In the lowlands a short distance back from the beach, the azaleas (Azalea nudiflora) are just dropping the last of their pink bloom, a bouquet thrown at the feet of all-conquering summer. Here and there in these jungles of yupon, bay, buttonwood, etc., appears a shrub clad in a filmy white mist. If this be the season for weddings, it must be that this is the bride that greets our eyes. A delicately beautiful bride she is, with arms that toss in the slightest breeze and now and then coyly shove aside the cloudy veil to take a farewell glimpse at the world she leaves.
The natives do not take this view of this shrub (Chionanthus virginicus). They have dubbed it “grand-daddy-gray-beard.” Usually popular names have much to justify them, but in the instance just mentioned, and that of the brilliant red flower which gazes at us from the underbrush, they are suggestive of African superstition rather than Saxon sentiment. The melancholy local fancy sees in these flaming orbs only the power of evil, hence the name “Devil’s eye.” If I could be assured that the devil’s eye is really as beautiful and kind in its expression as its floral representative I would be willing, like Emerson, to call its possessor “the dear old devil.”
Let us go back to the beach and stroll along the shell road, which parallels the shore all the way from Gulfport to Biloxi. Perhaps the glare of the white road is not pleasant to the eyes, but the deep green of live oak and long leafed pine is restful, the mingled fragrance of the salt breeze of the gulf, the resiny odor of the pine and the blossoming wisteria charm the senses and lull us into rapturous content. Only a few of the trees and shrubs which border the highway are of the kinds familiar to observers in Ohio and Illinois. Now and then a water oak or a sweet gum appears; but otherwise in the cypress, pine or live oak of the larger growth, or in the palmetto, Spanish dagger and rattan vine of the undergrowth, the eye looks in vain for old acquaintances.
The live oak certainly has individuality. Shorter and more spreading in its habit of growth than most of its kind, its limbs are gnarled and knotty, strong and muscular with its wrestling with the hurricanes that sweep the bosom of the gulf. It loves the white sand just a few feet above high tide, where it stands as a protector for the weaker growth between the tossing waters and the great pine forest. As is the case with human beings, this vigorous conflict with its surroundings does it good; for no place in the South that I have been have I found the live oaks as plentiful or as vigorous as on this strip of barren sand.
The birds know a good thing when they see it; hence they are well represented here at this season of the year. Our old acquaintance of the Maumee Valley, the Maryland yellow throat, with his cunning black mask and his cheerful if not wholly musical “Wichety, wichety, wichety,” greets us from a perch on a rattan vine, but on our nearer approach dives down into the palmettos, where only the noise made by his tiny feet indicates his whereabouts. Two other warblers, the hooded and the redstart, a little belated, perhaps, have stopped here on their way north to the old nesting grounds on the Kankakee and the Hudson. The most numerous as well as the most conspicuous element of the bird population is the summer tanager, whose intensely scarlet coat adds a touch of vivid color very grateful to the eye. Nearly every oak contains one of these redcoats, whistling a solo for our benefit or discussing the details of housekeeping with his more sober coated little wife.
Almost as numerous as the tanagers, and even more interesting, are the orchard orioles. Their song has more of the fire and ring of true music, a compensation probably for the comparative dullness of their garb. In nest building the orchard oriole is an artist. I remember one day finding in a small water oak a nest so carefully woven out of excelsior as to make me think the bird could knit if he would only turn his talent in that direction. Where twine and excelsior are not easily obtained, no doubt they utilize the long streamers of Spanish moss which hang from half the trees in the gulf country.
Flying about in the gardens, as tame as robins on northern lawns, or sharing the live oaks with the tanagers and orioles, are a multitude of mocking birds. There must be something in Maurice Thompson’s suggestion in “By Ways and Bird Notes” that along this coast the mocking birds find those berries and seeds best adapted to develop a high degree of musical ability and artistic expression, for these birds certainly surpass their brethren found a few hundred miles to the north.
Besides these land birds there are a multitude of sea birds more conspicuous on account of noise and numbers than bright coloring or attractive ways. The herring gull is very plentiful on this coast, wherever sand flats and shallow water offer attractive feeding grounds. It is a pleasant sight to see a dozen of these pearl gray creatures turning and wheeling, as free and easy as the wind. Just in shore from where the gulls are flying are some fish crows, a thoughtless, noisy set, contented to feast on the crabs and stray minnows which have eluded the watchful gulls. At the edge of the water, just where the wavelets of the receding tide curl and swish before turning back to join their fellows, a couple of sandpipers are running a race, now and then stopping to pick up some tidbit left by the water. A shadow flits along the sand. We look up. A great fish hawk or osprey soars seaward. He sails past the noisy crows, past the graceful gulls and steers for Ship Island, that line of darker haze where sky and ocean meet. Truly, April is the season to visit this coast.
James Stephen Compton.