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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Birds in the Bush, by Bradford Torrey
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Birds in the Bush
+
+
+Author: Bradford Torrey
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 7, 2009  [eBook #28019]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS IN THE BUSH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robin Monks, Joseph Cooper, Leonard Johnson, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+BIRDS IN THE BUSH
+
+by
+
+BRADFORD TORREY
+
+Sixth Edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Boston
+Houghton, Mifflin and Company
+New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+1893
+
+Copyright, 1885,
+by Bradford Torrey
+All rights reserved.
+
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
+
+
+
+
+Wherefore, let me intreat you to read it with favour and attention, and
+to pardon us, wherein we may seem to come short of some words, which we
+have laboured to interpret.
+
+_The Prologue of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                             PAGE
+
+   ON BOSTON COMMON             1
+
+   BIRD-SONGS                  31
+
+   CHARACTER IN FEATHERS       53
+
+   IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS      75
+
+   PHILLIDA AND CORIDON       103
+
+   SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE      129
+
+   MINOR SONGSTERS            155
+
+   WINTER BIRDS ABOUT BOSTON  185
+
+   A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL       211
+
+   AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY      243
+
+   A MONTH'S MUSIC            277
+
+
+
+
+                           ON BOSTON COMMON.
+
+    Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
+    And hermits are contented with their cells;
+    And students with their pensive citadels:
+    Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
+    Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
+    High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
+    Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
+    In truth, the prison unto which we doom
+    Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
+    In sundry moods 't was pastime to be bound
+    Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
+    Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
+    Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
+    Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
+
+                                         WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+                           ON BOSTON COMMON.
+
+
+Our Common and Garden are not an ideal field of operations for the
+student of birds. No doubt they are rather straitened and public. Other
+things being equal, a modest ornithologist would prefer a place where he
+could stand still and look up without becoming himself a gazing-stock.
+But "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps;" and if we are
+appointed to take our daily exercise in a city park, we shall very
+likely find its narrow limits not destitute of some partial
+compensations. This, at least, may be depended upon,--our
+disappointments will be on the right side of the account; we shall see
+more than we have anticipated rather than less, and so our pleasures
+will, as it were, come to us double. I recall, for example, the
+heightened interest with which I beheld my first Boston cat-bird;
+standing on the back of one of the seats in the Garden, steadying
+himself with oscillations of his tail,--a conveniently long
+balance-pole,--while he peeped curiously down into a geranium bed,
+within the leafy seclusion of which he presently disappeared. He was
+nothing but a cat-bird; if I had seen him in the country I should have
+passed him by without a second glance; but here, at the base of the
+Everett statue, he looked, somehow, like a bird of another feather.
+Since then, it is true, I have learned that his occasional presence with
+us in the season of the semi-annual migration is not a matter for
+astonishment. At that time, however, I was happily more ignorant; and
+therefore, as I say, my pleasure was twofold,--the pleasure, that is, of
+the bird's society and of the surprise.
+
+There are plenty of people, I am aware, who assert that there are no
+longer any native birds in our city grounds,--or, at the most, only a
+few robins. Formerly things were different, they have heard, but now the
+abominable English sparrows monopolize every nook and corner. These wise
+persons speak with an air of positiveness, and doubtless ought to know
+whereof they affirm. Hath not a Bostonian eyes? And doth he not cross
+the Common every day? But it is proverbially hard to prove a negative;
+and some of us, with no thought of being cynical, have ceased to put
+unqualified trust in other people's eyesight,--especially since we have
+found our own to fall a little short of absolute infallibility. My own
+vision, by the way, is reasonably good, if I may say so; at any rate I
+am not stone-blind. Yet here have I been perambulating the Public Garden
+for an indefinite period, without seeing the first trace of a
+field-mouse or a shrew. I should have been in excellent company had I
+begun long ago to maintain that no such animals exist within our
+precincts. But the other day a butcher-bird made us a flying call, and
+almost the first thing he did was to catch one of these same furry
+dainties and spit it upon a thorn, where anon I found him devouring it.
+I would not appear to boast; but really, when I saw what Collurio had
+done, it did not so much as occur to me to quarrel with him because he
+had discovered in half an hour what I had overlooked for ten years. On
+the contrary I hastened to pay him a heart-felt compliment upon his
+indisputable sagacity and keenness as a natural historian;--a measure of
+magnanimity easily enough afforded, since however the shrike might excel
+me at one point, there could be no question on the whole of my
+immeasurable superiority. And I cherish the hope that my fellow
+townsmen, who, as they insist, never themselves see any birds whatever
+in the Garden and Common (their attention being taken up with matters
+more important), may be disposed to exercise a similar forbearance
+toward me, when I modestly profess that within the last seven or eight
+years I have watched there some thousands of specimens, representing not
+far from seventy species.
+
+Of course the principal part of all the birds to be found in such a
+place are transient visitors merely. In the long spring and autumn
+journeys it will all the time be happening that more or less of the
+travelers alight here for rest and refreshment. Now it is only a
+straggler or two; now a considerable flock of some one species; and now
+a miscellaneous collection of perhaps a dozen sorts.
+
+One of the first things to strike the observer is the uniformity with
+which such pilgrims arrive during the night. He goes his rounds late in
+the afternoon, and there is, no sign of anything unusual; but the next
+morning the grounds are populous,--thrushes, finches, warblers, and what
+not. And as they come in the dark, so also do they go away again. With
+rare exceptions you may follow them up never so closely, and they will
+do nothing more than fly from tree to tree, or out of one clump of
+shrubbery into another. Once in a great while, under some special
+provocation, they threaten a longer flight; but on getting high enough
+to see the unbroken array of roofs, on every side they speedily grow
+confused, and after a few shiftings of their course dive hurriedly into
+the nearest tree. It was a mistake their stopping here in the first
+place; but once here, there is nothing for it save to put up with the
+discomforts of the situation till after sunset. Then, please heaven,
+they will be off, praying never to find themselves again in such a
+Babel.
+
+That most of our smaller birds migrate by night is by this time too well
+established to need corroboration; but if the student wishes to assure
+himself of the fact at first hand, he may easily do it by one or two
+seasons' observations in our Common,--or, I suppose, in any like
+inclosure. And if he be blest with an ornithologically educated ear, he
+may still further confirm his faith by standing on Beacon Hill in the
+evening--as I myself have often done--and listening to the _chips_ of
+warblers, or the _tseeps_ of sparrows, as these little wanderers, hour
+after hour, pass through the darkness over the city. Why the birds
+follow this plan, what advantages they gain or what perils they avoid by
+making their flight nocturnal, is a question with which our inquisitive
+friend will perhaps find greater difficulty. I should be glad, for one,
+to hear his explanation.
+
+As a rule, our visitors tarry with us for two or three days; at least I
+have noticed that to be true in many cases where their numbers, or
+size, or rarity made it possible to be reasonably certain when the
+arrival and departure took place; and in so very limited a field it is
+of course comparatively easy to keep track of the same individual during
+his stay, and, so to speak, become acquainted with him. I remember with
+interest several such acquaintanceships.
+
+One of these was with a yellow-bellied woodpecker, the first I had ever
+seen. He made his appearance one morning in October, along with a
+company of chickadees and other birds, and at once took up his quarters
+on a maple-tree near the Ether monument. I watched his movements for
+some time, and at noon, happening to be in the same place again, found
+him still there. And there he remained four days. I went to look at him
+several times daily, and almost always found him either on the maple or
+on a tulip tree a few yards distant. Without question the sweetness of
+maple sap was known to _Sphyropicus varius_ long before our human
+ancestors discovered it, and this particular bird, to judge from his
+actions, must have been a genuine connoisseur; at all events he seemed
+to recognize our Boston tree as of a sort not to be met with every day,
+although to my less critical sense it was nothing but an ordinary
+specimen of the common _Acer dasycarpum_. He was extremely industrious,
+as is the custom of his family, and paid no attention to the children
+playing about, or to the men who sat under his tree, with the back of
+their seat resting against the trunk. As for the children's noise, he
+likely enough enjoyed it; for he is a noisy fellow himself and famous as
+a drummer. An aged clergyman in Washington told me--in accents half
+pathetic, half revengeful--that at a certain time of the year he could
+scarcely read his Bible on Sunday mornings, because of the racket which
+this woodpecker made hammering on the tin roof overhead.
+
+Another of my acquaintances was of a very different type, a female
+Maryland yellow-throat. This lovely creature, a most exquisite, dainty
+bit of bird flesh, was in the Garden all by herself on the 6th of
+October, when the great majority of her relatives must have been already
+well on their way toward the sunny South. She appeared to be perfectly
+contented, and allowed me to watch her closely, only scolding mildly now
+and then when I became too inquisitive. How I did admire her bravery and
+peace of mind; feeding so quietly, with that long, lonesome journey
+before her, and the cold weather coming on! No wonder the Great Teacher
+pointed his lesson of trust with the injunction, "Behold the fowls of
+the air."
+
+A passenger even worse belated than this warbler was a chipping sparrow
+that I found hopping about the edge of the Beacon Street Mall on the 6th
+of December, seven or eight weeks after all chippers were supposed to be
+south of Mason and Dixon's line. Some accident had detained him
+doubtless; but he showed no signs of worry or haste, as I walked round
+him, scrutinizing every feather, lest he should be some tree sparrow
+traveling in disguise.
+
+There is not much to attract birds to the Common in the winter, since we
+offer them neither evergreens for shelter nor weed patches for a
+granary. I said to one of the gardeners that I thought it a pity, on
+this account, that some of the plants, especially the zinnias and
+marigolds, were not left to go to seed. A little untidiness, in so good
+a cause, could hardly be taken amiss by even the most fastidious
+taxpayer. He replied that it would be of no use; we hadn't any birds
+now, and we shouldn't have any so long as the English sparrows were here
+to drive them away. But it would be of use, notwithstanding; and
+certainly it would afford a pleasure to many people to see flocks of
+goldfinches, red-poll linnets, tree sparrows, and possibly of the
+beautiful snow buntings, feeding in the Garden in midwinter.
+
+Even as things are, however, the cold season is sure to bring us a few
+butcher-birds. These come on business, and are now welcomed as public
+benefactors, though formerly our sparrow-loving municipal authorities
+thought it their duty to shoot them. They travel singly, as a rule, and
+sometimes the same bird will be here for several weeks together. Then
+you will have no trouble about finding here and there in the hawthorn
+trees pleasing evidences of his activity and address. Collurio is
+brought up to be in love with his work. In his Mother Goose it is
+written,--
+
+    Fe, fi, fo, farrow!
+    I smell the blood of an English sparrow;
+
+and however long he may live, he never forgets his early training. His
+days, as the poet says, are "bound each to each by natural piety." Happy
+lot! wherein duty and conscience go ever hand in hand; for whose
+possessor
+
+        "Love is an unerring light,
+    And joy its own security."
+
+In appearance the shrike resembles the mocking-bird. Indeed, a policeman
+whom I found staring at one would have it that he _was_ a mocking-bird.
+"Don't you _see_ he is? And he's been singing, too." I had nothing to
+say against the singing, since the shrike will often twitter by the
+half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning
+the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were
+talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn
+bush, right under the shrike's perch. The latter was all attention
+instantly, and, after waiting till the sparrow had moved a little out of
+the thick of the branches, down he pounced. He missed his aim, or the
+sparrow was too quick for him, and although he made a second swoop, and
+followed that by a hot chase, he speedily came back without his prey.
+This little exertion, however, seemed to have provoked his appetite;
+for, instead of resuming his coffee-tree perch, he went into the
+hawthorn, and began to feed upon the carcass of a bird which, it seemed,
+he had previously laid up in store. He was soon frightened off for a few
+moments by the approach of a third man, and the policeman improved the
+opportunity to visit the bush and bring away his breakfast. When the
+fellow returned and found his table empty, he did not manifest the
+slightest disappointment (the shrike never does; he is a fatalist, I
+think); but in order to see what he would do, the policeman tossed the
+body to him. It lodged on one of the outer twigs, and immediately the
+shrike came for it; at the same time spreading his beautifully bordered
+tail and screaming loudly. Whether these demonstrations were intended to
+express delight, or anger, or contempt, I could not judge; but he seized
+the body, carried it back to its old place, drove it again upon the
+thorn, and proceeded to devour it more voraciously than ever, scattering
+the feathers about in a lively way as he tore it to pieces. The third
+man, who had never before seen such a thing, stepped up within reach of
+the bush, and eyed the performance at his leisure, the shrike not
+deigning to mind him in the least. A few mornings later the same bird
+gave me another and more amusing exhibition of his nonchalance. He was
+singing from the top of our one small larch-tree, and I had stopped near
+the bridge to look and listen, when a milkman entered at the
+Commonwealth Avenue gate, both hands full of cans, and, without noticing
+the shrike, walked straight under the tree. Just then, however, he heard
+the notes overhead, and, looking up, saw the bird. As if not knowing
+what to make of the creature's assurance, he stared at him for a moment,
+and then, putting down his load, he seized the trunk with both hands,
+and gave it a good shake. But the bird only took a fresh hold; and when
+the man let go, and stepped back to look up, there he sat, to all
+appearance as unconcerned as if nothing had happened. Not to be so
+easily beaten, the man grasped the trunk again, and shook it harder than
+before; and this time Collurio seemed to think the joke had been carried
+far enough, for he took wing, and flew to another part of the Garden.
+The bravado of the butcher-bird is great, but it is not unlimited. I saw
+him, one day, shuffling along a branch in a very nervous, unshrikely
+fashion, and was at a loss to account for his unusual demeanor till I
+caught sight of a low-flying hawk sweeping over the tree. Every
+creature, no matter how brave, has some other creature to be afraid of;
+otherwise, how would the world get on?
+
+The advent of spring is usually announced during the first week of
+March, sometimes by the robins, sometimes by the bluebirds. The latter,
+it should be remarked, are an exception to the rule that our spring and
+autumn callers arrive and depart in the night. My impression is that
+their migrations are ordinarily accomplished by daylight. At all events
+I have often seen them enter the Common, alight for a few minutes, and
+then start off again; while I have never known them to settle down for a
+visit of two or three days, in the manner of most other species. This
+last peculiarity may be owing to the fact that the European sparrows
+treat them with even more than their customary measure of incivility,
+till the poor wayfarers have literally no rest for the soles of their
+feet. They breed by choice in just such miniature meeting-houses as our
+city fathers have provided so plentifully for their foreign _proteges_;
+and probably the latter, being aware of this, feel it necessary to
+discourage at the outset any idea which these blue-coated American
+interlopers may have begun to entertain of settling in Boston for the
+summer.
+
+The robins may be said to be abundant with us for more than half the
+year; but they are especially numerous for a month or two early in the
+season. I have counted more than thirty feeding at once in the lower
+half of the parade ground, and at nightfall have seen forty at roost in
+one tree, with half as many more in the tree adjoining. They grow
+extremely noisy about sunset, filling the air with songs, cackles, and
+screams, till even the most stolid citizen pauses a moment to look up at
+the authors of so much clamor.
+
+By the middle of March the song sparrows begin to appear, and for a
+month after this they furnish delightful music daily. I have heard them
+caroling with all cheerfulness in the midst of a driving snow-storm. The
+dear little optimists! They never doubt that the sun is on their side.
+Of necessity they go elsewhere to find nests for themselves, where they
+may lay their young; for they build on the ground, and a lawn which is
+mowed every two or three days would be quite out of the question.
+
+At the best, a public park is not a favorable spot in which to study
+bird music. Species that spend the summer here, like the robin, the
+warbling vireo, the red-eyed vireo, the chipper, the goldfinch, and the
+Baltimore oriole, of course sing freely; but the much larger number
+which merely drop in upon us by the way are busy feeding during their
+brief sojourn, and besides are kept in a state of greater or less
+excitement by the frequent approach of passers-by. Nevertheless, I once
+heard a bobolink sing in our Garden (the only one I ever saw there), and
+once a brown thrush, although neither was sufficiently at home to do
+himself justice. The "Peabody" song of the white-throated sparrows is to
+be heard occasionally during both migrations. It is the more welcome in
+such a place, because, to my ears at least, it is one of the wildest of
+all bird notes; it is among the last to be heard at night in the White
+Mountain woods, as well as one of the last to die away beneath you as
+you climb the higher peaks. On the Crawford bridle path, for instance, I
+remember that the song of this bird and that of the gray-cheeked
+thrush[1] were heard all along the ridge from Mount Clinton to Mount
+Washington. The finest bird concert I ever attended in Boston was given
+on Monument Hill by a great chorus of fox-colored sparrows, one morning
+in April. A high wind had been blowing during the night, and the moment
+I entered the Common I discovered that there had been an extraordinary
+arrival of birds, of various species. The parade ground was full of
+snow-birds, while the hill was covered with fox-sparrows,--hundreds of
+them, I thought, and many of them in full song. It was a royal concert,
+but the audience, I am sorry to say, was small. It is unfortunate, in
+some aspects of the case, that birds have never learned that a _matinee_
+ought to begin at two o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+These sparrows please me by their lordly treatment of their European
+cousins. One in particular, who was holding his ground against three of
+the Britishers, moved me almost to the point of giving him three cheers.
+
+Of late a few crow blackbirds have taken to building their nests in one
+corner of our domain; and they attract at least their full share of
+attention, as they strut about the lawns in their glossy clerical suits.
+One of the gardeners tells me that they sometimes kill the sparrows. I
+hope they do. The crow blackbird's attempts at song are ludicrous in the
+extreme, as every note is cracked, and is accompanied by a ridiculous
+caudal gesture. But he is ranked among the oscines, and seems to know
+it; and, after all, it is only the common fault of singers not to be
+able to detect their own want of tunefulness.
+
+I was once crossing the Common, in the middle of the day, when I was
+suddenly arrested by the call of a cuckoo. At the same instant two men
+passed me, and I heard one say to the other, "Hear that cuckoo! Do you
+know what it means? No? Well, _I_ know what it means: it means that it's
+going to rain." It did rain, although not for a number of days, I
+believe. But probably the cuckoo has adopted the modern method of
+predicting the weather some time in advance. Not very long afterwards I
+again heard this same note on the Common; but it was several years
+before I was able to put the cuckoo into my Boston list, as a bird
+actually seen. Indeed it is not so very easy to see him anywhere; for he
+makes a practice of robbing the nests of smaller birds, and is always
+skulking about from one tree to another, as though he were afraid of
+being discovered, as no doubt he is. What Wordsworth wrote of the
+European species (allowance being made for a proper degree of poetic
+license) is equally applicable to ours:--
+
+    "No bird, but an invisible thing,
+      A voice, a mystery."
+
+When I did finally get a sight of the fellow it was on this wise. As I
+entered the Garden, one morning in September, a goldfinch was calling so
+persistently and with such anxious emphasis from the large sophora tree
+that I turned my steps that way to ascertain what could be the trouble.
+I took the voice for a young bird's, but found instead a male adult, who
+was twitching his tail nervously and scolding _phee-phee_, _phee-phee_,
+at a black-billed cuckoo perched near at hand, in his usual sneaking
+attitude. The goldfinch called and called, till my patience was nearly
+spent. (Small birds know better than to attack a big one so long as the
+latter is at rest.) Then, at last, the cuckoo started off, the finch
+after him, and a few minutes later I saw the same flight and chase
+repeated. Several other goldfinches were flying about in the
+neighborhood, but only this one was in the least excited. Doubtless he
+had special reasons of his own for dreading the presence of this
+cowardly foe.
+
+One of our regular visitors twice a year is the brown creeper. He is so
+small and silent, and withal his color is so like that of the bark to
+which he clings, that I suspect he is seldom noticed even by persons who
+pass within a few feet of him. But he is not too small to be hectored by
+the sparrows, and I have before now been amused at the encounter. The
+sparrow catches sight of the creeper, and at once bears down upon him,
+when the creeper darts to the other side of the tree, and alights again
+a little further up. The sparrow is after him; but, as he comes dashing
+round the trunk, he always seems to expect to find the creeper perched
+upon some twig, as any other bird would be, and it is only after a
+little reconnoitring that he again discovers him clinging to the
+vertical bole. Then he makes another onset with a similar result; and
+these manoeoeuvres are repeated, till the creeper becomes disgusted,
+and takes to another tree.
+
+The olive-backed thrushes and the hermits may be looked for every spring
+and autumn, and I have known forty or fifty of the former to be present
+at once. The hermits most often travel singly or in pairs, though a
+small flock is not so very uncommon. Both species preserve absolute
+silence while here; I have watched hundreds of them, without hearing so
+much as an alarm note. They are far from being pugnacious, but their
+sense of personal dignity is large, and once in a while, when the
+sparrows pester them beyond endurance, they assume the offensive with
+much spirit. There are none of our feathered guests whom I am gladder to
+see; the sight of them inevitably fills me with remembrances of happy
+vacation seasons among the hills of New Hampshire. If only they would
+sing on the Common as they do in those northern woods! The whole city
+would come out to hear them.
+
+During every migration large numbers of warblers visit us. I have noted
+the golden-crowned thrush, the small-billed water-thrush, the
+black-and-white creeper, the Maryland yellow-throat, the blue
+yellow-back, the black-throated green, the black-throated blue, the
+yellow-rump, the summer yellow-bird, the black-poll, the Canada
+flycatcher, and the redstart. No doubt the list is far from complete,
+as, of course, I have not used either glass or gun; and without one or
+other of these aids the observer must be content to let many of these
+small, tree-top-haunting birds pass unidentified. The two kinglets give
+us a call occasionally, and in the late summer and early autumn the
+humming-birds spend several weeks about our flower-beds.
+
+It would be hard for the latter to find a more agreeable stopping-place
+in the whole course of their southward journey. What could they ask
+better than beds of tuberoses, Japanese lilies, _Nicotiana_ (against the
+use of which they manifest not the slightest scruple), petunias, and the
+like? Having in mind the Duke of Argyll's assertion that "no bird can
+ever fly backwards,"[2] I have more than once watched these
+humming-birds at their work on purpose to see whether they would respect
+the noble Scotchman's dictum. I am compelled to report that they
+appeared never to have heard of his theory. At any rate they very
+plainly did fly tail foremost; and that not only in _dropping_ from a
+blossom,--in which case the seeming flight might have been, as the duke
+maintains, an optical illusion merely,--but even while backing out of
+the flower-tube in an upward direction. They are commendably catholic in
+their tastes. I saw one exploring the disk of a sunflower, in company
+with a splendid monarch butterfly. Possibly he knew that the sunflower
+was just then in fashion. Only a few minutes earlier the same bird--or
+another like him--had chased an English sparrow out of the Garden,
+across Arlington Street, and up to the very roof of a House, to the
+great delight of at least one patriotic Yankee. At another time I saw
+one of these tiny beauties making his morning toilet in a very pretty
+fashion, leaning forward, and brushing first one cheek and then the
+other against the wet rose leaf on which he was perched.
+
+The only swallows on my list are the barn swallows and the
+white-breasted. The former, as they go hawking about the crowded
+streets, must often send the thoughts of rich city merchants back to the
+big barns of their grandfathers, far off in out-of-the-way country
+places. Of course we have the chimney swifts, also (near relatives of
+the humming-birds!), but they are not swallows.
+
+Speaking of the swallows, I am reminded of a hawk that came to Boston,
+one morning, fully determined not to go away without a taste of the
+famous imported sparrows. It is nothing unusual for hawks to be seen
+flying over the city, but I had never before known one actually to make
+the Public Garden his hunting-ground. This bird perched for a while on
+the Arlington Street fence, within a few feet of a passing carriage;
+next he was on the ground, peering into a bed of rhododendrons; then for
+a long time he sat still in a tree, while numbers of men walked back
+and forth underneath; between whiles he sailed about, on the watch for
+his prey. On one of these last occasions a little company of swallows
+came along, and one of them immediately went out of his way to swoop
+down upon the hawk, and deal him a dab. Then, as he rejoined his
+companions, I heard him give a little chuckle, as though he said, "There!
+did you see me peck at him? You don't think I am afraid of such a
+fellow as that, do you?" To speak in Thoreau's manner, I rejoiced in the
+incident as a fresh illustration of the ascendency of spirit over
+matter.
+
+One is always glad to find a familiar bird playing a new _role_, and
+especially in such a spot as the Common, where, at the best, one can
+hope to see so very little. It may be assumed, therefore, that I felt
+peculiarly grateful to a white-bellied nuthatch, when I discovered him
+bopping about on the ground--on Monument Hill; a piece of humility such
+as I had never before detected any nuthatch in the practice of. Indeed,
+this fellow looked so unlike himself, moving briskly through the grass
+with long, awkward leaps, that at first sight I failed to recognize him.
+He was occupied with turning over the dry leaves, one after
+another,--hunting for cocoons, or things of that sort, I suppose. Twice
+he found what he was in search of; but instead of handling the leaf on
+the ground, he flew with it to the trunk of an elm, wedged it into a
+crevice of the bark, and proceeded to hammer it sharply with his beak.
+Great is the power of habit! Strange--is it not?--that any bird should
+find it easiest to do such work while clinging to a perpendicular
+surface! Yes; but how does it look to a dog, I wonder, that men can walk
+better on their hind legs than on all fours? Everything is a miracle
+from somebody's point of view. The sparrows were inclined to make game
+of my obliging little performer; but he would have none of their
+insolence, and repelled every approach in dashing style. In exactly
+three weeks from this time, and on the same hillside, I came upon
+another nuthatch similarly employed; but before this one had turned up a
+leaf to his mind, the sparrows became literally too many for him, and he
+took flight,--to my no small disappointment.
+
+It would be unfair not to name others of my city guests, even though I
+have nothing in particular to record concerning them. The Wilson thrush
+and the red-bellied nuthatch I have seen once or twice each. The chewink
+is more constant in his visits, as is also the golden-winged woodpecker.
+Our familiar little downy woodpecker, on the other hand, has thus far
+kept out of my catalogue. No other bird's absence has surprised me so
+much; and it is the more remarkable because the comparatively rare
+yellow-bellied species is to be met with nearly every season.
+Cedar-birds show themselves irregularly. One March morning, when the
+ground was covered with snow, a flock of perhaps a hundred collected in
+one of the taller maples in the Garden, till the tree looked from a
+distance like an autumn hickory, its leafless branches still thickly
+dotted with nuts. Four days afterward, what seemed to be the same
+company made their appearance in the Common. Of the flycatchers, I have
+noted the kingbird, the least flycatcher, and the phoebe. The two
+former stay to breed. Twice in the fall I have found a kingfisher about
+the Frog Pond. Once the fellow sprung his watchman's rattle. He was
+perhaps my most unexpected caller, and for a minute or so I was not
+entirely sure whether indeed I was in Boston or not. The blue jay and
+the crow know too much to be caught in such a place, although one may
+often enough see the latter passing overhead. Every now and then, in the
+traveling season, a stray sandpiper or two will be observed teetering
+round the edge of the Common and Garden ponds; and one day, when the
+latter was drained, I saw quite a flock of some one of the smaller
+species feeding over its bottom. Very picturesque they were, feeding and
+flying in close order. Besides these must be mentioned the
+yellow-throated vireo, the bay-winged bunting, the swamp sparrow, the
+field sparrow, the purple finch, the red-poll linnet, the savanna
+sparrow, the tree sparrow, the night-hawk (whose celebrated tumbling
+trick may often be witnessed by evening strollers in the Garden), the
+woodcock (I found the body of one which had evidently met its death
+against the electric wire), and among the best of all, the chickadees,
+who sometimes make the whole autumn cheerful with their presence, but
+about whom I say nothing here because I have said so much elsewhere.
+
+Of fugitive cage-birds, I recall only five--all in the Garden. One of
+these, feeding tamely in the path, I suspected for an English robin but
+he was not in full plumage, and my conjecture may have been incorrect.
+Another was a diminutive finch, dressed in a suit of red, blue, and
+green. He sat in a bush, saying _No, no!_ to a feline admirer who was
+making love to him earnestly. The others were a mocking-bird, a cardinal
+grosbeak, and a paroquet. The mocking-bird and the grosbeak might
+possibly have been wild, had the question been one of latitude simply,
+but their demeanor satisfied me to the contrary. The former's awkward
+attempt at alighting on the tip of a fence-picket seemed evidence enough
+that he had not been long at large. The paroquet was a splendid
+creature, with a brilliant orange throat darkly spotted. He flew from
+tree to tree, chattering gayly, and had a really pretty song. Evidently
+he was in the best of spirits, notwithstanding the rather obtrusive
+attentions of a crowd of house sparrows, who appeared to look upon such
+a wearer of the green as badly out of place in this new England of
+theirs. But for all his vivacity, I feared he would not be long in
+coming to grief. If he escaped other perils, the cold weather must soon
+overtake him, for it was now the middle of September, and his last state
+would be worse than his first. He had better have kept his cage; unless,
+indeed, he was one of the nobler spirits that prefer death to slavery.
+
+Of all the birds thus far named, very few seemed to attract the
+attention of anybody except myself. But there remains one other, whom I
+have reserved for the last, not because he was in himself the noblest or
+the most interesting (though he was perhaps the biggest), but because,
+unlike the rest, he did succeed in winning the notice of the multitude.
+In fact, my one owl, to speak theatrically, made a decided hit; for a
+single afternoon he may be said to have been famous,--or at all events
+notorious, if any old-fashioned reader be disposed to insist upon this
+all but obsolete distinction. His triumph, such as it was, had already
+begun when I first discovered him, for he was then perched well up in an
+elm, while a mob of perhaps forty men and boys were pelting him with
+sticks and stones. Even in the dim light of a cloudy November afternoon
+he seemed quite bewildered and helpless, making no attempt to escape,
+although the missiles were flying past him on all sides. The most he did
+was to shift his perch when he was hit, which, to be sure, happened
+pretty often. Once he was struck so hard that he came tumbling toward
+the ground, and I began to think it was all over with him; but when
+about half-way down he recovered himself, and by dint of painful
+flappings succeeded in alighting just out of the reach of the crowd. At
+once there were loud cries: "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" and while
+the scamps were debating what to do next, he regained his breath, and
+flew up into the tree again, as high as before. Then the stoning began
+anew. For my part I pitied the fellow sincerely, and wished him well out
+of the hands of his tormentors; but I found myself laughing with the
+rest to see him turn his head and stare, with his big, vacant eyes,
+after a stone which had just whizzed by his ear. Everybody that came
+along stopped for a few minutes to witness the sport, and Beacon Street
+filled up with carriages till it looked as if some holiday procession
+were halted in front of the State House. I left the crowd still at their
+work, and must do them the justice to say that some of them were
+excellent marksmen. An old negro, who stood near me, was bewailing the
+law against shooting; else, he said, he would go home and get his gun.
+He described, with appropriate gestures, how very easily he could fetch
+the bird down. Perhaps he afterwards plucked up courage to violate the
+statute. At any rate the next morning's newspapers reported that an owl
+had been shot, the day before, on the Common. Poor bird of wisdom! His
+sudden popularity proved to be the death of him. Like many of loftier
+name he found it true,--
+
+    "The path of glory leads but to the grave."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] My identification of _Turdus Aliciae_ was based entirely upon the
+song, and so, of course, had no final scientific value. It was confirmed
+a few weeks later, however, by Mr. William Brewster, who took specimens.
+(See _Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club_, January, 1883, p.
+12.) Prior to this the species was not known to breed in New England.
+
+[2] _The Reign of Law_, p. 140.
+
+
+
+
+                              BIRD-SONGS.
+
+    Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
+    Which make such delicate music in the woods?
+
+                                        SHELLEY.
+
+
+                              BIRD-SONGS.
+
+
+Why do birds sing? Has their music a meaning, or is it all a matter of
+blind impulse? Some bright morning in March, as you go out-of-doors, you
+are greeted by the notes of the first robin. Perched in a leafless tree,
+there he sits, facing the sun like a genuine fire-worshiper, and singing
+as though he would pour out his very soul. What is he thinking about?
+What spirit possesses him?
+
+It is easy to ask questions until the simplest matter comes to seem,
+what at bottom it really is, a thing altogether mysterious; but if our
+robin could understand us, he would, likely enough, reply:--
+
+"Why do you talk in this way, as if it were something requiring
+explanation that a bird should sing? You seem to have forgotten that
+everybody sings, or almost everybody. Think of the insects,--the bees
+and the crickets and the locusts, to say nothing of your intimate
+friends, the mosquitoes! Think, too, of the frogs and the hylas! If
+these cold-blooded, low-lived creatures, after sleeping all winter in
+the mud,[3] are free to make so much use of their voices, surely a bird
+of the air may sing his unobtrusive song without being cross-examined
+concerning the purpose of it. Why do the mice sing, and the monkeys, and
+the woodchucks? Indeed, sir,--if one may be so bold,--why do you sing,
+yourself?"
+
+This matter-of-fact Darwinism need not frighten us. It will do us no
+harm to remember, now and then, "the hole of the pit whence we were
+digged;" and besides, as far as any relationship between us and the
+birds is concerned, it is doubtful whether we are the party to complain.
+
+But avoiding "genealogies and contentions," and taking up the question
+with which we began, we may safely say that birds sing, sometimes to
+gratify an innate love for sweet sounds; sometimes to win a mate, or to
+tell their love to a mate already won; sometimes as practice, with a
+view to self-improvement; and sometimes for no better reason than the
+poet's,--"I do but sing because I must." In general, they sing for joy;
+and their joy, of course, has various causes.
+
+For one thing, they are very sensitive to the weather. With them, as
+with us, sunlight and a genial warmth go to produce serenity. A bright
+summer-like day, late in October, or even in November, will set the
+smaller birds to singing, and the grouse to drumming. I heard a robin
+venturing a little song on the 25th of last December; but that, for
+aught I know, was a Christmas carol. No matter what the season, you will
+not hear a great deal of bird music during a high wind; and if you are
+caught in the woods by a sudden shower in May or June, and are not too
+much taken up with thoughts of your own condition, you will hardly fail
+to notice the instant silence which falls upon the woods with the rain.
+Birds, however, are more or less inconsistent (that is, a part of their
+likeness to us), and sometimes sing most freely when the sky is
+overcast.
+
+But their highest joys are by no means dependent upon the moods of the
+weather. A comfortable state of mind is not to be contemned, but beings
+who are capable of deep and passionate affection recognize a difference
+between comfort and ecstasy. And the peculiar glory of birds is just
+here, in the all-consuming fervor of their love. It would be commonplace
+to call them models of conjugal and parental faithfulness. With a few
+exceptions (and these, it is a pleasure to add, not singers), the very
+least of them is literally faithful unto death. Here and there, in the
+notes of some collector, we are told of a difficulty he has had in
+securing a coveted specimen: the tiny creature, whose mate had been
+already "collected," would persist in hovering so closely about the
+invader's head that it was impossible to shoot him without spoiling him
+for the cabinet by blowing him to pieces!
+
+Need there be any mystery about the singing of such a lover? Is it
+surprising if at times he is so enraptured that he can no longer sit
+tamely on the branch, but must dart into the air, and go circling round
+and round, caroling as he flies?
+
+So far as song is the voice of emotion, it will of necessity vary with
+the emotion; and every one who has ears must have heard once in a while
+bird music of quite unusual fervor. For example, I have often seen the
+least flycatcher (a very unromantic-looking body, surely) when he was
+almost beside himself; flying in a circle, and repeating breathlessly
+his emphatic _chebec_. And once I found a wood pewee in a somewhat
+similar mood. He was more quiet than the least flycatcher; but he too
+sang on the wing, and I have never heard notes which seemed more
+expressive of happiness. Many of them were entirely new and strange,
+although the familiar _pewee_ was introduced among the rest. As I
+listened, I felt it to be an occasion for thankfulness that the
+delighted creature had never studied anatomy, and did not know that the
+structure of his throat made it improper for him to sing. In this
+connection, also, I recall a cardinal grosbeak, whom I heard several
+years ago, on the bank of the Potomac River. An old soldier had taken me
+to visit the Great Falls, and as we were clambering over the rocks this
+grosbeak began to sing; and soon, without any hint from me, and without
+knowing who the invisible musician was, my companion remarked upon the
+uncommon beauty of the song. The cardinal is always a great singer,
+having a voice which, as European writers say, is almost equal to the
+nightingale's; but in this case the more stirring, martial quality of
+the strain had given place to an exquisite mellowness, as if it were,
+what I have no doubt it was, a song of love.
+
+Every kind of bird has notes of its own, so that a thoroughly practiced
+ear would be able to discriminate the different species with nearly as
+much certainty as Professor Baird would feel after an examination of the
+anatomy and plumage. Still this strong specific resemblance is far from
+being a dead uniformity. Aside from the fact, already mentioned, that
+the characteristic strain is sometimes given with extraordinary
+sweetness and emphasis, there are often to be detected variations of a
+more formal character. This is noticeably true of robins. It may almost
+be said that no two of them sing alike; while now and then their
+vagaries are conspicuous enough to attract general attention. One who
+was my neighbor last year interjected into his song a series of four or
+five most exact imitations of the peep of a chicken. When I first heard
+this performance, I was in company with two friends, both of whom
+noticed and laughed at it; and some days afterwards I visited the spot
+again, and found the bird still rehearsing the same ridiculous medley. I
+conjectured that he had been brought up near a hen-coop, and, moreover,
+had been so unfortunate as to lose his father before his notes had
+become thoroughly fixed; and then, being compelled to finish his musical
+education by himself, had taken a fancy to practice these chicken calls.
+This guess may not have been correct. All I can affirm is that he sang
+exactly as he might have been expected to do, on that supposition; but
+certainly the resemblance seemed too close to be accidental.
+
+The variations of the wood thrush are fully as striking as those of the
+robin, and sometimes it is impossible not to feel that the artist is
+making a deliberate effort to do something out of the ordinary course,
+something better than he has ever done before. Now and then he prefaces
+his proper song with many disconnected, extremely _staccato_ notes,
+following each other at very distant and unexpected intervals of pitch.
+It is this, I conclude, which is meant by some writer (who it is I
+cannot now remember) when he criticises the wood thrush for spending too
+much time in tuning his instrument. But the fault is the critic's, I
+think; to my ear these preliminaries sound rather like the recitative
+which goes before the grand _aria_.
+
+Still another musician who delights to take liberties with his score is
+the towhee bunting, or chewink. Indeed, he carries the matter so far
+that sometimes it seems almost as if he suspected the proximity of some
+self-conceited ornithologist, and were determined, if possible, to make
+a fool of him. And for my part, being neither self conceited nor an
+ornithologist, I am willing to confess that I have once or twice been so
+badly deceived that now the mere sight of this _Pipilo_ is, so to speak,
+a means of grace to me.
+
+One more of these innovators (these heretics, as they are most likely
+called by their more conservative brethren) is the field sparrow,
+better known as _Spizella pusilla_. His usual song consists of a simple
+line of notes, beginning leisurely, but growing shorter and more rapid
+to the close. The voice is so smooth and sweet, and the acceleration so
+well managed, that, although the whole is commonly a strict monotone,
+the effect is not in the least monotonous. This song I once heard
+rendered in reverse order, with a result so strange that I did not
+suspect the identity of the author till I had crept up within sight of
+him. Another of these sparrows, who has passed the last two seasons in
+my neighborhood, habitually doubles the measure; going through it in the
+usual way, and then, just as you expect him to conclude, catching it up
+again, _Da capo_.
+
+But birds like these are quite outdone by such species as the song
+sparrow, the white-eyed vireo, and the Western meadow-lark,--species of
+which we may say that each individual bird has a whole repertory of
+songs at his command. The song sparrow, who is the best known of the
+three, will repeat one melody perhaps a dozen times, then change it for
+a second, and in turn leave that for a third; as if he were singing
+hymns of twelve or fifteen stanzas each, and set each hymn to its
+appropriate tune. It is something well worth listening to, common
+though it is, and may easily suggest a number of questions about the
+origin and meaning of bird music.
+
+The white-eyed vireo is a singer of astonishing spirit, and his sudden
+changes from one theme to another are sometimes almost startling. He is
+a skillful ventriloquist, also, and I remember one in particular who
+outwitted me completely. He was rehearsing a well-known strain, but at
+the end there came up from the bushes underneath a querulous call. At
+first I took it for granted that some other bird was in the underbrush;
+but the note was repeated too many times, and came in too exactly on the
+beat.
+
+I have no personal acquaintance with the Western meadow-lark, but no
+less than twenty-six of his songs have been printed in musical notation,
+and these are said to be by no means all.[4]
+
+Others of our birds have similar gifts, though no others, so far as I
+know, are quite so versatile as these three. Several of the warblers,
+for example, have attained to more than one set song, notwithstanding
+the deservedly small reputation of this misnamed family. I have myself
+heard the golden-crowned thrush, the black-throated green warbler, the
+black-throated blue, the yellow-rumped, and the chestnut-sided, sing
+two melodies each, while the blue golden-winged has at least three; and
+this, of course, without making anything of slight variations such as
+all birds are more or less accustomed to indulge in. The best of the
+three songs of the blue golden-wing I have never heard except on one
+occasion, but then it was repeated for half an hour under my very eyes.
+It bore no resemblance to the common _dsee_, _dsee_, _dsee_, of the
+species, and would appear to be seldom used; for not only have I never
+heard it since, but none of the writers seem ever to have heard it at
+all. However, I still keep a careful description of it, which I took
+down on the spot, and which I expect some future golden-wing to verify.
+
+But the most celebrated of the warblers in this regard is the
+golden-crowned thrush, otherwise called the oven-bird and the wood
+wagtail. His ordinary effort is one of the noisiest, least melodious,
+and most incessant sounds to be heard in our woods. His _song_ is
+another matter. For that he takes to the air (usually starting from a
+tree-top, although I have seen him rise from the ground), whence, after
+a preliminary _chip_, _chip_, he lets fall a hurried flood of notes, in
+the midst of which can usually be distinguished his familiar _weechee_,
+_weechee_, _weechee_. It is nothing wonderful that he should sing on
+the wing,--many other birds do the same, and very much better than he;
+but he is singular in that he strictly reserves his aerial music for
+late in the afternoon. I have heard it as early as three o'clock, but
+never before that, and it is most common about sunset. Writers speak of
+it as limited to the season of courtship; but I have heard it almost
+daily till near the end of July, and once, for my special benefit,
+perhaps, it was given in full--and repeated--on the first day of
+September. But who taught the little creature to do this,--to sing one
+song in the forenoon, perched upon a twig, and to keep another for
+afternoon, singing that invariably on the wing? and what difference is
+there between the two in the mind of the singer?[5]
+
+It is an indiscretion ever to say of a bird that he has only such and
+such notes. You may have been his friend for years, but the next time
+you go into the woods he will likely enough put you to shame by singing
+something not so much as hinted at in your description. I thought I knew
+the song of the yellow-rumped warbler, having listened to it many
+times,--a slight and rather characterless thing, nowise remarkable. But
+coming down Mount Willard one day in June, I heard a warbler's song
+which brought me to a sudden halt. It was new and beautiful,--more
+beautiful, it seemed at the moment, than any warbler's song I had ever
+heard. What could it be? A little patient waiting (while the black-flies
+and mosquitoes "came upon me to eat up my flesh"), and the wonderful
+stranger appeared in full view,--my old acquaintance, the yellow-rumped
+warbler.
+
+With all this strong tendency on the part of birds to vary their music,
+how is it that there is still such a degree of uniformity, so that, as
+we have said, every species may be recognized by its notes? Why does
+every red-eyed vireo sing in one way, and every white-eyed vireo in
+another? Who teaches the young chipper to trill, and the young linnet to
+warble? In short, how do birds come by their music? Is it all a matter
+of instinct, inherited habit, or do they learn it? The answer appears to
+be that birds sing as children talk, by simple imitation. Nobody
+imagines that the infant is born with a language printed upon his brain.
+The father and mother may never have known a word of any tongue except
+the English, but if the child is brought up to hear only Chinese, he
+will infallibly speak that, and nothing else. And careful experiments
+have shown the same to be true of birds.[6] Taken from the nest just
+after they leave the shell, they invariably sing, not their own
+so-called natural song, but the song of their foster-parents; provided,
+of course, that this is not anything beyond their physical capacity. The
+notorious house sparrow (our "English" sparrow), in his wild or
+semi-domesticated state, never makes a musical sound; but if he is taken
+in hand early enough, he may be taught to sing, so it is said, nearly as
+well as the canary. Bechstein relates that a Paris clergyman had two of
+these sparrows whom he had trained to speak, and, among other things, to
+recite several of the shorter commandments; and the narrative goes on to
+say that it was sometimes very comical, when the pair were disputing
+over their food, to hear one gravely admonish the other, "Thou shalt not
+steal!" It would be interesting to know why creatures thus gifted do not
+sing of their own motion. With their amiability and sweet peaceableness
+they ought to be caroling the whole year round.
+
+This question of the transmission of songs from one generation to
+another is, of course, a part of the general subject of animal
+intelligence, a subject much discussed in these days on account of its
+bearing upon the modern doctrine concerning the relation of man to the
+inferior orders.
+
+We have nothing to do with such a theme, but it may not be out of place
+to suggest to preachers and moralists that here is a striking and
+unhackneyed illustration of the force of early training. Birds sing by
+imitation, it is true, but as a rule they imitate only the notes which
+they hear during the first few weeks after they are hatched. One of Mr.
+Barrington's linnets, for example, after being educated under a titlark,
+was put into a room with two birds of his own species, where he heard
+them sing freely every day for three months. He made no attempt to learn
+anything from them, however, but kept on practicing what the titlark had
+taught him, quite unconscious of anything singular or unpatriotic in
+such a course. This law, that impressions received during the immaturity
+of the powers become the unalterable habit of the after life, is perhaps
+the most momentous of all the laws in whose power we find ourselves.
+Sometimes we are tempted to call it cruel. But if it were annulled, this
+would be a strange world. What a hurly-hurly we should have among the
+birds! There would be no more telling them by their notes. Thrushes and
+jays, wrens and chickadees, finches and warblers, all would be singing
+one grand medley.
+
+Between these two opposing tendencies, one urging to variation, the
+other to permanence (for Nature herself is half radical, half
+conservative), the language of birds has grown from rude beginnings to
+its present beautiful diversity; and whoever lives a century of
+millenniums hence will listen to music such as we in this day can only
+dream of. Inappreciably but ceaselessly the work goes on. Here and there
+is born a master-singer, a feathered genius, and every generation makes
+its own addition to the glorious inheritance.
+
+It may be doubted whether there is any real connection between moral
+character and the possession of wings. Nevertheless there has long been
+a popular feeling that some such congruity does exist; and certainly it
+seems unreasonable to suppose that creatures who are able to soar at
+will into the heavens should be without other equally angelic
+attributes. But, be that as it may, our friends, the birds, do
+undeniably set us a good example in several respects. To mention only
+one, how becoming is their observance of morning and evening song! In
+spite of their industrious spirit (and few of us labor more hours
+daily), neither their first nor their last thoughts are given to the
+question, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink? Possibly their
+habit of saluting the rising and setting sun may be thought to favor the
+theory that the worship of the god of day was the original religion. I
+know nothing about that. But it would be a sad change if the birds,
+declining from their present beautiful custom, were to sleep and work,
+work and sleep, with no holy hour between, as is too much the case with
+the being who, according to his own pharisaic notion, is the only
+religious animal.
+
+In the season, however, the woods are by no means silent, even at
+noonday. Many species (such as the vireos and warblers, who get their
+living amid the foliage of trees) sing as they work; while the thrushes
+and others, who keep business and pleasure more distinct, are often too
+happy to go many hours together without a hymn. I have even seen robins
+singing without quitting the turf; but that is rather unusual, for
+somehow birds have come to feel that they must get away from the ground
+when the lyrical mood is upon them. This may be a thing of sentiment
+(for is not language full of uncomplimentary allusions to earth and
+earthliness?), but more likely it is prudential. The gift of song is no
+doubt a dangerous blessing to creatures who have so many enemies, and we
+can readily believe that they have found it safer to be up where they
+can look about them while thus publishing their whereabouts.
+
+A very interesting exception to this rule is the savanna sparrow, who
+sings habitually from the ground. But even he shares the common feeling,
+and stretches himself to his full height with an earnestness which is
+almost laughable, in view of the result; for his notes are hardly louder
+than a cricket's chirp. Probably he has fallen into this lowly habit
+from living in meadows and salt marshes, where bushes and trees are not
+readily to be come at; and it is worth noticing that, in the case of the
+skylark and the white-winged blackbird, the same conditions have led to
+a result precisely opposite. The sparrow, we may presume, was originally
+of a humble disposition, and when nothing better offered itself for a
+singing-perch easily grew accustomed to standing upon a stone or a
+little lump of earth; and this practice, long persisted in, naturally
+had the effect to lessen the loudness of his voice. The skylark, on the
+other hand, when he did not readily find a tree-top, said to himself,
+"Never mind! I have a pair of wings." And so the lark is famous, while
+the sparrow remains unheard-of, and is even mistaken for a
+grasshopper.
+
+How true it is that the very things which dishearten one nature and
+break it down, only help another to find out what it was made for! If
+you would foretell the development, either of a bird or of a man, it is
+not enough to know his environment, you must know also what there is in
+him.
+
+We have possibly made too much of the savanna sparrow's innocent
+eccentricity. He fills his place, and fills it well; and who knows but
+that he may yet outshine the skylark? There is a promise, I believe, for
+those who humble themselves. But what shall be said of species which do
+not even try to sing, and that, notwithstanding they have all the
+structural peculiarities of singing birds, and must, almost certainly,
+have come from ancestors who were singers? We have already mentioned the
+house sparrow, whose defect is the more mysterious on account of his
+belonging to so highly musical a family. But _he_ was never accused of
+not being noisy enough, while we have one bird who, though he is classed
+with the oscines, passes his life in almost unbroken silence. Of course
+I refer to the waxwing, or cedar-bird, whose faint, sibilant whisper can
+scarcely be thought to contradict the foregoing description. By what
+strange freak he has lapsed into this ghostly habit, nobody knows. I
+make no account of the insinuation that he gave up music because it
+hindered his success in cherry-stealing. He likes cherries, it is true;
+and who can blame him? But he would need to work hard to steal more than
+does that indefatigable songster, the robin. I feel sure he has some
+better reason than this for his Quakerish conduct. But, however he came
+by his stillness, it is likely that by this time he plumes himself upon
+it. Silence is golden, he thinks, the supreme result of the highest
+aesthetic culture. Those loud creatures, the thrushes and finches! What a
+vulgar set they are, to be sure, the more's the pity! Certainly if he
+does not reason in some such way, bird nature is not so human as we have
+given it credit for being. Besides, the waxwing has an uncommon
+appreciation of the decorous; at least, we must think so if we are able
+to credit a story of Nuttall's. He declares that a Boston gentleman,
+whose name he gives, saw one of a company of these birds capture an
+insect, and offer it to his neighbor; he, however, delicately declined
+the dainty bit, and it was offered to the next, who, in turn, was
+equally polite; and the morsel actually passed back and forth along the
+line, till, finally, one of the flock was persuaded to eat it. I have
+never seen anything equal to this; but one day, happening to stop under
+a low cedar, I discovered right over my head a waxwing's nest with the
+mother-bird sitting upon it, while her mate was perched beside her on
+the branch. He was barely out of my reach, but he did not move a muscle;
+and although he uttered no sound, his behavior said as plainly as
+possible, "What do you expect to do _here_? Don't you see _I_ am
+standing guard over this nest?" I should be ashamed not to be able to
+add that I respected his dignity and courage, and left him and his
+castle unmolested.
+
+Observations so discursive as these can hardly be finished; they must
+break off abruptly, or else go on forever. Let us make an end,
+therefore, with expressing our hope that the cedar-bird, already so
+handsome and chivalrous, will yet take to himself a song; one sweet and
+original, worthy to go with his soft satin coat, his ornaments of
+sealing-wax, and his magnificent top-knot. Let him do that, and he shall
+always be made welcome; yes, even though he come in force and in
+cherry-time.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] There is no Historic-Genealogical Society among the birds, and the
+robin is not aware that his own remote ancestors were reptiles. If he
+were, he would hardly speak so disrespectfully of these batrachians.
+
+[4] Mr. C. N. Allen, in _Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club_,
+July, 1881.
+
+[5] Since this paper was written I have three times heard the wood
+wagtail's true song in the morning,--but in neither case was the bird in
+the air. See p. 284.
+
+[6] See the paper of Daines Barrington in _Philosophical Transactions_
+for 1773; also, Darwin's _Descent of Man_, and Wallace's _Natural
+Selection_.
+
+
+
+
+                         CHARACTER IN FEATHERS.
+
+    The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not
+    graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms,
+    constitutions, parts, and operations, which, aptly joined together,
+    do make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters
+    God calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam
+    assigned to every creature a name peculiar to its nature.
+
+                                                    SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
+
+
+                         CHARACTER IN FEATHERS.
+
+
+In this economically governed world the same thing serves many uses. Who
+will take upon himself to enumerate the offices of sunlight, or water,
+or indeed of any object whatever? Because we know it to be good for this
+or that, it by no means follows that we have discovered what it was made
+for. What we have found out is perhaps only something by the way; as if
+a man should think the sun were created for his own private convenience.
+In some moods it seems doubtful whether we are yet acquainted with the
+real value of anything. But, be that as it may, we need not scruple to
+admire so much as our ignorance permits us to see of the workings of
+this divine frugality. The piece of woodland, for instance, which skirts
+the village,--how various are its ministries to the inhabitants, each of
+whom, without forethought or question, takes the benefit proper to
+himself! The poet saunters there as in a true Holy Land, to have his
+heart cooled and stilled. Mr. A. and Mr. B., who hold the deeds of the
+"property," walk through it to look at the timber, with an eye to
+dollars and cents. The botanist has his errand there, the zoologist his,
+and the child his. Oftenest of all, perhaps (for barbarism dies hard,
+and even yet the ministers of Christ find it a capital sport to murder
+small fishes),--oftenest of all comes the man, poor soul, who thinks of
+the forest as of a place to which he may go when he wishes to amuse
+himself by killing something. Meanwhile, the rabbits and the squirrels,
+the hawks and the owls, look upon all such persons as no better than
+intruders (do not the woods belong to those who live in them?); while
+nobody remembers the meteorologist, who nevertheless smiles in his
+sleeve at all these one-sided notions, and says to himself that he knows
+the truth of the matter.
+
+So is it with everything; and with all the rest, so is it with the
+birds. The interest they excite is of all grades, from that which looks
+upon them as items of millinery, up to that of the makers of
+ornithological systems, who ransack the world for specimens, and who
+have no doubt that the chief end of a bird is to be named and
+catalogued,--the more synonyms the better. Somewhere between these two
+extremes comes the person whose interest in birds is friendly rather
+than scientific; who has little taste for shooting, and an aversion
+from dissecting; who delights in the living creatures themselves, and
+counts a bird in the bush worth two in the hand. Such a person, if he is
+intelligent, makes good use of the best works on ornithology; he would
+not know how to get along without them; but he studies most the birds
+themselves, and after a while he begins to associate them on a plan of
+his own. Not that he distrusts the approximate correctness of the
+received classification, or ceases to find it of daily service; but
+though it were as accurate as the multiplication table, it is based (and
+rightly, no doubt) on anatomical structure alone; it rates birds as
+bodies, and nothing else: while to the person of whom we are speaking
+birds are, first of all, souls; his interest in them is, as we say,
+personal; and we are none of us in the habit of grouping our friends
+according to height, or complexion, or any other physical peculiarity.
+
+But it is not proposed in this paper to attempt a new classification of
+any sort, even the most unscientific and fanciful. All I am to do is to
+set down at random a few studies in such a method as I have indicated;
+in short, a few studies in the temperaments of birds. Nor, in making
+this attempt, am I unmindful how elusive of analysis traits of character
+are, and how diverse is the impression which the same personality
+produces upon different observers. In matters of this kind every
+judgment is largely a question of emphasis and proportion; and,
+moreover, what we find in our friends depends in great part on what we
+have in ourselves. This I do not forget; and therefore I foresee that
+others will discover in the birds of whom I write many things that I
+miss, and perhaps will miss some things which I have treated as patent
+or even conspicuous. It remains only for each to testify what he has
+seen, and at the end to confess that a soul, even the soul of a bird, is
+after all a mystery.
+
+Let our first example, then, be the common black-capped titmouse, or
+chickadee. He is, _par excellence_, the bird of the merry heart. There
+is a notion current, to be sure, that all birds are merry; but that is
+one of those second-hand opinions which a man who begins to observe for
+himself soon finds it necessary to give up. With many birds life is a
+hard struggle. Enemies are numerous, and the food supply is too often
+scanty. Of some species it is probable that very few die in their beds.
+But the chickadee seems to be exempt from all forebodings. His coat is
+thick, his heart is brave, and, whatever may happen, something will be
+found to eat. "Take no thought for the morrow" is his creed, which he
+accepts, not "for substance of doctrine," but literally. No matter how
+bitter the wind or how deep the snow, you will never find the chickadee,
+as the saying is, under the weather. It is this perennial good humor, I
+suppose, which makes other birds so fond of his companionship; and their
+example might well be heeded by persons who suffer from fits of
+depression. Such unfortunates could hardly do better than to court the
+society of the joyous tit. His whistles and chirps, his graceful feats
+of climbing and hanging, and withal his engaging familiarity (for, of
+course, such good-nature as his could not consist with suspiciousness)
+would most likely send them home in a more Christian mood. The time will
+come, we may hope, when doctors will prescribe bird-gazing instead of
+blue-pill.
+
+To illustrate the chickadee's trustfulness, I may mention that a friend
+of mine captured one in a butterfly-net, and, carrying him into the
+house, let him loose in the sitting-room. The little stranger was at
+home immediately, and seeing the window full of plants, proceeded to go
+over them carefully, picking off the lice with which such window-gardens
+are always more or less infested. A little later he was taken into my
+friend's lap, and soon he climbed up to his shoulder; where, after
+hopping about for a few minutes on his coat-collar, he selected a
+comfortable roosting place, tucked his head under his wing, and went to
+sleep, and slept on undisturbed while carried from one room to another.
+Probably the chickadee's nature is not of the deepest. I have never seen
+him when his joy rose to ecstasy. Still his feelings are not shallow,
+and the faithfulness of the pair to each other and to their offspring is
+of the highest order. The female has sometimes to be taken off the nest,
+and even to be held in the hand, before the eggs can be examined.
+
+Our American goldfinch is one of the loveliest of birds. With his
+elegant plumage, his rhythmical, undulatory flight, his beautiful song,
+and his more beautiful soul, he ought to be one of the best beloved, if
+not one of the most famous; but he has never yet had half his deserts.
+He is like the chickadee, and yet different. He is not so extremely
+confiding, nor should I call him merry. But he is always cheerful, in
+spite of his so-called plaintive note, from which he gets one of his
+names, and always amiable. So far as I know, he never utters a harsh
+sound; even the young ones, asking for food, use only smooth, musical
+tones. During the pairing season his delight often becomes rapturous. To
+see him then, hovering and singing,--or, better still, to see the
+devoted pair hovering together, billing and singing,--is enough to do
+even a cynic good. The happy lovers! They have never read it in a book,
+but it is written on their hearts,--
+
+    "The gentle law, that each should be
+    The other's heaven and harmony."
+
+The goldfinch has the advantage of the titmouse in several respects, but
+he lacks that sprightliness, that exceeding light-heartedness, which is
+the chickadee's most endearing characteristic.
+
+For the sake of a strong contrast, we may look next at the brown thrush,
+known to farmers as the planting-bird and to ornithologists as
+_Harporhynchus rufus_; a staid and solemn Puritan, whose creed is the
+Preacher's,--"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." No frivolity and
+merry-making for him! After his brief annual period of intensely
+passionate song, he does penance for the remainder of the
+year,--skulking about, on the ground or near it, silent and gloomy. He
+seems ever on the watch against an enemy, and, unfortunately for his
+comfort, he has nothing of the reckless, bandit spirit, such as the jay
+possesses, which goes to make a moderate degree of danger almost a
+pastime. Not that he is without courage; when his nest is in question he
+will take great risks; but in general his manner is dispirited,
+"sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Evidently he feels
+
+    "The heavy and the weary weight
+    Of all this unintelligible world;"
+
+and it would not be surprising if he sometimes raised the question, "Is
+life worth living?" It is the worst feature of his case that his
+melancholy is not of the sort which softens and refines the nature.
+There is no suggestion of saintliness about it. In fact, I am convinced
+that this long-tailed thrush has a constitutional taint of vulgarity.
+His stealthy, underhand manner is one mark of this, and the same thing
+comes out again in his music. Full of passion as his singing is (and we
+have hardly anything to compare with it in this regard), yet the
+listener cannot help smiling now and then; the very finest passage is
+followed so suddenly by some uncouth guttural note, or by some whimsical
+drop from the top to the bottom of the scale.
+
+In neighborly association with the brown thrush is the towhee bunting,
+or chewink. The two choose the same places for their summer homes, and,
+unless I am deceived, they often migrate in company. But though they are
+so much together, and in certain of their ways very much alike, their
+habits of mind are widely dissimilar. The towhee is of a peculiarly even
+disposition. I have seldom heard him scold, or use any note less
+good-natured and musical than his pleasant _cherawink_. I have never
+detected him in a quarrel such as nearly all birds are once in a while
+guilty of, ungracious as it may seem to mention the fact; nor have I
+ever seen him hopping nervously about and twitching his tail, as is the
+manner of most species, when, for instance, their nests are approached.
+Nothing seems to annoy him. At the same time, he is not full of
+continual merriment like the chickadee, nor occasionally in a rapture
+like the goldfinch. Life with him is pitched in a low key; comfortable
+rather than cheerful, and never jubilant. And yet, for all the towhee's
+careless demeanor, you soon begin to suspect him of being deep. He
+appears not to mind you; he keeps on scratching among the dry leaves as
+if he had no thought of being driven away by your presence; but in a
+minute or two you look that way again, and he is not there. If you pass
+near his nest, he makes not a tenth part of the ado which a brown thrush
+would make in the same circumstances, but (partly for this reason) you
+will find half a dozen nests of the thrush sooner than one of his. With
+all his simplicity and frankness, which puts him in happy contrast with
+the thrush, he knows as well as anybody how to keep his own counsel. I
+have seen him with his mate for two or three days together about the
+flower-beds in the Boston Public Garden, and so far as appeared they
+were feeding as unconcernedly as though they had been on their own
+native heath, amid the scrub-oaks and huckleberry bushes; but after
+their departure it was remembered that they had not once been heard to
+utter a sound. If self-possession be four fifths of good manners, our
+red-eyed Pipilo may certainly pass for a gentleman.
+
+We have now named four birds, the chickadee, the goldfinch, the brown
+thrush, and the towhee,--birds so diverse in plumage that no eye could
+fail to discriminate them at a glance. But the four differ no more truly
+in bodily shape and dress than they do in that inscrutable something
+which we call temperament, disposition. If the soul of each were
+separated from the body and made to stand out in sight, those of us who
+have really known the birds in the flesh would have no difficulty in
+saying, This is the titmouse, and this the towhee. It would be with them
+as we hope it will be with our friends in the next world, whom we shall
+recognize there because we knew them here; that is, we knew _them_, and
+not merely the bodies they lived in. This kind of familiarity with birds
+has no necessary connection with ornithology. Personal intimacy and a
+knowledge of anatomy are still two different things. As we have all
+heard, ours is an age of science; but, thank fortune, matters have not
+yet gone so far that a man must take a course in anthropology before he
+can love his neighbor.
+
+It is a truth only too patent that taste and conscience are sometimes at
+odds. One man wears his faults so gracefully that we can hardly help
+falling in love with them, while another, alas, makes even virtue itself
+repulsive. I am moved to this commonplace reflection by thinking of the
+blue jay, a bird of doubtful character, but one for whom, nevertheless,
+it is impossible not to feel a sort of affection and even of respect. He
+is quite as suspicious as the brown thrush, and his instinct for an
+invisible perch is perhaps as unerring as the cuckoo's; and yet, even
+when he takes to hiding, his manner is not without a dash of boldness.
+He has a most irascible temper, also, but, unlike the thrasher, he does
+not allow his ill-humor to degenerate into chronic sulkiness. Instead,
+he flies into a furious passion, and is done with it. Some say that on
+such occasions he swears, and I have myself seen him when it was plain
+that nothing except a natural impossibility kept him from tearing his
+hair. His larynx would make him a singer, and his mental capacity is far
+above the average; but he has perverted his gifts, till his music is
+nothing but noise and his talent nothing but smartness. A like process
+of depravation the world has before now witnessed in political life,
+when a man of brilliant natural endowments has yielded to low ambitions
+and stooped to unworthy means, till what was meant to be a statesman
+turns put to be a demagogue. But perhaps we wrong our handsome friend,
+fallen angel though he be, to speak thus of him. Most likely he would
+resent the comparison, and I do not press it. We must admit that
+juvenile sportsmen have persecuted him unduly; and when a creature
+cannot show himself without being shot at, he may be pardoned for a
+little misanthropy. Christians as we are, how many of us could stand
+such a test? In these circumstances, it is a point in the jay's favor
+that he still has, what is rare with birds, a sense of humor, albeit it
+is humor of a rather grim sort,--the sort which expends itself in
+practical jokes and uncivil epithets. He has discovered the school-boy's
+secret: that for the expression of unadulterated derision there is
+nothing like the short sound of _a_, prolonged into a drawl. _Yah_,
+_yah_, he cries; and sometimes, as you enter the woods, you may hear
+him shouting so as to be heard for half a mile, "Here comes a fool with
+a gun; look out for him!"
+
+It is natural to think of the shrike in connection with the jay, but the
+two have points of unlikeness no less than of resemblance. The shrike
+is a taciturn bird. If he were a politician, he would rely chiefly on
+what is known as the "still hunt," although he too can scream loudly
+enough on occasion. His most salient trait is his impudence, but even
+that is of a negative type. "Who are you," he says, "that I should be at
+the trouble to insult you?" He has made a study of the value of silence
+as an indication of contempt, and is almost human in his ability to
+stare straight by a person whose presence it suits him to ignore. His
+imperturbability is wonderful. Watch him as closely as you please, you
+will never discover what he is thinking about. Undertake, for instance,
+now that the fellow is singing from the top of a small tree only a few
+rods from where you are standing,--undertake to settle the long dispute
+whether his notes are designed to decoy small birds within his reach.
+Those whistles and twitters,--hear them! So miscellaneous! so different
+from anything which would be expected from a bird of his size and
+general disposition! so very like the notes of sparrows! They must be
+imitative. You begin to feel quite sure of it. But just at this point
+the sounds cease, and you look up to discover that Collurio has fallen
+to preening his feathers in the most listless manner imaginable. "Look
+at me," he says; "do I act like one on the watch for his prey? Indeed,
+sir, I wish the innocent sparrows no harm; and besides, if you must know
+it, I ate an excellent game-breakfast two hours ago, while laggards like
+you were still abed." In the winter, which is the only season when I
+have been able to observe him, the shrike is to the last degree
+unsocial, and I have known him to stay for a month in one spot all by
+himself, spending a good part of every day perched upon a telegraph
+wire. He ought not to be very happy, with such a disposition, one would
+think; but he seems to be well contented, and sometimes his spirits are
+fairly exuberant. Perhaps, as the phrase is, he enjoys _himself_; in
+which case he certainly has the advantage of most of us,--unless,
+indeed, we are easily pleased. At any rate, he is philosopher enough to
+appreciate the value of having few wants; and I am not sure but that he
+anticipated the vaunted discovery of Teufelsdrockh, that the fraction of
+life may be increased by lessening the denominator. But even the stoical
+shrike is not without his epicurean weakness. When he has killed a
+sparrow, he eats the brains first; after that, if he is still hungry, he
+devours the coarser and less savory parts. In this, however, he only
+shares the well-nigh universal inconsistency. There are never many
+thorough-going stoics in the world. Epictetus declared with an oath
+that he should be glad to see _one_.[7] To take everything as equally
+good, to know no difference between bitter and sweet, penury and plenty,
+slander and praise,--this is a great attainment, a Nirvana to which few
+can hope to arrive. Some wise man has said (and the remark has more
+meaning than may at once appear) that dying is usually one of the last
+things which men do in this world.
+
+Against the foil of the butcher-bird's stolidity we may set the
+inquisitive, garrulous temperament of the white-eyed vireo and the
+yellow-breasted chat. The vireo is hardly larger than the goldfinch, but
+let him be in one of his conversational moods, and he will fill a smilax
+thicket with noise enough for two or three cat-birds. Meanwhile he keeps
+his eye upon you, and seems to be inviting your attention to his
+loquacious abilities. The chat is perhaps even more voluble. _Staccato_
+whistles and snarls follow each other at most extraordinary intervals of
+pitch, and the attempt at showing off is sometimes unmistakable.
+Occasionally he takes to the air, and flies from one tree to another;
+teetering his body and jerking his tail, in an indescribable fashion,
+and chattering all the while. His "inner consciousness" at such a moment
+would be worth perusing. Possibly he has some feeling for the grotesque.
+But I suspect not; probably what we laugh at as the antics of a clown is
+all sober earnest to him.
+
+At best, it is very little we can know about what is passing in a bird's
+mind. We label him with two or three _sesquipedalia verba_, give his
+territorial range, describe his notes and his habits of nidification,
+and fancy we have rendered an account of the bird. But how should we
+like to be inventoried in such a style? "His name was John Smith; he
+lived in Boston, in a three-story brick house; he had a baritone voice,
+but was not a good singer." All true enough; but do you call that a
+man's biography?
+
+The four birds last spoken of are all wanting in refinement. The jay and
+the shrike are wild and rough, not to say barbarous, while the
+white-eyed vireo and the chat have the character which commonly goes by
+the name of oddity. All four are interesting for their strong
+individuality and their picturesqueness, but it is a pleasure to turn
+from them to creatures like our four common New England _Hylocichlae_, or
+small thrushes. These are the real patricians. With their modest but
+rich dress, and their dignified, quiet demeanor, they stand for the
+true aristocratic spirit. Like all genuine aristocrats, they carry an
+air of distinction, of which no one who approaches them can long remain
+unconscious. When you go into their haunts they do not appear so much
+frightened as offended. "Why do you intrude?" they seem to say; "these
+are our woods;" and they bow you out with all ceremony. Their songs are
+in keeping with this character; leisurely, unambitious, and brief, but
+in beauty of voice and in high musical quality excelling all other music
+of the woods. However, I would not exaggerate, and I have not found even
+these thrushes perfect. The hermit, who is my favorite of the four, has
+a habit of slowly raising and depressing his tail when his mind is
+disturbed--a trick of which it is likely he is unconscious, but which,
+to say the least, is not a mark of good breeding; and the Wilson, while
+every note of his song breathes of spirituality, has nevertheless a most
+vulgar alarm call, a petulant, nasal, one-syllabled _yeork_. I do not
+know anything so grave against the wood thrush or the Swainson; although
+when I have fooled the former with decoy whistles, I have found him more
+inquisitive than seemed altogether becoming to a bird of his quality.
+But character without flaw is hardly to be insisted on by sons of Adam,
+and, after all deductions are made, the claim of the _Hylocichlae_ to
+noble blood can never be seriously disputed. I have spoken of the four
+together, but each is clearly distinguished from all the others; and
+this I believe to be as true of mental traits as it is of details of
+plumage and song. No doubt, in general, they are much alike; we may say
+that they have the same qualities; but a close acquaintance will reveal
+that the qualities have been mixed in different proportions, so that the
+total result in each case is a personality strictly unique.
+
+And what is true of the _Hylocichlae_ is true of every bird that flies.
+Anatomy and dress and even voice aside, who does not feel the
+dissimilarity between the cat-bird and the robin, and still more the
+difference, amounting to contrast, between the cat-bird and the
+bluebird? Distinctions of color and form are what first strike the eye,
+but on better acquaintance these are felt to be superficial and
+comparatively unimportant; _the_ difference is not one of outside
+appearance. It is his gentle, high-bred manner and not his azure
+coat, which makes the bluebird; and the cat-bird would be a cat-bird
+in no matter what garb, so long as he retained his obtrusive
+self-consciousness and his prying, busy-body spirit; all of which, being
+interpreted, comes, it may be, to no more than this, "Fine feathers
+don't make fine birds."
+
+Even in families containing many closely allied species, I believe that
+every species has its own proper character, which sufficient intercourse
+would enable us to make a due report of. Nobody ever saw a song-sparrow
+manifesting the spirit of a chipper, and I trust it will not be in my
+day that any of our American sparrows are found emulating the virtues of
+their obstreperous immigrant cousin. Of course it is true of birds, as
+of men, that some have much more individuality than others. But know any
+bird or any man well enough, and he will prove to be himself, and nobody
+else. To know the ten thousand birds of the world well enough to see
+how, in bodily structure, habit of life, and mental characteristics,
+every one is different from every other is the long and delightful task
+which is set before the ornithologist.
+
+But this is not all. The ornithology of the future must be ready to give
+an answer to the further question how these divergences of anatomy and
+temperament originated. How came the chickadee by his endless fund of
+happy spirits? Whence did the towhee derive his equanimity, and the
+brown thrush his saturnine temper? The waxwing and the vireo have the
+same vocal organs; why should the first do nothing but whisper, while
+the second is so loud and voluble? Why is one bird belligerent and
+another peaceable; one barbarous and another civilized; one grave and
+another gay? Who can tell? We can make here and there a plausible
+conjecture. We know that the behavior of the blue jay varies greatly in
+different parts of the country, in consequence of the different
+treatment which he receives. We judge that the chickadee, from the
+peculiarity of his feeding habits, is more certain than most birds are
+of finding a meal whenever he is hungry; and that, we are assured from
+experience, goes a long way toward making a body contented. We think it
+likely that the brown thrush is at some special disadvantage in this
+respect, or has some peculiar enemies warring upon him; in which case it
+is no more than we might expect that he should be a pessimist. And, with
+all our ignorance, we are yet sure that everything has a cause, and we
+would fain hold by the brave word of Emerson, "Undoubtedly we have no
+questions to ask which are unanswerable."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] This does not harmonize exactly with a statement which Emerson makes
+somewhere, to the effect that all the stoics were stoics indeed. But
+Epictetus had never lived in Concord.
+
+
+
+
+                         IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+    Our music's in the hills.
+
+                     EMERSON.
+
+
+                         IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
+
+
+It was early in June when I set out for my third visit to the White
+Mountains, and the ticket-seller and the baggage-master in turn assured
+me that the Crawford House, which I named as my destination, was not yet
+open. They spoke, too, in the tone which men use when they mention
+something which, but for uncommon stupidity, you would have known
+beforehand. The kindly sarcasm missed its mark, however. I was aware
+that the hotel was not yet ready for the "general public." But I said to
+myself that, for once at least, I was not to be included in that
+unfashionably promiscuous company. The vulgar crowd must wait, of
+course. For the present the mountains, in reporters' language, were "on
+private view;" and despite the ignorance of railway officials, I was one
+of the elect. In plainer phrase, I had in my pocket a letter from the
+manager of the famous inn before mentioned, in which he promised to do
+what he could for my entertainment, even though he was not yet, as he
+said, keeping a hotel.
+
+Possibly I made too much of a small matter; but it pleased me to feel
+that this visit of mine was to be of a peculiarly intimate
+character,--almost, indeed, as if Mount Washington himself had bidden me
+to private audience.
+
+Compelled to wait three or four hours in North Conway, I improved the
+opportunity to stroll once more down into the lovely Saco meadows, whose
+"green felicity" was just now at its height. Here, perched upon a
+fence-rail, in the shadow of an elm, I gazed at the snow-crowned Mount
+Washington range, while the bobolinks and savanna sparrows made music on
+every side. The song of the bobolinks dropped from above, and the
+microphonic tune of the sparrows came up from the grass,--sky and earth
+keeping holiday together. Almost I could have believed myself in Eden.
+But, alas, even the birds themselves were long since shut out of that
+garden of innocence, and as I started back toward the village a crow
+went hurrying past me, with a kingbird in hot pursuit. The latter was
+more fortunate than usual, or more plucky; actually alighting on the
+crow's back and riding for some distance. I could not distinguish his
+motions,--he was too far away for that,--but I wished him joy of his
+victory, and grace to improve it to the full. For it is scandalous that
+a bird of the crow's cloth should be a thief; and so, although I reckon
+him among my friends,--in truth, _because_ I do so,--I am always able to
+take it patiently when I see him chastised for his fault. Imperfect as
+we all know each other to be, it is a comfort to feel that few of us are
+so altogether bad as not to take more or less pleasure in seeing a
+neighbor's character improved under a course of moderately painful
+discipline.
+
+At Bartlett word came that the passenger car would go no further, but
+that a freight train would soon start, on which, if I chose, I could
+continue my journey. Accordingly, I rode up through the Notch on a
+platform car,--a mode of conveyance which I can heartily and in all good
+conscience recommend. There is no crowd of exclaiming tourists, the
+train of necessity moves slowly, and the open platform offers no
+obstruction to the view. For a time I had a seat, which after a little
+two strangers ventured to occupy with me; for "it's an ill wind that
+blows nobody good," and there happened to be on the car one piece of
+baggage,--a coffin, inclosed in a pine box. Our sitting upon it could
+not harm either it or us; nor did we wean any disrespect to the man,
+whoever he might be, whose body was to be buried in it. Judging the
+dead charitably, as in duty bound, I had no doubt he would have been
+glad if he could have seen his "narrow house" put to such a use. So we
+made ourselves comfortable with it, until, at an invisible station, it
+was taken off. Then we were obliged to stand, or to retreat into a
+miserable small box-car behind us. The platform would lurch a little now
+and then, and I, for one, was not experienced as a "train hand;" but we
+all kept our places till the Frankenstein trestle was reached. Here,
+where for five hundred feet we could look down upon the jagged rocks
+eighty feet below us, one of the trio suddenly had an errand into the
+box-car aforesaid, leaving the platform to the other stranger and me.
+All in all, the ride through the Notch had never before been so
+enjoyable, I thought; and late in the evening I found myself once again
+at the Crawford House, and in one of the best rooms,--as well enough I
+might be, being the only guest in the house.
+
+The next morning, before it was really light, I was lying awake looking
+at Mount Webster, while through the open window came the loud, cheery
+song of the white-throated sparrows. The hospitable creatures seemed to
+be inviting me to come at once into their woods; but I knew only too
+well that, if the invitation were accepted, they would every one of
+them take to hiding like bashful children.
+
+The white-throat is one of the birds for whom I cherish a special
+liking. On my first trip to the mountains I jumped off the train for a
+moment at Bartlett, and had hardly touched the ground before I heard his
+familiar call. Here, then, was Mr. Peabody at home. Season after season
+he had camped near me in Massachusetts, and many a time I had been
+gladdened by his lively serenade; now he greeted me from his own native
+woods. So far as my observations have gone, he is common throughout the
+mountain region; and that in spite of the standard guide-book, which
+puts him down as patronizing the Glen House almost exclusively. He knows
+the routes too well to need any guide, however, and may be excused for
+his ignorance of the official programme. It is wonderful how shy he
+is,--the more wonderful, because, during his migrations, his manner is
+so very different. Then, even in a city park you may watch him at your
+leisure, while his loud, clear whistle is often to be heard rising above
+a din of horse-cars and heavy wagons. But here, in his summer quarters,
+you will listen to his song a hundred times before you once catch a
+glimpse of the singer. At first thought it seems strange that a bird
+should be most at home when he is away from home; but in the one case
+he has nothing but his own safety to consult, while in the other he is
+thinking of those whose lives are more to him than his own, and whose
+hiding-place he is every moment on the alert to conceal.
+
+In Massachusetts we do not expect to find sparrows in deep woods. They
+belong in fields and pastures, in roadside thickets, or by fence-rows
+and old stone-walls bordered with barberry bushes and alders. But these
+white-throats are children of the wilderness. It is one charm of their
+music that it always comes, or seems to come, from such a
+distance,--from far up the mountain-side, or from the inaccessible
+depths of some ravine. I shall not soon forget its wild beauty as it
+rose out of the spruce forests below me, while I was enjoying an evening
+promenade, all by myself, over the long, flat summit of Moosilauke. From
+his habit of singing late at night this sparrow is in some places known
+as the nightingale. His more common name is the Peabody bird; while a
+Jefferson man, who was driving me over the Cherry Mountain road, called
+him the Peverly bird, and told me the following story:--
+
+A farmer named Peverly was walking about his fields one spring morning,
+trying to make up his mind whether the time had come to put in his
+wheat. The question was important, and he was still in a deep quandary,
+when a bird spoke up out of the wood and said, "Sow wheat, Peverly,
+Peverly, Peverly!--Sow wheat, Peverly, Peverly, Peverly!" That settled
+the matter. The wheat was sown, and in the fall a most abundant harvest
+was gathered; and ever since then this little feathered oracle has been
+known as the Peverly bird.
+
+We have improved on the custom of the ancients: they examined a bird's
+entrails; we listen to his song. Who says the Yankee is not wiser than
+the Greek?
+
+But I was lying abed in the Crawford House when the voice of
+_Zonotrichia albicollis_ sent my thoughts thus astray, from Moosilauke
+to Delphi. That day and the two following were passed in roaming about
+the woods near the hotel. The pretty painted trillium was in blossom, as
+was also the dark purple species, and the hobble-bush showed its broad
+white cymes in all directions. Here and there was the modest little
+spring beauty (_Claytonia Caroliniana_), and not far from the Elephant's
+Head I discovered my first and only patch of dicentra, with its delicate
+dissected leaves and its oddly shaped petals of white and pale yellow.
+The false mitrewort (_Tiarella cordifolia_) was in flower likewise, and
+the spur which is cut off Mount Willard by the railroad was all aglow
+with rhodora,--a perfect flower-garden, on the monochromatic plan now so
+much in vogue. Along the edge of the rocks on the summit of Mount
+Willard a great profusion of the common saxifrage was waving in the
+fresh breeze:
+
+    "Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
+    Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
+
+On the lower parts of the mountains, the foliage was already well out,
+while the upper parts were of a fine purplish tint, which at first I was
+unable to account for, but which I soon discovered to be due to the fact
+that the trees at that height were still only in bud.
+
+A notable feature of the White Mountain forests is the absence of oaks
+and hickories. These tough, hard woods would seem to have been created
+on purpose to stand against wind and cold. But no; the hills are covered
+with the fragile poplars and birches and spruces, with never an oak or
+hickory among them. I suspect, indeed, that it is the very softness of
+the former which gives them their advantage. For this, as I suppose, is
+correlated with rapid growth; and where the summer is very short, speed
+may count for more than firmness of texture, especially during the first
+one or two years of the plant's life. Trees, like men, lose in one way
+what they gain in another; or, in other words, they "have the defects
+of their qualities." Probably Paul's confession, "When I am weak, then
+am I strong," is after all only the personal statement of a general law,
+as true of a poplar as of a Christian. For we all believe (do we not?)
+that the world is a universe, governed throughout by one Mind, so that
+whatever holds in one part is good everywhere.
+
+But it was June, and the birds, who were singing from daylight till
+dark, would have the most of my attention. It was pleasant to find here
+two comparatively rare warblers, of whom I had before had only casual
+glimpses,--the mourning warbler and the bay-breasted. The former was
+singing his loud but commonplace ditty within a few rods of the piazza
+on one side of the house, while his congener, the Maryland
+yellow-throat, was to be heard on the other side, along with the
+black-cap (_Dendroeca striata_), the black-and-yellow, and the
+Canadian flycatcher. The mourning warbler's song, as I heard it, was
+like this: _Whit whit whit_, _wit wit_. The first three notes were
+deliberate and loud, on one key, and without accent. The last two were
+pitched a little lower, and were shorter, with the accent on the first
+of the pair; they were thinner in tone than the opening triplet, as is
+meant to be indicated by the difference of spelling.[8] Others of the
+family were the golden-crowned thrush, the small-billed water-thrush,
+the yellow-rumped, the Blackburnian (with his characteristic _zillup_,
+_zillup_, _zillup_), the black-throated green, the black-throated blue
+(the last with his loud, coarse _kree_, _kree_, _kree_), the redstart,
+and the elegant blue yellow-back. Altogether, they were a gorgeous
+company.
+
+But the chief singers were the olive-backed thrushes and the winter
+wrens. I should be glad to know on just what principle the olive-backs
+and their near relatives, the hermits, distribute themselves throughout
+the mountain region. Each species seems to have its own sections, to
+which it returns year after year, and the olive-backed, being, as is
+well known, the more northern species of the two, naturally prefers the
+more elevated situations. I have found the latter abundant near the
+Profile House, and for three seasons it has had exclusive possession of
+the White Mountain Notch,--so far, at least, as I have been able to
+discover.[9] The hermits, on the other hand, frequent such places as
+North Conway, Gorham, Jefferson, Bethlehem, and the vicinity of the
+Flume. Only once have I found the two species in the same neighborhood.
+That was near the Breezy Point House, on the side of Mount Moosilauke;
+but this place is so peculiarly romantic, with its noble amphitheatre of
+hills, that I could not wonder neither species was willing to yield the
+ground entirely to the other; and even here it was to be noticed that
+the hermits were in or near the sugar-grove, while the Swainsons were in
+the forest, far off in an opposite direction.[10]
+
+It is these birds, if any, whose music reaches the ears of the ordinary
+mountain tourist. Every man who is known among his acquaintances to have
+a little knowledge of such things is approached now and then with the
+question, "What bird was it, Mr. So-and-So, that I heard singing up in
+the mountains? I didn't see him; he was always ever so far off; but his
+voice was wonderful, so sweet and clear and loud!" As a rule it may
+safely be taken for granted that such interrogatories refer either to
+the Swainson thrush or to the hermit. The inquirer is very likely
+disposed to be incredulous when he is told that there are birds in his
+own woods whose voice is so like that of his admired New Hampshire
+songster that, if he were to hear the two together, he would not at
+first be able to tell the one from the other. He has never heard them,
+he protests; which is true enough, for he never goes into the woods of
+his own town, or, if by chance he does, he leaves his ears behind him in
+the shop. His case is not peculiar. Men and women gaze enraptured at New
+Hampshire sunsets. How glorious they are, to be sure! What a pity the
+sun does not sometimes set in Massachusetts!
+
+As a musician the olive-back is certainly inferior to the hermit, and,
+according to my taste, he is surpassed also by the wood thrush and the
+Wilson; but he is a magnificent singer, for all that, and when he is
+heard in the absence of the others it is often hard to believe that any
+one of them could do better. A good idea of the rhythm and length of his
+song may be gained by pronouncing somewhat rapidly the words, "I love, I
+love, I love you," or, as it sometimes runs, "I love, I love, I love you
+truly." How literal this translation is I am not scholar enough to
+determine, but without question it gives the sense substantially.
+
+The winter wrens were less numerous than the thrushes, I think, but,
+like them, they sang at all hours of the day, and seemed to be well
+distributed throughout the woods. We can hardly help asking how it is
+that two birds so very closely related as the house wren and the winter
+wren should have been chosen haunts so extremely diverse,--the one
+preferring door-yards in thickly settled villages, the other keeping
+strictly to the wildest of all wild places. But whatever the
+explanation, we need not wish the fact itself different. Comparatively
+few ever hear the winter wren's song, to be sure (for you will hardly
+get it from a hotel piazza), but it is not the less enjoyed on that
+account. There is such a thing as a bird's making himself too common;
+and probably it is true even of the great _prima donna_ that it is not
+those who live in the house with her who find most pleasure in her
+music. Moreover, there is much in time and circumstance. You hear a song
+in the village street, and pass along unmoved; but stand in the silence
+of the forest, with your feet in a bed of creeping snowberry and oxalis,
+and the same song goes to your very soul.
+
+The great distinction of the winter wren's melody is its marked rhythm
+and accent, which give it a martial, fife-like character. Note tumbles
+over note in the true wren manner, and the strain comes to an end so
+suddenly that for the first few times you are likely to think that the
+bird has been interrupted. In the middle is a long in-drawn note, much
+like one of the canary's. The odd little creature does not get far away
+from the ground. I have never seen him sing from a living tree or bush,
+but always from a stump or a log, or from the root or branch of an
+overturned tree,--from something, at least, of nearly his own color.[11]
+The song is intrinsically one of the most beautiful, and in my ears it
+has the further merit of being forever associated with reminiscences of
+ramblings among the White Hills. How well I remember an early morning
+hour at Profile Lake, when it came again and again across the water from
+the woods on Mount Cannon, under the Great Stone Face!
+
+Whichever way I walked, I was sure of the society of the snow-birds.
+They hopped familiarly across the railroad track in front of the
+Crawford House, and on the summit of Mount Washington were scurrying
+about among the rocks, opening and shutting their pretty white-bordered
+fans. Half-way up Mount Willard I sat down to rest on a stone, and after
+a minute or two out dropped a snow-bird at my feet, and ran across the
+road, trailing her wings. I looked under the bank for her nest, but, to
+my surprise, could find nothing of it. So I made sure of knowing the
+place again, and continued my tramp. Returning two hours later, I sat
+down upon the same bowlder, and watched for the bird to appear as
+before; but she had gathered courage from my former failure,--or so it
+seemed,--and I waited in vain till I rapped upon the ground over her
+head. Then she scrambled out and limped away, repeating her innocent but
+hackneyed ruse. This time I was resolved not to be baffled. The nest was
+there, and I would find it. So down on my knees I got, and scrutinized
+the whole place most carefully. But though I had marked the precise
+spot, there was no sign of a nest. I was about giving over the search
+ignominiously, when I descried a slight opening between the overhanging
+roof of the bank and a layer of earth which some roots held in place
+close under it. Into this slit I inserted my fingers, and there,
+entirely out of sight, was the nest full of eggs. No man could ever have
+found it, had the bird been brave and wise enough to keep her seat.
+However, I had before this noticed that the snow-bird, while often
+extremely clever in choosing a building site, is seldom very skillful in
+keeping a secret. I saw him one day standing on the side of the same
+Mount Willard road,[12] gesticulating and scolding with all his might,
+as much, as to say, "Please don't stop here! Go straight along, I beg of
+you! Our nest is right under this bank!" And one glance under the bank
+showed that I had not misinterpreted his demonstrations. For all that, I
+do not feel like taking a lofty tone in passing judgment upon Junco. He
+is not the only one whose wisdom is mixed with foolishness. There is at
+least one other person of whom the same is true,--a person of whom I
+have nevertheless a very good opinion, and with whom I am, or ought to
+be, better acquainted than I am with any animal that wears feathers.
+
+The prettiest snow-bird's nest I ever saw was built beside the Crawford
+bridle path, on Mount Clinton, just before the path comes out of the
+woods at the top. It was lined with hair-moss (a species of
+_Polytrichum_) of a bright orange color, and with its four or five
+white, lilac-spotted eggs made so attractive a picture that I was
+constrained to pause a moment to look at it, even though I had three
+miles of a steep, rough footpath to descend, with a shower threatening
+to overtake me before I could reach the bottom. I wondered whether the
+architects really possessed an eye for color, or had only stumbled upon
+this elegant bit of decoration. On the whole, it seemed more charitable
+to conclude the former; and not only more charitable, but more
+scientific as well. For, if I understand the matter aright, Mr. Darwin
+and his followers have settled upon the opinion that birds do display an
+unmistakable fondness for bright tints; that, indeed, the males of many
+species wear brilliant plumage for no other reason than that their mates
+prefer them in that dress. Moreover, if a bird in New South Wales adorns
+her bower with shells and other ornaments, why may not our little
+Northern darling beautify her nest with such humbler materials as her
+surroundings offer? On reflection, I am more and more convinced that the
+birds knew what they were doing; probably the female the moment she
+discovered the moss, called to her mate, "Oh, look, how lovely! Do, my
+dear, let's line our nest with it!"
+
+This artistic structure was found on the anniversary of the battle of
+Bunker Hill, a day which I had been celebrating, as best I could, by
+climbing the highest hill in New England. Plunging into the woods within
+fifty yards of the Crawford House, I had gone up and up, and on and on,
+through a magnificent forest, and then over more magnificent rocky
+heights, until I stood at last on the platform of the hotel at the
+summit. True, the path, which I had never traveled before, was wet and
+slippery, with stretches of ice and snow here and there; but the
+shifting view was so grand, the atmosphere so bracing, and the solitude
+so impressive that I enjoyed every step, till it came to clambering up
+the Mount Washington cone over the bowlders. At this point, to speak
+frankly, I began to hope that the ninth mile would prove to be a short
+one. The guide-books are agreed in warning the visitor against making
+this ascent without a companion, and no doubt they are right in so
+doing. A crippling accident would almost inevitably be fatal, while for
+several miles the trail is so indistinct that it would be difficult, if
+not impossible, to follow it in a fog. And yet, if one is willing to
+take the risk (and is not so unfortunate as never to have learned how to
+keep himself company), he will find a very considerable compensation in
+the peculiar pleasure to be experienced in being absolutely alone above
+the world. For myself, I was shut up to going in this way or not going
+at all; and a Bostonian must do something patriotic on the Seventeenth
+of June. But for all that, if the storm which chased me down the
+mountains in the afternoon, clouding first Mount Washington and then
+Mount Pleasant behind me, and shutting me in-doors all the next day, had
+started an hour sooner, or if I had been detained an hour later, it is
+not impossible that I might now be writing in a different strain.
+
+My reception at the top was none of the heartiest. The hotel was tightly
+closed, while a large snow-bank stood guard before the door. However, I
+invited myself into the Signal Service Station, and made my wants known
+to one of the officers, who very kindly spread a table with such things
+as he and his companions had just been eating. It would be out of place
+to say much about the luncheon: the bread and butter were good, and the
+pudding was interesting. I had the cook's word for it that the latter
+was made of corn-starch, but he volunteered no explanation of its color,
+which was nearly that of chocolate. As a working hypothesis I adopted
+the molasses or brown-sugar theory, but a brief experiment (as brief as
+politeness permitted) indicated a total absence of any saccharine
+principle. But then, what do we climb mountains for, if not to see
+something out of the common course? On the whole, if this department of
+our national government is ever on trial for extravagance in the matter
+of high living, I shall be moved to offer myself as a competent witness
+for the defense.
+
+A company of chimney-swifts were flying criss-cross over the summit, and
+one of the men said that he presumed they lived there. I took the
+liberty to doubt his opinion, however. To me it seemed nothing but a
+blunder that they should be there even for an hour. There could hardly
+be many insects at that height, I thought, and I had abundant cause to
+know that the woods below were full of them. I knew, also, that the
+swifts knew it; for while I had been prowling about between Crawford's
+and Fabyan's, they had several times shot by my head so closely that I
+had instinctively fallen to calculating the probable consequences of a
+collision. But, after all, the swift is no doubt a far better
+entomologist than I am, though he has never heard of Packard's Guide.
+Possibly there are certain species of insects, and those of a peculiarly
+delicate savor, which are to be obtained only at about this altitude.
+
+The most enjoyable part of the Crawford path is the five miles from the
+top of Mount Clinton to the foot of the Mount Washington cone. Along
+this ridge I was delighted to find in blossom two beautiful Alpine
+plants, which I had missed in previous (July) visits,--the diapensia
+(_Diapensia Lapponica_) and the Lapland rose-bay (_Rhododendron
+Lapponicum_),--and to get also a single forward specimen of _Potentilla
+frigida_. Here and there was a humblebee, gathering honey from the small
+purple catkins of the prostrate willows, now in full bloom. (Rather
+high-minded humblebees, they seemed, more than five thousand feet above
+the sea!) Professional entomologists (the chimney-swift, perhaps,
+included) may smile at my simplicity, but I was surprised to find this
+"animated torrid zone," this "insect lover of the sun," in such a
+Greenland climate. Did he not know that his own poet had, described him
+as "hot midsummer's petted crone"? But possibly he was equally surprised
+at my appearance. He might even have taken his turn at quoting
+Emerson:--
+
+    "Pants up hither the spruce clerk
+    From South Cove and City Wharf"?[13]
+
+Of the two, he was unquestionably the more at home, for he was living
+where in forty-eight hours I should have found my death. So much is
+_Bombus_ better than a man.
+
+In a little pool of water, which seemed to be nothing but a transient
+puddle caused by the melting snow, was a tiny fish. I asked him by what
+miracle he got there, but he could give no explanation. He, too, might
+well enough have joined the noble company of Emersonians:--
+
+    "I never thought to ask, I never knew;
+    But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
+    The self-same Power that brought me here brought you."
+
+Almost at the very top of Mount Clinton I was saluted by the familiar
+ditty of the Nashville warbler. I could hardly believe my ears; but
+there was no mistake, for the bird soon appeared in plain sight. Had it
+been one of the hardier-seeming species, the yellow-rumped for example,
+I should not have thought it very strange; but this dainty
+_Helminthophaga_, so common in the vicinity of Boston, did appear to be
+out of his latitude, summering here on Alpine heights. With a good pair
+of wings, and the whole continent to choose from, he surely might have
+found some more congenial spot than this in which to bring up his little
+family. I took his presence to be only an individual freak, but a
+subsequent visitor, who made the ascent from the Glen, reported the same
+species on that side also, and at about the same height.
+
+These signs of life on bleak mountain ridges are highly interesting and
+suggestive. The fish, the humblebees, the birds, and a mouse which
+scampered away to its hole amid the rocks,--all these might have found
+better living elsewhere. But Nature will have her world full. Stunted
+life is better than none, she thinks. So she plants her forests of
+spruces, and keeps them growing, where, with all their efforts, they
+cannot get above the height of a man's knee. There is no beauty about
+them, no grace. They sacrifice symmetry and everything else for the sake
+of bare existence, reminding one of Satan's remark, "All that a man hath
+will he give for his life."
+
+Very admirable are the devices by which vegetation maintains itself
+against odds. Everybody notices that many of the mountain species, like
+the diapensia, the rose-bay, the Greenland sandwort (called the mountain
+daisy by the Summit House people, for some inscrutable reason), and the
+phyllodoce, have blossoms disproportionately large and handsome; as if
+they realized that, in order to attract their indispensable allies, the
+insects, to these inhospitable regions, they must offer them some
+special inducements. Their case is not unlike that of a certain mountain
+hotel which might be named, which happens to be poorly situated, but
+which keeps itself full, nevertheless, by the peculiar excellence of its
+_cuisine_.
+
+It does not require much imagination to believe that these hardy
+vegetable mountaineers love their wild, desolate dwelling-places as
+truly as do the human residents of the region. An old man in Bethlehem
+told me that sometimes, during the long, cold winter, he felt that
+perhaps it would be well for him, now his work was done, to sell his
+"place" and go down to Boston to live, near his brother. "But then," he
+added, "you know it's dangerous transplanting an old tree; you're likely
+as not to kill it." Whatever we have, in this world, we must pay for
+with the loss of something else. The bitter must be taken with the
+sweet, be we plants, animals, or men. These thoughts recurred to me a
+day or two later, as I lay on the summit of Mount Agassiz, in the sun
+and out of the wind, gazing down into the Franconia Valley, then in all
+its June beauty. Nestled under the lee of the mountain, but farther from
+the base, doubtless, than it seemed from my point of view, was a small
+dwelling, scarcely better than a shanty. Two or three young children
+were playing about the door, and near them was the man of the house
+splitting wood. The air was still enough for me to hear every blow,
+although it reached me only as the axe was again over the man's head,
+ready for the next descent. It was a charming picture,--the broad, green
+valley full of sunshine and peace, and the solitary cottage, from whose
+doorstep might be seen in one direction the noble Mount Washington
+range, and in another the hardly less noble Franconias. How easy to live
+simply and well in such a grand seclusion! But soon there came a thought
+of Wordsworth's sonnet, addressed to just such a mood, "Yes, there is
+holy pleasure in thine eye," and I felt at once the truth of his
+admonition. What if the cottage really were mine,--mine to spend a
+lifetime in? How quickly the poetry would turn to prose!
+
+An hour afterwards, on my way back to the Sinclair House, I passed a
+group of men at work on the highway. One of them was a little apart from
+the rest, and out of a social impulse I accosted him with the remark, "I
+suppose, in heaven, the streets never will need mending." Quick as
+thought came the reply: "Well, I hope not. If I ever _get_ there, I
+don't want to work on the _road_." Here spoke universal human nature,
+which finds its strong argument for immortality in its discontent with
+matters as they now are. The one thing we are all sure of is that we
+were born for something better than our present employment; and even
+those who school themselves most religiously in the virtue of
+contentment know very well how to define that grace so as not to
+exclude from it a comfortable mixture of "divine dissatisfaction." Well
+for us if we are still able to stand in our place and do faithfully our
+allotted task, like the mountain spruces and the Bethlehemite
+road-mender.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] He is said to have another song, beautiful and wren-like; but that I
+have never heard.
+
+[9] This is making no account of the gray-cheeked thrushes, who are
+found only near the _tops_ of the mountains.
+
+[10] I have since found both species at Willoughby Lake, Vermont and the
+veery with them.
+
+[11] True when written, but now needing to be qualified by one
+exception. See p. 226.
+
+[12] Beside this road (in June, 1883) I found a nest of the
+yellow-bellied flycatcher (_Empidonax flaviventris_). It was built at
+the base of a decayed stump, in a little depression between two roots,
+and was partially overarched with growing moss. It contained four
+eggs,--white, spotted with brown. I called upon the bird half a dozen
+times or more, and found her a model "keeper at home." On one occasion
+she allowed my hand to come within two or three inches of her bill. In
+every case she flew off without any outcry or ruse, and once at least
+she fell immediately to fly-catching with admirable philosophy. So far
+as I know, this is the only nest of the species ever found in New
+England outside of Maine. But it is proper to add that I did not capture
+the bird.
+
+[13] But by this time the clerk's appearance was, to say the least, not
+reprehensibly "spruce." For one thing, what with the moisture and the
+sharp stones, he was already becoming jealous of his shoes, lest they
+should not hold together till he could get back to the Crawford House.
+
+
+
+
+                         PHILLIDA AND CORIDON.
+
+    Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song.
+
+                                                   SPENSER.
+
+    Much ado there was, God wot:
+    He would love, and she would not.
+
+                      NICHOLAS BRETON.
+
+
+                         PHILLIDA AND CORIDON.
+
+
+The happiness of birds, heretofore taken for granted, and long ago put
+to service in a proverb, is in these last days made a matter of doubt.
+It transpires that they are engaged without respite in a struggle for
+existence,--a struggle so fierce that at least two of them perish every
+year for one that survives.[14] How, then, can they be otherwise than
+miserable?
+
+There is no denying the struggle, of course; nor need we question some
+real effect produced by it upon the cheerfulness of the participants.
+The more rationalistic of the smaller species, we may be sure, find it
+hard to reconcile the existence of hawks and owls with the doctrine of
+an all-wise Providence; while even the most simple-minded of them can
+scarcely fail to realize that a world in which one is liable any day to
+be pursued by a boy with a shot-gun is not in any strict sense
+paradisiacal.
+
+And yet, who knows the heart of a bird? A child, possibly, or a poet;
+certainly not a philosopher. And happiness, too,--is that something of
+which the scientific mind can render us a quite adequate description? Or
+is it, rather, a wayward, mysterious thing, coming often when least
+expected, and going away again when, by all tokens, it ought to remain?
+How is it with ourselves? Do we wait to weigh all the good and evil of
+our state, to take an accurate account of it _pro_ and _con_, before we
+allow ourselves to be glad or sorry? Not many of us, I think. Mortuary
+tables may demonstrate that half the children born in this country fail
+to reach the age of twenty years. But what then? Our "expectation of
+life" is not based upon statistics. The tables may be correct, for aught
+we know; but they deal with men in general and on the average; they have
+no message for you and me individually. And it seems not unlikely that
+birds may be equally illogical; always expecting to live, and not die,
+and often giving themselves up to impulses of gladness without stopping
+to inquire whether, on grounds of absolute reason, these impulses are to
+be justified. Let us hope so, at all events, till somebody proves the
+contrary.
+
+But even looking at the subject a little more philosophically, we may
+say--and be thankful to say it--that the joy of life is not dependent
+upon comfort, nor yet upon safety. The essential matter is that the
+heart be engaged. Then, though we be toiling up the Matterhorn, or swept
+along in the rush of a bayonet charge, we may still find existence not
+only endurable, but in the highest degree exhilarating. On the other
+hand, if there is no longer anything we care for; if enthusiasm is dead,
+and hope also, then, though we have all that money can buy, suicide is
+perhaps the only fitting action that is left for us,--unless, perchance,
+we are still able to pass the time in writing treatises to prove that
+everybody else ought to be as unhappy as ourselves.
+
+Birds have many enemies and their full share of privation, but I do not
+believe that they often suffer from _ennui_. Having "neither storehouse
+nor barn,"[15] they are never in want of something to do. From sunrise
+till noon there is the getting of breakfast, then from noon till sunset
+the getting of dinner,--both out-of-doors, and without any trouble of
+cookery or dishes,--a kind of perpetual picnic. What could be simpler
+or more delightful? Carried on in this way, eating is no longer the
+coarse and sensual thing we make it, with our set meal-times and
+elaborate preparations.
+
+Country children know that there are two ways to go berrying. According
+to the first of these you stroll into the pasture in the cool of the
+day, and at your leisure pick as many as you choose of the ripest and
+largest of the berries, putting every one into your mouth. This is
+agreeable. According to the second, you carry a basket, which you are
+expected to bring home again well filled. And this method--well, tastes
+will differ, but following the good old rule for judging in such cases,
+I must believe that most unsophisticated persons prefer the other. The
+hand-to-mouth process certainly agrees best with our idea of life in
+Eden; and, what is more to the purpose now, it is the one which the
+birds, still keeping the garden instead of tilling the ground, continue
+to follow.
+
+That this unworldliness of the birds has any religious or theological
+significance I do not myself suppose. Still, as anybody may see, there
+are certain very plain Scripture texts on their side. Indeed, if birds
+were only acute theologians, they would unquestionably proceed to turn
+these texts (since they find it so easy to obey them) into the basis of
+a "system of truth." Other parts of the Bible must be _interpreted_, to
+be sure (so the theory would run); but _these_ statements mean just what
+they say, and whoever meddles with them is carnally minded and a
+rationalist.
+
+Somebody will object, perhaps, that, with our talk about a "perpetual
+picnic," we are making a bird's life one cloudless holiday;
+contradicting what we have before admitted about a struggle for
+existence, and leaving out of sight altogether the seasons of scarcity,
+the storms, and the biting cold. But we intend no such foolish
+recantation. These hardships are real enough, and serious enough. What
+we maintain is that evils of this kind are not necessarily inconsistent
+with enjoyment, and may even give to life an additional zest. It is a
+matter of every-day observation that the people who have nothing to do
+except to "live well" (as the common sarcasm has it) are not always the
+most cheerful; while there are certain diseases, like pessimism and the
+gout, which seem appointed to wait on luxury and idleness,--as though
+nature were determined to have the scales kept somewhat even. And surely
+this divine law of compensation has not left the innocent birds
+unprovided for,--the innocent birds of whom it was said, "Your heavenly
+Father feedeth them." How must the devoted pair exult, when, in spite
+of owls and hawks, squirrels and weasels, small boys and full-grown
+oologists, they have finally reared a brood of offspring! The long
+uncertainty and the thousand perils only intensify the joy. In truth, so
+far as this world is concerned, the highest bliss is never to be had
+without antecedent sorrow; and even of heaven itself we may not scruple
+to say that, if there are painters there, they probably feel obliged to
+put some shadows into their pictures.
+
+But of course (and this is what we have been coming to through this long
+introduction),--of course our friends of the air are happiest in the
+season of mating; happiest, and therefore most attractive to us who find
+our pleasure in studying them. In spring, of all times of the year, it
+seems a pity that everybody should not turn ornithologist. For "all
+mankind love a lover;" and the world, in consequence, has given itself
+up to novel-reading, not knowing, unfortunately, how much better that
+_role_ is taken by the birds than by the common run of story-book
+heroes.
+
+People whose notions of the subject are derived from attending to the
+antics of our imported sparrows have no idea how delicate and beautiful
+a thing a real feathered courtship is. To tell the truth, these
+foreigners have associated too long and too intimately with men, and
+have fallen far away from their primal innocence. There is no need to
+describe their actions. The vociferous and most unmannerly importunity
+of the suitor, and the correspondingly spiteful rejection of his
+overtures by the little vixen on whom his affections are for the moment
+placed,--these we have all seen to our hearts' discontent.
+
+The sparrow will not have been brought over the sea for nothing,
+however, if his bad behavior serves to heighten our appreciation of our
+own native songsters, with their "perfect virtues" and "manners for the
+heart's delight."
+
+The American robin, for instance, is far from being a bird of
+exceptional refinement. His nest is rude, not to say slovenly, and his
+general deportment is unmistakably common. But watch him when he goes
+a-wooing, and you will begin to feel quite a new respect for him. How
+gently he approaches his beloved! How carefully he avoids ever coming
+disrespectfully near! No sparrow-like screaming, no dancing about, no
+melodramatic gesticulation. If she moves from one side of the tree to
+the other, or to the tree adjoining, he follows in silence. Yet every
+movement is a petition, an assurance that his heart is hers and ever
+must be. The action is extremely simple; there is nothing of which to
+make an eloquent description; but I should pity the man who could
+witness it with indifference. Not that the robin's suit is always
+carried on in the same way; he is much too versatile for that. On one
+occasion, at least, I saw him holding himself absolutely motionless, in
+a horizontal posture, staring at his sweetheart as if he would charm her
+with his gaze, and emitting all the while a subdued hissing sound. The
+significance of this conduct I do not profess to have understood; it
+ended with his suddenly darting at the female, who took wing and was
+pursued. Not improbably the robin finds the feminine nature somewhat
+fickle, and counts it expedient to vary his tactics accordingly; for it
+is getting to be more and more believed that, in kind at least, the
+intelligence of the lower animals is not different from ours.
+
+I once came unexpectedly upon a wood thrush, who was in the midst of a
+performance very similar to this of the robin standing on the dead
+branch of a tree, with his crown feathers erect, his bill set wide open,
+and his whole body looking as rigid as death. His mate, as I perceived
+the next moment, was not far away, on the same limb. If he was
+attempting fascination, he had gone very clumsily about it, I thought,
+unless his mate's idea of beauty was totally different from mine; for I
+could hardly keep from laughing at his absurd appearance. It did not
+occur to me till afterwards that he had perhaps heard of Othello's
+method, and was at that moment acting out a story
+
+                    "of most disastrous chances,
+    Of moving accidents by flood and field,
+    Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
+    Of being taken by the insolent foe
+    And sold to slavery."
+
+How much depends upon the point of view! Here was I, ready to laugh;
+while poor Desdemona only thought, "'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous
+pitiful." Dear sympathetic soul! Let us hope that she was never called
+to play out the tragedy.
+
+Two things are very noticeable during the pairing season,--the scarcity
+of females and their indifference. Every one of them seems to have at
+least two admirers dangling after her,[16] while she is almost sure to
+carry herself as if a wedding were the last thing she would ever consent
+to think of; and that not because of bashfulness, but from downright
+aversion. The observer begins to suspect that the fair creatures have
+really entered into some sort of no-marriage league, and that there are
+not to be any nests this year, nor any young birds. But by and by he
+discovers that somehow, he cannot surmise how,--it must have been when
+his eyes were turned the other way,--the scene is entirely changed, the
+maidens are all wedded, and even now the nests are being got ready.
+
+I watched a trio of cat-birds in a clump of alder bushes by the
+roadside; two males, almost as a matter of course, "paying attentions"
+to one female. Both suitors were evidently in earnest; each hoped to
+carry off the prize, and perhaps felt that he should be miserable
+forever if he were disappointed; and yet, on their part, everything was
+being done decently and in order. So far as I saw, there was no
+disposition to quarrel. Only let the dear creature choose one of them,
+and the other would take his broken heart away. So, always at a modest
+remove, they followed her about from bush to bush, entreating her in
+most loving and persuasive tones to listen to their suit. But she, all
+this time, answered every approach with a snarl; she would never have
+anything to do with either of them; she disliked them both, and only
+wished they would leave her to herself. This lasted as long as I stayed
+to watch. Still I had little doubt she fully intended to accept one of
+them, and had even made up her mind already which it should be. She
+knew enough, I felt sure, to calculate the value of a proper maidenly
+reluctance. How could her mate be expected to rate her at her worth, if
+she allowed herself to be won too easily? Besides, she could afford not
+to be in haste, seeing she had a choice of two.
+
+What a comfortably simple affair the matrimonial question is with the
+feminine cat-bird! Her wooers are all of equally good family and all
+equally rich. There is literally nothing for her to do but to look into
+her own heart and choose. No temptation has she to sell herself for the
+sake of a fashionable name or a fine house, or in order to gratify the
+prejudice of father or mother. As for a marriage settlement, she knows
+neither the name nor the thing. In fact, marriage in her thought is a
+simple union of hearts, with no taint of anything mercantile about it.
+Happy cat-bird! She perhaps imagines that human marriages are of the
+same ideal sort!
+
+I have spoken of the affectionate language of these dusky lovers; but it
+was noticeable that they did not sing, although, to have fulfilled the
+common idea of such an affair, they certainly should have been doing so,
+and each trying his best to outsing the other. Possibly there had
+already been such a tournament before my arrival; or, for aught I know,
+this particular female may have given out that she had no ear for
+music.
+
+In point of fact, however, there was nothing peculiar in their conduct.
+No doubt, in the earlier stages of a bird's attachment he is likely to
+express his passion musically; but later he is not content to warble
+from a tree-top. There are things to be said which cannot appropriately
+be spoken at long range; and unless my study of novels has been to
+little purpose, all this agrees well with the practices of human
+gallants. Do not these begin by singing under the lady's window, or by
+sending verses to her? and are not such proceedings intended to prepare
+the way, as speedily as possible, for others of a more satisfying,
+though it may be of a less romantic nature?
+
+Bearing this in mind, we may be able to account, in part at least, for
+the inexperienced observer's disappointment when, fresh from the perusal
+of (for example) the thirteenth chapter of Darwin's "Descent of Man," he
+goes into the woods to look about for himself. He expects to find here
+and there two or three songsters, each in turn doing his utmost to
+surpass the brilliancy and power of the other's music; while a feminine
+auditor sits in full view, preparing to render her verdict, and reward
+the successful competitor with her own precious self. This would be a
+pretty picture. Unfortunately, it is looked for in vain. The two or
+three singers may be found, likely enough; but the female, if she be
+indeed within hearing, is modestly hidden away somewhere in the bushes,
+and our student is none the wiser. Let him watch as long as he please,
+he will hardly see the prize awarded.
+
+Nevertheless he need not grudge the time thus employed; not, at any
+rate, if he be sensitive to music. For it will be found that birds have
+at least one attribute of genius: they can do their best only on great
+occasions. Our brown thrush, for instance, is a magnificent singer,
+albeit he is not of the best school, being too "sensational" to suit the
+most exacting taste. His song is a grand improvisation: a good deal
+jumbled, to be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and
+yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,--that is,
+it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his
+instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, at an occasional
+grotesque or overwrought passage, but unless you are well used to it you
+will surely be astonished. Such power and range of voice; such startling
+transitions; such endless variety! And withal such boundless enthusiasm
+and almost incredible endurance! Regarded as pure music, one strain of
+the hermit thrush is to my mind worth the whole of it; just as a single
+movement of Beethoven's is better than a world of Liszt transcriptions.
+But in its own way it is unsurpassable.
+
+Still, though this is a meagre and quite unexaggerated account of the
+ordinary song of the brown thrush, I have discovered that even he can be
+outdone--by himself. One morning in early May I came upon three birds of
+this species, all singing at once, in a kind of jealous frenzy. As they
+sang they continually shifted from tree to tree, and one in particular
+(the one nearest to where I stood) could hardly be quiet a moment. Once
+he sang with full power while on the ground (or close to it, for he was
+just then behind a low bush), after which he mounted to the very tip of
+a tall pine, which bent beneath his weight. In the midst of the
+hurly-burly one of the trio suddenly sounded the whip-poor-will's call
+twice,--an absolutely perfect reproduction.[17]
+
+The significance of all this sound and fury,--what the prize was, if
+any, and who obtained it,--this another can conjecture as well as
+myself. I know no more than old Kaspar:----
+
+    "'Why, that I cannot tell,' said he,
+    But 'twas a famous victory.'"
+
+As I turned to come away, the contest all at once ceased, and the
+silence of the woods, or what seemed like silence, was really
+impressive. The chewinks and field sparrows were singing, but it was
+like the music of a village singer after Patti; or, to make the
+comparison less unjust, like the Pastoral Symphony of Handel after a
+Wagner tempest.
+
+It is curious how deeply we are sometimes affected by a very trifling
+occurrence. I have remembered many times a slight scene in which three
+purple finches were the actors. Of the two males, one was in full adult
+plumage of bright crimson, while the other still wore his youthful suit
+of brown. First, the older bird suspended himself in mid air, and sang
+most beautifully; dropping, as he concluded, to a perch beside the
+female. Then the younger candidate, who was already sitting near by,
+took his turn, singing nearly or quite as well as his rival, but without
+quitting the branch, though his wings quivered. I saw no more. Yet, as I
+say, I have often since thought of the three birds, and wondered whether
+the bright feathers and the flying song carried the day against the
+younger suitor. I fear they did. Sometimes, too, I have queried whether
+young birds (who none the less are of age to marry) can be so very meek
+or so very dull as never to rebel against the fashion that only the old
+fellows shall dress handsomely; and I have tried in vain to imagine the
+mutterings, deep and loud, which such a law would excite in certain
+other quarters. It pains me to say it, but I suspect that taxation
+without representation would seem a small injustice, in comparison.
+
+Like these linnets in the exceptional interest they excited were two
+large seabirds, who suddenly appeared circling about over the woods, as
+I was taking a solitary walk on a Sunday morning in April. One of them
+was closely pursuing the other; not as though he were trying to overtake
+her, but rather as though he were determined to keep her company. They
+swept now this way, now that,--now lost to sight, and now reappearing;
+and once they passed straight over my head, so that I heard the
+whistling of their wings. Then they were off, and I saw them no more.
+They came from far, and by night they were perhaps a hundred leagues
+away. But I followed them with my blessing, and to this day I feel
+toward them a little as I suppose we all do toward a certain few
+strangers whom we have met here and there in our journeyings, and
+chatted with for an hour or two. We had never seen them before; if we
+learned their names we have long ago forgotten them; but somehow the
+persons themselves keep a place in our memory, and even in our
+affection.
+
+    "I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
+    And a certain use in the world, no doubt;
+    Yet a hand's breadth of it shines alone
+    'Mid the blank miles round about:
+
+    "For there I picked up on the heather,
+    And there I put inside my breast,
+    A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
+    Well, I forget the rest."
+
+Since we cannot ask birds for an explanation of their conduct, we have
+nothing for it but to steal their secrets, as far as possible, by
+patient and stealthy watching. In this way I hope, sooner or later, to
+find out what the golden-winged woodpecker means by the shout with which
+he makes the fields reecho in the spring, especially in the latter half
+of April. I have no doubt it has something to do with the process of
+mating, but it puzzles me to guess just what the message can be which
+requires to be published so loudly. Such a stentorian, long-winded cry!
+You wonder where the bird finds breath for such an effort, and think he
+must be a very ungentle lover, surely. But withhold your judgment for a
+few days, till you see him and his mate gamboling about the branches of
+some old tree, calling in soft, affectionate tones, _Wick-a-wick,
+wick-a-wick_; then you will confess that, whatever failings the
+golden-wing may have, he is not to be charged with insensibility. The
+fact is that our "yellow-hammer" has a genius for noise. When he is
+_very_ happy he drums. Sometimes, indeed, he marvels how birds who
+haven't this resource are able to get through the world at all. Nor
+ought we to think it strange if in his love-making he finds great use
+for this his crowning accomplishment. True, we have nowhere read of a
+human lover's serenading his mistress with a drum; but we must remember
+what creatures of convention men are, and that there is no inherent
+reason why a drum should not serve as well as a flute for such a
+purpose.
+
+    "All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
+    Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
+    _All_ are but ministers of Love,
+      And feed his sacred flame."
+
+I saw two of these flickers clinging to the trunk of a shell-bark tree;
+which, by the way, is a tree after the woodpecker's own heart. One was
+perhaps fifteen feet above the other, and before each was a strip of
+loose bark, a sort of natural drum-head. First, the lower one "beat his
+music out," rather softly. Then, as he ceased, and held his head back
+to listen, the other answered him; and so the dialogue went on.
+Evidently, they were already mated, and were now renewing their mutual
+vows; for birds, to their praise be it spoken, believe in courtship
+after marriage. The day happened to be Sunday, and it did occur to me
+that possibly this was the woodpeckers' ritual,--a kind of High Church
+service, with antiphonal choirs. But I dismissed the thought; for, on
+the whole, the shouting seems more likely to be diagnostic, and in spite
+of his gold-lined wings, I have set the flicker down as almost certainly
+an old-fashioned Methodist.
+
+Speaking of courtship after marriage, I am reminded of a spotted
+sandpiper, whose capers I amused myself with watching, one day last
+June, on the shore of Saco Lake. As I caught sight of him, he was
+straightening himself up, with a pretty, self-conscious air, at the same
+time spreading his white-edged tail, and calling, _Tweet, tweet,
+tweet_.[18] Afterwards he got upon a log, where, with head erect and
+wings thrown forward and downward, he ran for a yard or two, calling as
+before. This trick seemed especially to please him, and was several
+times repeated. He ran rapidly, and with a comical prancing movement;
+but nothing he did was half so laughable as the behavior of his mate,
+who all this while dressed her feathers without once deigning to look at
+her spouse's performance. Undoubtedly they had been married for several
+weeks, and she was, by this time, well used to his nonsense. It must be
+a devoted husband, I fancy, who continues to offer attentions when they
+are received in such a spirit.
+
+Walking a log is a somewhat common practice with birds. I once detected
+our little golden-crowned thrush showing off in this way to his mate,
+who stood on the ground close at hand. In his case the head was lowered
+instead of raised, and the general effect was heightened by his
+curiously precise gait, which even on ordinary occasions is enough to
+provoke a smile.
+
+Not improbably every species of birds has its own code of etiquette;
+unwritten, of course, but carefully handed down from father to son, and
+faithfully observed. Nor is it cause for wonder if, in our ignorant
+eyes, some of these "society manners" look a little ridiculous. Even the
+usages of fashionable human circles have not always escaped the laughter
+of the profane.
+
+I was standing on the edge of a small thicket, observing a pair of
+cuckoos as they made a breakfast out of a nest of tent caterpillars (it
+was a feast rather than a common meal; for the caterpillars were
+plentiful, and, as I judged, just at their best, being about half
+grown), when a couple of scarlet tanagers appeared upon the scene. The
+female presently selected a fine strip of cedar bark, and started off
+with it, sounding a call to her handsome husband, who at once followed
+in her wake. I thought, What a brute, to leave his wife to build the
+house! But he, plainly enough, felt that in escorting her back and forth
+he was doing all that ought to be expected of any well-bred,
+scarlet-coated tanager. And the lady herself, if one might infer
+anything from her tone and demeanor, was of the same opinion. I mention
+this trifling occurrence, not to put any slight upon _Pyranga rubra_
+(who am I, that I should accuse so gentle and well dressed a bird of bad
+manners?), but merely as an example of the way in which feathered
+politeness varies. In fact, it seems not unlikely that the male tanager
+may abstain on principle from taking any active part in constructing the
+nest, lest his fiery color should betray its whereabouts. As for his
+kindness and loyalty, I only wish I could feel as sure of one half the
+human husbands whom I meet.
+
+It would be very ungallant of me, however, to leave my readers to
+understand that the female bird is always so unsympathetic as most of
+the descriptions thus far given would appear to indicate. In my memory
+are several scenes, any one of which, if I could put it on paper as I
+saw it, would suffice to correct such an erroneous impression. In one of
+these the parties were a pair of chipping sparrows. Never was man so
+churlish that his heart would not have been touched with the vision of
+their gentle but rapturous delight. As they chased each other gayly from
+branch to branch and from tree to tree, they flew with that delicate,
+affected movement of the wings which birds are accustomed to use at such
+times, and which, perhaps, bears the same relation to their ordinary
+flight that dancing does to the every-day walk of men and women. The two
+seemed equally enchanted, and both sang. Little they knew of the
+"struggle for existence" and the "survival of the fittest." Adam and
+Eve, in Paradise, were never more happy.
+
+A few weeks later, taking an evening walk, I was stopped by the sight of
+a pair of cedar-birds on a stone wall. They had chosen a convenient flat
+stone, and were hopping about upon it, pausing every moment or two to
+put their little bills together. What a loving ecstasy possessed them!
+Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sounded a faint lisping note, and
+motioned for another kiss. But there is no setting forth the ineffable
+grace and sweetness of their chaste behavior. I looked and looked, till
+a passing carriage frightened them away. They were only common
+cedar-birds; if I were to see them again I should not know them; but if
+my pen were equal to my wish, they should be made immortal.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[14] Wallace, _Natural Selection_, p. 30.
+
+[15] The shrike lays up grasshoppers and sparrows, and the California
+woodpecker hoards great numbers of acorns, but it is still in dispute, I
+believe, whether thrift is the motive with either of them. Considering
+what has often been done in similar cases, we may think it surprising
+that the Scripture text above quoted (together with its exegetical
+parallel, Matthew vi. 26) has never been brought into court to settle
+the controversy; but to the best of my knowledge it never has been.
+
+[16] So near do birds come to Mr. Ruskin's idea that "a girl worth
+anything ought to have always half a dozen or so of suitors under vow
+for her."
+
+[17]
+
+    "That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over,
+    Lest you should think he never could recapture
+    The first fine careless rapture!"
+
+The "authorities" long since forbade _Harporhynchus rufus_ to play the
+mimic. Probably in the excitement of the moment this fellow forgot
+himself.
+
+[18] May one who knows nothing of philology venture to inquire whether
+the very close agreement of this _tweet_ with our sweet (compare also
+the Anglo-Saxon _swete_, the Icelandic _soetr_, and the Sanskrit
+_svad_) does not point to a common origin of the Aryan and sandpiper
+languages?
+
+
+
+
+                         SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+    A man that hath friends must show himself friendly.
+
+                                    PROVERBS xviii. 24.
+
+
+                         SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+
+As I was crossing Boston Common, some years ago, my attention was caught
+by the unusual behavior of a robin, who was standing on the lawn,
+absolutely motionless, and every few seconds making a faint hissing
+noise. So much engaged was he that, even when a dog ran near him, he
+only started slightly, and on the instant resumed his statue-like
+attitude. Wondering what this could mean, and not knowing how else to
+satisfy my curiosity, I bethought myself of a man whose letters about
+birds I had now and then noticed in the daily press. So, looking up his
+name in the City Directory, and finding that he lived at such a number,
+Beacon Street, I wrote him a note of inquiry. He must have been amused
+as he read it; for I remember giving him the title of "Esquire," and
+speaking of his communications to the newspapers as the ground of my
+application to him. "Such is fame!" he likely enough said to himself.
+"Here is a man with eyes in his head, a man, moreover, who has probably
+been at school in his time,--for most of his words are spelled
+correctly,--and yet he knows my name only as he has seen it signed once
+in a while to a few lines in a newspaper." Thoughts like these, however,
+did not prevent his replying to the note (my "valued favor") with all
+politeness, although he confessed himself unable to answer my question;
+and by the time I had occasion to trouble him again I had learned that
+he was to be addressed as Doctor, and, furthermore, was an ornithologist
+of world-wide reputation, being, in fact, one of the three joint-authors
+of the most important work so far issued on the birds of North America.
+
+Certainly I was and am grateful to him (he is now dead) for his generous
+treatment of my ignorance; but even warmer is my feeling toward that
+city thrush, who, all unconscious of what he was doing, started me that
+day on a line of study which has been ever since a continual delight.
+Most gladly would I do him any kindness in my power; but I have little
+doubt that, long ere this, he, too, has gone the way of all the earth.
+As to what he was thinking about on that memorable May morning, I am as
+much in the dark as ever. But there is no law against a bird's behaving
+mysteriously, I suppose. Most of us, I am sure, often do things which
+are inexplicable to ourselves, and once in a very great while, perhaps,
+it would puzzle even our next-door neighbors to render a complete
+account of our motives.
+
+Whatever the robin meant, however, and no doubt there was some good
+reason for his conduct, he had given my curiosity the needed jog. Now,
+at last, I would do what I had often dreamed of doing,--learn something
+about the birds of my own region, and be able to recognize at least the
+more common ones when I saw them.
+
+The interest of the study proved to be the greater for my ignorance,
+which, to speak within bounds, was nothing short of wonderful; perhaps I
+might appropriately use a more fashionable word, and call it phenomenal.
+All my life long I had had a kind of passion for being out-of-doors;
+and, to tell the truth, I had been so often seen wandering by myself in
+out-of-the-way wood-paths, or sitting idly about on stone walls in
+lonesome pastures, that some of my Philistine townsmen had most likely
+come to look upon me as no better than a vagabond. Yet I was not a
+vagabond, for all that. I liked work, perhaps, as well as the generality
+of people. But I was unfortunate in this respect: while I enjoyed
+in-door work, I hated to be in the house; and, on the other hand, while
+I enjoyed being out-of-doors, I hated all manner of out-door
+employment. I was not lazy, but I possessed--well, let us call it the
+true aboriginal temperament; though I fear that this distinction will be
+found too subtile, even for the well-educated, unless, along with their
+education, they have a certain sympathetic bias, which, after all, is
+the main thing to be depended on in such nice psychological
+discriminations.
+
+With all my rovings in wood and field, however, I knew nothing of any
+open-air study. Study was a thing of books. At school we were never
+taught to look elsewhere for knowledge. Reading and spelling, geography
+and grammar, arithmetic and algebra, geometry and trigonometry,--these
+were studied, of course, as also were Latin and Greek. But none of our
+lessons took us out of the school-room, unless it was astronomy, the
+study of which I had nearly forgotten; and that we pursued in the
+night-time, when birds and plants were as though they were not. I cannot
+recollect that any one of my teachers ever called my attention to a
+natural object. It seems incredible, but, so far as my memory serves, I
+was never in the habit of observing the return of the birds in the
+spring or their departure in the autumn; except, to be sure, that the
+semi-annual flight of the ducks and geese was always a pleasant
+excitement, more especially because there were several lakes
+(invariably spoken of as ponds) in our vicinity, on the borders of
+which the village "gunners" built pine-branch booths in the season.
+
+But now, as I have said, my ignorance was converted all at once into a
+kind of blessing; for no sooner had I begun to read bird books, and
+consult a cabinet of mounted specimens, than every turn out-of-doors
+became full of all manner of delightful surprises. Could it be that what
+I now beheld with so much wonder was only the same as had been going on
+year after year in these my own familiar lanes and woods? Truly the
+human eye is nothing more than a window, of no use unless the man looks
+out of it.
+
+Some of the experiences of that period seem ludicrous enough in the
+retrospect. Only two or three days after my eyes were first opened I was
+out with a friend in search of wild-flowers (I was piloting him to a
+favorite station for _Viola pubescens_), when I saw a most elegant
+little creature, mainly black and white, but with brilliant orange
+markings. He was darting hither and thither among the branches of some
+low trees, while I stared at him in amazement, calling on my comrade,
+who was as ignorant as myself, but less excited, to behold the prodigy.
+Half trembling lest the bird should prove to be some straggler from the
+tropics, the like of which would not be found in the cabinet before
+mentioned, I went thither that very evening. Alas, my silly fears! there
+stood the little beauty's exact counterpart, labeled _Setophaga
+ruticilla_, the American redstart,--a bird which the manual assured me
+was very common in my neighborhood.
+
+But it was not my eyes only that were opened, my ears also were touched.
+It was as if all the birds had heretofore been silent, and now, under
+some sudden impulse, had broken out in universal concert. What a
+glorious chorus it was; and every voice a stranger! For a week or more I
+was puzzled by a song which I heard without fail whenever I went into
+the woods, but the author of which I could never set eyes on,--a song so
+exceptionally loud and shrill, and marked by such a vehement crescendo,
+that, even to my new-found ears, it stood out from the general medley a
+thing by itself. Many times I struck into the woods in the direction
+whence it came, but without getting so much as a flying glimpse of the
+musician. Very mysterious, surely! Finally, by accident I believe, I
+caught the fellow in the very act of singing, as he stood on a dead
+pine-limb; and a few minutes later he was on the ground, walking about
+(not hopping) with the primmest possible gait,--a small olive-brown
+bird, with an orange crown and a speckled breast. Then I knew him for
+the golden-crowned thrush; but it was not for some time after this that
+I heard his famous evening song, and it was longer still before I found
+his curious roofed nest.
+
+"Happy those early days," those days of childish innocence,--though I
+was a man grown,--when every bird seemed newly created, and even the
+redstart and the wood wagtail were like rarities from the ends of the
+earth. Verily, my case was like unto Adam's, when every fowl of the air
+was brought before him for a name.
+
+One evening, on my way back to the city after an afternoon ramble, I
+stopped just at dusk in a grove of hemlocks, and soon out of the
+tree-top overhead came a song,--a brief strain of about six notes, in a
+musical but rather rough voice, and in exquisite accord with the quiet
+solemnity of the hour. Again and again the sounds fell on my ear, and as
+often I endeavored to obtain a view of the singer; but he was in the
+thick of the upper branches, and I looked for him in vain. How delicious
+the music was! a perfect lullaby, drowsy and restful; like the
+benediction of the wood on the spirit of a tired city-dweller. I blessed
+the unknown songster in return; and even now I have a feeling that the
+peculiar enjoyment which the song of the black-throated green warbler
+never fails to afford me may perhaps be due in some measure to its
+association with that twilight hour.
+
+To this same hemlock grove I was in the habit, in those days, of going
+now and then to listen to the evening hymn of the veery, or Wilson
+thrush. Here, if nowhere else, might be heard music fit to be called
+sacred. Nor did it seem a disadvantage, but rather the contrary, when,
+as sometimes happened, I was compelled to take my seat in the edge of
+the wood, and wait quietly, in the gathering darkness, for vespers to
+begin. The veery's mood is not so lofty as the hermit's, nor is his
+music to be compared for brilliancy and fullness with that of the wood
+thrush; but, more than any other bird-song known to me, the veery's has,
+if I may say so, the accent of sanctity. Nothing is here of
+self-consciousness; nothing of earthly pride or passion. If we chance to
+overhear it and laud the singer, that is our affair. Simple-hearted
+worshiper that he is, he has never dreamed of winning praise for himself
+by the excellent manner in which he praises his Creator,--an absence of
+thrift, which is very becoming in thrushes, though, I suppose, it is
+hardly to be looked for in human choirs.
+
+And yet, for all the unstudied ease and simplicity of the veery's
+strain, he is a great master of _technique_. In his own artless way he
+does what I have never heard any other bird attempt: he gives to his
+melody all the force of harmony. How this unique and curious effect,
+this vocal double-stopping, as a violinist might term it, is produced,
+is not certainly known; but it would seem that it must be by an
+_arpeggio_, struck with such consummate quickness and precision that the
+ear is unable to follow it, and is conscious of nothing but the
+resultant chord. At any rate, the thing itself is indisputable, and has
+often been commented on.
+
+Moreover, this is only half the veery's technical proficiency. Once in a
+while, at least, he will favor you with a delightful feat of
+ventriloquism; beginning to sing in single voice, as usual, and anon,
+without any noticeable increase in the loudness of the tones, diffusing
+the music throughout the wood, as if there were a bird in every tree,
+all singing together in the strictest time. I am not sure that all
+members of the species possess this power, and I have never seen the
+performance alluded to in print; but I have heard it when the illusion
+was complete, and the effect most beautiful.
+
+Music so devout and unostentatious as the veery's does not appeal to the
+hurried or the preoccupied. If you would enjoy it you must bring an ear
+to hear. I have sometimes pleased myself with imagining a resemblance
+between it and the poetry of George Herbert,--both uncared for by the
+world, but both, on that very account, prized all the more dearly by the
+few in every generation whose spirits are in tune with theirs.
+
+This bird is one of a group of small thrushes called the _Hylocichlae_,
+of which group we have five representatives in the Atlantic States: the
+wood thrush; the Wilson, or tawny thrush; the hermit; the olive-backed,
+or Swainson; and the gray-cheeked, or Alice's thrush. To the unpracticed
+eye the five all look alike. All of them, too, have the same glorious
+voice, so that the young student is pretty sure to find it a matter of
+some difficulty to tell them apart. Yet there are differences of
+coloration which may be trusted as constant, and to which, after a
+while, the eye becomes habituated; and, at the same time, each species
+has a song and call-notes peculiar to itself. One cannot help wishing,
+indeed, that he might hear the five singing by turns in the same wood.
+Then he could fix the distinguishing peculiarities of the different
+songs in his mind so as never to confuse them again. But this is more
+than can be hoped for; the listener must be content with hearing two,
+or at the most three, of the species singing together, and trust his
+memory to make the necessary comparison.
+
+The song of the wood thrush is perhaps the most easily set apart from
+the rest, because of its greater compass of voice and bravery of
+execution. The Wilson's song, as you hear it by itself, seems so
+perfectly characteristic that you fancy you can never mistake any other
+for it; and yet, if you are in northern New England only a week
+afterwards, you may possibly hear a Swainson (especially if he happens
+to be one of the best singers of his species, and, more especially
+still, if he happens to be at just the right distance away), who you
+will say, at first thought, is surely a Wilson. The difficulty of
+distinguishing the voices is naturally greatest in the spring, when they
+have not been heard for eight or nine months. Here, as elsewhere, the
+student must be willing to learn the same lesson over and over, letting
+patience have her perfect work. That the five songs are really
+distinguishable is well illustrated by the fact (which I have before
+mentioned), that the presence of the Alice thrush in New England during
+the breeding season was announced as probable by myself, simply on the
+strength of a song which I had heard in the White Mountains, and which,
+as I believed, must be his, notwithstanding I was entirely unacquainted
+with it, and though all our books affirmed that the Alice thrush was not
+a summer resident of any part of the United States.
+
+It is worth remarking, also, in this connection, that the _Hylocichlae_
+differ more decidedly in their notes of alarm than in their songs. The
+wood thrush's call is extremely sharp and brusque, and is usually fired
+off in a little volley; that of the Wilson is a sort of whine, or snarl,
+in distressing contrast with his song; the hermit's is a quick, _sotto
+voce_, sometimes almost inaudible _chuck_; the Swainson's is a mellow
+whistle; while that of the Alice is something between the Swainson's and
+the Wilson's,--not so gentle and refined as the former, nor so
+outrageously vulgar as the latter.
+
+In what is here said about discriminating species it must be understood
+that I am not speaking of such identification as will answer a strictly
+scientific purpose. For that the bird must be shot. To the maiden
+
+                  "whose light blue eyes
+    Are tender over drowning flies,"
+
+this decree will no doubt sound cruel. Men who pass laws of that sort
+may call themselves ornithologists, if they will; for her part she calls
+them butchers. We might turn on our fair accuser, it is true, with some
+inquiry about the two or three bird-skins which adorn her bonnet. But
+that would be only giving one more proof of our heartlessness; and,
+besides, unless a man is downright angry he can scarcely feel that he
+has really cleared himself when he has done nothing more than to point
+the finger and say, You're another. However, I am not set for the
+defence of ornithologists. They are abundantly able to take care of
+themselves without the help of any outsider. I only declare that, even
+to my unprofessional eye, this rule of theirs seems wise and necessary.
+They know, if their critics do not, how easy it is to be deceived; how
+many times things have been seen and minutely described, which, as was
+afterwards established, could not by any possibility have been visible.
+Moreover, regret it as we may, it is clear that in this world nobody can
+escape giving and taking more or less pain. We of the sterner sex are
+accustomed to think that even our blue-eyed censors are not entirely
+innocent in this regard; albeit, for myself, I am bound to believe that
+generally they are not to blame for the tortures they inflict upon us.
+
+Granting the righteousness of the scientist's caution, however, we may
+still find a less rigorous code sufficient for our own non-scientific,
+though I hope not unscientific, purpose. For it is certain that no great
+enjoyment of bird study is possible for some of us, if we are never to
+be allowed to call our gentle friends by name until in every case we
+have gone through the formality of a _post-mortem_ examination.
+Practically, and for every-day ends, we may know a robin, or a redstart,
+or even a hermit thrush, when we see him, without first turning the bird
+into a specimen.
+
+Probably there are none of our birds which afford more surprise and
+pleasure to a novice than the family of warblers. A well-known
+ornithologist has related how one day he wandered into the forest in an
+idle mood, and accidentally catching a gleam of bright color overhead,
+raised his gun and brought the bird to his feet; and how excited and
+charmed he was with the wondrous beauty of his little trophy. Were there
+other birds in the woods as lovely as this? He would see for himself.
+And that was the beginning of what bids fair to prove a life-long
+enthusiasm.
+
+Thirty-eight warblers are credited to New England; but it would be safe
+to say that not more than three of them are known to the average
+New-Englander. How should he know them, indeed? They do not come about
+the flower-garden like the humming-bird, nor about the lawn like the
+robin; neither can they be hunted with a dog like the grouse and the
+woodcock. Hence, for all their gorgeous apparel, they are mainly left to
+students and collectors. Of our common species the most beautiful are,
+perhaps, the blue yellow-back, the blue golden-wing, the Blackburnian,
+the black-and-yellow, the Canada flycatcher, and the redstart; with the
+yellow-rump, the black-throated green, the prairie warbler, the summer
+yellow-bird, and the Maryland yellow-throat coming not far behind. But
+all of them are beautiful, and they possess, besides, the charm of great
+diversity of plumage and habits; while some of them have the further
+merit, by no means inconsiderable, of being rare.
+
+It was a bright day for me when the blue golden-winged warbler settled
+in my neighborhood. On my morning walk I detected a new song, and,
+following it up, found a new bird,--a result which is far from being a
+thing of course. The spring migration was at its height, and at first I
+expected to have the pleasure of my new friend's society for only a day
+or two; so I made the most of it. But it turned out that he and his
+companion had come to spend the summer, and before very long I
+discovered their nest. This was still unfinished when I came upon it;
+but I knew pretty well whose it was, having several times noticed the
+birds about the spot, and a few days afterwards the female bravely sat
+still, while I bent over her, admiring her courage and her handsome
+dress. I paid my respects to the little mother almost daily, but
+jealously guarded her secret, sharing it only with a kind-hearted woman,
+whom I took with me on one of my visits. But, alas! one day I called,
+only to find the nest empty. Whether the villain who pillaged it
+traveled on two legs, or on four, I never knew. Possibly he dropped out
+of the air. But I wished him no good, whoever he was. Next year the
+birds appeared again, and more than one pair of them; but no nest could
+I find, though I often looked for it, and, as children say in their
+games, was sometimes very warm.
+
+Is there any lover of birds in whose mind certain birds and certain
+places are not indissolubly joined? Most of us, I am sure, could go over
+the list and name the exact spots where we first saw this one, where we
+first heard that one sing, and where we found our first nest of the
+other. There is a piece of swampy woodland in Jefferson, New Hampshire,
+midway between the hotels and the railway station, which, for me, will
+always be associated with the song of the winter wren. I had been making
+an attempt to explore the wood, with a view to its botanical treasures,
+but the mosquitoes had rallied with such spirit that I was glad to beat
+a retreat to the road. Just then an unseen bird broke out into a song,
+and by the time he had finished I was saying to myself, A winter wren!
+Now, if I could only see him in the act, and so be sure of the
+correctness of my guess! I worked to that end as cautiously as possible,
+but all to no purpose; and finally I started abruptly toward the spot
+whence the sound had come, expecting to see the bird fly. But apparently
+there was no bird there, and I stood still, in a little perplexity.
+Then, all at once, the wren appeared, hopping about among the dead
+branches, within a few yards of my feet, and peering at the intruder
+with evident curiosity; and the next moment he was joined by a hermit
+thrush, equally inquisitive. Both were silent as dead men, but plainly
+had no doubt whatever that they were in their own domain, and that it
+belonged to the other party to move away. I presumed that the thrush, at
+least, had a nest not far off, but after a little search (the mosquitoes
+were still active) I concluded not to intrude further on his domestic
+privacy. I had heard the wren's famous song, and it had not been
+over-praised. But then came the inevitable second thought: had I really
+heard it? True, the music possessed the wren characteristics, and a
+winter wren was in the brush; but what proof had I that the bird and the
+song belonged together? No; I must see him in the act of singing. But
+this, I found, was more easily said than done. In Jefferson, in Gorham,
+in the Franconia Notch, in short, wherever I went, there was no
+difficulty about hearing the music, and little about seeing the wren;
+but it was provoking that eye and ear could never be brought to bear
+witness to the same bird. However, this difficulty was not insuperable,
+and after it was once overcome I was in the habit of witnessing the
+whole performance almost as often as I wished.
+
+Of similar interest to me is a turn in an old Massachusetts road, over
+which, boy and man, I have traveled hundreds of times; one of those
+delightful back-roads, half road and half lane, where the grass grows
+between the horse-track and the wheel-track, while bushes usurp what
+ought to be the sidewalk. Here, one morning in the time when every day
+was disclosing two or three new species for my delight, I stopped to
+listen to some bird of quite unsuspected identity, who was calling and
+singing and scolding in the Indian brier thicket, making, in truth, a
+prodigious racket. I twisted and turned, and was not a little astonished
+when at last I detected the author of all this outcry. From a study of
+the manual I set him down as probably the white-eyed vireo,--a
+conjecture which further investigation confirmed. This vireo is the very
+prince of stump-speakers,--fluent, loud, and sarcastic,--and is well
+called the politician, though it is a disappointment to learn that the
+title was given him, not for his eloquence, but on account of his habit
+of putting pieces of newspaper into his nest. While I stood peering into
+the thicket, a man whom I knew came along the road, and caught me thus
+disreputably employed. Without doubt he thought me a lazy
+good-for-nothing; or possibly (being more charitable) he said to
+himself, "Poor fellow! he's losing his mind."
+
+Take a gun on your shoulder, and go wandering about the woods all day
+long, and you will be looked upon with respect, no matter though you
+kill nothing bigger than a chipmunk; or stand by the hour at the end of
+a fishing-pole, catching nothing but mosquito-bites, and your neighbors
+will think no ill of you. But to be seen staring at a bird for five
+minutes together, or picking roadside weeds!--well, it is fortunate
+there are asylums for the crazy. Not unlikely the malady will grow upon
+him; and who knows how soon he may become dangerous? Something must be
+wrong about that to which we are unaccustomed. Blowing out the brains
+of rabbits and squirrels is an innocent and delightful pastime, as
+everybody knows; and the delectable excitement of pulling half-grown
+fishes out of the pond to perish miserably on the bank, that, too, is a
+recreation easily enough appreciated. But what shall be said of enjoying
+birds without killing them, or of taking pleasure in plants, which, so
+far as we know, cannot suffer even if we do kill them?
+
+Of my many pleasant associations of birds with places, one of the
+pleasantest is connected with the red-headed woodpecker. This showy bird
+has for a good many years been very rare in Massachusetts; and
+therefore, when, during the freshness of my ornithological researches, I
+went to Washington for a month's visit, it was one of the things which I
+had especially in mind, to make his acquaintance. But I looked for him
+without success, till, at the end of a fortnight, I made a pilgrimage to
+Mount Vernon. Here, after visiting the grave, and going over the house,
+as every visitor does, I sauntered about the grounds, thinking of the
+great man who used to do the same so many years before, but all the
+while keeping my eyes open for the present feathered inhabitants of the
+sacred spot. Soon a bird dashed by me, and struck against the trunk of
+an adjacent tree, and glancing up quickly, I beheld my much-sought
+red-headed woodpecker. How appropriately patriotic he looked, at the
+home of Washington, wearing the national colors,--red, white, and blue!
+After this he became abundant about the capital, so that I saw him
+often, and took much pleasure in his frolicsome ways; and, some years
+later, he suddenly appeared in force in the vicinity of Boston, where he
+remained through the winter months. To my thought, none the less, he
+will always suggest Mount Vernon. Indeed, although he is certainly
+rather jovial, and even giddy, he is to me the bird of Washington much
+more truly than is the solemn, stupid-seeming eagle, who commonly bears
+that name.
+
+To go away from home, even if the journey be no longer than from
+Massachusetts to the District of Columbia, is sure to prove an event of
+no small interest to a young naturalist; and this visit of mine to the
+national capital was no exception. On the afternoon of my arrival,
+walking up Seventh Street, I heard a series of loud, clear, monotonous
+whistles, which I had then no leisure to investigate, but the author of
+which I promised myself the satisfaction of meeting at another time. In
+fact, I think it was at least a fortnight before I learned that these
+whistles came from the tufted titmouse. I had been seeing him almost
+daily, but till then he had never chanced to use that particular note
+while under my eye.
+
+There was a certain tract of country, woodland and pasture, over which I
+roamed a good many times, and which is still clearly mapped out in my
+memory. Here I found my first Carolina or mocking wren, who ran in at
+one side of a woodpile and came out at the other as I drew near, and
+who, a day or two afterwards, sang so loudly from an oak tree that I
+ransacked it with my eye in search of some large bird, and was
+confounded when finally I discovered who the musician really was. Here,
+every day, were to be heard the glorious song of the cardinal grosbeak,
+the insect-like effort of the blue-gray gnatcatcher, and the rigmarole
+of the yellow-breasted chat. On a wooded hillside, where grew a
+profusion of trailing arbutus, pink azalea, and bird-foot violets, the
+rowdyish, great-crested flycatchers were screaming in the tree-tops. In
+this same grove I twice saw the rare red-bellied woodpecker, who, on
+both occasions, after rapping smartly with his beak, turned his head and
+laid his ear against the trunk, evidently listening to see whether his
+alarm had set any grub a-stirring. Near by, in an undergrowth, I fell in
+with a few worm-eating warblers. They seemed of a peculiarly
+unsuspicious turn of mind, and certainly wore the quaintest of
+head-dresses. I must mention also a scarlet tanager, who, all afire as
+he was, one day alighted in a bush of flowering dogwood, which was
+completely covered with its large white blossoms. Probably he had no
+idea how well his perch became him.
+
+Perhaps I ought to be ashamed to confess it, but, though I went several
+times into the galleries of our honorable Senate and House of
+Representatives, and heard speeches by some celebrated men, including at
+least half a dozen candidates for the presidency, yet, after all, the
+congressmen in feathers interested me most. I thought, indeed, that the
+chat might well enough have been elected to the lower house. His
+volubility and waggish manners would have made him quite at home in that
+assembly, while his orange-colored waistcoat would have given him an
+agreeable conspicuity. But, to be sure, he would have needed to learn
+the use of tobacco.
+
+Well, all this was only a few years ago; but the men whose eloquence
+then drew the crowd to the capitol are, many of them, heard there no
+longer. Some are dead; some have retired to private life. But the birds
+never die. Every spring they come trooping back for their all-summer
+session. The turkey-buzzard still floats majestically over the city; the
+chat still practices his lofty tumbling in the suburban pastures,
+snarling and scolding at all comers; the flowing Potomac still yields "a
+blameless sport" to the fish-crow and the kingfisher; the orchard oriole
+continues to whistle in front of the Agricultural Department, and the
+crow blackbird to parade back and forth over the Smithsonian lawns.
+Presidents and senators may come and go, be praised and vilified, and
+then in turn forgotten; but the birds are subject to no such mutations.
+It is a foolish thought, but sometimes their happy carelessness seems
+the better part.
+
+
+
+
+                            MINOR SONGSTERS.
+
+    The lesser lights, the dearer still
+    That they elude a vulgar eye.
+
+                              BROWNING.
+
+                         Listen too,
+    How every pause is filled with under-notes.
+
+                                       SHELLEY.
+
+
+                            MINOR SONGSTERS.
+
+
+Among those of us who are in the habit of attending to bird-songs, there
+can hardly be anybody, I think, who has not found himself specially and
+permanently attracted by the music of certain birds who have little or
+no general reputation. Our favoritism may perhaps be the result of early
+associations: we heard the singer first in some uncommonly romantic
+spot, or when we were in a mood of unusual sensibility; and, in greater
+or less degree, the charm of that hour is always renewed for us with the
+repetition of the song. Or if may be (who will assert the contrary?)
+that there is some occult relation between the bird's mind and our own.
+Or, once more, something may be due to the natural pleasure which
+amiable people take (and all lovers of birds may be supposed, _a
+priori_, to belong to that class) in paying peculiar honor to merit
+which the world at large, less discriminating than they, has thus far
+failed to recognize, and in which, therefore, as by "right of
+discovery," they have a sort of proprietary interest. This, at least, is
+evident: our preference is not determined altogether by the intrinsic
+worth of the song; the mind is active, not passive, and gives to the
+music something from itself,--"the consecration and the poet's dream."
+
+Furthermore, it is to be said that a singer--and a bird no less than a
+man--may be wanting in that fullness and scope of voice and that large
+measure of technical skill which are absolutely essential to the great
+artist, properly so called, and yet, within his own limitations, may be
+competent to please even the most fastidious ear. It is with birds as
+with other poets: the smaller gift need not be the less genuine; and
+they whom the world calls greatest, and whom we ourselves most admire,
+may possibly not be the ones who touch us most intimately, or to whom we
+return oftenest and with most delight.
+
+This may be well illustrated by a comparison of the chickadee with the
+brown thrush. The thrush, or, as he is sometimes profanely styled, the
+thrasher, is the most pretentious, perhaps I ought to say the greatest,
+of New England songsters, if we rule out the mocking-bird, who is so
+very rare with us as scarcely to come into the competition; and still,
+in my opinion, his singing seldom produces the effect of really fine
+music. With all his ability, which is nothing short of marvelous, his
+taste is so deplorably uncertain, and his passion so often becomes a
+downright frenzy, that the excited listener, hardly knowing what to
+think, laughs and shouts. Bravo! by turns. Something must be amiss,
+certainly, when the deepest feelings of the heart are poured forth in a
+manner to suggest the performance of a _buffo_. The chickadee, on the
+other hand, seldom gets mention as a singer. Probably he never looked
+upon himself as such. You will not find him posing at the top of a tree,
+challenging the world to listen and admire. But, as he hops from twig to
+twig in quest of insects' eggs and other dainties, his merry spirits are
+all the time bubbling over in little chirps and twitters, with now and
+then a _Chickadee, dee_, or a _Hear, hear me_, every least syllable of
+which is like "the very sound of happy thoughts." For my part, I rate
+such trifles with the best of all good music, and feel that we cannot be
+grateful enough to the brave tit, who furnishes us with them for the
+twelve months of every year.
+
+So far as the chickadee is concerned, I see nothing whatever to wish
+different; but am glad to believe that, for my day and long after, he
+will remain the same unassuming, careless-hearted creature that he now
+is. If I may be allowed the paradox, it would be too bad for him to
+change, even for the better. But the bluebird, who like the titmouse is
+hardly to be accounted a musician, does seem to be somewhat blameworthy.
+Once in a while, it is true, he takes a perch and sings; but for the
+most part he is contented with a few simple notes, having no semblance
+of a tune. Possibly he holds that his pure contralto voice (I do not
+remember ever to have heard from him any note of a soprano, or even of a
+mezzo-soprano quality) ought by itself to be a sufficient distinction;
+but I think it likelier that his slight attempt at music is only one
+manifestation of the habitual reserve which, more than anything else
+perhaps, may be said to characterize him. How differently he and the
+robin impress us in this particular! Both take up their abode in our
+door-yards and orchards; the bluebird goes so far, indeed, as to accept
+our hospitality outright, building his nest in boxes put up for his
+accommodation, and making the roofs of our houses his favorite perching
+stations. But, while the robin is noisily and jauntily familiar, the
+bluebird maintains a dignified aloofness; coming and going about the
+premises, but keeping his thoughts to himself, and never becoming one of
+us save by the mere accident of local proximity. The robin, again, loves
+to travel in large flocks, when household duties are over for the
+season; but although the same has been reported of the bluebird, I have
+never myself seen such a thing, and am satisfied that, as a rule, this
+gentle spirit finds a family party of six or seven company enough. His
+reticence, as we cheerfully admit, is nothing to quarrel with; it is all
+well-bred, and not in the least unkindly; in fact, we like it, on the
+whole, rather better than the robin's pertness and garrulity; but, none
+the less, its natural consequence is that the bird has small concern for
+musical display. When he sings, it is not to gain applause, but to
+express his affection; and while, in one aspect of the case, there is
+nothing out of the way in this,--since his affection need not be the
+less deep and true because it is told in few words and with unadorned
+phrase,--yet, as I said to begin with, it is hard not to feel that the
+world is being defrauded, when for any reason, however amiable, the
+possessor of such a matchless voice has no ambition to make the most of
+it.
+
+It is always a double pleasure to find a plodding, humdrum-seeming man
+with a poet's heart in his breast; and a little of the same delighted
+surprise is felt by every one, I imagine, when he learns for the first
+time that our little brown creeper is a singer. What life could possibly
+be more prosaic than his? Day after day, year in and out, he creeps up
+one tree-trunk after another, pausing only to peer right and left into
+the crevices of the bark, in search of microscopic tidbits. A most
+irksome sameness, surely! How the poor fellow must envy the swallows,
+who live on the wing, and, as it were, have their home in heaven! So it
+is easy for us to think; but I doubt whether the creeper himself is
+troubled with such suggestions. He seems, to say the least, as well
+contented as the most of us; and, what is more, I am inclined to doubt
+whether any except "free moral agents," like ourselves, are ever wicked
+enough to find fault with the orderings of Divine Providence. I fancy,
+too, that we may have exaggerated the monotony of the creeper's lot. It
+can scarcely be that even his days are without their occasional
+pleasurable excitements. After a good many trees which yield little or
+nothing for his pains, he must now and then light upon one which is like
+Canaan after the wilderness,--"a land flowing with milk and honey."
+Indeed, the longer I think of it the more confident I feel that every
+aged creeper must have had sundry experiences of this sort, which he is
+never weary of recounting for the edification of his nephews and nieces,
+who, of course, are far too young to have anything like the wide
+knowledge of the world which their venerable three-years-old uncle
+possesses. _Certhia_ works all day for his daily bread; and yet even of
+him it is true that "the life is more than meat." He has his inward
+joys, his affectionate delights, which no outward infelicity can touch.
+A bird who thinks nothing of staying by his nest and his mate at the
+sacrifice of his life is not to be written down a dullard or a drudge,
+merely because his dress is plain and his occupation unromantic. He has
+a right to sing, for he has something within him to inspire the strain.
+
+There are descriptions of the creeper's music which liken it to a
+wren's. I am sorry that I have myself heard it only on one occasion:
+then, however, so far was it from being wren-like that it might rather
+have been the work of one of the less proficient warblers,--a somewhat
+long opening note followed by a hurried series of shorter ones, the
+whole given in a sharp, thin voice, and having nothing to recommend it
+to notice, considered simply as music. All the while the bird kept on
+industriously with his journey up the tree; and it is not in the least
+unlikely that he may have another and better song, which he reserves for
+times of more leisure.[19]
+
+Our American wood-warblers are all to be classed among the minor
+songsters; standing in this respect in strong contrast with the true Old
+World warblers, of whose musical capacity enough, perhaps, is said when
+it is mentioned that the nightingale is one of them. But, comparisons
+apart, our birds are by no means to be despised, and not a few of their
+songs have a good degree of merit. That of the well-known summer
+yellow-bird may be taken as fairly representative of the entire group,
+being neither one of the best nor one of the poorest. He, I have
+noticed, is given to singing late in the day. Three of the New England
+species have at the same time remarkably rough voices and black
+throats,--I mean the black-throated blue, the black-throated green, and
+the blue golden-wing,--and seeing that the first two are of the genus
+_Dendroeca_, while the last is a _Helminthophaga_, I have allowed
+myself to query (half in earnest) whether they may not, possibly, be
+more nearly related than the systematists have yet discovered. Several
+of the warbler songs are extremely odd. The blue yellow-back's, for
+example, is a brief, hoarse, upward run,--a kind of scale exercise; and
+if the practice of such things be really as beneficial as music teachers
+affirm, it would seem that this little beauty must in time become a
+vocalist of the first order. Nearly the same might be said of the
+prairie warbler; but his _etude_ is a little longer and less hurried,
+besides being in a higher key. I do not call to mind any bird who sings
+a downward scale. Having before spoken of the tendency of warblers to
+learn two or even three set tunes, I was the more interested when, last
+summer, I added another to my list of the species which aspire to this
+kind of liberal education. It was on the side of Mount Clinton that I
+heard two Blackburnians, both in full sight and within a few rods of
+each other, who were singing two entirely distinct songs. One of
+these--it is the common one, I think--ended quaintly with three or four
+short notes, like _zip_, _zip_, _zip;_ while the other was not unlike a
+fraction of the winter wren's melody. Those who are familiar with the
+latter bird will perhaps recognize the phrase referred to if I call it
+the _willie, willie, winkie,_--with a triple accent on the first
+syllable of the last word. Most of the songs of this family are rather
+slight, but the extremest case known to me is that of the black-poll
+(_Dendroeca striata_), whose _zee, zee, zee_ is almost ridiculously
+faint. You may hear it continually in the higher spruce forests of the
+White Mountains; but you will look a good many times before you discover
+its author, and not improbably will begin by taking it for the call of
+the kinglet. The music of the bay-breasted warbler is similar to the
+black-poll's, but hardly so weak and formless. It seems reasonable to
+believe not only that these two species are descended from a common
+ancestry, but that the divergence is of a comparatively recent date:
+even now the young of the year can be distinguished only with great
+difficulty, although the birds in full feather are clearly enough
+marked.
+
+Warblers' songs are often made up of two distinct portions: one given
+deliberately, the other hurriedly and with a concluding flourish.
+Indeed, the same may be said of bird-songs generally,--those of the song
+sparrow, the bay-winged bunting, and the wood thrush being familiar
+examples. Yet there are many singers who attempt no climax of this sort,
+but make their music to consist of two, or three, or more parts, all
+alike. The Maryland yellow-throat, for instance, cries out over and
+over, "What a pity, what a pity, what a pity!" So, at least, he seems to
+say; though, I confess, it is more than likely I mistake the words,
+since the fellow never appears to be feeling badly, but, on the
+contrary, delivers his message with an air of cordial satisfaction. The
+song of the pine-creeping warbler is after still another fashion,--one
+simple short trill. It is musical and sweet; the more so for coming
+almost always out of a pine-tree.
+
+The vireos, or greenlets, are akin to the warblers in appearance and
+habits, and like them are peculiar to the western continent. We have no
+birds that are more unsparing of their music (prodigality is one of the
+American virtues, we are told): they sing from morning till night,
+and--some of them, at least--continue thus till the very end of the
+season. It is worth mentioning, however, that the red-eye makes a short
+day; becoming silent just at the time when the generality of birds grow
+most noisy. Probably the same is true of the rest of the family, but on
+that point I am not prepared to speak with positiveness. Of the five New
+England species (I omit the brotherly-love greenlet, never having been
+fortunate enough to know him) the white-eye is decidedly the most
+ambitious, the warbling and the solitary are the most pleasing, while
+the red-eye and the yellow-throat are very much alike, and both of them
+rather too monotonous and persistent. It is hard, sometimes, not to get
+out of patience with the red-eye's ceaseless and noisy iteration of his
+trite theme; especially if you are doing your utmost to catch the notes
+of some rarer and more refined songster. In my note-book I find an entry
+describing my vain attempts to enjoy the music of a rose-breasted
+grosbeak,--who at that time had never been a common bird with me,--while
+"a pesky Wagnerian red-eye kept up an incessant racket."
+
+The warbling vireo is admirably named; there is no one of our birds that
+can more properly be said to warble. He keeps further from the ground
+than the others, and shows a strong preference for the elms of village
+streets, out of which his delicious music drops upon the ears of all
+passers underneath. How many of them hear it and thank the singer is
+unhappily another question.
+
+The solitary vireo may once in a while be heard in a roadside tree,
+chanting as familiarly as any red-eye; but he is much less abundant than
+the latter, and, as a rule, more retiring. His ordinary song is like the
+red-eye's and the yellow-throat's, except that it is pitched somewhat
+higher and has a peculiar inflection or cadence, which on sufficient
+acquaintance becomes quite unmistakable. This, however, is only the
+smallest part of his musical gift. One morning in May, while strolling
+through a piece of thick woods, I came upon a bird of this species, who,
+all alone like myself, was hopping from one low branch to another, and
+every now and then breaking out into a kind of soliloquizing song,--a
+musical chatter, shifting suddenly to an intricate, low-voiced warble.
+Later in the same day I found another in a chestnut grove. This last was
+in a state of quite unwonted fervor, and sang almost continuously; now
+in the usual disconnected vireo manner, and now with a chatter and
+warble like what I had heard in the morning, but louder and longer. His
+best efforts ended abruptly with the ordinary vireo call, and the
+instantaneous change of voice gave to the whole a very strange effect.
+The chatter and warble appeared to be related to each other precisely as
+are those of the ruby-crowned kinglet; while the warble had a certain
+tender, affectionate, some would say plaintive quality, which at once
+put me in mind of the goldfinch.
+
+I have seldom been more charmed with the song of any bird than I was on
+the 7th of last October with that of this same _Vireo solitarius_. The
+morning was bright and warm, but the birds had nearly all taken their
+departure, and the few that remained were silent. Suddenly the stillness
+was broken by a vireo note, and I said to myself with surprise, A
+red-eye? Listening again, however, I detected the solitary's inflection;
+and after a few moments the bird, in the most obliging manner, came
+directly towards me, and began to warble in the fashion already
+described. He sang and sang,--as if his song could have no ending,--and
+meanwhile was flitting from tree to tree, intent upon his breakfast. As
+far as I could discover, he was without company; and his music, too,
+seemed to be nothing more than an unpremeditated, half-unconscious
+talking to himself. Wonderfully sweet it was, and full of the happiest
+content. "I listened till I had my fill," and returned the favor, as
+best I could, by hoping that the little wayfarer's lightsome mood would
+not fail him, all the way to Guatemala and back again.
+
+Exactly a month before this, and not far from the same spot, I had stood
+for some minutes to enjoy the "recital" of the solitary's saucy cousin,
+the white-eye. Even at that time, although the woods were swarming with
+birds,--many of them travelers from the North,--this white-eye was
+nearly the only one still in song. He, however, was fairly brimming over
+with music; changing his tune again and again, and introducing (for the
+first time in Weymouth, as concert programmes say) a notably fine shake.
+Like the solitary, he was all the while busily feeding (birds in
+general, and vireos in particular, hold with Mrs. Browning that we may
+"prove our work the better for the sweetness of our song"), and one
+while was exploring a poison-dogwood bush, plainly without the slightest
+fear of any ill-result. It occurred to me that possibly it is our
+fault, and not that of _Rhus venenata_, when we suffer from the touch of
+that graceful shrub.
+
+The white-eyed greenlet is a vocalist of such extraordinary versatility
+and power that one feels almost guilty in speaking of him under the
+title which stands at the head of this paper. How he would scold,
+out-carlyling Carlyle, if he knew what were going on! Nevertheless I
+cannot rank him with the great singers, exceptionally clever and
+original as, beyond all dispute, he is; and for that matter, I look upon
+the solitary as very much his superior, in spite of--or, shall I say,
+because of?--the latter's greater simplicity and reserve.
+
+But if we hesitate thus about these two inconspicuous vireos, whom half
+of those who do them the honor to read what is here said about them will
+have never seen, how are we to deal with the scarlet tanager? Our
+handsomest bird, and with musical aspirations as well, shall we put him
+into the second class? It must be so, I fear: yet such justice is a
+trial to the flesh; for what critic could ever quite leave out of
+account the beauty of a _prima donna_ in passing judgment on her work?
+Does not her angelic face sing to his eye, as Emerson says?
+
+Formerly I gave the tanager credit for only one song,--the one which
+suggests a robin laboring under an attack of hoarseness; but I have
+discovered that he himself regards his _chip-cherr_ as of equal value.
+At least, I have found him perched at the tip of a tall pine, and
+repeating this inconsiderable and not very melodious trochee with all
+earnestness and perseverance. Sometimes he rehearses it thus at
+nightfall; but even so I cannot call it highly artistic. I am glad to
+believe, however, that he does not care in the least for my opinion. Why
+should he? He is too true a gallant to mind what anybody else thinks, so
+long as _one_ is pleased; and she, no doubt, tells him every day that he
+is the best singer in the grove. Beside his divine _chip-cherr_ the
+rhapsody of the wood thrush is a mere nothing, if she is to be the
+judge. Strange, indeed, that so shabbily dressed a creature as this
+thrush should have the presumption to attempt to sing at all! "But
+then," she charitably adds, "perhaps he is not to blame; such things
+come by nature; and there are some birds, you know, who cannot tell the
+difference between noise and music."
+
+We trust that the tanager will improve as time goes on; but in any case
+we are largely in his debt. How we should miss him if he were gone, or
+even were become as rare as the summer red-bird and the cardinal are in
+our latitude! As it is, he lights up our Northern woods with a truly
+tropical splendor, the like of which no other of our birds can furnish.
+Let us hold him in hearty esteem, and pray that he may never be
+exterminated; no, not even to beautify the head-gear of our ladies, who,
+if they only knew it, are already sufficiently bewitching.
+
+What shall we say now about the lesser lights of that most musical
+family, the finches? Of course the cardinal and rose-breasted grosbeaks
+are not to be included in any such category. Nor will _I_ put there the
+goldfinch, the linnet, the fox-colored sparrow, and the song sparrow.
+These, if no more, shall stand among the immortals; so far, at any rate,
+as my suffrage counts. But who ever dreamed of calling the chipping
+sparrow a fine singer? And yet, who that knows it does not love his
+earnest, long-drawn trill, dry and tuneless as it is? I can speak for
+one, at all events; and he always has an ear open for it by the middle
+of April. It is the voice of a friend,--a friend so true and gentle and
+confiding that we do not care to ask whether his voice be smooth and his
+speech eloquent.
+
+The chipper's congener, the field sparrow, is less neighborly than he,
+but a much better musician. His song is simplicity itself; yet, even at
+its lowest estate, it never fails of being truly melodious, while by
+one means and another its wise little author contrives to impart to it a
+very considerable variety, albeit within pretty narrow limits. Last
+spring the field sparrows were singing constantly from the middle of
+April till about the 10th of May, when they became entirely dumb. Then,
+after a week in which I heard not a note, they again grew musical. I
+pondered not a little over their silence, but concluded that they were
+just then very much occupied with preparations for housekeeping.
+
+The bird who is called indiscriminately the grass finch, the bay-winged
+bunting, the bay-winged sparrow, the vesper sparrow, and I know not what
+else (the ornithologists have nicknamed him _Pooecetes gramineus_), is
+a singer of good parts, but is especially to be commended for his
+refinement. In form his music is strikingly like the song sparrow's; but
+the voice is not so loud and ringing, and the two or three opening notes
+are less sharply emphasized. In general the difference between the two
+songs may perhaps be well expressed by saying that the one is more
+declamatory, the other more _cantabile_; a difference exactly such as we
+might have expected, considering the nervous, impetuous disposition of
+the song sparrow and the placidity of the bay-wing.
+
+As one of his titles indicates, the bay-wing is famous for singing in
+the evening, when, of course, his efforts are doubly acceptable; and I
+can readily believe that Mr. Minot is correct in his "impression" that
+he has once or twice heard the song in the night. For while spending a
+few days at a New Hampshire hotel, which was surrounded with fine lawns
+such as the grass finch delights in, I happened to be awake in the
+morning, long before sunrise,--when, in fact, it seemed like the dead of
+night,--and one or two of these sparrows were piping freely. The sweet
+and gentle strain had the whole mountain valley to itself. How beautiful
+it was, set in such a broad "margin of silence," I must leave to be
+imagined. I noticed, moreover, that the birds sang almost incessantly
+the whole day through. Much of the time there were two singing
+antiphonally. Manifestly, the lines had fallen to them in pleasant
+places: at home for the summer in those luxuriant Sugar-Hill fields, in
+continual sight of yonder magnificent mountain panorama, with Lafayette
+himself looming grandly in the foreground; while they, innocent souls,
+had never so much as heard of hotel-keepers and their bills. "Happy
+commoners," indeed! Their "songs in the night" seemed nowise surprising.
+I fancied that I could be happy myself in such a case.
+
+Our familiar and ever-welcome snow-bird, known in some quarters as the
+black chipping-bird, and often called the black snow-bird, has a long
+trill, not altogether unlike the common chipper's, but in a much higher
+key. It is a modest lay, yet doubtless full of meaning; for the singer
+takes to the very tip of a tree, and throws his head back in the most
+approved style. He does his best, at any rate, and so far ranks with the
+angels; while, if my testimony can be of any service to him, I am glad
+to say ('t is too bad the praise is so equivocal) that I have heard many
+human singers who gave me less pleasure; and further, that he took an
+indispensable though subordinate part in what was one of the most
+memorable concerts at which I was ever happy enough to be a listener.
+This was given some years ago in an old apple-orchard by a flock of
+fox-colored sparrows, who, perhaps for that occasion only, had the
+"valuable assistance" of a large choir of snow-birds. The latter were
+twittering in every tree, while to this goodly accompaniment the
+sparrows were singing their loud, clear, thrush-like song. The
+combination was felicitous in the extreme. I would go a long way to hear
+the like again.
+
+If distinction cannot be attained by one means, who knows but that it
+may be by another? It is denied us to be great? Very well, we can at
+least try the effect of a little originality. Something like this seems
+to be the philosophy of the indigo-bird; and he carries it out both in
+dress and in song. As we have said already, it is usual for birds to
+reserve the loudest and most taking parts of their music for the close,
+though it may be doubted whether they have any intelligent purpose in so
+doing. Indeed, the apprehension of a great general truth such as lies at
+the basis of this well-nigh universal habit,--the truth, namely, that
+everything depends upon the impression finally left on the hearer's
+mind; that to end with some grand burst, or with some surprisingly lofty
+note, is the only, or to speak cautiously, the principal, requisite to a
+really great musical performance,--the intelligent grasp of such a truth
+as this, I say, seems to me to lie beyond the measure of a bird's
+capacity in the present stage of his development. Be this as it may,
+however, it is noteworthy that the indigo-bird exactly reverses the
+common plan. He begins at his loudest and sprightliest, and then runs
+off into a _diminuendo_, which fades into silence almost imperceptibly.
+The strain will never be renowned for its beauty; but it is unique, and,
+further, is continued well into August. Moreover,--and this adds grace
+to the most ordinary song,--it is often let fall while the bird is on
+the wing.
+
+This eccentric genius has taken possession of a certain hillside
+pasture, which, in another way, belongs to me also. Year after year he
+comes back and settles down upon it about the middle of May; and I have
+often been amused to see his mate--who is not permitted to wear a single
+blue feather--drop out of her nest in a barberry bush and go fluttering
+off, both wings dragging helplessly through the grass. I should pity her
+profoundly but that I am in no doubt her injuries will rapidly heal when
+once I am out of sight. Besides, I like to imagine her beatitude, as,
+five minutes afterward, she sits again upon the nest, with her heart's
+treasures all safe underneath her. Many a time was a boy of my
+acquaintance comforted in some ache or pain with the words, "Never mind!
+'t will feel better when it gets well;" and so, sure enough, it always
+did. But what a wicked world this is, where nature teaches even a bird
+to play the deceiver!
+
+On the same hillside is always to be found the chewink,--a creature
+whose dress and song are so unlike those of the rest of his tribe that
+the irreverent amateur is tempted to believe that, for once, the men of
+science have made a mistake. What has any finch to do with a call like
+_cherawink_, or with such a three-colored harlequin suit? But it is
+unsafe to judge according to the outward appearance, in ornithology as
+in other matters; and I have heard that it is only those who are foolish
+as well as ignorant who indulge in off-hand criticisms of wiser men's
+conclusions. So let us call the towhee a finch, and say no more about
+it.
+
+But whatever his lineage, it is plain that the chewink is not a bird to
+be governed very strictly by the traditions of the fathers. His usual
+song is characteristic and pretty, yet he is so far from being satisfied
+with it that he varies it continually and in many ways, some of them
+sadly puzzling to the student who is set upon telling all the birds by
+their voices. I remember well enough the morning I was inveigled through
+the wet grass of two pastures--and that just as I was shod for the
+city--by a wonderfully foreign note, which filled me with lively
+anticipations of a new bird, but which turned out to be the work of a
+most innocent-looking towhee. It was perhaps this same bird, or his
+brother, whom I one day heard throwing in between his customary
+_cherawinks_ a profusion of _staccato_ notes of widely varying pitch,
+together with little volleys of tinkling sounds such as his every-day
+song concludes with. This medley was not laughable, like the chat's,
+which it suggested, but it had the same abrupt, fragmentary, and
+promiscuous character. All in all, it was what I never should have
+expected from this paragon of self-possession.
+
+For self-control, as I have elsewhere said, is Pipilo's strong point.
+One afternoon last summer a young friend and I found ourselves, as we
+suspected, near a chewink's nest, and at once set out to see which of us
+should have the honor of the discovery. We searched diligently, but
+without avail, while the father-bird sat quietly in a tree, calling with
+all sweetness and with never a trace of anger or trepidation,
+_cherawink, cherawink_. Finally we gave over the hunt, and I began to
+console my companion and myself for our disappointment by shaking in the
+face of the bird a small tree which very conveniently leaned toward the
+one in which he was perched. By rather vigorous efforts I could make
+this pass back and forth within a few inches of his bill; but he utterly
+disdained to notice it, and kept on calling as before. While we were
+laughing at his impudence (_his_ impudence!) the mother suddenly
+appeared, with an insect in her beak, and joined her voice to her
+husband's. I was just declaring how cruel as well as useless it was for
+us to stay, when she ungratefully gave a ludicrous turn to what was
+intended for a very sage and considerate remark, by dropping almost at
+my feet, stepping upon the edge of her nest, and offering the morsel to
+one of her young. We watched the little tableau admiringly (I had never
+seen a prettier show of nonchalance), and thanked our stars that we had
+been saved from an involuntary slaughter of the innocents while
+trampling all about the spot. The nest, which we had tried so hard to
+find, was in plain sight, concealed only by the perfect agreement of its
+color with that of the dead pine-branches in the midst of which it was
+placed. The shrewd birds had somehow learned--by experience, perhaps,
+like ourselves--that those who would escape disagreeable and perilous
+conspicuity must conform as closely as possible to the world around
+them.
+
+According to my observation, the towhee is not much given to singing
+after July; but he keeps up his call, which is little less musical than
+his song, till his departure in late September. At that time of the year
+the birds collect together in their favorite haunts; and I remember my
+dog's running into the edge of a roadside pasture among some
+cedar-trees, when there broke out such a chorus of _cherawinks_ that I
+was instantly reminded of a swamp full of frogs in April.
+
+After the tanager the Baltimore oriole (named for Lord Baltimore, whose
+colors he wears) is probably the most gorgeous, as he is certainly one
+of the best known, of New England birds. He has discovered that men,
+bad as they are, are less to be dreaded than hawks and weasels, and so,
+after making sure that his wife is not subject to sea-sickness, he
+swings his nest boldly from a swaying shade-tree branch, in full view of
+whoever may choose to look at it. Some morning in May--not far from the
+10th--you will wake to hear him fifing in the elm before your window. He
+has come in the night, and is already making himself at home. Once I saw
+a pair who on the very first morning had begun to get together materials
+for a nest. His whistle is one of the clearest and loudest, but he makes
+little pretensions to music. I have been pleased and interested,
+however, to see how tuneful he becomes in August, after most other birds
+have ceased to sing, and after a long interval of silence on his own
+part. Early and late he pipes and chatters, as if he imagined that the
+spring were really coming back again forthwith. What the explanation of
+this lyrical revival may be I have never been able to gather; but the
+fact itself is very noticeable, so that it would not be amiss to call
+the "golden robin" the bird of August.
+
+The oriole's dusky relatives have the organs of song well developed; and
+although most of the species have altogether lost the art of music,
+there are none of them, even now, that do not betray more or less of the
+musical impulse. The red-winged blackbird, indeed, has some really
+praiseworthy notes; and to me--for personal reasons quite aside from any
+question about its lyrical value--his rough _cucurree_ is one of the
+very pleasantest of sounds. For that matter, however, there is no one of
+our birds--be he, in technical language, "oscine" or "non-oscine"--whose
+voice is not, in its own way, agreeable. Except a few uncommonly
+superstitious people, who does not enjoy the whip-poor-will's
+trisyllabic exhortation, and the _yak_ of the night-hawk? Bob White's
+weather predictions, also, have a wild charm all their own, albeit his
+persistent _No more wet_ is often sadly out of accord with the farmer's
+hopes. We have no more untuneful bird, surely, than the cow bunting; yet
+even the serenades of this shameless polygamist have one merit,--they
+are at least amusing. With what infinite labor he brings forth his
+forlorn, broken-winded whistle, while his tail twitches convulsively, as
+if tail and larynx were worked by the same spring!
+
+The judging, comparing spirit, the conscientious dread of being
+ignorantly happy when a broader culture would enable us to be
+intelligently miserable,--this has its place, unquestionably, in concert
+halls; but if we are to make the best use of out-door minstrelsy, we
+must learn to take things as we find them, throwing criticism to the
+winds. Having said which, I am bound to go further still, and to
+acknowledge that on looking back over the first part of this paper I
+feel more than half ashamed of the strictures therein passed upon the
+bluebird and the brown thrush. When I heard the former's salutation from
+a Boston Common elm on the morning, of the 22d of February last, I said
+to myself that no music, not even the nightingale's, could ever be
+sweeter. Let him keep on, by all means, in his own artless way, paying
+no heed to what I have foolishly written about his shortcomings. As for
+the thrasher's smile-provoking gutturals, I recall that even in the
+symphonies of the greatest of masters there are here and there quaint
+bassoon phrases, which have, and doubtless were intended to have, a
+somewhat whimsical effect; and remembering this, I am ready to own that
+I was less wise than I thought myself when I found so much fault with
+the thrush's performance. I have sins enough to answer for: may this
+never be added to them, that I set up my taste against that of Beethoven
+and _Harporhynchus rufus_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[19] Since this was written I have heard the creeper sing a tune very
+different from the one described above. See p. 227.
+
+
+
+
+                       WINTER BIRDS ABOUT BOSTON.
+
+    Not much to find, not much to see;
+    But the air was fresh, the path was free.
+
+                                W. ALLINGHAM.
+
+
+                       WINTER BIRDS ABOUT BOSTON.
+
+
+A weed has been defined as a plant the use of which is not yet
+discovered. If the definition be correct there are few weeds. For the
+researches of others beside human investigators must be taken into the
+account. What we complacently call the world below us is full of
+intelligence. Every animal has a lore of its own; not one of them but
+is--what the human scholar is more and more coming to be--a specialist.
+In these days the most eminent botanists are not ashamed to compare
+notes with the insects, since it turns out that these bits of animate
+wisdom long ago anticipated some of the latest improvements of our
+modern systematists.[20] We may see the red squirrel eating, with real
+epicurean zest, mushrooms, the white and tender flesh of which we have
+ourselves looked at longingly, but have never dared to taste. How amused
+he would be (I fear he would even be rude enough to snicker) were you to
+caution him against poison! As if _Sciurus Hudsonius_ didn't know what
+he were about! Why should men be so provincial as to pronounce anything
+worthless merely because _they_ can do nothing with it? The clover is
+not without value, although the robin and the oriole may agree to think
+so. We know better; and so do the rabbits and the humblebees. The wise
+respect their own quality wherever they see it, and are thankful for a
+good hint from no matter what quarter. Here is a worthy neighbor of mine
+whom I hear every summer complaining of the chicory plants which
+disfigure the roadside in front of her windows. She wishes they were
+exterminated, every one of them. And they are homely, there is no
+denying it, for all the beauty of their individual sky-blue flowers. No
+wonder a neat housewife finds them an eyesore. But I never pass the spot
+in August (I do not pass it at all after that) without seeing that hers
+is only one side of the story. My approach is sure to startle a few
+goldfinches (and they too are most estimable neighbors), to whom these
+scraggy herbs are quite as useful as my excellent lady's apple-trees
+and pear-trees are to her. I watch them as they circle about in musical
+undulations, and then drop down again to finish their repast; and I
+perceive that, in spite of its unsightliness, the chicory is not a
+weed,--its use has been discovered.
+
+In truth, the lover of birds soon ceases to feel the uncomeliness of
+plants of this sort; he even begins to have a peculiar and kindly
+interest in them. A piece of "waste ground," as it is called, an untidy
+garden, a wayside thicket of golden-rods and asters, pig-weed and
+evening primrose,--these come to be almost as attractive a sight to him
+as a thrifty field of wheat is to an agriculturalist. Taking his cue
+from the finches, he separates plants into two grand divisions,--those
+that shed their seeds in the fall, and those that hold them through the
+winter. The latter, especially if they are of a height to overtop a
+heavy snow-fall, are friends in need to his clients; and he is certain
+to have marked a few places within the range of his every-day walks
+where, thanks to somebody's shiftlessness, perhaps, they have been
+allowed to flourish.
+
+It is not many years since there were several such winter gardens of the
+birds in Commonwealth Avenue,--vacant house-lots overgrown with tall
+weeds. Hither cause flocks of goldfinches, red-poll linnets, and snow
+buntings; and thither I went to watch them. It happened, I remember,
+that the last two species, which are not to be met with in this region
+every season, were unusually abundant during the first or second year of
+my ornithological enthusiasm. Great was the delight with which I added
+them to the small but rapidly increasing list of my feathered
+acquaintances.
+
+The red-polls and the goldfinches often travel together, or at least are
+often to be found feeding in company; and as they resemble each other a
+good deal in size, general appearance, and ways, the casual observer is
+very likely not to discriminate between them. Only the summer before the
+time of which I speak I had spent a vacation at Mount Wachusett; and a
+resident of Princeton, noticing my attention to the birds (a taste so
+peculiar is not easily concealed), had one day sought an interview with
+me to inquire whether the "yellow-bird" did not remain in Massachusetts
+through the winter. I explained that we had two birds which commonly
+went by that name and asked whether he meant the one with a black
+forehead and black wings and tail. Yes, he said, that was the one. I
+assured him, of course, that this bird, the goldfinch, did stay with us
+all the year round, and that whoever had informed him to the contrary
+must have understood him to be speaking about the golden warbler. He
+expressed his gratification, but declared that he had really entertained
+no doubt of the fact himself; he had often seen the birds on the
+mountain when he had been cutting wood there in midwinter. At such
+times, he added, they were very tame, and would come about his feet to
+pick up crumbs while he was eating his dinner. Then he went on to tell
+me that at that season of the year their plumage took on more or less of
+a reddish tinge: he had seen in the same flock some with no trace of
+red, others that were slightly touched with it, and others still of a
+really bright color. At this I had nothing to say, save that his red
+birds, whatever else they were, could not have been goldfinches. But
+next winter, when I saw the "yellow-birds" and the red-poll linnets
+feeding together in Commonwealth Avenue, I thought at once of my
+Wachusett friend. Here was the very scene he had so faithfully
+described,--some of the flock with no red at all, some with red crowns,
+and a few with bright carmine crowns and breasts. They remained all
+winter, and no doubt thought the farmers of Boston a very good and wise
+set, to cultivate the evening primrose so extensively. This plant, like
+the succory, is of an ungraceful aspect; yet it has sweet and beautiful
+blossoms, and as an herb bearing seed is in the front rank. I doubt
+whether we have any that surpass it, the birds being judges.
+
+Many stories are told of the red-polls' fearlessness and ready
+reconciliation to captivity, as well as of their constancy to each
+other. I have myself stood still in the midst of a flock, until they
+were feeding round my feet so closely that it looked easy enough to
+catch one or two of them with a butterfly net. Strange that creatures so
+gentle and seemingly so delicately organized should choose to live in
+the regions about the North Pole! Why should they prefer Labrador and
+Greenland, Iceland and Spitzbergen, to more southern countries? Why?
+Well, possibly for no worse a reason than this, that these are the lands
+of their fathers. Other birds, it may be, have grown discouraged, and
+one after another ceased to come back to their native shores as the
+rigors of the climate have increased; but these little patriots are
+still faithful. Spitzbergen is home, and every spring they make the long
+and dangerous passage to it. All praise to them!
+
+If any be ready to call this an over-refinement, deeming it incredible
+that beings so small and lowly should come so near to human sentiment
+and virtue, let such not be too hasty with their dissent. Surely they
+may in reason wait till they can point to at least one country where the
+men are as universally faithful to their wives and children as the birds
+are to theirs.
+
+The red-poll linnets, as I have said, are irregular visitors in this
+region; several years may pass, and not one be seen; but the goldfinch
+we have with us always. Easily recognized as he is, there are many
+well-educated New-Englanders, I fear, who do not know him, even by
+sight; yet when that distinguished ornithologist, the Duke of Argyll,
+comes to publish his impressions of this country, he avers that he has
+been hardly more interested in the "glories of Niagara" than in this
+same little yellow-bird, which he saw for the first time while looking
+from his hotel window at the great cataract. "A golden finch, indeed!"
+he exclaims. Such a tribute as this from the pen of a British nobleman
+ought to give _Astragalinus tristis_ immediate entrance into the very
+best of American society.
+
+It is common to say that the goldfinches wander about the country during
+the winter. Undoubtedly this is true in a measure; but I have seen
+things which lead me to suspect that the statement is sometimes made too
+sweeping. Last winter, for example, a flock took up their quarters in a
+certain neglected piece of ground on the side of Beacon Street, close
+upon the boundary between Boston and Brookline, and remained there
+nearly or quite the whole season. Week after week I saw them in the same
+place, accompanied always by half a dozen tree sparrows. They had found
+a spot to their mind, with plenty of succory and evening primrose, and
+were wise enough not to forsake it for any uncertainty.
+
+The goldfinch loses his bright feathers and canary-like song as the cold
+season approaches, but not even a New England winter can rob him of his
+sweet call and his cheerful spirits; and for one, I think him never more
+winsome than when he bangs in graceful attitudes above a snow-bank, on a
+bleak January morning.
+
+Glad as we are of the society of the goldfinches and the red-polls at
+this time of the year, we cannot easily rid ourselves of a degree of
+solicitude for their comfort; especially if we chance to come upon them
+after sunset on some bitterly cold day, and mark with what a nervous
+haste they snatch here and there a seed, making the utmost of the few
+remaining minutes of twilight. They will go to bed hungry and cold, we
+think, and were surely better off in a milder clime. But, if I am to
+judge from my own experience, the snow buntings awaken no such
+emotions. Arctic explorers by instinct, they come to us only with real
+arctic weather, and almost seem to be themselves a part of the
+snow-storm with which they arrive. No matter what they are doing:
+running along the street before an approaching sleigh; standing on a
+wayside fence; jumping up from the ground to snatch the stem of a weed,
+and then setting at work hurriedly to gather the seeds they have shaken
+down; or, best of all, skimming over the snow in close order, their
+white breasts catching the sun as they veer this way or that,--whatever
+they may be doing, they are the most picturesque of all our cold-weather
+birds. In point of suspiciousness their behavior is very different at
+different times, as, for that matter, is true of birds generally. Seeing
+the flock alight in a low roadside lot, you steal silently to the edge
+of the sidewalk to look over upon them. There they are, sure enough,
+walking and running about, only a few rods distant. What lovely
+creatures, and how prettily they walk! But just as you are wishing,
+perhaps, that they were a little nearer, they begin to fly from right
+under your feet. You search the ground eagerly, right and left, but not
+a bird can you discover; and still they continue to start up, now here,
+now there, till you are ready to question whether, indeed, "eyes were
+made for seeing." The "snow-flakes" wear protective colors, and, like
+most other animals, are of opinion that, for such as lack the receipt of
+fern-seed, there is often nothing safer than to sit still. The worse the
+weather, the less timorous they are, for with them, as with wiser heads,
+one thought drives out another; and it is nothing uncommon, when times
+are hard, to see them stay quietly upon the fence while a sleigh goes
+past, or suffer a foot passenger to come again and again within a few
+yards.
+
+It gives a lively touch to the imagination to overtake these beautiful
+strangers in the middle of Beacon Street; particularly if one has lately
+been reading about them in some narrative of Siberian travel. Coming
+from so far, associating in flocks, with costumes so becoming and yet so
+unusual, they might be expected to attract universal notice, and
+possibly to get into the newspapers. But there is a fashion even about
+seeing; and of a thousand persons who may take a Sunday promenade over
+the Mill-dam, while these tourists from the North Pole are there, it is
+doubtful whether a dozen are aware of their presence. Birds feeding in
+the street? Yes, yes; English sparrows, of course; we haven't any other
+birds in Boston nowadays, you know.
+
+With the pine grosbeaks the case is different. When a man sees a company
+of rather large birds about the evergreens in his door-yard, most of
+them of a neutral ashy-gray tint, but one or two in suits of rose-color,
+he is pretty certain to feel at least a momentary curiosity about them.
+Their slight advantage in size counts for something; for, without
+controversy, the bigger the bird the more worthy he is of notice. And
+then the bright color! The very best men are as yet but imperfectly
+civilized, and there must be comparatively few, even of Bostonians, in
+whom there is not some lingering susceptibility to the fascination of
+red feathers. Add to these things the fact that the grosbeaks are
+extremely confiding, and much more likely than the buntings to be seen
+from the windows of the house, and you have, perhaps, a sufficient
+explanation of the more general interest they excite. Like the snow
+buntings and the red-polls, they roam over the higher latitudes of
+Europe, Asia, and America, and make only irregular visits to our corner
+of the world.[21]
+
+I cannot boast of any intimate acquaintance with them. I have never
+caught them in a net, or knocked them over with a club, as other
+persons have done, although I have seen them when their tameness
+promised success to any such loving experiment. Indeed, it was several
+years before my lookout for them was rewarded. Then, one day, I saw a
+flock of about ten fly across Beacon Street,--on the edge of
+Brookline,--and alight in an apple-tree; at which I forthwith clambered
+over the picket-fence after them, heedless alike of the deep snow and
+the surprise of any steady-going citizen who might chance to witness my
+high-handed proceeding. Some of the birds were feeding upon the rotten
+apples; picking them off the tree, and taking them to one of the large
+main branches or to the ground, and there tearing them to pieces,--for
+the sake of the seeds, I suppose. The rest sat still, doing nothing. I
+was most impressed with the exceeding mildness and placidity of their
+demeanor; as if they had time enough, plenty to eat, and nothing to
+fear. Their only notes were in quality much like the goldfinch's, and
+hardly louder, but without his characteristic inflection. I left the
+whole company seated idly in a maple-tree, where, to all appearance,
+they proposed to observe the remainder of the day as a Sabbath.
+
+Last winter the grosbeaks were uncommonly abundant. I found a number of
+them within a few rods of the place just mentioned; this time in
+evergreen trees, and so near the road that I had no call to commit
+trespass. Evergreens are their usual resort,--so, at least, I gather
+from books,--but I have seen them picking up provender from a
+bare-looking last year's garden. Natives of the inhospitable North, they
+have learned by long experience how to adapt themselves to
+circumstances. If one resource fails, there is always another to be
+tried. Let us hope that they even know how to show fight upon, occasion.
+
+The purple finch--a small copy of the pine grosbeak, as the indigo bird
+is of the blue grosbeak--is a summer rather than a winter bird with us;
+yet he sometimes passes the cold season in Eastern Massachusetts, and
+even in Northern New Hampshire. I have never heard him sing more
+gloriously than once when the ground was deep under the snow; a
+wonderfully sweet and protracted warble, poured out while the singer
+circled about in the air with a kind of half-hovering flight.
+
+As I was walking briskly along a West End street, one cold morning in
+March, I heard a bird's note close at hand, and, looking down,
+discovered a pair of these finches in a front yard. The male, in bright
+plumage, was flitting about his mate, calling anxiously, while she, poor
+thing, sat motionless upon the snow, too sick or too badly exhausted to
+fly. I stroked her feathers gently while she perched on my finger, and
+then resumed my walk; first putting her into a little more sheltered
+position on the sill of a cellar window, and promising to call on my way
+back, when, if she were no better, I would take her home with me, and
+give her a warm room and good nursing. When I returned, however, she was
+nowhere to be found. Her mate, I regret to say, both on his own account
+and for the sake of the story, had taken wing and disappeared the moment
+I entered the yard. Possibly he came back and encouraged her to fly off
+with him; or perhaps some cat made a Sunday breakfast of her. The truth
+will never be known; our vigilant city police take no cognizance of
+tragedies so humble.
+
+For several years a few song sparrows--a pair or two, at least--have
+wintered in a piece of ground just beyond the junction of Beacon street
+and Brookline Avenue. I have grown accustomed to listen for their
+_tseep_ as I go by the spot, and occasionally I catch sight of one of
+them perched upon a weed, or diving under the plank sidewalk. It would
+be a pleasure to know the history of the colony: how it started; whether
+the birds are the same year after year, as I suppose to be the case; and
+why this particular site was selected. The lot is small, with no woods
+or bushy thicket near, while it has buildings in one corner, and is
+bounded on its three sides by the streets and the railway; but it is
+full of a rank growth of weeds, especially a sturdy species of aster and
+the evergreen golden-rod, and I suspect that the plank walk, which on
+one side is raised some distance from the ground, is found serviceable
+for shelter in severe weather, as it is certainly made to take the place
+of shrubbery for purposes of concealment.
+
+Fortunately, birds, even those of the same species, are not all exactly
+alike in their tastes and manner of life. So, while by far the greater
+part of our song sparrows leave us in the fall, there are always some
+who prefer to stay. They have strong local attachments, perhaps; or they
+dread the fatigue and peril of the journey; or they were once
+incapacitated for flight when their companions went away, and, having
+found a Northern winter not so unendurable as they had expected, have
+since done from choice what at first they did of necessity. Whatever
+their reasons,--and we cannot be presumed to have guessed half of
+them,--at all events a goodly number of song sparrows do winter in
+Massachusetts, where they open the musical season before the first of
+the migrants make their appearance. I doubt, however, whether many of
+them choose camping grounds so exposed and public as this in the rear
+of the "Half-way House."
+
+Our only cold-weather thrushes are the robins. They may be found any
+time in favorable situations; and even in so bleak a place as Boston
+Common I have seen them in every month of the year except February. This
+exception, moreover, is more apparent than real,--at the most a matter
+of but twenty-four hours, since I once saw four birds in a tree near the
+Frog Pond on the last day of January. The house sparrows were as much
+surprised as I was at the sight, and, with characteristic urbanity,
+gathered from far and near to sit in the same tree with the visitors,
+and stare at them.
+
+We cannot help being grateful to the robins and the song sparrows, who
+give us their society at so great a cost; but their presence can
+scarcely be thought to enliven the season. At its best their bearing is
+only that of patient submission to the inevitable. They remind us of the
+summer gone and the summer coming, rather than brighten the winter that
+is now upon us; like friends who commiserate us in some affliction, but
+are not able to comfort us. How different the chickadee! In the worst
+weather his greeting is never of condolence, but of good cheer. He has
+no theory upon the subject, probably; he is no Shepherd of Salisbury
+Plain; but he knows better than to waste the exhilarating air of this
+wild and frosty day in reminiscences of summer time. It is a
+pretty-sounding couplet,--
+
+    "Thou hast no morrow in thy song,
+    No winter in thy year,"--
+
+but rather incongruous, he would think. _Chickadee, dee_, he
+calls,--_chickadee, dee_; and though the words have no exact equivalent
+in English, their meaning is felt by all such as are worthy to hear
+them.
+
+Are the smallest birds really the most courageous, or does an
+unconscious sympathy on our part inevitably give them odds in the
+comparison? Probably the latter supposition comes nearest the truth.
+When a sparrow chases a butcher-bird we cheer the sparrow, and then when
+a humming-bird puts to flight a sparrow, we cheer the humming-bird; we
+side with the kingbird against the crow, and with the vireo, against the
+kingbird. It is a noble trait of human nature--though we are somewhat
+too ready to boast of it--that we like, as we say, to see the little
+fellow at the top. These remarks are made, not with any reference to the
+chickadee,--I admit no possibility of exaggeration in his case,--but as
+leading to a mention of the golden-crested kinglet. He is the least of
+all our winter birds, and one of the most engaging. Emerson's "atom in
+full breath" and "scrap of valor" would apply to him even better than to
+the titmouse. He says little,--_zee, zee, zee_ is nearly the limit of
+his vocabulary; but his lively demeanor and the grace and agility of his
+movements are in themselves an excellent language, speaking infallibly a
+contented mind. (It is a fact, on which I forbear to moralize, that
+birds seldom look unhappy except when they are idle.) His diminutive
+size attracts attention even from those who rarely notice such things.
+About the first of December, a year ago, I was told of a man who had
+shot a humming-bird only a few days before in the vicinity of Boston. Of
+course I expressed a polite surprise, and assured my informant that such
+a remarkable capture ought by all means to be put on record in "The
+Auk," as every ornithologist in the land would be interested in it. On
+this he called upon the lucky sportsman's brother, who happened to be
+standing by, to corroborate the story. Yes, the latter said, the fact
+was as had been stated. "But then," he continued, "the bird didn't have
+a _long bill_, like a humming-bird;" and when I suggested that perhaps
+its crown was yellow, bordered with black, he said, "Yes, yes; that's
+the bird, exactly." So easy are startling discoveries to an observer who
+has just the requisite amount of knowledge,--enough, and (especially)
+not too much!
+
+The brown creeper is quite as industrious and good-humored as the
+kinglet, but he is less taking in his personal appearance and less
+romantic in his mode of life. The same may be said of our two
+black-and-white woodpeckers, the downy and the hairy; while their more
+showy but less hardy relative, the flicker, evidently feels the weather
+a burden. The creeper and these three woodpeckers are with us in limited
+numbers every winter; and in the season of 1881-82 we had an altogether
+unexpected visit from the red-headed woodpecker,--such a thing as had
+not been known for a long time, if ever. Where the birds came from, and
+what was the occasion of their journey, nobody could tell. They arrived
+early in the autumn, and went away, with the exception of a few
+stragglers, in the spring; and as far as I know have never been seen
+since. It is a great pity they did not like us well enough to come
+again; for they are wide-awake, entertaining creatures, and gorgeously
+attired. I used to watch them in the oak groves of some Longwood
+estates, but it was not till our second or third interview that I
+discovered them to be the authors of a mystery over which I had been
+exercising my wits in vain, a tree-frog's note in winter! One of their
+amusements was to drum on the tin girdles of the shade trees; and
+meanwhile they themselves afforded a pastime to the gray squirrels, who
+were often to be seen creeping stealthily after them, as if they
+imagined that _Melanerpes erythrocephalus_ might possibly be caught, if
+only he were hunted long enough. I laughed at them; but, after all,
+their amusing hallucination was nothing but the sportsman's instinct;
+and life would soon lose its charm for most of us, sportsmen or not, if
+we could no longer pursue the unattainable.
+
+Probably my experience is not singular, but there are certain birds,
+well known to be more or less abundant in this neighborhood, which for
+some reason or other I have seldom, if ever, met. For example, of the
+multitude of pine finches which now and then overrun Eastern
+Massachusetts in winter I have never seen one, while on the other hand I
+was once lucky enough to come upon a few of the very much smaller number
+which pass the summer in Northern New Hampshire. This was in the White
+Mountain Notch, first on Mount Willard and then near the Crawford House,
+at which latter place they were feeding on the lawn and along the
+railway track as familiarly as the goldfinches.
+
+The shore larks, too, are no doubt common near Boston for a part of
+every year; yet I found half a dozen five or six years ago in the marsh
+beside a Back Bay street, and have seen none since. One of these stood
+upon a pile of earth, singing to himself in an undertone, while the rest
+were feeding in the grass. Whether the singer was playing sentinel, and
+sounded an alarm, I was not sure, but all at once the flock started off,
+as if on a single pair of wings.
+
+Birds which elude the observer in this manner year after year only
+render themselves all the more interesting. They are like other species
+with which we deem ourselves well acquainted, but which suddenly appear
+in some quite unlooked-for time or place. The long-expected and the
+unexpected have both an especial charm. I have elsewhere avowed my
+favoritism for the white-throated sparrow; but I was never more
+delighted to see him than on one Christmas afternoon. I was walking in a
+back road, not far from the city, when I descried a sparrow ahead of me,
+feeding in the path, and, coming nearer, recognized my friend the
+white-throat. He held his ground till the last moment (time was precious
+to him that short day), and then flew into a bush to let me pass, which
+I had no sooner done than he was back again; and on my return the same
+thing was repeated. Far and near the ground was white, but just at this
+place the snow-plough had scraped bare a few square feet of earth, and
+by great good fortune this solitary and hungry straggler had hit upon
+it. I wondered what he would do when the resources of this garden patch
+were exhausted, but consoled myself with thinking that by this time he
+must be well used to living by his wits, and would probably find a way
+to do so even in his present untoward circumstances.
+
+The snow-birds (not to be confounded with the snow buntings) should have
+at least a mention in such a paper as this. They are among the most
+familiar and constant of our winter guests, although very much less
+numerous at that time than in spring and autumn, when the fields and
+lanes are fairly alive with them.
+
+A kind word must be said for the shrike, also, who during the three
+coldest months is to be seen on the Common oftener than any other of our
+native birds. _There_, at all events, he is doing a good work. May he
+live to finish it!
+
+The blue jay stands by us, of course. You will not go far without
+hearing his scream, and catching at least a distant view of his splendid
+coat, which he is too consistent a dandy to put off for one of a duller
+shade, let the season shift as it will. He is not always good-natured;
+but none the less he is generally in good spirits (he seems to enjoy
+his bad temper), and, all in all, is not to be lightly esteemed in a
+time when bright feathers are scarce.
+
+As for the jay's sable relatives, they are the most conspicuous birds in
+the winter landscape. You may possibly walk to Brookline and back
+without hearing a chickadee, or a blue jay, or even a goldfinch; but you
+will never miss sight and sound of the crows. Black against white is a
+contrast hard to be concealed. Sometimes they are feeding in the street,
+sometimes stalking about the marshes; but oftenest they are on the ice
+in the river, near the water's edge. For they know the use of friends,
+although they have never heard of Lord Bacon's "last fruit of
+friendship," and would hardly understand what that provident philosopher
+meant by saying that "the best way to represent to life the manifold use
+of friendship is to cast and see how many things there are which a man
+cannot do himself." How aptly their case illustrates the not unusual
+coexistence of formal ignorance with real knowledge! Having their
+Southern brother's fondness for fish without his skill in catching it,
+they adopt a plan worthy of the great essayist himself,--they court the
+society of the gulls; and with a temper eminently philosophical, not to
+say Baconian, they cheerfully sit at their patrons' second table. From
+the Common you may see them almost any day (in some seasons, at least)
+flying back and forth between the river and the harbor. One morning in
+early March I witnessed quite a procession, one small company after
+another, the largest numbering eleven birds, though it was nothing to
+compare with what seems to be a daily occurrence at some places further
+south. At another time, in the middle of January, I saw what appeared to
+be a flock of herring gulls sailing over the city, making progress in
+their own wonderfully beautiful manner, circle after circle. But I
+noticed that about a dozen of them were black! What were these? If they
+could have held their peace I might have gone home puzzled; but the crow
+is in one respect a very polite bird: he will seldom fly over your head
+without letting fall the compliments of the morning, and a vigorous
+_caw, caw_ soon proclaimed my black gulls to be simply erratic specimens
+of _Corvus Americanus_. Why were they conducting thus strangely? Had
+they become so attached to their friends as to have taken to imitating
+them unconsciously? Or were they practicing upon the vanity of these
+useful allies of theirs, these master fishermen? Who can answer? The
+ways of shrewd people are hard to understand; and in all New England
+there is no shrewder Yankee than the crow.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[20] See a letter by Dr. Fritz Muller, "Butterflies as Botanists:"
+_Nature_, vol. xxx. p. 240. Of similar import is the case, cited by Dr.
+Asa Gray (in the _American Journal of Science_, November, 1884, p. 325),
+of two species of plantain found in this country, which students have
+only of late discriminated, although it turns out that the cows have all
+along known them apart, eating one and declining the other,--the bovine
+taste being more exact, it would seem, or at any rate more prompt, than
+the botanist's lens.
+
+[21] Unlike the snow bunting and the red-poll, however, the pine
+grosbeak is believed to breed sparingly in Northern New England.
+
+
+
+
+                          A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL
+
+                                  There shall be
+    Beautiful things made new, for the surprise
+    Of the sky-children.
+
+                                          KEATS.
+
+    Everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed
+    rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which
+    they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and
+    yet these is a silent joy at their arrival.
+
+                                                           COLERIDGE.
+
+
+                          A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL.
+
+
+It began on the 29th of March; in the afternoon of which day, despite
+the authority of the almanac and the banter of my acquaintances (March
+was March to them, and it was nothing more), I shook off the city's dust
+from my feet, and went into summer quarters. The roads were
+comparatively dry; the snow was entirely gone, except a patch or two in
+the shadow of thick pines under the northerly side of a hill; and all
+tokens seemed to promise an early spring. So much I learned before the
+hastening twilight cut short my first brief turn out-of-doors. In the
+morning would be time enough to discover what birds had already reported
+themselves at my station.
+
+Unknown to me, however, our national weather bureau had announced a
+snow-storm, and in the morning I drew aside the curtains to look out
+upon a world all in white, with a cold, high wind blowing and snow
+falling fast. "The worst Sunday of the winter," the natives said. The
+"summer boarder" went to church, of course. To have done otherwise might
+have been taken for a confession of weakness; as if inclemency of this
+sort were more than he had bargained for. The villagers, lacking any
+such spur to right conduct, for the most part stayed at home; feeling it
+not unpleasant, I dare say, some of them, to have a natural inclination
+providentially confirmed, even at the cost of an hour's exercise with
+the shovel. The bravest parishioner of all, and the sweetest
+singer,--the song sparrow by name,--was not in the meeting-house, but by
+the roadside. What if the wind did blow, and the mercury stand at
+fifteen or twenty degrees below the freezing point? In cold as in heat
+"the mind is its own place."
+
+Three days after this came a second storm, one of the heaviest
+snow-falls of the year. The robins were reduced to picking up seeds in
+the asparagus bed. The bluebirds appeared to be trying to glean
+something from the bark of trees, clinging rather awkwardly to the trunk
+meanwhile. (They are given to this, more or less, at all times, and it
+possibly has some connection with their half-woodpeckerish habit of
+nestling in holes.) Some of the snow-birds were doing likewise; I
+noticed one traveling up a trunk,--which inclined a good deal, to be
+sure,--exploring the crannies right and left, like any creeper. Half a
+dozen or more phoebes were in the edge of a wood; and they too seemed
+to have found out that, if worst came to worst, the tree-boles would
+yield a pittance for their relief. They often hovered against them,
+pecking hastily at the bark, and one at least was struggling for a
+foothold on the perpendicular surface. Most of the time, however, they
+went skimming over the snow and the brook, in the regular flycatcher
+style. The chickadees were put to little or no inconvenience, since what
+was a desperate makeshift to the others was to them only an every-day
+affair. It would take a long storm to bury their granary.[22] After the
+titmice, the fox-colored sparrows had perhaps the best of it. Looking
+out places where the snow had collected least, at the foot of a tree or
+on the edge of water, these adepts at scratching speedily turned up
+earth enough to checker the white with very considerable patches of
+brown. While walking I continually disturbed song sparrows, fox
+sparrows, tree sparrows, and snow-birds feeding in the road; and when I
+sat in my room I was advised of the approach of carriages by seeing
+these "pensioners upon the traveler's track" scurry past the window in
+advance of them.
+
+It is pleasant to observe how naturally birds flock together in hard
+times,--precisely as men do, and doubtless for similar reasons. The edge
+of the wood, just mentioned, was populous with them: robins, bluebirds,
+chickadees, fox sparrows, snow-birds, song sparrows, tree sparrows,
+phoebes, a golden-winged woodpecker, and a rusty blackbird. The last,
+noticeable for his conspicuous light-colored eye-ring, had somehow
+become separated from his fellows, and remained for several days about
+this spot entirely alone. I liked to watch his aquatic performances;
+they might almost have been those of the American dipper himself, I
+thought. He made nothing of putting his head and neck clean under water,
+like a duck, and sometimes waded the brook when the current was so
+strong that he was compelled every now and then to stop and brace
+himself against it, lest he should be carried off his feet.
+
+It is clear that birds, sharing the frailty of some who are better than
+many sparrows, are often wanting in patience. As spring draws near they
+cannot wait for its coming. What it has been the fashion to call their
+unerring instinct is after all infallible only as a certain great public
+functionary is,--in theory; and their mistaken haste is too frequently
+nothing but a hurrying to their death. But I saw no evidence that this
+particular storm was attended with any fatal consequences. The snow
+completely disappeared within a day or two; and even while it lasted the
+song sparrows, fox sparrows, and linnets could be heard singing with all
+cheerfulness. On the coldest day, when the mercury settled to within
+twelve degrees of zero, I observed that the song sparrows, as they fed
+in the road, had a trick of crouching till their feathers all but
+touched the ground, so protecting their legs against the biting wind.
+
+The first indications of mating were noticed on the 5th, the parties
+being two pairs of bluebirds. One of the females was rebuffing her
+suitor rather petulantly, but when he flew away she lost no time in
+following. Shall I be accused of slander if I suggest that possibly her
+_No_ meant nothing worse than _Ask me again?_ I trust not; she was only
+a bluebird, remember. Three days later I came upon two couples engaged
+in house-hunting. In this business the female takes the lead, with a
+silent, abstracted air, as if the matter were one of absorbing interest;
+while her mate follows her about somewhat impatiently, and with a good
+deal of talk, which is plainly intended to hasten the decision. "Come,
+come," he says; "the season is short, and we can't waste the whole of
+it in getting ready." I never could discover that his eloquence produced
+much effect, however. Her ladyship will have her own way; as indeed she
+ought to have, good soul, considering that she is to have the discomfort
+and the hazard. In one case I was puzzled by the fact that there seemed
+to be two females to one of the opposite sex. It really looked as if the
+fellow proposed to set up housekeeping with whichever should first find
+a house to her mind. But this _is_ slander, and I hasten to take it
+back. No doubt I misinterpreted his behavior; for it is true--with
+sorrow I confess it--that I am as yet but imperfectly at home in the
+Sialian dialect.
+
+For the first fortnight my note-book is full of the fox-colored
+sparrows. It was worth while to have come into the country ahead of
+time, as city people reckon, to get my fill of this Northern songster's
+music. Morning and night, wherever I walked, and even if I remained
+in-doors, I was certain to hear the loud and beautiful strain; to which
+I listened with the more attention because the birds, I knew, would soon
+be off for their native fields, beyond the boundaries of the United
+States.
+
+It is astonishing how gloriously birds may sing, and yet pass
+unregarded. We read of nightingales and skylarks with a self-satisfied
+thrill of second-hand enthusiasm, and meanwhile our native songsters,
+even the best of them, are piping unheeded at our very doors. There may
+have been half a dozen of the town's people who noticed the presence of
+these fox sparrows, but I think it doubtful; and yet the birds, the
+largest, handsomest, and most musical of all our many sparrows, were, as
+I say, abundant everywhere, and in full voice.
+
+One afternoon I stood still while a fox sparrow and a song sparrow sang
+alternately on either side of me, both exceptionally good vocalists, and
+each doing his best. The songs were of about equal length, and as far as
+theme was concerned were not a little alike; but the fox sparrow's tone
+was both louder and more mellow than the other's, while his notes were
+longer,--more sustained,--and his voice was "carried" from one pitch to
+another. On the whole, I had no hesitation about giving him the palm;
+but I am bound to say that his rival was a worthy competitor. In some
+respects, indeed, the latter was the more interesting singer of the two.
+His opening measure of three _pips_ was succeeded by a trill of quite
+peculiar brilliancy and perfection; and when the other bird had ceased
+he suddenly took a lower perch, and began to rehearse an altogether
+different tune in a voice not more than half as loud as what he had
+been using; after which, as if to cap the climax, he several times
+followed the tune with a detached phrase or two in a still fainter
+voice. This last was pretty certainly an improvised cadenza, such a
+thing as I do not remember ever to have heard before from _Melospiza
+melodia_.
+
+The song of the fox sparrow has at times an almost thrush-like quality;
+and the bird himself, as he flies up in front of you, might easily be
+mistaken for some member of that noble family. Once, indeed, when I saw
+him eating burning-bush berries in a Boston garden, I was half ready to
+believe that I had before my eyes a living example of the development of
+one species out of another,--a finch already well on his way to become a
+thrush. Most often, however, his voice puts me in mind of the cardinal
+grosbeak's; his voice, and perhaps still more his cadence, and
+especially his practice of the _portamento_.
+
+The 11th of the month was sunny, and the next morning I came back from
+my accustomed rounds under a sense of bereavement: the fox sparrows were
+gone. Where yesterday there had been hundreds of them, now I could find
+only two silent stragglers. They had been well scattered over the
+township,--here a flock and there a flock; but in some way--I should be
+glad to have anybody tell me how--the word had passed from company to
+company that after sundown Friday night all hands would set out once
+more on their northward journey. There was one man, at least, who missed
+them, and in the comparative silence which followed their departure
+appreciated anew how much they had contributed to fill the wet and
+chilly April mornings with melody and good cheer.
+
+The snow-birds tarried longer, but from this date became less and less
+abundant. For the first third of the month they had been as numerous, I
+calculated, as all other species put together. On one occasion I saw a
+large company of them chasing an albino, the latter dashing wildly round
+a pine-tree, with the whole flock in furious pursuit. They drove him
+off, across an impassable morass, before I could get close enough really
+to see him, but I presumed him to be of their own kind. As far as I
+could make out he was entirely white. For the moment it lasted, it was
+an exciting scene; and I was especially gratified to notice with what
+extreme heartiness and unanimity the birds discountenanced their wayward
+brother's heterodoxy. I agreed with them that one who cannot be content
+to dress like other people ought not to be allowed to live with them.
+The world is large,--let him go to Rhode Island!
+
+On the evening of the 6th, just at dusk, I had started up the road for a
+lazy after-dinner saunter, when I was brought to a sudden halt by what
+on the instant I took for the cry of a night-hawk. But no night-hawk
+could be here thus early in the season, and listening further, I
+perceived that the bird, if bird it was, was on the ground, or, at any
+rate, not far from it. Then it flashed upon me that this was the note of
+the woodcock, which I had that very day startled upon this same
+hillside. Now, then, for another sight of his famous aerial courtship
+act! So, scrambling down the embankment, and clambering over the
+stone-wall, I pushed up the hill through bushes and briers, till, having
+come as near the bird as I dared, I crouched, and awaited further
+developments. I had not long to wait, for after a few _yaks_, at
+intervals of perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds, the fellow took to wing,
+and went soaring in a circle above me; calling hurriedly _click, click,
+click_, with a break now and then, as if for breath-taking. All this he
+repeated several times; but unfortunately it was too dark for me to see
+him, except as he crossed a narrow illuminated strip of sky just above
+the horizon line. I judged that he mounted to a very considerable
+height, and dropped invariably into the exact spot from which he had
+started. For a week or two I listened every night for a repetition of
+the yak; but I heard nothing more of it for a month. Then it came to my
+ears again, this time from a field between the road and a swamp.
+Watching my opportunity, while the bird was in the air, I hastened
+across the field, and stationed myself against a small cedar. He was
+still _clicking_ high overhead, but soon alighted silently within twenty
+yards of where I was standing, and commenced to "bleat," prefacing each
+_yak_ with a fainter syllable which I had never before been near enough
+to detect. Presently he started once more on his skyward journey. Up he
+went, in a large spiral, "higher still and higher" till the cedar cut
+off my view for an instant, after which I could not again get my eye
+upon him. Whether he saw me or not I cannot tell, but he dropped to the
+ground some rods away, and did not make another ascension, although he
+continued to call irregularly, and appeared to be walking about the
+field. Perhaps by this time the fair one for whose benefit all this
+parade was intended had come out of the swamp to meet and reward her
+admirer.
+
+Hoping for a repetition of the same programme on the following night, I
+invited a friend from the city to witness it with me; one who, less
+fortunate than the "forest seer," had never "heard the woodcock's
+evening hymn," notwithstanding his knowledge of birds is a thousand-fold
+more than mine, as all students of American ornithology would
+unhesitatingly avouch were I to mention his name. We waited till dark;
+but though _Philohela_ was there, and sounded his _yak_ two or three
+times,--just enough to excite our hopes,--yet for some reason he kept to
+_terra firma_. Perhaps he was aware of our presence, and disdained to
+exhibit himself in the _role_ of a wooer under our profane and curious
+gaze; or possibly, as my more scientific (and less sentimental)
+companion suggested, the light breeze may have been counted unfavorable
+for such high-flying exploits.
+
+After all, our matter-of-fact world is surprisingly full of romance. Who
+would have expected to find this heavy-bodied, long-billed,
+gross-looking, bull-headed bird singing at heaven's gate? _He_ a
+"scorner of the ground"? Verily, love worketh wonders! And perhaps it is
+really true that the outward semblance is sometimes deceptive. To be
+candid, however, I must end with confessing that, after listening to the
+woodcock's "hymn" a good many times, first and last, I cannot help
+thinking that it takes an imaginative ear to discover anything properly
+to be called a song in its monotonous _click, click_, even at its
+fastest and loudest.[23]
+
+While I was enjoying the farewell _matinee_ of the fox-colored sparrows
+on the 11th, suddenly there ran into the chorus the fine silver thread
+of the winter wren's tune. Here was pleasure unexpected. It is down in
+all the books, I believe, that this bird does not sing while on his
+travels; and certainly I had myself never known him to do anything of
+the sort before. But there is always something new under the sun.
+
+    "Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru?
+    Or who in venturous vessell measured
+    The Amazon's huge river, now found trew?
+    Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever vew?"
+
+I was all ear, of course, standing motionless while the delicious music
+came again and again out of a tangle of underbrush behind a dilapidated
+stone-wall,--a spot for all the world congenial to this tiny recluse,
+whose whole life, we may say, is one long game of hide-and-seek.
+Altogether the song was repeated twenty times at least, and to my
+thinking I had never heard it given with greater brilliancy and fervor.
+The darling little minstrel! he will never know how grateful I felt. I
+even forgave him when he sang thrice from a living bush, albeit in so
+doing he spoiled a sentence which I had already committed to "the
+permanency of print." Birds of all kinds will play such tricks upon us;
+but whether the fault be chargeable to fickleness or a mischievous
+spirit on their part, rather than to undue haste on the part of us their
+reporters, is a matter about which I am perhaps not sufficiently
+disinterested to judge. In this instance, however, it was reasonably
+certain that the singer did not show himself intentionally; for unless
+the whole tenor of his life belies him, the winter wren's motto is,
+Little birds should be heard, and not seen.
+
+Two days afterward I was favored again in like manner. But not by the
+same bird, I think; unless my hearing was at fault (the singer was
+further off than before), this one's tune was in places somewhat broken
+and hesitating,--as if he were practicing a lesson not yet fully
+learned.
+
+I felt under a double obligation to these two specimens of _Anorthura
+troglodytes hiemalis_: first for their music itself; and then for the
+support which it gave to a pet theory of mine, that all our singing
+birds will yet be found to sing more or less regularly in the course of
+the vernal migration.
+
+Within another forty-eight hours this same theory received additional
+confirmation. I was standing under an apple-tree, watching a pair of
+titmice who were hollowing out a stub for a nest, when my ear caught a
+novel song not far away. Of course I made towards it; but the bird flew
+off, across the road and into the woods. My hour was up, and I
+reluctantly started homeward, but had gone only a few rods before the
+song was repeated. This was more than human nature could bear, and,
+turning back upon the run, I got into the woods just in time to see two
+birds chasing each other round a tree, both uttering the very notes
+which had so roused my curiosity. Then away they went; but as I was
+again bewailing my evil luck, one of them returned, and flew into the
+oak, directly over my head, and as he did so fell to calling anew, _Sue,
+suky, suky_. A single glance upward revealed that this was another of
+the silent migrants,--a brown creeper! Only once before had I heard from
+him anything beside his customary lisping _zee_, _zee_; and even on
+that occasion (in June and in New Hampshire) the song bore no
+resemblance to his present effort. I have written it down as it sounded
+at the moment, _Sue_, _suky_, _suky_, five notes, the first longer than
+the others, and all of them brusque, loud, and musical, though with
+something of a warbler quality.[24]
+
+It surprised me to find how the migratory movement lagged for the first
+half of the month. A pair of white-breasted swallows flew over my head
+while I was attending to the winter wren on the 11th, and on the 14th
+appeared the first pine-creeping warblers,--welcome for their own sakes,
+and doubly so as the forerunners of a numerous and splendid company; but
+aside from these two, I saw no evidence that a single new species
+arrived at my station for the entire fortnight.
+
+Robins sang sparingly from the beginning, and became perceptibly more
+musical on the 8th, with signs of mating and jealousy; but the real
+robin carnival did not open till the morning of the 14th. Then the
+change was wonderful. Some of the birds were flying this way and that,
+high in air, two or three together; others chased each other about
+nearer the ground; some were screaming, some hissing, and more singing.
+So sudden was the outbreak and so great the commotion that I was
+persuaded there must have been an arrival of females in the night.
+
+I have heard it objected against these thrushes, whose extreme
+commonness renders them less highly esteemed than they would otherwise
+be, that they find their voices too early in the morning. But I am not
+myself prepared to second the criticism. They are not often at their
+matins, I think, until the eastern sky begins to flush, and it is not
+quite certain to my mind that they are wrong in assuming that daylight
+makes daytime. I have questioned before now whether our own custom of
+sitting up for five or six hours after sunset, and then lying abed two
+or three hours after sunrise, may not have come down to us from times
+when there were still people in the world who loved darkness rather than
+light, because their deeds were evil; and whether, after all, in this as
+in some other respects, we might not wisely take pattern of the fowls of
+the air.
+
+Individually, the phoebes were almost as noisy as the robins, but of
+course their numbers were far less. They are models of perseverance.
+Were their voice equal to the nightingale's they could hardly be more
+assiduous and enthusiastic in its use. As a general thing they are
+content to repeat the simple _Phoebe, Phoebe_ (there are moods in
+the experience of all of us, I hope, when the repetition of a name is by
+itself music sufficient), but it is not uncommon for this to be
+heightened to _Phoebe, O Phoebe_; and now and then you will hear
+some fellow calling excitedly, _Phoebe, Phoebe-be-be-be-be_,--a
+comical sort of stuttering, in which the difficulty is not in getting
+hold of the first syllable, but in letting go the last one. On the 15th
+I witnessed a certain other performance of theirs,--one that I had seen
+two or three times the season previous, and for which I had been on the
+lookout from the first day of the month. I heard a series of _chips_,
+which might have been the cries of a chicken, but which, it appeared,
+did proceed from a phoebe, who, as I looked up, was just in the act of
+quitting his perch on the ridge-pole of a barn. He rose for perhaps
+thirty feet, not spirally, but in a zigzag course,--like a horse
+climbing a hill with a heavy load,--all the time calling, _chip, chip,
+chip_. Then he went round and round in a small circle, with a kind of
+hovering action of the wings, vociferating hurriedly, _Phoebe,
+Phoebe, Phoebe_; after which he shot down into the top of a tree,
+and with a lively flirt of his tail took up again the same eloquent
+theme. During the next few weeks I several times found birds of this
+species similarly engaged. And it is worthy of remark that, of the four
+flycatchers which regularly pass the summer with us, three may be said
+to be, in the _habit_ of singing in the air, while the fourth (the wood
+pewee) does the same thing, only with less frequency. It is curious,
+also, on the other hand, that not one of our eight common New England
+thrushes, as far as I have ever seen or heard, shows the least tendency
+toward any such state of lyrical exaltation. Yet the thrushes are song
+birds _par excellence_, while the phoebe, the least flycatcher, and
+the kingbird are not supposed to be able to sing at all. The latter have
+the soul of music in them, at any rate; and why should it not be true of
+birds, as it is of human poets and would-be poets, that sensibility and
+faculty are not always found together? Perhaps those who have nothing
+but the sensibility have, after all, the better half of the blessing.
+
+The golden-winged woodpeckers shouted comparatively little before the
+middle of the month, and I heard nothing of their tender _wick-a-wick_
+until the 22d. After that they were noisy enough. With all their power
+of lungs, however, they not only are not singers; they do not aspire to
+be. They belong to the tribe of Jubal. Hearing somebody drumming on tin,
+I peeped over the wall, and saw one of these pigeon woodpeckers
+hammering an old tin pan lying in the middle of the pasture. Rather
+small sport, I thought, for so large a bird. But that was a matter of
+opinion, merely, and evidently the performer himself had no such
+scruples. He may even have considered that his ability to play on this
+instrument of the tinsmith's went far to put him on an equality with
+some who boast themselves the only tool-using animals. True, the pan was
+battered and rusty; but it was resonant, for all that, and day after day
+he pleased himself with beating _reveille_ upon it. One morning I found
+him sitting in a tree, screaming lustily in response to another bird in
+an adjacent field. After a while, waxing ardent, he dropped to the
+ground, and, stationing himself before his drum, proceeded to answer
+each cry of his rival with a vigorous rubadub, varying the programme
+with an occasional halloo. How long this would have lasted there is no
+telling, but he caught sight of me, skulking behind a tree-trunk, and
+flew back to his lofty perch, where he was still shouting when I came
+away. It was observable that, even in his greatest excitement, he paused
+once in a while to dress his feathers. At first I was inclined to take
+this as betraying a want of earnestness; but further reflection led me
+to a different conclusion. For I imagine that the human lover, no matter
+how consuming his passion, is seldom carried so far beyond himself as
+not to be able to spare now and then a thought to the parting of his
+hair and the tie of his cravat.
+
+Seeing the great delight which this woodpecker took in his precious tin
+pan, it seemed to me not at all improbable that he had selected his
+summer residence with a view to being near it, just as I had chosen mine
+for its convenience of access to the woods on the one hand, and to the
+city on the other. I shall watch with interest to see whether he returns
+to the same pasture another year.
+
+A few field sparrows and chippers showed themselves punctually on the
+15th; but they were only scouts, and the great body of their followers
+were more than a week behind them. I saw no bay-winged buntings until
+the 22d, although it is likely enough they had been here for some days
+before that. By a lucky chance, my very first bird was a peculiarly
+accomplished musician: he altered his tune at nearly every repetition of
+it, sang it sometimes loudly and then softly, and once in a while added
+cadenza-like phrases. It lost nothing by being heard on a bright, frosty
+morning, when the edges of the pools were filmed with ice.
+
+Only three species of warblers appeared during the month: the
+pine-creeping warblers, already spoken of, who were trilling on the
+14th; the yellow-rumped, who came on the 23d; and the yellow red-polls,
+who followed the next morning. The black-throated greens were
+mysteriously tardy, and the black-and-white creepers waited for May-day.
+
+A single brown thrush was leading the chorus on the 29th. "A great
+singer," my note-book says: "not so altogether faultless as some, but
+with a large voice and style, adapted to a great part;" and then is
+added, "I thought this morning of Titiens, as I listened to him!"--a bit
+of impromptu musical criticism, which, under cover of the saving
+quotation marks may stand for what it is worth.
+
+Not long after leaving him I ran upon two hermit thrushes (one had been
+seen on the 25th), flitting about the woods like ghosts. I whistled
+softly to the first, and he condescended to answer with a low _chuck_,
+after which I could get nothing more out of him. This demure taciturnity
+is very curious and characteristic, and to me very engaging. The fellow
+will neither skulk nor run, but hops upon some low branch, and looks at
+you,--behaving not a little as if you were the specimen and he the
+student! And in such a case, as far as I can see, the bird equally with
+the man has a right to his own point of view.
+
+The hermits were not yet in tune; and without forgetting the fox-colored
+sparrows and the linnets, the song sparrows and the bay-wings, the
+winter wrens and the brown thrush, I am almost ready to declare that the
+best music of the month came from the smallest of all the month's birds,
+the ruby-crowned kinglets. Their spring season is always short with us,
+and unhappily it was this year shorter even than usual, my dates being
+April 23d and May 5th. But we must be thankful for a little, when the
+little is of such a quality. Once I descried two of them in the topmost
+branches of a clump of tall maples. For a long time they fed in silence;
+then they began to chase each other about through the trees, in graceful
+evolutions (I can imagine nothing more graceful), and soon one, and
+then the other, broke out into song. "'Infinite riches in a little
+room,'" my note-book says, again; and truly the song is marvelous,--a
+prolonged and varied warble, introduced and often broken into, with
+delightful effect, by a wrennish chatter. For fluency, smoothness, and
+ease, and especially for purity and sweetness of tone, I have never
+heard any bird-song that seemed to me more nearly perfect. If the dainty
+creature would bear confinement,--on which point I know nothing,--he
+would make an ideal parlor songster; for his voice, while round and
+full,--in contrast with the goldfinch's, for example,--is yet, even at
+its loudest, of a wonderful softness and delicacy. Nevertheless, I trust
+that nobody will ever cage him. Better far go out-of-doors, and drink in
+the exquisite sounds as they drop from the thick of some tall pine,
+while you catch now and then a glimpse of the tiny author, flitting
+busily from branch to branch, warbling at his work; or, as you may
+oftener do, look and listen to your heart's content, while he explores
+some low cedar or a cluster of roadside birches, too innocent and happy
+to heed your presence. So you will carry home not the song only, but
+"the river and sky."
+
+But if the kinglets were individually the best singers, I must still
+confess that the goldfinches gave the best concert. It was on a sunny
+afternoon,--the 27th,--and in a small grove of tall pitch-pines. How
+many birds there were I could form little estimate, but when fifteen
+flew away for a minute or two the chorus was not perceptibly diminished.
+All were singing, twittering, and calling together; some of them
+directly over my head, the rest scattered throughout the wood. No one
+voice predominated in the least; all sang softly, and with an
+indescribable tenderness and beauty. Any who do not know how sweet the
+goldfinch's note is may get some conception of the effect of such a
+concert if they will imagine fifty canaries thus engaged out-of-doors. I
+declared then that I had never heard anything so enchanting, and I am
+not certain even now that I was over-enthusiastic.
+
+A pine-creeping warbler, I remember, broke in upon the choir two or
+three times with his loud, precise trill. Foolish bird! His is a pretty
+song by itself, but set in contrast with music so full of imagination
+and poetry, it sounded painfully abrupt and prosaic.
+
+I discovered the first signs of nest-building on the 13th, while
+investigating the question of a bird's ambi-dexterity. It happened that
+I had just been watching a chickadee, as he picked chip after chip from
+a dead branch, and held them fast with one claw, while he broke them in
+pieces with his beak; and walking away, it occurred to me to ask whether
+or not he could probably use both feet equally well for such a purpose.
+Accordingly, seeing another go into an apple-tree, I drew near to take
+his testimony on that point. But when I came to look for him he was
+nowhere in sight, and pretty soon it appeared that he was at work in the
+end of an upright stub, which he had evidently but just begun to hollow
+out, as the tip of his tail still protruded over the edge. A
+bird-lover's curiosity can always adapt itself to circumstances, and in
+this case it was no hardship to postpone the settlement of my newly
+raised inquiry, while I observed the pretty labors of my little
+architect. These proved to be by no means inconsiderable, lasting nearly
+or quite three weeks. The birds were still bringing away chips on the
+30th, when their cavity was about eleven inches deep; but it is to be
+said that, as far as I could find out, they never worked in the
+afternoon or on rainy days.
+
+Their demeanor toward each other all this time was beautiful to see; no
+effusive display of affection, but every appearance of a perfect mutual
+understanding and contentment. And their treatment of me was no less
+appropriate and delightful,--a happy combination of freedom and
+dignified reserve. I took it for an extremely neat compliment to
+myself, as well as incontestable evidence of unusual powers of
+discrimination on their part.
+
+On my second visit the female sounded a call as I approached the tree,
+and I looked to see her mate take some notice of it; but he kept
+straight on with what he was doing. Not long after she spoke again,
+however; and now it was amusing to see the fellow all at once stand
+still on the top of the stub, looking up and around, as much as to say,
+"What is it, my dear? I see nothing." Apparently it _was_ nothing, and
+he went head first into the hole again. Pretty soon, while he was
+inside, I stepped up against the trunk. His mate continued silent, and
+after what seemed a long time he came out, flew to an adjacent twig,
+dropped his load, and returned. This he did over and over (the end of
+the stub was perhaps ten feet above my head), and once he let fall a
+beakful of chips plump in my face. They were light, and I did not resent
+the liberty.
+
+Two mornings later I found him at his task again, toiling in good
+earnest. In and out he went, taking care to bring away the shavings at
+every trip, as before, and generally sounding a note or two (keeping the
+tally, perhaps) before he dropped them. For the fifteen minutes or so
+that I remained, his mate was perched in another branch of the same
+tree, not once shifting her position, and doing nothing whatever except
+to preen her feathers a little. She paid no attention to her husband,
+nor did he to her. It was a revelation to me that a chickadee could
+possibly sit still so long.
+
+Eight days after this they were both at work, spelling each other, and
+then going off in company for a brief turn at feeding.
+
+So far they had never manifested the least annoyance at my espionage;
+but the next morning, as I stood against the tree, one of them seemed
+slightly disturbed, and flew from twig to twig about my head, looking at
+me from all directions with his shining black eyes. The reconnoissance
+was satisfactory, however; everything went on as before, and several
+times the chips rattled down upon my stiff Derby hat. The hole was
+getting deep, it was plain; I could hear the little carpenter hammering
+at the bottom, and then scrambling up the walls on his way out. One of
+the pair brought a black tidbit from a pine near by, and offered it to
+the other as he emerged into daylight. He took it from her bill, said
+_chit_,--chickadese for _thank you_,--and hastened back into the mine.
+
+Finally, on the 27th, after watching their operations a while from the
+ground, I swung myself into the tree, and took a seat with them. To my
+delight, the work proceeded without interruption. Neither bird made any
+outcry, although one of them hopped round me, just out of reach, with
+evident curiosity. He must have thought me a queer specimen. When I drew
+my overcoat up after me and put it on, they flew away; but within a
+minute or two they were both back again, working as merrily as ever, and
+taking no pains not to litter me with their rubbish. Once the female (I
+took it to be she from her smaller size, not from this piece of
+shiftlessness) dropped her load without quitting the stub, a thing I had
+not seen either of them do before. Twice one brought the other something
+to eat. At last the male took another turn at investigating my
+character, and it began to look as if he would end with alighting on my
+hat. This time, too, I am proud to say, the verdict was favorable.
+
+Their confidence was not misplaced, and unless all signs failed they
+reared a full brood of tits. May their tribe increase! Of birds so
+innocent and unobtrusive, so graceful, so merry-hearted, and so musical,
+the world can never have too many.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] In the titmouse's cosmological system trees occupy a highly
+important place, we may be sure; while the purpose of their tall,
+upright method of growth no doubt receives a very simple and logical
+(and correspondingly lucid) explanation.
+
+[23] While this book is passing through the press (April 30th, 1885) I
+am privileged with another sight and sound of the woodcock's vespertine
+performance, and under peculiarly favorable conditions. In the account
+given above, sufficient distinction is not made between the clicking
+noise, heard while the bird is soaring, and the sounds which signalize
+his descent. The former is probably produced by the wings, although I
+have heretofore thought otherwise, while the latter are certainly vocal,
+and no doubt intended as a song. But they are little if at all louder
+than the _click, click_ of the wings, and as far as I have ever been
+able to make out are nothing more than a series of quick, breathless
+whistles, with no attempt at either melody or rhythm.
+
+In the present instance I could see only the start and the "finish,"
+when the bird several times passed directly by and over me, as I stood
+in a cluster of low birches, within two or three rods of his point of
+departure. His angle of flight was small; quite as if he had been going
+and coming from one field to another, in the ordinary course. Once I
+timed him, and found that he was on the wing for a few seconds more than
+a minute.
+
+[24] Still further to corroborate my "pet theory," I may say here in a
+foot-note, what I have said elsewhere with more detail, that before the
+end of the following month the hermit thrushes, the olive-backed
+thrushes, and the gray-cheeked thrushes all sang for me in my Melrose
+woods.
+
+Let me explain, also, that when I call the brown creeper a silent
+migrant I am not unaware that others beside myself, and more than
+myself, have heard him sing while traveling. Mr. William Brewster, as
+quoted by Dr. Brewer in the _History of North American Birds_, has been
+exceptionally fortunate in this regard. But my expression is correct as
+far as the rule is concerned; and the latest word upon the subject which
+has come under my eye is this from Mr. E. P. Bicknell's "Study of the
+Singing of our Birds," in _The Auk_ for April, 1884: "Some feeble notes,
+suggestive of those of _Regulus satrapa_, are this bird's usual
+utterance during its visit. Its song I have never heard."
+
+
+
+
+                         AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY.
+
+    Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,
+    And what the Swede intends, and what the French.
+
+                                             MILTON.
+
+
+                         AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY.
+
+
+My trip to Lake Memphremagog was by the way, and was not expected to
+detain me for more than twenty-four hours; but when I went ashore at the
+Owl's Head Mountain-House, and saw what a lodge in the wilderness it
+was, I said to myself, Go to, this is the place; Mount Mansfield will
+stand for another year at least, and I will waste no more of my precious
+fortnight amid dust and cinders. Here were to be enjoyed many of the
+comforts of civilization, with something of the wildness and freedom of
+a camp. Out of one of the windows of my large, well-furnished room I
+could throw a stone into the trackless forest, where, any time I chose,
+I could make the most of a laborious half-hour in traveling half a mile.
+The other two opened upon a piazza; whence the lake was to be seen
+stretching away northward for ten or fifteen miles, with Mount Orford
+and his supporting hills in the near background; while I had only to
+walk the length of the piazza to look round the corner of the house at
+Owl's Head itself, at whose base we were. The hotel had less than a
+dozen guests and no piano, and there was neither carriage-road nor
+railway within sight or hearing. Yes, this was the place where I would
+spend the eight days which yet remained to me of idle time.
+
+Of the eight days five were what are called unpleasant; but the
+unseasonable cold, which drove the stayers in the house to huddle about
+the fire, struck the mosquitoes with a torpor which made strolling in
+the woods a double luxury; while the rain was chiefly of the showery
+sort, such as a rubber coat and old clothes render comparatively
+harmless. Not that I failed to take a hand with my associates in
+grumbling about the weather. Table-talk would speedily come to an end in
+such circumstances if people were forbidden to criticise the order of
+nature; and it is not for me to boast any peculiar sanctity in this
+respect. But when all was over, it had to be acknowledged that I, for
+one, had been kept in-doors very little. In fact, if the whole truth
+were told, it would probably appear that my fellow boarders, seeing my
+persistency in disregarding the inclemency of the elements, soon came to
+look upon me as decidedly odd, though perhaps not absolutely demented.
+At any rate, I was rather glad than otherwise to think so. In those
+long days there must often have been a dearth of topics for profitable
+conversation, no matter how outrageous the weather, and it was a
+pleasure to believe that this little idiosyncracy of mine might answer
+to fill here and there a gap. For what generous person does not rejoice
+to feel that even in his absence he may be doing something for the
+comfort and well-being of his brothers and sisters? As Seneca said, "Man
+is born for mutual assistance."
+
+According to Osgood's "New England," the summit of Owl's Head is 2,743
+feet above the level of the lake, and the path to it is a mile and a
+half and thirty rods in length. It may seem niggardly not to throw off
+the last petty fraction; and indeed we might well enough let it pass if
+it were at the beginning of the route,--if the path, that is, were
+thirty rods and a mile and a half long. But this, it will be observed,
+is not the case; and it is a fact perfectly well attested, though
+perhaps not yet scientifically accounted for (many things are known to
+be true which for the present cannot be mathematically demonstrated),
+that near the top of a mountain thirty rods are equivalent to a good
+deal more than four hundred and ninety-five feet. Let the guide-book's
+specification stand, therefore, in all its surveyor-like exactness.
+After making the climb four times in the course of eight days, I am not
+disposed to abate so much as a jot from the official figures. Rather
+than do that I would pin my faith to an unprofessional-looking
+sign-board in the rear of the hotel, on which the legend runs, "Summit
+of Owl's Head 2-1/4 miles." For aught I know, indeed (in such a world as
+this, uncertainty is a principal mark of intelligence),--for aught I
+know, both measurements may be correct; which fact, if once it were
+established, would easily and naturally explain how it came to pass that
+I myself found the distance so much greater on some days than on others;
+although, for that matter, which of the two would be actually longer, a
+path which should rise 2,743 feet in a mile and a half, or one that
+should cover two miles and a quarter in reaching the same elevation, is
+a question to which different pedestrians would likely enough return
+contradictory answers.[25]
+
+Yet let me not be thought to magnify so small a feat as the ascent of
+Owl's Head, a mountain which the ladies of the Appalachian Club may be
+presumed to look upon as hardly better than a hillock. The guide-book's
+"thirty rods" have betrayed me into saying more than I intended. It
+would have been enough had I mentioned that the way is in many places
+steep, while at the time of my visit the constant rains kept it in a
+muddy, treacherous condition. I remember still the undignified and
+uncomfortable celerity with which, on one occasion, I took my seat in
+what was little better than the rocky bed of a brook, such a place as I
+should by no means have selected for the purpose had I been granted even
+a single moment for deliberation.
+
+"Hills draw like heaven" (as applied to some of us, it may be feared
+that this is rather an under-statement), and it could not have been more
+than fifteen minutes after I landed from the Lady of the Lake--the "Old
+Lady," as one of the fishermen irreverently called her--before I was on
+my way to the summit.
+
+I was delighted then, as I was afterwards, whenever I entered the woods,
+with the extraordinary profusion and variety of the ferns. Among the
+rest, and one of the most abundant, was the beautiful _Cystopteris
+bulbifera_; its long, narrow, pale green, delicately cut, Dicksonia-like
+fronds bending toward the ground at the tip, as if about to take root
+for a new start, in the walking-fern's manner. Some of these could not
+have been less than four feet in length (including the stipe), and I
+picked one which measured about two feet and a half, and bore
+twenty-five bulblets underneath. Half a mile from the start, or
+thereabouts, the path skirts what I should call the fernery; a circular
+space, perhaps one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, set in the midst
+of the primeval forest, but itself containing no tree or shrub of any
+sort,--nothing but one dense mass of ferns. In the centre was a patch of
+the sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis), while around this, and filling
+nearly the entire circle, was a magnificent thicket of the ostrich fern
+(_Onoclea struthiopteris_), with _sensibilis_ growing hidden and
+scattered underneath. About the edge were various other species, notably
+_Aspidium Goldianum_, which I here found for the first time, and
+_Aspidium aculeatum_, var. _Braunii_. All in all, it was a curious and
+pretty sight,--this tiny tarn filled with ferns instead of water,--one
+worth going a good distance to see, and sure to attract the notice of
+the least observant traveler.[26]
+
+Ferns are mostly of a gregarious habit. Here at Owl's Head, for
+instance, might be seen in one place a rock thickly matted with the
+common polypody; in another a patch of the maiden-hair; in still another
+a plenty of the Christmas fern, or a smaller group of one of the beech
+ferns (_Phegopteris polypodioides_ or _Phegopteris Dryopteris_). Our
+grape-ferns or moonworts, on the other hand, covet more elbow-room. The
+largest species (_Botrychium Virginianum_), although never growing in
+anything like a bed or tuft, was nevertheless common throughout the
+woods; you could gather a handful almost anywhere; but I found only one
+plant of _Botrychium lanceolatum_, and only two of _Botrychium
+matricariaefolium_ (and these a long distance apart), even though, on
+account of their rarity and because I had never before seen the latter,
+I spent considerable time, first and last, in hunting for them. What can
+these diminutive hermits have ever done or suffered, that they should
+choose thus to live and die, each by itself, in the vast solitude of a
+mountain forest?
+
+It was already the middle of July, so that I was too late for the better
+part of the wood flowers. The oxalis (_Oxalis acetosella_), or
+wood-sorrel was in bloom, however, carpeting the ground in many places.
+I plucked a blossom now and then to admire the loveliness of the white
+cup, with its fine purple lines and golden spots. If each had been
+painted on purpose for a queen, they could not have been more daintily
+touched. Yet here they were, opening by the thousand, with no human eye
+to look upon them. Quite as common (Wordsworth's expression, "Ground
+flowers in flocks," would have suited either) was the alpine enchanter's
+night-shade (_Circaea alpina_); a most frail and delicate thing, though
+it has little other beauty. Who would ever mistrust, to see it, that it
+would prove to be connected in any way with the flaunting willow-herb,
+or fire-weed? But such incongruities are not confined to the "vegetable
+kingdom." The wood-nettle was growing everywhere; a juicy-looking but
+coarse weed, resembling our common roadside nettles only in its
+blossoms. The cattle had found out what I never should have
+surmised,--having had a taste of its sting,--that it is good for food;
+there were great patches of it, as likewise of the pale touch-me-not
+(_Impatiens pallida_), which had been browsed over by them. It seemed to
+me that some of the ferns, the hay-scented for example, ought to have
+suited them better; but they passed these all by, as far as I could
+detect. About the edges of the woods, and in favorable positions well up
+the mountain-side, the flowering raspberry was flourishing; making no
+display of itself, but offering to any who should choose to turn aside
+and look at them a few blossoms such as, for beauty and fragrance, are
+worthy to be, as they really are, cousin to the rose. On one of my
+rambles I came upon some plants of a strangely slim and prim aspect;
+nothing but a straight, erect, military-looking, needle-like stalk,
+bearing a spike of pods at the top, and clasped at the middle by two
+small stemless leaves. By some occult means (perhaps their growing with
+_Tiarella_ had something to do with the matter) I felt at once that
+these must be the mitrewort (_Mitella diphylla_). My prophetic soul was
+not always thus explicit and infallible, however. Other novelties I saw,
+about which I could make no such happy impromptu guess. And here the
+manual afforded little assistance; for it has not yet been found
+practicable to "analyze," and so to identify plants simply by the stem
+and foliage,--although I remember to have been told, to be sure, of a
+young lady who professed that at her college the instruction in botany
+was so thorough that it was possible for the student to name any plant
+in the world from seeing only a single leaf! But her college was not
+Harvard, and Professor Gray has probably never so much as heard of such
+an admirable method.
+
+On the whole, it is good to have the curiosity piqued with here and
+there a vegetable stranger,--its name and even its family relationship a
+mystery. The leaf is nothing extraordinary, perhaps, yet who knows but
+that the bloom may be of the rarest beauty? Or the leaf is of a gracious
+shape and texture, but how shall we tell whether the flower will
+correspond with it? No; we must do with them as with chance
+acquaintances of our own kind. The man looks every inch a gentleman; his
+face alone seems a sufficient guaranty of good-breeding and
+intelligence; but none the less,--and not forgetting that charity
+thinketh no evil,--we shall do well to wait till we have heard him talk
+and seen how he will behave, before we put a final label upon him. Wait
+for the blossom and the fruit (the blossom _is_ the fruit in its first
+stage); for the old rule is still the true one,--alike in botany and in
+morals,--"By their fruits ye shall know them."
+
+What a world within a world the forest is! Under the trees were the
+shrubs,--knee-high rock-maples making the ground verdant for acres
+together, or dwarf thickets of yew, now bearing green acorn-like
+berries; while below these was a variegated carpet, oxalis and the
+flower of Linnaeus, ferns and club-mosses (the glossy _Lycopodium
+lucidulum_ was especially plentiful), to say nothing of the true mosses
+and the lichens.
+
+Of all these things I should have seen more, no doubt, had not my head
+been so much of the time in the tree-tops. For yonder were the birds;
+and how could I be expected to notice what lay at my feet, while I was
+watching intently for a glimpse of the warbler that flitted from twig to
+twig amid the foliage of some beech or maple, the very lowest branch of
+which, likely enough, was fifty or sixty feet above the ground. It was
+in this way (so I choose to believe, at any rate) that I walked four or
+five times directly over the acute-leaved hepatica before I finally
+discovered it, notwithstanding it was one of the plants for which I had
+all the while been on the lookout.
+
+I said that the birds were in the tree-tops; but of course there were
+exceptions. Here and there was a thrush, feeding on the ground; or an
+oven-bird might be seen picking his devious way through the underwoods,
+in paths of his own, and with a gait of studied and "sanctimonious"
+originality. In the list of the lowly must be put the winter wrens also;
+one need never look skyward for _them_. For a minute or two during my
+first ascent of Owl's Head I had lively hopes of finding one of their
+nests. Two or three of the birds were scolding earnestly right about my
+feet, as it were, and their cries redoubled, or so I imagined, when I
+approached a certain large, moss-grown stump. This I looked over
+carefully on all sides, putting my fingers into every possible hole and
+crevice, till it became evident that nothing was to be gained by further
+search. (What a long chapter we could write, any of us who are
+ornithologists, about the nests we did not find!) It dawned upon me a
+little later that I had been fooled; that it was not the nest which had
+been in question at all. That, wherever it was, had been forsaken some
+days before; and the birds were parents and young, the former
+distracting my attention by their outcries, while at the same moment
+they were ordering the youngsters to make off as quickly as possible,
+lest yonder hungry fiend should catch and devour them. If wrens ever
+laugh, this pair must have done so that evening, as they recalled to
+each other my eager fumbling of that innocent old stump. This opinion as
+to the meaning of their conduct was confirmed in the course of a few
+days, when I came upon another similar group. These were at first quite
+unaware of my presence; and a very pretty family picture they made, in
+their snuggery of overthrown trees, the father breaking out into a song
+once in a while, or helping his mate to feed the young, who were already
+able to pick up a good part of their own living. Before long, however,
+one of the pair caught sight of the intruder, and then all at once the
+scene changed. The old birds chattered and scolded, bobbing up and down
+in their own ridiculous manner (although, considered by itself, this
+gesture is perhaps no more laughable than some which other orators are
+applauded for making), and soon the place was silent and to all
+appearance deserted.
+
+Notwithstanding Owl's Head is in Canada, the birds, as I soon found,
+were not such as characterize the "Canadian Fauna." Olive-backed
+thrushes, black-poll warblers, crossbills, pine linnets, and Canada
+jays, all of which I had myself seen in the White Mountains, were none
+of them here; but instead, to my surprise, were wood thrushes, scarlet
+tanagers, and wood pewees,--the two latter species in comparative
+abundance. My first wood thrush was seen for a moment only, and although
+he had given me a plain sight of his back, I concluded that my eyes must
+once more have played me false. But within a day or two, when half-way
+down the mountain path, I heard the well-known strain ringing through
+the woods. It was unquestionably that, and nothing else, for I sat down
+upon a convenient log and listened for ten minutes or more, while the
+singer ran through all those inimitable variations which infallibly
+distinguish the wood thrush's song from every other. And afterward, to
+make assurance doubly sure, I again saw the bird in the best possible
+position, and at short range. On looking into the subject, indeed, I
+learned that his being here was nothing wonderful; since, while it is
+true, as far as the sea-coast is concerned, that he seldom ventures
+north of Massachusetts, it is none the less down in the books that he
+does pass the summer in Lower Canada, reaching it, probably, by way of
+the valley of the St. Lawrence.
+
+A few robins were about the hotel, and I saw a single veery in the
+woods, but the only members of the thrush family that were present in
+large numbers were the hermits. These sang everywhere and at all hours.
+On the summit, even at mid-day, I was invariably serenaded by them. In
+fact they seemed more abundant there than anywhere else; but they were
+often to be heard by the lake-side, and in our apple orchard, and once
+at least one of them sang at some length from a birch-tree within a few
+feet of the piazza, between it and the bowling alley. As far as I have
+ever been able to discover, the hermit, for all his name and consequent
+reputation, is less timorous and more approachable than any other New
+England representative of his "sub-genus."
+
+On this trip I settled once more a question which I had already settled
+several times,--the question, namely, whether the wood thrush or the
+hermit is the better singer. This time my decision was in favor of the
+former. How the case would have turned had the conditions been reversed,
+had there been a hundred of the wood thrushes for one of the hermits, of
+course I cannot tell. So true is a certain old Latin proverb, that in
+matters of this sort it is impossible for a man to agree even with
+himself for any long time together.
+
+The conspicuous birds, noticed by everybody, were a family of hawks. The
+visitor might have no appreciation of music; he might go up the mountain
+and down again without minding the thrushes or the wrens,--for there is
+nothing about the human ear more wonderful than its ability not to hear;
+but these hawks passed a good part of every day in screaming, and were
+bound to be attended to by all but the stone-deaf. A native of the
+region pointed out a ledge, on which, according to his account, they had
+made their nest for more than thirty years. "We call them mountain
+hawks," he said, in answer to an inquiry. The keepers of the hotel,
+naturally enough, called them eagles; while a young Canadian, who one
+day overtook me as I neared the summit, and spent an hour there in my
+company, pronounced them fish-hawks. I asked him, carelessly, how he
+could be sure of that, and he replied, after a little hesitation, "Why,
+they are all the time over the lake; and besides, they sometimes dive
+into the water and come up with a fish." The last item would have been
+good evidence, no doubt. My difficulty was that I had never seen them
+near the lake, and what was more conclusive, their heads were
+dark-colored, if not really black. A few minutes after this conversation
+I happened to have my glass upon one of them as he approached the
+mountain at some distance below us, when my comrade asked, "Looking at
+that bird?" "Yes," I answered; on which he continued, in a
+matter-of-fact tone, "That's a crow;" plainly thinking that, as I
+appeared to be slightly inquisitive about such matters, it would be a
+kindness to tell me a thing or two. I made bold to intimate that the
+bird had a barred tail, and must, I thought, be one of the hawks. He did
+not dispute the point; and, in truth, he was a modest and well-mannered
+young gentleman. I liked him in that he knew both how to converse and
+how to be silent; without which latter qualification, indeed, not even
+an angel would be a desirable mountain-top companion. He gave me
+information about the surrounding country such as I was very glad to
+get; and in the case of the hawks my advantage over him, if any, was
+mainly in this,--that my lack of knowledge partook somewhat more fully
+than his of the nature of Lord Bacon's "learned ignorance, that knows
+itself."
+
+Whatever the birds may have been, "mountain hawks," "fish-hawks," or
+duck-hawks, their aerial evolutions, as seen from the summit, were
+beautiful beyond description. One day in particular three of them were
+performing together. For a time they chased each other this way and that
+at lightning speed, screaming wildly, though whether in sport or anger I
+could not determine. Then they floated majestically, high above us,
+while now and then one would set his wings and shoot down, down, till
+the precipitous side of the mountain hid him from view; only to reappear
+a minute afterward, soaring again, with no apparent effort, to his
+former height.
+
+One of these noisy fellows served me an excellent turn. It was the last
+day of my visit, and I had just taken my farewell look at the enchanting
+prospect from the summit, when I heard the lisp of a brown creeper. This
+was the first of his kind that I had seen here, and I stopped
+immediately to watch him, in hopes he would sing. Creeper-like he tried
+one tree after another in quick succession, till at last, while he was
+exploring a dead spruce which had toppled half-way to the ground, a hawk
+screamed loudly overhead. Instantly the little creature flattened
+himself against the trunk, spreading his wings to their very utmost and
+ducking his head until, though I had been all the while eying his
+motions through a glass at the distance of only a few rods, it was
+almost impossible to believe that yonder tiny brown fleck upon the bark
+was really a bird and not a lichen. He remained in this posture for
+perhaps a minute, only putting up his head two or three times to peer
+cautiously round. Unless I misjudged him, he did not discriminate
+between the screech of the hawk and the _ank, ank_ of a nuthatch, which
+followed it; and this, with an indefinable something in his manner, made
+me suspect him of being a young bird. Young or old, however, he had
+learned one lesson well, at all events, one which I hoped would keep him
+out of the talons of his enemies for long days to come.
+
+It was pleasant to see how cheerfully he resumed work as soon as the
+alarm was over. _This_ danger was escaped, at any rate; and why should
+he make himself miserable with worrying about the next? He had the true
+philosophy. We who pity the birds for their numberless perils are
+ourselves in no better case. Consumption, fevers, accidents, enemies of
+every name are continually lying in wait for our destruction. We walk
+surrounded with them; seeing them not, to be sure, but knowing, all the
+same, that they are there; yet feeling, too, like the birds, that in
+some way or other we shall elude them a while longer, and holding at
+second hand the truth which these humble creatures practice upon
+instinctively,--"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
+
+Not far from this spot, on a previous occasion, I had very unexpectedly
+come face to face with another of the creeper's blood-thirsty
+persecutors. It happened that a warbler was singing in a lofty birch,
+and being in doubt about the song (which was a little like the
+Nashville's, but longer in each of its two parts and ending with a less
+confused flourish), I was of course very desirous to see the singer. But
+to catch sight of a small bird amid thick foliage, fifty feet or more
+above you, is not an easy matter, as I believe I have already once
+remarked. So when I grew weary of the attempt, I bethought myself to
+try the efficacy of an old device, well known to all collectors, and
+proceeded to imitate, as well as I could, the cries of some bird in
+distress. My warbler was imperturbable. He had no nest or young to be
+anxious about, and kept on singing. But pretty soon I was apprised of
+something in the air, coming toward me, and looking up, beheld a large
+owl who appeared to be dropping straight upon my head. He saw me in time
+to avoid such a catastrophe, however, and, describing a graceful curve,
+alighted on a low branch near by, and stared at me as only an owl can.
+Then away he went, while at the same instant a jay dashed into the
+thicket and out again, shouting derisively, "I saw you! I saw you!"
+Evidently the trick was a good one, and moderately well played; in
+further confirmation of which the owl hooted twice in response to some
+peculiarly happy efforts on my part, and then actually came back again
+for another look. This proved sufficient, and he quickly disappeared;
+retiring to his leafy covert or hollow tree, to meditate, no doubt, on
+the strange creature whose unseasonable noises had disturbed his
+afternoon slumbers. Likely enough he could not readily fall asleep again
+for wondering how I could possibly find my way through the woods in the
+darkness of daylight. So difficult is it, we may suppose, for even an
+owl to put himself in another's place and see with another's eyes.
+
+This little episode over, I turned again to the birch-tree, and
+fortunately the warbler's throat was of too fiery a color to remain long
+concealed; though it was at once a pleasure and an annoyance to find
+myself still unacquainted with at least one song out of the
+Blackburnian's repertory. In times past I had carefully attended to his
+music, and within only a few days, in the White Mountain Notch, I had
+taken note of two of its variations; but here was still another, which
+neither began with _zillup, zillup_, nor ended with _zip, zip_,--notes
+which I had come to look upon as the Blackburnian's sign-vocal. Yet it
+must have been my fault, not his, that I failed to recognize him; for
+every bird's voice has something characteristic about it, just as every
+human voice has tones and inflections which those who are sufficiently
+familiar with its owner will infallibly detect. The ear feels them,
+although words cannot describe them. Articulate speech is but a modern
+invention, as it were, in comparison with the five senses; and since
+practice makes perfect, it is natural enough that every one of the five
+should easily, and as a matter of course, perceive shades of difference
+so slight that language, in its present rudimentary state, cannot begin
+to take account of them.
+
+The other warblers at Owl's Head, as far as they came under my notice,
+were the black-and-white creeper, the blue yellow-backed warbler, the
+Nashville, the black-throated green, the black-throated blue, the
+yellow-rumped, the chestnut-sided, the oven-bird (already spoken of),
+the small-billed water thrush, the Maryland yellow-throat, the Canadian
+flycatcher, and the redstart.
+
+The water thrush (I saw only one individual) was by the lake-side, and
+within a rod or two of the bowling alley. What a strange, composite
+creature he is! thrush, warbler, and sandpiper all in one; with such a
+bare-footed, bare-legged appearance, too, as if he must always be ready
+to wade; and such a Saint Vitus's dance! His must be a curious history.
+In particular, I should like to know the origin of his teetering habit,
+which seems to put him among the beach birds. Can it be that such
+frequenters of shallow water are rendered less conspicuous by this
+wave-like, up-and-down motion, and have actually adopted it as a means
+of defense, just as they and many more have taken on a color harmonizing
+with that of their ordinary surroundings?[27]
+
+The black-throated blue warblers were common, and like most of their
+tribe were waiting upon offspring just out of the nest. I watched one as
+he offered his charge a rather large insect. The awkward fledgeling let
+it fall three times; and still the parent picked it up again, only
+chirping mildly, as if to say, "Come, come, my beauty, don't be quite so
+bungling." But even in the midst of their family cares, they still found
+leisure for music; and as they and the black-throated greens were often
+singing together, I had excellent opportunities to compare the songs of
+the two species. The voices, while both very peculiar, are at the same
+time so nearly alike that it was impossible for me on hearing the first
+note of either strain to tell whose it was. With the voice the
+similarity ends, however; for the organ does not make the singer, and
+while the blue seldom attempts more than a harsh, monotonous _kree,
+kree, kree_, the green possesses the true lyrical gift, so that few of
+our birds have a more engaging song than his simple _Trees, trees,
+murmuring trees_, or if you choose to understand it so, _Sleep, sleep,
+pretty one, sleep_.[28]
+
+I saw little of the blue yellow-backed warbler, but whenever I took the
+mountain path I was certain to hear his whimsical upward-running song,
+broken off at the end with a smart snap. He seemed to have chosen the
+neighborhood of the fernery for his peculiar haunt, a piece of good
+taste quite in accord with his general character. Nothing could well be
+more beautiful than this bird's plumage; and his nest, which is
+"globular, with an entrance on one side," is described as a wonder of
+elegance; while in grace of movement not even the titmouse can surpass
+him. Strange that such an exquisite should have so fantastic a song.
+
+I have spoken of the rainy weather. There were times when the piazza was
+as far out-of-doors as it was expedient to venture. But even then I was
+not without excellent feathered society. Red-eyed vireos (one pair had
+their nest within twenty feet of the hotel), chippers, song sparrows,
+snow-birds, robins, waxwings, and phoebes were to be seen almost any
+moment, while the hermit thrushes, as I have before mentioned, paid us
+occasional visits. The most familiar of our door-yard friends, however,
+to my surprise, were the yellow-rumped warblers. Till now I had never
+found them at home except in the forests of the White Mountains; but
+here they were, playing the _role_ which in Massachusetts we are
+accustomed to see taken by the summer yellow-birds, and by no others of
+the family. At first, knowing that this species was said to build in low
+evergreens, I looked suspiciously at some small spruces which lined the
+walk to the pier; but after a while I happened to see one of the birds
+flying into a rock-maple with something in his bill, and following him
+with my eye, beheld him alight on the edge of his nest. "About four feet
+from the ground," the book said (the latest book, too); but this lawless
+pair had chosen a position which could hardly be less than ten times
+that height,--considerably higher, at all events, than the eaves of the
+three-story house. It was out of reach in the small topmost branches,
+but I watched its owners at my leisure, as the maple was not more than
+two rods from my window. At this time the nestlings were nearly ready
+to fly, and in the course of a day or two I saw one of them sitting in a
+tree in the midst of a drenching rain. On my offering to lay hold of him
+he dropped into the grass, and when I picked him up both parents began
+to fly about me excitedly, with loud outcries. The male, especially,
+went nearly frantic, entering the bowling alley where I happened to be,
+and alighting on the floor; then, taking to the bole of a tree, he
+fluttered helplessly upon it, spreading his wings and tail, seeming to
+say as plainly as words could have done, "Look, you monster! here's
+another young bird that can't fly; why don't you come and catch him?"
+The acting was admirable,--all save the spreading of the tail; that was
+a false note, for the youngster in my hand had no tail feathers at all.
+I put the fellow upon a tree, whence he quickly flew to the ground (he
+could fly down but not up), and soon both parents were again supplying
+him with food. The poor thing had not eaten a morsel for possibly ten
+minutes, a very long fast for a bird of his age. I hoped he would fall
+into the hands of no worse enemy than myself, but the chances seemed
+against him. The first few days after quitting the nest must be full of
+perils for such helpless innocents.
+
+For the credit of my own sex I was pleased to notice that it was the
+father-bird who manifested the deepest concern and the readiest wit, not
+to say the greatest courage; but I am obliged in candor to acknowledge
+that this feature of the case surprised me not a little.
+
+In what language shall I speak of the song of these familiar myrtle
+warblers, so that my praise may correspond in some degree with the
+gracious and beautiful simplicity of the strain itself? For music to be
+heard constantly, right under one's window, it could scarcely be
+improved; sweet, brief, and remarkably unobtrusive, without sharpness or
+emphasis; a trill not altogether unlike the pine-creeping warbler's, but
+less matter-of-fact and business-like. I used to listen to it before I
+rose in the morning, and it was to be heard at intervals all day long.
+Occasionally it was given in an absent-minded, meditative way, in a kind
+of half-voice, as if the happy creature had no thought of what he was
+doing. Then it was at its best, but one needed to be near the singer.
+
+In a clearing back of the hotel, but surrounded by the forest, were
+always a goodly company of birds, among the rest a family of
+yellow-bellied woodpeckers; and in a second similar place were
+white-throated sparrows, Maryland yellow-throats, and chestnut-sided
+warblers, the last two feeding their young. Immature warblers are a
+puzzling set. The birds themselves have no difficulty, I suppose; but
+seeing young and old together, and noting how unlike they are, I have
+before now been reminded of Launcelot Gobbo's saying, "It is a wise
+father that knows his own child."
+
+While traversing the woods between these two clearings I saw, as I
+thought, a chimney swift fly out of the top of a tree which had been
+broken off at a height of twenty-five or thirty feet. I stopped, and
+pretty soon the thing was repeated; but even then I was not quick enough
+to be certain whether the bird really came from the stump or only out of
+the forest behind it. Accordingly, after sounding the trunk to make sure
+it was hollow, I sat down in a clump of raspberry bushes, where I should
+be sufficiently concealed, and awaited further developments. I waited
+and waited, while the mosquitoes, seeing how sheltered I was from the
+breeze, gathered about my head in swarms. A winter wren at my elbow
+struck up to sing, going over and over with his exquisite tune; and a
+scarlet tanager, also, not far off, did what he could--which was
+somewhat less than the wren's--to relieve the tedium of my situation.
+Finally, when my patience was well-nigh exhausted,--for the afternoon
+was wearing away and I had some distance to walk,--a swift flew past me
+from behind, and, with none of that poising over the entrance such as is
+commonly seen when a swift goes down a chimney, went straight into the
+trunk. In half a minute or less he reappeared without a sound, and was
+out of sight in a second. Then I picked up my rubber coat, and with a
+blessing on the wren and the tanager, and a malediction on the
+mosquitoes (so unjust does self-interest make us), started homeward.
+
+Conservatives and radicals! Even the swifts, it seems, are divided into
+these two classes. "Hollow trees were good enough for our fathers; who
+are we that we should assume to know more than all the generations
+before us? To change is not of necessity to make progress. Let those who
+will, take up with smoky chimneys; for our part we prefer the old way."
+
+Thus far the conservatives; but now comes the party of modern ideas.
+"All that is very well," say they. "Our ancestors were worthy folk
+enough; they did the best they could in their time. But the world moves,
+and wise birds will move with it. Why should we make a fetish out of
+some dead forefather's example? _We_ are alive now. To refuse to take
+advantage of increased light and improved conditions may look like
+filial piety in the eyes of some: to us such conduct appears nothing
+better than a distrust of the Divine Providence, a subtle form of
+atheism. What are chimneys for, pray? And as for soot and smoke, we were
+made to live in them. Otherwise, let some of our opponents be kind
+enough to explain why we were created with black feathers."
+
+So, in brief, the discussion runs; with the usual result, no doubt, that
+each side convinces itself.
+
+We may assume, however, that these old-school and new-school swifts do
+not carry their disagreement so far as actually to refuse to hold
+fellowship with one another. Conscience is but imperfectly developed in
+birds, as yet, and they can hardly feel each other's sins and errors of
+belief (if indeed these things be two, and not one) quite so keenly as
+men are accustomed to do.
+
+After all, it is something to be grateful for, this diversity of habit.
+We could not spare the swifts from our villages, and it would be too bad
+to lose them out of the Northern forests. May they live and thrive, both
+parties of them.
+
+I am glad, also, for the obscurity which attends their annual coming and
+going. Whether they hibernate or migrate, the secret is their own; and
+for my part, I wish them the wit to keep it. In this age, when the world
+is in such danger of becoming omniscient before the time, it is good to
+have here and there a mystery in reserve. Though it be only a little
+one, we may well cherish it as a treasure.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] The guide-book allows two hours for the mile and a half on Owl's
+Head, while it gives only an hour and a half for the three miles up
+Mount Clinton--from the Crawford House.
+
+[26] To bear out what has been said in the text concerning the abundance
+of ferns at Owl's Head, I subjoin a list of the species observed;
+premising that the first interest of my trip was not botanical, and that
+I explored but a very small section of the woods:--
+
+  _Polypodium vulgare._
+  _Adiantum pedatum._
+  _Pteris aquilina._
+  _Asplenium Trichomanes._
+  _A. thelypteroides._
+  _A. Filix-foemina._
+  _Phegopteris polypodioides._
+  _P. Dryopteris._
+  _Aspidium marginale._
+  _A. spinulosum_, variety undetermined.
+  _A. spinulosum_, var. _dilatatum_.
+  _A. Goldianum._
+  _A. acrostichoides._
+  _A. aculeatum_, var. _Braunii_.
+  _Cystopteris bulbifera._
+  _C. fragilis._
+  _Onoclea struthiopteris._
+  _O. sensibilis._
+  _Woodsia Ilvensis._
+  _Dicksonia punctilobula._
+  _Osmunda regalis._
+  _O. Claytoniana._
+  _O. cinnamomea._
+  _Botrychium lanceolatum._
+  _B. matricariaefolium._
+  _B. ternatum._
+  _B. Virginianum._
+
+[27] This bird (_Siurus naevius_) is remarkable for the promptness with
+which he sets out on his autumnal journey, appearing in Eastern
+Massachusetts early in August. Last year (1884) one was in my door-yard
+on the morning of the 7th. I heard his loud chip, and looking out of the
+window, saw him first on the ground and then in an ash-tree near a crowd
+of house sparrows. The latter were scolding at him with their usual
+cordiality, while he, on his part, seemed under some kind of
+fascination, returning again and again to walk as closely as he dared
+about the blustering crew. His curiosity was laughable. Evidently he
+thought, considering what an ado the sparrows were making, that
+something serious must be going on, something worth any bird's while to
+turn aside for a moment to look into. The innocent recluse! if he had
+lived where I do he would have grown used to such "windy congresses."
+
+[28] After all that has been said about the "pathetic fallacy," so
+called, it remains true that Nature speaks to us according to our mood.
+With all her "various language" she "cannot talk and find ears too." And
+so it happens that some, listening to the black-throated green warbler,
+have brought back a report of "_Cheese, cheese, a little more cheese_."
+Prosaic and hungry souls! This voice out of the pine-trees was not for
+them. They have caught the rhythm but missed the poetry.
+
+
+
+
+                            A MONTH'S MUSIC
+
+    And now 'twas like all instruments,
+    Now like a lonely flute;
+    And now it is an angel's song,
+    That makes the heavens be mute.
+
+                           COLERIDGE.
+
+
+                            A MONTH'S MUSIC.
+
+
+The morning of May-day was bright and spring-like, and should have been
+signalized, it seemed to me, by the advent of a goodly number of birds;
+but the only new-comer to be found was a single black-and-white creeper.
+Glad as I was to see this lowly acquaintance back again after his seven
+months' absence, and natural as he looked on the edge of Warbler Swamp,
+bobbing along the branches in his own unique, end-for-end fashion, there
+was no resisting a sensation of disappointment. Why could not the wood
+thrush have been punctual? _He_ would have made the woods ring with an
+ode worthy of the festival. Possibly the hermits--who had been with us
+for several days in silence--divined my thoughts. At all events, one of
+them presently broke into a song--the first _Hylocichla_ note of the
+year. Never was voice more beautiful. Like the poet's dream, it "left my
+after-morn content."
+
+It is too much to be expected that the wood thrush should hold himself
+bound to appear at a given point on a fixed date. How can we know the
+multitude of reasons, any one of which may detain him for twenty-four
+hours, or even for a week? It is enough for us to be assured, in
+general, that the first ten days of the month will bring this master of
+the choir. The present season he arrived on the 6th--the veery with him;
+last year he was absent until the 8th; while on the two years preceding
+he assisted at the observance of May-day.
+
+All in all, I must esteem this thrush our greatest singer; although the
+hermit might dispute the palm, perhaps, but that he is merely a
+semi-annual visitor in most parts of Massachusetts. If perfection be
+held to consist in the absence of flaw, the hermit's is unquestionably
+the more nearly perfect song of the two. Whatever he attempts is done
+beyond criticism; but his range and variety are far less than his
+rival's, and, for my part, I can forgive the latter if now and then he
+reaches after a note lying a little beyond his best voice, and withal is
+too commonly wanting in that absolute simplicity and ease which lend
+such an ineffable charm to the performance of the hermit and the veery.
+Shakespeare is not a faultless poet, but in the existing state of public
+opinion it will hardly do to set Gray above him.
+
+In the course of the month about which I am now writing (May, 1884) I
+was favored with thrush music to a quite unwonted degree. With the
+exception of the varied thrush (a New-Englander by accident only) and
+the mocking-bird, there was not one of our Massachusetts representatives
+of the family who did not put me in his debt. The robin, the brown
+thrush, the cat-bird, the wood thrush, the veery, and even the hermit
+(what a magnificent sextette!)--so many I counted upon hearing, as a
+matter of course; but when to these were added the Arctic thrushes--the
+olive-backed and the gray-cheeked--I gladly confessed surprise. I had
+never heard either species before, south of the White Mountains; nor, as
+far as I then knew, had anybody else been more fortunate than myself.
+Yet the birds themselves were seemingly unaware of doing anything new or
+noteworthy. This was especially the case with the olive-backs; and after
+listening to them for three days in succession I began to suspect that
+they _were_ doing nothing new,--that they had sung every spring in the
+same manner, only, in the midst of the grand May medley, my ears had
+somehow failed to take account of their contribution. Their fourth (and
+farewell) appearance was on the 23d, when they sang both morning and
+evening. At that time they were in a bit of swamp, among some tall
+birches, and as I caught the familiar and characteristic notes--a brief
+ascending spiral--I was almost ready to believe myself in some primeval
+New Hampshire forest; an illusion not a little aided by the frequent
+lisping of black-poll warblers, who chanced just then to be remarkably
+abundant.
+
+It was on the same day, and within a short distance of the same spot,
+that the Alice thrushes, or gray-cheeks, were in song. Their music was
+repeated a good many times, but unhappily it ceased whenever I tried to
+get near the birds. Then, as always, it put me in mind of the veery's
+effort, notwithstanding a certain part of the strain was quite out of
+the veery's manner, and the whole was pitched in decidedly too high a
+key. It seemed, also, as if what I heard could not be the complete song;
+but I had been troubled with the same feeling on previous occasions, and
+a friend whose opportunities have been better than mine reports a
+similiar experience; so that it is perhaps not uncharitable to conclude
+that the song, even at its best, is more or less broken and amorphous.
+
+In their Northern homes these gray-cheeks are excessively wild and
+unapproachable; but while traveling they are little if at all worse than
+their congeners in this respect,--taking short flights when disturbed,
+and often doing nothing more than to hop upon some low perch to
+reconnoitre the intruder.
+
+At the risk of being thought to reflect upon the acuteness of more
+competent observers, I am free to express my hope of hearing the music
+of both these noble visitors again another season. For it is noticeable
+how common such things tend to become when once they are discovered. An
+enthusiastic botanical collector told me that for years he searched far
+and near for the adder's-tongue fern, till one day he stumbled upon it
+in a place over which he had long been in the habit of passing. Marking
+the peculiarities of the spot he straightway wrote to a kindred spirit,
+whom he knew to have been engaged in the same hunt, suggesting that he
+would probably find the coveted plants in a particular section of the
+meadow back of his own house (in Concord); and sure enough, the next
+day's mail brought an envelope from his friend, inclosing specimens of
+_Ophioglossum vulgatum_, with the laconic but sufficient message,
+_Eureka!_ There are few naturalists, I suspect, who could not narrate
+adventures of a like sort.
+
+One such befell me during this same month, in connection with the wood
+wagtail, or golden-crowned thrush. Not many birds are more abundant than
+he in my neighborhood, and I fancied myself pretty well acquainted with
+his habits and manners. Above all, I had paid attention to his
+celebrated love-song, listening to it almost daily for several summers.
+Thus far it had invariably been given out in the afternoon, and on the
+wing. To my mind, indeed, this was by far its most interesting feature
+(for in itself the song is by no means of surpassing beauty), and I had
+even been careful to record the earliest hour at which I had heard
+it--three o'clock P. M. But on the 6th of May aforesaid I detected a
+bird practicing this very tune in the morning, and from a perch! I set
+the fact down without hesitation as a wonder,--a purely exceptional
+occurrence, the repetition of which was not to be looked for. Anything
+might happen once. Only four days afterwards, however, at half-past six
+in the morning, I had stooped to gather some peculiarly bright-colored
+anemones (I can see the patch of rosy blossoms at this moment, although
+I am writing by a blazing fire while the snow is falling without), when
+my ear caught the same song again; and keeping my position, I soon
+descried the fellow stepping through the grass within ten yards of me,
+caroling as he walked. The hurried warble, with the common _Weechee_,
+_weechee_, _weechee_ interjected in the midst, was reiterated perhaps a
+dozen times,--the full evening strain, but in a rather subdued tone. He
+was under no excitement, and appeared to be entirely by himself; in
+fact, when he had made about half the circuit round me he flew into a
+low bush and proceeded to dress his feathers listlessly. Probably what I
+had overheard was nothing more than a rehearsal. Within a week or two he
+would need to do his very best in winning the fair one of his choice,
+and for that supreme moment he had already put himself in training. The
+wise-hearted and obliging little beau! I must have been the veriest
+churl not to wish him his pick of all the feminine wagtails in the wood.
+As for the pink anemones, they had done me a double kindness, in
+requital for which I could only carry them to the city, where, in their
+modesty, they would have blushed to a downright crimson had they been
+conscious of one-half the admiration which their loveliness called
+forth.
+
+Before the end of the month (it was on the morning of the 18th) I once
+more heard the wagtail's song from the ground. This time the affair was
+anything but a rehearsal. There were two birds,--a lover and his
+lass,--and the wooing waxed fast and furious. For that matter, it looked
+not so much like love-making as like an aggravated case of assault and
+battery. But, as I say, the male was warbling, and not improbably (so
+strange are the ways of the world), if he had been a whit less
+pugnacious in his addresses, his lady-love, who was plainly well able
+to take care of herself, would have thought him deficient in
+earnestness. At any rate, the wood wagtail is not the only bird whose
+courtship has the appearance of a scrimmage; and I believe there are
+still tribes of men among whom similar practices prevail, although the
+greater part of our race have learned, by this time, to take somewhat
+less literally the old proverb, "None but the brave deserve the fair."
+Love, it is true, is still recognized as one of the passions (in theory
+at least) even among the most highly civilized peoples; but the tendency
+is more and more to count it a _tender_ passion.
+
+While I am on the subject of marriage I may as well mention the
+white-eyed vireo. It had come to be the 16th of the month, and as yet I
+had neither seen nor heard anything of this obstreperous genius; so I
+made a special pilgrimage to a certain favorite haunt of his--Woodcock
+Swamp--to ascertain if he had arrived. After fifteen minutes or more of
+waiting I was beginning to believe him still absent, when he burst out
+suddenly with his loud and unmistakable _Chip-a-wee-o_. "Who are _you_,
+now?" the saucy fellow seemed to say, "Who are _you_, now?" Pretty soon
+a pair of the birds appeared near me, the male protesting his affection
+at a frantic rate, and the female repelling his advances with a snappish
+determination which might have driven a timid suitor desperate. He
+posed before her, puffing out his feathers, spreading his tail, and
+crying hysterically, _Yip, yip, yaah_,--the last note a downright whine
+or snarl, worthy of the cat-bird. Poor soul! he was well-nigh beside
+himself, and could not take _no_ for an answer, even when the word was
+emphasized with an ugly dab of his beloved's beak. The pair shortly
+disappeared in the swamp, and I was not privileged to witness the upshot
+of the battle; but I consoled myself with believing that Phyllis knew
+how far she could prudently carry her resistance, and would have the
+discretion to yield before her adorer's heart was irremediably broken.
+
+In this instance there was no misconceiving the meaning of the action;
+but whoever watches birds in the pairing season is often at his wit's
+end to know what to make of their demonstrations. One morning a linnet
+chased another past me down the road, flying at the very top of his
+speed, and singing as he flew; not, to be sure, the full and copious
+warble such as is heard when the bird hovers, but still a lively tune. I
+looked on in astonishment. It seemed incredible that any creature could
+sing while putting forth such tremendous muscular exertions; and yet, as
+if to show that this was a mere nothing to him, the finch had no sooner
+struck a perch than he broke forth again in his loudest and most
+spirited manner, and continued without a pause for two or three times
+the length of his longest ordinary efforts. "What lungs he must have!" I
+said to myself; and at once fell to wondering what could have stirred
+him up to such a pitch of excitement, and whether the bird he had been
+pursuing was male or female. _He_ would have said, perhaps, if he had
+said anything, that that was none of my business.
+
+What I have been remarking with regard to the proneness of newly
+discovered things to become all at once common was well illustrated for
+me about this time by these same linnets, or purple finches. One rainy
+morning, while making my accustomed rounds, enveloped in rubber, I
+stopped to notice a blue-headed vireo, who, as I soon perceived, was
+sitting lazily in the top of a locust-tree, looking rather disconsolate,
+and ejaculating with not more than half his customary voice and
+emphasis, _Mary Ware!--Mary Ware!_ His indolence struck me as very
+surprising for a vireo; still I had no question about his identity (he
+sat between me and the sun) till I changed my position, when behold! the
+vireo was a linnet. A strange performance, indeed! What could have set
+this fluent vocalist to practicing exercises of such an inferior,
+disconnected, piecemeal sort? Within the next week or two, however, the
+same game was played upon me several times, and in different places. No
+doubt the trick is an old one, familiar to many observers, but to me it
+had all the charm of novelty.
+
+There are no birds so conservative but that they will now and then
+indulge in some unexpected stroke of originality. Few are more artless
+and regular in their musical efforts than the pine warblers; yet I have
+seen one of these sitting at the tip of a tree, and repeating a trill
+which toward the close invariably declined by an interval of perhaps
+three tones. Even the chipping sparrow, whose lay is yet more monotonous
+and formal than the pine warbler's, is not absolutely confined to his
+score. I once heard him when his trill was divided into two portions,
+the concluding half being much higher than the other--unless my ear was
+at fault, exactly an octave higher. This singular refrain was given out
+six or eight times without the slightest alteration. Such freaks as
+these, however, are different from the linnet's _Mary Ware_, inasmuch as
+they are certainly the idiosyncrasies of single birds, not a part of the
+artistic proficiency of the species as a whole.
+
+During this month I was lucky enough to close a little question which I
+had been holding open for a number of years concerning our very common
+and familiar black-throated green warbler. This species, as is well
+known, has two perfectly well-defined tunes of about equal length,
+entirely distinct from each other. My uncertainty had been as to whether
+the two are ever used by the same individual. I had listened a good many
+times, first and last, in hopes to settle the point, but hitherto
+without success. Now, however, a bird, while under my eye, delivered
+both songs, and then went on to give further proof of his versatility by
+repeating one of them _minus_ the final note. This abbreviation, by the
+way, is not very infrequent with _Dendroeca virens_; and he has still
+another variation, which I hear once in a while every season, consisting
+of a grace note introduced in the middle of the measure, in such a
+connection as to form what in musical language is denominated a turn. At
+my first hearing of this I looked upon it as the private property of the
+bird to whom I was listening,--an improvement which he had accidentally
+hit upon. But it is clearly more than that; for besides hearing it in
+different seasons, I have noticed it in places a good distance apart.
+Perhaps, after the lapse of ten thousand years, more or less, the whole
+tribe of black-throated greens will have adopted it; and then, when some
+ornithologist chances to fall in with an old-fashioned specimen who
+still clings to the plain song as we now commonly hear it, he will fancy
+_that_ to be the very latest modern improvement, and proceed forthwith
+to enlighten the scientific world with a description of the novelty.
+
+Hardly any incident of the month interested me more than a discovery (I
+must call it such, although I am almost ashamed to allude to it at all)
+which I made about the black-capped titmouse. For several mornings in
+succession I was greeted on waking by the trisyllabic minor whistle of a
+chickadee, who piped again and again not far from my window. There could
+be little doubt about its being the bird that I knew to be excavating a
+building site in one of our apple-trees; but I was usually not
+out-of-doors until about five o'clock, by which time the music always
+came to an end. So one day I rose half an hour earlier than common on
+purpose to have a look at my little matutinal serenader. My conjecture
+proved correct. There sat the tit, within a few feet of his apple-branch
+door, throwing back his head in the truest lyrical fashion, and calling
+_Hear, hear me_, with only a breathing space between the repetitions of
+the phrase. He was as plainly _singing_, and as completely absorbed in
+his work, as any thrasher or hermit thrush could have been. Heretofore
+I had not realized that these whistled notes were so strictly a song,
+and as such set apart from all the rest of the chickadee's repertory of
+sweet sounds; and I was delighted to find my tiny pet recognizing thus
+unmistakably the difference between prose and poetry.
+
+But we linger unduly with these lesser lights of song. After the music
+of the Alice and the Swainson thrushes, the chief distinction of May,
+1884, as far as my Melrose woods were concerned, was the entirely
+unexpected advent of a colony of rose-breasted grosbeaks. For five
+seasons I had called these hunting-grounds my own, and during that time
+had seen perhaps about the same number of specimens of this royal
+species, always in the course of the vernal migration. The present year
+the first comer was observed on the 15th--solitary and, except for an
+occasional monosyllable, silent. Only one more straggler, I assumed. But
+on the following morning I saw four others, all of them males in full
+plumage, and two of them in song. To one of these I attended for some
+time. According to my notes "he sang beautifully, although not with any
+excitement, nor as if he were doing his best. The tone was purer and
+smoother than the robin's, more mellow and sympathetic, and the strain
+was especially characterized by a dropping to a fine contralto note at
+the end." The next day I saw nothing of my new friends till toward
+night. Then, after tea, I strolled into the chestnut grove, and walking
+along the path, noticed a robin singing freely, remarking the fact
+because this noisy bird had been rather quiet of late. Just as I passed
+under him, however, it flashed upon me that the voice and song were not
+exactly the robin's. They must be the rose-breast's then; and stepping
+back to look up, I beheld him in gorgeous attire, perched in the top of
+an oak. He sang and sang, while I stood quietly listening. Pretty soon
+he repeated the strain once or twice in a softer voice, and I glanced up
+instinctively to see if a female were with him; but instead, there were
+two males sitting within a yard of each other. They flew off after a
+little, and I resumed my saunter. A party of chimney swifts were
+shooting hither and thither over the trees, a single wood thrush was
+chanting not far away, and in another direction a tanager was rehearsing
+his _chip-cherr_ with characteristic assiduity. Presently I began to be
+puzzled by a note which came now from this side, now from that, and
+sounded like the squeak of a pair of rusty shears. My first conjecture
+about the origin of this _hic_ it would hardly serve my reputation to
+make public; but I was not long in finding out that it was the
+grosbeaks' own, and that, instead of three, there were at least twice
+that number of these brilliant strangers in the grove. Altogether, the
+half hour was one of very enjoyable excitement; and when, later in the
+evening, I sat down to my note-book, I started off abruptly in a
+hortatory vein,--"Always take another walk!"
+
+In the morning, naturally enough, I again turned my steps toward the
+chestnut grove. The rose-breasts were still there, and one of them
+earned my thanks by singing on the wing, flying slowly--half-hovering,
+as it were--and singing the ordinary song, but more continuously than
+usual. That afternoon one of them was in tune at the same time with a
+robin, affording me the desired opportunity for a direct comparison. "It
+is really wonderful," my record says, "how nearly alike the two songs
+are; but the robin's tone is plainly inferior,--less mellow and full. In
+general, too, his strain is pitched higher; and, what perhaps is the
+most striking point of difference, it frequently ends with an attempt at
+a note which is a little out of reach, so that the voice breaks." (This
+last defect, by the bye, the robin shares with his cousin the wood
+thrush, as already remarked.) A few days afterwards, to confirm my own
+impression about the likeness of the two songs, I called the attention
+of a friend with whom I was walking, to a grosbeak's notes, and asked
+him what bird's they were. He, having a good ear for matters of this
+kind, looked somewhat dazed at such an inquiry, but answered promptly,
+"Why, a robin's, of course." As one day after another passed, however,
+and I listened to both species in full voice on every hand, I came to
+feel that I had overestimated the resemblance. With increasing
+familiarity I discerned more and more clearly the respects in which the
+songs differed, and each came to have to my ear an individuality
+strictly its own. They were alike, doubtless,--as the red-eyed vireo's
+and the blue-head's are,--and yet they were not alike. Of one thing I
+grew, better and better assured: the grosbeak is out of all comparison
+the finer musician of the two. To judge from my last-year's friends,
+however, his concert season is very short--the more's the pity.
+
+I begin to perceive (indeed it has been dawning upon me for some time)
+that our essay is not to fulfill the promise of its caption. Instead of
+the glorious fullness and variety of the month's music (for May, in this
+latitude, is the musical month of months) the reader has been put off
+with a few of the more exceptional features of the carnival. He will
+overlook it, I trust; and as for the great body of the chorus, who have
+not been honored with so much as a mention, they, I am assured, are far
+too amiable to take offense at any such unintentional slight. Let me
+conclude, then, with transcribing from my note-book an evening entry or
+two. Music is never so sweet as at the twilight hour; and the extracts
+may serve at least as a convenient and quasi-artistic ending for a paper
+which, so to speak, has run away with its writer. The first is under
+date of the 19th:--
+
+    "Walked, after dinner, in the Old Road, as I have done often of
+    late, and sat for a while at the entrance to Pyrola Grove. A wood
+    thrush was singing not far off, and in the midst a Swainson thrush
+    vouchsafed a few measures. I wished the latter would continue, but
+    was thankful for the little. A tanager called excitedly,
+    _Chip-cherr_, moving from tree to tree meanwhile, once to a birch in
+    full sight, and then into the pine over my head. As it grew dark the
+    crowd of warblers were still to be seen feeding busily, making the
+    most of the lingering daylight. A small-billed water thrush was
+    teetering along a willow-branch, while his congeners, the
+    oven-birds, were practicing their aerial hymn. One of these went
+    past me as I stood by the roadside, rising very gradually into the
+    air and repeating all the way, _Chip, chip, chip, chip_, till at
+    last he broke into the warble, which was a full half longer than
+    usual. He was evidently doing his prettiest. No vireos sang after
+    sunset. A Maryland yellow-throat piped once or twice (he is
+    habitually an evening musician), and the black-throated greens were
+    in tune, but the rest of the warblers were otherwise engaged.
+    Finally, just as a distant whippoorwill began to call, a towhee sang
+    once from the woods; and a moment later the stillness was broken by
+    the sudden outburst of a thrasher. 'Now then,' he seemed to say, 'if
+    the rest of you are quite done, I will see what _I_ can do.' He kept
+    on for two or three minutes in his best manner, and at the same time
+    a pair of cat-birds were whispering love together in the thicket.
+    Then an ill-timed carriage came rattling along the road, and when it
+    had passed, every bird's voice was hushed. The hyla's tremulous cry
+    was the only musical sound to be heard. As I started away, one of
+    these tree-frogs hopped out of my path, and I picked him up at the
+    second or third attempt. What did he think, I wonder, when I turned
+    him on his back to look at the disks at his finger-tips? Probably he
+    supposed that his hour was come; but I had no evil designs upon
+    him,--he was not to be drowned in alcohol at present. Walking
+    homeward I heard the robin's scream now and again; but the
+    thrasher's was the last _song_, as it deserved to be."
+
+Two days later I find the following:--
+
+    "Into the woods by the Old Road. As I approached them, a little
+    after sundown, a chipper was trilling, and song sparrows and golden
+    warblers were singing,--as were the black-throated greens also, and
+    the Maryland yellow-throats. A wood thrush called brusquely, but
+    offered no further salute to the god of day at his departure.
+    Oven-birds were taking to wing on the right and left. Then, as it
+    grew dark, it grew silent,--except for the hylas,--till suddenly a
+    field sparrow gave out his sweet strain once. After that all was
+    quiet for another interval, till a thrasher from the hillside began
+    to sing. He ceased, and once more there was stillness. All at once
+    the tanager broke forth in a strangely excited way, blurting out his
+    phrase two or three times and subsiding as abruptly as he had
+    commenced. Some crisis in his love-making, I imagined. Now the last
+    oven-bird launched into the air and let fall a little shower of
+    melody, and a whippoorwill took up his chant afar off. This should
+    have been the end; but a robin across the meadow thought otherwise,
+    and set at work as if determined to make a night of it. Mr.
+    Early-and-late, the robin's name ought to be. As I left the wood the
+    whippoorwill followed; coming nearer and nearer, till finally he
+    overpassed me and sang with all his might (while I tried in vain to
+    see him) from a tree or the wall, near the big buttonwood. He too is
+    an early riser, only he rises before nightfall instead of before
+    daylight."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Blackbird, crow, 17;
+    red-winged, 183;
+    rusty, 216.
+
+  Bluebird, 14, 72, 160, 184, 214, 217.
+
+  Blue-gray gnatcatcher, 152.
+
+  Bobolink, 16, 78.
+
+  Bunting, bay-winged, 27, 174, 234;
+    snow, 190, 195;
+    towhee, 25, 39, 62, 178.
+
+  Butcher-bird, 5, 11, 66, 208.
+
+
+  Cat-bird, 3, 72, 114.
+
+  Cedar-bird, 26, 50, 126, 269.
+
+  Chat, yellow-breasted, 69, 152, 153.
+
+  Chewink, 25, 39, 62, 178.
+
+  Chickadee, 27, 58, 158, 202, 215, 237, 291.
+
+  Chimney swift, 23, 96, 272.
+
+  Cowbird, 183.
+
+  Creeper, brown, 20, 161, 205, 227, 262;
+    black-and-white, 21, 266, 279.
+
+  Crow, common, 26, 78, 209;
+    fish, 154, 209.
+
+  Cuckoo, black-billed, 18.
+
+
+  Finch, grass, 27, 174, 234;
+    purple, 27, 119, 173, 199, 217, 287;
+    pine, 206.
+
+  Flicker, 25, 121, 232.
+
+  Flycatcher, great-crested, 152;
+    least, 26, 36, 231;
+    phoebe, 26, 215, 230, 269;
+    wood pewee, 36, 231, 257;
+    yellow-bellied, 91.
+
+
+  Goldfinch, 16, 19, 60, 173, 188, 190, 193, 236.
+
+  Grosbeak, cardinal, 27, 37, 152, 173;
+    pine, 197;
+    rose-breasted, 173, 292.
+
+
+  Humming-bird, ruby-throated, 21.
+
+
+  Indigo-bird, 177.
+
+
+  Jay, blue, 26, 65, 208, 264;
+    Canada, 257.
+
+
+  Kingbird, 26, 78, 231.
+
+  Kingfisher, 26, 154.
+
+  Kinglet, golden-crested, 21, 203;
+    ruby-crowned, 21, 235.
+
+
+  Lark, western meadow, 40, 41;
+    shore, 206.
+
+  Linnet, 27, 119, 173, 199, 217, 287;
+    red-poll, 27, 190, 192.
+
+
+  Maryland yellow-throat, 9, 21, 85, 166, 266, 296.
+
+  Mocking-bird, 27.
+
+
+  Night-hawk, 27, 183.
+
+  Nuthatch, red-bellied, 25;
+    white-bellied, 24.
+
+
+  Oriole, Baltimore, 16, 181;
+    orchard, 154.
+
+  Oven-bird, 21, 42, 86, 124, 136, 256, 283, 296.
+
+
+  Pewee, wood 36, 231, 257.
+
+  Phoebe, 26, 215, 230, 269.
+
+
+  Red-poll linnet, 27, 190, 192.
+
+  Redstart, 21, 86, 135.
+
+  Robin, 15, 16, 35, 38, 111, 131, 160, 202, 229, 294, 298.
+
+
+  Sandpiper, spotted, 123.
+
+  Scarlet tanager, 125, 153, 171, 257, 296, 298.
+
+  Shrike, 5, 11, 66, 208.
+
+  Small-billed water thrush, 21, 86, 266.
+
+  Snow-bird, 90, 176, 208, 214, 221, 269.
+
+  Snow bunting, 190, 195.
+
+  Sparrow, chipping, 10, 16, 126, 173, 233, 289;
+    field, 27, 40, 173, 233;
+    fox-colored, 17, 173, 176, 215, 217, 218;
+    house (or "English"), 14, 17, 20, 22, 45, 110;
+    savanna, 27, 49, 78;
+    song, 15, 40, 173, 174, 200, 214, 217, 219;
+    swamp, 27;
+    tree, 27, 215;
+    white-throated, 16, 80, 207, 271.
+
+  Swallow, barn, 23;
+    white-bellied, 23, 228.
+
+  Swift, chimney, 23, 96, 272.
+
+
+  Tanager, scarlet, 125, 153, 171, 257, 296, 298.
+
+  Thrush, brown, 16, 61, 117, 158, 184, 234, 297;
+    gray-cheeked (or Alice's), 17, 140, 141, 281;
+    golden-crowned, 21, 42, 86, 124, 136, 256, 283, 296;
+    hermit, 20, 71, 86, 140, 234, 258, 279;
+    olive-backed (or Swainson's), 20, 86, 88, 140, 281;
+    small-billed water, 21, 86, 266;
+    Wilson's (or veery), 25, 71, 138;
+    wood, 38, 112, 140, 258, 279.
+
+  Titmouse, black-capped, 27, 58, 158, 202, 215, 237, 291;
+    tufted, 151.
+
+  Towhee bunting, 25, 39, 62, 178.
+
+
+  Veery, 25, 71, 138.
+
+  Vireo, (or greenlet), blue-headed, 167, 168;
+    red-eyed, 16, 167, 268;
+    solitary, 167, 168;
+    yellow-throated, 27, 167;
+    warbling, 16, 167, 168;
+    white-eyed, 40, 41, 69, 148, 167, 170, 286.
+
+
+  Warbler, bay-breasted, 85, 166;
+    Blackburnian, 86, 165, 265;
+    black-and-yellow, 85;
+    black-poll, 21, 85, 165;
+    black-throated blue, 21, 41, 86, 164, 267;
+    black-throated green, 21, 41, 86, 137, 164, 267, 290;
+    blue golden-winged, 42, 145, 164;
+    blue yellow-backed, 21, 86, 164, 268;
+    Canada, 21, 85, 266;
+    chestnut-sided, 42, 266, 271;
+    golden, 21, 164;
+    golden-crowned wagtail, 21, 42, 86, 124, 136;
+    mourning, 85;
+    Nashville, 98, 266;
+    pine-creeping, 166, 228, 237, 289;
+    prairie, 165;
+    summer yellow-bird, 21, 164;
+    worm-eating, 152;
+    yellow red-poll, 234;
+    yellow-rumped, 21, 42, 43, 86, 269.
+
+  Waxwing, 26, 50, 126, 269.
+
+  Whippoorwill, 183, 298.
+
+  Woodcock, 27, 222.
+
+  Woodpecker, downy, 25;
+    golden-winged, 25, 121, 232;
+    red-bellied, 152;
+    red-headed, 150, 205;
+    yellow-bellied, 8, 26, 271.
+
+  Wren, great Carolina, 152;
+    winter, 88, 146, 225, 256, 272.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+_Many books belong to sunshine, and should be read
+out-of-doors_--WILLMOTT.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+OUT-DOOR BOOKS
+
+_Selected from the Publications of_
+
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
+
+4 PARK ST., BOSTON; 11 EAST 17TH ST., NEW YORK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Birds and Poets, with other Papers. By JOHN BURROUGHS. 16mo, $1.50.
+
+CONTENTS: Birds and Poets; April; Touches of Nature; A Bird Medley;
+Spring Poems; Our Rural Divinity; Emerson; The Flight of the Eagle (Walt
+Whitman); Before Genius; Before Beauty.
+
+Mr. Burroughs, as a careful observer of nature, and one of the most
+fascinating descriptive writers, is an author whose reputation will
+constantly increase; for what he does in not only an addition to our
+information, but to the good literature that we put on the shelf with
+Thoreau and White of Selborne.--_Hartford Courant._
+
+
+Country By-Ways. By SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 18mo, $1.25.
+
+In free and flowing lines Miss Jewett has drawn exquisite pictures of
+river and road and woodland, that fascinate by their happiness of
+descriptive detail, and by the kinship to humanity which the author
+finds in the flowers and trees and fields. Her treatment of the
+individuality and life of nature is masterly, and the skill with which
+she projects her figures on the canvas of her imagination is effective
+and suggestive.--_Boston Transcript._
+
+
+Drift-Weed. Poems. By CELIA THAXTER. Small 4to, full gilt, $1.50
+
+None of the poets of to-day have made so deep and sympathetic a study of
+the shifting aspects of the sea as has Mrs. Thaxter, and none of them
+have interpreted its meanings and analogies with half her grace and
+subtlety.--_Boston Journal_.
+
+
+Fresh Fields. By JOHN BURROUGHS. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+CONTENTS: Nature in England; English Woods--A Contrast; In Carlyle's
+Country; A Hunt for the Nightingale; English and American Song Birds;
+Impressions of some English Birds; In Wordsworth's Country; A Glimpse of
+English Wildflowers; British Fertility; A Sunday in Cheyn Row; At Sea.
+
+
+Locusts and Wild Honey. By JOHN BURROUGHS. 16mo, $1.50.
+
+CONTENTS: The Pastoral Bees; Sharp Eyes; Is it going to rain? Speckled
+Trout; Birds and Birds; A Bed of Boughs; Birds'-Nesting; The Halcyon in
+Canada.
+
+
+My Summer in a Garden. By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 16mo, $1.00.
+
+You cannot open his book without lighting on something fresh and
+fragrant.--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+Nature. "Little Classics," Vol. XIV. 18mo, $1.00.
+
+CONTENTS: A Hunting Of the Deer, by Charles Dudley Warner; Dogs, by P.
+G. Hamerton; In the Hemlocks, by John Burroughs; A Winter Walk, by H. D.
+Thoreau; Birds and Bird Voices, by N. Hawthorne; The Fens, by C.
+Kingsley; Ascent of the Matterhorn, by Edward Whymper; Ascent of Mount
+Tyndall, by Clarence King; The Firmament, by John Ruskin.
+
+
+Nature, together with Love, Friendship, Domestic Life, Success,
+Greatness, and Immortality. By R. W. EMERSON. 32mo, 75 cents; _School
+Edition_, 40 cents.
+
+
+Pepacton. By JOHN BURROUGHS. 16mo, $1.50.
+
+CONTENTS: Pepacton; A Summer Voyage; Springs; An Idyl of the Honey-Bee;
+Nature and the Poets; Notes by the Way; Foot-Paths; A Bunch of Herbs;.
+Winter Pictures; A Camp in Maine; A Spring Relish.
+
+
+Poems. By R. W. EMERSON. With Portrait. _Riverside Edition_. 12mo, gilt
+top, $1.75.
+
+This volume contains nearly all the pieces included in the former
+editions of "Poems" and "May-Day," beside other poems not hitherto
+published. The collection includes a very large number of poems devoted
+to nature and natural scenery.
+
+
+Poems. By CELIA THAXTER. Small 4to, full gilt, $1.50.
+
+They are unique in many respects. Our bleak and rocky New England
+sea-coast, all the wonders of atmospherical and sea-change, have, I
+think, never before been so musically or tenderly sung about.--JOHN G.
+WHITTIER.
+
+
+Poetic Interpretation of Nature. By Principal J. C. SHAIRP. 16mo, gilt
+top, $1.25.
+
+Full of learning and genuine appreciation of the poetry of
+Nature.--_Portland Press._
+
+
+Seaside Studies in Natural History. By ALEXANDER AGASSIZ and ELIZABETH
+C. AGASSIZ. Illustrated, 8vo, $3.00.
+
+The scene of these "Studies" is Massachusetts Bay.
+
+
+Summer. Selections from the journals of H. D. THOREAU. With a Map of
+Concord. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.
+
+He was the one great observer of external nature whom America has yet
+produced, a most subtle portrayer of his own personal thoughts and life,
+a tribune of the people, a man who joined the strongest powers of
+thought with an absolute love of liberty and a perfect fearlessness of
+mind.--_The Independent_ (New York).
+
+
+Wake-Robin. By John Burroughs. Revised and enlarged edition,
+illustrated. 16mo, $1.50.
+
+CONTENTS: The Return of the Birds; In the Hemlocks; Adirondac;
+Birds'-Nests; Spring at the Capital; Birch Browsings; The Bluebird; The
+Invitation.
+
+
+Winter Sunshine. By JOHN BURROUGHS. New Edition, revised and enlarged,
+with frontispiece illustration. 16mo, $1.50.
+
+CONTENTS: Winter Sunshine; Exhilarations of the Road; The Snow Walkers;
+The Fox; A March Chronicle; Autumn Tides; The Apple; An October Abroad.
+
+The minuteness of his observation, the keenness Of his perception, give
+him a real originality, and his sketches have a delightful oddity,
+vivacity, and freshness.--_The Nation_ (New York).
+
+
+*** _For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of
+price by the Publishers,_
+
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., BOSTON, MASS.
+
+
+The Gypsies.
+
+By CHARLES G. LELAND.
+
+Containing accounts of the Russian, Austrian, English, Welsh, and
+American Gypsies; together with Papers on the Gypsies in the East, Gypsy
+Names and Family Characteristics, the Origin of the Gypsies, a Gypsy
+Magic Spell, Shelta, the Tinker's Talk; beside Gypsy Stories in Romany,
+with Translations. In one volume, crown 8vo, red top, $2.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_From the New York Tribune._
+
+Mr. Leland thoroughly understands the love of the gypsy for the free and
+picturesque life out-of-doors; he feels it too; his pages glow with it;
+his fragments of description borrow from it an irresistible charm. He
+brings therefore to the writing of these fascinating chapters the rare
+qualifications of an exquisite sympathy with his subject and a poetic
+intuition of its inner character. But his enthusiasm is tempered by his
+shrewdness, and saved from extravagance by his keen sense of humor. It
+is impossible to read such a book without sharing the author's delight
+in the queer and not over reputable but highly romantic company to which
+it introduces us; and yet it is a great storehouse of serious and
+recondite information.
+
+_From The Independent (New York)._
+
+A volume beautiful for type and paper, fresh and full with the strange,
+mysterious history of the race of which it treats. It abounds in
+interesting studies of the language, in which the author is at home, and
+of the people. His sketches embrace experiences among gypsies of
+different nations,--Russian, Austrian, English, Welsh, and
+American,--and are original and immensely entertaining. The volume
+contains a number of excellent gypsy songs, well translated.
+
+_From The Churchman (New York)._
+
+The book is, on many accounts, both valuable and fascinating, and is
+undoubtedly the fullest and most reliable account of the gypsies ever
+written.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+*** _For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of
+price by the Publishers,_
+
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., BOSTON, MASS.
+
+
+
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