The glory of the spot is its trees; but with me, as things fell out, these took in the order of time a second place. My first admiration was not for them, admirable as they were, but for a few birds in the tops of them. In short, at my first approach to the Heights (there is no thought of climbing, but only the most gradual of ascents) I began to hear from the branches overhead, now here, now there, an occasional weak warbler’s song that set my curiosity on edge. It was not the parula’s (blue yellow-back’s), but like it. What should it be, then, except the cerulean’s? By and by I caught a glimpse of a bird, clear white below, with a dark line across the breast; and yes, I saw what I was looking for,—though the bird flew to another branch the next moment,—black streaks along the sides of the body. There were at least eight or ten others like him in the treetops; and it was a neck-breaking half-hour that I passed in watching them, determined as I was to gain a view not only of the under parts, but of the back and wings. The labor and difficulty of the search were increased indefinitely by the confusing presence of numerous other warblers of various kinds in the same lofty branches, making it inevitable that many opera-glass shots should be wasted. It is no help to a man’s equanimity at such a time to spend a priceless three minutes—any one of which may be the last—in getting the glass upon a tiny thing that flits incessantly from one leafy twig to another, only to find in the end that it is nothing but a myrtle warbler; a pretty creature, no doubt, but of no more consequence just now than an English sparrow. To-day, however, the birds favored me; no untimely whim hurried them away to another wood, and patience had its reward. Little by little my purpose was accomplished and my mind cleared of all uncertainty. Then I took out my pencil to characterize the song while it was still in my ears, and still new. “Greatly like one of the more broken forms of the parula’s,” I wrote, a bird repeating it at that very instant by way of confirmation. “I can imagine a fairly sharp ear being deceived by it, especially in a place like this, where parulas have been singing from morning till night, until the listener has tired of them and become listless.” This sentence the reader may keep in mind, if he will, to glance back upon for his amusement in the light of a subsequent experience which it will be my duty to relate before I have done with my story.
Between the migratory “transients” and the birds already at home, the place was pretty full of wings. A Swainson thrush sang, and from a bushy slope came a nasal thrush voice that should have been a veery’s. I took chase at once, and caught a glimpse of a reddish-brown bird darting out of sight before me. Do my best, I could find nothing more of it. If it was a veery, as I suppose, it was the only one I saw in Virginia, where the species, from Dr. Rives’s account of the matter, seems to be a rather uncommon migrant. Unhappily, I could not bring my scientific conscience to list it on so hurried a sight, even with the note as corroborative testimony. That, for aught I could positively assert, might have been a gray-cheek’s, while the reddish color might with equal possibility have belonged to a wood thrush, clear as it had seemed at the moment that what I was looking at was the back of the bird itself, and not the back of its head. Doubt is credulous. All kinds of negatives are plausible to it, and once it has adopted one it will maintain it in the face of the five senses.
On the opposite side of the path, in the bushy angles of a Virginia fence, a hooded warbler showed himself, furtive and silent,—my only Bridge specimen, to my great surprise; and near him was a female black-throated blue, a queer-looking body, like nothing in particular, yet labeled past mistake, which I can never see without a kind of wonder. Among the treetop birds were Blackburnian warblers, black-throated greens and blues, chestnut-sides, redstarts, myrtle-birds, red-eyed and yellow-throated vireos, and indigo-birds. Many white-throated sparrows still lingered; singing flat, as usual,—the only birds I know of that find it impossible to hold the pitch. The defect has its favorable side; it makes their concerts amusing. I remember seeing a quiet gentleman thrown into fits of uncontrollable laughter by the rehearsal of a spring flock, bird after bird starting the tune, and not one in ten of them keeping its whistle true to the conclusion of the measure. All these things,—though they may seem not many,—with the long rests and numerous side excursions that went with them, consumed the morning hours before I knew it, so that I was hardly at the end of the way before it was time to return for dinner.
For the afternoon nothing was to be thought of but another visit to the same place,—“the finest place I have seen yet, and the finest walk.” So I had put down the morning’s discovery. The cerulean warbler I found spoken of by Dr. Rives as “accidental or very rare;” in the light of which entry the dozen or so of specimens seen and heard during the forenoon acquired a fresh interest.
The second jaunt, because it was a second one, could be taken more at leisure; and as the birds gave me less employment, my eyes were more upon the trees. These, as I had felt before, were a wonder and a comfort; it was a benediction to walk under them, as if one were within the precincts of a holy place: oaks for the most part (of several kinds), with black walnut, shagbark, tulip, chestnut, and other species, set irregularly, or rather left standing irregularly, two or three deep, beside the road on either hand; a royal uphill avenue, which near the top became an open grove. Except in Florida, I had never seen a more magnificent growth. Some of the trees had grapevines and Virginia creeper clinging about them. Up one huge oak, with strange flaky bark, like a shagbark-tree’s (a white oak, nevertheless, to judge from its half-grown leaves), a grapevine had mounted for a height of forty feet, as I estimated the distance, not making use of the bole, but of the limbs, seeming to leap from one to another, even when they were ten feet apart. It must have been of the tree’s age, I suppose, and had grown with its growth. In the shadow of these giants, yet not overshadowed by them, were flowering dogwoods and redbuds. It is a pretty habit these two have of growing side by side, as if they knew the value of contrasted colors.
At a point on the edge of the grove I turned to enjoy the prospect southward: mountains everywhere, with the more pointed of the twin Peaks of Otter showing between two oaks that barely gave it room; all the mountains radiantly beautiful, with cloud shadows flecking their wooded slopes. Not a house was in sight; but in one place beyond the middle-distance hills a thin blue smoke was rising. There, doubtless, lay the valley of the James. Just before me, on the left of the open field, stood a peculiarly graceful dogwood, all in a glory of white, one fan-shaped branch above another,—a miracle of loveliness. The eye that saw it was satisfied with seeing. Beyond it a chat played the clown (knowing no better, even to-day), and a rose-breast began warbling. It seemed a tender story,—sweetness beyond words, and happiness without a shadow. From a second point, a little farther on, the entire southern horizon came into view, with both the Peaks of Otter visible; a truly enchanting picture, the sky full of sunlight and floating white clouds.
In a treetop behind me a cerulean warbler had been singing, but flew away as I turned about. My only sight of him was on the wing, a mere speck in the air. Afterward a parula gave out his tune, running the notes straight upward and snapping them off at the end in whiplash fashion, as much as to say, “Now see if you can tell the difference.” And then, just as I was ready to leave the grove, stepping along a footpath through a bramble patch, I descried almost at my feet a warbler,—a female by her look and demeanor, and a stranger; blue and white, with dark streakings along the sides. I lost her soon; but she had seemed to be looking for nest materials, and of course I waited for her to return. This she presently did, and now I saw her strip bits of bark from plant stems till she had her bill full of short pieces. Carrying these, she disappeared in a bramble and grapevine thicket. I waited, but she did not come back. Then I stole into the place after her, and in a moment there she was before me; but without complaint or any symptom of perturbation she passed quietly along, and again I lost her. I kept my position till I was tired, and then went back to the wood and sat down; and in a few minutes—how it happened I could not tell—there she stood once more, wearing the same innocent, preoccupied air. This time I saw her fly down the slope and disappear in a clump of undergrowth. I followed, took a seat, waited, and continued to wait. All was in vain. That was the last of her. She had played her cards well, or perhaps I had played mine poorly; and finally I turned my steps homeward, where a comparison of my notes with Dr. Coues’s description proved the bird to be, as I had believed, a female cerulean warbler. Her nest would probably be the first one of its kind ever found in Virginia.
On the way a male sang and showed himself. Now, too, I discovered for the first time that there were tupelo-trees among the large oaks and walnuts; much smaller than they, and for that reason, it is to be supposed, not noticed in my three previous passages along the avenue. They are particular favorites of mine, and I made them sincere apologies. In another place was a patch of what I knew must be the fragrant sumach, something I had wished to see for many years: low, upright shrubs, yet resembling poison ivy so closely that for a minute I shrank from gathering a specimen, although I was certain beyond a peradventure that the plant was not poison ivy and could not be noxious to the touch; just as people in general, through force of early instruction and example (miscalled instinct), shiver at the thought of handling a snake, though it be of some kind which they know to be as harmless as a kitten. While in chase of the cerulean, also, I had stumbled on several bunches of cancer-root (Conopholis), rising out of the dead leaves, a dozen or more of stems in each close bunch; queer, unwholesome-looking, yellowish things, reminding me of ears of rice-corn, so called. I had never seen the plant till the day before.
The next morning my course was beyond discussion or argument. I must go again to Lincoln Heights. The thought of the female cerulean warbler and her nest would not suffer me to do anything else. But for that matter, I should probably have taken the same path had I never seen her. The trees, the prospects, and the general birdiness of the place were of themselves an irresistible attraction. On the way I skirted a grove of small pines, standing between the road and the edge of Cedar Creek ravine: dull, scrubby trees, like pitch-pines, but less bright in color; of the same kind as those amid which, on Cameron Hill and Lookout Mountain, in Tennessee, there had been so notable a gathering of warblers the year before. Pinus pungens, Table Mountain pine, I suppose they were, though it must be acknowledged that I was never at the pains to settle the point. Here at Natural Bridge I had found all such woods deserted day after day, till I had ceased to think them worth looking into. Now, however, as I idled past, I caught the faint sibilant notes of a bird-song, and stopped to listen. Not a blackpoll’s, I said to myself, but wonderfully near it. And then it flashed into my mind what a friend had told me a few years before. “When you hear a song that is like the blackpoll’s, but different,” he had said, “look the bird up. It will most likely be a Cape May.” He was one of the lucky men (almost the only one of my acquaintance) who had heard that rare warbler’s voice. I turned aside, of course, and made a cautious entry among the pines. The bird continued its singing. Yes, it was like the blackpoll’s, but with a zip rather than a zee. Nearer and nearer I crept, inch by inch. If the fellow were a Cape May, it would be carelessness inexcusable not to make sure of the fact. And soon I had my glass upon him,—in high plumage, red cheeks and all. He had not been disturbed in the least, and kept up his music till I had had my fill and could stay no longer,—all the while in low branches and in clear view. Few songs could be less interesting in themselves, but few could have been more welcome,—for the better part of twenty years I had been listening for it: about five notes, a little louder and more emphatic than the blackpoll’s, it seemed to me, but still faint and, as I expressed it to myself, “next to nothing.” The handsome creature—olive and bright yellow, boldly marked with black and white—remained the whole time in one tree, traveling over the limbs in a rather listless fashion, and singing almost incessantly. He was my hundredth Virginia bird,—as my list then stood, question marks included,—and the second one whose song I had heard for the first time on this vacation trip. The day had begun prosperously.
After such a stirring up, a man’s ears are apt to be abnormally sensitive, not to say imaginative; then, if ever, he will hear wonders: for which reason, it may be, I had turned but a corner or two before I was stopped by another set of notes, a strain that I knew, or felt that I ought to know, but could not place a name upon at the moment. This bird, too, was run down without difficulty, and proved to be a magnolia warbler,—another yellow-rump, like the Cape May and the myrtle-bird. The song, unlike its owner, is but slightly marked, and to make matters worse, is heard by me only in the season of the bird’s spring passage; but I laughed at myself for not recognizing it. I was still in a mood for discoveries, however, and within half an hour was again in eager chase, this time over a crazy zigzag fence into a dense thicket, all for a black-and-white creeper (my fiftieth specimen, perhaps, in the last fortnight), whose notes, as they came to me from a distance, sounded like a creeper’s, to be sure, but with such a measure of difference as kept me on nettles till the author of them was in sight. I felt like a fool, as the common expression is, but was having “a good time,” notwithstanding.