Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws. / Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together With Observations on the Manners of the Indians.

by William Bartram

The common grey squirrel is about half the size of the preceding.

The black squirrel is about the same size, and all over of a shining jet black.

The little grey squirrel is much less than either of the preceding species; it is of a brownish grey upper side, and white belly.

The ground squirrel, or little striped squirrel of Pennsylvania and the northern regions, is never seen here, and very rarely in the mountains northwest of these territories; but the flying squirrel, (sciurus volans) is very common.

The rabbit (lepus minor, cauda abrupta, pupillis atris) are pretty common, and no ways differing from those of Pennsylvania and the northern states.

Having mentioned most of the animals in these parts of America, which are most remarkable or useful, there remains however yet some observations on birds, which by some may be thought not impertinent.

There are but few that have fallen under my observation, but have been mentioned by the zoologists, and most of them very well figured in Catesby’s, or Edwards’s works.

But these authors have done very little towards elucidating the subject of the migration of birds, or accounting for the annual appearance and disappearance, and vanishing of these beautiful and entertaining beings, who visit us at certain stated seasons. Catesby has said very little on this curious subject, but Edwards more, and perhaps all, or as much as could be said in truth, by the most able and ingenious, who had not the advantage and opportunity of ocular observation, which can only be acquired by travelling, and residing a whole year at least in the various climates from north to south to the full extent of their peregrinations, or minutely examining the tracts and observations of curious and industrious travellers who have published their memoirs on this subject. There may perhaps be some persons who consider this enquiry not to be productive of any real benefit to mankind, and pronounce such attention to natural history merely speculative, and only fit to amuse and entertain the idle virtuoso; however the ancients thought otherwise: for, with them, the knowledge of the passage of birds was the study of their priests and philosophers, and was considered a matter of real and indispensable use to the state, next to astronomy, as we find their system and practice of agriculture was in a great degree regulated by the arrival and disappearance of birds of passage, and perhaps a calender under such a regulation at this time, might be useful to the husbandman and gardener.

But however attentive and observant the ancients were on this branch of science, they seem to have been very ignorant or erroneous in their conjectures concerning what became of birds, after their disappearance, until their return again. In the southern and temperate climates some imagined they went to the moon: in the northern regions they supposed that they retired to caves and hollow trees, for shelter and security, where they remained in a dormant state during the cold seasons: and even at this day, very celebrated men have asserted that swallows (hirundo) at the approach of winter, voluntarily plunge into lakes and rivers, descend to the bottom, and there creep into the mud and slime, where they continue overwhelmed by ice in a torpid state, until the returning summer warms them again into life; when they rise, return to the surface of the water, immediately take wing, and again people the air. This notion, though the latest, seems the most difficult to reconcile to reason or common sense, that a bird so swift of flight that can with ease and pleasure move through the air even swifter than the winds, and in a few hours time shift themselves twenty degrees from north to south, even from frozen regions to climes where frost is never seen, and where the air and plains are replenished with flying insects of infinite variety, their favourite and only food.

Pennsylvania and Virginia appear to me to be the climates in North-America, where the greatest variety and abundance of these winged emigrants choose to celebrate their nuptials, and rear their offspring, which they annually return with, to their winter habitations in the southern regions of N. America; and most of these beautiful creatures, who annually people and harmonise our forests and groves, in the spring and summer seasons, are birds of passage from the southward. The eagle, i. e. falco leucocephalus, or bald eagle, falco maximus, or great grey eagle, falco major cauda ferruginea, falco pullarius, falco columbarius, strix pythaulis, strix acclamatus, strix assio, tetrao tympanus, or pheasant of Pennsylvania, tetrao urogallus, or mountain cock or grous of Pennsylvania, tetrao minor sive coturnix, or partridge of Pennsylvania, picus, or woodpeckers of several species, corvus carnivorus, or raven, corvus frugivora, or crow, corvus glandarius f. corvus cristatus, or blue jay, alauda maxima, regulus atrofuscus minor, or marsh wren, sitta, or nuthatch, meleagris, are perhaps nearly all the land birds which continue the year round in Pennsylvania. I might add to these the blue bird, motacilla fialis, mock bird, turdus polyglottos, and sometimes the robin readbreast, turdus migratorius, in extraordinary warm winters, and although I do not pretend to assert as a known truth, yet it may be found on future observation that most of these above mentioned are strangers, or not really bred where they wintered, but are more northern families, or sojourners, bound southerly to more temperate habitations; thus pushing each other southerly, and possessing their vacated places, and then back again at the return of spring.