A Bird-Lover in the West

by Olive Thorne Miller

And what of her gay little spouse all this time? Did he spend his days cheering her with music, as all the fathers of feathered families are fabled to do? Indeed he did not, and until I watched very closely, and saw him going about over the poplars in silence, I thought he had left the neighborhood. Once in the day he had a good singing time, about five o'clock in the morning, two hours before the sun rose over the mountains. If one happened to be awake then, he would hear the most rapturous song, delivered at the top of his voice, and continuing for a long time. But as it grew lighter, and the human world began to stir, he became quiet again, and, if he sang at all, he went so far from home that I did not hear him.

But the wise little blue-head had not deserted; he was merely cautious. Every time that the little sitter went off for food she met him somewhere, and he came back with her. Occasionally he took a peep at the treasures himself, but he never entered by her roundabout way. He always flew directly in from above.

Ten days passed away in this quiet manner, my attention divided between the birds, the dragonflies, and the clacking grasshopper, who went jerking himself about with a noise like a subdued lawn-mower, giving one the impression that his machinery was out of order.

The tenth day of sitting we had a south wind. That does not seem very terrible, but a south wind on the shore of the Great Salt Lake is something to be dreaded.

"A wind that is dizzy with whirling play,
A dozen winds that have lost their way."

It starts up suddenly, and comes with such force as to snap off the leaves of trees, and even the tender twigs of shrubs. As it waxes powerful it bends great trees, and tries the strength of roofs and chimneys. From the first breath it rolls up tremendous clouds of dust, that come and come, and never cease, long after it seems as if every particle in that rainless land must have been driven by. It is in the "Great Basin," and the south wind is the broom that sweeps it clean. Not only dust does the south wind bring, but heat, terrible and suffocating, like that of a fiery furnace. Before it the human and the vegetable worlds shrink and wither, and birds and beasts are little seen.

Such a day was the birthday in the little nest in the raspberries, and on my usual morning call I found four featherless birdlings, with beaks already yawning for food. Every morning, of course, I looked at the babies, but it was not till the eighth day of their life that I found their eyes open. Before this they opened their mouths when I jarred the nest in parting the branches, thus showing they were not asleep, but did not open their eyes, and I was forced to conclude that they were not yet unclosed.

Sometimes the daily visit was made under difficulties, and I was unpleasantly surprised when I stepped upon the grass of the little lawn that I was obliged to cross. The grass looked as usual; the evening before we had been sitting upon it. But all night a stream had been silently spreading itself upon it, and my hasty step was into water two or three inches deep, which swished up in a small fountain and filled a low shoe in an instant.

This is one of the idiosyncrasies of irrigation, which it seemed I should never get accustomed to, and several times I was obliged to turn back for overshoes before I could pay my usual call. A lawn asoak is a curious sight, and always reminds me of Lanier's verses,

"A thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the soil; the blades of the marsh grass stir;
... and the currents cease to run,
And the sea and the marsh are one."