At such a time my pond seemed to awaken and shed its silence like a garment.
[[270]]
Because of its solitude, its utter wildness, my pond seemed to be the chosen resting-place of the flocks on an autumn day (they feed or travel mostly by night), and perhaps for the same reason the ducks that frequented it were among the wildest creatures I have ever tried to stalk. A [[271]]black mallard is not an easy bird to outwit at any time or place; but here some magic mirror or sounding-board seemed to supplement his natural eyes or ears. The slightest unnatural voice or appearance, the snap of a twig or the quiver of a leaf or the glimpse of a face in the larches, would send a flock away on the instant; and sometimes, when I was sure no sound or motion of mine had broken the perfect quiet, they would take wing in such incomprehensible fashion as to leave me wondering what extra sense had warned them of danger.
Several times in the course of a summer, when I wanted to observe the little duck family more nearly, or to learn the meaning of some queer play that I could not understand from a distance, I would creep out of the larches unseen, worming my way along a sunken deer-path, and stopping whenever heads were turned in my direction. One might think it an easy matter to approach any game by such methods; yet almost invariably, before I could be safe behind a bush or a tuft of grass at the water’s edge, the old mother-duck would become uneasy, like a deer that catches a vague hint of you floating far down the wind. That she could not see or hear me was certain; that she could not smell me I had repeatedly proved; nevertheless, after searching the [[272]]shores narrowly she would stretch her neck straight up from the water, as if attentive to some wireless message in the air.
A wild duck does not take that alert attitude unless she is suspicious; and a curious thing was, that though the mother was silent, uttering never a word, the young would crouch and remain motionless wherever they happened to be. Suddenly, as if certain of danger but unable to locate it, the mother would spring aloft to go sweeping in wide circles over the bog. She seemed to know it by heart, every pool and bump and shadow of it; and when her keen eyes picked up an unfamiliar shadow on a certain deer-path she would come at it with a rush, whirling over it in an upward-climbing spiral till she became sure of me, as of something out of place, when she would speed away with a warning note over the tree-tops. If the young were strong of wing, they would follow her swiftly, giving wide berth to the deer-path as if she had told them beware of it; but if they did not yet trust themselves in the air, they would skulk away, their heads down close to the water, and hide in one of the grassy bogans of the pond, where because of the quaking shore it was impossible to come near them.
Once, when the mother left in this way, I waited till the ducklings had been some minutes hidden [[273]]before creeping back to my blind in the larches. An hour or more passed in the timeless quiet; while the water became as glass under the afternoon sun, and a deer moved near the hidden brood without flushing them or even bringing a head up where I could see it. Then the mother returned, calling as she came; and the first thing she did was to circle warily over the same deer-path, stretching her neck down for a close inspection. “Aha! that thing is gone, but where?” she said in every line and motion of her inquisitive head or pulsating wings, as she sped away to find the answer.
Twice she circled the bog, her eyes searching every cranny and shadow of it. From her high flight she slanted straight down and pitched fair in the middle of the pond, where for some moments she sat motionless, her head up, looking, listening,—a perfect image of alertness in the midst of wildness. Satisfied at last that no trouble was near, she turned to the shore with a low call; and out of the bogan pell-mell rushed the little ones, splashing, cheeping, half lifting themselves with their tiny wings as they scurried over the water to join the mother. For a full hour I had kept my glasses almost continuously on that bogan; then with divided attention I cast expectant glances at it when I heard the mother’s incoming note, the [[274]]whish of her wings as she circled the bog and the splash as she took the water; but not till the right signal came did I see a motion or a sign of life from the hidden brood.
The pond was shaped, as we have noticed, like a pair of spectacles; and a favorite place for the autumn flock to rest or preen or sleep was at the bend between the two lobes. Down into that bend ran a screen of alder-bushes, the only good cover between woods and water on the entire pond; and it was so dense that a cat could hardly have crept through it without making a disturbance. That was one reason, I suppose, why the ducks felt safe at the outer end of the tangle: they could see everything in front or on either side, and hear anything that moved behind them.
One day, when the shore at this bend was freshly starred by ducks’ feet and littered with feathers, showing that a large flock had just left the roost, I began at the fringe of larches and cut a passageway, a regular beaver’s tunnel, down the whole length of the alder run, making an end in a point of grass, where the water came close on three sides. One had to consider only the birds’ keen ears, the alder screen being so thick that not even a duck’s eye could penetrate it; therefore I smoothed the way most carefully, leaving no stick below to crack under my weight, and no [[275]]branch reaching down to rustle or quiver as I crawled beneath it. When the tunnel was well finished I left the pond to its solitude a few days, thinking that the birds would surely notice some telltale sign of my work, some fresh-cut stick or wilted bough that my eyes had overlooked, and be wary of the alders for a little time.
And why such pains to get near a bird, you ask, since one might better observe or shoot him from a comfortable distance? Oh, just a notion of mine, an odd notion, which can hardly be appreciated till one has proved it in the open. As you can seldom “feel” the quality of a stranger while he remains even a few yards away, so with any wild bird or beast: there is an impression arising from nearness, from contact, which cannot be had in any other way; and that swift impression, which is both physical and mental, a judgment as it were of the entire nature, is often more illuminating than hours of ordinary observation or speculation.