. One needs only to snip off the heads whose petals have dropped, to have a fresh and beautiful bowl of roses every morning. The daisy too adorns our tables and our vases cheerfully, and as long as if it still stood among the gra.s.ses, its feet planted in mother earth; and even when it has lived out its allotted time, it neither withers nor droops, but begins to look wild, its petals losing their trim regularity and standing every way.

Different indeed is the disposition of the goldenrod, which, though remaining fresh and bright, when called upon to decorate our homes, obstinately refuses to open a petal after it is gathered; and the fairy-like elder, which sullenly resents being touched, gives up the struggle for existence and droops at once; and the cactus, which promptly draws its satin petals together, and stubbornly declines to open again. The loveliest bouquet of late July on the coast of Maine is this, which I give for the pleasure of other flower-lovers, if haply there be any who have not discovered it. Put in a vase a few stalks of completely opened goldenrod, of the variety that divides into long, finger-like stems. Let there be just enough so that when each blossom is spread out full they shall barely cover the s.p.a.ce. Have the stems of equal length, so that the effect shall be flat, and not conical. Into this, between the blossoms, carefully stick the stems of a few fully spread lace flowers (or wild carrot), with stems two or three inches longer than you have allowed the goldenrod stems. Each must have full s.p.a.ce to display every tiny floweret, and not to hide the golden glory beneath. When prepared, set the vase or bowl on the floor, before a grate or to light up some gloomy corner. Properly done the effect is a marvel and a joy forever, like lace over sunshine, like some fairy creation too dainty for words to picture.

IX.

DOWN THE MEADOW.

The bird-baby world was not bounded by any pasture, however enchanting, and I have not told all the charms of this one. The house where I found bed and board, in the intervals of bird study,--once a farmhouse, now an "inn of rest" for a country-loving-family,--was happily possessed of two attractions: the pasture toward which I turned with the morning sun, and a meadow which drew me when shadows grew long in the afternoon. This meadow began at the road pa.s.sing in front of the house, and extended to the salt marsh which separated us from the sea. The marsh was always a beautiful picture,

"Stretching off in a pleasant plain To the terminal blue of the main."

It was never twice the same, for it changed with every pa.s.sing cloud, with every phase of the weather, with every tide; one never tired of it.

And it was full of winged life: not only the beautiful gulls,

"Whose twinkling wings half lost amid the blue,"

in a white cloud over the far-off beach, but small birds of several kinds, who never came near enough to dry land to be identified.

Sharp-tailed sparrows appeared on the meadow after gra.s.s was cut, and their exquisite ringing trill could always be heard from the bank; crows fed upon it every day; blackbirds' wings were always over it; and above all, sandpipers were there,

"Calling dear and sweet from cove to cove."

One afternoon, starting down the meadow on my usual visit to the sandpiper little folk, I heard a low cry of "flick-er! flick-er!" and there on the gra.s.s before me were two of the birds face to face. One was an adult, but the other was a nearly grown young one, and I saw in an instant that I had unwittingly intruded upon the breakfast he was about to receive. In the goldenwing family--as perhaps not every one knows--a repast is not over with one poke into an open bill; it is a far more serious affair indeed. The young bird opens his mouth a little, the parent thrusts his--or her--beak down the waiting throat, until one would think the infant must be choked, and then the elder delivers little pokes, as he crams down the mouthfuls, six, eight, even ten I have counted before he stops. Then the heads draw apart, and the grown-up--who has plainly come well provided--makes a sort of spasmodic movement in his own throat, probably raising from some internal reservoir another portion of food, the infant opens his beak again, and the operation is repeated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TAKING BREAKFAST--THE GOLDEN-WINGED WOODp.e.c.k.e.r]

[Sidenote: _TAKING HIMSELF TOO SERIOUSLY._]

Of course my presence interfered with this elaborate, several-course breakfast, and the elder of the two fell to reproaching me by loud calls and vehement bows in my direction. Seeing that I was not sufficiently impressed, and did not depart, he resorted to stronger measures; he swayed his head from side to side, stretching out his neck like an enraged goose, and presenting a most droll appearance.

At first the youngster seemed to be paralyzed, but suddenly--perhaps realizing what harm my inopportune appearance had done--he also began to bow and sway, exactly as papa was doing. Anything more ludicrous than those two birds standing face to face and performing such antics it is hard to imagine; no one but a flicker could be at the same time so serious and so absurd.

At the edge of the meadow, where it sloped sharply down to the marsh, lived one whose days were full of trouble, which he took care to make known to the world,--a

"Fire-winged blackbird, wearing on his shoulders Red, gold-edged epaulets."

His little family, not yet out of the nest, was settled safely enough behind a clump of bushes that fringed the marsh. But he, in his role of protector, had taken possession of two trees on the high land, where he could overlook the whole neighborhood, and see all the dangers, real and fancied, that might, could, would, or should threaten them, and "borrow trouble" to his heart's content. The trees, this bird's headquarters, were an aged and half-dead cherry and a scraggy and wind-battered elm, standing perhaps a hundred feet apart. On the top twig of one of these, or flying across between them, he was most of the time to be seen, and his various cries of distress, as well as his wild, woodsy song, came plainly up to me in my window.

[Sidenote: _THE REDWING WAS FRANTIC._]

The troubles of this Martha-like character began when mowers brought their clattering machine, and with rasping noise and confusion dire laid low the gra.s.s which had isolated him from the rest of the world, and that impertinent world poured in. First came crows, from their homes in the woods beyond the pasture, to feast on the numerous hoppers and crawlers left roofless by the mowers, and to procure food for their hungry young, and alighted in the stubble, two or three or half a dozen at a time. By this the soul of the redwing was fired, and with savage war-cries he descended upon them. His manner was to fly laboriously to a great height, and then swoop down at a crow as if to annihilate him. The bird on the ground turned from his insect hunt long enough to snap at his threatening enemy, and then returned to his serious business. So long as the crows stayed the redwing was frantic, his cries filled the air; and as they were almost constantly there, he was kept on the borders of frenzy most of the time.

After the crows came the bird-students, with opera-gla.s.ses and spying ways. These also the irascible redwing decided to be foes, flying about their heads threateningly, and never ceasing his doleful cries so long as they were in sight. I hoped his brown-streaked mate down in the marsh knew what a fussy and suspicious personage she had married, and would not be made anxious by his extravagances; but she too distrusted the bird gazers, adding her protests to his, and such an outpouring of "chacks" and other blackbird maledictions one--happily--is not often called upon to encounter.

After the bird-students the haymakers; and every time a man or a horse appeared in that field, the blackbird was thrown into utter despair, and the air rang with his lamentations.

He was evidently a character, a bird of individuality, and I was anxious to know him better; so, although I hated to grieve him, I resolved to go somewhat nearer, hoping that he would appreciate my harmlessness and soon see that he had nothing to fear from me. Not he! Having taken it into his obstinate little head that all who approached the sacred spot he guarded were on mischief bent, he refused to discriminate. The moment I approached the gate, the whole width of the meadow from him, he greeted me with shouts and cries, and did not cease for an instant, though I stayed two hours or more. I always went as modestly and inoffensively as possible through the meadow, far from his two trees, seated myself on the edge of the slope at some distance from him, and remained quiet. But he was never reconciled. His first act, as I started down the field, was to fly out to meet me, as if to drive me away. When he reached me, he would hold himself ten or fifteen feet above my head, perfectly motionless excepting a slight movement of the wings, looking as if he meditated an attack; and indeed I did sometimes fear that he would treat me as he did the crows. As I came nearer, his mate flew up out of the bushes, and added her demonstrations to his. Their movements in the air were beautiful. One would beat himself up quite high, and then hover, or apparently rest at that alt.i.tude, as if too light to come down, at last floating earthward, pausing now and then, as if he absolutely could not return to our level.

[Sidenote: _WHAT DID IT ALL MEAN?_]

Occasionally my presence caused a domestic scene not easy to interpret.

Madam, no doubt fully aware of the prying ways of the human family, sometimes hesitated to return to her little ones in the bushes. She flew around uneasily, alighting here and there, anxious and worried, but plainly afraid of exposing her precious secret. Then her "lord and master" took her in hand, flying at her, and following wherever she fled before him, till he almost overtook her, when she dropped into the marsh, and with a low, satisfied chuckle he took a wide circle around and returned to his tree. Scolding all the time, she remained some minutes in the deep gra.s.s, then flew up high, and floated down to the alder clump where the nest was placed. Upon this, her observant lord, whose sharp eyes nothing escaped, instantly flew down again, dashed impetuously through the alders, and without pausing returned to his post. Now how should one interpret that little family interlude?

Later, when the young were out of the nest and quite expert on wing, the redwing's relations with them puzzled me also. I often saw the two who appeared to compose the family flying about with their mother, and I knew they were his because he frequently joined the party. But their conduct seemed unnatural, and a doubt stole over me whether this bird--this individual, I mean--could be a domestic tyrant. I knew from previous studies that the love-making manners of the redwing are a little on the "knock-down-and-drag-out" order of some savage tribes of our own species. To chase the beloved until she drops with fatigue seems to be the blackbird idea of a tender attention, and possibly the pursuit of his spouse already spoken of may have been of this sort, merely a loverly demonstration. But with the babies it was a different thing.

Heretofore I had seen blackbird fathers devoted attendants on their young, working as hard as the mothers in seeking supplies, and following up the wandering brood to administer them. But this bird, I observed, was avoided by the little folk. When he showed inclination to join the family party on one of its excursions, they shied away from him, and if he came too near they uttered a sort of husky "huff," like the familiar protest of a cat. With the same sound they greeted him and moved away when he approached a bush where they sat. Perhaps this crustiness of demeanor was the natural result of his long weeks of anxiety and trouble as protector during their helpless infancy; perhaps he was tired out and exhausted, and it was not irritability, but nervous prostration, that made him appear so unamiable. Indeed, I do not see how it could be otherwise, after his exciting life. And may that not explain the fact that when the young are grown, the singer shakes off all family ties and joins a flock of his comrades, while mother and young remain together?

Since he insists on taking his family responsibilities so hard, he cannot be blamed for desiring a rest for part of the year.

[Sidenote: _A PANIC ON THE MARSH._]

Now that the nest was deserted and the young were always going about with their mother, I wondered that the head of the family did not relax his vigilance over the meadow and abandon his two watch-towers; but save that his enticing song came up to me oftener than his cries of distress, his habits were not materially altered. One day, when I thought his summer troubles ought surely to be over, a fresh anxiety came to him.

Several women and girls, with a dog, appeared on the marsh, which at low tide was in some parts explorable. The human members of the party amused themselves with bathing and wading in the now shallow stream; but the dog acted like one gone mad, dashing about on those peaceful flats where so many birds were enjoying themselves quietly, rushing full gallop from one group to another, wading or swimming the winding stream every time he came to it, and barking at the top of his voice every instant. Birds rose before him in flocks, sandpipers took to their wings in panic, swallows swooped down over him in anxious clouds, sharp-tailed sparrows and all other winged creatures fled wildly before this "agitator," who seemed to have no aim except to disturb, and reminded me irresistibly of his human prototype. Somewhere in that "league upon league of marsh gra.s.s," I suppose, were the blackbird's little folk; for the watcher on the bank was in deepest tribulation, and his outcries quickly brought me down to see what had happened.

The Young Americans of the redwing family are as vivacious and uneasy as might be expected of the scions of that house. No sooner do they get the use of their st.u.r.dy legs than they scramble out of the nest and start upon their bustling pilgrimage through life, first climbing over the bushes in their neighborhood, and as they learn the use of their wings becoming more venturesome, till at last, every time a hard-working mother brings a morsel of food, she has to hunt up her straggling offspring before she can dispose of it. Though eager for food as most youngsters, they are altogether too busy investigating this new and interesting world to stay two minutes in one place. So far from waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, they proceed, the moment they can use their limbs, to attack the problem of delay for themselves; to wait is not a blackbird possibility. It is needless to say that such preternaturally sharp and wide-awake Young Americans very soon graduate from the nursery.

[Sidenote: _A YELLOW-HEADED MONSTER._]

The last trial that came to the blackbird, and the one, perhaps, that induced him finally to abandon his watch-towers and join his friends on the bank farther down, was the appearance one day in the meadow of a new importation from the city, a boy marked out for notice by a striking yellow-and-black cap. The instant he entered the inclosure afar off, the redwing uttered a shriek of hopeless despair, as who should say, "What horrible yellow-headed monster have we here?" and as long as he remained the bird cried and bewailed his fate and that of his family, as if murder and sudden death were the sure fate of them all. It was the last act in the blackbird drama on the meadow.

Between my morning in the pasture and my afternoon down the meadow, were two or three hours of rest beside my window, and there, too, the drama of life went on. On one side was an orchard--an orchard, alas! without bluebirds, for it was the summer following the dreadful tragedy in Florida, where thousands perished of hunger, and not one of the blue-coated darlings was to be seen where had always been many.

Perhaps, too, even more destructive than the death by hunger that year is the death which I am a.s.sured is common in all years about Washington, and doubtless other places; death at the hands of man--for the table.

Who could eat a bluebird! It is bad enough to doom the bobolink to the pot after he has changed his coat and become a reedbird, and given some reason for his fate by his unfortunate fondness for rice. But what excuse can there be for bringing the "Darling of the Spring" to this woeful end?

To the deserted orchard came but one bird, a ph[oe]be, and I believe his object was to retire from the world, for he was the most modest bird of his family that I ever saw. He dwelt in an obscure corner, and never so much as tried the peak of the barn, which was temptingly near. When he called it was almost in a whisper. I saw no indications that he had a nest or a family, and I am inclined to think that he was a misanthrope and a hermit.

[Sidenote: _A BIRD BABY SHOW._]

Under my window on the other side came a vesper sparrow family. Three youngsters in bright new coats, quite unlike the worn and faded hues of their parents' dress. On the stone wall, or perched on a telegraph pole, close to the solitary insulator on the summit, the singer poured out his sweet little song, ending--in his best moods--in an exquisite trill that resembled the silver bell of the chewink. The family spent their time in the road or the meadow, the mother working hard to supply the hungry little mouths, which gave vent to queer whining cries. One day when it was raining the mother and one infant were out on the usual business, when suddenly they became aware of a chipmunk about eighteen inches from them, and at the same instant he saw them. He sat up very erect to look over the gra.s.s, and, holding his funny little hands over his heart, stared at the pair as if he had never seen birds. The baby sparrow flew a foot or two, but the elder ran toward him most valiantly, upon which the brave chipmunk took to his heels, scrambled up the stone wall, and disappeared.

Before the window, too, were always the swallows, for the telegraph wire was a favorite perch. And after the young were out, there was every day a baby show, the eave and tree swallows having adopted the wires as their out-of-door nursery. Nearly all the time might be seen half a dozen or more waiting patiently for a morsel from some of their elders circling about over their heads, and such a chatter as they kept up!

They whispered softly among themselves when their parents were away, and called in squeaky little voices with fluttering wings as one of the elders approached. Whether the young in these social nurseries know their particular parents has always been an interesting question with me, and I studied their ways for some clew to the truth. I noticed when one of the parents swooped over them or came near, to alight, not more than one or two of the waiting babies on the wire would flutter and ask for food, and I saw also, on such occasions, that they were usually fed.

When somewhat later another parent came near, a different little one would ask and be fed. They did not all, or even any great number, ask every time an old bird came about, which certainly looked as if the little ones knew their own parents.

After a while the swallows came out in great numbers. There were hundreds at a time on the telegraph wires, all, both old and young, talking at once--as it appeared. They had flight exercises, when the whole flock rose at once, filling the air with wings. This gathering continued for three or four days, while all other birds seemed to have disappeared, and then one morning they were gone to the marsh, where we often saw them afterward, and the other birds returned to their usual haunts.

X.

IN A COLORADO NOOK.

The loveliest nook I know is one of nature's wild gardens, on the banks of the "Shining Water," at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. It is forever fresh and green in my memory. Let me picture it for you, dear reader, as I saw it last.