Part 12

The men who live in such houses, the keeper tells me, are very wide-awake and well informed, reading their weekly newspaper with thoroughness, and always ready for rational talk on current topics. They are not rich, of course, in the down-country sense of the word, and see very little money, subsisting mainly upon the produce of the farm; a matter of twenty-five dollars a year may cover all their expenditures; but they are better fed, and really live in more comfort, than a great part of the folks who live in cities. I am glad to believe it; and I like the man’s way of standing by his neighbors. In fact, I think highly of him as a person of a good heart and no small discrimination; and therefore I am all the gladder when, having left the summit and stopped for a minute in the shade of a tree, I overhear him say to the musician, “That old man enjoys himself; he’s a _nice_ old man.” “Thank you,” say I, not aloud, but with deep inward sincerity; “that’s one of the best compliments I’ve had for many a day.” Blessings on this mountain air, that makes human speech unintentionally audible. An old man that enjoys himself is pretty near to my ideal of respectable senility. “Thank you,” I repeat; “that’s praise, and faith, I’ll print it.” And so I will, pleasing myself, let the ungentle reader--if I have one--think what he may. A good name is more to brag of than a million of money.

Yes, I am enjoying myself (why not?), and I loiter down the road with a light heart (an old man should be used to going downhill), pausing by the way to notice a little group--a family party, it is reasonable to guess--of golden-crowned kinglets. One of them, the only one I see fully, has a plain crown, showing neither black stripes nor central orange patch. But for his unmistakable _zee-zee-zee_, which he is considerate enough to utter while I am looking at him, he might be taken for a ruby-crown. So the lover of beauty and the hobbyist descend the hill together, keeping step like inseparable friends. And so may it be to the end of the chapter.

INDEX

INDEX

Adder’s-mouth, 149.

Arbutus, trailing, 57, 91, 133.

Aster Lindleyanus, 5, 181.

Azalea, Lapland, 140.

Beech-fern, 146.

Blueberries, alpine, 24.

Bluebird, 123, 125, 209, 210, 234.

Bobolink, 97, 110, 117, 213.

Butterflies, 10, 28, 36, 123, 145, 172.

Catbird, 29, 106, 117, 189, 191.

Cedar-bird, 15, 187.

Cherry, wild red, 79, 130, 148, 211; rum, 183.

Chickadee, black-capped, 13, 15, 16, 22, 72, 83, 94, 170, 191; Hudsonian, 15, 53.

Chokeberry, 133.

Chokecherry, yellow, 181.

Cicada, 54.

Clintonia, 164, 231.

Coltsfoot, 67.

Cornel, dwarf, 57, 122, 133, 150, 163, 231.

Creeper, brown, 129, 138.

Crossbill, red, 19, 194, 228; white-winged, 19.

Crow, 11, 97, 210.

Cuckoo, black-billed, 145.

Finch, pine, 126, 144, 170, 228; purple, 117.

Fleas, 32.

Flowers, alpine, 140.

Flycatcher, alder, 105, 125, 148, 214, 230, 240; crested, 99, 125, 210, 214; least, 212, 213, 214; olive-sided, 101, 105, 130, 169, 212, 214; yellow-bellied, 101, 215.

Fox, 58.

Goldfinch, 72, 172, 189, 191, 211.

Goldthread, 57, 83, 133, 150, 231.

Grosbeak, rose-breasted, 86, 117, 127.

Grouse, 27, 101, 192, 205, 210, 211.

Hardhack, 155.

Hawk, sparrow, 240.

Hobble-bush, 13, 130.

Houstonia, 133.

Humming-bird, 160, 205.

Hyla, 192.

Indigo-bird, 159.

Kinglet, golden-crowned, 138, 192, 246; ruby-crowned, 29, 66, 72, 192.

Kingfisher, 16.

Lady’s-slipper, pink, 108, 133; yellow, 111, 235.

Lark, meadow, 115; prairie horned, 162, 166, 195, 217, 234.

Lonesome Lake, 11.

Martin, purple, 117.

Maryland yellow-throat, 72, 125, 145, 189.

Merganser, 221.

Mountain ash, 17.

Mountain holly, 163, 231.

Nuthatch, red-breasted, 17, 121, 194; white-breasted, 189, 213, 216.

Oriole, 117.

Oven-bird, 125, 143, 216.

Owl, barred, 22.

Phœbe, 191, 209.

Raspberry, 151, 162.

Rhodora, 85, 133.

Robin, 13, 22, 74, 117, 170, 189, 191.

Salix balsamifera, 6, 41, 85, 155.

Sandpiper, solitary, 89, 115, 170.

Sandwort, Greenland, 25.

Sapsucker, 68, 148, 183, 184, 189, 215, 230.

Shadbush, 80, 83, 91, 133, 211.

Shadbush, few-flowered, 91, 133.

Siskin, pine, 126, 144, 170, 228.

Snowbird, 14, 15, 63, 240.

Sparrow, chipping, 77; English, 118; field, 77, 116, 117, 159, 189; fox, 57; Lincoln’s, 68, 74, 77; savanna, 78; song, 72, 74, 77, 117, 123, 159, 170, 189, 191, 210; swamp, 74, 172; vesper, 8, 44, 51, 116, 117, 123, 160, 191; white-crowned, 74, 77, 114, 194; white-throated, 13, 15, 25, 57, 66, 74, 83, 93, 130, 148, 160, 170, 189, 191.

Spiders, 31.

Spring-beauty, 88, 89.

Swallow, bank, 117; barn, 97, 117, 118, 152, 159, 234, 240; cliff, 117; tree, 117.

Swift, 134, 240.

Tanager, 72, 101, 117, 126.

Thorn-bush, 180.

Thrush, gray-cheeked, 117; hermit, 14, 21, 29, 30, 39, 80, 113, 115, 117, 148, 159, 165, 191, 237; olive-backed (Swainson’s), 14, 21, 22, 101, 117, 144, 189, 193; water, 105; Wilson’s (veery), 101, 110, 115, 117; wood, 112, 117, 126, 127.

Toad, 131.

Trillium, painted, 83, 133.

Violet, dog-tooth, 89; round-leaved, 88, 89, 130; Selkirk’s, 122, 135.

Vireo, Philadelphia, 189, 190; red-eyed, 18, 72, 116, 144, 159, 170, 210; solitary, 8, 66, 68, 72, 117, 148, 189, 191; warbling, 120; yellow-throated, 115, 214.

Warbler, bay-breasted, 72, 73, 87, 94; Blackburnian, 86, 87, 94, 135; black-and-white, 104; blackpoll, 72, 142; black-throated blue, 126; black-throated green, 72, 189; blue yellow-backed, 127, 216; Canada, 101, 230; Cape May, 94, 102, 103, 106, 107, 111, 198, 217; chestnut-sided, 72, 73, 170; magnolia, 101, 127, 144; mourning, 112, 128; myrtle, 68, 72, 143, 144, 189, 211, 240; Nashville, 127, 189, 213; Tennessee, 41, 92, 101, 102, 103, 105; Wilson’s black-cap, 114.

Woodchuck, 61, 86, 96.

Wood pewee, 169, 214.

Woodpecker, arctic three-toed, 14; downy, 68; golden-winged, 16, 68, 72; hairy, 41; pileated, 45, 99, 156, 183, 193, 234.

Wood-sorrel, 167.

Wren, winter, 10, 57, 72, 90, 117.

The Riverside Press _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The species was not new. A Maine collector had anticipated her, I believe. Whether _his_ name was given to the flea I did not learn or have forgotten.

[2] The _Atlantic Monthly_.

[3] “I named it Tom’s Finch,” says Audubon, “in honor of our friend Lincoln, who was a great favorite among us.”

[4] But the brightness of red-maple groves at this season is mostly not in the leaves, but in the fruit.

[5] Yes, he has even been seen (and “taken”), so I am told, at the summit of Mount Washington.

[6] No, the line is Coleridge’s:--

“the merry nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes.”

[7] So I was relieved to find all the Franconia white-throated sparrows introducing their sets of triplets with two--not three--longer single notes. That was how I had always whistled the tune; and I had been astonished and grieved to see it printed in musical notation by Mr. Cheney, and again by Mr. Chapman, with an introductory measure of three notes: as if it were to go, “Old Sam, Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody,” instead of, as I remembered it, and as reason dictated, “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.” I am not intimating that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Chapman are wrong, but that my own recollection was right,--a very different matter, as my present experience with Tennessee warblers was sufficient to show.

[8] I made the following list of fifty odd species heard and seen either from my windows or from the piazza: bluebird, robin, veery, hermit thrush, olive-backed thrush, chickadee, Canadian nuthatch, catbird, oven-bird, water thrush, chestnut-sided warbler, myrtle warbler, redstart, Nashville warbler, blue yellow-backed warbler, Maryland yellow-throat, warbling vireo, red-eyed vireo, cedar-bird, barn swallow, cliff swallow, sand swallow, tree swallow, goldfinch, purple finch, pine finch, red crossbill, indigo-bird, snowbird, song sparrow, field sparrow, chipping sparrow, vesper sparrow, white-throated sparrow, Baltimore oriole, bobolink, red-winged blackbird, crow, blue jay, kingbird, phœbe, least flycatcher, olive-sided flycatcher, alder flycatcher, great-crested flycatcher, wood pewee, humming-bird, chimney swift, whip-poor-will, flicker, kingfisher, black-billed cuckoo.

[9] _The Auk_, vol. v. p. 151.

[10] I was once walking over these same miles of sleepers with a bird-loving man, when he recalled a reminiscence of his boyhood. One of his teachers was remarking upon the need of seeking things in their appropriate places. “Now if you wanted to see birds,” he said, by way of illustration, “you wouldn’t go to a railroad track.” “Which is the very place we do go to,” my companion added.

[11] This and the two succeeding chapters are records of a vacation visit in May, 1901.

[12] Four days afterward (August 9) I found larks of the present season in the Landaff Valley, where I had watched their parents with so much pleasure in May, as I have described in a previous chapter. These August birds were feeding upon oats in the road, like so many English sparrows.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.