Chapter V: Part 5

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 Müller, "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."