Woodland Paths

by Winthrop Packard

The crows are rather silent now, though occasionally there is a dreadful towrow over a love affair which does not run smooth. Crows are such canny Scotchmen of the woods that you would hardly expect them to throw caution to the winds and have a riot and a duel with much loud talk over a love affair, but it does happen. Among the pines a day or two ago I heard a great screaming and scolding, cries of anger and distress, and then, before I could reach the scene, silence.

When I got there all I saw was two crows slipping shamefacedly away behind the tree tops. I thought it merely a lovers’ quarrel, but the next day I found beneath the pines not far from the spot a handsome young crow dandy, dead. It puzzled me a bit. He bore no marks of shot, but seemingly had died by violence. He was a stout youngster and had been in the prime of life and vigor. This morning, when all the soft glamor of the spring seemed made for lovers, and many of the birds were very happy about it, I heard another crow quarrel going on, and was mean enough to spy on it.

There was a lady, very demure, and there were two lovers anything but demure. Neither could get near enough to the lady to croak soft words of love in her ear, for the other immediately flew at him in a rage. The two tore about among the trees, hurling bad words at one another. It was distinct profanity. They towered high in air and dove perilously one after the other back into the woods again, screaming reckless oaths. Now and then they came together, and one or the other yelled with pain. It lasted but a few minutes, but it was a very hot scrimmage. Then one of them evidently had enough, and abandoned the fight, taking refuge in a thick fir very near me. No one of the three minded my presence.

The victor went back to his lady love on mincing wings, and though I could not see them I knew that he was received with open favor, for the cooing of cawing that followed was positively uncanny. As a reckless freebooter, a wise and jovial latter-day Robin Hood of the woods, I like the crow; but his love-making voice, dear me! One of Macbeth’s witches might address the cauldron in the same tone. Evidently the discomfited rival thought so too, for he began to jaw in an undertone and flew grumbling away, mostly on one wing. I have no direct evidence, of course, but I think my dead crow came to his untimely end in one of these duels between rival lovers.

I was glad to leave the crows behind me for once, and then in the full sunshine of the later morning I chanced upon a tree full of goldfinches. It was a tree full, also, of most delightful music. Each bird was vying with the other in a spring song that was more in tune with the surroundings than any ever written by Bach or Schumann, a pure outgiving of blossoming delight.

The birds themselves have just come into new bloom. Like the sweet gale they seem to have put on new color of gold almost in a night, for they made yellow gleams that were like blossoms all about on the bare twigs, their black wings making the color more vivid by contrast. Yesterday it was, or was it the day before, that these lovely singers were going about in sober brown, like sparrows. Now suddenly they are splashes of tropic sunshine.

It is their mating plumage which they will wear until late August puts them in brown again. They are so happy about it, and their rich, variable songs are such a delight that I am glad they do not quit wooing and go to nest-building until late June, the latest, I think, of all our birds.

And while I listened to the goldfinches a tiny bit of the sky fell. It lighted on a leaf by me, and expanded its wings and enjoyed the full sun. It was one of the least of butterflies and one of the loveliest, the common blue, the winter form, so called because it comes thus in April from a chrysalid that has passed the rigors of winter successfully. Like the blossoming sweet gale the song of the swamp tree frog and the gold of the goldfinch’s plumage this tiny, fearless bit of blue is a seal of the actual soft presence of the spring, which comes only when the April showers have made her calling and election sure.

To be sure, we might have a whiff of snow yet, but it will be only the dust blown far from the fleeing feet of those winter ghosts now scuffing the tundra up where the Saskatchewan empties into Hudson’s Bay.