Thirst overtook me at eight, after four hours of watching, and I crept softly down to the brook. Before I had gone a dozen steps, a huge bird sprang from the sedgy growth by the lake shore and rose into the air. It was a blue heron which had been patrolling the sand within forty feet of me. He flew along the shore for some distance, then rose and passed over the trees towards the north, seeking, no doubt, my lonely lake, half a mile away in the forest. One morning, when hidden in the alders and viburnums which grow at the very foot of the big tree, I heard a queer guttural call or grunt from the meadow, and the next moment the heron stood above me, on the lowest limb of the pine. He looked sharply over the meadow and the lake, stretched first one leg, then the other, then each wing in turn, and finally fell to preening his blue and gray plumes. Against a pale blue sky or ruffled water which mingles blue and gray with bits of white, he is marvelously well protected by his coloring. No wonder that the poor frogs fall a prey to his patient spearing. I kept breathlessly still, and watched this largest of our Chocorua birds. It seemed odd that the old tree should be a perch for him and for the humming-bird. The hummer is three and a quarter inches long; the heron spreads six feet with his great wings when he flies, and measures over four feet when standing. After a while I grew weary of watching the heron, and of wondering at his macaroni-like legs and his strangely concentrated stare, which now and then fixed itself on my hiding-place, so I whistled softly. The heron paused in his feather-combing and looked towards me. There was no fear in his glance, only mild interest. I sang, first sad music, then “Nancy Lee,” “Pinafore,” “Hold the Fort,” everything I could think of, in fact, which might prompt him to action; but he only stared, now over his beak, then under it. The latter method of ogling was very effective, for the long bill was contemplating the skies, while the cold, calculating eyes stood out each side of its base and glared down across it until I seemed to feel their clamminess. From music I turned to animal language, and barked, mewed, mooed, brayed, whinnied, quacked, crowed, cackled, peeped, hooted, and cawed, until my throat was raw. He was clearly entertained, and showed no desire to leave me. At last I came down to plain English, supposing that my voice undisguised by song would certainly alarm him, but to my great surprise he apparently did not associate the human voice with its owner in the slightest degree. In fact, he now seemed bored by my noise, and went on with his preening. Suddenly, in moving my foot, I snapped a small twig. Before there seemed to have been time for the sound to reach his brain, the heron was on the wing, and I saw him no more that day.
At 8.30, as I was watching the big tree, a large, light-colored bird passed close to its trunk and plunged downward towards the deep pool at its foot. The sound of splashing water was followed by utter silence. After remaining motionless for several minutes I crawled carefully towards the bank of the brook. The bushes were thick, and small dry twigs covered the ground. Their snapping could not be avoided, and just before I reached a point where I could see the water and the narrow strip of muddy beach, a heavy bird rose with a great beating of wings and flew up-stream. I broke through the cover, headlong, but the bird was out of sight. The surface of the stream was covered with small, soft feathers, which I gathered together and dried. They appeared to be from the breast of a sandpiper. Who the murderer was will never be known, though I presume that it was a Cooper’s hawk.
My glimpse of this hawk, if such it was, reminded me of an encounter between a sharp-shinned hawk and a flock of blue jays which I had seen at the tree the week previous. The hawk arrived when several flickers were in the tree and hurled himself upon them. They fled, calling wildly, and brought to their aid, first a kingbird, which promptly attacked the hawk from above, and then a flock of blue jays, which abused him from cover below. When the kingbird flew away, as he did after driving the hawk into the bushes for a few moments, the jays grew more and more daring in approaching the hawk. In fact they set themselves to the task of tiring him out and making him ridiculous. They ran great risks in doing it, frequently flying almost into the hawk’s face; but they persevered, in spite of his ferocious attempts to strike them. After nearly an hour the hawk grew weary and edged off to the woods. Then the jays went up the tree as though it were a circular staircase, and yelled the news of the victory to the swamp.
As the forenoon passed slowly by, there were periods when the tree was empty for ten minutes or more at a time, but generally a flicker, cedar-bird, olive-sided flycatcher, blue jay, crow, or catbird was to be seen perched in some part of the great skeleton. At ten o’clock I shifted my place to avoid the heat of the sun, and to keep its light behind me. My new seat was in the heart of a tangle of bushes, and as I looked through the network of their stems I suddenly saw a bird’s head, motionless. My glass aided me in recognizing the little creature as a red-eyed vireo sitting upon a twig. Close by it was a second vireo also perfectly passive. I watched them for a long time, and could see nothing but their eyes move. It is such moods as this, taking possession of birds, which make some parts of the day silent, and cause the woods to seem deserted by all their feathered tenants. Another occupant of the thicket was a yellow-bellied flycatcher, whose activity in the pursuit of small insects was tireless. He certainly found enough to eat, for small insects have been unusually abundant this summer, while birds have been noticeably scarce near Chocorua. Some species, usually well represented, have seemingly vanished, and others, quite numerous in average years, have been very sparingly represented. For instance, the summer has passed without my seeing either an oriole or a winter wren, while redstarts and chestnut-sided warblers, usually among the most numerous species, have been represented by a mere handful of birds. The supposed local causes of this dearth of small birds are a heavy snowfall, which occurred the last week in May, and a hailstorm, which did great damage just in the middle of the nesting period. Unusual numbers of birds are said to have been killed by spring storms in the Gulf States before the year’s migration really began.
At eleven o’clock a flock of small birds moved rapidly across the meadow, and four of the number passed through my covert. They were a chickadee and three Wilson’s blackcaps. I wish the latter bird lived here in the breeding season, for it is a pretty, confiding, gentle little creature. The departure of these birds was hastened by the appearance on the lake shore of a young man, a boy, and a dog. The man carried a gun, and the dog rushed about in an excited way, doing his best in cur fashion to aid in the hunt. When the trio reached the brook at the point where it debouched upon the lake sand, the man cursed the stream for its width, and the boy, in a loud nasal voice, followed his example. They stood upon the farther side for several minutes pouring out blasphemy and filth until a sandpiper attracted their attention and their gun spoke sharply. The bird escaped, perhaps to die in the meadow grass, and again the two intelligent human beings invoked wrath upon the bird, the stream, the meadow, the dog, and the gun. Then they crossed the brook higher up, where it was narrower, and distance covered their conversation with a welcome veil. As long as the pleasant memories of that quiet day linger in my mind, so long will there be drawn through them a black line of disgust at the vileness of the two representatives of my own species who offered such a contrast to the purity of nature.
From eleven until one o’clock there was almost unbroken stillness near the great tree. Now and then some one of the regular residents of the meadow spoke, a dragonfly buzzed past, a small pickerel stirred in the brook, or a frog said “wurro, wurroùh,” and splashed in the still water among the reeds. The kingbirds broke the monotony by coming, three strong, with much noise and fluttering to take possession of the tree. One of them flew to the sand by the lake ripples and drank. Then all three came upon the lowest branches of the big tree and looked at the dark pool below. One flew obliquely against the water, striking it and dashing a thousand bright drops into the air. He rose chattering and returned to his perch, shaking himself. I thought he had aimed for a fly and struck the water unintentionally, but down he went again, making even more of a splash than before, and presently both the others followed his example at such frequent intervals that the pool had no time to smooth its ripples. This odd kind of bathing was continued for ten minutes, during which time a catbird sneaked down upon the sand and watched the process silently but with evident interest. Later he saw me sitting motionless under the bushes, and flew directly at me, turning sharply just before reaching my head, and making a loud noise both by striking his wings against branches and by his harsh voice. If his purpose was to startle me he certainly succeeded.
The afternoon was clear, still, and warm, and the birds were evidently drowsy. From two until after four nothing perched in the tree. A sandpiper amused me by his patient search for food, as he waded back and forth on the mud over which the brook spread as it entered the lake. For an hour he confined himself to a space less than six feet square and worked over almost every inch of it. Much of the time he merely prodded the mud gently with his long, quill-like bill, but occasionally he seemed to see something squirm, and then he pursued it quickly and stabbed more vigorously. Much of the time the water was above his knees, and sometimes he ran into deeper places, so that it lapped upon his breast. Twice he plunged his head and neck entirely under water, but his eyes seemed to need no wiping when they emerged as wide open as before. Sometimes he crossed his legs and stood like a camp-stool, with his thin props meeting their equally straw-like reflections in the brook. After a while a second sandpiper appeared, but his method was to travel rapidly along the water line, and he was soon out of sight.
It was not until nearly six o’clock that the tree became really populous again. Then the catbirds went upstairs on its branches, flickers and kingbirds occupied its top; a humming-bird buzzed in the face of a pewee who was perched fully thirty feet from the ground; a sapsucking woodpecker came and drummed for a moment, and finally a flock of cedar-birds rested in it for a while as they had in the morning. The sun set and night breathed upon the meadow. A single cedar-bird remained in the tip of the tree and drearily repeated his one dismal word. Below in the shadows the catbirds were restlessly mewing, and as it grew dark the lament of the hermits joined in the gloomy chorus. The sky was fair, and rosy lights flowed and ebbed in the clouds. The stars came, and in the distant pines a barred owl sounded his long trumpet note. A few minutes after seven, when catbirds and hermits were silent for the night, I heard a solitary sandpiper whistling at the mouth of the brook. My glass brought his tiny form to view, and as I watched him, a second tattler ran along the gleaming sand and the whistling ceased. Suddenly they flew together as though startled, and the next moment I saw what I had supposed to be a bunch of pickerel-weed growing in the shallows move slowly eastward. The object was several rods from the shore, and moving across the mouth of the brook. Now it glided a few inches, then it paused. Ten minutes passed before it progressed as many yards. It was the heron’s ghostly form. When he reached the eastern shore a light flashed across the lake and a voice sounded. He flew. I rose to go, but as I crept out upon the sand I turned to take a last look at the tree, and saw there the heron, standing on a high limb, black against the sky.
MIGRATION.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,