Wild Pastures

by Winthrop Packard

No wonder that, utterly tired out and their brilliant plumage scattered and changed to dull and rusty colors, the birds are silent for a time, waiting for strength to recuperate. Some of them seem to retain enough courage and vitality to sing mornings through the moulting season, notably the robins. I suspect, though, that these faithful few—for the robin singers of the morning of the first day of August will be as one to twenty to those of the first day of June—are gay young sports who did not care to marry, or who, disappointed in love, still sing to keep their courage up. It is the best singers who are most strangely silent now, as they have been for weeks; nor will most of them be heard until next spring, hereabouts.

My catbird was so sorrowfully unseen and unheard that I began to think the cat had got him, till I hunted him up, down the hill among the scrub oaks. He was as dilapidated and passé-looking as his nest in the lilacs; as if, like it, the young birds had kicked him pretty nearly to pieces before they got through with him. But he perked up a bit when he saw me, flipped an apology for a tail, and miaued in a manner that was humorously unlike him, it was so deprecatory. But that was a week or ten days ago. Yesterday I heard some bird cooing a little song to himself out in the arbor-vitæ trees at the foot of the garden, and slipping quietly up found that it was the catbird again. He was quite sleek in his new coat, and he was practising his song in a delightful undertone, as if to be sure that he should not forget it altogether.

In four or five weeks more he will begin to flip saucily across the miles of country that separate him from his winter home in Southern Florida, or perhaps farther yet in some stretch of primeval forest that I myself have seen and loved in the heart of Santo Domingo. He will not sing his song there, high on some giant ceiba or swinging on the plume of some royal palm. He may not sing it again here on the tip of the tallest white lilac bush, but I know that, there or here, he will practise it now and then in that soft, sweet undertone which you would not believe of a catbird, and be ready to send it forth in jubilant peals when his strong wings bring him back again next May. My bluebirds may winter with him; and if they do I have hopes that he may persuade them to try my pear-tree box once more next spring.

THE POND AT LOW TIDE

THE POND AT LOW TIDE

ALL about the pond the woodland folk are enjoying shore dinners, for it is the time of ebb tide, and a wonderfully low ebb at that. Not for a score of years do I recall such low water. Where, on the ebb of ordinary years, the crow has been able to find one fresh-water clam, he may now feed till he can hold no more, for the drought has been long and severe, and the pond has been drained to the very dregs.

I say fresh-water clams, for that is the name commonly applied to the creatures, though I know that I might more properly call them river mussels, and if I wished to be severely scientific I should say Unio margaritifera, though it is difficult to be sure of your margaritifera, as there are about fifteen hundred species of unios known to people who classify creatures, and most of these are found in the rivers of this country.

Little do the crows care for that. In the sunny coves they have their clam-bakes, and as I slip slyly up I fancy I hear them smack their mandibles. As I round the screen of shore-loving button bushes, I know I shall come upon them, and I expect to find them seated in riotous fellowship, with napkins spread across broad waistcoats, dipping delicious mouthfuls in melted butter and tucking them away behind the white napkins. I have always missed the napkins and the butter dishes, but the shells are proof enough of what has been going on. If the mother crow carries the table furnishings away with her when she flies, that is no more than human picnickers do when driven from the sea beach.

The pond when full is ten feet deeper than it is now. In May the water lapped the forest roots on its edges; now from the forest to the mud of the very bottom where still the water lingers a strip of slanting beach stretches for a hundred yards. The crows are not the only creatures which have made tracks on this. Close by the edge in the soft mud the heron has walked with dignity, leaving footmarks that proceed precisely. The heron may not have large ambitions, but he is purposeful and does not turn aside. The crows gurgled and ha-haed over their clambake; the heron takes his fish course as solemnly as if he were taking the pledge.

All along you will see where the squirrels have come down to drink, skipping vivaciously, taking a sip here, bouncing away to examine something there, remembering that they came for a drink after all and taking a good one, then hurrying back with long leaps in a straight line for the trees. The squirrel is not solemn, far from it, but he is business-like, and though there is humorous good fellowship in his every hop, he nevertheless does not linger long from his work.