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THE PROSPERITY OF A
WALK A BIRD
lover's
daily rations during a New England winter are somewhat like Robinson
Crusoe's
on his island in the wet season. I eat a
bunch of
raisins for my breakfast,” he says, a piece of goat's flesh or of the
turtle
for my dinner, and two or three of the turtle's eggs for my supper.”
Such a
fare was ample for health, perhaps; and probably every item of it was
sufficiently appetizing, in itself considered; but after the first week
or two
it must have begun to smack of monotony. The castaway might have
complained
with some of old, “My soul loatheth this light bread.” He might have
complained,
I say; I do not remember that he did. What I do remember is that when,
moved by
pious feeling, he was on the point of thanking God for having brought
him to
that place, he suddenly restrained himself, or an influence from
without
restrained him. “I know not what it was,” he says, “but
something shocked my mind at that thought, and I durst not speak the
words.
'How canst thou be such a hypocrite?' said I.” So I
imagine that
most bird-gazing men would hesitate to thank the Divine Providence for
a
northern winter, with its rigors, its inordinate length, and its
destitution.
They put up with it, make the best of it, grumble over it as politely
as may
be; but they are not so piously false-tongued as to profess that they
like it. By the
last of
December they have begun, not exactly to tire of chickadees and blue
jays, but
to sigh for something else, something to go with these, something by
way of
variety. “Where are the crossbills,” they ask, “and the redpoll
linnets, and
the pine grosbeaks?” All these circumpolar species are too uncertain by
half,
or, better say, by two thirds. Summering at the apex of the globe, so
to speak,
with Europe, Asia, and America equally at their elbow, they seem to
flit
southward along whatever meridian happens to take their fancy. Once in
a while
chance brings them our way, but only once in a while. Last winter we
had redpolls
and both kinds of crossbills, the white-wings for the first time in
many years.
They made a bright season. This winter, to the best of my knowledge,
not one of
these hyperborean species has sent so much as a deputation for our
enlivenment.
And to
make matters
worse, even our regular local stand-bys seem to be less numerous than
usual.
Tree sparrows and snowbirds are both abnormally scarce, by my
reckoning. As for
the Canadian nuthatches, which helped us out so nobly a year ago, they
are not
only absent now, but were so throughout the fall. I have not seen nor
heard one
in Massachusetts since the middle of May, a most unusual — to the best
of my
recollection a quite unprecedented — state of things. I should like
very much
to know the explanation of the mystery. The daily
birds at
present, as I find them, are the chickadee (which deserves to head all
lists),
the Carolina nuthatch, the downy woodpecker, the crow, and the jay.
Less
regularly, but pretty frequently (every day, if the walk is long
enough), one
meets with tree sparrows, goldfinches, snowbirds, brown creepers,
flickers, and
golden-crowned kinglets. Twice since December came in I have seen a
shrike.
Once I heard a single pine finch passing, invisible, far overhead. On
the same
day (December 2) I caught the fine staccato calls of a purple finch,
without
seeing the author of them. On the 2d and 3d three or four rusty
blackbirds
were unexpectedly in the neighborhood. Quail and grouse are never
absent, of
course, but I happen to have seen neither of them of late, though one
day I
heard the breezy quoiting of a quail, greatly to my pleasure. On the
14th I
came upon a single robin in the woods, the first since November 21. He
was
perched in a leafless treetop, and was calling at the top of his voice,
as if
he had friends, or hoped that he had, somewhere within hearing. The
sight was
rather dispiriting than otherwise. He looked unhappy, in a cold wind,
with the
sky clouded. He had better have gone south before this time, I thought.
Half an
hour afterward I heard the quick, emphatic, answer-demanding challenge
of a
hairy woodpecker (as much louder and sharper than the downy's as the
bird is
bigger), and on starting in his direction saw him take wing. Him I
should
never think of commiserating. He can look out for himself. These, with
English
sparrows (“the poor ye have always with you”), Old Squaws, herring
gulls, and
loons, make up my December list of twenty-two species. It might be
worse, I
suppose. I remember the remark of a friend of mine on a similar
occasion.
“Well,” said he, “the month is only half gone. You ought to see as many
more
before the end of it.” He was strong in arithmetic, but weak in
ornithology. If
bird lists could be made on his plan, we should have our hands full in
the dullest
season. Even in January, I would engage to find more than three
hundred
species within a mile of my doorstep. As matters
are, we
must come back (we cannot do so too often, in winter especially) to the
good
and wholesome doctrine that pleasure is not in proportion to numbers or
rarity.
It depends upon the kind and degree of sympathy excited. One day, in
one mood,
you will derive more inspiration from a five-minute chat with a
chickadee than
on another day, in some mood of dryness, you would get from the sight
of
nightingales and birds of paradise. Worldlings and matter-of-fact men
do not
know it, but what quiet nature lovers (not scenery hunting tourists) go
to
nature in search of is not the excitement of novelty, but a refreshment
of the
sensibilities. You may call it comfort, consolation, tranquility, peace
of
mind, a vision of truth, an uplifting of the heart, a stillness of the
soul, a
quickening of the imagination, what you will. It is of different
shades, and
so may be named in different words. It is theirs who have the secret,
and the
rest would not divine your meaning though your speech were
transparency
itself. To my
thinking, no
one, not even Thoreau, or Jefferies, or Wordsworth, ever said a truer
word
about it than Keats dropped in one of his letters. Nothing in his poems
is more
deeply poetical. “The setting sun will always set me to rights,” he
says, “or
if a sparrow come before my window, I take part in his existence and
pick about
the gravel.” There you have the soul of the matter. “I take part in his
existence.” When you do that, the bird or the flower may be never so
common or
so humble. Your walk has prospered. |