Loveliest of all these pasture folk was the sweet gale. If you would know how beautiful just catkins can make a slender, modest creature you should hasten into the pasture now and take note of her. Until last night you would have passed her by without noting, so modest and reticent she is.
The other two members of her family have been for months more in evidence. The sweet fern keeps some of her last year’s leaves still, and as you pass tosses a bouquet of perfume to you that you may know she is by. The bayberry holds blue candles to the wind all winter, and the incense of them carries far. But the sweet gale is too modest and shy for such things. She just sits quiet and unobserved, and thinks holy thoughts, and because she does so it seems as if all the warmth and kindness of April sun and April showers touched her first.
The catkins of the sweet fern were still hard and varnished, and had not cracked a smile this morning after the night of April showers. Not a candle of the bayberry had melted or shown flame in all this softness and warmth, yet there stood the gentle sweet gale all aflame with soft amber and pale gold, a veritable burning bush of beauty. There is no perfume from these blossoms, so gently shy and self-contained is the plant. Both the bayberry and sweet fern will woo you from a distance with rich aroma, but only after the leaves have come, and then only if you bruise them, will you get a message from the shy heart of the sweet gale.
On such a morning it seems as if all the birds were here, flitting back and forth through the soft blue early mists and singing for pure joy in the soft air and gentle warmth. For the first time the robins sang as if they meant it, not in great numbers, though there are legions of them here, but enough so that you can easily forecast the power of the full chorus which will tune up a little later. Blackbirds and bluebirds caroled, and song sparrows fairly split their throats, and now and then a flicker would sit up on a top bough, clear his throat, throw out his chest and pipe up “Tucker-tucker-tucker-tucker-tucker,” then, abashed at the noise he had made, go off on tiptoe, very much ashamed, as well he might be.
Not a fox sparrow could I see; I think they went on the day before, but a kingfisher was flying from cove to cove, springing that cheerful cry of his, which sounds as if someone were rattling a stick on his slats. A meadow lark piped a clear whistle from the top of a pitch pine, then alternately fluttered and sailed down into the grass for an early bite. The chipping sparrow swelled his little gray throat and trilled a homely, contented note, and there was a clamor of blue jays as the hour grew late.
I find the blue jay a lazy chap. No early morning revelry is for him. Breakfast is a serious matter, not to be entered into lightly or with chattering. Later in the day he is apt to be noisy enough, though he never sings in public. The nearest he
There was a clamor of blue jays as the hour grew late
ever comes to it is when, in a crowd of good fellows, he gives you an imitation of some other bird, for the blue jay is a good deal of a mimic. But it is always a burlesque, and it rarely gets beyond the first few notes before a jeering chorus from his companions cuts it off, nor do you ever know whether they are jeering at him or the bird he is burlesquing. I fancy it does not matter to them as long as they have a chance to jeer.