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Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put on a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new.
The quaint story of Noah’s gathering the animals into the ark is always linked in my mind with the Pied Piper, and with that strange turn in the tide of bird life which is called migration. The marvelous music which charmed the rats and children of Hamelin town must have been used by Noah to call his creatures into the ark of safety, and it is still to be heard in the winds of autumn sighing through the Chocorua forests and calling the birds away to other lands. One day all is calm and serene; the next, though the sky is just as blue and the sunlight just as warm, something of unrest is in the air, and the birds are telling each other the story of the great journey. Songs are forgotten or sung only to greet the dawn and bless the night; nestlings are trained to flight and led silent journeys through field, forest, or ether after food; new scenes are visited, and the weak separated from the strong and left to die. Then, sometimes by day, sometimes by night, the hosts meet, drawn together by a force as irresistible and mysterious as magnetism, and finally the story of the great journey is written in fact once more.
MOUNT CHOCORUA AND CHOCORUA LAKE IN SUMMER
In the August mornings I hear the Swainson’s thrush by the lake. He was not there a few days before, he was on the mountain-side. He is drifting southward, slowly at first, but feeling the thrill of the Pied Piper’s music in his wings. All through the summer I have listened in vain for the nasal “quank, quank, quank,” of the red nuthatch. Suddenly, in mid-August, I hear it on the mountain, and an hour or two later every flock of chickadees brings the northern migrant’s call along with the jolly chorus of “dee, dee, dee.” These chickadees, alert, courageous, tireless, and generous, are the convoys of the warbler fleets. For an hour the silence of the forest will be broken only by the tiresome platitudes of the red-eyed vireo, the dry staccato of the harvest-fly, and the occasional whistle of a hyla. Then, far away, will be heard the faint “dee-dee” of the titmouse. It comes nearer, and presently a dozen or twenty little birds are seen hovering, darting, flitting, but steadily advancing, tree by tree, through the woods. Perhaps not more than one in ten will be a chickadee, yet it is the chickadee which gives character and direction to the body. The guided flock of easy-going warblers and vireos, nuthatches and kinglets, drift on, feeding and frolicking, heedless of what it passes.
If the observer “squeaks,” or if an owl draws the attention of the passing birds, the chickadee comes to the front at once, with his sharp reproving iterations, and his beady eyes snapping indignantly. Along with him come red-eyed and solitary vireos, nuthatches, golden-crested kinglets, black-throated blue warblers, Wilson’s blackcaps, young chestnut-sided warblers, looking puzzlingly unlike their parents. Blackburnians, with throats aflame; black-throated greens, rich in spring tints of yellow and tender green; black and white creepers, the tidiest of birds; the gay magnolias, redstarts, Canadians, and sober myrtle warblers. Sometimes a single flock contains nearly all of these courtiers of the woods, while others are composed almost entirely of a single species, as, for example, the black-throated greens, or the magnolias.
In these same late August and early September days the cherry and berry eaters gather together and travel in flocks. Robins by scores, sometimes by hundreds, combine with the cedar-birds and flickers and range over the country in search of food. The flickers feed much of the time upon the ground among the berry-bushes, casting aside woodpecker habits and seeming more like starlings. The robins are sometimes with them upon the ground, but oftener in the wild cherry-trees with the cedar-birds, stripping bough after bough of its dark fruit. When the flock moves, the cedar-birds mass themselves and fly for a while as though linked together. Then, without apparent cause, part or the whole turn about and fly first this way, then that, perhaps coming back, after a few minutes, to the point of departure. When a flock of red crossbills do this, they sprinkle the air and the earth with sweet notes; but the cedar-birds have no joy in their one chilly whistle, and there is more of aimless, witless indecision in their flights than there is of romping. Whenever I come near one of their flocks, I scan them carefully, hoping to detect the white wing-bars of a Bohemian waxwing among them, yet it is more than likely that I may watch a lifetime without having the fortune to see in the flesh one of those rare vagabonds of the north. The roving habits of these birds and of the crossbills contrast strangely with the simple steadfastness of the grouse, and the clock-like punctuality of many of the migrants. Something in that cold past with its glaciers and ice-crushed continents could explain the present temperaments of the wandering birds, but we may never know what that something is. Whether we are to know it or not, it is natural to have a feeling akin to pity for birds so lacking in home life.