WALKS WITH A NATURALIST
Suggestions for Teacher and Pupil in Nature Study
I
SPRING
Let us suppose that we are taking four country walks together, and trying to use, in actual experience in the field, the information we have been reading. The first shall be in the spring, the second in summer, the third when autumn leaves are falling, and the last in midwinter. We will go along the field-path, follow the lane through the woods to the creek, then down the stream to the road, and so homeward.
There is plenty to be seen, this bright spring morning. The birds are very busy, of course, for they have nests to build, and eggs to lay, and little ones to take care of; so they are hard at work from the very first thing in the morning till the very last thing at night. Almost every sparrow that we see has a feather or a piece of straw in its beak, and the robin which has just flown out of that tree with a terrified squall has already finished building, and was most likely sitting upon her eggs. Yes, there is her nest, you see, right on the lowest limb, with four greenish blue eggs.
See that catbird, all lead-color, with a black cap. See her dodge into that bush just beyond us. It is just the place for her nest; and, sure enough, here it is. It is a rough affair, but she mews as pitifully at us as if it were the finest of homes, and half a dozen other birds are already screaming their sympathy. Let us just look at the eggs, and remember that they are a deep polished green, and then walk on, for the poor mother is very unhappy. We have no use for the eggs, and it would be shameful to rob her; and, besides, we should thus destroy the coming lives of four catbirds, who will be too useful as insect-hunters in our gardens to be wasted.
This path is dusty, and we notice a great many pinhole doors of the little black ants. The ants are running in and out of them, and if we should carefully dig up the ground we would find a labyrinth of narrow passages, here and there widening into chambers, and so learn that these tiny holes are entrances to an ant-city whose streets are all subways.
Here are some larger ants—three times as big—a regular procession of them going and coming out from under that half-buried stone, winding through the grass, and then trotting up and down this tree-trunk. A lot of them go out along that low limb. Let us climb upon the fence, and try to see what it is that attracts them. Ah! This is the secret. Clustered thickly on the bark are hundreds of minute green creatures, smaller than pinheads. They are busily sucking the sap from the bark, and seem to interest the ants greatly, for they are stroking these bark-lice (aphids) with their feelers, and if we had a magnifying-glass we could see that they were licking up a honey-like liquid which oozes out of two short tubes on the back of each aphid.
A little distance beyond the ant's apple-tree a young maple stretches one of its branches out to the sunlight just above our heads, where the sharp eyes which young naturalists must keep wide open when they walk abroad will notice a bird's nest hung under the shelter of its broad outermost leaves. It is one of the loveliest nests in the world. A slim, graceful, olive-green little bird glides out from beneath the maple-leaves as we approach, perches near by and watches us silently. Though she does not mew and scream as did the catbird, she is just as anxious, you may be sure. Be easy, dear little vireo—for we know your name—we shall not ruin your home. Let us pull the branch gently down a little. Now we can see that the nest is a round hammock, woven of grapevine bark and spider-web, and hung by its edges. It seems too fragile to hold the weight of the mother, slight as she is; and in it are three white eggs with a circle of pink and purple dots around their larger ends. But here is also a fourth egg, much larger, grayish white, and speckled all over with brown.
That is the egg of the cowbird, a sort of purple, brown-headed blackbird which you may almost always see in pastures where there are cattle. The cowbirds, like the European cuckoos, never build any nests of their own, but put their eggs into those of other birds, and leave them to be hatched. And they are very fond of choosing the nest of a vireo. One would think that the mother would notice at once that a strange egg had been placed in her nest, and would throw it out. But she never seems to do so, but sits on the cowbird egg as well as on her own, so that in course of time she hatches out three or four little vireos and one young cowbird. Then what do you think the stranger does? Why, as soon as the mother vireo goes out to look for caterpillars for food, it begins to wriggle underneath the other little birds, and soon shoves them out of the nest, one after another. Still more strange is it, that when the vireo comes back she never seems to care that her own little ones are all lying dead on the ground below, but gives all the food that they would have eaten to the cowbird. And the greedy cowbird eats it all! Until it is fledged she feeds it in this way, and takes the greatest care of it, and even after it has left the nest and is able to fly about she will come and put caterpillars into its beak.
Look at the trunk of this tree. Why has so much of the bark fallen away from the wood? And what is this curious pattern engraved, as it were, upon the wood—a broad groove running downward, and a number of smaller grooves branching out from this on each side?
Ah! that is the work of a very odd little beetle, with a black head and reddish-brown wing-cases. About eighteen months ago, probably, a mother beetle came flying along, settled on the tree, and bored a hole through the bark, just big enough for her to pass through. Then she began to burrow downward between the bark and the wood, cutting the central groove which you see in the pattern. As she did so she kept on laying eggs, first on one side of the groove and then on the other, in the short branch-tunnels, which she cut out as she went along. In this way she laid, perhaps, eighty or ninety eggs altogether. When the last had been laid she turned round, climbed up her burrow again, passed into the hole by which she came in, and—died in it! And by so doing she blocked up her burrow with her dead body, and so prevented centipedes and other hungry creatures from getting in and eating up her eggs.
Early in the following spring all the eggs hatched, and out came a number of hungry little grubs with hard, horny heads and strong, sharp little jaws. Every one of these grubs at once began to make a burrow of its own, boring away at right angles to the groove made by the mother beetle, and cutting away the fibers which bind the bark to the wood. The consequence was, of course, that by the time they were fully grown quite a big piece of bark had been cut away. And very likely if we were to come and look at the tree again in two years' time we should find that the whole of the trunk had been completely stripped.
"Then these little beetles are very mischievous?" Oh, no, they are not; for they never touch a healthy tree. They only attack those trees which are sickly or diseased.
Here we are on the banks of the stream. Let us make our way home by the path which lies beside it.
Ah! Did you see that flash of blue and white and orange that went darting by, almost like a streak of many-colored light, sounding a loud rattling call as he flew? It was a kingfisher, and if we stand quite still for a minute or two, without moving so much as a finger, we shall very likely see him again. Yes, there he is, sitting on that branch overhanging the stream, and peering down into the water beneath. He is watching for little fishes, upon which he feeds. There, he has caught sight of one, and down he drops into the water, splashes about for a moment or two, and then rises with a minnow in his beak. Back he flies to his perch, slaps the little fish against the branch once or twice to kill it, jerks it up into the air, catches it head foremost as it falls, and then swallows it with one big gulp. A moment later he is peering down into the water again on the lookout for another.
That hole in the face of the steep bank across the stream is the doorway of the kingfisher's home. If we could get there, and should try to dig it, we would find it a hard task; for from that round door a tunnel runs into the ground probably six or eight feet, and ends in a chamber where lie half a dozen pure white eggs, resting upon the bones of fishes and scraps of every sort, which make a very ill-smelling place for the young kingfishers to be born in; but they do not mind that.
The butterfly that has just floated by is a small tortoise-shell, and it has lived through the winter, which kills nearly all of the butterfly tribe. That is why its wings are faded and chipped, for it had six or eight weeks of active life before it hid itself away, last of all, in a hollow tree, and entered upon a six-months' slumber. Sometimes, on a warmer day than usual, these and certain other butterflies will be roused up, and will flutter about in the sunshine, so that now and then you may capture a tortoise-shell even in the Christmas holidays.
The warm May sunshine is enticing out many a minute insect—gnats and flies especially. Dancing companies of small sulphur yellow and other companies of blue butterflies whirl about one another over the rapidly growing grass.
Have you noticed among the May flowers how many are yellow? There are dandelions, and yellow violets, and the modest fivefinger low in the herbage, while above them tower great tufts of wild mustard and indigo, the buttercups, the marsh-marigold, and many another.
The frogs and toads are less noisy than a month ago, and one sees fewer masses and strings of eggs in the roadside ditches than in April; but in their place the pools swarm with tadpoles, and it will be well worth your while to keep watch of their growth. Try to find out what they eat, and what eats them. Observe when the tail begins to disappear, and how it is lost; when the legs begin to appear, and which pair first shows itself. You may learn a lot of interesting facts about frogs and toads before the summer is done, if you are diligent.
In this stream are a few turtles. Can you tell when and where they lay their eggs? Keep careful watch of the little sandy beaches, and perhaps you may see one digging a hole in which to bury her set of sixty or so, leaving the sun to supply a better warmth than she could give them.
May is a month of activity for snakes. They have thrown off the stiffness and drowsiness of their long winter torpidity, and, grown thin after five months of fasting, are running about in search of food. Let the frogs and toads, the beetles and young ground-sparrows and mice—also weak from their winter trials—take heed, for the swift blacksnake or sly garter, or rapacious water-snake will seize them before they have time to squeal!
The water in the stream is still cool, but the fishes are struggling up the current, pickerel are spawning in the weedy shallows, and among the pebbles of the bottom a host of young creatures are beginning to grow vigorous.
None among them is more active than the larval caddis-flies, or case-worms, as anglers call them. Here is a caddis-fly now, its gauzy wings folded tentwise over its back. All its earlier life was spent in the water, and when it was a grub it lived in a very curious case, which it made by cutting up a rush into short lengths, and sticking them together by means of a kind of natural glue. When once a caddis-grub has made one of these cases it never gets out of it again, but drags it about wherever it goes. And if you try to pull it out you will find that you cannot do so without killing it. For at the end of its body it has a pair of strong little pincers, with which it holds on so firmly and so doggedly to its case that you might actually pull it in two without forcing it to loose its hold.
There are different kinds of caddis-flies, however, and the grub of one kind fastens grains of sand together to make a case, while that of another sticks two dead leaves face to face, and lives between them.
It would be an interesting task for a boy or girl to see how many different kinds of caddis-flies, judging by their cases, lived in the stream, and to keep them alive in an aquarium, and watch their behavior and changes.
II
SUMMER
A walk in midsummer is a stroll through what seems a quiet world compared with the noise and brightness of May. Then every leaf was green and crisp, every bird in full song, and the world seemed to have an air of gay youth, like a vigorous boy or girl full of eagerness and activity.
Now as July draws toward its end the eagerness has subsided and the year, like a lad grown a little older and more serious, has settled down to regular work. Had our walk been taken before breakfast, we should have heard no end of birds singing, it is true; but about the time the dew dried from the grass most of them ceased their music. One reason, besides the noonday heat, is that they are too busy to sing, for the husband and father—and he is the singer of the family—must now help his mate feed her young. We fear, however, he is not a very good provider after the fledglings quit the nest, leaving most of their support and schooling to the mother. At this season one may often come upon and watch a little family group of this kind, and perhaps we may do so.
Meanwhile let us sit down for a moment on this grassy bank—not too near that fence-post, for do you not see twined about it that vine with the reddish hairy stem, and the shining leaves in groups of threes? That is the poison-ivy, which may cause an itching rash to break out upon your skin if you touch it. You must learn to recognize and avoid this "ivy"—which is not a true ivy, but a kind of climbing sumach—before you go poking around in the fields, or you will be sorry. Do you notice the delicious beeswax-like odor in the air? That comes from the big yellow branches of blossoms on another and perfectly harmless kind of sumach—that scraggly sort of bush just beyond the fence.
See how the bees are humming about it—some of them honey-bees from a farmer's hive, others big bumblebees and small burrowing kinds. All are in search of the minute drops of sweet liquid which each of the tiny flowers in the blossom-head contains, and which turns into honey after it has been carried a little while in the insect's crop, or lower part of the throat, where it lodges. Then it is suitable to be really swallowed, or to be coughed up and fed to the young bees at home, or stored away in the cells of such bees as store up honey, for many wild bees do not make such stores.
Besides its nectar, however, every flower contains a quantity of small particles, like dust, which are produced in the heads of the little thread-like interior parts of the blossom called the stamens; and in order that the flower shall turn to a seed it is needful that some grains of this dust, or pollen, shall fall upon another hollow part called the pistil, and so pass down into its base. It is much better that the pollen of one flower shall get into the pistil of another than into its own. The wind manages this to some extent—especially for the grasses—by shaking or blowing the loose pollen out of one flower and into another.
But the bees help this process greatly, and so may be said to pay for the sweets they use. Watch this one buzzing in front of that clump of jewelweed. Suddenly the loud humming ceases, and the bee crowds herself into the hanging, bell-like blossom, searching for the nectar. Now she is backing slowly out, and you may see how her furry body is half-powdered with yellow dust. That is pollen; and when she dives into another "jewel" she will brush some of it off against the pistil there, which is right in her way, and is very glad to accept her gift. So the bees and other insects humming about the flowers in this hot sunshine are not only getting their living but helping the plants to keep vigorous and produce lots of healthy seed.
Now let us move on. The sky is filled with swallows. There are the fork-tailed ones that make their nests inside the barn; the square-tailed ones that form their curious bottle-shaped nests of mud on the outside, under the eaves; and the purple martins that live in our bird-house in the garden. They are darting and dashing and skimming about in mid-air as though they did not know what it is to be tired; and if only they were a little closer we should see that every one of them has its mouth wide open. The reason is that these birds have very sticky tongues, and that all the time they are in the air they are chasing flying insects, bothersome gnats and mosquitoes among the rest. As soon as one of these insects is touched by the tongue, it sticks to it. Then, without swallowing it, the bird tucks it away in the upper part of its throat, and goes off to hunt for another. After a time it has quite a ball of little bugs packed away in this curious manner, and can carry no more; so it flies off to its nest, and divides them among its little ones.
Do you see that small olive-green bird sitting very erect on that fence-post? There—it suddenly springs into the air, flutters up and down for just half a moment, and then returns to the post. It is a flycatcher, and for hours together it will go on catching insects just in that same way. As it alights it tells us its name, calling Phœ-e-be, Phœ-e-be in a sad sort of voice, though there is no reason to think it is sorrowful at all. If we should go down to that bridge over the stream in the valley we would find its solid nest of moss and mud among the stones of one of the piers.
The woodland path is not so good a place for birds as are more open spaces; but one hears here the distant cooing of a dove, the chip-chur-r-r shout of the scarlet tanager, as red as fire everywhere except on its black wings and tail, and often the tapping of a woodpecker. There is one at work now on that tall dead stub. If you want to see him you must keep perfectly still, for if he notices that he is watched he begins to think some harm may follow, and either flies away or stops work, scrambling around the trunk and peering out from behind it with one eye to see what you mean to do next. See how firmly he clings to the trunk. If you were close enough you could see that two of the large-clawed toes at the end of his short strong legs and feet were straight forward and two straight backward; and that he is also propping himself up by means of his short stiff little tail, which is bent inward, and really serves as a kind of natural camp-stool! Now he is pecking away at the bark with his strong chisel-like beak, and making the chips fly in all directions. Most likely the grub of some burrowing beetle is lying hidden in the wood below, and he is trying to dig it out. But he will not have to dig down to the very bottom of its tunnel, for he has a very long slender tongue with a brush-like tip; and this tip is very sticky. And with this, after he has enlarged the mouth of the burrow, he will lick out the little grub which is lying hidden away within it.
Now let us make our way to the path by the side of the stream.
What a number of galls there are on these oak-trees—some on the leaves, some hanging down from the twigs in clusters, like currants, and some growing on the twigs themselves! Do you know what causes them?
Well, a very tiny fly pricks a hole in a leaf, or a young shoot, by means of a kind of sharp sting at the end of her body, and in that hole she places an egg, together with a very small drop of a peculiar liquid. This liquid has an irritating effect on the leaf, or twig, and causes a swelling to grow; and when this has reached its full size, and become what we call a gall, a little grub hatches out of the egg, and begins to feed upon it. Sometimes there are several grubs in one gall. If we were to cut one of those large red and white "oak-apples" to pieces, probably we should find as many as a dozen, each lying curled up in a hollow which it had eaten out.
If a naturalist had to choose some one place in which to carry on his outdoor studies, he could find none better than the course of a small rural river, and a year's work would not exhaust it. Just now, in midsummer, he would be most interested in the nesting of the sunfish and minnows. Let us steal quietly to the brink, where the turf forms a little bank, a foot or so high, to which the bottom slopes up in clear sand and gravel, with here and there a clump of bulrushes. Let us lie down and scan this bottom through the clear water rippling gently by, keeping very quiet, so as not to alarm any fishes which may swim near, for they are the very fellows we wish to see.
Here comes a little one—a common shiner—no, a golden one—stealing cautiously toward an open space. A much smaller fish—not so big as your little finger—shoots past him and stops as suddenly as if it had run against a wall, then an instant later is off again so swiftly you can hardly see it move. No wonder it is called Johnny Darter! Meanwhile the shiner, a minnow in a scale-armor of burnished gold, moves slowly on. Where is he aiming? Ah! look over there. Do you see that low ring of sand, about as large as a dinner-plate, running about some clear gravel, as though the plate were strewn with small pebbles?
That is a nest of a sunfish; and look! did you see the swoop of that gray shadow from the bulrushes? The shiner turned and fled like a bright streak through the water; and now the gray shadow is poised over the dish-like nest, and we see that it is the blue-eared sunfish, or "punkin-seed," as you say the boys call it when they go a-fishing.
See how with its breast-fins it fans the gravel among which its eggs are lying. They are so small and transparent that we cannot see them, but they are there, and must be kept clean. So the fish stirs the water and the current sweeps away everything which may have lodged there while the owner was away for a few minutes. But he never goes far, for he must guard his treasures against enemies like the shiner and other fishes, salamanders, water-bugs, and the like, which would eat them if they dared.
Butterflies innumerable greet us and dance along the roadside, as if to see us safely home. Many are small and yellow, or white and yellow, with handsomely bordered wings, and they are greatly interested in the clover. Then we see plenty of little blues, very regular in outline, and with them various coppers, distinguished by their orange and brown colors, each with a coppery tinge and set off by black markings. The hair-streaks are brown, too, with delicate stripes for ornaments on the lower surface, which are shown neatly when the wings are closed upright above the back. Did you know this was one of the distinctive marks of a butterfly? A moth never holds its wings on high in that fashion.
But it is the larger butterflies that first catch the eye, such as the monarch and the viceroy, the fritillaries, fox-red and black, with trimmings of silver; the red admiral, and other anglewings, beautiful in outline as well as in colors; the delicately pretty meadow-browns, and the magnificent swallowtails and mourning-cloaks.
Don't you think it would be interesting and delightful to study these exquisite creatures?
III
AUTUMN
It is a bright warm day in October; and once more, as we go for our ramble, everything seems changed. The autumn flowers are blooming, the autumn tints are in the leaves; and again there are different animals, and different birds, and different insects almost everywhere around us.
We hardly take ten steps before there is a sudden commotion in a clump of tall grass by the path, and a red-backed mouse leaps almost over our toes and dives down a little hole which otherwise we should not have noticed. Doubtless he carried a mouthful of grass-seeds to add to his granary under ground. All over the country mice and gophers and squirrels are doing the same thing. There's a big gray squirrel, now, scratching a hole in the ground as busily as a terrier who thinks he smells a mole. Suddenly he stops, drops a hickory-nut into the little grave, paws the dirt and leaves over it, pats them down, and canters away. All day he is burying nuts so that when, next winter, the trees are bare, he may dig them up and feed upon their meat. Sometimes he doesn't need to, or forgets, and then a tree may spring up. Many a fine hickory or chestnut was planted in this way by squirrels.
CHICKADEE AND WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH.
What is that red squirrel doing under the chestnut-tree by the side of the lane? He is hard at work collecting chestnuts, stuffing his big cheeks with them and carrying them away to hide for use next winter. He seems to realize that although he will sleep in his bed under the stone fence almost the whole time from Thanksgiving to Easter, he will wake up now and then, on warm days, and will feel dreadfully hungry. But then there will be little to be found in the way of food. So he is now gathering nuts and acorns and dry mushrooms, and hiding them away so as to be prepared. Some he puts in a hole in the trunk of a tree, others in crevices in the stone wall; others he takes into his hole underground, where his cousin, the saucy chipmunk, stores all of his savings.
Notice how the pretty little animal uses his bushy tail as he scampers along a branch. Do you see that he holds it stretched out behind him, and keeps on turning it slightly first to one side and then to the other? The fact is that it helps him to keep his balance. When a man walks upon the tight rope he generally carries in his hands a long pole, which is weighted at each end with lead. Then if he feels that he is losing his balance, he can almost always recover it again by tilting up his pole. The squirrel's tail serves him as a sort of balancing-pole, and by turning it a little bit to one side, or a little bit to the other, he can run along the slenderest branches at full speed without any danger of falling.
Everywhere we go we hear the whirring of grasshoppers, the chirping of black crickets, and the shrill declarations of the katydids. A blind man who could not see the scarlet of the maples, the deep crimson and purple of sumachs, the pepperidge and the blackberry thickets, or the golden glow in the birches as the sunlight strikes through them, would know the season of the year by the sounds.
How do the insects make their noise—for one can hardly call it singing? That will be a good subject for you to look up in your books. The air is filled with the droning and humming of other insects; how are these sounds produced?
We notice the insect-noises more, perhaps, because other animals are so quiet. It is rare to hear the croak of a frog, or the piping of a tree-toad or the note of a bird. What has become of the birds? When we see a few they are in flocks, and seem very intent on traveling somewhere. The truth is they are gathering in companies and journeying away to the south, where winter, with its cold and snow and hunger, cannot follow them. Next spring they will come back again, to spend the summer with us.
Only those birds remain which can live upon seeds, or pick up rough fare along the sea-shore. A band of small winged friends are flitting about among the weeds ahead of us. Do you not know them? Look closely. Aren't the canary-like form and black wings familiar? You would say they were goldfinches if they were more yellow, wouldn't you? Now you see that that is what they are, but in an olive dress. The fact is that all birds molt their feathers twice a year. In spring the new feathers come out in bright colors, and in autumn there worn gay coats are lost, and feathers of duller hue take their place. Thus the brilliant yellow and black goldfinch of summer becomes a quiet Quaker in winter. Such a change is very advantageous to the birds—how, you may study out for yourselves.
Butterflies are scarce, too, but these have died, not run away, as the birds are doing. One sees a good many sluggish caterpillars, however; and sharp eyes may begin to find cocoons hanging from the bushes, or tucked into crevices of bark, or plastered against rocks and the boards of old fences. If you were to keep account of all the different kinds you could find, you would soon have a long list; and if you were to learn how to keep them properly and care for the butterflies and moths which will come out of them in the spring, you could start an admirable cabinet.
Here is a patch of milkweed. Examine each plant thoroughly because there may be a gift for you hidden among the leaves. You have found "something pretty," you say? What is it like? "Like a green thimble, with rows of gold buttons on it." That is a pretty accurate description; only your thimble is closed at the top, where it hangs by a short thread, and it is heavy and alive, for it is the lovely chrysalis of the milkweed butterfly. Next summer you must learn the appearance of that species, which you can easily do, for it is one of our largest and commonest ones.
Where the milkweeds grow you are pretty sure to see also masses of goldenrod, and towering high above them the great, flowering pillars of joepye-weed. Such clumps are good hunting-places for autumnal insects. There gather the soldier-beetles, brilliant in uniforms of yellow and black. They are sometimes so numerous as to bend down the plants by their weight, and are in constant motion, crawling about the blossoms, or flying from spray to spray. Here, too, come locust-boring beetles, black with a line of yellow V's on the back, whose eggs are laid in the soft inner bark of locust-trees; and fat short-winged blister-beetles, or oil-beetles, which leave such a bad odor on the hands when touched. This is due to an acrid oil which oozes out of the joints of the beetle's legs when it is handled and thinks itself in danger. It is a protection, for it both smells and tastes so nasty that no bird will ever attempt to eat an oil-beetle. And its body is so very big because it lays such an enormous number of eggs. How many eggs do you think an oil-beetle will lay? Why, something like thirty thousand! She lays them in batches in little holes in the ground, and a few days afterward a tiny little grub hatches out of each egg, and begins to hunt about for some flower that bees are likely to visit. When it finds one, it climbs up the stem, hides among the petals, and waits. Then as soon as a bee settles upon the flower it springs upon her and clings to her hairy body. The bee is very busy collecting nectar and pollen, and the grub is very tiny; so she never seems to notice that the long-legged little creature is clinging to her, and carries it back with her to her nest. Then the grub lets go, and proceeds to eat all the "bee-bread" which the bee had stored up so carefully for her own little ones.
How is it that all the trees, bushes, and plants are covered with threads of spider's silk, which often annoys us by getting on our hands or faces? Let us help you to an answer. This is the time of year when spiders are most numerous and most active; and many a spider trails behind it a thread of gossamer wherever it goes, and leaves it there. On many of the plants, bushes, trees, and fences you may see, if you look closely, very small spiders resting. Those little spiders have been taking a journey through the air—a sort of balloon trip. During the summer a number of spiders, all living near one another, had big families—a hundred or more in each. Perhaps you noticed in July and August spiders dragging about large white bundles: they were packets of eggs from which the young hatched. So many coming into the world together made it difficult to find food. So, one by one, the little spiders climbed low bushes or tall plants, and perched themselves on the tips of the topmost leaves. Then each poured out from the end of its body a slender thread of silk, which floated straight up in the warm air rising from the heated ground.
At last each little spider had seven or eight feet of thread rising up into the air above it. Then suddenly it loosed its hold of the leaf, and mounted into the air at the end of its own thread, higher, and higher, and higher, till it had risen several hundreds of feet into the air. Then it met a gentle breeze traveling slowly overhead, and traveled along with it, mile after mile, still resting on its thread. And when it wanted to come down, all that it had to do was to roll up the thread till there was not quite enough left to support it, and so it came floating gently down to the ground below. Then, having no more use for the thread, it broke loose from it and left it lying like a fallen telegraph wire across the tops of the bushes and fences and other things, where our faces brush against it.
What a pretty green fly this is sitting upon the fence, with delicate gauzy wings looking like the most delicate lacework!
Yes, that is a lacewing fly. Just notice what wonderful eyes it has. They look like little globes of crimson fire, and it is quite difficult to believe that a tiny lamp is not alight inside the head. This fly lays its eggs in a most curious way. Settling on a twig, she pours out a drop of a kind of thick gum from the end of her body. Then, jerking her body suddenly upward, she draws out this gum into a slender thread, which hardens as soon as it comes into contact with the air; and just as she lets go she fastens an egg to the tip. She then lays another egg in the same manner, and then another, and then another, and so she goes on till she has laid quite a little cluster of eggs—perhaps ninety or a hundred altogether. You would not think that they were eggs if you were to see them. You would be almost sure to think that the little cluster was a tuft of moss. Indeed, for a great many years even botanists thought that these eggs were a kind of moss, and put pictures of them in books of botany accordingly!
Look at these odd little black and white spiders. How jerkily they run; never moving more than an inch or so at a time, then stopping to rest, and then generally darting off again in a different direction. They are hunting-spiders, and are so called because they hunt for insects instead of trying to catch them in a web. You may see one of these spiders "stalking" a fly very much as a cat creeps up to a bird, and then suddenly springing upon it and leaping into the air with its victim firm in its grip.
Slowly the days grow shorter, the rains come more frequently, flowers wither, and the herbage shrivels. Insects die off, the birds one by one disappear quietly, or gather in flocks to journey southward, and the woods grow quiet and gray.
IV
WINTER
As we look out of the window on a landscape of snow, or of half-bare earth, frozen roads, and leafless trees, the world seems lifeless. But one who starts out for a walk, anxious to discover whether all nature is really dead, will soon find that it is very much alive, though much of it is buried in slumber. Let us test it.
As we take the well-accustomed path we cannot but contrast the bareness and silence with the activity and color and cheerful noise about us when a few weeks ago we strolled this way. The thought saddens and discourages us a little, when suddenly there comes to our ears
"Chick-chick-a-dee-dee! Saucy note,
Out of sound heart and merry throat,
As if it said: 'Good day, good sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places
Where January brings few faces.'"
There is the singer—half a dozen of them in fact—fluffy little gray, black-capped birds not much bigger than a man's thumb, dodging busily about the limbs of that old apple-tree, swinging with desperate clutch at the tip of a twig, hanging head downward to get at a morsel on the under side of the bough, and chattering all the time as though cold weather were no hardship at all.
What do they find to eat? Keep your eyes on one, and see if you cannot guess. He is pecking here and there at the bark, and swallowing something so minute we cannot recognize it. But do you not remember how, last summer, we watched the procession of ants climbing this very tree to get honey from a "herd" of aphids on the branches? Those bark-lice are still there, each hidden under a sort of scale, like a winter blanket; and it is these that the chickadees are pulling off and eating. It takes a great many of them to make a meal, and the birds must keep very busy. Perhaps that is one reason why they seem so happy. A busy person is usually a cheerful one.
When you meet a winter group of these merry tomtits it is well to wait quietly for a little while, since you are pretty sure to find others following them. There! do you hear that sharp tapping? Turn your head and you will see a small woodpecker with its checkered black and white coat, and a broad white stripe down the back, hewing away at the thick bark of that oak. He is tremendously in earnest, and let us hope he finds a good fat grub.
Gliding down the next tree-trunk comes something which for an instant we take for a mouse—it is so bluish and furtive; but it is a bird—a nuthatch—which has a straight slender bill almost like a woodpecker's, and which digs into the cracks and crannies for eggs and hiding grubs of small insects, now and then smashing a thin-shelled acorn for the wormy meal it contains, or tearing to pieces the fuzzy cocoon of a tussock-moth. It has an odd habit of working almost always head downward, and now and then lifts its head and squeaks out a sharp nee-nee-nee, as though it said "Never-mind-me. 'Tain't cold!"
Quite likely on the next tree a brown creeper—sedate brown little lady of a bird—is gliding about the trunk, very daintily picking and searching with her long slender and curving beak for similar hidden food. She is a dear little creature.
Even prettier are the kinglets that often form one of this little company of winter workers. They are the smallest of all American birds except the hummers, and are olive green with tiny crowns of gold and rubies, as one might say. They have the activity and nimbleness of the chickadees, and toward spring cheer us with a brilliant song. These lovely pygmies are cousins of the wrens; and one may sometimes see flitting about the brush a real wren, which in summer flies away to the far north, letting us hear for a few days in March, before he leaves, specimens of the exquisite song with which he will make the Canadian woods ring when next June he meets his mate and builds his nest among the great pines and spruces.
Most of our birds, you know, flee southward, when cold weather approaches, but some, like the crow, many birds of prey, as hawks and owls, some game-birds, such as Bob White and the grouse, several of the seed-eating sparrow tribe, and some others, such as the little fellows we have been watching, stay with us, because they find plenty of food. If we should go out every day of the winter we could make a long list of these by the time All Fools' day came around. To it might be added a goodly list of birds whose proper home is in Northern Canada, but which in midwinter come south to a country which is less snowy if not less cold. The snowbirds, with their satiny feet and ivory bills, dressed like gentlemen in lead-colored coats and white vests, to which you toss crumbs from the breakfast table every morning, are in this class. Doubtless we shall see others as we turn down the wooded lane that leads to the creek.
Here among these bushes is a good place to look for cocoons of moths and butterflies. One is pretty sure to see at once a few of those of the big Promethea moth folded within a large leaf, the stem of which is lashed by silk threads to its twig so that it will not fall or be blown away. Very likely on the same bush will hang a similar big cocoon, but this one fastened all along the under side of the twig, so that it is hammock-shaped. Search about among the heaped-up leaves beneath the bush, and you may find the cocoons of the great Polyphemus silkworm-moth and of that exquisite pale-green luna-moth which flits like a ghost to our lighted windows on summer nights.
But these are the giants of their race. Hundreds of smaller cocoons and chrysalids—papery, fuzzy, leathery, or naked and varnished to keep out the damp, may be discovered in the crevices of the old fence, upon and beneath the rough bark of trees, rolled up in leaves little and big, and buried in the ground, where the moles hunt for them when the ground is not frozen too hard, and the skunks dig them up.
How about the moles and the skunks? Well, the moles are by no means as active as in summer, though they move around somewhat under the frozen layer of top-soil, in search of the earthworms which have been driven deep down by the frost. As for the skunks, they, like the woodchucks, the chipmunks, and the red squirrels, are deeply sleeping in underground beds; but plenty of four-foots are wide awake. See how that gray squirrel is making the snow fly as he paws his way down to the nut he buried three months ago! Only the tip of the plume of his tail waves above the drift.
Do you see that double row of holes punched in the snow? Every country boy knows them as the track of a rabbit, and would tell you how fast the rabbit was going. But what embroidered on the glistening snow-sheet this lovely chain that extends wavily from this tree to that stone wall? A weasel. Little cares he for cold, in his white ermine coat; and many's the careless sparrow, and snugly tucked-in mouse that falls to his quick spring and sharp white teeth. The weasel's nearest cousin, the mink, is working for his living, too, these winter days, haunting the warm spring-holes in hope of catching eels or other fish. Perhaps we shall see some signs of his work along the creek.
And now we have come to the end of the last of our rambles. But don't think that we have seen nearly all that there is to be seen. If we had been able to spend a little more time in the fields, or the lane, or the wood, or on the banks of the stream, we should have noticed a great many more animals and birds and reptiles and insects, quite as curious and quite as interesting as any of those which we have met with. And if we had taken a dozen rambles together instead of only four, each time we should have found fresh creatures to look at, and fresh marvels to wonder at, and fresh beauties to admire. For wherever we go nature always has something new to show us; and the world is full of wonderful sights for every one who has eyes to see.