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Title: The Log of the Sun
A Chronicle of Nature's Year
Author: William Beebe
Release Date: September 3, 2008 [EBook #26516]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOG OF THE SUN ***
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[Illustration: Frontispiece]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frontispiece by
Walter King Stone
THE LOG OF THE SUN
A Chronicle of Nature's Year
By WILLIAM BEEBE
Garden City Publishing Co., Inc.
Garden City, New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO MY
Mother and Father
WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND SYMPATHY
GAVE IMPETUS AND PURPOSE TO
A BOY'S LOVE OF NATURE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
In the fifty-two short essays of this volume I have presented familiar
objects from unusual points of view. Bird's-eye glances and insect's-eye
glances, at the nature of our woods and fields, will reveal beauties which
are wholly invisible from the usual human view-point, five feet or more
above the ground.
Who follows the lines must expect to find moods as varying as the seasons;
to face storm and night and cold, and all other delights of what wildness
still remains to us upon the earth.
Emphasis has been laid upon the weak points in our knowledge of things
about us, and the principal desire of the author is to inspire enthusiasm
in those whose eyes are just opening to the wild beauties of God's
out-of-doors, to gather up and follow to the end some of these frayed-out
threads of mystery.
Portions of the text have been published at various times in the pages of
"Outing," "Recreation," "The Golden Age," "The New York Evening Post," and
"The New York Tribune."
C. W. B.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
JANUARY
Birds of the Snow 3
Winter Marvels 10
Cedar Birds and Berries 16
The Dark Days of Insect Life 20
Chameleons in Fur and Feather 25
FEBRUARY
February Feathers 31
Fish Life 37
Tenants of Winter Birds' Nests 44
Winter Holes 48
MARCH
Feathered Pioneers 55
The Ways of Meadow Mice 61
Problems of Bird Life 65
Dwellers in the Dust 71
APRIL
Spring Songsters 75
The Simple Art of Sapsucking 81
Wild Wings 85
The Birds in the Moon 88
MAY
The High Tide of Bird Life 91
Animal Fashions 97
Polliwog Problems 102
Insect Pirates And Submarines 105
The Victory Of The Nighthawk 109
JUNE
The Gala Days Of Birds 113
Turtle Traits 118
A Half-Hour In A Marsh 124
Secrets Of The Ocean 129
JULY
Birds In A City 153
Night Music Of The Swamp 160
The Coming Of Man 167
The Silent Language Of Animals 170
Insect Music 176
AUGUST
The Gray Days Of Birds 181
Lives Of The Lantern Bearers 188
A Starfish And A Daisy 191
The Dream Of The Yellow-Throat 195
SEPTEMBER
The Passing Of The Flocks 199
Ghosts Of The Earth 204
Muskrats 207
Nature's Geometricians 210
OCTOBER
Autumn Hunting With A Field Glass 217
A Woodchuck And A Grebe 223
The Voice of Animals 227
The Names Of Animals, Frogs, and Fish 234
The Dying Year 246
NOVEMBER
November's Birds of the Heavens 249
A Plea for the Skunk 255
The Lesson Of The Wave 258
We Go A-Sponging 262
DECEMBER
New Thoughts About Nests 269
Lessons From An English Sparrow 275
The Personality Of Trees 281
An Owl Of The North 297
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A fiery mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell;
A jelly fish and a saurian,
And the caves where the cave men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty
And a face turned from the clod,
Some call it evolution,
And others call it God.
W. H. Carruth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JANUARY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIRDS OF THE SNOW
No fact of natural history is more interesting, or more significant of the
poetry of evolution, than the distribution of birds over the entire
surface of the world. They have overcome countless obstacles, and adapted
themselves to all conditions. The last faltering glance which the Arctic
explorer sends toward his coveted goal, ere he admits defeat, shows flocks
of snow buntings active with warm life; the storm-tossed mariner in the
midst of the sea, is followed, encircled, by the steady, tireless flight
of the albatross; the fever-stricken wanderer in tropical jungles listens
to the sweet notes of birds amid the stagnant pools; while the thirsty
traveller in the desert is ever watched by the distant buzzards. Finally
when the intrepid climber, at the risk of life and limb, has painfully
made his way to the summit of the most lofty peak, far, far above him, in
the blue expanse of thin air, he can distinguish the form of a majestic
eagle or condor.
At the approach of winter the flowers and insects about us die, but most
of the birds take wing and fly to a more temperate climate, while their
place is filled with others which have spent the summer farther to the
north. Thus without stirring from our doorway we may become acquainted
with many species whose summer homes are hundreds of miles away.
No time is more propitious or advisable for the amateur bird lover to
begin his studies than the first of the year. Bird life is now reduced to
its simplest terms in numbers and species, and the absence of concealing
foliage, together with the usual tameness of winter birds, makes
identification an easy matter.
In January and the succeeding month we have with us birds which are called
permanent residents, which do not leave us throughout the entire year;
and, in addition, the winter visitors which have come to us from the far
north.
In the uplands we may flush ruffed grouse from their snug retreats in the
snow; while in the weedy fields, many a fairy trail shows where bob-white
has passed, and often he will announce his own name from the top of a rail
fence. The grouse at this season have a curious outgrowth of horny scales
along each side of the toes, which, acting as a tiny snowshoe, enables
them to walk on soft snow with little danger of sinking through.
Few of our winter birds can boast of bright colours; their garbs are
chiefly grays and browns, but all have some mark or habit or note by which
they can be at once named. For example, if you see a mouse hitching
spirally up a tree-trunk, a closer look will show that it is a brown
creeper, seeking tiny insects and their eggs in the crevices of the trunk.
He looks like a small piece of the roughened bark which has suddenly
become animated. His long tail props him up and his tiny feet never fail
to find a foothold. Our winter birds go in flocks, and where we see a
brown creeper we are almost sure to find other birds.
Nuthatches are those blue-backed, white or rufous breasted little climbers
who spend their lives defying the law of gravity. They need no supporting
tail, and have only the usual number of eight toes, but they traverse the
bark, up or down, head often pointing toward the ground, as if their feet
were small vacuum cups. Their note is an odd nasal _nyêh!_ _nyêh!_
In winter some one species of bird usually predominates, most often,
perhaps, it is the black-capped chickadee. They seem to fill every grove,
and, if you take your stand in the woods, flock after flock will pass
in succession. What good luck must have come to the chickadee race
during the preceding summer? Was some one of their enemies stricken with a
plague, or did they show more than usual care in the selecting of their
nesting holes? Whatever it was, during such a year, it seems certain that
scores more of chickadee babies manage to live to grow up than is
usually the case. These little fluffs are, in their way, as remarkable
acrobats as are the nuthatches, and it is a marvel how the very thin legs,
with their tiny sliver of bone and thread of tendon, can hold the body
of the bird in almost any position, while the vainly hidden clusters of
insect eggs are pried into. Without ceasing a moment in their busy
search for food, the fluffy feathered members of the flock call to each
other, "_Chick-a-chick-a-dee-dee!_" but now and then the heart of some
little fellow bubbles over, and he rests an instant, sending out a sweet,
tender, high call, a "_Phoe-be!_" love note, which warms our ears in
the frosty air and makes us feel a real affection for the brave little
mites.
Our song sparrow is, like the poor, always with us, at least near the
coast, but we think none the less of him for that, and besides, that fact
is true in only one sense. A ripple in a stream may be seen day after day,
and yet the water forming it is never the same, it is continually flowing
onward. This is usually the case with song sparrows and with most other
birds which are present summer and winter. The individual sparrows which
flit from bush to bush, or slip in and out of the brush piles in January,
have doubtless come from some point north of us, while the song sparrows
of our summer walks are now miles to the southward. Few birds remain the
entire year in the locality in which they breed, although the southward
movement may be a very limited one. When birds migrate so short a
distance, they are liable to be affected in colour and size by the
temperature and dampness of their respective areas; and so we find that in
North America there are as many as twenty-two races of song sparrows, to
each of which has been given a scientific name. When you wish to speak of
our northeastern song sparrow in the latest scientific way, you must say
_Melospiza cinerea melodia_, which tells us that it is a melodious song
finch, ashy or brown in colour.
Our winter sparrows are easy to identify. The song sparrow may, of course,
be known by the streaks of black and brown upon his breast and sides, and
by the blotch which these form in the centre of the breast. The tree
sparrow, which comes to us from Hudson Bay and Labrador, lacks the
stripes, but has the centre spot. This is one of our commonest field birds
in winter, notwithstanding his name.
The most omnipresent and abundant of all our winter visitors from the
north are the juncos, or snowbirds. Slate coloured above and white below,
perfectly describes these birds, although their distinguishing mark,
visible a long way off, is the white V in their tails, formed by several
white outer feathers on each side. The sharp chirps of juncos are heard
before the ice begins to form, and they stay with us all winter.
We have called the junco a snowbird, but this name should really be
confined to a black and white bunting which comes south only with a
mid-winter's rush of snowflakes. Their warm little bodies nestle close to
the white crystals, and they seek cheerfully for the seeds which nature
has provided for them. Then a thaw comes, and they disappear as silently
and mysteriously as if they had melted with the flakes; but doubtless they
are far to the northward, hanging on the outskirts of the Arctic storms,
and giving way only when every particle of food is frozen tight, the
ground covered deep with snow, and the panicled seed clusters locked in
crystal frames of ice.
The feathers of these Arctic wanderers are perfect non-conductors of heat
and of cold, and never a chill reaches their little frames until hunger
presses. Then they must find food and quickly, or they die. When these
snowflakes first come to us they are tinged with gray and brown, but
gradually through the winter their colours become more clear-cut and
brilliant, until, when spring comes, they are garbed in contrasting black
and white. With all this change, however, they leave never a feather with
us, but only the minute brown tips of the feather vanes, which, by wearing
away, leave exposed the clean new colours beneath.
Thus we find that there are problems innumerable to verify and to solve,
even when the tide of the year's life is at its lowest ebb.
From out the white and pulsing storm
I hear the snowbirds calling;
The sheeted winds stalk o'er the hills,
And fast the snow is falling.
On twinkling wings they eddy past,
At home amid the drifting,
Or seek the hills and weedy fields
Where fast the snow is sifting.
Their coats are dappled white and brown
Like fields in winter weather,
But on the azure sky they float
Like snowflakes knit together.
I've heard them on the spotless hills
Where fox and hound were playing,
The while I stood with eager ear
Bent on the distant baying.
The unmown fields are their preserves,
Where weeds and grass are seeding;
They know the lure of distant stacks
Where houseless herds are feeding.
JOHN BURROUGHS.
WINTER MARVELS
Let us suppose that a heavy snow has fallen and that we have been
a-birding in vain. For once it seems as if all the birds had gone the way
of the butterflies. But we are not true bird-lovers unless we can
substitute nature for bird whenever the occasion demands; specialisation
is only for the ultra-scientist.
There is more to be learned in a snowy field than volumes could tell.
There is the tangle of footprints to unravel, the history of the pastimes
and foragings and tragedies of the past night writ large and unmistakable.
Though the sun now shines brightly, we can well imagine the cold darkness
of six hours ago; we can reconstruct the whole scene from those tiny
tracks, showing frantic leaps, the indentation of two wing-tips,--a speck
of blood. But let us take a bird's-eye view of things, from a bird's-head
height; that is, lie flat upon a board or upon the clean, dry crystals and
see what wonders we have passed by all our lives.
Take twenty square feet of snow with a streamlet through the centre, and
we have an epitome of geological processes and conditions. With chin upon
mittens and mittens upon the crust, the eye opens upon a new world. The
half-covered rivulet becomes a monster glacier-fed stream, rushing down
through grand canyons and caves, hung with icy stalactites. Bit by bit the
walls are undermined and massive icebergs become detached and are whirled
away. As for moraines, we have them in plenty; only the windrows of
thousands upon thousands of tiny seeds of which they are composed, are not
permanent, but change their form and position with every strong gust of
wind. And with every gust too their numbers increase, the harvest of the
weeds being garnered here, upon barren ground. No wonder the stream will
be hidden from view next summer, when the myriad seeds sprout and begin to
fight upward for light and air.
If we cannot hope for polar bears to complete our Arctic scene, we may
thrill at the sight of a sinuous weasel, winding his way among the weeds;
and if we look in vain for swans, we at least may rejoice in a whirling,
white flock of snow buntings.
A few flakes fall gently upon our sleeve and another world opens before
us. A small hand-lens will be of service, although sharp eyes may dispense
with it. Gather a few recently fallen flakes upon a piece of black cloth,
and the lens will reveal jewels more beautiful than any ever fashioned by
the hand of man. Six-pointed crystals, always hexagonal, of a myriad
patterns, leave us lost in wonderment when we look out over the white
landscape and think of the hidden beauty of it all. The largest glacier of
Greenland or Alaska is composed wholly of just such crystals whose points
have melted and which have become ice.
We may draw or photograph scores of these beautiful crystals and never
duplicate a figure. Some are almost solid and tabular, others are simple
stars or fern-branched. Then we may detect compound forms, crystals within
crystals, and, rarest of all, doubles, where two different forms appear as
joined together by a tiny pillar. In all of these we have an epitome of
the crystals of the rocks beneath our feet, only in their case the
pressure has moulded them into straight columns, while the snow, forming
unhindered in midair, resolves itself into these exquisite forms and
floral designs. Flowers and rocks are not so very unlike after all.
Few of us can observe these wonderful forms without feeling the poetry of
it all. Thoreau on the fifth day of January, 1856, writes as follows:...
"The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists
of those beautiful star crystals, not cottony and chubby spokes as on the
13th of December, but thin and partly transparent crystals. They are about
one tenth of an inch in diameter, perfect little wheels with six spokes,
without a tire, or rather with six perfect little leaflets, fern-like,
with a distinct, straight, slender midrib raying from the centre. On each
side of each midrib there is a transparent, thin blade with a crenate
edge. How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are
generated! I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my
coat. Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity, so that not a
snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. Nothing is cheap and coarse,
neither dewdrops nor snowflakes. Soon the storm increases (it was already
very severe to face), and the snow becomes finer, more white and powdery.
"Who knows but this is the original form of all snowflakes, but that, when
I observe these crystal stars falling around me, they are only just
generated in the low mist next the earth. I am nearer to the source of the
snow, its primal auroral, and golden hour of infancy; commonly the flakes
reach us travel-worn and agglomerated, comparatively, without order or
beauty, far down in their fall, like men in their advanced age. As for the
circumstances under which this occurs, it is quite cold, and the driving
storm is bitter to face, though very little snow is falling. It comes
almost horizontally from the north.... A divinity must have stirred within
them, before the crystals did thus shoot and set: wheels of the storm
chariots. The same law that shapes the earth and the stars shapes the
snowflake. Call it rather snow star. As surely as the petals of a flower
are numbered, each of these countless snow stars comes whirling to earth,
pronouncing thus with emphasis the number six, order, [Greek: cosmos].
This was the beginning of a storm which reached far and wide, and
elsewhere was more severe than here. On the Saskatchewan, where no man of
science is present to behold, still down they come, and not the less
fulfil their destiny, perchance melt at once on the Indian's face. What a
world we live in, where myriads of these little discs, so beautiful to the
most prying eye, are whirled down on every traveller's coat, the observant
and the unobservant, on the restless squirrel's fur, on the far-stretching
fields and forests, the wooded dells and the mountain tops. Far, far away
from the haunts of men, they roll down some little slope, fall over and
come to their bearings, and melt or lose their beauty in the mass, ready
anon to swell some little rill with their contribution, and so, at last,
the universal ocean from which they came. There they lie, like the wreck
of chariot wheels after a battle in the skies. Meanwhile the meadow mouse
shoves them aside in his gallery, the schoolboy casts them in his ball, or
the woodman's sled glides smoothly over them, these glorious spangles, the
sweepings of heaven's floor. And they all sing, melting as they sing, of
the mysteries of the number six; six, six, six. He takes up the waters of
the sea in his hand, leaving the salt; he disperses it in mist through the
skies; he re-collects and sprinkles it like grain in six-rayed snowy stars
over the earth, there to lie till he dissolves its bonds again."
But here is a bit of snow which seems less pure, with grayish patches here
and there. Down again to sparrow-level and bring the glass to bear. Your
farmer friend will tell you that they are snow-fleas which are snowed down
with the flakes; the entomologist will call them _Achorutes nivicola_ and
he knows that they have prosaically wiggled their way from the crevices of
bark on the nearest tree-trunk. One's thrill of pleasure at this
unexpected discovery will lead one to adopt sparrow-views whenever larger
game is lacking.
I walked erstwhile upon thy frozen waves,
And heard the streams amid thy ice-locked caves;
I peered down thy crevasses blue and dim,
Standing in awe upon the dizzy rim.
Beyond me lay the inlet still and blue,
Behind, the mountains loomed upon the view
Like storm-wraiths gathered from the low-hung sky.
A gust of wind swept past with heavy sigh,
And lo! I listened to the ice-stream's song
Of winter when the nights grow dark and long,
And bright stars flash above thy fields of snow,
The cold waste sparkling in the pallid glow.
Charles Keeler.
CEDAR BIRDS AND BERRIES
Keep sharp eyes upon the cedar groves in mid-winter, and sooner or later
you will see the waxwings come, not singly or in pairs, but by dozens, and
sometimes in great flocks. They will well repay all the watching one gives
them. The cedar waxwing is a strange bird, with a very pronounced
species-individuality, totally unlike any other bird of our country. When
feeding on their favourite winter berries, these birds show to great
advantage; the warm rich brown of the upper parts and of the crest
contrasting with the black, scarlet, and yellow, and these, in turn, with
the dark green of the cedar and the white of the snow.
The name waxwing is due to the scarlet ornaments at the tips of the lesser
flight feathers and some of the tail feathers, which resemble bits of red
sealing wax, but which are really the bare, flattened ends of the feather
shafts. Cherry-bird is another name which is appropriately applied to the
cedar waxwing.
These birds are never regular in their movements, and they come and go
without heed to weather or date. They should never be lightly passed by,
but their flocks carefully examined, lest among their ranks may be hidden
a Bohemian chatterer--a stately waxwing larger than common and even more
beautiful in hue, whose large size and splashes of white upon its wings
will always mark it out.
This bird is one of our rarest of rare visitors, breeding in the far
north; and even in its nest and eggs mystery enshrouds it. Up to fifty
years ago, absolutely nothing was known of its nesting habits, although
during migration Bohemian chatterers are common all over Europe. At last
Lapland was found to be their home, and a nest has been found in Alaska
and several others in Labrador. My only sight of these birds was of a pair
perched in an elm tree in East Orange, New Jersey; but I will never forget
it, and will never cease to hope for another such red-letter day.
The movements of the cedar waxwings are as uncertain in summer as they are
in winter; they may be common in one locality for a year or two, and then,
apparently without reason, desert it. At this season they feed on insects
instead of berries, and may be looked for in small flocks in orchard or
wood. The period of nesting is usually late, and, in company with the
goldfinches, they do not begin their housekeeping until July and August.
Unlike other birds, waxwings will build their nests of almost anything
near at hand, and apparently in any growth which takes their
fancy,--apple, oak, or cedar. The nests are well constructed, however, and
often, with their contents, add another background of a most pleasing
harmony of colours. A nest composed entirely of pale green hanging moss,
with eggs of bluish gray, spotted and splashed with brown and black,
guarded by a pair of these exquisite birds, is a sight to delight the
eye.
When the young have left the nest, if alarmed by an intruder, they
will frequently, trusting to their protective dress of streaky brown,
freeze into most unbird-like attitudes, drawing the feathers close to
the body and stretching the neck stiffly upward,--almost bittern-like.
Undoubtedly other interesting habits which these strangely picturesque
birds may possess are still awaiting discovery by some enthusiastic
observer with a pair of opera-glasses and a stock of that ever important
characteristic--patience.
Although, during the summer months, myriads of insects are killed and
eaten by the cedar waxwings, yet these birds are preeminently berry
eaters,--choke-cherries, cedar berries, blueberries, and raspberries being
preferred. Watch a flock of these birds in a cherry tree, and you will see
the pits fairly rain down. We need not place our heads, _à la_ Newton, in
the path of these falling stones to deduce some interesting facts,--indeed
to solve the very destiny of the fruit. Many whole cherries are carried
away by the birds to be devoured elsewhere, or we may see parent waxwing
filling their gullets with ten or a dozen berries and carrying them to the
eager nestlings.
Thus is made plain the why and the wherefore of the coloured skin, the
edible flesh, and the hidden stone of the fruit. The conspicuous racemes
of the choke-cherries, or the shining scarlet globes of the cultivated
fruit, fairly shout aloud to the birds--"Come and eat us, we're as good as
we look!" But Mother Nature looks on and laughs to herself. Thistle seeds
are blown to the land's end by the wind; the heavier ticks and burrs are
carried far and wide upon the furry coats of passing creatures; but the
cherry could not spread its progeny beyond a branch's length, were it not
for the ministrations of birds. With birds, as with some other bipeds, the
shortest way to the heart is through the stomach, and a choke-cherry tree
in full blaze of fruit is always a natural aviary. Where a cedar bird has
built its nest, there look some day to see a group of cherry trees; where
convenient fence-perches along the roadside lead past cedar groves, there
hope before long to see a bird-planted avenue of cedars. And so the
marvels of Nature go on evolving,--wheels within wheels.
THE DARK DAYS OF INSECT LIFE
Sometimes by too close and confining study of things pertaining to the
genus _Homo_, we perchance find ourselves complacently wondering if we
have not solved almost all the problems of this little whirling sphere of
water and earth. Our minds turn to the ultra questions of atoms and ions
and rays and our eyes strain restlessly upward toward our nearest planet
neighbour, in half admission that we must soon take up the study of Mars
from sheer lack of earthly conquest.
If so minded, hie you to the nearest grove and, digging down through the
mid-winter's snow, bring home a spadeful of leaf-mould. Examine it
carefully with hand-lens and microscope, and then prophesy what warmth and
light will bring forth. "Watch the unfolding life of plant and animal, and
then come from your planet-yearning back to earth, with a humbleness born
of a realisation of our vast ignorance of the commonest things about us."
Though the immediate mysteries of the seed and the egg baffle us, yet the
most casual lover of God's out-of-doors may hopefully attempt to solve the
question of some of the winter homes of insects. Think of the thousands
upon thousands of eggs and pupæ which are hidden in every grove; what
catacombs of bug mummies yonder log conceals,--mummies whose resurrection
will be brought about by the alchemy of thawing sunbeams. Follow out the
suggestion hinted at above and place a handkerchief full of frozen mould
or decayed wood in a white dish, and the tiny universe which will
gradually unfold before you will provide many hours of interest. But
remember your responsibilities in so doing, and do not let the tiny plant
germs languish and die for want of water, or the feeble, newly-hatched
insects perish from cold or lack a bit of scraped meat.
Cocoons are another never-ending source of delight. If you think that
there are no unsolved problems of the commonest insect life around us, say
why it is that the moths and millers pass the winter wrapped in swaddling
clothes of densest textures, roll upon roll of silken coverlets; while our
delicate butterflies hang uncovered, suspended only by a single loop of
silk, exposed to the cold blast of every northern gale? Why do the
caterpillars of our giant moths--the mythologically named Cecropia,
Polyphemus, Luna, and Prometheus--show such individuality in the position
which they choose for their temporary shrouds? Protection and concealment
are the watchwords held to in each case, but how differently they are
achieved!
Cecropia--that beauty whose wings, fully six inches across, will flap
gracefully through the summer twilight--weaves about himself a half oval
mound, along some stem or tree-trunk, and becomes a mere excrescence--the
veriest unedible thing a bird may spy. Polyphemus wraps miles of finest
silk about his green worm-form (how, even though we watch him do it, we
can only guess); weaving in all the surrounding leaves he can reach. This,
of course, before the frosts come, but when the leaves at last shrivel,
loosen, and their petioles break, it is merely a larger brown nut than
usual that falls to the ground, the kernel of which will sprout next June
and blossom into the big moth of delicate fawn tints, feathery horned,
with those strange isinglass windows in his hind wings.
Luna--the weird, beautiful moon-moth, whose pale green hues and long
graceful streamers make us realise how much beauty we miss if we neglect
the night life of summer--when clad in her temporary shroud of silk,
sometimes falls to the ground, or again the cocoon remains in the tree or
bush where it was spun.
But Prometheus, the smallest of the quartet, has a way all his own. The
elongated cocoon, looking like a silken finger, is woven about a leaf of
sassafras. Even the long stem of the leaf is silk-girdled, and a strong
band is looped about the twig to which the leaf is attached. Here, when
all the leaves fall, he hangs, the plaything of every breeze, attracting
the attention of all the hungry birds. But little does Prometheus care.
Sparrows may hover about him and peck in vain; chickadees may clutch the
dangling finger and pound with all their tiny might. Prometheus is
"bound," indeed, and merely swings the faster, up and down, from side to
side.
It is interesting to note that when two Prometheus cocoons, fastened upon
their twigs, were suspended in a large cageful of native birds, it took a
healthy chickadee just three days of hard pounding and unravelling to
force a way through the silken envelopes to the chrysalids within. Such
long continued and persistent labour for so comparatively small a morsel
of food would not be profitable or even possible out-of-doors in winter.
The bird would starve to death while forcing its way through the
protecting silk.
These are only four of the many hundreds of cocoons, from the silken
shrouds on the topmost branches to the jugnecked chrysalis of a sphinx
moth--offering us the riddle of a winter's shelter buried in the cold,
dark earth.
Is everything frozen tight? Has Nature's frost mortar cemented every stone
in its bed? Then cut off the solid cups of the pitcher plants, and see
what insects formed the last meal of these strange growths,--ants, flies,
bugs, encased in ice like the fossil insects caught in the amber sap which
flowed so many thousands of years ago.
When the fierce northwestern blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast,
Thou already slumberest deep;
Woe and want thou canst outsleep.
Emerson.
CHAMELEONS IN FUR AND FEATHER
The colour of things in nature has been the subject of many volumes and
yet it may be truthfully said that no two naturalists are wholly agreed on
the interpretation of the countless hues of plants and animals. Some
assert that all alleged instances of protective colouring and mimicry are
merely the result of accident; while at the opposite swing of the pendulum
we find theories, protective and mimetic, for the colours of even the tiny
one-celled green plants which cover the bark of trees! Here is abundant
opportunity for any observer of living nature to help toward the solution
of these problems.
In a battle there are always two sides and at its finish one side always
runs away while the other pursues. Thus it is in the wars of nature, only
here the timid ones are always ready to flee, while the strong are equally
prepared to pursue. It is only by constant vigilance that the little mice
can save themselves from disappearing down the throats of their enemies,
as under cover of darkness they snatch nervous mouthfuls of grain in the
fields,--and hence their gray colour and their large, watchful eyes; but
on the other hand, the baby owls in their hollow tree would starve if the
parents were never able to swoop down in the darkness and surprise a mouse
now and then,--hence the gray plumage and great eyes of the parent owls.
The most convincing proof of the reality of protective coloration is in
the change of plumage or fur of some of the wild creatures to suit the
season. In the far north, the grouse or ptarmigan, as they are called, do
not keep feathers of the same colour the year round, as does our ruffed
grouse; but change their dress no fewer than three times. When rocks and
moss are buried deep beneath the snow, and a keen-eyed hawk appears, the
white-feathered ptarmigan crouches and becomes an inanimate mound. Later
in the year, with the increasing warmth, patches of gray and brown earth
appear, and simultaneously, as if its feathers were really snowflakes,
splashes of brown replace the pure white of the bird's plumage, and
equally baffle the eye. Seeing one of these birds by itself, we could
readily tell, from the colour of its plumage, the time of year and general
aspect of the country from which it came. Its plumage is like a mirror
which reflects the snow, the moss, or the lichens in turn. It is, indeed,
a feathered chameleon, but with changes of colour taking place more slowly
than is the case in the reptile.
We may discover changes somewhat similar, but furry instead of feathery,
in the woods about our home. The fiercest of all the animals of our
continent still evades the exterminating inroads of man; indeed it often
puts his traps to shame, and wages destructive warfare in his very midst.
I speak of the weasel,--the least of all his family, and yet, for his
size, the most bloodthirsty and widely dreaded little demon of all the
countryside. His is a name to conjure with among all the lesser wood-folk;
the scent of his passing brings an almost helpless paralysis. And yet in
some way he must be handicapped, for his slightly larger cousin, the mink,
finds good hunting the year round, clad in a suit of rich brown; while the
weasel, at the approach of winter, sheds his summer dress of chocolate hue
and dons a pure white fur, a change which would seem to put the poor mice
and rabbits at a hopeless disadvantage. Nevertheless the ermine, as he is
now called (although wrongly so), seems just able to hold his own, with
all his evil slinking motions and bloodthirsty desires; for foxes, owls,
and hawks take, in their turn, heavy toll. Nature is ever a repetition of
the "House that Jack built";--this is the owl that ate the weasel that
killed the mouse, and so on.
The little tail-tips of milady's ermine coat are black; and herein lies an
interesting fact in the coloration of the weasel and one that, perhaps,
gives a clue to some other hitherto inexplicable spots and markings on the
fur, feathers, skin, and scales of wild creatures. Whatever the season,
and whatever the colour of the weasel's coat,--brown or white,--the tip of
the tail remains always black. This would seem, at first thought, a very
bad thing for the little animal. Knowing so little of fear, he never tucks
his tail between his legs, and, when shooting across an open expanse of
snow, the black tip ever trailing after him would seem to mark him out for
destruction by every observing hawk or fox.
But the very opposite is the case as Mr. Witmer Stone so well relates. "If
you place a weasel in its winter white on new-fallen snow, in such a
position that it casts no shadow, you will find that the black tip of the
tail catches your eye and holds it in spite of yourself, so that at a
little distance it is very difficult to follow the outline of the rest of
the animal. Cover the tip of the tail with snow and you can see the rest
of the weasel itself much more clearly; but as long as the black point is
in sight, you see that, and that only.
"If a hawk or owl, or any other of the larger hunters of the woodland,
were to give chase to a weasel and endeavour to pounce upon it, it would
in all probability be the black tip of the tail it would see and strike
at, while the weasel, darting ahead, would escape. It may, morever, serve
as a guide, enabling the young weasels to follow their parents more
readily through grass and brambles.
"One would suppose that this beautiful white fur of winter, literally as
white as the snow, might prove a disadvantage at times by making its owner
conspicuous when the ground is bare in winter, as it frequently is even in
the North; yet though weasels are about more or less by day, you will
seldom catch so much as a glimpse of one at such times, though you may
hear their sharp chirrup close at hand. Though bold and fearless, they
have the power of vanishing instantly, and the slightest alarm sends them
to cover. I have seen one standing within reach of my hand in the sunshine
on the exposed root of a tree, and while I was staring at it, it vanished
like the flame of a candle blown out, without leaving me the slightest
clue as to the direction it had taken. All the weasels I have ever seen,
either in the woods or open meadows, disappeared in a similar manner."
To add to the completeness of proof that the change from brown to white is
for protection,--in the case of the weasel, both to enable it to escape
from the fox and to circumvent the rabbit,--the weasels in Florida, where
snow is unknown, do not change colour, but remain brown throughout the
whole year.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEBRUARY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEBRUARY FEATHERS
February holes are most interesting places and one never knows what will
be found in the next one investigated. It is a good plan, in one's walks
in the early fall, to make a mental map of all the auspicious looking
trees and holes, and then go the rounds of these in winter--as a hunter
follows his line of traps. An old, neglected orchard may seem perfectly
barren of life; insects dead, leaves fallen, and sap frozen; but the warm
hearts of these venerable trees may shelter much beside the larvæ of
boring beetles, and we may reap a winter harvest of which the farmer knows
nothing.
Poke a stick into a knothole and stir up the leaves at the bottom of the
cavity, and then look in. Two great yellow eyes may greet you, glaring
intermittently, and sharp clicks may assail your ears. Reach in with your
gloved hand and bring the screech owl out. He will blink in the sunshine,
ruffling up his feathers until he is twice his real size. The light partly
blinds him, but toss him into the air and he will fly without difficulty
and select with ease a secluded perch. The instant he alights a wonderful
transformation comes over him. He stiffens, draws himself as high as
possible, and compresses his feathers until he seems naught but the
slender, broken stump of some bough,--ragged topped (thanks to his
"horns"), gray and lichened. It is little short of a miracle how this
spluttering, saucer-eyed, feathered cat can melt away into woody fibre
before our very eyes.
We quickly understand why in the daytime the little owl is so anxious to
hide his form from public view. Although he can see well enough to fly and
to perch, yet the bright sunlight on the snow is too dazzling to permit of
swift and sure action. All the birds of the winter woods seem to know this
and instantly take advantage of it. Sparrows, chickadees, and woodpeckers
go nearly wild with excitement when they discover the little owl, hovering
about him and occasionally making darts almost in his very face. We can
well believe that as the sun sets, after an afternoon of such excitement,
they flee in terror, selecting for that night's perch the densest tangle
of sweetbrier to be found.
One hollow tree may yield a little gray owl, while from the next we may
draw a red one; and the odd thing about this is that this difference in
colour does not depend upon age, sex, or season, and no ornithologist can
say why it occurs. What can these little fellows find to feed upon these
cold nights, when the birds seek the most hidden and sheltered retreats?
We might murder the next owl we come across; but would any fact we might
discover in his poor stomach repay us for the thought of having needlessly
cut short his life, with its pleasures and spring courtships, and the
delight he will take in the half a dozen pearls over which he will soon
watch?
A much better way is to examine the ground around his favourite roosting
place, where we will find many pellets of fur and bones, with now and then
a tiny skull. These tell the tale, and if at dusk we watch closely, we may
see the screech owl look out of his door, stretch every limb, purr his
shivering song, and silently launch out over the fields, a feathery,
shadowy death to all small mice who scamper too far from their snow
tunnels.
When you feel like making a new and charming acquaintance, take your way
to a dense clump of snow-laden cedars, and look carefully over their
trunks. If you are lucky you will spy a tiny gray form huddled close to
the sheltered side of the bark, and if you are careful you may approach
and catch in your hand the smallest of all our owls, for the saw-whet is a
dreadfully sleepy fellow in the daytime. I knew of eleven of these little
gray gnomes dozing in a clump of five small cedars.
The cedars are treasure-houses in winter, and many birds find shelter
among the thick foliage, and feast upon the plentiful supply of berries,
when elsewhere there seems little that could keep a bird's life in its
body. When the tinkling of breaking icicles is taken up by the wind and
re-echoed from the tops of the cedars, you may know that a flock of purple
finches is near, and so greedy and busy are they that you may approach
within a few feet. These birds are unfortunately named, as there is
nothing purple about their plumage. The males are a delicate rose-red,
while the females look like commonplace sparrows, streaked all over with
black and brown.
There are other winter birds, whose home is in the North, with a similar
type of coloration. Among the pines you may see a flock of birds, as large
as a sparrow, with strange-looking beaks. The tips of the two mandibles
are long, curved, and pointed, crossing each other at their ends. This
looks like a deformity, but is in reality a splendid cone-opener and
seed-extracter. These birds are the crossbills.
Even in the cold of a February day, we may, on very rare occasions, be
fortunate enough to hear unexpected sounds, such as the rattle of a belted
kingfisher, or the croak of a night heron; for these birds linger until
every bit of pond or lake is sealed with ice; and when a thaw comes, a
lonely bat may surprise us with a short flight through the frosty air,
before it returns to its winter's trance.
Of course, in the vicinity of our towns and cities, the most noticeable
birds at this season of the year (as indeed at all seasons) are the
English sparrows and (at least near New York City) the starlings, those
two foreigners which have wrought such havoc among our native birds. Their
mingled flocks fly up, not only from garbage piles and gutters, but from
the thickets and fields which should be filled with our sweet-voiced
American birds. It is no small matter for man heedlessly to interfere with
Nature. What may be a harmless, or even useful, bird in its native land
may prove a terrible scourge when introduced where there are no enemies to
keep it in check. Nature is doing her best to even matters by letting
albinism run riot among the sparrows, and best of all by teaching sparrow
hawks to nest under our eaves and thus be on equal terms with their
sparrow prey. The starlings are turning out to be worse than the sparrows.
Already they are invading the haunts of our grackles and redwings.
On some cold day, when the sun is shining, visit all the orchards of which
you know, and see if in one or more you cannot find a good-sized, gray,
black, and white bird, which keeps to the topmost branch of a certain
tree. Look at him carefully through your glasses, and if his beak is
hooked, like that of a hawk, you may know that you are watching a northern
shrike, or butcher bird. His manner is that of a hawk, and his appearance
causes instant panic among small birds. If you watch long enough you may
see him pursue and kill a goldfinch, or sparrow, and devour it. These
birds are not even distantly related to the hawks, but have added a hawk's
characteristics and appetite to the insect diet of their nearest
relations. If ever shrikes will learn to confine their attacks to English
sparrows, we should offer them every encouragement.
All winter long the ebony forms of crows vibrate back and forth across the
cold sky. If we watch them when very high up, we sometimes see them sail a
short distance, and without fail, a second later, the clear "_Caw! caw!_"
comes down to us, the sound-waves unable to keep pace with those of light,
as the thunder of the storm lags behind the flash. These sturdy birds seem
able to stand any severity of the weather, but, like Achilles, they have
one vulnerable point, the eyes,--which, during the long winter nights,
must be kept deep buried among the warm feathers.
FISH LIFE
We have all looked down through the clear water of brook or pond and
watched the gracefully poised trout or pickerel; but have we ever tried to
imagine what the life of one of these aquatic beings is really like?
"Water Babies" perhaps gives us the best idea of existence below the
water, but if we spend one day each month for a year in trying to imagine
ourselves in the place of the fish, we will see that a fish-eye view of
life holds much of interest.
What a delightful sensation must it be to all but escape the eternal
downpull of gravity, to float and turn and rise and fall at will, and all
by the least twitch of tail or limb,--for fish have limbs, four of them,
as truly as has a dog or horse, only instead of fingers or toes there are
many delicate rays extending through the fin. These four limb-fins are
useful chiefly as balancers, while the tail-fin is what sends the fish
darting through the water, or turns it to right or left, with incredible
swiftness.
If we were able to examine some inhabitant of the planet Mars our first
interest would be to know with what senses they were endowed, and these
finny creatures living in their denser medium, which after a few seconds
would mean death to us, excite the same interest. They see, of course,
having eyes, but do they feel, hear, and smell!
Probably the sense of taste is least developed. When a trout leaps at and
catches a fly he does not stop to taste, otherwise the pheasant feather
concealing the cruel hook would be of little use. When an animal catches
its food in the water and swallows it whole, taste plays but a small part.
Thus the tongue of a pelican is a tiny flap all but lost to view in its
great bill.
Water is an excellent medium for carrying minute particles of matter and
so the sense of smell is well developed. A bit of meat dropped into the
sea will draw the fish from far and wide, and a slice of liver will
sometimes bring a score of sharks and throw them into the greatest
excitement.
Fishes are probably very near-sighted, but that they can distinguish
details is apparent in the choice which a trout exhibits in taking certain
coloured artificial flies. We may suppose from what we know of physics
that when we lean over and look down into a pool, the fishy eyes which
peer up at us discern only a dark, irregular mass. I have seen a pickerel
dodge as quickly at a sudden cloud-shadow as at the motion of a man
wielding a fish pole.
We can be less certain about the hearing of fishes. They have, however,
very respectable inner ears, built on much the same plan as in higher
animals. Indeed many fish, such as the grunts, make various sounds which
are plainly audible even to our ears high above the water, and we cannot
suppose that this is a useless accomplishment. But the ears of fishes and
the line of tiny tubes which extends along the side may be more effective
in recording the tremors of the water transmitted by moving objects than
actual sound.
Watch a lazy catfish winding its way along near the bottom, with its
barbels extended, and you will at once realise that fishes can feel, this
function being very useful to those kinds which search for their food in
the mud at the bottom.
* * * * *
Not a breath of air stirs the surface of the woodland pond, and the trees
about the margin are reflected unbroken in its surface. The lilies and
their pads lie motionless, and in and out through the shadowy depths,
around the long stems, float a school of half a dozen little sunfish. They
move slowly, turning from side to side all at once as if impelled by one
idea. Now and then one will dart aside and snap up a beetle or mosquito
larva, then swing back to its place among its fellows. Their beautiful
scales flash scarlet, blue, and gold, and their little hand-and-foot fins
are ever trembling and waving. They drift upward nearer the surface, the
wide round eyes turning and twisting in their sockets, ever watchful for
food and danger. Without warning a terrific splash scatters them, and when
the ripples and bubbles cease, five frightened sunfish cringe in terror
among the water plants of the bottom mud. Off to her nest goes the
kingfisher, bearing to her brood the struggling sixth.
Later in the day, when danger seemed far off, a double-pointed vise shot
toward the little group of "pumpkin seeds" and a great blue heron
swallowed one of their number. Another, venturing too far beyond the
protection of the lily stems and grass tangle of the shallows, fell victim
to a voracious pickerel. But the most terrible fate befell when one day a
black sinuous body came swiftly through the water. The fish had never seen
its like before and yet some instinct told them that here was death indeed
and they fled as fast as their fins could send them. The young otter had
marked the trio and after it he sped, turning, twisting, following every
movement with never a stop for breath until he had caught his prey.
But the life of a fish is not all tragedy, and the two remaining sunfish
may live in peace. In spawning time they clear a little space close to the
water of the inlet, pulling up the young weeds and pushing up the sandy
bottom until a hollow, bowl-like nest is prepared. Thoreau tells us that
here the fish "may be seen early in summer assiduously brooding, and
driving away minnows and larger fishes, even its own species, which would
disturb its ova, pursuing them a few feet, and circling round swiftly to
its nest again; the minnows, like young sharks, instantly entering the
empty nests, meanwhile, and swallowing the spawn, which is attached to the
weeds and to the bottom, on the sunny side. The spawn is exposed to so
many dangers that a very small proportion can ever become fishes, for
beside being the constant prey of birds and fishes, a great many nests are
made so near the shore, in shallow water, that they are left dry in a few
days, as the river goes down. These and the lampreys are the only fishes'
nests that I have observed, though the ova of some species may be seen
floating on the surface. The sunfish are so careful of their charge that
you may stand close by in the water and examine them at your leisure. I
have thus stood over them half an hour at a time, and stroked them
familiarly without frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers
harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my hand
approached their ova, and have even taken them gently out of the water
with my hand; though this cannot be accomplished by a sudden movement,
however dexterous, for instant warning is conveyed to them through their
denser element, but only by letting the fingers gradually close about them
as they are poised over the palm, and with the utmost gentleness raising
them slowly to the surface. Though stationary, they kept up a constant
sculling or waving motion with their fins, which is exceedingly graceful,
and expressive of their humble happiness; for unlike ours, the element in
which they live is a stream which must be constantly resisted. From time
to time they nibble the weeds at the bottom or overhanging their nests, or
dart after a fly or worm. The dorsal fin, besides answering the purpose of
a keel, with the anal, serves to keep the fish upright, for in shallow
water, where this is not covered, they fall on their sides. As you stand
thus stooping over the sunfish in its nest, the edges of the dorsal and
caudal fins have a singular dusty golden reflection, and its eyes, which
stand out from the head, are transparent and colourless. Seen in its
native element, it is a very beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all
its parts, and looks like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint. It is a
perfect jewel of the river, the green, red, coppery, and golden
reflections of its mottled sides being the concentration of such rays as
struggle through the floating pads and flowers to the sandy bottom, and in
harmony with the sunlit brown and yellow pebbles."
When the cold days of winter come and the ice begins to close over the
pond, the sunfish become sluggish and keep near the bottom,
half-hibernating but not unwilling to snap at any bit of food which may
drift near them. Lying prone on the ice we may see them poising with
slowly undulating fins, waiting, in their strange wide-eyed sleep, for the
warmth which will bring food and active life again.
3rd. Fish. Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
1st. Fish. Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the
little ones.
Shakespeare.
TENANTS OF WINTER BIRDS' NESTS
When we realise how our lives are hedged about by butchers, bakers, and
luxury-makers, we often envy the wild creatures their independence. And
yet, although each animal is capable of finding its own food and shelter
and of avoiding all ordinary danger, there is much dependence, one upon
another, among the little creatures of fur and feathers.
The first instinct of a gray squirrel, at the approach of winter, is to
seek out a deep, warm, hollow limb, or trunk. Nowadays, however, these are
not to be found in every grove. The precepts of modern forestry decree
that all such unsightly places must be filled with cement and creosote and
well sealed against the entrance of rain and snow. When hollows are not
available, these hardy squirrels prepare their winter home in another way.
Before the leaves have begun to loosen on their stalks, the little
creatures set to work. The crows have long since deserted their rough nest
of sticks in the top of some tall tree, and now the squirrels come,
investigate, and adopt the forsaken bird's-nest as the foundation of their
home. The sticks are pressed more tightly together, all interstices filled
up, and then a superstructure of leafy twigs is woven overhead and all
around. The leaves on these twigs, killed before their time, do not fall;
and when the branches of the tree become bare, there remains in one of the
uppermost crotches a big ball of leaves,--rain and snow proof, with a tiny
entrance at one side.
On a stormy mid-winter afternoon we stand beneath the tree and, through
the snowflakes driven past by the howling gale, we catch glimpses of the
nest swaying high in air. Far over it leans, as the branches are whipped
and bent by the wind, and yet so cunningly is it wrought that never a twig
or leaf loosens. We can imagine the pair of little shadow-tails within,
sleeping fearlessly throughout all the coming night.
But the sleep of the gray squirrel is a healthy and a natural one, not the
half-dead trance of hibernation; and early next morning their sharp eyes
appear at the entrance of their home and they are out and off through the
tree-top path which only their feet can traverse. Down the snowy trunks
they come with a rush, and with strong, clean bounds they head unerringly
for their little _caches_ of nuts. Their provender is hidden away among
the dried leaves, and when they want a nibble of nut or acorn they make
their way, by some mysterious sense, even through three feet of snow, down
to the bit of food which, months before, they patted out of sight among
the moss and leaves.
It would seem that some exact sub-conscious sense of locality would be a
more probable solution of this feat than the sense of smell, however
keenly developed, when we consider that dozens of nuts may be hidden or
buried in close proximity to the one sought by the squirrel.
Even though the birds seem to have vanished from the earth, and every
mammal be deeply buried in its long sleep, no winter's walk need be barren
of interest. A suggestion worth trying would be to choose a certain area
of saplings and underbrush and proceed systematically to fathom every
cause which has prevented the few stray leaves still upon their stalks
from falling with their many brethren now buried beneath the snow.
The encircling silken bonds of Promethea and Cynthia cocoons will account
for some; others will puzzle us until we have found the traces of some
insect foe, whose girdling has killed the twig and thus prevented the leaf
from falling at the usual time; some may be simply mechanical causes,
where a broken twig crotch has fallen athwart another stem in the course
of its downward fall. Then there is the pitiful remnant of a last summer's
bird's-nest, with a mere skeleton of a floor all but disintegrated.
But occasionally a substantial ball of dead leaves will be noticed, swung
amid a tangle of brier. No accident lodged these, nor did any insect have
aught to do with their position. Examine carefully the mass of leaves and
you will find a replica of the gray squirrel's nest, only, of course, much
smaller. This handiwork of the white-footed or deer mouse can be found in
almost every field or tangle of undergrowth; the nest of a field sparrow
or catbird being used as a foundation and thickly covered over and tightly
thatched with leaves. Now and then, even in mid-winter, we may find the
owner at home, and as the weasel is the most bloodthirsty, so the deer
mouse is the most beautiful and gentle of all the fur-coated folk of our
woods. With his coat of white and pale golden brown and his great black,
lustrous eyes, and his timid, trusting ways, he is altogether lovable.
He spends the late summer and early autumn in his tangle-hung home, but in
winter he generally selects a snug hollow log, or some cavity in the
earth. Here he makes a round nest of fine grass and upon a couch of
thistledown he sleeps in peace, now and then waking to partake of the
little hoard of nuts which he has gathered, or he may even dare to frolic
about upon the snow in the cold winter moonlight, leaving behind him no
trace, save the fairy tracery of his tiny footprints.
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring prattle!
ROBERT BURNS.
WINTER HOLES
The decayed hollows which we have mentioned as so often productive of
little owls have their possibilities by no means exhausted by one visit.
The disturbed owl may take himself elsewhere, after being so
unceremoniously disturbed; but there are roving, tramp-like characters,
with dispositions taking them here and there through the winter nights, to
whom, at break of day, a hole is ever a sought-for haven.
So do not put your hand too recklessly into an owl hole, for a hiss and a
sudden nip may show that an opossum has taken up his quarters there. If
you must, pull him out by his squirming, naked tail, but do not carry him
home, as he makes a poor pet, and between hen-house traps and irate
farmers, he has good reason, in this part of the country at least, to be
short tempered.
Of course the birds'-nests are all deserted now, but do not be too sure of
the woodpeckers' holes. The little downy and his larger cousin, the hairy
woodpecker, often spend the winter nights snug within deep cavities which
they have hollowed out, each bird for itself. I have never known a pair to
share one of these shelters.
Sometimes, in pulling off the loose bark from a decayed stump, several
dry, flattened scales will fall out upon the snow among the debris of wood
and dead leaves. Hold them close in the warm palm of your hand for a time
and the dried bits will quiver, the sides partly separate, and behold! you
have brought back to life a beautiful _Euvanessa_, or mourning-cloak
butterfly. Lay it upon the snow and soon the awakened life will ebb away
and it will again be stiff, as in death. If you wish, take it home, and
you may warm it into activity, feed it upon a drop of syrup and freeze it
again at will. Sometimes six or eight of these insects may be found
sheltered under the bark of a single stump, or in a hollow beneath a
stone. Several species share this habit of hibernating throughout the
winter.
Look carefully in old, deserted sheds, in half-sheltered hollows of trees,
or in deep crevice-caverns in rocks, and you may some day spy one of the
strangest of our wood-folk. A poor little shrivelled bundle of fur,
tight-clasped in its own skinny fingers, with no more appearance of life
in its frozen body than if it were a mummy from an Egyptian tomb; such is
the figure that will meet your eye when you chance upon a bat in the deep
trance of its winter's hibernation. Often you will find six or a dozen of
these stiffened forms clinging close together, head downward.
As in the case of the sleeping butterfly, carry one of the bats to your
warm room and place him in a bird-cage, hanging him up on the top wires by
his toes, with his head downward. The inverted position of these strange
little beings always brings to mind some of the experiences of Gulliver,
and indeed the life of a bat is more wonderful than any fairy tale.
Probably the knowledge of bats which most of us possess is chiefly derived
from the imaginations of artists and poets, who, unlike the Chinese, do
not look upon these creatures with much favour, generally symbolising them
in connection with passages and pictures which relate to the infernal
regions. All of which is entirely unjust. Their nocturnal habits and our
consequent ignorance of their characteristics are the only causes which
can account for their being associated with the realm of Satan. In some
places bats are called flittermice, but they are more nearly related to
moles, shrews, and other insect-eaters than they are to mice. If we look
at the skeleton of an animal which walks or hops we will notice that its
hind limbs are much the stronger, and that the girdle which connects these
with the backbone is composed of strong and heavy bones. In bats a reverse
condition is found; the breast girdle, or bones corresponding to our
collar bones and shoulder blades, are greatly developed. This, as in
birds, is, of course, an adaptation to give surface for the attachment of
the great propelling muscles of the wings.
Although the hand of a bat is so strangely altered, yet, as we shall see
if we look at our captive specimen, it has five fingers, as we have, four
of which are very long and thin, and the webs, of which we have a very
noticeable trace in our own hands, stretch from finger-tip to finger-tip,
and to the body and even down each leg, ending squarely near the ankle,
thus giving the creature the absurd appearance of having on a very broad,
baggy pair of trousers.
When thoroughly warmed up, our bat will soon start on a tour of inspection
of his cage. He steps rapidly from one wire to another, sometimes hooking
on with all five toes, but generally with four or three. There seems to be
little power in these toes, except of remaining bent in a hooked position;
for when our bat stops and draws up one foot to scratch the head, the
claws are merely jerked through the fur by motions of the whole leg, not
by individual movements of the separate toes. In this motion we notice,
for the first time, that the legs and feet grow in a kind of "spread
eagle" position, making the knees point backward, in the same direction as
the elbows.
We must stop a moment to admire the beautiful soft fur, a golden brown in
colour, with part of the back nearly black. The tiny inverted face is full
of expression, the bead-like eyes gleaming brightly from out of their
furry bed. The small moist nostrils are constantly wrinkling and
sniffling, and the large size of the alert ears shows how much their owner
depends upon them for information. If we suddenly move up closer to the
wires, the bat opens both wings owl-like, in a most threatening manner;
but if we make still more hostile motions the creature retreats as hastily
as it can, changing its method of progress to an all-fours, sloth-like
gait, the long free thumb of each hand grasping wire after wire and doing
most of the leverage, the hind legs following passively.
When at what he judges a safe distance he again hangs pendent, bending his
head back to look earnestly at us. Soon the half-opened wings are closed
and brought close to the shoulders, and in this, the usual resting
position, the large claws of the thumbs rest on the breast in little
furrows which they have worn in the fur.
Soon drowsiness comes on and a long elaborate yawn is given, showing the
many small needle-like teeth and the broad red tongue, which curls outward
to a surprising length. Then comes the most curious process of all.
Drawing up one leg, the little creature deliberately wraps one hand with
its clinging web around the leg and under the arms, and then draws the
other wing straight across the body, holds it there a moment, while it
takes a last look in all directions. Then lifting its fingers slightly, it
bends its head and wraps all in the full-spread web. It is most
ludicrously like a tragedian, acting the death scene in "Julius Cæsar,"
and it loses nothing in repetition; for each time the little animal thus
draws its winding sheet about its body, one is forced to smile as he
thinks of the absurd resemblance.
But all this and much more you will see for yourself, if you are so
fortunate as to discover the hiding-place of the hibernating bat.
Our little brown bat is a most excellent mother, and when in summer she
starts out on her nocturnal hunts she takes her tiny baby bat with her.
The weird little creature wraps his long fingers about his mother's neck
and off they go. When two young are born, the father bat is said sometimes
to assume entire control of one.
After we come to know more of the admirable family traits of the
_fledermaus_--its musical German name--we shall willingly defend it from
the calumny which for thousands of years has been heaped upon it.
Hibernation is a strange phenomenon, and one which is but little
understood. If we break into the death-like trance for too long a time, or
if we do not supply the right kind of food, our captive butterflies and
bats will perish. So let us soon freeze them up again and place them back
in the care of old Nature. Thus the pleasure is ours of having made them
yield up their secrets, without any harm to them. Let us fancy that in the
spring they may remember us only as a strange dream which has come to them
during their long sleep.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MARCH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEATHERED PIONEERS
In the annual war of the seasons, March is the time of the most bitterly
contested battles. But we--and very likely the birds--can look ahead and
realise what the final outcome will invariably be, and, our sympathies
being on the winning side, every advance of spring's outposts gladdens our
hearts. But winter is a stubborn foe, and sometimes his snow and icicle
battalions will not give way a foot. Though by day the sun's fierce attack
may drench the earth with the watery blood of the ice legions, yet at
night, silently and grimly, new reserves of cold repair the damage.
Our winter visitors are still in force. Amid the stinging cold the wee
brown form of a winter wren will dodge round a brush pile--a tiny bundle
of energy which defies all chill winds and which resolves bug chrysalides
and frozen insects into a marvellous activity. Other little birds, as
small as the wren, call to us from the pines and cedars--golden-crowned
kinglets, olive-green of body, while on their heads burns a crest of
orange and gold.
When a good-sized brown bird flies up before you, showing a flash of white
on his rump, you may know him for the flicker, the most unwoodpecker-like
of his family. He is more or less deserting the tree-climbing method for
ground feeding, and if you watch him you will see many habits which his
new mode of life is teaching him.
Even in the most wintry of Marches some warm, thawing days are sure to be
thrown in between storms, and nothing, not even pussy willows and the
skunk cabbage, yield more quickly to the mellowing influence than do the
birds--sympathetic brethren of ours that they are. Hardly has the sunniest
icicle begun to drop tears, when a song sparrow flits to the top of a
bush, clears his throat with sharp chirps and shouts as loud as he can:
"Hip! Hip! Hip! Hurrah--!" Even more boreal visitors feel the new
influence, and tree and fox sparrows warble sweetly. But the bluebird's
note will always be spring's dearest herald. When this soft, mellow sound
floats from the nearest fence post, it seems to thaw something out of our
ears; from this instant winter seems on the defensive; the crisis has come
and gone in an instant, in a single vibration of the air.
Bright colours are still scarce among our birds, but another blue form may
occasionally pass us, for blue jays are more noticeable now than at any
other time of the year. Although not by any means a rare bird, with us
jays are shy and wary. In Florida their southern cousins are as familiar
as robins, without a trace of fear of mankind. What curious notes our blue
jays have--a creaking, wheedling, rasping medley of sounds coming through
the leafless branches. At this time of year they love acorns and nuts, but
in the spring "their fancy turns to thoughts of" eggs and young nestlings,
and they are accordingly hated by the small birds. Nevertheless no bird is
quicker to shout and scream "Thief! Robber!" at some harmless little owl
than are these blue and white rascals.
You may seek in vain to discover the first sign of nesting among the
birds. Scarcely has winter set in in earnest, you will think, when the
tiger-eyed one of the woods--the great horned owl--will have drifted up to
some old hawk's nest, and laid her white spheres fairly in the snow. When
you discover her "horns" above the nest lining of dried leaves, you may
find that her fuzzy young owls are already hatched. But these owls are an
exception, and no other bird in our latitude cares to risk the dangers of
late February or early March.
March is sometimes a woodpecker month, and almost any day one is very
likely to see, besides the flicker, the hairy or downy woodpecker. The
latter two are almost counterparts of each other, although the downy is
the more common. They hammer cheerfully upon the sounding boards which
Nature has provided for them, striking slow or fast, soft or loud, as
their humour dictates.
Near New York, a day in March--I have found it varying from March 8 to
March 12--is "crow day." Now the winter roosts apparently break up, and
all day flocks of crows, sometimes thousands upon thousands of them, pass
to the northward. If the day is quiet and spring-like, they fly very high,
black motes silhouetted against the blue,--but if the day is a "March
day," with whistling, howling winds, then the black fellows fly close to
earth, rising just enough to clear bushes and trees, and taking leeward
advantage of every protection. For days after, many crows pass, but never
so many as on the first day, when crow law, or crow instinct, passes the
word, we know not how, which is obeyed by all.
For miles around not a drop of water may be found; it seems as if every
pool and lake were solid to the bottom, and yet, when we see a large bird,
with goose-like body, long neck and long, pointed beak, flying like a
bullet of steel through the sky, we may be sure that there is open water
to the northward, for a loon never makes a mistake. When the first pioneer
of these hardy birds passes, he knows that somewhere beyond us fish can be
caught. If we wonder where he has spent the long winter months, we should
take a steamer to Florida. Out on the ocean, sometimes a hundred miles or
more from land, many of these birds make their winter home. When the bow
of the steamer bears down upon one, the bird half spreads its wings, then
closes them quickly, and sinks out of sight in the green depths, not to
reappear until the steamer has passed, when he looks after us and utters
his mocking laugh. Here he will float until the time comes for him to go
north. We love the brave fellow, remembering him in his home among the
lakes of Canada; but we tremble for him when we think of the terrible
storm waves which he must outride, and the sneering sharks which must
sometimes spy him. What a story he could tell of his life among the
phalaropes and jelly-fishes!
Meadow larks are in flocks in March, and as their yellow breasts, with the
central crescent of black, rise from the snow-bent grass, their long,
clear, vocal "arrow" comes to us, piercing the air like a veritable icicle
of sound. When on the ground they are walkers like the crow.
As the kingfisher and loon appear to know long ahead when the first bit of
clear water will appear, so the first insect on the wing seems to be
anticipated by a feathered flycatcher. Early some morning, when the
wondrous Northern Lights are still playing across the heavens, a small
voice may make all the surroundings seem incongruous. Frosty air, rimmed
tree-trunks, naked branches, aurora--all seem as unreal as stage
properties, when _phoe-be!_ comes to our ears. Yes, there is the little
dark-feathered, tail-wagging fellow, hungry no doubt, but sure that when
the sun warms up, Mother Nature will strew his aerial breakfast-table with
tiny gnats,--precocious, but none the less toothsome for all that.
Hark 'tis the bluebird's venturous strain
High on the old fringed elm at the gate--
Sweet-voiced, valiant on the swaying bough,
Alert, elate,
Dodging the fitful spits of snow,
New England's poet-laureate
Telling us Spring has come again!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
THE WAYS OF MEADOW MICE
Day after day we may walk through the woods and fields, using our eyes as
best we can, searching out every moving thing, following up every
sound,--and yet we touch only the coarsest, perceive only the grossest of
the life about us. Tramp the same way after a fall of snow and we are
astonished at the evidences of life of which we knew nothing. Everywhere,
in and out among the reed stems, around the tree-trunks, and in wavy lines
and spirals all about, runs the delicate tracery of the meadow mice
trails. No leapers these, as are the white-footed and jumping mice, but
short-legged and stout of body. Yet with all their lack of size and
swiftness, they are untiring little folk, and probably make long journeys
from their individual nests.
As far north as Canada and west to the Plains the meadow or field mice are
found, and everywhere they seem to be happy and content. Most of all,
however, they enjoy the vicinity of water, and a damp, half-marshy meadow
is a paradise for them. No wonder their worst enemies are known as marsh
hawks and marsh owls; these hunters of the daylight and the night well
know where the meadow mice love to play.
These mice are resourceful little beings and when danger threatens they
will take to the water without hesitation; and when the muskrat has gone
the way of the beaver, our ditches and ponds will not be completely
deserted, for the little meadow mice will swim and dive for many years
thereafter.
Not only in the meadows about our inland streams, but within sound of the
breakers on the seashore, these vigorous bits of fur find bountiful
living, and it is said that the mice folk inhabiting these low salt
marshes always know in some mysterious way when a disastrous high tide is
due, and flee in time, so that when the remorseless ripples lap higher and
higher over the wide stretches of salt grass, not a mouse will be drowned.
By some delicate means of perception all have been notified in time, and
these, among the least of Nature's children, have run and scurried along
their grassy paths to find safety on the higher ground.
These paths seem an invention of the meadow mice, and, affording them a
unique escape from danger, they doubtless, in a great measure, account for
the extreme abundance of the little creatures. When a deer mouse or a
chipmunk emerges from its hollow log or underground tunnel, it must take
its chances in open air. It may dart along close to the ground or amid an
impenetrable tangle of briers, but still it is always visible from above.
On the other hand, a mole, pushing blindly along beneath the sod, fears no
danger from the hawk soaring high overhead.
The method of the meadow mice is between these two: its stratum of active
life is above the mole and beneath the chipmunk. Scores of sharp little
incisor teeth are forever busy gnawing and cutting away the tender grass
and sprouting weeds in long meandering paths or trails through the
meadows. As these paths are only a mouse-breadth in width, the grasses at
each side lean inward, forming a perfect shelter of interlocking stems
overhead. Two purposes are thus fulfilled: a delicious succulent food is
obtained and a way of escape is kept ever open. These lines intersect and
cross at every conceivable angle, and as the meadow mice clan are ever
friendly toward one another, any particular mouse seems at liberty to
traverse these miles of mouse alleys.
In winter, when the snow lies deep upon the ground, these same mice drive
tunnels beneath it, leading to all their favourite feeding grounds, to all
the heavy-seeded weed heads, with which the bounty of Nature supplies
them. But at night these tunnels are deserted and boldly out upon the snow
come the meadow mice, chasing each other over its gleaming surface,
nibbling the toothsome seeds, dodging, or trying to dodge, the
owl-shadows; living the keen, strenuous, short, but happy, life which is
that of all the wild meadow folk.
That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste,
An' weary winter comin' fast,
An' cosey here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell.
Robert Burns.
PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE
The principal problems which birds, and indeed all other creatures, have
to solve, have been well stated to be--Food, Safety, and Reproduction. In
regard to safety, or the art of escaping danger, we are all familiar with
the ravages which hawks, owls, foxes, and even red squirrels commit among
the lesser feathered creatures, but there are other dangers which few of
us suspect.
Of all creatures birds are perhaps the most exempt from liability to
accident, yet they not infrequently lose their lives in most unexpected
ways. Once above trees and buildings, they have the whole upper air free
of every obstacle, and though their flight sometimes equals the speed of a
railroad train, they have little to fear when well above the ground.
Collision with other birds seems scarcely possible, although it sometimes
does occur. When a covey of quail is flushed, occasionally two birds will
collide, at times meeting with such force that both are stunned.
Flycatchers darting at the same insect will now and then come together,
but not hard enough to injure either bird.
Even the smallest and most wonderful of all flyers, the hummingbird, may
come to grief in accidental ways. I have seen one entangled in a burdock
burr, its tiny feathers fast locked into the countless hooks, and again I
have found the body of one of these little birds with its bill fastened in
a spiral tendril of a grapevine, trapped in some unknown way.
Young phoebes sometimes become entangled in the horsehairs which are used
in the lining of their nest. When they are old enough to fly and attempt
to leave, they are held prisoners or left dangling from the nest. When
mink traps are set in the snow in winter, owls frequently fall victims,
mice being scarce and the bait tempting.
Lighthouses are perhaps the cause of more accidents to birds than are any
of the other obstacles which they encounter on their nocturnal migrations
north and south. Many hundreds of birds are sometimes found dead at the
base of these structures. The sudden bright glare is so confusing and
blinding, as they shoot from the intense darkness into its circle of
radiance, that they are completely bewildered and dash headlong against
the thick panes of glass. Telegraph wires are another menace to low-flying
birds, especially those which, like quail and woodcock, enjoy a whirlwind
flight, and attain great speed within a few yards. Such birds have been
found almost cut in two by the force with which they struck the wire.
The elements frequently catch birds unaware and overpower them. A sudden
wind or storm will drive coast-flying birds hundreds of miles out to sea,
and oceanic birds may be blown as far inland. Hurricanes in the West
Indies are said to cause the death of innumerable birds, as well as of
other creatures. From such a cause small islands are known to have become
completely depopulated of their feathered inhabitants. Violent hailstorms,
coming in warm weather without warning, are quite common agents in the
destruction of birds, and in a city thousands of English sparrows have
been stricken during such a storm. After a violent storm of wet snow in
the middle West, myriads of Lapland longspurs were once found dead in the
streets and suburbs of several villages. On the surface of two small
lakes, a conservative estimate of the dead birds was a million and a
half!
The routes which birds follow in migrating north and south sometimes
extend over considerable stretches of water, as across the Caribbean Sea,
but the only birds which voluntarily brave the dangers of the open ocean
are those which, from ability to swim, or great power of flight, can trust
themselves far away from land. Not infrequently a storm will drive birds
away from the land and carry them over immense distances, and this
accounts for the occasional appearance of land birds near vessels far out
at sea. Overcome with fatigue, they perch for hours in the rigging before
taking flight in the direction of the nearest land, or, desperate from
hunger, they fly fearlessly down to the deck, where food and water are
seldom refused them.
Small events like these are welcome breaks in the monotony of a long ocean
voyage, but are soon forgotten at the end of the trip.
Two of these ocean waifs were once brought to me. One was a young European
heron which flew on board a vessel when it was about two hundred and five
miles southeast of the southern extremity of India. A storm must have
driven the bird seaward, as there is no migration route near this
locality.
The second bird was a European turtle dove which was captured not less
than seven hundred and fifty miles from the nearest land--Ireland. When
caught it was in an exhausted condition, but it quickly recovered and soon
lost all signs of the buffeting of the storm. The turtle dove migrates
northward to the British Islands about the first of May, but as this bird
was captured on May 17th, it was not migrating, but, caught by a gust of
wind, was probably blown away from the land. The force of the storm would
then drive it mile after mile, allowing it no chance of controlling the
direction of its flight, but, from the very velocity, making it easy for
the bird to maintain its equilibrium.
Hundreds of birds must perish when left by storms far out at sea, and the
infinitely small chance of encountering a vessel or other resting-place
makes a bird which has passed through such an experience and survived,
interesting indeed.
In winter ruffed grouse have a habit of burrowing deep beneath the snow
and letting the storm shut them in. In this warm, cosey retreat they spend
the night, their breath making its way out through the loosely packed
crystals. But when a cold rain sets in during the night, this becomes a
fatal trap, an impenetrable crust cutting off their means of escape.
Ducks, when collected about a small open place in an ice-covered pond,
diving for the tender roots on which they feed, sometimes become confused
and drown before they find their way out. They have been seen frozen into
the ice by hundreds, sitting there helplessly, and fortunate if the sun,
with its thawing power, releases them before they are discovered by
marauding hawks or foxes.
In connection with their food supply the greatest enemy of birds is ice,
and when a winter rain ends with a cold snap, and every twig and seed is
encased in a transparent armour of ice, then starvation stalks close to
all the feathered kindred. Then is the time to scatter crumbs and grain
broadcast, to nail bones and suet to the tree-trunks and so awaken hope
and life in the shivering little forms. If a bird has food in abundance,
it little fears the cold. I have kept parrakeets out through the blizzards
and storms of a severe winter, seeing them play and frolic in the snow as
if their natural home were an arctic tundra, instead of a tropical
forest.
A friend of birds once planted many sprouts of wild honeysuckle about his
porch, and the following summer two pairs of hummingbirds built their
nests in near-by apple trees; he transplanted quantities of living
woodbine to the garden fences, and when the robins returned in the spring,
after having remained late the previous autumn feeding on the succulent
bunches of berries, no fewer than ten pairs nested on and about the porch
and yard.
So my text of this, as of many other weeks is,--study the food habits of
the birds and stock your waste places with their favourite berry or vine.
Your labour will be repaid a hundredfold in song and in the society of the
little winged comrades.
Worn is the winter rug of white,
And in the snow-bare spots once more,
Glimpses of faint green grass in sight,--
Spring's footprints on the floor.
Spring here--by what magician's touch?
'Twas winter scarce an hour ago.
And yet I should have guessed as much,--
Those footprints in the snow!
Frank Dempster Sherman.
DWELLERS IN THE DUST
To many of us the differences between a reptile and a batrachian are
unknown. Even if we have learned that these interesting creatures are well
worth studying and that they possess few or none of the unpleasant
characteristics usually attributed to them, still we are apt to speak of
having seen a lizard in the water at the pond's edge, or of having heard a
reptile croaking near the marsh. To avoid such mistakes, one need only
remember that reptiles are covered with scales and that batrachians have
smooth skins.
Our walks will become more and more interesting as we spread our interest
over a wider field, not confining our observations to birds and mammals
alone, but including members of the two equally distinctive classes of
animals mentioned above. The batrachians, in the northeastern part of our
country, include the salamanders and newts, the frogs and toads, while as
reptiles we number lizards, turtles, and snakes.
Lizards are creatures of the tropics and only two small species are found
in our vicinity, and these occur but rarely. Snakes, however, are more
abundant, and, besides the rare poisonous copperhead and rattlesnake,
careful search will reveal a dozen harmless species, the commonest, of
course, being the garter snake and its near relative the ribbon snake.
About this time of the year snakes begin to feel the thawing effect of the
sun's rays and to stir in their long winter hibernation. Sometimes we will
come upon a ball of six or eight intertwined snakes, which, if they are
still frozen up, will lie motionless upon the ground. But when spring
finally unclasps the seal which has been put upon tree and ground, these
reptiles stretch themselves full length upon some exposed stone, where
they lie basking in the sun.
The process of shedding the skin soon begins; getting clear of the head
part, eye-scales and all, the serpent slowly wriggles its way forward,
escaping from the old skin as a finger is drawn from a glove. At last it
crawls away, bright and shining in its new scaly coat, leaving behind it a
spectral likeness of itself, which slowly sinks and disintegrates amid the
dead leaves and moss, or, later in the year, it may perhaps be discovered
by some crested flycatcher and carried off to be added to its nesting
material.
When the broods of twenty to thirty young garter snakes start out in life
to hunt for themselves, then woe to the earthworms, for it is upon them
that the little serpents chiefly feed.
Six or seven of our native species of snakes lay eggs, usually depositing
them under the bark of rotten logs, or in similar places, where they are
left to hatch by the heat of the sun or by that of the decaying
vegetation. It is interesting to gather these leathery shelled eggs and
watch them hatch, and it is surprising how similar to each other some of
the various species are when they emerge from the shell.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APRIL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPRING SONGSTERS
Early April sees the last contest which winter wages for supremacy, and
often it is a half-hearted attempt; but after the army of the North has
retreated, with its icicles and snowdrifts, spring seems dazed for a
while. Victory has been dearly bought, and April is the season when, for a
time, the trees and insects hang fire--paralysed--while the chill is
thawing from their marrow. Our northern visitors of the bird world slip
quietly away. There is no great gathering of clans like that of the tree
swallows in the fall, but silently, one by one, they depart, following the
last moan of the north wind, covering winter's disordered retreat with
warbles and songs.
One evening we notice the juncos and tree sparrows in the tangled,
frost-burned stubble, and the next day, although our eye catches glints of
white from sparrow tails, it is from vesper finches, not from juncos, and
the weed spray which a few hours before bent beneath a white-throat's
weight, now vibrates with the energy which a field sparrow puts into his
song. Field and chipping sparrows, which now come in numbers, are somewhat
alike, but by their beaks and songs you may know them. The mandibles of
the former are flesh-coloured, those of the latter black. The sharp
_chip!_ _chip!_ is characteristic of the "chippy," but the sweet, dripping
song of the field sparrow is charming. No elaborate performance this, but
a succession of sweet, high notes, accelerating toward the end, like a
coin of silver settling to rest on a marble table--a simple, chaste
vespers which rises to the setting sun and endears the little brown singer
to us.
We may learn much by studying these homely little frequenters of our
orchards and pastures; each has a hundred secrets which await patient and
careful watching by their human lovers. In the chipping sparrow we may
notice a hint of the spring change of dress which warblers and tanagers
carry to such an extreme. When he left us in the fall he wore a
dull-streaked cap, but now he comes from the South attired in a smart
head-covering of bright chestnut. Poor little fellow, this is the very
best he can do in the way of especial ornament to bewitch his lady love,
but it suffices. Can the peacock's train do more?
This is the time to watch for the lines of ducks crossing the sky, and be
ready to find black ducks in the oddest places--even in insignificant rain
pools deep in the woods. In the early spring the great flocks of grackles
and redwings return, among the first to arrive as they were the last to
leave for the South.
Before the last fox sparrow goes, the hermit thrush comes, and these
birds, alike in certain superficialities, but so actually unrelated, for a
time seek their food in the same grove.
The hardier of the warblers pass us in April, stopping a few days before
continuing to the northward. We should make haste to identify them and to
learn all we can of their notes and habits, not only because of the short
stay which most of them make, but on account of the vast assemblage of
warbler species already on the move in the Southern States, which soon, in
panoply of rainbow hues, will crowd our groves and wear thin the warbler
pages of our bird books.
These April days we are sure to see flocks of myrtle, or yellow-rumped
warblers, and yellow palm warblers in their olive-green coats and chestnut
caps. The black-and-white creeper will always show himself true to his
name--a creeping bundle of black and white streaks. When we hear of the
parula warbler or of the Cape May warbler we get no idea of the appearance
of the bird, but when we know that the black-throated green warblers begin
to appear in April, the first good view of one of this species will
proclaim him as such.
We have marked the fox sparrow as being a great scratcher among dead
leaves. His habit is continued in the spring by the towhee, or chewink,
who uses the same methods, throwing both feet backward simultaneously. The
ordinary call note of this bird is a good example of how difficult it is
to translate bird songs into human words. Listen to the quick, double note
coming from the underbrush. Now he says "_towhee'!_" the next time
"_chewink'!_" You may change about at will, and the notes will always
correspond. Whatever is in our mind at the instant, that will seem to be
what the bird says. This should warn us of the danger of reading our
thoughts and theories too much into the minds and actions of birds. Their
mental processes, in many ways, correspond to ours. When a bird expresses
fear, hate, bravery, pain or pleasure, we can sympathise thoroughly with
it, but in studying their more complex actions we should endeavour to
exclude the thousand and one human attributes with which we are prone to
colour the bird's mental environment.
John Burroughs has rendered the song of the black-throated green warbler
in an inimitable way, as follows: "---- ----V----!" When we have once
heard the bird we will instantly recognise the aptness of these symbolic
lines. The least flycatcher, called _minimus_ by the scientists, well
deserves his name, for of all those members of his family which make their
home with us, he is the smallest. These miniature flycatchers have a way
of hunting which is all their own. They sit perched on some exposed twig
or branch, motionless until some small insect flies in sight. Then they
will launch out into the air, and, catching the insect with a snap of
their beaks, fly back to the same perch. They are garbed in subdued grays,
olives, and yellows. The least flycatcher has another name which at once
distinguishes him--chebec'. As he sits on a limb, his whole body trembles
when he jerks out these syllables, and his tail snaps as if it played some
important part in the mechanism of his vocal effort.
When you are picking cowslips and hepaticas early in the month, keep a
lookout for the first barn swallow. Nothing gives us such an impression of
the independence and individuality of birds as when a solitary member of
some species arrives days before others of his kind. One fork-tailed
beauty of last year's nest above the haymow may hawk about for insects day
after day alone, before he is joined by other swallows. Did he spend the
winter by himself, or did the _heimweh_ smite his heart more sorely and
bring him irresistibly to the loved nest in the rafters? This love of
home, which is so striking an attribute of birds, is a wonderfully
beautiful thing. It brings the oriole back to the branch where still
swings her exquisite purse-shaped home of last summer; it leads each pair
of fishhawks to their particular cartload of sticks, to which a few more
must be added each year; it hastens the wing beats of the sea-swallows
northward to the beach which, ten months ago, was flecked with their
eggs--the shifting grains of sand their only nest.
This love of home, of birthplace, bridges over a thousand physical
differences between these feathered creatures and ourselves. We forget
their expressionless masks of horn, their feathered fingers, their scaly
toes, and looking deep into their clear, bright eyes, we know and feel a
kinship, a sympathy of spirit, which binds us all together, and we are
glad.
Yet these sweet sounds of the early season,
And these fair sights of its sunny days,
Are only sweet when we fondly listen,
And only fair when we fondly gaze.
There is no glory in star or blossom
Till looked upon by a loving eye;
There is no fragrance in April breezes
Till breathed with joy as they wander by.
William Cullen Bryant.
THE SIMPLE ART OF SAPSUCKING
The yellow-bellied sapsucker is, at this time of year, one of our most
abundant woodpeckers, and in its life we have an excellent example of that
individuality which is ever cropping out in Nature--the trial and
acceptance of life under new conditions.
In the spring we tap the sugar maples, and gather great pailfuls of the
sap as it rises from its winter resting-place in the roots, and the
sapsucker likes to steal from our pails or to tap the trees for himself.
But throughout part of the year he is satisfied with an insect diet and
chooses the time when the sap begins to flow downward in the autumn for
committing his most serious depredations upon the tree. It was formerly
thought that this bird, like its near relatives, the downy and hairy
woodpeckers, was forever boring for insects; but when we examine the
regularity and symmetry of the arrangement of its holes, we realise that
they are for a very different purpose than the exposing of an occasional
grub.
Besides drinking the sap from the holes, this bird extracts a quantity of
the tender inner bark of the tree, and when a tree has been encircled for
several feet up and down its trunk by these numerous little sap wells, the
effect becomes apparent in the lessened circulation of the liquid blood of
the tree; and before long, death is certain to ensue. So the work of the
sapsucker is injurious, while the grub-seeking woodpeckers confer only
good upon the trees they frequent.
And how pitiful is the downfall of a doomed tree! Hardly has its vitality
been lessened an appreciable amount, when somehow the word is passed to
the insect hordes who hover about in waiting, as wolves hang upon the
outskirts of a herd of buffalo. In the spring, when the topmost branches
have received a little less than their wonted amount of wholesome sap and
the leaves are less vigorous, the caterpillars and twig-girdlers attack at
once. Ichneumen flies and boring beetles seem to know by signs invisible
to us that here is opportunity. Then in the fall come again the sapsuckers
to the tree, remorselessly driving hole after hole through the still
untouched segments of its circle of life. When the last sap-channel is
pierced and no more can pass to the roots, the tree stands helpless,
waiting for the end. Swiftly come frost and rain, and when the April suns
again quicken all the surrounding vegetation into vigorous life, the
victim of the sapsuckers stands lifeless, its branches reaching hopelessly
upward, a naked mockery amid the warm green foliage around. Insects and
fungi and lightning now set to work unhindered, and the tree falls at
last,--dust to dust--ashes to ashes.
A sapsucker has been seen in early morning to sink forty or fifty wells
into the bark of a mountain ash tree, and then to spend the rest of the
day in sidling from one to another, taking a sip here and a drink there,
gradually becoming more and more lethargic and drowsy, as if the sap
actually produced some narcotic or intoxicating effect. Strong indeed is
the contrast between such a picture and the same bird in the early
spring,--then full of life and vigour, drawing musical reverberations from
some resonant hollow limb.
Like other idlers, the sapsucker in its deeds of gluttony and harm brings,
if anything, more injury to others than to itself. The farmers well know
its depredations and detest it accordingly, but unfortunately they are not
ornithologists, and a peckerwood is a peckerwood to them; and so while the
poor downy, the red-head, and the hairy woodpeckers are seen busily at
work cutting the life threads of the injurious borer larvæ, the farmer,
thinking of his dying trees, slays them all without mercy or distinction.
The sapsucker is never as confiding as the downy, and from a safe distance
sees others murdered for sins which are his alone.
But we must give sapsucker his due and admit that he devours many hundreds
of insects throughout the year, and though we mourn the death of an
occasional tree, we cannot but admire his new venture in life,--his
cunning in choosing only the dessert served at the woodpeckers'
feasts,--the sweets which flow at the tap of a beak, leaving to his
fellows the labour of searching and drilling deep for more substantial
courses.
WILD WINGS
The ides of March see the woodcock back in its northern home, and in early
April it prepares for nesting. The question of the nest itself is a very
simple matter, being only a cavity, formed by the pressure of the mother's
body, among the moss and dead leaves. The formalities of courtship are,
however, quite another thing, and the execution of interesting aerial
dances entails much effort and time.
It is in the dusk of evening that the male woodcock begins his
song,--plaintive notes uttered at regular intervals, and sounding like
_peent!_ _peent!_ Then without warning he launches himself on a sharply
ascending spiral, his wings whistling through the gloom. Higher and higher
he goes, balances a moment, and finally descends abruptly, with zigzag
rushes, wings and voice both aiding each other in producing the sounds, to
which, let us suppose, his prospective mate listens with ecstasy. It is a
weird performance, repeated again and again during the same evening.
So pronounced and loud is the whistling of the wings that we wonder how it
can be produced by ordinary feathers. The three outer primaries of the
wing, which in most birds are usually like the others, in the woodcock are
very stiff, and the vanes are so narrow that when the wing is spread there
is a wide space between each one. When the wing beats the air rapidly, the
wind rushes through these feather slits,--and we have the accompaniment of
the love-song explained.
The feather-covered arms and hands of birds are full of interest; and
after studying the wing of a chicken which has been plucked for the table,
we shall realise how wonderful a transformation has taken place through
the millions of years past. Only three stubby fingers are left and these
are stiff and almost immovable, but the rest of the forearm is very like
that of our own arm.
See how many facts we can accumulate about wings, by giving special
attention to them, when watching birds fly across the sky. How easy it is
to identify the steady beats of a crow, or the more rapid strokes of a
duck; how distinctive is the frequent looping flight of a goldfinch, or
the longer, more direct swings of a woodpecker!
Hardly any two birds have wings exactly similar in shape, every wing being
exquisitely adapted to its owner's needs. The gull soars or flaps slowly
on his long, narrow, tireless pinions, while the quail rises suddenly
before us on short, rounded wings, which carry it like a rocket for a
short distance, when it settles quickly to earth again. The gull would
fare ill were it compelled to traverse the ocean with such brief spurts of
speed, while, on the other hand, the last bob-white would shortly vanish,
could it escape from fox or weasel only with the slow flight of a gull.
How splendidly the sickle wings of a swift enable it to turn and twist,
bat-like, in its pursuit of insects!
You may be able to identify any bird near your home, you may know its nest
and eggs, its song and its young; but begin at the beginning again and
watch their wings and their feet and their bills and you will find that
there are new and wonderful truths at your very doorstep. Try bringing
home from your walk a list of bill-uses or feet-functions. Remember that a
familiar object, looked at from a new point of view, will take to itself
unthought-of significance.
Whither midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
William Cullen Bryant.
THE BIRDS IN THE MOON
The lover of birds who has spent the day in the field puts away his
glasses at nightfall, looking forward to a walk after dark only as a
chance to hear the call of nocturnal birds or to catch the whirr of a
passing wing. But some bright moonlight night in early May, or again in
mid September, unsheath your glasses and tie them, telescope-fashion, to a
window-ledge or railing. Seat yourself in an easy position and focus on
the moon. Shut out all earthly scenes from your mind and imagine yourself
wandering amid those arid wastes. What a scene of cosmic desolation! What
vast deserts, and gaping craters of barren rock! The cold, steel-white
planet seems of all things most typical of death.
But those specks passing across its surface? At first you imagine they are
motes clogging the delicate blood-vessels of the retina; then you wonder
if a distant host of falling meteors could have passed. Soon a larger,
nearer mote appears; the moon and its craters are forgotten and with a
thrill of delight you realise that they are birds--living, flying
birds--of all earthly things typical of the most vital life! Migration is
at its height, the chirps and twitters which come from the surrounding
darkness are tantalising hints telling of the passing legions. Thousands
and thousands of birds are every night pouring northward in a swift,
invisible, aerial stream.
As a projecting pebble in mid-stream blurs the transparent water with a
myriad bubbles, so the narrow path of moon-rays, which our glass reveals,
cute a swath of visibility straight through the host of birds to our eager
eyes. How we hate to lose an instant's opportunity! Even a wink may allow
a familiar form to pass unseen. If we can use a small telescope, the field
of view is much enlarged. Now and then we recognise the flight of some
particular species,--the swinging loop of a woodpecker or goldfinch, or
the flutter of a sandpiper.
It has been computed that these birds sometimes fly as much as a mile or
more above the surface of the earth, and when we think of the tiny,
fluttering things at this terrible height, it takes our breath away. What
a panorama of dark earth and glistening river and ocean must be spread out
beneath them! How the big moon must glow in that rarefied air! How
diminutive and puerile must seem the houses and cities of human
fashioning!
The instinct of migration is one of the most wonderful in the world. A
young bob-white and a bobolink are hatched in the same New England field.
The former grows up and during the fall and winter forms one of the covey
which is content to wander a mile or two, here and there, in search of
good feeding grounds. Hardly has the bobolink donned his first full dress
before an irresistible impulse seizes him. One night he rises up and up,
ever higher on fluttering wings, sets his course southward, gives you a
glimpse of him across the moon, and keeps on through Virginia to Florida,
across seas, over tropical islands, far into South America, never content
until he has put the great Amazon between him and his far distant
birthplace.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
William Cullen Bryant.
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MAY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HIGH TIDE OF BIRD LIFE
For abundance and for perfection of song and plumage, of the whole year,
May is the month of birds. Insects appear slowly in the spring and are
numerous all summer; squirrels and mice are more or less in evidence
during all the twelve months; reptiles unearth themselves at the approach
of the warm weather, and may be found living their slow, sluggish life
until late in the fall. In eggs, cocoons, discarded bird's-nests, in
earthen burrows, or in the mud at the bottom of pond or stream, all these
creatures have spent the winter near where we find them in the spring. But
birds are like creatures of another world; and, although in every summer's
walk we may see turtles, birds, butterflies, and chipmunks, all
interweaving their life paths across one another's haunts, yet the power
of extended flight and the wonderful habit of continental migration set
birds apart from all other living creatures. A bird during its lifetime
has almost twice the conscious existence of, say, a snake or any
hibernating mammal. And now in early May, when the creatures of the woods
and fields have only recently opened their sleepy eyes and stretched their
thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose
bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant
feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap--the height of the grand
symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels'
chatter were only the first notes of the prelude.
Tantalus-like is the condition of the amateur bird-lover, who, book in
hand, vainly endeavours to identify the countless beautiful forms which
appear in such vast numbers, linger a few days and then disappear, passing
on to the northward, but leaving behind a goodly assemblage which spends
the summer and gives abundant opportunity for study during the succeeding
months. In May it is the migrants which we should watch, and listen to,
and "ogle" with our opera glasses. Like many other evanescent things,
those birds which have made their winter home in Central America--land yet
beyond our travels--and which use our groves merely as half-way houses on
their journey to the land of their birth, the balsams of Quebec, or the
unknown wastes of Labrador, seem most precious, most worthy at this time
of our closest observation.
More confusing--albeit the more delightful--is a season when continued
cold weather and chilly rains hold back all but the hardiest birds,
until--like the dammed-up piles of logs trembling with the spring
freshets--the tropic winds carry all before them, and all at once winter
birds which have sojourned only a few miles south of us, summer residents
which should have appeared weeks ago, together with the great host of
Canadian and other nesters of the north, appear within a few days' time.
A backward season brings strangers into close company for a while. A
white-throat sings his clear song of the North, and a moment later is
answered by an oriole's melody, or the sweet tones of a rose-breasted
grosbeak--the latter one of those rarely favoured birds, exquisite in both
plumage and song.
The glories of our May bird life are the wood warblers, and innumerable
they must seem to one who is just beginning his studies; indeed, there are
over seventy species that find their way into the United States. Many are
named from the distribution of colour upon their plumage--the blue-winged
yellow, the black-throated blue, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, and black
poll. Perhaps the two most beautiful--most reflective of bright tropical
skies and flowers--are the magnolia and the blackburnian. The first fairly
dazzles us with its bluish crown, white and black face, black and
olive-green back, white marked wings and tail, yellow throat and rump, and
strongly streaked breast. The blackburnian is an exquisite little fellow,
marked with white and black, but with the crown, several patches on the
face, the throat and breast of a rich warm orange that glows amid the
green foliage like a living coal of fire. The black poll warbler is an
easy bird to identify; but do not expect to recognise it when it returns
from the North in the fall. Its black crown has disappeared, and in
general it looks like a different bird.
At the present time when the dogwood blossoms are in their full
perfection, and the branches and twigs of the trees are not yet hidden,
but their outlines only softened by the light, feathery foliage, the
tanagers and orioles have their day. Nesting cares have not yet made them
fearful of showing their bright plumage, and scores of the scarlet and
orange forms play among the branches.
The flycatchers and vireos now appear in force--little hunters of insects
clad in leafy greens and browns, with now and then a touch of
brightness--as in the yellow-throated vireo or in the crest of the
kingbird.
The lesser sandpipers, both the spotted and the solitary, teeter along the
brooks and ponds, and probe the shallows for tiny worms. Near the woody
streams the so-called water thrushes spring up before us. Strange birds
these, in appearance like thrushes, in their haunts and in their teetering
motion like sandpipers, but in reality belonging to the same family as the
tree-loving wood warblers. A problem not yet solved by ornithologists is:
what was the mode of life of the ancestor of the many warblers? Did he
cling to and creep along the bark, as the black-and-white warbler, or feed
from the ground or the thicket as does the worm-eating? Did he snatch
flies on the wing as the necklaced Canadian warbler, or glean from the
brook's edge as our water thrush? The struggle for existence has not been
absent from the lives of these light-hearted little fellows, and they have
had to be jack-of-all-trades in their search for food.
The gnats and other flying insects have indeed to take many chances when
they slip from their cocoons and dance up and down in the warm sunlight!
Lucky for their race that there are millions instead of thousands of them;
for now the swifts and great numbers of tree and barn swallows spend the
livelong day in swooping after the unfortunate gauzy-winged motes, which
have risen above the toad's maw upon land, and beyond the reach of the
trout's leap over the water.
It would take an article as long as this simply to mention hardly more
than the names of the birds that we may observe during a walk in May; and
with bird book and glasses we must see for ourselves the bobolinks in the
broad meadows, the cowbirds and rusty blackbirds, and, pushing through the
lady-slipper marshes, we may surprise the solitary great blue and the
little green herons at their silent fishing.
No matter how late the spring may be, the great migration host will reach
its height from the tenth to the fifteenth of the month. From this until
June first, migrants will be passing, but in fewer and fewer numbers,
until the balance comes to rest again, and we may cease from the strenuous
labours of the last few weeks, confident that those birds that remain will
be the builders of the nests near our homes--nests that they know so well
how to hide. Even before the last day of May passes, we see many young
birds on their first weak-winged flights, such as bluebirds and robins;
but June is the great month of bird homes, as to May belong the migrants.
Robins and mocking birds that all day long
Athwart straight sunshine weave cross-threads of song.
Sidney Lanier.
ANIMAL FASHIONS
Warm spring days bring other changes than thawing snowbanks and the
swelling buds and leaves, which seem to grow almost visibly. It is
surprising how many of the wild folk meet the spring with changed
appearance--beautiful, fantastic or ugly to us; all, perhaps, beautiful to
them and to their mates.
As a rule we find the conditions which exist among ourselves reversed
among the animals; the male "blossoms forth like the rose," while the
female's sombre winter fur or feathers are reduplicated only by a thinner
coat for summer. The "spring opening" of the great classes of birds and
animals is none the less interesting because its styles are not set by
Parisian modistes.
The most gorgeous display of all is to be found among the birds, the
peacock leading in conspicuousness and self-consciousness. What a contrast
to the dull earthy-hued little hen, for whose slightest favour he neglects
food to raise his Argus-eyed fan, clattering his quill castanets and
screaming challenges to his rivals! He will even fight bloody battles with
invading suitors; and, after all, failure may be the result. Imagine the
feelings of two superb birds fighting over a winsome browny, to see
her--as I have done--walk off with a spurless, half-plumaged young cock!
The males of many birds, such as the scarlet tanager and the indigo
bunting, assume during the winter the sombre green or brown hue of the
female, changing in spring to a glorious scarlet and black, or to an
exquisite indigo colour respectively. Not only do most of the females of
the feathered world retain their dull coats throughout the year, but some
deface even this to form feather beds for the precious eggs and nestlings,
to protect which bright colours must be entirely foregone.
The spring is the time when decorations are seen at their best. The snowy
egret trails his filmy cloud of plumes, putting to shame the stiff
millinery bunches of similar feathers torn from his murdered brethren.
Even the awkward and querulous night heron exhibits a long curling plume
or two. And what a strange criterion of beauty a female white pelican must
have! To be sure, the graceful crest which Sir Pelican erects is
beautiful, but that huge, horny "keel" or "sight" on his bill! What use
can it subserve, æsthetic or otherwise? One would think that such a
structure growing so near his eyes, and day by day becoming taller, must
occupy much of his attention.
The sheldrake ducks also have a fleshy growth on the bill. A turkey
gobbler, when his vernal wedding dress is complete, is indeed a remarkable
sight. The mass of wattles, usually so gray and shrunken, is now of most
vivid hues--scarlet, blue, vermilion, green,--the fleshy tassels and
swollen knobs making him a most extraordinary creature.
Birds are noted for taking exquisite care of their plumage, and if the
feathers become at all dingy or unkempt, we know the bird is in bad
health.
What a time the deer and the bears, the squirrels and the mice, have when
changing their dress! Rags and tatters; tatters and rags! One can grasp a
handful of hair on the flank of a caribou or elk in a zoological park, and
the whole will come out like thistledown; while underneath is seen the
sleek, short summer coat. A bear will sometimes carry a few locks of the
long, brown winter fur for months after the clean black hairs of the
summer's coat are grown. What a boon to human tailors such an opportunity
would be--to ordain that Mr. X. must wear the faded collar or vest of his
old suit until bills are paid!
It is a poor substance, indeed, which, when cast aside, is not available
for some secondary use in Nature's realm; and the hairs that fall from
animals are not all left to return unused to their original elements. The
sharp eyes of birds spy them out, and thus the lining to many a nest is
furnished. I knew of one feathered seeker of cast-off clothing which met
disaster through trying to get a supply at first hand--a sparrow was found
dead, tangled in the hairs of a pony's tail. The chickadee often lights on
the backs of domestic cattle and plucks out hair with which to line some
snug cavity near by for his nest. Before the cattle came his ancestors
were undoubtedly in the habit of helping themselves from the deer's stock
of "ole clo's," as they have been observed getting their building material
from the deer in zoological parks.
Of course the hair of deer and similar animals falls out with the motions
of the creatures, or is brushed out by bushes and twigs; but we must hope
that the shedding place of a porcupine is at a distance from his customary
haunts; it would be so uncomfortable to run across a shred of one's old
clothes--if one were a porcupine!
The skin of birds and animals wears away in small flakes, but when a
reptile changes to a new suit of clothes, the old is shed almost entire. A
frog after shedding its skin will very often turn round and swallow it,
establishing the frog maxim "every frog his own old clothes bag!"
Birds, which exhibit so many idiosyncrasies, appear again as utilizers of
old clothes; although when a crested flycatcher weaves a long
snake-skin into the fabric of its nest, it seems more from the standpoint
of a curio collector--as some people delight in old worn brass and blue
china! There is another if less artistic theory for this peculiarity of
the crested flycatcher. The skin of a snake--a perfect ghost in its
completeness--would make a splendid "bogie." We can see that it might,
indeed, be useful in such a way, as in frightening marauding crows,
who approach with cannibalistic intentions upon eggs or young. Thus
the skin would correspond in function to the rows of dummy wooden
guns, which make a weak fort appear all but invincible.
POLLIWOG PROBLEMS
The ancient Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hindus, Japanese, and Greeks all
shared the belief that the whole world was hatched from an egg made by the
Creator. This idea of development is at least true in the case of every
living thing upon the earth to-day; every plant springs from its seed,
every animal from its egg. And still another sweeping, all-inclusive
statement may be made,--every seed or egg at first consists of but one
cell, and by the division of this into many cells, the lichen, violet,
tree, worm, crab, butterfly, fish, frog, or other higher creature is
formed. A little embryology will give a new impetus to our studies,
whether we watch the unfolding leaves of a sunflower, a caterpillar
emerging from its egg, or a chick breaking through its shell.
The very simplest and best way to begin this study is to go to the nearest
pond, where the frogs have been croaking in the evenings. A search among
the dead leaves and water-soaked sticks will reveal a long string of black
beads. These are the eggs of the toad; if, however, the beads are not in
strings, but in irregular masses, then they are frogs' eggs. In any case
take home a tumblerful, place a few, together with the thick, transparent
gelatine, in which they are encased, in a saucer, and examine them
carefully under a good magnifying glass, or, better still, through a
low-power microscope lens.
You will notice that the tiny spheres are not uniformly coloured but that
half is whitish. If the eggs have been recently laid the surface will be
smooth and unmarked, but have patience and watch them for as long a time
as you can spare. Whenever I can get a batch of such eggs, I never grudge
a whole day spent in observing them, for it is seldom that the mysterious
processes of life are so readily watched and followed.
Keep your eye fixed on the little black and white ball of jelly and before
long, gradually and yet with never a halt, a tiny furrow makes its way
across the surface, dividing the egg into equal halves. When it completely
encircles the sphere you may know that you have seen one of the greatest
wonders of the world. The egg which consisted of but one cell is now
divided into two exactly equal parts, of the deepest significance. Of the
latter truth we may judge from the fact that if one of those cells should
be injured, only one-half a polliwog would result,--either a head or a
tail half.
Before long the unseen hand of life ploughs another furrow across the egg,
and we have now four cells. These divide into eight, sixteen, and so on
far beyond human powers of numeration, until the beginnings of all the
organs of the tadpole are formed. While we cannot, of course, follow this
development, we can look at our egg every day and at last see the little
_wiggle heads_ or polliwogs (from _pol_ and _wiggle_) emerge.
In a few days they develop a fin around the tail, and from now on it is an
easy matter to watch the daily growth. There is no greater miracle in the
world than to see one of these aquatic, water-breathing, limbless
creatures transform before your eyes into a terrestrial, four-legged frog
or toad, breathing air like ourselves. The humble polliwog in its
development is significant of far more marvellous facts than the
caterpillar changing into the butterfly, embodying as it does the deepest
poetry and romance of evolution.
Blue dusk, that brings the dewy hours,
Brings thee, of graceless form in sooth.
Edgar Fawcett.
INSECT PIRATES AND SUBMARINES
Far out on the ocean, when the vessel is laboriously making her way
through the troughs and over the crests of the great waves, little birds,
black save for a patch of white on the lower back, are a common sight,
flying with quick irregular wing-beats, close to the surface of the
troubled waters. When they spy some edible bit floating beneath them, down
they drop until their tiny webbed feet just rest upon the water. Then,
snatching up the titbit, half-flying, they patter along the surface of the
water, just missing being engulfed by each oncoming wave. Thus they have
come to be named petrels--little Peters--because they seem to walk upon
the water. Without aid from the wings, however, they would soon be
immersed, so the walking is only an illusion.
But in our smallest ponds and brooks we may see this miracle taking place
almost daily, the feat being accomplished by a very interesting little
assemblage of insects, commonly called water skaters or striders. Let us
place our eyes as near as possible to the surface of the water and watch
the little creatures darting here and there.
We see that they progress securely on the top of the water, resting upon
it as if it were a sheet of ice. Their feet are so adapted that the water
only dimples beneath their slight weight, the extent of the depression not
being visible to the eye, but clearly outlined in the shadows upon the
bottom. In an eddy of air a tiny fly is caught and whirled upon the water,
where it struggles vigorously, striving to lift its wings clear of the
surface. In an instant the water strider--pirate of the pond that he
is--reaches forward his crooked fore legs, and here endeth the career of
the unfortunate fly.
In the air, in the earth, and below the surface of the water are hundreds
of living creatures, but the water striders and their near relatives are
unique. No other group shares their power of actually walking, or rather
pushing themselves, upon the surface of the water. They have a little
piece of the world all to themselves. Yet, although three fifths of the
earth's surface consists of water, this group of insects is a small one. A
very few, however, are found out upon the ocean, where the tiny creatures
row themselves cheerfully along. It is thought that they attach their eggs
to the floating saragassum seaweed. If only we knew the whole life of one
of these ocean water striders and all the strange sights it must see, a
fairy story indeed would be unfolded to us.
However, all the Lilliputian craft of our brooks are not galleys; there
are submarines, which, in excellence of action and control, put to shame
all human efforts along the same line. These are the water boatmen, stout
boat-shaped insects whose hind legs are long, projecting outward like the
oars of a rowboat. They feather their oars, too, or rather the oars are
feathered for them, a fringe of long hairs growing out on each side of the
blade. Some of the boatmen swim upside down, and these have the back
keeled instead of the breast. Like real submarine boats, these insects
have to come up for air occasionally; and, again like similar craft of
human handiwork, their principal mission in life seems to be warfare upon
the weaker creatures about them.
Upon their bodies are many short hairs that have the power of enclosing
and retaining a good-sized bubble of air. Thus the little boatman is well
supplied for each submarine trip, and he does not have to return to the
surface until all this storage air has been exhausted. In perfectly pure
water, however, these boatmen can remain almost indefinitely below the
surface, although it is not known how they obtain from the water the
oxygen which they usually take from the air.
All of these skaters and boatmen thrive in small aquariums, and if given
pieces of scraped meat will live in perfect health. Here is an alluring
opportunity for anyone to add to our knowledge of insect life; for the
most recent scientific books admit that we do not yet know the complete
life history of even one of these little brothers of the pond.
Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool;
Cool and clear, cool and clear,
By shining shingle, and foaming weir,
Charles Kingsley.
THE VICTORY OF THE NIGHTHAWK
The time is not far distant when the bottom of the sea will be the only
place where primeval wildness will not have been defiled or destroyed by
man. He may sail his ships above, he may peer downward, even dare to
descend a few feet in a suit of rubber or a submarine boat, or he may
scratch a tiny furrow for a few yards with a dredge: but that is all.
When that time comes, the animals and birds which survive will be only
those which have found a way to adapt themselves to man's encroaching,
all-pervading civilisation. The time was when our far-distant ancestors
had, year in and year out, to fight for very existence against the wild
creatures about them. They then gained the upper hand, and from that time
to the present the only question has been, how long the wild creatures of
the earth could hold out.
The wolf, the bison, the beaver fought the battle out at once to all but
the bitter end. The crow, the muskrat, the fox have more than held their
own, by reason of cunning, hiding or quickness of sight; but they cannot
hope for this to last. The English sparrow has won by sheer audacity; but
most to be admired are those creatures which have so changed their habits
that some product of man's invention serves them as well as did their
former wilderness home. The eave swallow and barn swallow and the chimney
swift all belie their names in the few wild haunts still uninvaded by man.
The first two were originally cliff and bank haunters, and the latter's
home was a lightning-hollowed tree.
But the nighthawks which soar and boom above our city streets, whence come
they? Do they make daily pilgrimages from distant woods? The city
furnishes no forest floor on which they may lay their eggs. Let us seek a
wide expanse of flat roof, high above the noisy, crowded streets. Let it
be one of those tar and pebble affairs, so unpleasant to walk upon, but so
efficient in shedding water. If we are fortunate, as we walk slowly across
the roof, a something, like a brownish bit of wind-blown rubbish, will
roll and tumble ahead of us. It is a bird with a broken wing, we say. How
did it ever get up here? We hasten forward to pick it up, when, with a
last desperate flutter, it topples off the edge of the roof; but instead
of falling helplessly to the street, the bird swings out above the
house-tops, on the white-barred pinions of a nighthawk. Now mark the place
where first we observed the bird, and approach it carefully, crawling on
hands and knees. Otherwise we will very probably crush the two mottled
bits of shell, so exactly like pebbles in external appearance, but
sheltering two little warm, beating hearts. Soon the shells will crack,
and the young nighthawks will emerge,--tiny fluffs,--in colour the very
essence of the scattered pebbles.
In the autumn they will all pass southward to the far distant tropics, and
when spring again awakens, the instinct of migration will lead them, not
to some mottled carpet of moss and rocks deep in the woods, but to the
tarred roof of a house in the very heart of a great city.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUNE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GALA DAYS OF BIRDS
Migration is over, and the great influx of birds which last month filled
every tree and bush is now distributed over field and wood, from our
dooryard and lintel vine to the furthermost limits of northern
exploration; birds, perhaps, having discovered the pole long years ago.
Now every feather and plume is at its brightest and full development; for
must not the fastidious females be sought and won?
And now the great struggle of the year is at hand, the supreme moment for
which thousands of throats have been vibrating with whispered rehearsals
of trills and songs, and for which the dangers that threaten the
acquisition of bright colours and long, inconvenient plumes and ornaments
have been patiently undergone. Now, if all goes well and his song is
clear, if his crest and gorgeous splashes of tints and shades are fresh
and shining with the gloss of health, then the feathered lover may hope,
indeed, that the little brown mate may look with favour upon dance, song,
or antic--and the home is become a reality. In some instances this home is
for only one short season, when the two part, probably forever; but in
other cases the choice is for life.
But if his rival is stronger, handsomer, and--victorious, what then? Alas,
the song dies in his throat, plumes hang crestfallen, and the disconsolate
creature must creep about through tangles and brush, watching from a
distance the nest-building, the delights of home life which fate has
forbidden. But the poor bachelor need not by any means lose hope; for on
all sides dangers threaten his happy rival--cats, snakes, jays, hawks,
owls, and boys. Hundreds of birds must pay for their victory with their
lives, and then the once discarded suitors are quickly summoned by the
widows; and these step-fathers, no whit chagrined at playing second
fiddle, fill up the ranks, and work for the young birds as if they were
their own offspring.
There is an unsolved mystery about the tragedies and comedies that go on
every spring. Usually every female bird has several suitors, of which one
is accepted. When the death of this mate occurs, within a day or two
another is found; and this may be repeated a dozen times in succession.
Not only this, but when a female bird is killed, her mate is generally
able at once somewhere, somehow, to find another to take her place. Why
these unmated males and females remain single until they are needed is
something that has never been explained.
The theme of the courtship of birds is marvellously varied and
comparatively little understood. Who would think that when our bald eagle,
of national fame, seeks to win his mate, his ardour takes the form of an
undignified galloping dance, round and round her from branch to branch!
Hardly less ridiculous--to our eyes--is the elaborate performance of our
most common woodpecker, the flicker, or high-hole. Two or three male birds
scrape and bow and pose and chatter about the demure female, outrageously
undignified as compared with their usual behaviour. They do everything
save twirl their black moustaches!
In the mating season some birds have beauties which are ordinarily
concealed. Such is the male ruby-crowned kinglet, garbed in gray and
green, the two sexes identical, except for the scarlet touch on the crown
of the male, which, at courting time, he raises and expands. Even the iris
of some birds changes and brightens in colour at the breeding season;
while in others there appear about the base of the bill horny parts, which
in a month or two fall off. The scarlet coat of the tanager is perhaps
solely for attracting and holding the attention of the female, as before
winter every feather is shed, the new plumage being of a dull green, like
that of its mate and its young.
As mystery confronts us everywhere in nature, so we confess ourselves
baffled when we attempt to explain the most wonderful of all the
attributes of bird courtship--song. Birds have notes to call to one
another, to warn of danger, to express anger and fear; but the highest
development of their vocal efforts seems to be devoted to charming the
females. If birds have a love of music, then there must be a marvellous
diversity of taste among them, ranging all the way from the shrieking,
strident screams of the parrots and macaws to the tender pathos of the
wood pewee and the hermit thrush.
If birds have not some appreciation of sweet sounds, then we must consider
the many different songs as mere by-products, excess of vitality which
expresses itself in results, in many cases, strangely æsthetic and
harmonious. A view midway is indefinable as regards the boundaries covered
by each theory. How much of the peacock's train or of the thrush's song is
appreciated by the female? How much is by-product merely?
In these directions a great field lies open to the student and lover of
birds; but however we decide for ourselves in regard to the exact meaning
and evolution of song, and what use it subserves among the birds, we all
admit the effect and pleasure it produces in ourselves. A world without
the song of birds is greatly lacking--such is a desert, where even the
harsh croak of a raven is melody.
Perhaps the reason why the songs of birds give more lasting pleasure than
many other things is that sound is so wonderfully potent to recall days
and scenes of our past life. Like a sunset, the vision that a certain song
brings is different to each one of us.
To me, the lament of the wood pewee brings to mind deep, moist places in
the Pennsylvania backwoods; the crescendo of the oven bird awakens
memories of the oaks of the Orange mountains; when a loon or an
olive-sided flycatcher or a white-throat calls, the lakes and forests of
Nova Scotia come vividly to mind; the cry of a sea-swallow makes real
again the white beaches of Virginia; to me a cardinal has in its song the
feathery lagoons of Florida's Indian River, while the shriek of a macaw
and its antithesis, the silvery, interlacing melodies of the solitaire,
spell the farthest _barrancas_ of Mexico, with the vultures ever circling
overhead, and the smoke clouds of the volcano in the distance.
So sweet, so sweet the calling of the thrushes,
The calling, cooing, wooing, everywhere;
So sweet the water's song through reeds and rushes,
The plover's piping note, now here, now there.
Nora Perry.
TURTLE TRAITS
A turtle, waddling his solitary way along some watercourse, attracts
little attention apart from that aroused by his clumsy, grotesque shape;
yet few who look upon him are able to give offhand even a bare half-dozen
facts about the humble creature. Could they give any information at all,
it would probably be limited to two or three usages to which his body is
put--such as soup, mandolin picks, and combs.
In the northeastern part of our own country we may look for no fewer than
eight species of turtles which are semi-aquatic, living in or near ponds
and streams, while another, the well-known box tortoise, confines its
travels to the uplands and woods.
There are altogether about two hundred different kinds of turtles, and
they live in all except the very cold countries of the world. Australia
has the fewest and North and Central America the greatest number of
species. Evolutionists can tell us little or nothing of the origin of
these creatures, for as far back in geological ages as they are found
fossil (a matter of a little over ten million years), all are true
turtles, not half turtles and half something else. Crocodiles and
alligators, with their hard leathery coats, come as near to them as do any
living creatures, and when we see a huge snapping turtle come out of the
water and walk about on land, we cannot fail to be reminded of the fellow
with the armoured back.
Turtles are found on the sea and on land, the marine forms more properly
deserving the name of turtles; tortoises being those living on land or in
fresh water. We shall use the name turtle as significant of the whole
group. The most natural method of classifying these creatures is by the
way the head and neck are drawn back under the shell; whether the head is
turned to one side, or drawn straight back, bending the neck into the
letter S shape.
The skull of a turtle is massive, and some have thick, false roofs on top
of the usual brain box.
The "house" or shell of a turtle is made up of separate pieces of bone, a
central row along the back and others arranged around on both sides. These
are really pieces of the skin of the back changed to bone. Our ribs are
directly under the skin of the back, and if this skin should harden into a
bone-like substance, the ribs would lie flat against it, and this is the
case with the ribs of turtles. So when we marvel that the ribs of a turtle
are on the outside of its body, a second thought will show us that this is
just as true of us as it is of these reptiles.
This hardening of the skin has brought about some interesting changes in
the body of the turtle. In all the higher animals, from fishes up to man,
a backbone is of the greatest importance not only in carrying the nerves
and blood-vessels, but in supporting the entire body. In turtles alone,
the string of vertebræ is unnecessary, the shell giving all the support
needed. So, as Nature seldom allows unused tissues or organs to remain,
these bones along the back become, in many species, reduced to a mere
thread.
The pieces of bone or horn which go to make up the shell, although so
different in appearance from the skin, yet have the same life-processes.
Occasionally the shell moults or peels, the outer part coming off in great
flakes. Each piece grows by the addition of rings of horn at the joints,
and (like the rings of a tree) the age of turtles, except of very old
ones, can be estimated by the number of circles of horn on each piece. The
rings are very distinct in species which live in temperate climates. Here
they are compelled to hibernate during the winter, and this cessation of
growth marks the intervals between each ring. In tropical turtles the
rings are either absent or indistinct. It is to this mode of growth that
the spreading of the initials which are cut into the shell is due, just as
letters carved on the trunks of trees in time broaden and bulge outward.
The shell has the power of regeneration, and when a portion is crushed or
torn away the injured parts are gradually cast off, and from the
surrounding edges a new covering of horn grows out. One third of the
entire shell has been known to be thus replaced.
Although so slow in their locomotion and actions, turtles have
well-developed senses. They can see very distinctly, and the power of
smell is especially acute, certain turtles being very discriminating in
the matter of food. They are also very sensitive to touch, and will react
to the least tap on their shells. Their hearing, however, is more
imperfect, but as during the mating season they have tiny, piping voices,
this sense must be of some use.
Water tortoises can remain beneath the surface for hours and even days at
a time. In addition to the lungs there are two small sacs near the tail
which allow the animal to use the oxygen in the water as an aid to
breathing.
All turtles lay eggs, the shells of which are white and generally of a
parchment-like character. They are deposited in the ground or in the sand,
and hatch either by the warmth of the decaying vegetation or by the heat
of the sun. In temperate countries the eggs remain through the winter, and
the little turtles do not emerge until the spring. The eggs of turtles are
very good to eat, and the oil contained in them is put to many uses. In
all the countries which they inhabit, young turtles have a hard time of
it; for thousands of them are devoured by storks, alligators, and fishes.
Even old turtles have many enemies, not the least strange being jaguars,
which watch for them, turn them on their backs with a flip of the paw, and
eat them at leisure--on the half shell, as it were!
Leathery turtles--which live in the sea--have been reported weighing over
a thousand pounds! This species is very rare, and a curious circumstance
is that only very large adults and very small baby individuals have been
seen, the turtles of all intermediate growths keeping in the deep ocean
out of view.
Snapping turtles are among the fiercest creatures in the world. On leaving
the egg their first instinct is to open their mouths and bite at
something. They feed on almost anything, but when, in captivity they
sometimes refuse to eat, and have been known to go a year without food,
showing no apparent ill effects. One method which they employ in capturing
their food is interesting. A snapping turtle will lie quietly at the
bottom of a pond or lake, looking like an old water-soaked log with a
branch--its head and neck--at one end. From the tip of the tongue the
creature extrudes two small filaments of a pinkish colour which wriggle
about, bearing a perfect resemblance to the small round worms of which
fishes are so fond. Attracted by these, fishes swim up to grasp the
squirming objects and are engulfed by the cruel mouth of the angler.
Certain marine turtles have long-fringed appendages on the head and neck,
which, waving about, serve a similar purpose.
The edible terrapin has, in many places, become very rare; so that
thousands of them are kept and bred in enclosed areas, or "crawls," as
they are called. This species is noted for its curious disposition, and it
is often captured by being attracted by some unusual sound.
The tortoise-shell of commerce is obtained from the shell of the hawksbill
turtle, the plates of which, being very thin, are heated and welded
together until of the required thickness. The age to which turtles live
has often been exaggerated, but they are certainly the longest lived of
all living creatures. Individuals from the Galapagos Island are estimated
to be over four hundred years old. When, in a zoological garden, we see
one of these creatures and study his aged, aged look, as he slowly and
deliberately munches the cabbage which composes his food, we can well
believe that such a being saw the light of day before Columbus made his
memorable voyage.
He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay
Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day.
Himself he boards and lodges; both invites
And feasts himself; sleeps with himself o'nights.
He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure
Chattels; himself is his own furniture,
Knock when you will,--he's sure to be at home.
Charles Lamb.
A HALF-HOUR IN A MARSH
There are little realms all around of which many of us know nothing. Take,
for example, some marsh within a half-hour's trolley ride of any of our
cities or towns. Select one where cat-tails and reeds abound. Mosquitoes
and fear of malaria keep these places free from invasion by humankind; but
if we select some windy day we may laugh them both to scorn, and we shall
be well repaid for our trip. The birds frequenting these places are so
seldom disturbed that they make only slight effort to conceal their nests,
and we shall find plenty of the beautiful bird cradles rocking with every
passing breeze.
A windy day will also reveal an interesting feature of the marsh. The
soft, velvety grass, which abounds in such places, is so pliant and
yielding that it responds to every breath, and each approaching wave of
air is heralded by an advancing curl of the grass. At our feet these
grass-waves intersect and recede, giving a weird sensation, as if the
ground were moving, or as if we were walking on the water itself. Where
the grass is longer, the record of some furious gale is permanently
fixed--swaths and ripples seeming to roll onward, or to break into green
foam. The simile of a "painted ocean" is perfectly carried out. There is
no other substance, not even sand, which simulates more exactly the
motions of water than this grass.
In the nearest clump of reeds we notice several red-winged blackbirds,
chattering nervously. A magnificent male bird, black as night, and with
scarlet epaulets burning on his shoulders, swoops at us, while his
inconspicuous brownish consorts vibrate above the reeds, some with grubs,
some empty mouthed. They are invariable indexes of what is below them. We
may say with perfect assurance that in that patch of rushes are two nests,
one with young; beyond are three others, all with eggs.
We find beautiful structures, firm and round, woven of coarse grasses
inside and dried reeds without, hung between two or three supporting
stalks, or, if it is a fresh-water marsh, sheltered by long, green fern
fronds. The eggs are worthy of their cradles--pearly white in colour, with
scrawls and blotches of dark purple at the larger end--hieroglyphics which
only the blackbirds can translate.
In another nest we find newly hatched young, looking like large
strawberries, their little naked bodies of a vivid orange colour, with
scanty gray tufts of down here and there. Not far away is a nest,
overflowing with five young birds ready to fly, which scramble out at our
approach and start boldly off; but as their weak wings give out, they soon
come to grief. We catch one and find that it has most delicate colours,
resembling its mother in being striped brown and black, although its
breast and under parts are of an unusually beautiful tint--a kind of
salmon pink. I never saw this shade elsewhere in Nature.
Blackbirds are social creatures, and where we find one nest, four or five
others may be looked for near by. The red-winged blackbird is a mormon in
very fact, and often a solitary male bird may be seen guarding a colony of
three or four nests, each with an attending female. A sentiment of
altruism seems indeed not unknown, as I have seen a female give a grub to
one of a hungry nestful, before passing on to brood her own eggs, yet
unhatched.
While looking for the blackbirds' nests we shall come across numerous
round, or oval, masses of dried weeds and grass--mice homes we may think
them; and the small, winding entrance concealed on one side tends to
confirm this opinion. Several will be empty, but when in one our fingers
touch six or eight tiny eggs, our mistake will be apparent. Long-billed
marsh wrens are the architects, and so fond are they of building that
frequently three or four unused nests are constructed before the little
chocolate jewels are deposited.
If we sit quietly for a few moments, one of the owners, overcome by wren
curiosity, will appear, clinging to a reed stalk and twitching his pert,
upturned tail, the badge of his family. Soon he springs up into the air
and, bubbling a jumble of liquid notes, sinks back into the recesses of
the cat-tails. Another and another repeat this until the marsh rings with
their little melodies.
If we seat ourselves and watch quietly we may possibly behold an episode
that is not unusual. The joyous songs of the little wrens suddenly give
place to cries of fear and anger; and this hubbub increases until at last
we see a sinister ripple flowing through the reeds, marking the advancing
head of a water snake.
The evil eyes of the serpent are bent upon the nearest nest, and toward it
he makes his way, followed and beset by all the wrens in the vicinity.
Slowly the scaly creature pushes himself up on the reeds; and as they bend
under his weight he makes his way the more easily along them to the nest.
His head is pushed in at the entrance, but an instant later the snake
twines downward to the water. The nest was empty. Again he seeks an
adjoining nest, and again is disappointed; and now, a small fish
attracting his attention, he goes off in swift pursuit, leaving untouched
the third nest in sight, that containing the precious eggs. Thus the
apparently useless industry of the tiny wrens has served an invaluable
end, and the tremulous chorus is again timidly taken up--little hymns of
thanksgiving we may imagine them now.
These and many others are sights which a half-hour's tramp, without even
wetting our shoes, may show us. Before we leave, hints of more deeply
hidden secrets of the marsh may perhaps come to us. A swamp sparrow may
show by its actions that its nest is not far away; from the depths of a
ditch jungle the clatter of some rail comes faintly to our ears, and the
distant croak of a night heron reaches us from its feeding-grounds,
guarded by the deeper waters.
And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade.
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin.
Sidney Lanier.
SECRETS OF THE OCEAN
We are often held spellbound by the majesty of mountains, and indeed a
lofty peak forever capped with snow, or pouring forth smoke and ashes, is
impressive beyond all terrestrial things. But the ocean yields to nothing
in its grandeur, in its age, in its ceaseless movement, and the question
remains forever unanswered, "Who shall sound the mysteries of the sea?"
Before the most ancient of mountains rose from the heart of the earth, the
waves of the sea rolled as now, and though the edges of the continents
shrink and expand, bend into bays or stretch out into capes, always
through all the ages the sea follows and laps with ripples or booms with
breakers unceasingly upon the shore.
Whether considered from the standpoint of the scientist, the mere
curiosity of the tourist, or the keen delight of the enthusiastic lover of
Nature, the shore of the sea--its sands and waters, its ever-changing
skies and moods--is one of the most interesting spots in the world. The
very bottom of the deep bays near shore--dark and eternally silent,
prisoned under the restless waste of waters--is thickly carpeted with
strange and many-coloured forms of animal and vegetable life. But the
beaches and tide-pools over which the moon-urged tides hold sway in their
ceaseless rise and fall, teem with marvels of Nature's handiwork, and
every day are restocked and replanted with new living objects, both arctic
and tropical offerings of each heaving tidal pulse.
Here on the northeastern shores of our continent one may spend days of
leisure or delightful study among the abundant and ever changing variety
of wonderful living creatures. It is not unlikely that the enjoyment and
absolute novelty of this new world may enable one to look on these as some
of the most pleasant days of life. I write from the edge of the restless
waters of Fundy, but any rock-strewn shore will duplicate the marvels.
At high tide the surface of the Bay is unbroken by rock or shoal, and
stretches glittering in the sunlight from the beach at one's feet to where
the New Brunswick shore is just visible, appearing like a low bluish cloud
on the horizon. At times the opposite shore is apparently brought nearer
and made more distinct by a mirage, which inverts it, together with any
ships which are in sight. A brig may be seen sailing along keel upward, in
the most matter-of-fact way. The surface may anon be torn by those fearful
squalls for which Fundy is noted, or, calm as a mirror, reflect the blue
sky with an added greenish tinge, troubled only by the gentle alighting of
a gull, the splash of a kingfisher or occasional osprey, as these dive for
their prey, or the ruffling which shows where a school of mackerel is
passing. This latter sign always sends the little sailing dories hurrying
out, where they beat back and forth, like shuttles travelling across a
loom, and at each turn a silvery struggling form is dragged into the
boat.
A little distance along the shore the sandy beach ends and is replaced by
huge bare boulders, scattered and piled in the utmost confusion. Back of
these are scraggly spruces, with branches which have been so long blown
landwards that they have bent and grown altogether on that
side,--permanent weather-vanes of Fundy's storms. The very soil in which
they began life was blown away, and their gnarled weather-worn roots hug
the rocks, clutching every crevice as a drowning man would grasp an oar.
On the side away from the bay two or three long, thick roots stretch far
from each tree to the nearest earth-filled gully, sucking what scanty
nourishment they can, for strength to withstand the winter's gales yet
another year or decade. Beach-pea and sweet marsh lavender tint the sand,
and stunted fringed orchids gleam in the coarse grass farther inland. High
up among the rocks, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, delicate
harebells sway and defy the blasts, enduring because of their very pliancy
and weakness.
If we watch awhile we will see a line of blackish seaweed and wet sand
appearing along the edge of the water, showing that the tide has turned
and begun to recede. In an hour it has ebbed a considerable distance, and
if we clamber down over the great weather-worn rocks the hardy advance
guard of that wonderful world of life under the water is seen. Barnacles
whiten the top of every rock which is reached by the tide, although the
water may cover them only a short time each day. But they flourish here in
myriads, and the shorter the chance they have at the salt water the more
frantically their little feathery feet clutch at the tiny food particles
which float around them. These thousands of tiny turreted castles are
built so closely together that many are pressed out of shape, paralleling
in shape as in substance the inorganic crystals of the mineral kingdom.
The valved doors are continually opening and partly closing, and if we
listen quietly we can hear a perpetual shuss! shuss! Is it the creaking of
the tiny hinges? As the last receding wave splashes them, they shut their
folding doors over a drop or two and remain tightly closed, while perhaps
ten hours of sunlight bake them, or they glisten in the moonlight for the
same length of time, ready at the first touch of the returning water to
open wide and welcome it.
The thought of their life history brings to mind how sadly they retrogress
as they grow, hatching as minute free-swimming creatures like tiny
lobsters, and gradually changing to this plant-like life, _sans_ eyes,
_sans_ head, _sans_ most everything except a stomach and a few pairs of
feathery feet to kick food into it. A few pitiful traces of nerves are
left them. What if there were enough ganglia to enable them to dream of
their past higher life, in the long intervals of patient waiting!
A little lower down we come to the zone of mussels,--hanging in clusters
like some strange sea-fruit. Each is attached by strands of thin silky
cables, so tough that they often defy our utmost efforts to tear a
specimen away. How secure these creatures seem, how safe from all harm,
and yet they have enemies which make havoc among them. At high tide fishes
come and crunch them, shells and all, and multitudes of carnivorous snails
are waiting to set their file-like tongues at work, which mercilessly
drill through the lime shells, bringing death in a more subtle but no less
certain form. Storms may tear away the support of these poor mollusks, and
the waves dash them far out of the reach of the tides, while at low water,
crows and gulls use all their ingenuity to get at their toothsome flesh.
There are no ant-hills in the sea, but when we turn over a large stone and
see scores upon scores of small black shrimps scurrying around, the
resemblance to those insects is striking. These little creatures quickly
hitch away on their sides, getting out of sight in a remarkably short
time.
The tide is going down rapidly, and following it step by step novel sights
meet the eye at every turn, and we begin to realise that in this narrow
strip, claimed alternately by sea and land, which would be represented on
a map by the finest of hair-lines, there exists a complete world of
animated life, comparing in variety and numbers with the life in that
thinner medium, air. We climb over enormous boulders, so different in
appearance that they would never be thought to consist of the same
material as those higher up on the shore. These are masses of wave-worn
rock, twenty or thirty feet across, piled in every imaginable position,
and completely covered with a thick padding of seaweed. Their drapery of
algæ hangs in festoons, and if we draw aside these submarine curtains,
scenes from a veritable fairyland are disclosed. Deep pools of water,
clear as crystal and icy cold, contain creatures both hideous and
beautiful, sombre and iridescent, formless and of exquisite shape.
The sea-anemones first attract attention, showing as splashes of scarlet
and salmon among the olive-green seaweed, or in hundreds covering the
entire bottom of a pool with a delicately hued mist of waving tentacles.
As the water leaves these exposed on the walls of the caves, they lose
their plump appearance and, drawing in their wreath of tentacles, hang
limp and shrivelled, resembling pieces of water-soaked meat as much as
anything. Submerged in the icy water they are veritable animal-flowers.
Their beauty is indeed well guarded, hidden by the overhanging seaweed in
these caves twenty-five feet or more below high-water mark.
Here in these beautiful caverns we may make aquariums, and transplant as
many animal-flowers as we wish. Wherever we place them their fleshy,
snail-like foot spreads out, takes tight hold, and the creature lives
content, patiently waiting for the Providence of the sea to send food to
its many wide-spread fingers.
Carpeted with pink algæ and dainty sponges, draped with sea-lettuce like
green tissue paper, decorated with strange corallines, these natural
aquariums far surpass any of artificial make. Although the tide drives us
from them sooner or later, we may return with the sure prospect of finding
them refreshed and perhaps replenished with many new forms. For often some
of the deep-water creatures are held prisoners in the lower tide-pools, as
the water settles, somewhat as when the glaciers receded northward after
the Ice Age there were left on isolated mountain peaks traces of the
boreal fauna and flora.
If we are interested enough to watch our anemones we will find much
entertainment. Let us return to our shrimp colonies and bring a handful to
our pool. Drop one in the centre of an anemone and see how quickly it
contracts. The tentacles bend over it exactly as the sticky hairs of the
sun-dew plant close over a fly. The shrimp struggles for a moment and is
then drawn downward out of sight. The birth of an anemone is well worth
patient watching, and this may take place in several different ways. We
may see a large individual with a number of tiny bunches on the sides of
the body, and if we keep this one in a tumbler, before long these
protuberances will be seen to develop a few tentacles and at last break
off as perfect miniature anemones. Or again, an anemone may draw in its
tentacles without apparent cause, and after a few minutes expand more
widely than ever. Suddenly a movement of the mouth is seen, and it opens,
and one, two, or even a half-dozen tiny anemones shoot forth. They turn
and roll in the little spurt of water and gradually settle to the rock
alongside of the mother. In a short time they turn right side up, expand
their absurd little heads, and begin life for themselves. These animal
"buds" may be of all sizes; some minute ones will be much less developed
and look very unlike the parent. These are able to swim about for a while,
and myriads of them may be born in an hour. Others, as we have seen, have
tentacles and settle down at once.
Fishes, little and big, are abundant in the pools, darting here and there
among the leathery fronds of "devils' aprons," cavernous-mouthed angler
fish, roly-poly young lump-suckers, lithe butterfish, and many others.
Moving slowly through the pools are many beautiful creatures, some so
evanescent that they are only discoverable by the faint shadows which they
cast on the bottom, others suggest animated spheres of prismatic sunlight.
These latter are tiny jelly-fish, circular hyaline masses of jelly with
eight longitudinal bands, composed of many comb-like plates, along which
iridescent waves of light continually play. The graceful appearance of
these exquisite creatures is increased by two long, fringed tentacles
streaming behind, drifting at full length or contracting into numerous
coils. The fringe on these streamers is a series of living hairs--an
aquatic cobweb, each active with life, and doing its share in ensnaring
minute atoms of food for its owner. When dozens of these _ctenophores_ (or
comb-bearers) as they are called, glide slowly to and fro through a pool,
the sight is not soon forgotten. To try to photograph them is like
attempting to portray the substance of a sunbeam, but patience works
wonders, and even a slightly magnified image of a living jelly is secured,
which shows very distinctly all the details of its wonderfully simple
structure; the pouch, suspended in the centre of the sphere, which does
duty as a stomach; the sheaths into which the long tentacles may be so
magically packed, and the tiny organ at the top of this living ball of
spun glass, serving, with its minute weights and springs, as compass,
rudder, and pilot to this little creature, which does not fear to pit its
muscles of jelly against the rush and might of breaking waves.
Even the individual comb-plates or rows of oars are plainly seen,
although, owing to their rapid motion, they appear to the naked eye as a
single band of scintillating light. This and other magnified photographs
were obtained by fastening the lens of a discarded bicycle lantern in a
cone of paper blackened on the inside with shoe-blacking. With this crude
apparatus placed in front of the lens of the camera, the evanescent
beauties of these most delicate creatures were preserved.
Other equally beautiful forms of jelly-fish are balloon-shaped. These are
_Beröe_, fitly named after the daughter of the old god Oceanus. They, like
others of their family, pulsate through the water, sweeping gracefully
along, borne on currents of their own making.
Passing to other inhabitants of the pools, we find starfish and
sea-urchins everywhere abundant. Hunched-up groups of the former show
where they are dining in their unique way on unfortunate sea-snails or
anemones, protruding their whole stomach and thus engulfing their victim.
The urchins strain and stretch with their innumerable sucker-feet, feeling
for something to grasp, and in this laborious way pull themselves along.
The mouth, with the five so-called teeth, is a conspicuous feature,
visible at the centre of the urchin and surrounded by the greenish spines.
Some of the starfish are covered with long spines, others are nearly
smooth. The colours are wonderfully varied,--red, purple, orange, yellow,
etc.
The stages through which these prickly skinned animals pass, before they
reach the adult state, are wonderfully curious, and only when they are
seen under the microscope can they be fully appreciated. A bolting-cloth
net drawn through some of the pools will yield thousands in many stages,
and we can take eggs of the common starfish and watch their growth in
tumblers of water. At first the egg seems nothing but a tiny round globule
of jelly, but soon a dent or depression appears on one side, which becomes
deeper and deeper until it extends to the centre of the egg-mass. It is as
if we should take a round ball of putty and gradually press our finger
into it. This pressed-in sac is a kind of primitive stomach and the
entrance is used as a mouth. After this follows a marvellous succession of
changes, form giving place to form, differing more in appearance and
structure from the five-armed starfish than a caterpillar differs from a
butterfly.
For example, when about eight days old, another mouth has formed and two
series of delicate cilia or swimming hairs wind around the creature, by
means of which it glides slowly through the water. The photographs of a
starfish of this age show the stomach with its contents, a dark rounded
mass near the lower portion of the organism. The vibrating bands which
outline the tiny animal are also visible. The delicacy of structure and
difficulty of preserving these young starfish alive make these pictures of
particular value, especially as they were taken of the living forms
swimming in their natural element. Each day and almost each hour adds to
the complexity of the little animal, lung tentacles grow out and many
other larval stages are passed through before the starfish shape is
discernible within this curious "nurse" or living, changing egg. Then the
entire mass, so elaborately evolved through so long a time, is absorbed
and the little baby star sinks to the bottom to start on its new life,
crawling around and over whatever happens in its path and feeding to
repletion on succulent oysters. It can laugh at the rage of the oysterman,
who angrily tears it in pieces, for "time heals all wounds" literally in
the case of these creatures, and even if the five arms are torn apart,
five starfish, small of arm but with healthy stomachs, will soon be
foraging on the oyster bed.
But to return to our tide-pools. In the skimming net with the young
starfish many other creatures are found, some so delicate and fragile that
they disintegrate before microscope and camera can be placed in position.
I lie at full length on a soft couch of seaweed with my face close to a
tiny pool no larger than my hand. A few armadillo shells and limpets crawl
on the bottom, but a frequent troubling of the water baffles me. I make
sure my breath has nothing to do with it, but still it continues. At last
a beam of sunshine lights up the pool, and as if a film had rolled from my
eyes I see the cause of the disturbance. A sea-worm--or a ghost of one--is
swimming about. Its large, brilliant eyes, long tentacles, and innumerable
waving appendages are now as distinct as before they had been invisible. A
trifling change in my position and all vanishes as if by magic. There
seems not an organ, not a single part of the creature, which is not as
transparent as the water itself. The fine streamers into which the paddles
and gills are divided are too delicate to have existence in any but a
water creature, and the least attempt to lift the animal from its element
would only tear and dismember it, so I leave it in the pool to await the
return of the tide.
Shrimps and prawns of many shapes and colours inhabit every pool. One
small species, abundant on the algæ, combines the colour changes of a
chameleon with the form and manner of travel of a measuring-worm, looping
along the fronds of seaweed or swimming with the same motion. Another
variety of shrimp resembles the common wood-louse found under pieces of
bark, but is most beautifully iridescent, glowing like an opal at the
bottom of the pool. The curious little sea-spiders keep me guessing for a
long time where their internal organs can be, as they consist of legs with
merely enough body to connect these firmly together. The fact that the
thread-like stomach and other organs send a branch into each of the eight
legs explains the mystery and shows how far economy of space may go. Their
skeleton-forms, having the appearance of eight straggling filaments of
seaweed, are thus, doubtless, a great protection to these creatures from
their many enemies. Other hobgoblin forms with huge probosces crawl slowly
over the floors of the anemone caves, or crouch as the shadow of my hand
or net falls upon them.
The larger gorgeously coloured and graceful sea-worms contribute not a
small share to the beauty of Fundy tide-pools, swimming in iridescent
waves through the water or waving their Medusa-head of crimson tentacles
at the bottom among the sea-lettuce. These worms form tubes of mud for
themselves, and the rows of hooks on each side of the body enable them to
climb up and down in their dismal homes.
Much of the seaweed from deeper bottoms seems to be covered with a dense
fur, which under a hand lens resolves into beautiful hydroids,--near
relatives of the anemones and corals. Scientists have happily given these
most euphonious names--_Campanularia_, _Obelia_, and _Plumularia_. Among
the branches of certain of these, numbers of round discs or spheres are
visible. These are young medusæ or jelly-fish, which grow like bunches of
currants, and later will break off and swim around at pleasure in the
water. Occasionally one is fortunate enough to discover these small
jellies in a pool where they can be photographed as they pulsate back and
forth. When these attain their full size they lay eggs which sink to the
bottom and grow up into the plant-like hydroids. So each generation of
these interesting creatures is entirely unlike that which immediately
precedes or follows it. In other words, a hydroid is exactly like its
grandmother and granddaughter, but as different from its parents and
children in appearance as a plant is from an animal. Even in a fairy-story
book this would be wonderful, but here it is taking place under our very
eyes, as are scores of other transformations and "miracles in miniature"
in this marvellous underworld.
Now let us deliberately pass by all the attractions of the middle zone of
tide-pools and on as far as the lowest level of the water will admit. We
are far out from the shore and many feet below the level of the
barnacle-covered boulders over which we first clambered. Now we may indeed
be prepared for strange sights, for we are on the very borderland of the
vast unknown. The abyss in front of us is like planetary space, unknown to
the feet of man. While we know the latter by scant glimpses through our
telescopes, the former has only been scratched by the hauls of the dredge,
the mark of whose iron shoe is like the tiny track of a snail on the leaf
mould of a vast forest.
The first plunge beneath the icy waters of Fundy is likely to remain long
in one's memory, and one's first dive of short duration, but the glimpse
which is had and the hastily snatched handfuls of specimens of the
beauties which no tide ever uncovers is potent to make one forget his
shivering and again and again seek to penetrate as far as a good-sized
stone and a lungful of air will carry him. Strange sensations are
experienced in these aquatic scrambles. It takes a long time to get used
to pulling oneself _downward_, or propping your knees against the _under_
crevices of rocks. To all intents and purposes, the law of gravitation is
partly suspended, and when stone and wooden wedge accidentally slip from
one's hand and disappear in _opposite_ directions, it is confusing, to say
the least.
When working in one spot for some time the fishes seem to become used to
one, and approach quite closely. Slick-looking pollock, bloated lump-fish,
and occasionally a sombre dog-fish rolls by, giving one a start, as the
memory of pictures of battles between divers and sharks of tropical waters
comes to mind. One's mental impressions made thus are somewhat
disconnected. With the blood buzzing in the ears, it is only possible to
snatch general glimpses and superficial details. Then at the surface,
notes can be made, and specimens which have been overlooked, felt for
during the next trip beneath the surface. Fronds of laminaria yards in
length, like sheets of rubber, offer convenient holds, and at their roots
many curious creatures make their home. Serpent starfish, agile as insects
and very brittle, are abundant, and new forms of worms, like great
slugs,--their backs covered with gills in the form of tufted branches.
In these outer, eternally submerged regions are starfish of still other
shapes, some with a dozen or more arms. I took one with thirteen rays and
placed it temporarily in a pool aquarium with some large anemones. On
returning in an hour or two I found the starfish trying to make a meal of
the largest anemone. Hundreds of dart-covered strings had been pushed out
by the latter in defence, but they seemed to cause the starfish no
inconvenience whatever.
In my submarine glimpses I saw spaces free from seaweed on which hundreds
of tall polyps were growing, some singly, others in small tufts. The
solitary individuals rise three or four inches by a nearly straight stalk,
surmounted by a many-tentacled head. This droops gracefully to one side
and the general effect is that of a bed of rose-coloured flowers. From the
heads hang grape-like masses, which on examination in a tumbler are seen
to be immature medusæ. Each of these develop to the point where the four
radiating canals are discernible and then their growth comes to a
standstill, and they never attain the freedom for which their structure
fits them.
When the wind blew inshore, I would often find the water fairly alive with
large sun-jellies or _Aurelia_,--their Latin name. Their great milky-white
bodies would come heaving along and bump against me, giving a very
"crawly" sensation. The circle of short tentacles and the four
horse-shoe-shaped ovaries distinguish this jelly-fish from all others.
When I had gone down as far as I dared, I would sometimes catch glimpses
of these strange beings far below me, passing and repassing in the silence
and icy coldness of the watery depths. These large medusæ are often very
abundant after a favourable wind has blown for a few days, and I have
rowed through masses of them so thick that it seemed like rowing through
thick jelly, two or three feet deep. In an area the length of the boat and
about a yard wide, I have counted over one hundred and fifty _Aurelias_ on
the surface alone.
When one of these "sunfish," as the fishermen call them, is lifted from
the water, the clay-coloured eggs may be seen to stream from it in
myriads. In many jellies, small bodies the size of a pea are visible in
the interior of the mass, and when extracted they prove to be a species of
small shrimp. These are well adapted for their quasi-parasitic life, in
colour being throughout of the same milky semi-opaqueness as their host,
but one very curious thing about them is, that when taken out and placed
in some water in a vial or tumbler they begin to turn darker almost
immediately, and in five minutes all will be of various shades, from red
to a dark brown.
I had no fear of _Aurelia_, but when another free-swimming species of
jelly-fish, _Cyanea_, or the blue-jelly, appeared, I swam ashore with all
speed. This great jelly is usually more of a reddish liver-colour than a
purple, and is much to be dreaded. Its tentacles are of enormous length. I
have seen specimens which measured two feet across the disc, with
streamers fully forty feet long, and one has been recorded seven feet
across and no less than one hundred and twelve feet to the tip of the
cruel tentacles! These trail behind in eight bunches and form a living,
tangled labyrinth as deadly as the hair of the fabled Medusa--whose name
indeed has been so appropriately applied to this division of animals. The
touch of each tentacle to the skin is like a lash of nettle, and there
would be little hope for a diver whose path crossed such a fiery tangle.
The untold myriads of little darts which are shot out secrete a poison
which is terribly irritating.
On the crevice bottoms a sight now and then meets my eyes which brings the
"devil-fish" of Victor Hugo's romance vividly to mind,--a misshapen squid
making its way snakily over the shells and seaweed. Its large eyes gaze
fixedly around and the arms reach alternately forward, the sucking cups
lined with their cruel teeth closing over the inequalities of the bottom.
The creature may suddenly change its mode of progression and shoot like an
arrow, backward and upward. If we watch one in its passage over areas of
seaweed and sand, a wonderful adaptation becomes apparent. Its colour
changes continually; when near sand it is of a sombre brown hue, then
blushes of colour pass over it and the tint changes, corresponding to the
seaweed or patches of pink sponge over which it swims. The way in which
this is accomplished is very ingenious and loses nothing by examination.
Beneath the skin are numerous cells filled with liquid pigment. When at
rest these contract until they are almost invisible, appearing as very
small specks or dots on the surface of the body. When the animal wishes to
change its hue, certain muscles which radiate from these colour cells are
shortened, drawing the cells out in all directions until they seem
confluent. It is as if the freckles on a person's face should be all
joined together, when an ordinary tan would result.
From bottoms ten to twenty fathoms below the surface, deeper than mortal
eye can probably ever hope to reach, the dredge brings up all manner of
curious things; basket starfish, with arms divided and subdivided into
many tendrils, on the tips of which it walks, the remaining part
converging upward like the trellis of a vine-covered summer house. Sponges
of many hues must fairly carpet large areas of the deep water, as the
dredge is often loaded with them. The small shore-loving ones which I
photographed are in perfect health, but the camera cannot show the many
tiny currents of water pouring in food and oxygen at the smaller openings,
and returning in larger streams from the tall funnels on the surface of
the sponge, which a pinch of carmine dust reveals so beautifully. From the
deeper aquatic gardens come up great orange and yellow sponges, two and
three feet in length, and around the bases of these the weird serpent
stars are clinging, while crabs scurry away as the mass reaches the
surface of the water.
Treasures from depths of forty and even fifty fathoms can be obtained when
a trip is taken with the trawl-men. One can sit fascinated for hours,
watching the hundreds of yards of line reel in, with some interesting
creature on each of the thirty-seven hundred odd hooks. At times a glance
down into the clear water will show a score of fish in sight at once,
hake, haddock, cod, halibut, dog-fish, and perhaps an immense "barndoor"
skate, a yard or more square. This latter hold back with frantic flaps of
its great "wings," and tax all the strength of the sturdy Acadian
fishermen to pull it to the gunwale.
Now and then a huge "meat-rock," the fishermen's apt name for an anemone,
comes up, impaled on a hook, and still clinging to a stone of five to ten
pounds weight. These gigantic scarlet ones from full fifty fathoms far
surpass any near shore. Occasionally the head alone of a large fish will
appear, with the entire body bitten clean off, a hint of the monsters
which must haunt the lower depths. The pressure of the air must be
excessive, for many of the fishes have their swimming bladders fairly
forced out of their mouths by the lessening of atmospheric pressure as
they are drawn to the surface. When a basket starfish finds one of the
baits in that sunless void far beneath our boat, he hugs it so tenaciously
that the upward jerks of the reel only make him hold the more tightly.
Once in a great while the fishermen find what they call a "knob-fish" on
one of their hooks, and I never knew what they meant until one day a small
colony of five was brought ashore. _Boltenia_, the scientists call them,
tall, queer-shaped things; a stalk six to eight inches in length, with a
knob or oblong bulb-like body at the summit, looking exactly like the
flower of a lady-slipper orchid and as delicately coloured. This is a
member of that curious family of Ascidians, which forever trembles in the
balance between the higher backboned animals and the lower division, where
are classified the humbler insects, crabs, and snails. The young of
_Boltenia_ promises everything in its tiny backbone or notochord, but it
all ends in promise, for that shadow of a great ambition withers away, and
the creature is doomed to a lowly and vegetative life. If we soften the
hard scientific facts which tell us of these dumb, blind creatures, with
the humane mellowing thought of the oneness of all life, we will find much
that is pathetic and affecting in their humble biographies from our point
of view. And yet these cases of degeneration are far from anything like
actual misfortunes, or mishaps of nature, as Buffon was so fond of
thinking. These creatures have found their adult mode of life more free
from competition than any other, and hence their adoption of it. It is
only another instance of exquisite adaptation to an unfilled niche in the
life of the world.
Yet another phase of enjoying the life of these northern waters; the one
which comes after all the work and play of collecting is over for the day,
after the last specimen is given a fresh supply of water for the night,
and the final note in our journal is written. Then, as dusk falls, we make
our way to the beach, ship our rudder and oars and push slowly along
shore, or drift quietly with the tide. The stars may come out in clear
splendour and the visual symphony of the northern lights play over the
dark vault above us, or all may be obscured in lowering, leaden clouds.
But the lights of the sea are never obscured--they always shine with a
splendour which keeps one entranced for hours.
At night the ripples and foam of the Fundy shores seem transformed to
molten silver and gold, and after each receding wave the emerald seaweed
is left dripping with millions of sparkling lights, shining with a living
lustre which would pale the brightest gem. Each of these countless sparks
is a tiny animal, as perfect in its substance and as well adapted to its
cycle of life as the highest created being. The wonderful way in which
this phosphorescence permeates everything--the jelly-fish seeming elfish
fireworks as they throb through the water with rhythmic beats--the fish
brilliantly lighted up and plainly visible as they dart about far beneath
the surface--makes such a night on the Bay of Fundy an experience to be
always remembered.
Like the tints on a crescent sea beach
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in--
Come, from the mystic ocean,
Whose rim no foot has trod--
Some of us call it longing,
And others call it God.
W. H. Carruth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JULY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIRDS IN A CITY
We frequently hear people say that if only they lived in the country they
would take up the study of birds with great interest, but that a city life
prevented any nature study. To show how untrue this is, I once made a
census of wild birds which were nesting in the New York Zoological Park,
which is situated within the limits of New York City. Part of the Park is
wooded, while much space is given up to the collections of birds and
animals. Throughout the year thousands of people crowd the walks and
penetrate to every portion of the grounds; yet in spite of this lack of
seclusion no fewer than sixty-one species build their nests here and
successfully rear their young. The list was made without shooting a single
bird and in each instance the identification was absolute. This shows what
a little protection will accomplish, while many places of equal area in
the country which are harried by boys and cats are tenanted by a bare
dozen species.
Let us see what a walk in late June, or especially in July, will show of
these bold invaders of our very city. Wild wood ducks frequently decoy to
the flocks of pinioned birds and sometimes mate with some of them. One
year a wild bird chose as its mate a little brown female, a pinioned bird,
and refused to desert her even when the brood of summer ducklings was
being caught and pinioned. Such devotion is rare indeed.
In the top of one of the most inaccessible trees in the Park a great rough
nest of sticks shows where a pair of black-crowned night herons have made
their home for years, and from the pale green eggs hatch the most awkward
of nestling herons, which squawk and grow to their prime, on a diet of
small fish. When they are able to fly they pay frequent visits to their
relations in the great flying cage, perching on the top and gazing with
longing eyes at the abundant feasts of fish which are daily brought by the
keepers to their charges. This duck and heron are the only ones of their
orders thus to honour the Park by nesting, although a number of other
species are not uncommon during the season of migration.
Of the waders which in the spring and fall teeter along the bank of the
Bronx River, only a pair or two of spotted sandpipers remain throughout
the nesting period, content to lay their eggs in some retired spot in the
corner of a field, where there is the least danger to them and to the
fluffy balls of long-legged down which later appear and scurry about. The
great horned owl and the red-tailed hawk formerly nested in the park, but
the frequent noise of blasting and the building operations have driven
them to more isolated places, and of their relatives there remain only the
little screech owls and the sparrow hawks. The latter feed chiefly upon
English sparrows and hence are worthy of the most careful protection.
These birds should be encouraged to build near our homes, and if not
killed or driven away sometimes choose the eaves of our houses as their
domiciles and thus, by invading the very haunts of the sparrows, they
would speedily lessen their numbers. A brood of five young hawks was
recently taken from a nest under the eaves of a school-house in this city.
I immediately took this as a text addressed to the pupils, and the
principal was surprised to learn that these birds were so valuable. In the
Park the sparrow hawks nest in a hollow tree, as do the screech owls.
Other most valuable birds which nest in the Park are the black-billed and
yellow-billed cuckoos, whose depredations among the hairy and spiny
caterpillars should arouse our gratitude. For these insects are refused by
almost all other birds, and were it not for these slim, graceful creatures
they would increase to prodigious numbers. Their two or three light blue
eggs are always laid on the frailest of frail platforms made of a few
sticks. The belted kingfisher bores into the bank of the river and rears
his family of six or eight in the dark, ill-odoured chamber at the end.
Young cuckoos and kingfishers are the quaintest of young birds. Their
plumage does not come out a little at a time, as in other nestlings, but
the sheaths which surround the growing feathers remain until they are an
inch or more in length; then one day, in the space of only an hour or so,
the overlapping armour of bluish tiles bursts and the plumage assumes a
normal appearance.
The little black-and-white downy and the flicker are the two woodpeckers
which make the Park their home. Both nest in hollows bored out by their
strong beaks, but although full of splinters and sawdust, such a
habitation is far superior to the sooty chimneys in which the young
chimney swifts break from their snow-white eggs and twitter for food. How
impatiently they must look up at the blue sky, and one would think that
they must long for the time when they can spread their sickle-shaped wings
and dash about from dawn to dark! Is it not wonderful that one of them
should live to grow up when we think of the fragile little cup which is
their home?--a mosaic of delicate twigs held together only by the sticky
saliva of the parent birds.
A relation of theirs--though we should never guess it--is sitting upon her
tiny air castle high up in an apple tree not far away,--a ruby-throated
hummingbird. If we take a peep into the nest when the young hummingbirds
are only partly grown, we shall see that their bills are broad and stubby,
like those of the swifts. Their home, however, is indeed a different
affair,--a pinch of plant-down tied together with cobwebs and stuccoed
with lichens, like those which are growing all about upon the tree. If we
do not watch the female when she settles to her young or eggs we may
search in vain for this tiniest of homes, so closely does it resemble an
ordinary knot on a branch.
The flycatchers are well represented in the Park, there being no fewer
than five species; the least flycatcher, wood pewee, phoebe, crested
flycatcher, and kingbird. The first two prefer the woods, the phoebe
generally selects a mossy rock or a bridge beam, the fourth nests in a
hollow tree and often decorates its home with a snake-skin. The kingbird
builds an untidy nest in an apple tree. Our American crow is, of course, a
member of this little community of birds, and that in spite of
persecution, for in the spring one or two are apt to contract a taste for
young ducklings and hence have to be put out of the way. The fish crow, a
smaller cousin of the big black fellow, also nests here, easily known by
his shriller, higher caw. A single pair of blue jays nest in the Park, but
the English starling occupies every box which is put up and bids fair to
be as great or a greater nuisance than the sparrow. It is a handsome bird
and a fine whistler, but when we remember how this foreigner is slowly but
surely elbowing our native birds out of their rightful haunts, we find
ourselves losing sight of its beauties. The cowbird, of course, imposes
her eggs upon many of the smaller species of birds, while our beautiful
purple grackle, meadow lark, red-winged blackbird, and the Baltimore and
orchard orioles rear their young in safety. The cardinal, scarlet tanager,
indigo bunting, and rose-breasted grosbeak form a quartet of which even a
tropical land might well be proud, and the two latter species have, in
addition to brilliant plumage, very pleasing songs. Such wealth of
æsthetic characteristics are unusual in any one species, the wide-spread
law of compensation decreeing otherwise. More sombre hued seed-eaters
which live their lives in the Park are towhees, swamp, song, field, and
chipping sparrows. The bank and barn swallows skim over field and pond all
through the summer, gleaning their insect harvest from the air, and
building their nests in the places from which they have taken their names.
The rare rough-winged swallow deigns to linger and nest in the Park as
well as do his more common brethren.
The dainty pensile nests which become visible when the leaves fall in the
autumn are swung by four species of vireos, the white-eyed, red-eyed,
warbling, and yellow-throated. Of the interesting and typically North
American family of wood warblers I have numbered no fewer than eight which
nest in the Park; these are the redstart, the yellow-breasted chat,
northern yellow-throat, oven-bird, the yellow warbler, blue-winged,
black-and-white creeping warblers, and one other to be mentioned later.
Injurious insects find their doom when the young house and Carolina wrens
are on the wing. Catbirds and robins are among the most abundant breeders,
while chickadees and white-breasted nuthatches are less often seen. The
bluebird haunts the hollow apple trees, and of the thrushes proper the
veery or Wilson's and the splendid wood thrush sing to their mates on the
nests among the saplings.
The rarest of all the birds which I have found nesting in the Park is a
little yellow and green warbler, with a black throat and sides of the
face, known as the Lawrence warbler. Only a few of his kind have ever been
seen, and strange to say his mate was none other than a demure blue-winged
warbler. His nest was on the ground and from it six young birds flew to
safety and not to museum drawers.
NIGHT MUSIC OF THE SWAMP
To many, a swamp or marsh brings only the very practical thought of
whether it can be readily drained. Let us rejoice, however, that many
marshes cannot be thus easily wiped out of existence, and hence they
remain as isolated bits of primeval wilderness, hedged about by farms and
furrows. The water is the life-blood of the marsh,--drain it, and reed and
rush, bird and batrachian, perish or disappear. The marsh, to him who
enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and
stagnation,--melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of
Nature undisturbed by man.
The ideal marsh is as far as one can go from civilisation. The depths of a
wood holds its undiscovered secrets; the mysterious call of the veery
lends a wildness that even to-day has not ceased to pervade the old wood.
There are spots overgrown with fern and carpeted with velvety wet moss;
here also the skunk cabbage and cowslip grow rank among the alders. Surely
man cannot live near this place--but the tinkle of a cowbell comes faintly
on the gentle stirring breeze--and our illusion is dispelled, the charm is
broken.
But even to-day, when we push the punt through the reeds from the clear
river into the narrow, tortuous channel of the marsh, we have left
civilisation behind us. The great ranks of the cat-tails shut out all view
of the outside world; the distant sounds of civilisation serve only to
accentuate the isolation. It is the land of the Indian, as it was before
the strange white man, brought from afar in great white-sailed ships, came
to usurp the land of the wondering natives. At any moment we fancy that we
may see an Indian canoe silently round a bend in the channel.
The marsh has remained unchanged since the days when the Mohican Indians
speared fish there. We are living in a bygone time. A little green heron
flies across the water. How wild he is; nothing has tamed him. He also is
the same now as always. He does not nest in orchard or meadow, but holds
himself aloof, making no concessions to man and the ever increasing spread
of his civilisation. He does not come to his doors for food. He can find
food for himself and in abundance; he asks only to be let alone. Nor does
he intrude himself. Occasionally we meet him along our little meadow
stream, but he makes no advances. As we come suddenly upon him, how
indignant he seems at being disturbed in his hunting. Like the Indian, he
is jealous of his ancient domain and resents intrusion. He retires,
however, throwing back to us a cry of disdain. Here in the marsh is the
last stand of primitive nature in the settled country; here is the last
stronghold of the untamed. The bulrushes rise in ranks, like the spears of
a great army, surrounding and guarding the colony of the marsh.
There seems to be a kinship between the voices of the marsh dwellers. Most
of them seem to have a muddy, aquatic note. The boom of the frog sounds
like some great stone dropped into the water; the little marsh wren's song
is the "babble and tinkle of water running out of a silver flask."
The blackbird seems to be the one connecting link between the highlands
and the lowlands. Seldom does one see other citizens of the marsh in the
upland. How glorious is the flight of a great blue heron from one
feeding-ground to another! He does not tarry over the foreign territory,
nor does he hurry. With neck and head furled close and legs straight out
behind, he pursues his course, swerving neither to the right nor the
left.
"Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As darkly painted on the crimson sky
Thy figure floats along."
The blackbirds, however, are more neighbourly. They even forage in the
foreign territory, returning at night to sleep.
In nesting time the red-wing is indeed a citizen of the lowland. His voice
is as distinctive of the marsh as is the croak of the frog, and from a
distance it is one of the first sounds to greet the ear. How beautiful is
his clear whistle with its liquid break! Indeed one may say that he is the
most conspicuous singer of the marshlands. His is not a sustained song,
but the exuberant expression of a happy heart.
According to many writers the little marsh wren is without song. No song!
As well say that the farmer boy's whistling as he follows the plough, or
the sailor's song as he hoists the sail, is not music! All are the songs
of the lowly, the melody of those glad to be alive and out in the free
air.
When man goes into the marsh, the marsh retires within itself, as a turtle
retreats within his shell. With the exception of a few blackbirds and
marsh wrens, babbling away the nest secret, and an occasional frog's
croak, all the inhabitants have stealthily retired. The spotted turtle has
slid from the decayed log as the boat pushed through the reeds. At our
approach the heron has flown and the little Virginia rail has scuttled
away among the reeds.
Remain perfectly quiet, however, and give the marsh time to regain its
composure. One by one the tenants of the swamp will take up the trend of
their business where it was interrupted.
All about, the frogs rest on the green carpet of the lily pads, basking in
the sun. The little rail again runs among the reeds, searching for food in
the form of small snails. The blackbirds and wrens, most domestic in
character, go busily about their home business; the turtles again come up
to their positions, and a muskrat swims across the channel. One hopes that
the little colony of marsh wren homes on stilts above the water, like the
ancient lake dwellers of Tenochtitlan, may have no enemies. But the habit
of building dummy nests is suggestive that the wee birds are pitting their
wits against the cunning of some enemy,--and suspicion rests upon the
serpent.
As evening approaches and the shadows from the bordering wood point long
fingers across the marsh, the blackbirds straggle back from their
feeding-grounds and settle, clattering, among the reeds. Their clamour
dies gradually away and night settles down upon the marsh.
* * * * *
All sounds have ceased save the booming of the frogs, which but emphasises
the loneliness of it all. A distant whistle of a locomotive dispels the
idea that all the world is wilderness. The firefly lamps glow along the
margin of the rushes. The frogs are now in full chorus, the great bulls
beating their tom-toms and the small fry filling in the chinks with
shriller cries. How remote the scene and how melancholy the chorus!
To one mind there is a quality in the frogs' serenade that strikes the
chord of sadness, to another the chord of contentment, to still another it
is the chant of the savage, just as the hoot of an owl or the bark of a
fox brings vividly to mind the wilderness.
Out of the night comes softly the croon of a little screech owl--that cry
almost as ancient as the hills. It belongs with the soil beneath our
towns. It is the spirit of the past crying to us. So the dirge of the frog
is the cry of the spirit of river and marshland.
Our robins and bluebirds are of the orchard and the home of man, but who
can claim neighbourship to the bittern or the bullfrog? There is nothing
of civilisation in the hoarse croak of the great blue heron. These are all
barbarians and their songs are of the untamed wilderness.
The moon rises over the hills. The mosquitoes have become savage. The
marsh has tolerated us as long as it cares to, and we beat our retreat.
The night hawks swoop down and boom as they pass overhead. One feels
thankful that the mosquitoes are of some good in furnishing food to so
graceful a bird.
A water snake glides across the channel, leaving a silver wake in the
moonlight. The frogs plunk into the water as we push past. A night heron
rises from the margin of the river and slowly flops away. The bittern
booms again as we row down the peaceful river, and we leave the marshland
to its ancient and rightful owners.
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose and silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow; a thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr.
Sidney Lanier.
THE COMING OF MAN
If we betake ourselves to the heart of the deepest forests which are still
left upon our northern hills, and compare the bird life which we find
there with that in the woods and fields near our homes, we shall at once
notice a great difference. Although the coming of mankind with his axe and
plough has driven many birds and animals far away or actually exterminated
them, there are many others which have so thrived under the new conditions
that they are far more numerous than when the tepees of the red men alone
broke the monotony of the forest.
We might walk all day in the primitive woods and never see or hear a
robin, while in an hour's stroll about a village we can count scores. Let
us observe how some of these quick-witted feathered beings have taken
advantage of the way in which man is altering the whole face of the land.
A pioneer comes to a spot in the virgin forest which pleases him and
proceeds at once to cut down the trees in order to make a clearing. The
hermit thrush soothes his labour with its wonderful song; the pileated
woodpecker pounds its disapproval upon a near-by hollow tree; the deer and
wolf take a last look out through the trees and flee from the spot
forever. A house and barn arise; fields become covered with waving grass
and grain; a neglected patch of burnt forest becomes a tangle of
blackberry and raspberry; an orchard is set out.
When the migrating birds return, they are attracted to this new scene. The
decaying wood of fallen trees is a paradise for ants, flies, and beetles;
offering to swallows, creepers, and flycatchers feasts of abundance never
dreamed of in the primitive forests. Straightway, what must have been a
cave swallow becomes a barn swallow; the haunter of rock ledges changes to
an eave swallow; the nest in the niche of the cliff is deserted and phoebe
becomes a bridgebird; cedarbirds are renamed cherrybirds, and catbirds and
other low-nesting species find the blackberry patch safer than the
sweetbrier vine in the deep woods. The swift leaves the lightning-struck
hollow tree where owl may harry or snake intrude, for the chimney
flue--sooty but impregnable.
When the great herds of ruminants disappear from the western prairies, the
buffalo birds without hesitation become cowbirds, and when the plough
turns up the never-ending store of grubs and worms the birds lose all fear
and follow at the very heels of the plough-boy: grackles, vesper sparrows,
and larks in the east, and flocks of gulls farther to the westward.
The crow surpasses all in the keen wit which it pits against human
invasion and enmity. The farmer declares war (all unjustly) against these
sable natives, but they jeer at his gun and traps and scarecrows, and
thrive on, killing the noxious insects, devouring the diseased
corn-sprouts,--doing great good to the farmer in spite of himself.
The story of these sudden adaptations to conditions which the birds could
never have foreseen is a story of great interest and it has been but half
told. Climb the nearest hill or mountain or even a tall tree and look out
upon the face of the country. Keep in mind you are a bird and not a
human,--you neither know nor understand anything of the reason for these
strange sights,--these bipeds who cover the earth with great square
structures, who scratch the ground for miles, who later gnaw the
vegetation with great shining teeth, and who are only too often on the
look out to bring sudden death if one but show a feather. What would you
do?
THE SILENT LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS
What a great difference there is in brilliancy of colouring between birds
and the furry creatures. How the plumage of a cardinal, or indigo bunting,
or hummingbird glows in the sunlight, and reflects to our eyes the most
intense vermilion or indigo or an iridescence of the whole gamut of
colour. On the other hand, how sombrely clad are the deer, the rabbits,
and the mice; gray and brown and white being the usual hue of their fur.
This difference is by no means accidental, but has for its cause a deep
significance,--all-important to the life of the bird or mammal. Scientists
have long known of it, and if we unlock it from its hard sheathing of
technical terms, we shall find it as simple and as easy to understand as
it is interesting. When we once hold the key, it will seem as if scales
had fallen from our eyes, and when we take our walks abroad through the
fields and woods, when we visit a zoological park, or even see the animals
in a circus, we shall feel as though a new world were opened to us.
No post offices, or even addresses, exist for birds and mammals; when the
children of the desert or the jungle are lost, no detective or policeman
hastens to find them, no telephone or telegraph aids in the search. Yet,
without any of these accessories, the wild creatures have marvellous
systems of communication. The five senses (and perhaps a mysterious sixth,
at which we can only guess) are the telephones and the police, the
automatic sentinels and alarms of our wild kindred. Most inferior are our
own abilities in using eyes, nose, and ears, when compared with the same
functions in birds and animals.
Eyes and noses are important keys to the bright colours of birds and
comparative sombreness of hairy-coated creatures. Take a dog and an oriole
as good examples of the two extremes. When a dog has lost his master, he
first looks about; then he strains his eyes with the intense look of a
near-sighted person, and after a few moments of this he usually yelps with
disappointment, drops his nose to the ground, and with unfailing accuracy
follows the track of his master. When the freshness of the trail tells him
that he is near its end he again resorts to his eyes, and is soon near
enough to recognise the face he seeks. A fox when running before a hound
may double back, and make a close reconnaissance near his trail, sometimes
passing in full view without the hound's seeing him or stopping in
following out the full curve of the trail, so completely does the
wonderful power of smell absorb the entire attention of the dog.
Let us now turn to the oriole. As we might infer, the nostrils incased in
horn render the sense of smell of but slight account. It is hard to tell
how much a bird can distinguish in this way--probably only the odour of
food near at hand. However, when we examine the eye of our bird, we see a
sense organ of a very high order. Bright, intelligent, full-circled, of
great size compared to the bulk of the skull, protected by three complete
eyelids; we realise that this must play an important part in the life of
the bird. There are, of course, many exceptions to such a generalisation
as this. For instance, many species of sparrows are dull-coloured. We must
remember that the voice--the calls and songs of birds--is developed to a
high degree, and in many instances renders bright colouring needless in
attracting a mate or in locating a young bird.
As we have seen, the sense of smell is very highly developed among
four-footed animals, but to make this efficient there must be something
for it to act upon; and in this connection we find some interesting facts
of which, outside of scientific books, little has been written. On the
entire body, birds have only one gland--the oil gland above the base of
the tail, which supplies an unctuous dressing for the feathers. Birds,
therefore, have not the power of perspiring, but compensate for this by
very rapid breathing. On the contrary, four-footed animals have glands on
many portions of the body. Nature is seldom contented with the one primary
function which an organ or tissue performs, but adjusts and adapts it to
others in many ingenious ways. Hence, when an animal perspires, the pores
of the skin allow the contained moisture to escape and moisten the surface
of the body; but in addition to this, in many animals, collections of
these pores in the shape of large glands secrete various odours which
serve important uses. In the skunk such a gland is a practically perfect
protection against attacks from his enemies. He never hurries and seems
not to know what fear is--a single wave of his conspicuous danger signal
is sufficient to clear his path.
In certain species of the rhinoceros there are large glands in the foot.
These animals live among grass and herbage which they brush against as
they walk, and thus "blaze" a plain trail for the mate or young to follow.
There are few if any animals which care to face a rhinoceros, so the scent
is incidentally useful to other creatures as a warning.
It is believed that the hard callosities on the legs of horses are the
remains of glands which were once upon a time useful to their owners; and
it is said that if a paring from one of these hard, horny structures be
held to the nose of a horse, he will follow it about, hinting, perhaps,
that in former days the scent from the gland was an instinctive guide
which kept members of the herd together.
"Civet," which is obtained from the civet cat, and "musk," from the queer
little hornless musk deer, are secretions of glands. It has been suggested
that the defenceless musk deer escapes many of its enemies by the
similarity of its secretion to the musky odour of crocodiles. In many
animals which live together in herds, such as the antelope and deer, and
which have neither bright colours nor far-reaching calls to aid straying
members to regain the flock, there are large and active scent glands. The
next time you see a live antelope in a zoological park, or even a stuffed
specimen, look closely at the head, and between the eye and the nostril a
large opening will be seen on each, side, which, in the living animal,
closes now and then, a flap of skin shutting it tight.
Among pigs the fierce peccary is a very social animal, going in large
packs; and on the back of each of these creatures is found a large gland
from which a clear watery fluid is secreted. Dogs and wolves also have
their odour-secreting glands on the back, and the "wolf-pack" is
proverbial.
The gland of the elephant is on the temple, and secretes only when the
animal is in a dangerous mood, a hint, therefore, of opposite significance
to that of the herding animals, as this says, "Let me alone! stay away!"
Certain low species of monkeys, the lemurs, have a remarkable bare patch
on the forearm, which covers a gland serving some use.
If we marvel at the keenness of scent among animals, how incredible seems
the similar sense in insects--similar in function, however different the
medium of structure may be. Think of the scent from a female moth, so
delicate that we cannot distinguish it, attracting a male of the same
species from a distance of a mile or more. Entomologists sometimes confine
a live female moth or other insect in a small wire cage and hang it
outdoors in the evening, and in a short time reap a harvest of gay-winged
suitors which often come in scores, instinctively following up the trail
of the delicate, diffused odour. It is surely true that the greatest
wonders are not always associated with mere bulk.
INSECT MUSIC
Among insects, sounds are produced in many ways, and for various reasons.
A species of ant which makes its nest on the under side of leaves produces
a noise by striking the leaf with its head in a series of spasmodic taps,
and another ant is also very interesting as regards its sound-producing
habit. "Individuals of this species are sometimes spread over a surface of
two square yards, many out of sight of the others; yet the tapping is set
up at the same moment, continued exactly the same space of time, and
stopped at the same instant. After the lapse of a few seconds, all
recommence simultaneously. The interval is always approximately of the
same duration, and each ant does not beat synchronously with every other
ant, but only like those in the same group, so the independent tappings
play a sort of tune, each group alike in time, but the tapping of the
whole mass beginning and ending at the same instant. This is doubtless a
means of communication."
The organ of hearing in insects is still to be discovered in many forms,
but in katydids it is situated on the middle of the fore-legs; in
butterflies on the sides of the thorax, while the tip of the horns or
antennæ of many insects is considered to be the seat of this function. In
all it is little more than a cavity, over which a skin is stretched like a
drum-head, which thus reacts to the vibration. This seems to be very often
"tuned," as it were, to the sounds made by the particular species in which
it is found. A cricket will at times be unaffected by any sound, however
loud, while at the slightest "screek" or chirp of its own species, no
matter how faint, it will start its own little tune in all excitement.
The songs of the cicadas are noted all over the world. Darwin heard them
while anchored half a mile off the South American coast, and a giant
species of that country is said to produce a noise as loud as the whistle
of a locomotive. Only the males sing, the females being dumb, thus giving
rise to the well-known Grecian couplet:
"Happy the cicadas' lives,
For they all have voiceless wives."
Anyone who has entered a wood where thousands of the seventeen-year
cicadas were hatching has never forgotten it. A threshing machine, or a
gigantic frog chorus, is a fair comparison, and when a branch loaded with
these insects is shaken, the sound rises to a shrill screech or scream.
This noise is supposed--in fact is definitely known--to attract the female
insect, and although there may be in it some tender notes which we fail to
distinguish, yet let us hope that the absence of any highly organised
auditory organ may result in reducing the effect of a steam-engine whistle
to an agreeable whisper! It is thought that the vibrations are felt rather
than heard, in the sense that we use the word "hear"; if one has ever had
a cicada _zizz_ in one's hand, the electrical shocks which seem to go up
the arm help the belief in this idea. To many of us the song of the
cicada--softened by distance--will ever be pleasant on account of its
associations. When one attempts to picture a hot August day in a hay-field
or along a dusty road, the drowsy _zee-ing_ of this insect, growing louder
and more accelerated and then as gradually dying away, is a focus for the
mind's eye, around which the other details instantly group themselves.
The apparatus for producing this sound is one of the most complex in all
the animal kingdom. In brief, it consists of two external doors, capable
of being partly opened, and three internal membranes, to one of which is
attached a vibrating muscle, which, put in motion, sets all the others
vibrating in unison.
We attach a great deal of importance to the fact of being educated to the
appreciation of the highest class of music. We applaud our Paderewski, and
year after year are awed and delighted with wonderful operatic music, yet
seldom is the _limitation_ of human perception of musical sounds
considered.
If we wish to appreciate the limits within which the human ear is capable
of distinguishing sounds, we should sit down in a meadow, some hot
midsummer day, and listen to the subdued running murmur of the myriads of
insects. Many are very distinct to our ears and we have little trouble in
tracing them to their source. Such are crickets and grasshoppers, which
fiddle and rasp their roughened hind legs against their wings. Some
butterflies have the power of making a sharp crackling sound by means of
hooks on the wings. The katydid, so annoying to some in its persistent
ditty, so full of reminiscences to others of us, is a large, green,
fiddling grasshopper.
Another sound which is typical of summer is the hum of insects' wings,
sometimes, as near a beehive, rising to a subdued roar. The higher,
thinner song of the mosquito's wings is unfortunately familiar to us, and
we must remember that the varying tone of the hum of each species may be
of the greatest importance to it as a means of recognition. Many beetles
have a projecting horn on the under side of the body which they can snap
against another projection, and by this means call their lady-loves,
literally "playing the bones" in their minstrel serenade.
Although we can readily distinguish the sounds which these insects
produce, yet there are hundreds of small creatures, and even large ones,
which are provided with organs of hearing, but whose language is too fine
for our coarse perceptions. The vibrations--chirps, hums, and clicks--can
be recorded on delicate instruments, but, just as there are shades and
colours at both ends of the spectrum which our eyes cannot perceive, so
there are tones running we know not how far beyond the scale limits which
affect our ears. Some creatures utter noises so shrill, so sharp, that it
pains our ears to listen to them, and these are probably on the borderland
of our sound-world.
Pipe, little minstrels of the waning year,
In gentle concert pipe!
Pipe the warm noons; the mellow harvest near;
The apples dropping ripe;
The sweet sad hush on Nature's gladness laid;
The sounds through silence heard!
Pipe tenderly the passing of the year.
Harriet Mcewen Kimball.
I love to hear thine earnest voice,
Wherever thou art hid,
Thou testy little dogmatist,
Thou pretty Katydid!
Thou mindest me of gentlefolks,--
Old gentlefolks are they,--
Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUGUST
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GRAY DAYS OF BIRDS
The temptation is great, if we love flowers, to pass over the seed time,
when stalks are dried and leaves are shrivelled, no matter how beautiful
may be the adaptation for scattering or preserving the seed or how
wonderful the protective coats guarding against cold or wet. Or if insects
attract us by their many varied interests, we are more enthusiastic over
the glories of the full-winged image than the less conspicuous, though no
less interesting, eggs and chrysalides hidden away in crevices throughout
the long winter.
Thus there seems always a time when we hesitate to talk or write of our
favourite theme, especially if this be some class of life on the earth,
because, perchance, it is not at its best.
Even birds have their gray days, when in the autumn the glory of their
plumage and song has diminished. At this time few of their human admirers
intrude upon them and the birds themselves are only too glad to escape
observation. Collectors of skins disdain to ply their trade, as the
ragged, pin-feathery coats of the birds now make sorry-looking specimens.
But we can find something of interest in birddom, even in this interim.
Nesting is over, say you, when you start out on your tramps in late summer
or early autumn; but do not be too sure. The gray purse of the oriole has
begun to ravel at the edges and the haircloth cup of the chipping sparrow
is already wind-distorted, but we shall find some housekeeping just
begun.
The goldfinch is one of these late nesters. Long after his northern
cousins, the pine siskins and snowflakes, have laid their eggs and reared
their young, the goldfinch begins to focus the aerial loops of his flight
about some selected spot and to collect beakfuls of thistledown. And here,
perhaps, we have his fastidious reason for delaying. Thistles seed with
the goldenrod, and not until this fleecy substance is gray and floating
does he consider that a suitable nesting material is available.
When the young birds are fully fledged one would think the goldfinch a
polygamist, as we see him in shining yellow and black, leading his family
quintet, all sombre hued, his patient wife being to our eyes
indistinguishable from the youngsters.
But in the case of most of the birds the cares of nesting are past, and
the woods abound with full-sized but awkward young birds, blundering
through their first month of insect-hunting and fly-catching, tumbling
into the pools from which they try to drink, and shrieking with the very
joy of life, when it would be far safer for that very life if they
remained quiet.
It is a delightful period this, a transition as interesting as evanescent.
This is the time when instinct begins to be aided by intelligence, when
every hour accumulates fact upon fact, all helping to co-ordinate action
and desire on the part of the young birds.
No hint of migration has yet passed over the land, and the quiet of summer
still reigns; but even as we say this a confused chuckling is heard; this
rises into a clatter of harsh voices, and a small flock of blackbirds--two
or three families--pass overhead. The die is cast! No matter how hot may
be the sunshine during succeeding days, or how contented and thoughtless
of the future the birds may appear, there is a something which has gone,
and which can never return until another cycle of seasons has passed.
During this transition time some of our friends are hardly recognisable;
we may surprise the scarlet tanager in a plumage which seems more
befitting a nonpareil bunting,--a regular "Joseph's coat." The red of his
head is half replaced with a ring of green, and perhaps a splash of the
latter decorates the middle of his back. When he flies the light shows
through his wings in two long narrow slits, where a pair of primaries are
lacking. It is a wise provision of Nature which regulates the moulting
sequence of his flight feathers, so that only a pair shall fall out at one
time, and the adjoining pair not before the new feathers are large and
strong. A sparrow or oriole hopping along the ground with angular,
half-naked wings would be indeed a pitiful sight, except to marauding
weasels and cats, who would find meals in abundance on every hand.
Let us take our way to some pond or lake, thick with duckweed and beloved
of wild fowl, and we shall find a different state of affairs. We surprise
a group of mallard ducks, which rush out from the overhanging bank and
dive for safety among the sheltering green arrowheads. But their outspread
wings are a mockery, the flight feathers showing as a mere fringe of quill
sticks, which beat the water helplessly.
Another thing we notice. Where are the resplendent drakes? Have they flown
elsewhere and left their mates to endure the dangers of moulting alone?
Let us come here a week later and see what a transformation is taking
place. When most birds moult it is for a period of several months, but
these ducks have a partial fall moult which is of the greatest importance
to them. When the wing feathers begin to loosen in their sockets an
unfailing instinct leads these birds to seek out some secluded pond, where
they patiently await the moult. The sprouting, blood-filled quills force
out the old feathers, and the bird becomes a thing of the water, to swim
and to dive, with no more power of flight than its pond companions, the
turtles.
If, however, the drake should retain his iridescent head and snowy collar,
some sharp-eyed danger would spy out his helplessness and death would
swoop upon him. So for a time his bright feathers fall out and a quick
makeshift disguise closes over him--the reed-hued browns and grays of his
mate--and for a time the pair are hardly distinguishable. With the return
of his power of flight comes renewed brightness, and the wild drake
emerges from his seclusion on strong-feathered, whistling wings. All this
we should miss, did we not seek him out at this season; otherwise the few
weeks would pass and we should notice no change from summer to winter
plumage, and attribute his temporary absence to a whim of wandering on
distant feeding grounds.
Another glance at our goldfinch shows a curious sight. Mottled with spots
and streaks, yellow alternating with greenish, he is an anomaly indeed,
and in fact all of our birds which undergo a radical colour change will
show remarkable combinations during the actual process.
It is during the gray days that the secret to a great problem may be
looked for--the why of migration.
A young duck of the year, whose wings are at last strong and fit, waves
them in ecstasy, vibrating from side to side and end to end of his natal
pond. Then one day we follow his upward glances to where a thin, black
arrow is throbbing southward, so high in the blue sky that the individual
ducks are merged into a single long thread. The young bird, calling again
and again, spurns the water with feet and wings, finally rising in a
slowly ascending arc. Somewhere, miles to the southward, another segment
approaches--touches--merges.
But what of our smaller birds? When the gray days begin to chill we may
watch them hopping among the branches all day in their search for
insects--a keener search now that so many of the more delicate flies and
bugs have fallen chilled to the earth. Toward night the birds become more
restless, feed less, wander aimlessly about, but, as we can tell by their
chirps, remain near us until night has settled down. Then the irresistible
maelstrom of migration instinct draws them upward,--upward,--climbing on
fluttering wings, a mile or even higher into the thin air, and in company
with thousands and tens of thousands they drift southward, sending vague
notes down, but themselves invisible to us, save when now and then a tiny
black mote floats across the face of the moon--an army of feathered mites,
passing from tundra and spruce to bayou and palm.
In the morning, instead of the half-hearted warble of an insect eater,
there sounds in our ears, like the ring of skates on ice, the metallic,
whip-like chirp of a snowbird, confident of his winter's seed feast.
LIVES OF THE LANTERN BEARERS
To all wild creatures fire is an unknown and hated thing, although it is
often so fascinating to them that they will stand transfixed gazing at its
mysterious light, while a hunter, unnoticed, creeps up behind and shoots
them.
In the depth of the sea, where the sun is powerless to send a single ray
of light and warmth, there live many strange beings, fish and worms,
which, by means of phosphorescent spots and patches, may light their own
way. Of these strange sea folk we know nothing except from the fragments
which are brought to the surface by the dredge; but over our fields and
hedges, throughout the summer nights, we may see and study most
interesting examples of creatures which produce their own light. Heedless
of whether the moon shines brightly, or whether an overcast sky cloaks the
blackest of nights, the fireflies blaze their sinuous path through life.
These little yellow and black beetles, which illumine our way like a cloud
of tiny meteors, have indeed a wonderful power, for the light which they
produce within their own bodies is a cold glow, totally different from any
fire of human agency.
In some species there seems to be a most romantic reason for their
brilliance. Down among the grass blades are lowly, wingless creatures--the
female fireflies, which, as twilight falls, leave their earthen burrows in
the turf and, crawling slowly to the summit of some plant, they display
the tiny lanterns which Nature has kindled within their bodies.
Far overhead shoot the strong-winged males, searching for their minute
insect food, weaving glowing lines over all the shadowy landscape, and
apparently heedless of all beneath them. Yet when the dim little beacon,
hung out with the hopefulness of instinct upon the grass blade, is seen,
all else is forgotten and the beetle descends to pay court to the poor,
worm-like creature, so unlike him in appearance, but whose little
illumination is her badge of nobility. The gallant suitor is as devoted as
if the object of his affection were clad in all the gay colours of a
butterfly; and he is fortunate if, when he has reached the signal among
the grasses, he does not find a half-dozen firefly rivals before him.
When insects seek their mates by day, their characteristic colours or
forms may be confused with surrounding objects; or those which by night
are able in that marvellous way to follow the faintest scent up wind may
have difficulties when cross currents of air are encountered; but the
female firefly, waiting patiently upon her lowly leaf, has unequalled
opportunity for winning her mate, for there is nothing to compare with or
eclipse her flame. Except--I wonder if ever a firefly has hastened
downward toward the strange glow which we sometimes see in the heart of
decayed wood,--mistaking a patch of fox-fire for the love-light of which
he was in search!
In other species, including the common one about our homes, the lady
lightning-bug is more fortunate in possessing wings and is able to fly
abroad like her mate.
Although this phosphorescence has been microscopically examined, it is but
slightly understood. We know, however, that it is a wonderful process of
combustion,--by which a bright light is produced without heat, smoke, or
indeed fuel, except that provided by the life processes in the tiny body
of the insect.
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Shakespeare.
A STARFISH AND A DAISY
Day after day the forms of horses, dogs, birds, and other creatures pass
before our eyes. We look at them and call them by the names which we have
given them, and yet--we see them not. That is to say, we say that they
have a head, a tail; they run or fly; they are of one colour beneath,
another above, but beyond these bare meaningless facts most of us never
go.
Let us think of the meaning of form. Take, for example, a flower--a daisy.
Now, if we could imagine such an impossible thing as that a daisy blossom
should leave its place of growth, creep down the stem and go wandering off
through the grass, soon something would probably happen to its shape. It
would perhaps get in the habit of creeping with some one ray always in
front, and the friction of the grass stems on either side would soon wear
and fray the ends of the side rays, while those behind might grow longer
and longer. If we further suppose that this strange daisy flower did not
like the water, the rays in front might be of service in warning it to
turn aside. When their tips touched the surface and were wet by the water
of some pool, the ambulatory blossom would draw back and start out in a
new direction. Thus a theoretical head (with the beginnings of the organs
of sense), and a long-drawn-out tail, would have their origin.
Such a remarkable simile is not as fanciful as it might at first appear;
for although we know of no blossom which so sets at naught the sedentary
life of the vegetable kingdom, yet among certain of the animals which live
their lives beneath the waves of the sea a very similar thing occurs.
Many miles inland, even on high mountains, we may sometimes see thousands
of little joints, or bead-like forms, imbedded in great rocky cliffs. They
have been given the name of St. Cuthbert's beads. Occasionally in the
vicinity of these fossils--for such they are--are found impressions of a
graceful, flower-like head, with many delicately divided petals, fixed
forever in the hard relief of stone. The name of stone lilies has been
applied to them. The beads were once strung together in the form of a long
stem, and at the top the strangely beautiful animal-lily nodded its head
in the currents of some deep sea, which in the long ago of the earth's age
covered the land--millions of years before the first man or beast or bird
drew breath.
It was for a long time supposed that these wonderful creatures were
extinct, but dredges have brought up from the dark depths of the sea
actual living stone lilies, or _crinoids_, this being their real name. Few
of us will probably ever have an opportunity of studying a crinoid alive,
although in our museums we may see them preserved in glass jars. That,
however, detracts nothing from the marvel of their history and
relationship. They send root-like organs deep into the mud, where they
coil about some shell and there cling fast. Then the stem grows tall and
slender, and upon the summit blooms or is developed the animal-flower. Its
nourishment is not drawn from the roots and the air, as is that of the
daisy, but is provided by the tiny creatures which swim to its tentacles,
or are borne thither by the ocean currents. Some of these crinoids, as if
impatient of their plant-like life and asserting their animal kinship, at
last tear themselves free from their stem and float off, turn over, and
thereafter live happily upon the bottom of the sea, roaming where they
will, creeping slowly along and fulfilling the destiny of our imaginary
daisy.
And here a comparison comes suddenly to mind. How like to a many-rayed
starfish is our creeping crinoid! Few of us, unless we had studies about
these creatures, could distinguish between a crinoid and one of the frisky
little dancing stars, or serpent stars, which are so common in the rocky
caves along our coast. This relationship is no less real than apparent.
The hard-skinned "five finger," or common starfish, which we may pick up
on any beach, while it never grew upon a stem, yet still preserves the
radial symmetry of its stalked ancestors. Pick up your starfish, carry it
to the nearest field, and pluck a daisy close to the head. How interesting
the comparison becomes, now that the knowledge of its meaning is plain.
Anything which grows fast upon a single immovable stem tends to grow
equally in all directions. We need not stop here, for we may include sea
anemones and corals, those most marvellously coloured flowers of the sea,
which grow upon a short, thick stalk and send out their tentacles equally
in all directions. And many of the jelly-fish which throb along close
beneath the surface swells were in their youth each a section of a pile of
saucer-like individuals, which were fastened by a single stalk to some
shell or piece of coral.
We will remember that it was suggested that the theoretical daisy would
soon alter its shape after it entered upon active life. This is plainly
seen in the starfish, although at first glance the creature seems as
radially symmetrical as a wheel. But at one side of the body, between two
of the arms, is a tiny perforated plate, serving to strain the water which
enters the body, and thus the circular tendency is broken, and a beginning
made toward right and left handedness. In certain sea-urchins, which are
really starfishes with the gaps between the arms filled up, the body is
elongated, and thus the head and tail conditions of all animals higher in
the scale of life are represented.
THE DREAM OF THE YELLOW-THROAT
Many of us look with longing to the days of Columbus; we chafe at the
thought of no more continents to discover; no unknown seas to encompass.
But at our very doors is an "undiscovered bourne," from which, while the
traveller invariably returns, yet he will have penetrated but slightly
into its mysteries. This unexplored region is night.
When the dusk settles down and the creatures of sunlight seek their rest,
a new realm of life awakens into being. The flaring colours and loud
bustle of the day fade and are lost, and in their place come soft, gray
tones and silence. The scarlet tanager seeks some hidden perch and soon
from the same tree slips a silent, ghostly owl; the ruby of the
hummingbird dies out as the gaudy flowers of day close their petals, and
the gray wraiths of sphinx moths appear and sip nectar from the spectral
moonflowers.
* * * * *
With feet shod with silence, let us creep near a dense tangle of
sweetbrier and woodbine late some summer evening and listen to the sounds
of the night-folk. How few there are that our ears can analyse! We huddle
close to the ground and shut our eyes. Then little by little we open them
and set our senses of sight and hearing at keenest pitch. Even so, how
handicapped are we compared to the wild creatures. A tiny voice becomes
audible, then dies away,--entering for a moment the narrow range of our
coarse hearing,--and finishing its message of invitation or challenge in
vibrations too fine for our ears.
* * * * *
Were we crouched by a dense yew hedge, bordering an English country lane,
a nightingale might delight us,--a melody of day, softened, adapted, to
the night. If the air about us was heavy with the scent of orange blossoms
of some covert in our own southland, the glorious harmony of a mockingbird
might surge through the gloom,--assuaging the ear as do the blossoms
another sense.
But sitting still in our own home tangle let us listen,--listen. Our eyes
have slipped the scales of our listless civilised life and pierce the
darkness with the acuteness of our primeval forefathers; our ears tingle
and strain.
A slender tongue of sound arises from the bush before us. Again and again
it comes, muffled but increasing in volume. A tiny ball of feathers is
perched in the centre of the tangle, with beak hidden in the deep, soft
plumage, but ever and anon the little body throbs and the song falls
gently on the silence of the night: "I beseech you! I beseech you! I
beseech you!" A Maryland yellow-throat is asleep and singing in its
dreams.
As we look and listen, a shadowless something hovers overhead, and,
looking upward, we see a gray screech owl silently hanging on beating
wings. His sharp ears have caught the muffled sound; his eyes search out
the tangle, but the yellow-throat is out of reach. The little hunter
drifts away into the blackness, the song ends and the sharp squeak of a
mouse startles us. We rise slowly from our cramped position and quietly
leave the mysteries of the night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SEPTEMBER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PASSING OF THE FLOCKS
It is September. August--the month of gray days for birds--has passed. The
last pin-feather of the new winter plumage has burst its sheath, and is
sleek and glistening from its thorough oiling with waterproof dressing,
which the birds squeeze out with their bills from a special gland, and
which they rub into every part of their plumage. The youngsters, now grown
as large as their parents, have become proficient in fly-catching or
berry-picking, as the case may be. Henceforth they forage for themselves,
although if we watch carefully we may still see a parent's love prompting
it to give a berry to its big offspring (indistinguishable save for this
attention), who greedily devours it without so much as a wing flutter of
thanks.
Two courses are open to the young birds who have been so fortunate as to
escape the dangers of nestlinghood. They may unite in neighbourly flocks
with others of their kind, as do the blackbirds of the marshes; or they
may wander off by themselves, never going very far from their summer home,
but perching alone each night in the thick foliage of some sheltering
bush.
How wonderfully the little fellow adapts himself to the radical and sudden
change in his life! Before this, his world has been a warm, soft-lined
nest, with ever anxious parents to shelter him from rain and cold, or to
stand with half-spread wings between him and the burning rays of the sun.
He has only to open his mouth and call for food and a supply of the
choicest morsels appears and is shoved far down his throat. If danger
threatens, both parents are ready to fight to the last, or even willing to
give their lives to protect him. Little wonder is it that the young birds
are loth to leave; we can sympathise heartily with the last weaker
brother, whose feet cling convulsively to the nest, who begs piteously for
"just one more caterpillar!" But the mother bird is inexorable and stands
a little way out of reach with the juiciest morsel she can find. Once out,
the young bird never returns. Even if we catch the little chap before he
finishes his first flight and replace him, the magic spell of home is
broken, and he is out again the instant our hand frees him.
What a change the first night brings! Yet with unfailing instinct he
squats on some twig, fluffs up his feathers, tucks his wee head behind his
wing, and sleeps the sleep of his first adult birdhood as soundly as if
this position of rest had been familiar to him since he broke through the
shell.
We admire his aptitude for learning; how quickly his wings gain strength
and skill; how soon he manages to catch his own dinner. But how all this
pales before the accomplishment of a young brush turkey or moundbuilder of
the antipodes. Hatched six or eight feet under ground, merely by the heat
of decaying vegetation, no fond parents minister to his wants. Not only
must he escape from the shell in the pressure and darkness of his
underground prison (how we cannot tell), but he is then compelled to dig
through six feet of leaves and mould before he reaches the sunlight. He
finds himself well feathered, and at once spreads his small but perfect
wings and goes humming off to seek his living alone and unattended.
It is September--the month of restlessness for the birds. Weeks ago the
first migrants started on their southward journey, the more delicate
insect-eaters going first, before the goldfinches and other late nesters
had half finished housekeeping. The northern warblers drift past us
southward--the magnolia, blackburnian, Canadian fly-catching, and others,
bringing memories of spruce and balsam to those of us who have lived with
them in the forests of the north.
"It's getting too cold for the little fellows," says the wiseacre, who
sees you watching the smaller birds as they pass southward. Is it, though?
What of the tiny winter wren which spends the zero weather with us? His
coat is no warmer than those birds which have gone to the far tropics. And
what of the flocks of birds which we occasionally come across in
mid-winter, of species which generally migrate to Brazil? It is not the
cold which deprives us of our summer friends, or at least the great
majority of them; it is the decrease in food supply. Insects disappear,
and only those birds which feed on seeds and buds, or are able to glean an
insect diet from the crevices of fence and tree-trunk, can abide.
This is the month to climb out on the roof of your house, lie on your back
and listen. He is a stolid person indeed who is not moved by the chirps
and twitters which come down through the darkness. There is no better way
to show what a wonderful power sound has upon our memories. There sounds a
robin's note, and spring seems here again; through the night comes a
white-throat's chirp, and we see again the fog-dimmed fields of a Nova
Scotian upland; a sandpiper "peets" and the scene in our mind's eye as
instantly changes, and so on. What a revelation if we could see as in
daylight for a few moments! The sky would be pitted with thousands and
thousands of birds flying from a few hundred yards to as high as one or
two miles above the earth.
It only adds to the interest of this phenomenon when we turn to our
learned books on birds for an explanation of the origin of migration, the
whence and whither of the long journeys by day and night, and find--no
certain answer! This is one of the greatest of the many mysteries of the
natural world, of which little is known, although much is guessed, and the
bright September nights may reveal to us--we know not what undiscovered
facts.
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive; what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God sends his hail
Of blinding fire-balls, sleet or driving snow,
In sometime, his good time, I shall arrive;
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
Robert Browning.
GHOSTS OF THE EARTH
We may know the name of every tree near our home; we may recognise each
blossom in the field, every weed by the wayside; yet we should be
astonished to be told that there are hundreds of plants--many of them of
exquisite beauty--which we have overlooked in very sight of our doorstep.
What of the green film which is drawn over every moist tree-trunk or
shaded wall, or of the emerald film which coats the water of the pond's
edge? Or the gray lichens painting the rocks and logs, toning down the
shingles; the toadstools which, like pale vegetable ghosts, spring up in a
night from the turf; or the sombre puff balls which seem dead from their
birth?
The moulds which cover bread and cheese with a delicate tracery of
filaments and raise on high their tiny balls of spores are as worthy to be
called a plant growth as are the great oaks which shade our houses. The
rusts and mildews and blights which destroy our fruit all have their
beauty of growth and fruition when we examine them through a lens, and the
yeast by which flour and water is made to rise into the porous, spongy
dough is just as truly a plant as is the geranium blossoming at the
kitchen window.
If we wonder at the fierce struggle for existence which allows only a few
out of the many seeds of a maple or thistle to germinate and grow up, how
can we realise the obstacles with which these lowly plants have to
contend? A weed in the garden may produce from one to ten thousand seeds,
and one of our rarest ferns scatters in a single season over fifty
millions spores; while from the larger puff-balls come clouds of
unnumbered millions of spores, blowing to the ends of the earth; yet we
may search for days without finding one full-grown individual.
All the assemblage of mushrooms and toadstools,--although the most deadly
may flaunt bright hues of scarlet and yellow,--yet lack the healthy green
of ordinary plants. This is due to the fact that they have become brown
parasites or scavengers, and instead of transmuting heat and moisture and
the salts of the earth into tissue by means of the pleasant-hued
chlorophyll, these sylvan ghosts subsist upon the sap of roots or the
tissues of decaying wood. Emancipated from the normal life of the higher
plants, even flowers have been denied them and their fruit is but a cloud
of brown dust,--each mote a simple cell.
But what of the delicate Indian pipe which gleams out from the darkest
aisles of the forest? If we lift up its hanging head we will find a
perfect flower, and its secret is discovered. Traitor to its kind, it has
dropped from the ranks of the laurels, the heather, and the jolly little
wintergreens to the colourless life of a parasite,--hobnobbing with
clammy toadstools and slimy lichens. Its common names are all
appropriate,--ice-plant, ghost-flower, corpse-plant.
Nevertheless it is a delicately beautiful creation, and we have no right
to apply our human standards of ethics to these children of the wild,
whose only chance of life is to seize every opportunity,--to make use of
each hint of easier existence.
We have excellent descriptions and classifications of mushrooms and
toadstools, but of the actual life of these organisms, of the conditions
of their growth, little is known. Some of the most hideous are delicious
to our palate, some of the most beautiful are certain death. The splendid
red and yellow amanita, which lights up a dark spot in the woods like some
flowering orchid, is a veritable trap of death. Though human beings have
learned the fatal lesson and leave it alone, the poor flies in the woods
are ever deceived by its brightness, or odour, and a circle of their
bodies upon the ground shows the result of their ignorance.
MUSKRATS
Long before man began to inherit the earth, giant beavers built their dams
and swam in the streams of long ago. For ages these creatures have been
extinct. Our forefathers, during historical times, found smaller beavers
abundant, and with such zeal did they trap them that this modern race is
now well-nigh vanished. Nothing is left to us but the humble
muskrat,--which in name and in facile adaptation to the encroachments of
civilization has little in common with his more noble predecessor. Yet in
many ways his habits of life bring to mind the beaver.
Let us make the most of our heritage and watch at the edge of a stream
some evening in late fall. If the muskrats have half finished their mound
of sticks and mud, which is to serve them for a winter home, we will be
sure to see some of them at work. Two lines of ripples furrow the surface
outward from the farther bank, and a small dark form clambers upon the
pile of rubbish. Suddenly a _spat!_ sounds at our very feet, and a muskrat
dives headlong into the water, followed by the one on the ground. Another
_spat!_ and splash comes from farther down the stream, and so the danger
signal of the muskrat clan is passed along,--a single flap upon the water
with the flat of the tail.
* * * * *
If we wait silent and patient, the work will be taken up anew, and in the
pale moonlight the little labourers will fashion their house, lining the
upper chamber with soft grasses, and shaping the steep passageway which
will lead to the ever-unfrozen stream-bed. Either here or in the snug
tunnel nest deep in the bank the young muskrats are born, and here they
are weaned upon toothsome mussels and succulent lily roots.
Safe from all save mink and owl and trap, these sturdy muskrats spend the
summer in and about the streams; and when winter shuts down hard and fast,
they live lives more interesting than any of our other animals. The ground
freezes their tunnels into tubes of iron,--the ice seals the surface, past
all gnawing out; and yet, amid the quietly flowing water, where snow and
wind never penetrate, these warm-blooded, air-breathing muskrats live the
winter through, with only the trout and eels for company. Their food is
the bark and pith of certain plants; their air is what leaks through the
house of sticks, or what may collect at the melting-place of ice and
shore.
Stretched full length on the smooth ice, let us look through into that
strange nether world, where the stress of storm is unknown. Far beneath us
sinuous black forms undulate through the water,--from tunnel to house and
back again. As we gaze down through the crystalline mass, occasional
fractures play pranks with the objects below. The animate shapes seem to
take unto themselves greater bulk; their tails broaden, their bodies
become many times longer. For a moment the illusion is perfect; thousands
of centuries have slipped back, and we are looking at the giant beavers of
old.
Let us give thanks that even the humble muskrat still holds his own. A
century or two hence and posterity may look with wonder at his stuffed
skin in a museum!
NATURE'S GEOMETRICIANS
Spiders form good subjects for a rainy-day study, and two hours spent in a
neglected garret watching these clever little beings will often arouse
such interest that we shall be glad to devote many days of sunshine to
observing those species which hunt and build, and live their lives in the
open fields. There is no insect in the world with more than six legs, and
as a spider has eight he is therefore thrown out of the company of
butterflies, beetles, and wasps and finds himself in a strange assemblage.
Even to his nearest relatives he bears little resemblance, for when we
realise that scorpions and horseshoe crabs must call him cousin, we
perceive that his is indeed an aberrant bough on the tree of creation.
Leaving behind the old-fashioned horseshoe crabs to feel their way slowly
over the bottom of the sea, the spiders have won for themselves on land a
place high above the mites, ticks, and daddy-long-legs, and in their high
development and intricate powers of resource they yield not even to the
ants and bees.
Nature has provided spiders with an organ filled always with liquid which,
on being exposed to the air, hardens, and can be drawn out into the
slender threads we know as cobweb. The silkworm encases its body with a
mile or more of gleaming silk, but there its usefulness is ended as far as
the silkworm is concerned. But spiders have found a hundred uses for their
cordage, some of which are startlingly similar to human inventions.
Those spiders which burrow in the earth hang their tunnels with silken
tapestries impervious to wet, which at the same time act as lining to the
tube. Then the entrance may be a trap-door of soil and silk, hinged with
strong silken threads; or in the turret spiders which are found in our
fields there is reared a tiny tower of leaves or twigs bound together with
silk. Who of us has not teased the inmate by pushing a bent straw into his
stronghold and awaiting his furious onslaught upon the innocent stalk!
A list of all the uses of cobwebs would take more space than we can spare;
but of these the most familiar is the snare set for unwary flies,--the
wonderfully ingenious webs which sparkle with dew among the grasses or
stretch from bush to bush. The framework is of strong webbing and upon
this is closely woven the sticky spiral which is so elastic, so ethereal,
and yet strong enough to entangle a good-sized insect. How knowing seems
the little worker, as when, the web and his den of concealment being
completed, he spins a strong cable from the centre of the web to the
entrance of his watch-tower. Then, when a trembling of his aerial spans
warns him of a capture, how eagerly he seizes his master cable and jerks
away on it, thus vibrating the whole structure and making more certain the
confusion of his victim.
What is more interesting than to see a great yellow garden-spider hanging
head downward in the centre of his web, when we approach too closely,
instead of deserting his snare, set it vibrating back and forth so rapidly
that he becomes a mere blur; a more certain method of escaping the
onslaught of a bird than if he ran to the shelter of a leaf.
Those spiders which leap upon their prey instead of setting snares for it
have still a use for their threads of life, throwing out a cable as they
leap, to break their fall if they miss their foothold. What a strange use
of the cobweb is that of the little flying spiders! Up they run to the top
of a post, elevate their abdomens and run out several threads which
lengthen and lengthen until the breeze catches them and away go the
wingless aeronauts for yards or for miles as fortune and wind and weather
may dictate! We wonder if they can cut loose or pull in their balloon
cables at will.
Many species of spiders spin a case for holding their eggs, and some carry
this about with them until the young are hatched.
A most fascinating tale would unfold could we discover all the uses of
cobweb when the spiders themselves are through with it. Certain it is that
our ruby-throated hummingbird robs many webs to fasten together the plant
down, wood pulp, and lichens which compose her dainty nest.
Search the pond and you will find another member of the spider family
swimming about at ease beneath the surface, thoroughly aquatic in habits,
but breathing a bubble of air which he carries about with him. When his
supply is low he swims to a submarine castle of silk, so air-tight that he
can keep it filled with a large bubble of air, upon which he draws from
time to time.
And so we might go on enumerating almost endless uses for the web which is
Nature's gift to these little waifs, who ages ago left the sea and have
won a place for themselves in the sunshine among the butterflies and
flowers.
* * * * *
In the balsam-perfumed shade of our northern forests we may sometimes find
growing in abundance the tiny white dwarf cornel, or bunch-berry, as its
later cluster of scarlet fruit makes the more appropriate name. These
miniature dogwood blossoms (or imitation blossoms, as the white divisions
are not real petals) are very conspicuous against the dark moss, and many
insects seem to seek them out and to find it worth while to visit them. If
we look very carefully we may find that this discovery is not original
with us, for a little creature has long ago found out the fondness of bees
and other insects for these flowers and has put his knowledge to good
use.
One day I saw what I thought was a swelling on one part of the flower, but
a closer look showed it was a living spider. Here was protective colouring
carried to a wonderful degree. The body of the spider was white and
glistening, like the texture of the white flower on which he rested. On
his abdomen were two pink, oblong spots of the same tint and shape as the
pinkened tips of the false petals. Only by an accident could he be
discovered by a bird, and when I focussed my camera, I feared that the
total lack of contrast would make the little creature all but invisible.
Confident with the instinct handed down through many generations, the
spider trusted implicitly to his colour for safety and never moved, though
I placed the lens so close that it threw a life-sized image on the
ground-glass. When all was ready, and before I had pressed the bulb, the
thought came to me whether this wonderful resemblance should be attributed
to the need of escaping from insectivorous birds, or to the increased
facility with which the spider would be able to catch its prey. At the
very instant of making the exposure, before I could will the stopping of
the movement of my fingers, if I had so wished, my question was answered.
A small, iridescent, green bee flew down, like a spark of living light,
upon the flower, and, quick as thought, was caught in the jaws of the
spider. Six of his eight legs were not brought into use, but were held far
back out of the way.
Here, on my lens, I had a little tragedy of the forest preserved for all
time.
There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;
The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night;
The thistledown, the only ghost of flowers,
Sailed slowly by--passed noiseless out of sight.
Thomas Buchanan Read.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OCTOBER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUTUMN HUNTING WITH A FIELD GLASS
One of the most uncertain of months is October, and most difficult for the
beginner in bird study. If we are just learning to enjoy the life of wood
and field, we will find hard tangles to unravel among the birds of this
month. Many of the smaller species which passed us on their northward
journey last spring are now returning and will, perhaps, tarry a week or
more before starting on the next nocturnal stage of their passage
tropicward. Many are almost unrecognisable in their new winter plumage.
Male scarlet tanagers are now green tanagers, goldfinches are olive
finches, while instead of the beautiful black, white, and cream dress
which made so easy the identification of the meadow bobolinks in the
spring, search will now be rewarded only by some plump, overgrown
sparrows--reedbirds--which are really bobolinks in disguise.
Orchard orioles and rose-breasted grosbeaks come and are welcomed, but the
multitude of female birds of these species which appear may astonish one,
until he discovers that the young birds, both male and female, are very
similar to their mother in colour. We have no difficulty in distinguishing
between adult bay-breasted and black poll warblers, but he is indeed a
keen observer who can point out which is which when the young birds of the
year pass.
October is apt to be a month of extremes. One day the woods are filled
with scores of birds, and on the next hardly one will be seen. Often a
single species or family will predominate, and one will remember "thrush
days" or "woodpecker days." Yellow-bellied sapsuckers cross the path,
flickers call and hammer in every grove, while in the orchards, and along
the old worm-eaten fences, glimpses of red, white, and black show where
redheaded woodpeckers are looping from trunk to post. When we listen to
the warble of bluebirds, watch the mock courtship of the high-holders, and
discover the fall violets under leaves and burrs, for an instant a feeling
of spring rushes over us; but the yellow leaves blow against our face, the
wind sighs through the cedars, and we realise that the black hand of the
frost will soon end the brave efforts of the wild pansies.
The thrushes, ranking in some ways at the head of all our birds, drift
through the woods, brown and silent as the leaves around them. Splendid
opportunities they give us to test our powers of woodcraft. A thrush
passes like a streak of brown light and perches on a tree some distance
away. We creep from tree to tree, darting nearer when his head is turned.
At last we think we are within range, and raise our weapon. No, a leaf is
in the way, and the dancing spots of sunlight make our aim uncertain. We
move a little closer and again take aim, and this time he cannot escape
us. Carefully our double-barrelled binoculars cover him, and we get what
powder and lead could never give us--the quick glance of the hazel eye,
the trembling, half-raised feathers on his head, and a long look at the
beautifully rounded form perched on the twig, which a wanton shot would
destroy forever. The rich rufous colouring of the tail proclaims him a
singer of singers--a hermit thrush. We must be on the watch these days for
the beautiful wood thrush, the lesser spotted veery, the well named
olive-back and the rarer gray-cheeked thrush. We may look in vain among
the thrushes in our bird books for the golden-crowned and water thrush,
for these walkers of the woods are thrushes only in appearance, and belong
to the family of warblers. The long-tailed brown thrashers, lovers of the
undergrowth, are still more thrush-like in look, but in our
classifications they hold the position of giant cousins to the wrens. Even
the finches contribute a mock thrush to our list, the big,
spotted-breasted fox sparrow, but he rarely comes in number before mid
October or November. Of course we all know that our robin is a true
thrush, young robins having their breasts thickly spotted with black,
while even the old birds retain a few spots and streaks on the throat.
If we search behind the screen of leaves and grass around us we may
discover many tragedies. One fall I picked up a dead olive-backed thrush
in the Zoological Park. There were no external signs of violence, but I
found that the food canal was pretty well filled with blood. The next day
still another bird was found in the same condition, and the day after two
more. Within a week I noted in my journal eight of these thrushes, all
young birds of the year, and all with the same symptoms of disorder. I
could only surmise that some poisonous substance, some kind of berry,
perhaps some attractive but deadly exotic from the Botanical Gardens, had
tempted the inexperienced birds and caused their deaths.
As we walk through the October woods a covey of ruffed grouse springs up
before us, overhead a flock of robins dashes by, and the birds scatter to
feed among the wild grapes. The short round wings of the grouse whirr
noisily, while the quick wing beats of the robins make little sound. Both
are suited to their uses. The robin may travel league upon league to the
south, while the grouse will not go far except to find new bud or berry
pastures. His wings, as we have noticed before, are fitted rather for
sudden emergencies, to bound up before the teeth of the fox close upon
him, to dodge into close cover when the nose of the hound almost touches
his trembling body. When he scrambled out of his shell last May he at once
began to run about and to try his tiny wings, and little by little he
taught himself to fly. But in the efforts he got many a tumble and broke
or lost many a feather. Nature, however, has foreseen this, and to her
grouse children she gives several changes of wing feathers to practise
with, before the last strong winter quills come in.
How different it is with the robin. Naked and helpless he comes from his
blue shell, and only one set of wing quills falls to his share, so it
behooves him to be careful indeed of these. He remains in the nest until
they are strong enough to bear him up, and his first attempts are
carefully supervised by his anxious parents. And so the glimpse we had in
the October woods of the two pair of wings held more of interest than we
at first thought.
In many parts of the country, about October fifteenth the crows begin to
flock back and forth to and from their winter roosts. In some years it is
the twelfth, or again the seventeenth, but the constancy of the mean date
is remarkable. Many of our winter visitants have already slipped into our
fields and woods and taken the places of some of the earlier southern
migrants; but the daily passing of the birds which delay their journey
until fairly pinched by the lack of food at the first frosts extends well
into November. It is not until the foliage on the trees and bushes becomes
threadbare and the last migrants have flown, that our northern visitors
begin to take a prominent place in our avifauna.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
JOHN KEATS.
A WOODCHUCK AND A GREBE
No fact comes to mind which is not more impressed upon us by the valuable
aid of comparisons, and Nature is ever offering antitheses. At this season
we are generally given a brief glimpse--the last for the year--of two
creatures, one a mammal, the other a bird, which are as unlike in their
activities as any two living creatures could well be.
What a type of lazy contentment is the woodchuck, as throughout the hot
summer days he lies on his warm earthen hillock at the entrance of his
burrow. His fat body seems almost to flow down the slope, and when he
waddles around for a nibble of clover it is with such an effort that we
feel sure he would prefer a comfortable slow starvation, were it not for
the unpleasant feelings involved in such a proceeding.
As far as I know there are but two things which, can rouse a woodchuck to
strenuous activity; when a dog is in pursuit he can make his stumpy feet
fairly twinkle as he flies for his burrow, and when a fox or a man is
digging him out, he can literally worm his way through the ground,
frequently escaping by means of his wonderful digging power. But when
September or October days bring the first chill, he gives one last yawn
upon the world and stows himself away at the farthest end of his tunnel,
there to sleep away the winter. Little more does he know of the snows and
blizzards than the bird which has flown to the tropics. Even storing up
fruits or roots is too great an effort for the indolent woodchuck, and in
his hibernation stupor he draws only upon the fat which his lethargic
summer life has accumulated within his skin.
As we might expect from a liver of such a slothful life, the family traits
of the woodchuck are far from admirable and there is said to be little
affection shown by the mother woodchuck toward her young. The poor little
fellows are pushed out of the burrow and driven away to shift for
themselves as soon as possible. Many of them must come to grief from hawks
and foxes. Closely related to the squirrels, these large marmots (for they
are first cousins to the prairie dogs) are as unlike them in activity as
they are in choice of a haunt.
What a contrast to all this is the trim feathered form which we may see on
the mill pond some clear morning. Alert and wary, the grebe paddles slowly
along, watchful of every movement. If we approach too closely, it may
settle little by little, like a submarine opening its water compartments,
until nothing is visible except the head with its sharp beak. Another step
and the bird has vanished, swallowed up by the lake, and the chances are a
hundred to one against our discovering the motionless neck and the tiny
eye which rises again among the water weeds.
This little grebe comes of a splendid line of ancestors, some of which
were even more specialised for an aquatic life. These paid the price of
existence along lines too narrow and vanished from the earth. The grebe,
however, has so far stuck to a life which bids fair to allow his race
safety for many generations, but he is perilously near the limit. Every
fall he migrates far southward, leaving his northern lakes, but if the
water upon which he floats should suddenly dry up, he would be almost as
helpless as the gasping fish; for his wings are too weak to lift him from
the ground. He must needs have a long take-off, a flying start, aided by
vigorous paddling along the surface of the water, before he can rise into
the air.
Millions of years ago there lived birds built on the general grebe plan
and who doubtless were derived from the same original stock, but which
lived in the great seas of that time. Far from being able to migrate,
every external trace of wing was gone and these great creatures, almost as
large as a man and with sharp teeth in their beaks, must have hitched
themselves like seals along the edge of the beach, and perhaps laid their
eggs on the pebbles as do the terns to-day.
The grebe, denied the power to rise easily and even, to ran about on land
without considerable effort, is, however, splendidly adapted to its water
life, and the rapidity of its motions places it near the head of the
higher active creatures,--with the woodchuck near the opposite extreme.
THE VOICE OF THE ANIMALS
Throughout the depths of the sea, silence, as well as absolute darkness,
prevails. The sun penetrates only a short distance below the surface, at
most a few hundred feet, and all disturbance from storms ceases far above
that depth, Where the pressure is a ton or more to the square inch, it is
very evident that no sound vibration can exist. Near the surface it is
otherwise. The majority of fishes have no lungs and of course no vocal
chords, but certain species, such as the drumfish, are able to distend
special sacs with gas or air, or in other ways to produce sounds. One
variety succeeds in producing a number of sounds by gritting the teeth,
and when the male fish is attempting to charm the female by dashing round
her, spreading his fins to display his brilliant colours, this gritting of
the teeth holds a prominent place in the performance, although whether the
fair finny one makes her choice because she prefers a high-toned grit
instead of a lower one can only be imagined! But vibrations, whether of
sound or of water pressure, are easily carried near the surface, and
fishes are provided with organs to receive and record them. One class of
such organs has little in common with ears, as we speak of them; they are
merely points on the head and body which are susceptible to the watery
vibrations. These points are minute cavities, surrounded with tiny _cilia_
or hairs, which connect with the ends of the nerves.
The ears of the frogs and all higher animals are, like the tongue-bone and
the lower jaw, derived originally from portions of gills, which the
aquatic ancestors of living animals used to draw the oxygen from the
water. This is one of the most wonderful and interesting changes which the
study of evolution has unfolded to our knowledge.
The disproportionate voices are produced by means of an extra amount of
skin on the throat, which is distensible and acts as a drum to increase
the volume of sound. In certain bullfrogs which grow to be as large as the
head of a man, the bellowing power is deafening and is audible for miles.
In Chile a small species of frog, measuring only about an inch in length,
has two internal vocal sacs which are put to a unique use. Where these
frogs live, water is very scarce and the polliwogs have no chance to live
and develop in pools, as is ordinarily the case. So when the eggs are
laid, they are immediately taken by the male frog and placed in these
capacious sacs, which serve as nurseries for them all through their
hatching and growing period of life. Although there is no water in these
chambers, yet their gills grow out and are reabsorbed, just as is the case
in ordinary tadpoles. When their legs are fully developed, they clamber up
to their father's broad mouth and get their first glimpse of the great
world from his lower lip. When fifteen partly developed polliwogs are
found in the pouches of one little frog, he looks as if he had gorged
himself to bursting with tadpoles. To such curious uses may vocal organs
be put.
Turtles are voiceless, except at the period of laying eggs, when they
acquire a voice, which even in the largest is very tiny and piping, like
some very small insect rather than a two-hundred-pound tortoise. Some of
the lizards utter shrill, insect-like squeaks.
A species of gecko, a small, brilliantly coloured lizard, has the back of
its tail armed with plates. These it has a habit of rubbing together, and
by this means it produces a shrill, chirruping sound, which actually
attracts crickets and grasshoppers toward the noise, so that they fall
easy prey to this reptilian trapper. So in colour, sound, motion, and many
other ways, animals act and react upon each other, a useful and necessary
habit being perverted by an enemy, so that the death of the creature
results. Yet it would never be claimed that the lizard thought out this
mimicking. It probably found that certain actions resulted in the approach
of good dinners, and in its offspring this action might be partly
instinctive, and each generation would perpetuate it. If it had been an
intentional act, other nearly related species of lizards would imitate it,
as soon as they perceived the success which attended it.
That many animals have a kind of language is nowadays admitted to be a
truism, but this is more evident among mammals and birds, and, reviewing
the classes of the former, we find a more or less defined ascending
complexity and increased number of varying sounds as we pass from the
lower forms--kangaroos and moles--to the higher herb-and-flesh-eaters, and
particularly monkeys.
Squeaks and grunts constitute the vocabulary, if we dignify it by that
name, of the mammals. The sloths, those curious animals whose entire life
is spent clinging to the underside of branches, on whose leaves they feed,
may be said almost to be voiceless, so seldom do they give utterance to
the nameless wail which constitutes their only utterance. Even when being
torn to pieces by an enemy, they offer no resistance and emit no sound,
but fold their claws around their body and submit to the inevitable as
silently and as stoically as did ever an ancient Spartan.
Great fear of death will often cause an animal to utter sounds which are
different from those produced under any other conditions. When an elephant
is angry or excited, his trumpeting is terribly loud and shrill; but when
a mother elephant is "talking" to her child, while the same sonorous,
metallic quality is present, yet it is wonderfully softened and modulated.
A horse is a good example of what the fear of death will do. The ordinary
neigh of a horse is very familiar, but in battle when mortally wounded, or
having lost its master and being terribly frightened, a horse will scream,
and those who have heard it, say it is more awful than the cries of pain
of a human being.
Deer and elk often astonish one by the peculiar sounds which they produce.
An elk can bellow loudly, especially when fighting; but when members of a
herd call to each other, or when surprised by some unusual appearance,
they whistle--a sudden, sharp whistle, like the tin mouthpieces with
revolving discs, which were at one time so much in evidence.
The growl of a bear differs greatly under varying circumstances. There is
the playful growl, uttered when two individuals are wrestling, and the
terrible "sound"--no word expresses it--to which a bear, cornered and
driven to the last extremity, gives utterance--fear, hate, dread, and
awful passion mingled and expressed in sound. One can realise the fearful
terror which this inspires only when one has, as I have, stood up to a mad
bear, repelling charge after charge, with only an iron pike between one's
self and those powerful fangs and claws. The long-drawn moan of a polar
bear on a frosty night is another phase; this, too, is expressive, but
only of those wonderful Arctic scenes where night and day are as one to
this great seal-hunter.
The dog has made man his god,--giving up his life for his master would be
but part of his way of showing his love if he had it in his power to do
more. So, too, the dog has attempted to adapt his speech to his master's,
and the result is a bark. No wild coyotes or wolves bark, but when bands
of dogs descended from domesticated animals run wild, their howls are
modulated and a certain unmistakable barking quality imparted. The
drawn-out howl of a great gray wolf is an impressive sound and one never
to be forgotten. Only the fox seems to possess the ability to bark in its
native tongue. The sounds which the cats, great and small, reproduce are
most varied. Nothing can be much more intimidating than the roar of a
lion, or more demoniacal than the arguments which our house-pets carry on
at night on garden fences.
What use the sounds peculiar to sea-lions subserve in their life on the
great ocean, or their haunts along the shore, can only be imagined, but
surely such laudable perseverance, day after day, to out-utter each other,
must be for some good reason!
Volumes have been written concerning the voices of the two remaining
groups of animals--monkeys and birds. In the great family of the
four-handed folk, more varieties of sound are produced than would be
thought possible. Some of the large baboons are awful in their
vocalisations. Terrible agony or remorse is all that their moans suggest
to us, no matter what frame of mind on the part of the baboon induces
them. Of all vertebrates the tiny marmosets reproduce most exactly the
chirps of crickets and similar insects, and to watch one of these little
human faces, see its mouth open, and instead of, as seems natural, words
issuing forth, to hear these shrill squeaks is most surprising. Young
orang-utans, in their "talk," as well as in their actions, are
counterparts of human infants. The scream of frantic rage when a banana is
offered and jerked away, the wheedling tone when the animal wishes to be
comforted by the keeper on account of pain or bruise, and the sound of
perfect contentment and happiness when petted by the keeper whom it learns
to love,--all are almost indistinguishable from like utterances of a human
child.
But how pitiless is the inevitable change of the next few years! Slowly
the bones of the cranium thicken, partly filling up the brain cavity, and
slowly but surely the ape loses all affection for those who take care of
it. More and more morose and sullen it becomes until it reaches a stage of
unchangeable ferocity and must be doomed to close confinement, never again
to be handled or caressed.
THE NAMES OF ANIMALS, FROGS, AND FISH
When, during the lazy autumn days, the living creatures seem for a time to
have taken themselves completely beyond our ken, it may be interesting to
delve among old records and descriptions of animals and see how the names
by which we know them first came to be given. Many of our English names
have an unsuspected ancestry, which, through past centuries, has been
handed down to us through many changes of spelling and meaning, of
romantic as well as historical interest.
How many people regard the scientific Latin and Greek names of animals
with horror, as being absolutely beyond their comprehension, and yet how
interesting these names become when we look them squarely in the face,
analyse them and find the appropriateness of their application.
When you say "wolf" to a person, the image of that wild creature comes
instantly to his mind, but if you ask him _why_ it is called a wolf, a
hundred chances to one he will look blankly at you. It is the old fault,
so common among us human beings, of ignoring the things which lie nearest
us. Or perhaps your friend shares the state of mind of the puzzled old
lady, who, after looking over a collection of fossil bones, said that she
could understand how these bones had been preserved, and millions of years
later had been discovered, but it was a mystery to her how anyone could
know the names of these ancient animals after such a lapse of time!
Some of the names of the commonest animals are lost in the dimness of
antiquity, such as fox, weasel, sheep, dog, and baboon. Of the origin of
these we have forever lost the clew. With camel we can go no farther back
than the Latin word _camelus_, and elephant balks us with the old Hindoo
word _eleph_, which means an ox. The old root of the word wolf meant one
who tears or rends, and the application to this animal is obvious. In
several English and German names of persons, we have handed down to us a
relic of the old fashion of applying wolf as a compliment to a warrior or
soldier. For example, Adolph means noble-wolf, and Rudolph glory-wolf.
Lynx is from the same Latin word as the word _lux_ (light) and probably
was given to these wildcats on account of the brightness of their eyes.
Lion is, of course, from the Latin _leo_, which word, in turn, is lost far
back in the Egyptian tongue, where the word for the king of beasts was
_labu_. The compound word leopard is first found in the Persian language,
where _pars_ stands for panther. Seal, very appropriately, was once a word
meaning "of the sea"; close to the Latin _sal_, the sea.
Many names of animals are adapted from words in the ancient language of
the natives in whose country the creatures were first discovered. Puma,
jaguar, tapir, and peccary (from _paquires_) are all names from South
American Indian languages. The coyote and ocelot were called _coyotl_ and
_ocelotl_ by the Mexicans long before Cortes landed on their shores.
Zebra, gorilla, and chimpanzee are native African words, and orang-utan is
Malay, meaning Man of the Woods. Cheetah is from some East Indian tongue,
as is tahr, the name of the wild goat of the Himalayas. Gnu is from the
Hottentots, and giraffe from the Arabic _zaraf_. Aoudad, the Barbary wild
sheep, is the French form of the Moorish name _audad_.
The native Indians of our own country are passing rapidly, and before many
years their race may be extinct, but their musical, euphonious names of
the animals they knew so well, often pleased the ear of the early
settlers, and in many instances will be a lasting memorial as long as
these forest creatures of our United States survive.
Thus, moose is from the Indian word _mouswah_, meaning wood-eater; skunk
from _seganku_, an Algonquin term; _wapiti_, in the Cree language, meant
white deer, and was originally applied to the Rocky Mountain goat, but the
name is now restricted to the American elk. Caribou is also an Indian
word; opossum is from _possowne_, and raccoon is from the Indian
_arrathkune_ (by further apheresis, coon).
Rhinoceros is pure Greek, meaning nose-horned, but beaver has indeed had a
rough time of it in its travels through various languages. It is hardly
recognisable as _bebrus_, _babbru_, and _bbru_. The latter is the ultimate
root of our word brown. The original application was, doubtless, on
account of the colour of the creature's fur. Otter takes us back to
Sanskrit, where we find it _udra_. The significance of this word is in its
close kinship to _udan_, meaning water.
The little mouse hands his name down through the years from the old, old
Sanskrit, the root meaning to steal. Many people who never heard of
Sanskrit have called him and his descendants by terms of homologous
significance! The word muscle is from the same root, and was applied from
a fancied resemblance of the movement of the muscle beneath the skin to a
mouse in motion--not a particularly quieting thought to certain members of
the fair sex! The origin of the word rat is less certain, but it may have
been derived from the root of the Latin word _radere_, to scratch, or
_rodere_, to gnaw. Rodent is derived from the latter term. Cat is also in
doubt, but is first recognised in _catalus_, a diminutive of _canis_, a
dog. It was applied to the young of almost any animal, as we use the words
pup, kitten, cub, and so forth. Bear is the result of tongue-twisting from
the Latin _fera_, a wild beast.
Ape is from the Sanskrit _kapi_; _kap_ in the same language means tremble;
but the connection is not clear. Lemur, the name given to that low family
of monkeys, is from the plural Latin word _lemures_, meaning ghost or
spectre. This has reference to the nocturnal habits, stealthy gait, and
weird expression of these large-eyed creatures. Antelope is probably of
Grecian origin, and was originally applied to a half-mythical animal,
located on the banks of the Euphrates, and described as "very savage and
fleet, and having long, saw-like horns with which it could cut down trees.
It figures largely in the peculiar fauna of heraldry."
Deer is of obscure origin, but may have been an adjective meaning wild.
Elk is derived from the same root as eland, and the history of the latter
word is an interesting one. It meant a sufferer, and was applied by the
Teutons to the elk of the Old World on account of the awkward gait and
stiff movements of this ungainly animal. But in later years the Dutch
carried the same word, eland, to South Africa, and there gave it to the
largest of the tribe of antelopes, in which sense it is used by zoologists
to-day.
Porcupine has arisen from two Latin words, _porcus_, a hog, and _spina_, a
spine; hence, appropriately, a spiny-hog. Buffalo may once have been some
native African name. In the vista of time, our earliest glimpse of it is
as _bubalus_, which was applied both to the wild ox and to a species of
African antelope. Fallow deer is from fallow, meaning pale, or yellowish,
while axis, as applied to the deer so common in zoological gardens, was
first mentioned by Pliny and is doubtless of East Indian origin. The word
bison is from the Anglo-Saxon _wesend_, but beyond Pliny its ultimate
origin eludes all research.
Marmot, through various distortions, looms up from Latin times as _mus
montanus_, literally a mountain mouse. Badger is from badge, in allusion
to the bands of white fur on its forehead. The verb meaning to badger is
derived from the old cruel sport of baiting badgers with dogs.
Monkey is from the same root as _monna_, a woman; more especially an old
crone, in reference to the fancied resemblance of the weazened face of a
monkey to that of a withered old woman. Madam and madonna are other forms
of words from the same root, so wide and sweeping are the changes in
meaning which usage and time can give to words.
Squirrel has a poetic origin in the Greek language; its original meaning
being shadow-tail. Tiger is far more intricate. The old Persian word _tir_
meant arrow, while _tighra_ signified sharp. The application to this great
animal was in allusion to the swiftness with which the tiger leaps upon
his prey. The river Tigris, meaning literally the river Arrow, is named
thus from the swiftness of its current.
As to the names of reptiles it is, of course, to the Romans that we are
chiefly indebted, as in the case of reptile from _reptilus_, meaning
creeping; and crocodile from _dilus_, a lizard. Serpent is also from the
Latin _serpens_, creeping, and this from the old Sanskrit root, _sarp_,
with the same meaning. This application of the idea of creeping is again
found in the word snake, which originally came from the Sanskrit _naga_.
Tortoise harks back to the Latin _tortus_, meaning twisted (hence our word
tortuous) and came to be applied to these slow creatures because of their
twisted legs. In its evolution through many tongues it has suffered
numbers of variations; one of these being turtle, which we use to-day to
designate the smaller land tortoises. Terrapin and its old forms
_terrapene_ and _turpin_, on the contrary, originated in the New World, in
the language of the American Redskin.
_Cobra-de-capello_ is Portuguese for hooded snake, while python is far
older, the same word being used by the Greeks to denote a spirit, demon,
or evil-soothsayer. This name was really given to designate any species of
large serpent. _Boa_ is Latin and was also applied to a large snake, while
the importance of the character of size is seen, perhaps, in our words
_bos_ and _bovine_.
The word viper is interesting; coming directly from the Romans, who wrote
it _vipera_. This in turn is a contraction of the feminine form of the
adjective _vivipera_, in reference to the habit of these snakes of
bringing forth their young alive.
Lizard, through such forms as _lesarde_, _lezard_, _lagarto_, _lacerto_,
is from the Latin _lacertus_, a lizard; while closely related is the word
alligator by way of _lagarto_, _aligarto_, to alligator. The prefix may
have arisen as a corruption of an article and a noun, as in the modern
Spanish _el lagarto_,--a lizard.
Monitor is Latin for one who reminds, these lizards being so called
because they are supposed to give warning of the approach of crocodiles.
Asp can be carried back to the _aspis_ of the Romans, no trace being found
in the dim vistas of preceding tongues.
Gecko, the name of certain wall-hunting lizards, is derived from their
croaking cry; while iguana is a Spanish name taken from the old native
Haytian appellation _biuana_.
Of the word frog we know nothing, although through the medium of many
languages it has had as thorough an evolution as in its physical life. We
must also admit our ignorance in regard to toad, backward search revealing
only _tade_, _tode_, _ted_, _toode_, and _tadie_, the root baffling all
study. Polliwog and tadpole are delightfully easy. Old forms of polliwog
are _pollywig_, _polewiggle_, and _pollwiggle_. This last gives us the
clew to our spelling--_pollwiggle_, which, reversed and interpreted in a
modern way, is wigglehead, a most appropriate name for these lively little
black fellows. Tadpole is somewhat similar; toad-pole, or toad's-head,
also very apt when we think of these small-bodied larval forms.
Salamander, which is a Greek word of Eastern origin, was applied in the
earliest times to a lizard considered to have the power of extinguishing
fire. Newt has a strange history; originating in a wrong division of two
words, "_an ewte_," the latter being derived from _eft_, which is far more
correct than newt, though in use now in only a few places. Few fishermen
have ever thought of the interesting derivation of the names which they
know so well. Of course there are a host of fishes named from a fancied
resemblance to familiar terrestrial animals or other things; such as the
catfish, and those named after the dog, hog, horse, cow, trunk, devil,
angel, sun, and moon.
The word fish has passed through many varied forms since it was _piscis_
in the old Latin tongue, and the same is true of shark and skate, which in
the same language were _carcharus_ and _squatus_. Trout was originally
_tructa_, which in turn is lost in a very old Greek word, meaning eat or
gnaw. Perch harks back to the Latin _perca_, and the Romans had it from
the Greeks, among whom it meant spotted. The Romans said _minutus_ when
they meant small, and nowadays when we speak of any very small fish we say
minnow. Alewife in old English was applied to the women, usually very
stout dames, who kept alehouses. The corpulency of the fish to which the
same term is given explains its derivation.
The pike is so named from the sharp, pointed snout and long, slim body,
bringing to mind the old-time weapon of that name; while pickerel means
doubly a little pike, the _er_ and _el_ (as in cock and cockerel) both
being diminutives. Smelt was formerly applied to any small fish and comes,
perhaps, from the Anglo-Saxon _smeolt_, which meant smooth--the smoothness
and slipperiness of the fish suggesting the name.
Salmon comes directly from the Latin _salmo_, a salmon, which literally
meant the leaper, from _salire_--to leap. Sturgeon, from the Saxon was
_stiriga_, literally a stirrer, from the habit of the fish of stirring up
the mud at the bottom of the water. Dace, through its mediæval forms
_darce_ and _dars_, is from the same root as our word dart, given on
account of the swiftness of the fish.
Anchovy is interesting as perhaps from the Basque word _antzua_, meaning
dry; hence the dried fish; and mullet is from the Latin _mullus_. Herring
is well worth following back to its origin. We know that the most marked
habit of fishes of this type is their herding together in great schools or
masses or armies. In the very high German _heri_ meant an army or host;
hence our word harry and, with a suffix, herring.
_Hake_ in Norwegian means hook, and the term hake or hook-fish was given
because of the hooked character of the under-jaw. Mackerel comes from
_macarellus_ and originally the Latin _macula_--spotted, from the dark
spots on the body. Roach and ray both come from the Latin _raria_, applied
then as in the latter case now to bottom-living sharks.
Flounder comes from the verb, which in turn is derived from flounce, a
word which is lost in antiquity. Tarpon (and the form _tarpum_) may be an
Indian word; while there is no doubt as to grouper coming from _garrupa_,
a native Mexican name. Chubb (a form of cub) meant a chunky mass or lump,
referring to the body of the fish. Shad is lost in _sceadda_, Anglo-Saxon
for the same fish.
Lamprey and halibut both have histories, which, at first glance, we would
never suspect, although the forms have changed but little. The former have
a habit of fastening themselves for hours to stones and rocks, by means of
their strong, sucking mouths. So the Latin form of the word _lampetra_, or
literally lick-rock, is very appropriate. Halibut is equally so. _But_ or
_bot_ in several languages means a certain flounder-like fish, and in
olden times this fish was eaten only on holidays (_i.e._, holy days).
Hence the combination halibut means really holy-flounder.
The meaning of these words and many others are worth knowing, and it is
well to be able to answer with other than ignorance the question "What's
in a name?"
THE DYING YEAR
When a radical change of habits occurs, as in the sapsucker, deviating so
sharply from the ancient principles of its family, many other forms of
life about it are influenced, indirectly, but in a most interesting way.
In its tippling operations it wastes quantities of sap which exudes from
the numerous holes and trickles down the bark of the wounded tree. This
proves a veritable feast for the forlorn remnant of wasps and
butterflies,--the year's end stragglers whose flower calyces have fallen
and given place to swelling seeds.
Swiftly up wind they come on the scent, eager as hounds on the trail, and
they drink and drink of the sweets until they become almost incapable of
flying. But, after all, the new lease of life is a vain semblance of
better things. Their eggs have long since been laid and their mission in
life ended, and at the best their existence is but a matter of days.
It is a sad thing this, and sometimes our heart hardens against Nature for
the seeming cruelty of it all. Forever and always, year after year,
century upon century, the same tale unfolds itself,--the sacrifice of the
individual for the good of the race. A hundred drones are tended and
reared, all but one to die in vain; a thousand seeds are sown to rot or to
sprout and wither; a million little codfish hatch and begin life
hopefully, perhaps all to succumb save one; a million million shrimp and
pteropods paddle themselves here and there in the ocean, and every one is
devoured by fish or swept into the whalebone tangle from which none ever
return. And if a lucky one which survives does so because it has some
little advantage over its fellows,--some added quality which gives just
the opportunity to escape at the critical moment,--then the race will
advance to the extent of that trifle and so carry out the precept of
evolution. But even though we may owe every character of body and mind to
the fulfilment of some such inexorable law in the past, yet the witnessing
of the operation brings ever a feeling of cruelty, of injustice
somewhere.
How pitiful the weak flight of the last yellow butterfly of the year, as
with tattered and battered wings it vainly seeks for a final sip of
sweets! The fallen petals and the hard seeds are black and odourless, the
drops of sap are hardened. Little by little the wings weaken, the tiny
feet clutch convulsively at a dried weed stalk, and the four golden wings
drift quietly down among the yellow leaves, soon to merge into the dark
mould beneath. As the butterfly dies, a stiffened Katydid scratches a last
requiem on his wing covers--"_katy-didn't--katy-did--kate--y_"--and the
succeeding moment of silence is broken by the sharp rattle of a
woodpecker. We shake off every dream of the summer and brace ourselves to
meet and enjoy the keen, invigorating pleasures of winter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOVEMBER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOVEMBER'S BIRDS OF THE HEAVENS
As the whirling winds of winter's edge strip the trees bare of their last
leaves, the leaden sky of the eleventh month seems to push its cold face
closer to earth. Who can tell when the northern sparrows first arrive? A
whirl of brown leaves scatters in front of us; some fall back to earth;
others rise and perch in the thick briers,--sombre little white-throated
and tree sparrows! These brown-coated, low-voiced birds easily attract our
attention, the more now that the great host of brilliant warblers has
passed, just as our hearts warm toward the humble poly-pody fronds
(passing them by unnoticed when flowers are abundant) which now hold up
their bright greenness amid all the cold.
But all the migrants have not left us yet by any means, and we had better
leave our boreal visitors until mid-winter's blasts show us these hardiest
of the hardy at their best.
We know little of the ways of the gaunt herons on their southward journey,
but day after day, in the marshes and along the streams, we may see the
great blues as they stop in their flight to rest for a time.
The cold draws all the birds of a species together. Dark hordes of
clacking grackles pass by, scores of red-winged blackbirds and cowbirds
mingle amicably together, both of dark hue but of such unlike matrimonial
habits. A single male red-wing, as we have seen, may assume the cares of a
harem of three, four, or five females, each of which rears her
brown-streaked offspring in her own particular nest, while the valiant
guardian keeps faithful watch over his small colony among the reeds and
cat-tails. But little thought or care does mother cowbird waste upon her
offspring. No home life is hers--merely a stealthy approach to the nest of
some unsuspecting yellow warbler, or other small bird, a hastily deposited
egg, and the unnatural parent goes on her way, having shouldered all her
household cares on another. Her young may be hatched and carefully reared
by the patient little warbler mother, or the egg may spoil in the deserted
nest, or be left in the cold beneath another nest bottom built over it;
little cares the cowbird.
The ospreys or fish hawks seem to circle southward in pairs or trios, but
some clear, cold day the sky will be alive with hawks of other kinds. It
is a strange fact that these birds which have the power to rise so high
that they fairly disappear from our sight choose the trend of terrestrial
valleys whenever possible, in directing their aerial routes. Even the
series of New Jersey hills, flattered by the name of the Orange Mountains,
seem to balk many hawks which elect to change their direction and fly to
the right or left toward certain gaps or passes. Through these a raptorial
stream pours in such numbers during the period of migration that a person
with a foreknowledge of their path in former years may lie in wait and
watch scores upon scores of these birds pass close overhead within a few
hours, while a short distance to the right or left one may watch all day
without seeing a single raptor. The whims of migrating birds are beyond
our ken.
Sometimes, out in the broad fields, one's eyes will be drawn accidentally
upward, and a great flight of hawks will be seen--a compact flock of
intercircling forms, perhaps two or three hundred in all, the whole number
gradually passing from view in a southerly direction, now and then sending
down a shrill cry. It is a beautiful sight, not very often to be seen near
a city--unless watched for.
To a dweller in a city or its suburbs I heartily commend at this season
the forming of this habit,--to look upward as often as possible on your
walks. An instant suffices to sweep the whole heavens with your eye, and
if the distant circling forms, moving in so stately a manner, yet so
swiftly, and in their every movement personifying the essence of wild and
glorious freedom,--if this sight does not send a thrill through the
onlooker, then he may at once pull his hat lower over his eyes and concern
himself only with his immediate business. The joys of Nature are not for
such as he; the love of the wild which exists in every one of us is, in
him, too thickly "sicklied o'er" with the veneer of convention and
civilisation.
Even as late as November, when the water begins to freeze in the tiny cups
of the pitcher plants, and the frost brings into being a new kind of
foliage on glass and stone, a few insect-eaters of the summer woods still
linger on. A belated red-eyed vireo may be chased by a snowbird, and when
we approach a flock of birds, mistaking them at a distance for purple
finches, we may discover they are myrtle warblers, clad in the faded
yellow of their winter plumage. In favoured localities these brave little
birds may even spend the entire winter with us.
One of the best of November's surprises may come when all hope of late
migrants has been given up. Walking near the river, our glance falls on
what might be a painter's palate with blended colours of all shades
resting on the smooth surface of the water. We look again and again,
hardly believing our eyes, until at last the gorgeous creature takes to
wing, and goes humming down the stream, a bit of colour tropical in its
extravagance--and we know that we have seen a male wood, or summer, duck
in the full grandeur of his white, purple, chestnut, black, blue, and
brown. Many other ducks have departed, but this one still swims among the
floating leaves on secluded waterways.
Now is the time when the woodcock rises from his swampy summer home and
zigzags his way to a land where earthworms are still active. Sometimes in
our walks we may find the fresh body of one of these birds, and an upward
glance at the roadside will show the cause--the cruel telegraph wires
against which the flight of the bird has carried it with fatal velocity.
One of the greatest pleasures which November has to give us is the joy of
watching for the long lines of wild geese from the Canada lakes. Who can
help being thrilled at the sight of these strong-winged birds, as the
V-shaped flock throbs into view high in air, beating over land and water,
forest and city, as surely and steadily as the passing of the day behind
them. One of the finest of November sounds is the "Honk! honk!" which
comes to our ears from such a company of geese,--musical tones "like a
clanking chain drawn through the heavy air."
At the stroke of midnight I have been halted in my hurried walk by these
notes. They are a bit of the wild north which may even enter within a
city, and three years ago I trapped a fine gander and a half a dozen of
his flock in the New York Zoological Park, where they have lived ever
since and reared their golden-hued goslings, which otherwise would have
broken their shells on some Arctic waste, with only the snowbirds to
admire, and to be watched with greedy eyes by the Arctic owls.
A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite tender sky,
The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields,
And the wild geese sailing high;
And ever on upland and lowland,
The charm of the goldenrod--
Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.
W. H. Carruth.
A PLEA FOR THE SKUNK
In spite of constant persecution the skunk is without doubt the tamest of
all of our wild animals, and shares with the weasel and mink the honour of
being one of the most abundant of the carnivores, or flesh-eaters, near
our homes. This is a great achievement for the skunk,--to have thus held
its own in the face of ever advancing and destroying civilisation. But the
same characteristics which enable it to hold its ground are also those
which emancipate it from its wild kindred and give it a unique position
among animals. Its first cousins, the minks and weasels, all secrete
pungent odours, which are unpleasant enough at close range, but in the
skunk the great development of these glands has caused a radical change in
its habits of life and even in its physical make-up.
Watch a mink creeping on its sinuous way,--every action and glance full of
fierce wildness, each step telling of insatiable seeking after living,
active prey. The boldest rat flees in frantic terror at the hint of this
animal's presence; but let man show himself, and with a demoniacal grin of
hatred the mink slinks into covert.
Now follow a skunk in its wanderings as it comes out of its hole in early
evening, slowly stretches and yawns, and with hesitating, rolling gait
ambles along, now and then sniffing in the grass and seizing some sluggish
grasshopper or cricket. Fearlessness and confidence are what its gait and
manner spell. The world is its debtor, and all creatures in its path are
left unmolested, only on evidence of good behaviour. Far from need of
concealment, its furry coat is striped with a broad band of white,
signalling in the dusk or the moonlight, "Give me room to pass and go in
peace! Trouble me and beware!"
Degenerate in muscles and vitality, the skunk must forego all strenuous
hunts and trust to craft and sudden springs, or else content himself with
the humble fare of insects, helpless young birds, and poor, easily
confused mice. The flesh of the skunk is said to be sweet and toothsome,
but few creatures there are who dare attempt to add it to their bill of
fare! A great horned owl or a puma in the extremity of starvation, or a
vulture in dire stress of hunger,--probably no others.
Far from wilfully provoking an attack, the skunk is usually content to go
on his way peacefully, and when one of these creatures becomes accustomed
to the sight of an observer, no more interesting and, indeed, safer object
of study can be found.
Depart once from the conventional mode of greeting a skunk,--and instead
of hurling a stone in its direction and fleeing, place, if the opportunity
present itself, bits of meat in its way evening after evening, and you
will soon learn that there is nothing vicious in the heart of the skunk.
The evening that the gentle animal appears leading in her train a file of
tiny infant skunks, you will feel well repaid for the trouble you have
taken. Baby skunks, like their elders, soon learn to know their friends,
and are far from being at hair-trigger poise, as is generally supposed.
THE LESSON OF THE WAVE
The sea and the sky and the shore were at perfect peace on the day when
the young gull first launched into the air, and flew outward over the
green, smooth ocean. Day after day his parents had brought him fish and
squid, until his baby plumage fell from him and his beautiful
wing-feathers shot forth,--clean-webbed and elastic. His strong feet had
carried him for days over the expanse of sand dunes and pebbles, and now
and then he had paddled into deep pools and bathed in the cold salt water.
Most creatures of the earth are limited to one or the other of these two
elements, but now the gull was proving his mastery over a third. The land,
the sea, were left below, and up into the air drifted the beautiful bird,
every motion confident with the instinct of ages.
The usefulness of his mother's immaculate breast now becomes apparent. A
school of small fish basking near the surface rise and fall with the
gentle undulating swell, seeing dimly overhead the blue sky, flecked with
hosts of fleecy white clouds. A nearer, swifter cloud approaches,
hesitates, splashes into their midst,--and the parent gull has caught her
first fish of the day. Instinctively the young bird dives; in his joy of
very life he cries aloud,--the gull-cry which his ancestors of long ago
have handed down to him. At night he seeks the shore and tucks his bill
into his plumage; and all because of something within him, compelling him
to do these things.
But far from being an automaton, his bright eye and full-rounded head
presage higher things. Occasionally his mind breaks through the mist of
instinct and reaches upward to higher activity.
As with the other wild kindred of the ocean, food was the chief object of
the day's search. Fish were delicious, but were not always to be had;
crabs were a treat indeed, when caught unawares, but for mile after mile
along the coast were hosts of mussels and clams,--sweet and lucious, but
incased in an armour of shell, through which there was no penetrating.
However swift a dash was made upon one of these,--always the clam closed a
little quicker, sending a derisive shower of drops over the head of the
gull.
Once, after a week of rough weather, the storm gods brought their battling
to a climax. Great green walls of foaming water crashed upon the rocks,
rending huge boulders and sucking them down into the black depths. Over
and through the spray dashed the gull, answering the wind's howl--shriek
for shriek, poising over the fearful battlefield of sea and shore.
A wave mightier than all hung and curved, and a myriad shell-fish were
torn from their sheltered nooks and hurled high, in air, to fall broken
and helpless among the boulders. The quick eye of the gull saw it all, and
at that instant of intensest chaos of the elements, the brain of the bird
found itself.
Shortly afterward came night and sleep, but the new-found flash of
knowledge was not lost.
The next day the bird walked at low tide into the stronghold of the
shell-fish, roughly tore one from the silky strands of its moorings, and
carrying it far upward let it fall at random among the rocks. The
toothsome morsel was snatched from its crushed shell and a triumphant
scream told of success,--a scream which, could it have been interpreted,
should have made a myriad, myriad mussels shrink within their shells!
From gull to gull, and from flock to flock, the new habit spread,
imitation taking instant advantage of this new source of food. When to-day
we walk along the shore and see flocks of gulls playing ducks and drakes
with the unfortunate shell-fish, give them not too much credit, but think
of some bird which in the long ago first learned the lesson, whether by
chance or, as I have suggested, by observing the victims of the waves.
* * * * *
No scientific facts are these, but merely a logical reasoning deduced from
the habits and traits of the birds as we know them to-day; a theory to
hold in mind while we watch for its confirmation in the beginning of other
new and analogous habits.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
William Wordsworth.
WE GO A-SPONGING
When a good compound microscope becomes as common an object in our homes
as is a clock or a piano, we may be certain that the succeeding generation
will grow up with a much broader view of life and a far greater
realisation of the beauties of the natural world. To most of us a glance
through a microscope is almost as unusual a sight as the panorama from a
balloon. While many of the implements of a scientist arouse enthusiasm
only in himself, in the case of the revelations of this instrument, the
average person, whatever his profession, cannot fail to be interested.
Many volumes have been written on the microscopic life of ponds and
fields, and in a short essay only a hint of the delights of this
fascinating study can be given.
Any primer of Natural History will tell us that our bath sponges are the
fibrous skeletons of aquatic animals which inhabit tropical seas, but few
people know that in the nearest pond there are real sponges, growing
sometimes as large as one's head and which are not very dissimilar to
those taken from among the corals of the Bahamas. We may bring home a twig
covered with a thick growth of this sponge; and by dropping a few grains
of carmine into the water, the currents which the little sponge animals
set up are plainly visible. In winter these all die, and leave within
their meshes numbers of tiny winter buds, which survive the cold weather
and in the spring begin to found new colonies. If we examine the sponges
in the late fall we may find innumerable of these statoblasts, as they are
called.
Scattered among them will sometimes be crowds of little wheels, surrounded
with double-ended hooks. These have no motion and we shall probably pass
them by as minute burrs or seeds of some water plant. But they, too, are
winter buds of a strange group of tiny animals. These are known as
Polyzoans or Bryozoans; and though to the eye a large colony of them
appears only as a mass of thick jelly, yet when placed in water and left
quiet, a wonderful transformation comes over the bit of gelatine....
"Perhaps while you gaze at the reddish jelly a pink little projection
appears within the field of your lens, and slowly lengthens and broadens,
retreating and reappearing, it may be, many times, but finally, after much
hesitation, it suddenly seems to burst into bloom. A narrow body, so
deeply red that it is often almost crimson, lifts above the jelly a
crescentic disc ornamented with two rows of long tentacles that seem as
fine as hairs, and they glisten and sparkle like lines of crystal as they
wave and float and twist the delicate threads beneath your wondering gaze.
Then, while you scarcely breathe, for fear the lovely vision will fade,
another and another spreads its disc and waves its silvery tentacles,
until the whole surface of that ugly jelly mass blooms like a garden in
Paradise--blooms not with motionless perianths, but with living animals,
the most exquisite that God has allowed to develop in our sweet waters."
At the slightest jar every animal-flower vanishes instantly.
A wonderful history is behind these little creatures and very different
from that of most members of the animal kingdom. While crabs, butterflies,
and birds have evolved through many and varied ancestral forms, the tiny
Bryozoans, or, being interpreted, moss-animals, seem throughout all past
ages to have found a niche for themselves where strenuous and active
competition is absent. Year after year, century upon century, age upon
age, they have lived and died, almost unchanged down to the present day.
When you look at the tiny animal, troubling the water and drawing its
inconceivably small bits of food toward it upon the current made by its
tentacles, think of the earth changes which it has survived.
To the best of our knowledge the Age of Man is but a paltry fifty thousand
years. Behind this the Age of Mammals may have numbered three millions;
then back of these came the Age of Reptiles with more than seven millions
of years, during all of which time the tentacles of unnumbered generations
of Bryozoans waved in the sea. Back, back farther still we add another
seven million years, or thereabouts, of the Age of the Amphibians, when
the coal plants grew, and the Age of the Fishes. And finally, beyond all
exact human calculation, but estimated at some five million, we reach the
Age of Invertebrates in the Silurian, and in the lowest of these rocks we
find beautifully preserved fossils of Bryozoans, to all appearances as
perfect in detail of structure as these which we have before us to-day in
this twentieth century of man's brief reckoning.
These tiny bits of jelly are transfigured as well by the grandeur of their
unchanged lineage as by the appearance of the little animals from within.
What heraldry can commemorate the beginning of their race over twenty
millions of years in the past!
The student of mythology will feel at home when identifying some of the
commonest objects of the pond. And most are well named, too, as for
instance the Hydra, a small tube-shaped creature with a row of active
tentacles at one end. Death seems far from this organism, which is closely
related to the sea-anemones and corals, for though a very brief drying
will serve to kill it, yet it can be sliced and cut as finely as possible
and each bit, true to its name, will at once proceed to grow a new head
and tentacles complete, becoming a perfect animal.
Then we shall often come across a queer creature with two oar-like feelers
near the head and a double tail tipped with long hairs, while in the
centre of the head is a large, shining eye,--Cyclops he is rightly called.
Although so small that we can make out little of his structure without the
aid of the lens, yet Cyclops is far from being related to the other still
smaller beings which swim about him, many of which consist of but one cell
and are popularly known as animalculæ, more correctly as Protozoans.
Cyclops has a jointed body and in many other ways shows his relationship
to crabs and lobsters, even though they are many times larger and live in
salt water.
Another member of this group is Daphnia, although the appropriateness of
this name yet remains to be discovered; Daphnia being a chunky-bodied
little being, with a double-branched pair of oar-like appendages, with
which he darts swiftly through the water. Although covered with a hard
crust like a crab, this is so transparent that we can see right through
his body. The dark mass of food in the stomach and the beating heart are
perfectly distinct. Often, near the upper part of the body, several large
eggs are seen in a sort of pouch, where they are kept until hatched.
So if the sea is far away and time hangs heavy, invite your friends to go
sponging and crabbing in the nearest pond, and you may be certain of
quieting their fears as to your sanity as well as drawing exclamations of
delight from them when they see these beautiful creatures for the first
time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DECEMBER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW THOUGHTS ABOUT NESTS
Our sense of smell is not so keen as that of a dog, who can detect the
tiny quail while they are still invisible; nor have we the piercing sight
of the eagle who spies the grouse crouching hundreds of feet beneath his
circling flight; but when we walk through the bare December woods there is
unfolded at last to our eyes evidence of the late presence of our summer's
feathered friends--air castles and tree castles of varied patterns and
delicate workmanship.
Did it ever occur to you to think what the first nest was like--what home
the first reptile-like scale flutterers chose? Far back before Jurassic
times, millions of years ago, before the coming of bony fishes, when the
only mammals were tiny nameless creatures, hardly larger than mice; when
the great Altantosaurus dinosaurs browsed on the quaint herbage, and
Pterodactyls--those ravenous bat-winged dragons of the air--hovered above
the surface of the earth,--in this epoch we can imagine a pair of
long-tailed, half-winged creatures which skimmed from tree to tree,
perhaps giving an occasional flop--the beginning of the marvellous flight
motions. Is it not likely that the Teleosaurs who watched hungrily from
the swamps saw them disappear at last in a hollowed cavity beneath a
rotten knothole? Here, perhaps, the soft-shelled, lizard-like eggs were
laid, and when they gave forth the ugly creaturelings did not Father
Creature flop to the topmost branch and utter a gurgling cough, a most
unpleasant grating sound, but grand in its significance, as the opening
chord in the symphony of the ages to follow?--until now the mockingbird
and the nightingale hold us spellbound by the wonder of their minstrelsy.
Turning from our imaginary picture of the ancient days, we find that some
of the birds of the present time have found a primitive way of nesting
still the best. If we push over this rotten stump we shall find that the
cavity near the top, where the wood is still sound, has been used the past
summer by the downy woodpecker--a front door like an auger hole, ceiling
of rough-hewn wood, a bed of chips!
The chickadee goes a step further, and shows his cleverness in sometimes
choosing a cavity already made, and instead of rough, bare chips, the six
or eight chickadee youngsters are happy on a hair mattress of a closely
woven felt-like substance.
Perhaps we should consider the kingfisher the most barbarous of all the
birds which form a shelter for their home. With bill for pick and shovel,
she bores straight into a sheer clay bank, and at the end of a six-foot
tunnel her young are reared, their nest a mass of fish bones--the residue
of their dinners. Then there are the aerial masons and brickmakers--the
eave swallows, who carry earth up into the air, bit by bit, and attach it
to the eaves, forming it into a globular, long-necked flask. The barn
swallows mix the clay with straw and feathers and so form very firm
structures on the rafters above the haymows.
But what of the many nests of grasses and twigs which we find in the
woods? How closely they were concealed while the leaves were on the trees,
and how firm and strong they were while in use, the strongest wind and
rain of summer only rocking them to and fro! But now we must waste no time
or they will disappear. In a month or more almost all will have dissolved
into fragments and fallen to earth--their mission accomplished.
Some look as if disintegration had already begun, but if we had discovered
them earlier in the year, we should have seen that they were never less
fragile or loosely constructed than we find them now. Such is a cuckoo's
nest, such a mourning dove's or a heron's; merely a flat platform of a few
interlaced twigs, through which the eggs are visible from below. Why, we
ask, are some birds so careless or so unskilful? The European cuckoo, like
our cowbird, is a parasite, laying her eggs in the nests of other birds;
so, perhaps, neglect of household duties is in the blood. But this style
of architecture seems to answer all the requirements of doves and herons,
and, although with one sweep of the hand we can demolish one of these
flimsy platforms, yet such a nest seems somehow to resist wind and rain
just as long as the bird needs it.
Did you ever try to make a nest yourself? If not, sometime take apart a
discarded nest--even the simplest in structure--and try to put it together
again. Use no string or cord, but fasten it to a crotch, put some marbles
in it and visit it after the first storm. After you have picked up all the
marbles from the ground you will appreciate more highly the skill which a
bird shows in the construction of its home. Whether a bird excavates its
nest in earth or wood, or weaves or plasters it, the work is all done by
means of two straight pieces of horn--the bill.
There is, however, one useful substance which aids the bird--the saliva
which is formed in the mucous glands of the mouth. Of course the first and
natural function of this fluid is to soften the food before it passes into
the crop; but in those birds which make their nests by weaving together
pieces of twig, it must be of great assistance in softening the wood and
thus enabling the bird readily to bend the twigs into any required
position. Thus the catbird and rose-breasted grosbeak weave.
Given a hundred or more pieces of twigs, each an inch in length, even a
bird would make but little progress in forming a cup-shaped nest, were it
not that the sticky saliva provided cement strong and ready at hand. So
the chimney swift finds no difficulty in forming and attaching her mosaic
of twigs to a chimney, using only very short twigs which she breaks off
with her feet while she is on the wing.
How wonderfully varied are the ways which birds adopt to conceal their
nests. Some avoid suspicion by their audacity, building near a frequented
path, in a spot which they would never be suspected of choosing. The
hummingbird studs the outside of its nest with lichens, and the vireo
drapes a cobweb curtain around her fairy cup. Few nests are more beautiful
and at the same time more durable than a vireo's. I have seen the nests of
three successive years in the same tree, all built, no doubt, by the same
pair of birds, the nest of the past summer perfect in shape and quality,
that of the preceding year threadbare, while the home which sheltered the
brood of three summers ago is a mere flattened skeleton, reminding one of
the ribs and stern post of a wrecked boat long pounded by the waves.
The subject of nests has been sadly neglected by naturalists, most of whom
have been chiefly interested in the owners or the contents; but when the
whys and wherefores of the homes of birds are made plain we shall know far
more concerning the little carpenters, weavers, masons, and basket-makers
who hang our groves and decorate our shrubbery with their skill. When on
our winter's walk we see a distorted, wind-torn, grass cup, think of the
quartet of beautiful little creatures, now flying beneath some tropical
sun, which owe their lives to the nest, and which, if they are spared,
will surely return to the vicinity next summer.
That time of year thou may'st in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,--
Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
SHAKESPEARE.
LESSONS FROM AN ENGLISH SPARROW
Many people say they love Nature, but as they have little time to go into
the country they have to depend on books for most of their information
concerning birds, flowers, and other forms of life. There is, however, no
reason why one should not, even in the heart of a great city, begin to
cultivate his powers of observation. Let us take, for example, the
omnipresent English sparrow. Most of us probably know the difference
between the male and female English sparrows, but I venture to say that
not one in ten persons could give a satisfactory description of the
colours of either. How much we look and how little we really see!
Little can be said in favour of the English sparrows' disposition, but let
us not blame them for their unfortunate increase in numbers. Man brought
them from England, where they are kept in check by Nature's wise laws.
These birds were deliberately introduced where Nature was not prepared for
them.
When we put aside prejudice we can see that the male bird, especially when
in his bright spring colours, is really very attractive, with his ashy
gray head, his back streaked with black and bay, the white bar on his
wings and the jet black chin and throat contrasting strongly with the
uniformly light-coloured under parts. If this were a rare bird the
"black-throated sparrow" would enjoy his share of admiration.
It is wonderful how he can adapt himself to new conditions, nesting
anywhere and everywhere, and this very adaptation is a sign of a very high
order of intelligence. He has, however, many characteristics which tell us
of his former life. A few of the habits of this bird may be misleading.
His thick, conical bill is made for crushing seeds, but he now feeds on so
many different substances that its original use, as shown by its shape, is
obscured. If there were such a thing as vaudeville among birds, the common
sparrow would be a star imitator. He clings to the bark of trees and picks
out grubs, supporting himself with his tail like a woodpecker; he launches
out into the air, taking insects on the wing like a flycatcher; he clings
like a chickadee to the under side of twigs, or hovers in front of a heap
of insect eggs, presenting a feeble imitation of a hummingbird. These
modes of feeding represent many different families of birds.
Although his straw and feather nests are shapeless affairs, and he often
feeds on garbage, all æsthetic feeling is not lost, as we see when he
swells out his black throat and white cravat, spreads tail and wing and
beseeches his lady-love to admire him. Thus he woos her as long as he is
alone, but when several other eager suitors arrive, his patience gives
out, and the courting turns into a football game. Rough and tumble is the
word, but somehow in the midst of it all, her highness manages to make her
mind known and off she flies with the lucky one. Thus we have represented,
in the English sparrows, the two extremes of courtship among birds.
It is worth noting that the male alone is ornamented, the colours of the
female being much plainer. This dates from a time when it was necessary
for the female to be concealed while sitting on the eggs. The young of
both sexes are coloured like their mother, the young males not acquiring
the black gorget until perfectly able to take care of themselves. About
the plumage there are some interesting facts. The young bird moults twice
before the first winter. The second moult brings out the mark on the
throat, but it is rusty now, not black in colour; his cravat is grayish
and the wing bar ashy. In the spring, however, a noticeable change takes
place, but neither by the moulting nor the coming in of plumage. The
shaded edges of the feathers become brittle and break off, bringing out
the true colours and making them clear and brilliant. The waistcoat is
brushed until it is black and glossy, the cravat becomes immaculate, and
the wristband or wing bar clears up until it is pure white.
The homes of these sparrows are generally composed of a great mass of
straw and feathers, with the nest in the centre; but the spotted eggs,
perhaps, show that these birds once built open nests, the dots and marks
on the eggs being of use in concealing their conspicuous white ground.
Something seems already to have hinted to Nature that this protection is
no longer necessary, and we often find eggs almost white, like those of
woodpeckers and owls, which nest in dark places.
We have all heard of birds flocking together for some mutual benefit--the
crows, for instance, which travel every winter day across country to
favourite "roosts." In the heart of a city we can often study this same
phenomenon of birds gathering together in great flocks. In New York City,
on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, there stands a tree--a solitary
reminder of the forest which once covered all this paved land. To this,
all winter long, the sparrows begin to flock about four or five o'clock in
the afternoon. They come singly and in twos and threes until the bare
limbs are black with them and there seems not room for another bird; but
still they come, each new arrival diving into the mass of birds and
causing a local commotion. By seven o'clock there are hundreds of English
sparrows perching in this one tree. At daylight they are off again,
whirring away by scores, and in a few minutes the tree is silent and
empty. The same habit is to be seen in many other cities and towns, for
thus the birds gain mutual warmth.
Nature will do her best to diminish the number of sparrows and to regain
the balance, but to do this the sparrow must be brought face to face with
as many dangers as our wild birds, and although, owing to the sparrows'
fearlessness of man, this may never happen, yet at least the colour
protections and other former safeguards are slowly being eliminated. On
almost every street we may see albino or partly albino birds, such as
those with white tails or wings. White birds exist in a wild state only
from some adaptation to their surroundings. A bird which is white simply
because its need of protection has temporarily ceased, would become the
prey of the first stray hawk which crossed its path. We cannot hope to
exterminate the English sparrow even by the most wholesale slaughter, but
if some species of small hawk or butcher bird could ever become as
fearless an inhabitant of our cities as these birds, their reduction to
reasonable numbers would be a matter of only a few months.
So dainty in plumage and hue,
A study in gray and brown,
How little, how little we knew
The pest he would prove to the town!
From dawn until daylight grows dim,
Perpetual chatter and scold.
No winter migration for him,
Not even afraid of the cold!
Scarce a song-bird he fails to molest,
Belligerent, meddlesome thing!
Wherever he goes as a guest
He is sure to remain as a King.
Mary Isabella Forsyth.
THE PERSONALITY OF TREES
How many of us think of trees almost as we do of the rocks and stones
about us,--as all but inanimate objects, standing in the same relation to
our earth as does the furry covering of an animal to its owner. The simile
might be carried out more in detail, the forests protecting the continents
from drought and flood, even as the coat of fur protects its owner from
extremes of heat and cold.
When we come to consider the tree as a living individual, a form of life
contemporaneous with our own, and to realise that it has its birth and
death, its struggles for life and its periods of peace and abundance, we
will soon feel for it a keener sympathy and interest and withal a
veneration greater than it has ever aroused in us before.
Of all living things on earth, a tree binds us most closely to the past.
Some of the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands are thought to be
four hundred years old and are probably the oldest animals on the earth.
There is, however, nothing to compare with the majesty and grandeur of the
Sequoias--the giant redwoods of California--the largest of which, still
living, reach upward more than one hundred yards above the ground, and
show, by the number of their rings, that their life began from three to
five thousand years ago. Our deepest feelings of reverence are aroused
when we look at a tree which was "one thousand years old when Homer wrote
the Iliad; fifteen hundred years of age when Aristotle was foreshadowing
his evolution theory and writing his history of animals; two thousand
years of age when Christ walked upon earth; nearly four thousand years of
age when the 'Origin of Species' was written. Thus the life of one of
these trees spanned the whole period before the birth of Aristotle (384
B.C.) and after the death of Darwin (A.D. 1882), the two greatest natural
philosophers who have lived."
Considered not only individually, but taken as a group, the Sequoias are
among the oldest of the old. Geologically speaking, most of the forms of
life now in existence are of recent origin, but a full ten million of
years ago these giant trees were developed almost as highly as they are
to-day. At the end of the coal period, when the birds and mammals of
to-day were as yet unevolved, existing only potentially in the scaly,
reptile-like creatures of those days, the Sequoias waved their needles
high in air.
In those days these great trees were found over the whole of Canada,
Greenland, and Siberia, but the relentless onslaught of the Ice Age
wrought terrible destruction and, like the giant tortoises among reptiles,
the apteryx among birds, and the bison among mammals, the forlorn hope of
the great redwoods, making a last stand in a few small groves of
California, awaits total extinction at the hands of the most terrible of
Nature's enemies--man. When the last venerable giant trunk has fallen, the
last axe-stroke which severs the circle of vital sap will cut the only
thread of individual life which joins in time the beating of our pulses
to-day with the beginning of human history and philosophy,--thousands of
years in the past.
Through all the millions of years during which the evolution of modern
forms of life has been going on, then as now, trees must have entered
prominently into the environment and lives of the terrestrial animals.
Ages ago, long before snakes and four-toed horses were even foreshadowed,
and before the first bird-like creatures had appeared, winged
reptile-dragons flew about, doubtless roosting or perching on the Triassic
and Jurassic trees. Perhaps the very pieces of coal which are burned in
our furnaces once bent and swayed under the weight of these bulky animals.
Something like six millions of years ago, long-tailed, fluttering birds
appeared, with lizard-like claws at the bend of their wings and with jaws
filled with teeth. These creatures were certainly arboreal, spending most
of their time among the branches of trees. So large were certain great
sloth-like creatures that they uprooted the trees bodily, in order to feed
on their succulent leaves, sometimes bending their trunks down until their
branches were within reach.
On a walk through the woods and fields to-day, how seldom do we find a
dead insect! When sick and dying, nine out of ten are snapped up by frog,
lizard, or bird; the few which die a natural death seeming to disintegrate
into mould within a very short space of time. There is, however, one way
in which, through the long, long thousands of centuries, insects have been
preserved. The spicy resin which flowed from the ancient pines attracted
hosts of insects, which, tempted by their hope of food, met their
death--caught and slowly but surely enclosed by the viscid sap, each
antenna and hair as perfect as when the insect was alive. Thus, in this
strangely fortunate way, we may know and study the insects which, millions
of years ago, fed on the flowers or bored into the bark of trees. We have
found no way to improve on Nature in this respect, for to-day when we
desire to mount a specimen permanently for microscopical work, we imbed it
in Canada balsam.
If suddenly the earth should be bereft of all trees, there would indeed be
consternation and despair among many classes of animals. Although in the
sea there are thousands of creatures, which, by their manner of life, are
prohibited from ever passing the boundary line between land and water, yet
many sea-worms, as for example the teredo, or ship-worm, are especially
fashioned for living in and perhaps feeding on wood, in the shape of stray
floating trees and branches, the bottoms of ships, and piles of wharves.
Of course the two latter are supplied by man, but even before his time,
floating trees at sea must have been plentiful enough to supply homes for
the whole tribe of these creatures, unless they made their burrows in
coral or shells.
The insects whose very existence, in some cases, depends upon trees, are
innumerable. What, for example, would become of the larvæ of the cicada,
or locust, which, in the cold and darkness of their subterranean life, for
seventeen years suck the juicy roots of trees; or the caterpillars of the
moths, spinning high their webs among the leaves; or the countless beetles
whose grubs bore through and through the trunk their sinuous, sawdusty
tunnels; or the ichneumon fly, which with an instrument--surgical needle,
file, augur, and scroll saw all in one--deposits, deep below the bark, its
eggs in safety? If forced to compete with terrestrial species, the tree
spiders and scorpions would quickly become exterminated; while especially
adapted arboreal ants would instantly disappear.
We cannot entirely exclude even fishes from our list; as the absence of
mangroves would incidentally affect the climbing perch and catfishes! The
newts and common toads would be in no wise dismayed by the passing of the
trees, but not so certain tadpoles. Those of our ditches, it is true,
would live and flourish, but there are, in the world, many curious kinds
which hatch and grow up into frogs in curled-up leaves or in damp places
in the forks of branches, and which would find themselves homeless without
trees. Think, too, of the poor green and brown tree frogs with their
sucker feet, compelled always to hop along the ground!
Lizards, from tiny swifts to sixty-inch iguanas, would sorely miss the
trees, while the lithe green tree snakes and the tree boas would have to
change all their life habits in order to be able to exist. But as for the
cold, uncanny turtles and alligators,--what are trees to them!
In the evolution of the birds and other animals, the cry of "excelsior"
has been followed literally as well as theoretically and, with a few
exceptions, the highest in each class have not only risen above their
fellows in intelligence and structure, but have left the earth and climbed
or flown to the tree-tops, making these their chief place of abode.
Many of the birds which find their food at sea, or in the waters of stream
and lake, repair to the trees for the purpose of building their nests
among the branches. Such birds are the pelicans, herons, ibises, and
ospreys; while the wood ducks lay their eggs high above the ground in the
hollows of trees. Parrots, kingfishers, swifts, and hummingbirds are
almost helpless on the ground, their feet being adapted for climbing about
the branches, perching on twigs, or clinging to the hollows of trees.
Taken as a whole, birds would suffer more than any other class of
creatures in a deforested world. The woodpeckers would be without home,
food, and resting-place; except, possibly, the flicker, or high-hole, who
is either a retrograde or a genius, whichever we may choose to consider
him, and could live well enough upon ground ants. But as to his nest--he
would have to sharpen his wits still more to solve successfully the
question of the woodpecker motto, "What is home without a hollow tree?"
Great gaps would be made in the ranks of the furry creatures--the mammals.
Opossums and raccoons would find themselves in an embarrassing position,
and as for the sloths, which never descend to earth, depending for
protection on their resemblance to leaves and mossy bark, they would be
wiped out with one fell swoop. The arboreal squirrels might learn to
burrow, as so many of their near relations have done, but their muscles
would become cramped from inactivity and their eyes would often strain
upward for a glimpse of the beloved branches. The bats might take to caves
and the vampires to outhouses and dark crevices in the rocks, but most of
the monkeys and apes would soon become extinct, while a chimpanzee or
orang-utan would become a cripple, swinging ever painfully along between
the knuckles of crutch-like forearms, searching, searching forever for the
trees which gave him his form and structure, and without which his life
and that of his race must abruptly end.
Leaving the relations which trees hold to the animals about them and the
part which they have played in the evolution of life on the earth in past
epochs, let us consider some of the more humble trees about us. Not,
however, from the standpoint of the technical botanist or the scientific
forester, but from the sympathetic point of view of a living fellow form,
sharing the same planet, both owing their lives to the same great source
of all light and heat, and subject to the same extremes of heat and cold,
storm and drought. How wonderful, when we come to think of it, is a tree,
to be able to withstand its enemies, elemental and animate, year after
year, decade after decade, although fast-rooted to one patch of earth. An
animal flees to shelter at the approach of gale or cyclone, or travels far
in search of abundant food. Like the giant algæ, ever waving upward from
the bed of the sea, which depend on the nourishment of the surrounding
waters, so the tree blindly trusts to Nature to minister to its needs,
filling its leaves with the light-given greenness, and feeling for
nutritious salts with the sensitive tips of its innumerable rootlets.
Darwin has taught us, and truly, that a relentless struggle for existence
is ever going on around us, and although this is most evident to our eyes
in a terrible death battle between two great beasts of prey, yet it is no
less real and intense in the case of the bird pouring forth a beautiful
song, or the delicate violet shedding abroad its perfume. To realise the
host of enemies ever shadowing the feathered songster and its kind, we
have only to remember that though four young birds may be hatched in each
of fifty nests, yet of the two hundred nestlings an average often of but
one lives to grow to maturity,--to migrate and to return to the region of
its birth.
And the violet, living, apparently, such a quiet life of humble sweetness?
Fortunate indeed is it if its tiny treasure of seeds is fertilized, and
then the chances are a thousand to one that they will grow and ripen only
to fall by the wayside, or on barren ground, or among the tares.
At first thought, a tree seems far removed from all such struggles. How
solemn and grand its trunk stands, column-like against the sky! How puny
and weak we seem beside it! Its sturdy roots, sound wood, and pliant
branches all spell power. Nevertheless, the old, old struggle is as
fierce, as unending, here as everywhere. A monarch of the forest has
gained its supremacy only by a lifelong battle with its own kind and with
a horde of alien enemies.
From the heart of the tropics to the limit of tree-growth in the northland
we find the battle of life waged fiercely, root contending with root for
earth-food, branch with branch for the light which means life.
In a severe wrestling match, the moments of supremest strain are those
when the opponents are fast-locked, motionless, when the advantage comes,
not with quickness, but with staying power; and likewise in the struggle
of tree with tree the fact that one or two years, or even whole decades,
watch the efforts of the branches to lift their leaves one above the
other, detracts nothing from the bitterness of the strife.
Far to the north we will sometimes find groves of young balsam firs or
spruce,--hundreds of the same species of sapling growing so close together
that a rabbit may not pass between. The slender trunks, almost touching
each other, are bare of branches. Only at the top is there light and air,
and the race is ever upward. One year some slight advantage may come to
one young tree,--some delicate unbalancing of the scales of life, and that
fortunate individual instantly responds, reaching several slender side
branches over the heads of his brethren. They as quickly show the effects
of the lessened light and forthwith the race is at an end. The victor
shoots up tall and straight, stamping and choking out the lives at his
side, as surely as if his weapons were teeth and claws instead of delicate
root-fibres and soughing foliage.
The contest with its fellows is only the first of many. The same elements
which help to give it being and life are ever ready to catch it unawares,
to rend it limb from limb, or by patient, long-continued attack bring it
crashing to the very dust from which sprang the seed.
We see a mighty spruce whose black leafage has waved above its fellows for
a century or more, paying for its supremacy by the distortion of every
branch. Such are to be seen clinging to the rocky shores of Fundy, every
branch and twig curved toward the land; showing the years of battling with
constant gales and blizzards. Like giant weather-vanes they stand, and,
though there is no elasticity in their limbs and they are gnarled and
scarred, yet our hearts warm in admiration of their decades of patient
watching beside the troubled waters. For years to come they will defy
every blast the storm god can send against them, until, one wild day, when
the soil has grown scanty around the roots of one of the weakest, it will
shiver and tremble at some terrific onslaught of wind and sleet; it will
fold its branches closer about it and, like the Indian chieftains, who
perhaps in years past occasionally watched the waters by the side of the
young sapling, the conquered tree will bow its head for the last time to
the storm.
Farther inland, sheltered in a narrow valley, stands a sister tree, seeded
from the same cone as the storm-distorted spruce. The wind shrieks and
howls above the little valley and cannot enter; but the law of
compensation brings to bear another element, silent, gentle, but as deadly
as the howling blast of the gale. All through the long winter the snow
sifts softly down, finding easy lodgment on the dense-foliaged branches.
From the surrounding heights the white crystals pour down until the tree
groans with the massive weight. Her sister above is battling with the
storm, but hardly a feather's weight of snow clings to her waving limbs.
The compressed, down-bent branches of the valley spruce soon become
permanently bent and the strain on the trunk fibres is great. At last,
with a despairing crash, one great limb gives way and is torn bodily from
its place of growth. The very vitals of the tree are exposed and instantly
every splintered cell is filled with the sifting snow. Helpless the tree
stands, and early in the spring, at the first quickening of summer's
growth, a salve of curative resin is poured upon the wound. But it is too
late. The invading water has done its work and the elements have begun to
rot the very heart of the tree. How much more to be desired is the manner
of life and death of the first spruce, battling to the very last!
A beech seedling which takes root close to the bank of a stream has a good
chance of surviving, since there will be no competitors on the water side
and moisture and air will never fail. But look at some ancient beech
growing thus, whose smooth, whitened hole encloses a century of growth
rings. Offsetting its advantages, the stream, little by little, has
undermined the maze of roots and the force of annual freshets has trained
them all in a down-stream direction. It is an inverted reminder of the
wind-moulded spruce. Although the stout beech props itself by great roots
thrown landward, yet, sooner or later, the ripples will filter in beyond
the centre of gravity and the mighty tree will topple and mingle with its
shadow-double which for so many years the stream has reflected.
Thus we find that while without moisture no tree could exist, yet the same
element often brings death. The amphibious mangroves which fringe the
coral islands of the southern seas hardly attain to the dignity of trees,
but in the mysterious depths of our southern swamps we find the strangely
picturesque cypresses, which defy the waters about them. One cannot say
where trunk ends and root begins, but up from the stagnant slime rise
great arched buttresses, so that the tree seems to be supported on giant
six- or eight-legged stools, between the arches of which the water flows
and finds no chance to use its power. Here, in these lonely
solitudes,--heron-haunted, snake-infested,--the hanging moss and orchids
search out every dead limb and cover it with an unnatural greenness. Here,
great lichens grow and a myriad tropical insects bore and tunnel their way
from bark to heart of tree and back again. Here, in the blackness of
night, when the air is heavy with hot, swampy odours, and only the
occasional squawk of a heron or cry of some animal is heard, a rending,
grinding, crashing, breaks suddenly upon the stillness, a distant boom and
splash, awakening every creature. Then the silence again closes down and
we know that a cypress, perhaps linking a trio of centuries, has yielded
up its life.
Leaving the hundred other mysteries which the trees of the tropics might
unfold, let us consider for a moment the danger which the tall, successful
tree invites,--the penalty which it pays for having surpassed all its
other brethren. It preeminently attracts the bolts of Jove and the lesser
trees see a blinding flash, hear a rending of heart wood, and when the
storm has passed, the tree, before perfect in trunk, limbs, and foliage,
is now but a heap of charred splinters.
Many a great willow overhanging the banks of a wide river could tell
interesting tales of the scars on its trunk. That lower wound was a deep
gash cut by some Indian, perhaps to direct a war-party making their way
through the untrodden wilderness; this bare, unsightly patch was burnt out
by the signal fire of one of our forefather pioneers. And so on and on the
story would unfold, until the topmost, freshly sawed-off limb had for its
purpose only the desire of the present owner for a clearer view of the
water beyond.
Finally we come to the tree best beloved of us in the north,--the
carefully grafted descendant of some sour little wild crab-apple. A
faithful servant indeed has the monarch of the old orchard proved. It has
fed us and our fathers before us, and its gnarled trunk and low-hanging
branches tell the story of the rosy fruit which has weighed down its limbs
year after year. Old age has laid a heavy hand upon it, but not until the
outermost twig has ceased to blossom, and its death, unlike that of its
wild kindred, has come silently and peacefully, do we give the order to
have the tree felled. Even in its death it serves us, giving back from the
open hearth the light and heat which it has stored up throughout the
summers of many years.
Let us give more thought to the trees about us, and when possible succour
them in distress, straighten the bent sapling, remove the parasitic
lichen, and give them the best chance for a long, patient, strong life.
In the far North stands a Pine-tree, lone,
Upon a wintry height;
It sleeps; around it snows have thrown
A covering of white.
It dreams forever of a Palm
That, far i' the morning-land,
Stands silent in a most sad calm
Midst of the burning sand.
(_From the German of Heine._) SIDNEY LANIER.
AN OWL OF THE NORTH
It is mid-winter, and from the northland a blizzard of icy winds and
swirling snow crystals is sweeping with fury southward over woods and
fields. We sit in our warm room before the crackling log fire and listen
to the shriek of the gale and wonder how it fares with the little bundles
of feathers huddled among the cedar branches.
We picture to ourselves all the wild kindred sheltered from the raging
storm; the gray squirrels rocking in their lofty nests of leaves; the
chipmunks snug underground; the screech owls deep in the hollow apple
trees, all warm and dry.
But there are those for whom the blizzard has no terrors. Far to the north
on the barren wastes of Labrador, where the gale first comes in from the
sea and gathers strength as it comes, a great owl flaps upward and on
broad pinions, white as the driving snowflakes, sweeps southward with the
storm. Now over ice-bound river or lake, or rushing past a myriad dark
spires of spruce, then hovering wonderingly over a multitude of lights
from the streets of some town, the strong Arctic bird forges southward,
until one night, if we only knew, we might open our window and, looking
upward, see two great yellow eyes apparently hanging in space, the body
and wings of the bird in snow-white plumage lost amidst the flakes. We
thrill in admiration at the grand bird, so fearless of the raging
elements.
Only the coldest and fiercest storms will tempt him from the north, and
then not because he fears snow or cold, but in order to keep within reach
of the snowbirds which form his food. He seeks for places where a less
severe cold encourages small birds to be abroad, or where the snow's crust
is less icy, through which the field mice may bore their tunnels, and run
hither and thither in the moonlight, pulling down the weeds and cracking
their frames of ice. Heedless of passing clouds, these little rodents
scamper about, until a darker, swifter shadow passes, and the feathered
talons of the snowy owl close over the tiny, shivering bundle of fur.
Occasionally after such a storm, one may come across this white owl in
some snowy field, hunting in broad daylight; and that must go down as a
red-letter day, to be remembered for years.
What would one not give to know of his adventures since he left the far
north. What stories he could tell of hunts for the ptarmigan,--those
Arctic fowl, clad in plumage as white as his own; or the little kit foxes,
or the seals and polar bears playing the great game of life and death
among the grinding icebergs!
His visit to us is a short one. Comes the first hint of a thaw and he has
vanished like a melting snowflake, back to his home and his mate. There in
a hollow in the half-frozen Iceland moss, in February, as many as ten
fuzzy little snowy owlets may grow up in one nest,--all as hardy and
beautiful and brave as their great fierce-eyed parents.
THE END
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