One important exception to this kind of nonsense may be made, however, for in certain circumstances it is fair to accept from our American birds a broad hint as to the character of the approaching winter. Experience convinces us that an unusually early arrival of migratory birds from the north indicates an extra cold winter to follow. Several northwestern sayings about ducks and geese tell us that whenever they leave Lake Superior noticeably earlier than is their wont; or fly southward straight and fast, not lingering near accustomed halting-places, then a severe season is to be anticipated. In the sum this is logical, for this reason:
Birds whose home is in the far North—and several species go to the extreme limit of arctic lands to make their nests—must quit those desolate coasts as soon as chilling rains, snow-storms, and frost begin to kill the insects, bury the plants and freeze the streams, thus cutting off food-supplies; and they must keep ahead of those famine-producing conditions as they travel southward toward their winter-resorts in a more hospitable zone. On the average, their arrival in the United States will be nearly on the same date year after year.
It sometimes happens, however, that winter will pounce upon the arctic border of the continent days or weeks earlier than usual, and the cold and snowfall will exceed the normal quantity. In such circumstances the birds must make their escape more hastily than ordinarily, and will come down across the Canadian border in larger and more hurrying companies, very likely accompanied by such species as snow-birds, crossbills, pine finches and evening grosbeaks, which in general pass the winter somewhat to the north of our boundary. Excessive cold in the far North is almost certain to influence southern Canada and the northern states, and it is therefore safe to conclude, when we witness this behavior of migratory birds, that a winter of exceptional severity has set in at the north and is in store for us. But the prophets are ourselves—not the birds! They are dealing with dangerous conditions, and leave it to us to do the theorizing.
One feature of the behavior of the fish-hawks in Wilson’s story was their restlessness, taken by fishermen to betoken a rising storm. There may be some value in this “sign,” since it is noted in many other cases. Dozens of proverbs mention as indications various unusual actions noticeable in poultry, such as crowing at odd times, clappings of the wings, rolling in the dust, standing about in a distraught kind of way, a tendency to flocking, and so forth. Many popular sayings tell us that both barnyard fowls and wild birds become very noisy before an unfavorable change in the weather.
When the peacock loudly bawls
Soon we’ll have both rain and squalls,
is one such. Virgil’s statement that “the owl” screeches unduly at such a time is supported by modern testimony.
A reasonable explanation of this uneasiness is that it is the effect of that increased electrical tension in the atmosphere that often precedes a shower, to which small creatures are perhaps more sensitive than are men and large animals. It will not do, then, to reject all the weather-signs popularly alleged to be given by animals.
At the same time, as has been suggested, much of the current weather-prophecy relating to animals is silly, such, for example, that a solitary turkey-buzzard seen at a great altitude indicates rain; that blackbirds’ notes are very shrill before rain; that there will be no rain the day a heron flies down the creek; that when woodpeckers peck low on the tree-trunks expect a hard winter. These, and many other nonsensical maxims, are in fact spurious. Most of them, no doubt, were uttered originally in jest, or as a whimsical answer to some inquisitive child, then repeated as amusing, and finally quoted seriously. Others have been brought to us from the old world by early farmer-immigrants—French in Canada, Louisiana and New England, Dutch in New York, Swedish and German in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Spanish in the Southwest, and so on—and have been applied to our native birds, where often they fail to fit. A saw that perhaps had some value when told of the European robin or blackbird, is ludicrously inappropriate when said of our blackbirds and robins, which are totally different in nature and habits.
One of the most venerable of these worthless prognostics, and one that very likely is a relic of Roman auspices, twenty-five centuries ago, is that of the goose-bone: