Birds and "Birds"

I.

WITH the desire to record certain fond and unscientific observations with regard to our winged friends and neighbors came the fanciful persuasion that this design would be furthered could the writer obtain, for scriptorial purposes, an eaglequill. Then, as if to satirize an ambition so overweening, there was placed in my path one of the longer feathers from a humming-birdwing. The omen was accepted, and although the offered pen (penna) was impracticable to my hand, it was preserved, to remind me that the Chorus of Birds must be left to Aristophanes, and to Ruskin all defining of the spiritual mystery contained within that exquisite embodiment of beauty, the bird. No less to the savant must be left the consideration of its specific description and curious data of a biological character. But in passing. somewhat unwillingly I recall that occasionally in the glance of a birdeye, so open yet so subtle, and occasionally in the markings upon its coat of imbricated plumes, an emphasis has been given to the suggestion of a remote common ancestor for my lovely subject and for the reptilian cousin that never exchanged its scales for plumes, or the ooze of the ancient strand for the realms of air. But if a varied adaptability and varied locomotive powers were taken as indications of superior organism, I know not, then, why the bird should not stand at the head of all created orders, — the one family to whom, in its range, is given right of way by earth, water, air; and ability also to walk or run, to wade, swim, or dive, and the consummate gift of flight. Until man shall learn to fly should he boast preëminence ?

Exclusion from the privilege of speaking with learned intelligence and authority regarding the names conferred upon the birds by the student must also be accepted. Ignorance or aptitude, it is all the same to the birds, happily I remember. They have no concern in any

QUESTION OF NOMENCLATURE.

Technical disputations of this sort are most absurd; yet, on the other hand, it could be wished that an acquaintance with birds by sight and a recognition of their individual notes, with some knowledge of their popular names, were more general among those who have the opportunity for such pleasant intimacy. There are but some half dozen birds in the average farmer’s range of practical observation, — the robin, sparrow, meadow lark, blackbird, crow, and quail.

It is, of course, the poet’s special prerogative to claim comradeship and kinship with the singing ones whose lyrics are flung about the air “ in profuse strains of unpremeditated art,”and die with no commemorative record of the written character ; for what is so futile as the attempt to render a bird’s song by the use of musical notes, or to venture its interpretation, even, in any collocation of human words ? However, I do not go so far in the matter of reprehension as does a lady of my acquaintance, who thinks it a “ positive wickedness ” in the small boy when he attempts a whistled mimicry of her favorites. It is to overlay a violet with sugar or to gild refined gold, when one sets out to poetize the melody or movement of a bird’s song. But may I say that I have a half sympathy with those youthful friends of the Muse who are found guilty of solecisms in their sweeping impressment of ornithological subjects from afar? True, we cannot have skylarks afloat on the sea of air that sweeps our Western prairies, nor can we have nightingales singing where the whip-poor-will is head chorister ; yet does it seem to me that the poet and the idealist have a prescriptive right to all the birds there are (and to those that are not, as the doves of Dodona, the birds that flew from Memnon’s funeral pyre, the phœnix and the dodo, and the little bird that sings one’s soul away in Arabia Deserta). The true lover and diviner of birds will keep an eye on those which share his own habitat, and an ear cognizant of their songs; yet, as he is true poet, will he own a quenchless sense of pleasure in those unheard songs that are sweeter, in the land of Keats and Shelley. A bird of passage itself, his soul follows the lure of voices and flight beyond his own horizon. Still, a special betrayal awaits that idealist who in the midst of nature takes up with the pleasing assumption that all things there relate themselves to him and to his capacity for enjoying them. Some time must he overhear that the flowers bloom for themselves, and not, primarily, for him ; and as to the birds, it may chance there will be conveyed to him some bit of current and humiliating public sentiment like the following : —

II.

Were it required to give on the moment a symbol for the universal principle of wholesome hunger, natural avidity, I would but cross my two forefingers as indicating the young bird’s ever open mouth. Indeed, I should not be surprised to learn that some ancient picture-writing had anticipated this hieroglyphic suggestion. That the suggestion is justifiable any one will bear witness who has attempted to bring up “by hand” a kidnapped or a foundling bird. The quantum of food consumed daily by an under-fledgeling (if I may so call the infant bird not yet at all able to shift, for itself) is something startling; and the matter of “providing,” even for a giant adoptive parent, is by no means a light task, if the constant appeal of the open and accusing mouth is to be duly regarded. How long before the baby bird gets the coöperative use of the bifid beak! A human child could not be more awkward in learning to feed itself ; but then, the poor bird-child has, as it were, a knife and fork for its mouth. In my experience, the care of a young bird is accompanied with a grotesque sense of tenderness, as of nurse Glumdalclitch for little Gulliver, in the foster-parent’s feeling towards this downy nestling, — this mere feathered egg so long retaining the contour of the walls of its brittle prison. There is nothing to parallel the supreme and pathetic confidence of the young bird in the hand which feeds it, and which might crush it on the instant if that hand would. Such pleasing “Auguries of Innocence " have in this way been shown me as nearly to cause forgetfulness of the annexed menace: —

1 shall not shirk the confession that in several instances I have been accessory to the taking of young birds from the parent nest, but the nemesis that followed up the act was in each case distinct and unsparing. L shall not soon forget the accusation levied at me when, stooping with lighted lamp, I beheld, resting halfway down the stairs, one of these detained innocents. It had somehow managed to escape durance, but, benighted on its way to freedom, it had halted, and, with head under wing, and apparently having trustingly committed itself to Providence, it awaited the light, to continue its righteous quest. I had, moreover, a poignant fancy that, before going to sleep, it had put up a prayer (in the bird’s way) soliciting forgiveness for its enemy. Again, helping a friend to secure a young thrush, it was my lot to experience what a bird’s curse is like, — a note not to be forgotten, rapid, guttural, instinct with hate, denunciatory, from the very soul of the mother-thrush it came. My companion declared that its equivalent sound and meaning in human vocables could be approximated only by the line, —

While speaking of nests and traits of bird nature, one questions why the feathered founders of a home so readily desert it, not only in case of actual disturbance, but sometimes on mere suspicion of a too interested surveillance. This resentful abandonment of domestic hopes does not, somehow, comport with the devotion and toil which characterize the bird-parents’ rearing of their young ; nor, to my knowledge, does any other creature behave in a like fashion.

THE DESERTED NEST.

I have spoken of subtlety in the glance of a bird’s eye as betokening a remote kinship in primeval time with the saurian kind. But my heart misgives me when I think of the alleged (and perhaps actual) charming of the bird by ophidian witchcraft, and also when I reflect upon the defenselessness of the bird, how devoid it is of predatory arts ; neither lying in wait for its victim, after the manner of feline nature, nor delighting in the prolonged pangs of the feebler creature it may have caught. Even the acknowledged birds of prey are not chargeable with this relish for playful cruelty. Such craft, for instance, as any of our familiar song-birds may display is directed merely towards the protection of itself or its offspring: it feigns dead that you may not regard it as “ worth your while ; ” it trails an unhurt wing, with pitiful cries, to lead you away from its nest. These devices do not impress us as real cunning, but rather as the artless arts of the infantine and inexperienced. In view of the multiplied dangers that beset the bird from the nest, its lover could almost complain that, by some oversight, Providence had left it as unpossessed of strategy as of strength against its foes.

It may well be that the instinct of the fowler is not to be rooted from the human breast. I do not exactly know why we should wish to catch birds and tame them, but true it is of the most of those interested at all in the subject — and quite literally true — that “ a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” I do not know why we should wish to tame them any more than we should wish to tame the west wind, or the sunset, or Fancy herself ! Beautiful, fugitive, elusive things, birds in a cage are no more the creatures they were than a woodflower is of the woods when in a vase on the mantelpiece. Essentially, the wings are the bird ; and captive song cannot make up to the imagination what is lost when the bird’s free flight is foregone. Yet there is a distinct though rather unaccountable pleasure in holding in one’s hand this slight creature of paradox (so timorous yet so fearless, so helpless yet so defying), — this soft, wild, mysterious ranger that no word could stay nor cord bind but the moment before. Whoever cherishes a cage-bird has by him what serves as a perpetual symbol of the human spirit, environed, ignorant-contented or ignorant - protesting ; usually, in the bird’s case at least, ignorant-contented, if the bird was in its infancy deprived of liberty.

But the same bird that in the foregoing points the moral of a fable, upon his actual introduction to the out-door world appeared well aware of having come into his heritage ; and I shall not forget the glance of the round, innocent, inspective eye, for the first time turned upon the vast orb of the sky, - two disks of unconscious speculation thus opposed to each other. While I was speaking about “ Auguries of Innocence" I should have mentioned a token of this sort which not long ago came under my observation. From a last year’s robin’s nest which the storms had thrown to the ground was trailing a tatter of newspaper. The rain had effaced the type thereon to illegibility, with the exception of a paragraph noting an appointment for a meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, in a neighboring city. Had the former nest-holder been interested in that meeting ? Had he attended it, in a public-spirited way, and in behalf of the whole bird community entered his protest against some crying evil of the hour ?

III.

It is but to think of the widely differentiated individuals of the feathered tribe, to give a delightful diversity to any landscape held in the mind’s eye. The grass-lands have their own broods, the forests theirs ; nay, more, the denizens of the pine grove are often other than those to whom the deciduous trees give shelter. The shore and the great waters are haunted by the osprey, while the inland streams know well the little sand-lark and its tremulous cry. Also, in character and in voice the birds are distinguished in a manner to give a kaleidoscopic pleasure to the imagination through the eye and the ear. The silence we ascribe to the eagle, the volubility which speaks for itself in the chickadee, the boisterous fusillade of the high-holder’s notes, the clever sweetness of the song sparrow’s, the drumming of the partridge from the deep woods, the musical susurrus of the humming-bird’s wings as it hovers at the door of the trumpetflower, — these few contrarieties serve to illustrate the riches of the inexhaustible antitheses which the birds themselves and their songs present. Seasonal divisions, also, the mind readily makes: the bluejay to the stormy stream of the March winds, the warbler in the blossoming orchard, the meadow lark to the summer meadows (how like an antheming echo running through some sacred sylvan interior is his call!). And in the autumn, what note so characteristic as the interrupted quavering, plaintive syllable of inquiry incessantly repeated by the flocking thistle-birds ! Though now no thorn blossoms, yet might one reply : —

Those slightly utilitarian lovers of nature who are given to arranging floral timepieces might advisably take the hint which is afforded in the succession of bird-songs between dawn and evening dusk, and thereby portion out the hours of the day. For instance, the time between daybreak and morning-red is claimed by the wood pewee’s aerial note moving in undulatory sound through the dark treetops (never perchance from the earth). This note is silent before

any save lightest sleepers, much visited by morning dreams, blend with their dreams, from time to time, slight realities from the outer world. Tree-nesting birds, having a natural observatory and superior point of view, might therefore be expected to send out the first notes of an aubade soon taken up by the full chorus, — robins, song sparrows, and others. The wonted four-o’clock morning concert has usually subsided by the time the sun peeps over the horizon. What the birds may be about during the silent interval that succeeds has always been an interesting question for me ; but this musical rest between the early prelude and the full song service of the day seems to be a matter of general consent and intelligent understanding. With hot summer noons is connected the shrill, rapid, monotonous, and insect-like note of the little chipping sparrow. In the late afternoon the brown thrush mounts to his favorite high branch, and there for a half hour or more continues his delicious performance, oblivious of all worldly cares. In the evening, if you walkthrough the dusking fields or by the deeper-shadowed wood borders, an enchanted bird flits on before you, lighting now on the fence rail, now on some conspicuous stone, and thence throwing out a lure of brief, sweet melody touched by twilight and the dew. This is the vesper swallow. Nocturnal voices we do not lack, though the nightingale is denied us. Yet the one most notable voice of the night can scarcely be said to be a popular favorite, for when the whip-poorwill in new countries strays out of the near woods, and in its darkling ignorance and blundering unsuspicion lights in the porch of the settler’s house, the inmates hear in its song, so full of the vague conjecture and sombre rumination of the night, only the announcement of an impending death. A voice not commonly noticed among voices of the dark hours is that of the killdeer. On moonlight nights, from chosen meadow haunts goes a quick, glancing alarum note which belongs to this bird. Other birds occasionally sing after dark, perhaps dreamingly, often with striking regularity, as in the case of a certain song sparrow whose record I kept for several nights in succession. Faithfully at 9.20 P. M. the little bellman of his own precinct rang out a clear “ All’s well! ”

Such is the impression that the first spring days make upon the mind that the sunshine “sounds and sweet airs” follow one far into the dusk and stillness of the night. I no sooner settle my head upon the pillow than I begin to hear bluebird antiphonies, soft whistling calls sent back and forth through the smooth air as I have heard them all day. Notable among these bird-songs of the day that penetrate into the night is that of

THE ORIOLE.

Not only is the time of day kept by the winged community, but also barometrical conditions are indicated by their movements, activity or passivity. Will it rain ? Will the winter be a cold one ? are questions which it is supposed are within the province of the bird to answer. Not alone in the days of Aristophanes might the bird boast of being Apollo’s oracle to portent-seeking mortals ; for there are yet believers in the flying omen. Of my own acquaintance is a good old dame for whom the casual instraying bird, as well as her every dream, enters by the horn gate. For myself, I cannot deny that once when a swallow (in pursuit of an insect, doubtless) darted in at my window, made a rapid circuit of the room, and out again, I experienced a sense of being designated by fate in some peculiar and occult way. It seemed that the day thus marked with live hieroglyphic should have been fraught with unusual significance in its occurrences. I still think there may have been augury and import in the behavior of the housewren who had all summer, with his family, lived in the little “addition” under the eaves built for his benefit, and who but yesterday came to take a hurried good-by of other householders. A quick, silent token at the window, a flip of his absurd perpendicular tail, a meaningful glance from his bright mischievous eye, and he was a-wing, Southbound, a minute eddy in the unceasing migratory current that sets in from our autumnal shore to summer seats of the blessed, named for the halcyon. Again, a touch of glamour was laid upon the hour and the scene, when, looking out of the window, I observed that a row of young trees, whose leaves had been shed some days before, appeared to be reclothed with leafage, and leafage of a peculiar sharp-cut, purplish description. The next instant, however, as though a sudden autumn gust had swept the trees, this pseudo - leafage rose and fluttered into the still air, —

My leaves were only an extensive flock of these birds, probably in consultation as to the journey soon to be made towards the wooing South. When the air is finally almost emptied of song and flight, the imagination has its own pleasure in picturing the bird of passage arrived, and in the midst of the new-old environments of its other home. Yet where its young have been reared must its fuller allegiance always be, and the seductions of the South shall not stifle the equally strong instinct of return, when some months are gone.

The first large flakes of the winter are falling. Looking through their descending cloud, which is as a sort of loose “solid contents,” giving to the unmeasured air the three dimensions. I also seem to see the hyperborean flocks which Herodotus had heard of as constantly stirring in the heavens of the far north. Collecting, they brood with soft cold tenderness the empty robin’s nest, or from the recesses of pine branches present the “ great snowy owl,”or even lodged among marginal débris and whipped-up foam glide down the swollen streams as white swans, dissolving with inaudible death-song, as befits their kind. And among these snowbirds of the fancy flies the occasional snowbird of actuality, with the chickadee and the woodpecker, for all of whom I pray there may be no other enemy than winter and rough weather !

Withdrawing from the snowy prospect to the fireside, reminiscence mingles with the present, and the long-past summer confers mysteriously with the powers of the dead of the year, and still a bird shall interpret for me.

CHIMNEY-SWIFTS.

THE RING OF CANACE.

(WITH APOLOGIES TO CHAUCER, SPENSER, MILTON.)

Edith M. Thomas.