Our cedar or cherry bird is the most silent bird we have. Our neutral-tinted birds, like him, as a rule are our finest songsters; but he has no song or call, uttering only a fine bead-like note on taking flight. This note is the cedar-berry rendered back in sound. When the ox-heart cherries, which he has only recently become acquainted with, have had time to enlarge his pipe and warm his heart, I shall expect more music from him. But in lieu of music, what a pretty compensation are those minute, almost artificial-like, plumes of orange and vermilion that tip the ends of his wing quills! Nature could not give him these and a song too. She has given the hummingbird a jewel upon his throat, but no song, save the hum of his wings.
Another bird that is occasionally borne to us on the crest of the cold waves from the frozen zone, and that is repeated on a smaller scale in a permanent resident, is the pine grosbeak; his alter ego, reduced in size, is the purple finch, which abounds in the higher latitudes of the temperate zone. The color and form of the two birds are again essentially the same. The females and young males of both species are of a grayish brown like the sparrow, while in the old males this tint is imperfectly hidden beneath a coat of carmine, as if the color had been poured upon their heads, where it is strongest, and so oozed down and through the rest of the plumage. Their tails are considerably forked, their beaks cone-shaped and heavy, and their flight undulating. Those who have heard the grosbeak describe its song as similar to that of the finch, though no doubt it is louder and stronger. The finch’s instrument is a fife tuned to love and not to war. He blows a clear, round note, rapid and intricate, but full of sweetness and melody. His hardier relative with that larger beak and deeper chest must fill the woods with sounds. Audubon describes its song as exceedingly rich and full.
As in the case of the Bohemian waxwing, this bird is also common to both worlds, being found through Northern Europe and Asia and the northern parts of this continent. It is the pet of the pine-tree, and one of its brightest denizens. Its visits to the States are irregular and somewhat mysterious. A great flight of them occurred in the winter of 1874-75. They attracted attention all over the country. Several other flights of them have occurred during the century. When this bird comes, it is so unacquainted with man that its tameness is delightful to behold. It thrives remarkably well in captivity, and in a couple of weeks will become so tame that it will hop down and feed out of its master’s or mistress’s hand. It comes from far beyond the region of the apple, yet it takes at once to this fruit, or rather to the seeds, which it is quick to divine, at its core.
Close akin to these two birds, and standing in the same relation to each other, are two other birds that come to us from the opposite zone,—the torrid,—namely, the blue grosbeak and his petit duplicate, the indigo-bird. The latter is a common summer resident with us,—a bird of the groves and bushy fields, where his bright song may be heard all through the long summer day. I hear it in the dry and parched August when most birds are silent, sometimes delivered on the wing and sometimes from the perch. Indeed, with me its song is as much a midsummer sound as is the brassy crescendo of the cicada. The memory of its note calls to mind the flame-like quiver of the heated atmosphere and the bright glare of the meridian sun. Its color is much more intense than that of the common bluebird, as summer skies are deeper than those of April, but its note is less mellow and tender. Its original, the blue grosbeak, is an uncertain wanderer from the south, as the pine grosbeak is from the north. I have never seen it north of the District of Columbia. It has a loud, vivacious song, of which it is not stingy, and which is a large and free rendering of the indigo’s, and belongs to summer more than to spring. The bird is colored the same as its lesser brother, the males being a deep blue and the females a modest drab. Its nest is usually placed low down, as is the indigo’s, and the male carols from the tops of the trees in its vicinity in the same manner. Indeed, the two birds are strikingly alike in every respect except in size and in habitat, and, as in each of the other cases, the lesser bird is, as it were, the point, the continuation, of the larger, carrying its form and voice forward as the reverberation carries the sound.
I know the ornithologists, with their hair-splittings, or rather feather-splittings, point out many differences, but they are unimportant. The fractions may not agree, but the whole numbers are the same.
VII
A BED OF BOUGHS
When Aaron came again to camp and tramp with me, or, as he wrote, “to eat locusts and wild honey with me in the wilderness,” It was past the middle of August, and the festival of the season neared its close. We were belated guests, but perhaps all the more eager on that account, especially as the country was suffering from a terrible drought, and the only promise of anything fresh or tonic or cool was in primitive woods and mountain passes.
“Now, my friend,” said I, “we can go to Canada, or to the Maine woods, or to the Adirondacks, and thus have a whole loaf and a big loaf of this bread which you know as well as I will have heavy streaks in it, and will not be uniformly sweet; or we can seek nearer woods, and content ourselves with one week instead of four, with the prospect of a keen relish to the last. Four sylvan weeks sound well, but the poetry is mainly confined to the first one. We can take another slice or two of the Catskills, can we not, without being sated with kills and dividing ridges?”
“Anywhere,” replied Aaron, “so that we have a good tramp and plenty of primitive woods. No doubt we should find good browsing on Peakamoose, and trout enough in the streams at its base.”
So without further ado we made ready, and in due time found ourselves, with our packs on our backs, entering upon a pass in the mountains that led to the valley of the Rondout.