The purple finch—a small copy of the pine grosbeak, as the indigo bird is of the blue grosbeak—is a summer rather than a winter bird with us; yet he sometimes passes the cold season in Eastern Massachusetts, and even in Northern New Hampshire. I have never heard him sing more gloriously than once when the ground was deep under the snow; a wonderfully sweet and protracted warble, poured out while the singer circled about in the air with a kind of half-hovering flight.
As I was walking briskly along a West End street, one cold morning in March, I heard a bird's note close at hand, and, looking down, discovered a pair of these finches in a front yard. The male, in bright plumage, was flitting about his mate, calling anxiously, while she, poor thing, sat motionless upon the snow, too sick or too badly exhausted to fly. I stroked her feathers gently while she perched on my finger, and then resumed my walk; first putting her into a little more sheltered position on the sill of a cellar window, and promising to call on my way back, when, if she were no better, I would take her home with me, and give her a warm room and good nursing. When I returned, however, she was nowhere to be found. Her mate, I regret to say, both on his own account and for the sake of the story, had taken wing and disappeared the moment I entered the yard. Possibly he came back and encouraged her to fly off with him; or perhaps some cat made a Sunday breakfast of her. The truth will never be known; our vigilant city police take no cognizance of tragedies so humble.
For several years a few song sparrows—a pair or two, at least—have wintered in a piece of ground just beyond the junction of Beacon street and Brookline Avenue. I have grown accustomed to listen for their tseep as I go by the spot, and occasionally I catch sight of one of them perched upon a weed, or diving under the plank sidewalk. It would be a pleasure to know the history of the colony: how it started; whether the birds are the same year after year, as I suppose to be the case; and why this particular site was selected. The lot is small, with no woods or bushy thicket near, while it has buildings in one corner, and is bounded on its three sides by the streets and the railway; but it is full of a rank growth of weeds, especially a sturdy species of aster and the evergreen golden-rod, and I suspect that the plank walk, which on one side is raised some distance from the ground, is found serviceable for shelter in severe weather, as it is certainly made to take the place of shrubbery for purposes of concealment.
Fortunately, birds, even those of the same species, are not all exactly alike in their tastes and manner of life. So, while by far the greater part of our song sparrows leave us in the fall, there are always some who prefer to stay. They have strong local attachments, perhaps; or they dread the fatigue and peril of the journey; or they were once incapacitated for flight when their companions went away, and, having found a Northern winter not so unendurable as they had expected, have since done from choice what at first they did of necessity. Whatever their reasons,—and we cannot be presumed to have guessed half of them,—at all events a goodly number of song sparrows do winter in Massachusetts, where they open the musical season before the first of the migrants make their appearance. I doubt, however, whether many of them choose camping grounds so exposed and public as this in the rear of the "Half-way House."
Our only cold-weather thrushes are the robins. They may be found any time in favorable situations; and even in so bleak a place as Boston Common I have seen them in every month of the year except February. This exception, moreover, is more apparent than real,—at the most a matter of but twenty-four hours, since I once saw four birds in a tree near the Frog Pond on the last day of January. The house sparrows were as much surprised as I was at the sight, and, with characteristic urbanity, gathered from far and near to sit in the same tree with the visitors, and stare at them.
We cannot help being grateful to the robins and the song sparrows, who give us their society at so great a cost; but their presence can scarcely be thought to enliven the season. At its best their bearing is only that of patient submission to the inevitable. They remind us of the summer gone and the summer coming, rather than brighten the winter that is now upon us; like friends who commiserate us in some affliction, but are not able to comfort us. How different the chickadee! In the worst weather his greeting is never of condolence, but of good cheer. He has no theory upon the subject, probably; he is no Shepherd of Salisbury Plain; but he knows better than to waste the exhilarating air of this wild and frosty day in reminiscences of summer time. It is a pretty-sounding couplet,—
"Thou hast no morrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year,"—
but rather incongruous, he would think. Chickadee, dee, he calls,—chickadee, dee; and though the words have no exact equivalent in English, their meaning is felt by all such as are worthy to hear them.
Are the smallest birds really the most courageous, or does an unconscious sympathy on our part inevitably give them odds in the comparison? Probably the latter supposition comes nearest the truth. When a sparrow chases a butcher-bird we cheer the sparrow, and then when a humming-bird puts to flight a sparrow, we cheer the humming-bird; we side with the kingbird against the crow, and with the vireo, against the kingbird. It is a noble trait of human nature—though we are somewhat too ready to boast of it—that we like, as we say, to see the little fellow at the top. These remarks are made, not with any reference to the chickadee,—I admit no possibility of exaggeration in his case,—but as leading to a mention of the golden-crested kinglet. He is the least of all our winter birds, and one of the most engaging. Emerson's "atom in full breath" and "scrap of valor" would apply to him even better than to the titmouse. He says little,—zee, zee, zee is nearly the limit of his vocabulary; but his lively demeanor and the grace and agility of his movements are in themselves an excellent language, speaking infallibly a contented mind. (It is a fact, on which I forbear to moralize, that birds seldom look unhappy except when they are idle.) His diminutive size attracts attention even from those who rarely notice such things. About the first of December, a year ago, I was told of a man who had shot a humming-bird only a few days before in the vicinity of Boston. Of course I expressed a polite surprise, and assured my informant that such a remarkable capture ought by all means to be put on record in "The Auk," as every ornithologist in the land would be interested in it. On this he called upon the lucky sportsman's brother, who happened to be standing by, to corroborate the story. Yes, the latter said, the fact was as had been stated. "But then," he continued, "the bird didn't have a long bill, like a humming-bird;" and when I suggested that perhaps its crown was yellow, bordered with black, he said, "Yes, yes; that's the bird, exactly." So easy are startling discoveries to an observer who has just the requisite amount of knowledge,—enough, and (especially) not too much!
The brown creeper is quite as industrious and good-humored as the kinglet, but he is less taking in his personal appearance and less romantic in his mode of life. The same may be said of our two black-and-white woodpeckers, the downy and the hairy; while their more showy but less hardy relative, the flicker, evidently feels the weather a burden. The creeper and these three woodpeckers are with us in limited numbers every winter; and in the season of 1881-82 we had an altogether unexpected visit from the red-headed woodpecker,—such a thing as had not been known for a long time, if ever. Where the birds came from, and what was the occasion of their journey, nobody could tell. They arrived early in the autumn, and went away, with the exception of a few stragglers, in the spring; and as far as I know have never been seen since. It is a great pity they did not like us well enough to come again; for they are wide-awake, entertaining creatures, and gorgeously attired. I used to watch them in the oak groves of some Longwood estates, but it was not till our second or third interview that I discovered them to be the authors of a mystery over which I had been exercising my wits in vain, a tree-frog's note in winter! One of their amusements was to drum on the tin girdles of the shade trees; and meanwhile they themselves afforded a pastime to the gray squirrels, who were often to be seen creeping stealthily after them, as if they imagined that Melanerpes erythrocephalus might possibly be caught, if only he were hunted long enough. I laughed at them; but, after all, their amusing hallucination was nothing but the sportsman's instinct; and life would soon lose its charm for most of us, sportsmen or not, if we could no longer pursue the unattainable.