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MARCH SWALLOWS THE birds
are
having their innings. They have been away and have come back, and even
the most
stolid citizen is for the moment aware of their presence. I rejoice to
see them
so popular. Two or
three
mornings ago I met a friend in the road, a farmer, one of the happy
men, good
to talk with, who glory in their work. A phoebe was calling from the
top of an
elm, and as we were near the farmer's house I asked, “How long has the
phoebe
been here?” He looked up, saw the bird, and answered with a smile, “He
must
have just come. I haven’t heard him before.” I made some remark about
its being
pleasant to have such creatures with us again, and he responded, as I
knew he
would, in the heartiest manner. “Oh, I do love to see them!” he said. I was
reminded of a
lady of whom I had been told the day before. She had felt obliged, as I
heard
the story, to attend a meeting of the woman's club, but remarked to
one of her
assembled sisters that she had had half a mind to stay at home. The
truth was,
she explained, that two or three meadow larks were singing gloriously
in the
rear of her house, and she could hardly bear to come away and leave
them. I
hope her self-denial was rewarded. On the
same day I
heard of a servant who hastened into the sitting-room to say to her
mistress,
“Oh, Mrs. —! there’s a little bird out in the hedge singing to beat the
band.”
The newcomer proved to be a song sparrow, and the lady of the house was
fully
as enthusiastic as the servant in her welcome of it, though I dare say
she
expressed herself in less picturesque language. And I know
another
house, still nearer home, where a few days ago the dinner-table was
actually
deserted for a time, in the very midst of the meal. Three bluebirds,
with
snowbirds, goldfinches, and chickadees, had suddenly appeared under the
windows. “There! there! In the maple! Will you look at him! Oh-h-h!”
The dinner
might “get cold,” as the prudent housewife suggested, but it did not
matter.
Such a color as those bluebirds displayed was better than anything that
an
eater could put into his mouth. Yes, as I
say, the
birds are having their innings. In whichever direction I walk, in town
or
country, I am asked about them. A schoolgirl stopped me in the street
the other
day. “Can you tell me what that bird is?” she inquired. A
white-breasted nuthatch
was whistling over our heads in a shade tree. Possibly the study of
live birds
will be as fashionable a few years hence as the wearing of dead ones
was a few
years ago. On the 22d
of
March, as I stood listening to a most uncommonly brilliant song sparrow
(now is
the time for such things, before the greater artists monopolize our
attention)
and the outgivings of a too chary fox sparrow, the first cowbird of the
year
announced himself. Polygamist, shirk, and, by all our human standards,
general
reprobate, I was still glad to hear him. He is what he was made. Few
birds are
more interesting, psychologically, if one wishes an object of study. Saturday,
the 23d,
was cloudless, a rare event at this time of the year, and with an
outdoor
neighbor I made an excursion to Wayland, to see what might be visible
and
audible in those broad Sudbury River meadows. We took a
“round”
familiar to us (to one of us, at least), down the road to the north
bridge and
causeway, thence through the woods on the opposite side of the river to
a main
thoroughfare, or turnpike, and back to the village again over the south
causeway. Meadow larks were in full tune, now from a treetop, now from
a
fence-post. They were my first ones since the autumn, and their music
was
relished accordingly. As we
stopped on
the bridge to look down the blue river and across the overflowed meadow
lands
to a gray, flat-topped hill far beyond toward Concord, we suddenly
discovered
a shining white object on the surface of the water. It proved to be a
duck, one
of two, jet black and snow white, and presumably a merganser, though
it was
too far away to be made out with positiveness. Thoreau, I remember,
makes
frequent mention of mergansers and golden-eyes in his March journals. We were admiring this couple (a couple only in the looser sense of the word, for both birds were drakes), when all at once some small far-away object “swam into my ken.” “A swallow!” said I, and even as I spoke a second one came into the field of the glass. Yes, there they were, two white-breasted swallows, sailing about over the meadows on the 23d of March. How unspeakably beautiful they looked, their lustrous blue-green backs with the bright sun shining on them! The date must constitute a “record,” I assured my companion. Once before, at least, I had seen swallows in March, but that, I felt certain, was on one of the last days of the month. Strange that such creatures should have ventured so far northward thus early. If Gilbert White could see them, he would be more firmly convinced than ever that swallows “lay themselves up in holes and caverns, and do, insect-like and bat-like, come forth at mild times, and then retire again to their latebrć.” For my own part, not being able to accept this doctrine, I contented myself with Americanizing Shakespeare. “Swallows,” said I, “Swallows
that come before the daffodil dares,
And take the winds of March with beauty.” I could
hardly
recover from my excitement, which was renewed an hour afterward when,
on the
southern causeway, a third bird (or one of the same two) passed near
us. But
now see how untrustworthy a clerk a man's memory is! On reaching home I
turned
at once to my book of dates, and behold, it was exactly four years ago
to an
hour, March 23, 1897, that I saw two white-breasted swallows about a
pond here
in Wellesley. We had broken no “record,” after all. But I imagine the
Rev.
Gilbert White saying, “Yes, yes; you will notice that in both cases the
birds
were seen in the immediate neighborhood of water.” And there is no
doubt that
such places are the ones in which to look most hopefully for the first
swallows
of the year. All this
time a
herring gull, a great beauty in high plumage, was sailing up and down
the
meadows like a larger swallow. He, too, was one of Thoreau's river
friends at
this season; and since we are talking of dates, I note it as a
coincidence that
precisely forty-two years ago (March 23, 1859), he entered in his
journal that
he saw “come slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, of
voracious form,
which at length, by a sudden and steep descent, alighted in Fair Haven
Pond [a
wide place in the river], scaring up a crow which was seeking its food
on the
edge of the ice.” Our bird, also, made one “sudden and steep descent,”
and
picked from the ice some small, dark-colored object, which at our
distance
might have been a dead leaf. But if Thoreau saw ducks and gulls, he saw
no
March swallows. His earliest date for them, so far as the printed
journals
show, seems to have been April 5. The woods
brought
us nothing, — beyond a chickadee or two, — but we were hardly out of
them
before we heard the blue-jay scream of a red-shouldered hawk, and
presently
saw first one bird and then another (rusty shoulder and all) sailing
above us.
A grand sight it is, a soaring and diving hawk. May it never become
less
frequent. I must
quote
Thoreau once more, this time from memory, and for substance only. I am
with
him, heart and soul, when he prays for more hawks, though at the cost
of fewer
chickens. And I like the spirit of a friend of mine who girdled a tall
pine
tree in his woods, that it might serve as a perching station for such
visitors. As we
approached
the village again, we came upon two phśbes. Like the white-breasted
swallow,
the phśbe winters in Florida, and is by a long time the earliest member
of its
family to arrive in New England. Red-winged blackbirds were numerous,
of
course, every one a male, and in one place we passed a flock of crow
blackbirds
feeding on the ground. Not the
least
interesting bird of the forenoon was a shrike, sitting motionless and
dumb in
an apple tree. The shrike has all the attractiveness of singularity. He
is no
lover of his kind, save as the lion loves the lamb and the hawk the
chicken.
Lonesome? No, I thank you. Except in breeding-time, he is sufficient
unto
himself. Even when he happens to feel like conversation, he goes not in
search
of company. He is like the amiable philosopher who was asked by some
busybody
why he so often talked to himself. “Well,” said he, “for two reasons:
first, I
like to talk to a sensible man, and secondly, I like to hear a sensible
man
talk.” In the present instance the shrike may very well have considered
that
there was little occasion for his talking, either to himself or to
anybody
else, since a bunch of twenty masculine redwings in some willow trees
near by
were chattering in chorus until, to use a good Old Colony phrase, a man
could
hardly hear himself think. Blackbird loquacity, each particular bird
sputtering “to beat the band,” is one of the wonders of the world. |