THE DEAD TREE’S DAY.
It is the theory that there are always plenty of hens to be bought in a New England farming town; but as a matter of fact, in the month of July, 1892, the country north of Bearcamp presented such a dearth of hens that, after traveling miles in my efforts to buy some, I returned to my own neighborhood and hired a contingent for the season. The transaction was unique, but, on the whole, mutually satisfactory. It had one drawback. When one owns fowls, the accumulation of family wrath against the rooster on account of too early crowing on his part always finds relief in eating him; but when one hires a rooster, his life is charmed by contract, and he can with impunity crow the family into nervous prostration. The magnificent Black Spanish cock hired by me began crowing, on the morning of August 21, at twenty minutes of four. Not a ray of daylight pierced the bank of mist which filled the east. Nothing but instinct or a bad conscience could have told Murillo that it was time to crow. Nevertheless, on this occasion his song was welcome, for I had counted upon his arousing me early in order that I might spend an entire day with the Dead Tree.
On the northern shore of Chocorua Lake a broad reach of swampy woodland is broken by a meadow. At the point where the small and very cool brook which bounds the meadow on the west enters the lake, a tall pine once cast its shadow upon a deep pool at its foot. The pine died many years ago, and its bark has been entirely removed by weather and woodpeckers, leaving its trunk and eighty-seven branches, or stumps of branches, as white as bleached bones. A few rods farther from the mouth of the brook stands a smaller pine of similar character. These two trees form a famous bird roost, and at their feet I planned to stay from sunrise to sunset on this August day, in order to see, during consecutive hours, how many birds would make use of the tree as a perch. From frequent visits during this and earlier years, I knew that the tree was not only a rendezvous for the birds living in the meadow and adjoining woods, but also a kursaal for tourists in feathers, and for all birds coming to the lake to hunt or to fish.
As I left the house, hermit thrushes were uttering the short complaining notes of alarm characteristic of them at twilight. Dark as it was, they were awake and stirring. Reaching the bank of the lake a minute or two after four, I startled a spotted sandpiper from the beach, and heard his peeping whistle as he flew from me across the black water, beyond which only dusky masses of gloom marked the pine woods on the farther shore. The surface of the water was disturbed by thousands of insects cutting queer figures upon it. Where they moved, white ripples followed. As I walked along the moist sand of the beach, pickerel shot out from the shore, bats squeaked, and frogs jumped into deeper water with nervous croaks of fear. Then a whippoorwill sang, and as his weird notes echoed from the woods, Venus sailed clear from the mist bank and reflected her dazzling beauty in the lake. As I drew near the mouth of the brook, a solitary tattler ran along the sand in front of me, whistling softly. When I turned into the bushes, he stopped and resumed his search for breakfast.
The dead tree rose above me, jet black against the dark sky. Stepping softly through the bushes, I disturbed the wary catbirds, and their fretful cries awoke the meadow. At twenty minutes past four, three whippoorwills were singing, and two catbirds, with several hermit thrushes, were complaining. A few moments later, the call of a veery was heard, a song sparrow gave a sharp squeak, and then, so still was the air, I heard the heavy stamping of my horse in his stable, a quarter of a mile away, as he gained his feet after a long night’s rest. The stars were growing paler moment by moment, and outlines becoming sharper in the bushes and trees near me. A Swainson’s thrush uttered its clear “quick,” expressive of much more vigilance than the cries of the veery and the hermit, yet less fault-finding than the mew of the catbird.
THE DEAD TREE
I settled myself comfortably amid the bushes eastward of the dead trees, near enough to them to see even a humming-bird if one alighted on the bare branches. At 4.35 I had heard eight kinds of birds, yet the crows, notorious for early rising, had not spoken. A minute later one cawed sleepily among the eastern pines where the mist lay thickest, and soon a dozen voices responded. Dense as was the fog, the light of day made swift inroads upon the shadows, and when, about quarter to five, a young chestnut-sided warbler came out of a dewy bush near me, its colors were plainly distinguishable. The little bird looked sleepy and dull. It moved languidly, and so did three Maryland yellow-throats which appeared from the same clump of thick bushes a moment later. As yet no bird of the day had sung.
Far away in the swampy woods to the north a big red-shouldered hawk cried “ky-e, ky-e, ky-e.” I remembered the morning, just a year previous, when, sitting in about the same spot, with Puffy perched on a dead limb over my head, a red-shouldered hawk had flown with stately wing-beat to one of the lower branches of the dead tree, and then, suddenly discovering the owl, had thrust its head forward, opened wide its beak, and, with its fierce eyes glaring, had shrieked its hatred at the almost unmoved owl. This morning it did not visit the meadow, probably finding its humble game nearer home.
The first bird to appear flying above the level of the meadow was a graceful night-hawk. Perhaps he had just come down from a night’s revel in the cool air over Chocorua’s summit. I wondered whether he had been one of a company of between two and three hundred of his tribe which deployed across the sky on the afternoon of the 19th, just in advance of a violent thunderstorm. Yearly, about the 20th of August, the night-hawks muster their forces and parade during one or two afternoons. Yet there seems to be no diminution in the number of the local birds after the army disappears. Perhaps it is formed of migrants from the north; or perhaps the display is, after all, only a drill, preparatory to a later flight.
The Maryland yellow-throats, in moving about the bushes, discovered me, and began scolding at my intrusion. They came so near to me that they seemed within reach of my hands. I kept perfectly still, and half closed my eyes. Their inspection seemed to convince them that I was harmless, for they went away, and presently the male sang his “rig-a-jig, rig-a-jig, rig-a-jig,” close behind me. I am convinced that closing the eyes does a great deal to reassure a timid bird. Owls entirely cloak their evil appearance by simply drawing their eyelids down, and closing their feathers tightly about them. On discovering a man, birds watch, not his legs or his body, but his face, and his eyes are the most conspicuous part of his face and fullest of menace. I have sometimes fancied that nervous birds knew when they were watched, even though they could not see the observer.
At 4.48 a kingbird came sailing and fluttering over the meadow, its chattering cries giving ample warning of its approach. It lighted in the big tree, and scanned sky, water, and grass, searching for something with which to quarrel. A flicker passed silently, coming, as the kingbird had, from the woods, and going to a tree near the lake shore. Small birds, possibly warblers, flew by, westward. A blue jay screamed harshly in the edge of the woods, but the fog, which was growing more and more dense upon the meadow, discouraged its coming to the dead trees. Just at five o’clock a goldfinch undulated past, and the noisy rattle of a kingfisher echoed along the edge of the pond, provoking answers from a red squirrel, whose chatter seemed an imitation of the call, and from a crow, whose mimicry of the fisher’s rattle was remarkably good. Probably all bird-calls originated in the efforts of their makers to reproduce sounds which pleased or startled them. In this case, Chickaree and Corvus had no sober motive for replying to the kingfisher; they may neither of them have associated the rattle with the blue projectile which made it. Both were entertained or attracted by the sound, and each in its way tried to reproduce it. It is by a similar process, doubtless, that parrots, crows, and blue jays acquire the power of producing sounds which correspond to our words. Later, they may gain, through experience, a knowledge of the meaning or force of such words, but often no such knowledge lies behind the empty iteration of the parrot.
For nearly a quarter of an hour there seemed to be a lull in the process of bird-awakening. The Maryland yellow-throats were moving, and now and then the male sang a little. Crows called in the distance, and the catbirds moved restlessly about from one part of the meadow to another, mewing, but nothing new appeared under the fog mantle. The spell was broken by the appearance of one of the small tyrant flycatchers, which are so difficult to identify during the migrations unless they are killed and closely examined. This one seemed to me to be a least flycatcher (Empidonax minimus), there being almost no trace of yellow in his coloring. He flew from point to point, in or just over the bushes, catching small insects with vicious snaps of his beak. Apparently it was necessary, for the proper working of his machinery, to have his tail jerk spitefully several times a minute.
About half past five three crows came to the big tree. One of them sailed softly by, but the other two alighted and began cawing in a fretful way. They were bedraggled with fog and dew, and their tones told of hunger and discomfort. When they spoke, they thrust their heads far forward, giving them a low, mean air. They pulled viciously at their moist clothing, all the while keeping the keenest watch of their surroundings and the distance. Suddenly one of them saw me, and with a low croak flew away, his mate following. Again silence and fog prevailed. A cedar-bird, alighting on the tip of the old tree, seemed to shiver. He remained in the dim upper air but a moment, taking a headlong plunge into the shrubbery below. I thought even the frogs resented the slow-moving vapors, for they croaked and splashed restlessly.
A red-eyed vireo began his sermon at 6.10, and soon after, blue sky and scattering rays of sunlight appeared. Then the birds became more cheerful, and catbirds, crows, kingbirds, Maryland yellow-throats, and song sparrows vied with each other in activity and noise. Every one of them was intent upon making a good breakfast. The catbirds ate viburnum berries; the crows marched upon the lake sand, searching for the waste of the waves; a barn swallow, the kingbirds, and several smaller flycatchers hovered or darted in pursuit of insects, and the sparrows gathered their harvest from the earth. Then a flicker appeared in the top of the old tree, and, finding a resonant spot in the trunk, beat his reveille softly upon it. My neck fairly ached when I tried to imagine the mental and muscular effort required of the bird to produce such regular and rapid action with his beak. The only way in which a man can make as many beats to the minute with any regularity is by allowing his hand to rest in such a position that it will tremble. Then, by grasping a pencil and resting its tip upon a board, a sound somewhat similar to the rolling reverberation of the woodpecker’s drumming can be produced.
At half past six an olive-sided flycatcher came to the pine, but on seeing the kingbird disappeared. A moment later the kingbird flew away, and the olive-sided at once returned to the highest branch of the tree, and made it his point of rest during a long series of sallies after insects. When he caught one of large size, he brought it back to his perch, and pounded it violently against the branch until its struggles ceased, and its harder portions were, presumably, reduced to a jelly. The kingbirds really have more right than any of the migrants to use the old tree, for they have built, year after year, time out of mind, in the spreading branches of the nearest living pine overhanging the lake. As August advances, however, they wander a good deal, paying visits to my orchard and other good feeding-grounds near the lake. While they are away, wood pewees and phœbes, olive-sided and least flycatchers, visit the vicinity, and enjoy the great tree and the fine chances which it offers of seeing insects over both land and water. About quarter to seven a solitary sandpiper flew swiftly over the meadow, calling. It made two great circles, rising above the trees, and then flew westward so fast that I looked to discover a pursuer, but could discern none. In the high woods, over which it flew, the crows were chortling. Northward the peak was clear, although below it a long scarf of mist trailed over the forest, moving westward. In the tree-top the flicker “flickered,” and then drummed; called again, and drummed more emphatically. Soon a second woodpecker appeared, but flew by into the woods. The first one watched him, and then drummed again, whereupon the new-comer flew to him, and an animated dialogue took place, the second bird apparently having much to say in an excited manner. After they had finished their conference, the second bird flew away, and the first relapsed into a reverie. It lasted only a few moments, for shortly before seven o’clock two crows flew into the two dead trees, and the woodpecker hurried away. Each crow took the topmost perch on his tree, and began his toilet. Just then a frog jumped with a splash into the pool in front of me, and the crows, hearing the noise, looked searchingly down, saw me, and flew off without a caw.
For several years the morning of the 21st of August has been my time for first seeing Wilson’s blackcap warblers on their autumn journey southward. Having been in the swamp three hours without seeing one, I began to think that, 1892 being leap year, the pretty migrants might not keep their tryst; but I wronged them, for just at seven o’clock I heard a sharp “cheep” behind me, and, turning slowly, found a blackcap gazing at me nervously. No sooner had my eyes met his than he darted away.
Between seven and eight the trees were occupied by a flock of twelve cedar-birds, one or two flickers, several young robins, a pewee, a humming-bird, and some of the small flycatchers. The humming-bird is a tyrannical and blustering little bird, giving himself many airs. His wife is quite as much of a virago as he is of a bully. In this instance she was determined to drive away the flycatchers. Sitting in the big tree, and looking smaller than a well-fed dragonfly, she darted, every now and then, at one of the chebecs, and put him to flight. They tired her out, however, and after a while she gave up the struggle and departed. About 7.30 a flock of small birds, including several chickadees, appeared in the edge of the woods and scattered over the meadow. Few of them came near enough to me for identification, but there seemed to be vireos and warblers among them. Their coming aroused other birds, and a goldfinch, a catbird chasing a veery, one or two Maryland yellow-throats, and a swift were in sight at one time.
Thirst overtook me at eight, after four hours of watching, and I crept softly down to the brook. Before I had gone a dozen steps, a huge bird sprang from the sedgy growth by the lake shore and rose into the air. It was a blue heron which had been patrolling the sand within forty feet of me. He flew along the shore for some distance, then rose and passed over the trees towards the north, seeking, no doubt, my lonely lake, half a mile away in the forest. One morning, when hidden in the alders and viburnums which grow at the very foot of the big tree, I heard a queer guttural call or grunt from the meadow, and the next moment the heron stood above me, on the lowest limb of the pine. He looked sharply over the meadow and the lake, stretched first one leg, then the other, then each wing in turn, and finally fell to preening his blue and gray plumes. Against a pale blue sky or ruffled water which mingles blue and gray with bits of white, he is marvelously well protected by his coloring. No wonder that the poor frogs fall a prey to his patient spearing. I kept breathlessly still, and watched this largest of our Chocorua birds. It seemed odd that the old tree should be a perch for him and for the humming-bird. The hummer is three and a quarter inches long; the heron spreads six feet with his great wings when he flies, and measures over four feet when standing. After a while I grew weary of watching the heron, and of wondering at his macaroni-like legs and his strangely concentrated stare, which now and then fixed itself on my hiding-place, so I whistled softly. The heron paused in his feather-combing and looked towards me. There was no fear in his glance, only mild interest. I sang, first sad music, then “Nancy Lee,” “Pinafore,” “Hold the Fort,” everything I could think of, in fact, which might prompt him to action; but he only stared, now over his beak, then under it. The latter method of ogling was very effective, for the long bill was contemplating the skies, while the cold, calculating eyes stood out each side of its base and glared down across it until I seemed to feel their clamminess. From music I turned to animal language, and barked, mewed, mooed, brayed, whinnied, quacked, crowed, cackled, peeped, hooted, and cawed, until my throat was raw. He was clearly entertained, and showed no desire to leave me. At last I came down to plain English, supposing that my voice undisguised by song would certainly alarm him, but to my great surprise he apparently did not associate the human voice with its owner in the slightest degree. In fact, he now seemed bored by my noise, and went on with his preening. Suddenly, in moving my foot, I snapped a small twig. Before there seemed to have been time for the sound to reach his brain, the heron was on the wing, and I saw him no more that day.
At 8.30, as I was watching the big tree, a large, light-colored bird passed close to its trunk and plunged downward towards the deep pool at its foot. The sound of splashing water was followed by utter silence. After remaining motionless for several minutes I crawled carefully towards the bank of the brook. The bushes were thick, and small dry twigs covered the ground. Their snapping could not be avoided, and just before I reached a point where I could see the water and the narrow strip of muddy beach, a heavy bird rose with a great beating of wings and flew up-stream. I broke through the cover, headlong, but the bird was out of sight. The surface of the stream was covered with small, soft feathers, which I gathered together and dried. They appeared to be from the breast of a sandpiper. Who the murderer was will never be known, though I presume that it was a Cooper’s hawk.
My glimpse of this hawk, if such it was, reminded me of an encounter between a sharp-shinned hawk and a flock of blue jays which I had seen at the tree the week previous. The hawk arrived when several flickers were in the tree and hurled himself upon them. They fled, calling wildly, and brought to their aid, first a kingbird, which promptly attacked the hawk from above, and then a flock of blue jays, which abused him from cover below. When the kingbird flew away, as he did after driving the hawk into the bushes for a few moments, the jays grew more and more daring in approaching the hawk. In fact they set themselves to the task of tiring him out and making him ridiculous. They ran great risks in doing it, frequently flying almost into the hawk’s face; but they persevered, in spite of his ferocious attempts to strike them. After nearly an hour the hawk grew weary and edged off to the woods. Then the jays went up the tree as though it were a circular staircase, and yelled the news of the victory to the swamp.
As the forenoon passed slowly by, there were periods when the tree was empty for ten minutes or more at a time, but generally a flicker, cedar-bird, olive-sided flycatcher, blue jay, crow, or catbird was to be seen perched in some part of the great skeleton. At ten o’clock I shifted my place to avoid the heat of the sun, and to keep its light behind me. My new seat was in the heart of a tangle of bushes, and as I looked through the network of their stems I suddenly saw a bird’s head, motionless. My glass aided me in recognizing the little creature as a red-eyed vireo sitting upon a twig. Close by it was a second vireo also perfectly passive. I watched them for a long time, and could see nothing but their eyes move. It is such moods as this, taking possession of birds, which make some parts of the day silent, and cause the woods to seem deserted by all their feathered tenants. Another occupant of the thicket was a yellow-bellied flycatcher, whose activity in the pursuit of small insects was tireless. He certainly found enough to eat, for small insects have been unusually abundant this summer, while birds have been noticeably scarce near Chocorua. Some species, usually well represented, have seemingly vanished, and others, quite numerous in average years, have been very sparingly represented. For instance, the summer has passed without my seeing either an oriole or a winter wren, while redstarts and chestnut-sided warblers, usually among the most numerous species, have been represented by a mere handful of birds. The supposed local causes of this dearth of small birds are a heavy snowfall, which occurred the last week in May, and a hailstorm, which did great damage just in the middle of the nesting period. Unusual numbers of birds are said to have been killed by spring storms in the Gulf States before the year’s migration really began.
At eleven o’clock a flock of small birds moved rapidly across the meadow, and four of the number passed through my covert. They were a chickadee and three Wilson’s blackcaps. I wish the latter bird lived here in the breeding season, for it is a pretty, confiding, gentle little creature. The departure of these birds was hastened by the appearance on the lake shore of a young man, a boy, and a dog. The man carried a gun, and the dog rushed about in an excited way, doing his best in cur fashion to aid in the hunt. When the trio reached the brook at the point where it debouched upon the lake sand, the man cursed the stream for its width, and the boy, in a loud nasal voice, followed his example. They stood upon the farther side for several minutes pouring out blasphemy and filth until a sandpiper attracted their attention and their gun spoke sharply. The bird escaped, perhaps to die in the meadow grass, and again the two intelligent human beings invoked wrath upon the bird, the stream, the meadow, the dog, and the gun. Then they crossed the brook higher up, where it was narrower, and distance covered their conversation with a welcome veil. As long as the pleasant memories of that quiet day linger in my mind, so long will there be drawn through them a black line of disgust at the vileness of the two representatives of my own species who offered such a contrast to the purity of nature.
From eleven until one o’clock there was almost unbroken stillness near the great tree. Now and then some one of the regular residents of the meadow spoke, a dragonfly buzzed past, a small pickerel stirred in the brook, or a frog said “wurro, wurroùh,” and splashed in the still water among the reeds. The kingbirds broke the monotony by coming, three strong, with much noise and fluttering to take possession of the tree. One of them flew to the sand by the lake ripples and drank. Then all three came upon the lowest branches of the big tree and looked at the dark pool below. One flew obliquely against the water, striking it and dashing a thousand bright drops into the air. He rose chattering and returned to his perch, shaking himself. I thought he had aimed for a fly and struck the water unintentionally, but down he went again, making even more of a splash than before, and presently both the others followed his example at such frequent intervals that the pool had no time to smooth its ripples. This odd kind of bathing was continued for ten minutes, during which time a catbird sneaked down upon the sand and watched the process silently but with evident interest. Later he saw me sitting motionless under the bushes, and flew directly at me, turning sharply just before reaching my head, and making a loud noise both by striking his wings against branches and by his harsh voice. If his purpose was to startle me he certainly succeeded.
The afternoon was clear, still, and warm, and the birds were evidently drowsy. From two until after four nothing perched in the tree. A sandpiper amused me by his patient search for food, as he waded back and forth on the mud over which the brook spread as it entered the lake. For an hour he confined himself to a space less than six feet square and worked over almost every inch of it. Much of the time he merely prodded the mud gently with his long, quill-like bill, but occasionally he seemed to see something squirm, and then he pursued it quickly and stabbed more vigorously. Much of the time the water was above his knees, and sometimes he ran into deeper places, so that it lapped upon his breast. Twice he plunged his head and neck entirely under water, but his eyes seemed to need no wiping when they emerged as wide open as before. Sometimes he crossed his legs and stood like a camp-stool, with his thin props meeting their equally straw-like reflections in the brook. After a while a second sandpiper appeared, but his method was to travel rapidly along the water line, and he was soon out of sight.
It was not until nearly six o’clock that the tree became really populous again. Then the catbirds went upstairs on its branches, flickers and kingbirds occupied its top; a humming-bird buzzed in the face of a pewee who was perched fully thirty feet from the ground; a sapsucking woodpecker came and drummed for a moment, and finally a flock of cedar-birds rested in it for a while as they had in the morning. The sun set and night breathed upon the meadow. A single cedar-bird remained in the tip of the tree and drearily repeated his one dismal word. Below in the shadows the catbirds were restlessly mewing, and as it grew dark the lament of the hermits joined in the gloomy chorus. The sky was fair, and rosy lights flowed and ebbed in the clouds. The stars came, and in the distant pines a barred owl sounded his long trumpet note. A few minutes after seven, when catbirds and hermits were silent for the night, I heard a solitary sandpiper whistling at the mouth of the brook. My glass brought his tiny form to view, and as I watched him, a second tattler ran along the gleaming sand and the whistling ceased. Suddenly they flew together as though startled, and the next moment I saw what I had supposed to be a bunch of pickerel-weed growing in the shallows move slowly eastward. The object was several rods from the shore, and moving across the mouth of the brook. Now it glided a few inches, then it paused. Ten minutes passed before it progressed as many yards. It was the heron’s ghostly form. When he reached the eastern shore a light flashed across the lake and a voice sounded. He flew. I rose to go, but as I crept out upon the sand I turned to take a last look at the tree, and saw there the heron, standing on a high limb, black against the sky.