As I pa.s.sed slowly up, looking well to my steps, and listening for birds, I heard a note that aroused me at once,--the squawk of a bluejay.
It came from the higher ground, and I looked about for a pathway up the steep bank on my right. At the most promising point I could select I started my climb. Unfortunately that very spot had been already chosen by a small rill, a mere trickle of water, to come down. It was not big enough to make itself a channel and keep to it, but it sprawled all over the land. Now it lingered in the cows" footprints and made a little round pool of each; then it loitered on a level bit of ground, and soaked it full; when it reached a comfortable bed between the roots of trees, it almost decided to stay and be a pond, and it dallied so long before it found a tiny opening and straggled out, that if it did not result in a pond, it did accomplish a treacherous quagmire. In fact that undecided, feeble-minded streamlet totally "demoralized" the whole hillside, and with its vagaries I had to contend at every step of my way.
I reached the top, but I left deep footprints to be turned into pools of a new pattern, and as trophy I carried away some of the soil on my dress. Of my shoes I will not speak; shall we not have souls above shoe-leather?
As soon as I recovered breath after my hasty scramble to dry ground, I started toward a thick-growing belt of spruce trees which came down from the mountain and ended in a point,--one tree in advance, like the leader of an army. Here I found the bird I was seeking, a much disturbed bluejay, who met me at the door--so to speak--with a defiant squawk, a warning to come no nearer.
"Ah ha!" said I, exultingly, "are your little folk in there? Then I shall see them."
I slowly advanced; she disputed my pa.s.sage at every step, but nothing was to be seen till her anxiety got the better of her discretion and she herself gave me the precious secret; she suddenly slipped through the trees to the other side, and became perfectly silent.
I could not follow her path through the tangle of trees, but I could go around, and I did. On a dead spruce wedged in among the living ones I saw the object of her solicitude; a lovely sight it was! Two young bluejays huddled close together on a twig. They were "humped up," with heads drawn down into their shoulders, and breast feathers fluffed out like snowy-white floss silk, completely covering their feet and the perch. No wonder that poor little mother was anxious, for a more beautiful pair I never saw, and to see them was to long to take them in one"s hands.
Silent and patient little fellows they appeared, looking at me with innocent eyes, but showing no fear. They were a good deal more concerned about something to eat, and when their mother came they reminded her by a low peep that they were still there. She gave them nothing; she was too anxious to get them out of my sight, and she disappeared behind a thick branch.
In a moment I heard the cry of a bird I could not see. So also did the twins on the tree, and to them it meant somebody being fed; they lifted their little wings, spread out like fans their short beautiful tails, and by help of both, half hopped, half flew through the branches to the other side.
I followed, by the roundabout way again, and then I saw another one.
Three bonny bairns in blue were on that dead spruce tree; two close together as before, and the third--who seemed more lively--sitting alone. He lifted his crest a little, turned his head and looked squarely at me, but seeing nothing to alarm him--wise little jay!--did not move.
Then again mamma came forward, and remonstrated and protested, but only by her one argument, a squawk.
I quietly sat down and tried to make myself as much a part of the bank as possible, for I wanted the distracted dame in blue to go on with her household duties, and feed those babies. After a while she did calm down a little, though she kept one distrustful eye on me, and now and then came near and delivered a squawk at me, as if to a.s.sure me that she saw through my manoeuvres, and despised them.
But I cared not at that moment for her opinion of me; she did not move my sympathies as do many birds, for she appeared insulted and angry, not in the least afraid. I wanted to see her feed, and at last I did--_almost_; she was to the last too sharp for me.
She came with a mouthful of food. Each one of the three rose on his st.u.r.dy little legs, fluttered his wings, opened his beak and cried. It was a sort of whispered squawk, which shows that the bluejay is a wary bird even in the cradle. When they were all roused and eager, the mother used that morsel as a bait to coax them through the tree again. She did not give it to either of her pet.i.tioners, but she moved slowly from branch to branch, holding it before them, and as one bird they followed, led by their appet.i.te, like bigger folk,--
"Three souls with but a single thought, Three hearts that beat as one!"
and as I had no desire to see them die of starvation, and leave the world so much poorer in beauty, I came away and left them to their repast.
That was not the end of the bluejay episode. A few days later a young bird, perhaps one of this very trio, set out by himself in search of adventures. Into the wide-open door of the barn he flew, probably to see for what the swallows were flying out and in. Alas for that curious young bird! He was noticed by the farmer"s boy, chased into a corner, still out of breath from his first flight, then caught, thrust into an old canary cage, brought to the house, and given to the bird-student.
Poor little creature! he was dumb with fright, though he was not motionless. He beat himself against the wires and thrust his beak through the openings, in vain efforts to escape. We looked at him with great interest, but we had not the heart to keep him very long. In a few minutes he was taken out of the cage in a hand (which he tried to bite), carried to the door and set free.
Away like a flash went the little boy blue and alighted in a tree beside the house. For a few moments he panted for breath, and then he opened his mouth to tell the news to whom it might concern. In rapid succession he uttered half a dozen jay-baby squawks, rested a moment, then repeated them, hopping about the tree in great excitement.
In less than thirty seconds his cries were answered. A bluejay appeared on the barn; another was seen in a spruce close by; three came to a tall tree across the road; and from near and far we heard the calls of friends trooping to the rescue.
Meanwhile the birds of the neighborhood, where the squawk of a jay was seldom heard, began to take an interest in this unusual gathering. Two cedar birds, with the policy of peace which their Quaker garb suggests, betook themselves to a safe distance, a cat-bird went to the tree to interview the clamorous stranger, a vireo made its appearance on the branches, and followed the big baby in blue from perch to perch, looking at him with great curiosity, while a veery uttered his plaintive cry from the fence below.
All this attention was too much for a bluejay, who always wants plenty of elbow room in this wide world. He flew off towards the woods, where, after a proper interval to see that no more babies were in trouble, he was followed by his grown-up relatives from every quarter. But I think they had a convention to talk it over, up in the woods, for squawks and cries of many kinds came from that direction for a long time.
IN THE BLACK RIVER COUNTRY.
Where shall we keep the holiday?
Up and away! where haughty woods Front the liberated floods: We will climb the broad-backed hills, Hear the uproar of their joy; We will mark the leaps and gleams Of the new-delivered streams, And the murmuring river of sap Mount in the pipes of the trees.
And the colors of joy in the bird And the love in his carol heard.
Frog and lizard in holiday coats, And turtle brave in his golden spots.
EMERSON.
IX.
THAT WITCHING SONG.
A year or two before setting up my tent in the Black River Country, began my acquaintance with the author of the witching song.
The time was evening; the place, the veranda of a friend"s summer cottage at Lake George. The vireo and the redstart had ceased their songs; the cat-bird had flirted "good-night" from the fence; even the robin, last of all to go to bed, had uttered his final peep and vanished from sight and hearing; the sun had gone down behind the mountains across the lake, and I was listening for the whippoorwill who lived at the edge of the wood to take up the burden of song and carry it into the night.
Suddenly there burst upon the silence a song that startled me. It was loud and distinct as if very near, yet it had the spirit and the echoes of the woods in it; a wild, rare, thrilling strain, the woods themselves made vocal. Such it seemed to me. I was strangely moved, and filled from that moment with an undying determination to trace that witching song to the bird that could utter it.
"I"m going to seek my singer," was the message I flung back next morning, as, opera-gla.s.s in hand, I started down the orchard towards the woods. I followed the path under the apple-trees, pa.s.sed the daisy field, white from fence to fence with beauty,--despair of the farmer, but delight of the cottagers,--hurried across the pasture beyond, skirting the little knoll on which the cow happened this morning to be feeding, crossed the brook on a plank, and reached my daily walk.
This was a broad path that ran for half a mile on the edge of the lake.
Behind it, penetrated every now and then by a foot-path, was the bit of old woods that the clearers of this land had the grace to leave, to charm the eye and refresh the soul (though probably not for that reason). Before it stretched the clear, sparkling waters of Lake George, and on the other side rose abruptly one of the beautiful mountains that fringe that exquisite piece of water.
Usually I pa.s.sed half the morning here, seated on one of the rocks that cropped out everywhere, filling my memory with pictures to take home with me. But to-day I could not stay. I entered one of the paths, pa.s.sed into the grand, silent woods, found a comfortable seat on a bed of pine needles, with the trunk of a tall maple tree for a back, and prepared to wait. I would test Th.o.r.eau"s a.s.sertion that if one will sit long enough in some attractive spot in the woods, sooner or later every inhabitant of it will pa.s.s before him. I had confidence in Th.o.r.eau"s woodcraft, for has not Emerson said:--
"What others did at distance hear, And guessed within the thicket"s gloom, Was shown to this philosopher, And at his bidding seemed to come"?
and I resolved to sit there till I should see my bird. I was confident I should know him: a wild, fearless eye, I was sure, a n.o.ble bearing, a dweller on the tree-tops.
Alas! I forgot one phrase in Th.o.r.eau"s statement: "sooner or _later_."
No doubt the Concord hermit was a true prophet; but how many of the inhabitants are "later"--too late, indeed, for a mortal who, unlike our New England philosopher, has such weak human needs as food and rest, and whose back will be tired in spite of her enthusiasm, if she sits a few hours on a rock, with a tree for a back.
Many of the sweet and shy residents of that lovely bit of wildness showed themselves while I waited. A flicker, whose open door was in sight, and who was plainly engaged in setting her house in order, entertained me for a long time. Silently she stole in, I did not see how. Her first appearance to me was on the trunk, the opposite side from her nest, whence she slid, or so it looked, in a series of jerks to her door, paused a few minutes on the step to look sharply at me, and then disappeared, head first, within. Quick as a jack-in-the-box, her head popped out again to see if the spy had moved while she had been out of sight, and finding all serene, she threw herself with true feminine energy into her work. The beak-loads she brought to the door and flung out seemed so insufficient that I longed to lend her a broom; but I found she had a better helper than that, a partner.
When she tired, or thought she had earned a rest, she came out, and flying to the limb above the nest, began softly calling. Never was the ventriloquial quality more plainly exhibited. I heard that low "ka! ka!
ka! ka! ka!" long repeated, and I looked with interest in every direction to see the bird appear. For a long time I did not suspect the sly dame so quietly resting on the branch, and when I did it was only by the closest inspection that I discovered the slight jerk of the tail, the almost imperceptible movement of the beak, that betrayed her.
Another as well as I heard that call, and he responded. He was exactly like her, with the addition of a pair of black "mustachios," and it may be she told him that the strange object under the maple had not moved for half an hour, and was undoubtedly some new device of man"s, made of wood perhaps, for he did not hesitate on the door-step, but plunged in at once, and devoted himself to the business in hand, clearing out, while she vanished.
But though I watched this domestic scene with pleasure, and saw and noted every feather that appeared about me, the tree-tops had my closest attention, for there I was certain I should find my rare singer. Hours pa.s.sed, the shadows grew long, and sadly and slowly I took my way homewards, wishing I had a charm against fatigue, mosquitoes, and other terrors of the night, and could stay out till he came.
All through the month of June I haunted that wood, seeking the unknown.
Every evening I heard him, but no sight came to gladden my eyes. I grew almost to believe it merely "a wandering voice," and I went home with my longing unsatisfied.
When next the month of roses came around, I betook myself to a spur of the Hoosac Mountains to see my birds. The evening of my arrival, as the twilight gathered, rose the call of my witching voice.