Forest Neighbors: Life Stories of Wild Animals

by William Davenport Hulbert

But speaking of Mahng's wedding-garment reminds me that I haven't told you about his winter dress. His back and wings were very dark-brown, and his breast and under-parts were white. His head and the upper portion of his neck were black; his bill was black, or blackish, and so were his feet. His coat was very thick and warm, and his legs were feathered right down to the heel-joint. More than five feet his wings stretched from tip to tip, and he weighed at least twelve pounds, and would be still larger before he died.

As to his nuptial finery, its groundwork was much the same, but its trimmings were different and were very elegant. White spots appeared all over his back and the upper surfaces of his wings, some of them round, and some square. They were not thrown on carelessly, but were arranged in gracefully curving lines, and they quite changed his appearance, especially if one were as near him as one is supposed to be during a courting. His spring neckwear, too, was in exceedingly good taste, for he put on a sort of collar of very narrow vertical stripes, contrasting beautifully with the black around and between them. Higher up on his neck and head the deep black feathers gleamed and shone in the sunlight with brilliant irridescent tints of green and violet. He was a very handsome bird.

And now everything was going north. The sun was going north, the wind was going north, the birds were going, and summer herself was sweeping up from the tropics as fast as ever she could travel. Mahng was getting very restless. A dozen times a day he would spread his wings and beat the air furiously, dashing the spray in every direction, and almost lifting his heavy body out of the water. But the time was not yet come, and presently he would fold his pinions and go back to his courting.

Do you think he was very inconstant? Do you blame him for not being more faithful to the memory of the bird who was shot at his side only a few months before? Don't be too hard on him. What can a loon do when the springtime calls and the wind blows fresh and strong, when the new strong wine of life is coursing madly through his veins, and when his dreams are all of the vernal flight to the lonely northland, where the water is cold and the fish are good, and where there are such delightful nesting-places around the marshy ponds?

But how did his new friend feel about it? Would she go with him? Ah! Wouldn't she? Had not she, too, put on a wedding-garment just like his? And what was she there for, anyhow, if not to be wooed, and to find a mate, and to fly away with him a thousand miles to the north, and there, beside some lonely little lake, brood over her eggs and her young? Her wing was gaining strength all the time, and at last she was ready. You should have heard them laugh when the great day came and they pulled out for Michigan—Mahng a little in the lead, as became the larger and stronger, and his new wife close behind. There had been nearly a week of cooler weather just before the start, which had delayed them a little, but now the south wind was blowing again, and over and over it seemed to say,

"And we go, go, go away from here!
On the other side the world we're overdue!
'Send the road lies clear before you
When the old Spring-fret comes o'er you,
And the Red Gods call for you."

And the road was clear, and they went. Up, and up, and up; higher and higher, till straight ahead, stretching away to the very edge of the world, lay league after league of sunshine and air, only waiting the stroke of their wings. Now steady, steady! Beat, beat, beat! And the old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour! No soaring—their wings were too short for that sort of work—and no quick wheeling to right or left, but hurtling on with whizzing pinions and eager eyes, straight toward the goal. Was it any wonder that they were happy, and that joyful shouts and wild peals of laughter came ringing down from the sky to tell us poor earthbound men and women that somewhere up in the blue, beyond the reach of our short-sighted eyes, the loons were hurrying home?

"The old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour."

Over the fresh fields, green with the young wheat; over the winding rivers and the smiling lakes; over the—shut your eyes, and dream a little while, and see if you can imagine what it was like. Does it make you wish you were a loon yourself? Never mind; some day, perhaps, we too shall take our wedding-journeys in the air; not on feathered pinions, but with throbbing engines and whizzing wheels, and with all the power of steam or electricity to lift us and bear us onward. We shall skim the prairies and leap the mountains, and roam over the ocean like the wandering albatross. To-day we shall breathe the warm, spicy breath of the tropic islands, and to-morrow we shall sight the white gleam of the polar ice-pack. When the storm gathers we shall mount above it, and looking down we shall see the lightning leap from cloud to cloud, and the rattling thunder will come upward, not downward, to our ears. When the world below is steeped in the shadows of coming night, we shall still watch the sunset trailing its glories over the western woods and mountains; and when morning breaks we shall be the first to welcome the sunrise as it comes rushing up from the east a thousand miles an hour. The wind of the upper heavens will be pure and keen and strong, and not even a sleigh-ride on a winter's night can set the live blood dancing as it will dance and tingle up there above the clouds. And riding on the air, alone with the roaring engines that have become for the time a part of ourselves, we shall know at last what our earth is really like, for we shall see it as the loons see it—yes, as God and His angels see it—this old earth, on which we have lived for so many thousand years, and yet have never seen.