Around the blossoming bush the air fairly vibrated with hummers, darting up into the sky, shooting down and chasing each other pell mell—sometimes almost into my face. As I sat by the bush one day, a handsome male went around with upraised throat, poking his bill up the red fuchsia-like tubes. Another one was flying around inside the bush, and I edged nearer to see. The sun shone in, whitening the twigs, and as the bird whirred about with a soft burring sound, I caught gleams of red, gold, and green from his gorget, and could see the tiny bird rest his wee feet on a twig to reach up to a blossom. Then he hummed what sounded more like a love song than anything I had ever heard from a hummingbird. He seemed so much more like a real bird than any of his brothers that I felt attracted to him.
One morning a little German girl, in a red pinafore, and with hair flying, came riding down the sand stream toward my bush. Her colt reared and pranced, but she sat as firmly as if she had been a small centaur. It was a holiday, and she was staking out her horses to graze, making gala-day work of it. She had one horse down by the little oak already, and springing off the one she had brought, changed about, jumped as lightly as a bird upon the other's back and raced home. Soon she came galloping back again, and so she went and came until tired out, for pure fun on her free holiday.
In looking over the bright memory pictures of my beautiful oak garden, there is one to which I always return. The spreading trunks of a great five-stemmed tree on one side of the grove made a dark oaken couch, screened by the leafy willow-like branches that hung to the ground. Here—after looking to see that there were no rattlesnakes coiled in the dead leaves—I spent many a dreamy hour, reclining idly as I listened to the free songs of the birds that could not see me behind my curtain. It was interesting to note the way certain sounds predominated; certain songs would absorb one's attention, and then pass and be replaced by others. At one time a jay's scream would jar on the ear and drown all other voices; when that had passed, the chewinks would fly up from the leaves and sing and answer each other till the air was quivering with their trills. Then came the thrashers, with their loud rollicking songs; and when they had pitched down into the brush, out rang the clear bell-like tones of the wren-tit, filling the air with sound. Afterwards the impatient whipped-out notes of the chaparral vireo were followed by the soft cooing of doves; and then, as the wind stirred the trees and sent the loosened oak blossoms drifting to the ground, from high out of an oak top came a most exquisite song. At the first note of this grosbeak all other songs were forgotten—they were noise and chatter—this was pure music. It was like passing from the cries of the street into the hall of a symphony concert. The black-headed grosbeak has not the spirituality of the hermit thrush, and his ordinary song is not so remarkable, but his love song excels that of any bird I have ever heard in finish, rich melody, and music. As I listened, my surroundings harmonized so perfectly with the wonderful song echoing through the great trees that the old oak garden seemed an enchanted bower. The drooping branches were a leafy lattice through which the afternoon sun filtered, steeping the oaks in thick still sunshine. Last year's leaves drifted slowly to the ground, while the bees droned about the yellow tassels of the blooming trees. As a violinist, lingering to perfect a note, draws his bow again and again over the strings, so this rapt musician dwelt tenderly on his highest notes, trolling them over till each was more exquisite and tender than the last, and the ear was charmed with his love song—a song of ideal love fit to be dreamed of in this stately green oak garden filled with golden sunlight.
XIV.
A MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY.
On a peg just inside the door of the ranchman's old wine shed hung one of the horses' unused nosebags. A lad on the place told me that a wren had a nest in it, and added that he had seen a fight between the wren and a pair of linnets who seemed to be trying to steal her material.
The first time I went to the wine shed both wrens and linnets were there, but nothing happened and I forgot about the original quarrel. By peering through a crack in the boarding I could look down on the wren in the nosebag inside. I could see her dark eyes, the white line over them, and her black barred tail. She was Vigor's wren. She got so tame that she would not stir when the creaking door was opened close by her, or when people were talking in the shed; and I used to go often to see how her affairs were progressing.
All her eggs hatched in time, and the small birds, from being at first all eyeball, soon got to be all bill. When I opened the bag to look at them, the light woke them up and they opened their mouths, showing chasms of yellow throat.