The home of the porcupines is west of the pond on the slope of a heavily wooded hill, the sides of which are encumbered by very large boulders. Beneath one of the largest of these boulders and overhung by one almost as large, which rests against its mate, is the porcupines’ den. By lying down between the rocks and crawling forward into the mouth of the den I can see several feet into its black interior. A passage large enough for a hound to squeeze through leads out of sight below the rocks. Quills and hairs line the ground, and other marks of long occupancy are abundant. I have been told by farmers that they had killed old “hedgehogs” weighing nearly fifty pounds. Tales are told of white porcupines, and it is impossible to shake the hunter’s belief in the brutes’ power to shoot their quills at their enemies.
The skunk is a well-known character at the pond, but I have not sought her society, and it is an open question whether she lives in a deserted woodchuck hole or among the boulders on the porcupine’s hill.
So far as I know, Bruin never comes to my pond. He lives within sight of it among the oaks and blueberry patches on the ledges of Chocorua, and if his small eyes ever scan the landscape from the cliffs above the heart of the mountain, he can see its emerald water gleaming in the sunlight. I am more than willing not to find his huge footprints on my mosses. Deer, on the other hand, go freely and frequently to the pond, and in May and June come to the garden patch below my cottage.
Wings even more than feet bring wild life to the lonely lake. The first time that I ever saw the waters of the pond flashing and rippling in the sunlight, wings awoke the echoes of the basin as a flock of black ducks rose at my coming and vanished behind the oaks. Wood ducks nested for years in a hollow oak by the shore. One bright October morning a black tern, borne by storm or waywardness of wing, came to the lake with five black ducks. That tiny mirror in the deep woods seemed to please the weary sea-bird, for it rested there many hours, and even when alarmed circled for a while in the sky and then returned to the spot where Chocorua’s horn was reflected in the mountain pool. The great numbers of tadpoles and frogs always to be found in the lake attract not only the great blue heron and the bitterns, but also the night herons, which sometimes come in flocks of eight or ten to fish in the lakes of this region. Early in August of each year a kingfisher appears at the pond and passes much of his time by it. There are certain dry branches upon which he perches one after another in order, as he circles round the pond uttering his harsh rattling cry. I suspect that fishing of the same kind goes on after dark, for the lake is a favorite resort of the barred owls, whose trumpet tones are heard nightly at certain seasons. More than once I have seen them on branches above the water, or floating on noiseless wing from shore to shore. The fondness of this owl for frogs and fish is remarkable, particularly for hornpout, which abound in this lake. I have known my captive owls to strike a fish with their talons when it was several inches below the surface of the water in a tank.
Many a time as I have been hidden by sheltering boughs, scanning the lake and its shores for signs of life, I have seen a dark shadow glide across the water, and then a broad-winged bird alight noiselessly on a dead limb from which the whole surface of the lake could be seen. Its face would express cruelty and hunger, apprehension and something akin to remorse. The eyes of a hawk are full of meaning; they tell the story of guilt and of the eternal misery of spirit which follows guilt. The hawks which come to my pond are of several species, including the slow buteos, which one sees circling by the hour in the high skies; the dangerous accipiters, so ruthless in their raids upon poultry and small birds; and the low-flying, graceful, mouse-hunting marsh hawk, readily to be known by its white rump. At evening the whippoorwills and their cousins the night-hawks frequent the lake. Just at twilight I have heard six whippoorwills at once singing their strange song on the edge of the water. Perhaps they come there to bathe; at all events they sing only for a moment, after which only an occasional cluck or “whip” betrays their presence. Late in August the night-hawks fly in large companies, and as many as twenty-five have sometimes wheeled into the lake’s basin and circled over it, to the consternation of the small frogs.
Behind the great oaks, in which scarlet tanagers breed, there is a level overgrown with gray birches. Nearly a dozen of these trees have been converted into drinking fountains by a family of sap-sucking woodpeckers, and through the summer days, as long as the sap is sweet and abundant, the indolent birds cling to the trunk, sip the tree’s lifeblood as it drains away, and catch a few of the many insects which hover around the moist bark. The product of the trees is shared with several humming-birds, and the insects attract small flycatchers and warblers.
To tell of all the birds which either live near the lake or come to it more or less regularly, would be to recount the doings of most of the six-score species which are found in the Chocorua country. The lake is not only a favorite place of resort for resident birds, but it is a section of one of those dimly recognizable “lines” of migration along which bands of spring and autumn birds seem by instinct to take their way year by year. On this “line,” above the lake shore, I met my first and only Philadelphia vireo, one of the rarest of our migrants.
The vegetation of the lake shore has a great deal to do with its power to attract animal and bird life. I know of some woods which are forever silent to bird voices, and in which the snows of winter seem untrodden by any foot save mine. The lake was once in the heart of a white pine forest. Scores of huge stumps show where the giant trees lived until a tornado overturned them. Now the canoe birch is the prevailing tree, and few creations of the New England soil can rival it in grace, beauty, and useful qualities. The forest’s carpet of gray and green mosses, wintergreen, checkerberry, linnæa, dwarf cornel, asters and goldenrod, ferns and brakes, is strangely lacking in one flower generally common to the region. I have searched for half a mile in every direction from the pond and failed to find more than one root of the mayflower. That root, with its three or four clusters of flowers, is well hidden in a deeply shaded and poorly watered spot, where its future is threatened by a lack of all the elements which make plant life prosperous. Near this solitary root of mayflower there grows an eccentric blueberry bush, which bears pale pink and white berries very sweet to the taste, but which never grow blue. Here, too, is to be found the shy little snowberry, whose fruit has the art of hiding itself beneath glossy round leaves, so that close search is needed to gather it. Along the banks of the lake high-bush blueberries of fabulous size tempt the stroller from his course. Some of these berries were once mistaken for fox grapes. In the moist sand at the foot of these blueberry bushes, the modest houstonia blossoms throughout six consecutive months of the year. It comes in May, and it fades not until November. The bunchberry retains its flowers in these groves until long after its berries are red elsewhere. Yet autumn flowers are not noticeably slow in blooming by the lake. One of these autumn flowers is an interesting hybrid, so recognized at the Gray Herbarium. For four years we have found several roots of a goldenrod which is neither the cæsia, which it closely resembled in form, nor the bicolor, from which it inherits its white ray flowers. Both of these familiar species grow near it, and are presumably its parents.
CANOE BIRCHES OF THE BEARCAMP VALLEY