Shall the dumb bird instructed say.”
XVII.
BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS.
Even the most home-loving body may sometimes gain refreshment, and at the same time have his mental vision broadened, by a jaunt to another neighborhood; and if he has a hobby, he may beguile the days in riding it, and thus evade, for a time at least, that most harrowing of all maladies, homesickness. Well, to make a long story short, and a dull one a little brighter, let me say at once that I have, more or less recently, made several visits to various points of interest, and everywhere have found delightful comradeship with the birds. First, I shall speak of a trip to Montreal, that gem city on the St. Lawrence, beautiful for situation as well as for other attractive features.
South of the city a mountain rears its green, symmetrical mass. True, it is not very lofty as mountains go; but standing there alone in the midst of a far stretching plain, it seems really majestic, especially to one unused to great altitudes. It is a favorite pleasure-resort for residents and visitors, having been converted into a beautiful park, with winding paths and driveways, many shady nooks, with comfortable benches to lounge on, and a tower on the summit, from which you can look down upon a scene that is really enchanting. Nestling at the foot of the mountain is the city, with its towers, steeples, well-laid streets, and palatial residences; curving and gleaming far to the northeast and southwest is the mighty St. Lawrence, its green banks holding it in loving embrace far as the eye can reach; in another direction you trace the Ottawa River meandering far to the northwest like a ribbon of silver, and dividing into two branches a few miles away, thus forming the island of Montreal; beyond the St. Lawrence is the Lake of Two Mountains, and far away in the misty distance toward the south and southwest, are the blue outlines of the Green and Adirondack ranges; in other directions the plain stretches level until it melts in the hazy distance, and is dotted with farm-houses, villages, well-cultivated fields, and green woodlands.
One afternoon a few unoccupied hours were at my disposal. I determined to spend them on Mount Royal, as the eminence is called. A car wheels you up an inclined plane, almost perpendicular near the top, at least two-thirds of the way to the summit. Having filled myself with the scene from the tower, I was starting off to make a tour of the park, when my footsteps were arrested by a quaint new song coming from a clump of trees farther down the declivity. Interest in everything else vanished in a moment. A good deal of time was spent before I could get a sight of the minstrel. Much to my surprise, he turned out to be a thrush; the species, however, could not be determined at the time for lack of my opera-glass, as the bird was perched rather high in a tree. In the brief time at my disposal just then, I saw a number of other birds, and resolved to spend a day on the mountain studying them, as soon as other duties would permit.
That day came in good time. An early morning hour found me skirting the steep sides of the mountain, alert for feathered dwellers. It was the tenth of July, too late for the best songs and for finding birds in the nest, and yet I felt fairly well satisfied with the results of the day’s excursion. Presently the song of the thrush, whose identity I had come to settle, was heard in the copse. A look at him with my glass proved him to be the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, only a migrant in my State, and one that pursues his pilgrimage both to the north and south in patience-trying silence.
To my ear the song was sweet, almost hauntingly so. Some notes were quite like certain strains of the wood-thrush’s rich song, but others seemed more ringing and bell-like, and the whole tune was more skilfully and smoothly rendered,—that is, with less labored effort. Still, I am loath to say that the general effect of this bird’s song is more pleasing than that of the wood-thrush, for there is something far-away and dreamy about the minstrelsy of the latter that one does not hear in the song of any other species.
The veeries evidently had nests or younglings among the bushes, for they called in harsh, alarmed tones as I entered their secluded haunts, but I had not the good fortune to find a nest. Indeed, it was too late to discover any nests at all, except such as had been deserted. But, to my great delight, I found that the jolly juncos breed on the mountain, for there they were carrying food to their little ones, which had left the nursery and were ensconced in the thick foliage. These birds are winter residents in my own neighborhood, but in the spring they hie to this and other localities of the same and higher latitudes to spend the summer. It was refreshing to meet my little winter intimates. They were quite lyrical, but their little trills did not seem any more tuneful here in their breeding-haunts than in their winter residences, especially when Spring pours her subtle essence into their veins.
Nothing surprised me more than to find song-sparrows on the top of the mountain, whereas they are usually the tenants of the swamps and other lowlands in my neighborhood. Here they were rearing families on the mountain’s crest as well as along the streams that laved the mountain’s base. They also sang their tinkling roundels in both places, sometimes ringing them out so loudly that they could be distinctly heard above the clatter of the street cars.
At one place, in a cluster of half-dead trees and saplings, a colony of warblers were tilting about; all of them only migrants about my home in Ohio, but breeding here. There were old and young creeping warblers, the elders singing their trills in lively fashion, and the young ones twittering coaxingly for food. Here were also a number of redstarts,—sonnets in black and gold,—the young beseeching their parents constantly for more luncheon. A beautiful chestnut-sided warbler wheeled into sight and reeled off his jolly little trill, and then gave his half-grown baby a tidbit from his beak. On another part of the mountain the song of a black-throated green warbler fell pensively on the ear, coming from the thick branches of a tall tree, like a requiem from a broken heart. Presently he flitted down into plain view, his curiosity drawing him toward his auditor sitting beneath on the grass. No doubt his mate was crouched on her nest far up in one of the trees.