Part 2

The birds of this retired spot may be divided into two classes,—those of the oak and of the sproutland growths about it, and the birds of the air, principally swallows, which hung over the tree as a trembling cloud. Never were swallows more numerous, except when flocked prior to migration. In the tree and bushes were always many birds, yet often they were far from each other. This gave me an excellent idea of what a great oak really is. Birds quite out of sight and hearing of each other were resting on branches from the same trunk. Although the middle of July, there was no lack of song, and second nesting of many familiar birds is, I judge, more common in Maryland than in New Jersey. Of all the birds that came, the little green herons were the most amusing. A pair doubtless had a nest near by, or young that were not yet on the wing. They walked sedately along the level branches, as a man might pace up and down his study, buried in deep thought. I listened carefully for some expression of content, but they made no sound except when they were startled and flew off. I was much surprised to find the beach-birds occasionally darting among the branches, and once a spotted sandpiper rested a moment near me. These birds we associate with water and the open country, although this species is less aquatic than its fellows. They were always in sight from the door of my tent, and always an earlier bird than I. I recall now standing upon the beach long before sunrise, marking the promises of the coming day, as I interpreted them. The fish-hawks were ahead of me; so, too, the little sand-pipers. Their piping at this time was very clear and musical. It was a delightful accompaniment to the rippling water. The dear old song-sparrows were quiet, and I was very glad; but with the first flooding of the sea with sunlight they all sang out, and the Chesapeake was afar off and I in the home meadows on the Delaware. I prefer novelty when away. It is well to utterly forget, at times, that which we most prize. What boots it to stand on the hill-top, if your thoughts are forever in the lowlands? Twice, from the branches of the old oak, I saw a splendid sunset, but nothing equal to the sunrise of to-day. With many a matter of this life the beginning is better than the end. We had a superb sunset last night. The color was gorgeous, but it was plain and commonplace compared to the sunrise of to-day. Perhaps no tint was really brighter in one case than in the other, but my mind was. The sunset was too closely linked with the death of the day; there was the idea of a grand finale before the curtain drops, and this tends to dull enthusiasm. It is not so with sunrise. It is all freshness,—a matter of birth, of beginning, of a new trial of life,—and with so happy an entrance, the exit should be one of gladness only; but there is no trace of pity in Nature. In awful certainty the night cometh.

I was not surprised at every visit to this tree to find some new form of life resting on its branches. A beautiful garter-snake had reached a low branch by climbing to it from a sapling that reached a little above it. There was no break in the highway that led to its very summit. The grass leaned upon ferns, these upon shrubs, these again upon saplings, and so the tree was reached. Any creeping thing could have climbed just eighty feet above the earth with far less danger than men encounter clambering over hills.

And not only a zoological garden was this and is every other old tree, but the oak had its botanic garden as well. When we consider that many of the branches were so wide and level that one could walk upon them, it is not strange that earth, dead leaves, and water should lodge in many places. Indeed, besides the two gardens I have mentioned, the oak had also an aquarium. But I cannot go into particulars. The parasitic plant-life—not truly such, like the mistletoe—was a striking feature. Maple seeds had lodged and sprouted, and in a saucer-shaped depression where dust and water had lodged a starved hawkweed had got so far towards maturity as to be in bud.

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It may appear as utter foolishness to others, but I believe that trees might in time become tiresome. Whether in leaf or bare of foliage, there is a fixedness that palls at last. We are given to looking from the tree to the world beyond; to hurrying from beneath their branches to the open country. To live in a dense forest is akin to living in a great city. There is a sense of confinement against which, sooner or later, we are sure to rebel. We long for change. The man who is perfectly satisfied has no knowledge of what satisfaction really is. Logical or not, I turned my attention from the tree at last, and thought, What of the outlook? Directly north, in the shallow basin, hemmed in by low hills, lies the town. A cloud of smoke and steam rests over it, and barely above it reach the church-spires and tall factory chimneys, as if the place was struggling to be free, but only had its finger-tips out of the mire of the town, of which I know but little. My wonder is that so many people stay there, and, stranger still, wild life not only crowds its outskirts, but ventures into its very midst. In one town, not far away, I found the nests of seventeen species of birds, but then there was a large old cemetery and a millpond within its boundaries. Time was when through the town before me there flowed a creek, and a pretty wood flourished along its south bank. The creek is now a sewer, and an open one at that, and yet the musk-rat cannot quite make up his mind to leave it. Stranger than this was seeing recently, in a small creek discolored by a dyeing establishment, a little brown diver. How it could bring itself to swim in such filth must remain a mystery. A queer old character that had lived all his life in the country once said of the nearest town, “It is a good place to dump what we don’t want on the farm.” This old fellow would always drive me out of his orchard when apples were ripe, but I liked him for the sentiment I have quoted.

I am out of town now, and what of the world in another direction? Turning to the east, I have farm after farm before me; all different, yet with a strong family likeness. This region was taken up by English Quakers about 1670 and a little later, and the houses they built were as much alike as are these people in their apparel. The second set of buildings were larger only and no less severely plain; but immediately preceding the Revolution there were some very substantial mansions erected. From my perch in the tree-top I cannot see any of the houses distinctly, but locate them all by the group of Weymouth pines in front and sometimes both before and behind them. The old-time Lombardy poplar was the tree of the door-yards at first, but these, in this neighborhood, have well-nigh all died out, and the pines replace them. One farm-house is vividly pictured before me, although quite out of sight. The owner made it a home for such birds as might choose to come, as well as for himself, and what royal days have been spent there! There was no one feature to attract instant attention as you approached the house. The trees were thrifty, the shrubbery healthy, the roses vigorous, and the flowering plants judiciously selected; but what did strike the visitor was the wealth of bird-life. For once let me catalogue what I have seen in and about one door-yard and what should be about every one in the land. At the end of the house, and very near the corner of the long portico, stood a martin-box, occupied by the birds for which it was intended. In the porch, so that you could reach it with your hand, was a wren’s nest, and what a strange house it had! It was a huge plaster cast of a lion’s head, and between the grim teeth the bird passed and repassed continually. It promenaded at times on the lion’s tongue, and sang triumphantly while perched upon an eyebrow. That wren certainly saw nothing animal-like in the plaster cast as it was, and I have wondered if it would have been equally free with a stuffed head of the animal. My many experiments with animals, as to their recognition of animals as pictured, have demonstrated everything, and so, I am afraid I must admit, nothing. In the woodbine on the portico were two nests,—a robin’s and a chipping-sparrow’s. These were close to each other, and once, when sitting in a rocking-chair, I swayed the woodbine to and fro without disturbing either bird. In the garden were a mocking-bird, cat-bird, thistle-finch, song-sparrow, brown thrush, yellow-breasted chat, and red-eyed vireo. In the trees I saw a great-crested fly-catcher, purple grakle, a redstart, spotted warbler, and another I failed to identify. In the field beyond the garden were red-winged blackbirds and quail, and beyond, crows, fish-hawks, and turkey-buzzards were in the air; and, as the day closed and the pleasant sights were shut out, I heard the clear call of the kill-deer plover as they passed overhead, heard it until it mingled with my dreams. “Providence Farm” is indeed well named, for the birdy blessing of Providence rests upon it; but were men more given to considering the ways and wants of wild life, we might find such pleasant places on every hand. Farms appear to be growing less farm-like. The sweet simplicity of colonial days has been well-nigh obliterated, and nothing really better has replaced it. On the other hand, a modern “country place,” where Nature is pared down until nothing but the foundation-rocks remain, is, to say the least, an eyesore. There is more pleasure and profit in an Indian trail than in an asphaltum driveway.

Westward lie the meadows, and beyond them the river. Seen as a whole, they are beautiful and, like all of Nature’s work, will bear close inspection. The bird’s-eye view to-day was too comprehensive to be altogether enjoyable: it was bewildering. How completely such a tract epitomizes a continent! The little creek is a river; the hillock, a mountain; the brushland, a forest; the plowed tract, a desert. If this fact were not so generally forgotten we would be better content with what is immediately about us. Mere bigness is not everything. So, too, with animal life. We spend time and money to see the creatures caged in a menagerie, and never see the uncaged ones in the thicket behind the house. Every lion must roar, or we have not seen the show; a lion rampant is everything, a lion couchant, nothing. There was no visible violence in the meadows to-day; Nature was couchant, and I was thankful. When the tempest drives over the land I want my snug harbor by the chimney-throat. The sparks can fly upward to join the storm if they will. The storms I enjoy are matters of hearsay.

Take up a ponderous government quarto of the geological survey and glance over the splendid plates of remarkable rocks, cañons, and high hills, and then look out of your window at the fields and meadow. What a contrast! Yes, a decided one, and yet if you take an open-eyed walk you will find a good deal of the same thing, but on a smaller scale. You have not thought of it before; that is all. I put this matter to a practical test not long ago, and was satisfied with the result. The last plate had been looked at and the book was closed with a sigh, and a restless youth, looking over the wide range of fields before him, was thinking of the grand mountains, strange deserts, and deep cañons pictured in the volume on his lap, and comparing such a country with the monotonous surroundings of his home.

“What a stupid place this part of the world is!” he said at last. “I wish I could go out West.”

“Perhaps it is not so stupid as it looks,” I replied. “Let’s take a walk.”

I knew what the book described at which the lad had been looking, and had guessed his thoughts. We started for a ramble.

“Let us follow this little brook as far as we can,” I suggested, “and see what a stupid country can teach us,” purposely quoting my companion’s words, with a little emphasis.

Not fifty rods from beautiful old trees the collected waters, as a little brook, flowed over an outcropping of stiff clay, and here we voluntarily paused, for what one of us had seen a hundred times before was now invested with new interest. There was here not merely a smooth scooping out of a mass of the clay, to allow the waters to pass swiftly by; the least resisting veins or strata, those containing the largest percentage of sand, had yielded quickly and been deeply gullied, while elsewhere the stiff, black ridges, often almost perpendicular, still withstood the current, and, confining the waters to narrow limits, produced a series of miniature rapids and one whirlpool that recalled the head-waters of many a river.

Near by, where, when swollen by heavy rains, the brook had filled the little valley, temporary rivulets had rushed with fury over the clay, and cut in many places deep and narrow transverse channels. From their steep sides projected many a pebble that gave us “overhanging rocks,” and one small bowlder bridged a crevice in the clay, and was in use at the time as a highway for a colony of ants. Near it stood slender, conical pillars of slightly cemented sand, some six inches in height, and every one capped with a pebble of greater diameter than the apex of the supporting sand. These were indeed beautiful.

“I have never seen them before,” remarked the boy.

“Very likely,” I replied, “but you have crushed them under foot by the dozens.” They were not to be overlooked now, though, and in them he saw perfect reproductions of wonderful “monument rocks” which he had so lately seen pictured in the ponderous government geological report.

Withdrawing to the field beyond, where a bird’s-eye view of the brook’s course could be obtained, we had spread out before us a miniature, in most of its essentials, of a cañon country. The various tints of the clay gave the many-colored rocks; the different densities of the several strata resulted in deep or shallow ravines, fantastic arches, caverns, and beetling precipices. On a ridiculously small scale, you may say. True, but not too small for the eyes of him who is anxious to learn.

A few rods farther down the stream we came to a small sandy island which divided the brook and made a pleasant variety after a monotonous course through nearly level fields. A handful of the sand told the story. Here, meeting with so slight an obstruction as a projecting root, the sandy clays from above had been deposited in part, and year after year, as the island grew, the crowded waters had encroached upon the yielding banks on either side, and made here quite a wide and shallow stream. Small as it was, this little sand-bar had the characteristic features of all islands. The water rippled along its sides and gave it a pretty beach of sloping, snow-white sand, while scarcely more than half a foot inland the seeds of many plants had sprouted, and along the central ridge or backbone the sod was thick set, and several acorns, a year before, had sprouted through it. We found snails, spiders, and insects abundant, and faint footprints showed that it was not overlooked by the pretty teetering sand-piper.

Now came a total change. Abruptly turning from its former straightforward course, the brook entered a low-lying swamp, crowded to the utmost with dense growths of tangled vines and stunted trees. The water was no longer sparkling and colorless, but amber-tinted, and in many a shallow pool looked more like ink. Life here appeared in many forms. Small mud-minnows, turtles, and snakes were found in the gloomy, weed-hidden pools, and numberless insects crowded the rank growths above as well as the waters beneath. The mutual dependence of vegetation and animal life was here very striking. Previously we had found comparatively little either in the brook or about it, but now our eyes were gladdened not only with what I have mentioned, but birds, too, were in abundance.

Bent upon freeing my native county from the charge of stupidity, I led the way through this “dismal swamp.” It was no easy task. Nowhere were we sure of our footing, and it required constant leaping from root to root of the larger trees. There was at times no well-defined channel, and often we could hear the gurgling waters hurrying beneath our feet, yet catch no glimpse of them.

Here, too, other springs welled to the surface, and the augmented volume of waters finally left the swamp a stream of considerable size, which, after a tortuous course through many fields, entered a deep and narrow ravine. After untold centuries the brook has worn away the surface soil over which it originally flowed, then the gravel beneath, and so down to the clay, thirty feet below. Upon this now rest the bowlders and such coarser material as the waters could not transport.

Clinging to the trees growing upon the sides of the ravine, we closely followed the course of the troubled, bubbling, foamy waters, stopping ever and anon to look at the exposed sections of sand and gravel here shown in curious alternate layers. The meaning of the word “deposits,” so frequently met with in descriptive geology, was made plain, and when we noticed of how mixed a character was the coarse gravel, it was easy to comprehend what had been read of that most interesting phase of the world’s past history, the glacial epoch, or great ice age. The gravel was no longer an unsuggestive accumulation of pebbles, but associated rolled and water-worn fragments of a hundred different rocks that by the mighty forces of ice and water had been brought to their present position from regions far away.

The ravine ended at the meadows, through which the waters passed with unobstructed flow “to join the brimming river.” As we stood upon the bank of the mighty stream I remarked, “This is a stupid country, perhaps, but it has some merits.” I think the boy thought so, too.

* * * * *

The meadows are such a comprehensive place that no one knows where to begin, if the attempt is made to enumerate their features. There is such a blending of dry land and wet, open and thicket-grown, hedge and brook and scattered trees, that it is bewildering if you do not choose some one point for close inspection. From the tree-top I overlook it all, and try in vain to determine whether the azure strip of flowering iris or the flaunting crimson of the Turk’s cap lilies is the prettier. Beyond, in damper soil, the glistening yellow of the sunflowers is really too bright to be beautiful; but not so where the water is hidden by the huge circular leaves of the lotus. They are majestic as well as pretty, and the sparse bloom, yellow and rosy pink, is even the more conspicuous by reason of its background. How well the birds know the wild meadow tracts! They have not forsaken my tree and its surroundings, but for one here I see a dozen there. Mere inky specks, as seen from my point of view, but I know them as marsh-wrens and swamp-sparrows, kingbirds and red-wings, that will soon form those enormous flocks that add so marked a feature to the autumn landscape. It needs no field-glass to mark down the passing herons that, coming from the river-shore, take a noontide rest in the overgrown marsh.

I had once, on the very spot at which I was now looking, an unlooked-for adventure. For want of something better to do, I pushed my way into the weedy marsh until I reached a prostrate tree-trunk that during the last freshet had stranded there. It was a wild place. The tall rose-mallow and wavy cat-tail were far above my head, and every trace of civilization was effectually shut out. It was as much a wilderness as any jungle in the tropics. Nor was I alone. Not a minute elapsed before a faint squeak told me that there were meadow-mice in the hollow log on which I sat. Then the rank grass moved and a least bittern came into view and as quickly disappeared. I heard continually the cackle of the king-rail, and the liquid twittering of the marsh-wrens was a delight. The huge globular nests of these birds were everywhere about me; but the birds did not think of me as having any evil designs upon them, so they came and went as freely as if alone. This is bird-viewing that one too seldom enjoys nowadays. Often, and very suddenly, all sound ceased and every bird disappeared. I did not recognize the cause at first, but was enlightened a moment later. A large bird passed over, and its very shadow frightened the little marsh-dwellers. If not, the shadow and fright were a coincidence several times that morning. The day, for me, ended with the unusual chance of a close encounter with a great blue heron. I saw the bird hover for a moment directly overhead, and then, letting its legs drop, it descended with lead-like rapidity. I leaned backward to avoid it, and could have touched the bird when it reached the ground, it was so near. I shall never know which was the more astonished. Certainly, had it chosen, it could have stabbed me through and through.

I was glad to be again on drier land and in open country. There had been adventure enough; and yet, as seen from a distance, this bit of marsh was but weeds and water.

Southward there stands the remnant of a forest: second- and third-growth woodland usually; for trees of really great age are now generally alone. I can see from where I sit three primeval beeches that are known to be over two centuries old, and not far away towered one giant tulip-tree that since the country’s earliest settlement had stood like a faithful sentinel, guarding the south bank of a nameless spring brook. Ever a thing of beauty, it shone with added splendor at night, when the rising full moon rested in its arms, as if weary at the very outset of her journey. My grandfather told me that in his boyhood it was known as the “Indian tree,” because a basket-maker and his squaw had a wigwam there. That was a century ago, and often, of late years, I have hunted on the spot for some trace of these redskins, but found nothing, although all about, in every field, were old Indian relics, even their cherished tobacco-pipes. Small, recent growths of timber, even where they have succeeded an ancient forest, are not, as a rule, attractive. Their newness is too evident, and, except for a few passing birds, they are not apt to harbor much wild life. As I look at the mingled foliage of oaks and elms, beeches, hickories, and wild cherry, I give little heed to that before me and recall forests worthy of the name, doing precisely what I have declared unwise. A naturalist could find more material in these few acres of woodland than he could “work up” in a lifetime. I have underrated them. From the little thicket of blackberry vines I see a rabbit slowly loping, as if in search of food. It is a full-grown fellow, and suggests the round of the traps in late autumn and the woods in winter.