Ways of Wood Folk Part 10

A curious thing about the flocks we see in winter is that they are composed almost entirely of females. The male bird is very rare with us. You can tell him instantly by his brighter color and his beautiful crimson breast. Sometimes the flocks contain a few young males, but until the first mating season has tipped their breast feathers with deep crimson they are almost indistinguishable from their sober colored companions.

This crimson breast shield, by the way, is the family mark or coat of arms of the grosbeaks, just as the scarlet crest marks all the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs. And if you ask a Micmac, deep in the woods, how the grosbeak got his shield, he may tell you a story that will interest you as did the legend of Hiawatha and the woodp.e.c.k.e.r in your childhood days.

If the old male, with his proud crimson, be rare with us, his beautiful song is still more so. Only in the deep forests, by the lonely rivers of the far north, where no human ear ever hears, does he greet the sunrise from the top of some lofty spruce. There also he pours into the ears of his sober little gray wife the sweetest love song of the birds. It is a flood of soft warbling notes, tinkling like a brook deep under the ice, tumbling over each other in a quiet ecstasy of harmony; mellow as the song of the hermit-thrush, but much softer, as if he feared lest any should hear but her to whom he sang.

Those who know the music of the rose-breasted grosbeak (not his robin-like song of spring, but the exquisitely soft warble to his brooding mate) may multiply its sweetness indefinitely, and so form an idea of what the pine-grosbeak's song is like.

But sometimes he forgets himself in his winter visit, and sings as other birds do, just because his world is bright; and then, once in a lifetime, a New England bird lover hears him, and remembers; and regrets for the rest of his life that the grosbeak's northern country life has made him so shy a visitor.

One Christmas morning, a few years ago, the new-fallen snow lay white and pure over all the woods and fields. It was soft and clinging as it fell on Christmas eve. Now every old wall and fence was a carved bench of gleaming white; every post and stub had a soft white robe and a tall white hat; and every little bush and thicket was a perfect fairyland of white arches and glistening columns, and dark grottoes walled about with delicate frostwork of silver and jewels. And then the glory, dazzling beyond all words, when the sun rose and shone upon it!

Before sunrise I was out. Soon the jumping flight and cheery good-morning of a downy woodp.e.c.k.e.r led me to an old field with scattered evergreen clumps. There is no better time for a quiet peep at the birds than the morning after a snow-storm, and no better place than the evergreens. If you can find them at all (which is not certain, for they have mysterious ways of disappearing before a storm), you will find them unusually quiet, and willing to bear your scrutiny indifferently, instead of flying off into deeper coverts.

I had scarcely crossed the wall when I stopped at hearing a new bird song, so amazingly sweet that it could only be a Christmas message, yet so out of place that the listener stood doubting whether his ears were playing him false, wondering whether the music or the landscape would not suddenly vanish as an unreal thing. The song was continuous--a soft melodious warble, full of sweetness and suggestion; but suggestion of June meadows and a summer sunrise, rather than of snow-packed evergreens and Christmastide. To add to the unreality, no ear could tell where the song came from; its own m.u.f.fled quality disguised the source perfectly. I searched the trees in front; there was no bird there. I looked behind; there was no place for a bird to sing. I remembered the redstart, how he calls sometimes from among the rocks, and refuses to show himself, and runs and hides when you look for him. I searched the wall; but not a bird track marked the snow.

All the while the wonderful carol went on, now in the air, now close beside me, growing more and more bewildering as I listened. It took me a good half-hour to locate the sound; then I understood.

Near me was a solitary fir tree with a bushy top. The bird, whoever he was, had gone to sleep up there, close against the trunk, as birds do, for protection. During the night the soft snow gathered thicker and thicker upon the flexible branches. Their tips bent with the weight till they touched the trunk below, forming a green bower, about which the snow packed all night long, till it was completely closed in. The bird was a prisoner inside, and singing as the morning sun shone in through the walls of his prison-house.

As I listened, delighted with the carol and the minstrel's novel situation, a ma.s.s of snow, loosened by the sun, slid from the snow bower, and a pine-grosbeak appeared in the doorway. A moment he seemed to look about curiously over the new, white, beautiful world; then he hopped to the topmost twig and, turning his crimson breast to the sunrise, poured out his morning song; no longer m.u.f.fled, but sweet and clear as a wood-thrush bell ringing the sunset.

Once, long afterward, I heard his softer love song, and found his nest in the heart of a New Brunswick forest. Till then it was not known that he ever built south of Labrador. But even that, and the joy of discovery, lacked the charm of this rare sweet carol, coming all unsought and unexpected, as good things do, while our own birds were spending the Christmas time and singing the sunrise in Florida.

XV. MOOWEEN THE BEAR.

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Ever since nursery times Bruin has been largely a creature of imagination. He dwells there a ferocious beast, prowling about gloomy woods, red eyed and dangerous, ready to rush upon the unwary traveler and eat him on the spot.

Sometimes, indeed, we have seen him out of imagination. There he is a poor, tired, clumsy creature, footsore and dusty, with a halter round his neck, and a swarthy foreigner to make his life miserable. At the word he rises to his hind legs, hunches his shoulders, and lunges awkwardly round in a circle, while the foreigner sings _Horry, horry, dum-dum_, and his wife pa.s.ses the hat.

We children pity the bear, as we watch, and forget the other animal that frightens us when near the woods at night. But he pa.s.ses on at last, with a troop of boys following to the town limits. Next day Bruin comes back, and lives in imagination as ugly and frightful as ever.

But Mooween the Bear, as the northern Indians call him, the animal that lives up in the woods of Maine and Canada, is a very different kind of creature. He is big and glossy black, with long white teeth and sharp black claws, like the imagination bear. Unlike him, however, he is shy and wild, and timid as any rabbit. When you camp in the wilderness at night, the rabbit will come out of his form in the ferns to pull at your shoe, or nibble a hole in the salt bag, while you sleep. He will play twenty pranks under your very eyes. But if you would see Mooween, you must camp many summers, and tramp many a weary mile through the big forests before catching a glimpse of him, or seeing any trace save the deep tracks, like a barefoot boy's, left in some soft bit of earth in his hurried flight.

Mooween's ears are quick, and his nose very keen. The slightest warning from either will generally send him off to the densest cover or the roughest hillside in the neighborhood. Silently as a black shadow he glides away, if he has detected your approach from a distance. But if surprised and frightened, he dashes headlong through the brush with crash of branches, and b.u.mp of fallen logs, and volleys of dirt and dead wood flung out behind him as he digs his toes into the hillside in his frantic haste to be away.

In the first startled instant of such an encounter, one thinks there must be twenty bears scrambling up the hill. And if you should perchance get a glimpse of the game, you will be conscious chiefly of a funny little pair of wrinkled black feet, turned up at you so rapidly that they actually seem to twinkle through a cloud of flying loose stuff.

That was the way in which I first met Mooween. He was feeding peaceably on blueberries, just stuffing himself with the ripe fruit that tinged with blue a burned hillside, when I came round the turn of a deer path. There he was, the mighty, ferocious beast--and my only weapon a trout-rod!

We discovered each other at the same instant. Words can hardly measure the mutual consternation. I felt scared; and in a moment it flashed upon me that he looked so. This last observation was like a breath of inspiration. It led me to make a demonstration before he should regain his wits. I jumped forward with a flourish, and threw my hat at him.--

_Boo!_ said I.

_Hoof, woof!_ said Mooween. And away he went up the hill in a desperate scramble, with loose stones rattling, and the bottoms of his feet showing constantly through the volley of dirt and chips flung out behind him.

That killed the fierce imagination bear of childhood days deader than any bullet could have done, and convinced me that Mooween is at heart a timid creature. Still, this was a young bear, as was also one other upon whom I tried the same experiment, with the same result. Had he been older and bigger, it might have been different. In that case I have found that a good rule is to go your own way un.o.btrusively, leaving Mooween to his devices. All animals, whether wild or domestic, respect a man who neither fears nor disturbs them.

Mooween's eyes are his weak point. They are close together, and seem to focus on the ground a few feet in front of his nose. At twenty yards to leeward he can never tell you from a stump or a caribou, should you chance to be standing still.

If fortunate enough to find the ridge where he sleeps away the long summer days, one is almost sure to get a glimpse of him by watching on the lake below. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still in your canoe among the water-gra.s.ses near sh.o.r.e. When near a lake, a bear will almost invariably come down about noontime to sniff carefully all about, and lap the water, and perhaps find a dead fish before going back for his afternoon sleep.

Four or five times I have sat thus in my canoe while Mooween pa.s.sed close by, and never suspected my presence till a chirp drew his attention. It is curious at such times, when there is no wind to bring the scent to his keen nose, to see him turn his head to one side, and wrinkle his forehead in the vain endeavor to make out the curious object there in the gra.s.s. At last he rises on his hind legs, and stares long and intently. It seems as if he must recognize you, with his nose pointing straight at you, his eyes looking straight into yours. But he drops on all fours again, and glides silently into the thick bushes that fringe the sh.o.r.e.

Don't stir now, nor make the least sound. He is in there, just out of sight, sitting on his haunches, using nose and ears to catch your slightest message.

Ten minutes pa.s.s by in intense silence. Down on the sh.o.r.e, fifty yards below, a slight swaying of the bilberry bushes catches your eye. That surely is not the bear! There has not been a sound since he disappeared. A squirrel could hardly creep through that underbrush without noise enough to tell where he was. But the bushes sway again, and Mooween reappears suddenly for another long look at the suspicious object. Then he turns and plods his way along sh.o.r.e, rolling his head from side to side as if completely mystified.

Now swing your canoe well out into the lake, and head him off on the point, a quarter of a mile below. Hold the canoe quiet just outside the lily pads by grasping a few tough stems, and sit low. This time the big object catches Mooween's eye as he rounds the point; and you have only to sit still to see him go through the same maneuvers with greater mystification than before.

Once, however, he varied his program, and gave me a terrible start, letting me know for a moment just how it feels to be hunted, at the same time showing with what marvelous stillness he can glide through the thickest cover when he chooses.

It was early evening on a forest lake. The water lay like a great mirror, with the sunset splendor still upon it. The hush of twilight was over the wilderness. Only the hermit-thrushes sang wild and sweet from a hundred dead spruce tops.

I was drifting about, partly in the hope to meet Mooween, whose tracks were very numerous at the lower end of the lake, when I heard him walking in the shallow water. Through the gla.s.s I made him out against the sh.o.r.e, as he plodded along in my direction.

I had long been curious to know how near a bear would come to a man without discovering him. Here was an opportunity. The wind at sunset had been in my favor; now there was not the faintest breath stirring.

Hiding the canoe, I sat down in the sand on a little point, where dense bushes grew down to within a few feet of the water's edge. Head and shoulders were in plain sight above the water-gra.s.s. My intentions were wholly peaceable, notwithstanding the rifle that lay across my knees. It was near the mating season, when Mooween's temper is often dangerous; and one felt much more comfortable with the chill of the cold iron in his hands.

Mooween came rapidly along the sh.o.r.e meanwhile, evidently anxious to reach the other end of the lake. In the mating season bears use the margins of lakes and streams as natural highways. As he drew nearer and nearer I gazed with a kind of fascination at the big unconscious brute. He carried his head low, and dropped his feet with a heavy splash into the shallow water.

At twenty yards he stopped as if struck, with head up and one paw lifted, sniffing suspiciously. Even then he did not see me, though only the open sh.o.r.e lay between us. He did not use his eyes at all, but laid his great head back on his shoulders and sniffed in every direction, rocking his brown muzzle up and down the while, so as to take in every atom from the tainted air.

A few slow careful steps forward, and he stopped again, looked straight into my eyes, then beyond me towards the lake, all the while sniffing. I was still only part of the sh.o.r.e. Yet he was so near that I caught the gleam of his eyes, and saw the nostrils swell and the muzzle twitch nervously.

Another step or two, and he planted his fore feet firmly. The long hairs began to rise along his spine, and under his wrinkled chops was a flash of white teeth. Still he had no suspicion of the motionless object there in the gra.s.s. He looked rather out on the lake. Then he glided into the brush and was lost to sight and hearing.

He was so close that I scarcely dared breathe as I waited, expecting him to come out farther down the sh.o.r.e. Five minutes pa.s.sed without the slightest sound to indicate his whereabouts, though I was listening intently in the dead hush that was on the lake. All the while I smelled him strongly. One can smell a bear almost as far as he can a deer, though the scent does not cling so long to the underbrush.

A bush swayed slightly below where he had disappeared. I was watching it closely when some sudden warning--I know not what, for I did not hear but only felt it--made me turn my head quickly. There, not six feet away, a huge head and shoulders were thrust out of the bushes on the bank, and a pair of gleaming eyes were peering intently down upon me in the gra.s.s. He had been watching me at arm's length probably two or three minutes. Had a muscle moved in all that time, I have no doubt that he would have sprung upon me. As it was, who can say what was pa.s.sing behind that curious, half-puzzled, half-savage gleam in his eyes?

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He drew quickly back as a sudden movement on my part threw the rifle into position. A few minutes later I heard the snap of a rotten twig some distance away. Not another sound told of his presence till he broke out onto the sh.o.r.e, fifty yards above, and went steadily on his way up the lake.

Mooween is something of a humorist in his own way. When not hungry he will go out of his way to frighten a bullfrog away from his sun-bath on the sh.o.r.e, for no other purpose, evidently, than just to see him jump. Watching him thus amusing himself one afternoon, I was immensely entertained by seeing him turn his head to one side, and wrinkle his eyebrows, as each successive frog said _ke'dunk_, and went splashing away over the lily pads.

A pair of cubs are playful as young foxes, while their extreme awkwardness makes them a dozen times more comical. Simmo, my Indian guide, tells me that the cubs will sometimes run away and hide when they hear the mother bear returning. No amount of coaxing or of anxious fear on her part will bring them back, till she searches diligently to find them.

Once only have I had opportunity to see the young at play. There were two of them, nearly full-grown, with the mother. The most curious thing was to see them stand up on their hind legs and cuff each other soundly, striking and warding like trained boxers. Then they would lock arms and wrestle desperately till one was thrown, when the other promptly seized him by throat or paw, and pretended to growl frightfully.