Читать книгу: «Under the Maples», страница 4
When the nest-building actually began, the birds were so shy about it that, watch as I might, I failed to catch them in the act. One morning I saw the mother bird in the garden with nesting-material in her beak, but she failed to come to the honeysuckle with it while I watched from a near-by covert. At the same time robins were flying here and there with loaded beaks, and wood thrushes were going through the air trailing long strips of white paper behind them, but the catbird was an emblem of secrecy itself. She, too, brought fragments of white paper to her nest, but no one saw her do it. Like other nest-builders, she apparently put in her big strokes of work in the early morning before the sleepers on the veranda were stirring. A few times my inquisitive eye, cautiously peering over the railing, started her from the vine, but I never saw her enter it with leaf, stick, or straw; yet slowly the nest grew and came into shape, and finally received its finishing touches. So cautiously had the birds proceeded that, were they capable of concepts like us, I should fancy they flattered themselves that we had not the least suspicion of their little secret. The male ceased to sing near the house after the nest was begun. So much time elapsed after the finishing of the nest before the first egg appeared in it that some members of the household feared the birds had deserted it, especially as they were not seen about the premises for several days. But the weather was wet and cool, and the eggs ripened slowly. Then one morning the birds were seen again, and one blue-green egg was discovered in the nest. The next morning another egg was added, and a third egg on the third morning, and a fourth on the fourth morning. In due time incubation began, and thenceforth all went well with our dusky neighbors.
It is an anxious moment for all birds when their young leave the nest. One noontime by the unusual mewing of a parent catbird I felt sure that the critical time had come. Sure enough, there sat one of the young on a twig a few inches above the nest, motionless and hushed. No lusty response to the agitated cry of the mother, as is usually the case with the robin. "No publicity" is the watchword of the young catbirds as well as of the old. An hour or two later another young one was perched on a branch, and before night, when no one was looking, they both disappeared, leaving two motionless birds in the nest. The next morning early, without any signs of alarm or agitation on the part of the old birds, they took the important step. It could hardly have been much of a flight with any of them, as their wing-quills were only partially developed, and their tails were mere stubs. For several days afterward no sign or sound of old or young was seen or heard. They were probably keeping well concealed in the near-by trees or in the vines and currant-bushes in the vineyard. In about a week the whole family appeared briefly in upper branches of the maples near the house. The young were distinguishable from the old only by their shorter tails. A few days later the parent birds were seen moving stealthily through the vines and bushes about the house, or perching on the near-by stakes that supported the wire netting. Are they coming back for a second brood? was the question in our minds.
Soon we began to hear snatches of song from the male, then one morning a regular old-time burst of joy from him in the vine that held the old nest. Then he sang in a syringa-bush near the window on the south side of the cottage, and both birds were soon seen paying frequent visits to the bush. We felt sure another brood was in the air. Whether or not the first brood were now shifting for themselves, we did not know; they never again appeared upon the scene. Finally, on the morning of the Fourth of July, the foundation of a new nest was started in the syringa-bush three feet from the ground, and barely four feet from the window!
We had a view of the proceedings that the first site did not afford us. The old nest appeared to be in perfect condition, but there was evidently no thought with the birds of using it again, as the robins sometimes do, and as bluebirds and cliff swallows always do. A new nest, built of material almost identical with that of the old, and in a more exposed position, was decided upon. It progressed rapidly, and I was delighted to find that the male assisted in the building. Indeed, he was fully as active as the female. Very often they were both in the nest with material at the same moment. They seemed to agree perfectly. At first I got the impression that the male was not quite as decided as the female, and hesitated more, once or twice bringing material that he finally rejected. But he soon warmed up to the work and certainly did his share.
With most species of our birds the nest is entirely built by the female. With the robin, the wood thrush, the ph[oe]be, the oriole, the hummingbird, the pewee, and many others, the male is only an interested spectator of the proceeding. He usually attends his mate in her quest for material, but does not lend a hand, or a bill. I think the cock wren assists in nest-building. I know the male cedar-bird does, and probably the male woodpeckers do also. The male rose-breasted grosbeak assists in incubation, and has been seen to sing upon the nest. It seems fair to infer that he assists in the nest-building also, but I am not certain that he does, and I have heard another observer state that in a nest which he watched the female apparently did it all.
My catbirds both worked overtime one afternoon at least, being on their job as late as seven o'clock. In three days the nest was done, all but touching up the interior. During the construction I laid out pieces of twine and bits of white paper on the bushes and wire netting, also some loose material from the outside of the old nest; all was quickly used. How much labor the birds would have saved themselves had they pulled the old nest to pieces and used the material a second time! I have known the oriole to start a nest, then change her mind, and then detach some of her strings and fibers and carry them to the new site; and I once saw a "chebec" whose eggs had been destroyed pull the old nest to pieces and rebuild it in a tree a hundred feet away.
The male catbird is slightly brighter and fresher-looking than his mate, but we could easily tell her by her often simulating the actions of a young bird when she came with material in her beak; she would alight on a near-by post and slightly spread and quiver her wings in a tender, beseeching kind of way. She would do this also when bringing food to her first brood. When one of the parent birds of any species simulates by voice or manner the young birds, it is always the female; her heart would naturally be more a-quiver with anticipation than that of the male.
On the fifth day the nest was completed and received its first egg. There was considerable delay with the second egg, but it appeared on the second or third day, and the third egg the following day. Then incubation began. In twenty days from the day the nest was begun, the birds were hatched, and in eleven days more they had quietly left the nest.
A friend of mine who has a summer home on one of the trout-streams of the Catskills discovered that the catbird was fond of butter, and she soon had one of the birds coming every day to the dining-room window for its lump of fresh butter, and finally entering the dining-room, perching on the back of the chair, and receiving its morsel of butter from a fork held in the mistress's hand. I think the butter was unsalted. My friend was convinced after three years that the same pair of birds returned to her each year, because each season the male came promptly for his butter.
The furtive and stealthy manners of the catbird contrast strongly with the frank, open manners of the thrushes. Its cousin the brown thrasher goes skulking about in much the same way, flirting from bush to bush like a culprit escaping from justice. But he does love to sing from the April tree-tops where all the world may see and hear, if said world does not come too near. In the South and West the thrasher also nests in the vicinity of houses, but in New York and New England we must look for him in remote, bushy fields. I do not know of any bad traits that go with the thrasher's air of suspicion and secrecy, but I do know of one that goes with the catbird's – I have seen her perch on the rim of another bird's nest and deliberately devour the eggs. But only once. Whether or not she frequently does this, I have no evidence. If she does, she is doubtless so sly about it that she escapes observation.
I welcomed the catbird, though she is not so attractive a neighbor as the wood thrush. She has none of the wood thrush's dignity and grace. She skulks and slinks away like a culprit, while the wood thrush stands up before you or perches upon a limb, and turns his spotted waistcoat toward you in the most open and trusting manner. In fact, few birds have such good manners as the wood thrush, and few have so much the manner of a Paul Pry and eavesdropper as the catbird. The flight of the wood thrush across the lawn is such a picture of grace and harmony, it is music to the eye. The catbird seems saying, "There, there! I told you so, pretty figure, pretty figure you make!" But the courteous thrush (just here I heard the excited calls of robins and the hoarse, angry caw of a crow, and rushed out hatless to see a fish crow fly away from the maple in front of the Study, pursued by a mob of screeching robins. He took refuge in the spruces above the house where the collected robins abused him from surrounding branches. On my appearance he flew away, and the robins dispersed) – but the courteous thrush, I say, invites the good-breeding in you which he himself shows. The thrush never has the air of a culprit, while the catbird seldom has any other air. But I welcome them both. One shall stand for the harmony and repose of bird life, and the other for its restlessness and curiosity. The songs and the manners of birds correspond. The catbird, the brown thrasher, and the mockingbird are all theatrical in their manners – full of gestures of tail and wings, and their songs all imply an audience, while the serene melody of the thrushes is in keeping with the grace and poise of their behavior.
V
A MIDSUMMER IDYL
As I sit here of a midsummer day, in front of the wide-open doors of a big hay-barn, busy with my pen, and look out upon broad meadows where my farmer neighbor is busy with his haymaking, I idly contrast his harvest with mine. I have to admit that he succeeds with his better than I do with mine, though he can make hay only while the sun shines, while I can reap and cure my light fancies nearly as well in the shade as in the sun. Yet his crop is the surer and of more certain value to mankind. But I have this advantage over him – I might make literature out of his haymaking, or might reap his fields after him, and gather a harvest he never dreamed of. What does Emerson say?
One harvest from the field
Homeward bring the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.
But the poet, like the farmer, can reap only where he has sown, and if Emerson had not scattered his own heart in the fields his Muse would not reap much there. Song is not one of the instruments with which I gather my harvest, but long ago, as a farm boy, in haymaking, and in driving the cows to and from the pasture, I planted myself there, and whatever comes back to me now from that source is honestly my own. The second crop which I gather is not much more tangible than that which the poet gathers, but the farmer as little suspects its existence as he does that of the poet. I can use what he would gladly reject. His daisies, his buttercups, his orange hawkweed, his yarrow, his meadow-rue, serve my purpose better than they do his. They look better on the printed page than they do in the haymow. Yes, and his timothy and clover have their literary uses, and his new-mown hay may perfume a line in poetry. When one of our poets writes, "wild carrot blooms nod round his quiet bed," he makes better use of this weed than the farmers can.
Certainly a midsummer day in the country, with all its sights and sounds, its singing birds, its skimming swallows, its grazing or ruminating cattle, its drifting cloud-shadows, its grassy perfumes from the meadows and the hillsides, and the farmer with his men and teams busy with the harvest, has material for the literary artist. A good hay day is a good day for the writer and the poet, because it has a certain crispness and pureness; it is positive; it is rich in sunshine; there is a potency in the blue sky which you feel; the high barometer raises your spirits; your thoughts ripen as the hay cures. You can sit in a circle of shade beneath a tree in the fields, or in front of the open hay-barn doors, as I do, and feel the fruition and satisfaction of nature all about you. The brimming meadows seem fairly to purr as the breezes stroke them; the trees rustle their myriad leaves as if in gladness; the many-colored butterflies dance by; the steel blue of the swallows' backs glistens in the sun as they skim the fields; and the mellow boom of the passing bumble-bee but enhances the sense of repose and contentment that pervades the air. The hay cures; the oats and corn deepen their hue; the delicious fragrance of the last wild strawberries is on the breeze; your mental skies are lucid, and life has the midsummer fullness and charm.
As I linger here I note the oft-repeated song of the scarlet tanager in the maple woods that crown a hill above me, and in the loft overhead two broods of swallows are chattering and lining up their light-colored breasts on the rims of their nests, or trying their newly fledged wings while clinging to its sides. The only ominous and unwelcome sound is the call of the cuckoo, which I hear and have heard at nearly all hours for many days, and which surely bodes rain. The countryman who first named this bird the "rain crow" hit the mark. The cuckoo is a devourer of worms and caterpillars, and why he should be interested in rain is hard to see. The tree-toad calls before and during a shower, mainly, I think, because he likes to have his back wet, but why a well-dressed bird like the cuckoo should become a prophet of the rain is a mystery, unless the rain and the shadows are congenial to the gloomy mood in which he usually seems to be. He is the least sprightly and cheery of our birds, and the part of doleful prophet in our bird drama suits him well.
A high barometer is best for the haymakers and it is best for the human spirits. When the smoke goes straight up, one's thoughts are more likely to soar also, and revel in the higher air. The persons who do not like to get up in the morning till the day has been well sunned and aired evidently thrive best on a high barometer. Such days do seem better ventilated, and our lungs take in fuller draughts of air. How curious it is that the air should seem heavy to us when it is light, and light when it is heavy! On those sultry, muggy days when it is an effort to move, and the grasshopper is a burden, the air is light, and we are in the trough of the vast atmospheric wave; while we are on its crest, and are buoyed up both in mind and in body, on the crisp, bright days when the air seems to offer us no resistance. We know that the heavier salt sea-water buoys us up more than the fresh river or pond water, but we do not feel in the same way the lift of the high barometric wave. Even the rough, tough-coated maple-trees in spring are quickly susceptible to these atmospheric changes. The farmer knows that he needs sunshine and crisp air to make maple-sugar as well as to make hay. Let the high blue-domed day with its dry northwest breezes change to a warmer, overcast, humid day from the south, and the flow of sap lessens at once. It would seem as if the trees had nerves on the outside of their dry bark, they respond to the change so quickly. There is no sap without warmth, and yet warmth, without any memory of the frost, stops the flow.
The more the air presses upon us the lighter we feel, and the less it presses upon us the more "logy" we feel. Climb to the top of a mountain ten thousand feet high, and you breathe and move with an effort. The air is light, water boils at a low temperature, and our lungs and muscles seem inadequate to perform their usual functions. There is a kind of pressure that exhilarates us, and an absence of pressure that depresses us.
The pressure of congenial tasks, of worthy work, sets one up, while the idle, the unemployed, has a deficiency of hæmoglobin in his blood. The Lord pity the unemployed man, and pity the man so over-employed that the pressure upon him is like that upon one who works in a tunnel filled with compressed air.
Haying in this pastoral region is the first act in the drama of the harvest, and one likes to see it well staged, as it is to-day – the high blue dome, the rank, dark foliage of the trees, the daisies still white in the sun, the buttercups gilding the pastures and hill-slopes, the clover shedding its perfume, the timothy shaking out its little clouds of pollen as the sickle-bar strikes it, most of the song-birds still vocal, and the tide of summer standing poised at its full. Very soon it will begin to ebb, the stalks of the meadow grasses will become dry and harsh, the clover will fade, the girlish daisies will become coarse and matronly, the birds will sing fitfully or cease altogether, the pastures will turn brown, and the haymakers will find the hay half cured as it stands waiting for them in the meadows.
What a wonderful thing is the grass, so common, so abundant, so various, a green summer snow that softens the outlines of the landscape, that makes a carpet for the foot, that brings a hush to the fields, and that furnishes food to so many and such various creatures! More than the grazing animals live upon the grass. All our cereals – wheat, barley, rye, rice, oats, corn – belong to the great family of the grasses.
Grass is the nap of the fields; it is the undergarment of the hills. It gives us the meadow, a feature in the northern landscape so common that we cease to remark it, but which we miss at once when we enter a tropical or semi-tropical country. In Cuba and Jamaica and Hawaii I saw no meadows and no pastures, no grazing cattle, none of the genial, mellow look which our landscape presents. Harshness, rawness, aridity, are the prevailing notes.
From my barn-door outlook I behold meadows with their boundary line of stone fences that are like lakes and reservoirs of timothy and clover. They are full to the brim, they ripple and rock in the breeze, the green inundation seems about to overwhelm its boundaries, all the surface inequalities of the land are wiped out, the small rocks and stones are hidden, the woodchucks make their roads through it, immersed like dolphins in the sea. What a picture of the plenty and the flowing beneficence of our temperate zone it all presents! Nature in her kinder, gentler moods, dreaming of the tranquil herds and the bursting barns. Surely the vast army of the grass hath its victories, for the most part noiseless, peace-yielding victories that gladden the eye and tranquillize the heart.
The meadow presents a pleasing picture before it is invaded by the haymakers, and a varied and animated one after it is thus invaded; the mowing-machine sending a shudder ahead of it through the grass, the hay-tedder kicking up the green locks like a giant, many-legged grasshopper, the horserake gathering the cured hay into windrows, the white-sleeved men with their forks pitching it into cocks, and, lastly, the huge, soft-cheeked loads of hay, towering above the teams that draw them, brushing against the bar-ways and the lower branches of the trees along their course, slowly winding their way toward the barn. Then the great mows of hay, or the shapely stacks in the fields, and the battle is won. Milk and cream are stored up in well-cured hay, and when the snow of winter fills the meadows as grass fills them in summer, the tranquil cow can still rest and ruminate in contentment.
As the swallows sweep out and in near my head they give out an angry "Sleet, sleet," as if my presence had suddenly become offensive to them. I know what makes the change in their temper. The young are leaving their nests, and at such eventful times the parent birds are always nervous and anxious. When any of our birds launch a family into the world they would rather not have spectators, and you are pretty sure to be abused if you intrude upon the scene. The swallow can put a good deal of sharp emphasis into that "Sleet, sleet," though she is not armed to make any of her threats good. Who knows that all will go well with them when they first make the plunge into space with their untried wings? A careful parent should keep the coast clear.
They have been testing their wings for several days, clinging to the sides of the nest and beating the wings rapidly. And now comes the crucial moment of letting go and attempting actual flight. Several of them have already done it, and I see them resting on the dead limbs of a plum-tree across the road. But more are to follow, and parental anxiety is still rife. I shall be sorry when the spacious hayloft becomes silent. That affectionate "Wit, wit" and that contented and caressing squeaking and chattering give me a sense of winged companionship. The old barn is the abode of friendly and delicate spirits, and the sight of them and the sound of them surely bring a suggestion of poetry and romance to these familiar scenes.
Is not the swallow one of the oldest and dearest of birds? Known to the poets and sages and prophets of all peoples! So infantile, so helpless and awkward upon the earth, so graceful and masterful on the wing, the child and darling of the summer air, reaping its invisible harvest in the fields of space as if it dined on the sunbeams, touching no earthly food, drinking and bathing and mating on the wing, swiftly, tirelessly coursing the long day through, a thought on wings, a lyric in the shape of a bird! Only in the free fields of the summer air could it have got that steel-blue of the wings and that warm tan of the breast. Of course I refer to the barn swallow. The cliff swallow seems less a child of the sky and sun, probably because its sheen and glow are less, and its shape and motions less arrowy. More varied in color, its hues yet lack the intensity, and its flight the swiftness, of those of its brother of the haylofts. The tree swallows and the bank swallows are pleasing, but they are much more local and restricted in their ranges than the barn-frequenters. As a farm boy I did not know them at all, but the barn swallows the summer always brought.
After all, there is but one swallow; the others are particular kinds that we specify. How curious that men should ever have got the notion that this airy, fairy creature, this playmate of the sunbeams, spends the winter hibernating in the mud of ponds and marshes, the bedfellow of newts and frogs and turtles! It is an Old-World legend, born of the blindness and superstition of earlier times. One knows that the rain of the rainbow may be gathered at one's feet in a mud-puddle, but the fleeting spectrum of the bow is not a thing of life. Yet one would as soon think of digging up a rainbow in the mud as a swallow. The swallow follows the sun, and in August is off for the equatorial regions, where it hibernates on the wing, buried in tropical sunshine.
Well, this brilliant day is a good day for the swallows, a good day for the haymakers, and a good day for him who sits before his open barn door and weaves his facts and midsummer fancies into this slight literary fabric.
