Wood Wanderings

by Winthrop Packard

To-morrow the wind will be in the northwest again, the morning sun will glint on fields that are hoar with frost, and in the afternoon the Blue Hills will be blue no more, but brown with the rustling tannin of dead scrub oak leaves seen too clearly,—gray with granite angles, and sharply cut against a sky from which all dreams have fled. We had thought the summer too long and too hot, we welcomed the crispness and vigor of autumn, but to-day we walked abroad with joy in the warmth that again thrills us as with a fine touch of youth come back, and as little crinkles of heat shimmer upward from the brown fields we push forward, eager to bathe in it all once more.

All the out-door world seems dreamy with the same delight. The blue jays flutter back and forth on softer wing, and their usual strident clangor is subdued to an almost caressing babble, in which you think you hear the tones of spring love-making. They know the feel of nesting weather, and though it is but for a day it soothes them to happy response. This morning a robin, sure that spring had come again, sat up on the elm tree outside my window and greeted it with full-throated song, just as he had in June, and all day long there has been twittering of birds in the pasture and the forest.

Only a few of our host of summer visitor song birds remain, and the great wave of southward migration has passed us, yet to-day the pasture was vocal with the twittering of late passing warblers, and some even sang, sotto voce, to a sand-dance accompaniment of rustling leaves. The myrtle warblers were busy among the blue-gray, waxy, aromatic berries of the bayberry, which is their favorite food. The crop is good this year, portions of the pasture being almost blue with the close-set berries, and I think the myrtle warblers will linger long with us. Indeed, they have been reported as staying all winter when the bayberry supply is ample and sheltered from the worst of the north winds.

If they do the robins will stay with them, for the crop of cedar berries is a good one also. Almost all the red cedars have some, and some are so thick-set with them that their bronze-green, now yellowing a little with the lessening sap, is all lightened up with an alluring blue. I do not blame the robins for lingering long with the cedar berries. I like them myself. They are a little dry, but very pleasantly sweet; and after the sweetness is gone there lingers on the palate a spicy aromatic flavor which is most enticing.

Some of our Norfolk County swamps are so thickly set with swamp white cedars that it is almost impossible for a man to push his way through their young growth. That north wind that can cut its way to the heart of these must be keen indeed, and here, when the berries are plentiful, you may find not only robins, but now and then a bluebird, and more frequently partridge woodpeckers, all winter long.

We had a killing frost only a night or two ago, the thermometer in sheltered positions marking twenty-five to twenty-eight degrees. It withered the grape leaves and took all tender things of the gardens and fields. Such a temperature for a long autumn night one would think would be death to those frail creatures of summer,—the butterflies. Yet to-day I saw a monarch soaring on strong red wings about the top of a great pine tree, sixty feet in air, seemingly seeking food among the resinous tips.

Across the fields a sulphur flitted his dainty way like a yellow fleck of animated sunshine. A few grizzled goldenrod and frost-bitten asters still bloom feebly for him, but in the swamp, undismayed, the witch-hazel twists its soft, yellow petal-fingers and sends out dainty perfume for his delectation. Over at the clubhouse a hunter’s butterfly and two well-preserved specimens of the painted lady sunned themselves in warm spots on the shingles.

In spite of the summerlike quality of the day these seemed anxious. Now and then they fluttered eagerly about the building trying window fastenings and poking their heads into cracks, seemingly trying desperately to get in. They tried on the shady sides of the building as well as on the sunny, and though I cannot prove that it was not mere aimless wandering, it seemed to me to be done with a definite design. I think the painted ladies were hunting shelter in expectation that the day was a weather breeder. I think they knew that more cold weather was sure to follow, and though they had found shelter in which they were able to weather the first cold snap, they feared lest the next be too much for them, and hoped to get inside in some crevice next to a stove funnel.

Some butterflies, notably the Antiopa vanessa, which appears sometimes on warm days in February, winter successfully. Probably the vanessa is particularly resistant to cold. Probably also he has a peculiar faculty for finding shelter and safety, and I think the two hardy examples of Pyrameis cardui showed signs of some of the same instinct.

Later, in the full heat of the afternoon, when the thermometer stood at eighty degrees, I stood by the side of a long, straight country road leading north and south. One monarch butterfly after another was soaring along this road, seemingly not in haste, but making, nevertheless, a speed of six or seven miles an hour. And every one of them was heading due south on the trail of the one ahead, as if in a game of follow-your-leader. Was the leader a wise old butterfly who had made the long southern road before, and were these others monarchs of this year’s growth following him that they might reach the goal in safety?