Fresh Fields

by John Burroughs

the nightingale, though Audubon thought our large-billed water-thrush, or wagtail, equaled that famous bird. It is certainly a brilliant songster, but most provokingly brief; the ear is arrested by a sudden joyous burst of melody proceeding from the dim aisles along which some wild brook has its way, but just as you say "Listen!" it ceases. I hear and see the bird every season along a rocky stream that flows through a deep chasm amid a wood of hemlock and pine. As I sit at the foot of some cascade, or on the brink of some little dark eddying pool above it, this bird darts by me, up or down the stream, or alights near me, upon a rock or stone at the edge of the water. Its speckled breast, its dark olive-colored back, its teetering, mincing gait, like that of a sandpiper, and its sharp chit, like the click of two pebbles under water, are characteristic features. Then its quick, ringing song, which you are sure presently to hear, suggests something so bright and silvery that it seems almost to light up, for a brief moment, the dim retreat. If this strain were only sustained and prolonged like the nightingale's, there would be good grounds for Audubon's comparison. Its cousin, the wood wagtail, or golden-crowned thrush of the older ornithologists, and golden-crowned accentor of the later,—a common bird in all our woods,—has a similar strain, which it delivers as it were surreptitiously, and in the most precipitate manner, while on the wing, high above the treetops. It is a kind of wood-lark, practicing and rehearsing on the sly. When the modest

songster is ready to come out and give all a chance to hear his full and completed strain, the European wood-lark will need to look to his laurels. These two birds are our best warblers, and yet they are probably seldom heard, except by persons who know and admire them. If the two kinglets could also be included in our common New England summer residents, our warbler music would only pale before the song of Philomela herself. The English redstart evidently surpasses ours as a songster, and we have no bird to match the English wood-lark above referred to, which is said to be but little inferior to the skylark; but, on the other hand, besides the sparrows and vireos, already mentioned, they have no songsters to match our oriole, our orchard starling, our catbird, our brown thrasher (second only to the mockingbird), our chewink, our snowbird, our cow-bunting, our bobolink, and our yellow-breasted chat. As regards the swallows of the two countries, the advantage is rather on the side of the American. Our chimney swallow, with his incessant, silvery, rattling chipper, evidently makes more music than the corresponding house swallow of Europe; while our purple martin is not represented in the Old World avifauna at all. And yet it is probably true that a dweller in England hears more bird-music throughout the year than a dweller in this country, and that which, in some respects, is of a superior order.

In the first place, there is not so much of it lost "upon the desert air," upon the wild, unlistening solitudes. The English birds are more domestic

and familiar than ours; more directly and intimately associated with man; not, as a class, so withdrawn and lost in the great void of the wild and the unreclaimed. England is like a continent concentrated,—all the waste land, the barren stretches, the wildernesses, left out. The birds are brought near together and near to man. Wood-birds here are house and garden birds there. They find good pasturage and protection everywhere. A land of parks, and gardens, and hedge-rows, and game preserves, and a climate free from violent extremes,—what a stage for the birds, and for enhancing the effect of their songs! How prolific they are, how abundant! If our songsters were hunted and trapped by bird-fanciers and others, as the lark, and goldfinch, and mavis, etc., are in England, the race would soon become extinct. Then, as a rule, it is probably true that the British birds as a class have more voice than ours have, or certain qualities that make their songs more striking and conspicuous, such as greater vivacity and strength. They are less bright in plumage, but more animated in voice. They are not so recently out of the woods, and their strains have not that elusiveness and plaintiveness that ours have. They sing with more confidence and copiousness, and as if they, too, had been touched by civilization.

Then they sing more hours in the day, and more days in the year. This is owing to the milder and more equable climate. I heard the skylark singing above the South Downs in October, apparently with

full spring fervor and delight. The wren, the robin, and the wood-lark sing throughout the winter, and in midsummer there are perhaps more vocal throats than here. The heat and blaze of our midsummer sun silence most of our birds.

There are but four songsters that I hear with any regularity after the meridian of summer is past, namely, the indigo-bird, the wood or bush sparrow, the scarlet tanager, and the red-eyed vireo, while White names eight or nine August songsters, though he speak of the yellow-hammer only as persistent. His dictum, that birds sing as long as nidification goes on, is as true here as in England. Hence our wood thrush will continue in song over into August if, as frequently happens, its June nest has been broken up by the crows or squirrels.

The British songsters are more vocal at night than ours. White says the grasshopper lark chirps all night in the height of summer. The sedge-bird also sings the greater part of the night. A stone thrown into the bushes where it is roosting, after it has become silent, will set it going again. Other British birds, besides the nightingale, sing more or less at night.

In this country the mockingbird is the only regular night-singer we have. Other songsters break out occasionally in the middle of the night, but so briefly that it gives one the impression that they sing in their sleep. Thus I have heard the hair-bird, or chippie, the kingbird, the oven-bird, and the cuckoo fitfully in the dead of the night, like a schoolboy laughing in his dreams.

On the other hand, there are certain aspects in which our songsters appear to advantage. That they surpass the European species in sweetness, tenderness, and melody I have no doubt; and that our mockingbird, in his native haunts in the South, surpasses any bird in the world in fluency, variety, and execution is highly probable. That the total effect of his strain may be less winning and persuasive than the nocturne of the nightingale is the only question in my mind about the relative merits of the two songsters. Bring our birds together as they are brought together in England, let all our shy wood-birds—like the hermit thrush, the veery, the winter wren, the wood wagtail, the water wagtail, the many warblers, the several vireos—become birds of the groves and orchards, and there would be a burst of song indeed.