Wood Wanderings

by Winthrop Packard

Along the pond shore, after the yellow-legs have dashed in upon us, whistled the wind full of loneliness and heartache, and dashed away again like ghosts of gray snow-flurries yet to be, it is a pleasure to watch the homely antics of the spotted sandpipers. Of these you may find a pair or two about the pond all summer long, no doubt having a nest in some grassy meadow nearby. By the time the equinoctial northeaster is due, this pair or two has become oftentimes a dozen, preparing for their flight to the shores of the Caribbean Sea, where they will spend the winter, yet loth to leave New England.

These birds are never much afraid of me. If I approach too near they sing out peevishly, “Peet-weet, peet-weet,” and half-circle in a short level flight out over the water and back again to the shore. Indeed, I strongly suspect their attitude toward my intrusion is one of humorous scorn. They are apt to face me as I come quite near, and bow low with what seems the exaggeration of politeness, only they immediately turn about and bow just as politely the other way, which flips their white tail feathers in my direction with a gesture which is certainly one of ill-bred contempt.

Then they fly away, leaving me in doubt as to whether they mean it or not. Probably, however, there is nothing distinctly personal in it. The legs of the spotted sandpiper are hitched to the body with muscles that seem to act like springs, and he can’t help teetering when he attempts to stand still, hence his popular names of teeter, teeter-tail, etc.

Along with the spotted sandpipers at this time of year I am apt to find the ring-necked or piping plover, these already on their autumnal migration, for they breed from Labrador northward. They differ little from the sandpiper in size, but you will readily know them by the white collar which encircles the neck, with a little black vest partly defined just below it. Modest, busy little chaps they are, running about on the sands, picking up insects and minute crustaceæ, continually twittering “Peep, peep,” and caring little for your approach until, finally frightened, they rise as one bird and fly away in a compact flock.

I have never seen these birds swim, though their half-webbed feet would seem to indicate that they can. Though, for that matter, birds that have no webbing at all between the toes sometimes swim well when forced to it. The common barn-yard hen, thrown into the water, will sit erect and swim as a duck might until her feathers are wet through.

To the pond with the autumnal northeaster usually comes a pied-billed grebe or two. If you are sharp eyed and fortunate you may see one beating his way down the wind with rapid strokes of his ludicrously short wings. His flight is something like that of a duck, though I think he makes harder work of it, more wing strokes to the minute; but you will know him as he nears you, for no duck ever stretched his head so eagerly forward or carried his legs dangling so far astern.

The bird should be at ease on land, for he has a bill like a hen, and his toes are lobed merely, not connected with webbing. But he is not. On foot he is slow, clumsy, and ludicrously ungainly. Probably for this reason the grebe does not go near land when he can help it. Even his nest is built on the water, sometimes actually floating, a mass of rotten sedge and mud, and the chicks swim and dive like old birds as soon as hatched. But if the land gait of the grebe is ludicrous and his flight laborious, in the water he is the personification of grace, ease, and agility.

Well does he merit one of his familiar names,—that of water-witch. When the hunters go forth to the marsh I am sorry for my innocent friends, the blue-winged teal. I know how few fly now where once the air would seem full of them. When I hear the quacking of live decoys my heart misgives me for the fate of the black duck, for I know how their fellow-feeling and sociable instinct will bring them in to the blind where the gunners are hidden.

Neither decoys nor dead shots give me any qualms of uneasiness where the pied-billed grebe is concerned. The decoys may split their throats in calling to him when they see him swim by just out of gunshot. He will not even turn his head. It may be that he has a voice; I have never heard him use it. When it is in the open with fair play, grebe against gun, my sympathies are with the gunner, for I know how great cry and little wool will result.

I have seen a pied-billed grebe cornered in a narrow, shallow river by gunners on each bank. He dove at the flash of the first gun, and though it was point-blank range, he was under water before the shot could reach him. He was up again and under a dozen times, to be followed by a dozen shots, only wasted. No wonder the hunters call him “hell-diver.” I have seen it stated in nature books that this name is given him because of the extreme depth to which he is supposed to go. No doubt the grebe goes deep when he wishes to, but the gunners haven’t taken that into consideration. The name is one symptom of the profanity which his exceptional skill necessitates.