Part 9
It would seem, therefore, that to be a poet does not always give one the coign of vantage in observing Nature, but may, on the contrary, prove a positive disadvantage. Should the rambler go about “crooning rhymes” and making an over-sweet melody to himself, instead of keeping his ear alert to the music around him, he would be likely to miss many a wild, sweet song fully as enchanting as his own measured lines. No music of my own, however, diverted my mind from Nature’s blithe minstrels as, on the twenty-ninth of April, 1892, I pursued my avian studies in some of my favorite resorts.
It was nine o’clock when I reached the quiet woodland lying beyond a couple of fields. The first fact noted was the return of a number of interesting migrants which had not been present on the preceding day. They had, as is their wont, come by night from some more southern rendezvous. Among them was the oven-bird or accentor, announcing his presence with his startling song, which at first seemed to come from a distance, but gradually drew nearer, like a voice walking toward me as it grew louder and more accelerated. On account of this quaint ventriloquial quality of voice, the little vocalist is often very difficult to find, and you are sure to look in a dozen places before you at last descry him. What a sedate genius he is, as he sits atilt on a twig, or walks in his leisurely fashion on the leaf-carpeted ground, looking up at you at intervals out of his sage, beady eyes.
I have hinted that the oven-bird was first seen and then heard. In this respect the habits of different species of birds differ widely. The accentors, meadow-larks, orioles, bobolinks, Bewick’s wrens, summer warblers, white-crowned sparrows, and some other species usually begin at once to celebrate with pæans their return to their old haunts; whereas the wood-thrushes, brown thrashers, and white-throated sparrows seem to wait several days after their arrival before they tune their harps,—a diversity of behavior difficult to explain. Scarcely less inexplicable is the fact that some species arrive in scattered flocks, others in battalions and armies, and others still, one by one. My notes made on this day contain this statement: “Yesterday I heard a single call of the red-headed woodpecker; to-day the woods are full of these birds.”
On the first day of April the first Bewick’s wren of the spring appeared, but, strange to say, not another wren was seen until near the end of the month. A single bird often goes ahead of the main body of migrants like a scout or outrider; while not infrequently a small company precedes the approaching army in the capacity, perhaps, of an advance guard.
Threading my way through the “dim vistas, sprinkled o’er with sun-flecked green,” to an open space near the border of the woods, I had the opportunity of listening to an improvised cat-bird concert, without a cent of charge for admission. Here some mental notes were made on the vocal qualities of this bird in comparison with those of the celebrated brown thrasher, and with some hesitancy I give my conclusions. Each songster has his special points of excellence. The thrasher has more voice volume than his rival, his technique is better, he glides more smoothly from one part of his song to another, and executes several runs that for pure melody and skill in rendering go beyond the cat-bird’s ability; but, on the other hand, it must be said that the latter minstrel’s song contains fewer harsh, coarse, unmusical notes; his voice, on the whole, is of a finer quality, is pitched to a higher key, and his vocal performances are characterized by greater artlessness or _naïveté_. Though professing to be no connoisseur, I have never felt so deeply stirred by the thrasher’s as by the cat-bird’s minstrelsy. There does not seem to be so much fervor and real passion in the vocal efforts of the tawny musician.
A little farther on, I again turned my steps into a dense section of the woods. Suddenly there was a twinkle of wings, a flash of olive-green, a sharp _Chip_, and then there before me, a few rods away, a little bird went hopping about on the ground, picking up dainties from the brown leaves. What could it be? Was I about to find a species that was new to me? It really seemed so. My opera-glass, when levelled upon the bird, revealed olive-green upper parts, yellow or buff under parts, and four black stripes on the head, two on the pileum and one through each eye. It was the rare worm-eating warbler (_Helmitherus vermivorus_) at last,—a bird that had for many years eluded me. The little charmer was quite wary, chirping nervously while I ogled him,—for it was a male,—and then hopped up into a sapling, and finally scurried away out of sight.
A few steps farther on in the woods an extremely fine cat-like call swung down, like thread of sound, from the tree-tops. Of course, it was my tiny acquaintance the blue-gray gnat-catcher, and his pretty spouse, who had arrived, perhaps from Cuba or Guatemala, a few days before. What an immense distance for their frail little wings to traverse, “through tracts and provinces of sky”! You seldom see anything more dainty and dream-like than the fluttering of these birds from one tree-top to another, reminding you of an animated cloudlet hovering and darting about in mid-air. Not a more fay-like bird visits my woodland than the blue-gray gnat-catcher. Even the ruby-throated hummingbird, though still smaller, seems rather roly-poly in comparison; and no warbler, not even the graceful redstart, can flit about so airily. One of the gnat-catchers in the tree-top presently darted out after a miller, which tried to escape by letting itself fall toward the ground. A vigorous drama followed. The bird plunged nimbly after, whirling round and round in a spiral course until it had secured its wriggling prize.
The gnat-catcher lisps a little song,—a gossamer melody, it might be called. His slender voice has quite a “resonant tang.” On that day I did not take notes on his music, but the next day I had a good opportunity to do so; and I give the result, especially as no minute description of this bird’s song has been recorded, so far as I know. I had often heard it before, but had neglected to listen to it intently enough to analyze its peculiar quality. Bending my ear upon it, I distinctly and unmistakably detected, besides the bird’s own notes, the notes of three other birds,—those of the cat-bird’s alarm-call, of the phœbe’s song, and of the goldfinch’s song and call. The imitation in each case was perfect, save that the gnat-catcher’s tones were slenderer than those of the birds whose music he had (if I may so speak) plagiarized. Is this tiny minstrel a mocker? Perhaps my description may be a surprise to many students of bird minstrelsy, but I can only say that, having listened to the song for fully an hour, I could not well have been mistaken. Several times the reproduction of the goldfinch’s song was so perfect that I looked the tree all over again and again with my glass for that bird, but goldfinches there were none about. Moreover, the gnat-catcher was in plain sight, dropping quite low in the tree part of the time; and there can be no doubt that every strain proceeded from his lyrical little throat.
The forenoon and part of the afternoon slipped away all too rapidly, bringing many valuable additions to my stock of bird lore; but I must pass others by to describe the most important “find” (to me) of this red-letter day in my experience. At about half-past four o’clock I reached an old bush-covered gravel-bank where many birds of various species have been encountered. As I stepped near a pool at the foot of the bank, a little bird flashed into view, setting my pulses all a-flutter. It was the hooded warbler, the first of the species I had ever seen. He was recognizable at once by the bright yellow hood he wore, bordered all around with deep black. A bright, flitting blossom of the bird world!
For fully an hour I lingered in that “embowered solitude,” watching the bird’s quaint behavior, which deserves more than a mere passing notice. He was not in the least shy or nervous, but seemed rather to court my presence. Almost every moment was spent in capturing insects on the wing or in sitting on a perch watching for them to flash into view. Like a genuine flycatcher, as soon as a buzzing insect hove in sight, he would dart out after it, and never once failed to secure his prize. Sometimes he would plunge swiftly downward after a gnat or a miller, and once, having caught a miller that was large and inclined to be refractory, he flew to the ground, beat it awhile on the clods, and then swallowed it with a consequential air which seemed to say, “That is my way of disposing of such cases!” Several times he mounted almost straight up from his perch, and twice he almost turned a somersault in pursuit of an insect. Once he clung like a titmouse to the bole of a sapling. I could often hear the snapping of his mandibles as he nabbed his prey. When an insect came between him and myself, he would fearlessly dash directly toward me, as if he meant to fly in my face or alight on my head, often coming within a few feet of me. He seemed to be as confiding as a child. When I stepped to the other end of the gravel-bank, going even a little beyond it, curiously enough, the bird pursued me; then, as an experiment, I walked back to my first post of observation, and, to my surprise, he followed me again. Was he really desirous of my company? Or did he know that I intended to ring his praises in type? At length I stole away a short distance among the trees, but presently a loud chirping in my rear arrested my attention. I turned back, and found it to be my new-made friend, the hooded warbler, who, strange to say, seemed to be calling me back to his haunt. Then I climbed to the top of the gravel-bank; he selected perches higher up in the saplings than before, so as to be nearer me,—at least, so it appeared. The affectionate little darling! The only other sound he uttered during the entire time of our hobnobbing—his and mine—was the slenderest hint of a song, which was really more of a twitter than a tune.
But at last I bade the little sorcerer a reluctant adieu. In a hollow of the woods I lay down on the green grass, and listened for half an hour to the lyrical medley of a brown thrasher perched on a treetop. It was indeed a wonderful performance, and the longer I listened the more its witchery grew upon me. My special purpose in bending my whole attention upon this performance was to see if the thrasher mimicked the songs of other birds. Many persons think him a genuine imitator; indeed, in some places he is called the northern mocking-bird. I am forced to say, however, that, as far as my observation goes, he does not mimic, but sings his own compositions, like the original genius he is. In all that song, and others since listened to, not a single strain did he utter that I could positively identify as belonging to the musical repertoire of another bird. It is true, he sometimes, in the midst of his song, uttered the alarm call of the robin; but as both birds belong to the same family, this was not to be wondered at, and affords no evidence of the gift of imitation. If the thrasher does mimic his fellow-minstrels, as many persons contend, the borrowed notes are so brief and so intermingled and blent with his own music as to be unrecognizable.
On the other hand, this tawny vocalist utters musical strains that are entirely unlike anything else in the whole realm of bird minstrelsy, proving his song to be characteristic. The brown thrasher is not a musical pirate, but an original composer,—a sort of Mozart or Beethoven in the bird world. And how wonderful are some of his slurred runs! Nothing in the domain of music could be finer, and the harsh notes he frequently interpolates only serve to accentuate and enhance the melody of those that are truly lyrical.
In his engaging book entitled “Birds in the Bush,” Bradford Torrey, who is second to none in the school of popular writers on feathered folk, characterizes this tawny vocalist in a most admirable manner. However, in regard to the matter of mimicry, his observations differ slightly from my own; yet I gladly quote what he says rather incidentally on the subject. One day he was listening to three thrashers singing simultaneously. “In the midst of the hurly-burly,” he writes, “one of the trio suddenly sounded the whippoorwill’s call twice,—an absolutely perfect reproduction.” Then he adds, somewhat jocosely, in a foot-note: “The ‘authorities’ long since forbade _Harporhynchus rufus_ to play the mimic. Probably in the excitement of the moment this fellow forgot himself.” Of course, one cannot gainsay the testimony of so careful an observer and so conscientious a reporter as Mr. Torrey; yet it is possible that this whippoorwill call was only a slip of the thrasher’s voice and not an intended imitation; at all events, in my opinion, such vocal coincidences, whether accidental or designed, are of rare occurrence.
Since the foregoing observations were made and first published, I have often sought to prove them untrue, but have failed. No thrasher has ever, in my hearing, unmistakably plagiarized a single strain from his fellow-musicians. Fearing my ear for music might be defective, rendering me incapable of distinguishing correctly the various songs of birds, I put myself to the test in this way: On one of the streets of my native town there is a brilliant mocking-bird, whose cage is often hung out on a veranda. Again and again I have stopped to listen to his ringing medley, and have never failed to hear him distinctly mimic the songs and calls of other birds, such as the robin, blue jay, cardinal grossbeak, and red-headed woodpecker. Why should I be able instantly to detect the notes of other birds in the mocker’s song and never once be able to detect them in the song of the thrasher?
But it is fully time to return to my ramble. The gifted songster in the tree-top would sometimes pipe a strain of such exquisite sweetness that it seemed to surprise himself; he would pause a moment, as if to reflect upon it and fix it in mind for future use; and erelong he would repeat it, reminding his admiring auditor of Browning’s lines on the Wise Thrush,—
“He sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture.”
New strains were continually introduced. So loud and full were some of his notes that “the blue air trembled with his song,” and the woods fairly woke into echoes. It is really doubtful if the disparaging term “hurly-burly” should be applied to such peerless vocalization. It was bird opera music of the highest style, improvised for the occasion, and formed a fitting conclusion to this rare birds’ gala-day.
XIV. RIFE WITH BIRDS. A JAUNT TO A NEW FIELD.
A four days’ outing along the Ohio River one spring brought me some “finds” that may be of interest to bird lovers. Everywhere there were the twinkle of wings, the twitter of voices, and the charm of song; indeed, so plentiful were the feathered folk that the title of this article is far less poetical than realistic and descriptive. It was the latter part of May, the time in that latitude when the birds were in full song, at least those which were not too busy with their family cares. Sixty-four species were seen during a stay of four days in the neighborhood.
Mine host was a farmer whose premises afforded a habitat for numerous birds, there being many trees and bushes in the yard and a large orchard near by. In one of the silver maples a pair of warbling vireos had built a tiny pendent cradle, as is their wont, set in a bower of shining twigs and green leaves. There it swayed in the zephyrs, rocking the birdlings to sleep and filling their dreams with rhythm; and the lullabies that the happy parents sang were cheerful and engaging, in spite of the fact that some critic has pronounced the minstrelsy of the warbling vireo tiresome. Tiresome, forsooth! Truth to tell, the more closely you listen to it the sweeter it grows. All day long, from peep of dawn to evening twilight, those quaint, continuous lays could be heard, now subdued and desultory, now almost as vigorous as a robin’s carol.
It sometimes seemed as if the vireos and orchard orioles were rival vocalists. If so, a prize should be awarded to both,—to the vireos for persistency, for never letting up; to the orioles for richness and melody of tone. Many a rollicking two-part concert they gave.
But there were other voices frequently heard in the chorus, though not so continuously as those of the birds just mentioned. A song-sparrow, which had built a dainty cot in a bush not two rods from the veranda, sometimes trilled an interlude of entrancing sweetness, taking the bays for real tunefulness from every rival. Then, to my surprise, a Maryland yellow-throat, shy little fellow in other places, would frequently sing his heart out in the small trees and silver maples of the front yard. He did not fly off or discontinue his song when an auditor stood right beneath his perch, but would throw back his masked head, distend his golden throat, and deliver his trill to his own and everybody else’s satisfaction. Very often, too, the indigo-bird, just returned from a bath in the cerulean depths, would enrich the harmony with the most rollicksome, if not the most tuneful lay of the chorus. As a sort of accompaniment, the chipping-sparrow often trilled his silvery monotone; and once a robin added his _Cheerily, here, here!_
So much for the birds about the house, though there were many others that have not been mentioned; in fact, there were some twenty species in all. There were also birds a-plenty in other places. A half day was spent in some fields bordering the broad river. On a green slope was a bush-sparrow’s nest, daintily bowered in the grass by the side of a blackberry bush, and in a thicket hard by two yellow-breasted chats had placed their grassy cradles, proclaiming their secret to all the world by their loud cries of warning to keep away. It is odd that these birds, shy and nervous as they are, should go so far out of their way to tell you that they have a nest somewhere in the copse that you mustn’t touch, mustn’t even look for. While you are yet a quarter of a mile away, they will utter their loud cries of warning; and if you go to the thicket where they are, you will be almost sure to find their nest, so poorly have they learned the lesson of discretion.
In a little hollow of the copse a dying crow lay prone upon the ground. At intervals he would struggle and gasp in a spasmodic way. When I gently moved him with my cane, he grasped it with his claws and held it quite firmly. I put the stick to his large black beak. He took hold of it feebly, ready to defend himself even with his last gasp, for that it proved to be; he lay over and died the next instant. I could not give the pathology of the case, as no wounds could be found on his body.
One of the most interesting finds of the day was the nest of a green heron, often called “fly-up-the-creek.” The nest, only a loosely constructed platform of sticks, was placed on the branches of a leaning clump of small trees, and was about twenty feet from the ground. The startled bird flew back and forth in the row of trees, and even went back to the nest while I watched her at a distance, but was too shy to remain there when I went near. In spite of the offensive nicknames foisted upon this heron, it is a handsome bird. As this one flew back and forth she made quite an elegant picture, with her long, glossy-brown neck and tail, white throat-line, ash-blue back, dappled under parts, and the long, slender feathers draping her hind-neck. But why was she called the green heron? Look as sharply as I would, I could descry no green in her plumage. A few days later, however, I examined a mounted specimen, and then the puzzle was solved; for an iridescent green patch on the wing was so marked a feature of its coloration as to account for the bird’s common name.
Memory will always linger fondly about a certain afternoon and evening spent on the steep hills mounting up toward the sky a quarter of a mile or more back from the river. To a pedestrian like myself, used to rambling over a comparatively level scope of country, these high hills afforded a wonderful prospect, and almost made my head dizzy, as I clambered far up their steep sides. Perhaps the mountain-climber would think them tame. It made my head swim that evening to see a towhee bunting dart from a copse near by and hurl himself with reckless abandon down the declivity, as if there were not the slightest danger of breaking his neck or dashing himself to pieces. He stopped just in time to plunge into another thicket for which he had taken aim.
As the sun sank, I seated myself on the grass far up the steep, and looked down on the beautiful valley below me. There was the broad Ohio, wending its way between the sentinel hills, the green clover fields and meadows smiling good-night to the sinking sun, and the brown ploughed fields with their green corn-rows. A wood-thrush mounted to a dead twig at the very top of a tall oak some distance below me, and poured forth his sad vesper hymn, so bewitchingly sweet and far-away; the while Kentucky warblers and cardinal grossbeaks piped their lullabies or madrigals, as they chose, from the darkling woods; and, altogether, it was a never-to-be-forgotten evening.
An early morning hour found me climbing the acclivity and mounting to the top of the hill. In a clover-field the gossamer _Tse-e-e_ of the grasshopper sparrow, a birdlet among birds, pierced my ear. Presently a pair of these sparrows were seen on the fence-stakes, and, yes, one of them had a worm in its bill, indicating that there were little ones in the neighborhood. If I could find a grasshopper sparrow’s nest! Often had I sought for one, but without success. For a long while my eyes followed the bird with the worm in her bill. Every now and then she would dart over into the grass as if to feed her bantlings, and I would mark the spot where she alighted; but when I went to it no nest or birdlings were to be found. Again and again I fairly trembled, thinking myself on the verge of a discovery, only to be balked completely in the end. But one victory was won; I got close enough to the bird to see distinctly with my glass the yellow markings on the edge of the wings,—a characteristic I had never before been able to make out. Curiously enough, one wing of this bird was quite profusely tinged with yellow, while the yellow of the other could just be distinguished.
Why should not a bird-student frankly chronicle his failures as well as his successes? During the day I encountered three birds that I was unable to identify, try as I would. One was singing lustily in some tall trees, and when at length I got my glass upon him he looked like a Carolina wren; but that bird has been a familiar acquaintance for many years,—comparatively speaking,—and I have so often heard his varied roundels that they certainly are all known to me. Moreover, the quality of this mysterious singer’s voice and the manner of his execution were wholly different from those of the Carolina or any other wren of my acquaintance. The following is a transcription of the song as near as it could be represented by letters: _Che-ha-p-e-e-r-r-r!_ _che-ha-p-e-e-r-r-r!_ repeated at brief intervals loudly and vigorously, but without variation. The bird had a white superciliary line, brownish-barred wings, and whitish under parts. A consultation of all the manuals in my possession fails to solve the problem.