Part 12

In all my tramping over eastern Massachusetts I have met with two foxes. One I saw for perhaps the tenth part of a second, the other for perhaps two or three seconds. And probably my experience has not been exceptional. In this one particular it would be safe to wager that not one in ten of those who read this article will be able to boast of any great advantage over the man who wrote it. Yet every raiser of poultry hereabout will certify that foxes are by no means uncommon, and I know a man living within fifteen miles of the State House who, last winter, by a kind of “still hunt”--without a dog--killed three foxes in as many successive days. Reynard has fine gifts of invisibility, but a man with foxes on his mind will be likely to find them.

This same near neighbor of mine takes now and then an otter; only three or four weeks ago he showed me the skin of one on its stretching-board; and the otter is an animal that I not only have never seen in this part of the world, but never expect to see. I haven’t that kind of an eye. As for muskrats, the trapper takes them almost without number; “rats,” he calls them; while to me it is something like an event if once or twice a year I happen to come upon one swimming in a brook.

Another of these seclusive races, that manage to live close about us unespied by all except the most inquisitive of their human neighbors, is the race of flying squirrels. Whether they are more or less common than red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks, it would be difficult to say; but while red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks flit before you wherever you go, you may haunt the woods from year’s end to year’s end without seeing hide or hair of their interesting cousin. Flying squirrels stir abroad after dark; not because their deeds are evil (though they are said to like small birds and birds’ eggs), but because--well, as the wise old nursery saw very conclusively puts it, because “it is their nature to.”

Several times during the past winter I made attempts to see them (the story of one of these attempts has been told in a previous chapter), but always without success, though twice I was taken to a nest that was known to be in use. The other day I went to the same place again, the friend who conducted me having found a squirrel there that very forenoon. He shook the tree, a small gray-birch, with a nest of leaves and twigs perched in its top, and out peeped the squirrel. “See him?” said my friend. “Yes.” Then he gave the tree a harder shake, and in a moment the creature spread his “wings” and sailed gracefully away, landing on the trunk of an oak not far off, at about the height of my head. There he clung, his large handsome eye, full of a startled emotion, fastened upon me. I wondered if he would let me put my hand on him; but as I approached within three or four yards he scrambled up the tree into the small branches at the top. He was going to take another flight, if the emergency seemed to call for it, and the higher he could get, the better. The oak was too big to be shaken, but a smaller tree stood near it. This my companion shook in the squirrel’s face, and again he took flight. This time he passed squarely over my head, showing a flat outspread surface sailing through the air, looking not the least in the world like a squirrel or any other quadruped. Again he struck against a trunk, and again he ran up into the treetop. And again he was shaken off.

Four times he flew, and then I protested that I had seen enough and would not have him molested further. We left him in a maple-top, surrounded by handsome red flower-clusters.

The flight, even under such unnatural conditions, is a really pretty performance, the surprising thing about it being the ease and grace with which the acrobat manages to take an upward turn toward the end of his course, so as always to alight head uppermost against the bole.

It would be fun to see such a carnival as Audubon describes, when two hundred or more of the squirrels were at play in the evening, near Philadelphia, running up the trees and sailing away, like boys at the old game of “swinging off birches.” “Scores of them,” he says, “would leave each tree at the same moment, and cross each other, gliding like spirits through the air, seeming to have no other object in view than to indulge a playful propensity.”

Compared with that, mine was a small show; but it was so much better than nothing.

Two mornings later (April 30) I was walking up the main street of our village, lounging along, waiting for an electric car to overtake me, when I heard loud batrachian voices from a field on my left hand. “Aha!” said I, “the spade-foots are out again.” It had occurred to me within a day or two that this should be their season, if, as is believed, their appearance above ground is conditioned upon an unusual rainfall.

Some years ago, when I was amusing myself for a little with the study of toads and frogs, checking Dr. J. A. Allen’s annotated list of the Massachusetts batrachia, I became very curious about this peculiar and little understood species, known scientifically as _Scaphiopus holbrookii_, or the solitary spade-foot. It was originally described from South Carolina, I read, and was first found in Massachusetts, near Salem, about 1810. Its cries were said to have been heard at a distance of half a mile, and were mistaken for those of young crows. For more than thirty years afterward the frogs were noticed at this place only three times. They were described as burrowing in the ground, coming forth only to spawn, and that, as far as could be ascertained, at very irregular intervals, sometimes many years in length.

This, as I say, I read in Dr. Allen’s catalogue, to the great sharpening of my curiosity. If I ever heard such noises, I should be prepared to guess at the author of them. Well, some years afterward (it was almost exactly eight years ago), fresh from a first visit to Florida, where my ears had grown expectant of strange sounds (a great use of travel), I stepped out of my door one evening in late April, and was hardly in the street before I heard somewhere ahead of me a chorus of stentorian frog-notes. “That should be the spade-foot’s voice,” I said to myself, with full conviction. I hastened forward, traced the tumult to a transient pool in a field, and as I neared the place picked up a board that lay in the grass, and with it, by good fortune, turned the first frog I came in sight of into a specimen. This I sent to the batrachian specialist at Cambridge, who answered me, as I knew he would, that it was Scaphiopus.

My spade-foots of yesterday morning were in the same spot. I could not stay then to look at them, for at that moment the car came along. I left it at a favorite place in the next township, and had gone a mile or so on foot when from another transient roadside pool I heard the spade-foot’s voice again. This was most interesting. I skirted the water, trying to get within reach of one of the performers. The attempt was unsuccessful; but in the course of it I saw for the first time the creature in the act of calling. And every time I saw him I laughed. He lay stretched out at full length upon the surface of the pool, floating high, as if he were somehow peculiarly buoyant. Then suddenly his hind parts dropped, his head flew up, his enormous white, or pinkish-white, vocal sac was instantaneously inflated (like a white ball on the water), and the grating call was given out; after which the creature’s head dropped, his hinder parts bobbed up into place (sometimes he was nearly overset by the violence of the action), and again he lay silent.

This same ludicrous performance--which by the watch was repeated every three or four seconds--I observed more at length in the other pool after my return. It seems to be indulged in only so long as the frogs are unmated. I took it for the call of the male, the “lusty bachelor.” At the same moment couples lay here and there upon the water, all silent as dead men.

That was yesterday afternoon. At night, as had been true the evening previous (the neighbors in at least four of the nearer houses having noticed the uproar), the chorus was loud. I could hear it from my window, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. This morning there is no sign of batrachian life about the place. Within a very short time--long before the tadpoles, which will be hatched in two or three days, can possibly have matured--the pool will in the ordinary course of nature have dried up, and all those eggs will have gone to waste.

A strange life it seems. What do the frogs live on underground? Why do they omit, year after year, to come forth and lay their eggs? Do they wait to be drowned out, and then (like thrifty farmers, who improve a wet season in which to marry) proceed to perpetuate the species?

These and many other questions it would be easy to ask. Especially one would like to read from the inside the story of the life and adventures of the young, which grow from the egg to maturity--through tadpole to frog--without seeing father or mother. What a little we know! And how few are the things we see!

THE WARBLERS ARE COMING

They are a grand army. The Campbells are nowhere in the comparison, whether for numbers or looks. And this is their month. Let us all go out to see them and cry them welcome.

They are late, most exceptionally so. I have never known anything to match it. Brave travelers as they are (some of them, yes, many of them, are on a three or four thousand mile journey; and a long flight it is for a five-inch bird, from South America to the arctic circle)--brave travelers as they are, they cannot contend against the inevitable, and our April weather, this year, was too much even for a bird’s punctuality.

The yellow warbler, for example, one of the prettiest of the tribe, is by habit one of the truest to his schedule. In any ordinary season he may be confidently expected to arrive in our Boston country on the first day of May. If conditions favor his passage, he may even anticipate the date, perhaps by forty-eight hours. This year not a yellow warbler was to be seen up to May 6. Then, between the evening of the 6th and the morning of the 7th, the birds dropped into their accustomed places, and in the early forenoon, when I went out to look for them, they were singing as cheerily as if they had never been away. With nothing but their wits and their wings to depend upon, I thought they had done exceedingly well. To me, on such terms, South America would seem a very long way off.

The same night brought the Nashville warblers. On the 6th not one was visible, for I made it my business to look. On the morning of the 7th I had no need to search for them. In all the old haunts, among the pitch-pines and the gray-birches, they were flitting about and singing, as fresh as larks and as lively as crickets. They, too, have come from the tropics, and will go as far north, some of them, as “Labrador and the fur countries.” A bold spirit may live under a few feathers.

With them, I am pretty sure, came a goodly detachment of myrtle warblers (yellow-rumps), though the advance guards of that host (two birds were all that fell under my eye) were seen on the 18th of April. The great host is still to come; for the myrtles _are_ a host,--a multitude that no man can number. As I listen to their soft, dreamy trill on these fair spring mornings, when the tall valley willows are all in their earliest green,--a sight worth living for,--I seem sometimes to be for the moment on the heights of the White Mountains. Well I remember how much I enjoyed their quiet breath of song on the snowy upper slopes of Mt. Moosilauke in May a year ago. For the myrtle, notwithstanding his name, is a great lover of knee-high spruces.

He is a lovely bird, wherever he lives, and it is good to see him flourish, though by so doing he forfeits the peculiar charm of novelty. Everything considered, I am bound to say, that is not so regrettable a loss. If he were as scarce as some of his relatives, every collector’s hand would be against him. Czars and rare birds must pay the price.

The first member of the family to make his appearance with me this spring was the pine warbler. He was trilling in a pine grove (his name is one of the few that fit) on April 17. “The warblers are coming,” he said. Not so pronounced a beauty as many of his tribe, he is one of the most welcome. He braves the season, and with his lack of distinguishing marks and his preference for pine-tops, he offers an instructive deal of puzzlement to beginners in ornithology. His song is simplicity itself, and, rightly or wrongly, always impresses me as the coolest of the cool.

I stood the other day between a pine warbler and a thrasher. The thrasher sang like one possessed. He might have been crazy, beside himself with passion. Operatic composers, aiming at something new and brilliant in the way of a “mad scene,” should borrow a leaf out of the planting bird’s repertory. The house would “come down,” I could warrant. The pine warbler sang as one hums a tune at his work. Among birds, as among humans, it takes all kinds to make a world.

After the advent of the myrtle warblers, on April 18, eleven days elapsed with no new arrivals, so far as I discovered, except a few chipping sparrows, first seen on the 23d! The weather was doing its worst. Then, on the 29th, I saw three yellow palm warblers. They were singing, as they usually are at this season--singing and wagging their tails, and incidentally putting me in mind of Florida, where in winter they are seen of every one. It is noticeable that these three earliest of the warblers all have, by way of song, a brief trill. Very much alike the three efforts are, yet clearly enough distinguished, if one hears them often enough. The best and least of them is the myrtle’s, I being judge.

The yellow palm warbler ought to be a Southerner of the Southerners, one would say, from his tropical appellation; but the truth is that he makes his home from Nova Scotia northward, and visits the land of palms only in the cold season. He is a low-keeping bird (for a warbler), much on the ground, very bright in color, and well marked by a red crown, from which he is often called the yellow redpoll. If he could only keep his tail still!

Next in order was the black-throated green (May 4), which, take him for all in all, is perhaps my favorite of the whole family. He is the bird of the white pine, as the pine warbler is the bird of the pitch-pine. And now we have a real song; no longer a simple trill, but a highly characteristic, sweetly modulated tune--or two tunes, rather, perfectly distinguished one from the other, and equally charming. If the voice is rough, it is sweetly and musically rough. I would not for anything have it different.

What a vexatiously pleasant time I had, years ago, in tracing the voice home to its author! How vividly I remember the day when I lay flat on my face in a woodland path, opera-glass in hand, a manual open before me, and the bird singing at intervals from a pine tree opposite; and a neighbor, who had known me from boyhood, coming suddenly down the path. I may err in my recollection (it was long ago), but I think I heard the music for weeks before I satisfied myself as to the identity of the singer. “Trees, trees, murmuring trees:” so I once translated the first of the two songs; and to this day I do not see how to improve upon the version. He is talking of the Weymouth pine, I like to believe.

Black-and-white creeping warblers have been common since the 4th (under normal weather conditions they should have been here a fortnight sooner), and on the 6th the oven-bird took possession of the drier woods. He looks very little like a warbler, but those who ought to know whereof they speak class him with that family. I have not yet heard his flight song, but he has no idea of keeping silence. As is true of every real artist, he is in love with his part. With what a daintily self-conscious grace he walks the boards! It is a kind of music to watch him. He makes me think continually of the little ghost in Mrs. Slosson’s story. Like that insubstantial reality he is always saying: “Don’t you want to hear me speak my piece?” And whether the answer is yes or no, it is no matter--over he goes with it.

Yesterday my first blue yellow-back was singing, and to-day (May 8) the first chestnut-sides are with me. And there are numbers to follow. From now till the end of the month they will be coming and going--a procession of beauty. In my mind I can already see them: the gorgeous redstart, the lovely blue golden-wing, the splendid magnolia, and the more splendid Blackburnian, the Cape May (a “seldom pleasure”), and the multitudinous blackpoll--these and many others that are no less worthy. At this time of the year a man should have nothing to do but to live in the sun and look at the passing show.

INDEX

INDEX

Alder, 159. black, 135.

Anemone, 3.

Apple, 51.

Arbutus, trailing, 4, 143.

Asters, 59, 120.

Azalea, swamp, 22.

Barberry, 111, 172.

Bayberry, 136.

Beech, 163.

Bees, 58.

Birch, sweet, 119, 160.

Bittern, 31. least, 30.

Bitternut, 113.

Blackbird, crow, 120, 240. red-winged, 39, 240, 241, 254. rusty, 155.

Blackberry, 172.

Bladderwort, 22.

Blueberry, 123, 136, 166.

Bluebird, 16, 52, 83, 120, 217, 230, 231, 234.

Bobolink, 19, 52, 83.

Butter-and-eggs, 114.

Butterflies, 57, 85, 108.

Canna, 62, 115.

Catbird, 6, 7.

Catnip, 54.

Cat-tail, 28.

Cedar, red, 39, 172.

Checkerberry, 161, 174, 176

Cherry, rum, 123.

Chestnut, 34.

Chewink, 24.

Chickadee, black-capped, 22, 60, 64, 66, 67, 73, 134, 150, 153, 154, 182, 205, 206, 234, 239.

Chicory, 27.

Chipmunk, 182, 226, 227.

Chokecherry, 41.

Clethra, 122.

Clover, rabbit-foot, 23.

Coffee-tree, 125.

Columbine, 3.

Corn, 52.

Cornel, dwarf, 4.

Cowbird, 235.

Cowslip, 3.

Creeper, brown, 155.

Crickets, 65.

Crossbill, red, 154. white-winged, 154.

Crow, 24, 39, 42, 65, 154.

Dahlia, 115.

Dangleberry, 123, 174.

Desmodium nudiflorum, 36.

Duck, dusky, 102.

Finch, Lincoln, 70. pine, 155. purple, 8, 155, 203, 219, 225, 231.

Flicker, 64, 155, 231.

Flycatcher, least, 6.

Forsythia, 2.

Fox, 183, 258.

Frog, spade-foot, 262. wood, 257.

Frost grape, 111.

Galium, yellow, 21.

Gallinule, Florida, 32.

Gerardia, 36.

Goldenrod, 59, 121.

Goldfinch, 8, 27, 63, 134, 136, 155, 234.

Goose, Canada, 198.

Grass, 50, 76.

Grosbeak, rose-breasted, 5, 47, 72.

Grouse, ruffed, 83, 133, 143, 155.

Gull, black-backed, 108. herring, 95, 108, 111, 156, 238.

Hardhack, 21, 37, 38, 39.

Hawk, red-shouldered, 239. marsh, 108, 254.

Heron, great blue, 94. green, 31. night, 31.

Holly, 150, 175.

Huckleberry, 123, 172.

Hummingbird, 58, 61, 88.

Indigo-bird, 47, 70.

Jay, blue, 38, 120, 125, 154, 204, 221.

Jewel-weed, 26, 58, 62.

Joe Pye weed, 57.

Kingbird, 6, 24, 40, 52.

Kingfisher, 253.

Kinglet, golden-crowned, 134, 155, 182.

Lady’s-slipper, 4.

Lark, shore, 107. meadow, 19, 132, 234, 236.

Leucothoë, 164.

Loosestrife, swamp, 57.

Lucky-bug, 57.

Maple, red, 122, 124. striped, 124.

Maryland yellow-throat, 6, 60.

Mayweed, 54, 114.

Meadow-beauty, 37.

Meadow-sweet, 21.

Morning-glory, 26.

Mullein, 21.

Muskrat, 136, 259.

Nuthatch, red-breasted, 154. white-breasted, 35, 154, 205, 209, 225, 235.

Old-maid’s pinks, 54.

Old Squaw, 156.

Oriole, Baltimore, 5, 7, 39, 60.

Otter, 259.

Oven-bird, 7, 273.

Owl, screech, 248.

Partridge-berry, 150.

Pennyroyal, 38.

Phœbe, 22, 40, 60, 233, 240.

Pickerel-weed, 29.

Pine, pitch, 35.

Plover, black-bellied, 92, 97, 99.

Quail, 41, 155.

Quince, 115.

Rail, Carolina, 31, 33. Virginia, 31.

Raspberry, 21.

Redpoll, 153, 154.

Redstart, 7, 12, 55, 274.

Robin, 60, 67, 155, 232, 255.

Rose, swamp, 26.

Sandpiper, pectoral, 98. red-backed, 99, 109. white-rumped, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 109.

Sassafras, 3, 124, 166.

Saxifrage, 3.

Shadbush, 3.

Shrike, 155, 240.

Snipe, 25, 254.

Snowbird, 134, 154, 155, 234, 252.

Sparrow, chipping, 19, 70, 271. English, 14, 16, 52, 156. field, 24, 39. fox, 235, 244, 250, 255. grasshopper, 17. Ipswich, 102. savanna, 18, 107. song, 19, 38, 60, 68, 234, 235, 253. swamp, 13, 22. tree, 134, 136, 154, 155. vesper, 19, 24, 253. white-throated, 6, 69.

Spatter-dock, 29.

Spice-bush, 3, 123, 162.

Squirrel, gray, 118, 227, 259. flying, 177, 259. red, 227, 259.

Swallow, barn, 38. tree, 15, 16, 237.

Swift, 38.

Tanager, scarlet, 36, 47, 60, 72.

Thimbleberry, 21.

Thorn, 111.

Thoroughwort, 38.

Thrasher, brown, 23, 270.

Thrush, northern water, 13, 61, 71. Swainson, 7, 69. wood, 7.

Titlark, 93, 94, 102, 107, 108.

Veery, 6, 23.

Vireo, Philadelphia, 71. red-eyed, 7, 55, 73. solitary, 23. warbling, 6, 60, 67. yellow-throated, 6, 60, 67.

Warbler, black-and-white, 273. Blackburnian, 274. blackpoll, 68, 73, 274. black-throated blue, 10. black-throated green, 23, 73, 272. blue golden-winged, 274. Canadian, 22. Cape May, 274. chestnut-sided, 7, 274. golden, 6, 267. magnolia, 274. myrtle, 73, 136, 269. Nashville, 7, 268. parula (blue yellow-backed), 6, 274. pine, 68, 270. prairie, 7. yellow palm, 271.

Waxwing, cedar, 8.

Waxwork, Roxbury, 111, 124.

Woodchuck, 182.

Woodcock, 242, 255.

Woodpecker, downy, 114, 154, 205. hairy, 155. red-headed, 42.

Wood pewee, 60, 67.

Wren, long-billed marsh, 30.

Yellow-legs, greater, 96, 101.

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

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 1900.

[2] The formal record will be found in the _Auk_, vol. xviii. p. 394.

[3] How fallible a thing is a man’s memory! The wrapper was not yellow, but green. Yellow was for lemon. So more than one friendly correspondent has made haste to inform me, and the venerable shopkeeper himself has sent me a roll of the “lossengers” to prove it. My compliments to him.

* * * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.