Just at starlight we reached the camp, and I fell asleep to the weird notes of unknown water-birds passing down the river through the darkness. Followed a week of unalloyed happiness. Each day, from before dawn until long after dark, we met strange birds and found new nests and listened to unknown bird-songs. One morning we heard a loud yap from a dead maple-stub. On its side grew what seemed to be an orange-colored fungus. As we came nearer, it proved to be the head of a male Arctic three-toed woodpecker, who wears an orange patch on his forehead and shares with his undecorated spouse the pains and pleasures of incubation. As we came nearer, he flew out of the nest, showing his jet-black back and white throat, and fed unconcernedly up and down the tree, even when we climbed to where we could look down at the five ivory-white eggs he had been brooding.
Later on we were to learn how favored above all other ornithologists we had been, in that within one short week we had found such almost unknown nests as those of the Arctic three-toed woodpecker, the yellow palm, the bay-breasted, and the Tennessee warbler. We learned the jingling little song of the yellow palm warbler, who has a maroon-colored head, a yellow breast, and twitches his tail like a water thrush. Another new song was the “Swee, swee, swee” of the bay-breasted warbler, who wears a rich sombre suit of black and bay. Over on the shore we heard the plaintive piping of the brownish-gray-and-white piping plover, who ran ahead of us and was hard to see against the sand. Right beside my foot I found one of the nests, a little hollow in the warm sand, lined with broken shells, containing four eggs, the color of wet sand all spotted with black and gray.
All through the woods we heard a strange wild, ringing song much like that of the Carolina wren. “Chick-a-ree, chick-a-ree, chick-a-ree, chick” it sounded. Then between the songs the bird sang another like a rippling laugh, and then for variety had a note which went “Chu, chu, chu” like a fish-hawk. It was some time before we found that these three songs all came from the same bird, and it was much longer before we learned the singer’s name. For days and days we searched the woods without a glimpse of him. We found at last that he was none other than the ruby-crowned kinglet, that tiny bird with a concealed patch of flame-colored feathers on the top of his head, who sings so brilliantly as he passes through the Eastern states in the spring. Not once during that week did we hear the intricate warble which is the kinglet’s spring song. Evidently this talented performer has a different repertoire for his home engagement from that which he uses while on the road.
One of the most beautiful songs of that week I heard in the middle of a marsh, up to my knees in muck, water, and sphagnum moss. Around me grew wild callas, with their single curved dead-white petals and pussy-toes, grasses topped with what looked like little dabs of warm brown fur. I was painstakingly searching through the wet moss and tangled reeds for the little hidden jewel-caskets of the yellow-bellied flycatcher, Lincoln finch, Wilson, Tennessee, and yellow palm warblers. I had just found my fourth yellow palm warbler’s nest, all lined with feathers, and with its four eggs like flecked pink pearls, the nest itself so cunningly concealed in a mass of moss and marsh-grass that the discovery of each one seemed a miracle that would never happen again.
Suddenly, out of a corner of my eye, I caught sight of a tiny movement under the drooping boughs of a little spruce half hidden in a tangle of moss. There crouched a little brown rabbit, not even half-grown, but yet old enough to have learned that maxim of the rabbit-folk—when in danger sit still! Not a muscle of his taut little body quivered even when I touched him, save only his soft brown nose. That was covered with mosquitoes, and even to save his life Bunny could not keep from wrinkling it. It was this tiny movement that had betrayed him. I brushed away the mosquitoes and was watching him hop away gratefully to another cover, when down from mid-sky came a rippling whinnying note as if from some far-away aeolian harp. As I looked, a speck showed against the blue, which grew larger and larger, and into sight volplaned a Wilson snipe, the driven air whining and beating against its wings in little waves of music, and we had added to our collection of bird-music the famous wing-song of the Wilson snipe, even rarer than the strange flight-song of the woodcock.
A little later one of my friends found our first olive-backed thrush’s nest, lined with porcupine-hair and black rootlets, and containing blue eggs blotched with brown. Just beyond the nest I heard what I thought was a gold-finch singing “Per-chickery, per-chickery.” The song was so loud that I stopped to investigate, and to my delight found that the singer was a pine grosbeak, all rose-red against a dark green spruce. All around us magnificent olive-sided flycatchers shouted from their tree-tops, “Hip! three cheers! Hip! three cheers!” and we heard the listless song of the beautiful Cape May warbler, with its yellow and black under-parts and orange-brown eye-patch and black crown. “Zee, zee, zee, zip,” it sang, something like the song of the blackpoll warbler, but lacking the high, glassy, crystalline notes of that white-cheeked bird.
I was responsible for the last bird-song which appears on the lists of my three friends—but not on mine. We were to start back for civilization the next morning, and I was walking along the river-bank in the late twilight, while my more industrious and scientific companions were writing up their notes and compiling lists of everything seen and heard on our trip. Through the windows of the gun-room I could see their learned backs as they bent over their compilations. Suddenly the eerie little wail of a screech owl floated up from the river-bank. Curiously enough, it came from the very tree behind which I was crouching. Instantly I saw three backs straighten and three heads peer excitedly out into the darkness. When I at last strolled in half an hour later, they told me excitedly that they had scored the first screech owl ever heard in that particular part of Canada. I never told them. It is not safe to trifle with the feelings of a scientific ornithologist. Undoubtedly my reticence in regard to that particular bird-song is all that has saved me from occupying a lonely grave in upper Canada.