Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

ONE night in June I heard a new bird note, wonderfully clear and sweet, but so dreamlike that it seemed some tiny creature had blown a flute from elfland. The note came from far away, apparently; but I traced it at last to a branch just over my head, where a pair of grosbeaks had built their nest. There the male bird was singing near his brooding mate, singing in his dreams, I think, for his song was like no other that I ever heard from him.

The surprise of that dream song returned to me at dawn, one winter morning, when I heard low, eager voices outside my “Commoosie,” and crept out to find a family of partridges under the birds’ table.

Now a mother partridge has many notes, from the sibilant squeal of anger to the deep kroo-kroo that calls the chicks from hiding; but these voices were quite different from all grouse sounds with which I had grown familiar in the woods. They had what one might call an intimate quality, musical, softly modulated, marvelously expressive. When the partridges were gone, gliding away as if they had not meant to be overheard, I spread the table abundantly, as usual; and that day hardly a bird came without giving me at least one new note, perhaps because I was for the first time really listening.

From that time forth the voices of these feeding birds were a revelation to me, as I heard them close at hand. Surprise, confidence, pleasure, resentment, hunger, loneliness, alarm,—a dozen different emotions seemed to find ready expression, either in varied cries or by modulations of a single note. In making mental register of this bird “talk,” I became convinced that the ear needs more training than the eye if one is to understand the wood folk or enter into the spirit of their little comedy. Even if you turn mere ornithologist, with an interest in feathers or species rather than in birds, hearing is a better or surer sense than sight if you would name birds without the needless barbarity of killing them for identification. Once you recognize the peculiar quality of any bird’s voice, you may surely name him at any season. He may change his plumage as he will, for youth or age, for spring or winter; but he cannot change his natural voice, and, like Peter’s, his speech bewrayeth him.

One morning, in that same winter camp where the grouse appeared, a woodpecker sent a long call rattling across the frozen lake. The first subtle feeling of spring was in the air. Deep under snow the sap began to well upward from roots of the sugar maples to express itself in coloring buds; and I fancy that something stirred upward from some root of being in the woodpecker, also, to find expression in lusty drumming. Ever since we made camp we had heard him or his fellows signaling, answering, drilling their food out of frost-bound wood; but this call was entirely different, and Bob’s keen ears were instantly turned to it.

“Aha! that chap wants something. Can ye answer him now?” he said; and in his eye was a challenge.

I imitated the drumming, closely as I thought; but though I tried repeatedly, I received nothing like an answer. Downy or logcock or goldenwing, a woodpecker is an independent chap that I have never been able to call fairly; not even in spring, when he is all ears for a mate or a rival. Like many other birds, he will come quickly to an excited and deceptive squeaking between my fingers, but to my best drumming he remains deaf or indifferent.

“Ye haven’t the right combination, b’y,” said Bob when I gave over my fruitless attempt, and using his hunting knife as a hammer he began talking woodpecker-talk on a dry stub. At his first tunk-a-tunk (which was not like the call we had just heard) the answer came back like an echo, and when he varied his note the woodpecker came speeding across the lake. He could do that almost any time when woodpeckers were talking, as he could excite a red squirrel into emotional fits by his gibbering; but he abused me when I told him the truth, that it was not his secret combination of raps but the fellow feeling he put into it which brought the woodpeckers.

Still more amusing have been my efforts to make talk with the timber wolves. The dog wolf has a tremendous voice for occasions, and his pack has several distinct calls, challenge, trail yelp, rallying cry, lunatic baying of the moon; but though I seem to recognize these when I hear them, and to imitate them closely enough to deceive some ears, it is seldom that I can put into my voice the true wolf quality which brings an answer. For in the woods, as elsewhere, “the tone makes the music”; it is tone quality rather than any sound or combination of sounds, the feeling behind a cry rather than the cry itself, which appeals to moose or owl or any other wild beast or bird you happen to be calling.

One still, winter night I stood in front of my “Commoosie” and repeatedly gave the gray wolf’s challenge. That wolves were within hearing I was quite sure, having crossed the fresh trail of a pack at sundown; but none made answer. Then old Noel stirred and came forth from his blanket. “Hwolf don’ spik dat way; he spik dis way,” he said, and gave a howl so nearly like mine that no ordinary ear could detect the difference. Something was in his voice, however, some primal or animal quality which a wolf understood; for hardly had his howl gone forth when it was flung back eagerly from the woods behind us; and when the Indian changed his howl to a whimper, he had wolves answering from three different directions.