All night long they flew steadily, and turned earthward only at sunrise. As the weary flyers sought the trees and fields for rest and food, overhead, against a crimson and gold dawn, passed the long-distance champion of the skies—the Arctic tern, with its snow-white breast, black head, curved wings, and forked tail. Nesting as far north as it can find land, only seven and a half degrees from the Pole, it flies eleven thousand miles to the Antarctic, and, ranging from pole to pole, sees more daylight than any other creature. For eight months of its year it never knows night, and during the other four has more daylight than dark. Scorner of all lands, tireless, unresting, this dweller in the loneliest places of earth flashed white across the dawn-sky—and was gone.
[V]
THE LITTLE PEOPLE
The swamp-maples showed rose-red and gold-green in the warm sunlight, and the woods were etched lavender-brown against a heliotrope sky. The bluebird, with the sky-color on his back and the red-brown of earth at his breast, called, “Far-away! far-away! far-away!” in his soft sweet contralto. From a wet meadow a company of rusty blackbirds, with short tails and white eyes, sang together like a flock of creaking wheelbarrows, with single split notes sounding constantly above the squealing chorus. Beyond the meadow was a little pool, where the air was vibrant with the music of the frogs. The hylas sang like a chest of whistles so shrill that the air quivered with their song. At intervals, a single clear flute-note rose above the chorus, the love-call of the little red salamander; while the drawling mutter of cricket-frogs, the trilled call of the wood-frogs, and the soft croon of the toad added delicate harmonies. Near-by a song-sparrow sang wheezingly from a greening willow tree, but its note sounded flat compared with the shrill, high sweetness of the batrachian chorus.
Near the top of Prindle Hill was a dry warm slope, with stretches of underbrush, pasture, and ledges of rock rising to the patch of woods which crowned the crest of the hill. Beyond was a tiny lake. Everywhere along the sunny slope were small round holes bored through the tough turf. As the sun rose higher and higher, little waves of heat penetrated deep below the grass-roots.
Suddenly, from out of one of the holes, a little pointed nose was thrust, and a second later the first chipmunk of the year darted above ground from the burrow where he had slept out the long winter. His dark pepper-and-salt colored back had a black-brown stripe down the centre and four others in pairs along either side, separated by strips of cream-white. His cheeks, flanks, feet, and the underside of his black fringed tail were of a light fawn-color, and he wore a silky white waistcoat. Erecting his white-tipped tail, he sat up on his haunches and tipping back his head, began to sing the spring song which every chipmunk must sing when he first comes above ground at the dawn of the year. “Chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck,” he chirped loudly, at the rate of two chirps per second.
At the very first note sharp noses and bright black eyes appeared at every hole, and in a second a score or more other singers had whisked out and joined in the spring chorus, each one bent on proving that his notes were the loudest and clearest of any on the hill. One of the last to begin was a half-grown chipmunk, who had been crowded out of the family burrow by new arrivals the autumn before. Fortunately for him, however, the next burrow was occupied by a chipmunk of an inquiring disposition. Said disposition caused him to wait to investigate the habits of a passing red fox. Thereafter his burrow was to let, and was immediately taken possession of by the young chipmunk aforesaid.
This new tenant came out timidly, even when he felt the thrill of spring. Once above ground, however, he simply had to sing. At his very first note, he sensed a difference between his voice and those of all the others. Whereas they sang “Chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck,” he sang “Chippy, chippy, chippy.” To his delighted ear his own higher notes were far superior to those of his companions, and he shrilled away, ecstatically, with half-closed eyes. Ten minutes went happily by. Then a singer on the outskirts caught sight of a marsh-hawk quartering the hillside, and gave the alarm-squeal as he dove into his hole. The song broke in the middle, as every singer whisked underground and the annual spring song was over. Thereafter the customary caution of a chipmunk-colony was resumed.
At first, Chippy ventured but seldom outside of his new burrow. Far in under the turf was the storehouse, filled by its first owner full of hazel-nuts, cherry-pits, wild buckwheat, buttercup seeds, maple-keys, and other chipmunk staples, all carefully cleaned, dried, and stored. On these he lived largely during the first few weeks of spring. Then came a day when he entered his front door with a flying leap, only to find a burly and determined stranger blocking his way. A bustling and lusty bachelor from another colony had spied the burrow from the stone wall, the broad highway of all chipmunks, and had decided to make it his own by right of conquest.