My morning stroll (it is October 13, my last day in Franconia) showed me, in addition to the birds already named, one lonesome-mannered hermit thrush, a few robins, two or three ruby-crowned kinglets, one of them running over with his musical twittity, twittity, twittity, a single yellow palm warbler (this and the myrtle have been the only warblers of the month), a red cross-bill, going somewhere, as usual, and leaving word behind him as he went, a small flock of pine siskins, a strangely few song sparrows, one vesper sparrow, one white-crown, a multitude of snowbirds, a purple finch or two, a goldfinch, and a grouse, with the inevitable crows, jays, chickadees, and red-breasted nuthatches. Had my walk been longer and into a more varied country, I should have found gold-crested kinglets, winter wrens, brown creepers, titlarks (perhaps), white-throated sparrows, field sparrows, chippers, tree sparrows (probably), and three or four kinds of woodpeckers.
And speaking of woodpeckers, I must allow myself to boast that within the last few days I have had exceptional luck with the big fellow of them all, known in books as the pileated. On the 9th I saw one and heard the halloo of another, and on the 11th I saw two (together) and heard a third. One of those seen on the 11th shouted at full length, and at the top of his voice while flying.
The pileated woodpecker is a splendid bird. A pity he cannot find himself at home in our Massachusetts country. To see him here in New Hampshire one might imagine that he belonged with the mountains and would be homesick in other company; but if you would see him oftener than anywhere else, you may go to a land where there is scarcely so much as a hillock—to the peninsula of Florida. There or here, he is a great bird. The brightest maple leaf that ever took color was not so bright as his crest.
FLORIDA
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MIAMI
It is Sunday, the 19th of January. A week ago I was sitting before a fire, watching the snow fall outside, in winter-bound Massachusetts. This forenoon I am reclining in the shade of a cocoanut palm, looking across the smooth blue waters of Biscayne Bay to a line of woods, I know not how many miles distant, broken in the midst by a narrow cut or inlet (Norris Cut, a passer-by tells me it is called), through which is to be seen the open Atlantic. The air is motionless, the sky cloudless, the temperature ideal. “This is the day the Lord hath made,” I repeat to myself. He has seldom done better.
I left Boston Monday morning, spent that night and the next day in Washington, slept in St. Augustine Wednesday night, and on Thursday took the long, all-day ride down the east coast of Florida, past miles on miles of orange groves and pineapple plantations, to the terminus of the railroad, the new and flourishing city of Miami.
My visit, it must be owned, began rather inauspiciously. It was nobody’s fault, of course, but the “magic city” did not put its best foot forward. Friday morning the mercury stood at forty-five, and although the day was abundantly warm out of doors,—so warm that a walker naturally took off his coat,—an oil stove proved a comfort at nightfall. In short, the day was exactly like a White Mountain day in late September, hot in the middle and cool at both ends. Yesterday, however, was a piece of Massachusetts June, while this morning is so perfect that every one, visitor or resident, passes comments upon it. Perfection of any kind is a rare and precious thing,—in this world, at least,—and though it be merely a bit of weather, it should never go unspoken of. So I say to myself as I lie in the shade, and look and breathe.
In truth, I can hardly feel it credible that I was in the midst of snowstorms less than a week ago. For a long two days winter has seemed a thing utterly past and forgotten. Only now and then it comes upon me, with the shock of unexpected news, that this is not summer, but January.
The bay, for some reason to me unknown, is almost without birds. The only one just now in sight is a cormorant pretty far offshore, diving and swimming by turns. I imagine him to be a loon till suddenly he takes wing, with outstretched neck, and after a long flight comes to rest, not in the water, but at the top of a stake. Somewhere behind me a flicker is shouting as in springtime, and on one side a mockingbird is calling (“smacking” is the word that comes of itself to my pencil), and a blue-gray gnatcatcher utters now and then a fine, thread-like ejaculation.