A Bird-Lover in the West

by Olive Thorne Miller

On the morning spoken of, I stopped before the barrier, considering how I should pass it, when the woman showed me a narrow passage between the house and the stone wall, through which I could reach the higher ground at the back. I took this path, and in a moment was in the grove of young oaks which made her out-of-doors kitchen and yard. A fire was burning merrily in the stove, which stood under a tree; frying-pans and baking-tins, dippers and dishcloths, hung on the outer wall of her little house, and the whole had a camping-out air that was captivating, and possible only in a rainless land. I longed to linger and study this open-air housekeeping; if that woman had only been a bird!

But I passed on through the oak-grove back yard, following a path the horses had made, till I reached an open place where I could overlook the lower land, filled with clumps of willows with their feet in the water, and rosebushes

"O'erburdened with their weight of flowers,
And drooping 'neath their own sweet scent."

A bird was singing as I took my seat, a grosbeak,—perhaps the one who had entertained me in the field below, while I had waited hour after hour, for his calm-eyed mate to point out her nest. He sang there from the top of a tall tree, and she busied herself in the low bushes, but up to that time they had kept their secret well. He was a beautiful bird, in black and orange-brown and gold,—the black-headed grosbeak; and his song, besides being very pleasing, was interesting because it seemed hard to get out. It was as if he had conceived a brilliant and beautiful strain, and found himself unable to execute it. But if he felt the incompleteness of his performance as I did, he did not let it put an end to his endeavor. I sat there listening, and he came nearer, even to a low tree over my head; and as I had a glimpse or two of his mate in a tangle of willow and roses far out in the wet land, I concluded he was singing to her, and not to me. Now that he was so near, I heard more than I had before, certain low, sweet notes, plainly not intended for the public ear. This undertone song ended always in "sweet! sweet! sweet!" usually followed by a trill, and was far more effective than his state performances. Sometimes, after the "sweet" repeated half a dozen times, each note lower than the preceding one, he ended with a sort of purr of contentment.

I became so absorbed in listening that I had almost forgotten the object of my search, but I was suddenly recalled by a loud voice at one side, and the lively genius of the place was on hand in his usual rôle. Indeed, he rather surpassed himself in mocking and taunting cries that morning, either because he wished, as my host, to entertain me, or, what was more probable, to reproach me for disturbing the serenity of his life. Whatever might have been his motive, he delighted me, as always, by the spirit and vigor with which he poured out his chacks and whistles and rattles and calls. Then I tried to locate him by following up the sound, picking my way through the bushes, and among the straggling arms of the irrigating stream. After some experiments, I discovered that he was most concerned when I came near an impenetrable tangle that skirted the lower end of the lot. I say "near:" it was near "as the crow flies," but for one without wings it may have been half a mile; for between me and that spot was a great gulf fixed, the rallying point of the most erratic of wandering streamlets, and so given over to its vagaries that no bird-gazer, however enthusiastic, and indifferent to wet feet and draggled garments, dared attempt to pass. There I was forced to pause, while the bird flung out his notes as if in defiance, wilder, louder, and more vehement than ever.

In that thicket, I said to myself, as I took my way home, behind that tangle, if I can manage to reach it, I shall find the home of the chat. The situation was discouraging, but I was not to be discouraged; to reach that stronghold I was resolved, if I had to dam up the irrigator, build a bridge, or fill up the quagmire.

No such heroic treatment of the difficulty was demanded; my problem was very simply solved. As I entered the gate the next morning, my eyes fell upon an obscure footpath leading away from the house and the watery way beyond it, down through overhanging wild roses, and under the great tangle in which the chat had hidden. It looked mysterious, not to say forbidding, and, from the low drooping of the foliage above, it was plainly a horse path, not a human way. But it was undoubtedly the key to the secrets of the tangle, and I turned into it without hesitation. Stooping under the branches hanging low with their fragrant burden, and stopping every moment to loosen the hold of some hindering thorn, I followed in the footsteps of my four-footed pioneers till I reached the lower end of the marsh that had kept me from entering on the upper side. On its edge I placed my chair and seated myself.

It was an ideal retreat; within call if help were needed, yet a solitude it was plain no human being, in that land where (according to the Prophet) every man, woman, and child is a working bee, ever invaded;

"A leafy nook
Where wind never entered, nor branch ever shook,"

known only to my equine friends and to me. I exulted in it! No discoverer of a new land, no stumbler upon a gold mine, was ever more exhilarated over his find than I over my solitary wild rose path.