A Bird-Lover in the West

by Olive Thorne Miller

The tangle was composed of a varied growth. There seemed to have been originally a straggling row of low trees, chokecherry, peach, and willow, which had been surrounded, overwhelmed, and almost buried by a rich growth of shoots from their own roots, bound and cemented together by the luxuriant wild rose of the West, which grows profusely everywhere it can get a foothold, stealing up around and between the branches, till it overtops and fairly smothers in blossoms a fair-sized oak or other tree. Besides these were great ferns, or brakes, three or four feet high, which filled up the edges of the thicket, making it absolutely impervious to the eye, as well as to the foot of any straggler. Except in the obscure passages the horses kept open, no person could penetrate my jungle.

I had hardly placed myself, and I had not noted half of these details, when it became evident that my presence disturbed somebody. A chat cried out excitedly, "chack! chack! whe-e-w!" whereupon there followed an angry squawk, so loud and so near that it startled me. I turned quickly, and saw madam herself, all ruffled as if from the nest. She was plainly as much startled as I was, but she scorned to flee. She perked up her tail till she looked like an exaggerated wren; she humped her shoulders; she turned this way and that, showing in every movement her anger at my intrusion; above all, she repeated at short intervals that squawk, like an enraged hen. Hearing a rustle of wings on the other side, I turned my eyes an instant, and when I looked again she had gone! She would not run while I looked at her, but she had the true chat instinct of keeping out of sight.

She did not desert her grove, however. The canopy over my head, the roof to my retreat, was of green leaves, translucent, almost transparent. The sun was the sun of Utah; it cast strong shadows, and not a bird could move without my seeing it. I could see that she remained on guard, hopping and flying silently from one point of view to another, no doubt keeping close watch of me all the time.

Meanwhile the chat himself had not for a moment ceased calling. For some time his voice would sound quite near; then it would draw off, growing more and more distant, as if he were tired of watching one who did absolutely nothing. But he never got far away before madam recalled him, sometimes by the squawk alone, sometimes preceding it by a single clear whistle, exactly in his own tone. At once, as if this were a signal,—which doubtless it was,—his cries redoubled in energy, and seemed to come nearer again.

Above the restless demonstrations of the chats I could hear the clear, sweet song of the Western meadow-lark in the next field. Well indeed might his song be serene; the minstrel of the meadow knew perfectly well that his nest and nestlings were as safely hidden in the middle of the growing lucern as if in another planet; while the chat, on the contrary, was plainly conscious of the ease with which his homestead might be discovered. A ruthless destroyer, a nest-robbing boy, would have had the whole thing in his pocket days ago. Even I, if I had not preferred to have the owners show it to me: if I had not made excuses to myself, of the marsh, of bushes too low to go under; if I had not hated to take it by force, to frighten the little folk I wished to make friends with,—even I might have seen the nest long before that morning. Thus I meditated as, after waiting an hour or two, I started for home.

Outside the gate I met my fellow-student, and we went on together. Our way lay beside an old orchard that we had often noticed in our walks. The trees were not far apart, and so overgrown that they formed a deep shade, like a heavy forest, which was most attractive when everything outside was baking in the June sun. It was nearly noon when we reached the gate, and looking into a place

"So curtained with trunks and boughs
That in hours when the ringdove coos to his spouse
The sun to its heart scarce a way could win,"

we could not resist its inviting coolness; we went in.

As soon as we were quiet, we noticed that there were more robins than we had heretofore seen in one neighborhood in that part of the world; for our familiar bird is by no means plentiful in the Rocky Mountain countries, where grassy lawns are rare, and his chosen food is not forthcoming. The old apple-trees seemed to be a favorite nesting-place, and before we had been there five minutes we saw that there were at least two nests within fifty feet of us, and a grosbeak singing his love song, so near that we had hopes of finding his home, also, in this secluded nook.

The alighting of a bird low down on the trunk of a tree, perhaps twenty feet away, called the attention of my friend to a neighbor we had not counted upon, a large snake, with, as we noted with horror, the color and markings of the dreaded rattler. He had, as it seemed, started to climb one of the leaning trunks, and when he had reached a point where the trunk divided into two parts, his head about two feet up, and the lower part of his body still on the ground, had stopped, and now rested thus, motionless as the tree itself. It may be that it was the sudden presence of his hereditary enemy that held him apparently spellbound, or it is possible that this position served his own purposes better than any other. Our first impulse was to leave his lordship in undisputed possession of his shady retreat; but the second thought, which held us, was to see what sort of reception the robins would give him. There was a nest full of young on a neighboring tree, and it was the mother who had come down to interview the foe. Would she call her mate? Would the neighbors come to the rescue? Should we see a fight, such as we had read of? We decided to wait for the result.