The answer came in the spring, and was my own discovery. I am still more proud of it than of the time, years later, when I first touched a wild deer in the woods with my hand. Near my home was a woodsy dell with a brook singing through it, which I named “Bird Hollow” from the number of feathered folk that gathered or nested there. What attracted them I know not; perhaps the brook, with its shallows for bathing; or the perfect solitude of the place, for though cultivated fields lay about it, and from its edge a distant house could be seen, I never once met a human being there. It was just such a place as a child loves, because it is all his own, and because it is sure to furnish something new or old every day of the year,—birds’ nests, wood for whistles, early woodcock, frogs for pickerel bait, pools for sailing a fleet of cucumber boats, a mink’s track, a rabbit’s form, an owl’s cavernous tree, a thousand interesting matters.
One morning I was at the Hollow alone, watching some nests at a time when mother birds chanced to be away for a hurried mouthful. Presently came my blue jay, and he seemed a different creature from the Chesterfield I had known. No more polite or gallant ways now; he fairly sneaked along, hiding, listening, like a boy sent to plunder a neighbor’s garden. Without knowing why, I felt suddenly ashamed of him.
Just over a catbird’s nest the jay stopped and called, but very softly. That was a “feeler,” I think, for at the call he pressed against the stem of a tree, as if to hide, and he stood alert, ready to flit at a moment’s notice. Then he dropped swiftly to the nest, drove his bill into it, and tip-tilted his head with a speared egg. A dribble of yellow ran down the corner of his mouth as he ate. He finished off two more eggs, and went straight as a bee to another nest, which I had not discovered. Evidently he knew where they all were. He speared an egg here, and was eating it when there came a rush of wings, the challenge of an excited robin, and away went the jay screaming, “Thief! Thief!” at the top of his voice. A score of little birds came with angry cries to the robin’s challenge, and together they chased the nest-robber out of hearing.
And then I understood why the other guests had no patience with the jay’s comedy when he played the part of a fine fellow at the winter table. They knew him better than I did.
It was an experience, not a theory, of life that I sought in those early days, when nature spoke a language that I seemed to understand; and a host of experiences soon confirmed me in the belief that birds and beasts accept life, unconsciously perhaps, as a kind of game and play it to the end in a spirit of comedy. Later came the literature and alleged science of wild life, one filling the pleasant woods with tragedy, the other with a pitiless struggle for existence; but no sooner do I go out-of-doors to front life as it is than all such borrowed notions appear in their true light, the tragic stories as mere inventions, the scientific theories as bookish delusions.
The cheery lesson of the winter birds, for example, is one which I have since proved in many places, especially in the North, where I always spread a table for the birds before I dine at my own. The typical table is a broad and bountiful affair, set just outside the window on the sunny side of camp; but sometimes, when I am following the wolf trails, it is only a bit of bark on the snow beside my midday fire.
When the halt comes, and the glow of snowshoeing is replaced by the chill of a zero wind, a fire is quickly kindled and a dipper of tea set to brew. Next comes the birds’ table with its sprinkling of crumbs, and hardly is one returned to the fire before Ch’geegee appears, calling blithely as he comes to share the feast. His summons invariably brings more chickadees, each with gray, warm coat and jaunty black cap; their eager voices attract other hungry ones, a woodpecker, a pair of Canada jays (they always go in pairs, as if expecting another ark), and a shy, elusive visitor who is no less welcome because you cannot name him in his winter garb. Suddenly from aloft comes a new call, very wild and sweet; there is a whirl of wings in the top of a spruce, where Little Far-to-go, as the Indians name him, calls halt to his troop of crossbills at sight of the fire and the gathering birds. A brief moment of rest, a babel of soft voices, another flurry of wings, and the crossbills are gone, speeding away into the far distance. Next to arrive are the nuthatches, a squirrel or two, and then—well, then you never know who may answer your invitation. Before your feast ends you may learn two things: that these snow-filled woods shelter an abundant life, and that the life is invincibly cheerful.
So it happens that, though I have often been alone in the winter wilderness, I have never eaten a lonely meal there; always I have had guests, friendly, well-mannered little guests, and the pleasure they bring to the solitary man is beyond words. Very companionable it is, as one says grace over his bread and meat, to hear “Amen” from a score of pleasant voices making Thanksgiving of the homely fare. Warm as the radiance of the fire, soothing as the fragrance of a restful pipe, is the inner glow of satisfaction when one sees his guests linger awhile, gossiping over the unexpected, questioning the flame or the smoke, and anon turning up an inquisitive eye at the silent host from whose table they have just eaten. When I hear speaker or writer urging his audience to feed our winter birds because of their earthly or economic value, I find myself wondering why he does not emphasize the heavenly fun of the thing.
As I recall these many tables, spread in the snow at a season when, as we imagine, the pitiless struggle for existence is at its height, they all speak to strengthen the early impression of gladness, of good cheer, of a general spirit of play or comedy among wild creatures. I have counted over sixty chickadees, woodpeckers, grouse, jays, squirrels and other wayfarers around the table beside my camp; but though some of these have their enmities in the nesting season, when jays and squirrels are overfond of eggs, it was still a lively and a happy company, because all the wood folk have an excellent way of ending an unpleasantness by forgetting it. They live wholly in the present, being too full of vitality to dwell in the past, and too carefree to burden life by carrying a grudge.