Chapter 9

For the largest and finest chestnuts I had last fall I was indebted to the gray squirrels. Walking through the early October woods one day, I came upon a place where the ground was thickly strewn with very large unopened chestnut burrs. On examination, I found that every burr had been cut square off with about an inch of the stem adhering, and not one had been left on the tree. It was not accident, then, but design. Whose design? The squirrels'. The fruit was the finest I had ever seen in the woods, and some wise squirrel had marked it for his own. The burrs were ripe, and had just begun to divide, not "threefold," but fourfold, "to show the fruit within." The squirrel that had taken all this pains had evidently reasoned with himself thus: "Now, these are extremely fine chestnuts, and I want them; if I wait till the burrs open on the tree, the crows and jays will be sure to carry off a great many of the nuts before they fall; then, after the wind has rattled out what remain, there are the mice, the chipmunks, the red squirrels, the raccoons, the grouse, to say nothing of the boys and the pigs, to come in for their share; so I will forestall events a little: I will cut off the burrs when they have matured, and a few days of this dry October weather will cause every one of them to open on the ground; I shall be on hand in the nick of time to gather up my nuts." The squirrel, of course, had to take the chances of a prowler like myself coming along, but he had fairly stolen a march on his neighbors. As I proceeded to collect and open the burrs, I was half prepared to hear an audible protest from the trees about, for I constantly fancied myself watched by shy but jealous eyes. It is an interesting inquiry how the squirrel knew the burrs would open if left to lie on the ground a few days. Perhaps he did not know, but thought the experiment worth trying.

The gray squirrel is peculiarly an American product, and might serve very well as a national emblem. The Old World can beat us on rats and mice, but we are far ahead on squirrels, having five or six species to Europe's one.

THE SKYLARK ON THE HUDSON

My note-book of the past season is enriched with the unusual incident of an English skylark in full song above an Esopus meadow. I was poking about a marshy place in a low field one morning in early May, when, through the maze of bird-voices,--laughter of robins, call of meadowlarks, song of bobolinks, ditty of sparrows, whistle of orioles, twitter of swallows,--with which the air was filled, my ear suddenly caught an unfamiliar strain. I paused to listen: can it be possible, I thought, that I hear a lark, or am I dreaming? The song came from the air, above a wide, low meadow many hundred yards away. Withdrawing a few paces to a more elevated position, I bent my eye and ear eagerly in that direction. Yes, that unstinted, jubilant, skyward, multitudinous song can be none other than the lark's! Any of our native songsters would have ceased while I was listening. Presently I was fortunate enough to catch sight of the bird. He had reached his climax in the sky, and was hanging with quivering wings beneath a small white cloud, against which his form was clearly revealed. I had seen and heard the lark in England, else I should still have been in doubt about the identity of this singer. While I was climbing a fence I was obliged to take my eye from the bird, and when I looked again the song had ceased and the lark had gone. I was soon in the meadow above which I had heard him, and the first bird I flushed was the lark.

How strange he looked to my eye (I use the masculine gender because it was a male bird, but an Irishman laboring in the field, to whom I related my discovery, spoke touchingly of the bird as "she," and I notice that the old poets do the same); his long, sharp wings, and something in his manner of flight suggested a shore-bird. I followed him about the meadow and got several snatches of song out of him, but not again the soaring, skyward flight and copious musical shower. By appearing to pass by, I several times got within a few yards of him; as I drew near he would squat in the stubble, and then suddenly start up, and, when fairly launched, sing briefly till he alighted again fifteen or twenty rods away. I came twice the next day and twice the next, and each time found the lark in the meadow or heard his song from the air or the sky. What was especially interesting was that the lark had "singled out with affection" one of our native birds, and the one that most resembled its kind, namely, the vesper sparrow, or grass finch. To this bird I saw him paying his addresses with the greatest assiduity. He would follow it about and hover above it, and by many gentle indirections seek to approach it. But the sparrow was shy, and evidently did not know what to make of her distinguished foreign lover. It would sometimes take refuge in a bush, when the lark, not being a percher, would alight upon the ground beneath it. This sparrow looks enough like the lark to be a near relation. Its color is precisely the same, and it has the distinguishing mark of the two lateral white quills in its tail. It has the same habit of skulking in the stubble or the grass as you approach; it is exclusively a field-bird, and certain of its notes might have been copied from the lark's song. In size it is about a third smaller, and this is the most marked difference between them. With the nobler bipeds, this would not have been any obstacle to the union, and in this case the lark was evidently quite ready to ignore the difference, but the sparrow persisted in saying him nay. It was doubtless this obstinacy on her part that drove the lark away, for, on the fifth day, I could not find him, and have never seen nor heard him since. I hope he found a mate somewhere, but it is quite improbable. The bird had, most likely, escaped from a cage, or, maybe, it was a survivor of a number liberated some years ago on Long Island. There is no reason why I the lark should not thrive in this country as well as in Europe, and, if a few hundred were liberated in any of our fields in April or May, I have little doubt they would soon become established. And what an acquisition it would be! As a songster, the lark is deserving of all the praise that has been bestowed upon him. He would not add so much to the harmony or melody of our bird-choir as he would add to its blithesomeness, joyousness, and power. His voice is the jocund and inspiring voice of a spring morning. It is like a ceaseless and hilarious clapping of hands. I was much interested in an account a friend gave me of the first skylark he heard while abroad. He had been so full of the sights and wonders of the Old World that he had quite forgotten the larks, when one day, as he was walking somewhere near the sea, a brown bird started up in front of him, and mounting upward began to sing. It drew his attention, and as the bird went skyward, pouring out his rapid and jubilant notes, like bees from a hive in swarming-time, the truth suddenly flashed upon the observer.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, "that is a skylark; there is no mistaking that bird."

It is this unique and unmistakable character of the lark's song, and its fountain-like sparkle and copiousness, that are the main sources of its charm.

NOCTURNAL INSECTS

How the nocturnal insects, the tree-crickets and katydids, fail as the heat fails! They are musicians that play fast or slow, strong or feeble, just as the heat of the season waxes or wanes; and they play as long as life lasts: when their music ceases, they are dead. The katydids begin in August, and cry with great vigor and spirit, "Katy-did," "Katydid," or "Katy-did n't." Toward the last of September they have taken in sail a good deal, and cry simply, "Katy," "Katy," with frequent pauses and resting-spells. In October they languidly gasp or rasp, "Kate," "Kate," "Kate," and before the end of the month they become entirely inaudible, though I suspect that if one's ear were sharp enough he might still hear a dying whisper, "Kate," "Kate." Those cousins of Katy, the little green purring tree-crickets, fail in the same way and at the same time. When their chorus is fullest, the warm autumn night fairly throbs with the soft lulling undertone. I notice that the sound is in waves or has a kind of rhythmic beat. What a gentle, unobtrusive background it forms for the sharp, reedy notes of the katydids! As the season advances, their life ebbs and ebbs: you hear one here and one there, but the air is no longer filled with that regular pulse-beat of sound. One by one the musicians cease, till, perhaps on some mild night late in October, you hear--just hear and that is all--the last feeble note of the last of these little harpers.

LOVE AND WAR AMONG THE BIRDS

In the spring movements of the fishes up the stream, toward their spawning-beds, the females are the pioneers, appearing some days in advance of the males. With the birds the reverse is the case, the males coming a week or ten days before the females. The female fish is usually the larger and stronger, and perhaps better able to take the lead; among most reptiles the same fact holds, and throughout the insect world there is to my knowledge no exception to the rule. Among the birds, the only exception I am aware of is in the case of the birds of prey. Here the female is the larger and stronger. If you see an exceptionally large and powerful eagle, rest assured the sex is feminine. But higher in the scale the male comes to the front and leads in size and strength.

But the first familiar spring birds are cocks; hence the songs and tilts and rivalries. Hence also the fact that they are slightly in excess of the other sex, to make up for this greater exposure; apparently no courting is done in the South, and no matches are prearranged. The males leave irregularly without any hint, I suspect, to the females as to when and where they will meet them. In the case of the passenger pigeon, however, the two sexes travel together, as they do among the migrating water-fowls.

With the song-birds, love-making begins as soon as the hens are here. So far as I have observed, the robin and the bluebird win their mates by gentle and fond approaches; but certain of the sparrows, notably the little social sparrow or "chippie," appear to carry the case by storm. The same proceeding may be observed among the English sparrows, now fairly established on our soil. Two or three males beset a female, and a regular scuffle ensues. The poor bird is pulled and jostled and cajoled amid what appears to be the greatest mirth and hilarity of her audacious suitors. Her plumage is plucked and ruffled; the rivals roll over each other and over her; she extricates herself as best she can, and seems to say or scream "no," "no," to every one of them with great emphasis. What finally determines her choice would be hard to say. Our own sparrows are far less noisy and obstreperous, but the same little comedy in a milder form is often enacted among them. When two males have a tilt, they rise several feet in the air, beak to beak, and seek to deal each other blows as they mount. I have seen two male chewinks facing each other and wrathfully impelled upward in the same manner, while the female that was the bone of contention between them regarded them unconcernedly from the near bushes.

The bobolink is also a precipitate and impetuous wooer. It is a trial of speed, as if the female were to say, "Catch me and I am yours," and she scurries away with all her might and main, often with three or four dusky knights in hot pursuit. When she takes to cover in the grass, there is generally a squabble "down among the tickle-tops," or under the buttercups, and "Winterseeble" or "Conquedle" is the winner.

In marked contrast to this violent love-making are the social and festive reunions of the goldfinches about mating time. All the birds of a neighborhood gather in a treetop, and the trial apparently becomes one of voice and song. The contest is a most friendly and happy one; all is harmony and gayety. The females chirrup and twitter, and utter their confiding "PAISLEY" "PAISLEY," while the more gayly dressed males squeak and warble in the most delightful strain. The matches are apparently all made and published during these gatherings; everybody is in a happy frame of mind; there is no jealousy, and no rivalry but to see who shall be gayest.

It often happens among the birds that the male has a rival after the nuptials have been celebrated and the work of housekeeping fairly begun. Every season a pair of phœbe-birds have built their nest on an elbow in the spouting beneath the eaves of my house. The past spring a belated male made desperate efforts to supplant the lawful mate and gain possession of the unfinished nest. There was a battle fought about the premises every hour in the day for at least a week. The antagonists would frequently grapple and fall to the ground, and keep their hold like two dogs. On one such occasion I came near covering them with my hat. I believe the intruder was finally worsted and withdrew from the place. One noticeable feature of the affair was the apparent utter indifference of the female, who went on with her nest-building as if all was peace and harmony. There can be little doubt that she would have applauded and accepted the other bird had he finally been the victor.

One of the most graceful of warriors is the robin. I know few prettier sights than two males challenging and curveting about each other upon the grass in early spring. Their attentions to each other are so courteous and restrained. In alternate curves and graceful sallies, they pursue and circumvent each other. First one hops a few feet, then the other, each one standing erect in true military style while his fellow passes him and describes the segment of an ellipse about him, both uttering the while a fine complacent warble in a high but suppressed key. Are they lovers or enemies? the beholder wonders, until they make a spring and are beak to beak in the twinkling of an eye, and perhaps mount a few feet into the air, but rarely actually delivering blows upon each other. Every thrust is parried, every movement met. They follow each other with dignified composure about the fields or lawn, into trees and upon the ground, with plumage slightly spread, breasts glowing, their lisping, shrill war-song just audible. It forms on the whole the most civil and high-bred tilt to be witnessed during the season.

When the cock-robin makes love he is the same considerate, deferential, but insinuating gallant. The warble he makes use of on that occasion is the same, so far as my ear can tell, as the one he pipes when facing his rival.

FOX AND HOUND

I stood on a high hill or ridge one autumn day and saw a hound run a fox through the fields far beneath me. What odors that fox must have shaken out of himself, I thought, to be traced thus easily, and how great their specific gravity not to have been blown away like smoke by the breeze! The fox ran a long distance down the hill, keeping within a few feet of a stone wall; then turned a right angle and led off for the mountain, across a plowed field and a succession of pasture lands. In about fifteen minutes the hound came in full blast with her nose in the air, and never once did she put it to the ground while in my sight. When she came to the stone wall, she took the other side from that taken by the fox, and kept about the same distance from it, being thus separated several yards from his track, with the fence between her and it. At the point where the fox turned sharply to the left, the hound overshot a few yards, then wheeled, and, feeling the air a moment with her nose, took up the scent again and was off on his trail as unerringly as Fate. It seemed as if the fox must have sowed himself broadcast as he went along, and that his scent was so rank and heavy that it settled in the hollows and clung tenaciously to the bushes and crevices in the fence. I thought I ought to have caught a remnant of it as I passed that way some minutes later, but I did not. But I suppose it was not that the light-footed fox so impressed himself upon the ground he ran over, but that the sense of the hound was so keen. To her sensitive nose these tracks steamed like hot cakes, and they would not have cooled off so as to be undistinguishable for several hours. For the time being, she had but one sense: her whole soul was concentrated in her nose.

It is amusing, when the hunter starts out of a winter morning, to see his hound probe the old tracks to determine how recent they are. He sinks his nose down deep in the snow so as to exclude the air from above, then draws a long full breath, giving sometimes an audible snort. If there remains the least effluvium of the fox, the hound will detect it. If it be very slight, it only sets his tail wagging; if it be strong, it unloosens his tongue.

Such things remind one of the waste, the friction, that is going on all about us, even when the wheels of life run the most smoothly. A fox cannot trip along the top of 'a stone wall so lightly but that he will leave enough of himself to betray his course to the hound for hours afterward. When the boys play "hare and hounds," the hare scatters bits of paper to give a clew to the pursuers, but he scatters himself much more freely if only our sight and scent were sharp enough to detect the fragments. Even the fish leave a trail in the water, and it is said the otter will pursue them by it. The birds make a track in the air, only their enemies hunt by sight rather than by scent. The fox baffles the hound most upon a hard crust of frozen snow; the scent will not hold to the smooth, bead-like granules.

Judged by the eye alone, the fox is the lightest and most buoyant creature that runs. His soft wrapping of fur conceals the muscular play and effort that is so obvious in the hound that pursues him, and he comes bounding along precisely as if blown by a gentle wind. His massive tail is carried as if it floated upon the air by its own lightness.

The hound is not remarkable for his fleetness, but how he will hang!--often running late into the night, and sometimes till morning, from ridge to ridge, from peak to peak; now on the mountain, now crossing the valley, now playing about a large slope of uplying pasture fields. At times the fox has a pretty well- defined orbit, and the hunter knows where to intercept him. Again, he leads off like a comet, quite beyond the system of hills and ridges upon which he was started, and his return is entirely a matter of conjecture; but if the day be not more than half spent, the chances are that the fox will be back before night, though the sportsman's patience seldom holds out that long.

The hound is a most interesting dog. How solemn and long-visaged he is,--how peaceful and well-disposed! He is the Quaker among dogs. All the viciousness and currishness seem to have been weeded out of him; he seldom quarrels, or fights, or plays, like other dogs. Two strange hounds, meeting for the first time, behave as civilly toward each other as two men. I know a hound that has an ancient, wrinkled, human, far-away look that reminds one of the bust of Homer among the Elgin marbles. He looks like the mountains toward which his heart yearns so much.

The hound is a great puzzle to the farm dog; the latter, attracted by his baying, comes barking and snarling up through the fields, bent on picking a quarrel; he intercepts the hound, snubs and insults and annoys him in every way possible, but the hound heeds him not: if the dog attacks him, he gets away as best he can, and goes on with the trail; the cur bristles and barks and struts about for a while, then goes back to the house, evidently thinking the hound a lunatic, which he is for the time being,--a monomaniac, the slave and victim of one idea. I saw the master of a hound one day arrest him in full course, to give one of the hunters time to get to a certain runway; the dog cried and struggled to free himself, and would listen to neither threats nor caresses. Knowing he must be hungry, I offered him my lunch, but he would not touch it. I put it in his mouth, but he threw it contemptuously from him. We coaxed and petted and reassured him, but he was under a spell; he was bereft of all thought or desire but the one passion to pursue that trail.

THE TREE-TOAD

We can boast a greater assortment of toads and frogs in this country than can any other land. What a chorus goes up from our ponds and marshes in spring! The like of it cannot be heard anywhere else under the sun. In Europe it would certainly have made an impression upon the literature. An attentive ear will detect first one variety, then another, each occupying the stage from three or four days to a week. The latter part of April, when the little peeping frogs are in full chorus, one comes upon places, in his drives or walks late in the day, where the air fairly palpitates with sound; from every little marshy hollow and spring run there rises an impenetrable maze or cloud of shrill musical voices. After the peepers, the next frog to appear is the clucking frog, a rather small, dark-brown frog, with a harsh, clucking note, which later in the season becomes the well-known brown wood-frog. Their chorus is heard for a few days only, while their spawn is being deposited. In less than a week it ceases, and I never hear them again till the next April. As the weather gets warmer, the toads take to the water, and set up that long-drawn musical tr-r-r- r-r-r-r-ing note. The voice of the bullfrog, who calls, according to the boys, "jug o' rum," "jug o' rum," "pull the plug," "pull the plug," is not heard much before June. The peepers, the clucking frog, and the bullfrog are the only ones that call in chorus. The most interesting and the most shy and withdrawn of all our frogs and toads is the tree-toad,--the creature that, from the old apple or cherry tree, or red cedar, announces the approach of rain, and baffles your every effort to see or discover it. It has not (as some people imagine) exactly the power of the chameleon to render itself invisible by assuming the color of the object it perches upon, but it sits very close and still, and its mottled back, of different shades of ashen gray, blends it perfectly with the bark of nearly every tree. The only change in its color I have ever noticed is that it is lighter on a light-colored tree, like the beech or soft maple, and darker on the apple, or cedar, or pine. Then it is usually hidden in some cavity or hollow of the tree, when its voice appears to come from the outside.

Most of my observations upon the habits of this creature run counter to the authorities I have been able to consult on the subject.