Outings at Odd Times

by Charles C. Abbott

Where we now strolled the cliff had been spared for several years, and a rank vegetation covered it from base to top. Squatty willows and dwarf sumachs, golden-rod and chess, a wild grass that recalled the graceful plumes of the Panicum crusgalli at home; these held the winds at bay, but were likely, when next it stormed to be carried out to sea, and with them tons of the cliff upon which they grew. As so many of the rank growths near by were heavy with seed, it was and is an unsolved puzzle why there should have been a complete absence of birds. Everything that an ornithologist would say seed-eating birds required was here in profusion; yet the birds were not. Already the summer migrants had departed—I found many warblers’ and fly-catchers’ nests—and the winter birds of the region had not yet appeared. From what I saw this day and afterward in other localities, I am well convinced that, taking the year through, there is no spot, east of the Alleghanies, in the United States where birds are so abundant as in the valley of the Delaware. I have seen, since my return, more birds of many kinds in one half-hour at home than I saw during two weeks’ rambles in Canada.

I was in no hurry to climb up the cliff, the descent of which was still impressed upon my memory, but the order to march came from the guide, and we struggled slowly up the well-worn path. If a brief rest had not been permitted, I should have rebelled; but we were fortunate in this, and never did lake look lovelier than “in the golden lightning of the sunken sun.” It was with regret that we turned our faces landward and crossed prosy fields, and even longed for the bright waters while threading a fragment of Canadian forest. Here, too, silence brooded over nature; not even a chickadee flitted among the branches of the sturdy oaks and maples, nor a woodpecker rattled the rough bark of towering white pines. As we reached the public road, and stopped for supper at an old wayside inn, three silent crows passed by high overhead. They were flying in a southeasterly direction, and I watched them long, and wondered if they were bound for the far-off meadows at home, where hundreds of their kind gather daily as the sun goes down.

Dew and Frost.

At sunrise to-day, by reason of the dew, the whole earth was beautiful. Every harsh outline was softened to comely roundness. Not even an ungainly fence scarred the landscape. Instead of Nature tortured out of shape, the outlook was as a peep into a fairy-land. And all by reason of the glittering dew. What is dew? Says the physical geography at hand: “When at night the earth radiates the heat which it has received during the day, the surface becomes colder than the ground beneath or the air above. Vapor rises from the moist soil below, to be condensed at the cooler surface. The adjacent layer of air above is also cooled to its point of saturation, and its vapor is deposited. This condensed moisture at the surface, whether from the soil or the air, is dew.... Dew does not fall, but is condensed on the best radiators, such as grass and trees.”

Going no further into explanations, let us consider the dewy morn as we find it. What of this “early, bright, transient, and chaste” moisture that bathes the world alike? No, it does not, by the way. Many a spot is dry as powder, while elsewhere all is dripping. It does not do to make sweeping assertions even about such a phenomenon as this. You will stir the lurking critic in his den if you do, and what a fell catastrophe!

But to-day, October 3d, the dry spots are to be looked for, so scattered are they, and practically everywhere are sparkling globules of pure water. Finding the world so, it becomes the essential business of the rambler to determine its effects. Are the birds chilled to silence? Does the field-mouse shiver in his grassy nest? I think not. Often have I wished to detect some marked evidence of the influence of dew, but my sluggish senses have failed me. Up from the glistening expanse of weedy meadows comes the blithe song of the sparrow; out from the misty depths of the river valley floats the triumphant cawing of the crow. The bluebird greets the dawn with prophetic warble, promising the brightness of summer when the dew has gone; and chill though the night has been, the twittering swifts are alert and aloft at daybreak. Whether there be dew or none, it seems to matter nothing to the birds. But it is a veritable tell-tale so far as the early stirring mammals are concerned. They can never move so daintily that the dew-drops are not brushed aside, and the long lines of swept herbage stand out in boldest relief as the sunlight sweeps across the field. One can now track the belated creature to his home.

Most marked of all the effects of a heavy dew is the beading of a spider’s web. A more exquisite object than a dew-spangled gossamer I have never seen. Within a week I saw a single silken strand that reached a rod in length, and not a break was there in the row of sparkling beads that clung to it. At the same time, from rail to rail of the roadside fence were stretched the marvelous weavings of the geometric spider, and every horizontal thread was dew-laden. I waited until the sun broke through the bank of clouds in the east, anticipating a splendid exhibition, nor was I disappointed. Alas! that language is so inadequate to one’s needs, when such magnificence is before us. What the spiders may think of dew remains to be determined. As I prodded several of them, and forced them to the fore, they were a sorry-looking set, and shook their webs and themselves in a disconsolate way, as though chilled to the core. An hour later, as I passed by, their energy had revived.

And now what of dew as a weather sign? I turn to the “weather proverbs” that have been gathered and made into a little book (Signal Service Notes, No. IX), and find the sum and substance of fourteen “sayings” to be that dew in summer and autumn is indicative of fair days; the absence of it, of rain. “If your feet you wet with the dew in the morning, you may keep them dry for the rest of the day.” It is a comfort to know that a modicum of truth lies in some of the sayings in everybody’s mouth; and certainly a dewy morn is likely to be followed by a dry and sunny noon. Nevertheless, do not expect to notch off your three score and ten years without a failure in these sayings. Euripides never hit the nail more squarely on the head than when he wrote—

What to-morrow is to be

Human wisdom never learns.