Two big hairy woodpeckers were on a neighboring tree, but they were not so fearless. One can hardly get nearer than thirty feet. The field glass is a great help in such cases, and no one should go to the woods without one, or at least a good opera glass. These two were both males. That could be easily told by the bright scarlet band on the back of their heads. The rest of the plumage is much like the downy woodpecker. Both have beautiful black wings, spotted and striped with white and a broad white stripe down the back. Downy's white outer tail-feathers are barred with black; the Hairy's are all white. Downy is sparrow-size; Hairy is robin-size. Downy is usually a gentle creature; Hairy is aggressive and militant. Downy is a little Lord Fauntleroy; Hairy is a Robin Hood.
One other woodpecker was seen on this lucky bird-day. It was the red-bellied woodpecker, more rare and more shy than either of the others. His breast is a grayish white tinged with red, and his back is barred white and black like a ladder; but the black is not so deep and vivid as that of the other woodpeckers. He has no white stripe down the middle of his back. His nape and crest are both scarlet and he utters a hoarser squeak than either the downy or the hairy.
One of the events of the day was the sight of the winter wren, the first time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner, his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed perfectly happy, with his two sharp, shrill, impatient "quip quaps," much shriller than the "pleeks" of downy woodpecker.
A flock of tree sparrows were busy in and around a big thicket of wild gooseberry bushes on the upland. You may easily get within a rod of them, but hardly closer, and a field glass is almost a necessity to careful study. He is a grayish, graceful sparrow, with streaks of reddish brown, chestnut caps, and a small black spot in the middle of the brownish breast. One white wing bar is a distinguishing characteristic, and a better one is the difference in color of the two mandibles; the upper one is black and the lower one yellow. The tinkling notes of the tree sparrows sound like the music a pipe organist makes when he uses the sweet organ and the flute stop.
A sharp watch was kept for goldfinches and the evening grosbeak during the day, but neither was seen. This was something of a disappointment. But it was forgotten in the thrill of joy that came late in the afternoon. There was a wide stretch of river bottom, walled in on the west by a high and forest-crowned ridge; on the east was the river, with a hundred foot fringe of noble trees, not yet sacrificed to the axe of the woodsman. The sun was just above the tops of the trees on the western ridge and long rays of slanting light came pink across the river flood-plain, investing the tree-tops by the shore with a soft and radiant light. Suddenly there came a plaintive little note from the bottom of a near-by tree, instantly recognized as a new note in the winter woods. Then another, and another, leading the eyes to the foot of a big bass-wood, where a graceful bird, with a beautiful blue back and a reddish brown breast, as if his coat had been made of the bright blue sky and his vest of the shining red sand, was hopping. The field glass brought him within ten feet. A bluebird, sure enough! The first real, tangible sign of the spring that is to be, the first voice from the southland telling us that spring is coming up the valleys. There is no mistaking the brilliant blue, the most beautiful blue in the Iowa year, unless it be the blue of the fringed gentian in the fall; and the soft reddish, earthy breast enhances the beauty of the brilliant back.
Another hopped into view; the female, doubtless, for both the blue and the reddish brown were less brilliant. Every well-regulated bluebird ought to be seen in the top of a tall elm or maple; but these seemed to have no high-flying inclinations. Maybe they could read in the clouds beneath the setting sun a prediction of the snow which came that night. They stayed a few moments and then slowly hopped away and were lost among the tree trunks. A further search only frightened a prairie chicken from beneath a hawthorne bush, where he had meant to pass the night; and the bluebirds were not seen again. But the sight of bluebirds in Iowa on the nineteenth day of February is glory enough for one day.
III. MARCH—AND A SPRING BOUQUET
Every pilgrim to the mystic land of spring knows hallowed places in sunny valleys where the tender goddess first reveals herself at Nature's living altars. Yet he can scarcely tell at which shrine she will first appear. She delights in surprising her votaries. Thoreau was right in saying that no man was ever alert enough to behold the first manifestation of spring. Sometimes as we walk toward the mossy bank in the glen where the fresh green leaves of the haircap mosses were last year's first signs of vernal verdure, the bluebird calls to us from the torch-like top of the smooth sumac and shyly tells us that, if we please, spring is here. Sometimes we thrill with the "honk, honk" of the Canada goose and think the A-shaped band of migrants is surely this year's messenger, crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the goddess and make her paths straight; but a little later we pass through a shadowy ravine where the white oaks have held their leaves all winter, and find that the great horned owl has already appropriated a last year's hawk's nest and deposited therein her two white eggs. At the foot of the sunny hill where the spring has freely flowed all winter long, we tramp around the swamp in the vain hope of finding the purplish monk's-hood of the skunk's cabbage; but look up to see, instead, the many "mouse ears," shining like bits of silvery fur, along the slender stems of the pussy willow. Or we tramp through a hazel thicket, where the squirrels have been festive among the nuts all winter, in the hope of finding, among the myriads of short, stiff catkins, one which has lengthened and softened until it is ready to pour its golden pollen into our palms. We find neither this nor the crimson stars of the fertile flowers, but the chirp of a white-throated sparrow directs our eyes to a young aspen tree from whose every flower-bud spring is peeping.