Suddenly there burst upon the silence a song that startled me. It was loud and distinct as if very near, yet it had the spirit and the echoes of the woods in it; a wild, rare, thrilling strain, the woods themselves made vocal. Such it seemed to me. I was strangely moved, and filled from that moment with an undying determination to trace that witching song to the bird that could utter it.
"I'm going to seek my singer," was the message I flung back next morning, as, opera-glass in hand, I started down the orchard towards the woods. I followed the path under the apple-trees, passed the daisy field, white from fence to fence with beauty,—despair of the farmer, but delight of the cottagers,—hurried across the pasture beyond, skirting the little knoll on which the cow happened this morning to be feeding, crossed the brook on a plank, and reached my daily walk.
This was a broad path that ran for half a mile on the edge of the lake. Behind it, penetrated every now and then by a foot-path, was the bit of old woods that the clearers of this land had the grace to leave, to charm the eye and refresh the soul (though probably not for that reason). Before it stretched the clear, sparkling waters of Lake George, and on the other side rose abruptly one of the beautiful mountains that fringe that exquisite piece of water.
Usually I passed half the morning here, seated on one of the rocks that cropped out everywhere, filling my memory with pictures to take home with me. But to-day I could not stay. I entered one of the paths, passed into the grand, silent woods, found a comfortable seat on a bed of pine needles, with the trunk of a tall maple tree for a back, and prepared to wait. I would test Thoreau's assertion that if one will sit long enough in some attractive spot in the woods, sooner or later every inhabitant of it will pass before him. I had confidence in Thoreau's woodcraft, for has not Emerson said:—
"What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
Was shown to this philosopher,
And at his bidding seemed to come"?
and I resolved to sit there till I should see my bird. I was confident I should know him: a wild, fearless eye, I was sure, a noble bearing, a dweller on the tree-tops.
Alas! I forgot one phrase in Thoreau's statement: "sooner or later." No doubt the Concord hermit was a true prophet; but how many of the inhabitants are "later"—too late, indeed, for a mortal who, unlike our New England philosopher, has such weak human needs as food and rest, and whose back will be tired in spite of her enthusiasm, if she sits a few hours on a rock, with a tree for a back.
Many of the sweet and shy residents of that lovely bit of wildness showed themselves while I waited. A flicker, whose open door was in sight, and who was plainly engaged in setting her house in order, entertained me for a long time. Silently she stole in, I did not see how. Her first appearance to me was on the trunk, the opposite side from her nest, whence she slid, or so it looked, in a series of jerks to her door, paused a few minutes on the step to look sharply at me, and then disappeared, head first, within. Quick as a jack-in-the-box, her head popped out again to see if the spy had moved while she had been out of sight, and finding all serene, she threw herself with true feminine energy into her work. The beak-loads she brought to the door and flung out seemed so insufficient that I longed to lend her a broom; but I found she had a better helper than that, a partner.
When she tired, or thought she had earned a rest, she came out, and flying to the limb above the nest, began softly calling. Never was the ventriloquial quality more plainly exhibited. I heard that low "ka! ka! ka! ka! ka!" long repeated, and I looked with interest in every direction to see the bird appear. For a long time I did not suspect the sly dame so quietly resting on the branch, and when I did it was only by the closest inspection that I discovered the slight jerk of the tail, the almost imperceptible movement of the beak, that betrayed her.